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Title: "Montmartre"
Disclaimer: Being a bloke who likes to slash pretty men doesn't make me RTD, I don't work for the BBC, and as much as I might like to, I don't own Jack or Ianto or any part of Torchwood. I do, however, order pizza under that name on principle.
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG
Notes/Summary: This was my round 1.06 entry over at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
writerinadrawer for the "Private Moments" prompt.
Shameless Plug: As always, I encourage everyone to check outwriterinadrawer. Please read and vote! As of the last elimination there were only 11 of us left! Stories for this week's round go up this weekend, and voting typically runs until 4 PM Central Time (-6 GMT) on Sunday. This week's prompt is "Deadly Sin" with the added feature that each story must include fruit. If that's not enough for you, well, check your pulse. ;)
Ianto was lost.
This didn’t happen often. He had a good memory, and even before he’d begun working for Torchwood he could be counted on to learn his way around very quickly. When he travelled, he studied maps ahead of time. He liked to know where he was going. And yet here he was, lost on the streets of Paris with no idea how he’d got turned around. All of the buildings looked wrong to him. Even the people seemed different somehow. Worse, he’d managed to lose Jack. Jack who was, incidentally, the one playing translator on this little excursion because Ianto’s schoolboy French was sorely lacking in all but the most basic circumstances.
“Excusez moi,” he said, approaching a blonde woman in a long, flowered dress. “Parlez vous Anglais?”
She made no move to turn around. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him? He reached out to tap her shoulder. “Excusez moi, mademoiselle. Je suis –“
His hand passed straight through her.
Ianto lurched backwards. His eyes went wide and he spun around, stumbling right through a couple who laughed and talked as if he wasn’t there.
“Hello?” he called into the crowd. He screamed at the top of his lungs. No one answered. The world, it seemed, had cut him off.
***
The possibility that he might be dead had crossed Ianto’s mind, but it hadn’t sunk in. After all, this wasn’t the sort of death he saw at work every day. It wasn’t a switching off or a plunge into nothingness. It wasn’t the strange ascension they’d seen Eugene make. He’d been walking for hours and was hungry and tired.
Did the dead feel hungry and tired?
He made his way down Avenue Rachel toward Montmartre Cemetery. If there were answers to be found, Ianto thought, perhaps he could find them among the dead. He wondered briefly if all the ghosts would speak French, or if language ceased to be a consideration after death.
His path descended below street level, and Ianto was immediately impressed by the strangeness and grandeur of the Parisian cemetery. Montmartre was its own world, and it seemed crammed to the brim with strange statuary, above-ground vaults, and trees upon trees. It lacked the solitary, peaceful character of churchyards in Britain. Montmartre was just as loud and wild as Paris itself.
And there – draped in his long, woolen coat – was Jack.
He knelt with his hands full of marigolds. Ianto couldn’t understand Jack’s quick, murmured French, but he could read the name on the slab and the dates beneath it. The tears were plain on the other man’s face as he laid the flowers down next to a bronze soldier’s helmet.
Jean-Alexis Coudray
1896-1916
Ianto stepped toward him and laid a hand on the other man’s shoulder. Jack gasped and whipped around. And then he vanished.
***
“Ianto.”
Ianto turned around to find his Captain standing tired and worried, waiting beneath a tree. Ianto looked over at the slab. The marigolds were gone.
“What happened? How did you…”
“It’s not important,” Jack said, wrapping Ianto up in his arms like something precious he’d lost and then found again by accident.
“But you were just here,” Ianto protested.
“And I’m here right now.”
“But that was you!” Ianto squirmed out of Jack’s embrace, pointing at the slab and demanding an explanation.
“How do you think I knew where to find you?”
Ianto shook his head in disbelief. The buildings, the people, the way the whole of Paris had gone wrong and unfamiliar in the blink of an eye. Changed as if he’d stepped back in time.
“You...remembered?”
Disclaimer: Being a bloke who likes to slash pretty men doesn't make me RTD, I don't work for the BBC, and as much as I might like to, I don't own Jack or Ianto or any part of Torchwood. I do, however, order pizza under that name on principle.
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG
Notes/Summary: This was my round 1.06 entry over at
writerinadrawer for the "Private Moments" prompt. Shameless Plug: As always, I encourage everyone to check out
writerinadrawer. Please read and vote! As of the last elimination there were only 11 of us left! Stories for this week's round go up this weekend, and voting typically runs until 4 PM Central Time (-6 GMT) on Sunday. This week's prompt is "Deadly Sin" with the added feature that each story must include fruit. If that's not enough for you, well, check your pulse. ;)Ianto was lost.
This didn’t happen often. He had a good memory, and even before he’d begun working for Torchwood he could be counted on to learn his way around very quickly. When he travelled, he studied maps ahead of time. He liked to know where he was going. And yet here he was, lost on the streets of Paris with no idea how he’d got turned around. All of the buildings looked wrong to him. Even the people seemed different somehow. Worse, he’d managed to lose Jack. Jack who was, incidentally, the one playing translator on this little excursion because Ianto’s schoolboy French was sorely lacking in all but the most basic circumstances.
“Excusez moi,” he said, approaching a blonde woman in a long, flowered dress. “Parlez vous Anglais?”
She made no move to turn around. Perhaps she hadn’t heard him? He reached out to tap her shoulder. “Excusez moi, mademoiselle. Je suis –“
His hand passed straight through her.
Ianto lurched backwards. His eyes went wide and he spun around, stumbling right through a couple who laughed and talked as if he wasn’t there.
“Hello?” he called into the crowd. He screamed at the top of his lungs. No one answered. The world, it seemed, had cut him off.
The possibility that he might be dead had crossed Ianto’s mind, but it hadn’t sunk in. After all, this wasn’t the sort of death he saw at work every day. It wasn’t a switching off or a plunge into nothingness. It wasn’t the strange ascension they’d seen Eugene make. He’d been walking for hours and was hungry and tired.
Did the dead feel hungry and tired?
He made his way down Avenue Rachel toward Montmartre Cemetery. If there were answers to be found, Ianto thought, perhaps he could find them among the dead. He wondered briefly if all the ghosts would speak French, or if language ceased to be a consideration after death.
His path descended below street level, and Ianto was immediately impressed by the strangeness and grandeur of the Parisian cemetery. Montmartre was its own world, and it seemed crammed to the brim with strange statuary, above-ground vaults, and trees upon trees. It lacked the solitary, peaceful character of churchyards in Britain. Montmartre was just as loud and wild as Paris itself.
And there – draped in his long, woolen coat – was Jack.
He knelt with his hands full of marigolds. Ianto couldn’t understand Jack’s quick, murmured French, but he could read the name on the slab and the dates beneath it. The tears were plain on the other man’s face as he laid the flowers down next to a bronze soldier’s helmet.
1896-1916
Ianto stepped toward him and laid a hand on the other man’s shoulder. Jack gasped and whipped around. And then he vanished.
“Ianto.”
Ianto turned around to find his Captain standing tired and worried, waiting beneath a tree. Ianto looked over at the slab. The marigolds were gone.
“What happened? How did you…”
“It’s not important,” Jack said, wrapping Ianto up in his arms like something precious he’d lost and then found again by accident.
“But you were just here,” Ianto protested.
“And I’m here right now.”
“But that was you!” Ianto squirmed out of Jack’s embrace, pointing at the slab and demanding an explanation.
“How do you think I knew where to find you?”
Ianto shook his head in disbelief. The buildings, the people, the way the whole of Paris had gone wrong and unfamiliar in the blink of an eye. Changed as if he’d stepped back in time.
“You...remembered?”
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