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The soldier guarding the bodies is from UNIT.
Footsteps approach and she stands to attention by the door, casting a curious but quiet eye over the solemn man walking down the hallway towards her. Even in his suit, he looks out of place here, though later she will be hard-pressed to say exactly how so. The shoes, perhaps.
"Ianto Jones," the man says, holding up his ID, and she nods and points him to the far side of the room where one corpse in a row has had its sheet tugged down and not replaced. She watches as he walks through the carefully laid out victims, red sheets suggesting a more bloody death than most of them had (though, in the press by the doors, there were some who had been trampled), and when he reaches #14 he kneels.
She can't hear what he says, but she sees his lips moving, and he lays a hand on the corpse's face.
*
He'd meant to come earlier. He'd checked the coordinates and everything, but when he arrived the 456 were gone, Torchwood was shattered, Jack had left Britain and there was nothing more to be done.
But there was something... something.
It tugged. Even the TARDIS was calling out to it.
Something...
*
There is enough mess that needs cleaning that it's easy to take custody of Ianto's body. He brings it back to the TARDIS and lays it down, carefully, on a high bed in the room that functions as a medical unit. The skin is pale and he is dignified even in death, and for a long moment the Doctor simply watches him. He doesn't know how many people Jack has loved since he left him on the Gamestation, but he knows that Ianto is the most recent of them, and he wonders why. He knows nothing about this frail little creature, has seen him only once over a video link and only briefly. He only exists in the context of Jack's relationship to him.
It seems perverse. He should have more than that. He should have galaxies.
Gently, the Doctor wipes his face with a damp cloth, less because he's dirty and more because it feels like the right thing to do. He is running on instinct, here; as far as he knows this has never been done before, though if his suspicions are correct it will most likely happen again.
Gently, the TARDIS hums.
His vigil lasts enough hours to technically be days, and the Doctor doesn't leave the room. It is warm, and twice he gets up to pace and finds a cup of tea, which makes him remember his last regeneration. A good cup of tea is never to be underestimated.
He feels it when the golden energy floats from Ianto's mouth as though carried on a soft exhale, and instantly he is rapt. This focused, he is terribly aware of the light that winds its way through Ianto's body. He knows that it is rearranging atoms, changing them, making something out of something else, and oh how beautiful it is. He feels the same awe as when he held his first child in his arms, the wonder at the creation of life, new life.
He sits, and watches, and waits, even when the screaming starts.
*
He'll remember this for the rest of his life. He'll call it neo-genesis, spontaneous mutating evolution of the individual. He'll theorise about rift-stuff and exposure to the time vortex and the energy that anchors Jack (like a pin through a moth) to his snagged point in time-space.
He'll find more of them, until there are half a dozen, and he'll tell them the legends of the Timelords. He'll find the small piece of TARDIS-that-will-be in the ruins of Torchwood and grow it, patiently, skipping ahead in time until there are two of them. He will not be alone.
But that is all in the future.
*
He aches. It's as though he has a bad flu, the kind that settles into each and every muscle and leaves him unable to find a comfortable position to sleep in, though the warmth wrapped around him eases it slightly. His eyes are closed but he knows he's in a smallish room, cosy, on a firmly yielding surface about two feet off the ground. A mattress, probably. He also knows that the room is alive.
Then he remembers the hard floor of Thames House, and dying on it, and he wrenches his eyes open and sits up.
He's naked, wrapped in a thick duvet in a four poster bed with a canopy of all things. Everything's decorated in dark timber and navy blue and it's somehow not surprising that this is the bedroom he's always wished he had.
There is a man sitting nearby in a worn leather armchair and as soon as Ianto looks at him he feels an undeniable tug, a sense of familiarity that goes beyond recognising him from pictures, CCTV and live video footage.
"Good morning," says the Doctor brightly. "At least, it could be morning. We're not exactly in linear time, but I thought, well, waking up, might as well be morning."
Ianto stares at him. He's far too cheerful. "I was dead."
"Only a little bit!"
"And now we're in the TARDIS."
"Can you feel it?" The Doctor leans forward, face the picture of intense interest, and Ianto nods without even thinking about it. He doesn't know what's going on, wants to demand clothes and to be taken back because Jack will be alone in a building full of corpses and he needs to tell him that he's alive, but the Doctor has been so, so lonely. Besides, they are not in linear time. His impatience is a human trait that developed in different circumstances and doesn't apply here.
He feels dizzy. "Why aren't I dead?" he demands, because that seems to be the most pressing question, though admittedly it beats out some pretty tough competitors.
The Doctor looks as though he isn't sure whether he should be solemn or break out into an ear-splitting grin. "You evolved," he tells Ianto, a great weight behind the word, and Ianto is about to object that individuals do not evolve, only species, except then he realises that he has two heartbeats, two hearts, and he doesn't feel human anymore.
Actually, he feels sort of Timelordian.
And somehow he knows. "The universe is trying to replace them. Sort of different but sort of the same. My cells have been manipulated, extra organs, new respiratory system, two more ribs - god, no wonder I hurt so much."
It seems the Doctor has settled on grinning, the expression widening further and further as Ianto talks until he looks a little like a Cheshire Cat. "Just don't go taking any aspirin, it's toxic. Not sure if you'll regenerate. It's all a bit of a mystery, really, but me, I love a good mystery."
"Where's Jack?" Ianto asks. Impatience may be a terribly linear trait, but the more he comes back to himself the more he feels uncomfortable, hiding in this safe little haven, not knowing what's going on back on Earth. Perhaps the Doctor fixed it, or Jack and Gwen found a way, or maybe they hadn't been able to do anything and David and Mica were just... gone.
The grin disappears, which only makes the pit of his stomach tighten. "I don't know. I was too late. He sacrificed his grandson to turn the wavelength back against the 456, and then he left."
Ianto thinks about the cabinet meetings they'd spied on, the politicians coldly discussing acceptable losses and protecting their own interests. He thinks about Jack's grandson, who he's never met and now never will. He tries to imagine having to kill David or Mica.
To save the world.
He remembers once telling Jack, "I know you get lonely." They'd been sitting in Jack's office, and then he'd started in talking about things Ianto hadn't been ready to hear. It will be even worse now, he thinks. There's no one left to help him.
"Oh," he says, because that is how conversation works, trading words, and it is his turn to say something.
"I called Martha," the Doctor volunteers. "Told her I was trying to get hold of him. I daresay we'll stumble across him somehow." He studies Ianto, and his eyes seem so, so sharp. "You need to process. Library's across the hall if you need it. Kitchen's... well. Never in the same place twice, but I'm sure you'll find it."
He stands, leaving the room without so much as a goodbye, and Ianto wonders if it's a coincidence that he really was starting to get overwhelmed there.
Probably.
Surely.
*
Ianto had cradled Jack's body many times in death, clinging to him, unwilling to let go, but this was the first time Jack had done it for him. "I love you," he said, and wished he had the breath for more, but he thought maybe Jack knew.
He wasn't afraid, really. Somehow he knew it would be okay.