Torchwood: Fanfic: United front

[m_findlow]

Title: United front
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,798 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, the whole team had to pull together" at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto's act forces the team to band together against a common enemy. A sequel to my own fic Fallen.

Boarding the train at Paddington made him feel sick. He hadn't eaten for the better part of a day, and every vendor along the station's length selling greasy potato cakes, pies or dim sum left his stomach roiling. Even the little man with his cinnamon coated churros couldn't tempt him. Perhaps it was a side affect of the tablets, that left him feeling groggy, even though he'd slept the entire flight home. Another few hours and he'd be back in Cardiff, having to face the team.

Finding a seat with a table, he propped himself in the corner, leant up against the window. The glass was cold, and it felt nice after the sweltering heat in Turkey, pressing his forehead against it. He drifted in and out of sleep, oblivious to the rocking and changing of tracks until they were well out of London. Somewhere near Reading he got up to fetch a piping hot cup of tea, and sat back down, letting it scald the back of his parched throat, before fumbling in the backpack for his phone.

There were over forty missed calls, and just as many messages, demanding to know where he was. A shame they hadn't bothered to call him when he really needed them, he thought. Tosh might have been able to turn the ship around and land them right in the middle of Cardiff. Until their coffee ran dry, they hadn't even noticed he wasn't there. He flipped through most of the messages, deleting them. All they'd been were questions from Gwen and Owen asking him where he was and could he please call the ASAP? At least Tosh's messages started off by asking him if he was okay, and that she was worried. It was such a little thing, but it mean the world to him that at least someone was worried.

He tossed the phone on the tabletop, scrubbing his face with his hands, trying to eke out some of the tiredness. He fetched another tea and some crisps. Perhaps a little bit of food would help settle his stomach. He sat there, idly munching the salty crisps, tapping out a message. He was pretty sure Jack had his phone off, so that it couldn't be traced, but there was always the off chance he might check it for messages, even if he didn't send one back. He changed his mind about the message half a dozen times, before finally settling on one he could live with.

"Sorry about Turkey. Hope you got whatever you needed. Please let me know you're okay."

It was inadequate, he knew, but he felt like he had to say something to explain himself. Jack had specifically asked the team not to get involved with The Committee, and that it was too dangerous. Well, he'd gotten that much right at least. Ianto had nearly become nothing more than a skid mark in the desert. Accepting that there was nothing more he could do for the time being, he folded his arms on the table and let himself doze.

Cardiff came into view a lot quicker than he hoped, and he was tumbling into a black cab before he'd realised that he still didn't know what he'd say to the others when he got there. They'd probably checked his flat when he didn't return their calls, so he could've lied and said he was at his sister's house, too sick to stay home on his own. Owen would soon check him over and know that it was false. There wasn’t much he could do to hide the cuts and bruises, and the large gash in his upper leg that was barely beginning to heal, even after several days stuck in hospital. He’d still be there but for the fact that The Committee might find him and get rid of him.

Plus, what good was it lying to the team even more? They were never going to trust him if he kept laying them a false trail, and he was going to need their help. It wasn't up to him anymore. They had to be the ones to make a choice: either to trust him and help him help Jack, or to ignore all the warning signs that said if they didn't help, then Jack was never coming back.

Stepping out of the cab, the cold wind ate right though the thin cotton of his cargo pants and shirt. He hadn't bothered buying a jumper, saving his remaining cash for the flight home, not wanting to risk using his credit card. Still, it felt good to be home. Safer somehow.

He struggled down the stairs to the quay, and along the deck to the tourist office. He'd forgotten just how many steps there were to get there, and his injured leg protested at each one. His limited physical therapy at the hospital had been nothing more than an exercise in getting himself back out of bed so he could discharge himself before anyone from The Committee found him and decided to slip something into his tablets. He was reasonably sure that they didn't know he was there, having snuck on board the Sky Puncher in the first place, but it wasn't worth the risk. At least back at the hub he could hide himself away, safe in the knowledge that they couldn't get to him there. It would have been better if he could have gotten the vital information from Ephraim Salt back to the hub as well, only now it was with Jack. He only hoped that Jack could make use of whatever it was.

Finally inside, down the dark corridor to the lift, he sucked in a deep breath and hit the button.

The cog wheel door was already open when he exited, sparing him a very loud entrance. As he limped through, he could see Tosh working busily away at her computer, engrossed in whatever was on screen. Gwen and Owen seemed to be missing, for which he was immediately grateful, making his way over to the short steps up to the desk. Then the voice came from behind him.

'Where the fucking hell have you been?'

Ianto closed his eyes for a second, before turning to face their grumpy medic.

'Have a nice little holiday did you, whilst the rest of us were busting our arses?'

Owen's reaction was hardly unsurprising, but it still irked that after everything he'd been through, that there wasn't the least bit of concern.

'Oh my God, Ianto!' Gwen cried, hearing Owen's voice across the hub. Had she been working in Jack's office again? The thought incensed him. You're not the boss, and he's coming back, he wanted to say to her. 'We've been worried sick,' she said. 'Why didn't you answer your phone?'

'Reception was bad,' he replied blithely. That had to be the understatement of the century.

'You thought you'd just nick off whenever you like, did you?' Owen asked, still thunderous. No amount of coffee was going to temper his mood.

'Where were you?' Gwen insisted.

Ianto gave a brief look across at Tosh who'd kept her distance. Her look of genuine concern was the one redeeming thing.

'I can explain everything,' he said.

'Oh, well I'm so glad,' Owen huffed.

'Look, just head upstairs and I'll tell you everything,' he said, turning away towards to the corridor.

'Where the hell do you think you're going, now?' Owen cried.

Ianto was done being polite. He'd been knocked out, sent hurtling off into space, nearly killed in a crashing spaceship, three days in hospital, a twelve hour flight home, under constant threat from The Committee, another three hours on the train and all he really wanted was a hot shower, even hotter coffee, and to sleep for another three days.

'You already decided you don't need me around to run Torchwood. Another twenty minutes won't kill you,' he snapped.

They were all up in the boardroom when he returned, freshly washed and dressed, feeling slightly more human. As usual, they were waiting for a round of coffee before the meeting officially started. It didn't seem to matter that he was the subject of said meeting, only that his duties were expected regardless. It almost made him want to scream at the unfairness of it all. Instead he took a deep breath and got on with it, using the time to formulate just what exactly he was supposed to tell them.

'Don’t think this gets you off the hook,' Owen griped, taking the steaming mug from him.

'Perish the thought,' Ianto replied, hardly in the mood for anymore of Owen's snark than he had been when he’d first arrived.

Gwen took her seat at the top of the table and that irked him even more. That was Jack’s seat, even if Jack wasn’t here to lead them. It wasn’t like last time when he’d gone. This time he’d told them he’d be back. They didn’t need another leader in the interim.

He eased down into his own seat, glad to take some of the weight off his injured leg. Whilst he’d been showering, he decided that there was only one way to do this, and that was to rip the proverbial band-aid off as quickly as possible.

'I’ve been researching The Committee, even though Jack told us not to,' he blurted out. 'I was chasing down a lead and smuggled myself onto Ephraim Salt’s Sky Puncher.'

'But,' Tosh began, 'we got reports that it crashed in the desert in Turkey. It was all over the news.'

He pulled a face halfway between proud and embarrassed. 'And who do you think crashed it?'

Rather than answer a million and one questions out of sequence, he started at the beginning, telling them everything. Well, he left a few little things out, such as being the person responsible for serving the coffee that had sent all the passengers and crew into a psychotic rampage, nearly having a meltdown from blood loss, and committing Zeynep to a horrible death whilst he parachuted to safety, but pretty much everything else was fair game.

'Ephraim Salt gave you a memory stick?' Tosh asked. 'What was on it? Do you still have it?'

Ah. Now came the tricky part. How to tell them he’d lost it. 'Not exactly,' he replied.

'What do you mean?' Owen said. 'You’ve either got it or you don’t.'

'Well, I did have it, but then Jack took it.'

The three of them clamoured over the top of one another with questions. He’d found Jack? Where? When? What was he doing?

'He sort of found me. When I landed I wasn’t exactly in the best, er, condition. He got me to the hospital and took it whilst they were patching me up.'

'You spoke to him? What did he say? Is he coming back?' Gwen demanded.

'Er, I didn’t actually see him. I may have been a little out of it at the time.' Or a lot out of it; like all the way out. Drugged up in painkiller Disneyland.

'So, how do you know it was him?' Gwen said. 'Maybe The Committee stole the drive.'

'It was him. I know it was.'

'How?'

'He left a message that could have only been him.'

'Right,' Owen said, leaning back. 'So, basically you nearly got yourself and a hundred other people killed and you have nothing to show for it?'

'Owen!' Tosh scolded.

'Well, it's true, isn’t it? Teaboy here went on a wild fucking goose chase.'

'I think he feels bad enough without you helping, Owen,' Gwen said. It was the first kind thing she’d said to him, even if it was backhanded. 'Ianto,' she said, turning to him and looking stern, 'why did you do it? Why didn’t you say something if you thought the Sky Puncher was in danger?'

He looked at the three of them in turn. In for a penny, in for a pound, he decided. 'I didn’t think you’d take me seriously. I thought... I’m part of the team, too.'

'Of course you are, sweetheart. But this is a big thing. We could have helped.'

'Jack told us The Committee was dangerous and not to get involved. I didn’t think you’d approve of me doing research on them.'

'Not behind our backs, no,' she replied.

'And, if something happened... well, at least I’d be the only one that... I mean... I wouldn’t be missed.'

'Ianto!' Gwen cried. 'We’d never think that. Jack would never...' she trailed off. Jack would never forgive them if they'd let anything happen to Ianto, was what she meant.

Tosh quietly raised her hand. 'Actually I have a confession to make.' She waited until they were all looking at her. 'I’ve been running spiders through a series of data servers looking for and tracing activity for The Committee. I was hoping to crack some of their encrypted data packets and find out what they were up to.'

Gwen nodded quietly. 'I found the interview tapes in Jack’s desk drawer. I’ve been putting together profiles for suspected members of The Committee, connecting the dots between people in the highest levels of government and enterprise.'

Owen scoffed loudly. 'Bloody hell. Is there anyone who hasn’t been working on this?'

'You too?' Tosh asked.

'Series of anomalies in a bunch of hospital cases worldwide that can’t be connected except for a biotechnology company that I can’t get any details for. We’re not talking allergic reactions or sudden deaths. These are bizarre: malformations, organ degradation, comas, pigmentation changes, foetuses that don’t resemble anything even remotely human.'

'So, we’ve all been working on this,' Ianto said, 'without telling each other, even though Jack forbade us to get involved because we all know that Jack is in way over his head on this?'

'You’re absolutely right, Ianto,' Gwen replied. 'Jack thinks he can sort this out by himself, but we all know this is way too big and too far reaching. It’s clear that for now we have no way of pinpointing his location or what information was on that jump drive, but he’s going to need our help. There must be something more we can do in the meantime.'

'Harkness Industries,' Ianto said. 'That’s the front he was using in Turkey. There must be a way of tracing him from that.'

'Maybe if we could get a message to him,' Tosh suggested. 'Tell him that we know and that we’re here to help.'

'How?' Owen said. 'If he'd wanted our help, why did he leave Teaboy here high and dry?'

'I think he’s still watching us,' Ianto replied. 'How else would he have found me? Shouldn’t be too hard to get a message to him, assuming he lets us help.'

'He doesn’t get a choice anymore,' Gwen replied firmly. 'We’ve just proven that each of us is working on this regardless of his warning. If we’d stuck together as a team in the first place, maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess now. Ianto, you could have been killed, and that’s on all of us, Jack included. From here on in, we do this together.'

'Agreed,' Owen said.

'Completely,' Tosh replied.

It wasn’t the outcome he’d expected, but for the first time in days, he felt glad to be home.

The hostel was grotty, the bed lumpy and the walls covered with mildew. It was a roof over his head though, and the odd backpacker wasn’t going to look twice at him huddled on the top bunk, laptop resting on his knees.

His vortex manipulator beeping caught him off guard. He flipped it open and checked the signal. Who in the hell was trying to contact him from Delta Nine? He traced the signal, only to discover it had been bounced halfway across the galaxy, but originating from Earth. The message was short. "We know. Let us help."

He shook his head. He should have expected it. His run in with Ianto in Turkey was the catalyst. Yes, they knew. And if he wasn’t wrong, the web of connections was getting more tangled by the day. He missed the team like crazy, and seeing Ianto in the hospital had only made him yearn for home even more. He knew it was dangerous, dealing with The Committee, and he knew that by getting the rest of the team involved, he would be putting them in danger. But if he wasn't mistaken, they already were, and whatever research they were doing in his absence had already put them right in the line of sight. Better if he kept them close so that he had a hope of protecting them. Yes, perhaps it was time to come home. Gods but he admired their stubbornness. They were team, and teams were supposed to stick together.