Cast no shadow
Title: Cast no shadow
Written to: kel_reiley
Author: electro_club
Beta: blue_fjords and solsticezero. ILU²
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Rhiannon, Jack (mentions of Jack/Ianto)
Spoilers: Post-Children of Earth
DISCLAIMER: THEY'RE NOT MINE. EXCEPT WHEN THEY ARE. IN MAH PANTS.
Summary: When he showed up on a Wednesday night, Rhiannon felt almost as though she should've been waiting for him.
Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say
Chained to all the places that he never wished to stay
Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say
As he faced the sun he cast no shadow
It is a Wednesday night when he shows up.
Mica screams from the living room that there is a man outside the house. The undertone of fear in her daughter’s voice, her eyes a trifle too wide, a trifle too haunted, breaks Rhiannon’s heart a little bit. She’s only five years old, and suddenly past the monsters under the bed and fairytale witches; found out only too soon that there is nothing quite as evil and heartless and capable of harming her as her own kind.
Rhiannon rushes to the window, heart pounding insanely in her mouth. Johnny isn’t home yet ¬- and where is that daft sod anyway? She’s only one, if anything happens to her-
“Stay away from the window, Mica,” she whispers, pulling her daughter back to hide behind her body. Whisper has become the default tone for most conversations inside her house.
She never thought she’d long for the yelling, the noises, the arguments during breakfast and the fights to see who’d get in the shower first, not quite like she does now. Silence used to be nonexistent in the Davies’ home. She remembers yelling at the kids to shut them up, and yelling at Johnny because he was a 35, soon to turn 36 year old, acting like a 12 year old most of the time. She remembers thinking she’d certainly lose her mind sooner rather than later. Never could Rhiannon have imagined that there was nothing as fearsome, as conductive to madness, as silence. Nothing quite as dreadful. And now silence is all she’s got, plain and constant, like someone listening to their every word and watching their every move. A presence, solid and oppressive, that feels so awfully lifeless.
Nothing is ever absolutely safe or completely normal these days, and Rhiannon feels almost guilty of the times she complained of the plainness of her life, of when she wished for something more, something bigger, to come and sweep her off her feet.
Now she just wants it to go back to the way it was. Exactly how it was.
Having a man standing on her front yard at this hour of the night is the sort of thing that never happened before. Now she thinks she should’ve anticipated it. Not that this is the most scary or strange occurrence she’s seen in the last couple of weeks, but right now, the sight of that eerie figure outside sends cold shivers down her spine like nothing else.
Not three weeks before, Rhiannon wouldn’t have spared a second thought before phoning the coppers; but she’s not the same woman she was three weeks ago, nor are the coppers the same pillar of safety they used to be. The entire world is changed, shifted out of its axis only to resettle into new and awkward ways around her, broadening horizons and limiting options, complicating things that weren’t supposed to be complicated, making it all so difficult.
Three weeks ago, seems like a lifetime. Rhiannon wasn’t paranoid then, her daughter wasn’t easily frightened by things she couldn’t understand, there wouldn’t have been a man standing on her front yard in the middle of the night, and if there was, certainly, then, there wouldn’t have been any chance he might be an alien. She still can’t decide whether considering the odds of that is simply being realistic or just completely mental.
There are aspects of this brand new world she’s not sure she’s ready to embrace. Not sure she ever will.
In retrospect, life seemed impossibly easier three weeks back, when she didn’t know a thing about aliens, trusted her government. Still had a younger brother.
She knows she’s supposed to be doing something - plotting the quickest way out of the house, calling her husband, screaming; but instead, she waits. Not an idea why, except that this man, however creepy, doesn’t feel like a threat. She isn’t in any ways an expert, in spite of everything, but someone ill-intentioned wouldn’t just wait, giving her time to escape or get help. Or would he?
Rhiannon mutters a curse under her breath, because there is a whole new batch of nutters outside, including ones that come from other planets, or whatever hole in the universe they come from, and she can’t distinguish between them anymore.
She looks down at Mica, urgent expectancy in her eyes. “It’s ok, sweetheart,” she says soothingly, but probably not sounding as convincing as she’s aiming for. “Go play with your brother, yeah?” She holds her by her shoulder and gently pushes her towards David, who’s got his eyes glued to the telly, completely oblivious to the growing tension around him. There was a time when that would’ve bothered her, his heedlessness and lack of interest; now, though, she’s actually grateful someone in that family has managed to go on like nothing ever happened.
The man just stands there, faceless in the dark, boring into her with eyes she cannot see but feels almost like a touch, as long, dragged-out minutes of silent war of mutual observation go by. It takes a while for her to quiet the riot going inside her head, enough to understand, at last, why it is that he feels so strangely harmless in spite of his very questionable behavior, why is it that he just won’t go away.
She realizes she knows who he is.
Decision made in a split-second, Rhiannon shrugs on her coat, pulls her hair up. “David, I’m going out for a minute.” It’s Mica who looks up at her. “It’s alright, sweetie. Mum knows the person who’s out there. Watch your sister, David.”
“Yes, mum.” He doesn’t even bat an eyelid.
“Let her play with you.” She advances towards the door with fast, decided steps.
“Aw, mum-“ he begins his complaint.
“Do as I say already.” And then she hesitates, white-knuckled grip around the doorknob.
What if she’s wrong? “Stay alert,” she turns to her son once more. “If you hear anything weird, take the phone and go hide. Call your dad. Did you hear me, David?”
“Yes, mum.” It is Mica who replies.
Rhiannon smiles. “I’ll be right back.”
The door clicks shut behind her, locking inside the feeble sense of assurance she thought she had, along with the warmth. Rhiannon crosses her arms, all the hairs on her body bristling furiously, muscles shuddering under layers of clothes. The weather has little to do with this, she reckons.
She must be mad, she thinks.
They eye each other tentatively. She can see his face, from where she stands now; hardened lines on a marble-carved expression. Creases between eyebrows, his eyes sparkle diamond-blue in the middle of her barely lit garden.
He is very handsome indeed.
When the growing feeling of inevitability beats, though not completely eradicates, her recently acquired doubtful nature, she is the one to take the first - vacillating - step. He seems almost grateful, when she comes to stand mere feet from him. He can reach her if he stretches his arm, she notes, but the hostile atmosphere dissipates in a spell, and she feels almost… safe. Here, outside, with a stranger, this stranger, more than anywhere else.
His lips twist in the lightest of curves, an attempted smile that softens his lines momentarily. But the gentleness of his grin doesn’t meet the unaltered sharpness in his gaze.
There is something brutally lonely about this man.
Rhiannon shifts her weight on her feet, uncrosses her arms, hesitates, putting her hands in her trouser pockets, then in her coat pockets, and then finally crossing them again. She tries to speak and feels her mouth dry. She bites her lip, turns her face to the window. Mica is probably looking from behind the curtains.
“We’re not ready to have strangers standing on our gardens,” she tells him, soft-toned and deliberately ignoring formalities and introductions. There’s no need for that. Probably no time either. “You’re scaring my kids.”
“They’re fine, then,” he says, voice rough; an affirmation draped in some sort of relief.
“Shouldn’t you know that? It was that woman, Gwen, who came down here to… help them.”
He regards her with an undecipherable look for a moment before nodding. “Good.”
Silence slams down and she panics, digs her ungloved fingers on her coated arms. She’s wanted to meet this man for a time that feels excruciatingly longer than it really is, and for reasons that have varied drastically in the short period of time that went by since she first heard of him. First because he was the man, a man, sleeping with her brother; then because he isn’t anymore.
If there’s any truth in what Gwen Cooper has told her, this man in the odd, old fashioned coat, standing right before her, was the last person to see her brother alive. She doesn’t know whether she wants to hit him, and blame him, and hate him - or hug him and cry with him and grasp with all her strength onto the stupid, fragile sense of closeness to Ianto that radiates from him.
There are tons of questions she’s been mentally rehearsing since the day the world tumbled down, but the jumble of things rushing too fast through her mind, between thoughts, and memories, and feelings, leave her lost; she can’t hold back anything, can’t decide where to begin.
Was he scared? Did it hurt? Did you hold his hand? Did you look in his eyes? What were his last words?
Why didn’t you save him?
But words dissolve on her tongue as fast as they form. In this long, strained quietness that betrays far more than a thousand of her broken, uncertain lines ever could, she feels almost as compassionate for this disheartened figure as she feels an unsubstantial resentment towards him. His exuding sadness pierces through her layers of woolen lines and defense walls and finds its measure in her own pain.
He takes a deep breath, the droop of his shoulders more pronounced than ever. For the first time he has to look away, takes a moment, and then he says “I’m sorry.” Something clearly wavers in his impassively built façade.
She’d never even heard of them, of him, and of Torchwood, until three weeks ago, but now feels they’re responsible for ruining so much, for taking away a part of her life. She has to blame someone, and she blames them. They saved her children, quite possibly the whole world, have been doing it for a while, for all she knows - heroes, is what anyone else would call them - and yet, instead of being thankful, or before being thankful, she can’t help but hold them accountable for taking her brother and not returning him safely. Not returning him at all.
She accused Gwen Cooper of not caring, of not knowing him well enough, when in all honesty she knows that the man who wore expensive suits, slept with other men - man, it was only him, he’d said - and saved the world for a living was more Gwen’s Ianto than he was hers. At some point, Ianto stopped being the boy who used to call her in the middle of the night to pick him up when he got in trouble, whose messes she always covered up, because dad would be furious if he ever found out, and they never got along very well, did they? The boy who needed her became a grown man. And she wasn’t there to see it.
She imputes all her frustrations to Torchwood, all the things she wanted to fix and work on with her brother for months, years even, but never got around to; she blames them for running out of time. It’s too hard to accept that it’s her fault, too, that he got so out of her reach in the end. It’s even harder to think that it was nobody’s fault. That it just… happened.
She doesn’t know if she can forgive them, him, and she doesn’t even know what for, exactly. But right now, looking at this man, it’s almost like they share some kind of inexplicable comprehension.
It’s ironic that what pulls them together and drives them into this less-than-ordinary encounter is that the one thing they ever had in common is gone. And Rhiannon is almost thankful, just almost, that she sees in the dark pits of his eyes that he feels as outrun and cheated by the abruptness of time and the unfairness of life as she does.
“Why are you here?” she finally asks, looking briefly away; the hardened, unflappable mask she’s reserved for Torchwood on again.
He hesitates for a moment, before reaching inside his greatcoat and fetching what seems to be a book. “I came to give you this,” he says, and offers it to her.
Her hand wavers for a second, but she takes it.
“What is this?” Rhiannon questions, eyes fleeting from him to the book. Uncertain fingertips trace the battered patterns on the leather cover that has nothing written on it.
“Ianto’s diary,” he tells her; a light shrug of his shoulder settling down a hint of indecision.
The air is knocked out of her lungs; her mouth opens and closes several times before it gives up on producing any reasonable sounds. Her gaze falls on the book - the diary. She opens it.
Its first yellowish page contains only two single letters, discreetly marked at the bottom in a distinct handwriting that she’s known since ever, something neither London nor Torchwood had made different.
I.J.
“Why are you giving me this?” The exasperation in her tone doesn’t sound quite right, but the rising urgency in her refuses to lay calm.
“I imagine you have lots of questions,” he replies, simply. “And I trust it will be in good hands. Ianto’s - life,” he strives to say it, the word thrumming with ache out of his lips. “Shouldn’t be left behind. Forgotten.”
Her eyes burn with the half angry, half desperate tears she tries, uselessly, to force back. Her fingers tremble around the diary as she flips through it, finding random names and words on pages filled with the story of a Ianto Jones she doesn’t know. Didn’t know. The bits that complete a cycle that she’s only witnessed partially.
Aliens. Lisa. Artifacts. London. Blood. Sex. Torchwood. Death. Suzie. Nothing.
Jack.
She snaps the diary shut, looks up at him, at Jack, with determination written all over her face, ignoring the ferocious twist in her guts.
A shuddering breath escapes through her nostrils, lips pressed into a thin, sharp line, strangling syllables she has to brace herself to grab hold of. Frowning, Rhiannon stares at him with steely, piercing brown eyes - so different from her brother’s.
Then, it finally bursts.
“I was seven when Ianto was born,” she starts. “I hated him because I thought mum and dad wouldn’t like me anymore - I thought they’d only care for the new baby.” Rhiannon swallows down resentment, watches as something changes, slightly, on this Jack’s face. “But then mum let me hold him. She put him in my arms, and he was this tiny, little thing. He didn’t try to get away, he didn’t cry - he just looked at me. The way he looked at things. So quiet, like I was the most fascinating thing in the world.” She pauses. “And I loved him. I loved him right away. You won’t find this in diaries or - or videotapes, or aliens. Wherever it is that you people find things,” she waves the diary in the air, nearly spitting the last words. “I don’t care if he didn’t come here as often as I’d like, or if I have no idea what these names and places written here mean. Nothing is ever gonna change the fact that before any of this - before aliens and secret service or you - he was my little brother. I know he loved me, and I… loved him. I loved him.”
She snaps her mouth shut, unsure of where all that had surged up from, or when exactly during the speech her tone rose to nearly shouting. But she made sure to stress the last phrase, and make it as crystal clear as possible. Because she suddenly needs to scream that he was her brother, will always have been, before anything else. She needs to get it all out, to let everyone know how much it hurts, how much she misses him, even though he was their Ianto, even though she barely ever saw him, even though she didn’t really know him. He was still her brother, and this they can’t take away from her. No one can.
And it hurts so fucking much that he’s gone.
Maybe she is angry because it was her fault, and she should’ve tried harder, should’ve pulled him closer instead of letting him run free. But he was a grown man, and she didn’t know, couldn’t know, then, that there would be no time.
Or maybe she is just jealous.
She is jealous.
Jack is looking back at her with something she can’t quite define, but almost compassionate, almost… understanding.
“I loved him,” he murmurs, like it’s a secret - like it hurts and rips him apart to say it. “Too.”
She feels the cutting breeze again, swallows down hard, and loses track of her thoughts, doesn’t know what to say anymore, after this. Doesn’t think there’s anything left to say.
His eyes fall to the diary in her hands, wistful and distant. That’s all that’s left of Ianto, she thinks, his and hers.
“I really am,” he says again, raising his head. All recomposed, only a vain trace of a broken heart there, disguised as utter inborn solitude, he finishes, “Sorry.”
She nods her head just barely to him. Rhiannon thinks she should thank him now, for saving her children, for bringing her the diary, for loving her brother. But she can’t. It’s stronger than her, and she won’t try to be a better person, a greater person, and pretend she is not feeling what she feels. He doesn’t need that.
He fumbles in one of his pockets, gets out a watch - no, a stopwatch. It’s a silvery, battered thing, with a button on the top. He presses it, then presses it again, rubs its glass with the tips of his fingers and, as though making a decision, stuffs it back inside the coat.
“I have to go,” he announces, and nods his head, lightly.
She remembers a time when she would’ve said nice to meet you, not three miserable weeks ago.
He turns around and walks back down the street, hands in his pockets. She watches until he is nothing more than a blur, barely distinguishable amongst houses and lamp posts casting their shadows.
If Ianto were here, she thinks, he wouldn’t be going alone.
Written to: kel_reiley
Author: electro_club
Beta: blue_fjords and solsticezero. ILU²
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Rhiannon, Jack (mentions of Jack/Ianto)
Spoilers: Post-Children of Earth
DISCLAIMER: THEY'RE NOT MINE. EXCEPT WHEN THEY ARE. IN MAH PANTS.
Summary: When he showed up on a Wednesday night, Rhiannon felt almost as though she should've been waiting for him.
Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say
Chained to all the places that he never wished to stay
Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say
As he faced the sun he cast no shadow
It is a Wednesday night when he shows up.
Mica screams from the living room that there is a man outside the house. The undertone of fear in her daughter’s voice, her eyes a trifle too wide, a trifle too haunted, breaks Rhiannon’s heart a little bit. She’s only five years old, and suddenly past the monsters under the bed and fairytale witches; found out only too soon that there is nothing quite as evil and heartless and capable of harming her as her own kind.
Rhiannon rushes to the window, heart pounding insanely in her mouth. Johnny isn’t home yet ¬- and where is that daft sod anyway? She’s only one, if anything happens to her-
“Stay away from the window, Mica,” she whispers, pulling her daughter back to hide behind her body. Whisper has become the default tone for most conversations inside her house.
She never thought she’d long for the yelling, the noises, the arguments during breakfast and the fights to see who’d get in the shower first, not quite like she does now. Silence used to be nonexistent in the Davies’ home. She remembers yelling at the kids to shut them up, and yelling at Johnny because he was a 35, soon to turn 36 year old, acting like a 12 year old most of the time. She remembers thinking she’d certainly lose her mind sooner rather than later. Never could Rhiannon have imagined that there was nothing as fearsome, as conductive to madness, as silence. Nothing quite as dreadful. And now silence is all she’s got, plain and constant, like someone listening to their every word and watching their every move. A presence, solid and oppressive, that feels so awfully lifeless.
Nothing is ever absolutely safe or completely normal these days, and Rhiannon feels almost guilty of the times she complained of the plainness of her life, of when she wished for something more, something bigger, to come and sweep her off her feet.
Now she just wants it to go back to the way it was. Exactly how it was.
Having a man standing on her front yard at this hour of the night is the sort of thing that never happened before. Now she thinks she should’ve anticipated it. Not that this is the most scary or strange occurrence she’s seen in the last couple of weeks, but right now, the sight of that eerie figure outside sends cold shivers down her spine like nothing else.
Not three weeks before, Rhiannon wouldn’t have spared a second thought before phoning the coppers; but she’s not the same woman she was three weeks ago, nor are the coppers the same pillar of safety they used to be. The entire world is changed, shifted out of its axis only to resettle into new and awkward ways around her, broadening horizons and limiting options, complicating things that weren’t supposed to be complicated, making it all so difficult.
Three weeks ago, seems like a lifetime. Rhiannon wasn’t paranoid then, her daughter wasn’t easily frightened by things she couldn’t understand, there wouldn’t have been a man standing on her front yard in the middle of the night, and if there was, certainly, then, there wouldn’t have been any chance he might be an alien. She still can’t decide whether considering the odds of that is simply being realistic or just completely mental.
There are aspects of this brand new world she’s not sure she’s ready to embrace. Not sure she ever will.
In retrospect, life seemed impossibly easier three weeks back, when she didn’t know a thing about aliens, trusted her government. Still had a younger brother.
She knows she’s supposed to be doing something - plotting the quickest way out of the house, calling her husband, screaming; but instead, she waits. Not an idea why, except that this man, however creepy, doesn’t feel like a threat. She isn’t in any ways an expert, in spite of everything, but someone ill-intentioned wouldn’t just wait, giving her time to escape or get help. Or would he?
Rhiannon mutters a curse under her breath, because there is a whole new batch of nutters outside, including ones that come from other planets, or whatever hole in the universe they come from, and she can’t distinguish between them anymore.
She looks down at Mica, urgent expectancy in her eyes. “It’s ok, sweetheart,” she says soothingly, but probably not sounding as convincing as she’s aiming for. “Go play with your brother, yeah?” She holds her by her shoulder and gently pushes her towards David, who’s got his eyes glued to the telly, completely oblivious to the growing tension around him. There was a time when that would’ve bothered her, his heedlessness and lack of interest; now, though, she’s actually grateful someone in that family has managed to go on like nothing ever happened.
The man just stands there, faceless in the dark, boring into her with eyes she cannot see but feels almost like a touch, as long, dragged-out minutes of silent war of mutual observation go by. It takes a while for her to quiet the riot going inside her head, enough to understand, at last, why it is that he feels so strangely harmless in spite of his very questionable behavior, why is it that he just won’t go away.
She realizes she knows who he is.
Decision made in a split-second, Rhiannon shrugs on her coat, pulls her hair up. “David, I’m going out for a minute.” It’s Mica who looks up at her. “It’s alright, sweetie. Mum knows the person who’s out there. Watch your sister, David.”
“Yes, mum.” He doesn’t even bat an eyelid.
“Let her play with you.” She advances towards the door with fast, decided steps.
“Aw, mum-“ he begins his complaint.
“Do as I say already.” And then she hesitates, white-knuckled grip around the doorknob.
What if she’s wrong? “Stay alert,” she turns to her son once more. “If you hear anything weird, take the phone and go hide. Call your dad. Did you hear me, David?”
“Yes, mum.” It is Mica who replies.
Rhiannon smiles. “I’ll be right back.”
The door clicks shut behind her, locking inside the feeble sense of assurance she thought she had, along with the warmth. Rhiannon crosses her arms, all the hairs on her body bristling furiously, muscles shuddering under layers of clothes. The weather has little to do with this, she reckons.
She must be mad, she thinks.
They eye each other tentatively. She can see his face, from where she stands now; hardened lines on a marble-carved expression. Creases between eyebrows, his eyes sparkle diamond-blue in the middle of her barely lit garden.
He is very handsome indeed.
When the growing feeling of inevitability beats, though not completely eradicates, her recently acquired doubtful nature, she is the one to take the first - vacillating - step. He seems almost grateful, when she comes to stand mere feet from him. He can reach her if he stretches his arm, she notes, but the hostile atmosphere dissipates in a spell, and she feels almost… safe. Here, outside, with a stranger, this stranger, more than anywhere else.
His lips twist in the lightest of curves, an attempted smile that softens his lines momentarily. But the gentleness of his grin doesn’t meet the unaltered sharpness in his gaze.
There is something brutally lonely about this man.
Rhiannon shifts her weight on her feet, uncrosses her arms, hesitates, putting her hands in her trouser pockets, then in her coat pockets, and then finally crossing them again. She tries to speak and feels her mouth dry. She bites her lip, turns her face to the window. Mica is probably looking from behind the curtains.
“We’re not ready to have strangers standing on our gardens,” she tells him, soft-toned and deliberately ignoring formalities and introductions. There’s no need for that. Probably no time either. “You’re scaring my kids.”
“They’re fine, then,” he says, voice rough; an affirmation draped in some sort of relief.
“Shouldn’t you know that? It was that woman, Gwen, who came down here to… help them.”
He regards her with an undecipherable look for a moment before nodding. “Good.”
Silence slams down and she panics, digs her ungloved fingers on her coated arms. She’s wanted to meet this man for a time that feels excruciatingly longer than it really is, and for reasons that have varied drastically in the short period of time that went by since she first heard of him. First because he was the man, a man, sleeping with her brother; then because he isn’t anymore.
If there’s any truth in what Gwen Cooper has told her, this man in the odd, old fashioned coat, standing right before her, was the last person to see her brother alive. She doesn’t know whether she wants to hit him, and blame him, and hate him - or hug him and cry with him and grasp with all her strength onto the stupid, fragile sense of closeness to Ianto that radiates from him.
There are tons of questions she’s been mentally rehearsing since the day the world tumbled down, but the jumble of things rushing too fast through her mind, between thoughts, and memories, and feelings, leave her lost; she can’t hold back anything, can’t decide where to begin.
Was he scared? Did it hurt? Did you hold his hand? Did you look in his eyes? What were his last words?
Why didn’t you save him?
But words dissolve on her tongue as fast as they form. In this long, strained quietness that betrays far more than a thousand of her broken, uncertain lines ever could, she feels almost as compassionate for this disheartened figure as she feels an unsubstantial resentment towards him. His exuding sadness pierces through her layers of woolen lines and defense walls and finds its measure in her own pain.
He takes a deep breath, the droop of his shoulders more pronounced than ever. For the first time he has to look away, takes a moment, and then he says “I’m sorry.” Something clearly wavers in his impassively built façade.
She’d never even heard of them, of him, and of Torchwood, until three weeks ago, but now feels they’re responsible for ruining so much, for taking away a part of her life. She has to blame someone, and she blames them. They saved her children, quite possibly the whole world, have been doing it for a while, for all she knows - heroes, is what anyone else would call them - and yet, instead of being thankful, or before being thankful, she can’t help but hold them accountable for taking her brother and not returning him safely. Not returning him at all.
She accused Gwen Cooper of not caring, of not knowing him well enough, when in all honesty she knows that the man who wore expensive suits, slept with other men - man, it was only him, he’d said - and saved the world for a living was more Gwen’s Ianto than he was hers. At some point, Ianto stopped being the boy who used to call her in the middle of the night to pick him up when he got in trouble, whose messes she always covered up, because dad would be furious if he ever found out, and they never got along very well, did they? The boy who needed her became a grown man. And she wasn’t there to see it.
She imputes all her frustrations to Torchwood, all the things she wanted to fix and work on with her brother for months, years even, but never got around to; she blames them for running out of time. It’s too hard to accept that it’s her fault, too, that he got so out of her reach in the end. It’s even harder to think that it was nobody’s fault. That it just… happened.
She doesn’t know if she can forgive them, him, and she doesn’t even know what for, exactly. But right now, looking at this man, it’s almost like they share some kind of inexplicable comprehension.
It’s ironic that what pulls them together and drives them into this less-than-ordinary encounter is that the one thing they ever had in common is gone. And Rhiannon is almost thankful, just almost, that she sees in the dark pits of his eyes that he feels as outrun and cheated by the abruptness of time and the unfairness of life as she does.
“Why are you here?” she finally asks, looking briefly away; the hardened, unflappable mask she’s reserved for Torchwood on again.
He hesitates for a moment, before reaching inside his greatcoat and fetching what seems to be a book. “I came to give you this,” he says, and offers it to her.
Her hand wavers for a second, but she takes it.
“What is this?” Rhiannon questions, eyes fleeting from him to the book. Uncertain fingertips trace the battered patterns on the leather cover that has nothing written on it.
“Ianto’s diary,” he tells her; a light shrug of his shoulder settling down a hint of indecision.
The air is knocked out of her lungs; her mouth opens and closes several times before it gives up on producing any reasonable sounds. Her gaze falls on the book - the diary. She opens it.
Its first yellowish page contains only two single letters, discreetly marked at the bottom in a distinct handwriting that she’s known since ever, something neither London nor Torchwood had made different.
I.J.
“Why are you giving me this?” The exasperation in her tone doesn’t sound quite right, but the rising urgency in her refuses to lay calm.
“I imagine you have lots of questions,” he replies, simply. “And I trust it will be in good hands. Ianto’s - life,” he strives to say it, the word thrumming with ache out of his lips. “Shouldn’t be left behind. Forgotten.”
Her eyes burn with the half angry, half desperate tears she tries, uselessly, to force back. Her fingers tremble around the diary as she flips through it, finding random names and words on pages filled with the story of a Ianto Jones she doesn’t know. Didn’t know. The bits that complete a cycle that she’s only witnessed partially.
Aliens. Lisa. Artifacts. London. Blood. Sex. Torchwood. Death. Suzie. Nothing.
Jack.
She snaps the diary shut, looks up at him, at Jack, with determination written all over her face, ignoring the ferocious twist in her guts.
A shuddering breath escapes through her nostrils, lips pressed into a thin, sharp line, strangling syllables she has to brace herself to grab hold of. Frowning, Rhiannon stares at him with steely, piercing brown eyes - so different from her brother’s.
Then, it finally bursts.
“I was seven when Ianto was born,” she starts. “I hated him because I thought mum and dad wouldn’t like me anymore - I thought they’d only care for the new baby.” Rhiannon swallows down resentment, watches as something changes, slightly, on this Jack’s face. “But then mum let me hold him. She put him in my arms, and he was this tiny, little thing. He didn’t try to get away, he didn’t cry - he just looked at me. The way he looked at things. So quiet, like I was the most fascinating thing in the world.” She pauses. “And I loved him. I loved him right away. You won’t find this in diaries or - or videotapes, or aliens. Wherever it is that you people find things,” she waves the diary in the air, nearly spitting the last words. “I don’t care if he didn’t come here as often as I’d like, or if I have no idea what these names and places written here mean. Nothing is ever gonna change the fact that before any of this - before aliens and secret service or you - he was my little brother. I know he loved me, and I… loved him. I loved him.”
She snaps her mouth shut, unsure of where all that had surged up from, or when exactly during the speech her tone rose to nearly shouting. But she made sure to stress the last phrase, and make it as crystal clear as possible. Because she suddenly needs to scream that he was her brother, will always have been, before anything else. She needs to get it all out, to let everyone know how much it hurts, how much she misses him, even though he was their Ianto, even though she barely ever saw him, even though she didn’t really know him. He was still her brother, and this they can’t take away from her. No one can.
And it hurts so fucking much that he’s gone.
Maybe she is angry because it was her fault, and she should’ve tried harder, should’ve pulled him closer instead of letting him run free. But he was a grown man, and she didn’t know, couldn’t know, then, that there would be no time.
Or maybe she is just jealous.
She is jealous.
Jack is looking back at her with something she can’t quite define, but almost compassionate, almost… understanding.
“I loved him,” he murmurs, like it’s a secret - like it hurts and rips him apart to say it. “Too.”
She feels the cutting breeze again, swallows down hard, and loses track of her thoughts, doesn’t know what to say anymore, after this. Doesn’t think there’s anything left to say.
His eyes fall to the diary in her hands, wistful and distant. That’s all that’s left of Ianto, she thinks, his and hers.
“I really am,” he says again, raising his head. All recomposed, only a vain trace of a broken heart there, disguised as utter inborn solitude, he finishes, “Sorry.”
She nods her head just barely to him. Rhiannon thinks she should thank him now, for saving her children, for bringing her the diary, for loving her brother. But she can’t. It’s stronger than her, and she won’t try to be a better person, a greater person, and pretend she is not feeling what she feels. He doesn’t need that.
He fumbles in one of his pockets, gets out a watch - no, a stopwatch. It’s a silvery, battered thing, with a button on the top. He presses it, then presses it again, rubs its glass with the tips of his fingers and, as though making a decision, stuffs it back inside the coat.
“I have to go,” he announces, and nods his head, lightly.
She remembers a time when she would’ve said nice to meet you, not three miserable weeks ago.
He turns around and walks back down the street, hands in his pockets. She watches until he is nothing more than a blur, barely distinguishable amongst houses and lamp posts casting their shadows.
If Ianto were here, she thinks, he wouldn’t be going alone.