A/N: This was actually written for a prompt (Memories/subprompt Purple) in the Last Author Standing competition over at Livejournal. I did NOT submit this story, though. I wrote two and chose the other one (I may regret that, actually). Hope you all like this one, though! I'll post the one I submitted in a couple of weeks after the voting is done over at LJ (hint, hint: go vote!) Thanks.
Guarding the Survivors
Ianto found himself at Tosh's empty desk, holding a cup of coffee prepared just the way she liked it. He glanced around, looking for something left, but they had been thorough when they packed away their teammates' lives. There was only the dark screen, the empty chair, the barren desk. He sat, sipping the coffee out of her mug, cringing at how sweet the drink was.
He fiddled with the mouse, remembering how Owen would disconnect it and hide it, eliciting growls and laughter from her. Ianto missed her laughter more than he expected to.
Laughter's not what he thought of first with Tosh, though. He thought first of brilliance, light that was so bright that some days, when she was on to something, the Hub seemed to glow. She would sit, hunched over at her desk, wordlessly accepting caffeine, scribbling, typing, and sometimes even muttering to herself.
As he sat in her chair he could hear her, the clap she'd always give when she'd figured it out, the shout of "Jack, I think I've got it!" and Jack's reply, "All right, Toshiko, show me what you've got."
He drank, he tipped the chair back, and looked up to see Jack, watching from the railing above, sipping his own drink and offering Ianto a small nod, as if he had heard it, too.
Gwen found herself sitting on the steps to the autopsy bay, sipping a cup of her own coffee, running her fingers over the purple silk shirt that Rhys had surprised her with one day, obviously not aware of what purple silk might mean to her. She pulled her arm to her nose and inhaled, wishing she could smell Owen on it the way she could when she had woken in his apartment those few times they found relief in each others' arms.
The affair wasn't what she thought of first with Owen, though. His sharp, acerbic wit, his hidden compassion, his obvious passion for his work, those things she thought of first. The memories of sex would simply slip in once she started thinking of him.
As she sat on the concrete steps she could hear him, growling at whoever bothered him, throwing tools around in his frenzy of discovery, shouting out "Found it, Jack!" and Jack leaning against the railing, one foot up, replying "What is it, Owen?"
She sipped her drink and ran her fingers over the railing next to her on the steps, looking up to find Jack in his familiar pose, giving her a nod, as if he had heard it, too.
Jack found himself watching his two survivors closely as they wandered through their grief, stopping in the familiar places of their colleagues lives, obviously clinging to whatever they could still see, hear, feel about the ones they'd lost. He heard what they heard, and he certainly felt what they felt, and he watched, guarding them for when they were ready to emerge, ready to start again, from the end.
