Ianto stirred in his sleep and opened a bleary eye. He listened to the sound of Jack sleeping next to him, fingers caught in the blanket as he held Ianto close to him. He smiled and tried to go back to sleep, when the Captain started jerking around. Concerned Ianto turned around and was shocked to see Jack was sweating, had a white face and was moaning 'no' over and over again.
'Jack' he reached out and shook his shoulder, but it made no difference. Jack's eyes were flicking behind his lids and he soon started to get louder.
'No NO! Leave him alone! It's me you want!' he cried, tears escaping his closed lids.
'Jack!' Ianto roughly pushed Jack around, trying to wake him up.
'Please! Take me!' Jack screamed.
'Jack!' Ianto was getting worried now; Jack had had nightmares before, but nothing like this. He stroked his face and tapped him on the shoulder. Suddenly Jack's eyes flew open.
Ianto looked worriedly at him. 'Jack!' he called again. Jack looked at him.
'Thank you' he breathed. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and struggled to sit up.
'What happened?' asked Ianto, pulling the blanket around him and Jack.
Jack shook his head. 'Nightmares' he said finally.' Bad ones'
Ianto nodded and put an arm around him, which Jack settled into, putting his head on the Welshman's shoulder.
'Want to talk about it?' asked Ianto, knowing that Jack was often cagey about his feelings and experiences. But to his surprise, Jack started talking.
'It's worse than any other one. And it's the first one about you.' He looked up tearfully at Ianto 'We all get captured by some guys and they want information. They want to know how to bring down the government. So they go through each of the team, trying to find out if they know anything useful. They don't find anything, which isn't surprising.' He looked up at Ianto, who was watching him sadly, knowing that Jack needed support, someone to talk to without talking back.
'Then they somehow manage to find out our records and they find out that you are the archivist. So they ignore the others and tie your hands above you on some hook. They tie me and Owen and Gwen and Tosh to chairs and force us to watch. I know you know a lot about the goings on at Torchwood, they would have got better info out of me. But they completely ignored me for some reason.' He breathed in deeply and closed his eyes. It was a minute or two before he started talking again.
'They ask you for information, but you don't give it to them and they start hitting you. Hard. I can still hear your screams as they broke your ribs.' Jack stifled a sob. 'They keep asking you, but you never give in, telling them that you would rather die than give them what they want. So they carry on, until they beat you unconscious. They just leave you hanging there. Blood dripping from you. And Owen's there yelling at them to let him see to you, but they didn't and when you woke up they started it all over again. That's when you woke me up.' He looked glisten eyed at Ianto, who smiled reassuringly at him.
'Dont worry' he soothed, hugging the captain. 'I'm fine. It didn't happen.'
He looked down at Jack, who had put his head back on his shoulder. 'It was just a dream.'
Jack didn't answer him, just buried his head into Ianto's shoulder. It broke Ianto's heart to see him like this. Sure, he had comforted the captain through a fair few nightmares, but never about him. And seeing Jack like this, broken and vulnerable made him want to cry.
He was pulled out of his reverie when he heard a small snuffling noise. Looking down, he saw that his captain had fallen asleep. He smiled and gently pulled Jack into a laying position. He settled down next to him and closed his eyes.
Hopefully they'll be no more nightmares tonight.