Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Jack, OC

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 2,049 words,

Content notes: Major spoilers for Big Finish audioplay “The Office of Never Was”

Author notes: Written for Challenge 380 - Position

Summary: Jack follows up on an investigation he thought was all in the past.


Jack watched with intrigue as the youngest member of his team exited the derelict office building just off the rainbow roundabout in Splott. Jack knew all about the building of course, but what he couldn't wrap his brain around was why Ianto was here. Apart from a slightly strange voicemail he’d left Jack - which had fortunately been intercepted just before Ianto had gone and deleted it some two hours later - there was no other reason to be here.

He stayed a careful distance away as Ianto very calmly, almost lackadaisically, wandered to his car and got inside, driving off as if nothing at all were the matter. Ghosts in the building? Unlikely, Jack thought. The building had been abandoned for months and was unlikely to ever again be tenanted. At least not for years until the media’s influence on its reputation faded from memory. No one wanted to work in a building where all the workers had been murdered by their company CEO, or so the story went.

Something made him want to go and check the place out for himself. There was just no sense in someone having reported ghosts and Ianto then going to check it out without reporting back that there was nothing there. Something must have happened, but what? And why was he leaving so calmly?

Jack waited until the black Audi had pulled out and completed its three point turn, heading back in the direction of home before Jack moved out of the shadows of an adjoining street, coming to park right in front of the building.

He stepped out of the car, feeling a cool breeze whisk by as he craned his head up at the glass and steel edifice. Milne Futures, or what was left of it, which wasn’t much more than a lease and a name that had been scratched into the historical records of Companies House. Not that Ianto would know that; not anymore. He’d once known everything there was to know about the place and what had gone on there - including how Torchwood had gotten themselves involved with disastrous consequences. It was a guilt he couldn’t live with, knowing that the reason all those people were dead was because of Torchwood and not their CEO, even if he'd taken the first steps in contributing to their deaths.

Moreover, they were dead because of what Ianto had done - albeit under the assurances of his team and leader - that retconning the company’s employees would fix the alien enhancements that had been made to their brains by The Committee. Instead it had killed them. All of them. All except Mr Milne himself, who had declined to have the procedure done to him. Like most corporations, the boss got to do what he wanted, but tell his employees that it was in their best interests to comply. He was lucky in a way. He was still alive, even if he had little to live for these days.

Jack wasn't one to condone the use of retcon for his team, but there were some occasions he yielded to the pressure, if for no other reason than he couldn’t bear to see them suffering. Mostly he wanted them to remember the bad times so that they’d appreciate the good in the world. However Ianto’s trauma over what had happened appeared to eclipse even that of losing his girlfriend. Or perhaps it was because of it, that Jack didn't want to heap any more misery on the young man, giving him the carefully constructed dose of retcon that would erase months of that particular case file, whilst keeping other memories intact. It was always a risky procedure wiping only selective memories and Jack had taken a lot of care with the unusual request, but it had seemed to work. The case files were locked away in Jack's private archive, password and biometrically protected and never again was a word spoken about it that might risk triggering the suppressed memories and bringing them back. So why had Ianto been here tonight? And had doing so triggered any of what had happened before to come rolling back? Judging by his calm demeanour Jack wanted to say no, but he'd take a look around the place himself, just to be sure.

The front doors hung unlocked, just as they’d been when Ianto had earlier picked the locks, allowing him access. Nothing about the building's reception area immediately gave anything away, so Jack decided on a traditional sweep of the building from top to bottom. Spying the lift off to his left he strode over to it, pressing the up button.

"Doors opening! Agor drysau!" the childish voice of the lift chirped at him. It was creepy, even more so that it did so in two languages. At least it had been until he’d noticed the fact that on the other side of the doors there was no lift, just an empty well and the crumpled body of a young woman at the bottom. Her eyes started blankly sideways at him as she lay in an impossible shape, dead, but only dead recently.

He immediately discounted the idea that Ianto had murdered her. It just wasn’t possible. Even so, it was terribly out of character for him to leave the body behind, either. Collect it, find out who she was, create a false story regarding the circumstances of her death if need be, but lay her to rest properly and give her family and friends closure at least. To just walk out and leave her there though was totally out of character.

"Doors closing! Cau drysau!" the doors announced with equalling disturbing undertones, sliding shut and concealing her from view, like curtains in a funeral parlour at the end of the service. Jack didn’t press for the lift again. He didn’t need to see her body any longer. He turned on his heel instead and headed for the stairs, wondering why he didn’t just pick up the phone and call Ianto right now, demanding he come back here and explain what the hell was going on. His boot slipped on something small, pausing the bend down and pick up an abandoned swipe card. He pocketed it out of habit and carried on.

The stairs weren’t lit but Jack carried a small torch in his pocket and used it to light the way as he took the steps two at a time. The odd rat scurried away from his loud footfalls, squeaking and squealing at the disturbance. He hated rats, but he hated not knowing what was going on more.

Reaching the top floor he pushed open the door, revealing the sad remnants of a once proud company, evidenced now only by the daily commercial detritus of its former staff. His eyes came to a halt at the first desk he passed, seeing it littered with flyers, all with Ianto’s picture printed on them in glossy colour. What the hell? He let it flutter to the ground as his torchlight made a slow arc of the space. His eyes were squinting to make out anything that would give him a clue when he was accosted from his left. Something tackled into him, clutching and clawing at him.

'You came back! Thank you! Thank you! My legs!' cried a desperate voice as it continued to paw at his coat. Jack couldn't make out much more than it was a man, who seemed to be in some distress, possibly injured.

'Easy,' Jack said, trying to clutch the man and help him to his feet until they gave way under him like a rag doll. With some effort he managed to half carry half drag the man to the closest office space, leaning him up against the wall and searching for a light switch. His fingers blindly ran over the panel, locating it and flicking it on, which thankfully caused the lights overhead to blink on despite the place probably not having paid a power bill in months.

The man held a hand up to shield his eyes whilst they adjusted. He finally lowered it and squinted. 'You’re not Ianto,' he said, and then his expression changed again. 'Wait, I know you.'

Now that the space was lit, Jack could also see who he was dealing with. 'Likewise,' he replied, feeling slightly surprised. ‘You’re Oliver Milne.’

‘And you're Torchwood.’ He pushed himself into a more comfortable position, rubbing at his legs as if to bring feeling back into them. ‘Christ, you’ve come because he was here, haven’t you? He was leaving me to die here.’

‘Ianto?’

‘Look, I didn't mean it,’ Oliver began to ramble. ‘It was just a bit of mucking around. Psych him out a bit. Revenge for ruining my life. I wasn't really going to kill him, I swear!’

Jack’s eyes narrowed as the truth began to spill out of the man. ‘What did you do? Are you the reason he came out here tonight?’

‘I wanted him to remember. To know what it feels like to have your life taken away from you. That’s all.’

Jack’s sympathy for Oliver Milne was quickly waning. ‘And the girl? Did you kill her too?’

‘It was a mistake!’ Oliver said, trying to crawl his way closer to Jack, dragging himself forward with his arms. Jack took a hesitant step backwards. ‘He was going to kill me, just like he killed the others. Once I reminded him what he’d done. He’s a murderer, don’t you see that? He left me locked in here with no way out. Just food for the rats. He did this to me,’ he wailed, indicating his useless legs. ‘I only wanted him to remember, just like I do. I can’t ever forget it. He shouldn’t either.’

Jack was slowly beginning to understand now just how Ianto had come to wander out of here so cool and calm. There’d been retcon involved - again - erasing this final chapter of a terrible story. It wasn’t bad enough that he had hundreds of lives on his conscience, now he also had a psychopath after him wanting revenge. ‘He gave you a dose of your own medicine,’ Jack said. ‘Let you rot here in his place?’

“Yes! Don’t you see though? I wouldn’t have done that to him. It was all bullshit, mate! Just a bit of banter.’

Jack’s jaw clenched as he considered Oliver sprawled at his feet. ‘Ianto doesn't get to make those decisions about who lives and who dies. That’s my job.’

‘You get it, though, don’t you?’ Oliver said, pleading again as he propped himself back up into a sitting position. ‘He just brushed us all off like we meant nothing. Like humans meant nothing to him. That’s not what Torchwood does, is it? He went rogue on you. You need to stop him before he turns on anyone else.’

‘I’ll deal with him,’ Jack assured him. ‘And you’re right,’ he added. ‘In Ianto’s position I’d never just leave you here to die of starvation.’

A relieved smile broke out over Oliver’s face, numbing the pains shooting up and down his legs. ‘I knew I could count on you. You’re one of the good guys. I-’

Blam! The single gunshot rang loudly in the cramped confines of the office cubicle. Oliver Milne sat slumped against the wall, a huge wash of red emanating from behind his head in a bloom of colour. It dripped slowly down the thin plaster wall eventually reaching the beige carpet and soaking into it. Jack spared him only the briefest glance as he holstered his Webley, his eyes catching on yet another pile of flyers stacked neatly on the desk as he did so.

‘Maybe I’d have just wiped your memories if you hadn’t threatened my team.’ Or maybe if you’d just never crossed paths with The Committee in the first place, Jack thought, we wouldn’t have even crossed paths. Milne Futures might have had a future. Now it was dead, as was the man who’d started it all. The last remaining piece of evidence that any of this had ever existed had been eliminated, along with Ianto’s memories of this evening. All that was left was for Jack to take his rightful spot as Torchwood’s leader and consign the case to long forgotten history.