Yesterday Is But Today's Memory - 5/19+Interlude
Title: Yesterday Is But Today's Memory
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R
Disclaimer: If I was the one who owned Torchwood, you think I'd admit it now?
Spoilers: Takes place post 2x05 'Adam', but mentions briefly minor info from later s2 eps. AU
Summary: It wasn’t the lost days that were really giving Ianto Jones nightmares. It was the fact that ever since, he’d suddenly been having flashes from another period of his life he’d thought was lost forever - his first ten years.
Warning: Some chapters of this fic will contain material some may find offensive. To go into more detail would be spoilery for the plot, but DO NOT READ if you are easily offended.
Thanks to: My wonderful betas morbid_sparks, cazmalfoy and angelzbabe1989, who talked me into writing this, then held my hand while I worked through the plot and filled all its holes.
Previous chapters at master list
Chapter Five
Ianto’s visions - for they were too long now to accurately be called flashes - grew steadily more detailed and vivid over the next days.
Any hope Ianto had of the creatures’ invasion into his flashes being a construct only of his own mind was abandoned as he remembered more. Remembered how they looked, the piercing noise they made as they attacked.
Remembered things that had definitely never been seen or recorded in the Torchwood archives.
The visions of the darkness were back and, more than ever, he knew with absolute certainty that he had been kept there for a long time. Years, he thought, although of this he could not be sure. He remembered now that on top of the darkness and the loneliness, there had often been excruciating physical pain.
He didn’t remember quite what had caused the pain, but the more he did recollect, the more he was sure that he didn’t want to remember what tortures he had been subjected to all those years before.
Or possibly after, technically.
As the visions gained increasing clarity in his mind, and he had rid himself of the comforting pretence that it was all in his head, he realised that with the presence of the Rift, he could have started off more than just anywhere. He could have been any when too.
Pulled out of time and space and dropped in Cardiff, like so many of the artefacts and creatures it was now his job to recover. Not quite like the unfortunate victims Jack took out to Flat Holm but, he felt, closer to them in some ways than he was to anyone else in Cardiff. It was remarkable, really, that he’d come away so relatively unscathed.
Memory loss notwithstanding.
There was an entire universe out there, and it shook Ianto to realise that he had no idea where in it he had started out in life. Given his appearance and biology, he assumed that wherever and whenever it was, it had been a human settlement, but it was small comfort.
Jack was doing what he could. He was there to hold Ianto through his recurring nightmares; he listened patiently as Ianto puzzled through what the visions were showing him; he did his best to assure Ianto that there were worse things than being born in another time and place.
“I was born three millennia and hundreds of millions of miles from here,” Jack whispered to Ianto the first time he confessed how terrifying the idea was to him, “and it doesn’t seem to have done me any real harm so far.”
“It’s all very well for you, though,” Ianto retorted. “You may not have been born here, but at least you know where you were born.” He sighed. “It’s not so much that I was probably born in another time period at minimum, but that I was born somewhere or sometime else and I don’t have any real clues about where that was.”
Jack held him closer and stroked his fingers through Ianto’s hair. “I wish there was something I could do to help. I wish I had the answers for you.”
“I’m not sure if I truly want to know, though,” Ianto confessed. “I don’t know what I’d do if I somehow found out that I have biological parents out there, in the future or whenever, who are still looking for their lost child. Parents I don’t even remember. I don’t even remember how old I was when I was taken from them.”
He blinked back unwelcome tears. “I don’t know why that suddenly bothers me so much. I’ve never been bothered about not remembering my biological parents before. Or about them having lost me. Why is it hitting me so hard now?”
“Well, until now you’ve believed you were abused and abandoned,” Jack reasoned, resting his cheek on the top of Ianto’s head. “You’ve only just discovered that you were taken from your parents instead. It’s understandable that you’d be a bit confused.”
“I wish I’d never started having these flashes,” Ianto said, letting himself lean against Jack. “Everything has become so much more complicated. I don’t even feel like I know who I am anymore.”
Jack pulled Ianto’s head back gently and met his eyes. “No matter who you were born, or where, or when, you’re still Ianto Jones. My Ianto. You always will be.”
The sincerity in Jack’s gaze helped Ianto centre himself a little, and he surrendered to Jack’s warm kiss, pushing all his troubling thoughts to the side for the moment and concentrating on Jack.
Ianto startled awake a few hours later, wrapped in Jack’s arms. He shifted slightly, and Jack immediately woke from his doze, turning Ianto to him with a concerned look on his face. “Okay? Nightmare again?”
Ianto shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “Not… not exactly. I was in the darkness at first, but then, I wasn’t, and the creatures were there but they weren’t attacking, and…” He sighed, and his confused gaze found Jack’s. “Then I saw John Hart.”
Chapter Six
Comments and concrit welcomed - comments are love!! &hearts
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R
Disclaimer: If I was the one who owned Torchwood, you think I'd admit it now?
Spoilers: Takes place post 2x05 'Adam', but mentions briefly minor info from later s2 eps. AU
Summary: It wasn’t the lost days that were really giving Ianto Jones nightmares. It was the fact that ever since, he’d suddenly been having flashes from another period of his life he’d thought was lost forever - his first ten years.
Warning: Some chapters of this fic will contain material some may find offensive. To go into more detail would be spoilery for the plot, but DO NOT READ if you are easily offended.
Thanks to: My wonderful betas morbid_sparks, cazmalfoy and angelzbabe1989, who talked me into writing this, then held my hand while I worked through the plot and filled all its holes.
Previous chapters at master list
Chapter Five
Ianto’s visions - for they were too long now to accurately be called flashes - grew steadily more detailed and vivid over the next days.
Any hope Ianto had of the creatures’ invasion into his flashes being a construct only of his own mind was abandoned as he remembered more. Remembered how they looked, the piercing noise they made as they attacked.
Remembered things that had definitely never been seen or recorded in the Torchwood archives.
The visions of the darkness were back and, more than ever, he knew with absolute certainty that he had been kept there for a long time. Years, he thought, although of this he could not be sure. He remembered now that on top of the darkness and the loneliness, there had often been excruciating physical pain.
He didn’t remember quite what had caused the pain, but the more he did recollect, the more he was sure that he didn’t want to remember what tortures he had been subjected to all those years before.
Or possibly after, technically.
As the visions gained increasing clarity in his mind, and he had rid himself of the comforting pretence that it was all in his head, he realised that with the presence of the Rift, he could have started off more than just anywhere. He could have been any when too.
Pulled out of time and space and dropped in Cardiff, like so many of the artefacts and creatures it was now his job to recover. Not quite like the unfortunate victims Jack took out to Flat Holm but, he felt, closer to them in some ways than he was to anyone else in Cardiff. It was remarkable, really, that he’d come away so relatively unscathed.
Memory loss notwithstanding.
There was an entire universe out there, and it shook Ianto to realise that he had no idea where in it he had started out in life. Given his appearance and biology, he assumed that wherever and whenever it was, it had been a human settlement, but it was small comfort.
Jack was doing what he could. He was there to hold Ianto through his recurring nightmares; he listened patiently as Ianto puzzled through what the visions were showing him; he did his best to assure Ianto that there were worse things than being born in another time and place.
“I was born three millennia and hundreds of millions of miles from here,” Jack whispered to Ianto the first time he confessed how terrifying the idea was to him, “and it doesn’t seem to have done me any real harm so far.”
“It’s all very well for you, though,” Ianto retorted. “You may not have been born here, but at least you know where you were born.” He sighed. “It’s not so much that I was probably born in another time period at minimum, but that I was born somewhere or sometime else and I don’t have any real clues about where that was.”
Jack held him closer and stroked his fingers through Ianto’s hair. “I wish there was something I could do to help. I wish I had the answers for you.”
“I’m not sure if I truly want to know, though,” Ianto confessed. “I don’t know what I’d do if I somehow found out that I have biological parents out there, in the future or whenever, who are still looking for their lost child. Parents I don’t even remember. I don’t even remember how old I was when I was taken from them.”
He blinked back unwelcome tears. “I don’t know why that suddenly bothers me so much. I’ve never been bothered about not remembering my biological parents before. Or about them having lost me. Why is it hitting me so hard now?”
“Well, until now you’ve believed you were abused and abandoned,” Jack reasoned, resting his cheek on the top of Ianto’s head. “You’ve only just discovered that you were taken from your parents instead. It’s understandable that you’d be a bit confused.”
“I wish I’d never started having these flashes,” Ianto said, letting himself lean against Jack. “Everything has become so much more complicated. I don’t even feel like I know who I am anymore.”
Jack pulled Ianto’s head back gently and met his eyes. “No matter who you were born, or where, or when, you’re still Ianto Jones. My Ianto. You always will be.”
The sincerity in Jack’s gaze helped Ianto centre himself a little, and he surrendered to Jack’s warm kiss, pushing all his troubling thoughts to the side for the moment and concentrating on Jack.
Ianto startled awake a few hours later, wrapped in Jack’s arms. He shifted slightly, and Jack immediately woke from his doze, turning Ianto to him with a concerned look on his face. “Okay? Nightmare again?”
Ianto shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. “Not… not exactly. I was in the darkness at first, but then, I wasn’t, and the creatures were there but they weren’t attacking, and…” He sighed, and his confused gaze found Jack’s. “Then I saw John Hart.”
Chapter Six
Comments and concrit welcomed - comments are love!! &hearts