m_findlow

Title: All she wants 
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Lisa
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none 
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 59 - Daylight at fffc
Summary: Ianto wishes he could give Lisa everything she wants. 

Ianto trundled down through the darkened hallways without so much as a thought for which turns left and right he was taking. He'd done this trip so many times now he could do it asleep with his eyes shut. Which was lucky because that was about how he felt right now, ready to drop off to sleep at the first moment he could sit down and lay his head somewhere. It was probably fortunate he'd never mastered the art of sleeping whilst standing, or he might have been asleep hours ago. 

But no, there was still more work to do. Wasn't there always? Sometimes it felt like he was the only one who was working around here, or so it seemed when everyone else waltzed out the door at six pm, or earlier. Unless the world was potentially ending, that is, in which case they were here until the job was done. But even then, he was still here even after they'd rolled out the door, exhausted, battered and bruised, whichever happened to apply. He rarely found himself in the battered and bruised categories, but exhausted was becoming a permanent state of being. Not that anyone noticed, or so it seemed to him. He was invisible most of the time, and at times like this, he was immensely grateful for that fact. 

He nearly dropped the heavy metal key as he slipped it from his tired hand, refusing to grip around it. Muscle memory did the rest for him, finding the keyhole and letting him turn it in the lock, hearing the pins and bolts clink heavily into place. He took a deep breath in and remembered to school his features, before pushing the door in. 

He could never figure out why it was such a relief to find Lisa still down there. It wasn't as if she could leave, strapped down as she was in that great metal monstrosity. He didn't understand how half of it worked, despite having spent all the hours building it from scratch almost. All that technical know-how was inside Lisa's mind, and whilst he was glad she knew what to do to help keep herself alive, a little bit of him hated her for it. Not her, precisely, but the thing those monsters had tried to turn her into. She shouldn't know how to do it anymore than he did. She didn't even know how to change a tyre when they'd met and still didn't, but she could build a machine that was hundreds of years ahead of any technology they had. It was wrong in ways he couldn't even begin to describe. 

What he saw when he came in made his bright, confident and reassuring mask fall away immediately. Tears were running down both sides of her face in thick rivers. She'd been a sobber before, but now encased in her metal body, she could only shake ever so slightly. Ianto knew she was breaking apart on him and guilt ripped his heart apart, wondering how long he'd left her down here like this, crying her heart out. 

He rushed to her side and took one of her ice cold hands in his, the other reaching to touch her face and wipe away some of the tears with his thumb. ‘Hey, it's okay. I'm here.’ He felt his own voice break just a little as he forced the words out. His chest tightened with its own sob trying to force its way out of him but somehow he swallowed it back down, though it hurt to do so. 

He kissed her cheek, then her lips, brushing away a few more tears. ‘I'm here,’ he repeated. ‘Everything's going to be okay. Are you in any pain?’ He realised that could explain why she was so anxious and upset. He quickly checked the drips and the machines, turning them all up a notch just in case. 

‘I'm okay,’ Lisa croaked. ‘It's not the pain. It's just…’ 

‘What?’ He mentally begged for her not to say what he feared. More than once she'd suggested it might be best if he switched off the machines and just let her go. He couldn't do that. She was here, and she was alive. There was no way he was giving up on her whilst she was awake and able to talk to him. 

‘I want to go outside,’ she said, another tear slipping down her face. ‘I haven't seen daylight in so long. I just want to breathe real air and see the sky.’ 

Ianto could scarcely remember the last time he'd seen daylight either. He'd taken to sleeping down here as often as he could, so that he was always on hand. It was bad enough that he left her alone most of the day. He couldn't bear to leave her here alone all night as well. 

He shook his head sadly. ‘We can't.’ She knew it was well as he did. ‘You wouldn't survive.’ 

‘I'd be okay for a little while,’ she assured him. The machines were the only thing keeping her breathing. Yes, she might be okay for a few minutes, perhaps even as much as fifteen minutes, but then she'd be in trouble. He wasn't even sure he could walk her out of here. It took him a good eight minutes to come down here from the main hub, and that was without worrying about running into Jack. Who knew what he did after hours. He hadn't found them yet, but it was too much of a risk to move about. 

‘I'm sorry,’ Ianto apologised. ‘I wish I could give you everything you want.’ He stroked her face as his own tears began to pool. ‘We just have to hang in there a little longer, okay? When you're better, we'll find a quiet little place in the country with nothing but wide open skies and lots of fresh air.’ He hoped they would because he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold on either.