Chapter Text
After the obliteration of Japan, at least a hundred and twenty thousand people dead, the atmosphere aboard the Valiant really began to change.
Jack didn't see the attack happen directly, but he heard about it from the whispered conversations of guards. He also felt it through the intensifying anger of the Jones family, and from the growing sense of dismay amongst the UNIT troops who had been assigned to the ship as well. There was also a noticeable transition between those troops and the lifer special forces types with nothing in their eyes who gradually took their place almost everywhere after that.
The jubilation that had accompanied the Master's first six months as ruler of the earth was now shifting, Jack could tell, with mutterings of public executions, labour camps and military conscriptions taking place across the world. There were huge rocket sites being built, detailed construction plans handed down from the Master and followed to the letter, as if he was preparing to make earth his base of operations for a full on intergalactic war. Jack could well believe that to be the case.
With so much happening, Jack was mostly left alone from that point onwards, save for the occasions when he was brought up to the Bridge Deck in chains to witness some petty act of destruction in the name of finding Martha Jones. When that invariably failed, Jack was the one punished. Deaths included being hung, being burned with a blowtorch, being squashed down into a tub of broken glass, and getting the business end of an axe to the spine. Not that he remembered any of it beyond the moments leading up to those punishments, thanks to Ianto.
He upped his escape attempts, partly to provide a further distraction, but also partly to give hope to Francine, Tish and Clive, who were spending most of their days trying to come up with ways to defy the Master. They never succeeded, and Jack was always the whipping boy for everyone after, but he viewed it as worth it.
Otherwise he was able to live almost entirely with Ianto in their shared dreamscape, with the godbots' recovery breathing new life into the sandbox of their combined imaginations.
Because he so wanted it to be a place of refuge for Jack, Ianto had deferred to him on the general shape, and had subsequently recreated the beaches Jack remembered so fondly from growing up on the Boeshane Peninsula as a colonist, providing a warm, almost tropical place for them to spend time in. The sands were golden, the oceans blue, and the sky bright and pale, right up until the blurred point at which the darker infinity space where the godbots were visible came into view. With that base format laid down, it was a case of adding in whatever they wanted, from the log cabin with the hot tub, to the Italian villa with the swimming pool, and even to a vaguely rendered recreation of the Hub, complete with a concealed lift marked by a Water Tower monolith, with Ianto generating the environments with a machine-like precision and maintaining them even when Jack was not there.
Jack made the most of his refuge, only leaving to sleep, to be fed, and whenever there was escape attempt plan coming together. He was able to maintain a vague awareness of his true surroundings when there was no danger, with Ianto quietly healing up any minor pains or wounds caused by the chains and position of his imprisonment, but when he was in danger of death, Ianto shielded him completely from the experience.
It was a strange existence, not quite real enough to be of comfort, not quite the paradise it might appear on the surface, but at least better than the alternative.
With Ianto unable to actually feel anything in a physical sense, their intimacy was limited to small acts of emotion, a kiss and a caress here and there, which was probably for the best, since Jack's body reacted too much otherwise and it only frustrated him, hanging as he was in chains alone. It also caused Ianto obvious annoyance as well, as he missed being able to feel those touches and wanted Jack desperately. Despite this, they made the most of the time, with silly games and long conversations, Jack sharing a little more of his life in the early days of Torchwood and Ianto doing his best to keep Jack occupied.
There were a few ongoing mysteries, however, that Jack couldn't solve, and which weighed heavily on his mind, even as he did his best to be content within the restrictions of the situation.
There was still one building in the dreamscape that very obviously didn't belong there. It was a place that the child version of Ianto had mentioned before to Jack; the manor. It apparently hadn't ever gone away, even with the change of scenery around it, revealed on the horizon of the sand dunes when the Peninsula was recreated.
It stuck out like a sore thumb against everything else; one of those sizeable stately homes inherited by wealthy landowners, all sandstone bricks, lines and lines of windows, and large columns around the front entrance porch. The estate was enclosed by a protective wall, with a very large set of gates at the front and extensive gardens and a lake at the rear, complete with stables on one side and garages as well. The manor stood at the centre of an out-of-place field, immovable, like a monument to some piece of Ianto's mind that Jack couldn't penetrate, and it was a strange landmark against the rest of their agreed dreamscape.
What happened in Utopia still weighed heavily on Ianto, though he never said it out loud; Jack still sometimes saw the reflections of Toclafanes spheres in the waters of shore, so he knew this well enough. And whenever Ianto was becoming introspective or melancholy over it, he retreated into the manor, where Jack simply couldn't reach him.
Jack had gone up to the gates a time or two, but they were always locked tight, and looking through them was like looking through a pane of glass smeared with Vaseline. He could never make out any details. Even circling around past the wall to try and get in from the back led nowhere. He was always turned around and sent towards the beach instead.
The only clue provided was the large copper plaque on the front gates, upon which a name was written in beautiful cursive lettering:
C O L E M A N O R
It didn't mean anything to Jack, and the most explanation Ianto ever gave was that it was his childhood home, which Jack knew to be almost certainly inaccurate, unless the family that Nancy and Jamie had gone to stay with during the air raids of World War Two had been incredibly wealthy. It just didn't feel at all likely to Jack. But whenever he tried to press for details, Ianto would blink a few times with surprise at being asked, and then tunnel around the subject.
It wasn't as if Ianto seemed to be purposefully holding something back from him about it, or keeping Jack out of the manor on purpose. He actually seemed to be genuinely confused sometimes, occasionally mentioning a father Jack knew had never existed, and even more bafflingly, a pony named Gentleman. On top of that, when Jack brought up their defeat of the Grey Man in a conversation, Ianto stared at him blankly, because he had no memory of that at all. He remembered something unclear related to a patient on Flat Holm, that Jack had helped him overcome, but none of the details remained.
Disconcerting though it was to keep finding these gaps and inconsistencies, there was a lot that Ianto did remember about their lives and about Torchwood. Nothing truly critical was gone, so far as Jack could tell, but it saddened him all the same. Every time there was a slip, he was reminded that, in essence, three quarters of the godbot collective had been lost, and pretty much Ianto's entire body too. It was a miracle he was even able to communicate with Jack, let alone create this space for them to inhabit. He had to be thankful for that.
Ianto didn't want to tell Jack what had happened to his body, that much was clear. Just mentioning it, even in passing or by accident, tended to send him into an emotional spiral that led him to going to the manor. It wasn't that Jack needed to know, he supposed, but Ianto being unable to feel the press of Jack's hand in his, or even Jack's eager kisses, left the question of what had really happened forever hanging between them.
Then there was the most baffling additional mystery of all, and the one that Jack was most bothered by; the sudden appearance of minor injuries on Ianto every now and then. Most of the time there was nothing but, every now and then, Jack noticed that he had the faint outline of a black eye, or a hand print on his arm, or sometimes even a limp would appear. Ianto brushed it off, no matter what Jack said to try and get an explanation out of him; even when it sparked arguments. Though Ianto never noticed himself until it was pointed out, and clearly felt nothing, the visible evidence disturbed Jack a great deal and he really didn't like feeling that he was missing something important.
Time passed, marked only by the escalating stories of death and destruction on earth. Seven months, eight months, nine... Jack took heart that Martha was clearly evading everything the Master was throwing at her and that, if nothing else, helped him keep the faith that whatever the Doctor had planned would be their way out of the situation, even if it was taking a really long time.
Then it finally happened. Ten or so months into his incarceration aboard the Valiant, Jack got the answers he thought he had wanted about what had really happened to Ianto.
And it was all so much worse than he even suspected.
Mrs Saxon was the key to it all, he discovered. He'd seen very little of her in the course of his time on the Valiant. She put in official appearances when the Master broadcast himself to the world, usually to introduce some new atrocity he'd decided to have carried out in the name of his future empire. Jack noticed the way her smart suits turned into dresses, then turned into slinkier, sexier scraps of material that showed off her attractive form. Her hair, which had started off tightly bound, was gradually let more and more loose, but was still never less than perfectly curled and styled, while her make up grew more and more obvious. Her expression grew more vacant with every passing day, but he noticed as an aside that there was a slight hint of recoil from the Master's touch from her now.
When the Master sent the Toclafane to tear down Washington DC, and did one of his big broadcasts to earth, Lucy was there too, in a satin red dress that left little to the imagination. Jack noticed that, unusually, Lucy's was wearing a scarf that didn't match at all. It didn't quite hide the bruising on her neck that he noticed at the edges underneath, particularly stark against her porcelain skin.
Unlike all the other occasions, he was able to snatch the briefest of moments to speak to her when she lingered behind after the Master left the Bridge Deck, too distracted to even notice her.
"Mrs Saxon, are you alright?" he asked, as she passed by him, moving to leave as well.
She paused and then gave him a wide eyed stare. Then she pulled the scarf down, showing off the finger indentations which made it obvious as to what had happened. Much as he felt she had a lot of blame for the situation, Jack still had some sympathy for the woman. He supposed she had loved Harold Saxon, and people did strange things when in love. His treatment of her had clearly become increasingly cruel over time.
"I'm sorry," he said. She had tried to be kind to him here and there, even if it had never amounted to much. Jack hadn't forgotten that.
A hint of a smile reached her lips; perhaps the first genuine expression he'd actually seen from her, and then she reached out as if she was about to touch him. But suddenly, Jack's arms involuntarily twitched upwards, the manacles around his wrists connecting with her hand and batting it out of the way. Then he was being hauled away by the guards before he could say another word.
This startled him. Never before had Ianto assumed any sort of control over Jack's body. In fact, Jack hadn't even considered that it might be possible for him to do that. Nor did he understand why he'd felt the need to react like that for something so harmless.
Jack couldn't help his annoyance at the intrusion, even though he knew in his logical mind that there had to be a good reason. It didn't feel good at all, to know that he could be puppeted, and as he was returned to his usual incarceration spot on the Engine Deck, his edge of anger grew, merging into his frustration over Ianto still keeping things from him after all this time.
They had to trust each other. That was all they had now. Ianto had his reasons for keeping some things back, and Jack had been careful to respect that, but if this was how it was going to be, stuck sharing a body for who knew how long - sharing autonomy even - then he really felt that he fully deserved an explanation.
As he suspected would be the case, Ianto was nowhere to be found when he closed his eyes and pulled himself to the calm beaches of the recreated Boeshane Peninsula. Nor was he in the Hub or the villa, or anywhere else they'd added. That could only mean that he was in the manor, hiding away yet again. Maybe he could sense Jack's displeasure, or maybe he just knew him well enough to predict his reaction would not be a happy one.
Jack marched his way over the sand dunes, walking across onto the grasslands where the manor stood alone. He went to the gate and, finding it locked as always, leaned on the entry buzzer and shouted at Ianto to come out. "We need to talk, Ianto," he yelled. "You can't hide away in there forever. I need to know what the hell that was all about."
"I'm here," came Ianto's voice, and he was standing a few metres away behind him. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have done that."
"I just want to know w-" Jack's words fell away when his eyes settled on Ianto's neck, at first confused as to what he was seeing, then struck with a sick feeling in his stomach. "What am I seeing here?" he muttered.
"You've already figured it out," Ianto said, not meeting his eyes, one hand absently rubbing at the very visible finger-shaped bruises on his neck. "Or... maybe you haven't. Maybe..." he laughed bitterly, "Maybe it's too horrible to think."
"I don't know what to think," Jack told him, going very still, unnerved by what Ianto might be implying. "So you have some, what, connection to Lucy Saxon then? But why? I don't get it."
"Not Lucy Saxon," came the soft answer. "Lucy Cole. Maiden name."
Jack looked to the gates, confirming to himself again that, yes, that was indeed the name of the manor.
"It wasn't that I wanted to hide this from you. Not really. I was trying to hide it from her." Ianto stepped towards Jack and lightly held onto his hand. "The smallest slip... it could ruin everything. If she knows what I did, the Master will know."
"Let what slip? What the hell is going on, Ianto? You're not making any sense."
"I want to tell you but... you need to understand, she's an open book to him. He will kill us if he knows what we did. I'm not joking Jack. Everything's on the line here."
His deep expression of worry let the air right out of Jack's anger, and he grabbed Ianto and hugged him. "You can trust me," he said.
"I know," Ianto said, and let out a shaky breath as he pulled free from Jack's embrace and stepped back.
The bolt on the lock of the entranceway to the manor made a loud clang as it was suddenly opened. The two big black iron gates creaked open, at last opening the way to the secrets inside.
"See you at the party," Ianto said, with a joyless smile, and disappeared.
The first thing Jack noticed as he breached the boundary was the music drifting out from inside. Unlike the weird chant-drumming he'd heard with the slaughterhouse, this sounded happy. It was the sound of rock and roll, played live. The Beatles, if he wasn't mistaken.
The sky had changed form completely. It was incredibly bright, filled with all those hanging diamonds with missing cores, hovering like dozens of small suns, even though at the low edge it looked to be more of a twilight orange haze. Beautiful, until Jack thought again about what they really were; not lights, but corpses, hung up on display like a mass crucifixion.
'For I so love the world that I give to you my one and only son!"
He shivered as he remembered the Master shouting that to the crowd he had gathered around in on Utopia... Ianto in that machine... being torn apart... So many biblical delusions.
As Jack walked forward down the driveway, he noticed that lines of cars parked up were all vintage, all expensive, and he could hear the hustle and bustle of conversation and noise that sounded very much like the promised party was well underway. There were also helium balloons tied to baskets and left on the front porch in welcome and a table with glasses of chilled Prosecco and Buck's Fizz on offer as well, as if he were walking into a celebration.
Stepping inside, Jack marvelled at the size of the place, the huge staircase in the atrium and the big chandeliers above. He wandered through the corridor that stretched off aside of the staircase, looking for the source of the music, admiring the mix of modern interior design with antique furnishings.
The walls were covered in picture frames containing certificates and also family photos, images of a young Ianto with two doting parents that were definitely not his; Ianto riding a horse, which he doubted ever happened; Ianto part of a netball squad, all the other players blurry but definitely female. It was all just a bit out of place.
There were also a lot of clocks on the walls of the hallway, including a large Grandfather clock to one side, but none of them were telling the same time. Disorientating somehow.
The corridor led into an enormous kitchen at the rear of the property, with mountains of finger food and still-sizzling BBQ meats out on all of the surfaces, its huge bay windows opened out into the gardens. He could see the blurry outlines of dozens of people out there, all in slightly out of date 80s or 90s summer clothes, with kids running around with dogs and the music drifting in merrily from somewhere outside as well. Beyond the gardens, at the bottom of an incline, he could also see boats on the lake and lots of couples relaxing in them, some under parasols, also blurry, making the entire scene look like something out of a painting of upper class British life, of the sort commissioned to liven up a bland hotel lobby.
Jack stood in the kitchen looking out for a moment, trying to discern what he was seeing and why, and he as he did, he noticed the change of song to one he recognised.
Picture yourself in a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly - a girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
Cellophane flowers of yellow and green, towering over your head...
Jack felt hands slide around his chest from behind, and he knew immediately it was Ianto somehow, crowded against him, his chin on Jack's shoulder.
Ianto sang gently along with it in his ear.
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes, and she's gone.
He circled around, a wan smile on his face, taking hold of Jack's hand as the band continued on without him, switching to the fast section.
Lucy in the sky with diamonds...
Ianto was dressed in white trousers and pastel pink golf shirt, looking every bit the upper class son of a wealthy family on a summer day out suddenly, aside from the bruises still marring his neck at the open collar.
"A classic," Jack commented on the song, though he was still frowning a bit over how weird it all was. "This is a real nice place."
"Lucy's father was Lord Cole of Tarminster. When ah... when I lost some memories, I think I must have filled in the gaps with some of hers. Got a little confused."
The obvious question was why he had any of her memories to call upon at all, but Jack decided to just let Ianto tell the story in his own time.
Ianto started to lead Jack back out of the kitchen, so he quickly snagged a particularly plump looking fresh strawberry from a bowl on the way, eager not to lose out, only to be stopped from eating it.
"If you eat that you'll never leave, like Persephone in the Underworld," Ianto cautioned, but he couldn't keep a straight face long enough to make the warning sound serious. "Kidding. You can have it if you want, though it won't taste of anything. I can't remember what half of this stuff actually tastes like."
Jack took a bite and, as predicted, there was no taste to it whatsoever. It was pretty disappointing. "You can remember Persephone in the Underworld but not the taste of strawberries?"
"Random, I know." Into led Jack out of the kitchen and back down the corridor. "Talking about that myth was the first proper conversation I ever had with Lucy actually."
For some reason, the tick of the clocks seemed louder now, all disparately doing their own thing, but he didn't mention it, not wanting to dissuade Ianto from continuing on with his explanation.
"We can judge her for the choices she made but, I came to understand her," Ianto continued, as he led Jack up the grand staircase to the second floor. "She really did love Harry Saxon. Imagine finding out you're dating an alien from another world... actually never mind, that sort of thing has probably happened to you a lot."
Jack just waggled his eyebrows at that, not taking the bait otherwise.
As they entered a passageway full of heavy mahogany doors, Ianto opened the nearest one to show off a scene unfolding inside, like something on a movie reel; a beautiful night in Paris, Harold Saxon on one knee on the exterior balcony of a very nice restaurant overlooking a river, proposing to a fashionably dressed Lucy Cole, with the lights of the city blinking behind them. She tearfully nodded and allowed him to place the ring on her finger, before he whisked her into a kiss, to the applause of all the onlooking diners.
Ianto closed the door to the fairytale vision with a hard slam and a roll of the eyes.
"All of these rooms hold happy memories. Lucy's happy memories."
He led Jack further along, down the corridor, towards an ominous larger door at the end, orange light leaking out at the cracks around the sides. All of the natural ight was draining away, shadows growing the deeper they went, like it was more of a yawning mouth than part of a house.
There they paused, Ianto obviously having to summon his courage to continue. He pushed the door open, just few inches, but then stopped as the sound of voices came ringing out from the other side, like he wanted to go in but was struggling to actually make himself do it.
"You don't know anything about me, Mr Jones," said Lucy's voice, suddenly a great deal more commanding and in control than Jack had ever heard from her before.
"Ohh I think I do," said another Ianto behind the door, his voice strangely muffled compared to hers. "You love him. I can see that much. And here you are, whisked away to the end of the universe, and it's hell. You can no more leave than I can. Just like Persephone."
Finally, Ianto managed to summon the strength to push the door open all the way, revealing the workshop space they had been in before to Jack, only it had now been half smashed apart, the roof completely gone, the walls covered in burn marks like a messy renovation had been carried out. Lucy was there, improbably dressed like a woman on her way to a business meeting, and she was standing before the slightly singed main unit of the Lazarus Machine, inside which the silhouette of Ianto was visible, leaning against inside the frosted glass frontage.
"That would make him Hades," the memory of Lucy noted, with a smile, not seeing the real Jack and Ianto standing behind her at all, "But you know he's only trying to help. Harry is trying to make this place the paradise the people here need. He's an incredible man."
The Ianto standing beside Jack snorted his derision at that. "He worked hard to make us both believe it had been the right thing... converting the last of the human race into those things. The problem is, it took quite a toll. Six billion conversions. Afterwards kept me trapped inside the Lazarus Machine, set it to destabilise the last of us if we broke out. He said it was to help me, keep me safe, but I know now that he was holding our body to ransom."
Overhead, Toclafane spheres were zipping back and forth, some of them laughing like children, their voices echoing past. Above them, Jack noticed one or two of the diamonds flickering out and dying away, merging into the empty dark universe beyond.
Time around them started to move fast, the vision of Lucy changing clothes and her position repeatedly, showing Jack dozens of occasions where she had stood in front of the machine in conversation with Ianto, almost in fast forward. Above, the number of diamonds shining brightly in the sky grew fewer and fewer, the darkness growing back above them like mold.
"Lucy became more and more disillusioned with it all. She lost her faith. The Master went on tours across Utopia, spending time basking in the affection of his so-called 'children'. The more miserable she grew, the more he left her behind with me." Ianto exhaled, heavily. "I felt for her. It was my fault she was there."
"Your fault?" Jack asked, puzzled. "She chose this."
"Yes and no. Remember, he saw Mr and Mrs Saxon as I knew them when he went into my mind," Ianto told him, sadly. "Causation loop. He went back in time, became Harold Saxon and found her... married her, because I'd already shown her to him."
"Dying. Everything dying," she said, dreamily, her eyes staring into the distant nowhere, a lot more like the Lucy Jack knew. "The whole of creation is falling apart and... there's no point. No point to anything."
Time continued to move and change, and Jack watched them conversing again in fits and starts, and then he saw a significantly more dishevelled Lucy, very carefully prising open a very small panel on the side of the capsule, down near the floor. Once it was winched open, she slid her hand inside, through all of the wiring, and Jack saw Ianto's grubby hand linking fingers with hers as she sank down to sit against the device, still holding onto him.
"So she finally showed me the truth. Lucy opened her mind to me... gave me everything she could, proving what I had long suspected; that he wasn't the Doctor at all. She invited me in completely, took me into her life, her happy childhood home. Strange at it may seem, we found a level of kinship together. For a while I think we stopped each other going mad."
Ianto began to circle around the capsule, the fond expression he wore steadily growing more and more pained.
"In the end, Lucy betrayed him," he told Jack.
Jack staggered back as the scene changed suddenly... a Toclafane sphere cutting into the Lazarus capsule with a laser tool extended from its underbelly, Lucy physically pulling a very dirty, weak looking Ianto out of it and helping him to stand.
"Wait, she freed you behind his back?" Jack asked, surprised. The woman he'd observed had always seemed so passive, so incredibly airy, this seemed like someone else entirely.
Ianto nodded, sadly. "We planned this together. I quietly built a sheep in wolf's clothing, a fake Toclafane, to disable all the power lines and monitors so I could get out of the machine, and then help us get out of the complex and unlock the TARDIS."
"Baa Baa," Jack muttered.
"Well, I was going to call it the 'Mock-lafane', or maybe 'Fear Sphere', but... well, part of me was a bit stuck on the drums. As you know."
The scene turned, and Jack was startled to find himself inside the TARDIS suddenly, his whole being lurching at the sight of a longed-for home long lost. It wasn't a perfect recreation, but damn, it was close enough for Jack, who was unable to hide his awed reaction.
He was about to say something, but the door opened before he could, and the memory versions of Ianto, Lucy and Baa Baa tumbled inside, Ianto holding back to throw the door closed behind them as if greatly relieved.
Jack watched, nervously, as Lucy ran forward to the central console with Baa Baa close behind her. On her command of, 'Do it,' the sphere immediately extended its laser cutter again and started to tear into the seal over the console's main panel, ripping it downwards to create a huge hole down the side.
"Whoa what the hell?" Jack gasped in alarm, knowing the danger of uncovering the unbridled power inside the TARDIS so casually.
Almost at the same time, the memory Ianto shouted, "What are you doing?" to Lucy, and then shielded his eyes as the energy core of the ship, the time vortex, exploded out.
The burst of light behind her turned Lucy almost entirely into a silhoette, her eyes reflecting it like twin suns.
"I'm sorry, Ianto," Lucy shouted over the sound of the immense energy crackling out behind her, "But it's all pointless. He'd find us. I can't even kill myself as he'd only make you bring me back. There's no escape from him. Not ever. This is the only way."
With a sad final smile, she turned around and threw herself into the light.
"No!" the memory Ianto shouted, reaching towards the space where she had been, staring in shock as he realised that she was gone.
Jack felt the real Ianto's hand slide into his, holding on, clearly finding this hard to watch. The scene froze then, silencing the din of the memory.
"I don't understand what just happened," Jack said, shaking his head.
"Come on Jack, please don't make me show you the rest." When Jack made no reply, Ianto sighed and continued, "Well, put simply, the energy was too much - we couldn't even get near the console. No way to get the ship moving in time. There was," he took a deep breath, "Only one other option. I did what I had to... became what I had to."
He couldn't help it, Jack pulled away from Ianto as the slow trickle of truth finally hit him, backing up all the way until he hit a wall. "No," he gasped.
The shirt Ianto was wearing was slowly growing saturated with blood on the right side, his ashen face a picture of sadness.
The memory-version of Ianto was now lying on the floor of the TARDIS, his suit jacket laid out beneath him, deeply bloodstained, his shirt cut open where a heart had been removed on one side, now held in his hand, half wrapped in a torn off piece of his jacket sleeve. With the other hand, he held Baa Baa close, speaking into the sphere.
'Jack... if you're hearing this, the Master has done what he planned. I wish I could tell you it's going to be okay but, right now, I don't know... I have a plan to get to you but... I can't risk the Master finding out...'
The real Ianto stepped closer to Jack to explain further, speaking over the memory. "I knew I had to save something original from my real body, or there would be no way to reverse this, so I reprogrammed Baa Baa, had it take out and conceal my second heart, and put every last bit of my energy into changing-"
Jack couldn't bear to hear anymore, spinning around and running out of the TARDIS doors, into an empty white space outside of it.
Ianto came out after him, looking both worried and wary.
"So you... you sampled her DNA, like you did with the Doctor? And you... you used it to-?" Jack stammered.
"It was contrary to our very nature... but, we were desperate. You've no idea. Yes, we reshaped the body into a more rudmentary lifeform. A human form; a perfect facsimile of Lucy Cole. We gave it the memories she shared with us, well... the good ones. We made it everything the Master wanted, a perfect little doll, so he'd take it with him back to the past. And we hid inside the last unsullied part of our body left."
"Oh god," Jack said, leaning over with his hands on his knees, struggling to breathe. "Then all this time-"
"We needed him to think we were dead. We had her tell him it was Ianto Jones who burned away in the light. He bought it."
Jack had his teeth clenched tightly now, trying to school his expression into something neutral as he stood up agian, fighting the rolling waves of nausea he felt at the idea of Ianto... his body... Lucy and the Master...
"I had to do it," Ianto said, snapping at him, defensively. "This was another causation loop. It had already happened. Remember when Mr and Mrs Saxon came to see me in Torchwood One? That was me, not her."
"Huh?" Jack said, now feeling like he was actually losing his mind.
"I told you. Lucy kissed me, and I saw a flash of her burning in the vortex light, and the diamonds in the skies and falling from the TARDIS. That's because it wasn't Lucy. It was my body, my instructions. I was giving us her genetic code, so that when the time came-" He stopped short and took a deep breath, glaring at Jack. "Don't think I like this. You've no idea how hard this has been, knowing, sensing... what he does to it. It's still my body and I want it back and... god I hate this. I hate this." His anger was draining into despair more with every word, as his defensiveness crumbled against the truth of his feelings. "I feel sick all the time. And I'm sorry... I'm so... so sorry. Jack-"
That snapped Jack out of it. The thought that Ianto felt in any way guilty, to the point of starting to sound panicky, made him feel like absolute shit for his reaction. He quickly grabbed onto him, holding Ianto tightly against his body in a vice-like grip. "No, it's okay. It's okay. I get it. You had no choice."
"We had to get back home... back to you," Ianto said, face pressed into his shoulder, his voice finally cracking.
"It worked. It was clever, it's just... if I'd known-"
"If you'd have known, you might have done something that triggered the body to remember. If it ever starts to question things, if it remembers, the Master will figure this out... and you know what he'll do."
He trailed off and Jack nuzzled his nose against Ianto's cheek, trying to communicate that he understood.
"If we can make it through this and get away from him, I can fix myself," Ianto promised. "It can all be fixed."
"I believe you," Jack said, all of his senses momentarily blurring with a flash of his own infinity of hellish nightmares; that old predator, stalking invisibly around him, ready to pounce with a thousand faces of the dead, the exhausting anger, the neverending loneliness... but, Ianto... Ianto... his light... still his light in the dark. His Ianto, who he'd made, and who loved him so much he had put himself through hell to get home.
Though he knew Ianto couldn't feel it, Jack kissed him then, very gently, cradling his head in his hands, sliding his hands to cover the brusies on his neck with careful touches. It wasn't about the kiss, it was about what he was trying to say with it. When he pulled back, he was relieved to see the edge of panic retreating from Ianto's eyes.
"Ianto, you did the right thing," he said, though it hurt him to confront the truth of that. "I wouldn't have been able to hide my reactions seeing her... knowing. But I want you to know this and really listen to me, okay? Knowing changes nothing, because I love you. The beautiful little lights that you are, not your body or anything else. Never ever doubt that for a second."
He felt Ianto exhale hard at that, the weight lifting from his shoulders. It shouldn't have needed saying, Jack thought, given everything, but he was so glad that he had. The only thing worse than Ianto's obvious guilt at doing what he did had to have been the worry that it might affect their relationship somehow.
"I lose everyone and it never stops. And now you're here and... you're everything I ever prayed for, but knew I didn't deserve." Jack stroked his face, his heart aching at the way Ianto leaned into his touch, his need for Jack so raw. "However you did it, you made it. You've no idea how grateful I am that you exist and you made it back. And things are going to change. Martha is going to succeed. The Doctor will find a way to stop the Master. I know he will. It's... what he does."
Ianto looked at him, sadly. "You really think he can?"
A frail old man... staring passively as Jack died, over and over... owlish eyes staring out of that tent... helplessly being wheeled around...
"Yes," Jack said, because god help him, despite it all, he still believed in him. He would always believe in him. He had to believe the Doctor knew what he was doing.
"Alright," Ianto said, putting aside his doubts to trust Jack. He looked around the empty space they were in and then asked, "Now the manor gates are open, can I show you more of it? I think I've had enough of remembering all of this for now."
"If you want to," Jack said, with a fond smile. Then he inhaled sharply as whatever imaginary surface he was standing on grew unstable, a new scene appearing around them. They were standing together on a small wooden rowboat, which was drifting on a calm grey lake. Cole Manor stood proudly amidst oak trees in the distance, a warm orange sky above, filled with hollow diamonds.
The party was still ongoing in the gardens, all the people still blurry, the children still running about, the shapes of dogs following them, the upbeat music still playing as ever.
Ianto's clothes were repaired, the ashen look he had taken on gone, his expression no longer so tense. He sank down onto a blanket laid out on the bed of the little boat and reached his hand out to Jack, inviting him to come down and join him.
They settled together, side by side. Ianto curled against Jack and sighed, heavily, clinging onto his arm. The right side of Jack's chest felt like it was vibrating, the way it occasionally did when Ianto was feeling something intense, usually contentment. He'd long since started to think of it as purring in his mind, but he hadn't ever said that out loud, knowing the sort of reaction it would get if he did.
It was going to be alright, Jack decided, with a faint air of desperation that he didn't want to acknowledge. He fought to keep his mind in check, and not start cataloguing all the times he'd seen Mrs Saxon on the Valiant, the horrible knowledge that it was a facsimile. An unwilling facsimile, fashioned from... Don't think about it, it doesn't matter, this will all be over soon, the Master will be defeated and Ianto will be fine...
Two months later, it finally was all over, but only one of those expectations would prove to be true.