Title: Snow
By: lower-case-me
Pairing: gen
Rating: PG-13 for mentions of violence
Summary: Why does Ianto wear a suit?

***

In the mirror, Ianto knotted his tie expertly. He didn't have to wear one. No-one else at Torchwood did, and Jack would certainly not express dissaproval if Ianto chose not to dress so formally. Surprise, yes, but not disapproval. He might suspect an evil robotic replacement Ianto and demand to know what happened to the real one, but he wouldn't disapprove of casual wear.

That's not why he wears a suit every day. It isn't just a suit either, it's a good suit that fits well, over an immaculately ironed white linen shirt with a lightly starched collar. His shoes are of high quality and well polished, especially in damp weather. Now, with the season sliding towards winter, a heavy black wool overcoat, scarf and leather gloves are added to the ensemble when he goes out. Ianto does not like to be cold.

In the early hours of the morning, sometimes, his body still wakes him up and tells him he is too cold, but Ianto always finds that he is not. In the cold months he lies under a heavy duvet and a thick blanket, between perfectly crisp clean sheets. His home is insulated and double-glazed, centrally heated. It is not the house he grew up in.

Back there, daddy was a coal miner. Even after the mines closed down, he remained a miner. Jobs were scarce in the Valleys under Thatcher. A few of the other men found factory work, but many could not. Ianto's father did not work. Instead, he drank and tried to explain. He would put his battered and black-nailed hands on his son's skinny shoulders and talk. The words were slurred and indistinct and stank of cheap whiskey.
'Ianto boy... It wasn't just our jobs they took. The mines were hard, a hard life, but we had a kind of dignity down there. That's what the took from us. Not just the living. Our dignity.'

Little Ianto did not know what dignity was. He looked at his father, half-shaven and reeking of stale drink and stale body-odour, with his trousers half undone and crusted yellow stains on his undershirt, and knew only that it was something his father did not have.

On the worst days, his mother was the one trying to explain. His father was too angry to care, and Ianto knew that he was angry at him, because if Ianto didn't exist, his daddy wouldn't have to go out and look for a low-paid, no-benefit factory job. She wiped the tears off Ianto's face and let her own fall and tried to tell him he had to understand that his father was a good man, had been a good man, would still be a good mine if the mines hadn't closed. Ianto didn't tell her to stop, she was hurting him where the bruises were.

Later, as he got older and began to read and to listen to the wider world of the Valleys, Ianto learned that the miners were heroes. They fought for their jobs and their villages, their families. They stood together and supported each other when there were no wages and no money. He learned about Thatcher and Ian McGregor and Arthur Scargill, about the fights on the pickets, strikers' Christmas parties and the speeches of their and about the idea of solidarity. He listened to the stories told by other children's dads and uncles and by the men in the pubs. Young Ianto looked at the history around him and decided that yes, the miners were heroes.

He looked at his father and did not see a hero.

When he asked, his friends' dads were delighted to tell him stories about the picket and the strikes. There was always two or three of those men together. They laughed together as they told the stories and, rarely, after a couple of pints or more, wept a few quiet tears. Some of them had jobs and some of them didn't. Almost all of them drank too much, and when they did some of them would slur and bellow and ball their fists like his dad, but none of them ever mentioned the man's name.

On the cold days when his father was raging drunk, Ianto would slip out of the barely-heated terrace where they lived. When he dared. He was small and quick, more blue eyes and too-long hair than flesh and bone, but for a man reduced to staggering and swearing, his dad was pretty quick too. Inside the house smelt of old beer and piss and damp on the walls. Outside it might be snowing, but Ianto liked the snow. It made the whole village white and clean, and buried the slagheaps and the mess of rusting equipment behind the concrete and razor-wire fences that enclosed the mine site. Up on the hills, the only things breaking the smooth whiteness were the stark black lines of the trees. He liked the purity and the elegance of the black curves on white.

The way home was always the coldest, because Ianto would only turn back when he had to. Water would seep through his shoes and freeze his feet, and sometimes the sleet and the snow would come down and soak through his jumper or his coat if he'd had time to grab one, stick his jeans to his calves with ice water. His clothes were always too small, and the wind bit into the bare skin at his wrists and ankles. Ianto would cut back through woods and walk right by the older boys come up there to drink, when they called and jeered at him. Ianto knew that one day, not today but a day just like this one, he would keep walking and leave this place behind.

Between now and then, he had to grow up. Ianto did his homework and studied hard. He wasn't a genius, but he was bright and he worked at it. He figured out how to mend his own clothes and wash his own bedding. Now, still small for his age and thin, but older, Ianto wiped up his own tears and did his best to clean up the things his father destroyed. Broken glasses and plates with the dinner still on them. He did his best to scrub the stains off the walls, although he knew they would always be there. While most of his friends found beer and speed and sometimes herion and fought with the teenagers from the next valley in the street at night, and saw themselves as heroes because of it, Ianto did not. He saw only his father in those boys, the same absence of anything better to do or to hope for.

His father hated him. Ianto knew it. He hated the rock-solid belief Ianto had that things would be better some day, because he had given up that belief for himself a long time ago. Without ever hearing it said, Ianto understood why his father's name was never mentioned in the miner's stories. By the day he left, he understood why his father chose to drink at home and not with the other old miners in the pub. His father had not struggled and fought and lost as those men had. They had kept hold of something he had given up, and neither he nor they would ever forget it. They at least could remember and still feel some kind of brotherhood.

Ianto finished school with good grades, even very good grades in some subjects. And then, on a rainy day with water soaking through his shoes, he had walked away.

Now, in the mirror, he adjusted the knot of his tie and smiled softly. Ianto Jones knew exactly what dignity was.

***