In the several months he'd worked with Ianto, Owen had never been round to Ianto's flat. By the looks of it, Ianto hadn't spent much time there either. The furnished rooms on the top floor of the weather-beaten house more clearly reflected the personality of the elderly, housecoat-clad woman who had answered his ring than that of the polished young man who resided there. Owen took in the faded, paisley-covered sofa and matching chairs that were too shabby to ever be considered "chic" and the dusty knickknacks scattered about, and wondered if any of it belonged to Ianto. He was fussy, true, but Owen doubted that even he would have picked out the hideous ceramic cat clad in Victorian garb that rested on the battered end-table by the door.

Make that cats, Owen realized with horror. They were a set. A male and a female graced each side of the door, and that suggested that there might be wee ones about as well. Owen's gaze flew to the dimly lit corners of the room, seeking them out. The idea that they could be lurking there watching him with their creepy, lifeless eyes and painted-on smiles unnerved him.

"Oh, it's you," Ianto said tonelessly behind him, and Owen nearly jumped out of his skin. Ianto had been suspended from duty for almost two weeks, but clearly hadn't lost any of his uncanny butler's ability to appear in someone's personal space with no warning whatsoever.

"Don't sound so excited," Owen snapped, sounding testier than he'd meant to.

"I'm not." Ianto sighed and flopped down on the sofa with a graceless-sounding "thunk", as if he'd simply run out of the energy to stand. Owen turned to regard him and realized that might have been exactly what had happened.

Ianto looked terrible. His normally perfectly-gelled hair stuck up in strange places, and his cheeks and chin were dark with what looked like days worth of stubble. The cargo pants and white t-shirt he wore were too baggy, even allowing for the casual style, and his feet were clad in white athletic socks that looked none too clean.

Owen sucked in his breath. He had been expecting-well, he didn't know what, exactly, but it hadn't been this. Ianto's sartorial style had never been less than impeccable; seeing him so casually attired seemed too intimate, somehow.

Ianto lifted his head and Owen saw dark circles under his eyes. "What?" he asked, when Owen continued to stare.

Owen said the first thing on his mind. "You look like shit."

Ianto gave a mirthless chuckle. "Thanks. Great to see you too."

"Welcome." Owen moved closer, scanning Ianto carefully, going for a more specific assessment, looking for tell-tale signs of illness. "You all right, mate?" He murmured.

Ianto laughed again, more of a bark this time, but just as devoid of humor. "What the hell do you think?"

"Right then," Owen said, coming to stand in front of where the younger man slumped, looking up at him without much curiosity that Owen could see. "It doesn't matter what I think. Because I'm going to find out how you're doing, and then I'm going to KNOW."

"Is that meant to be a threat? I'm terrified." Ianto's tone was still flat, but Owen thought he spotted a flicker in Ianto's eyes, a little of his old fire. But it came and went so fast Owen couldn't be sure.

"It means, I'm here to give you a check-up, and we can do it the easy way, or we can do it the hard way."

There, that was definitely an eye-roll, and even as it wound Owen up (as it always did), it was good to see some of his stubborn, sardonic colleague in this slumped, disheveled shell of a man.

Ianto shrugged. "Do what you have to. But since this is a professional visit, don't expect me to offer you any tea."

Owen rolled up the blood pressure cuff and returned it to its case, then made a few notes in a little notebook and snapped it shut.

The examination had proceeded well enough. Ianto had let him poke and prod without comment, at least until Owen pressed a digital thermometer to his forehead and idly apologized for not bringing an old-fashioned rectal thermometer, because "you'd probably enjoy that more."

"Not nearly big enough," Ianto had come back with. "Nothing you have is, 'Doctor' Harper."

At another time, this might have irked him, but now Owen just smiled. Immature sexual jokes were part of his admittedly-limited bedside manner, and if it would distract the patient from the situation at hand he was even willing to turn them on himself. There would be plenty of time to get revenge when Ianto was feeling better. For now, Owen was glad there was enough of Ianto present to crab at him at all.

Owen finished putting everything away. "You're dehydrated, malnourished and running a slight fever," he announced. "Which way's the kitchen?"

Ianto inclined his head to the left. "Through there." If he cared why Owen wanted to know, he didn't bother to ask.

Owen took a few packages out of his medical kit and headed in the direction Ianto indicated. The kitchen, like the rest of the place, looked well-used but not necessarily by its current occupant There were mismatched plates and cups stacked in the cupboards but few of the convenient packaged foods that you'd expect to find in a bachelor's flat.

'But then, Ianto hasn't been a bachelor for long, has he,' a snarky part of Owen's mind pointed out. 'Although, it's not like Lisa was eating much when she was alive. And neither of them were cooking any romantic dinners for two. No wonder there's not much here.'

Owen pushed these thoughts away and concentrated on the business at hand. He'd promised himself not to mention or even think about the reason he and Ianto were in this unusual circumstance in the first place. He didn't trust himself to do his job properly if he did. He didn't trust himself to do ANYTHING properly if he did. His emotions were still veering between fury at Ianto for his sheer audacity, chagrin for himself and the rest of the Team for being so fucking blind, and stubborn denial that the whole thing had happened at all.

Surely the hours he had spent walking the long, dim corridors of the sub-basements of the Hub, his senses heightened with the adrenaline from his encounter with the Cyberwoman, had been too surreal to be believed. He had been searching for the body of Dr. Tanizaki and any other unfortunates that might have been caught up in the catastrophe, and it had taken nearly the whole night. He didn't mind. The way his body was crackling with energy, it'd be days before he'd sleep again. And the further away he stayed away from Ianto, the less it was likely he'd be responsible for murder himself.

As that improbable night wore on, the corridors had extended much further than seemed possible, some so deep under the Bay and so far West that they must reach half way to Ireland. The cloying smells of damp and decay that had assaulted his nose were more reminiscent of a medieval dungeon than a facility steps from the Millennium Centre. He had stumbled into more forgotten rooms than he had ever dreamed lurked under his workplace, some of which looked like they hadn't been disturbed in centuries.

The discovery of Dr. Tanizaki's body had been a gruesome affair, and if Owen had eaten anything in the last twelve hours, he would have lost it. As it was, he had to fight down the dry heaves before he could start the grim task a cursory examination before transporting the body back upstairs. He'd seen quite a few horrific things in his time with Torchwood, but few things so utterly wrong as the sight of those metal cyber-pieces jammed into the abused, dead flesh of the fellow doctor.

Thankfully, there had been no other hidden corpses, at least that Owen could find. Ianto had assured them, in a hoarse and defeated voice, that there were wouldn't be. But after all, Ianto's credibility was in the crapper, wasn't it?

"God help you if there are any others," Owen had snarled before he left, meaning every word of it. If he'd found just one more thing awry that night, even Jack wouldn't be able to stop him from... something drastic.

The Captain himself had done quite a bit of yelling and gun-waving that day, and now seemed calm enough as he issued the orders that would begin to set things to rights again. But as the night wore on, Owen's fury had continued to build. In retrospect, it had been a good thing Jack had sent him below, though of course he'd cursed him out thoroughly for it at the time.

Owen had calmed down since then. But not enough to quite trust himself not to haul off and punch Ianto in the face if he dwelled on the subject too long, and so why the hell was he still thinking about it?

Owen yanked open the fridge so hard the handle, which had been attached with loose screws, came off in his hand. He hurled it to the floor with an oath, and it landed with satisfying clatter. Owen scrubbed a hand across his face and forced himself to continue his inspection.

The fridge was nearly empty and there were no tell-tale take-away boxes anywhere, which served to confirm Owen's suspicions.

"Bloody idiot," he muttered.

He found two tall glasses and used tepid water from the sink to prepare two beverages. He checked for ice but naturally, the tray in the freezer was empty.

Owen returned to the living room to find that Ianto hadn't moved. He knelt down beside him. "Drink these," he said.

Ianto eyed the offering. "That has got to be the most lurid orange slop I've ever seen. And the other one just looks gross. No, thanks."

"Doctor's orders, Ianto. And by orders, I mean exactly that. Drink up."

Ianto regarded him balefully. "I think I liked it better when you were a micro-brew kick," he said. He took one of the drinks and sniffed it. "What is it?"

"A nutritional shake."

"Ianto pulled a face. "Smells like chalk. No, worse. Something synthetic. Chemicals."

"What do you expect? It's good for you! It's not bleedin' McDonalds!"

Ianto merely looked at him.

Owen sighed.

"Look, I promise I won't make any remarks about swallowing something white and creamy if you just drink it."

Ianto took a sip. "It's worse than it looks. You could have at least brought a straw," he complained, but took another sip.

"It'd be better with sugar, but I didn't see any in your kitchen. Might want to get some. It'll help."

Ianto shrugged. "I don't care."

"It's up to you. I'm prescribing one of these four times a day, though, so you might want to consider it."

"Four? You expect me to choke down four of these a day?"

"Less, if I can be assured that you're eating something regularly. Which, by the looks of you, you haven't been."

Ianto looked away and didn't reply.

"Come on, Ianto, that saggy-trousers look just isn't your style. What are you doing, deliberately starving yourself?"

"No." Another shrug. "Just haven't feel like eating."

"Well, you're going to start, one way or another. My orders are to make sure you stay healthy while you're... for the next two weeks."

Owen stumbled over the words and mentally cursed himself. He'd almost mentioned The Suspension, which was a road he didn't want to go down. Too much focus on Ianto's suspension might lead to the reasons for it and... no, he'd focus on the present, on the practicalities.

Silence descended. Owen plucked the empty glass from Ianto's fingers and offered him the one with the orange liquid. Ianto stared at it, unresponsive, for so long that Owen was tempted to dump it over his head.

"Why," Ianto finally asked.

"I told you," Owen said, impatience rising. "You're dehydrated. It's making you sick. You need to drink this. And the others I'm going to prescribe as well. If you won't take them voluntarily, I am perfectly willing to strap you down and administer them a through a tube!"

"No, I meant, why are you doing this at all?" Ianto waved his hand to indicate the glasses, the medical kit on the floor, and Owen himself.

That brought Owen up short.

"I have... orders."

Ianto snorted. "Jack's orders. Jack sent you."

"Of course he bloody well did! Who else?"

Ianto rolled his eyes again, but this time there was something frightening about it. Maybe because when he finished and met Owen's gaze again, his eyes looked lifeless. Like the eyes of the painted ceramic cats.

"I don't know why you're bothering with this charade," Ianto said. Jack's going to kill me."

Owen rocked back on his heels, stunned by both the statement and the matter-of-fact way Ianto delivered it. Not that he hadn't wanted to do the deed himself, and no doubt Jack had too. But that had been in the heat of the moment.

He set the full glass carefully on the ground before replying.

"No, he's not. Weren't you fucking listening? He sent me to take care of you. Why would he bother do to that if he were planning to kill you?"

"I don't know. But he is."

"Christ, Ianto! Think about it. You're not making sense. What's he doing then, fattening you up before the kill? Jack's a military man, not the old witch of the woods. If he wanted you dead, he'd send someone with a gun, not a medical kit."

Ianto stared at the floor, appearing to consider this.

'And you're no Hansel, believe me." Owen added, sensing he was getting through. "Or whatever you call him in Welsh."

Ianto gave a small smile. "Hansel. So you came unarmed, then." He cast a sidelong look at Owen's bulging pocket. "And judging by the looks of your jeans, you're just really, really glad to see me."

Owen rolled his eyes. He HAD shoved his firearm in his pocket at the last minute, wary of what he might find. After all, their unobtrusive teaboy had proved to be more unpredictable than he'd ever have imagined possible two weeks and a day ago.

"You didn't answer your mobile or the bell. It was just a precaution," Owen said.

Ianto stared at the floor some more, then picked up the orange drink and took a swallow.

Owen watched Ianto carefully as he drank. Apparently the "slop" was more flavorful than the shake, because Ianto finished half of it before he paused and wiped his mouth with his hand.

"This morning, as I was waking up, it was pitch dark," he said. "And not just because the sun wasn't up. I mean, there was nothing. No streetlight coming in through the curtains. No clock-radio. No LED from the mobile charger."

"Huh?"

"It was stuffy too. No air. I thought... I thought I was in a box in the morgue."

"Christ, Ianto!"

"It didn't help that I was tangled in the sheet and couldn't move. All I could picture was one of those body bags we store corpses in, you know? I thought I'd been interred alive."

Owen was speechless.

Ianto gave bitter chuckle. "Turns out it was a power outage. It came back on suddenly, I woke up all the way and nearly had a heart attack in the process. That would have saved everyone a lot of bother, I suppose."

"You only dreamed that because it's on your mind. Doesn't mean it's going to happen," Owen said firmly.

"Doesn't it? You didn't see Jack's face when he said he was going to execute us, Owen. He meant it."

Owen hadn't seen, but he had heard Jack's voice, as harsh and unyielding as any Cyberman's, and it still gave him chills to think about it.

"He was angry, Ianto. And scared shitless. But if he were going to execute you, you'd be dead already and we wouldn't be having this conversation."

"I don't know. Maybe you're right."

"Of course I'm right." Owen was getting an idea. "Do you have those a lot?"

"Power outages? Sometimes. You might have noticed this isn't the best of neighborhoods."

"No, you numbnuts! Nightmares!"

"Dunno. Define 'a lot'."

"What do you mean, 'define a lot'? A lot is a lot!

"It's hard to tell. I don't sleep much. I haven't since Canary Wharf."

"Why? Because you're having nightmares?" Owen prompted.

"Because I've been busy!" Ianto snapped.

That did it. Ianto had no right to be defensive when Owen was being so patient and sensitive.

"Busy! Fuck all, Ianto, I bet you were! Pulling the wool over our eyes and playing nursemaid to Electric Barbarella would eat up a lot of time, wouldn't it?"

They stared at each other.

'So much for not getting into it,' Owen thought.

But Ianto didn't take the bait.

"It did," was all he said, then slumped back against the sofa, letting his head loll, and covered his eyes with his forearm.

"I can't think straight anymore, Owen. I'm so tired."

Owen huffed, reigned his temper in with great effort, and tried to bring things back to the situation at hand.

"Look, I can give you something to help you sleep, no worries. Don't tell Jack, but I've got something that will give you the best dreams you ever had."

"That's nice of you. But I don't care, really. I just want to sit here and not do anything."

"Ianto, I'm no shrink, but it seems to me like you've got depression."

"Great. Me and every teenage girl in the U .K. I'll be very trendy. Are you going to offer me the pill-of-the-month next? I can wash it down with my nutritional shake."

"Dammit, yes, if that's what it takes! What the hell have you got to lose?"

"Jack said there's always something more to lose," Ianto murmured. "But I can't see it."

"That's because you've been sitting on your goddamn couch for two weeks! The view sucks! Get the fuck up and let me help you."

"So, that's it then? You do your job, patch me up, I sit on my arse for two weeks because I'm not allowed to go anywhere anyway, and then what?

"What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean. Owen..." Ianto paused. "Has Jack said anything to you about what happens if - when - I come back?"

"No, he hasn't."

"Would you tell me if he had? If you knew something about what's going to happen to me that I didn't know?"

'No.' The answer to that was clearly 'no'. He should say it, he would say it, it was on the tip of his tongue to say it. If Jack spoke to him in confidence, he kept it to himself. Always had. Always would. Say 'no' and be done with it.

"Why," he heard himself ask.

Ianto sat forward with a rueful smile on his lips and Owen realized he might have well have said 'no'.

"Of course you wouldn't. I'm the last person you'd tell anything. Why would anyone trust me after what I did? I understand."

Ianto's mouth twisted into a bitter smile. "I only asked because If I'm not going to die, it'd be nice to know if I'm going back to Torchwood or... somewhere else. If I'm going to BE someone else. It shouldn't matter, because it's not something you can prepare for anyway, but it does, somehow. It... just... does."

Ianto's voice cracked on the last word and his eyes, which he quickly closed, seemed overbright.

Owen shifted, unsure what to say.

He had long ago squared his employer's use of the memory-erasing drug Retcon with the Hippocratic Oath he had taken to "prescribe only good and never do any harm." Though he knew that most of his old professors would argue that tampering with people's memories was an ethical gray area at best and more likely something that should be verboten, Owen had always justified it as being the lesser of two evils in most cases and therefore, the better one.

Torchwood's-and his-mission was to protect humanity from alien threats, and at this point in time, knowledge of the mere existence of aliens was deemed a dire threat. How and by whom this was determined was above his pay grade. All he needed to know was that if the wrong knowledge got out at the wrong time and in the wrong manner, the fate of entire human race, indeed, all life on planet Earth, could be affected. In the face of this, erasing a small, specific event from a person's mind here and there didn't seem so bad.

Hell, he could imagine scenarios where it might be expedient to take Retcon himself. He suspected that he already had. He had no real way of knowing, of course.

But they were speaking of something rather different, here. If Jack wasn't going to keep Ianto in his employ, every single memory of Torchwood and everything related to his life with it would have to be erased. In Ianto's case, that was nearly three years. He couldn't just be dropped somewhere with a hole that big in his memory. Besides being unnecessarily cruel, it would raise too many questions when he started blundering about and came into contact with authorities. So new memories would have to be fashioned for him; a phony backstory planted. He would become, both in name and in fact, a different person.

The thought of this being done to him, the thought of walking around in the same body thinking he was someone else, living a life that he had not created for himself, was terrifying. Whenever Owen got fed up with his work and fantasized about leaving Torchwood, this thought alone was usually enough to get him back on track. No doubt Ianto was feeling the same way - scared shitless. No wonder he was having nightmares.

"Forget it. I don't expect you to understand." Ianto said, waving his hand about. His voice was strained.

Owen understood. All to well. What it was like need information about the most important things in your life, like your dead wife, or your fate, and not be able to get them. To have your concerns merely brushed aside. To be told you were crazy for even asking the questions.

Owen picked up the glass next to him and rose.

"I'll let you know if I hear anything," he said, placing the glass on the coffee table in front of Ianto.

Ianto swallowed thickly. "Thank you."

Owen scooped up his medical kit, extracted some packets of powder and a bottle of pills, and placed them next to the glass.

"Here are your drinks, and a sleep aid if you want it. It's non-narcotic, but if you need something stronger just let me know. I'll be back tomorrow with some anti-depressants. And maybe some curry. There's a new place opened just off the Plass. It doesn't suck. Want to try some?"

"Sure." Ianto was leaning back against the sofa again, eyes shut. He seemed to be nearly asleep.

"Don't get up, I'll see myself out," Owen informed him with more than a little sarcasm and headed for the door.

On his way out his bag bumped into the little end table on the right, sending it careening to one side. The cat statue slid to the hardwood floor and shattered into several pieces.

"That wasn't my fault!" Owen said. "I barely even touched it."

Ianto's eyes opened half way, and he smiled. The first genuine, full-on smile Owen had seen all day.

"I always hated that thing. Leave it be. I'll get it later."

Owen didn't need to be told twice. "Right. Well. 'Night!"

He opened the door and took off before anything else could happen.

A/N: Written for the LiveJournal community "Redisourcolor's" Challenge 28. As per the challenge, I included the words, "notebook, "synthetic", and "paisley; and the sentence, "Leave it be."