07.05.2009
Gwen's funeral was held a week after the attacks. She was one of the lucky ones - her parents had gone through their affairs when she was planning her wedding and bought a burial plot at the Thornhill Cemetery, although they'd intended it for themselves rather than for their daughter. Every place of worship in the city had held a funeral over the last few days, but those who wanted to be cremated would have to wait weeks to be laid to rest. Gwen, either because she'd expected to spend her afterlife in the morgue at Torchwood or because she'd never actually accepted the inevitability of her own death, hadn't told anyone a preference either way, and so her parents had stepped in and arranged for her burial. They knew, at least, that she'd died in the line of duty, protecting her city like she always had.
The funeral ceremony was held in the larger of the two chapels at Thornhill, and it was still packed out. Half the mourners were her police mates, smartly dressed in their uniforms and grim-faced with that shock of being one of the survivors. For them, like for Torchwood, the losses were too big to truly celebrate the victory. Several of them snuck glances at the Torchwood team on the back row, recognising, at last, allies in a war they hadn't even known they were fighting. The family and friends were more suspicious, of all of them. Gwen's mother shot Jack a truly toxic look through her tears. The coffin was carried in by some of her cousins and Rhys's rugby mates, big beefy Welshmen of a type he recognised well from his own childhood and vaguely recognised from the wedding, and her bridesmaids dabbed at their eyes carefully so as not to smudge their eyeliner. Rhys led the tributes, his stories full of the warm, charismatic girl he'd fallen in love with and not the cold, driven woman Torchwood had been turning her into. Ianto hardly recognised her, but it was better that way.
Torchwood's Gwen hadn't been the woman they all remembered. She wasn't even the woman her former colleagues in the police had known. It had that effect on people, ground them up and spat them out. Ianto wondered just what his family would say at his own funeral, and whether Jack would recognise anything of him in the stories they had to tell. They certainly wouldn't recognise him from Jack's stories. It wasn't that he was unhappy like this, far from it, but... different. The gangly teenager Rhiannon would recall had had a very different relationship with authority, for a start. Once upon a time he would have felt far more nervous about being in a room full of police officers, or at least nervous for a very different reason. He wondered what Tosh's mother would say about her, and who the Jack that Alice knew was.
They mumbled their way through the hymns and prayers, none of which Ianto had been able to believe in since his father died, and then joined the queue of mourners filing out into the spring sunshine. Ianto met Rhys's eye with some difficulty but gripped his hand firmly. "I'm sorry, Rhys. She was a good woman."
"Aye, she was." He sniffed and looked past Ianto to Jack. "You're all coming to the wake, right?"
"If you want us there. Can't pretend it won't be awkward."
He laughed. "Is there any other sort of wake?" His eyes flickered past Ianto to Jack. "Is he alright? He looks..."
"He's... taken it hard." He looked back at Jack, who was stuck in conversation with Gwen's father, and sighed. "I'd better go. We'll see you there."
Jack looked more relieved to see him than he had in a while, as Ianto approached and offered his hand to Gwen's father. "Mr Cooper, good to see you again, although I wish it were better circumstances."
"Yes, thank you. She'll always be my little girl, you know?" He looked between them for a moment, puzzled. "I'm sorry, did we meet..."
"At the wedding," Ianto filled in for him. He remembered the Retcon a moment too late and plastered on a smile. "I'm Jack's partner - I filled in as DJ as a favour to Gwen."
The false memories settled into place like a comfortable blanket and Mr Cooper smiled warmly. "Ah, of course. It was good of you to do that for her. Wasn't it a lovely wedding? She was so lucky to have a man like Rhys. He's been such a rock for us the last few days."
"He's a good bloke," Ianto agreed. He reached down and took Jack's hand, squeezing gently. "We'll miss Gwen, won't we?"
"Yeah." Jack looked away quickly. "We should..."
"Yes, of course." Mr Cooper glanced at their hands. "You two take care of each other. See you at the golf club?"
"We'll be there," Ianto promised.
He tugged on Jack's hand again and they wove through the crowds, deftly avoiding Banana Boat and Gwen's mother and making a bee line for Andy Davidson instead. He was standing at the edge of the crowd with Tosh and Owen, wearing that awkward expression of someone who doesn't know quite where they fit in that was practically the Torchwood uniform. Behind them, outside the chapels, another family were gathering to grieve. Ianto wondered if it was another victim of Gray and John's attack, or something he couldn't blame himself for.
Andy gave him a curt nod and looked past him. "This it for your lot, then?"
"Christina is back at the Hub, keeping an eye on things. It's a bit soon for us to be comfortable leaving it, you know?"
"Bit soon for us to be comfortable with you leaving it, to be honest." He shook his head. "Hey, at least it wasn't Canary Wharf, right?"
"Yeah. Living through that once was enough." Ianto shook his head at Andy's curious look. "Just pray the Daleks don't come back. To any god you can find."
It looked for a moment like he might ask further, but in the end he responded to a sharp elbow in his ribs from Tosh and just nodded. "I have to admit, I'm pretty grateful now that Gwen never did give you my CV. Think I've seen enough of the weird shit from our side of the desk."
"It's not for everyone," Ianto agreed, desperate for a way out of the conversation. "Do you need a lift up to the wake?"
"Oh, no, I've got the car. Thanks, though. See you there?"
Ianto tugged Jack away as quickly as he could, down the path through the trees towards the car park. Here it was even more clear that summer was well on its way. The trees were in full leaf, lush and green and studded with flowers already. The contrast between life and death was more jarring in the cemetery than it had been on Mermaid Quay. The newer graves were dotted with flowers and gifts, whilst between them the older graves were kept neat and tidy by the staff and volunteers. No crawling brambles here like in the older cemeteries around the city, no shrubs for anything to hide in, not even a wilting bunch of daises left out of a sense of duty on a birthday was allowed to mar the celebration of life lest it remind them of the reality of death. He picked up his pace and didn't really relax until they were back in the SUV and on the road towards the golf club where the wake was being held.
# # #
The afternoon was wearing on when Ianto dragged himself away from what had been turning into a deep discussion about the Welsh rugby team's international prospects between two of Gwen's cousins that he'd somehow been roped into refereeing and made a break for the doors. The walls of Mr Cooper's golf club had been plastered with photos of Gwen from throughout her life - her as a little girl on Pendine Sands, as a teenager at Barry Island, her first day at school and first day in the police, college graduation photos, prom with Rhys and their wedding day, and even a team photo from a pub quiz night out with the Torchwood team. Her whole life, captured first on film and then digitally, moments preserved forever. The bar was doing a roaring trade, especially with the police officers in attendance, and there was more laughter than tears. Most people weren't even talking about Gwen, really. It was more rugby and politics and the sudden revelation of the existence of aliens that of course everyone in the room had known about for years.
Most of them were from Cardiff, so it could be true, but Ianto suspected that there was a lot of posturing involved.
He finished off his pint and dropped it on the edge of the table, grabbing a sausage roll on his way past, and wove his way through to the French windows that overlooked the driving range and, beyond it, the gentle undulations of the course. Jack was already out there, at a safe distance from the smokers, eyes distant once more. He barely glanced at Ianto when he approached, and his smile was barely there and entirely false.
"I've missed too many of these," Ianto said, in lieu of a greeting. "I tried to avoid them after my dad's. Always found an excuse."
"My dad's was a mass funeral. Half the settlement died in the attack, and everyone was related to everyone else, so it made sense." Jack didn't react when Ianto's head snapped around so fast it hurt, just kept staring out into the distance. "It made it easier to deal with the ones there were no bodies for, too. We knew they weren't coming home, but... you didn't notice they weren't there."
Ianto stared at him and wondered if Jack remembered that all of this was new to him. The way he said it, he had to assume not. "I'm sorry," he said belatedly, when he realised he'd been staring too long. "I... well, I can't imagine losing that many people I care about in a day."
"Yeah." Jack looked over at him, a frown creasing his forehead. "It puts you off caring for a while."
"I suppose it would." He watched Jack again, waiting for any sort of clues, then looked back into the club for Tosh. "Do you think we should head off? Tosh needs saving from Banana Boat again."
At that, Jack finally turned to look at him and plastered on another bigger and faker smile. "Sure. I should get back to work, anyway."
He headed off through the crowd to a very relieved Tosh, denying Ianto any opportunity to work out what had just happened. Rhys clapped him on the shoulder before he left and told him not to be a stranger, Gwen's mum actually hugged him, and by the time he got outside Tosh and Jack were in the car and waiting for him, seemingly unaware of anything wrong, so he chalked it up to well-earned paranoia and slipped into the passenger seat.
# # #
By the time Jack returned from the Hub, it was nearly dark and Ianto was beyond worried. Tybalt had taken to his presence with gratifying delight, and was curled up on Ianto's lap, paws kneading at his thigh whilst he purred up a storm and Ianto tried to keep his attention on the TV instead of wondering where Jack had got to. He'd thought about doing dinner, but he didn't know how much Jack had eaten at the wake. It gave you something to do with your hands, so Ianto had eaten far more than he should have. But Jack had been separated from him fairly early on, so perhaps he'd drifted outside and avoided that? They had enough leftovers in that Ianto could rustle him something up quickly enough if he was hungry when he got back.
The first warning he got that Jack was home was the sharp prick of claws finally digging into his skin, then Tybalt stretched, yawned enormously and jumped down from his lap to strut across the room to the door. As soon as it opened, he was winding around Jack's legs, trying to convince him that he hadn't been fed in years. Ianto turned the TV off but stayed where he was, letting Jack get in and get his coat off before he got to his feet and approached him. Jack ignored him, though, and crouched down to look in the cupboard.
"He's lying to you," Ianto told him, over Tybalt's happy chirrups. "I fed him an hour ago."
"He's a growing boy, aren't you?" He stroked Tybalt from ears to tail and filled his bowl up with another pouch. "I was thinking that we might be able to take him into the new office. He sleeps for most of the day anyway, so he can't get into too much trouble."
Ianto snorted. "Oh, just watch him." He leaned on the counter and looked down at the pair of them. "What about you, are you hungry? I could do..."
"I'm fine." Jack straightened up at last and turned away to empty his pockets out into the bowl by the door. "It's been a long day. I might just have a shower and turn in."
There wasn't even an implicit invitation in that. Ianto curled his fingers around the back of one of the bar stools. "Are you alright?" He watched Jack pause in the bedroom doorway and traced the slump of his shoulders, but his patience went unrewarded when Jack carried on his way.
Tybalt, at least, was still happy to see him.