cyus

Title: In Mid-Wales
Characters/Pairing: Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness
Type/Setting: Gen
Rating: G
Length: 760
Summary: Things don't last, not really.
Notes: experimenting,

horizonssing summer challenge, day five prompt

"Here- what do you think? You can put a tie across here, a tie in stone?" Ianto laughed.

"Ianto."

"Jack."

They stopped, standing where they were, the wind coming in from the sea. Two hours from Cardiff, somewhere in the nothingness of mid-Wales where forests were still forests and the hills sloped up with a person every now and then, and more sheep, they stood at the edge of an overhang. Ianto crouched, looking out at the valley below while Jack wandered among the graves behind them, old stones with green mould, the names barely comprehensible, letters worn down from age.

"You said you wanted something proper," Ianto said with a shrug.

"I just-"

Ianto turned to look up at Jack who was standing with his hands in the pockets of his coat. "You said."

Jack shrugged. "It came up."

"You're not doing this for me. I couldn't care less where my body ends up."

Sullen, Jack kicked at a stone. It rolled down the slope. "Thought it'd be nice to have a place, that's all. For you- for-"

"You're sentimental." It came out a little mocking.

Jack looked at him, eyes hard. "I'm human."

Silence stretched between them that the birds filled with cries as Jack huddled deeper into his coat, staring at the forest ground, then up.

"I'm sorry." Ianto straightened to step up to Jack, glancing at him glancing out over the valleys.

Jack's finger traced over one of the headstones, fingernail scratching at mould. His jaw worked, tight. He shrugged, a non-answer to an unasked-question, like an internal monologue unrolling.

"Come on." Ianto gestured, stopped short of taking his hand.

Weaving between overgrown graves Ianto led them from the cemetery back to the village. Old houses stood side by side, some worn down to the barest walls by age. The people that still lived there, most of them well past sixty, living on the milkman and the grocer that came by every week, were watching with distrust, following the strangers' every step, the man in the suit and another in a military coat. The sandy road swallowed their footsteps as they walked through the village, passing the forgotten houses. An abandoned children's playground, an old swing, half fallen away, a rusted metal grate for climbing sat at the edge of the village, just before the road weaved off towards the nearest town.

"I used to come here. Not just as a kid." A bird soared overhead. "Later, when Cardiff seemed too big and London too busy. You know how it gets. Well, maybe you don't. Haven't been back in a while." An elderly woman passed by them, not paying them any thought. "I remember them, they don't remember me. Strange how that-" He cleared his throat. "If you need a place-" Ianto shrugged and twirled the swing hanging from one metal chain. The chain jangled.

"It doesn't last," Jack said, gesturing at the playground. "Ten years, maybe twenty, but then..." He trailed off, rubbing a thumb over the rust of the metal poles holding up the swing

"But I won't last either, Jack." Ianto stepped close to Jack, tapping his fingers to Jack's head. "Ten years, maybe twenty, in here." He shrugged, and closed the distance between them. "You've loved before, you've lost before. You don't stop but- it fades." He shrugged. "I guess. I wouldn't know, really."

Jack nodded even as he made to shake his head.

"It's not now. It's not tomorrow but then, and ten years later, twenty years later. It'll be good it will be gone."

Jack turned from the close contact and walked away. Ianto watched him: the coat flapping in the wind.

*

Years later, the swing holding on by a thread, a man in a greatcoat walked through the village. They watched him, wary, the man with the military coat. He stood by the old playground for a few minutes and knotted a pink tie around the chain just holding the swing up. Then he left and the tie blew in the wind.

He came back, every few months, then every few years until they didn't remember when he came and when he didn't, until the village stood nearly empty and the buildings were rotting, somewhere in mid-Wales.

The tie, then grey and thread-bare, had slid to lie in the grass and mud as he crouched next to it, the wind chasing clouds over the sky.

"Everything's gone, son," an old woman said, her hand on his shoulder.

The man in the military coat looked up and nodded. He touched the strip of fabric, not nearly pink or a tie any longer, then stood and walked away with a polite nod to the woman and a last look over his shoulder.

He never came back.