Title: Two Dreams
By: Lupa
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: COE based fic.

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.
(Shakespeare – Macbeth)

Jack was on the Mermaid Quay, walking away from the crater where the Hub had been.  It was now cordoned off with boards bearing a construction company logo.  He walked into an area left undamaged by the bomb, past shops, restaurants, bars.  As he walked past a coffee shop he saw Ianto, pale and sombre, sitting at a table in the window.  

“Ianto?” whispered Jack.  

It wasn’t possible, and yet it had been unmistakeably Ianto.  He must go in and find him! He rushed to the door, but the door was oddly elusive.  No, that was a window. Here was the door.  Jack tried the handle furiously, breaking away in frustration as he realised that it was locked.  There had to be an open door – how could the place survive if it didn’t offer customers some way in?  He ran around the corner – where he found a door at last, slightly ajar.  But there was a table in front of it, with a middle aged man and woman sitting at it.  

Jack tried to squeeze round them, but they were so much in the way!  Jack was simultaneously reaching over them and trying to squeeze past them, pulling at the door.  “Excuse me” he muttered, wondering why they couldn’t see his desperation and at least have the common courtesy to move.  He pulled more frantically at the door.  Screw politeness: “Can you just get out my fucking way!” he screamed at the couple.  Slowly they turned their faces to him, before, with bovine obtuseness, turning back to their coffees, which they sipped in silence.  

Well, if they were going to be like that, then just let them take the consequences.  Jack yanked the door with as much strength as he could muster, expecting it to burst forwards, sending the table and its obdurate occupants flying.  But it hardly moved and he realised that the door was wedged firmly at the bottom on a piece of uneven paving.  Short of taking the damn thing off its hinges, there was no way that he getting in by that door.

He ran round another corner (how many corners could a single coffee shop have?) and found (at last!) a door which was wide open.  He ran in.

But the coffee shop, which had seemed quite modestly proportioned from the outside, inside turned out to be vast, the size of an aircraft hangar.  Jack forced himself to remain calm.  If he had had such difficulty finding a way in, it was hardly possible that Ianto could have made his way out within that time, so he must still be in here somewhere.

He had been at a window, so Jack began a circuit of the tables around the edges of the shop, which, it transpired, had windows on all four walls.  He went to each table in turn.  Men, women and children gazed back at him, but no Ianto.  The size of the place, which had at first presented a daunting challenge, began to take on a comforting aspect.  Still plenty more tables to look at, no need to give up hope yet….

But eventually Jack looked into the face of a customer he had already seen.  That was it then.  He had looked at every window table in the place.  No Ianto.  Jack turned away and looked despairingly around him.

And then he saw him.  He was sitting at a table in the middle of the room.  Not at a window at all.  How had Jack managed to get that wrong?  Or had Ianto switched tables?  Ianto, still pale and sombre, sat with a cup of coffee untasted before him, staring into the distance.

“Ianto,” said Jack, his voice catching slightly, “I thought you were dead!”

Ianto looked up at Jack.  His eyes were harder and colder than Jack could ever remember seeing them.  

“I am dead Jack” he said “and I died for nothing!”

“No, no” stuttered Jack “We did it, we got rid of 456, we saved the children Ianto”

“And how did you do that, Jack?”

Well I…we had to…there weren’t many options….ah, Steven, um…”

“ ‘An injury to one is an injury to all.’  Don’t you remember that, Jack?”

“Yes, of course, but …”

“325,000 children, 6,700 children, 12 children, one child.  It’s all the same Jack, that was the whole point”

“I had to do something, I couldn’t just…..You’re not being fair!  I was the only one who could make the decision, you weren’t there, Ianto”

“Yes, I’m sorry I couldn’t make that date.  I was unavoidably detained”

“It was so hard, but what were the alternatives?  I’ve thought about it every minute of every day…”

“Yes, Jack, it must’ve been hard, leading another trusting child to its death.  Good thing you’d already got some practice in”.

“No Ianto, please, don’t”  Jack was now crying so hard that as each sob that tore its way out of him he thought he would never catch enough breath to give vent to the next.  His words tumbled over each other and snot sputtered from his nose as he tried to explain.  He had to make Ianto understand, if he could just understand he would forgive him…

Then he awoke and his face was wet with tears.  He had been crying in his sleep.  He had not even known that people could actually do that.  Well, the knowledge was dearly bought, he thought bitterly.

He looked around him.  A cheap motel room.  “A cheap motel room” – the stereo-typical refuge of all lost souls seeking somewhere to hide.  He lay back on the pillow, trying to exorcise the memory of Ianto, cold and cruel, his accuser and his judge.  He would not allow himself to sleep again, he could not risk the return of dreams like that.  He would lie here with his eyes closed, listening to the sound of the HGVs passing down the wet motorway….. soothing in its own way…..like the sound of the water lapping in the bay at Cardiff…. where Jack now stood, on one of the jetties looking out across the water.

He turned to see Ianto standing looking at him, his face full of pain and concern, because he could see Jack’s anguish.

“Oh Ianto, I’m so glad” said Jack, weeping now with relief.  “You’re OK.  It’s been so long.  Where have you been?  I’ve missed you”

“I had to go away” said Ianto, “you remember, I had to go away after 456”

Yes, Jack did remember, Ianto had had to go away after 456.  Why was that?  It didn’t matter now though.

“It was terrible, Yan, I had this nightmare, you were dead and you hated me because of what I did to save the children from 456”

“I would never hate you” said Ianto softly “whatever you did, I could never hate you.  What happened with Steven, I know what it cost you.  I know how badly it’s hurt you.  I don’t want to see you hurt anymore.  No-one has the right to judge you, Jack, because no-one’s been in your situation.”

“I knew you’d say that.  I knew you’d take my side.  I’ve needed that Ianto, I’ve needed someone on my side, because I couldn’t be on my own side, I couldn’t forgive myself.   And God, the dreams Ianto; nightmares like that last one where you hated me, or dreams that you were back with me, but then I’d wake and you were still missing.  I don’t know which was worse.  But now you’re really back, at last, you’re really here”

“Yes, Jack, I’m really back” said Ianto tenderly.  “No more need for dreams now.”

Jack reached out to hold Ianto in the embrace which would slake his heart’s long thirst, but as he tried to take him in his arms, Ianto, insubstantial as ether, disappeared and Jack awoke to emptiness and despair.