A/N: Don't you wish Ten and Ianto had met properly in canon? They would've had the best conversations! Sigh :(
There was no doubt about it, Ianto decided, the alien slugs were definitely acting strange.
He frowned and corrected himself. Not slugs: Kalkerifeenians. Which was a shame really, because he hadn't yet thought up his own name for them. In the reports he'd been calling them Extraterrestrial Gastropods (or ETGs, which sounded much snappier) but he was sure there was an even better name to be found. Unfortunately that little mental distraction had been scuppered by the Doctor's arrival and instead of christening them something clever, all he could do now was go back through the records and update their true designation.
Pouting, Ianto tapped on the tank directly over the 'foot' of one of the creatures, making the alien's body ripple slightly at the noise. He stepped to the side, rounding one of the reinforced corners, and watched whilst the aliens, all of which had been clustered together on that one wall, hurried to slide around after him.
It was a toss-up between being flattered that they were following him and worried that they were following him. The fact they were moving with far more vigour than ever before was rather lost beneath the development that they were clearly aware of Ianto's presence. The Doctor had confirmed they were consuming something far more intangible than salad leaves (being the faint leak of temporal radiation from the Rift) so Ianto knew their attention wasn't because they associated him with food.
There were few other explanations, but Ianto suspected it had something to do with the Doctor's arrival. It seemed likely that the disruption of the Time Vortex had stirred them up, filling them with energy and interest in their surroundings. It was certainly more preferable than thinking they'd taken a shine to him, Ianto decided, and jotted down a few notes concerning his idea on his clipboard.
There was no reason for him to stay any longer, having completed his routine check on the aliens, but he lingered regardless, enjoying the quiet and solitude of the old subterranean chamber. The last two days had been extremely...eventful...and the peace in the vaults was a welcome relief to the near perpetual worry and confusion. Even the night before, going out with Jack and sleeping in his own bed, had been fraught with tension, instead of the relaxing break for which he'd hoped.
His mind obligingly drifted back a few hours, to the packed bar they'd visited for a drink. Jack had been right to guess that particular venue had been chosen for the lack of privacy and considerable noise. Ianto had wanted to avoid the conversation he knew Jack would push to start whether Ianto was mentally prepared for it or not. Which he wasn't.
It had probably been a bit of a low trick to deflect Jack with talk of the Tarot reading, but, conversely, he truly had only recognised for the first time how the little girl's predictions could fit into recent events. Just as he'd explained to Jack, the mystery surrounding fortune-telling was far more troubling to him than the idea of being able to predict the future. There were plenty of ways to calculate the outcome of various circumstances, and undoubtedly people existed who could make those sums without any visible effort, but dressing it all up in jewels and incense made it seem cheap and tawdry.
Ianto smiled faintly at his own thoughts, wondering if he were trying to convince himself it was okay to indulge in a little optimism. It surely wasn't so bad to hope that the girl was right and Gwen would be healed because of the Doctor. Although, if he really laid his faith in that prediction, it did present an issue concerning the rest of the reading; specifically the matter of Ianto's own problems.
The cards had apparently spoken of his quest for something in the wrong place. Ianto knew 'something' could only mean that which had dominated his life up to that moment – his fascination with pain – and the wrong place was undoubtedly the professional he'd hired to help him explore the subject. Thanks to Jack's interference, Ianto had found the right place to look; that could hardly be disputed when his encounters with Jack were so much more intense and satisfying than they'd ever been with Alex.
The only unanswered question was precisely what he sought. It lingered at the edge of his mind, danced on the tip of his tongue, and darted away whenever he tried to look directly at it. As a result he hadn't been thinking about it at all, right up to the moment he'd decided the Doctor was the Magician. Now it was yet another weight on his already crowded shoulders.
Because it had been decided that Lurrelia was the most likely culprit behind the booby-trapped message pod, Ianto had been reminded once again of everything that'd happened to him at her hands. More than that, however, he'd been forced to revisit the concerns about his unnatural desires that had been lurking in the shadows of his psyche for the past few months.
So much had changed that Ianto couldn't help but wonder at the cause of those transformations, and whether they were truly his own doing. The root of the problem lay in the fact that he couldn't remember precisely what had happened during his unintentional trip through the Rift. Of course he hadn't known what to expect when he'd leapt recklessly through the portal Lurrelia had created, but he could never have imagined what he'd found there. The sheer overwhelming nature of having each and every one of his senses abused and overloaded had almost entirely robbed him of any memory of what he'd done. He could recall occasional flashes, feelings of intense cold and strange metallic smells, but everything else was lost in the confusion of light and noise and an intense pressure surrounding his body. Most of the time Ianto was glad for that (it wasn't exactly something he wanted to relive, even if only in his mind) but not knowing the truth troubled the young man greatly when he began to think too hard about his situation.
If he could be sure, for example, that Lurrelia was definitely dead – that the blood which had covered his hands upon his return had really been hers – then he might not feel such concern that she was still a threat to him. As it was, discovering she was responsible for the virus Gwen had contracted merely added fuel to that fear, no matter that all signs indicated the infected pod had been sent before Lurrelia had travelled to Earth herself. He supposed it was because she'd been in his head, so deep a part of his mind that he couldn't tell who was directing his limbs or saying the words that left his mouth. Things had happened without him knowing who was responsible, leaving him unable to be completely sure what he would've done in those circumstances had he not been under the control of an alien.
He was especially conflicted over his encouragement for Jack to continue embracing him, when that touch brought about an agony way out of proportion to the injuries from which he'd been suffering at the time. Ianto may well have been able to set aside all of the confusion of that time, transferring the blame to Lurrelia's influence and getting on with his life, had it not been for that lingering fascination with pain.
What had started as an accident, combining the throb of his injuries, the false ache Lurrelia had planted in his head, and the pleasure of Jack's ministrations, had progressed into an obsession of sorts; a sensation unlike anything he'd ever experienced before and simply could not banish from his mind. Even though he'd first approached this new interest to vent his fears about lacking self-control, when Jack had elbowed his way into the process, it had swiftly become an entirely different entity, a trait so incredibly unlike Ianto's previous character that he was terrified it meant his mind was still not his own.
What if, instead of dying wherever the Rift had taken them, Lurrelia had abandoned her stolen body and hopped back into Ianto's? Could he really trust that anything he'd done since then was at his own volition?
Or was he simply looking for a way to excuse his descent into the perversions that had consumed him entirely, body and mind?
The atmosphere in the room changed suddenly, something shifting in the air around Ianto and causing him to pause in his dour contemplations. His brain attempted to catalogue the feeling, as it did with all new sensations, and ended up offering the comparison of a breeze forming around him, flowing towards some distant point, yet the air wasn't moving. It was rather more an illusion of everything in the room, living and inanimate objects alike, turning their attention to one single thing.
Ianto automatically thought of Jack, having felt a similar physical draw to the Captain numerous times in the past, however when he turned away from the glass tank, it was not his lover standing in the doorway, but the Doctor instead.
Staring at the newcomer, his eyes unknowingly wide, Ianto witnessed for the first time the pull the Time Lord exerted on the world around him. It was a wonder he hadn't noticed before just how powerful the allure of the alien's incredible knowledge and ability was; alike and yet so distinct from Jack's personal magnetism.
The Doctor cocked an eyebrow at him, head tilting slightly as though he suspected, but wasn't quite sure, why Ianto was gawking at him. "Hullo," he said, the word elongating into more of a question than a greeting and Ianto's awareness snapped abruptly back into his body.
He blinked, straightening his back to regain the appearance of control and smoothing over the expression upon his face. "Hello," he replied, just as carefully, watching as the Doctor stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered further into the chamber.
The pull hadn't gone away, but it was muted now, as though Ianto's mind had adjusted to keep from being so distracted. Had it always been there? He frowned and thought back to his previous encounters with the Time Lord: they were few and far between, for a variety of reasons, but he was sure he hadn't ended up slack-jawed like that before. Perhaps it was because they were alone, away from all the commotion of recent events, that he'd been able to recognise its presence...or, Ianto admitted, maybe he was simply imaging things. The stress of the past couple of days might finally have gotten to him, even though he'd thought everything was under control.
He shook his head minutely, banishing the unanswerable thoughts, and instead reached for a problem that he could easily solve. "Is there something you need? Something I can get for you?"
"Need?" the Doctor echoed, considering the question carefully. "Need," he said again, rolling the word around his mouth as though tasting it. He bent to peer into the tank. "Nope! No needs for me! How about you?"
Ianto swallowed, confused. "Uh, no. No, I'm fine. Thank you."
"You don't have any more questions about them then?"
Again confusion reigned, and also a sliver of fear; that intrinsic paranoia of being around someone who was so very superior to himself. "Them?" Ianto echoed.
The Doctor glanced up, perhaps recognising the wariness in the young human's voice. "Them," he said, nodding towards the tank.
"The Kalkerifeenians?" Ianto asked unnecessarily. "Oh." His mind struggled to right itself. What had he been expecting the other man to say? "I'm not sure."
"Well, when we move them to the TARDIS I can show you what the old girl has on them. I can't give you a physical copy of course, but I'm sure your memory is more than sufficient to pick up a few of the important details." The Time Lord tapped on the glass, just as Ianto had done earlier, and the nearest creature squirmed in response.
As alluring as that offer sounded, Ianto's loyalty to Jack overwhelmed all thought of getting access to the database on the Doctor's ship. "Jack wants them kept here, in case we need a live sample."
"A live sample?"
Ianto kept silent, merely lifting his eyebrows in confirmation to avoid falling into the same echoing trap Owen had triggered the day before.
"Huh," the Doctor said. "Well I don't know what he thinks he needs any kind of sample for, live or otherwise. Not now he knows about..." he trailed off and wiggled his fingers at Ianto instead of finishing the sentence. "Knowing Jack, he's probably got a crush on one of these little fellas," he went on, tapping the tank again and making the same alien twist upon the glass. "This one, if he has any taste. You're going to grow up to be a great little breeder, aren't you? Yes, you are!"
One of Ianto's eyebrows went up again as the Doctor addressed the creature in what sounded suspiciously like baby-talk. "They're not going to start multiplying, are they?" he asked, deciding not to respond to the suggestion that his lover was attracted to a slug.
"No, no, you're fine, they're all male and I'd wager the closest female is the one that attacked you. Unless one of these guys is already gestating...no, he'd be showing by now. They get quite rotund before the grubs eat their way out you see."
"The males carry the offspring?" Ianto frowned and then added, "They eat their way out?"
"Oh yes! The males who become breeders have this little pouch in their underside, nice and cosy and slimy, and the eggs get transferred into it from the female after fertilization. Then once the offspring have developed sufficiently, they emerge, making sure to have a proper meal before setting out into the big wide wor-, uh, universe."
Ianto felt his stomach clench in sympathy and he eyed the aliens warily, hoping – and it was one of the more bizarre hopes he'd ever had – that none of the creatures had gotten up to any slug-style shenanigans before falling through the Rift into Cardiff. Typically his curious mind then questioned what slug-style would be precisely and began riffling through his knowledge of mating habits in the animal kingdom to find out. Hadn't he read once that slugs engaged in intercourse twisted around each other...?
"Kind of you to offer," the Doctor declared suddenly and Ianto turned a very nearly horrified look on the Time Lord.
"Sorry?" he squeaked. He hadn't been thinking about slug sex out loud, had he?
"To help me. Very kind of you." He grinned at Ianto. "It's always nice to find someone able to remember their manners when tensions are high. Politeness is the most important thing in life, I've always said."
Ianto deflated in relief. "Oh, really?"
"Yes, well, maybe not. I think I alluded to it once but I don't know if the Helsern Tax Collector got the hint. He was trying to disembowel me with a shoe horn at the time and probably didn't make the connection."
"Human or alien shoe horn?" Ianto found himself asking.
"What, you don't think aliens have trouble getting their shoes on as well?"
"I can't say it has ever even come close to crossing my mind," Ianto admitted. "What happens to the non-breeder males?" he asked.
The Doctor was caught out by the sudden shift in the conversation, apparently not accustomed to having his own habits thrown back at him. "What?" he asked dumbly, before realisation set in. "Ooh, the Kalkerifeenians, right. Well there's no real difference; they do everything apart from carry the offspring. They can fertilize a female's eggs but then she has to pass them immediately on to a breeder to incubate them."
Ianto waited a beat, expecting from experience a filthy or suggestive comment to follow. "So they practise threesomes?" he asked eventually, unable to back down from that one. "A slug ménage à trois?" He struggled to keep the smile from his face at the Doctor's expression – the notion having evidentially never occurred to the Time Lord before.
"Ah, yes, well, I suppose some of them do..." The Doctor looked alarmed for a long moment before shaking his head to clear the disturbing thoughts. "We'd better not mention that fact to Jack."
"God, no. I dread to think what ideas he'd come up with." Ianto pulled a face. "Although now I have a mental image I really didn't want in my head."
The Doctor laughed, his ageless face beaming with amusement and Ianto smirked back at him for a carefree moment before his expression morphed into a frown. "You're looking at me."
"Am I?" the Doctor responded. "Of course I am, what am I saying? You're right there in front of me, of course I'm looking at you," he declared in a flurry of words. "Is that a problem? I'm sorry if it offends you."
Ianto ignored his babbling and continued calmly. "I mean you're not squinting or looking away."
"Oh," the Doctor replied. "Oh! No, I'm quite used to you now. It was much harder to learn to deal with Jack's presence than yours."
"You're telling me," Ianto muttered.
"Yes, Jack is a completely fixed point in time," the Doctor continued, either mishearing or purposefully misunderstanding his comment, "but you're only partially fixed. Your possibilities still aren't completely endless and varied, unlike Jack." He waved a hand, drew a circle in the air with one finger and nodded to himself as though that was explanation enough.
Ianto had been in the process of setting his clipboard down on top of the tank but he turned back sharply at the Time Lord's words, a little alarmed. "What do you mean his possibilities are endless? Is that a bad thing?"
"You want an actual explanation?" the Doctor asked, bemused. "Can't you just smile and nod and pretend you know what I'm saying?"
"That wouldn't help me understand him now, would it?" Ianto countered with a shrug.
The Doctor expressively blew out a long breath. "You're hoping for a lot there," he observed. "But okay, if you insist?"
Ianto gave a firm nod.
"Okay." The Doctor strolled around to a different side of the glass tank, idly watching the aliens as he spoke. "Well, every living being is capable of doing or being a lot of different things, the possibilities that arise from their existence spread out before them like...like pieces of string disappearing off into the distance, or the future, as it were. I can sort of sense those possibilities, the directions their lives could take and all that could be brought about because of them. Normally they're limited, constrained by certain elements, death being the most prominent, but Jack's got rather knotted when he was made immortal."
"Wait a minute," said Ianto. "Even if his 'strings' are longer than everyone else's, he'd surely still limited by what he can and can't do, beyond cheating death."
"Technically, maybe, but they reach very very far, as close to eternity as any being can imagine, and that is a lot of string." The Time Lord combed a hand through his hair, leaving it even more dishevelled than before. "It's a bit overwhelming to consider really."
Ianto couldn't help but nod at that slight understatement. "I can imagine." He frowned. "Actually, no I can't." He gave the other man a pensive look. "But my possibilities are still short, right?"
The Doctor opened his mouth to respond, made a non-committal noise, and snapped it shut again with a clack of teeth.
"Ah," Ianto said in understanding.
"What?" the Doctor asked.
"You're going to claim you can't tell me about my future, aren't you?"
The Doctor eyed him suspiciously, confused by his accepting tone. "You're okay with that?"
Ianto strolled around the next corner of the glass tank, until he was opposite the Doctor. The Kalkerifeenians followed him, paying no heed at all to the Time Lord, and he smiled to himself at their behaviour. "Oh I completely understand," he replied. "But if you'll recall, I wasn't actually asking for details. Just a clue as to how alike I am to Jack now."
"You're not immortal," the Doctor said, almost immediately.
Ianto raised an eyebrow at him in silent query, surprised by the straight answer considering the Doctor's penchant for ambiguous responses.
"I didn't want you testing the theory," the Doctor explained with a shrug.
"I wasn't planning on doing any such thing."
"Oh."
Ianto laughed, then took a moment to straighten his suit, his fingers precise in their actions. "What about yourself?" he asked when he was satisfied everything was in order. "Can you see your own possibilities?"
The Doctor's eyes widened a bit at the suggestion. "Why would I want to do that?"
"I'm sure you wouldn't. I just wondered if you could."
"Ah," the Doctor said gravely. "If I ever could it would have been back in my childhood, but living as long as I have, doing what I do, I've stopped looking at myself in the way I look at other people."
Ianto continued to consider him, trying to make sense of this being who appeared so deceptively human and yet had the undeniable eyes of someone who'd seen more than any mere Earthling could ever imagine.
"You know, you're taking this all very calmly," the Doctor remarked suddenly and Ianto fancied he could see the other man fidgeting beneath his scrutiny. "You're not flustered, or in shock, or even overly excited."
Ianto gave a small shrug. "Should I be? It doesn't really change anything."
"You're going to be young for the rest of your life."
"Only on the outside," he sagely pointed out. "Besides, I work here. Chances are I'll be dead long before I have to start lying about my age."
The Doctor looked at him with impossible eyes, and Ianto felt as though his very soul was being examined. The young man smiled thinly and gave another shrug. "You just confirmed my situation isn't like Jack's. I understand what that means."
"That's good," the Doctor said brightly. "No need to get ones hopes up for the impossible. Of course nothing is impossible, just improbable, so perhaps I should say no need to hope for the improbable. But no, I shouldn't say that either, because if no one hoped for anything improbable, nothing would ever get done or dreamed or created." He tugged on his earlobe, troubled by his own words. "So should I be encouraging you to hope for it?"
Ianto's smile became more genuine, amused by the other man's verbal meandering. "I'd rather you didn't," he said. "If it's any help."
"It is, actually. Well, good, good, as you wish, Mr. Jones." The Doctor stuck his hands into his pockets once again and rocked on his heels, attention drawn back to the tank.
"You can't help him, can you?" Ianto asked, unable to stop himself. "You can't do anything about Jack's immortality."
"No, I can't." The Time Lord's tone was regretful but firm.
"So he'll never die? Ever?"
"I...don't know about that one."
"He is aging. It's slow but it's happening, Owen said. Surely his body would have to give out at some point? Reach a point where it can't take another resurrection?"
The Doctor looked uncomfortable. "Perhaps."
Ianto blinked, taking a moment to consider the other man's tone. "This is another one of those things you can't talk about, isn't it?" He sighed, not needing an answer. "Can you cure me?"
"Would you want me to?"
Ianto considered it for a long moment. He hadn't been joking when he'd declared it unlikely he'd live long enough for his lack of aging to be an issue, but as he stood there, eyes sliding away from the Time Lord's piercing gaze, he realised he'd apparently allowed some of Jack's enthusiasm to slip into his heart.
If it were possible for him to cheat death long enough to live longer than normal, would he make every effort to do so? It wasn't as though he purposefully put his life in danger, but perhaps with a little more care, he could greatly extend his lifespan. Given the extra time, he could do so much, help so many people, especially if he didn't have the worry of infirmity and losing his usefulness in the field.
Ianto's sudden zeal about the possibilities laid before him lasted only a few seconds before he realised that, even if his body was long-lived, there still remained the question of his mental state.
"Can I ask you something?" he began slowly, considering as he spoke how to phrase his concerns without it sounding like utter paranoia. "Lurrelia had the ability to project herself into another's body and control their actions without that person realising. But was there a limit to how far she could go?"
The Doctor took the change of topic in his stride this time and answered immediately. "Well you know, distance doesn't even factor into the equation when it comes to that kind of mental prowess..."
"I meant more existentially," Ianto interrupted. "How much of an influence could she have had over the host's personal thoughts? Or their feelings?"
The Doctor examined Ianto's features for a moment, reading deep beneath the question. Ianto resisted the urge to look away, well aware that he had effectively laid bare all of his fears before the alien. "When the Perscalla-Fam fully grew into their mental abilities they were, they will be, unrivalled in that field for millennia. At the beginning they weren't so adept, sparking Lurrelia's assumption that she was alone in her abilities, but it sounds as though she would have been considered quite gifted, even if she'd been born later in the Fam's development."
Ianto listened intently, trying hard to ignore the chill creeping over his skin. He couldn't comprehend what it would feel like to be so different to everyone else around him; to have the ability to do something that his peers couldn't even understand because of their animalistic nature. She must have felt incredibly lonely, and really it was no wonder that she'd desperately sought a reason for her abnormality, as she'd considered it, and yet despite all of that, Ianto could not feel any pity for the alien at all.
"So as to the extent of her influence," the Doctor went on in a thoughtful tone, "I'd think she could probably submerge herself deeply enough that the host would never realise their behaviour was out of the ordinary."
Much against Ianto's expectation, he felt only numbness at the Doctor's reply. He had thought hearing once and for all that his fears had some basis would shake him to the core, but he felt nothing. Shock, he noted absently, though recognising that fact did not make it dissipate.
"Of course that would only work on a weak mind," the Doctor declared, fixing Ianto with a meaningful look. His eyes bore into the young human's and a shiver ran along Ianto's spine, the room once again seeming to lean in towards the Time Lord. "And you don't have a weak mind, do you, Ianto?"
Hearing his name spoken in that powerful voice left Ianto speechless, but even had he been able to respond, he had no idea how he would have answered. He wanted to consider himself a strong person, but at the same time, admitting that strength would mean no longer being able to blame Lurrelia for the development of his recent perversions.
Ianto's eyes slid away, ashamed to even look at the other man. If it wasn't because of an alien's influence, then it was all down to him; the panic over his loss of control, his sudden and desperate obsession with pain, everything. It was a terrifying prospect to think that all the changes in his life would have likely happened, even had Lurrelia not messed around in his head. Could he really believe he would have turned to masochism if she hadn't subjected him to that first experience of pleasure through pain?
"Anyone can see you don't," the Doctor declared, breaking through Ianto's reflective silence.
The young man shook his head, not wanting to hear any more and he held up a hand to ward off further discussion of the matter. "I really don't-" he trailed off, noticing movement from the corner of his eye, and looked across the room to find Gwen standing in the doorway, staring at them with large unblinking eyes.
She was wearing only the long baggy t-shirt Rhys had brought for her to sleep in; her feet were bare, her dark hair tousled and unkempt, and from one hand...
(Ianto's heart gave a lurch.)
...from one hand dripped blood.