Title: Suppressing Sorrow

Author: Erin Giles

Rating: PG-13

Characters: Gwen, Ianto, Jack (Jack/Ianto implied)

Summary: Post Exit Wounds. Her priority at the moment is Ianto.

It's Gwen who finds him eventually. He's bent over the toilet bowl in the locker room, spitting bile into it. They've been up for forty-eight hours now, at least. Well Ianto and Jack have – Gwen slept in. His shoulders shake from both exhaustion and grief as he coughs and splutters before his stomach is trying to heave itself up again. She has a brief fleeting thought that she should go get Owen. A moment of grief fuelled negligence on her part before she realises, belatedly, that that's the reason Ianto is sat on the cold tile floor hugging the toilet bowl. Fresh tears make tracks down her face as she sits down on the floor beside him, back leaning against the stall.

Gwen doesn't say anything, just watches as he reaches up to flush the toilet before he wipes the back of his hand across his mouth roughly. The sound of the toilet flushing and the water trickling back into the cistern echoes loudly in the bathroom, and Gwen's almost grateful she doesn't have to say anything to fill the awful silence. Ianto sniffs loudly, coughs and gags before he's spitting into the empty toilet again. Gwen's eyes finally move to look at his face. He's pale and drawn looking, his brow clammy and Gwen would say he was coming down with something but she knows it's just suppressed grief. He hasn't cried yet, and his cheeks still aren't wet with tears. His grief has just built within him, twisting a physical knot in his stomach and making him sick with the desperation to repress it.

Gwen thinks she's cried herself into the early stages of dehydration. She probably would be dehydrated if Ianto hadn't made her tea earlier on, sweet and warm, just the way she used to make it when she was a constable. Good for shock, her Grandmother had always said. She'd seen him give one to Jack as well, although she suspected Jack's was probably laced with copious amounts of brandy. She hadn't seen Ianto take one for himself though.

Gwen watches as he pulls himself back from the toilet bowl, leaning against the stall so he's facing Gwen now. His eyes are dull and wet with unshed tears as his gaze meets hers, and yet she still doesn't know what to say. What can she say? 'Are you alright?' is the obvious one but she already knows the answer to that even if Ianto lies. Instead, she pulls herself awkwardly to her feet in the confines of the toilet cubical before she holds her hand out to Ianto. He looks at it dubiously for a moment before he grasps it, hauling himself to his feet with her help. He's unsteady on his feet but they don't go far. Gwen sits him down on the small wooden bench that has a pile of towels on the end of it. She takes one to the sink and wets a corner of it. He doesn't try to stop her as she wipes it across his lips before her fingers move to the cut above his right eyebrow. There's still dust and building debris clinging to it and yesterday morning seems like a lifetime ago now.

"Do you want me to clean it up for you?"

Ianto just raises his own hand to hers, giving her the chance to note his knuckles are also scraped, no doubt from where he tried to dig himself out.

"No," he tells her softly as he takes her hand in his, pulling it down and away from his face.

"I need to shower," he states calmly, but makes no move of any kind.

"I need to clean-" His sentence breaks off and he looks away to the floor, eyes casting over the tiles and Gwen knows he's thinking of the other tiles that are at the bottom of the stairs in the autopsy bay. Gwen chews on her bottom lip for a moment, scared to say anything because she's scared how Ianto will react.

She's waiting for it all to burst out of him in an explosion of words and emotions, like fireworks. She could be waiting a lifetime for that to happen, but she can see the fissures as Ianto's clammy hand continues to cling to her own. She extracts her hand gently from his, fingers moving to his tie, which she slowly unknots.

"Gwen." Her name comes out a hoarse whisper, a questioning tone to it, but hands do not stop her as she pulls the tie from round his neck and places it carefully on the bench.

"I'll get you one of Jack's shirts," Gwen says softly as she slips the jacket from his shoulders. It'll need to go to the dry cleaners before Ianto can wear it again. She notices a tear in the lining and she wants to mend it for him, as if sowing back together Ianto's suit will somehow fix everything.

"There's a couple of mine in his wardrobe," Ianto tells her, almost embarrassed by this revelation. The thought though tugs at Gwen's lips as the start of a smile. It doesn't fully manifest but it leaves a warm spark in the pit of her belly like the thought of going home to Rhys does.

"I'll fetch one while you have a shower," Gwen says, watching him for a brief second as he starts to undo the buttons of his own shirt. Gwen turns, taking Ianto's jacket with her, still brushing dust from it.

She emerges into the rest of the Hub, so empty and quiet now, like she'd stumbled upon it in the early morning, when no one had yet surfaced. She can hear the dull murmur of voices coming from the autopsy area as she draws nearer, not bothering to make her presence known as she moves towards Jack's office. She hangs Ianto's jacket next to Jack's greatcoat on the hat stand before she looks bleakly into the hole of Jack's office floor.

She's never ventured into it. She's only seen the bed at the bottom of the ladder, peering down at the neatly folded sheets and blankets as Ianto's voice came from somewhere further down, telling her about his and Jack's adventures the previous evening that had nothing to do with the date they'd had planned.

She takes a deep breath before she starts to descend the ladder, as if she's expecting the air to be foul. It's far from it. The room smells of Jack and Ianto in equal measures, and it doesn't really surprise Gwen to be honest. She's had brief moments where she wonders if Ianto has also moved into the Hub because he always seems to be here, and really it can't be healthy for a person to live underground without any natural sunlight.

She fumbles the switch for the bedside lamp and squints slightly as it throws light across the neatly made bed, catching the shadows of a well thumbed Ian Fleming novel and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on the opposite wall. She rolls her eyes before crossing to the wardrobe. Ianto's shirts aren't hard to spot. Tucked at one end of the wardrobe, nestled next to Jack's blue shirts is a red shirt and a pristine white one. It's hard to miss a spare suit and a pair of shoes lurking at the bottom of the wardrobe as well. Gwen would be even less surprised if she opened one of the drawers at the bottom of the wardrobe to find Ianto's underwear and socks.

She picks out the white one - the red one reminds her too much of blood. She glances longingly at the bed on her way back up the ladder, hanging Ianto's shirt off the hatch as she's seen him do many a time with Jack's shirts. There's still no sign of Jack or even John in the Hub, but she doesn't care right now. Her priority at the moment is Ianto.

When she emerges back into the bathroom, steam is now engulfing a large portion of it, fogging up the mirrors and making the tiles underneath her feet slick with condensing water. The shower is still running and Ianto has left his clothes in a messy pile on the bench. Gwen retrieves a towel from the pile on the end of the bench and hangs it on the hook next to the drawn shower curtain before she turns back to his clothes. She folds his trousers neatly along the creases and picks up his once white shirt that is now almost black to put in for washing. She inspects it for a moment, noticing the splashes of blood on it and wonders if it's his or someone else's.

Gwen decides to go get a first aid kit just in case. Of course, that means going into the autopsy bay where John and Jack are still deep in conversation. She lurks for a long time beside her workstation, listening to see if she can hear them anymore. There's no sound anywhere it seems, but she pokes her head round the corner cautiously because she's been caught out before when she thought there was no one in the Hub.

There's no one in the autopsy bay, though, even Tosh's blood has been scrubbed away. Gwen still gingerly steps over where the blood was, like it's imprinted on her retinas. By the time she's salvaged a first aid kit from one of the cupboards there's footsteps behind her on the stairs and she turns round sharply as if spooked.

Ianto is standing there, shirt open at the collar and dusty trousers on. His feet are bare and his hair is pushed back from his forehead in wet rows. He looks as startled to see her as she does him.

"I was just wondering where you were," he lies expertly, but Gwen's had enough practice to see through the bullshit as his eyes flick down to the green box in her hands. She gives him her best mother hen look but he turns away from her and goes back into the main area of the Hub.

"Ianto." She goes after him, jogging up the stairs, only to find he hasn't gone far, he's sat on the scraggly sofa, trying to do up his cuffs with shaking hands. He's not dismissing her help, he's just relocating to somewhere comfier, somewhere less foreboding with the presence of death. She sits on the table opposite him for a moment, just watching him as he fumbles the buttons through the holes, like he's trying to thread a needle in the dark.

She lets him struggle on with his menial task for another minute before she stops him by pressing an antiseptic wipe to the cut on his forehead. His eyes close in resignation and exhaustion as she manipulates his head with a hand under his chin, being as gentle as she can, picking bits of grit out his forehead with tweezers now. She stops as a yawn shudders through him.

"I'm tired." He states the obvious, half-heartedly trying to muffle a second yawn with the back of his hand but he flinches instead.

"How's your shoulder?" Gwen asks, trying for an easy conversational tone as she tries to pluck the last piece of gravel from his forehead. She can see in his eyes that he briefly considers lying to her again.

"Aching," he confesses as she carefully applies Savlon to his forehead. Gwen always liked the smell of it. It brings back childhood memories of falling off her bike and tripping over in the playground before being comforted as she sat on an adult's knee and was fed hard-boiled sweets.

"Jack put it back in right?" Gwen enquires, scrutinising him as she screws the lid back on the Savlon.

"Yeah, it's just sore," Ianto says quietly, rotating his shoulder a couple of times and letting out a hiss of pain.

"There's some heat muscle relaxant in the top drawer of the medical bay." Jack's voice startles both Gwen and Ianto and they both look towards him where he is lurking at the bottom of the gantry stairs. Jack's looking right at Ianto so Gwen pulls herself to her feet, taking the first aid kit and rubbish with her as she goes back into the medical bay. She can hear Jack's footsteps moving above her as she takes her time putting the first aid kit away and depositing the used supplies in the bin. Even after she's found the muscle rub she pauses at the bottom of the stairs. She can just see Jack sat on the edge of the coffee table where she had previously been perched. His lips are moving although she can't hear what he's saying, but the look on his face says it all. She wants to go home to Rhys now. Jack will take care of Ianto.

"I'm going home," she says quietly before she's even made it to the top of the stairs. Jack has a hand on Ianto's knee and Ianto's head is bent towards Jack as if he's trying to hide his face. She hands Jack the muscle rub, his hand capturing hers for a moment and giving it a squeeze. On impulse she bends to kiss him on the cheek. With Ianto she lingers as she tastes salty tears on his skin, she wipes the ones on his other cheek away with a thumb.

"Thank you." His voice is nothing more than a hoarse whisper as she moves away from the pair of them, glancing back to find Jack undoing the buttons of Ianto's shirt with practiced care. As she watches them for a moment, Jack kissing Ianto's hairline as he lets his tears fall freely down his cheeks, she wants to run all the way home to Rhys. She's taken care of Ianto, now she needs someone to take care of her.