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Title: Imprisoned
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 3,115 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 175 - Square
Summary: A step too far spells disaster

The noise woke both of them as they were huddled on the sofa after a long night of chasing weevils across the city. Neither of them could find the energy to make it to Jack's bunker, besides which, his bed was hardly wider than the sofa in any case.

'Jack, that came from upstairs,' Ianto said, referring to the noise.

'Sounded like the boardroom,' Jack agreed.

The pair of them slowly got up, still dressed, and collected their stun guns from the nearby coffee table.

'What do you think it was?' Jack asked.

'Well, I don't think it's Gwen coming in for some overtime,' Ianto quietly answered. He was worried that where there was one noise, there might be more culprits lurking.

'Could just be rats,' Jack offered.

'Not in my hub,' Ianto replied, offended by the idea.

'You take the side door, I'll take the back,' Jack said, splitting off from him and heading down the passageway that would lead him to a set of stairs that would take him to the first level. From there it would lead into the long hallway that ran from the boardroom at one end, all the way to the upper level of the underground car park that sat under the Millennium Centre. Ianto would take the metal staircase that spiraled up to the small kitchenette and the side entrance.

Without their comms, it was difficult to guage just how long Ianto should wait until Jack would be ready to enter from the other side, his own journey much longer to get to the same location. Ianto left it for a count of forty seconds before stepping through, gun raised.

Inside there was nothing. He quickly checked under the table and chairs, finding nothing untoward hidden there. The boardroom looked just like it always did. Jack still hadn't arrived, but it seemed there wasn't much point worrying about someone attacking him in here. Perhaps they'd escaped out the door Jack was headed for. Without hesitation, he let it slide open and stepped out into the darkened hallway.

'Ianto, stop!' Jack yelled, but it was too late. He'd taken one step too many before coming to a halt, watching as a square shaped ring of light encircled his feet.

'What?' he said, staring down at it. 'What is it?'

Jack shut his eyes, feeling a weight of dread sink into his stomach. He should've raised the alarm quicker, or else stepped over it himself.

The loud clunk they'd heard earlier was the square piece of metal falling through the rift. In the time it had taken them to come and investigate it, it had seeped into the concrete floor, just waiting to be activated.

'Jack, what the hell is it?' he said, about to step back and out of its way. Luckily, Jack saw what he was about to do.

'No! Don't move an inch. Keep your entire body still and don't let it outside the square.'

Ianto looked down at the seemingly harmless ring of light. Well, he knew better than to assume anything was harmless, and judging by Jack's reaction, he wasn't about to move a single muscle until someone told him what they were dealing with.

'Jack, you're scaring me.'

'Not as much as I'm about to,' he apologised.

'What the hell have I just stepped in to? Am I about to be teleported somewhere?'

'No. It's not a teleport, it's a prison cell.'

'A cell? Lovely. And could you get me out of it?'

Jack looked nervous. That was never a good thing, Ianto knew.

'Okay, so not getting me out,' Ianto answered himself. 'What exactly happens if I cross this line?' he asked, noting how terribly small it was, maybe two feet square at most; just enough room for him to remain standing upright, but not much else.

'You'll be disintegrated into atoms,' Jack replied, looking fearful.

'Just another day at the office then,' he quipped.

'Ianto,' Jack began, 'I can't get you out of there. These things, well, I say they're prison cells, but that's not quite accurate.'

'Well, you know how I love you to be accurate,' Ianto said, sensing even more bad news.

'They're not designed temporary usage, or transport. People who go into these things don't come out. They stay there until exhaustion or starvation kill them, or until they grow so mad that they try to escape, and,'

'And get blown to atoms,' Ianto finished.

'Yeah.'

'Well,' Ianto sighed, 'that's largely unacceptable. I suggest you figure out a way to deactivate it.'

Jack tried hard not to look devastated. 'Ianto, there is no way. I don't know. I've never heard of anyone deactivating one.'

Ianto felt annoyed. It would be a thoroughly anticlimactic way to go, he decided, and not at all something he fancied. It also wasn't like Jack to concede quite so easily.

He went to put his hands on his hips before remembering that they would most likely poke out beyond the reaches of his new confined space, and setting them down at his side. He quite liked his elbows and suspected that if they got atomised, the arm attached below them might also be lost. It was a difficult task, since the only thing he had to go on was the line of light on the floor beneath him to determine where the outer limits of his new cage ended. For all intents and purposes, he felt like he was just standing on the spot, with nothing around him. It didn't feel like there was an invisible wall about to blast him to bits if he touched it.

'Are you saying that these things are single use only? One death per prison?'

'No, just that I've never seen one deactivate until the person inside was dead. Ianto, I'm so sorry. I should've tried to warn you sooner. I didn't expect you to come out through the door. I was trying to figure out how to get it back out of the floor before anyone got hurt.'

'It's my fault,' Ianto apologised. 'I was worried that whatever had come visiting might have been heading in your direction. I thought I could come up and capture it from  behind before it found you.'

They stared at each other for a moment, both wishing they could undo their last decisions. In trying to do the right thing by one another, they'd both condemned themselves.

'So what do we do now?' Ianto asked, 'Apart from me pretending to be a statue for the foreseeable future?'

'Stay here. I'm going to try and find out if there's anything in the Shadow Proclamation database.' He jogged away, leaving Ianto alone in the dark hallway, with only two square feet of light around him to keep him company.

'Yeah, I'll just stay here and wait.'

'I'll be back, I promise.'

Jack scoured the database for hours, searching for any information that might save Ianto. His search was fruitless however, and he struggled to even think of where to begin searching, his tired and panicked brain working against him. Their job was inherently dangerous, but this seemed like a terrible way to go. There had to be something in their database that covered off on the technicalities of the device, and how to undo the effects. He'd seen them used before, but only ever for the galaxy's most ruthless criminals, and had never spared a merciful thought for their fate. For most of them, it was far better than they deserved, as far as he'd been concerned.

He bolted up from the desk, realising that he'd left Ianto alone for a lot longer than he'd thought, rushing back up the stairs to the boardroom and out through the far door.

Ianto jumped at the sound, quickly arresting his own movements before he sent himself backwards through the invisible barrier between him and the rest of the world.

'Jesus, Jack. Are you trying to scare me to death?'

'Sorry,' he apologised. 'How are you?'

'Peachy. Just me and my box, hanging out. Trying not to kill each other.'

'I haven't found anything yet, but I'll keep trying. I've put out an alert to some old friends from the Agency. If any of them know anything, they'll let me know.'

Ianto grew wary at the term "old friends from the Agency". He didn't fancy having John Hart turn up here, just to watch him die, or worse, to try and help and him end up dying anyway. Much the better if he could have seen John Hart on the inside of one of these things. That would have made his day.

To his credit, Jack stayed with him for several hours more, keeping him company and in high spirits, whilst they waited for word back. Neither of them were quite ready to admit defeat yet. Just because Jack didn't know how to get him out, didn't make it impossible. He didn't know everything, as Ianto was happy to remind him every now and then, and they'd been in worse scrapes than this.

Gwen arrived some time in the late morning and took over keeping him company, whilst Jack left to go and scour their databases again, and checking for any word from his contacts. Like Ianto, she was determined not to give up until they'd exhausted every possibility.       

'I really wish we hadn't skipped dinner last night,' he complained, feeling very hungry. It would take a long while before he reached starvation levels, but it didn't make the growling in his stomach go away. More likely he was to dehydrate first, he thought glumly. Coffee would have been really good right now.

Jack was avoiding him, Ianto knew. He didn't want to come back until he had good news, but as the day wore on, Gwen's smile faltered a little bit more, and Ianto grew and little more worried.

Left on his own for about half an hour, whilst Gwen was grabbing a break and something to eat, he realised that he really needed company. After a long night the night before, and not much sleep, standing in one spot was beyond boring and exhausting. He'd gone a lot longer on a lot less sleep before, but it was amazing what keeping busy and a body full of adrenaline could do to stave off sleep. Here though, with nothing to do and nowhere he could go to keep himself moving, he felt like a dead weight on his feet. Dead weight, he noted the abysmal pun. More than once he'd felt his eyes drifting closed, and his head drooping forward, his upper torso not far behind it. He needed to do something soon before he collapsed, atomising himself. He had to buy Jack time to figure out a solution.

'Get Jack for me,' he instructed Gwen.

'He says he's busy trying to fix this,' she replied.

'Well, he's not doing a very good job so far, is he?' Ianto snapped. 'Get him down here. I have a few questions for him.'

When finally Gwen was able to drag Jack away from his desk to face Ianto in his cell, he looked awful. He hadn't slept either, but he had Ianto's life on his conscience and that was weighing heavier than anything.

'This cell thing,' Ianto said, pointing at the bright light, making right angles around his body. 'It's stopping me from getting out, but what about stuff getting in? I mean, if nothing could get through, the air in here would have been gone long ago, right?'

'It's unidirectional,' Jack replied. 'Stuff can go in, but not out.'

'And you never thought to shove a sandwich through?' Ianto exclaimed.

'It's limited. Nothing bigger than a paper clip, say.'

'Okay. Well that's a good start.'

'Ianto, what are you thinking?' Gwen said.

'I'm thinking, that if stuff can get in, maybe we can send in something useful.'

'Like what?' Jack argued. 'You want us to slip you a spoon so you can dig your way out of the bottom?'

Ianto rolled his eyes. 'You said this thing will deactivate when I'm dead?'

'That doesn't help us,' Gwen said.

'Unless you can get something in here to kill me.'

'That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard, and you've come up with some real good ones over the years, Ianto Jones,' Jack said, fuming with anger. 'You being dead doesn't fix anything.'

'Unless I'm only dead long enough to get out of here. That virus the 456 used last year. I was dead and then you brought me back.'

'No,' Jack flatly refused.

'You did it before.'

'It's too risky.'

'I only have to be dead long enough for this thing to stop working. You could bring me back, I know you could. Listen, I've thought this through. Anything else and I'll be dead, dead. You could shoot me, but that's a little hard to fix, and most other things will result in me collapsing unconscious first, getting obliterated in the process. This virus is deadly quick.'

'Deadly, being the key word,' Jack said, crossing his arms, furious with Ianto. This wasn't a plan, it was a suicide mission.

'Jack it's my life. Since you can't come up with anything better, I don't intend on rotting away in here, and it probably won't come to that. Another day in here and I won't be able to stay awake any longer. There's not even room to sit, let alone sleep. In twenty four hours, I'm dead however you cut it. Give me a chance? I don't want to lose you any more than you want to lose me.'

Jack's blue eyes were icy, and he was shaking slightly, but the longer he stood there in a stand off with his lover, the more he realised that they had to do something. They were both tired and argumentative. And if Ianto was willing to risk everything to be with him, how could he deny him?

'Okay,' he finally replied. 'But we do this my way.'

Jack spent an hour preparing the area, loading it full of emergency medical equipment, oxygen tanks, defibrillators, powerful vaccines, which had little effect against the 456 virus, but might be enough to kill it off if Jack couldn't completely do the job himself. Yes, he'd managed it before, but there had been more than a little luck involved. He hadn't truly known what he'd done or how he'd done it, only that he'd wanted it badly enough to make it work. He just had to hope that he could do the same again now.

Finally, satisfied that they were ready, or at least as ready as they could be, he shut the doors at both ends and isolated the section of ventilation overhead, sealing it off from the rest of the hub. He already had Gwen suited up in a thick hazmat suit, not willing to take any chances, in case the virus should somehow escape.

'Are you ready?' Jack's voice scratched over the intercom.

'Do it,' Ianto said, already feeling ridiculously weary, his legs like jelly underneath him as he struggled to stay awake and upright.

Jack released the small vial of agent into the ventilation. There was enough in those few drops to kill several hundred people. It would be quick this time, the potency more than ten times what it had been before, and without Ianto hanging on as long as possible for Jack's sake.

No sooner was the agent released, than Ianto felt it assail his body, so much stronger than before. He didn't even make it to his first thought before it had stopped his heart dead. The prison cell grew dim as the light faced to black, the metal square rising back up out of the floor before Ianto's body had even begun to crumple down to meet it.

Jack was through the doorway a split second later, as the ventilation quickly sucked the residue out of the hall, incinerating it, destroying the virus cells.

He picked Ianto up in his arms, kneeling beside him, and plunging his lips onto Ianto's. He felt the raw power of the vortex rise up inside him, glowing bright and golden as he let it flow into his lover. Over and over again he prayed, trying to convey to the vortex itself just how much Ianto meant to him, and how desperately he needed it to save him.

He kissed long and deep, never letting go for a moment, and determined to let every last shred of the vortex leave his body, if only to save Ianto, his own life be damned. It had been a stupid, stupid plan, he realised, as he poured more and more life force into him to no avail.

Just as he began to lose all hope, he heard a tiny gasp, and a hand grabbed at his arm, squeezing tight. Jack didn't stop, pouring more and more warm light into him, afraid to stop in case it wasn't enough.

It was though, and as Jack finally broke away, Ianto's body convulsed underneath him, life flowing through him once more.

'You did it,' he gasped, feeling weak.

'You did it,' Jack replied. 'My crazy, clever, gorgeous man.'

Jack leaned down and kissed him again, this time feeling the pleasant sensation of Ianto's lips kissing him back. Somehow they'd managed to cheat death twice now, and Jack vowed it would be the last time.

Jack was surprised when a message came through two days later from the Proclamation High Regency, stating that someone would be arriving shortly to collect the artifact. It wasn't so much that he wasn't glad to be rid of it, but that they would bother sending anyone at all.

The squat man that arrived advised them that their use had finally been discontinued, and even made illegal, in the sixty-fourth century, but that on account of the nature of their discovery, an early amnesty for their collection and destruction was well advised.

'Lucky no one was hurt in the process,' the man said, unaware of the fact that they'd come remarkably close to losing one of their own.

'Torchwood are used to stuff falling through the rift,' Jack replied. 'I just wish it was more often kittens than lethal prison units.'

'I've never liked them myself,' he said. 'These prison units, that is. Kittens are basically acceptable. I've always much preferred the old customs on this world of beheading criminals. Crude, but effective.'

'Well, perhaps we should just be fortunate you don't have a device that automatically beheads people,' Ianto muttered.

'Agreed,' Jack replied. 'I quite like your head just where it is.'

'Me too.'