Ianto had managed to drag his sorry arse out of the shower, before it froze him, and clean his teeth (which actually made him feel even more ill), when there was a heavy knock at the door of his flat. He knew exactly who it was, Jack, and he had no intention of inviting the man into his home, whether the word fitted where he was living or not.

"Ianto!" Jack's voice ordered, the tone carrying through the quiet rooms of the small city flat.
"So help me, Ianto, I'll break down the door. Let Me In." he bellowed again after nothing happened.

Ianto couldn't care less, he lay there, spread-eagled on his bed, and he couldn't care less if his door was about to be ripped off it's hinges, or that the man he hated was about to see him in all his naked shame. He didn't care that he currently felt like he really, really ill and that his head hurt him so much it made him want to curl up and cry or sleep or something. He just couldn't give a damn about anything.

It happened quite quickly; not two minutes after Jack's last less than polite request to open the door, a crash was heard across the flat. Obviously Jack had decided some of his showing heroics were in order, and he kicked the door open. Or perhaps he ran at the obstacle with his shoulder, who knew?

"I hope you're aware that my land lady is about to call the police," Ianto said as he felt Jack storm into his room, his arm lying over his eyes therefore meaning that he couldn't see the grand entrance. "She doesn't take kindly to criminal damage."

"Well, I don't take too kindly to my employee bringing a threat to the entire planet into my base." Jack's cold reply came as he stood at the door, his arms crossed over his chest and a frown on his face.

"Touché, Captain." Ianto snorted, still not moving and avoiding thinking too much.

After a couple of minutes Jack spoke again, "Owen will be surprised that you're still alive, he had ten quid saying you'd have topped yourself."

Ianto snorted again and moved his arm from over his face. "It may surprise you to know, sir, but I'm not looking for the coward's way out. I think I've proved that I'm not a coward. After all, I did go back into the wreckages of Canary Wharf, I did pull Lisa off of a conversion table and I was even able to hook her back onto it when I set one up and when I moved her into your base, under your noses might I add. It takes a pretty strong person to do that, I'm sure you'll agree?" his words were almost dripping in venom.

"You're smart, I give you that. You conned me. A simple, plain and ordinary Welsh boy managed to con me. It's quite an achievement on your part, and salute you for that," Jack nodded his head in Ianto's direction. "But would a strong person really drink themselves to sleep? I've seen you're kitchen Ianto, it's not a pretty sight. I'm surprised you're not in an alcohol induced coma if you drank all that."

"I'm full of surprises, sir. Now, if you'd like to get on with it." Ianto stood and folded his arms over his chest. "I think the bathroom would be the best place to do it. Less to clean up you see. And it's better for Mrs Sheppard, too. Easier to sell the flat on after I've been executed for treason. You're lucky she is shopping actually, she keeps a shotgun by her door." Ianto snarled, walking towards the en-suite.

Jack pulled Ianto by the wrist back to him, "if I'm going to kill you, I'll kill you wherever I bloody well like, got it?"

"Yes," Ianto muttered, pulling his arm from Jack's vice grip. "Sir."

Jack let Ianto go and watched him cautiously. Ianto made no attempt to move back to the bed or into the bathroom, he simply stood there and waited for whatever Jack had planned. The silence in the room was deafening as Jack watched Ianto. While he knew it was the most inappropriate time, Jack allowed his eyes to wander over Ianto's body. In all the time that Ianto had worked for him and allowed Jack to fuck him on occasion, Jack had never seen him completely naked before (when they had fucked, Ianto ensured that the only skin Jack ever saw was from his waist to his knees, an arrangement Jack never questioned). Jack was only a 51st century guy, so he was bound to leer when a really, really sexy man was naked in front of him, but he did acknowledge (to himself) that it was a shame that he saw the whole of Ianto in such bad circumstances.

"I'm not going to kill you." he said simply.

"Retcon then?"

"No, no retcon either. I know that the worst punishment anyone can inflict on you would be to allow you to remember what you did. To live with the knowledge that your actions cost two innocent people their lives. Plus, the Canary Wharf battle claimed enough lives, wiping your memory would cost another one and I'm not willing to add to the list. You, Ianto Jones, are going to live with what you did."

"What I did? I tried to save the woman I loved, how is that wrong?" Ianto asked harshly.

"Ianto, you're not the first person to do something stupid for love, and you won't be the last. You may think you tried to save Lisa but she was already lost, Ianto."

"You can't know that, Jack, you can't!"

"I'm sorry, Ianto, I really am. There was no way that the process could have been reversed, and that was made worse by the way that she was kept alive like that." As much as Jack hated to prove that yes, he was in fact a monster, he had to tell Ianto this. "The cyber technology affected her brain, badly. The process of conversion starts with the brain, even in a rushed and sloppy process. The first thing that cyber technology does is to imprint the orders for their survival onto it: delete, convert, multiply. Granted, the process started on Lisa wasn't complete, that gave you hope. I can sympathise Ianto, I really can, but the hope was false. The fact that Lisa was kept alive in a cyber machine meant that the technology flourished, and the lack of an emotional inhibitor meant that the thing in Lisa was smart enough to fool you. Lisa was too weak to fight it right from the beginning-"

"You didn't knowanything about Lisa, so don't you throw around things like that. She fought it. I fought it. We were going to cure her, together, and then you happened. Do you know how it feels to love someone that much, that you're willing to sacrifice the whole planet just to save them? Do you, Jack?" Ianto's voice was a mere whisper by the end, there was hope in his words, hope that Jack understood.

"Yes. The difference is I let them go. That's how you and I are different, Ianto. I had the courage to let them go. 'Cause," Jack pulled himself to his full height and looked down on Ianto, speaking words that were empty with their sincerity; Jack didn't have any another choice but to watch them go, and he certainly didn't have to courage to do that. "No matter what I felt, or how you and Lisa felt, two people are never worth more than 6 billion. You didn't understand that, you valued Lisa's life above the life of the planet, that's so very human. Something so... so extraordinary. But it's irrational. Wrong. What you did was wrong."

"Being in love is never wrong! That's all I did. I was in love. I tried to save the only woman that I've ever loved, and you say it's wrong?"

"Yes, because that love you shared had the potential to kill so many people."

"Then you are a monster. And I pity you."

Jack growled and pushed him against the wall, his well controlled anger now over flowing inside him like water from a full glass, "I don't need or want your pity, Ianto Jones. And if I'm a monster, what are you? You conned your way into Torchwood, you lied to your workmates, you let me fuck you while Lisa was in that basement, you kept her alive because you were selfish. So, what are you? Come on Ianto, you seem to have an answer for everything. If I'm the big bad wolf, what does that make you?"

Ianto tensed in his grip, hands pulling at Jack's and his body thrashing against him. He grunted in pain as Jack's grip tightened and he pushed him back against the wall, hard. Ianto's vision blurred for a second from the impact.

"What does it make you?!" Jack shouted, spit flying from his mouth unnoticed.

Ianto's reply was nothing more than a whisper, "you said it yourself, I'm human. I make mistakes. Obviously trusting that you could help me was one of them. I'm human Jack, and I'm so very flawed."

With a final push against the wall, Jack let Ianto go and stalked to the door. "4 weeks suspension. I'll be checking up on you everyday. You need to tell me where you are, what you've done and who you've been with."

"Do I need permission to eat? Drink? Sleep? Take a shit? Piss?" Ianto asked, his hand caressing where Jack had pushed him hard, he'd have bruises by morning.

"Enough with the games, Ianto. Grow up." Jack ordered before he left the room and Ianto's flat.