Counting the Days As I'm Counting on You

[aviv_b_artwork]

TITLE:  Counting the Days As I'm Counting on You
 Author: Aviv_b
RATING:  PG
CHARACTERS:  Ianto, Gwen, Rhys, Jack
DISCLAIMER:  Not mine; Aunty B's and RTD's
WORDS: ~ 2210
SUMMARY:  A CoE fix it, sort of.  Ianto survives, but things still aren't working out very well.

Written for redisourcolor Challenge 20 - Theme: Anniversary 

 

He sat alone in his room, staring out the window as he did every day of what he thought of as 'my pathetic life such as it is.’ He never had visitors anymore which was a relief. Having to act like everything was ok, when it would never be ok again, had become unbearable.  He loathed the ‘cheer ups,’  ‘you’ll get over this in time,’ as well as the ‘fine, sit there feeling sorry for yourself and see where that gets you.’ It got him peace- which was a small mercy anyway.

 

He remembered the first few days after he revived. The joy of being alive, the possibilities of a future, continuing his life with his friends and his lover. ‘Well that worked out well,’ he thought as he moved over to sit in front of his bed. Two hours until he could go to sleep. He had no choice but to wait until the aides came to help him into bed.

 

He’d woken up six weeks after the 456 let go their poison gas in Thames House.  At least that’s how he thought about it. One doctor said he came back from the dead, others declared that he had probably been in a coma, he felt like he’d been sleeping. They hadn’t buried him, thank goodness; he had been laid to rest in a mausoleum that Jack had purchased.  He’d told Gwen that he couldn’t bear to think of Ianto lying in the cold earth. Ianto snorted; Jack certainly had some experience in that department.

 

They’d shipped him off to Flat Holm, told him it was for him to be able to recover in secret. He didn’t understand why that was necessary, not at first. It had taken him months to work out the real reason. He reckoned once his legs got better and he could walk again, he’d go home. But his legs never did get better and going home was a problem as well.

 

His sister visited once, but didn’t bring the children. ‘Too frightening,' she told him. Gwen and Rhys visited weekly for a while. He’d ask Gwen when he could go home and she’d gently change the subject. And so it went until that fateful day. The day when he couldn’t stand not having his questions answered, when she was heavy with her baby, and tired and irritable. They’d been sitting outside under some old spreading oak trees, enjoying the warmth of a late summer afternoon. And he asked the fateful questions.

 

“But why doesn’t Jack visit? Is he angry at me?” Gwen had sighed. “What about my sister and my niece and nephew? Don’t they want to see me? Does Andy know I’m here?” She had tried to quiet him, until Rhys had said, “Just tell him Gwen, he’s got a right to know.”

 

“What? What aren’t you telling me Gwen? What the hell is going on?”

 

And she’d spat it out straight and simple. “You’re never going back Ianto; this place is your home now.”

 

He’d been confused and frightened and cried and she’d snapped at Rhys and said she wanted to go home. Rhys had apologized and promised to be back. He came just one more time, the following week.

 

“No one knows you’re alive Ianto. That’s the truth of it. The government doesn’t want you alive, so no one can know you’re here. Gwen did this to protect you.”  And then he explained what Jack had done to destroy the 456.

 

“After the government tried to cover up and deny their intentions to round up the children, there was rioting on a scale never seen before in the United Kingdom. Half of the business district of London was burned; in Glasgow and Cardiff every government office was vandalized; several members of the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh were torn apart by a mob. You happened to wake up just as things were quieting down. When Gwen told the Prime Minister of your resurrection, he ordered your execution. So we had to fake your death to save your life.”

 

“Fortunately, only a few outsiders knew of your existence, they were easily retconned including your family and the PM. The people who work here are paid to keep this place secret, so they aren’t going to tell anyone. Sorry mate, but that’s your fate.”

 

Ianto nodded, understanding at last why he was there. He was the only survivor (besides Jack) from Thames House. The others had been buried or cremated shortly after the incident. The world was still in chaos. And if it had been revealed that someone came back, literally from the dead after the attack, then the families of the other victims would have been outraged at the possibility that their loved ones had been buried or burned alive. It would have reopened all the distrust and hatred for the government that were just starting to abate.

 

“Tell you what, once the baby is born, we’ll bring him or her over to see you.”

 

Ianto had smiled at that. Rhys always was a soft touch. And then he looked at Rhys and asked the one question that had been dancing around in his brain the whole visit.

 

“Does Jack know?”

 

Ianto replayed that scene in his mind almost every day. Even after all this time, he still went over and over it, thinking how it could have been different. If he hadn’t asked, that would have been best, of course. Or Rhys could have lied. But good old Rhys, good old honest Rhys, good old naive, honest Rhys had blurted out the truth.

 

“He was gone when you woke up. He did visit once, not long after you awoke. Gwen never told him about you. She reckoned that it would be better for both of you that way.”

 

Ianto had screamed at that. And kept on screaming until staff had come running. And Rhys stood there, looking flustered, apologizing, trying to explain the unexplainable. And Ianto couldn’t stop screaming. Six months of being locked away from the world and his only chance of parole not even knowing he existed.

 

Even after all this time, Ianto wasn’t sure why Gwen hadn’t told Jack. Neither she nor Rhys had ever visited again probably because they couldn’t or wouldn’t answer that question.

 

So he sat as days turned into weeks, turned into months, turned into years. He never took part in any activities at the facility, never spoke unless spoken to, and then only to answer a question with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ He spent his days staring out the window of his room or just staring off into space.

 

A year passed, then two. The few employees who knew his identity left and new employees came. Now he was just another rift refugee. A quiet and docile one, so they generally ignored him. They dressed and bathed him and made sure he ate, but everyone had learned to leave him alone. They thought his mind had been destroyed by his travels through the rift.

 

In reality, his mind was busy calculating everything and anything.

 

It’s August 19, 2013. I’m 30 years old today. That’s 7 years, 2 months and 14 days since the Battle of Canary Wharf. That’s 62,856 minutes or 3,771,360 seconds.

 

It’s August 19, 2013. It’s 6 years, 8 months and 5 days since Jack and I were together for the first time. It’s 4 years, 1 month and 4 days since I died at Thames House…

 

He reckoned he might as well be immortal as he calculated the incremental passage of time. Time from birth, from his mam dying, from meeting Lisa, from Canary Wharf, from Lisa’s execution, from the death of Owen and Tosh, his death at Thames House, his rebirth, his incarceration at Flat Holm, the last time anyone visited, how old Gwen’s baby would be now. 

 

***

 

Ianto wasn’t the only one conscious of the passage of time. The passage of time bit into Rhys’ soul. He loved his wife and his new baby, but his dreams were haunted by Ianto's screams. A year after his last visit he asked Gwen whether maybe they shouldn’t see if they could contact Captain Jack and tell him about Ianto.

 

Gwen flew into a rage. “There are people trying to find him and kill him. Do you want to get involved with that? We have our child to think of. Just leave it alone.”

 

Rhys had to admit that she was right. It wasn’t their fight anymore and they had to protect their child at any cost.

 

Another year, and then several more passed and Gwen was still adamant about not trying to find Captain Jack. Rhys became more distraught with each passing year. He did not confide his unease to Gwen, knowing that it would upset her and make his life more of a living hell than it already was.

 

He couldn’t get an update on Ianto, it would be too dangerous. He searched the Internet for anything on Captain Jack and found nothing. With the passage of time, references to Captain Jack Harkness had become more difficult to retrieve as his existence receded into a dark corner of the World Wide Web.

 

He caught a break quite by accident. Literally. On a business trip to London with his boss, he slipped on some ice and ended up admitted to hospital with a broken wrist and a concussion. While there, a doctor recognized his name and came to speak with him.

 

He found himself talking to one Martha Jones who apparently knew Jack and someone called the Doctor. He didn’t know why, but he trusted her and told her about Ianto. She was, not surprisingly, shocked.

 

“It haunts me, Dr. Jones. I can’t visit him because he isn’t supposed to exist. I don’t know how to contact Captain Jack, but I can’t believe that after all these years it would be dangerous for him to visit. But if I do contact him and something were to happen to Jack or Ianto, Gwen would never forgive me.”

 

“Leave this to me,” Martha told him. “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

Rhys had no choice but to do just that. He returned to Cardiff and never mentioned  his meeting with Martha Jones to Gwen. But he finally felt that the weight of the secret existence of Ianto Jones had been lifted from his shoulders.

 

Gwen noticed a difference in Rhys almost immediately. He began to smile again and was actually sleeping through the night. She couldn’t figure it out and eventually attributed it to a ‘knock on the head that finally knocked some sense into him.’

 

***

Ianto sat alone in his room staring out the window.  

 

“Three hours until bedtime. That’s 180 minutes or…”

 

“10,800 seconds.”  Ianto turned his wheelchair at the sound of a voice he hadn’t heard in years. Jack Harkness was standing in the doorway. He looked older, sadder, somehow. Ianto felt his eyes cloud with tears as he was sure he really had gone mad.

 

“No you’re not real, you can’t be, not after all this time,” he mumbled as he pushed his chair away from Jack.

 

“Hey,” Jack said walking toward him. “I didn’t know, Ianto, I would have come sooner if I had known.”

 

“But you’re older. That can’t be.”

 

“A lot more time has passed for me than for you. I do age, just a lot more slowly than you do.”

 

They were interrupted by a floor nurse who was astounded to see someone in this patient’s room. “Who are you, what are you doing here?” she asked Jack. Not waiting for Jack’s answer she called down the hall for assistance.

 

“Well, time we’re off then,” Jack told Ianto.

 

“They’ll never let us leave.”

 

Jack sat down on Ianto’s lap. “Not planning on asking,” he said as he activated his wrist strap. Ianto saw the room spinning around him before everything went dark.  

 

Ianto opened his eyes and looked around. They were inside some type of control room. “Welcome to my spacecraft. It took a while but remember that piece of coral I had? It finally grew into a Tardis.”

 

“How long?” Ianto asked.

 

“Seven hundred and thirty thousand days, give or take.”

 

“You don’t look too bad for being two thousand years older.”

 

“And you have aged very nicely as well,” Jack said smiling.  “And I couldn’t have picked a better day to find you, Ianto Jones.”

 

Ianto scanned his memory for the significance of the day. “September 3? What’s so special about the day?”

 

“I’m surprised at you, Ianto. I promised I’d always remember you and here you’ve gone and forgotten the most significant day of our lives.”  Ianto knew Jack was just teasing, but he couldn’t for the life of him think of any important event linked to that date.

 

“September 3, 2006, I was rescued from a weevil in Bute Park by a handsome young man. Happy anniversary, Ianto. It's ten years to the day since we first met,” Jack said, kissing him on the cheek.

 

“Five million, two hundred and fifty-six thousand minutes,” Ianto blurted out before he could stop himself.

 

“And I’ve missed you every single one of those minutes,” Jack replied. “But starting right now, I’m spending every remaining second you have at your side.”

 

For the first time in more than three million minutes, Ianto smiled.