Truth or Lie

[aviv_b_artwork]

Title: Truth Or Lie
Author: Aviv_b
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairing: Ianto, Jack, mentions of the rest of the team, Ianto’s family.
Rating: PG-13 for adult nature of the story.
Warnings: Child abuse, mental illness, character death.
Words: 2814

Prompt: Torchwood, Ianto, a little bit of back story. No one mentions his mother. Ever.
Summary: After the Cyberwoman is killed, Jack is determined to know everything else that Ianto is hiding.
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It felt like a dream…

He knelt over her body, feeling the hysteria build within until he heard the click of the revolver and felt the cold metal pressed against his temple.

It sprang into his head suddenly, the only prayer he knew, the one he stopped saying when he was six:

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep

The hysteria broke free in nervous laughter, then crying and more laughter. He felt the gun move away and a voice full of anger and pain ordered,

“Get up. Now. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

Between the floor slick with her blood and Annie’s blood, the tears and the snot running down his face, the pain in his shoulder where he landed when she threw him, and the pain in his heart when he finally saw her, he was overwhelmed and unbalanced. He tried to stand but slipped and fell back down on his knees. Hard.

He felt a hand on his collar and another on his belt as he was yanked roughly to his feet. A push from behind.

“Move.”

He stumbled forward best he could, his body not wanting to follow directions. Another rough push from behind.

“Don’t make me tell you again…move.”

They ended up in a small room several levels lower than Ianto had ever explored in the Hub. A small wooden table, two chairs, a metal storage cabinet, a single light bulb dangling from the ceiling.  He wasn’t surprised. Easy to kill him here, dispose of the body, wouldn’t even have to clean up; no one would ever come looking for evidence.

Suddenly, everything came into sharp focus.

Jack pushed him through the threshold, followed him in, locking the door behind them.

“Sit.” He sat. Jack sat in the chair opposite him nearer to the door. 

“What should I do with you? What do you think would be appropriate punishment?”

Ianto felt the hysteria bubble up once more as the prayer invaded his consciousness.

If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

He found himself giggling, couldn’t help it, his emotional inhibitions had been destroyed and he was unable to control his own reactions to his circumstances.

Jack stared at him in anger. He knew Ianto was in shock but didn’t have much sympathy for a man who almost allowed the world to be destroyed.

“Cybermen. What the hell were you thinking? You survived Canary Wharf; you know what they can do.” Ianto stayed silent.

Jack tapped his earpiece. “Yeah, what did you find…Ok then, Owen you take care of the mess, Tosh you get a cover story in place, Gwen go home.” Jack listened some more. “Gwen, go home. I don’t want to see any of you before noon tomorrow.” He disconnected the com and sighed.

“Lisa Hallett, the former and now truly dead Lisa Hallett. So you thought it was worth risking mankind to keep that thing alive?” Ianto gave no response.

“Ianto, I’m talking to you; I would suggest if you want to survive to see another day, you start answering my questions.” No reply.

“Do you want me to kill you?” Jack shouted. Ianto stared at him; he almost looked like he was smiling. “Fine. You’ll get what you want but first I need to make sure there isn’t anything else you’re hiding here or elsewhere.”

Jack walked over to the metal cabinet. Inside there were boxes of what appeared to be medical supplies. Jack took out a disposable syringe and a tiny bottle of solution, opened the pack, took out the syringe, carefully measured the solution and walked back over toward Ianto.

For the first time since they entered the room Ianto reacted. He leaned away from Jack but couldn’t will himself to get up from the chair.

“Don’t want this do you, but how else am I to know that you’ve told me the truth? And I will have the truth Ianto, even if it kills you.” Before Ianto could react, Jack had forced the left side of Ianto’s head down on the table and was injecting the solution into his carotid artery. The solution burned as it flowed into his body but Ianto didn’t have the strength to fight back.  Finally it was finished; Jack tossed the syringe in a small garbage bin and moved away from Ianto back to the chair on the other side of the table.

“The mind is a funny thing, Ianto. You can lie, you can cover up, but the mind knows the truth. Some would call the drug I’ve given you a truth serum, others might call it an inhibition neutralizer. The bottom line is that you’ll be unable to resist telling me the truth. You may try to lie through omission or through carefully chosen words, but your brain will know and it will set off a chemical reaction quite painful to experience. And I have a feeling Mr. Jones, that you are going to require several demonstrations of its strength before you break.”

Ianto just glared at him. “Let’s begin. What’s your name? When were you born? What’s the name of the grammar school you attended?” Despite his attempts to resist, Ianto found himself providing the information.

“Tell me about the shoplifting incident you were arrested for when you were fifteen.”

“Stole some candy from a store.”   Ianto winced.

“Ah, someone isn’t telling the whole story. Did you steal something else that day or another time?”

“No nothing else that day.” Ianto flinched as a pain shot up his back.

“Oh you’re still avoiding the whole truth. Trust me Ianto it will get much worse the longer you hold out.”

“Nothing to tell,” Ianto spat out through gritted teeth. “Fuck!” Ianto yelped as a sharper pain ran up his spine.

Jack chuckled and shook his head. “You will tell me eventually, so why not save yourself the trouble.”

“Noth…” Ianto started to say when a shock so powerful it made him jump to his feet.

“Ok, I shoplifted stuff pretty regularly until I got caught. Just candy and some CDs and...cigarettes.”

“All that fuss over candy, CDs and nicotine. And we haven’t gotten to the fun stuff yet.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you,” Ianto spat out. The first act of defiance. ‘Good,’ thought Jack, ‘now we’re getting somewhere.’

Jack laughed. “As a matter of fact, I am. And the best part is that I feel absolutely no responsibility for your situation. You did this to yourself Ianto; any further pain you experience is strictly of your own doing. 

And so it went for hours. Having experienced the level of pain the drug could produce, Ianto didn’t need much reminding until they approached a final topic.

“I’m relieved to know that you aren’t harboring any more Cybermen or Daleks or nuclear weapons anywhere. We will have to address your getting around some of Tosh’s security protocols to access my secure files. It’s a shame Ianto that you haven’t done much in your life to put your apparent cleverness toward anything positive.”

“There’s one last topic we need to cover. Your personal records are so incomplete; I’d almost think they had been tampered with.”

Jack laughed. “So let’s talk about the family, shall we.” Ianto glared at him with pure hatred.

“Oh touchy subject I see. So Ianto, how did you and your sister Rhiannon end up living with your maternal grandmother?”

“Tad and Mum died.”

“How?”

“In a fire.”

“How did the fire start?” No answer. “Ianto tell me.”

“Don’t know,” Ianto grimaced at the first twinge of discomfort.

“Oh I think you do.” Ianto shook his head ‘no.’

“Tell me,” Jack ordered.

“No.” Ianto was writhing in pain as a shock once again ran up his spine.

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know...ahh…I can’t say…not allowed to say,” Ianto gasped out.

“Not allowed to say. Now that’s interesting. Why are you not allowed to say?”

“Promised…can’t…ca…AHHHHHHHH.” Ianto’s words were cut off by his screams.

Jack waited patiently until the last jolt of pain had worked its way through Ianto. Ianto looked at him his eyes pleading.

“Who said you couldn’t talk about the fire.”

“Grandmother.”

“Tell me everything.”

It took several more hours before the whole truth was out. Ianto screamed and begged and pleaded and lied and screamed some more, but eventually Jack was confident that he had the whole story.

He sat later in his office listening to the recording he had made of the interrogation. So many lies. Rhiannon wasn’t his only sibling. He had another brother and sister, much older who never were heard from again after the fire. They weren’t minors and they took off on their own not wanting to have anything to do with the sorrow and the shame and the disgrace that followed.

His mother had set the fire that much was apparent. Ianto had been six and Rhiannon had been ten. Ianto truthfully didn’t know why his Mum had set the fire; just that she had acted strangely ever since he could remember. She lit the fire in the middle of the night in the house when everyone was asleep.

“And Tad was burned up…he couldn’t get out. And so was Mum.” Ianto screamed again as he hadn’t apparently told the whole truth.

Ianto wept and struggled and even wet himself before he finally gave up. “There was…My brother Ivor was also killed in the fire. He was my twin. Grandmother said we were never to speak of it.” Ianto was still jerking as shocks continued to course through his body.

Jack felt sick to hear Ianto speak of a twin. ‘By the goddess, how can one person have survived so much?’ 

“Finish it, Ianto...just let the rest of the story out and then you can rest.”

And like a dam suddenly burst, Ianto did. To Jack’s horror, Ianto’s voice had taken on the speech pattern of a small child as his hysteria accelerated.

“Mum didn’t like Ivor cause Ivor was Tad’s favorite. She always was mean to Ivor, yelled at him and made him stay in his room. If Tad was on the road, she’d keep him locked up for days. Ian…I… sometimes tried to help him, but if she caught us, we’d both be punished the same. She didn’t dare hit Ivor cause she was afraid of Tad. And Ivor said that Mum was mad, truly mad, and that we should run away before she turned on me too.”

Ianto took a deep breadth. “And then one time she was so angry that she hit Ivor and threw him against a dresser and it left a big bruise.” 

“And then she came and wanted to hold me and I wouldn’t let her. And she cursed me. And then Tad came home and saw the bruise and they were shouting and yelling and we went into our bed and hid under the covers. And then it was quiet. And later there was screaming and shouting and Rhiannon came into our room yelling, ‘Fire, there’s a fire, Mum’s set the house on fire.’”

“And she grabbed us by the hands and led us out of the house. And Huw and Carys, my older brother and sister were trying to talk to Mum out in front of the house. And Mum was dancing around and laughing as our house burned down. And our Tad, he wasn’t no where to be seen. And then she looked over at us. Called for Ivor and he stepped forward. I wanted to stop him, but I couldn’t. She ran over and grabbed him and she picked him up and somehow threw him through the front window, through the glass, back into the burning house. Everyone was screaming and I felt dizzy and sat down on the grass and I didn’t want to see anymore and I covered my face with my pajamas.”

Ianto took a final gasping breath. “And then Mum looked over at me and began to howl. Like a wounded animal, she cried, ‘No, no, no!’ And ran back into the burning house. And then Rhiannon said that the gas tank must have caught cause the whole house exploded.”

Ianto let out a sob. “And then it was over. I didn’t go to the funeral for Mum and Tad and my brother. I just couldn’t. Huw and Carys took off; never heard from them again. 

Grandmother took me and Rhi back to her home. She raised us best she could. And no one in her town knew what had happened and she told everyone that our parents had been killed in a car crash. We had to promise that we’d never tell anyone what really happened or talk about our parents. And I promised never to talk about my twin. And I’ve kept that promise until you made me break it.” Ianto’s put his head down on the table and sobbed.

Jack flinched as Ianto looked up at him pure malice in his eyes. “You bastard, you made me tell. I fucking hate you; just put a bullet in me, I don’t want to live. You’ve destroyed me, I have nothing to live for, I have no one that loves me.  I killed my brother.” Ianto put his forehead back on the table and continued to cry.

Something in Jack broke hearing those words. Shit, it was just like him and Grey; he still felt responsible for letting go of Grey’s hand. And like Ianto he had never told anyone, not in his last 100 plus years on earth about Grey. How could he have let this get so out of hand?  He knew hours ago that Ianto wasn’t hiding anything else dangerous. But his anger and his hurt at Ianto’s betrayal made him want to punish Ianto, rip him apart, grind him down until there was nothing left. And he had succeeded. ‘My god I am a monster,’ Jack thought.

He sighed and helped Ianto to his feet. Ianto struggled to get away from Jack. “I’m not going to hurt you; I’m not going to kill you. Come on, come with me.”

Jack led him back out of the fourth sub-basement and into the main area of the Hub. Exhausted, broken, nearly catatonic, Ianto was completely docile.  Jack just wanted to get him home. They drove in silence to Ianto’s flat. He helped Ianto undress, watched him shower in silence, got him ready for bed. As Ianto sat on the bed in a T-shirt and sweat pants, Jack handed him water and a pill.

“Its short acting retcon. It’ll wipe out the last twenty four hours. You don’t have to take it, but I think you should. I’ll tell you tomorrow that Lisa died peacefully while you worked, that you told us and that you were so grief stricken that you asked for the retcon. Everything will be cleaned up, the rest of the team will go along with the story and we’ll be able to move on.” Ianto stared at Jack saying nothing.

“I’m not going to kill you and you need to feel your secret is safe. And I need to know you aren’t going to cut my throat when I least expect it.”

Ianto nodded, resigned and defeated. He took the water swallowed the pill and knelt by his bed. “What’s the matter, Ianto, are you Ok?”

Ianto choked out a sound halfway between a laugh and a cry. “No, I’m not really Ok, but I want to be alone. I need to pray, in private. Could you at least give me that?”

Jack nodded. “Ok I’m going to leave once I check around and make sure your place is secure. I’ll be by tomorrow morning. Once the recon kicks in, you’ll be out until I wake you up.” He waited for a response but Ianto already had his hands clasped together and his eyes closed.

Jack left the bedroom quietly and went toward the front door pausing to listen just for a moment.

Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep 

Jack smiled. He didn’t know if Ianto actually believed what he was saying, or if it was just a comforting ritual. But he was relieved to know that Ianto hadn’t given up. He left the flat shutting the door behind him.

If I should die before I wake
I pray the Lord my soul to take.

Angels watch me through the night,
And wake me with the morning light.

God bless my Tad. And God bless my brother Ianto, my guardian angel on earth and now in heaven.

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. And a lie told often enough can become the truth.  A truth so deeply held that it becomes undetectable. Truth or lie; he was Ianto Jones.