Title: The Windhovers: The Beginning
Author: sarcasticchick
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: NC-17
A/N: 1. Set between "From Out of the Rain" and "Fragments", although backstory learned in "Fragments" plays into some of the secondary plot.
2. Title taken from a poem which I will post upon completion.
3. I do not own Torchwood, any of its characters, or canon - that is all owned by the BBC and RTD. I am not profitting from this writing venture. All OCs and aliens are mine.
Summary: Ianto Jones embarks on a journey of self-discovery which takes him to the innermost corners of his mind beyond the farthest reaches of the Universe.

***

"Ianto, you never told your story."

Ianto wondered, briefly, if his inclusion in a conversation was anything like the timed accuracy of conversation lulls, once every seven seconds, or in his case, a cessation of all earlier joviality in favor of uneasy tension and wary looks from everyone but Gwen. Gwen, who either had forgotten of Lisa or pretended it never happened, blundering in curiously without ever considering the consequences. Of course, he admitted as the team casually strolled from the pub that had been their afternoon retreat after a hellish morning, it was nice to actually have been remembered.

He could lie, that was always an option. Tosh had, as did Owen and Jack, which was almost amusing in and of itself as the team had sat around the pub table, drinking their lagers, ales, and mixed drinks (save for Owen, who instead harped about the toxicity of alcohol and the damage to brain cells in an effort to spoil their drinks. Hadn't worked; in fact, the next round had been bought in Owen's name), telling stories of how they had come to be at Torchwood. Ianto didn't know the truth behind Tosh, Owen, and Jack's tales, but he'd known they were lying, from Tosh's government think-tanks to Owen's dodgy tale about saving the life of an alien to Jack's epic tale of Van Helsing proportions.

Entertaining, but not truth.

Yet what was the point in lying. Had the question been asked of Torchwood Three, Ianto might have chosen to lie. The tale of stalking Jack, attempting every line and trick he'd learned to get in at Torchwood Three before being hired was too sensitive still to even talk about with Jack, much less share openly with Gwen or confirm to Tosh and Owen. But Cardiff wasn't the first branch he'd worked for, after all. "Was hired to set up security and run the books for an underground poker parlor. Turned out my boss was an alien," Ianto started, maintaining candor and level delivery despite the surprised-confused expression on Jack's face, "Torchwood London raided the place and I persuaded the agent in charge to hire me on as I found myself unemployed."

Ianto had to stop as the rest of the group had fallen a few steps behind as they stared, forgetting locomotion in favor of stunned silence.

Not exactly the story they had been expecting, it appeared.

"You're joking." Ianto arched his eyebrow instead of answering Gwen's accusation. Her eyes grew large and he waited for any number of expression to follow. "You worked for an illegal gambling ring?"

Trust Gwen to fixate on the illegality rather than the story, her affronted tone almost enough to make him lose his blank expression. He didn't have to respond, however, as Owen broke in. "Bullocks! Beginner's luck my arse, you lying little cheat. You took me for fifty quid!" Owen's eyes narrowed. "Hold up, you knew your boss was an alien? And you still worked for him?"

"More to point," Jack interjected, arms crossed as he appeared to be puzzling out Ianto, least that's what it felt like, "London still hired you even though you were security and they captured your boss?"

"He preferred Tang over coffee or tea. Of course I knew he was an alien." Ianto didn't mention the tail or the third eye his boss kept covered by a tattered derby hat as he first addressed Owen's question with the proper amount of righteous indignation. Jack still appeared cross, though Ianto could hardly blame him; the man had lost every game of strip poker they'd played. Ianto felt the corners of his lips slip into a smirk as he stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trousers, mimicking Jack's confident arrogance. "I never said he was captured. Got him out of there with the contents of the safe as Torchwood arrived. Knocked out Edwards' team before he found me; he seemed to find that an admirable quality."

Jack threw his head back and laughed, whether because he had known Edwards or due to his actions, Ianto wasn't quite sure. Edwards had been a gruff man of few words who'd held true to his word and found Ianto a place on the research staff. It'd been his first job with actual benefits and legitimate pay instead of quiet money handed to him after he'd finished his duties. Ianto had almost wept at the sight of his first real paycheck. He'd never forgotten Edwards' favor, and had remained loyal to the man even when he'd objected to the theories of the ghost shifts. Though, Ianto remembered with a touch of regret, he'd never openly showed his support; the thoughts of the streets so close that the idea of losing a comfortable paycheck had been enough to keep him silent.

"You never went to university?" Tosh's voice sounded surprised as they resumed their walk towards the Information Center, crossing the Plas towards the scent of sea. The smell was strong today, carried by the wind and tasting slightly of rain. It'd rain yet that day, probably later in the evening, surely to coincide with Rift activity to ensure the finances of their dry cleaning service.

University. Silly childhood dreams lost to fate and duty. Ianto shook his head, turning away from Tosh's scrutiny as they walked. "I left that pursuit for those more inclined to academics." With a gentle nudge of his shoulder into Tosh's, he smiled as she stammered in embarrassment, pleased when the conversation shifted from him to Gwen's inquiries into Tosh's studies. He allowed the group to pull ahead, an action not unnoticed by Jack; he fell back as well, his strides matching Ianto's as they neared the tiny office.

"What other talents are you hiding beneath that suit of yours?"

Ianto glanced at Jack, the slow tug of warmth from both alcohol and simply the other man's presence stretching his lips into a rare smile. An honest one, not the polite, empty smile reserved for confused travelers or hostile Torchwood employees cranky from caffeine withdrawal or too many alien threats. Or sometimes even both. Speaking of confused travelers, Ianto took note of the figure near the Information Center, most likely waiting for the building to reopen again so they could find out what time Cardiff Castle closed. "And lose my aura of mystery?" They walked close enough to touch, close enough in fact that Ianto felt the brush of Jack's arm across his as they walked, hands in pockets, watching in amusement as whatever the trio in front of them had been arguing about devolved into name-calling and playful shoving. Ianto only hoped that Owen took care; he could remember kids breaking bones in schoolyard tussles.

It was almost embarrassing given they had an audience. The woman hadn't moved, standing just far enough away from the Information Center that Ianto wondered if she were more lost than searching for information; wouldn't be the first time. His concerns for public decency were thrown when he quickly found himself spun about, tucked into the shadows with his back against a wall and only slightly hidden from view.

"Never."

He wondered if he was going to have to forward the interoffice documents regarding fraternizing during work hours to Jack again, despite the captain's attempts to shake Ianto of such ridiculous notions of rules and propriety. But policy rules slipped his mind as quickly as they had entered, focus dwindling down to Jack's lips and the warm body pressed against him.

"Oi, at least have the decency to wait till we've gone home before you molest the tea-boy, Jack!"

Ianto felt the laughter rumble deep within Jack's chest. The steady quake echoed by the puffed air caressing his cheek before it was ripped away by nature's hand, jealous of the competition. Jack's unrepentant grin remained, though, and Ianto partnered a roll of his eyes with a quick nip to the lips, still rosy from the cold wind or the kiss. "Don't encourage him," he warned, taking a moment to straighten his overcoat as he stepped away from the wall, feeling like a parent scolding a child. And if that wasn't an image Ianto wished he could strike from his mind, he didn't know what was.

Jack remained just as smug, but at least allowed Ianto to step away, unlike the last time Owen had caught them in flagrante. Then, Jack had responded with a voyeur's wet dream, not stopping even when the distinct sounds of a zipper could be heard across the Hub, not even when Ianto's hands knocked coffee mugs to the floor as Jack fucked him against the coffee machine. The muffled curse in response hadn't belonged to either Jack or Ianto. Jack hadn't even stopped once Ianto was melted boneless against the machine, cheek pressed against the edge while Jack cursed dirty in every tongue, chanting epithets in time with the slick sounds of someone wanking in the distance, which unerringly coincided with each of Jack's thrusts.

Luckily, that had been some time ago, when Retcon still worked on Owen. Jack's smirk when Ianto had handed their medic his coffee the next day had left Ianto blushing and fleeing to the Archives despite Owen believing his missing night was due to too much alcohol. Though, on recollection, Ianto had to admit that it had been rather exciting, knowing they were being watched. He might have to explore that certain predilection of Jack's again.

From the way Jack's eyes darkened (and Ianto swore he smelled the rush of pheromones coinciding with the blown pupils), he appeared to have followed Ianto's train of thought and enjoyed the idea as well.

"Later," Ianto chided, straightening the lapels of Jack's greatcoat before resuming their walk towards the Information Center, turning his face into the wind a moment to have an excuse for the flush he could feel in his cheeks. Gwen, Tosh, and Owen waited just outside the Information Center door; of course they'd left their keys when they'd gone to the pub - no surprise, sometimes Ianto wondered at their ability to show up to work clothed without a reminder pinned to the front door. Perhaps that had been a bit harsh, but not altogether untrue. Why would they worry about such details when either Jack or Ianto had keys? He tried to think of a time he had ever felt such relaxed comfort leaving details in the hands of someone else. He distinctly remembered a time when someone had made him tomato soup and cheese toasties when he'd been ill, bringing it to him on a tray in bed and taking the tray away after he had finished, the dishes cleaned because he hadn't seen them in the sink the next day.

He'd been eight at the time.

It had been his mum who'd done everything, took care of him when he'd been sick with either the flu or food poisoning as he'd never really been sure what had made him so ill. He still couldn't stomach much citrus after that bout of illness no matter how much time had passed, and even now his stomach flipped queasily just remembering and he could feel phantom cold sweats that had flashed over his skin. And the thought of his mother in such a comforting role could be the only explanation Ianto had now for seeing what he was seeing. His steps slowed to a crawl as they drew closer to the Information Center and the woman lurking nearby.

"Mum?" Ianto broke away from Jack who had continued on towards the door where Tosh, Gwen, and Owen stood waiting like lost children for anyone with a key. In disbelief, Ianto walked away from the team and towards the person he'd least expected to ever show up on Torchwood's doorstep. Figuratively speaking, as she wasn't literally standing on the doorstep, but too close to the Information Center for it to be mere coincidence. "Mum, is that you?"

She looked the same as he remembered her. It'd been...years. Years and some days since Ianto had last seen her. And here...she looked beautiful. Same blue eyes with the wrinkles of sun and wind creasing the skin delicately around the edges, dark curled hair falling in a scattered mess over her shoulders, rich as the blackest earth. His father had sworn he could plant seed in it and harvest the most beautiful flowers. And when he'd been little, it'd been magic to see her walk in with a flower tucked behind her ear, a bloom most vibrant in color that his father had certainly picked for her, but Ianto had always liked to pretend she really had grown the flower in her hair.

And her smile...her smile was radiant. Ianto supposed he had a son's biased opinion, but when his mother smiled, she lit the entire house and made it laugh with her, even if the skies thundered and the rain pounded the windows. Her smile, so warm and inviting it almost brought Ianto to tears. "Mum. I've still got the watch you gave me, for my thirteenth birthday." Ianto smiled as he held up the watch that had been tucked away in his waistcoat pocket.

Her smile, so radiant and warm as she nodded in reply, a hand covering her mouth as a tear trickled down her cheek, rosy as his from the biting wind.

Her smile and nod. Made it so much easier to raise his gun he never left Torchwood without, not even on casual trips to the pub. Not after "Captain" John Hart. Not after Owen had been killed.

"Ianto! Stand down."

Jack's voice broke over the mumbling cry of the rest of his team. Must have been shouts, but it sounded to Ianto's ears like garbled sound in water for all the blood pounding in his ears and the denial threatening to shake the steady hands holding his side arm. He didn't flinch, nor did he lower his weapon. He ignored Jack and shook off the hands that grabbed at his shoulders, cautiously approaching the woman who looked like his mother. Acted like her, cried like her...but she'd never given him the watch. He'd bought it from a pawnbroker as a gift to himself on his eighteenth birthday. He knew it, and the snarl on her face he'd seen often but never directed at him indicated she knew she as well. A weapon was brandished, removed from the delicately beaded purse Ianto remembered purchasing from a peddler with his allowances for Christmas. It looked as deadly as her intent; hell, he knew that weapon, or at least the make. He'd seen one similar in the Archives of Torchwood One. With that kind of weaponry, the entire team was in danger.

"Lower the gun. Please." His voice crackled; he'd felt it break and he knew he was crying but it was his mother holding the weapon, aiming it at him, advancing towards him. If it hadn't been for the watch he might have believed it to be her. She moved just like his mum, with a natural lithe grace that Ianto had to practice to imitate. "Stop," he might have begged, though he might have imagined the plea in his mind as his hearing was monopolized by the warbling sounds of his team. He hoped Jack had his gun. No, he trusted the captain had his gun, but Jack might have forgotten that detail as the others had forgotten their keys and were counting on Ianto to have brought his set. Because the threat wasn't leaving. In fact, the woman was squaring the weapon on him, the woman who looked just like his mother, holding an alien weapon aimed directly at him and rushing at the team in a run that he had never seen his mom perform.

Ianto took a deep breath and fired on the exhale.

He didn't even have a chance to watch her fall. His body slammed into the ground with far more force, his gun torn from his hands. Ianto was too shaken to even put up a token of protest as Jack straddled his waist, pinning his arms to the ground. Words finally started making sense, Gwen's rambling 'oh my gods' and Owen's curses. But Jack's...Jack's escalated above the rest.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Ianto rolled his head to the side, away from Jack's piercing accusations and towards the open-eyed stare of the fallen woman...a woman who looked exactly like his mother as her hair spilled around her, a bullet hole in her pale forehead. "She's not my mum," Ianto swore through hitched breath, though his body was shaking in defiance because, for all he knew logically it wasn't her, the memories of dancing with her to the tunes of a Welsh fiddle were too deep to deny sensory familiarity.

"Ianto." the hands on his arms tightened for a moment before Ianto assumed Jack deemed him safe enough to let go to wave his hand about like he was batting at gnats. But his voice had enough concern ringing in it to bring Ianto up short. "There's nothing there."

"What..." Ianto stopped breathing completely for fear of what his voice might do without permission and pushed Jack off his chest. Or rather, Jack allowed him to scramble away because, even in his panic, Ianto knew the captain was a much more capable fighter than Ianto ever would be. He looked from Jack, elbows on his knees as he crouched in place with a wary eye on Ianto, to behind him. Tosh stared with wide-eyes, Gwen looked like she was dealing with a caged animal in a schoolyard, and Owen was...Owen. Probably still annoyed he couldn't drink and yet they'd gone to the pub anyways. Ianto's hand shook despite his best efforts to keep it steady, turning towards the spot where the woman lay dead. The woman who was not his mother, she was not, no matter how much his eyes screamed their denial. "The woman...she looks like my mum. Right there!"

Ianto turned to look and she was most certainly still there, sprawled dead on the ground. His lungs finally remembered their function, wringing and twisting his insides as he struggled for breath. He was hyperventilating. He knew he was, but for the life of him he couldn't quiet the clamor for air like his lungs demanded. "She had a gun! An alien gun! I had to ... " Jack was in front of him without Ianto even seeing him move as through the black dots that swam in starbursts in front of his eyes. He sat down hard on the ground, head forced between his knees as he tried to breathe with the steady voice commanding him when to inhale and when to exhale. The ludicrous notion of the voice belonging to Owen made him giggle. Owen was dead; how the fuck could he be telling Ianto how and when to breathe since he himself didn't need the oxygen? The giggling might have been a slight tinged on the hysterical -- he never giggled -- but he'd just shot his mother for fuck's sake. No matter how the soothing hand on his back tried to calm him, Ianto couldn't forget that image.

She wasn't really his mother. He knew that. But as he tilted his head up from between his knees, feeling as shattered and wilted as he must look, it still looked like her. "She's still there." Ianto pointed, an action made difficult as he realized Jack's greatcoat surrounded him. Despite the heavy wool, he was still freezing cold, his shoulders trembling to find balance even with Jack's steady arms supporting him.

"Look, there's nothing here!" Owen stood up and walked over to where Ianto pointed, waving his hands blindly in the air. Which would have made sense, even to Ianto when he knew things weren't making an entirely great deal of sense, had it not been for the fact that he'd shot the woman and she wouldn't be standing five feet above the ground because she was dead. On the ground.

Ianto had the second most horrifying notion of the day as Owen continued to flail about in an effort to, what, bring comfort to Ianto? If Owen was right, and there was really nothing there...Ianto's stomach rolled in protest, the lager he'd drunk earlier disgustingly uncomfortable at the idea that he was shooting imaginary things. He'd worked himself into quite a state of anxious nausea when Owen tripped, tripped right over the head of the fallen woman.

He choked down a whimper; it wasn't his mother. The woman Owen had just kicked was not his mother.

"Shit! Something's there."

There was a mad scramble for his gun as the warm, solid weight of Jack vanished, leaving Ianto struggling to remain upright, but fuck if he wasn't relieved that he wasn't seeing (and shooting at) imaginary visions of his mother. He would have laughed, if he'd had the fortitude. Instead he just stared dumbly as Jack whipped out his wrist strap and began punching into it furiously while Gwen aimed Ianto's gun at everything but the dead woman she should be aiming at.

Ianto didn't bother pointing in the direction again now that they knew something real was there, he just pulled Jack's greatcoat tighter about himself and tried desperately to convince himself that it wasn't his mum. Tosh took his keys; he knew it was her by her smell - jasmine and rose blended with just a touch of patchouli - and left for...something. Ianto didn't know, didn't care, just concentrated on breathing, not vomiting, and rationalizing, in that order of preference and significance.

Minutes, hours, some time later, Ianto'd lost track but there were shouts and curses blending with the pouring rain. Ianto saw blurred figures moving about, violently separating the weapon from the body despite the fact the woman was dead.

Not his mum. It wasn't his mum.

Hands suddenly appeared at his arms, his elbows, helping him stand. Ianto tried the best he could to comply, but his knees were quivering so badly he leaned more than stood - leaned and stared as Owen, Tosh, and Gwen lifted the body of his mother. Of course, it had to be brought into the Hub. The woman was impersonating his mum and had an alien weapon; that made it Torchwood business.

Didn't make it any easier when the trio loaded the body onto the lift to take it down to the Hub.

Sharing the lift with the woman he killed.

He tried to crawl into the corner of the lift, flattening and wedging himself as far away from the others as physically possible. This was made easier when a solid form stepped between he and the body - Jack. Jack, all fire and heat as he cut into Ianto's line of sight, drawing Ianto away from the lift wall towards an exceedingly wet chest and shoulder, Ianto's cheek squelching the material. He had Jack's greatcoat, he remembered. It had rained and Jack had gotten wet because Ianto was buried beneath layers and still felt as though he were freezing from the inside out. Returning the coat was not an option as the arms wrapped around him refused to budge, so Ianto gave up trying and relaxed, sinking into him as the lift descended.

It wasn't his mum. He knew it wasn't his mum.

The lift dinged and Ianto felt Jack move; he might have said something, Ianto wasn't listening. But instead of stepping out of the lift he and Jack just stood there, dripping water onto the lift which would mold. He'd clean it later. He'd have to anyway, the woman's body probably left bloodstains on the floor which he refused to contemplate for the moment.

He wasn't sure how long they'd been standing there - had he dozed off? - but they were suddenly moving, out of the lift and into the Hub without a spared glance back or sign of any of the others. A detour to Jack's office; he didn't remember climbing the steps at all, but suddenly he was being towelled off, his wet coats and clothing piled in a heap on the floor. Dry pants, a tee, and hoodie later, he was sat on a table in the autopsy bay, a heated blanket thrown around his shoulders without a clue who to thank.

A humiliating experience, for certain, if he hadn't seen the sheet pulled over the body on a table near him. Then he remembered why the humiliation in the first place.

Not his mum. It wasn't her.

"Ianto." Fingers snapped in front of his eyes, distracting him from the body on the table, understanding Owen's commands as his hand was dragged out from the cocoon of warmth. Blood drawn, why he wasn't quite sure, he didn't think that was typical for hyperventilating, but Owen was the doctor, even if he was a dead one. Though he didn't remember cold being associated with hyperventilating; maybe Owen did have a point. Not that he'd ever admit that.

Once Owen finished all the tests he needed to run and pronounced him a twat - a twat in shock but a twat all the same - Jack stepped into view, rewrapping the blanket around Ianto's shoulders while he kept the cotton puff pressed firmly against the skin of his arm. "How'd you know it was there?"

"Her," Ianto corrected, feeling his numb face twist into a scowl while he duly noted and ignored Owen's sharp glance at Jack. "She was just standing there, waiting for us." His eyes fell on the sheet-covered body, his mind reluctantly catching up with the fact that he had killed someone. Killed someone and she had looked like his mother. How very ancient Greek of him. "She looked just like her."

Owen started to ask something but Jack interrupted. Easier to track the conversation when it was just one voice, one person to listen to, while his eyes remained on the green sheet. "Like your mother? How'd you know it wasn't her?"

"I had to-" Ianto swallowed around the lump in his throat, taking a moment to collect himself as Jack once again placed himself in Ianto's direct line of sight and blocked the other table from view. He would have thanked Jack for the move, but it was almost more difficult to explain to Jack who bore the face of detached inquiring captain, not lover or friend. The words seemed to tumble over his lips at the sight, desperately needing Jack to understand that he hadn't meant to kill his mum. It hadn't been his mum. It had looked like her but it wasn't her. "The watch. I...she died, nearly ten years ago. I had to make sure...and then she pulled the weapon and ran at me. I don't know...maybe it saw an old photo and copied my mum's likeness. But it wasn't her. I know it wasn't. She didn't give me the watch."

"Maybe it was psychic." Ianto turned away from Jack to look up at Tosh who was standing against the railing, fiddling with her scanner while she talked. "Maybe it took an image from Ianto's mind after it perceived him as a threat, then used the image like a defensive measure."

Ianto turned to Jack with hope bubbling like champagne; the idea made sense. He'd been armed, he still wasn't sure if Jack was, but if she had thought the image of his mum would leave him defenseless when the team had been threatened, she'd been wrong. The weapon she had was a vicious one; Ianto wouldn't have allowed it. He didn't.

Then Jack pulled back the green sheet. Ianto felt himself recoil and would have ended up on the floor behind the bed had it not been hands on his shoulders, apparently having anticipated the reaction. "What do you see, Ianto?"

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a white bandaged hand on his shoulder. Fancy that, Owen hadn't let him fall, though a cracked skull was far more difficult to deal with than a skittish patient. "Her," was all Ianto could manage, feeling like he'd some how failed Jack's test and acknowledging at least on some level that proved Tosh's theory wrong.

"Your mother?" At Ianto's nod, Jack pointed at her. Head full of dark curls, spilling over the edge of the table, face slack but still his mother's cheekbones, her nose. Nothing like his nose, a slight bump at the bridge, straight and thin. "That's not your mother. It's not even female." Ianto opened his mouth to protest but Jack cut him off, hand rapping on her skull with so much force he flinched in both protest and shock.

Plastic-like. Almost metal. Definitely not the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

"It's wearing a helmet and a full body-suit with biosystem controls that made it invisible to our eyes. We," and Jack stressed the 'we,' gesturing to the others, "don't see a woman. We didn't even see it until I deactivated its technology."

"But..." Ianto scooted off the table, unsteady, but shuffled in the slippers over to the table. He hadn't seen his mother this close for so long; he nearly retreated to his desk in the Information Center -- the furthest point he could run from the autopsy room -- but he didn't, compelled either by curiosity or sheer stubbornness to redeem himself for his actions earlier. Jack didn't move, standing at the edge of the bed as Ianto approached, arms crossed while Ianto tentatively extended his hand. Not to her face, but to the hair, the color of perfect espresso. Jack tracked his every movement - hell, Ianto knew everyone was watching - but he didn't care as he reached for the hair, certain Jack was mistaken because he knew what he saw.

The chill of the table burned when he touched metal instead of hair, his hand jerking back so quickly he nearly hit Jack. "No," he denied vehemently. What he perceived as real did not match what his hands said. Ianto squeezed his eyes shut and gave his head a shake, physically clearing the scattered images so he could see what the others saw. When he opened them again, for just a fraction of a second he swore he could see what Jack claimed. It was gone just as quickly, just a desperate imagination he knew. The figure of his mother on the table was undeniable, as was the color of her dress (purple, she'd always loved purple) and the blue of her eyes. Shaking his head, Ianto backed away from the table, the blanket nearly choking him as he pulled it tighter around his shoulders.

"Owen took a blood sample and I want a full neural work-up before I send you home." Jack's tone was far more comforting than it had been before. Concerned, they were all concerned. Ianto didn't blame them. He was seeing his dead mother and he'd shot her. He was concerned with himself.

"Just...the weapon, she had a weapon, yeah?" Ianto wasn't pleading with Jack, but he had to know in part for his own sanity, in part so when he Archived it later it wouldn't catch him by surprise. If it was real.

Jack covered the head again (but still dark curls hung over the edge of the table), stepping close to rest his hands on Ianto's shoulders. "It had an anti-particle weapon in its hand. Could have done terrible things to my hair." Ianto smiled as Jack expected him to, though he didn't feel it, not really. It was just a standard reaction to typical Harkness 'we almost died but I'm going to deflect and make it about me to minimize the threat to you' humor. "You did good, Ianto. Whatever reason you saw it, you stopped a very bad day for Torchwood."

'Well, good for bloody Torchwood,' Ianto wanted to say, but he bit his tongue, nodding instead and submitting to Owen when he came around for tests and the like. Questions and poking, lights and scans, testing everything from alien infection to microchips to brain tumor.

Good day for Torchwood. But as Ianto was directed to piss in a cup and shoved off towards the loo, he could argue it'd been a shit day for him.

***

He'd overslept.

Ianto stared at the coffee machine in disgust, impatiently waiting for espresso to hiss and spit out the end of the nozzle. The rest of the team's coffees were already made, just a double shot for him left to brew.

He never overslept.

His internal clock consistently woke him up at five, no matter what had happened the night before or the genuine reason to stay in bed. That night, Jack had taken him to his flat after Owen had finished his testing (some of it made up on the spot just to torture him, Ianto was certain of that) and had followed in, not asking, but Ianto wasn't about to turn him away. He hadn't said anything, however, just directed Ianto towards the bedroom after placing a glass of whisky in his hand with a silent order to drink it. Ianto had followed without question, swallowing the contents in one gulp and felt the alcohol burn all the way down to his stomach and shoot out across every cell, the individual nerve bundles collapsing after the strain of the day. The springs popped as the tension unwound until he felt larger than the space he occupied in the room; numb and weightless with the heavy images of his mother pressing from the dark corners. Jack left him for a moment and Ianto just sat on the bed, eyes closed, every slow breath like fire and tasting of whisky until he was sure the air itself was drunk.

Jack had returned, his quiet footfalls warning Ianto so he didn't startle when the bed dipped, nor did he protest when the hoodie and tee (both Jack's, though Ianto had never seen Jack wear them in all the time he'd known the man) were pulled over his head. He did arch a questioning eyebrow when his trousers were removed, however; while Jack was an exceedingly attractive man, sex just seemed beyond Ianto's capabilities at that point. Unexpectedly, all he received was a chaste kiss, too quick to be leading towards anything remotely serious, before Jack patted the bed. Ianto obliged, laying as indicated on his stomach.

Ianto never failed to appreciate how Jack knew when silence was required, every movement and look volumes louder than any spoken word and far more appropriate. To be sure, they talked, often, Jack sharing stories from his past, Ianto sometimes so close to the verge of sleep he dreamt of the tales - the worlds Jack had visited, the creatures he'd met, the adventure and drama playing out in visions of purple skies and orange earth. But there were other times, like that night, when Jack just knew, and as the older man's legs settled into their straddle of Ianto's hips, silence said everything.

The first drop had surprised Ianto, cool on his skin as it and others pooled between his shoulder blades. Then Jack's hands swept the scented oil over his skin and Ianto was lost, first in the gentle massage that warmed then loosened every taunt muscle in his shoulders, and finally to sleep as Jack's quiet hum and tender hands lulled Ianto away from warring thoughts.

And then he'd overslept.

The possibility of a sedative in the whisky wasn't entirely out of the question; in hindsight Ianto should have been suspicious. With the new day had come clarity and Ianto stared at the coffee machine as the details aligned themselves, though he willed the machine to go faster since he was already late to daily morning meeting. It was a possibility, but he'd not woken with any lingering aftertaste or residual sedative hangover, the latter being the primary reason why he avoided the drugs. He didn't even remember dreaming, which was equally unusual. Standard Torchwood nightmares were commonplace, mixed in with a variety of the surreal and fanciful. And sometimes Jack. He always remembered, though, especially the nightmares. But this time he remembered nothing, no hint or fragment or scattered wisp of a thought. Just sleep.

Sleep and waking up late.

Finally the espresso, colored just as his mum's hair, started trickling into the special Italian-made cup he reserved for those who wished to enjoy an unadulterated espresso. Every coffee had its cup, and every cup had its person. Today, Ianto's was small, delicate and naked.

He scowled at the cup at this consideration, hoping no one else paid attention to the mug or the philosophy of the king of coffee. He did check, however, to make sure he was indeed clothed and his tie straight before he arranged the beverages on a serving tray, specifically ordered for balance for distribution. Ianto kept his footfalls silent as he walked, pausing out of visual range yet where he could still overhear the conversation carrying on in the conference room.

"-clean. No signs of pathogen or toxin in his bloodwork. No implants, no tumors...hell, even his hair samples came back clean, no indication of drug use or illness."

"Toshiko?"

"The body suit was designed specifically to negate visual recognition within the range of our perception. It's really remarkable, actually, based on quantum physics we haven't discovered yet-"

Ianto hated being subject matter for the daily meetings. At least with Lisa, he had been absent during the fallout and whether or not he was discussed...well, he didn't know and didn't care to find out. But he had a rather vested interest in the reporting occurring in his absence now. Taking a deep breath and making sure his spine was as straight as possible, he braved the conference room, not bothering to care who he interrupted as he entered. "I've always had a rather high sensitivity to electromagnetic fields." The team at least looked moderately abashed for discussing him without his presence. "Might have led to the symptoms, given the mechanics of the suit."

He didn't apologize for being late, just passed out the mugs, setting them down deliberately on the coasters with the Torchwood emblem and ignored the scattered Starbucks cups sitting carelessly on the table top. Tosh thanked him, making a show of sipping her soy latte (half decaf, no whip with chocolate shavings). Gwen and Jack looked up a bit guilty from theirs, stammering thanks while Owen looked like he wished the world to swallow them all alive for enjoying their beverages when he couldn't. Served him right for all the tests the night before.

"Tosh?"

"That's possible." Ianto sipped his espresso and smiled behind the cup as he watched Tosh's eyes light up with the excitement of discovery. The others looked relieved at this as well; apparently a plausible, normal explanation of any sort was worth relief. "Exposure to high EMFs is said to lead to paranoia, hallucinations, nausea." Tosh smiled apologetically for the hallucinations portion, but Ianto just shrugged; he was the one who'd brought it up, after all. "If you're sensitive enough to it, the suit may have put off a large enough field to trigger the paranoia and the image of your mother, making you see...well, a ghost."

The silence following Tosh's explanations lasted long enough for Ianto to finish his espresso; he really wanted nothing more than to hide for the next few days in the Archives until the team forgot about the whole incident. He wouldn't - he couldn't - but it was enough walking around with the visuals and knowledge in his head. He didn't need the pitying looks from Gwen or the studious gaze of Owen as he tried to puzzle Ianto out, possibly blame it on aliens just for an excuse to try out a number of remedies for sake of annoying and embarrassing Ianto.

"I'd like to run a few tests, activate the armor in a controlled environment, if you wouldn't mind?"

Tosh looked so hopeful Ianto didn't have the heart to tell her no. He nodded (to her delight; it seemed Owen wasn't the only one who enjoyed subjecting him to tests), running a finger around the lip of his cup as he began mentally going through artifacts in the Archives that he could use to distract Tosh if he needed to refocus her on something less ... him-related.

"Fine. Ianto, no field work for a week, just to be sure there's nothing else going on." Ianto didn't mention that it hadn't been on active field duty that he'd encountered the problem for fear of being lashed to the coffee machine for a week by a well-intentioned (if not slightly overprotective) captain. Not that Jack wasn't overprotective of the entire team - to a fault, if Ianto were to be asked - but Jack might get ideas about confining Ianto to the Hub for protection and they could no longer Retcon Owen. "Tosh, keep up your research on the suit. We need to know if we can track wearers so this doesn't happen again. Dismissed." Ianto stood with the rest, a week of no field duty meant plenty of time re-cataloging and cross-referencing the Archives. "Not you."

He rolled his eyes at the tone, but moved to a seat closer to Jack while the others filed out. He could hear Gwen's eager questions about ghosts all the way down the hall and around the corner; seemed her aunt thought her home was haunted and Gwen wondered if there was anything they could use to test the EMF readings in her house. The door closed behind Owen, considerate of him, and Ianto spoke up before Jack could start. "I'm sorry for my tardiness this morning, I overslept."

Jack waved off the apology, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, cradling his mug of coffee in both hands. "You can take time off, if you need to. We can survive without you for a few days. Can't guarantee the state of the Archives, but we could manage. For a couple days."

Ianto smiled briefly, acknowledging Jack's attempt at humor. "Time alone in my flat doing nothing would be worse, but thanks." Time alone with the memories of shooting his mother. Nothing could have been more worse.

"That line about EMFs was bullshit."

He snorted; he couldn't help himself. Trust Jack to skip all finer points and jump directly to the one faulty argument. "I know. The effect should have worn off soon after you disabled the body suit." Ianto frowned, staring at his hands as he flipped a pen between his fingers. "Owen says my labs came back clean. I don't know what happened but I don't need everyone spending days trying to figure out why I saw my mum and you didn't."

"Do you know why?"

"What? God, no." The pen flipped out of his hands, skittering across the table until Jack calmly stopped it. Ianto was too flustered to even muster an apology. "Jack, I have no idea. If I had my choice of visuals I would have opted to shoot an alien over my mum for fuck's sake!"

Jack nodded, settling back in his chair like he hadn't accused Ianto of...whatever it had been. Popping alien narcotics? Making it up? Knowing the answer and not revealing? Jack was warped enough for his position as head of Torchwood Three, Ianto decided. "How'd she die?"

Ianto gave up all pretense of composure and slumped back in his seat with a sigh. He knew the question had been coming, and really it was better from Jack than any of the others. They had an understanding between them - Jack wouldn't push, Ianto could choose to answer. Went vice versa; they both did their fair share of avoiding, but they never lied. At least, Ianto trusted that Jack never did. Ianto didn't, and he'd quickly learned what was game and what wasn't, as had Jack. Family had always been avoided, on both sides.

And now, he could tell Jack, or he could push him off yet again, burying family within memory and no where else. He fully expected Gwen to rope Tosh in on a hunt for information once she learned nothing was in his files, and they'd have a hard time finding anything as he had been very thorough with the data wipe. Or rather, the hacker who'd owed him a dozen favors had been thorough in erasing/altering all the records at Ianto's request before he'd signed on with Torchwood One.

His family might as well be ghosts. He just wasn't exactly sure who it was he was trying to protect anymore - his family or himself.

Running a hand through his hair, he settled finally with his hands behind his head, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Jack waited patiently for an answer or a 'no.' Gwen would find nothing in her search. Tosh would let it go after Gwen quit pushing and Jack would let the subject drop if he wanted. He didn't have to answer. It'd be so easy to say 'no.' He just couldn't remember a time when someone had honestly asked, with no motive and no threat to either his mother's memory or his job. "Suicide," Ianto finally answered, hearing but not seeing Jack's chair clunk down on all four legs, "Room 314 of Providence Park."

He took a quick glance at Jack who'd pitched forward, elbows resting on his knees, his fingers laced under his chin and touching his lips almost as though he was physically stopping himself from saying anything. Maybe he was; if it were possible, Jack would figure out a way to accomplish it. Ianto laughed at the idea, then realized how ridiculous he must sound and cut himself off before Jack called Owen in. He freed his hands from behind his head, using his fingertips to press against the burning in his eyes. It helped, for a time.

"I tried to take care of her, did for years." He snorted at the enormity of the task, but it'd been the only thing to make sense at the time, even if it had been incredibly foolish. They had no other family, so he'd simply done it rather than risk separation. "She just...kept getting worse. I was gone on Christmas day - had a job cleaning a church - and she started a fire in the kitchen. Burned the house down; the neighbors barely got her out and all she kept saying was that 'they were coming.'"

And not for the first time Ianto berated himself for allowing things to deteriorate that far. It'd been so insidious, a slow creep towards instability where excuses for her eccentricities failed and he could barely recognize her for the woman she had been almost ten years before. He sighed and finished the story; what little there was remaining. "She spent five months at Providence before she...I was supposed to visit the next day."

Ianto smiled sadly at the memory. While he'd hated seeing her in that place, he'd always looked forward to seeing her, playing draughts and letting her win in outrageous fashion or reading to her when the medications and her own realities stole her attention. Twice a week - more if he could cut class or wasn't working. Jack smiled with him, despite there being no way he had a clue what memory was trickling across Ianto's mind. But at the same time, it was almost better with the captain not knowing, and with Jack joining blindly in an emotion Ianto wasn't sure he wanted to describe.

He was abruptly pulled to his feet, stumbling forward until he found his balance wrapped in a full-bodied hug. It took him a moment to realize how and why he'd moved, relaxing instead of protesting as was his first instinct. He didn't think Jack would let go even if he'd complained about the manhandling or reminded him they were at work in an embrace inappropriate for employer and employee.

And if Ianto were completely honest with himself, he enjoyed the sympathetic touch.

"My mother's name was Nydia."

The words were spoken so soft at first Ianto thought he'd imagined them. Given his track record of late, that idea wasn't too far-fetched. But he'd felt the breath wisp past his ear, and that certainly hadn't been imagined. "Isolde," Ianto replied, knowing he hadn't been asked but offering it just the same. It felt good, to say it just once, to have someone listen and not call her crazy or mock her when they thought he wasn't listening. He hadn't spoken her name in nearly a decade.

He wondered how long it had been for Jack.

"You were just a kid."

Ianto took the words for how they were intended, not an admonishment for the guilt or grief but for the respect he heard behind the words. "I never was much of a kid." And he hadn't been, working whatever job he could find that would pay him when even they didn't believe the lies of his age; it helped that he'd always been tall for his age. But he'd taken care of her, even if now he realized it wasn't 'just mum being mum' and she'd been outside his ability to tend.

He'd do it all over again if he had to. She'd been the only family he'd had left.

Jack chuckled, low and dry. Whether in agreement, amusement or simply a private joke, Ianto wasn't sure, but he closed his eyes, falling into the steady sway as Jack danced them in a slow circle. There were a million things to do around the Hub, and the team was probably thinking whatever they wished to think Jack and he were up to in the conference room, but for once, Ianto didn't care about office rules or work or even the CCTV footage Tosh was most likely tapping into. He rested his head against Jack's shoulder, and Jack's against his.

He was willing to bet they both weren't ever really kids.

***

Two days later and things were back to normal, or as normal as Torchwood ever got. Owen was still dead, Jack was still immortal, Tosh was still freakishly adept with technology, Gwen was still ... human ... and Ianto, well, he considered himself still breathing. And while that may have seemed like a minor point on anyone's scale of normalcy and things to consider 'good,' given it was Torchwood, Ianto considered himself lucky. He made the coffee, spent most of his free-time in the Archives, avoided the team best he could - made easier by his suspension from field duty - and focused on compartmentalizing the whole experience with the alien and the hallucination. Because that's all it was. Overwork, exhaustion, living and breathing Torchwood until it became second-skin. That's all it was.

Avidly monitoring the CCTV footage and sensors because there was something about the case that left him uneasy for the safety of the team was just exhaustion, too. His mind playing tricks on him, alone in the Hub while the others were off defending Cardiff from the greater threats of the universe. Wishful thinking, more like. He'd become so much a part of the team in the field that, when they were out, he began imagining what they were searching for. The overwhelming urge to save the day, to taste that high from rescuing someone from a threat manifesting through the fatigue as a sort of fear for the team. It made sense. No cause for panic or alarm.

He just hadn't mentioned it to Jack because the team had come back splattered in fluorescent pink alien guts and reeked of paint thinner, Tosh with a sprained wrist, Jack once-dead-now-living, Gwen with a limp and Owen bitching about his favorite pair of pants.

Ianto threw his keys into the small dish in the entrance way of his flat, rubbing his hand over his face, wincing when they still smelled of paint thinner. Or rather, alien guts with the tenacity of skunk spray. Jack had said he'd be by later, with dinner. That in and of itself had surprised Ianto, but he wasn't going to argue if Jack wanted to take responsibility for dinner. Ianto would have time for a quick shower, maybe even time to catch up on some of the work he'd brought home. Stacks of paperwork he'd put off while the team had been in the field filled his briefcase, along with a few harmless artifacts and documents he could record and place in the Archives in the morning. One apparently was an alien toothbrush; he'd been a bit squeamish about touching it, there was just something inherently wrong about touching another's toothbrush. He'd even purchased one for Jack (and threw away his old one) after he'd caught Jack using his one morning. Blue, with sparkles in the handle. For some reason, it made him laugh every time Jack used it.

He turned on the lights, wincing as they flared on bright to light his flat. Really too much time spent in the dim Hub, Ianto decided, cancelling the second and fifth light switches, a hazard of their job. Underground, poor lighting, it was a wonder they all weren't blind by the time they were thirty and could stand to enter the daylight at all. Perhaps that's how Torchwood would survive in the future, their DNA altering to become night dwellers, the dark vampires of lore. Owen was already working on the undead problem, though the notion of consuming blood was one to turn his stomach and make him thankful Jack never forgot Ianto's switch to vegetarianism. Nearly becoming meat himself had put him off quickly; the alien manatee had cemented any lingering taste for it.

Unless the meat was Jack.

Ianto smirked at his own joke as he sorted the paperwork into piles of urgency, leaving the rest of the various widgets and gadgets in the briefcase. The pile for 'immediate attention' grew at an alarming rate, and with an eye he quickly calculated the time required to work through the stacks. Far more than he had initially figured when he'd packed his briefcase. With a grimace, Ianto opted to put aside the paperwork, procrastination the preferable choice when the evening was to consist of Jack, food, maybe a movie, sex and sleep.

Definitely sleep. And perhaps even a repetition of sex in the morning.

Instead, Ianto went to the kitchen and quickly mixed up a batch of scones to enjoy with morning coffee. Not that he was really much of a baker - working for the Smythe's bakery had taught him little of the trade but how to sweep up flour and empty bins - but Taffy Smythe herself had taught him the simple recipe as a surprise for his mum. They were cheap to make, difficult for him to screw up too badly and his mum's favorite with tea.

It'd been a long while since he'd bothered making them, though he always kept the ingredients on hand. Out of habit, and partially to thumb his nose at his past; a stocked pantry was a wealthy pantry.

After placing the pan of carefully cut dough rounds in the oven, Ianto once again considered the paperwork before opting for a shower to wash away the long hours of the day and the smell of turpentine in an efficient (lemon-vanilla scented, both energizing and a combination Jack seemed to appreciate) scrub that left his skin pleasantly tingling. He didn't waste any time, knowing he had just minutes before the oven timer would buzz, though he did pause, contemplating wanking before dismissing that notion as well. Jack was coming over, after all. There'd be time enough for pleasure later.

Ianto threw on a pair of pajama bottoms, a deep cranberry pinstripe he'd purchased simply with hedonistic intentions rather than Jack's accusations that he couldn't wear anything that wasn't tailored and professional in appearance. The material was the softest cotton-silk Ianto had touched, light and cool on his skin and an indulgence he enjoyed whenever he had a lengthy evening at home. Rare, given Torchwood, but occasionally he found himself with time to luxuriate in something as frivolous as expensive pajama bottoms.

He'd just loosely tied the drawstrings when Ianto heard a knock at the door. Jack never knocked as he had a key, just as he did to all the other team member's flats but Ianto doubted Jack just strolled in without so much as a courtesy knock on their doors. Given it might be a neighbor and some of those neighbors had young children, Ianto grabbed a black tee as he went to the door, stretching it over his head as he walked, nearly tripping over his own feet when, for a moment, he couldn't see the path to the door. Perhaps the paperwork should be avoided altogether, he decided, if he couldn't even manage to walk and pull a tee over his head. It hadn't even been that bad of a day.

Upon opening the door, Ianto quickly set about revising that notion.

"Ianto?"

Rationally, Ianto knew the truth of the man standing in his doorway just as rationally he knew now that what he had seen at the Information Center was not his mother. Logically, he understood that his difference of perception was not normal and the question still lurked behind Jack's eyes (and in the back of Ianto's consciousness, if he were to be honest with himself) as to the cause. There had to be a cause, an explanation, a reason why he had seen his mother -- why even after he had been told the figure was not even female he still saw his mother.

Because there had to be an equally logical cause and explanation as to why his father stood in his doorway.

Ianto stared; he couldn't help himself. Before him stood the man he hadn't seen in nearly twenty years and no rational argument or logic could dissuade his eyes from believing what they saw. It wasn't real; Ianto knew it couldn't be real. But knowing it wasn't real and wishing it was were two completely different things.

His father looked just as Ianto remembered, though the angle was different. Instead of looking up into his face, Ianto looked down, his father no longer the towering figure he'd always appeared. He was still a gangly man, all arms and legs just like Ianto remembered, and impeccably dressed in the brown suit he had worn the day he'd died, brown the exact shade of the wire-framed glasses he wore and brown making his blond hair appear even more golden.

"Are you okay?"

The vision had his father's voice as well, only it didn't. Split, bi-tonal, sounding in the same breath distinctly like Ianto's father - a light tenor pitch, distinctly masculine, unrushed and soothing - and a woman, a voice he recognized but couldn't place for all the distraction of the hand placed on his arm. A gold wedding band gleamed on the ring finger.

Not his father. It wasn't his father, not even if that was his wedding band.

"Fine." Ianto winced at the sound of his own voice, unsteady and clouded by emotion's strangle-hold on his throat. Almost twenty years; before he'd discovered Torchwood, before he'd wandered the streets, before childhood's end when his mum's mind had splintered, fragile as spun glass after his father had died, tiny pieces breaking every day, every week, every year until nothing remained but paranoia and altered realities. Despite all that time, he'd never forgotten what his father had looked like, even though all the photographs had burned.

But Ianto had forgotten that look, that look he'd received when he was just little, he'd been running and fallen, skinning his knee and tearing his trousers. His father had run out of the house at the sound of his cries, crouching beside him and looking at him in the same concerned way, the same exact way, before gathering Ianto in his arms to carry him into the house. A plaster and bowl of ice cream later and Ianto had been laughing again, helping his father measure everything from the length of Ianto's nose to the distance of Ianto's best hop with the ever-present measuring tape.

Clearing his throat, Ianto smiled in what he hoped was an assuring smile, never forgetting that it couldn't be his father but yet unable to tear his eyes away. "I'm fine, just a bit under the weather."

"Right." Ianto could hear the doubt in his (not) father's voice, the feminine tones curling up and around the tenor. "Well, I got some of your post by mistake." A handful of paper envelopes ended up in his hand which visibly shook no matter how hard he tried to steady it. "You sure you're okay? I could make some ginger tea?"

He nearly laughed. His father had gotten his post by mistake. It was the most ridiculous thing he'd never thought he'd hear.

"No, thank you." Ianto turned down the offer, the lure of sitting down with his father too tempting when he knew it couldn't possibly be him. He'd sit and stare, memorize every movement that did not belong to his father, tarnishing memories and imposing a reality that just were not possible. It wasn't real. Ianto kept repeating this even as he stared, his eyes contradicting his brain's mantra.

"Get yourself to bed, then. You look terrible."

He tried to smile at the words, the advice sound given his shaking hands and relative inability to move past the thought of his father, standing at the door because he'd received Ianto's post by mistake. He stared even long after the door had closed and his father vanished, a reprisal of a theme nearly twenty years before when his father had left and never returned.

The door closing behind him as he waved goodbye to son while the son waved goodbye in reply; the chapter closing on another life, another time, over and over as history repeated itself. Ianto only wondered what his mother would say, had she been alive to watch him leave again.

He refused to consider that maybe she had seen exactly that, lost in her own world, when he'd read to her while they sat on a sunny bench on Providence Park grounds.

***

"Ianto?"

The sound of his name reverberated in Ianto's ears, striking off the memories of his father and collapsing the veritable picture show he'd been watching since 'he' had left. He. It hadn't been his father. He knew and was fully aware of it. But the memories were so old, the history so faint that it had been impossible not to sink within them once 'he' had left, closing the door behind him. They were hard to grasp, glimpses of Ianto's childhood framed in sometimes fuzzy colors and strange order, but seeing his father had triggered them all. And greedy though it was, Ianto couldn't resist embracing each one. Going to the cinema. Watching his father work. A trip to the zoo. Bedtime stories and goodnight kisses. Skinned knees and playing in the rain. The one time his parents had taken him on a picnic and he'd pretended they were in King Arthur's court, dining on the grounds of Camelot.

Those were the days of his childhood, the tiny sliver of time when he could remember no sorrow, no grief, no struggle to survive. They weren't perfect days - he knew there were things he was conveniently forgetting because they didn't match the idyllic nature of the memories - but they were the closest thing Ianto had to simple, carefree times, times when he wasn't mourning the death of his father or dealing with the slow decay of his mother's mind.

They'd been a happy family.

Overwhelming in all its peacefulness and multitude of snapshots, Ianto was reluctant to slip away from the vise memory held, almost desperate in his attempt to capture every tiny moment anew. No, he knew he was desperate and the tingle of awareness that his name had been spoken was acknowledged and equally dismissed.

Toast. Ianto connected amusement with the memory, images of his father vainly scraping off the blackened sections into the sink to disguise the fact that he'd done it again. He always burned the toast. Every time. To the extent that his mother finally banned him from attempting to make toast or anything else. A chef his father was not, Ianto remembered, could almost hear his father stating that if he were meant to cook then cakes would come with zippers and toast with hems.

Ianto imagined his coffee and tea would have been dreadful as well, but that was long before he could appreciate them.

"Ianto!"

Like a film reel snapping, wildly spinning with two tails flapping in the air, Ianto felt his attention break and the screen go blank as his shoulders struck something solid, the physical touch jolting him from his reverie. He protested before he could stop himself, rationally knowing that any attempt to recapture the wisps of the past would be as likely as stopping time but he tried anyway, pushing back physically and with a vocal "no!" while trying to chase down the images of his father dissolving into his past, becoming nothing more than a blurred lump of entangled experiences forming who he once was.

Lost again. His father had stepped out the door, closing it behind him just as he had that morning so long ago, never to return. But Ianto could still smell the burnt toast, burnt and scraped into the sink quickly before his mum would spot him, though the smell would always linger, a telltale sign she never missed.

Ianto scowled as the smell remained, long after the mental images had scattered to the wind. Remained and tickled the back of his throat to the point he had to cough. And he did, both coughing and clearing his throat, the taste of burnt toast on his tongue.

"Shit. The scones." Awareness had his heart pounding against his ribs as panic set in, his mind quickly rifling through memory backwards from knock on the door to the shower to setting a timer. The timer. He didn't hear the time but he could smell the scones burning; frantic he shifted his body to stand, moving his hands to push himself off the floor but he couldn't. Couldn't move, couldn't stand because he couldn't get leverage because his hands wouldn't move. His hands... oh.

He blinked, the back of his head colliding with the wall in surprise as he tried desperately to get his breathing under control. Jack. Jack was there, holding his wrists, though when he had arrived Ianto wasn't quite sure because he didn't remember the door opening or Jack entering, and wouldn't he be offended to learn Ianto had missed his approach. "Jack," Ianto tried to pull his hands away to stand but Jack wouldn't budge, and Ianto needed to do something before Jack rang the fire brigade. "Let go, the scones are burning."

"Were. I took care of them." Jack's statement gave Ianto pause, he could feel his forehead wrinkle as he tried to figure out how much time had passed while he sat on the floor. He didn't think it had been long, he remembered the door closing and he'd sat with his back against the wall, cherishing all the fleeting memories seeing his father had triggered. But he couldn't remember Jack's arrival nor the timer going off which certainly would have alerted him before the scones burned. Wouldn't it have? The grip on his wrists loosened, though Jack didn't remove his hands; one thumb softly circled the skin on the inside of Ianto's wrist as though to soothe him. It was working, no matter how Ianto wanted to deny he needed to be treated like some skittish animal. "Where were you, just now?"

They didn't lie, not to each other. But Ianto had to admit to himself he was seriously considering it given how the situation looked and what it would sound like. Even inside his own head, the self-deprecating tones mocked him. He scared himself, truth be told. "My post," Ianto evaded, pulling his hands away to search the floor, not having the faintest notion where he'd left it. Not that it was important in the grand scheme but that was what had initiated the sight of his father. "A neighbor, I think, brought it-"

He stopped himself when Jack reached down near his feet, slowly bringing up a pile of envelopes that Ianto had misplaced. He couldn't even look at Jack, whether due to embarrassment or denial he wasn't sure but he found the tiled floor far safer than the eyes of his boss. Lover? Too archaic. Partner, perhaps. Friend assuredly, though he wasn't sure which face Jack wore now and he didn't much care to find out. The most unnerving thing was what Jack didn't say as Ianto looked at everything but him - that he didn't ask what the hell was going on or demand answers. He just waited patiently while Ianto glanced through the envelopes, then waited some more while Ianto struggled to his feet, knees stiff from having sat for a time in the same position.

And waited more while he stared at the door, trying to figure out what happened for himself, pacing to and fro in the entranceway in frustration when he failed. Miserably.

It made no sense. It made absolutely no sense.

For something, anything to do with his hands that twitched constantly (and no amount of running them through his hair would calm the need to anxiously wring them), Ianto instead followed his nose to the coffee table where bags of food were set. At first he was curious why they were there instead of the dining table, but then he remembered spreading piles of paper out. Seemed a lifetime ago, but it must have been a matter of an hour or so. Chinese; he could smell the soy sauce on his lo mein, carried on the breeze from an open window. He nearly asked about that too, before he remembered the taste of burnt toast and the smell of smoking scones.

Jack followed, still waiting for an answer as Ianto sat on the couch and grabbed the nearest container of food and a set of chopsticks. Taking Ianto's lead, Jack sat on the chair across from him, selecting a dinner that had, prior to events, been intended to be the start of a quiet evening at home, just the two of them, no Torchwood or Weevils or Rift. And now... Ianto didn't even know what 'now' was, stabbing his chopsticks into the vegetable and noodle mix, spearing a mushroom with the skills of one using the utensils for the first time.

He wasn't hungry.

After contemplating the fascinating exterior of a mushroom and deliberately avoiding all thought of 'father' and 'Jack', Ianto returned the fungus to the container. He couldn't eat. He knew it, Jack knew it, even the chopsticks knew it, so he set the box aside, giving up all pretense of eating. Ianto caught sight of Jack doing the same, and fuck if he hadn't ruined their night. Not a date night, not exactly. But it'd been a night spent in. Jack had even picked up dinner.

Wasn't bloody fair.

"I think it was a neighbor," Ianto admitted as he rested his elbows on his knees, supporting his chin with his thumbs. He still didn't look at Jack; knowing what Jack was thinking as Ianto confessed something he wished to avoid. He'd seen the looks his mother had received, there at the end on those rare occasions when she left their house, and he didn't need to see them reflected on the face of the man he shared a bed with. "But I saw my father. I heard my father."

Silence fell over the room, so thick in the air Ianto breathed the tension. He finally chanced a look at Jack, but couldn't read the expression on his face. Couldn't see any expression, just blank, maybe a little concern, but empty of anything Ianto could discern.

And that scared him, far more than he had expected. Preemptively, Ianto started talking before Jack said anything, interrupting the drawn breath and opening lips. "Don't. Don't say anything." Ianto watched with some satisfaction as Jack's mouth snapped shut at his accusing finger and tone. "This isn't what you think. It's not like my mum's illness."

He could feel his voice growing hoarse and rising in volume despite his best attempts at maintaining a level pitch. That wasn't the response of a calm man. If he was so certain of what he was saying he'd be collected and explaining to Jack in a reasonable tone what had happened. But he could feel that slipping away as quickly as the images of his father at his door crept back into his head to hand him his post, over and over. "There's a rational explanation for this. Stress, delayed trauma response to London, an after-effect of the alien I saw as my mum, but there is nothing wrong with me. I just saw my dad, he handed me the post he got by mistake, and left. I am not going mad."

Ianto was on his feet by the time he was finished, or rather, when he ran out of things to say in his defense, pathetic a defense as it was. He rested his hands on his hips, refraining from a flinch when he was reminded that he'd just performed a monologue, brief as it was, clad in his pajamas. Impressive, really. It would surely convince Jack of the truth of his words.

Jack remained silent for some time, enough time to set Ianto's teeth on edge as he tried not to read into everything he wasn't saying, fingers tapping both with impatience and nerves. Finally, Jack spoke, his voice melting into every surface of Ianto's flat, warm and understanding rather than the cold distance Ianto had been expecting while saying the clinical and detached words threatening from the far corners of Ianto's mind. But they weren't anything close, and Ianto's relief left him breathless.

"What I was going to say, is your father deceased as well?"

Lacking any other option, Ianto jerked his head in an embarrassed 'yes,' affirming what Jack had already correctly presumed. He almost wished a Rift tear would open right in his flat, swallowing him bodily into another time, another place, another dimension, anywhere but there, standing before Jack and feeling more naked than he had ever felt. Raw and shamed, clad in pajamas and wearing a crack in his persona running far deeper than his betrayal of Torchwood to save Lisa. Love was an easy excuse, a normal, understandable flaw that could be exploited because everyone knew what one would do for love. Love wasn't wrong; when it gleamed through fractured control, no one bothered.

But now Ianto found himself exposed beyond what he allowed others to see within his suits and ties, quiet pieces of himself pushed behind destruction and chaos, Torchwood and coffee. It was awkward and uncomfortable. Humiliating. Others simply weren't to know basic terrors itching at the subconscious, the haunting surreal forms that twisted into dreams of possibility. Fear of the dark would even be more acceptable, fear of snakes or flying; phobias were simple and admissible.

Ianto's dreams weren't of death and loss, of ruin and defeat to an invading alien army. No, his nightmares were of ruin of self, a complete divergence of reality into the paranoid and the fantasy, where control no longer existed but in the hands of others as they bed his body down for the night, tucking him into a room with padded walls that reflected the screams of his mind back upon himself. That was what he feared, and he knew each disastrous Torchwood failure brought him one step closer to that threshold, that knife blade upon which all Torchwood danced but he quite possibly had the genes to assist the process.

He'd all but admitted as such to Jack, who was again waiting patiently for Ianto to speak.

The carpeting suddenly became very, very interesting.

He ran a hand through his hair, smelling both the sharp-mellow of his shampoo and the smoky bitter of the burnt scones, odors intermingling with the Chinese until he felt nauseous. Fuck, if it hadn't been for Jack, would he have noticed the burning scones in time? The thought shook him, his mind deliberately refusing to accept the similarities between his mother's accident and his with the scones. And wasn't that really the mark of sanity? Reality wasn't broken if he was aware, and he was aware insomuch as he recognized that spending time lost within his memories was foolish when the oven was on. He'd simply forgotten, distracted by the appearance of his father. Not appearance - vision, but not hallucination. Someone had been there, that meant he wasn't hallucinating. He just ... was stressed.

And seeing his dead parents. There were movies with this as a plot. Terrible movies; he never did finish one of them to see how they ended.

"Nearly twenty years ago." Ianto crossed his arms, wrapping them about himself as the breeze blowing in through the window carried both the scent of sweet rain and a chill, answering the request Jack never gave. Body language; he was failing miserably. Torchwood One had given him the training, all employees received it. Cursory, basic interrogation tactics and defenses. He was failing tone, body language, speech pattern ... hell, he probably could be read by the most inept psychic. Every learned trick for maintaining normalcy had been forgotten; he wasn't even going to attempt.

At least it was Jack who witnessed, not the police, not UNIT, and not Owen. Ianto gave a soft huff of laughter, shaking his head. "Looked just as I remembered, only shorter." Tearing his gaze away from the carpet, fascinating though the pattern might be in the ecru fibers, he risked a glance at Jack despite knowing almost instinctively that the other man's eyes hadn't left him since he'd arrived. His face was inscrutable, which did nothing for Ianto's nerves, stretched taut and quivering just waiting to be snapped. The visions weren't normal, Ianto knew they weren't normal. But for the life of him, he couldn't explain it. He didn't know.

And, he was willing to wager everything he owned, neither did Jack.

But he wasn't going mad. "There was nothing threatening about him. He just ... left."

"You're positive there's no danger?"

"Absolutely." Ianto wasn't sure how he was so convinced, but didn't hesitate when answering Jack's question. He didn't trust one parent more than the other or anything as foolish as that, but when he'd seen his father, there had been no overwhelming feeling of a threat as it had been when he'd seen his mother. Ianto worried his lower lip a moment before continuing, debating whether to mention it or not as it just compounded the matter of sanity. "When he spoke, I could hear both his voice and one that was feminine."

Jack's brow furrowed in thought and Ianto privately rejoiced in triggering a response of any kind. While he appreciated the unflappable patience, the later the hour the more Ianto grew nervous about Jack's silence. He wasn't looking for reassurance, not exactly; they weren't hearts and flowers. But when he could discern nothing from Jack's expression or action, the old niggling fear that something was terribly wrong with him choked what little analytic logic he possessed.

"You think the one that handed you the post might have been female."

Statement, not a question. But it was what Ianto had began to assume, not to mention offering him ginger tea fit a few of his female neighbors' mothering personalities. He nodded, though the insight didn't really explain why he'd seen what he'd seen. Nothing did. Well, nothing rational. Ianto ran his hand through his hair again, trying to piece together his thoughts enough to figure out what to do and how to proceed. Should have been easy, there was standard protocol at Torchwood for such events, buried in the back of the employee manual but they were there, from alien mind devices to cracks in sanity, rare but did happen with the stresses of the job. Ianto knew them, had memorized the handbook when he'd started for fear there'd be tests that he could fail, that he might lose the first permanent position he'd held since he'd began working.

Problem was, he couldn't order his thoughts at the moment to remember the first page of the handbook, much less protocol buried in the back, and the harder he tried the more the pages fluttered in the wind as he desperately grasped at the information swirling about in the maelstrom of his mind. He knew, logically, that seeing his father was most likely the explanation for his rattled thoughts, but that was little comfort as he forced himself not to panic. "What am I supposed to do?" Ianto finally asked Jack, hands back on his hips for lack of clipboard or coffee mug or anything else to give his idle hands a focus.

Ianto held that stance even as Jack approached him, wary as to Jack's purpose but trusting him at least enough that whatever he intended, it would probably not involve a violent action to render him unconscious, followed by waking in a cell and labeled a threat to Torchwood. He might have flinched just a little when Jack's hands gripped his shoulders, but Ianto would deny it to his death.

"First, we're going to bed." The idea startled Ianto so much he opened his mouth to protest but nothing came out, prompting a grin - far softer than a typical Jack smirk which so often accompanied talk of beds - that surprised Ianto nearly as much as Jack's words. "Tomorrow, you'll submit to every test Owen thinks necessary, even the ones he makes up on the spot." Ianto felt himself nodding in agreement, though the ease may have had something to do with Jack's thumb circling his collar bone, hypnotically faint with just enough pressure to both anesthetize the skin as well as remind Ianto of its presence. The touch stopped, distracting Ianto from the lull, and made him even more aware of Jack's hands on his shoulders, fingers increasing in pressure as the hold tightened. "And you'll pack an overnight bag with things you'll need for a few days. You're staying at the Hub."

"No." Ianto understood immediately why Jack's hands had tightened on his shoulders as he tried to jerk away with the last order. Either he was weaker than he'd thought or Jack was that much stronger, but Ianto couldn't pull away, no matter how he tried. It wasn't that there was anything inherently wrong with the order; he'd shared Jack's bed overnight on more than one occasion. Ianto even had a suit tucked away in Jack's wardrobe. But removing the option that had always existed, the freedom to go home, that kind of heavy-handed control of his life stank of something he would have done for his mother. "No," he repeated, stubbornly falling still within Jack's hands, "that's unnecessary and unwarranted. You can't keep me confined to the Hub like a bloody invalid."

Ianto saw the muscles clench and release in Jack's jaw as they stared at each other with equal measures of defiance, Jack's born from decades of practice and his own tenacious stubbornness and Ianto's from dealing with his mother and maybe just a hint of fear. "One week." Jack's voice was as clipped and determined as Ianto had heard it. "If your labs come back clear and you've not seen any other dead relatives, you're free to come back. That's an order."

"What? No!" Ianto managed to pull away, disbelief at the week-restrictions fueling his motions or maybe it was Jack's surprise that he would have the audacity to defy his orders. But when those orders felt so much like betrayal, defiance was easy. "Tests, yes. But you've no cause to lock me up."

"Lock..." Jack's mouth snapped shut as though Ianto had struck him, and from the way he rubbed his face Ianto almost wondered if he had. But he hadn't moved, still braced for whatever Jack had to argue. "Ianto." His name was spoken with such exasperation Ianto wondered if he'd missed some vital component of the conversation. "Staying at the Hub isn't about your mom's committal; there are legions of unknown devices in the Archives. Until we're sure you're safe, I don't want to find out you saw the face of your grandma in a bar of soap and drowned in the shower!"

Ianto stared with all words of protest forgotten in the back of his throat as he watched Jack first flail a hand at the kitchen in faint reminder of what had transpired that evening, then use those same fingers to pull him forward, stumbling, into the radiant heat of Jack's embrace. If Ianto's return of the hug was perhaps a little more desperate than was proper, Jack made no comment. And likewise Ianto said nothing of how Jack's hold tightened until he could scarcely breathe.

***

Nearly eight hours of overt observation (Jack, Tosh via the internal CCTV), not-so-subtle covert monitoring (Gwen, who would fail miserably as a spy), tests of every nature, and writing down every artifact he could remember coming into contact with for the past two weeks left Ianto in an incredibly foul mood. Not that he thought it should be any different - according to official Torchwood policy he ought to be confined to a cell - so he considered himself lucky by that account. But the constant, heavy weight of eyes on his back watching for the next chink and the conversations that ended as soon as he arrived, clumsily altered to discussions of the weather or the Rift, ratcheted his anxiety to new levels.

He didn't blame the team; he could practically feel Tosh's concern when he'd handed her afternoon coffee. They were worried, but whether from protective self-interest or honest care for his wellbeing he couldn't discern. And if it made Tosh feel reassured to train the cameras on him wherever he went, he couldn't argue. However, his graciousness didn't kill the unsettling irritation crawling like bugs beneath his skin, distracting him from the perfect cup of coffee (twice remade) because he couldn't be trusted to work the bloody coffee machine without spooking. He might steam himself to death while making Gwen's coffee. And wouldn't that be one for the Torchwood books: Ianto Jones, death by latte.

Fuck, it'd be hilarious if it weren't so true. And he'd laugh, but laughter would most likely be misconstrued as a symptom of whatever ailed him; another tick box in Owen's notes, Tosh would add that to her search parameters and Gwen would tell him that perhaps a nap would do him well.

They'd watch and record, they were watching and recording, and while Ianto desperately tried to understand and rationalize why, the hair on the back of his neck never relaxed. He'd spent eight bloody hours in a state of half-crazed adrenaline alert confusing his fight-or-flight until it felt like even Myfanwy watched, concerned and wary from her alcove.

If he wasn't mad, Torchwood would succeed in driving him there. Day one, confined to Torchwood Three's main Hub with nothing to do but pace, tidy up, and brew bloody coffee, as he'd been officially placed on restricted duty and couldn't even venture to the Archives without someone holding his hand to make sure he didn't get into trouble.

Nothing to do but think about what he'd seen, what he'd done.

In frustration, Ianto slammed his hand against the coffee machine, wincing when all he received for his effort was a stinging palm and a jarred shoulder when the machine didn't budge. He'd curse the thing if he thought it'd do any good, then realized someone had most likely witnessed that display as well. 'Subject prone to fits of violence and self-inflicted harm upon his person'; Ianto could almost see the annotated notes in Owen's reports, clinical and detached as a good doctor should be.

At this rate, he wasn't going to last a night, much less seven.

"Feel better?"

Eyes. Everyone watching. It wasn't paranoia if it was true.

Ianto spun slowly on his heel, not bothering to hide rubbing the sting from his palm as he faced Jack who leaned ever so casually against the pillar. Hands stuffed in his pockets and looking small without his greatcoat, Jack was almost the perfect picture of indifference. But Ianto knew that mega-watt, full-toothed smile which never was as honest as one believed it to be. "Would you care for some coffee?" Ianto asked, blatantly ignored Jack's question ; answering honestly would gain him nothing and Jack would see through the lies.

"It's only for a week."

"Only?" Ianto gave up pretence of maintaining any form of calm, stabbing into the air in the direction of the CCTV cameras, though he kept his voice down so at least the others wouldn't hear what he said. "Now I know what an animal in the zoo feels like, on display twenty-four hours a day."

"They're worried." Ianto didn't ask if 'they' included Jack, in part because he simply didn't want to know the answer, but also because thought derailed when Jack took hold of his injured hand and pressed his lips against the tender skin. Just a simple, small gesture, but one that deflated Ianto's fury and softened the angry line of his scowl when Jack moved the kiss from palm to lips. Maybe Jack did understand; it didn't make the monitoring any less invasive or the intrusion into his private frustration less unwanted, but Jack asked patience and forgiveness in the kiss melting Ianto's ire as completely as his body unwound and draped against the cabinets, losing individual shape until it identified as sharp angles and mirrored reflection of Jack.

"Come on, conference room." Ianto opened his eyes from the languid haze Jack had reduced him to, a slow burn that promised rather than demanded and Ianto found it difficult disengaging to focus on Jack's words laced with a touch of amusement. His unspoken question was answered, however, while Jack straightened the lay of suit coat for him. "We're going to be discussing you, I assumed you'd want to participate."

Bastard. He was so relaxed he could hardly work up the effort it would take to become outraged at the idea of the team conferring about him. Probably intentional on Jack's part. Most likely, given Jack's smirk, though his hands weren't smirking so much as encouraging as they made sure Ianto's suit was in order. He collected himself enough for what was most likely to be an uncomfortable conversation focused on him.

***

"I've sent his labs to Martha for a second opinion, but nothing abnormal in the scans or bloodwork, no trace of alien chip or compound, no injection sites or even a scratch."

Ianto should have been overjoyed at his labs returning normal but was instead quietly seething that Owen would have sent his files to UNIT for fuck's sake, for a physician consult without informing him first. They'd already covered Gwen's inquiries with the police and A&E for anyone brought in displaying similar symptoms - all turning up empty. Then Tosh had launched into her theories ranging from Billis (as yet undismissed) to alien signal to an artifact in the Archives. Rather, the team discussed and Ianto primarily focused on maintaining a level of calm indifference as his entire history for the past two weeks was dissected and analyzed. And now his medical records were being flung about without his consent. He was fairly certain he had a say in their dispersal, but then, when did Torchwood Three ever follow the rules.

And now Jack and Owen were engaged in an exchange Ianto could only half-follow as they were speaking in partial sentences about something which they both were familiar with but left nameless. At least Tosh and Gwen looked as lost as he felt.

"So no..."

"No. No sign."

"You're sure?"

"I know what I'm looking for, Harkness, and no, no sign."

Ianto twisted the pen in his hand sharply, not breaking the barrel but feeling moderately better for the small action while the rest of him was held steady. Of course he didn't need to know what they were talking about. It was only his body and his life they were discussing as though it was the latest threat of the week. Frustrating, humiliating, hell, Owen even had a computer display for the results of the urinalysis, complete with bar graphs of white blood cells and protein counts as well as negatives for known drugs, both human and alien. He didn't think it was possible to hate the man more. And now he had no idea what they were discussing, only that it related to him and he was showing no sign.

Brilliant.

More images, more conversation about what it wasn't. No alien gas corrupting his bloodstream, no particles in his clothing, apparently despite his poor diet he was in perfect health, although his body temperature was slightly elevated, but given no indication of infection Owen discarded the information from relevancy. Comparison analysis run on the previous blood and DNA samples revealed no change.

No aliens, no nothing. Just Ianto.

"What if we're making this too complicated. Maybe it's not alien at all."

The general chatter died instantly at Gwen's words, well intentioned as though they might be, though Ianto was personally having a very difficult time finding any small measure of good intent. If it wasn't alien in nature, then there was only one other option he knew for the visions when his body was in perfect health.

Calmly, he set the pen down, perfectly perpendicular to his body with just a slight 'snap' as the plastic struck the table, parallel to the notepad he adjusted just so until it too fell into alignment. And he breathed, he remembered to breathe through the stranglehold in his chest, panic held at bay for the moment but only just as the silence continued and all eyes turned on him. It might have been minutes, half an hour, or two seconds for all Ianto could tell, slipping back in the chair until his spine, straight and tall - no slouch - pressed firm into the thin padding. Every move was deliberate, every action purposeful to wrap himself in dense steel to deflect anything and everything. Straighten his tie, gently clasp his fingers in front of him with his elbows resting casually on the arm rests.

Small smile for PC Cooper. Remembered to breathe. "And in your expert opinion, what might be afflicting me if it's not alien?"

"Oh god, Ianto," Gwen clapped a hand over her mouth, looking about the room with, if Ianto were to be asked, a certain degree of desperation for someone to intercede. Ianto wouldn't have been that surprised at this point if someone had. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean...I don't think you're..."

"Insane?" Breathe, Ianto reminded himself. No panic, no fear, no anxiety. Just calm, blue skies, a friendly conversation among friends. "If my faculties have been in any way diminished due to a mental illness, I believe any number of my earlier experiences would have broken me long before the stress of making you coffee or planning your wedding."

Her eyes grew large and Ianto swore he saw the gears shift to an alternate track. He should be kind, he knew her question wasn't completely out of line and his remark was far less than cordial. In fact, he'd be lying to himself to say he hadn't feared something similar. But if this was to be a conversation about his mental stability he would rather have not been invited. She didn't deserve the swipe -- his temper stressed to snapping -- but he couldn't bring himself to apologize.

"Lisa." She nodded in presumed understanding, a better friend than he as the comment struck her and still she tried to empathize. Gwen stretched out her hand to touch his arm and he wished he was on the other side of the table as in a proper police interview, no touching allowed for all the touch unnerved him. "Losing someone you love is traumatic, I think I'd lose my mind if I lost Rhys."

Ianto stared at the slim fingers resting on his arm and truly wished she would stop touching him. The wide-eyed, tearful compassion made him physically sick for as misplaced as it felt, or else it was her sweet perfume that was overwhelming in the closed conference room. But he believed it the first; it was wrong, her compassion was wrong, and while it was genuine, it didn't fit in a way he couldn't explain but it made his jaw tighten as he restrained himself from jerking away. That wouldn't be proper or calm. He couldn't risk that.

For a brief, horrible moment, however, he guiltily acknowledged a small hope that whatever he had was catch-able.

"It wasn't just Lisa." Tosh's voice was timid but loud enough to stop whatever Gwen was going to say next, her lips snapping shut but she still left her hand on his arm, apparently to calm him? Perhaps calm herself. "Ianto survived the Battle."

Gwen's confused questions were interrupted by a welcome voice, even if it belonged to Owen. "Tea-boy's right, to some extent." Ianto hid his surprise as easily as he hid his anger, slowly averting his gaze from his arm (Gwen removed her hand at the snap of Owen's voice) to Owen who chewed a pen while his attention was on Ianto. Disgusting habit, Ianto found many half-chewed pens laying around the Hub. He would have called Owen on his oral fixation, but didn't since Owen never bitched about missing medical supplies. "But not perfect in practical application." A chewed pen cap was pointed in his direction and Ianto couldn't stop the small curl of his lip in distaste at the gnawed, twisted plastic. "You turned away all the psychiatrists I lined up for you. Why?"

This time, Ianto couldn't smother the startled expression, darting a quick look at Jack for explanation but the man just shrugged his shoulders and looked as surprised as Ianto felt. He'd thought maybe Jack in a fit of guilt had been behind the phone calls and attempts to confirm appointments, half-hearted attempts to slap plasters on a gaping wound. After Lisa, one had even showed up on his doorstep. He'd sent her away as easily as he had the others - when one had experience with how they worked, it was easy to speak their language. "That was you?"

Owen snorted and went back to chewing his pen, almost more pleasant than it being waved in his direction. "We were on site the next day retrieving the most dangerous alien artifacts and two of your lot are in such a state they show up ready to work, either not grasping or in denial that their building's gone." His chair spun as Owen enjoyed the attention, though Ianto's was purely disbelief. "I contacted a few people I knew, made sure the survivors had access to help. Asshole, not heartless."

Ianto shook his head slightly, more to clear his mind than in denial that Owen had just admitted to performing good which went unrecognized. And that he had a heart. It was like learning there was no Santa. "Thank you," Ianto said with utmost sincerity, still trying to wrap his brain around Owen and good deeds. "They were left to fend for themselves, I'm sure your help was appreciated."

He didn't look at Jack; didn't need to. Ianto could feel Jack's glare tearing pieces in his armor for the subtle jab directed at the leader of Torchwood Three. This would be brought up later in private conversation for certain. Perhaps not entirely fair as Jack had no responsibility for anyone at Torchwood One, nor had he ever voiced desire to be in any way connected to the outfit. However, Jack had been the sole remaining visible leadership within Torchwood ranks and he'd walked away with the tech and turned his back on the twenty-seven who'd survived. Maybe they deserved it; Ianto knew London's hubris had brought its own destruction. But apparently he still fostered a bit of subconscious resentment, tucked away behind duty and responsibility, memories and the present day. He'd blame it on stress for the deliberate stab at Jack in such a public forum except for the sudden awareness that the thought did exist and it felt remarkably good to voice.

Oh, they'd be discussing this later. He'd be lucky if he didn't get written up for insubordination. If Jack cared about things like employee paperwork; Ianto was hardly writing his own insubordination report.

Owen's nod was the only hint that he even recognized the thanks before he snapped back to the Owen Ianto recognized and was far more comfortable with. "Now answer the question. I'd refer to your medical history for an explanation, but that's right, you haven't any."

"Haven't any what?" Jack finally spoke up, though the conversation was veering quickly into a direction Ianto didn't want it to go. Nothing in front of the others, not in front of Owen; hell, he didn't even want to have it again with Jack. It wasn't pertinent to the conversation, it wasn't necessary to discuss any of the information shared thus far.

"Medical history. Family, vaccinations, injuries, illness. London was notorious for paperwork and records but Ianto's are a big nothing until he joined us."

Ianto lost whatever gratitude he had towards Owen and felt the comfort of the facade of calm slip over him again, tight as a glove and just as warm. He picked up his pen again, set it down once more on the notepad perfectly aligned down the center as he reminded himself to breathe, nudging the pad a little to the left, then back to perpendicular again as he gave himself a moment. What he wouldn't give to slip back into the shadows of Torchwood Three, working unnoticed by the others, his presence essentially forgotten until something was needed. The team was staring again; he could almost read the script Tosh was writing in her head to circumvent whatever had erased his files, to search down the missing history that wasn't so much missing as deliberately gone. His mother would not be a matter of Torchwood and he'd had little of a pre-Torchwood medical file to begin with. "All of which are of no importance to this investigation. My personal life has no bearing on the situation so I kindly ask you stay the fuck out." He smiled at the table without really looking at any of the faces, knowing the expression was just as empty as he intended.

Although, perhaps it wasn't a good thing to be demonstrating a change in behavior; he never cursed in front of the team. Yet another tick on Owen's checklist.

"Your personal life has a nasty habit of becoming a Torchwood situation."

"Enough!" Jack's interruption didn't distract Ianto from his stand-off with Owen. While the doctor was stubborn and intense, forehead knitted in concentration, his pen resting forgotten on his lips as he tried to figure out what he perceived a great mystery, Ianto remained as still and unaffected as ever, save for the incredible pressure he felt on every finger and joint as he restrained himself from reacting. He wouldn't, and he knew to the casual observer nothing would appear amiss. But he could feel it, a vibrating urge to act in response to Owen's jab. Owen wasn't worth it, but the temptation was great.

Besides, his lack of response seemed to unnerve Owen and there was some satisfaction to that.

"Ianto's right, the information's not important now." Before Ianto's lips could curl into a smirk, Jack pointed at him and looked equally as determined as he had when addressing Owen. "However, if it does gain relevance then you'll inform your doctor. Clear?"

Not bothering to agree - he'd do it if ordered by his employer and Ianto trusted Jack enough not to abuse that privilege - Ianto instead refocused on the team, pointing to the CCTV camera in the corner. "No more of this. My life is not for your entertainment. If I need help, I'll contact you on the comms; if I'm needed for more tests, I'll answer." Ianto stood and gathered his pen and notepad as professionally as he could without appearing wooden. Not difficult, professionalism and decorum were standard operation procedure and training for London. "Notify me of meetings pertaining to new discoveries, if they're to discuss the state of my mental health, don't bother."

"Ianto, we don't think-"

"No." Ianto cut Gwen off before she could say anything more; he simply didn't want to hear it. "If you think it's necessary because you believe I've gone mad, then you shouldn't be discussing it in front of me. Otherwise, leave me alone, I'll not be party to these invasions of my privacy."

No one argued when he left.

***

Jack and he did argue later that night, restraining themselves with simmering tempers just shy of boiling till the others had left and they had the Hub to themselves, save for Myfanwy squawking irritably from her nest. They should have had more consideration for her, Ianto supposed, but the Hub was neutral ground and he didn't want the argument to seep into the bedroom. Literally. Besides, it gave them room to pace and work off the anger rather than compacting and intensifying the emotions until irreparable damage was done to either their persons or their relationship.

Nothing was held sacred or left high and secure on a shelf while the ground was kicked, beaten and scraped. Torchwood London. Lisa. The survivors. Jack leaving. Jack returning. Flat Holm and secrets. They yelled, they whispered, they asked questions and listened. They fought.

And in reflection, it had felt good.

It hadn't at the time - Ianto stressed beyond measure between the visions and the microscope he'd been placed under, and Jack frayed by frustration or worry or whatever had pushed him to give voice to his anger - and it seemed as though each point just fueled the next, escalating the argument until the house of cards fell, scattering at their feet to soften the steps as they tried to figure out where they stood, staring at each other with hands on hips, warily contemplating their next words.

Ianto had said he was going to bed; Jack offered his, with or without him in it.

He accepted neither, insisting on taking one of the camp beds in the spare room converted to a sleeping quarter for weary Torchwood employees when the long days were simply too long. He'd worried, for a moment, that Jack would misinterpret and read negatives into Ianto's decision that didn't exist, not when it came to he and Jack, no matter the words exchanged. After the day he'd had he just needed escape, a private moment to himself where he could collect his thoughts, review what had been said and, perhaps just once, replay the moment at his flat's door with his father. His own flat had been taken away, and while curling up with Jack, no matter their fight, had been appealing, he needed time to away. Alone.

He'd worried, but only for a moment. Jack had nodded, then gave a hesitant smile, low-watt, the shy one reserved when only Ianto watched and Jack was uncertain.

Ianto had reassured with a smile of his own.

The camp bed had been exceedingly uncomfortable and it'd taken Ianto hours to fall asleep. He wasn't sure if he ever did; maybe he just dozed while his mind spun on thoughts spiking from all angles of his life in vibrancy so blinding it was a wonder he didn't dream in technicolor 70s glam. By the time morning came, Ianto had a crick in his neck and a stiff back. Sleeping with Jack would most likely have been more comfortable, but Ianto wouldn't swap his night alone with the quiet song of a sleeping Torchwood for even a perfect cup of coffee.

Maybe for a perfect cup of coffee.

Jack was given a perfect cup of coffee that morning, strong and black in a heavy, bold mug with the blue and white stripes that privately made Ianto think of the passants on Jack's greatcoat. They didn't talk, didn't ask silly questions like 'how'd you sleep?' since Jack already knew and Ianto wouldn't answer him with anything more than a non-committal 'fine' anyway. And Ianto didn't ask if Jack had slept at all, since he already knew and Jack wouldn't answer with anything more than an 'oh, enough.' He did sit in the chair opposite Jack, however, his own mug (over-sized red ceramic bowl-mug, matched his shirt plus offered the perfect espresso-to-steamed milk ratio while permitting him to spray on an unhealthy amount of whipping cream) cradled in his hands while they silently enjoyed the other's company and prepared for the day.

It was good, their non-conversation, almost as good as what they had finally aired the night before. And if Ianto's fingers lingered just a moment too long on Jack's when he retrieved the empty blue and white striped mug, or if Jack's brushed his pinstriped thigh, neither commented but neither pulled away.

So much said without saying anything at all.

Rather summed up their relationship, Ianto mused as he brought food for all the beings kept within Torchwood's cells. Mostly Weevils, but there were a few others of various shapes, sizes, and nutrition sources. Ianto's favorite was the Pollywig, an alien race that looked like a hedgehog with flamingo biochemical properties in their spikes - turned an orangish-pink when they ate blue-green algae. Which Ianto fed it daily, just for the pleasure of watching it preen. Behind closed cage doors, of course; it turned into a vicious little devil with jaws like a micro-great white shark that could chew through flesh and bone in the presence of female pheromones (which had perturbed Gwen to no end).

The smile was still on his face as he approached the second-to-last cell, a smile that made his surprised frown even more noticeable as the muscles shifted, contracting and relaxing with such clarity Ianto could identify what pulled where and when. "Owen?"

Ianto looked to his left and right down the corridor, waiting for Jack to jump out of the shadows, laughing at some attempt at a joke that Ianto didn't quite get. He wouldn't put it past the man to lock up Owen just to get a reaction, and after the previous day's meeting, Ianto was half-tempted to leave the bastard in the cell. Served him right for being an arsehole. In fact, just seeing Owen again reminded him of the stress and tension that had knotted every muscle and tested every reserve Ianto had possessed. It all came flooding back until it became a dislike so deep it bordered on loathing for destroying his mood that morning.

And Owen just stood there with his arms crossed impatiently, tapping his foot like Ianto had deliberately delayed coming just to irritate him further. "I should leave you in there," Ianto grumbled, hitting the release for the door lock. As he did, Ianto remembered pieces of what Tosh had said, her theory that it could be Billis who was responsible for his visions, and maybe he had struck again, only this time his target was Owen, not Ianto. Which meant that Torchwood Three might be under attack if Owen had been incapacitated, if it wasn't some joke by Jack.

"How did you end up in there?" Ianto asked as he turned, about to pick up the containers of food; he'd feed the last Weevils and then, if the Hub was under attack by Billis, he and Owen could sketch out a plan. Given the chaos that typically befell Torchwood, no sense in letting them go hungry while the team dealt with whatever fate had planned.

Whatever answer Ianto expected, he hadn't planned on the shove from behind nor the growl, the two catching him completely off-guard as he barely caught himself from crashing headfirst into the stone wall. "The fuck?" He spun about, confusion dismissing logic forthright. "Owen? What the hell?"

Owen lunged at him again and Ianto had just enough time to put his hands up in defense, catching Owen's wrists and using his momentum to shove him to the side. Ianto patted his pockets, desperately searching for a weapon of any sort. His heel colliding with one of the containers of food gave him an idea despite his own mind reminding him unhelpfully that any physical harm and Owen would not heal from it. Fuck healing, Ianto thought as he threw the first container, which appeared to do no harm as Owen just batted it away.

Which would have made sense if Owen wasn't as skinny as he. That container should have injured him, and Ianto should have spent the rest of his life bearing the curses of Owen with a splint forever on his arm. Unless it was supernatural in origin, maybe Death was back and giving him strength, and if that was the case, Ianto had more to be concerned about than scuffing his shoes or Owen bitching about a broken bone.

In fact, if Ianto was truly honest with himself, he might say he was panicking. "Shit." He tapped his ear comm even as he bent to pick up the second container, lighter than the first but still heavy enough to possibly do some damage. "Jack?" What if Jack didn't even have his device with him? Ianto figuratively crossed every finger and toe for luck; his hands were otherwise occupied as Owen jumped for him again. This time Ianto maintained hold on the container, swinging it around to solidly crack against the man's shoulder, which threw him off target, but Ianto still received a painful swipe of fingernails across his chest. Definitely supernatural. "Jack! I need your help down here."

Death was resilient, Ianto had to give Owen credit for that. And persistent. Ianto would have laughed at the absurdity but Owen came after him again and Ianto forgot about shouting for help and instead tried to figure out how to either trap him in the cell again or escape out the heavy doors that might keep Death within. But the door was at the other end of a very long passageway and Owen was damned fast.

And strong. The container was ripped from his hands before he could ready it to swing again, thrown far out of his reach and it was all Ianto could do not to watch it bounce and roll out of play. He couldn't take his eyes off Owen though, who snarled and hissed as he moved forward to pin Ianto against the wall. Ianto could see what was happening, he just couldn't think of a way to get out of it, not with Owen's increased speed and strength. He was just able to put up his hands against the man's throat to prevent his own throat from being gnawed on by Owen's teeth. It didn't stop Owen's attack, even with Ianto doing his best to cut off his breathing and blood supply to his brain. Then he realized the futility of that action; Owen didn't breathe. And as a hand flailed and collided with his shoulder Ianto realized just how truly fucked he really was.

Before he could work his foot up to try to at least deflect or push him away, Owen was suddenly jerked away, still snarling in the dark language no one could understand until they ran it through Mainframe. He wondered what was being said now as Owen was being forced back into the cell Ianto had freed him from. Thumping his head back against the wall as he tried to recapture a steady, calm breath and heartbeat, Ianto built a list of what needed to be done: notify Tosh to run the CCTV footage through Mainframe to determine what Owen had said, he still needed to feed the last Weevils, he'd have-

"Ianto! Are you okay?"

Focusing his attention on Jack, now standing in front of him and looking exceedingly concerned, Ianto nodded, grimacing as the action made him aware of the tears in his suit jacket and shirt. He'd have to have Jack go to his flat and pick up another; he wouldn't have enough to survive his week stuck at Torchwood Three otherwise. Nothing felt too painful; Owen's fingernails may have been sharp but they didn't appear to have cut too deep. At least he didn't think fingernails could really get deep enough as he panted for breath; Ianto supposed they might and it was purely adrenaline clouding his perception. But they had more important things to worry about at the moment.

He pushed himself off the wall - Jack kept close as he walked - and made his way towards the cell he had seen Jack manhandle Owen into. He looked in to see Owen again standing impatiently with his arms crossed and foot tapping. "I'm sorry I let him out," Ianto apologized as he rested a finger on the small door window, mindful enough of his finger so as not to put it completely in the cell with Owen. Death. Whatever-whomever was in there.

"Let who out?"

Ianto scowled as he turned, wondering if Jack had hit his head or perhaps died in between getting Owen into the cell. But Jack looked far too casual leaning against the wall of cell doors to be confused with a concussion. "Owen." Ianto pointed into the cell to clarify who he meant in case Jack believed he meant one of the dozens of others kept in various cells and cages on the level. Jack made a show of looking through the window before turning his attention to Ianto's tattered shirt and ruined suit coat. "I thought it was just a joke. I didn't realize you'd put him in there because he was a dang-ow. Dammit, Jack. That hurt."

He winced as Jack poked a scrape that stung far worse than it really should have. Ianto didn't give in to the impulse to slap his hands away, though, restraining himself long enough for the perusal of his person. Apparently satisfied, Jack tapped his ear comm. "Owen, I need you on Level 9, Cellblock C."

"Owen?" Ianto asked half aghast, half concerned as he forced Jack's shoulders around to face the cell door, "he's in there, Jack, he can't answer the comms. I don't know what kind of sick joke you're playing, but Owen's gone mad and attacked me and you could have fucking warned me before I came down here."

Jack didn't say anything, and to his annoyance and worry, didn't even blink, just pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket and pressed it against the worst of the scratches. That unnerved Ianto far more than if Jack had started growling and attacked him outright as Owen had. It didn't make any sense, and Ianto was ready to ask what was going on when a voice from the end of the hall interrupted him.

"Yeah, Jack? What do you-"

Ianto stared, he couldn't help himself. He felt any fight and any anger directed at Jack evaporate as quickly as the feeling in his fingers and toes and really, all his limbs together. He looked through the window, just to make sure Owen was still within the cell. He was, back against the cell glass with his elbows on his knees as he squatted and snarled at Ianto.

He was there.

But Owen was also outside the cells wearing his lab coat, rushing towards them in such a mimicry of earlier events that Ianto flinched. He hadn't meant to but minus the hissing and the growling it was Owen both inside and out. Owen must have seen as Jack most certainly felt Ianto's instinctual response; Jack's arm tightened reassuringly around his waist (when had that gotten there? He didn't remember Jack moving) and Owen slowed his pace, holding up his hands as one would ease the fears of a cornered cat.

This wasn't possible. It wasn't fucking possible.

"Let's get him up to medical."

Jack and Owen were talking over his head - well, not really over but through his head as Ianto felt himself being propelled forward towards the open door wedged between the two men. He couldn't resist a look back, managing to successfully trip over his own two feet as he misjudged his steps; his feet really weren't listening. Nothing was. The cell door was closed, it was locked, and fuck, what had he let out? A Weevil, a bloody Weevil was in that cell, he knew a Weevil was in that cell. So why had he thought it had been Owen?

He'd let a bloody Weevil out.

Was this even Owen beside him? Or Jack?

He couldn't answer, couldn't even decide what was truly real or not. Owen had looked real, looked so very real Ianto had let him out of the cell he was locked in. And now there were two of them, one in the cell, one out and helping him up on to the autopsy table while Jack carefully helped him out of his jacket. Stripping him down, layer by layer. Shirt next, far more care unbuttoning buttons than Jack usually showed when undressing him and Ianto would have teased if he'd not been so wary of Owen with his gauze and antiseptic. He'd seen those hands have far more damaging use and fuck if he hadn't attempted to choke the pale neck in attempt to get Owen off of him.

But Owen couldn't be choked. He should have known that wouldn't work.

Owen was dead.

As soon as the idea struck him, Ianto couldn't help it. It was all the inappropriateness of a funeral in an equally somber setting.

He laughed.

And not just a soft, quiet chuckle, barely the length of a breath before he regained control. He laughed with all the hilarity of the best comic's best joke, a chuckle developing into a full-bellied laugh and disturbingly enough he found he couldn't stop it, no matter how hard he tried and no matter how he knew it must look. But that made it all the more (not) funny and soon he was doubled over and shaking because his muscles ached but still he couldn't stop, no matter Jack's concerned voice or Owen asking if he needed to prepare a sedative.

Sedative. Silent sleep. Long sleep. Oh god, he most certainly must be going mad because the mere notion set him off again and while he was frantic to stop himself, if only to breathe, he simply couldn't.

"Oh fuck, I see dead people." The words were more gasped than spoken, Ianto couldn't quite get his voice to support the words he wanted. But the meaning was behind them as he laughed, though the laughter was morphing far more into sobs and no matter how hard he tried he couldn't get himself to stop. Control kept tumbling away from him faster than he could run, faster than he could chase despite the clutch he'd held before. He was grasping at the sides of a pit dug in sand, the walls caving as quickly as he tried to climb out, worsening with ever increasing frantic attempts.

God, he was drowning within his own mind.

He needed to slow down, he needed to breathe, he needed to collect himself. He needed all these things but he kept circling back to the same thought, the same phrase repeating itself over and over like a mantra borne in hell, taunting him from the edges of sanity. I see dead people I see dead people I see dead people.

He was going mad. Not going, Ianto corrected himself. He was mad.

There was no other explanation. He was seeing dead people, setting loose Weevils, and nearly burning down his flat. There was no rationale, there was no logic, this was the definition of insanity. But would he still be questioning his sanity if he was insane? Introspection didn't fit with the diagnosis; the thought calmed him a bit and Ianto discovered he could finally breathe, albeit in hitched half-breaths that oddly seemed timed with the beat of his heart.

Oddly timed as well with the circles spinning round and round on his chest or the whispered words in his ear, all sounding as fuzzy as the world looked: a hazy prismed scape complete with a blurred dead man standing in front of him, arms crossed as he leaned against what might have been a cabinet or it might have been a mid-sized white Chatoacl, Ianto wasn't sure.

Focus. He needed to focus.

'I see dead people.'

Ianto let himself drift instead, conversation happening around him while he felt (dead) Owen's hands clean up the scrapes he received from his encounter with the Weevil dressed as Owen. He knew he ought to be paying attention, they were talking about him after all, but paying attention meant dealing and he most certainly did not want to deal with the notion that he was seeing dead people. As he let his head rest against the shoulder conveniently placed for his head resting, Ianto could almost pretend it was just a quiet night at home, telly on to some random nature program (violent crime dramas were too much after a long day of Torchwood, comedy fell flat, cartoons were too animated and reality shows apparently reminded Jack of times he'd rather forget). Ianto's favorite had been meerkats; the program had rather reminded him of the team's interaction. And if it wasn't for the harsh smell of antiseptic and the tug at his arm and upper torso (numb; must be a topical analgesic) Ianto could almost believe he was at his flat. Comforting. He'd probably be in his favorite pair of cranberry colored pajama bottoms as well.

It wasn't right. He'd seen too much death to see it when it wasn't even present.

"I don't bloody know. There's nothing anomalous in any of his labs." Owen's voice actually sounded worried. Ianto made a mental note to notate the event in his diary.

"What'd Martha say?"

"Just got in when you called. He honestly thought it was me in there?"

"He's still here." Ianto opened an eye, then both as he resolved himself to the fact that he'd not have a quiet night at home for at least another six days, probably longer now. He didn't move away from Jack, however, just continued to relax as he held up his arm to inspect Owen's work. Less a blur of rainbow-rimmed white now, more defined, he caught sight of a similar white stretch of gauze on his chest. Paint him up, he'd make a good piñata. "Dunno that it's you now."

A dry chuckle rattled off his ear, falling into Ianto's sand pit to bury itself at his feet. If Ianto had the energy, he would have bent down to pick it up but instead, he just leaned back against the brick wall he felt at his back. "It's really Owen," Jack reassured, his hands joining Ianto's as it smoothed over the gauze on his arm.

"Don't know that it's you, either." He felt the other man tense behind him, though not with tension at being caught out, Ianto knew that as much as he knew his father hadn't been a threat. Quite possibly it was that Jack was being compared to Owen, and Ianto could appreciate that affront. "You've died. How do I know you're real?"

He didn't believe that, not really. But as soon as the words slipped past his lips, he had to admit to the fear. His earlier panic must have loosened his tongue, providing a slick conduit for the words typically kept trapped tight within his mind. As much as he was certain this reality was true, that the more-curious-than-annoyed Owen studying him with arms crossed and the reassuring Jack warming his back while idly tracing patterns into the gauze were who they appeared to be, Ianto had been just as certain that it was Owen in that cell, waiting to be released to play doctor to team Torchwood.

But he couldn't be mad, not if he was questioning what he perceived as real. Could he?

"I assure you, I am very real."

'But Jack might not be Jack,' Ianto's traitorous mind helpfully supplied, arguing in a somewhat sanguine manner that he worked for Torchwood. He could be trapped by an alien device, abducted by aliens in a facsimile of real life, in a coma thanks to the tenderizing of a cannibal's club. Fuck. Maybe that was it, he'd never woken up from brain trauma and the past year was just a dream.

Only Owen was dead. If it was a dream, it was an incredibly creative dream because there was no way he would rationally envision Owen as a zombie, Jack the immortal demon slayer, or Suzie returning from the dead. It might be something from the mind of Joss Whedon, but it was too rich, too detailed, too absurd, even by Torchwood's standards.

"You're sure this isn't anything from the Archives?" Owen had moved from curious to accusing, though Ianto noted it wasn't directed at him. Jack, for not locking down a dangerous object? Or Jack for permitting Ianto to spend half his days buried deep within the Archives where artifacts of every shape, size and purpose as well as books regaling the strangest of tales were kept? Ianto was more than willing to allow Jack to remain the focus of Owen's questioning if the angles were to be accusatory.

"This effect with no blips on a scan? Not that I'm aware of, but that doesn't mean it's not down there."

Ianto heard the uncertainty in Jack's voice and read it for what it meant, as well as felt the man's persistence in remaining seated on the exam table, chest pressed firmly to Ianto's back. An uncharacteristic gesture at the best of times, innuendo and gratuitous (and poorly hid) groping not uncommon but the intimacy the act implied, in view of another, left Ianto more than a little unsettled. Jack had no clue, and he'd never seen this before in all his travels, except, most likely in the diagnosis Ianto feared. He wondered if there was even mental illness in the 51st century, if it'd changed and evolved over time or perhaps been eradicated altogether. What was it like, Ianto briefly wondered, to live in a world full of incurable diseases as an immortal when one's true reality existed millennia in the future, with cures and treatments accessible to all?

Depressing. Ianto was actually quite surprised Jack hadn't lost his mind with anger and frustration yet. Or made billions 'developing' the cure for the common cold.

Owen donned the glasses he rarely wore, or at least that Ianto rarely saw, and scratched more notes into Ianto's file with an exceedingly well-chewed pen. What those notes indicated Ianto couldn't say for certain but he was pretty sure they consisted of accounts of hallucinations, threat to himself, and a detailed list of his injuries. Maybe even some guesses as to the cause. Whatever he was thinking must have stumped him; he tapped his pen repeatedly on the clipboard before impatiently throwing the file to the counter top. "Well, if we weren't Torchwood, I'd have you on the first lift to Psych for a full eval cause this makes no bloody sense."

Any lingering sluggishness vanished like water in the desert, leaving his body so sapped of daze that awareness felt pin-point accurate. Not that he moved an inch, Ianto remained pressed against Jack's chest, but everything he was seemingly 'pinged' into full alert. Jack must have sensed it as well, the wall of chest at Ianto's back didn't shift so much as harden, tensing along every pitch and angle until even his arms felt like stone and Ianto was braced by a statue. Not to hold him in place - Ianto didn't think it was done to hinder - but more a ripple effect of Owen's words traveling from lips across the air, striking ear drums and shattering calm that evoked more anticipation of reaction than reaction itself.

Ianto didn't move, just blinked and remembered to breathe.

It was in jest. Ianto recognized the attempt at humor as easily as he could acknowledge Gwen's well-intentioned suggestion. But as much as it was a joke the fear remained of nightmares trapped in padded rooms and long white hallways, of speaking but no one understanding, of screams never vocalized and dead blue eyes staring out from a mirror.

He swore he saw Jack's face in that mirror, standing behind him now, blanketing his fear with a light so bright it nearly blinded.

A nice thought; Ianto nearly smiled at the sparked images of regurgitated nightmares sprung from Owen's flippant comment reforming and resettling into something different. Reassuring. But a smile would be inappropriate. Or maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it'd acknowledge Owen's joke.

Despite the conflict, Ianto allowed himself to smile. Small, nothing extravagant, but honest to himself and humoring Owen. "Lucky for me, then, that we're Torchwood." Ianto finally stood, pushing from the table with his good hand. He was careful, twisting his waist and shoulders slightly to test both movement and pain from the scratches - limited, but not completely restricted. He'd feel the pain later; he most likely had adrenaline to thank for that. There were scrubs stocked in one of the cabinets, white and uncomfortable, but they would have to make do until Ianto could change into something more comfortable. He was not walking around the Hub bare-chested. That was fine when it was just he and Jack in the late hours of the night, but not during work hours.

Slipping the temporary shirt over his head was a different matter entirely. He refused to ask for help from Jack (Owen wasn't even a remote consideration), but between the injuries to his upper arm and torso, navigation of the sleeves and neck hole was impossible. A blush didn't spread over his cheeks but a curse echoed loudly in his mind. Perhaps they'd leave him alone to dress. Unlikely, but Ianto declined to humiliate himself further by struggling into the garment.

He glanced up, white scrub top twisted in his hands to find Jack's eyes narrowed and locked on him, either studying or tracking him. He'd moved from the table at some point after Ianto had stood, choosing to stand instead with his arms crossed - almost defiant - and if Ianto permitted himself to think about what it might indicate, standing coincidentally in the middle of Ianto's path to the exit.

But that was ridiculous and purely coincidence.

What drew Ianto's attention the most was Owen, who'd forgotten about the clipboard and apparently Ianto as well. Jack was Owen's calculating focus, the expression highlighted even more by the glasses he still wore, making Ianto wonder briefly if Owen had ever abused the look back at Uni to appear the intellectual.

Ianto wouldn't put it past him.

The fact that Owen was intensely considering something unnerved Ianto, especially when Jack's attention never left him. The triangle of scrutiny left him feeling like the ultimate loser in the contest.

With hope to escape and flee to whatever recesses of the Hub still open to him, Ianto inched backwards and towards the narrow space still unblocked by Jack. He'd duck down one of the nearby corridors and fight his way into the shirt without tearing open the scratches again. Fuck, he still had to feed the Weevil that looked like Owen, otherwise she'd be violent the next time Ianto went to feed her.

A sharp crack of fingers snapping stopped him in his tracks, as did Owen's voice. "Oi, just where do you think you're going?"

Frozen in place with his jaw open and ready for speech, Ianto realized he had no response prepared. Usually relatively quick, his mind sluggishly shrugged its proverbial shoulders in defeat, an image Ianto found both disturbing and alarming. Even his mind was turning its back on him, refusing to engage to preserve what little dignity he had left. He'd feel betrayed if he wasn't just as embarrassed by his own actions that morning. "I ... coffee. It's morning."

Owen turned to look at him, the disbelief so clear on his face Ianto couldn't have missed it had he been blind. "You just set a Weevil loose. What part of 'not right' escaped you?" Again, Ianto found he couldn't reply, denial short-circuiting and leaving him with the uncomfortable facts as Owen so bluntly stated. Jack was no help; he hadn't moved from his determinedly studious posture, and Ianto was quickly running out of options on how best to remove himself from the situation. With a sigh that dissolved the disbelief into resignation, Owen made a show of removing his glasses and folding them carefully, hiding them away in the pocket of his lab coat.

Ianto now didn't doubt for a minute Owen had used the glasses on the pull.

"What was it?" Owen's question made Ianto blink in confusion, uncertain what the doctor meant. But before he could ask, Owen directed his attention at Jack, leaving Ianto with the distinct awareness that Jack was being used to gauge the accuracy of Owen's thoughts. Ianto's stomach plunged to his toes before the words ever left Owen's lips. "Epilepsy? PTSD?" Owen tapped his chin as he continued watching Jack, Ianto's only recourse was to beg Jack to make Owen stop.

All Ianto managed was to twist the white-cotton shirt in his hands.

"Not PTSD, something possible to inherit since you wiped your family too. Bipolar disorder? Acute depression?" Owen paused and Ianto's insides knotted. He'd feel outrage as Owen continued to pry but he was too numb too feel anything more than the dull throb of the Weevil cuts, steadily beating in time with the roar in his ears that threatened to drown out Owen completely. "Schizophrenia? Something schizoid or schizotypal. Let me know when I'm right."

"Fuck you." Ianto didn't know who he was addressing - Jack, who except for the clenched jaw remained still, or Owen, for the list, the presumptions, and for ignoring Jack's orders to let it go the day before. Maybe it was to both that he spat out the curse, alone and betrayed and half-naked for their entertainment. Wasn't the most inventive of rejoinders, nor one invoking innocence of all accusations, but the language tasted good upon his tongue, even if it was at a fraction of strength and cracked by desperation.

Owen turned away from Jack to look at him directly; apparently all answers sought were found. Ianto would have glared in defiance and animosity but the disbelief was gone, as was any antagonism Ianto had come to expect, completely sapping Ianto of any protest as he tried to justify an almost-sympathetic Owen with the arsehole Ianto knew him to be. "Who was it?"

Ianto shook his head, backing up until he felt a cabinet behind him, which he leaned on gratefully. Not that he couldn't stand, but the firm structure behind him was a steadying force as everything else spun around him. "Irrelevant." Ianto spoke carefully, refusing his internal panic to show within his voice. A calm façade was impossible, but at least he could pretend that he possessed some measure of control. "This follows none of the patterns."

"Ianto-"

"No!" Ianto let his voice rise with his determined anger; he was not allowing Owen to even argue the point aloud. "I saw something which you couldn't see. How the hell did I manifest that?"

Silence.

Not that Ianto expected much by way of conversation following the question, but some indication that he had spoken at all would have been appreciated for all he bore the weight of two pairs of eyes and an unequally heavy quiet. Between the moment of vocalization and another's reply, Ianto lost himself in the sudden fear that perhaps he hadn't spoken at all. Or the words had come out wrong despite sounding correct to himself. He refused to accept that possibility. Still, the notion that he wasn't actually conscious and aware crept back in, his reality at some point diverging from the real. A perfect explanation for why he was seeing dead people.

There was a rational explanation for it. He knew there was. Owen's baseless diagnoses didn't resolve everything and Ianto found no shame in clinging to that fact.

"Tell me then," Owen's voice was far more soothing than Ianto would have preferred, sounding less like the abrasive zombie he was and more actually ... concerned. That frightened Ianto far more than it should have. It was simply unnatural. "You honestly thought it was me in that cell."

He nodded yes, glancing quick at Jack before resettling on Owen to see where he was going with the conversation.

"And when the next hallucination hits, can you tell me you'll know there's a difference between it and the object that evoked the vision?"

Ianto started to respond, then cut himself off, realizing immediately what Owen was leading to but feeling equally powerless to stop the inexorable march towards the final questions. He couldn't say what he wanted to; it'd all be lies. He'd been convinced it was Owen in the cell and now he wasn't positive of anything's perceived existence.

"Owen-"

Ignoring Jack, Owen followed up on Ianto's silence. "And when Myfanwy looks like Jack, will you greet him with a kiss? How about if you see a Cyberman in the Hub, only it's really Tosh?"

The blood drained from his face so fast Ianto was certain he might pass out. That could also be attributed to his injuries, however, not necessarily what Owen had just said, but that offered little comfort. He didn't fool himself - this made two times he'd endangered himself through what he'd seen. He knew what that implied, what that meant, but the idea that he might accidentally injure one of the team made his stomach turn.

Options existed, though, and he'd be damned if he inadvertently hurt someone. Hell, even the Weevil could have killed him and escaped into the Hub with the others unaware and unsuspecting of any danger. And he'd shot an alien who'd appeared to be his mother; what if it'd been an innocent civilian?

Torchwood was no place for hallucinations of any kind. Even if he lacked a weapon thanks to duty restrictions.

Ianto straightened his shoulders, employing what little control he had left. "I'll go home," he stated simply, inviting no debate. As he said his intentions, panic slithered its way to the front of his mind, a black writhing mass lashing out at every rational thought. Home. He wouldn't be involved in finding out what was wrong with him, he wouldn't be involved in the discussions or the research, he was handing over everything to Torchwood Three and trusting them with his life. Counting on them to continue searching, to exhaust every angle, to care.

He didn't do that. He relied on himself. The lines had relaxed a little since the Brecon Beacons and mostly because of Jack but he didn't do that.

And if they thought him mad, if Owen pursued any of what he'd questioned, would they continue? Or would it be easier just to let him go and forget?

"You can't stay here," Owen agreed, nodding as if he understood exactly what Ianto was thinking Maybe he did, but Ianto hated giving him that much credit. "Ianto," Owen started, then stopped as though rethinking his words, but he continued despite the internal debate. "We should also consider a full evaluation."

Ianto recoiled as physically as if Owen had struck him. "Absolutely not. There's no cause to."

"And what if this is a combination? Something you touched flipped an internal switch and now it's both alien and natural. We can't help if you keep pretending it's not possible."

"No." Ianto was vehement with his denial, but he wondered how many more of these incidents could happen before he was forced to. But he'd be damned if he just accepted it now. "I'm going home."

"If you're going home, I'm going with you." Jack stepped forward, causing Ianto (and Owen as well) to snap attention on the man though their purposes may have differed.

Ianto spoke up before Owen. "You can't."

"You're not staying there alone."

He knew Jack meant to protect him, he really did. But sometimes, Ianto swore the man didn't think. "Then who the fuck is here finding out what's wrong with me?" Some of the panic swept into his voice, Ianto heard it just as he was sure both Jack and Owen heard it. But he had eyes only for Jack at the moment, watching as awareness dawned, but he chewed his lip almost as though he was consuming the response he truly wanted to give. "Lucky we're Torchwood," Ianto reminded, but didn't plead no matter how his voice edged on desperate.

"Stay here, then." He knew Jack didn't mean just the autopsy bay. "We'll take extra precautions for everyone's protection." And almost as an afterthought, and nearly as quiet, Jack added, "Don't go where I can't help you."

Finally, a choice instead of the orders Ianto had grown tired of, chaffing at the edges of their relationship with the demands and Jack's unquestionable authority. Their relationship, however it was defined.

"Oh my god, Ianto! What happened?"

Ianto couldn't stop his face from flaming what he was sure was a brilliant red at the sound of Tosh's voice. Vainly he adjusted his hold on the scrub shirt to cover his chest, hiding the gauze. He turned away from Jack to look up at Tosh, dreading explaining the latest to her and, even more, fearing anything Owen might say. The fear was almost definite in form, taking root in the pit of his stomach and stretching its hands up to his throat, choking off his answer.

"Tea-boy saw another dead person, set loose a Weevil by mistake." Owen made a show of snapping off his latex gloves, making a scene as he threw them in the biologicals bin and proceeded to plod around the autopsy theatre, picking up and resetting items. "What'd you need, love? Just about done with him, and then he's yours for all your caffeinated services."

"Just..." Tosh looked at Ianto again, her attention obviously torn between the patches of gauze hiding the injuries beneath and the distraction Owen was providing; Ianto could think of no purpose for his actions other than to diffuse the situation with levity as Jack would have done had he not been completely fixated on Ianto. A situation almost worse than the CCTV tracking of the day before, Ianto decided, offering Tosh what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "Actually, I was looking for Ianto. I've got a test I'd like to run. But it can wait...?"

"He's yours once I clear him. And dress him - and we thought Jack was worthless when Ianto wore denims."

Tosh glanced one more time from Owen to Ianto, Jack's back was to her so she couldn't read his expression. Perhaps she really did believe he was distracted by Ianto's bare chest. Maybe she wasn't fooled; Ianto didn't know what to think anymore or even what remained of his dignity. She smiled encouragingly and waved before turning away, her heels clicking her path across the Hub.

Turning back to Jack, Ianto found himself staring at the same fiercely determined man that he'd argued with the night before - arms crossed with barely contained emotion bubbling beneath the surface - only this time there was far less anger and more, well, Ianto would call it helplessness on any other, but that didn't read as the Jack he knew or understood.

An answer. He was waiting for an answer.

Ianto wasn't sure which required the most faith in Jack, removing himself from the investigation or Jack doing everything to keep Ianto from inadvertently hurting one of the team during a vision. Owen was clear with his preference, and with one option Ianto would be under even more scrutiny, the doctor adding tailored psych checklists to his records and chart-making, detailing everything into his permanent record. His response to Tosh led Ianto to believe he might at least keep his observations quiet; a small positive to come from the situation, although discussion of an evaluation was certain to come up again.

And then there was Jack.

Every option was a terrible choice, never leading to a satisfactory conclusion that maintained Ianto's sanity. Every aspect of the whole fucking mess continued to pile on exponentially until he felt leadened and anxious about the mere notion of spending an unspecified amount of time in the Hub.

Or confined to his home.

In the end, Ianto selected his choice for the most selfish of reasons because he truly didn't know how he'd cope if isolated.

And he'd been asked.

"I'll stay."

Jack.

***

Next part of The Windhovers: The Beginning.

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