For day eight of the redismycolour challenge.

The prompt was Vivaldi's Four Seasons, specifically 'Winter' which is quoted in the fic.



Title: Frozen Dreams, The Warmth of Life
Rating: G.
Summary: A short character study of Ianto in three parts.

 

Allegro non molto
To tremble from cold in the icy snow,
In the harsh breath of a horrid wind;
To run, stamping one's feet every moment,
Our teeth chattering in the extreme cold

When he was seven years old, Ianto Jones ran away. He planned it for two weeks beforehand, packing his bag carefully with spare clothes, tins of food stolen from the cupboards and his favourite book. The morning he ran away, he packed his toothbrush and left to get the school bus as normal.

He was declared missing at lunchtime when the school rang his father. He was found three hours later, hiding in a neighbours shed.

The next time he ran away was eleven years later. He got his A-Levels, decided to postpone university and turned down his father’s offer to work in his business. Instead, he went to Leeds where he got a temporary job in a coffee shop and spent his weekends popping pills in disused quarries.

His break for freedom lasted five months. Until he got the phone call to say that his father had had a heart attack and he was needed at home. The doctors blamed it on stress and being overworked and Ianto did his best not to feel guilty.


Largo
Before the fire to pass peaceful,
Contented days while the rain outside pours down.

London was where it all began to make sense. First in the shape of a permanent job, then in the form of Lisa. She understood him in a way that nobody ever had. Ever would.

His days were spent filling in spreadsheets, his evenings were spent in laughter and friendship and his nights were spent holding his girl in his arms.

It was too perfect to last.


Allegro
We tread the icy path slowly and cautiously, for fear of tripping and falling.
Then turn abruptly, slip, crash on the ground and, rising, hasten on across the ice lest it cracks up.
We feel the chill north winds course through the home despite the locked and bolted doors...
this is winter, which nonetheless brings its own delights.

Torchwood Three gave him meaning again. To do so, it had to break him first. It continues to break him a little every day - every time he has to wipe a memory, every time he has to forge a death, every time he watches someone else’s world get torn apart. He’s held together by Jack, a constant presence, who puts the pieces back in place each and every time.

He survives by refusing to remember the past. He endures by ignoring the future and the death that awaits him. He takes it a step at a time and never once thinks about running away.

He survives because he has to. This is his life.