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Gwen didn't believe in the fairies. Tosh and Owen probably believed because of some evidence or, in Owen's case, because it twitched Gwen's tail. Jack believed; Ianto knew that he had a run in with them around the turn of the twentieth century in Pakistan. At the time, Ianto was in India and none of his other brothers or sister was able to curb the fairies at the time. Somehow, they marked Jack. Ianto didn't know how they knew him now, but they did. The night that Jack had come up from his bunk with the troubled look on his face he also was redolent with the smell of roses. Ianto curled his lip at the memory of that night before smoothing his mask back into place.
Ianto had gone to Estelle's talk on the fairies to see what any of the other mortals knew about the mysterious and deadly beings. He had stood in the shadowed corner and watched as Jack and Gwen came in late. Jack had listened; Gwen scoffed and glared at the elder lady, especially when Jack revealed that he knew Estelle from before.
'Pushy,' snorted Ianto quietly. 'So sure that she has a claim on Jack.' Ianto wondered what she would say if it was brought out that Jack was Ianto's human partner. He was sure that he would be wishing for his sister and a bowl of popcorn if that ever came up. His sister was scary when she was protecting her family.
Ianto didn't have a good feeling about the outcome of this situation. If the fairies were true to form, they would be looking for someone they could terrorize while they waited for the Lost One to be ready to return to the Lost Lands. Ianto didn't relish the idea of what could happen to any of the players in this drama, even Gwen. He would have to go see Estelle tonight when he left for the evening. If he could put some sort of protection on Estelle, then maybe she would get out of this with only a scare or her belief in the fairies intact. It pained him to think what her loss of belief could do for the rest of this world.
It was past supper when Ianto was able to walk out of the Hub and get to his car. Gwen was still demanding answers for what was universally being called fairies and why Jack was so interested in this problem. Poor Tosh was fine-tuning her weather tracker; Ianto hoped it would be ready the next morning. His feeling was they would need it soon. Ianto put it from his mind though; he had a visit to a good friend to enjoy and he didn’t want anything to ruin it.
Estelle was pleased to see Ianto at her door when he knocked. “Ianto,” she beamed. “You still look the same as when you found me as a child in the woods.”
Ianto smiled tenderly back at the woman who became a good friend. “I look the same as when I discovered I could see what the wind looked like. I think the only thing that changed for me were the clothes I was wearing.” He looked around her home and sighed. “I see you still practice divining?”
Estelle nodded. “I want to see if I can find them again. I saw you at the talk, but you didn’t stay.”
“You looked like you had enough with Jack and Gwen asking you about the last pictures you showed.”
She looked at her oldest confidant. “You know Jack?”
“I work for him,” answered Ianto. “I know what his opinion was and I didn’t want to complicate your situation any more than usual. I know that you complain about his beliefs about the fairies, but I can’t help either one of you with your arguments; I see them differently from the both of you.”
Estelle hummed. “You haven’t told him about your ability?”
Ianto shook his head. “He only knows I’m special from when we first met. I haven’t been able to tell him more since he took on a new employee and lost a friend.”
“You should tell him,” she admonished. “He is stubborn about many things, but he does listen.” Estelle gave Ianto an impish smile. “Even if Jack does get it wrong part of the time.”
Ianto shared her smile and sighed. “I just want to make sure you’re safe too. These fairies have their own justice and won’t be adverse to hurting people around the chosen players of their games.” He looked soberly at his old friend. “They have marked Jack for some reason, but they may target you or one of the others at our job. Please stay safe and don’t call them to you. Enjoy them from afar; don’t get too close. They may notice you and bring down something that will hurt Jack through you.”
“What of you?” she asked with a tremble in her voice. Ianto didn’t know if it was from anger or fear. Either one could lose him his friend though. “Surely they can do something to a Guardian just as much as they can to an old woman or a young man.”
Ianto nodded. “They could and then they would bring down the anger of my family, Wales, and the Earth upon them. Any one of those three could deny them what they seek even if they try to go back in time. The Earth can mark them just as surely as they can mark their own targets.” He gave an impish grin at the next thought. “Besides, they already annoyed my sister and older brother. If they do it again, then both of them will come down on the lot like a tonne of bricks. My sister might even bring the spirits of her home with her to make the point. Last time she threatened them, Wales agreed to her threat.”
Estelle shook her head. “It is hard to think of Wales as a sentient land, but you have proved it many times. I don’t think that I would like to meet any of the other lands that your family watches.”
Ianto nodded. “It can be overwhelming.” He gave his old friend a soft smile. “Now, I hope that you will take my warning to heart. Enjoy the fairies from a distance and do call Jack if anything strange happens. We both want to keep you safe.”
“Yes, Ianto, I will,” promised Estelle. Ianto could see the mischievous little girl he first found in the woods in her promise, but let it go. She promised and he was satisfied.
As Ianto walked out to his car, he could feel the presence of the fairies watching him from the trees. He kept walking, but he said conversationally, “Leave her alone. She is one of your biggest supporters and if any harm came to her, then I would be very upset. You do remember what was said last time we encountered each other, don’t you?” The hissing and growling from the trees told Ianto that they did remember and they weren’t happy. “Good. I won’t stop you from taking the Lost One, but I will object if you do more damage than necessary. Jack will object, but he will allow you your Lost One.”
“He better, Guardian,” hissed the fairies. “Or we will cover this world with fire and ice and great storms and it won’t be able to protect you any longer.”
“And you will have to deal with the Laws, if you do,” growled Ianto. “Blaming this world on the choice of one person, whoever they are, will not endear you to this world. She might take back that which you have already taken.” Ianto wasn’t sure if that would be true, but the thrum of agreement from his home told him that the words were Marked. The Earth will deliberate on them if the situation comes to it, but Ianto suspected that the fairies didn’t believe that would happen. He just hoped that they weren’t going to push the situation and force the issue. “Good night.” Ianto got into his car and left for home. He had to be up early for work.
When Ianto finally came in for the morning clean up and ritual coffee sacrifice to the Torchwood employees, there was a call waiting for them. It was from the police department saying they had a strange occurrence that needed to be checked out. That didn’t sound good, but Ianto took the message to Jack. As seemingly usual, Jack took his golden child and Tosh to see what had the police constables’ hair in knots. Even Ianto agreed that having a man dead in a cell with no apparent cause of death other than rose petals stuffed down his throat was something strange enough for Torchwood. It also told Ianto that the fairies were protecting their Lost One.
Then Jack got the call from Estelle.
Her frightened voice made Jack shoot into action to get to her side as quickly as possible. Ianto quietly disappeared and flew past his Captain on the back of the wind to get to Estelle faster. It was a good thing too because the fairies were trying to entice her to come out into their grasp. Ianto was furious. He stood on the edge of Estelle’s garden and the rain that came down wasn’t under the control of the fairies. The trees shook from the strength of the winds and lightening threatened to burn the bushes the fairies were hiding in. Moses scuttled his way from his hiding place to the angry Storm Master and watched with smug pride. He knew they were in trouble now.
The fairies left quickly when the lights of the Torchwood SUV flashed into Estelle’s garden. Ianto stopped his storm and quietly picked up Moses to bring him back to his frantic human. As Jack burst through the front door, Ianto left the way he came in through the back garden. He felt bad about ruining Estelle’s garden, but he silently promised to come back and help her fix it. May be he could talk to his sister about a few of her seeds that she had. Estelle might like some of the flowers that his sister liked to grow in her own garden.
Ianto’s last glimpse of Estelle was of Jack bringing her into his arms to comfort her as she wept. Ianto hoped that she hadn’t lost the child-like wonder of the fairies. He favored the watching fairies with one last growl before going back to the Hub the way he came. It wouldn’t do for anyone to miss him while Jack was gone. They might get even more suspicious of him than they already were.
The Welsh Storm Master figured that the fairies trashed Gwen’s home in order to make a point to him and to provoke Jack some more. Either way, Gwen came barreling into the Hub like a stung bull bellowing about how her home was invaded and she didn’t feel safe anymore outside of her work. Ianto snorted silently over that claim since he knew that she was probably more protected than the others due to Jack making sure that her home and Rhys were never going to be touched by alien influences. Too bad that didn’t include the fairies of the Lost Lands. Safety was always a relative thing to Ianto and having Gwen complain that her home was invaded like it was an alien invasion instead of a common break in that would have the constables taking a statement about it after the fact. It really irked Ianto when Jack sprung for a room at a high end hotel for Gwen and Rhys and then asked him to get a cleaning service to completely clean their apartment then next morning. Even Owen and Tosh raised an eyebrow over the blatant favoritism Jack was exhibiting toward their mouthy new recruit.
The next morning they had a hit on the possible Lost One. Of course it was due to the non-Ianto made storm at the school that gave them their first tip. Ianto stayed at the Hub to coordinate like he was told, but he kept an ear out for when it might be good to have the Guardian step in instead of Torchwood. He left at the first sounds of screams over the communicators when they reached the little girl’s home. Wales was getting irritated with how the fairies were viciously playing with the Land’s people and demanded Ianto do something about it.
Him stepping from nowhere into the backyard melee solved Her demand nicely.
Everything stopped when he came between the lead fairy and the stepfather to the Lost One. “Take your Chosen One and go,” he growled.
“He hurt her,” growled the fairies.
“And I will hurt you,” snarled Ianto. “Take your Chosen One and leave.”
Then a breeze told him that Jack and Gwen went after the child. Ianto muttered an oath in old Welsh that would have put blushes on young maids and shocked the elderly if they heard it back when it was more common. All he got now was the raised eyebrow of Tosh and a snort from Owen. Ianto didn’t even try running after the idiot pair; he caught the wind and rode it to the point of the face-off between Jack, Gwen, and the fairies.
Unlike another reality where Jack was the only one who knew of the fairies, it wasn’t Jack holding the girl, it was Gwen. Jack was trying to negotiate with the fairies about letting the girl stay, but Gwen was the one trying to drag her back. Ianto growled for everyone to stay right where they were and to give him the child. Gwen didn’t listen. She continued to drag the girl away from the rest, telling her that Gwen was going to help her get back to her mum.
“By the Laws, Gwen, stop or I will stop you,” ordered Ianto in the coldest voice a mortal man could use. Gwen froze and the girl jerked herself away from Gwen’s grasping hands.
“Are you the Guardian of this Land?” asked the girl. Her voice started to sound overlapped with the voices of the other fairies. Ianto nodded. “Then why are you allowing them to keep me away from my choice?”
“I am not allowing them to do anything. I am trying to keep the balance between the Beings coming to collect you and them. Your friends are not blameless in this matter.”
“How do you mean?” The overtones were getting stronger and she was trying to play coy. Ianto internally rolled his eyes.
“You lost the Innocence of the Mortals the day you allowed yourself to become a Chosen One,” he told her scathingly. “You know they attacked without need an elderly lady who did nothing but admire them and provoked the agent that was trying to keep you away from your compatriots. I would venture to say that you lot are testing to see if I would follow through with my threat. Shall I demonstrate the final results of your ‘Games’?”
The land beneath their feet started to tremble and heave. The trees that the fairies hid in shook them from the covering branches to the heaving ground below. The wind blew in gale force gusts to help the trees unburden themselves of the annoying interlopers. In the center stood Ianto and Jack; the land they stood upon was calm as the Spring day. Gwen watched with frightened eyes from her place on the ground gripping on a tree trunk. Outside the area of influence Owen and Tosh held back the girl’s mother as they watched the power play.
“Enough! We concede!” screamed the fairies. The Land settled at their cry and the wind gentled to a soft breeze.
“I’m glad we came to an agreement,” stated Ianto. “Take the Lost One back to the Lost Lands and leave. Try any of this again while I still walk this Earth and you will never take another again.”
Jack gripped Ianto’s arm. “Ianto, you can’t threaten them with that.
“Actually, Jack,” said Ianto. “I can.”
“Then if you have the power to do so, you should keeper her here. She belongs here with her family.”
Ianto closed his eyes to the repeated rhetoric of Gwen’s. “No, she was Chosen long before the Beings came to claim her for the Lost Lands. In her mother’s womb she was marked to leave and this is the easiest for her. Others leave a different way, but all Chosen go to the Lost Lands.” He turned from Jack and the fairy beings. He passed Gwen and her glaring, accusing gaze to stop in front of the mother of the Lost One. “I cannot allow her to stay, but I do know that watching her leave is painful for you and, in a small way, even for me. For a while she was part of this Land and my responsibility, but she is your daughter.”
“Why?” cried the mother. “Why are you allowing her to leave me?” She pulled away from Owen’s and Tosh’s slack grip to pound on Ianto’s chest. “Why can’t she stay?” she howled.
Ianto looked over his shoulder to see the malicious smile on the girl’s face before she turned and skipped off with the fairy beings. Inwardly, he snarled at the spoiled, ungrateful brat, but outwardly he held her mother close as he tried to bring her comfort and understanding. “Once in a while, a person is marked as a Lost One. It is random chance, like a lottery. My brothers and sister don’t know how they get here or how they are marked to leave for the Lost Lands, but one day they vanish, never to be seen again. My sister thinks they slip through tiny cracks in realities to get to the Lost Lands. The spirits of her home whisper to her when there is a Lost One walking in her Land, but my brothers are not so forthcoming with information about their Lands and the Lost Ones who might be there. The fairy beings sometimes aid the Lost Ones back to the Lost Lands. Other times, they find their own way. I have seen some of the Lost Ones before they leave and they are more gracious than your daughter. They at least tell the ones who will mourn them good-bye or that they love them, but your daughter is malicious. That may be why the fairies came or they may have corrupted her; I don’t know. I do know that you should not have had the trauma that you and your husband experienced today. I can promise you that from now on the fairy beings are going to be watched by the very Land we stand on. If they leave for another place, the Earth itself will watch and intervene. Your pain will not be anyone else’s pain.” As Ianto spoke, he wove understanding and compassion into his words. As the girl’s mother listened, she cried, but she accepted the apology that Ianto silently gave her. The response from his teammates was another story.
He led the grieving mother back to her husband and explained that the girl was lost in the woods. The strangeness of the place gave credence to his story and to his pronouncement that she would never be seen again. The other agents of Torchwood stalked past him to the SUV and never looked back as they drove off. Ianto would have been nonplussed if he didn’t have another way to get back to the Hub.
They were waiting for him when he walked through the blast door. Jack was the only one who didn’t look at him with open disgust on his face. The other three looked at him like he had hid a Cyberman in the basement. Ianto just looked at them and walked past them like they were a part of the furniture to the doorway to the Archives. Tosh reached out, but pulled back before even touching him. Jack watched him and his team, gaining a thoughtful expression on his face. Owen seemed to study Ianto’s back before shrugging and going to his computer to make notes on an autopsy that he had finished before the whole fiasco started. Gwen narrowed her eyes at Ianto and huffed. When Ianto was no longer in the main room, she stalked up to Jack’s office and swept in.
“Aren’t you going to do something about him?” she demanded.
Jack looked up. “What do you mean?” he asked.
“That-“ She paused as she looked for a word to describe the hate and disgust she felt for Ianto before just spitting out- “Man allowed a young girl to leave her mother and father to go with a bunch of malicious fairies. She should have stayed here! She belongs here Jack! He should not have let her go!”
Jack leaned back in his chair and studied the fuming Welshwoman. “Do you know the legends of the Guardians?” he asked.
“Which legends?” she spat. “The fairytales that come out in children’s books and directors make into movies?”
Jack shook his head. “No. The legends of beings who protect worlds and planets. Beings who live long lives and are tied to the Land they protect. Beings who can command elements and control the Land they stand on. Beings who are kept from dying for centuries until new Guardians are found.”
Gwen looked incredulously at Jack. “What are you talking about? I’m talking about the Tea-boy allowing a young girl to leave when she should have stayed. He had no right to sacrifice her like that! Come on, Jack!”
Jack shook his head. “No, Gwen, I think he had every right to let her leave. You were in the middle of that storm. He created it or he directed it, I’m not sure which. It calmed down when he was ready to make his point, but I could see it ready to start back up at his nod.”
“Then he’s an alien,” exclaimed Gwen. “That can be the only other reason. We should take him into custody and-”
“And what, Ms. Cooper,” interrupted Ianto from the door. “And put me down like a rabid animal? Interrogate me like a prisoner of war? Or give me over to UNIT and wash your hands of me because I’m a threat to you and your delusions of grandeur? I know you sit at your desk proclaiming you are second in command, when in reality it could be either Owen or I. Tosh has been here the longest, but she won’t take the reins of this place. Owen has been at Torchwood 3 the longest, but I have been a part of Torchwood since the beginning. We know what we are doing should Jack have to take a leave of absence.”
Ianto spared a glance at Jack. “Surprised Jack? I was at Glasgow or the House before it was thought that I should infiltrate London to see what those quote pinheads unquote were doing. Before Queen Victoria had her unfortunate run in with the werewolf and the Doctor and Rose, my siblings and I were the ones where dealt with the alien and the strange. Who do you think asked Prince Albert to cut the Koh-I-Noor to the shape it is now? We suspected and I think the Elder told my brother and sister when he taught them about the werewolf. I was there when Queen Victoria knighted the Doctor and Rose.” Ianto pulled a distasteful face. “I thought their antics were juvenile and not befitting the trouble we were experiencing. I stayed to help start the Torchwood Institute that the Queen started after the Doctor left and no, I did not agree with how you were treated by Holroyd and Guppy. I protested it, but I’m a man and an archivist. To quote them, “What do I know about catching aliens?” It seems that I know a far sight more than they or Gwen does,” he sneered. “When you find your Doctor, don’t expect Ms. Cooper to be in charge. I will petition the Queen if I have to. And she will see it my way.”
Ianto turned, walked out of the office, and left the Hub. Out in the main room of the Hub Tosh and Owen listened to the whole conversation. In a way, both were pleased to have Gwen Cooper put into her place. Now they just had to find out who Ianto Jones really was. And why he kept himself hidden for so long. In Jack’s office he looked thoughtful while Gwen Cooper’s mouth opened and closed like a landed fish. Then she shrieked out a rant at Jack, but he wasn’t listening to her demands. The stories were true. There were Guardians. He wondered if the other part of the legend was also true. Did they have partners to keep them from losing themselves to their elements? And how did Ianto know Estelle?