badly_knitted: (Give Ianto A Hug)
[personal profile] badly_knitted
 


Title: Crazy For Trying
Author: 
[personal profile] badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Lisa.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1672
Setting: Pre-Season One.
Summary: It may be crazy, but Ianto can’t give up on Lisa.
Written For: Weekend Challenge Lyrics & Nouns at 
[community profile] 1_million_words.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
 
 


Slipping away from the team, not that anyone noticed, Ianto made his way down into the lower levels, to the cold, damp room where he’d hidden Lisa and her life-support machinery. He needed to check on her, see that her pain meds were working. He was fairly sure he had the dosage right now, even if it meant she spent most of her time in a drugged sleep. That was probably for the best anyway; she had no quality of life at present, and sleeping put less of a strain on her body and mind.

 
Still, she was awake when he unlocked the door and entered the dimly lit room.

 
“Ianto?” She couldn’t lift her head, or even turn it much, so he quickly moved to where she could see him.
 

“Hey. How are you feeling? Are you in any pain?”


 
“No, it’s okay. It hurts, but just a little. I get lonely though, when I wake up and you’re not here.”
 

Ianto took her hand, stroking his thumb across the backs of her fingers. “I know, I’m sorry, but I have things to do. If I don’t do my job, they’ll get suspicious, and then we’ll really be in trouble. Can’t have them finding you, can we? I have to keep you hidden until I can find someone who can fix you.”

 

“I know, I just miss you. Are you okay though?”


 
Ianto smiled; it was a relief to hear Lisa sounding so much like herself. There were times, more and more lately, when she… didn’t, when her voice turned hard, and cold, and robotic, scaring him before it reverted to normal.
 

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”


 
Lisa squinted up at him. “You don’t look fine. You look… tired, stressed. Is it because of me?”
 

It was, of course, at least in part, but Ianto could hardly tell Lisa that; it would only upset her, make her feel guilty, when none of this was her fault. She was the innocent victim, suffering from something that had been done to her against her will.

 

“No, love, it’s just… I’m trying to juggle taking care of you and doing everything on the mile-long list of duties Captain Harkness has handed me, and I haven’t quite got it all figured out yet. I swear he’s giving me more responsibilities every day, just to make his own job easier, and the rest of the team are just as bad. I spend half my time cleaning up after them. Apparently they have yet to grasp the concept of rubbish bins.”


 
“Poor Ianto. You’re like the swan, aren’t you? All calm and poised on the surface, but paddling like crazy underneath.”
 

“Yep, that’s me.” Ianto put on a long-suffering expression. “The general dogsbody, doing all the jobs that no one else can be arsed to do.”

 

Lisa laughed, and the sound sent a warm glow though Ianto. The sound of her laughter, filled with genuine amusement, was becoming increasingly rare, and that made moments like this all the more precious. “Oh, the look on your face!”


 
Ianto found himself grinning back at her, feeling almost giddy. Leaning in, he kissed her briefly, but the coldness of her lips, and the metallic taint to her breath, quickly sobered him again. He sighed.

 
“Sometimes I think they don’t see me as a real person at all. I’m starting to feel like a pawn in a bizarre game of three-dimensional chess. Stick me on any black square, then move me anywhere you want where there’s some menial job that needs doing. Clean up, wash the dishes, order food, make coffee, feed the inmates, go to the shops, collect the dry-cleaning, do the filing, carry out repairs, wash the car, do the driving, and now Harkness wants to put me in charge of the archives! Hah, they’re a joke! If you could only them…They’re just a bunch of rooms crammed full of everything that’s fallen through the Rift since this branch was set up. As far as I can make out, there’s never been any serious attempt at properly organising and cataloguing anything. A few things are labelled, but…” He trailed off with another, heavier sigh. “Still, at least it gives me an excuse to come down here more often.”
 

“Not too often though.” Lisa gave a wan smile. “As much as I wish you could stay with me all the time, you do need to keep on top of your responsibilities.” Her face went blank, liked a switch had been thrown, and her voice changed. “This unit is functioning improperly. It requires repairs.” Then Lisa blinked again. “I’m so tired, Ianto. All I seem to do is sleep, but I never get any less tired. It will all be alright, won’t it?”

 

Ianto blinked back the tears that burned behind his eyes; he couldn’t afford to cry in front of Lisa, not when she wasn’t even aware of her lapses. “Yes, of course it will. I’m making progress with tracking down a cyberneticist. I’ve narrowed the list down to three possibilities, I just need to do a bit more research into what they’re working on, see who’ll be the best able to fix you. I love you, Lisa.”


 
“And I love you.”
 

“I know you do. We’ll get through this, together. I promise. You just have to hold on a bit longer.”


 
“I’ll try, but I’m scared, Ianto. It hurts.”
 

“I know, love. Let me just adjust your pain meds again, then you can rest. I need to get back to work.”

 

“Alright.”

 

“I’ll be back again as soon as I can.” Ianto moved to the automated drug delivery system and increased the dosage by a fraction. Every time he changed it, it worked fine for a few days and then Lisa got used to the increased dose, built up some kind of tolerance, and he had to increase it again. He’d really believed he’d got it this time, she’d been stable for almost two weeks, but now… How long would it be before he had to start giving her a potentially lethal dose? The cyber implants must be filtering the drugs out of her bloodstream, that was the only explanation that made sense.

 

‘I must be crazy,’ he told himself as he checked the machines, making sure Lisa’s vital signs were stable even as she drifted off to sleep again. ‘But I have to keep trying. Whatever it takes to save her.’ They were meant to be together; Lisa had told him once that it was fate, destiny, written in the stars…

 

If that was true then he had nothing to fear; everything would work out the way it was meant to, and yet with every passing day, Ianto found it harder to believe. He loved her so much, but he could almost feel her slipping away from him, millimetre by millimetre, a little more each day. Conversations with her when she was lucid were becoming rarer, and the metallic, robotic voice was breaking through more frequently, but he had to keep believing, had to keep trying, no matter how crazy that made him, because he still loved her. She was his whole world.

 
Maybe he was crazy for that too, for loving the amalgam of flesh and metal, human and machine, that his beautiful Lisa had been turned into, but then again, the whole situation was crazy, like something out of a psychedelic body-horror nightmare.
 

Closing and locking the door to Lisa’s dungeonlike room behind him, Ianto leaned against the cold stone wall and closed his eyes, silent tears rolling down his face as he let himself give in, just for a moment, to the sense of hopelessness he’d been struggling to hold at bay for so long. Crying wouldn’t help, he knew that; it wouldn’t change a damn thing, and would probably only make him feel worse. He couldn’t afford to let any sign of weakness creep in. Lisa needed him, more than ever, and he couldn’t let her down, not when he’d already promised her that everything would be alright. But he was so tired, and it was getting harder every day to stray strong. He wasn’t sure how much strength he had left.


 
How many more days, weeks, months would it take to get back the beautiful, vibrantly alive woman Lisa had been before? He hadn’t let her down yet, he’d done everything he’d said he would, liberating her and her life-support machinery from Torchwood Tower, transporting her to Cardiff, getting her into the Torchwood Three Hub… Caring for her every need had been difficult enough even before he’d taken on a full-time job with irregular working hours and no time off to speak of, but it didn’t matter; he’d manage, somehow. He’d come too far to give up.
 

Ianto wiped his eyes and blew his nose, determinedly pulling himself together, shoved his handkerchief back in his pocket, tugged at his shirt cuffs, and straightened his tie. He was crazy for giving in to tears in the middle of the workday. If anyone noticed… Most of the team wouldn’t, of course, but Jack might; he could be scarily observant at times, and then how would Ianto explain? A quick trip to the men’s room to splash cold water on his face, and then… Maybe Jack would believe that the dust in the archives was triggering Ianto’s allergies. Yes, that might work.

 

One last look at the heavy wooden door that hid the woman he loved from the people he now worked with, then Ianto turned on his heel and strode resolutely to the stairs, heading up to the archive level. He should do something up there to make it at least appear that he’d been working. Later, he’d check on Lisa again, but for now he had a job to do. It was the only way to maintain his cover as the efficient office boy and coffee maker.

 

Crazy he might be, but this would all work out in the end. It had to.

 
 

The End

 
 


 

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Date: 2025-09-19 10:39 pm (UTC)
mrs_sweetpeach: (Default)
From: [personal profile] mrs_sweetpeach
What an awful situation, so terrible for both of them.

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