False Memories, Chapter 1/4

[criccieth]

Story: False Memories
Chapter: 1/4
Title: Tuesday Morning, 6a.m.
Word Count: circa 4,700
Spoilers: S2 Ep 5 - Adam
Rating: Teen+ - it's 'Adam' so hints of nastiness
Pairing: None - mention of Tosh/Adam and Gwen/Rhys
Disclaimer: Torchwood and anyone you recognise belong to the BBC and were created by RTD. If you recognise dialogue, it's from the show. This is NOT part of my own 'verse and is complete.



Tuesday, 6am:

Jack is thankful that the Hub is quiet - he’s feeling oddly unsettled and out of sorts and really doesn’t want company.

“Jack.” The voice is so soft that he only just hears it and after everything else that’s happened tonight he whips round, breath catching. It takes a moment before he sees the speaker and when he does he breathes a sigh, half-relieved because it’s Ianto not…..someone else, and half-baffled because why is he still here this late at night? And that… itches at something in his mind, because isn’t Ianto normally here most nights? He has a momentary flash of memory - Ianto sitting opposite him in his office, and two glasses of whisky on the table and warmth between them. But no, that’s not right - it’s Adam he talks into the night with, isn’t it? He shakes off the strange memory lapse, moving forward with a smile for the youngest member of the team.

“Ianto.” It takes only a moment to realise that something certainly isn’t right. Ianto is sitting slumped at his desk, his eyes glazed.

“Hey - what’s wrong?” Jack asks. Ianto has been crying, he’s shocked to realise. There’s a very, very, short list of things that can bring Ianto Jones to tears and Lisa’s name is banned from everyone’s lips but Ianto’s so what can have done this?

“You have to put me in the vaults,” Ianto says and his voice isn’t just near the edge, it sounds like he’s already slipped over the edge and is hanging onto it by his fingernails. “Lock me up.” What the HELL?

“I killed three girls.” Ianto says. “Strangled them”. His voice is shaking and Jack is struggling to make sense of this because what the ever-loving fuck? That - that just doesn’t even begin to make sense. Ianto looks and sounds like his mind is an inch from cracking and the idea of Ianto losing that battle is a terrifying one.

“Stop kidding around,” Jack says, but he can feel his pulse accelerating because Ianto would never joke about something like this.

“I’m serious,” Ianto says. His voice drops, and his tone is almost matter-of-fact, as though he’s giving a report. He’s still not looking at Jack, his gaze now fixed at some point on the far side of the Hub. “I murdered them, in cold blood.” And this is not his Ianto. Gwen forgetting Rhys and his own long-buried memories coming back, those he can put down to ‘it’s Torchwood.’ Not this. This is so wrong, it’s crazy. Wait - ‘his’ Ianto? When has there ever been anything between them that would make him think of Ianto as ‘his’?

“I took their bodies...” Ianto startles suddenly, surging to his feet so abruptly Jack takes a step back as Ianto looks frantically from one side to another, like he’s seeing something Jack can’t. There’s sheer terror on his face. The list of things that actually scare Ianto is even shorter than the list of things that bring him to tears. There’s never been a Dalek or a cannibal here and the only Cyberman that ever entered the Hub is long-gone, so this situation is so far beyond wrong that Jack can’t find the words to express it even in his own head.

“You have to lock me away,” Ianto gasps out. “Before I turn on you. None of you are safe!” He starts moving, clearly aiming for the stairs beyond Jack - the ones that lead to the vaults. Jack grabs his arm as he goes past, forcing him to stop.

“Hey! Hey!” Jack pulls him round so they’re face to face, grabs his other arm and tries to draw him closer but Ianto goes rigid, resisting. “Come here. Come here.” He looks into Ianto’s face and there’s fear and despair in those blue-grey eyes and none of this makes sense. “What’s happened to you?” What the hell is going on? Possessed? Drugged? He tightens his grip and without thinking about it pulls him into an embrace, using his greater strength to force compliance in a way he hasn’t done since what he always thinks of as That Night. He holds him close, one arm going around his back and the other coming up to cup the back of Ianto’s head. Despite the overwhelming wrongness of Ianto’s words, this feels quintessentially right. It’s as though he’s held him hundreds of times but how can that be? Their relationship is hard to define in some ways but it’s entirely professional, so why does holding him feel so familiar? He feels Ianto lift his head from Jack’s shoulder and the words he whispers into Jack’s ear make his blood run cold.

“I’m a monster.” Ianto’s head drops onto his shoulder, as though he has given up. I’m a monster. It’s a moment before Jack can even make his lips move.

“No.” He grips Ianto’s shoulder, pushing him back enough to look into his eyes. “No. We talked about this, we went through this.” They had. After That Night - when Ianto was so damaged, so shattered that Jack was at first not sure that a bullet might not actually be the kinder action. When Ianto called himself a monster beyond reprieve, beyond redemption, for what had happened to the pizza girl. Annie, Annie! You fucking bastard, her name was ANNIE….in his nightmares he can still hear Ianto screaming that at him after Jack admitted he had no idea who the girl was. When Ianto refused Retcon because forgetting was the coward’s way out. When Jack realised he was too much of a monster to give this beautiful, broken boy the relief of death or even to force Retcon on him. Because if he could tie that capacity for loyalty to him there was nothing he, or Torchwood, couldn’t do with it.

So once that night was over, and Ianto’s flat stripped of any and everything he could use to hurt himself, Jack had begun. Had pushed Ianto over and over again through every step of the way from the twentieth floor of the Tower to the room deep below the Hub. No threats, no violence, no torture. Just Jack gently, subtly, breaking him down until Ianto was putty in his hands. And then….

It had been easy, in some ways. Tell the others not to approach him during his suspension, so that ‘tempers can cool’. Keep him hemmed in by demanding instant response to phone-calls and texts and minimal warning of an impending arrival at his flat - supposedly for ‘security’ and Ianto’s own safety. In reality, it had been to isolate him. To be his only real source of human contact. Tell him that forgiveness was possible, redemption within his reach - with Jack’s help. Then slowly put him back together - rebuilding him to be what Jack needed, what he wanted. It paid off rapidly: it was Ianto, for example, who came up with the idea of saving Tosh time in blocking UNIT’s weekly hacking attempts by both looping various recordings from within the Hub and elsewhere to build fake conversations and by creating a fake server, complete with cases mocked up from various ancient Torchwood files. UNIT now think they have a reasonable success rate and the real stuff is left alone.

It was only later that he realised that everything has a price, including the loyalty he had so wanted. He had assumed that the loyalty and the love came separately, and that he could have the one for his use without the other being an issue. He was wrong. For Ianto, who never did anything by halves, love and loyalty were so intertwined that one demanded the other. That combination, given to Lisa Hallett, had conned the con-man; brought a Cyber-conversion unit and its victim into the Hub; hidden them and himself from the entire team for months on end and nearly ended the world. And then, somehow, it was all at Jack’s command.

It was heady at first. Exhilarating, to be the focus of that much passion, and he forgot how dangerous the man could be. Thoughtless, led only by the intoxication of meeting the 20th century man he’d secretly admired since he took the name, he’d disregarded how his actions appeared. He hadn’t spared a thought for the 21st century man whose loyalty he had so wanted and it took Owen being shot for Jack to realise that things might be out of his control, but by then it was too late. Even when he saw Tosh’s message to the team, sketching an image of a brief doomed romance, he hadn’t thought about how his actions might wound someone who valued loyalty and fidelity so much. Then Bilis had snatched at the chance he’d been given. And while Jack floundered around, lashing out at his own team because he had no clue how to fix things, his every word and action making things worse; Bilis used an old loyalty to break the strained new one.

He can still remember the shock of that calm, flat ‘No’ and the realisation that he’d lost all control over the situation. Standing now in the Hub, he feels a flicker of shame that it took endless time in the blackness of death to realise the extent of the damage he’d thoughtlessly inflicted. And it took the Valiant for him to finally realise that he feels more for Ianto than merely lust and a possessive pride in his work.

Hard on the heel of that thought is that itch of puzzled memory. Lust? Well, perhaps - Ianto is more than merely easy on the eye, and Jack Harkness knows how to appreciate beauty. But he doesn’t mix business with pleasure. And it’s Adam that he turns to when he needs friendship from anyone in the team. He knows that - remembers many hours spent in conversation with Adam, sharing parts of himself. Yet he can also remember a TV flickering through a movie while he lies stretched out on a sofa that certainly isn’t in the Hub, Ianto next to him with his legs tangled with Jack’s own. Remembers dropping kisses onto that lovely mouth.….

He shakes his head, takes a breath. “Something’s…something’s wrong. Something’s…I don’t know. Got inside your head.” And perhaps inside mine. What the hell is going on tonight? “Come on. I’ve got something that can help.” He turns them away from the vault, once more over-riding Ianto’s resistance, and moves them both into his office.

“Sit down - get comfortable.” He eases his grip and when Ianto doesn’t try to flee to the vaults, he lets go and turns to the safe. It only takes a moment or two to find the lie detector. It came through the Rift a few weeks ago, and he’d recognised it from a mission to 35th century Earth for the Agency; a mission they undertook after the end of the time loop, shortly before he woke up with a two-year hole in his memory. As it’s harmless and highly useful, he’s kept it up here and they’ve been too busy for him to get around to getting it logged into the Archives.

Ianto has taken off his jacket and is sitting in the chair on the other side of the table, hands wrapped around the end of the arm-rests and his sleeves rolled up. Jack stops in his tracks as he realises that Ianto is clearly expecting to be drugged - and yet is looking at him with a level of trust that he has no idea when or even how he earned. He puts the lie detector down the table and runs through the settings for a human male then takes a deep breath, looking up.

“I need you to give me some details. In your own words,” he says reluctantly.

Ianto’s jaw is clenched in the way it does when he’s working at them not having a blazing row. Jack gestures at the lie detector.

“Best lie detector on the planet. If something’s untrue, the light turns red.” He turns it on. “Go.” There’s a brief pause, then:-

“My… hands on her throat.” Ianto’s voice is strained, as though he doesn’t want to hear his own words. Then something seems to shift and his voice changes, becoming softer, and there’s a light in his eyes that makes Jack’s skin prickle uncomfortably. His next words fill Jack with a sick dread.

“And it felt so good.” He snatches in a breath and Jack knows that sound, knows the way he breathes as he starts to get turned on. Ianto? Oh my god, Ianto…. “Squeezing the life out of her.” His accent is rougher, like when Jack is getting him closer and closer to orgasm and the light is staying green. The light is staying green. No. NO. He looks down at the data streaming across the display. This isn’t possible. This isn’t him.

“It reads as truth!” Ianto’s voice has changed again - there’s horror now, and desperation and a guilt that tears at Jack’s heart. Jack looks up. Ianto’s sweating heavily, tears in his eyes and this cannot be happening.

“I don’t believe it,” Jack says, his voice as firm as he can make it. This isn’t true, this isn’t him. “Okay, tell me about the second girl.” There’s a moment’s silence, broken by a sob from Ianto.

“She tried to get away,” he says, and for that one moment he sounds very young, very shaken and very miserable and a tear glints in the dim light. And then from one breath to the next, he changes.

“But I was too quick,” and there’s an unholy glee in his eyes and a dreadful pride in his voice and Jack would be happy to never see that particular faint smile on his face again.

“Pleading,” and the word is drawn out and his breathing shifts again, the accent roughening and Jack’s blood is running cold. Then he takes in a ragged sobbing breath and his voice changes once more, cracking with pain and guilt. “And…and I didn’t care.” His voice breaks on the last word, and he’s clearly fighting not to break down. His gaze goes to Jack and there’s horror in his eyes and his voice.

“Something in me wants to kill!”

They sit, staring at each other over the green light.

“No,” Jack says flatly. “This is not you.” He reaches out and shuts the lie detector off, because it’s useless to them. He stands up, walking around the desk. “Something’s changed you. You’re not a murderer.” He squeezes Ianto’s shoulder, trying to show how firmly he believes his own words. “I’m certain of it.” He moves to the door, trying to think of their next move. Then he turns his head to look back at the other man as something occurs to him.

“Why tonight?”

“W..what?” Ianto says, voice shaking.

“Why did you tell me this tonight?” He moves back to stand in front of Ianto, forcing the next question out. “Did you think you were going to.. try and….” His voice fails him because he cannot, will not finish that question. They both know what he means though. Ianto stares up at him wide-eyed and Jack can almost see the cogs turning in his head as he tries to think clearly.

“N.. I…I don’t know. I just….” He blinks and now there’s something other than either horror or (thank god) delight in his voice:- there’s puzzlement and a Torchwood-bred note of caution. “I knew it had happened. Knew I wasn’t safe to… go out. I knew I could trust you to…” His eyes go bleak for a moment. Lisa and That Night are not mentioned now; but they are always there, hovering on the edges of whatever-this-is between them. They always will be. “To do what was necessary.”

Jack frowns, one thumb scratching down his jaw. Again, he doesn’t understand where the trust Ianto has in him comes from. What has he done to deserve it?

“But - we were together before I went on the weevil hunt. You were fine then - weren’t you?”

Ianto nods slowly, hesitantly. “Yes? I… I don’t….”

They look at each other again.

“What did you do, after I dropped you off?”

“We…” Ianto closes his eyes for a moment, then they snap open fast enough that Jack knows he’s seeing things he doesn’t like behind his eyelids. “Coffee,” Ianto says firmly. “I made coffee. Four coffees. Then…Owen and Tosh and I were in the conference room, talking about that weird box that came through. Tosh said it didn’t make sense, it’s made of wood but it’s got low level meson energy. She said….” He frowns, looks at Jack. “That box - you brought it in, didn’t you?”

Jack frowns, trying to think. “I… might have. I… I don’t know.”

“I thought you’d brought it in, but Tosh thought Adam brought it in from an excavation a few months ago. So… I said I’d look in my diary.” His breathing is changing again, becoming agitated and he’s starting to shift in the chair, sweat beading his face again. “I… went to get it, and….” He swallows hard, looks at Jack. “I don’t remember,” he whispers and there’s sudden fear in his eyes and Jack feels a flicker of it himself, because Ianto’s memory is one of the few reliable things about this whole place, this whole life.

“Why don’t I….?” Ianto remembers everything. He can, Jack knows with grim certainty, remember the expression on the face of the thing calling itself Lisa seconds before the rest of the team ended it all. Tosh might have deleted all trace of that night from the CCTV but Ianto is a more-than-passable artist and Jack saw the drawings, before Ianto burnt them.

“CCTV!”

“What, for the box?”

“No.” He beckons and Ianto joins him as they move from the office down to the Hub floor. “To find out what happened after you came back here tonight.” Half-way down the stairs, a question occurs to Jack and he stops and turns to look at Ianto.

“Why four coffees?”

“What?”

“You said you made four coffees? Why?” He’s not sure himself why that fact is crawling through his brain but there’s something…. important about it.

Ianto stares. “Owen, Tosh, me, Adam.”

“But - Adam was with me. On the weevil hunt.”

“He was here,” Ianto states. “I brought Gwen back to her place, then I told you about the weevil alert. You dropped me here and went off by yourself, remember?”

Jack blinks. Remember. Why does that word… But… that can’t be right… “No, Adam was with m.…” Yet… ‘I could come with you. It’s been a while since we went hunting together’. Ianto’s voice. And it has - they haven’t been ‘hunting’ together for a while, because Adam comes hunting with him now. So Adam must have come with him tonight. Yes, yes of course he did. Because after the Weevil got away, he started telling Adam about… about Grey. But…..he can remember driving the SUV up onto the edge of the Plass. He can remember Ianto slipping out of the car and crossing to the lift. Why can’t he remember Adam getting into the car? And why does ‘hunting’ seem to mean two different things depending on whether he’s thinking of Adam or Ianto?

Then another set of questions are suddenly there, as though part of his mind has just reviewed the last few minutes. Since when did he and Ianto have blazing rows? How does he know what Ianto sounds like when he’s turned on? How his voice changes as he gets close to coming? Why does he know he could list a dozen ways to turn Ianto on, and none of them would involve pain or violence at all; still less what Ianto has described? How does he know any of this? Gwen has Rhys, Adam has Tosh, Owen… well, Owen has no-one but that’s because he only has eyes for Tosh. When Jack wants sex, he goes to the clubs or the hookers or rent-boys. He knows he does, he can remember doing it. Remember. What Ianto does for sex he has no idea - hell, he’s not even sure if Ianto goes only for women or likes both - but he knows, he knows, it has never involved strangling innocent women to death.

They stand and look at each other for a moment; both aware that something is very, very wrong tonight. Jack turns and hurries down the stairs and then over to the CCTV monitoring system. If something is screwing with them all, if something messed with Ianto tonight, then there should be some sign on the CCTV; even if it’s by virtue of it having been wiped. If he can’t find anything, he’ll get Ianto to look - not even Tosh can wipe the CCTV well enough to hide the fact from Ianto - but something is telling him to look for himself first. He can also settle for his own peace of mind just when Adam left the Hub this evening. If the Hub cameras are entirely clean, then he’ll have to find out just when Ianto thinks he did… whatever he thinks he did (but he didn’t do it. That’ s not him) and study all the CCTV he can get his hands on for that time-frame. To get the proof that Ianto is… mistaken. Deep in the back of his mind, he knows that if it should turn out that something - alien or otherwise - has caused Ianto to actually do what he is claiming, then Jack will bury the evidence too deep to ever be found before deciding how he’s going to keep Ianto in his life - and keep others safe from him.

He starts with his own entry into the Hub and works backward from there, skimming back through the recording on high speed. Watches Ianto sit at his desk for hours on end, twitching and shaking intermittently. Watches him hiding his face in his hands, sobbing as he rocks backwards and forwards. Watches him grip the desk, turning his head and looking from one side to other, and even in the CCTV image Jack can tell his jaw is set and Jack does not want to know what was going through Ianto’s mind in those moments. Watches Ianto visibly struggle to stop himself from leaving the Hub. For six hours, alone.

Owen left just before midnight, walking out through the main door without spotting the figure huddled on the floor feet from the break area. Tosh and Adam left shortly before that. Adam caught Tosh up from her work station in a rush of laughter and arms wrapping about her before sweeping her out through the cog-door, neither of them seeming to notice Ianto.

Adam? When did Adam get back to the Hub? He frowns, trying to remember when he last saw the man. They were standing on the basket-ball court. He told Adam about Grey. Then.... then he walked away, took the SUV and the next thing he remembers, he was climbing the access stairs to one of his usual roofs. You're good on roofs ....Ianto's voice, with a teasing note in it. But where was Adam? Surely he wouldn't have left him to just walk back to the Hub? And why would Ianto say that to him?

Adam. He tracks Adam back. And finds his proof. Finds the images of Ianto, huddled on the Hub floor and sobbing. Adam holding Ianto, nothing of friendship or love in that mockery of an embrace. Adam forcing a kiss onto Ianto, Ianto pleading, Adam exultant. He goes further back….until he sees Adam appear out of nowhere, sitting next to Ianto on the sofa. He watches Ianto stumble away, sees Adam rise, then grab Ianto and shove him back into the wall. Watches, and listens.

Remember. He calls up any and every image of Adam, from tonight and earlier. Tosh, Gwen, himself - and Adam. Adam smiling and touching and that word - remember, remember, remember, remember, remember. And now he thinks back to earlier tonight. Coming back up from the sewers and Adam being there and… remember.

He turns from the screens. Ianto is slumped at the foot of the stairs they came down, his gaze fixed on Jack as though Jack is his lifeline. He looks exhausted. Jack crosses to him.

“Here,” he says, taking his arm and starting to pull him to his feet.

“No,” Ianto tries to pull away. There’s a note of pleading in his voice, as though he dreads whatever he thinks Jack is about to show him.

“Come here,” Jack says gently. He pulls Ianto with him, ignoring the reluctance in every line of Ianto’s body. “Come here, just look.” He stands behind him, supporting him and points over Ianto’s shoulder to the screen that shows Adam’s attack on Ianto. “Look!”

They both watch as on the screen Adam has one hand on Ianto’s head, the ugly words pouring from him as Ianto screams and tries to resist. Jack keeps one hand on Ianto’s arm, the other running up and down his shoulder, trying to ground him, to reassure him.

When they have seen it all, Jack turns Ianto to face him and wraps him in an embrace. The whole of Ianto’s body shudders, his hands fisting in Jack’s shirt and Jack can feel hot tears against his neck. He’s shaking as well, shock and anger and disgust coursing through him. Adam violated Ianto’s mind not his body, but the only word that fits is ‘rape’ and Jack wonders how he can recover from this; how they can defeat Adam.

Even now, Jack’s memories are telling him that Adam is his confidante, his closest friend. The one he trusts above all others, the one he always turns to. And yet those memories are splitting, tearing and fragmenting under the horror of what he’s just seen. Other memories are emerging. Memories of Ianto. In his life, in his bed. In his heart. Memories that are suffused with the warmth that is missing from the memories of Adam. Memories…. Memories. That’s the key.

“We’re going to fix this,” he whispers into Ianto’s ear. “I promise.” He waits until Ianto nods and straightens in his arms, then gently puts the other man a little way from him. Ianto, still shaking, starts to fumble at his shirt pocket. Jack gently bats his hand away and pulls the handkerchief out himself. Ianto takes it, wiping sweat and tears from his face as Jack then dips into his own trouser pocket and pulls out the packet of tissues to hand one over. Ianto deals with any number of deeply unpleasant things in his job as their clean-up specialist without batting an eyelid, yet it’s touching used handkerchiefs that makes him heave. Go figure.

“We need proof,” Jack says, watching Ianto start to rebuild his surface calm. “We need to separate him from the others, if need be, while we find it.”

“We need to figure out how long he’s been here,” Ianto says, and Jack can tell he is forcing himself to sound calm.

“We need to get rid of him. Permanently,” Jack says. “Now, if he plants himself in our memories, tampers with them in order to exist….”

“Then getting him out of our memories should get rid of him.”

Jack grins. “Clever and gorgeous,” he says, and gently pulls Ianto’s head down to press a kiss to his forehead. Ianto catches his breath and then his own hands come up to cup Jack’s face and suddenly they are kissing and for a moment all they are aware of is each other.
Eventually, Ianto draws back for air and they stare at each other for a long moment. They both know that, despite no memory of a previous time, this is not their first kiss.

He forces out a shaky smile. “Alright. Duty calls.”

They trawl through the CCTV first. Two days. That’s all he’s been here for. They watch as Tosh’s station flashes up the Rift alert in the early hours of Sunday morning. And now they can both remember what happened.

Continued in Chapter 2: https://criccieth.livejournal.com/19620.html