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Entry tags:
Fic: "HG Wells"
Title: HG Wells
Characters: Ianto Jones
Rating: G
Length: ca 2700
Setting: post-Exit Wounds
Summary: A small artifact of unknown origin, a trip to the forest and some sense of closure.
Made it to the edge of the city. Fog's low and the night's high, he has his thoughts cast in that snow globe in his hand and his eyes closed as the damp brush of air pushes past him. Eyes open and it's the darkness, a few houses standing back further from the road, a tree and the cry of some kind of bird, owl, more than likely. His fingers are sweaty, cold, cold sweat and he has to shift his grip on the glass to keep it from slipping from his fingers and cascading across the ground in splinters and tepid water.
The jacket he's wearing is getting heavier with the wet night. His feet are cold in the boots. It feels like he's spent more than a night out here now even when it's only been a few hours. No communications, no-one at his shoulder or just obstructing the right side of his field of vision this time. It's him and the owl. The fog, too, it's hard to forget about that when you're wading through it, glass globe in your hand.
"You, you there." He's a boy: four, five. Brown hair, as far as he can tell. Shorts and a shirt. English schoolboy uniform. He likes to think British but associates posh more with them than with his part of the Isles.
"Hey." He clears his throat, or tries, but it turns into a wet cough, eyes watering. When he blinks the wetness away to stare out into the fog again, the boy's gone. He turns to look over his shoulder. Over there- but it's only one of the smaller trees next to one of the bigger houses. A dog barks. The owl hoots.
Giving a shrug that lets more cold air into his jacket he moves on, trudging along the muddy path, deeper into the forest. "Does that make me Hansel, Jack?" he mutters under his breath, not quite amused, and hopes it's Gretel, or not. There are no crumbs to follow. He holds up the snow globe, shakes it. Fake flakes twirl to the fake ground and onto the fake house too fast behind the shimmer of wet air. It seems too much to ask for it to glow.
"You there." The boy is standing to his left. Ianto's right hand twitches, but holds onto the globe. "I know a place." The boy points, so he looks, and the moment he does the boy's gone. He runs his hand through his hair and his mind through possible scenarios. Ghost, Rift Apparition, Hallucination, Joke. Jack's waggling eyebrows pop into mid-thought. Alien. Maybe even an alien.
A bit of bark gives a wet squelching sound in the mud as he moves on. He slides, off-balance for a moment, then rolls his eyes at the wave of his fingers in the air. Drop the globe and have it done and over with, get out of the cold and back to the Hub. A cup of coffee. Some Chinese.
He follows the direction of the pointy boy finger instead, the globe still held securely at his side. It gave a Helpful Glow, capital H capital G as by the Captain's orders, in the Hub during a rift spike, Christmas lights, really. Ianto's vote was for Spurt Blurt but the name lost 1 to 2 to HG. Wells, as he privately supplies. Wells has been silent since.
He shakes it again but it does nothing other than the Hansel and Gretel Witch hut impression in plastic monocolor. He peers into the darkness. The sun should be up anytime now but in the Valleys time seems to stand still in more than one way. The fog's not helping the sun or the cold. He transfers Wells from left to right to left to get some warmth into his fingers.
"Ghost?" he asks the boy appearing in midair before the boy has time to open his mouth. Wells is silent - not a rift spurt. Or spike. Or wibble, even.
The boy shakes his head and floats ahead of him, turning to wave. He waits for Ianto to follow, then floats on as he does. Ianto holds Wells straight out but the plastic flakes move idly in the murky white water. "You're walking on air," Ianto adds conversationally as he sidesteps a puddle of unknown depth or, in fact, origin with a frown, the globe shaking a little.
A girl giggles. Ianto's eyebrows raise, corners of his mouth turn down as he watches her walk- float- shimmy closer. She takes the boy's hand and shakes her head. "You're floating!" She points at him. A little older, nine or ten maybe. "In the ground!" She giggles. It rings out loud enough to have Ianto ducking his head, peering around. A dog barks again in the distance.
"Not ghosts?" he addresses them.
She shakes her head, then nods. It doesn't make sense. The boy pulls at her hand but she drags him close and deeper into the forest.
The mental checklist gets a tentative cross-out. Would you know you're a ghost if you're a ghost? He stares at Wells but Wells just is. He walks a circle around the spot the two have hovered over, ducks under it, then walks through it. Nothing: No shiver, no Blurt.
Gwen has laughed them off as ghost stories. Only stopped laughing at Jack's glare, and usually he is the one cracking up during the Sunday 7 in the morning of sorting through the Latest Hunt Through The Supernatural, capitalised throughout, and it hasn't been his idea to name their meetings. A Remnant Of Grief, he would've called it. And he only missed Owen's commentary when he's not had enough sleep which happened, albeit, fairly often. Tosh- well- he turns Wells in his hand: the paperwork's been filed weeks ago and that is that.
"You're still in the ground." She points at him and walks closer. "You are glowing." The boy just stares at him.
"That is-?" he starts to ask and point but as she shakes her head, he points at himself, eyebrows raised. "I am? Glowing?"
She nods. "Not like fire. Just white." Neutrons- he thinks, voices- he thinks, with an edge of panic. "Like a snowman!" she supplies with a giggle. "Are you cold?"
He shakes his head, but he is. The fog's cold and wet, turning hair and skin clammy, his jacket heavy with dampness. "You're in the ground! And there are things all over you!" She runs around him, dragging the boy along but then they are gone.
He looks down himself. Nothing. Wells stares back at him dully, asking him what he thinks he is doing here. He opens his mouth for a silly voice, but curbs the desire. If he was glowing the fog, the ground, the darkness around him would be lit in some way. It isn't. It's damp and muddy and bloody freezing. Left to right to left to right, he's waiting for the blood to flow to icy fingertips.
"This is a magic forest." The whisper in his ear catches him off-guard. The girl is right there, her face so close.
"Magic," he clears his throat, vocal cords caught by the damp air, "what kind of magic?"
She shrugs. "Just magic. Right, Danny?" She nudges the boy and the boy nods eagerly, staring right at Ianto.
"Can you- describe what kind of magic?" He longs for a notebook, among other things closer to his physical well-being.
"Just MAGIC!" Frustrated she stomps her foot. "There are people! Lot's of them. And they walk around. But you're the first one who is stuck in the ground. With stuff on you." She eyes him. "Are *you* magic?"
"I wish," he snorts, then rubs the back of his hand under his nose. Bloody cold. "What kind of people?"
"All sorts like-"
But she vanishes in mid-sentence and it feels like she is taking some warmth with her this time. He gives a shiver, then pulls himself together. A bit of fog and cold, nothing he hasn't seen before.
The rift spurted, the globe blurted and Jack's interest was piqued - for about two minutes. Carefully classified to be mildly predictive of rift spurts - wibbles - and his concern that coincidence hardly implied causality went unheard in the game of tag with a Torchwood folder. He stowed it back in the archives after the vote on the name, between the forks and knives and old Torchwood paperwork, right where he'd found it in the first place.
He stows it in his pocket now. There is nothing but fog, nothing but mud.
"Some of them are strange." The girls sits cross-legged in midair, the boy behind her - seems higher this time, his feet level with Ianto's head. "They walk in circles like this-" and she does it. "And some of them, they are leaking. But they don't glow. Why do you glow? Why are you in the ground?"
His mouth's so dry. He coughs. He shivers, squinting at the girl, at the boy, having to look up. It's not the neutrons.
"You're in the ground like this-" and she demonstrates and just stands still, then she rubs her hand over her hair, palm over her forehead, a strange kind of salute. "Like this. And your hair's getting all dirty from the water." She crouches down and peers at him, directly at his eyes. "You're glowing like a snowman but it's not snow. Not really." She picks something off of him and it glows. He doesn't feel her touch, more like a whisper.
She holds it up. It's a plastic snowflake.
He pulls Wells out of his pocket, confused. The flakes are swimming inside, dancing back and forth even as he's not shaking it. "Can you see this? What I am holding?"
She looks at his hand but shakes her head. "No. Are you a ghost?"
He shakes Wells but the plastic world doesn't move more or less, stays the same and moves at its own pace.
Jack had been talking about ghosts for a while now, up in the Valleys, about reports and they'd discarded them as rubbish more than once. But the rift's been quiet and there was nothing like a little excursion and maybe they'd even take that little globe, what was it, where was it, what was the name again - two hassles down in one and they'd spend sometime outside the Hub. And away from memories, they've all thought but none supplied.
They're not ghosts, they say. No ghost stories for them then. The sun should be up but there is no sun, only the fog in the dark. A faraway owl hoots again, like a signal long lost and forgotten. He'd like some Chinese now, hell, he'd take pizza, too.
The world in Wells is moving on its own. He's left to stare at it, transfixed, teeth chattering now. He clenches them to stop the sound but the moment he forgets about it, it starts again like the dead-end monotone of a closed telephone line.
"You *are* a ghost," the girl whispers and plucks snowflakes off his head. "You are a ghost and you are in the ground and you are glowing like a snowman and he's afraid of you." She points at the boy. Danny, his memory supplies in a strange spurt.
"It shouldn't be this cold in Wales in summer," he says inanely.
"It's not Wales," she replies and he can't even bring himself to be surprised anymore.
"Is he your brother?" he asks through chattering teeth.
She shakes her head, she kneels, has to lean down to whisper into his ear. "His name's not Danny either."
"No?"
"No." She shakes her head again and brushes over his hair. It feels cold. "Are you a ghost?"
He shakes his head 'no' but falters at her doubtful look. "I don't know."
"You look like a ghost. In the ground. Are you dead?"
Wells is still in his outstretched hand but inside the flakes are falling in fake monocolor symphony. It looks so real. So perfect. He squints through the thick glass, squints around flakes and behind the house. There's a boy and a girl inside, little miniature plastic figures. He can't make out the faces, can't make out anything but the cold in his bones.
"What's your name?" he asks, squinting.
She smiles. "Toshiko."
He stares at her, stares at the globe.
The boy starts giggling. "He's in the GROUND!" And he walks over, draws boy hands through his hair and what feels like dirt.
"Owen!" She admonishes but he keeps at it.
"He's a ghost! And he's glowing!"
It can't be the neutrons, it can't be the voices. Wells gives him the Winter Wonderland and as he watches, there are the two of them, and then a third, emerging behind a plastic flake. He squints. The face, the face, he can- Chattering, split second.
Toshiko from above is smiling at him as she drags Owen around, older, they look older now, almost. "Your name's Ianto," she says. "You're a ghost." Definite.
Torn between her, Owen and the globe, himself and the snowflake she's still holding, the cold in his bones and the cold around him, the taste of dirt and mud and rainwater in his mouth, his eyes as they fill and something squeezing the air from his body.
"You're a ghost," she says earnestly and then for a moment, she looks like the person he remembers and he looks like the bloke whose comments he's hated and he squints, freezes- dies for just a moment. "I'm sorry," he murmurs "sorry." And as the wetness around him wants to drag him under he lets Wells roll from his hand and shatter on the forest ground.
It springs apart with a glare of glass, plastic flakes and water that mingles with the mud and the fog, rain now that it's started, just a drizzle that's soaked through his jacket already. He stares at the off-white plastic flakes spilled at his feet, among the glass remnants and carried away from his boots by the slide of dirt.
"Ianto! Ianto? Can you hear me?" Jack's voice is glaring in his ear and he presses his finger to it.
"Yes." Throat cleared and a little stronger, "yes."
"What is going on with you there? Thought I'd lost you. You okay?" The edge of panic is in the terse tone. Concern, too, if Ianto stops to think about it which he does right now. It's comforting, and it's good that something is in the cold.
"Just cold, sir." He's still staring at the broken shards, the flakes, gives a violent shiver before he can catch himself. His stomach's rolling as the memory of the girl's giggles rings in his ears.
"Seen any ghosts?" Laughter coats the worry in Jack's voice. Ianto can imagine the tilt of the lips, ever so slight smirk on the face.
He nods 'yes'. "No sir, no ghosts around here. Must have missed them if there were any." He can do the same, just as well.
"Got away, you mean?" Relief. It's like the five stages of reassurance, not grief, in fast-forward and maybe reversed.
"Yes, sir. Something like that."
"Get back here." Familiar, and Ianto can deal with that.
Then the connection cuts out and he's left alone in the dawn, the first glimmer of the sun glancing through the fog. The glass sparkles, the flakes shine dull. It doesn't glow. It's never glowed for him. He can take a few minutes of the drizzle of rain, the wet slide of it down the inside of his jacket and shirt and his trousers clinging to his legs. The fog's clearing, leaving the forest less dense and the houses with people, real people, so much closer than they seemed in the night.
He shakes himself away from the spot and the forest. He steps over the shards of glass, careful not to tread on them and pauses to shove some dirt to cover them until only some of the white continues to peak out. He is tempted to fall to his knees, dig for the miniature figures he's seen. For something that is more real than a hazy memory and the dark tension during meetings, the loss of something, the moment of sharing a joke and laughter missing. Voices missing. And just the presence missing. It's tempting to just grab something to hold onto, like a talisman, a memento of something lost.
But head down, he walks back towards the SUV, fingers clenched into fists at his side, every step forward leaving more of them behind. Some Chinese now, a coffee, his diary, but he won't be writing about ghosts. It's time to let them go and keep just the memories.
Characters: Ianto Jones
Rating: G
Length: ca 2700
Setting: post-Exit Wounds
Summary: A small artifact of unknown origin, a trip to the forest and some sense of closure.
Made it to the edge of the city. Fog's low and the night's high, he has his thoughts cast in that snow globe in his hand and his eyes closed as the damp brush of air pushes past him. Eyes open and it's the darkness, a few houses standing back further from the road, a tree and the cry of some kind of bird, owl, more than likely. His fingers are sweaty, cold, cold sweat and he has to shift his grip on the glass to keep it from slipping from his fingers and cascading across the ground in splinters and tepid water.
The jacket he's wearing is getting heavier with the wet night. His feet are cold in the boots. It feels like he's spent more than a night out here now even when it's only been a few hours. No communications, no-one at his shoulder or just obstructing the right side of his field of vision this time. It's him and the owl. The fog, too, it's hard to forget about that when you're wading through it, glass globe in your hand.
"You, you there." He's a boy: four, five. Brown hair, as far as he can tell. Shorts and a shirt. English schoolboy uniform. He likes to think British but associates posh more with them than with his part of the Isles.
"Hey." He clears his throat, or tries, but it turns into a wet cough, eyes watering. When he blinks the wetness away to stare out into the fog again, the boy's gone. He turns to look over his shoulder. Over there- but it's only one of the smaller trees next to one of the bigger houses. A dog barks. The owl hoots.
Giving a shrug that lets more cold air into his jacket he moves on, trudging along the muddy path, deeper into the forest. "Does that make me Hansel, Jack?" he mutters under his breath, not quite amused, and hopes it's Gretel, or not. There are no crumbs to follow. He holds up the snow globe, shakes it. Fake flakes twirl to the fake ground and onto the fake house too fast behind the shimmer of wet air. It seems too much to ask for it to glow.
"You there." The boy is standing to his left. Ianto's right hand twitches, but holds onto the globe. "I know a place." The boy points, so he looks, and the moment he does the boy's gone. He runs his hand through his hair and his mind through possible scenarios. Ghost, Rift Apparition, Hallucination, Joke. Jack's waggling eyebrows pop into mid-thought. Alien. Maybe even an alien.
A bit of bark gives a wet squelching sound in the mud as he moves on. He slides, off-balance for a moment, then rolls his eyes at the wave of his fingers in the air. Drop the globe and have it done and over with, get out of the cold and back to the Hub. A cup of coffee. Some Chinese.
He follows the direction of the pointy boy finger instead, the globe still held securely at his side. It gave a Helpful Glow, capital H capital G as by the Captain's orders, in the Hub during a rift spike, Christmas lights, really. Ianto's vote was for Spurt Blurt but the name lost 1 to 2 to HG. Wells, as he privately supplies. Wells has been silent since.
He shakes it again but it does nothing other than the Hansel and Gretel Witch hut impression in plastic monocolor. He peers into the darkness. The sun should be up anytime now but in the Valleys time seems to stand still in more than one way. The fog's not helping the sun or the cold. He transfers Wells from left to right to left to get some warmth into his fingers.
"Ghost?" he asks the boy appearing in midair before the boy has time to open his mouth. Wells is silent - not a rift spurt. Or spike. Or wibble, even.
The boy shakes his head and floats ahead of him, turning to wave. He waits for Ianto to follow, then floats on as he does. Ianto holds Wells straight out but the plastic flakes move idly in the murky white water. "You're walking on air," Ianto adds conversationally as he sidesteps a puddle of unknown depth or, in fact, origin with a frown, the globe shaking a little.
A girl giggles. Ianto's eyebrows raise, corners of his mouth turn down as he watches her walk- float- shimmy closer. She takes the boy's hand and shakes her head. "You're floating!" She points at him. A little older, nine or ten maybe. "In the ground!" She giggles. It rings out loud enough to have Ianto ducking his head, peering around. A dog barks again in the distance.
"Not ghosts?" he addresses them.
She shakes her head, then nods. It doesn't make sense. The boy pulls at her hand but she drags him close and deeper into the forest.
The mental checklist gets a tentative cross-out. Would you know you're a ghost if you're a ghost? He stares at Wells but Wells just is. He walks a circle around the spot the two have hovered over, ducks under it, then walks through it. Nothing: No shiver, no Blurt.
Gwen has laughed them off as ghost stories. Only stopped laughing at Jack's glare, and usually he is the one cracking up during the Sunday 7 in the morning of sorting through the Latest Hunt Through The Supernatural, capitalised throughout, and it hasn't been his idea to name their meetings. A Remnant Of Grief, he would've called it. And he only missed Owen's commentary when he's not had enough sleep which happened, albeit, fairly often. Tosh- well- he turns Wells in his hand: the paperwork's been filed weeks ago and that is that.
"You're still in the ground." She points at him and walks closer. "You are glowing." The boy just stares at him.
"That is-?" he starts to ask and point but as she shakes her head, he points at himself, eyebrows raised. "I am? Glowing?"
She nods. "Not like fire. Just white." Neutrons- he thinks, voices- he thinks, with an edge of panic. "Like a snowman!" she supplies with a giggle. "Are you cold?"
He shakes his head, but he is. The fog's cold and wet, turning hair and skin clammy, his jacket heavy with dampness. "You're in the ground! And there are things all over you!" She runs around him, dragging the boy along but then they are gone.
He looks down himself. Nothing. Wells stares back at him dully, asking him what he thinks he is doing here. He opens his mouth for a silly voice, but curbs the desire. If he was glowing the fog, the ground, the darkness around him would be lit in some way. It isn't. It's damp and muddy and bloody freezing. Left to right to left to right, he's waiting for the blood to flow to icy fingertips.
"This is a magic forest." The whisper in his ear catches him off-guard. The girl is right there, her face so close.
"Magic," he clears his throat, vocal cords caught by the damp air, "what kind of magic?"
She shrugs. "Just magic. Right, Danny?" She nudges the boy and the boy nods eagerly, staring right at Ianto.
"Can you- describe what kind of magic?" He longs for a notebook, among other things closer to his physical well-being.
"Just MAGIC!" Frustrated she stomps her foot. "There are people! Lot's of them. And they walk around. But you're the first one who is stuck in the ground. With stuff on you." She eyes him. "Are *you* magic?"
"I wish," he snorts, then rubs the back of his hand under his nose. Bloody cold. "What kind of people?"
"All sorts like-"
But she vanishes in mid-sentence and it feels like she is taking some warmth with her this time. He gives a shiver, then pulls himself together. A bit of fog and cold, nothing he hasn't seen before.
The rift spurted, the globe blurted and Jack's interest was piqued - for about two minutes. Carefully classified to be mildly predictive of rift spurts - wibbles - and his concern that coincidence hardly implied causality went unheard in the game of tag with a Torchwood folder. He stowed it back in the archives after the vote on the name, between the forks and knives and old Torchwood paperwork, right where he'd found it in the first place.
He stows it in his pocket now. There is nothing but fog, nothing but mud.
"Some of them are strange." The girls sits cross-legged in midair, the boy behind her - seems higher this time, his feet level with Ianto's head. "They walk in circles like this-" and she does it. "And some of them, they are leaking. But they don't glow. Why do you glow? Why are you in the ground?"
His mouth's so dry. He coughs. He shivers, squinting at the girl, at the boy, having to look up. It's not the neutrons.
"You're in the ground like this-" and she demonstrates and just stands still, then she rubs her hand over her hair, palm over her forehead, a strange kind of salute. "Like this. And your hair's getting all dirty from the water." She crouches down and peers at him, directly at his eyes. "You're glowing like a snowman but it's not snow. Not really." She picks something off of him and it glows. He doesn't feel her touch, more like a whisper.
She holds it up. It's a plastic snowflake.
He pulls Wells out of his pocket, confused. The flakes are swimming inside, dancing back and forth even as he's not shaking it. "Can you see this? What I am holding?"
She looks at his hand but shakes her head. "No. Are you a ghost?"
He shakes Wells but the plastic world doesn't move more or less, stays the same and moves at its own pace.
Jack had been talking about ghosts for a while now, up in the Valleys, about reports and they'd discarded them as rubbish more than once. But the rift's been quiet and there was nothing like a little excursion and maybe they'd even take that little globe, what was it, where was it, what was the name again - two hassles down in one and they'd spend sometime outside the Hub. And away from memories, they've all thought but none supplied.
They're not ghosts, they say. No ghost stories for them then. The sun should be up but there is no sun, only the fog in the dark. A faraway owl hoots again, like a signal long lost and forgotten. He'd like some Chinese now, hell, he'd take pizza, too.
The world in Wells is moving on its own. He's left to stare at it, transfixed, teeth chattering now. He clenches them to stop the sound but the moment he forgets about it, it starts again like the dead-end monotone of a closed telephone line.
"You *are* a ghost," the girl whispers and plucks snowflakes off his head. "You are a ghost and you are in the ground and you are glowing like a snowman and he's afraid of you." She points at the boy. Danny, his memory supplies in a strange spurt.
"It shouldn't be this cold in Wales in summer," he says inanely.
"It's not Wales," she replies and he can't even bring himself to be surprised anymore.
"Is he your brother?" he asks through chattering teeth.
She shakes her head, she kneels, has to lean down to whisper into his ear. "His name's not Danny either."
"No?"
"No." She shakes her head again and brushes over his hair. It feels cold. "Are you a ghost?"
He shakes his head 'no' but falters at her doubtful look. "I don't know."
"You look like a ghost. In the ground. Are you dead?"
Wells is still in his outstretched hand but inside the flakes are falling in fake monocolor symphony. It looks so real. So perfect. He squints through the thick glass, squints around flakes and behind the house. There's a boy and a girl inside, little miniature plastic figures. He can't make out the faces, can't make out anything but the cold in his bones.
"What's your name?" he asks, squinting.
She smiles. "Toshiko."
He stares at her, stares at the globe.
The boy starts giggling. "He's in the GROUND!" And he walks over, draws boy hands through his hair and what feels like dirt.
"Owen!" She admonishes but he keeps at it.
"He's a ghost! And he's glowing!"
It can't be the neutrons, it can't be the voices. Wells gives him the Winter Wonderland and as he watches, there are the two of them, and then a third, emerging behind a plastic flake. He squints. The face, the face, he can- Chattering, split second.
Toshiko from above is smiling at him as she drags Owen around, older, they look older now, almost. "Your name's Ianto," she says. "You're a ghost." Definite.
Torn between her, Owen and the globe, himself and the snowflake she's still holding, the cold in his bones and the cold around him, the taste of dirt and mud and rainwater in his mouth, his eyes as they fill and something squeezing the air from his body.
"You're a ghost," she says earnestly and then for a moment, she looks like the person he remembers and he looks like the bloke whose comments he's hated and he squints, freezes- dies for just a moment. "I'm sorry," he murmurs "sorry." And as the wetness around him wants to drag him under he lets Wells roll from his hand and shatter on the forest ground.
It springs apart with a glare of glass, plastic flakes and water that mingles with the mud and the fog, rain now that it's started, just a drizzle that's soaked through his jacket already. He stares at the off-white plastic flakes spilled at his feet, among the glass remnants and carried away from his boots by the slide of dirt.
"Ianto! Ianto? Can you hear me?" Jack's voice is glaring in his ear and he presses his finger to it.
"Yes." Throat cleared and a little stronger, "yes."
"What is going on with you there? Thought I'd lost you. You okay?" The edge of panic is in the terse tone. Concern, too, if Ianto stops to think about it which he does right now. It's comforting, and it's good that something is in the cold.
"Just cold, sir." He's still staring at the broken shards, the flakes, gives a violent shiver before he can catch himself. His stomach's rolling as the memory of the girl's giggles rings in his ears.
"Seen any ghosts?" Laughter coats the worry in Jack's voice. Ianto can imagine the tilt of the lips, ever so slight smirk on the face.
He nods 'yes'. "No sir, no ghosts around here. Must have missed them if there were any." He can do the same, just as well.
"Got away, you mean?" Relief. It's like the five stages of reassurance, not grief, in fast-forward and maybe reversed.
"Yes, sir. Something like that."
"Get back here." Familiar, and Ianto can deal with that.
Then the connection cuts out and he's left alone in the dawn, the first glimmer of the sun glancing through the fog. The glass sparkles, the flakes shine dull. It doesn't glow. It's never glowed for him. He can take a few minutes of the drizzle of rain, the wet slide of it down the inside of his jacket and shirt and his trousers clinging to his legs. The fog's clearing, leaving the forest less dense and the houses with people, real people, so much closer than they seemed in the night.
He shakes himself away from the spot and the forest. He steps over the shards of glass, careful not to tread on them and pauses to shove some dirt to cover them until only some of the white continues to peak out. He is tempted to fall to his knees, dig for the miniature figures he's seen. For something that is more real than a hazy memory and the dark tension during meetings, the loss of something, the moment of sharing a joke and laughter missing. Voices missing. And just the presence missing. It's tempting to just grab something to hold onto, like a talisman, a memento of something lost.
But head down, he walks back towards the SUV, fingers clenched into fists at his side, every step forward leaving more of them behind. Some Chinese now, a coffee, his diary, but he won't be writing about ghosts. It's time to let them go and keep just the memories.
no subject
I'm glad they're still giving out Life Knife-type names to everything. Nice touch.
Plus, there was just enough Jack/Ianto interaction to warm my fangirl heart!
And this is so true, not just for them, but in life & death in general:
"It's tempting to just grab something to hold onto, like a talisman, a memento of something lost."
no subject
Just reread it, it's actually not as imagery-laden as I remember it being, not bad, lol.
But yeah it's kind of been a ghost story. I like ghost story and creepy crawlies, good stuff really. :D Thanks for the comment, appreciate it.