Isolation

Come on, oh my star is fading, and I see no chance of release
And I know I’m dead on the surface
But I am screaming underneath.

Coldplay – Amsterdam

Warmth sank into him, soaking into his very bones.

He let his head slide underneath the surface, leaving only his face exposed to the cool night air. His ears filled, muffling the sounds around him, blanketing him from it all. The steady dripping of the tap into the sink, the groaning of the pipes beneath him, his own heartbeat; they were the only noises he could hear, and even then, they were muffled and distorted. Everything else was distant, drowned out by the silence.

He needed that.

His eyes were tightly screwed shut, although it wouldn’t have mattered a great deal if he'd opened them, not really. He had turned off the lights as soon as the door closed safely behind him and it was late now, very late, the only illumination coming through the small frosted window, dim and soothing. He was six floors above the streetlights, and the sound of what little traffic there was at this hour was muted by distance. He thought of the whirl of activity outside, even at this hour; clouds rushing the sky, frenzied traffic dipping in and out of the motorways, the sun plummeting below to the horizon, with another day over. Time rush. Blood rush.

It should have left him terrified, fearing for his sanity following recent events. That darkness shouldn't have been welcome - he should have craved the light, longed for it with the same intensity as he’d longed for happiness, peace, redemption. He'd craved it once - an eternity ago. Before that eternity, when minutes, hours, days had stretched forever and he'd been lost. Isolated. So terribly alone. Deaf, blind, numb - on the outside at least. He'd never been anything less than utterly petrified, silent, harsh screams echoing wildly in the vaults of his mind. Yes, this darkness should have left him with that same sense of fear.

It didn't. There was just enough of the real world intruding into this self-imposed isolation to ground him. The silence here was the simple absence of noise, not the all-encompassing silence of ears that didn't hear or, in hearing, pass signals to the brain. This was a stillness of his own making, not one forced upon him. If he moved his legs now he could feel the water stirring around him. He could feel everything - the eddies his movement created, the way the water slid past his skin like silk.  He could hear the slight splashing noise the passage of his limb left in its wake, felt it both through his ears and through the vibrations along his body. His pulse and the sound of his breathing echoed in his head. Feel the whisper of it against the damp skin of his chest. If he sat up again he would feel the way the water ran in rivulets down over his skin from his wet hair, sliding over his face, into his closed eyes and dropping to his lips. He could taste the droplets as they settled on his dry lips, inhale the scent of the bath salts Tosh had given him for Christmas, something subtle and masculine.

If he opened his eyes he could see the dim outlines of the fittings around him, familiar even in this still hour. If he closed them again he could see swirls of lights behind his eyelids as nerve endings fired randomly.

Somewhere else, in the back of his mind, he could hear the siren of a police car started up, dim and distant, but no less real for that. He sank further into his almost-trance, now picking up other familiar sounds. Somewhere, he thought he heard the TV starting up, canned laughter adding to that sense of unreality. Unreal because it was so normal and unwearied. Unnoticed until it was gone.

The squeaking of the wobbly floorboard in the hall on the other side of this bathroom door. He recognised that too, a sound that seemed to echo in the middle of the night when he got up, eyes closed, the remnants of dreams still clinging to him.

He knew what caused the noise now, could close his eyes again and picture Jack standing there, still and quietly attentive, head cocked to one side as he listened for sounds. He even knew what Jack would be listening for - for sounds of him, for sounds to let Jack know that he was still there, still safe. To reassure Jack that he was still alive and whole and healing.

I'll let you know, Jack, he thought. I'll let you know that all of those things are true. As soon as I know whether they are.

It was the only thought he permitted himself, soon sinking back into the cooling water and that state of emptiness.

He'd been hurt, feared dying. No sound, no sight, no smell, no ability to taste, no sensation of touch. Nothing. A void. An emptiness that consumed him, swallowed him whole with only his own thoughts to keep him from the abyss. He'd tried. Fought. Raged against the dying of the light, both figuratively and literally. He'd tried to hold himself together, to stop himself from shattering into a million pieces and being lost forever. It was easy at first, when he thought it would be minutes only and not the eternity it had become. Simple. How often did he get to be alone with his own thoughts, to sort through the impressions of the last few years? Wasn't he always complaining that running from place to place never gave him enough time to simply think? It was easy at first, keeping calm by remembering everything and anything, literally living in his own head. Reciting poems from centuries past, or long in the future, epics of deeds barely remembered, of acts no one these days knew whether were founded in fact or in the imagination of bards long dead. And when that failed to fill the silence completely he moved onto other things. Remembering the plot of every book he'd ever read, every film he'd ever seen. Reliving conversations over and over again. A thousand impressions from a hundred different places filled his mind. He told himself stories from his long-lost and all too brief childhood. Told himself them and tried to cling to them with the single mindedness of a child.

Remembered faces; Lisa's, his parents'. Jack's. A smile, an expression, a glint in dark blue eyes.

No hours had been as dark as those, and memories had not been not enough to hold back the panic, the fear, the encroaching insanity. He could feel it like a tangible entity, gibbering around those so dark corners of his mind.

The more he remembered, the more slipped away, trickling from him like grains of sand between his fingers. The words left him, dissolved until his tired and frantic brain hadn't been able to summon any up at all and he was left speechless, even in his own mind. The faces had left him too, until he couldn't remember what Jack looked like, until he couldn't remember whether there had ever really been a Jack or whether he'd made Jack up so that he wouldn't have to be alone. Until he couldn't differentiate fantasy from reality, separate the memories of things he had experienced from those he'd read about. Until he couldn't remember whether or not there was anyone to come for him at all or whether there had ever been more than the emptiness.

That had been when his grip on sanity had started to slip too. He’d felt it go and, unlikely though he may have thought it before then, feeling it slipping through his fingers, as the memories had, increased the terror. He remembered all too well the last time this fear had gripped him, the fear of losing the one thing he could count on, the one thing he'd held on through while everything else was lost – the hope that Lisa would be saved, that Jack would return. Hope. The one thing he'd always been able rely upon, regardless of whether that reliance was a curse or a blessing. His mind, before Jack’s disappearance, and even that was taken from him, for a while, and even in being given back came back with another unwelcome passenger.

Doubt.

In the darkness, doubt was back with a vengeance. Helpless, hopeless, he’d teetered on that brink, unsure why he didn’t just embrace it. Let go. Go insane. Let that slip through his fingers along with anything else that mattered. Stop fighting it. Sleep. He'd fought sleep at first as he'd fought the emptiness, because there was also the fear that if he went to sleep he'd never wake up again, not as himself. Or that he would, and still be as lost, adrift on nothingness.

And then finally, exhausted beyond measure, afraid, already half-insane and unable to fight anymore he simply let go. Felt himself unravelling and falling and felt that darkness claim him.

The first thing that hit him when consciousness flooded back into his tired body was the light. It was everywhere, blasting his senses with a persistent, repetitive stream of painful brightness. His skin felt raw and bloody, like half cooked meat, like it was being roasted alive, tortured under a giant heat lamp. He squeezed his eyes shut and covered them with his hands, hoping to gain some respite from the incandescent rays, but it was no better. The light still filtered through his long lashes, scarring his eyes, burning his flesh. The only colour he could see was the afterimage of the burning brightness on the inside of his eyelids, a dancing, splotchy pattern of yellow and red.

They'd turned the lights down low when they realised they'd hurt him, kept their voices at a whisper too when they realised that he found the sounds equally distressing. Stopped touching him when he flinched and scrabbled away. Didn't ask him too many questions when they realised that talking was almost beyond him at that point.

Jack had rescued him from that too, from Tosh’s tender ministrations and Owen’s urgent pleading. Got him away from the too bright lights, the too loud sounds. Heroically kept himself from doing what Jack did best – kisses, hugs, pats on the back, the little touches that had made Ianto recoil.

From too little he'd gone to too much, and he couldn't cope.

'Acclimatisation', Owen had called it, his voice still pitched low as though Ianto was still interested, as though he didn't have his hands clapped over his ears to filter out those too loud sounds. As though Ianto wasn't sitting there, shivering violently because the air moved around by the air conditioners was too cold, too icily frigid against skin that hadn't felt anything for so long.

Jack. Yes, Jack had been there and his face scorched itself back into Ianto's memory. He grasped hold of that image, hard, never ever wanting to be in a situation when he couldn't remember what the man looked like. Held onto Jack's face in his mind with a desperation that at any other time would have scared him. Jack had been there, Jack had come for him and even now Jack was saving him. Jack was real and not something he'd conjured up to fill the void. Jack was real and Jack had taken Owen and Toshiko aside, murmured words that Ianto hadn't wanted to listen to but couldn't tune out entirely. Words he'd let wash over him while he closed his eyes and pressed his face into the starched pillow to muffle out the world. The sheets he lay on were scratchy underneath his skin. Even the dim lights were too bright and he was too cold, too lost.

Something – or someone, he hadn’t been able to tell – had brushed up against his arm, the cold of the sudden, unexpected touch causing his stomach to heave in something akin to revulsion, and he had retched uncontrollably onto the floor, nearly choking. Then it had gripped him stronger, and some nightmarish grasp had turned him over, hands running over his skin. He’d protested, coughing, retching, stumbling for words, anything that would make them just leave him alone, until they had, leaving him alone in the blessedly quiet darkness.

Jack had won them over and, after Owen had given him a sedative, had taken him home - to his flat, not his Hub quarters, somehow knowing that Ianto needed to be among familiar things.

And Ianto had escaped here, to the bathroom, in spite of Jack's protests, Jack's doubt.

Ianto knew what he was doing, why he was so insistent, simply looking at Jack with pleading eyes while part of his brain concentrated on capturing the image of Jack's face, storing the look of it for another eternity. He was doing what he always did - coping.

Hours they said, not the days he'd imagined. Not even a full day, not quite although it had been close, and long enough, apparently, for Jack and Tosh to start despairing at his non-responsive state. Even his sense of time had been skewed completely by his ordeal. Hours and that was all his tenuous hold on sanity was worth. It had taken mere hours to break him once he was cut-off from all external stimuli and trapped in his own head with nothing but his own thoughts for company. A simple mission, and Ianto had stepped too close to an uncovered alien artefact, got caught in some kind of energy beam.

Trapped by an in unrelenting darkness and fear until his team found a way to free him from the floating cell and the effects had faded, slowly but surely. Scary place, Jack had joked before the sheer terror in the young man’s eyes had cut the soft attempt at humour dead and concern replaced it. Ianto hadn't explained.

Instead Jack had filled the awkward silence, tried to both explain and soothe, mutterings about 'complete sensory deprivation', some vain reassurance that Ianto had done well to survive it, that it had always been a form of extreme torture reserved for only the worst criminals. Ianto had tuned him out, craving the sound of Jack's voice but not wanting to know what the man was talking about. Not wanting any reminder of the darkness that existed in others that enabled them to think up that kind of agony, punishment and in thinking of it being able to inflict it on the unwary. Instead he'd just let the soft syllables of Jack's speech wash over him, low and warm, letting it say 'home' to him not 'horror' until slowly, his voice had voice trailed off and left him alone in the silence that was bearable simply because it wasn't empty. No, Ianto hadn't explained that fear, that feeling to Jack.

The floorboard creaked again, and if he listened hard enough he could almost hear Jack breathing on the other side of the door.

He was cold now, shivering slightly as he stepped onto the icy floor, but the towels were over the radiator outside where Jack had put them and would be warm, soft, feel good against his chilled skin. He could smell the scent of the fabric conditioner, a homely, comforting scent that spoke of washing, of odd jobs and most of all, reality.

The floorboard creaked again, and he heard the unlocked door being pushed open, slowly. Ianto sat on the floor and slumped forward, resting his head on the cool wall tiles. He felt a hand touching his hair, and Jack was beside him, taking the largest bath towel from the radiator and holding it out for him to step into. It occurs to him that he should probably be embarrassed by the man’s almost omniscient appearance and the way he was caring for him as he hadn’t been since childhood, but, somehow, he wasn’t. Tired as he was, it seemed entirely comfortable and natural for him to be there.

‘Jack,’ he croaked out, his throat having gone tight somehow and his voice coming out softly enough to avoid jarring his ears. The bright smile in return for uttering the single word seemed a good trade, so he said it again, twice more, a litany in the man’s name.

Ianto hadn't explained. But he would. Because he trusted Jack to give him time and space, allow him anything and everything he’d need before and afterward.

It would take time, but – Jack assured him, later that evening – that because everything else could - and would - wait, they had all the time in the world.