Chapter Text
The dockyard was the only occupant of a spit of land that poked out into the bay just beyond the leading edge of the most recent wave of redevelopment to hit the old Cardiff industrial sector. In a few more years, as the hunger for luxury seaside living space grew, it would be replaced by glass and steel towers with their own marinas and promenades. For now it waited, the once beautiful Victorian buildings returned to their previous glory by a trick of moonlight, rot and rust gilded into decoration.
Ianto saw none of it as he walked down to the small pebble beach at the end of the complex. There, a caretaker's cottage was still kept in good repair, even though the man himself was long gone and the owners hadn't bothered to replace him. He kept his senses as open as he dared, in the hope that it would give him enough warning in case of attack that he could at least give Lisa time to get away.
He very carefully did not ask himself what was left for her to run to.
A fluttering touch at the edge of his mind made him veer towards the shore. She stood just beyond the reach of the gentle waves that lapped at the pebbles. He could feel the hunger rising in her. Tamping down his need to vomit, he forced himself to consider what he could do to feed her before she went out of control.
"I won't take from you," she said without turning around.
"All right." He sat down on what was left of a concrete retaining wall. "Doctor Tanizaki will be here tomorrow."
"Good." She danced towards the waves, close enough to risk a burn, then danced back out of the way. "It'll be lovely to swim again."
Ianto studied her, trying to find any trace of the girl he had known. They had met on the first day of choir school and had been inseparable until the day she had died. By the time they were thirteen it was accepted by both families that at the appropriate time there would be a handfasting, followed by a wedding as soon as the young ones were settled in their careers. There had never been anyone else for either of them.
Until the night of Lisa's sixteenth birthday.
Pushing away the memories, he concentrated on planning. If doctor Tanizaki could help Lisa, they would need a place where he could treat her. The best place would be the Hub, but that would mean telling Jack, and Ianto wasn't sure if Jack would be willing to let the get of a rogue vampire into his home. Especially if the vampire was Elaine de Cussac.
"I should go," he told her. "I'll need to be in tomorrow early if I'm going to disappear in the middle of the afternoon. I'll bring Doctor Tanizaki here then go back to work until evening."
"All right." She walked to him, tossing back her long braids, reaching to put her hands on his shoulders as she had always done. "I love you, Ianto."
"I love you, Lisa," he said, and the lie was bitter on his tongue, but it was also a truth of a sort. "I love you."
The next day he tried to keep to his usual routines in the tourist office and the Archives, but kept finding reasons to be in the work area. He tried to make believe that it was just a need to be among the living, but he had never been very good at lying to himself. He needed to be near Jack. He needed to sense his breath, his warmth, the way his heartbeat thundered in his veins. He desperately needed his touch.
He couldn't exactly pinpoint the moment this thing with Jack had passed from mild flirting to… whatever it was they had now. During his sessions with Mother Katherine he had struggled to put it into words until she had laughed and told him that whatever it was would name itself in its own good time. But Ianto had always been obsessive about naming things; naming them made them real, solid, so he kept trying.
They hadn't been to bed yet, in any sense of the phrase; neither one seemed in a hurry to take that step. But there were long hours spent entangled in each other arms on the couch, his head over Jack's heart, as they talked about everything and anything. Or the stolen moments in Archives when they kissed until they had either to breathe or faint. Or the drives out to the country to see the stars where they had never taken their eyes off each other, and fallen asleep on a quilt thrown over the grass and kissed each other awake. Jack knew him as he was and accepted him. It was the greatest gift Ianto had ever received.
But now there was Lisa, his beloved Lisa who he had believed dead for so long, his first and only lover before Jack. She needed his help, and he had enough love and guilt left in him to do whatever he needed to do to help her, even if that meant losing Jack.
Late in the afternoon, on the pretext of restocking the pantry, he went to meet the afternoon train from London. Doctor Tanizaki was a smallish man with a marked stoop and an eager, quick manner. His excitement over Lisa made Ianto feel uneasy; the man sounded like a researcher discussing some newly discovered virus rather than a doctor concerned for his patient. But from what Lisa had been able to find, Doctor Tanizaki was the only one whose research showed promise of a cure.
He left Doctor Tanizaki in the caretaker's cottage and returned to the Hub after a quick stop at his favorite sweets shop. He made coffee and took a cup up to Jack, along with a plate of his favorite biscuits. His… lover's?... happy smile made him bold. Setting down the tray he pushed Jack back on his chair and pressed their mouths together. He felt Jack's arms come around him to caress his back and shoulders as their tongues tangled.
"And good afternoon to you too," Jack whispered when their mouths finally separated. "Will I see you tonight?"
"Maybe. I want to do all the shopping for Rhiannon's party tonight so I can spend the weekend here."
"Good plan." Jack kissed him lightly. "The weekend, then."
Ianto started to leave the office and then turned back. "Jack… if I ever do anything… if there's a reason…"
Jack looked up and the concern in his eyes nearly made Ianto's knees buckle. "What is it, Ianto?"
"Nothing. Never mind."
He left by the tourist office door, locking up behind himself and making sure all the alarms were working. By the time he reached the dockyard it was dark. He kept praying, every word he had learned from his Mum and Tad jumbled together as he invoked all the gods of his childhood. If Doctor Tanizaki had a cure, then he could ask Jack for help, explain…
The reek of fear and death hit him before he was even out of the car. He ran down the path as quietly as possible. The door to the cottage was wide open and light spilled out. The stench was so strong in his mind that it made him physically gag.
"Lisa! Lisa!"
"Here."
He turned to see standing by the water. The moonlight cast her features in copper, but she could see the blood in her lips and on her dress.
"Mother of God, what have you done?"
"He lied. There was no cure. He was working on some experiments, he said, and I was to be his first willing subject. Willing subject! What had he been doing until now, I asked. He said that to do good science sometimes one had to be willing to bend the rules." Her hands clenched. "Did he really think I would be willing to spend years as his guinea pig?"
"Where is he?"
"In the house."
"All right. We need to get you out of here. Elaine had to have sensed this, no matter how far away she is."
Suddenly she looked sick with fear. "I was so angry… oh, Ianto, I didn't think!"
"Go. Put on jeans, boots, jacket, like we were going camping. I'll take care of the rest."
When she came out, she sniffed the air experimentally. "Gasoline?"
"They'll think it was a tramp that came in here to sleep warm." He threw the match in and waited until he was sure the fire was strong enough. "Let's go."