Right. Well. He does seem to be mangling this conversation rather well.
Good, echoes back a small corner of his mind. Push hard enough and maybe he'll keep his distance. Maybe he'll leave. And that's one less person for you to snap under your heel.
He gives a thin, and somewhat venomous, smile back. "Politics, Ianto. When a powerful, unknown organization is playing at charity, you don't send the leader of your own to accept it. And Mio is a perfectly capable agent." He raises his eyebrows. "Yeah. I replaced you. You fell through a Rift, and I got Torchwood handed to me with instructions to keep it running. Can't exactly staff positions with fond memories."
This is dangerous territory. All of it. From the quirk of his eyebrows to the tone of his voice, the emotion swirling inside him – he's edging close to a backslide, even if just a minor one, and who's going to be here to stop it? He can recognize, it, but stepping back...
Stepping back means disengaging. There are only so many ways to disengage.
He looks to the door.
"Your moral compass doesn't have a picture of what's going on here," he says. "Why don't you go give it one. Get a sense of the history, here. Talk to people. Ask around. Take a week." His voice is hard. "If you really think Torchwood is where you want to cast your lot after that, I'll consider you, but I won't consider it before then."
no subject
Good, echoes back a small corner of his mind. Push hard enough and maybe he'll keep his distance. Maybe he'll leave. And that's one less person for you to snap under your heel.
He gives a thin, and somewhat venomous, smile back. "Politics, Ianto. When a powerful, unknown organization is playing at charity, you don't send the leader of your own to accept it. And Mio is a perfectly capable agent." He raises his eyebrows. "Yeah. I replaced you. You fell through a Rift, and I got Torchwood handed to me with instructions to keep it running. Can't exactly staff positions with fond memories."
This is dangerous territory. All of it. From the quirk of his eyebrows to the tone of his voice, the emotion swirling inside him – he's edging close to a backslide, even if just a minor one, and who's going to be here to stop it? He can recognize, it, but stepping back...
Stepping back means disengaging. There are only so many ways to disengage.
He looks to the door.
"Your moral compass doesn't have a picture of what's going on here," he says. "Why don't you go give it one. Get a sense of the history, here. Talk to people. Ask around. Take a week." His voice is hard. "If you really think Torchwood is where you want to cast your lot after that, I'll consider you, but I won't consider it before then."