V.
Jack had been gone for six weeks.
Ianto wanted to believe that Jack was coming back, but it seemed unlikely after so long with no word, and Ianto had started to lose hope. They'd pieced things together, after all, and the picture wasn't a particularly encouraging one. Ianto had known Jack was from the future. After watching him run across the Plass and throw himself at a blue police box, it was obvious that Jack had gone with the Doctor. The right kind of doctor, Gwen had said. It appeared that Jack's doctor was the Doctor—the one Torchwood had been charged with capturing, the one who traveled through time.
The complex picture that was Jack began to make even more sense, while raising still more questions. Jack was from another time, and he knew the Doctor, a known time-traveler, so it made sense that he would leave with the Doctor to return to his own time. Or perhaps he had gone back to the 1940s, to the time he'd loved. To the man he'd fallen for at the dance hall.
Ianto shook his head of that particular thought, anger and resentment blossoming in his chest every time he thought about what Owen had said, what Tosh had told him. Instead he focused on the facts: Jack was a time traveler from the future, and he had left the planet with another time traveler. He could be anywhere, anytime. There was no reason to believe Jack would come back to a relatively small, unimportant city in the 21st century. Why would he, after everything that had happened? They had to continue without him.
It had been a struggle at first, but slowly they'd begun to get a grip and manage the Hub with just the four of them. There were even days when Ianto felt the smallest bit of hope and pride, that they'd survived so far, saved lives, and might even make it few more weeks on their own before the world inevitably ended on their watch.
And then there were days like the one they'd just had, days where they were driven off their feet chasing Weevils and retrieving space junk and trying to stop an invasion of alien hamsters while resettling a Clemoriax whose ship had fallen through the Rift and fending off government officials like Harold Saxon. Gwen had called Rhys to pick her up, nursing a sore ankle and too burnt out to drive, while Owen had taken Tosh home after patching up her latest injury courtesy of a very angry hamster. And Ianto…he was beyond exhausted. He'd been awake for thirty-six hours straight and could probably fall asleep standing up.
He'd stayed behind thinking he'd finish the paperwork and clean up before leaving, just so there was less in the morning, but the words blurred on the page, and he stumbled when he tried to walk across the Hub for a bin bag. So he retreated to Jack's office to grab his coat, having taken to leaving it there on the coat rack since he spent a good deal of time at Jack's desk forging the man's signatures and making excuses for his absence to the government bureaucrats who called looking for him.
Not to mention managing Flat Holm. Which he didn't even want to think about anymore.
Pulling on his coat, his eye caught the grey officer's cap still hanging on the wall. He walked over and ran a hand across the scratchy wool, as he tended to do quite often now. It was a tangible connection to Jack, a reminder of the man who'd left them and a confirmation of who he was. For Ianto, it helped him remember Jack not as someone who had run off without a word or explanation, but as a brave man who had served in the war, a time traveler now returned to his own time.
Which didn't always lessen the anger or resentment, that Jack had kept so many secrets, that he had left them so abruptly, without even saying goodbye. Maybe if he'd told them even the tiniest bit more, he could have prepared them for his departure and not left them floundering. Then again, they had betrayed him, so Jack probably didn't feel much regret about leaving them so suddenly on their own.
Sometimes Ianto ran a finger along the golden eagle and told himself he had no right to be angry at Jack after what they'd done—after what he himself had done. He'd betrayed Jack more than any of them—first with Lisa, then with the Savior, finally with the Rift. And he'd been sleeping with Jack during the last, had stood there and watched as Owen shot him. Sometimes the hat reminded him of Jack, but it also reminded Ianto of his failures and reset his determination to make things right.
Walking over to the cap, he took it off the hook and gently caressed the old wool. It was on hard days like this when, guilt and anger aside, he simply missed Jack. He missed their leader and his missed his lover. He missed chasing Weevils with Jack and he missed tumbling into bed after. He even missed Jack teasing him about the hat and men in uniforms.
Standing in Jack's office, hat in hand, he made an impulsive decision. Jack was gone and the constant reminders of his presence were distracting and often upsetting. The girls frequently went glassy-eyed, hiding their tears, though Gwen just as often grew angry and cursed Jack for leaving them. Tomorrow Ianto would clean out Jack's office. He'd move Jack's personal belongings down to the bunker below, safe and out of sight. And he'd give that three months before moving it to storage.
Jack was gone and the rest of them had to carry on without him, including Ianto. It occurred to him that meant moving on physically as well as emotionally. It would be hard, given his strong attraction to Jack and the brilliant sex they'd shared over the months they'd been sleeping together, but it was time. Ianto felt tense, stuck, alone. Before, Jack had been a balm at the end of a difficult day, but he was gone and Ianto had nothing, no one. He needed something more in his life, even something as basic as a warm body to lose himself with on cold, lonely nights.
He would keep the hat, though. Jack wasn't there and wasn't coming back; he wouldn't miss it. But Ianto could at least remember the man by it, remember their brief time together. If by some miracle Jack did come back to them, then Ianto would return the hat and Jack would enjoy teasing him about it, and maybe things would go back to normal, whatever that was.
Until then, it was time to move on with a new normal. Tomorrow he would clear out the office, and then maybe find a new local and meet someone he could relax with after hours. Punch drunk with fatigue, Ianto placed the cap on his head and left for home, his heart feeling both lighter and sad.
He never did clear out Jack's office, nor did he make it to the pub much either.
Author's Note:
Another shorter one, to get us through the in-betweens. Just a few more to go, thank you for reading!
