Archive of Our Own

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Fic: Of Blood and Absolution (1/6 - Complete)

Title: Of Blood and Absolution

Author: temporal_witch

Characters: Jack / Ianto, team.

Rating: Adult. (Seriously, have your ID ready.)

Spoiler(s): Series through 2x5; DW 3x11-13.

Word count: 13,600

Summary: After the events of “Meat”, Jack and Ianto must come to terms with Gwen’s accusations and their own near-misses.

By compassion we make others' misery our own, and so,

by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.

Sir Thomas Browne

Of Blood and Absolution

On a normal evening, the Hub was quiet. Its only sounds were the hum of the generator that gave the underground base a sense of breathing, of being alive, and of anticipating.

This was not a normal evening.

This night, it seemed to hold its breath and wait. It felt - pensive. Ianto could not fail to notice its (imagined?) demeanour as he made his final rounds through its intricate spaces, clearing up the last bits of rubbish and removing files the team no longer needed. He saved the upper level for last, knowing Jack was in his office mulling over the events of the day.

Of course, Jack had a right to brood tonight, Ianto reflected as he silently climbed the metal spiral staircase that connected the floors. As soon as he peered through the glass walls of the office, he stilled, and his breath caught in his throat. He gripped the railing tightly until his knuckles whitened with the strain.

Gwen’s words echoed through Ianto’s mind as he watched Jack, hunched miserably in his office chair behind his desk. His fingers were steepled, index fingers brushing the tip of his nose. Jack was still gazing at the CCTV monitor, his eyes unfocused and unseeing.

Jack looked…lost.

But none of you have any partners outside of this!

But we understand how you feel.

No you don’t! No, you don’t, Jack! You all think it’s cold and lonely out there, but it isn’t for me because I have him. He matters…

Ianto’s jaw tightened and his eyes narrowed. Jack’s palpable misery was too much for either of them to bear alone. Jack was holding himself together in a way that bordered on recalcitrant, letting everyone else assume he was fine and would be right as rain the next day.

Ianto knew better.

He and Jack were trying to find their way back from the schism Jack left behind when he travelled with the Doctor – he had told Ianto that much about his missing time – but as to where they were going, he couldn’t have said. He didn’t even know what to call whatever it was they had. But it was something.

Jack was his boss, his friend, and his once-and-current lover. Ianto valued each aspect of his relationship with Jack individually, but at this moment, he thought Jack probably needed his friendship more than anything.

Ianto knew, suddenly and with certainty, what he needed to do. He would intervene while the wounds were fresh and tend them carefully. The unfinished business he could handle later.

*^*

Jack had sent his team home an hour earlier, quietly and solemnly dismissing them for the evening with none of his usual teasing banter. Toshiko and Owen left quickly, grimacing with the acerbic taste Gwen’s tantrum had left in their mouths. They could not conceal their eagerness to escape the funereal pall that had descended over them as Gwen had ascended on the invisible lift to join Rhys on the Plass.

Owen was subdued and cloaked in remorse and grief at what he had been forced to do to relieve the alien’s suffering. He had thanked Ianto for the coffee he’d supplied after their return to the Hub, which told him more about Owen’s emotional state than anything else might have done. He grabbed his things and fled as soon as Jack gave them leave, sparing Toshiko a small, grateful smile that didn’t reach his eyes. But he did not invite her to go with him, and Ianto would have been concerned if he had. Owen was in no state to be entertaining Ianto’s closest friend; he’d probably go out on the pull and get pissed to oblivion, and Ianto couldn’t blame him. Owen’s own mindless refuge from the horrors Torchwood inflicted on him was the simple act of a drunken shag with a nameless stranger who would not be around in the morning.

But Ianto stayed, because that was what Ianto did.

Ianto scrutinized Jack’s expressive features and studied the posture of his body, and decided Jack wasn’t ready for company yet. With a tired sigh, Ianto made his way to the shower room. He rummaged in his locker and found a set of casual clothes he had forgotten he had stashed there – for that matter, he couldn’t even remember putting them there. He retrieved the old denims and shook them out, draping them across the bench against the wall, and collected the black tee-shirt that lay beneath them. He dug out an old but comfortable pair of trainers, wrapped neatly in a plastic bag. He poked about, frowning; how was it he had no pants in his locker? It was hardly the end of the world, but it irked him all the same.

While they didn’t measure up to his usual work attire, they were clean and his suit wasn’t. His suit stank of the horror of the alien manatee’s living death and of the ravenous greed of the men who had murdered it in pieces every day. It reeked of the creature’s living putrefaction and the stink of rotting blood and of his own desperate fear.

Even worse - he reeked of it. He felt contaminated to his very bones by the day’s collective filth.

He stank of meat, of the putridity of decomposing tissues. He imagined the smell clinging to him, to his clothes, to his hair and his skin. The memories it dredged up - bound and gagged (trussed), beaten (tenderized), scared shitless and knowing he was about to die. His throat still bore the tiny, pale scar below his Adam’s-apple where the meat cleaver had scored the tender flesh, ready to bleed him dry…Ianto swallowed hard and forced the unwanted thoughts away.

Ianto peeled off his armour layer by layer with his fingertips, resisting the urge to heave the pieces into a bin liner - shoes and all - tie it off, and walk it down to the incinerator stark naked. The garments could be laundered, he reasoned. It was not like the clothes were damaged.

Except that they were. So many of his clothes were ruined like this – perfectly wearable, but equally detestable for the unspeakable horrors to which they’d borne helpless witness.

With a single-minded determination that could be easily mistaken for obsession, Ianto forcefully scoured every inch of his body, losing himself in the singular task of getting clean. Every plane, concavity, prominence, arc, and crevice was soaped and scrubbed vigorously until his pale skin glowed bright pink. He washed until the powerful stench he imagined clinging to him swirled down the drain with the suds. He worked with brutality, his goal nothing more than feeling like he’d been fully cleansed. Purified.

At last he was satisfied, though his sensitized skin tingled somewhat unpleasantly. Ianto sagged against the cool tiles and allowed the water to rinse the remnants of soap and shampoo and contamination away. He wanted only to curl up in his own bed, in his own flat, and forcefully will the day to have never happened – or at least to coerce its memories into that dark niche in his mind into which he rarely ventured (where cybermen and Lisa and cannibals and Daleks and Abaddon lived).

Ianto towelled off and rubbed his hair damp-dry, ruffling it so that it stood on end and curled gently, and tucked the towel around his waist. He picked up his razor and looked in the mirror, then slowly replaced it on the counter.

Fuck.

No aftershave – he had run out yesterday and hadn’t found the time to go out for more. He had gone without it all day since he had shaved that morning in the little bathroom adjacent to Jack’s quarters, where he had taken his last shower and dressed in his impeccable suit.

Unbidden, the memory of dressing with the bathroom door slightly ajar to let the steam escape flooded him. He recalled smirking, his fingers working the silk tie into its traditional half-Windsor knot by rote, when his eyes fell upon the tangle of bedding, wadded and hanging half off the narrow cot. He found himself smiling a little at the thought, and wondered if it should hurt to smile at something that was meant to be a fond recollection.

He wondered if it had only been this morning, some half a day ago, when he had awoken cold where the covers were missing and hot where Jack was draped across him.

Ianto scrutinized his reflection in the mirror. There wasn’t much stubble, he decided; he could shave in the morning at his flat.

I should stay, he thought half-heartedly. He wanted to stay. He wanted to put Jack to bed and to take his mind off of everything that had happened, and to curl protectively around him afterward.

Ianto’s gut twisted when he thought of Jack, alone in his bunker, after the day they had just experienced. His eyes closed as he imagined Jack curled on his side, trying to sleep and fighting it at the same time, attempting to keep the inevitable nightmares at bay for just a little while longer.

However, the idea of sleeping at the Hub tonight did not appeal to him after all that had transpired here earlier in the day.

Perhaps it was the echo of Gwen’s words, bouncing off the stone walls and somehow permeating them with vitriolic stains, that made him want to retch. Maybe it was being trussed up like livestock. Maybe it was the look of helpless terror in Jack’s eyes when their plan began to unravel.

It was too much. It had already been too much for him and too much for Owen and too much for Jack when they returned to the Hub that evening. Then Gwen-bloody-Cooper had sashayed in and dealt the coup de grace, leaving Jack more devastated than the horrific day’s events had already done.

The fallout was only just beginning, Ianto suspected, and he dreaded what it would bring in the days to come.