Sometimes I Wish Someone Out There Will Find Me - 13
"I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air. They fly so high, nearly reach the sky, then like my dreams they fade and die. Fortune's always hiding, I've looked everywhere, I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air."
Ianto blinked against the light, his eyes burning against its brilliance.
"I'm dreaming dreams, I'm scheming schemes."
Something soft popped against his skin.
"I'm building castles high. They're born anew, their days are few, just like a sweet butterfly."
He blinked again, focusing through the blinding fog of white.
"And as the daylight is dawning, they come again in the morning."
Again something skimmed past him, kissing his skin before it burst with a quiet 'pop'. A bubble. Ianto's eyesight cleared. Lucy Saxon sat crossed legged before him dipping a wand into a tube of bubble solution.
"I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air. They fly so high, nearly reach the sky…" She blew gently through the hole, producing a dozen glittering spheres of various sizes.
She watched them drift in the endless ivory of the room, the transparent rainbow of their skins holding the only colour apart from the scarlet of her lipstick, which had been smeared across her mouth.
"Then like my dreams, they fade and die. Fortune's always hiding, I've looked everywhere. I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air."
Lucy caught a bubble on the wand and looked at him through its sphere. "Are you real?" she whispered, her other hand pulling at the tangled mess of her knotted hair. "We don't get many visitors here." Her eyes stared wildly around the empty space.
Ianto looked about; there were no doors or windows, just a never-ending burn of white. "Where is here?"
She giggled, spinning round on her bottom, the taffeta of her chalky dress swishing as it twisted; its great length seamless against the pale surroundings. She rolled over onto her front and regarded him, her body wasted in the folds of the overwhelming material. "We're in his mind," she replied, her gaze measuring his reaction.
Ianto stood and looked into the glare of white; Lucy crawled toward him, the train of her dress trailing behind in clumsy waves.
"Did you think it would be black, Mr Jones, Ianto Jones, his mind?" Lucy laughed. "That would be in his hearts, sir, or the void where we keep our soul. Black it is - no daylight there. Just a coarse and prickly blanket of hate, that's his soul, Ianto Jones, sir."
Lucy stopped, resting the weighty pull of the dress on bony arms. "Are you real? Sometimes his mind plays tricks on me. Sometimes things fall through his thoughts, black and scary things that change the blankness and take you through his looking glass." She stood. "Welcome to the first circle of hell, Mr Jones, Ianto Jones."
She ran off into the distance, her bare feet padding in the emptiness, the taffeta whispering in rippling folds behind her. She fell back onto the cloud of the material. "I hope you're not real," she shouted, "for then I would have no hope and you must have hope, you must." She clutched at the fabric and brought it around her, nestling in its abundant folds.
Ianto went to her and crouched down. "I am real," he said, holding out his hand.
Lucy reached up and touched its softness. "Then you are lost too." She bowed her head, rubbing at the bodice, trying to remove the crimson stain resulting from her lipstick.
Ianto gently took both her hands in his. Lucy looked up at him, tears forming in her eyes. "It looks like blood. In fact I think it's pouring." Around them blood spread across the expanse, soaking up the bleached space in an unwelcoming claret.
Lucy laughed a brittle little laugh and pulled him nearer to her. "Kill me, please, don't let the clowns get me. Can you hear them? They're laughing with creased faces full of death. They bite you know? They stab with clawed hands while they sing their jovial clown songs. No two are alike, but they all smile those combustible smiles, flame red with yellow teeth."
The seep of carmine fashioned itself into dozens of elongated lips, twisted and stretched over the snarl of decaying teeth. They laughed, filling the air with their warped, cadaverous humour. Lucy jammed her hands over her ears, her lips muttering in desperation. "In sleep he sang to me, in dreams he came. That voice which calls to me and speaks my name. And do I dream again? For now I find, the phantom of the opera is there, inside my mind." She threw herself into the vast train of her dress, covering her head in its material.
Ianto stood, challenging the shoal of floating lips as they coasted toward him. "Clowns never frightened me," he stated, watching as their bullying laughter melted back into the pale surroundings.
A whisper breezed past, soft and light, making Ianto jerked his head to follow the sound. For a moment he saw a blaze of colour, a silhouette, a young woman turn to meet his gaze through the mist. Dark eyes, deep, vibrant, bewitching.
"…Rich and dark, like the dappled swirl of Aurum chocolate." The riddle of the Master's voice floated through the spectre of her presence.
She laughed. The sound was honeycomb sweet, mellow and warm, making Ianto stepped forward to touch its gift and savour its radiance. He reached out his hand, his fingertips making ripples in the fragile film that separated them both. It was then he understood; she was a glimpse of a memory, a catalyst that had once shaped the Master's past and the fragile fibre of his youth.
Ianto concentrated, trying to draw the fragmented image to the surface of the Master's mind, to glean understanding from the flash of her apparition.
Sanna. The name drifted through the breach as the woman aged gracefully before him. Her laughter faded as time gather around her eyes shrouding them with sorrow and heartache. A single tear fell as death claimed her for his own, a tear full of compassion and forgiveness. She reached out, fingertips thick with blood to caress his face before fading back into the glaring whiteness.
Ianto touched his cheek, touched her mark upon his skin and touched the graze of the past. He felt irritated; he didn't want her kindness, her sympathy, her understanding. He wanted her to burn as he burnt, feel the flame of festering anger…
Something glinted in his hand, a knife, coated and dripping with blood. He lifted it up, catching the reflection in its blade, catching the image of another man.
A hand reached through the ether, more bone than flesh, blackened and putrefying from the inside out. It grabbed his wrist, coiling with a click of knuckles and crushing strength. The knife fell back into the past and its monster stepped through the divide.
Lucy screamed as the decaying shell of a man slammed into Ianto, tipping him backward onto the floor. This was the Master, wasted and charred by the burn of his severe emotions, a mixed being of rage and envy, fuelled by rejection, denied by love, warping the sanity of his youth and pushing him over the edge.
His other hand gripped Ianto's neck, squeezing with sustained pressure, leaving disc like bruises to form on his skin from its expose bony tips. Ianto fought against the fierce hold as the Master swapped his grip, choking him further into oblivion. The slate of his jaw moved, teeth grinding against one another, snarling at Ianto through perished lips. "Now, Mr Jones, I've show you mine, time to show me yours."
He released Ianto from the clog of strangulation to bring the skull of his face nearer. The scorched flesh of the Master's forehead touched Ianto's own, adhering to the younger man in its jellied state. The Time Lord smiled death's eternal grin as he began to probe Ianto's mind.
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Chess. Ianto saw the large board before him, its chequered squares reaching out into the distance. The tall pieces towering above him were the still effigies of those who shared his life.
'Is this my mind?' he asked himself, looking out across the orderly rows.
"I gave you white, I thought it would be apt." The man who had once been Harold Saxon was lent against an opposing pawn, a UNIT soldier dress in full battle fatigues.
He straightened his posture; adjusting the cuffs of his suit, one that matched Ianto's own and clicked his fingers, the pieces on both sides began to move with graceful ease. Ianto heard the haunting voices of his childhood blow across the board on prevailing winds. Images flashed past him, trailing in the stream of their wake, the emotions of the each moment stirring the cloth of his jacket and ruffling his hair.
Ianto's queen moved beside him, his mother fashioned from marble, staring out across the board, accessing the opposition's formation. The Master's dark knight, an ebony Slitheen, travelled across the rank and file to capture her.
"What a shame to loose your queen so early on," Saxon consoled as Ianto relived those stark moments of mother's violent demise. The stone crumbled, her body becoming flesh to bleed its silhouette into the wood.
The game continued, his memories spilling across the uniformed battlefield in systematic order. The opening move, the middle game, each occurrence of his life brought to the forefront, every emotion relived. Ianto experienced the fall of Torchwood One as his rook was taken by the march of a Cyber knight.
"I think I enjoy this part of you the most," the Master whispered in his ear, "apart from all that death and destruction you witnessed, the sensation of guilt is just so intense. You knew this was coming, didn't you? I mean, Rose must have told you how she came to be in another universe? How your father saved her own reality from the twin threat of Cybermen and Daleks?"
"You cannot change the past," Ianto whispered mutely.
"And yet you condemned all those people to death." The Master laughed. "And I thought I was meant to be the bastard?"
Ianto swallowed, watching as the Cyber-knight turned and the metal casing began to unwrapped itself from its core body, carefully stripping some parts of its conversion. "Turn you on?" the Master enquired, as the human beneath the metal upgrade became evident.
Lisa.
Ianto's pieces moved forward, en masse, Owen, Tosh, Gwen and Jack. Lisa captured a pawn in a bid to escape but Torchwood cornered the piece, taking her out in a volley of bullets.
"No!" Ianto screamed, watching Lisa crumple like a disused marionette.
The Master stepped forward, dabbing his eyes with a tissue. "I'm such an old romantic; I do like a good love story especially one with a tragic end. Boy meets girl, girl gets converted into a sect of metal monsters; boy tries to save girl by giving his soul to another monster, a freak of nature; freak kills girl and boy gives his heart to the freak." He moved closer to Ianto's ear. "I bet you were glad, deep down, Mr Jones, when Torchwood rid you of your responsibility."
Ianto shook his head. "Oh, come on," the Master pushed, prodding him with a finger. "I'm in your mind. She became a burden in the end, didn't she? How many times did you think about pulling the plug, doubling her medication?"
Ianto pushed away. "Never, I loved her!" He stared at his tormentor.
The Master's smile held a hint of triumph. "Then why did you let her go to work that day?" He spread his hands.
Ianto averted his gaze to the pattern of the grain on the floor. "I - you-you can't change the past."
The Master stepped forward. "Really? But by being there you did change the past, in fact, you created a paradox. Two places at one time…" He held up the same amount of fingers for emphasis.
Ianto flinched. "No, that's not true."
"But it is, dear boy, even if you were just a speck of energy inside Rose, you were there none the less."
Ianto licked his dry lips, the weave of the wood forming ghostly faces in its surface, the knot of their hollow eyes full of accusations.
"And Lisa?" the Master continued, watching the smoothness of the board buckle with the press of Ianto's guilt. "She was your atonement, your penance for leaving so many to perish."
The wood began to splinter as cracks appeared in its surface. "I could…"
"What? Couldn't save her? Couldn't save them? Or could only save yourself? I mean, what sort of son condemns his own mother to die in another universe away from the man she loves? You knew what was going to happen, you could have sacrificed yourself and taken her place…"
"You think I didn't try?" Ianto's pain resounded in his voice. "I was too late," he whispered, "she'd already gone."
The fractures ripped open, tipping the pieces into its ebony void; Ianto fell to his knees, his heart sinking, pulling at its cords with a leaded weight.
"Lucky for you then, Mr Jones, you got to save yourself twice." The Master stroked the top of his head. "Oh, don't get me wrong, I admire self-preservation, in fact I think it's something we could build on…"
"Leave him alone!" The chess board faded back to white and the Doctor stood in the brightness.
"Ah, I was wondering if you'd have the mental capacity to turn up." The Master pushed Ianto away and walked to the other Time Lord. The Doctor was pale, a sheen of sweat glistening across his brow. "I see it's taken its toll on you." He smiled. "Or maybe the boy's emotional anguish is the cause."
The Doctor swayed slightly. "Let him go," he said again, his bloodshot eyes betraying his own pain.
"But I feel like a kitten with a new ball of wool." The Master rocked back and forth on his heels. He looked back at Ianto. "You must be so proud; he has your morals, even if they mean sentencing so many to die…" He raised his voice so the younger man could hear, "…even his own mother. You must feel like a god, Ianto Jones."
A wave of emotion pushed out from Ianto causing the Doctor to double over. "Don't listen to him Ianto, you did the right thing…"
Ianto looked up at his father and the Master. "Is this another trick, another game?"
"I'd like to say, yes, but I'm afraid he's gate-crashed our little mind party," the Master answered.
Ianto looked to his father. "I tried," he whispered as if the words could expunge the rip of guilt.
The Doctor's stare remained sober even though his hearts lay in a thousand shattered pieces. "There was nothing you could have done, Ianto." He stepped forward, offering the young man his hand. "Don't listen to his lies."
"But we're all so full of them aren't we, Doctor? They're apart of our everyday performance; some come cheap while others cost us dear."
The Doctor helped Ianto to his feet. "Were yours worth your family?" the Master poised, walking around the two men.
"I never lied to you," the Doctor answered honesty. "We were friends, once, good friends."
The Master laughed, its sound stippling his mind with shadows. He stepped into the Doctor's face. "And yet you took what should have been mine."
The Doctor shook his head, holding the shade of the Master's thoughts. "No, it just happened…"
Saxon's skin began to blister in the heat of his rage. "You filled her head with your deceitful nonsense, laughed behind my back…"
"No, we never…"
The Master's flesh baked on the bones of his soul. "I was the better man, I deserved her love!"
"She did love you…" A charred hand hit out, fuelled by the longevity of raw hate. The blow caused the Doctor to fall to the ground.
"I'm going to cripple you, smash your hearts and rip your soul in two." The Master turned his focus to Ianto. "You're going to feel this boy's pain, the scale of his every emotion bleed inside you until you beg me to kill him."
"Never!" the Doctor yelled.
"We'll see," the Master promised.