Nothing Gold Can Stay

by Sheltiesong

In the end, Jack is always alone

Title: Nothing Gold Can Stay

Rating: PG
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Word count: 498
Warnings: angst, major character death
Spoilers: post-Exit Wounds
Disclaimer: Torchwood and its characters belong to Russell T. Davies and the BBC. I just took them out of the toybox for a bit. "Nothing Gold Can Stay" was written by the amazing Robert Frost. Originally published in The Yale Review, November 1923.
Summary: In the end, Jack is always alone.
Notes: Thanks to Kaly for the last minute-beta. You rock!

Nature's first green is gold

Her hardest hue to hold

Her early leaf's a flower

But only so an hour

Then leaf subsides to leaf

So Eden sank to grief

So dawn goes down to day

Nothing gold can stay

The late winter sun sparkled against the new snow, casting diamond glints against the soft whiteness. It should have been beautiful, should have struck a chord somewhere inside, but Jack only felt the cold. He ducked his head a little more deeply in his collar, wrapped the warmth of his greatcoat a little more securely around him, but it did little to warm him.

Standing on the roof, the snow crunching lightly under his boots and the Plass bustling below him, Jack shook his head. The sight and sounds of the world in motion angered him, the everyday mundanity an irritation. So many people, so utterly oblivious of the lives that bought their ignorance. They'd never mourn the loss of beautiful Welsh vowels or feel their hearts twist at the scent of coffee, never see the empty spaces where the neat lines of a well-cut suit should be. They'd never listen for the quicksilver comment forever silenced, and never wipe away the salty warmth of tears when it didn't come.

So Eden sank to grief.

The images came unbidden, blood and violence tangled up in screams, red and lurid and oppressive, of Ianto falling, those lips that would never kiss Jack again frozen in a vague expression of surprise. Of the Re-suna going down in a jumbled, many-limbed heap under Gwen's gun, pale ichor oozing. Of that horrid, unnatural stillness that stretched in the aftermath, as he knelt there beside his lover on the storm-drenched sidewalk, fingertips lightly brushing skin clinging to its last dregs of warmth.

The images slowed now, the mental reel pausing on weak sun splashing a cool grey headstone nestled above the freshly-turned ground, a single red rose lending the only colour to the scene. No charade-funeral for Ianto, Torchwood rules be damned. No cold and sterile drawer in the Torchwood morgue, no decoy corpse wearing his lover's name. Just Ianto, cradled forever by his beloved Wales.

Sigh misting the air, Jack shoved the images aside, brushing the moisture from his cheeks with an impatient hand. Turning away from his silent contemplation, he walked with slow steps to the access door, and down to the invisible lift. He couldn't face the shuttered tourist office and the cog door, not yet. Let Ianto be the last to have touched them.

His steps echoed hollowly in the hub's underground depths, and as Gwen looked up, shadow-cast in the low light of her computer monitor, Jack met her eyes briefly. The grief of her expression ached as she dropped a chaste kiss on his cheek and turned away, bootheels clicking as she left him for her home and her husband.

The pteranodon's call pierced the silence, mournful and longing, and Jack stood alone.

Nothing gold can stay.