Forget Me Not
Disclaimer: Don't own it. Not making any money. Just playing in the sandbox to ease my pain after day 4.
Authors Note: So SPOILERS in this story if the summary hasn't made that clear enough already. Just a little fic that deals with Ianto begging Jack to remember him after his (slightly pointless) death. (After all couldn't he have stayed with Gwen? Then he would have lived!!!) This is unbetaed, I've read over it a few times, but there are most likely still some mistakes in there, so sorry if there are!
Also some spoliers for Doctor Who series 1-4
Summary: 5 times Jack remembers Ianto…
1.
He is in a market bazaar on a planet that is filled to bursting with aliens from all over the galaxy. Everything is frenetic, haphazard. There is no time to think because every moment is spent navigating around haggling, shouting, fighting, stealing.
Jack likes it this way. Being unable to think. He has spent the last 6 months moving from one planet to another, visiting only those that are dangerous, busy, and anonymous. He looks forward to bumping into people who take it the wrong way, to taking the hits that they dish out, to fighting back so hard that his knuckles are bruised and bloodied…to gasping back to life the next morning and for just a moment thinking he is somewhere else.
It is in this moment, between the air returning to his body and when he sits up and opens his eyes, that he thinks he is back on Earth, recovering from some Torchwood related mishap. Ianto is with him, is always with him as he comes back to life, because Ianto knows that reawakening from death isn't easy, isn't fun, isn't something that he likes to do by himself. (Strange, because Jack never realised just how alone you can feel waking from death until he started waking up, hand held, someone there to care for him.)Sometimes, when the illusion is most complete, when he truly believes himself to be back where he felt he truly belonged, he speaks, chats about plans, is in mid-sentence with flirtatious words on his lips…
And then he opens his eyes to find himself lying in a back alley on some planet he cannot remember the name of.
After 6 months of waking up alone (which is so much harder having experienced years of waking up with someone by his side), happy memories of Ianto dissipating as he comes back to himself, to be replaced with overwhelming guilt, pain, hatred, everything negative that he has been carrying since the 456 toppled the house of cards on which he had been basing his existence, Jack is not sure if he can take remembering his lover any more.
Because remembering he is no longer there hurts more than anything Jack has ever had to deal with before.
2.
On the one year anniversary of Ianto's death Jack is slumped in a bar, trying to drink himself into oblivion. Alien liquor can be pretty potent, and he has consumed more than most people do in a one year period, but he can't seem to get Ianto's face out of his mind, no matter how hard he tries.
Jack knows that he promised Ianto to never forget, but it hurts, it hurts so much, and all he wants to do is give up. This moment, this recognition that he has been going for one whole year without him, (also the knowledge that this is one year of possibly millions, billions) is overwhelming. He just wants to give in to weakness, to forget, to block from his mind Ianto's smile, his warm, rich laugh, his shy but determined pursuit of Jack, forcing revelations that no one else had ever heard.
He can't forget though, no matter how much drink he consumes Ianto is always pressing at him, pushing him into emotional territory that he wants to do nothing but move on from. And so Jack finds himself, tears streaming down his face, sitting in this shit-hole of a bar, with a two headed green man slumped unconscious on his right, and a raucous crowd skulling pints to his left.
He still has not forgiven himself for not saying "I love you."
3.
He runs into the Doctor, literally, on planet with an unpronounceable ten-syllable name.
Except, it is the old Doctor, the one who died saving Rose from the vortex energy, who he hasn't seen for years and years and years.
Jack experiences joy for the first time in a very long time, he lets out a whoop, and hugs the man before he has even completely pulled himself upright.
"Doctor!! I can't believe it's you! Is Rose with you?" He is looking around wildly now, because he hasn't seen Rose in forever either, and nothing could make him happier, in this moment, than seeing her again.
Except the Doctor is not returning the hug, he is pushing away, as though he is being assaulted, and Jack knows immediately that this man has not met him yet, is not here with Rose, may not be due to visit earth for sometime.
"I'm sorry, who are you?"
Jack has been warned again and again (by the man standing in front of him) that messing with the timeline is forbidden, is bad, can have catastrophic consequences. He should pretend to have made a mistake, and walk away. He should not, cannot, reveal to the Doctor anything that is to come, in case it changes something (or everything).
At the same time he can see an opportunity. Jack should grab this man and tell him exactly what Bad Wolf is, and how to deal with it, and to not let Rose bring him back to life, bring him back forever, because then he wouldn't have to be here, could be somewhere else, could be dead. And it is so tempting, too tempting, because now he is opening his mouth to say all these things, to tell the Doctor of what he needs to change in his travels.
But then, Ianto comes to him, clear as day, as if he is standing in the street amongst the bustling aliens, on this planet that cannot be named. He is in his favourite suit, and smiling, eyes twinkling, as though he has just told a joke, or heard one and enjoyed it.
And Jack realises everything that he will miss if he dies on that platform, if Rose's good intentions don't backfire and cause him to live forever.
Instead he sees another opportunity, and grabs the Doctor by both shoulders.
"Listen to me. You haven't met me yet, but you need to make sure that you are on Earth in July 2009, when the 456 return and try to take the children. You have to stop them ever arriving. Please, please, it's the most important thing you could ever do for earth."
The Doctor stares at him with hard eyes, confused, but also angry. He obviously doesn't like that he is being asked to change history by people whom he has never met (or at least, whom he hasn't met yet).
"You know that isn't how it works." He responds, and Jack isn't surprised, because of course that was the answer he was going to get, but it is still crushing because for a moment there he could feel Ianto again, for the first time in a long time. And now he is drifting away again.
Jack casts around for something, anything to make the Doctor listen, to make him promise to fix things, to have him say "yeah, sure, lets just jump in the Tardis and go save the world hey?"
"I know how you die! I can save you if you stop the 456!" He shouts suddenly, surprising himself almost as much as he surprises the Doctor, who had been walking swiftly away by this point.
He pauses, back still to Jack, and the moment seems to last forever.
And then without looking back the Doctor disappears into a crowd of people and Jack is too stunned to move.
The extinguishing of hope hurts almost as much as losing Ianto the first time.
He heads off in search of a drink.
4.
His first steps on earth's soil since he left more than a century previously, Gwen's tears following him as he transported away, bring Ianto back so strongly that for several minutes Jack can only stand completely still, in the thrall of memory.
He knew this would happen the minute he returned, and this is why he has put it off for far, far too long. Gwen is gone now, and Rhys, the baby Jack was so excited about, but never got to meet, even Martha, Mickey… in short everyone whom he ever knew and was close to on earth.
He looks them all up, of course, wanting to know everything that happened to them, everything that he missed because he was afraid of the guilt and pain that would overwhelm him when he returned.
The baby who Jack knew as a bump in his mother's stomach was joined by three others, and this is a cheering thought, because it means Gwen was able to move beyond everything that had happened, all the horrific things she saw and experienced, and love a family the way she was destined to before she found Torchwood. Jack jots down the number of one or two of her descendants, he hopes that there is a little bit of Gwen and Rhys still in these people so far removed from them. He wishes he could see them again.
Martha had kids too, and Mickey found himself a girl (Jack takes a moment to be surprised by this, but the joke is lost because there is no one to share it with.)
He doesn't look up Alice, doesn't think he can take finding out whether or not she remained alone for the rest of her life, after he killed her only son. (His grandson.)
Through all this discovery, the bittersweet excitement of finding out about the lives of people he had once loved, and still misses, Ianto is with him, more tangibly than he has been since Jack held his body back in that room filled with blanket-covered corpses.
Unlike the last time he was here, and most of the times that he has remembered earth since, Jack feels a sense of peace as he wanders the streets of Cardiff, surveying all the changes that have been wrought since he was last here. It is not what he expected as he finally forced himself back to earth. He had imagined a return of all the self-hatred and recrimination that he has managed to push beneath the surface, a return of the debilitating guilt that he carried with him for so long. This is why he has stayed away so long, the fear of being overwhelmed by the emotions that forced him to leave in the first place.
Instead he is able to remember happy moments with Ianto, to remember him as he would have wanted to be remembered, to see him clearly in his mind.
Jack finds himself smiling broadly as he wanders the streets, feeling as though Ianto is with him, walking merely a step behind, just out of sight.
He wishes he had come back sooner.
5.
Jack is grey-haired, and has stopped counting the years that he has been alive. He has his own ship now, can (and does) travel the universe at will, though there is very little that he has not seen these days. Many centuries of straight travel will let you see just about everything in the universe…twice. Still, as you get to one end the other end changes beyond belief, and so he fills his days observing differences, thinking about what a planet looked like in the past, before it was hit by war or famine or prosperity or over-population.
The girl whose life he has just saved, (somewhat unintentionally, Jack has been done with all that hero stuff for a long, long time) offers him lunch, and he is never one to pass up a free meal. They are sitting in a little restaurant, looking over menus (because some things never change, and wherever humans have colonised in the world, they have taken social eating with them) when Jack catches sight of the date in a newspaper that has been discarded on their table.
Usually he doesn't look at the date, because his brain can never resist doing the sums, working out how old he is, how long he has been here (and this always leaves him with the knowledge that one day he will look at the date and his age will have doubled, or tripled). This time though, without meaning too, he has seen not only what year it is, but also what day it is (strange how humans can travel the universe but never let anything change their long established ways of telling time and date.)
It's Ianto's birthday. Ianto who has been dead for so long that no one even remembers the city in which he was born, or the one in which he was killed.
Jack's heart beats faster for a minute, jumping in his chest painfully, and he thinks for a moment that he might just be having a heart attack (surely his body can't be that old can it?). Memories wash over him, and he realises that despite his promise to the man who he had loved (the only man he ever loved? Maybe, maybe not) he hasn't thought of Ianto in over a century. Now though he can see him again almost clearly, can hear that Welsh voice inside his head laughing about the fact that Captain Jack Harkness is walking around the world with a head full of grey hair, and wrinkles beginning to form on his previously perfect skin.
Jack has to excuse himself from lunch. He doesn't give an explanation, he simply apologises that something else has come up and leaves the startled girl by herself in the restaurant. He figures its better that he make her feel stood up than he embarrass her by bursting into apparently spontaneous tears in the middle of a public establishment.
He gets around the corner before the emotion overtakes him. It has been so long since he even thought of Ianto that the memories are a little grainy around the edges, as though he has thought of them too often, and they are starting to fade the way photos do. (Jack's photographs of Ianto have long since washed out so that they are completely white, and the idea that the same thing could happen to his carefully protected memories is terrifying.)
Some time later the sun is setting, and Jack has tear streaks drying messily all over his face. He has spent the afternoon thinking carefully over every moment that he still has with Ianto carefully filed in his mind. Some of them he cannot completely get all the details for any longer.
He goes into the nearest bar and orders two very expensive drinks, to toast for Ianto's birthday, in memory of Ianto, and worries about how much longer he will be able to hold onto the love that was, and still is, one of the most important parts of his life.
Well, that's the end of my first Torchwood fic, would love to hear what you thought!