Torchwood: Divergence

Book One: Dychwelyd

Chapter 4B

Ianto was suddenly sitting up, and he'd grabbed Cooper's arm when she'd tried to punch Harkness, the motion so quick that none of them had seen it. He seemed to be somewhat unfocused, as though he'd acted purely on instinct and wasn't truly conscious of his actions. The recently resurrected brunette blinked rather dazedly, then seemed to realise he was crushing his friend's wrist and quickly let go, his blue eyes both sad and increasingly frightened.

"Don't..." he murmured, his soft words somehow conveying a sense of urgency and a palpable warning. "Jack's suffered enough..."

Rhys had come up close behind his wife, was trying to check the rapidly bruising wrist she now clutched in her other hand as she stared at her newly returned co-workers with shock widened eyes.

"You nearly broke my bloody arm," she finally managed to protest, beginning to wonder if they'd let Jones out the cells too soon after all.

"Gwen..." Jack began quietly, the tone of his voice urging her to back off, even as he reached out to steady the now violently trembling youth beside him.

Ianto looked stricken, his unsteady gaze wavering between Cooper and her concerned but obviously confused husband.

"'M sorry..." he breathed shakily, tears beginning to fall once more as he started to hyperventilate, his emotional control non-existent in his current state. "I... I didn't mean... to hurt you..."

Harkness could feel the blanket clad brunette's muscles starting to tense and spasm when he placed a comforting hand on his back, alarm bells going off in his head as the young Welshman's eyes lost focus entirely, his breathing turned to choked gasps, and his spine stiffened. Jack instinctively pulled Ianto to him, holding him tight with one arm and using the other hand to firmly support the back of his companion's head and neck as he went into some sort of convulsive seizure.

"Oh, God," Gwen hissed, suddenly forgetting all about her wrist and why she'd been angry with Jack, horrified by her young friend's suffering. "What can we do?"

"Get an empty bin and some cold towels," the Captain instructed distractedly, feeling muscles slowly relax under his hands as the brief seizure petered out. "Quick as you can."

"Towels," Rhys volunteered, hurrying up into the kitchenette again.

Cooper strode across to the nearest workstation and upended the small trash receptacle there, the couple arriving back at the couch in mere minutes. And as the convulsions stopped, Jack eased Ianto over to sit with his head leaned back against the top of the upper cushions, pulled the blanket over his lap to cover his naked body, then thanked Rhys for the towels. He began gently bathing his trembling companion's face and neck while the obviously dazed brunette sat panting for breath... only to suddenly double over in apparent pain.

"Bin," Harkness requested, managing to get the item positioned just as Ianto was violently ill.

Again, all that came up was blood and a little bile, but at least it appeared to be old, swallowed blood and not the vivid red that could indicate an internal haemorrhage. When Jones had stopped retching, the Captain gave him sips of water to rinse his mouth, and then used one of the damp towels to wipe his face and hands for him after placing the defiled dust bin out of the way. Finally, he shifted to sit close to the still shivering Archivist, put his arms around him in a comforting embrace. Ianto was ashen, unfocused, and obviously quite ill, but until all the results came back from the tests Martha was running, it was uncertain what could be done to help him. And it was Rhys who voiced the fear that was coiling coldly in Gwen's guts.

"Did we get him back just to watch him die again?" Williams whispered worriedly as he fielded the bin to go clean it out.

"No," Jack stated firmly, meeting the heavyset Welshman's gaze and giving him a small, reassuring smile. "He's suffering from a pretty major case of system shock. Coming back to life isn't a picnic, plus he looks to've been used for experimentation of some sort and came through who knows what kind of temporospatial portal. He needs warmth, sleep, and fluids to get things back on track.

"You know, I've seen a dead man that had returned to life with wings kinda like this... ages ago when I was through here on a job. He was a kind of protector for a village near Jerusalem. Really put a knot in the Crusaders' knickers for about ten years. I lost track of him after that, but from the stories the villagers told, he was weak and sick the first couple of days, then kicked serious ass after that. And now that I think about it, he could retract his wings when he wanted to."

"We found that story when we first started investigating strange light and a pool of blood in the old overgrown end of the Cathays Cemetery," Gwen remarked, reaching over to get a hold of her spouse's hand as he returned from the lavatory with the dust bin. "It was a tiny reference about something called the Scions of the Void. It said 'The Scions came cloaked in the night sky to summon an unholy light with their whispers... For forty days they conjured and danced and on the night of the forty first the Scions called forth a shining winged Guardian from a great boil of blood'. I can show you the surveillance footage we have from London and the graveyard, with the red light and strange shadow creatures. And what we all saw that recorded earlier tonight, Ianto appearing from a huge pool of hot blood at twilight. But what are the 'Scions of the Void'? How did they bring him back to life, and why couldn't we find any other references to them or this phenomenon no matter how hard we looked?"

"I don't know," Harkness admitted with a slight frown. "I've never encountered a race by that name or seen anything close to what you described. And I've never known of any power that can truly resurrect the dead, other than what was done to me and this doesn't sound anything like it. What I gleaned from the tale about the man outside Jerusalem sounded more like an alien possession that kicked in when his heart briefly stopped. But I didn't actually see him till he'd been 'reborn' about a year. So, I'm not sure what was done to bring Ianto back like this."

"Blood..." Jones whispered, surprising them all. "I was... covered in blood for so long. They chained me down... used sharp, hot knives to cut me over and over... threaded bits of shadow into me... stripped apart the muscles in my back... broke open the bones and wrapped it all in shadows so the wings would grow..."

A small choked sound of pain escaped the traumatized brunette and he hid his face against Jack's shoulder.

"They promised I'd be with you again," Ianto hissed brokenly. "That's all I cared about... all I wanted. I tried to bear the pain... be strong so I could get back to you, Jack... but it never stopped. All I could hear... was the hiss of blood on hot steel... the roar of the fires... and my own screams past the gag..."

"Shh..." the older man holding him gently stroked his past shoulder length hair and tightened the embrace he was captured in. "It's over, Ianto, you're safe now and I'm right here. Relax... no one's going to hurt you again, I promise."

"We should be going, Gwen," Rhys prodded quietly. "Let him get some sleep, yeah?"

"I'll help you get him into the room behind the office," Cooper offered her former boss, smiling when he raised curious brows. "Come on, I'll show you."

"Let's put you to bed, Tiger Pants," Harkness murmured jokingly to the young Welshman shivering in his arms, shifting so he could pick him up once more.

"Guess you didn't notice... I'm not wearing pants..." Jones breathed shakily, slightly arching one brow as a tiny spark of his old humour surfaced. "Convenient, yeah...?"

"Oh, yeah," Jack grinned enthusiastically, hoisting the too light weight brunette into his arms blanket and all. "Lead on, PC Cooper."

Gwen headed across and up to the new office, waiting for her friends to catch up. The Captain carefully set Ianto on his feet once more, not wanting to try to carry him through the current obstacle course of desk, chairs, filing cabinets, and stacked boxes. He gently but firmly supported the younger man, leading his limping steps to where the female member of their old three-person team stood by a floor to ceiling bookcase built into the rear wall. She pointed out the small handle along one edge, depressed the top portion of it and pushed. The shelving unit swung away into what should have been a solid wall, and she reached in to flip on the light switch as Rhys came up to stand in the office doorway.

"Wow... they actually made a real bedroom when they rebuilt the place," Jack grinned, helping his partner through the dual use portal. "Locking door... King sized bed... and its own big open American style bathroom. Man, they went all out."

"I think UNIT was hoping someone would eventually reactivate the Torchwood Institute and figured a few home improvements might help," Gwen shrugged. "Never hurts to have someplace to crash after an all-night Weevil hunt, even if no one planned to be here full time."

"Exactly," Harkness agreed, obviously ignoring the not-so-subtle hint that even UNIT had been expecting him to return. "Here we go, Ianto... a nice comfy bed not in a bunker, so you can get a good night's sleep."

He guided the painfully unsteady Welshman over to the bed in the far corner of the room, eased him down to sit on the edge of the mattress. Cooper came to help get their friend tucked under the crisp new sheets, woolly blankets, and corduroy covered duvet, shifting pillows so he could rest sitting partially upright on his side in case he was sick again at some point. Her husband watched from the room's threshold now, thinking to himself that the two Torchwood agents looked like parents putting their child to bed. Then Gwen was heading his way, her expression a conflicted mix of concern, confusion, and lingering anger.

"The team will be here in the morning early," she warned as she and her spouse started out through the office. "Turlough's normally the first in at about 6:15, with whoever hits the base next about fifteen minutes later. I'll try to be back before anyone else gets here."

"I'll stay bunked in with Ianto till you make it," Jack promised solemnly. "You two try to get some rest. Sounds like you've all had your hands full with regular alerts on top of this whole 'Scions of the Void' business."

"I've got work tomorrow," Rhys put in as they headed for the main entrance. "But I'll likely have time to swing 'round with lunch. See how things are going."

"Always welcome," Harkness smiled, his blue eyes showing that he really meant it and wasn't just being polite.

"Team specs are on the system if you want to know who all you'll be dealing with tomorrow," Gwen added, nodding toward the office. "Call me if something comes up before then, my numbers are in the database."

"Will do," the still coat clad brunette promised as the big circular door rotated open.

"Oh, and it's a girl," Williams called with a grin as he and his wife stepped through the gaping portal and started for the stairs to the lift. "Looks just like her Mam."

Then they were in the lift and gone, the big cog-wheel door alarms punctuating their departure as it rolled closed, leaving the Captain alone in a place that had long been his home, with only the masses of equipment and the young man whose death had seen him abandon the Earth for over a year without any intention of returning... until now. He hurried back to the room at the rear of the office, planning to tour the renovations later when he didn't have more important matters to deal with. The undying brunette took off his coat and hung it up on the sturdy new tree near the desk on his way through, closed the cleverly concealed door behind him. Then he approached the bed and very gently pulled back all the covers.

Jack's heart was telling him the traumatized youth curled up on the mattress was truly Ianto... it felt like Ianto. But he knew too well that there were myriad races that could take on the shape of others based on surface images gleaned from their victims' minds, choosing the one person they would most easily trust. He desperately wanted to have the young Archivist back, however; he had to be sure he wasn't being fooled by a clever shape shifter, or an alien intelligence that had inhabited his deceased lover's body.

With a feather light touch, the Captain traced the hair fine Y-shaped scar over Jones' right cheek near his eye... a souvenir from when the Hub had been destroyed by the bomb planted in his guts. Then he tracked farther down, found one of the small, roughly circular marks on either side of the young Welshman's left bicep, where a bullet had passed all the way through... he'd bandaged that wound himself, the result of a one-man assault on Black Marketers to obtain the antidote to a virus he and Gwen had been infected with. His search followed the younger man's left arm down to his wrist, to the thin, barely raised white line all the way across the inside of the joint just a little below the heel of his hand where his watch band normally covered it... another wound he'd treated, this one using alien tech when he'd come to check on the Archivist during his second day of suspension after the incredibly messy, emotionally devastating Cyberwoman incident, and found him in the process of doing exactly what he'd been afraid of the reason he'd dropped by unannounced and brought the device with him. That had been a rather harrowing and uncomfortable rescue, which had shown him a side of the boy he hadn't dreamt existed... one that had been determined to die on his own terms rather than be executed as a traitor or have his memories wiped with Retcon. It had honestly scared the crap out of the former Time Agent, but it had also been the start of their true friendship, a dark little secret that the rest of the team had never been privy to and that he'd never mentioned in his daily logs. There were other permanent marks on the Welshman's forearms... not from injuries he was familiar with but that had marred the fair skin since he'd known the other man none the less, likely aftermath from Canary Warf. The burn scars above and just below the inside of the twenty-six-year old's left elbow certainly were... as was the brand-like grid pattern across his back just above his right hip where he'd backed into the burning remains of a ventilation duct while trying to drag Lisa out of the Tower and been pinned against it by her weight for several minutes. Jack moved his hand to the younger brunette's torso, unconsciously counting the far too visible ribs, noting the sharply defined muscles. Finally, across the centre and left side of the overly pale Archivist's chest and abdomen just below his ribs, a destructive pattern of oval, semi-circular, and serpentine scars... the aftermath of Xilobyte "assassins" sent for him but accidentally picked up by Ianto instead. The nasty little insects had chewed through skin and muscle, at least one having had to be cut out with a pocket knife by Gwen. Even still, they'd come perilously near to burrowing deep enough to hit vital organs, and the wounds had taken weeks to fully heal. Too close a call in more ways than one.

"Shape shifters normally don't bother with that kind of detail," he murmured to himself. "Events could never be that identical in an alternate reality, and I'm not getting the odd smell or creepy vibe alien possessions usually give off."

Harkness gingerly ran his hand over the final scars, was almost certain that the being before him truly was the real Ianto Jones, impossibly returned from the dead. The Welshman stirred at his touch, shakily moving to intercept the hand that was against his stomach.

"Are you really here, Jack...?" he whispered, his tired eyes more grey than blue at the moment and begging for reassurance. "Or am I only dreaming again...?"

"I'm here," the Captain soothed, shifting to support the frighteningly unwell Archivist when he struggled to sit upright so they could face one another. "Take it easy. You're not exactly up to any major activity yet."

"I'm scared, Jack..." Ianto breathed unsteadily, his voice barely audible and his gaze not fully focused, a constant trembling setting into all his limbs once more. "I'm afraid this is just another hallucination... that they're actually still cutting on me... that I've finally gone mad from it and I'll never really be with you again..."

"This is real," Harkness insisted fiercely, moving to sit on the edge of the mattress and hold the frightened brunette by the shoulders. "You came back to me somehow, and I won't let you go ever again."

Seeking to reassure the obviously badly traumatized young Welshman and himself for that matter, Jack put his arms around Ianto to hold him close and engaged him in a deep, passionate kiss. A little unsure at first, Jones quickly relaxed in his partner's embrace, then returned both it and the kiss in kind. And if the Captain had harboured any residual doubts about being in the presence of the real, non-possessed Ianto Jones, they evaporated completely with that intimate contact. The way he kissed, the touch of his skin, the taste of his lips, the softness of his hair, the energy he radiated, the warmth of his soul, the power of his love... there was no way Jack could ever mistake any of those things or how they made him feel. He'd spent nearly two full years longing for them, dreaming about them, and trying to come to terms with the fact that they were gone forever and his heart would never truly be whole again. Now by some alien wrought miracle, Ianto had been returned to him, altered in more than one way yet very much alive. He desperately wanted to know the how and why of it, but for the moment was more concerned with getting the ill-treated brunette strong enough to be back on his feet and functioning.

When they finally parted, Ianto sighed and managed to smile for the first time since he'd emerged from the pool of blood in the graveyard. Then he just leaned against the older man, finding almost forgotten comfort and security in the strength of his embrace and the steady beat of his heart.

"I've missed you," Harkness growled, tightening his arms slightly around Jones' shivering body for a moment before shifting to meet his partner's teary-eyed gaze. "And I want you to get well so we can both start living again. So, let's settle you back under the covers so you can rest, yeah?"

"Will you stay with me...?" Ianto asked wistfully, looking lost and afraid. "If I wake up and you're not here..."

"I don't know..." Jack acted like he had to seriously consider the request when his companion's voice faded to frightened silence, then he grinned. "You skoonch toward the wall a little, and I'll see what I can do."

"'Skoonch'..." his partner echoed quietly with a raised brow. "Is that a Time Agency term for 'shove over'...?"

"Absolutely," the Captain chuckled; overjoyed to see the younger man's well remembered wit resurfacing.

A few minutes of shifting saw Ianto settled on his side facing the wall and curled up in a more prone position. He stubbornly struggled to stay awake, waiting silently for the older brunette to join him. Harkness quickly removed his boots and socks, took off his waistcoat, braces, belt and long-sleeved button up. Then, clad only in his trousers and undershirt, he stretched out under the duvet and top cover so he could slide over to spoon with his partner and drape an arm over his waist atop the sheet.

"Rest," he urged quietly, briefly reaching above his head to hit the dimmer switch he'd seen over the headboard earlier. "I'll guard your sleep. If you need anything, just say the word and I'll take care of it for you."

"I only need you, Jack..." Ianto whispered, apparently starting to drift off to sleep once more. "Always…"

"I need you too," Harkness murmured, kissing his exhausted companion on the nearest shoulder.

He felt Jones shift the covers and fumble for his hand where it rested near his stomach, pulling it close to his body so he could hold it against his chest. The Captain listened to the young Archivist's breathing as it became slow and deep, could feel the strong steady beat of Ianto's heart where his palm was now pressed to the Welshman's body. He relaxed fully for the first time in more than two years, drifted as close to true sleep as he ever came these days. If he could actually die, he'd think he'd gone to Heaven. As it was, Jack simply snuggled close to the one who so completely owned his heart, and enjoyed watching him sleep.

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AN: Hopefully that sees me forgiven for the end of the last chapter.
This is a special additional post for my birthday, so it'll be back to weekends only from now on.
Thank you to those reading the story. And thank you to those who have followed, favourited, and reviewed. NM