Fanfic - Something You Play [Torchwood: Ianto]

[soera]

Title: Something You Play
Rating(s): PG-13
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Ianto-centric; mentions of Ianto/Lisa and Jack/Ianto pre-slash
Summary: Ianto hasn’t finished atoning.
Warning(s): Spoilers for Cyberwoman and Countrycide. Alien hijacking Ianto’s body (not sure if the loss of control warrants a trigger warning? Let me know if it does!).
Author's Notes: Set roughly around the time of Greeks Bearing Gifts.
ETA: This fic now has a sequel, A Hat to Cover Your Heart.

Something You Play

Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
- Anne Sexton, “Live”

One of these days, Ianto thinks sourly to himself, he’s going to shoot out those bloody alarms. The cog door rolls back, revealing the team as they troop in, chattering away amongst themselves. Tracking in rainwater and mud, of course, because none of them could be bothered to so much as knock off a bit of the dirt from their shoes before entering.

They’re empty-handed, which either means that he’ll soon be sent out on clean-up duty, or they’d lost their alien friend. Ianto suspects it will probably be the former.

“Ianto!” Jack yells. The former it is, then. “Anything new on the monitors?”

All right, maybe not. “No, sir,” Ianto replies, moving towards the team. “All quiet on this front.”

“Sure about that?” Owen snipes. “No robots anywhere?”

Ianto silently takes Jack’s greatcoat and heads to his office to hang it up. He takes a few moments to straighten it, brushing debris from the collar and ensuring it hangs just right before re-emerging into the Hub main.

“Coffee, sir?” he asks, and that’s when the sirens go off. “Maybe not,” he adds to himself as Toshiko runs for her computers.

The grinding of the door mechanisms is clearly audible even over the alarms. Ianto throws an alarmed look at it. That had sounded ominously like they were going into lock-down.

“We’ve gone into lock-down!” Toshiko calls.

Sometimes, Ianto really hates being right.

“Why?” Jack demands.

“It’s picking up foreign energy readings,” Toshiko says, typing rapidly. “Unauthorised alien life-form, etcetera. We must have brought something back with us from the field.”

“Can you get a lock on it?” Jack asks, leaning over her shoulder.

“Trying,” she mutters, working fast. “Okay, got it.” She pauses, taking in the information on the screens. “Owen, it’s right on top of you!”

“What!” he yelps, looking down at himself.

“Clothes off, Harper,” Jack says.

“Not the bloody time, Harkness,” Owen growls.

“Seriously, it might be in you - we need to see it’s not just hiding in your clothes,” Jack says. “Off, hurry up!”

“Bugger,” Owen says.

“Only if you’re lucky,” Jack retorts.

Then Owen screams and something leaps out of his mouth and the last thing Ianto sees is something vaguely insect-like heading straight for him.

“- out of him,” Jack growls.

Ianto wakes up and sees four guns pointed straight at him. Well. This isn’t familiar at all. He attempts to put his hands up and discovers that they won’t work.

“Oh dear,” he says. His mouth doesn’t move. “Oh dear,” he repeats with feeling.

“I said, get out of him,” Jack says.

“Why would I do that?” Ianto’s mouth says of its own volition. “Such a lovely, strong, young host. So full of all the right emotions.”

“What would those be?” Jack asks. Owen is carefully inching around. Ianto suspects he might be trying to get a clear shot.

“Hatred,” Ianto purrs. “Despair. Such a pretty boy, he is.”

Trapped in his own mind, Ianto squirms. He sincerely hopes this thing can’t read his mind or some such. Hopes it doesn’t have access to his memories. He’s had enough already of worrying about what Toshiko might have heard in his head.

“What do you want with him?” Jack asks. The gun barrel, Ianto notices, never wavers. He’s always wondered why Jack used such an archaic model. How does he keep it in good condition? If any parts need replacing, where does he get them from? How ironic would it be that if Jack fired now, Ianto’s last thoughts would have been about gun maintenance?

“Just a little taste,” Ianto says. “A body to drive. That’s all.” He raises his hands. “Let me walk out of here and I won’t touch anyone on this planet. Just give me this body to drive.”

“He’s not a car,” Jack says. “Not a robot.”

Somewhere in his head, Ianto flinches.

“You think of him as one,” Ianto says thoughtfully. “All in here. Always hated, never trusted. Poor darling wants to die anyway. You might as well give me his body to use, since he doesn’t want it.”

“He doesn’t want to die,” Jack says.

Ianto’s lips curve in a mocking smile. It’s inappropriate timing, Ianto knows this, but he can’t help but laugh hysterically in the safe confines of his mind.

“He’s laughing,” Ianto confides, eyes wide in artful innocence. “Even he thinks it’s funny, what you said.”

“There’s nothing funny about it,” Jack growls. “He doesn’t want to die.”

Ianto thinks that Jack should go into stand-up comedy. He is not quite surprised when he hears his voice say, “He thinks you should go into stand-up comedy. Such a strong wish for death in this little one. So sorry, he was, that he didn’t die before. Two weeks ago? Ah, yes. Nearly eaten! My, my, Captain. What you do put him through.”

“Now,” Jack says, and Ianto has no idea what he is talking about and then the pain hits. He screams in his mind and out loud and the alien is thrashing and his body is convulsing and he thinks he might go insane from the searing lancing agony the thousand needles stabbing in his eyes his ears ripping his tongue from his mouth his throat counting the segments of his spine breaking breaking -

Ianto’s voice catches on a whimper as he comes back to himself. In the back of his mind, he huddles in a tight ball, willing the pain not to strike again. The burning reminds him of Torchwood London, of the flames and the smell of hot metal. Of the places where he’d seared off skin, trying to get Lisa’s conversion unit out of the building.

His eyes blink open slowly, hazily. He cannot see clearly, and it takes a few moments before he realises that it is because his eyes are filled with tears. A blink, two, three, and the liquid haze clears somewhat. He knows the tears must be trickling down his face, but he cannot feel them.

Jack is seated in a chair before him, casual, insouciant. There is a sheet of clear glass between them. The Vaults, then. They’ve put him in a cell in the Vaults.

“Awake?” Jack asks brightly. “Just so you know, you can’t jump to another person anymore. Tosh took care of that.”

Ianto feels rage flood him for a brief moment, rage that isn’t his, and he knows that Jack’s being truthful. On the heels of that realisation comes a question: if the alien cannot leave him of its own accord, can it be removed in any other? And then another: if it cannot be removed, what becomes of Ianto?

Ianto thinks about what his life is. Lies and half-truths, shadows and silhouettes. It hardly matters if he must be killed. No, not killed. Let’s not aggrandise the act. He will have to be put down, like a rabid dog. Euthanasia. A mercy killing, like he should have offered Lisa. He thinks it patently unfair that he might be given what he failed to give her. When they kill him, he hopes that it will be violent and slow. He does not deserve a peaceful death.

He suspects they will oblige him.

“If you could hear him now,” his voice rasps. “Wondering how you’ll kill him. And not a thought of escape in him. He doesn’t want this body, can’t you see that?”

“Maybe he wants to die,” Jack says. “But I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to be permanently riding around in the back of his own head while you parade around in his body.”

No, Ianto thinks. That hadn’t been a scenario he’d considered, actually. And now that he is thinking about it, he can safely say it doesn’t appeal. A lifetime to think about what he’s done, without even the occasional distraction of physical work? The thought terrifies him.

“Then I’ll lance his mind,” Ianto’s voice suggests, his lips curving in a pained smile. “Rid myself of the cancer.”

Ianto freezes. Is that possible? Can the alien kill his consciousness, leave his body alive for it to use? Something terrifying unfurls gossamer wings in Ianto. He wonders if it is fear, or hope.

“You won’t,” Jack disagrees calmly. He rises and saunters over to the cell door, looking down on Ianto. “And Ianto, I know you can hear me. You’re not allowed to die yet, do you hear me?”

“Yes,” Ianto says, even if Jack will never hear the response. “Yes, all right, I know. I haven’t finished paying yet.”

Ianto’s face twists into a grimace, and then his eyes turn away. Ianto surprises himself by wanting desperately to see Jack’s face again.

Ianto estimates that it has probably been five hours or so since he woke up here in this cell, an alien controlling his body. The alien has spent the time inspecting Ianto’s fingers, apparently fascinated by the way they bend. Ianto is thankful that it did not try to bend them backwards - but then, he supposes that it wouldn’t want to damage its vessel.

And how easy it is to think of himself as a vessel! Ianto marvels at himself. So easy to think of himself as anything other than human. Anything other than what he is, fragile, broken, used.

He thinks he can hear the alien laughing at him. The entrance to the Vaults buzzes and a few moments later, Gwen and Owen come into view.

“Come to take the tea-boy prisoner?” Ianto’s voice mocks.

“Get up,” Owen says brusquely. The cell door opens. Gwen’s gun is trained on him as Owen roughly cuffs his wrists behind his back, keeping himself out of the line of fire.

“He wants you to, you know,” Ianto tells Gwen, his eyes boring into her. “Shoot me, that’s what he’s saying. It shouldn’t be too hard. Or maybe Owen would prefer to. Maybe Owen would like to take out his anger, let a few bullets loose into my skull. I wouldn’t mind, it would be all right if it was one of you. But otherwise I’ve got to live because that’s the worst punishment of all.”

Ianto screams soundlessly, trying to stop the alien from talking. Gwen and Owen silently march him upstairs, through the doors, down into the medical bay.

“I was going to marry her,” Ianto tells them conversationally as they strap him down. “I’d bought the ring. I was going to ask her in three days, on the anniversary of our first date. When I pulled her out of the wreckage, I begged with her not to leave me because I hadn’t proposed yet. She said, ‘I’d have said yes.’ I told her there was still time for her to do so, and she cried. I keep smelling her perfume on the streets and in my house. I keep turning around expecting to hear her laughing at my attempts to cook.”

There are tears on Toshiko’s and Gwen’s cheeks. Ianto is crying in his head.

“No,” Jack says, stepping closer. “You did none of that. Ianto did, and you’re using him, you bastard, you’re using him and his memories and I’m not letting you ruin him or Lisa like that.” Strong fingers catch his chin, force his head up. Blue meets blue. “This ends now.”

Ianto sobs helplessly as Jack steps back. Owen re-appears, togged out in surgical scrubs. They’re going to manually extract the creature, of course, of course. He can’t die yet, he hasn’t finished atoning.

For the third time that day, Ianto swims murkily into consciousness.

“Welcome back,” Jack says. Ianto blinks open his eyes and squints against the bright lights. Jack’s face slowly comes into focus. Everything hurts, in a slow, sluggish sort of way. If he’s aching even when on the drugs, he doesn’t want to know what he’ll feel like when they wear off.

“Any pain?” Owen asks.

“No,” Ianto manages to say. His tongue feels unfamiliar to him, but the words are coming out of his mouth as he wants them to. His body is his own again. He feels like weeping, and does not know if it is out of sadness or relief.

“Good,” Jack says, patting Ianto’s shoulder. “We got the alien out of you. It’s dead now - turns out it can’t survive out of a host body for too long. Probably why it was so desperate for one.”

“Was it true?” Gwen asks hesitantly. Ianto blinks slowly. “What it said,” she presses. “About you wanting to - about - Lisa, and all that, I mean, was it true?”

“Out, Gwen,” Jack says firmly. “He’s just come out from under anaesthesia. Let his head catch up to the rest of him.”

Ianto hopes it doesn’t. His body hurts enough without adding a headache to the mix. No wait, actually - too late. Now that he’s thinking about it, his head’s throbbing violently.

“Right,” Gwen says. “Sorry, love.” She’ll ask again later, Ianto knows she will, because that’s how she is. She needs to understand. Ianto doesn’t begrudge her the need, but he doesn’t know what he can possibly say. He has no answers for her.

“Get some rest,” Jack says, squeezing Ianto’s shoulder. “No more work for you today.” He hesitates, then leans down and kisses Ianto on the lips briefly, firmly. Ianto closes his eyes as he listens to Jack’s boots tapping away, out of the medical bay. That peculiar scent he associates with Jack hangs about him for a while. He remembers pteranodon-hunting. He remembers the weight and solidity of Jack’s body pressed against his. He remembers the desperate desire to tell Jack, confess everything, remembers deciding not to and walking away, what will be, will be, even if Lisa dies, and then those words, the job he’d gotten without even realising.

Jack’s scent lingers in the air, chasing away Lisa’s perfume. A sob catches in Ianto’s throat and dissolves into the cold air.

~fin