Disclaimer: If I owned Torchwood Ianto wouldn't have died.
Time does not pass consistently. The concept of this has had humans struggling for ages to understand. One second is always just that long and sixty seconds always form a minute, sixty minutes always an hour. If there are enough hours, they turn into days, weeks, months, and eventually years. And, although this designation on time goes round and round, our minds cannot always let time pass so easily. Five minutes can turn into years, and sometimes years could feel like minutes.
The human brain also has the remarkable ability to keep the truth from itself, until the truth overwhelms in the darkness of night. I promised Ianto that I would never forget him. But I am afraid. I fear the day that Ianto's face joins the chorus of forgotten people I have failed. The night I wake up from his nightmare and cannot remember why it mattered. And as the horrible, wonderful, thing called time passes it scares me even more.
I find it harder and harder to remember what I wish to about Ianto because it hurts too much to remember his smile, his laugh, and the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention. I can feel these happy memories fading away into the darkness, and becoming tainted my grief.
Humans aren't meant to see so many years, we aren't meant to have our hearts broken so many times. When the grief and pain and life just become too overwhelming, time ceases to have meaning. Everything ceases to have meaning. I've been running because that's the only thing I can do. I always thought that if I ran a little faster the darkness would never catch me. So that's what I ran from and every death made me remember that I was alive only to keep running, to stay out of the dark. I of all people should know what happens when you run from the dark. You end up running into it as well.
Sometimes there is nothing left to do, when no matter how hard I tried the mask wasn't convincing, and no matter how many times I told myself that caring was not an advantage, I still cared. Even now I can feel my heart breaking a thousand times, no a thousand times a thousand and it hurts so much.
So I sleep. Sleep is good usually, time where I'm not forced to think about anything that happened, not forced to run or to face the dark. It's good, until the dreams start. Nightmares mostly, and nothing to extraordinary at that and yet every time I fail to save Ianto, I wake covered in sweat and tears. As much as those dreams hurt that are by far the preferred to the second kind. The second kind has always seemed far crueler to me, because the good dreams hurt the most. They vary from setting to setting, scene to scene, always with one constant; Ianto and I together. The dreams are always to happy and they are all I ever truly wanted, to love and be loved in return. Then I wake up to an empty, cold bed, in my empty, cold house and remember that I am alone. Left by all the people I ever loved because in the end I am always a disappointment.
Before when I was left alone once again I would push it to the back of my mind and forget, but even as my greatest fear is forgetting Ianto, I wish I could forget the pain. I go to bars, hotels, clubs, dances, anywhere with people to try and make the pain stop, to rid myself of the terrible ache that has settled in my chest as though it is trying to wrench itself in two. But the people, the crowds are sallow and delicate like moths around a flame, drawn in by the lights, music, and emotions saturating the air not realizing how easy it is to burn. I burn. The simple things mean nothing anymore. How can I be content when I was once happy? How can I be satisfied with running when I used to soar? Ianto made me the happiest I had even been, in some twisted way it makes sense that the loss is also the strongest I have ever known.
I try to find some solace that in his dying breaths, he wanted me to know that I was loved, even if I was too much of a coward to assure a dying man of the same thing. My team believed I was a hero, and I let them believe it because I wanted to believe it as well. But I can never be hero; too many people have died as a result of my actions.
I can't continue the way I have. It is time for the ceaseless mourning to end. My life from this point forward will be for Ianto. I will be the hero I can for him. I will save as many as I can in his name. From now on I promise to honor his death with my life and to never, never forget him, to hold every detail as crisp and sharp in my mind as I can and remember for as many millennia as I live. I will always remember the pain but I will try to learn to live again for him. For Ianto. While it may be too late to proclaim my love for him I will show it to others from now on. Ianto may be gone but he will live in my heart from here to eternity.
Authors Note: I hope you enjoyed, please leave a review to tell me what you thought!