(Originally posted 22/06/14)
A/N I would like to respectfully remind everyone that this is a work of fiction. I am not trying to reinvent the wheel or change Social Policy. If fictional consequences to fictional situations in fictional landscapes are likely to upset you personally, then please feel free to be elsewhere.
A/N 2 When once won't do.
CHAPTER 19.
-OOO-
Deja view.
"This is me Yan - this is my Jackanory." Ianto's lips moved slightly in an upward motion, despite his better instincts.
"First things first, John Hart is my partner. My business partner." Ianto's lips moved downwards again. This was worse, far worse than he had expected. He felt sick. He felt cold. He felt hot. He felt as though the firm foundations that he had newly laid had turned out to be an emotional shipment of quicksand.
He'd been played. No question.
Jack was doing his best to try to sugar-coat it; mentioning something about being together years, centuries in fact.
Centuries!?
See now he was just taking the piss. Ianto went to make a move. He needed to get as far away from this lying bastard as he could.
Only he couldn't move.
Not one limb.
At all.
"Centuries? What do you mean, centuries?" Ianto didn't want to enter this fandom of lies, he didn't want to humour Jack in any way, but he couldn't not ask either, he just had to, his newly acquired self esteem demanded it.
Ianto was beginning to get one of his headaches. Jack wasn't helping matters.
An alien life form!
"Fuck right off Jack! What do you take me for? You deceive me. You cheat on me and now you are just blatantly lying to my face and you expect me to okay with that?"
Ianto Jones tried harder to get away from Jack Harkness.
To no avail.
His whole head saw red.
"SECURITY, SECURITY, HELP, HELP ME. SECURITY."
In a previous life Ianto Jones had been a keen member of a national choir; he had a strong set of lungs on him.
Suddenly his whole being was being jerked forwards, led by his transfixed fingertips.
"Mummpfh won't mumphfth work Jack humph gettoff me."
What the hell was that? Did you…did you just bite me?
Stunned into mortification, Ianto felt a wave of calm alertness quickly wash over his previously agitated self. Jack had seemingly injected him with a serum to remove all mobility barriers to his fairytale.
The Welshman noted his ears still worked, but the rest of his body, voice box included, felt as though it had been ordered to take a career break.
"I would never deliberately hurt you Yan."
Wanna bet?
"Are you comfortable?"
Ianto gave this the eye-brow raise such a stupid question deserved.
"Ish?"
A sharp head tilt met this.
"Good."
Good for whom exactly?
"As I was saying, I'm not exactly human, just human compatible….I'm essentially a lone star."
Yada, yada, yada, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I swear when you release me Jack, all you'll see from me is a clean pair of heels.
Ianto tried to convey all his intentions in a blood-freezing glare.
"Don't look at me like that Yan; I'm doing this without notes remember.
I was born on the planet Sensetre; it's not in this galaxy….."
Ianto Jones did his best to act out how totally bored and disinterested he was in anything Jack Deceiving Harkness had to say. The best he could achieve was to literally turn his head away, away from Jack, towards the den's walls. Now the den for all her faults was not normally partisan. The only side she ever liked to side with was her own. However Captain Jack had grown on her over the previous months. Yes they had had their issues; he had a habit of only remembering their living agreement, when it suited him. He was untidy. He was often late. His saving grace though was that he had charm, bucket loads of it. Sweet talking and the occasional sweet caress was the sure fire way to this girl's heart. It was traditional, tried and tested.
It was the reason why she was willing to put herself out for him now.
Knowing that she held captive captive Ianto's attention, the den decided to display her wares.
She had skills and she was not afraid to use them.
Coating her walls in a basecoat of co-operation, the den delved into the collective consciousness that she shared with Jack.
The room appeared to fill with smoke. Ianto was forced into a blinking frenzy. He had lost the use of most of his faculties today; he didn't want to lose sight of his sight too.
As the smoke cleared, Ianto's eyes were introduced to a blinding light. Forced once again to close his soul's windows, he inadvertently tuned in to Jack's meandering monologue.
"I had a fabulous childhood. Everybody loved me. Everybody praised me."
Slowly happy, uplifting, wholesome images began to appear on the den's walls. So positive and brightly coloured were they, that Ianto felt as though he had entered an Imax and was watching a surround sound infomercial sponsored by Healthy Living magazine.
"I threw myself into everything. Drama. Sports. Public-speaking. Pageants."
As the Welshman watched and paid far more attention to his private show than he had wanted to, one thought struck him.
Where was Jack? If his childhood was so ideal, how come he didn't appear to be in it?
Ianto Jones scanned the many smiling faces at the many social gatherings, he was pseudo-privy to.
This.
Was.
Odd.
No?
Some of the bile that had risen in Ianto's throat receded. He was intrigued, despite himself. Why was Jack being so detailed and yet so vague?
The Welshman watched as a pretty girl mounted the steps to take the podium, at what appeared to an important civic event. Something about her caught his eye. Her jaunty, confident manner reminded him of everything he was not at her age.
Or ever had been at any age.
He was fascinated and envious.
The envy soon dissipated.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
The carefully selected audience gasped as one, as an unscripted side-show took centre-stage of the stage.
Before their eyes a perfectly pretty girl transformed into a perfectly petrified boy.
A boy whom Ianto thought he knew.
A boy named Jack?
Ianto's jaw fell open - no sound came out.
The Welshman screwed up his eyes and asked them for a second opinion. This hadn't happened surely? Swivelling his bulbs in Jack's direction Ianto could tell from his ashen, hollow and haunted expression that Jack was not test-driving his latest joke. His reality was rushing through the crowd desperately seeking a dignified escape route.
In kaleidoscopic fashion, one scene evaporated into another. Ianto Jones had trouble seeing exactly what was taking place. There seemed to be a kerfuffle. A struggle. A battle that was won by those wearing white.
White.
This now dominated the space in front of Ianto's pupils. A silent ballet now played out before him.
Strapped and sedated, a lonesome hospital bed was visited by ashamed duos, each acting out the same awkward choreography, heads bowed.
With alarming regularity these visits were punctuated by screaming and cursing.
Ianto learnt some new words.
Other words that the Welshman picked up were medical. It was difficult to catch all the sentences from his distance of thirty centuries, but he got the gist of it.
Jack was a marvel.
A fixed point in time and space.
Unique.
Almost.
He didn't seem to take it well.
Ianto was astounded that although this predicament came as a surprise to him, to Jack's family it did not.
How was that possible?
Why didn't they prepare him better?
Why didn't they love him better?
Before any answers could float through his mind, the all pervasive white was replaced by bone-melting red.
Even though he was unafraid of flame, Ianto still flinched unaccustomed as he was to being this close to this planet's core.
He could see shadows.
He could hear screams.
His lungs felt singed.
His hair curled.
He felt his grip of consciousness was tenuous at best. He felt himself floating.
Up.
Towards a public gallery - and saw a solitary figure in the dock,
below.
Jack.
Justice was swift.
Ianto was confused.
What had been decreed?
He looked to Jack for guidance.
His face was closed, shut-down, empty.
Usually the picture of animation Ianto was shocked by this. He was beginning to understand that the Jack he knew was a deliberate construct, a re-routed reflex.
A line on his brow unfurrowed.
-O-
Ianto Jones was not the galaxy's best traveller. Not having had much of an opportunity to wander far a-field, he was the reason Barley-Sugar had been invented. Observing Jack Harkness whizzing from planet to planet, the Welshman felt as though he had been trapped inside an early version of a video game. He was actually grateful his stomach was unable to move in any direction.
The Welshman saw people and places that were truly out-of-this-world. Lands and vistas were revealed to him that his imagination found hard to compute. He realised that nature is a wonder wherever it was housed.
His yet to be processed passport was stamped over and over.
He followed Jack through cityscapes and jungles.
He traced his fingers around the edges of desserts and fjords.
He indirectly met dynasties and orphans alike.
He was quenching a wanderlust he didn't even realise he was harbouring.
With the ease of a chameleon, Jack shape-shifted his way through others' histories.
Not quite overwhelmed by this, one thought struck Ianto.
Jack was never alone.
Ever.
An arm was always attached to a waist, hip or shoulder.
If he had been more psychiatrically-minded Ianto Jones would have suspected that Jack Harkness was suffering from some sort of compulsion.
A fear of being alone.
A fear of being alone with his thoughts?
Maybe.
Compassion moved from the back of the Stalls to the Front Row of Ianto's mind.
-O-
Ianto's vision began to blur. A mist descended. Objects. Nations. People. Became out of focus.
The Welshman turned his head, not one part of the den afforded him clear visibility.
Strange.
Then he heard it.
A voice.
The voice that had started this whole investigation.
John Hart's.
Frozen now due to his own will, Ianto Jones listened to the two J's first exchange.
A tongue was employed.
A face was licked.
"Fuck me you taste good. I bet you'd taste even better in my bed. Coming?"
"Give me twenty minutes hotshot, then we'll see."
Ianto Jones desperately wanted to fast-forward the next bit.
The den was one step ahead of him.
Much like one would with a magazine in a shop, the two J's relationship was flipped through in under a minute. All escapades personal and professional meshed together in silhouette form only.
Ianto's emotional palette changed to green. He looked down and reacquainted himself with his shoes.
"Then I met John Hart….His heart was a hard as a diamond and as black as coal.
He thought he had found his coal-mate.
Yan look at me." Yan didn't.
"He hadn't I promise you that." Yan shrugged, crushed and unconvinced.
"One day I told John I was going out for a paper and left…..I had moved to Earth.
It was a Sabbatical that became a fresh start."
Ianto Jones lifted his head, the walls had cleared and he had a ring side seat for the creation of his home.
Completely distracted he barely heard a word of what the Captain had to say.
History had always held a certain allure for the Welshman, now (thanks to Jack) its many mysteries were being unravelled. Who knew that humans had trekked across the plains before the continents had broken up? Or that women had invented writing? Or that the Great Wall of China had been worked on in sections simultaneously?
Well he did now.
As the modern era developed Ianto watched Jack revert back to his olde ways.
A different body in every port.
A different concubine in every conurbation.
His Jack roamed free.
-O-
Ianto Jones smiled broadly as Cardiff came into view. He had seen many sepia-toned prints of days of long ago, so it was a joy to see similar prints come to life. Even though he didn't want to admit it out loud, he had to concede that the Williams clan had always been a good-looking bunch of fellas.
He had good taste; he'd give Jack that.
All of a sudden the kaleidoscope was set to the spin cycle.
Images, colours, sights and smells collided and clashed and washed over each other.
Ianto heard something that made his hackles rise.
"John Hart found me - again. Recently."
Ianto tried to block his ears
No no no no.
The Welshman lent backwards, trying to remove his ears from the line of fire.
He heard excuses.
He heard justifications.
He heard pleading.
"I don't want to lie to you Yan. I don't want to jeopardise what we have….what we had.
Are we still a we Ianto?
Are we?"
Ianto Jones held his breath. He needed to clear his head, reset his emotions and straighten his back.
His twenty-first century senses had taken on a lot in a short space of time. Jack had had centuries to get used to his unusual make up.
Ianto minutes.
The Welshman could feel the American's eyes boring into the outside of his own lids.
The den was deathly silent.
Both men waited on the pin.
"We…."
"Yes?"
"…need to talk."
"Of course Yan. About anything, anything you want."
"I can't be expected to make a snap decision about something so huge."
"No. Right. 'Course not."
Jack Harkness looked hopeful for the first time that afternoon. "Where would you like to start?"
Ianto took the first deep breath he had been able to that day. "I noticed…."
"Yes?"
"…. that you didn't allow yourself the opportunity to be lonely during your long lifetime, lifetimes?"
Ianto found it hard to use the right terminology.
"I kept myself busy it's true."
"With anyone and everyone."
"I like light and shade, Yan you already know this about me."
"There just seemed to be so many."
"Many is such a relative term."
"So how many is many to you?"
"Lots of lots."
"Obviously; but could you put your "lots" into context?"
"Ummm I'd rather not."
"Oh come on, an approximation then."
"Well…"
"Look don't think you'll shock me. I've seen part of the evidence and I went to college with some pretty randy rugger guys."
Jack hesitated, he looked deeply into Ianto's soul-searching eyes, if this was going to work, there needed to be complete honesty. He inhaled then breaking a habit of several lifetimes he exhaled with the true number on his breath.
The number knocked on Ianto's ears, but his brain refused to let it in.
"WHAT!"
Ianto's voice reached a pitch that started to interest dogs.
He gasped in shock. His hands fell to his sides.
-OOO-
Comments are always appreciated