Cursed

Jack and Ianto were still standing there a few minutes later, enjoying the closeness of their embrace and basking in the joy shared along their bond, when Owen and Susan appeared with Gwen’s body on a gurney, already secured in the body bag Ianto had sent up with Toshiko.  Susan checked Ianto over as Owen and Jack interred Gwen.  They would take a few moments sometime later to say a few words, but this was not the time.

Susan disapparated with Ianto, leaving Jack and Owen to follow, but not before Jack stole another kiss.  Back in the main part of the hub, Susan sat Ianto on the sofa and brought him some water.  Ron and Hermione were curled up in a conjured chair, dozing, and Luna was finishing a letter she had been scribbling out since Ianto had left the main part of the hub three quarters of an hour, before.

“Bunny?” Ianto asked as she folded the sheets of paper and secreted them in a pocket.

“I’m letting Professor McGonagall know about the magic you did tonight.  I think it’s important to your healing and for her instruction that she knows about your anti-splinch and double-casting whilst helping to run the hexagram, along with the rest.  I’ve explained that we will all have been obliviated and won’t remember due to an alien encounter.  I’m confident she will use the information wisely.”

Ianto frowned, but then nodded.  “If you think that’s best,” he said.

Luna stared at him with that abstracted expression that Jack hoped he would someday become accustomed to, though for now it was still quite disconcerting.  “I’m not sure you realize how singular it is that you have been doing some fairly complex casting with a new wand and whilst physically weakened and out of practice.  It is important that she knows of it, because I think you are far more powerful than anyone has ever realized.  It will likely influence how she approaches your training, so it is quite important that she is told.”

“I trust you, Bunny,” Ianto said, and she stood up so she could hug him.

Toshiko announced that she had finished scrubbing the CCTV.  She checked the rift predictor and said the next twenty-four hours should be fairly quiet, so Jack called UNIT and asked them to monitor the activity for that period so Torchwood could inform Gwen’s fiancé of her death and have a bit of time to mourn.

Ron took Owen and Toshiko to her flat and altered their memories according to the plan, leaving them asleep together on the sofa.  It did not take long, as he had been working on getting Ianto’s script to flow naturally while waiting for everyone to finish their various tasks.  He returned to the hub and took Hermione home to get ready for bed (again) and wait for Luna.

Luna and Susan took Jack and Ianto home.  Ianto brushed his teeth and he and Jack had some water before undressing and settling into bed.  Susan and Luna altered their memories and left them to sleep. 

Luna went to Susan’s home with her and altered her memory of the evening and left her dozing with a cup of tea she had prepared to help herself to decompress after the late-night callout.  Luna then went to Ron and Hermione’s, obliviating Ron and altering Hermione’s memory according to the plan they had come up with.  She then recruited Ron’s owl Pigwidgeon (renowned for escaping and going joy-flying) to take her letter to Professor McGonagall before returning to Susan’s to wake the Healer and ask to be obliviated. 

Luna had told Owen the truth – it was not uncommon for an Unspeakable to require the occasional alteration to their memories.  Usually, they would find a coworker within the Department of Mysteries to help, but it was not unheard of to go to a Healer, as there was something akin to muggle medical confidentiality that would keep the Healer from mentioning the event.

Susan was too tired from her own busy night to ask Luna for any details regarding what she had been up to that required the spell.  And at any rate, there was no point – as an Unspeakable, Luna wouldn’t tell her, anyway.  So she accompanied Luna home and obliviated all of her memories since midnight and then returned home to her bed.

And in a locked-down lab in the Torchwood Three hub in Cardiff, the containment unit fell still, the alien locked inside, dead.

***

In the end, the plan worked.  George thought he woke up tired because he’d fallen asleep on his couch.  Harry and Ginny just thought they’d had an off night.  Ron figured it was because Hermione had been gone to Cardiff (which she told him about, the next morning); he never slept as well when she wasn’t there.  Luna had taken precautions with some additional techniques she had learned as an Unspeakable in order to refrain from pursuing any suspicions she might have had that she had been working the night before.  And Hermione and Susan of course remembered that they had been called to Cardiff, but the stories they remembered held, and the alien did not return.

***

It was almost noon as Ianto woke slowly to the warmth and comfort of Jack’s arms around him, Jack’s body pressed close to his, and Jack’s kisses, soft and tender, against his lips.  As awareness slowly returned, he realized he’d been dreaming about kissing Jack, and now as he slowly woke up, he was kissing Jack.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened in the last few weeks.  Jack loved being awakened by his lover, still asleep and snuffling, unerringly finding Jack’s lips for the loveliest soft, lazy kisses.  He refrained from teasing Ianto, not wanting his lover to feel self-conscious about something so lovely.  It was flattering, really.  Clearly it was Jack that Ianto was seeking out, even in his sleep, so he just enjoyed Ianto’s sleep-snogging to the fullest, whenever it occurred.

Ianto, still half asleep, went for another kiss before letting out a purr of enjoyment, eliciting a chuckle from Jack.   But as the last tendrils of sleep released him back into full awareness, his purr morphed into a groan as the pain reasserted itself and the anguish of the previous night was remembered.

Jack began to pull away, but Ianto surprised him by following, wrapping himself more tightly around his lover and letting out a whimper of distress that Jack could now feel along their bond.

“Shhh, Love,” Jack ran a gentle hand up and down Ianto’s back in a soothing caress.  He reached for the syringe on the bedside table, thankful that Owen had thought of pain relief for Ianto.  Until he healed, they would need to manage the pain.  And it seemed that, at the moment, Ianto’s exhaustion and physical depletion were causing his healing factor to be much slower than what would eventually become normal, for him.

After administering the painkiller, Jack held onto Ianto as they both made their apologies.  They remembered that they had hashed out most of the things that had arisen the night before, but it took some touch and comfort for them to be able to close the door on it all.  Jack’s heart ached at how upset Ianto was.  The younger man wanted to trust Jack, more than anything, and Ianto was cut to pieces that he had lost faith in Jack so easily.  But Jack understood, and he was able to walk Ianto through it all so they could come out the other side, leaving the distrust and betrayal behind.

Jack wanted to leave Ianto to sleep, but the younger man insisted on accompanying him to notify Rhys.  Their debate continued as Jack made them tea and toast, planning to cook a proper breakfast for the younger man once the unpleasant task had been completed.

“Ianto, that’s a really bad idea,” Jack began.

“Why?” Ianto frowned, confused.

“Because she tried to kill you!”

“So did Lisa,” Ianto replied, and then blinked a few times as Jack’s mouth snapped shut.  “That made more sense in my head.”

“No,” Jack sighed.  “I think I get it.  It’s not for her; it’s for Rhys, because you know what’s about to hit him.”

“Yeah,” Ianto sighed, feeling guilty.

“Ianto, you have nothing to feel guilty about.”

“But I do,” Ianto insisted.  “I killed her during the Year, and…”

“Ianto, the Year reversed.  You did nothing wrong!”

“But I’m relieved she’s gone, now!” Ianto blurted, and Jack’s heart broke as sheer terror exploded along their bond at the admission.  “I…” he choked, backing away from Jack and looking around for an escape route.  “I’m sorry,” he said, reaching into the pocket of his robe. 

Jack put his hands out, recognizing this as the fear the curses had instilled.  “Ianto, it’s okay.  Please,” he stepped back rather than towards Ianto, who was looking like a cornered animal, clutching the wand in his pocket and fighting the instinct to disapparate to safety.  “Please, Love.  It’s me.  I’m not going to hurt you.  I understand.  You killed her during the Year because she had betrayed the people you were trying to protect.  And you have every right to be relieved that she’s gone, now.”

“I do?” Ianto asked, his voice small and frightened.

“Ianto, she shot you.  You would have died if your friends hadn’t intervened.  And if we can help it, I don’t want you to experience that.  Not yet.  Not for a very long time.  So of course it’s a relief that someone with that much hate and insanity, even without alien influence, is gone.”

“You… You’re not mad?”

Jack’s heart ached.  He knew there may have been a time when he’d have lost patience with the same insecurity coming up, again and again.  But the tenacity of this particular one was down to his own actions.  So he would take the consequences of those actions each time they arose.  Because he owed that to his beloved.

“No, Love,” he replied, giving Ianto a soft smile and stepping forward, hands still raised.  He would stop if Ianto told him to.  “I could never be mad at you for that.”  He took another step, and then they were hugging, neither certain who had initiated the embrace.  It didn’t matter, though.  They both needed the comfort.

Jack felt Ianto nuzzling into his neck, hiding his face.  Jack sighed, but then another smile graced his lips as he realized what he needed to do.  “Particularly when I feel the same way.”

“What?” Ianto jolted back, but Jack kept his arms wrapped around the younger man.  Ianto stared at him.  “What does that mean?”

“It means,” Jack said, his voice quiet and his eyes pained, “that she tried to kill you.  And that is not something I could have forgiven.”  He shrugged.  “Not sure how I would have handled it, if she’d lived.  I would have been inclined to kill her,” he speculated, “but it’d be hard to justify now, after all the other interoffice shootings I’ve tolerated.”

Ianto gave a huff, and Jack pulled him close, once more.  Once they’d both calmed, they leaned away from one another, slowly pulling from the embrace.  Jack kissed Ianto and pressed a finger to the younger man’s lips when he drew breath to speak.

“If that’s another apology, I’m not having it,” he warned.

Ianto gave a guilty smile before nipping Jack’s finger – a playful acknowledgement that he had been about to do just that and acceptance of Jack’s… request.  “Then thank you,” he said, instead.

They showered (Jack felt it his solemn duty to help Ianto wash), and then Jack continued to help as Ianto dressed in one of his more somber suits, to mark the solemnity of the task ahead.  Jack did not abandon his own look, but he did choose dark trousers and a black waistcoat pilfered from Ianto’s closet over a light blue broadcloth shirt.

They dressed slowly, not looking forward to this particular duty, but eventually, they were ready.

***