It was the lights that got to him. That eerie green line blinking out from the bottom of the closed bedroom door. The noise became easily ignorable after a couple weeks. A beeping heart monitor quickly became white noise, the rhythmic "whoosh-choo…whoosh-choo…whoosh-choo" of the respirator almost hypnotizing. But the little green lights that never turned off, that burrowed through his eyelids, that he stared into whenever trying to get back to sleep after one of them had woken up, inevitably screaming, is what made him start sleeping out on the couch, leaving Lisa to beep and whoosh alone in the green-lit bedroom while he huddled with his back to the bedroom door, the darkness in every corner still tinged with green.

He's at the shops one day, with a hand basket full of cheap bread and bananas to distract from the pricier items he's stuffed into his jacket. Torchwood had clearly been using their severance package to say "We are ever so sorry you had to watch everyone you know be gruesomely turned into metal monsters who then came after your brain", but he wants to keep as much of that money on hand as humanly possible, he doesn't know when they'll need painkillers, or possibly even hush-money. He's dropping item cheap enough to buy and too bulky to steal in his hand-basket when his eyes light on a draft-excluder like it's the fucking Holy Grail. He seizes it from the shelf, wondering why he never thought to just stick something in the crack under the door in the first place, and drops it in the basket with a sigh of relief.

Then he realizes what his life has come to and nearly falls apart right there in Aisle Three. He leaves the hand basket on the aisle floor, surreptitiously slips the draft excluder in his jacket and leaves, a plan already forming. He's getting back into Torchwood, and those bastards are going to give him back what he lost.

His first thought is Torchwood Two, because according to all the reports he ever snuck a glance at, the one weirdo who runs it wouldn't notice him and Lisa setting up house on his fucking desk, let alone sneaking around a basement. But Torchwood Two is remote, underfunded and little bit pointless. He decides on Cardiff, which actually has a team and resources and capabilities. Torchwood Cardiff was something of a joke in London, but obviously when you nearly cause a planet wide genocide that is only averted with the aid of the man you were created to fight, the jokes on you. Cardiff's ad hoc administration will be easy to get into, and even easier to hide in. Ianto has total faith in his ability to become invisible to a bunch of chickens running around headless under the guidance of a man who he never once heard described without the describer beginning with a disparaging sigh. It takes him a couple weeks to find a flat in Cardiff and a way to get Lisa into it without anyone seeing her. Then he dives, head first, into his new project.

His only starting point is a rift activity monitor that Lisa helps him patch together out of parts scavenged from the ruins. He runs around for weeks like the creepiest form of ambulance chaser, finding random space junk in the middle of the street, an occasional weevil, and once in a while something he can't name. He only crosses paths with Torchwood three times, and he watches them from the shadows, trying to gleen what he can with the few, slightly damaged devices he has at his disposal. He catches names. He's already heard about Captain Jack Harkness. Everyone at Torchwood London was in on the joke about Captain Jack Harkness. The smug bastard in Cardiff refusing to play by London's rules and shagging anything capable of saying "Hello". The other names aren't anything useful. Suzie. Owen. Another woman whose name he can't make out. She isn't always in the field, but they talk to her over their headsets.

The only thing he really learns is that Captain Jack Harkness's flair for the dramatic wasn't a joke after all. A man running a secret organization, waving around a title in a manner as far out of date as his ridiculously flashy coat.

A search for "Suzie" or "Owen" is practically impossible, a search for Jack Harkness brings up nothing but a World War II volunteer. Ianto briefly attempts to dig into any sightings of a man running amok in period military. Nothing. He tries another tack.

His Torchwood Junior Researcher skills aren't as atrophied as he thought they'd be after several weeks spent building and maintaining impromptu robot life support and drinking steadily. It only takes him another week to find a couple conspiracy groups, picking through the complete shit to find anyone who seriously believes in a big blue box whirling in the sky, or has seen a blowfish monster running around in fancy clothes. He gains sympathy easily, having realized in his drifting years that blue eyes and a sweet smile will get you most things, and now learning that getting a little throaty when you talk about your sickly girlfriend will get you nearly everything else. He tries not to think about how talking about it, even with wildly altered details, helps.

After a couple meetings one of the members shows up with a police scanner that he almost certainly stole. He runs it during the meeting and every single one of the members titters when they hear the name "Torchwood" come up over the chatter.

Ianto leaves early, getting sad, empathetic looks from all when he tells them he needs to be home to help his girlfriend with her medicine. He waits outside until the meeting ends, and follows Scanner Bloke until they hit a patch dark enough that he'll probably escape being picked up on the CCTV. Ianto knocks the guy out, takes the scanner and after a little bit of camera dodging he runs home. He sets it next to the Rift Activity Monitor and waits.

Weeks of nothing. The random chatter of the scanner whooshing along the respirator and heart monitior. Until finally, viscous attack, someone bitten, assailant pursued by man in long coat. Ianto jumps into jeans that haven't really fit him since school, a coat he shoplifted just in case he ever got past Step One of the Plan "Find Jack Harkness" and onto Step Two "Get Jack Harkness to Notice You" and gets to the scene to find the Captain attempting to beat up a weevil with his bare hands.

He cuts into the fight with a pipe, bashing the weevil off the ridiculous man who represents his last chance to put his life back together the way it was supposed to be. The weevil sedated, Ianto wraps himself up in the same charm he worked on his conspirator groups. The Captain doesn't seem to care, but he doesn't have to. Ianto's put himself on Torchwood Three's radar. Jack will have to look up a civilian who knows what a Weevil is.

"By the way- love the coat," Ianto calls after his retreating back, just in case a little flirting would help.

Ianto really expected showing up with coffee the next morning to work. The Captain's running a team of what seems from the outside like two agents who bitch at each other like toddlers and a technician who weighs approximately two stone. And he was so easy to follow back to his "secret" headquarters that he really should be ashamed of himself. It seemed like a ballsy, resourceful move, and all it takes to impress people used to office coffee is a coffee from a pot that actually been washed.

It sends a chill down his spine when Jack mentions Lisa's name. Another when he realizes how easy it was for him to spit out "Deceased" so quickly. Almost as quickly as Harkness blows him off.

He can't believe how desperate he sounds when he sounds out the same compliment to the Captain's damn coat.

When he gets back to their flat Lisa's awake and more lucid than she's been since they got to Cardiff. He fills her in on everything that's happened. He's walked her through every step of the plan, but it scares him how little she remembers. She follows along, even chuckles a little at his sad attempt to flirt his way into the Captain's memory. Especially when Ianto tells her that he guesses the man is 15 or so years older than they are. When Lisa makes the suggestion that "it takes a clothes horse to catch a clothes horse," Ianto even jokes with her that the new pain meds are making her loopy. But she insists it's a good idea and Ianto can't see how it could hurt. He waits until she drifts off, then pulls one of his old work suits out of the dry cleaner bag it hangs in and waits between the rift activity monitor and the police scanner.

The rift monitor brings his attention to the pterodactyl. From there he just has to wait for the police to start swearing about Torchwood- worst kept secret in Cardiff- over the scanner. Which they are doing two days later. Ianto throws on the suit and thanks anyone who's listening that he knows every back way in Cardiff. As the SUV blazes toward him it briefly occurs to him that he should've thought through standing in the middle of the road. But Harkness sees him.

Apparently Harkness can't pass up a dinosaur and he follows Ianto to the warehouse. But now flirting and being enigmatic hasn't worked, being qualified hasn't worked and Ianto is genuinely desperate. He needs access to Torchwoods files, contacts, and equipment if he's going to save Lisa, and this arrogant prick who thinks he can save the world single-fucking-handed is standing in his way.

He crams disparaging, begging, and flirting (you smell like that naturally? Really Ianto? He chides himself) and pretending to be a pterodactyl expert into their dinosaur hunt, oscillating wildly, looking for something that'll get him into Torchwood.

He shouldn't be surprised that it's actually laying on top of the man that does it. The stupid attempt to catch him was all instinct, Ianto's got a chance to get through to their leader, the other two will just know him as the annoying coffee groupie. If this stunt gets the Captain killed he'll be back at square one.

Harkness is warm. He does smell good. "Organic" is the word Ianto tries to chase out of his mind. He suddenly realizes he hasn't been touched since Canary Wharf. At all. Not a hug from another survivor, not a handshake from the movers. Not a sympathetic pat on the arm from one of his conspiracy group acquaintances. Even with Lisa his hands shy away from her… metal surface. His chuckle dies out as he realizes this, and Harkness is staring into his eyes.

"I should go," He manages, feeling distinctly that he's done something wrong and desperate to get away from this man.

He hears the job offer in a haze, feeling as though he's reached the end of the road only to turn a corner and realized there are miles and miles left to go. And if getting the job after that wasn't enough of an indication of exactly what his new "duties" at Torchwood Three are going to entail, he calls out after him, "Like the suit by the way."

Ianto goes home to find Lisa asleep. He checks her vitals, and crams the draft excluder as tightly under the door as he can.

He sits in the almost not green dark and wonders when (or if) he'll have to tell her he whored his way into this job for her. Or if he does tell her- if she'll remember.

He wakes up to his alarm in the morning, picks out a suit and kisses Lisa goodbye.