[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."

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[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.