repressed 7/7+ epilogue
Summery: Ianto wakes up one morning to discover 3 months of his memories are missing.
Rating: NC-17
Warning: This chapter is pretty dark. Implied non-con, implied violence, may squick, may trigger, self harm.
Torchwood is owned by RTD and the BBC. Invitation to love is owned by Mark Frost and David Lynch
Whiskey and Game Shows
Ianto spoke to Helen and Owen first thing the next day. Owen didn't think viewing the police file could make things much worse. Helen said he should only look at it one piece at a time. Both of them agreed they would pass this information onto Jack, and by the end of the day they had.
Unwilling to face the sympathetic looks from everyone, Ianto retreated to the archives or the tourist office and kept himself occupied with whatever project he could find.
A couple days later, with mounting frustration, when he asked Jack about the police file, the older man promised to take care of it tomorrow. Tomorrow came, and Jack said he forgot all about it. Ianto reminded him the following morning in sharp, clipped tones, keeping the urge to scream and hit the man barely at bay, but still no file appeared. Jack was stalling.
So Ianto contacted the police himself and gave them Jack's authorization code. A courier arrived two hours later and Ianto signed for the package. He left it on the desk of the information office untouched for well over an hour (more like two or three) while he tiptoed around it sorting through pamphlets and tidying up the window displays.
Finally he decided he would never really feel prepared for this, and he snatched it up. He retreated behind the beaded curtain and shut and locked the door behind him.
Carefully he placed the thick envelope on the small table beside the copy machine and took a moment to pull off his tie and hang his suit jacket over the back of a chair. He took another moment or two, or three, to pace the room and get his breathing under control. What was the worst that could happen? He'd end up jammed in the corner for a while until someone came and found him. His nightmares might get worse, but at least they would be more informed. They might have to move him to Flatholm in the end, but that was where he was heading anyway. The only other option was to drag this farce out for even longer, and he just couldn't bear it any more. Something had to happen before someone else got hurt. This was what he had to do. There was no other option. He lifted the envelope up and sat himself down on the floor, close to the corner, but not actually in it. As an after thought he tugged a near by paper bin in close as well.
Ianto ripped open the seal and gingerly pulled the folder out of the envelope A brief note from detective Swanson was paper clipped to the front telling Jack the constables were nearly finished searching through Issac Miller's possessions, and thanking him for Ianto's conformation of the man in question as his kidnapper
Ianto took a deep breath and flipped the cover open. He jumped at the sight if Miller's dirty pail eyes looking back at him and and took a deep breath. There was one hurdle already down. Feeling slightly more confident as he thought about the weight of a Glock 9 millimeter in his hand, Ianto flipped to the next section of the file. The image of an old mat in the corner of a dingy room stained with a myriad of filth and crawling with flies assailed him. Just above it there was a short dog chain anchored to the mildew stained wall, just long enough to coil on one end of the mat. Ianto could smell it. Raw sewage, blood and vomit clawing at his nostrils strong enough to make his head swim. Flies were crawling all over every surface. There was a cat tray in the corner full of human waist. A red nylon leash hanging on the wall beside a length of rubber hose he could feel biting into his back. Everything was way to bright and sharp beneath the flash of the camera in the 8x10 glossy full color photos now scattered across the copy room floor. There were dog dishes by the door, cheep blue plastic, dead flies floating in the water. A rusty old sledge hammer leaned against the wall. An adult sized diaper stained and torn, its contents orange and sick was pushed into a corner.
Ianto apparently didn't make it to the paper bin. He came to streaked with his own vomit, the sound of Jack calling his name as he pounded on the door. He could feel a great dark pit opening in his chest. At that moment Ianto very much wanted to hurt someone, so he did not get up and unlock the door. He picked up the paper bin and flung it across the room with an angry shout. A box of tourist maps followed. He flung ream after ream of copy paper into the walls. With tears streaming down his face he emptied every shelf of its contents, scattering books and boxes of pens across the floor. Finally he tipped over the copy machine, its power cord sending off a spark as it was brutally yanked from the wall. Ianto picked up the small table beside it, disregarding his tie as it fell to the floor, and he slammed the small piece of furniture into every surface he could find until it was a mangled twisted wreck, and he was a boneless sobbing heap on the floor.
The door creaked open and the beads rattled. With a sudden burst of energy Ianto got to his feet. He didn't look up as he barked, “Don't fucking touch me!” and Jack and Owen stepped aside to let him pass. “I'm going home. I'm getting drunk. Don't follow me.” He snapped.
At the liquor store he grabbed a bottle of cheep whiskey and as he stood in line to pay, his eyes landed on the rows of cigarettes lined up behind the counter. He hadn't smoked cigarettes since he nicked a carton in high school. He purchased a pack, something unfiltered with extra tar, and took everything home to his flat where he sat directly down on the couch and turned on something mindless and trivial on the telly. He watched game shows. Everyone was so happy and excited, clapping their hands as they jumped up and down. Lights flashed, wheels spun, bells and whistles sounded and quid signs flashed everywhere while Ianto though about dog dishes and dirty adult nappies rotting against his skin. Game shows dissolved into cheerful people going on ad nauseum about cleaning products and exercise machines that could fit into the boot of a moped, and Ianto could still not get the smell of human waist or the feeling of flies crawling across his skin out of his head. He drank strait out of the bottle, not moving from his couch unless he had to pee, and when ever he did that he thought of cat pans. The pit in his chest widened into a great bottomless chasm
When he lit his first cigaret, the smoke burned and seared down into his lungs just right. He learned about a new robotic vacuum and the exciting attachments that would come with it for free if he just called now, and tears dripped down his face. He sucked on the cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs until the nicotine and lack of oxygen made his head feel like it was floating off his shoulders. He pulled on the cigarette until the embers burned his fingers and his lungs began to crystallize, and he used it to light another one before putting it out right on the cherry wood coffee table. He could feel the filth of his own feted wast burning into his skin. He could feel it crawling and cloying just beneath the surface.
Ianto sat in the shower, clutching the bottle of whiskey to his chest. He wasn't quite drunk enough to see double yet. He sat under the spray rocking back and forth until the scalding hot water turned to ice and the black hole in his chest began to suck him in. The dirt was still there. Blood, shit, and vomit. Another man's semen, sticky, crusty, and itching against his skin. He slumped to the floor of the bathroom naked and dripping, drunk enough now to sway, and he lit another cigarette, taking a deep drag before considering the cherry tip in the dim light of his bathroom. He thought about all the control he lost and pressed the embers into the skin of his thigh. The pain was sharp, even with liquor swimming through his blood it was almost too much. He thought about the games he used to play with Jack that he would never be able to play again and the depraved acts he was suddenly eager, but would never ask to try. He held the cigarette against his skin longer this time leaving an angry blood red circle that continued to burn long after he pulled the cigarette away. He thought about the ribs still to prominent on his chest, the muscles gone from his arms and legs now wiry and sinewy instead of solid and powerful. If he were tackled in a dark ally somewhere and hauled off again he'd be even more incapable of fighting back. He burned him self again. He wandered what unsavory aspect of himself led people to do all this shit to him and he pressed the cigarette harder. He thought about being a dog and burned himself again. He thought about three months as a mindless doll while Jack dressed him and fed him and helped him use the toilet. He thought about Lisa stitching her self in to the skull of the pizza delivery girl. He thought about how much he actually deserved being beaten bloody by cannibals after he let her kill two innocent people. Maybe he deserved this too.
Ianto came to with his skull pounding and his belly threatening mutiny. His head was still reeling with alcohol, but the pleasant feeling of being good and drunk was gone. Daylight shown bright through the window piercing his throbbing scull like a lance. A familiar scent and a familiar set of arms was wrapped around him along with a familiar blue wool coat. “Sorry, sorry, so sorry,” Jack was chanting as he rocked him back and forth like a child.
“Jack?” Ianto mumbled.
With that the older man began to ramble almost incoherently between fits of sobbing, “Told me not to hold your hand, not to kiss you, not in the countryside. Never listen. So stupid. Never did. Went to interview the baker. Sweet old lady. You'd come back with paisteries. Then you were gone. Shouldn't have let you go alone. Should've known something was wrong. It was aliens, had to be aliens. But I was wrong. Always wrong. Couldn't find you. Couldn't save you. Can't even get you a stupid police file. Knew something was wrong, and let you go alone. Forgive me, forgive me, please forgive me.”
Ianto twisted around to wrap his arms around the older man, pressing himself against his chest. “Wasn't your fault,” Ianto said, “nothing to forgive.”
“Please,” Jack begged.
“Okay,” Ianto said, reaching up to wipe tears from the older man's face, “I forgive you.”
“Promise?” Jack asked.
“I promise.”
“Promise not to hurt yourself again?”
Ianto winced as the previous evening's events came back to him. He was hoping to keep anyone from finding out.
“Ianto? Promise?”
“Will I ever feel clean again?” Ianto asked.
Jack sniffed and tucked Ianto's head under his chin. “It takes a while,” He said.
“How long?” Ianto asked.
“Donno.”
“He did it because he thought I was gay, didn't he?”
“Yeah,” Jack whispered, “that's what he said.”
“I'm not even gay,” Ianto murmured, “not really”
“I don't even know what 'gay' really means,” Jack said.
“Are you going to call Owen?” Ianto asked.
“Yes.”
“Am I going to a room in Flatholm with no shoe laces, silverware, or glass mirrors?”
“No.”
“Can I get dressed first?”
“You can put on shorts, but Owen needs to look at the burns.”
“Okay.”
“Ianto?”
“Yes Jack?”
“Do you promise not to hurt yourself again?”
Ianto sighed and rubbed a hand up and down Jack's shoulder. “I'll do my best, Jack.”
He pulled on a jumper and some clean shorts, a little alarmed at the large number of angry red circles tinged with black and brown that now dotted both his thighs. In the other room he could hear Jack murmuring on the phone and he dreaded Owen's arrival. He pulled on some track suit bottoms and trudged out to his living room to slump on the couch and stare at the cigaret burns gouged into what was once a respectable coffee table. Once again the photographs from the police file were cycling through his head, and his queazyness ratcheted up a notch.
Jack made him a cup of peppermint tea and Ianto sipped it while he waited for Owen to arrive.
Jack buzzed Owen into the building 30 minutes after his phone call and Owen was stepping through the door a few moments later slinging a pack off his back.
“Morning tea boy,” he sang with a smile, and Ianto was relieved at the normalcy of it. “Got a good hang over going?”
“Bloody fantastic,” Ianto said, rubbing his pounding head.
Owen opened his back pack and pulled out a thick white envelope Ianto's name was scrawled across the front of it in flowery writing. “The girls got you a gift,” he said.
Ianto tore it open and dumped the contents onto his coffee table. A large chocolate bar, a DVD, and a photograph of Rachel the Cat-Baby zipped into a penguin snuggy, sucking a small stuffed mouse toy clutched in her odd little half paw half hands while she slept. On the back of the photo in Tosh's precise handwriting were the words, “We love you Ianto!” and it was signed by them both. He looked at the DVD. The Big Lebowski. He seemed to recall Gwen was astonished he had not seen this.
Ianto managed a small smile and laid everything on the table beside the first aid supplies Owen was assembling from his open bag. “Let's have a look.” Owen gestured at Ianto's thighs. With a sigh of resignation Ianto pulled off the track suit bottoms. Owen took a seat on the coffee table and let out a low whistle. “I've seen worse,” He said, “But not by much.” And he set to work cleaning out, disinfecting, and taping plasters over each round burn while Ianto squirmed against the pain. “Most of these are going to scare, Ianto.” he said.
“I know,” the young man replied in a hushed tone.
He leaned back against the sofa and looked up at Jack who was watching the proceedings while he wiped fresh tears from his eyes. “Sorry,” Ianto mouthed at him.
“Right!” Owen said, clapping his hands together once he'd finished. Ianto groaned and rubbed his pounding head again. “Here's the plan.” Ianto pulled his track suite bottoms back over his hips as Owen fished around in his backpack until he produced a bottle. “Anti-depressants,” he said, passing it to Ianto. “Same as the ones you were on after Lisa.” Ianto nodded. “Jack, you are going to call the police and get another copy of that file. The first one is covered in monkey bullocks vomit.” Ianto groaned again, this time clutching his belly. “Helen and I will sit down together and sort the file in to small easy to digest portions that Ianto can look at one a time when he feels ready to try this again. You are both going to take the day off and do... what ever it is you two do to make up.” He waved his hands around to illustrate something. Ianto and Jack both cocked their eyebrows at him.
“Right,” Owen said, packing up his supplies. “Watch the movie. It really is very good, especially the part when Jeff Bridges goes to the beach party.”
Jack slumped down beside Ianto on the couch as soon as Owen was gone.
“I'm really sorry,” Ianto said again. “It was never my intention to hurt you.”
“I know,” Jack said. “And I understand why you did it.”
Ianto studied him. Sometimes it was easy to forget how many years were hidden behind those blue eyes, even if they did look older than their face. “You do understand, don't you?”
Jack nodded, his expression grim.
“You don't have to tell me about it,” Ianto said. “Not if you don't want to.”
Jack nodded again. “I still think you're beautiful you know.” He reached over and grabbed Ianto's hand. “Even after I saw those photos and read all details of the police file and the medical file. Even after I could only spend about 30 seconds in that room at a time mask or no, I never stopped thinking that you are beautiful. And even after what you did to your self, I still think you are beautiful. Please, please don't do it again.” He was stroking his hand down Ianto's cheek, eyes once again growing moist.
“Okay, Jack, I won't do it again.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Jack smiled, satisfied. “So what is it that we 'do' to make up?”
Ianto furrowed his brow. “Not sure. I think last time we had a fight the make up sex involved hand cuffs, a blind fold, and cheese whiz.”
“Hmm,” Jack said, “Oddly I'm not in the mood for sex.”
“Yeah, I'd probably puke on you anyway.”
Jack winced and picked up the DVD. “I liked the part when she was painting while riding a zip-line in the nude.”
Ianto sighed, “Of course you did.”
Jack smiled.
“And now I have to watch it,” Ianto said.
“Good,” said Jack. “We'll watch the movie and then it'll be time for Invitation to Love and we can finally find out who the father of Jade's baby is.”
“I'll bet when she finally pops it out its a Cat-Person,” Ianto said.
Eye liner and Answers
Six months later Ianto stood in the middle of a cosmetics store in the largest shopping mall in Cardiff watching Jack poke through racks full of eyeliner pencils.
Malls still made him nervous, but he was starting to believe that was a fear seeded in something pre-captivity.
“Ooh, ripe plumb,” Jack said passing a pencil back to him. “Bet that would look good on you.” Ianto cocked and eyebrow and added the pencil to the growing collection in the basket under his arm before taking another sip of his coffee.
Things were better. The rats were smaller. He was eating normal food at almost his previous rate. Over the last six months he dragged Jack into every pet store in Cardiff until he could handle things like leashes and dog dishes with out batting an eye. When he refused to actually get a dog because his flat was too small, his life was to busy, and his pet pteradon would just eat the poor thing anyway, Jack dragged him into the local animal shelter and signed them both up as volunteers. It felt good to be taking care of something instead of being the frightened animal himself.
The panic attacks still came, but he knew what situations to avoid when he was in the field and no one questioned it when he refused to work on a particular case.
He tried to learn how to change Rachel's nappy in a brightly colored bird and mouse themed nursery set up in Flatholm, but in the end it was just too much.
“Bet you'd look good with eye shadow to,” Jack said.
“I'm armed, Jack,” Ianto replied.
“Aww, spoil sport. Haven't you seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show?”
“Yes, Jack, you dragged me off to that musical dressed in fishnet stockings and a mini skirt with a big red 'V' drawn on my forehead last year.”
“Ahh,” Jack mused, “Now I remember. You do look good in eye shadow.”
Ianto rolled his eyes, and took another sip of coffee.
He made it to the end of the police file nearly three months ago and many of his questions were answered, most importantly, why it happened. Issac Miller did see him and Jack holding hands and steeling a kiss. The man's father was a preacher before he died. He was always angry about the fact that he could never keep more than a small handful of parishioners in his church. They always left in favor of the one across town. “They were sinners,” Miller said to the police, “Drawn to the house of Satan.” Ianto imagined the real reason was that they preferred a preacher who was sane, and kind and actually interested in helping them rather than a blustering angry old man crowing about hell fire,damnation, and guilt.
Listed as distinguishing marks upon Miller's body ware deep striped scars left by a cane across his genitals and thighs. When asked about them he said his father only wanted to save him from homosexuality, and he thanked him for every strike. No wander the poor bastard killed himself.
It didn't make Ianto's nightmares any more bearable though. He still woke up on occasion curled in a tight ball in the corner of the room. After one memorable night when it took him nearly two hours to convince him self he was safe enough to get to his feet and climb back into bed he refused to sleep alone. If Jack was unavailable he went to Tosh's flat (Owen refused to share a bed with him. Even if it was for medical purposes).
Jack passed two more sticks of eyeliner back to him. “Oh, midnight!” He said, “I'd look stunning in that one.”
“Yes, Jack. Like a Transylvanian God.” Ianto tossed it in with the rest.
“Can you believe how much these things cost?” Jack commented, “25 quid for a stick of paint!”
Three bodies were found buried in Miller's back yard, all of them with shattered hands and feet. Miller used the same slege hammer on them he used on Ianto. One of them was a young man who disappeared the year before Ianto's birth, 1982. He attended each of their memorial services, clutching Jack's hand like a lifeline while he cried for them. He found it almost impossible to talk to their families at these events, but he accepted their embraces and their gratitude for finally giving them a little closure.
Ianto fingered through what was quite possibly 400 quid of eye liner pencils wandering which one contained the hallucinogen that made people see advertisements for beef flavored shakes everywhere they looked. The most disturbing part of the intelligent drug was that it made its victim actually want the beef flavored milk shakes as well.
Jack promised him it was getting better. It was getting better with each generation, he said, only 60 years ago a man could be arrested for being gay. Today that was unheard of. Tomorrow humanity would be flying across the stars and falling in love with hundreds of different alien races.
“Ooooh,” said Jack, “Bad Girl Black. I'll bet it's this one!”
“If it's not we're making Owen wear it,” Ianto said.
“He looked good in eye shadow too,” Jack mused. “But not as good as you.”
Rating: NC-17
Warning: This chapter is pretty dark. Implied non-con, implied violence, may squick, may trigger, self harm.
Torchwood is owned by RTD and the BBC. Invitation to love is owned by Mark Frost and David Lynch
Whiskey and Game Shows
Ianto spoke to Helen and Owen first thing the next day. Owen didn't think viewing the police file could make things much worse. Helen said he should only look at it one piece at a time. Both of them agreed they would pass this information onto Jack, and by the end of the day they had.
Unwilling to face the sympathetic looks from everyone, Ianto retreated to the archives or the tourist office and kept himself occupied with whatever project he could find.
A couple days later, with mounting frustration, when he asked Jack about the police file, the older man promised to take care of it tomorrow. Tomorrow came, and Jack said he forgot all about it. Ianto reminded him the following morning in sharp, clipped tones, keeping the urge to scream and hit the man barely at bay, but still no file appeared. Jack was stalling.
So Ianto contacted the police himself and gave them Jack's authorization code. A courier arrived two hours later and Ianto signed for the package. He left it on the desk of the information office untouched for well over an hour (more like two or three) while he tiptoed around it sorting through pamphlets and tidying up the window displays.
Finally he decided he would never really feel prepared for this, and he snatched it up. He retreated behind the beaded curtain and shut and locked the door behind him.
Carefully he placed the thick envelope on the small table beside the copy machine and took a moment to pull off his tie and hang his suit jacket over the back of a chair. He took another moment or two, or three, to pace the room and get his breathing under control. What was the worst that could happen? He'd end up jammed in the corner for a while until someone came and found him. His nightmares might get worse, but at least they would be more informed. They might have to move him to Flatholm in the end, but that was where he was heading anyway. The only other option was to drag this farce out for even longer, and he just couldn't bear it any more. Something had to happen before someone else got hurt. This was what he had to do. There was no other option. He lifted the envelope up and sat himself down on the floor, close to the corner, but not actually in it. As an after thought he tugged a near by paper bin in close as well.
Ianto ripped open the seal and gingerly pulled the folder out of the envelope A brief note from detective Swanson was paper clipped to the front telling Jack the constables were nearly finished searching through Issac Miller's possessions, and thanking him for Ianto's conformation of the man in question as his kidnapper
Ianto took a deep breath and flipped the cover open. He jumped at the sight if Miller's dirty pail eyes looking back at him and and took a deep breath. There was one hurdle already down. Feeling slightly more confident as he thought about the weight of a Glock 9 millimeter in his hand, Ianto flipped to the next section of the file. The image of an old mat in the corner of a dingy room stained with a myriad of filth and crawling with flies assailed him. Just above it there was a short dog chain anchored to the mildew stained wall, just long enough to coil on one end of the mat. Ianto could smell it. Raw sewage, blood and vomit clawing at his nostrils strong enough to make his head swim. Flies were crawling all over every surface. There was a cat tray in the corner full of human waist. A red nylon leash hanging on the wall beside a length of rubber hose he could feel biting into his back. Everything was way to bright and sharp beneath the flash of the camera in the 8x10 glossy full color photos now scattered across the copy room floor. There were dog dishes by the door, cheep blue plastic, dead flies floating in the water. A rusty old sledge hammer leaned against the wall. An adult sized diaper stained and torn, its contents orange and sick was pushed into a corner.
Ianto apparently didn't make it to the paper bin. He came to streaked with his own vomit, the sound of Jack calling his name as he pounded on the door. He could feel a great dark pit opening in his chest. At that moment Ianto very much wanted to hurt someone, so he did not get up and unlock the door. He picked up the paper bin and flung it across the room with an angry shout. A box of tourist maps followed. He flung ream after ream of copy paper into the walls. With tears streaming down his face he emptied every shelf of its contents, scattering books and boxes of pens across the floor. Finally he tipped over the copy machine, its power cord sending off a spark as it was brutally yanked from the wall. Ianto picked up the small table beside it, disregarding his tie as it fell to the floor, and he slammed the small piece of furniture into every surface he could find until it was a mangled twisted wreck, and he was a boneless sobbing heap on the floor.
The door creaked open and the beads rattled. With a sudden burst of energy Ianto got to his feet. He didn't look up as he barked, “Don't fucking touch me!” and Jack and Owen stepped aside to let him pass. “I'm going home. I'm getting drunk. Don't follow me.” He snapped.
At the liquor store he grabbed a bottle of cheep whiskey and as he stood in line to pay, his eyes landed on the rows of cigarettes lined up behind the counter. He hadn't smoked cigarettes since he nicked a carton in high school. He purchased a pack, something unfiltered with extra tar, and took everything home to his flat where he sat directly down on the couch and turned on something mindless and trivial on the telly. He watched game shows. Everyone was so happy and excited, clapping their hands as they jumped up and down. Lights flashed, wheels spun, bells and whistles sounded and quid signs flashed everywhere while Ianto though about dog dishes and dirty adult nappies rotting against his skin. Game shows dissolved into cheerful people going on ad nauseum about cleaning products and exercise machines that could fit into the boot of a moped, and Ianto could still not get the smell of human waist or the feeling of flies crawling across his skin out of his head. He drank strait out of the bottle, not moving from his couch unless he had to pee, and when ever he did that he thought of cat pans. The pit in his chest widened into a great bottomless chasm
When he lit his first cigaret, the smoke burned and seared down into his lungs just right. He learned about a new robotic vacuum and the exciting attachments that would come with it for free if he just called now, and tears dripped down his face. He sucked on the cigarette, holding the smoke in his lungs until the nicotine and lack of oxygen made his head feel like it was floating off his shoulders. He pulled on the cigarette until the embers burned his fingers and his lungs began to crystallize, and he used it to light another one before putting it out right on the cherry wood coffee table. He could feel the filth of his own feted wast burning into his skin. He could feel it crawling and cloying just beneath the surface.
Ianto sat in the shower, clutching the bottle of whiskey to his chest. He wasn't quite drunk enough to see double yet. He sat under the spray rocking back and forth until the scalding hot water turned to ice and the black hole in his chest began to suck him in. The dirt was still there. Blood, shit, and vomit. Another man's semen, sticky, crusty, and itching against his skin. He slumped to the floor of the bathroom naked and dripping, drunk enough now to sway, and he lit another cigarette, taking a deep drag before considering the cherry tip in the dim light of his bathroom. He thought about all the control he lost and pressed the embers into the skin of his thigh. The pain was sharp, even with liquor swimming through his blood it was almost too much. He thought about the games he used to play with Jack that he would never be able to play again and the depraved acts he was suddenly eager, but would never ask to try. He held the cigarette against his skin longer this time leaving an angry blood red circle that continued to burn long after he pulled the cigarette away. He thought about the ribs still to prominent on his chest, the muscles gone from his arms and legs now wiry and sinewy instead of solid and powerful. If he were tackled in a dark ally somewhere and hauled off again he'd be even more incapable of fighting back. He burned him self again. He wandered what unsavory aspect of himself led people to do all this shit to him and he pressed the cigarette harder. He thought about being a dog and burned himself again. He thought about three months as a mindless doll while Jack dressed him and fed him and helped him use the toilet. He thought about Lisa stitching her self in to the skull of the pizza delivery girl. He thought about how much he actually deserved being beaten bloody by cannibals after he let her kill two innocent people. Maybe he deserved this too.
Ianto came to with his skull pounding and his belly threatening mutiny. His head was still reeling with alcohol, but the pleasant feeling of being good and drunk was gone. Daylight shown bright through the window piercing his throbbing scull like a lance. A familiar scent and a familiar set of arms was wrapped around him along with a familiar blue wool coat. “Sorry, sorry, so sorry,” Jack was chanting as he rocked him back and forth like a child.
“Jack?” Ianto mumbled.
With that the older man began to ramble almost incoherently between fits of sobbing, “Told me not to hold your hand, not to kiss you, not in the countryside. Never listen. So stupid. Never did. Went to interview the baker. Sweet old lady. You'd come back with paisteries. Then you were gone. Shouldn't have let you go alone. Should've known something was wrong. It was aliens, had to be aliens. But I was wrong. Always wrong. Couldn't find you. Couldn't save you. Can't even get you a stupid police file. Knew something was wrong, and let you go alone. Forgive me, forgive me, please forgive me.”
Ianto twisted around to wrap his arms around the older man, pressing himself against his chest. “Wasn't your fault,” Ianto said, “nothing to forgive.”
“Please,” Jack begged.
“Okay,” Ianto said, reaching up to wipe tears from the older man's face, “I forgive you.”
“Promise?” Jack asked.
“I promise.”
“Promise not to hurt yourself again?”
Ianto winced as the previous evening's events came back to him. He was hoping to keep anyone from finding out.
“Ianto? Promise?”
“Will I ever feel clean again?” Ianto asked.
Jack sniffed and tucked Ianto's head under his chin. “It takes a while,” He said.
“How long?” Ianto asked.
“Donno.”
“He did it because he thought I was gay, didn't he?”
“Yeah,” Jack whispered, “that's what he said.”
“I'm not even gay,” Ianto murmured, “not really”
“I don't even know what 'gay' really means,” Jack said.
“Are you going to call Owen?” Ianto asked.
“Yes.”
“Am I going to a room in Flatholm with no shoe laces, silverware, or glass mirrors?”
“No.”
“Can I get dressed first?”
“You can put on shorts, but Owen needs to look at the burns.”
“Okay.”
“Ianto?”
“Yes Jack?”
“Do you promise not to hurt yourself again?”
Ianto sighed and rubbed a hand up and down Jack's shoulder. “I'll do my best, Jack.”
He pulled on a jumper and some clean shorts, a little alarmed at the large number of angry red circles tinged with black and brown that now dotted both his thighs. In the other room he could hear Jack murmuring on the phone and he dreaded Owen's arrival. He pulled on some track suit bottoms and trudged out to his living room to slump on the couch and stare at the cigaret burns gouged into what was once a respectable coffee table. Once again the photographs from the police file were cycling through his head, and his queazyness ratcheted up a notch.
Jack made him a cup of peppermint tea and Ianto sipped it while he waited for Owen to arrive.
Jack buzzed Owen into the building 30 minutes after his phone call and Owen was stepping through the door a few moments later slinging a pack off his back.
“Morning tea boy,” he sang with a smile, and Ianto was relieved at the normalcy of it. “Got a good hang over going?”
“Bloody fantastic,” Ianto said, rubbing his pounding head.
Owen opened his back pack and pulled out a thick white envelope Ianto's name was scrawled across the front of it in flowery writing. “The girls got you a gift,” he said.
Ianto tore it open and dumped the contents onto his coffee table. A large chocolate bar, a DVD, and a photograph of Rachel the Cat-Baby zipped into a penguin snuggy, sucking a small stuffed mouse toy clutched in her odd little half paw half hands while she slept. On the back of the photo in Tosh's precise handwriting were the words, “We love you Ianto!” and it was signed by them both. He looked at the DVD. The Big Lebowski. He seemed to recall Gwen was astonished he had not seen this.
Ianto managed a small smile and laid everything on the table beside the first aid supplies Owen was assembling from his open bag. “Let's have a look.” Owen gestured at Ianto's thighs. With a sigh of resignation Ianto pulled off the track suit bottoms. Owen took a seat on the coffee table and let out a low whistle. “I've seen worse,” He said, “But not by much.” And he set to work cleaning out, disinfecting, and taping plasters over each round burn while Ianto squirmed against the pain. “Most of these are going to scare, Ianto.” he said.
“I know,” the young man replied in a hushed tone.
He leaned back against the sofa and looked up at Jack who was watching the proceedings while he wiped fresh tears from his eyes. “Sorry,” Ianto mouthed at him.
“Right!” Owen said, clapping his hands together once he'd finished. Ianto groaned and rubbed his pounding head again. “Here's the plan.” Ianto pulled his track suite bottoms back over his hips as Owen fished around in his backpack until he produced a bottle. “Anti-depressants,” he said, passing it to Ianto. “Same as the ones you were on after Lisa.” Ianto nodded. “Jack, you are going to call the police and get another copy of that file. The first one is covered in monkey bullocks vomit.” Ianto groaned again, this time clutching his belly. “Helen and I will sit down together and sort the file in to small easy to digest portions that Ianto can look at one a time when he feels ready to try this again. You are both going to take the day off and do... what ever it is you two do to make up.” He waved his hands around to illustrate something. Ianto and Jack both cocked their eyebrows at him.
“Right,” Owen said, packing up his supplies. “Watch the movie. It really is very good, especially the part when Jeff Bridges goes to the beach party.”
Jack slumped down beside Ianto on the couch as soon as Owen was gone.
“I'm really sorry,” Ianto said again. “It was never my intention to hurt you.”
“I know,” Jack said. “And I understand why you did it.”
Ianto studied him. Sometimes it was easy to forget how many years were hidden behind those blue eyes, even if they did look older than their face. “You do understand, don't you?”
Jack nodded, his expression grim.
“You don't have to tell me about it,” Ianto said. “Not if you don't want to.”
Jack nodded again. “I still think you're beautiful you know.” He reached over and grabbed Ianto's hand. “Even after I saw those photos and read all details of the police file and the medical file. Even after I could only spend about 30 seconds in that room at a time mask or no, I never stopped thinking that you are beautiful. And even after what you did to your self, I still think you are beautiful. Please, please don't do it again.” He was stroking his hand down Ianto's cheek, eyes once again growing moist.
“Okay, Jack, I won't do it again.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Jack smiled, satisfied. “So what is it that we 'do' to make up?”
Ianto furrowed his brow. “Not sure. I think last time we had a fight the make up sex involved hand cuffs, a blind fold, and cheese whiz.”
“Hmm,” Jack said, “Oddly I'm not in the mood for sex.”
“Yeah, I'd probably puke on you anyway.”
Jack winced and picked up the DVD. “I liked the part when she was painting while riding a zip-line in the nude.”
Ianto sighed, “Of course you did.”
Jack smiled.
“And now I have to watch it,” Ianto said.
“Good,” said Jack. “We'll watch the movie and then it'll be time for Invitation to Love and we can finally find out who the father of Jade's baby is.”
“I'll bet when she finally pops it out its a Cat-Person,” Ianto said.
Eye liner and Answers
Six months later Ianto stood in the middle of a cosmetics store in the largest shopping mall in Cardiff watching Jack poke through racks full of eyeliner pencils.
Malls still made him nervous, but he was starting to believe that was a fear seeded in something pre-captivity.
“Ooh, ripe plumb,” Jack said passing a pencil back to him. “Bet that would look good on you.” Ianto cocked and eyebrow and added the pencil to the growing collection in the basket under his arm before taking another sip of his coffee.
Things were better. The rats were smaller. He was eating normal food at almost his previous rate. Over the last six months he dragged Jack into every pet store in Cardiff until he could handle things like leashes and dog dishes with out batting an eye. When he refused to actually get a dog because his flat was too small, his life was to busy, and his pet pteradon would just eat the poor thing anyway, Jack dragged him into the local animal shelter and signed them both up as volunteers. It felt good to be taking care of something instead of being the frightened animal himself.
The panic attacks still came, but he knew what situations to avoid when he was in the field and no one questioned it when he refused to work on a particular case.
He tried to learn how to change Rachel's nappy in a brightly colored bird and mouse themed nursery set up in Flatholm, but in the end it was just too much.
“Bet you'd look good with eye shadow to,” Jack said.
“I'm armed, Jack,” Ianto replied.
“Aww, spoil sport. Haven't you seen The Rocky Horror Picture Show?”
“Yes, Jack, you dragged me off to that musical dressed in fishnet stockings and a mini skirt with a big red 'V' drawn on my forehead last year.”
“Ahh,” Jack mused, “Now I remember. You do look good in eye shadow.”
Ianto rolled his eyes, and took another sip of coffee.
He made it to the end of the police file nearly three months ago and many of his questions were answered, most importantly, why it happened. Issac Miller did see him and Jack holding hands and steeling a kiss. The man's father was a preacher before he died. He was always angry about the fact that he could never keep more than a small handful of parishioners in his church. They always left in favor of the one across town. “They were sinners,” Miller said to the police, “Drawn to the house of Satan.” Ianto imagined the real reason was that they preferred a preacher who was sane, and kind and actually interested in helping them rather than a blustering angry old man crowing about hell fire,damnation, and guilt.
Listed as distinguishing marks upon Miller's body ware deep striped scars left by a cane across his genitals and thighs. When asked about them he said his father only wanted to save him from homosexuality, and he thanked him for every strike. No wander the poor bastard killed himself.
It didn't make Ianto's nightmares any more bearable though. He still woke up on occasion curled in a tight ball in the corner of the room. After one memorable night when it took him nearly two hours to convince him self he was safe enough to get to his feet and climb back into bed he refused to sleep alone. If Jack was unavailable he went to Tosh's flat (Owen refused to share a bed with him. Even if it was for medical purposes).
Jack passed two more sticks of eyeliner back to him. “Oh, midnight!” He said, “I'd look stunning in that one.”
“Yes, Jack. Like a Transylvanian God.” Ianto tossed it in with the rest.
“Can you believe how much these things cost?” Jack commented, “25 quid for a stick of paint!”
Three bodies were found buried in Miller's back yard, all of them with shattered hands and feet. Miller used the same slege hammer on them he used on Ianto. One of them was a young man who disappeared the year before Ianto's birth, 1982. He attended each of their memorial services, clutching Jack's hand like a lifeline while he cried for them. He found it almost impossible to talk to their families at these events, but he accepted their embraces and their gratitude for finally giving them a little closure.
Ianto fingered through what was quite possibly 400 quid of eye liner pencils wandering which one contained the hallucinogen that made people see advertisements for beef flavored shakes everywhere they looked. The most disturbing part of the intelligent drug was that it made its victim actually want the beef flavored milk shakes as well.
Jack promised him it was getting better. It was getting better with each generation, he said, only 60 years ago a man could be arrested for being gay. Today that was unheard of. Tomorrow humanity would be flying across the stars and falling in love with hundreds of different alien races.
“Ooooh,” said Jack, “Bad Girl Black. I'll bet it's this one!”
“If it's not we're making Owen wear it,” Ianto said.
“He looked good in eye shadow too,” Jack mused. “But not as good as you.”