"Ianto, sleep," Jack mumbled. It was rare that Jack was as exhausted as he was. And Ianto didn't need to be getting up at the ungodly hours he usually did either. It took a moment for Jack to realize Ianto was dreaming. "Come on, Yan. Wake up, just a dream."
Ianto whimpered in his sleep before letting out a pained cry.
"Come on, Ianto, it's a dream. You're fine. Wake up, handsome," Jack said, shaking Ianto gently.
Ianto just cried out again.
"Ok, Yan. Seriously? You gotta wake up for me 'cause that's really starting to bother me." Jack had heard far too many men cry out in pain like that in his life, and even knowing that it was just a dream, that Ianto was safe and sound beside him, didn't help.
Ianto only seemed to shrink into himself and still didn't wake up.
"Ianto!" Jack shouted.
Nothing.
"Wake up," Jack demanded, shaking his lover roughly, all to no avail. "Damn it," he growled, dragging a hand through his hair. Jack sat up and fumbled around his nightstand for his wrist strap. He fastened it and flipped up the flap, pressing a few buttons and running a scan over Ianto.
The scan showed Ianto's vitals were elevated much more than they should have been for a regular nightmare. For a moment, Jack had no idea what was going on, and it terrified him. Then he thought of the large, plain, bullet-shaped object sitting on his desk, waiting to be identified, and Jack's blood ran cold. That was a somnabomb, he'd stake anything on it. And that meant Ianto was its victim.
Jack emerged from his bunker, still half undressed, to get a better look at the shell on his desk and try to figure out how to counter its effects.
"Hello, Jack."
Jack spun around faster than a blink. "Who the hell are you?"
"Oh, how quickly we forget. Of course, you had some help with that."
"How did you get in here?" Jack growled.
"Jack, Jack, Jack. Getting in here was nothing, especially a second time. It was getting out of that nothingness you sent me to. Any of this coming back to you yet, Jack? What about you and your father and brother, Jack?"
Jack glared.
"Oh, yeah. You remember. See, Jack, that's the thing about your pills. They're not perfect, memories come back sometimes. Especially when someone has had training and resistance to them. Someone like our Ianto… or you. Speaking of Ianto, how is he?"
"What did you do to him?" Jack hissed. "I won't just make you disappear this time, I will kill you!"
"You know, Jack, the last time I made the mistake of trying to bribe you with your past. I could see how much you wanted that… oh, you wanted those memories back bad. But I missed the really obvious… kind of tends to be the problem when you live on memory. Those memories were almost 200 years ago. You've started to move on. There's something here right now that you'd go a lot further for, isn't there, Jack? And he is pretty when he's in pain… even when it's all in his head."