The room is almost dark, a single writing lamp spilling dim yellow shadows across the desk. A pen scratches at the paper, pausing at every word and then moving on. The sound of breathing, steady, comforting: in, out, in, out. Eyes trace a path across the paper in front of them.

The year is 2012 and all over Britain people are celebrating the Olympics. On the surface water splashes against the docks and in the flat down the road an old man is watching the late night news; he hears none of it.

The words on the paper grow closer and closer, until they are one giant mark staining the page. His eyes drift closed.

Dreams don't come to him anymore, their worlds of colour and subconscious longings have disappeared, but in his sleep he is never alone.

Faces float in front of him, effervescent in the blackness, hundreds of faces...and voices. Words, conversations, arguments – all reaching towards him, across time. There are so many of them; friends, lovers, children, grandchildren, family, even a wife – all gone now. Trapped in the blackness.

He reaches out to them, gathering them towards him – Stephen, Ianto, Gray, and the others (some of whose names he's forgotten) – but they drift through his fingers like smoke. They stare at him, eyes bottomless pools, and so sad. We're gone, they seem to say, we're gone.

His lips form words, breathed out towards the faces, carried from his heart.

I miss you.