Work Text:
Tonight as the barrier between the two realms grows thin,
Spirits walk amongst us, once again.
They be family, friends and foes,
Pets and wildlife, fishes and crows.
But be we still mindful of the Wee Folke at play,
Elves, fey, brownies, and sidhe.
– Excerpt from Samhain Ritual by Akasha, 1997
Prologue
Pale as the ghosts said to walk abroad this night, she glided across my garden to stand opposite me. The night shrouded us in darkness, the only illumination provided by the trio of candles in the centre of the table. There wasn’t even a moon to brighten the sky, though it was likely fitting that on this night there was no moon. The bleak winter was beginning on a truly dark and brisk night. I rose, as was fitting in the presence of a lady, even if she appeared to be little more than a child in years. Inclining my head, I waved a hand toward the chair opposite me.
To my surprise, she didn’t sit. She just stared across the table at me, silent and inscrutable as always. Finally, just when I was ready to demand answers, she slipped into the chair and set a wooden box on the table in just in front of the candles. It looked as old as she, edges smooth with wear, brass fittings faded and tarnished with age. I returned to my chair, rested my arms on the edge of the table and waited patiently for her to speak. I knew from Jack’s tales and my own experiences that there was no sense in pushing her, she would talk when she was ready. Time passed, the candles melted, it was getting later and later. I wondered if she would ever speak when she finally did, her words soft and eerily calm.
“I want you to kill me.”
“What?” I leapt to my feet to stare down at her. “I can’t. You have no idea what you are asking of me.”
“I do, Ianto Jones.” She twisted in her chair to watch me as I paced beside the table. “I’m tired. I have lived for centuries, unchanging, while all around me grow older, change, live, love and finally die.”
“I can’t believe you’re asking this of me.” I stopped my pacing to lean on the back of one of the chairs around the table. “Why me?”
“Because you understand,” she murmured as she rose to her feet. “You see me.”
I knew there was no arguing with that remark. I did understand how it felt to be that tired that all you wanted to do was die. Hadn’t I experienced that particular pain myself through Jack’s final years as, what had he called himself, the Face of Boe? No, I couldn’t deny her the release she sought. The only questions were how and when. “How?” I choked out the question. “How can I possibly kill you? Nothing ever harmed Owen after Jack brought him back not until he was locked in that reactor.”
“With this.” She pushed the box towards me. “The Captain never brought Doctor Harper back in this world, so this is still bound to me.”
With shaking hands, I reached out and pulled the box toward me. I feared I knew what the contents were and, as I slowly lifted the lid to peer inside, my every fear was confirmed. The second resurrection gauntlet lay inside on a bed of slowly decaying velvet. Slamming the lid closed, I stared at her and swallowed. “I destroy this and you will die, won’t you?”
“Yes.” Her eyes, usually so blank and opaque, actually begged me to help her. “After centuries, I will die, but that is not the only request I have of you, Ianto.”
“What else could you possibly ask of me?” I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “You’re already asking me to commit murder.”
She rose to her feet. Her hand went out to pass through the flame of the candles in the center of the table, lingering there for a full minute before she pulled it back with a sigh. “You know what tonight is. It’s the night when the veil is thinnest… when we can see all the future and all the past… when we can make the wish of our deepest heart and have it come true.”
“Or so they say,” I replied. “I was always taught this is the night to honor the dead, to give thanks to the ancestors and ask their blessing on the home and family for the coming year.”
“It is that as well. Much has been lost over the years.” She smiled at me. A sadness tinged her smile, regrets shading her eyes as she watched me. “So many things can happen on this night. If I die tonight, then I can make a request of the gods, but you’d have to agree to it. I’d have to take the knowledge of your acceptance with me when I go before them.”
“What is the request?” I held up a hand before she could speak. “Know this first; if it would bring harm to Misha, Jack or my team, I won’t agree even if I do owe you a favor.”
“There’s no harm to any of them that I can foresee.” She came around the table to stand directly before me. For the first time in our acquaintance she touched me. Her small cold hand clasped my own where it rested on top of the box containing the glove. “I would never bring harm to the man who treated me with as much respect and care as you have.” She smiled up at me, her expression so solemn as to tear at my heart. “I would like to be reborn as your child to know the love of a whole family, not be hidden away as a guilty secret as my own father did to me, my siblings and my mother. Would you allow this?”
“I’m with Jack. I can’t have children of my own.”
“You know that’s not true, Ianto.” She took her hand away and clasped them in front of her. “Jack can bear children. There will come a day when he will want to feel your child quickening beneath his heart. Plus, you are Torchwood, who knows what could happen to you?”
Ain’t that the truth? was the only thing I could think. I considered her for a long moment before I gave a quick nod. “I’ll do it.” I reached out and gently stroked her hair back from her face, sliding my fingers down her jaw to cup her chin and lift it so I could stare into her eyes. “I’ll even agree to your request, but on one condition.”
“What is it?”
“I want to know your name.” I smiled at her. “You haven’t had a name in far too long, m’genethig. If I’m doing this for you, then at least give me that.”
“Faith.” She blinked and I could see the tears gather in her eyes. She blinked again, one lone tear escaping to slip down her cheek onto my fingers. “My name is Faith.”
Chapter One
Jack kicked the kitchen door shut behind him. It was a bit of a struggle to shift Misha enough to reach the keypad for the security system but he managed to do it and key in the codes without waking the child. She’d exhausted herself running about at the party Rhys had hosted for the children of his employees. Shifting her to make her easier to carry, Jack headed through the dark house and up the stairs to Misha’s room.
He tossed the covers back, rested one knee on the bed, and set Misha in the center of it. She was so deeply asleep as to be completely limp which made getting her out of her jacket a bit of an interesting proposition. Still, Jack managed it without calling Ianto for assistance. His brow wrinkled as he realised that his husband hadn’t come looking for them when they’d come in. He wondered what was wrong that Ianto wasn’t standing there waiting for his chance to wish Misha a good night. Shaking off the musing, Jack laid Misha on the pillows and carefully tugged off her shoes, setting them aside and covering her with her blankets. Pressing a kiss to her temple, he murmured a soft goodnight while setting Jack-bear close by in case she wanted the toy overnight.
He hung her jacket on the back of her bedroom door before stepping out into the hall and pulling the door nearly closed behind him. He reached for Ianto with his mind only to run into a worryingly blank space. In the months since he’d arrived here, he and Ianto never completely separated from each other. There was always that little bit of Ianto in him, reassuring him of his lover’s feelings, just as Ianto said there was always a sense of him in Ianto’s mind. So to not have Ianto’s presence there was completely disturbing. With brisk strides, Jack headed down the hall toward the room he was sharing with Ianto.
He shoved the door open, calling, “Ianto?” He scanned the room, not certain what he expected to find, but it certainly wasn’t a completely cold and dark room with only the huddled lump of covers in the middle of the bed giving him the slightest clue as to Ianto’s location. Pitching his voice to be low and soothing, he asked, “Ianto?”
He received no response, at least not a verbal one; instead the lump of covers seemed to curl into a tighter ball. Now Jack knew something was seriously wrong. Ianto hadn’t hidden from him so completely since his suspension after the Cyberman incident. He eased onto the bed beside Ianto and reached out a hand to rest it on what he believed was Ianto’s shoulder. When Ianto flinched away from his touch, Jack sighed softly. He hated this, hated not knowing what was wrong with his husband.
“Talk to me, cariad,” Jack murmured. “I can’t help if you won’t talk to me.”
Still nothing from Ianto and so Jack rose and stripped off his clothes. He tossed them to the floor and kicked the resulting pile out of the main paths of travel through the room. He pulled on the covers until he detangled them enough to slip in beside Ianto. He eased close to his lover and pressed a kiss beneath his ear. That spot usually got him a soft moan and full body shudders; tonight, though, all he received was another flinch. Those little flinches were tearing his heart to shreds. “Please, Ianto. You’ve shut me out so completely…” he trailed off for a moment, easing closer, and slipped his arms around the other. “Did I do something?”
Jack waited, as patiently as he could, for Ianto to say something, anything, but the only response he received was just as worrying as the silence. Ianto rolled over, wrapped both arms around him, and clung. Clung so tightly Jack knew he’d have bruises from the grip of Ianto’s hands on his shoulders, little cuts from the bite of Ianto’s nails into his skin. He wrapped his own arms around the other man and pressed his cheek to Ianto’s hair. The dark curls with their faint citrus scent tickled his nose. He struggled not to sneeze and focused his mind, pressing against the barrier Ianto had erected between them. Jack pushed, determined to at least have that connection back, and only stopped when a pain filled whimper escaped Ianto’s throat.
“Don’t. Please, don’t,” Ianto whimpered. The words muffled where his face was buried in Jack’s neck. “I’ll tell you later, just don’t.” The younger man pulled back for a moment to look up at Jack, his eyes red rimmed and anguished, before he looked away and pressed back into Jack. “Just hold me.”
“I’m here, cariad,” Jack whispered, pressing a kiss to Ianto’s hair. “I’m here. Just tell me what you need from me. I’ll never leave you. Never again.”
It was as if his words were a trigger. Ianto began to shake in his arms, silent sobs wracking his frame while hot tears soon heated Jack’s skin where they fell from Ianto’s eyes. Jack closed his eyes. He wouldn’t press, no matter how much he wanted to, he knew he had to wait on Ianto to speak. Instead, he pulled Ianto closer to him, rubbing his hand along his lover’s back, humming wordlessly in an effort to soothe his upset.
Chapter Two
“All the things I’ve done. All the lives I’ve ruined.” Ianto’s words were a barely audible murmur against his chest. “How can you love me, Jack? How, when all I’ve done is caused people pain?”
“How can I not?” Jack whispered in response. He stared at the man so closely pressed against him that he could feel every breath the other took. “How could I not after all the things you have done for me? For Tosh? For the team? All the pain you took on just because you love me?” He pressed another kiss to Ianto’s hair. “Tell me what’s wrong, Ianto? What’s happened to you? You were so happy when Misha and I went out earlier.”
Ianto squirmed out of his arms. Jack let him go and watched as Ianto sat up, pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. Only then did he see the faint marks, the reddened skin from where Ianto had likely scrubbed himself raw hours before. He reached out and stroked his fingers over the healing skin. “Oh, Ianto,” he murmured. “This wasn’t necessary. What ever happened, you didn’t need to hurt yourself.”
“Yes, I did.” Ianto turned his head to rest his cheek on his knees. His blue eyes were so raw and full of pain. This was purely emotional pain, not physical. A pain Jack recognized all too easily. “I had to get the blood off me. Even if it was only metaphorical blood.”
Jack sat up. He shifted a bit on the bed until he was directly facing Ianto. “All right. Tell me,” he ordered in tones he knew Ianto would react to despite the complete change in the power dynamics of their relationship stemming from Ianto’s claiming him as mate. He reached out and curled a hand around Ianto’s arm, pulling it out from beneath his head. “I know what these marks are, Ianto. I’ve done it enough myself. Cut deep enough and you can bleed out slowly which hurts like hell to come back from. So, tell me what was so bad that you felt the need to punish yourself like that.”
Ianto twisted his hand, trying to pull free, but Jack held firm. He really did recognize the now nearly invisible marks on Ianto’s arms, small cuts along the veins and arteries hidden beneath the rub marks from scrubbing away the resulting blood after you come back. He’d killed himself so many times in just that manner while waiting for the Doctor the first time around. It was an escape from responsibility for a while and a punishment in one death.
“I killed someone tonight.”
“So?” Jack half shrugged and released Ianto from his hold. “That’s no reason to do that.”
“I don’t have your cavalier approach to death and killing, Jack.” Ianto reminded him. He curled back in on himself, withdrawing again like he had all those years ago. “Yeah, she wanted to die and asked me to do it for her, but…”
“You still feel like you did something wrong doing it.”
“Yeah,” Ianto responded a bit breathlessly. “She said she was tired, tired of living, and I remembered how you felt just before you finally died over there. She didn’t have that eventuality. She was going to live forever, unchanging, if I didn’t help her. And I did owe her. So, I did it.” Ianto dropped his gaze to the covers, tangling them in his hands. “But afterwards, when I’d finished the cleanup, all I could think was now I was a murderer.”
It took a moment, but Jack suddenly realized just who Ianto was talking about killing: Faith, the creepy fortune teller who’d tangled them both together so tightly that they’d always be a part of each other. He remembered what Gwen, in that other realm, had told them. The legend and, even more so, he remembered what had happened to Owen, how the man had been alive but not; living, but never changing. Just the memory disturbed him even now so many years later. With a shudder, Jack leant forward and gathered Ianto into his arms.
“You’re not a murderer,” Jack growled into Ianto’s ear. “You’re a compassionate man who saw no other way then to do what was asked of him to free a soul from pain.” He sat back, cupped Ianto’s chin in his hand and forced the other man to meet his gaze. “If that had been Toshiko, in pain from some incurable disease with no hope for a cure, who asked you to help her die, would you?”
“Of course!” Ianto snapped back. “You know I’d never let her suffer if I could help her.”
“Then why are you letting this bother you so much,” Jack retorted. “It’s the same basic concept, save her pain was more mental and emotional. I can’t imagine what it would be like to be eternally trapped in a child’s body while my mind grew up.”
“She was a child, Jack.” Ianto all but threw himself off the bed to pace beside it. “Intellectually, I know, she wasn’t. She was at least six hundred years old, but she looked like a child. And if her hair had been darker, brown instead of blonde, then she…”
“She what?” Jack asked, determined to get to the root of the situation before it destroyed them.
“She could have been Misha’s older sister!” Ianto snapped. He stood there, hands on his hips, and panted in anger.
“Oh, Ianto,” Jack said, climbing off the bed to gather Ianto into his arms. “She was nothing like Misha.”
“I could see it though,” Ianto murmured. “After it was done, all I could see was Misha lying there dead because of me.”
“Let's look at it that way, Ianto. What if it was Misha that was stuck like that? After 600 years of being stuck in the body of a little girl, would you see yourself as a murderer if you put her out of that kind of misery?" Jack stroked his hand down Ianto’s back, then back up and took a step back to consider Ianto carefully. “Honestly, Ianto, would you?”
The other man shook his head, the denial unspoken, and stepped back into him. Jack rocked them both for a moment before returning to the bed, climbing in and pulling Ianto in with him. He settled Ianto in the middle of the bed and pulled the covers over him. “You stay right there. Get warm. I’m going to go turn the heat up, check on Misha, and get us some proper hot cocoa.” He leant over and kissed Ianto, a bare brush of their lips together, and slipped off the other side of the bed.
“Don’t forget a robe, m’gwr.”
Jack slumped a bit, but grinned over at Ianto. If he was once again honoring him with the title of husband, then his husband was, slowly, recovering from what he’d done tonight. With a soft sigh of resignation, he grabbed the indicated garment and pulled it on before leaving the room.
Chapter Three
Jack leant against the counter and watched the cocoa heat the last little bit, just to the edge of boiling, before pulling it from the heat so it didn’t scorch. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand about modern living, it was cocoa made from little mix envelopes. It just wasn’t the same as the older method of making it. He split the mixture into two mugs and added a splash of peppermint schnapps. Setting the pan in the sink, he filled it with water so it would be easier to clean in the morning. Lifting his mug, he took a single sip, sighed, and gathered up the other mug to take to Ianto. Leaving the kitchen, Jack used his elbow to flick off the light.
He moved through the house with care, knowing that Ianto would really get on him if he spilled anything on Ianto’s precious antique hardwood floors. Jack actually grinned at Ianto when he reached the bedroom door, slipping into the room to offer a mug to Ianto before pushing their bedroom door nearly closed. Setting his own mug aside, he stripped off his robe and tossed it over the footboard of the bed. Then he climbed into bed, stretched out his legs and sighed softly. He nodded to the mug in Ianto’s hands. “So, what do you think?”
Jack watched Ianto lift the mug and breathe deeply of the steam drifting up from it. He saw the faintest hint of a smile drift onto his beloved’s face and felt some knot inside him ease a bit. Ianto’s eyes closed as he breathed in the scent of chocolate and peppermint before he took a small sip. He purred while licking his lips.
“Delicious,” he whispered. Then, Ianto opened his eyes and smiled. The first real smile Jack had seen since he’d come home that night. “You can make this for me whenever you like, Jack. It’s delicious. Reminds me of when I was small, before Tad lost the business, and we would go to my Mam-gu’s house for Christmas.” He looked down at the mug and sipped at it again. “She’d put oil of peppermint in the cups we kids got while the adults had whiskey in theirs, but something happened after Tad lost the business. We never saw her again.” He looked up and sighed. “I always missed the cocoa.”
“Then I’ll make it for you.” Jack drank some of his own before leaning over to kiss Ianto. “I’ll make it for Misha too. Minus the schnapps, of course. I’ll have to experiment a bit to get the amount of peppermint oil right for her.” He finished off his own mug, putting it aside on the nightstand, and watched Ianto slowly drink his. “I never liked whiskey in cocoa. I preferred peppermint or cinnamon in mine.”
“This isn’t from a mix, is it?” Ianto finished off his mug and handed it back to Jack. “You made it yourself…”
“On the stove, the old fashioned way,” Jack finished for him after putting Ianto’s mug down by his own. “Exactly. Hate that mix stuff. Never goes together right.” He lay down on the bed and patted the spot next to himself. “Come here. Sleep. You need it, love.”
Ianto stared at him for a moment. Jack could almost see the denial building in him, but a yawn caught him before Ianto could say it. Rolling his eyes and looking completely resigned, Ianto nodded and scooted across the bed to stretch out by Jack. After a moment of silent consideration, while Jack silently begged for him to give in, Ianto laid his head on Jack’s chest over his heart, the other man’s arm curling around his waist. “You’ll keep the nightmares away?” he murmured, sounding so much like a lost child that Jack wanted to cry in response.
“Always,” he whispered, craning his neck to kiss the top of Ianto’s head. “I always will.” It was then, as Ianto relaxed against him and drifted into sleep, that the last worry Jack had was eased. The barrier Ianto had erected between them slipped away into nothingness, letting him feel the tension, fear, and self-hatred that Ianto was feeling. Jack slipped along the bond, soothing Ianto, and petted the other man’s hair. “Sleep, love, I’ll keep you safe.”