Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. This is my reaction to what happened on Thurs 9th and Friday 10th (Children of Earth Days 4 and 5). If you haven't watched it and don't wish to be spoilered, don't read.

Also, it is quite raw. But that is how I felt after the series. So, excuse the lack of polished finishes.

Comments, reviews here or at my Livejournal would be welcome.

Guilt

He shouldn't be alive. Every cell in his body knows it. Every part of him has known for a long time, yet he has never been so painfully aware of it before. He should have died in GameStation, 198.000 years in the future, over two thousand years ago. Maybe if he had, Ianto Jones, and so many others would still be alive.

He is wrong. Everything, everybody he touches dies. He's grown used to losing those he cares for, those he loves, but that doesn't make it any easier when it happens, over and over again. So many, so quickly, so young... He's left behind, left to carry on, with no other escape than moving on. The crash of metal against metal barely registers in his brain; it takes a while until he realizes it is his coffee mug that now lies in the corner, dark liquid pooling around it. He doesn't remember throwing it.

"Wrecking my crockery won't bring him back." John is leaning on the door frame, looking strangely naked barefoot, without his jacket or his weapons. It's not often that anybody, not even him, gets to see this side of the pretentious Captain Hart. Not even back in their wild days.

"I should be dead." He can't even look at John, doesn't need – doesn't want – the comfort and the care. "I should have died, not him." He can hear John rolling his eyes as he sits across from him. "I've lived enough." He has all the time in the Universe ahead of him. Others would kill for the privilege; he'd give it up if it meant Ianto was still alive. Hell, he'd give it up just to escape the knot of pain on his throat, on his chest, everywhere. "And it is my crockery. My ship."

"Your space tub, yes, Captain. And you said the same thing a year after you joined the Time Agency. Remember?" Eyes closed, he nods, pretending he's not, once again, losing the battle with his emotions. How could he forget? How could he forget her? "She was beautiful, I have to give you that."

"She was more than a pretty face." Metal clattering tells him John is serving coffee. He should make a snarky remark about it; John has never really liked coffee, claiming it's too soft a chemical for his liking. But he's been drinking it lately as fast as he used to drink hypervodkas.

"Was she?" He grinds his teeth, too tired to try to figure out what John is up to today, what his latest plan to make him "snap out of it" is, why exactly he seems so intent on, for once in his life, helping.

"You know as well as I do, John. She shared your bed as often as mine." Memories, fragments, fly through his mind. "Beautiful, resilient, good fighter, and a brain for the minutiae of Time Travelling that neither of us could match."

"More often than yours, thank you. Have you forgiven yourself yet?" He shakes his head. How could he? She died because of him. Caught up in one of his many fuck-ups. She was only twenty-one. He was new in the Agency, and wanted to impress her."How long has it been?"

Tears stream down his face as he curses John once again. Why is he doing this? Why can't he leave him alone in his misery?

"Two thousand, two hundred, give or take some missing memories."

"And you still remember her." As John rests a hand on his arm, it all clicks in place. But having a good memory is not going to make him feel better.

"So?" Anger flairs inside him, and, for a very brief moment, it even overcomes the pain. "Just because I can't forget them, it makes it all right that I get them killed?" John looks at him as if he were considering slapping him, or shooting him. Maybe it is a good thing he's not armed.

"You love them. You lose them. But you remember them. Oh, come on, Jack. In the end, memories are all there is." The words slap him in the face. He used to say that himself, back in the Agency. "Isn't that why you left?" Without a word, John stands up and leaves. He rests his head on his hands, the mesh of the table surface digging in his elbows.

He may never forgive himself for what happened to Ianto. But he'll remember him.