Cape & Cowl: Application
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Zee
AGE: 27
JOURNAL: fire
IM: Deca Republica
E-MAIL: skyjump@gmail.com
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Ianto Jones
FANDOM: Torchwood
CHRONOLOGY: After The House of the Dead (radio play, based after COE)
CLASS: Hero!
SUPERHERO NAME: n/a
ALTER EGO: Ianto Jones, mild-mannered coffee god barista.
BACKGROUND:
Ianto's early background is obscured in mystery, but what we do know goes as follows: Ianto's mother was not in the picture, even so far as she's never even mentioned in the series. His only relatives are his sister Rhiannon (and later her two children), and his father. Ianto's father was not outright abusive, but was not an ideal father in many ways, and at some point in Ianto's late teens, he died.
How Ianto came to work for Torchwood One is never explained, but he became a junior researcher for the organization in his early 20s. Torchwood was a secret organization dedicated to the protection of Earth against alien threat, and consisting of four different bases of operation (that we know of); Torchwood One in Canary Wharf, London, Torchwood Two in Scotland, Torchwood Three in Cardiff, and Torchwood Four, currently "missing" but expected to pop up someday. While working for Torchwood One, Ianto met and fell in love with Lisa Hallett, a fellow employee. Everything between them was good until the battle of Canary Wharf, in which Torchwood One found itself under siege by both Cybermen and Daleks. The battle resulted in the deaths of nearly 800 employees. Ianto was one of only 27 survivors, but Lisa was not so lucky. She was partially converted by the Cybermen just before they were defeated by the Doctor. She still lived, but in pain and unable to function without the assistance of the conversion unit that had encased her in metal in the first place.
Convinced Lisa could be saved, Ianto managed to smuggle her -- conversion unit and all -- out of the ruins of Torchwood One. He brought her to Cardiff and secured a job with Torchwood Three by stalking, flirting with, and assisting its leader, Captain Jack Harkness. Much to Ianto's guilt, he was genuinely attracted to Jack, but didn't act on his feelings. Nor did he tell Jack about Lisa, but instead snuck her into Torchwood Three's basement and proceeded to fade into the background, doing his job as silently and unobtrusively as possible while simultaneously taking care of Lisa as best he could.
He eventually managed to secure the help of a cybernetics expert, Dr. Tanazaki, and brought him into the hub while Jack and the team were out on a rift alert. Dr. Tanazaki succeeded in removing Lisa from the life support provided by the conversion unit, but unfortunately the cyber technology saw its chance and took over. "Lisa," now truly a Cyberman despite the incomplete conversion, killed Dr. Tanazaki in a botched attempt at converting him as a "thank you," and then she attacked the team. Ianto tried desperately to appeal to any part of Lisa still alive that she had to stop, while also trying to convince Jack she could be saved, to keep him from killing her. Ultimately though, those attempts were useless. It took Ianto's near death (prevented only by Jack's life-saving emergency measures (AKA: the kiss of life)) and the death of the unwitting pizza delivery girl, Annie, for Ianto to realize Lisa was beyond help. The team shot and killed what was left of Lisa, and a distraught Ianto was placed on suspension.
It took time, but Ianto grieved and eventually began emerging from his shell, bonding with the team (Gwen, Owen, and Toshiko) and truly becoming a member in his own right, no longer just a shadow. He forgave Jack, Jack forgave him, and after a while their newfound trust turned to a friendship that quickly became physical, their mutual attraction never having faded. It was a complicated relationship, difficult to define, that went through its own share of trials and tribulations.
At one point, the whole team was tricked by visions of their loved ones (in Ianto's case, Lisa) into thinking that they needed to open the temporal rift running through Cardiff. These visions, caused by a man named Billis Manger, led the team to commit mutiny against Jack, who knew the horrible consequences that could come from opening the rift. Ianto betrayed Jack, though it clearly pained him, and helped open the rift. Owen shot Jack to prevent him stopping them, leaving Ianto in shock...until Jack gasped back to life. He revealed he was unable to die, but they had little time to discuss it further as the opened rift caused an earthquake, forcing them to flee the base. It turned out the earthquake was caused by the rise of Abbadon, former prisoner of the rift, set loose by Torchwood's actions. It was the fruition of Billis Manger's plan. Abbadon fed on life force, killing the citizens of Cardiff who passed into his shadow. Jack knew he could kill Abbadon with his overabundance of life, and he did so at the cost of his own.
For three days Jack lay dead, and Ianto mourned, unable to believe he would come back this time. But he did, and a stunned and guilty Ianto could only awkwardly attempt to offer a handshake, unable to believe Jack would forgive him. Jack instead rolled his eyes, pulled him into his arms, and then kissed him in front of the rest of the team, offering complete forgiveness without saying a thing.
It was only a few minutes after this triumphant return that the Doctor showed up. Jack had been on Earth since the late 1800s waiting for him, and so he seized his chance, jumping onto the TARDIS, the Doctor's ship, as it dematerialized, leaving Ianto and the others behind. It was quite the emotional roller coaster for Ianto. When Jack finally returned three months later, Ianto had begun to work in the field regularly with the others to pick up the slack, no longer staying primarily on base. He had come into his own as an operative. Sadly, the circumstances necessitating that change (Jack's disappearance) had left him hurt and wary of Jack's intentions. It didn't help that one of Jack's ex-boyfriends had shown up to try and con the team immediately upon Jack's return. But when Jack rather awkwardly asked Ianto on a date, moving their arrangement from mostly casual sex into the realm of a proper relationship, a stunned Ianto just as awkwardly said yes. From there, their love for each other deepened.
At the end of season two, Jack's ex, John Hart, returned again with Jack's long lost brother, Gray, in tow. But Gray had gone mad from his long experience in captivity, and he blamed Jack for allowing him to be captured in the first place when they were children. He sought to destroy everything Jack loved, and buried Jack underneath Cardiff to suffer for thousands of years, suffocating but unable to die. Ianto worked tirelessly to save both the city and Jack, threatening John Hart's life if Jack wasn't returned to them. Gray was ultimately defeated, but not before he put Jack through the ringer, and killed both Toshiko and Owen. Ianto, Jack, and Gwen were left to grieve and move on together, their numbers depleted. But Ianto and Jack grew ever closer, showing more outward signs of being in a steady and loving relationship by the time season three began.
In season three, the Earth found itself under threat by a species known only as the 456. They were able to take control of the world's children, using them to announce their approach, and eventually demanded millions of human children or else they would release a virus and kill the whole population of Earth. The government had previously had dealings with the 456 in 1965, of which Jack had been a part of. In exchange for a vaccine, they had given the 456 twelve children. Wanting to stop any operatives involved in that deal from exposing them, factions in the government ordered the destruction of Torchwood Three and the death or containment of Jack Harkness. While Ianto and Gwen were able to escape, Jack was blown up and taken into custody in pieces.
Naturally, Ianto and Gwen schemed to get Jack back and eventually succeeded, but they'd been left without a base of operations and few options on how to fight the 456. It was only through the use of some scavenged technology and a spy within Home Office that they were able to discover that the government planned to hand over the many millions of children requested. Unwilling to go down without a fight, Jack and Ianto blackmailed the government into allowing them access to Thames House, where they spoke face to face to the 456 and announced there would be no deal. In response, the 456 released a deadly virus. Ianto died in Jack's arms, having just enough time to say goodbye.
Ianto's death was the catalyst that made it possible for Jack to do the unthinkable and, in his grief, kill his own grandson in order to use the 456's own frequency against them, killing them and saving the world. It also drove him to eventually seek out Ianto's ghost in the House of the Dead. There, he found not a shade, but Ianto's true soul, manifested by Seriath, the creature controlling the house, to convince Jack he and Ianto could walk away together. It would leave her unimpeded in her intention to come through the rift and wreak havoc. Jack's solution was to essentially commit suicide by setting off an explosion and sealing the rift behind him, going into oblivion with Ianto. To save him, Ianto convinced him they could indeed walk away together and let someone else deal with the problem for a change. Jack wanted desperately to try, tired of saving the world and wanting Ianto back, returned to him whole and alive. But Ianto chose instead to convince Jack he was following right behind him, only to refuse to cross the threshold himself. He sacrificed himself to close the rift and seal the creature Seriath away forever. In their last moments together, Jack confessed his love to Ianto, something he had never done verbally while Ianto lived. Ianto returned the sentiment, and then was gone for the final time.
PERSONALITY:
On first impression, Ianto seems like a very upright, straight-laced and mature individual, especially for his age. While this is true to some extent, it's only his surface personality, the one he faces the world with like a defensive shield. Beneath the three-piece suits and polite turns of phrase, Ianto is a complicated and surprising individual.
While Ianto is no genius and doesn't pretend to be, he's quite sharp and highly efficient. He prides himself on his dearth of knowledge, especially his knowledge about Torchwood. His attention to detail is described as "unrivaled," and he's almost always able to anticipate the needs of the rest of the team before they have to ask.
When Ianto is open and unguarded, his personality quirks come to the forefront. The most obvious of these is his penchant for snark and sarcasm. He's well-prepared with witty comebacks to any bit of teasing, and can be quite scathingly sarcastic in times of stress. This can also manifest in inappropriate jokes, and it's plain that Ianto can have a dark sense of humor. During Sleeper, Jack decides to use a mind probe on a woman he's convinced is an alien. The probe has a bad history of causing heads to explode, and while testing the straps, Ianto shakes and jolts and makes sound effects as if he's being electrocuted, teasing Jack about what Ianto sees as a move that's doomed to end in brains on the floor.
It's times like these that serve as a reminder just how young Ianto still is. There are other instances throughout the series, and most notably in some of the novels that highlight Ianto's bouts of immaturity. During The Sin Eaters, Ianto engages in a little game of one-upmanship with Jack, who's teasing him about being afraid of Jack's crazy driving. He insists on trying out two vehicle modifications that Jack warns haven't been tested; one dramatically increases the speed, the other makes the vehicle amphibious. The second doesn't work out so well and the car promptly floods with water, ending in a sunken SUV, an annoyed Gwen, and an embarrassed Jack and Ianto.
Though much of his past is still shrouded in mystery, we do know that Ianto grew up in a lower-class family consisting of his father and his sister Rhiannon. When he mentions his father to Jack and Gwen, he tells them he was a master tailor. However, Rhiannon reveals later that Ianto's father worked at Debenhams, a department store. It may seem odd that Ianto would lie to the people he's closest to about his family, but the reasons behind it are complicated.
While nothing is ever stated in canon about Ianto's mother, fandom speculates that she was committed when Ianto was young and eventually died. For RP purposes, I like to stick with this theory. It's mentioned during Children of Earth that Ianto's father broke Ianto's leg during his childhood by pushing him too hard on a swing, but Rhiannon insists that it wasn't intentional. Ianto sees it as just one more example of how his father was always pushing him. He died when Ianto was in his late teens, and Ianto left home immediately afterwards.
Clearly, Ianto's childhood isn't what he would have liked it to have been, so by lying about it, Ianto creates a fantasy childhood instead. He embellishes tales of the good times until they take on a life of their own, while neglecting to mention all the bad things in an attempt to erase them. It makes him feel better about what he lacked, and makes him feel like a more sophisticated person if he pretends his father was half as good as he pushed Ianto to be. He reinforces the fantasy (and keeps Jack or Gwen from discovering his lies) by having little contact with Rhiannon, who chides him about it in Children of Earth. While these are the traits of a compulsive liar, Ianto's compulsion seems restricted only to lies about his childhood and his father. However, the practice does make him very good at lying under other circumstances when he has to, as well as keeping secrets and even manipulating others if he feels he has no other choice, as was revealed in the beginning of the series.
This is just scratching the surface of his dark side, which is something that rarely rears its ugly head, but does seep through when he's pressed. In the episode Meat, Ianto is hit, tied up, shot at, and forced to run after the bad guys on his own because the rest of the team are trapped and in danger. He's ruthless as he takes out the people responsible, and just before he tases the last man -- in the head -- he utters, "Pray they survive." There's little doubt that if the rest of the team had died, Ianto might have returned the favor.
There are other hints throughout the series that Ianto is capable of doing horrible things, most notably in Adam. Though the memories Adam gives Ianto are fabricated, they don't fundamentally change who Ianto is as a person. For the most part, the false memories only bring out another side to each member of the team, making them the people they might have become had their lives gone in different directions. Adam gives Ianto memories of stalking and killing innocent women, which implies that being a killer is something Ianto is innately capable of. He immediately confesses everything to Jack, telling him "something in me wants to kill." This may be completely true, and Adam just brings it to the surface. However, the fact that Ianto confesses to Jack without prompting, demanding to be locked in the vaults before he turns on the team, demonstrates that he's horrified by his inner monster. Without the aid of false memory, whatever demons or urges he may possess deep inside are completely overwhelmed by his genuine goodness. Jack knows it, and that proves to be Adam's downfall.
Much of Ianto's development throughout the series has to do with his relationship with Captain Jack Harkness. There's a clear spark of attraction between them when they first meet, but Ianto doesn't act on it due to his secret reasons for wanting Jack to hire him at Torchwood Three in the first place. His girlfriend, Lisa, is still alive, but half-converted into a cyberman since the attack at Canary Wharf, which Ianto survived. Ianto feels guilty for his attraction to Jack, since his driving goal is to use Torchwood resources to keep Lisa alive until he can fix her. Not only would acting on his physical feelings for Jack be a betrayal against Lisa, but he's betraying Jack every moment he hides Lisa away in the basement of the hub.
Needless to say, this is a dark time in Ianto's life, and his guilt and fear and secrecy take a toll on him emotionally that's only compounded by his unresolved trauma from Canary Wharf. He's quiet and withdrawn, doing his job and fading into the background save for the occasional quip or comment. When Lisa is discovered, a whole new side of Ianto is revealed.
Finally able to breathe without assistance from the conversion unit that's been keeping her alive, the cyber components in Lisa completely take over and she escapes into the hub, intent on completing her own conversion before beginning the conversion of the human race. But Ianto loves deeply and is loyal to a fault, and consequently remains in denial about Lisa. He's still convinced that she can be saved, and is desperate to keep Jack from killing her. He fights Jack every step of the way. Though he has every disadvantage, he doesn't give in, and it becomes clear that there's much more to the quiet, unassuming Ianto than meets the eye. It takes the death of an innocent girl for Ianto to finally accept that the Lisa he knew and loved is gone.
Despite Ianto's betrayal, Jack doesn't kill him or wipe his memory. Though Ianto is severely emotionally damaged at this point and Jack is not a happy camper, Jack makes the effort to help Ianto pull through and find a new purpose in life. After Ianto has time to heal and forgive Jack for doing what he had to do, Torchwood -- and Jack -- become that purpose. A fledgeling physical relationship forms between them that gradually grows into love on Ianto's part, and eventually Jack's as well. It's this relationship that helps improve Ianto's confidence and sense of self-worth. He emerges more and more from his self-imposed shell and goes from being withdrawn and depressed to being happy and outspoken.
By the third season, Ianto's relationship with Jack is steeped in genuine, mutual love, but it's by no means completely stable or fully developed. Ianto is unsure how to define his relationship with Jack and he's insecure about his place in Jack's heart. At one point, it's remarked upon by multiple characters in short succession that Jack and Ianto are a "couple," prompting Ianto to somewhat hopefully (and awkwardly) try to broach the subject with Jack, pushing for Jack to say implicitly whether they are or are not a proper couple. Jack replies by snappishly stating that he hates the word "couple" and distancing himself from the subject. Jack doesn't like labels or admitting just how close he's become to Ianto, but Ianto needs that kind of categorization in all aspects of his life, especially when it comes to relationships. He knows Jack loves him, but without any explicit declaration of their status as a couple, he has doubts about what Jack ultimately wants and expects from their relationship.
POWER:
Ianto doesn't have any canon powers. For the city, his power will be to go virtually unnoticed when he wishes, like a human perception filter. He's not invisible exactly, but if someone tries to look at him, their eyes will just slide away of their own accord and they won't register his presence. It's a bit like how muggles don't notice things in Harry Potter. He could be in a locked room with two other people having a private conversation and those people wouldn't notice him unless he purposely drew attention to himself.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE: [Ianto doesn't look good. That's not to say he isn't handsome as always, but he looks strung out, as if recovering from a hangover -- or grieving. His lips are set in a line as he addresses the network, and his tone is weary and dry.] This wasn't what I was expecting, but then I suppose it never really is. I should probably be alarmed at how unsurprising I find all this.
[He pauses to rub a hand roughly over his face, a frustrated gesture that only enhances the appearance of emotional fatigue.] Right then. So here I am, unexpectedly alive and well somewhere on the other godforsaken side of the rift. It could be worse, I suppose. I could be permanently trapped in Splott. [The joke falls flat, the attempted smile half-hearted, because for a variety of reasons, this is all still pretty damned awful. He's just said his final goodbyes to Jack, only to find that life, as they say, goes on. And not in any way he'd like it to.]
My name is Ianto Jones. I don't suspect anyone out there knows me, but if you do, feel free to say hello. I could use the happy coincidence.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE: Ianto knew it was never an intelligent idea to walk alone down dark alleyways at night, but it would take an even less intelligent mugger to choose to attack him now. His body language is tense and broody, bordering the knife's edge of aggression. He would welcome a mugger foolish enough to take his chances, if only for the brutal release of a fight, and for the brief moments when he wouldn't have to think about anything. Because right now, all he can do is think.
Jack's grief-lined face eats him up inside, clawing and gnawing. He'd made the right choice, there was no question of that, but that didn't make it any easier. Had he been only a little weaker, a little less angry, he might have chosen the easier path, not the right one. And damn Jack anyway, for trying to bring him back. And damn Seriath for making it possible in the first place, and then making it equally impossible to let it happen. And damn his father, and damn the rift, and damn all of it and damn this city, too!
This wasn't what he'd been expecting. Jack said oblivion had awaited on the other side of the rift. He'd been willing to go into it with Ianto, to commit the closest thing to suicide he could, and instead Ianto had tricked him and by doing so, saved him. He didn't regret that, but he found it massively frustrating that Jack had been wrong. This wasn't oblivion, but another life he'd never asked for. It was a life without Jack, without Torchwood, without any familiar face or place. He would have to start fresh. At one or two points in his life, he would have welcomed that. Now it was hell, and he couldn't stop wondering what would have happened if he'd just walked through that door with Jack instead.
Tomorrow, he would have to do something. He would have to find a job, a flat, all the usual things that came with starting a new life. He would grit his teeth and survive, because there was nothing else to do. But tonight, he'll walk in the dark places, and he'll grieve.