“It’s light outside.”

The remainder of the team turned to Toshiko with various levels of surprise.  If she’d told them they’d missed Christmas, or that the Pterodactyl was tap-dancing in their local pub for tips it would have been much the same.  Different degrees of ‘Oh’ and then straight back to what was occupying their every thought.

But Jack, post-‘Oh’, took charge in a way that nobody had had the strength to when he was the one missing.

“Go home,” he told them.  The degrees of ‘Oh’ morphed into degrees of ‘Huh?’  “Go home,” he reiterated.

“But…Ianto,” Toshiko said weakly, looking like a horrible truth was setting in.

“I know.”  Jack went to her and hugged her, feeling one distinct tremor that was as close as she was about to get to breaking down and making anyone else feel more dejected.  “You all need rest, mistakes will be made if everyone’s exhausted.”

“Is that what happened?  With you?  We were all so tired we made mistakes and couldn’t find you?”

“No.  You couldn’t find me because I couldn’t be found.”

Mildly placated by that, Toshiko took a step out of Jack’s arms, a step toward her coat, and stopped.  She looked at her computer for several long minutes until a light nudge from Jack encouraged her to leave.  Gwen was beginning to look panicked at the thought of being sent away.

“Jack, shall I talk to…”

“No,” Jack stopped her in her tracks.  “I mean it, go home.  Being here changes nothing.”

Gwen gave a shallow nod and reluctantly collected her belongings, and a long, hard stare from Jack eventually forced Owen to throw down his phone and notebook and leave in grumpy silence.

Alone at last, Jack could finally let his defences down, more fatigued by keeping up a positive appearance than the long sleepless hours.  He looked at his watch.  Very soon it would be twenty-four hours since he’d last spoken to Ianto, since he’d brusquely told him to leave, and since Ianto had inevitably had the final word.  A fragile smile lifted the corners of Jack’s mouth.  His Ianto.  Had he ever told Ianto that his tenacity was as much admired as his rear?  He probably knew, regardless.  That was Ianto: knowing.

Jack went up to the Tourist Office, not looking for any kind of evidence regarding Ianto’s present whereabouts, just wanting to share his space.  The boxes were so untidily out of place that Jack decided to do exactly what Ianto would be doing if he were here: he unpacked.  He returned the creepy little gonk to the company of its friends, and the postcards to the rack, but he slipped the love spoon into his pocket.  The items of spare clothing were set aside to go back to Ianto’s locker in the changing rooms, although Jack couldn’t resist burying his face in the t-shirt and jumper, seeking Ianto’s scent but being confounded by perfect laundering.

Jack flicked through the files and paperwork that Ianto had chosen to take with him to London, finding most to be old cases that had particularly interested Ianto, along with several folders containing pictures and detailed descriptions of some of their more baffling and unclassifiable pieces of recovered alien technology.  Beneath the Torchwood material was a sealed plastic document box, and if Jack wavered before breaking through the seals, it wasn’t for long.  He went into the ante-room to check the contents, out of the range of the CCTV, and was glad he had when he brought out a pile of photographs, the majority of himself, most printed from the contents of Gwen’s off-duty-pictures file, but a few that Jack recognised as having been recently taken on Ianto’s phone.

There were very few photographs of the two of them together, but Ianto had gone to the trouble of finding a few moments from the CCTV when they’d been close, including a couple where Jack had obviously been seriously flirting with Ianto.  Jack swallowed hard and set the photographs aside, finding them far too personal to cope with at present.  He turned back to the document box and pulled out the other contents.  If the photographs had been difficult to handle, this final bundle of papers made Jack feel as if his heart was being torn from his chest.  Notes.  It looked like every note that Jack had ever left for Ianto had been kept and filed away, and there was nothing special, nothing personal other than a few cheeky messages as they got to know one another better.  But Ianto had kept them all, right from the first: full pages, torn fragments, memos on paper napkins, comments on tourist leaflets, post it notes carefully arranged on sheets of A4 paper.

Jack couldn’t have felt any more special or any more wretched.  Ianto had painstakingly preserved these pointless scraps yet Jack couldn’t start to take care of the man himself.  How many times had he promised Ianto he’d keep him safe?  How many times had he apparently lied?

It was too upsetting to be in this place.  Jack ensured the reception was locked up before rushing downstairs for his coat and taking the lift to daylight.  As he rode up he studied the love spoon, knowing he should find a website that would tell him what the individual carvings meant, because there would be meaning, Ianto wouldn’t have simply chosen that spoon because he thought it was attractive.  Once outside Jack dropped the spoon into his coat pocket and then…  Nothing.  He remained on the lift, lost and lonely, invisible to those around him – the Christmas shoppers, the visibly less harassed late tourists – and…nothing.

If he could bear to stay in the Hub there was probably plenty to get on with, all the day to day necessities that Ianto would have no doubt filed under ‘Life Goes On’.  But, although Jack refused to conceive a future where life went on without Ianto, he was feeling crushed by the weight of these circumstances and he was without an iota of motivation to read reports from London or answer the phone or eat or sleep or save a world he irrationally felt had betrayed him.

Although Jack’s instincts told him that there was nothing to be done – Ianto had gone; intervention was impossible; circumstances would change; Ianto would come back – there was a need, a growing need, to be somehow active.  Actively investigate.  Pointlessly actively investigate, maybe, but…

The morning chill seemed to sink into Jack’s bones and he shivered.  Was Ianto cold, he wondered, or was he warm and nourished, understanding and unafraid?  The image of Ianto after Brynblaidd broke into Jack’s thoughts, the stunned young man attempting to shake off the bloody terror and make sense of the senseless.  ‘Not so good with the unpredictable’, that’s what Ianto had said, and whatever had occurred the previous day must have been completely unpredictable or Ianto would have found a way to leave a message.  ‘Not so good with the unpredictable.’  Jack’s stomach rolled.  The notion of Ianto having to face more horror – face it alone – made Jack feel so sick that he had to deliberately set the possibility aside, force himself to occupy his mind with the practical rather than the gruesome.

What was practical?  What would Ianto do?  Keep searching, despite the glaring stupidity of such a course of action, because (as Toshiko had unsubtly pointed out) no stone should remain unturned?  Search, yes.  Jack went back for the SUV, a copy of the latest photo of Ianto they had on file, and a downloaded picture of Ianto’s model of Rover; he’d drive the route/s – confirmed and projected – that Ianto had driven, talk to anyone he could find along the way who might have noticed…well, anything, and fool himself he was doing something useful.

…

The chilly morning had become an icy afternoon by the time Jack returned to Cardiff.  The drive had been, as expected, unforthcoming as far as clues were concerned, but each of his team had contacted him along the way and were relieved to hear he was doing something positive.  They were concerned about him; he didn’t deserve that.  He didn’t deserve any degree of consideration; if he’d shown Ianto any consideration the previous day they wouldn’t be in their current state of distress.  He’d told each of them to stay home and rest, and knew that when he re-entered the Hub they’d all be there.  As much as he craved company he didn’t want to see them, or their worried faces that now reminded him constantly of the damage caused by his desertion such a relatively short time before.

So he parked the SUV back in the Hub’s garage and left by the ramp, wandering along to Mermaid Quay, hunching his back against the cold and pushing his hands deep into his coat pockets, encountering welcome warmth and a so-far meaningless love spoon.  With sudden motivation Jack turned on his heel and headed for the shops.  He wanted to understand the symbolism, why Ianto had chosen this spoon in particular, anything to feel nearer to his missing partner, and surely there had to be somewhere locally where they were sold or made, the obvious sort of place to buy a book that would explain everything.

As he walked he once again drew the spoon out to examine the design, but this time it was caught up with something from his pocket.

Keys.

Jack came to an abrupt halt.  Keys?  The spare keys to Ianto’s house, placed there…when?  Jack untangled the key ring from the spoon and, for a fleeting second, felt as close to Ianto as he ever had.  Silly and superstitious, no doubt, but the keys were like a message, and not necessarily about Ianto’s whereabouts: he didn’t expect to find Ianto at home with his feet up and a mug of tea in his hand.  But…a refuge.  Ianto had told him the house could be his refuge.

He raced back to the Hub, easily avoiding his team because they were trying equally hard to avoid the boss who’d told them to stay away from their workplace.  Having collected Ianto’s document box from the Tourist Office, Jack once again took the SUV, miserable and happy and relieved to be heading to a refuge he now needed more than ever.

…

As he stepped into Ianto’s house Jack experienced the oddest sensation, and it was with some difficulty that he persuaded himself that Ianto wasn’t there.

Because Ianto wasn’t there, Ianto wasn’t anywhere, Jack reminded and reminded and reminded himself.

A moment of frantic panic came and went.

A moment of threatened breakdown came and went.

Jack put the box of notes and photographs on the dining table then did what Ianto always did, straight into the kitchen to switch on the coffee maker.  Which he then switched off.  He filled and boiled the kettle instead, finding tea and sugar and making sure the milk in the fridge was still fresh.  He made the tea, which was as bad as his usual efforts, but he drank it anyway, pondering sentimentality.

The house was exactly as they’d left it the previous morning – no clues to Ianto’s disappearance here.  Wandering from room to room Jack experienced the same feeling of wrongness as he had in the Tourist Office, with so much out of place.  He considered unpacking all the boxes, knowing that ninety-five percent of what he unpacked would be put in the wrong location by Ianto’s standards, but thinking it might be worth the constant cries of ‘What’s that doing there?’ when Ianto returned simply to make the place look lived in rather than being left.

Jack wouldn’t be able to resist snooping and he didn’t bother to pretend otherwise; for that reason alone he decided to leave the unpacking for a few days, give Ianto a chance to make an early return and take charge.  Ianto would come back and they’d be together, they’d live together, have a life rather than share a work environment; Jack hadn’t wanted this in so long the prospect was both daunting and exhilarating.  The Doctor had been right, it was time to start living.

In which case…he needed Ianto.

Abandoning the resolution he’d made only minutes earlier, Jack turned to the first of the packing boxes, determined to find every photograph that existed of his partner and cover the house with his image.  Everywhere he looked he would see Ianto.  Everywhere instead of nowhere.

…

It didn’t take Jack long to discover that he barely knew Ianto at all, not the building bricks that formed the foundation of the person he’d come to wholeheartedly admire.  Ianto had accused Jack of that during the terrible debacle with Lisa, of not knowing him; Jack had immediately recognised that Ianto was right, and had been determined to rectify the situation if Ianto survived the night.  What had started as an obligatory commitment had soon developed into sincere interest, and Ianto – the Ianto that was so assiduously tucked away beneath the immaculate surface – had fascinated him.  He did know Ianto better, but a single box of mementoes had proved to Jack how much more there was to learn.

The second that Jack had opened this particular box, he knew he was in a territory so unfamiliar that it was unlikely Ianto would easily forgive him for daring to trespass.  But that in itself made it irresistible, the prospect of rousing Ianto’s passionate nature, by whatever means.  So Jack delved into these previously hidden glimpses of Ianto’s life with the breathless awe of a weary explorer chancing upon a hitherto unexplored trove of riches.

Up until the fall of Torchwood One, Ianto wrote.  Stories and poems, notebook upon notebook full of them; Jack was able to chart the growth of boy to man, rocked by a sudden change from sunny boyish disposition to tormented teen soul, tracing a slow recovery that became a flurry of charming yet surprisingly unsentimental work when Lisa enriched his life.  Nothing since.  The writing appeared to have died a death with her.

There was a novel, partially written, by the two of them, unremarkable for anything other than ideas stolen from their workplace and the obvious fun they’d had with it.  The notes in the margins brought the real Lisa to life for Jack.  ‘This isn’t meant to be porn,’ Ianto had scribbled on the last page, alongside one of Lisa’s more graphic paragraphs; ‘It should be!!!’ she’d written back, and drawn little stick figures, mid-copulation.  Beneath, Ianto had added his own little cartoon, an in-scale pot of tea and plate of cakes, ‘To keep their energy up’.

Love letters from Lisa were accompanied by several pressed flowers and grasses; Jack set these aside, all too delicate for his intrusion.

A pair of gig tickets, dated two weeks after the Battle of Canary Wharf.  Unused, still in the envelope they came in.

There was a batch of cards from Ianto’s mother, celebrating special occasions, and each had its own personally devised and handwritten poem, loving and often humorous; it was fairly obvious who Ianto had inherited his passion for writing from.

A Blue Peter badge left Jack wondering what it had been won for, but its inclusion didn’t surprise him.  A fishing reel; a broken penknife; a seagull feather, hand-cut into a quill and ink-stained at its tip; a nineteen-sixty-eight, seven-inch vinyl copy of Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World; the tail of a kite; a well-worn and frayed friendship bracelet.  The Noo-Noo toy was rather baffling, but going by the illustration on the box, it was an in-joke about Ianto’s tidiness.

There was a souvenir programme for A Christmas Carol from Ianto’s schooldays: disturbingly, his surname in the cast list was scribbled out so violently that the paper was torn.  Ianto featured in a creased photograph tucked inside its pages, playing Jacob Marley in ghostly greasepaint and many yards of cardboard chains.  Unsurprisingly, a good luck card from his mother completed this little bundle, and Jack paused to question the absence of Ianto’s father.  But not for long.

At the very bottom of the box was an old manila envelope, unsealed, well-thumbed.  For the first time Jack hesitated before pressing on, but his undeniable curiosity made him reach inside for the contents.  He found himself staring at the face of a woman who bore a striking resemblance to Ianto; a glance at the small print beneath the picture identified her as Alice Lyle.  It was a clipping from what appeared to be a regional newspaper, and it reported the death of a popular local woman in a fall at her home.  Awful enough, but as Jack read through subsequent cuttings he found that the woman’s husband was ostracised and eventually driven from the area when it was revealed that, if he hadn’t spent quite so long in the bed of his mistress, he would have discovered his wife in time to save her from a slow, painful death, and wouldn’t have left her body to be found by their eleven-year-old son, Ianto.

Jack sat in numb shock for a long time, gazing at the reports, at Alice’s death certificate, the coroner’s findings, paperwork that placed Ianto in the care of his maternal grandmother.  There were photographs that had been clumsily torn apart and Sellotaped back together – Jack suspected the respective actions of father and son.

More paperwork: Ianto Jones, the boy became at twelve, legally taking his grandmother’s surname in commemoration of his mother, and apparently breaking his last connection with the man who had betrayed his family.

There was a letter, much more recent, addressed to Ianto Jones-Lyle, the father begging for his son’s forgiveness, trying to make amends as he struggled to combat alcoholism.  This too had been ripped into pieces, but remained as such and was readable only as a puzzle.

So much made sense in the light of these revelations, particularly aspects of Ianto’s personality that Jack had accepted but not questioned.  The idea of Ianto always associating love with loss became more poignant than ever.  As he stared at a damaged picture of Alice and the boy she reportedly ‘lived for’, Jack mourned a woman he’d never have the chance to meet, and missed her offspring more than he thought physically possible.

Attrition 28       Attrition Index       Attrition Notes

Site Updates     Update List     Home     Fiction     Gallery     Links     Feedback