Disclaimer: Anything recognisable belongs to Russell T Davies.
Music
Jack can hear music.
Sweet and tragic and escalating, echoing around in his head, and it makes Jack think of stained glass and misery and, absurdly, of quiet. He can't shut it off or turn it down, but he wouldn't want to, because it is dark and delicate and beautifully broken and it hurts, hurts so desperately, but it is nothing more than he deserves.
The first thing he thinks, when she appears in the doorframe, is 'Gwen.' Then 'No, but...', and then it's that she's Welsh, so very Welsh. All thick, sable hair and bright eyes, and Jack considers, briefly and stupidly, how lovely it would be to step into her embrace, to be comforted by this round-faced, kindly-looking woman whom he does not know.
A small child appears behind her, dark hair dishevelled and eyes febrile, then disappears again, feet like horses on the hardwood floor. Then Jack recognises what it is he is hearing; it's children, a dozen children, more, playing and chattering and safe, here in this little haven, guarded by this maternal angel blinking up at him.
"You're that man. That handsome man..." She looks amused, for a moment, then her pretty features seem to fall, shadowed, a spectre of fear passing across her face, and Jack's mouth fills with bile as those wide eyes turn accusatorial.
"What do you want? Where's Ianto?"
It's the name, his name, spoken in that familiar lilt, and those eyes drilling miniscule holes into him like some barbaric acupuncture, and he steps, involuntarily drawn, over the threshold.
"Oh, no you don't!" She raises a hand, a hand used to reprimanding children, and lays it flat against the plane of his chest. "Where's my brother?"
He submits to her superior will, to the sheer force of her personality, so unlike her brother's, and freezes still, halfway through the door, kept in place by her hand, so warm it's searing through the fabric, the very layers of his clothing to sear his skin, and he is sure, later, he will be marked, in the red and black and blue of her grief.
"Rhiannon? It's... Rhiannon, isn't it?"
His voice sounds disembodied; rough and monotone, and he desperately doesn't want to be here, doesn't want to anywhere but most of all not here, not doing this, now, not breaking the heart of a woman he doesn't know. He thinks, 'Doctor', Doctor, come save me, come steal me away, spirit me off and we'll dance among the stars, you and me, immortal. But he doesn't come, hardly ever comes now, when Jack wishes it.
"Where is my brother?" She is like Gwen, so like Gwen; fierce and determined despite the softness of her and her warm, homely surroundings. Those wide eyes flash.
"Rhiannon... he's... your...." And he can't do it, can't speak, can't form words at all and it's ridiculous, because he's done this before, will be doing this for another hundred years to come, forever, while the people around him turn to dust. This should be easier.
"You heard... you would've seen... Thames House. The evacuation. On... on the news. You saw, didn't you? Rhiannon?"
And it's happening, already; and this is something now with which Jack is so familiar it turns his stomach, makes it twist in upon itself and send tremors of cold and fever coursing through him as if he's dying, but he isn't. He is only watching, still breathing and wretched on this poor woman's doorstep as her life is split in two, like the sky over the bay, and God knows what will be found, what will pour out from the chasm he's carving in her heart.
"Rhiannon, he's... he was... he was in the building. He... he didn't survive. He's... Rhiannon, he's dead."
Disbelief, and surging, deadly anger, flood her gentle features, and this is what Jack fears most; the convincing, the careful presentation of damning, incontrivertible evidence, so no doubt, or hope, is retained.
"No, he isn't."
"Rhiannon-"
"He isn't, I talked to him, just... before..." And she turns her back, and it is so final and devastating that Jack suddenly feels a desperate need for anger of his own, for violence, and he lurches forward and seizes her.
"Listen to me." His voice is spitting, snarling like an animal and Rhiannon looks so terrified that he can see white all around the colour in her eyes, but she is pinned, captured in his hands so much bigger and stronger than her own.
"Listen. He is dead. Ianto is dead. I watched it. I watched him die, I held him, I..."
And finally Jack is the one breaking, splitting like a crack in stone, in the very surface of the planet, and what has been kept inside, rage as hot and fatal as molten rock, as fire and brimstone, is beginning to pour out.
"Ianto Jones is dead. He died, in my arms, I watched it. I saw."
He is weakened, momentarily overcome and so Rhiannon slips from his grasp, her face stricken and eyes wide and flooding.
"Then... why didn't you do something? Why didn't you save him?!" Her voice has lost all softness now, and taken on the shrill chiming of bells that always remind Jack of angels, with heaven's final judgement, and it is loud enough to attract a crowd of small children, but Jack does not look at their faces. There is a man, too, who is surely her husband, and even he has some Rhys-like quality that make Jack want to laugh, to explode in a cacophany of bubbling, maniacal hysteria.
"I... I couldn't."
The words trickle out, from in between the cracks, and he raises his hands, knowing what is coming next.
The sting, when her palm connects with his cheek, is white-hot and momentarily blinding, and the satisfying sound it makes echoes in his head like a slammed door, clear and focussed and utterly deserved. From behind her the husband is rushing, restraining her, holding her up and together as her grief turns inexorably inward, and he wishes it wouldn't, wishes her devastated rage could turn murderous and just end this, all of it, now.
The music in his head reaches its terrible crescendo as he returns to the car, the sting still gnawing at his face in the form of a perfect handprint, and as he checks his reflection in the tinted glass he notes with disappointment that already it is beginning to fade.
The music swells, and he recognises it, now; it's Barber, Adagio for Strings, and he thinks of fallen soldiers, of boys too young to have borne the cost of death and torture and war. He thinks of him, laid at the feet of an angel bearing aloft a sword, its beautiful, terrible face cast out across the battlefield, and Jack knows this is not the end. The war has only just begun.