Title: Give and Take
Author: firesnap
Rating: PG
Pairing/Characters: Ianto, Suzie, Jack.
Summary: Suzie and Ianto play cards, discuss Torchwood and try to find a point to it all.
Notes: This story hasn't been beta'd, but screw it, I'm putting it up anyway. You want to share it with people, go ahead. If you want to beta things for me, please, let me know. I really need one because I'm the worst self-editor in the world and need someone to help me remember how to do this better.
Contains: Language, Canon Character Death
Relevant Episodes: Everything Changes, Cyberwoman, They Keep Killing Suzie
Disclaimer: Torchwood and all of its characters are owned by the BBC and Russell T. Davies. I make nothing from writing this and wouldn't take your filthy money if you offered it. All characters included and mention within are of legal age.

Suzie had been a secret card shark. Actually, that wasn't a fair assessment. Suzie rarely played where money was involved, but she did have an unnatural talent for card games in general.

When Ianto first started at Torchwood Three, his nights were filled with mind numbing terror and anxiety– he had to smuggle Lisa in, he had to research ways to keep her alive, he had to find help, real help, someone that would want to save her. The days though, those were equally mind numbing. However, that particular mind numbing was usually the result of boredom than anything particularly terrifying. His job was fairly easy. He got in at seven and took three hours to clean and feed the occupants of the Hub. At ten sharp he went to the tourist office where he worked, remotely, as Jack's secretary. There he would reply to the dozens of emails Jack didn't bother with, sort through case files and paperwork and manage any scheduling issues Jack may have. At noon, he would order lunch for the hidden staff downstairs. He rarely ate downstairs with them.

At four thirty, the tourist office would close and Ianto would stay as late as needed to file in the Archives or do any other tasks that still lingered. He'd sneak off to check on Lisa between coffee refills and generally tried to be as unobtrusive and useful, and most importantly, invisible, as much as possible.

The worst part of the day, by far, was the time after lunch and before the tourist office closed. It was usually only a few hours, but they were the longest and particularly soul crushing time Ianto could experience. It was afternoon, and other than one coffee break, harder to come up with excuses to go downstairs and sneak off to see Lisa. Most of his work was completed for the day – at this point, Ianto suspected, Jack thought he was overwhelming the lad and not, as reality would actually show him, boring him to death. Ianto wasn't about to go ask for new tasks though. His reasoning being, first off, that he didn't want to draw attention to himself. Secondly, why bother? He had other tasks, far more important and dear to his heart, that he could obsess over.

Ianto managed about two weeks of slow afternoons and stomach turning boredom before he finally snapped. Jack and Owen were out in the field, examining some sort of disgusting corpse that Ianto would have to clean up later, and Suzie and Tosh were downstairs politely forgetting that anyone even worked upstairs. Ianto sighed, refreshed his email, and sighed again. He drummed his fingers on the tourism office's counter, looking for something to straighten or dust. Nothing. Ianto was fairly certain he worked in the cleanest fake tourism office in the world. He shuffled through the paperwork he'd finished that morning and double checked that the only thing needed on any of it was Jack's signature. Everything in order. Finally, Ianto grabbed a pack of playing cards from a display shelf and tore the packaging open.

The cards were that slight inflexible that all new cards were, and the back of the cards was some ridiculous scene of the Millennium Center at night. Still, they were cards. Ianto shuffled them back and forth and dealt out a game of constitution. He was through his second game when the door to the Hub swung open. Ianto jerked, startled, and dropped the six of spades onto the floor while trying to mask his guilty expression.

Suzie stepped out into the tourism office and let the brick wall swing shut behind her. She had her hands on her waist, her hair pulled back and her thick framed glasses resting on top of her head. She was somewhat smiling at Ianto, like a parent or teacher who had caught a favored student goofing around.

"I knew you'd been getting bored, but I didn't think it was this bad," she half-chided. Suzie walked behind Ianto and pulled the extra stool from behind the beaded curtain and sat it opposite of him. When Ianto raised an eyebrow she shrugged. "I saw you on the cameras downstairs." She pointed up at the two cameras that covered Ianto's office.

"Sorry."

"Why? It's a slow day. Everyone else is allowed to have fun now and then. Do you think Jack will set your pretty arse on the street for relaxing?" Suzie scooped up all of the cards on the counter and began to shuffle them. Ianto didn't say anything about losing the game he'd currently been playing, or how he wasn't worried about his pretty arse being set anywhere. He watched Suzie with a glint of suspicion in his eyes. Her face softened and Ianto was struck with how pretty she could be when she wasn't looking down her nose at everything. "Gin?"

Ianto shrugged and stretched his arms above his head. "I'm in."

And so began their twice weekly ritual – a ritual Ianto found himself looking forward to and enjoying as much as any good cup of coffee or reliable translation program. Suzie would venture up about twice a week, rift permitting, and grab the now broken in deck of cards from Ianto's desk. She would deal out a game and Ianto would make coffee. They'd joke about how ridiculous Jack was, or a little talk about London (Suzie had lived there a few years and they, apparently, had haunted some of the same neighborhoods). Suzie was good at any game that required strategy and Ianto was amazing at any game that required bluffing. They weren't friends, and Ianto didn't suffer from any delusions that they were. It was a welcome break from monotony and a chance for Ianto, now so rusty at actually chatting with people, to banter and converse with someone who didn't reply to every one of his jokes with a brave smile and a fake, pained laugh.

Two weeks into their new little ritual, Jack came into the tourist office, soaked from the drizzling Welsh rain, and paused to watch them play. It was gin rummy, Ianto's favorite, and he suspected Suzie's as well. Jack raised an eyebrow and put his hands on his hips still silently watching the exchange and drawing of cards. Ianto glanced at him and hit the button for the Hub before discarding from his hand.

Finally, Jack's booming playful voice filled the office. "You know, strip poker would be much more exciting."

Suzie smirked at Ianto before turning to acknowledge their dampened leader. "We play that on Tuesdays."

Jack's eyes grew comically large. He looked like a mixture of a half drowned puppy and a teenager whose parent's had found his pornography stash.

"Absolutely," Ianto confirmed with a straight face. "If you checked the email reminders I'd set up for you, then you would have gotten your invitation, sir. "

Suzie stifled a laugh as she drew a card. Jack's expression twisted into a mix of bemused and puzzled. His mouth was hanging open slightly.

"Conference call in ten minutes."

"Right," Jack nodded and, with a shrug, retreated down into the bowels of the Hub. Once the wall swung shut, Suzie burst out laughing. She smacked Ianto's hand playfully before laying down her cards. Gin. Again.

"We're going to have to stop encouraging him or one day he's going to corner you in the Archives."

"What about you?"

"He's very good at cornering people. Just saying."

Ianto laughed at the time, but later, when he was checking his email for the last time that night, he noticed a new one from C.J. Harkness.

Ianto –

I didn't see any invites. Maybe you could stay late and show me how this scheduling program works? Or, you know, we could always schedule our own private game.

CJH

Ianto swallowed and quickly deleted the email. He took a deep breath, flexed his hands and headed downstairs to check on Lisa.

"What do you think of our esteemed Dr. Harper?"

Ianto raised an eyebrow at Suzie and threw down a green wine gum. They were playing poker today for sweets. Smarties and Rowntree Wine Gummies mostly. "He's a giant prat," Ianto answered honestly.

"Mm." Suzie studied her cards intensely and chewed on her bottom lip. It was a tell she'd had trouble breaking, though right now Ianto couldn't figure out whether it was in regards to the cards or not.

"Please tell me you didn't."

"He's not that bad. A bit damaged."

"Aren't we all." Ianto sighed as Suzie raised the bet. The conversation was distracting him.

"We all need company, Mr. Jones."

"Come on, you could get better company than that." Suzie set her cards down on the counter and eyed the younger man critically.

"Can I? With this job? We see so many amazing things. I love all of it, don't get me wrong. I love this fucking job and I could never be anywhere else. It's easier though, when the person you're with is involved in it too. I saw your file. You dated a girl in London. Same reason?"

Ianto's heart caught in his chest and it took him a moment to breath. His hand that wasn't holding playing cards clenched tightly. "Yeah," he said and immediately cursed the shaky quality to his voice. "Wait, no. I mean, we met because of work. It was easier because of it – similar schedules, close quarters. It was… fairly normal actually. We are – were –like one of those average couples you'd see at the pub on weekends. Met at work, moved in together, planning to get married. The aliens were just an extra part." Ianto forced himself to relax. He rubbed his face, then the back of his neck and stared blearily at his cards before folding.

Suzie pursed her lips while collecting her winnings. "I think it's interesting you came back. You have to love, really love, some part of this job to come back for more after all that."

"A glutton is what I am."

"Beggar my neighbor? I'd rather eat the rest of this than steal all of your stash."

"Yeah."

Suzie gathered the cards and began shuffling them quickly. Ianto lost himself for a moment wanting her small delicate hands move with impressive speed through the cards. He'd seen her work on tech downstairs with the same quick finesse. Suzie may be odd, and a bit cold at times, but the things she could make a machine do would be considered magic on some planets.

"You know, we should convince Tosh and Owen to stay late tonight. Get some takeaway, some beer and play Spades or something. You should socialize more so I can stop feeling sorry for you and get some more work done."

Ianto couldn't tell if she was serious or not, but he didn't see stay late and she didn't offer again.

A week before Suzie died, they'd played their last game. It had been tense for a few games beforehand. Suzie seemed twisted, distracted and irritable. She'd been staying later and later and Ianto noticed the dark bruises under her eyes and the fatigue that seemed to haunt her expression. He imagined, honestly, that it probably mirrored his own.

They tried not to talk about anything too personal. Their games were a time to break away and spend some time with an acquaintance who wouldn't give a fuck about any sad story lurking in the past. When Suzie lost her third consecutive game, Ianto bit his lip. Maybe, he reasoned, she was wanting him to ask.

"Are you alright?"

Suzie glared at him. "Just deal." Or maybe not.

Ianto nodded and shuffled the cards for another game. As he slowly passed them out, he heard Suzie release a long breath.

"Do you even like Torchwood?"

There was a pause and Ianto set down the deck. "Sometimes," he said cautiously.

Suzie popped her knuckles and shook her head. "I don't get that. How could you not? We see so many wonderful things. Could you really imagine going back? Leaving this? Living a life where you don't know any of this exists?"

Ianto thought of Lisa downstairs. If he was promised that she'd be healthy and human tomorrow he would walk away from Torchwood without a second thought. Otherwise, he needed Torchwood. "I wouldn't go back," he said slowly. "I'm not saying I couldn't, if I had to, or if something better was an option."

With a loud crack, Suzie slammed her hand against the countertop. "What could be better? Tell me what you'd be doing otherwise? Filing in an office? Running a coffee shop? You could do so much better. I could do so much better – with everything we have here – we could..." Suzie stuttered to a stop. She stared at the cards that she had accidentally scattered everywhere.

The only thing Ianto could do was stare at Suzie. He kept a blank, calm expression on his face. He didn't know what she wanted him to say. He didn't know what was going through her hand and, well, as much as they chatted, they didn't know each other. He didn't even know if she had family outside of this.

Suzie stood up abruptly. "I've got worked to do, Ianto." Ianto nodded and watched as she smashed the button to go back downstairs. "You need to figure out why you're here and what you're getting out of this. This job, it gets to you, and you need to take something back from it."

Four days after Ianto had helped haul Suzie's body to the vault, he was back to sitting in the tourism office, alone, and staring at the long afternoon ahead of him. He was numb to it, if he was going to be truthful about it all. Seeing every co-worker you know brutally murdered by robots and space pepper pots did that to you. It was, however, unsettling, to say the least. Death really did follow Torchwood wherever its name loomed. It didn't give him much hope about him, or Lisa, or that big eyed new girl Jack had dragged in before Suzie's body was even cold. Would Jack do that to all of them? Have their replacements ready to help him shove the bodies into the morgue?

Ianto grabbed the worn deck of cards from his desk and began to shuffle them absently. He didn't hear the door to the tourist office open at first. He did look up when to the noise of someone sliding Suzie's stool out of the corner where he'd started keeping it. It was Jack. Jack settled in across the counter and gave Ianto an assessing look.

"Do you want to play a game?" Jack motioned to the cards in Ianto's hands. Ianto stared at the glossy pieces of papers. Their tacky pictures and brightly printed numbers and shapes sat limply in his hands. He nodded after a moment.

"Gin rummy okay?"

"Sure."

Ianto dealt the game as Jack removed his greatcoat and hung it on a peg by the front door. He settled back across from Ianto and picked up his hand. Jack drew his first card and paused to look back at Ianto. Ianto had resolutely refused to look back up at Jack's face since agreeing to their card game.

"Are you doing alright?" Jack asked politely as he discarded.

Ianto raised an eyebrow and picked up Jack's displaced card. "We had rules about this. This isn't a therapy session or anything like that. We played cards, made fun of Owen and thought of ways to tease you."

Jack nodded and they played their game quietly for a few long minutes. It wasn't the relaxed sort of silence that Ianto was used to with Suzie. This felt like Jack was waiting for Ianto to make a move, or break down or do… something, but he'd neglected to tell Ianto just exactly what he was expecting to happen. Ianto sighed and glanced at Jack. Jack was looking at Ianto in that piercing way that made sure that once he had eye contact, his victim couldn't look away again.

"Are you alright?" Ianto asked. Honestly, he didn't want to care if Jack was alright. Part of Ianto's plan for keeping his sanity, for staying focused on Lisa, included making sure that he didn't care. It was an easy plan to formulate, and act on when there were distractions, but it was harder to put into place when the man was in front of him was slouched on a stool, staring at him and looking like a sulking child.

"Not really," Jack admitted. "She was my first recruit and… I don't know. I thought I knew her better. Did you see it coming? You're quiet, in the background, she talked to you some that last month. She hadn't been talking to me."

"Are you asking me if, at some point during our games, did she tell me a piece of alien tech was slowly driving her insane? If so, no. Not that I remember."

"Ah. Yeah, I assume you'd tell me if any staff members made that confession."

"Well. If it was Owen, I might not."

Jack barked out a laugh at that and, this time, the smile stayed on his face for a while.

On his first day back at work, after Lisa died, Ianto threw out the playing cards in his desk drawer. They fell into the rubbish silently, accusingly, and Ianto couldn't even bear to look at them.

Jack was up in the tourism office in a matter of minutes, frowning and looking at Ianto in the same guarded way he had been looking at him for the past month.

"So what are you going to do with your afternoons now?"

"Not that." Ianto shrugged and pulled out the inventory sheets he'd printed off earlier. They needed to order new supplies before the tourist season started. Fake tourist office or not, it looked a little more suspicious when they were lacking things like maps or souvenirs.

"I'm changing the hours this thing is open."

"Oh?" Ianto paused in counting dragon key chains to listen to Jack. In his head, he knew they didn't need this place open at all. Jack had wanted to hire Ianto, for whatever reason he'd ended up deciding to do so, and made up jobs to keep him occupied.

"Yeah. Eleven to three. Just long enough to handle any people visiting in the afternoon and look like it's a token effort. You're needed more downstairs."

"Doing what? Scrubbing the floors?"

"No. You're our full time archivist now." Ianto stared at Jack in confusion. "We're not London – our archivists don't sit and catalogue every day. We don't keep enough people on staff for that luxury. Eventually, you'll have to be able to go into the field to collect items. "

Ianto sat his clipboard down and put his hands on his hips. "Why are you doing this? I get suspended and you promote me? That's not how things usually work, you know."

A ghost of Jack's normal smile appeared on his face. "I didn't plan on it until I saw you throw those away." Jack gestured toward the trashcan where Ianto's cards now resided. Ianto tensed. The cameras. Jack had been watching him on the cameras. "We were wasting you. You were bored and… I guess Suzie saw it before I did. I think you didn't want us to see it, or you wanted me to think you were happy with what you had to do. Now I know why." Jack's eyes took on a harder glint as he cocked his head at Ianto. "No more free rides. You do good work, great work even, enough that I couldn't see how much you were capable of because what I did get was better than I expected. No more of that. You'll live up to your potential or you'll find somewhere else to go."

Ianto nodded and found he couldn't meet Jack's eyes. He looked somewhere to the left of Jack's head and put on his best, bland professional smile. "Yes, sir."

Jack grimaced and took a step forward. He clutched Ianto's arm and squeezed. "No more of that either. You're not fading into the background again – intentionally or otherwise." He released Ianto's arm and his face relaxed. "Meet me downstairs when you're finished. We'll go over your new duties."

After Jack left, Ianto realized that this no longer felt like a promotion. He knocked the little display of prepackaged playing cards onto the floor and swore loudly. Suzie was right. This job took and took and never let you go.

The coming weeks were some of the hardest and busiest of Ianto's life – worse even than the first weeks without Lisa when grief and guilt had numbed most of the pain away. In hindsight, Ianto realized what Jack's promotion had actually done. It kept him busy, and when he was busy, he couldn't think about blood and metal and just the absurd amount of self-loathing that wouldn't go away. It didn't work all the time. Sometimes the pain would weigh him down in the middle of the most mundane tasks. He'd be left gasping next to the coffee maker or staring vacantly out the window while closing up the tourist shop. But it wasn't all the time and, it was easier to ignore those aches with work.

He still functioned as Jack's secretary during his hours in the tourism office. He still managed Jack's accounts and budgets and all the necessary paperwork that kept the Institute afloat. Cleaning chores were slowly being broken up to be shared amongst the team. Owen took care of the Weevils, Jack had an amusing possessive streak toward the dinosaur and, other than the coffee station, and everyone was under the impression that it was now a team effort to keep the Hub tidy. Ianto still spent the first hour he was at work, every morning, doing various cleaning projects, but he did appreciate that the team at least tried now.

The rest of Ianto's time was now spent in the Archives. He went through old files, digitalizing them and re-sorting them into some semblance of order. He now filled the afternoon hours in the tourism office with going through the Archives database looking for errors and typing up old field reports. He stayed late more and more - working in the evenings in Jack's office while they went through uncategorized artifacts or homeless files. Jack's cold edge had slowly been thawing toward Ianto. He told Ianto funny stories that, Ianto assumed, had been passed down through the years regarding some of Torchwood's more unique acquisitions. They shared meals. Sadly, for as much as Ianto still found it uncomfortable to be the focus of Jack's gaze for too long, he found that his boss was the closest thing he had to a friend.

The cannibals happened, and then the mess with Tosh and Mary, and Ianto's heart broke a little more for Tosh being forced into an eerily parallel situation. Surprisingly, he found a little bit of sympathy for Jack for, again, having to sell a little bit more of whatever soul he had left to protect everyone else. Oh, the bitterness was still there, too.

When Suzie came back, Ianto tried to rely on professional distance and being understandably very fucking creeped out by her living dead status out to avoid her. That only lasted a few hours.

He was cleaning up in the small kitchenette, putting away mugs and various dishes , Tosh was cleaning up CCTV records from the retrieval of Max and they waited on the rest of the team. Ianto heard a small cough behind him and his shoulders immediately tensed up. When he turned, Suzie gave him an off-putting bashful smile. She was in the wheelchair Owen had found for her and the ghastly remains of her head wound were covered with one of Tosh's scarves. She was still as pale as when Ianto first helped Jack pull her from the morgue. He shivered.

"Do you need a drink or anything?"

Suzie tilted her chin and gave Ianto an appraising look. "I was hoping that, if I came back, and you were still here, you wouldn't still be doing the cleaning."

"I'm not. I'm the Archivist now. I just don't like to leave messes lying about."

Suzie smiled. "No, I always assumed that about you."

Taking a tentative step forward, Ianto crouched to meet Suzie's eye level. She still had a slightly amused expression on her face, and seemed to be examining Ianto just as much as he was her. There was something off though - more than the fact that she was, basically, a reanimated corpse powered by a magical piece of medieval armor. It's was like some carefully constructed wall had crumbled around her post-death. She seemed sharper now, and her smile was as cold as the rest of her. "Did I ever see anything near what's really you? Did any of us?"

Suzie's chilled fingers brushed against Ianto's cheek and he startled back. "Can I ask you the same question?"

"No."

"Maybe you did, Ianto Jones. Maybe I didn't know enough about me to show anyone." Suzie shrugged and the action looked so unnatural, she looked so corpse like, that Ianto had to repress any outward signs of repulsion. The only part of her that looked alive, that ever looked alive, were her eyes. Dark and fiery and speaking of mischief and cleverness that Ianto would never understand. "You know," she continued and her tone changed from mischievous to something soft, something that could have been mistaken for affection. "I always thought, that if any of them could bring me back, you could have. I knew Jack wouldn't manage it, or Owen would be too angry or Tosh would be too betrayed. I thought to myself, if they needed me, Ianto could probably pull up enough pleasant memories to make a connection. I never imagined it would be that doe eyed copper – though, trust me, I'm not complaining right now."

Her laugh that followed, which should have matched her confessional and friendly tone, did nothing but make more shivers go down Ianto's spine. Ianto stood stiffly, smoothed out his suit jacket and gave Suzie a quick nod. As he walked away her voice, calling his name, stopped him again.

"Did you ever figure out what you're getting out of this?"

Ianto paused and half turned to look at her. "A little."

"Is it enough?"

"Sometimes."

"Remember what I said, if you remember anything about me. Remember that. Torchwood will take your life, your soul and every part of you it can grab. Take something for yourself too. There's no point in staying empty. "

That was the last time he saw Suzie Costello. Later that night, as Ianto helped push her bullet ridden body back into its cold storage, he couldn't help but wonder if – despite it all – Suzie was right. She let the job consume her and by the time she'd tried to grab something, anything, for herself she was too twisted and empty for it to be positive. Ianto squinted across the gurney, ignoring the pale body and white sheet between them, to quickly scan Jack. Jack looked more dejected and empty than any time in Ianto's recollection. He resembled more of a lonely older man, a lonely man who was constantly pouring himself out and pulling himself thin with no reward, than the big bravado action hero Ianto had grown accustomed to seeing. Ianto, figured then, that he could relate. Maybe Jack kept them around because he related too.

Ianto took a deep breath and his hand clenched around the pen in his hand. They were all broken and too disjointed to mix back into the world. Suzie was right – there was no going back to something before Torchwood. So what. What the fuck did it matter in the end? He and Tosh and Owen and even poor Gwen were ensnared. They'd all stay as long as they lived and the Institute functioned.

But. Jack was barely holding them together; Jack was barely holding himself together. If something didn't change soon, everything - Torchwood and this motley collection of people -would collapse. Ianto glanced at Jack again, and truly saw the resignation and weariness that weighed down those broad shoulders. Ianto felt something shift within himself and he tapped the underside of his clipboard. Jack was just as lost as him and… no longer so good at hiding it. Jack was looking for something to ground himself and, if there was one thing this fucking awful mess in Cardiff had taught him, it was how a bit of distraction could do some good.

Ianto kept his head raised high to watch Jack and made a decision. He resolved to give Torchwood just one more thing. In the end, hopefully, it would give him back something too.