love is watching someone die ( closed )
amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines
in a place where we can only say goodbye
it stung like a violent wind that our memories depend
on a faulty camera in our minds
but I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose
than to have never lain beside at all
- death cab for cutie, “what sarah said”
Dinner was over and they were washing dishes; he washed, she dried, because she liked it better that way so her nails wouldn’t get ruined. He didn’t mind, shirt-sleeves rolled up to keep out of the sudsy water. Lisa suggested a dishwasher a few months ago, but Ianto turned down the idea. This was domestic and comfortable, a little semblance of daily routine in their often hectic lives, and he enjoyed the boring normalcy of it.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” she said as she lifted a stack of plates into the cabinet.
“Mm,” Ianto acknowledged, placing a freshly washed glass into the dish drainer. “What would you like to do?”
Lisa leaned her hip against the counter. “I don’t know, the weather’s nice and we hardly get the day off at the same time - maybe a picnic? We can drive into the countryside and find a nice place ... basket of food, bottle of wine ...”
He nodded lightly. “That sounds nice.”
“Are you sure?” She tilted her head thoughtfully at him, eyes skeptical. “It’s hard to tell about you sometimes.”
“Whatever you want.” Ianto leaned over to kiss her lightly. “If you’re happy, I’m happy.”
Lisa returned the kiss but sighed in something close to disappointment when she turned around. “... I know,” she murmured; he was too busy wiping down the counter to notice.
--
Ianto stared at the box, marveled just a little at how a cardboard cube could be the symbol of change. It was empty, but the fact that it was there spoke volumes of his progression in the last few months. He had never considered that things with Lisa might have ended the way they did. He never thought anything would be as traumatizing as seeing her lying prone in the corner of the office, partially converted, until he saw her body dead and the stitches on the pizza girl’s forehead.
The images haunted his dreams, turned them into nightmares. He was greatly pained to know that when he thought of Lisa, he could only summon those images. He knew that she wouldn’t have wanted him to remember her that way. The woman who loved him had died in the invasion at Canary Wharf; what he had dragged out of Torchwood Tower was a ridiculous shell. In hindsight he could see the error of his ways. It would have been more merciful to let her go, then, but he had been selfish.
Now it was time to finally let her go. Ianto gathered her things and began to place them into that box and a few others. Clothes and shoes would go to charity, books to the library (she’d never shared his taste for the classics, anyway), and anything with sentimental value he would return to her family. For himself he kept only the photographs and the modest necklace with a little diamond that he’d given her on their first anniversary. Anything pertaining to Torchwood had been burned before they left London.
The ripping sound of packing tape coming off the roll cut through the silence as Ianto sealed the boxes. He was careful not to think about Jack as he did this. He wanted to move on for the right reasons, not just because he had (more than) filled the gap in his life left by her absence. He would always love her, but he wouldn’t keep hanging on.
With the boxes, the remainder of one woman’s life on earth stacked by the door, Ianto sat down beside them with a yellow legal pad and a pen.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hallett,
I’m sorry.