Title: Wishing & Hoping
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Ianto Jones/Tenth Doctor
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Rating: PG
Table: 20_est_relships
Prompt: 10, Hope
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own Ianto Jones or the Tenth Doctor. Please do not sue.

***

The Doctor leaned his head back against the couch, closing his eyes. This was the first time in a while he'd had the chance to relax; he and Ianto had been roaming around the galaxy in the Tardis rather than staying in Cardiff for the last few weeks.

Jack had found it strange that he'd wanted to come back to Cardiff at all, other than for a fleeting visit; he hadn't been able to explain to the immortal just why he enjoyed being here so much. He didn't really understand it himself.

It was just that .... Cardiff felt like home. Not in the same way that Gallifrey had, of course; nothing would ever replace his home planet. But Cardiff had come to feel like a place where he belonged, a place where he could feel comfortable.

The Doctor opened his eyes to stare up at the ceiling, a soft smile on his lips. Maybe Cardiff just felt so much like home because the man he loved was here.

Yes, that had to be it. Cardiff was Ianto's home, the place where he came from -- so it made sense that the Doctor would start to feel a kinship with the city as well. It seemed more and more like a place he could be happy in every time he was here.

Of course, he'd never be able to let his guard drop and be completely himself. It wasn't as though he could arbitrarily tell people just who and what he was; they'd think he was completely barmy. But he could have a permanent home here, a place to go when he wanted peace and quiet.

He'd never abandon the Tardis -- he couldn't. She was a part of him, and his bond iwth her had a way of rejuvenating him when he most needed it. If he wanted to settle donw in one place for good, she would obviously have to be somewhere near him.

Not that he would ever do that. He was too much of a traveler to ever completely settle down, no matter how much he told himself he'd like to do that.

He was fooling himself if he thought for one second that he could turn his back on what he was, give up being a Time Lord, push away the responsibilities he'd taken on for so mnay centuries. He would never even consider doing anything so rash.

But he'd learned in the time since he'd been with Ianto that he needed a bit of what humans would call "normalcy" in his life, that he needed a place to go when he wanted to keep his feet firmly on the ground and in one place. And Cardiff was that place.

Maybe it was just because Ianto was from here -- or maybe it also had something to do with the fact that the Rift was here, and that Torchwood was now based here. He had friends here, people who knew about him, people he could trust. That meant a lot.

And he also had a hope for the future that he'd never had, not until Ianto had come into his life. He wasn't alone any more. He was .... secure.

Oh, all right, maybe he couldn't ever be completely secure. But he had someone in his life now who wasn't going to leave him, who wasn't going to decide that they had a life they had to go back to and walk away from him. It was a big change.

That had happened so often in the past that he almost expected it at times, almost thought that this was too good to be true and that Ianto wasn't really meant to be with him. It all seemed like a fairy tale, a beautiful dream that he would eventually wake up from.

But no, it wasn't. Ianto was his soul mate, the man he was destined to be with from the moment of his birth. Never mind that Ianto hadn't come into existence until centuries after he had. They were meant for each other -- he firmly believed that.

And so did the young man who was his mate. He'd never had the kind of relationship that he had with Ianto, one that filled him with hope, something that he'd never have thought possible.

He'd given up the idea that he had a future with anyone. He'd resigned himself to being alone, or to having companions who were only with him for a while and then left and broken his hearts by doing so. He'd never expected that he'd find his soul mate, not at this point.

There were nights when he still fell asleep marveling at how this had come to pass -- that day when he'd decided to go to the Hub and see Jack while he was in Cardiff and had nothing else to do, he hadn't thought the groundwork would be laid for the rest of his life.

The humans had a saying -- that an emotion could "hit them like a ton of bricks." That was what had happened when he'd first looked into Ianto's blue-grey eyes -- he'd felt himself falling, and he'd never quite been able to pick himself up.

Not that he'd wanted to. Those eyes, the look of love in their depths when Ianto gazed at him, could still send a tingle of warmth over his entire body.

Was he the kind of man who had to be in a relationship to be fulfilled? He'd often thought of that since he'd met Ianto, and even before. Maybe he hadn't been like that in his other bodies, but then, his personality did mutate and change somewhat with each one.

Maybe he was more dependent emotionally now, though he couldn't have any way of knowing why. It could be simply because he was older, and because he'd spent so many centuries alone. Or just because his personality was such that he wanted a mate.

A soul mate, not just a friend. He couldn't help but smile as he remembered how he'd tried to explain that to Donna -- and she'd gotten it entirely wrong. What a mess he'd made of it before he'd been able to make her understand!

She'd been like a sister to him, someone he'd been able to depend on and trust. But she was gone now, too, like all of his other companions before her.

He had fond memories of them all, of course. They'd all given him hope when they'd been with him, hope that this time, he wouldn't have to eventually be alone, that they'd stay with him. But he'd always known in the back of his mind that it wasn't possible.

They were all human, with a human's life span. And most of them had lives that they wanted to go back to eventually. They couldn't have given him the forever he craved, even when they'd wanted to do so. And he didn't hold it against them.

But now .... now he was with someone who not only wanted to give him forever, but someone who he truly wanted to spend the rest of his life with. It didn't matter that Ianto was human. All that mattered was that they were meant to be together.

Ianto would eventually age and die; they couldn't be together for what the Doctor euphemistically termed as "forever." He'd known that from the first moment he'd realized that he was in love with this young man, and that knowledge never failed to pierce his hearts with a shaft of pain.

He would just have to deal with the fact that his angel wouldn't always be with him. But they would have each other for as long as time would allow -- and they'd make the most of that. And there was another hope that the Doctor could cherish, too.

He could always hope that something would happen to grant Ianto more years than he'd normally be given. It was possible. Look at what had happened to Jack.

The Doctor shook his head, a wry smile flickering over his face and then disappearing. That had been a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence. It wasn't going to happen again; Ianto wasn't going to be given Jack's peculiar immortality. Lightning didn't strike twice, after all.

But .... he could always hold on to the hope that it would.

***