Guard Them, and Him Within
chapter two
The base was like a little city, except for a distinct lack of people who weren't soldiers. There was a constant thrum of activity, without any discernible changes between the designated 'day' and 'night' hours, aside from a brief dip in activity during the transition. Everybody worked in shifts, except for Jack who worked all shifts.
(One nickname his men apparently had for him, because obviously it wouldn't do for Captain Jack Harkness to have only one, was 'Allshift'. Ianto heard it echoing in the hallway most often after grueling back-to-back days.)
It took approximately two days for him to get used to the synthesized, vaguely female voice rendering everything he heard into English. Her accent was strangely northern, but not quite Scottish. Torchwood had a few devices with similar capabilities, but only Tosh had any familiarity with them. Ianto was glad to find that he wasn't the only person base who wore one in addition to the standard comm earpiece. He did notice that the others who were so equipped had distinct little differences in appearance - a tilt of the eyes, extra fingers, an exotic skin color. Perhaps they were from outlying colonies? He imagined there were collections of major cities - major planets - wherein everybody learned a common set of knowledge, including a language. But there would always be little forgotten communities, or just people who clung to their own traditions.
He wasn't sure how everybody else was going to understand him, but it turned out the technology went both ways. After the third person he spoke to for directions quickly switched on their earpiece the moment he began to speak, Ianto deduced that the device transmitted a translation to other comm devices.
Technically, Ianto didn't have to keep to the soldiers' schedules, in much the same way as none of the Torchwood team were contractually obliged to work beyond the daytime hours of eight to five. He did try to work and sleep in regular intervals, reasoning he had a moderate chance of success without Jack actively seeking him out for odd jobs, but when he resurfaced after sleeping through two minor attacks, he learned that three men on the wall had died after their shields malfunctioned from lack of maintenance.
It wasn't Ianto's fault at all, he was still on unofficial probation and thus not given access to areas on the base beyond the ones used by everyone, and he hadn't even known about guns on the exterior. But he felt partly responsible, all the same.
Jack had called him a quintessential team player, once. He'd thought it was just another compliment, another way of acknowledging his contributions to Torchwood. But now he wondered if Jack had seen this, if the part of him that was always a soldier had realized what it meant for Ianto to be loyal to fault, how that could be transferred and used for the good of Torchwood.
The man who had the top bunk above Ianto's introduced himself as Roadrunner. Ianto barely saw him; either they had entirely different schedules, or the other man had a second bed to sleep in.
The first time they were both in the barracks-room, Ianto asked about how he got his name.
The man shrugged. "The first time I went outside... I panicked, and ran. Ran for hours. Nobody could stop me, I was a track runner at school, I think I was trying to run around the mountain. One moment, I knew that something was chasing me, and in the next I was the one doing the chasing, terrified that the quarry would get away. Eventually my body gave out, and they dragged me back inside."
"Oh," said Ianto, rather inadequately.
"It was the Wake. The Wake gets you, there's no escaping it." Roadrunner's words trailed off, and soon snores were coming from above.
Ianto bit his lip, kept in the words; he was a stranger here, an outsider, knew nothing about the man kneeling on the ground and precious little more (or nothing, nothing at all) about the man holding an old-fashioned pistol to the first man's head.
"No looting. No stealing. No giving people to the Wake!" barked Jack, coldly furious and controlled like Ianto had never seen before.
The man, his soldier's uniform bloodied around the neck and sleeves, spat at Jack's boots. "You don't know what he did, before he came here. What that monster was capable of-"
"I. Don't. Care." The gun dug into the man's forehead. "All of that doesn't matter down here. The moment you were assigned to R-133-FT, nothing that happened to you in the outside makes a difference. We follow the same rules, or we die."
The man laughed, spine bowing back and arms thrown up on either side. "Then shoot me! Give me your justice, Captain." He grabbed the barrel of the gun, pressed it back on his head. "Prove to me that the law can be equal for all men."
Jack blinked, exactly once. The sharp crack of gunshot echoed loudly off the thick walls of the base, a strange alien sound in a world where plasma and electricity were the ammunition of choice.
Nobody moved, there were no sudden pounding of footsteps in the distance. Ianto thought of Jack being known for his gun, the rarity of those weapons now, and wondered if everybody knew what the sound of it being used must mean.
"You don't look surprised," murmured Varys quietly, beside him.
Frankly, Ianto was still processing what had happened. But later - later, he would still not be surprised. "It's not the first execution I've seen."
He could feel her surprised look. But before he could say anything, he realized that Jack's gaze was directed at him.
No, not Jack. Not with those cold eyes, when there was a dead man splattered over the wall, the blood pool trickling towards his boots.
"I guess I was expecting you to disapprove, or something."
"He's the Captain," said Ianto, a little breathless with heartbreak.
A long breath, before her eyes moved away. "Yes."
And blue-grey eyes were still on Ianto. Maybe he, too, expected Ianto to disapprove. As if it would matter if Ianto did. Ianto couldn't read him, not at all.
But he, at least, was still Ianto.
He politely stepped through the front row of silent watchers, carefully avoiding the little pools of blood as he made his way to the Captain. The Captain.
He held out his hand expectantly. Jack blinked, stared at the hand, and after a moment's hesitation slapped the pistol onto it, handle first.
Normally Ianto waited until he got to the arms room before he worked on the weapons, but this time he checked the gun and took out the bullets, which he handed over to the Captain.
"I'll clean this up, sir," he said, when the older man continued to stare at him. The sound of his voice seemed to remind the Captain that they still had an audience. He nodded tersely, dismissed the watching soldiers with a pointed look, and strode off in the direction of his office.
Very soon after that, Ianto got his name.
He walked into Commons B after inspecting the lockers in Commons A, and found a short, burly man pulling on Toss' hair. Nobody else Ianto knew was nearby, so he sighed and strode over to them.
"Toss, is this man bothering you?" asked Ianto stiffly.
She smacked the man's hand away, and jabbed him in the side. "Definitely, can you throw him out?"
"Whoa, hold it, I'm her brother," said the man, grinning at Toss and sneaking in another tug on her longest braid. "I can see why they call you Knight. You just need a suit."
Ianto blinked. "Of armor?"
"Nah, force fields don't have the right look, plus no man looks dignified jumping around with no clothes on. What you want is those black jacket things, made of real cloth, with a white shirt that has the buttons down the center." The man looked him up and down, frowning. "You know, that would actually look real good on you. You've got the height, and you're scrawny enough."
Ianto resisted the urge to back away, his thoughts doing the now-familiar dance trying to realign concepts of his old world with this new one, and beneath that was a breath of nostalgia at the mention of suits. "Um. Thank you?" He stuck out his hand. "Nice to meet you. I didn't know Toss had a brother."
"I try to pretend I don't," grumbled Toss.
"Call me Oakland," said her brother, shaking Ianto's hand. "To be honest, I came here so I could get a look at you. Normally I go to Commons D. But it's been a while since it took two whole weeks to decide somebody's name, and I wanted to see what the fuss was about."
"Name?" repeated Ianto.
"And now that Oakland's given his approval, it's set," said Toss. She grinned at Ianto. "Nice to meet you, Knight."
Ianto paid attention to the word coming out of their mouths, not just the comm device's translation - to his surprise, it sounded the same, which confirmed that they meant 'knight' and not 'night'. Ianto had learned enough of their language to know their word for the latter. He supposed that antiquated, rarely-used words would not change as much, in the evolution of the language, as the ones used in the everyday.
He needed to ask, though. "Why Knight?"
Toss looked thoughtful. "These things take on a mind of their own. I think it's when you called the Captain 'sir' that the others first got the idea. Well, they wanted to call you 'Sir', but that didn't seem right, especially when you were calling the Captain that. You've always got this face on, it's really hard to read, and one guy said it reminded him of Butler, you remember that show when you were a kid? And you're always so... " she made a vague gesture towards his person. "Nice. Like just now, when you jumped in to save me even though you're just a civilian." She bit her lip, and added loyally, "Not that I don't think you couldn't take Oakland."
"Please." Ianto grinned, and looked pointedly at the other man. "Why bother? You do realize I'm the one in charge of maintenance for the barracks. You know, where you sleep."
Oakland stared at him for a moment, and then roared in laughter. "I like a man who doesn't pretend to be less or more than he is. Nice to meet you, Knight."
Hours later, cocooned in the surprising warmth of his blanket, Ianto dreamed of a chessboard. It started off the size of those mini travel versions, but grew and grew until it covered all of Wales. And between the black and white boxes, the Rift burned lines of storm-red and lightning-blue.
He jerked awake when somebody swore loudly, several beds away. Maybe because of that, when he slipped under again, he was looking down at Jack. Jack, not the Captain, Jack and his RAF coat. Nothing else, because Ianto was riding him, knees pressed in on either side of Jack's ribs. Slowly but with purpose, Jack's skin hot on his thighs, fingers and nails digging in with every sweet slide of Jack's cock into the thrumming resistance of Ianto's body.
He didn't come, but woke knowing that release hadn't been the point. He pressed his face into his pillow, the rushing sound in his ears and his own heavy breathing making it easy to ignore the latest round of sirens. The pleasure, the connection, all the memories of it, of how he and Jack communicated best.
He thought that the second dream was a lot less allegorical than the first, or at least more direct about things, the product of weeks without sex. But he just felt homesick, and lost, and above all, missing Jack.
Ianto didn't, of course, have to clean up after the entire squad. Actually, he found he had less to do for the few hundred people on the base than he'd had for the five-person team in Cardiff. It didn't surprise him that Jack insisted on his men taking care of their own things; war didn't change much, aside from the deadly accoutrements.
But occasionally - well, quite often, actually - there was a soldier injured, or sick, or otherwise indisposed, and their weapons needed to be cleaned and charged. Ianto guessed that this job had traditionally fallen to somebody in the ailing person's squad. He was glad to take it, though; it allowed him to learn about the various types of weaponry, the technology, the workings of the base.
The woman in charge of the armory introduced herself as Lace. She looked suspiciously at him for a moment, and then contacted the Captain to confirm his identity. Ianto was surprised to be given access to all the hand weapons, and that Lace was to answer all his questions; but he was not allowed to use one, even for practice.
Lace responded to his questions readily enough, but with a polite distance. She did not look askance at him when he asked things that he thought everybody else would already know, and patiently demonstrated how to clean the guns and gear, her scarred hands moving efficiently over the various components.
The soldiers had a rota for cleaning various areas of the base, but it was followed only when there were no attacks, no missions, no sudden training, which meant that most rooms saw a cursory mop or wipe-down once a month at best.
He did hardly saw the Captain at all in the first few weeks, aside from momentary glimpses in the corridors and his voice over the PA system. The situation had a distinct, bitter feeling of abandonment; made worse by the knowledge that, as far as the man was concerned, he'd already done all that could be expected of him for a stranded time-traveler he'd found on a ship.
It was easier to focus on acclimatizing to the new environment. Light-years from his planet, centuries from his time. But he was healthy, intact, relatively safe, he even had a job. He'd spent enough time at Flat Holm to not be grateful, to not appreciate just how bad it could have been.
And yet, the ache for home was growing to almost a physical pain, the sum of all the ways he did not fit in this new world. He wondered if it was driving him mad, after all; there were times when he'd suddenly grow aware of the security cameras covering the base, as if there were living eyes on the other side.
Gaining a name was apparently cause for celebration.
"Normally, we'd take the ex-Newbie out for a scavenge run to the Cherry Pits. A little taste of the life, you know? But you're a civilian, you don't need that. Plus, that place has become an absolute nightmare." Toss paused, blinked. "Um. With the storm and everything."
Ianto wanted to tell her that it was all right, he didn't mind them keeping secrets. Especially if it was something that wouldn't affect him. But he couldn't think of a way to do so without sounding like he did care, so he only made a noncommittal noise.
Toss looked a little relieved that he didn't jump to grill her, and started off again on what the others had planned. "We're gonna have drinks, of course. Not enough juice for a triple vodka, but Eyrie knows how to make this killer Continental Shake, and the Captain brought in a few cases of medicinal beer from his last time topside."
Coming up on Ianto's other side, Rum-Tum cheered and smacked Ianto's back. "We're gonna have a party!"
"Just don't eat up all the cake, like last time," said Dree. Who was, as far as Ianto could tell without directly asking, Rum-Tum's significant other, for all that they never agreed on anything.
Ianto laughed. The joviality of the others was infectious, lightening the strange mood that had hung over him lately.
He was trapped in the future. He wanted to go home, but couldn't think of how. The Captain wasn't Jack, the Captain didn't remember him, but he was still the only hope Ianto had of going back.
Ianto sighed inwardly. Oh well. On the bright side, he had responsibilities, people he could call friends, and cake.