***Mod Note: This fic is split into two posts, four parts in one, four in the next, posted immediately after this. Make sure to read both!***
Author Name:
callmerayray
Recipient:the9thdoctor
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, mentions of past Ianto/Lisa
Summary:It had been a year since Ianto had woken up in a flat he didn’t recognize, beat to hell and with no memories of the previous four years. He had made little progress with his life since then, but he preferred it that way.
Rating: R-ish
Disclaimer: Santa Claus has yet to leave them under my tree, so no, no they are not mine. Here's hoping for next year.
Warnings: Minor OOC-ness, but we're blaming that on distress. And somewhat AU. Timeline wise this story would fit after ‘Something Barrowed’, but then it veers off as if the events in ‘Fragments’ and ‘Exit Wounds’ never happened.
Word Count: 14,500
Author's Notes: I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you were looking for, but sometimes my brain runs off without me and does things without my permission. This is the results. I hope you like it. And a big thanks to my beta, for doing an excellent job slugging through all my muck, and for calling me on all my cliches. Lastly, title taken from the song ‘Skin Deep’ by the fabulous Melissa Etherigde.
Beta:
don’t give your heart and soul (my love is only skin deep)
one
Ianto walked down the street, watching the shop windows idly, his left hand held protectively close to his body. It had been months since his physical therapy had ended, but it had become reflex during the long healing process to protect the fragile bones that had been shattered.
Lisa Miller, co-worker and only friend, walked beside him, bumping his shoulder every now and then. She had started working at the cafe he was employed at just before he had. She was perpetually cheerful, three years his junior and pretty in a sweet sort of way. She was a good friend and he wasn't quite sure why he had never asked her out; he just knew that every time he thought about it something held him back, telling him it was wrong.
It had been a year since he had woken up in a flat he didn’t recognize, beat to hell - then bandaged up again – and with no memories of the previous four years. He had made little progress with his life since then. Succeeding only in returning himself to a healthy, if somewhat scarred, state. He worked a dead end job, lived alone, and had only Lisa and his mother for company.
But he preferred it that way.
Despite what his doctors, the police, his mother, Lisa, and the strange little woman with nine cats who lived next door to him said, he could not move on. He could not pick up and start his life anew when he believed whole-heartedly that his life was still out there somewhere, waiting for him to remember it.
And he would remember, eventually; he had to. Because he didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
Lisa was chattering on at his side about something, work, or something else he should care about, but he wasn’t listening and she gave no indication that she cared. So he kept on walking, half paying attention and trying not to scan the faces in the crowd. He wouldn’t know them.
They reached a cross-section and he started forward, but Lisa pulled him to the right, indicating a posh little shop tucked away on the next street. “Let’s get you a new suit,” she said, curling her hand in his and dragging him along.
“I don’t even wear them anymore,” he protested, but he followed her obediently nonetheless.
While he looked at ties that he wasn’t going to buy, she looked at jewellery that she would never wear. An ancient little man with a pin cushion strapped to his wrist kept trying to take Ianto’s measurements, and Lisa kept coughing behind her hand to hide her laughter as she casually suggested colour tones.
“You’re not helping,” Ianto hissed. The little man jabbed a pin into his hip, making him yelp in surprise.
“I’m not trying to,” she laughed. “You need a little fun in your life, love.”
“I have fun,” Ianto groused, warding off another jab from the pin-wielding old man.
The man’s equally tiny and ancient wife wandered over at one point, leaving the other customers to tut over the two of them. She asked when the date was and Ianto’s eyes grew wide. He stammered out a protest, which just made Lisa laugh harder.
Suddenly Lisa’s laughter was overpowered by a piercing scream at the front of the store. Ianto whipped around to see a man wearing a dark mask push his way to the middle of the store where they all stood. He had a gun in one hand, waving it wildly while the patrons screamed.
He barked out an order, wanting the old man to open the register, but the shop owner had gone pale, his body shaking itself apart as he stared at the robber and held his wife close.
The man turned the gun on Lisa then, holding it close to her face, and she was shaking too.
“You do it!” he shouted, cocking the gun. “Get the money!”
But she couldn’t move, her body frozen as she stared down the barrel of the gun. Wide eyes turned to look at Ianto, begging for help. Begging for –
Hold me, Ianto. Please. I need you to hold me.
Three swift moves and the man was against the wall, Ianto's left hand pinning him to the rough brick, while the other held the robber's gun, cocked and ready to fire if he moved. Everything went deadly silent and the other people in the shop stared at him, mouths agape. Lisa was wide-eyed beside him, one hand over her mouth as she looked back and forth between him and the robber.
Then the people erupted into sound, cheering for him, their hero, as two policemen raced in from outside. One handcuffed the robber while the other carefully took the gun from Ianto's hand. Customers and employees jostled each other to get to him, patting him on the back and speaking multitudes of thanks. The little old man shook his hand with a surprising grip like steel. One of the policemen tried to ask him questions, but Ianto didn't notice any of them.
He kept staring at the wall, where he had held the man down, face pressed against the paint, and it all felt wrong. He felt scared. Angry. Betrayed. He felt the muzzle of a gun at his own temple; the press of cold stone at his cheek.
And he knew that what he was feeling wasn't here, wasn’t now. It belonged to someone else. A different person. A different life.
Lisa wrapped a hand around his elbow and pulled him away from the wall, away from his thoughts. He looked up to see the robber being pushed into a police car and patrons being interviewed. The whole thing felt stifling, the room too small.
While everyone was busy telling their tales, he slipped out the back, casting a fleeting glimpse back at Lisa before he started to run.
:::::
“Maybe you were special ops.”
Lisa strolled into his kitchen with a smile, carrying beer in one hand and a large pizza in the other. “I figured you wouldn't want to go anywhere tonight, even though half of Cardiff wants to buy you a round,” she said as she began opening his cupboards to get plates.
Ianto watched her from the living room, door still open, not really listening to what she was saying. His mind was still reeling with what had happened earlier.
“No, really,” Lisa went on, handing him a plate and a bottle and shutting the door for him. “What if you are? Secret services, I mean. What if they wiped your mind like in the Bourne movies?”
She plopped down on the sofa, talking around a mouthful of cheese and tomato sauce, and turned to him expectantly. “That would explain that little bit of kung-fu you pulled today. And also, Kieran told me about that time the computer system crashed at work, and you hacked back into it like some sort of tech genius. What was that, your second day on the job? It would explain everything.”
Ianto sighed and finally sat down beside her, biting absently into the pizza as he stared at the wall. Lisa nudged him with her foot and gave him a bright, sad smile. “It's not all that bad, is it?” she asked, toes wiggling against his on the floor. “Your life. It's not all bad. Is it really so necessary to find all these answers?”
Ianto shook his head and discarded his plate on the coffee table. “It's – it's hard to explain. I know I should be happy. I know I should just… move on. But I can't. I can't let it go, Lisa. Because I feel like if I do I'll lose something. Something important. Like I'll stop being me.”
He turned to her, needing her to understand; needing someone to understand. But she didn't.
He didn't blame her for that; didn't think any less of her for it. How could he expect her to know what it was like to look in the mirror and see nothing?
It was like there was just a gaping hole where he should be. He walked and talked and made it through every day, but he didn’t know how. He didn’t know why.
He didn’t know how he had stopped that man. Didn’t know how his hands had moved, how his body had done what it did. He couldn’t show you if you asked him. He couldn’t tell you how to hold a gun; how to cock the barrel or steady the grip, but he had held a gun to a man’s head today, his finger on the trigger, ready to kill. Was he a killer? Was that what was in his blood?
Last week he had hacked into UNIT’s databases, just because he could. Another of those things he knew but didn’t know. He could do it again, if he wanted to, but he couldn’t teach someone else because he didn’t know what he was doing. Like his fingers belonged to someone else as they moved across the keyboard.
He hated not knowing himself.
But he hated more not knowing the people on the street. He used to look at each face he passed, every day, wondering if they knew him, if he would see recognition in their eyes. He used to watch crowds of people, hoping to see a familiar face.
Sometimes he thought he had. Sometimes a person would catch his eyes across the street or on the other side of a plaza and he would go after them, only to be left standing alone on a street corner with crowds of nameless people pushing past. He’d stopped looking long ago.
Ianto sighed and tried to stop thinking, tuning instead into Lisa’s soft chatter. She had been talking while he wallowed in self-pity, all the while knowing he wasn’t listening to a word she said. But silence would be awkward and to be alone would be worse. He was tired of being alone.
He smiled at her, grateful for her company and kind words, and she smiled back knowingly. “You’ll be alright, Ianto Jones,” she said at last. “You’re just that kind of guy.”
He tried to believe her.
two
“Where's Aimee gone, then?” Gwen asked as she fiddled with the coffee machine. “I haven't seen her all day.”
“Gone,” Tosh said, dumping a few spoonfuls of sugar into her cup.
“Gone gone?”
“Yup. Jack retconned her yesterday.” Gwen rolled her eyes.
“That's, what, three this month? What did this one do?”
“Don't know. Maybe she made bad coffee.” Tosh sighed, glaring at her own bad coffee before dumping her cup into the sink.
“Or good coffee,” Gwen said, sighing in a long-suffering sort of way. “Or she didn't wear a suit, or she did wear a suit. Or she pressed his clothes wrong, or just right. When will Jack just admit that he doesn't want any of them because they're not Ianto?”
“What I want to know is if we're going to be one man down forever. I got used to having five of us on the job, once Ianto got into the field.”
“What I want to know is if he'll find it this hard to replace the rest of us.”
“Well, what I want to know,” Jack said, startling them both. “Is whether or not you two are actually going to work today, or just stand around gossiping about things that are really none of your business anyway.”
Tosh had the decency to look guilty, but Gwen opened her mouth to reply. Jack held up and hand and spoke above whatever she was going to say. “Work. Now. Or I’m going to find it very easy to replace you.”
Both women slipped out of the kitchen area, leaving Jack alone. He stared over at the complicated machine that Ianto had once loved, maybe a little too much, and sighed. He’d give just about anything for a good cup of his coffee right now.
:::::
A few hours later Jack sat in his office, the screen in front of him keyed into the little brick house just outside Cardiff with its perfect little flowerbeds and the black hybrid sitting in the driveway. Ianto had ridden his bike to work today.
The file sitting in front of him he had memorized long ago. He could tell you which words were spelled wrong, how the words slanted differently from the hurried scrawl that filled the green diary inside his desk, and which pages were spotted with blood.
First page, opening line: “Guy Anderson arrived at the Plass at 1400 hours as I was walking back from the cafe. He approached me and threatened me. He had a gun.”
Third page, second paragraph: “He grew angrier each time he returned to the cell. I told him nothing, waiting for Torchwood...”
Bottom of page six: “...gashes across my chest. My fingers were broken. I knew he would kill me if I didn't escape.”
Page after page of the cold, clinical explanation of how Guy Anderson had turned from a grieving husband who just wanted answers to a raving madman, determined to kill to find the truth. Jack didn't know if it was merely the years that had made Anderson change, too many years without answers, too much anger locked inside and festering behind a wall of retcon, or if he had just never had the time to show his true psychosis in the past. And Ianto was the one who had suffered for it.
There was movement on the screen. Jack looked up from the report, but it was just a neighbour boy kicking a football along the sidewalk. He shifted the file to the one beneath it.
Owen's file: handwriting surprisingly neat for a doctor, and the images of Ianto's injuries. There were the gashes on his chest that had scarred. The bruises on his jaw and around his eyes. The long, elegant fingers that had once pieced back together alien technology to save the woman he loved and had always known exactly where to press to release the tension in Jack's tightly wound muscles.
They were swollen and bruised in the picture, blood seeping out where broken bone had sliced through thin skin. It had taken him five months to regain full mobility. The doctors had predicted at least a year.
Jack heard someone approach his office and quickly swept the files into his desk, creased white paper covering up the box that held the pictures of his past. Gwen knocked, then slipped her head inside, eyes filled with veiled concern.
“Jack,” she said, in that infuriating, pitying tone they all used when they caught him looking at Ianto's files. “There's, um, an alien sighting downtown. Hasn't hurt anyone, but it's causing a lot of property damage. And the people are getting into an uproar, saying it's some sort of genetic mutant from that testing lab outside the city. Do you want us to...” she trailed off.
“No.” Jack stood and reached for his coat, tried not to think of a time when it would have already been waiting for him, held out by strong hands for him to slip into and run off. Like always. “I'll come with you.”
Jack cast one last look at the screen, the peaceful little house still quiet in the early evening light, and headed out to do the job that just hadn't felt the same over the past year.
:::::
The creature had run, of course. And they had chased it, of course.
Through alleys and into shops, and between cars that all honked until they got a good look at what was running past their bumpers. Jack hadn't realized where the thing had taken them until it was too late, hadn't seen the man in front of him until they were both sprawled across the cobblestones, six feet of impeccably dressed Welshman lying on top of him.
It took just an instant, a moment of weakness that Jack couldn't stop, where their eyes met and he thought, please. And then suddenly his wish came true and there was recognition in Ianto's eyes and Jack remembered that he didn't want that, not really. Not when Ianto was safe and happy and not tormented with visions of the past or of a lover that couldn't love him the way he deserved.
Jack pushed Ianto away from him, helped him to his feet because Ianto didn't do undignified very well, and then spun away, coat flying as he tried to run.
Strong hands on his arm spun him back around and Ianto's wide blue eyes were looking him up and down, full of confusion and hope. Fingers curled around his coat sleeve, and Ianto was so desperate, so determined, so painfully hopeful it could have been that day all over again; on the dock with the most amazing cup of coffee in one hand and Ianto begging him for a chance.
“Do I – do I know you?” he asked.
Jack wanted to shout, 'Yes, you know me! You love me – please remember.’
But instead, “No. No, you don't.” And then he turned around, pulled his arm away from Ianto's desperately clinging grasp, and walked away from him. Again.
three
Everything was wrong. So wrong.
He didn't want this; had never wanted this before, but something kept telling him that it was right. That this, this, was everything.
He scrambled for a hold on the desk beneath him as he was pushed back across its surface, slipping on papers and knocking things to the floor. He moved to pick them up, to put things right, but strong hands turned him back, drawing his attention back to where it was supposed to be.
The living hum of an inanimate entity echoed in the background, but the only thing he could concentrate on was the maddening feel of fingertips at his collar, delicately brushing over skin as his tie was undone. His own hands moved to grip broad shoulders; slid down over smooth skin, paused to feel the strong heartbeat beneath his palms. He knew the rhythm of that heart. Knew the body beneath his hands.
He couldn't see him, the man that moved him so easily, that knew exactly where to touch to make him gasp and squirm. He was just shadows in the darkness.
His tie slid loose and the buttons of his shirt quickly followed. Hot breath brushed across his ear, carrying words he couldn't quite hear.
Suddenly a siren started blaring, echoing through the room and through his head. Warning lights began flashing, turning the room a ghastly red, but the man above him didn't seem to notice, or care.
But as the lights flashed he could finally see the man that held him so completely, the man that had been haunting him for weeks. Bright blue eyes looked down at him from a face unknown to him outside his dreams, and a smile that held all the secrets of the world seemed to light up the room, overpowering the blaring red glow and blinding him to anything else.
The man leaned down and bit playfully at Ianto's jaw, making him writhe and squirm as his own hands tightened around strong arms that caged him in. Then one of the man's hands was brushing over his chest, tracing his navel and teasing sensitive skin until it slid down, into his pants and wrapped around his aching cock.
Ianto jolted awake with a gasp, hands reaching for a body that wasn't there, and painfully hard. He sat up slowly and put his head in his hands, trying to ignore the barely-there light outside his windows. He hadn't slept right for weeks – longer if he was honest with himself – his dreams plagued by the memory of the man he had run into on the street.
There was something so startlingly familiar about him, something Ianto couldn't place. The man's denial on the street just hadn't sounded true. It had been something in his eyes, in the way his hands had held on so tightly while they were sprawled across the cobblestones.
And because Ianto knew in his heart that he had dreamt of him before. Long before that abrupt meeting. He had never seen his face before that day, those eyes always hidden in the darkness of his dreams, but there was something about his presence, something undeniable. Ianto knew it was him.
Now he just had to figure out who he was.
Ianto rose from the bed with a sigh and wandered over to his closet, brushing aside rows of suits and dress shirts to find his work clothes before heading into the bathroom to take care of his still insistent erection.
Today was going to be another very long day.
:::::
“There you are, Mrs. Cavish, just the way you like it.” Ianto smiled his most convincing smile, trying to mask his exhaustion as he handed the sweet old woman her usual tea.
“I don't know what I'd do without you, Ianto,” Mrs. Cavish said with a smile. “I just can't get these old bones moving in the morning until I've had a cup of your wonderful tea.”
Ianto nodded, smile still firmly in place. “See you tomorrow, ma'am,” he said.
As Mrs. Cavish walked away Ianto signalled to his co-workers that he was taking a break and quickly fled the cafe.
This job was becoming stifling, like all the others had before it. He had spent the first few months since he woke up, bruised and broken and without a memory of the past four years, living off the substantial savings in his bank account while he healed from his injuries.
The medical bills had been paid for from an account set up in his name by an anonymous source, and as far as the search for his attacker went, the police had given up long ago after months of dead ends. The doctors and police had both told him to simply move on, and so he had tried.
After he had gained most of the mobility back in his broken hand he had somehow found himself recommended for a job as personal assistant to a local judge. That had gone on well enough for a few months, but it had somehow felt wrong, setting up meetings with public officials, cleaning up after him and making sure he got everywhere on time. It had been quiet and simple and lonely.
He had left the judge’s office and joined a team of researchers and archivists at a history museum. For a while that had been fun, easy, but exciting as each new piece of history came in and was analyzed and categorized. But soon the little pieces of history became less exciting, static and boring with their age and uselessness. They were all the same, just broken stories of the past, and it wasn't enough.
So now he was here, over a year since he woke up a lost man, and the best barista in the Mauvais Loup Cafe. But he was growing restless again, and he had no idea what he would do this time. He was starting to wonder if he would ever feel right again.
“Oi, Ianto, g’morning, love.”
Lisa sat down beside him on the bench outside the cafe and playfully punched his arm, her bright smile pushing away some of the gloom that had fallen over him.
“You look awful, love,” she observed, one hand rubbing his arm in sympathy. “Sleep poorly again?”
Ianto nodded and leaned his head back against the brick wall of the cafe.
“That man again?”
Ianto nodded once more. He hadn't told her the nature of his dreams, but he had talked to her about the man he had run into and how he dreamt of him every night.
“You're killing yourself with this, you know,” she said, ruffling a hand through his hair.
He sighed and leaned into her touch, happy to have at least one thing in his life that made sense right now. “I know,” he sighed, running his hands across his face. “I just don't know what to do.”
“Well,” she shrugged, a quiet sort of smile on her face. “Maybe you should try and find him.”
“Where would I even start?”
Lisa stood and stepped towards the front door of the cafe, shrugging again. “I don't know. But you have to do something, Ianto. You can't keep living like this.”
Ianto knew she was right; he had to do something. No one else had been able to help him so he would have to do it on his own. But where to begin?
:::::
There were places that called to him. Places all over the city that seemed bigger than everywhere else. More important. The office building down on Ty-glas road. The bar on St. Mary's street. And for some reason, the wedding boutique downtown. And there were places that filled him with a sick sense of revulsion. The Electro, which he had cherished as a child, and the pizza shop down by the bay.
He had stood outside each building, staring, wondering if answers to his life lay somewhere inside, only to go in and find nothing. No recognition, no memories. Just that same overwhelming sense of emptiness.
But there was one place that drew him in more strongly than all the rest. He had spent more time down at the Bay over the past year than he had at home. He would spend hours there each night after work, wandering the docks or simply staring out at the water, wishing something would trigger a memory.
He was there now; the sun was setting, turning the Bay a burnished summer gold. He had been wandering aimlessly for some time, paying little attention to where he was going. Thoughts of the man from the street had been distracting him again, and he suddenly found himself in a place he had never been before.
There was a staircase to his right, leading up to a set of shops, and the bay to his left. Right in front of him was a dirty little run-down building beneath a plaza deck, nothing more than a faded 'Information' sign tacked to the wall to tell passersby what its use was. Ianto couldn't imagine that anyone actually used it still. The place looked ancient and ill-kept.
As he was contemplating the store front, getting that same knowing feeling he had gotten outside so many other buildings around Cardiff, the door began to open and he could hear voices coming from inside. Something told Ianto that he shouldn't been seen, so he stepped around the shop and pressed his back against the wall on the bay side.
Two women walked out of the building, talking to each other in that tired, familiar fashion of co-workers after a long day on the job as they locked up the shop. One of the women, Welsh with too-big eyes, said something about a rift and the other, petite and Asian, with a London accent, rattled off what sounded like a lot of technical jargon that Ianto didn’t understand any of.
Suddenly, “Did Jack tell you that he ran into Ianto the other day?”
Ianto perked up at the sound of his own name and edged a little closer. The second woman's eyes grew wide as they stared to walk away. “No!”
“Yeah, literally. Ran right into him while we were chasing that Gorgor'osh. Knocked 'em both to the ground.” Ianto had followed them as they walked, staying to the late evening shadows but they weren’t paying attention anyway. They were halfway down the dock now, in a private parking garage.
“What did Jack say?” the second woman asked as she unlocked one of the few remaining cars in the lot. The only other ones still in the garage were a blue hybrid and a large, black SUV at the back.
“Who, Jack? Like he would say anything. Didn't even mention it. I wouldn't even know except the Gorgor'osh doubled back and almost ran right over them. But that's Jack for you. All his secrets. I don't think even Ianto ever really knew him.”
Ianto hoped they would continue, but the conversation stopped there and they both left. But he had a name now, even if it wasn't much to go on. Jack. The man's name was Jack. It was a start, at least.
He was contemplating whether or not he could break into the information building as he left the garage — he doubted the place would have security — when he got so much more than just a name. There, right outside the garage in the dying sunlight, striding down the dock in that same grey military coat was the man he had been looking for for weeks.
He disappeared around a corner and Ianto quickly followed.
:::::
Ianto followed the other man, Jack, doing his best to keep out of sight as he wandered around the bay, almost aimlessly like Ianto had been doing for months. He wandered past shops and through crowds of people, never stopping, just walking on until he finally walked into an alleyway that had an exit on each side but no other people around.
Ianto walked unconcealed into the alley after him, determined to confront him, to demand answers, when suddenly Jack whirled around, coat flying out around him like some superhero’s cape and grabbed Ianto by the arms. Ianto struggled briefly, but stopped when he realized that he wasn't actually afraid.
Jack's hands tightened around his arms like they had that day on the street, but instead of the anger Ianto was expecting to see, his eyes held a sad sort of desperation. Ianto was about to speak, to ask all the questions that had been building in him over the past year, but Jack cut him off.
“Let it go, Ianto,” he said, all the authority of a man that was used to being obeyed, but his voice wavered just slightly on Ianto's name. “You don't know what you're doing. Just let it go.”
Ianto knocked his hands aside and shook his head. “No,” he said, anger boiling to the surface after so long pent up inside. This was his life and he wanted it back. Who was this man to tell him to let it go? “I want answers. I know you have them.”
Jack sighed and shook his head sadly, turning to walk away, but Ianto grabbed him and pushed him against the alley wall, hands clenched in the lapels of his coat. “Who are you?” he demanded again. “I know that I know you. I know I do! Why won't you tell me?”
“Ianto,” Jack started to say, but Ianto didn't want to hear it, knew it wouldn't be the answers he wanted.
“Four years of my life, Jack!” he shouted. “Four damn years, just gone. Wiped away like they were never there. You have no idea what that's like!”
“You'd be surprised,” Jack growled, grabbed Ianto's wrists and pushing him away. But Ianto held on tight, fingers curling around Jack's arm, stopping him from running again. He wasn't going to let him go, not now.
“What did you do to me, Jack?” Ianto demanded. “Why do I know how to fight? Where did I learn how to handle a gun? Why do I own so many damn suits? I only had one. When I woke up I had a whole damn closet full! Why do I dream about you every night?”
Jack finally looked up at him and his eyes were burning, hard with anger and pain. “I didn't do anything,” he said quietly, hands clenching into fists at his side to stop them from shaking. “You did this to yourself. You chose this, Ianto Jones. Now live with it.”
He pulled out of Ianto's grip and straightened his jacket. And with that Jack turned around and walked out of the alley, leaving Ianto to gape at his retreating back, shocked and even more confused than he had been before.
four
*one year ago*
“Oh, no.”
Tosh's words stopped the argument that had slowly been escalating between Jack and Owen and the two men looked up at her expectantly, waiting for an explanation to her frustrated moan. But she gave no clarification, just turned her computer screen so they could all see the clip of CCTV footage she had brought up.
They watched silently as a familiar figure walked across the quad, bags in hand from the deli down the street. Someone approached Ianto from the side, with no attempt at secrecy or any effort to disguise himself. Ianto stopped in his tracks as the man wrapped a hand around his arm. He struggled briefly, determination in his set shoulders and clenched fists, but grew still when the man pulled a gun from his back pocket.
Ianto placed the bags he was carrying on the ground and silently walked off, his abductor following closely behind. The man looked suspiciously over his shoulder all the while as he ushered Ianto into a white SUV. Tosh stopped the footage when the man drove off, Ianto sitting stoically in the passenger seat.
“This makes, what? Three times now?” Owen asked as he slumped down at his own desk.
“Four, if you count when he took Suzie that day right after New Year’s,” Tosh corrected him, replaying the footage once again while Jack looked over her shoulder.
“He only had her for two minutes,” Owen said, sending his chair spinning lazily. “Bad luck to get hit by a drunk driver when you're trying to kidnap someone.”
Jack sighed and started walking toward his office. “How long ago was that footage, Tosh?” he asked as he ducked inside and grabbed his coat.
“About thirty minutes. I was checking to see where he was since it'd been so long since he left to get lunch.”
Jack nodded and checked the holster at his side for his pistol. “All right then, they'll be back at Anderson's house by now. Owen, grab the retcon; make it strong this time. Let's go collect him.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Sarcastic as usual, but he obeyed.
They had all piled into the SUV, ready to retrieve their missing teammate when Jack's mobile rang shrilly. Looking down at the caller ID, he sighed and put on one of his best 'angry boss' faces. “You're supposed to be vacationing, Gwen. I distinctly remember telling you not to call any of us until you got back.”
A moment passed, the indistinct sounds of Gwen's distress coming through the phone. Jack sighed heavily and smacked the steering wheel in frustration. “What the hell are they doing out there? – All right, fine, we'll be there. – Thirty minutes. – Yeah, bye.”
Jack ended the call, tossing the phone into Tosh's lap, and flipped a u-turn in the middle of the road. “Weevils, about twenty miles outside the city limits. Owen, you remembered to restock the equipment, right?”
“What about Ianto?” Tosh asked, fingers already flying across the keyboard in front of her.
“He’ll be fine. This won't take long.”
:::::
'Won't take long' turned into several hours, half a dozen scratches on Tosh’s leg, and a full case of Weevil suppressant before they were ready to return to the city.
An entire nest of Weevils had migrated into a caravan site near Swansea. It took all four of them, with a little help from Rhys and a lot of retcon for the other campers, to capture all of them and load them into Rhys' mother's camper. All bound up tight and heavily sedated, Rhys and Gwen prepared to drive the creatures back to the city and return them to the Cardiff sewers.
They were just about to head out when Gwen suddenly stopped and looked around, as if searching for something that was missing. “Where's Ianto?” she asked.
Tosh gasped, Owen snickered, earning him a hard smack from Tosh, and Jack growled and kicked a tree. “Damn it, he’s gonna be pissed,” the errant captain sighed.
“Did you leave him behind, Jack?” Gwen demanded, hands on her hips and ready to stand up for Jack’s oft-abused lover.
“Why do you assume I’ve done something wrong?” Jack shifted into a similar position, hands on his hips and all indignation. Tosh and Owen quickly retreated, knowing better than to interfere or stay too near the eye of the storm, and Rhys watched warily from the caravan, looking back and forth between them and the weevils in the back, not sure which posed the greater danger.
Gwen huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Because you’re you, Jack. You always do something wrong.”
“I’ll have you know this has nothing to do with me,” Jack growled, pointing a finger at his irate employee. “Ianto’s been kidnapped.”
Gwen’s eyes grew large and her face red as she started sputtering in outrage. “You – he…what? Jack! Why are you here? Go get him!”
“Relax,” Jack soothed, wrapping an arm around Gwen’s shoulders and steering her toward the caravan. “He does this all the time.”
“Who, Ianto?” Rhys asked, his eyes as wide as Gwen’s. It had been months since he had found out the truth about Torchwood, but the things they saw and did on a regular basis still baffled him.
“No, Guy Anderson.” At the two identical, confused looks he received Jack continued. “He’s a decent enough person. Middle-aged, tech-geek, comes from old money and all that. IQ bordering on genius. But about four years ago his wife was murdered by aliens. We had to retcon him because we were afraid he would go to the press, and this guy has enough clout to be able to convince people what he said was true.
But every now and then he remembers something, or thinks he does, and so he kidnaps a member of Torchwood to try and make them talk. Then we go in, extract our personnel, and retcon him again. It’s sad, really - he just wants an explanation for what happened to his wife, but we can’t give it to him.”
“Is he…dangerous?” Gwen asked.
“No. Never has been. He just wants answers. Tosh, go with them, get that leg cleaned up. Owen and I can handle Anderson.”
Jack ushered the three of them into the vehicle, peering into the back one last time to make sure the Weevils were all still sedated, and sent them on their way.
“Come on, Owen,” he said as the caravan drove off. “Let's go fetch our wayward teaboy.”
:::::
The SUV pulled up outside Anderson's house and Jack slid out of the passenger seat, checking his pistol out of habit. As the fourth go-around with this guy, he knew how this was going to play out. He and Owen would storm in, guns drawn, and Guy would surrender peacefully. They'd calm him down enough to get a drink into him, laden once again with retcon, and he would slip off to sleep and they'd go home, Ianto in tow.
Jack already had Ianto's punishment in mind for having been caught in the first place. Much different, of course, from the previous punishments he had doled out for the same crime. He smiled to himself as he strolled down the driveway, wondering if he could possibly convince Owen to take a cab home.
A tug at his arm drew his attention to Owen. The other man's eyes had gone wide and he was pointing at the front of the house, his other hand tightening around Jack’s wrist. Jack looked to where he was pointing and stumbled to a halt.
The front door had swung open to reveal a triangle of light that illuminated a desolate, broken silhouette in the doorway. It took Jack a moment to recognize the huddled, shaking figure, so different from its normally strong and stoic stance. And then he was running for the door, swallowing his fear as he wrapped his arms around Ianto's bare shoulders.
He was naked to the waist, his belt, shoes and socks removed as well, leaving him vulnerable in a way Jack couldn't explain. His face was covered in bruises, and blood soaked into Jack's clothes from the wounds on Ianto's hands and chest that still steadily bled. Jack recognised all too well the look of a purposefully inflicted knife wound.
“Owen, get the medical kit, now!” Jack shouted over his shoulder. Owen stared, wide-eyed and unmoving for just a moment before running back to the SUV.
“Ianto, what happened?” Jack demanded softly, releasing the other man just long enough to pull off his coat and wrap it around Ianto's shoulders.
Bright blue eyes looked up at Jack from behind bruises and blood, and the sight made Jack's heart break. One hand was held close to Ianto's body; Jack could see the swelling in his fingers even in the dark, and the other was wrapped so tightly in Jack's shirt that the seams threatened to split. Jack wanted to kill the man that had done this. Slowly. Wanted to extract the price of each wound, each drop of blood Ianto had shed, tenfold.
But then Ianto spoke and Jack felt like the world stopped spinning.
“Where were you?” Ianto demanded, painful accusation tainting his beautiful voice.
Jack didn't know what to make of that, didn't know how to respond to the bitter truth that, yes, this was his fault. “I – I don't...Gwen called, and –”
Ianto made a sound, a broken sound, like he had taken a fatal blow, and pushed away from Jack. “You were with Gwen?”
The pain in those words was agonizing; the look in his eyes the same as when Jack had told him to kill the woman he loved: ultimate betrayal.
Ianto leaned over, nearly collapsing to the ground as his strength waned, and braced his good hand on one knee. His whole body was shaking as he whispered 'oh, God' over and over again.
Chest heaving in deep, panicked breaths, he was breaking before Jack's eyes.
Jack reached for him, wanting to fix it, needing to make it better, but his fingers barely grazed the dark wool of his coat when Ianto pushed him away, stumbling several paces before falling to his knees, exhausted.
Owen ran to his side, medical kit under one arm, and carefully lifted Ianto to his feet. Ianto pulled away from him with what strength he had left and flipped the coat off his shoulders, thrusting it back into Jack's arms. “I needed you!” he shouted, body trembling in anger and pain as his hands pushed Jack back a step. “I fucking needed you, Jack! And you weren't here.”
Tears slid from Ianto's bruised eyes and Jack watched helplessly as he limped back to the SUV without another word.
:::::
Jack shifted the papers on his desk again and tried not to look at the clock. He had spent the last hour standing at the window in his office watching the medical bay as Owen stitched up the gashes on Ianto's chest and arms, Ianto's words ringing through his mind.
Where were you? So accusing. I needed you.
A knock on the door drew his attention. He wanted it to be Ianto; needed to see again that his failure hadn't cost more than a few bruises and a little blood. But it was Owen, looking solemn and holding a white folder.
“How is he?”
A deep sigh, the slap of paper on Jack's desk, and Owen was leaving again. “He'll live. I'm gonna go help Tosh fabricate a break in at Anderson's home.”
A fake break-in to cover up the real reason behind Guy Anderson's death.
They hadn't bothered bringing the body back to autopsy. The grim, red handle of the knife sticking out of his chest had been more than enough evidence of how he had died. It didn't make Jack feel any better knowing that the blood on the knife's handle was not Guy's, but Ianto's.
Anderson's death, he knew, was his fault.
Jack stared down at the papers Owen had left on his desk, eyes scanning the short, clinical description of Ianto's injuries. Multiple knife wounds, requiring stitches; minor concussion; broken fingers; bruises and contusions too numerous to catalogue, including finger-shaped bruises around his throat.
The door opened while Jack was reading and he looked up, expecting to see Owen again. He found Ianto instead, standing stiff and precise, his spare suit immaculately clean. If not for the bruises that glared out from beneath his stiff white collar or the wrapped fingers held protectively in front of him, no one would ever have guessed what had happened only hours ago.
“I'm done, Jack,” Ianto said, placing a new white folder beside the one Owen had left. The untidy scrawl across the front simply read 'Incident Report'. Jack picked it up and placed it with Owen's, nodding absently.
“Good. Good,” he said, tidying the debris on his desk, feeling a coward for not being able to look his lover in the eye. “Go home, get some rest. I don't want to see you here tomorrow, alright?”
For a moment neither of them said anything, Jack busying himself with nothing, Ianto standing stiffly at the door. Ianto repeated himself, “I'm done, Jack.”
Then, “For good.”
Jack looked up then, confused. “What – I don't–”
But when Ianto opened his unbandaged hand and Jack saw the tiny, white capsule in his palm, he understood and his heart broke for it. “Don't be ridiculous,” Jack said, voice wavering slightly as he stood from his desk. “You're not going to do that.”
Ianto's fingers curled around the pill and he turned away from Jack, shoulders stiff. “Fine. Don't say goodbye.”
He began to limp back towards the door but Jack moved quickly, blocking the exit and grabbing him by the shoulders, ignoring the wince of pain he caused. “I'm not saying goodbye because you're not leaving,” he hissed, fingers loosening but not letting go. He was not going to let go.
“I am leaving, Jack,” Ianto said calmly, ignoring Jack's hands, like they had never meant anything at all. Like they had never dressed his wounds or caressed him while he slept. “I told you, I'm done. With all of this. With the pain, and the fear, and everything else. We protect everyone in the world, Jack, but there's never anyone to protect us. And I'm done.”
Ianto moved to step away from Jack, but Jack followed, holding on tighter, denying with every fibre of his being the words that were coming out if his lover's mouth. “No. No, you're not doing this. You're being rash,” he said, pushing at Ianto's shoulders, trying to move him over to the couch. “You're going to go home, and you're going to sleep, and in the morning everything will be better.”
Ianto stopped struggling as Jack manoeuvred him, but Jack could still feel the tension in his body, knew that he was just waiting for the right moment. “No, Jack, it won't,” he sighed, fingers curling tighter around the pill in his hand, eyes blazing. “It won't be better. It won't stop hurting. None of it will, because it never does. It never does, Jack, and you know that better than anyone.”
Jack didn't reply, didn't know what to say, and Ianto's eyes grew sad and cold. “Goodbye, Jack,” he said quietly, slipping out of Jack's hold.
But Jack wasn't going to let him get away that easily. He stopped him again, arm crossing over the open doorway to block his path and this time Ianto looked angry. “I’m not letting you do this,” Jack said. “I’m not letting you throw away your life.”
“What are you going to do, Jack, lock me in the vaults?” Ianto asked, weary now.
“Maybe.”
Ianto rolled his eyes and moved away from him, glaring out the windows into the centre of the Hub. “Fine, Jack, you do that. Throw me in the vaults. But you’ll have to let me out sometime, and you can’t watch me forever. Once your back is turned, I’ll do it anyway.”
Jack blanched at that, the words all too familiar. The last time someone had said that to him, he had spent an hour holding John’s hand while he died.
“You're just going to let it all go?” Jack asked, desperate now that he realised Ianto was serious. He was really leaving. For good. And Jack wouldn’t – couldn't – let that happen.
“The last four years of your life,” he continued. “Everything you've done, everything you've become. All those memories. You're just going to let them all go? You're going to forget Torchwood? You'd forget Lisa?”
Me? His heart screamed inside his chest. You'd forget me?
And he saw it in Ianto's eyes, those words Jack couldn't bring himself to say. He knew before Ianto spoke that, yes, he would forget.
“There are too many things about Torchwood that I don't want to remember,” Ianto said, nothing in his beautiful eyes but goodbye.
When he walked past, Jack let him go, his heart breaking, something he never thought Ianto would do.
Jack watched numbly from his office as Ianto hugged Tosh goodbye, handing her a small silver disk and giving her instructions as she cried. “It'll take care of everything,” he said. Jack watched as Ianto shook hands with Owen, the doctor stony and silent, never good with words or emotions, even before he died. Jack watched as Ianto picked up a small duffle bag from the floor and turned toward the hallway that led to the garage. “Tell Gwen–” Ianto said. “Well, just tell her goodbye.”
Jack watched as he walked away.
Continued...
Click Here For Second Part
Author Name:
callmerayrayRecipient:
the9thdoctorPairing: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, mentions of past Ianto/Lisa
Summary:It had been a year since Ianto had woken up in a flat he didn’t recognize, beat to hell and with no memories of the previous four years. He had made little progress with his life since then, but he preferred it that way.
Rating: R-ish
Disclaimer: Santa Claus has yet to leave them under my tree, so no, no they are not mine. Here's hoping for next year.
Warnings: Minor OOC-ness, but we're blaming that on distress. And somewhat AU. Timeline wise this story would fit after ‘Something Barrowed’, but then it veers off as if the events in ‘Fragments’ and ‘Exit Wounds’ never happened.
Word Count: 14,500
Author's Notes: I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you were looking for, but sometimes my brain runs off without me and does things without my permission. This is the results. I hope you like it. And a big thanks to my beta, for doing an excellent job slugging through all my muck, and for calling me on all my cliches. Lastly, title taken from the song ‘Skin Deep’ by the fabulous Melissa Etherigde.
Beta:
don’t give your heart and soul (my love is only skin deep)
one
Ianto walked down the street, watching the shop windows idly, his left hand held protectively close to his body. It had been months since his physical therapy had ended, but it had become reflex during the long healing process to protect the fragile bones that had been shattered.
Lisa Miller, co-worker and only friend, walked beside him, bumping his shoulder every now and then. She had started working at the cafe he was employed at just before he had. She was perpetually cheerful, three years his junior and pretty in a sweet sort of way. She was a good friend and he wasn't quite sure why he had never asked her out; he just knew that every time he thought about it something held him back, telling him it was wrong.
It had been a year since he had woken up in a flat he didn’t recognize, beat to hell - then bandaged up again – and with no memories of the previous four years. He had made little progress with his life since then. Succeeding only in returning himself to a healthy, if somewhat scarred, state. He worked a dead end job, lived alone, and had only Lisa and his mother for company.
But he preferred it that way.
Despite what his doctors, the police, his mother, Lisa, and the strange little woman with nine cats who lived next door to him said, he could not move on. He could not pick up and start his life anew when he believed whole-heartedly that his life was still out there somewhere, waiting for him to remember it.
And he would remember, eventually; he had to. Because he didn’t know how much more of this he could take.
Lisa was chattering on at his side about something, work, or something else he should care about, but he wasn’t listening and she gave no indication that she cared. So he kept on walking, half paying attention and trying not to scan the faces in the crowd. He wouldn’t know them.
They reached a cross-section and he started forward, but Lisa pulled him to the right, indicating a posh little shop tucked away on the next street. “Let’s get you a new suit,” she said, curling her hand in his and dragging him along.
“I don’t even wear them anymore,” he protested, but he followed her obediently nonetheless.
While he looked at ties that he wasn’t going to buy, she looked at jewellery that she would never wear. An ancient little man with a pin cushion strapped to his wrist kept trying to take Ianto’s measurements, and Lisa kept coughing behind her hand to hide her laughter as she casually suggested colour tones.
“You’re not helping,” Ianto hissed. The little man jabbed a pin into his hip, making him yelp in surprise.
“I’m not trying to,” she laughed. “You need a little fun in your life, love.”
“I have fun,” Ianto groused, warding off another jab from the pin-wielding old man.
The man’s equally tiny and ancient wife wandered over at one point, leaving the other customers to tut over the two of them. She asked when the date was and Ianto’s eyes grew wide. He stammered out a protest, which just made Lisa laugh harder.
Suddenly Lisa’s laughter was overpowered by a piercing scream at the front of the store. Ianto whipped around to see a man wearing a dark mask push his way to the middle of the store where they all stood. He had a gun in one hand, waving it wildly while the patrons screamed.
He barked out an order, wanting the old man to open the register, but the shop owner had gone pale, his body shaking itself apart as he stared at the robber and held his wife close.
The man turned the gun on Lisa then, holding it close to her face, and she was shaking too.
“You do it!” he shouted, cocking the gun. “Get the money!”
But she couldn’t move, her body frozen as she stared down the barrel of the gun. Wide eyes turned to look at Ianto, begging for help. Begging for –
Hold me, Ianto. Please. I need you to hold me.
Three swift moves and the man was against the wall, Ianto's left hand pinning him to the rough brick, while the other held the robber's gun, cocked and ready to fire if he moved. Everything went deadly silent and the other people in the shop stared at him, mouths agape. Lisa was wide-eyed beside him, one hand over her mouth as she looked back and forth between him and the robber.
Then the people erupted into sound, cheering for him, their hero, as two policemen raced in from outside. One handcuffed the robber while the other carefully took the gun from Ianto's hand. Customers and employees jostled each other to get to him, patting him on the back and speaking multitudes of thanks. The little old man shook his hand with a surprising grip like steel. One of the policemen tried to ask him questions, but Ianto didn't notice any of them.
He kept staring at the wall, where he had held the man down, face pressed against the paint, and it all felt wrong. He felt scared. Angry. Betrayed. He felt the muzzle of a gun at his own temple; the press of cold stone at his cheek.
And he knew that what he was feeling wasn't here, wasn’t now. It belonged to someone else. A different person. A different life.
Lisa wrapped a hand around his elbow and pulled him away from the wall, away from his thoughts. He looked up to see the robber being pushed into a police car and patrons being interviewed. The whole thing felt stifling, the room too small.
While everyone was busy telling their tales, he slipped out the back, casting a fleeting glimpse back at Lisa before he started to run.
:::::
“Maybe you were special ops.”
Lisa strolled into his kitchen with a smile, carrying beer in one hand and a large pizza in the other. “I figured you wouldn't want to go anywhere tonight, even though half of Cardiff wants to buy you a round,” she said as she began opening his cupboards to get plates.
Ianto watched her from the living room, door still open, not really listening to what she was saying. His mind was still reeling with what had happened earlier.
“No, really,” Lisa went on, handing him a plate and a bottle and shutting the door for him. “What if you are? Secret services, I mean. What if they wiped your mind like in the Bourne movies?”
She plopped down on the sofa, talking around a mouthful of cheese and tomato sauce, and turned to him expectantly. “That would explain that little bit of kung-fu you pulled today. And also, Kieran told me about that time the computer system crashed at work, and you hacked back into it like some sort of tech genius. What was that, your second day on the job? It would explain everything.”
Ianto sighed and finally sat down beside her, biting absently into the pizza as he stared at the wall. Lisa nudged him with her foot and gave him a bright, sad smile. “It's not all that bad, is it?” she asked, toes wiggling against his on the floor. “Your life. It's not all bad. Is it really so necessary to find all these answers?”
Ianto shook his head and discarded his plate on the coffee table. “It's – it's hard to explain. I know I should be happy. I know I should just… move on. But I can't. I can't let it go, Lisa. Because I feel like if I do I'll lose something. Something important. Like I'll stop being me.”
He turned to her, needing her to understand; needing someone to understand. But she didn't.
He didn't blame her for that; didn't think any less of her for it. How could he expect her to know what it was like to look in the mirror and see nothing?
It was like there was just a gaping hole where he should be. He walked and talked and made it through every day, but he didn’t know how. He didn’t know why.
He didn’t know how he had stopped that man. Didn’t know how his hands had moved, how his body had done what it did. He couldn’t show you if you asked him. He couldn’t tell you how to hold a gun; how to cock the barrel or steady the grip, but he had held a gun to a man’s head today, his finger on the trigger, ready to kill. Was he a killer? Was that what was in his blood?
Last week he had hacked into UNIT’s databases, just because he could. Another of those things he knew but didn’t know. He could do it again, if he wanted to, but he couldn’t teach someone else because he didn’t know what he was doing. Like his fingers belonged to someone else as they moved across the keyboard.
He hated not knowing himself.
But he hated more not knowing the people on the street. He used to look at each face he passed, every day, wondering if they knew him, if he would see recognition in their eyes. He used to watch crowds of people, hoping to see a familiar face.
Sometimes he thought he had. Sometimes a person would catch his eyes across the street or on the other side of a plaza and he would go after them, only to be left standing alone on a street corner with crowds of nameless people pushing past. He’d stopped looking long ago.
Ianto sighed and tried to stop thinking, tuning instead into Lisa’s soft chatter. She had been talking while he wallowed in self-pity, all the while knowing he wasn’t listening to a word she said. But silence would be awkward and to be alone would be worse. He was tired of being alone.
He smiled at her, grateful for her company and kind words, and she smiled back knowingly. “You’ll be alright, Ianto Jones,” she said at last. “You’re just that kind of guy.”
He tried to believe her.
two
“Where's Aimee gone, then?” Gwen asked as she fiddled with the coffee machine. “I haven't seen her all day.”
“Gone,” Tosh said, dumping a few spoonfuls of sugar into her cup.
“Gone gone?”
“Yup. Jack retconned her yesterday.” Gwen rolled her eyes.
“That's, what, three this month? What did this one do?”
“Don't know. Maybe she made bad coffee.” Tosh sighed, glaring at her own bad coffee before dumping her cup into the sink.
“Or good coffee,” Gwen said, sighing in a long-suffering sort of way. “Or she didn't wear a suit, or she did wear a suit. Or she pressed his clothes wrong, or just right. When will Jack just admit that he doesn't want any of them because they're not Ianto?”
“What I want to know is if we're going to be one man down forever. I got used to having five of us on the job, once Ianto got into the field.”
“What I want to know is if he'll find it this hard to replace the rest of us.”
“Well, what I want to know,” Jack said, startling them both. “Is whether or not you two are actually going to work today, or just stand around gossiping about things that are really none of your business anyway.”
Tosh had the decency to look guilty, but Gwen opened her mouth to reply. Jack held up and hand and spoke above whatever she was going to say. “Work. Now. Or I’m going to find it very easy to replace you.”
Both women slipped out of the kitchen area, leaving Jack alone. He stared over at the complicated machine that Ianto had once loved, maybe a little too much, and sighed. He’d give just about anything for a good cup of his coffee right now.
:::::
A few hours later Jack sat in his office, the screen in front of him keyed into the little brick house just outside Cardiff with its perfect little flowerbeds and the black hybrid sitting in the driveway. Ianto had ridden his bike to work today.
The file sitting in front of him he had memorized long ago. He could tell you which words were spelled wrong, how the words slanted differently from the hurried scrawl that filled the green diary inside his desk, and which pages were spotted with blood.
First page, opening line: “Guy Anderson arrived at the Plass at 1400 hours as I was walking back from the cafe. He approached me and threatened me. He had a gun.”
Third page, second paragraph: “He grew angrier each time he returned to the cell. I told him nothing, waiting for Torchwood...”
Bottom of page six: “...gashes across my chest. My fingers were broken. I knew he would kill me if I didn't escape.”
Page after page of the cold, clinical explanation of how Guy Anderson had turned from a grieving husband who just wanted answers to a raving madman, determined to kill to find the truth. Jack didn't know if it was merely the years that had made Anderson change, too many years without answers, too much anger locked inside and festering behind a wall of retcon, or if he had just never had the time to show his true psychosis in the past. And Ianto was the one who had suffered for it.
There was movement on the screen. Jack looked up from the report, but it was just a neighbour boy kicking a football along the sidewalk. He shifted the file to the one beneath it.
Owen's file: handwriting surprisingly neat for a doctor, and the images of Ianto's injuries. There were the gashes on his chest that had scarred. The bruises on his jaw and around his eyes. The long, elegant fingers that had once pieced back together alien technology to save the woman he loved and had always known exactly where to press to release the tension in Jack's tightly wound muscles.
They were swollen and bruised in the picture, blood seeping out where broken bone had sliced through thin skin. It had taken him five months to regain full mobility. The doctors had predicted at least a year.
Jack heard someone approach his office and quickly swept the files into his desk, creased white paper covering up the box that held the pictures of his past. Gwen knocked, then slipped her head inside, eyes filled with veiled concern.
“Jack,” she said, in that infuriating, pitying tone they all used when they caught him looking at Ianto's files. “There's, um, an alien sighting downtown. Hasn't hurt anyone, but it's causing a lot of property damage. And the people are getting into an uproar, saying it's some sort of genetic mutant from that testing lab outside the city. Do you want us to...” she trailed off.
“No.” Jack stood and reached for his coat, tried not to think of a time when it would have already been waiting for him, held out by strong hands for him to slip into and run off. Like always. “I'll come with you.”
Jack cast one last look at the screen, the peaceful little house still quiet in the early evening light, and headed out to do the job that just hadn't felt the same over the past year.
:::::
The creature had run, of course. And they had chased it, of course.
Through alleys and into shops, and between cars that all honked until they got a good look at what was running past their bumpers. Jack hadn't realized where the thing had taken them until it was too late, hadn't seen the man in front of him until they were both sprawled across the cobblestones, six feet of impeccably dressed Welshman lying on top of him.
It took just an instant, a moment of weakness that Jack couldn't stop, where their eyes met and he thought, please. And then suddenly his wish came true and there was recognition in Ianto's eyes and Jack remembered that he didn't want that, not really. Not when Ianto was safe and happy and not tormented with visions of the past or of a lover that couldn't love him the way he deserved.
Jack pushed Ianto away from him, helped him to his feet because Ianto didn't do undignified very well, and then spun away, coat flying as he tried to run.
Strong hands on his arm spun him back around and Ianto's wide blue eyes were looking him up and down, full of confusion and hope. Fingers curled around his coat sleeve, and Ianto was so desperate, so determined, so painfully hopeful it could have been that day all over again; on the dock with the most amazing cup of coffee in one hand and Ianto begging him for a chance.
“Do I – do I know you?” he asked.
Jack wanted to shout, 'Yes, you know me! You love me – please remember.’
But instead, “No. No, you don't.” And then he turned around, pulled his arm away from Ianto's desperately clinging grasp, and walked away from him. Again.
three
Everything was wrong. So wrong.
He didn't want this; had never wanted this before, but something kept telling him that it was right. That this, this, was everything.
He scrambled for a hold on the desk beneath him as he was pushed back across its surface, slipping on papers and knocking things to the floor. He moved to pick them up, to put things right, but strong hands turned him back, drawing his attention back to where it was supposed to be.
The living hum of an inanimate entity echoed in the background, but the only thing he could concentrate on was the maddening feel of fingertips at his collar, delicately brushing over skin as his tie was undone. His own hands moved to grip broad shoulders; slid down over smooth skin, paused to feel the strong heartbeat beneath his palms. He knew the rhythm of that heart. Knew the body beneath his hands.
He couldn't see him, the man that moved him so easily, that knew exactly where to touch to make him gasp and squirm. He was just shadows in the darkness.
His tie slid loose and the buttons of his shirt quickly followed. Hot breath brushed across his ear, carrying words he couldn't quite hear.
Suddenly a siren started blaring, echoing through the room and through his head. Warning lights began flashing, turning the room a ghastly red, but the man above him didn't seem to notice, or care.
But as the lights flashed he could finally see the man that held him so completely, the man that had been haunting him for weeks. Bright blue eyes looked down at him from a face unknown to him outside his dreams, and a smile that held all the secrets of the world seemed to light up the room, overpowering the blaring red glow and blinding him to anything else.
The man leaned down and bit playfully at Ianto's jaw, making him writhe and squirm as his own hands tightened around strong arms that caged him in. Then one of the man's hands was brushing over his chest, tracing his navel and teasing sensitive skin until it slid down, into his pants and wrapped around his aching cock.
Ianto jolted awake with a gasp, hands reaching for a body that wasn't there, and painfully hard. He sat up slowly and put his head in his hands, trying to ignore the barely-there light outside his windows. He hadn't slept right for weeks – longer if he was honest with himself – his dreams plagued by the memory of the man he had run into on the street.
There was something so startlingly familiar about him, something Ianto couldn't place. The man's denial on the street just hadn't sounded true. It had been something in his eyes, in the way his hands had held on so tightly while they were sprawled across the cobblestones.
And because Ianto knew in his heart that he had dreamt of him before. Long before that abrupt meeting. He had never seen his face before that day, those eyes always hidden in the darkness of his dreams, but there was something about his presence, something undeniable. Ianto knew it was him.
Now he just had to figure out who he was.
Ianto rose from the bed with a sigh and wandered over to his closet, brushing aside rows of suits and dress shirts to find his work clothes before heading into the bathroom to take care of his still insistent erection.
Today was going to be another very long day.
:::::
“There you are, Mrs. Cavish, just the way you like it.” Ianto smiled his most convincing smile, trying to mask his exhaustion as he handed the sweet old woman her usual tea.
“I don't know what I'd do without you, Ianto,” Mrs. Cavish said with a smile. “I just can't get these old bones moving in the morning until I've had a cup of your wonderful tea.”
Ianto nodded, smile still firmly in place. “See you tomorrow, ma'am,” he said.
As Mrs. Cavish walked away Ianto signalled to his co-workers that he was taking a break and quickly fled the cafe.
This job was becoming stifling, like all the others had before it. He had spent the first few months since he woke up, bruised and broken and without a memory of the past four years, living off the substantial savings in his bank account while he healed from his injuries.
The medical bills had been paid for from an account set up in his name by an anonymous source, and as far as the search for his attacker went, the police had given up long ago after months of dead ends. The doctors and police had both told him to simply move on, and so he had tried.
After he had gained most of the mobility back in his broken hand he had somehow found himself recommended for a job as personal assistant to a local judge. That had gone on well enough for a few months, but it had somehow felt wrong, setting up meetings with public officials, cleaning up after him and making sure he got everywhere on time. It had been quiet and simple and lonely.
He had left the judge’s office and joined a team of researchers and archivists at a history museum. For a while that had been fun, easy, but exciting as each new piece of history came in and was analyzed and categorized. But soon the little pieces of history became less exciting, static and boring with their age and uselessness. They were all the same, just broken stories of the past, and it wasn't enough.
So now he was here, over a year since he woke up a lost man, and the best barista in the Mauvais Loup Cafe. But he was growing restless again, and he had no idea what he would do this time. He was starting to wonder if he would ever feel right again.
“Oi, Ianto, g’morning, love.”
Lisa sat down beside him on the bench outside the cafe and playfully punched his arm, her bright smile pushing away some of the gloom that had fallen over him.
“You look awful, love,” she observed, one hand rubbing his arm in sympathy. “Sleep poorly again?”
Ianto nodded and leaned his head back against the brick wall of the cafe.
“That man again?”
Ianto nodded once more. He hadn't told her the nature of his dreams, but he had talked to her about the man he had run into and how he dreamt of him every night.
“You're killing yourself with this, you know,” she said, ruffling a hand through his hair.
He sighed and leaned into her touch, happy to have at least one thing in his life that made sense right now. “I know,” he sighed, running his hands across his face. “I just don't know what to do.”
“Well,” she shrugged, a quiet sort of smile on her face. “Maybe you should try and find him.”
“Where would I even start?”
Lisa stood and stepped towards the front door of the cafe, shrugging again. “I don't know. But you have to do something, Ianto. You can't keep living like this.”
Ianto knew she was right; he had to do something. No one else had been able to help him so he would have to do it on his own. But where to begin?
:::::
There were places that called to him. Places all over the city that seemed bigger than everywhere else. More important. The office building down on Ty-glas road. The bar on St. Mary's street. And for some reason, the wedding boutique downtown. And there were places that filled him with a sick sense of revulsion. The Electro, which he had cherished as a child, and the pizza shop down by the bay.
He had stood outside each building, staring, wondering if answers to his life lay somewhere inside, only to go in and find nothing. No recognition, no memories. Just that same overwhelming sense of emptiness.
But there was one place that drew him in more strongly than all the rest. He had spent more time down at the Bay over the past year than he had at home. He would spend hours there each night after work, wandering the docks or simply staring out at the water, wishing something would trigger a memory.
He was there now; the sun was setting, turning the Bay a burnished summer gold. He had been wandering aimlessly for some time, paying little attention to where he was going. Thoughts of the man from the street had been distracting him again, and he suddenly found himself in a place he had never been before.
There was a staircase to his right, leading up to a set of shops, and the bay to his left. Right in front of him was a dirty little run-down building beneath a plaza deck, nothing more than a faded 'Information' sign tacked to the wall to tell passersby what its use was. Ianto couldn't imagine that anyone actually used it still. The place looked ancient and ill-kept.
As he was contemplating the store front, getting that same knowing feeling he had gotten outside so many other buildings around Cardiff, the door began to open and he could hear voices coming from inside. Something told Ianto that he shouldn't been seen, so he stepped around the shop and pressed his back against the wall on the bay side.
Two women walked out of the building, talking to each other in that tired, familiar fashion of co-workers after a long day on the job as they locked up the shop. One of the women, Welsh with too-big eyes, said something about a rift and the other, petite and Asian, with a London accent, rattled off what sounded like a lot of technical jargon that Ianto didn’t understand any of.
Suddenly, “Did Jack tell you that he ran into Ianto the other day?”
Ianto perked up at the sound of his own name and edged a little closer. The second woman's eyes grew wide as they stared to walk away. “No!”
“Yeah, literally. Ran right into him while we were chasing that Gorgor'osh. Knocked 'em both to the ground.” Ianto had followed them as they walked, staying to the late evening shadows but they weren’t paying attention anyway. They were halfway down the dock now, in a private parking garage.
“What did Jack say?” the second woman asked as she unlocked one of the few remaining cars in the lot. The only other ones still in the garage were a blue hybrid and a large, black SUV at the back.
“Who, Jack? Like he would say anything. Didn't even mention it. I wouldn't even know except the Gorgor'osh doubled back and almost ran right over them. But that's Jack for you. All his secrets. I don't think even Ianto ever really knew him.”
Ianto hoped they would continue, but the conversation stopped there and they both left. But he had a name now, even if it wasn't much to go on. Jack. The man's name was Jack. It was a start, at least.
He was contemplating whether or not he could break into the information building as he left the garage — he doubted the place would have security — when he got so much more than just a name. There, right outside the garage in the dying sunlight, striding down the dock in that same grey military coat was the man he had been looking for for weeks.
He disappeared around a corner and Ianto quickly followed.
:::::
Ianto followed the other man, Jack, doing his best to keep out of sight as he wandered around the bay, almost aimlessly like Ianto had been doing for months. He wandered past shops and through crowds of people, never stopping, just walking on until he finally walked into an alleyway that had an exit on each side but no other people around.
Ianto walked unconcealed into the alley after him, determined to confront him, to demand answers, when suddenly Jack whirled around, coat flying out around him like some superhero’s cape and grabbed Ianto by the arms. Ianto struggled briefly, but stopped when he realized that he wasn't actually afraid.
Jack's hands tightened around his arms like they had that day on the street, but instead of the anger Ianto was expecting to see, his eyes held a sad sort of desperation. Ianto was about to speak, to ask all the questions that had been building in him over the past year, but Jack cut him off.
“Let it go, Ianto,” he said, all the authority of a man that was used to being obeyed, but his voice wavered just slightly on Ianto's name. “You don't know what you're doing. Just let it go.”
Ianto knocked his hands aside and shook his head. “No,” he said, anger boiling to the surface after so long pent up inside. This was his life and he wanted it back. Who was this man to tell him to let it go? “I want answers. I know you have them.”
Jack sighed and shook his head sadly, turning to walk away, but Ianto grabbed him and pushed him against the alley wall, hands clenched in the lapels of his coat. “Who are you?” he demanded again. “I know that I know you. I know I do! Why won't you tell me?”
“Ianto,” Jack started to say, but Ianto didn't want to hear it, knew it wouldn't be the answers he wanted.
“Four years of my life, Jack!” he shouted. “Four damn years, just gone. Wiped away like they were never there. You have no idea what that's like!”
“You'd be surprised,” Jack growled, grabbed Ianto's wrists and pushing him away. But Ianto held on tight, fingers curling around Jack's arm, stopping him from running again. He wasn't going to let him go, not now.
“What did you do to me, Jack?” Ianto demanded. “Why do I know how to fight? Where did I learn how to handle a gun? Why do I own so many damn suits? I only had one. When I woke up I had a whole damn closet full! Why do I dream about you every night?”
Jack finally looked up at him and his eyes were burning, hard with anger and pain. “I didn't do anything,” he said quietly, hands clenching into fists at his side to stop them from shaking. “You did this to yourself. You chose this, Ianto Jones. Now live with it.”
He pulled out of Ianto's grip and straightened his jacket. And with that Jack turned around and walked out of the alley, leaving Ianto to gape at his retreating back, shocked and even more confused than he had been before.
four
*one year ago*
“Oh, no.”
Tosh's words stopped the argument that had slowly been escalating between Jack and Owen and the two men looked up at her expectantly, waiting for an explanation to her frustrated moan. But she gave no clarification, just turned her computer screen so they could all see the clip of CCTV footage she had brought up.
They watched silently as a familiar figure walked across the quad, bags in hand from the deli down the street. Someone approached Ianto from the side, with no attempt at secrecy or any effort to disguise himself. Ianto stopped in his tracks as the man wrapped a hand around his arm. He struggled briefly, determination in his set shoulders and clenched fists, but grew still when the man pulled a gun from his back pocket.
Ianto placed the bags he was carrying on the ground and silently walked off, his abductor following closely behind. The man looked suspiciously over his shoulder all the while as he ushered Ianto into a white SUV. Tosh stopped the footage when the man drove off, Ianto sitting stoically in the passenger seat.
“This makes, what? Three times now?” Owen asked as he slumped down at his own desk.
“Four, if you count when he took Suzie that day right after New Year’s,” Tosh corrected him, replaying the footage once again while Jack looked over her shoulder.
“He only had her for two minutes,” Owen said, sending his chair spinning lazily. “Bad luck to get hit by a drunk driver when you're trying to kidnap someone.”
Jack sighed and started walking toward his office. “How long ago was that footage, Tosh?” he asked as he ducked inside and grabbed his coat.
“About thirty minutes. I was checking to see where he was since it'd been so long since he left to get lunch.”
Jack nodded and checked the holster at his side for his pistol. “All right then, they'll be back at Anderson's house by now. Owen, grab the retcon; make it strong this time. Let's go collect him.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” Sarcastic as usual, but he obeyed.
They had all piled into the SUV, ready to retrieve their missing teammate when Jack's mobile rang shrilly. Looking down at the caller ID, he sighed and put on one of his best 'angry boss' faces. “You're supposed to be vacationing, Gwen. I distinctly remember telling you not to call any of us until you got back.”
A moment passed, the indistinct sounds of Gwen's distress coming through the phone. Jack sighed heavily and smacked the steering wheel in frustration. “What the hell are they doing out there? – All right, fine, we'll be there. – Thirty minutes. – Yeah, bye.”
Jack ended the call, tossing the phone into Tosh's lap, and flipped a u-turn in the middle of the road. “Weevils, about twenty miles outside the city limits. Owen, you remembered to restock the equipment, right?”
“What about Ianto?” Tosh asked, fingers already flying across the keyboard in front of her.
“He’ll be fine. This won't take long.”
:::::
'Won't take long' turned into several hours, half a dozen scratches on Tosh’s leg, and a full case of Weevil suppressant before they were ready to return to the city.
An entire nest of Weevils had migrated into a caravan site near Swansea. It took all four of them, with a little help from Rhys and a lot of retcon for the other campers, to capture all of them and load them into Rhys' mother's camper. All bound up tight and heavily sedated, Rhys and Gwen prepared to drive the creatures back to the city and return them to the Cardiff sewers.
They were just about to head out when Gwen suddenly stopped and looked around, as if searching for something that was missing. “Where's Ianto?” she asked.
Tosh gasped, Owen snickered, earning him a hard smack from Tosh, and Jack growled and kicked a tree. “Damn it, he’s gonna be pissed,” the errant captain sighed.
“Did you leave him behind, Jack?” Gwen demanded, hands on her hips and ready to stand up for Jack’s oft-abused lover.
“Why do you assume I’ve done something wrong?” Jack shifted into a similar position, hands on his hips and all indignation. Tosh and Owen quickly retreated, knowing better than to interfere or stay too near the eye of the storm, and Rhys watched warily from the caravan, looking back and forth between them and the weevils in the back, not sure which posed the greater danger.
Gwen huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. “Because you’re you, Jack. You always do something wrong.”
“I’ll have you know this has nothing to do with me,” Jack growled, pointing a finger at his irate employee. “Ianto’s been kidnapped.”
Gwen’s eyes grew large and her face red as she started sputtering in outrage. “You – he…what? Jack! Why are you here? Go get him!”
“Relax,” Jack soothed, wrapping an arm around Gwen’s shoulders and steering her toward the caravan. “He does this all the time.”
“Who, Ianto?” Rhys asked, his eyes as wide as Gwen’s. It had been months since he had found out the truth about Torchwood, but the things they saw and did on a regular basis still baffled him.
“No, Guy Anderson.” At the two identical, confused looks he received Jack continued. “He’s a decent enough person. Middle-aged, tech-geek, comes from old money and all that. IQ bordering on genius. But about four years ago his wife was murdered by aliens. We had to retcon him because we were afraid he would go to the press, and this guy has enough clout to be able to convince people what he said was true.
But every now and then he remembers something, or thinks he does, and so he kidnaps a member of Torchwood to try and make them talk. Then we go in, extract our personnel, and retcon him again. It’s sad, really - he just wants an explanation for what happened to his wife, but we can’t give it to him.”
“Is he…dangerous?” Gwen asked.
“No. Never has been. He just wants answers. Tosh, go with them, get that leg cleaned up. Owen and I can handle Anderson.”
Jack ushered the three of them into the vehicle, peering into the back one last time to make sure the Weevils were all still sedated, and sent them on their way.
“Come on, Owen,” he said as the caravan drove off. “Let's go fetch our wayward teaboy.”
:::::
The SUV pulled up outside Anderson's house and Jack slid out of the passenger seat, checking his pistol out of habit. As the fourth go-around with this guy, he knew how this was going to play out. He and Owen would storm in, guns drawn, and Guy would surrender peacefully. They'd calm him down enough to get a drink into him, laden once again with retcon, and he would slip off to sleep and they'd go home, Ianto in tow.
Jack already had Ianto's punishment in mind for having been caught in the first place. Much different, of course, from the previous punishments he had doled out for the same crime. He smiled to himself as he strolled down the driveway, wondering if he could possibly convince Owen to take a cab home.
A tug at his arm drew his attention to Owen. The other man's eyes had gone wide and he was pointing at the front of the house, his other hand tightening around Jack’s wrist. Jack looked to where he was pointing and stumbled to a halt.
The front door had swung open to reveal a triangle of light that illuminated a desolate, broken silhouette in the doorway. It took Jack a moment to recognize the huddled, shaking figure, so different from its normally strong and stoic stance. And then he was running for the door, swallowing his fear as he wrapped his arms around Ianto's bare shoulders.
He was naked to the waist, his belt, shoes and socks removed as well, leaving him vulnerable in a way Jack couldn't explain. His face was covered in bruises, and blood soaked into Jack's clothes from the wounds on Ianto's hands and chest that still steadily bled. Jack recognised all too well the look of a purposefully inflicted knife wound.
“Owen, get the medical kit, now!” Jack shouted over his shoulder. Owen stared, wide-eyed and unmoving for just a moment before running back to the SUV.
“Ianto, what happened?” Jack demanded softly, releasing the other man just long enough to pull off his coat and wrap it around Ianto's shoulders.
Bright blue eyes looked up at Jack from behind bruises and blood, and the sight made Jack's heart break. One hand was held close to Ianto's body; Jack could see the swelling in his fingers even in the dark, and the other was wrapped so tightly in Jack's shirt that the seams threatened to split. Jack wanted to kill the man that had done this. Slowly. Wanted to extract the price of each wound, each drop of blood Ianto had shed, tenfold.
But then Ianto spoke and Jack felt like the world stopped spinning.
“Where were you?” Ianto demanded, painful accusation tainting his beautiful voice.
Jack didn't know what to make of that, didn't know how to respond to the bitter truth that, yes, this was his fault. “I – I don't...Gwen called, and –”
Ianto made a sound, a broken sound, like he had taken a fatal blow, and pushed away from Jack. “You were with Gwen?”
The pain in those words was agonizing; the look in his eyes the same as when Jack had told him to kill the woman he loved: ultimate betrayal.
Ianto leaned over, nearly collapsing to the ground as his strength waned, and braced his good hand on one knee. His whole body was shaking as he whispered 'oh, God' over and over again.
Chest heaving in deep, panicked breaths, he was breaking before Jack's eyes.
Jack reached for him, wanting to fix it, needing to make it better, but his fingers barely grazed the dark wool of his coat when Ianto pushed him away, stumbling several paces before falling to his knees, exhausted.
Owen ran to his side, medical kit under one arm, and carefully lifted Ianto to his feet. Ianto pulled away from him with what strength he had left and flipped the coat off his shoulders, thrusting it back into Jack's arms. “I needed you!” he shouted, body trembling in anger and pain as his hands pushed Jack back a step. “I fucking needed you, Jack! And you weren't here.”
Tears slid from Ianto's bruised eyes and Jack watched helplessly as he limped back to the SUV without another word.
:::::
Jack shifted the papers on his desk again and tried not to look at the clock. He had spent the last hour standing at the window in his office watching the medical bay as Owen stitched up the gashes on Ianto's chest and arms, Ianto's words ringing through his mind.
Where were you? So accusing. I needed you.
A knock on the door drew his attention. He wanted it to be Ianto; needed to see again that his failure hadn't cost more than a few bruises and a little blood. But it was Owen, looking solemn and holding a white folder.
“How is he?”
A deep sigh, the slap of paper on Jack's desk, and Owen was leaving again. “He'll live. I'm gonna go help Tosh fabricate a break in at Anderson's home.”
A fake break-in to cover up the real reason behind Guy Anderson's death.
They hadn't bothered bringing the body back to autopsy. The grim, red handle of the knife sticking out of his chest had been more than enough evidence of how he had died. It didn't make Jack feel any better knowing that the blood on the knife's handle was not Guy's, but Ianto's.
Anderson's death, he knew, was his fault.
Jack stared down at the papers Owen had left on his desk, eyes scanning the short, clinical description of Ianto's injuries. Multiple knife wounds, requiring stitches; minor concussion; broken fingers; bruises and contusions too numerous to catalogue, including finger-shaped bruises around his throat.
The door opened while Jack was reading and he looked up, expecting to see Owen again. He found Ianto instead, standing stiff and precise, his spare suit immaculately clean. If not for the bruises that glared out from beneath his stiff white collar or the wrapped fingers held protectively in front of him, no one would ever have guessed what had happened only hours ago.
“I'm done, Jack,” Ianto said, placing a new white folder beside the one Owen had left. The untidy scrawl across the front simply read 'Incident Report'. Jack picked it up and placed it with Owen's, nodding absently.
“Good. Good,” he said, tidying the debris on his desk, feeling a coward for not being able to look his lover in the eye. “Go home, get some rest. I don't want to see you here tomorrow, alright?”
For a moment neither of them said anything, Jack busying himself with nothing, Ianto standing stiffly at the door. Ianto repeated himself, “I'm done, Jack.”
Then, “For good.”
Jack looked up then, confused. “What – I don't–”
But when Ianto opened his unbandaged hand and Jack saw the tiny, white capsule in his palm, he understood and his heart broke for it. “Don't be ridiculous,” Jack said, voice wavering slightly as he stood from his desk. “You're not going to do that.”
Ianto's fingers curled around the pill and he turned away from Jack, shoulders stiff. “Fine. Don't say goodbye.”
He began to limp back towards the door but Jack moved quickly, blocking the exit and grabbing him by the shoulders, ignoring the wince of pain he caused. “I'm not saying goodbye because you're not leaving,” he hissed, fingers loosening but not letting go. He was not going to let go.
“I am leaving, Jack,” Ianto said calmly, ignoring Jack's hands, like they had never meant anything at all. Like they had never dressed his wounds or caressed him while he slept. “I told you, I'm done. With all of this. With the pain, and the fear, and everything else. We protect everyone in the world, Jack, but there's never anyone to protect us. And I'm done.”
Ianto moved to step away from Jack, but Jack followed, holding on tighter, denying with every fibre of his being the words that were coming out if his lover's mouth. “No. No, you're not doing this. You're being rash,” he said, pushing at Ianto's shoulders, trying to move him over to the couch. “You're going to go home, and you're going to sleep, and in the morning everything will be better.”
Ianto stopped struggling as Jack manoeuvred him, but Jack could still feel the tension in his body, knew that he was just waiting for the right moment. “No, Jack, it won't,” he sighed, fingers curling tighter around the pill in his hand, eyes blazing. “It won't be better. It won't stop hurting. None of it will, because it never does. It never does, Jack, and you know that better than anyone.”
Jack didn't reply, didn't know what to say, and Ianto's eyes grew sad and cold. “Goodbye, Jack,” he said quietly, slipping out of Jack's hold.
But Jack wasn't going to let him get away that easily. He stopped him again, arm crossing over the open doorway to block his path and this time Ianto looked angry. “I’m not letting you do this,” Jack said. “I’m not letting you throw away your life.”
“What are you going to do, Jack, lock me in the vaults?” Ianto asked, weary now.
“Maybe.”
Ianto rolled his eyes and moved away from him, glaring out the windows into the centre of the Hub. “Fine, Jack, you do that. Throw me in the vaults. But you’ll have to let me out sometime, and you can’t watch me forever. Once your back is turned, I’ll do it anyway.”
Jack blanched at that, the words all too familiar. The last time someone had said that to him, he had spent an hour holding John’s hand while he died.
“You're just going to let it all go?” Jack asked, desperate now that he realised Ianto was serious. He was really leaving. For good. And Jack wouldn’t – couldn't – let that happen.
“The last four years of your life,” he continued. “Everything you've done, everything you've become. All those memories. You're just going to let them all go? You're going to forget Torchwood? You'd forget Lisa?”
Me? His heart screamed inside his chest. You'd forget me?
And he saw it in Ianto's eyes, those words Jack couldn't bring himself to say. He knew before Ianto spoke that, yes, he would forget.
“There are too many things about Torchwood that I don't want to remember,” Ianto said, nothing in his beautiful eyes but goodbye.
When he walked past, Jack let him go, his heart breaking, something he never thought Ianto would do.
Jack watched numbly from his office as Ianto hugged Tosh goodbye, handing her a small silver disk and giving her instructions as she cried. “It'll take care of everything,” he said. Jack watched as Ianto shook hands with Owen, the doctor stony and silent, never good with words or emotions, even before he died. Jack watched as Ianto picked up a small duffle bag from the floor and turned toward the hallway that led to the garage. “Tell Gwen–” Ianto said. “Well, just tell her goodbye.”
Jack watched as he walked away.
Continued...
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