A/N: again, many thanks for the reviews / fave/alert listings this has gotten.
I also keep meaning to say a HUGE thank you to the 'favourite author' listings I've gotten… they really make me feel special…
I'm grateful for anyone whose reading and enjoying, whether you put me on any special lists or not… so really, thank you everybody. '-)
Chapter Seven
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"So as through a glass and darkly, the age long strife I see,
Where I fought in many guises, many names, but always me."
—General George S. Patton
……………….
Henry leant back against the soft cushions of the sofa a long moment after Jack had finished speaking, regarding the other man thoughtfully. Henry's quarters were spacious… room to write. To paint. To sculpt… his new hobby of the last hundred or so years. Comfortable sofas and chairs made up individual sitting areas. He and Jack were seated in front of the window that overlooked the docking bay. From here Henry could see every ship that came and went.
"So," he began, "let me make sure I'm understanding you correctly," he leaned towards Jack, his fingers laced together, giving the impression of deeper contemplation than he really felt was necessary to understand the situation. "You like this young man, Kamden Anders, but you're reluctant to pursue a romantic liaison because he reminds you of Ianto. Ianto whom you loved… who loved you. Who made you happier than I think I've ever seen you." He raised his eyebrows questioningly.
Jack gave him an exasperated look; Henry was putting it that way to be difficult. "I don't want to do something for the wrong reasons," he explained. Again.
"And those would be…?"
"He isn't Ianto, Henry. Ianto's gone. I buried him five hundred years ago and over a billion light years away."
After five hundred years, it shouldn't hurt so much. It hadn't until that day on the bridge when he'd ended up with Kam in his arms. He hadn't even remembered the incident in the warehouse with that spoiled-rotten pterodactyl until he was rolling around the deck with the young pilot.
Henry nodded, but said nothing.
Jack heaved a sigh. He should have known this was what he would get; all he wanted was for Henry to say that he was right to let it sleeping dragons lay undisturbed. It had been a very long time since he had felt this way, even a little bit, about somebody. He wanted to tell himself that he was happier this way. He wanted to believe it.
Ironically – or coincidentally at least – he seemed to remember feeling much the same way about his life when Ianto came into it. He was waiting for his Doctor. He had buried Laura a hundred years earlier. He'd left Estelle because he could never tell her the truth. He and Henry had had their moment and there was no going back to it after they'd both moved on with their lives. He hadn't been looking for anybody to do more than warm his bed at night.
"I see him, Henry. I don't remember what he looked like, but when I look at Kam Anders I see him even though Kam has brown eyes. Blond hair. Ianto's eyes were blue. His hair was darker, he wore it short. I'm sure Kam looks nothing like him, but when I look at him..." His voice had become ragged. He wiped the moisture from his cheeks. " I keep seeing him in someone I just met but I still feel like I've lost him completely because all I can remember are his blue eyes. His stopwatch… don't ask," he said to Henry's questioning look. "I'm not sure even you want to know all the things he could do with that stopwatch."
Henry chuckled softly, easing himself closer to the grieving man. It had been a long time since he'd seen Jack this rattled by old ghosts.
"I don't remember what any of them looked like. All I have are names... random memories. Abby... I remember her driving me nuts with that music... she used to blare it through the place so loud I was sure that they could hear it all the way up in the Plass," he smiled; Henry too. Henry had liked Abby. She of course had adored him as well. "And Bobby... Bobby Chase. Wendy... Gwen, Rhys. Mickey. Mickey Mouse." Captain Cheese Cake... what he wouldn't give to hear those words one more time or to hear Owen Harper complaining about something. "Toshiko," his memories of Owen would forever be intermingled with his memories of Owen. Grey. His son and his mother... "Sara... Tim," he said aloud. Victoria Waterfield... Sarah Jane Smith. Liz Shaw. Tegan Chesterton... "Martha Jones. Rose Tyler... I don't even remember what Rose looked like, just that she had blond hair and this fantastic smile and the first time I saw her, she was hanging from a barage balloon during the Blitz," he smiled, just a little. Bananas are good...
"It's been five hundred years, Jack. You can't beat yourself up for forgetting what people looked like."
"But I loved him and I don't even remember the sound of his voice any more, just that I loved it… his accent. Welsh vowels," all two of them, they used to tease each other. Jack hadn't heard a Welsh accent in over two hundred years. "He had this… this dry… sarcastic wit… he could be… God, he could be such a kid at times," he managed to choke out a laugh in between the sobs.
"He was a child, by comparison."
"Kam isn't even twenty," Jack reminded him. What could they possibly have in common? What would they ever be able to talk about... ?
"You are going to find very few partners close to your own age, Jack. And I would be remiss in my duties as one of your oldest… 'living'… friends if I didn't point out that you still have a tendency to wax towards the immature from time to time."
Jack couldn't help but laugh aloud. Only Henry would find a way to put it so eloquently. "Duly noted, your Highness," he intoned sarcastically. Then, in a genuinely serious tone, "No one has ever gotten to me the way he did, Henry." No one ever will…
"Have you ever stopped to consider that that's because you didn't want anyone to?"
He didn't answer.
"Jack… love is… it's complex. Amazing. Painful. Humans need it as much as you need air to breathe."
"Except that if I suffocate, I still come back."
"But you do die."
Jack didn't respond to that, either.
"Look, I know you don't want to acknowledge the possibility that it might really be him, but if any two people ever loved each other enough to come back to one another – to recognize each other – it's the two of you. You just have to have a little faith… "
"I've seen the other side, Henry. There's nothing there. Believe me, there's nothing there. I wish there was." It would give me something to have faith in…
"Maybe you don't see it because you're not meant to go there. You're not meant to have anything beyond this life any more than I am."
It was an old argument. Henry claimed to have seen proof of reincarnation, life after death, Heaven… Hell. Jack had seen Heaven and Hell with his own eyes but they weren't esoteric states… he'd seen Death. He didn't understand It, but he'd seen it and knew where It lived. "There's nothing out there. Nothing but darkness. Emptiness. Cold."
"What if you're wrong?"
"What if I am wrong?" he turned the question in on itself. "What if you're right and there is something out there and… and what if I'm still all wrong about Kam. What if I'm only seeing what I want to see. What he wants me to see." A cyprian, a courtesan, could be anyone, anything the client wanted him to be… assuming Smeed was right. But it explained the kiss better than Henry's esoteric theories.
Kam had read him and delivered what he thought he wanted, right down to the coy smile... the only thing he hadn't done was bat his eyelashes. What if the only reason he wants into my bed is because I'm the Captain… the Captain of a ship had an incredible amount of power, at least on his own vessel and Jack doubted very much that Kam had bought his way out of his previous contract. He might see warming the Captain's sheets as his only way of surviving. Jack didn't hold that against him, but he would hold it against himself if he fell for it.
"A courtesan would certainly have been able to pick up on the signals you were sending and would doubtless have had no trouble fulfilling the fantasy he thought you wanted him to fulfill. If he's twenty, he must have been in Service for at least five or six years… But he can't read your mind, Jack. And even if he could," he added, before Jack launched into some other argument, "were you thinking about the things Ianto used to say before this Mr. Anders of yours said them?"
"It could be coincidence. It isn't as if… " it isn't as if he called me Cariad… "It was just a few random statements. So what if he likes the same tea Ianto used to drink? What does that prove?" he wasn't sure who he was trying to convince any more.
"Didn't you used to say you didn't believe in coincidences?"
Jack turned to look out the window. He wasn't studying the ships so much as the space beyond… all those stars. All thos worlds. People… in the grand scheme of things even he was just a speck in the Universe. They all were… dust in the wind… he seemed to remember the lyrics of some old song…
"Why are you so reluctant to admit that even the possibility that the spark that makes us who and what we are lives on after the shell withers and dies? Science tells us that nothing is ever truly destroyed, it just changes form. Why not with the spirit as well? Many great and rational minds have embraced the philosophy of reincarnation, Jack. It's not just the esoteric 'mumbo jumbo' of mystics and holy men. Just because you haven't witnessed a thing personally doesn't mean it isn't possible."
There was no winning this argument with Henry. There never had been… and he didn't want to admit it, but for once, he he wanted to lose it. "What if your theory of the Universe is right and it's still not him?"
"So what?"
"What?"
"What's the worst that could happen? A few months of self-indulgent carnal pleasure before you go your separate ways because one of you snores and the other steals the blankets at night? An argument over squeezing the toothpaste tube in the middle instead of at the end?"
Jack almost laughed. He and Ianto had had that argument more than once… in fact, he was pretty sure he'd had it with Estelle a time or two… maybe more…
"I'm not saying to marry him, Jack, I'm just suggesting that you approach the situation with an open mind. Even if it isn't him, when was the last time you had a lover? A serious lover," he amended, before the Captain started regaling him with a detailed list of his recent conquests.
Jack shrugged. "A hundred years ago, maybe."
"Don't you think you're overdue?" he paused a long moment, but Jack didn't answer. "Come with me."
"What?"
"I have something to show you."
"Why Henry Fitzroy…" Jack began; Henry rolled his eyes.
"I'm sorry I didn't show this to you sooner," he said as he stood up, holding his hand out. Jack took it. "If I'd realized you didn't remember, I would have shown you before now."
"Shown me what?"
"I'm an artist, Jack. Photographs fade. Even the imaging technology in this century is going to crumble some day. But I still have that copy of the Mona Lisa… albeit a strange forgery," he gave the other man a look.
Jack chuckled, "You can thank the Doctor for that one." He followed Henry into the next room where the other man rummaged around a bit before coming to what he was looking for.
"Every few decades I re-paint the pictures of people I don't want to forget," he explained. "You can keep this if you like. I've got others." Henry left the room before Jack had finished unrolling the portrait…
……………………………………………………………………
I close my eyes, only for a moment, and the moment's gone
All my dreams, pass before my eyes, a curiosity
Dust in the wind, all they are is dust in the wind.
Same old song, just a drop of water in an endless sea
All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see
Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind
Now Don't hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky
It slips away, and all your money won't another minute buy.
Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind
Dust in the wind, everything is dust in the wind.
Everything is dust in the wind
-- by Kansas