Tales and Tears

"Didn't you show me how much you wanted to protect her? Why can't they see that? Why did they leave you behind?"

"I know! That is, I don't have that . . . right to decide what missions I do or don't go on, but . . . Maybe it's best I didn't go. I don't know what I would have done . . . "

"You didn't have the right? What right? The right to follow? To be led?" She rested her arms on Ianto's shoulders from behind, her chin tickling his ear. "Don't be blind, Ianto. You know what you would have done. And that... that would have been your right. And no-one else's."

Ianto sighed, and nodded his head. She was right of course - was she always right? "Yeah, I think I know. And maybe it would have been right, even . . . but Jez needed me. I don't think I could have gone if it meant leaving her to think I might get hurt. But then, I don't even know if she knew about it beforehand."

"Making sure that she would never be hurt again, with your own eyes, your own blade... that might have been worth the risk." A tap under his chin from a ribboned finger: a gentle, teasing admonition. "But... then again... you have to do what seems right to you. What would your heart have done, if it didn't have your mind to guide it?"

"What would I have done?" He wondered aloud, bringing his hand up to his chin. "I'd have gone," he decided with a short nod. "I would have gone, and I don't know if I'd have killed him, but I'd have gone. Jez didn't know they were going - I could have gone and come back before she knew. And then I'd have been sure that she was safe . . . " He frowned, and looked back at Sophia. "You're so nosy," he said, and clearly didn't mean it.

"Nosy? Yes, I suppose I am." Sophia smiled. "But your story needs a little nosiness. It has the potential to be so wonderful." She dipped her head to his shoulder, hugging him tightly, taking in Ianto's breath, his scent, the quivers of his uncertainly, his dreams, hidden just below the surface.

"'Wonderful'" he mimicked with a derisive snort. "I wouldn't say that there's anything wonderful about it. Whatever wasn't mind-numbingly boring was just plain depressing." His shoulders slumped, but there was an odd comfort to take from Sophia's embrace. It wasn't like Jez's, which just made him feel warm, but it was almost motherly, and yet searching at the same time.

"Then make it wonderful. Would it really be so hard?"

"I - ," he paused, and frowned. "I don't know. It might be, but it might not, either. Sometimes I'm not sure, myself. I can't help but feel . . . guilty that I've . . . that maybe I've forgotten someone from my past, or worse, that I've let myself get over it too fast but, at the same time, don't the living have the right to be happy, too?"

"Happiness is everything. So is love." She reached up to fiddle with his hair, running absent-minded fingers through it almost as if remembering something else.

"Well, I agree with that at least," he said, voice heavy with a sudden weariness. Why was trying to be happy so hard? He shivered a little at the feel of fingers running through his hair, but only for the unfamiliarity of the touch, and not for any personal objection - he rather felt like a dog being petted by its master as the human contemplated more pressing matters.

"Then why is it so hard?" A soft murmur. "Why do you have to struggle, when others seem to find it wherever they go? Even when it seems to offer itself to you, why do you find it so hard to accept?" The fingers paused, frozen. "Why is it easier to follow a leash, a mabari to his owner, then it is to do what you know would make you happy?"

"Because that's just what I do," he said, and he sounded frustrated with some hidden, inner demon. "It's what I've always done. And the sad thing is that I know - I know - and I've never done anything to . . . stop it." Maybe there was some foolish desire to please others etched into his skull - maybe he just liked doing it. Maybe there wasn't much to him besides that. It could have been any of those things - all of those things. He'd loved her with every fiber of his being, and she couldn't have cared to even say his name if it inconvenienced her. And he'd always been okay with that - no. Stop. She had always been a scared little thing - he couldn't blame her for not being brave. It was part of the reason he'd loved her - he could protect her against the rest of the world that scared her so much. But now, after so long, he didn't know how to do anything else.

"Why?" Her voice, now a whisper, breathed into his ear, searching at that frustration, chipping away, drawing him tighter into her embrace. "Why is protecting others so important to you? It's wonderful... selfless... beautiful... but why?"

"Because I'm good at it." He barely noticed the tightening of the arms around him, as lost as he was in his own mind. He didn't even know if he was speaking at her suggestion anymore, or if the words were simply coming out of him, as if they'd been beating down the doors of his mind and he'd only just let them free. Could you even be 'good' at such a thing? That didn't seem right . . . "No - because I feel I have to - but I want to, too. I could be important to someone, if I can protect them." And didn't everyone want to be important?

"Someone?" So close... a woven web of words, soothing, coaxing... "Or just one person?"

"No . . . " He couldn't quite remember. "Two people. Or, one now, and one then." He wished he was still protecting the other - it would have been better than the alternative. Failing was a messy business.

"Who was she?"

Could he really tell her? Had he even told anyone else? "She was Maari," he said wistfully, as if that explained everything - her whole essence in a name. "And she died . . . " He wasn't sure he could even attempt to say anything else - was it too soon, or too late to tell someone else?

"Tell me, Ianto." Those fingers through his hair again, this time soothing: safe, safe, safe. A mother, warding her child against the dark: tell me about your nightmares, darling one, so I can chase them away.

"I met her at the Tower," he started, and his mouth was working ahead of his mind, recounting a story that was so distant and yet so scarred into his every thought. "She was the first mage I saw. Such a small little elf - white hair, and pale skin. She looked like a ghost - I almost thought she was. But I loved her right away. I loved her." It felt strange to say out loud, despite how often he thought it. "She was so gentle, and kind, but she was always scared. I think she loved me a little, too, but she was too scared of the other Templars. She was always so nervous - I would have done anything for her, but she . . . I told her I'd protect her, you know, and I couldn't. I wasn't allowed to be at her Harrowing. And she died. They killed her. I left the Tower that night. They couldn't have known about us - well, maybe they did. Maybe that was why they kept me away - but I couldn't stay there, where I'd failed her so horribly, where my friends killed the woman that I . . . "
He kept talking. Once the first words were out, the rest tumbled after, as if they'd been waiting an age to be told. He couldn't tell Jez, he knew - not yet at least - and Sophia . . . she was there, and she was asking.

A shock ran through the willowy mage: for a moment, she stood frozen, barely seeming to breath. If Ianto had looked over his shoulder as he spoke, he would have seen a face so removed from Sophia's normal expression as to be nightmarish: eyes wide, agonised, smile replaced by a tiny 'o' of utter surprise, barely masking something broken beyond repair. All she could do was bury her face in his shoulder, speechless as she tried to sketch her smile back into place, desperately scrabbling for the serenity which, until now, had been so easy to maintain...

Ianto shivered, unsure of why - some primal instinct that he didn't understand or even fully recognize reacting to the sudden chill behind him. For a long moment, he was lost in the haze of his own memories. They were never easy to recall - he so often buried them deeper than he could reach, and only the barest of outlines of that time were remembered, if only to keep the timeline of his life consistent.

"They... killed her?" A strained whisper. "Because she failed? Or because they were jealous of what you could have had?" Warmth, wet, liquid, dripped onto Ianto's shoulder. "They bind, and they take, they destroy... jealous of power, of love, of everything that we should have. Everything that we could have had." The words slipped from her mouth, unpolished and reckless.

If Ianto noticed that they were suddenly 'we,' it wasn't on a conscious level. He only nodded, because it was true - no matter the reason for her death, she'd been taken. It hadn't been a perfect love, he'd known, but it had been as important to him as his own soul had been, and when it had been wrenched so violently out of him, it had taken something with it. He'd never know why they'd killed her - they'd told him that she'd become a demon, as they did when they failed, but it didn't really matter 'why' - all that mattered was 'what was.'

Ianto's silence... it helped. Gradually the shards of her smile came back together, clicking into place as if nothing had ever happened. She could stop holding him so tightly, stop crying onto his shoulder... and yet she couldn't. Something in her breast forbade her to. So Sophia held on, silent, weeping, all thoughts of conversation forgotten in the revelation of the story which they both shared.

Ianto seemed to jolt out of the revere he'd entrenched himself in as the hot drops finally soaked through to his skin. He tried not to jump and disturb her, and he mostly succeeded as he looked back at her, concern wrinkling his brow. He'd gotten too far into his story, it seemed - he hadn't wanted her to cry! Andraste, but he was just all kinds of useless, wasn't he? "Sophia?" He asked, trying for gentle but succeeding only with 'worried.' "Are you alright? I'm sorry, I - " The smile seemed to wrong, so incongruous with the quiet shuddering and silent tears - he might never have noticed at all had she not been crying onto him.

"Don't be sorry." Slowly, oh so slowly, Sophia managed to peel her arms away from Ianto, lifting her fingers to wipe those treacherous tears from her eyes. "... thank you, for trusting me..."

He shifted a little, so that he was half facing her without having to crane his neck around, and his eyes still held every bit of that protectsaveworry feeling, because that last thing he'd wanted was to make her sad. She'd listened to him, after all, and he should be thanking her. "No," he said, shaking his head. "I have to . . . thank you, for listening. I haven't . . . I don't think I've ever told anyone that before." Because who would listen? The other Templars? He'd be imprisoned. Jez? How could he burden her with that? But Sophia, the storyteller, the tale-spintress - she'd listened to all of the stories. His had only been another tacked on, and that had made it a little bit easier.