Torchwood: Fanfic: Buried beneath the sand

[m_findlow]

Title: Buried beneath the sand
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,244 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, Golden sand as far as the eye could see" at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack returns home to unbury his burdens

Jack didn't always tell Ianto where they were going on their travels across space and time. He said he liked to be able to surprise his lover, after so many years of being constantly surprised by him. If Jack thought Ianto had out-surprised him over the years, he was well and truly wrong. There was hardly a day that went by that Ianto didn't learn something new about Jack and the vast universe they existed in.

Once they landed, Ianto expected Jack to grab his hand and haul him bodily out the door, eager to show him whatever new wonder was outside, or else to toy with him and make him wear a blindfold, saving the big reveal for a moment of his choosing. Instead, this time Jack held back, letting Ianto step outside first, trailing several steps behind him.

The first thing that hit him was the bright sunshine, hot and steady, before a breeze whipped up and whistled around his head, kicking up sand.

There was so much sand. Miles and miles of golden sand as far as the eye could see. It seemed to go on forever, undulating off into the nether nether.

'What is this place?' he asked.

Jack paused for a moment, looking around and letting the sun's heat reflect back up off the sand, hitting him with its warmth.

'This is Boeshane.'

The words caught Ianto by surprise. They'd been a hundred different places, but they'd never even talked about coming here. It was just one of those unspoken things, and Ianto thought it would be too painful for Jack to even come back here, so he'd never asked. Knowing where he was now was suddenly less important than knowing when he was.

'What year?'

'5486,' Jack replied. More than four hundred years after he'd grown up here. He took Ianto by the hand. 'Come on.'

He lead them across a large stretch of dunes, their feet sinking into the hot sand with each step, until finally the hot winds blowing around them cooled. In the distance, Ianto thought he could hear the sound of the ocean. A few more minutes of walking and they crested a tall dune, the long stretch of dark blue water coming into view, running east and west infinitely.

They continued to walk down towards the shore and along its length. Jack pointed to a spot further down the curved coastline.

'Over there was the main city. You could see the main tower blocks rising up out of the sand, hovering over the edge of the sea. And other there, further inland, were the smaller townships.'

Ianto looked across and saw nothing but more sand and sea.

'Where is it all now?'

'Gone.' The word felt like a lead weight dropping into his stomach.

'And the people? What happened to them?'

'I don't know,' Jack replied. 'I only came back here the once, a few years earlier than this. Maybe they moved, or maybe something came and took them.'

'Surely the buildings would have survived though?' Ianto said, thinking out loud.

'There was nothing left. Not even a graveyard. It's like they never existed.'

Ianto squeezed his hand hard, knowing what it must have meant to Jack to come back and find no trace of his childhood home. Jack squeezed back and continued their walk along the beach.

Ianto tried to imagine what it would have been like to grow up here. It was the complete opposite of where he'd grown up, hot and dry as opposed to wet and wintery, and without the hustle and bustle of cars and technology and industry, noise and pollution. It was beautiful in its simplicity. Perhaps that was why Jack was so endlessly old fashioned, yearning for the simple things.

The further they strolled down the shore, listening to the waves crashing gently on the beach, the more Ianto sensed Jack relax, as if the memories in this place that had haunted him were slowly fading. It was desolate out here, and it felt like they were the only two people on the entire planet. Perhaps they were. Then a tiny movement caught his eye.

'At least something is still living here,' Ianto said, pointing and watching as a small scorpion-like insect crawled by near his foot.

'Careful,' Jack said, 'you don't want one of those to sting you. You'll be in bed with fever for a week.'

'Speaking from experience?'

'Oh, yeah. Not fun.'

'Survival of the fittest,' Ianto mused.

Jack seemed to spot something up ahead and Ianto followed his line of vision, but couldn't make out what it was. Jack walked up the berm and grabbed a loose stick that had washed up on the beach and returned to the spot he'd been eyeing off. He knelt down and prodded the stick into the sand, digging a small hole. Only Ianto began to see it wasn't a hole; he was using the stick to dig out the sand from around something that was wedged in the sand, painstakingly scraping it away. He put the stick down and began scooping the sand out with his hands, pushing it away to reveal the treasure buried underneath, finally grabbing hold of it and pulling it out.

He brushed some of the damp sand off the oddly shaped object before standing back up and taking it down to the shoreline, letting the waves roll up the beach to engulf his hand, washing off the remaining sand, ignoring the water soaking through his shoes and the bottom of his trousers. He walked back up the beach and held out the object for Ianto to see.

It was bigger than his hand, twisted into strange shapes, and a pale aqueous colour, but it was cloudy, rather than clear.

'It's sea glass,' Jack said, looking at it fondly.

Ianto turned the object in his hand, looking at it from all angles. 'I thought sea glass was just coloured pebbles.'

'On Earth it mainly is, but here, the lightning storms are so fierce some nights that they hit the ground and melt huge chunks of sand.'

It did look rather like a lightning bolt, all curled and jagged, mishapen and twisted, yet it had a raw beauty about it, wild and untempered.

'It's beautiful.'

'I hoped we might find some, but it's often hard to spot, buried beneath the sand. You could walk the beach for miles and not find any, yet have walked over the top of it without ever knowing.'

Ianto couldn't help but draw the comparison between the beach and Jack. Sometimes it felt like you could spend years with Jack and still have barely scratched the surface of what made him tick. Admiring the glass sculpture in his hand, it felt like he'd unearthed something special by coming here. Something rarer than sea glass.

'I'm really glad we came here,' Ianto said, 'even if it isn't the same anymore.'

'My family have been gone for a long time, 'Jack said, scanning the vista around them, 'so it's as close to the same as I guess it can be.'

'I know the perfect place for us to put this,' Ianto said, already picturing the spot on the table in their main living quarters. He wanted to be able to see it as often as possible. It might have only been glass, but it felt like it was worth more than all the diamonds in the universe.

Comments

[bk_forever]

That happens on earth too, lightning hits the sand and sometimes creates Fulgurite. I wanted to get a piece for my collection, but the really good pieces are way too expensive.

I'm glad Ianto got to see where Jack was born, even though the settlement is long gone. I wonder if they'll ever find out what happened to the people.

[jo02]

This was really lovely.