Disclaimer: Jack, Ianto and Torchwood belong to the BBC. And, really, they're wasting their ownership by not doing anything with them. Bring back Torchwood! With a Time Loop so that, at the very least, Ianto comes back. I miss Ianto.

*.*.*

Jack had been missing in action for an hour before I noticed anything off. At first, I'd just thought he was licking his wounds in his bunker or scrubbing the dirt from his...well, his everywhere, really. I'd never understand why they didn't at least hose him off before sticking him in the cryochamber.

I wanted to give him space. Well, that's partially true. Mostly, I wanted space myself.

Space to scrub Tosh's blood from the Autopsy Bay before it curdled.

Space to come to grips with the idea that my best friend was dead, along with another good (if contentious) friend.

Space to work through all the anger and bitterness I was feeling towards Jack.

I knew, even as it burned through the back of my head, how unfair that was. It wasn't his actions, not really. But they were his secrets. In the end, it always seemed to be Jack's secrets that muddled things up.

I kept my distance, at least for that little while, but used Tosh's PDA (Oh, God. Tosh.) to find the signal in his mobile. I really didn't want Jack to see my grief or my anger. He'd forgiven me so quickly after the Cyberman incident. He'd comforted me, whispered platitudes of understanding what it felt like to want to rip apart the universe to save the one person you loved the most. At the time, I didn't believe him in the slightest and later, when my jealous heart kept me up at night, I imagined a lover. I never would have thought he meant his baby brother.

Once I'd gotten myself under control, once I was confident my usual emotionless mask didn't have any cracks Jack could see through, I slid into the SUV and followed the directions the PDA had given me. He was further away than I'd expected. I'm not sure where I'd expected to find him—on the roof of a tall building or maybe a dramatic, rocky cliffside. Somewhere that his greatcoat could billow heroically behind him, really, though I supposed he wasn't likely to feel overly heroic right about now.

Instead, I found him sitting on a park bench, facing a group of boys playing dare-devil on a jungle gym. He'd changed his clothes—just jeans and a t-shirt, which shocked me—but was still covered in dirt. I made myself stop imagining what being buried alive for two thousand years must have been like. I couldn't even wrap my head around the endlessness of his life normally. I hadn't lost nearly the number of people Jack had—really just my parents and Lisa and friends at Torchwood Tower—and sometimes I still felt like life was too much, too long, too everything. I was constantly feeling like I was on the periphery of life, on the outside looking in. I could not imagine how it felt to be Jack, constantly watching people he loved leave him—whether they died young like Suzie, Tosh and Owen, or whether they grew old like Estelle, it was the same result. They died. They left him behind. One day...one day, I will too.

I wondered if Jack had ever really felt like he belonged anywhere. I wondered if being Jack meant always feeling like he was watching a television programme or reading a choose-your-own-adventure book. I imagined it would have to—everything around him changes, ages, dies, every single day. But Jack was always the same. He made the same innuendos, wore (mostly) the same clothing, smelled exactly the same. He'd taken to joking about not gilding the lily, but I couldn't imagine looking exactly as I do now for decades more, forever watching life pass me by.

I sat beside him as one of the boys was egging another on. "Steven, don't be a chicken! It's not that far off the ground!"

Neither of us said a word, not to each other and certainly not to the boys. I felt him tense beside me when the blond boy—Steven—flipped himself down from the structure and landed safely on his own two feet. He chuckled quietly and tangled his dirty fingers in mine.

"He's a brave one," he said.

I knew my opinion—that the boy's ease in being bullied into something that could have injured him would get him into trouble later on—would not be welcome, so I simply nodded.

"Toshiko and Owen...they were brave, too. Right until the end. I'm...I'm so proud of them. If you've gotta go out, go out with a bang, right?" He was trying to be nonchalant, but his voice broke at the end.

I massaged his hand with my fingers, a small gesture I knew he found comforting. "They would always have wanted to die protecting the good people of Cardiff. It's our jobs. None of us have ever been under any illusions about what we signed up for, Jack."

He took a steadying breath. "I wish...I wish I could wrap you in cotton wool and keep you safe forever. I wish I could do it all on my own so none of you would have to die."

"I know."

"You should run, Ianto. Run fast and run far. Far, far away from me. I've...I've caused so much death."

"This is not your fault, Jack. You know it isn't."

He looked at me, finally. His blue eyes were so bright against his dirty skin, so hopeful and full of unshed tears. "I should have held his hand."

Suddenly, I felt like I was seeing the real Jack for the very first time. He weighted himself down with the guilt of something that happened hundreds of years ago and thousands of years in the future, when he was little more than a baby himself and pinned every tragedy, every sadness, every death since then as a consequence of that one small mistake. I captured his lips in a gentle kiss before I whispered against them. "Then hold my hand instead."

He did, and I gave him another reassuring squeeze. He rested his head on my shoulder. We fell back into a companionable, comfortable silence and watched the children play. I honestly wanted to get back to my flat and scrub at least a few layers of dirt from Jack, but I was sure one of those boys were going to break their neck the moment we drove away.

"So," I asked, "what are you doing here, anyway?"

"Just...watching."

*.*.*

A/N: Today's prompt was "Watching."