005.Journal // Ianto Jones // Torchwood
Title: Binding Lives
Prompt/Number: Journal/005
Rating: PG-13 for hearsay violence
Character/Fandom: Ianto Jones/Torchwood
Word Count: ~1300 words
Notes: Set right after/spoilers for "Cyberwoman" (TW 01x04)
It was her journal.
I found it while I was packing up the remnants of her life, of our life together. I didn't know what it was at first, though. It was just a book, a book out of place, a book that wasn't mine and wasn't ours either. It was the color of faded grass and the paper had that softly mottled handmade look, like it came from the exotic end of one of those world shops she liked to drag me through sometimes.
When I looked at it, I felt like I should almost turn away, pretend it wasn't there, protect it. I can't explain. I know it makes no sense, but when I touched it, it felt sacred, made only for certain hands. It had this kind of energy to it, this kind of spirit in it, and I am not a religious man, but it seemed wrong, somehow, to disturb it, as if moving it or reading it would awaken something or maybe put something to sleep.
I'm not big on nature - well, I'm not big on much of anything - but I remembered feeling just that way, almost, when we were in the park once and a pair of butterflies landed on the cake that I'd prepared. I'm a lout at times, I know, when my careful planning goes to pot and my first thought was to bat them away, but she stayed my hand before I'd done more than shift a bit. I felt it then, that way of waiting, hoping, barely breathing, knowing deeply that if I unsettled things, something beautiful would slip away.
So, I left the book alone at first. It made me ache for her, feel like she was there somehow and only just out of reach, just out of earshot. I knew she'd never been to the apartment, but I had made it hers, made it ours, filling every space as much with who she was as whoever I might have been, and as I turned each corner I thought - madness, I know - that maybe she'd be there somehow, that maybe I just kept missing her as I moved from room to room and that I'd find her in the end.
But, of course, I never did.
I found it, though, that book, her book, and it pulled at me somehow. I couldn't look away. As much as I felt that it shouldn't be disturbed, I also felt like maybe it wanted to be, like it was whispering secrets to me from behind a hand cupped at its mouth, disguising its actions as if there was someone else there, to interpret, to overhear. And in a way maybe there was.
I approached it, handling it with care as if it were fragile in a way that other books just weren’t, but I opened the front cover and I read the first line.
"I'm starting this journal to record all the bits bouncing around in my head that I'm not quite sure I should let bounce around in public."
I laughed a little at the end there, because she would have. She could always laugh with herself, even when things were tougher than they should have been. She could even pull smiles out of me at times when so many would say that I hardly smiled or that my smiles are hollow somehow. They weren't when she was here, but now I know they are.
Flashes of her final smiles, a metal monster conquering and killing and seeking to upgrade, made me choke, remembering the smell of blood and death and welded metal. And I didn't stop myself from crying as I stumbled to the loo and heaved up tea and takeaway.
She shouldn't have died like that, so young, so beautiful, and not only when I kissed her, but when she spoke to me. She was so good and so good to and for others. They shouldn't have just let her die that way. I shouldn't have just let her die.
I didn't remember closing the book, but I was glad to see it shut when I could bring myself to look at something other than the stark white of bathroom tile. I didn't open it again, though. I knew why it felt so sacred, why it seemed to whisper to my curiosity, but plea with my loyalty at the very same time. It was private and it was hers and she deserved better than me snooping around it like some gossip columnist or overbearing mum.
It contained things she might have told me, if she'd lived, maybe, but so many other things that she likely never would have said. I'd never know which was which for sure, though, and I had no right to steal that final choice from her. Not when I was already guilty of letting her die with so little, her mind drowning in reprogramming that I couldn't break through.
So, I just left it there, didn't even touch it, as I steeled myself against the hurt and moved around it to do the work that I'd refused all help with.
I sifted through old newspapers and tore off bits of packing foam, swaddling each of her knickknacks and framed photos, clothes and jewelry, before arranging them, gently, in one box or another, all according to size and weight and category. It was a ritual I knew by rote, familiar and ingrained, from cleaning up every single Torchwood mess, almost always on my own. I surprised myself with how quickly I could shove the pain down into a bottle under my heart and screw the cap on tight. It made me wonder if I was becoming one of them already, if my humanity was slipping away just as fast as theirs, if I was no less a monster for crying over her when the coldness of my work was always so easily in reach.
The tears fell again, though, hard and long, as I rocked against the table and looked out over the mess of our lives made neat and dead. The boxes were all sealed and ready for retrieval, ready to be stacked in storage, like her body slotted, nearly nameless, into the wall of the massive Torchwood morgue. And it felt like knives were stacking up inside of me, angling out and jabbing to pierce ever bit that they could reach.
That was all I had of her and I couldn't keep a single thing. The years of her life, of our lives together, and everything that marked them, belonged to some unknowable organization, one with enough clout to wipe clean the canvas of anyone's existence. That's what they were doing to her, to us. Erasure. But even that void was being created solely for the public. Torchwood had different rules for itself, held itself outside society, though it claimed to be working in humanity's best interest.
I wished that I couldn't believe it, that I could just let it all go and leave, but even then, there was a part of me that still knew the importance of our work, even in amongst the horrors.
I thought about them going through her things, though, rifling through their storage bays to study everything therein like they were just odd little rocks found in the street instead of pieces from someone's history, soaked in joys and pains and human life. It made me remember the journal in the other room, the one I'd carefully refused to pack, and all the secrets it held that even I shouldn't really ever be allowed to know. There was no question in the air, then. I didn't hesitate.
And the hearth smelled right and good, of grass and sweets, as the movers came to carry her away.
Prompt/Number: Journal/005
Rating: PG-13 for hearsay violence
Character/Fandom: Ianto Jones/Torchwood
Word Count: ~1300 words
Notes: Set right after/spoilers for "Cyberwoman" (TW 01x04)
It was her journal.
I found it while I was packing up the remnants of her life, of our life together. I didn't know what it was at first, though. It was just a book, a book out of place, a book that wasn't mine and wasn't ours either. It was the color of faded grass and the paper had that softly mottled handmade look, like it came from the exotic end of one of those world shops she liked to drag me through sometimes.
When I looked at it, I felt like I should almost turn away, pretend it wasn't there, protect it. I can't explain. I know it makes no sense, but when I touched it, it felt sacred, made only for certain hands. It had this kind of energy to it, this kind of spirit in it, and I am not a religious man, but it seemed wrong, somehow, to disturb it, as if moving it or reading it would awaken something or maybe put something to sleep.
I'm not big on nature - well, I'm not big on much of anything - but I remembered feeling just that way, almost, when we were in the park once and a pair of butterflies landed on the cake that I'd prepared. I'm a lout at times, I know, when my careful planning goes to pot and my first thought was to bat them away, but she stayed my hand before I'd done more than shift a bit. I felt it then, that way of waiting, hoping, barely breathing, knowing deeply that if I unsettled things, something beautiful would slip away.
So, I left the book alone at first. It made me ache for her, feel like she was there somehow and only just out of reach, just out of earshot. I knew she'd never been to the apartment, but I had made it hers, made it ours, filling every space as much with who she was as whoever I might have been, and as I turned each corner I thought - madness, I know - that maybe she'd be there somehow, that maybe I just kept missing her as I moved from room to room and that I'd find her in the end.
But, of course, I never did.
I found it, though, that book, her book, and it pulled at me somehow. I couldn't look away. As much as I felt that it shouldn't be disturbed, I also felt like maybe it wanted to be, like it was whispering secrets to me from behind a hand cupped at its mouth, disguising its actions as if there was someone else there, to interpret, to overhear. And in a way maybe there was.
I approached it, handling it with care as if it were fragile in a way that other books just weren’t, but I opened the front cover and I read the first line.
"I'm starting this journal to record all the bits bouncing around in my head that I'm not quite sure I should let bounce around in public."
I laughed a little at the end there, because she would have. She could always laugh with herself, even when things were tougher than they should have been. She could even pull smiles out of me at times when so many would say that I hardly smiled or that my smiles are hollow somehow. They weren't when she was here, but now I know they are.
Flashes of her final smiles, a metal monster conquering and killing and seeking to upgrade, made me choke, remembering the smell of blood and death and welded metal. And I didn't stop myself from crying as I stumbled to the loo and heaved up tea and takeaway.
She shouldn't have died like that, so young, so beautiful, and not only when I kissed her, but when she spoke to me. She was so good and so good to and for others. They shouldn't have just let her die that way. I shouldn't have just let her die.
I didn't remember closing the book, but I was glad to see it shut when I could bring myself to look at something other than the stark white of bathroom tile. I didn't open it again, though. I knew why it felt so sacred, why it seemed to whisper to my curiosity, but plea with my loyalty at the very same time. It was private and it was hers and she deserved better than me snooping around it like some gossip columnist or overbearing mum.
It contained things she might have told me, if she'd lived, maybe, but so many other things that she likely never would have said. I'd never know which was which for sure, though, and I had no right to steal that final choice from her. Not when I was already guilty of letting her die with so little, her mind drowning in reprogramming that I couldn't break through.
So, I just left it there, didn't even touch it, as I steeled myself against the hurt and moved around it to do the work that I'd refused all help with.
I sifted through old newspapers and tore off bits of packing foam, swaddling each of her knickknacks and framed photos, clothes and jewelry, before arranging them, gently, in one box or another, all according to size and weight and category. It was a ritual I knew by rote, familiar and ingrained, from cleaning up every single Torchwood mess, almost always on my own. I surprised myself with how quickly I could shove the pain down into a bottle under my heart and screw the cap on tight. It made me wonder if I was becoming one of them already, if my humanity was slipping away just as fast as theirs, if I was no less a monster for crying over her when the coldness of my work was always so easily in reach.
The tears fell again, though, hard and long, as I rocked against the table and looked out over the mess of our lives made neat and dead. The boxes were all sealed and ready for retrieval, ready to be stacked in storage, like her body slotted, nearly nameless, into the wall of the massive Torchwood morgue. And it felt like knives were stacking up inside of me, angling out and jabbing to pierce ever bit that they could reach.
That was all I had of her and I couldn't keep a single thing. The years of her life, of our lives together, and everything that marked them, belonged to some unknowable organization, one with enough clout to wipe clean the canvas of anyone's existence. That's what they were doing to her, to us. Erasure. But even that void was being created solely for the public. Torchwood had different rules for itself, held itself outside society, though it claimed to be working in humanity's best interest.
I wished that I couldn't believe it, that I could just let it all go and leave, but even then, there was a part of me that still knew the importance of our work, even in amongst the horrors.
I thought about them going through her things, though, rifling through their storage bays to study everything therein like they were just odd little rocks found in the street instead of pieces from someone's history, soaked in joys and pains and human life. It made me remember the journal in the other room, the one I'd carefully refused to pack, and all the secrets it held that even I shouldn't really ever be allowed to know. There was no question in the air, then. I didn't hesitate.
And the hearth smelled right and good, of grass and sweets, as the movers came to carry her away.