The Black Hole of My Mind
1.
Ianto Jones is twenty three years old when he wakes up in a Cardiff hospital. His last memory is being barely twenty one and working in a London coffee shop.
That, in itself, proves to be problematic.
Car accident, his doctor tells him. Some poor bloke found him inside a ruined car crashed against a lightpost, unconscious with signs of bruising and very mild head trauma. Given how much his body aches (he feels like he had been thrown around like a ragdoll, to be quite honest), Ianto isn't inclined to question the former diagnosis much. It's the latter that has doctors baffled, considering the hit to his head shouldn't have affected him much at all, except for a horrible headache and a pretty impressive goose egg. Amnesia spanning years from a little bump in the head is a bit worrying, but it happens and it's probably temporary, so hey, why doesn't Ianto take it easy for a while and everything will all come back to him soon.
Two months later and with no signs of regaining anything from the two and a half year hole in his memories, Ianto thinks his doctors can go fuck themselves.
2.
Other than that, he's fine. His sister Rhiannon went spare at discovering his condition, but Ianto thinks she secretly enjoys the opportunity to take care of him and with a little prodding discovers that he's been distant since getting some posh job in London and even more so since losing Lisa (his now dead girlfriend, it seems) in that terrorist attack in Canary Wharf. And she goes on and on and on…
The blank looks he gives her shuts her up. Eventually.
But for all her rambling, she did give Ianto a clue. London. Ianto would bet on his sparsely furnished apartment (which was a really depressing place, no matter how you looked at it – did he even do anything there other than sleep and shower?) that London held the answers. And Ianto would love to go there as soon as he can, really, but Rhiannon would have none of it. Not until he's "much better."
So in the meantime, Ianto picks up the scraps of his missing life and sets himself for a temporary new one. His bank account has a hefty sum in it from God knows where, so money isn't an issue for now, but Ianto doesn't like spending his days doing nothing and wants to do something. And since he can't go to London without risking his sister calling an entire police force in on him, he might as well find himself a job.
He hunts for a job, any job, and gets one in no time, even if it sounds like there's no glam about it. Just a boring 9-5 office job.
It's fine. He'll get everything right soon enough.
3.
He's a glorified teaboy, Ianto realizes a week into his new job as he sets his boss' cuppa (two sugars, a dash of milk) into a tray with a small plate of Jammy Dodgers. His official job description is Personal Assistant, but he does more tea making than note taking, orders more take-away than supplies for the firm, and picks up more dry cleaning for his boss to wear than papers for his boss to look over.
There's a frightening familiarity about his job, and it causes a buzzing in his head that irritates the fuck out of him. Some nights it even makes him lose hours of sleep. It's bothersome, but Ianto is a creature of compromise, so he works around it eventually.
Nevertheless, his boss isn't much of a crude ass, he doesn't ever need to do overtime, and the entire law firm is harassment-free, so things could be much worse.
Now if only they would start preferring coffee over tea.
4.
Christmas Night, after an exhausting Eve and Morning with Rhiannon and her family, he gets his chance and escapes to London, arriving just in time to see a giant star being blown up in the sky and the Thames being drained dry.
Bless this city.
5.
Three days in London, and it's almost time for him to go back to Cardiff. Ianto's more than a bit disappointed, getting nothing at all from his trip. He's retraced his steps all the way from Canary Wharf to apparently previous apartment to, finally, the coffee shop he used to work in, but nothing. He drains the last of his cup of coffee and heads off to back to the hotel he's been staying at.
An hour and a half later, as he hides from purple-skinned whatever-the-fuck-they-are that have apparently hijacked the hotel, Ianto thinks that he should have stopped over the nice little bookstore he saw just around the corner from the coffee shop. At least, he muses, the nearest thing they would have to strange discolored beings are safe and sound between the pages of the Sci-Fi section.
The hallway looks empty, and it's time for Ianto to go hide somewhere more comfortable (because crouching behind a potted plant is really burning his thighs). He barely turns to the corner of the next hallway when he is bowled over by a lanky man in a pinstripe suit and Converses and with ridiculously wild hair.
They stare at each other for a moment, and Ianto feels as if the world shifted beneath his feet and time twisted around the air and doesn't that knock the breath out of him.
The man looks at him with a curious expression, until they hear heavy footsteps racing towards them, and he grabs Ianto by the sleeve of his coat and says the one word that will change Ianto's life forever.
"Run!"
6.
No less than an hour later, Ianto's legs are aching, but he's collectively helped save the world (or at least, the hotel) and seen that the purple-skinned creatures are banned from the Earth's atmosphere (or at least, Britain). He's a string away from collectively losing it and laughing hysterically, when the pinstripe suited man plops down beside him against the wall.
"Very good job, then!" The man beams at him. "I wouldn't have thought of using the hotel's electric line against them! Well, I would have eventually, but you did save us a lot of trouble, and just in time for afternoon tea! I would murder for a cuppa right now, three sugars, a little cream, that's how I like it. There's this little corner shop that serves the best tea on this side of the Thames, I'll have you know, and nice banana loafs. Banana loafs sound splendid right now, come to think of it! By the way, what's your name?"
Ianto blinks and blinks and shakes his head a few times to get his bearings straight again. "Ah, well, pft. Jones. Ianto Jones, sir."
The man claps his shoulder a good two times before dragging him up to stand. "Well, Jones, Ianto Jones, I think a thank you is in order! How about that cuppa?"
He gapes at the other man and tries to get his bearings straight as quickly as he can. "Wait!" Ianto exclaims as they head off to exit the hotel. "What were those things? And who are you, anyways?"
"Ah," The man says. "Right. Those were Giasdofju, from the planet Giasdofghenar, from the G109385 Galaxy. Nice place, really, if a little bit too purple for my taste, I prefer yellow. Yellow is a much happier color, really!"
He's mad, Ianto thinks. He's barking mad, but from what he's seen, a load lot of brilliant, too, and isn't that a combination. Nevertheless, he obediently follows the madman to the tea house (and not, Ianto hopes, some dark alleyway where the man would proceed to reveal himself as some psychopathic serial killer) like the good teaboy he is (oh god, he's just a teaboy, how did he save an entire hotel against aliens?).
"Oh, and as for me," The pinstripe suited madman adds like an afterthought to his rambles.
"I'm the Doctor."
7.
The first thought that comes to mind when Ianto sees and enters the blue police box is that, 'It wasn't euphuism, thank god.'
The second is that, 'It's bigger in the inside, oh my god.'
The Doctor casts him an amused grin, as if he knows the reason for his gob smacked expression, and urges him to say something.
Ianto makes a strangled sound at the back of his throat and breathes, "It's bigger in the inside."
"Well, yes! Oh, I love it when you humans say tha-"
"And it's beautiful."
And it truly, truly is. The TARDIS positively glows in a golden light, and while the metal floor and coral-esque pillars and the center column should look a bit drab, but the TARDIS makes them shine in a way, and it's nothing like Ianto has ever seen before. His mind flashes to a similarly cavernous room, only dank and cool and gray, but just as he is about to latch on it, it swims away and he forgets about it for the time being.
The Doctor looks at him with a contemplative expression, before beaming. "Oh, I think we're going to get along quite well, Ianto Jones!" He runs to the console and Ianto follows at a more sedate pace, carefully taking in everything about the room.
"So!" The Doctor leans on the console beside Ianto as he reverently runs a hand across the levers and switches and lights. "Ianto Jones. We can go forwards, backwards, sidewards, longwards, shortwards, any-wards the TARDIS can. All of time and space, ready to be taken! Only, the question is, do you want to take it?"
And Ianto turns to look at the Doctor, eyes shining and the large hole from his missing memories not feeling so big anymore.
"Yes." He says. "Yes."
The Doctor smiles.
A/N: A plot bunny that wouldn't go away. I actually have a basic outline of events for this verse, but whether or not I continue remains to be unseen. Hm.