A/N: Hello and welcome! I'm pretty new to the world of authoring, and even newer to the world of Torchwood so I hope the characterisation isn't completely off-base. I'm not really sure what compelled me to write this but I hope you get something out of it worth taking away.
Disclaimer: I own the laptop this was written on, and that's it. Story, characters, world.. All belong to other people. I make no money from this. No, seriously. I know you're shocked.
Summary: In 'Adam' Ianto realised that Torchwood, and Jack, have given him meaning again. He then promptly forgot. A short look at his thoughts on the matter.
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Lately, Ianto had been having this feeling like he was forgetting something
It was distracting him. He'd been trying to explain it to Jack the other night, and the closest comparison he could come up with was this:
When you're drinking and you remember something, say that someone owes you money, it's suddenly the most important thing in your life,but you're drunk so soon you totally forget what you were just thinking. But for the rest of the night you know there's something you should be thinking about, and you don't know if it's good or bad you just know it's important, but you can't remember..
For a split second Jack had given him that deep far off look he got whenever he was thinking something he couldn't bring himself to say, and then he was grinning and saying that if you could remember anything at all of a nights drinking then you weren't doing it right.
Ianto had given up trying to explain shortly afterwards.
The feeling remained though, and with it grew the suspicion that whatever this lost-memory was, it wasn't bad. Ianto had always had an obsessive personality, there was always something occupying him. Back in the day, it had been Lisa. First loving her, and then attempting to save her, and finally grieving for her. There was a time not so long ago when everything in him ached for something to obsess over that wasn't loss.
He couldn't place when exactly that had started to recede, but here he was, feeling as far away from that time as if it had happened to someone else. It wasn't that he was, 'over it' - that was too simple, but for whatever reason he found that this current feeling of forgetting was the easiest fixation he'd had since Canary Wharf. It wasn't consuming him, it was just distracting. It left room for all the other things he liked to obsess over; Torchwood, Jack.. He knew that no matter what else was distracting him, these things would keep him sane.
In his better moments, he thought they might even keep him happy.
Now, if only he could figure out what he was supposed to be remembering...
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A/N: Yeah, I have no idea what just happened either. I just figure Ianto can be very cerebral, so he doesn't just feel happy, he has to actively think, 'hey, I'm happy'. I find it deeply amusing that he realised this only to forget. It's typical Ianto-luck isn't it to figure out that you know where you belong in life only to forget it! Anyways many thanks for reading, I hope it didn't suck so hard that it destroyed your faith in humanity.
(P.S. - I don't think we'd ever hear Ianto speak like he does here about the drinking example in the show, but I thought he'd be more relaxed with Jack.)