Between Hello and Goodbye

I never did find out exactly why he was there. I didn't really try, I suppose. Perhaps I'm better off not knowing...but I do sometimes think about what happened, and I wonder – why? Why me? Why then? I guess I'll never know. But I think I'll keep it that way. It's probably safer.

I met him at the village graveyard. I was never considered a normal child, because I liked to look at the names on the gravestones, and imagine about them – give them stories, and lives. I was there one day, just two days before my twelfth birthday, imagining a story for a man who had died over a hundred years before. He was a family man, I decided as the wind whipped my unruly dark curls around my head and into my face. Two – no, three – children, two boys and a girl, and a wife. However, just before I could lose myself within my own fascinating imagination, I heard a noise behind me. I jumped, surprised, and turned. There, in front of another gravestone, newer than the one I'd been scrutinising, was a man. Quite old (compared to me), I thought, perhaps mid-thirties. But what hit me almost immediately was that I didn't know him.Being eleven, and apparently 'cute', I knew everyone living in my small village, at least by sight, if not by name, and I was one hundred per cent certain that this was a man I had never seen before.

He spoke, startling me out of my reverie.

"Hello." His voice was quiet, but like my father's, it demanded attention. Attention, it seemed, that I was happy to give.

"Hello," I replied softly, uncharacteristically unsure of myself. He smiled reassuringly at me and asked me my name. "Ianto," I replied, "what's yours?"

"Jack."

I tilted my head like I'd seen my Dad do on occasion, to try and prompt him into giving more than one name. It didn't work, though, since he didn't elaborate, and looked rather blank. I gave up, and instead decided to dig a little deeper.

"How old are you?" I knew it was rude, but it might help, and I was desperate to know more about him. Even at the age of eleven, he intrigued me. He laughed a little at that.

"Do you know something? I'm not entirely sure." he sounded wistful, but I was confused. I decided not to press the issue for the moment. Then, for some reason, he glanced at the gravestone behind him, and then looked up at the sky, as if searching for something – or working something out, I realized with a jolt. He laughed again, and told me that he was 37 years old. I nodded slowly. Something about this man unnerved me, and it wasn't just because I didn't recognize him. Who had to work out their own age? And why look at a gravestone before doing so?

I edged round him, to try to see what was on the stone, but, seeming to catch on to what I was doing, the man – Jack, I reminded myself – moved with me, carefully and purposefully keeping his body between me and the stone. Eventually, I gave up, defeated.

"Ianto."

I looked at Jack for a moment, expecting him to continue talking, before I noticed something. He was looking as curious as I was…and then the voice, his voice, said my name again. But Jack's mouth hadn't moved.

I stared at him. He looked outright terrified, and I was pretty sure that that look of terror would be mirrored almost perfectly on my own face. I backed away from him slowly, but before I could get more than a few steps back, my legs hit something and I stumbled. I shrieked and spun to find – the gravestone. My family man from earlier. As I tried frantically to calm my racing heart, I jumped as I heard two identical, very loud, noises and I once again made eye contact with Jack as I realized that the gates of the graveyard had just slammed shut. I knew that he had come to the same conclusion as I when he shuddered. Looking around, I saw that a storm had picked up around us, but it was with both relief and great trepidation that I realized that we were in the relative calm of the eye of the storm – where, it seemed, not even the rain beating down on the graveyard around us could touch us. As I realized this, Jack spoke and I noted how oppressive the silence had been.

"Wh-what's happening?" He sounded calm, and his face gave nothing away. I wondered if he was as frightened as I was. I was opening my mouth to reply when the sound hit. The silence, it seemed, had been only temporary. As the sound hit, so did the rain. I threw myself to ground and curled up beside a gravestone in an attempt to protect myself from the storm that was now surrounding us. I heard a scream pierce the air nearby but I prevented myself from lifting my head into the storm to investigate. After all; it could only have been Jack.

After what felt like hours, but in reality could only have been two or three minutes, the storm subsided and I stood, brushing myself off. I turned slowly in a circle. Jack was nowhere to be seen.

"Goodbye…" barely more than a whisper, the finality of that one word hit me hard. I walked forward slowly, to inspect the mysterious gravestone he had tried to hide.

Captain Jack Harkness

Born 1 July 1958

I fell to my knees, shaking. Surely it couldn't be…. My head hit the ground. I blacked out. Just before the darkness surrounded me, I realized there was no date of death - and that that year - 1958 - was exactly 37 years before.

When I joined Torchwood London, I heard stories of the mysterious Captain Jack Harkness, leader of Torchwood Three - and supposedly immortal. I often wondered whether the two - this Captain, and the Jack I met aged just eleven years old - could possibly be the same, but I never really allowed myself to hope. When I joined Torchwood Three, I knew. But he never remembered me, and I was never sure whether it had happened yet, for him, in his timeline…or if it had happened so long ago that he'd forgotten. I'd like to think it's the former - I hate to believe he could ever forget me, but…I didn't know him. Not really. So I could never be sure.

I don't know why he made up a date of birth on that gravestone.

I don't know why he was there; whether it was Torchwood business, or private.

And I don't think I'll ever find out what truly happened that day, between his first hello and that last, lingering goodbye.