Ficlet: Lost And Found
Title: Lost And Found
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, mentions Gwen and Bilis Manger.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: End Of Days.
Summary: Jack helped Ianto get over losing Lisa, but who can help him get over losing Jack?
Word Count: 400
Written For: Prompt #407: Past Prompts Revisited, using #013: Lost, at slashthedrabble.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Jack’s gone and Ianto feels lost. It was Jack who’d given him a new purpose and reason for living after Lisa’s final end, Jack who’d offered new hope for the future and a warm body to cuddle up to when the nightmares were bad.
Now it’s Jack who’s lying on a cold metal tray in the morgue, with Gwen stubbornly hovering beside him like a grieving lover, keeping everyone else from saying their final goodbyes. Ianto wishes Jack was here to tell him what to do, how to deal with another loss when his heart has barely healed from the last one.
He should be the one down there, sitting beside the man he’s gradually been falling in love with over the last few months. He wants to be there, holding Jack’s cold hand, spilling his heart out to ears that can no longer hear, but Gwen won’t leave and Ianto’s not about to utter those private and personal expressions of love in front of her. They’re for Jack alone, Jack who is gone.
Ianto wonders whether he would follow Jack if he could.
The coat is a poor substitute for Jack, but it still smells of him so Ianto hugs it as he grieves. It hurts, not having the comforting warmth of Jack’s arms around him, so he puts the coat on and hugs himself, but it’s not the same and soon he returns the tear-dampened coat to its hook. There’s work to do, and he can’t let Jack down. Not again.
Perhaps he deserves this misery, punishment for betraying his leader, his lover. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, but he wasn’t, Manger had deceived them all; they’d fallen for his lies. What had it got them? They’d unleashed a demon that could have destroyed them all, forcing Jack to make the ultimate sacrifice to save them from their stupidity. They couldn’t undo what they’d done, but they could pick up the pieces as best they could and try to carry on, in Jack’s name.
When Jack appears in the doorway, pale but alive, it’s nothing short of a miracle. Ianto approaches, tentative and unsure; after what he did, his lover has every right to hate him. But Jack is a better man than that; he understands, and he forgives. Wrapped in Jack’s arms, held close, Ianto no longer feels lost; he’s found his way home.
The End