Probably my last one before Christmas, so Yuletide best wishes to: Torchwood Cardiff, thedeejay, brionyjae and L.A.H.H.
Inspiration: a winter morning at Robin Hood's Bay, 'The Time-Traveller's Wife', and Odyssey Bk 11. I own none of these. More's the pity.

Another Shore

The waves go on and on and on until the clouds swoop down and the horizon swallows them. They roll onto the shore, then roll back, dragging the sand with them with a steady pulse, the noise like the breath of the sea. The surface is pearly grey, but the white crests caught in the sunlight remind her of the stories her father used to tell her when she was small – charging horses and secrets beneath the sea. The thin mist trails from her hands.

And all is still, in the midwinter cold. Silence apart from the breakers, no one else. Peace, security, freedom.

The waves roll on.

The footprints appear in the middle of the beach. Leading from nowhere, heading down-shore, soft imprints in the wet sand. A wayward breaker rolls over a section, removing every indent. Heading her way.

Gwen watches, noting the walk and the way the head tilts, scanning everything. She lets her voice break the spell. "Ian-?"

"Not your Ianto." He corrects. The tops of his shoes are dusted with sand. "June 2008. When are you?"

"Later."

"Not telling?"

"Protocol."

"I suppose I can't be getting any spoilers." Ianto settles himself on the rug next to her. "Can I borrow one of your blankets? I'm not really dressed for-"

"December." Gwen fills in, as she removes a layer. "Is this the time when you vanished at a building site?"

"Yes. I take it I get back?" There is a slight hint of worry there.

Gwen racks her memory. "You were gone about an hour. Long enough for us to get frantic." One hour lost then, of little account –

"What's in the bundle?"

- Now she would have given up years for one more hour. An hour which had been granted. She places the bundle gently in Ianto's lap. "Ianto Jones; Anwen Cooper."

"Anwen's a beautiful name. We nearly called my niece that."

"My Mam says it's too much like Gwen."

Ianto smiles. "Call the next one Olwen. Or are there more already?"

"She's the only one." Anwen is probably a safe topic. But most of her life these days is Anwen. "What… what were we doing? Last week? For you?"

Ianto looks at her strangely. "Miss the old days?"

"I always miss what's gone, when I stop to think about it. And it's different now, with Anwen. So different." Too much time for thinking, for a start.

Ianto looks out to sea, gazing the same way she had been just a few minutes before. She remembers that he's seen as much, and lost as much, as she has. She tries to stop herself taking in every line of the face, every wayward hair. "There was a weevil chase two nights ago, down by – no, that's not what you want to know, is it? You want the little things."

Gwen weaves her cold fingers together, and nods.

Ianto takes a breath. "I came in first this morning. Apart from Jack. He's always there these days, not doing the old roof-climbing so much. I tidied up – Owen had left a pile of folders all over the floor by his desk – then I made Jack's morning coffee. Owen arrived about halfway through that. He was… hung-over. Mildly. And mouthy. He said I'd ruined his filing system. You know Owen. And then you came in, in that red blouse you always used to wear and took my side, which meant that you were in the way when Owen tried to throw coffee at me, and Tosh was in hysterics. Turned out that she hadn't actually slept, on account of being halfway through some new bit of programming, and was running mostly on caffeine. So she got Owen's coffee instead of him, and you were grousing about your top - Is this boring you?"

"No." Gwen replies honestly.

"But can't you remember it?"

Gwen shakes her head. "Sort of. The little stuff just sort of… blurs together."

"I know what you mean. Here." He deposits Anwen's sleeping body on her knees again. She hadn't even noticed he still had her, cocooned in his words of the past.

"Thank you."

"She's beautiful. You and Rhys should be proud." Ianto glances across at her. "I'm assuming-"

"It's Rhys. Don't tell me anything about it when you get back – you never did. I didn't know this was coming. Any of it."

"I won't." He promises. "Is everything-?"

Gwen looks at him fully, glad of the excuse. "Everything's fine." And, she discovers, it is. She's sat on a beach on a perfect winter's day with her daughter and a best friend she hasn't seen for months. She smiles at him, and gets one back. "Tell me about the weevil chase." And he does.

They're not really talking about anything now. Gwen has progressed from entwining Ianto's cold fingers in hers to burying her head in his shoulder.

"Gwen?"

"Mmm?"

"I'm always going to wonder, when I get back, and worry…"

"What?" Another wave crashes. Can't be long now.

"You want to know about…" Ianto falters. "The way Tosh's smile looks like out of the corner of your eye, and what arguments Owen's been having, and Jack's laugh, and when he last flirted with me, and what my coffee tastes like…"

Gwen wants to bury her head in deeper, but raises it instead. "I didn't ask-"

"No, but… but you might as well have done. Yes?" Ianto's throat catches. "Why? Why do you want to know about that?"

She knows exactly what he's afraid of.

"I… I'm not part of Torchwood any more." Truth but not truth. But she sees him believing, like he needs to. Like she knows he does. "Rhys wants it like that. It's better for Anwen. Safer. But I miss the old days, back at the Hub. I don't see you so often, all the way out here, I don't…"

Ianto reaches round to try and hug her properly, Anwen somewhere in the middle. "You miss us."

"Every day." Gwen breathes.

She embraces the cold sea air, and finds the salt water in her eyes has made the horizon blurred. Anwen starts to cry. "Every day."

The waves roll on.