A/N: Written specifically for the reel_torchwood challenge round 1, so previously posted on live journal. This is basically a version of Daphne du Maurier/Hitchcock's Rebecca, but with added Jack/Ianto, and a bit of Gwen bashing...
Prologue and first part: "Rebecca"
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again, and it seemed to me that I stood at the gate but could not enter, the gates being rusted shut and chained together.
I looked to the gatehouse and found it deserted, and then, all of a sudden, it seemed to leap into life, looking as it had all that time ago, climbing red and white roses growing up the walls. I turned to see Bill, the Gatekeeper, smiling and waving as he pulled the gate open for me
The driveway wound this way and that, but now the trees and shrubs were unkempt, and bracken, nettles and ground ivy had taken over and were now starting to claim the gravelled drive, making it appear narrower than I'd remembered all those years ago. As I travelled further, I reached spindly rhododendrons and azaleas, now uncared for, reaching their outer branches across the driveway.
And then I came suddenly to a corner. I turned and there it was: Manderley, still beautiful with the moonlight upon it. As I neared it, it appeared as if the windows glowed with light and I could hear music and laughter, evidence of gaiety and parties- parties that had taken place many years before I first went there.
Then just as suddenly, a cloud drifted across the full moon, and the light went from the windows, and the music and the laughter faded. Now, the house was as I last remembered it- a deserted and bleak shell. The remains of its roofs had long since fallen, and here and there I could see the remnants of the rafters
We can never go back to Manderley again, that much is certain, and waking I know I am many hundreds of miles away, in a foreign country, far away from the events that took place there so many years ago.
Sometimes in my dreams I do go back there, back to my life all those years ago, and how it changed, all that time ago... All those years ago in the South of France...in Monte Carlo..."
xxx
Packing away his sketch pad and pencils, the young man rose from the rock where he'd been sitting, overlooking the bay, and made his way along the cliff top path back down towards Monte Carlo. The weather was unseasonably stormy and the winds ruffled his short dark hair as he pulled his casual outdoor jacket around him. He was used to the weather; he'd been born in Newport and spent his weekends on the Pembrokeshire coast.
As he rounded a rocky outcrop, he could see a man, maybe ten or fifteen years older than himself, standing at the cliff's very edge, staring down towards the swirling sea far beneath him. The man appeared transfixed by the waves crashing violently on the rocks below, his expression dark and brooding. Worryingly, he also seemed to be leaning further and further towards the edge.
"No, stop! Careful! The edge of the cliff is unstable!"
The man's head snapped upwards and his eyes settled on the younger man.
"Good God! You startled me- I could have slipped. And what the hell are you shouting at?" The man sounded irritated by the interruption. He was also unmistakeably American.
"Well, I thought...I..."
"Oh you did, did you?" he paused. "What're you doing up here anyway?"
"Just walking..." he hadn't been expecting the other man's reaction and his voice tailed off.
"Well...well...just...keep on walking then. And stop shouting!" The American sounded almost exasperated as he shook his head and then turned away, as the young man squeezed past him on the pathway and rushed down the track back down to town.
xxx
To be continued...