![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Shhhh….It was Just a Dream (Denial!Fic)
Character(s): Jack/Ianto, mentions of Alice & Steven
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: So called “Season 3” (yes, I’m still a little bitter)
Summary: Children of what? Oh that. Yeah, that never happened. It was just a really horrible bad dream Jack had.
Notes: Special thanks goes to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
tardistenantsue, all the peeps in chat and everyone in the Ask_Verse who have helped me in the search to find my Inner!Ianto again. This might not be him at his best, but it is a start (better than giving up, yes?) This is the closest I can come to acknowledging the last season right now. If that makes me a self indulgent crap writer then so be it. I didn’t plan to be a writer in the first place, and if you can’t cut a denialist a little slack right now then when can you? So if you are here to tell me that I can’t avoid new canon because I find it entirely distasteful then please allow Inner!Ianto to show you out. I’ll face what I consider is the travesty of CoE when/if I’m ready. Consider this my reaction post to the season *steps off soap box* Anybody else here thanks for reading and comments are <3 <3 <3 (especially right now)
Jack called out in his sleep “Alice! Wait! I’m Sorry! Nooooo!”
“Jack. Jack! Wake up! Jack!” Ianto grabs on to Jack as he jumps up out of sleep. Sobs are wracking Jack’s body as he continues to shake.
“No! No! How could I?!? Let me go, I don’t…I can’t….No! What have I done!!!?” Jack kept screaming, trying to shove his away from Ianto. The look in his eyes was one of both disgust and terror.
“Hey…hey…calm down. It was just a dream. You’re safe, home, look around…shhhh….” Ianto continued trying to soothe him. Unfortunately this wasn’t the first time he’d had to try and pull Jack out from a nightmare, but his reaction had never been as bad as this. He knew the best thing he could do at this point was keep Jack from hurting himself, even if the damage wasn’t permanent it would still upset them both much more later. And besides that it wouldn’t do to have the neighbors talk about screaming and potential gunfire.
Slowly Jack began to calm down. His breathing slowed and he leaned against Ianto. They just sat together for the longest time, not saying anything.
When Jack finally spoke it was softly, but after the silence it was still enough to nearly startle Ianto.
“Thank you,” Jack whispered. “I don’t deserve you.”
“What do you mean? What happened? It was just a dream…” Ianto continued running his hand up and down Jack’s arm, trying to soothe him like you would a crying child. Kids weren’t the only ones affected by nightmares after all. Working for Torchwood made even the most outrageous nightmares seem plausible.
“It might have been a dream, but…” Jack trailed off before taking a deep choking breath and continuing. “It might have been a dream, but it was my mind that dreamed it. Part of me made it happen.”
“Made what happen? What was the dream, Jack?” Ianto asked. He wished he could tell Jack to just forget the dream, but he knew that if he didn’t talk it out then he would never shake whatever it was that had upset him so badly.
“I can’t…you’ll hate me. I hate me…” Jack started to shake again at the memory.
“How could I ever hate you over a dream? You had no control over whatever happened. It wasn’t your fault!” Ianto decided to switch tactics and shocked Jack by his next words. “You need to stop trying to be such a big damn hero! Not even the great Captain Jack Harkness can control everything, and especially not while he’s asleep. Just tell me what happened and I’ll be the judge of whether I hate you or not!”
The stern words worked to get Jack’s attention. Ianto looked down at him waiting to see what he would do. Jack’s eyes darted back and forth, Ianto could almost see the thoughts running through his head as he decided how much to say, how to say it. Finally Jack spoke.
“I never told you, but I have a daughter.” Jack stared at Ianto, his look daring the other man to turn away from him.
“I know, Alice. And a grandson, Steven.”
Jack looked up at him with shock, “But how did you know? I never said, you never said! When? How did you find out about them?”
Ianto lifted his hand, interrupting Jack’s stuttering. When he looked up Ianto gave a wry smile. “I know everything, remember?” After pausing to make sure Jack was going to let him talk, he continued. “I came across her records when going through some old paperwork. She was eligible for maintenance from the crown due to her…family situation. There weren’t a lot of personal details in the report, but she had never accepted the help and in light of her raising a son on her own I wanted to be sure she knew of the offer. So I got in contact with her. She seemed familiar to me from the start, but I couldn’t figure out why. I thought she would be grateful, but my visit seemed to upset her more than anything. She said she didn’t want any help from ‘bloody torchwood’ and that she thought she was ‘more than clear on that point’. Once I noticed her boy watching from around the corner down the hall I tried to calm her down…”
“You’re good at that.” Jack said as he held onto Ianto’s hand.
“I do my best, sir.” Ianto paused for a brief kiss before continuing. “As I was saying, I didn’t want the boy to see his mother so upset so I suggested we take the conversation into the other room, or perhaps outside. We went into the kitchen and talked for a bit. Told me some things about your family, the rest I filled in with more research after I got back. I don’t know why I didn’t notice the connection straight away. She resembles you, and not just her stubbornness.”
Jack started to open his mouth, but the sight of Ianto cocking an eyebrow at him made him just smile and shrug. Even without his constant influence Alice had managed to pick up a bit of his flair.
“You know, she suggested I get out of Torchwood before it was too late. She said that I’m still young enough, hadn’t been completely ruined yet. I didn’t tell her it was too late for me to leave. I didn’t think it was my place to tell her why I wouldn’t want to, considering…”
Jack’s voice was rough when he replied, “You could have, you know. I wouldn’t have minded, and it’s hardly the most shocking bit of news she’d ever have gotten about me.”
“Your grandson is an amazing boy, smart as a whip too…”
“With these genes how could he be anything but?” jack started to laugh, but then stopped as quickly as he had begun. “Alice doesn’t want him to know about me, but I’m sure she told you that…” Ianto nodded. “They call me Uncle Jack. When I’m allowed to see him that is.”
“She’s trying to protect him. Face it, Torchwood and children, we just don’t mix very well. She’d know that better than anyone.”
“Alice says she’s protecting Steven, but preparing him would be better. It’s not just Torchwood that’s dangerous. The world is changing Ianto.” Jack made a choked noise. “I just want my family to be safe and prepared. That’s why I talked with Lucia about it, before we lost her. I think she understood.”
“Well, I can tell you that someone taught that boy a few tricks. He definitely pays attention to his surroundings, always alert. He’d do you proud, I’m sure of it.”
“But what if the danger…” Jack paused, and then spit out as quickly as he could. “What if the danger is me? How can he be ready for that?”
“Well Jack, I’m not sure how you being the danger is even possible. You obviously love them. Plus, we’ve already discovered you can’t keep a secret nearly as well as you like to think.” Ianto waited for a protest that didn’t come. Jack not rising to the bait? This was bad. “After all, what can you expect from a guy that plasters our name on every piece of equipment? Kind of hard to be a secret threat that way…”
Ianto waited again, and Jack mumbled “I’m not the one who went crazy with the label maker.”
“True enough. Fact remains, I know about your family, have now for some time.” Ianto held up his hand, he wanted to finish this without interruption. “I didn’t say, because you seemed to have gone through a lot of trouble to keep it secret, took some serious digging to find out what I did. I figured you’d tell me in your own time. Or not. I’m sure you had your reasons. I’m assuming the dream has to do with them?”
“Starts and ends with, but you don’t know what I did!”
“I won’t know unless you tell me. What I do know is that it was just a dream, and I think you’ll feel better if you just talk to me about it.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Since when do you need to worry about time?” Ianto quickly glanced at the watch on their nightstand. “Besides, it’s early yet.”
So Jack started to tell his story. Ianto already knew about Alice, so that went easier than he could have hoped for.
They shared a laugh over fake hospitalized friends and Tupperware.
Speculated over what Gwen would do with a child.
Ianto whispered “She’d be a lovely mum, I’m sure of it.”
They shared the horror of Jack’s deaths. After the incident with Grey, the idea of Jack being buried alive again (and in concrete no less) was unthinkable.
Jack dazzled Ianto with the story of his rescue plan. Embellishing a bit he even gave Ianto a kick ass gun that he fired over the heads of the guards before jumping onto the forklift and saving the day.
“So I got to be the big damn hero for once?”
Ianto laughed as Jack described how he walked around naked with a coat draped over his arm.
“You probably would prefer wearing nothing to a coat that wasn’t yours!”
“Be fair! I was handcuffed, how would I even have put it on?”
“Still, you needn’t worry about that. I have a spare on standby already. You really should be more careful with that thing.”
“A spare coat? Maybe you can model?”
“Safe deposit box, sorry.”
Jack sighed and continued. They had a couple more laughs…Rhys and his baked beans seemed particularly funny and frustrating all at once.
“Then I lost you. There was nothing I could do. I lay down and died, right next to you.” Ianto held Jack as he shook, trying to hold it in, tears running down his own face.
“How did I go? Please tell me I wasn’t a mess.”
“Huh?” Jack pulled back to look at Ianto.
“Did I go out in style at least?”
Jack wasn’t sure why that would matter so much to Ianto, but he told him anyway. “You were so brave, amazing really. You had this gorgeous suit on, you’ve never looked better. Not even in red. And I forgot to mention – you tried to correct my speech! You knocked my philosophy! I was being brilliant and there you were trying to tell me what to say to those alien bastards!”
“Well someone has to watch over you…”
“Don’t try to distract me Ianto Jones. Going on without you was terrible. When I came back I saw Gwen leaning over you, straightening your tie. Part of me broke. It was so real. So very real.
“But I’m alive. Look, feel, I’m fine Jack. Just fine. I’m not leaving you.” Ianto tried to comfort Jack again, but just hearing the dream secondhand had him a little shaken.
The rest of the dream retelling continued without many smiles, except the one bit about Andy jumping into a riot on the wrong side of the blockade.
“Well the right side, actually.” Ianto noted.
When Jack got to him and Alice and Steven and the plan to save the world he stopped. This was so hard to admit. The dream was still fresh enough it felt real. After a nudge from Ianto he continued through till the end.
Jack told of sacrificing Steven to save the world just as daybreak started to show through around the drapes. Ianto held him and murmured comforting words as Jack broke down. Finally he stopped. Jack turned to Ianto, who had been crying right along with him (what else could he do when faced with such pain?).
“Now you see what I did. No one could love me after that. Not even you.”
“It was just a dream. No one can blame you for a dream.”
“It felt so real.”
“I know you, you would never do that.”
“You’ve only known me for so long. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of.”
“John Hart?” Ianto quipped, hoping to lighten the mood. It only earned a dark look from Jack. “Even if you were that person, which I don’t believe for a second, you aren’t now. And you haven’t been for some time.”
At the mention of time, Jack noticed the brightness of the room and checked the clock. “You must be so uncomfortable, let me move. Why did you let me lean on you all this time, must have a terrible crick in your neck.”
“You’re always a pain in my neck Jack Harkness.” Ianto stopped him as he went to move away. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now why don’t we lie back down and you can tell me more about this Lucia. Based on what I know of your family, I’m thinking there’s got to be some great stories there…”
And so they continued talking, until they both drifted back to sleep. It was a peaceful sleep, with no more horrible dreams to haunt their thoughts.
Character(s): Jack/Ianto, mentions of Alice & Steven
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: So called “Season 3” (yes, I’m still a little bitter)
Summary: Children of what? Oh that. Yeah, that never happened. It was just a really horrible bad dream Jack had.
Notes: Special thanks goes to
tardistenantsue, all the peeps in chat and everyone in the Ask_Verse who have helped me in the search to find my Inner!Ianto again. This might not be him at his best, but it is a start (better than giving up, yes?) This is the closest I can come to acknowledging the last season right now. If that makes me a self indulgent crap writer then so be it. I didn’t plan to be a writer in the first place, and if you can’t cut a denialist a little slack right now then when can you? So if you are here to tell me that I can’t avoid new canon because I find it entirely distasteful then please allow Inner!Ianto to show you out. I’ll face what I consider is the travesty of CoE when/if I’m ready. Consider this my reaction post to the season *steps off soap box* Anybody else here thanks for reading and comments are <3 <3 <3 (especially right now)Jack called out in his sleep “Alice! Wait! I’m Sorry! Nooooo!”
“Jack. Jack! Wake up! Jack!” Ianto grabs on to Jack as he jumps up out of sleep. Sobs are wracking Jack’s body as he continues to shake.
“No! No! How could I?!? Let me go, I don’t…I can’t….No! What have I done!!!?” Jack kept screaming, trying to shove his away from Ianto. The look in his eyes was one of both disgust and terror.
“Hey…hey…calm down. It was just a dream. You’re safe, home, look around…shhhh….” Ianto continued trying to soothe him. Unfortunately this wasn’t the first time he’d had to try and pull Jack out from a nightmare, but his reaction had never been as bad as this. He knew the best thing he could do at this point was keep Jack from hurting himself, even if the damage wasn’t permanent it would still upset them both much more later. And besides that it wouldn’t do to have the neighbors talk about screaming and potential gunfire.
Slowly Jack began to calm down. His breathing slowed and he leaned against Ianto. They just sat together for the longest time, not saying anything.
When Jack finally spoke it was softly, but after the silence it was still enough to nearly startle Ianto.
“Thank you,” Jack whispered. “I don’t deserve you.”
“What do you mean? What happened? It was just a dream…” Ianto continued running his hand up and down Jack’s arm, trying to soothe him like you would a crying child. Kids weren’t the only ones affected by nightmares after all. Working for Torchwood made even the most outrageous nightmares seem plausible.
“It might have been a dream, but…” Jack trailed off before taking a deep choking breath and continuing. “It might have been a dream, but it was my mind that dreamed it. Part of me made it happen.”
“Made what happen? What was the dream, Jack?” Ianto asked. He wished he could tell Jack to just forget the dream, but he knew that if he didn’t talk it out then he would never shake whatever it was that had upset him so badly.
“I can’t…you’ll hate me. I hate me…” Jack started to shake again at the memory.
“How could I ever hate you over a dream? You had no control over whatever happened. It wasn’t your fault!” Ianto decided to switch tactics and shocked Jack by his next words. “You need to stop trying to be such a big damn hero! Not even the great Captain Jack Harkness can control everything, and especially not while he’s asleep. Just tell me what happened and I’ll be the judge of whether I hate you or not!”
The stern words worked to get Jack’s attention. Ianto looked down at him waiting to see what he would do. Jack’s eyes darted back and forth, Ianto could almost see the thoughts running through his head as he decided how much to say, how to say it. Finally Jack spoke.
“I never told you, but I have a daughter.” Jack stared at Ianto, his look daring the other man to turn away from him.
“I know, Alice. And a grandson, Steven.”
Jack looked up at him with shock, “But how did you know? I never said, you never said! When? How did you find out about them?”
Ianto lifted his hand, interrupting Jack’s stuttering. When he looked up Ianto gave a wry smile. “I know everything, remember?” After pausing to make sure Jack was going to let him talk, he continued. “I came across her records when going through some old paperwork. She was eligible for maintenance from the crown due to her…family situation. There weren’t a lot of personal details in the report, but she had never accepted the help and in light of her raising a son on her own I wanted to be sure she knew of the offer. So I got in contact with her. She seemed familiar to me from the start, but I couldn’t figure out why. I thought she would be grateful, but my visit seemed to upset her more than anything. She said she didn’t want any help from ‘bloody torchwood’ and that she thought she was ‘more than clear on that point’. Once I noticed her boy watching from around the corner down the hall I tried to calm her down…”
“You’re good at that.” Jack said as he held onto Ianto’s hand.
“I do my best, sir.” Ianto paused for a brief kiss before continuing. “As I was saying, I didn’t want the boy to see his mother so upset so I suggested we take the conversation into the other room, or perhaps outside. We went into the kitchen and talked for a bit. Told me some things about your family, the rest I filled in with more research after I got back. I don’t know why I didn’t notice the connection straight away. She resembles you, and not just her stubbornness.”
Jack started to open his mouth, but the sight of Ianto cocking an eyebrow at him made him just smile and shrug. Even without his constant influence Alice had managed to pick up a bit of his flair.
“You know, she suggested I get out of Torchwood before it was too late. She said that I’m still young enough, hadn’t been completely ruined yet. I didn’t tell her it was too late for me to leave. I didn’t think it was my place to tell her why I wouldn’t want to, considering…”
Jack’s voice was rough when he replied, “You could have, you know. I wouldn’t have minded, and it’s hardly the most shocking bit of news she’d ever have gotten about me.”
“Your grandson is an amazing boy, smart as a whip too…”
“With these genes how could he be anything but?” jack started to laugh, but then stopped as quickly as he had begun. “Alice doesn’t want him to know about me, but I’m sure she told you that…” Ianto nodded. “They call me Uncle Jack. When I’m allowed to see him that is.”
“She’s trying to protect him. Face it, Torchwood and children, we just don’t mix very well. She’d know that better than anyone.”
“Alice says she’s protecting Steven, but preparing him would be better. It’s not just Torchwood that’s dangerous. The world is changing Ianto.” Jack made a choked noise. “I just want my family to be safe and prepared. That’s why I talked with Lucia about it, before we lost her. I think she understood.”
“Well, I can tell you that someone taught that boy a few tricks. He definitely pays attention to his surroundings, always alert. He’d do you proud, I’m sure of it.”
“But what if the danger…” Jack paused, and then spit out as quickly as he could. “What if the danger is me? How can he be ready for that?”
“Well Jack, I’m not sure how you being the danger is even possible. You obviously love them. Plus, we’ve already discovered you can’t keep a secret nearly as well as you like to think.” Ianto waited for a protest that didn’t come. Jack not rising to the bait? This was bad. “After all, what can you expect from a guy that plasters our name on every piece of equipment? Kind of hard to be a secret threat that way…”
Ianto waited again, and Jack mumbled “I’m not the one who went crazy with the label maker.”
“True enough. Fact remains, I know about your family, have now for some time.” Ianto held up his hand, he wanted to finish this without interruption. “I didn’t say, because you seemed to have gone through a lot of trouble to keep it secret, took some serious digging to find out what I did. I figured you’d tell me in your own time. Or not. I’m sure you had your reasons. I’m assuming the dream has to do with them?”
“Starts and ends with, but you don’t know what I did!”
“I won’t know unless you tell me. What I do know is that it was just a dream, and I think you’ll feel better if you just talk to me about it.”
“It’s a long story.”
“Since when do you need to worry about time?” Ianto quickly glanced at the watch on their nightstand. “Besides, it’s early yet.”
So Jack started to tell his story. Ianto already knew about Alice, so that went easier than he could have hoped for.
They shared a laugh over fake hospitalized friends and Tupperware.
Speculated over what Gwen would do with a child.
Ianto whispered “She’d be a lovely mum, I’m sure of it.”
They shared the horror of Jack’s deaths. After the incident with Grey, the idea of Jack being buried alive again (and in concrete no less) was unthinkable.
Jack dazzled Ianto with the story of his rescue plan. Embellishing a bit he even gave Ianto a kick ass gun that he fired over the heads of the guards before jumping onto the forklift and saving the day.
“So I got to be the big damn hero for once?”
Ianto laughed as Jack described how he walked around naked with a coat draped over his arm.
“You probably would prefer wearing nothing to a coat that wasn’t yours!”
“Be fair! I was handcuffed, how would I even have put it on?”
“Still, you needn’t worry about that. I have a spare on standby already. You really should be more careful with that thing.”
“A spare coat? Maybe you can model?”
“Safe deposit box, sorry.”
Jack sighed and continued. They had a couple more laughs…Rhys and his baked beans seemed particularly funny and frustrating all at once.
“Then I lost you. There was nothing I could do. I lay down and died, right next to you.” Ianto held Jack as he shook, trying to hold it in, tears running down his own face.
“How did I go? Please tell me I wasn’t a mess.”
“Huh?” Jack pulled back to look at Ianto.
“Did I go out in style at least?”
Jack wasn’t sure why that would matter so much to Ianto, but he told him anyway. “You were so brave, amazing really. You had this gorgeous suit on, you’ve never looked better. Not even in red. And I forgot to mention – you tried to correct my speech! You knocked my philosophy! I was being brilliant and there you were trying to tell me what to say to those alien bastards!”
“Well someone has to watch over you…”
“Don’t try to distract me Ianto Jones. Going on without you was terrible. When I came back I saw Gwen leaning over you, straightening your tie. Part of me broke. It was so real. So very real.
“But I’m alive. Look, feel, I’m fine Jack. Just fine. I’m not leaving you.” Ianto tried to comfort Jack again, but just hearing the dream secondhand had him a little shaken.
The rest of the dream retelling continued without many smiles, except the one bit about Andy jumping into a riot on the wrong side of the blockade.
“Well the right side, actually.” Ianto noted.
When Jack got to him and Alice and Steven and the plan to save the world he stopped. This was so hard to admit. The dream was still fresh enough it felt real. After a nudge from Ianto he continued through till the end.
Jack told of sacrificing Steven to save the world just as daybreak started to show through around the drapes. Ianto held him and murmured comforting words as Jack broke down. Finally he stopped. Jack turned to Ianto, who had been crying right along with him (what else could he do when faced with such pain?).
“Now you see what I did. No one could love me after that. Not even you.”
“It was just a dream. No one can blame you for a dream.”
“It felt so real.”
“I know you, you would never do that.”
“You’ve only known me for so long. I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of.”
“John Hart?” Ianto quipped, hoping to lighten the mood. It only earned a dark look from Jack. “Even if you were that person, which I don’t believe for a second, you aren’t now. And you haven’t been for some time.”
At the mention of time, Jack noticed the brightness of the room and checked the clock. “You must be so uncomfortable, let me move. Why did you let me lean on you all this time, must have a terrible crick in your neck.”
“You’re always a pain in my neck Jack Harkness.” Ianto stopped him as he went to move away. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now why don’t we lie back down and you can tell me more about this Lucia. Based on what I know of your family, I’m thinking there’s got to be some great stories there…”
And so they continued talking, until they both drifted back to sleep. It was a peaceful sleep, with no more horrible dreams to haunt their thoughts.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 03:31 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2009-07-13 04:01 am (UTC)From:ps I like the way your nephew thinks