Fingernails scratched at his arms and Jack let go rather than hold on because Ianto's eyes were wild and he was fighting like a frightened, trapped animal. Released, he stumbled, tripped and dropped to his ass on the pub's sticky carpet, scrambling back, away from where Jack was standing, staring at him. "This is your fault!" Jack listened to the accusation without uttering a word of self-defence; in a way it was his fault. He'd thought they could handle this. He'd been wrong. He glanced down at himself. On the scramble back from the village, across the fields, Ianto had bled onto his shirt and coat, in the same places where Gwen's blood had soaked through. He was to blame for their injuries, for them being out there. It would be on his head if any of the damage was permanent. "We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you! Chasing� aliens! They're not aliens!" The tears in Ianto's voice were running down his cheeks and it cracked Jack's already broken heart to see him hurting again even if he couldn't feel it right at that moment. "They're human beings, just like us!" All Jack could feel was the sickening residue of adrenaline coating the inside of his veins. His limbs felt heavy with it. He barely heard Gwen's hiss of, "They're not like us! They're nothing like us!" She was still wired from the morphine shot. Ianto's head snapped around and he nailed her with large, wide eyes. "They are like us! They're not alien, they're human." "Inhuman," Owen having his say. "Listen to me! We're not going anywhere until they're arrested or dead." Jack said it hard, like it was an oath, a vow he was taking for all of them. "They're not taking anyone else." But Ianto shook his head. "I don't care about anyone else! I care about us! I know you don't, Jack, but I do. We can't do this. I can't do this. Tosh and I� we've seen hell tonight. And Gwen should be in a hospital. This isn't our fight! We don't have to take on every wrong thing!" "They've been doing this for decades, killing people! We can't leave them to it!" "Why?" Ianto stepped forward, closed the physical gap between them, getting in Jack's face. "Who protects us, Jack?" "We're supposed to be able to protect ourselves." In retrospect, anger in the face of Ianto's blossoming hysteria may not have been the best of responses. He'd never been one for appropriate responses. Ianto exploded. "HOW?! Gwen was lucky enough to get the one-on-one weapons training and she got shot! That guy had a fucking meat cleaver to my throat, how was I supposed to fight that? If you hadn't have come smashing through the wall at the very right moment like some fucking action hero I'd be bleeding to death on the floor of that house! You'd have my death on your conscience as well as Lisa's! But I suppose that's all right with you, isn't it? You selfish, heartless monster!" Jack surged forward. Felt Ianto's hands on his waist. Felt something hard against his chest. Heard a sharp crack bounce around his skull. Felt a cold, burning heat in his gut. He fell back, swaying, losing his balance as blood started to bubble from the bullet wound, hands going on instinct to stem the flow, looking up at Ianto in surprise, hurt, pain�. His knees gave way, the left side of his body going numb. Silence followed the gunshot. One more, sharp crack of metal against gunpowder shouldn't have sounded so ominous after Jack's crazed cowboy act not twenty minutes ago, but it did. Tosh's scream, Owen's shout. Gwen's step forward, Ianto's keening cry. Jack toppled sideways, blood leaking from between his fingers where he was pressing then over his wound. Ianto would remember it always in slow motion. Tosh rushing forward, Jack hitting the floor, head at such an angle he had to be dead. Raising the gun to his own temple, no semblance of clarity amongst the screaming hysteria in his mind. Gwen screaming. "NO!" Pulling the trigger. Jack broke Ianto's wrist twisting the gun away from his head; he felt the bone crack in his hand. The bullet splintered wood and cracked plaster in the corner of the ceiling. He wrapped a strong arm around Ianto's shoulders, going with him as he collapsed to his knees, sobbing like a child, tears streaming from his eyes, snot mingling with blood on his chin. Jack cradled his broken wrist between them, rubbing his shoulders and back, turning his face into the dark waves of his damp hair, smelling the sharp tang of fresh blood and the coarse odour of earth. He tuned out Tosh's questions, Gwen's tried-for explanations, Owen's blaspheming. The only person in his world then was the man who'd shot him. Maybe now he'd got it out of his system. He murmured unfounded words of comfort, fragments of reassuring phrases while Ianto leaned heavily into him, shattering in his arms. Sirens in the distance permeated the cacophony of distress. Jack eased back just a little, cheek against Ianto's temple. "It's over now. I'm sorry." He felt Ianto's good hand flex then grasp at his shirt before curling into a trembling fist. Tightening his embrace again, mindful of the broken bones cushioned against him, Jack looked up at his team, each of them dissolving in to their own version of shock. Not long before Ianto did the same. "I'm sorry I brought you all out here," he told them, meaning it. "I thought you were ready." Toshiko's expression hardened, he could see her push the thousands of questions to the back of her mind. "Don't you dare blame us, Jack." "I'm not. I promise you. I'm to blame, Tosh. It's my fault." Ianto's pulled at his shirt and Jack turned his face back into his hair, hushing softly, stroking his back. Ianto needed him. More than the rest of them. And Ianto could have him; have as much of him as he needed. That was how the medics found them minutes later. When they tried to get Ianto into the back of the same ambulance Gwen was already sitting inside, he refused to let go of Jack's shirt. So Jack went too, leaving Toshiko and Owen to retrieve the SUV with a heavily armed escort. They sedated Ianto. Jack stayed at his side and held his hand as long as they'd let him. At the hospital they set his wrist into a cast and put two stitches in his forehead. They gave Gwen a pint and a half of blood and cleaned her wound, commenting on the excellent job the field doctor had done. Both of them were treated for shock and sent home. There had been a pile up on the M4 - the A&E department was barely organised chaos. Owen arrived to take Gwen home; Jack doubted Rhys would see her tonight. Jack took Ianto back to the hub in a taxi, made him comfortable in what he laughingly referred to as his bed, and sat vigil on the floor next to him all night until he woke, groggy from the sedatives and the pain killers. They didn't say much to each other then. It was later that Jack explained how he couldn't die. And Ianto still apologised for shooting him. Kept apologising until Jack kissed him just to shut him up; a long kiss, a good kiss, a kiss that went some way to healing all the pain between them. ~ Weapon grasped in one hand, protective goggles on, Ianto tried not to tense up when Jack moved up to stand behind him. He could feel hot breath on his neck, a hard shoulder pressing into his, that firm body against his back, and unless that was a gun in his pocket�. "One on one, Ianto," he murmured into his ear, that velvet voice that invited so much treachery. "I'll teach you to shoot with both barrels. And in return, you can teach me how to feel." |