Title: It
Author: Clarity
Rating: G
Pairings/Characters: Jack/Doctor, Jack/Ianto, TARDIS
Warnings: none
Summary: Love makes us change...

***

Ianto didn't know if he felt bad at what he'd done. He thought perhaps he did, but he also felt immense relief. There would be no more demands, no more childish games, no more loneliness and no more anger at feeling so much love and never having it returned.

Of course, he'd only come with the Doctor for Jack; because Jack had missed his coffee and his sense of humour and making love to him. Apparently. Not that any of those things were indulged in much on the TARDIS.

He watched the Doctor and Jack run around together, entirely absorbed in each other, wondering what they did when they were out of sight. Ianto had been happy to find a friend in Martha but she was just as lovesick. Then of course, when she was accidentally lost, there was no one.

The Doctor turned only to Jack and Jack turned only to the Doctor. In a way, Ianto was happy to see the man he loved happy. It had never been so when they were living and working together in Torchwood Three, so Ianto didn't complain.

Instead, he did what he knew he did best. He served. At first, only them. Then he gradually came to be aware of a third presence in the time vessel. In the beginning, the presence indulged his obsessive cleaning and repair work with a bright amusement. Then It began to whisper in the night, compelling him to do more. To touch, to care, to console himself and It at their unrequited loves in the act of obsessive maintenance.

The whispers got louder and louder over time until every stroke of his cloth was felt, as if he were touching his own skin. Ianto wanted to be afraid and found that he couldn't. Because It needed him and, since nobody else did, he found comfort in that.

But he began to hate Jack. Hate burned so deeply in him he thought it might consume him. Rage grew to flood his veins at the sight of him, of both of them. Strange thoughts went through his mind and he wasn't sure where they were coming from.

He thought, with anger, that the Doctor never listened anymore. Which was odd because he had never experienced the act of him listening much anyway. He thought that Jack, his beloved Jack, was a loathsome fool for not understanding why he was being preserved for eternity. Which was odd because Ianto didn't know why that was himself.

Except, over time, he did. He knew it all; Jack wasn't being saved for the Doctor. Of course not. The Time Lord wouldn't live forever. Stupid, stupid Jack.

It, the voice, the presence, called Ianto one night and cradled him so tightly he thought he might burst. For the first time, he was frightened by It. There were screams in his ears but he was powerless. He fell into a burning fire which tore through the core of his body.

It opened its heart to him and flooded him with light and time and space; all the power of its love. In an instant he saw everything. His whole future. Ianto saw himself as a guardian of the ancient and timeless vessel, caring for the physical part of it as he had always done in the act of upkeep and holding within himself the metaphysical part. He saw a creature that was himself and yet not; he would burn alongside and within It forever, an inhuman being with blazing eyes of fire and fingertips capable of drawing timelines in the air.

Ianto didn't know if he felt bad at what he'd done, abandoning Jack and the Doctor like that. He never knew now if his feelings were his own or that of the vortex living within him.

He knew that one day he would return for Jack at least.

***