First of all I am German so this isn't easy for me. The last episode of season one was shown for the first time last week. So, if there is information about the characters in season two, I don't know them. If there should be some mistakes please feel free to tell me. Hopefully you'll enjoy my story and reviews are always welcome.

Disclaimer: I own nothing, but I really love to play with them :)

BTW I would like to thank the following persons: Helen – your difficult questions about the content and details manage to write a better story/ Michaela – your passion and belief in the story are a big support. Your wish is my command: Meiriona is for you! I know you really like the name. / RoadrunnerGER – your ideas are brilliant so everything fits in and your incentive is needed to capture my ideas on paper. *Ran an den Feind*/ And last, but not least alienstar07 for betareading, so the grammar is much better.

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"The silence that is here

Is of the grave, and of the austere

But happy feelings of the dead.

It is not quiet – is not peace –

But something deeper far than these."

Wordsworth "Glen-Almain"

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Prologue

As he did not have an umbrella, he sought refuge from the cloudburst under a big, copper beech. Grey rain swallowed the last light of the midday sun. It kept falling and falling, pattering on the streets and leaving large puddles. When the shower finally eased, the man continued his way to the graves. This was the only place where he could find peace. He sat down on a blue bench with peeling off paint. Here at the cemetery, the silence had its own sound. The sound of the city, the street noise, was locked out by the high, thick walls. The dark sandstones were already overgrown by wild ivy and moss. The air after the rain was cold in his lungs. Under the huge maple trees and copper beeches with dissipated crowns the pain faded away for a short moment and he found solace. Single raindrops glistened on the moss-covered tombstones. The man stood up and went to one of the graves. Slowly he let his finger trail along the engraved letters. There was nobody he knew, but the headstones told stories that took Ianto's mind off his worries. Returning to the bench he sat back down and got a sketch pad and a paint box out of his bag. Drawing allowed him to capture his different moods on paper and to give his pain a colour. For a long time he had abandoned painting and drawing. For too long.

Canary Wharf and its consequences had torn a deep black hole in his heart and often the pain threatened to overwhelm him. Curiosity had left him. He forgot to eat. At night he often ran through his apartment like a trapped animal in a cage when his nightmares became unbearable.

Ianto had loved Lisa, deep and dearly, but sometimes the loneliness was bigger than the love for someone who only existed in your memory.

Never Ianto would have dreamed that one day his love for her would be replaced by the love for someone else. When he first entered the cemetery, a week after Lisa's final death, the desire to draw came back. There were only his thoughts and pictures. At first his lines were hesitant and unsteady, but grew fast and stable. He slowly relaxed, his restlessness faded away and he became absorbed by the natural activity. The green-dark paintings of the cemetery wallpapered his bedroom. When he was awake at night and nightmares troubled Ianto, the paintings put his mind at ease and gave him some peace, but the memories of Lisa were still in his blood, buried deep within his heart.

Ianto looked at his watch and saw that it was time to return to his apartment. In half an hour, Meiriona would be home with his daughter and he had promised to eat with them. He often worked long and irregular times, so he rarely arrived home around the same time. Under these circumstances his little girl sometimes was unhappy. Ianto, though, could not decide to leave Torchwood Three. Despite the horrific things that had happened in the fateful night Lisa died he was unable to part from the organization and the people.

He remembered the last days when Jack looked at him with strange and intensive glances that made Ianto feel uneasy. Since they had met for the first time, he felt inevitably attracted by the Captain, but the worries about Lisa left no room for thoughts and feelings. Only in the wake of her death something new forced its way into his heart.

His eyes hurt, so he leaned back and closed them. Thoughts swirled through his mind like the cataracts of a wild river. Memories were knocked about by the waves and thrown on the land, where they forced their ways through his heart, painfully like the thorns of a rose. His inner self was a jungle, scary, confusing, and beautiful at the same time.

Jack's bare, heated body against his skin, when they were wrapped in a warm blanket. The wonderful, smooth feeling of his skin as he held him in his strong arms. The blazing heat. Jack's gentle touches let him forget all of the pain. The feeling of the soft cotton sheets and the overwhelming scent of the Captain nearly left him stunned.

Pattering rain. The scent of heat rose from the tar. It was a strong smell. The wind that blew gently through the room when he looked at his beautiful daughter reminded him of his mother. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen with her oval face with marked cheekbones, full lips, large brown eyes always sparkling with joy and dark red-brown curls. She didn't like the freckles on her nose and collarbones. He could always smell her violet shampoo. But there was also the smell of blood, scorched earth, the beautiful face cold like porcelain … lifeless.

Abruptly a siren startled him out of his reminiscence, but he quickly drifted into another memory.

"Can I have kiss?"

Ianto looked over his shoulder, but his team mates were absorbed by their work. Jack approached only this way when they were alone.

"Why?"

Jack was puzzled for a moment, not knowing whether to laugh or if he should be upset and moved away a bit. The Welshman noticed the hurt in his face and felt guilty immediately.

"Because nothing comes from you, Ianto. You obey to all my orders, but I really don't know what's going on in your head. Do you want me or not?"

Tightness was building up in the young Welshman's chest and his brain stopped working.

"I don't bite," whispered Jack and his lips came closer. Ianto was dizzy. Suddenly Jack's hands were on his shoulders and their lips met. Ianto slightly opened his mouth and the kiss became more intense, more demanding. Pleasant shivers ran through his body, but before he could completely lose his control, both were interrupted.

"Jack, I think we found something," called Toshiko.

Ianto backed off with a jerk. What was happening here? He seriously was about to fall in love with the Captain. This couldn't end well, only expecting pain and despair. Jack opened his mouth and wanted to say something, but once more Tosh called for him. He knew he missed the possibility to speak with the young man about their relationship.

Gently Jack lay down his hands on Ianto's shoulders, so careful as if he was afraid to hurt him. Then he went away.

How could he have been so stupid to develop feelings for the Captain? He would never understand him. As always he had to do this alone and he wouldn't allow Torchwood to step in. Two times he had taken the risk and had never failed.

Slowly Ianto stood up and walked down the path between the graves. He felt lonely, lost and totally unstable. He cursed the loneliness, but it showed him a way to survive everything that happened. Outside, without the protection of the trees, it drizzled and the grey clouds fitted his mood perfectly. Grey had the same importance as red, blue or green. There's a shiny black grey, a milky grey, slate grey and mussel grey.

A lump formed in his throat, and from a tight, hard knot in his chest, a terrible pain spread through his body that he identified with horror as longing for Jack. Inwardly Ianto writhed. Desperately he tried to hold back his tears. His nose blocked and his pulse throbbed in his temples painfully. The hard lump in his throat seemed to widen, making him choke. His tears, though, did not come, and after a while he could think more clearly. One last time he turned before he stepped through the big wrought-iron gate into the noisy world again. He dipped into the crowd, staid and anonymous among the people, often invisible. In the shadows.

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I hope you enjoyed my beginning and reviews are appreciate :)