Fic: To The Pain (7/41)
Title: To The Pain, Chapter 7
Rating: R
Warnings: None really, just don’t feel like changing the rating :)
Spoilers: Season One thru End of Days (1x13)
Disclaimer: Torchwood and all its wonderfulness belong to Russell T. Davies and the Mighty Beeb. Just goofin' around! All ©’s to Noel Clarke for dialogue borrowed from Combat.
Summary: In which Gwen does something irritating…
Notes: Sequel to Vizzini’s Rule; previous chapters of To The Pain can be found here. Thanks to my wonderful beta
thrace_adams for all the support - any mistakes are mine!
To The Pain: Chapter Seven
Six weeks. Six weeks. Six weeks. Ianto pounded the words into the pavement with every step. He was chasing the endorphin high but today it was eluding him. Six weeks. Six weeks. I should have known better, it’s too cold, he thought as he pushed himself to keep running. His breath was coming in shallow pants and the wind seemed to be trying to blow the air right back inside his body. He ran for another five minutes before he admitted defeat. He slowed to a jog and turned to face home.
Home. He supposed the Hub was his home now. He’d spent most of his nights there since Jack’s disappearance. He hadn’t willingly spent more than an hour in his own flat for six weeks. Six weeks. Ianto shook his head and focused on slowing his breathing, cooling down gradually from the run. Six weeks. How am I going to survive the full six months?
And what if he never comes back?
Ianto shoved that thought to the back of his mind and fumbled for his key. He locked the Tourist Office door behind him and took the stairs to the Hub. He stopped to do stretches every third landing or so, keeping his muscles warm and loose until he could get in the hot shower. He shivered. I thought we were done with winter, he grumbled silently.
He hurried down the ladder to Jack’s quarters and stripped off his running gear as he headed for the shower. Once he was standing under the hot spray, he let himself relax.
Ianto had taken Owen’s threat seriously. He knew the doctor was fed up and that the girls were worried so he’d tried hard the last two weeks to get back to normal. Whatever that is. He realized that his experiments with telepathy had drained him more completely than he’d thought possible. His body ached, he was exhausted all of the time and he should have known they would all notice. After Owen’s blow up, he’d thought about stopping all together, giving up on trying to reach Jack, but then that thing with the weevils had happened.
Ianto shuddered as he remembered that night…
He was down in the vaults, doling out the weevil chow when one of the weevils moaned and clutched its head. The weevils in the vaults around it all dropped to their knees and howled in a bizarre display of sympathy. Ianto remembered another time he’d seen this behavior - remembered what Jack had said, “They have a low level of telepathic ability to share emotion across distance.”
Ianto dropped the bucket and stared at the weevil. He crouched in front of the plexi-glass and just stared for a long moment. He felt light and heavy all at once and then the tingling began in his fingertips. A part of his mind wondered just what the hell he was doing, but he continued nonetheless, reaching out to the weevil with his mind.
The scream was deafening. He clutched at his head, unconsciously mirroring the weevil in the vault. That scream went on and on, rage and hate and pain made sound. Ianto stumbled back until he was pressed against the opposite cell. He stared at the weevil and realized that its mouth was closed. The scream was only in his head.
It had worked.
He tried to disengage, to stop the unbearable noise in his mind, but it only grew louder. The weevil held him there. He was trapped as surely as if the creature had him pinned to the wall with its claws. He started to sweat with the effort of breaking the link. Just when he thought he might actually pass out, the noise eased and began to fade. He drew long gasping breaths of relief… until the other sound began.
Laughter.
Someone was laughing. A deep, low chuckle, rich with enjoyment at his pain. Ianto turned his head slightly to see the weevil that Jack called Janet in the cell behind him. She was - there was no other way to describe it - she was grinning. Other voices joined hers and soon Ianto’s head was full of the sound of malicious delight.
He left the bucket in the middle of the floor and ran.
Ianto shuddered again and ducked his head under the hot water, remembering how that laughter had followed him up to the Hub. He’d only been able to shut it out by leaving the Hub, going for a run. The distance and the ability to focus on something else had finally broken the link and he’d sworn he would go camping in Brecon Beacons before he tried to communicate with a weevil again.
But the incident had given him just enough hope to keep pushing. He knew that he could do it. He had proof. If he could connect to a weevil, surely he could reach Jack. So he’d kept trying, but he’d been more careful. He would only let himself try for a few hours every night. He used alarms to pull out of the trance and then forced himself to actually sleep. He’d started running again as the weather got nicer and it gave him some of his appetite back, enough that he could eat with the team anyway. Owen was still riding him about how thin he’d gotten, but he could always shut him up by grabbing some take-away or suggesting they close up shop.
Ianto smiled a little, his face still unused to the expression. He was doing okay. Not great, but he’d survived so far and God knows he’d survived worse. Little did he know as he dressed and got ready to face another day that his biggest test since Jack had vanished was just around the corner.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Ianto walked into Jack’s office giving his report a final once-over before he handed it to Gwen. She had sent him back to Bilis Manger’s old shop for one last look before they closed the book on it. He’d talked with Ms. Pierce, who hadn’t been there when he and Owen had driven out originally. She was a pleasant, middle-aged woman who was in the process of selling off the stock which had been included in the lease. She was planning to renovate and re-open the shop a few months down the road to sell exotic birds. Ianto had spent almost an hour pretending to look at the watches on display and discussing the merits of African Greys over Macaws with the woman. She was harmless. Wherever Bilis had gone, whatever he was planning, Ianto would swear that Ms. Pierce had nothing to do with it. He finished reading his report and glanced up to set it on Jack’s desk.
“What the…?”
Gwen wasn’t there.
Neither was the desk.
Ianto stared at the empty floor, wondering if he’d finally lost his mind.
“I moved it,” Gwen said brightly.
Ianto turned to find Gwen and Jack’s desk behind him, just to the right of the door. She was grinning at him. There were a hundred things he wanted to say to her at that moment. Luckily the most pertinent and least impertinent one came out first.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, it was too close to the radiator, it just blocked the heat from getting to the rest of the room and it’s easier to see out into the Hub from here and...and I was always afraid I was going to step in that hole down to… over there,” she finished lamely, waving her hand in the direction of Jack’s quarters.
Ianto unclenched his teeth and managed to ask politely, “How is it easier to see out into the Hub with your back to the windows?”
“Well, you just turn the chair, see?”
Ianto raised an eyebrow.
A dull flush started on Gwen’s neck and rose to her cheeks. “I’m closer to the windows and it’s easier to see out since they’re all dirty. Really, Ianto, haven’t you heard of Windolene?”
“I have. The glass isn’t dirty, it’s a hundred years old.”
“Fine, it’s not dirty. I don’t care, I like it here,” Gwen said. She ran her hands over the shiny surface of the desk which, Ianto noticed, was completely bare except for a file folder and two new lamps.
He cleared his throat and tried very hard to remain civil. “And all of Jack’s things?” he inquired.
“Oh! I just packed them away. Don’t you think it looks better all tidied up?”
“No,” Ianto said flatly. He looked around and spied the box where she had ‘packed’ the items from Jack’s desk. He snatched it off the shelf and stared at the jumble. It looked like Gwen had just swept everything off the surface of the desk into the box. He carefully picked up the coral which had landed on the top of the pile. He examined it closely and found one little corner that had been broken off. He felt something snap inside him at the sight. “You had no right moving his things!” he shouted.
Gwen looked surprised, then angry as Ianto started to put Jack’s knickknacks back on the desk. “I had every right,” she shouted back. “This is my desk now. I’m head of Torchwood, you said it yourself.”
“Acting head, Gwen, as in temporary. You’re just keeping that seat warm until Jack comes back, something you’d do well to remember!”
They were inches apart, both of them leaning across the desk, red-faced with fury. “And if he never comes back? What then, Ianto?”
Ianto flinched. He felt the now-familiar pain rip through him at her words. He dropped his eyes and backed away. Silently he put the rest of Jack’s personal items back on the desk, right where they belonged. “It’s not August yet,” he said, his voice raspy with emotion. “We said we’d give Jack six months and that’s what we’re going to do. Four and a bit to go and then you can do what you like. But not until then.” He ran a gentle finger over the coral and felt it vibrate slightly. He sighed with relief and looked back up at Gwen. “That’s alive,” he said, pointing at the coral. “Don’t touch it again.”
She glanced down at the coral in surprise as Ianto strode out of the office.
He almost ran into Tosh as he was leaving.
“Hi, Ianto,” Tosh said pleasantly. He knew she had heard the argument, hell, they probably heard it up on the Plass, he thought crossly, but Tosh seemed to be ignoring it. “Did you want to take a look at this? Just came through on the rift monitor.”
Ianto reigned in his temper and took the sheet of paper from her with a tight smile. He glanced down and saw the familiar pattern of a rift spike. As he looked at it more closely, Tosh spoke again.
“Jack always wanted to see them. I’ve seen you two going over the reports before, so I figured you’d be the best person to know if it’s something we should go take a look at or not.”
Oh God, not now, please! Ianto thought desperately. But there they were - the little feathery edges on the spike. Something came back.
“Thanks, Tosh,” Ianto said with a calm he didn’t feel. “And these are the coordinates?” he asked, indicating to Tosh’s handwritten notes in the corner.
She nodded.
“Great. I’m sure it’s nothing big. I’ll just pop over and take a quick look. I could use some air,” he muttered.
Tosh grinned. “I’ll bet. I’ll be on comms if you need backup,” she said. She gave his arm a little squeeze and continued into Jack’s office.
As Ianto grabbed his coat and the keys to the SUV, he heard Tosh and Gwen talking. It sounded like Tosh was calming Gwen down and convincing her to leave Jack’s stuff alone at the same time. Bless you, Tosh. I owe you one, Ianto thought as he headed for the lift. His conscience poked at him, reminding him that he’d been an arse since Jack disappeared and that he probably owed Tosh a lot more than one.
When I get back, I’ll take her out to dinner, he promised silently, and say thank you and I’m sorry properly. But first…
His mouth settled into that grim line again and he glanced down at the paper crumpled in his hand. Work to do.
TBC in Chapter Eight
Rating: R
Warnings: None really, just don’t feel like changing the rating :)
Spoilers: Season One thru End of Days (1x13)
Disclaimer: Torchwood and all its wonderfulness belong to Russell T. Davies and the Mighty Beeb. Just goofin' around! All ©’s to Noel Clarke for dialogue borrowed from Combat.
Summary: In which Gwen does something irritating…
Notes: Sequel to Vizzini’s Rule; previous chapters of To The Pain can be found here. Thanks to my wonderful beta
thrace_adams for all the support - any mistakes are mine!
To The Pain: Chapter Seven
Six weeks. Six weeks. Six weeks. Ianto pounded the words into the pavement with every step. He was chasing the endorphin high but today it was eluding him. Six weeks. Six weeks. I should have known better, it’s too cold, he thought as he pushed himself to keep running. His breath was coming in shallow pants and the wind seemed to be trying to blow the air right back inside his body. He ran for another five minutes before he admitted defeat. He slowed to a jog and turned to face home.
Home. He supposed the Hub was his home now. He’d spent most of his nights there since Jack’s disappearance. He hadn’t willingly spent more than an hour in his own flat for six weeks. Six weeks. Ianto shook his head and focused on slowing his breathing, cooling down gradually from the run. Six weeks. How am I going to survive the full six months?
And what if he never comes back?
Ianto shoved that thought to the back of his mind and fumbled for his key. He locked the Tourist Office door behind him and took the stairs to the Hub. He stopped to do stretches every third landing or so, keeping his muscles warm and loose until he could get in the hot shower. He shivered. I thought we were done with winter, he grumbled silently.
He hurried down the ladder to Jack’s quarters and stripped off his running gear as he headed for the shower. Once he was standing under the hot spray, he let himself relax.
Ianto had taken Owen’s threat seriously. He knew the doctor was fed up and that the girls were worried so he’d tried hard the last two weeks to get back to normal. Whatever that is. He realized that his experiments with telepathy had drained him more completely than he’d thought possible. His body ached, he was exhausted all of the time and he should have known they would all notice. After Owen’s blow up, he’d thought about stopping all together, giving up on trying to reach Jack, but then that thing with the weevils had happened.
Ianto shuddered as he remembered that night…
He was down in the vaults, doling out the weevil chow when one of the weevils moaned and clutched its head. The weevils in the vaults around it all dropped to their knees and howled in a bizarre display of sympathy. Ianto remembered another time he’d seen this behavior - remembered what Jack had said, “They have a low level of telepathic ability to share emotion across distance.”
Ianto dropped the bucket and stared at the weevil. He crouched in front of the plexi-glass and just stared for a long moment. He felt light and heavy all at once and then the tingling began in his fingertips. A part of his mind wondered just what the hell he was doing, but he continued nonetheless, reaching out to the weevil with his mind.
The scream was deafening. He clutched at his head, unconsciously mirroring the weevil in the vault. That scream went on and on, rage and hate and pain made sound. Ianto stumbled back until he was pressed against the opposite cell. He stared at the weevil and realized that its mouth was closed. The scream was only in his head.
It had worked.
He tried to disengage, to stop the unbearable noise in his mind, but it only grew louder. The weevil held him there. He was trapped as surely as if the creature had him pinned to the wall with its claws. He started to sweat with the effort of breaking the link. Just when he thought he might actually pass out, the noise eased and began to fade. He drew long gasping breaths of relief… until the other sound began.
Laughter.
Someone was laughing. A deep, low chuckle, rich with enjoyment at his pain. Ianto turned his head slightly to see the weevil that Jack called Janet in the cell behind him. She was - there was no other way to describe it - she was grinning. Other voices joined hers and soon Ianto’s head was full of the sound of malicious delight.
He left the bucket in the middle of the floor and ran.
Ianto shuddered again and ducked his head under the hot water, remembering how that laughter had followed him up to the Hub. He’d only been able to shut it out by leaving the Hub, going for a run. The distance and the ability to focus on something else had finally broken the link and he’d sworn he would go camping in Brecon Beacons before he tried to communicate with a weevil again.
But the incident had given him just enough hope to keep pushing. He knew that he could do it. He had proof. If he could connect to a weevil, surely he could reach Jack. So he’d kept trying, but he’d been more careful. He would only let himself try for a few hours every night. He used alarms to pull out of the trance and then forced himself to actually sleep. He’d started running again as the weather got nicer and it gave him some of his appetite back, enough that he could eat with the team anyway. Owen was still riding him about how thin he’d gotten, but he could always shut him up by grabbing some take-away or suggesting they close up shop.
Ianto smiled a little, his face still unused to the expression. He was doing okay. Not great, but he’d survived so far and God knows he’d survived worse. Little did he know as he dressed and got ready to face another day that his biggest test since Jack had vanished was just around the corner.
~ * ~ * ~ * ~
Ianto walked into Jack’s office giving his report a final once-over before he handed it to Gwen. She had sent him back to Bilis Manger’s old shop for one last look before they closed the book on it. He’d talked with Ms. Pierce, who hadn’t been there when he and Owen had driven out originally. She was a pleasant, middle-aged woman who was in the process of selling off the stock which had been included in the lease. She was planning to renovate and re-open the shop a few months down the road to sell exotic birds. Ianto had spent almost an hour pretending to look at the watches on display and discussing the merits of African Greys over Macaws with the woman. She was harmless. Wherever Bilis had gone, whatever he was planning, Ianto would swear that Ms. Pierce had nothing to do with it. He finished reading his report and glanced up to set it on Jack’s desk.
“What the…?”
Gwen wasn’t there.
Neither was the desk.
Ianto stared at the empty floor, wondering if he’d finally lost his mind.
“I moved it,” Gwen said brightly.
Ianto turned to find Gwen and Jack’s desk behind him, just to the right of the door. She was grinning at him. There were a hundred things he wanted to say to her at that moment. Luckily the most pertinent and least impertinent one came out first.
“Why?” he asked.
“Well, it was too close to the radiator, it just blocked the heat from getting to the rest of the room and it’s easier to see out into the Hub from here and...and I was always afraid I was going to step in that hole down to… over there,” she finished lamely, waving her hand in the direction of Jack’s quarters.
Ianto unclenched his teeth and managed to ask politely, “How is it easier to see out into the Hub with your back to the windows?”
“Well, you just turn the chair, see?”
Ianto raised an eyebrow.
A dull flush started on Gwen’s neck and rose to her cheeks. “I’m closer to the windows and it’s easier to see out since they’re all dirty. Really, Ianto, haven’t you heard of Windolene?”
“I have. The glass isn’t dirty, it’s a hundred years old.”
“Fine, it’s not dirty. I don’t care, I like it here,” Gwen said. She ran her hands over the shiny surface of the desk which, Ianto noticed, was completely bare except for a file folder and two new lamps.
He cleared his throat and tried very hard to remain civil. “And all of Jack’s things?” he inquired.
“Oh! I just packed them away. Don’t you think it looks better all tidied up?”
“No,” Ianto said flatly. He looked around and spied the box where she had ‘packed’ the items from Jack’s desk. He snatched it off the shelf and stared at the jumble. It looked like Gwen had just swept everything off the surface of the desk into the box. He carefully picked up the coral which had landed on the top of the pile. He examined it closely and found one little corner that had been broken off. He felt something snap inside him at the sight. “You had no right moving his things!” he shouted.
Gwen looked surprised, then angry as Ianto started to put Jack’s knickknacks back on the desk. “I had every right,” she shouted back. “This is my desk now. I’m head of Torchwood, you said it yourself.”
“Acting head, Gwen, as in temporary. You’re just keeping that seat warm until Jack comes back, something you’d do well to remember!”
They were inches apart, both of them leaning across the desk, red-faced with fury. “And if he never comes back? What then, Ianto?”
Ianto flinched. He felt the now-familiar pain rip through him at her words. He dropped his eyes and backed away. Silently he put the rest of Jack’s personal items back on the desk, right where they belonged. “It’s not August yet,” he said, his voice raspy with emotion. “We said we’d give Jack six months and that’s what we’re going to do. Four and a bit to go and then you can do what you like. But not until then.” He ran a gentle finger over the coral and felt it vibrate slightly. He sighed with relief and looked back up at Gwen. “That’s alive,” he said, pointing at the coral. “Don’t touch it again.”
She glanced down at the coral in surprise as Ianto strode out of the office.
He almost ran into Tosh as he was leaving.
“Hi, Ianto,” Tosh said pleasantly. He knew she had heard the argument, hell, they probably heard it up on the Plass, he thought crossly, but Tosh seemed to be ignoring it. “Did you want to take a look at this? Just came through on the rift monitor.”
Ianto reigned in his temper and took the sheet of paper from her with a tight smile. He glanced down and saw the familiar pattern of a rift spike. As he looked at it more closely, Tosh spoke again.
“Jack always wanted to see them. I’ve seen you two going over the reports before, so I figured you’d be the best person to know if it’s something we should go take a look at or not.”
Oh God, not now, please! Ianto thought desperately. But there they were - the little feathery edges on the spike. Something came back.
“Thanks, Tosh,” Ianto said with a calm he didn’t feel. “And these are the coordinates?” he asked, indicating to Tosh’s handwritten notes in the corner.
She nodded.
“Great. I’m sure it’s nothing big. I’ll just pop over and take a quick look. I could use some air,” he muttered.
Tosh grinned. “I’ll bet. I’ll be on comms if you need backup,” she said. She gave his arm a little squeeze and continued into Jack’s office.
As Ianto grabbed his coat and the keys to the SUV, he heard Tosh and Gwen talking. It sounded like Tosh was calming Gwen down and convincing her to leave Jack’s stuff alone at the same time. Bless you, Tosh. I owe you one, Ianto thought as he headed for the lift. His conscience poked at him, reminding him that he’d been an arse since Jack disappeared and that he probably owed Tosh a lot more than one.
When I get back, I’ll take her out to dinner, he promised silently, and say thank you and I’m sorry properly. But first…
His mouth settled into that grim line again and he glanced down at the paper crumpled in his hand. Work to do.
TBC in Chapter Eight