Previous part of The Windhovers: The Beginning.

***

Ianto tugged on the short sleeve of the white cotton scrub, wishing it was long enough to cover the patches of gauze on his upper arm. He'd caved, eventually, and asked Jack to help him maneuver his way into the shirt, but only after waiting until Owen left the autopsy theatre, though Ianto knew he lingered just outside the doorway.

Jack hadn't said anything while he helped Ianto dress, just held the cloth in his steady hands, easing the proper holes over the proper appendage.

The tears in his skin had burned in protest anyway, mocking him, reminding Ianto that everything was far from normal. Jack was reminded as well, who caught Ianto's barely masked flinch and struggled equally as hard to contain his scowl. It looked almost guilty, though his hallucinations were hardly Jack's fault and none of the team thus far had been able to find a cause or solution.

There was an easy explanation for that, Ianto knew it and Jack knew it, despite the one anomaly that left Ianto clinging to alternatives. They were Torchwood. There had to be a Torchwood explanation.

Both to reassure himself and Jack, Ianto had stepped forward to brush his lips over Jack's. It was a kiss that pivoted quickly from confident platonic to desperate longing for the familiar and the forgotten, times before visions, times before pain, times when the greatest threat to their relationship since Jack's return was Torchwood, not Ianto himself.

It wasn't supposed to be like that.

He was limited in motion so only one hand had mapped Jack's jawline and throat while the other curled around his waist, pulling Jack invariably closer yet never quite close enough. If he was truly going mad, Ianto had wanted that kiss to last a lifetime within the trappings of his mind, control blanketing while he possessed what was his. Claiming his own had appeared to be on Jack's mind as well, as though by the force of his will (and tongue, Ianto noted as it demandingly entwined with his own) Jack could banish whatever was the source of Ianto's hallucinations.

Maybe he could; Ianto swore Jack had banished death once with just a kiss.

Ianto was desperate enough to believe it possible.

Jack's touch was just as needy, though Ianto could feel the slight corrections for his injuries. But his hands were just as urgent, one tangling in Ianto's hair as it twisted and scraped over his scalp, the other resting on Ianto's neck. His thumb traced patterns on the sensitive skin on Ianto's chin - patterns Ianto was certain were alien for the repeated curves and lines - but Ianto had known Jack's focus was elsewhere. The rest of his fingers curled around Ianto's neck and rested with gentle pressure over his carotid artery. Ianto had understood the action, had performed it on Jack a few times after he'd been killed on Weevil hunt or various other Torchwood activities.

Jack had never needed reassurance before that Ianto lived.

He had almost felt bad for causing Jack worry, then guilty for thinking that it was about time Jack had been so overt in his awareness that Ianto's life was limited.

They had broken apart only when they had to, both unashamedly gasping for breath as Ianto rested his forehead on Jack's.

"No camp bed tonight."

Ianto had smiled as the words heated his skin, whispering promise in so few words. Promise and understanding, forgiveness and apology. He'd closed his eyes, just for a moment, enjoying the faint tickle of Jack's nose against his, lips just a breath away, then sighed as he straightened. He couldn't forget how normal it wasn't, and Ianto looked directly at Jack to make sure he was not misunderstood. "Make sure I don't hurt anyone."

He hadn't missed the pained expression that crossed fleetingly over Jack's face, but just as quickly it was filled with more fierce determination than Ianto could ever hope to hold. "We're going to find out what's wrong."

A shaky nod was all Ianto could manage in reply.

Jack had sent him on to find Tosh, saying he needed to talk with Owen about a few things. Ianto understood it as a discussion about him, and rather than hear debate of his sanity he'd taken the escape opportunity and fled past Owen. He'd be angry over the discussion but he couldn't blame them, and perhaps between the two they could figure out a way to at least make sure the others were safe.

Entering the main Hub, Ianto caught sight of Gwen and tugged at his sleeve again, curious how easily he could blend into the shadows and avoid her concern before he could change. Unlikely, as he was supposed to find Tosh for a test. But he tried as best he'd ever learned in his early days at Torchwood Three and even earlier when he'd been forced to 'acquire' goods by rather unsavory means. He'd been good, only caught the once, but that'd been just a minor charge.

He'd left it on his record when he'd had his friend wipe everything to remind him that he wasn't perfect.

"Oh, Ianto! What happened to you?"

Ianto blamed the glaring white cotton shirt, which most certainly did not pair with his trousers, rather than lack of skill when Gwen took notice. He'd not lost everything he'd learned, it was just hard to not draw attention to one's self when one was so contrarily dressed.

He smiled politely but didn't answer, he'd suffered enough embarrassment for the morning and Gwen could find out from one of the others later. Instead, he focused his attention on Tosh, who sat at her desk soldering a wire but caught his approach easily enough.

It was really quite difficult to blend in to the surroundings when one wore white. At least he still maintained silence with his movement. He'd be utterly disappointed with himself if he'd lost even that. "Tosh, you said you had a-"

He would have continued but his voice just ... stopped. Lost in his throat. Perhaps vanished, fled to hide in his toes for all he could find it again. Standing right next to Tosh's desk was George Evans, Engineering for Torchwood One.

Which was impossible, or rather, improbable, but given his penchant for seeing the dead of late, more reality than fantasy.

"Ianto?"

Tosh's voice was a pale echo in his mind as his ears rang with the rushing blood of a thousand elephants stampeding across the Serengeti. Panic so tangible it colored his vision, shattering lights into jagged starlight that bounced off every surface until images became over-processed and exceedingly sharp. Defined. Because it wasn't just George Evans. Next to her stood Ross Smyth and Brittany Ann Collins, all crowded on the level around Tosh's desk, crowded for space but looking amiable.

He'd eaten with Brittany once, in the cafeteria of Torchwood London. She was a nice woman, bit put off when he'd started dating Lisa.

She hadn't made the survivor list; neither had Ross.

But that wasn't the end; if only it were.

Ianto stepped aside as Calvin Marshall passed him by, watched as he passed right through Gwen and carried on to sit on the coffee table with Roger Mills. Ianto recognized him as the one who'd come dressed as an elf to the Torchwood One Christmas party. An elf in bells, green bodysuit, and an impressive codpiece.

Apparently he was a scientist from research.

"Are you okay, Ianto?"

He saw Gwen's lips move but he didn't hear. Couldn't hear. Couldn't speak either as he pointed to the crowd around Tosh's desk with a hand that shook far more than it ought.

This wasn't real. They didn't exist. Ianto knew that even as Tosh and Gwen looked in confusion (albeit not without wariness following the incident at the Information Centre) at the desk. He didn't need it verified by the two Torchwood operatives; what he was seeing didn't exist.

But it didn't make it any less real to him.

Especially when the screams began.

He felt as much as heard; piercing cries, multiplied upon hundreds until the sound bled together to become one unified force battering his equilibrium. Ianto staggered and clapped his hands over his ears, spinning to identify the source even though he recognized the sounds.

Torchwood One. They were the sounds of the death knell of Torchwood One. Fuck, he'd heard the sounds before.

With a gasp he couldn't quite smother and that may have escaped louder than he'd have preferred, his eyes fell upon the Rift Manipulator, or rather where he knew it was supposed to be. Supposed to be. Horrified, Ianto forgot about the screams for a moment, forgot about the others and stared at the tower, his hands slowly falling to his sides simply because he forgot to hold them up.

A column of people stretched floor to ceiling, piled one on top one another until in some places he only saw a flailing arm or a kicking leg. Hundreds upon hundreds, a writhing exhibition of compiled humanity he'd only seen in sculpture. "No," Ianto whispered, recognizing face after face in the tower of people.

Torchwood Tower.

Oh fuck it wasn't real. It wasn't real, he kept reminding himself as he identified Thomas Griffiths from Security, face contorted in a scream.

He saw his mentor Edwards.

No.

"No " Ianto cursed every god he knew as sound returned, shrieking echoes of time best left forgotten as Torchwood fell. The cries tore across his mind, vicious as eight hundred clawed Weevils, shredding without caution or concern every last credible defense until even his guilt for surviving was subject to the punishing replay.

So many screams. How the hell had he survived? And why did he have to face the ones who didn't again?

"Stop," Ianto begged, hands against his ears again, not sure who he was pleading with because no one had listened before.

"Stop what, love? What do you see?"

Gwen added a hand with her words, touching his arm but he pulled away reflexively, stumbling as he moved too far too quickly. He ran into someone else (Tosh, he realized, hearing her voice as she spoke with someone other than him. Jack, Ianto hoped) and bounced off her as well, needing distance. Space.

He froze, however, when he nearly bumped into Lisa sitting on the edge of Gwen's desk.

And still the hundreds screamed.

"London." Ianto choked out, casting his eyes on the people-built Rift Manipulator again, then permitting himself to drift across the Hub where the dead stood at various points on various things, his mind refusing to accept Elizabeth Daniels flying over head as legitimate. "I see Torchwood One."

"Oh, god. Ianto, Jack's coming."

But what the hell was Jack going to do when Torchwood London was stacked in a tower and spread across the Hub, Ianto wanted to ask Tosh, but didn't. Kept quiet amidst the pleas for mercy and death, to be spared and for life, as they lay waste to his mind.

This was wrong. So very wrong.

"Ianto!"

The sound of Jack's voice cut through the cacophony of Torchwood One, forcing Ianto's attention from the tower made of man, though he did in as much relief as distraction. Not that he believed Jack could manage a miracle and make this stop, but ... Ianto didn't know what he hoped for. Just his presence. Just ... anything.

Someone cared. That was more than a simple drifter could ever hope for.

Ianto's head snapped back in surprise, however, his feet backpedaling before he could tame his reaction. Despite throwing an arm before his eyes, brilliant white-gold light bend around the edges, blinding him as completely as stepping out of the cinema with his father on a sunny day. He didn't know the source; his mind raced through the possibilities of an alien stunner to an explosion, the sonics of which perhaps canceled by the screams of Torchwood London. But it was painfully bright, burning red even behind closed eyes which teared in response.

Flared so bright, Ianto felt his foot touch air and the other soon followed. Stunned awareness seemed to slow time, the horrible realization that he'd ungracefully tripped down the stairs near Gwen's desk lasting lifetimes within the span of a breath.

Lifetimes filled with brilliant light. White-gold etched on his retina, blasting images of the Hub filled with Torchwood One into nothing but overexposed film.

White light, flaring as he felt himself hit the ground, his head crashing into the floor with equal force.

White-gold, flaring into black.

***

Ianto woke slowly, not with the instant coming-to-awareness that he typically associated with waking in the morning but rather a disoriented fuzz that clung to every thought that drifted across his mind. Thoughts were few, however, as the steel lance driving through his head, right over his left eye, was enough to halt any thoughts from forming beyond the desperate wish to sink back into the dark nothing he'd been in before.

He put a hand to his temple, an equally slow act once he recognized the conscious thought to move it, temporarily relieved when he felt no object piercing his skull but he'd almost rather that than the incredible pain with no explanation.

Migraine. He had a migraine.

Explanation.

Resolution?

Growing nauseous at simply the notion of moving, much less the actual act to walk, no, crawl to his medicine cabinet for no fewer than a dozen paracetemols, Ianto let his hand fall (flop) back to his bed, a frustrated groan escaping his lips before he could stop himself. He positively ached, his head and chest feeling like they'd been beaten with a cricket bat and his mouth arid as the Sahara.

If this was a hangover, Ianto wondered what the hell he'd drunk.

"Oh, you're awake! I'll fetch the doctor."

Doctor? Ianto opened one bleary eye, so detached from active logical processes he couldn't quite figure out why a doctor had been notified for a migraine. But at least the chances of getting drugs for it drastically increased with the addition of a doctor. And perhaps then he could think. A giant chasm existed within his mind, or maybe more a wall, blocking the ability to gather input by allowing only a small percentage of comprehension to actually fall through. He could feel it, sharp and jagged, like a rocky crag of Great Wall size.

A doctor?

His eye didn't stay open long, snapping shut the moment light hit it and shot straight through his head, the pillow, and probably buried itself into the floor.

He had seen unfamiliar walls, blurred though they might have been. Blurred walls and unfamiliar window dressings; neither the Hub nor his flat, then.

Blurred walls. Doctor.

Disinfected air.

Cardiff General.

The victory of thought exhausted Ianto; he nearly successfully retreated back into nothing when he heard a door open, coinciding with the soothing tones of a voice he didn't recognize.

"Still with us, Mr. Jones?"

Ianto considered feigning sleep and ignoring the question, but then he'd merely be delaying the inevitable.

"You took quite the nasty fall. How about opening your eyes for me? I've drawn the blinds, it should be a bit easier on you."

Not that Ianto didn't trust the man, but he didn't trust the man. Owen. Where was Owen and why wasn't he Ianto's doctor?

One eye first. He could manage that.

Jack. Where was Jack?

Through one eye Ianto could see the doctor hadn't been lying; the light in the room was significantly less bright. Reluctantly he opened the other, taking in the standard hospital room, sparsely decorated with a fake Monet on the wall and an uncomfortable plastic-covered chair by the bedside. His eyes finally fell on the doctor, his soothing voice deceptive for his outwardly youthful appearance. Could he even be old enough to practice medicine, let alone prescribe?

The man laughed as he stuffed his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, a pleasant laugh, not harsh or grating, perfectly suited for a hospital setting. Or tailored, but Ianto was fairly certain it had sounded natural. "You don't know how many times I've seen that expression. My name's Naveen Ramamurthy and I assure you, I'm older than I appear."

Ianto sincerely hoped that was true.

The door opened again, distracting Ianto from asking for Dr. Ramamurthy's C.V. Tosh ran in, as did Gwen, piling into the room and nearly crashing into the bed in their haste.

"Ianto!' Gwen kissed his cheek; Tosh did the same. He suddenly feared any prognosis. It was most certainly terminal. "Jack and Owen are on their way, they were hunting-"

"Information," Tosh interrupted, her eyes darting to Dr. Ramamurthy before she smiled at Ianto, patting his hand. Terminal, and dreadfully painful. Radiation sickness, maybe. "How are you feeling? Can we get you anything?"

Dr. Ramamurthy cleared his throat, interrupting before Ianto thought of a response that didn't include 'I don't know.' "I hate to interrupt, but I was about to involve Mr. Jones in a few tests to make sure everything is okay. If you wouldn't mind waiting outside, I'll let you know when we're done."

Tests. Questions.

Where was Jack?

Ianto heard the previously ignored but steady beep change its tempo, obnoxious as it sped up. He wasn't making up the sound; Tosh and Gwen both looked, and he heard Doctor Ramamurthy move. Looking around, at first Ianto couldn't identify its source. Then he noticed the heavy weight on his finger, monitoring his pulse. Fuck, that was his heart rate.

What the hell was he doing in hospital?

"Easy, Mr. Jones. Just a few questions, completely harmless."

Completely harmless, but Ianto remembered. Another hole in the wall, a bridge across the chasm, memory connecting with rationale in one swift rush of awareness and horror.

Torchwood One. He'd seen the dead of Torchwood One.

He wasn't panicking, he honestly wasn't, but the frantic pace of the heart monitor shrilly cried a different story. Everyone. Every single one, seven-hundred and ninety-six faces, spilling about the Hub and towering tall above him.

And screams. The fucking screams.

Too much death.

Fuck, the beeping. It almost drowned out the screams.

Ianto tore off the finger pulse monitor despite the hands that tried to stop him. He was acting irrationally, he knew he was, but his mind was a spiked ball of pain bouncing around within his skull and he couldn't get the images out of his head. Shooting his mother. His father handing him the post. Owen attacking him. Torchwood London, a moving, shuddering mass of people towered high.

He was sane. He knew he was sane. But the visions were driving him mad.

"Oi, what's going on here?"

Instantly, Ianto's frantic struggles ceased at the sound of Owen's voice - not that he was any less panicked, but it was Owen, not some random doctor assigned his care. He couldn't even bring himself to be embarrassed by taking comfort in Owen's presence.

That didn't mean he couldn't be terrified by it.

The air simply left his lungs as Owen hurried towards his bed, in a decidedly un-Owen body. Not real. This isn't real. She had Owen's voice, she sounded like Owen.

Only it wasn't.

Was it?

"Don't touch me," Ianto more growled than spoke, the warning feeling so awkward on his lips, half of him not comprehending why he was speaking and the other half begging to say more. "They died because of you!"

Yvonne Hartman stopped just a foot from the bed; Ianto drew his feet up just so he wouldn't be any closer than he had to.

Not real. This wasn't real.

His head throbbed when he raised his voice, vehemently protesting the vocalization, but that wasn't important for the moment. Ianto simply raised his hand and pressed the heel of his palm against the point that seemed to be the point of origin of the pain - not that it helped, as he'd used the wrong hand and now his arm and chest burned in protest of the movement.

He didn't particularly care. "Seven hundred and ninety-six people are dead." Somehow, somewhere he heard a muffled 'Torchwood One' and an 'oh god.' Ianto maintained his attention on Yvonne, however, wary as hell she wouldn't pull a gun and shoot him on the spot and all the time fully aware that it wasn't real. But he couldn't stop himself, the outrage and hate cultivated over the years like a dam bursting forth in anger and an honest desire for justice. "Lisa's dead. Because of you."

The room was still after Ianto spoke, Yvonne didn't move, which Ianto supposed was a good thing considering the treasonous act he was committing by accusing her of such crimes. "For Queen and Country," Ianto scoffed at the quote, having heard it from her lips and echoed by the division leaders at every bloody meeting until it meant nothing more than personal ambition dressed in honor for country. Jack had seen it; he'd understood the downfall of Yvonne Hartman and took his wrath out on even the meager servants to the cause. Jack would understand now; she ought to be arrested and tried. "Where's Jack?"

"He's right there, love." Gwen wept while she pointed, an action Ianto couldn't understand. She hadn't been at Torchwood One - there was no reason she would hold any form of resentment or anguish over the former leader.

Former.

This isn't real. It's not real.

Ianto followed the path of her arm, a frown curving his lips as she pointed at what he'd initially believed a light source - just a lamp, or a bare bulb - bloomed forth into a shock of white-gold.

White-gold.

He remembered that, from the Hub. Blinding then as it was now and he hadn't had a migraine before. It as almost too much, too intense to look at for long and he averted his eyes, shielding them with his hand. But it did little good because now that he was aware, the light followed everywhere he looked, no matter how he turned his head away.

That wasn't Jack. There was no way it could be Jack. Jack wasn't there.

And no one else saw it. Everyone else saw Jack.

Ianto would have screamed at them all if he hadn't been so terrified.

"This is wrong. This is-" Ianto completely lost what ability he had to speak for a moment when he turned back to Yvonne to demand she leave his room. Yvonne. It had been Yvonne, standing right there at the foot of his bed sounding like Owen.

Yvonne he'd accused of Torchwood One's downfall.

And now Torchwood One's downfall stood at the foot of his bed.

"No!" Ianto shouted as much as whispered, fear making even his jaw tremble. Movement out of the corner of his eye distracted him - Tosh and Gwen, both were crying and holding the other as they ought. The Cyberman Lisa had become hadn't been nearly as frightening as the real damned thing. "Get out of here!"

They didn't move.

They didn't move.

The hurt that they wouldn't listen to him stung deep, digging into that quiet quest for acceptance with the team. He thought he'd earned their respect and trust after Lisa, that he'd found a 'family' within Torchwood Three.

Maybe he'd been wrong.

He leaped from the bed, stumbling when the action proved far too much activity on legs that just wouldn't function quite right. The golden light blocked the only exit and no matter how much Ianto believed it light, it had an air of sentience with it. The only thing he was entirely sure of was that it was wrong, but in a way he couldn't quite figure out.

His only option was to back against the wall, trapped as the Cyberman advanced on him, leaving the others alone. Doctor Ramamurthy was on the comms, good, they'd get security in the room, perhaps there was something-

No.

No.

It wasn't real. What had Owen asked? If Ianto saw a Cyberman in the Hub, what would he do, and what if it was actually Tosh?

No, no no.. "This isn't real." Ianto knew it wasn't and kept repeating it over and over in his mind, deliberately not looking at the looming metal mass that had killed nearly all his coworkers as he slid to the floor. "No." It was dead. The Cybermen had all just ... vanished. They were destroyed and dead. Ianto pressed his hands to his forehead again, pressing against both temples as his headache returned in force, drawing a muffled cry despite his best intentions to keep it silent. "No, no, no."

An argument carried on above him, mercifully brief, something about concussions and sedatives, but he couldn't hear the details over the denials ringing in his ears.

The pinch on his arm indicated which side had won.

And oddly enough, the voice had sounded a lot like Owen.


***

A/N:

As maybe you can tell from reading, seeing Vigeland's Monolith Pic 1 and Pic 2 for perspective as a child really screwed me up ;) Check out the other pictures from Oslo! Norway is such a gorgeous country.

***

When Ianto next woke, he saw white walls.

***

He awoke, heavy and lethargic, no thoughts but perceptions. Sluggish. Mud oozing over the lip of a plate, not a tidal wave but a steady creep until a drop formed, weighty enough to pull away from the mass to splatter a dark stain upon empty white.

White walls.

Ianto closed his eyes and crawled back into darkness.

***

Sunlight. Magnificently bright, but not warm.

Ianto would have reached a hand to touch the pane of glass separating him from the light, but the instruction never made it to his fingertips.

It was lost somewhere in between.

In between, buried in darkness. It was dark beyond the glass, but the sun still shone a brilliant beacon from the ground.

***

He was back in his chair. His chair.

No memory of getting there, but that didn't really matter.

But it could matter.

Ianto couldn't help but feel it should matter.

"-mistake in your records. Jack and Owen had a terrible row, but Owen finally won since you couldn't go back-"

Coffee. But he saw nothing through the glass. Just endless green and grey.

***

Time to get up!

Let's get you dressed.

Why don't you eat a bit of your porridge?

Now, swallow these.

Shall we walk? It's a beautiful day.

Would you like to sit in your chair? You like that, don't you?

Ianto's body did as it was told.

He'd tell it to do otherwise, but it never listened.

***

Coffee.

"-again. It's probably a good thing Owen is as he is, I think Jack might have killed him by now. Don't suppose it's good to joke about the dead. Owen says they're weaning you off the injections they gave you at Cardiff General-"

The sunlight was back, even though it rained. Drops hit the pane of glass thudsplatter but the white-light glowed in golden luminescence against the grey.

"-down to anything alien, tech or species. That's why you're here. Jack and Owen can't treat you if you react like that to them and the Hub. But we're still looking-"

***

He slept, sometimes.

Other times, Ianto lay with his eyes closed, staring at the back of his eyelids listening to the sounds around him.

Sometimes he heard screaming. Sometimes crying.

And sometimes, just sometimes, he saw light turn his eyelids red.

***

"-do you mind if I comb your hair? It's really ... we want you looking cute for the staff, don't we? Here, I've got a comb in my bag-"

Ianto finally saw the coffee cup in the window pane.

Reflection.

If his hand could hear him, he could touch it.

But everything was off, his mind split in two and shoved apart so only a fraction still touched. He wondered what would happen if he pushed, just a little bit, and sent the one half tumbling to the floor.

"-Gwen sends her love. She's taken over your duties for now, even mucking the cells, I think she feels a bit guilty, she just couldn't ... she tried. But you've got me. There, next time I'll bring some gel and we'll have you looking so cute Jack will have to fight off all the people vying for your attention."

There was a smudge on his window pane. It distorted his view, and probably the view in. He wondered what he looked like when viewed through the glass, although it probably was no different than his view out.

Distanced, a panel of glass separating worlds, with a smudge making both temporarily imperfect when viewed from without.

"-but Owen argued that the meds calmed you. And they did, if you count unconscious 'calming.' I hope you're not in pain, back at the hospital I think you were. I can't believe I agreed with Jack, you don't think Owen will take it personally? It shouldn't matter, but it does, you know? I mean, he's dead and there's no chance there but you can't just turn it off. I have the worst luck in love, don't I? Just once I'd like ... what you and Jack have-"

Pressure on his skin, a touch on his cheek.

Ianto felt it smudge the window pane.

"-I wish I still had Mary's necklace, find out what's going on in that head of yours. You probably know the answer, we just don't know how to ask you for it yet. We're still looking, Jack wouldn't let us stop even if we wanted to-"

***

Look at you! Did you get all dolled up just for me? Let's get washed up for the evening meal.

All right, handsome. Can you swallow your pills for me?

There we go. Settled in? Pleasant dreams, Mr. Jones.

He couldn't remember a time when his dreams had been pleasant. That was one command his body never followed.

Ianto stared at his eyelids again, picturing a world of only black. But he saw only red behind light-burned lids.

"Ianto."

Never did the dark speak, nor the light touch. But both did as Ianto felt depressions on his skin, faint, more a puff of wind blowing dust than a gusty rattle of a wooden house on a hill in the Highlands. It rolled down his cheek to his neck, stopping there.

Gentle. A rolling wave lapping the shore.

Touch increased, deepened, shattered light down the length of his body until Ianto was certain even his toes gleamed with the power of it.

"Ianto...Tosh had an idea. Normally, I'd have explored this under far different circumstances, but I've got to try. Forgive me not receiving your consent."

Pressure on his temples, twin points of focus that distracted Ianto from the examination of the sense of light bearing weight against the body which ignored him at every moment. Burnished black and occasional starbursts interweaving a dance across the thin skin of shading his eyes, ordered to sleep and so his body attempted but somehow ignored his mind.

His mind, cleaved in two and pushed apart, dysfunctioning halves making one whole.

"I'm sorry. I thought it would work."

Raindrops falling thudsplatter on window pane; Ianto felt light wrap around him and quake as sunlight was not meant to do. Shake and splinter, a million shards upon his skin brilliant but drenched in storm, sunlight and rain, the two did not coincide.

"I'm sorry, Ianto, I'm so sorry."

Ianto watched the light weep beneath the shades of black.

***

Good morning, love. Time to get up!

Let's get you dressed.

Why don't you eat a bit of your porridge?

Now, swallow these.

And for the first time, Ianto's hand listened to Ianto.

He dutifully swallowed saliva and none were the wiser.

***

Time passed and Ianto noticed.

Noticed locks and keys, doors and windows, cameras and staff. Shift changes, cleaning staff, meal times and patients.

Not that it appeared he noticed, quiet and unresponsive, only following orders.

Except the one command he didn't wish to follow.

Pills palmed, disposed when no one watched.

No one watched because no one believed him worth watching, as easy as it'd been in his childhood and with Lisa. Overlooked, taken for granted, assumed.

He watched because he didn't belong.

***

"-so Gwen sends her love and apologies, but Jack's promised to put a new coffee grinder in the budget. Oh, and Gwen says Rhys wants to discuss babies. Can you imagine it? Babies at Torchwood, like we need other distractions crawling underfoot, sticking their fingers in sockets and chewing on wires. There. Your hair's getting longer, I'd offer to cut it but I'm much better with a soldering iron than I am with scissors. Besides, I think Jack would like it-"

Green and grey were the world beyond the glass, a coffee cup reflected within just an inch away from his hand. Ianto still wasn't sure if the cup actually existed; he never looked. But he smelled, and it arrived every morning with Tosh, and disappeared when she left.

"-your evaluation period's almost up, did you know? Owen brought it up to Jack again but he'd have nothing of it. Jack's ... being Jack, you know how he is. He's put himself down as your next of kin, so there won't be another mix-up like before. Sort of sweet, really-"

Sunlight broke through the greys and greens, a brilliant spotlight from the grassy park. That was life, out beyond the glass pane.

He wasn't mad.

Ianto knew he wasn't, though he wasn't certain how he knew.

It grew clearer every day.

"-Owen hates this, too. He can't figure it out. He's even worked with Martha repeatedly but both are clueless, which pleases Owen a bit, I think, that Martha doesn't have any answers either. She's apparently put in a call with an expert she knows, but hasn't heard a response yet. Everyone wants you back, funny how we forget sometimes, take things for granted. We won't stop looking, you may just have to stay here a while longer. I hope you'll forgive us all for keeping you here once you've come back to us-"

***

Keys misplaced.

Uniform disappeared from laundry services.

A mobile lost.

Searches spun around him, while Ianto stared out the window.

***

The thing about maintaining the pretense of previous catatonics was that when one was actually in pain, one couldn't ask for paracetemol.

***

"-tense, to say the least. Jack actually yelled at Gwen today. She didn't mean anything by it, she never does, just doesn't think before she talks. Usually we would have laughed it off, just another Gwenism - do you remember when Jack was missing, and the three of us would go to the pub when Gwen went home to Rhys? I think that's the only thing that kept us from mutinying, though none of us would have fared much better at managing Torchwood Three. I never thanked you for suggesting the trips to the pub, did I? Well, Owen and I both appreciated it. I sort of wished I would have asked how you buried the expenses in Torchwood's budget, be nice to know-"

Typically, Ianto's mouth began salivating at the smell of the coffee Tosh brought every day. Pavlovian. Two cups, one she placed near his hand on the windowsill, the other she drank. She always picked his up when she left; he'd hear the heavy thump as the full cup hit the bottom of the waste bin.

Sometimes he heard her cry.

This time, however, his head hurt so much the smell was nauseating.

Migraine. Not unexpected given his earlier concussion, Ianto theorized, though he'd hoped given the time frame those would have passed.

"-she made the mistake of calling an alien 'schizo' within earshot of Jack. The alien's biology was fascinating - seemed it was a community of aliens living together as one unit, and they all had different specializations. One of them kept hitting on Owen when it was in control of its speaking function, I wish I had a camera to capture the look on his face - the alien had an external vagina, did I mention that? He couldn't quit staring. Made for an interesting conversation with each alien coming forward to voice its opinion. Anyways, Jack was positively livid; I don't think she'll ever mix up multiple personalities and schizophrenia again-"

Ribbons, his brain was being sliced in ribbons by a medieval torture device. He'd say something about it, but even thinking about admitting his duplicity physically hurt.

"-not that I think you're schizophrenic, though that's what the doctors are talking about. Easiest diagnosis, given the symptoms, but it just doesn't fit. Plus, we're Torchwood. Things like this don't just ... well, we're still looking. I've got to get back, I'm running more tests on that suit. Gwen's been trying to find the woman you thought might have been the person behind your father's visage, but we're having a bit of difficulty finding anyone. She's the only one who doesn't fit in all this. But we'll figure it out, that's what we do-"

***

Let's get washed up for the evening meal.

Look at that, did someone mark your hand with a pen? Don't worry, love, we'll get that cleaned for you.

Oh, my. They used something permanent, didn't they? That's not very nice of them. Well, so long as it's not bothering you, we'll just let that wear off, yeah?

Through pain-blurred eyes, Ianto stared at the marks on his hand, crawling back towards his wrist in perfectly drawn fashion. Not drawn. No one had drawn on him, that he knew of and he most certainly hadn't blacked out, not now with the drugs out of his system.

The marks had just ... appeared.

It was hard to think around the migraine stabbing a hole above his left eye. He contemplated crying out in pain but he'd seen what had happened with other patients. Not that the staff were cruel by any means. But making a scene was never a good act to engage in at a psychiatric hospital, not if one still wished to leave.

Leave by any means necessary.

He wasn't even shocked by the appearance of the marks, black as the darkest night against his pale skin. They weren't random, as he looked they almost seemed to ... make sense, like he was on the brink, so close to understanding all of it he only needed to stare a bit longer.

Curves and curls, lines and dots.

Intricate.

Or perhaps, it was with the passing of time that the complexity developed like a complicated mehndi-meet-fractal, lines pulling inwards, replicating and multiplying, curling around his wrist and stretching up towards his fingers.

Ianto knew he should be panicking.

But as collapsing on the floor in the middle of the room to beg for unconsciousness was unacceptable, the force of his will was centered on that, not the strange design and engaging in panic.

It was almost beautiful, really.

He shouldn't find it so peaceful to watch.

Slowly the warning perforated the haze of focus, the nagging, quiet reminders of the past few months. Hallucinations - anything alien. Now, this marking.

He wasn't going mad. He knew he wasn't going mad.

Something alien, something not right. But something not wrong.

Ianto couldn't explain it, no matter how he stared at his hand.

It wasn't wrong, even if it wasn't right.

He had to get out of there.

The thought struck him with the force of a weighted blow nearly tumbling him over in his chair, sitting at the window staring out beyond the glass. His thoughts were no longer a passing plan for escape from a hell that wasn't his, but a necessary flight.

Necessary as the pressure increased in his head, pushing him near-retching but Ianto maintained his calm, unobtrusively glancing around him.

Not a staff member in sight. He wasn't worth watching, after all.

Ianto had everything planned, planned from the hidden uniform, the keys and the mobile. No shoes, those had been far too difficult to acquire, but the security cameras overall were of a simplistic system, easy to step into dead spots and disappear.

Disappear into the darkening evening after retrieving all the hidden items, disappear with a key for every lock, disappear during shift change, right before it was time to settle everyone in for the night. Commotion, there was always commotion from the patient down the hall, and that night was no different, the shrieks bringing all the aides to tend the man.

The patient belonged.

Ianto didn't.

But something wasn't right.

He ran, barely remaining upright as he fled along the trees, sneaking past open windows and doors, grass slick under his bare feet. The open green space was far more difficult but Ianto had the escaped mapped after all the days sitting and staring out the window, counting cameras and calculating range.

He was outside.

Outside.

Despite the need to run, to get away before they noticed he was missing, Ianto stopped, taking a deep breath of fresh air, appreciating the moment.

He wasn't mad. He knew he wasn't mad.

Ianto couldn't help himself. After a month of doing as ordered and no free reaction of his own, of a drugged mind and absolute dependence on others, Ianto smiled.

The moment was brief as the feeling of his mind wrenching in two nearly dropped him to his knees, which most certainly would have spoiled his carefully laid plans for escape. He pressed the heels of his palms into his temples, willing the migraine away with measured breaths and steady pressure.

Didn't work well, didn't work at all, Ianto amended. With a deep, shaky inhale and a slow exhale, Ianto moved on. He had to move, he had to get beyond the grounds and he had his path.

It was easier than he'd thought it'd be.

But then, he had sneaked Lisa into the Hub under Jack's watchful eye.

Jack.

Even with his ears ringing, distracting Ianto as he made his way to the road, he considered his options, options rapidly dwindling as he felt his ability to think logically fading as quickly as his ability to stand.

The mobile.

Closing his eyes as he leaned against a tree, Ianto gave a small prayer to any god listening that there would be power, there'd be a signal, that the owner hadn't deactivated the number. Any number of things could cause this plan to fail ... but it worked. The mobile worked.

He shielded the mobile face, pausing as the light caught the marks on his hand, still visible in the faint light.

Something wasn't right. And for the first time that evening, he began to panic, a full-fledged fear chasing all the way down to his toes almost driving the ache from his head. Perhaps it was making him slightly irrational, though Ianto rather thought rationality had fled since the first vision, much less all that followed.

Ianto immediately canceled the number he'd begun dialing,

He couldn't go back to Providence Park. He'd have to deal with all that later, when his mind was willing to think, and most importantly, deal with the fact that it'd been encouraged or at least condoned by Torchwood.

And he couldn't go back to the Hub. Ianto believed Tosh in that much.

His flat was out - the others were most likely watching it if they were still looking for an answer. Jack would come, so would the rest of them and he'd end up back at the place he'd just left facing far more scrutiny and restriction.

Quickly, he punched in the number before another damning wave from his migraine could drown him completely.

"I'm calling in that favor."

***

Ianto purposefully allowed himself to wake slowly, the drift back to consciousness reluctant for all he could distinctly remember pain.

But there was no pain, not that Ianto could discern behind closed eyelids. The absence of the feeling that his mind was shredding itself into a million pieces was most welcome.

As was the complete lack of institutionalized disinfectant lingering in the air.

He vaguely remembered giving the details of his location, more unintelligible babble into the mobile than enunciating clearly the road he was on. Ianto knew he'd been found, had felt hands lift him, but much more than that was a fog. Actually, remembering much of anything after that was a complete void of memory. Not that Ianto cared; so long as he did not smell Providence Park he could be on the arse end of Betelgeuse for all he cared.

Well, he might care, eventually, but anything was better than Providence Park. Ianto couldn't help himself. Despite the contradictory feelings of weightlessness and heaviness in his body and the questions quickly forming in his mind, Ianto smiled. No constant feelings of oppression as cries rang out in the night, no shouts of anger or random nonsense.

Just a still, steady silence. And birds, he could hear the birds singing a morning greeting.

"Ianto Jones. Back with us now, are you, lad?"

He could smell the horrible, artificial scent of orange even from where he lay. Ianto wasn't quite sure why, but it made him grin all the more broadly as he listened to the sounds of clothing shift-scratch and the rustle of paper, paper refolding and resting finally with a soft brush against wood.

"Bit of wonder you turned out to be. Come on, then, quit smiling like a sleepy Cheshire and thank me properly for remembering you at all."

"You owed me." Ianto tried clearing his throat after his voice rasped out like a two-pack-a-day smoker but that did nothing more than exasperate the pained tickle scratching his esophagus. He must have shouted the previous night; he had no memory but he recognized the feeling of the morning after. Sandpaper dry, parched lips, general ache from clenching muscles to propel the voice. Fear, pain, anger, defiance; any or all of those in combination, he'd yelled them all the day of the Battle.

Not something he particularly wanted to remember now, not while lethargy numbed his senses but his mind was sharp as ever. He'd think himself into circles of the past he couldn't run from. Never healthy.

Healthy. He wasn't at Providence Park. Or at hospital. That was a start.

Slowly, Ianto opened his eyes, dreading what he'd see. Lester was alien as they come, and his most recent experiences with anything remotely alien had left him with tainted memories, if Tosh was to be believed. Tainted memories and a month he'd rather forget.

Glass of Tang, a folded newspaper, bright sunlight pouring through an open window.

And Lester -

Species Profile
Species: Altarian
Origin: Altar
Threat Priority Level: Low
---***---
Individual Profile
Name: Rosly Reesly
Aliases: Rosso, Michael Rosly, Stan Reesly, Lester McDermott
Previous Violations: NONE
Active Warrants: NONE
Threat Priority Level: Low
Current Status: Earth, ERCY2008

- sitting in an old leather high-backed chair, looking just as Ianto remembered, if not a little more bald and a lot thicker about the middle. Life had treated Lester well, it would seem, since the days of London and Torchwood One's raid on his establishment. He'd never done poorly, but as Ianto let his gaze travel around the room, he noted a decadence to the decor that hadn't been present before. It was an eclectic display of wealth; mismatched chairs, tables and lamps decorated the floor and an exceedingly gaudy chandelier dripping with crystals that Ianto wasn't quite sure were authentic dangled from the ceiling.

An ancient-looking tapestry hung on the opposite wall - wasn't until that moment Ianto realized he lay on his side, blankets the shade of ivy clutched to his chin - and if Ianto wasn't mistaken, it portrayed a battle fought by a dragon and a knight with an odd plastic spaceship figurine pinned to the corner.

Lester always had an unusual sense of humor.

The Altarian still carried a tattered derby to cover his third eye at the back of his head, though Ianto was fairly certain the hat on the arm of the leather chair hadn't been in the collection when he'd worked for Lester. And for all Ianto could discern, he was curious to the extent of barely concealed zeal, but at least appeared to have a modicum of grip on his self-control. Unlike Jack who would have asked by now whatever question was on his mind.

Jack.

Ianto wondered if it was possible to both miss and hate the man.

"Can't think of a better way to repay it, either. Don't you be thinking I can't appreciate the irony. Now, you idiot child, why didn't you ever tell me? We could have helped you sooner."

The levity lightening Ianto's smile fled, leaving him with an affronted scowl as he shifted on his side, trying to get comfortable. He never slept like that and it was putting a terrible strain on his back, but it made it easier to speak with Lester without having to move, a proposition that made his toes curl in protest. "I was bloody sectioned, how was I supposed to phone-"

Ianto felt his ability to speak disappear like his good mood, dissipating like fog in the morning sun. His brain must have been damaged some how, there was no rational explanation how he could forget that. He withdrew one hand from under the blankets, afraid to look at what he'd seen before, afraid to look and remember why he'd run. A frantic escape, an escape with purpose.

His hand, marked in black.

Everything about him, everything he knew and understood, felt wrong. Not a slow dawning but an instant awareness that even his thoughts seemed to flow just slightly left of center as the weight of his physical mass even felt abnormal in comparison to what he remembered.

Etched in black, trailing down his fingers and twisting vine-like up his arm, beautiful patterns bent in on each other, splintering lines curling and straight as they encapsulated his skin with some hidden message.

It was a language. Ianto knew it as soon as he understood that he had no fathomable reason why he should know it. He couldn't read it though, couldn't make sense of what it was trying to say, but he knew with almost guaranteed certainty what he would find when he uncovered his other hand.

Hand, marked in black. Not wrong. Different. Different and not normal, but not wrong.

"What the fuck is going on?" Ianto's voice cracked on the curse; he blamed the scratchy throat rather than nerves pulling in every direction fueled by adrenalin and fear. He pushed the blankets down around his hips and stared at his arms, both of them, pale skin and black sworls, dots and lines against the ivy linens. Fingers shaking, he pressed an area of black, then raked a fingernail over the surface when he felt no pain from the pressure.

They weren't covering his skin, nor were they painted on. The delicate lines swirling over the backs of his hands ... they were his skin.

Tattoos?

He'd never been tattooed.

"What do you mean... Ianto? Naveen! Get in here!"

His chest.

Ianto blinked as his eyes caught a flash of black against white, the uniform shirt he'd stolen gone and all he could see were thick lines racing down his side, branches shooting off to twist and bend into patterned fine curls over his chest, the dramatic and bold fading almost into nothing the closer to the center of his torso they came.

Fading. Thinning. Explicit and purposeful. The patterns meant something.

His skin.

The lines were his.

He scratched his hand again, just to make sure. The sound of a door opening distracted him from trying it one more time just to be certain.

"Mr. Jones, good to see-"

Species Profile
Species: Human
Origin: Earth
Threat Priority Level: UNKNOWN
---***---
Individual Profile
Name: Naveen Ramamurthy
Aliases: NONE
Previous Violations: UNKNOWN
Active Warrants: NONE
Threat Priority Level: Low
Original Status: Earth, ERCY3668
Current Status: Earth, ERCY2008

"-you again under better circumstances. My sincerest apologies for my errors in diagnosis and care. If I had known this I would have arranged for your care at one of our safe houses."

Safe houses? Ianto flinched as a penlight flashed in his eyes, the hand steadying his chin feeling like remorse personified rather than flesh contacting his.

Completely unsettling.

"Naveen, I don't think he knows."

Ianto felt the hand on his chin still, then withdraw as Dr. Ramamurthy stepped back to fall into line with Lester. Know what? What was wrong with him?

Not wrong, different. Altered. But not wrong.

He'd be angry with Dr. Ramamurthy later for his misdiagnosis, for thinking him mad, but the way the two were staring at him, much as Jack and Owen did after he'd hallucinated various deceased individuals, stripped the anger as quickly as it came.

Know what?

"I don't know how you can stand this stuff, Mr. Lester. I don't care if it is your grandmother's recipe, anything this orange is simply unnatural. And I brought your tea as well, oh! Ianto-"

Species Profile
Species: Ckass
Origin: Orion
Threat Priority Level: Low
---***---
Individual Profile
Name: Cket Nmuth
Aliases: Sabrina Matthews, Bree Matthews
Previous Violations: NONE
Active Warrants: NONE
Threat Priority Level: Low
Current Status: Earth, ERCY2008

"-you're awake. Would you care for some ginger tea? I saw some in the kitchen. It might help your throat, I bet it's pretty raw after last night."

His neighbor. His bloody neighbor, Bree, was setting down a serving tray with tea and a neon-orange glass of Tang. It was her. Ianto knew without even her suggesting the ginger tea, he recognized that voice. Her voice. Which had been overlayed by his father's; her freckles and red hair replaced by blond hair and glasses.

It'd been Bree handing him his post.

The thought startled him as much as her appearance had. He wasn't hallucinating. Unless all of it wasn't real, which was a possibility Ianto really didn't want to entertain. But she was Ckass, that was the final piece in Tosh's theory. Anything alien. Yet now there were three looking at him, watching him, and all three were outside the normal scope of 21st century human and they looked as they should. No dead walking, no parents or Owen or Torchwood One. Simply them.

"Aw, cat got your tongue?" Bree giggled and then covered her mouth with her hand, but Ianto heard the smothered laughter behind it. "Oh, that's probably offensive, isn't it? I'm sorry, I didn't mean anything by it and besides, I think they're gorgeous. Quite striking. I bet your partner loves to-"

"Sabrina." Lester's tone was more warning than rebuke, silencing Bree as effectively as pushing her out of the room and closing the door behind her. "Now, Ianto, I don't want to alarm you-"

Ianto didn't think it would be possible to alarm him more than he was. He wasn't hallucinating, Bree was apologizing for offences he didn't understand and something was terribly wrong from the looks on Lester and Dr. Ramamurthy's faces.

He could smell their apprehension and that just heightened his personal tension.

"-but ... you've ... "

Lester's flailing hand didn't help.

Ianto looked down at his bare chest, seeing the same black markings that he'd seen before. Something alien had struck him. That was the only reasonable explanation, but it didn't explain the anxious looks or Bree who wasn't even looking at his chest. She was looking behind him. Over his shoulder? Just a wall behind him, he could feel the pressure against his back.

His back.

Ianto closed his eyes, resisting the urge to follow the others' gaze, deluding himself that if he didn't look then whatever they saw didn't exist. He'd markings across his arms and chest, maybe he'd grown a hump. Third arm? Perhaps there was an alien attached to his back, the marks simply tendrils tendrils of alien attaching itself to him. Maybe he'd become affixed to the wall itself.

He was Torchwood; any number of things could and had happened.

A deep breath and he turned his head till his chin just brushed his shoulder. Slowly he opened one eye, as if doing so would somehow change the outcome ... or perhaps he could close it quickly again and pretend whatever it was didn't exist.

"Shit!" Ianto instinctively lept from the bed, his vision so filled with glossy black that whatever it was, he needed distance before it devoured him. And with his leap came consequence as his upper body pushed forward with far too much momentum, top-heavy when whatever was behind him followed.

He was hallucinating. That's all there was to it. He was imagining this because it wasn't real.

Three pairs of hands caught him before he completely fell in a graceless heap on the floor as though they anticipated his movement. Maybe they had. But the hands didn't help, concerned and anxious and curious all tightly wound into individual pressure points on his skin. He careened backwards once they did let go, the weight unexpected and miscalculated. Vertigo in the worst of senses, he couldn't find his center; even when he thought he was steady that thing behind him shifted, moved, changed the position enough to throw him off again.

Something. Whatever it was.

Problem being, Ianto knew what it was all glossy black. But perhaps if he didn't apply a name it would cease to exist.

He never was really good at pretending. Wishing, either.

"What the hell is wrong with me?" Not wrong. Altered. Different. But not wrong. Ianto knew that as much as he denied it, denied everything from the marks to the things on his back. "Undo this."

"Undo?" Dr. Ramamurthy stepped forward to match Ianto's step back, grabbing his shoulders before he toppled over completely. To Ianto's relief, he let go nearly as quickly, holding on only until Ianto had steadied himself. "I don't know that anything's exactly wrong with you."

Not even the weight on his back moved Ianto, frozen still by the doctor's words.

This was not him.

"Tell me this isn't real." It wasn't real. It couldn't be. And even if it was, it wasn't because of him. A device, something, somewhere struck him and this was the result. Or a drug. An infection. A consequence of shagging Jack, like an alien STD. "Tell me I'm hallucinating like before." He didn't trust Dr. Ramamurthy; hell, he didn't even know the man. Didn't really know Bree either. It'd been an error in judgement to phone Lester. This wasn't real. He was still at Providence Park, or better yet, passed out in the autopsy bay of the Hub. Or in a coma and dreaming.

"Tell me I've not got fucking wings attached to my back." Ianto shouted, ineffectual really given his voice but there was need; it was either that or give in to the panic. "Tell me that somewhere in that 37th century brain, doctor, you know how to bloody undo this!"

It wasn't real. Just a hallucination. Jack would know, he'd know what was wrong. Not wrong. Different. True. But he'd gotten nowhere with Jack and Torchwood before; they'd solved nothing and had him sectioned. And whatever it was had advanced, worsened, leaving him in this state. Fuck Torchwood. But he had no one else so what the hell was he supposed to do?

"How do you know that?"

Ianto's focus snapped from the splotch on the wall, some kind of patchy fading cloth once probably a rich burgundy but now more a smoothie-orange, that had captured his attention. Not that he'd been studiously analyzing the patch, but the riveting procedure of tracing individual threads had occupied the half of his persona inclined to run around the room screaming and kicking things. It was calming. But Dr. Ramamurthy's question derailed all calm. "Know what?"

"37th century. I never told you that."

He tried, he honestly did, to come up with an explanation for how he knew the information. Someone had said it, maybe during the point from the road to wherever this was that he couldn't remember. Ianto knew that was the most rational explanation. Most rational and simplest.

But as rational as it might be, he understood that wasn't the correct answer.

For every second Ianto wasted trying to formulate words that failed to capture the uncatchable, the honest confusion on Dr. Ramamurthy's face drifted to suspicion and hostility. And if Ianto read the expression properly, a little bit of fear, which logic failed to explain as well.

The unease sent a shiver down his spine, not because he believed Dr. Ramamurthy was fearful of ... whatever had happened to him, but rather that the doctor believed there was a reason to fear him. Ianto would have pursued that path of thought towards understanding but the reflexive shiver had an additional consequence as he felt along lengths which before had never existed, ruffling with a soft thrum the air at his back. Nothing dramatic, nothing drastic, but he felt it.

By all the gods in spacetime, he felt it. Down the twin lengths, long as he was tall, like a tickle in his arms, Ianto sensed the shiver travel. Even if he hadn't yet seen he could visualize precisely the shape and size because they were him.

His bloody wings.

If this was the result of an alien STD he received from Jack, Ianto was going to personally see to the removal of everything the man held dear, up to and including hair, coffee, prick and greatcoat.

Movement distracted him yet again, his ability to concentrate on one thing seemingly completely fractured though Ianto reasoned there was justification to his scattered thoughts given recent events. Dr. Ramamurthy had turned and stared at Lester in blatant defiance, so like Owen in mannerism (though definitely not in looks, Ianto would have to be blind not to appreciate the man's beauty, from the dark mane of curls framing his face to the expressive brown eyes narrowing in response to Ianto's lack of one) that for a moment, Ianto believed that perhaps he'd simply been transported to another time, another place, alternates running around in different bodies but embodying the personalities of Torchwood Three.

It would also provide a perfectly rational argument against the marks. And the other things.

"I vouch for him, Naveen. The lad's not a threat to you."

"He's Torchwood."

"He's one of us, first."

Ianto watched the exchange but didn't quite know what to make of it, other than Lester was implying (not so) vague notions that Ianto didn't want to consider. "No, you're wrong. I'm not one of you," he interrupted before he had to listen to any more of the apparent stand-off. "This ... isn't me. Something's wrong and there's a cure, I just need to find it. Research. Do you have a library here? A computer?"

Even while he said the words, the lie felt as obvious had it been dressed in blinking neon lighting. Not wrong.

"Careful what you say around here, Ianto." His old boss turned to him, patting his shoulder. Unlike before, the gesture spoke nothing more than comforting reassurance to Ianto. "That cure you speak of implies that we're faulted humans. And much as I appreciate the lot for supporting my business ventures, I do not wish to be one." Lester smirked and Ianto at first was taken aback before he realized the look wasn't directed at him. In fact, Ianto was almost certain the Alteran's third eye was looking directly at Dr. Ramamurthy. It would have been spooky had Ianto not witnessed working security at the poker parlor. "No offense, Naveen."

For a moment, Ianto thought Dr. Ramamurthy would argue, but the fight left as quickly as it came. He grabbed a tablet PC instead, shoving it into Ianto's hands. "Data from scans taken after we got you here, plus labs taken at hospital. I'll run further analysis later, but all initial readings indicate this is not caused by an exterior source. And if you honestly know nothing of who you are, I can begin sequencing once I've a vial of your blood to compare to known species. We might at least be able to identify a common ancestor from whom to start."

Before Ianto could open his mouth to argue that he was human, that he'd been born and raised human and this was all ... a terrible misunderstanding and there was no species to identify (lie, a lie and he knew it), Dr. Ramamurthy stepped closer, pushing just hard enough at the tablet Ianto clutched to his chest that he could feel the warning. "I don't know how you know when I'm from, but if Torchwood finds me, your name will be the first and only name to leave my lips. Do you understand? I've lived far too long to be threatened by those savages."

"We're not-" Ianto cut himself off, his mind flashing to Torchwood Standard Operating Procedure. Not that Jack ever followed it, but Torchwood One had. Down to the last tittle, to their eternal detriment. But even considering Jack's leniency with the Torchwood protocol, Ianto wasn't quite sure how that applied to him now.

He didn't want to even give rise to the thought of Jack's reaction to ... this.

Dr. Ramamurthy nodded, taking Ianto's half-response for whatever affirmative he'd sought and left the room, reducing the overall number in the room, but for some reason, Ianto believed that somehow increased the focus of the remaining two.

"Don't mind him. He's lived through some rough years in London. Good man, just prefers to keep his secrets his own."

Earlier panic dwindled into resigned numbness, and Ianto couldn't even think of an appropriate response to Lester's endorsement of the doctor. Looking down was a mistake. The black lines stretching across his skin curled into accusatory reminders of everything he was doing his best to avoid thinking about. Not to mention, the action shifted the weight at his back again, reminding him of ... all of that. He'd gotten better at standing, however, less leaning and more upright as his mind and body quickly adjusted to the change.

Adapting quickly, almost like it was natural. Not wrong.

It couldn't be real, could it? He'd spent so much time fighting to discern reality from hallucination it was difficult to tell anymore which he'd prefer when reality suddenly deviated from 'normal.'

Was it better than a life at Providence Park? It made him sick to even consider the possibility that it might be.

"I imagine you'd like some time to yourself. Get used to things, look over the information Naveen gave you." Lester grabbed the tray Bree had brought in, smacking his lips over a long drink from his glass. Tang. Ianto had known Lester was an alien, even before he'd seen the third eye, because of that drink. First he'd ever really known of aliens, but it hadn't bothered him much at all. Was even that connected? "There's a mirror there, inside the wardrobe door. And when you're done, the place is yours. Kitchen's stocked, there's even coffee in there."

Ianto didn't look at the wardrobe, didn't even move. Bree smiled at him, silent through all, but not once did her smile waver. Or leer, Ianto noted as the realization struck that he stood in just the uniform pants he'd stolen. He'd be embarrassed, but really, being with Jack had made any embarrassment over his body disappear overnight.

Fuck. Jack.

It was possible, Ianto knew, that given he appeared to no longer be hallucinating, he would be able to see Jack instead of the light. It was also possible that Jack would take one look at him and lock him up in a cell next to all the other Torchwood Three permanent guests. But Jack wasn't that way, Ianto was quick to reassure himself, for what little good that did. Jack was a good man who had divorced himself and Torchwood Three from Torchwood One. He might not care.

He might.

Ianto bolstered his resolve not to think of Jack, their relationship or even of Torchwood Three by remembering the long-buried images of the team shooting Annie-Lisa, of Jack sending Myfanwy to feed on Lisa. Lisa the Cyberman.

Alien.

Fuck, what if he had an ulterior motive? A prime directive to kill inborn in his psyche, one he couldn't resist if he tried? What if-

"Ianto."

His head snapped front-and-center at the sound of Lester's voice, startled out of his thoughts.

"Whatever it is you're thinking, stop. You'll do no good by yourself thinking in terrible circles of what-ifs and maybes."

In response to the question he never needed to ask, Lester gestured to him ... no, behind him, and Ianto realized one more important thing about his new self.

Agitation and stress - causing the sensation of hair rising on the back of his neck as tension worked its way down his spine until he felt almost rigid with the desperate withdrawal of emotions - most likely had a different result when he had two large fucking wings attached to his back.

Where was his Torchwood One control now?

"Don't worry, lad. Couldn't have called in a better favor. Universe righting itself out. Who'd have guessed we were supposed to meet?" For some reason, Ianto failed to latch hold of Lester's enthusiasm. Though, he rather thought enthusiasm was beyond him at the moment. "Come join us when you feel up to it, we've got a lot to catch up on."

Lester raised his glass of Tang before gesturing to Bree with the tray to follow him as he left.

She didn't, for what reason Ianto couldn't imagine, but he assumed it had nothing to do with some missing post.

"They really are gorgeous, you know. Suits you." Ianto tried to smile in acknowledgment and thanks for her effort, but he felt it fail miserably. At least he tried. "I don't know if it matters, or if it's even relevant. But when I was a kid growing up on Orion, we heard stories. The kind they tell on Earth, you know the ones, monster under the bed type of stories."

Ianto nodded with the disheartening feeling that she was going to tell him he resembled the bogeyman.

"Oh, cheer up, you." She touched his arm in play, but he didn't flinch or pull away; it was almost nice. Reassuring. "It's not like that. See, there was one story, some children were out playing where they weren't supposed to, and a giant, fire-breathing Hornsk attacked. Heard of them? They're vicious, all teeth and little else. But the children were saved by a winged creature named Bob, and you just sort of remind me of the way the story described him."

"Bob?" Ianto couldn't stop the snort of laughter, and the rasp in his throat made the name two syllables instead of one, but surely, not Bob? "So what was the winged creature called?" He asked mostly in jest, but in part curiosity simply because it was the first hint of an answer, even if it was entirely false, just the bedtime ghost stories of another world.

"We didn't really have a name for them, or rather, we didn't know their real name. We just called them angels."

Ianto scowled, remembering the collection of little white ceramic angels his mother had kept in the windowsill, their wings edged in chintzy gold leaf. Her little army, she'd called them. But she had had collections of newspapers, rocks, and tangles of hair, so he hardly believed it of any relevance other than a common theme across cultures, Ckass and humans alike.

"Yeah, we have those stories here, too." Everything had burned; his mother's little army lost.

***

Ianto watched Bree leave the room, closing the door behind her. And with her all the sound fled and the bedroom quieted to stillness, not even the birds sang.

Quiet. Until Ianto started laughing, because really, what other option was there?

Crying, screaming, kicking things. But those all seemed so far outside the realm of possibility.

He laughed until his stomach hurt, doubled over and clutching Lester's leather chair to steady himself, the computer long forgotten. Laughed until the idea of 'angels' had lost its amusement. Laughed until it no longer seemed funny.

Laughed until he realized that he hadn't toppled over, face first into the cushion, because of the weight of the wings.

He laughed until he balanced.

It was as sobering as it was surreal.

All mirth vanished in favor of determination. Ianto collected himself enough to stand, aware of how easy it was and not sure whether he should be pleased with the progress or concerned for how 'normal' it felt. The wardrobe beckoned, the looming wooden box instilling far more terror than a bloody Dalek and he knew that terror. It was ridiculous and silly, but Ianto had never felt such childish trepidation.

The mirror, the monster under his bed.

Irrational and if he could get over the mental images of Owen standing with a gun aimed directly at his (Annie-Lisa's) heart, he could hear Owen mocking him for being a coward.

Ianto opened the door of the wardrobe forcefully, just to silence the internal ridicule.

He just didn't tell the voice of Owen in his head that he had his eyes closed.

Anxiety was felt on levels of his first Torchwood One interview, of setting up that first encounter with Jack, of brewing that perfect coffee that he was sure to win Jack over. Of every day dreading the discovery of Lisa and the anticipation of finding a cure.

There hadn't been a cure for her.

Slowly, he opened his eyes, knowing the mirror nor the quest for self-identity would ever truly go away. At first he didn't see, didn't permit himself even though his eyes were open, creating a moment when he actually thought he'd somehow made himself blind through anxiety.

He hadn't, however. And slowly his eyes focused on the figure reflected in the mirror, pale skin accentuated by black swirled lines-

Species Profile
Species: Windhovers
Known Variants: Angels, Protectorati, Guardians, Sky Walkers, Seraphim
Origin: (d) Halcyon
Alert Status: MIN - Individual
Network: ACTIVE
---***---
Individual Profile
Name: Ianto Jones
Aliases: NONE
Current Status: Earth, ERCY2008

-extending below the waistband of his trousers, which he refused to lower for fear of what he might see. Just to make sure, and he would swear until his dying breath it was without panic, Ianto did pull the waistband out enough so that he could reach a hand down and just double check that everything was in order. Prick, balls, all good.

A small relief.

After resettling the trousers on his hips, Ianto froze at the sight before him, finally taking in his full body in the mirror.

His face, too.

He didn't know whether to cry or laugh, the ideas of blending in (the unmentionables on his back excluded) as Bree had accomplished slipping away like silk over glass as he pressed fingertips to his cheeks, his temples.

Black lines, fine and delicate swirled up from his neck, curling over his jawline and round near his ears, branching up until the patterns stretched over his temples. Dots and sworls, intricate as they intertwined in a recognizable form he couldn't place, a language he couldn't speak. Lines and curves shadowing his hairline, lightening - or rather simply becoming fewer in quantity - as they worked middle towards his nose and mouth, arching over and around his eyes with faint traces of black painting pale, but he knew it wasn't painted; it wouldn't merely wash away.

It was him, his face, his skin, marked by something alien.

While fingers traced a lone sinuous line over his cheekbone, movement caught his eye, subtle yet enough that it brought his undivided attention involuntarily to a point just over his shoulders. By that time it was too late to deny, too late to pretend.

They were there.

Wings arching sharply from a point on his back before falling in relief; glossy jet-black feathers for fuck's sake, and as much as Ianto's mind protested what he saw, gone was any belief that it was wrong. Conflicting but right, normal, normalcy the only thing stopping Ianto from lashing out, breaking the mirrored glass to shatter his reflection and the possibility of existence.

Windhovers.

Ianto tried the name out on his tongue while he stared, turning to the side so he could see more. When he couldn't quite see his back because the long span of the wing fell nearly to the floor, he thought and the wing moved. Fuck, it was really connected to him. Connected; he could move them.

Difficult at first, a feeling not dissimilar from shaking a hand after Jack slept on it wrong, cutting off circulation, pins and needles signifying the waking limb. Slowly control returned, a welcome sensation when everything had been so numb.

He'd been numb before.

And now every nerve woke, pins and needle awareness spreading down like fire across the wings, tendons straining as muscles flexed and relaxed, not remembering but learning.

Shit, it was real.

Or an exceedingly elaborate hallucination, but Ianto wasn't that lucky in life.

Just a thought and movement, the wings bending at the joints extended above his head, fanning out until one side was stopped by the bed. Feathers, appearing soft and light-weight but at the same time gleaming like obsidian as they stretched long, a contradiction in - and blending of - sensations his eyes couldn't quite separate into unique and logical categories.

He should be scared. He should be having the stress-induced breakdown he'd been expecting starting with Torchwood One.

Windhovers.

Ianto didn't know how he knew that name, wasn't even really aware when or how it came to him. It was nebulous, intangible, fist-fulls of nothing if he tried to pin it down. But it was there, just as with Dr. Ramamurthy.

Touching his reflection in the mirror he traced the angle of one wing, following it until his fingers fell off the mirror edge.

He couldn't go back.

The thought made his hand tremble as they touched the pane of glass again, this time following the curve of his neck as the intricate black lines played over his skin, hovering over the stricken expression. He couldn't hide, not even with his best avoidance skills. And he couldn't be confined to the Hub, he'd go mad fighting Myfanwy for airspace.

His hand covered the image in the mirror when it reflected the sound not quite a sob but the feeling was similar, the very joke of the idea nearly enough to unsettle the loose emotional stability he maintained.

No hallucination this time. It was all so very real.

Windhovers.

***

If asked, Ianto would like to have said that he handled the unexpected developments with typical aplomb, embracing the new 'him' with a natural, curious enthusiasm tempered by Torchwood One-bred stolidity.

Ianto sipped his coffee, then cradled the mug in his hands, the empty kitchen providing the quiet backbone to his brooding.

He'd be lying, of course. Aplomb had miserably failed, and the fact that he observed himself mimicking Owen's behavior following his promotion from living to undead did nothing to buoy Ianto's thoughts. Not that he was as self-destructive as Owen had been, but he could now fully sympathize with the grief and rage, the depression and the questions for a life completely undone by factors far removed from control.

It'd taken thirty-eight hours before he'd finally emerged from his self-imposed isolation, mostly due to hunger thanks to what he assumed was Lester's personal kick-in-the-arse. Ianto had been granted the private time he'd needed, but he'd been neither coddled nor mothered. Not even Bree had stopped in with a cup of ginger tea.

Time had been divided between exploration and denial. One moment Ianto would be staring at himself in the mirror, analyzing every inch of himself and searching for even the slightest deviation from memory or studying the new. In the next, he'd have slammed the wardrobe door shut and curled in a ball on the bed, pretending the warmth covering him was a blanket and not wings.

He'd showered in the lavatory adjoining his bedroom, the first shower he'd actually given himself in well over a month, and he'd debated wanking just to see if his cock still functioned the same despite the black lines curling and twisting in patterns over the shaft.

The combined thought of touching the marks and the fear that somehow the wings had altered that prior form of entertainment killed any possible pleasure, so Ianto had instead focused on just how the fuck he was supposed to 'bathe' his wings, or if he even needed to.

Wings.

The name Windhovers blended with his coffee as Ianto drank, teasing his mind with possibility and questions. It was just a name, nothing more, and really Ianto hadn't the slightest notion what it meant or who they were, other than believing unequivocally that he was one. He'd yet to actually tell anyone what he knew, and Ianto wasn't exactly sure why he avoided saying anything at all. Dr. Ramamurthy drew blood samples and ran tests of all sorts, but no one seemed to know what race he was, so Ianto didn't feel inclined to proffer the information. The labs came back "off-the-charts alien," which the doctor found intriguing given both Ianto's previous human appearance and the humanoid form he possessed now, wings notwithstanding. In fact, Ianto looked so much like himself that he wanted to argue that the tests were wrong, that his DNA wasn't really unrecognizable, and that Dr. Ramamurthy was a shoddy doctor who shouldn't be practicing medicine.

Of course, none of that was true and he had the wings to prove it.

Despite knowing that Lester and Bree were alien and that Dr. Ramamurthy was not of this time, Ianto still found it difficult to finally open that bedroom door and venture out into the rest of the house, but the cries of his stomach and his personal loathing for self-pity drove him to seek the kitchen. It'd been empty at that late of hour and Ianto had taken full advantage by making his first mug of coffee in over a month.

He'd sipped it slowly, black and strong, luxuriating in the small fact that he once again had the freedom to enjoy coffee.

The coffee mug had a giant yellow smiley face on it, 'Be Happy!' printed in the bottom of the mug. Ianto tried not to think too much about the implications of his mug choice.

It had become habit, every night for nearly two weeks now, as Ianto discovered he slept far less than he had before. Most often his indulgences with the coffee were private; only once had Lester joined him with his glass of Tang, sharing a companionable silence with Ianto at the table shoved off to one corner of the kitchen. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was enormous, cluttered with the oddest of trinkets amidst fine china and silver. Its extensively remodeled cooking area looked far more futuristic than modern.

And he was fairly sure the cookbooks had never been cracked.

It wasn't that the kitchen was never in use - no, the first time Ianto had ventured out during the day, he'd walked into the kitchen and faced an entire group of people. Alien, all of them. A Preocis from Andromeda, two Natuki siblings, a family of Clifftans, and one Dribite turned and stared.

Well, they hadn't stared, but that's what it'd felt like when Ianto had walked in the room, shirtless, in denims a size too small. ("Bree's picking up some clothes for you," Lester had said.) He would have retreated immediately but one of the Clifftan children (Ianto still wasn't sure on the name) had called out "bird man!" and thus began the awkward apologies from the parents and stilted conversation followed as he was dragged fully into the kitchen. Once he'd found something to eat from the array of foods, he secluded himself from the group.

He didn't intend to be rude, but he supposed it was. The two Clifftan children apparently were incapable of understanding subtle hints, climbing onto his lap to touch his hands, his arms, his face, his wings (and may grabby hands never pull on his wings again), basically anywhere they could.

It was like they'd never seen an alien before

New aliens came and went every day, some humans displaced in time, others as far from humanoid as was imaginable. Ianto couldn't quite figure how they knew Lester, but given what he knew of Lester's background in less than legal activities, he assumed it would be better not to ask. He really didn't give himself a chance to ask, preferring to wander the grounds, exploring the house or doing research in the surprisingly large library.

He wasn't avoiding contact with others, not really. Maybe a little, but definitely not to the point of true isolation. The number of visitors was just a bit overwhelming, and Ianto still felt the pressure of curiosity weighing on his shoulders. Or, rather, his wings. Or the marks. Or maybe he was just imagining it, a psychology transference of his own discomfort onto the presumed reactions of others.

Entirely possible, given the hours he'd wasted staring at the marks on his hand.

Ianto drained the last of his coffee and stared at the inscription fired into the bottom of the mug; he'd choose better, next mug. It reminded him too much of something his mother would have owned, along with an array of other silly things she found amusing, like the plastic frog salt and pepper shakers that croaked when one used them and the gilt-winged angels on her windowsill.

His mother had been on his mind a lot.

Unsurprising, given his recent stint at Providence Park.

With a scowl, Ianto stood and wandered to the sink to wash up the mug and scattered dishes collecting on the counter tops. It wasn't only his stay that brought her to mind, it was everything, from seeing her outside the Information Center to Providence Park to this, whatever this was. He didn't understand it; his mother lacked wings or marks of any kind, so where did he fit in? The thought that they might not be his parents by blood made his heart race a little faster, his hands shake as he scrubbed dried tomato from a plate.

But they would always be his parents, even if they weren't by birth.

The far more terrifying thought, the one that left him nauseous and struggling for composure around the lump in his throat was the idea that he was her child by birth.

They'd both been sectioned. It couldn't be coincidence that they'd both ended up at Providence Park, could it?

And he'd signed her papers. Not that he'd really had any valid influence as he was still a youth and the doctors would have done it with or without his consent, but he'd been next of kin.

They'd both ended up at Providence Park.

Ianto consciously stopped the furious scrubbing of the plate and took a deep breath, attempting to relax and shake the threatening guilt. If she had been one of them ... a Windhover ... and her illness had actually been ... whatever had happened to him. He still wasn't quite sure, but he was aware of differences, of knowing when he shouldn't know. Species. Some names. Odd impressions of danger or safety. It was never consistent and always surprised him when he realized what should have been an abnormality acted as accepted thought within his mind.

And his mother, she'd been locked up, same as he.

"Troubled thoughts again?"

Ianto couldn't help but startle as the sound of Lester's voice broke into his self-recrimination; hands jerking so hard that he dropped the dish back into the sink. Immediately he picked it up and examined the plate for chips or cracks, but thankfully the dish remained whole. The same couldn't be said for his nerves.

It was overwhelming, the awareness that he'd been caught by surprise and just how wrong that was. He'd let his guard down, drawn too far inward. Unnerving and disappointing.

Lester just smiled as he grabbed the plate from Ianto's hands, setting it on the drying rack. "Your wings are your worst tell right now. Too tied to your emotions and too visible."

With a snort, Ianto returned his focus to washing up the remaining dishes. "My poker game thanks you. Next time I play at the Empire, I'll be sure to create a suitable deflection to distract them from watching my wings for cues."

The next plate disappeared from Ianto's hands as well. He would have thanked Lester for expediting the process except once the dishes were clean, he'd need something else to occupy himself. Preferably something that distracted him from thinking. They washed in silence interspersed with side-glances from Lester that began grating on Ianto's nerves as much had the other been rambling aimlessly about the weather or the fear he was going to need a monocle soon for his third eye which was beginning to show signs of myopia.

All the dishes were clean and Lester wandered to the small, mobile island that functioned as a mini-bar. Ianto had to admit the ingenuity; anywhere the conversations took place within the kitchen, a few favored spirits were only a roll away. He did fear where this conversation might be headed as Lester brought the bar with him, pouring two glasses of whisky before setting the decanter aside but within reach.

"It's come to my attention that your employer, Jack Harkness -" Lester began as he handed Ianto a glass, a glass from which Ianto quickly took a drink given the subject matter, "- and his team have been tearing apart Cardiff looking for you. Seems convinced your disappearance was not voluntary."

"Neither was my sectioning," Ianto remarked before he could stop the words from bypassing every brain-mouth filter he possessed. He knew the full story now, of confusion among the doctors and mangled paperwork filing resulting in his transference to Providence Park on basis of no friends or family listed among his records, of Jack attempting to trump all involved by claiming Torchwood only to have Owen counter-trump as Ianto's physician that it might be in his best interests to remain at Providence for an evaluation period. Ianto didn't necessarily blame anyone in particular for the situation - hell, having someone else monitor his care meant that Torchwood was free to find out what was wrong with him - but that didn't mean he didn't feel betrayed.

Especially since they never did figure out what was wrong.

And now he realized he may have betrayed his mother in kind.

"Yes, that was most unfortunate. However, we still have the problem of Mr. Harkness tearing apart Cardiff." Lester eyed him over his glass and Ianto began to wonder just what were Lester's interests. "You won't go back, will you."

Statement, not even remotely a question. But Ianto incredulously couldn't believe Lester would consider the alternate possibility. "Are you mad?" Maybe madness was contagious. Ianto wouldn't even dare consider calling Jack, because Tosh would immediately trace the call to this location - a location even he wasn't sure of, just that it was outside of London and that Bree and Dr. Ramamurthy had brought him here. But he wasn't about to clue Jack in on someone who'd barely escaped Torchwood years ago, much less clue Jack in that he lived ... and 'oh, by the way, don't mind the wings.'

No way was he going back to Torchwood.

"Didn't think you would." Lester didn't appear to blame him, but Ianto felt the need to parse and judge every word before he spoke. Warily, he sipped his whisky and hoped the alcohol wouldn't addle his mind. "Do you think he'll stop looking?"

"Eventually," Ianto quickly responded, then stopped as the utter lack of truth in those words were realized. Memories from before Providence flooded his mind - of his flat and the scones, of the encounter with his mother, of arguing and amends, of Owen and the Weevil - and from during his stay at the institution - of seeing the light watching, there when he looked out the window, of the night the light joined him and wept for failure. They had no definition to their relationship, no grand declarations or commitments, but he knew with certainty that Jack would never stop. "Unlikely."

"Then we have a problem."

Ianto's eyes narrowed as he rapidly considered all the things Lester might be involved with in Cardiff that would be of concern. "They won't bust your parlors if that's what you're concerned about. They're looking for me, not illegal operations."

"They're looking for anything alien because they believe that's what was wrong. And not necessarily inaccurate." Lester gestured at Ianto's back with his glass, and Ianto bit his tongue to keep himself from saying anything disparaging about Lester in retaliation of the honesty. "Do you know how many aliens live in Cardiff?"

"At least two." Ianto really had no idea beyond that. He'd never really considered it, given that Torchwood was far more reactionary than preemptive. There were far more than that if one counted Weevils, which really was an undefined population.

"Try one thousand, six hundred and forty-two peaceful citizens registered with me." Ianto stared, he couldn't help it. Given his assumption that Weevils had not registered, it might be less than one percent of the population, but that was still a relatively large number for Cardiff. "Including three multi-generational families who have been here longer than you've breathed, ten additional families, and a smattering of couples, siblings, and the poor lot who end up here alone, all under Torchwood's radar. And your friends are going about with their tech looking for anyone who might know anything."

Ianto read between what Lester said and didn't say, that all those one thousand, six hundred and forty-two were in danger of being discovered. And that's with the ones who had registered. There were perhaps more, Ianto knew of a few that Jack himself had helped place and the ones who ended up at Flat Holm needing specific care. Jack had transformed Torchwood Three. Before his control, and with Torchwood One, those aliens wouldn't have stood a chance of living any kind of life. Even now, it made Ianto sick to consider how many lives could be affected if Torchwood discovered them. Not that Jack would harm them, but Torchwood had such a reputation the members of Torchwood Three would be lucky to survive a retaliation of one thousand, six hundred and forty-two if they thought their lives were at stake.

He opened his mouth to speak, intending to defend Torchwood Three, but his mind took a different track, latching onto information that he remembered. "But according to Galactic Law, they're well within their right to seek asylum if planetarily displaced so long as they adhere to current social regulations and do not engage in activity providing technology beyond the means of the current development. Torchwood can't interfere if they're not breaking the laws and customs."

"You don't say?" Lester took a casual sip of his drink but Ianto could sense the shift of interest, the honing of the concentration Ianto had seen at play during poker hands, only this was far more fierce and he swore he could almost touch the intensity emanating from Lester. He wasn't quite sure if he should be afraid of it. "What do you know of Galactic Law, lad?"

"I don't know." Ianto wasn't even sure how he knew. As much as it felt like he'd always known the rights of refugees of space and time, Ianto knew he hadn't some time ago. It had to be connected with the names, with knowing immediately when he saw an individual their species. But it made no sense how he knew. He certainly hadn't learned it at Torchwood One; knowing that place, they had probably broken every law possible.

"And the Judoon?"

"Mercenary thugs employed by corporations profiting off the corruption of the Shadow Proclamation." Ianto quite literally felt his lips curl in distaste, the thought of the Judoon so foul the stench turned his stomach. Maybe it wasn't the Judoon, maybe it was the corporations who purchased their services or maybe it was the abuse of the Shadow Proclamation. Something within his response, however, had him turning to his glass of whisky to wash away the utter revulsion.

And as the alcohol burned down his throat, Ianto against wondered how the hell he knew any of that.

"Ianto?"

"I don't know." He held out his glass, begging a refill which Lester did without question. Silence stretched in comfortable familiarity after Lester returned the glass, and filled the space while Ianto swirled the whisky three times before taking a drink. "Some things," Ianto said finally, knowing full well he was playing into the basic interrogation trick but knew Lester would say nothing until Ianto spoke. For a moment of distraction, he tugged at the sleeve of one of two shirts now in his possession, crafted by some seamstress Lester knew. The back operated by a series of buttons, creating a seam down his spine with a wide hole in the upper back to allow for his wings. He appreciated the clothing immensely, but it was an embarrassment requesting assistance to dress in the morning. Ianto supposed he'd have to get used to either that or no shirt as he didn't have many options at his disposal. "Some things just are in my head and I don't know why."

"Like Naveen's origins."

"Yep." He refused to say any more on the subject, preferring to keep the information regarding his own personal revelations to himself. And Lester seemed perfectly aware that he was hiding something more, or perhaps even correctly assumed what the 'something' was, but he didn't push for it, for what reason Ianto couldn't quite figure out.

"Bit of wonder you are indeed." Lester smiled and raised his glass in toast; Ianto rolled his eyes in return but raised his glass, figuring it'd be better to play along than to argue. "But that still doesn't solve our Jack Harkness problem. Naveen's getting anxious the more reports come in."

"Reports?" His mind latched onto the word and Ianto looked at Lester with suspicion. "You're spying on Torchwood?"

He didn't think he'd ever seen a man (or alien) as smug as Lester looked as he leaned back against the counter, drink beside him and his hands clasped and resting on his ample middle.

"We always have been. Had to, really, for our own protection before Torchwood Three internally collapsed and Torchwood One fell. Quite relieved to hear you'd survived that, actually." Lester grabbed his glass again, waving it in Ianto's direction, looking rather pleased with himself if Ianto was to be asked. "What, you thought it was coincidence that Sabrina was your neighbor?"

Stunned speechless, Ianto had to admit that he had in fact either never considered it or had believed it coincidence. There was just one more piece to the puzzle, and once he found his tongue and the courage to confess to never having thought of it over the past two weeks, he spoke up. "And Dr. Ramamurthy?"

"Torchwood brings in one of their own, injured on the job? I assigned myself to your case immediately. Never can be too careful when it's Torchwood." Ianto turned to find Dr. Ramamurthy leaning against the door frame, legs casually crossed and looking as pleased with himself as Lester had. The idea that he'd been watched, for years by one and recently by another, left him extremely uneasy, almost anxious. It shouldn't matter, but it did, tickling every nerve ending until he felt as wound as he had that horrible day in the Hub when everyone had been watching, only this time he swore Ianto could feel it even in the tips of every feather. "In fact, I've been wondering if the injury and anti-psychotics may have delayed this development if as you say you'd been experiencing hallucinations for a time prior to the concussion."

Ianto tampered down the urge to irritably insult the doctor's skills and failure to realize something more had been in play during events at hospital. He and the doctor had worked to a tenuous relationship over the past two weeks, Dr. Ramamurthy still wary of Ianto's knowledge but ultimately his intrigue as to Ianto's biology and "metamorphosis" as he liked to call it triumphed.

The boyish glee Dr. Ramamurthy exhibited as he theorized and drew conjecture about this previously undiscovered species would have amused Ianto if he hadn't been the subject and focus of the doctor's enthusiasm. As it was, Ianto relied on him to figure out what had happened and Dr. Ramamurthy depended on Ianto for the genetic mystery. A symbiotic relationship, perhaps, but at least Lester was no longer defending Ianto's presence.

He even, sometimes, found it pleasant to be around Dr. Ramamurthy, even if Ianto would never admit it. But the man was a better chess player than Lester, and Ianto knew better than to challenge Lester to a card game.

Dr. Ramamurthy angled away from the door frame to look into the hall, beckoning to an individual to join them in the kitchen. Perhaps he'd brought Bree with him again; Ianto hadn't seen her for quite a time, and after Lester's statements regarding Jack and Torchwood he rather worried for her freedom. Though maybe she was just busy with her own life, or quite possibly in hiding at one of the safe houses, the ones that Dr. Ramamurthy had mentioned that first day but Ianto had never really considered until now.

He hoped she was safe; the other two chatted while he stared at his drink, considering his options or how best to deal with Jack. They could cover it up, fake Ianto's death; it wasn't like he hadn't ever done that in the past with Torchwood. It'd be more complicated given the technology Torchwood Three possessed, but it could be done.

Ianto simply didn't know if he was ready to completely give up his life just yet.

Even though it was technically gone already unless wings suddenly became the new fashion in Paris, Ianto was reluctant to have his old life ... killed. He hated to do that to the team, he hated the idea of never going back to everything he was and owned, and most of all, he hated to do that to Jack. Jack wouldn't kill him or even turn him over for study, Ianto was certain of this, but Ianto couldn't live a life constrained to the Hub. The idea of presenting the dead remains of "Ianto" to Jack, however ... he'd seen what Owen's death had done to Jack.

Though would it be more cruel for Jack to think he still lived?

Ianto realized his thoughts were circling back to arguments over the survivors living at Flat Holm and communicating their status to known relatives, and he nearly laughed at the irony.

"-crash near Abergavenny. Put up most of them at the safe house in Monmouth, but Celia and Mihouf offered to meet with you to discuss arrangements. Wesley's running from UNIT, encountered a squadron in London while out doing some independent investigation, fancies himself quite the journalist-"

He looked up when the sounds of hard-soled shoes scuffed the tiled floor, the pair Celia and Mihouf appearing battered but whole, though he wasn't sure if the Nertin race was naturally green in color or if it was a consequence of the crash as the shade reminded Ianto of Lester's Tang. Their returned looks made him uncomfortable, staring at both his wings and the markings on his face, their eyes a golden amber not dissimilar from the whisky he sipped. It was getting a bit ridiculous, and it was small wonder why he tended to avoid everyone who passed through Lester's place. Which was a rather incredible number; Ianto did have to wonder how the refugee process worked, and just how the hell Dr. Ramamurthy had gotten all of them out of the craft before Torchwood arrived.

Fuck, what if Torchwood Three was becoming lax in their duties due to their search for him?

The thought was as unpleasant as it was warming, but Ianto knew the dangers that lurked in the shadows. And while it was somewhat a comfort to know that Torchwood was turning Cardiff upside down looking for him, the fact that they would be derelict in their duties ratcheted the anxiety. Torchwood was there to protect the citizens of Britain, a service desperately needed.

But Jack wouldn't allow the team to lose sight of Torchwood's directive, would he?

Ianto grimaced behind his glass, realizing that it seemed just the thing Jack would do himself, let alone the entire team. Never ones for following protocol, not unless they believed him dead.

Squeaky, rubber-heeled footsteps on tiled floor distracted him from his thoughts and Ianto looked up from his glass to -

Species Profile
Species: Bandala
Origin: New Earth
Threat Priority Level: Low
---***---
Individual Profile
Name: Weslinoteth Lyone Braden Hartmew, Jr
Aliases: Archibald Douglass, Guy Lyone, Wesley
Previous Violations: NONE
Active Warrants: 6 (SIX) COUNTS Xenocide of Sentient Species in Violation of Section 4.6ac. 39 (THIRTY-NINE) COUNTS Xenocide of Non-Sentient Level Four Species in Violation of Section 4.7be. 14 (FOURTEEN) COUNTS Unlawful Use of Particle Disrupter: Class F in Willful Destruction of (d) New Atlos, (d) Marcedonia, (d) Camberin, and (d) Xyllythrns. 5 (FIVE) COUNTS Unlawful Use of Levitation Device Class B on Level Five Planet Sploe in Violation of Charter M-24 of Shadow Proclamation.
Threat Priority Level: HIGH
Original Status: New Earth, ERCY 4346370
Current Status: Earth, ERCY2008

- only have the glass slip from numb fingers, crashing to the floor and shattering into a hundred pieces as the previous anxiety exploded in intensity. Wesley was small in stature but carried a violent arrogance that would have left Ianto shaking had he not already been so distraught at the unthinkable horrors the man had wrought. "You ... " Ianto could barely speak the words as shock stole his breath. "You destroyed four planets."

"Ianto?"

"Look, kid, I don't know what you're on about."

Lester and Wesley's voices both rang out in the kitchen but Ianto chose to ignore Lester as his question failed to dent Ianto's growing anger. "You ... obliterated entire species." It was unconscionable. The weight of all the lives lost both suffocated and enraged him, so many lives, and how many species were lost that failed to meet warrant scripts?

"You've got me confused-"

"Weslinoteth Lyone Braden Hartmew, Junior!" Ianto all but roared, noting with satisfaction that Wesley's face blanched entirely and blue spots rose to the surface as an odor most foul filled the room. Panic. A defense mechanism, perhaps, native to the Bandalans. He caught movement from the corner of his eye, but he pushed it aside as he stood tall, straightening as he squared his shoulders on Wesley, perfect parallel stance to the diminutive Bandalan who was frantically searching for an exit.

Wouldn't happen. Every fiber of his being felt attuned to Wesley's breath, the stench of his sweat and frantic syncopated beat of the Bandalan's heart. He wouldn't escape; there was no where he could run on Earth that Ianto couldn't find him. "You've sixty-four counts of acts in direct violation of Galactic Law, including five counts against the Shadow Proclamation." Ianto advanced as one of the Nertins slammed the door to the kitchen shut behind Wesley, preventing his escape. "You will not walk free on Earth while she is mine to protect."

Wesley crouched low and snarled, springing forward to rush Ianto - and Ianto was more than ready - but the Bandalan's momentum was suddenly halted as Mihouf tackled him to the ground. Dr. Ramamurthy engaged as well, shoving what appeared to Ianto to be a pressurized syringe against Wesley's neck, within seconds rendering him unconscious.

Ianto watched it all, noting that the doctor seemed remarkably unruffled as he checked Wesley's pulse before slipping a plastic binding around his wrists. Dr. Ramamurthy looked up with a mixture of relief and revulsion. "Knew something was off about him. Couldn't deny him asylum without knowing for sure though."

But Ianto didn't move, couldn't really, frozen in place as his eyes drifted from Dr. Ramamurthy to Wesley, to the Nertin pair and back to Wesley again. He wondered if he should find it alarming that he was taken at his word in regards to the violations of Galactic Law, it wasn't like the others could see into his head. Hell, he didn't even know if it was actually truth, though he hadn't been incorrect yet. The rage, very real and not wrong, still lingered despite it being wasted on the unconscious form; rage more at such inhumane destruction and loss of life than the actual criminal himself.

"Calm yourself, lad. We'll take care of him, now."

Lester partnered his words with a touch on Ianto's shoulder; when Lester had moved to stand in front of him he wasn't precisely sure and Ianto flinched in surprise. The jolt of awareness was all it took for Ianto to discover just how far removed from calm he was, tension twisting around every muscle, every joint, every nerve until all were coiled and bound, waiting for the depression of the hair-trigger. Even his wings waited poised and anxious, half-flared in warning and causing quite the spectacle from the looks on Celia and Mouhif's faces.

Ianto realized immediately how very not normal this was.

The anger vanished, leaving Ianto physically deflated and stumbling backwards until he collided with the sink. If there was any question remaining as to whether the wings were truly his or belonging to some parasitic creature, Ianto had his answer. Not debilitating, but painful enough to remind Ianto to avoid further such action in the future. He'd have to look at them later, make sure none of the feathers were permanently damaged. Even if they were, he wasn't exactly sure what he would do about it.

Fuck, would he molt?

And he thought early balding was something to fear.

"What will you do with him?" Ianto asked to get his mind off everything abnormal transpiring just now ... and in the past few weeks.

Had he really said he was protecting Earth? Then again, through Torchwood Ianto was, so there was truth in the statement. Perhaps he wasn't completely megalomaniacal.

"We have a few sections of land with facilities to house the criminal and the few who can't survive Earth's atmosphere." Lester smirked as Ianto blinked in surprise. There were no records of such facilities existing at all in Torchwood's records, and if they were large enough and housed aliens, Torchwood would know, wouldn't they? "He'll be given the chance to defend himself, we'll check what records we have, and if it's determined he's a threat to Earth, we'll ensure he doesn't set a free foot upon the soil."

To Ianto, that sounded a lot like Torchwood's duties. "But, Torchwood -"

"Your Torchwood is far different than the Torchwood of old." Lester sharply rebuked Ianto, crossing his arms while he watched Dr. Ramamurthy gather his few things (Ianto wasn't quite sure where that med kit had come from). "I also know the conditions of your holding cells and I have to say ours are more suited to long-term stay. They may be criminals, but on this planet, they're one of us. Naveen!"

Ianto frowned as Lester and Dr. Ramamurthy exchanged pointed looks; Ianto followed their eyes from the Netrins, to Wesley, and then to Ianto himself before the 'conversation' ended. The doctor nodded, then with Moutif's assistance carried Wesley out the door; Celia waved, albeit hesitantly, then exited as well, leaving Lester and Ianto alone in the kitchen.

"Naveen will make sure those three don't remember anything of this night," Lester said after the footsteps disappeared down the hall and he'd opened the closest windows to alleviate the stench of the Bandalan defense. "I think it's best we keep this between the three of us."

"Wesley?" His frown morphed into a scowl, whether his displeasure stemmed from the whisky on the floor making his shoes sticky or the man who'd killed countless, Ianto wasn't sure. As much as he didn't want Wesley roaming free on Earth risking all if the Judoon showed to serve the warrants, he wanted due process, not injustice.

"You, idiot child." A damp flannel struck Ianto in the face, surprising him but not so much that he didn't catch it before it could fall to the floor. Lester's boisterous laughter filled the room as he swept the broken glass into a pan; Ianto barely resisted the urge to throw it back at him, instead mopping up the spilt alcohol while mindful not to drag his wings on the floor. "You're one of us now, and that includes our protection. And I'd wager everything I own that there's a reason why we don't know much of anything about your kind."

Ianto didn't have an answer, but then, he didn't think Lester really expected a response. Seemed he didn't know a lot of things lately, and the things he did know he didn't know how. And he'd just cited an individual's violations of Galactic Law, condemning him though he really wasn't sure what he would have done had Mouhif and Dr. Ramamurthy not stepped in. Fought Wesley? With wings? How awkward would that have been?

And how ridiculous. It most certainly would not have been graceful. Owen would have mocked him. Which reminded Ianto. "We still have the Jack problem."

"Well, we won't solve it tonight. Think about it a while, maybe something will pop into that head of yours." Lester gestured with the broom, using the handle to emphasize his point. "You could just tell him, you know. From what I hear, you were quite close. Might be nice to have someone right now."

"Oh, so you're matchmaking now?" Ianto grabbed the broom away from Lester, throwing the flannel in the sink before tucking the broom away in its closet, anything to keep from looking him in the eyes; Ianto feared the truth might just be a little too apparent. It was so easy to pretend and ignore when no one knew to ask. "We'll talk in the morning."

Lester was right; it'd be really nice to have someone right now. Someone named Jack, as aplomb was failing miserably the more normal abnormal became.

***

"No. Absolutely not."

Ianto closed his eyes and took a deep breath as the argument spun out yet again between Dr. Ramamurthy and Lester, finally deciding that brewing yet another pot of coffee would provide a good distraction to remove himself from the disagreement. Maybe find a sleeping pill to slip into the pair's drinks while he was up; surely the coffee and Tang would cover any taste. They'd been arguing for countless hours, or at least it felt like it, sitting on the incredibly uncomfortable stool that was his only option in a kitchen full of high back chairs.

Yet more comforts gone with the damned wings. For all the stories of angels and fairies, Ianto wondered how any of them actually functioned in normal, everyday life. Lester had dug up a Victorian threadbare chaise lounge (in the most awful shade of lavender) which Ianto used as an option to the wooden low-back chairs and stools, but he'd only strained the muscles in his shoulders reclining on the cursed furniture.

Dr. Ramamurthy had scolded him like an errant child for that, then again for not taking into account the increased demand on his chest and back muscles and promptly assigned modified exercises to strengthen and develop.

And then, with childlike curiosity, he'd asked Ianto if he'd tried to fly yet.

It wasn't that the question was outrageous or entirely out of line, but Ianto had been both embarrassed and furious, retreating to his room with a pair of mismatched weights. He'd have blamed the nerve of the doctor, only that would have been a lie and he knew it, knew it as well as he understood why he sat on his bed and miserably wept. Nothing was normal, no matter how he pretended it was or would be. He kept trying to adapt himself to the human world, but it was a world that didn't fit him.

Ianto's shame redoubled when he acknowledged to himself that he wished he was human. As a Windhover, it felt like both a dismissal of his entire race and a personal insult. There was an underlying thrum of pride that he didn't understand, a feeling of national unity, if one could call it that, but stronger, even if he couldn't explain it. Pretending to be human, wishing that he no longer had the marks or the wings; the self-hatred disgusted him even if he had no idea what his 'self' was anymore. Everything he'd taken for granted, from nationality to his heritage, his entire history was just gone. Not his personal history, he remembered that well enough. But everything he'd self-identified as his - countrymen, cultural and political history, hell, the Queen - weren't technically his.

Though, he'd been raised believing he was Welsh. That had to count, if only by adopted proxy.

Looking back, Ianto knew he'd been right pathetic that afternoon. Even by that evening he had grown angry with himself for wallowing in pity for things he couldn't change.

He'd even tried swishing his wings just a couple times to see how it'd work, from the privacy of his own room where none could laugh.

'Ungainly' was the word best used to describe that attempt, for sake of his ego.

While the rest of the house slept (it varied day to day, depending on the guests), Ianto had been stretching his wings, moving them and trying to learn how to 'walk' even if he swore he'd never actually try to fly. Contingency plan, he preferred to call it, as he revelled in the powerful strokes he could feel across his pectorals, through his traps and down to the fine muscles along the arched lengths of the wings. He never left the ground though. The idea of actually flying was too extreme and too far from normal to rationally accept, even as he tried to discover what it was to be one of the Windhovers.

He didn't get far; he didn't have much to go on.

And now Lester and Dr. Ramamurthy were arguing Round Thirty of the 'what do we do with Ianto/Jack/Torchwood debate.' Nearly six days had passed since the encounter with Wesley; Ianto's decision had been made just hours after Lester had retired for the evening. He would call Jack from a new mobile from a an off-site location, drop the phone, then leave with the transport vehicle (driving a car, yet another thing Ianto hadn't considered in the 'nigh-impossible' world of wings). A simple enough plan, and if executed far enough away from Cardiff he would be long gone before they traced the signal.

Dr. Ramamurthy had vehemently protested, and thus the continued debate until Ianto wished nothing more than to repeatedly strike his head against the hardwood kitchen table. It wasn't that he failed to understand the logic - the doctor had run from Torchwood for some time and knew the terrors they inspired. He feared both for his own safety as well as the thousands of others in Britain quietly living their life in peace. It was more that Ianto hated circular debates, repeated points, and unmade decisions.

Not to mention that once he'd decided to contact Jack - what he'd say Ianto hadn't the slightest - once he'd made that decision he'd given in to the need to hear Jack's voice.

The subsequent delay left Ianto with a vacuum where want triumphed over necessity and made the nights all the more lonely.

Fuck, he missed Jack.

"You don't know him like I do. Ianto calls him up and no matter what he says, Jack will think he's acting under duress. He'll continue to search for him. No matter that they're shagging, Jack is fiercely loyal to that team of his. He won't stop, and Torchwood will find us."

For a moment, Ianto wondered how long Dr. Ramamurthy had been keeping tabs on Jack. And for the first time since he'd arrived, Ianto felt the calming sense of control slipping into place as the argument took tones with which he was familiar. "And you'd know him better than I?" Ianto noticed with some small satisfaction that both men flinched. The debate had gone on for so long while Ianto had remained quiet that the introduction of Ianto's voice sparked a derailment from the pattern. "I trust Jack. If he knew about me or the underground you've got in Britain, he wouldn't cause any harm to anyone."

"He's Torchwood."

"He's Jack first, Captain Harkness, leader of Torchwood Three with no concern for Standard Operating Procedure so long as Earth is protected, second. Besides," Ianto added with a gesture from his empty coffee mug at Dr. Ramamurthy, "I'm Torchwood, too."

As the silence stretched, Ianto belatedly realized that the fact that he was Torchwood quite possibly had more to do with the argument then Jack. As for keeping him from communicating with Jack, Ianto asked the first question that came to mind. "So, am I prisoner here?"

"Don't be daft, lad." Lester levelled his gaze on Dr. Ramamurthy, though Ianto knew the comment was directed at him. "Naveen just thinks it's wise to be paranoid of all things Torchwood, and on most occasions, he's correct."

"They killed Karl."

"Karl?" Ianto looked back and forth between Dr. Ramamurthy and Lester. "Who's Karl?"

"Karl Colbert." Ianto raised his brow at Lester's rather horrid French accent and hoped he'd never attempt it again. "I believe he said "Sploe" as well. He was Hoosknarian, bipedal race with dagger teeth and a dog nose? Unknowingly jacked a UNIT vehicle full of munitions, you lot caught up to him before UNIT and had that spat about who's authority the case fell under."

He couldn't have stopped the wince if he'd tried; in fact, Ianto was fairly certain even his feathers winced. Oh, did he remember that case. "We had every reason to believe he was stockpiling arms to use in an attack. His death was ... an unfortunate accident."

"You blew up his head!"

"We didn't know he had high ... blood pressure." Ianto knew it was a weak defense, but they'd honestly not known of the severe consequences of the mind probe. Jack had believed it necessary to extract the information when every word out of the Hoosknarian's mouth was a lie. Stealing UNIT weapons was a crime unto itself, but UNIT had wanted blood for their fallen men and Jack had done his best to take control of the situation. "He killed three UNIT soldiers when he fled with the vehicle. He wasn't an innocent and he most certainly was not following laws established by the Shadow Proclamation."

"He was just a kid," Dr. Ramamurthy furiously pointed at Ianto, "and not terribly bright. And you lot hooked him up to tech you didn't understand and are responsible for his death. Tell me why the hell we should trust you not to turn us all over for study and extermination."

Ianto felt his face blanch at the doctor's words; intentioned as they might be they still rang a far different chord in him. "We're Torchwood, not Daleks. And while we've occasionally screwed up, Jack does his best to do what's right at Torchwood Three. I stand by his decisions." Lester began to say something, but Ianto plowed on, refusing to be stopped. This was the only home he was currently welcome in and he wasn't about to be branded as one of the worst from London. "Torchwood One is another matter, but I will not speak ill of the dead. London was destroyed, and Cardiff has reinvented itself under Jack's leadership."

He loomed over Dr. Ramamurthy, and finally Ianto understood what that meant. He stood in umbrage, wings spanning out to either side of him as he leaned his hands on the table. A bit dramatic, but then what was the point of wings if one couldn't loom? Jack would laugh, or he might even find it attractive, which made Ianto miss the man even more. He wouldn't be calling out Ianto's duty to Britain. "And I'd be a hypocrite if I turned you all over, wouldn't I?"

"Ianto-"

He rolled his eyes and Ianto swore he caught the barest of smiles on Dr. Ramamurthy's face, whether in sympathy of Lester's fatherly tone or amusement at his belligerence Ianto wasn't sure. Refocusing his argument and stripping all of their control from it, Ianto made his point. "I refuse permission to stage my death; that's my life out there you want to kill and I can't do that to my team. And I'll think of something to say to Jack that will convey that he is not to search for me any longer. But give me the chance to say goodbye."

Goodbye.

At least he had the chance to say goodbye, he supposed. Torchwood rarely gave the opportunity. Ianto knew to waste it would be foolish; he just had to think of what to say and how to say it. Dr. Ramamurthy was correct insomuch that very little would convince Jack that Ianto wasn't lying and needed rescuing. He could tell Jack about the wings - Ianto was certain that Jack wouldn't mind that he was now 'different' - but the odds of that not fracturing what refuge and safety he had at Lester's was enough to convince him to at least delay that pursuit.

And maybe it wouldn't take much for Jack to forget him, or to move on.

Ianto didn't think he ever would forget.

Dr. Ramamurthy sighed and tilted his chair back on two legs. "I'm going to be out-voted, aren't I?"

"This isn't up for vote." With his mind made up (for the second time), Ianto was adamant. Besides, he couldn't continue worrying about the safety of all the displaced as well as Torchwood's. He had to quit avoiding the fact that his life was no longer normal and he had to deal with loose ends from his former life.

Goodbye.

It did not mean, however, that it wouldn't hurt.

***

Ianto dreamed.

It was surreal, the awareness of dreaming, of controlling his path within his dream and yet he felt pulled by the dream itself in an absence of all control.

But he dreamed; aware within his dream of silken gray fog that he had rested his head to sleep or at least think about Jack.

Gray, sometimes blue flashing cerulean folds within the gray; wasn't gray so much as silvered air. Air? Wasn't air so much as gleaming life in undulating waves.

Or maybe he was the waves.

He dreamed, he was aware he dreamed. He dreamed and he wanted Jack within his dream.

Ianto smiled, or at least he thought he did as the steel fog crackled in jade fire. He felt connected to everything within the billowing gray, connected to all points within as if each quantum particle was affixed to him by a tiny string. As he moved, so did the strings; as he thought, so followed the strings.

Exquisite tempest, dark and powerful swirling black as he spun to embrace the dreamworld. Jack would appreciate the dream, would dance until the storm burst gold, raining drops of white light on Ianto's skin until it infused his very being.

Or perhaps that was simply Jack.

Jack.

Linear thought on moebius tape, winding and twisting, but always the same path and destination no matter if he stood upside down or sideways along normal's face. Ianto searched, or maybe he was led, following his own direction through the sparking gray world until the haze cleared. Where it went he didn't know or care; it just dwindled to nothing like blowing steam from a cup of coffee.

Jack.

Jack lay just how Ianto remembered him from long ago, stretched out in light and shadows the length of his bed, one arm curled over his head and the crisp white bedding gathered at his hip. Before, Ianto had guiltily watched only a moment before scaling up the ladder and fleeing to Lisa within the depths of Torchwood Three. This time within the comforts of his dream he stared, memorizing the plane of Jack's chest, curling down across taunt skin that rose and sank with each breath.

Beautiful.

Beautiful was how Ianto remembered, relaxed and not innocent but pure. A conundrum to be studied and poetically transcribed but never fully realized. Sharp angles and straight lines, gentle curves and tight bends, Jack was a disarray of order and structured chaos, at once living and existing beyond until the story of his body surpassed mankind but never quite touched the divine.

Captain Jack Harkness, just a man with humanity's faults and the immortality of the gods. Would he be worshiped a million years in the future? Ianto wondered as he silently crept forward. Would he be a nameless hero and salvation's grace? Or would he eventually collapse into the darkness kissing the tales of his past, becoming an unstoppable scourge feared by all?

Two shades of one spirit wearing the face of man. Temptations no different than any human but with the capacity for much worse.

Or better.

Within the dream neither mattered on the angled planes of shadow and light. Before Ianto lay just a man. Human with every breath huffing past soft lips, slow and measured in undisturbed sleep. Human in mind and human in heart.

Ianto wanted nothing more than to worship Jack as a mere human himself, not the being he'd become. He didn't know why it was important, or why he so desperately wished it. But Ianto wanted a dream of what once was, of the relationship they long ago shared, not the shredded fragments of history they now were, twisted up in wings and marks.

It was just a dream, a dream he controlled as much as it controlled him.

As Ianto watched, the marks slipped from his skin. They ran like oil glides over metal to reemerge in pattern on the walls, spinning in huge swaths of ebony coils and straight lines as the patterns repeated mark for mark, line for line, in abstract upon Jack's dimly lit walls.

It said something, even within dream, twisting serpentine black before his eyes. But even as Ianto traced a curl up the wall to the ceiling, he couldn't read it any better than had it been on his hand.

His hand, pale and unmarked as it swam in the wan light.

His body, so light and re-balanced in absence of wings.

So human.

Ianto moved, or maybe he didn't move but the room moved around him as he stood still, black lines upon the walls stretching and twisting, pulling and pushing with such force Ianto felt it echoed upon his skin until the whole world snapped in blazing cerulean-touched gray. He was pressed against Jack's bedside, bent low, his tongue just a fraction of a thought away from licking the spot on Jack's neck that drove the man to his knees.

He licked.

Licked and tongued a path from neck to ear as Ianto felt Jack come alive beneath him with a murmured "Ianto" inscribing itself on the wall with the color of Jack's waking breath. His name pulsed with the rest of the black writing, throbbing until the walls themselves bowed with the beat half the tempo of his heart.

Fuck he wanted Jack.

Needed.

Ianto nipped the lobe of Jack's ear, hearing the half-awake moans escalate to a growl that crashed against his skin with the power of waves against a rocky shore. Heady, spiraling, effusive. He floated on the sound, tumbled with it until Ianto realized it wasn't the sound but Jack toppling him onto the bed, a bed so much larger than Jack's narrow mattress that they rolled but never hit wall or edge.

Legs naked and tangled, straight lines and curves as Ianto viewed them splayed on the storm-purple bedding, living replicas of the lines that danced upon the walls of Ianto's bedroom.

Where had Torchwood Three gone?

It didn't matter; Jack didn't seem to notice as Ianto both felt the man's weight pressing down over every touchable inch of Ianto's body and watched from a bird's view. Jack's desperate kiss turned nigh frantic with the need to touch and devour as an endless litany of nonsense and promise poured from his lips and wrote themselves upon the walls.

Promise. Ianto was aware he dreamed, he knew it as he watched himself fan long, pale fingers over the tanned skin of Jack's arse and felt their erections rub deliciously fierce and hot against the other. A dream where time was finite but unlimited and Ianto so ravenously needed that he saw it echoed in Jack as well while neither voiced a word and yet everything was said, everything Ianto could imagine possible and some things yet undefined.

A dream. "Love you," Ianto dared. Not dared, but rather confessed, abusing the privileged freedoms of sleep to test how Jack would react - no, could react to taboo words staining red the innocent white.

"Fuck, Ianto." Jack shuddered as he bowed to crush Ianto's lips, stealing breath no longer there to give as he pressed down in time with Ianto's angled thrusts, bodies curved and blended until they became a ring, joined head and hip while Jack rose and fell on his cock. Ianto'd missed this, he needed this. "Love you, too."

Ianto heard rather than saw the steel fog crackle and snap like flickers of flame dancing over wood as he surged up from his elbows, nearly overturning them but finding balance as the column wavered but stood tall and powerful. Chest plied to chest, Jack straddled his thighs. Shallow and rapid, Jack bounced on Ianto's cock, but no less wanton than the hitched sounds of punctuated words whose beat fell just slightly off rhythm.

Desperate.

A test with an outcome of many, but resulting in the one reply Ianto wanted.

Just a dream, Ianto knew as he watched himself trace the curve of Jack's arse to finger the lube-slicked hole wrapped vise-like around his erection, the touch more a tickled echo on his cock as Jack moved. The kiss deteriorated into more clinging than practiced action; Ianto could taste Jack's building orgasm on his tongue if he weren't already aware of the faltering, frenzied pace. It wrenched his control as easily as it'd been a wisp of dust on the whorling wind, the salty zing of gusts off the Bay reminding him to hold tight to Jack for fear of toppling off the pier.

Jack's cock blazed like a brand between their bellies, a trapped friction superheated until Ianto feared they'd melt through the planks. As the grey fog settled in around them, Ianto felt hot strings of semen rain his skin. Jack's voice dwindled to vibrations rippling across the delicate skin of Ianto's mouth, captured and drowned with the surf of a stormy sea. Ianto quickly followed as the clouds darkened with broad slashes of black. His orgasm more growled than shouted against Jack's lips even as lightning flashed brilliant jade against the night sky.

The dream was ending. He felt it even as his body quaked while coming down from the heavens, weak half-thrusts still attempting to claim every last moment buried deep within Jack, who seemed to sense it as well. Languid kisses turned possessive as he pushed Ianto back into the pier.

Claiming, but claims held no stake in a dream as Ianto soon realized, pier disappearing within sheets of flowing steel tipped in blue.

***

Ianto woke with regret that the dream ever had to end and the distinct displeasure of feeling disgustingly sticky. Fuck, he hadn't done that since his teens. He touched a hand to his stomach, lip curling as he felt the drying semen turning tacky. It was still dark out, Lester and anyone else staying at the place would be sleeping yet, but Ianto's room was far enough away that a shower wouldn't wake the others. Or at least he hoped. With a mammoth yawn as he walked into the lavatory, he blindly fumbled for the light cord and stepped in the shower, letting the water run over his head a moment before locating the flannel.

Jack.

He'd phone him later that day when the lingering whispers of dream-Jack's voice no longer could be heard in Ianto's subconscious. He'd tell Jack ... something, something Jack would believe. He'd had enough of Torchwood, he wasn't going back, he hated them all for sectioning him, doctor's orders - no Torchwood.

Problem was, he didn't believe himself even when he thought that, much less how he would say it when he was actually speaking with the man.

Wasn't going to be easy. At all.

With a curse, Ianto turned his face into the spray and increased the water's heat to barely tolerable. He absently rubbed the bar of soap quickly over his body, ignoring the small fissures of pleasure still burning beneath the surface. Fuck, he even missed his specially blended natural soaps and his pinstriped pajama bottoms. Maybe he could have Lester stage a break-in. Or he could buy new, except he didn't have a bloody job or access to his accounts, which left him feeling even more lost and unsettled than he had when he was a youth working for cash day to day.

He could write books. There was surely a profit to be made on science fiction based on his experiences. Or maybe he could work for the facilities where they tended the criminal elements of alien life on Earth.

What he really needed to do was stop being alien. Imagine that, a Torchwood agent who was actually the very alien Torchwood hunted. Life's irony never failed to bring out the bitter in him.

Frustrated, Ianto quickly shampooed his hair, turning off the water with a bit more force than necessary. He grabbed the towel folded on the shelf, buffing his hair dry while tallying all the places he might be employable.

Pretty limited to recluse within the city with a pernicious twin case of agoraphobia and anthropophobia or a marked freedom in the countryside. Alone, or maybe near Lester to allow for the occasional visitor.

Ianto scoffed at the idea of living in the city, an indelicate snort placing an exclamation point on the thought as he ran his hand over the mirror to clear the condensed steam.

Marked.

He stared at the reflection, heart racing so fast he was sure he'd pass out before he could rationalize what he saw.

Or didn't see.

Holding up his hand directly in front of his eyes, Ianto searched the skin for any trace, any indication, any hint of black.

None. Nothing. Perfectly pale, unmarked skin.

Twisting his head, he anxiously tried to catch a glimpse of his back, stepping a full circle before he realized with a cynical eye roll how inane he must appear and how relieved he was that no one caught him in the act. With his back to the mirror, he turned his head and saw ... nothing.

Nothing but skin covering bone and muscle. No wings, no feathers. Hell, he could see his back.

Light-headed, Ianto sat on the floor, the cold tile freezing his arse but he needed a moment to steady his breathing, to get a grip on himself. With his head pressed to his knees, Ianto looked at them, albeit blurred with the close distance, but there were no blurred lines, no black curves, circles or lines running over the skin there either.

He didn't know how, but fucking hell he didn't care.

***

Watching the expression on Lester's face as he walked into the kitchen was something Ianto would never forget.

He himself couldn't quit smiling. It was ridiculous, he had no bloody clue why, and that should scare the hell out of him as much as actually getting the wings, but he just couldn't make himself stop.

After seeing Ianto, Lester had immediately gotten on his mobile and rung Dr. Ramamurthy - even before making his morning glass of Tang and joining Ianto at the table.

Ianto, sitting in a regular chair instead of on his customary stool.

With a stupid grin on his face that matched the smiley-faced mug he'd hated so much before.

It was a while before Dr. Ramamurthy joined them; Ianto managed to finish two cups of coffee in the silence that stretched between him and Lester. Not altogether uncomfortable, but Ianto could tell he was nearly vibrating with the need to ask questions yet was holding his tongue for the moment. At least Ianto wouldn't have to explain his inability to answer any of those questions more than once.

Upon rushing into the kitchen - Lester had indicated a medical emergency - Dr. Ramamurthy promptly dropped his med kit. "Where the hell did they go?"

Ianto shrugged, eyeing the coffee pot to determine if another mug of coffee was necessary for the morning. "Don't really know. And certainly don't care." Third mug it was; Ianto stood from his chair, noting the absence of the weight on his back and realizing just how quickly he'd reverted to his former sense of balance.

That should probably concern him, too.

He'd forgone the shirt, knowing that Dr. Ramamurthy and Lester would wish to see his back and skin as proof of what they saw. And after days of walking around with no shirt at all, Ianto felt comfortable in his own skin. Well, comfortable so long as there were no wings on his back.

"You should care."

Lester sounded almost disappointed, though Ianto couldn't fathom why. Or he did, he just didn't care to broach that line of conscious thought. Instead, he poured another mug and sipped it while Dr. Ramamurthy continued his shocked, rambled monologue about the implications and theories in utter disconnect from Lester and Ianto. He might as well have been in a room all by himself, though that would have deprived Ianto from his slight amusement at watching the doctor giddy with a boyish glee.

"No, I really can't." Ianto leaned back against the counter, holding his mug in both hands after taking a generous sip. He hadn't lost a single feather when he'd backed into the cabinets after the incident with Wesley. In fact, there hardly seemed a barb out of place. It'd hurt when he'd bumped them, but apparently no damage. But he'd missed leaning, for fuck's sake. "They're gone, and I look normal."

Dr. Ramamurthy interrupted before Lester could argue with him. For the interruption Ianto was thrilled, even if it was to poke at Ianto's skin and prod his shoulder blades. "What happened? How did they go away?"

He shrugged again, itching to escape the exceedingly curious hands of the doctor. It wasn't that Ianto minded the touching, although maybe he did. But it was more unnerving as the doctor's excitement bled through. "I was sleeping, woke up, showered, then noticed the marks and the wings were gone."

"Different approach. What did you alter in your routine?"

Ianto flushed, though he was fairly certain Dr. Ramamurthy wasn't inquiring as to the state of his sheets upon waking. "Nothing different. Ablutions in the same order as every night before bed, laid down - wings and all - slept a couple hours, then woke up."

"And?" Lester's eyes never missed anything, Ianto remembered. Made him good at catching cheats. "What aren't you telling us?"

Flustered, Ianto looked at his feet, then took a sip of coffee before answering. "Dreamed. A very .. .vivid dream."

"A dream- ah ah." Dr. Ramamurthy turned away from his inspection of Ianto's back to wag a finger at him. "Spare us the sordid details. Can you feel the wings? Are they just invisible to our eyes, but still there?"

Concentrating, Ianto thought about what it had felt like when the wings were there. Before, even the slightest rustle of wind ruffled through the feathers, his nerves sparking like wildfire in awareness. But there was simply ... nothing. "No. At least not that I can tell. They're just gone."

"That's not possible. Matter just cannot vanish." Dr. Ramamurthy's voice shifted into his lecture mode; perfect for patients learning of new diseases, but matters of physics, biological constants, and anatomical theories were too much for Ianto to wrap his mind around at this time of morning.

Lester had a fond smile on his face as Dr. Ramamurthy began muttering to himself before he went to retrieve his kit. "What'd you dream about?"

"Jack." Simple answer, but it left him terribly embarrassed. Not embarrassed so much, sex was never an embarrassment, but Ianto preferred to keep such matters private.

"Ah." Lester gestured at Ianto with his glass, proving a pointed question in Tang. "And how did you appear?"

He was fairly certain Lester wasn't looking for a 'naked' answer, though it might have been amusing just to see what kind of reaction he'd get. "I appeared ... like this."

"Wait," Dr. Ramamurthy interrupted, a needle and vial in hand to withdraw blood. "You're telling me he dreams of shagging his partner as a human and poof! he's human? That's not possible. Biology doesn't work like that, not without a glandular development to facilitate shape-shifting, and you didn't have one."

"But I had the wings and marks to begin the dream," Ianto added, not sure if that really mattered as it'd been a dream. It wasn't like he'd gone and had sex with Jack in various locations about Cardiff. The walls didn't move and they didn't say things like 'love you' or anything of the other various rambled promises and endearments.

Just a dream.

"What happened in the dream, to make them go away?"

Ianto had a hard time looking at Lester as he was supposed to answer the question, and he knew full-well why, even if he didn't want to admit it. He looked at the floor instead, ignoring the rubber tourniquet tied round his upper arm. "I just wanted to be normal. Human."

Lester didn't say anything for a long while, then sighed and patted Ianto's shoulder. "I'll leave you in Dr. Ramamurthy's capable hands. If there's an answer, he'll find it."

As he walked away without another word, Ianto felt the initial joy at the discovery dim, just a bit.

***

Ianto cursed as he nearly dropped the PDA for the fourth time that trip; the borrowed device was smaller than the one he was used to driving and tracking with. He shouldn't probably be driving with it; if he was arrested while driving with the thing he wasn't sure that the "Torchwood" claim would work for him. Especially since he lacked any personal information, much less a security badge.

He held the PDA against the steering wheel, one eye on the road and one eye on the blinking marker. And occasionally, Ianto indulged himself and looked at his hand, waving his fingers to admire the mark-free skin.

It'd taken Dr. Ramamurthy less than six hours to declare him completely human ("Impossible!") and Lester a full eight before he'd re-entered the kitchen and demanded Ianto attempt to think himself back ("Are you mad? Why?").

Lester had emphatically stated that Ianto was going nowhere until he changed back. Ianto tried arguing everything from alien STD to parasite to contagious hallucination while Lester fought back with every insult of cowardice and self-loathing in his arsenal - quite full, given the variety of notorious activities he'd been involved in over the years.

In the end, thirty-six hours later in the dead of night and alone in the courtyard, Ianto pictured the dreamworld he'd moved through to get to Jack and reluctantly meditated on 'wings.'

He'd nearly wept as he felt the shift; a soft brush of displaced air inspired him to open his eyes to the marked hand he held in front of his face. It wasn't that he'd honestly believed his 'alien' aspect was truly gone, but for just a moment, there was the sliver of hope that it was all a terrible mistake.

Lester had just nodded when he had seen Ianto, complete with wings and body art, as if his appearance just reaffirmed a belief he held. Then he told told Ianto to repeat it again.

Taking a street corner sharper than he should have given his complete lack of ID, Ianto rechecked the blip on the PDA indicating that his target had yet to move. Didn't mean much in the grand scheme, but it at least gave him a starting point. Timetables had altered drastically earlier that day when a UNIT team broke into Bree's flat, and the investigation escalated far beyond what Ianto would permit. This was obscene; he was just one person and Torchwood was wasting far too much time and dedicated resources instead of performing their real duties.

Thankfully, Bree had been away from her flat when they'd broken in; somehow Lester had been alerted to that and four other 'places of suspicion' including a warehouse, the tiny shop where Ianto purchased his coffee beans, and the residences of two former Torchwood cases. Despite Dr. Ramamurthy's objections and Lester's hesitation as he insisted Ianto wasn't ready yet, he left Lester's in one of the spare vehicles retained on site for such purpose with a borrowed PDA and mobile.

After he'd showered of course. Twice. And made lunch. And carefully labeled his research. Not that he was avoiding the inevitable, but he was. He shouldn't have been nervous, he shouldn't be nervous, but it'd been nearly a month since he'd escaped from Providence and he felt more alien, literally and figuratively, than he had when he'd first joined the Cardiff branch of Torchwood. He felt it all the time now, a certain displacement of self and yet a distinct, albeit surreal, connection to everything. Ianto had made the mistake of attempting to describe the feeling to Lester, who had immediately declared a return to Torchwood off-limits.

Not that Ianto had listened, once Bree had been targeted. He realized he couldn't hide and toy around with his changes forever.

The toying had been interesting. Once he'd gotten the hang of - well, he had no better way to describe it than the strings he'd dreamed about - sort of, tugging on those strings and visualizing either human or alien, he'd ceded to Lester and Dr. Ramamurthy's requests to view it themselves. More anxious than his Torchwood One interview, Ianto had struggled briefly before the two pairs of watching eyes. He never really morphed, they insisted; there had been no fluidity of transition from one appearance to the next, he'd simply gone from human to winged with just a flicker amidst a halo of white-laced electric sky-blue.

There were other things as well. Subtle things that required conscious thought to observe as abnormal action or behavior for himself. Slightly faster reflexes than he remembered having (Lester thanked him for saving a shelf full of trinkets from crashing to the floor), his perception of things alien wasn't limited to just individuals but slowly tech names and uses began filtering in, confirming his suspicions that Lester's place wasn't just made with items found in the recent centuries. But like individuals, it wasn't consistent in quantity or quality. Sometimes just a year was associated, sometimes a race that created it. Mostly, the tech was weapons-related, a development inopportunely timed with venturing into Lester's munitions collection.

The overwhelming quantity of information was too much for him to take in; Ianto woke up on the floor with no recollection of laying down and a concerned Lester standing over him. He mentally collected himself, getting his bearings before facing down the weapons room, this time prepared for the onslaught. And it worked, though he was distracted for some time at the vast array of weapons until he hit one Class F sonic blasting device (a "Banshee" in colloquial terms) from the 79th century and Ianto turned his focus on Lester, yelling at the man for the stupidity of possessing a weapon one couldn't even license, much less have on premises without being charged with a Level-A crime.

Lester had just grinned, though why Ianto wasn't exactly sure.

He'd lost his grin once Ianto had begun dismantling the weapon, tearing it down wire by wire, destroying the main processor and permanently disabling the power supply. No way was such a weapon, capable of horrendous destruction, going to even exist on Earth, much less upon British soil. He handed the shell of the weapon back to a speechless Lester with a promise as much as a warning: "Not even Torchwood should touch such a weapon."

Ianto smirked in memory of Lester's outrage as he waited impatiently for the light to turn green; there was no one on the streets this late at night to even merit the stop. With his recent luck, however, he knew better than to tempt fate. The SUV was nearby, and while Ianto knew he could have staged his return at the Information Centre or on the Plas near the invisible lift (not actually in the Hub as Jack should have changed the security codes per Torchwood Standard Operating Procedure), he had no idea how he would be received if they thought he had been stolen away by a nefarious alien and showed up on their doorstep. Ianto still didn't know how well his reemergence would be taken far away from the Hub, but at least he had the chance to escape before they threw him in a holding cell for a permanent stay,

At least he no longer had wings. Or he did, rather, but had some semblance of control over their appearance.

He parked his car next to the SUV - quite close to the area where Ianto had first met Jack, actually - and listened, as his rigged PDA could only track the SUV's signal, not Jack himself. At least Ianto hoped it was Jack, but at this time of day generally it was Jack on a Weevil chase if he was out.

The sounds of a fight were easy to distinguish and Ianto ran in the general direction, slowing as he approached to maintain some element of surprise. He had no weapon, so he picked up a sturdy-looking branch, wondering again at the felicitousness of events.

Fate had a funny way of amusing itself.

Grimacing at the unpleasant sound of something striking a hard object, Ianto advanced to see a crumpled figure near a tree (he would not consider what it was he heard cracking because that was far too unpleasant a thought for the time) and a Weevil threatened with drool dripping over its fangs.

Why did it always have to be Weevils?

Ianto noted that wasn't actually the species' name, though it was an alternate moniker for the species. 'Kophs' they were called, the entire race held at a medium level threat so Ianto felt little reserve as he struck the alien at the base of its neck with the branch, wincing as the impact vibrated up the wood and into his hands.

Fucking stung.

He didn't have time to waste, however. While the Weevil was dazed he grabbed the discarded spray and hood dropped near the figure Ianto couldn't bear to look at; looked around was more what he was doing. A quick spray and the Weevil went down, luckily one of the few who were still affected by the spray, it would seem. While he was bagging the Koph, Ianto heard Jack gasp back to life, a sound he was far too familiar with but never got used to. What Jack went through - best not think about it, Ianto decided, tightening the cord around the Weevil's neck so it would remain pacified like a horse with blinders.

"Ianto?"

The fact that Jack recognized him from behind, even in denims and a simple tee instead of his standard suit, shouldn't have surprised him as much as it did. Ianto finished knotting the cord as the crunch of footfalls in the leaves behind him indicated movement by Jack. He rose, dusting his knees of the leaves before he turned around.

Now that he was here, Ianto irrationally wanted to flee, run far from Jack and Torchwood, from the bastards who sectioned him and the team he called family. His mind whirled in a bit of a panic set at blazing speeds, he should have listened to Lester: this was too soon, he could have phoned Jack, asked for some more time and to halt the search, bought himself more time to figure out who he was and what he was. But he hadn't, rushing off at the first opportunity because he could pass for a human and he missed Jack, the team, and even Myfanwy without so much of a half-arsed plan to keep him from being deemed a security threat.

Which he wasn't, for the most part. If he helped a few aliens who weren't a threat by protecting them from Torchwood through his position, that wouldn't be that great a threat, would it? He hadn't promised Dr. Ramamurthy he actually would do that, though Ianto had promised to consider it. Jack might even listen if Ianto insisted the ones he could identify weren't a threat. Maybe. Those questions were all for another time, however.

Ianto did acknowledge, however, that this was perhaps not the wisest thing he had ever done.

Holding up his hands so that Jack wouldn't shoot him before he could say anything, Ianto slowly turned on his heel, coming about to see the incredulous look-

Species Profile
Species: BADWOLF
Origin: BADWOLF
Threat Priority Level: BADWOLF
---***---
Individual Profile
Name: BADWOLF
Aliases: BADWOLF
Previous Violations: BADWOLF
Active Warrants: BADWOLF
Threat Priority Level: BADWOLF
Original Status: BADWOLF
Current Status: BADWOLF

-on Jack's face, which he was fairly certain was probably mirrored on his own.

Badwolf? What was Badwolf?

"Ianto?"

"Sorry, just ... remembering," Ianto lied, shaken far more by seeing Jack than he had prepared himself for, not to mention the profiles which were never wrong seeming completely ... hijacked ... when it came to Jack. He had no clue what it meant, but he'd deal with that later. He smiled with more than a little regret as he watched Jack's expression shift not to hostility, but wariness as the Captain's military-trained mind took over. Ianto had known it would come, but he still had no idea how to convince Jack that he was Ianto and not controlled by an outside source. "You've blood..."

As before, Jack stepped away from his touch and Ianto held up his hands in innocence as Jack drew his Webley. "You can see me?"

Ianto nodded with absolute certainty, gesturing with his head at the Weevil as well. "No more dead people, no more light. Just ... you."

Jack seemed as thrown as Ianto felt by the situation; Ianto really should have planned this better. He hadn't thought much beyond locating Jack and he lacked any evidence of any story he might tell, and even less of an explanation for what had gotten him sectioned in the first place.

No explanation other than the truth, and Ianto was not ready to tell Jack that just yet, no matter how accepting of it Jack proclaimed himself to be.

Fuck, usually he was more prepared than this.

"You disappeared." Jack's Webley shook and Ianto hoped it wouldn't accidentally go off; that was not the joyful reunion he had in mind. "We searched everywhere for you, but you'd just disappeared."

"It's called escape, Jack." His tone probably wasn't conducive to encouraging Jack to believe him, but he couldn't stop the cynicism from creeping in. In any event, it was at least helping prevent Ianto from saying that he knew just how much Jack searched. The cynicism wouldn't be fair in that context; Jack and Torchwood searching was every reason why he was there. "I reconnected with an old friend and spent the past month relaxing in the country." Not exactly a lie, though the time hadn't always been relaxing.

"Why didn't you call me?" The gun snapped back into place, Jack's voice sharp with hurt feelings. But really, it was going to take more than a gun aimed at his head to strike fear in his heart.

"You locked me up!" Ianto stepped closer, ignoring the gun. He didn't believe Jack would shoot him anyway, unless he suddenly sprouted wings and looked like an alien, and wouldn't that be an adventure? "Forgive me if my trust in Torchwood was a little less than solid at the time."

Jack's lips twisted themselves into a thin line, whether anger or self-recrimination Ianto wasn't sure, but the gun did lower, a small victory at the very least. "How? You were in no condition to run."

Ianto heard everything within Jack's words that he didn't say, the 'I watched yous' and the 'I saw yous' and the 'I came to you one night and held you while I wept.' He may have seen it as a glorious ball of brilliant white-gold light, but he knew it had been Jack. The 'why' portion of that question was still a mystery to Ianto; the best he could reason was that, as his mind and body changed, so did his ability to define what he was seeing. Maybe. Maybe he had gone just a bit mad for a while there. It'd certainly felt like it. "Please," Ianto scoffed at Jack's question with pure bravado that was every bit bluster as it sounded. "I've escaped from worse."

Daleks. Cybermen. His mother's madness and his childhood. Men with guns and cleavers. Owen-Weevil. Jack leaving him tied to the coffee machine, naked, mere minutes before the rest of the team was due to show for work.

He just kept on escaping and it didn't make sense why.

"Yeah." Jack touched his ear, surprising Ianto as he hadn't figured anyone would be at the Hub. "Found the Weevil. Had a little help catching it." Ianto stood tall as Jack leveled his stare, unyielding but not unforgiving. "Claims he's Ianto."

Ianto winced, knowing he had no evidence to support his claims other than it was really him; he wasn't a Sleeper agent or an alien in disguise (well, not like that), or functioning under the control of someone else. He almost wished he would have gone with one of Dr. Ramamurthy's plans - fake kidnapping and ransom, bruise him up a bit with a concocted story of escape, drop him off at some remote village and fake amnesia for a while. But no, he'd insisted, and if he said it wasn't to return to Jack, he'd be lying.

"You'll see for yourself. Call Owen in. I want to start tests immediately."

"Security Protocol Four," Ianto interrupted, holding out his hands. He knew the Torchwood handbook; hell, he preached it.

Jack actually looked pained at the idea. "Ianto, I'm not going to-"

"Lock me up?" Ianto smiled sadly as he remembered the first awareness of confinement, though it had been far more trapping within his own mind than actual bars and keys. Something else to deal with later. He straightened his shoulders though and raised his chin, determinedly keeping his hands in front of him, wrist to wrist. "I can't prove to you I am who I say I am and you would be a shit leader of Torchwood if you took me at my word. So call Security Protocol Four, it's at least my choice this time."

For a moment, Ianto thought Jack was going to continue to argue, but then he reached into his pocket and removed the wrist restraints Ianto had yet to figure out how to break free from. Security Protocol Four it was, suspected agent contamination or tampering, often used at Torchwood One but never at Torchwood Three; Ianto wasn't sure if that was because London was more paranoid or Cardiff was more lax. "Tosh ... yeah. I know. Look up Security Protocol Four, we play by those rules." Jack looked directly at him while he spoke, snapping the restraints over Ianto's wrists. "It's temporary ... no, I don't want to either. No ... he says he isn't, but maybe a blindfold couldn't hurt?"

Jack asked and Ianto shook his head, vehemently against being blindfolded walking through the Hub, if only to prove there was no cause for them to send him back to Providence Park. There'd be a lot of tech there, but he could handle it. At least he hoped. "No, we won't use one, but good idea ... yeah, neither do I. Loading up, we'll be there in five."

Ianto waited patiently as Jack loaded up the Weevil, then casually checked out Ianto's car after punching in a series of numbers into his wrist strap. Checking for explosives, Ianto knew, and tracking devices. There wouldn't be any; no way would Lester attempt anything of the sort. Then it was into the backseat for Ianto, his restraints hooked through the locking device on the back of the passenger seat. Not exactly comfortable, but he wouldn't complain.

Ask him two months ago, and Ianto would have stared out the window and not said a word. Ask him a month past and Ianto would have laughed at the idea so ludicrous it bordered on the obscene. An alien, in Torchwood?

And now? Fuck, he was actually headed back to Hub, back to his team and his job.

It wasn't perfect, in fact it was far from perfect - he was essentially under arrest until they deemed him no longer a security threat, something he'd initially hoped to avoid - but it was a start.

And there was Jack, checking the rear mirror so often Ianto wondered if he was watching the road at all. Maybe he was afraid Ianto would vanish again, or maybe he just expected an assassin's attempt to kill him before they made it to the Hub.

Or maybe he was happy to have Ianto back.

Truth or not, Ianto indulged, wrapping the notion tight about him like plastic wrap and it kept him warm all the way to Torchwood Three.

***

Three days later, Ianto stood on the pier stretching its wooden finger into the bay. Typically, he didn't venture out, but there was something freeing about standing over the water, land visible out of the corner of one's eyes but ahead, nothing but water.

After months of rather isolated living, the press of people was unnerving, winding its way inside like thousands of worms until he swore he could sense every single person living in Cardiff as easily as he breathed. And confinement within Torchwood had been even worse, though he smiled through it all seeing as how he had actually wanted to get out of the holding cell. Locked up, a captured prize through the looking (plexi)glass, Ianto developed a quick understanding of what could happen should he live as an alien among Torchwood.

Not an option.

The tests had all come back "human" with no signs of alien interference, much as Dr. Ramamurthy's tests had demonstrated. The psych questions all returned within the norms for someone who'd been through what he had in his life, though Owen was hardly the most qualified for quick determinations of mental health. He'd also been subjected to a lie detector test, a pitiful excuse of Maintok tech (cheap imitations of a similar device the Dabstoynes developed, sold for huge profits across the universe to unsuspecting fools).

Ianto had no problem lying when Jack asked him if he was an alien, though technically at that point in time he wasn't. Not exactly, at any rate. Enough doubt that Ianto could literally see how to work the test to maintain a green light.

He hadn't lied about anything else, however. Even if he hadn't told the complete truth. Stress was the reason for the visions, and Ianto certainly had been stressed. Owen didn't believe the stress argument, but the light remained green ("Stress? Bollocks to that." To which Ianto had quickly pointed and asked "Dead? Bullshit.").

The use of the mind probe was rejected immediately by Gwen who proceeded to berate everyone for considering using such a traumatic device on one who'd so recently been so severely traumatized. Perhaps a little over the top by way of delivery - Ianto didn't think he'd seen her so worked up since she refused to Retcon Rhys - but in the end, he didn't complain as the idea was dismissed.

Tosh ran her scanning device over his arm just to be on the safe side, no sense knowingly permitting a sleeper agent to continually broadcast from within the Hub. Not that he was, but he understood their fears and he couldn't exactly waylay them.

He'd been a bit concerned about the length of time he spent in the holding cells and his ability to control the alien side of him - there hadn't been much time to experiment if there was a fixed amount of time he could spend looking human as it hadn't gone well with the initial metamorphosis, but the anxiety was unnecessary. Ianto still did push-ups in the cell to work off some of that nervous energy, however, feeling like he truly belonged in a prison movie when he did so. Owen had mocked him, but Dr. Ramamurthy would have been pleased that Ianto had kept up the strengthening exercises.

Finally, after every test known to Torchwood had been run, Jack set him free and declared that he no longer posed a security threat. Ianto watched as Jack remained where he was, hands stuffed in his trouser pockets - Captain, not partner - as Tosh gave him a happy, tearful hug that Ianto had returned with equal joy.

For her ears only, he quietly thanked her for the wonderful coffee, all those many days.

Gwen had given him a hug as well, hesitant. But once Ianto thanked her for taking over for him while he'd been gone, she sagged in relief, laughing that she was never doing it again because she didn't actually enjoy working.

He did, but maybe he simply had a different perspective.

Owen had surprised them all, a hug so quick if Ianto blinked he would have missed it, then welcomed the tea-boy back to the Hub by demanding coffee cause Gwen's wasn't bad, but it wasn't perfect.

Ianto took that for the compliment it was, all the while watching Jack who never once moved. He didn't know what that meant, what Jack was saying, hell, if Jack was saying anything at all by it. He could have been carved in marble for all Ianto could tell. All of a sudden it felt too much, too real, too many secrets, too normal when he knew how truly abnormal it was, then guilt for even thinking his race could be considered abnormal. The Windhovers weren't abnormal, the Earth simply wasn't built for them, not now, nor possibly ever.

But thinking that didn't stop the shame and Ianto excused himself with the need for fresh air, escaping to the pier.

Lester was disappointed that Ianto had been so quick to return, to run away from the truths secreted away in the eclectically decorated house in the country. But really, Torchwood was as much Ianto as any Windhover heritage or purpose. And here, Ianto felt at home in ways he hadn't since he was five years old and his father would step through the front door at the end of his workday with a flower for his mother's hair.

Torchwood Three, the most dysfunctional collective of disparate characters that somehow worked itself into normal.

Normal was relative, Ianto supposed.

"I'm sorry." Jack's voice didn't startle him - even if he hadn't heard the foot treads, he felt the vibrations in the planks of the pier. But Ianto was a bit surprised Jack had joined him on the pier, standing so close behind him he could feel Jack's breath blow warm apologies into his ear. "I'm so sorry I couldn't ..."

Ianto leaned back into Jack as his voice tapered off into nothing but the swish of the waves lapping against the pier. Hands curled around his waist, seeking the warmth of his skin, the permission to touch granted by Ianto's simple action. Jack's chin followed, resting on Ianto's shoulder. Fuck, he couldn't remember the last time they'd touched when it hadn't been connected to something tragic or extreme.

He couldn't imagine what it'd been like for Jack, although Ianto had some idea what lengths he'd go to when he'd started calling UNIT help for the search effort. Bit ridiculous, if one would ask Ianto, all that effort for just one person.

One not-quite-human person, and Ianto hated the idea of keeping more secrets from Jack. But now was not the time, nor was it his right to share, now when doing so could possibly spill the secrets of the hundreds living free in Cardiff.

Jack wouldn't care, Ianto knew he wouldn't. But Torchwood would know. And that was too much to debate at the moment.

"You have every reason to hate me, to hate all of Torchwood. We... I failed ... you ended up at ... " Jack stopped himself, and Ianto didn't blame him - the rambled half-phrases seemed far too scattered for even Jack. But the silence didn't last with Jack picking up the thread from where he'd left off. "If you want to leave, I won't stop you or Retcon you. We owe you that much. Unless you want to Retcon the last few months, which I could arrange. Whatever you want."

Fuck, if only he could forget the last few months. "I'm not leaving, Jack. And I'm not chasing these memories with a bottle of whisky and a couple amnesia pills, though I may yet try the bottle of whisky idea."

"So, we're good?" Loaded question: Torchwood, Jack, their relationship, all the funny little details shredded by the last few months rolled into a tiny little query.

Sighing, Ianto closed his eyes and relaxed against Jack, wrapped in the great coat and protected from the wind whipping about the Bay. Good? Ianto didn't know that they'd ever return to good. Maybe they could, or maybe they were already. He supposed another argument was primed for the future, one where Ianto unleashed about Providence and Jack railed on Ianto for keeping secrets to which Ianto would retaliate with 'Badwolf?'. But hopefully, that would be a long time down the Torchwood road. Maybe it'd never happen. Ianto was skilled at maintaining secrets, though he really did wonder how long he could keep his heritage from Jack. He still wondered if he even needed to, or if the guilt would consume him for denying it.

Or maybe he'd wake up from a dream, in Jack's bed, with wings protruding from his back.

He'd been wrong about so many things, all of them had, from his vision of his mother until Jack freed him from the cell as he was deemed not a security threat that he didn't know what was actually right anymore and anything was possible.

"Yup, we're good." He didn't lie, not really.

Jack huffed in amusement, cheeks rubbing as they stared out over the Bay. The hands wrapped about his sides turned decidedly naughty as they seduced more than warmed, and Ianto had to resist the urge to stomp on Jack's foot for doing any such thing in public.

"You know, I dreamt about having sex with you right here," Jack mused, his fingers teasing a pattern on Ianto's skin that was so distractingly familiar he almost missed what Jack had said. But his attention fully snapped on Jack's words, even if he didn't outwardly move. "Both of us naked, me riding you, and fuck, the things you were doing with your hands..."

Fin


***


Endnotes:

1. It's done! Clocks in at over 50k words. What do you think, did I take back the plot? *g*

First off, mucho mega super thanks to my wonderful beta lilithilien who kept kicking my ass to get this thing written. Despite it being wing!fic. *g* And then she took it and made all my funky, rambled writing into a beautiful, grammar-friendly piece.

Then to cs_whitewolf, kel_reiley and demotu who provided some much needed reassurance after the first third of the fic or so when I was struggling with the concepts. *blows kisses*

Thank you to the artists, love_jackianto and neo_star0114 who honored me with some amazing art to complement the fic. Beautiful!!

2. A sincere *hug* and thanks to all of you who shared personal stories of dealing with mental illness with me - they were all so touching and my heart goes out to each of you for the day-to-day struggles and tiny battles.

One of the things I was trying to accomplish through this fic was to get the other side, to see things from an altered perspective (like "Requiem for a Dream" which, hands down, kicks the ass of most if not all who attempt to compete with it in the 'seriously disturbing but oh so brilliant' category). Hopefully if there's one impression you walk away w/ (if anything) is that schizophrenia does NOT equal multiple personalities/dissociative identity disorder, no matter what the media tries to tell you (while Ianto's case was obviously alien in origin, I based a lot of the writing/symptoms on my studies of/family experiences w/ schizophrenia). And, while that "crazy lady down the street" who talks to herself and wears a tinhat may seem funny, to them, it's very, very real.

3. On a lighter note, this has laid the groundwork for a series of follow-up fics within the 'verse (cha, what a tease I know). So, expect more! Will Jack find out? Will the team? Just what is a Windhover, what's with this sometimes being human? What was it with that dream? And most importantly, WILL THERE BE WINGSMUT?!?!!? Okay, that last one was added almost as a joke. Almost. I may have been serious about it. Hush, I did write smut! It just ... wasn't wingsmut.

4. And finally, the poem from which the title came. Trust me - read the poem outloud to really get the rhythm of the piece - it's just brilliant.

The Windhover - Hopkins

I caught this morning morning's minion, king-
dom of daylight's dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate's heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,--the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: sheer plod makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

***

Next story in series - The Windhovers: The Fledgling.

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