Ianto steps forward without his body and looks for his captain.
The sea fills his vision and he breathes in, expecting salt, and nearly gags. He stumbles, coughs, retches, mind reeling. His knees hit the sand and his hand, reaching out to steady him, lands on a corpse. He yells in shock, in horror, throws himself away from the body, the bodies, the beach filled with bodies.
He scrambles to his feet, backs away and trips and what he lands on is just growing stiff from rigor mortis. Standing once more, he stays where he is, doesn't risk movement. The stench of the sun-heated bodies fills his nose, fills up his head, his lungs. He coughs, holds his hand over his mouth, tries to breathe.
All of the bodies have similar wounds, one vivid bloody rent in the breast of each of their dull tunics. He bends down carefully, looks at the face of the woman lying at his feet, the one he'd fallen on. Her features are strangely blurred, her sightless eyes slowly changing in colour and shape as she stares up towards the heavenless sky.
The sea continues to roar throughout, the only source of movement in this barren wasteland. It's the only sound and motion, and then it isn't.
A boy yells.
Ianto turns, sees him. The hoarse, exhausted voice comes from the form of a teenager, a boy of maybe fourteen, maybe fifteen, maybe more. It's difficult to tell from this distance, difficult to tell with the boy's back partially turned. He stoops, kneels for a moment to turn over a small corpse before straightening.
"Gray!" the boy cries, voice breaking; not cracking, breaking. "Gray! Where are you! Gray, please! This isn't funny!"
He can't breathe, but he asks anyway. "Jack?"
As the boy looks up, the world twists and fades away.
.-.-.-.-.-.
Gasping, Ianto nearly falls out of the chair.
"Steady there," Tosh advises as Gwen catches him, holds him by the shoulder. He pulls in shaking breath after shaking breath and air has never smelled so clean, so pristine as it does now.
"You all right?" Gwen questions, looking at him with obvious concern.
He nods hastily, a nonverbal lie. "I found him. I found him; send me back in."
Tosh looks to Owen, the doctor standing at the monitor with two men's vital signs – one comatose with alien venom, one ready to join the other through an alien device. Tosh is the one who knows the device best, who's used it last. "It helped with Tommy," she reminds them all.
Owen nods and the world twists into pieces.
.-.-.-.-.-.
He's ready for it this time, can withstand the blasts of wind-whipped sand and the accompanying stench by willing himself not to feel it, not to smell it. The boy isn't yelling any longer and it takes Ianto a moment to find him in the gale.
A tan-clad form is crouched down low, a cowl over his mouth, goggles over his eyes. He could nearly be part of the beach, part of the desert. The wind dies down and the boy stands, shakes yet another cloud of dust into the gently falling haze of sand.
All the bodies are covered with it, all the blood encrusted with it.
Ianto steps towards him and the boy yells something incomprehensible without looking at him, yells and bolts towards the sea. He follows, has trouble running through sand and over corpses. When he catches up with the boy, they're nearly at the waterline.
The words take on meaning as the boy continues to yell and then Ianto sees it, this hulking creature like a seal or a walrus but altered somehow. It looms over a figure on the sand, head buried in the corpse, a wet snapping noise heard below the boy's shouting against the backdrop of the sea.
Seizing a length of driftwood as he runs, the boy charges forward, bellowing. The animal – creature – alien looks up, gore clutched in a series of mandibles or some grotesque maw. It doesn't so much move backwards or scuttle backwards as slide, as bunch itself up like some giant carnivorous slug. The movement reveals the body beneath it, great rents of flesh torn away.
"Leave him alone!" the boy shouts, brandishing the thick length of wood. He shouts and swears and the words are alien in a human mouth and Ianto knows the thing can't possibly be a vulture, even if that's what the boy seems to have called it. Connotation or mistranslation, he can't be sure.
The creature's maw opens further, the seal-slug swelling in size and making a rattling noise.
The boy advances like a man on a suicide mission and that's what makes Ianto run and reach for his firearm. With a yell, the boy stops his approach, waves the stick and bellows.
Boy and alien stare one another down, the stick held high, the maw opening further. The creature warbles and the boy screams louder, curses at it like a sailor and, slowly, the creature backs away. The boy feigns forward and the thing backs into the sea, backs into the waves, dripping blood and half-chewed flesh into the water.
"Run!" the boy commands, voice weakening. "Go on, run!" He hurls the stick at the creature, lands that blow.
It shrieks a high-pitched whistle and retreats into the waves.
The boy's shoulders shake as he watches it go. His entire body trembles. With the creature gone, he's the only thing on the beach in true focus. No, that's not true. The corpse he stands before, that too is in perfect detail, impressed into unfading memory.
The boy turns at last, turns to see what he's defended. Ianto watches, helpless, as the young face blanches, as the boy retches at the sight and smell.
He stumbles and Ianto moves forward, steadies him by the elbow and is immediately shoved away. The boy stares at him, his reddened eyes wild, his expression a cross of terror and fury.
"Where'd you come from?" the boy demands and if it weren't for the sand stuck to his face in the dried trails of tears, Ianto would have only thought him enraged.
Taking an involuntary step back from those blue eyes, those eyes so young in a face so young, he holds his hands up in an expression of peace, points the firearm into the air – and realizes that's what the boy's reaction is over.
"I'm here to help," he says, as reasonably as he can. "I was sent to find you," he adds softly. "To help."
The boy looks at the gun in his hand, looks at his suit, at his face. "You're late," the boy accuses and those two words seem to encompass the entire beach and all the death upon it.
He's not entirely sure how to go about this, how to break through a memory with such strength as this one seems to have. "I know."
The boy seems to weigh him in his head, watches him with eyes well known and unfamiliar. "The tide's coming in," he says at last, the act of speech obviously paining him. "The further we move them away from the waterline, the less of them that get eaten."
With that, the boy bends down and raises his cowl over mouth and nose before looping his arms under the arms of the deceased man. His feet dig into the sand, his light boots sporting stains. "C'mon," he says impatiently and coughs.
Swallowing, Ianto gets the legs, feels the slime of the creature on the soiled trousers. He lifts and it's a delicate task between the two of them, moving the body without letting it tear in half. They lower it when the boy says to, his knowledge of the high waterline evidently coming into play.
No sooner than they're done with that one then the boy turns back towards the sea, heads back for the next body.
Ianto calls after him, "Is it just you out here?"
The boy turns, looks at him as only a worn teenager can. He nods and then something happens, some abrupt change comes over his features and suddenly, those blue eyes are alive again.
"Is this for the survivor's list?" the boy demands, voice rough, tone desperate. "Is there one yet? I mean, some of them had to make it, didn't they? Have you got a copy?"
Ianto holds his hands up, fails to stop the torrent. "I-"
"Is there a Gray on it? His name's Gray," the boy interrupts, clarifies. "He's that tall and he's still a child. He's got brown hair, curly, light brown – looks like a pipe-scrubber. Oh, blue eyes. Blue eyes and a round face. That tall," he repeats, holding his hand out at a different level than previously before hastily correcting the height.
"I don't-"
"Gray. It's Old Earth and spelled weird, so if they put it down on a list, they might spell it wrong 'cause, I mean, he's little and he- he doesn't- we always just let him use the thought-processor on the link-up, so it's not like-" He coughs again. "He doesn't know how to write yet. He's just- he's a kid." The boy's voice breaks and he coughs again, rasps up choking sand.
Ianto holds him by the shoulders, doesn't register surprise at the slight, still-growing frame beneath his hands. "Breathe," he tells him, bending his knees to look up at that down-turned face. He has no idea what else to say beyond that. "We'll look for Gray," he settles on, uses the strongest voice he has.
The boy nods, screws up his face in the effort not to try and something in Ianto shakes. "I," the boy tries to say and ends up coughing again, his voice barely there at all.
"Breathe, drink something, and then we'll look," Ianto says and then the boy shakes his head, points to the encroaching waterline.
"Have to," he says and the sand on his face darkens in two lines down his cheeks. He pulls away, trudges back towards the water and the corpses in danger of those creatures, in danger of washing away.
Out of more than force of habit, Ianto follows.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They bring him back out slowly this time, let him hover between reality and the captain's reality in the most stomach churning of ways.
" . . . hear me? Ianto, can you hear me?"
He nods his head, lolls his head, physical movement unfamiliar. His skin feels like a long-removed glove, worn in places that he doesn't remember being worn. Forcing his tongue to shape words is difficult, regaining coordination enough to say them even more so. "There was a beach," he manages. "Bodies. Everywhere."
Gwen leans forward, takes Tosh's spot. "Was it D-Day?"
"No." He shakes his head, lolls his head. "Worse."
He can hear something, something that takes a moment to register even as Owen announces, "Tosh, we've got a problem." Machines beep and the captain's body twitches on the table. "It's worse than before. He's having a full-blown panic attack."
"Send me back in."
"Look, Ianto, every time we do," Owen says, "it gets worse. The coma lessens, but that's literally the only good thing about it. If we let him die with his mind like this, I honestly can't say if we'll ever get him back."
"He's alone and he's scared," Ianto counters, speaks of his captain in a way he never dreamed he would. "Send me back in. I'm making progress."
Tosh opens her mouth to join the protest and so he looks to Gwen, looks to the emotional wildcard he knows is on his side.
"I'm helping him," he promises.
He goes back in.
.-.-.-.-.-.
The boy's strong for his age, strong and numb and powerful in his pain. There are trails leading away from the sea, the paths of dragged legs scraping over a teenager's boot print.
Ianto looks at the bodies the boy has moved, has hauled back single-handedly, and these are always the bodies with stable features, with details of face and build that remain the same. Some are clearly human, some are clearly not, and the boy doesn't seem to notice the difference. The corpses they walk by further inland are nigh featureless, Ianto discovers, purposefully looking where the boy doesn't. It rattles his stomach but by now, he's nearly used to the stench.
"You don't have to stay here," he tells the boy.
"I'm not leaving Mom," the boy replies, the only strain in his argument the strain in his voice. He speaks with conviction. "We'll find Gray and then we'll-" His cheeks move oddly as he swallows. "We'll cremate Dad. And then, and then we can . . ."
"Move away from this place," he finishes for him. "You'll be better off for it."
The boy shakes his head. "No. No, you don't get it. We've still got the boat. I'd . . . I'd make a good captain. I could do that." He taps the goggles around his neck as if as proof. "I'm a man of the peninsula."
"Somewhere else," he agrees and puts his hand on the boy's shoulder to make him turn, to make him face him. "Trust me on this."
The boy looks up at him, studies his eyes with a shifting intelligence Ianto couldn't fail to recognize. He felt himself being weighed in some manner he didn't quite understand.
"What do they call it?" the boy asks, tone as soft as his voice is rough, and he stands as if the hand on his shoulder is an accepted thing.
Ianto frowns. "Call what?"
"Your massacre."
He swallows, looks down. Drops his hand. "The Battle of Canary Wharf," he says.
"They're going to call this a battle, too, aren't they?" the boy asks and he sees the man the boy will be, sees the infinite weariness already in those eyes.
"I don't know," Ianto says.
"They are," the boy decides. "They are, because if they don't call it that, it means we're weak."
"It's not all that bad," Ianto tells him, "being weak."
The boy shakes his head, tears coming out from behind his eyes. "Yes it is."
"You're the strongest man I've ever met," he says quietly.
"You should've met my dad," the boy says and then, finally, he cries.
Ianto isn't made for this, isn't the sort of man who copes well with overt signs of grief from others. He does the best he can, gives him an awkward pat on the shoulder. This is his captain. This is his captain as a boy, crying.
He hugs him, and the boy sobs into his lapel, so small, so fragile. Arms both thin and solid press against his chest; hands nearly delicate fist in the front of his suit jacket. The boy shakes, trembles and all Ianto can do is hold him, is to hold him up and hope the support amounts to something.
"I wish I had," he says gently.
"He was- He was always . . . " Perhaps it's failure of voice or of will or of heart, but the boy falls silent.
"I bet he was," Ianto agrees, still soft, still gentle, and that's when the boy pushes him away.
Most of the sand from the boy's face is on his suit now, on his shoulder, leaving the boy splotchy and tan as well as gritty. "I need to find Gray," he says, rubbing at his face with the heels of his hands. "I can't- I'm not going to stop until I find him."
"Jack," he says and the boy looks at him like he doesn't understand.
He shakes his head, moves away, gesturing, his red eyes turning wild once more. "It was this way, c'mon!"
"Jack!"
The boy sprints, impossibly fast across the sand, never looking back. On the edge of panic from the boy's whirlwind of emotion, Ianto chases after, pumps his legs against the shifting surface.
As they run, reality becomes more real, takes on more definite features. The sand still shifts but that's all that does. Something indefinable snaps into place and he thinks they might be back on track for the true memory.
Despite not existing, Ianto's out of breath by the time he catches the boy, panting and winded. Running on sand changes the game and he knows the boy has had practice, possibly all his life thus far to practice. Strangely, the boy seems to have his voice back, as returned to his yelling.
"Gray!" he yells, cupping his hands to his mouth and shouting through them. "Gray, where are you!"
He gets his second wind, asks the obvious question, the one with an answer that he thinks the boy is ignoring. "Have you checked-"
"Every last body," the boy replies, answers before the question is fully asked. "I checked every single one and Gray's not there. He's hiding. He's . . . he's scared and hiding and he needs me to find him."
"There are search parties," he says, assumes, possibly lies. "Come home. People are worried. Your mum," he adds when the boy looks askance at him.
"Mom wants Gray," the boy replies, says it so simply that it must be true. "I have to find Gray." He sniffles after that; doesn't wipe at his face but clench his fists.
There's something tight in his throat, something Ianto can't swallow down. "He's your little brother."
"And I'm gonna find him," the boy tells him, the muscles of his mouth twitching with the effort of keeping his expression as close to neutral as he can.
"What normally happens when- when this happens?" How often, and by what? And what for?
The boy bites his lip, squeezes his eyes shut. "That doesn't matter. They won't have him. I won't let them."
The world twists and bends and stays the same and Ianto sees the boy become too young of a man. The man is with others in the dark, in the cold and dark metal of cells, of a prison camp and the word lieutenant rings through the air as things scream and die and shout flight coordinates to their captors to make the torture stop.
Someone he loves dies, someone he's sworn to protect, someone who knew a joke for every occasion and could drink anything under the table. That someone dies and he doesn't even know who it is, only knows they're gone, they're gone like his brother, further gone because he can't even lie to himself about it because it's his fault, it's still his fault, it'll always be his fault and the boy screams in fear and rage at the futility of his life yet to come.
They stand on the beach once more, the desert waste by the sea. The tide rises and those creatures can be heard crooning in the distance, can be assumed to be feeding once again on the bodies of the dead.
There's blood on the boy's tunic, he realizes at last, on his chest and his forearms. On the legs of his trousers, the rough fabric infused with reddened sand. How many bodies has this boy turned over? How many did he mistake for his brother?
"I'm never going to be helpless again," the boy swears and Ianto hasn't the heart to tell him he's wrong. "Never again."
"That doesn't mean you can't let us help you," Ianto says, reaches out to him mentally with a seemingly physical hand. The boy's eyes hold his gaze, capture it and search for the honesty behind it.
With more doubt than trust, the captain takes his hand.
.-.-.-.-.-.
They wake up together and leave nothing behind.