Will My Arms Be Strong Enough 36/45
Title: Will My Arms Be Strong Enough? 36/45 (well, probably 45 anyway!)
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys...and others!
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Rhys, John Hart, two OC's, Andrea (Andie) Carlowe and Nick Jones.
Spoilers: Set after Exit Wounds.
Summary: What's happened to John?
Chapter 36
The sight cut through him as easily as a knife cutting through butter. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. He couldn’t even move; it was as if his body had frozen at the sight in front of him.
He’s awake…and he’s alive…oh, God, he’s alive…
Will came in then and smiled weakly. “He woke up about ten minutes ago,” he explained and then turned to the other man. “This one sat here waiting with you ever since you were brought in until he got called away because of an emergency at work.”
“Everything okay?” asked John.
“Fine - just a bit of hassle at Queen’s Arcade,” stammered Nick, still unable to tear his eyes away. He’s here…he’s standing in front of me…
They sat in silence for a while after Will left, letting the sunlight stream into the room, filling it with light. Nick shifted a bit and chewed absently on his fingernails. He could feel the exhaustion starting to catch up with him after the worry of the past few days. He was almost falling asleep when he heard John give a small laugh and sat up in surprise.
“What?”
“Just thinking,” muttered John and smiled. “You know, when I was a boy, I loved my mum…”
Nick blinked. “You had a mother?” he blurted out and then blushed. “Sorry, it’s just all the talk about fifty-first century men being able to, you know, carry children, I thought -”
John chuckled. “Nope, not in my family, although some of my best friends came from same-sex families. Nobody really cares who’s with who in those days.” He picked up his wrist strap and pressed a button on it. Immediately, what looked like an ancient citadel made of clear stones and with trees and multi-coloured flowers growing around it and in the gaps, sheltering the residents from the sun, appeared. It was seven stories high and covered a vast area of land, yet there was still room for it to be surrounded by a huge lawn and what looked like a vast trackless jungle.
“Is this where you lived?”
“Yep.” John switched the focus slightly and Nick’s eyes widened as, on the horizon, he saw a wide blue ribbon of water. “And you see the sea there? People used to say that, on a clear night, you could see right across the ocean to the Boeshane Peninsula. Yes,” he laughed gently, “the very place where Jack lived as a child.”
“That’s amazing - you and Jack lived across an ocean and you never met,” mused Nick.
“Yeah; personally, I think it’s because I was too busy in that jungle - I used to follow my mother there when she went to work…she was a botanist,” he explained with a slightly wistful smile.
Nick smiled understandingly. “You must have really loved her.”
“I did. I was an only child, so she spoiled me rotten - I was her little baby.” He sighed. “Sweet goddesses, I miss her so much.”
Nick turned to look at him. “Would you go back home…I mean, back to your time…if it meant that you could see her again?”
John snorted. “It wouldn’t do any good,” he murmured. “She’s dead.”
Nick’s eyes widened. “Oh,” he whispered, reaching over to hold his hand. “I’m sorry,” he added, changing his mind and gently stroking the soft skin instead.
John swallowed. “She was killed…in the same way Jack’s father was.” He shuddered. “By…by the most horrible creatures you could ever imagine.”
“Like the Cybermen?”
“No.” John shook his head. “Worse than the Cybermen - much worse.”
Now it was Nick’s turn to swallow. “Worse?” he whispered, feeling chills break out over his arms. “What…what were they?”
“I don’t know,” John shook his head. “Nobody knows. I don’t think they even had a name.”
“At least you still had your dad though…right?”
That comment earned him a rather bitter laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I still had him. But he changed after Mum died.” He shrugged. “We’d never really been that close, to be honest, but…after she died, he became fixated on revenge.”
“Revenge?”
“Yeah. He wanted to avenge Mum’s death, but he knew that he wasn’t as young and strong as he once was.” John took a deep breath. “So, he tried to train me for four years…he tried to make me stronger…he wanted me to defeat the creatures who had killed Mum.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.” John shivered. “I was fourteen years old and he was trying to train me to be a killer…he put me through hell for four years.”
“Four years…” Nick looked at the picture of the shining citadel and tried to picture John’s story. He gasped in surprise when he realised that he could picture it only too easily, and was very relieved when John switched off the picture and started speaking again.
“When I turned eighteen and heard that the Time Agency was recruiting, it was like a breath of fresh air. I realised that this could be a new start for me and I was determined to make the most of it. I didn’t tell anybody where I was going; I just slipped out one night with the few possessions I had and there was an escort waiting for me. I never saw my home again.”
“That was where you met Jack, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Jack was four years older than me and had almost finished his training, so at first we didn’t speak much. But for the first time since Mum died, I was starting to enjoy my life again. Yes, we were learning how to shoot and how to kill, but that wasn’t everything. We learned history and foreign languages and dialects as well. It was like I was finally learning to live.” He laughed. “And the night life…oh the night life…believe me when I say that it could make university look tame.”
Nick laughed softly. “I bet you lived it to the full.”
John smiled at him. “Oh, yes. Anyway, you know that, after I completed the training, I was teamed up with Jack. I’d met him briefly on those nights out and I’d heard stories about him…I guess you could say I started to look up to him. Working with him was a dream come true. He toughened me up in a way that my dad never could; he was firm, but gentle. He knew when to stop.”
A small, sad smile flickered over his face. “And he was kind as well. One night, shortly after we started working together, he found me sitting alone at a campfire just looking at a picture of Mum. I just found myself opening up to him and telling him what happened.”
“And then he told you about his father?” Nick felt his eyes stinging as he pictured the two men sat somewhere, their faces lit by the campfire, sharing the unfortunate connection they had found.
“Yep.” John swallowed, seemingly also lost in the memories. He coughed and shook himself and suddenly his eyes darkened. “But then, three years after we started working together, things changed very suddenly.”
“The time loop?”
“Yes. I don’t know how it happened and I don’t know why. But something inside me changed during those two weeks or five years, depending on how you look at it. I didn’t realise it until Jack was almost killed on a mission because we had been given faulty instructions.” He shuddered, his smile completely gone. “I don’t think you need to guess what happened while we were there, but I didn’t stop there. When we returned home and Jack was being treated, I tracked down the people who’d given us the instructions and I killed them all. Their actions had put Jack in danger and there was no way that I could let them live after that. My only regret is that Jack wasn’t with me so that he could have tortured them first. ”
Nick shivered a bit; he could imagine that all too easily, especially when something very cold flashed in John’s eyes. He was, however, chilled by the last sentence, remembering John saying something very similar to him after he had killed those men.
John continued. “That was the beginning of the end for me and Jack, even though neither of us saw it, but I never thought that it would end in the way it did. Three years after the time loop, Jack and I were sent to investigate a piece of alien weaponry which was being smuggled by some bandits.” He laughed bitterly. “Well, we thought they were bandits anyway. In hindsight, I’d bet that the Agency was behind it and it was all a hoax.”
“Why?”
“Because when we came within an inch of finding out what was happening, we were suddenly summoned back to the Agency,” answered John. “Well, when I say summoned, I really mean we were forcibly ejected via teleport and ended up in one of the interrogation rooms there. We were both just sat there for hours wondering what the fuck was going on. And then,” John’s voice cracked a bit, “then, six Agents, higher up the ranks than either of us put together, came in and dragged us away in opposite directions, even as we tried to get back to each other.” He shivered again. “The last thing I remember as our hands were ripped apart was Jack shouting that he’d come back and find me again…and then I woke up to find that it was two years later and the first thing I heard was that he’d gone rogue.”
He paused and dragged his sleeve angrily over his eyes, evidently struggling to get a grip on himself. Slowly, Nick reached over again and started to stroke his palm, letting their fingers intertwine as he digested what he was hearing.
John looked at him in surprise, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he squeezed Nick’s hand before carrying on, his voice suddenly much older than usual. “As soon as I got the chance, I left the Agency. I travelled through time and space for years trying to find Jack. Nothing else mattered except finding him.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t a good man, Nick. I killed anyone who got in my way, slept with anything that would have me, and even some that wouldn’t…I was absolutely desperate.”
“What did you do then?” asked Nick, still stroking his fingers. But when John stiffened, he immediately knew the answer. “You didn’t,” he gasped. “You went back to the Agency? You went back to the place that stole your memories?”
“I had to. It was the only place where I thought I could get the answers I’d been searching for. But when I arrived there, I found that it had shut down. There were only seven left. Five of them were people I wouldn’t have recognised if they’d slapped me in the face. The other two?”
“You and Jack?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t take much imagination to guess what happened to the rest.”
John’s voice had wound down slightly while he had been saying these last few words and now Nick knew that it was the end of his story. He swallowed hard; the man looked completely drained after reliving over twenty years of his life like that.
“Why…why are you telling me all this?” he asked, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
John looked at him. “When you and I were…barely talking, I had a lot of time to think,” he said slowly, “and I realised that I know plenty about you, but you know hardly anything about me.” He shook his head bitterly. “How can I claim to love you if I don’t tell you anything?”
“Oh.” Nick leaned back with a deep sigh, clasping his hands over his knees as he attempted to digest what he had just been told. It seemed so unreal…and yet it made so much sense.
“But I really do love you, Nick,” John said, playing with the ends of his jacket. “And, believe me; I didn’t want you to hear it the way that you did hear it. I’ve been trying to tell you how I felt for a long time now, but every time I got close something always got in the way. The first time I tried, you managed to go and fall asleep on me!” He gave a small chuckle at the memory, but then turned serious.
“I don’t expect a big confession in return, Nick,” he said calmly. “All I need…all I want, is -”
But Nick interrupted him. “No,” he said, and his eyes flashed. “We’ve danced around each other for long enough and it nearly cost us everything. It’s silly for us to hide from each other now. If Ianto can get over that silly stigma then I am damn sure I can.” He took a deep breath and then finally spoke those four words.
“I love you too.”
They both looked at each other for a long time, the walls that had been held up for so long crashing down around them at last as the words were spoken. And then, very slowly, they came together, their lips connecting in one deep kiss, a kiss which was filled with hope, strength, forgiveness and love.
When they eventually broke apart, they simply sat and held each other until Nick’s eyelids started to droop. John smiled at him. “Get some rest,” he whispered, stroking his hair gently as he laid him down on the bed. “You’re going to need it.”
Nick smiled weakly. “Thank you…” he whispered before his eyes closed. Within less than a minute, he was fast asleep.
“No,” John shook his head and kissed the young man on the forehead. “No…thank you, Nicky,” he whispered, feeling sleep take him over as well. “Thank you for waiting for me.”
~*~
The next day…
“I can’t believe you got them to discharge you so quickly,” remarked Nick as he got rid of the rubbish that was scattered over the desk. “You still look like an injured soldier.”
“I’m glad they’re letting me go now!” retorted John. “I would have been going crazy stuck in this place.” He glared miserably at the crutches next to his bed. “Guess I won’t be doing any field work for a while, then?”
Nick looked up. “You won’t be doing any field work until you’ve had written agreement from your doctor,” he said. “Until he’s satisfied that you’re fully recovered, you’re going to be resting and burying yourself under a mountain of paperwork.”
“And who would this esteemed doctor be?”
“The esteemed doctor would be the one who’s currently tidying this room up,” answered Jack who had come in a few moments earlier. He was smiling, but his eyes were deadly serious. “You do whatever he tells you for as long as it takes. And you,” he turned to look at Nick. “You use whatever means necessary to make sure that he does as he’s told.” With a nod, he swept out of the room.
John sighed. “Looks like I’m stuck with you for a while then.”
“You certainly are,” replied Nick. He zipped up the bag he had been packing. “Let’s go.”
“Nick, wait.” John took a deep breath, readying himself. “Before we go, there’s something I want to ask you.” He waited until Nick was looking at him before he continued. “We didn’t do things properly before and that nearly cost us a lot more than it should have. I don’t want us to make the same mistakes again, so this time, I’m going to ask you something.”
He reached out and took Nick’s hands. “Will you move in with me…properly?”
***
Next Time: Gwen faces a couple of home truths back at the Hub. Meanwhile what answer will Nick give to John’s proposal?
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys...and others!
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Rhys, John Hart, two OC's, Andrea (Andie) Carlowe and Nick Jones.
Spoilers: Set after Exit Wounds.
Summary: What's happened to John?
Chapter 36
The sight cut through him as easily as a knife cutting through butter. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. He couldn’t even move; it was as if his body had frozen at the sight in front of him.
He’s awake…and he’s alive…oh, God, he’s alive…
Will came in then and smiled weakly. “He woke up about ten minutes ago,” he explained and then turned to the other man. “This one sat here waiting with you ever since you were brought in until he got called away because of an emergency at work.”
“Everything okay?” asked John.
“Fine - just a bit of hassle at Queen’s Arcade,” stammered Nick, still unable to tear his eyes away. He’s here…he’s standing in front of me…
They sat in silence for a while after Will left, letting the sunlight stream into the room, filling it with light. Nick shifted a bit and chewed absently on his fingernails. He could feel the exhaustion starting to catch up with him after the worry of the past few days. He was almost falling asleep when he heard John give a small laugh and sat up in surprise.
“What?”
“Just thinking,” muttered John and smiled. “You know, when I was a boy, I loved my mum…”
Nick blinked. “You had a mother?” he blurted out and then blushed. “Sorry, it’s just all the talk about fifty-first century men being able to, you know, carry children, I thought -”
John chuckled. “Nope, not in my family, although some of my best friends came from same-sex families. Nobody really cares who’s with who in those days.” He picked up his wrist strap and pressed a button on it. Immediately, what looked like an ancient citadel made of clear stones and with trees and multi-coloured flowers growing around it and in the gaps, sheltering the residents from the sun, appeared. It was seven stories high and covered a vast area of land, yet there was still room for it to be surrounded by a huge lawn and what looked like a vast trackless jungle.
“Is this where you lived?”
“Yep.” John switched the focus slightly and Nick’s eyes widened as, on the horizon, he saw a wide blue ribbon of water. “And you see the sea there? People used to say that, on a clear night, you could see right across the ocean to the Boeshane Peninsula. Yes,” he laughed gently, “the very place where Jack lived as a child.”
“That’s amazing - you and Jack lived across an ocean and you never met,” mused Nick.
“Yeah; personally, I think it’s because I was too busy in that jungle - I used to follow my mother there when she went to work…she was a botanist,” he explained with a slightly wistful smile.
Nick smiled understandingly. “You must have really loved her.”
“I did. I was an only child, so she spoiled me rotten - I was her little baby.” He sighed. “Sweet goddesses, I miss her so much.”
Nick turned to look at him. “Would you go back home…I mean, back to your time…if it meant that you could see her again?”
John snorted. “It wouldn’t do any good,” he murmured. “She’s dead.”
Nick’s eyes widened. “Oh,” he whispered, reaching over to hold his hand. “I’m sorry,” he added, changing his mind and gently stroking the soft skin instead.
John swallowed. “She was killed…in the same way Jack’s father was.” He shuddered. “By…by the most horrible creatures you could ever imagine.”
“Like the Cybermen?”
“No.” John shook his head. “Worse than the Cybermen - much worse.”
Now it was Nick’s turn to swallow. “Worse?” he whispered, feeling chills break out over his arms. “What…what were they?”
“I don’t know,” John shook his head. “Nobody knows. I don’t think they even had a name.”
“At least you still had your dad though…right?”
That comment earned him a rather bitter laugh. “Yeah. Yeah, I still had him. But he changed after Mum died.” He shrugged. “We’d never really been that close, to be honest, but…after she died, he became fixated on revenge.”
“Revenge?”
“Yeah. He wanted to avenge Mum’s death, but he knew that he wasn’t as young and strong as he once was.” John took a deep breath. “So, he tried to train me for four years…he tried to make me stronger…he wanted me to defeat the creatures who had killed Mum.”
“How old were you?”
“Fourteen.” John shivered. “I was fourteen years old and he was trying to train me to be a killer…he put me through hell for four years.”
“Four years…” Nick looked at the picture of the shining citadel and tried to picture John’s story. He gasped in surprise when he realised that he could picture it only too easily, and was very relieved when John switched off the picture and started speaking again.
“When I turned eighteen and heard that the Time Agency was recruiting, it was like a breath of fresh air. I realised that this could be a new start for me and I was determined to make the most of it. I didn’t tell anybody where I was going; I just slipped out one night with the few possessions I had and there was an escort waiting for me. I never saw my home again.”
“That was where you met Jack, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Jack was four years older than me and had almost finished his training, so at first we didn’t speak much. But for the first time since Mum died, I was starting to enjoy my life again. Yes, we were learning how to shoot and how to kill, but that wasn’t everything. We learned history and foreign languages and dialects as well. It was like I was finally learning to live.” He laughed. “And the night life…oh the night life…believe me when I say that it could make university look tame.”
Nick laughed softly. “I bet you lived it to the full.”
John smiled at him. “Oh, yes. Anyway, you know that, after I completed the training, I was teamed up with Jack. I’d met him briefly on those nights out and I’d heard stories about him…I guess you could say I started to look up to him. Working with him was a dream come true. He toughened me up in a way that my dad never could; he was firm, but gentle. He knew when to stop.”
A small, sad smile flickered over his face. “And he was kind as well. One night, shortly after we started working together, he found me sitting alone at a campfire just looking at a picture of Mum. I just found myself opening up to him and telling him what happened.”
“And then he told you about his father?” Nick felt his eyes stinging as he pictured the two men sat somewhere, their faces lit by the campfire, sharing the unfortunate connection they had found.
“Yep.” John swallowed, seemingly also lost in the memories. He coughed and shook himself and suddenly his eyes darkened. “But then, three years after we started working together, things changed very suddenly.”
“The time loop?”
“Yes. I don’t know how it happened and I don’t know why. But something inside me changed during those two weeks or five years, depending on how you look at it. I didn’t realise it until Jack was almost killed on a mission because we had been given faulty instructions.” He shuddered, his smile completely gone. “I don’t think you need to guess what happened while we were there, but I didn’t stop there. When we returned home and Jack was being treated, I tracked down the people who’d given us the instructions and I killed them all. Their actions had put Jack in danger and there was no way that I could let them live after that. My only regret is that Jack wasn’t with me so that he could have tortured them first. ”
Nick shivered a bit; he could imagine that all too easily, especially when something very cold flashed in John’s eyes. He was, however, chilled by the last sentence, remembering John saying something very similar to him after he had killed those men.
John continued. “That was the beginning of the end for me and Jack, even though neither of us saw it, but I never thought that it would end in the way it did. Three years after the time loop, Jack and I were sent to investigate a piece of alien weaponry which was being smuggled by some bandits.” He laughed bitterly. “Well, we thought they were bandits anyway. In hindsight, I’d bet that the Agency was behind it and it was all a hoax.”
“Why?”
“Because when we came within an inch of finding out what was happening, we were suddenly summoned back to the Agency,” answered John. “Well, when I say summoned, I really mean we were forcibly ejected via teleport and ended up in one of the interrogation rooms there. We were both just sat there for hours wondering what the fuck was going on. And then,” John’s voice cracked a bit, “then, six Agents, higher up the ranks than either of us put together, came in and dragged us away in opposite directions, even as we tried to get back to each other.” He shivered again. “The last thing I remember as our hands were ripped apart was Jack shouting that he’d come back and find me again…and then I woke up to find that it was two years later and the first thing I heard was that he’d gone rogue.”
He paused and dragged his sleeve angrily over his eyes, evidently struggling to get a grip on himself. Slowly, Nick reached over again and started to stroke his palm, letting their fingers intertwine as he digested what he was hearing.
John looked at him in surprise, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he squeezed Nick’s hand before carrying on, his voice suddenly much older than usual. “As soon as I got the chance, I left the Agency. I travelled through time and space for years trying to find Jack. Nothing else mattered except finding him.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t a good man, Nick. I killed anyone who got in my way, slept with anything that would have me, and even some that wouldn’t…I was absolutely desperate.”
“What did you do then?” asked Nick, still stroking his fingers. But when John stiffened, he immediately knew the answer. “You didn’t,” he gasped. “You went back to the Agency? You went back to the place that stole your memories?”
“I had to. It was the only place where I thought I could get the answers I’d been searching for. But when I arrived there, I found that it had shut down. There were only seven left. Five of them were people I wouldn’t have recognised if they’d slapped me in the face. The other two?”
“You and Jack?”
“Yeah. It doesn’t take much imagination to guess what happened to the rest.”
John’s voice had wound down slightly while he had been saying these last few words and now Nick knew that it was the end of his story. He swallowed hard; the man looked completely drained after reliving over twenty years of his life like that.
“Why…why are you telling me all this?” he asked, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
John looked at him. “When you and I were…barely talking, I had a lot of time to think,” he said slowly, “and I realised that I know plenty about you, but you know hardly anything about me.” He shook his head bitterly. “How can I claim to love you if I don’t tell you anything?”
“Oh.” Nick leaned back with a deep sigh, clasping his hands over his knees as he attempted to digest what he had just been told. It seemed so unreal…and yet it made so much sense.
“But I really do love you, Nick,” John said, playing with the ends of his jacket. “And, believe me; I didn’t want you to hear it the way that you did hear it. I’ve been trying to tell you how I felt for a long time now, but every time I got close something always got in the way. The first time I tried, you managed to go and fall asleep on me!” He gave a small chuckle at the memory, but then turned serious.
“I don’t expect a big confession in return, Nick,” he said calmly. “All I need…all I want, is -”
But Nick interrupted him. “No,” he said, and his eyes flashed. “We’ve danced around each other for long enough and it nearly cost us everything. It’s silly for us to hide from each other now. If Ianto can get over that silly stigma then I am damn sure I can.” He took a deep breath and then finally spoke those four words.
“I love you too.”
They both looked at each other for a long time, the walls that had been held up for so long crashing down around them at last as the words were spoken. And then, very slowly, they came together, their lips connecting in one deep kiss, a kiss which was filled with hope, strength, forgiveness and love.
When they eventually broke apart, they simply sat and held each other until Nick’s eyelids started to droop. John smiled at him. “Get some rest,” he whispered, stroking his hair gently as he laid him down on the bed. “You’re going to need it.”
Nick smiled weakly. “Thank you…” he whispered before his eyes closed. Within less than a minute, he was fast asleep.
“No,” John shook his head and kissed the young man on the forehead. “No…thank you, Nicky,” he whispered, feeling sleep take him over as well. “Thank you for waiting for me.”
~*~
The next day…
“I can’t believe you got them to discharge you so quickly,” remarked Nick as he got rid of the rubbish that was scattered over the desk. “You still look like an injured soldier.”
“I’m glad they’re letting me go now!” retorted John. “I would have been going crazy stuck in this place.” He glared miserably at the crutches next to his bed. “Guess I won’t be doing any field work for a while, then?”
Nick looked up. “You won’t be doing any field work until you’ve had written agreement from your doctor,” he said. “Until he’s satisfied that you’re fully recovered, you’re going to be resting and burying yourself under a mountain of paperwork.”
“And who would this esteemed doctor be?”
“The esteemed doctor would be the one who’s currently tidying this room up,” answered Jack who had come in a few moments earlier. He was smiling, but his eyes were deadly serious. “You do whatever he tells you for as long as it takes. And you,” he turned to look at Nick. “You use whatever means necessary to make sure that he does as he’s told.” With a nod, he swept out of the room.
John sighed. “Looks like I’m stuck with you for a while then.”
“You certainly are,” replied Nick. He zipped up the bag he had been packing. “Let’s go.”
“Nick, wait.” John took a deep breath, readying himself. “Before we go, there’s something I want to ask you.” He waited until Nick was looking at him before he continued. “We didn’t do things properly before and that nearly cost us a lot more than it should have. I don’t want us to make the same mistakes again, so this time, I’m going to ask you something.”
He reached out and took Nick’s hands. “Will you move in with me…properly?”
***
Next Time: Gwen faces a couple of home truths back at the Hub. Meanwhile what answer will Nick give to John’s proposal?