Ianto awoke the next morning to the sound of quiet, miserable sniffles. He turned over, and Jack came into sight. He sat at the little table in their room, flipping slowly through the Irish folktales book, and occasionally wiping tears away from his eyes. This wasn't the loud, open distress that he'd displayed the previous day, but rather a very quiet and private grieving. Ianto almost felt as though he was intruding when he went to Jack's side.
"I really miss him," Jack said miserably as Ianto's arm slipped around his shoulders. "I wish he'd come back. I want to tell him I'm sorry."
Ianto pressed his lips gently to Jack's temple.
"I keep telling you, love. You don't have anything to apologise for. If we ever see Gage again, I think he's the one who needs to apologise to you. You didn't do anything wrong, and I'm positive that he was not mad at you." Ianto sighed. "I just wish I could get you to understand that. C'mon, now. We'll have a wash and get dressed, and go and have breakfast."
"I don't want pancakes," Jack said as Ianto ushered him up. "Gage made me pancakes. I don't want them from anyone else."
Ianto sighed again, but conceded.
"All right, Jack. No pancakes."
After a somewhat subdued breakfast, the Doctor ushered them all to the library, and urged them all to get comfortable.
"I promised to try and restore your mind, Jack," he told the immortal. Jack looked more than a little worried.
"Why? What's wrong with it?"
Ignoring the strained look on Ianto's face, and the amused one on Rose's, the Doctor crouched down in front of Jack and offered him a smile that was full of love and affection.
"There is nothing is wrong with you that we can't fix, Jack, and none of it is your fault. Torchwood took your prisoner over one hundred years ago. They took away your freedom, and your identity. They tried to take your humanity and turn you into a… a thing to be experimented on and tormented. To survive, you buried who you are deep down within your own mind, and you reverted back to your most base instincts. You did that to try and minimise the hurt that they caused you, and that's where you were at when Ianto first met you."
Jack looked sheepishly at Ianto.
"I remember. You talked to me properly… and I just growled at you."
Ianto smiled at the memory.
"I never blamed you for that. You had no reason to believe that I was any different from any of the others."
"Who you are is still buried inside your mind," the Doctor went on. "Your memories of yourself, the people you know… the life you lived before you fell victim to Torchwood. If you're willing, I'll help you to try and remember. We'll help you remember who you are."
Jack swallowed hard.
"Who… Who am I?"
They all understood what he meant, even if he wasn't able to vocalise that meaning. He wanted to know if his true self was worth rediscovering. Rose answered his unspoken fears with a vehemence that startled both Jack and Ianto.
"You're a hero, Jack. You're a good, brave, kind man, and we love you."
Jack still looked uneasy, though.
"I'm… not a bad person?"
"You've made mistakes," the Doctor told him quietly. "Just like anyone… Just like me. But no. You're not a bad person, Jack. I guarantee that."
"Then why did you leave me behind?"
The Doctor blanched, and found himself looking anxiously at Rose. She shook her head, and he could have sworn that she was trying to hide a smirk.
"You're on your own, there. You told me that he'd decided to stay behind to help rebuild the Earth."
The Doctor didn't try to argue. He knew damned well that he didn't have a leg to stand on.
"I left you behind because I was a coward, Jack. You'd changed, and I was scared to face you. It was a mistake to do that, and I am so sorry, but I swear to you that nothing that happened was your fault."
Jack nodded slowly.
"Okay. So, what are we doing now?"
"Right now," the Doctor answered, "I'm going to tell a story."
Jack's face promptly lit up.
"I like stories! What's it about?"
"You, Jack. Rose and I are going to tell you the stories of our adventures together. You can just sit and listen, if you like. If you remember something, though, then just jump right in and tell us, all right?"
"All right," Jack agreed, although he sounded marginally less enthusiastic.
"Ianto?" Rose asked at the sight of the odd look on his face. "You all right, there?"
"Fine," he murmured. "It's just, when you said we were going to start working on healing his mind, Doctor, I kind of expected some sort of… I don't know… telepathy?"
The Doctor looked indignant as he settled himself back into his chair.
"I will not go traipsing through his mind unless we've exhausted all other possibilities, and we do still have some options open to us. If this doesn't help, we'll try using a trigger. I have a specific one that should prove fairly effective. We'll use the non-invasive and less dangerous methods first, thankyou."
"And if they don't work?" Ianto wondered.
"Oi! A little positive thinking wouldn't go astray!" Rose chided. Ianto, however, was unapologetic.
"I'm sorry, but I have to look at this practically. If this doesn't work… if none of it works and the damage is permanent, then we have a big problem."
"If that turns out to be the case, then Jack will stay here on the TARDIS, with me," the Doctor promised. "I'll take care of him, Ianto, and I promise I'll do a better job than I did the last time."
"That sounds great, Doctor. But how long are you going to live for? Somehow, I don't think it'll be as long as Jack."
The Doctor glanced ruefully at Jack, who was watching them with wide-eyed uncertainty.
"We'll deal with that if it becomes an issue. Not now. Jack, are you ready to hear a story?"
With the discussion swinging back to familiar territory, the worry fled Jack's face and he nodded enthusiastically.
"Yes, please!"
The Doctor smiled gently.
"All right, then."
The Doctor was a talented storyteller. Ianto soon found himself enthralled as much as Jack, listening to the Doctor tell the story of his and Rose's first encounter with Jack. Vivid descriptions of Chula warships, gasmask people and nanogenes swept over them both.
From World War II, they were then transported to Cardiff, and the story of Margaret, the Slitheen in hiding who had intended to blow up the Earth, but saw the heart of the TARDIS and got a second chance at life. Ancient Tokyo followed, along with a string of adventures that generally risked life and limb.
Rose took special pleasure in describing Jack's grand distraction at the hospital in London, where they'd found the caveman. Ianto was amused, and poor Jack looked torn between embarrassment and wicked glee.
Ianto listened, enthralled, but also surreptitiously glanced at Jack every now and then to see his reactions. It was hard to tell him just by watching him. There were no outward signs of remembrance on his face, and he never uttered a sound whilst the Doctor and Rose talked.
When the Doctor began to tell the story of the battle on the game station, though, Jack finally began to show a visible reaction. Feeling suddenly uneasy, Ianto began to watch Jack more than he was listening to the Doctor's tale. He could see the beginnings of distress as the Time Lord recounted the trauma of believing Rose to be dead. He saw the slow-building tension as the courageous actions of Jack were recounted in solemn tones.
"I was nearly done getting the Delta Wave ready," the Doctor said quietly. "It was almost finished when I heard you, Jack. 'Last man standing', you shouted. You were the only one left out of every other human on that wretched satellite. The only person standing between me and the Daleks. You didn't run, and you didn't beg. You stood your ground against them, even though you knew it would mean your death. I loved you so much right at that moment, Jack. You gave your life for me on pure faith that I was doing the right thing, and I never had the time to so much as shed a tear for you. After that, everything happened so fast…"
"Doctor, stop," Ianto said suddenly. Silence fell as the three of them looked properly at Jack.
"What is it?" Rose asked finally. "Jack? Do you remember something?"
"S… Scared," Jack whispered tremulously. "They were going to k… kill me. Couldn't run, or hide… Just dead. I was dead, and I was never going to find…"
Jack trailed off, his breath hitching painfully in his chest. Ianto laid a hand gently on his shoulder.
"Never going to find what, cariad?"
"Can't… can't remember," Jack whimpered in distress.
Making a snap decision, the Doctor reached into his pocket, and his fingers closed around the supple leather of Jack's vortex manipulator. It seemed that Jack's memories were there, right at the brink of his conscious mind. It could be that he only needed a single trigger to bring it all back.
"Jack," he said before he had a chance to rethink his plan of action. "Hold out your hands. I have something here that belongs to you."
Jack held out his hands, and the Doctor lay the futuristic device gently in his palms, and closed his fingers around it. He froze. Jack stared down at the device in his hands in complete, deathly silence that seemed to stretch out for an age. Then, he began to scream.
The Doctor honestly hadn't know what to expect when he handed the wrist strap to Jack. For all he knew, nothing at all could have happened. But he really, truly had not been prepared for the hysteria that Jack quickly descended into. All hell literally broke loose as he, Rose and Ianto scrambled to help Jack, who had collapsed to the floor and curled up into a tight foetal position, whilst still screaming his lungs out.
"Take it off him!" Rose screamed, and the Doctor immediately tried to do so. Jack's hands clutched it in a death grip, though, and the Doctor couldn't pull it free.
"He's going into shock!" Ianto burst out. "You have to do something!"
"Ianto, go to the med room," the Time Lord ordered. "Bring back one of those sedatives that I showed you earlier."
"You're not bloody sedating him!" Ianto roared, incensed. The Doctor felt like screaming himself.
"It's not a standard sedative. It'll help him. Please, just go and get it, before he does go into shock, and shut down on us!"
Ianto glared at him threateningly before running from the room.
"Doctor?" Rose asked in confusion. He didn't answer her, but instead reached up to press his palms to Jack's temples.
"Look at me, Captain. That's it, look at me. Focus on me."
By the time Ianto returned less than a couple of minutes later, Jack's hysterical, terrified screams had been replaced by tremulous whimpers. He remained curled up on the floor with his hands locked around the vortex manipulator, but his eyes were no longer as wild, and he seemed to be focused on the Doctor, at least to a degree.
"What do I do with this?" Ianto asked, half hoping to be told that it was no longer needed.
"Inject it into his neck, at the base of his skull," the Doctor instructed. "Now, quickly."
Ianto frowned darkly, but nevertheless did as he was told. The effect was instantaneous, and Jack's body relaxed as he slipped into unconsciousness.
"All right," Ianto demanded as the Doctor carefully removed the offending item from Jack's grasp. "What the hell was all that about?"
The Doctor held up the wrist strap for Ianto to see.
"This is Jack's vortex manipulator. It's the device used by time agents to hop around via the vortex."
"Like the TARDIS?" Ianto asked in confusion, and the Doctor snorted derisively.
"This is not space travel. It's like, I've got a sports car, and he's got a space hopper."
Rose smirked.
"Boys and their toys."
Ianto smiled faintly in appreciation of the light joke before turning serious again.
"You used it as a trigger for his memories, didn't you?"
The Doctor answered with a nod.
"Yes, I did, and it seems to have worked."
"Worked? Doctor, did you pay attention? He went into shock! How could you say it worked?"
The Doctor raised an eyebrow at the young man.
"Were you paying attention?"
Ianto stared at him for a long moment before speaking in a forcibly calm voice.
"Would you please explain to me just what is going on here? Because I seem to have missed the boat somewhere along the line."
"You're not the only one," Rose added. "Doctor, how could you possibly say this was successful?"
"Ah, well, whether it's successful is yet to be seen," the Doctor conceded.
"But you just said it worked!" Rose argued.
"I did, and it did. But whether the memories will hold is going to be entirely up to Jack. Look, Jack is approximately one hundred and seventy years old. That is far longer than any human was ever meant to live, and Jack is still only human. Now, the human brain can only cope with being filled with so much knowledge at a time. You know how you tend to find that you forget some things in favour of remembering others? Well, up until this point, Jack has only had a clear memory of the last six or seven months. Anything before that was hazy at best."
And suddenly, Ianto understood what the Doctor was trying to explain to them.
"He's just been bombarded with a hundred and seventy years worth of memories, hasn't he?"
"Bingo," the Doctor said humourlessly. "His body and mind both need a chance to catch up with the sudden influx. What the sedative did was to effectively put him into stasis while he sorts himself out."
"So, when he wakes up, he'll be… you know… better?" Rose asked hopefully, and both men could see she was hoping for a return of the man she remembered.
"If only it were that simple," Ianto said tiredly, speaking before the Doctor had a chance to. "Even if this gives him back his memories, he still has the trauma of a hundred years in captivity to deal with. You don't just bounce back from something like that, and now he's going to remember all of it. It could be enough to break him all over again."
"He's stronger than you're giving him credit for," the Doctor said quietly. "And, he has something now that he never had before. He has you, Ianto."
"He's right, you know," Rose agreed. "It's because of you that he's come this far."
Ianto couldn't bring himself to argue. Modesty aside, he knew the Doctor and Rose were right. Jack had worked hard to get to this point, and he'd done it all for his beloved Yan toe. To write him off now wasn't just wrong. It was unforgivable.
"How long is he likely to be out for?" Ianto asked as he and the Doctor settled Jack back into his bed. On impulse, Ianto tucked the toy dog carefully into the crook of Jack's arm.
"Hours. Days. Weeks, even," the Doctor answered vaguely. "It's impossible to tell."
"Weeks?" Ianto echoed in dismay. "It could really take that long?"
"It's possible. We're talking about a lot of memories here, and the human brain can only cope with so much."
"Yes, you pointed that out already, Doctor."
The Time Lord looked genuinely surprised, so much so that Ianto had a powerful urge to laugh.
"Did I? Must be getting old. Starting to repeat myself."
Ianto eyed the Doctor wonderingly.
"Just how old are you?"
"That's a bit personal."
"I'm sorry if I seem nosy," Ianto apologised. "I was just wondering. I didn't mean any harm or offense."
The Doctor stared at Jack intently for nearly a minute before raising his gaze to meet Ianto's once more.
"None taken, Mr Jones. If you must know, I'm nine hundred years old. Give or take a few years."
Ianto, to his credit, hardly blinked.
"But your body couldn't be that old. And you've had other faces… other bodies over the years."
"It's called regeneration," the Doctor explained. "When a Time Lord is dying, he or she can regenerate. It basically means growing a whole new body. This body is my tenth regeneration. I can do it twelve times before I die for good."
Ianto chewed lightly on his lower lip as he considered that.
"So, before Jack, you were the closest thing this universe had to immortality."
"I guess you could say that," the Doctor conceded. "But I did not leave Jack behind out of jealousy on my part."
"What did happen, Doctor? Help me to understand, so that I can help Jack when he wakes up."
At his question, the Doctor's face clouded over. For just an instant, Ianto thought the Time Lord was going to simply walk out, but he didn't.
"I suppose that if anyone has a right to know, it's Jack. All right, then. Rose happened. Even though I sent her home, she came back. She opened the heart of the TARDIS and absorbed the Time Vortex. She came back and destroyed the Daleks. She saved me, and she brought Jack back to life. She couldn't control it, though, and she brought him back forever. She did it because she loved him, Ianto. Not because she wanted to curse him. She didn't understand what she was doing… She didn't even remember it afterwards. It was my decision not to tell her the truth."
Ianto held up his hands as the Doctor's defence steadily became more and more vehement.
"I understand, really, and I'm not going to sit here and make condemnations. Not even over you. I do want to know, though, why did you leave him behind?"
"Because I was a coward," the Doctor answered bitterly. "I was also dying. I took the Vortex out of Rose to save her. She would have burned up, otherwise. Doing it destroyed my ninth regeneration, though. All I could think of was getting the TARDIS into the vortex, where I could regenerate safely. Yes, I knew Jack was alive again, and I knew what Rose had done to him but I couldn't face him. Not right then. Then I regenerated, and I got sick… nearly missed the Sycorax invasion because of that."
Ianto's eyes were dark with controlled anger.
"You should have gone back for him. You could have gone back at any point, because your timeline and his didn't cross again until now. It could have been months for you, but it would have been only moments for him. Why couldn't you do that?"
"I told you, I'm a coward," the Doctor growled. "The longer I waited, the easier it became to convince myself that it didn't matter, that he was better off on his own." He paused, waiting for the expected condemnation, but it never came. Ianto interpreted his expression correctly, and smiled crookedly.
"I'm not really in the position to be able to claim the moral high ground. I've done things wrong… run away from my responsibility. I can't judge you. I don't have the right."
The Doctor regarded him curiously.
"Care to explain that, Mr Jones? Because just a moment ago, I could have sworn you were doing just that."
Ianto shuddered just a little. He hadn't really intended on ever making this particular confession, but now he couldn't seem to stop himself.
"Lisa. She was my girlfriend when I first started taking care of Jack, and we ended up breaking up. She couldn't understand why I wanted to help him. During the... the battle, she was captured by the Cybermen. She and Jack together, actually. When Rose and I got to them, she was already half converted."
The Doctor shut his eyes, and was immediately assaulted by the image of a young woman, partially converted and very much dead.
"You killed her to end her suffering."
It wasn't a question, nor was it an accusation. It was simply a statement of fact. Ianto was in tears by then, crying openly as he made his own confession.
"She was in so much pain! I tried to free her, I really did. But she was trapped, and she was hurting. I didn't know what else to do! I should have waited for you, but I just couldn't think straight. She begged me to end it. I didn't want to, but I couldn't just leave her there, either."
The Doctor laid a hand gently on his shoulder.
"You made a hard decision, Ianto, and I can't dictate whether it was the right one or not. But I can tell you this. You didn't take the coward's way out. I saw her in that room, and I'm telling you that there was no way back for her by then. The cyber technology would have already infected her brain. She couldn't have been saved, and she definitely could not have been reverted back to human form."
Ianto rubbed self-consciously at his eyes.
"They'd started the process on Jack, too, when the power went down. What would have happened to him if they'd gotten as far with him as they had with Lisa?"
The look in the Doctor's eyes was truly haunted, and Ianto couldn't help but wonder just how many times he had contemplated that very possibility.
"I don't know, Ianto. I really don't know."
to be continued....