fandomweekly | [#166] Far From Home (Torchwood)

Theme Prompt: #166 – Loneliness
Title: Far From Home
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes.
Word Count: 1000
Summary: On an alien planet that reminds him of home, Ianto thinks about the people he loves and how much he misses them.

Of all the worlds Ianto has visited since unexpectedly coming back from death and finding himself aboard a TARDIS that had apparently decided to adopt him, this is by far the most beautiful, and the most heart-breaking because it reminds him of home.

Not so much the city itself, which doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to Cardiff except for being situated on the coast; the parts that are above ground are designed to blend with the landscape, not merely for aesthetic reasons but for energy efficiency. No, what gets to him is the greenness, the rolling hills, the grey skies overhead with occasional patches of blue, the frequent rains… It’s the Welsh countryside all over again, despite being more than two-hundred lightyears from earth and the sight of it, despite the way it soothes his soul to see something so familiar, fills him with an overwhelming sense of homesickness, making his eyes burn with unshed tears.

He can’t go home again, not in any meaningful way. He can return to earth in the nineteen-sixties or before, or some hundred or so years after his death, but he can’t return to his own time, can’t drop in on old friends at old hangouts, can’t climb his favourite tree in Bute Park and look out across a familiar landscape, can’t go to the restaurants he frequented with Jack on their usually interrupted date nights…

He can’t visit his sister.

How many years had he spent trying to keep Rhiannon and her family at arm’s length, not wanting them to get caught up in the madness of Torchwood? And yet they’d been caught up anyway because of the 456, and he’d died trying to protect his nephew and niece along with all of earth’s other children. He’d been a distant brother and uncle for their sake, and in the end it hadn’t kept them safe at all. He wishes he could see them one more time, try to explain, tell them how much he loves them, because he does, even if he was never good at showing it.

Standing on this hilltop, a few miles from the nearest city, looking out over a wide bay where the grey-green sea is being ruffled by the invisible fingers of a fresh wind coming off the water, he breathes deeply. He can taste the salt in the air, and smell an indefinable ozone tang that catches at the back of his nose, and it’s so like the scent of home that it brings a lump to his throat. The sense of loneliness that abruptly swamps him is an almost physical weight pressing down on him and his vision blurs.

Back on earth, what’s left of his family are going about their daily lives, hopefully better off thanks to the money he left them in his will. By now they know he’s still alive, if they believe the letter he arranged to be delivered to them six months after his first death, and he wonders if they miss him the way he misses them. Probably not. The kids never knew him that well anyway, and Rhiannon spent most of her time being annoyed at him. At least now he’s not her concern anymore.

Gwen and Rhys probably don’t miss him either; they have their baby to take care of so it’s doubtful he even crosses their minds. Martha was more Jack’s friend than his own, and now he thinks about it, he really didn’t have much in the way of friends outside of the people he worked with. He hadn’t realised until now just how isolated he’d become since first being recruited by Torchwood One. The friends he’d made there had all been killed during the Canary Wharf battle, Tosh and Owen are both long gone, and Jack…

Somewhere out in space Jack still exists; he must, since he’s unable to stay dead. But space is vast, and finding one particular person in all its endless expanse is more difficult than locating one particular grain of sand that could be on any beach, or in any desert, anywhere in the galaxy. The task of tracking him down has never felt more impossible. It doesn’t matter that he’s got all of eternity ahead of him to search for the man he loves, because he could spend forever arriving where Jack had been only to find he’s already left, and that’s somehow worse than arriving somewhere Jack has never been.

His heart aches for Jack, knowing his lover still believes him to be dead, and blames himself. That would be a heavy enough burden of guilt for an immortal to carry around with him without the additional weight of having sacrificed one child, his own grandson, to save every other child on the planet, destroying his daughter’s life in the process. Ianto wants to be there to comfort Jack, to assure him that what he did was the only possible course of action, no matter how devastating and horrific it was. But he can’t do anything when he doesn’t know where Jack is, so until he solves that mystery Jack will have to endure his guilt and grief alone, and if Ianto knows Jack at all, which of course he does, wherever Jack is he’s undoubtedly punishing himself in every way he can think of.

As lonely and bereft as Ianto feels right now, he’s certain Jack is far worse off, because Jack is most likely wallowing in solitude while Ianto is not alone. Just a few hundred yards behind him, his TARDIS is standing, her leaves fluttering in the same wind that ruffles the waves below and tugs at Ianto’s clothing and hair. He can feel her presence at the edges of his mind, supportive but unobtrusive, allowing him the space he needs. Inside the TARDIS, his guests are probably feeling as lost and homesick as he is, longing to be with their own families.

Ianto can’t go home again, but maybe with his help, the Tallans can.

The End