Author's Note: The title is from the Yeats poem, "The Lover Tells of the Rose in his Heart". This story takes place - I am forming a pattern - just after "Small Worlds". Everything is "just after" for me, apparently.
Jack watched as the team left one by one, none of them looking at his office or saying goodbye. Not even to each other. They just gathered their things silently and went. Then the hub was quiet, and he was left brooding at his desk. One human child, or hundreds. That had been the decision. He had made it.
There was a knock on his doorframe and he looked up. Ianto stood looking hesitant in the doorway. "I've brought you coffee," he said.
Jack waved him inside. "I didn't know you were still here."
Ianto set the mug on his desk and stepped back. "The others left without saying anything. I assume that you had a bad day."
Jack looked at Ianto for a moment, searching. He'd left it open for an explanation. Why was he interested? He sighed. "You could say that."
Ianto looked back at the door, seemed to hesitate, and then finally said, "This afternoon, while you were gone – I opened a bag of coffee and-" He paused, thinking for a moment.
Jack prompted, "And?"
"There were rose petals inside." Ianto looked bewildered, but also sort of touched. Jack felt a stir of surprise at the combination on his usually blank face. "No coffee," Ianto said slowly, his eyes growing distant, "just petals."
Jack took his coffee in his hands. "I hope you threw it out."
Ianto came back to himself. "Of course I did. What can you do with a bag full of petals? But it was the strangest thing. I assume it's the same as what happened at Gwen's flat."
Jack nodded. "They were just mocking us." He looked grim, and sad.
Ianto asked quietly, "What happened today?"
And Jack explained. About the school, about the party, about the step-father, and the mother, and the little girl. "I let her go," he said finally. "I let her go, and I know it was the right thing, but-" He sighed again. "It'll never feel that way."
Ianto was quiet for a moment, his hands in his pockets, looking at the floor. Then he said, "Come away, oh human child, to the waters and the wild, with a faery, hand in hand, for the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."
Jack looked at him. "I didn't take you for a Yeats man, Ianto."
"I learned more than maths in school." There was visible for an instant a very small smile on Ianto's face. And then it was gone. "You did right, sir. The others know, but they can't help but hate you for it. They'll be back to worshipping you soon enough." There was a friendly sarcasm in this last that made Jack half-smile.
"Well, at least I know I've got you behind me, Ianto."
"Anytime, sir," he answered with a smirk, and then he was gone.
It took Jack about a minute of not thinking about it for the innuendo to occur to him, and when it did he laughed out loud to the silent, empty hub.