Chapter Ten

It took a long twenty minutes of nursing a glass of brandy - not drinking it, simply swishing it around in the glass and staring at it - before Ianto even began to talk, and when he did, it wasn't something that made much sense to Jack.

"I don't get to hold on to the things I love."

Jack frowned at him and asked, "What do you mean?"

"My girlfriend. My son. My parents. Mam especially. Gwen. I'm not allowed to keep them."

"You...lost your family?" Jack asked uncertainly, and he really didn't get that. How could Ianto have lost Gwen? Gwen was still alive and well and living in Cardiff? Ianto couldn't have lost her, it was just silly.

"Yeah. Mam left my father when I was nine. Took me and Gwen with her, but...I went back. I couldn't...I wasn't wanted."

Jack was not a parent, and had never even come close. But he'd seen, in his job and in his own life, mothers and their children, and he couldn't comprehend Ianto's insinuation. What mother didn't want her own child? Okay, sure, nine-year-old boys were difficult little buggers at the best of times...but Gwen would have been, what, seven? Seven-year-old girls weren't any better.

"Why not?" Jack asked.

Ianto sighed, put down the glass, and scrubbed his hands over his face.

"I told you I was a surprise baby. My parents didn't think they'd get any more - they'd been trying for a baby for years and years and nothing had happened. They pretty much settled with what they could get and put all their hopes and dreams onto me. And then when I was two, Gwen was born. And it looked like things were going to be even better, because Mam got the daughter she always wanted, and there was me. The perfect unit, you know?"

"Mm," Jack said. He knew his own mother had bemoaned the lack of a daughter sometimes - though the way Grey had preened as a teenager, Jack had sometimes felt like he had a little sister.

"Only...Mam had enough. She told...she told my Dad that Gwen..." Ianto struggled for a moment, then said, "wasn't his."

"Oh," Jack said.

"Yeah," Ianto said, and chuckled bitterly. "Gwen's my half sister. Cooper. Jones. Mam'd been having an affair for years with this man at work, Brian Cooper. Her boss, Jack. And Gwen was his baby."

"Your Dad left?"

"No, my Mam left," Ianto laughed, even more bitterly, and whispered: "My Dad was prepared to deal with that. He said the past was the past, and he'd raised Gwen as his for seven years...surely that counted for something? Only Mam said it wasn't the past, because Cooper was still there...and she wanted him, Jack. She didn't want my Dad anymore. She packed up our stuff and took us all to live with Cooper. She married him, changed her name...but I refused. And then Gwen's old man said he wasn't having an ungrateful little shit like me around if I was going to be disrespectful like that..."

"Oh, Ianto."

"So I ran away, back to my Dad. Lived above the shop, helped him out...he left it to me when he died..."

"The tailor shop? Jones and whatever?"

"Yeah."

"Small world."

"Not really," Ianto said. "But...I had to choose, Jack. I had to pick between my Mam and my Dad, and I was nine. I didn't know what to do! And by the time I was old enough to have handled the two separate families...it was too late. Gwen had sided with her father, and me with mine, and we just...she wasn't my little sister any more, Jack. And she still defends him to death, acts like my Dad didn't exist...acted like I didn't, sometimes."

Jack didn't know what to say, and settled for taking Ianto's hand and gripping it firmly.

"I lost my Mam, I lost Gwen...and I loved Gwen - she was my little sister, she'd always been my little sister. I always moaned about having to take her to the shop for ice cream or letting her play on my swing in the garden, but she was my little sister."

Jack knew that protective loathing of an older sibling - the feeling of resentment that you had to share everything with a being younger and therefore more insignificant than yourself, but at the same time, a fierce protectiveness that you were the only one allowed to hate their existence. Nobody else was allowed to even think bad things about your baby brother or sister.

"Then she turned up years later - I was twenty, she was eighteen - and everything was wrong. She still defends her family, and it's like...like I was never there. And that hurt, and she hates my Dad for taking me away, as she puts it, and I just...sometimes, Jack, I really hate her for that."

Ianto took a choking breath, then snatched up the glass and downed the alcohol in one go. Jack had the sneaking suspicion that Ianto just wasn't used to talking about his problems. He had the air of a man who'd spilled out ages-old, very hidden secrets in a few short minutes, and wasn't totally sure over what he should be doing about this.

"And...your girlfriend?"

"Lisa."

"What?"

"That's her name. Lisa Hallett."

Jack noted the use of the present tense, and swallowed.

"Okay...Ianto, I still think you need to tell me about her, and...what happened...but I think I'm going to insist on getting you home first, alright? I can tell this is going to be difficult, and I...I want you to be somewhere you know is safe. Somewhere you can relax."

Ianto snorted, and shook his head: "No point. It's not a home, just a bloody apartment. I can't go home anymore."

"Why not?"

"I sold it."

Jack vaguely realised that Ianto must have been talking about his home with Lisa, and bit his lip.

"Okay," he said. "But in that case, you're going to be staying here for the night, you understand?"

"Why?" Ianto asked suspiciously.

Jack raised his eyebrows and said, "I am not going to get you worked up and upset, then let you out to wander Cardiff in a mood and probably do something very stupid."

Ianto sighed heavily and shook his head, saying: "I'm about four years past the stupid stage, Jack."

"Four years?"

"Lisa died five years ago."

"That would have made you twenty."

Ianto nodded, and added: "Lisa had just turned twenty. Her family hated me...God, they must hate me even more now."

"Why?" Jack murmured.

"I killed her!" Ianto yelled, and then, in a fit of temper, threw the glass across the room, where it shattered on the wall and sparkled to the floor in a haze of light noise. In a moment, Jack had his arms right around the younger man, tight and secure and sheltering, and Ianto's defenses crumbled, as well as his back, and he slumped into Jack's hold.

"You didn't kill her; I won't believe you killed her. You're not a murderer."

"I was a stupid fucking idiot and I killed her," Ianto whispered, then his voice cracked and he buried his head in Jack's shoulder and clung to him like a drowning man to a life raft.

Neither said anything more for some time.