tampered | (no subject)

(no subject)

When; Late evening; Friday, June 26th
Rating; R for violence (may change)
Characters; Kyle Brooks (

justashow ); Ianto Jones (

king_coffee ); Jack Harkness (

handsomejack )
Summary; As Ianto heads down to the Underground to drown out the past, Kyle follows and gets in over his head.
Log; It had been said that Kyle Brooks was too stubborn and head-strong for his own good, and Kyle would agree with that any other time, but it really was too much now. He'd done everything he could think of short of dragging Ianto into a full-out fight on the subject (something he did not want to encite, given that Jack's squabbles with the other man were proving dangerous enough) and it still had not worked. He had drugged hot chocolate, and he had made himself present and available, and he had given 'space'. Enough space that Kyle, at the very least, was feeling a little like he'd have to cross the Grand Canyon to get back within touching distance.

Enough was enough, and Kyle has had enough.

So that night he refused to wrap himself up in cool sheets and lie awake waiting for partners who would not come home to bed. He knew where Ianto was going, and when he would go. He took his stun gun from the armory and fifteen minutes later followed the other man down into the dark and the damp.

It was always night in the Underground, and Kyle had heard of the more populated corners, the vampire bars and circuses, even the scummy bars where Jack flirted with danger. But that wasn't where Ianto was going, and Kyle didn't stick to the beaten, slightly less hazardous track either. And while some part of him recognized that prowling around in the dark, hunting a man who was hunting monsters was a bad idea, Kyle hadn't been listening to that part in a while.

Warehouse brick and stone under his palm, Kyle followed the lines of ruined and abandoned buildings to make up for his lack of flashlight. The light of his Network device wasn't really suitable for this and he'd wished he'd brought better supplies. He brought out the small PDA to frown at and adjust the settings, holding it close to his face and that's when he heard the growl.

Kyle froze. Lack of light kept him from knowing what it was, but his ears told him it was entirely too close, and the click of claws on stone and the interested whuff hunger told him that the creature didn't have Kyle's eyesight problem.

If he ran it would run after him. But if he stayed put it would be on him in a matter of seconds. Kyle made a split second decision and ran. He got five feet before something hard and heavy slammed into his back and took him down. Sharp teeth grazed the back of his neck and Kyle smelled rot and decay, old meat, dead idiots. The stun-gun was of no use in close combat and he couldn't move. Panic tightened Kyle's limbs and the pressure on his back got stronger. Maybe he would be crushed to death before the thing got in its first bite.

It wasn't a comforting thought.

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"I did try," Kyle yelled, voice scraping over the words. His eyes burned and he pressed his palms to the sockets, much the same way Robin did the other night, and took a few settling breaths.

"I tried everything. Everything I could think of to be there and you wouldn't let me. You wouldn't let me in. And nobody wants to hear about horrible things that happen to people they love, but I would've listened anyway. If I'd thought you wanted me to, I would have listened."

Still against the French doors, Jack let Kyle take the lead for the time being.

He recognized that he, probably had some apologizing to do when it came to how things had gone down between himself and Ianto but Kyle was definitely entitled to his upset and had the right to express it uninterrupted.

Edited 2009-06-27 00:40 (UTC)

He couldn't escape, could he?

"I couldn't do that to you. It was horrible, and I don't want to put those kind of images into your head, because you already have nightmares. And I'd be pretty selfish to make someone listen if they didn't want to hear."

"Do you know what's worse?"

Kyle wiped his eyes and stared hard at the other man.

"Lying alone in bed wondering if you were ever coming home. At least if you were talking to me I'd know what was wrong, maybe have a small clue about what would help."

He gave Jack a glare as well.

"And you two were taking shots at each other instead of taking comfort, so I knew better than to offer it. Or ask for it."

That ... was a fair shot and Jack looked down at his boots for a moment before back up with a nod.

"You're right," he said. "And I apologize for my part in that, cold war."

There he was getting his apology out in the open, though he recognized that there was still a one on one conversation that would need to happen with Ianto.

"I'm also sorry that you've been alone through much of this, Kyle."

Since ... he'd had his own head up his ass as well.

...he deserved that.

"I know. You said that when Jack and I fight with each other, we leave you by yourself. And we just did it again."

This was for Kyle, at the moment though, not Jack.

"I'm sorry too."

"I don't want you to be sorry. I want to know what's wrong with me, that I'm not someone you can talk to."

Jack was going to let Ianto field that one.

Ianto ran a frustrated hand through his hair.

"I can, usually. But not about this, this one thing. It's not your fault but Jack, Gwen, they already know the basics, because they're from the same world as me, so I don't have to explain them. I would with you, and it's hard enough, it hurts enough to talk about it without having to explain everything as well."

His hands went into his pockets, defensive.

"It took me three whole years to say anything at all to Jack about it, and that was horribly hard. And I've known you less than one year."

The hands in pockets kept Kyle from reaching out. Defensive posture, defensive words. And all of Ianto was closed off from him.

Kyle stayed where he was, kept his hands loosely clasped.

"You could have told me that then. I would have understood." He shook his head. "I just wanted to be there. Maybe to help you get some sleep. I knew you weren't sleeping."

Jack still kept his mouth shut but if it was one language he was good at it was body language. Knowing how Ianto could close himself off, Jack moved away from the doors to come up and rest his hands lightly on Kyle's shoulders.

Just a little bit of physical contact to help the lawyer so that he didn't continue to be caught between the pair of them without anyone there for him.

Keeping his eyes down on the top of Kyle's head, Jack peeked at Ianto from under his lashes but otherwise didn't give full eye contact. He didn't want Ianto to feel pushed or threatened.

Even though he wasn't, not at all with how enclosed he was, Ianto felt as though he'd been stripped bare and had to turn away from both men looking at him.

"I can't stay asleep, not without taking something, and I hate drugged sleep."

Even with both Jack and Kyle there, he wouldn't be able to stay asleep.

Kyle leaned back gratefully into Jack's touch and spoke wearily.

"All right. Then I don't know what to do. I've no idea."

And he hated that feeling.

Gently rubbing his thumb along Kyle's shoulder, Jack lifted his eyes to look at Ianto.

"Drugging yourself isn't the answer," he agreed. "Talking to us, even if it's just a little bit, one thing, then maybe after a couple of hours another, that's how you learn to work through it."

And it was hard, Jack knew it was hard he'd lived through it often enough himself but at the same time, he also knew that Ianto couldn't keep letting the fact that he'd lived destroy him like this.

Or Canary Wharf was going to have a 100% mortality rate.

Silent, his jaw straining as he kept his teeth clenched together, Ianto nodded. He hadn't been this bad last year, and he didn't know why it was affecting him differently this year.

He'd never understood why he'd survived, a lowly junior researcher, while fully trained field agents had died. How come he didn't have a mark on him when others had to live for the rest of their lives with terrible injuries.

But he couldn't tell Kyle, and Jack had given no indication that he'd wanted to listen. He wondered if that's what Jack was trying to say now.

Ianto wasn't going to speak to them. Or, at least, he wasn't going to speak to one of them, and as Ianto had just stated that he didn't want to talk to Kyle, he could guess which one.

Kyle sighed and pulled away from Jack's hands. "I'll go spend some time with Mercy."

He could deal with the loneliness for another night.

Jack's hand, gently but firmly tightened on Kyle's shoulders, holding him in place even as he continued to watch Ianto.

Taking a deep breath, Jack began to talk.

"Canary Wharf was the location of Torchwood London a very different institute than Torchwood Cardiff. Larger, more ruthless, more reckless."

Letting his hand slide away from Kyle's shoulder, Jack began to pace.

"Torchwood London had, a sphere they were experimenting on. They liked to experiment and often did so without any sort of understanding of what they were messing with. This particular sphere, along with causing ghosts to appear, was without mass or a gravitation field – physically, it did not exist."

Pausing Jack turned to look at them both.

"In the 51st Century your average kindergarten student can tell you that an item without mass or gravitational field in inherently unstable to the fabric of time and space itself. 21st Century government talking heads, not so much with the understanding of these things. And mankind does love to meddle in what they do not understand with a certain arrogance..."

Jack trailed off, reeling himself in on a rant that he usually only shared with the Doctor.

"Anyway, the sphere caused a breach between universes, which was releasing these 'ghosts' more importantly, it was allowing Cybermen from a parallel universe, to filter through, and slowly infiltrate Torchwood's ranks."

Pacing once more, Jack shook his head, starting to get lost in his own memories.

"I told Yvonne ... I told her..." a pause and a sigh. "Yvonne Hartman the head of Torchwood London, she was not interested in reason. I tried to explain to her her, that the experiments were increasing the activity in the Rift at Cardiff, indicative of a fracture and that this could pull enemies we had fought so hard to vanquish, right back to Earth. She stopped taking my calls and from what I can piece together soon the breach was fully opened, and then a multitude of Cybermen were able to cross the Void and push to take over the Earth."

It was ... frustrating, when you died over and over again, to stop these things from happening and some talking head with delusions of grandeur ripped the holes right back open.

"Well, at the same time the sphere, which after I did some digging around in my old notes, was a 'void ship' began to open. From the records, more Cybermen were expected and Torchwood London believed themselves properly equipped for such a battle. However, the Cybermen explained they merely followed the sphere across worlds and were not responsible for its origin."

Jack rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the floor, lost in the past.

"When it was fully opened, Daleks emerged, identify the Earth and vowed to exterminate its lifeforms."

Daleks, the very enemy Jack had died the first time against.

Still staring at the floor, Jack whispered to himself, Ianto and Kyle almost forgotten.

"Earth is so vulnerable."

Sometimes the weight of responsibility for it ... moving on.

"Well it gets complicated, reports of Time Lord technology in the hands of the Daleks, millions of imprisoned Daleks being freed and now you have Cybermen and Daleks, both on Earth, battling for the right to exterminate all of mankind."

Scrubbing his face, Jack wheeled back to face the two men in the room with him.

"Human beings became canon fodder. The Cybermen, in their rush to shore up their troops took most of the employees of Torchwood London and any other humans they could round up and converted them as quickly as possible to throw them at the Daleks. That's what happened to Lisa, what Ianto escaped but it would have been only temporary if, well I didn't know it at the time but I have to assume the Doctor had something to do with it. I think it's how he lost Rose."

Head down Jack tried to decide if he wanted to get into the particulars of that, from what he knew of the reports and shook his head. Though he had been setting up fall back positions, Jack was just grateful his measures had never been necessary. Because they would never have been enough.

Now Ianto hadn't wanted to hear a single word of that. He knew of London's faults, would never even consider thinking of defending them - after all, what had they done for the survivors, any of them? - but every time he tried to get out, Jack somehow blocked him, and he wasn't about to go as far as using force to get away.

By the end of it, however, he'd turned away from both of the other men, standing on the far side of the room with his hands over his ears like a child, chest heaving as he tried to keep himself in control.

Kyle listened and took it in. Of course he couldn't know the same way that Ianto knew, or even the same way Jack knew. He wasn't of that world, and he'd never seen a dalek, never saw a cyberman or heard of the kind of destruction and terror these could rain down on an unsuspecting planet. God willing, he'd never fully understand it.

But he never wanted to understand it, as much as he wanted to understand Ianto.

"You know you couldn't have stopped it," he said, looking at each of them in turn. "Either of you."

Jack heard Kyle but his eyes were on Ianto. The lover wanted to go over, hold and console but that would let Ianto continue to hide, from them both. Jack's face became an expressionless mask as he stalked Ianto, springboarding off Kyle's words.

"Certainly not a junior researcher," he said, loud enough to be heard. "A young man, barely out of his teens, who had never seen so much blood, who had never heard so many screams. The rhythmic, metallic footsteps that echo in the head. Holding the gun, feeling it kick in your palm for the first time as the bullet obliterates the 'upgraded' features of a friend..."

Was it cruel to be kind? Was it shocking to yank Ianto out of his destructive circle of repression? Was it meant to put Kyle in the middle of that smoke filled, scream filled, hell hole that Canary Wharf had become?

"Do you remember, Ianto?" Jack whispered, loud enough that Kyle was still a part of this conversation. "Tell me, do you remember the Glock in your hand? Did you save the clip or did you finger freeze on the trigger, emptying the whole of it into the first converted human you saw?"

"Shut up."

Ianto felt as though he had to drag air into his lungs, that his body wouldn't be able to breathe unless Ianto made it do so. He didn't want to do this, not now, and certainly not in front of Kyle.

And it wasn't that he didn't want to talk to Kyle, it was that he didn't want Kyle to know about this. Who the hell were they to put such awful images in the lawyer's head, who were they to make him have to think about such things? In the oddest of ways, Ianto was trying to protect Kyle.

But Kyle was more concerned with protecting Ianto. At that moment Jack had made himself a threat, and Kyle was up out of his seat, inserting himself inbetween them and puffing himself up as big as he could.

With his stature, both men still towered over him, but Kyle growled at Jack and pushed with his hands.

"Leave him alone," he hissed. "You don't need to torture him. He didn't do anything wrong. Nothing."

In all honesty, Jack was pleased with Kyle's protective reaction. He'd much rather the lawyer stand and fight then slink off like a whipped dog.

Allowing the push to shove him back a few steps, Jack put his hands in his pockets and lifted his chin.

"Fine," he said sharply, though he'd done what he'd hoped to do. Lance the wound Ianto was carrying and remind Kyle that he was needed.

Even so, Jack's words were true, he did remember lifting the gun - although it had been a beretta, discarded by one of the field agents and not a glock - and shooting...

But he didn't want to think about that, not now.

Still he was a little surprised when Kyle jumped to his defence like that, and he turned slightly towards the smaller man, not entirely sure what he should do about the situation. But he certainly wasn't in the mood to talk now.

Kyle practically vibrated with tension and unused adrenaline. He was still caught in various stages of fight or flight from his encounter in the Underground. Trying to retreat from the conversations going on around him and then ultimately the room was a flight response. Jack had managed to arouse the other with his callous treatment of Ianto's feelings.

And now it was like they were frozen in tableaux.