9
Jack reached for his VM and hit the button to bring up the note.
Not the official one left on the desk but the one in the candy drawer. The personal one that was no one else's business and he read it again with a heavy heart.
.
.
Dear Jack
I am so sorry for this. Have you ever loves someone so fully, so completely you would follow them into fire? Run towards bullets for them? Have you ever been ready to die for that love?
I never knew love like that existed. Not until now. I now understand the term 'dying of a broken heart' and I am so sorry that it has come to this but I has no choice. I had to try. Had saved up enough to pay Doctor Tanizaki for his time and treatment to get Lisa back on her feet, so I could release her.
You see… this silly little 19th Century ape is only capable of one true love. One, completely unforgettable true love and I found it. For a moment I found it, held it in my hand and knew the overwhelming despair of it, knowing it could never last.
I was going to free her, release her and let her go. Since coming to Cardiff I have not loved anyone else, my waning affection for Lisa so raw as I had it all worked out to put her in a safe house and apologize to her, explain tht I had found another who was so much more than I thought I could ever hope to find. She would have understood, I am sure of that. Freedom the price for me? She would have let me go.
I am so sorry Jack. I knew the inescapable heat of love and know I held it too tightly in my hand and it has burned me.
I am ready to face my losses knowing that at least knew true love.
Love from
Ianto.
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Jack read it several times with a heavy heart, scolding himself for reading it wrong and thinking this was about him. How could he be so stupid. Ianto had someone else this entire time, some woman out there waiting for him, his rushed attempt to get rid of Lisa for her and the unborn child he had probably only just leaned of.
"You should have come to me" Jack whispered, sniffling back a traitorous tear that surprised him. Was it shame in being so bloody arrogant as to have thought Ianto loved him? Or sorrow that someone else clearly held his heart instead.
"Jack?"
Jack looked up morosely at Owen who was leaning against the doorframe with a look of extreme annoyance. Like… looking like himself.
"Owen?"
"What do you want me to do?"
Jack leaned back, one finger rolling over the VM's closed flap as he stared at Owen then she said softly "Let him go. Sign him out as deceased, no body."
"Really?" Owen asked with surprise "You throwing this one back Ahab?"
Jack snorted and nodded "He found something I could not give him. Someone out there loves him and … he is needed by that woman and her child. No… he deserves some peace after the shitty life he had under the umbrella of Torchwood. Sign him out."
Owen nodded and turned to leave, then looked back "For what it is worth… when he saw you … for a moment… he almost looked pleased before the fear set in."
Jack nodded and sighed "And shut the door. Tell them to go home, I want to be quiet for a while."
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"Jack?"
"I told you to go home!" Jack said with annoyance as he looked up from the folder in his office chair to find not only Owen but Toshiko there with matching looks of doom.
"Oh god… what is it now? Gwen lost again?"
"I went to sign Ianto out like you said, told Tosh to do the shut down on his file while I did the medical bit and… apparently he had started it that night. He erased everything on the main server but Mainframe… well… to be hopeful she had saved a draft and brought it up." Owen glanced a Toshiko who made a motion with her hand for him to tell him and Jack felt a strange twist in his gut as he rose to meet them. Owen sighed and then said "His blood works were there and he had started his own medical shut down for me and…well… shit."
"His blood showed several anomalies that did not make sense so Owen asked me to double check it all, in case this was a matter of cross contamination or something" Toshiko took over as she saw Owen was unable to continue "It shows markers in his blood that are… unusual."
"Like?"
"Like… not only testosterone but… estrogen. Also… the test for pregnancy came back positive." She let Jack stand there blinking as he took a deep breath that was more of a shuddered gasp of pain then she continued "I checked the preliminary scans Owen did while he was still on the floor ignoring us and it confirms the blood tests… we never check, never did the follow-ups because you told us to hold off. So. We didn't know. Jack… the chid is his. Biologically… he was pregnant that night. He saw, that is why he ran. After starting to prepare for death he found traces of a pregnancy and… that is why he ran."
"The baby … well. Mate. His blood showed strange markers that I had only seen once before and I double checked against Mainframe and… the little flecks of gold match your own sample of weird. Looks like T-Boy was carrying your child when he ran from us that night."
"Jack" Toshiko whispered with open sorrow as Jack's face betrayed his horror "That little girl is your daughter. That's why he will not leave… he … I think he watches you."
