| Date: 12 December 2007
Characters: Toshiko Sato, Ianto Jones Location: hotel bar Link to IJ: thread #4881 |
 After checking in with Donna and sharing what information she'd garnered -- which wasn't much -- Toshiko got a drink at the bar, then a table near the window. She tried to appear at home while scanning for familiar faces, listening for any clues to what might have happened ... anything that would help her get home
She took out her ear piece again and started to test it. Maybe that office building they'd been in had been blocking the signal somehow. |
 "Tosh?" he asked, sitting down across from her. |
| She looked up, first startled, then relieved.
"Ianto!? Oh thank god! I was going for coffee when the rift must have sucked me through to ... wherever here is." She looked around for a familiar brightly-glowing doorway, frowning when she didn't see one. "Don't tell me," she said, groaning. |
| "What am I not telling you?" he asked, relaxing. |
| "That Torchwood haven't figured out what happened and you're not my way home but that you got sucked through too." |
| "Jacks' here too." Ianto admitted, "And an Owen from an alternate dimension. And the Doctor." |
| "An alternate dimension?" Tosh asked, frowning as she thought. "What is this place? Some sort of temporal nexus?" |
| "I have no idea. Time doesn't exist here. Jack and I are from different times but everything else seems to be the same. We should do a check for you. I." Ianto took a deep breath, "We're not on Earth." |
| "Here's not on Earth or your Torchwood isn't on Earth?" she asked for clarification. |
| "Here's not on Earth." |
| "How do you know?" she asked as she put away the ear piece. If they weren't on earth, she probably wasn't ever going to get a signal. |
| "Jack says we're close to a galaxy." |
| She suddenly realized something.
"Is this where Jack disappeared to? Wait, you said you and he were from different times." The logical part of her brain started to kick in. "OK, who are the members of the Torchwood team?" |
| "Jack disappeared?" Ianto frowned, "He said he was fighting ...something. You, me, Jack, Owen, and Gwen." |
| "We'll get to that later." OK, so post-Suzie from some definition. Maybe. "Um, no Suzie?" |
| "She just died. Again." he added. "When is it for you?" |
| "I'm a bit further along than you," she said, her smile a touch sad. Ianto, but not her Ianto. But close enough in this place. "A couple of months." |
| He rubbed his face, "Close to Jack then." |
| "It sounds like it. What exactly did he tell you?" she asked, offering her hand across the table. |
| She slid his hand into hers, squeezing lightly, "That we all opened the rift." |
| "We did," she admitted. "Jack and I ... " she paused. "It's not going to screw things up if I tell you specifics, is it?" |
| "I really doubt it." |
| "We were trapped in the 1940s. It was decided that the only way to save us was to open the rift without the whole equation on how to do so. That ... caused all sorts of problems." |
| "Who's we?" |
| "Jack and me." |
| "But you got back all right?" |
| "Eventually. But the rift. Well, all sorts of things started to come through." |
| "And that's what Jack was overfeeding?" |
| She could laugh at the description ... now.
"Yeah. We were afraid we'd lost him for good. He said that's the last thing he remembers?" |
| "Right in the middle of it. What happened after?" |
| "He died," she said quietly. "He died for days. We thought he was truly gone." |
| "But Jack can't die." |
| "He fed that thing his life," she said, her tone still quiet but now mixed with a generous amount of regret and a bit of leftover fear.
"All of it. As much as it could take. Until it couldn't take any more. Until it was defeated. He didn't walk away from that, Ianto. He didn't come back a few minutes later and tell us it would be OK. He laid on a slab in ... in the morgue for days. Still. Pale. No signs that he... No hints. We. I thought he'd given it all to that creature. All of his life, all of his energy, given up for us. To save us." |
| "But he got up?" Ianto asked, paling as she spoke. |
| "Yes," she said with a sigh. "Eventually. Only, he disappeared again." |
| "Disappeared how?" |
| "I don't know," she said. "He was there, and then he wasn't and the HUB was in a state. Now I'm wondering if he's here." |
| "He's here but. Do you remember me disappearing?" |
| "No, everyone was searching for Jack. I was monitoring CCTV." |
| "No, I mean. Back in early December." |
| "No," she said, shaking her head. |
| "Then I sort of doubt it." |
| "Doubt what?" |
| "That this is where he came when you can't find him." |
| "How do you know?" she asked; looking for the logic behind his assumption. |
| "Because you remember him disappearing but you don't remember me disappearing." |
| "So he's your Jack but he's not mine?" she asked. "That doesn't mean that mine's not here too." |
| "Or it's something else that made him disappear." |
| "Which is also entirely possible," she said as she rubbed her forehead with her free hand. |
| "Torchwood," he agreed. |
| "So I don't suppose anyone you've talked to knows a way out?" she said. She figured he would have taken it if they had but then again, this wasn't the Ianto she knew. |
| "No one even knows where we are." |
| "If there's a way in, there's got to be a way out," she murmured. Dammit, she missed her computer. |
| "That's not always true, Toshiko." |
| "Right now, Ianto, I need to believe it." |
| "We're still trying to find a way out." |
| "Count me in," she said with a determined smile. "And a woman I met named Donna. Although I'm not sure how much actual help she'd be." |
| "She freaking out?" |
| She held up her thumb and forefinger, a smidge apart. |
| "How are you doing?" |
| "Vaguely less confused, more disappointed, more determined, and in need of another drink," she said. |
| "We can get you another drink," Ianto stood and offered her his hand. |
| She took it gratefully.
"I'm glad you're here," she said. |
| "I'm glad you are too," he squeezed her hand and led her to the bar. |