Something Bad had Happened
Jack/Ianto
Rating NC 17 – for horror. WARNING. Graphic descriptions of torture
Summary: - the title says it all. Ianto woke up knowing something bad had happened. It just didn't make sense because when he'd woken up knowing that, he'd thought it had happened to Jack not himself.
Hurt/comfort
A/N This is the middle story in my Family History trilogy. The first story was Weta and the last story is Family History. For those that read Family History and wondered how Ianto got those awful wounds on his wrists, this story will tell you. You don't need to have read any of those stories to understand this one. Just know that in Weta, Jack told the team that he had given birth to a daughter during a time of war when he was sixteen. The last time he saw her she was sixteen and with Tosh's help he'd sent her a message saying he would see her soon. He intended to take the long route to get there but fully intended to be back in her life not long after he had seemed to leave.
The cottage in Cornwall mentioned at the end of this is of course where Jack and Ianto go in Family History.
This story also owns its inspiration and its aliens to Sam Storyteller's, "I Were the Heavens". I haven't quite used his timeline for Jack's history, it was more the idea of it that I latched onto. Sam has given me permission to use his ideas. I then went and did something quite different with them.
I have had this story unfinished for nearly two years, mainly because I managed to timeywimey myself into a corner. However someone out there mentioned Temporal locked paper in a fic a while back and bingo – I had a way out. Then I had to remember what had happened myself and find the time to complete it.
This story is complete and I will try and get all parts up together, internets willing.
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Something bad had happened.
Something really bad had happened.
Ianto dragged his eyes open, trying to orientate himself, place himself in time, feel his body… remember.
Ow! Fucking Shit, God he hurt. Agonising pain assaulted him as he tried to make sense of the world. His eyes told him he was lying on the grating beside the bottom of the invisible lift. He was on his side. His body told him there was something flat pillowing his head. His head, his chest and his arms hurt. Badly. Different hurts. Breathing hurt. Something was annoying his face. He placed that quite quickly, it was an oxygen mask.
He had a horrendous headache. The blood pulsed erratically in his tender skull with enough pressure to shatter something. His chest felt as if he'd been sat on by an elephant. Breathing was bad, really bad. Broken ribs maybe and yet his skin felt burnt. His arms seemed to have been flayed, and crushed, were still being forced through a mangle although obviously they weren't. Beyond that his whole body ached, just ached as if he'd done something really physically exerting, like climbing a mountain or shovelling tons of rocks, for days. He tried to move and he couldn't. It wasn't the freaky sort of inability to move that would have told him he was paralysed, it was just that he was so exhausted he could do little more than blink. There was absolutely no energy to power his muscles.
There was more. The taste in his mouth and his nose told him he'd been sick. His fuzzy brain wondered who was going to clean that up because vomiting through the grating had to have made a hell of a mess that wasn't going to be easy to get to. Knowing his colleagues they'd just leave it there for him to deal with when he was well enough. Embarrassingly a certain smell and a nasty sensation in his trousers told him that he'd done more than just vomit.
He was lying here in his own shit.
He wished he hadn't woken up.
What the hell had happened? What was happening? Where were the others?
With some sense of relief he realised he could hear voices from the med bay. Owen's was sharp and slightly panicked, Gwen and Tosh were loud, argumentative and frightened. At least they were all there and obviously alive. He forced himself to try and make sense of things. He didn't think what was bothering them was an immediate threat. There was something odd though. He could hear another voice, a stranger. A woman. She sounded as if she was giving orders and the team didn't like it at all.
Ianto felt even more confused. In front of him and slightly to the side was the big green med kit. It was open and medical stuff - wrappers, syringes, ampoules – were strewn across the grating and the steps. In the corner of his vision he could see the ambu-bag, the big grey squashy thing used to squeeze air into someone's lungs when they'd stopped breathing. He shuddered. His exhausted muscles barely rippled. With tremendous effort he managed to move his head a little. Now he could see the defibrillator, the paddles lying on the floor. His heart jumped oddly. God, that couldn't be good.
He was starting to feel really frightened.
Nothing he could see told him what had happened.
He hurt badly and he couldn't move, therefore something bad must have happened to him. It just didn't make sense because when he'd woken up knowing something bad had happened, he'd thought it had happened to Jack.
'Ianto?' Tosh was suddenly at his side.
There seemed to be a crack in his eye. A wobbly line ran up her face as she knelt beside him. How had he broken his eye? 'You're awake,' she said soothingly. 'That's good.' Her hand rested on his cheek. Tosh didn't usually touch him. It must be bad. There was someone else behind him. He felt a hand on his shoulder. The hand moved to feel for the pulse in his neck.
'You're going to be fine,' Tosh told him. 'It's okay Ianto. You had poison in your system but you're all right now. You'll be fine.' She looked up and nodded at the person behind him. Her hand moved up and fiddled with something above him and as his eyes followed her hand he realised that there was nothing wrong with his eyes. The "crack" was an IV line snaking up past his face. The business end seemed to be stuck into his neck.
Disconcertingly Ianto realised there were more lines, cords running from his chest. The odd beeping sound he'd barely noticed was a heart monitor. He put the clues together. His heart had stopped. Why? They'd resuscitated him. He gasped. Tosh put her hand back on his head, stroked his hair. 'Are you okay now?' She looked pale. 'You gave us a real fright.' Her eyes filled with tears and she gave a watery smile. 'It scared me anyway. Owen was just pleased to play with that new kit he nicked from the NHS. Ianto,' she stroked some more, 'I need you to stay here for a while. Okay?' She smiled. 'I know you. You're going to be wanting to race up and start cleaning up but you've got to stay still for a while. Okay?' Her smile was crooked, anxious. She was worried about him. 'I also know it's not very comfortable but just lie here and rest. We have to help Owen with Jack now, then we'll come back and get you cleaned up. All right?'
Help with Jack? Ianto just stared at her. What was wrong with Jack? He couldn't seem to speak.
'You can't move can you?' said a semi familiar voice behind him that he was quite sure he'd never heard before in his life. The timbre was feminine but the cadence, accent and tone were all Jack. What? Who? 'You've survived flyer venom,' the woman said. 'Your energy stores have been totally depleted. That's to be expected.'
He swivelled his eyes upwards as a woman leant across him. He saw blue eyes, dark brows and little else from this angle. She was wearing a military looking leather jacket and he had the impression she was older than him. There was a green line running up her chin. He blinked. That wasn't another tube, there really was a green line running down her jaw. 'We've got you on a dextrose IV to help replenish energy but it will take a while for you to recover.' She patted his shoulder and pulled up the blanket that was covering him with a well manicured hand. 'You will be all right.'
'Ianto,' Tosh said. 'This is Lyndel. She saved your life.'
Ianto couldn't even say thanks.
He was cold and confused and now Tosh had pointed it out he was uncomfortable. He lay there in something like suspended animation, his body moulding into the grating floor. The breeze coming through the grating chilled him. He didn't seem to have any clothes on his upper body, just another mystery to add to the list.
Have to help Owen with Jack?
Lyndel? The woman's name was Lyndel.
Helping Jack. Jack had an alien egg in his belly. No, no that wasn't right. That had happened months ago. He was fine now. Lyndel. Jack had told them about Lyndel when he was sick before they'd removed the alien egg. And suddenly Ianto knew why she was so familiar. She was Jack's daughter. He'd seen her hologram.
Lyndel was the teenage daughter that Jack had left behind in the 51st century when he'd run away from the Time Agency. He had her last message to him. It was a cube that played a hologram and Tosh had been able to make it work and then Jack had sent her a message through a TV broadcast that Ianto worked out she'd already received before she made the message that Jack had. The green line on her face was a tattoo. The woman was Lyndel. She just wasn't a teenager anymore.
All of that thinking was too much for him and he closed his eyes. The metal grill was cutting through him. If he stayed here long enough he would decompose and slide right through. He'd join the vomit and muck and over a century of detritus down there where no-one could clean. Ianto Jones, part of Torchwood decay.
Time passed slowly, or maybe it was fast. He couldn't tell.
Then suddenly Jack was there. Without opening his eyes he knew it. 'Ianto? Oh God Ianto I'm sorry.' He was swept up in Jack's arms, the pain jolting him startlingly awake. He must have moaned. Even so it was good to be lifted off the rough grating. Jack smelt of vomit too. And blood.
Blood, there'd been a lot of blood but he couldn't quite seem to remember why. He'd been with Jack, in the med bay with Jack. There'd been blood. His blood and Jack's. Owen had finished with him. He'd pulled out the spikes from his wrists and bandaged his arms. A lot of the blood was his own. His arms really hurt.
Owen had been ready to work on Jack when Tosh called out from her monitor. Ianto had looked at Owen but Owen was busy and Gwen was holding Jack. Ianto climbed up the stairs to see Tosh's monitor showing two people standing out in the Plass waving at the camera above the water tower. He remembered thinking, Jesus, not now. Not with Jack like this. One of the people was John Hart.
The other person was a somehow familiar looking woman wearing something that looked suspiciously like military uniform a la Battlestar Galactica. She was familiar but Ianto couldn't place her. Hart had taken the woman by the shoulders and placed her on the paving stone of the invisible lift. He'd waved at the camera again and moved away.
It was obvious to Tosh and Ianto that Jack was supposed to recognise the woman. The trouble was that while they both agreed she looked familiar they didn't have a clue who she was. Ianto remembered the pain from the wounds in his wrists had been burning, spreading up his arms. He was distracted. Shrugging Tosh had pulled out her gun and keyed the lift control. The great machinery graunched and the lift started to descend. Tosh had her gun trained on the stranger.
Ianto watched the lift descending as the burning in his arms increased. He was going to ask Owen for stronger painkillers. He'd twisted his arms trying to ease things but it seemed to make it worse, shooting pain through his bones into his whole body. It reached his shoulders, burnt into his spine and suddenly, instead of looking up at the lift he was looking at the grating on the floor. He'd screamed as the fire raced through his body then didn't remember any more until he woke up on the floor.
He shook with the memory of the dreadful pain.
Jack pulled him closer, lifting him up off the grating and across his knees. That caused a completely different pain in his chest. He gasped. Yes he definitely had broken ribs. Unfortunately he was quite familiar with that unpleasant sensation. Jack pulled the blanket up around him as Ianto huddled into his warmth. His face pressed into Jack's chest and he didn't give a shit that Jack's shirt was covered with blood, vomit, snot and probably cerebral spinal fluid. Even though Jack smelt really bad Ianto did too and in behind it all he still smelt like Jack and love and safety.
Jack was trembling too. Disturbingly Ianto knew him well enough to recognise that he was in the recovery period after a traumatic death. Jack was holding on to him for dear life. Whatever had happened it had been really rough on him. His long lost daughter appearing in the middle of whatever this crisis was probably wasn't helping things either. It certainly wasn't helping Ianto.
'Jack mate,' Owen was saying. 'Let us take him. We need to warm him up and get him cleaned up. I need to check him over and make sure he's still stable. Okay?' He started trying to peel Jack away from Ianto. 'You go and have a shower. We'll look after him.' And you look after yourself, was the unspoken thought behind Owen's words.
Jack just clutched him tighter.
'Lee… ah, Jack,' the woman said. She had her hand on his shoulder. 'He'll be all right. I promise.'
Jack wrapped around him, his forehead pressed to his. Warm tears splashed onto his face. God, what had happened? Jack was really going to pieces – and Ianto couldn't do anything to help him. He didn't even have the strength to speak. 'Come on Jack,' Gwen said. 'I'll come with you. See if I can find you some clean clothes and stuff.' She took his hand and untangled his fingers from Ianto's hair.
'Lyndel?' Jack asked. There was a hitch in his voice.
'I'll be here.' She moved in to help Gwen. 'Go get yourself sorted. I'll help here and we'll talk later. I'm afraid this isn't just a social call.' Her sleeve rode up as she stroked Jack and Ianto noticed a wrist strap just like her parent's. She was Jack's daughter but he had a disconcerting feeling that that didn't automatically make her on their side. She had arrived with John Hart after all. Why was she here and what did she want?
Owen and Lyndel picked Ianto up between them. Ianto got the feeling she could have slung him over her shoulder and carried him perfectly well on her own. As they carried him off to the med bay he could see Gwen leading a distressed looking Jack towards his office. His head was all bloody. 'I will not be scrubbing your back though Jack Harkness,' she said loudly as they headed up the stairs. The woman Lyndel gave a startled chuckle.
Jack's head was all bloody. Suddenly Ianto started to remember.
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