Fic update!
A/N: This was written on the wing, in an attempt to shift whatever is making me crazy at the moment. Much darker than my usual stuff, this doesn't belong to any of the main AUs. Not sure where it came from and I'm a little unsettled by it! Un-beta'd, and I'll probably hate it when I re-read it tomorrow!
Title: COME AWAY
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OCs
Spoilers: For SmallWorlds, Series One and From Out of The Rain, Series 2.
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to RTD and to the BBC
Warnings: Bitter angst.
Rating: Mild PG for slight inference of M/M sex.
Summary: Ianto has reason to understand Jack's reactions after Jasmine.
He stands to one side and watches as Jack sits at his desk, grief and defeat making his shoulders slump, bitterness clouding his eyes. The others have long since gone, and it is just the two of them, as it so often is.
Part of him wants to be glad, wants to take vindictive pleasure in the pain jack Harkness is feeling. He wants Jack to look up and see him smile before he turns his back on him and leaves him alone, just as the others have. He wants to. He wants to so much that he can taste it on his tongue, like vinegar soured by the sun. Some small petty part of his soul strains at the leash and bares teeth glittering with venom, eager to taste and bite and worry away at another's anguish. He muzzles the beast and swallows the sourness. He has no right to judge. He lost that right thirteen years ago, in a wood filled with moonlight.
"Do you love me, Ianto Jones?" Eyes that seem to reflect the moonlight gaze at him mischievously as she slides around the tree trunks and peers at him through arches of bramble and wild dog rose. "Do you truly love me?"
He's bewitched, held in thrall by her beauty and the music of her voice. "Of course I love you," he says with all the confidence a thirteen year old boy can muster.
"Do you love me more than you love your sister? Do you love me more than Eleri?"
He blinks and then laughs at the sheer foolishness of the question. As if his sister, awkward, shy Eleri with her tiresome curiosity and talent for barging in on him when he's reading, can compare with this bewitching creature.
"Do you love me more than her?"
"Of course I do," he avers, then shivers without understanding why when she laughs, the music suddenly edging towards dissonance.
"Bring her to the woods, Ianto Jones. Bring her here so I may dance with her."
Ianto frowns. "She doesn't like these woods. She says they frighten her."
"Am I frightening, Ianto Jones?"
Her eyes are nothing but darkness now, with no hint of the moon. He wants to say that yes, she does frighten him. That she has frightened him every time she has appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and made him drunk with dew and moonlight. He wants to say that, but he is thirteen years of age and straining at the leash his parents bind him with.
"No, you're perfect," he says instead.
She laughs and lifts her hands above her head as she measures out a quick dance step. He watches her and feels his blood heat before coiling deep in his groin, making him ache. He can never seem to control his body these days, that same sweet ache troubling him when he is with some of his friends, some male and some female. He is confused and seemingly always in the wrong and he cannot seem to control the anger and resentment that makes him so contrary. 'If only you were more like Eleri', his parents sigh and Eleri smiles and ducks her head and Ianto burns with jealousy.
"Why do you want her?" he demands. "Don't you love me?"
She laughs and comes close enough for him to smell her, like crushed herbs and sun-warmed apple, and then she is out of his reach again. "I want to dance with her. If you bring her here, I will grant you a kiss and a wish."
The thought makes him burn with something other than jealousy and her bright laughter follows him as he goes back to the house.
It takes a lot to entice Eleri to come to the woods with him after the sun has gone down. She stays close to him, her hand in his, and Ianto tries to quell the impatience he feels when she almost steps on his toes as they negotiate the darkened path. Eleri does not have his night vision and stumbles a lot. It takes all of his desire to please his love to stop him from telling her to go home.
She's waiting for them in the clearing and Eleri presses close to Ianto when she sees her, something very like terror on her face. Ianto decides that his sister is probably jealous of seeing someone so perfect as.... Ianto frowns, realising that he does not know his love's name. How can he not know something so fundamental as a name?
"Come away with me, Eleri," she says, her voice sweet as honey as she stretches out her hand. "Come away with me and dance across time and space."
Eleri shrinks against Ianto and shakes her head, her silence and terror almost palpable in the moon-drenched silence.
"Ianto, make her come and dance with me."
There is a hint of petulance in her voice, the bee's sting inside the honey, and cold ripples across Ianto's skin. "I can't make her dance," he says in as reasonable a voice as he can muster. "I told you; she doesn't like these woods. I can't make her want to dance."
"Give her to me." The sting is stronger, now; venom that is barely coated with sugar, and some of her beauty has faded, leaving something hard and sharp behind. For some reason Ianto finds himself pulling Eleri close to him, his hand against her back, and she clings to him, shaking with a fear that is more instinct than conscious. "Give her to me now!"
There's something in the woods with them now; dark shadows that slink just at the corner of the eye and sometimes Ianto catches a glimpse of a fang or glittering eye if he turns his head quickly enough. Some ancestral instinct stirs into life and Ianto understands that if he lets go of Eleri, he will never see her again. He finds her all too ready to take his hand when he offers it and he spares the time to give her as reassuring a smile as he's capable of and feels a welling of pure love when he sees how bravely she tries to smile back.
"I trust you," she whispers to him in Welsh.
"I'll keep you safe," he promises in return.
They turn and start to run as if they had spent all afternoon practicing. Ianto knows the path and is naturally sure-footed, but he has never run down it at night while trying to keep his sister safe beside him. He curses the slender build that means he can't just pick her up, but Eleri has grown tall for her eleven years and comes up to his chin. They run, and behind them there is a howl that isn't even remotely human and something comes after them.
They run and Ianto has never been more afraid in all of his life. They run and shapes slither and slide through the trees on either side of the path. The edge of the forest appears and Ianto somehow knows that if they can reach that then they will be safe. The creature he had been meeting would never come past the last tree of the wood and now that he guesses what he has been dabbling with, he also guesses that there are boundaries the creature cannot pass.
Eleri trips over something on the path. A root, a pebble, a rut; Ianto does not know or care. All he cares about is the fact that for one precious moment Eleri's hand is wrenched out of his grasp. He skids to a halt and turns, but it is too late. There is nothing but darkness and emptiness behind him. There is no Eleri picking herself up off the ground. There is no Lady made out of moonbeams and shadows. There are no things sliding and prowling through the trees.
Ianto spends the rest of the night searching the woods, then goes home to tell his parents what has happened. They stare at him in disbelief, disregarding everything apart from the fact that his sister is missing. They search and search, then call the police, who also search and then come and ask him questions that make him burn with anger. He smashes the nose of one of them for what he insinuates Ianto has done to his sister, and after that Ianto is left alone as the search continues.
And then Eleri is found.
Ianto is ecstatic right up until the moment he is reunited with his sister. Then the joy turns to ashes in his mouth and throat as he sees his sister's face but the dark, malicious eyes of the Lady. Everyone says 'see, here is your sister' but Ianto knows her for the false creature she is. Their parents accept her gladly back into the family and grow increasingly frustrated and angry with Ianto as he continues to reject 'Eleri' and goes wandering in search of his real sister.
Anger turns to arguments which become steadily more acrimonious as Ianto grows up. More than once he finds himself in Providence Park, where well-meaning experts talk of delusions and sexual aberrations. It takes a while for Ianto to understand the latter and when he does he loses his temper. That makes the experts shake their heads and give him pills that make the world recede or twist into strange shapes. His parents move back to Cardiff and away from the woods, but Ianto just runs away and goes back there, wandering around at night and calling out to his sister. He is always found and brought back, and his parents start talking about sending him to Providence Park permanently 'for his own good'.
And through it all, the false Eleri flourishes. She grows slender and tall, a gifted dancer and singer. The other boys crowd around her like wasps to a ripened plum, while the girls scowl and try to pick fault. Sometimes she comes to sit on Ianto's bed so that he wakes to find her smiling at him. His skin crawls at the smile and he remembers what the experts in Providence Park said.
One night she does more than just smile.
Ianto leaves home after that. He packs some clothes into a rucksack, raids the housekeeping money and leaves. He hitchhikes to London, wanting to get as far away from the false Eleri and the cursed woods as possible. He spends a year learning how to survive, using his body and his skills to keep a roof over his head and food in his stomach. He survives. And then he finds Torchwood. He decides to use Torchwood to find his sister and rescue her. Instead he finds Lisa and learns how to love again. Only to lose that love to another kind of monster.
"Are you going to stand there and gloat all night?" Jack finally asks wearily.
"I'm not gloating," Ianto says calmly. "I don't have the right to gloat." He moves further into the room and studies Jack with concern. "You couldn't win against them, Captain. The result was always a foregone conclusion."
Jack's lips twist into a mirthless smile. "Know that for a fact, do you?" he asks bitterly. He glances up just as Ianto allows his mask to drop just a little bit. Jack's eyes widen. "Oh!" He looks away again. "Maybe you do know. Pity the others don't."
"It is something you have to experience before you can understand it," Ianto says evenly.
"But not accept it?" Jack is swift to seize on that distinction.
"Some things cannot be accepted," Ianto says quietly. "They can only be endured." He continues to study Jack for a while, a little surprised at the passive way the Captain accepts the scrutiny. "Come with me." The offer is made out of impulse and he is almost as surprised as Jack that he has made it.
"Where to?"
"Away from here. Somewhere where there is life. A pub, a club, a restaurant... my place," he finishes quietly. "Not here."
"Your place?" Jack's exhaustion isn't proof against his curiosity, but his expression is empty of lust. "Your home is your sanctuary, Ianto. I wouldn't-"
"I'd welcome you inside it," Ianto cuts in before Jack can call up old ghosts. "What's the use of a sanctuary if you don't offer it to friends when they're in need?"
He realises what he's said but he's not going to take the words back. He lifts his chin and gives Jack a defiant look, daring him to make a joke out of the offer. Instead he watches as Jack just smiles with gratitude and gets to his feet. Ianto has turned and taken down his coat before he's cleared the desk.
"Thank you," Jack says quietly as he slides his hands into the arms of the coat and shrugs it into place.
Ianto knows he has crossed some kind of line that Jack had marked in the sand. He feels curiously relieved, as if he has lost some weight that was holding him back. He gives Jack a nod and they both make for the door of the Hub. Tonight Ianto will have company in his flat and maybe in his bed and they will both try to forget the fact that sometimes, no matter how hard you tried, you didn't get to win.
OOOO
Title: COME AWAY
Characters: Ianto, Jack, OCs
Spoilers: For SmallWorlds, Series One and From Out of The Rain, Series 2.
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to RTD and to the BBC
Warnings: Bitter angst.
Rating: Mild PG for slight inference of M/M sex.
Summary: Ianto has reason to understand Jack's reactions after Jasmine.
He stands to one side and watches as Jack sits at his desk, grief and defeat making his shoulders slump, bitterness clouding his eyes. The others have long since gone, and it is just the two of them, as it so often is.
Part of him wants to be glad, wants to take vindictive pleasure in the pain jack Harkness is feeling. He wants Jack to look up and see him smile before he turns his back on him and leaves him alone, just as the others have. He wants to. He wants to so much that he can taste it on his tongue, like vinegar soured by the sun. Some small petty part of his soul strains at the leash and bares teeth glittering with venom, eager to taste and bite and worry away at another's anguish. He muzzles the beast and swallows the sourness. He has no right to judge. He lost that right thirteen years ago, in a wood filled with moonlight.
"Do you love me, Ianto Jones?" Eyes that seem to reflect the moonlight gaze at him mischievously as she slides around the tree trunks and peers at him through arches of bramble and wild dog rose. "Do you truly love me?"
He's bewitched, held in thrall by her beauty and the music of her voice. "Of course I love you," he says with all the confidence a thirteen year old boy can muster.
"Do you love me more than you love your sister? Do you love me more than Eleri?"
He blinks and then laughs at the sheer foolishness of the question. As if his sister, awkward, shy Eleri with her tiresome curiosity and talent for barging in on him when he's reading, can compare with this bewitching creature.
"Do you love me more than her?"
"Of course I do," he avers, then shivers without understanding why when she laughs, the music suddenly edging towards dissonance.
"Bring her to the woods, Ianto Jones. Bring her here so I may dance with her."
Ianto frowns. "She doesn't like these woods. She says they frighten her."
"Am I frightening, Ianto Jones?"
Her eyes are nothing but darkness now, with no hint of the moon. He wants to say that yes, she does frighten him. That she has frightened him every time she has appeared, seemingly from nowhere, and made him drunk with dew and moonlight. He wants to say that, but he is thirteen years of age and straining at the leash his parents bind him with.
"No, you're perfect," he says instead.
She laughs and lifts her hands above her head as she measures out a quick dance step. He watches her and feels his blood heat before coiling deep in his groin, making him ache. He can never seem to control his body these days, that same sweet ache troubling him when he is with some of his friends, some male and some female. He is confused and seemingly always in the wrong and he cannot seem to control the anger and resentment that makes him so contrary. 'If only you were more like Eleri', his parents sigh and Eleri smiles and ducks her head and Ianto burns with jealousy.
"Why do you want her?" he demands. "Don't you love me?"
She laughs and comes close enough for him to smell her, like crushed herbs and sun-warmed apple, and then she is out of his reach again. "I want to dance with her. If you bring her here, I will grant you a kiss and a wish."
The thought makes him burn with something other than jealousy and her bright laughter follows him as he goes back to the house.
It takes a lot to entice Eleri to come to the woods with him after the sun has gone down. She stays close to him, her hand in his, and Ianto tries to quell the impatience he feels when she almost steps on his toes as they negotiate the darkened path. Eleri does not have his night vision and stumbles a lot. It takes all of his desire to please his love to stop him from telling her to go home.
She's waiting for them in the clearing and Eleri presses close to Ianto when she sees her, something very like terror on her face. Ianto decides that his sister is probably jealous of seeing someone so perfect as.... Ianto frowns, realising that he does not know his love's name. How can he not know something so fundamental as a name?
"Come away with me, Eleri," she says, her voice sweet as honey as she stretches out her hand. "Come away with me and dance across time and space."
Eleri shrinks against Ianto and shakes her head, her silence and terror almost palpable in the moon-drenched silence.
"Ianto, make her come and dance with me."
There is a hint of petulance in her voice, the bee's sting inside the honey, and cold ripples across Ianto's skin. "I can't make her dance," he says in as reasonable a voice as he can muster. "I told you; she doesn't like these woods. I can't make her want to dance."
"Give her to me." The sting is stronger, now; venom that is barely coated with sugar, and some of her beauty has faded, leaving something hard and sharp behind. For some reason Ianto finds himself pulling Eleri close to him, his hand against her back, and she clings to him, shaking with a fear that is more instinct than conscious. "Give her to me now!"
There's something in the woods with them now; dark shadows that slink just at the corner of the eye and sometimes Ianto catches a glimpse of a fang or glittering eye if he turns his head quickly enough. Some ancestral instinct stirs into life and Ianto understands that if he lets go of Eleri, he will never see her again. He finds her all too ready to take his hand when he offers it and he spares the time to give her as reassuring a smile as he's capable of and feels a welling of pure love when he sees how bravely she tries to smile back.
"I trust you," she whispers to him in Welsh.
"I'll keep you safe," he promises in return.
They turn and start to run as if they had spent all afternoon practicing. Ianto knows the path and is naturally sure-footed, but he has never run down it at night while trying to keep his sister safe beside him. He curses the slender build that means he can't just pick her up, but Eleri has grown tall for her eleven years and comes up to his chin. They run, and behind them there is a howl that isn't even remotely human and something comes after them.
They run and Ianto has never been more afraid in all of his life. They run and shapes slither and slide through the trees on either side of the path. The edge of the forest appears and Ianto somehow knows that if they can reach that then they will be safe. The creature he had been meeting would never come past the last tree of the wood and now that he guesses what he has been dabbling with, he also guesses that there are boundaries the creature cannot pass.
Eleri trips over something on the path. A root, a pebble, a rut; Ianto does not know or care. All he cares about is the fact that for one precious moment Eleri's hand is wrenched out of his grasp. He skids to a halt and turns, but it is too late. There is nothing but darkness and emptiness behind him. There is no Eleri picking herself up off the ground. There is no Lady made out of moonbeams and shadows. There are no things sliding and prowling through the trees.
Ianto spends the rest of the night searching the woods, then goes home to tell his parents what has happened. They stare at him in disbelief, disregarding everything apart from the fact that his sister is missing. They search and search, then call the police, who also search and then come and ask him questions that make him burn with anger. He smashes the nose of one of them for what he insinuates Ianto has done to his sister, and after that Ianto is left alone as the search continues.
And then Eleri is found.
Ianto is ecstatic right up until the moment he is reunited with his sister. Then the joy turns to ashes in his mouth and throat as he sees his sister's face but the dark, malicious eyes of the Lady. Everyone says 'see, here is your sister' but Ianto knows her for the false creature she is. Their parents accept her gladly back into the family and grow increasingly frustrated and angry with Ianto as he continues to reject 'Eleri' and goes wandering in search of his real sister.
Anger turns to arguments which become steadily more acrimonious as Ianto grows up. More than once he finds himself in Providence Park, where well-meaning experts talk of delusions and sexual aberrations. It takes a while for Ianto to understand the latter and when he does he loses his temper. That makes the experts shake their heads and give him pills that make the world recede or twist into strange shapes. His parents move back to Cardiff and away from the woods, but Ianto just runs away and goes back there, wandering around at night and calling out to his sister. He is always found and brought back, and his parents start talking about sending him to Providence Park permanently 'for his own good'.
And through it all, the false Eleri flourishes. She grows slender and tall, a gifted dancer and singer. The other boys crowd around her like wasps to a ripened plum, while the girls scowl and try to pick fault. Sometimes she comes to sit on Ianto's bed so that he wakes to find her smiling at him. His skin crawls at the smile and he remembers what the experts in Providence Park said.
One night she does more than just smile.
Ianto leaves home after that. He packs some clothes into a rucksack, raids the housekeeping money and leaves. He hitchhikes to London, wanting to get as far away from the false Eleri and the cursed woods as possible. He spends a year learning how to survive, using his body and his skills to keep a roof over his head and food in his stomach. He survives. And then he finds Torchwood. He decides to use Torchwood to find his sister and rescue her. Instead he finds Lisa and learns how to love again. Only to lose that love to another kind of monster.
"Are you going to stand there and gloat all night?" Jack finally asks wearily.
"I'm not gloating," Ianto says calmly. "I don't have the right to gloat." He moves further into the room and studies Jack with concern. "You couldn't win against them, Captain. The result was always a foregone conclusion."
Jack's lips twist into a mirthless smile. "Know that for a fact, do you?" he asks bitterly. He glances up just as Ianto allows his mask to drop just a little bit. Jack's eyes widen. "Oh!" He looks away again. "Maybe you do know. Pity the others don't."
"It is something you have to experience before you can understand it," Ianto says evenly.
"But not accept it?" Jack is swift to seize on that distinction.
"Some things cannot be accepted," Ianto says quietly. "They can only be endured." He continues to study Jack for a while, a little surprised at the passive way the Captain accepts the scrutiny. "Come with me." The offer is made out of impulse and he is almost as surprised as Jack that he has made it.
"Where to?"
"Away from here. Somewhere where there is life. A pub, a club, a restaurant... my place," he finishes quietly. "Not here."
"Your place?" Jack's exhaustion isn't proof against his curiosity, but his expression is empty of lust. "Your home is your sanctuary, Ianto. I wouldn't-"
"I'd welcome you inside it," Ianto cuts in before Jack can call up old ghosts. "What's the use of a sanctuary if you don't offer it to friends when they're in need?"
He realises what he's said but he's not going to take the words back. He lifts his chin and gives Jack a defiant look, daring him to make a joke out of the offer. Instead he watches as Jack just smiles with gratitude and gets to his feet. Ianto has turned and taken down his coat before he's cleared the desk.
"Thank you," Jack says quietly as he slides his hands into the arms of the coat and shrugs it into place.
Ianto knows he has crossed some kind of line that Jack had marked in the sand. He feels curiously relieved, as if he has lost some weight that was holding him back. He gives Jack a nod and they both make for the door of the Hub. Tonight Ianto will have company in his flat and maybe in his bed and they will both try to forget the fact that sometimes, no matter how hard you tried, you didn't get to win.
OOOO