Fffc Bingo Card - Visiting hours

[m_findlow]

Title: Visiting hours 
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none 
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 60 - Silence at fffc
Summary: Jack has come to pay a visit to someone who isn't expecting him. 

Jack was nonplussed by the rigmarole the prison administration put him through. Even Ianto would have been impressed by the amount of paperwork and red tape they'd subjected him to just to get a permit to come here, and that was before he'd even walked through the first set of gates. There was more paperwork after that -all kinds of liability forms and waivers they made Jack sign- all just to make it clear that he was doing this voluntarily, and that they wouldn't accept any liability for what happened to him whilst he was here. Not that he was worried unduly about anything happening to him here, or anywhere for that matter. They couldn't touch him in here. Security would make sure of that. 

Whilst Ianto would have been impressed by their administration and due process, he would have been far less impressed if he knew Jack was here at all. It wasn't like they'd made promises about this sort of thing, only that Ianto would have liked the past to stay dead and buried, never to be spoken of ever again. 

Jack however couldn't help himself. He couldn't explain why now. It had just been a random thought that crossed his mind and since that point he hadn't been able to dislodge it. He just had to see for himself. 

There was more of a hold up as Jack relinquished all of his personal effects -watch, vortex manipulator, even his cufflinks. They certainly hadn't been impressed by the firearm he handed over. By rights perhaps he should have left that in the glove box but it had slipped his mind until he was already past the gates. After that, they made a point of searching him more thoroughly, in the politest way you could for a civilian who wasn't a criminal, and one who also happened to work for an agency way above the government. After all, that had been the only way he'd been allowed in here to begin with. Orders from the top couldn't be ignored. Jack didn't the pockets of his coat and taking a good long time to pat him down. If they didn't look so serious about the whole thing he'd have offered to strip for them and even suggest he'd find a cavity search kind of kinky. Maybe Ianto would see the funny side of that joke once he'd finished being furious with Jack. 

Once they were finished vetting him, they sent him on what felt like a tour of the facility. He lost track of how many people he'd been handed over to through various gates and double-doored security posts. Everyone in here gave him the same untrustworthy glare. He couldn't blame them. He'd been in a lot of prisons in his life, both as a guard and as an inmate. He understood how it all worked and how there were different systems in prisons with basic lowlife criminals versus places like this. This was as maximum security as you could get. People didn't even know these kinds of places existed. Nor would they want to. This is where they kept the people who couldn't be put into the general population of your typical prison. They'd either murder someone or end up murdered. These places were for the incurably violent and the criminally insane. They were the worst of the worst, and the kind that would never again see the light of day, or even the light of a prison exercise yard. Death was too good for them, Ianto had convinced him of that. Better that they got to live and suffer every day. 

Finally Jack was led though into a heavily locked room. There was a single metal chair bolted to the floor and four inches of perspex separating him from the tiny room on the other side. 

‘Fair warning,’ the guard said to him. ‘He doesn't say much.’ 

‘That's okay,’ Jack assured the guard. ‘I didn't come here to listen to him.’ Scintillating conversation was not one of the features of the maximum security prison system, that much Jack knew.

The guard closed the door and Jack was left alone in the room. Moments later the door on the other side opened up and the man was led inside. He was heavily chained around the wrists and ankles. Jack could hear them clinking through the intercom as the guard pushed the man down into the chair. He looked so much thinner than Jack remembered, with less hair, but those eyes were still the same. They still had a glint of madness in them though it was subdued by any number of sedatives. 

Jack leaned forward as close as he could. ‘Remember me?’ The cannibal stared vaguely through him before his eyes seemed to focus on Jack's face. ‘Yeah, you remember me. Thought I'd come see you.’ 

The man just sat there, like Jack had commented on the weather. 

‘I never got to be at your sentencing. I heard you screamed through the whole thing. They'd have had you in contempt of court but what's the worst you can do to a man on life with no parole?’ 

Blue eyes lifted to meet Jack's. He could almost hear the reply as the man licked his lips. 

‘I asked them to do a little something for me,’ Jack began. ‘Part of your rehabilitation.’ Ianto could be mad at him all day long but he'd love Jack for this. ‘I told them that your doctors insisted on it. The only way to cure a cannibal’s lust for killing is to take him off meat. So from today, they're putting you on vegan rations. Permanently.’ 

It got exactly the reaction Jack had hoped for. The silent, sullen prisoner turned wild like an animal. If he could, he would have killed Jack and stripped the flesh from his bones with his bare teeth. The guards piled into the room, restraining him.

‘I'll be back in a few months to see how you're getting on.’