and every color illuminates (Part I)
Rating: T
Word count: ~ 13500 (Length-training is progressing! And I'm teaching myself not to rush immediately to the end…mostly.)
Warnings: Non-consensual drug use, captivity, John Hart.
Summary: Light and heat like a dying star, a long fall down into nothingness, and then Ianto is awake again. He comes to gasping, choking, fire burning in his blood and electricity arcing through each nerve. Pain-and he’s no stranger to it, not with Torchwood, but it still hurts and he’s supposed to be dead. CoE fix-it.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Beta: czarina_kitty was kind enough to go after my abuse of commas and run-on sentences with a stick, while managing my frantic spazzing, and I am eternally grateful for it. I also bounced ideas off SnarkyHunter and bendyfish, who were both very helpful. Many thanks to all of you!
A/N: Urgh. Why am I doing this to myself again? (But this was satisfying to write, and makes me happy. I guess that's reason enough.) As a warning-this Ianto is much more of a woobie than I usually allow myself to write. Oops? -.-‘
(Before I forget: quotes in the middle-ish are from Alice in Wonderland. Don't ask me why.)
and every color illuminates
The water is red and the sky is green, and the sand stretching out along the crescent curve of the shore is lavender. There are alien stars overhead, a nebula so close that Jack can almost feel the heat of the reds and blues and yellow-whites, a host of stars dying and reforming in the sky. Ianto stands before him, pale and lovely in the eerie light, face lined with weariness, red shirt torn and stained. He is barefoot, and that is perhaps the oddest thing about this entire scene, because Jack can count on his fingers the number of times he has seen Ianto choose to go outdoors without shoes on.
But this is not the Ianto that Jack remembers best-it can't be, it isn’t, because that Ianto is pallid and weak and gasping in his arms, choking on death as much as on words of love. That Ianto is gone, and Jack admits without hesitation that he fled the memory of him, ran as fast and far as he could from the phantasm of a dying, loving man. A man who only looked at him with sad, resigned amusement when Jack wouldn't give him anything, even in his last moments.
Not a kind word.
Not a kind touch.
Not a whisper of reciprocation for the heart laid out on display.
Nothing.
“Jack,” the ghost says, and it’s Ianto’s voice even if it isn’t really him, light and rich and lilting, vowels soft and curled over his tongue. “Jack.”
Pain, pain in his scalp, and it takes Jack a moment to realize that he’s the one causing it, that he has his fingers laced through his hair and is wrenching at it, tearing, pulling, trying anything that he possibly can to distract and distance himself from this mirage. He clenches his eyes tight, chokes on a breath because that’s okay, that's fine, it can't kill him because he can't die, he’ll never die no matter what he tries.
“No,” he whispers, and it aches.
The sand hisses around Ianto’s bare feet as he comes closer, but it’s not Ianto and Jack can't allow himself to think of it that way or he’ll be lost again, swept away by fancy and longing and soul-deep desperation, and he can't. Not now, not when he’s finally run so far as to come back around on the other side of normal, and finally has something resembling his old life again. “No,” he repeats, and it reverberates through him, denial like a gong struck against his bones. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Jack,” Ianto-not-Ianto whispers for a third time-three invocations, third time’s the charm, thrice spoke and done, three wishes wasted on a single name. He pauses on the purple sand, stretches out his hand to Jack in supplication, and it’s Jack's apple, offered by a serpent with too-blue eyes and bruises on his high, sharp cheekbones. As Jack stares at him, so tempted, so taunted, another mottled splotch of color blooms and spreads like some macabre flower, red to black to green to yellow before it fades away entirely.
And then Ianto opens his mouth, lip splitting and spilling blood, and whispers to Jack, “Please. Save me.”
There is fire in Jack's ears, a rushing, dully throbbing horror, and he staggers back a step, struck. Just for a moment he thinks he actually has been struck, that he’ll look down and see a blade imbedded in his gut, but there is none.
Only Ianto and his desperate eyes, the light of a dying galaxy burning in them as he fades away.
A moment too late-and he always is, always, always just one step behind where he should be, always a second too late to save a single damn person who means anything to him-and Jack realizes what's happening and lunges, reaching for that pale and elegant hand.
But it’s useless, done in vain. Ianto is already gone, and Jack slides to his knees in the lavender sand, under an alien sky, and screams his grief to the pitiless stars.
*.~.*.~.*
This isn’t the first time Jack has dreamed such a thing. The number of people he has lost, even in the past few years, all but guarantees that.
Grey, a small voice deep in his mind taunts.
Tosh.
Owen.
Alex and the others.
Stephen.
Alice, in all but name.
Rose.
Ianto.
There are more names, a list stretching back more than two hundred years-almost three hundred, now, counting the years before he met the Doctor. Jack lists them all, sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly morbid in his attempts to sleep, and the number is…vast.
Innumerable.
Equal to the stars in the sky.
Jack opens his eyes in the darkness of his room in the TARDIS, cocooned in warm, silken blankets and sheets, lying on a mattress softer than a cloud. But his eyes are burning and his throat is tight, and he can all but feel that lavender sand shifting beneath his boots, all but see Ianto fading away before him once again with that grimly fearful look upon his face.
He knows that look. He’s seen it before on Ianto’s face, when Tosh and Owen died, when Jack faced Abaddon, when cannibals held Ianto and Tosh and the Welshman used himself as a distraction to let her escape, even when the Cyberman in Lisa’s body was bearing down on him without pity in her blank, bare eyes.
If there's one thing Jack never, ever wanted to see again, it’s that.
Taking a long, slow, breath Jack rolls over onto his back and stares up at the ceiling for a long moment. Another breath, this one tight and shaking, and Jack presses the backs of his hands over his eyes, refusing to let a single tear escape.
He’s already cried far too much for the past, and in the end, that’s all Ianto can ever be now.
He’s dead, can never leave the past, and for the sake of this damned eternal life, Jack has to bind him there, never to leave.
*.~.*.~.*
Light and heat like a dying star, a long fall down into nothingness, and then Ianto is awake again. He comes to gasping, choking, fire burning in his blood and electricity arcing through each nerve. Pain-and he’s no stranger to it, not with Torchwood, but it still hurts and he’s supposed to be dead. He’s said his last words, given Jack his deathbed confession, and that's supposed to be the end of it. He’s gone towards the light, kicked the bucket, flown up to join the heavenly choirs.
But something’s gone wrong. The light has been turned off, the bucket is stuck to his shoe, and the pearly gates are padlocked shut.
Ianto is alive when he shouldn't be, and the agony in every inch of his skin lets him know it.
Somewhere beyond him a voice is chanting, and it's a low, heavy thrum in the air. The words are lost to the sound, and that sound is swallowing Ianto up, wrapping around him like a thousand thin, silver-sharp chains and then tightening viciously. Ianto gasps, breath stolen by the sudden burst of white-bright agony, and arches. But the chains are intangible for all they hurt, inescapable no matter what torture they are, and he can't break free.
He wants to cry out but he has no voice. Something has stolen it, locked it away inside his throat-the pain, perhaps? Or something more aware?
Then there is a voice in his ear, deep as a drum roll and vast as an ocean, and the pain is receding, retreating to the edges of Ianto’s consciousness. He forces his eyes open, because he finally can, and there is a man leaning over him, old and grey and lined, but with a victorious spark in the depths of his brown eyes. Ianto stares up at him, and the man stares back down.
And then the man smiles, sharp and white, and says, “You, my boy, have great things before you.”
*.~.*.~.*
It’s an alien world that Ianto is entirely unfamiliar with, a place he’s never seen mentioned even in the vastness of the Torchwood Archives and all of UNIT’s files. There are six moons in the sky, three dusky pink and distant, three so large and close that they feel overwhelming, a weight where Ianto has never felt one before. Gold and forest-green and copper-red, they loom in the sky like vast eyes, and it’s entirely unlike anything Ianto has ever seen before.
But they aren’t alone in the sky. There's a vast curve on the horizon, red and green and lavender, so distant but so close at the same time, especially when Ianto is used to seeing other planets in the sky as bits of light akin to stars. Not so here, where the sister planets spin around each other the same way they spin around the sun and the people step from one to the other as simply as walking through a door.
The planet-both of them really, for they are twins in all ways, right down to their tall, strong, fair-haired people and the bright, joyful, colorful culture-is lovely, what Ianto has seen of it. There are no wars, nor have there been in many ages. There are processions in the street outside the vast palace where Ianto has found himself confined, and he and his fellow prisoners often gather at the wide windows overlooking the road, watching the dancers and merrymakers go past.
Sometimes, when the copper-red moon is full in the sky, there is a market on the other side of the palace, full of bright tents and laughter and throngs of people dressed in all colors save white or black. On those days, the air is filled with the scent of foreign spices and hot meats, bread and food and herbs, sweet perfumes and the sharp bite of the local brews. Market days are harder to watch, because there is always a need for Ianto and his companions on those days, and the guards come for them before the sun rises, dressed in black with gauzy scarves wrapped around their heads to cover their faces.
Market days mean waking up to the smell of incense and the gentle insistence of the brightly-garbed servants, who never touch but direct Ianto’s hands to towels and soaps and chivy him into scented waters, then urge him out with soft words as they hand him the heavy white robes and golden jewelry of the office. They rarely speak more than a few whispers at a time, never meet Ianto’s eyes and always step away from him whenever there is room, but they are far less unsettling than the tall, silent guards, who never touch him, never lay a hand on him unless he forces them to. That’s perhaps the most disturbing thing of all, after the look of worship in their eyes.
Then the doors of Ianto’s private room are thrown open, and the guards flank him through the palace. The halls are marble, white as milk, and the floors are tiled in gold-gilt and silver-grey, almost too fine to tread upon. The walls are bare, and the lights are bright, and there are sweeping arches and grand domes wherever the eye falls, inspiring awe.
On market days, there will be others in the halls, black-clad guards with smaller figures in white between them. The guards lead them to great doors bound tightly shut, secured with dull-grey chains and heavy padlocks. Ianto and the others are never allowed past these doors without the guards around them, never permitted to set foot where someone might see them without being robed and escorted and watched, tied in up chains of formality and office and ceremony.
But on market days, the guards undo the padlocks and throw open the doors of the palace, and they march out in threes, black and white a sharp contrast to the colors of the twin worlds, the bright-clad people parting before them in a wave of murmurs and whispers.
“Gatekeepers,” they say, and there is awe in their voices and in their eyes, the way they watch the figures in white until they are blocked from view. “The Gatekeepers are among us.”
The guards walk them to the Ways, wide, circular plazas set at strategic points throughout the city, with streets leading out in all directions. Platforms rise from the center, wide enough for six men to pass abreast, with stone slopes leading down to the street on either side.
Then the Gatekeepers step up onto the platforms, one in each plaza in the city. They bow their heads, wait for the guards to step back, and then open the Gates.
Ianto hates the pomp of it all, the solemn ceremony that hides the fact that the Gatekeepers are prisoners trapped in golden cages with no way out, but even he can admit that the Gates are beautiful, entrancing, and that the power is a heady drug, its use burning like concentrated ecstasy through his veins. Each Gate is unique to the one who opens it, little differences that set them apart, and Ianto’s are as blue as a Welsh sky on a summer afternoon, wide and tall and open. Energy crackles around the rim, bright and lively, and they take hardly any effort to maintain as the people file through, passing from one planet to the other with their large families and colorful clothes and cheerful voices, carts overflowing with their wares pulled along behind them. Many of them call out their thanks, others whisper it with wonder in their eyes, but Ianto doesn't smile, rarely looks up at all until bells chime the late hour and another Gatekeeper arrives to replace him as the people throng the plaza again, preparing for their return.
The Gates are beautiful, and the power used to open them takes Ianto’s breath away, but they're tiring. Each one opening feels like a bruise left on his skin, aching for days afterwards. Ianto staggers as he lets the Gate slip closed, and it’s the other Gatekeeper who reaches out to catch his arm and steady him. Their guards hover, three steps away, but don't approach as the other Gatekeeper tightens her grip on Ianto’s elbow. There is a question in her eyes, a murmured question on her lips, too soft for anyone but the two of them to hear. Ianto meets her crimson cat-eyes-because there are not just humans here but aliens as well, to both Ianto and the people of the sister-planets-and manages a faint, wan smile in answer.
Then she lets him go, bows her head, and opens a Gate that is the same deep violet as a crocus against the snow, edged with bronze ripples. Her guards take up position on either side of her, far enough away that they won't touch her even accidentally, and Ianto’s flank him and escort him from the plaza.
Night falls over the city as they make their way back to the palace. The market is closed, the people fading back into the city with only the memory of laughter to mark them. There are other Gatekeepers in the streets, and they look as weary as Ianto, their steps slow and stumbling. Some assist each other, but the majority-like Ianto-grit their teeth and make their way on their own, no matter how gradual their progress.
The guards never complain, never speak; if anything, the worship in their kohl-painted eyes is more fervent than ever at times like these.
As the last Gatekeepers file into the palace, the doors are chained shut behind them and they are reduced to caged songbirds, elevated to venerated prisoners once more.
*.~.*.~.*
It never ceases to amaze Ianto, the reverence with which the people of these worlds treat the Gatekeepers. They are like demigods, like saints, pillars of this culture and the base on which these people’s lives are constructed. The Gates that link the sister-planets are what allow trade, communication, travel in a society that has never found any need for advanced technology like spacecraft or cars. People walk or travel through Gates, and there is rarely conflict when all of the people are so similar from the constant mixing of cultures, which have slowly but surely melted into each other until they are indistinguishable.
The Gates make it possible, and the Gatekeepers are the only ones who can open and maintain the Gates.
“White is for divinity,” the old man who brought Ianto into this world says, stroking long, age-thin fingers along the spines of the books before him. The library is quiet and bright, dust motes drifting through the sunlight and spinning around the tall shelves. It smells crisp, and clean, like ink and paper and the cloth bindings on the books. “In this world, only the Gatekeepers are permitted to wear it, because only the Gatekeepers are important enough to be considered divine. You are this world, in a way, my boy.”
Ianto is seated on the wide window seat, a book on the history of the city open on his lap. His eyes are on the street outside, however, and on the forest-green moon hanging full and bright in the paler green of the sky, so low that it seems about to touch the earth. When Ianto half-closes his eyes and lets his mind drift, just a little, he can see sparks and streamers in the air, blue and gold and black, red and orange and brilliant violet, dancing as the wind changes in the same way the dust motes do in the sunlight. They’re thick over the city, brightest where Ianto knows the plazas lie, where the Gates-smaller on days without the markets, kept to a size that two or three people can pass through at a time-are being maintained.
The sparks are power, Ianto knows, the force that the Gatekeepers can tap into to open the Gates, the way they can speak to each other over long distances or call up images of places they've never seen and then Gate there without trouble.
In his heart of hearts Ianto has always wanted to have power, to have an ability like this and be special, or at the very least useful. He’s grateful to this man, who pulled him out of the circle of life as he moved from one stage to another and brought him here, created a new body in the image of his old one, who gave him this talent and taught him to use it.
But somewhere, in the back of his mind, Ianto wonders. He’s trapped here, a supremely useful songbird in a gilded cage, kept in check by the guards and this old man, the Steward. It’s very likely that, unless he can find some way to break free, he’ll never see Jack-or Earth-again. Surely, he thinks sometimes, death would have been better.
The Steward is watching him, brown eyes bright with knowing. He’s a prisoner here, too, but he seems to have accepted his lot as the one to find new Gatekeepers to swell their ranks. That's something Ianto is certain he will never do.
“You are a Gatekeeper,” the Steward tells him, and there is amusement in his voice. “You have everything you could ever desire here and you are held in awe by the people. They love you for what you are. What more could you ask for, my boy?”
“Freedom,” Ianto suggests dryly, and it isn’t the first time they've had this conversation. Nor, he’s certain, will it be the last.
The old man shakes his head, perfectly on cue. “It is for your own protection,” he assures Ianto. “Once, we didn't guard the Gatekeepers as we do now, and a war started over their abilities and one group’s desire to control them. In the end, only three Gatekeepers were left alive. That was when we began taking those with potential from other planets, those who were not affiliated with anyone in our world, and making sure that none could control or capture the Gatekeepers. It has worked for almost a thousand years now, and I do not see it changing.”
Truthfully, Ianto can't see it either, but that doesn't stop him from hoping. He’s been here long enough that the aching pain of separation and loneliness have dulled, settled into a soul-deep burn that he tends like a fire in the wind, feeding it with bits of injustice and anger and resentment, woven into a fabric of escape escape escape.
*.~.*.~.*
Ianto dreams only rarely on this planet where time runs strangely to his mind. There are no seasons that he’s witnessed and the months are all but impossible to mark with six moons in the sky. The twin planets, too, make it hard to tell days apart, since they rotate around each other at the same time they rotate around the sun.
As far as Ianto has been able to tell, the days are longer than they are on Earth, almost half again as long perhaps, but there are a few hours of darkness in the middle of each day, caused by one planet crossing the other’s path. The people tend to use the stretch of darkness as a short rest period, everyone retreating back inside their homes to sleep.
This darkness, rather than the fall of full night, is what brings on Ianto’s dreams.
When he does dream, more often than not it’s about these sister-planets rather than Earth, about the people he’s met here rather than the people he knew. Sometimes, he dreams of the two places mixing, of Gwen and Tosh and Owen in this world’s bright clothes, or Jack standing with him dressed in the black of a guard.
Other times, it’s of the last Gatekeeper who tried to escape.
The man stands before him in his dream, an alien Gatekeeper with green skin and a craggy face, a warrior’s fierce and fearsome honor. He is friendly enough to Ianto, though withdrawn, but there's something about him that makes Ianto follow his slim green form with his eyes as the man stalks across the common room to the wide bank of windows. There is a parade in the streets, bright and loud with music and laughter and people dancing. Ianto is tempted to go over and watch it with him, but before he can rise Sekheme latches on to his elbow and holds him in his seat. Her crimson cat-eyes are narrowed warily, and her mouth is open just a bit, as though she’s scenting the air.
“No,” she says softly, warningly. “He’s…different.”
Ianto glances at her, surprised, because she’s the type to be a friend to anyone, and was the first to make him welcome when the Steward brought him in, half-conscious and nearly blind from the strange lights that filled the atmosphere like energy made visible. “What?” he asks softly.
There is a rush of air before she can answer. Ianto twists around automatically, looking back towards the green-skinned man. The power in the air-quintessence, the Steward calls it- is dancing, whirling around the man as he bows his head.
A Gate, Ianto realizes one moment too late. He’s opening a Gate.
They've been warned, all of them, that Gates are only to be opened in designated areas, and that they'll only work if they're opened from one sister-planet to the other. But Ianto can feel in the air, in his bones, that the man isn’t trying to move between the two worlds.
The target of his Gate is much, much further out.
A cry breaks the startled stillness and two guards burst into the room, the Steward half a step behind. Ianto makes to move again, thinking to pull Sekheme and himself out of the line of fire, and she obviously has the same idea. But, even as they make it to their feet, the Steward raises a hand, clenches his fist, and wrenches every bit of quintessence out of the room.
The Gate dies stillborn as every one of the Gatekeepers feel the power torn out of their bodies. Most fall, crying out in sudden, shocking agony, some to their knees and some all the way to the floor. The Steward couldn't have gotten a stronger reaction if he’d pulled all the air from their lungs and from the room.
The guards, unaffected, take the opportunity to pin the green-skinned man down and bind him with silken ropes. He struggles, but like the rest of them he's hindered by the crippling lack of power, by the painful, gaping void where that power once was, and they subdue him easily enough.
As they drag him away, the Steward lowers his hand and uncurls his fingers and the quintessence floods back around them, washing over and filling the emptiness like salve spread over a burn. Ianto gasps for breath, on his knees with Sekheme beside him, both of them curled close in pain. Their eyes meet, horrified and a little terrified, and they turn to look at the Steward.
The old man stares around the room, his mouth a tight line, and then nods once. “A warning to you,” he says courteously, and sweeps after the guards.
Two days later, the green-skinned man is escorted past the common room on his way out into the city. His eyes are glazed over and he is only barely standing on his feet. There is a smell of herbs and chemicals around him and no words can reach him.
No one tries to Gate out of the palace after that.
End Part I
Word count: ~ 13500 (Length-training is progressing! And I'm teaching myself not to rush immediately to the end…mostly.)
Warnings: Non-consensual drug use, captivity, John Hart.
Summary: Light and heat like a dying star, a long fall down into nothingness, and then Ianto is awake again. He comes to gasping, choking, fire burning in his blood and electricity arcing through each nerve. Pain-and he’s no stranger to it, not with Torchwood, but it still hurts and he’s supposed to be dead. CoE fix-it.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Beta: czarina_kitty was kind enough to go after my abuse of commas and run-on sentences with a stick, while managing my frantic spazzing, and I am eternally grateful for it. I also bounced ideas off SnarkyHunter and bendyfish, who were both very helpful. Many thanks to all of you!
A/N: Urgh. Why am I doing this to myself again? (But this was satisfying to write, and makes me happy. I guess that's reason enough.) As a warning-this Ianto is much more of a woobie than I usually allow myself to write. Oops? -.-‘
(Before I forget: quotes in the middle-ish are from Alice in Wonderland. Don't ask me why.)
and every color illuminates
The water is red and the sky is green, and the sand stretching out along the crescent curve of the shore is lavender. There are alien stars overhead, a nebula so close that Jack can almost feel the heat of the reds and blues and yellow-whites, a host of stars dying and reforming in the sky. Ianto stands before him, pale and lovely in the eerie light, face lined with weariness, red shirt torn and stained. He is barefoot, and that is perhaps the oddest thing about this entire scene, because Jack can count on his fingers the number of times he has seen Ianto choose to go outdoors without shoes on.
But this is not the Ianto that Jack remembers best-it can't be, it isn’t, because that Ianto is pallid and weak and gasping in his arms, choking on death as much as on words of love. That Ianto is gone, and Jack admits without hesitation that he fled the memory of him, ran as fast and far as he could from the phantasm of a dying, loving man. A man who only looked at him with sad, resigned amusement when Jack wouldn't give him anything, even in his last moments.
Not a kind word.
Not a kind touch.
Not a whisper of reciprocation for the heart laid out on display.
Nothing.
“Jack,” the ghost says, and it’s Ianto’s voice even if it isn’t really him, light and rich and lilting, vowels soft and curled over his tongue. “Jack.”
Pain, pain in his scalp, and it takes Jack a moment to realize that he’s the one causing it, that he has his fingers laced through his hair and is wrenching at it, tearing, pulling, trying anything that he possibly can to distract and distance himself from this mirage. He clenches his eyes tight, chokes on a breath because that’s okay, that's fine, it can't kill him because he can't die, he’ll never die no matter what he tries.
“No,” he whispers, and it aches.
The sand hisses around Ianto’s bare feet as he comes closer, but it’s not Ianto and Jack can't allow himself to think of it that way or he’ll be lost again, swept away by fancy and longing and soul-deep desperation, and he can't. Not now, not when he’s finally run so far as to come back around on the other side of normal, and finally has something resembling his old life again. “No,” he repeats, and it reverberates through him, denial like a gong struck against his bones. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“Jack,” Ianto-not-Ianto whispers for a third time-three invocations, third time’s the charm, thrice spoke and done, three wishes wasted on a single name. He pauses on the purple sand, stretches out his hand to Jack in supplication, and it’s Jack's apple, offered by a serpent with too-blue eyes and bruises on his high, sharp cheekbones. As Jack stares at him, so tempted, so taunted, another mottled splotch of color blooms and spreads like some macabre flower, red to black to green to yellow before it fades away entirely.
And then Ianto opens his mouth, lip splitting and spilling blood, and whispers to Jack, “Please. Save me.”
There is fire in Jack's ears, a rushing, dully throbbing horror, and he staggers back a step, struck. Just for a moment he thinks he actually has been struck, that he’ll look down and see a blade imbedded in his gut, but there is none.
Only Ianto and his desperate eyes, the light of a dying galaxy burning in them as he fades away.
A moment too late-and he always is, always, always just one step behind where he should be, always a second too late to save a single damn person who means anything to him-and Jack realizes what's happening and lunges, reaching for that pale and elegant hand.
But it’s useless, done in vain. Ianto is already gone, and Jack slides to his knees in the lavender sand, under an alien sky, and screams his grief to the pitiless stars.
*.~.*.~.*
This isn’t the first time Jack has dreamed such a thing. The number of people he has lost, even in the past few years, all but guarantees that.
Grey, a small voice deep in his mind taunts.
Tosh.
Owen.
Alex and the others.
Stephen.
Alice, in all but name.
Rose.
Ianto.
There are more names, a list stretching back more than two hundred years-almost three hundred, now, counting the years before he met the Doctor. Jack lists them all, sometimes, when he’s feeling particularly morbid in his attempts to sleep, and the number is…vast.
Innumerable.
Equal to the stars in the sky.
Jack opens his eyes in the darkness of his room in the TARDIS, cocooned in warm, silken blankets and sheets, lying on a mattress softer than a cloud. But his eyes are burning and his throat is tight, and he can all but feel that lavender sand shifting beneath his boots, all but see Ianto fading away before him once again with that grimly fearful look upon his face.
He knows that look. He’s seen it before on Ianto’s face, when Tosh and Owen died, when Jack faced Abaddon, when cannibals held Ianto and Tosh and the Welshman used himself as a distraction to let her escape, even when the Cyberman in Lisa’s body was bearing down on him without pity in her blank, bare eyes.
If there's one thing Jack never, ever wanted to see again, it’s that.
Taking a long, slow, breath Jack rolls over onto his back and stares up at the ceiling for a long moment. Another breath, this one tight and shaking, and Jack presses the backs of his hands over his eyes, refusing to let a single tear escape.
He’s already cried far too much for the past, and in the end, that’s all Ianto can ever be now.
He’s dead, can never leave the past, and for the sake of this damned eternal life, Jack has to bind him there, never to leave.
*.~.*.~.*
Light and heat like a dying star, a long fall down into nothingness, and then Ianto is awake again. He comes to gasping, choking, fire burning in his blood and electricity arcing through each nerve. Pain-and he’s no stranger to it, not with Torchwood, but it still hurts and he’s supposed to be dead. He’s said his last words, given Jack his deathbed confession, and that's supposed to be the end of it. He’s gone towards the light, kicked the bucket, flown up to join the heavenly choirs.
But something’s gone wrong. The light has been turned off, the bucket is stuck to his shoe, and the pearly gates are padlocked shut.
Ianto is alive when he shouldn't be, and the agony in every inch of his skin lets him know it.
Somewhere beyond him a voice is chanting, and it's a low, heavy thrum in the air. The words are lost to the sound, and that sound is swallowing Ianto up, wrapping around him like a thousand thin, silver-sharp chains and then tightening viciously. Ianto gasps, breath stolen by the sudden burst of white-bright agony, and arches. But the chains are intangible for all they hurt, inescapable no matter what torture they are, and he can't break free.
He wants to cry out but he has no voice. Something has stolen it, locked it away inside his throat-the pain, perhaps? Or something more aware?
Then there is a voice in his ear, deep as a drum roll and vast as an ocean, and the pain is receding, retreating to the edges of Ianto’s consciousness. He forces his eyes open, because he finally can, and there is a man leaning over him, old and grey and lined, but with a victorious spark in the depths of his brown eyes. Ianto stares up at him, and the man stares back down.
And then the man smiles, sharp and white, and says, “You, my boy, have great things before you.”
*.~.*.~.*
It’s an alien world that Ianto is entirely unfamiliar with, a place he’s never seen mentioned even in the vastness of the Torchwood Archives and all of UNIT’s files. There are six moons in the sky, three dusky pink and distant, three so large and close that they feel overwhelming, a weight where Ianto has never felt one before. Gold and forest-green and copper-red, they loom in the sky like vast eyes, and it’s entirely unlike anything Ianto has ever seen before.
But they aren’t alone in the sky. There's a vast curve on the horizon, red and green and lavender, so distant but so close at the same time, especially when Ianto is used to seeing other planets in the sky as bits of light akin to stars. Not so here, where the sister planets spin around each other the same way they spin around the sun and the people step from one to the other as simply as walking through a door.
The planet-both of them really, for they are twins in all ways, right down to their tall, strong, fair-haired people and the bright, joyful, colorful culture-is lovely, what Ianto has seen of it. There are no wars, nor have there been in many ages. There are processions in the street outside the vast palace where Ianto has found himself confined, and he and his fellow prisoners often gather at the wide windows overlooking the road, watching the dancers and merrymakers go past.
Sometimes, when the copper-red moon is full in the sky, there is a market on the other side of the palace, full of bright tents and laughter and throngs of people dressed in all colors save white or black. On those days, the air is filled with the scent of foreign spices and hot meats, bread and food and herbs, sweet perfumes and the sharp bite of the local brews. Market days are harder to watch, because there is always a need for Ianto and his companions on those days, and the guards come for them before the sun rises, dressed in black with gauzy scarves wrapped around their heads to cover their faces.
Market days mean waking up to the smell of incense and the gentle insistence of the brightly-garbed servants, who never touch but direct Ianto’s hands to towels and soaps and chivy him into scented waters, then urge him out with soft words as they hand him the heavy white robes and golden jewelry of the office. They rarely speak more than a few whispers at a time, never meet Ianto’s eyes and always step away from him whenever there is room, but they are far less unsettling than the tall, silent guards, who never touch him, never lay a hand on him unless he forces them to. That’s perhaps the most disturbing thing of all, after the look of worship in their eyes.
Then the doors of Ianto’s private room are thrown open, and the guards flank him through the palace. The halls are marble, white as milk, and the floors are tiled in gold-gilt and silver-grey, almost too fine to tread upon. The walls are bare, and the lights are bright, and there are sweeping arches and grand domes wherever the eye falls, inspiring awe.
On market days, there will be others in the halls, black-clad guards with smaller figures in white between them. The guards lead them to great doors bound tightly shut, secured with dull-grey chains and heavy padlocks. Ianto and the others are never allowed past these doors without the guards around them, never permitted to set foot where someone might see them without being robed and escorted and watched, tied in up chains of formality and office and ceremony.
But on market days, the guards undo the padlocks and throw open the doors of the palace, and they march out in threes, black and white a sharp contrast to the colors of the twin worlds, the bright-clad people parting before them in a wave of murmurs and whispers.
“Gatekeepers,” they say, and there is awe in their voices and in their eyes, the way they watch the figures in white until they are blocked from view. “The Gatekeepers are among us.”
The guards walk them to the Ways, wide, circular plazas set at strategic points throughout the city, with streets leading out in all directions. Platforms rise from the center, wide enough for six men to pass abreast, with stone slopes leading down to the street on either side.
Then the Gatekeepers step up onto the platforms, one in each plaza in the city. They bow their heads, wait for the guards to step back, and then open the Gates.
Ianto hates the pomp of it all, the solemn ceremony that hides the fact that the Gatekeepers are prisoners trapped in golden cages with no way out, but even he can admit that the Gates are beautiful, entrancing, and that the power is a heady drug, its use burning like concentrated ecstasy through his veins. Each Gate is unique to the one who opens it, little differences that set them apart, and Ianto’s are as blue as a Welsh sky on a summer afternoon, wide and tall and open. Energy crackles around the rim, bright and lively, and they take hardly any effort to maintain as the people file through, passing from one planet to the other with their large families and colorful clothes and cheerful voices, carts overflowing with their wares pulled along behind them. Many of them call out their thanks, others whisper it with wonder in their eyes, but Ianto doesn't smile, rarely looks up at all until bells chime the late hour and another Gatekeeper arrives to replace him as the people throng the plaza again, preparing for their return.
The Gates are beautiful, and the power used to open them takes Ianto’s breath away, but they're tiring. Each one opening feels like a bruise left on his skin, aching for days afterwards. Ianto staggers as he lets the Gate slip closed, and it’s the other Gatekeeper who reaches out to catch his arm and steady him. Their guards hover, three steps away, but don't approach as the other Gatekeeper tightens her grip on Ianto’s elbow. There is a question in her eyes, a murmured question on her lips, too soft for anyone but the two of them to hear. Ianto meets her crimson cat-eyes-because there are not just humans here but aliens as well, to both Ianto and the people of the sister-planets-and manages a faint, wan smile in answer.
Then she lets him go, bows her head, and opens a Gate that is the same deep violet as a crocus against the snow, edged with bronze ripples. Her guards take up position on either side of her, far enough away that they won't touch her even accidentally, and Ianto’s flank him and escort him from the plaza.
Night falls over the city as they make their way back to the palace. The market is closed, the people fading back into the city with only the memory of laughter to mark them. There are other Gatekeepers in the streets, and they look as weary as Ianto, their steps slow and stumbling. Some assist each other, but the majority-like Ianto-grit their teeth and make their way on their own, no matter how gradual their progress.
The guards never complain, never speak; if anything, the worship in their kohl-painted eyes is more fervent than ever at times like these.
As the last Gatekeepers file into the palace, the doors are chained shut behind them and they are reduced to caged songbirds, elevated to venerated prisoners once more.
*.~.*.~.*
It never ceases to amaze Ianto, the reverence with which the people of these worlds treat the Gatekeepers. They are like demigods, like saints, pillars of this culture and the base on which these people’s lives are constructed. The Gates that link the sister-planets are what allow trade, communication, travel in a society that has never found any need for advanced technology like spacecraft or cars. People walk or travel through Gates, and there is rarely conflict when all of the people are so similar from the constant mixing of cultures, which have slowly but surely melted into each other until they are indistinguishable.
The Gates make it possible, and the Gatekeepers are the only ones who can open and maintain the Gates.
“White is for divinity,” the old man who brought Ianto into this world says, stroking long, age-thin fingers along the spines of the books before him. The library is quiet and bright, dust motes drifting through the sunlight and spinning around the tall shelves. It smells crisp, and clean, like ink and paper and the cloth bindings on the books. “In this world, only the Gatekeepers are permitted to wear it, because only the Gatekeepers are important enough to be considered divine. You are this world, in a way, my boy.”
Ianto is seated on the wide window seat, a book on the history of the city open on his lap. His eyes are on the street outside, however, and on the forest-green moon hanging full and bright in the paler green of the sky, so low that it seems about to touch the earth. When Ianto half-closes his eyes and lets his mind drift, just a little, he can see sparks and streamers in the air, blue and gold and black, red and orange and brilliant violet, dancing as the wind changes in the same way the dust motes do in the sunlight. They’re thick over the city, brightest where Ianto knows the plazas lie, where the Gates-smaller on days without the markets, kept to a size that two or three people can pass through at a time-are being maintained.
The sparks are power, Ianto knows, the force that the Gatekeepers can tap into to open the Gates, the way they can speak to each other over long distances or call up images of places they've never seen and then Gate there without trouble.
In his heart of hearts Ianto has always wanted to have power, to have an ability like this and be special, or at the very least useful. He’s grateful to this man, who pulled him out of the circle of life as he moved from one stage to another and brought him here, created a new body in the image of his old one, who gave him this talent and taught him to use it.
But somewhere, in the back of his mind, Ianto wonders. He’s trapped here, a supremely useful songbird in a gilded cage, kept in check by the guards and this old man, the Steward. It’s very likely that, unless he can find some way to break free, he’ll never see Jack-or Earth-again. Surely, he thinks sometimes, death would have been better.
The Steward is watching him, brown eyes bright with knowing. He’s a prisoner here, too, but he seems to have accepted his lot as the one to find new Gatekeepers to swell their ranks. That's something Ianto is certain he will never do.
“You are a Gatekeeper,” the Steward tells him, and there is amusement in his voice. “You have everything you could ever desire here and you are held in awe by the people. They love you for what you are. What more could you ask for, my boy?”
“Freedom,” Ianto suggests dryly, and it isn’t the first time they've had this conversation. Nor, he’s certain, will it be the last.
The old man shakes his head, perfectly on cue. “It is for your own protection,” he assures Ianto. “Once, we didn't guard the Gatekeepers as we do now, and a war started over their abilities and one group’s desire to control them. In the end, only three Gatekeepers were left alive. That was when we began taking those with potential from other planets, those who were not affiliated with anyone in our world, and making sure that none could control or capture the Gatekeepers. It has worked for almost a thousand years now, and I do not see it changing.”
Truthfully, Ianto can't see it either, but that doesn't stop him from hoping. He’s been here long enough that the aching pain of separation and loneliness have dulled, settled into a soul-deep burn that he tends like a fire in the wind, feeding it with bits of injustice and anger and resentment, woven into a fabric of escape escape escape.
*.~.*.~.*
Ianto dreams only rarely on this planet where time runs strangely to his mind. There are no seasons that he’s witnessed and the months are all but impossible to mark with six moons in the sky. The twin planets, too, make it hard to tell days apart, since they rotate around each other at the same time they rotate around the sun.
As far as Ianto has been able to tell, the days are longer than they are on Earth, almost half again as long perhaps, but there are a few hours of darkness in the middle of each day, caused by one planet crossing the other’s path. The people tend to use the stretch of darkness as a short rest period, everyone retreating back inside their homes to sleep.
This darkness, rather than the fall of full night, is what brings on Ianto’s dreams.
When he does dream, more often than not it’s about these sister-planets rather than Earth, about the people he’s met here rather than the people he knew. Sometimes, he dreams of the two places mixing, of Gwen and Tosh and Owen in this world’s bright clothes, or Jack standing with him dressed in the black of a guard.
Other times, it’s of the last Gatekeeper who tried to escape.
The man stands before him in his dream, an alien Gatekeeper with green skin and a craggy face, a warrior’s fierce and fearsome honor. He is friendly enough to Ianto, though withdrawn, but there's something about him that makes Ianto follow his slim green form with his eyes as the man stalks across the common room to the wide bank of windows. There is a parade in the streets, bright and loud with music and laughter and people dancing. Ianto is tempted to go over and watch it with him, but before he can rise Sekheme latches on to his elbow and holds him in his seat. Her crimson cat-eyes are narrowed warily, and her mouth is open just a bit, as though she’s scenting the air.
“No,” she says softly, warningly. “He’s…different.”
Ianto glances at her, surprised, because she’s the type to be a friend to anyone, and was the first to make him welcome when the Steward brought him in, half-conscious and nearly blind from the strange lights that filled the atmosphere like energy made visible. “What?” he asks softly.
There is a rush of air before she can answer. Ianto twists around automatically, looking back towards the green-skinned man. The power in the air-quintessence, the Steward calls it- is dancing, whirling around the man as he bows his head.
A Gate, Ianto realizes one moment too late. He’s opening a Gate.
They've been warned, all of them, that Gates are only to be opened in designated areas, and that they'll only work if they're opened from one sister-planet to the other. But Ianto can feel in the air, in his bones, that the man isn’t trying to move between the two worlds.
The target of his Gate is much, much further out.
A cry breaks the startled stillness and two guards burst into the room, the Steward half a step behind. Ianto makes to move again, thinking to pull Sekheme and himself out of the line of fire, and she obviously has the same idea. But, even as they make it to their feet, the Steward raises a hand, clenches his fist, and wrenches every bit of quintessence out of the room.
The Gate dies stillborn as every one of the Gatekeepers feel the power torn out of their bodies. Most fall, crying out in sudden, shocking agony, some to their knees and some all the way to the floor. The Steward couldn't have gotten a stronger reaction if he’d pulled all the air from their lungs and from the room.
The guards, unaffected, take the opportunity to pin the green-skinned man down and bind him with silken ropes. He struggles, but like the rest of them he's hindered by the crippling lack of power, by the painful, gaping void where that power once was, and they subdue him easily enough.
As they drag him away, the Steward lowers his hand and uncurls his fingers and the quintessence floods back around them, washing over and filling the emptiness like salve spread over a burn. Ianto gasps for breath, on his knees with Sekheme beside him, both of them curled close in pain. Their eyes meet, horrified and a little terrified, and they turn to look at the Steward.
The old man stares around the room, his mouth a tight line, and then nods once. “A warning to you,” he says courteously, and sweeps after the guards.
Two days later, the green-skinned man is escorted past the common room on his way out into the city. His eyes are glazed over and he is only barely standing on his feet. There is a smell of herbs and chemicals around him and no words can reach him.
No one tries to Gate out of the palace after that.
End Part I