Two months to the day since Ianto was last seen, every avenue exhausted in their search, and no hope left in the hearts of at least three of the team, Gwen approached Jack with little confidence but a real need to make her request.  She entered his office and sat on the guest chair.  Jack seemed oblivious to her presence, working on the accounts that he’d had to take charge of again in Ianto’s absence.

“Jack, can I…”

“I’d lost track of how much he did for me,” Jack said without looking up.  “It’s been a pain in the ass finding out.  I hate this stuff.”  Jack threw his pen down and finally looked at Gwen with a tired smile.  “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m…”  The inclination to put on a brave face came and went in seconds.  “Not great.”

“We can manage if you need to take the rest of the day off.”

“No, that won’t help.”

Jack could see how uncomfortable Gwen was.

“Whatever it is you don’t want to say, say it.”  Gwen nodded and took a deep breath and…stopped.  “Ianto, then,” Jack correctly guessed.

Gwen nodded again.

“I don’t…  It isn’t that…  Oh God,” Gwen sighed miserably.  “We never had a chance of finding him, did we?”

“No,” Jack answered softly.

“You knew.  The minute that personal tracker failed, you knew.”

“Yes.”

“We should have listened.”

“Yes, you should.  But I can understand why it was impossible at the time.”

“So…  He’s probably…”  Gwen’s voice seriously wavered and it took some effort for her to continue.  “He’s probably…dead.  And I – that is we – would like…  I don’t know quite what, but…a memorial service, some kind of…  I want to remember him, and honour him, and maybe then we could…”

“Forget him?”

“No.  Not…  We need to come to terms with the loss, to know it is a loss, to recognise that this isn’t an ongoing enquiry, it’s…  It’s over.  I know you’re in pain but we need you to…”

“Don’t ask me to say goodbye, not yet.”

“We need you to lead us, Jack.”

“I can’t lead you there,” Jack insisted.  “Do whatever you feel is necessary for yourselves, but don’t ask me to do something that I know is wrong.”

“If you won’t, then…we can’t.”

“Maybe there’s something to that.”

The tone of Jack’s voice was so brittle that Gwen actually flinched, but she determinedly recovered: it wasn’t as if she’d expected this to be easy.

“I’m not trying to be hurtful.”

Jack turned to his computer, minimised the currently displayed worksheet, and swung the monitor toward Gwen.  This week’s wallpaper was a shot of himself and Ianto lifted from the CCTV: they were close, Jack was flirting, Ianto was loving it.  The affection, the happiness, the life radiated from the screen.

“That the body you need for your funeral?” Jack asked coldly.

Gwen stared at the photograph, stared and stared as tears welled in her eyes and her hands knotted into fists in her lap.  With a brief shake of her head she stood and walked away.  Jack followed moments later, calling to them all to go home as he passed by on his way to the archives.

“Jack…” Toshiko’s voice faded away as Jack quickened his pace, not wanting to discuss memorial services or listen to reason or lose Ianto.

R to T.  Always very entertaining, in Ianto’s words, and the last place in these vaults that the archivist had been working.  As Jack strolled through the maze of storage units he felt calmer, closer to Ianto, but was shaken by the amount of times he turned a corner and expected to find his partner, because, every time, that didn’t happen.

As he approached R to T he immediately noticed that the ghost had been up to its old tricks: there was a neatly arranged line on the floor, piles of folders, eleven in all.  Jack was about to start tidying up when he wondered about the make up of the piles, and why there were a different number of folders in each.  It took him ten minutes of counting, considering, reversing his findings, before he realised with a jolt that the numbers of folders corresponded to Ianto’s phone number.

It could mean nothing or it could mean everything.  Jack pulled his headset from his pocket and fumbled it onto his ear, clumsy in his hurry to switch it on.

“Ianto,” he said immediately, waiting impatiently as a connection was attempted.  The voicemail had been disabled at their request and there was nothing but dead air.  “Ianto,” Jack tried again.  He jumped as an abrupt crackle filled his ear.  “Ianto?”  An eerily tuneful hissing came and went and then it was back to silence.

Jack started toward the Hub at a sprint, excited by this latest development, but he gradually slowed to a halt.  He knew the response he’d receive, three faces full of pity as the noises were dismissed as static or some other natural phenomena, and…that was probably quite right.  Plus, if time was of the essence, he’d probably run out the moment the hissing stopped.

Jack retraced his steps, slowly and thoughtfully.  He’d wait until his colleagues had gone before renewing his personal investigations – he wasn’t fooling himself that his people had done as he’d asked and left when they were told.  He suspected that it wouldn’t be long before his risen hopes would be cruelly dashed, but he was prepared to take that chance, and he was prepared for the pain.

Meantime…  R to T.  The folders were no longer on the floor, the area was neat and tidy, and the archives appeared perfectly in order.  Jack returned to where Ianto had left Torchwood’s ancient library trolley, pulled out the stool that lived inside one of its cupboards and made himself comfortable; settled in front of Stu to Swa, Jack almost contentedly spent the next three hours talking to the ghost about Ianto.

Attrition 32       Attrition Index       Attrition Notes

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