Title: Damaged
Author: TheRani
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: AO
Warnings: This is a dark story. There is some reference to violence, torture and implied rape.
Summary: Unspeakable things happened during "the year that never was". Jack must come to terms with this after his return to Cardiff.

***

1
5:15 am. An obscene hour by most standards. Jack walked slowly toward the Hub. He wasn't sure who was likely to be there. Maybe no one. He tapped his entry code into the keypad beside the tourist office. It gave an obliging click and opened. He was surprised. He wasn't sure exactly how long he'd been gone. More than a day, less than months. The whole "year—that-never- happened" was sort messing with his head. Some of the memories of that year were so horrific that he didn't think Torchwood even owned enough RetCon to touch. He walked softly through the office and reached under the desk to trigger the interior door. It opened quietly.

It took him another couple of minutes to reach the main floor. A single light was on, next Tosh's computer. No one in sight. He went up to his office and flipped on the light. It looked close to untouched. There were a couple of stacks of folders on the desk. His coffee cup was nowhere in sight. He sat down at the desk, elbows leaned on it, chin on folded fingers. It felt like home. Well, sort of. More than the TARDIS. He had believed that seeing the Doctor again would have made him happy... content ...complete... choose one of the above. It hadn't. Finding out that the Doctor had left him on purpose on the Game Station. After a century and a half of deluding himself that it had been a mistake, that hurt. Ok, hurt didn't even come close to describing it. Ripped inside out, maybe that came just a little closer. But to give the Doctor credit, just a little, they had come to a sort of uneasy truce. Enough that he had offered to let Jack travel with him again. He couldn't. There just wasn't enough care to overwhelm the pain right now.

The Doctor wasn't human. But then neither was he, not really. But he had been. Some little pieces still were, sort of. Jack rubbed his hands down over his face. He was tired, numb. A entire year of intermittent torture, imprisonment, not enough sleep, not enough food, not enough showers.... After they had all left the Valiant on the TARDIS, Jack had spent nearly 2 hours sitting on the floor of the shower, under the pounding spray of the water. Adrenaline spent, feeling more dead than alive. He had finally roused himself enough to get dressed, paste on a smile and pretend to be "normal".

He reached out and touched the proto-TARDIS, propped on a stand on the far corner of the desk. He looked at his fingers. They trembled. He closed his hand in a loose fist, in an attempt to still the shaking. There was really only just so much stress a man could stand, even an immortal one. He felt hollow. Maybe some sleep would take the edge off. He doubted it.

He climbed down the ladder toward his quarters. There was a body in his bed. Ianto. Face buried into the pillow, he was stretched out beneath the blankets. Jack stood looking at the sleeping form for a long time. It wasn't like his involvement with Ianto was any less complicated... But even when Ianto had been furious with him, it was just hot naked hate based on a very specific reason. Not the icy indifference/loathing. He swallowed hard. He hurt. Physically and emotionally. Was there any chance the man in the bed could give him just a little of the comfort he was so desperate for? Or had he wrecked that too? He stripped out of his clothes, down to his briefs and carefully slid into the bed beside the younger man. He was warm, muscles slack and heavy in sleep. He made a faint noise as Jack spooned up against his back.

Jack lay very still, not wanting to wake him. He could feel the steady even breathing of his sometimes lover, the faint thud of his pulse. His throat tightened and it was all he could do not to sob. Jack squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will away the burn of tears. Snuggled against a familiar warmth, sheer exhaustion over whelmed him and he fell asleep.

***

2
I am merely a product
Of the life that I've lived
An amalgam of sorrows
and the wisdom they give
Damaged by Assemblage 23


Ianto was dreaming. Dreaming he was in bed with Jack. It was a frequent dream, based on heartache and longing. In that early morning fuzziness that happens right before your body knows the alarm clock is going to go off, he dreamed he could feel the solid warmth of Jack's body pressed to his back. An arm wound around his waist, limp fingers curled along his stomach.

The alarm clock chirped obnoxiously and he stretched a hand out to turn it off. 6:30. And he realized the dream hadn't left. He could still feel the weight of the arm around him. He blinked hard and looked down. Arm, wrist, fingers, Jack's watch. He twisted just a little, beneath the weight of the arm. Jack lay behind him. His breath caught. It couldn't be real. He couldn't be real. He stared at the sleeping face. Jack looked... stressed? His gorgeous features somehow tight. The muscles in the arm that lay across him were ... more sharply defined. Like Jack had lost some weight, and not in the good "I-could-stand-to-lose-a-few" way.

He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, expecting the vision to vanish any second. It didn't. He twisted again, to face Jack, sliding his own arm around him. Jack drew a shuddering breath and his eyes opened very slowly, like he was fighting his way back to consciousness.

"Are you real?" whispered Ianto. Jack looked at him in silence. He could see something flickering in his eyes. Grief ? Sorrow? Pain? What ever it was, he had never seen it before. A look so raw, it hurt to watch. Jack's lips curved just a little, a half smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"I think so," he said. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because 1st you were dead. And then you weren't. And then you were gone. And every night, if I sleep, I dream of you."

"I'm.... sorry..." Jack shut his eyes. "How long have I been gone?" His voice was a bare whisper.

"Not quite 5 weeks.... It was ... him...wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Was it... Did he... What happened?" Ianto finally finished, not entirely sure what to ask. Jack just shook his head a little, biting his lip, eyes not quite meeting Ianto's.

"I can't.... maybe later." Ianto brushed the fingers of the hand behind Jack's back, along his spine. His body jerked and tensed, like he was expecting the caress to be a prelude to a blow. Ianto raised an eyebrow. This was not like Jack. He usually took a caress as an invitation for a kiss, a grope or something more intimate. He didn't almost cringe from a touch.

"Are you going to leave again?" asked Ianto uncertainly.

"Not anytime soon..... maybe.... never." Ianto glanced at the clock.

"Everyone else will be here in a bit over an hour..... I really ought to take a shower and get dressed..." But he didn't get up immediately. Instead he leaned forward and kissed Jack. Just a brush of lips. In the silence of the room, he somehow kept expecting him to vanish.

He got up and headed for the shower. When he came back out, damp towel slung around his hips, he expected the room to be empty. It wasn't. Jack was sitting on the bed, t-shirt and shirt on, trousers dangling from his hand, looking ....vacant. Ianto dropped to one knee in front of him, laying a hand on his.

"You...ok?" he asked. Jack blinked at him, like he hadn't noticed that Ianto had walked back into the room.

"Huh? Yeah... just off-line..." He slowly began to dress the rest of the way. Ianto hastily yanked on his clothes and headed off to start coffee, check overnight computer scans and do the usual morning things.

***

3
But the weight has grown heavy
And its dragging me down
It's so hard not to sink now
But I don't want to drown

Surprisingly Owen was the first one in. He appeared to be in shock at Jack's reappearance, trying to grill him for wheres and whys about his disappearance. Jack deflected the majority of the questions. Tosh was next, throwing her arms around Jack, a vast gush of information bubbling forth on how they had hunted for him, how they had seen the APB bulletins hunting for him and Martha and the Doctor. Jack patiently let her ramble. Gwen was the last.
"I knew you would come back eventually," she said. The rest of the morning was more or less chaos, as they all took turns trying to bring Jack up to speed on what had occurred while he was gone.

At lunch time, he sat in his office, paperwork spread all over his desk. Ok, this, he hadn't missed. Except for the fact that doing paperwork meant that things were calm, and the world wasn't ending. He walked out toward the kitchenette in search of coffee. He set his cup on the counter and reached for the pot. A hand touched his shoulder and he just about jumped out of his skin, heart pounding insanely fast. A flicker of memories rushed through his head. How there would be a touch, casual, maybe even intimate, to be immediately followed by exquisite pain and sometimes death.

"Sorry. Thought you heard me," said Gwen. "Being a bit skittish, aren't you ?"

"You just startled me," he glanced at her, wondering if she could see what an incredible lie that was, written across his face.

"Mmm. Anyway I've been reading through some witness statements RE the robberies over toward Barry. Every single one of them has missing time, like they blanked out."

"Did you ask Tosh about odd energy signatures ? Anything that might correspond with the times?"

"Only one, and it was iffy at best. It only lasted 10 seconds"

"Ok, that's vague. I guess we're in wait mode until it happens again. At least it appears to be just robbery and nothing particularly...violent ..."

"True. I think I might have a go a little door to door. See if I turn up anything."

"Sounds like a plan."
He headed back toward his office. He sat back down at the desk. Out, door to door, she had said. He grabbed his coat and headed after her. Something more distracting than paperwork.

They talked to the staff in the pub closest to the last robbery. Well more truthfully, Gwen talked and he listened. Leaving the pub, they climbed back into the SUV. Gwen put her hand on his as he started to jam the key in the ignition. He flinched just a little.

"Wait."

"We forget something?"

"Talk to me."

"About....the fact the barman and the waitress didn't seem to know much?"

"No. You."
He raised an eyebrow and looked puzzled.

"You barely said 2 words while we were in there."

"I thought you were doing just fine."

"The barmaid was ready to crawl all over you and I don't think you even noticed."

"I.... Was I suppose to ?"

"This coming from the guy who will flirt with anything with a pulse? Jack, what's wrong?"

"Nothing. Just drop it." He stabbed the key in and started the SUV.

***

4
I'm damaged
But somehow I've managed
This far
But I don't know if I can find my way back home


The day wound down into evening and the rest of the team began making going home motions. Tosh was actually bold enough to ask Jack if he would be around tomorrow. He assured her that as far as he knew he would be.
Jack sitting at one of the work tables. He was tinkering with one of Tosh's scanners, attempting to try and calibrate so it would pick up the energy signature when the "robbery device" wasn't in active use. Ianto came across the level toward the table. Jack glanced up from the mass of parts spread across the table.
"Are there going to be parts left over when you put it back together?" Ianto asked. That brought a slight grin to Jack's face. The only one he'd seen all day.
"No guarantees."
Ianto sat on the edge of the table and carefully laid his hand on top of Jack's, making sure his movement was slow and obvious. Jack went still for a long moment then hooked his thumb around Ianto's hand, only the slightest pressure holding it in place. His smile vanished to be replaced by a flicker of the same look Ianto had seen in the early morning.
"How long were you gone, ...according to your time line?" Ianto asked carefully.
"Just over a year."
"A lot of things can happen in a year."
"Uh-huh," was Jack's grunted reply.
"I've got a batch of labels to type for the archive. I was going to get some take-away Thai. Should I order some for you?"
"Yeah, I guess so."

An hour later, they were in the conference room, eating while Ianto halfway typed at his project on a laptop. Or more precisely Ianto was eating and Jack was mostly pushing his food around.

"Did I order the wrong thing?" asked Ianto.

"Huh? ... Oh, no... I ... It's been an awful long time since I actually ate a ...meal."

"Too much life on the run?"

"....no... it was.... I was...." he trailed off and laid his fork on the table, got up and walked out of the room. Ianto waited several minutes before headed after him. Jack standing by the railing, forearms braced against it, staring at ... nothing.

"Sorry," said Ianto.

"Don't be. I just can't really deal with talking about it right now."

"Do you want me to go?"
Jack glanced at him and let out a slow breath. "No... I'd ... prefer you stay, but... I'm not particularly good company at the moment."

"S'ok. I do actually need to finish the label list," Ianto said.

Ianto spent another hour typing while Jack fiddled with the scanner parts. Ianto sent the print job to the printer and started to get up to go fetch it. He realized Jack was slumped on the end of the table, head resting on his arm, eyes closed, asleep. Considering how little Jack usually slept, this was a bit of a surprise. He softly walked out of the room to go get his labels. Putting them on was a job for tomorrow. He laid them on top of the closed laptop.

He stood looking at Jack for several minutes. In the harsh fluorescent lighting of the room, the drawn features were even more evident. That impression of, well, not starvation, more like malnutrition. And even that wasn't really a good description, it was more subtle than that. His visible hand was clenched in a fist. Ianto stretched out a hand to shake him awake, then hesitated.

"Jack. Wake up." There was no response. He touched his hand to Jack's shoulder as gently as possible. Jack flinched, hard, head snapping up, but arms drawn in, a protective motion.

"There are better places to sleep than the conference room," said Ianto. Jack blinked hard, like it took seconds for his brain to catch up. "Come on, bed." He held out a hand to Jack. Jack took it slowly, giving him a confused look.

Down in his quarters, Jack kicked off his shoes and sat on the edge of the bed. Ianto sat beside him, roughly half undressed, legs stretched out, crossed at the ankle. He held out a hand to Jack, palm up. Jack slowly took it, threading his fingers down through Ianto's. They sat motionless for a while, before Ianto coaxed him into undressing. They stretched out in the bed, Jack clinging silently to him.

In the night, Jack woke with a strangled gasp. Ianto held him while he lay shaking, hard enough to chatter his teeth. He didn't say a single word.

In the morning the alarm went off, Jack wasn't in bed. Ianto wondered groggily if he had dreamed the entire previous day, then he realized Jack was only inches away, sitting on the floor beside the bed, a book in his lap. Ianto rolled over.

"Whatcha reading?"

"The Tao of Pooh"

"That's sort of ... unusual," commented Ianto. There was just a hint of a smile from Jack.

***

5
I'm damaged
But somehow I've managed
For now
But I don't think I can face this on my own


The day was not overly dissimilar from the one before. Ianto watched Jack at various points throughout the day. He barely ate. He seldom smiled and when he did, it looked strained. He practically jumped a meter if anyone touched him. He had an argument with Owen. Ok, that was not exactly unusual, but then he disappeared down toward the weevil cells. When he didn't reappear after half an hour, Ianto went to check on him. He heard a strange thudding sound from one of the storage rooms. He glanced inside.

Jack was smashing his hands and feet into a filing cabinet that had been moved down there because it had a drawer that repeatedly jammed and they hadn't gotten around to getting rid of it yet. Basically, he was beating the absolute shit out of it, in what appeared to be a fit of incoherent rage. Ianto waited in the hallway for nearly 20 minutes, listening. He heard a few choice curses in languages he recognized and what he suspected were a few more in ones he didn't. And one phrase that didn't quite make sense. — I will not give in to you master. Eventually there was silence. He looked back into the room. Jack was sitting on the floor, forehead against his knees, arms hugged around his knees. His hands were bruised and bloodied. His breath was heaving gasps.

He sat down on the floor next to Jack, not touching him.

"Wouldn't a sand bag be a little less hard on your hands?" he said softly. Jack's head jerked up in something that resembled terror, then relaxed as he saw Ianto.

"I... It doesn't matter. They'll heal."

"Owen's gone home. Come upstairs, I'll bandage them for you." Jack gave him a look of infinite weariness.

In autopsy, Ianto cleaned the gashes in Jack's knuckles and began to bandage them. He was very gentle. Jack chewed on his lip.

"Sorry, maybe I should've given you a local first," said Ianto.

"No, it's ok. I've had worse."

"From... him?"

"The Doctor ? Hell no! He may be good at breaking hearts but he doesn't do gratuitous torture! Only The..." And then he immediately shut up.

***

6
There is beauty in hardship
There are poems in grief

Business as usual for the next week, well for Torchwood anyway. A weevil chase, paperwork, and a mugging handed off to the local police. And there was another robbery that actually did give off a very brief energy signature. The team went out to investigate.

Gwen dragged Ianto off on a door to door canvas of the area. Jack and Tosh spent several hours prowling the scene of robbery hoping for some clue of the energy signature. No luck on anybody's front.
Jack spent several hours with Tosh, on 2 separate days, fiddling with the partially reassembled scanner, trying to coax it to replicate the energy signature or any similar variation. No joy.

Ianto watched Jack over the days of that week. Jack was uncharacteristically quiet. He still ate very little, despite a couple of bribery attempts, involving lamb vindahloo, and cheesecake. What little sleep he got, was spent clinging desperately to Ianto. He had another go at the filing cabinet. But he would finally tolerate a casual touch from Ianto with only a slight flinch.

Ianto worried. On a post-it, he wrote "PTSD — Jack? Talk to me later", and stuck it on a folder he needed to give Owen. Toward the end of the day, he was toting some supplies down to autopsy, Owen was there.

"I read your note," said Owen. "Why would you think he has Post Traumatic Stress? This is the guy who can't die, remember?"

"Some things he's said. And some things he's not said. In his time line, he said he was gone for a little over a year. He said something about not eating meals. I thought he meant that kind of eat on the run thing, we get trapped into around here. But I think he actually meant he didn't eat much period. He's lost weight. Not tons. Just enough to make his ribs show more and give him this kind of feral wolf physique. He has had a couple of rages where I found him beating the crap of a file cabinet. I think it was to avoid hurting a person. If he sleeps, it's all broken by nightmares. I'm the only one he will let touch him without looking like he's about to freak. I'm not absolutely sure, but I think he was tortured. And not just once or twice. I sort of got the impression it went on for months."

Owen gave him a long studied look. "If that's true, that would provide a very good reason for PTSD. I do have to admit, he's been a bit... off, since he got back."

"What do we do?"

"Unless you can get some straight answers from him, I'm not really sure. Just... keep an eye on him I suppose."

***

7
There are trials we must go through
Though the shake our beliefs


A couple of weeks slid by. Life fell into a pattern. Well as much of a pattern as intermittent weevil attacks and hunting for a device that was suspected to blank people's minds, allowed. Any night they weren't out doing something borderline insane, Jack slept in Ianto's arms. Slept being a relative term. In a way it was odd, thought Ianto. Before, he and Jack had occasionally slept together, literally, rather than figuratively, since that often involved Jack's desk, the conference room table or any other handy furniture item. Now he slept with him every available night. But that was all they did. Not that he was objecting. Waking with Jack's body plastered tightly against his, like a drowning man, was just fine, especially if it provided the comfort Jack seemed to need. He'd even pieced together a few more tiny details of the time he had been gone, from him.

In the past they had played the bondage game a few times. Nothing too serious, nothing that involved pain. Just a few creative uses of Ianto's ties and Jack's braces. But an off-hand comment by Owen had produced an absolute shudder from Jack and a muttered reply about shackles and dislocated shoulders when you try to pull away.

Gwen had been reading through a police report trying to decide if it fit the profile for the memory blanking device. It wasn't robbery though, it was rape. She had made some gentle sympathetic comments about how a couple of minutes could change how you dealt with the rest of your life. Jack has said something about sometimes it was not just a couple of minutes.

***

Next part of Damaged.