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m_findlowTitle: Pause for effect
Fandom: Torchwood
I love a good story. I tell a lot of them, not that anyone believes me most of the time. The things I say sound too outrageous to have actually happened. None of that ”Dear Diary…” nonsense. When you've lived as long as I have, you don’t make stuff up anymore.
There are some stories however, that are too terrible to tell. There’s the obvious one of course, about the last time I ever saw my brother, that day the aliens killed my dad. That’s a day I’ll never forget, but putting it into words feels way too hard. There’s so much that just can't be conveyed with words.
I always thought that it would be the worst story I had. I mean, come on, what could compare to that? But then it happened. The year that never was. When Earth was nearly destroyed, all because of a chain of events that I set in motion. Some would say it happened yesterday, others would argue it began a hundred and thirty years ago when I was abandoned up on that game station, left behind by the Doctor, found my way back to Earth and started the long waiting game, biding my time until we could be reunited.
Some reunion, huh?
Anyway, why am I even telling you this? Because at the end of it all, I didn't need the answers to the existential crisis that comes with being made immortal. I wanted to know how, why, and what possibility there was of making me how I’d been before; mortal. Truthfully, I think I'd stopped wanting to be mortal a long time ago. Terrible as it can be, living is what makes everything worthwhile. All the rest, the death and the loss and the periods of loneliness are worth the things in between - laughter, joy, friendship and love.
Love is what I left behind, and it's what I didn’t know mattered more to me than any answers I might get.
I wasn't going to follow Ianto back to his hotel room after the massage to beat all massages - and no, that isn't a euphemism. Those masseuses at St David’s really know how to pamper a guy. Glad we ordered one of everything. Anyway, digressing again. Stalking your lover back to his room when you've been gone four months in his timeline? Not the best way to start making it up to him. Not to mention he fell asleep during the hot rock session, so the point was to let him sleep.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’ he asks, as if he hadn’t heard me four hours ago ordering five separate rooms. Maybe I was out of the doghouse already. Things had been going so well before I left.
That was before the election. Before the Master became Harold Saxon. Before he brainwashed the entire population of Great Britain into voting him in as Prime Minister. A landslide election result, they reported - ninety percent of the House of Commons. What does that tell you about just how brainwashed people were; that nobody questioned an election result that defied history? Not that I can blame them. I was going to vote Saxon as well. At least I was until the Doctor showed up, took us all the way to the year one hundred billion and back.
Ianto remains standing even though there is a spectacular king size bed with the fattest pillows I've ever seen. ‘So,’ I said, trying to shove hands in my pockets then remembering the complimentary robe doesn't have any. ‘How have things been? Anything exciting happen while I was gone?’
‘Nothing too much. A few close shaves here and there but nothing we couldn't handle.’
I nod. ‘I know. I read your emails’.
‘Well, then,’ Ianto said, slightly affronted that I would go prying - like he didn't know me at all - ‘you needn't have bothered asking.’
‘You were all out when I got back. What else was I gonna do? Besides, I prefer hearing you tell it. And you know Owen is always light on details in his reports.’ Like pulling teeth sometimes, which drove me crazy. His report on the Himalayan incident filled half a page at most. It was the fake mission Harold Saxon had sent my team on to put them out of reach when I arrived back on Earth. The mission that very nearly killed them, buried under an avalanche of snow. It was the first thing I went looking for. They survived it, so he’d resorted to arresting them, torturing and killing them one by one. That's what he said anyway, and I believe him. It’s what I'd do to break the people trying to stop me.
I want to ask about it but don’t. A tiny fragment of time before the Master had built his paradox machine and powered it up. Everything from that point on had been erased and reversed, fixed back just as it should have been before Martha, the Doctor and I set in motion the chain of events that woke the Master from his amnesiac state. But Ianto would remember the Himalayan mission and not think much of it, unaware of how it played into a much bigger and scarier plan. The rest I'm glad he won't remember. All that pain and suffering because of me.
Familiar little furrows appear in his brow as he studies my face. ‘What happened when you were gone, Jack?’
Just like that, he's read straight through that confident air and nonchalance. He knows it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. If it were, I'd have been flopped on the bed by now, regaling him with tales of adventure, unable to keep them to myself a moment longer. I reach up and plant a kiss on his forehead. He's a good, decent man. Would that the world were full of men like him. ‘I want to tell you. Really I do. I'm just not ready yet.’
Ianto's fingers brush my cheek. ‘I'm here. When you're ready.’
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG.
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 133 - Storytelling at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly
fandomweeklySummary: Even Jack has stories that are too terrible to tell.
I love a good story. I tell a lot of them, not that anyone believes me most of the time. The things I say sound too outrageous to have actually happened. None of that ”Dear Diary…” nonsense. When you've lived as long as I have, you don’t make stuff up anymore.
There are some stories however, that are too terrible to tell. There’s the obvious one of course, about the last time I ever saw my brother, that day the aliens killed my dad. That’s a day I’ll never forget, but putting it into words feels way too hard. There’s so much that just can't be conveyed with words.
I always thought that it would be the worst story I had. I mean, come on, what could compare to that? But then it happened. The year that never was. When Earth was nearly destroyed, all because of a chain of events that I set in motion. Some would say it happened yesterday, others would argue it began a hundred and thirty years ago when I was abandoned up on that game station, left behind by the Doctor, found my way back to Earth and started the long waiting game, biding my time until we could be reunited.
Some reunion, huh?
Anyway, why am I even telling you this? Because at the end of it all, I didn't need the answers to the existential crisis that comes with being made immortal. I wanted to know how, why, and what possibility there was of making me how I’d been before; mortal. Truthfully, I think I'd stopped wanting to be mortal a long time ago. Terrible as it can be, living is what makes everything worthwhile. All the rest, the death and the loss and the periods of loneliness are worth the things in between - laughter, joy, friendship and love.
Love is what I left behind, and it's what I didn’t know mattered more to me than any answers I might get.
I wasn't going to follow Ianto back to his hotel room after the massage to beat all massages - and no, that isn't a euphemism. Those masseuses at St David’s really know how to pamper a guy. Glad we ordered one of everything. Anyway, digressing again. Stalking your lover back to his room when you've been gone four months in his timeline? Not the best way to start making it up to him. Not to mention he fell asleep during the hot rock session, so the point was to let him sleep.
‘Aren’t you coming in?’ he asks, as if he hadn’t heard me four hours ago ordering five separate rooms. Maybe I was out of the doghouse already. Things had been going so well before I left.
That was before the election. Before the Master became Harold Saxon. Before he brainwashed the entire population of Great Britain into voting him in as Prime Minister. A landslide election result, they reported - ninety percent of the House of Commons. What does that tell you about just how brainwashed people were; that nobody questioned an election result that defied history? Not that I can blame them. I was going to vote Saxon as well. At least I was until the Doctor showed up, took us all the way to the year one hundred billion and back.
Ianto remains standing even though there is a spectacular king size bed with the fattest pillows I've ever seen. ‘So,’ I said, trying to shove hands in my pockets then remembering the complimentary robe doesn't have any. ‘How have things been? Anything exciting happen while I was gone?’
‘Nothing too much. A few close shaves here and there but nothing we couldn't handle.’
I nod. ‘I know. I read your emails’.
‘Well, then,’ Ianto said, slightly affronted that I would go prying - like he didn't know me at all - ‘you needn't have bothered asking.’
‘You were all out when I got back. What else was I gonna do? Besides, I prefer hearing you tell it. And you know Owen is always light on details in his reports.’ Like pulling teeth sometimes, which drove me crazy. His report on the Himalayan incident filled half a page at most. It was the fake mission Harold Saxon had sent my team on to put them out of reach when I arrived back on Earth. The mission that very nearly killed them, buried under an avalanche of snow. It was the first thing I went looking for. They survived it, so he’d resorted to arresting them, torturing and killing them one by one. That's what he said anyway, and I believe him. It’s what I'd do to break the people trying to stop me.
I want to ask about it but don’t. A tiny fragment of time before the Master had built his paradox machine and powered it up. Everything from that point on had been erased and reversed, fixed back just as it should have been before Martha, the Doctor and I set in motion the chain of events that woke the Master from his amnesiac state. But Ianto would remember the Himalayan mission and not think much of it, unaware of how it played into a much bigger and scarier plan. The rest I'm glad he won't remember. All that pain and suffering because of me.
Familiar little furrows appear in his brow as he studies my face. ‘What happened when you were gone, Jack?’
Just like that, he's read straight through that confident air and nonchalance. He knows it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. If it were, I'd have been flopped on the bed by now, regaling him with tales of adventure, unable to keep them to myself a moment longer. I reach up and plant a kiss on his forehead. He's a good, decent man. Would that the world were full of men like him. ‘I want to tell you. Really I do. I'm just not ready yet.’
Ianto's fingers brush my cheek. ‘I'm here. When you're ready.’
