"I won't do it. You can't make me. You like to think you're a hero, but you're the biggest monster of all. " - Ianto Jones, Cyberwoman

"Ianto Jones, I never expected you of all people to live in a tip…" Jack Harkness's voice broke the fugue state that Ianto had been in since collapsing on the couch of his single bedroom flat two days earlier. He had only just managed to get his shields back into to a semblance of order, and the last thing he needed was to deal with all the complicated emotions that Captain Jack Harkness brought out in him. Anger, betrayal, fear...he had absolutely loathed Jack at times over the last few days, and yet underneath everything else, he still felt that inexplicable attraction, even affection for the Captain that had made what happened between them inevitable. It was too soon for this. He wasn't ready, but the time had obviously come.

Ianto knew what this visit was. The last words he'd actually spoken to Jack had been an accusation in the heat of the moment, but he had known even as he spoke that they were a lie. Jack wasn't a monster then, and he wasn't one now. This was going to be far more difficult on the Captain than it would be for him. All Ianto had to do was sit here and let it happen, and he was so tired of fighting. His own grief and self disgust were so strong, he just didn't have the strength. He wondered if Gwen would truly be able to pick up the slack the way she seemed to want to, when he was gone. Would she be able to help Jack deal with what he came here to do? Somehow Ianto doubted it. This day was going to live in Jack's memory for some time, before it faded and Ianto found that he was truly sorry for that, but it was too late for apologies.

"What would be the point?" He finally replied, blanking the roiling emotions from his voice. Ianto had learned to do that since joining Torchwood One. It had been even more useful in Cardiff.

"Since the rest of the team seems to think you have some form of OCD, keeping your reputation would be one. Where is your coffee, anyway?"

The rustling noise, and sound of cabinets opening and closing behind him told Ianto where the Captain was, so he sighed.

"I'm immune to Retcon, sir." He said, as expressionlessly as before. "There's no point going through the cabinets for something to put it in."

"Then it's just as well that I didn't bring any with me." Jack said, and Ianto could feel the hurt as much as he could hear it in Jack's voice, and it scared him for reasons he wasn't in any shape to think about. "I know that you're immune. Apparently more-so than even the rare resistant person, like Gwen. Owen was very thorough in the report he made after your first physical. He also said that you were suffering from PTSD, and unspecified mental trauma after Canary Wharf, and he thought that bringing you back into Torchwood was the worst possible thing we could do for you at the time. He's having a very good time singing the 'I told you so' song, as he cleans up his autopsy bay."

"Well, I'm not particularly surprised he's the one who sensed something." Ianto said, allowing at least a slight shading of irony in his tone. Given how badly Ianto shields had eroded over the course of that horrible night, Owen should have picked up on a lot more than Ianto's latent PTSD as he'd examined him before sending him home.

"I should have sensed it."

The regret and self-recrimination pouring off the Captain ate at Ianto's over-sensitized mind, and he dropped his head into his hands to massage his temples, even though he knew the pain he felt wasn't physical. He could not let Jack know what was causing his reactions. He wanted this over with, not to have to go through a question and answer session about his hidden abilities.

"You are absolutely the last person who could or would have sensed it, Captain." He muttered. "I deliberately made very sure of that, and to be completely honest with you, I'd really rather you just get on with what you're here to do, rather than put me through the agony of rehashing it, first."

"Just what exactly is it you think I'm here to do, Ianto?" The Captain's voice was closer now. Directly behind Ianto, and his shoulders tensed, expecting to hear the tell-tale sound of the Webley being cocked.

"I'm immune to Retcon." Ianto repeated, after a tense moment of silent anticipation. "I knew going in to this that there was only one way it would end, if that ending wasn't the one I prayed for."

"I'm not here to kill you, Ianto." The words were quiet, but the emotion behind them made Ianto gasp more than the surprise he felt at hearing them. Wrenching pain that was so strong...Stronger than anything Ianto had ever felt, despite all he'd been through. He had trouble crediting it, as Jack went on. "I think there was one thing you never factored into all your plans. I'm not Yvonne Hartman, and you're not in London, anymore. I won't kill you for this. No matter how misguided you may have been, your intentions weren't to commit treason against the Crown, or betray anyone at all."

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions." Ianto said, with the first emotion he'd shown in the entire conversation. Self-recrimination of his own, that he had to work very hard to keep from projecting. The last thing he and the Captain needed was to get into another self-destructive emotional feedback loop.

"If you believe in that sort of thing."

"I always have." Ianto said, softly. "I believe we create our own hell through our actions in life. I always wondered if Yvonne might have figured it out for herself, in the end. I crossed her path, you know. When I finally got free of the Archives, as I was searching for Lisa."

"How would you have…"

"I knew her." Ianto then quoted, "'I did my duty for Queen and Country.' over and over again. She just stood there, looking at the conversion chambers where her employees were strapped in, dead and dying. She was no threat to me. She still had her soul, and it was in agony. I couldn't even put her out of her misery, because there wasn't an inch of her that wasn't covered in metal. I went back past her, dragging Lisa, and she just watched me go, and stood with the flames overtaking her. She didn't even try to save herself. That's why I think she knew in the end, that she'd created her own hell and resigned herself to facing it. I respected her more in that moment than I did the entire time I worked for her."

"Ianto, Cybermen don't feel misery…"

"Half, possibly more than half of the conversions that day went wrong." Ianto interrupted him. "Not all of the conversions were completed, and not all of the ones that were completed were actually completed correctly. I was there. You weren't. Of the two of us, who is more likely to know the real story of what went on inside that tower, Captain?"

"I can only base my opinion on what I've been told about them, you're right. However, my source is impeccable."

"My source isn't just impeccable, it's unimpeachable." Ianto said roughly.

"Your Lisa can't be considered a reliable source of information..."

"Lisa isn't my source. She was barely conscious when I found her, and her pain was too extreme to let her really understand what was going on around her at that point. They didn't use anesthetic when they sliced and drilled into their recruits, Captain. I'm my own source. I was uninjured, in full control of my faculties, and senses. I know what I saw, what I felt, what I experienced first hand. The Cybermen were so concerned with fighting the Dalek's that they weren't as in control of the conversion process as they would have been under normal circumstances, and it went wrong more than half the time because of it. After a certain point, they were running out of the metal they needed for full conversions, that's how there could be a half-converted victim like Lisa. They changed their conversion process on the fly, after they realized they needed to overwhelm the Dalek's with numbers. They cut corners, and it cost them in precision. Ask your source exactly what that means, if they're so impeccable. See if they have answers for you that are any different from mine."

"I wish I could…" The Captain sighed.

"The Doctor stopped the invasion, and then he left without a word, or lifting a finger to help anyone who managed to survive." Ianto said, coldly, and wasn't surprised when he saw the Captain's head snap toward him in the corner of his eye. "I doubt even he really understood the extent of how completely out of the ordinary the situation was, when it came to the Cybermen, but he also didn't bother to try. I hated him for that, when I heard the full story from a co-worker I had to dig out from under a partially collapsed wall. He'd walked right past her as she lay there being crushed so badly that she couldn't even scream for help, only whisper. It took me some time to come to the conclusion that he probably didn't see her, didn't hear her, didn't even realize there were any survivors, and if he had he probably would have thought we deserved whatever fate we'd made for ourselves. I can't really blame him for that, to be completely honest. Twenty-six people in institutions, and me, and I begged to come back for more. Does that make me saner, or even more mad than the broken ones who can't even face the normal world anymore?"

"You aren't mad, Ianto Jones." The Captain told him, and when Ianto glanced up to meet his eyes, there was a slight smile on his face. "You aren't broken. A bit damaged, some of the shine has rubbed off, and maybe a few parts got a bit bent along the way, but they all still work. That's why I came here today, before I thought you'd have had time to get it into your head that things were entirely hopeless. You have a decision to make. One you made once before, with a lot more reasons than you made clear. As of this moment, you're suspended for a month. At the end of thirty days, you have a decision whether you will come back to work with a clean slate, or take the retirement you were originally offered by the Crown. Yes, I do know that you were offered full retirement, with all benefits, and without prejudice after Canary Wharf. It wasn't in the file I read when you started stalking me for a job, but there were enough discrepancies raised by your ability to do what you've done, so I did some more digging. You were the person who saved what survivors there were, that day. You were the only person physically capable of some of the rescues, and most of the other survivors were clear enough for long enough to name you as the person who got them out. The ones who weren't personally saved by you were saved by the people you saved, as they made their way back down out of the building, so even they're to your credit in the end. You got to meet the Queen, before you came home to Cardiff, Ianto Jones. She tells me you turned down a knighthood for a chance to come work for me, instead."

"Would have drawn too much attention to me, and to Torchwood as a whole…" Ianto muttered, embarrassed to have what he considered a secret exposed. "She was very understanding..."

"I'll say, and so she gave you a substantial financial reward in addition to the hush money and pensions the rest of the survivors were given, instead." The Captain grinned at him. "Which is why I am so entirely surprised to see you living in a tip like this, and brings me right back to my original point. Go get into the shower, and clean yourself up. As lovely as that suit was, three days in it is two too many, and I have something I think you need to see."

"If I'm on suspension, I don't have to take your orders, Captain." Ianto met the other man's eyes, blandly.

"It's not an order, it's a suggestion." The Captain's lips twitched, and he continued. "I think we've established between us that my giving you orders never works out particularly well. That's why I generally make requests of you, instead. But, if you don't go clean up, then you'll be wearing that bedraggled suit to meet some people who might get the wrong idea about you, so it would be in your best interests…"

"I suppose you're going to drag me out of here for whatever you're planning, whether I take that suggestion or not, then?"

"Yep."

"Fine." Ianto rose from the sofa slowly but steadily even after his long bout of inactivity. "But if I'm on suspension I'll be leaving my suits in the closet, and dressing like a normal person again, for once."

"Those jeans you were wearing the night we met would be my preference…" Jack said with a slightly mocking smirk, but Ianto wasn't interested in what had become their normal routine.

"Your preferences aren't my problem, anymore." He said stiffly, and as he strode into the bedroom Jack's still-mocking response followed, for once allowing the Captain the final word.

"Darn."

Nevertheless, when he emerged freshly showered and changed into clothes that fit his age far more than the suits he'd gotten used to, he found himself choosing the same jeans like some sort of Pavlovian response to the Captain's voice.

They didn't fit as well as they had originally, he realized he'd lost weight and conditioning from the stress he'd been under for just over six months, and resolved to do something about that during his suspension. He already knew what his answer to Jack's proposal would be. There was nothing left for Ianto besides Torchwood, but he wasn't ready to give up on his life altogether. He might let the Captain sweat it out a bit, but he'd be returning to the team, and he'd work as hard as he had to hide himself to make up for what he'd done.

It was late. Ianto knew that the Hub would be empty even before he and Jack made their way in through the underground parking entrance. The Captain still hadn't explained why immediately after suspending Ianto, he had dragged him into work. In fact, the other man hadn't said a word ever since he had given Ianto's choice of clothing a once-over when he emerged from the bedroom at the flat. He'd just nodded toward the door, and held it open as Ianto preceded him out of the flat and downstairs to the SUV. It was taking every ounce of control Ianto believed himself capable of not to display to the Captain just how uncomfortable he was being back within the Hub so soon.

"Forgive me for breaking the ominous silence we've apparently been operating under, but what are we doing here, sir?" Ianto finally asked, as Jack led him across the hub toward Toshiko's work-space. "Shouldn't a suspension preclude my being here at all..."

"Under normal circumstances, that would be the case." Jack finally spoke. He nodded toward Tosh's chair, and Ianto rolled his eyes and took a seat. "I have something I need to go over with you, and this is the only place with the necessary equipment. I'm sorry Ianto, if I could have given you more time to get some perspective before dragging you back here, I would have. I think what I have to tell you about might make a difference, though. Since you're the one sitting in the place of honour, pull up the last six months of Rift readings, and display them as a frequency graph..."

"Alright." Ianto sighed, and spun to do as he'd been asked using Tosh's Rift predictor program. He spread the graph across the three monitors at Tosh's station, then sat back and spun the chair again to face Jack before speaking again. "There, the last six month's readings. What are we looking for?"

"We're looking at the readings. At a pattern that I've done a great deal to disguise from the rest of the team, because I don't think they're ready to learn what I'm about to tell you. You see, the rift here in Cardiff is the only fixed position." Jack explained. "The other end...well...since we can't control our end of the rift we have no way of mapping all the other points. Apparently the planet the Weevils come from is a regular stop on what seems to be a rotation on the other terminus, but things come in from all over the universe. Other places, other times, there are infinite combinations, and the only fixed terminus is here in Cardiff. There are a few places and times that the other end of the rift seems drawn to more often, the Weevil's planet for example, but that doesn't mean they're stable. On top of that, things can arrive here a hundred years or more on either side of where they started out. Following me so far?"

"Yes." Ianto said, shortly. "I knew all of this already…"

"OK, then lets get straight to the new information." Jack said, without rancor for Ianto's obvious impatience. "The rift in Cardiff isn't a one-way terminus."

"Not a one-way…" Ianto's eyes widened as he immediately made the connection. "Jesus… you mean…"

"The rift takes as well as gives." Jack met his eyes squarely, and Ianto stared at the Captain in utter shock.

"People have been taken…"

"Not just people." Jack told him. "Objects, animals…but yes, people have been taken. Look here…" Jack spun Ianto's chair around to face the monitors, and with the press of a few buttons, zoomed in on the rift readings displayed on Tosh's computers. "You can easily see all the positive rift spikes. The ones where a flare comes up and drops something off here in Cardiff. But look here." Jack zoomed in again, and pointed to a small nearly unnoticeable spike that showed below the line of what they had always believed to be normal rift energy. "That's from this morning. Right then, at that very moment, something was taken. In this case, it was actually an inanimate object. A street-light, as a matter of fact. I got the notification on my wrist-strap, checked the CCTV and it disappeared from one frame ot the next. Didn't need to go out and do anymore checking for that one."

"And there's no way to predict them, is there…" Ianto sighed. it wasn't a question, and he didn't really need the Captain's negative head-shake in reply. "Why are you telling me, then? What's the point?"

"Because sometimes, the rift gives back what it takes." Jack told him, solemnly. Then, leaning over Ianto to reach the keyboard again, he pulled up a file from twenty years before, and nodded his head at it for Ianto to read.

The report detailed an electric streetlamp of a style not in use within Cardiff at the time, that had appeared randomly in the roof of a warehouse. it had fallen from the roof, and struck a bystander, breaking the neck of the man and killing him. Torchwood had arranged for the incident to be covered up as a construction accident and the man's family compensated by the city council. The lamp-post had been taken into Torchwood inventory, and now that he read the report Ianto could remember being curious about the damaged and dusty streetlamp that sat in a corner of one of the non-secured archive rooms that he hadn't yet gotten around to organizing. It had never occurred to him that the streetlamp matched the new ones the city council was so enthusiastically placing around Cardiff in the past year, replacing the older less attractive models that had lit the city's streets for several decades. Rusted, dented, damaged beyond usefulness, the style was exactly the same but it looked as if it had been through a war rather than a jump through time.

"The lamp in the archives?" Ianto said, glancing up at Jack.

"The very same." The Captain nodded.

"It didn't just jump through time twenty years, did it?" Ianto asked, again not really needing to have his guess confirmed. He knew he was right from it's condition.

"No, it probably went to a place where it was damaged by the elements. No way of telling for how long. it's one of the newer ones. Been placed in the last month or so, and it's been stored in a dry room all this time, so it didn't rust up and get damaged there. it's in basically the same condition it was found in, as per the report."

"So, one can assume that if inanimate objects are returned, however outside their own time, then animate ones can be returned as well?" Ianto said.

"Correct." Now, Jack's expression grew very grave. "When I took over, I found two people in the lowest level of cells. They had been mentally and physically damaged, and there was no way they would have survived in the outside world, but they weren't cared for beyond basic needs. They were prisoners of Torchwood, treated like criminals or aliens. When I searched the records to find out why, I found that they'd been taken and returned by the rift before they were originally taken. Within their own lifetime, but deposited in their own past by as little as six months and as much as thirty years. That seems to happen more often than someone being taken and dropped into their own future, but it's not a hard and fast rule. I discovered that it was a rare, but recurring circumstance which Cardiff's leadership had been hiding for over a century. Rather than treating them like victims, they had been hiding them down there until they died."

"God…" Ianto closed his eyes, and tried very hard not to imagine what that must have been like for the victims.

"Yeah…" Jack agreed. "So rather than continue that disgusting tradition, I did my best to find some way to care for them, instead. At first, I tried to care for them on my own, but I really was alone here. I hadn't even brought Susie in at that time, so I was constantly in and out of the hub trying to keep a handle on things, and one of them was able to kill himself during one of my absences, and then shortly afterward two more victims appeared who both required extensive care that I wasn't knowledgeable enough to give them, and I lost both of them shortly after their arrival. I realized that I just wasn't equipped to manage, so I set up a place where the rift victims who absolutely cannot reenter society could be cared for." Jack again leaned over Ianto and tapped more keys on the computer, bringing up a map of Wales, then zoomed in on Flat Holm island. Ianto knew of the former munitions bunkers, but had understood the island to be abandoned except for a lighthouse to keep ships from running around on it in the Channel.

"Flat Holm…" He said, and turned to look back up at Jack. "You turned the old bunkers from the war into…what? A private asylum?"

"Yes." Jack said, and smiled slightly. Ruefully. "I tell the caregivers that the victims were part of scientific experiments that went wrong, or government employees who were caught up in accidents. Most of them know better after a short time there, but they go along with the fiction in order to be able to continue helping them. Ianto…the team doesn't know. I don't think any of them would understand. I help the ones who can reintegrate to do it safely, but some of them…they can't be saved. They're taken, tossed like driftwood through time and space by the rift, and in most cases they aren't just damaged physically and mentally, they're somehow changed in ways we can't even understand much less treat. They're lost forever. Even when they come back. All we can do is care for them as best we can."

"Is this intended to be some sort of object lesson…" Ianto narrowed his eyes, glaring at Jack. "Do you think showing me this…"

"No!" Jack interrupted him. "No, Ianto… That's not what this is about. Yes, I think your experience with…with Lisa will help you understand in a way the others won't, but it's not meant to teach you anything except that I believe you have the capacity to understand the situation enough to help me, when the others can't. You told me once that Gwen saw you as the person who cares. That seeing that in you was closer than any of the rest of us had come to the reason you're here. Well, that's exactly what I need. Help me care for them."

"You want me to...help you with the victims?" Ianto stared at Jack, feeling the honest desire for Ianto's help with what he had been dealing with alone for so long. "How?"

"I have just as much trouble dealing with the administrative details of Flat Holm as I do the ones here, Ianto. I can do it, but you and I both know it isn't my area of expertise. I have the funding situation set up, but I barely ever have time to adjust it according to the demands of the situation. The island can't help but generate a paper-trail that I don't have the time to deal with as often as I should. I also hate going there and seeing them, knowing there's nothing I can do to change things for them. Most of the times I would disappear for most of the day and come back with no explanation for why I needed you to distract me were because I'd had to make a visit to the island for one reason or another. I need someone to take over the administrative details; someone who can go and liaise with the head nurse and make sure she has what she needs to care for them. You are the most organized person I know, and you've been through something that makes me believe you will be able to handle this better than anyone else I can even imagine. Certainly better than the rest of the team..."

"Owen would go mad trying to come up with a way to fix them..." Ianto said, quietly. "Tosh would be just as bad trying to come up with a way to predict the events and stop them, and Gwen..."

"It would break her heart, and possibly her sanity along the way..." Jack agreed. "She is in no way ready for what she would find. I can conceivably see Owen and Tosh managing somehow, but I can't see them being able to keep the secret entirely from her until she's possibly ready to deal with it."

"While I have more than proven my ability to keep things secret from the entire team..." Ianto finished ironically.

"You don't have to do this, Ianto." Jack told him, seriously. "I won't force you; it isn't intended as a punishment. You also haven't given me a decision about staying with the team, and I really don't want you to until you've had more time to think things through. I just wanted this to be a part of your decision making process. I wanted you to know that despite what you think, we do have a great need for you here. I have a need for you far above and beyond what I thought I'd already demonstrated. I am not just offering this to you because of what's happened. I had been considering it for several weeks, and had already discussed bringing you in with the head nurse on the island before any of this week's events. No matter what you decide, I can't take away your knowledge of the situation, and I'm sorry for dumping this on you without you having that choice, but..."

"I wouldn't want you to Retcon the knowledge, sir." Jack interrupted. "Not under any circumstances, if for no other reason than because it gives you someone to unburden yourself to."

"You really don't have to..."

"Jack..." Ianto interrupted him again, shaking his head and meeting the Captain's eyes steadily. "You've done something very important, for no other reason than that it was the right thing to do, despite the obvious emotional discomfort it causes you. I wouldn't like to consider myself the kind of person who could turn away from that, even if I wouldn't know any differently. Not that it's a possibility, but the sentiment remains. Besides, I made my choice before I ever left my living room, this evening. I can't leave. I'm not ready to say I've been defeated by Torchwood. So, this changes nothing, except to give me further reason to stay."

A previously absent light seemed to rekindle in the Captain's eyes with Ianto's words, not much more than a spark, but still noticeable to someone with Ianto's abilities. The hope and relief that Jack felt came at Ianto in invisible waves, but he held his expression steadily calm, deliberately radiating nothing in return. The effort was almost enough to collapse his shields again under the strain he still felt internally, but the emotions coming from the Captain were so overwhelmingly positive that it somehow did more to shore up Ianto's strength than erode it. That surprised him, because the positivity or negativity of others' emotions had never before had any affect on Ianto's abilities unless he was deliberately using someone as an emotional anchor with or without their cooperation, and when he had the free time and solitude to consider it he knew he was going to need to give the fact that it was happening with Jack without any effort on either of their parts a great deal of thought.

"Are you feeling up to a visit to the Island tonight, or would you prefer to take more time?" The Captain asked, interrupting Ianto's thoughts.

"I think I'd prefer more time, first..." Ianto admitted. "I'm still...coming to terms. I think I'm more in need of a distraction right now than such a rather unfortunate reminder."

"I may have a solution to that, as well." The Captain told him, slowly. "Going back to my poor impression of that flat you've been living in, I happen to have another option for you..."

"What, you want me to move flats?" Ianto asked, surprised.

"Yes, and I'm afraid this is more of an order than a suggestion, despite my earlier disclaimer about giving you orders."

"I've already agreed to come back after my suspension, I assumed it would be implied that I intend to follow your orders..." Ianto reminded him. "I just can't understand why you would want to order me to move house..."

"Well, I intended to make this my final nonnegotiable order if you chose to leave us, or my first new potentially negotiable order were you to choose to stay." Jack explained. "I would like you to move into a building that has a very special purpose, both for your own safety and for my peace of mind. It's someplace that I have a very particular connection to, and the ability to monitor your movements. Were you to have chosen retirement, it would have allowed me to keep tabs on you without interfering in your life. Your decision to stay just opens up other, far more palatable options. I don't think the move will be a hardship, in fact I'm fairly certain you'll find yourself very pleased with it, if you give it a chance..."

Ianto's brows drew together in thought as he stared at the Captain's earnest expression. The emotions the Captain was radiating were anticipation, and...hopefulness. Jack really wanted Ianto to agree to this, and it made him curious as to what could be so special about this building. Curious enough to agree.

"Alright, show me." Ianto said, abruptly. "I'll agree to go to the island at the weekend, and we can check out this flat you want me to move into, tonight. I don't agree to move in sight unseen, but I will keep an open mind..."

"Well, you're certainly going to need that..." Jack replied, and when Ianto looked at him in question he only shrugged, and gestured toward the exit. Ianto sighed in annoyance, rolling his eyes, and stood, preceding the Captain out of the Hub.

For all that it's taken so long to get to this point, I still feel somehow as if I've rushed this chapter... Ianto is just as hard for your interpid author to read as he seems to be for Jack. Or at least, that's how he seems to want to come out on proverbial paper. Even when I'm in his head writing him, he is maddeningly hard to get a handle on at this point in the story. It's not that I don't know how he's feeling and what he's thinking, it's just that when I try to illustrate it I find myself holding back from making him as transparent as the thoughts of the other POV characters. I think maybe what's happening is that I really am in his head, it just isn't as simple as it is with the other characters. He isn't just holding back with everyone around him, he's holding back from himself, and therefore me as the author. Yes, I realize I'm ascribing personal motives to a fictional character, but what author doesn't? The problem isn't that he's not transparent enough, it's that it is very difficult to be truthful to that and still feel as if I'm giving the reader a complete picture of where he is actually coming from in the way an author normally does in this point of view.

Rereading this chapter again before posting it, I find myself less bothered by Ianto's lack of transparency now than I was when I decided to take a few days after completing it, and the above author's note. It took rereading future chapters that are already completed, so if anyone else is feeling the same way, you might have to wait for me to get back to that point in the story before things become more clear in Ianto's head. Sorry for that, I'm going to shamelessly claim author's perogative. So, yes. Ianto Jones is hard even for himself to read, at this point. Things, even in his own mind, are so unsettled that he can't really find true balance in his own emotions, and even he doesn't know why. So for him, it shows as a return to a level of stoicism that doesn't even allow him to feel his own emotions entirely, much less convey them to others. He's hiding again, even from himself. Don't worry, regular applications of Jack Harkness have a tendency to cure that particular problem, we just aren't quite there yet.