Title: One Fine Day
By: Lupa
Summary: Listening to "Madama Butterfly", suddenly it hit him: he was that poor deluded bitch.
Rating: Teens/PG-13
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Genre: Slash; Angst

***

At first he had been sustained by hope - no, more than hope: belief.  Once they had viewed the CCTV and knew that Jack had gone wherever it was he'd gone willingly, there was no longer any need for alarm.  Jack would be back, soon. 

"Soon,” didn’t have to mean 24 hours.  When 24 hours passed there was no reason to worry.  That was a perfectly normal amount of time for anyone to be away from anywhere.  So was 48 hours.  That was just like a weekend. 

And four days was like a long weekend.

Then, well, okay, if it stretched out to a week, people took a week off work didn't they?  Holidays were generally measured in weeks, so a week was not out of the ordinary.   In fact, two weeks was the traditional holiday taken.  Yes, two weeks was normal.   More than normal: probably only to be expected.

And there had been that kiss.  That had meant something - hadn't it?  It didn’t mean commitment; Ianto didn’t fool himself about that.  But it had to mean that there was an acknowledged relationship there, not something to be completely abandoned without even the courtesy of a goodbye.

It was only necessary that Ianto should wait with the most perfect faith and his faith would be rewarded.  So, while Owen snarked, Gwen huffed and Toshiko retreated silently into technology, Ianto said nothing and waited.

The days dragged and piled up into weeks which then turned into months.   Ianto began at last, not to abandon hope, but at least to find it harder to cling to.

Then one evening, driving back from the Hub, Ianto tuned in to one of the classical music stations.  They were playing the aria "Un Bel Di, Vedremo" from Madam Butterfly.

“One fine day, we shall see….”

The soprano voiced Butterfly’s dream of re-union with Pinkerton:  a dream which she had never doubted would become real one fine day.  As she soared with aching purity, into the song's emotional climax:

"And a little so as not to die

At our first meeting.."   

 Ianto took in a sharp breath as it hit him.  Of course, of course.  He was that poor deluded bitch.   How had it taken him so long to see it?  He had just been a diversion while Jack been marking time, waiting for something better to turn up.  He had been available and….others….hadn’t.  Jack would never come back.  Or if he did, it wouldn’t be for Ianto.

Inside his flat he walked like an automaton to where he kept the bin bags.  He pulled one out and began the task of removing every trace of Jack.  The few clothes he had left there, his stuff in the bathroom, the maple syrup, which only Jack ever ate, from the fridge.  All were thrown into the black bag which Ianto took straight down to the bins outside.

But it was not so easy to eradicate Jack.  He had not realised until now, when he tried to disentangle it, how closely his life had become linked to Jack’s. 

He wiped the photos of Jack from his computer.   But he couldn’t wipe the memory of how, when he had been sitting at that computer one evening, the doorbell had rung and it had been Jack, calling unannounced.  How Ianto had tried to continue his work, but Jack had leant over his shoulder, ostensibly interested in watching what he was doing, when all he really wanted was to make sure Ianto was so drenched with his pheromones that any further work was impossible.

He moved to sleep on what had been Jack’s side of the bed, thinking that it would make him less conscious of Jack’s absence.  When the alarm went off, his fingers scrabbled over the mattress as, disoriented and confused, he tried to hit the “off” button.

Alone at night, his fist curled round his erection as memories assailed him.  He came after his solitary endeavours crying out the name of the man who had left him without a backward glance.  He wiped his hand on the sheet and wondered if he could become any more pathetic and desperate.  A week later, when, after cleaning out the trap from the shower,  he looked at a clump of damp hair and found himself wondering if any of Jack’s were still there, entwined with his own, he had his answer.

At the Hub it was even worse.  Every room, every corridor held a memory and every memory held a sting, like a paper cut catching on a thread.  For Ianto, it was death by a thousand paper cuts every day.

He opened a drawer in Jack’s desk and the scent of Jack rose up from it.  A Pavlovian stab of joy ebbed to renewed sadness.

And the hardest thing was to maintain some semblance of outward dignity, never to break down in front of the rest of the team.  Ianto smiled and joked with them, shrugged off Owen’s sarcastic digs, replied efficiently whenever Tosh needed information and tried not to scream when Gwen spoke to him in a voice which dripped compassion.

He went out to catch weevils and other aliens.  He came back, he catalogued, he archived, he cleaned up and, yes, he still made the coffee.  Still the same odd mix of danger and drudgery.  But the man who had made the danger attractive and the drudgery acceptable was not there any more and Ianto would never find out where he had gone or why.

Now, standing at the coffee machine and pouring out the coffees, Ianto reflected that his mayfly life as a Torchwood operative must fast be running out.  He would die and Jack would never even know.  He would die without ever having the chance to say what had been left unsaid between them. 

He looked at the blue cup he was holding.  It had become Jack’s cup after Ianto had once joked about it matching the colour of Jack’s eyes.  Then when Jack had first gone, Ianto had taken to using it.  Now it was just anyone’s except his.   He could hardly bear to look at it. 

A wave of bitter rage swept through him suddenly and he threw the cup against the wall where it shattered and fell to the floor. 

Ianto looked at it for a few seconds before getting down on his hands and knees to pick up the bits, including the tiniest, the most immeasurably small fragments: the ones that would have been the easiest to forget and leave behind  In fact, he thought, they were the most important pieces of all.

He was interrupted by Gwen, running in.  She stopped and he looked up at her.

“I’ve just dropped a cup,” he said.

Gwen looked at the coffee-burst on the wall, then down at Ianto on all fours in the detritus beneath it.

Hmm.

“Come on Ianto,” she said.  “Leave that.  Get down to the SUV.  Blowfish in a stolen sports car.  We need to follow him.”

Ianto ran out to join the team and set off into the night, which was to become, for him, a fine day.

Fin