Slashthedrabble Challenge 468 - In the mind's eye

[m_findlow]

Title: In the mind's eye
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 500 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 468 - Paint at slashthedrabble
Summary: Ianto has his own way of painting a picture.

Jack watched his lover with bemused curiosity as he sat on the hillside, furiously writing in his journal. It wasn't the first time, nor did he expect it would be the last.

'You're meant to be enjoying the view,' Jack called out, hardly able to tear his own eyes away from the vista.

'I am,' Ianto replied, looking up and then returning to scribble some more. Jack used the term scribble, but knew that within those pages would be perfectly neat script, as if he'd had all the time in the world to write it, rather than the rushed speed at which his pen was currently flowing across the pages.

Jack shook his head. Only Ianto would think that spending time writing down everything he saw was better than just standing there, taking it all in.

'I thought they said a picture paints a thousand words.'

'They also say that no one else sees they world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories you can.'

'I like my saying better,' Jack said.

Ianto ignored him and turned back to the pages in front of him. Jack tried hard but he could never understand what it was that made Ianto want to pour the words out onto the page. Everything he saw was new and wondrous, and he wanted to be able to fix it all in place so that one day he could return to the pages full of words and relive the experience.

He didn't need pictures, or photographs, though he occasionally took the time to sketch things he saw: unusual flowers, breathtaking architecture, quirky foods. He wished he had better artistic skills, and that he could bring them to life in vivid colour, capturing the sparkle of stars or the burning orange sunsets, but for now it was enough to draft them in pencil and describe them as best he could. He had only to re-read what he'd described, the hue of the blue sky, the dry desert air, how the monolithic buildings gleamed in the sunlight or the softness of the fur on the mammals that lived peacefully unaware of human presence, and suddenly he was back there in that moment, seeing it in all its glorious detail. The words were his paint, his pen the brush, and his notebooks the canvas on which he threw them, sometimes with reckless abandon, other times with careful reverence, but always with an intensity that only a fellow journaller could appreciate.

He never forgot to live in the moment, and to absorb everything - seeing it, hearing it, feeling it, using every sense he had to capture its beauty and awe - but memories were fickle things, wont to drift and fade and meld together. Photos were nice, but they couldn't tell him how he'd felt in that moment, what he'd been thinking, or what else had happened at the time.

Pictures faded and memories were betrayed by the minds that held them, but words were forever.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Wonderful use of the prompt, and such a very Ianto-ish thing to do. Writing is clearly a compulsion he wouldn't resistv even if he could.

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

One day when they have their bigger ship and it's enormous library, all of his journals can live in there where they can be enjoyed at leisure. He might even let Jack read them.

[bk_forever]

I'm sure they'd both enjoy reliving past adventures that way =)