Archive of Our Own

1. Your nerves of steel (won't do much good down here, my love)

Down in the depths of Torchwood Cardiff's base, Ianto's voice is the only good part of Lisa's every day. She loves to hear him talk with her, the way he tries so hard to be hopeful and act as if everything will be all right. He tells her about his days, about his plans for them, and Lisa shares in those dreams, because she's only twenty-six years old, and she doesn't want to die.

It's why she doesn't tell him how afraid she is that the constant sounds of her life support system no longer scare her. They used to, when she and Ianto built the system up. She hated the incessant sounds. The constant reminder of how close she is to death. But now they're reassuring, they remind her that she's alive.

Lisa can't help but find something sinister about that. Four years working for Torchwood, and Lisa has developed an instinct about these things. Something is wrong about her, and unlike what she's been judged for her whole life – her gender, her sexuality, her ethnicity – she agrees this time. Something is wrong. And yet she doesn't tell Ianto – she can't bear to be the one to crush the earnest hope in his expression. From what Ianto doesn't say about his time with Torchwood Cardiff, Lisa is left with the sense that Ianto needs her to be okay just as much as she needs herself to be.

That's the dangerous thing about love. But he saved her, and so she tells him what he needs to hear; she tells him that it's all right. That things will be all right. She needs to make this right for him, because it's only when Ianto looks at her that she feels like herself. He looks at her with love and hope and a piercing, knowing stare. From underneath this cybertechnology, he sees her.

He sees Lisa.

2. Silver spoon, bitter syrup

Lisa Hallett grows up on the grassy fields where her older brother is captain of his polo team, and in the auditoriums where her older sister excels in violin and piano. She sits at the foot of the sofa, a model piano before her, in her parents' drawing room while her mother fields business calls for an international corporation over breakfast, and her father jots down ideas for the latest innovations he's planning on for the bank that he manages.

She's enrolled in extracurriculars that dominate the first sixteen years of her life – cello lessons, vocal lessons, painting, dressage, fencing – anything that a child of the upper class needs in order to be considered well-rounded compared to the children of her parents' associates.

Her brother goes on to train as a barrister. Her sister tours with an internationally-renowned orchestra. And so she chooses the sciences to try and carve her niche of the Hallett family accomplishments. Lisa does love chemical engineering, really. Even though it's not something that her family considers glamorous, even as an integrated master's student, on the fast track for advanced studies. She doesn't wear suits like her brother, and her career path won't lead to the coveted postnominal title of QC. She can't bring her family into the lab like her sister can secure private box tickets for them to the Royal Festival Hall.

But her siblings still insist on having monthly lunches together when they're all in the city, and her parents welcome her home when she visits. Her father vets research companies that try to recruit Lisa for their financial viability, and her mother continuously asks about how her love life is faring.

Lisa knows that they love her in their own way. They love her as a Hallett. But whether they love her as Lisa, she's not so sure.

3. Love, sorrow, and a Fuck You attitude

The first boy Lisa kisses is Jamie Parris, at their classmate's sixth birthday party. His wild array of brown curls brush her forehead as she scrunches up her face to press her lips against his own scrunched up mouth. She thinks his curls are cute. His smile is cute too.

What's less cute is the way his friend throws a tantrum when he sees them walking home the next day, hand in hand. His friend says something that Lisa understands, but doesn't understand. It's the first time that her skin, different from most of her classmates', has ever been talked about like it's bad.

Lisa goes home and touches her face as she studies herself in the mirror. She decides that Jamie Parris and his friend don't know what they're talking about at all.

Lisa kisses more boys after that. Her first proper snog happens the summer she turns 15, beside the poolhouse at her friend Kaitlynn's. What she remembers isn't what the kiss was like – probably too wet, too weird when the boy groped her tit – but rather, it's the giggling of her friends who were peeking around the corner, and who'd orchestrated the kiss in the first place.

She loves her friends. She loves boys as well, but not in the same way, falling in and out of love as teenagers are wont to do.

By nature, Lisa is confident and what her teachers call 'self-assured.' She's popular amongst the girls in her classes, and that's why at the start of the next school year, the headmistress assigns her to help a new transfer to her year settle in. The new student's name is Eadie Malee, and she's so pretty. As Lisa walks beside her as she shows Eadie the school grounds, she can't stop noticing the darkness of Eadie's curled lashes, the way the sun brightens the browns of her eyes and warms a duskier hue beneath Eadie's faintly acned cheeks – but how impeccable her foundation is blended into her skin – and the way she walks. She's about Lisa's height, a little lankier, and she swings her arms as she walks. Sometimes her knuckles brush against the back of Lisa's hand, and Lisa doesn't know what to think.

She's never thought about how soft another girl's face would feel if she kisses Eadie. She's never felt this self-conscious before, not even when she had to sit next to Mark when she had a crush on him that caused her stomach to squeeze every time she looked at him. Lisa's sure that she acts like a fool around Eadie, because it feels like a crush, but she hesitates to call it what it is. Lisa thinks that it's stupid to judge or hate anyone for who they love, but she never thought that she would like girls. She refuses to be scared of admitting it, but neither does she want to think too hard about it. Maybe she's just… Maybe it's something else about Eadie that she likes.

Eadie accepts her offer to have lunch with her and her friends, and soon she fits right in with them.

Months later, listening to music while laying on Lisa's bed, Eadie scoots closer to Lisa and puts her hand on Lisa's cheek. She asks Lisa if she can kiss her, and Lisa forgets how to breathe as her insides do cartwheels. She's been thinking about it so much in the past few weeks that refusing doesn't even cross her mind. Lisa barely remembers nodding, before Eadie's cherry-gloss lips are pressing against her own bubblegum ones. This kiss, Lisa remembers, and the racing of her heart and quiet giggle when they both end it, just to ask, was that okay? It was? I liked it – did you? Maybe… we should do it again?

All too soon, Eadie has to go home. Lisa licks her lips and tastes bubblegum cherry, and she smiles at Eadie until Eadie says that they can't tell anyone about this. Especially not her parents.

All of the warmth rushes out of Lisa's room in an instant.

She knows why Eadie needs this to be a secret. She isn't rushing to tell her parents either – Lisa doesn't know how they'd react. Her brother and sister are both in nice, straight engagements, and while her family's never voiced any prejudices, she can't be sure. And so Lisa agrees. But she would've agreed to anything to keep Eadie close. That's the dangerous thing about love.

Eadie is her first girlfriend. She's many of Lisa's firsts – first sex, first long-term date, first secret relationship, first person who hears about Lisa's dreams, first to encourage Lisa to be the nerdy chemist you've always been under your hot bod. First breakup that left Lisa inconsolable for weeks, bouncing between burying herself in her university's library and consuming as much alcohol as she could at parties before stumbling back into her bed or someone else's.

She moves on, slowly. Eventually. She dates men, she dates women, she spends her weekends in London surreptitiously visiting queer bookshops and getting a better, fuller picture of the worlds she inhabits, and the people like her. When her relationships end, when she graduates and realises how quickly friends drift apart when work intercedes, she goes looking for somewhere she feels welcome and celebrated. She finds a local LGBT group, she helps grow the group's reach, and she has fun. And just as she's starting to truly feel like she's growing into what it means to be bisexual, to be simply her, she discovers that aliens – real, extraterrestrial aliens – exist.

Compared to that, making a fuss over people's sexuality seems even more trivial.

4. Lessons from Alice and her White Rabbit

Torchwood infiltrates the research company that Lisa is working at. On paper, the new head of Lisa's department has a shining pedigree, Oxford-educated and head of his own lab at a university in the States. In person, Lisa doesn't see Rajesh for the entire week that he's here. It's frustrating, because she's been trying to get the higher ups to look through the strange data that she's been noticing. Her team is trying to scale up a chemical process that allows them to reclaim chemical compounds from industrial waste. It's not glamorous, but it could really make a difference in the world.

Except that the process is working a little too well. Lisa's analysis is turning up chemicals that can't possibly have been synthesised from what was in the waste and what they were introducing into it. She suspects that the machines must be broken in some place, mixing in chemicals from the labs on either side of theirs. It can't be an issue with their measurement machines; she's checked them all three times, and so has her coworker Ewan. Since he's on the weekend shift this week, he offers to hold onto her report for her, and pass it along to Rajesh if the elusive department head ever shows up. Unfortunate for them that the weekend passes, and Ewan apologises that he never saw Rajesh around.

Monday starts in the slow yet pressurised way that it always does, but then in the afternoon, one of the vats of industrial waste somehow gains the ability to form solid hands. It then proceeds to smash its way through the lab.

It's only then that she meets Rajesh, when he comes running out of his office – when had he even gone in? – with a blowtorch that breathes green flames onto the oozing mass of waste until only a scorched, orange spot remains.

Lisa sees Ewan charging at Rajesh for some inexplicable reason, a wastebasket of all things held aloft and ready to bring it smashing down against Rajesh's back. So Lisa intercepts Ewan with a hard tackle, and really, pinning down a weedy scientist is a lot easier than the ornery horses she's had to wrangle over the course of her life.

A group – troop would be the more accurate unit, she supposes – appears mere minutes after that, also strangely and inexplicably from Rajesh's office. They take Ewan from her, locking thick, steel cuffs all the way up his forearms, and her coworkers start peering in again to see if the strange mutation's been taken care of. In the commotion, Lisa slips away to Rajesh's office, and pushes open the door.

After seeing disembodied mutant hands dripping with industrial slime today, Lisa doesn't even blink when she sees the large glowing portal, the height of an average adult human male, in the middle of Rajesh's office. It looks like a portal, she thinks, and it certainly would explain how her alleged boss and all of those soldiers came out of this room that only ought to have one door. Carefully, she backs out of the room and closes the door, wishing there was a safe way to find out where that portal leads to.

A handsome guy who looks like a life-sized version of a Ken doll is dressed in black fatigues and passing out water bottles to everyone around her. Her gaze lingers on him for a second longer than it should, before she notices Rajesh walking up to her. He looks assessingly at her, then holds out his hand.

"Lisa Hallett, yes? Rajesh Singh. You're the one who put together that report on the strange results of the reclamation process, and you helped me out back there." He looks past her, at the door to his office. "And you've just seen what's inside."

"I won't tell anyone," Lisa assures as she ends their handshake, but that, for some reason, just makes Rajesh smile, amused, at her.

"Would you like to see what's on the other side? I could show you."

Lisa gives him a skeptical look that has him laughing, while the Ken doll and the other soldiers group around behind him.

"Tell you what." Rajesh takes a business card out of his pocket, clicks his pen, and jots down an address and a sentence onto the blank card that has only a hexagonal letter T embossed in black on it. "Come by here in an hour, if you'd like the answers to the science behind what just happened here."

It takes Lisa a minute after watching Rajesh and the others step through the portal, and seeing it disappear in thin air, to make her decision. Twenty minutes later, she steps out of the taxi at Canary Wharf, in front of a tall, gleaming skyscraper.

It's not that Lisa ever believed in aliens, or even cares about whether or not they've been visiting Earth. She's still not entirely ready to believe that the existence of aliens is anything but an elaborate in-joke when Rajesh shows her the labs. Instead, what captures her is the level of unbridled curiosity that she can tell Torchwood encourages in its science and research. Rajesh tells her of all the incredible discoveries and inventions Torchwood has and will create, and shows her some of what his teams have in development.

She doesn't see her first alien until two weeks into her time at Torchwood, but it comes as a nice relief that it's not just one big prank on the new hires. And as gruesome and destructive as most of the aliens Torchwood fights are, Lisa knows there's good out there as well. The technology they recover speaks for itself.

5. Torchwood Watching

Adeola is Lisa's first close friend at Torchwood. Her team is nice enough to socialise with, but Adeola gets it – they share similar experiences growing up, similar family dynamics and subtle tensions. When Lisa talks about what it's been like to be out to everyone but them, she learns that Adeola's straight, but that difference doesn't change anything between them, and that only makes Lisa happier.

At first, Guleranna's a potential friend as well; she works reception and is incredibly keen to gossip and share insightful critiques of their coworkers. But Lisa notices how Guleranna looks at her and Adeola with a slight envy, an awareness that Lisa and Adeola's charmed lives are things that she wishes she had. Lisa doesn't mind, but it makes their time together a little less comfortable, and after a few months, they don't see each other outside of Torchwood working hours.

As the months go on, Lisa settles into her new job that steadily eats into her life. Yvonne Hartman – who behaves a little too similarly to Lisa's mother for Lisa's comfort – convenes all the employees for bi-monthly announcements from the Director, in which she talks about the value of all her employees having work-life balances. It's all pomp; in reality, it's so easy to be taken under by the swell of Torchwood's tide. Lisa doesn't try to resist – she's thrilled by her work.

What she's a little less thrilled by are the quality of the dates she's accepted from people around the Institute. Kenny from Field Ops kept complaining to her on their date about another Ops team leader, Samir, who asked Lisa out after Lisa had put an end to her date with Kenny. Unfortunately, Samir wouldn't shut up about Kenny either. But at least she was a good kisser. Lisa prays those two put each other out of their misery, ideally in sexually passionate rather than murderously passionate ways. Her latest date was with Colin, an associate manager in HR, and he's been sweet and put-together enough that they've been arranging another date for this Friday. So Lisa is prepared, when the call comes, that the head of the HR department would want to see her, perhaps to inform her about a rule against dating management in HR.

What she isn't prepared for, however, is that Pippa doesn't care at all about enforcing Torchwood's dating policies. Rather, Lisa sits across from Pippa and listens with growing anger as Pippa tells her that Lisa's activities with her LGBT group are exactly what Pippa would like to leverage in order for HR to be more "Diversity & Inclusion-minded." Lisa can hear the capitalisations in Pippa's cheery American accent when she says this. Pippa claims to know about Lisa's activities outside of work because she's psychic; Lisa is sure that she knows this because Torchwood stalks every aspect of their employees' lives.

Lisa would go to HR for this blatant invasion into her privacy, but, well. It becomes complicated to do that when HR is the one invading said privacy. It's not that Lisa was keeping her sexuality a secret amongst her coworkers, but neither does she appreciate how she knows Pippa is looking at her and only seeing every diversity checkbox that Lisa ticks.

But it's precisely because of this that she agrees to join Pippa's Diversity & Inclusion workgroup. She's used to tempering the well-meaning but heavy-handed actions of allies.

She and Colin date through the rest of the year, including making it past meeting each other's families and going on a holiday together. But he starts to grow distant, and Lisa sees the signs, and couples' therapy isn't something that either of their Torchwood schedules can accomplish. So she ends their relationship, and Colin gets weird about it. He refuses to meet her gaze whenever she's on HR's floor for the Diversity & Incision workgroup meetings, and Lisa feels bad for a few weeks, before Adeola takes her drinking and she decides that Colin's issues aren't any of her business anymore.

6. 'Family' always looks much prettier embroidered on a tea towel

She's been thinking more and more about just telling her family. They're not unobservant; Lisa's introduced them to a few boyfriends before, and they've known in between those times that she's been dating too. She's sure that they at least suspect. And so she tells them, at their monthly family dinner.

Her brother and father nod, looking alike in their 'I knew it all along,' self-satisfied reactions. Her mother stands and comes around the table to hug her and press a kiss to her hair, telling Lisa that she loves her. Her sister reaches across the table to squeeze her hand.

"I'm so proud of you for telling us," she says, enthusiasm clear in her voice and gaze. "And your timing is wonderful! The board of the Philharmonic has been thinking about doing a fundraiser for this year's London Pride – I was already in support of it, but now I'll be sure to press them more on it. Maybe circulate a petition around the orchestra?" She looks over at their brother, who nods in approval.

And that's it. The moment's gone, dissipated like wisps of clouds under the strong glow of the rest of her family's needs. It's not about her. They take who she is and treat it like any other news about her, parading it around for their own purposes – how gay rights are important because their daughter, their sibling, "is one." It's not really about her, she sees. Not to them.

7. Ianto Jones and the new coat

"I've got someone you should meet," Pippa whispers to Lisa with a wink. It's what she says every time she finds a new hire who she thinks could benefit from knowing Lisa and finding a support system through her.

So when Pippa tells Lisa that it's Ianto Jones, the Welsh guy who's been newly promoted to Yvonne's PA, Lisa goes up to the top floor to introduce herself. She doesn't suspect anything when Ianto says that he's happy that Pippa had a word on his behalf, and he asks Lisa if she'd be interested in going to see a film at the vintage cinema this weekend. Lisa understands wanting to be discrete; it's how Kieran approached her last year with questions about how she'd known she was attracted to her same gender. Kieran's still in the closet, but he tells her that he feels better just having it figured out now.

And like Kieran, it's no trouble for Lisa to want to spend time with Ianto – he's easy on the eyes, handsome: all bright, blue eyes and crisp suit, tamed hair and toothy smile when he sees her outside of the cinema.

She doesn't realise until after the movie is over, and they're heading back out – and wow, this guy really knows too much about James Bond – that this wasn't Pippa setting her up to help a new member of the 'club.' It was Pippa setting her up on a date. Ianto stops by the driver's side of her car, and smiles nervously – and oh, Lisa kicks herself for not connecting the dots sooner. He asks her if she'd like to do this again sometime, and now she feels bad.

She thinks about it – it's not like she had a horrible time. And she feels like she owes Ianto a proper date. So she says yes to dinner next week.

Ianto Jones is different than the people she's gone out with in the past few years. He's so earnest. He telegraphs it with every stutter and aborted move to hold Lisa's arm as he picks her up in a car – a fancy one, one that she recognises as the car that drives Yvonne around. They have a pleasant enough conversation while on the drive over, about recent current events in London. Ianto seems genuinely interested in hearing her talk about growing up in the city.

She's curious that there's no valet when they arrive, Ianto easing them carefully to park against the side of the curb.

"Lucky," he comments, "Usually parking gets filled up pretty fast this time of night."

She gets out of the car, and sees a dingy-looking, one-story restaurant with a lighted sign that clearly used to be white years ago, now yellowed with age.

"This place," Ianto says proudly, "Does some incredible Chinese."

She smiles politely; finding hole-in-the-wall restaurants is a pretty trendy thing to do nowadays. Her confidence slips when they get inside, however, and she sees the round tables with old-fashioned, white linen tablecloths pushed closely together to maximise the number of guests that the restaurant can get away with seating.

Intimate, she supposes. And the couple who clearly own the restaurant are incredibly helpful and courteous in getting them seated and serving them, and the food is good, and Ianto's a nice enough person to talk with, but…

But what is she supposed to tell people, her family and her friends? That their first proper date was in a dingy Chinese restaurant with large photos of the dishes papered onto the walls? The dinner feels too surreal, too different from what she's used to.

This isn't the sort of relationship Lisa imagines for herself.

So she turns him down gently when he lingers outside of the restaurant when they've finished, and asks her, "Shall we do this again?"

She smiles apologetically but firmly at him. "No, I don't think so." He only complicates it by looking surprised and hurt.

"Oh! Oh. Can I ask why?"

Lisa forces herself not to sigh. It's cold enough outside that she tugs her coat up a little higher around her neck, the fur lining warming her. Ianto's own hands are buried deep in the pockets of a dark, wool coat that still looks a little too painfully new rather than dashing, like it will once he's grown into it.

"Ianto," she tries to say reasonably, "You took me to a restaurant with the menu printed on the wall."

Ianto frowns. "And that's… a problem?"

Lisa gives him a flat look. "Look, advice from me? When you take a girl out, it should be to a place in Chelsea, not here."

"But here's actually authentic," Ianto protests.

And therein lies their difference. Lisa shakes her head, earrings tapping softly against her jaw. "That's not the point."

She sees the moment that confusion gives way to realisation on his face, and then a flash of embarrassment.

"Ah. Right." He looks so lost for a moment that Lisa feels sorry for him, but she doesn't reach out to put her hand on his forearm, or any gesture that could be misconstrued. "I'm…sorry."

"Don't think another moment of it," Lisa reassures him. "Well. I should go and get a taxi, I think."

"Are you sure? I could still–"

Lisa shakes her head firmly, and starts walking down the street. "No, really. Thanks, Ianto; I'll see you at work, yeah?"

He nods slightly. "Right. Yeah."

8. Nina

Work goes on. Life goes on. Kieran tells her over a coffee catchup together that he thinks Dean's been looking at him like that, and should Kieran make a move? Lisa manages to talk him out of retconning Dean if things don't go well, but she's happy for him when Kieran decides to come out with Dean. She hears that Ianto has started dating a new girl, Rachel Allan, Tommy's PA. Lisa lets herself laugh a little for thinking that he was gay, and is relieved that she didn't let that misunderstanding slip around him. That's really one of the last things she has to laugh about, because then Dean is dead and Yvonne Hartman has evidently betrayed the organisation, and somehow Rachel Allan's stepped into her shoes as the new Director of Torchwood.

It's a mad, horrifying time, and Lisa keeps her head down like the rest of her coworkers. She meets one of the field medics on Kenny's ops team, Nina, and as Rachel's reign over Torchwood turns downright authoritarian, requiring all the scientists and field agents to be on 24-hour standby, it's stolen moments with Nina on beds in the medical wing and up against the shelves in supply closets that keep Lisa sane.

Lisa memorises the slope of Nina's shoulders, loves the feeling of having a partner with short-cropped hair like hers, and finds Nina's smile with her own when they decide to keep the lights of the supply closets off sometimes. Nina's easy to talk with as well, passionate when she's frustrated and incredibly tactile as she plays with Lisa's hand in hers while she listens to Lisa talk.

It might have been love, but in the end, Yvonne regains her control and almost every Torchwood employee is retconned of the events of the past two months. They remember it as business as usual, and that their coworkers and friends who died under Rachel's command were lost in other tragic ways. The retcon is only meant to affect their memories that are related to interactions with Rachel, and the deaths of their coworkers because of her actions. But Torchwood London's retcon isn't perfect – Cardiff's is much more precise, not that Captain Harkness will share his formula – and not when used to cover this many weeks of memories.

Lisa remembers that Pippa was involved in a horrific car accident last month. She remembers that Dean was lost on a mission that same month as well, along with a number of other employees.

No one remembers that Ianto Jones dated Rachel Allan. No one remembers that the new girl joining them this week isn't so new, not even Rachel. Kieran's relationship with Dean is lost to retcon as well.

So is her relationship with Nina. When she passes Nina in the hallway, their eyes meet, one stranger to another.

She's sexy. Lisa thinks about asking around and getting her name – but then she gets transferred to Alien Acquisitions, and work gets a little too busy.

9. Truth

Tommy's department functions surprisingly well considering how the way that people get assigned to a project is determined by who's walking past an engineer or a researcher and gets their elbow snagged and physically dragged over to help. Lisa's seen it happen often enough that she's not fazed when Moira picks her to help on a surveillance project by tugging Lisa into the supply closet as Lisa's walking by.

"Hi, Moira," Lisa says, having to crane her head up at her tall coworker. Moira wears four-inch heels and her long hair in an even higher bun, and wisps of her hair nearly touch the stark white lightbulb above them.

"Lisa," Moira whispers urgently. She says everything urgently; rumours are that Moira disappeared on an artefact retrieval for two minutes a few years ago, and she's never been the same since. "There's a demon on the floor of Security."

Lisa purses her lips. "Alright. Do you think Kieran and his team have been compromised?"

"It's not an alien," Moira insists. "It's a demon."

This makes Lisa put her hand gently on Moira's forearm. "Moira. Torchwood gets infiltrated by aliens at least once a month. I really think it's a lot more likely that whatever you saw, it'll turn out to be an alien and not a supernatural hell creature."

Except Moira then proceeds to lead Lisa to her office, and show her the CCTV of the security floor during periods when the entire team's away with work. Lisa doesn't see any alien appear, but she sees… Well, she's not entirely sure what it is. Kieran's station is a proud fortress that he's built of rows and rows of monitors tapped into all of the tower's CCTV feeds, and a control hub for every device on their network. But when no one's there watching it, she sees all of the screens that usually show the CCTV feeds suddenly start rewinding, scrubbing backwards so fast that her eyes can't keep up or make sense of why it's happening.

When one of the security team gets close enough to see what's happening, though, the screens suddenly revert back to their usual footage.

It's weird. Probably not demon-weird, but definitely alien-weird, so she calls Kieran up to see what Moira's discovered. Kieran is, understandably, incensed, and arranges an investigation tonight, and Lisa finds herself enlisted to help without even offering. Kieran still needs a few more people to staff up his teams; the last month was a deadly month particularly for the security department.

The help that Kieran brings with him that night comes in the form of Guleranna and Ianto Jones. Lisa's worried for a moment that things will be awkward, but Ianto simply gives her a polite smile when he sees her before Kieran calls them all to attention. They now make up enough people to form three groups of three – two to patrol the hallway while the third waits by Kieran's fortress of screens. The other two teams will watch from the floor below, through CCTV, and trade shifts every four hours. It's a tidy operation, with nothing happening as the first team patrolled. Lisa, Ianto, and Kieran take the next shift, and the three of them study Kieran's monitors for any sign of the glitching pattern to appear. It doesn't, and so Kieran sends her and Ianto to patrol the rest of the floor, while he keeps watching.

"So, what do you think it is?" Lisa says, trying to sound optimistic as Ianto walks beside her and they open up each door to offices and meeting rooms to see if any aliens will spring out.

Ianto seems tense as he tests each door carefully, the tasers that Kieran's issued to them clutched firmly in his hand. "At this point, something messing around with Kieran's computers has me thinking it could be WOTAN, the sequel. Or rather, Episode Three."

Lisa has to think for a minute. "That thing that took over the Law Machines?" Those had been a terrible idea from the start of Yvonne's.

"Yep. He tried it again three months ago, infiltrating a company over at Lambeth & Southwark. It seems misguided to try taking us over again from the inside, though."

"And yet it happens at least once a month," Lisa points out.

She sees Ianto smile a little, sardonic as he says, "Twice, usually. Some of them we nip very early in the bud."

Lisa pinpoints it in that moment, why Ianto seems a little different than the last time they'd seen each other. Despite the wariness in his expression, there's a certain confidence in how he moves that wasn't there when she'd met him all those months ago. The confidence looks well on him.

"Is that supposed to impress me?" She can't help but tease, and she's surprised, then pleased, at how Ianto's eyes dart to look at her, then away, self-conscious.

"I didn't mean to sound like – like–"

"One of Kieran's macho agents?" Lisa grins. It's always cute seeing people flustered. "I'm kidding, Ianto."

"Oh. Good." Ianto clears his throat, then turns resolutely to push open the security doors that open up to the end of the hallway, where the bank of elevators stand in the centre and the door to the stairwell looks firmly shut as always. Ianto uses the handheld comm that Kieran gave each of them to call their teammate up.

"Kieran? We've gone down the entire floor – nothing to report."

"Roger," Kieran answers. "Nothing happening here either. May as well head back over here and take a seat til our time's up."

It's strange how silent the tower is at night, Lisa reflects, as she and Ianto head back down the main corridor to Kieran's station. Or maybe it's that she's gotten used to the noise of power tools and shouting that happens in her department.

Ianto's the one to speak up, this time. "So… Lisa. Er, how've you been?"

It's small talk, but Lisa's had to get good at that with all of the parties, events, and social networking she's grown up with. "Can't complain. I watched Troy last night – have you seen it?"

"I have," Ianto says, cheer in his tone. "It was great."

"Of course, horribly inaccurate to the actual Iliad, but I'll forgive them because they cast Eric Bana." She fans herself.

Ianto laughs. "Really? How badly did they get it wrong?"

Surprised, she asks, "You don't know the Iliad?"

She's about to apologise in the silence that follows, before Ianto says, looking just as sheepish as he sounds, "I didn't so much take Classics as spend that time in my mate Daryn's garage, thinking we could write better, more contemporary literature."

Lisa stifles a laugh. "And by 'contemporary literature,'" she presses, teasingly, "You mean…?"

"Heavy rock metal band lyrics, yes."

"Ianto Jones," she grins, "It's like I don't know you at all!"

"All part of my air of mystery and mystique," Ianto says, as the lights above them suddenly plunge from white to red, and five low blares sound – the signal for lockdown. Before their eyes, the corridor has suddenly stretched far between them and Kieran, and there's only darkness in that distance where the red glow of the lights can no longer penetrate.

"Okay," Ianto says slowly, "I know what I just said, but I did not do that."

And that darkness, in a slow undulating waver around the walls, is creeping towards them.

"I suggest we run," Ianto says.

"Brilliant idea," Lisa concurs.

They turn around, but the white tiles before them elongate into what looks like a neverending hallway. Doors appear, carbon copies of the ones that she and Ianto had checked before.

"Don't touch any of them!" Ianto warns.

"As if I would!" Still Lisa looks at each one of them, in a hurry, trying to spot some sign of what's happening. Why this is happening. Beside her, Ianto's pulled out the handheld comm again.

"Kieran! Kieran," he tries to call through it.

Both he and Lisa freeze in their places when what comes through is the sound of Kieran screaming.

Ianto's thumb slips off of the call button, but Lisa can still hear Kieran's screams. Not even in her memory – it echoes around them now, the sound distorting as if they were standing in a cave rather than an office building. It's horrifying – that's her friend.

"I hate that I'm saying this. But we should split up." Ianto stares down the hallways, into the darkness where Kieran is. "I'll see if I can get to Kieran – you go and get the others for backup." He unclips his badge and holds it out to her. "Take that down to the Archives for full access; there has to be some information about what this is."

"No." Lisa grabs Ianto by his forearm and pulls him to start walking again. "Lesson number one from horror movies – never split up. Let's find some weapons, and we'll go after Kieran together." She pulls out her own comms and tries to call Guleranna. There's only static. She swallows. "Whatever's happening, the fact that Guleranna and the others aren't here with us already likely means that they can't override the lockdown to get up to us."

She's relieved when Ianto stops resisting, and starts to hurry along beside her. They race around a corner, to where an open plan of cubicles sits. Twenty desks – Lisa thinks there has to be at least something they can use. They both hesitate when they see the desks, however. Objects are moving around the surfaces all on their own; the silly little Newton's cradle balls clacking against each other, while assorted miniature stress toys bounce back and forth. All of the framed photographs of loved ones and pets are blank.

They start pulling open drawers and rifling through for anything sharp. Their tasers are still the best weapon they have, but, "Preferably something that we can use from a distance," Ianto calls over from across the cubicles at her. Lisa's hoping for a nice heavy paperweight projectile or a box cutter, but finds only pens so far. She's looking so hurriedly that she doesn't notice until she turns and bumps into Ianto, standing at the desk behind hers.

"Sorry–"

She sees Ianto studying one of the frames intently. It's a nice, bronze one, with real glass, Lisa guesses, judging from its ornate engravings and gold plating. Ianto picks it up and unfastens the pins on the back to slide out the photograph. He looks even more troubled, but then lays the blank photo on the desk, and then whacks the frame firmly against the edge, shattering it. Lisa jumps at the sound, and watches as Ianto quickly pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and wraps it around the thicker edge of a large, pointed piece of the broken glass.

"You just made a shiv," she says, baffled. There are computer mice whipping on desks around them, chairs rolling back and forth on their wheels of their own accord, and yet what's most surreal to her is Ianto Jones holding a makeshift shiv. He looks embarrassed at her tone.

"Yes, well." He clears his throat. "Just in case we don't find any box cutters."

They do find one, which Lisa takes, along with an assortment of scissors and a few letter openers. Ianto ducks under desks to pull out a few long ethernet cords for them.

"Rope?" Lisa guesses. Ianto nods.

"Think it'll work?"

"It's worth a try." She pivots and they start to head back towards Kieran. "God," she sighs, "Dean would've loved being here tonight."

Ianto doesn't answer, as they speed up to a run down the corridor. It seems like they're doing the right thing, Lisa figures, because now that they're heading towards Kieran, things start happening to try and block their way. Doors to the offices fling open, and Ianto yanks her out of the way of a few, and the floor beneath them trembles. They lose a few letter openers and Ianto's makeshift knife in order to cut through a flurry of papers that cascade from the printers and dive at them, leaving sharp, stinging papercuts over Lisa's cheeks and bare arms.

There's an ominous sound ahead of them, screams and cries of more than just one voice.

"Is it WOTAN?" Lisa asks Ianto. This time he answers, although his voice is shaky.

"No. I'm not sure…" But there's something in his voice that doesn't ring true to Lisa.

"Ianto," she demands, and they come to a stop a few feet before where the darkness begins. "Tell me."

He looks agitated, but she sees him come to a decision with the barest moment's pause. "The screams. They sound just like the day that Rachel had us testing an alien weapon."

Lisa frowns. "When did that happen?"

"It's complicated," Ianto says, apologetically, as if knowing that would make her annoyed to be told. "But that, and the blank photographs, and the fact that this centres around Kieran's security station… It could be some sort of alien that's psychic? Something to do with memories?"

Lisa lets herself panic for just a moment. "It's taking our memories?!"

Ianto shakes his head. "No! I don't know."

They eye the darkness wearily, as it creeps close to where they stand. Lisa takes a deep breath, then holds her hand out to Ianto. He looks startled, so she just sighs and takes his hand in hers.

"So we don't get separated," she explains. He nods, opens his mouth as if to say something, and then closes it again.

They walk into the dark together.

Lisa's never thought much about the dark. Sometimes, it's a nuisance, when she's tipsy and can't be bothered to hit the light switch in her bedroom, and her hip collides with the edge of her desk. Other times, it's bliss, after a long shift at Torchwood and she collapses into bed – or the sofa in her living room – and falls asleep cradled by the dark. In her first year in primary school, to teach them about the five senses, her teacher brought in a child's play shed and covered it with quilts, making the small cabin inside pitch dark. One by one, they'd go inside and be asked to identify objects set on the table by their senses other than sight, and it's a memory that's always stayed with Lisa.

She's keenly aware here, in the absence of all light, of Ianto. Ianto's warm hand in hers, and the quiet sounds of his breathing as they walk forward.

"This reminds me of the legend of Orpheus and Euridyce," Lisa says, just to have something to say to break up the neverending yawn of the darkness. The weight of it around them has her whispering.

"You really like Greek legends," Ianto whispers back.

"The Iliad was Roman," she corrects, and hears him chuckle.

"Did they get to hold hands, though?" He asks. Lisa thinks for a moment.

"I don't believe so. She had to walk behind him."

"Pity," Ianto says, and there's that confidence again when he says, "Maybe they would've made it, if they'd been able to."

He squeezes her hand lightly, reassuringly, and she sees now what it is about Ianto that's made him succeed where other PAs failed in keeping up with Yvonne. He's always looking for a way to keep going.

They're going to find Kieran, and stop whatever's happening. She's sure of it. That's what they're here to do.

And they do find him. After what feels like hours, the darkness around them suddenly falls away, and they find themselves standing only a few feet from where Kieran is hurriedly working on his computer, his back to them and another man standing beside him.

"Kieran!" Ianto calls. At the sound of his name, their head of Security jumps out of his chair and has his gun pointed at them. The other person turns around as well, and his name slips out from her mouth: "Dean?"

Lisa suddenly finds Ianto standing in front of her, and she has to look cautiously around his shoulder at Kieran and Dean. But that's impossible. Dean's dead.

"Kieran," Ianto says carefully, "What's going on?"

Kieran's upper lip curls as he glares at Ianto. "I trusted you. I know better to ever trust Yvonne, but I trusted you. You retconned me – you made me forget Dean and I were ever together!"

Horror spreads through Lisa. She knows that employees here get retconned; it's a necessity, with some of the things that happen here. Everyone in Alien Acquisitions has been retconned at least once before for their own good; Tommy had told her on her first day in the department to expect that it'd happen to her at some point too. But forgetting a relationship? Particularly Kieran's first one; Lisa can tell from the fury in Kieran's face just how violating this loss was. It's disturbing that Ianto had a hand in it.

"Kieran," Ianto pleads, "You know how retcon works. You know we can't wipe more than a month of memories with that sort of precision. I'm sorry, I am, but whoever that is, that's not Dean."

Dean smirks. Kieran's laugh is harsh. "Oh, I know. But I don't care anymore. Why don't you tell them what you're up to, babe?" With that, he turns dismissively away from them and leans back over his desk, starting to work on the computer again.

Dean – whoever that really is – perches neatly on the edge of the desk beside Kieran. "Torchwood," he starts, rolling the word with relish in a pitch-perfect replication of Dean's accent. "You had a little mishap recently, didn't you? And now 800 employees have been puttering around with conflicting memories simmering away in their subconscious, and oh, it's been delicious."

"Is that what you are?" Ianto demands. "Some sort of psychic alien entity?"

Dean laughs and laughs, and the cruelty in it sets Lisa's teeth on edge. She looks over to Kieran's monitors, trying to figure out what he's working on. She sees schematics of floor plans, and tunes out the alien to focus when she realises that Kieran's doing something with the automatic controls on the R&D floors. She inhales sharply when she sees him bring up the screens showing the controls to the volatile gases that they keep on hand but locked up, for experiments and sustaining aliens who can't survive breathing the mix of air on Earth.

He's going to divert a mixture of the gases down to this floor and the one below, and kill them all.

While Ianto argues with the alien – something about being an old experiment of Torchwood's, driven into hiding – Lisa slowly creeps toward Kieran. She doesn't need that much of an element of surprise, because they're standing so close and Kieran may be a brick wall but Lisa is quick, and by the time the alien taking Dean's form is shouting a warning for Kieran, Lisa is already applying the taser, like Kieran trained them, and rendering him unconscious.

Silently apologising, she shoves Kieran, in his chair and all, off to the side, where he slips out and falls to the floor.

"Amazing," she hears Ianto murmur, awed, but her attention's on the alien as it lunges for her, hand grabbing her arm, and suddenly –

Her brain feels as if it's straining too big for her skull, memories pouring into her head, and she sees herself laughing with that sexy woman she'd seen a few days before she joined Alien Acquisitions, she sees them kissing, she can feel the other woman's stomach quivering under Lisa's lips as Lisa teases her. She remembers the way her voice pitches higher when she's coming, she remembers how Nina does the dishes for her if Lisa sings for her while she's doing them.

She remembers Nina.

Lisa staggers back when the alien releases her, and catches herself on the desk. She's crying, as she realises that she'd forgotten what she had with Nina. That Torchwood took this away from her – that Yvonne and Ianto took this away from her.

She hears Ianto's furious shout at the alien, "What have you done to her?!"

The alien laughs. "I've given her back what you stole from her, Torchwood. I'm going to do that to every employee here, and watch you all rip each other apart. But first." He turns to Lisa, and she flinches when he lays a hand over her shaking one on the desk. "You figured out what Kieran was about to do for me," he says, soothingly. "Do this, Lisa. Do this for me, and I'll give you back all your memories of her. That was only a little taste of everything they've taken from you."

She looks at the monitors – Kieran's commands are almost complete. It would only take a few clicks, and she could even change it so the gas only floods this floor, on a timed release. She and the alien could overpower Ianto – knock him unconscious and leave him here, tell everyone downstairs that it couldn't be helped. People disappear and die all the time at Torchwood.

"Lisa!" She looks at him, when he says her name. She can see the remorse on his face, but she also remembers now that he was dating Rachel. Rachel Allan, who infiltrated Torchwood and is the reason why so many of their coworkers died in 'accidents' last month.

God, she shouldn't have let that friendly demeanor fool her. He's Yvonne's PA, the only one she keeps close by her side. Of course he'd be just as bad as her.

"Please," Ianto implores. "I'm sorry. I'll tell you about your missing memories, but please. Don't do this. Don't let it win."

The alien laughs. "And why should she believe you? Although," he says, consideringly, "There's something in your memories too, Torchwood. It's older than the rest of your coworkers, but it's there." The alien sniffs the air, making a hungry sound that chills Lisa to the core. "Like fine, aged wine. Oh, yes. Don't you want to know what's been taken from you?"

She can see Ianto hesitate, before his expression hardens. "Of course I do. But not at the risk of all of this. Torchwood – well, it's a nightmare, but I chose it. And I'm not going to let you tear it down after all the work I've put into it. I finally managed to talk Yvonne into casual dress Fridays – it'd be a shame to give that up just now."

Lisa wants to hate him, just a little, for cracking a joke like he's in one of those daft Bond movies he loves so much. But part of her understands what he's saying, because she feels it too. She chose Torchwood, and she's proud of what she's done here. And if it comes down to a choice between trusting Ianto, and trusting this alien?

She turns to the keyboard, and starts undoing Kieran's work and the lockdown. The alien realises too late, and Ianto has him pinned to the floor, tasered unconscious, and tied up with the ethernet cables when Lisa's finished. She looks down at the alien, and feels a wave of sadness wash over her.

"Dean didn't die on an away mission, did he?"

Ianto looks up at her, and slowly shakes his head. "No. I'm sorry. It was Rachel's doing."

Lisa sighs, and wipes at her eyes. They hear footsteps approaching, and turn to see Guleranna, Moira, and all of Kieran's teammates rushing up to them. It only takes Kieran's team a few seconds to identify that the person wearing Dean's face and pinned under Ianto is the threat, and they haul him up. Guleranna's at Kieran's side, checking on him carefully and then painstakingly hauling his thick limbs into a more comfortable position.

Lisa feels Ianto's hand rest on her shoulder lightly, after he gets to his feet.

"Thanks," he says, and it's subdued but heartfelt. "I… Just, thank you. You saved us all tonight."

She nods. "Nipped it in the bud, wouldn't you say?"

Ianto's eyebrows fly up, and oh, that's definitely a blush as he looks away for a moment.

"So does that get me a bonus?" She says, changing the subject and taking pity on him. He looks back at her, and a small smirk graces his lips.

"Sadly not."

They look at each other for a few more moments, and Lisa thinks that she should probably go and check on Kieran as well, but in the end, Moira's the one who walks over and ends the long stretch of comfortable, almost warm silence between them. She looks between them.

"Was I right? Was it a demon?"

—

After Kieran wakes, after they all debrief and he gives everyone permission to head on home – or rather, wash up before the day begins in two hours – Lisa sits with Kieran and they just talk, both of them reeling from the memories of their partners they'd not even known they'd had.

She sees Ianto approach them, and he looks suitably ashamed as he says, "I would've brought you coffee, but, well. After… Everything…" He takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kept this information from either of you. I'll tell you everything that I can remember, but I know it's not the same as what we took."

Kieran stands stiffly, and eyes Ianto up wordlessly for a few seconds, before he shakes his head. "Don't come around here for a while," is all he says, before he walks off.

Lisa watches Ianto watch Kieran. "Are you going to retcon him? If he tries to retaliate against you or Yvonne?"

Ianto shakes his head. "This job is all he has now," Ianto says softly. Sadly.

"That's not a good thing."

Ianto looks at her. "I know." He visibly struggles with deciding what to say, she can see it on his face. She supposes that's a good contrast he has to Yvonne; that he's easily readable. Maybe it's not too late for him yet.

"The offer stands for you too," he says to her at last. "I want to tell you everything that I know about you and Nina. I'm afraid I only really have rumours and gossip to go off of, but, if it could help…"

Lisa studies him for a moment, and sees the same earnest look on his face that she saw across the table during their disaster of a date. "You really mean it?"

He smiles, just barely. "I promised you, didn't I? I always keep my promises."

She finds herself really, truly believing him.

So they go to a cafe, the unlucky uni students on the morning shift still bleary-eyed as they set out the patio chairs and open up the doors for them. Ianto calls Colin, and arranges for HR to give everyone on the team who was here last night the morning off, and then he slips his phone into his pocket, wrinkles his nose slightly after the first sip of his coffee, and tells her what really happened with Rachel Allan, and all of the office gossip about her and Nina.

—

Lisa goes home that evening and sits in front of her laptop, scrolling through the shows and events happening this weekend. Now that she remembers Nina, and knows in broad strokes how her relationship had grown during her retconned memories, she thinks about asking Nina out again. She should; she has so many memories of affection and safety with Nina. She's sure they could work their way back to that, and to more.

But.

She also has memories now of Ianto's hand in hers. His embarrassing James Bond-esque monologue against the alien. His confidence in the moments when it was the most illogical and stupid times to be confident, but it meant he took action. And how weird it is that Ianto Jones, always so freshly-pressed and a model portrait of a young working professional, was in a heavy rock metal band.

She makes a choice.

10. Rusty Tommys

Ianto's making coffee when she finds him on the floor of HR. She spares a solemn look at what was once Pippa's office, and is now Colin's, now that Ianto's told her what really happened to Pippa.

Ianto turns, and looks startled to see her. "Hi," he says. And then lapses into an awkward silence.

She grins. Okay, it's really cute. "Hey, Ianto. I've been looking for you."

"Oh. Er. Good?"

He's turned back to the machine, asking, "Would you like a coffee?"

"Sure. Cappuccino?"

"Easy."

She watches him work, practiced motions making her think, barista experience. "Are you free this Friday night?"

He nearly shoots a stream of hot water on himself, jerking the nozzle over the cup before he says, "Yeah! Yes." He's looking at her now, and only her, disbelief on his face.

"Metal's not really my scene," Lisa continues, "But there's supposed to be a good punk band playing in Soho – the Rusty Tommys. Interested?"

"As a – like a date?"

"What else would it be?" She says, just to watch him stammer, before he settles on:

"I've never heard of them before."

"Me either." Lisa grins. "It'll be an adventure. Maybe we'll both really like them."

"Or hate them," Ianto points out dryly. That tone makes Lisa laugh.

"Still gives us something to talk about, doesn't it? And if it's within Tommy's earshot…"

Ianto laughs, hands her the coffee, and she decides that even if their date falls through again, she's glad she did this.

—

As it turns out, they both hate the music. Lisa catches Ianto's eye during a break in the set around the twenty minute mark, sees how his eyes are slightly gazed over before embarrassment flits over his expression when he sees her watching him.

She leans in, makes sure to brush her lips against his ear. "Should we just go?"

They wander out of the club and down the street, trading complaints about the lyrics and the incomprehensibility of the lead singer's vocals. Lisa sees the surprise and interest on Ianto's face when she mentions her vocal lessons, and there's something about the way he's looking at her, how their hands feel clasped together, and she gives him a little tug, and they end up laughing and kissing in a dark alley.

"Ever done something like this before?" She teases between kisses, thrilled by the way Ianto takes her entire mouth with his and the hard way he strokes his tongue against hers.

"Can't remember when I've got you here with me," Ianto murmurs, and Lisa thwacks his shoulder and calls him a mood killer, but somehow when Ianto says it, she feels like he means it.

11. Why on earth would you think I'd like camping?

Ianto's easy to love. He shouldn't be, she thinks – he works for Yvonne with eyes wide open to all of the decisions she manipulates and weapons she stockpiles for the great of an empire that Lisa thinks is still toxic to the world. His standards for good coffee are high to the point that she hasn't been able to find a single cafe in London that he actually wants to stay sitting in, and god has she been looking. He's cagey about his family and where he grew up. Her family warm up to him quickly, which is good on the one hand, but sets Lisa a little on edge to wonder if it's Ianto they like, or Lisa's Welsh boyfriend from the Valleys they want to be seen liking.

Their tastes in nearly everything, from food to movies to hobbies, are different.

But his sense of humour is as deep and sharp as she knows his courage is. He sews up small aberrations in the seams of Lisa's blouses, and loose buttons, often without her even noticing. He's so good at keeping track of dates and events, like a sexy personal calendar who fucks her until she feels like she's been permanently stretched out the next morning. He's up for everything in bed. And the office. And in dark corners of movie theatres. And in Yvonne's corporate car.

For someone so neatly buttoned up, he gives such tight, adoring hugs, as if Lisa's presence is his sun.

She makes fun of him for his nerdy crush on James Bond, and he doesn't deny it – which is very, very interesting, and Lisa makes a mental note to explore the bounds of Ianto's sexuality one day – he just turns it right back around and calls her a history nerd. But she knows he's got a SparkNotes copy of the Iliad in his work desk, and that he researched how to use the cutlery before taking her out for a seven course dinner.

Somehow, they're good together. They're good to each other, and for each other. They push each other to try new things, and to make new experiences together. That's what a relationship is to Lisa: taking the time to experience things together. They carve out a life with each other that isn't just all Torchwood, and it's amazing. It's just Lisa and Ianto, and all their plans for the future.

12. Your nerves of steel (won't do much good down here, my love) (Reprise)

Lisa has always known how risky it would be to try and untangle the cybertechnology from her, although she thinks that the danger had never fully sunk in for Ianto. But it's worth it, she thinks, before she loses consciousness when Ianto and the doctor remove her from her support machines, and take her up to the medbay. Torchwood is gone for them, but they have each other.

Because Ianto's there when she wakes with a sudden rush of consciousness. He's only looking at her, and she breathes easier when he leans down and presses his kiss to her forehead.

Breathing. That's right. She can breathe now. It's incredible – it worked.

A sharp pain lances through her brain.

It worked.

I'm alive, she says. The words fall so easily from her numb lips. No –

No. It's not really her saying it, it's not her relief colouring those words, because Lisa feels numb. She can tell that Ianto is frantic, but she doesn't feel it herself. She can see Ianto sling her arm around his shoulders as he helps her and the doctor hurry down into the vaults, but she doesn't feel him anymore.

He squeezes her hand.

She doesn't feel it.

Something has gone very wrong.

Ianto leaves her with the doctor in the first level of the vaults, his eyes meeting hers and promising to be back as soon as Torchwood has left. There's sweat over his hairline and panic in his gaze, and Lisa tries to grab for him, to force her mouth open and warn him. She needs him to see that this isn't right, that there's something else in her. But Ianto is so determined to find the part of her that's being slowly dismantled that he doesn't see the rest before he rushes back up to the team.

The cyber consciousness creeps over her like a blight, an asphyxiation of everything Lisa is, and she tries to hold onto herself, with every step that her feet take. She's Lisa Hallett, twenty-six years old, her favourite thing to do is grabbing a coffee and walking around Hays Galleria. She is – was – a researcher at Torchwood One, and the last holiday she took was with Ianto, camping on a beach in Brittany. She thinks about the way that Ianto hugged her as they kept warm in the freezing cold, the jog they were planning on before it started to rain, and they spent the morning having sex instead.

They have plans, when she's better, to take a trip to the Alps. Ianto proposed the idea a few weeks ago, and she agreed because it made him smile and she likes the thought of seeing snow. She tries to think about what they'd planned to do there, but her brain seems fixated on remembering the memory of their camping trip. She tries to think about sitting with Ianto in front of a fireplace, warm after so long in the cold, damp basement, as Dr. Tanizaki helps her down the hallway to the room she's been hidden away in. But then her vision blinks away and the memory of the drumming rain over the tarpaulin of their tent crackles like sharp static in her mind, drowning everything else out.

No, she thinks, she doesn't want to think about that again. She wants to think of kissing Ianto under blankets, she'll kiss him until he can't think of anything but her, and then –

And then,

She's gone.

—

That night, we camped on a beach in Brittany. It got so freezing we wore our coats and shared one sleeping bag. When we woke up the next morning, a dog was pissing on our tent. Hold me, Ianto. I need you to hold me. I need you to tell me it's all right.

All of Ianto's grief surges out of him in one ragged, painful sob.

That's not Lisa.

He sees this now.