Ficlet: Home No More
Mar. 26th, 2026 06:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Home No More
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Ianto.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 869
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: This isn’t the Cardiff Ianto once knew. Too much has changed.
Written For: The prompt ‘any, any, a visitor in someplace that used to be home’, at
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threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
For a long, breathless, motionless moment Ianto simply stands on what was once known as the Plas, drinking in the atmosphere, comparing the sights and sounds and smells to his memories of this place, cataloguing the differences, both large and small. He never expected it all to be exactly the same as he remembers, because everything changes with the passage of time; that’s just the way the universe works, and yet… Deep down he’d still been expecting a sense of familiarity greater than he’s experiencing.
It’s disappointing even though it’s inevitable. The past, the time that he belonged to, is long gone, and he feels out of step with the present, which is only natural. It isn’t his. Nevertheless, he came back to see the city as it is now, so that’s what he intends to do, picking a direction and beginning to wander aimlessly through a place that feels more alien in its unfamiliarity than many alien planets.
It's strange being back here. He used to know every street, and every alley, how to get from one point to another in the shortest possible time, covering the shortest possible distance. He knew all the cap parks, and the bus routes, all the local attractions, opening and closing times, and ticket prices. He knew the best places to get coffee, tea, fish and chips that weren’t too greasy, or a bacon butty at five in the morning. He knew every drycleaner and had them ranked by their ability to remove dubious stains from various fabrics. He even knew the location of every sewer access point… Invaluable local knowledge for a Torchwood agent.
But that was then, back when he lived here, worked here, helped protect the city and its surrounding areas, and this is now, fifty years down the line, and while he hasn’t changed appreciably, aside from having a beard and letting his hair grow longer, much of the city is barely recognisable.
It isn’t just that the Rift is closed now, although that has certainly had an effect. It isn’t even that the Hub no longer exists, the gaping hole in the Plas having long since been filled in… Old buildings have been torn down, new ones have been erected, some of the streets he used to drive down are now closed to traffic, and there are new streets where none existed before.
Most of the shops he remembers fondly are long gone, the premises having changed hands multiple times, and his favourite pub is now a trendy wine bar, devoid of character. Part of Bute Park is fenced off, with signs up on the fence advertising the new housing development that’s under construction. Pontcanna Fields has already become a housing estate; Ianto wonders when that happened.
Everything about Cardiff feels subtly wrong, as if he’s stumbled through a portal into an alternate version of the city that used to be his home, and it strikes him that he doesn’t belong here anymore. He’s a stranger, a visiting tourist trying to rediscover something that used to be, something that only exists now in his memories. It hurts.
He remembers chasing Weevils through dark alleys, rounding up dinosaurs in the Botanical Gardens, rescuing Jack after he got stuck up a tree in Bute Park, jumping into the Taff to save some stranger’s dog. He recalls nights out with Jack, dinner and a movie, drinks in a pub, or fish and chips down by the bay, although more often than not, their dates got interrupted by work.
He remembers other things too, the loss of good friends, the explosion that destroyed the Hub’s upper levels, and the nightmarish events that followed… He wonders if his archives survived, if anything still remains intact down there. He could check, the access point off the sewers should still be there and the codes won’t have changed, but…
Honestly, he’s not sure he wants to know. It would break his heart to see all the months of hard work he put in down there undone, everything he painstakingly sorted and catalogued buried under layers of dust, all the files and reports mouldering in the filing cabinets. The history of a secret organisation, the lives and deaths of its employees, all carefully chronicled and now forgotten about by the few people who knew they existed. There are things he might have liked to have as souvenirs, bits of tech that could, possibly, prove useful in his travels, but perhaps it’s best that they remain where they are. If they stay hidden, they can never be misused.
Returning to his starting point, he spares one final glance at the Millennium Centre, still standing proud, if starting to look a bit faded, but he resists the temptation to turn and look towards what used to be Mermaid Quay and the boardwalk, where the Tourist Office entrance once was. It’s true that you can’t go home again. He probably shouldn’t have come here, but he’d needed to see, and now he’s seen enough. Cardiff stopped being his fifty years ago. Time to go back where he belongs.
Flipping his Vortex Manipulator open, he sets the coordinates, steps into a narrow alley, presses one last button, and vanishes.
The End
It’s disappointing even though it’s inevitable. The past, the time that he belonged to, is long gone, and he feels out of step with the present, which is only natural. It isn’t his. Nevertheless, he came back to see the city as it is now, so that’s what he intends to do, picking a direction and beginning to wander aimlessly through a place that feels more alien in its unfamiliarity than many alien planets.
It's strange being back here. He used to know every street, and every alley, how to get from one point to another in the shortest possible time, covering the shortest possible distance. He knew all the cap parks, and the bus routes, all the local attractions, opening and closing times, and ticket prices. He knew the best places to get coffee, tea, fish and chips that weren’t too greasy, or a bacon butty at five in the morning. He knew every drycleaner and had them ranked by their ability to remove dubious stains from various fabrics. He even knew the location of every sewer access point… Invaluable local knowledge for a Torchwood agent.
But that was then, back when he lived here, worked here, helped protect the city and its surrounding areas, and this is now, fifty years down the line, and while he hasn’t changed appreciably, aside from having a beard and letting his hair grow longer, much of the city is barely recognisable.
It isn’t just that the Rift is closed now, although that has certainly had an effect. It isn’t even that the Hub no longer exists, the gaping hole in the Plas having long since been filled in… Old buildings have been torn down, new ones have been erected, some of the streets he used to drive down are now closed to traffic, and there are new streets where none existed before.
Most of the shops he remembers fondly are long gone, the premises having changed hands multiple times, and his favourite pub is now a trendy wine bar, devoid of character. Part of Bute Park is fenced off, with signs up on the fence advertising the new housing development that’s under construction. Pontcanna Fields has already become a housing estate; Ianto wonders when that happened.
Everything about Cardiff feels subtly wrong, as if he’s stumbled through a portal into an alternate version of the city that used to be his home, and it strikes him that he doesn’t belong here anymore. He’s a stranger, a visiting tourist trying to rediscover something that used to be, something that only exists now in his memories. It hurts.
He remembers chasing Weevils through dark alleys, rounding up dinosaurs in the Botanical Gardens, rescuing Jack after he got stuck up a tree in Bute Park, jumping into the Taff to save some stranger’s dog. He recalls nights out with Jack, dinner and a movie, drinks in a pub, or fish and chips down by the bay, although more often than not, their dates got interrupted by work.
He remembers other things too, the loss of good friends, the explosion that destroyed the Hub’s upper levels, and the nightmarish events that followed… He wonders if his archives survived, if anything still remains intact down there. He could check, the access point off the sewers should still be there and the codes won’t have changed, but…
Honestly, he’s not sure he wants to know. It would break his heart to see all the months of hard work he put in down there undone, everything he painstakingly sorted and catalogued buried under layers of dust, all the files and reports mouldering in the filing cabinets. The history of a secret organisation, the lives and deaths of its employees, all carefully chronicled and now forgotten about by the few people who knew they existed. There are things he might have liked to have as souvenirs, bits of tech that could, possibly, prove useful in his travels, but perhaps it’s best that they remain where they are. If they stay hidden, they can never be misused.
Returning to his starting point, he spares one final glance at the Millennium Centre, still standing proud, if starting to look a bit faded, but he resists the temptation to turn and look towards what used to be Mermaid Quay and the boardwalk, where the Tourist Office entrance once was. It’s true that you can’t go home again. He probably shouldn’t have come here, but he’d needed to see, and now he’s seen enough. Cardiff stopped being his fifty years ago. Time to go back where he belongs.
Flipping his Vortex Manipulator open, he sets the coordinates, steps into a narrow alley, presses one last button, and vanishes.
The End
(no subject)
Date: 2026-03-26 11:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-03-26 11:41 pm (UTC)Ianto can move on now.