Renewal: Chapter 48 - Distraction

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IANTO'S JOURNEY, PART III, RENEWAL
TITLE: Chapter 48 - Distraction
AUTHOR: Aviv_b
RATING: Chapter 48 - PG- nothing really, one swear word, but better to err on the safe side
CHARACTERS:  Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Tosh
DISCLAIMER:  Not mine; Aunty B's and RTD's
WORDS: ~ 1700
SUMMARY:  Jack's gone.  How will the team cope? Well at least one member isn't.

 Title is from: Never neglect details. When everyone's mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.  Colin Powell

 

They met in the conference room the next day to try to figure out what to do. Gwen and Owen did most of the talking. Ianto was noticeably distracted and disengaged from the conversation.

“Well, as I said yesterday, it seems to me that Gwen ought to take the lead on tactical issues,” Owen offered. “She’s got the most experience with catching criminals as well as the connections to the police force.”

Gwen was a bit uncertain. “But I haven’t been here as long as the rest of you. That doesn’t seem fair somehow.” 

“But you know what you’re doing,” Tosh added. “Owen and I are support. We go on missions but only under someone else’s command.”

“How does that sound to you, Ianto?” Gwen asked. Ianto was gazing off into space. “Ianto, is that alright with you?”

Ianto suddenly realized that everyone was staring at him. ‘Sorry. What was that again?’

Owen patiently repeated the information that Ianto had missed. ‘Oh fine, fine. It’s all fine by me.’

Gwen knew Ianto was still barely listening to what was being discussed. “And we want to put you in charge of laisoning with UNIT and other government officials. That means you are going to have to be able to keep them from realizing that Jack is gone. That also means you are going to have to forge his signature on reports. Are you OK with that?’

‘Sure, whatever.’

Owen rolled his eyes. “And we’d like you to make sure you have sex with Janet twice a week, OK?”

‘Of course, whatever you….WHAT DID YOU SAY!’

“Well that got his attention,” Owen snarked.

‘Sorry, I really am. I just can’t seem to focus.’

Tosh was really concerned with Ianto’s behavior. “We know you’re hurting Ianto, but we have to keep it together here. We’re short the one person who actually knows about the aliens coming through the rift. Without Jack, anything new coming through is going to be much riskier for us to handle.”

Ianto nodded.

“And we all have a lot to lose if Jack’s discovered missing,” she added pointedly. 

‘I know.’ He recognized that only he and Jack knew about Tosh’s contract and he realized that she could lose everything if they weren’t careful. He silently berated himself for focusing on his own worries.

He took his phone and typed, ‘I think we may need some procedures for handling anything novel that comes through the rift. We’ll need to get the data base uploaded to my computer on the main level. If I need to direct the rest of you to an alien and check on what it is at the same time, I can’t be running down to the archives.’

Tosh thought that it made sense to have a standalone computer that would have only the archive records on it so that anyone could access it. That way, if Ianto was unavailable, someone else could try to match information from the field to the database.

‘I think I should also run you all through the mechanics of performing searches on the database. It’s pretty intuitive, but there are a few tricks that make searches faster that I can show you.’  Everyone agreed that made a lot of sense. 

“I’d also like to give some more advanced first aid lessons to everyone,” Owen suggested. “Most of the field triage I do isn’t all that complicated and if I’m incapacitated, we should have back up. Always meant to do this, but now it seems more important. But we may have to rely more on Cardiff A & E if there are serious injuries.”   

“You know, Owen, I have a medical degree, so I wouldn’t mind getting refreshed on some things like stitching and the like,” Tosh added. I know only you and Jack did that before, but the more cross-training we all have, the better off we’ll be.”

No one wanted to ask the obvious questions. At what point did they decide that Jack was gone for good and what would they do then? 

“Ok, let’s how this goes and we can make adjustments as needed,” Gwen said ending the meeting.

Fortunately, the rift cooperated for once and for the next week they had nothing more than a few weevils to round up. Ianto took advantage of the quiet and tried to get through as much of the remaining un-catalogued artifacts as he could. Everyone was so busy that the very long hours he was putting in went largely unnoticed. 

Well, unnoticed until Ianto fell asleep at the next meeting. The rest of the team left Ianto snoring in the conference room and went into Jack’s office to talk.

“What are we going to do about Ianto?” Tosh asked, a worried look on her face. Gwen frowned. “Is he going home at night?” No one seemed to know. 

“I’ll give him a look over and see if I can’t sort him out,” Owen offered.

They went back to the conference room to find that Ianto was still sound asleep. They all smiled at the sight of him, but decided to wake him up and continue the meeting. “Right,” Owen said shaking Ianto gently, I’d like to talk about scheduling those first aid classes we spoke about.”

Ianto opened his eyes and looked around sheepishly. “Glad you’re back with us Mr. Jones.” Owen continued to discuss the training without giving any indication that Ianto had been sleeping for a good half hour. Ianto, wiped a hand across his face and tried to focus on what Owen was saying. He was embarrassed that he was having so much trouble keeping his eyes open. ‘So tired,’ he thought.

The meeting ended a short time later and honestly Ianto wasn’t sure he could remember what occurred even while he was awake. As they walked out of the conference room, Owen asked to see Ianto in the medical bay. Ianto sighed, but followed Owen back to his work area.

“Listen Ianto, I have to tell you that you look like crap. Are you going home at night?” Ianto just stared at Owen. “This is not acceptable, Ianto. We’re down one team member, and I’m sorry about everything that’s happened to you, but if you don’t start paying attention and being part of the team, I’m going to send you home on a medical suspension.”

Ianto glared at him. “I’m not kidding. I’d rather have you out of the way and work around the gap than risk one of our lives’ on your ability to make decisions when you’re clearly not capable of it. Now let’s try this again. Are you going home at night?”

‘No.’

“Very helpful. Please tell me why you aren’t going home.”

‘Can’t sleep. Too much to do here.’

Owen sighed. ‘Great,’ he thought. ‘Now Ianto’s acting like a sulky 5 year old. Just what we need.’

“Are you eating.”

‘Yeah, some.’

Owen snapped. “Damn it Ianto, tell me what’s going on. I don’t have time for this!”

Ianto looked him shocked. First Jack was yelling at him, now Owen. What next? Owen had a pretty good idea what Ianto was thinking. He walked over to Ianto and sat next to him. In a much softer voice he said, “Ianto, I’m your medic and your friend. Please tell me what’s going on.”

‘I’ve been staying overnight here. I brought some clothes and personal stuff in, so I don’t need to go home. There’s so much that needs to be done with the archives. And with Jack gone, we don’t have the luxury of not having those records up to date. I do sleep a little, but my nightmares are back and I feel safer here even if It’s just me and Myfanwy.’

“What are you doing for food? Are you taking any down time?”

'I just eat what’s left over from lunch. And it’s easier for me to keep working than to go home to the apartment. All I do there is think about Jack, why he left me, why he didn’t say anything, why I’m always ending up on the shit side of the street. The work distracts me, and when I’m really tired then I can sleep.'

Owen wasn’t quite sure how to handle this. He certainly wanted Ianto to eat and sleep properly but it probably was better that he not sit at home and ruminate about Jack every evening. “OK, how about this. I’ll give you some medicine to help you sleep, and you get some proper food in here for dinners and we’ll take it from there. But I want you sleeping at least six hours and eating three meals a day. And if you’re not, I expect you to tell me.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. ‘Yes Mum.’

“Don’t get smart with me, young man,” Owen replied, trying his best to imitate what he thought Ianto’s mum would have sounded like when he was young.

‘That’s scary. She used to put her hands on her hips exactly like that.’

“Well, you be a good boy and I won’t call your sister and tattle on you.”

Ianto smiled. It was the first smile that Owen had seen from Ianto since Jack and Ianto had started bickering the week before.

As Ianto left the medical bay, Owen realized that his birthday was only a week and a half away. Once he saw Ianto go down to the archives, he went to talk to Tosh and Gwen. They decided that they should have a small party on Ianto’s birthday. Nothing elaborate, but just something so that he’d know they didn’t forget about him.

“I’d like to call Jonathan, Stephen and Aaron and see if maybe they can invite him up the weekend after his birthday. It might do him some good to be with some non Torchwood people and away from Cardiff.”

Tosh and Gwen thought that was an excellent idea. “The ghosts of Jack Harkness have to be everywhere here. In his flat, on the street, it’s got to be tough for him to not think about Jack,” Tosh said.

Gwen looked like she could cry. “I hope,” she said, her voice almost a whisper, “that ghosts aren’t all we’ll have of Jack Harkness to remember.”

 Chapter 49 is here: http://aviv-b.livejournal.com/24641.html