Fic - Remarkable (Part Three)

[snowwhiteliar]

Title: Remarkable
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Lisa, Tosh, Gwen, Owen, Jack's fairy godfather
Rating: R
Summary: Once upon a time, in a small village in a distant province of a peaceful kingdom, there lived a boy called Ianto...

A/N: For tw-bigbang Part One || Part Two

Ianto ran south until there were no leaves on the trees and the ground was cold at night, stopping to hunt with Toshiko and sleep only when he knew he could go no further, carrying​ Toshiko by the scruff of her neck when she couldn’t keep up, and only coming to a full halt when he reached the wide, open sea, with no way forward in sight.

He put Toshiko down gently, and told her, “Thank you. I think I have to leave you here.”

She stretched up to touch noses with him, and told him, “You know what to do. I’ll see you again soon.”

Ianto closed his eyes and became a man again, still dressed in his old sheepskin clothes. He waded forward into the water, and called aloud, “Creature of the sea, I have need of your skin.”

“And a right prat you look, too,” Owen called, surfacing a few feet further in, as a black cloud plumed under the water and vanished in the waves. “What do you want, shepherd boy?”

“I need the fastest animal in the sea,” Ianto told him. “One that can keep going for days.”

Owen snorted, blowing a spray of water at him. “Killer whales. Wolves of the sea. Bastards, the lot of them. One of them tried to eat me the other day.”

“Perfect,” Ianto said with a smile, and waded out chest deep, shivering in the cold water.

Owen gave him a vivid description of a killer whale and dragged him out to much deeper water when he explained what he was doing.

“Try not to drown,” he recommended, swimming off to a safe distance and leaving Ianto spluttering and struggling to stay afloat as the waves pushed him about. “Jack’d have my balls if I got you killed.”

Ianto gasped a breath and went under, and closed his eyes and concentrated.

Owen waited for a few moments, then ducked under to look for him, worried though he would never admit it. He saw a dark shape rising rapidly through the water, and shot out of the way as a killer whale soared up out of the water and cut back in with a splash.

“I think I’ve got the hang of this,” Ianto told him, with a laugh, and Owen snorted.

“Yeah? Try saying that when you’re out in the deep in the middle of a storm. You have no idea how to handle the currents.”

“Then teach me,” Ianto told him.

Owen didn’t have a snappy comeback for that, and with a flick of his flippers that was the seal equivalent of a shrug, he started showing Ianto how to swim properly.

They swam south through the winter, following the deep currents and diverting through giant shoals to feed, Ianto protecting Owen from hungry sharks and other killer whales who decided to try and catch him, and even letting Owen hold on to his dorsal fin with his teeth and take a ride, speeding through the water much faster than Owen could manage, whisking him out of danger and racing south until they reached a new shore.

Ianto left Owen in the deep water, with a cry of thanks, and surged forward until he felt sand under him. Concentrating, he found his old form again and was washed up on the shore in the next wave, coughing and spluttering as he remembered how to use his arms and legs, and crawled out of the reach of the next wave. He picked himself up and crossed the beach, struggling up the barren dunes ahead of him to survey the land ahead.

More dunes rolled on ahead of him, the desert stretching off as far as he could see, with mountains of sand and distant towers of bare red rock, and he squinted for a few moments, shielding his eyes with one hand from the midday sun. That worried him. By his calculations it was still spring, but the heat in this place was the worst he’d ever felt, even at the height of a dry, fire-plagued summer.
​
He squinted up above him at the cloudless sky, remembering how the valleys back home had always been so much warmer than the mountain peaks, and cried, “Creature of the sky, I have need of your wings,” before his throat got too dry to say it.

He slumped down to sit at the top of the dune, panting for breath, his clothes already dry, coated with a fine layer of white salt from the sea. After a few moments, a shadow appeared on the sand in front of him, and when he looked up he saw Gwen descending rapidly towards him, the winds pulling apart what was left of a clump of black smoke. She tried to land on the sand but was caught by surprise by its heat, and Ianto hurried to pick her up, wincing at the burn of her black feathers.

“It’s a lot cooler up there,” she gasped. “What do you need?”

“I need a bird that can fly south for the longest time without stopping,” Ianto told her. “And quickly, I’m roasting out here.”

“With those thermals,” Gwen panted, “you just need a predator with wingspan and you can glide forever. I saw some when I was coming down. They’re circling over beyond the next dune. I think they were going down to eat something.”

Ianto glanced up at the sun, then told her, “You get back up there and cool down. I’ll need you again once I’ve had a look at these birds of yours.”

He gave her a boost to help her back into the air, and took a look at the dune he was on. It was a fearfully long way down, but he decided speed was his best bet right now, and dropped and rolled.

He came to a stop in a shower of sand at the bottom of the next dune, and scrambled to all fours to climb up, slipping and sliding the whole way. Finally cresting the dune, scratched and grazed and out of breath, he lay flat as he saw before him some kind of deer, dead, surrounded by an ever-growing horde of giant winged monsters, ripping into the flesh with hooked beaks and talons. They squabbled and fought amongst themselves, screeching and croaking and crying, and when one came in over his head and landed closer to him, he realised their wingspan was wider than he was tall, by half his height again.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Gwen said nearby, “Have you seen what you need?”

“Yes,” Ianto gulped, turning his head to see Gwen a little way behind him, shifting from foot to foot in the hot sand. “I think that’s enough. Can you teach me how to fly?”

As she started to ask what he meant, he closed his eyes and concentrated, and elicited a shriek from her as he became one of the monstrous scavenger birds.

Gwen got him up into the air and heading south, teaching him to use the currents of heat rising from the desert to give him lift, and soar from one to another with hardly any effort, all day long. It was far harder work for her, her wings being smaller and unused to the different strains of gliding, so at times she rested on his back, a surprising weight and impediment while flying. At night the thermals didn’t last long, and Ianto was forced to land and either carry on by foot through the shifting, exhausting sand, or find a carcass and let his hideous form eat and drink and sleep for the night. Gwen was hunted by almost every animal they encountered on the ground, and while sometimes it was enough for Ianto to shield her with his wings and fluff his feathers and shriek until their attacker left, sometimes he had to change forms entirely, launching himself as a wolf to fight off a pack of strange, cackling creatures one night, and splitting the darkness with a bear’s thundering roar when a group of tiny, big-eared foxes took an interest in them a few days later.

Spring turned to summer as they made slow, painful progress through the land where everything wanted to kill them, and Ianto, counting the days, realised it was already a couple of days past midsummer when they finally came to one twisted red tower of stone that hurt the eyes to behold.

Ianto circled for a little while, forcing himself to look at it, though it made him feel ill to see it springing up from the sand, out by itself in front of a shorter cliff. He spotted a dark shadow at the base, an entrance, and called to Gwen, “This is it. You can leave me here. I’ll go in​ alone. Thank you.”

“Good luck,” Gwen called back, and turned away as he dropped out of the thermal and started to descend.

He landed a short walk from the tower entrance, and turned human again as the sun’s heat started to push down on him. He trudged through the sand, looking up at the tower and fighting through the powerful urge to turn and run. Some ten feet from the entrance he stopped, and went down on one knee, putting a hand on the ground in front of him.

“I don’t know if this will work,” he said quietly, “but I could use the company right now, so, creature of the earth, I have need of your paws.”

He waited for a few moments, breathing heavily in the heat, and turned his head at a flicker in the corner of his eye, an explosion of shadowy smoke.

Toshiko leapt into his arms as he stood, and he hugged her close and stepped into the shadow of the entrance, into sudden cool darkness.

“Do you know what day it is?” Toshiko asked, and he nodded.

“I’ll stay human unless I have no choice. I don’t want to get stuck. I’m glad you’re here, though.”

“You shouldn’t have called me,” Toshiko said quietly, rubbing her head under his chin. “She’ll know you’re here, now. It’s her curse, she’ll have sensed it working.”

“That’s alright,” Ianto told her. “I never planned to sneak up on her. I’d rather have your company than a surprise attack which wouldn’t do me any good.”

“Don’t pity her,” Toshiko warned him, as he started up the flight of uneven stairs circling the inside of the tower. “Don’t underestimate her. Don’t believe her. Don’t think you can bargain with her.”

She yelped, as black shadows appeared around her, and told him quickly, “She summons me. You can save us, Ianto, please -”

She vanished right out of his arms, and he stood for a moment on the stairs, steeling himself to go on. He looked up the centre of the tower, to the distant speck of light at the top, and narrowed his eyes.

“You think that’ll stop me? You think taking my friends will scare me away? Try harder.”

He took off up the stairs at a run, and was halfway up when a wall of fire burst into being on the step above. He recoiled, throwing his arms up to protect his face, feet slipping from under him at such a sharp turn, and tumbled down ten steps and nearly went over the side and down the centre of the tower before he caught the edge of a step above him and skidded to a halt. He managed to haul himself back up, panting, and had to take a moment to catch his breath.

“Not good enough,” he called, starting back up the steps, and the fire came rushing down towards him.

He yanked his old, battered sheepskin jacket up over his head and ran and leapt up as the fire swept over him. He kept running, pulling the jacket off and using it to squash out the flickers of fire on his shirt sleeves and trousers.

Halfway up the remaining distance, slowed to a steady climb, he found a door in the wall. It was half open, leaning in to a vast room filled with gold and jewels. He stopped, and stared for a second, then looked up at the last stretch of circling stairs.

“Money? You think I would leave them for money? You don’t know the first thing about me, do you?”
​
​He went to grab the door and slam it shut, and nearly fell when the whole room vanished and left just a gaping hole in the wall where the door had been.

“Not good enough!” he shouted, pulling back and starting up the stairs again, and was almost at the top, out of breath and focusing on the next step in front of him when he came to a glass wall, and looked up.

There was a figure on the other side, who stepped forward and pressed a hand to the glass as he stood frozen, staring.

“Ianto,” Lisa said quietly, despairingly, “help me. Take me away from here. Save me.”

Ianto stepped up to the wall, raising his hand, his fingers inches from hers, not quite daring to touch the glass.

“Please, Ianto,” Lisa begged him. “You can pull me through. Take me home. I’ve waited so long for you.”

“I love you,” Ianto said quietly. “I’ll always love you. I’m so sorry, I failed you, and there’s nothing I can do about it now. Someone I trust told me there’s no way to bring back the dead, no power on Earth that can save you. I wish it was different. I really do. But I can’t help you.” He took a deep breath, and kept his eyes on hers as he told her quietly, “I can help Jack. I’m sorry.”

He stepped back and braced himself against the wall, and kicked the glass. Cracks shot through it, and Lisa screamed and begged him to stop, but he kicked again, and the wall came raining down in huge splinters and shards of glass, and Ianto turned away and shielded his face until all was silent again.

When he looked up again there was no sign of Lisa, and he closed his eyes for a second, then took a deep breath and went up the last few steps, through the hole in the ceiling into the top of the tower, a wide, circular room hewn straight from the rock, like the rest, with a ceiling so high it vanished into shadows. On the other side of the room from the stairs, he saw his wolf, frozen on three legs, and Toshiko, Gwen and Owen, flat on the ground and trembling before the shadows at the back of the room.

“Jack?” he called, but the wolf didn’t turn. He broke into a run, unable to help himself after a year of searching.

“Ianto, no!” Toshiko cried, and a chain lashed out of the shadows and slammed over the three of them, pinning them to the floor.

Ianto skidded to a halt and ducked as more chains spun from the darkness, whipping through the air where his head had been, smashing into the stone in front of him. He dropped to one knee as the chains were dragged back, and snarled, “Not good enough. Let them go, all of them.”

A laugh rumbled out of the shadows, and Ianto got up again, walking forward while she cackled. As he got nearer, he realised why Jack wasn’t moving. He was encased in stone, his hind legs sunk to the ankle in the floor, and head to tail trapped in rock.

“Jack, no,” he groaned, hurrying over, and the floor lurched beneath him, knocking him off his feet before he even got close.

“Let him go!” he yelled, turning to face the shadows. “You’ve hurt him enough!”

“You should have run, little boy,” he was told, in a hiss. “Should have taken the gold. Should have feared the flames, should have stayed loyal to the woman you loved.”

“None of that was real,” Ianto said flatly. “I’m here for Jack. For my friends. This has gone on long enough. Let them go.”

“Perhaps it’s time you truly joined them,” came the hiss, and chains leapt from the floor and​ bound his arms and legs, slamming him to the ground and lashing across his chest and neck until he could hardly breathe, never mind struggle.

“And what shall you be? Something on your level. Insignificant. Worthless. Perhaps a frog. A slimy little frog, to be eaten by the first thing that finds you.”

“Not if I get there first,” Ianto muttered, and closed his eyes. In an instant he was a desert fox like the ones that had tried to eat Gwen, small enough to slip from the chains. He bounded into the shadows and changed mid-step, leaping as a wolf and knocking an old woman from her throne. He didn’t hesitate, remembering Toshiko bidding him not to pity her. Before she could thrust him away with her magic he clamped his jaws on her throat and ripped her apart.

He stood panting there for a moment, then turned, and dashed over to Toshiko and the others, grabbing their chain in his jaws and hauling it up so they could squirm free.

“It’ll take all of us to get Jack out, I think,” he told them.

“Turn back before you get stuck,” Toshiko warned him, and he shuddered and closed his eyes.

There was a strange rustling behind him, and he opened human eyes and turned, standing, as a terrible, three-headed beast rose up from the body of Jack’s mother and let out a piercing shriek.

Ianto went wolf again in an instant, and ran to attack. He leapt, snarling, and one of the heads of the demon knocked him straight down out of the air. The other two came lancing in, jagged teeth snapping at him as he twisted and dodged, flicking from form to form as he tried to avoid the bites and strike back at the same time.

With a shriek, two of the heads pulled away, and he scrambled out from under the monster to find Gwen fluttering around one head, pecking and scratching, and Toshiko grimly holding on to the long neck of another, teeth sunk into its flesh, growling, and even Owen down at its feet, determinedly chewing through the back of one leg.

Ianto yelled aloud in triumph and dove back in as the wolf, biting and scrabbling and ripping at the monster’s body, until it swung its unencumbered middle head and hit him so hard that when he hit the floor again he skidded on his back right to the other end of the room and tumbled down the stairs, landing with a crash in the pile of glass.

Agony shot through his side, and when he tried to get his paws under him he only cut his legs on glass, so he turned human to grab the stair above. He pulled himself free, and looked down at his side. There were six inches of glass spike sticking out of his shirt, in the middle of a rapidly spreading red stain.

For a moment, Ianto struggled to breathe, and then he heard Toshiko yelp in pain above him, and he seized three of the longest glass shards and forced himself to his feet and back up to the battle.

Owen had been knocked to the wall, and was struggling back into the fight, and Toshiko was frantically dodging the three heads, bleeding from scratches down her side and visibly tiring, while Gwen harried the heads as best she could, her talons making little impression.

Ianto pushed himself into a run, and one of the heads noticed him and came down towards him, mouth open, snarling. He thrust out one hand, glass shard gripped tight, and slammed it into the roof of the creature’s mouth, letting it bite down and do the rest itself. Its teeth ripped his arm, but only for a moment, then it opened its mouth wide and thrashed, shrieking, trying to dislodge the glass spike. The other heads left off attacking Toshiko and went for him instead, and he was ready for them with a spike in each hand. One of the heads died instantly, biting too hard and too slow as he jerked his hand out between the gaps in its ragged teeth. Gwen whisked a wing through the other’s mouth as it reared back, making it snap shut instinctively, killing itself in a moment.

​ The third head twisted around and hissed and struggled, knocking Toshiko aside when she tried to leap onto its neck and force it down. The body started to crumple, legs collapsing on the side with no heads, and it stumbled closer to Ianto, with a scream. He put out a hand to its chest, and felt the giant heart thundering.

“For Jack,” he murmured, and pulled the spike from his side and drove it through the demon’s heart.

The creature screamed and slumped down, thrashing wildly, and he stumbled back ten steps and stared as it finally lay still.

The stone around the wolf cracked, and with a howl the wolf tore free, and fell to the ground as a man again, naked as Ianto had last seen him. Toshiko, Gwen and Owen all cried out and convulsed, and then they too were human, and Ianto smiled at Jack as he picked himself up and started forward.

Jack broke into a run when Ianto’s legs gave way under him, and caught him as he fell, dropping to his knees and pulling Ianto into his lap.

“He’s hurt,” he told the others, and Owen hurried over, pulling his silk shirt off and kneeling to press it hard against Ianto’s side.

Ianto gripped Jack’s arm and smiled up at him, gasping, “Good to see you.”

“Took you long enough,” Jack told him, with a smile that faded when he glanced at Owen, and Owen slowly shook his head.

He looked back down at Ianto with tears in his eyes, and Ianto squeezed his arm.

“Hey. Didn’t do so bad, huh? Think you’ll all be fine now.”

Toshiko came to kneel beside Owen, reaching out to stroke his hair, murmuring, “Thank you, Ianto. Thank you.”

Gwen echoed that, kneeling on Owen’s other side, putting a hand on his leg that he couldn’t feel.

Ianto managed a smile for them, then looked up at Jack.

“I love you,” he said at last, and Jack’s tears spilled over.

“Don’t leave me. Ianto, don’t, please. Don’t go.”

“Sorry,” Ianto sighed, and Jack put a hand on his cheek, thumb stroking his skin. Ianto couldn’t feel it.

“Jack,” Gwen said desperately. “Tell him how you feel before it’s too late.”

“I’ll tell him when he’s well again,” Jack snapped, and Ianto mustered a smile.

“’salright. Love you. I don’t need...”

Jack looked down at him in silence for a moment, then Toshiko gasped a sob and buried her face in Owen’s shoulder, and Jack pulled Ianto’s limp body closer, wrapping his arms around him, repeating under his breath, “No. No. You can’t do this to me. You can’t. Please.”

He hugged Ianto to him, hiding his face in Ianto’s arm, rocking a little as the tears turned into a flood.

With a grating scrape, a chunk of the ceiling fell free and plummeted to the floor, shattering on impact.

“There’s no magic holding this place up anymore,” Owen said, getting to his feet and pulling​ Toshiko up with him. “We have to get out, now. The whole tower could come down at any minute.”

“How can you be so heartless?” Gwen asked him, gesturing at Jack. “Ianto just -”

“Ianto just saved our lives,” Owen snapped. “You think he’d want us to sit and cry over him and wait to get crushed when this place collapses? Come on.”

He gave Gwen a hand up, as another couple of stones fell down and an unpleasant grinding noise started to get louder.

“Jack,” he said sharply, but Jack shook his head.

“You go. I’m not leaving him.”

Owen tried to grab his arm, but Jack shook him off with a snarl.

“I’ll be fine. I can’t die, remember? I wish I could.”

“Ianto broke the curse,” Gwen pointed out. “Jack, come on.”

“That was never part of my curse,” Jack told them impatiently. “That was my godfather interfering. This one I’m stuck with.”

“Your godfather made you immortal?” Toshiko said breathlessly. “That was him? He made Ianto drink three potions, Jack. He said one was a little bit of yours. He said he had to be sure Ianto wouldn’t back out.”

Jack raised his head and stared at her.

Half the wall of the room disintegrated and tumbled out, ripping a vast hole and flooding the place with sunlight. And Ianto gasped in a breath and clutched at Jack’s arm.

Jack clenched his fist on Ianto’s shirt, and choked out, “I love you.”

Ianto gave him a dazed smile, and then Jack kissed him breathless while Tosh and Gwen hugged Owen, laughing and crying at the same time.

When they broke apart, Ianto looked at the crumbling room as a chunk of the remaining ceiling fell near the stairs, and said, “I think we should probably go now.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Owen grumbled, ushering Gwen and Toshiko towards the stairs, but he shot Ianto a smile as Jack helped him to his feet.

They hurried down the crumbling stairs, Owen supporting Tosh when the scratches in her side started to cause her trouble, Jack hanging on to Ianto’s hand so tight it hurt, and raced out of the shadowy entrance and into the desert moments before the tower collapsed with a roar, in a vast cloud of dust and sand.

Coughing and spluttering, they found each other as the dust settled, and looked around. The sun was low in the sky, just starting to turn red, and there was nothing but sand for miles in any direction other than the looming cliff.

Jack hauled Ianto to him and kissed him deeply again, and when he let go Ianto told him breathlessly, “I’m so sorry.”

Jack looked confused, so he elaborated.

“This last year, everything you went through. It was all my fault. If I hadn’t seen you -”

Jack shook his head. “That was my fault. I knocked the blindfold down. I never blamed you for a second. And if you hadn’t seen me you’d never have saved us all.”

​ “I killed your mother,” Ianto pointed out, but Jack shook his head again.

“She died when she sold her soul to a demon. Ianto, you’ve nothing to apologise for. I’m happy to tell you that every day for the rest of your life, if you’ll let me.”

He kissed Ianto again, and Ianto clung to him, trying to make up for a year’s worth of lost kisses in one go.

“Is he properly immortal now, too?” Gwen asked Toshiko quietly, and Toshiko bit her lip.

“Jack’s godfather said something about limits. And then I think he said until Ianto has a child.”

Gwen raised her eyebrows and exchanged a glance with Owen, then looked at the two men locked in embrace in front of them.

“Do you think Jack’s godfather has the slightest idea how humans work?”

“More importantly,” Owen said loudly, loud enough to make Jack and Ianto stop for a moment, “how the hell are we going to get home? And you need some clothes, mate.”

Jack grinned, and told him, “I think I can sort that. Follow me.”

He led them up to the cliff face, and as the sun started to drop below the horizon, he called, “We could use a shortcut right now.”

A small part of the cliff swung open, and Jack’s godfather, leaning on the doorframe, arms folded, with his workshop in clear view behind him, said huffily, “The correct phrase, if you recall, is ‘Creature of magic, I have need of your gifts.’ And a please and thank you wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Please,” Jack said, with a broad grin, and his godfather broke into a smile and held out his arms.

“Oh, get over here. It’s wonderful to see you yourself again.”

Jack laughed and hugged him, and led the way into the workshop. His godfather patted the others on the shoulder as they went past, with a warning wag of his finger at Toshiko.

“No biting today, thank you.”

She ducked her head and went in to sit and let Owen borrow some of the potions and poultices around for her injuries, and then Ianto finally stepped to the door. Jack’s godfather regarded him for a moment, then held out his hand.

“Well done.”

“Thank you,” Ianto said quietly, and shook hands.

“My coat!” Jack yelled from the other side of the workshop. “I knew I’d left it somewhere. Ianto, what do you think?”

Jack’s godfather gave him a grin, and Ianto smiled and went to compliment Jack on how he looked in blue.

Jack’s godfather slammed the door behind them and set about finding a new destination. They detoured briefly to reunite Gwen with her overjoyed husband, and then he opened the door again and they stepped out to Jack’s palace.

Jack, bedecked in his grand long coat, slung an arm around Ianto’s shoulders, and proudly invited their friends to come and live with them, if they so desired. They chorused approval and embraced, and went to sort out rooms and dinner, and Jack sank into Ianto’s arms and kissed his remarkable man like they had all the time in the world.
​
And so they did.