Ianto was vaguely aware of being moved, his body manhandled from one pool of light to another, whilst his mind floated separate from everything that happened around him.
Finally, however, another voice broke though the haze. "Right, all done."
Ianto blinked, focus returning to his vision, and the blur in front of him sharpened into the familiar shape of Torchwood's resident doctor. He looked around, finding himself inexplicably seated on the metal bed in the autopsy bay.
Ianto gaped at Owen Harper for a long silent moment before looking down at himself. His clothes were a damp mess, ripped and bloodied, and his right arm was encased in a fresh fibreglass cast from hand to elbow. "What happened?" he asked, recalling only the fall and the agony that followed.
"You," Owen began matter-of-factly, wiping his hands as he spoke, "were hit by a car." He shook his head. "The whole day chasing bloody aliens and you get hit by a car? That's just embarrassing, mate."
Ianto blinked again and said nothing. He lifted his hand to examine the wet bandages and felt his body protesting the movement. From the feel of it he had bruises all down his right side, but that wasn't anything he couldn't handle; he had been bruised more than enough times to be accustomed to the sensation by now. He wiggled the exposed tips of his fingers, fascinated by the fact that he couldn't feel them moving.
Owen reached up, pressing at something on Ianto's forehead and the younger man flinched away from the contact. "Take it easy, I was just checking your stitches."
"Stitches?" Ianto echoed, futilely looking upwards.
Owen grunted in confirmation, tipping his head back and squinting down his nose at the wound on Ianto's forehead before producing a square of thick white gauze and taping it into place.
"Ah-hah! Back with us at last?" Captain Jack Harkness asked cheerfully, appearing on the walkway above them. Ianto looked up as the new arrival leaned over the handrail and grinned down at him. "You had us worried for a while there, Ianto, all non-compos mentis and so on. How's he doing, Owen?"
"There's no serious damage, other than the arm, and he's got a few bruises and a small cut on the head. He'll be in the cast for a good few weeks, but nothing really to be worried about."
Ianto frowned at his newly encased forearm. He had never broken his arm before, never broken any bones at all before, and whilst he supposed it was better than one of his legs being damaged, he couldn't quite agree with Owen's blasé declaration. How was he supposed to be of any use with only one hand?
There were more things said, but he ignored the other two men, paying attention only when Owen produced a blue plastic sling and told him to make sure his arm was kept dry and elevated as much as possible for the next couple of days. Ianto nodded dutifully, accepted the dose of fantastically effective painkillers that Torchwood employees were privy to, and excused himself.
"Whoa!" Gwen Cooper cried out, almost colliding with him at the top of the stairs. Her expression shifted from surprise to elation in the blink of an eye. "Ianto! How are you feeling?"
Caught off guard, he floundered for a suitable response before finally realising what she wanted to hear. "Couldn't be better, thanks," he lied, trying to move around her. Gwen reached out to stop him, accidentally brushing against his injured arm. Ianto winced but made no sound, though pain ran through his body like a shot.
In a perverse way the agony served better than his polite attempt to escape Gwen. "Sorry, sorry!" she said with a grimace, pulling her hand back sharply.
"It's all right," Ianto reassured her, forcing a smile and hurrying to add, "I'm going to get changed."
With that he hurried away, the weight of three pairs of eyes heavy against his back.
Almost half an hour later, Ianto finally dropped the shirt in his hand to the floor, frustrated. There was really no way he could replace his ruined shirt with a new one; he had been trying unsuccessfully to get the sleeve over his now-set cast for a long time, mindlessly focused, despite the obvious futility of the entire endeavour and the ache that his movements produced.
Admitting defeat, he grabbed a t-shirt instead, stretching the worn cotton fabric over his injured arm and then fixing the sling Owen had given him across his shoulder, holding his arm securely in place. He sighed, annoyed at the inconvenience of having one less limb to work with.
Back in the Hub's central room, Ianto looked around, unable to decide what to do with himself. He knew he had a long list of things that needed tending to but couldn't seem to recall anything actually on that list. Shrugging mentally to himself, he moved across to a workstation set away from the others, pulling over a chair and attempting to sit without putting too much weight on his bruises. He tapped at the controls with his uninjured hand, slowly flicking through various programs, waiting for something to catch his eye.
"What are you up to?"
Ianto jumped and twisted his head to look up at Jack, standing close behind the chair and peering over his shoulder. The younger man blinked, confused, then looked back to the glowing screen in front of him. There were lines of text there, and an image from the interior cameras just visible behind the main window. Ianto frowned a little as he scanned the text quickly, recognising a few figures from the Hub's internal systems. "I was just trying to help Tosh sort out the problems we've been having with the security sensors," he explained. Apparently, he added in his head, alarmed that he couldn't remember pulling up the information, let alone working on it.
"You should be resting," Jack told him.
Ianto gave him a bemused look. "It's just a broken arm. I've had worse."
"Uh huh," the Captain agreed reluctantly. "How is it?"
Ianto looked down at the cast cradled against his chest and considered the question carefully. "It itches," he replied at last, forehead creasing as the tingling sensation seemed to increase with his attention.
Jack rocked a little on his heels, hands shoved casually in his pockets. "Well, everyone else has gone home for the night, but if you'd like I could help scratch it?"
The frown deepened on Ianto's face. "They've gone?" he asked, lifting his undamaged left arm to check the time. It was almost eleven at night, meaning that over five hours had passed since they had all returned to the Hub after the hunt. And he had seemingly spent most of that time at the workstation, completely oblivious to what he was doing. "Oh," he murmured. "I should probably get going too."
The declaration made Jack hesitate. "I'm not sure you should be alone tonight," he began carefully. "You might be suffering from shock."
"I feel fine."
"That doesn't mean you're not in shock."
Ianto stood, forcing a smile onto his lips. "I'm okay, Jack. Just need a good night's rest." He reached across to switch off the monitor, abandoning whatever work he might have done in the past few hours, and then turned to make his way out of the Hub.
"You can't drive," Jack pointed out, once he was halfway to the exit.
Ianto's step faltered. "I'll get a taxi."
"Why don't you let me take you home?"
"I'll be fine, Jack, Thank you."
"Ianto!"
Ianto stopped, sighing to himself and waiting for Jack to continue. There came only silence and he gave into curiosity and turned around, tensing slightly to find that the older man had crossed the large room and was right behind him once again.
Jack held out his hand, a small bottle within it. "Owen left these for you. Painkillers." He watched intently as Ianto reached out to take the medication, and grabbed his hand when he made to move away again. "Are you sure you're okay?" Jack asked, squeezing the fingers in his grasp and ducking his head slightly to catch Ianto's eye.
The younger man returned the gaze, though his expression was flat and unreadable. "I just want to go home and sleep," he said and then offered a small smile that seemed to reassure Jack more than anything he could say.
Jack expelled a breath loudly and dropped the other's hand. "Go on then, get out of here. And take tomorrow off."
Ianto smiled honestly at that. "We don't get days off," he pointed out wryly, turning and exiting the Hub, leaving the Captain frowning at the door as it shut firmly behind him.
Ianto did not take a taxi. He did not even consider the manner in which he was going to get home, he simply began walking and some indeterminate time later found himself outside the door to his flat, shivering from the cold as he had, apparently, forgotten to pick up a jacket before leaving the Hub.
Letting himself into the small apartment, Ianto shoved the door closed and moved over to the sofa in the middle of the room, not bothering to switch on any lights as he went. He collapsed into the cushions, groaning in a mixture of pain and relief, eyes closing and chin falling forward onto his chest.
The ringing of a phone brought his head back up and he looked around drowsily, bewildered for a moment. It felt as though he had barely closed his eyes, let alone actually slept, but he couldn't be sure, especially as the room now seemed lighter than before. Glancing over to the window, he could see a thin line of daylight around the edge of the blinds; blinds he had forgotten to open the previous morning as he hurried to work and the trouble that awaited him there.
The phone was still ringing and Ianto rubbed at his eyes before bending awkwardly in order to reach the mobile tucked in his trouser pocket. He managed to extract it, flip it open and was just lifting it to his ear when the ringing sounded again.
Rolling his eyes, Ianto pushed himself up off the couch, abandoning his mobile on the cushions and heading instead for the landline. His fingers had barely closed over the receiver when it fell silent and he glared down at it accusingly.
A glance at his watch told him it was definitely morning, time for him to be getting ready to head back into work. He walked through his bedroom into the bathroom and stopped. A shower was out of the question with the cast, despite his longing for one, and a bath would take too long, so he set about washing as best he could, one-handed and aching, from the basin.
His right arm was throbbing, his leg was swollen slightly, his shoulders and neck felt as though they had been wrenched in the wrong direction and his head was pounding. The moment he had finished towelling himself off, he rummaged through his discarded clothes to find the pills Jack had given him the night before and swallowed a couple dry.
The phone began to ring again and Ianto huffed air loudly through his nose, stalking out of the bathroom, completely naked, to grab the phone beside his bed. He lifted it to his ear and growled, "Yes?!"
"Hello? Hello, Mr. Jones?"
But Ianto wasn't listening. He was opening and closing his mouth, trying to speak, trying to make any sound with his voice. And failing.
"What?" he said, sure he had spoken and yet the word did not seem to reach his ears. "Hello?" he tried again, returning the phone to his mouth to see whether the person on the other end could hear him, but they had already hung up, presumably having heard only silence on the line.
"Hello?" Ianto repeated in disbelief, the cordless phone falling to the floor, forgotten. He shouted the word again, louder and louder until his throat was raw from trying, and still no sound emerged.
Baffled, he knocked on the bedside table, making the noise to check his hearing, in spite of the fact he had quite clearly heard the phone ringing only moments earlier. Unsurprisingly he could still hear, which, whilst a good thing, provided no hint at all as to how he might have lost his voice in a matter of hours.
Shocked, he could think of nothing else to do but finish getting ready. He focused on dressing, managing with some twisting, silent cursing, and a tiny bit of tearing, to slide the sleeve of a deep red shirt over his cast. He pushed the material up to his elbow, out of the way, and then twisted around to slip his left arm into the empty sleeve. The young man was sweating by the end of the ordeal.
Increasingly annoyed by his injury and the awkward start to his day, Ianto scowled at his reflection as he brushed his teeth, completely unimpressed by the grey tint to his skin, the dark shadows under his eyes and the livid red slash of the wound on his forehead, visible now that he had thrown away the stained gauze pad in disgust.
When he remembered that he couldn't drive to work, that his car was in fact still in the parking lot beneath the Millennium Centre and thus no use to him anyway, his irritation doubled, culminating just short of a full blown tantrum as he threw the phone against a wall, halfway through dialling the number for a local taxi firm.