Canon: Cyberwoman

[likesthecoat]

Ianto readjusts his tie, heart pounding as the elevator carries him down into the Hub.

(today, today, he's coming today)

He's scared for a moment that he'll be caught, that someone will notice how nervous he looks and know and everything will come crashing down around him. Today is a special day, a good day, but dangerous as well-- he's been planning it for weeks now, and there's always the chance that something might happen, that they'll all find out.


Ianto needn't have worried-- when he crosses the threshold he is greeted by the sounds of an energetic two-on-two basketball game. He stands behind the bars for a few minutes, puzzling out the teams as he waits on the doors to open. They're loud and clumsy and Ianto hopes they don't knock over or break any important equipment.

Owen and Gwen are together, their moves flashy and unorthodox. Owen tosses her the ball from the upper level-- Jack intercepts it and he and Tosh play keep-away for a few seconds, laughing, until Gwen recovers and throws it back to Owen who scores the final goal from his position above the net. The usual post-game banter is exchanged ("Of course, that was an illegal move." "Totally illegal!" "Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Losers.") as everyone gathers jackets and purses.

No one speaks to Ianto as they leave, or even seems to realize that he's there. Jack throws the basketball to him without looking, and the sudden silence is almost as deafening as the noise of the game.

As soon as the door hisses closed he's off and moving. He can't spare a single second-- there's too much to be done.

Comments

[othercaptjack]

Jack regains consciousness with a shudder of life, and groans before he can stop himself. He pants heavily as he gets to his knees, looking around through blurring eyes - but Lisa doesn't seem to have seen.

He turns, eyes finally focusing and sees Ianto lying on the ground near him. He isn't moving. Jack's hands move almost of their own accord to pick the boy up out of the water, feeling the weight of an empty shell against his body and cradles it against him, feeling his throat and skin. There's a pulse there somewhere. He glances behind him as he hears Lisa's heavy footsteps somewhere above. There' not much time, but... He pats at the side of Ianto's face, trying to get him to wake up. There's barely a storring, and desperately Jack leans in to kiss him, willing heat and life into his limp body - not even sure why, only knowing that he doesn't want Ianto to die.

In spite of everything, he wants him to live. He can hear Lisa's slow, mechanical footsteps a little way away, searching for the others, but all that matter for now is forcing life into the stupid, lost boy in his arms.

And then there's a gasp against his lips, and the body jerks with awareness. Jack pulls back hastily.

"Ssh!" he insists urgently, and tugs him up off the soaked floor.

[pc-cooper.livejournal.com]

A freezer door closes and Gwen's still kissing Owen, clutching his shoulders tightly. She can't say she actually minds too--

Her mobile goes off. Shit. Jumbled whispers of "Where is it, hurry please" come from the both of them before Owen finally fishes her phone out of her back pocket.

He hands it to Gwen, and she's so terrified that she drops it as the door opens. Owen tells her to turn it off as they crawl out of the freezer unit.

Gwen almost cannot breathe. She's so scared and panting as Lisa comes round at them. She could bloody kill Rhys just now for calling. Lisa stares at Gwen, moving towards her faster.

Owen throws an arm in front of Gwen. "Don't you touch her."

He grabs a screwdriver and when Lisa gets too close, he jabs it in her stomach. The Cyberwoman collapses.

[likesthecoat]

At the sound of Lisa's scream Ianto stops staring in shock at Jack, shoves himself to his feet and runs across the water tower pool to find her.

Lisa falls back against the wall and slumps against it. Gwen and Owen watch her, panting, hardly believing they're out of danger.

"What the hell was that?" Gwen says.

"What?"

"Snogging me!"

"Last kiss for the condemned man! Little embarrassing given we haven't been killed." He sees her disbelieving look. "What?! It's not like I fancy you or anything."

"I was on top of you. I could feel your hard-on."

"Yeah, well, you didn't exactly struggle, did you?"

Ianto runs down the stairs and knees in front of Lisa, touching her wounded belly.

"It was kill or be killed," Owen says quickly.

"Owen's right. There was no choice."

Ianto is still gasping for breath, looking at his lover in disbelief. He stumbles to his feet when her eyes open.

[othercaptjack]

Gwen grabs his arm, and starts tugging him away. "Ianto, move! Get out!" When he fails to move for a second, she panics and starts shoving him to the stairs. "GET OUT I SAID! MOVE! MOVE!"

They finally run, as Lisa gets to her feet, clattering down the stairs to meet a remarkably living Jack.

"You should be dead," Owen says, almost accusingly.

Jack simply shrugs. "I'm the stubborn type." He grabs a blowtorch and lights it, before seeing a squeeze bottle on the desktop, and grabbing that, too. Lisa advances toward them, cold and determined, and he brandishes his improvised weapons and prays this works. "Get behind me!" he tells the other three. She pauses, but doesn't exactly look like she's about to run.

"That's right. Stay back," he grins, extending the blue flame slightly closer to her. "This'll at least give you heartburn."

"The power will run out," she replies in a matter-of-fact tone. "I can wait."

She probably can, if Jack's one, wild, improbably plan doesn't work out, he thinks.

"Jack, help her. Give her a chance to surrender..." Ianto says, and no matter how loving a boyfriend he may be, he is obviously concussed.

Behind him, Owen and Gwen hold him back from starting forward.

"Have you not seen what she's done?" Owen asks.

"Let her stay in the cells! We have to reverse the process!"

"I've told you!" Jack interrupts, barely holding onto his temper. "We're past that! Hold him back!"

"What are you gonna do?" Gwen asks him uncertainly, but obeys.

"Don't ask questions. Just get him on there and hold him!

They push Ianto back to the concrete slab that doubles as a lift when they actually have power to the hub, keeping a firm hold on him. Jack abruptly squeezes the bottle, squirting the contents onto Lisa, who seems mildly annoyed, but mostly nonplussed.

"...What is that stuff?" Gwen asks, sounding as if she really doesn't want to know, but can't stop herself asking.

"Kind of a barbecue sauce. It helps it identify its food."

"Help what identify its food?!"

Jack ignores her, instead turning the blowtorch off and putting it hastily down before jumping up onto the lift with the others before Lisa can recover from her confusion. He glances at Ianto, almost ashamed.

"I'm sorry," he says, and presses a certain combination into his wrist strap, causing an answering screech from high above.

"Come on Tosh, hurry up," he mutters as the Cyberwoman begins to advance.

Ianto's eyes widen as he realises that Jack is entirely serious. "You'll kill her!" he shouts after a second, voice anguished, and he tugs against Gwen and Owen's restraining hands, just as the pterodactyl flies out of the pipe opening near the ceiling. It swoops down, straight for Lisa. Ianto can't get free, but continues yelling at Jack, desperate.

"Let me go! Let me help her!"

[likesthecoat]

Upstairs, Tosh is still working on the power, frantically connecting wires. "Yes!" she whispers as her power cell light flickers on.

Below, the invisible lift stone is still rising. "Hold him still!" Jack shouts as Ianto struggles against Owen and Gwen's grip and screams, "No!"

Toshiko checks her power cells and opens the outside door to find the others.

Down in the hub, the pterodactyl is attacking Lisa. Lisa fights back, screaming her terrible metallic scream.

"Call it off her!" Ianto pleads. "You can do that! Have some fucking mercy!" But still the lift stone continues to rise and the pterodactyl and the cyberwoman continue their struggle. Ianto keeps screaming as the lift trapdoor opens and the lift carries them up to the street.

Once they're at street level Jack steps off, and Gwen and Owen release Ianto. Tosh runs to them, laughing and sobbing with relief.

"It worked!" She looks around. "What happened to ... ?"

Jack shakes his head and brushes the question aside. "No," he says, panting.

Ianto stands with his back to them, quietly sobbing, and then turns to them and punches Jack in the face. "You could have saved her!"

Gwen pulls Ianto away, holding him back while Jack cries out in pain and Ianto continues shouting. "You're worse than anything locked up down there! One day, I'll have the chance to save you ... and I'll watch you suffer and die."

"It was the only thing that would stop her!" Jack says harshly, Owen holding him back, Gwen in front of Ianto.

"Listen," Toshiko says, "when I was at reception, I managed to trip the lockdown timer. The power should be coming back on any second. We can get back in."

Ianto doesn't pause to look--he simply runs back to Torchwood.

"Ianto!" Jack shouts, and they all take off after him.

[angiedeluca.livejournal.com]

Outside the tourist shop, a girl walks up to the door. It is the delivery girl from Jubilee Pizza. She rings the door to be let in, as she has probably done countless times before.

“Pizza!”

A loud buzzer sound goes off as the door unlatches, allowing her to let herself into the shop.

The interior of the tourist shop looks as it always does, immaculate and neat. The girl, Annie, looks around the shop with a confused look on her face.

“Ianto,” she asks, her voice a bit hesitant.

Her eyes are drawn to her right as there’s another noise, not as loud as the buzzer. The secret door to Torchwood opens, beckoning her to go through it. Holding the pizza close to her, she steps forward.

The door to the hub opens, Annie’s eyes widening as she steps inside and sees the complete mess the Hub is in.

“Bloody hell!”

Finally, as if her mind is processing things, she looks around, more as if she’s looking for someone than at the hub itself.

“Ianto? D’you want these or not?”

Suddenly, there’s a loud screech above her, drawing her attention. She cannot believe it. She sees a pterodactyl flying above her head. As if that wasn’t enough, off to her side, a brief movement catches her eye, drawing her attention there. Lisa stands, a blank look on her face, watching Annie. She’s covered in blood from her fight with the pterodactyl, but she is very much alive.

[othercaptjack]

Jack runs as flat out as he can manage with his whole face aching - Ianto has one hell of a punch on him when pissed, apparently - trying to catch up to him before he runs right into his girlfriend and sure electrocution.

"Ianto! Stop!" he yells, voice echoing around the plaza.

"She can't have survived that attack," Gwen calls from just ahead, but keeps running.

"I used my initiative!" yells Tosh, trying to keep pace. "I'm sorry!"

"When I want you to think for yourself, I'll tell you," he growls back, failing to apply diplomacy to the situation. Again.

"Maybe if you'd told me your plan, I wouldn't have done it!" she tells him crossly.

Ianto isn't stopping, and he's a long way in the lead. All they can do is follow him into the office - and find him with a gun levelled at them as they get in. Gwen and Owen stop, shifting to one side to let Jack get in.

"Ianto, don't be stupid!" Gwen starts.

"I've nothing left to lose," he replies, breathing rough, eyes bright with fury and grief.

"There's always something left to lose," Jack says, and gets a gun aimed directly at him for his trouble.

Ianto is trying visibly to sound cold. "I'm going back in to save her. Anybody tries to stop me, I'll shoot them."

"Ianto, put the gun down..." Gwen tries, and Jack moves. He steps forward, grabs Ianto’s wrist with one hand and twists his arm down and back, forcing him to drop the gun, and pushing him one-handed but hard against the wall. His own gun is out and the muzzle at Ianto’s cheek in a second or two without a shot being fired.

"You make a threat like that, you better be prepared to follow it through," he says grimly. "See, you disobey me now... I really will shoot you."

Ianto struggles ineffectually. "Get off me!"

"You wanna go back in there?" Jack asks, voice deceptively level. "You go in to finish the job. If she's still alive, you execute her." He loosens his grip enough to shift the younger man to face him. He looks horrified, shaking his head.

"No way."

"You brought this down on us. You hid her. You hid yourself from us. Now it's time for you to stand as part of the team."

He feels a tentative touch on the back of his shoulder. Gwen, following police training under entirely the wrong circumstances. "Jack..." she says, and he speaks over her voice.

"The girl you loved has gone," he tells Ianto. "Your loyalty is to us now."

"You can't order me to do that."

Jack's voice is almost a growl. For now, while he's this angry, he can and he will. "You execute her or I'll execute you both!"

"I won't do it. You can't make me. You like to think you're a hero. But you're the biggest monster of all."

Wrong. Jack knows exactly what he is. He just knows that he can't stop. Because if he stops then everything dies. "I'm giving you ten minutes," he says. "Then we're coming in."

He's itching to just knock Ianto out and sort this out over his head. But... "Pick it up," he says softly. Ianto reaches down and picks up his gun. He looks at them, then turns and disappears silently into the corridor.

"How can you ask him...?" Tosh breathes.

"I don't need your opinion!" he snaps.

Which means: I don't know. I don't know when I became someone who could force people into something like that.

[likesthecoat]

There's blood. There's pizza boxes. Oh, shit. Annie. There's the pterodactyl. There's the computer warning them of power failure.

There's . . . no sign of Lisa.

Ianto moves through the Hub--when he sees the lights on in the storeroom where the conversion unit is stored, he breaks into a run.

He knows what he's going to find--somehow, knows it in his heart--but still the sight of her breaks something inside him and he falls to his knees. There's blood everywhere, all over the metal frame, and there's no mistaking that Lisa--whatever was left of Lisa in this body--is completely gone.

Ianto cradles her body and weeps.

[angiedeluca.livejournal.com]

“Ianto…”

In the dimly lit room, Ianto grabs his gun and points it at the woman standing across the room from him. It’s Annie, the pizza girl. Her shirt is soaked with blood and there seems to be a cut across her forehead.

“Ianto. It’s me… It’s Lisa,” she murmured.

Ianto steps around the table. Hesitantly, Annie walks toward him.

“I'm human again. You fought so hard for me, I had to hold on for you, so I took this body and transplanted the brain.”

She had a look as she stared at him, a pleading look. Slowly, Ianto gazes down at Lisa’s body on the floor.

“You’re not Lisa,” he said softly.

“You always said you didn't love me for what I looked like. Last time you said that, it was a Saturday. We were hungover. You made cheese toasties, and moaned I hadn't de-scaled my kettle.”

As she spoke, she stepped closer. Ianto cried as he listened her.

“That night, we camped on a beach in Brittany. It got so freezing we wore our coats and shared one sleeping bag. When we woke up the next morning, a dog was pissing on our tent.”

She sees his tears but presses onward, needing to speak, to get her words out for him.

“Hold me, Ianto. I need you to hold me. I need you to tell me it's all right.”

Still crying, Ianto steps forward. Wrapping his arms carefully around her, he holds her, for a moment. But the moment doesn’t last long. Releasing her, Ianto steps back, cocking the gun and pointing it right in her face. She looks a little confused at this.

”What are you doing? Ianto, it's me! You wouldn't shoot me. I did this for you!”

”I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” he repeats. He lowers the gun, unable to stop his crying. “Lisa!” Ianto slowly turns away from her He can’t do it.

”We can be upgraded ... together.”

A gun fires hitting Lisa-in-Annie in the stomach. Turning around, Ianto sees Owen, Gwen, Jack, and Toshiko aim their guns at Lisa. They fire… and keep firing. Lisa falls backward onto the table from the impact of the bullets. Turning, she looks at Ianto. The team lower their weapons.

Ianto turns back to look at them. While the rest of the team is looking back at him, Gwen can’t look. He turns back to Lisa, falling to his knees beside the bodies.

[othercaptjack]

It's a few weeks later.

Below them, the alarm blares and lights flash as the front door rolls open. Ianto walks in slowly. He looks up. Jack and Gwen are in the conference room looking down through the windows on the hub. Jack nods to Ianto, expression neutral and eyes watchful. Ianto barely nods back.

Up in the office, Gwen glances at Jack. "You'd never have shot him," she says. "Not really."

"Wouldn't I?" he replies, not looking at her, eyes still following Ianto as he goes about his duties.

She rolls her eyes, obviously disbelieving. "Would you have shot me if I'd gone to stand by him?"

"But you didn't."

"If I had, though," she insists, wanting to know, to hear him say he wouldn't.

"But you didn't."

There is a pause, almost awkward, as Ianto starts to pick up rubbish down below.

"Will he stay?" Gwen asks eventually, to a noncommittal shrug from Jack. She sighs. "All that deception. Because he couldn't bear to live without her. So, have you ever loved anyone that much?"

Jack is silent, face blank and unreadable.

She continues anyway. "When she had hold of you, I thought, just for a moment, I thought maybe you could die after all."

Finally, Jack looks at her, eyes glittering. "Wanna know a secret?" he says, and she nods. "So did I. And just for a second there, I felt so... alive."

[likesthecoat]

Ianto adjusts his tie, heart pounding as the elevator carries him down into the Hub.

(today, today, I'm back today)

He's scared for a moment that he'll be thrown out, that no one will speak to him, that every decision he's made in the last two weeks will be made moot the moment he steps through the door.

He's greeted by near silence, and looks up at Jack before he moves any further. Jack nods to him, and Ianto nods simply in return.

I'm where I need to be.

He picks up a garbage bag and begins collected the rubbish that's accumulated in his absence. No time for scenes. There's too much to be done.