Prompt Response story
Should point out, this is NOT part of my "First Time for Everything" series. This is my rather-late response to the Torchwood Reset prompt: http://community.livejournal.com/torchwood_reset/
Apologies for delay: got blocked BAD.
Anyway:
Title: Sins Unspoken
Pairing: J/I mentioned
Rating: PG-13
Warning: VERY brief mentions of mental illness, parental death, stillbirth [as historical note]. All treated seriously.
Spoilers: Audio book "The Sin Eaters", Series 1 episode "Cyberwoman" and therefore DW2 season ender. CoE compliant BUT takes place during "The Sin Eaters" so therefore pre-CoE.
Authors Note: 'bach' is Welsh for 'small' and is sometimes added to a child's name, so John-bach would mean "little John", with the implication you're talking about a young child named after an older relative rather than Robin Hood's best mate.
Beta'd by madtheo and travellingone - to whom my thanks are unending!
My chosen prompt was the rather popular question of "Why did Ianto lie about his father's job? What was he hiding?" I chose to wrap that in with a slight tweak to "The Sin Eaters" and have Ianto also come under their 'influence'.
So:
“Hit the deck!” Jack grabbed both their arms as he suited action to word, dragging them with him to the deck of the ‘Queen’. Flat against the boards, his head turned to one side, Ianto saw Gwen had both arms wrapped around her head almost as though she expected a bomb blast or something similar. He just had time to wonder whether, like Jack, she’d had her own personal run-in with these creatures when he heard a faint chittering coming from far closer than above the Queen’s cabin where the rest of the swarm flooded past. Then something brushed against the back of his neck, a barely-felt touch that was nothing like the feather-light touches that Jack favoured during their quieter times in bed.
The initial sensation was all-too familiar, stomach-turningly reminiscent of standing in the Hub staring at the thing that used to be Annie, the jagged wound across her head clear even in the dim light, staring at her in dawning horror as she told him she was Lisa. In that moment of terrible clarity before everything else was again drowned under a love turned into obsession, the one thought in his head had been dear god, what have I done? The guilt had nearly floored him and now….now all there was, was guilt. Guilt and the knowledge of all those things he was responsible for, all those sins he was culpable for.
Mam going into hospital because like an idiot he’d let one of the teachers in Infants see his hand after Mam used the iron to burn ‘the bad’ away. His fault.
Angry with her because all the other boys have their Mams at home but his is stuck in this horrible, dark, stinking hospital and the other people scare him so he won’t go in and see her, even when Dad drags him to the car. He can see Mam in tears through the window. His fault.
“Ianto?”
His sixth birthday and she’s at Providence Park now and she wanted him to come but he wanted to go and play at Morgan’s so he ran off and hid in the grounds and wouldn’t come even when she came outside and called his name. It’s the last time he sees her and he doesn’t come out of hiding. When the phone rings the next day, Dad’s face goes white and then Rhi starts screaming and shouting. His fault.
Packing his stuff in their bedroom above the shop and Rhi is silently furious because he got angry when Dad said the shop was being repossessed and he doesn’t know what that means but apparently Dad owes the bank lots of money because of Providence Park and now they have to go and live somewhere else. Rhi hissing that Mam only went to Providence Park because she hoped he’d visit her there. His fault.
Dad trying to be upbeat when they first see the council house on the Cromwell Estate and the look on his face when Ianto complains about the smell and the mouldy wallpaper and gets angry because Dad says he can’t buy another shop. His fault.
Rhi finding him in the playground telling the others his dad’s a master tailor and she shouts at him and he doesn’t understand because Dad said the job at Debenhams was only just-for-now. He tells Dad that night because he wants to hear Dad tell Rhi she’s wrong but when he says the job at Debenhams is stupid, Dad goes into his room and won’t come out and Rhi yells at him and goes banging off out to her mates. And he can hear Dad crying. His fault.
“Ianto!”
Dad telling him he has to work hard at school but he hates the school because the other kids bully him whenever he gives the right answers in class. He screams at Dad, telling him he hates this dump and he’s angry and he tells Dad he’s pathetic because he takes all that shit from his boss at work and for a moment he thinks he’s about to get hit but then Dad just walks past him and out of the house and it’s nearly two days before he comes back stinking of alcohol. His fault.
Being brought home by the cop when he lifted the perfume from David Morgans, and he was trying to get something nice for Karen at school because she’s his girlfriend and it’s nearly Christmas and he’s got no money. Rhi glaring at him and spitting out that he’s embarrassed them all and he’s angry because all he hears from her or Dad is that he has to try harder and Johnny’s there nodding in agreement with her so he snarls at her and tells her at least it’s better than coming home pregnant at 14. And her face goes blank because they don’t TALK about that. They don’t mention John-bach, not ever, and even as he sees the tears start in her eyes and Johnny and his dad start shouting, he remembers the tiny white coffin that Johnny could almost have held in one hand and he turns and runs out of the house and it’s nearly a month before Rhi will even look at him. His fault.
The letters coming from school complaining about how he won’t listen in class and now Dad decides he needs ‘discipline’. The homework school sets isn’t enough, Dad keeps insisting he does more and more and more and three hours of work becomes four and then five and then six and he’s knackered but if he gets things wrong Dad becomes angrier and angrier and angrier and it gets so bad that Ianto starts to dread going home. But Dad keeps pushing and pushing and pushing. He needs a break, he needs some space or he’s going to go mental. But Dad won’t let him out, won’t let him have any peace. Still says he has to stay in and work. So he starts slipping out after everyone is asleep, starts going to the park. There’s other kids there, the cool kids, the ones everyone seems to want to be friends with. At first, they ignore him, so he starts lifting stuff again only he’s more careful now. Be polite and smile and no-one thinks you might be up to something. Fags and cider and any cash that Dad leaves lying around. Soon they all want to be friends with him - and then one night he climbs back in through the window and Dad is waiting for him. Marked notes and Ianto didn’t spot it when he went to the chippy and Fry Davies rang Dad. So Dad lays into him for nicking again. He screams at Dad, saying he hates it in this dump and what’s the fucking point because he’ll never get off this shit estate and even after six years he still has no mates, they only talk to him because he nicks stuff for them and he just wants to go back to the shop. The slap comes out of nowhere and he’s on the floor, stunned, and Dad is staring down at him in horror and then takes a step towards him but he jerks back, away, thinking he’s about to get hit again. Dad stands there for a second, frozen, one hand out. Then he turns and goes out and this time it’s three days before he comes back and when he does he’s drunk. His fault.
“Ianto!”
His GSCE results and they’re failures across the board and he’s never going to get any kind of job with those and Rhi is screaming at him that he’s a useless piece of shit just like their old man, because by now Dad’s so far in the drink he’s lost the job at Debenhams and he’s just sitting there in the corner of the living room and he’s barely aware of what’s going on around him. He grabs Ianto’s sleeve and asks him for a few quid to get a little drink and Rhi’s only 20 but she looks older, she looks tired and she’s yelling at him because she’s 8 months gone now and how is Johnny supposed to find the money to feed all of them. His fault.
He brings home every penny from the crappy job down the market on Hugh’s stall but Dad’s nicked Mam’s jewellery that she left Rhi and flogged it in order to buy something to drink and Rhi has to keep her purse locked up or Dad will nick that too. Then Hugh finds Ianto in the back with his missus with her blouse open and he won’t listen when Ianto swears blind she’s been trying it on with him for months and that he hasn’t laid a finger on him and little David is old enough now to start wanting toys and sweets and another baby’s on the way and Rhi starts to cry when he tells her he’s lost his job. His fault.
He still hasn’t found another job two months later when Dad dies two days before Mica is born. The night of the funeral he gets pissed and when he gets home he throws up all over the carpet while Rhi is trying to feed Mica and the look on her face…so he leaves and later on Jack will call it drifting and he keeps sending money home but he can’t bring himself to ring her because really he’s a coward and he doesn’t want to hear her say she wants nothing more to do with him. His fault.
Torchwood and Lisa and for once everything seems to be perfect, everything is going well, he’s getting the nerve together to call Rhi and say sorry. He knows she’ll like Lisa and Lisa will like Rhi and she’ll love the kids and little Mica must be almost ready for school now. Then the Ghost Shift project starts and then one afternoon he fancies a smoke so he gives Lisa a kiss and goes downstairs and outside and the next time he sees her she’s wired into a conversion table and…
“IANTO!”
He felt hands gripping his shoulders hard and he was shaken roughly. Awareness snapped back and he realised he was on the deck of the ‘Queen’, the last of the creatures whirring overhead and Jack & Gwen crouched to either side of him. Greenish brown gunk was smeared over Gwen’s hands as they hovered just above his arm and Jack’s hands were on his shoulders, the other man’s face close to his own and his eyes alive with concern.
“Ianto?” Jack’s voice was softer, calmer. “You ok?”
Ianto drew in a single, shuddering breath. No, not really. But that wasn’t an answer he could give so he avoided making eye-contact because he’d lost the ability to lie convincingly to Jack sometime between Lisa and the Brecon Beacons. So he nodded, and then jerked one hand in the direction of the cloud of insects descending on Cardiff.
“Duty calls.”
He was hauled to his feet and he looked from one to the other of them, trying not to think about what his mind had been replaying for him. “Thanks.”
Gwen gave him a rueful smile before wiping her goo-covered hands on her trousers and kicking the crushed corpse to the side. He owed her the laundry bill for that, he guessed. Jack gave him one of those blinding smiles, then a quick, sharp look that told Ianto he had a few questions. Questions, if Ianto knew the man whose bed he’d first gone to in a haze of pain and guilt and fear and hate and relief, that he would continue with until he got an answer. In his own way, Jack was every bit as stubborn as Gwen. But then, they all were.
What was it Jack had asked earlier? What sins did he have? After Lisa, on his suspension Jack had questioned him relentlessly - any time of day or night the phone would go or Jack would be at the door, questioning. Trying to find out if there were any other secrets that might endanger Torchwood - any other deadly skeletons in the closet. Fortunately, he’d not dug as far back as before London.
As for Gwen, she had always seemed to assume that Lisa was his only sin, not simply his worst one. All she knew of Ianto’s past was that Morgan Jones was a master tailor. Not a lie, Ianto told himself whenever he made an allusion to it, though every time he did he could Rhi’s voice: Why d’you do it, Ianto? Why do you keep on telling everyone that? Then she’d get angry; tell him that hearing him keep with ‘that old lie’ was killing Dad. As far as Rhi was concerned it meant he was rubbing Dad’s nose in everything that had gone wrong since the day Mam went into hospital. He never seemed to be able to make her see that as long as he kept saying Dad was a tailor, he could make himself believe that perhaps one day it might be true again.
And now? Now he remembered the ten years at Debenhams, Dad dragging himself into work every day and Ianto never once thanking him, never once realising that what he saw then as pathetic was his Dad doing his best when half his reason for living had been lost in two fell swoops. So when he spoke about his past, he spoke about the years at the shop, when Dad laughed and joked his way through the days. To him, it was a way of apologising. Atoning for everything that gone wrong from the moment he opened his mouth and told about Mam to his teacher.
Later, after it was all over, the vicar’s body found and the Coastguard mollified, he heard Jack’s voice, heard him trying to comfort Gwen. But he saw the look on Jack’s face as he looked over her head across the Hub. And he knew Jack was lying. Knew that everything he’d seen and felt under the Sin-Eater’s influence was true.
His fault.
END