[BTR|RP] Without the light of wisdom, what else can be done?

[eelseason]

{BACKDATED FOREVER; LOCKED TO IANTO. Follows this madness.}

As it turns out, Elashte is either not as invested in answering Jack's proverbial phonecalls these days as he could be, or Jack chose a rather poor time to try to get in touch with him. And with Mio being not exactly a mindhealer, and the Vesmier being in a different country and rather comprehensively out of reach...

If it takes him a bit longer to find Ianto than it should, it's because he's had to track down a few tools he'd rather never have had cause to use again, and stow them safely in a dark canvas bag. And he's had to do quite a number of mental gymnastics to pout himself in a state where he can think yes, it's time to break someone and not turn around and walk straight for his link severer.

Some days, it's all he can do not to strangle Owen for dragging him back from that brink.

He knocks twice at Ianto's cell door before letting himself in, more as an announcement of his presence than any need for permission to enter. Once he steps in he activates the command on his wrist device that locks the door from the outside – thank you, Torchwood op-techs – and drops the bag, which lands with a soft jangle just inside the door.

He gives a smile that's more rue than warmth.

"So, I guess this is going to happen the hard way."

Comments

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

Ianto has been doing what Ianto does best these days: living in his head. Also, reminding himself of all the truly bad things he's done the last month or so. It's probably not healthy, but when has he really been known for making healthy life decisions? Being retconned after Lisa probably would have been wise, but instead he decided to stay and then fall in love with Jack, who shot her in the head. So he supposes that on the list of stupid things he's done, wallowing in his guilt is hardly the most destructive.

He looks up when Jack walks into his cell. His appearance reflects his mood, and he hasn't slept since Jack left. Sleeping means leaving the pain behind, and that means allowing his body to sink back into madness... so he hasn't slept, and has kept himself awake by standing up and doing push ups every twenty minutes. Very painful push ups, given his condition, but at least that's keeping him awake.

"Hey," he says quietly, glancing down at the bag for a moment, before back up at Jack. "Should I ask what the hard way is, or find out during so it's a fun surprise?" His voice probably shouldn't contain quite that much amusement, but he hasn't slept in a couple of days. His sense of humor is skewed.

[eelseason]

"Well, that depends," Jack says, steadily putting his mental controls in place. He's keeping part of his attention tuned to his own expression, his own tone and posture – both the physical kind and the more sociological definition drilled into him in the Agency. His posture in that sense is easy: torturer.

How much do you trust me? is what he'd like to ask, but that's quickly quashed. That's an emotional question, not a tactical one. His job is to coerce that trust, not scavenge it.

"Do you prefer dread or unpleasant surprises?" he asks, locking his eyes on Ianto's. There's a moment where his entire manner is analyzing – like he's looking at one of Owen's dissected alien corpses, or the guts of one of Toshiko's programs. Ianto's not a person, here, he's a bundle of psychoprogramming and encoded reactions, jammed into a collection of nerve endings and sensory organs.

Then his expression softens again, modulating into a light, attentive concern. It's neutral enough that he can move in any direction – harder, softer, more intimate, more aloof. He's gauging reactions. It's always easier to do this once you're tuned to a person.

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

The truth was, Ianto trusts Jack, more than he'd like to, and certainly more than he's proud to admit. He should be more jaded, especially considering his short life thus far, but he finds himself unable to forget their relationship, no matter how hard he tries, and back home, even if he was wrong, Jack always tried to do what was best. What's best was not always was was easy.

This looks like another one of those times, especially if he takes Jack's facial expression into account. He stares back gray-blue eyes meeting brighter blue ones, Jack's expression almost calculating. He doesn't flinch, but he wants to. There's something there that sends a shiver up his spine, and he flexes his fingers to remind himself that he's human, not an animal. He's been acting like an animal, but they are going to fix it.

They have to, or he's finding the nearest firearm and finishing it off before he gets worse.

"I hate surprises, you know that," he responds neutrally, wanting to break away from Jack's gaze, but knowing he shouldn't. "I'm not big on adrenaline rushes or life-or-death situations. I'm also not big on being seem as a proponent of strangling pretty women, so I think I'll deal with whatever it is you have planned." He pauses, standing up, hands on his hips. It's his nervous gesture of choice. "Do whatever you think will fix this."

[eelseason]

Two small tickmarks fill themselves in, in the back of Jack's mind.

One: honesty feeds to intimacy here.

Two: surprise unbalances here.

Both good things to know.

He exhales, then gestures back to the edge of the bed. (Chair might be more comfortable; a more professional spot, less vulnerable. That's exactly why he doesn't indicate it.) "Sit."

It only gets worse from here.

"I'm a compliance officer," he says. "Technically. Eletor-Instagur of the Time Agency, specializing in information extraction and compliance. Call me a torturer emeritus." The corner of his mouth ticks up, but the smile is gone in an instant. "What you have is a set of conditionings which are causing problems I don't want to deal with, so it's my job to either dismantle the impulse you suffer to do that, or set up psychological systems that don't let you follow through on them. Now, there are ways to do all of this that don't factor down to physical pain. But I'm not going to call any of them 'pleasant'."

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

Is it pathetic that he now knows more about Jack's life because he's been killing people than he ever did as a good employee? He's noticed a pattern with Jack; be bad, and he reveals something about himself. Too bad Ianto has pesky morals, otherwise he might act out just to get some answers.

He sits down on the bed with as much dignity as he can manage, being covered in bruises and lacerations. He's used to it by now, but that doesn't mean it hurts any less. He's again reminded of the cannibals and how terrible he felt afterward.

Then he had sex, and all the pain paled in comparison. Amazing how it works that way. Somehow he doubts this is all ending with a good shagging.

He's actually feeling a bit of pity now for Jack, because the Jack he knows doesn't particularly enjoy causing pain, even if he's capable of it. He's seen Jack shoot out kneecaps and sacrifice small children for the sake of the world, but that didn't mean Jack lacked remorse. He suspects in order to do the job for the Time Agency, Jack had to shove down all that remorse.

"I doubt I'm going to enjoy it," he says honestly, staring down at his fingers now. "But I also deserve it, and it's necessary. I'm more worried about what this is going to do to you than what you're going to do to me." He doesn't want to further damage Jack's humanity; he knows how the other man fights against losing it altogether.

[eelseason]

There's a flicker at the corner of Jack's eyes, there – an involuntary reaction, still mostly obscured; a brief brush against raw nerve. Because it's always about him, isn't it? He remembers Suzie, coming to him, asking what he or she or anyone could do about the torturer who got his hands on Sark, afraid for what it could mean if Jack – J, then – let himself go after him.

Of course, to a point, it made sense. On a good day, he walked more cliffs than any of them. And these cliffs? They'd be first in line to get hurt, the instant he fell.

There are things he could say. Can't do anything to me, for one – everything that could happen has already been done, six or ten times over. But this isn't about him, and he's not going to let the conversation stray.

"I'm right here," he says, softening his voice by degrees. Not much – he's steady, official, in a posture of command, but there's just enough give to lend a tinge of Lean on me to his tone. I'm the one you turn to when it hurts. "We'll start shallow. First off, tell me everything you can about your riftpower."

Breaking empaths is always a challenge of its own echelon. It helps, though, when the empath is complicit in being broken.

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

For Ianto it is always about Jack. Love boarding on obsessive, the man fills a void in his life left by a dead woman. He's long accepted the fact that he needs to be needed, and loves to be useful. He dedicates himself wholly to one person and one situation and performs magnificently.

That's been working out really well for him so far; he should probably figure out a new life plan before the current one drives him even more insane.

He still trusts Jack though, even this Jack, who's been through events Ianto isn't privy to, and might never be. So he listens when Jack's voice sounds understanding, even if inside, he probably recognizes it for what it is. It's not affection, or love, it's manipulation, but he doesn't care. Even the impression of emotion is enough.

"It's empathy," he replies dryly, and almost stops there, as though that's enough. "I can feel other people's emotions and categorize them. I've made several different lists and sublists already. I thought about color coding them based on the way the emotion made me feel, but I've decided that's not specific enough; it's too theoretical. I can block out people better now, but it still seeps through. Apparently I should be able to project my emotions upon other people soon enough, once I retain the proper control."

[eelseason]

"Okay," Jack says. "Fix on me." And Ianto might not be able to sense anything, not yet – Jack's got every shield he can muster up at full strength, partially because psychics and empaths of almost every variety still make his skin crawl, partly because it's protocol. "Just the quiet." The corner of his mouth ticks up again.

One mote of stability. One channel of communication and influence. It's enough to start with.

"Adam," he says. "Contact psychic. Mnemnomorph, from what you've told me. I want you to go back to the first strong memory you have of him. Not the first memory, but the earliest you have that jumps to the front of your mind."

Adam would have laid false memories indicating events in the past. He would have convinced Ianto that thy were friends, that they had a shared history, but those background memories wouldn't have to be complete – just enough for the mind to gloss over and reassure itself that yes, there was substance there. It's the real memory which would have the most meat on its bones, and the most bones, as well.

"Find the one you can go into," Jack says, letting his voice hit a rhythm and stay there. It's half trance-talking and half a light order: Here are the instructions. I know you're competent enough to follow them. "The one you can taste and smell. You can reach out and feel what you're standing next to. Close your eyes and go there."

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

The first memory Ianto has of Adam, the first palpable one, is of the moment he walked into Torchwood that morning the alien arrived and took over. He remembers wondering who Adam was, but it was all a funny joke, right?

Funny, haha, Ianto. We're friends, remember? We watch James Bond together. Except when he does watch James Bond it's either alone at his flat or curled up against Jack. He can recall watching them with Adam now, but it's hazy. He can distinctly remember watching them with Jack, however, the way they both were dressed, the film itself... not Adam.

Adam wasn't there.

He knows this, because his diary already told him. Adam isn't mentioned when the rest of them are. He immediately recognized that as wrong, because he knows everything and writes it down. He didn't write Adam down and therefore Adam doesn't exist.

And then Adam brought the bad memories. He feels his breath hitch as he remembers, and the images flash in his head, a kaleidoscope of bright colors, the most prominent of which is red. Red is his color, after all, bold and vibrant in a way he never is. Adam convinced him he saw red on a nightly basis, on the steps of a church, sprinkled over garbage in a filthy alleyway. Those memories are so implanted that he smells it right now, mingling with Jack's specific scent.

At least he doesn’t love it anymore, and it sickens him that he used to feel bliss when he smelled it mingling with the scent of sweat and tears, salty and moist, clinging to vein-laced skin that purpled with the tightening of his grip, bones that cracked under his hands. That sensation is palpable and fresh and definitely not made up. He's done it now, and he can't even stand to look at himself in the mirror.

He gasps, opening his eyes, aware that he's shaking and in a cold-sweat, his body rejecting the memories but unable to throw them out. He stares up at Jack, and all he wants to do is run away from this.

[eelseason]

Jack watches, taking in the motion of the fine muscles of the hands and face, the pupil dilation when Ianto looks at him again. That's a definite stress line – palpable cognitive dissonance and distress.

He steps closer, reaching out to cover one eye with his palm. "Eyes closed," he says – gentle command. Most people rely on their eyesight more than their other senses. Take that away, and you push them into a more vulnerable state.

Vulnerable is exactly where you want someone you're targeting for compliance.

"Just feel." His hand slips down, cradling the side of Ianto's neck, carefully positioned to track Ianto's heartbeat without being obvious about doing so. This is just contact. Just human contact. That's all.

At the same time, he lets a shield slip, calling up a sense of rock-solid competence and allowing it to seep out. Nothing dramatic, not just yet. Almost subconscious. Look at me. I've got everything in the palm of my hand. I'm in control. Don't you want to fall to that control?

"He made you want something," he says. "With every ounce of your body." Didn't he? Ianto is compliant enough already that he doesn't need to feel his way through, ask questions. He can pretty much tell him the answers he needs to work with. "A hunger for the hunt. There was a moment when it was too much, too sharp; you'd never consider it. And then right down to the pit of your stomach it was there, pulling you down those alleys, and you could taste it on the back of your tongue."

Another slight slip past the shields, still subtle. Fix on me. And there's the old hunger, the perverse twist on empathy they carved into him in the Agency. I'll own you. With your blood on your hands I'll own you and I need you...

And of course, This is what it feels like, isn't it? Come a little bit closer.

"That one moment where it changed. That spark." ianto got a primary and proximate authority in one session, levered right into his mind.

Jack is pretty sure he can supplant that.

"I want you there." Ease back on the shield. Let the hunger rise. "Right. There."

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

Normally Ianto would be backing around right now, avoiding any vulnerability, but he's making himself calm down. He trusts Jack, just not himself. He needs this to work to have a sense of self again, but he's terrified of confronting what he's become.

The moment where he became this. He now knows there was a moment, but he can't separate reality from the false memories, and that's the part he needs help with.

He remembers confronting Adam.

Our little secret.

His perverse desires were known by Adam, but he promised to keep them a secret from Jack, so the immortal wouldn't hate him. That was why he and Adam were best friends, closer than brothers. Adam protects him.

Except Adam fed him falsehoods and made him something he's not. He can recall the man's hands on him, making him see those things, changing the way his brain works so he's no longer Ianto anymore, but a fading version of himself without the control he's so proud of.

"He put his hands on me," he says quietly, his voice distant and flat. Inside he's screaming to stop, because he doesn't want to remember this. It hurts too much and he's gone to hate himself at the end of it. "He made me recall what I am, and it hurt so badly, physically yes, but mentally my brain felt like it was being torn apart." He manages to almost repress the shiver, Jack's hands an odd anchor. "I resisted because it's not who I am. I don't think that way." There was a moment where he fought back, but then Adam crushed it.

[eelseason]

"There was nothing to recall," Jack says. He steps closer, drawing Ianto's head down until his forehead touches his chest. You're listening, right? You're sensing. Quiet competence. "Think back. You can remember the quiet before the crash. The breath of air before the memory."

And this – this is tricky. He closes his own eyes, then; evens out his breathing, takes very baseline he's ever established from Ianto, every scrap of psychological profiling... and then turns it. Steps inside. Replicates it right into his own emotional state, pushing it over his shields.

A dark, quiet loyalty. Carbon-innocuous; carbon-strong. Watching, waiting, learning everything just to be able to be that much more necessary, that much more invisible. It would be heroic, really; and the more palatable sort of heroics, and the aversion to running in with guns blazing was equal elements jealousy and lack of confidence and distaste and dignity. But at the same time, things had to be done. Things were done in accordance to these inner imperatives – love so strong t hurt, anger so black it choked, all hard and steady as pavement.

Good old Ianto. Loyal Ianto. No, the point here is not that there was never darkness in him. For one thing, Jack rarely recruits for that. But it was just this: low and everpresent, like a fault line in the earth, not this predatorial thing. Know thyself, they say. And this is as close to a mirror as Jack can provide.

His voice is low and even. "Are you following?"

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

Seeing his own personality push back on his, the fragments of Jack's perceptions of him, doesn't particularly make him any less self-loathing. Ianto's always fought society's perceptions of who he should be. His family would have been happy with him staying home, working at a shop, but he pushed back.

Now here he is, trying to push forward, through a haze of self-doubt and hate, to the person he really is, underneath all the false memories. Cowardly unless faced with life-threatening danger or unless someone he loves is suffering. First his focus was Lisa, now it's Jack, and even being this close he can remember how Jack makes him feel. It hurts, because he's trying to put that love before all the hate and false desire to kill.

He is a constant in Ianto's life, something to focus on when all other parts of his being could be doubted. He's passionate, painfully and stupidly loyal, almost blind to Jack's faults but never completely forgetting that the other man won't let himself fall in love because it never turns out well. Everyone around him dies, and Ianto has always accepted that it's only a matter of time before he does as well. Facing this hurts, and he bites down a choked noise, resisting the urge to pull back and hide again. "That's who I am, not who Adam told me I am."

[eelseason]

"Yeah," Jack says, quietly. "And I'm going to lead you back here. Right out of where you are."

His fingers twine in Ianto's hair. Everything is intertwined, here – power and symbolism and suggestion and reminder and recall. Being this close is not a foreign situation to either one of them, even when it's been perverted from both sides – by Adam or Thane, false memories or buried, this side of the Rift or the other.

"But you need to find the way out," he says, and starts letting the emotion he's not shielding... slide. The thrum of loyalty becomes dependence, then yearning; the watching becomes predatory; the love, hunger. For violence, for power. For one thing to change and choke itself out under an action of will.

It's not easy, but it's too easy at the same time. All he has to do is dip back down into his Agency days, remember how it felt to be so poisonous and feral. He can reconstruct a persona from the things Ianto's told him and what he himself has seen. Adam went for the clichés. Jack Harkness, John Thane, Jarec Issendur, all of his various name codes, understood those.

Tell me when it's right, he thinks. His hand is steady at the back of Ianto's head, preventing him from pulling away. "Tell me when this hurts."

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

He's confused then, because beyond the myriad of emotions he's attempting to understand and bring up, Jack is asking him to tell him when it hurts. SO far the entire experience is nothing like he expected it to be, the touches almost gentle. He expected pain, anticipated it, lay awake thinking about it. He wants it because he wants to atone for what he's done, and somewhere inside of Ianto's mind, agony seems appropriate. He emotionally tortured himself after Lisa, only able to let go after cannibals beat him almost to death, and then he connected to Jack.

That is how Ianto functions. He connects to one solitary person and bases his entire being on them. He lives for Jack, and that is both terrifying and exhilarating for him. Being in love is an emotion he's familiar with, one he grasps for, but it's also a painful emotion. A contrast, pleasure and pain, intertwined in every memory of Jack.

That's when the pain begins. He hates how much he needs Jack because it makes him weaker. It makes him dependent, and Adam gave him a way out. Killing took the place of love, his need for the sensation of a neck struggling to take in air outweighing his need for Jack. Now that need to be himself again, the feel those emotions poignantly, is trying to shove through the false memories Adam gifted him with.

"It's hurts," he whispers, and the pain builds, thrumming in his head, harder and harder. He can almost hear the tears before he feels them, warm and wet on cold skin. He's shaking, his breath still controlled but every third or fourth he can hear a hitch, as the panic begins. What if he wants to stay this way? He's not as desperate for Jack's approval this way; he's his own person, free of regret, free of the pain of losing Lisa. He can be his own man.

[eelseason]

Jack stays steady, focusing on echoing that pain.

Because there was a time, in the Agency, a long time, when he'd been a goddamn border prince. Regents and seneschals would bow or get out of his way. Oh, he was higher than a kite, keener than a knife...

And every day, every moment he paused to know what he was doing, every instant he thought instead of letting inertia carry him, there was a disgust so deep it became a palpable hurt.

he learned to twist it. He learned to convince his experiencing mind that it was the ache of a sore muscle, or the sort of nostalgia people hit when they thought about their own mortality, or a natural apprehension about passing beyond so many rules and lines. He can feel that now, coiling at his diaphragm; the old torturer techniques, the old torturer sickness.

He crouches down in front of the bed edge, drawing Ianto down into a closer embrace. Stay here. It's a comforting gesture, with the added benefit of bringing Ianto solidly into his sphere of control. He can read every tremor of muscle or irregularity of breath. And he can keep Ianto here.

Let the panic run its course, is his instinct. Either the urge to get lost in this will break, like a fever, or it'll take root and push Ianto into a backslide – and if it's the latter, Ianto wouldn't have been a soft break, anyway.

So he holds on, hoping for the moment when something has to give – when it's clear to Ianto's animal hindbrain that either this feeling itself is the enemy, or Jack is.

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

That embrace is more agonizing than the convoluted memories are. It brings back sensations, feelings and emotions he's managed to ignore, shut away in a little box since he arrived here. Because he's very stupid, oh so stupid, he reaches up and clings to Jack's shirt, gripping right below the arms.

He tells himself that touching Jack will make this all easier, but he knows he's lying to himself. He wants to touch because he's human, and even Ianto at his most dead inside wants to be human. Jack gives him a reason to live, but he also makes him feel human, because what is more human than being in love? Jack is his safety net and so he clings.

He begins to shudder, as the memories continue to fight back. They want to stay, they want to convince Ianto that Jack is the enemy, that he's invading who Ianto is and making him someone he's night.

Jack wants to take away his independence.

He's trying to control his emotions. Using them to make Ianto his perfect servant again.

He begins to struggle against Jack, trying to push him away, in the same way the memories are pushing back against his sanity. He hears his breath hitching in a panic, and he wants to stop, but he can't, every inch of his being fighting back against closure. Fight or flight, and in this case, Ianto's mind is ordering him to flee.

[eelseason]

"Ianto."

Jack recognizes the moment he starts to slip – hard not to, when it comes with that sort of a struggle. His voice is sharp.

"Where do you want to be, right now? Think." Is it in an alley somewhere? Is it at my side in Torchwood? He's not letting go. You have to go through this. There's no running away. "You can think."

It's a terribly crude, half-hour assisted break he's looking for, here; the kind of break you can only force when you're working with an entire history. Even so, he's got to prepare himself for the ways this could go. If Ianto breaks down, that's one thing. If he attacks him...

Well, he's made a wrong choice, and that's what Jack gets to break him from.

Come on. His own heart is beginning to speed up, and he almost tries to biofeedback that back down. Come ON. You've got to hate something. What's it going to be?

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

At one point, Torchwood was all he had. Then it was Jack, with his bloody charisma and pheromones. Now it is the hunt, that pumping of adrenaline through his veins when he is about to kill someone, trap them in an alleyway.

Only two out of the three are real. He remembers Torchwood, craves it. Even in their worst moments he felt more like Torchwood was his family than his biological one. He doesn't feel like he belongs in the Jones family, with his high cheekbones and striking eyes. He's always considered himself too smart as well, but he knows that's arrogance. Rhi is smart, in her own way. She doesn't fool herself into thinking that there's something better than having children and just existing. Ianto wants more, and that's why he's here, in a cold sweat, trying to separate reality from fantasy.

Where does he want to be? With Jack is a simple answer, but he's not even sure if he's capable of that anymore.

"Here," he whispers. "As myself." The funny thing is, he's perfectly capable of hating Jack. He has it within him to be himself again, free of the bloodlust, and hate Jack. He certainly has reasons to, from Lisa to the way Jack looks at Gwen when he thinks no one is looking. This Jack doesn't do that, and even though they don't know each other, Ianto can't make himself hate Jack.

He calms down, just barely, even though he's still shaking. It's a start; he's not panicking anymore.

[eelseason]

Here.

One long process of Jack's hindbrain wends down, begins to settle. A quiet tension in his fingertips goes away.

(Soft break.)

He preses his lips to the crown of Ianto's head. It's not quite a kiss – one would be hard-pressed to say exactly what it was.

"When I was in the Agency," he says, "this was normal." And lets that hunger, that resentment, that anger beat up in intensity like a heart before calling it back down. And how he got out of the Agency doesn't bear repeating, but there was a time, after that...

Just follow.

It's painful, thinking of the Doctor while excising all of the nightmares from his conscious recall. Just the Doctor, just that first patch on the TARDIS, before abandonment and Thane and a little dark hallway and a hand slicked with blood...

(Focus.)

There. He can feel it, and shoves that out beyond his shields, hard enough that he'd be projecting it if he had any psi powers at all. One point of reference, one north star: there, in the dark, he'd been dragging all his evils around his neck like an albatross, and the Doctor had looked at him and implied, There's a way to be good, after this.

He can feel the knot beneath his lungs tightening up, but he keeps that part safely hidden.

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

It's a moment of affection, but Ianto can almost feel the regret on Jack's lips as they brush across his clammy skin. He can't categorize it either, but that's the state of their relationship on most days, so he's not disappointed. He's adjusting, like everything else.

He's trying to separate himself from the bad memories and the good ones. It's harder than it would have been had he and Jack done this when Ianto first arrived, before he'd actually killed someone. Now half the memories are real, not the ones that make him a killer, but he has killed, and that makes this all the more painful. He can't exorcise those memories, and he'll never truly be able to forget... he's not going to be able to forgive himself either. It's a moot point.

His head aches, and then there's a sharp, stabbing pain, and the memories are fighting back, grasping for purchase. He clutches Jack's arm with his hand, nails digging into the soft flesh beneath familiar cotton. He hears his own gasp of breath, and he sounds like a drowning man, but it's almost as though he can hear in from beneath the water.

It's confusing and terrifying, but exhilarating, all combined together and his brain is trying to process what's going on.

Another gasp, more pained, but he can almost feel the memories receding back, hiding in the darkest shadows of his brain. They'll never really be gone, but they're losing control and he's gaining it back.

It isn't until he takes another breath and feels the tiniest bit of blood bubble up to his lips that he realizes he was screaming.

[eelseason]

{{OOC: My Riftpower seems to be thread necromancy. But I've had this, unfinished, sitting in drafts for FOREVER, so I figured I might as well finish it and toss it out.}}

Jack shifts his weight, moving into Ianto's grip, noting and pushing aside the pain from his fingertips. It's not as though the arm will bruise, after all; and if it does, that just means it's not serious. He keeps his focus on what he's projecting.

One north star. And he reaches back to the beginning to the exercise, the feel of Ianto he's constructed, to the part that puts the lie to (predator – killer). That predatory need and this feeling can't exist together, or not well, not without a schism in Ianto's mind.

Ianto's mind, unlike his own, shouldn't have that schism. It should have false memories masking the true ones, and if he can bolster those true ones, he will.

He murmurs something nonlingual and slips a hand behind Ianto's ear, cradling the screams, not yielding to them. Acute point, breaking point – fair enough.

The trick is to push beyond that.

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

(ooc: took a while to get back. I had to crawl back inside the crazy!head)

One word that can definitely not describe Ianto is predatory. Under normal circumstances he's only dangerous if backed into a corner or if someone threatens people he cares about, and even then, he prefers a stun-gun to an actual gun. His aversion to killing was slowly giving way as he became more and more ingrained in Torchwood. Like Gwen, Ianto is changing, and perhaps that change isn't altogether positive. Torchwood took the soft-spoken Welshman from the country and made him downright cutthroat.

That's why his brain is trying so hard to push back on the false memories because they don't belong in any way inside Ianto's mind. He might kill someone for Jack, but innocent girls are no threat to Torchwood. He's not supposed to feel gleeful over the pain of others, the soft noises they make when they bones crack and their hearts stop beating. That's not who he is.

The screams finally dissipate, replaced by shuddering gasps, and he grasps for his reality, not the one Adam constructed. He knows who he's supposed to be, and this isn't it. He might not have been happy, but his life had meaning. He knew what he was striving for even if it was unattainable. Ianto's good with impossible goals; they at least provide him with a purpose, even if he knows he's grasping at straws.

This isn't who he is, and killing gives him no purpose.

[eelseason]

Jack's eyes aren't closed, but his attention isn't on the visual data. He can feel the changes in Ianto's breathing, his heartrate, the palpitation of the muscles of his jaw; they tell him more than just watching would. He's not quite close enough to suss out the chemical cues, not with this human nose, and he's not about to shift just to sniff for distress pheromones, but that's ancillary data, if anything.

For a bit, he just lets all that even out. Lets them come back down toward an equilibrium, feels for tenseness, waits until they're steady. Then, firmly, tilts Ianto's head back to look at him.

There's where the eyes come in.

Faint, or not-so-faint, flecks of expression, the faint muscles around the eyes and corner of the mouth, pupil dilation or lack of same – it's an old vocabulary. Jack's face is carefully masked. He tilts his head to one side, taking it all in.

"You know exactly where you are and what's happened," he says. It's implied to be a question. It's an instruction.

[stopwatchdabble.livejournal.com]

His vision blurs, and for a few painful seconds he wonders if this is all going to end with him blind as well as insane. Then it clears, and he can see Jack, blue eyes extremely bright in the faded light of the room. He realizes the blurred vision was from the hot tears rolling soundlessly down his cheeks, and he tries not to wipe them away, tries not to think about the loss of dignity. That's not what's important right now.

"I know exactly where I am," he whispers, echoing Jack's worse. His voice is hoarse from screaming, and now his throat is closed from crying. He knows he looks terrible, the pain and days of not sleeping taking their toll on his very-human body. He feels like a weight has been lifted, even if he knows this is just the beginning. He's not going to be able to just forget this, get over it like nothing happened. "And what's happened."

He wants it to all go away, but that's not how it's going to be. He won't ever forget what he's done, and that's his penance.