PTSD: Post Torchwood Stress Disorder (6/7)
Title: PTSD: Post Torchwood Stress Disorder (6/7)
Characters: Jack/Ianto (with Owen, Gwen and Tosh)
Rating: R
Words: 3475 (this part)
Notes: See part one. Seriously, they threaten to overwhelm the story. The very awesome kensieg apparently stayed up late last night to beta this so I could get it out while I'm sitting here at the airport. Whew! 6/7. The end is finally in sight!
Summary: It's been two and a half years since Canary Wharf. It's been a year since Lisa. And Jack is just now realizing what the real toll has all been on Ianto and the other survivors of Torchwood One. Now he needs to fix a big thing done badly before anyone else dies.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
The house was on the edge of town, in an area with lots of woods and fields and several hundred meters between houses. Jack told Gwen and Owen to do a cursory check of the house while he, Ianto and Tosh did a perimeter check. If there was a dead body lying in the bathtub or hanging off the banister, he didn’t want Ianto stumbling across it
Jack used his wristband to override the security system of the modest two-floor, brick and stone house and then used the alien lock-pick on the deadbolt and handle. Owen and Gwen went in, guns drawn, calling for Andrew or any other occupant.
Jack nodded to the side and led his group around the side of the house, checking the cellar door and a back sliding-glass door. The sliding door opened when Jack tested it. “Gwen? Owen?” Jack hollered through the door. Gwen appeared a few seconds later, gun preceding her into the large family room.
“What have you found?” she asked, lowering her gun as she cleared the room.
“Nothing, just that this door was open,” Jack told her.
Owen joined them and added, “If someone went out this way last, they wouldn’t be able to lock it from the outside. There’s no one in this house and very few personal belongings. Toothbrush in the bathroom, a box of cereal in the kitchen, like that.”
“Anything with any kind of identification to it? I’m sure it’s too much to hope there’s a wallet sitting on the bedside table, but some post or something?” Tosh asked.
Ianto seemed strangely silent, studying the woods behind the house. Without saying anything he broke from the group and headed towards the gate in the corner of the split rail fence that separated the house’s garden from the forest behind.
Jack made a face but let Ianto move off alone. “I guess we better go check the woods. Stay in someone else’s line of sight,” he cautioned as he moved to follow Ianto.”
Ianto looked sick and pale as he moved with purpose through the layers of decomposing leaves from the previous fall. “Ianto?” Jack trotted to catch up with him. “Ianto? You see something?”
He stopped and shook his head, eyes closed. “I… I just know…”
Jack stepped in front of him and rested a hand on Ianto’s chest. “Tell me where to check.”
Ianto shook his head. “He sent me on this wild goose chase. He wanted me to find him. He was here. I know he was. And now he’s gone and there’s nothing left for it but to find his body.” Ianto began scrubbing his fingers through his hair. “I think he knew we were coming, Jack. I think he waited until he knew he’d be found.”
It was on the tip of Jack’s tongue to ask how Ianto knew all that, but as he crossed his arms over his chest he felt the skeleton key still in his pocket. The perception filter that didn’t work on Ianto because he had such a high psychic rating. “Are you sure it’s too late?”
Ianto scuffed the leaves under his feet. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always noticed that there’s a … hole around a dead body. Like something’s missing from the air. That’s the best explanation I’ve ever been able to come up with, but it’s not… I know it doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes sense,” Jack said softly, realizing they were back to the programming that had happened in the hospital. Anything Ianto brought up that couldn’t be explained in cold, rational terms, he was told it didn’t make sense so that he wouldn’t say it again.
“I’ve felt it too. It’s like everything that’s living is connected, but where there’s a body, there’s a disruption to the circuit. Like if there’s light in a whole room, but one shadowy corner that shouldn’t be dark, but is.” Jack moved in and rubbed a hand up and down Ianto’s back. He took a deep breath. “In my time psychic ability was well documented. Mine is… pretty lousy,” Jack said with a slight grin. “I can get a basic sense of when someone’s lying to me or when someone’s highly emotional, but usually by the point I can feel it, it’s written all over their face. But I’ve been places where there have been a lot of dead bodies. And in cases like that, I’ve felt what you’ve felt. A cold spot in an otherwise warm place. Unless I’m basically standing right over it, I don’t feel it from just one body.”
Ianto turned his head away. “You’re lucky. Sometimes…” He swallowed and changed his approach. “By the time they got me away from Canary Wharf I was sure I was going to fall into that hole and never be able to crawl back out. So many damn bodies.”
Jack reached up to wipe away the tear that tracked slowly down Ianto’s cheek. “And there’s another one here.”
“Tell me where to start looking,” Jack said softly. “You found him, but you don’t need to see him. If it’s messy… Let me do this.”
Ianto squeezed his eyes shut, his need to take care of his first team warring with the overwhelming desire to let Jack handle the dirty work this time.
Suddenly Jack’s hand shot up to his headset. “Owen?” He reached out to take Ianto’s hand. “Understood, can you…? Right. Thanks.”
Ianto looked up, eyes red and wet. “Owen found him?” He looked up the hill to where Gwen was coming back towards them and Owen was pulling a plastic sheet out of his medkit, Ianto supposed, to cover Andrew’s face.
Gwen had her sympathetic face on when she came to the pair of them. “Ianto, I’m sorry.”
Ianto just nodded and slid down the nearest tree, where he wrapped his arms around his knees and hid his face, too drained to even cry.
Gwen looked at Jack, not sure what to do or say.
“He already knew,” Jack said simply.
() () () () () () ()
Owen and Gwen took care of getting the body picked up by the local authorities and explained that the body would be transferred to Torchwood within the next day.
Jack took Ianto inside the house to get him up out of the wet, muddy, leaves. Once up and moving, Ianto became restless. He wandered the house looking for any signs of real habitation. A note. Something that would tell him what had happened. Eventually he’d come back down the stairs and just aimlessly paced the living room while Jack sat in the chair in the corner and watched him warily.
“No note, hardly any clothes upstairs, no books or any kind of personal effects… No computer, which is odd as hell for Andrew. I can’t figure out what happened.” He leaned his arm on the fireplace mantle and rested his head on it.
Jack moved behind him and squeezed his shoulders. “I think we have a pretty good idea.”
Ianto turned his head to look at Jack, his mouth open to say something, but he shut it again as he took in the ‘model home’ trinkets on the mantle. The crystal rose vase with a single red rose in it caught his eye. It was familiar. The rose was real, not the dried or silk sort he’d thought at first. The edges of the petals were drying and curling, like it had been there a few days without water. The crystal seemed milky in the dim evening light. He straightened up, pulled away from Jack and examined it.
He took out the rose and examined the dry stem before tossing the flower onto the mantle. He looked into the vase, wondering why there was no water. What he saw made him sigh and steel himself. Jack watched over his shoulder as Ianto slowly pulled out the tightly rolled paper from the vase.
“Want me to read it first?” Jack asked softly as he hooked his chin over Ianto’s shoulder and rested his hands on Ianto’s waist.
Ianto shook his head and moved away, crossing the room to the window where he could use the fading light to read the message.
He scoffed at the opening line. “Damn Jones, you were always good. Nothing ever got past you. So if you’ve found this, at least I’ll go knowing one of us hasn’t lost our edge.”
He read it through and then handed it over to Jack. It was mostly a standard Torchwood suicide note - and it chilled him to think that there was such a thing - the reassurance that there was nothing anyone could do, directions as to what to do with his things, a few private notes that Ianto would copy over into the Letters.
Jack folded the note up and tucked it into his coat pocket. He moved to embrace Ianto, but Ianto stepped away. “Please don’t, Jack. Not right now.”
Jack raised an eyebrow, but didn’t move towards him again. It wasn’t like Ianto to decline comfort. “How’re you feeling, Ianto?” Jack asked cautiously.
Ianto leaned against the window, watching the few birds hopping in the trees. “Right now I’m feeling nothing. I’m completely fucking numb. And I think it’s for the best. I’m pretty damn terrified of what’ll happen when it sets in that we’ve had two suicides inside of a week.”
Jack itched to reach out and comfort him even if Ianto didn’t feel like he needed it.
“Actually, no,” Ianto said still staring out the window. “The one thing I’m feeling is pissed. He had to go and fuck with me first. He couldn’t just go and top himself; he had to set all this up to fuck with me because Lisa chose me over him. He had no fucking clue what he was spared. I’d have given anything to not be the one slowly losing her over a year and a half. To not have to be the one sneaking around trying to keep her alive, and as pain free as possible, and keep her a secret.” He took a deep breath and raised an arm to keep his forehead off the cold glass as he leaned into it. “I loved her. I truly did. But he had no idea what kind of hell he was spared.”
Jack jumped as the crystal vase in Ianto’s other hand slipped to the tile floor and shattered.
A crystal vase and a red rose. Jack made the connection and raised his eyes to the ceiling, wishing desperately he could tell this Andrew Wright fellow to fuck off in person. It was bad enough that Ianto would have to arrange to get to another funeral so soon after Marc’s, but, yeah, what Ianto’d said. Had the guy had to go and fuck with Ianto first?
Jack moved closer, sliding the crystal shards to one side with his boot. He put a hand on Ianto’s back. “He was suicidal. That speaks for not being in his right mind. He may not have realized how cruel he was being,” Jack tried.
“PTSD,” Ianto snorted. “In quarantine we called it Post Torchwood Stress Disorder. Somehow ‘trauma’ just didn’t seem to capture the whole thing well enough. Especially after ten weeks of their so-called counseling and then being dumped out like so much garbage.”
“Sounds about right,” Jack said, heartened that Ianto hadn’t shaken off his hand. “But try to cut him a little slack if you can. Eventually. He wasn’t in his right mind.”
Ianto turned to lean his back on the window, to try and see Jack in the rapidly encroaching dark. “None of us are, are we?”
Jack pulled him in and kissed him on the forehead. “You tell me. Is there anything I need to worry about?” Jack held his eyes, challenging Ianto to lie to him, even a little.
“I don’t know. Marc seemed perfectly fine up until he wrote a letter and sprinkled rat poison on his oatmeal. How do I know I won’t wake up feeling like that’s a good plan for the day?”
“Because I don’t think you just wake up suicidal one day. It builds. Tell me the truth,” Jack said with utter seriousness. “Do you think you’d be better off dead?”
There was a pause as Ianto seemed to take mental inventory. “No. I really don’t. I just worry that that will change.”
“With as much death as you’ve had to deal with in the last few years, I think that’s healthy. As long as you worry that suicide will sound attractive, you can be assured that you’re doing okay so far.” Jack took his hand and squeezed it. He’d come to a conclusion, but he wasn’t ready to talk to Ianto about it yet. He’d wait until the wheels were in motion.
Bright lights flashing along the driveway caused them both to lean and look out. Police were arriving and Gwen and Owen and Tosh were making their way around to explain and make arrangements. When Ianto started to head for the door, Jack grabbed his arm. “Just wait in here. They have this. If the police need to verify the suicide, they’ll come in and we can show them the note and explain just enough to make them go away. It’s being handled.”
Ianto nodded and walked back into the sitting room proper and collapsed onto the sofa. He grabbed his satchel from the coffee table and pulled out a writing tablet and a pen. Before he could get busy with the Letters, Jack sat next to him, “Give me your phone.” Ianto looked a question at him, but handed over his mobile before Jack could explain. “I’m going to call Meaghan. No point in letting her sit and worry any longer.”
Ianto reached for the phone. “I should -“
Jack pulled the phone back and squeezed Ianto’s hand before setting it back on his lap. “I’ll do it. Remember, you don’t have to deal with any of this crap alone any more. I’ll tell her that you’re writing the Letters and that you’ll call later.”
Ianto nodded, spinning his black fountain pen on his thumbnail. “Jack?”
Jack had been heading into the kitchen to call, but he stopped and looked back. “Amanda Lambert, she’s the only one of us who went to Glasgow when MacAllister asked… could you call her too? She’s in my directory. She and Andrew were together for a while. She should know.”
Jack nodded before disappearing behind the saloon doors into the kitchen.
Ianto slouched into the sofa, ignoring the fact that it was extremely rude to put your feet on someone else’s furniture, and put his shoes on the edge of the coffee table, propped the tablet on his legs and began to write. He was actually starting to hate this tradition. Who thought it was a good idea to have to write letters detailing someone’s suicide over and over again, ten different times?
Characters: Jack/Ianto (with Owen, Gwen and Tosh)
Rating: R
Words: 3475 (this part)
Notes: See part one. Seriously, they threaten to overwhelm the story. The very awesome kensieg apparently stayed up late last night to beta this so I could get it out while I'm sitting here at the airport. Whew! 6/7. The end is finally in sight!
Summary: It's been two and a half years since Canary Wharf. It's been a year since Lisa. And Jack is just now realizing what the real toll has all been on Ianto and the other survivors of Torchwood One. Now he needs to fix a big thing done badly before anyone else dies.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5
The house was on the edge of town, in an area with lots of woods and fields and several hundred meters between houses. Jack told Gwen and Owen to do a cursory check of the house while he, Ianto and Tosh did a perimeter check. If there was a dead body lying in the bathtub or hanging off the banister, he didn’t want Ianto stumbling across it
Jack used his wristband to override the security system of the modest two-floor, brick and stone house and then used the alien lock-pick on the deadbolt and handle. Owen and Gwen went in, guns drawn, calling for Andrew or any other occupant.
Jack nodded to the side and led his group around the side of the house, checking the cellar door and a back sliding-glass door. The sliding door opened when Jack tested it. “Gwen? Owen?” Jack hollered through the door. Gwen appeared a few seconds later, gun preceding her into the large family room.
“What have you found?” she asked, lowering her gun as she cleared the room.
“Nothing, just that this door was open,” Jack told her.
Owen joined them and added, “If someone went out this way last, they wouldn’t be able to lock it from the outside. There’s no one in this house and very few personal belongings. Toothbrush in the bathroom, a box of cereal in the kitchen, like that.”
“Anything with any kind of identification to it? I’m sure it’s too much to hope there’s a wallet sitting on the bedside table, but some post or something?” Tosh asked.
Ianto seemed strangely silent, studying the woods behind the house. Without saying anything he broke from the group and headed towards the gate in the corner of the split rail fence that separated the house’s garden from the forest behind.
Jack made a face but let Ianto move off alone. “I guess we better go check the woods. Stay in someone else’s line of sight,” he cautioned as he moved to follow Ianto.”
Ianto looked sick and pale as he moved with purpose through the layers of decomposing leaves from the previous fall. “Ianto?” Jack trotted to catch up with him. “Ianto? You see something?”
He stopped and shook his head, eyes closed. “I… I just know…”
Jack stepped in front of him and rested a hand on Ianto’s chest. “Tell me where to check.”
Ianto shook his head. “He sent me on this wild goose chase. He wanted me to find him. He was here. I know he was. And now he’s gone and there’s nothing left for it but to find his body.” Ianto began scrubbing his fingers through his hair. “I think he knew we were coming, Jack. I think he waited until he knew he’d be found.”
It was on the tip of Jack’s tongue to ask how Ianto knew all that, but as he crossed his arms over his chest he felt the skeleton key still in his pocket. The perception filter that didn’t work on Ianto because he had such a high psychic rating. “Are you sure it’s too late?”
Ianto scuffed the leaves under his feet. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always noticed that there’s a … hole around a dead body. Like something’s missing from the air. That’s the best explanation I’ve ever been able to come up with, but it’s not… I know it doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes sense,” Jack said softly, realizing they were back to the programming that had happened in the hospital. Anything Ianto brought up that couldn’t be explained in cold, rational terms, he was told it didn’t make sense so that he wouldn’t say it again.
“I’ve felt it too. It’s like everything that’s living is connected, but where there’s a body, there’s a disruption to the circuit. Like if there’s light in a whole room, but one shadowy corner that shouldn’t be dark, but is.” Jack moved in and rubbed a hand up and down Ianto’s back. He took a deep breath. “In my time psychic ability was well documented. Mine is… pretty lousy,” Jack said with a slight grin. “I can get a basic sense of when someone’s lying to me or when someone’s highly emotional, but usually by the point I can feel it, it’s written all over their face. But I’ve been places where there have been a lot of dead bodies. And in cases like that, I’ve felt what you’ve felt. A cold spot in an otherwise warm place. Unless I’m basically standing right over it, I don’t feel it from just one body.”
Ianto turned his head away. “You’re lucky. Sometimes…” He swallowed and changed his approach. “By the time they got me away from Canary Wharf I was sure I was going to fall into that hole and never be able to crawl back out. So many damn bodies.”
Jack reached up to wipe away the tear that tracked slowly down Ianto’s cheek. “And there’s another one here.”
“Tell me where to start looking,” Jack said softly. “You found him, but you don’t need to see him. If it’s messy… Let me do this.”
Ianto squeezed his eyes shut, his need to take care of his first team warring with the overwhelming desire to let Jack handle the dirty work this time.
Suddenly Jack’s hand shot up to his headset. “Owen?” He reached out to take Ianto’s hand. “Understood, can you…? Right. Thanks.”
Ianto looked up, eyes red and wet. “Owen found him?” He looked up the hill to where Gwen was coming back towards them and Owen was pulling a plastic sheet out of his medkit, Ianto supposed, to cover Andrew’s face.
Gwen had her sympathetic face on when she came to the pair of them. “Ianto, I’m sorry.”
Ianto just nodded and slid down the nearest tree, where he wrapped his arms around his knees and hid his face, too drained to even cry.
Gwen looked at Jack, not sure what to do or say.
“He already knew,” Jack said simply.
() () () () () () ()
Owen and Gwen took care of getting the body picked up by the local authorities and explained that the body would be transferred to Torchwood within the next day.
Jack took Ianto inside the house to get him up out of the wet, muddy, leaves. Once up and moving, Ianto became restless. He wandered the house looking for any signs of real habitation. A note. Something that would tell him what had happened. Eventually he’d come back down the stairs and just aimlessly paced the living room while Jack sat in the chair in the corner and watched him warily.
“No note, hardly any clothes upstairs, no books or any kind of personal effects… No computer, which is odd as hell for Andrew. I can’t figure out what happened.” He leaned his arm on the fireplace mantle and rested his head on it.
Jack moved behind him and squeezed his shoulders. “I think we have a pretty good idea.”
Ianto turned his head to look at Jack, his mouth open to say something, but he shut it again as he took in the ‘model home’ trinkets on the mantle. The crystal rose vase with a single red rose in it caught his eye. It was familiar. The rose was real, not the dried or silk sort he’d thought at first. The edges of the petals were drying and curling, like it had been there a few days without water. The crystal seemed milky in the dim evening light. He straightened up, pulled away from Jack and examined it.
He took out the rose and examined the dry stem before tossing the flower onto the mantle. He looked into the vase, wondering why there was no water. What he saw made him sigh and steel himself. Jack watched over his shoulder as Ianto slowly pulled out the tightly rolled paper from the vase.
“Want me to read it first?” Jack asked softly as he hooked his chin over Ianto’s shoulder and rested his hands on Ianto’s waist.
Ianto shook his head and moved away, crossing the room to the window where he could use the fading light to read the message.
He scoffed at the opening line. “Damn Jones, you were always good. Nothing ever got past you. So if you’ve found this, at least I’ll go knowing one of us hasn’t lost our edge.”
He read it through and then handed it over to Jack. It was mostly a standard Torchwood suicide note - and it chilled him to think that there was such a thing - the reassurance that there was nothing anyone could do, directions as to what to do with his things, a few private notes that Ianto would copy over into the Letters.
Jack folded the note up and tucked it into his coat pocket. He moved to embrace Ianto, but Ianto stepped away. “Please don’t, Jack. Not right now.”
Jack raised an eyebrow, but didn’t move towards him again. It wasn’t like Ianto to decline comfort. “How’re you feeling, Ianto?” Jack asked cautiously.
Ianto leaned against the window, watching the few birds hopping in the trees. “Right now I’m feeling nothing. I’m completely fucking numb. And I think it’s for the best. I’m pretty damn terrified of what’ll happen when it sets in that we’ve had two suicides inside of a week.”
Jack itched to reach out and comfort him even if Ianto didn’t feel like he needed it.
“Actually, no,” Ianto said still staring out the window. “The one thing I’m feeling is pissed. He had to go and fuck with me first. He couldn’t just go and top himself; he had to set all this up to fuck with me because Lisa chose me over him. He had no fucking clue what he was spared. I’d have given anything to not be the one slowly losing her over a year and a half. To not have to be the one sneaking around trying to keep her alive, and as pain free as possible, and keep her a secret.” He took a deep breath and raised an arm to keep his forehead off the cold glass as he leaned into it. “I loved her. I truly did. But he had no idea what kind of hell he was spared.”
Jack jumped as the crystal vase in Ianto’s other hand slipped to the tile floor and shattered.
A crystal vase and a red rose. Jack made the connection and raised his eyes to the ceiling, wishing desperately he could tell this Andrew Wright fellow to fuck off in person. It was bad enough that Ianto would have to arrange to get to another funeral so soon after Marc’s, but, yeah, what Ianto’d said. Had the guy had to go and fuck with Ianto first?
Jack moved closer, sliding the crystal shards to one side with his boot. He put a hand on Ianto’s back. “He was suicidal. That speaks for not being in his right mind. He may not have realized how cruel he was being,” Jack tried.
“PTSD,” Ianto snorted. “In quarantine we called it Post Torchwood Stress Disorder. Somehow ‘trauma’ just didn’t seem to capture the whole thing well enough. Especially after ten weeks of their so-called counseling and then being dumped out like so much garbage.”
“Sounds about right,” Jack said, heartened that Ianto hadn’t shaken off his hand. “But try to cut him a little slack if you can. Eventually. He wasn’t in his right mind.”
Ianto turned to lean his back on the window, to try and see Jack in the rapidly encroaching dark. “None of us are, are we?”
Jack pulled him in and kissed him on the forehead. “You tell me. Is there anything I need to worry about?” Jack held his eyes, challenging Ianto to lie to him, even a little.
“I don’t know. Marc seemed perfectly fine up until he wrote a letter and sprinkled rat poison on his oatmeal. How do I know I won’t wake up feeling like that’s a good plan for the day?”
“Because I don’t think you just wake up suicidal one day. It builds. Tell me the truth,” Jack said with utter seriousness. “Do you think you’d be better off dead?”
There was a pause as Ianto seemed to take mental inventory. “No. I really don’t. I just worry that that will change.”
“With as much death as you’ve had to deal with in the last few years, I think that’s healthy. As long as you worry that suicide will sound attractive, you can be assured that you’re doing okay so far.” Jack took his hand and squeezed it. He’d come to a conclusion, but he wasn’t ready to talk to Ianto about it yet. He’d wait until the wheels were in motion.
Bright lights flashing along the driveway caused them both to lean and look out. Police were arriving and Gwen and Owen and Tosh were making their way around to explain and make arrangements. When Ianto started to head for the door, Jack grabbed his arm. “Just wait in here. They have this. If the police need to verify the suicide, they’ll come in and we can show them the note and explain just enough to make them go away. It’s being handled.”
Ianto nodded and walked back into the sitting room proper and collapsed onto the sofa. He grabbed his satchel from the coffee table and pulled out a writing tablet and a pen. Before he could get busy with the Letters, Jack sat next to him, “Give me your phone.” Ianto looked a question at him, but handed over his mobile before Jack could explain. “I’m going to call Meaghan. No point in letting her sit and worry any longer.”
Ianto reached for the phone. “I should -“
Jack pulled the phone back and squeezed Ianto’s hand before setting it back on his lap. “I’ll do it. Remember, you don’t have to deal with any of this crap alone any more. I’ll tell her that you’re writing the Letters and that you’ll call later.”
Ianto nodded, spinning his black fountain pen on his thumbnail. “Jack?”
Jack had been heading into the kitchen to call, but he stopped and looked back. “Amanda Lambert, she’s the only one of us who went to Glasgow when MacAllister asked… could you call her too? She’s in my directory. She and Andrew were together for a while. She should know.”
Jack nodded before disappearing behind the saloon doors into the kitchen.
Ianto slouched into the sofa, ignoring the fact that it was extremely rude to put your feet on someone else’s furniture, and put his shoes on the edge of the coffee table, propped the tablet on his legs and began to write. He was actually starting to hate this tradition. Who thought it was a good idea to have to write letters detailing someone’s suicide over and over again, ten different times?