absdax

Title:Leap of Reality Part 3
Author: Absdax
Pairing: Implied Ianto/Jack
Rating: PG-13 (for swearing, kissing and smutty inuendos from Jack)
Summary - Ianto centric Drabble, Gareth Centric Drabble.
Ianto wakes up in a strange place - a crossover with reality.

Disclaimer: Characters not mine, never will be, i'm not RTD, i just like putting them in situations! I have met Gareth and John, but I have no idea how they would really react to these happenings!
Author's Notes: my first fic, un-beata'd any spelling mistakes sorry, word must have overlooked em!

Part 1 is here

Part 2 is here

***********

Jack was still standing very close to Gareth, legs pressing against his legs, holding him firmly wedged against the desk, Keep your friends close but your enemies closer, he supposed was Jack's motto.

Gareth wanted to move away, but didn’t want to try to wriggle out of his grip, as struggling would bring him even closer to Jack, and as Jack had the stronger upper body strength it was pointless trying to escape, he was caught like a rabbit staring into the headlights of an oncoming car, wanting to move but unable to.

Jack was looking at him weirdly, Gareth stared back, trying not to think about the lower part of his body being trapped, and hoping that it was only Jacks gun poking into his hip.

"No, I'm not Ianto, I was trying to tell you before you stuck your tongue down my throat! You didn’t really give me a chance!"

"Well I had to find out, you've been acting all Un-Ianto like since you dropped the tray of coffee." Jack replied pressing closer, "but tell me this, What. Have you done. With Ianto?" his voice was a low dangerous growl that was not to be messed with.

"Jack, I can explain..." Gareth closed his eyes thinking of an explanation that Jack might accept and not throw him into a grubby Torchwood Cell for not being his Ianto "This, is not my universe, I think I must have fallen through the rift... I cant believe I just said that, or I'm either asleep and having a really weird dream!"

Jacks eyebrows rose to his hairline in question, "Ok, I'm listening..."

Gareth took a deep breath and cleared his throat and continued, "I'm an actor, on my side of the rift, Torchwood is a TV program, it's not real, any of it, I am Ianto, kinda! this must be like a mirror universe or something like that... where everything we have on TV is real.. or Torchwood is real anyway..."

Jack looked at Gareth as if working out if he was telling the truth, "Mirror Universe, okay I've not heard that one before... unlikely but not improbable, its original I'll give you that, a little too far fetched for you to lie about. If you'd said that you were Ianto I would have thrown you in a cell quicker than you can say Imposter."

He moved slightly away from Gareth, he was still in his personal bubble space, but at least he wasn't all pressed up against him anymore. He paused for a second or two, digesting what Gareth had just said.

"An actor huh? So technically you will know things about me that Ianto doesn’t? things about my past?"

"Um, yeah maybe?" Gareth nodded.

"Tell me then, prove yourself."

"Well I don't exactly know what you've told Ianto, but, you're from the 51st century, you used to be a Time Agent, and you traveled with the doctor and you cant stay dead when people kill you,"

"Carry on,"

Gareth racked his brains for more of Jacks back story, "Um, you first met the Doctor and Rose in 1941, she was clinging to a barrage balloon, and you rescued her, um... she was wearing a union jack t-shirt. The time you sent the whole team to Glasgow the weekend of the Cardiff earthquake, it wasn’t actually an earthquake, it was the rift opening as the Slitheen had sabotaged the TARDIS trying to get home, and um, you have two years of your memory missing," It all came out in one long sentence as he was remembering, hoping he would stumble on something that Jack hadn't told Ianto about his past.

"Do you know what the memories are?" Jack looked almost hopeful at this.

"No, and if I did know, I don’t know if I could tell you as it might cause some temporal shift in this reality!"

"Damn logic, okay then say I believe you, the guy who plays me, is he as handsome and dashing as me?"

Gareth shook his head in disbelief, "Jack, he's so much like you it’s unbelievable! Oh, I'm Gareth by the way." He smiled and he held out his hand to Jack,

Jack shook his hand "Cap’n Jack Harkness, but then you already knew that didn’t you? "

"Do you think Tosh will be able to find a way back for me? If I'm here, I guess that Ianto..."

Jack cut him off finishing Gareth's thought. "Ianto, shit, he must be in your reality now, we need to trace where the rift opened up from, and see if we can reverse it, otherwise... I'm sure there are a few gadgets in the archives that would help, Ianto would know exactly where they are. Dammit! No I'm not going to loose Ianto, you're coffee was ok, but it didn’t have Ianto's magic touch to it,"

"The Coffee, that’s how you knew I wasn't Ianto?"

"Well that, and you didn’t kiss me back!"

"Ah... Oh."

"Right, Archives, Come on."

*******

It had been a long day, Ianto was no closer to getting back home than when he had fallen through the rift 7 hours before. Filming had finished for the day, and most of the people had gone home.

He was sitting in Gareth's trailer, looking thru his stuff, 'Right, who am I supposed to be, and where the hell do I live'

He had tracked down Gareth's wallet in his jeans pocket, he opened it, and found the drivers license, he looked at it and then re-looked at in surprise, the picture was the same one he had on his license, he looked at the rest, the only thing that was different was the name at the top of the little pink card, same birthday and same address as his.

"Huh, well that figures, mirror universe an' all." It was a little creepy, well at least he knew how to get back to his house!

He found the car keys, and went out from the trailer, and bumped into someone who looked like Gwen,

"Hey Gareth, you got more filming? I thought we had finished for the day?"

Ianto racked his brains to remember what John had called her,

"Um, Eve, no, I was just heading home, catch you tomorrow?" he hoped he sounded like Gareth would react around her, then he remembered, "Bollocks! Still got my suit on haven't I?"

Eve smiled shook her head, "You sure that bump on ya head didn’t affect you?"

"I'm fine, see ya." Ianto ran back to the trailer to get changed.

Getting to the BCC car park he saw a car that looked like his one, closing his eyes, he offered up a silent prayer to the powers that be 'Please let it be as simple as this' opening his eyes he pressed the unlock button on his car keys, the car beeped and unlocked, proving the theory that the universe is generally a nice place! 'YES!'

'Thank you!'

Ianto drove back to the house, parked, turned the engine off and opened the car door, getting out he glanced up at the house, it still looked like home. It was a cross between creepy and reassuring, on one hand he was in a mirror universe, some things were completely different, but then other things were exactly the same, and then some things were almost right, but not quite that was the creepy part.

He unlocked the front door and walked into the hallway, stairs going up on the right, and the corridor leading to kitchen, and dining room etc on the left, the same as his place, although Gareth’s place looked lived in, Ianto looked into the front room, yeah, defiantly lived in, there wasn’t any boxes lying around waiting to be unpacked when Lisa got better. 'Lisa, she's dead, she wont BE better,' he muttered to himself.

His thoughts were taking a decidedly morbid turn, he shook himself to stop those thoughts from taking hold, and decided that coffee would be a good idea.

Before walking out of the room, he spotted the computer; he turned it on, and went to investigate the coffee situation.

In the kitchen, luckily there was a coffee machine, if there wasn’t Ianto would probably have taken up smoking again instantly.

Looking in the fridge he found the fresh coffee, and bonus it was his favorite. 'This Gareth guy has good taste,'

Finding the cups in the cupboard where he expected them to be was also a relief, he grabbed the first one, and made his coffee.

He opened a few more cupboards, taking a quick inventory of the items in the kitchen, he found a few bottles of whisky and a box of some strange green looking liquid labeled Romulan Ale,

Steering clear of the green drink, he settled for the whisky, went back to the front room, and finding a coaster for his coffee mug, he sat himself down at the computer.

And poured a bit of the whisky into the coffee.

What was the TV program all about, and what exactly did this world know of Torchwood.

'Right, here goes nothing...'

Typing in TORCHWOOD in the search engine brought up links 1-50 of about 3,530,000 matches... if he was to believe it.

'oh hell, it was going to be a long night...'

He clicked on the first link, might as well start with the official BBC one eh??

Sipping the Irish coffee he had concocted he settled down for an evening of research...

************

Tosh was still at her computer, no surprise there. Owen was also sitting at his desk, but he was the complete opposite to Tosh, where as Tosh was lost in concentration on her work, Owen was sitting with his feet up on his desk, chewing the end of a pen, and flicking paper at Tosh trying to distract her,

As soon as Owen heard Jack's footsteps on the stairs he swung his feet off the desk, and seemingly went back to whatever he was supposed to be doing.

Gareth followed Jack down the stairs, as soon as Owen spotted him, the was a cry of..

"Oi, Teaboy, where's my coffee?"

Gareth rolled his eyes, "Kitchen, I'm sure you know how to boil a kettle! Touch the coffee machine and fear for your life though! The Tesco Value Instant is in the cupboard!"

“What did I do this time?” Owen looked shocked, not used to Ianto answering back, Jack smirked, and ignored the look on Owens face, Gareth just raised his eyebrows and looked at Owen till he backed down.

"Tosh, can you pull all the CCTV in and around the hub from 25 mins ago, just before and after the rift glitch? Correlate the data and the images and see if anything strange happened, if anything appeared weird. Call if you have anything. Owen, go over the CCTV with her too, you know, use your eyes? We're going to the Archives."

As they walked away to the archives Gareth heard Owen mutter, "Going to the Archives, euphemism for I'm gonna have a quickie with Ianto,"

"Ignore him," Jack said quietly when they were out of earshot, Gareth just smiled at him.

"I was, Burn and I are good mates back in my world, I can put up with Owen for a bit, just gives me a little more incentive to find a way home! But if we cant find a way back, I still have my gun, I can always shoot him again!"

Jack glanced at him, "Always look on the bright side of life, eh?"

"Yup." Gareth smirked back.

The archives were massive, there were shelves everywhere, and it reminded him of a scene in x-files with all the filling cabinets... Lots and Lots of files... but these shelves were occupying the old metro tunnels that used to link the Torchwoods back in the 1920's and 30's before the Cardiff Blitz had destroyed most of the tunnel systems, and obviously Jack had blocked off the tunnels properly and made sure that they were suitable for storing hordes of alien artifacts away from prying eyes and wandering fingers.

Gareth looked around in awe as they entered, "Woh!! Where do we start?"

Jack looked around at the archives, a wry smile on his face, "Well it would be useful if Ianto has labeled something with - Shiny device that will get Gareth and Me back to our proper universe, but somehow I doubt he has!"

"Yeah, the universe isn’t that kind!"

"Ok, you start with A to C, and I'll look in D to F, they are all meticulously labeled,"

"Right, um, where’s A to C?" Gareth looked around the tunnels, and Jack gestured to the first tunnel on his left.

"Over there, you take one side, A to C are the shelves on the left of this tunnel, and I’ll take the other side. Don’t wander too far away from me as we sometimes get stray weevils down here!"

"Stray weevils? Well that should be fun!"

"Hey, don’t worry, you’re with the Cap’n!"

Gareth didn't reply, he just rolled his eyes and grinned back at Jack.

Seven hours later Gareth and Jack were still down in the Archives, looking for anything that could be of use.

*********

"I did WHAT to Owen??? EWW I really DONT think so!!"

Ianto stared at the screen, not knowing what to think, he had typed in his name on a search engine, just to see what would come up... BAD idea, some of the links should NEVER be clicked on,

He clicked 'leave comment' on the bottom of the page.

He started giggling, in that tipsy way, when your not quite drunk, and everything you do is funny…

While this is well written, I am respectfully disinclined to agree that Ianto would EVER get into this kind of situation with Owen,

Yours truthfully

I. Jones

Already he had commented on various things, he had hacked into some of the Torchwood sites and updated all the info, just so it had a little more detail, too keep the fans happy of course,

And then he had stumbled onto the Wiki site, so he had to update that too, of course he knew how to hack into the system so that it hadn’t looked like it had been hacked into, or updated. Thereby they wouldn’t be able to change it back to the original wrong data! Oh Yeah, Ianto knew his way around the Internet

Hours later Ianto was lets just say, a tinsy winsy bit legless, but he was still browsing the internet, he was happily updating random sites, and correcting info that needed to his knowledge correcting, but he carefully avoided sites that mentioned fan fic, for fear of warping his mind any further. He had come across some fanfic though that made him wonder if some things were physically possible to do, he smiled to himself, well he would have to work that out with Jack when he got home, back to his reality.

He fell asleep dreaming of Jack.

***********

cont to part 4