Title: Blinded By Your Light
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Ianto Jones/Tenth Doctor
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Table: 2, letter100
Prompt: 51, Blind
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own Ianto Jones or the Tenth Doctor. Please do not sue.

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Dearest Ianto,

It's strange how I've started to pour out my feelings to you in letters so much more now that you're here with me on a permanent basis, rather than being in Cardiff. But it's a bit of a relief to know that I can leave a letter on your pillow in our bedroom.

Just knowing that you're here, sitting on the couch only a few feet away from me, is enough to make me smile. I've never smiled as much as I have since we first met, did you know that? Sometimes it seems that I didn't really know until I met you.

All right, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration. Of course I knew how to smile -- I just didn't do it often enough. That was a part of some of my past personalities, of course, so I can't put it down to being unhappy all of the time.

But in this body .... until I met you, I hid how I felt a great deal of the time behind laughter and smiles that I didn't really mean. There were times when I felt that my life was a lie, and that I was simply existing from day to day, not living.

I suppose it might be inevitable for someone like me to have that feeling, after such a long life. But I'd avoided it until then; I don't know why the feeling of drifting aimlessly never really hit me until I regenerated into this body. Maybe I never will.

If I were to hazard a guess, I would say that it's because I wasn't happy in this body until I met you. I'd resigned myself to being alone in all the ways that mattered; I'd thought that I was destined for the kind of loneliness that I'd tried all my life to run away from.

Then you exploded into my life, and that feeling was swept away. Oh, I'll admit that at first, I fought against giving you my hearts. I tried to tell myself to go slowly, that the two of us were far too different to ever make a go of it, that nothing could work between us.

And I tried to turn away from what I knew you meant to me. Even before I knew that it was you who'd left those love notes and flowers for me in the Tardis, I cared for you, Ianto. I've never said that before, but here it is, written down in black and white.

I didn't want to let myself admit that there were emotions in me that had never been tapped, and that you were slowly pulling them to the surface. I was afraid to open myself up to you, and to those feelings that no one had ever given me.

Admittedly, when I first met you, I was blinded by the light of my own attraction to you. I thought that you still belonged to Jack, so I tried to steer clear. That was why I didn't seem to notice you; it wasn't that I didn't, but I didn't feel that I could say anything.

After all, I thought you weren't free -- and I didn't want to let my hearts get involved with someone who couldn't return those feelings. Yes, it's a very human way to feel, or so it seems -- but there are some emotions that are universal.

Fear of being hurt is one of them. And that was a very strong emotion for me at the time. So, in spite of the attraction I was feeling, I held myself back. I deliberately blinded myself to everything that I was feeling in an attempt to deny it, to shut it out.

That was impossible. I couldn't get you out of my mind; I went back to the Tardis and thought about almost constantly. And, truth be told, that attraction to you was the main reason that I stayed on Earth for so long. I couldn't make myself leave.

The Tardis sensed that, too. I might have tried to blind myself to my own emotions, but she could read them loud and clear. And there's not a doubt in my mind that she had something to do with leading you to me, and making you leave those notes and flowers.

She'd never have let you into her inner sanctum if she didn't realise how I felt about you -- and also your own feelings for me. She deliberately made it easy for you to leave those notes, and though I'm surprised that she did that, I'll always be grateful to her for it.

If it wasn't for her, we might not be here together now. We both owe her a great deal; I can almost feel her smirking (in her own way) as I write this, knowing that I'm admitting something here on paper that I'd never say out loud.

I've changed a great deal since we first met, Ianto. I can now say out loud that I love you; I'd never hide that from anyone, least of all myself. It wasn't that I was ashamed of my feelings then; I never was. But I was afraid to open myself up to them.

Can you ever forgive me for being so blind, my beloved? I could try to make excuses for myself, to say that I thought I was doing the right thing at the time. But the truth is, I was frightened of what I felt for you, and where it could lead me.

I hope that I'll be able to make up for that short-sightedness in the future. I want to make up for all the time that we spent being apart at the start of our relationship, when I was foolish enough to leave you on Earth and thought that it was the best thing for both of us.

You'll never be left behind anywhere again, you can count on that. I've learned that your place is by my side -- and that I'm not complete without you there. No matter what I might face, no matter what danger we run into, I'll face it with the man I love.

I'll never be blinded like that again. And thank you, beloved, for helping me to see more clearly than I ever have before.

Your

Doctor

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