Ficlet: Without Jack
Jan. 29th, 2026 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Without Jack
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Ianto, Jack, Team.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 764
Spoilers: Just after End of Days.
Summary: Jack has left them, and Ianto isn’t sure he can carry on without the support of the man who has held him together since Lisa’s death.
Written For:
ravenlilyrose’s prompt ‘any, any, I try to carry on, to be strong / How can I when you carried me all along?’ at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Jack was gone, and no one knew where; most of the team weren’t even in the Hub when he vanished, just Gwen and she didn’t see anything. According to her, he was there, and then he wasn’t. It was as if he’d simply disappeared into thin air, which could have been dismissed as impossible if they’d been anywhere but Torchwood, but was a possibility they had to at least consider.
How or why Jack had left them was something Ianto was sure would be endlessly argued over in the coming days, but right at that moment, all that mattered was that he was gone. If Ianto had felt broken when the man who’d been holding him together over the past few months was dead and showed no sign of coming back to life this time, the fact that he’d simply vanished without a word to any of them, without so much as a goodbye note, just left him numb and empty, hollowed out of all emotion.
What was he supposed to do now, when he had no way of knowing whether Jack would return tomorrow, sometime in the future, or never? How would he cope now that the one constant in life he’d come to depend on was no longer there to help him get through the bad days without shattering into a million pieces, to give him a reason to keep going?
He shouldn’t need Jack to hold on to, like a child with a comfort blanket; he was supposed to be an adult, but he was still dealing with trauma from the Canary Wharf massacre, nightmares and flashbacks, and Jack was the only one he could talk to about it, the only one who could pull him out of his nightmares, anchor him in the present… Without his support, Ianto would be adrift, at the mercy of his memories.
But Jack hadn’t just left him, he’d left the whole team, and he must have had a good reason; something beyond their betrayal of him, because he already forgave them, and Ianto couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that Jack was punishing them. He was human, he could be petty, selfish, even cruel, a monster when it was warranted, and yet Ianto had come to know Jack well over the past few months, and if he’d wanted to punish them, he wouldn’t have done it by abandoning them.
Gwen thought something, or someone, had taken Jack, but the hand in its jar was gone as well, and Ianto found it hard to believe that anyone snatching Jack against his will would take a spare body part as well. What would be the point? Unless Jack had stolen it in the first place and whoever it belonged to had turned up to take it back, which Ianto supposed was a possibility, but still… It was more likely that Jack had left of his own free will and simply hadn’t been able to spare the time to say goodbye, or hadn’t wanted to…
Ianto shook his head. He was thinking in circles, trying to make sense of something that in all likelihood, only made sense to Jack. Their leader was gone, he’d left them, for reasons known only to himself, so speculation was pointless, and Ianto needed to focus on what he was going to do now.
Jack would want him to carry on; he was sure of that. It was up to Ianto to prove that he deserved to be part of the team, and the best way for him to do that was to keep the others organised, and to hold Torchwood together in Jack’s absence, just in case he did eventually come back. It was just that Ianto didn’t know if he was strong enough to cope without Jack there to catch him when he stumbled, and to tell him that despite everything he’d done, he mattered. He felt as though, by leaving, Jack had stripped him of all his courage, left him exposed and vulnerable, like a mollusc without a shell…
No, he was better than that, and he did matter, not just to the team but to Jack as well. Jack had kissed him in front of the whole team, for everyone to see. Jack believed in him; he just needed to believe in himself. It was time Ianto stepped up, stood on his own two feet, and got on with his job. He’d cope in Jack’s absence because that was what Jack would expect him to do, and when Jack came back, because he would, Ianto would be here waiting for him.
The End
How or why Jack had left them was something Ianto was sure would be endlessly argued over in the coming days, but right at that moment, all that mattered was that he was gone. If Ianto had felt broken when the man who’d been holding him together over the past few months was dead and showed no sign of coming back to life this time, the fact that he’d simply vanished without a word to any of them, without so much as a goodbye note, just left him numb and empty, hollowed out of all emotion.
What was he supposed to do now, when he had no way of knowing whether Jack would return tomorrow, sometime in the future, or never? How would he cope now that the one constant in life he’d come to depend on was no longer there to help him get through the bad days without shattering into a million pieces, to give him a reason to keep going?
He shouldn’t need Jack to hold on to, like a child with a comfort blanket; he was supposed to be an adult, but he was still dealing with trauma from the Canary Wharf massacre, nightmares and flashbacks, and Jack was the only one he could talk to about it, the only one who could pull him out of his nightmares, anchor him in the present… Without his support, Ianto would be adrift, at the mercy of his memories.
But Jack hadn’t just left him, he’d left the whole team, and he must have had a good reason; something beyond their betrayal of him, because he already forgave them, and Ianto couldn’t, wouldn’t believe that Jack was punishing them. He was human, he could be petty, selfish, even cruel, a monster when it was warranted, and yet Ianto had come to know Jack well over the past few months, and if he’d wanted to punish them, he wouldn’t have done it by abandoning them.
Gwen thought something, or someone, had taken Jack, but the hand in its jar was gone as well, and Ianto found it hard to believe that anyone snatching Jack against his will would take a spare body part as well. What would be the point? Unless Jack had stolen it in the first place and whoever it belonged to had turned up to take it back, which Ianto supposed was a possibility, but still… It was more likely that Jack had left of his own free will and simply hadn’t been able to spare the time to say goodbye, or hadn’t wanted to…
Ianto shook his head. He was thinking in circles, trying to make sense of something that in all likelihood, only made sense to Jack. Their leader was gone, he’d left them, for reasons known only to himself, so speculation was pointless, and Ianto needed to focus on what he was going to do now.
Jack would want him to carry on; he was sure of that. It was up to Ianto to prove that he deserved to be part of the team, and the best way for him to do that was to keep the others organised, and to hold Torchwood together in Jack’s absence, just in case he did eventually come back. It was just that Ianto didn’t know if he was strong enough to cope without Jack there to catch him when he stumbled, and to tell him that despite everything he’d done, he mattered. He felt as though, by leaving, Jack had stripped him of all his courage, left him exposed and vulnerable, like a mollusc without a shell…
No, he was better than that, and he did matter, not just to the team but to Jack as well. Jack had kissed him in front of the whole team, for everyone to see. Jack believed in him; he just needed to believe in himself. It was time Ianto stepped up, stood on his own two feet, and got on with his job. He’d cope in Jack’s absence because that was what Jack would expect him to do, and when Jack came back, because he would, Ianto would be here waiting for him.
The End
(no subject)
Date: 2026-01-30 12:13 am (UTC)