Title: Reconstruction.
Pairing: Jack/Ianto.
Rating: pg13
Summary: AU set after Last of the Time Lords. Ianto helps Jack recover from his treatment at the hands of the Master
Ianto sits at the kitchen table of his and Jack’s isolated cottage. Dinner needs starting, the dishes from breakfast and lunch need washing, and the laundry on the line outside needs bringing in before the threatening rain begins, but Ianto can’t find the energy to move or to care about any of it.
Staring at his hands Ianto can see them trembling slightly. It’s almost imperceptible really, he tells himself as he presses them flat against the tabletop.
He knows what it is. It’s exhaustion, emotional and physical burn out from caring for Jack for months with no break, no respite. Ianto knows that he will never willing abandon Jack. But day on day Ianto can feel himself slipping, falling to pray to his own despair and he wonders how much longer he can continue to provide the level of care and support that Jack needs before he breaks.
It has been six months since the fall of the Master and the Valiant, since Ianto in his other guise as a UNIT operative had helped retake the ship. Six impossibly long months of caring for Jack, of slowly helping him recover from what had happened to him at the hands of the Master.
The sight of Jack hanging limply in chains, unresponsive to Ianto’s touch or voice is an image that will forever haunt his memory.
He’d carried Jack from that room. Had held him close on the flight back down to UNIT HQ,and had told him, whispered to him over and over again that he was safe, that it was all over. That the Master was dead, that he would never let anyone hurt him again.
In the end it had been nearly a week before Jack had even realised that Ianto was there. Long days and nights when Ianto never left his side while Jack’s body slowly healed and his system rid itself of the drugs that the Master had fed him. Drugs to break him down, and to keep him in a state of fear and disorientation.
Ianto knows that the Master’s methods of breaking Jack would not have been purely pharmaceutical, they would have been physical as well. Physical in everyway he can imagine and in some that he cannot. A fact for which he is grateful.
He knows because he was there, undercover at the wishes of those high up in UNIT. They don’t know what he did to get the information that he passed to them, information that in the end proved to be crucial.
Since his return they haven’t asked and he will never tell. There are some things that he’s not ready to remember or to explain. Ianto’s not sure if there will ever be a day when he is ready.
Ianto hadn’t known that Jack had been aboard the Valiant until the day before UNIT had removed him, bringing him back to base to help plan the final assault. A few stolen moments with Jack had been all he'd been able manage and for most of that time Jack had been incoherent, believing Ianto to be a hallucination sent to taunt him.
In the end the final assault had been a long time coming, weeks more of sleepless nights and days filled with fear for Jack’s safety. The knowledge that Jack couldn’t die had been of little comfort, especially as Ianto had known first hand just what the Master was capable off.
The first month had definitely been the worse. Ianto had held him when he cried, listened to him as he talked brokenly of what had happened, and held his hand on all the nights he'd had to wake him from his nightmares.
The doctors had called it PTSD. They'd said it was a miracle that Jack was still alive after what he had suffered. Ianto had kept silent, the last thing that Jack had needed was for UNIT to find out that Jack wasn’t quite the 21st century human he appeared to be.
They had tried medication. But the combination of Jack’s abnormally fast metabolism, the fact that biologically he was thirty centuries removed from the population that the drugs had been developed for and that he was actively trying to fight any attempt to administer them eventually won out, and the medication was stopped.
The first counselling session had gone little better. This had been almost entirely down to who had been sent, or rather their appearance. Sending a slim, blond woman with more than a passing resemblance to Lucy Saxon had been a mistake of astounding proportions.
It had taken Ianto over an hour to persuade Jack to unlock the door to his room, and when he’d finally did let Ianto in he’d refused to let go of his hand for another two.
The cottage miles from anywhere had been Jack’s idea, or at least what he had begged Ianto for. For Ianto to take him away from the UNIT base, to go somewhere, anywhere away from the doctors who treated him like a lab rat and wanted to fill him full of drugs. Away from the psychiatrists and councillors who wanted him to talk about things that he didn’t wants to remember. Away from the hum and noise of machines, away the smell of oil and chemicals and everything that reminded him of where he was imprisoned.
Ianto hadn’t been able to say no. His aunt’s old cottage high in the Preseli mountains had seemed the perfect solution. Quiet and as removed in appearance and sound from the Valiant as they could hope for, yet still within easy reach of civilization if help was truly needed.
In the end the UNIT medical staff, and even more eventually Owen, had agreed. Mainly, Ianto suspected, because that had run out of reasonable alternatives. He could take Jack to the cottage.
Since then Owen has continued to visit them once a week. Just for a couple of hours every Thursday, bringing them supplies and making sure they are still alive and that neither of them have gone of the deep end.
Occasionally Tosh visits bringing them news of what’s happening with the rebuilding of the Hub, and how inconvenient it is having a pterodactyl on a construction site and how much she misses his coffee.
Rarer still are Gwen’s visits. In fact she has only visited Jack three times since his rescue from the Valiant.
Ianto knows why. It's seeing somebody you'd always thought of as so strong, so unbreakable, being so hurt. He saw it in the look of horror on her face when she'd seen him as Ianto had carried him from the helicopter, bleeding and broken.
The way when a week later Jack had stared at her with vacant eyes and had told her to run before the monsters came.
The last time had been when she’d visited them at the cottage two months ago. It had been fine until she’d started asking questions, trying to find out what had happen, curiosity momentarily winning out over common sense as Ianto later considered it.
At the time though he’d been furious. Furious that she’d managed to reduce Jack to tears in a few short minutes after nearly a whole week of Jack, if not seeming like his old self, then at least not being the wreck that he’d been back at the UNIT base.
He’d almost thrown her from the house, yelling at her not to come back until she got a brain and worked out how to use it.
So she left. Two days later she phoned to apologise. Ianto had accepted it grudgingly. He had too few friends to lose one over a lapse of judgement.
Lately though Jack has become quiet again, brooding, staring off into space, his expression blank and distant. Ianto can’t help but wonder if his own darkening mood, his own growing despair is holding Jack back, slowing his recovery, if Jack would be better off without him.
With a sigh Ianto runs his hands through his hair and glances over at clock. Nearly five, Jack would be back soon, back from one of his walks.
Still trying to out run your demons Jack and there’s not a damn thing I can do to help you, Ianto thinks. He can feel a sob welling up inside him and he slams his hands down on the table, relishing the brief flare of mind clearing pain.
He can’t let Jack see him like this, he can’t, it wouldn’t be fair. Jack doesn’t need to see him like this. Jack need him to be strong. He needs him.
He’s still fighting for control when he feels a warm, comforting pair of arms around him, pulling him up out of his chair to be holding him tight.
For a moment Ianto allows himself to be held, not caring who is holding him, just enjoying the feel of somebody comforting him.
“Jack, I’m sorry. I’ll be all right,” Ianto chokes out, scrubbing tears from his face as he realises who's holding him. “Don’t worry about me, you shouldn’t be worrying about me, it’s not good for you.” He’s sure that if only he could stop shaking, stop crying, everything would be all right.
“You don’t look all right.” Jack there is a slightly tremor in his voice as he catches Ianto hands in his own, fingers brushing lightly over knuckles bruised from their earlier impact with the table.
“I never could bear to see you cry.” Jack’s lips hover over Ianto’s for a breathless moment before he kisses him.
The kiss is tentative, a little shy and awkward and is over almost before it’s begun.
“I’m not sure I…” Ianto shakes his head, expression miserable, tears threatening, scared that he won’t be able to give Jack what he might want.
“Neither am I.” Jack cups Ianto’s face in his hands, “But it doesn’t change how I feel about you, I still love you. I don’t think I every told you how much.” There are tears in Jack’s eyes now, a measure, Ianto knows, of just how much Jack still isn’t his old self. “We both just need time.”
“You love me?” It seems amazing to Ianto after all that has happened that, all that Jack has suffered that he can still think about love.
“What’s not to love?” There’s a glimpse of the old Jack, a slight sparkle in his eyes and Ianto smiles, he’d begun to think he’d never see it again.
“It’s going to be tough, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Jack runs his fingers through Ianto’s hair, before pressing a kiss to his forehead and holding him close, whispering, “But we’re going to make it.”
And for the first time since this nightmare began Ianto dares to believe it.
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