Jack's Flowers
Fandom: Torchwood (what else?)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 980
Summary: Jack and Ianto share a chance meeting and a lot of understanding.
Prompt: 030. Death.
Jack's Flowers
The sun was out, making the grass seem greener even though the day was cold and the plants had all faded into their winter colours. Jack knelt by the headstone, moving the dead rose from the base of the stone and putting it on the grass in front. He put a fresh rose in its place, and paused for a moment before standing up again and brushing dirt from his knees with one hand.
“Jack?”
A little startled, he turned, then relaxed and nodded a greeting.
“Ianto.”
He watched as Ianto’s gaze went to the bundle of flowers he still held, then the headstone. He could see Ianto wondering who Catherine Meyers had been, but he offered no explanation, instead shifting his grip on the bundle of roses and starting to walk on through the cemetery. Ianto fell into step beside him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked after a few moments, and Ianto told him, “Visiting my brother.”
The way he said it, Jack wondered if he meant that his brother worked here somehow. Priest, maybe, or groundskeeper.
“You’ve never mentioned him,” he said, and, looking sideways, saw Ianto shrug.
“No,” he agreed. “But he died so long ago I’ve got nothing to say about him.”
Jack nodded, understanding. They walked on in silence for a few minutes, Jack stopping every now and again to replace old roses with new. Ianto made no comment, but Jack could tell he was reading the names and dates on the headstones, wondering who they’d been, what they were like, how they’d died, why Jack was putting flowers on their graves. He considered for a moment, as they reached a headstone reading Estelle Cole, what Ianto’s reaction would have been had he seen some of the earlier graves Jack had visited already today. Somehow he thought that even then Ianto wouldn’t have broken his silence.
Standing again, still holding most of the flowers he’d had when Ianto had found him, he hesitated, watching Ianto, and wavered between telling him to stay here for a few minutes and begging him to provide some company. In the end he didn’t say anything, just turned and started walking again. Ianto went with him, still silent.
It was this part of the visit that always hurt Jack the most. He found himself slowing down a little as they approached a separate area at the back of the cemetery. The trees that shaded the area in summer were now bare, and Jack, kneeling again, put aside his roses to brush the fallen leaves from the granite slabs in the ground. He cleared four, laid out in a square, each of them four feet across and six feet long, with names inscribed in two columns. He resolutely didn’t look at Ianto, knowing that he would have noticed that the fourth slab was not yet full, and that there were two more slabs he hadn’t uncovered, beyond the third and fourth.
He sat back and reached for his roses.
In silence, taking his time, he laid them out on certain names. He didn’t care if Ianto read them or not. Though he probably recognised a lot of them, even just vaguely, from the Torchwood archives. Names signed on the dotted lines, scrawled freehand at the top or bottom of memos, typed, printed, added, filled in on documents and reports and death certificates.
He didn’t put a rose on every name - somewhere a little less than half. But his fingers trailed across a few others, resting on the carved stone for a second here, a moment there. For some, laying the rose, he paused with his hand on the stone before withdrawing and moving on. It took a long time to get through the list.
John Carruthers
Griffith Davies
Harold Elsdon
Emily Wakeman
Charles Tennyson
Dai Evans
Lewis Kendall
Vivien Hawke
Iain Stanway
Jack kept going, his bundle of roses getting thinner as he moved on and on again, until he placed one last rose on the final name - Suzie Costello - and stopped. He stayed on his knees, and looked at the rose he still had in his left hand.
“They gave me one extra,” he said softly, but received no reply from Ianto. He didn’t look up, just knelt there a little longer, gazing at the slabs. There was no heading above them to let others know the connection between those names. They were just uniform letters on stone, named but unknown now. Lost to everyone except him.
“This is what Torchwood does,” he told Ianto quietly. “It takes your life, it takes your soul, it takes your body, and then it takes your individuality. Look at them. You can’t tell anything about them from that.” He gestured at the list, almost contemptuously, then sighed, and added, “But that’s all there is. Just names to try and remind us of people who did our job once. For some of them that’s all that was ever left behind. Names and memories.”
He looked up at Ianto at last, met his eyes, and was quietly surprised by the depth of understanding he saw there. In a way it saddened him. Ianto was so young, to know so much about death and loss and regret.
But Ianto, with a very slight smile, held out a hand to help him to his feet, saying, “Come on, Jack. You’ve spent enough time with the dead.”
You too, Jack wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead he took Ianto’s hand and stood up, pausing briefly to look down at the names of everyone lost from Torchwood Cardiff since he had started keeping records. He looked at his last rose, and then offered it to Ianto, who accepted it wordlessly. Their hands were still joined as they turned to leave.
And Jack didn’t need to check to know that there were fresh flowers on Lisa Hallett’s grave.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 980
Summary: Jack and Ianto share a chance meeting and a lot of understanding.
Prompt: 030. Death.
Jack's Flowers
The sun was out, making the grass seem greener even though the day was cold and the plants had all faded into their winter colours. Jack knelt by the headstone, moving the dead rose from the base of the stone and putting it on the grass in front. He put a fresh rose in its place, and paused for a moment before standing up again and brushing dirt from his knees with one hand.
“Jack?”
A little startled, he turned, then relaxed and nodded a greeting.
“Ianto.”
He watched as Ianto’s gaze went to the bundle of flowers he still held, then the headstone. He could see Ianto wondering who Catherine Meyers had been, but he offered no explanation, instead shifting his grip on the bundle of roses and starting to walk on through the cemetery. Ianto fell into step beside him.
“What are you doing here?” he asked after a few moments, and Ianto told him, “Visiting my brother.”
The way he said it, Jack wondered if he meant that his brother worked here somehow. Priest, maybe, or groundskeeper.
“You’ve never mentioned him,” he said, and, looking sideways, saw Ianto shrug.
“No,” he agreed. “But he died so long ago I’ve got nothing to say about him.”
Jack nodded, understanding. They walked on in silence for a few minutes, Jack stopping every now and again to replace old roses with new. Ianto made no comment, but Jack could tell he was reading the names and dates on the headstones, wondering who they’d been, what they were like, how they’d died, why Jack was putting flowers on their graves. He considered for a moment, as they reached a headstone reading Estelle Cole, what Ianto’s reaction would have been had he seen some of the earlier graves Jack had visited already today. Somehow he thought that even then Ianto wouldn’t have broken his silence.
Standing again, still holding most of the flowers he’d had when Ianto had found him, he hesitated, watching Ianto, and wavered between telling him to stay here for a few minutes and begging him to provide some company. In the end he didn’t say anything, just turned and started walking again. Ianto went with him, still silent.
It was this part of the visit that always hurt Jack the most. He found himself slowing down a little as they approached a separate area at the back of the cemetery. The trees that shaded the area in summer were now bare, and Jack, kneeling again, put aside his roses to brush the fallen leaves from the granite slabs in the ground. He cleared four, laid out in a square, each of them four feet across and six feet long, with names inscribed in two columns. He resolutely didn’t look at Ianto, knowing that he would have noticed that the fourth slab was not yet full, and that there were two more slabs he hadn’t uncovered, beyond the third and fourth.
He sat back and reached for his roses.
In silence, taking his time, he laid them out on certain names. He didn’t care if Ianto read them or not. Though he probably recognised a lot of them, even just vaguely, from the Torchwood archives. Names signed on the dotted lines, scrawled freehand at the top or bottom of memos, typed, printed, added, filled in on documents and reports and death certificates.
He didn’t put a rose on every name - somewhere a little less than half. But his fingers trailed across a few others, resting on the carved stone for a second here, a moment there. For some, laying the rose, he paused with his hand on the stone before withdrawing and moving on. It took a long time to get through the list.
John Carruthers
Griffith Davies
Harold Elsdon
Emily Wakeman
Charles Tennyson
Dai Evans
Lewis Kendall
Vivien Hawke
Iain Stanway
Jack kept going, his bundle of roses getting thinner as he moved on and on again, until he placed one last rose on the final name - Suzie Costello - and stopped. He stayed on his knees, and looked at the rose he still had in his left hand.
“They gave me one extra,” he said softly, but received no reply from Ianto. He didn’t look up, just knelt there a little longer, gazing at the slabs. There was no heading above them to let others know the connection between those names. They were just uniform letters on stone, named but unknown now. Lost to everyone except him.
“This is what Torchwood does,” he told Ianto quietly. “It takes your life, it takes your soul, it takes your body, and then it takes your individuality. Look at them. You can’t tell anything about them from that.” He gestured at the list, almost contemptuously, then sighed, and added, “But that’s all there is. Just names to try and remind us of people who did our job once. For some of them that’s all that was ever left behind. Names and memories.”
He looked up at Ianto at last, met his eyes, and was quietly surprised by the depth of understanding he saw there. In a way it saddened him. Ianto was so young, to know so much about death and loss and regret.
But Ianto, with a very slight smile, held out a hand to help him to his feet, saying, “Come on, Jack. You’ve spent enough time with the dead.”
You too, Jack wanted to say, but didn’t. Instead he took Ianto’s hand and stood up, pausing briefly to look down at the names of everyone lost from Torchwood Cardiff since he had started keeping records. He looked at his last rose, and then offered it to Ianto, who accepted it wordlessly. Their hands were still joined as they turned to leave.
And Jack didn’t need to check to know that there were fresh flowers on Lisa Hallett’s grave.