Title: The Refuge at Home
Author: Published as Finn AUS
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, post Exit Wounds
Rating: If you’ve seen all episodes aired then you’re good.
Summary: Jack struggles with memories.
Spoilers: Up to and including Exit Wounds
Disclaimer: All credit and kudos to BBC and Co, and a small clap for John B and massive clap Gareth for his fine performances in S2, and just generally looking so damn fine.
Feedback: Yes please!!
Author Note: Many, many people have commented on the fact that Jack must have some serious mental will power, because no average person survives being buried alive and reliving it, time over. A small piece about the possibilities that he’s not okay.
In the darkness, his panting is more furious. I sit next to him, waiting for the right moment. To break the cycle, to cut into the nightmare. I’ve been the recipient of countless black eyes, many fingers around my throat and one particularly bad night, he almost snapped my neck. It’s that moment between reality and the dream state. I have to pick the moment and help him back, help him find a way out of the darkness and back to this world.
The first night, it scared me more than I care to admit, even to him. I’d crept from the bed, where we had just spent past several hours worshipping each other’s bodies, to clean the mess. An impatient and more hungry lover, I’ve never known. The wake we leave is pretty chaotic and I can’t sleep knowing that clothes are strewn from one end to another. Still, I was folding and straightening, when I heard him, whimpering. I didn’t believe the sound to be him, it was so foreign, so wounded, so vulnerable. But the volume increased and the only place it was coming from was the bed I just left. Then I strangely thought he was joking, begging for more and in my mind, at that moment it made sense – the man was after all insatiable.
How wrong I was. I found him in the foetal position, clawing at the sheets, clawing at the air, gasping for breath – yet asleep. For more time than I want to remember, I was frozen. How could this man, who’d been so indestructible, so immortal be crashing down before me? I moved and immediately surrounded his body with mine, attempting to offer comfort. I got a short sharp elbow to the ribs instead. Of course he knew nothing, it hadn’t been meant for me.
For weeks he wouldn’t discuss it, but the pattern continued irregularly. I tried to raise it, various ways, various times but he was a master at evasion, and he knew my weakness. Then, shortly after Owen and Toshiko passed, after I heard a sound from him that no human would ever make. A pain that radiated from his body – he told me. Spoke of years spent in a place no person should. Spoke of a darkness that he feared. Spoke to a place he went mentally that scared him. Saw inside something that still frightens him when he thinks about it. And I did what only I knew how, I kissed him. I held him. I loved him.
So each night the darkness comes knocking, I am prepared. To offer a refuge, to help him find the way back home. To help him see the light.
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