A/N: My Christmas Offering. Just felt a little blue…and I figured Jack would feel the same at this time of year. A dear friend of mine was lost 5 years come this January – and at Christmas I feel his loss most. Merry, Merry Martin….
And Merry Christmas to all of you who keep reading my stories….and to my peeps in the UK, deeta and converter. And to the rest of you that I've written to and who have written back, you make writing these stories a joy…and from the bottom of my heart…Feliz Navidad.
Torchwood: Merry Christmas, Ianto
The incident had long since faded into distant histories of Earth, as had so many other things…but to him it was as fresh and painful as if it had happened yesterday. But as he stood on the platform of the terra-forming station as it began processing the alien planet's atmosphere into something humans could breathe, he realized so much time had passed.
They were all long since gone…Gwen, Rhys, Martha and Mickey. John…Owen and Tosh. Grey. Even the TimeLord had bid him a fond farewell some time before. He took a holocube from his pocket and it displayed an image of a man in a close-cut, hand tailored three piece dark colored suit. He wore a burgundy shirt and burgundy and silver striped tie, with a devilish half smile perched on his petal pale lips. His blue eyes and dark hair shined as he held the image up to the platform's observation deck. The different sun's rays lit the image's eyes until they glowed.
The Cute Suit, he remembered calling it. He flicked through the other images; the same young man in a swimsuit, much younger than when they first met. Rhiannon, his sister, was coerced into giving up a few prized photos of his younger, carefree days. There were different ones; Owen and Tosh at a picnic where both had had one beer too many and were displaying their beer buzz for the camera. Gwen and Rhys dancing at their wedding. Their son, Edward Ianto, graduating university. A few candids of Tosh, a few of Gwen…PC Andy…Detective Swanson…Owen passed out on the sofa under the Torchwood sign. Martha, smiling yet was holding a scalpel in her hand. How many others he had met along the way!
And yet, through it all, it was a quiet, beautiful Welshman that forever stole his heart…and with his passing, took it with him. 'Ianto,' he breathed. 'Eighty thousand years…and I still remember you, my love.' He looked up towards a star he knew he couldn't see, but being human, he could always feel as his chronometer beeped. 'So…it's come again,' he whispered as he wiped a tear away. 'Merry Christmas, my love…my Ianto.'