Rating: T

Word count: ~ 5,000

Warnings: Should I even warn for angst anymore? It's kind of a given with my stuff. ^.^'

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: This was written over the course of an extremely boring lecture on the psychology of grief, if that gives you any warning. (And partly out of frustration that fandom likes to portray Ianto as a woobie. There's nothing wrong with that. I find myself in the mood for woobie!Ianto, too, sometimes. Just...not now.) Spoilers for everything up to Cyberwoman, with mentions of Fragments.

Edit: This has expanded, edited, and reposted, so help me. It is now a series.

Ashes

The ashes drift like snow.

Somewhere in the distance, they're burning the remaining conversion units, melting them into slag so that the Cybermen can never be rebuilt.

Ianto sits in one of the first aid tents with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders to ward off shock, and thinks desperately of the conversion unit and its occupant that are hidden away in a room under the Archives. No one will find it, because the door is concealed and locked and only Ianto, as the last remaining archivist, has a key.

Lisa will be fine, he tells himself. It helps enough that he can ignore the smell of charred flesh and blood on the wind, the rubble of the once-grand tower that was Torchwood London. If he focuses on that, lets any stray threads of thought encroach on what he knows he has to do to save her, he'll fall apart.

There's no time for that now.

One of the doctors on the scene bends over him, asking him something that Ianto can't quite hear. Ianto ignores him. He can't understand why there are so many doctors here in the first place; how many people do they think could have possibly survived the combined wrath of two of the most dangerous species in the galaxy? There are only twelve other people in the tent besides Ianto, and the rescue teams have already been at it for hours.

Soon, he thinks. Soon they'll be able to leave, and it will be nightfall. Ianto has already rented a van, during the time they thought he was calling family. It should be big enough for the conversion unit and whatever other equipment he can scavenge.

His hands clench around the edges of the blanket until it's in danger of tearing—tearing like the Cybermen tore apart the doors of the Archive when they came. Ianto had seen them, had fled deeper into the Secure Archives as quickly as he could and secreted himself behind a shelf of items that were shown to disrupt scanners.

Ianto calls himself a coward and a thousand kinds of fool for not looking for Lisa earlier, even though he's aware it's the only thing that kept him alive. He knows what the Cybermen can do, knows what the risks are possibly more than anyone else in One. He's read the files, and once he reads something, hears something, sees something, he never forgets it.

And yet what he's doing could potentially recreate the Cybermen here on Earth. He could be laying the foundations of the next invasion.

But no. No. That's not Lisa. Lisa is not a Cyberman. Lisa is still beautifully, miraculously human, even though they tried to convert her. She recognizes Ianto, loves him just like she did before, begged for him to help her. Ianto can't say no to her, not now, not ever. She's his entire world, his life, the woman he dreams of marrying and spending the rest of his life with. Lisa doesn't mind his obsessive tendencies, his chronic neatness, or the way he alphabetizes the spices. She wants a cat, and maybe children when they're older, and that blue Hermès scarf they saw the shops last month. Ianto was already saving up to get it for her birthday when the Ghost Shifts started, and—

The thought trails off on a choked sob, but Ianto fights it back. There's no reason to grieve right now, nothing to mourn. Lisa is alive, and as long as she's still his beautiful, sweet, kind Lisa, he can go on.

The destruction of Torchwood One is nothing in comparison to saving Lisa. Ianto shuts down all thoughts of friends and colleagues and the pretty young mother working in the cafeteria, and focuses on what he needs to do next. There's only one place that can provide what Lisa will need, in terms of sheer energy output and alien technology, and Ianto closes his eyes, pulling up everything he's ever come across about Torchwood Cardiff and Captain Jack Harkness, leader of Three.

He gets the job. Ianto is too desperate to be surprised, because he wouldn't have let himself fail, ever. Even so, something in the back of his mind insists that there was a very large chance everything could have gone wrong. There still is, really. Ianto hasn't found any definite way to reverse the transformation, and he's exhausted from too many hours on his feet. Caring for Lisa takes everything he has, and to add to that the stresses of working for Torchwood—even if it isn't London, or maybe especially because it isn't London—leaves him reeling and stupid from sleep deprivation.

Thankfully, in this case, the job is a bit of a demotion. Back at One, Ianto specialized in the classification and categorization of alien artefacts, crosschecking references and previous encounters to establish an item's origin and function before it could be stored in the correct section. It was a good job and he had loved it. Everything was neat and orderly and in its place, and—

Well. Torchwood Three is the exact opposite.

He's a glorified office boy now. He makes coffee, completes and files paperwork, cleans up the huge amounts of rubbish the others leave behind, and takes care of whatever strange creatures the captain brings in. No one thanks him for it, no one looks at him any longer than they have to, and he's only spoken to when they need something.

Truly, Ianto doesn't mind. He's always been good at becoming invisible, fading away into the background. At first, he had had his doubts about how well it would work on Captain Harkness, but he needn't have worried. The captain is brash and bright and showy, drawing all eyes. As long as everyone is looking, admiring, he's content. That makes it easy for Ianto to slip away, become part of the furniture. He admires Jack Harkness, of course, recognizes that he's handsome and dashing and all the things a hero saving the world should be, but Lisa takes all of Ianto's attention.

Resolutely, Ianto ignores the strange way his heart fluttered when he and Jack were in the warehouse, lying pressed together with their faces close enough to kiss.

He can't think of anyone but Lisa.

The conversion unit now keeps her alive, encased in metal and only able to breathe with the help of a machine, but it's enough. When she is awake, when she looks at him with dark, scared eyes that beg him to save her, Ianto feels his heart break. He sits with her, when Jack thinks he's in the Archives sorting out a hundred years worth of neglect, and tells her about the future they'll have when she's been cured. A cat, a house, a ring on her finger—he's bought it already, and keeps it with him in his innermost pocket, because there's not a chance in hell that he won't save her. Lisa will live, and they'll be happy, and he'll kiss her scars and love her until the end of time.

The conversion was incomplete. Those monstrous creatures that destroyed One don't exist anymore. Whatever little glitches Ianto sometimes sees, little moments where Lisa looks as though she's calculating his body mass and weakest points, they're a reaction to trauma and pain, nothing more.

The first time Lisa opens her eyes and doesn't recognize him, Ianto doesn't cry. He throws himself into his research with renewed drive, because there has to be something in Torchwood's vast collection. Anything will do.

He doesn't need hope. He knows Lisa will survive.

In the rare moments that Ianto can sleep, when his rest is not haunted by the screams of the dying—of Lisa—or the heavy tread of metal boots, he dreams of something else entirely.

Someone else entirely.

She's pretty, in a basic way—long bleached-blond hair, bright brown eyes, a sweet smile and an engaging grin. When Ianto dreams of her, he dreams of the interior of a ship he's never seen, even in pictures records in the Archives. Nevertheless, he's there, and he perches on a chair while the girl sits on the edge of the controls.

"Shouldn't you be driving?" Ianto asks, because he's always been eminently practical, and the habit of a lifetime is hard to break.

The girl laughs at him as if he's said something particularly clever, and pats the nearest spot that is free of buttons. "Oh no," she says, grinning. "I don't dare touch. The TARDIS is quite capable of flying herself."

Of course, Ianto knows the TARDIS, knows about the Doctor and what Torchwood's charter says about him. Ianto has also seen the UNIT reports, though, and he's a little more inclined to trust those at the moment than what Torchwood told him. Still, he's never heard anything about the Doctor switching genders when he regenerates, and this young woman doesn't have quite the manic personality he's been warned to expect, so…

"Companion?" he asks.

She smiles at him, soft and sad. "It's complicated. But that's life, right?" She shrugs. "Or something like it."

They both look at each other for a heartbeat, melancholic and a little wry, before Ianto nods his head in greeting and offers, "Ianto Jones, former Archivist, formerly of Torchwood London, now the glorified teaboy of Torchwood Cardiff. At your service."

The girl ignores his introduction and doesn't offer one of her own. Instead, she slides off the console to look him straight in the eye, and says, "Do you really think you're going to save her, Ianto Jones?"

It's a dream (albeit an incredibly lifelike one), so he doesn't ask how she knows. "I have to. She's everything to me."

She just looks at him for a moment, almost pitying. Then, with a visible shift, she grins, bright and a little wicked. "So that Captain Jack's real fit, isn't he?"

Ianto laughs for what feels like the first time in years, and says, "Gorgeous. Should be in films," even though heat burns in his cheeks at the boldness.

The grin he gets for that is just shy of triumphant, and Ianto lets himself be distracted from all the pain of the waking world until his alarm buzzes loudly in his ear.

When he wakes up, he can't remember anything except the words Bad Wolf.

Captain Jack is everything that Yvonne Hartman could never be. He's charismatic, strong, and inspires his team to new heights. Larger than life, the way he sweeps around in that greatcoat and those boots, the way he always seems to be more sharply in focus than anyone else. It's a little overwhelming, a little too much for Ianto when he's already exhausted from caring for Lisa.

Jack Harkness is dangerous, and not just because of his skill with a gun.

Standing before the coffee machine in the little kitchenette, Ianto draws a deep breath and tries to ground himself. Lisa had one of her episodes last night, staring at him with eyes that were flat and cold instead of deep and warm. He's shaken, even though he knows that there's no reason to be. After all, the conversion wasn't complete. She's still Lisa, not…not some monster wearing Lisa's body.

His hands don't shake as he pours coffee into each cup; his mask is better than that. This ritual helps, though, reminiscent of the days he worked as a barista before Torchwood One found him. It's possible to tell a lot about someone from the way they take their coffee, and Ianto's new teammates are no exception.

Suzie likes hers black. A strong personality, then, not caring for the presence of bitterness. She's the senior member after Jack, his second, and completely ignores Ianto's existence unless she needs paperwork filed or something brought up from the Archives. Ianto knows her well enough by now to realize it isn't personal. The only thing that registers in Suzie's world is the alien technology that falls though the Rift and what she can learn about it. In that way, she reminds Ianto of some of the scientists from One, even though he'd never say it within hearing distance of the others.

Owen, on the other hand, likes his with lots of sugar and no milk. It looks like he's drinking black, but it's sweet enough to rot a tooth. Hidden depths, Ianto assumes. The prickly medic is still a doctor, for all his horrendous bedside manner, and he still cares—even if that caring more resembles browbeating his teammates into submission, at times. Ianto is his new favorite target with the many teaboy comments, and while Ianto would love to stand up to him and punch him in the nose, he contents himself with slipping the doctor decaf whenever he's being particularly nasty and making him redo his reports because of minor errors.

Ianto is very good at passive-aggressive.

Of all the others, Tosh is Ianto's favorite. She's soft-spoken and sweet, and takes her coffee with lots of milk and sugar. When Ianto comes to collect her reports or whatever data she's been working on, or to deliver her coffee, she smiles at him and asks after his day, and even though Ianto usually has to lie, it's nice to be treated like a human being instead of some sort of maid-bot.

And then there's Jack, who is his own category, no matter how Ianto tries to file him away. He flirts with everything that moves—including that alien spaceship that landed in the Bay, much to Ianto's consternation—but rarely follows through. Despite his tales of sexual exploits that cross galaxies, Ianto has never seen him go home with anyone, or bring anyone back to the Hub.

He's not what Ianto expected, either. There are moments when he personifies the brave hero, true, but Ianto has also seen him on the roof of the Millennium Center, staring off into the distance. It's too far away for Ianto to ever see his expression without a pair of binoculars and more stalkerish intent than he can usually dredge up, but there's an air of melancholy about him nevertheless. At first, this seems so at odds with what Ianto sees every day with the team that he can hardly consider it the same person. But then, one night when he was coming up from doing his final check on Lisa, he found Jack sitting in his office with a box of old photographs and that same downhearted feel, a look on longing on his face.

For reasons that Ianto can't name, Jack Harkness has now become an obsession. He scours the Archives for any mention of the man, and—

Well. He finds it. Close to two centuries of it.

Oh, it's been hidden, concealed. Someone tried to hide it where no one else would think to look, but Ianto's too good at his job and too accustomed to deception to be fooled by something like that. There are repots going back almost to the founding of Torchwood written in Jack's broad, loopy scrawl. Team pictures that feature him and that greatcoat, or his broad grin. There's no way to mistake that jaw line, either, and Ianto knows it well enough to spot it even in a crowd.

And then there are the even more interesting reports, the ones by other members with the words "alien killed JH before subdued" or the like, but with no death certificates accompanying the files. The only thing Ianto can think of is that Jack can't die.

The spoon trembles in the cup as he stirs Tosh's coffee. Ianto fights the urge to laugh hysterically. He's managed to fool an immortal who has been working at Torchwood for well over a hundred years, to get a job from him and sneak a half-converted Cyberman into the basement. It defies rational thought, it really does.

Taking a deep breath, Ianto picks up the tray of coffees and starts his rounds. It's early yet, but Tosh is already deeply entrenched in a new program she's writing, and Suzie is fiddling with the metal gauntlet they pulled out of the Bay a few weeks ago. Owen is in the autopsy bay, clanging around while trying not to make very much noise and reeking like he's just crawled out of the pub. He hisses when Ianto wishes him a (slightly louder than normal) good morning, and gulps his coffee like it's a hangover cure. Ianto rolls his eyes and leaves him to it, heading up the stairs to Jack's office.

Jack's is a blue cup, no pithy saying or decoration, several shades bluer than his greatcoat. It's always seemed a little too plain for the captain, too simple. Ianto likes it for that reason, he thinks. Another thing about Jack that shouldn't be, but is.

"Sir," he says, pausing in the doorway.

Jack looks up from his papers, pen tapping against one corner of his mouth, and then grins. Ianto is inordinately fond of those grins, bright flashes of teeth and good humor that travel all the way to Jack's blue, blue eyes and warm the room by several degrees. Sometimes, those smiles are a mask, but more often they're not. It's something rare in Torchwood, to smile so genuinely all the time, but then Jack is singular in so many ways.

"Coffee, sir?" Ianto asks politely, though he has to consciously control his heartbeat. When Jack looks at him like that, it becomes impossible to fade into the woodwork. With that expression, Ianto becomes the most important person in the universe, and it's unnerving.

"Do you even have to ask?" Jack grins at him and holds out a hand for the cup, then takes a deep breath of the steam when it's in his grasp. A little bit of sugar, a splash of milk—but that's not the only way Jack drinks it. Any way Ianto makes it, Jack is happy. Just one more thing about him that refuses to be pigeonholed.

Jack's eyes appraise him, careful and warm, and his next smile is the same. "Nice suit. I like this one, too."

Ianto makes an obvious reach for the workplace harassment forms he carefully left in plain sight. "Sir, do you really want to have to fill out more paperwork?"

Laughing, Jack raises his hands in surrender, cup tilting precariously. "Okay, I'll just admire quietly. As you were."

Ianto smiles a little bit in return, the sick knowledge that he has lied, is lying, and will lie to this man twisting in his gut. But it will be forgiven, he insists to himself as he carries the tray back to the kitchen. When Lisa is better they will understand why he did this to save her. They will love her as much as he does, and forgive him.

The burn of shame and self-disgust does not evaporate, but it becomes easier to bear.

There is someone new in the Hub, someone else to fool and sidestep now.

Suzie is dead.

Jack was dead, too.

Does he really expect Ianto not to notice that there's more blood than could come from one person? Blood in two different places? Does he expect Ianto to overlook this kind of thing when he is sent to scrub the lift and remove the evidence? Does he think they are all stupid?

Ianto considers how Owen and Tosh have been working here for half a decade, give or take, and have yet to notice anything, and revises the thought. Perhaps they are.

Gwen, though—she's something new. Jack always looks interested, but with Gwen, it almost seems as though he's going to follow through, or would if she didn't already have a boyfriend. For all his grumbling about quaint little labels and the restrictions of this century, Jack doesn't overstep those bounds as much as he could. He respects them.

Ianto wonders how long Jack has been alive, and how much of it has been spent in a century not his own. He remembers quite well Jack's quip about 51st century pheromones when they were capturing Myfanwy, and suspects that it wasn't just a joke, as Jack probably wanted him to take it.

Gwen is so heartbreakingly new and naïve, though. She's awkward with a gun, with any alien device, and awed by Jack's tales of distant galaxies and other races. Tosh, Owen, Ianto—they've all seen the worst that Torchwood has to offer, things gone far more wrong than one woman's obsession with a glove. Canary Wharf, a fiancée with aliens tearing apart her mind, imprisonment by UNIT for building alien tech—all of them know just what can happen, just how not-human their opponents, even when they are human.

The first time Ianto brings her coffee, Gwen jumps. She's nervous around him, around all of them, but gives Ianto a careful smile anyway. It's a lovely smile too, for all that it's gap-toothed and a little weak. Ianto smiles back, unable to do anything else. Gwen is imperfect, but she's human, when he and the others have spent so long around aliens that they only think like aliens now. Even the worst humans, the scum of the Earth, are still of Earth. Ianto can't remember the last time he had to deal with some kind of danger from this solar system. But Gwen knows how, has faced that kind of thing for years. Ironically, the one thing that makes Ianto so against her presence is the one thing that they need to help them.

"So…you're Jack's secretary?" she asks nervously. "Or thereabouts."

It's as good a description as any, though it hardly encompasses everything he does. Ianto keeps his smile and nods. "Bit of everything," he agrees. "Jack generates a lot of paperwork, and someone has to keep things running with coffee."

The words strike a perfect balance—he's not too important, but everything would fall apart without him, just like any other administrator in the world. Gwen seems satisfied with it, too, because she gives him another sweet, imperfect smile and goes back to the handbook Ianto thoughtfully provided for her. It only applies to Torchwood One, of course, but the basics are all she needs. Jack will take care of the rest. Ianto knows firsthand what his "firearms training" is like. Were Lisa not a factor—

But she is, and Ianto berates himself for thinking anything else. Jack is gorgeous and appealing on a level Ianto has never encountered before, but Ianto is nothing if not loyal. Even when the strain of caring for Lisa weighs so heavily on him that he only wants to go to sleep and wake up when it's all over, he still carries on.

There's nothing else he can do.

Ianto is being torn in two.

Ever since Gwen's arrival, the team has begun to see him. They smile at his sarcastic humor, look him in the eye when he brings them coffee, complain to him about the OCD with which he checks their paperwork, requiring ever line to be perfect. It's as though the introduction of someone who is still so wholly human—who sees, to a fault, the humans they protect rather than the aliens they protect against—has reconnected them all to the real world, reminded them of all the things they've otherwise forgotten.

Were it any other time, Ianto would rejoice. Were he not in the middle of trying to cure Lisa, this recognition would be everything he ever wanted. It warms him, deep inside where he thought himself frozen after Canary Wharf—even more than Jack's smiles alone, though those are still present, and if anything the number and frequency have increased.

But it's also dangerous, because Ianto is still lying to them, still hiding away a deadly, terrible secret.

It's getting more and more rare for Lisa to recognize him now, the few times she manages to wake up. But after months of searching, Ianto has found someone who can help: one Dr. Tanizaki, from Japan, who was marked for surveillance by UNIT after he attempted to requisition a conversion unit for study. Ianto has made an appointment for a Friday evening, when he knows the team will go out to a pub and leave him to monitor the Hub. They always do, after all, and as much as their attention has begun to refocus lately, he's still proficient at being forgotten.

This will be the chance that he's been waiting for. With Tanizaki's help, Lisa will be cured.

Ianto almost can't believe the end is in sight.

He hasn't needed—wanted—hope in a very long time. Months, though they feel like decades. Saving Lisa has always been a certainty. But with this new change, the knowledge that he's almost accomplished what he set out to do, Ianto allows a bright, shining hope for the future to consume him.

Even as he does, though, he regrets—just faintly—what learning about his lies will do to the team…and to Jack. Equally, he mourns that tiny spark of something that has existed since their first meeting, which will die out once Lisa is returned to him, along with all the possibilities it entails.

But it's enough. Lisa is enough, and Ianto has never doubted that, even though it's been so hard the last few months. All he's wanted is a smile or some touch of warmth, and instead he finds only empty eyes and no emotion.

In comparison, Jack is as vivid as a sun breaking into his frozen world, and it's a thousand times more tempting than it should be.

Jack looks at him as Ianto hands over his morning coffee, and raises an eyebrow. Unlike normal, it's not a flirtation. "You all right, Ianto?"

Ianto forces himself to smile and breathe evenly, calming his nerves. "Of course, sir. Do you have the incident report from the encounter with the sex-addicted alien?" Even as he speaks the words, he stops to shake his head faintly. Only in Torchwood. "I'd like to get it archived as soon as possible."

As always, the thought of paperwork makes Jack instantly change the topic. "That tie's nice on you. Red is really your color."

Ianto raises an eyebrow at him, saying plainly that he is not fooled for an instant, and then relents. "I'll make note, sir, and collect that report tomorrow, shall I?"

Jack grins a little sheepishly. It's adorable on him, like a five-year-old getting caught stealing cookies, and normally a grown man wouldn't be able to pull it off. But this is Jack Harkness, and his charm allows it. "Sure. Thanks, Ianto."

By the time Ianto leaves, Jack is already desperately sifting through the many papers on his desk, trying to find the right ones. Ianto rolls his eyes and heads down to the Archives, deciding to get some cleaning done while he waits for the end of the day.

Tonight, everything will change for the better.

It doesn't.

Lisa, Annie the pizza delivery girl, and Dr. Tanizaki are all dead.

It's his fault.

And the most horrible thing about this entire bloody tragedy?

All Ianto can feel is relief.

Jack nods to him as he steps carefully through the door.

It feels almost like a benediction.

That night, he dreams of coming back to life in Jack's arms, wet and aching in every muscle. There is laughter all around, sweet and engaging, and when he wakes it is to see a swirl of golden light.

The words on his lips are "Bad Wolf," and for the very first time he understands what they mean.

Rose Tyler, the Doctor's former companion, looks down at him with warmth in her eyes and says, "This is my gift to Jack. You've got forever to learn to love him, Ianto Jones. But somehow, I don't think it will take that long."

Ianto sits in bed long after she's vanished, and knows deep in his heart that she is right.