I am the wind in darkness and I am the last of my kind. I have drifted for so long I no longer know light. I live in memories and I have been all but forgotten. I no longer know what name I was given. I am Adam. This should have been my story but instead it is my eulogy. There is no epitaph for I have been forgotten. I was in the darkness of the void until I found a light I could not ignore. That light was Jack but I made a mistake in assuming that light could be mine when it belonged to another. And that was my demise.
I could have been happy in Torchwood, I was happy, I made Tosh happy. Sweet, sexy Tosh, I rescued her from her own darkness but they did not see it that way. Jack did not see it that way. Even Owen was freed from the chains around his heart. Did it amuse me to take from him the one woman who he could have been happy with? Yes. I have no need to lie. It was not my fault he was so blinded by his own pain he was afraid to take a chance on what could have been. And I needed somewhere to live so Tosh was my logical choice. Dear sweet damaged Tosh. Giving her love to a man who was too terrified to love her back. I would have given her back when I got bored.
It was never my intention for Gwen to forget her fiancé. Sometimes giving memories must displace other things, not usually entire people though. Jack said he should have seen it then, but he didn't. He didn't know what I was, he didn't see what I did. It was the one person I underestimated who destroyed me. Unassuming, always in the background, always in line of sight but never seen. Easily forgotten. Ianto Jones.
When I touched Tosh and Owen I felt everything. Their thoughts and memories mine to enjoy, to influence, control. Filling me with their light and colour as I shared their lives. I took nothing from them, I gave them so much more.
Tosh, Owen, I knew he loved her back but was too afraid to admit it. There was so much pain in his memories of women he had loved and lost, the fiancée Katie, Dianne, Tosh. And the love Tosh thought was unwarranted, unnoticed and unrequited. The irony alone was delicious. And Gwen, torn between her love for Rhys and her feelings for Jack, feelings he did not return.
In touching Ianto even as I gave him memories of me, he gave me very little. I should have seen then that he would prove my undoing. Him and his diary with his meticulous notes. I made one crucial error, I did not see who Ianto was to Jack. Neither man gave me that information in touching them.
In Jack I found longing for a past long denied him, his father gone, his brother missing and an army of lovers lost in death. And regret at not being able to tell someone he was in love with them. But who he was in love with was a shadow. It was as if Jack had protected thoughts of his lover so they were only his, held safe forever. I hadn't seen that the someone even his mind held so dearly as to not reveal the identity, was actually Ianto. And that was the cause of my demise, the beginning of my end for not recognising it sooner.
Jack was different, but that didn't explain why Ianto was able to hide himself from me as well. Like he had spent a lifetime hiding who he was, locking bits of himself away so no one else could see them. There were shadows in his mind of his childhood, his father. Shadows of a woman lost, and a love he was ruled by. Shadows he was able to hide deep within that acted like quick sand and trapped me in my own pride.
Getting into Torchwood was easy, Jack picked my box up just like I hoped he would. His memories, his touch gave me an anchor and Tosh gave me an opening. Except I tried to plant myself in too far, I had been alone in the darkness too long. Like a glutton I feasted on memories and I was lost. Tosh commented to Ianto that I had found the puzzle box but that was a mistake. Ianto Jones and his bloody diary.
I know it wasn't deliberate on his part, it was just wrong and he recognised it. He doubted her story and he doubted me. He didn't want me to touch him after that. I know I shouldn't have enjoyed giving him the memories of murdering those women. Of making him think he had put his hands around their necks and watching the life leave their eyes. Of throwing them away like so much trash. It might have been wrong but I liked it.
There is a high so incredible I couldn't even begin to explain it. How would you tell someone what it feels like to jump from a plane if they have never done it themselves. Explaining the silence. I could no more describe the colour purple to someone who had no eyes. I was so desperate to live I didn't care how. That was a mistake. Clever Ianto Jones worked me out, Jack didn't believe him capable of murder. I broke him but Jack put him back together. He was a million pieces of dust crumbled under my foot and blown away on the breeze. Jack just couldn't let go of the idea that Ianto wasn't the murderer he confessed to being. Except, I can only plant true darkness where shadows already exist.
If I had known Jack and Ianto were lovers I would have torn them apart with their own fears. Ianto's fears about Jack not loving him enough to stop the flirting with Gwen. Jack's fear of loving someone who was going to eventually die, to become just another lost love in a long line of many. And Gwen wanting to know what it would feel like to be loved by Jack, even for a moment. The memories I could have given them all of more than just kisses interrupted.
I could have lived forever on such memories. Now I have nothing. Only the moments left to me trapped in a cell as the sentence passed on me by Jack is carried out by the drug he has taken. That they have all taken. Don't I deserve to live? Am I not allowed a life? Is my crime so unforgivable that they must execute me in their indifference. I could have been magnificent. I could have lived forever. Instead I fade. Soon I will be gone, wiped from CCTV footage just as I have been wiped from their minds. Soon I will be no more. This time I wont even have the void to return to.
I can feel the pain as I am pulled apart, as I become the dust trampled underfoot. But Jack does not hear my pleas, my cries as I die. They fall on a frozen heart and deaf ears. I am the wind, I drift in the darkness and I am undone. I do not remember the name I was once given, but for a moment I was Adam.