Unfortunately English isn't my native language but I really wanted to write this. Tips are more than welcome.
The same mistake
„I miss you so much; your light, your smile, your way and everything about us. Though you're gone your still here. In my heart, in my tears. Yeah, you sure left your mark. We were just getting started." — Rascal Flatts (Forever)
You can not stay here, you know that. You know that with every tiniest part of your eternal body. The knowledge that home, found after all this time, doesn't exist anymore is the worst kind of agony. You feel the pain in your bones, it takes away your will of a fight and causes the phantom pain in your heart.
You can not stay here. You can not because the guiltiness and the pain of loss is an extremely bitter blend, and in the end, it will drive you crazy.
Very slowly days pass by and you still haven't gone. You are kept here by this pathetic allegiance and the feeling for him which tenaciously doesn't want to fade away. You can see him everywhere. You walk along the familiar streets and you catch yourself in hoping that you'll see him around the next corner.
You can not stay here.
Sometimes you look at the slate-blue Welsh sky and you wonder why you have never told him how much you loved his eyes. You wonder why you decided to dissemble so many things even while he was asking for your frankness. And now? Well, now he's gone. He died and this time you can not do anything about this. There's literally nothing you can do to bring him back. You're left alone with your pain and this emptiness which you will never fill again. With his absence.
You can not stay here.
You haven't seen Gwen since that day happened. You can't force yourself to do that. You keep on repeating that she's happy, much happier without Torchwood and you would only ruin that with your return – that's how you rationalize it when you miss her. But the truth is much less crystal and much more selfish. Because Gwen lost Ianto too, her friend and coworker. But her husband is still safe and sound while she's carrying his baby, and you're not sure if you could manage to see it. See another reminder of what you've lost.
You can not stay here.
Every little thing – Cardiff, people with this bloody accent, misleadingly familiar places which are so terribly strange, your favorite bar where you spent so much time together, the block where he used to live – everything is just a poor substitute for your past life, the echo of you and him.
You feel like you're going crazy. You have to go away. Without Owen, without Tosh, and without Ianto Cardiff is just a city, blank blip on the map. There's no point in waiting for a miracle. No one's going to come and save you. Save him.
You can not stay here.
Two months is long enough to move on – that's what you keep saying to yourself, even when it's the last thing you want to do. You lived so many lives, you used to change them like gloves. You want to believe that you can do it one more time but somewhere in your mind, you know that it's not easy. He made a permanent mark on your heart and then he died. He left you with a thousand unspoken words, a million promises you haven't made yet.
You can not stay here so you leave Cardiff, Wales, Great Britain but don't leave the Earth. Just not yet.
For some time you just travel. You go through Europe and after weeks of wandering you decide to stop somewhere for a little longer – you don't know exactly where but you don't care either. It's some big city, maybe the capitol. Doesn't matter. You rent a room in some poor hotel and order breakfast. Recklessly you order the cup of coffee too and a few minutes later you're hit painfully by the avalanche of memories.
The concentration on his face while he's making coffee, irritation when you break the coffee maker again, the sound of his breath when you kiss back of his neck.
You grit your teeth. It has to end. He's dead and nothing can bring him back. It's nothing too surprising. After all, you expected it from the very beginning. It always ends the same way. You fall in love, live a sweet dream and then you're left on your own again. Years pass by and you should get used to that - you can not have love without pain. So you learned to be afraid of letting yourself feel.
Ianto wouldn't want it for you, you know that. He was one of the bravest and most selfless people you've ever met. He never asked for more than you could give him, even in his last minutes he only wanted to be remembered by the man he loved. Ha! As you could ever forget him! You'are absolutely sure that those blue eyes will haunt you till the end of your days and you think that maybe he was selfish though. Just a little.
You're trying to drink your coffee and suddenly you have to run to the bathroom. You haven't eaten for a few days so you're vomiting bile. You can't stop the bitter tears falling from your eyes while you bend over the lavatory. You tried so hard not to fall in love with him. It supposed to be just one night, just sex. You have no idea when it became something more and why did you let it. Again you made the same old mistake just to be left with another memory of another dead lover.
You come back to your room, slowly take off the clothes. You don't have the energy to take a shower even if you desperately need it. It's still morning - It has to be if you ordered breakfast - but it doesn't matter. The bed is rather small but without his warm body, every bed seems to be too big and cold. You close your eyes and try not to thing but you don't want to sleep either. You don't want to be woken up again by the image of Stephen's dead body and tears of your daughter. So you're laying awake and do not think about what you have done. Do not think about Gwen and Rhys, about Alice and Steven, about Ianto and the only picture you dared to take with you (you do not think about how in love you seem to be in this picture).
But most of all you don't think about the Doctor. About how much you hate him right now (how much you hate him every sleepless night). Because you know that if anyone in this entire world could save Ianto and Steven, that was him. He would have found a way to rescue them, he always did. And it hurts the most - the consciousness that he abandoned you again. Some part of you knows that you will never forgive him that.
So you're laying there and do not think about any of this. Minutes pass by, then come hours. You lost the sense of time, you're drowning in your sadness. You want to cry, to scream – show this fucking world what you think about it. But you don't have the power to do that, you feel so tired. Tired of the grief, tired of losing everyone you love, tired of the guiltiness. Because it's all your fault. All those people, not only Ianto and Steven but so many more. Owen, Tosh, Gray, Suzie, Alex, even Lisa Hallett, the girl which Ianto loved so much. Names slowly fade away but faces are still clear.
At some point, you sit up and hide your face in hands. You don't know what is worse – exhaustion or the fear that you will fall asleep. Before Ianto, you used to sleep much less but after some time he taught you that his loving arms can chase away the nightmares. Today Ianto – the memory of him – is only another demon of yours.
After some time you decide to continue your journey. Without a purpose, without a plan. You just want to forget but even that is out of your reach. Because you promised to remember.
But you can not stay here.
You walk through the crowded streets, you pass by laughing people. You ignore every airport, every railway station. Your only wish is to run away from other humans, from humanity, from anything that could hurt you again. That would be too much, you know that another loss would destroy you completely. You can not afford for that ever again.
Sometimes – not too often though – you think about him. About how much he deserved a better life, even without you. You should have stayed away from him and maybe he would still be alive. You know it's bullshit but you can't help these thoughts. It's too much to accept that this beautiful, strong man is now just a dead body somewhere beneath the ground in Cardiff.
You haven't been at the funeral, you don't even know if there was a one. You're just not sure if you could let them bury the coffin and you didn't want to make a drama in front of Ianto's family.
You keep on traveling for next weeks, maybe months. You don't know, you don't count. You visit some desolated places, you stay away from cities. You don't mind rains or heats. You die a few times and it's okay too. The only problem is a surprising lack of those gentle arms when you come back. You got used to having him beside you while your lungs were learning how to breathe again. God, you miss him, you miss him so much.
You get lost in this pathetic try of not to feel anything and you think that if he's anywhere there, he must be so mad at you. He used to hate the way you tried to distance yourself from your feelings. You had been doing this before he died and he'd hated it so much.
"So why did you leave me?" you ask at some cold and lonely night, laying on the ground under the beautiful sky which is full of stars.
The heavy silence is the only answer you get and suddenly you feel even colder.
You wrap your coat tighter around you and you stare at the sky. You think about his eyes when, just this once, you left the city together after Tosh and Owen had died. You think about this little isolated island somewhere in Wales. You think about his arms around you while you were looking at the stars. You think about this overpower warm that you felt while you were making love on the cold beach. You think about his head on your chest and how he let you just hold him. He'd never liked all those soppy motions but it didn't matter that night.
So you're laying at the same place now and you miss him more than ever before. You close your eyes tightly but you can't tell yourself that he'll be right next to you when you open them. It's been almost six months since you lost him and you still can not accept that. Now you're closer to home (to what's left of it) than ever. You're not ready to come back but something doggedly pushes you forward. You spend a few nights on the island and then you decide to visit Cardiff. Not for long, just to make sure that Gwen, Rhys and Ianto's family is alright, and that Alice, even if she hates your guts right now, is safe. Then you'll be gone, maybe you'll find a way to leave this misery planet. It's not that impossible as it was when you landed here in the nineteenth century.
You can not and you do not want to stay here. Too many memories, too many familiar places. You make a decision and tell yourself that is for the best. And that's when you hear about the House of the Dead. The place where you'll lose him again.