Title: Moving Mountains
Author: remuslives23
Characters: Gwen, Ianto, Jack
Rating: PG
Summary: Ianto wants more wine and Gwen wants answers.
Beta: Both dogsunderfoot and eldarwannabe looked this over because I am hopeless at both commas and gen fic.
Prompt: 156 - post-'In The Shadows' (audiobook), a team member learns Tosh's program could not have brought Ianto and Jack back from hell. What happens next?
Notes: If you aren't familiar with the audio book, 'In The Shadows': A taxi driver with a matchbook sends Jack to 'Hell'. The team eventually figure out how it's all been done and Tosh creates a program that can fetch him home, but before it's ready, Ianto sends himself to Hell to forgive Jack for his sins and brings him home. At the end of the story, only Tosh and an OC are aware that it couldn't have been the program that brought Jack back.
Disclaimer: Torchwood characters and universe belong to Russell Davies and the BBC. No money is being made and no copyright infringement intended by this work of fanfiction. Title from a proverb: 'Faith will move mountains'. Ianto's part quote: 'Hell is yourself, and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person" by Tennessee Williams.

Gwen finally found Ianto in the Archives, sitting on the floor in the Ha-Hi section. He had his back against the filing cabinet and a bottle of Toshiko's cheap, nasty (in Gwen's opinion but she was certainly no connoisseur) wine wedged between his thighs.

'Alright, sweetheart?' she asked, plonking herself down beside him without waiting for permission. She knew him. 'Give us some then.'

Ianto's head rolled to the side, and he gazed at her for a long moment before he uncorked the wine and held out the bottle. 'I don't have any glasses.'

'Who do you think you're talking to, Jones?' she retorted, deliberately thickening her Powys accent and getting the smile she'd hoped for in return. She snatched the bottle out of his hand and took a healthy swig, grimacing at the too-sweet aftertaste.

Ianto chuckled and accepted the bottle back. She waited to see if he'd wipe her lipstick mark away before he took another drink and was both pleasantly surprised and a little disturbed that the normally fastidious man didn't.

They sat in silence for several minutes with just the intermittent drip-drip-drip from somewhere below that she dared not explore and the occasional clink of teeth on glass as she and Ianto passed the bottle back and forth.

Finally, it burst from her like a geyser. 'Tosh didn't bring you back.'

Ianto didn't blink. His bland exterior didn't change in any way, but Gwen could feel the sudden tension in him. 'Didn't she?' he murmured, tipping his head back to drain the dregs before carefully placing the wine bottle on the ground between them.

'You know she didn't.'

Gwen gazed at him, wanting answers; the need to know, to understand, burning hot and furious deep inside her. Ianto glanced at her with eyes that were so old, so tired, eyes that had seen too much. She knew he saw her, saw the fire within her, and knew that it would consume her if he didn't extinguish the flames. This wasn't fair, Gwen knew it, asking Ianto - who needed to help, who needed to take care of them - to give answers he didn't want to give, but she needed to know, needed to understand what had happened here today.

Ianto looked down at the empty bottle then sighed. 'Seems like the polite thing to do would have been to bring another bottle with you,' he said before turning away.

'Ianto!'

He exhaled, short and sharp, frustration bleeding through. 'I don't know what you want me to say, Gwen.'

'You went to Hell!' she said, her voice taking on a shrill quality as her agitation increased. 'You went there and you... you brought him back, Ianto. You brought Jack back from Hell.'

'Hell is yourself', he mumbled, and Gwen frowned.

'What does that mean?' She blew her fringe out of her eyes, exasperated with him. 'God, Ianto, you're just as bad as him sometimes with all the cryptic sentences and secrets.'

Ianto shrugged, and Gwen scowled as the slow burn of acrimony suddenly flared in her chest. 'Ianto, Tosh's program wasn't finished. She can't have brought you and Jack back, so how...? What did you do?'

Ianto shook his head - just once, from side to side - then lowered his gaze to the bottle between them. He ran his index finger around the mouth and, despite her pique, Gwen quickly found herself mesmerised by the smooth, circular motion of the elegant fingers.

'I had faith,' Ianto whispered finally, and Gwen blinked in surprise, looking up at his face, now cast in shadows.

'Faith?' she repeated, incredulity dripping from the word. 'That's it? You believed Jack was in Hell and that you could save him so... you did?' She slapped her hand against her denim-clad thigh. 'Come on, Ianto.'

'I believe in Jack,' Ianto replied, his finger still moving concentrically around the rim of the bottle. 'I believe in Jack and Torchwood and, I guess, that was enough.'

'But you believed he was really in Hell,' she pressed, leaning in closer. 'I heard you. You said that if you forgave him...'

'I forgive him every day,' Ianto interrupted, his hand falling away from the bottle. 'Because I have faith in him, in his choices. I forgive him so he can forgive himself.'

Gwen just stared at him. He was so young, but so very damaged. How could he still hope, still believe in things like Heaven and Hell and forgiveness wiping the slate clean? How could he when she had all but given up on it? When her own belief system had been so thoroughly shaken to the core by what she'd seen, what she'd done? This young man was so broken - so very, very broken by Torchwood - yet, he still had faith.

She was conflicted. She wanted to hold him, to fix him. She wanted to hurt him, to pummel him until he told her the trick he'd used to bring Jack back, until he told her that she had been right to let go of herself, to let go of her childish notion of seeing her loved ones again one day. She wanted him to tell her it was nothing but darkness. She wanted him to tell her there was something waiting for them that made this all worth it.

'You brought him back from Hell,' she whispered tremulously. 'Ianto, that is...' She bit her lip, thinking, then looked at him sharply. 'You hated him,' she reminded him. 'He hurt you and you hated him. How could you...?'

'I forgave him, just as he forgave me.'

'Just like that?' she said, doubtfully.

That startled an abrupt laugh from him. 'No, Gwen,' he said in a tone that was slightly patronising and she felt her hackles rise. 'Not just like that, but... eventually.' He closed his eyes and let his head drop back against the filing cabinet. 'I really wish you'd brought some more wine with you.'

A scurrying noise - claws on concrete - broke the thick silence and Gwen shuddered. 'It's nothing,' Ianto murmured, eyes still shut. 'Just mice.'

Disgust contorted her face and she shifted closer to him, her thigh bumping against the wine bottle. Ianto's hand shot out and caught it before it fell and she looked up at him in surprise. He stared back at her as he steadied the bottle then reached across and took her hand.

'I don't know how it worked,' he told her softly. 'I just knew it would.'

'Because you believe?' she asked, twining her fingers with his, the solid warmth reassuring. 'Because you have faith that there is really a Hell and a Heaven? God and the Devil?'

Ianto's brow creased. He gazed down at their joined hands, his thumb stroking over the gentle rise of her metacarpal bones as he thought. Gwen bit her tongue, stilling the questions that crowded her mind, stopping herself from rushing him. She watched his thumb rub back and forth, a callus on the side scratching her skin lightly.

Ianto took a breath and she looked up at him. 'I do,' he answered quietly, desperately, and her heart clenched at the sight of the lines of sorrow, of exhaustion that cut deep into the flesh around his eyes and mouth. 'I have to because if I didn't believe there was something, if I believed Jack and Suzie and their stories about the darkness and the horrors that wait for us there...'

He shook his head slowly and clenched his eyes shut tight. 'I couldn't go on if I believed that there was nothing, if I thought that Lisa was alone there with...'

Gwen squeezed his hand and he choked off the rest of his sentence, giving her a quick, strained smile. He swallowed hard enough for her to hear then said, 'We make our own hell, Gwen. Jack was in his - a hell where we are all dead, where he made the wrong choices, where he was alone, surrounded by ghosts and regrets with no one that loved him enough to save him...'

Her eyes filled with tears when he turned to her, mouth tight with grief. 'And I was in mine - where Jack was gone and I... I couldn't help him.'

A tear spilled, trailing down her cheek as he took a deep breath. 'We make our own hell,' he repeated. 'But we don't have to stay in it forever. We just need someone to believe in us.'

'You rescued him,' she said, more than a little awestruck by her quiet colleague. 'You... saved him from his own personal Hell.'

Ianto shifted uncomfortably. 'All I did was believe in him.'

'You didn't know it would work, though. Ianto, you were so brave,' she murmured. 'I don't... I couldn't have...'

He turned to look at her, his face set in amused disbelief. 'Of course you could have,' he said matter-of-factly.

She sniffed, brushing at the tears she couldn't stop from falling, and shook her head. 'No, I don't...' She took a shaky breath. 'I question him. I don't forgive him for his choices.'

'My faith isn't blind, Gwen. I question him all the time. Not as loudly and publicly as you tend to...' He gave her a fond glance. 'But ultimately, I trust that he does what he believes to be the right thing, and forgive him when can't forgive himself.'

'I don't have the kind of faith that could have saved him,' she whispered. 'Not anymore.'

Ianto ducked his head to make eye contact with her and smiled a smile she'd never seen before. 'But you already did,' he told her with such certainty, such surety. He chuckled at her startled expression. 'Remember Abaddon? You sat there for three days, willing him back to life?'

Her mouth fell open and Ianto rolled his eyes before tapping her chin. She snapped her mouth shut. Ianto lifted her hand and kissed the back of her cool fingers. 'Sometimes, Gwen, you can't fight your way out, you can't question and dig and demand answers. Sometimes, you have to throw everything else away and just believe, just have faith.' He gave her a crooked smile. 'I'd have done it for you, you know? Or Tosh. Don't know about Owen...'

She giggled, tasting salt on her lips.'Really?'

Ianto smiled, a slow spread across his face. 'Yep,' he said, popping the 'p'.

'Because you have faith in us?'

He tugged on her hand, pulling her closer until her head slotted comfortably into the crook of his neck. 'I do.'

She turned her face into his shoulder, silently thanking him for giving her this gift. For showing her that her own faith, though flagging, hadn't been entirely lost to Torchwood.

'You know I'd do it for you, too, don't you, Ianto?' she murmured into his neck.

His cheek twitched up into a smile and he kissed the top of her head. 'Yeah,' he said, voice a little raspy. 'Yeah, I know.'

'Hey, kids,' Jack said quietly from the shadows.

Ianto didn't react - Gwen suspected he had some kind of super-sense and knew where Jack was at all times - but she jumped. There was a low chuckle then Jack stepped out into the light, a strangely open expression on his face. 'I was wondering where my two favourite Welshmen had gotten to.'

'Welsh persons,' Gwen corrected, swiping the back of her hand across her face, sticky and dirty from tears and one hundred years of grime that even Ianto couldn't completely banish.

Jack grinned and bowed his head. 'My apologies,' he said, his gaze flicking from Gwen to Ianto then lingering there. 'It's late.'

Gwen checked her watch then gasped. 'Oh, bugger,' she swore. 'Rhys will be going mental that I haven't called him back.'

She gave Ianto's hand one last squeeze then stood up, letting their fingers slide apart. 'See you tomorrow, sweetheart. And thank you.' He nodded, and she smiled before turning to Jack who opened his arms.

She fell into his embrace, letting his steady heartbeat reassure her before pulling back. 'Don't get yourself sent off to any other dimensions before the morning,' she teased and, although he laughed, it sounded stilted and his eyes were fixed past her, on the figure sitting on the floor.

'I'll be in good hands if I do,' he murmured, and she looked over her shoulder to see the sadness and pain ease from Ianto's face.

'Yeah, you will,' she whispered.

She slipped past Jack and reached the end of the stack before curiosity made her turn. Her hand twitched at her side, ready to wave if they were watching, but it didn't rise. Ianto hadn't moved, but Jack was crouched on his haunches before him, holding out a hand to help Ianto up. There was something inexplicably intimate about the simple offer and she knew they'd both already forgotten about her.

She smiled and hugged herself before setting off home to crawl into bed beside her gorgeous husband.

fin.