Title: Where there was once something
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,826 words
Content notes: Post-Cyberwoman.
Author notes: Written for Challenge 413 -Negative Space
Summary: Jack takes it upon himself to better understand what happened and why.


Jack’s earpiece beeped in his ear. Without consciously thinking about it he reached up and tapped it on. He knew to expect the call. ‘Yeah, Owen?’

‘Just letting you know he’s all tucked up for the night. Not going anywhere based on the amount of sleeping pills we gave him.’ There was a scarcely detectable sigh. ‘Still, I’ve got Tosh setting up a motion sensor just outside, so if he does try to make a move, we’ll know about it.’

Jack was less worried about the man leaving the flat than he was what he might do behind closed doors once they were all out of earshot but he didn't say so. ‘Thanks, Owen. Go home and get some sleep.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘Call me if anything changes, though.’

‘Will do.’ Jack tapped off the earpiece again and resumed his slow walk. He knew the way without giving it a thought. The halls were empty and the concrete underfoot echoed with the sound of his boots. The hub was such an empty, lonely place. He didn’t normally notice just how hollow it was, but tonight he heard every last sound his footsteps made, and the way the place dripped with a permanent dankness that came from being so deep under the bay, yet so old that the Victorian stonework was only just managing to keep on holding it all back after more than a century. No doubt the barrage had put additional pressure on the old structure, forcing the water to press against it constantly, rather than just on the whim of the tides. Maybe one day it would all get to be too much for the place and it would collapse and flood. Perhaps that might be for the best, washing away all the horror and the sin that this place had endured.

God, this place was grim, Jack thought. If there had been an award for finding the bleakest space within the hub, then Ianto Jones won that prize, hands down.

He stood before the door, looming and ominous. Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy wad of keys and rifled through them until he found the one he wanted. It didn’t usually live on his keychain, but tonight he didn’t want anyone else to have access to it, possibly forever. He slipped the key into the lock and turned it, feeling a slight resistance as if the door didn’t want to permit him access. Eventually with enough pressure, the tumblers could be heard clunking into place and the lock released. He held his breath for a moment as he gripped the door and pulled it open.

He braced himself to be attacked right hand rested on the butt of his webley – still in its holder at his hip, ready to be drawn – and then let out the breath when he saw that there was nothing inside. The room was empty, just as he’d instructed his team to make it so. There wasn’t so much as a mark on the floor despite the carnage that had taken place. Every last shred of what had been down here had been dismantled and removed. That was a relief. He didn't think he would be able to stand the sight of it.

He stepped into the room, hearing the echo of his own footsteps. It was just a room, and yet…

He slipped a hand into his other pocket and felt the cold metal object, wrapping his hand around it and pulling it out. It belonged in the secure archives, under lock and key where it couldn’t cause any more damage than it had already done. He shouldn’t have it, especially not down here, and yet he couldn’t resist. He had to understand what had happened and why. His fingers traced the split lip that still stung slightly in its slow attempt to heal. Ianto had given him that with a solid right hook. He probably deserved more. He wasn’t sure he would have blamed Ianto for turning his gun on him and making Jack pay for what he’d done. Or not done. Jack was as guilty for the things he’d done as the things he hadn’t.

The ghost machine had been nothing but trouble from the moment they'd found it, delivering haunting images of times long since past, and even worse, visions of things that were yet to pass. Jack had snapped the thing back in two after removing it from the secure archive, putting the unwanted half back in its crate. He didn't dare try to find out what the future held. As a time traveller, he knew the dangers of that better than anyone, and he of all people, wanted to know his future least of all.

Part of his mind screamed at him to see sense and not do this. Nothing good could come of it.
He swallowed hard and before he could change his mind, he pressed the button on the blunt end of the object and the whole room came alive.

Jack was suddenly struck by intense pain. It made him cry out with the sensation of the tearing and burning within his body. Even though he’d imagined what it must have felt like to be converted by the cybermen into one of their own, he hadn’t been ready for it. It was agony, feeling the flesh being torn apart and fused with the metal, feeling his chest constrict as his ability to breathe was taken away and replaced by some kind of cybernetic alternative. He clawed at his chest, trying to find a way to breathe and to tell himself that it wasn't real.

The smell was the thing that hit him next. It was the metallic tang of chemicals that burned the back of his throat and made his tongue feel like it was touching the top of a battery, tingling and almost burning. Chemicals and drugs; too many for any ordinary human to be able to process, but a cyberman could take it and barely feel it making any difference. Beyond the smell of chemicals, Jack detected the coppery scent of blood. Not so far from human that it couldn't still bleed, Jack remembered, beginning to see the pools of blood forming on the floor in front of him. The one that had been created when that poor girl Annie had been brutally murdered for her body, and the second even larger pool, where Jack and the others had driven their bullets into the cybermen, killing it once and for all. Not all of them, Jack recalled. Not Ianto. He couldn’t do it even though he'd known it was the right thing to do. He’d simply loved her too much to ever see her as anything other than the woman he loved.

Pain. Jack's body was riddled with pain. It ached and burned and he felt his knees buckled and go out from under him, lurching him forward onto the ground. He was so tired and in so much pain he could scarcely take it. He’d died a thousand times in every way possible and yet he'd never felt pain like this. It was everywhere all around him, forcing a choking sob from his throat as he realised the awful truth of it. Cyberen were emotionless monsters. They weren’t capable of feeling pain. Even the half converted would suffer only a modicum of discomfort. It wasn’t the cyberman’s pain he was feeling; it was Ianto’s pain.

God, the pain. It was utterly unbearable. Jack couldn’t imagine anyone feeling this much hurt. How had the man gone about his day amongst them, always with a smile and eager to help in his own quiet way, yet have been concealing all of this underneath.? Jack's eyes pricked with tears that wouldn't abate and a bone aching weariness that made him want to curl up on the ground and just give in to it all. He couldn’t do it anymore. His hands pressed heavily into the concrete floor, trying to keep him on all fours, but then he felt the hot blood seeping under them. There was blood everywhere. He thought he might drown in it as it rose higher and higher, like the room might flood with it.

He cried and cried and howled from the agony, feeling a stabbing pain rip through his torso, throwing him backwards. Shot with a half dozen bullets, all aimed to kill. Dying. He was dying. Alone down here where no one would ever find him. It was bitterly cold and lying backwards in a pool of his own blood he knew this was the end. He couldn’t go on. There was nothing left. He just wanted to die.

He lay there, shaking and weeping and cold as ice, feeling the life slowly ebb out of him, and then it all dropped away. The pounding of blood in his years was gone, and a massive weight lifted from his body. Jack blinked and gone was the blood and the smell and the pain and the despair. He tipped his head sideways and saw the ghost machine lying there on the floor, just a few feet from where he must have dropped it, out of reach of his hand if he could even have realised it was there. The room was empty. It always had been. All the pain and the horror was just the echo of a memory scarcely a few hours old, and yet Jack knew that it would linger in this place for as long as he drew breath, now and a thousand years from now. Always a reminder of what had happened.

Jack let out a shuddering breath and forced himself upright, leaning back on his heels, wiping the wetness from his face and the congealed snot pouring from his nose from so many unshed tears, and rubbing his arms up and down to eke the cold and the lingering pain from them. His breath was still ragged as he tried to regain control of it, wishing he wasn’t shaking so badly. All of it had felt so real and yet unreal, far stronger than anything he’d prepared himself for.

He’d wanted to be able to find a reason not to forgive Ianto his folly and found he simply couldn't. Jack would never have been so noble as to do what Ianto had done, risking everything for one chance at love. Jack couldn't claim the moral high ground. The whole world might have burned and perished as a result, but the pain and the agony of doing anything else felt inconceivable. He didn’t have to forgive Ianto per se, he just needed to let him know that he understood. There was a space inside him now that could never be filled for all the things he’d lost here tonight. All Jack could do was to take some of the memories of monsters and pain and carry those himself.