notevery | Torchwood fic: Lost (Part One)

Title: Lost (Part One of Two)
Rating: PG. Allusions to violence.
Characters: Gwen, Owen, Toshiko, the pterodactyl, and primarily Jack/Ianto.
Spoilers: Set post Countrycide (1.06) with spoilers to match.
Other notes: Sister fic to Found. Comments and constructive criticism welcomed!

Thanks for the beta go to the lovely

katharynne, for grammar and canon checking, whilst

azdaja_dafema worked on the sexy stuff in part two. Any remaining mistakes are my fault, not theirs.

Part Two, rated NC-17 for language and sexual situations, will be posted tomorrow.

Information on the Welsh mentioned in the fic is available:
Bara brith
Ffroes eira (snow pancakes)
Crempogs, and the song about them

Summary: Toshiko says a 'thank you'; Jack drives; Ianto realizes that nothing will ever be the same again.

* * *

Ianto stares at his hands and tries to remember how to breathe. It’s amazing, really – how hard and how beautiful that simple action is. Muscles expanding and contracting, internal pressures shifting and rebalancing, his lungs filling with chill, fresh air. Country air. The faint smell of grass and the vague tang of autumn remind him of a childhood out in the valleys – of Welsh, with its lilting vowels and thick consonant clusters sticking to his tongue, its fluidity and grit impossible to lose; of bara brith, ffroes eira on his birthday, and crempogs dripping with hot butter – sgwelwch chi’n dda ga i grempog? Mae ‘ngheg i'n grimpin grempog…

Years on, miles away from home, the old song still makes him hungry.

He squeezes his hands tightly into fists and lets out the shuddering breath he was not aware he was holding, shoulders slumping down. After a pause, he reaches up tentatively to touch his face – blood free, after his session with the paramedic in the ambulance, though antiseptic swabs couldn’t clear the bruising or remove the dull pain-throb from his forehead. He feels dazed and dizzy, cotton wool packed tight into his skull, but they said he was fine: told him to have some nice sugary tea, to keep warm, to ‘take it easy’ for a couple of days. To put this all behind him.

And physically, he is fine: he knows that. He’s alive. Able to feel the hard press of the car bumper behind his thighs as he sits in the open boot; aware of the sharp ridges of the gravel through the thin soles of his trainers; conscious of the people and the voices flowing about him. He is lucky. Even after the fear and the blood and the touch of that man’s hands and the cold metal cleaver on his neck, he is lucky. Lucky to have lived to see Jack shooting left right and centre. Lucky to have spent those countless minutes drifting in and out of consciousness in the smothering, cloying blackness of the bag. Lucky to have been alive to whimper with fear.

His stomach clenches and twists. ‘Lucky’.

Mae Mam rhy dlawd i dlawd i brynu blawd…

“Ianto. May I…?”

He moves up so Toshiko can sit beside him, tilting his head towards her and smiling tight-lipped. Across the courtyard, a car door slams.

Toshiko is quiet for a long time: she looks straight ahead; pulls a PDA from her pocket; slides the wand from the groove; clicks a few buttons. She smells of sweat and blood and, very faint under that, her perfume: something expensive. Amazing, how quickly civilized society – designer perfumes and well-ironed shirts and office manners – is pushed away, crushed by the weight of survival. Amazing, too, how quickly the woman can revert back into the old rhythm of technology and world-saving.

Ianto doesn’t know how she does it.

“I wanted to say,” Tosh says finally, letting her PDA rest in her lap, “that… What you did in there, Ianto. Thank you.”

His breath catches, suddenly searing in his throat, and a sharp pain pounds at his temples. Mae ‘Nhad rhy ddiog i weithio.

Raising his shoulders jerkily, he shrugs; looks up at the impassive grey sky, infinitely uncaring, and is suddenly breathless in the face of the size of it all; cowed by his own insignificance. What of Cybermen and Rifts, what of expensive suits and Torchwood when faced with this – the nature that will go on for so much longer than he will, or his memory? Faced with the impenetrable slope of the high, high hills, everything seems so pointless.

“Didn’t work, did it? It was Jack who saved us in the end.”

Her hand is light on his thigh, her squeeze gentle. “It took more courage to do what you did.”

‘Sgwelwch chi’n dda ga i grempog.

Jack does not let Ianto drive them back: his hands are shaking uncontrollably, and he cannot fasten his own seatbelt. Toshiko does it for him, wordless: leaning forward from the backseat she’s sharing with Owen and Gwen, her fingers brushing his outer thigh, pressing the metal loop into the waiting slot with a deft click.

Jack drives. After adjusting the seat (distance from pedals; slope of backrest) he turns the key sharply in the ignition, and the purr of the awakened engines thrums through the body of the vehicle, rocking soothingly against Ianto’s back and thighs: a gasoline and metal lullaby that alleviates the aches and pains in Ianto’s body; quiets him to sleep.

Half-dreaming, bursting briefly into consciousness with gasps and starts, Ianto is not sure of what he dreams and what is felt. His experience of the journey is hallucinatory: encased in a flying box of metal he can see himself, third person, cutting a searing arc of light through the Welsh night; reopening the dual-carriageway wound through the hills and the lowlands. He imagines he can hear the earth crying out. There is phantom blood in his mouth.

He is not sure if he imagines Jack’s hand brushing his thigh, Jack’s fingers stroking his leg briefly as he reaches for the gearstick.

When Ianto is properly conscious they are already in Cardiff, pulling up outside a tall building illuminated with the warm yellow glow of streetlamps. There is speaking: Jack’s voice, as he twists in his chair to look into the backseat; Owen’s, as he opens his door, unclips his belt, and maybe – or perhaps, Ianto thinks, this is a part of his dream again – looks at Gwen for too long, brushes against her unnecessarily as he slips out.

“I expect you back on Wednesday, understand? The Rift won’t wait for you before it starts spitting aliens out over Cardiff again,” Jack calls out through his half-open window, voice hoarse in the cold night. “You hear that, Owen?”

Owen pulls his bag from the boot before slamming the door unnecessarily hard, stepping up onto the pavement and snarling a not-smile at Jack.

“Why would I want to stay away from your charming company, Harkness?”

Ianto twists his head, muscles scraping over each other, to watch Owen as they pull away. He can’t help but notice that Gwen does, too.

Toshiko insists on being dropped off at Cardiff Central Station. They pull up as close as possible to the pavement, so close that Ianto is startled by the sudden press of late-night commuters about them; Jack flicks on the hazards.

“I can just drop you home, Tosh.”

Ianto can see her white teeth in the wing mirror, can recognize the unforgiving blankness of her smile. “No. This is fine. I’ll see you on Wednesday, yes?” A nod to Gwen, a look to Jack, and then Ianto feels the light touch of her fingertips on his shoulder before she slips out of the car and is instantly lost in the crowd.

Jack smiles too wide and too bright. “Well, and that leaves three. How do you feel about picking up a pizza?”

Ianto can hear Gwen slide into the seat vacated by Tosh; can see her reflection rest her forehead on the glass of the window.

“Just take me home, please.”

Jack waits to see that Gwen is safely inside before he looks to Ianto. His smile is precarious, now: it is slipping slightly over the left side of his mouth, and his frown is more pronounced. The faint blue glow of the GPS screen reveals just how tightly his fingers are gripping the steering wheel.

“And where can I drop you off, Ianto Jones?”

“I’ll get home from the Hub,” Ianto replies in a monotone, picking at a loose thread of his jeans. There are stains over the knees he would rather not think about.

“Sure? After everyone else has had the bona fide Torchwood taxi service I’d feel bad if –”

“The Hub,” Ianto repeats firmly, twisting his head to the side to look out of his window at the concrete city. “I need to check on the pterodactyl, sir.”

Ianto turns the dial of the shower up to ‘high’ and hisses as the hot water burns his skin. The scrapes of the scrubbing brush, red and irritated, blend in with the angry flush where the hot water hits; underneath – blurred by the water and tears in Ianto’s eyes, shaken with his trembling – the splatters of blood are still visible. Irremovable. Blood and bruises and scrapes. The man’s fingers. The inside of the bag. The smell of the cleaver –

The tiles of the shower cubicle are chill against Ianto’s forehead and nose, and he gulps in deep breaths of the recycled city air, bracing his arms against the walls and trying to clench his muscles into stillness – every tendon and ligament vibrating with energy, an acid taste in his mouth that water, coffee, soap will not remove. Curling his toes, ducking his head, he squeezes his eyes tight shut and draws in a deep, shuddering breath. Behind his eyes, light glints on the blade of knives and hooks.

He feels such a failure. This is not what he is good at. Not going out into the middle of nowhere; not using guns; not nearly dying. He is a suit, as Owen said scathingly on his first day in Torchwood Three, when he took the coffee that Ianto had spent an hour preparing, perfecting. He should be dealing with numbers and logistics and communications. He should be the shadow behind the scenes.

You can’t catch shadows. You can’t cut them. If you’re a shadow, you can come and you can go. People forget, and that’s for the best.

He dries himself on one of Jack’s towels. It looks clean, but it smells of the Captain – of his aftershave. Of his sweat. Of his skin.

Ianto folds the towel once he is done with it; rests it beside the sink neater than he found it. Without thinking, he reaches up to straighten Jack’s tube of toothpaste, arranging it parallel to the edge of the shelf.

The suit has not been pressed since Ianto wore it last, but the feel of the smooth, expensive fabric under his fingertips calms him, and for the first time since the country he feels relaxed, in control. The tension flows out of him, loosening the muscles over his back and arms; his breathing comes easy and a weight fades from his belly. As he buttons his top button, ties his tie, clicks on his cufflinks, he stands straighter, stands taller.

If he has to be the civilian in Torchwood, he will at least be the best he can be.

Sgwelwch chi’n dda ga i grempog…

* * *

Onto Part Two

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

elfinessy.livejournal.com

stunning, absolutely stunning. (even if Jack didn't join him in his burning shower... ;-)

Beautifully written, heart-wrenching and such an incredible insight to Ianto's so real feelings. I love this.

From:

Torchwood fic: Lost (Part One)

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