Dead On His Feet.

A week later and Ianto knocks on the door of the sandwich and as usual, Alison opened the door for him but her smile soon changed to a look of concern.

"Ianto. You look worse today than you did yesterday. Are you sure that you are fit for work?" Alison asks him and he piles in through the door.

"I'm fine Alison, just a little tired," he tells her with the best smile he could offer her.

Since the night Jack had come around and driven him crazy with the incessant buzzer ringing and endless phone calls, Jack hadn't left him alone. Every day, a different Torchwood team member would come into the shop, order their usual order and then tried to slip Ianto the letter from Jack which was starting to get a little shabby looking but every time, Ianto pushed it back and rejected it. Ianto didn't sleep much anymore and he didn't eat much anymore either.

All he did was go to work, gone home, curl up on his bed until it was time to get ready for work the next morning. Ianto was now a shell of the former, happy, young Welshman that he used to be and everyone around him saw it but Jack. Ianto gazed at the cakes as he put them in the cabinet. Alison was talking away to him but he was too tired, too empty to hear what she was saying.

"Ianto. IANTO!" Alison shouted and it scared him and he jumped a little before looking over to her.

"Sorry. I was miles away there. What were you saying?" Ianto asks her a gentle voice.

"It doesn't matter what I was saying. Should you be at work today?" she asks him, walking over to him and putting her hand on his shoulder.

"I don't want to be at home. It's safe here. Please don't send me home," Ianto almost begs her like a little child.

"It's ok Ianto. I won't send you home if you don't want to go home. Tell me what's wrong Ianto?" she asks him and he sighs.

"It's Jack. He won't leave me alone. It's like he can't move on so he doesn't want me to either. You've seen what it's like in the shop. He sends me flowers, chocolates, teddies and then there are my former colleagues. Every time they come in, they order their food and then try and give me the letter from Jack again. If that wasn't bad enough, every time I go home, he follows me there, sits outside my flat, constantly calls me and rings my door buzzer religiously. I can't take it anymore," Ianto tells her, a single tear running down his face.

Alison puts her arms around him as Ianto again, for the second time in a week, falls apart.

********************

Hours later, after talking to Alison, sitting down and drinking tea with her and a few friendly regular pensioners, Ianto seemed a little more cheery. He was closer to his usual self again, Alison doing her best to keep his spirit up. It was just after 12 o'clock and the door bell rang as a customer opened the door and Ianto looked up and saw her walking in. He bit his bottom lip as Gwen walked up to the counter.

"Hello Ianto," she said, flipping her dark below shoulder length hair back over her shoulder and smiling like she usually did.

"Yes Gwen. How can I help you?" he asks her knowing what was coming.

"We'll have our usual please," she tells him and as Alison sets about starting to make the order up. Gwen slides the letter across the counter to Ianto and he sighs.

"I'm still not interested Gwen. I wish he would just leave me alone," Ianto tells her and the sadness from the morning returned to Ianto.

"I know Ianto but at least I can tell him I tried. We have all tried to tell him to leave you alone, that you will talk to him if you want to but he doesn't listen and every day, he hands us the letter and sends us out. He doesn't listen to any of us anymore. He's like a man possessed or obsessed," she tells him as he looks up to the ceiling, suppressing his tears.

Alison steps over to the counter where they are both stood, takes the letter and tears it into piece and bins it as Gwen watches in horror and Ianto watches with relief.

"Torchwood isn't welcome here anymore. You are all barred from this shop and you can take a message back to Jack. There will be no more letters, no more deliveries, no more anything. He is to leave Ianto alone," Alison barks at her and Gwen doesn't like it at all, to have this young girl giving her orders.

"And who the hell do you think you are?" Gwen barks back, looking her straight in the eye and Alison steps forward.

"I am Alison, Ianto's friend and I am trying to look after him and all this is destroying him. If you have a problem with that, we could always take it outside?" Alison asks Gwen, eyes blazing with anger and what she had said.

"Do you want me to past that message on?" Gwen asks Ianto turning away from Alison before she said something they would all regret.

"Please Gwen. Tell him to leave me alone. I'm not going back and I am trying to move on, start again and he is making it impossible. I don't know how much more I can take," Ianto tells her, Gwen seeing that he was a broken man and not the Ianto she knew.

"I will give him the message," she tells him with a smile and as she turns, she glares at Alison and leaves.

Ianto slumps into the chair that was behind the counter and puts his head in his hands and cries. Alison crouches down next to him and puts her arm around him. He turns into her and she puts her other arm around him and holds him close.

"It's ok Ianto. Hopefully he will get the message now. I am here for you Ianto," she tells him as she rubs his back, comforting him as he wept on her shoulder.

********************

The rest of the day went on pretty much as usual, serving customers, cleaning as they went along, Alison smiling at Ianto and even making a cup of tea for him as it was usually him that insisted on making it. Ianto's spirit seemed to lift on the outside but inside, he was dying. After the shop was closed and all the cleaning up was done, Ianto and Alison sat in the back room, each with a cup of tea.

"I hope you didn't mind me ripping up that letter? It was just making you so sad," she tells him, blowing the steaming tea and sipping it.

"In a way, you did me a favour. Eventually, probably soon, I would have cracked and read it and then who knows what would have happened," Ianto tells her.

"No-one is worth that Ianto. He might have meant a lot to you but you walked away. He can't keep hounding you like this. It's tearing you apart and even if you were to go back to him, it would never be the same as you aren't the same. Your not the Ianto that used to come in the shop for the sandwich order," Alison tells him, sorrow now in her eyes as well as his.

"He can't give me what I want even if I did go back. He hasn't got it in him. He promises me that he loves me and then everything carries on as usual," Ianto tells her knowing that it was true.

"Well I am a friend so I am here for you," she tells him smiling, knowing that he really needed a friend.

After they finish their tea, Ianto gets up and gets his coat and is about to leave but Alison dangles her dads van keys in front of his face and insists on taking him home. He is too tired to argue with her so he gets in the van with her. Her driving style reminded Ianto of Jack's. In a hurry, not caring too much about other people and road rage. He smiled as Alison came out with a line that Jack used and then his smile fell away.

They arrived outside Ianto's flat and they sat there a minute.

"I'd love to sit here all night with you but dad needs the van back. I can drop it back and then come back if you want?" Alison asks him, wanting to spend some time with him but not push him.

"It's ok. No doubt I will have the usual company tonight but thanks for the offer. I will see you at work tomorrow," he tells her as he leans over and kisses her on the cheek, his way of thanking her for her help.

He opens the door and gets out of the van, closing the door behind him and crossing in front of the bonnet of the van and stands on the pavement. Alison waves at him as she pulls her dads van away from the curb and away from Ianto and he waves back. He turns to the flats and then looks up at his flat and takes a deep breath in. He finally plucks up enough courage to go up to his flat and the depression and despair hits him as he opens his flat door. He steps inside and goes over to the sofa and sits down without even taking his coat off.

10 minutes after returning home and Ianto is in his bedroom sitting on his bed and then it starts. The buzzer starts ringing but then the shouting starts.

"Ianto. Ianto Jones. I know you are home. We need to talk," Jack shouts up to Ianto's window, pressing the buzzer while he shouts.

Ianto closes his eyes and cries.