Summary: Jack isn't the only Torchwood member with restorative powers. At least, not anymore. Jack/Ianto—Post COE.
Rating: R++ overall, this individual chapter…. PG-15ish?
Warnings for this chapter: An almost het scene, cuz Jack's a bit of an ass… sorry guys. Also, profanity and a touch of horror in the beginning.
Disclaimer: In no way, shape, or form do I claim any ownership over the Torchwood/Doctor Who Universe. This is a slash fanfiction. Don't like it? Don't read it!
Author's note: Ianto in this chapter, yay! Unfortunately, I do feel as if some of this chapter may be filler. But stick with the story, and things will begin to get a bit more interesting. Thanks to my wonderful beta, Vittani, for helping me out here. Also, excuse my sad attempts at Welsh—I'm sure it's pretty incomprehensible. If anyone knows a reliable Welsh translation site, please send the link my way. It would be much appreciated ^_^.
Some Jack!bashing, because really, we all know that Ianto was never shown the appreciation that he deserved. That will all change in this story. *grins*
And I had to re-watch Ianto's death to get this chapter just right… so I'm completely traumatized again. *sniffle*
Things will be speeding up quite nicely in the next couple of chapters, and Torchwood will slowly regain its feet. If only we could find that pesky Captain Jack Harkness…
Enjoy!
Chapter One: And then Came the Miracle
There was bad.
Then there was bad.
Bad was being trapped in the sewers with three Weevils and no weapons.
Bad was waking up in a soundless, sightless box, unable to breathe.
The latter was a situation Ianto currently found himself in, gasping desperately as his hands scraped at the fabric covered wood above him. Which wasn't budging an inch, and Ianto couldn't breathe.
There were no questions of 'how' or 'why' (because, certainly, oxygen deprivation wasn't conducive to higher order thinking), just an overwhelming need to get out of the small space and see light. But his movements were slowing and his head felt as if it was filled with white noise and he knew he was dying. As he lost strength, Ianto waited for the release, for the moment when it would stop hurting. But it didn't come. Instead, his lungs burned and burned until it felt as if there were fire in them, and had he had breath, he would have screamed.
Who ever said suffocating was like going to sleep only said so because it had never happened to them.
Strength came back slowly, and Ianto continued to hammer away at the lid, fabric pealing away to reveal harsh and unmoving wood. His fingers felt as if they were breaking, but that wasn't so terrible in comparison to chest, which felt as if a sledge hammer was repeatedly slamming into it, robbing him of breath. Why hadn't it stopped? How was he still alive? There was no air… no air.
Oh, god, he couldn't breathe.
Someway, somehow, Ianto was able get one of his feet braced tightly against the top of the box, digging into his chest harshly as he tried to gain enough momentum to truly smash in the lid. But the box was so small and narrow that it was nearly impossible.
Like a coffin.
And that was Ianto's last coherent thought for a long while.
When the wood splintered under his foot after what seemed like breathless, endless years of kicking and kicking and kicking, and Ianto felt a moment of relief.
Then the dirt poured in.
"And this, young lady, is the holding cells," Gwen explained cheerfully, feeding off of the wide-eyed fascination Lois was exuding. "Where we keep all the baddies, and the not-so-baddies when we think they're bad until we find out whether or not they're actually… bad."
That got her a blink.
Gwen laughed. "Um, well, maybe that explanation was a bit—"
"No, no! I understood that, scarily enough. I just didn't know that Torchwood could do that. Keep people imprisoned, I mean." Lois shivered slightly, eyes darkening as she no doubt remembered her own incarceration at the hands of the British Government.
"Officially, there's a lot of red tape involved when it comes to holding prisoners. Technically, we aren't able to hold humans, though if the human is somehow infected with an alien 'something,' we do whatever we need to. UNIT—who I hope you never have to deal with—are more of the 'anti-alien' military, while Torchwood are more like… policemen and women dealing with the threat of malevolent aliens, I suppose. But UNIT is a bit, well, controlling, and their idea of policing leaves a bit to be desired. We try to deal with them as little as possible. So, more often than not, we do what we want."
Lois raised an eyebrow. "What do you mean, 'do what you want?' What about the rights of the people… or aliens… we capture?"
Gwen hid a smile. Not only had Lois said 'we,' she clearly thought of the aliens as deserving of the same rights as humans. Lois was perfect for this.
"Well, let it me put it to you this way. Torchwood's motto is 'If it's alien, it's ours.' We don't answer to anyone when it comes to things of an extraterrestrial nature—we are who everyone else answers to. Except for UNIT, but we try to stay out of their way and they try to stay out of ours."
"But I thought UNIT helped to rebuild the Hub?"
"They did. It was one of those rare cases," Gwen said with a wink, in an extraordinarily good mood now that it seemed things were finally coming together. She ushered Lois out of the empty (for now) holding cells, allowing herself to dream about Torchwood 3's rise-from-the-ashes. So to speak.
After reaching her workspace, Gwen leaned against the counter, turning to face the young woman, dark eyes were wide with wonder and excitement. "So, what do you think? Considering a career in Torchwood?"
Lois didn't even pause. "Yes, of course! It's… it's not what I expected." The girl smiled softly. "It's wonderful."
Staring around at the empty Hub, Gwen couldn't repress the slightly pain in her heart. "Yes, it is."
That had gone wonderfully. Lois had left, promising to come back in the next couple of days to fill out her paperwork and Gwen could already tell that, with a bit of training, Lois would become a force to be reckoned with in Torchwood.
Her phone began to ring and she picked it up halfway through the second ring. "Hello?"
"Hey, darling. You done meeting with Lois?"
Gwen smiled, even though she knew Rhys couldn't see her. "Oh, was brilliant, Rhys, just brilliant. She was so excited about everything, the cutest little thing, just so interested and wanting to know about every little detail. I have a good feeling about this. Torchwood will be up and running in no time!"
"But don't you need at least three members to run a Torchwood branch? And really, there needs to be at least two other members besides Lois as you're going to be out of the office in a couple of months, yeah?" Rhys voice came out of the phone apologetically, almost as if he was sorry for what he was say. He wasn't. Rhys was ecstatic at the idea of Gwen being out of Torchwood for at least five months.
Gwen glowered. "Yes, thank you for ruining my good mood," She snapped out, irritated. Rhys had been like this for weeks, always bringing her back to reality with a crash. Couldn't he just allow her a bit of daydreaming? Didn't she deserve a bit of a reprieve from the gloom and doom after Jack leaving and Ianto…
Ianto.
"What, love?"
Gwen snapped out of her thoughts, realizing that she'd said that last bit out loud. She sighed and reached for a warm cup of coffee that wasn't there. That wouldn't ever be there.
"Nothing. I'm on my way home." Click.
She was an especially beautiful alien, part of the rare humanoid Nyaridds and she moved in a way that was pure sexuality. Standing in his room, leaning against the bedpost ideally as she undid her tunic, she was a vision and Jack allowed himself to be taken in. The sway of her hips, the movement of her braided hair on small shoulders… it was all very arousing. It had be a while since he had been with a woman, he had nearly forgot how enticing someone so much smaller than yourself could be.
Jack had also missed the novelty of all alien races, the oddness of their looks combined with something altogether familiar. She could have walked the streets of Earth had it not been for her coloring. Her hair was blue, and her eyes even bluer…. Even her skin was softly flushed with azure.
Jack had a bit of a thing for blue.
With every unraveled lacing, another inch of skin was bared, until she stood confidently with a naked bosom. Her fingers idly traced on the soft skin of her stomach and she sighed in pleasure. "Will you join me, Captain?" She spoke in her native language, the words both guttural and smooth.
It was a language he knew well.
Jack flashed his best lecherous grin, and wondered why it was so difficult to remember how to do that. "Only if you go on with the show, lovely. Let's get you out of those uncomfortable clothes."
She smirked as she shimmied out of her skirt, and Jack couldn't help but think that she was doing it all wrong. First, her lips were too full and blue, and they didn't quirk up on one side and her eyes didn't stare at him with wry affection… there was only lust. Paltry and insignificant lust.
But since when had lust become insignificant to him?
Jack pushed the sense of wrongness out of his mind, and focused on the task at hand. So to speak.
"And now?" She asked throatily, without a scrap of cloth on her. She was so unabashed, laying herself on the bed, limbs spread and showing all that she had to offer. That was wrong too—there was no mystery or intrigue, just blatant and overt sexuality.
Forgetting about Ianto would be so much easier if she wasn't doing everything wrong.
Growling at himself, Jack crossed the room in two paces, pulling the Nyaridd from the bed and kissing her harshly. It was all bite and tongue and teeth and she was still doing it wrong, her two tongues flicking at his like a kitten while she made the most obnoxious moaning noises.
"Mmm, Captain."
God, where had that gag gone?
Her hand, deft and fine-fingered, ran down the line of his chest as they kissed, reaching to cup his crotch with an odd giggle. A giggle that stopped short when she didn't find she was looking for and they both froze.
"What's this, now?" Her face was mocking, mouth drawn into a sneer as her eyebrows rose. And Jack noticed she wasn't nearly as beautiful as he had thought she was. Certainly not a comparison to—no, not going there. "Humans are supposed to get erect, aren't they?" The look on her face said she already knew the answer.
How humiliating.
"What can I say, darling?" Jack snarled, pushing her away. "You're just not doing it for me."
"The little human can't perform?" She cackled, reaching for his crotch again, and Jack wondered how he could have ever seen her as beautiful. "You know, it's extra if I have to put this much effort into it." And, of course, she was a prostitute. Just wonderful.
"Get out," he snapped coldly.
"Aw, baby, what's wrong? Thinking about your boyfriend?" Logically, he knew it was a generic insult for her people—they were notoriously homophobic, one of the only alien races to have such prejudices. Jack knew she didn't anything about him. And she certainly didn't know Ianto.
But that logical part of Jack's brain took a vacation and he found himself hitting her harder than he'd ever hit an unarmed woman before, yanking her up by the wrist and forcibly dragging her across the room. "I said… get out." Throwing her as soon as he was able to get the door open with her struggling, Jack didn't even blink before throwing her cloths out after her, paying no mind to the whore's spitting curses.
He slammed the door shut just as she rose up again, claws extended. "You limp-dick bastard!"
"Skank!" He yelled back just as loudly through the closed door. Jack could hear her stumping down the hallway, and hoped she didn't have any brothers close-by. Male Nyaridds were a bitch to kill.
Jack sat down on the bed, closing his eyes, only to see a familiar face in the back of his eyelids staring at him accusingly.
Blue.
Ianto's eyes had been so blue.
----------------------------------
Well.
That hadn't gone as planned.
Turns out, the skank (Jack had never bothered to learn her name) did have a couple of brothers nearby—and the fight hadn't gone very well. If Jack wasn't immortal, the fist through his chest surely would have done it… and that blow to the head would have too, now that he thought about it. Still, he ended the fight as victor, though it had taken him a pathetically long time to get the upper hand. And he hadn't even managed to kill any of them.
God, he was just glad that John hadn't been here to see it. The smug little bastard would have laughed himself silly.
"Shameful, how off the game you are," a voice crowed from behind him, the slightly British accent oozing with amusement. "Where's Eyecandy when you need 'im?"
No.
No.
God, what had he done to deserve this?
Jack should have realized that one shouldn't speak of the devil lest you meet him face-to-face.
Or face to fist, he thought, as John floored him with one well-aimed punch.
Really, had it not been for the lack of air, Ianto would have stayed in that narrow box. The weight of the earth seemed impenetrable, and had he been able to die of suffocation, it would have surely happened when he screamed, his mouth filling with soil. But the pressure wouldn't stop, and the fire in his lungs had turned into a slow, roasting burn that caused tracks of tears to fall down his face.
So Ianto did the only thing he could do.
He began to dig.
The first handful of soil was soft and slightly wet, yielding nothing but more pressure on his chest. But he kept on, eyes and mouth closed. Eventually, he was able to sit up in the box (he could not even think the word coffin) pressed at all sides by impassable dirt. It somehow made the inability to breathe worse, and Ianto was little more than a panicked thing clawing desperately for the surface.
Only his desperation to end the flames in lungs kept him going for what felt like years, his fingers moving inch by inch and his legs pushing him upwards with all their strength. When the fingertips of Ianto's left hand met the still night air, he could have sobbed in relief. The last part of it was the hardest, when his arms breached the ground and he somehow found the strength to hoist himself up, finally freeing his body from the dampened earth.
And then there was air, blessed and sweet air that flowed into his deflated lungs so swiftly that he began to cough and choke harshly, unable to calm his desperation for oxygen, but unable to breathe it in while hyperventilating.
It took Ianto a while to calm his breathing, mouth open and eyes closed. He imagined he must have painted a ridiculous picture, akin to a fish out of water. Well, if fish often wore suits and were covered in dirt.
There was dirt in his mouth, and he was too tired spit it out. Laying flat on his back, Ianto could still feel the minute stinging in his fingers, and didn't even bother to open his eyes to take a look at them—torn fingernails had always gotten to him, oddly enough. Cool, slick blades of grass caressed his palms and finally, curiosity won over.
Where in the hell was he?
Opening his eyes cautiously, Ianto sat up almost immediately, cursing in Welsh as the soil clinging to his forehead and cheekbones fell into his eyes. He rubbed his hands over them vigorously, but considering how filthy they were, it didn't seem to do much good. Well, this is a conundrum, isn't it? Finally, after his tears expelled most of the filthy from his eyes and he participated in some very vigorous blinking, Ianto's eyes were able to open without complete agony.
When his blurred sight cleared, he saw a long stretch of grass all around him punctuated with lines of varying stones. It took him another second to understand it all.
A graveyard.
Which could only mean that the hole he'd climbed out of was… a grave.
In a detached type of daze, Ianto stood and inspected the grave he'd climbed out of, from the overturned dirt to the moderate sized stone at the head of it.
Ianto Jones (1983-2009)
Erioed at bod 'n anghofiedig (1)No. He couldn't have been… this couldn't be…
"No," Ianto choked out, stumbling backwards only to flinch when bump into the statue of an angel, wings spread as its arms lifted up in supplication. No, this didn't make any sense! How in hell had he ended up here… he… wasn't dead…
"It's too late, I breathed the air." Jack's hands were holding onto his shoulders to tightly, almost as if Jack believed his grip was the only thing that was keeping Ianto here. Maybe it was.
"Then I take it back, alright? I take it all back! But not him!" Jack's voice was pleading to the 456, in a way that Ianto had never heard before, but he knew that those pleas would fall on deaf ears. And he was surprisingly numb with it all. Was this how it was going to end?
….
Gasping, Ianto shook his head as memories dragged him under, memories that he would rather forget. No, no, that had never happened. It couldn't have, because he wasn't dead. He pressed his shaking hands together, looking at the dirt covered and bloody fingers. No. He wasn't dead.
….
"No. No no no no no! Ianto, Ianto?!"
….
"A thousands year time, you won't remember me." Ianto's voice sounded so far away, even to his own ears, but Jack's teary eyes kept him tethered, made him want to stay.
God, he wanted to stay.
"Yes I will. I promise. I will."
….
And then there was darkness.
He was whispering to himself when he came to, eyes clenched shut as tears made their way down his face stubbornly. It had all come back. The children. The 456. The Hub's destruction. Being on the run. The twelve children in 1965. Jack's lies. Facing the 456 with their ultimatum.
Their failure.
Oh, God, Jack had looked so heartbroken. Ianto wondered if the man had even stayed long enough to see his funeral. Probably not. He knew Jack well enough to know that the man had probably done a runner the moment the world looked as if it wasn't about to collapse. Which it wasn't, considering the quiet, tranquil air of the graveyard. And Ianto wondered how the world had got on in his absence—if the UK had given up the children after all.
But these were questions that would be left unanswered for the moment, Ianto reflected as he slowly stood again, very careful not to look at his tombstone again, lest he lose the relative calm he had at the moment.
Now, time to get out of this blasted necropolis and see what exactly had happened in the past couple of days.
-------------------------------
Ianto walked down a quiet, residential streets, the cool air allowing him to clear his head for the moment, and truly began to reflect on what waking up in his own coffin meant. The fact that he must look truly ridiculous in a funeral suit covered in dirt still hadn't fully registered, and he only knew he was heading somewhere far away from that damned graveyard, even if he didn't know where that 'somewhere' might be. It seemed to late enough that everyone was tucked into bed, luckily enough.
Fighting the residual panic from having to climb his way out of his own grave, Ianto began to mentally catalogue all that he knew about his situation similarly to the way he would organize the archives. The scientist in him went into overdrive as his mind raced, happy to think of something other than how he'd clawed his way out of a coffin.
Fact One: He died in that room with the 456, or at least had made a rather convincing dead man for the others to bury him. But why hadn't he been put into a Torchwood drawer, if that were the case?
The answer was rather obvious. The Hub must not have been rebuilt, and perhaps the entirety of Torchwood Three had been shut down. And wouldn't that be ironic—Ianto was the sole survivor of Canary Warf (excluding Lisa, but he wasn't going near that topic presently), only to be moved to a Torchwood that had been obliterated by the government, of all things.
If that didn't about sum up his luck, nothing would. Moving on, then.
Fact Two: The world didn't seem to have ended. But what facts did he have to support that hypothesis?
He could only assume that as they'd been able to arrange a funeral for him, the outcome of the 456's demands had ended in their favor—laying the dead to rest would be the last thing on anyone's mind if ten percent of the world's children had gotten 'vaccinated' overnight.
And the fact the neighborhoods he passed on his way seemed rather normal (and by normal, Ianto meant no enraged crowd of parents seeking out destruction on every corner) was a testament that Torchwood—Jack—must have found a solution at the last moment. This was both comforting and upsetting to think about, because he wondered what Jack had to sacrifice for this victory, and if this sacrifice had finally been too much.
Thoughts absorbed in Jack, which was not an odd occurrence, Ianto's feet moved him towards a familiar location, a location he knew to be destroyed. He wasn't sure how long he walked, but his feet were aching and tired (they didn't exactly worry about the comfort of a corpse's footwear) and the breeze of the night made him shiver, little particle of dirt falling to the ground as he shook slightly. And as he stopped before in the entrance of the Hub, in shock, Ianto wondered how much time had truly passed since he'd… been away.
The crater was gone, the sight looking as if the explosion that tore Jack apart had never happened.
Fact Three: The Hub wasn't destroyed after all.
How in the world, Ianto thought as he entered through the tourist shop (which wasn't locked, and why on Earth wasn't it locked? How many times did he have to tell them that people would snoop?). The entrance was the same, as well as the codes, and yet he could tell that it was new, as it had a gleam that he had never seen before.
Ianto felt a chill pass through him. How long had he been dead, for the Hub to be completely rebuilt? Long enough for Gwen to have her child? Long enough for that child to grow up? Hell, long enough for Torchwood to have an entirely new staff?
Shaking his head as he began his descent, Ianto forced himself to think of that terrifying concept if and when it became reality.
Whoever was employed by Torchwood now had clearly left for the day, as all of the lights save the automatic ones were off. Good, because he really needed a shower, and he was hardly up to explaining that he wasn't an alien, and no, he wasn't trying to destroy the world. As he passed by the work areas, a few pictures caught his eye. Pictures of him, Jack, Gwen, Tosh, and Owen. Pictures of his team. The relief set in so suddenly that Ianto felt slightly weak. At least it wasn't 2072, or something equally disturbing.
So then.
Showers.
He didn't look at himself in the mirrors before getting into the showers, not yet (perhaps a part of him was afraid that something in his reflection would just scream not right), but he was quick to strip off the suit he was wearing, not even sparing it a glance as he put it in one of the handy 'hazardous clothing' bags near the lockers. It would be getting burned soon.
Owning the suit he wore to his funeral was a bit too morbid, even for him.
Ianto had soon discovered, after first being employed by Torchwood One, that few things were better than taking a long shower when you were absolutely filthy. And he had never been so disgustingly dirty before in his life. The water felt heavenly. It didn't matter, for the moment, that it was several degrees colder than he usually preferred his showers, or that the soil on him was quickly turning to sludgy mud, dropping off of his slender, toned body in thick rivets of brown. And of course, Ianto would manfully deny the shriek he made when a beetle dropped from the vicinity of his hair with a plop on the damp tiled floor. He didn't move to wash himself, not yet, just content with the water beating down on him, relaxing sore and tense muscles.
Of course, his thoughts were drawn towards Jack once more.
Ianto could tell that he had been right when he figured that Jack had left already—the man's office had been completely barren.
It burned, and stung, and hurt in ways the Ianto couldn't really think of, knowing that Jack wasn't near him any longer. Knowing that, in all likelihood, Jack wasn't even in this solar system.
Ianto's frowned as he pumped shampoo out of the handy dispensers, still absorbed in this thoughts.
He wasn't conceited enough think that his death alone would break the proud Captain, even though it hurt to think that Jack might have dismissed his demise so quickly. Ianto had been around enough, however, to see how quickly Jack was able to put grief behind him. Ianto didn't believe himself to be memorable. Because really, what did he have to offer a man that would never die, a man from the 51st century, a former Time Agent, con-artist, and all around adventurous flirt? What had he ever had to offer Jack, really? A warm body? The best coffee in three galaxies (Jack's words, not his own)? Knowing when not to ask questions when others would have (rightfully so) demanded an explanation?
Raising his hands to rub the shampoo into his hair in a way that could almost be considered harsh, Ianto shuddered and pretended that his tears were from the soapy water falling down his face.
He was just 'Eye Candy,' the 'part time shag' that had only became full-time because Jack was too busy to find someone else to sleep with. Ianto was the man Jack would never be part of a couple for. The man that was too dull, too serious, too something to be more than a nameless face in another thousand years, no matter what Jack promised as he lay dying in his arms. What else could he be, when Jack couldn't even say the three words Ianto wanted to hear most as he breathed his last?
Ianto had lived in denial far too long with one Captain Jack Harkness, and while he knew the man had felt something for him, it certainly was not love.
Which led him to Fact Four: Ianto Jones had never been more to Jack than 'convenient.'
And, of course, there was the irrevocable Fact Five: That if Jack were to walk through that door this very moment, Ianto would be unable to hold onto to the anger and betrayal the caused sobs to build in his chest. And, as always, Ianto loved him still.
TBC
Endnotes:
Erioed at bod 'n anghofiedig (1)—Welsh for 'Never to be forgotten.'