Fanfic: "Permutations"

[aeshna_uk]

Title: Permutations
Author: Aeshna
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13; gen, AU
Warnings: Character death
Word count: 1,453
Characters: Lisa Hallett, Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness
Summary: "I won't let them hurt you, Ianto. I swear, I won't let them hurt you."
Spoilers: Heavy for DW 2x13 Doomsday and themes from TW 1x04 Cyberwoman
Disclaimer: Not mine, no matter how many DVDs and toys I buy! Everything here belongs to RTD and to Auntie Beeb, who already has my licence fee.
Archive: Sure, whoever wants it – just let me know where it ends up!
Notes: Written for the tw_exchange AU challenge, prompt #50: "It was Ianto and not Lisa who was partially converted." I said when I took this claim that the resulting story would likely be short and not terribly sweet – looks like I was right.... ;)

Many thanks to mimarie and jwaneeta for looking this over for me. Feedback of any variety is very much appreciated but not compulsory – I'll post anyway! I've suffered for my art, now it's your turn....



He was still trapped in the conversion unit when she found him, his pale, bloodied flesh ensnared within a cruel lattice of steel and silicone. The air was thick with smoke, with the scent of spoiled meat, dim lights flickering red and violet in the confused shadows, and it was hard to work out exactly what she was seeing, hard to tell where the twisted machinery ended and he began. For a brief and glorious moment she thought that she had found him in time, that the knives hadn't yet started their butchery....

And then her shaking fingers raised the torch and she saw.

Ianto's eyes were closed but there were fat tears wending their way down his smoke-smeared cheeks, a display of simple human emotion a universe removed from the monstrosity surrounding him. His face was untouched, but the rest... oh, the rest was a nightmare blend of metal and mesh and sinuous tubing wrapped around and threaded though the sturdy body she knew so well. They had taken something beautiful and carved it into their own warped image and she couldn't –

"Ianto?"

The sound of her own voice, low and despairing, startled her, and she swallowed hard as his eyes snapped open and fixed on her face. "Ianto?" she tried again, forcing herself to calm, "it's me, it's –"

"Lisa?" he whispered, and his familiar Welsh lilt sounded so normal.... "Lisa? What happ– where am I? Are you all right?"

"You're still at Canary Wharf, love." She set the torch aside and reached up to stroke his face, careful to avoid the edges of the metallic helmet that framed his features. "You're in the Tower and – oh god, how much do you remember?"

"I... it hurts, Lisa. It hurts and I can't... I – oh." His eyes squeezed shut once more. "The ghosts. They were... huge, silver and we couldn't escape, we couldn't – Louise tried and they killed her, right there. They were everywhere and then...." He bit his lip, then pulled in a choking breath. "Then they strapped us into these things and there were blades and... they were making me into one of them." His eyes opened and the pain in his gaze broke her heart. "Weren't they?"

She nodded mutely.

"Oh, god." He trembled within the machinery's frame and she wondered if he was trying to get up, wondered what would happen if he succeeded. "But you're all right? Please, Lisa – tell me you're all right?"

She nodded again, gently stroking her thumb across his mouth. "I'm all right, love. I'm fine. I was in one of the shielded storage units, talking to Hanif and Krista and Burgess – it locked down when the ghost shift... when everything happened, when it all went wrong. The things couldn't get at us."

The desperation in his tear-filled eyes eased a little. "You were safe?"

"Yes. We were... safe." Safe even when they wanted to fight, when the open comms meant that they could hear the battle, could hear the screams. Safe when their entire world was ending and all they could do was cower in their bunker, caught between the frantic need to help and the instinctive animal desire to stay low and silent and hope that the danger would pass them by. They hadn't been cowards by choice but that didn't make it any easier to deal with.... "The lockdown released in the end. After it was over. After they were gone."

"Good," Ianto breathed. "Good. Were there...." He paused. "Are there many? Survivors? Is Torchwood –"

"No." Lisa shook her head. "Not here, not One. There's maybe two dozen of us left, give or take, and not all are...." She swallowed hard. "The other units are coming in – Three has seniority now."

"The provinces? The American?" He sounded faintly horrified. "We don't need –"

"We do," she told him sadly. "It's them or UNIT and nobody wants to sell out to those idiots."

"Doesn't matter." He sighed and flexed his gauntleted hands. "They'll destroy it all anyway."

Lisa let her head fall back, gazing up at the cracked and stained ceiling overhead and fighting down the lump that threatened to choke her. It would be a kindness, she thought, if the Tower finally gave up its fight and collapsed on top of them both, but if the world were fair then it would have been Burgess or Llewellyn who found him and she would never have known his fate....

If the world were fair, then none of this would have happened in the first place.

"Gone," Ianto said, his voice cracking. "All gone."

"Not quite, my love." Please, please don't....

"Yes." His features contorted miserably. "They did this to me and then they left me unfinished."

And there it was, so simple and so quiet and so like the words of all of the others they had found. Lisa smothered her sob, brushing away the tears that threatened to blind her – for a moment there she had so nearly let herself believe.... But then she remembered Caren stalking through the blasted remains of Development, her eyes blankly murderous; remembered Terry from Accounts fighting to free himself from the conversion frame, hellbent on killing whoever came closest. And she remembered Cindy, trapped and helpless and talking as though the conversion was all she wanted, was all that mattered for her and for them. They thought themselves still human but there was more to this than metal and it lurked just beneath the surface, waiting, just waiting....

A sharp crack came from somewhere nearby, the sound of the shot echoing and amplifying oddly through the corridors. Ianto tried to turn his helmeted head towards the door. "What was that?"

She took a step back, her hand going to her mouth. "Oh, god...."

"Lisa?"

His eyes were confused, pleading, but she had heard it, she knew she had heard it, the reverberation changing his voice for just that brief unguarded moment. And she couldn't do it, couldn't lie to herself, not with so very much at stake. She loved him, loved him as she had never loved anyone else, but Cindy's conversion hadn't been anywhere near this far along and she –

Lisa dashed the tears from her eyes again, swallowing hard as she made her decision. She loved him.

And that meant that she owed him this much, at least.

"I won't let them hurt you, Ianto. I swear, I won't let them hurt you." The gun was heavy in her right hand, a solid weight that she had not relinquished since escaping the shielded store. "Oh, please, I love you so much...."

"Lisa?" He smiled, the expression as genuine and honest as any she had ever seen on him. "Love you too. Always."

"Then forgive me," she whispered, and pressed the gun's muzzle against helpless flesh where it joined the moulded chestplate, pulling the trigger once, twice, before she lost her nerve. "Please, please, forgive me...."

# # # # #
It was Hanif who found her sitting and sobbing in a pool of Ianto's blood, was Burgess who quietly took the gun from her trembling hand. It was Graham who led her back up into the daylight and Krista who brought her the change of clothes and who sat and wept with her in the corner of the fifth floor canteen, pouring the pain and the fear out onto each others' shoulders as they grieved all that had been lost and all that had been done.

And then, when there was nothing left to do but face the prospect of a future without, it was the tall American with the long coat and the ancient eyes who laid a gentle hand on her shoulder and told her that she had done the right thing, that there had been no other way. Told her that sometimes the acceptance of responsibility for another's fate, however painful, was the truest mark of courage.

Told her that, for that alone, he had an opening for her on his team if she wanted it.

She didn't accept immediately. She needed time to think, time to mourn. The Tower still stood broken and empty on the London skyline, a reminder that nothing was forever and no one was invincible. Ianto had loved it there, had loved everything it stood for, had loved the purpose and sheer presence of the place. He had been so happy there....

In the end, though, Torchwood One had fallen.

But Torchwood had not. And if the Institute's future now lay in the very place that Ianto had spent most of his short life longing to leave, then that, she finally realised, was where she needed to be.

She owed him that much, at least.

~ fin ~

Comments

[akeyoftime.livejournal.com]

Guh.

This is beautifully done. It really makes me want to read more about your Lisa, who is such a beautiful and strong person, and to mourn for this Ianto, who did have to die, but it's still so upsetting. Your portrayal of Jack is also fantastic - the aura you've surrounded him with is a force to be reckoned with indeed.

[aeshna_uk]

Thank you. :) I did rather enjoy writing Lisa in this - my immediate thought on seeing the prompt was that Ianto wasn't going to be leaving TW1 alive as someone had to have the brains in that relationship and it clearly wasn't him! Not sure if I'll ever get back to her, but I think she'll make a good addition to this TW3. :)

Jack doesn't have a great deal to do in this one, so I'm glad his brief appearance worked for you. I'm always fascinated by how he must seem to others who are in TW but not in his immediate team, aware of rumour and third-hand stories but little more than that. Lots to play with there. :)

Glad you enjoyed it!

[akeyoftime.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to let you know, I've recced this story in my journal.

[aeshna_uk]

Thank you, I'm flattered. :)

[eumenidis.livejournal.com]

Whoa, whoa, goody! A new Aeshna story! Now I'll have something to read on the bus tomorrow...

[aeshna_uk]

:D

I hope it made your ride more enjoyable!

[eumenidis.livejournal.com]

Now that's an AU I can live with, & happily. You've handled the aftermath of the TW1 battle & the TW survivors' emotional responses not just to the battle but to the horrors afterward very deftly & realistically. I particularly appreciated the glimpse into the brutal choices which any member of TW is apt to be faced at any time, & the kindness & supportiveness to one another of the survivors.

Re: your comment that Ianto wasn't the brains of his & Lisa's relationship--I'm not sure it's a matter of smarts so much as of temperament--though I also suspect even the people most perfectly suited to TW would have a pretty high rate of burnout & breakdown. My impression from the series is that Ianto is probably very clever & talented, but, given the conversation between himself & Toshiko in "Countrycide," possibly didn't grasp emotionally the dangers, or horrors, he'd have to face.

[aeshna_uk]

Thank you. :) For me it's the emotional responses that make a story 'real', more often than not - the small human things in the moment or the aftermath more than the big showboaty displays. I think that's a large part of the reason why I just can't warm to the current Doctor: he's very into big displays of moral outrage, telling people how he thinks they should be behaving or reacting, but then he's just grinning and buggering off again and leaving someone else to clean up the mess. And he's quite amazingly hypocritical about it - "no second chances"? Well, not unless you happen to be a member of his own species, in which case, what's a little genocide or torture between friends?

Ahem. ;)

Ianto is the TW character I have the least feel for so far, but what I do get from him is that he's very much one of those suited admin types we saw at the end on DW s2 (he really should recognise Martha because of her similarity to her cousin!). Probably a lot of book smarts, very loyal to the Institute, but doesn't really have much grasp of, or aptitude for, fieldwork. At TW1 there was plenty of scope for folks like that, but TW3 is run more like a wolf pack than an ant hill, so he's pretty much stuck with answering the phone and making the tea. We don't know what Lisa did at TW1, but in my head she had a role at least a bit more proactive than her boyfriend's. :)

Glad you enjoyed it, given that I know you're not fond of AUs!

[eumenidis.livejournal.com]

My feeling is that RTD said all he really had to say about the Doctor in DW1, & after that--pfft. I still enjoy the series a lot, but the characters don't engage me like they did in DW1.

I think you're right about Ianto. TW1 vs TW3: well, we could write a couple of volumes on that subject, but suffice it to say that ant hill & wolf pack are pretty good analogies, though I'd like to add that their respective directors had retained different firmness of grip on reality.

[aeshna_uk]

I find that the secondary characters on DW engage me a lot more that the central ones do these days (although I did like Martha). The one-shots and the recurring characters have been, without exception, superb, but the Doctor drives me nuts more often than not. I'm actally quite looking forward to having Donna around simply because she may act as audience-proxy for those of us wishing that someone would slap him when he gets into his Impractical Moral Outrage vibe....

But, that said, I have TW to fall back on and I'm finding the characters there a lot more real and complex (but then it's basically a BBC post-watershed drama first and foremost; the SF/DW connection is almost a secondary theme). :)

I quite liked Yvonne. :) She was barking mad, but she had style with it. It was pretty clear to me that the various branches have been left to develop their own style over time - Yvonne was too young to have been around when Canary Wharf was built in the late '80s, so we can't blame it all on her - and London went in a quite different direction to Cardiff. I'm sure other branches (which may or may not still exist) did their own thing too, though we've not seen much evidence of them yet.

[eumenidis.livejournal.com]

Re: Donna--oooh, I do hope so, God knows I've wanted to slap him silly.

I regard Yvonne more as a symptom than a cause, TW1 seemed to be an organization that had had grown from a relatively small group who likely had a sense of mission amounting to vocation--like the early NASA--to a sprawling bureaucracy where for most people it was just a job--like later NASA. Credit where it's due, Yvonne may have been bonkers, but she had retained the sense of mission that I suspect her colleagues had mostly lost, & she went down, poor thing, fulfilling her mission.

[aeshna_uk]

Yeah, mad as a hatter but dedicated to the cause to a truly amazing degree. I really must dig out those bunnies featuring Yvonne as she is an awful lot of fun to play with. :)

And yes, TW1's issues can largely be put down to a strange addiction to middle-management....

[kickair8p.livejournal.com]

Perfect. Just perfect.





~

[aeshna_uk]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! :)

[muggy-wump.livejournal.com]

*wibble*

*bursts into tears*

That was beautiful. :'(

[aeshna_uk]

*passes tissues* Glad you enjoyed it! :)

[hellenebright.livejournal.com]

Excellently done.

[aeshna_uk]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! :)

[talaayn.livejournal.com]

Wow...
This really is a lovely piece of writing.
Well done!

[aeshna_uk]

Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed it! :)

[idontlikegravy.livejournal.com]

*sniffle*

Beautiful, thank you.

[aeshna_uk]

Thank you, glad you enjoyed it! :D

[invisible-lift.livejournal.com]

"Yes." His features contorted miserably. "They did this to me and then they left me unfinished."

Ouch. Eek. Ick. Makes me all squirmy just thinking about it.

[aeshna_uk]

Sorry for making you squirmy, but you know Ianto - he does like everything to be neat and tidy.... ;)

[invisible-lift.livejournal.com]

It was squirmy in really good characterization ways. That made it...well, more awful. (In really well-executed ways!)

[sunnyrea.livejournal.com]

ohhhh you made me want to cry with this one. *sniff* I liked Lisa deciding to kill him off of the sound of his voice changing. Lovely.

[aeshna_uk]

Thank you - glad you enjoyed it (even if it did want to make you cry!). :)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_stolendreams_/]

Hi there

Just dropping you a comment to let you know that your fic has been shortlisted at tw_fandom_award in the Best AU category. Voting should be up in a couple of days.

Until then could you please spare us a moment to check that we have the details listed right or to let us know if you would rather not have your fic included. You can find the shortlists here (http://community.livejournal.com/tw_fandom_award/9062.html)

Thank you very much and congratulations
_stolendreams_

[otp-alert.livejournal.com]

So powerful and well written. God, this really hurt to read.
Your Lisa was so incredibly strong and managed to do what Ianto should have done in the series.
:mems: