Hand
Short piece from Jack's POV after COE.
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or any of its characters they are the property of the BBC. Promise I will treat them with care.
I look at the back of my left hand. The skin is firm and I can only see a network of fine lines when I hold it to my eyes. There should be deep crevices and age spots. Signs that I've lived. I pinch the skin and it flicks back into place. That's wrong too. It should pucker and slowly flatten. I should have used up all the life in my skin. It should show what I've lived through.
Some days I think that my life must be a dream. There is no one who can tell me otherwise. No one alive who knew me when I was young. I think about travelling through time. Travelling to the time when I was young and just picking up that life. Like none of this ever happened.
I turn my hand over and trace the deep crease that runs around the mound of my thumb. My life line, strong and unbroken. Once, as an experiment, I drew a knife across that line. It stung and throbbed and bled for ages. The next day it had healed, without a scar.
But there was a time, just a moment really, when I didn't want it to end, when I had my family; Tosh, Owen, Gwen and Ianto. For a time I forgot about dying and lived. But I killed them, as if I held a gun to their heads. Cursed them and killed them. Gwen is left, but time will take her. And I can't even enjoy that time, because she knows. She knows what I've done. And that in itself is the death of love.
I wonder what Ianto would think if he was still alive. Would he forgive me? I hope he wouldn't, but I think he would. He forgave everything. Stupid boy, lost himself in me, lost his life because he forgave me. I could never push him away hard enough. I wish I had, wish I'd tried harder. But it was so good. In his youth, I regained my own.
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