In the shadows [fic]
Title: In the shadows
Author:
shadowbyrd
Rating(s): G
Pairing(s): Jack/Tosh
Prompt: 55. Spirit for
fanfic100, 80. Curse for
otp_100
Word Count: 1508
Summary: Even memories struggle to be immortal.
He keeps the key in an old ashtray amongst decades-old cigarette ends. He used to carry it around with him, but after that time he had to rip apart three alien corpses to get it back he took to hiding it instead; the turn-ups of a pair of trousers in his wardrobe, an empty hip-flask. Six months after Ianto went missing in action Jack had felt safe leaving the half-full ashtray on his desk.
He doesn’t dig it out often - when things start getting too much for him, sometimes when he feels nostalgic. He used to go because he missed her, but it’s been a few years and he feels he’s grown out of that now.
Tonight he just wants to be able to talk with someone that he’s not going to have to look in the eye the next day, who won’t be glancing back, checking for weaknesses when they think he’s not looking. He sends the team home, slips his coat on and walks. It takes him a lot longer and the clouds overhead have been threatening rain all day, but that’s how Jack likes it. It allows him to uphold the illusion that this is nothing to do with work; for all his drama and flair he’s far less conspicuous than the SUV.
The front door is awkward as always and it takes Jack a couple of shoves before it finally stutters open. He tries the old light-switches, but the hallway stays stubbornly dark. He frowns and pulls out his torch, climbing up the stairs anyway. If she didn’t want him coming in tonight she could very easily stop him in his tracks, never mind all this messing around with locks and lights.
The door to the upstairs flat welcomes him in, smooth and silent. The lights are not so sympathetic. The room is quite empty save the dressing table by the door and a few creaking armchairs draped in old bed sheets to keep the dust off. He always gets this feeling when he first comes in. Apprehension. Will she come back again?
He turns to shut and bolt the door and turns back to find the room lit in the low, warm light of a single trembling candle flame, set on the old dressing table. Jack peers at it for a moment and reaches out to try and pick it up. He gets confused every now and then with what’s his, what’s hers and what is theirs to share.
“They switched the electricity off a couple of weeks back,” says Toshiko, a couple more candles on the table flickering into life.
Jack looks up and sees her in the mirror, crouched by the coffee table, lighting more candles. Floating candles. He remembers them from a dinner party they went to at Gwen’s, how much Toshiko had admired them. He turns to face her, looking appropriately apologetic. “I’m, sorry, I must have forgotten to pay the bill -”
“I’m not complaining,” she says. And she’s not. She sounds amused, actually. “Candles. Gives a certain feel, don’t you think?” She slides back up onto the couch, the dust covers vanished like tired ghosts.
Jack chuckles. “If they were real we’d probably end up burning the place down.” As he looks around he recognises more and more of Toshiko’s things from her old flat, including one or two which he actually has in his quarters back at the Hub. Seeing her rug he smiles and eases out of his shoes. Toshiko shivers.
Jack pauses. “You cold?”
“A little.”
He sets the candle down on the table and shrugs his coat off. He makes to toss it to her, but she stops him with a reproving look and a low, “Jack…”
“They’re not real,” Jack points out. All the same, he walks around the memory of a table (and God knows whose it is, because it’s not the one he remembers from her flat) and its memory of candle light to hand it to her. Technically, because it’s his through and through, she shouldn’t be able to touch it. Her memories, however, are apparently too strong, too visceral. It’s not just that she can touch it; she can, if she so chooses, do up all the buttons and the belt and prance about the room in it, or use it as a blanket, as she does now.
Jack eases himself to the floor, leaning back against the couch and giving his arms, his legs and his neck a good long stretch, before relaxing and letting his whole body go limp. He hears Toshiko laugh quietly, and she begins to stroke his hair. “So. Long time, no see.”
Jack’s eyes drift open lazily. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
“I was surprised not to see you on the fifteenth.” The reprimand is subtle, but carries a lot. Did you forget? Don’t you care anymore?
Jack shrugs carelessly. “Too busy saving the world. Always meant to come along after, but then it was one thing after another, and -”
She pats his shoulder slowly. She’s not particularly interested in his excuses.
“Were you alright?”
“…okay, actually,” he admits. “Much better than I expected.” He tilts his head back and watches her nod.
“That’s why, then?”
He lets his head fall forward again. “Yeah.”
The truth is, Ianto’s slipped past him; when Jack remembers he still feels a little worried, a little upset, but he is no longer waiting for Ianto to suddenly re-appear, wondering every other moment where he is and whether he’s alright. Either he’s dead and that’s that or he’s not and there’s a chance that Jack might find him again one day. Of course, if Ianto is dead, then Jack will probably never know and will probably be able to live in hope for as long as he chooses, for better or for worse.
He doesn’t have anything to say to her about Ianto that he hasn’t already said at some point, sober or drunk, so he tells her about the others.
He talks to her about Owen, ignoring her winces when he mentions all the stitches that he and Owen need to re-do almost every morning. It takes forever these days - there are so many of them now and he’s on the verge of falling apart even when they’re done stitching him together. He voices his worries over Gwen, who barely argues with him anymore. She’s growing cold, becoming quieter and more withdrawn. She’s not been the same since Rhys left. She blames him for that. She’s never come out and said it but it hangs there between them nonetheless.
He used to be careful about mentioning the new recruits (not that they are all that new any more), only mentioning Ianto’s replacement in passing and never speaking of the new tech. After a while he forgot to be quite so careful, let a name slip and ended up answering all of Toshiko’s questions with great detail. He doesn’t have any big concerns with them at the moment - their “new” receptionist/tea boy doesn’t quite have Ianto’s grasp of figures, but he does have an excellent score on the firing range, and while their techie spends a lot of time on online gaming he has managed to repair an alien answering machine without even knowing what it was. They’re not Tosh and Ianto, but they’re not bad at all.
After he’s got it all off his chest they begin to reminisce, in particular about that day they ended up in 1941. Toshiko still has questions, and Jack still for the most part dances around them. They have a dance too, and Toshiko’s steps are perfect, a few times putting him to shame. He laughs and just about manages to kiss her, due to some almost forgotten night out, not long before -
After another hour or so he gets ready to go - he shouldn’t have stopped here this long really; there should always be someone manning the Hub, just in case. And, just as sure as the apprehension when he first enters this little hallows, on leaving he feels guilty.
“Toshiko.” She smiles slightly to show she’s listening. “Are you happy? Being here, I mean?”
Toshiko adopts a politely confused expression. “Of course. I’d leave if I wasn’t.”
Jack mimics her. “Why don’t you want to?”
Her smile fades. “Beyond. It’s just… there’s nothing there. Just dark. I don’t like the dark.”
Jack almost laughs. “It’s dark here.”
“Not really.” She crouches by the table, sitting in the gold glow. “I have my candles.”
Jack can’t think what to say to that and so just smiles and says, “Good night, Toshiko.”
“Good night.”
Jack locks the door behind him on his way out and nearly breaks his neck trying to get down the stairs in the dark. As Toshiko listens to him go the candles wink out one by one. As she hears the front door shut and lock behind him she picks up the last candle and after a moment of hesitation blows it out.
Author:
shadowbyrd
Rating(s): G
Pairing(s): Jack/Tosh
Prompt: 55. Spirit for
fanfic100, 80. Curse for
otp_100
Word Count: 1508
Summary: Even memories struggle to be immortal.
He keeps the key in an old ashtray amongst decades-old cigarette ends. He used to carry it around with him, but after that time he had to rip apart three alien corpses to get it back he took to hiding it instead; the turn-ups of a pair of trousers in his wardrobe, an empty hip-flask. Six months after Ianto went missing in action Jack had felt safe leaving the half-full ashtray on his desk.
He doesn’t dig it out often - when things start getting too much for him, sometimes when he feels nostalgic. He used to go because he missed her, but it’s been a few years and he feels he’s grown out of that now.
Tonight he just wants to be able to talk with someone that he’s not going to have to look in the eye the next day, who won’t be glancing back, checking for weaknesses when they think he’s not looking. He sends the team home, slips his coat on and walks. It takes him a lot longer and the clouds overhead have been threatening rain all day, but that’s how Jack likes it. It allows him to uphold the illusion that this is nothing to do with work; for all his drama and flair he’s far less conspicuous than the SUV.
The front door is awkward as always and it takes Jack a couple of shoves before it finally stutters open. He tries the old light-switches, but the hallway stays stubbornly dark. He frowns and pulls out his torch, climbing up the stairs anyway. If she didn’t want him coming in tonight she could very easily stop him in his tracks, never mind all this messing around with locks and lights.
The door to the upstairs flat welcomes him in, smooth and silent. The lights are not so sympathetic. The room is quite empty save the dressing table by the door and a few creaking armchairs draped in old bed sheets to keep the dust off. He always gets this feeling when he first comes in. Apprehension. Will she come back again?
He turns to shut and bolt the door and turns back to find the room lit in the low, warm light of a single trembling candle flame, set on the old dressing table. Jack peers at it for a moment and reaches out to try and pick it up. He gets confused every now and then with what’s his, what’s hers and what is theirs to share.
“They switched the electricity off a couple of weeks back,” says Toshiko, a couple more candles on the table flickering into life.
Jack looks up and sees her in the mirror, crouched by the coffee table, lighting more candles. Floating candles. He remembers them from a dinner party they went to at Gwen’s, how much Toshiko had admired them. He turns to face her, looking appropriately apologetic. “I’m, sorry, I must have forgotten to pay the bill -”
“I’m not complaining,” she says. And she’s not. She sounds amused, actually. “Candles. Gives a certain feel, don’t you think?” She slides back up onto the couch, the dust covers vanished like tired ghosts.
Jack chuckles. “If they were real we’d probably end up burning the place down.” As he looks around he recognises more and more of Toshiko’s things from her old flat, including one or two which he actually has in his quarters back at the Hub. Seeing her rug he smiles and eases out of his shoes. Toshiko shivers.
Jack pauses. “You cold?”
“A little.”
He sets the candle down on the table and shrugs his coat off. He makes to toss it to her, but she stops him with a reproving look and a low, “Jack…”
“They’re not real,” Jack points out. All the same, he walks around the memory of a table (and God knows whose it is, because it’s not the one he remembers from her flat) and its memory of candle light to hand it to her. Technically, because it’s his through and through, she shouldn’t be able to touch it. Her memories, however, are apparently too strong, too visceral. It’s not just that she can touch it; she can, if she so chooses, do up all the buttons and the belt and prance about the room in it, or use it as a blanket, as she does now.
Jack eases himself to the floor, leaning back against the couch and giving his arms, his legs and his neck a good long stretch, before relaxing and letting his whole body go limp. He hears Toshiko laugh quietly, and she begins to stroke his hair. “So. Long time, no see.”
Jack’s eyes drift open lazily. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”
“I was surprised not to see you on the fifteenth.” The reprimand is subtle, but carries a lot. Did you forget? Don’t you care anymore?
Jack shrugs carelessly. “Too busy saving the world. Always meant to come along after, but then it was one thing after another, and -”
She pats his shoulder slowly. She’s not particularly interested in his excuses.
“Were you alright?”
“…okay, actually,” he admits. “Much better than I expected.” He tilts his head back and watches her nod.
“That’s why, then?”
He lets his head fall forward again. “Yeah.”
The truth is, Ianto’s slipped past him; when Jack remembers he still feels a little worried, a little upset, but he is no longer waiting for Ianto to suddenly re-appear, wondering every other moment where he is and whether he’s alright. Either he’s dead and that’s that or he’s not and there’s a chance that Jack might find him again one day. Of course, if Ianto is dead, then Jack will probably never know and will probably be able to live in hope for as long as he chooses, for better or for worse.
He doesn’t have anything to say to her about Ianto that he hasn’t already said at some point, sober or drunk, so he tells her about the others.
He talks to her about Owen, ignoring her winces when he mentions all the stitches that he and Owen need to re-do almost every morning. It takes forever these days - there are so many of them now and he’s on the verge of falling apart even when they’re done stitching him together. He voices his worries over Gwen, who barely argues with him anymore. She’s growing cold, becoming quieter and more withdrawn. She’s not been the same since Rhys left. She blames him for that. She’s never come out and said it but it hangs there between them nonetheless.
He used to be careful about mentioning the new recruits (not that they are all that new any more), only mentioning Ianto’s replacement in passing and never speaking of the new tech. After a while he forgot to be quite so careful, let a name slip and ended up answering all of Toshiko’s questions with great detail. He doesn’t have any big concerns with them at the moment - their “new” receptionist/tea boy doesn’t quite have Ianto’s grasp of figures, but he does have an excellent score on the firing range, and while their techie spends a lot of time on online gaming he has managed to repair an alien answering machine without even knowing what it was. They’re not Tosh and Ianto, but they’re not bad at all.
After he’s got it all off his chest they begin to reminisce, in particular about that day they ended up in 1941. Toshiko still has questions, and Jack still for the most part dances around them. They have a dance too, and Toshiko’s steps are perfect, a few times putting him to shame. He laughs and just about manages to kiss her, due to some almost forgotten night out, not long before -
After another hour or so he gets ready to go - he shouldn’t have stopped here this long really; there should always be someone manning the Hub, just in case. And, just as sure as the apprehension when he first enters this little hallows, on leaving he feels guilty.
“Toshiko.” She smiles slightly to show she’s listening. “Are you happy? Being here, I mean?”
Toshiko adopts a politely confused expression. “Of course. I’d leave if I wasn’t.”
Jack mimics her. “Why don’t you want to?”
Her smile fades. “Beyond. It’s just… there’s nothing there. Just dark. I don’t like the dark.”
Jack almost laughs. “It’s dark here.”
“Not really.” She crouches by the table, sitting in the gold glow. “I have my candles.”
Jack can’t think what to say to that and so just smiles and says, “Good night, Toshiko.”
“Good night.”
Jack locks the door behind him on his way out and nearly breaks his neck trying to get down the stairs in the dark. As Toshiko listens to him go the candles wink out one by one. As she hears the front door shut and lock behind him she picks up the last candle and after a moment of hesitation blows it out.