silver_sun | Writer in a drawer round 4:Those left behind. (Reply)

Title: Those left behind.

Rating: PG

Spoilers: S1 and Exit Wounds.

Episode title used: Memorial Day.

Prompts: The title of a West Wing episode, a coin and less than 500 words

Walking quickly along the rain soaked streets, Ianto tries not to look at the skyline ahead of him, which seems strangely bare now that Torchwood Tower has been demolished.

After a while he slows. There’s no point hurrying, he knows that he’s missed them, that he’s late, and given what today is that seems rather unforgivable.

Two years have passed since the battle of Canary Wharf, and he wonders how many of the survivors, if they could really be called that, had been present for this year’s memorial.

Not that it’s a proper memorial, he thinks bitterly, as he arrives at the rubble strewn plot where Torchwood Tower had once stood. There wouldn’t have been any remembrance service, nor any speeches about how those who had died had done so serving their county. No, they had all been quietly forgotten, just a few more nameless deaths by Torchwood.

He shakes his head, unable to separate the anger and the grief. This year it seems doubly hard, coming as it does just a scant few weeks after Owen and Tosh’s deaths. He’d been beginning to put his life back together, starting to feel whole again, and now everything has been torn apart, every emotion once more as raw and open as it was two years ago.

Sitting down amidst the rubble he stares melancholy at the grey rain-washed city that had, for a while at least, been his home. Today it looks as bleak as he feels, and it seems impossible that this place, which had once been full of people, with all their hopes and dreams, can now be so dead and empty.

Closing his eyes he can see it as it was, remembers how on his first day working there, he’d met Lisa out in the car park. How he’d dropped his wallet, coins falling out and rolling everywhere, and she’d stopped to help him pick them up. It had seemed like fate.

He smiles, knowing the wetness on his cheeks isn’t just rain. Not that it matters, it’s just a relief to be able to let go for once.

Lost amongst memories, Ianto doesn’t realise that he’s no longer alone until a familiar voice asks him, “This seat taken?”

Startled he looks up. Standing in front of him is Jack, his hair and greatcoat soaked through from the incessant rain. “Jack, I…”

“It’s hard always being the one left behind.” He smiles wearily, his eyes filled with more understanding and loss than Ianto thinks anyone should have to bear.

There seems to be no need for words after that. Not that Ianto thinks he could find any even if he needed to, either about what he’s feeling or about just how much he appreciates Jack being there for him right now.

Sitting shoulder to shoulder amongst the ruins, they find, for now at least, a sort of comfort in the knowledge that they're not alone.