Title: Nightmares
By: bittersweet
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Note: Ah well, I'm sure you'll forgive me. You know how it is – idea comes, nestles in your brain, sets up camp and refuses to leave until you start typing. Also, be prepared for nonsensical flow-of-consciousness type dreams. If it doesn't make sense, don't blame me. I'm just the writer.
Summary: Whats this? The events of "Adam" coming back in dreams? How startlingly original! -cough-
Disclaimer: I am more than the sum of my experiences! I am not conventional and neither am I extraordinary! I am… actually, it's irrelevant what I am. I still don't own Torchwood.

***

It is a man. A man he has never seen before. Sandy hair, an unremarkable face. A man that scares Jack Harkness like nothing has scared him for over two hundred years. This man is tied in somehow, tied in with memories and pain and sand and blood and children running. Jack wants to run away, but he can't move. He is crushed in the dark and the heat and weight on his body, holding him fast. The man looks right through him. Momentary relief, then he sees Ianto. Helplessly watches as this man walks over. Helpless and knowing something horrifying is going to happen right before his eyes.

Ianto lay awake as Jack dreamed; the older man's steady heartbeat a comforting rhythm by his ear. Forty eight hours. Two whole days lost. Ianto wasn't sure he wanted to know what could have happened to make them all willing to do that to themselves. Or at the very least, to make Jack willing to do that to them. It had been Jack who had deleted the CCTV files – Tosh was certain of it, and there was no questioning Tosh in these matters. So Jack had made that choice, which meant it was a choice Ianto would willingly abide by. That didn't mean he could shake away the feeling of unease. The events with Owen and the flowers, other little clues left around, little things out of place… an extra desk set up and a name. Adam. This person had come, everyone had behaved differently, and now the person was gone. As these thoughts ran through his mind, Ianto was sure of only one thing – he would not do anything to make Jack remember something so painful he had retconned the memory away.

The man walks closer, saying something but Jack can't hear… Ianto is replying, and then he has his hands on the young Welshman's temples, smiling and whispering in his ear as Ianto arches his back and cries out, pulling away. Somehow a realisation, a sudden knowledge…this is an attack not on the body but the consciousness. This person is attacking Ianto. Worse than that, this is violation… this is rape of the mind. Horror in Ianto's eyes and screams of pain that go deeper than the physical. His Ianto. Smirking and whispering and hurting his Ianto. No one touches his Ianto. Jack begins to fight the choking weight, furiously trying to do something, anything. He has to stop this.

Jack always struggled. He thrashed madly, twisting the bedding, tossing and turning throughout the night. Ianto never tried to hold him still… he had learned that lesson the hard way, with bruises along his chest and arms that he only just managed to hide away from Jack the next morning. Instead, he simply did his best to stay close, knowing that physical contact was the only thing that helped. He dreaded to imagine what Jack's nights had been like before, alone in that tiny bunk. He hated seeing Jack in pain, and his own inability to do anything about it infuriated him. So he would lie awake and wait through the night, a silent guardian.

Tonight, Ianto was not surprised as Jack began to move violently. He was expecting it. Whatever had happened during those two days, whatever had made them willing to destroy their own memories, he had known it would come up like this. Tonight, he didn't care about the bruises. Tonight he tried to hold Jack tight and safe.

He has to protect Ianto. Ianto is counting on him. Jack can see him… at a desk, in a chair… looking up, utterly vulnerable and giving himself to Jack without reservation.

"… gave me meaning again…You."

A single word, spoken with complete trust. Wide eyes that are not begging but instead tentatively offering. Then the scene crumples before his eyes and Ianto's face twists and there is the horror and the pain. He can feel the young man lying in his arms all broken up inside…"I am a monster"… a whispered confession that isn't true, couldn't be true. Someone has done this. They will pay, damn them, they will pay for this… he will find them and hurt them and he will like it. He remembers how. He was good at that, once.

Jack talked loudly when he had nightmares, gasping out names, denials and commands. Ianto listened, and remembered. He didn't need to know what had happened to hear the caress given to a woman's name, to hear the passion as he called out for a soldier long buried. It was overwhelming to think of all the people that had come before him, and all the people who would come after, but it was also comforting. He liked to think that there would be someone there for Jack when he was gone. He knew how it felt to be the one left behind, and he didn't want Jack to feel that emptiness. That was why it scared him a little when Jack told him he loved him and meant it. It was wonderful… but terrible. With Jack, nothing was simple.

There were other things too, of course. Pleas for the darkness to end, just end, pleas and curses directed at someone called the Master. Apologies, fervent and heartbreaking. Ianto heard many things at night, and he took it all and carefully stored it away. He never asked Jack what they meant. He never asked how many times Jack had died, or how many times he had killed. He heard the emotions, and they told him more about the person than the facts ever could.

It's starting again. Jack wants to run away, but he can't move. The man looks right through him. Momentary relief, then he sees Ianto. It's starting again. Worse, so much worse, knowing now what the man is going to do to Ianto... He won't let this happen. He can hear someone speaking, saying his name… get away. He has to get away from this. It's happening again. Please not again.

"I won't let him… I won't…"

"Shh, Jack, shh…"

"You're mine. I won't let him hurt you!"

"It will be alright. No one is going to hurt me. Go back to sleep."

"You're mine…"

"I know, Jack. Sleep now. I'm here."

***

Sometimes you can learn a lot about someone from being there for them during their nightmares.

Sometimes you are shown just how much you have already learned.

Blackness and rain. A road. A wall. An alleyway, bare and solitary and menacing. A figure, up against a wall. Ianto reaches out. This is what he has come for. The screaming starts, but he ignores it. It doesn't matter, he is untouchable, and his hands fit around the quivering throat so smoothly. This is how it was meant to be. This is what feels right. It satiates the hunger that rages in his chest, in his mind. He needs this, needs to feel the life slip away, needs to know he has the ultimate control. It feels… beautiful.

Jack didn't go back to sleep that night. He couldn't. The memory of that dream had scorched itself across his brain and he couldn't get rid of it. He focused on Ianto's warm weight next to him. Safe in his arms. It was so difficult, with Ianto. He was out of practice – it had been a long time since he had felt excited just from someone entering the room, and afraid when they weren't there. Even longer since the last time he had felt content to just lie in the dark and listen to the sound of another person breathing. Jack tightened his grip on Ianto slightly, and didn't let go.

That was why, later in the night, he felt the telltale tension, the tear-damp on Ianto's face. He was surprised for a moment. Ianto did not often have troubled dreams. Then again, with Ianto it was so hard to tell. Jack suspected it had been a problem before, and those suspicions had been confirmed as much by Ianto's stubborn silence on the topic as Owen's continual recommendations after physicals that the teaboy needed a rest. But not anymore, not since he had started staying then night. Jack thought about the missing two days, and his own dream, and fought to ignore the fear. Just a dream, that was all. Just a nightmare.

It hurts, he can't think and it hurts. He's against the wall. No air. He's the victim, now, and he can't fight because he is being killed by himself and it is better, far better this way than the other. Anything is better than that… that helplessness, trapped inside watching as his hands tighten. Feeling that joy and pleasure. He had enjoyed it… oh god…he had enjoyed it so much. Tears run freely. He tells himself to be still. Be still, let it happen and not struggle and then it will all be over, it will end and there will be no more horror. Just stay strong for a moment more. I can do it. I'm not afraid, not afraid at all…this is the easy way, this way. I know that. But why does it hurt so much?

Ianto never struggled. He went very still, curling tightly around Jack's body as if to fend of the outside world. Sometimes a tentative arm would find its way around the other man's waist and cling there. Jack found him so beautiful lying there, helpless and small and young and somehow, for this moment, belonging only to Jack. It was his age that was the biggest problem, Jack decided. When you have lived for centuries it is hard to feel that twenty five is an adult. It is hard not to feel you are taking advantage of the naivety, the vulnerability of youth. And while Ianto was never naïve, there were times when Jack had seen him so vulnerable...

Tonight, though, he moved away. Pulled away, turning to the edge of the bed and hunching into himself, muscles tense. His arms crossed over his chest, his head bowed. When Jack leaned over he actually flinched at the touch. Jack sank back, and grew steadily more worried.

He is the attacker again, he holds the warm flesh in his fingers…it feels so good, so good as it twitches and struggles, and inside he is screaming because he knows this isn't right, something is wrong about this, so wrong, but he feels in control and it feels good. The face… it is changing…three times, three women he doesn't know. Three pleas and three screams and never any mercy. The body shudders. It changes again, and he knows this face, he knows this woman now, with a gap in her teeth and brown hair and such wide, wide eyes… a man, a man so skinny with a smirk and a world of pain and fear…a woman again, asian and small and frightened and screaming so loud...then it is still. No screams now. No more screams.

Ianto barely made a sound all night. It was only occasionally that Jack caught a fragment of a phrase, always spoken in Welsh, always with a desperate rawness to it that frightened him. Hearing that language – something Jack had never bothered to learn, not in over a century of life in Cardiff – was a reminder that this man was different from the others. This one was a mystery, an enigma hiding behind an immaculate suit and a carefully phrased "Sir". This one had gotten under his skin and there was nothing he could do about it.

Jack had only seen Ianto have a nightmare once before. It was after the…incident… with Lisa. He had fallen asleep at the Hub, working late down in the archives to avoid the others. Jack, who had not yet forgiven him, had found him and carried him upstairs, laying him on a couch and seating himself opposite to watch with a kind of angry concern and, as the night went on, several bottles of whisky, three shots of bourbon and Owen's stash of sake. Ianto had been almost silent then, too. He had only said one word. But the way he had said it… it had been enough for Jack to empty those bottles in record time.

Ianto sinks to the ground. Alone in the rain, in the dark with the body. The body…why, why is there a body? Monster. He can't escape the monster. He is the monster and the monster is him and it is there, always there…He bites his lip until it bleeds, trying not to call out, not to make a sound. The hunger isn't gone. It is still there, like fire and ice and noise in his chest, stronger now, stronger than before. If he closes his eyes, shuts out everything then maybe it will stop. Maybe Jack will come. Come with his gun and make it stop. Please, Jack. Please come and make it stop. Make me stop. You did it before, almost, I was on my knees with your gun against my head…cold metal on my forehead and I wasn't scared, I'm not scared. Do it, do it now…only you, I trust you. I trust you to stop me. Please.

"Ianto? Wake up! Dammit, Ianto, you're bleeding!"

Ianto's eyes slammed open.

"What?"

"Ianto… your lip.."

"Oh…right. Hang on. Where did you put the tissues, Jack?"

"I dunno…Ianto, are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

Ianto seemed so relaxed, casually dabbing his lip as if it was every day that he woke up bleeding. As if he was used to it.

"Are you sure?"

"Of course. Hey, Jack…can I ask you something?"

"Yes. Fire away."

"Could you promise me that, if it came to it, you would be able kill me?"

For a moment Jack just stared, unable to conceive a reply, unable to process what he had heard. The way it had been delivered – not quite offhand, just a weary, blunt question – was too much for Jack to cope with. These moments were supposed to come with warning, with long pauses and significant glances. Not like this.

"What the hell, Ianto? What kind of promise…What were you dreaming about?"

A strange look, a hidden flicker deep in stormy grey eyes. Then nothing, his countenance as clear and untroubled as a child's. What went on behind those eyes? Jack really didn't know. He could tell he wasn't going to get an answer – at least not the kind he wanted. The bloody stubborn teaboy…damn him and damn all the bloody stubborn welsh…

"It isn't important."

"Yan, tell me."

"It was just a scary dream. Jack…"

"Yes?"

"Did I get blood on your shirt? Give it here; I can wash it out now before it stains."

***

Sometimes, you can learn a lot about someone from being there for them during their nightmares.

Sometimes you are shown just how much more you have to learn.

***