Fic: The Boy Is Gone 8/?
TITLE: The Boy Is Gone 8/?
AUTHOR: Erin Giles
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood and its characters are property of the BBC. The Family Jones is of my own creation.
RATING: PG-15
PAIRINGS/CHARACTERS: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, Helen, OC’s (& a surprise guest)
SUMMARY: The Rift has never been the most stable influence in Ianto Jones’ life but when children in Cardiff start disappearing all over the city, Ianto’s family life crashes rather dramatically with Torchwood.
AUTHOR NOTES: This is the sequel to my stories, “Family Matters” and “A Nostalgic Yearning” and is the finale in the series “Footprints in the Sand”. It will not make sense unless you have read these. Set post Exit Wounds.
I know I'm sort of teasing you now over who or what it is that's controlling everything but I'm afraid I will continue to tease - for a bit at least. *smiles wickedly* Also that original estimate of about 35000 words? Smidge off... 'cause I'm kinda at that already. (although I've only posted 25000 so far)
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Tuesday 12th August 3.24pm
Jack turned the rift alarm off without thinking, ignoring whatever it was alerting them to. He didn’t care now.
“Jack what’s going on? What are you doing?” Gwen demanded, trying to see what he was pulling up on the screen. She saw rift reports flash before her eyes, saw equations and numbers, before one flashed up that she recognised.
“Jack, you can’t. You can’t do this!” Gwen was imploring, pulling on his arm to tug him away from the screen.
“Why are you doing this? This is ridiculous, you’re desperate, and so am I, but this isn’t even a last resort.” Gwen pleaded, trying to put herself between Jack and the computer screens even as he reached to pull the gratings up, revealing miles of cables.
“Jack!” Gwen yelled, actually shoving him backwards so he stumbled into the coffee table. But it wasn’t Jack that was drawing her attention now.
A figure was stood at the top of the autopsy stairs, that stupid smirk on his face that said he’d been up to no good. He had on that purple t-shirt underneath his lab coat that Gwen had loved so much - even wore it to bed when Rhys wasn’t home.
“Owen?”
Gwen stepped forward hesitantly, a hand reaching out to him, to make sure he was there, that he was real. His smile grew brighter as she reached out to hug him, to pull him close to her. She could almost smell the formaldehyde barely concealed by the somewhat strong aftershave he wore.
Someone was tugging her away though, calling her name and before she had a chance to touch him something hit her full in the chest, knocking her back onto the grating. She let out a gasp of breath as the room was plunged back into a dull grey and she realised Jack was lying on top of her.
“Jack? What the hell?” Gwen stuttered, confused for a moment as Jack pulled himself off her and she continued to lie on the grate, a sudden emptiness filling her up inside.
“Who did you see?” Jack questioned as he pulled her effortlessly to her feet. She didn’t question how he knew, just met his gaze levelly before she answered.
“It was Owen.”
Gwen had tears in her eyes now as she glanced over Jack’s shoulder at the entrance to the autopsy bay. There was no one there, no one beckoning to her with open arms for the hug she desired and desperately needed.
“I saw Tosh, she tried to take me, held out her hand to be, beckoning me to come with her.” Jack admitted before he was moving back round Gwen to Tosh’s old workstation.
“These apparitions that have been appearing to children, they’re the ones that are taking them.” Jack surmised.
“So what? They’re being taken to Limbo?” Gwen asked, frowning, a confused look on her face as she spun round to face Jack.
“If you want to call it that.” Jack shrugged, turning away from the computer to regard her again.
“It’s another world, somewhere between living and dying and I’m guessing they need energy to survive in it, to move between worlds, that’s why they glow so much when they appear to us. We’re seeing the Rift and the energy they burn up to move through it, to move between worlds.” Jack explained, but Gwen was still frowning.
“So they’re taking children?” Gwen asked, almost incredulously.
Jack nodded. “More energy from them, more life still to live and easier to take. More accepting that their family member’s are still alive.”
“So why take Ianto?”
Jack hesitated, swallowing slightly, but his eyes not moving from Gwen’s questioning gaze.
“He’s fragile, fresh with grief and so much of it.” Jack admitted almost sheepishly.
“Think about it Gwen, he lost all his colleagues at Canary Wharf, Lisa six months later, his Mum just after that and now Tosh and Owen. He smells like an all you can eat buffet to them.”
“And you don’t?” Gwen asked before she had a chance to stop herself.
Jack’s face tried to remain impassive. “It just tried to take us didn’t it?”
“But why now?” Gwen was questioning again. “Why after everything are they seeping through now, taking people, taking children? And just from Cardiff?”
“Kick us when we’re down?” Jack asked rhetorically, shrugging before he was turning back to the bank of computers again.
“I’m not going to let them take anyone else though. I’ve got nothing but life to give. And they’re going to get it.” Jack spoke fiercely as he opened up Tosh’s equations again that would allow them to open the rift before he was going back to pulling miles of cable out from under the grating.
“Jack you can’t!” Gwen was back to pleading again, pulling the cables from his hands.
“You can’t open the rift, not after last time.”
“How else are we supposed to get them back?” Jack yelled, getting in Gwen’s face, but she wasn’t backing down.
“What so you won’t open the rift to get all those other missing people back but now it’s Ianto we’re going to risk the whole world for him? You don’t even know where he is Jack! You said so yourself!” Gwen was yelling back, almost spitting in his face she was that close to him.
“I’ll come back with him!”
“What if you don’t?” Gwen bit back almost immediately. “What if you go through the rift and you spend months, years, millennia searching for him? What am I supposed to do? Run Torchwood Cardiff by myself?”
“So what, it’s okay for you to open the rift to get someone you love back?” Jack spat, but Gwen could see he was losing his resolve.
Gwen calmed herself slightly. “You don’t know that opening the Rift is going to bring him back. What if you open it, you go through to find him and Abadan comes through again? Or worse? I can’t save the world on my own Jack.”
“How else am I supposed to get him back? I can’t just sit around and wait for the Rift to spit him back out Gwen.”
Gwen noted how quickly them had changed to him; she also didn’t fail to notice the lost look in Jack’s eyes.
“I don’t know.” Gwen admitted sadly, her voice barely above a whisper. She watched as Jack’s jaw set before he was moving past her, grabbing his coat from the stand and pulling it on, knocking the stand to the ground in his wake.
“Where are you going?” Gwen called after him.
“Out.” He replied rather gruffly as the cog door rolled shut behind him. Gwen sighed. She had won the argument, but it was a small and hollow victory. She wondered how many more people would disappear before she started thinking the same way as Jack.
Her heart clenched in her chest as she pulled her phone from her pocket, pressing speed dial two.
“Hello?”
“Rhys.” She sighed gratefully as she sunk onto the tatty old sofa below the Torchwood sign, taking in the chaos left behind by Jack’s manic moment.
“Gwen? You alright love?”
“No.” Gwen answered almost immediately, pulling her legs up onto the couch and tucking them under her chin.
Tuesday 12th August 7.11pm
Rhys was flicking through the paper, the first chance he’d got today. Not that he had been particularly busy, it was just he’d been distracted. Gwen had arrived home early again, a lack of appetite and a lack of will to do anything. She had lain against him on the couch, staring blankly at the news on the television before she’d announced she was going out for a walk. Rhys had wanted to go with her, to make sure she was okay, but he’d also appreciated that she needed to be on her own at the moment.
He’d let her go reluctantly and now, an hour later, he was looking for distractions to stop the worry gnawing away at the pit of his stomach. He’d already munched his way though a family size packet of walkers and was now perusing the headlines. Something caught his eye in the centrefold though. It reminded him somewhat of September 11th and the months after when there had been two page spreads in remembrance of all the firemen that had died in the attack. Now though he was staring down at names of children lost, pictures of four and five year olds grinning out at him without a care in the world. Timothy Roberts. Alun Williams. Evan Jones. Cadi Davies. Megan Owen. Finlay Lloyd.
Rhys shut the paper. It didn’t help. On the front page there was an announcement that the city would be having a ceremony outside the town hall tomorrow morning and the Mayor would make a plea to whomever had taken the children on the BBC 9 o’clock news. It wouldn’t help, and Rhys hated the fact he knew that.
Tuesday 12th August 11.59pm
Jack was alone back in the Hub again. He’d come back eventually, after wandering around aimlessly for hours, to find Gwen long gone. He didn’t want to stay here though. It was too empty, a distinct lack of life about the place.
Jack was considering going back to Ianto’s when the rift alarm sounded. It was almost background noise now; going off so often in a day Jack didn’t think he could bare the silence when it came back - if it came back. But as he crossed to the computer he realised this alarm was different. The Rift hadn’t taken something, something had come through.
“Ianto.” Jack’s voice was breathy and hopeful as he pulled his coat from the stand, bringing it the floor, clattering off the metal grating as he dived out the Hub without a second thought. Too late he realised he didn’t have the keys for the SUV with him, so he ran. He ran so hard and so long he thought his arms and legs would fall off. He sprinted through puddles that splattered mud on his coat and trousers, but he didn’t care. He ran until it felt like his heart was going to explode from inside his chest, felt like he was breathing pure carbon dioxide.
He knocked someone down in Mount Stuart Square, dodging round their friends that were emerging from the Point. The echoes of some band reached his ears, drowning out the sound of rain pelting down on him, flattening his hair to his forehead as his feet slapped loudly on wet tarmac. He skidded past a dumpster that bar staff were emptying bottles into.
“Careful mate!”
The sound of shattering glass failed to distract him as he ran on with the hope in his heart that he had found Ianto, finally stumbling to a halt outside the station. He turned in a wide arch, glancing furiously around for any sign of a suited Welshman, but the street was full of nothing but drunken revellers, searching blindly for keys and phones and numbers for taxis that hadn’t shown up. Until there was screaming, a deafening roar of someone in distress. Jack whirled around in search of the source to find a man crouched beside the closed gates to the station entrance. His face was buried in his hands; only thing showing was a cropped head of brown hair.
“Ianto?” Jack tentatively enquired, reaching out to the man. Green eyes glanced up at him, boring into his very soul as Jack’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach, leaving a queasy feeling in its wake. He didn’t recognise the face, and the face didn’t recognise him.
“Come on.” Jack encouraged, pulling the pliable man to his feet. “Let’s get you somewhere safe.”
Wednesday 13th August 2.14am
Jack sat with his head in his hands in the television room at Flat Holm. He could hear the distant sounds of crying, screaming and banging reverberating around the stone walls. If it was possible he felt worse now than when Ianto had first disappeared. He wondered bleakly how many times his heart had to break before it shattered.
“Here.”
Helen was handing him a warm mug. He was grateful to see it was tea and not coffee.
“You look like you need it. Rough couple of days for you I presume with all those children going missing. I hope you’re not expecting them to be housed here when they come back?” Helen asked, sitting down beside Jack on the saggy couch. Jack didn’t say anything, just clasped the mug in both hands, trying to get some feeling back in them.
“Ianto not with you tonight?” Helen prompted, somewhat disturbed by Jack’s vow of silence.
“He’s gone.” Jack said, voice void of emotion. Helen frowned, hoping Jack meant he’d moved on from Torchwood, rather than the alternative. But Helen knew Ianto Jones well enough to know that he would never leave Torchwood willingly. She had seen the way he looked at Jack Harkness, and to be honest she couldn’t blame him.
“He’s been taken by the Rift.” Jack added eventually, still staring into the depths of his cup of tea that remained untouched.
“I’m sorry.” Helen said eventually. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, had worked at Flat Holm too long to know that she couldn’t say anything that would make it okay. Ianto would either come back like the residents of Flat Holm or he wouldn’t come back at all.
“We’ll take care of him when he comes back.” Helen added as an after thought, trying to buoy Jack’s mood somewhat.
“I know you will. But I’d rather it was me. I rather he didn’t come back that way at all.” Jack replied almost immediately, but he sounded resigned, as if he knew he was clutching at straws, holding on to the back of false hope.
Wednesday 13th August 6.45am
Jack was in Ianto’s Church. He didn’t know why or how he had got here, nor how long he’d been sat there. He’d just walked and somehow he’d found himself in the second row staring at the figure of Christ hung from the cross like it was going to be his salvation.
“Jack?” Father Bowen was stood beside the pulpit, a sheaf of papers in his hands that he placed down on the lectern before moving across the wooden floor towards Jack.
“Everything alright?” Bowen asked, leaning on the end of the pews, trying to catch Jack’s eye as he gazed blearily into the middle distance.
“I think I’ve lost my hope.” Jack admitted, a defeated sound to his voice as he finally brought red-rimmed eyes into focus, gazing up at the vicar.
Bowen sighed slightly as he sat down beside Jack, leaning back against the hard wood and clasping his hands in front of him.
“Would I be right in guessing that Ianto is now amongst the many unlucky souls that have lost their way?” Bowen asked dejectedly. Jack didn’t trust his voice to answer and instead nodded sadly.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Bowen said, and he did sound genuinely cut up about the fact that Ianto was gone from the world. Jack expected him to be full of cutting remarks about how the church didn’t approve of ‘that sort of thing’, but Bowen was reaching out and placing a reassuring hand on Jack’s knee, squeezing slightly.
“I know it must be hard to lose someone you love, but you have to hang onto your hope, for his sake as much as yours.” Bowen advised. Jack didn’t say anything, found it hard to get even breath past the large lump in his throat that was both a mixture of shock over how accepting the church had become nowadays and how hard it was getting to keep the faith.
“You know what the bible says about hope?” Bowen asked, not expecting a reply from Jack, but taking his slight shake of the head as encouragement to go on.
“Hope isn’t about wishful thinking; hope is confident expectation. Christians have the hope that Christ will return someday to us, and with that hope we have faith and from that hope springs love.” Bowen explained. A bemused look crossed Jack’s features as he turned to regard the Vicar with doleful eyes.
“No offence Reverend, but what does that have to do with me finding Ianto again?” Jack asked, rather more bluntly than he intended.
“Let me put it another way for you Captain. As Christopher Reeve once said, ‘Once you choose hope, anything is possible.’”
On to Part 9
AUTHOR: Erin Giles
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood and its characters are property of the BBC. The Family Jones is of my own creation.
RATING: PG-15
PAIRINGS/CHARACTERS: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, Helen, OC’s (& a surprise guest)
SUMMARY: The Rift has never been the most stable influence in Ianto Jones’ life but when children in Cardiff start disappearing all over the city, Ianto’s family life crashes rather dramatically with Torchwood.
AUTHOR NOTES: This is the sequel to my stories, “Family Matters” and “A Nostalgic Yearning” and is the finale in the series “Footprints in the Sand”. It will not make sense unless you have read these. Set post Exit Wounds.
I know I'm sort of teasing you now over who or what it is that's controlling everything but I'm afraid I will continue to tease - for a bit at least. *smiles wickedly* Also that original estimate of about 35000 words? Smidge off... 'cause I'm kinda at that already. (although I've only posted 25000 so far)
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Tuesday 12th August 3.24pm
Jack turned the rift alarm off without thinking, ignoring whatever it was alerting them to. He didn’t care now.
“Jack what’s going on? What are you doing?” Gwen demanded, trying to see what he was pulling up on the screen. She saw rift reports flash before her eyes, saw equations and numbers, before one flashed up that she recognised.
“Jack, you can’t. You can’t do this!” Gwen was imploring, pulling on his arm to tug him away from the screen.
“Why are you doing this? This is ridiculous, you’re desperate, and so am I, but this isn’t even a last resort.” Gwen pleaded, trying to put herself between Jack and the computer screens even as he reached to pull the gratings up, revealing miles of cables.
“Jack!” Gwen yelled, actually shoving him backwards so he stumbled into the coffee table. But it wasn’t Jack that was drawing her attention now.
A figure was stood at the top of the autopsy stairs, that stupid smirk on his face that said he’d been up to no good. He had on that purple t-shirt underneath his lab coat that Gwen had loved so much - even wore it to bed when Rhys wasn’t home.
“Owen?”
Gwen stepped forward hesitantly, a hand reaching out to him, to make sure he was there, that he was real. His smile grew brighter as she reached out to hug him, to pull him close to her. She could almost smell the formaldehyde barely concealed by the somewhat strong aftershave he wore.
Someone was tugging her away though, calling her name and before she had a chance to touch him something hit her full in the chest, knocking her back onto the grating. She let out a gasp of breath as the room was plunged back into a dull grey and she realised Jack was lying on top of her.
“Jack? What the hell?” Gwen stuttered, confused for a moment as Jack pulled himself off her and she continued to lie on the grate, a sudden emptiness filling her up inside.
“Who did you see?” Jack questioned as he pulled her effortlessly to her feet. She didn’t question how he knew, just met his gaze levelly before she answered.
“It was Owen.”
Gwen had tears in her eyes now as she glanced over Jack’s shoulder at the entrance to the autopsy bay. There was no one there, no one beckoning to her with open arms for the hug she desired and desperately needed.
“I saw Tosh, she tried to take me, held out her hand to be, beckoning me to come with her.” Jack admitted before he was moving back round Gwen to Tosh’s old workstation.
“These apparitions that have been appearing to children, they’re the ones that are taking them.” Jack surmised.
“So what? They’re being taken to Limbo?” Gwen asked, frowning, a confused look on her face as she spun round to face Jack.
“If you want to call it that.” Jack shrugged, turning away from the computer to regard her again.
“It’s another world, somewhere between living and dying and I’m guessing they need energy to survive in it, to move between worlds, that’s why they glow so much when they appear to us. We’re seeing the Rift and the energy they burn up to move through it, to move between worlds.” Jack explained, but Gwen was still frowning.
“So they’re taking children?” Gwen asked, almost incredulously.
Jack nodded. “More energy from them, more life still to live and easier to take. More accepting that their family member’s are still alive.”
“So why take Ianto?”
Jack hesitated, swallowing slightly, but his eyes not moving from Gwen’s questioning gaze.
“He’s fragile, fresh with grief and so much of it.” Jack admitted almost sheepishly.
“Think about it Gwen, he lost all his colleagues at Canary Wharf, Lisa six months later, his Mum just after that and now Tosh and Owen. He smells like an all you can eat buffet to them.”
“And you don’t?” Gwen asked before she had a chance to stop herself.
Jack’s face tried to remain impassive. “It just tried to take us didn’t it?”
“But why now?” Gwen was questioning again. “Why after everything are they seeping through now, taking people, taking children? And just from Cardiff?”
“Kick us when we’re down?” Jack asked rhetorically, shrugging before he was turning back to the bank of computers again.
“I’m not going to let them take anyone else though. I’ve got nothing but life to give. And they’re going to get it.” Jack spoke fiercely as he opened up Tosh’s equations again that would allow them to open the rift before he was going back to pulling miles of cable out from under the grating.
“Jack you can’t!” Gwen was back to pleading again, pulling the cables from his hands.
“You can’t open the rift, not after last time.”
“How else are we supposed to get them back?” Jack yelled, getting in Gwen’s face, but she wasn’t backing down.
“What so you won’t open the rift to get all those other missing people back but now it’s Ianto we’re going to risk the whole world for him? You don’t even know where he is Jack! You said so yourself!” Gwen was yelling back, almost spitting in his face she was that close to him.
“I’ll come back with him!”
“What if you don’t?” Gwen bit back almost immediately. “What if you go through the rift and you spend months, years, millennia searching for him? What am I supposed to do? Run Torchwood Cardiff by myself?”
“So what, it’s okay for you to open the rift to get someone you love back?” Jack spat, but Gwen could see he was losing his resolve.
Gwen calmed herself slightly. “You don’t know that opening the Rift is going to bring him back. What if you open it, you go through to find him and Abadan comes through again? Or worse? I can’t save the world on my own Jack.”
“How else am I supposed to get him back? I can’t just sit around and wait for the Rift to spit him back out Gwen.”
Gwen noted how quickly them had changed to him; she also didn’t fail to notice the lost look in Jack’s eyes.
“I don’t know.” Gwen admitted sadly, her voice barely above a whisper. She watched as Jack’s jaw set before he was moving past her, grabbing his coat from the stand and pulling it on, knocking the stand to the ground in his wake.
“Where are you going?” Gwen called after him.
“Out.” He replied rather gruffly as the cog door rolled shut behind him. Gwen sighed. She had won the argument, but it was a small and hollow victory. She wondered how many more people would disappear before she started thinking the same way as Jack.
Her heart clenched in her chest as she pulled her phone from her pocket, pressing speed dial two.
“Hello?”
“Rhys.” She sighed gratefully as she sunk onto the tatty old sofa below the Torchwood sign, taking in the chaos left behind by Jack’s manic moment.
“Gwen? You alright love?”
“No.” Gwen answered almost immediately, pulling her legs up onto the couch and tucking them under her chin.
Tuesday 12th August 7.11pm
Rhys was flicking through the paper, the first chance he’d got today. Not that he had been particularly busy, it was just he’d been distracted. Gwen had arrived home early again, a lack of appetite and a lack of will to do anything. She had lain against him on the couch, staring blankly at the news on the television before she’d announced she was going out for a walk. Rhys had wanted to go with her, to make sure she was okay, but he’d also appreciated that she needed to be on her own at the moment.
He’d let her go reluctantly and now, an hour later, he was looking for distractions to stop the worry gnawing away at the pit of his stomach. He’d already munched his way though a family size packet of walkers and was now perusing the headlines. Something caught his eye in the centrefold though. It reminded him somewhat of September 11th and the months after when there had been two page spreads in remembrance of all the firemen that had died in the attack. Now though he was staring down at names of children lost, pictures of four and five year olds grinning out at him without a care in the world. Timothy Roberts. Alun Williams. Evan Jones. Cadi Davies. Megan Owen. Finlay Lloyd.
Rhys shut the paper. It didn’t help. On the front page there was an announcement that the city would be having a ceremony outside the town hall tomorrow morning and the Mayor would make a plea to whomever had taken the children on the BBC 9 o’clock news. It wouldn’t help, and Rhys hated the fact he knew that.
Tuesday 12th August 11.59pm
Jack was alone back in the Hub again. He’d come back eventually, after wandering around aimlessly for hours, to find Gwen long gone. He didn’t want to stay here though. It was too empty, a distinct lack of life about the place.
Jack was considering going back to Ianto’s when the rift alarm sounded. It was almost background noise now; going off so often in a day Jack didn’t think he could bare the silence when it came back - if it came back. But as he crossed to the computer he realised this alarm was different. The Rift hadn’t taken something, something had come through.
“Ianto.” Jack’s voice was breathy and hopeful as he pulled his coat from the stand, bringing it the floor, clattering off the metal grating as he dived out the Hub without a second thought. Too late he realised he didn’t have the keys for the SUV with him, so he ran. He ran so hard and so long he thought his arms and legs would fall off. He sprinted through puddles that splattered mud on his coat and trousers, but he didn’t care. He ran until it felt like his heart was going to explode from inside his chest, felt like he was breathing pure carbon dioxide.
He knocked someone down in Mount Stuart Square, dodging round their friends that were emerging from the Point. The echoes of some band reached his ears, drowning out the sound of rain pelting down on him, flattening his hair to his forehead as his feet slapped loudly on wet tarmac. He skidded past a dumpster that bar staff were emptying bottles into.
“Careful mate!”
The sound of shattering glass failed to distract him as he ran on with the hope in his heart that he had found Ianto, finally stumbling to a halt outside the station. He turned in a wide arch, glancing furiously around for any sign of a suited Welshman, but the street was full of nothing but drunken revellers, searching blindly for keys and phones and numbers for taxis that hadn’t shown up. Until there was screaming, a deafening roar of someone in distress. Jack whirled around in search of the source to find a man crouched beside the closed gates to the station entrance. His face was buried in his hands; only thing showing was a cropped head of brown hair.
“Ianto?” Jack tentatively enquired, reaching out to the man. Green eyes glanced up at him, boring into his very soul as Jack’s heart sank to the pit of his stomach, leaving a queasy feeling in its wake. He didn’t recognise the face, and the face didn’t recognise him.
“Come on.” Jack encouraged, pulling the pliable man to his feet. “Let’s get you somewhere safe.”
Wednesday 13th August 2.14am
Jack sat with his head in his hands in the television room at Flat Holm. He could hear the distant sounds of crying, screaming and banging reverberating around the stone walls. If it was possible he felt worse now than when Ianto had first disappeared. He wondered bleakly how many times his heart had to break before it shattered.
“Here.”
Helen was handing him a warm mug. He was grateful to see it was tea and not coffee.
“You look like you need it. Rough couple of days for you I presume with all those children going missing. I hope you’re not expecting them to be housed here when they come back?” Helen asked, sitting down beside Jack on the saggy couch. Jack didn’t say anything, just clasped the mug in both hands, trying to get some feeling back in them.
“Ianto not with you tonight?” Helen prompted, somewhat disturbed by Jack’s vow of silence.
“He’s gone.” Jack said, voice void of emotion. Helen frowned, hoping Jack meant he’d moved on from Torchwood, rather than the alternative. But Helen knew Ianto Jones well enough to know that he would never leave Torchwood willingly. She had seen the way he looked at Jack Harkness, and to be honest she couldn’t blame him.
“He’s been taken by the Rift.” Jack added eventually, still staring into the depths of his cup of tea that remained untouched.
“I’m sorry.” Helen said eventually. She couldn’t think of anything else to say, had worked at Flat Holm too long to know that she couldn’t say anything that would make it okay. Ianto would either come back like the residents of Flat Holm or he wouldn’t come back at all.
“We’ll take care of him when he comes back.” Helen added as an after thought, trying to buoy Jack’s mood somewhat.
“I know you will. But I’d rather it was me. I rather he didn’t come back that way at all.” Jack replied almost immediately, but he sounded resigned, as if he knew he was clutching at straws, holding on to the back of false hope.
Wednesday 13th August 6.45am
Jack was in Ianto’s Church. He didn’t know why or how he had got here, nor how long he’d been sat there. He’d just walked and somehow he’d found himself in the second row staring at the figure of Christ hung from the cross like it was going to be his salvation.
“Jack?” Father Bowen was stood beside the pulpit, a sheaf of papers in his hands that he placed down on the lectern before moving across the wooden floor towards Jack.
“Everything alright?” Bowen asked, leaning on the end of the pews, trying to catch Jack’s eye as he gazed blearily into the middle distance.
“I think I’ve lost my hope.” Jack admitted, a defeated sound to his voice as he finally brought red-rimmed eyes into focus, gazing up at the vicar.
Bowen sighed slightly as he sat down beside Jack, leaning back against the hard wood and clasping his hands in front of him.
“Would I be right in guessing that Ianto is now amongst the many unlucky souls that have lost their way?” Bowen asked dejectedly. Jack didn’t trust his voice to answer and instead nodded sadly.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Bowen said, and he did sound genuinely cut up about the fact that Ianto was gone from the world. Jack expected him to be full of cutting remarks about how the church didn’t approve of ‘that sort of thing’, but Bowen was reaching out and placing a reassuring hand on Jack’s knee, squeezing slightly.
“I know it must be hard to lose someone you love, but you have to hang onto your hope, for his sake as much as yours.” Bowen advised. Jack didn’t say anything, found it hard to get even breath past the large lump in his throat that was both a mixture of shock over how accepting the church had become nowadays and how hard it was getting to keep the faith.
“You know what the bible says about hope?” Bowen asked, not expecting a reply from Jack, but taking his slight shake of the head as encouragement to go on.
“Hope isn’t about wishful thinking; hope is confident expectation. Christians have the hope that Christ will return someday to us, and with that hope we have faith and from that hope springs love.” Bowen explained. A bemused look crossed Jack’s features as he turned to regard the Vicar with doleful eyes.
“No offence Reverend, but what does that have to do with me finding Ianto again?” Jack asked, rather more bluntly than he intended.
“Let me put it another way for you Captain. As Christopher Reeve once said, ‘Once you choose hope, anything is possible.’”
On to Part 9