Fffc Bingo Card - Out of the ashes

[m_findlow]

Title: Out of the ashes
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, OCs
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 8 - Ruin at fffc
Summary: Ianto is still feeling like the odd one out at UNIT despite his hard work.

‘Would you look at that?’ someone in the break room muttered, attracting the attention of several others around them, all clustered around the formica tables with their trays of egg and lettuce sandwiches, twist top juice bottles and scrunched up napkins. ‘Made an absolute bloody mess of the place, didn't they?’ he said, pointing at the television screen in the corner of the room, muted but still showing newsreel pictures of the enormous crater in the still cordoned off area around Cardiff Bay. 

Another one picked up their red cap from the table and slipped it back on before picking up their tray to slide away the rubbish into a nearby bin. ‘That's why you shouldn't let military intelligence be in charge of these things,’ he replied. ‘Leave it to the experts like us.’ 

‘Still,’ the first one said, ‘gonna take them months to clear up all that. More taxpayer money off to the Welsh government to prop them up.’ He cast a glance at Ianto across the room who'd been sitting there silently on his own, not part of the accepted group. ‘No offense, mate.’ 

Ianto cupped his hands around the mug and looked up. ‘None taken. It's Torchwood's fault so Torchwood should pay for it, shouldn't they?’

His comment had the desired effect, ending the conversation of the group and forcing them all to hurriedly finish their lunches and disappear from the room, leaving him alone. 

He brought the mug back to his lips, sipping the coffee which was awful, but for which he didn't have any right to complain about. The ham and tomato sandwich on his tray sat untouched. He couldn't find any appetite for it even though he'd skipped breakfast and dinner the night before. 

Rhiannon would have done her nut if she'd been here, forcing it down his throat, but she wasn't. She was back there, in Cardiff, with that bloody great hole in the ground that had once been his whole life. He couldn't even bring himself to look at the television. He could picture it perfectly in his head, that ugly crater wrapped in temporary cyclone fencing with dual language signs saying Danger and Keep Out. 

He'd been asked a half dozen times by the UNIT’s head if he wanted to lead a recovery team. She said they were worried about looters but Ianto had succinctly stated that no one knew there was anything down there except for a massive hole caused by a gas explosion. If they didn't think there was anything to loot, no one would give it a second thought. He'd even said no to a patrol around the perimeter, citing that it would only make it look like there was something in there worth stealing. 

Deep down, he suspected the only reason Kate Stewart kept returning to the matter was so that they could retrieve anything that UNIT might find useful. There was plenty that they couldn't wait to get their hands on if they knew what was really down there, but for now it was still a bit of a political taboo. Jack had been missing for weeks so no one knew where they stood and whether Torchwood was up for grabs. Even without Jack, no one was willing to ruffle feathers too much. Ianto might have gone hat in hand to work for them but he was still an unknown quantity in some respects. And that was to say nothing of Gwen, who would no doubt fight them tooth and nail if they so much as thought about trying to pick over the remnants. 

Ianto pushed away the mug and tray. Right now he'd be happy if they just poured concrete over the whole lot, bricked up the entrance to the tourist office and sealed the thing up permanently. He hated seeing that ugly ruin that had been his home for so many years. If Jack wasn't coming back then let that be the end of it. Ianto didn't even feel like he was a part of Torchwood anymore, but neither was he a part of UNIT. They all knew who he was, right down to the lowliest corporal and cleaner, but there was no empathy for what they'd been through. Even if everyone agreed that the government had made a massive dogs breakfast of it. Even if they'd been a party to all the negotiations. There was a certain amount of egg on faces that was being swept under the rug in the name of reinstating order. 

Perhaps if we'd been better allies in the years beforehand, Ianto thought with no small amount of regret. They'd done what they had to and that was it. Jack said they didn't need UNIT, and UNIT only needed them when it suited. In a lot of ways he'd been right. They didn't need an organisation that could blow open the truth that they'd once negotiated with the 456 before and made a bad deal that would see them eventually come back for more, just like any good bully. Jack had made mistakes too. None of them were innocent in all of this. All they could do was put the past in the past and try to build something new out of the ashes. 

At least that's what he told himself he was doing. He wasn't running away, or avoiding confronting the real problem. Torchwood was gone. Jack was gone. Any hopes he'd harbored that he and Jack might be something more were so far gone that nothing was going to bring them back. Ianto was left adrift, fitting in nowhere and with no real plan what to do next. Just like the hub that had been his life, his metaphorical one also lay in ruin. There was no amount of fencing that could keep him protected from the outside world, and no amount of concrete able to be poured in to bury all the memories that went with it. That small part of Torchwood would never go away.