Where did no other fic go? Well this is it-just, different!

It took me awhile to get this out, which I'll blame on life and whatnot, but also on season 2 Fragments. It totally screwed my mind, continuity wise: I was like, should I start there, or start season 1 and go along. It was crazy!

So, this will follow production time: season 1 first, the rest to follow.

Oh, and the plot bunny (you'all know which one! Don't worry: this is just a revamping) is still in effect; it'll just take a little time to get there. Oh, and it could be canon! I'll give proof of this next time.

Important: Torchwood does not belong to me, it's Davies and the BBC, and I'm getting nothing by perverse enjoyment from this. Go me!

Into the Rush

Prologue

Ianto always knew he had been different.

The world had always been a different place for him, a place full of beauty and enchantment. For him the colors burned brighter, the sounds were more resonant and clear, and the people more vivid and beautiful. He liked the way the stars sung to him and called him by name, and the way the trees and flowers moved to welcome him and granted him shelter and warmth. He liked watching the people, he liked the way the layers of emotion and thought and intent pulsed around them, searing the air with a silent flame that called to him, and embraced him. He liked they way that the strands of time and dreams seemed to dance around him in patterns of song, how the notes were ever-changing, and how they seemed to silence when he sung their song. These were the things he loved and they were the things that loved him. The universe danced for him and he was happy.

The happiness hadn't lasted long, for as he grew, he noticed that he was the only one shown these things, the only one who understood. The other children laughed and jeered when he spoke of what he saw and knew to be true. At the time he didn't understand why they taunted and hurt him; he was too young to understand that the truth is not always welcome. He didn't yet understand that they were unable to see what he could, he didn't know that their minds could never comprehend what his could. He soon realized that he alone knew these things.

No, that wasn't quite true; his mother knew, as she was kin to him, and they sheltered each other from the unkindness of man. In family he knew that he had been blessed, as he had a mother who knew him and a father who accepted and loved his wife and son regardless of their oddities. His mother told him stories, and listened to his in return; his father marveled at his mind and praised his gifts of insight and imagination.

Ianto learned early that the universe always demands a price for its gifts.

He knew that it was this knowledge, this strange and worldly knowledge, that eventually killed his mother. Over time it had driven her away from the world and into the sanatorium, and then into death. He remembered watching her slowly pull into her own mind, leaving he and his father pleading with her to stay. On the final day of her life, she turned her fathomless gaze to him and said:

"Never love. Love is the great betrayer, and love will always bring death to you."

Despite his pleas her thread had broken and snapped, and half a year later his father's followed. He was alone in the world, with none to speak to, and none who would understand.

And so he grew silent and kept his words to himself, guarding his soul against the world, ever quiet and ever watchful.

Ianto had always known that human did not always mean humanity.

Just out of school he had been bundled up and carried away to the tower of glass and steel and intention, and invited to join their distinguished ranks of Torchwood. Yvonne Hartman was a welcoming woman with cold eyes that were as watchful as his own, and while he smiled, he also feared. But he knew and had always known, that this was where he was meant to be and fitted himself into the ranks without difficulty. He made friends and bonded with his co-workers, accepting invitations and giving them, to parties and clubs and rugby matches. He met a girl, Lisa, who he came to like and who came to like him, and they were happy. He trusted her as best he could and was content in what he had. As the year passed, he realized he was happy.

A voice inside whispered warnings.

Against an unspoken regulation he kept a diary of thoughts, opinions, and details of the tower and what happened there. Over time he noticed his insights weaving a darker and dangerous pattern, and smelled the broken ozone of an unsealed hole, and yet he could not speak, could not let them know. The strands of his life had begun to fray under the weight of the gathering storm.

Lisa knew of his fears, but assured him of the safety of the tower, and in her he saw the arrogance of man, assured of their greatness that they feared nothing. He wanted to press his knowledge upon her, his certainty of doom, yet he had begun to see the same coldness growing in her eyes that existed in Hartman's, and so he waited and watched. Until one day he had been in the archives, buried in artifacts and histories, when the universe screamed and was torn asunder.

Ianto had been torn apart with it.

Afterwards, clawing his way back to consciousness and piecing himself together, he knew that the world he knew was gone.

For the first time he cursed his knowledge, as lives of his friends no longer burned, their deaths coming to him in flashes of insight that left him weeping on the archive floor. And then he heard Lisa's cries, begging him to come to her, to help her, and his bleeding soul obeyed. He would save one life, he swore; he would save just one. He had found her, alone and screaming, and had carried her as best he could away from the reek of death and despair, with the screams still echoing in the air, the promise tattooed onto his very being.

In his state he did not feel her desires twist his own to serves hers. He did not feel the pulsing beat of the universe that screamed WRONG at him. He did not see how time shifted and rearranged, and how the words of his mother would become truth.

Ianto would die twice for love.

He would walk away only once.

I just got my season 1 Torchwood, and I love in the deleted scenes, disc one, where Tosh brings Ianto a coffee, and the combination of both her and his failed attempts at connections really stands out. Here is a lonely Tosh, and here is a torn Ianto (as we know what's in the basement :) Oh, I love him!

It got me thinking that Ianto hides things so well (and he angst so beautifully) that I wanted to torment him with secrets and lies and angst!