Title: Travelling for work
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OCs
Author: m_findlow
Rating: M
Length: 3,423 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 315 - Amnesty and Challenge 304 - Travel
Summary: Ianto has to go a long way to keep Jack safe.


South America was very firmly off Ianto's bucket list, he decided. It was hot, sticky, full of bugs that found him a tasty meal, and if he'd expected the jungle to be a lush, tranquil paradise, he'd clearly been reading all the wrong travel guides. It was never not a complete racket as every kind of bird imaginable vied to be heard over all of the rest.

Having said that, there didn't seem much point scratching from his list since he was already here. He just wasn't planning on coming back here for a holiday anything soon. All those Aztec pyramids could just stay as glossy photos in books on his coffee table.

This was all Jack's fault. He'd been fixated on rumours that somewhere in the jungles of South America was an alien device so powerful that it was capable of controlling minds. Not just one mind at a time, but whole populations. And worse was that it was being used. Jack's vortex manipulator had picked up the faintest of energy readings when it was being used, but was unable to pinpoint its location.

Since then, Jack had been on Ianto's case about it - daily, in fact - trying to convince him that they needed to go there right now and find it. Ianto, whilst agreeing that such a device would potentially be very dangerous, had taken a different view. At the moment it was somewhere in one the most isolated places on Earth. The chances of it making its way out of the jungle were limited. For all they knew it had been unearthed by a tribe of primitive Amazonians who had no idea what it was, and had accidentally triggered it, thinking they'd invoked their gods, or whatever it was Amazonian people believed in. In time, they could do more detailed scans, mobilise a team to go over there and see what more they could find out just from being on the ground in one of the major cities that hugged the Amazon basin. If they did manage to pinpoint an exact location, then they were in a position to send the team in to track it down. Until then, they just needed more time and good planning, both of which were fundamental components of Ianto's brand of leadership.

Jack however had other plans. Just when Ianto thought they were done arguing about it, and that Jack had come around to see that the patient, methodical approach would achieve the same result, he'd gone rogue. That was the only way Ianto could describe it. He must have been planning it for days but he'd given away no clues about his intent. He'd simply vanished one night. No phone, no signal from his vortex manipulator, and his real passport still in the drawer where Ianto kept them both. The string of expletives Ianto used would have stunned his teammates, and his barely concealed impatience and fury at trying to locate Jack had been thrust upon them as the only people in proximity whom he could take it out on.

He had no illusions about where Jack had gone and why. The question was only where exactly was he now, and Ianto knew the only way to answer that was to be on the ground where a proper search could begin. His efforts were slowed by the fact that he didn't have the same technology as Jack had in his wrist strap, which meant their equipment wasn't nearly as good at picking up the unique signals from this price of technology. That was then hampered by the fact that their equipment picked up several other unknown signals, all of which he immediately had assigned to his local teams in Caracas, Rio De Janeiro, Buenos Aires and La Paz. Further hindering him was trying to continue to coordinate a global network of Torchwood offices that never stopped creating work for him.

Receiving an email late one night demanding a ransom for Jack's life had caught him off guard, yet it was also the break he'd needed in locating Jack. He could have kissed those gun-toting, drug peddling thugs for making his job easier. They not only gave him a location where he could make the exchange in person, but also allowed him to direct a state of the art satellite right over their location, confirming that Jack had at least been successful in one thing - he'd found their alien mind control device. Both he and it were in the exact same place.

His bags were packed within the hour and loaded into a jeep that would take him as far into the jungle as it could. After that, he'd need to pay locals to take him eighty miles down a network of rivers and estuaries to Manaus. And after that he was on his own, on foot for the last seventy miles of uncharted rainforest. It wasn't the kind of mission he could ask anyone else to accompany him on. It was uncertain, dangerous with a huge chance of contracting any one of a hundred tropical and often lethal diseases, and harder to move the more people there were. He imagined some of the local villagers had boats that never carried more than two people, and were immediately suspicious of strangers. A line man wanting to risk his own life seemed a far less confrontational prospect. It wouldn't be easy going by any stretch of the imagination and he didn't have anyone he'd ask to risk themselves like that, Gwen included. This was a job for one, an and one man who was relatively impervious to most deadly dangers.

By the time he was just a few miles short of the camp's location, he felt thinner and leaner than he ever had. The prospect of cutting his way through twelve miles of thick, impenetrable vegetation, mountains and swamps no longer tired him out. It would have been good physical training for some of his team if it weren't so bloody dangerous.

He could tell he was getting close, because the trees weren't quite so closely packed anymore, and the vines and other spiny plants that liked to dangle down from the canopy branches - through kind that were sharp enough to slit your throat if you walked through them in a hurry - had been cut away to create clear paths. If that wasn't a sign of human habitation, he didn't know what was. And, at this distance, his equipment was very clearly picking up the signal from the alien device.

He didn't have to find the camp because they found him first. He was surrounded on all flanks by men with heavy automatic machine guns and long bowie knives tucked into their belts and flak jackets. The militia welcome wagon was here waiting for him. It was almost a relief, knowing it would all be over soon.

‘I'm here to pay the ransom for my friend,’ he said in Spanish. He'd had plenty of time during that long trek to memorise all the essential phrases one might need in a prisoner exchange scenario.

They didn't reply, but their guns did all the talking for them, directing him into their camp. They didn't bother to relieve him of any of his gear, assuming that with so many guns pointed at him they had it covered. Their mistake, he thought.

It was a pretty miserable looking camp, just a few wooden huts and a handful of larger canvas tents, all in military green. God alone knew how they got supplies in and out of here, a million miles from anywhere. They must know all the closest villages and keep them under some kind of permanent threat to hand over whatever these guys wanted. That or they had an apache helicopter stowed away somewhere. Judging by what he'd seen so far they got all their gear from Military Monthly.

There was a small clearing that was surrounded by tents. At its centre were a couple of fold out directors chairs, and sat in one of them, with the biggest machine gun Ianto had ever seen lying across his lap, was their camp leader. He looked the part with his Rambo style headband, chunky boots and rolled up shirt sleeves.

The man lazily got up out of the chair and checked his watch. Had he really expected ia to to show up at some preordained hour without knowing how long it would take him to get here, assuming he didn't contract some awful disease along the way that had him out for the count for several weeks?

The man tucked his large thumbs into his belt and sauntered over, cocking his head appraisingly at Ianto. ‘Jones?’ he asked in a thick Latino accent. He didn't even attempt the first name.

‘Si.’

He looked Ianto up and down, eyes falling in the heavy pack on his shoulders. ‘Plata?’

Ianto recognised the slang word for money. He'd heard it often enough lately, every time he tried to seek passage anywhere, or just for a bottle of clean drinking water. Everything in this part of the world seemed to revolve around “plata”. Si, he replied.

He slowly moved to remove his pack noting that several of Rambo’s men raised their guns a little higher and held them a little further. Twitchy, Ianto thought. Once it was on the ground, he unclipped a carabiner that held a second bag tethered to the first. It was chock full of American hundred dollar bills, wrapped in wads of ten thousand. All up half a million dollars, which would keep a pathetic little mob like this very comfortable for at least a year, and no doubt would be channeled into even more illegal activities. He dumped the zipped up bag on the ground between them.

Of all the things he'd had to lug around for the last three weeks, this felt like the most useless. The rest of it had kept him alive - cooking tools, his sleeping bag, a sheet of tarpaulin he could tie just about anywhere that could be used as either a shelter from the monsoonal afternoon rains or as a hammock to keep him out of the reach of apex predators. Not that it had stopped a rather unpleasant conjunction between his leg and a large snake that had wound itself around it whilst he'd been snaffling an hour of sleep. He could appreciate why Saint Patrick had chased all of the snakes out of Ireland. The only snake he wanted to meet was the kind behind glass at the zoo.

‘I'll be taking the alien device my friend came here for as well,’ he said, reverting to English. These guys weren't in the habit of kidnapping white, American-accented men and holding them for ransom without knowing a whole lot of English, rendering them able to interrogate, torture and then send emails to worried family members demanding money.

The man nodded down at the bag. ‘It's not a two for one deal.’

Ianto tossed the second bag he'd had clipped to his pack onto the ground. ‘I think you'll find that should cover it. More than double what you asked.’ A million dollars that had been lugged all over the continent by one increasingly impatient Welshman.

The man smiled, leaning down to collect the two heavy bags. ‘A pleasure doing business with you.’ He waved Ianto away. ‘You can go now.’

Ianto narrowed his eyes. He'd half expected to come here and be swindled. ‘I'm not stupid. Both of those bags are combination locked and sprayed with an alien compound that makes it impossible to cut, tear or otherwise open the using anything other than the zip and that padlock. You give me what I want first, and then you get the combination.’

Rambo grinned at him, enjoying their exchange. It was obvious that most people who made it this far were just glad to get out of there with their lives. ‘We could just torture you for it.’

Ianto's blue gaze was steely. ‘I don't think so. I've just spent three weeks trekking through mud, rain, humidity, trees, leeches, poisonous plants and more snakes than I ever want to see in a lifetime. I'm so sick of reconstituted lentils that I would happily cut off my own leg and barbecue it just for a change on the menu. I'm tired, I'm filthy and I stink. I've had about as much of the jungle as I want and I should add that if you attempt the wrong combination on that lock, not only will it not open, it will explode, along with every last greenback in those bags. Oh, and I should mention that if you try to kill me, I can't die. Try it now if you like. Shoot me in the shoulder, just for fun, and see what happens.’

The man tittered nervously at the bold statement and the slightly crazed glint in Ianto's eyes that said he wasn't kidding. Ianto could read his expression like a book. Jack would have shown remarkable resilience to their games. Whilst they clearly hadn't tortured him to the point of death, he had bounced back quicker than any hostage they would have ever had. Rambo here must have put two and two together and was now realising why Jack was so resistant to their usual methods.

One of Rambo's men acted on impulse and without authority, lunging at Ianto and pressing him back against a thick tree trunk. His knife was pressed hard against Ianto's windpipe to the point where the honed blade began to draw blood.

‘Go a little deeper,’ Ianto taunted him, pushing forward to force the man's knife to slice further into the tender skin at his neck. The man, surprised by Ianto's movement, pulled his knife away instead and the long bleeding cut dripped for a moment before sealing itself back up, the skin fresh and whole again.

‘Madre de Dios!’ he swore, backing away in fear.

Ianto pulled his own knife from his belt and held it up to his wrist. ‘Want to see that again?’ He sliced hard down the length of his forearm, wincing at the immediate pain of it. The blood as it poured from the long, deep gash for just a minute and then healed itself up again. He made sure to hold it up so that they could all see.

There were muttered curses between the men. Something about devils and hell and God, Ianto surmised from his fledgling Spanish. He didn't need a translation for panic and fear. He'd sold them on that without the need for words.

‘We bring you your friend now,’ Rambo stammered, his eyes never leaving Ianto for fear of what curses he might lay upon them. They clearly all thought he was the devil incarnate. A pity some of the political leaders he had to deal with on a daily basis didn't feel the same. He'd get a lot more done if they did.

‘And the device,’ he reminded them. He sheathed his knife. ‘Don't dally. Hunger makes me impatient.’

Jack looked rough when they finally dragged him from the small hut. He too was filthy and looking thinner for a lack of food, but his eyes brightened a little as he saw his lover.

‘Device first,’ Ianto insisted. ‘I don't trust you.’ Not that he didn't of course want Jack first and foremost but there was no point in letting them know that. Plus, it would be a right in the arse to have come all this way for nothing other than his impetuous and idiotic lover, wasting both their efforts to retrieve the one thing Jack had defied his orders to to go after. It arrived shortly after in a hessian sack. Ianto checked it before nodding, and they cut loose the roped binding Jack's hands, shoving him towards Ianto. They backed away, keeping their weapons held low. They were still prepared to shoot him if he threatened them but they also looked just as glad to be seeing the back of him.

Ianto lifted his now much lighter pack onto his shoulders. Let them keep the money, not that they deserved it. And good luck to them if they decided to try the combination lock or some other more forceful means of opening the bags to get at the money. Just as he'd promised, it would explode gloriously, shredding and burning every last hundred dollar bill. The chance they would ever get to spend it was somewhere in the order of three billion to one.

‘Torchwood thanks you for your cooperation.’ Ianto took Jack by the hand and dragged him insensibly away from their camp. He waited until they were a good three miles distant before breaking the silence.

‘You're an idiot,’ Ianto scolded, ‘going off on your own like that.’ If it wasn't for the fact that they were going to be spending the next three weeks at least, trekking all the way back out of the jungle, having to now share a sleeping bag and Ianto's meager and thoroughly bland provisions, he might have punished Jack. This however - weeks of suffering through Ianto's foul temper at their situation - seemed punishment enough. And there'd be more in store for Jack once they were safely back in Cardiff. Ianto had broken the rules many times before over the years and suffered Jack's wrath for doing so. Now that he was in charge, Jack was going to get a dose of his own medicine. Just because they slept together didn't mean Jack didn't have to follow orders if they related to all things Torchwood. That was the price for putting Ianto in charge. It was just fortunate that Jack mostly agreed with Ianto's ideas and methods, but now there did it hurt to remind him of the consequences of defying them.

‘You're not supposed to give them what they want,’ Jack said, having nothing particularly constructive to argue with, and knowing it was far too soon to be gushing and appreciative. His pride was still smarting from his failed attempts to secure the device on his own.

‘And what else would you have had me do? Let them keep you? Let them use that device to control minds? Imagine a drug cartel that could make anyone do anything they wanted. I think they were amazed I gave them money at all. They're probably too scared to spend it, thinking it's been cursed by the devil incarnate. And it'll blow to kingdom come before they can even consider it.’ He'd considered putting the explosives on a timer but it felt far more satisfying to let them stew over the untouched bags, perhaps for weeks or even months.

‘You gave them some kind of a scare, that's for sure. They hurried me out of that stinking hut so fast I thought they must have had the devil whipping their heels.’

Ianto scowled at a vine that crossed his path, swiping it hard with his machete to vent some of his building frustration. ‘I don't like advertising my immortality like that, as you well know.’ He'd always told Jack he was too laissez faire about telling everyone he couldn't die. It gave them leverage. After his year spent chained and tortured on the Valiant Jack still didn't seem to have learned that lesson. There were things far worse, and far longer lasting, than death.

‘I'm sorry.’

Ianto huffed. ‘So you should be. Going off like that against my express orders.’ Ianto sighed. ‘Still, mad as I am at you, I'd have had every last Torchwood and UNIT asset tear this wretched jungle apart to find you if it took that.’ The alien device was valuable, no doubt about it, for its potentially dangerous function, but some things were beyond value. Jack had a price tag no one could afford.

Jack grabbed him by the hand, halting his movements. ‘I'm glad I'm worth getting mad at. Not everyone would go so far just to be mad at me.’

Ianto tugged him along behind him. ‘Just wait and see if you still feel that way in three weeks. You might prefer for the leeches to eat you alive.’

Jack chuckled and Ianto couldn't put into words just how much he'd missed that sound. ‘I'm willing to find out. But I'm pretty sure I already know the answer.’

Ianto squeezed back. ‘Me too. But if you have to go rogue on me again, can you please go rogue in the Maldives?’