[fic] Alas Babylon
Yay, Torchwood!fic for fic_on_demand.
Title: Alas Babylon
Author: creepy_crawly
Fandom, Pairing: Torchwood, Jack/Ianto
Rating:…R+
Warnings: Darkness, torture, my sick and twisted mind, gheyness…um…that should just about cover it…
Requestor/Request: kirke_novak requested a Jack/Ianto H/C that would make, and I quote, “Countrycide look like a Care Bears episode”. Request found here
Disclaimer: No matter how much I plead, BBC’s a little too attached to Torchwood to hand it over. Oh, and RTD won’t write an episode that is purely “Jack and Ianto have sex. Lots of it. The end.”
Summary: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately-pleasure dome decree
But ‘twas the Queen misheard that call
And founded Torchwoods One through Three.
“I’ve done everything I can, Jack, I’m sorry,” Gwen says quietly, not meeting his eyes, staring at her shoes. She doesn’t want to see the raw pain in his eyes. She can feel enough of it in his presence, has heard enough of it in his voice. There’s no sense in adding more pain to the one thing that is tearing apart the team.
“Not everything,” Jack protests, less the infallible captain, more the pleading child. “You can’t have done everything, Gwen, no, you can’t. He’d be here…he’d be here.”
“Oh, Jack…” she whispers, rigid walls of emotionlessness collapsing in a heartbeat. She stumbles forward, pulls him against her body. Jack doesn’t resist her, falls into her embrace like a rag doll, like a broken man. Gwen presses his head against her shoulder, lays her own head against his. “Oh, Jack,” she repeats, not knowing what else to say.
And really, what else is there to say? We’ll find him? He’s okay? He’s alive? He’ll come back?
They’ve been searching for five weeks. The only clues they have are the bloodspots on the concrete, a plastic baggie with a used needle (heroin residue easily found), a plastic baggie with a used condom (full of bloody cum), and shavings of something that Toshiko says appears to be bone.
Wherever Ianto is, he didn’t go there willingly. He fought back. Not all of the blood outside is his. But the needle-well, that’s not a good sign. And the blood in the condom is Ianto’s. The cum isn’t.
They’re still waiting on DNA tests on the bone. Toshiko has refused to run a single DNA test in their lab since Ianto went missing. Instead, she’s been monitoring all of the cameras she has access to, looking for any sign, any clue, anything. Gwen’s been using the police as best she can-Missing Persons, Violent Crime, Vice, Sex Crimes, and every single beat cop have been fed the appropriate information.
If Ianto is anywhere, they will find him.
Right?
-
“Oi, you there!”
Man doesn’t open his eyes. He’s not sure he can, actually, and failure is greeted with much harsher punishment then just not doing anything. They’ve come to expect the latter, he thinks. After all, it’s been a while. And the pain doesn’t stop.
The pain never stops.
“He won’t move,” Fowler grunts. He must be speaking to Master. Man suppresses a shudder. His sessions with Master are…unpleasant, to say the least. Normally, he would…distance himself. That’s what he was trained to do, after all. (Who did the training, and why, and how-all these things are beyond him, have been beyond him for hours, days, weeks, months, years…lifetimes, even).
But the Warmth has made that impossible. Sick as it is, the punishments make him happy, comfortable, sleepy, warm. Or, rather, what comes before them makes him feel like that. So he calls it the Warmth. It’s a technique he learned (again, who and why and how are questions he cannot answer), this calling things in sensations. Simple thoughts stay best in the mind, even through death.
And the simplest of thoughts is pure sensation.
Footsteps approach, walking heel-toe-heel-toe in heavy shoes. A soft hand brushes under his chin, forcing Man to look up, eyes still closed. Harsh fingers pry his lids open. Then Master drops his head back to his chest, sneering in disgust.
“We’ve finally broken his resistance, Fowler,” he says cruelly, “but that’s brought its own problems. Make sure he gets the injections every three hours. In fact…” he pauses, daintily avoiding the puddle of sick from where Man threw up some short while ago, “take him into the play room and dose him now. I’ll be in shortly.”
Fowler doesn’t say anything, but he soon leaves, so Man figures he has nodded.
Master crouches down next to him. “We’re going to have so much fun,” he chuckles.
--
“You need to sleep,” Owen grunts, hands on hips, tapping his toe against the floor. He looks like nothing so much as a huffy mum, but Jack can’t find it in him to find it funny. With a tired sigh, he heaves himself to his feet and plods the few feet to his bed. As Owen glares expectantly, he collapses onto it.
Owen sits quietly in a nearby chair, clearly planning on guarding Jack in his sleep. Last night it was Tosh, and the night before Gwen, and before that Owen. Jack’s not sure what they think they’re guarding him from-himself, maybe? Except that Gwen knows he can’t die.
He ruled out suicide as a possibility so many, many years ago, realizing that there was no point in trying to escape the agony of immortality through death. But he has never hated it so much as he hates it now. If Ianto turns up dead-or, god, god, god forbid, if Ianto never turns up-Jack wants death.
Surely he can find a way.
---
Warmth floods his veins. His mouth is suddenly dry. Man would stretch out, but his limbs are heavy. It feels like a good nap.
Feels that way now, it does. It will change. It will change. It always does.
And, with the first blistering strike of Pain, Man curses the hell that holds him here.
----
“It’s my fault, y’know,” Jack says casually, suddenly, apropos nothing.
“What?” Owen asks, suddenly snapping completely awake. “Wha-? No, it’s not. It’s not your fault.”
“But it is,” Jack tells him, rolling onto his back beneath the light sheet he’s drawn up over his shoulder (because it still smells like Ianto, still smells like it did the day he pressed Jack down into the pillows and straddled him, the day they’d snogged one another for hours and hours because they were the only ones there and it had just felt so right). “It’s my fault, Owen. If I hadn’t insisted…”
Owen, though not the most brilliant or sensitive person Torchwood has ever hired, is not a slouch in the intellectual department. “Just because you have us all chipped doesn’t mean it’s your fault,” he says firmly, following Jack’s thought process to the letter. “It’s standard Torchwood operation these days; you’re just ahead of the curve.”
“But if I hadn’t!” Jack explodes. “If Ianto didn’t have that chip-they wouldn’t have tortured him. They wouldn’t send us…bits and…and pieces. They wouldn’t, Owen!”
“Shh,” Owen whispers, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “No, Jack, they wouldn’t have. You know what they would have done? They would have killed him-considered him useless and killed him flat out. The thing keeping him alive right now is that chip, Jack. You are keeping him alive.”
“Torchwood is,” Jack mumbles, sulky, collapsing back into his pillows.
“No, Jack, you are,” Owen says forcefully. “They’re keeping him alive because of you.”
Unwilling to think about it any more, Jack turns away from Owen and pretends to sleep.
-----
Man hurts. And he’s cold. And he smells. He threw up again, and tasted blood in it. His head seems to be oddly detached, and he can’t help but drift. Besides, drifting doesn’t hurt as much as everything else…
Man’s eyes close.
He sleeps.
------
Rick Harrell turns down the side street, hoping to all hell that the heat in the police cruiser will kick in soon. It is nearing Christmas, and fucking cold. As he continues to drive, humming ‘Jingle Bells’, thinking of what to get his oldest sister’s children for the holidays, he sees something odd by the side of the road.
He makes a U-turn, and heads back to check it out. Pulling over, he parks the car by the side of the road and gets out. He wanders carefully towards the bundle. It’s roughly human-sized, and wrapped in a thin blanket. Could be a homeless person. Could be a body. Could be nothing.
Carefully, Rick toes aside part of the blanket. It reveals a pair of very pale, very dead looking feet. They’re covered in blisters and bruises and blood and things he’d rather not think about.
They’re also human.
Grimacing, he kneels and uncovers the entire body. Not expecting much of anything, he lays a pair of fingers on the side of the man’s neck, trying not to look at the gaping wounds.
He nearly falls backwards when he feels the weak, thready pulse. Stumbling to his feet, he races for the cruiser, where he flings open the door and seizes the radio and radios for help. An ambulance, he pleads, and some beat cops. And somebody scan through the Missing Persons files, looking for somebody who has dark hair…
-------
The phone rings.
Jack doesn’t move.
It rings again.
Jack still doesn’t move.
Toshiko grabs it. “Hello? Toshiko Satou.”
“Ms Satou? I’m Ellen Carn, with Missing Persons. I was given this number by Gwen Cooper…may I please speak with her?”
“One moment, please,” Toshiko requests, making the international sign for “phone” with one hand at Gwen. With the other, she primes the computer to swap the call to Gwen’s headset.
“This is Gwen Cooper.”
“Gwen? It’s Ellen, love. You know that man you asked us to look for?”
Gwen’s eyes widen. “Ellen…is he?”
“At Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, in London, love,” the woman answers. “One of the cops out there found him by the side of the road. They sent a request through all missing persons, and it came through our office early this morning.” She types something into her computer. “They’ve got a standing guard on him. How quickly will you be down there?”
Gwen laughs humourlessly. “Let’s just say Special Ops cars still come with sirens and lights for a reason, Ell.” She ends the call with a quick keystroke. “Tosh, go wake Jack. We have to get to London. Now.”
--------
When they arrive, Jack tears through the hallways like there’s a homing beacon in his head that’s suddenly operating. The only thing that stops him is a short, blonde doctor with a dangerous glare.
“I don’t care who you are,” she tells Jack finally, “but you are not getting in there, be you the Queen, God, or some awkward offspring of the two.”
“You have to let me in,” Jack replies, just as dangerous and twice as desperate. “Listen, it’s Torchwood business! Surely you’ve been told about us.”
“There hasn’t been a Torchwood in London in years,” the woman shoots back. “And there’s never been one in America.”
Jack eyes her up and down for a moment, frozen, still. Then, taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes and thinks as hard as he can, ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately-pleasure dome decree/ But ‘twas the Queen misheard that call/ And founded Torchwoods One through Three.’
The woman’s eyes go wide and she stares at him. “You…who are you?”
“Captain Jack Harkness. You?”
“Elizabeth Limmer, Queen’s Medic.” Her hand slips down from her folder, tugs the waistband of her scrubs down, revealing a dark tattoo. It’s an odd sign, like a snake twining around a cross, a crown tossed over the top at an angle.
But Jack nods, clearly recognising it. “You part of Torchwood One?”
She shakes her head. “Medic on-call only. But I served after Canary Wharf. I only saw Ianto once, but…he’s been offline ever since; he’s never entered the Weave.”
Jack shakes his head the slightest bit. “Come again?”
The doctor stares at him. “Ianto Jones? He was part of the Babylon Weave. Didn’t he tell you? That’s why he was permitted to go to Cardiff. We didn’t have anyone there, and after what happened in London, they figured it would be safer to keep someone we trusted and could contact in every city. But…well, Ianto never rejoined the Weave, not last I’d heard.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Ianto…Ianto’s part of Babylon?” Jack asks, breathing shaky and fast.
The doctor nods.
“That’s why he was…why he saw what happened?”
She nods again. “If he’s told you the pass, though…come with me. If you go through sterilisation, I can let you in. but I’m going to have to cocoon your mind.”
“His defenses are down?” Jack asks, following her down the hallway, waving for Owen and Gwen and Toshiko to wait there.
“Completely shattered,” the doctor confirms. “He’s streaming everything in his range right now. I’ve been shutting him down as much as I can, but I’m only a Class C Psi. I’m not able to shut down a Class A completely, particularly not one who’s a Stepper as well.”
Jack nods, pensive. “How…how bad?”
The doctor frowns. “Well…he’s lost a lot of blood. He is very definitely malnourished, there’s some frostbite, abnormal brain patterns. There’s a fair amount of internal bleeding, in addition to the psionic haemorrhaging. On top of that, he’s suffering severe emotional trauma and…well. His captors made it easier to control him by dosing him with heroin. He’s addicted to that, now, too. And, of course, multiple broken bones and open wounds and the lot…he’s not in a good condition, Captain Harkness.”
“Lord!” Jack curses. He pounds a fist against a wall.
The doctor watches him, pitying. “If…if you want…I’m controlling the block on his mind…I’ve worked as a Conduit before…you could Tie through me…I can hold him to this one plane of existence-of time-if you want to try and talk to him.”
Jack says nothing, nods.
---------
Man feels dull, stupid. He doesn’t mind. After the hours-days-weeks-months-years-lifetimes-eras-forevers of having his brain open, screaming, raw, salted…it’s pleasant, this stupidness. He doesn’t mind it at all.
Within the warm, comforting bubble of nothing, his mind curls. Weak and alone for now, it will grow, it will strengthen. And when it does, it will wait.
It will wait until Man is ready for it once again.
----------
“I can’t reach him,” Jack whispers, collapsing against the bed, pale and drained from the mental fishing trip. “He’s sunk within himself…”
The young woman places a gloved hand on his forehead. “I’ll bring you a cot,” she tells him soothingly. “And I’ll keep trying. Babylon Weave has equipped me with a psi-healing degree.”
“Thank you,” Jack answers, watching Ianto lay still as death.
-----------
Man sleeps. He doesn’t want to wake up, so he doesn’t. It’s as simple as that.
Inside its bubble, Man’s mind can feel the gentle-tender brushes of thought, of emotion, of people disturbing the nothing. It recoils, afraid. It’s been so long since it has felt another mind.
All those years ago-the last thing it felt from anyone else was agonising pain, screaming, horror. Fire and smoke, brimstone, hell and damnation in Xanadu. Alas, Babylon. Alas, alas.
------------
Jack stirs, feeling more than hearing the words. When they register, he sits bolt upright.
“Alas, Babylon!” he cries.
-------------
Man’s mind can hear the nearby mind repeating its thought. It recognises it, vaguely. For all that it has been hiding, waiting for Man to repair enough to handle its existence once more, it has still tied itself to that familiar mind.
The warmth and care and love and pure life wrap around Man’s mind like a blanket. It’s not like the cocoon of nothingness, brought on by another psionic, a healing block. It’s emotion, pure and whole and clean and deeper than space. It’s protection, subconscious but intentional.
Inside the womb-like love, Man’s mind curls in delight.
--------------
Jack feels Ianto’s mind slowly sliding into itself as his body repairs. He never realised quite how deep the other man’s unconscious Tie to him ran, but now he’s grateful. He can feel the tiny stirrings, like the fluttering kicks of an unborn child.
“Wake up,” he whispers against Ianto’s lips. “Please, love.”
But Ianto is still.
---------------
Man can feel consciousness returning to him. He’s not sure he wants it to, but something deep inside his head is blossoming, a heat he hasn’t felt in years. It’s like sinking into a hot bath, like sitting in front of a fire under a blanket with your lover. It’s everything that is good and right with the world.
It’s love, pure and simple.
And Ianto knows from whence it comes.
----------------
“Jack?”
A harsh, sore, soft croak.
Fast asleep, Jack sits bolt upright. “Ianto!” he cries, turning to look blearily at the man. “Oh, Ianto!”
Ianto’s lips twist into a pained smile beneath the nasal canula that replaced the oxygen mask that replaced the ventilator sometime around Week Four. He twitches his fingers against Jack’s own. “Jack.”
Choking back a sob, Jack reaches up and gently brushes a strand of hair away from Ianto’s forehead. “Oh, Ianto…” he chokes. “I thought…I thought I’d lost you…” He pauses, swallowing hard, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. “You were so far gone…so far away.”
“I’m here now,” Ianto promises. He can feel his Mind, his Gift, his Talent stretching. Before he can reign it in (after all, the last time it was free, all it brought him were first-person views of the deaths of friends, family-members, co-workers), it expands, exploding away from him in a rush of blissful energy.
Jack’s hand tightens almost painfully around his own as he groans, eyes rolling back in his head, every nerve in his body firing in unison, muscles seizing and releasing, mind stretching to the ends of the universe and time.
Their minds stay there, suspended for a few moments that feel like eternity, before collapsing back in on themselves.
----------------
The lights in the ward have all gone out. All of the lights in the city are out. In fact, there is no electricity anywhere on Earth right now.
Gwen stares in shock. Beside her, Toshiko gapes. Owen looks frightened-he knows what this means.
In a hallway close to them, Elizabeth Limmer falls to her knees, crying out silently as the force of the psionic explosion sweeps through her. Her body quakes, the psionic equivalent of an orgasm striking her with more mental force than she ever knew was possible.
As soon as her body is back under control, she automatically sweeps her mind through what’s left of the Babylon Weave. Every mind responds in a bright, healthy glow of energy-but the energy of newborn infants…
‘What was that, Liz?’
‘Why do we look so young?’
The minds clamour against hers.
‘It’s…our…we’ve just been granted a whole ‘nother lifetime,’ she pants, slowly standing. ‘Ianto’s back with us, I think.’
-----------------
In the dark hospital room, Ianto lies curled in Jack’s arms, content and comfortable. Tomorrow will bring more pain, undoubtedly, and the days after that. He will have to heal. He will have to fight the infections. He will have to face the psychological trauma-starting from the end of Torchwood One. He will have to readjust to have his mind back online. He will even need to fight this heroin addiction.
But for all of those days, for all of those pains, for all of those tears and fits of rage, for the shakes and the sickness and the twitching and the screaming, Jack will be with him.
And that’s the way it will always be.
Title: Alas Babylon
Author: creepy_crawly
Fandom, Pairing: Torchwood, Jack/Ianto
Rating:…R+
Warnings: Darkness, torture, my sick and twisted mind, gheyness…um…that should just about cover it…
Requestor/Request: kirke_novak requested a Jack/Ianto H/C that would make, and I quote, “Countrycide look like a Care Bears episode”. Request found here
Disclaimer: No matter how much I plead, BBC’s a little too attached to Torchwood to hand it over. Oh, and RTD won’t write an episode that is purely “Jack and Ianto have sex. Lots of it. The end.”
Summary: In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately-pleasure dome decree
But ‘twas the Queen misheard that call
And founded Torchwoods One through Three.
“I’ve done everything I can, Jack, I’m sorry,” Gwen says quietly, not meeting his eyes, staring at her shoes. She doesn’t want to see the raw pain in his eyes. She can feel enough of it in his presence, has heard enough of it in his voice. There’s no sense in adding more pain to the one thing that is tearing apart the team.
“Not everything,” Jack protests, less the infallible captain, more the pleading child. “You can’t have done everything, Gwen, no, you can’t. He’d be here…he’d be here.”
“Oh, Jack…” she whispers, rigid walls of emotionlessness collapsing in a heartbeat. She stumbles forward, pulls him against her body. Jack doesn’t resist her, falls into her embrace like a rag doll, like a broken man. Gwen presses his head against her shoulder, lays her own head against his. “Oh, Jack,” she repeats, not knowing what else to say.
And really, what else is there to say? We’ll find him? He’s okay? He’s alive? He’ll come back?
They’ve been searching for five weeks. The only clues they have are the bloodspots on the concrete, a plastic baggie with a used needle (heroin residue easily found), a plastic baggie with a used condom (full of bloody cum), and shavings of something that Toshiko says appears to be bone.
Wherever Ianto is, he didn’t go there willingly. He fought back. Not all of the blood outside is his. But the needle-well, that’s not a good sign. And the blood in the condom is Ianto’s. The cum isn’t.
They’re still waiting on DNA tests on the bone. Toshiko has refused to run a single DNA test in their lab since Ianto went missing. Instead, she’s been monitoring all of the cameras she has access to, looking for any sign, any clue, anything. Gwen’s been using the police as best she can-Missing Persons, Violent Crime, Vice, Sex Crimes, and every single beat cop have been fed the appropriate information.
If Ianto is anywhere, they will find him.
Right?
-
“Oi, you there!”
Man doesn’t open his eyes. He’s not sure he can, actually, and failure is greeted with much harsher punishment then just not doing anything. They’ve come to expect the latter, he thinks. After all, it’s been a while. And the pain doesn’t stop.
The pain never stops.
“He won’t move,” Fowler grunts. He must be speaking to Master. Man suppresses a shudder. His sessions with Master are…unpleasant, to say the least. Normally, he would…distance himself. That’s what he was trained to do, after all. (Who did the training, and why, and how-all these things are beyond him, have been beyond him for hours, days, weeks, months, years…lifetimes, even).
But the Warmth has made that impossible. Sick as it is, the punishments make him happy, comfortable, sleepy, warm. Or, rather, what comes before them makes him feel like that. So he calls it the Warmth. It’s a technique he learned (again, who and why and how are questions he cannot answer), this calling things in sensations. Simple thoughts stay best in the mind, even through death.
And the simplest of thoughts is pure sensation.
Footsteps approach, walking heel-toe-heel-toe in heavy shoes. A soft hand brushes under his chin, forcing Man to look up, eyes still closed. Harsh fingers pry his lids open. Then Master drops his head back to his chest, sneering in disgust.
“We’ve finally broken his resistance, Fowler,” he says cruelly, “but that’s brought its own problems. Make sure he gets the injections every three hours. In fact…” he pauses, daintily avoiding the puddle of sick from where Man threw up some short while ago, “take him into the play room and dose him now. I’ll be in shortly.”
Fowler doesn’t say anything, but he soon leaves, so Man figures he has nodded.
Master crouches down next to him. “We’re going to have so much fun,” he chuckles.
--
“You need to sleep,” Owen grunts, hands on hips, tapping his toe against the floor. He looks like nothing so much as a huffy mum, but Jack can’t find it in him to find it funny. With a tired sigh, he heaves himself to his feet and plods the few feet to his bed. As Owen glares expectantly, he collapses onto it.
Owen sits quietly in a nearby chair, clearly planning on guarding Jack in his sleep. Last night it was Tosh, and the night before Gwen, and before that Owen. Jack’s not sure what they think they’re guarding him from-himself, maybe? Except that Gwen knows he can’t die.
He ruled out suicide as a possibility so many, many years ago, realizing that there was no point in trying to escape the agony of immortality through death. But he has never hated it so much as he hates it now. If Ianto turns up dead-or, god, god, god forbid, if Ianto never turns up-Jack wants death.
Surely he can find a way.
---
Warmth floods his veins. His mouth is suddenly dry. Man would stretch out, but his limbs are heavy. It feels like a good nap.
Feels that way now, it does. It will change. It will change. It always does.
And, with the first blistering strike of Pain, Man curses the hell that holds him here.
----
“It’s my fault, y’know,” Jack says casually, suddenly, apropos nothing.
“What?” Owen asks, suddenly snapping completely awake. “Wha-? No, it’s not. It’s not your fault.”
“But it is,” Jack tells him, rolling onto his back beneath the light sheet he’s drawn up over his shoulder (because it still smells like Ianto, still smells like it did the day he pressed Jack down into the pillows and straddled him, the day they’d snogged one another for hours and hours because they were the only ones there and it had just felt so right). “It’s my fault, Owen. If I hadn’t insisted…”
Owen, though not the most brilliant or sensitive person Torchwood has ever hired, is not a slouch in the intellectual department. “Just because you have us all chipped doesn’t mean it’s your fault,” he says firmly, following Jack’s thought process to the letter. “It’s standard Torchwood operation these days; you’re just ahead of the curve.”
“But if I hadn’t!” Jack explodes. “If Ianto didn’t have that chip-they wouldn’t have tortured him. They wouldn’t send us…bits and…and pieces. They wouldn’t, Owen!”
“Shh,” Owen whispers, closing his eyes and shaking his head. “No, Jack, they wouldn’t have. You know what they would have done? They would have killed him-considered him useless and killed him flat out. The thing keeping him alive right now is that chip, Jack. You are keeping him alive.”
“Torchwood is,” Jack mumbles, sulky, collapsing back into his pillows.
“No, Jack, you are,” Owen says forcefully. “They’re keeping him alive because of you.”
Unwilling to think about it any more, Jack turns away from Owen and pretends to sleep.
-----
Man hurts. And he’s cold. And he smells. He threw up again, and tasted blood in it. His head seems to be oddly detached, and he can’t help but drift. Besides, drifting doesn’t hurt as much as everything else…
Man’s eyes close.
He sleeps.
------
Rick Harrell turns down the side street, hoping to all hell that the heat in the police cruiser will kick in soon. It is nearing Christmas, and fucking cold. As he continues to drive, humming ‘Jingle Bells’, thinking of what to get his oldest sister’s children for the holidays, he sees something odd by the side of the road.
He makes a U-turn, and heads back to check it out. Pulling over, he parks the car by the side of the road and gets out. He wanders carefully towards the bundle. It’s roughly human-sized, and wrapped in a thin blanket. Could be a homeless person. Could be a body. Could be nothing.
Carefully, Rick toes aside part of the blanket. It reveals a pair of very pale, very dead looking feet. They’re covered in blisters and bruises and blood and things he’d rather not think about.
They’re also human.
Grimacing, he kneels and uncovers the entire body. Not expecting much of anything, he lays a pair of fingers on the side of the man’s neck, trying not to look at the gaping wounds.
He nearly falls backwards when he feels the weak, thready pulse. Stumbling to his feet, he races for the cruiser, where he flings open the door and seizes the radio and radios for help. An ambulance, he pleads, and some beat cops. And somebody scan through the Missing Persons files, looking for somebody who has dark hair…
-------
The phone rings.
Jack doesn’t move.
It rings again.
Jack still doesn’t move.
Toshiko grabs it. “Hello? Toshiko Satou.”
“Ms Satou? I’m Ellen Carn, with Missing Persons. I was given this number by Gwen Cooper…may I please speak with her?”
“One moment, please,” Toshiko requests, making the international sign for “phone” with one hand at Gwen. With the other, she primes the computer to swap the call to Gwen’s headset.
“This is Gwen Cooper.”
“Gwen? It’s Ellen, love. You know that man you asked us to look for?”
Gwen’s eyes widen. “Ellen…is he?”
“At Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth, in London, love,” the woman answers. “One of the cops out there found him by the side of the road. They sent a request through all missing persons, and it came through our office early this morning.” She types something into her computer. “They’ve got a standing guard on him. How quickly will you be down there?”
Gwen laughs humourlessly. “Let’s just say Special Ops cars still come with sirens and lights for a reason, Ell.” She ends the call with a quick keystroke. “Tosh, go wake Jack. We have to get to London. Now.”
--------
When they arrive, Jack tears through the hallways like there’s a homing beacon in his head that’s suddenly operating. The only thing that stops him is a short, blonde doctor with a dangerous glare.
“I don’t care who you are,” she tells Jack finally, “but you are not getting in there, be you the Queen, God, or some awkward offspring of the two.”
“You have to let me in,” Jack replies, just as dangerous and twice as desperate. “Listen, it’s Torchwood business! Surely you’ve been told about us.”
“There hasn’t been a Torchwood in London in years,” the woman shoots back. “And there’s never been one in America.”
Jack eyes her up and down for a moment, frozen, still. Then, taking a deep breath, he closes his eyes and thinks as hard as he can, ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/ A stately-pleasure dome decree/ But ‘twas the Queen misheard that call/ And founded Torchwoods One through Three.’
The woman’s eyes go wide and she stares at him. “You…who are you?”
“Captain Jack Harkness. You?”
“Elizabeth Limmer, Queen’s Medic.” Her hand slips down from her folder, tugs the waistband of her scrubs down, revealing a dark tattoo. It’s an odd sign, like a snake twining around a cross, a crown tossed over the top at an angle.
But Jack nods, clearly recognising it. “You part of Torchwood One?”
She shakes her head. “Medic on-call only. But I served after Canary Wharf. I only saw Ianto once, but…he’s been offline ever since; he’s never entered the Weave.”
Jack shakes his head the slightest bit. “Come again?”
The doctor stares at him. “Ianto Jones? He was part of the Babylon Weave. Didn’t he tell you? That’s why he was permitted to go to Cardiff. We didn’t have anyone there, and after what happened in London, they figured it would be safer to keep someone we trusted and could contact in every city. But…well, Ianto never rejoined the Weave, not last I’d heard.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.
“Ianto…Ianto’s part of Babylon?” Jack asks, breathing shaky and fast.
The doctor nods.
“That’s why he was…why he saw what happened?”
She nods again. “If he’s told you the pass, though…come with me. If you go through sterilisation, I can let you in. but I’m going to have to cocoon your mind.”
“His defenses are down?” Jack asks, following her down the hallway, waving for Owen and Gwen and Toshiko to wait there.
“Completely shattered,” the doctor confirms. “He’s streaming everything in his range right now. I’ve been shutting him down as much as I can, but I’m only a Class C Psi. I’m not able to shut down a Class A completely, particularly not one who’s a Stepper as well.”
Jack nods, pensive. “How…how bad?”
The doctor frowns. “Well…he’s lost a lot of blood. He is very definitely malnourished, there’s some frostbite, abnormal brain patterns. There’s a fair amount of internal bleeding, in addition to the psionic haemorrhaging. On top of that, he’s suffering severe emotional trauma and…well. His captors made it easier to control him by dosing him with heroin. He’s addicted to that, now, too. And, of course, multiple broken bones and open wounds and the lot…he’s not in a good condition, Captain Harkness.”
“Lord!” Jack curses. He pounds a fist against a wall.
The doctor watches him, pitying. “If…if you want…I’m controlling the block on his mind…I’ve worked as a Conduit before…you could Tie through me…I can hold him to this one plane of existence-of time-if you want to try and talk to him.”
Jack says nothing, nods.
---------
Man feels dull, stupid. He doesn’t mind. After the hours-days-weeks-months-years-lifetimes-eras-forevers of having his brain open, screaming, raw, salted…it’s pleasant, this stupidness. He doesn’t mind it at all.
Within the warm, comforting bubble of nothing, his mind curls. Weak and alone for now, it will grow, it will strengthen. And when it does, it will wait.
It will wait until Man is ready for it once again.
----------
“I can’t reach him,” Jack whispers, collapsing against the bed, pale and drained from the mental fishing trip. “He’s sunk within himself…”
The young woman places a gloved hand on his forehead. “I’ll bring you a cot,” she tells him soothingly. “And I’ll keep trying. Babylon Weave has equipped me with a psi-healing degree.”
“Thank you,” Jack answers, watching Ianto lay still as death.
-----------
Man sleeps. He doesn’t want to wake up, so he doesn’t. It’s as simple as that.
Inside its bubble, Man’s mind can feel the gentle-tender brushes of thought, of emotion, of people disturbing the nothing. It recoils, afraid. It’s been so long since it has felt another mind.
All those years ago-the last thing it felt from anyone else was agonising pain, screaming, horror. Fire and smoke, brimstone, hell and damnation in Xanadu. Alas, Babylon. Alas, alas.
------------
Jack stirs, feeling more than hearing the words. When they register, he sits bolt upright.
“Alas, Babylon!” he cries.
-------------
Man’s mind can hear the nearby mind repeating its thought. It recognises it, vaguely. For all that it has been hiding, waiting for Man to repair enough to handle its existence once more, it has still tied itself to that familiar mind.
The warmth and care and love and pure life wrap around Man’s mind like a blanket. It’s not like the cocoon of nothingness, brought on by another psionic, a healing block. It’s emotion, pure and whole and clean and deeper than space. It’s protection, subconscious but intentional.
Inside the womb-like love, Man’s mind curls in delight.
--------------
Jack feels Ianto’s mind slowly sliding into itself as his body repairs. He never realised quite how deep the other man’s unconscious Tie to him ran, but now he’s grateful. He can feel the tiny stirrings, like the fluttering kicks of an unborn child.
“Wake up,” he whispers against Ianto’s lips. “Please, love.”
But Ianto is still.
---------------
Man can feel consciousness returning to him. He’s not sure he wants it to, but something deep inside his head is blossoming, a heat he hasn’t felt in years. It’s like sinking into a hot bath, like sitting in front of a fire under a blanket with your lover. It’s everything that is good and right with the world.
It’s love, pure and simple.
And Ianto knows from whence it comes.
----------------
“Jack?”
A harsh, sore, soft croak.
Fast asleep, Jack sits bolt upright. “Ianto!” he cries, turning to look blearily at the man. “Oh, Ianto!”
Ianto’s lips twist into a pained smile beneath the nasal canula that replaced the oxygen mask that replaced the ventilator sometime around Week Four. He twitches his fingers against Jack’s own. “Jack.”
Choking back a sob, Jack reaches up and gently brushes a strand of hair away from Ianto’s forehead. “Oh, Ianto…” he chokes. “I thought…I thought I’d lost you…” He pauses, swallowing hard, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. “You were so far gone…so far away.”
“I’m here now,” Ianto promises. He can feel his Mind, his Gift, his Talent stretching. Before he can reign it in (after all, the last time it was free, all it brought him were first-person views of the deaths of friends, family-members, co-workers), it expands, exploding away from him in a rush of blissful energy.
Jack’s hand tightens almost painfully around his own as he groans, eyes rolling back in his head, every nerve in his body firing in unison, muscles seizing and releasing, mind stretching to the ends of the universe and time.
Their minds stay there, suspended for a few moments that feel like eternity, before collapsing back in on themselves.
----------------
The lights in the ward have all gone out. All of the lights in the city are out. In fact, there is no electricity anywhere on Earth right now.
Gwen stares in shock. Beside her, Toshiko gapes. Owen looks frightened-he knows what this means.
In a hallway close to them, Elizabeth Limmer falls to her knees, crying out silently as the force of the psionic explosion sweeps through her. Her body quakes, the psionic equivalent of an orgasm striking her with more mental force than she ever knew was possible.
As soon as her body is back under control, she automatically sweeps her mind through what’s left of the Babylon Weave. Every mind responds in a bright, healthy glow of energy-but the energy of newborn infants…
‘What was that, Liz?’
‘Why do we look so young?’
The minds clamour against hers.
‘It’s…our…we’ve just been granted a whole ‘nother lifetime,’ she pants, slowly standing. ‘Ianto’s back with us, I think.’
-----------------
In the dark hospital room, Ianto lies curled in Jack’s arms, content and comfortable. Tomorrow will bring more pain, undoubtedly, and the days after that. He will have to heal. He will have to fight the infections. He will have to face the psychological trauma-starting from the end of Torchwood One. He will have to readjust to have his mind back online. He will even need to fight this heroin addiction.
But for all of those days, for all of those pains, for all of those tears and fits of rage, for the shakes and the sickness and the twitching and the screaming, Jack will be with him.
And that’s the way it will always be.