I don't own the song lyrics, or the characters. And if it wasn't clear from the summary, these fics are not focused on just ONE Torchwood character, as each of them have their own quirks that make them enjoyable to write.

Thank you for reading, and enjoy!


Author: Chrissy/MayQueen517 (On LJ)
Rating: PG

Word Count: 543

Prompt 46: I don't need to be forgiven


"Do you regret bringing her into the Hub?" Jack says, his voice coming from somewhere behind Ianto. Feeling his back stiffen, he keeps his voice calm, betraying nothing as he's taught himself to do. It's effective in shutting himself down when he doesn't want to feel.

When he doesn't want to have a mental breakdown in the middle of Torchwood Three, actually.

"Not for a moment, sir. She's my life," he says finally. The intake of breath behind him doesn't make him move from the impossible task of getting Owen's station clean.

"She was,"

"Just because she's dead doesn't mean she isn't my life still, Jack. I would think you'd understand that more than I,"

Ianto doesn't need to look up to see the wince, he can hear it in the empty, silent air.

He's glad that he caused that hurt.

Somewhere, buried beneath anger, terror, hurt, trauma, and above all some skewed sense of love, he screams at the injustice of wanting to hurt others because he still refuses to accept the loss of Lisa. Not the Cyberwoman, not the metal-encased woman that killed two people and tried to kill the sickeningly naive one.

What was her name? Oh, right; Gwen.

It'd take him a while to remember her name, but as long as he remembered her coffee, he supposed he'd be fine.

Pressure on his back made him stiffen again, hands stilling over the disturbingly sticky surface of Owen's desk. Frankly, he wasn't sure he wanted to know why it was sticky. Best to clean it up and not ask questions like a good tea-boy.

"I'm sorry about her, Ianto. But I couldn't let her convert someone else,"

"Tell me, Jack, where would she have gotten the metal to make someone like herself? The Cybermen at Canary Wharf cannabalised the remaining metal from rennovations. The human body is too weak to withstand the needs of a Cyberman brain. You seem to forget that I was there at the Wharf, I remember the wreckage. I remember seeing the vortex open because when it closed, the building was hollow,"

And he did. Ianto's mind casting back to that day that could be catagorized as sheer chaos. The man, impossibly young yet impossibly old at the same time, running around and trying to end things with as little dead as possible. He remembered a blonde who later disappeared.

He remembered nothing after his screams at seeing Lisa led to his frantic, fragile hands freeing her. In a ghost memory of trauma, his arms ached at the weight of Lisa and his ears rang from her screams.

"They're resourceful, Ianto,"

"With all due respect, sir, I think I know a fair bit about Cybermen on my own and I respectfully decline your input. I did what I had to do because of my love for Lisa. And somewhere in there, my Lisa was too. Perhaps one day, you'll understand that even through mayhem, the person you love is always there. I wonder what you'll do then,"

And with that, Ianto Jones left the trash bag sitting at Owen's desk and walked away, leaving Captain Jack Harkness in sad speechlessness.