Just One Chime
The clock strikes once for 11.15am. Just one chime for the quarter hour.
Jack heard it strike 11 am as he sat in the park, his greatcoat folded neatly on the bench beside him. He's heard it chime every hour since.... since.... He checked his watch. It was almost time.
At eight, he'd been standing at the water front, thinking of Owen. Remembering the doctor's desperately lonely dive into the coldness of Cardiff Bay.
He was still there when he heard it strike nine, but he'd returned to the Hub to sit on the couch behind the desk that had been Tosh's. He watched her Rift monitoring program running soothingly in a small window on her PC.
At 10, he had been on the roof of the Millennium Centre, just a few yards from the Hub. His coat had been billowing behind his ankles in the wind that came off the Bay as he counted the chimes.
At 11.30 am, Gwen finds him in the park and passes him his coat. "Come on," she says gently. "We have to go now." She takes his hand.
At 12.15, the clock strikes one chime for the quarter hour. Jack stands at the graveside, his coat folded across his arm. He bends down and softly places a brand new stopwatch on top of the coffin. The stopwatch chimes.
"Necessary modification," Jack explains with the merest ghost of a smile as Gwen raises a questioning eyebrow before she bends down to say her own private Ffarwel.