Chapter Text
Ianto watches the TARDIS fade away and then heads down the stairs from the balcony walkway to pick up the papers that went flying as air rushed to fill the space vacated. After that, he feeds Myfanwy, and then it's non-essential lights out, overnight security on, before he leaves through the airlock door and heads upstairs to the Bay.
He walks home. It's not far, though it is bitterly cold, and he bundles his hands under his arms to keep them warm. There's going to be a thick frost tonight. It's already forming, making car windscreens opaque and puddles potentially lethal.
As he walks up the stairs in his apartment building, he tries not to think too much. He'd been doing very well with all this loom business and hadn't had to lie to Jack about it once. But when the Doctor yelled at him like that, in that room, about that particular piece of non-human technology, it somehow brought it all back.
He puts his key into the door of his tiny flat, turns it, and heads wearily inside. Jack looks up from the sofa where he seems to have been sitting with his head in his hands. There are folders open on the glass coffee table, but Ianto's certain they weren't being read.
"What's wrong?" Jack asks, apparently in one of his more psychic moods.
"Nothing," Ianto says, turning his back on Jack to hang up his jacket. "I'm just tired."
"Come here and let me help you relax."
"Don't you want to know what happened?" Ianto asks, not moving.
"I don't know," Jack says, sounding just a little peevish. "Do I?"
Ianto turns around, keeping his expression neutral. "The Doctor did it, like you said he would. They left together in the TARDIS."
He watches Jack swallow, catches the hurt in the blue eyes before they look down. "Nope. Didn't want to know that." Jack sighs.
Feeling unaccountably tense suddenly, Ianto heads into his kitchenette. "I'm making coffee. It's bitter out. Do you want one?"
"Sure," Jack says. Ianto hears the springs creak as Jack stands up from the old sofa. It was Lisa's, second-hand from her grandmother when they were setting up home together, and he can't bring himself to get rid of it now. Jack comes over to lean on the counter that splits the kitchenette off from the main room of the flat. "Did it take him long to decide?"
"Not really." Ianto pauses as he fills the jug with water. "A bit of a pace and some hair-pulling. I put the CCTV footage in the special folder on your console."
"Thanks. I think."
"Should I make a third cup?"
"Yeah. Actually, ask her yourself."
Ianto turns to see Romana enter the main room from the bedroom. She smiles at him, saying, "Welcome home, Ianto. Did all go as expected?"
He nods and gestures with a mug. "I'm making if you want some, Lady President."
"Thank you. That would be lovely." She's still dressed in Jack's clothing, which really, Ianto thinks, should look a good deal stranger than it does. He still finds the presence of Time Lords unnerving. They look so human, but they're not, not even slightly. She's beautiful though, and sometimes he catches a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye, and just for fractured moment, he thinks she's Lisa come home.
He busies himself making the coffee while the other two talk.
"Did you discover what he's done with the array?" Romana's asking.
"Yeah, finally," Jack answers, turning to lean back against the counter. "For a while I was beginning to think it would've been better for me to smuggle it in after all, however difficult. It took me a long time to find the place through all those perception filters he had draped over the door like heavy curtains, and then the locks were difficult to get through even with a sonic. He seems to be storing it in with a lot of other items. Damn scary items too, some of them."
"His attic probably," Romana says knowledgeably. "He never allowed me in there when we travelled together. That's perfect. With just a little luck, he'll forget about it up there now he has the Master to care for." She sighs softly. "It's time to activate it."
The coffee machine on, Ianto turns to watch as Jack opens his wrist console. Jack hits a few buttons and then a diagram drawn in blue light appears above it. "Sure we want to do this?" he asks, looking at Romana.
"I don't think we have a choice. I'd like the Doctor to be happy; he's done so much for us, but we can't be careless again as far as the Master's concerned. The array is the equivalent of what we did with you, Jack. It's our failsafe, that's all. Neither of them ever need know, providing the worst never happens."
Jack nods, but Ianto can tell he's still not relaxed about the idea. Not that Jack'll argue with Romana. He seems to consider her his superior officer - to be advised, aided, but never disobeyed.
"What does it do?" Ianto asks, feeling he should show an interest if he's not to be evermore the tea boy. "This array?"
Jack turns to him, and Ianto wonders if he's glad for a further delay before pushing buttons he obviously doesn't want to press. "It's the receiver for the signals transmitted by that organic device we implanted in the Master's new head as it was growing. It receives, stores and analyses all the data the device sends, and if the Master starts to think or act in a way the algorithms suggest is dangerous, the array will let me know immediately."
"And if he does?" Ianto suspects he already knows the answer.
"I report to Romana, and on her word, send the instruction to the array to activate the self-destruct mechanism in the device."
Poor bastard. Even his fresh start is marred before it's started. Ianto turns back to the kitchen, deciding to raid the biscuit tin.
Ever since that business with the Prime Minister, Jack's been trusting Ianto with so much more. That's a major U-turn from the 'you're better off not knowing' line. Apparently Jack's experiences have allowed him to see Ianto's potential more clearly. Which is great. Just great. Now Ianto only has himself to live up to. That is, some kind of perfect version of himself from another dimension who looked hot in black ops gear.
Fortunate then that Ianto's ordered himself a set, really.
"Ianto?" Romana's voice.
He turns and manages a smile. "Yes, Lady President?"
She comes closer to the counter, putting her hand on it as she stands beside Jack. "You do understand that you must never discuss these matters with anyone but us, don't you? The captain thinks very highly of you, and I certainly trust him enough to trust you in turn, but I feel I have to say it."
"Of course, Lady President. No one shall hear about it from me."
She nods, her expression serious. He supposes it's something presidents are taught, like royalty, to listen in apparent seriousness to even the lowest plebeian presented to them. Romana turns to Jack now and says, "Time to do it, Captain."
Jack swallows and presses a couple of... well, they're just areas on a touchscreen really as opposed to actual buttons. A shiver of light passes through the projected diagram and then characters start streaming down across it. "Receiving." Jack says, rather redundantly Ianto feels. "Calibrating..."
"Where are they?" Romana asks.
"Roanar galaxy," Jack says after a short pause. "Styrex Nebula. The year 1251AR, Gallifrey time."
"And how's the Master?"
"Happy predominantly. Very happy. Nothing to worry about."
Ianto knows the Lady President heard the edge in Jack's voice; she's frowning at him slightly now. "It's important," she says, "that you acclimatise yourself to knowing these things, Captain, however private they may seem to be. I need to know that I can rely on you to monitor the array. Any desire to avoid the information with which it provides us, while understandable, is unhelpful."
"You can rely on me, Romana," Jack says, his tone that of the loyal soldier again. "You know you can. I'll even hit the kill switch if it ever becomes necessary, but I'm hoping for the Doctor's sake that it doesn't."
She nods. "On to more pleasurable matters then. We have an empty loom now, and I'd appreciate Braxiatel back at my side..."
Ianto stops listening and turns to fill the coffee mugs. He's not sure how much he should care about Time Lords and their agendas anyway, but Jack cares, and so Ianto really has to.
He carries the coffees over to the sofa, an unopened pack of McVities chocolate digestives under his arm. They're not posh, but he fancies them. Without a word, the other two come over. Romana takes the armchair, and Jack sits down beside Ianto on the sofa. He claps his hand on Ianto's leg and squeezes before picking up his mug.
"Not much of a 'happy ever after' for them, is it?" Ianto finds himself saying after a few welcome sips of hot coffee. "More a 'have a happy ever after, or else' really."
Jack snorts. "You could put it that way."
"Does anyone get a perfect 'happy ever after' outside of stories?" Romana asks thoughtfully, and there are a few moments' silence then. Ianto bites into his chocolate digestive.
It's Jack, inevitably, who breaks the silence. "Okay then!" he announces, clapping his hands together. "Who's for pizza?"