Torchwood -- Broken
Title: Broken
Date Written: 2/25/09
Rating: PG/K+
Word Count: 2,263
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Characters/Pairings: Ianto, past Ianto/Lisa, Ianto/Jack, Suzie, Tosh, Owen, Gwen, Martha, Mickey, Ten
Spoilers: Up through Torchwood 03 (just for names in 03), Doctor Who 04, minor drawings from The Torchwood Archives
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: This one is definitely different from my normal type of work. I know this isn't DKoM, but she was a work of love. Major thanks to my betas katestamps and totally4ryo, who were both totally into this. Thank you girls!
Bribe for teachwriteslash. I hope she likes it.
He's eight when it happens the first time. Or maybe, the first time he can remember. There's a lot of stuff he doesn't remember that much anymore. It should be worrisome, looking back on your life and realizing you're missing huge chunks of it here and again, but it doesn't worry Ianto all that much.
It's his normal. Who is he to question it?
Anyway, he'd had a row with his father. Mr. Jones had stumbled across Ianto's little research lab -- "Your little lab of horrors!" the older man called it.
He hadn't been doing anything bad, not really. He'd seen something on telly that had intrigued him, something on one of those science afternoon kid shows his mother liked him to watch. It had been a programme about the Earth's oceans, mostly about how pollution was making everything in the oceans die out and eco-somethings, he hadn't quite cared to be honest. The part that had caught -- no, captivated -- his attention had been a tiny little thirty-second bit about starfish.
Specifically, how starfish could regenerate.
He was a clever boy for his age, so he looked it up the next day at school. Then he'd started catching newts and salamanders in the garden, catching them in big glass jars and studying them for hours. He had copious notes on them; where and when he caught them, distinguishing features, little mannerisms that were both typical of the species and unique to that one specimen.
His parents had thought their young son had taken a shine to biology. That was until his father had stumbled across the pile of severed reptile limbs.
"It's not like I hurt 'em. They grew back," Ianto muttered to himself, tapping out a random beat on the kitchen table with a biro. It was a familiar theme, him making noises to get out energy. Sometimes he'd find one he liked, remember how it went and named it. Catalogued it for future reference.
He liked storing things, remembering. Which was odd when he got older and realized he didn't remember as much as he thought he had.
"What's that?" his older sister, Rhi, stuck her head into the kitchen. "All right?"
Eight-year-old Ianto shrugged his little shoulders, still tapping on the table.
"What d'you call that one, then?" she asked, taking a glass out of the cupboard. "You've been banging on steady for five minutes now," she explained, pouring herself a glass of orange juice.
Ianto's stride didn't falter, but he actually started listening to what was being played out.
Da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum --
It was something he'd always associate with anger bordering on rage, with getting what he wanted taken away from him. With Time Out at the kitchen table while the Others took apart his hard work and thought up a more suitable punishment.
"The Call to War," he told Rhi after a moment's thought.
"Creepy."
-----
Again, it's not his fault, but he gets blamed anyway.
He's in court. Standing before a petty judge who frowns and tells him that, "It's a shame son, a real shame. Your parents did the best they could with you, but it's apparent that you just want to throw all that away."
Ianto knows, on one level, that the judge is trying to scare him back onto the straight and narrow. But in that moment all he can see is red, all he can hear is the da-da-da-dum of his heartbeats in his ears.
When the judge asks why he did it, Ianto answers.
"Because it's mine."
The statement is spoken with such sincerity that the judge pauses, eyes wide. Big eyes are set deep in a big face, that ridiculous powdered wig slightly askew, revealing a wisp of black hair and Ianto can't help but laugh at just how ridiculous it all looks.
Then the judge's face turns bright red and he bangs the gavel down. "Four weeks community service! And I hope you think about that when you get the urge to steal another watch!"
The conviction gets expunged off his record when he becomes an adult.
-----
Torchwood London is like Heaven on Earth. He fits, he belongs. They give him his favorite thing -- information -- and he records it fastidiously. Alien items, alien beings, alien autopsies. He can't get enough, can't ever get enough. He swears "For Queen and Country" but inside he swears "For Me. All For Myself."
The biggest change comes when he meets Lisa. And oh, he loves her. Not because she is beautiful, or because she is clever, or because she tumbles so easily into his arms, into his bed, like she belongs.
He loves her because she is broken, but she can hide it just as well as he can.
She comes from a perfect family, just like him. Her parents are hardworking middle-class, with a mortgage and a minivan and a budget and double-digits in their marriage anniversary. But somehow, in some way, Lisa was born broken. There's a little flaw in her that Ianto finds ridiculously easy to locate, to exploit. She does the same with him and he loves her even more for it.
The Ghost Shifts had upset him for some reason, he'd never liked them. When they were scheduled to happen he would find Lisa and drag her into a supply closet until they were over. She thought he was being a little dangerous, wanting to neck with the excitement of potentially getting caught and fired.
Ianto could see the black energy surrounding them. He knew they were wrong. The Sphere (that's what the scientists called it, he knew that was the wrong name; it was a ship, God damn it, a fucking Pandora's Box without the Hope at the bottom) gave him the same feeling, so he avoided it like the plague.
He knew that today was the day that Torchwood London would fall when Yvonne Hartman announced that they'd captured the Doctor and his TARDIS. (oh how he ached to see the TARDIS, he could hear her singing in his head!) The Doctor's pictures were always smiling and happy, but the man was like the Ghost Shifts, like the Sphere. He brought pain, and he brought death. It was that simple.
So when the Ghosts turned out to be Cybermen, he wasn't all that surprised. He was more upset that he had missed something so completely obvious.
He only got truly afraid when the Daleks appeared. There would be no escaping the Daleks. There never was.
There was a gap in his memory during the battle. He'd fought against the Daleks and the Cybermen, along with everyone else, that frantic need to survive overriding everything else. Even the drumming in his ears was drowned out by terror, by loud explosions, by metallic whirling and screams of pain. The last thing he remembered was Lisa being captured, of her screaming for him, arm outstretched as two Cybermen pulled her towards the conversion chambers.
The doctors tell him later that it's trauma, that his mind had locked away the horrible memories so he could continue to move, to get out and live. He wanted to believe them.
Sometimes when he woke up screaming from nightmares, he thought he could hear another voice, too.
Free me and I can save you.
-----
He learns to blend in when he moves to Cardiff. The proximity pleases his mother. The quiet smiles, the good coffee, the fast work make Jack happy. His work is stellar, but no one can tell because it takes the form of a file placed on Suzie's desk, an email in Toshiko's inbox, an x-ray hung up in the medical bay for Owen, the case files on Gwen's desk sorted and stacked, and an on-schedule Jack Harkness.
He is indispensible and unnoticeable at the same time. It's like he cast a spell. Everyone thinks they're part of Jack Harkness' team, but in reality it's Ianto pulling the strings.
He knows everything about them, and they know nothing. He likes that imbalance. He likes that they're all broken.
He loves Suzie just a little bit too, senses that she's the one who's the most shattered. He pushes into studying the Glove. He's just as curious as she is to find out if it works, if there's the possibility of human resurrection, regeneration. He feels guilty after she goes mad and kills herself, but only slightly. He's damn proud of her when she comes back a second time, and hides the fact that she finally got what she needed, what she deserved; revenge.
Toshiko is the easiest because he can feed her the Rift forever and she'll sit there, as clever as the day is long, tea going cold as she works away happily. She's also the most helpful, since she does most of his work for him. Contrary to what the others think, she's not the only one who can mostly understand the Rift Manipulator; Ianto knows that fucking around with it holds the potential of backfire. Killing himself is the one thing he's loath to even consider, no matter what he stands to gain if it goes correctly.
Owen's a prick, but he's relatively easy to control because he doesn't give a damn anymore. He has a database of women for Owen, an account cleverly hidden in the records to make sure they're paid well for their services and a stock of pheromone spray. If he's kept sexed and half-drunk, he's kept in line. And it feels damn good to shoot him.
Losing Lisa did hurt because he did love her, but she gives him the in with Gwen. So caring, so compassionate, while she hides her own betrayal to Rhys and Toshiko. She thinks she comforts him, and Ianto lets her believe that. Even as he drops a tiny little hint here and there that he knows she'll never let up on.
If he loved Lisa, however, he worships Jack. Jack is so ultimately broken, so ultimately wrong. He reminds Ianto of the gravity theory, planets sitting on the fabric of space, weighing it down. Jack is a black hole, a place where time exists around but not in him. Ianto can taste the sorrow of immortality on his skin.
For the first time in his life, Ianto belongs. And the drums aren't heard for a long time.
-----
It surprises him that he misses Tosh and Owen, especially when they're recruited to help the Doctor pull the Earth back into orbit. While the Daleks terrified him, the Reality Bomb invention of theirs intrigued him.
Even as he runs about, hooking this and that up and opening the Rift wide open, he wonders if even Jack would be able to survive his atoms coming apart.
He wonders if Jack is thinking about it too, if he wants it.
Jack comes back with Martha and another Companion, Mickey. Martha is heartbreakingly whole, and it disappoints Ianto because he really does want to love her. Mickey's hard, but there's a crack in there somewhere. It may just take a little bit of time to find it.
And then he arrives.
The Doctor.
If Jack is worthy of worship, then Ianto wants to build a temple to the worship of the Time Lord. The sorrow, the heartbreak, the pure broken, shattered shards of the man make Ianto want to fall to his knees before the brown-haired man.
Instead he takes to following him around like a puppy. There's nothing but pure awe right now, and Ianto can tell that the Doctor likes that, just a little. He craves attention, love, and Ianto's giving it to him in spades.
Beginning to control him. Bit by bit.
They're up in the tourist shop when it happens. When it finally, finally happens. The Doctor, clumsy, beautiful, broken fool that he is, trips over something and falls, scattering Ianto's possessions everywhere. Jack and Gwen and Ianto let out little gasps and yelps of surprise, scrambling to help the man to his feet. He just laughs but lets them help him up.
Then there's the crunch, the chink of shattering glass and the sproing of loosened coils. The Doctor looks down and there's a broken fob watch under his foot, the watch Ianto got four weeks for as a teenager.
"Oh, dear! I'm so, so sorry about that, I'll be sure to fix it right up!" the Doctor says, stooping to gather up all the bits and pieces. "Nothing a bit of sonicking can't fix."
Jack and Gwen bend to help him. All are oblivious to Ianto, to the way the Welshman is standing stock-still.
The way his eyes are glowing golden.
Free... It's the voice he'd heard at Canary Wharf, the one he associates with safety, with life. With identity.
With drums.
The Doctor's finishing gathering up all the bits when Jack hands him the back. It's beautifully, intricately carved with circles and curves and lines and burnished silver and the Time Lord freezes when he sees it.
"No."
"Hello Doctor."
"No no no no no," the Doctor says, standing so quickly he nearly knocks Gwen and Jack back. He puts himself between the two broken humans. "You died, you died in my arms!"
"Say my name."
"No..." It's a long, low moan from Broken Jack, but Ianto ignores it, focusing instead on the Doctor.
"Say it," he demands again.
The Doctor swallows once, twice, tears already threatening to fall. His hearts are breaking. Again. Ianto can see it, rejoices in it.
No. Not Ianto.
"... Master."
Date Written: 2/25/09
Rating: PG/K+
Word Count: 2,263
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Characters/Pairings: Ianto, past Ianto/Lisa, Ianto/Jack, Suzie, Tosh, Owen, Gwen, Martha, Mickey, Ten
Spoilers: Up through Torchwood 03 (just for names in 03), Doctor Who 04, minor drawings from The Torchwood Archives
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: This one is definitely different from my normal type of work. I know this isn't DKoM, but she was a work of love. Major thanks to my betas katestamps and totally4ryo, who were both totally into this. Thank you girls!
Bribe for teachwriteslash. I hope she likes it.
He's eight when it happens the first time. Or maybe, the first time he can remember. There's a lot of stuff he doesn't remember that much anymore. It should be worrisome, looking back on your life and realizing you're missing huge chunks of it here and again, but it doesn't worry Ianto all that much.
It's his normal. Who is he to question it?
Anyway, he'd had a row with his father. Mr. Jones had stumbled across Ianto's little research lab -- "Your little lab of horrors!" the older man called it.
He hadn't been doing anything bad, not really. He'd seen something on telly that had intrigued him, something on one of those science afternoon kid shows his mother liked him to watch. It had been a programme about the Earth's oceans, mostly about how pollution was making everything in the oceans die out and eco-somethings, he hadn't quite cared to be honest. The part that had caught -- no, captivated -- his attention had been a tiny little thirty-second bit about starfish.
Specifically, how starfish could regenerate.
He was a clever boy for his age, so he looked it up the next day at school. Then he'd started catching newts and salamanders in the garden, catching them in big glass jars and studying them for hours. He had copious notes on them; where and when he caught them, distinguishing features, little mannerisms that were both typical of the species and unique to that one specimen.
His parents had thought their young son had taken a shine to biology. That was until his father had stumbled across the pile of severed reptile limbs.
"It's not like I hurt 'em. They grew back," Ianto muttered to himself, tapping out a random beat on the kitchen table with a biro. It was a familiar theme, him making noises to get out energy. Sometimes he'd find one he liked, remember how it went and named it. Catalogued it for future reference.
He liked storing things, remembering. Which was odd when he got older and realized he didn't remember as much as he thought he had.
"What's that?" his older sister, Rhi, stuck her head into the kitchen. "All right?"
Eight-year-old Ianto shrugged his little shoulders, still tapping on the table.
"What d'you call that one, then?" she asked, taking a glass out of the cupboard. "You've been banging on steady for five minutes now," she explained, pouring herself a glass of orange juice.
Ianto's stride didn't falter, but he actually started listening to what was being played out.
Da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum --
It was something he'd always associate with anger bordering on rage, with getting what he wanted taken away from him. With Time Out at the kitchen table while the Others took apart his hard work and thought up a more suitable punishment.
"The Call to War," he told Rhi after a moment's thought.
"Creepy."
-----
Again, it's not his fault, but he gets blamed anyway.
He's in court. Standing before a petty judge who frowns and tells him that, "It's a shame son, a real shame. Your parents did the best they could with you, but it's apparent that you just want to throw all that away."
Ianto knows, on one level, that the judge is trying to scare him back onto the straight and narrow. But in that moment all he can see is red, all he can hear is the da-da-da-dum of his heartbeats in his ears.
When the judge asks why he did it, Ianto answers.
"Because it's mine."
The statement is spoken with such sincerity that the judge pauses, eyes wide. Big eyes are set deep in a big face, that ridiculous powdered wig slightly askew, revealing a wisp of black hair and Ianto can't help but laugh at just how ridiculous it all looks.
Then the judge's face turns bright red and he bangs the gavel down. "Four weeks community service! And I hope you think about that when you get the urge to steal another watch!"
The conviction gets expunged off his record when he becomes an adult.
-----
Torchwood London is like Heaven on Earth. He fits, he belongs. They give him his favorite thing -- information -- and he records it fastidiously. Alien items, alien beings, alien autopsies. He can't get enough, can't ever get enough. He swears "For Queen and Country" but inside he swears "For Me. All For Myself."
The biggest change comes when he meets Lisa. And oh, he loves her. Not because she is beautiful, or because she is clever, or because she tumbles so easily into his arms, into his bed, like she belongs.
He loves her because she is broken, but she can hide it just as well as he can.
She comes from a perfect family, just like him. Her parents are hardworking middle-class, with a mortgage and a minivan and a budget and double-digits in their marriage anniversary. But somehow, in some way, Lisa was born broken. There's a little flaw in her that Ianto finds ridiculously easy to locate, to exploit. She does the same with him and he loves her even more for it.
The Ghost Shifts had upset him for some reason, he'd never liked them. When they were scheduled to happen he would find Lisa and drag her into a supply closet until they were over. She thought he was being a little dangerous, wanting to neck with the excitement of potentially getting caught and fired.
Ianto could see the black energy surrounding them. He knew they were wrong. The Sphere (that's what the scientists called it, he knew that was the wrong name; it was a ship, God damn it, a fucking Pandora's Box without the Hope at the bottom) gave him the same feeling, so he avoided it like the plague.
He knew that today was the day that Torchwood London would fall when Yvonne Hartman announced that they'd captured the Doctor and his TARDIS. (oh how he ached to see the TARDIS, he could hear her singing in his head!) The Doctor's pictures were always smiling and happy, but the man was like the Ghost Shifts, like the Sphere. He brought pain, and he brought death. It was that simple.
So when the Ghosts turned out to be Cybermen, he wasn't all that surprised. He was more upset that he had missed something so completely obvious.
He only got truly afraid when the Daleks appeared. There would be no escaping the Daleks. There never was.
There was a gap in his memory during the battle. He'd fought against the Daleks and the Cybermen, along with everyone else, that frantic need to survive overriding everything else. Even the drumming in his ears was drowned out by terror, by loud explosions, by metallic whirling and screams of pain. The last thing he remembered was Lisa being captured, of her screaming for him, arm outstretched as two Cybermen pulled her towards the conversion chambers.
The doctors tell him later that it's trauma, that his mind had locked away the horrible memories so he could continue to move, to get out and live. He wanted to believe them.
Sometimes when he woke up screaming from nightmares, he thought he could hear another voice, too.
Free me and I can save you.
-----
He learns to blend in when he moves to Cardiff. The proximity pleases his mother. The quiet smiles, the good coffee, the fast work make Jack happy. His work is stellar, but no one can tell because it takes the form of a file placed on Suzie's desk, an email in Toshiko's inbox, an x-ray hung up in the medical bay for Owen, the case files on Gwen's desk sorted and stacked, and an on-schedule Jack Harkness.
He is indispensible and unnoticeable at the same time. It's like he cast a spell. Everyone thinks they're part of Jack Harkness' team, but in reality it's Ianto pulling the strings.
He knows everything about them, and they know nothing. He likes that imbalance. He likes that they're all broken.
He loves Suzie just a little bit too, senses that she's the one who's the most shattered. He pushes into studying the Glove. He's just as curious as she is to find out if it works, if there's the possibility of human resurrection, regeneration. He feels guilty after she goes mad and kills herself, but only slightly. He's damn proud of her when she comes back a second time, and hides the fact that she finally got what she needed, what she deserved; revenge.
Toshiko is the easiest because he can feed her the Rift forever and she'll sit there, as clever as the day is long, tea going cold as she works away happily. She's also the most helpful, since she does most of his work for him. Contrary to what the others think, she's not the only one who can mostly understand the Rift Manipulator; Ianto knows that fucking around with it holds the potential of backfire. Killing himself is the one thing he's loath to even consider, no matter what he stands to gain if it goes correctly.
Owen's a prick, but he's relatively easy to control because he doesn't give a damn anymore. He has a database of women for Owen, an account cleverly hidden in the records to make sure they're paid well for their services and a stock of pheromone spray. If he's kept sexed and half-drunk, he's kept in line. And it feels damn good to shoot him.
Losing Lisa did hurt because he did love her, but she gives him the in with Gwen. So caring, so compassionate, while she hides her own betrayal to Rhys and Toshiko. She thinks she comforts him, and Ianto lets her believe that. Even as he drops a tiny little hint here and there that he knows she'll never let up on.
If he loved Lisa, however, he worships Jack. Jack is so ultimately broken, so ultimately wrong. He reminds Ianto of the gravity theory, planets sitting on the fabric of space, weighing it down. Jack is a black hole, a place where time exists around but not in him. Ianto can taste the sorrow of immortality on his skin.
For the first time in his life, Ianto belongs. And the drums aren't heard for a long time.
-----
It surprises him that he misses Tosh and Owen, especially when they're recruited to help the Doctor pull the Earth back into orbit. While the Daleks terrified him, the Reality Bomb invention of theirs intrigued him.
Even as he runs about, hooking this and that up and opening the Rift wide open, he wonders if even Jack would be able to survive his atoms coming apart.
He wonders if Jack is thinking about it too, if he wants it.
Jack comes back with Martha and another Companion, Mickey. Martha is heartbreakingly whole, and it disappoints Ianto because he really does want to love her. Mickey's hard, but there's a crack in there somewhere. It may just take a little bit of time to find it.
And then he arrives.
The Doctor.
If Jack is worthy of worship, then Ianto wants to build a temple to the worship of the Time Lord. The sorrow, the heartbreak, the pure broken, shattered shards of the man make Ianto want to fall to his knees before the brown-haired man.
Instead he takes to following him around like a puppy. There's nothing but pure awe right now, and Ianto can tell that the Doctor likes that, just a little. He craves attention, love, and Ianto's giving it to him in spades.
Beginning to control him. Bit by bit.
They're up in the tourist shop when it happens. When it finally, finally happens. The Doctor, clumsy, beautiful, broken fool that he is, trips over something and falls, scattering Ianto's possessions everywhere. Jack and Gwen and Ianto let out little gasps and yelps of surprise, scrambling to help the man to his feet. He just laughs but lets them help him up.
Then there's the crunch, the chink of shattering glass and the sproing of loosened coils. The Doctor looks down and there's a broken fob watch under his foot, the watch Ianto got four weeks for as a teenager.
"Oh, dear! I'm so, so sorry about that, I'll be sure to fix it right up!" the Doctor says, stooping to gather up all the bits and pieces. "Nothing a bit of sonicking can't fix."
Jack and Gwen bend to help him. All are oblivious to Ianto, to the way the Welshman is standing stock-still.
The way his eyes are glowing golden.
Free... It's the voice he'd heard at Canary Wharf, the one he associates with safety, with life. With identity.
With drums.
The Doctor's finishing gathering up all the bits when Jack hands him the back. It's beautifully, intricately carved with circles and curves and lines and burnished silver and the Time Lord freezes when he sees it.
"No."
"Hello Doctor."
"No no no no no," the Doctor says, standing so quickly he nearly knocks Gwen and Jack back. He puts himself between the two broken humans. "You died, you died in my arms!"
"Say my name."
"No..." It's a long, low moan from Broken Jack, but Ianto ignores it, focusing instead on the Doctor.
"Say it," he demands again.
The Doctor swallows once, twice, tears already threatening to fall. His hearts are breaking. Again. Ianto can see it, rejoices in it.
No. Not Ianto.
"... Master."