Torchwood: Fanfic: Nothing hurts like the truth

[m_findlow]

Title: Nothing hurts like the truth
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Tosh, Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,507 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, truth hurts" at fic_promptly
Summary: Tosh learns that some things are better left unsaid.

Tosh couldn't get over the fact that she'd just watched Jack send Mary up in a blaze of light, to be burnt up inside the sun. It seemed cruel and harsh, no matter how many people she'd killed, to have to die like that.

'Tosh, with me please,' Jack said. 'Ianto, you too.'

Gwen and Owen both gave perplexed looks at the pair of them. Ianto looked equally confused. They could understand why Jack wanted to speak to Tosh, given everything that had happened, but what was Ianto's involvement? Had he known about the pendant as well?

Tosh reluctantly followed Jack and was surprised by the fact that he didn't stop in his office, but kept going out the other side, across the hub, up the spiral stairs and straight into the board room. Behind her she could hear the quiet footfalls of Ianto following them. Perhaps this was treason, what she'd done, and they were taking her away to deal with her. She ripped the pendant from her neck before she could hear any of their innermost thoughts. She didn't want to know what came next.

As the boardroom door clicked shut, she set the pendant down on the table top and looked up at Jack.

'Sit,' he said, though not in an unkind way. 'We need to debrief, Toshiko. Everything that happened. From the beginning.'

She felt like Jack surely already knew everything he needed to know. He'd been the one to figure out the alien stapler was a prison transport vessel. Owen had figured out that someone in the area had been murdering victims the same way for over a hundred years. Two and two together, really. Prison transport, serial killer. Just a pity she'd been too blind to see it; she who should have had the advantage.

'Ianto, why don't you run this one?' Jack asked.

'Sorry?'

'Run the debrief with Tosh. You know what do to, right?'

'Right,' he mumbled, thinking how he'd been on the receiving end on unpleasant debriefings more times than he cared to remember. Seeing the look on Tosh's face now made him feel sorry for her, sitting there where he'd sat so many times.

'Come find me when you're done,' Jack said, before leaving the room.

Ianto looked around, waiting to see if Jack was kidding, before slowly settling into the chair next to Tosh.

'I feel so stupid,' Tosh blurted out. Suddenly there were tears welling up in her eyes and an overwhelming desire to just let them fall.

Ianto handed her a handkerchief from his pocket, impeccably clean and pressed as she unfolded it gratefully.

'Thanks.'

Ianto didn't say anything further, waiting for her to settle her emotions.

'I made such a mess of things, Ianto.'

'I'm sure you didn't.'

'I believed everything she said. Even when I was wearing the pendant, I could hear all her thoughts and I was sure she couldn't possibly have been lying to me. It... showed me things. People's thoughts, on the inside.'

She rambled for a while about all the things she'd heard whilst Ianto pressed her with seemingly innocuous questions. Some of the things people said on the streets were shocking, but some of it was also very funny, though she struggled to see the funny side now. He asked about Mary, what kind of questions she'd asked about the team and about Torchwood. Strangely she couldn't remember much of use at all. All she remembered were the little moments they'd spent together, the giggling over coffee, or the tender touches she'd received, and the feeling of the whole bed being warm instead of just the tiny space she usually occupied. It had been nice feeling loved and wanted, especially when everyone else seemed not to care about her at all.

Then she told him how Mary had insisted the pendant could do good, and how she'd followed the man home who'd been planning on murdering his family.

'That was a very brave thing to do,' Ianto said.

'It wasn't really. The stuff he was saying just kind of freaked me out.'

'Sounds like you saved a lot of lives using that pendant.'

She gave it a wary glance, sitting there innocently on the table between them. 'It's not what you think, Ianto. It's evil. You'd think it would be nice to know what people were thinking all the time but it's not. There's so much stuff we shouldn't know, things that people are thinking that are awful. Owen and Gwen are...' she trailed off.

'Sleeping together,' Ianto finished for her.

She looked up, startled. 'How did you know?'

He gave a noncommittal shrug as if he preferred not to say.

She sighed. 'Just goes to show you don't need an alien mind reading device if you actually open your eyes.'

'Oh, no. I accidentally spotted them in the car park yesterday morning. It wasn't pretty.'

Tosh laughed despite herself. 'I thought it would be so brilliant, knowing what people really thought, but it was just...' She could feel herself getting teary again. 'Everyone hates me.'

Ianto reached across as more tears began to fall. 'No one hates you, Tosh. Everyone loves you.'

'Not Owen. Or Gwen,' she replied. 'Jack was just a blank, I couldn't hear anything. And you...'

His mouth tightened slightly. 'What about me?'

'I'm sorry,' Tosh apologised. 'Those thoughts were private. I had no right. I'm really sorry. I wish I'd never been given that stupid pendant. I hate myself for falling into such a stupid trap.'

Ianto pulled his hand back, picking up the pendant off the table in the process and studying between his fingers. He felt for her. How many times had he wondered what was on Jack's mind, or what was really going on with the people that worked around him. It turned out there were a lot of things that really were better left unsaid. It was just a shame that any of them had to learn that lesson the hard way.

'I'm sure we probably all think things in our heads that we don't really mean,' he said. 'There are whole days when I picture wanting to inflict bodily harm on someone. Doesn't mean I'd do it. It's nice to be fanciful sometimes.'

'I don't think the things I heard were flights of fancy,' she replied. All she could think of were the sideways insults Owen had said, and the way Gwen looked down her nose at her. With Jack there'd been nothing, as if he didn't have a single thought to spare for her, and Ianto was so wrapped up in his own pain that he couldn't think of anything else. It made her feel about as low as she possibly could.

'I really though maybe Mary and I... How could I be so stupid to think she liked me? She just wanted to use me to get into Torchwood. All the power to hear people's thoughts and she still hid everything from me.'

'Well,' Ianto said, leaning forward. 'Maybe she wasn't the only one.'

'What do you mean?'

'Maybe what you heard from the rest of us wasn't the full story either. You say you heard hurtful things, but underneath all of that maybe there's a lot more hidden away. I can't speak for everyone, but I know I have nothing but respect for you, and so does Jack. I'm sure Gwen and Owen feel the same way, even if they don't show it.'

She wanted to believe him, truly, but everything from the past few days had eaten away at her resolve to believe anyone cared about anyone anymore. 'I don't think I can make this right,' she said, bowing her head and sniffling into Ianto's handkerchief. 'I can't take back the things I heard.'

He wished that he could have taken them back for her, and make her forget whatever it was she'd heard that had her so upset. Retcon wouldn't make things right, though. He couldn't even begin to imagine what thoughts of his own she might have been privy to. He didn't think he'd had time for thoughts of his own, always busy doing something. Though he could imagine Gwen and Owen having an internal monologue of tactless thoughts. They so very often said the wrong thing aloud at the best of times. Inside their heads it must be bedlam.

'I really don't think there's anything else to cover off on,' Ianto said, setting down his clipboard though he hadn't jotted a single note on it. 'I think it's safe to say Mary would have done anything to get into Torchwood. She could have tried to befriend any one of us.'

'Instead she picked me because I'm pathetic and an easy target,' Tosh replied, blowing her nose and looking miserable.

He hated seeing Tosh so defeated. Jack was much better at this than he was. Jack would have known the right thing to say.

'We stopped a serial killer. That's good, isn't it?'

'I suppose,' she replied, though without any enthusiasm.

'Go home and take care of yourself, yeah? Have a bath, get some sleep. Tomorrow is another day.'

'Yeah,' she said, nodding and sniffing again. Just her and her own thoughts. They were more than enough to have to deal with.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Poor Tosh, I really felt for her in that episode. She's so lovely and so intelligent, but Mary shattered her self-confidence, all the things she heard thanks to the pendant chipped away at her. =(