Ianto Jones

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Contents

The Mun

The Character

  • Name: Ianto Jones
  • Age/Birthdate: 26 / August 19, 1983 (Children of Earth takes place in September, 2009)
  • Canon: Torchwood
  • Canon Entry Point: The end of Children of Earth: Day Four, literally the moment before the SPOILER happens.
  • Journal: http://twdenmother.livejournal.com/

Defining Abilities and Attributes

Ianto's perfectly suited to administrative work -- he's reliable, resourceful, frighteningly efficient, and relentlessly organized. He's also skilled with computers, and makes an amazing cup of coffee. He's recently taken on a larger role as a field agent, though, showing a great deal of proficiency with firearms, and expert use of a stun-gun, though his judgement in the field tends to be a bit lacking.

He's almost never seen in anything but a well-tailored suit, though he does own casual clothes, which are mostly reserved for tromping about in the not-so-great outdoors.

Personality

Ianto's easy to overlook, at first. He's the quiet one, getting everything done in the background, the sort that few people would miss until they went looking for a file or some coffee. Ianto's never been particularly good at expressing emotions, or standing out in any way, leaving him with a tendency to bottle things up until he reaches the breaking point. Of course, working at Torchwood, breaking points have a habit of coming more often than he's comfortable with.

For the most part, Ianto seems uncomfortable initiating much of anything, seemingly just falling into jobs, relationships, and situations in general. However, working in a small, close-knit group like Torchwood 3 has gotten him out of his shell a little, and his relationship with Jack has only encouraged him further. The quiet facade slips further and further, revealing a nearly fanatical sense of loyalty (though who he's loyal to, exactly, varies -- Ianto attaches himself to people rather than institutions), a great deal of intelligence, and enough sarcasm to provide several third-world countries with their recommended yearly allotment. And it's in text-based media where this really comes out: instant messaging, journal entries, and his official Torchwood reports all carry a distinct blend of whimsy and sarcasm which stops just short of biting.

He's distinctly uncomfortable with his past, and has built up a lovely and entirely fictional history for himself. If the people he works with know better, they're too polite to say.

He's inordinately fond of old movies, and may secretly dream of being James Bond.

Background

This contains massive spoilers for Children of Earth. Read at your own risk.

Ianto's family was... not what he'd have people think. His mother died early on, leaving his father to take care of him and his older sister, Rhiannon. It wasn't the easiest of childhoods, with their dad trying to provide for them both on a department store salary, but they made do. At least he had a loving family, in a way that involved a great deal of shouting at each other in Welsh... Rhiannon took after their mother, and could, when she got going, roll right over any protests from their father. Ianto, on the other hand, took after his dad, whose motto could well have been 'keep your head down'. Be good, but never exceptional. Leaders are the first ones to take the fall. Be modest, be quiet, be invisible yet necessary. All of that was drilled into him from an early age, his father always pushing him to unobtrusively achieve all the things he himself couldn't.

He rebelled. Of course he rebelled. His performance at school was determinedly mediocre. He got caught shoplifting, found his way into various sorts of trouble, and ran away for London as soon as his dad died, in the hopes of finding a better life. But certain things stuck with him, and so when he found his way into Torchwood 1 as a Junior Researcher, he fell back into the patterns he'd been taught: quiet efficiency and modesty, never letting on how bad things really were. He came up with a family history that bore no resemblance to the real thing -- as he told it, his father was a master tailor, and Rhiannon was mentioned rarely, if at all -- anything to divorce him from the relative poverty he'd grown up in, from a sister who tried to be a mother to him and failed, and a father who pushed him far harder than Ianto thought he deserved.

It was when working for Torchwood that he met Lisa Hallett, who decided she fancied the cute and quiet ones and dragged Ianto home with her one night. He found her infuriatingly chaotic. She found him far too repressed for his own good and bordering on anal-retentive. Naturally, they fell quite madly in love.

And then came the Battle of Canary Wharf, in which Lisa was partially converted into a Cyberman. And Ianto was crushed. He might not have chosen the relationship to start with, but once in it, his loyalty was unshakable. He cobbled equipment together, kept her alive, and threw himself at Captain Jack Harkness until he was given a place in Torchwood 3. Granted, his duties consisted mostly of making coffee and dealing with the administrative nonsense that no one else had the patience for, but it gave him more resources with which to keep her alive, and attempt to make her human again.

The results of that attempt were... unfortunate. The remaining human side of Lisa had been a calculated play on his emotions, enabling the Cyberwoman to gain control of the Hub. And once Lisa had finally been killed at the hands of the rest of Torchwood, Ianto was left with nothing. Oh, he still had his job, but he'd lost the woman he loved, the trust of his teammates... And the relationship between himself and Captain Harkness became less fraught with sexual tension and more fraught with hatred on Ianto's part.

But time passed. It never stopped hurting, but Ianto could finally admit to himself what Jack had known all along: Lisa had died long before Jack led Torchwood in shooting her down. And again and again, he saw Jack act with a ruthlessness that only barely concealed how much those decisions hurt Jack himself. That's the thing about the quiet ones -- they tend to be observant.

Even so, there was more than a bit of masochism in his eventual decision to have sex with Jack. Not even he was clear on his motivations, at first. But something happened that he didn't quite expect: he started to fall in love.

Then, during a rather harrowing series of events, Lisa appeared to him, and pleaded with him to turn on Jack and open the Rift. In the conflict of loyalties, it was his loyalty to Lisa that won out... And all hell promptly broke loose. The day was saved, though it seemed like Jack had died for good. But in the end, Jack came back to life as usual (well, not precisely, but close enough), and it seemed all was forgiven.

Then Jack vanished that same day. Then Jack came back, after considerable political turmoil and a wild goose chase in the Himalayas. Things... didn't go as smoothly as they might have. Ianto had been crushed all over again by Jack's disappearance, and it didn't help that the day Jack showed up, one of Jack's many, many exes decided to pay a visit.

But Jack seemed earnest about pursuing a relationship (while never being quite clear on just what that relationship was), and Ianto found himself unable to resist Jack's ample charms. Things were good for a while. Then Owen Harper, Torchwood's resident doctor, died. Then Jack brought him back. Gwen Cooper, who Jack was also in love with, got married, which left Jack a bit more distracted than Ianto was comfortable with, his tolerance for Jack's wandering ways aside. Jack's little brother showed up and engineered Owen's death (again, and permanently this time), fatally shot Toshiko Sato, and buried Jack underneath Cardiff for almost two thousand years.

Amazingly enough, his relationship with Jack survived all this, though all of Torchwood was shocked and grieving for some time afterwards. During this period, and after Ianto finally got to meet the Doctor, who Jack had been obsessing over for more than a century (and who happened to be the reason Jack left Torchwood, however briefly), Gwen, Ianto, and Jack all ended up in bed together after a particularly miserable day.

Two things came from what Gwen would later call their 'company indiscretion': the first and most obvious result was that Ianto finally started to do more than tolerate Jack's frequent romances with anyone else interesting enough -- he might not have been the only one, but he wasn't being left out, either. And, although Ianto and Gwen hardly had a romance for the ages (or a romance at all, the sex notwithstanding), he did consider her a good friend, and they quite frankly adored each other in a mostly-platonic sense. The other result was Gwen's pregnancy... not by Jack, as Ianto would have thought, but by him.

(For those confused: the pregnancy is canon. The threesome and Ianto's role in the creation of the Torchwood Baby are not, but the relevant muns and I have agreed it's part of their backstory.)

But as Gwen was learning she was pregnant in the first place, and Ianto began to, for the first time, question Jack about whether or not they really were a couple, Torchwood had bigger problems. An alien race known only as the 456, for the frequencies they used to broadcast instructions, was demanding a tithe of 10% of the Earth's children in exchange for the continued survival of the human race. This wasn't their first visit -- they had come to Britain in 1965, asking for twelve children, and offering the cure for a virus that would kill millions if it was allowed to mutate. At the time, the cost had been acceptable, and Jack had been the one to deliver the children to them. In the present day, the British government, desperate to hide their previous contact with the 456, ordered a cover-up. Jack was to be killed, and his team with him. The Hub was destroyed, and the remaining members of Torchwood found themselves on the run from the government they were supposedly above.

Jack's immortality caused a few problems, though, and after he regenerated from having a bomb implanted in his body and detonated, he was encased in concrete. Ianto and Gwen, both of whom had barely escaped in time, and Rhys, Gwen's husband, mounted a rescue. Once Jack had been recovered, they set about trying to save the world yet again, and Ianto learned about Jack's previous involvement with the 456, and the fact that Jack had an adult daughter and grandson living in Cardiff. Neither of these facts did much to change how Ianto felt -- if anything, he felt more strongly that Jack needed someone to be there for him, with all the secrets eating away at him.

Jack wanted to redeem himself for his actions in 1965, and Ianto wanted to be there for him when he did. After blackmailing key government officials, Ianto and Jack went to face the 456 at their current base of operations in Thames House, only to be trapped inside when the 456 released a remarkably efficient and invariably fatal virus into Thames House's air supply.

Jack, of course, would come back. Ianto knew he wouldn't be so lucky. His heart-rate was slowing, and it was becoming harder to breathe with every moment that passed. Ianto told Jack he loved him for the first and last time, begged Jack not to forget him...

And found himself gasping for air in the Parlor, the virus purged from his system.

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