After a while of walking like that, Ianto spoke of his own childhood. About his father and how his earliest memory was sitting in his father's shop watching him work. He told silly stories about growing up, about how he rebelled against joining the family business and instead went off to uni in London so he could be independent. He spoke of being recruited for Torchwood One and how naively amazed he was with the place when he first started.
"That's exactly what they wanted you to feel," Jack said quietly as they picked their way across the locks which led to Penarth. "The Tower was supposed to be the pinnacle of human achievement, built on the back of alien technology. I told Yvonne it was extremely hubristic as well as being quite the phallic symbol, but she ignored my warnings." Ianto snorted at Jack's description of the building and he could see Jack grin in response. "Tell me about Lisa." Jack felt Ianto's fingers twitch in his hand as he asked his question. He was silent for a while as he thought. He found that the memories weren't as painful as they had been in the past, and that he could look back upon her without that empty gaping hole he had had for so long. He wondered when it had stopped being so painful and decided it had been when he had finally come to terms with his burgeoning feelings for Jack. He squeezed Jack's hand before starting to talk.
"I met Lisa when I was a junior researcher in the Tower," Ianto said. He took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. It did help to talk about it in the dark, where he felt that Jack couldn't watch him too closely. "I literally walked into her in the hallway one day." Ianto chuckled as he thought back to it. "I was hurrying with some boxes piled up and plowed right into her. She lit into me for not paying attention and ripped me from one end of the hallway to the other. Then she asked me to make it up to her by taking her out for a drink.
"Here I was, not on the job for more than a month or two and an upper level staffer was hitting on me. I thought I was going to wet myself." Jack laughed out loud as he told his story. "She told me to meet her outside at six sharp. I was there at ten to and paced nervously the whole time wondering what I was going to talk to her about. Little did I know that she was watching from inside, killing herself laughing with some friends." He shook his head as he remembered. "Originally she was going to blow me off, but when she saw me standing there she couldn't do it. She met me and insisted I take her out to dinner as well.
"Blew my whole paycheck on that meal, and ended up eating canned soup and Wheetabix until I got paid again," Ianto said with a smile. "But it was an amazing evening. We hit it off. How two people from two completely different backgrounds could do that, I don't know, but there was just something there from the get go." Ianto went on to tell some stories of their time together, from the point where they moved in together in London to their trips out into the country for what Lisa used to call their "constitutionals."
"Often we ended up in some god forsaken place in the back end of nowhere, cold, wet, miserable and cranky, but we'd get back to the city and she'd tell her friends at lunch how much fun she'd had. I thought she was mad," Ianto admitted and Jack chuckled. "I hated every minute of it, myself. Well, not every minute, but the cold wet parts, yes."
"Poor Ianto," Jack said, still chuckling. "She sounded like an amazing woman."
"She was," Ianto said. "Before Canary Wharf happened, I thought I was going to ask her to marry me." They were both silent as they picked their way through the rough terrain along the water.
"I'm sorry that didn't happen," Jack said. He thought about all the people who had lost someone there, and how damaged they had been by that experience. He heard Ianto sigh and wrapped his arm around Ianto's shoulders, pulling him close. Ianto snaked his arm under Jack's coat and around his waist and they walked silently for a while.
After a while Ianto stopped, tugging on Jack so that they faced one another. "My mother always used to tell me that everything happened for a reason. While I wish I hadn't done what I did without talking with you about it, what happened brought us together. I knew when I pulled Lisa out of the wreckage that was the Tower that I wasn't going to be able to save her. I knew that deep down in my heart. But I had to try, because I couldn't imagine life without her.
"You asked me what my hopes and dreams were earlier," Ianto continued. Jack nodded, his face shadowed by the dim light. They were on the shore of Penarth, having walked across the city in the dark. Jack didn't need to look at his watch to know that dawn wasn't too far away. The sky was beginning to get lighter over Ianto's shoulders. "Do you want to know what they are?"
