17
Ianto runs on to the moors.
"Wait for me!" he cries into the wind.
He looks all around him at the moonlit landscape.
"Where are you?" he roars.
The moors send his question back in an echo. We see Ianto's face. His path is clear.
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Ianto is waiting for the coach at the crossroads where he arrived, almost a year before. It comes pounding towards him. He hails it. This time, the coachman respectfully descends to take his bag and help him on. He is so confident and so changed that he doesn't recognise him.
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Ianto is walking through the orchard. It is wild, neglected. Its untended state worries him. He looks up. Rooks are circling, cawing.
Ianto finds himself at the side of the house. The ground is pitted with weeds. The windows are dark. He half runs round to the front. What he sees takes his breath away.
The great walls and battlements are blackened with fire. Windows gape on a hollow shell. The inside of the house has collapsed. Through the hanging door, only its charred remains can be seen. Weeds grow through utter devastation.
Ianto gazes in horror and distress.
Ianto knocks on the door of Alice's cottage. She opens it.
"They sent me from the inn. I've been up at the house …" Ianto can say no more, a sob escaping.
"Come in, come in."
"Is he dead?"
Alice takes Ianto in her arms. "No, no. Jack still lives."
Ianto is crying tears of relief. "Tell me - please …"
"Why did you run away in the night like that? I would have helped." Alice grasps his hands "I would have helped."
Alice has sat Ianto on a settle near the fire. "He sought you as if you were a lost and precious jewel. He didn't rest. And as days turned into weeks and no word came, he grew quite savage in his disappointment."
"He stayed at Torchwood?"
"Didn't leave the house..."
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Jack, unshaven and unkempt is standing at his threshold.
"Shut himself up like a hermit. He only went out at night, when he walked like a ghost through the grounds."
We see what he is looking at: an open carriage piled with luggage, into which Alice is helping Toshiko. Leah and Sophie are already sitting inside, dressed for a journey.
"He'd have no one near him. Toshiko was sent off to school. He placed me here. Only John and Martha stayed - and Mrs Poole of course."
Toshiko looks back at Jack with tears in her eyes. He walks across the dark hall and slams the library doors.
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Jack, in his shirt sleeves, is looking at the tree where Ianto promised him his hand - now dying, cleft by lightning. The rising moon inhabits the sky.
"It was harvest time when it happened. No one knows how she got out." Alice explains with a look of sorrow, Ianto's' hand moving to his mouth.
Jack hears a cry from the top floor. He sets off, a look of finality on his face.
Grace Poole is asleep, her empty jug of gin beside her.
"My theory is that when Mrs Poole was asleep, having taken too much of the gin and water..."
Jack takes Grace's keys.
Jack opens the door to the inner chamber.
"... The mad lady must have stolen her keys and let herself out."
Bertha Antoinetta Hart, standing in the last patch of daylight thrown down from her skylight, sees that it is Jack. She calmly walks towards him.
Jack graciously bows, indicating that she may leave.
Bertha glides past him. She is free.
Bertha walks past an elegant vase. She tips it to the floor. It smashes. Jack pays it no heed.
Jack has stood Bertha at his desk. A case of jewels is open before her. She has put on a tiara, a diamond necklace, bracelets. She is gazing at a ruby brooch. She turns to Jack. His expression is calm, resigned. In his hand he is holding the pocket watch, the pretty diamond encrusted chain wrapped around his hand.
Bertha begins to laugh.
She takes the candelabra from the table. She admires herself in the mirror; her white shift, the black feathers, the jewels. She holds up the candelabra and sets the huge curtains alight.
Jack is impassive; he does nothing to stop her. As she passes, Jack realises he is bleeding. She has run the brooch pin across him.
Bertha knocks a lamp onto the floor. The oil springs into flames, licking the tapestries and the paintings. Jack sees his ancestors begin to burn.
The conflagration is growing. Jack sees Bertha leaving Ianto's room. As he passes, he sees everything inside it being consumed by fire. He can't bear to look.
Bertha is watching the rooks. Jack goes to the edge of the roof. Bertha looks at him. The invitation is clear.
Jack is ready to die.
Bertha sees the rooks wheeling away. She runs at the edge of the roof. Jack sees her intention too late. He puts out his arm to stop her.
For the perfect fraction of a second, Bertha flies.
Jack sees her fall; almost falls himself – saves himself.
Life reawakens in him. Behind him, he sees Grace Poole, coughing, crawling up through the door.
"Antoinetta?" she chokes with horror.
Responsibility floods over him. He goes to her side, lifts Grace, helps her down the stairs.
Alice finishes the story "He didn't leave the house until everyone was out. Some say it was a just judgement on him for having her confined there all those years but for my part, I pity him."
Ianto is deeply affected.
"He's alive child, but many think he'd be better off dead" Alice sighs sadly.
"Why?"
"When he was taken out from under the ruins, a beam had fallen in such a way as to protect him, partly - but his eye was taken out and his left hand so crushed that he lost it. The other eye inflamed and - he is blind." Alice pauses, sobs softly "He's blind."
Tears fall as Ianto rocks with pain.
"I know... it's a terrible thing." Alice whispers.
"I had dreaded worse. I'd dreaded he was mad." A great sense of urgency is coming over him. "Where is he?"
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Ianto is walking through forest, along a grass grown track. His pace is fast; his journey almost at an end. He comes to a pair of rusting iron gates hanging open between granite pillars. He walks through them.
He finds himself in front of a decrepit Elizabethan manor house; no garden, just a sweeping semi circle of meadow grass, which someone has cut at with a scythe. Ianto stops.
Standing on the threshold is Jack Edward Harkness. He is in his shirtsleeves. He stands strong, stalwart, brooding. His hair is still raven black. He is looking hawk. His strength is undiminished.
He walks fifteen paces from the house. It brings him into the middle of the semicircle of grass. He is close enough for Ianto to see his scarred eyes. He walks towards him, silent.
A few drops of rain begin to fall. Jack puts out his right hand to feel them. He raises his face up to the sky as if he is looking for something from there. He is absolutely still; his expression, serene.
Ianto is very close. He steps on a twig. It breaks with a loud crack, shattering the silence. Jack is immediately on guard, his expression turning wary.
Jack suddenly swipes the air with his left arm; the ruin of it passing an inch from Ianto's face. Ianto steps back. Jack swipes again. Ianto holds his breath.
He seems satisfied at last that nothing is there. He turns and walks fifteen paces back to the house. He disappears into the dark interior.
Ianto starts to breathe again.
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Ianto lightly taps on the side door. Martha opens it; she is astonished. Ianto puts his finger over his lips.
Jack is in an armchair in front of his fire. Pilot is at his feet. Ianto carries in a tray with a candelabra and a jug of water.
"I can see the candles, Martha, at your side like a luminous glow. And the fire; a red haze." Jac mutters, "It returns so slowly."
Pilot notices Ianto. He leaps up with a whine, wagging his tail, madly. Ianto spills half the water. He cannot help finding it funny. His entrance has been ruined by the dog.
"Martha?"
Ianto giggles. Jack's face falls.
"Martha, is that you?"
"Martha is in the kitchen, sir."
"Who's there?" Jack starts.
"Pilot knows me. Will you have some more water? I've spilt half the glass."
Jack stands, holding out his hand. "If you are real, touch me."
Ianto touches his fingers; puts his hand in his. Jack ulls him into his arms. "His hand, his shape, his size."
"And his voice." Ianto chortles.
"Ianto Jones - Ianto Jones."
"My Jack, I am Ianto Jones: I have found you out. I am come back to you."
For some while neither is able to speak.
Finally Jack asks with wonder "You're not lying dead in some ditch? Not an outcast among strangers?"
"I've been with good people; far better than you" Ianto snorts "quite more refined and exalted."
Jack laughs with delight "he insults me …"
"And I'm an independent man. My uncle in Madeira died and left me five thousand pounds" Ianto reaches out to touch Jack's shoulder now.
"This is real. This is practical."
"I'm here. I'm home. I am where I love best."
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Ianto curled on Jack's knee by the fire. He is running his fingers over Ianto's face, feeling its contours. "You're altogether a human being, Ianto?"
"I conscientiously believe so, sir." Ianto is running his hands through Jack's hair. "But I see that you're turning into a lion. It's time someone undertook to re-humanise you."
"I'm a sightless block"
"I know." he kisses his eyes. "And the worst of it is, I'm in danger of loving you too well for this, and making too much of you."
"Am I hideous, Ianto?"
"Very. But you always were, you know."
A smile cracks Jack's face.
Ianto runs his fingers over it, feeling its contours.
Jack holds him.
Silence falls.
Ianto watches as slowly Jack's face changes and his damaged eye opens to show both eyes still intact.
Ianto leans in and kisses each eyelid.
"Ianto" Jack whispers as he focuses.
He sees.
Ianto is finally home.
Jack is whole again.
THE END.