I should've slammed the door in his face. Showing up here 3 hours after watching me scream and sob on a cold floor, covered in blood and metal. He killed her! The only person on this planet to ever love me, and he killed her, and now he has the audacity to show up at my door looking hurt and angry? I really should've just slammed the door in his face. Actually, I shouldn't have opened the door in the first place. I was busy after all.

I had my second favorite gun, in pristine condition of course, sitting on the edge of my bathtub, a singular bullet, a beautiful hollow-point number that had been rattling around in my drawer since Canary Wharf, and I was ¾ of the way finished with a bottle of scotch. It was the bottle my father had given me a week before he died. Thanks old man! The only gift you ever gave me that wasn't a bruise, or a complex. Cheers. Anyway, back to the man at my door.

I considered telling him to fuck off, but thought better of it when I thought about the effect my use of vulgar language has on him. Much as I loved our games, I already had plans tonight.

Instead, I go with the always handy, "What can I do for you sir?" His response is immediate. I didn't even see his arm movie before I was on my ass with the imprint of his fist in my cheek. I manage to sputter out a, "will that be all then?" before the pain sets in, and all I can do is lay my head on the floor, and wait for the throbbing to stop.

"Is something about this funny Ianto?"

Only then do I realize I've been laughing. I'm not sure how to answer him, so I don't. I do, however, continue laughing. I hope it doesn't sound quite as hysterical to Jack as it does in my own head, but judging by the growing look of concern on his face, I'm gathering it does.

"Ianto. IANTO STOP. You're going to make yourself sick."

Between the scotch, the punch, the maniacal laughter, and just the all around horror that is my life, he's right. The urge to wretch is becoming far too prominent to ignore, and I have enough of my wits still about me to know that vomiting on Jack's shoes would be mortifying. It takes almost all my will to force myself to stumble towards the toilet, but I make it. Just. In fact, I'm still hugging said toilet when I hear him walk up behind me. I'm just about to wave him off when I find myself surprisingly upright, and slammed very harshly into the bathroom wall.

"WHAT THE FUCK IANTO? It's not enough to lie to us. To lie TO ME. TO almost get us all killed. To put the entire planet in danger. No. Now you're going to make us scrub your brains off of a fucking bathroom wall? WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU? Why do you insist on doing everything but opening your fucking mouth, and telling me you need help? But no. Of course not. Hide your converted girlfriend in the basement. Get a couple of innocent people killed. Blow your FUCKING BRAINS OUT! Those are much better options."

At some point during his tirade, I'd started laughing again. I grabbed onto his arm, the one he had pressed into my chest, pinning me to the wall, to keep from sliding to the floor, I was laughing so hard! He'd stopped yelling at me, and was now just staring at me, furious, hurt, and something else that I didn't have the brain-cells to read at the moment. He grabbed my chin, trying to force me to look at him, but I couldn't focus.

"Ianto. IANTO!"

A sharp, hot pain on my cheek caused me to momentarily abandon my hysterics. I realize he's slapped me. Hard.

"Ow…"

I'd thought I'd shouted it, but it came out as a whisper. Then, suddenly, I'm clinging to him, my face buried in his neck, and I am sobbing. Mortifyingly, it is uncontrollable, and I can't stop.

We slide down to the floor, my back against the wall, my face plastered to the shoulder of his coat, and he's rubbing the back of my neck, whispering what sounds like a mantra into my hair.

Sitting like this, my mind flits back to the other times we've been this close. My lips tasting the sweat on his neck. His arms around me. He whispered then too, but it was usually my name, or a plea of some sort. "Don't stop." "Harder."

When those memories crash into my actions…my betrayal of this man in front of me, this man I called "monster", I do the only thing I can. I bite down, as hard as possible, on that coat I love so dearly, and I scream.

I scream until my throat is raw. Until I can't breathe. I let myself be comforted for a few more seconds before I grab him by the shoulders, and shove him away from me as hard as I can. He lands between me and the pistol, so I run at the mirror, and slam my fists into it. He knows what I'm trying to do, and is already rising and coming for me, but my determination makes me quick, and instead of bending down and picking up a broken shard from the sink, I just take both forearms and drag them along the jagged pieces still stuck in the mirror above. It has the same effect, and I am proud of my ingenuity for a brief second before I am violently shoved to the ground.

I find myself staring into the wet, blue eyes of the man I betrayed. The man whose face I should've slammed the door on, and I realize I love him. That's why this is unbearable. Not only did I lose her, and betray them, but I loved him, and used him anyway. That's what I'm capable of, and I know I've made the right choice.

He viciously, and rather tightly, wraps my arms in a couple of towels before he whips out his mobile and starts barking orders at a, probably very annoyed, Owen. Once he's had his say, he turns his full attention back to me. I try to tell him I'm sorry, to give him my best reassuring smile, and to tell him the name of the cleaner he should take his coat to when this is all done, but it's getting harder to keep my eyes open.

I allow myself one last look at him before I let myself fade. Trying to convince myself that the voice I hear, the one thick with tears, is a blood-loss induced hallucination. That he isn't whispering my name. That he's not pleading with me not to leave him. That he isn't begging me not to go.

Then it's dark, and I don't have to convince myself of anything anymore.