The Darkest Night Chapter 5
Dec. 7th, 2010 12:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galadriel1010Title: The Darkest Night
Chapter Title: Chapter 5
Challenge/Fest: Ianto Big Bang
Rating: M
Dedication: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mcparrot for the awesome beta work, and to xxxholiclover and a_silver_story for the artses
Summary: Although the crisis with the 456 is over, Torchwood’s problems definitely aren’t. The government is meddling, Jack is pregnant and they don’t trust the team they’ve been assigned. When they cut loose from Torchwood, things get worse rather than better, and Ianto soon finds himself adrift from his loved ones and on the run, chasing down the chance that Steven’s death might not have been what it seemed.
Characters: Ianto, Jack and Alice, Steven, Agent Johnson
Contains: Pregnancy, violence, death, drug use, child in harm’s way, Ianto/OFC. COE compliant
Disclaimer: Torchwood and its environs, occurrences and persons belong to the BBC. The original characters have disowned me.
The darkness lightened into a grey fog that lingered around his mind even once the room came into focus. It was brightly lit and silent save for his breaths. A digital clock above the door told him that it was half past two in the morning, and in trying to move from the bed he realised that he was handcuffed to it by one wrist and heavily drugged.
It was a bare hospital room that stank of disinfectant and stagnant air. The machinery against the walls looked several years out of date, and he was glad that they hadn’t been using it to monitor him, despite the neglect and lack of care that that implied. He could have died during the night, and no one would have known.
He shivered at the thought and tugged against the cuff. It rattled against the bed and he hissed at it to keep quiet whilst he twisted his wrist this way and that, trying to get loose. No one came to investigate, so he dragged himself out of the bed and explored as far as he could reach. One cupboard, under a sink that wasn’t attached to the water supply any more, contained several bottles of liquid soap and disinfectant, which he seized and brought back to the bed. It was awkward with only one hand, but he managed to get the top off some of the soap bottles and start pouring it over his trapped hand. The other open bottles leaked over the bed, and he nudged them with his leg in an attempt to stop them.
Whilst he poured the soap on with his free hand he kept tugging at the other, contorting it into different positions to fit better through the ring of the cuffs. They scraped against his skin, biting into it in a way that would have been painful without the numbing drugs, but he felt nothing beyond a mild discomfort and a fascination with the way his blood mixed with the soap bubbles.
His hand slid further through the too-tight ring of metal, and he finally felt the pain when a particularly sharp wrench pulled his thumb out of its socket. He bit down on the scream and cradled his hand to his chest, closing his eyes against the tears. He was free, but now he wasn’t sure he wanted to be.
The pain receded gradually into a dull throbbing, but it was still too intense for him to try to manipulate his thumb back into position. His hand was scraped raw by the biting metal and dripping blood onto the covers, so he dragged himself from the bed to search through the other cupboards. He found a box of sterile wrappings and fumbled them around his now-useless hand, clenching it to hold them in place and biting down on a scream.
He struggled to his feet and swayed against the wall, clutching it with his good hand for support. Blood pounded in his ears and that, and the sound of his own ragged breathing, drowned out the world around him. Every step to the door and onto the corridor threatened to bring him to his knees again, and by the time he got to the opposite wall from his room he was swaying and dizzy, and the world was in shades of grey. Still, he pushed himself onwards, pushing open doors as he passed them, searching for Steven. There were more empty treatment rooms, dusty storerooms and cluttered offices. A door opened at his touch, catching him by surprise and stripping him of his support, and he swayed in the doorway until he found the far doorframe and clung to it whilst he waited for the world to right itself.
Ahead of him, another door opened, and the woman who had haunted him for six months stood framed in the doorway. She sneered and reached to her side, to her empty holster. Ianto hurled himself at her, bearing down on her with his greater height and pushing her back into her office, but two months on the run had taken their toll on Ianto's strength. Her fingers wrapped around his wrists, able to close around them, and she twisted him around and threw him against her desk. Her lips moved and he heard noises, jumbled and mixed together with the roaring, but comprehension was beyond him. When she reached for her gun, safely out of the way on a side table, he grabbed the only moment available to him, wrapped his hand around something on her desk and lunged for her. They struggled, and as she pushed him back and started to bring her gun around he lashed out with the object in his hand, aiming for her neck.
She slumped against him instantly, and her weight against him carried him to the floor, screaming. Slick, red blood spilled across the concrete floor, staining the loose hospital gown he'd been dressed in, and coated his hands. Her eyes were wide and glassy, glaring at him in death, and he had to roll to the side to throw up, the rippling shudders ripping through his injuries and amplifying them. He convulsed on himself over and over again, retching until there was nothing left in him.
How long he lay there he didn't know, but his hearing and vision had cleared somewhat by the time he managed to push her off him, collect her gun from the floor and crawl into her chair. The computer was still switched on and logged in, warning him that it would lock down if he didn't do something soon, so he moved the mouse and started reading through the files she had open. Words flew past him, slipping through his comprehension and away, and he sent the whole lot to the printer and started searching for a memory stick instead. He found one in the drawer and cleared the music off it, but when he tried to save the files onto it the computer refused him. When that failed he tried to email them to himself, tried to upload them to a storage area, tried to connect with UNIT's computer system in a last act of desperation, but nothing worked.
A penknife and a book of stamps on the desk caught his eye, and he pulled up a Word document instead and typed out Sarah Jane's address. He sent it to the printer twice and shut the computer down, then found a box and dragged the computer tower out from under the desk. His fingers fumbled on the screwdriver, the blood making them sticky and slippy and his injured hand sending blinding pain up his arm when he used it for as little as supporting the screwdriver, but he got the back off the computer and, with a piece of paper between his fingers and the delicate drive, he extracted the hard drive and put it in the box, then resealed the computer tower, put it back where it belonged and attached the first address to the outside of the box, sealing it, attaching a stamp and putting the whole thing into the dead woman's out-tray. Then he got a large envelope from her drawer, finding her keys at the same time, and put the printed information into that, attached the address and stamps, and took it, the gun and the keys down the corridor in search of another out-tray.
With the keys, he was able to get into some of the locked rooms. The first proved to be another office, where he deposited the envelope carefully, hiding it under another sheet of paper to conceal the bloody fingerprints. There were more offices, cleaner than the unlocked ones he'd passed, and then, in a small room with a bed and a desk, there was a boy asleep. Asleep until Ianto staggered in, anyway. He stared at Ianto with wide eyes that flicked from the gun to the blood and up to his face, clutching the duvet against his chest.
Ianto blinked slowly and grabbed at the chair so that he could sink into it. “Steven?”
The boy, blond-haired and blue-eyed, nodded and raised the duvet over his face. “Please don't hurt me.”
“No! No no...” He rubbed at his face with the hand that held the gun, dropping it when he realised he still held it. “I'm not... I'm not here to hurt you. I've come to rescue you. Been looking everywhere for you. I'm... Your mum. Your mum sent me. I'm not your mum.”
“Mum's okay?” The duvet lowered again and Steven leaned forwards. “Can I go back to her now?”
“Yes, but we have to be quiet.” He pressed a finger to his lips and got to his feet again. The concrete floors were cold, and Steven's feet, like his own, were bare. “Slippers, do you have slippers?” He found a pair in the bottom of the wardrobe and brought them over with a blanket, which he wrapped around Steven's shoulders. “Now, come on quietly,” he instructed when Steven was wrapped up to his satisfaction. “Home.”
X~X~X~X
Steven was shaky on his legs after his long incarceration and still wary of Ianto, but he let him lead him down the corridor in search of an exit. Every door they passed led into an office or a lab or a storeroom, and Ianto had stopped checking them when the smell of cigarettes pulled him up short. He returned to a door he’d ignored and sniffed again, leaning in to smell the doorknob.
“What are you doing?” Steven asked, hugging his arms around himself. The pyjamas didn’t fit right, and the gesture created a gap between the top and the trousers. Ianto caught hold of the blanket and wrapped it around him more securely. “Why were you sniffing the door?”
“Smoke,” he explained. “Cigarettes. It’s either a store cupboard or the outside.”
The handle turned easily, no alarms went off, and he breathed a sigh of relief at the first breath of fresh air on his face. Before anyone could catch them there, he ushered Steven out and closed the door behind them. It was still dark, and dawn wouldn’t touch the horizon for hours at this time of year, but lights from the other buildings around them showed the faint outlines of the area. He walked forwards, rough asphalt painful under his bare feet, and was glad that he’d found the slippers for Steven. As he got used to it he picked up speed, one foot in front of the other.
Voices behind him took him by surprise and he stumbled, turning back to check on them. Two men stood silhouetted in the doorway he’d just come out of, glows of red in their hands, at their mouths. He was frozen in place, staring at them until one of them turned and stared back. “Shit.”
He grabbed Steven again and pushed forwards, away from the men and into the darkness. Their light-coloured clothes aided their pursuers in seeing them, and he could hear the alarm being raised behind him. Tears flowed down his cheeks despite his attempts to stop them, and his steps were growing slower, holding Steven back. “Go,” he told him, pushing him away. “Run for the perimeter, hide. There’s a gap, in the fence.” He stood on broken glass and gasped at the sharp pain. Lights were approaching to the side now as well, and the voices behind him were louder. “Steven, run!”
“I can’t!” He sobbed. “I don’t know where…”
“Go and find Jack,” he told him again. They were still hobbling on as fast as Ianto could, but it wasn’t fast enough, the lights and the voices were coming closer, resolving themselves into an army of vehicles and individual shouts. “Go!”
The boy stumbled when he pushed him and, with one last tear-stained glance at their pursuers, he bolted into the night, a smudge of white disappearing towards the fence. Ianto changed tack, veering towards one of the buildings. It brought him closer to the oncoming vehicles, but away from Steven.
He choked on a sob and stumbled again, clasping his hand to his side to stop the bleeding. It throbbed in time with his racing heart, and he could feel the warm, wet sensation of blood soaking the hospital gown. Behind him he heard a car door slam, voices rising, and then he pressed too hard on the injury and the grey at the edges of his vision grew and engulfed him in a silent blackness.
Epilogue
Chapter Title: Chapter 5
Challenge/Fest: Ianto Big Bang
Rating: M
Dedication: Thanks to
mcparrot for the awesome beta work, and to xxxholiclover and a_silver_story for the artsesSummary: Although the crisis with the 456 is over, Torchwood’s problems definitely aren’t. The government is meddling, Jack is pregnant and they don’t trust the team they’ve been assigned. When they cut loose from Torchwood, things get worse rather than better, and Ianto soon finds himself adrift from his loved ones and on the run, chasing down the chance that Steven’s death might not have been what it seemed.
Characters: Ianto, Jack and Alice, Steven, Agent Johnson
Contains: Pregnancy, violence, death, drug use, child in harm’s way, Ianto/OFC. COE compliant
Disclaimer: Torchwood and its environs, occurrences and persons belong to the BBC. The original characters have disowned me.
The darkness lightened into a grey fog that lingered around his mind even once the room came into focus. It was brightly lit and silent save for his breaths. A digital clock above the door told him that it was half past two in the morning, and in trying to move from the bed he realised that he was handcuffed to it by one wrist and heavily drugged.
It was a bare hospital room that stank of disinfectant and stagnant air. The machinery against the walls looked several years out of date, and he was glad that they hadn’t been using it to monitor him, despite the neglect and lack of care that that implied. He could have died during the night, and no one would have known.
He shivered at the thought and tugged against the cuff. It rattled against the bed and he hissed at it to keep quiet whilst he twisted his wrist this way and that, trying to get loose. No one came to investigate, so he dragged himself out of the bed and explored as far as he could reach. One cupboard, under a sink that wasn’t attached to the water supply any more, contained several bottles of liquid soap and disinfectant, which he seized and brought back to the bed. It was awkward with only one hand, but he managed to get the top off some of the soap bottles and start pouring it over his trapped hand. The other open bottles leaked over the bed, and he nudged them with his leg in an attempt to stop them.
Whilst he poured the soap on with his free hand he kept tugging at the other, contorting it into different positions to fit better through the ring of the cuffs. They scraped against his skin, biting into it in a way that would have been painful without the numbing drugs, but he felt nothing beyond a mild discomfort and a fascination with the way his blood mixed with the soap bubbles.
His hand slid further through the too-tight ring of metal, and he finally felt the pain when a particularly sharp wrench pulled his thumb out of its socket. He bit down on the scream and cradled his hand to his chest, closing his eyes against the tears. He was free, but now he wasn’t sure he wanted to be.
The pain receded gradually into a dull throbbing, but it was still too intense for him to try to manipulate his thumb back into position. His hand was scraped raw by the biting metal and dripping blood onto the covers, so he dragged himself from the bed to search through the other cupboards. He found a box of sterile wrappings and fumbled them around his now-useless hand, clenching it to hold them in place and biting down on a scream.
He struggled to his feet and swayed against the wall, clutching it with his good hand for support. Blood pounded in his ears and that, and the sound of his own ragged breathing, drowned out the world around him. Every step to the door and onto the corridor threatened to bring him to his knees again, and by the time he got to the opposite wall from his room he was swaying and dizzy, and the world was in shades of grey. Still, he pushed himself onwards, pushing open doors as he passed them, searching for Steven. There were more empty treatment rooms, dusty storerooms and cluttered offices. A door opened at his touch, catching him by surprise and stripping him of his support, and he swayed in the doorway until he found the far doorframe and clung to it whilst he waited for the world to right itself.
Ahead of him, another door opened, and the woman who had haunted him for six months stood framed in the doorway. She sneered and reached to her side, to her empty holster. Ianto hurled himself at her, bearing down on her with his greater height and pushing her back into her office, but two months on the run had taken their toll on Ianto's strength. Her fingers wrapped around his wrists, able to close around them, and she twisted him around and threw him against her desk. Her lips moved and he heard noises, jumbled and mixed together with the roaring, but comprehension was beyond him. When she reached for her gun, safely out of the way on a side table, he grabbed the only moment available to him, wrapped his hand around something on her desk and lunged for her. They struggled, and as she pushed him back and started to bring her gun around he lashed out with the object in his hand, aiming for her neck.
She slumped against him instantly, and her weight against him carried him to the floor, screaming. Slick, red blood spilled across the concrete floor, staining the loose hospital gown he'd been dressed in, and coated his hands. Her eyes were wide and glassy, glaring at him in death, and he had to roll to the side to throw up, the rippling shudders ripping through his injuries and amplifying them. He convulsed on himself over and over again, retching until there was nothing left in him.
How long he lay there he didn't know, but his hearing and vision had cleared somewhat by the time he managed to push her off him, collect her gun from the floor and crawl into her chair. The computer was still switched on and logged in, warning him that it would lock down if he didn't do something soon, so he moved the mouse and started reading through the files she had open. Words flew past him, slipping through his comprehension and away, and he sent the whole lot to the printer and started searching for a memory stick instead. He found one in the drawer and cleared the music off it, but when he tried to save the files onto it the computer refused him. When that failed he tried to email them to himself, tried to upload them to a storage area, tried to connect with UNIT's computer system in a last act of desperation, but nothing worked.
A penknife and a book of stamps on the desk caught his eye, and he pulled up a Word document instead and typed out Sarah Jane's address. He sent it to the printer twice and shut the computer down, then found a box and dragged the computer tower out from under the desk. His fingers fumbled on the screwdriver, the blood making them sticky and slippy and his injured hand sending blinding pain up his arm when he used it for as little as supporting the screwdriver, but he got the back off the computer and, with a piece of paper between his fingers and the delicate drive, he extracted the hard drive and put it in the box, then resealed the computer tower, put it back where it belonged and attached the first address to the outside of the box, sealing it, attaching a stamp and putting the whole thing into the dead woman's out-tray. Then he got a large envelope from her drawer, finding her keys at the same time, and put the printed information into that, attached the address and stamps, and took it, the gun and the keys down the corridor in search of another out-tray.
With the keys, he was able to get into some of the locked rooms. The first proved to be another office, where he deposited the envelope carefully, hiding it under another sheet of paper to conceal the bloody fingerprints. There were more offices, cleaner than the unlocked ones he'd passed, and then, in a small room with a bed and a desk, there was a boy asleep. Asleep until Ianto staggered in, anyway. He stared at Ianto with wide eyes that flicked from the gun to the blood and up to his face, clutching the duvet against his chest.
Ianto blinked slowly and grabbed at the chair so that he could sink into it. “Steven?”
The boy, blond-haired and blue-eyed, nodded and raised the duvet over his face. “Please don't hurt me.”
“No! No no...” He rubbed at his face with the hand that held the gun, dropping it when he realised he still held it. “I'm not... I'm not here to hurt you. I've come to rescue you. Been looking everywhere for you. I'm... Your mum. Your mum sent me. I'm not your mum.”
“Mum's okay?” The duvet lowered again and Steven leaned forwards. “Can I go back to her now?”
“Yes, but we have to be quiet.” He pressed a finger to his lips and got to his feet again. The concrete floors were cold, and Steven's feet, like his own, were bare. “Slippers, do you have slippers?” He found a pair in the bottom of the wardrobe and brought them over with a blanket, which he wrapped around Steven's shoulders. “Now, come on quietly,” he instructed when Steven was wrapped up to his satisfaction. “Home.”
X~X~X~X
Steven was shaky on his legs after his long incarceration and still wary of Ianto, but he let him lead him down the corridor in search of an exit. Every door they passed led into an office or a lab or a storeroom, and Ianto had stopped checking them when the smell of cigarettes pulled him up short. He returned to a door he’d ignored and sniffed again, leaning in to smell the doorknob.
“What are you doing?” Steven asked, hugging his arms around himself. The pyjamas didn’t fit right, and the gesture created a gap between the top and the trousers. Ianto caught hold of the blanket and wrapped it around him more securely. “Why were you sniffing the door?”
“Smoke,” he explained. “Cigarettes. It’s either a store cupboard or the outside.”
The handle turned easily, no alarms went off, and he breathed a sigh of relief at the first breath of fresh air on his face. Before anyone could catch them there, he ushered Steven out and closed the door behind them. It was still dark, and dawn wouldn’t touch the horizon for hours at this time of year, but lights from the other buildings around them showed the faint outlines of the area. He walked forwards, rough asphalt painful under his bare feet, and was glad that he’d found the slippers for Steven. As he got used to it he picked up speed, one foot in front of the other.
Voices behind him took him by surprise and he stumbled, turning back to check on them. Two men stood silhouetted in the doorway he’d just come out of, glows of red in their hands, at their mouths. He was frozen in place, staring at them until one of them turned and stared back. “Shit.”
He grabbed Steven again and pushed forwards, away from the men and into the darkness. Their light-coloured clothes aided their pursuers in seeing them, and he could hear the alarm being raised behind him. Tears flowed down his cheeks despite his attempts to stop them, and his steps were growing slower, holding Steven back. “Go,” he told him, pushing him away. “Run for the perimeter, hide. There’s a gap, in the fence.” He stood on broken glass and gasped at the sharp pain. Lights were approaching to the side now as well, and the voices behind him were louder. “Steven, run!”
“I can’t!” He sobbed. “I don’t know where…”
“Go and find Jack,” he told him again. They were still hobbling on as fast as Ianto could, but it wasn’t fast enough, the lights and the voices were coming closer, resolving themselves into an army of vehicles and individual shouts. “Go!”
The boy stumbled when he pushed him and, with one last tear-stained glance at their pursuers, he bolted into the night, a smudge of white disappearing towards the fence. Ianto changed tack, veering towards one of the buildings. It brought him closer to the oncoming vehicles, but away from Steven.
He choked on a sob and stumbled again, clasping his hand to his side to stop the bleeding. It throbbed in time with his racing heart, and he could feel the warm, wet sensation of blood soaking the hospital gown. Behind him he heard a car door slam, voices rising, and then he pressed too hard on the injury and the grey at the edges of his vision grew and engulfed him in a silent blackness.
Epilogue
