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Ianto Jones is going to die.He should really be panicking about this. At the very least, he should be panicking about the manner in which he is going to die. He has seen the other bodies Torchwood found, he knows what is going to happen. He is to become the next in the long line of victims of this sick and twisted village’s tradition.
Some part of him – a large part of him – is glad. He knows it is going to hurt, and he deserves it. For what happened to Lisa. She died horrifically, body and mind mutilated beyond recognition. It seems fitting that he should die like that as well. His penance, or something along those lines. He should’ve protected her.
Ewan Sherman’s huge knife presses into his neck. “Time to be bled,” he hisses. “Like veal, it takes a long time. But it definitely makes the meat taste better.”
“No!” Gwen screams desperately. Ianto’s heart thuds despondently. Please, Gwen, just let me die. It’ll be fast like this. “No, please don’t kill him, we can— we can figure something else out, yeah? Just please— please don’t kill him.”
Sherman grins even wider, Ianto can hear it when he speaks. “You’re right. Where’s the fun in that? My parents always told me not to play with my food. I didn’t like listening to my parents.” He hisses the last part in Ianto’s ear, and Ianto’s heart sinks. Penance, he reminds himself. You deserve this.
Sherman shoves him to the floor and bends down over him, pulling a smaller knife off the table. Gwen screams something incoherently, but this time Sherman ignores her. He carefully cuts Ianto’s shirt and undershirt away, and picks up the giant butcher’s knife again, raising it above his head. Gwen starts forwards but Sherman’s wife jabs her gun at her, and Gwen falls back again, silent for once.
Ianto feels the moment the knife slices through the top of his humerus. He broke his arm when he was six, falling off the monkey bars in the playground near his house, and he’d thought it had hurt like losing a limb might. He had been wrong. Ianto screams, and turns to stare in shock at the stump of his arm, the rest of his arm rolling away from his body. Blood is pooling quickly, thick and such an intense shade of red it could easily be found on the side of an M&S shortbread tin. He can feel his veins throbbing as agony shoots up what remains of his arm, even as his scream dies away.
Sherman raises the knife again, and if Ianto had thought he was prepared for it this time, he was wrong. If he’d thought being conscious as he lost an arm hurt, being conscious whilst losing two definitely hurt more. Twice as much, even. He doesn’t scream this time, just groans through the gag, biting down on it, almost glad for it as it means he can’t bite his tongue. Hot blood pools, soaking into his jeans and seeping under his back. He might be crying or it might be sweat or it might be both, Ianto isn’t sure, but he knows his face is damp with Something. Sherman giggles, sounding completely insane, which makes perfect sense. Ianto’s vision is swimming, black dots dancing around, which is probably good; he doesn’t really want to be able to see his friends’ faces.
Sherman crouches down next to him and taps the bone stump thoughtfully. Waves of white-hot pain shoot up Ianto’s shoulder and he screams again, trailing off into whimpers as Sherman says, “Now, then… do I let you keep your legs?”
Someone groans quietly. Ianto thinks it might be Owen. He also doesn’t really care. He stares desperately at Sherman, wide-eyed, willing him to not cut off any more limbs please and thank you. Blood is still leaking sluggishly from where his arms used to be, and he can feel Sherman’s breath against his exposed muscle, repulsively warm and pungent.
Sherman tilts his head. “Well… you’ve already lost a lot of blood, you might die from that. I want you to feel what I’m going to do.”
This is, unsurprisingly, a lot more concerning than if Sherman had decided to just chop off his legs as well. As he’d said, at least maybe then he would have died, which would have been a blessed relief at this point. What the fuck was Sherman about to do to him that he wanted him to be able to feel?
A third knife appears in Sherman’s hand and Gwen, realising what he’s going to do, turns around and throws up on the floor. The smell complements the stench of blood and death nicely. Gwen thuds to the floor, sitting down heavily, still retching.
Ianto really wishes Sherman would just kill him, actually. >i>You deserve it, he reminds himself again. >i>For what you did to Lisa.
The first bite of the knife under the flesh of his stomach isn’t that bad. But then the knife keeps going, and keeps going, and keeps going, jaggedly bouncing up his torso under his skin, and Ianto screams, and screams, and screams. He’s definitely crying now, not really caring as he starts to fade in and out of consciousness as Sherman starts to carefully pull Ianto’s flesh away from his body. He can feel blood pooling everywhere, flooding under his loosening skin and trembling as he screams or whimpers or whatever noise he’s even making now. Dimly, he can hear Gwen sobbing, and he wishes she would stop; doesn’t she know he deserves this?
He wishes Jack were here. He doesn’t know where Jack is. He’s going to die and he doesn’t know where Jack is. He can feel his skin tearing, nerve endings on fire as Ewan Sherman rips his flesh from his stomach to feed a village of Welshmen human crisps or maybe just for fun, Ianto doesn’t know and doesn’t care, his vocal cords groaning under the weight of his screams.
Blood is pooling everywhere now and Ianto can feel his consciousness beginning to slip away. There’s still so much pain, skin still tearing like an envelope on a birthday, and then there’s screaming and shouting and Ianto can’t make out what they’re saying or who’s saying it but suddenly his skin is no longer being torn up like astroturf and Jack’s face is swimming into view, hand sliding under his head.
Ianto gasps, whimpering in pain as his mangled body shifts minutely. “Oh, Ianto,” Jack whispers, hurriedly untying the gag which Ianto has mostly chewed up by now. Ianto closes his mouth, jaw aching, and just stares up at Jack as his vision starts to black out.
“You are not dying,” Jack says firmly, and stands up again, pulling his gun out. A volley of shots rings out, too many for Ianto to be able to count in his semiconscious state, but it’s clear from the ensuing silence that everyone non-Torchwood is dead.
The last thing Ianto hears before he blacks out completely is Jack yelling “Gwen, call an ambulance!” and then Jack’s arms are back around him but nope everything’s gone now.