When they made it back to the Hub, Owen, Tosh, and Gwen all made for the conference room. It had been a hell of a day, and they were all famished; it was time for dinner, and since they didn't have their beloved Tea Boy to figure out their dinner, they were about to begin an epic fight to the death to decide something of the utmost importance:

Chinese, or pizza?

"We had pizza yesterday!" Gwen protested as they jogged up the stairs.

Owen snorted. "Yeah, well last time we had Chinese, I had a bloody migraine for a week. When they figure out that MSG is not a food group that needs representing, then have at it!"

The argument faded as the three disappeared, and after a moment, Jack stepped through the open port door into the Hub. He, too, started for the stairs, only to freeze when something caught his ear. It was faint, barely audible, but then it repeated.

"Jack?"

He knew that voice; there was no mistaking it, and Jack turned around to see Ianto sitting in the desk by the coffee machine, just to the right of the door he'd come through.

Though he was tempted to lecture him, he couldn't help the smile on his face as he turned around and started down the stairs. "Hey, Yan, I thought you were taking the rest of the day off," he said. He had half a mind to lecture him, but as he neared the desk, the thought died where it stood.

Ianto was sitting in the chair behind the desk, his head lolled back against the back of it and his eyes barely open. Tears streamed down his face, glistening in the industrial lighting of the Hub, and the rise and fall of his chest was alarmingly fast.

"Jack," he whimpered again, his lips parting only just enough to let the words slip from them.

There was something oddly familiar about this, but Jack shoved the feeling back as he stepped slowly closer. "Yan, what's going on?" he asked. Whatever had been wrong with him before, it looked to be exponentially worse.

"You have to put me in the Vaults, Jack. You have to lock me up." There was a haunted look in his eyes, and as Jack took another step closer, he sprang from his seat, knocking the chair to the floor as he pressed himself back against the rail behind him.

"What are you talking about?" Jack asked, his eyebrows pulling together of their own accord.

"You have to lock me up!" Ianto repeated, more urgently this time. His face was twisted in a mask of terror and agony, and…was that shame? Disgust? "I killed three girls, Jack. I murdered them with my bare hands!"

Jack snorted. "Stop kidding around, Yan," he said. Ianto didn't kill three girls; Ianto was the most passive person he knew, and besides that, he was the most pure-hearted.

Just then, he heard footsteps coming down the stairs of the Hub. It seemed Ianto's start had made enough noise to draw the others from the conference room, and Owen, Gwen, and Tosh were all coming down the stairs, with Owen in the lead.

Only, it wasn't Owen whom Ianto's eyes fixed upon; instead, they flashed between Gwen and Tosh for a moment, before he screamed.

"Get away, please!" he cried. "Before I turn on you." His gaze fell once again to Jack, desperate and oddly unfocused. "Please, you have to lock me in the Vaults. I don't want to hurt anyone anymore, but I'm not safe!"

Jack didn't know what was going on, but he knew that having Tosh and Gwen around was only agitating his confused lover more. It made sense, he guessed: if Ianto thought he'd killed three girls, it was only logical he wouldn't want to be around his female teammates. "Gwen, Tosh, get back upstairs." Owen would stay, though, because he wanted to have the extra hands ready should he need them.

"But—"

He cut Gwen off before she could protest. "Now!" he shouted, and they went, albeit hesitantly.

Once they were gone, he held out his hands to Ianto, who had fallen back against the rails weakly, hugging himself and rocking back and forth on his feet. "I murdered them, Jack. In cold blood, I murdered them. I don't know why; I couldn't stop it. Please, Jack, you have to put me in the Vaults."

Jack took another step towards him, and tried not to be hurt as Ianto let out a fearful whimper. "I don't know what's happened to you, Ianto, but we're going to get you sorted out," he said in what he hoped was a confident manner.

"Don't you get it?" Ianto screamed at him. "I killed them! I could kill you too! Please, you have to lock me away!" But it didn't matter, because he was already on his feet, walking past Jack, clearly on the way to the Vaults.

Jack grabbed him, though, before he could get past him, turning Ianto around to face him. "Hey, hey," he said, gripping Ianto's shoulders firmly and forcing him to look him in the eyes. "Come here. What's happened to you?" Ianto tried to pull away, but Jack pulled him closer, wrapping his arms around him and holding him. "Shh, come here."

And then, Ianto whispered three words that sent a chill down Jack's spine.

"I'm a monster."

Before he got the chance to respond to it, though, Owen spoke up. "Jack, look at his arms," he said. Jack let go of Ianto so that he could grab one of the smaller man's wrists, pushing up the sleeve of his jumper.

He was a bloody mess. The sleeve was soaked through with it, and from what he could tell, glass shards were embedded deep and sporadically all the way up to his elbows.

"Oh God, Yan, what did you do to yourself?" he whispered, because he knew those wounds. They were self-inflicted. They were panic wounds, with shards of broken mirror digging into shaking limbs.

Ianto let out a choked laugh, and to Jack's ears, it sounded truly mad. Mad, pained, and so very, very broken. "It doesn't matter anymore," he whispered.

The way he said it, Jack's already thudding heart leapt into his throat. He grabbed Ianto's shoulders again, gripping them tightly. "Why doesn't it matter?" he demanded. "Ianto, what did you do?"

But Owen was already on it. He had made his way to the desk sometime, and had produced from behind it an orange bottle covered in blood. Even through the bloodstains, Owen was able to make out what it was. "Codeine," he muttered, and then looked at Jack, his eyes wide. "He's taken all of it."

"I had to make it stop," Ianto whispered, his eyes boring desperately, pitifully into Jack's. "I was afraid you wouldn't get back in time, and I couldn't do it again. I can't hurt anyone else, Jack, I can't."

"When, Ianto?" Owen asked, but Ianto wasn't listening to him.

So Jack tried. "Ianto, you have to tell me when you took it. I need you to tell me when."

Ianto was crying so hard by now that it was hard for him to speak, but he did manage. "Just before you came in. I thought you weren't coming. I thought I could—I thought that if I—"

"The capsules take a good half hour to break down. We've got to make him throw 'em up, Jack," Owen said. His voice held a calm that Jack knew he personally didn't have. Ianto had just tried to kill himself; he was panicking. But he knew Owen was right, and he knew he had to be quick. They couldn't help Ianto if he was dead.

Between the two of them, Jack and Owen managed to wrestle Ianto into the morgue. He was screaming and thrashing all the way.

"You have to let me die!" he was screaming. "I killed them!"

They forced Ianto to his knees in front of the empty rubbish bin, Jack holding onto Ianto with his arms around the smaller man's chest and arms while Owen grabbed hold of his head. "C'mon, Iants, out with it," Owen said, and Jack couldn't tell if it was an order or a prayer. Either way, Ianto wasn't listening. He was sobbing now, thrashing with his teeth clenched.

"Come on, Yan, I need you to be sick, okay? I know you don't want to, but I need you to be sick," Jack pleaded as Owen fought to get Ianto's jaws apart. He'd break them if he bloody-well had to – a broken jaw was easier to fix than a dead Ianto – but he didn't want it to come to that. "Please, Yan. I'll take you to the Vaults; I'll do whatever you want, but you have to open your mouth for me."

And even though that didn't seem to do it entirely, Ianto's jaw loosened just enough for Owen to get his fingers in between Ianto's teeth and pry his mouth open. Ianto's eyes went wide with panic as he realized his mistake, and he bucked and thrashed, but Jack held him still.

"Sorry for this, mate," Owen said, and then forced his fingers into the back of Ianto's throat. With a violent heave, the capsules came rushing up and out his mouth and into the waiting bin as Owen started checking his pulse. One hand still kept Ianto's mouth open, pressing into the juncture of his jaw. "His pulse is quick, but strong, and it doesn't look like any of it's started to break down." Right about then, Ianto stopped retching, and Jack was about to relax, but Owen shook his head. "Just to be sure," he said. He pressed his fingers once again to the back of Ianto's tongue, and once again, Ianto started to throw up. This time, only yellow acid came up, free of any of the white pills that spotted the last one, and when he stopped this time around, Owen let his jaw slip closed.

As Owen pulled a penlight from his pocket and started flashing it in Ianto's eyes, the younger man started rocking back and forth. He was too distraught for words, now, shaking and sobbing in Jack's arms.

"It's all right, mate," Owen told him, and there was a tenderness in his voice that Jack rarely heard. He turned his attention to Jack. "So far's I can tell, he's got no symptoms of an overdose. I think we caught it in time. I'll need to check his arms out, too."

Jack nodded, and started to life Ianto up to get him to the morgue table, but Ianto let out a sudden scream and tore away from him. "You said you'd lock me up!" he shouted. "You have to! Please!"

Jack grabbed him, though, before he got a chance to get too far. He pulled him, thrashing, to his chest and wrapped his arms around him. "Shh," he soothed. "I'm gonna need you to trust me, okay? You know I'll take care of you, so I need you to let me. Me and Owen are going to get you patched up, and then we'll go from there."

"Jack," Ianto moaned pitifully, and Jack could feel his hot, frantic breaths through the fabric of his shirt. He was so scared, and it was tearing at Jack's heart. "I killed them, Jack," he sobbed. "I saw it; I killed them, and I forgot about it like we all forgot about it, but I remembered. I remembered."

That's when Jack finally made the connection: whatever was going on with Ianto, it had something to do with the two days they'd lost. Something had happened to Ianto, maybe to all of them, something that he'd told himself not to try to remember.

Whatever it was, though, he knew without a doubt that it wasn't this. Ianto hadn't done what he thought he'd done; now he just had to find out why he thought it.

"We'll get you sorted, mate," Owen assured him, and then nodded to Jack. Ianto really was bleeding a lot, and Owen needed to have a look at him.

Between them, it wasn't hard for Jack and Owen to get Ianto up onto the table, sitting on the side of it with his legs hanging off the edge at the knee. He'd gone limp, for the most part, muttering to himself under his breath and shaking like a leaf all the while. Jack had taken up post behind him, holding Ianto around the waist as Owen gathered his tools.

"It's gonna be okay," Jack whispered to him, pressing feather-soft kisses into Ianto's hair, and he repeated it as Owen wheeled two tables over. The first was tall, with a pillow and blue cloth on top, and the second was covered with tools and a bottle of rubbing alcohol and two bins.

Owen started with the scissors, picking them up with his now-gloved hands. "You've got a particular fondness for this jumper?" Owen asked, though he wasn't really expecting a response. Not surprisingly, he didn't get one, and he started cutting away the blood-soaked sleeves. With a few skillful sweeps of the scissors, the jumper went, then the t-shirt. It wasn't until he pulled off Ianto's shoes and reached for the fastenings of his jeans that Ianto started to show signs of life.

He pulled back, pressing himself closer to Jack's waiting body. "Don't," he said, his voice cracking weakly.

Owen frowned sympathetically. Ianto always did have a problem with being undressed, and now that he was already upset – that seemed to be putting it lightly – it didn't take much to set him off.

"Sorry, Iants, but I've got to be sure there's nothing else I ought to be worried about."

"There's not," Ianto choked out. His heart was thudding faster, his eyes impossibly wide. He was panicking, and as Jack grabbed Ianto around the middle so that he held his upper arms as well, he started struggling again. "I can't be here! I deserve it!" he screamed. "It hurts so much, and I killed them, so I deserve it!" When his pleas fell on deaf ears, and when his thrashing failed to shake Jack's grip, he screamed louder, a desperate, animalistic sound that made Jack's hair stand up on the back of his neck.

"Can't you sedate him?" Jack demanded, doing his best to hold Ianto still as he twisted. For someone who'd nearly overdose, bled out, and struggled for hours, he was still putting up a hell of a fight.

Owen frowned. He'd thought that, too. He wanted to, to sedate his friend to stop his suffering until they could get to the root of all this, but he couldn't. "I can't risk it interfering with the codeine if there's any left in his system," he said. "I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do to calm him down."

The gravity of that took a second to sink in. He couldn't be sedated; it meant he wouldn't sleep, it meant he wouldn't relax, it meant he'd have to be awake to feel every damn thing Owen was about to have to do to him. While part of him just wanted to tell the doctor to tend to his arms and just leave the rest of him alone, he was scared, too. They had to be sure that Ianto hadn't done anything more to himself, and hopefully run some tests to figure out what the hell had happened to the poor, terrified young man.

"Jack?" The way Ianto said his name, it was with the same pleading desperation from before. He was begging Jack to help him, to make it better. It was what Jack wanted to do, what Jack was going to do; the problem was that what Ianto wanted and what was best for him were two different things. Things were about to get worse for Ianto Jones, while he and Owen tried to make it better.

"I'm sorry, Yan," he said, because that was all he could say. "I'm so sorry." He kissed Ianto's tear-stained cheek and adjusted his hold on his trembling form. "But we're going to figure out what happened to you; we're going to make it better. I promise."

And that was a promise he was going to keep.