Disclaimer: I own neither Torchwood nor the Biblical tale of Moses, which is referenced herein.
*.*.*
It was nearly dawn on Saturday morning when Jack showed up at his doorstep, soaked to the bone and cradling a black and white housecat.
It had been an exhausting few days—his first back from a month-long suspension. He was still mostly confined to the Hub, which struck him as a bit counterintuitive when all of the…wrongdoing he'd done was in the basement. There'd been a lecture about trust and watching each other's backs, the standard kind of thing, but Ianto had been distracted by flashbacks of Lisa…of that thing wreaking havoc…grappling with Myfanwy, electrocuting Jack, killing.
But as exhausting as it had been for him, he knew that for Jack, it was excruciating. He'd overheard Gwen telling Toshiko about old photographs of Jack's father with the fairy lady and their whirlwind romance on the brink of war.
Ianto was no fool and more importantly, he was good at his job. He knew Jack was long-lived. The Archives were rife with references to him in the field or adding some tidbit of information about something's origins. It was always vague, always circumspect, but there. The man Estelle Cole had fallen in love with wasn't Jack's father. It was the Captain himself.
At the Hub, when the other's were stamping their feet like children and giving Jack the silent treatment—not that anyone was speaking to him yet, either—Ianto had given comfort the only way he knew how. A large cup of coffee spiked with Bailey's and a quiet assurance that he'd done the right thing, for whatever that was worth.
Then he'd turned tail and left right as rain started to fall on the Plass. He refused to think about why he wasn't relishing in Jack's suffering so soon after his own.
It was a surprise, though, to see Jack at his doorstep.
"Do you like cats?" he said, by way of greeting.
"Good morning to you, too, Sir."
"I thought about keeping him at the Hub," Jack continued, with the air of a practiced speech. "But the pterodactyl would eat him. And even if she didn't, it's not really a safe place for a housecat, you know? Aliens, wires, too many places to get lost in, tech that could vaporize him. So, do you like cats?"
Ianto didn't know how to answer that. On the one hand, it was a very straight forward question. On the other, he did not want a pet and that's where this was heading. "You want me to take it in?"
"I…I thought of asking Gwen. She…I dunno, she seems like a cat person. But she's not speaking to me, not yet." He looked so broken, like the grief was consuming him. He looked how Ianto felt. "I couldn't just leave him to fend for himself or let the RSPCA stick him in some cage. Estelle loved him so much, doted on him like a baby. I just…he needs a home."
He knew then that he'd lost this one. He had a cat now whether he wanted one or not. "You're dripping on my floor. Come on, let's get you dried off."
Ianto took the cat—who was either very lazy or drugged—from his boss and placed it on the sofa before raiding the hall cupboard for towels and his bedroom for pyjamas. He delivered them to Jack—who was either running on autopilot or did not think undressing in front of Ianto was anything of import—and fled to the kitchen.
He busied himself with making coffee. It was complicated enough to distract him from thinking of his very naked employer, whom he hated but was naked, just there, on the other side of those too-thin walls and oh, God, Jack was naked yet simple enough that he could make a mental list of all the things he'd need to keep a housecat.
Having a pet wasn't something he'd ever done before. His father had made it clear that the last thing they needed was another mouth to feed and Lisa had been allergic to pet dander. Once, when they'd been camping, they'd woken up to a dog pissing on their tent. When he'd gone to chase it off, the little bastard had darted into their tent, covering Lisa with wet "kisses," and their tent in that awful wet-dog smell. It was minging and worse, it set poor Lisa into an asthma attack.
Plans for a romantic fireside proposal quickly turned into an evening at A & E.
Shaking the memories, Ianto took a deep breath and set the two mugs on a tray. He wondered for a second if the saucer filled with cream was one of those television inventions, like mice and Swiss cheese. He reasoned that the worst that could happen was the damn cat would ignore it, so he put that on the tray, too.
Thankfully, Jack was dressed when he stepped back into the room. He looked somehow smaller, younger without his ridiculously out of date clothing. The cat was draped languidly on his lap and Ianto gathered it up with one hand while passing Jack his coffee with the other.
"Hello, moggie. Do you have a name?" It was…easier, less awkward to talk to the cat than to Jack. It was a horrible clash of emotions, caught between wanting Jack to suffer for Lisa and this inexplicable urge to coddle him until the grief was siphoned from both of them.
"Moses," Jack croaked. "It's Moses."
Ianto smiled. "Well, Moses, we'll have to get you a basket. Can't very well have a Moses with no basket, can we? Promise not to send you down the Taff, though."
He pretended not to hear Jack snorting into his coffee, more to trample down the odd flutter he felt hearing it than to ignore the man on principle. To his eternal satisfaction, Moses tucked into the cream. It wasn't quite the purring enthusiasm Ianto was hoping for, but it was a start.
It occurred to him, then, that the cat must be grieving too. All three of them were sat on his sofa, sipping their beverages in silence, mourning lost loves. Suddenly, the silence was sickening, as if he could hear their broken hearts beating like boots crunching down on broken glass.
"Tell me about her, about Estelle," he blurted. It was the one thing he'd wanted during his suspension, for someone to just ask about her—not about the mad, evil machine she'd become, but Lisa, his lovely, clever Lisa.
Ianto knew it would be a relief to just talk, to ramble without point or purpose. It was what Jack did. He talked about Estelle's kindness, her lighthearted teasing, how she saw the good in everything and how she teased him for his cheeky, inappropriate flirting. Ianto listened, taking in the fondness in Jack's voice more than the details.
He'd asked, when everything had gone to hell, if he'd ever really loved anyone. At the time, he just assumed that Jack—cruel, angry Jack, who'd put a gun to his head and handed out orders too horrible to carry through—wasn't capable of such a thing.
He was wrong. Losing Lisa had nearly destroyed him—and, if he were being completely honest, the world entire—and he'd only been with her for two short years. Jack had loved Estelle for decades and he wasn't sure he could fathom just how broken Jack felt for losing her.
"How old was she when you met her?"
Jack looked up, suspicious. "I…I only met her a few years ago. She went steady with my dad, back before the war."
"Jack," he admonished with a sad smile and a shake of his head. "How old was she when you met her?"
The other man sighed heavily and leaned back. "Seventeen. She was…just so full of life, so ready to make a difference in the world. I couldn't help but love her. And, God, she was so beautiful. Had the most amazing hair. It was so luxurious, so thick and just the perfect shade of brown, like warm chocolate."
He was silent for a moment but carried on. "I never intended to go back. I thought it was…kinder to let her think I'd gone missing or died in battle. But I thought of her one day, just in passing, and realized I couldn't remember what colour her eyes were. I remembered that she loved the Bay, liked Bing Crosby more than Glenn Miller, and that she was obsessed with candy floss. I could remember the way she sounded when she laughed. But I couldn't remember her eyes."
Ianto thought of Lisa and her beautiful, dark eyes. He wondered if he'd forget the details, too—if one day, Lisa would be a fond, hazy memory that he couldn't revisit, not like Jack had.
"What colour were they?"
Jack smiled—a real, easy smile that made his own eyes sparkle. "They were brown."
*.*.*
A/N: The basket thing with Moses is a Biblical reference. Most of you likely know it, but I showed it to someone once and they didn't get it. So, if you don't, when Moses was a baby, his mother put him in a basket and floated him down the Nile. He was found amongst the reeds by the pharaoh's daughter, who raised him like her own son. The River Taff is the largest river in Wales and runs through Cardiff. The bit about the peeing dog was from "Cyberwoman" but I added to it. Poetic licence, all that.
Bing Crosby and Glenn Miller were both popular in the early 1940s. Bing Crosby was a crooner, while Glenn Miller was a big band leader. My grandma was very fond of Bing (especially Toora Loora Loora) , but I (like our Jack) have always had a fondness for Glenn Miller. In the Mood is my favorite, but In Moonlight Serenade, which Jack and Rose danced to in Who, is a good one, too, if you're interested.
Thank you for reading.