Ficlet: Not A Dream
Apr. 13th, 2026 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Not A Dream
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Jack, Ianto.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 551
Spoilers: Children of Earth. Fix-it.
Summary: On a distant planet, in a seedy bar, Jack finds something he never expected to find.
Written For: The prompt ‘Any, Any, You want this to be true’, at
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threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
This seedy bar at the edge of a rundown spaceport on a backwater planet that has absolutely nothing to recommend it to the average traveller, not even a halfway decent hotel or regular spaceflights, is the last place that Jack would have expected to find a reason to go on living his endless existence.
When he arrived here a week ago, he was just looking for somewhere to get drunk where no one knew or cared who he was. It’s the kind of place frequented by people running from the law, their lives, their families, their enemies, their debts, or all of the above. A place where losers and lowlifes gather, where people of dubious reputation might find paying work, if they don’t care that it’s unlikely to be legal and might cost them their life if they screw up. Jack has known a lot of places like it in his long career as Time Agent turned conman. He expects to know a lot more.
He's not looking for employment opportunities right now, however, is only interested in cheap booze and getting as drunk as he can before his immortal healing abilities can sober him up again, so when someone approaches him and takes the barstool beside him, at first he ignores their presence, until a voice with a very familiar accent asks, “Aren’t you even going to say hello? It’s the least you can do after I’ve come all this way.”
Then, all Jack can do is stare, mouth dry, head whirling, even though he’s barely started drinking yet. He’s only on his second glass of the strongest alcoholic beverage the place serves, homemade rotgut that makes Hypervodkas seem as potent as a glass of sherry. He stares, and there’s a lump in his throat the size of a boulder, making it impossible to swallow the contents of the glass in his hand.
Jack wants this to be true, to be real, to not be a dream or a hallucination when he’s had so many of those before, to not be wishful thinking, or his imagination working overtime. He’s been through that too often already, his own desperate longing turning a stranger’s face into a familiar one, times when he’s been so drunk he could barely remember his own name, but couldn’t forget one particular name because he promised he wouldn’t, and he owes his long-dead lover that much at the very least.
He wants this to be true so badly that he can barely draw enough breath into his lungs to speak the name, and he’s afraid to say it anyway, because it might just break the spell he’s under and bring this sweet illusion crashing down around him. Immortal though he is, he’s not convinced he could survive that, but if he doesn’t speak, if he just continues to stare with eyes that burn from not blinking, he thinks this illusion, ghost, whatever it is, might vanish anyway. He doesn’t know which alternative would be worse. He manages at last, in a dry, hoarse, ragged voice barely above a whisper, to speak one word.
“Ianto?”
“Yes, Jack, it’s me, I’m real. You’re not dreaming, or imagining, or hallucinating. I don’t know how, or why, but I’m alive, and I’ve been searching for you for a very long time.”
The End
When he arrived here a week ago, he was just looking for somewhere to get drunk where no one knew or cared who he was. It’s the kind of place frequented by people running from the law, their lives, their families, their enemies, their debts, or all of the above. A place where losers and lowlifes gather, where people of dubious reputation might find paying work, if they don’t care that it’s unlikely to be legal and might cost them their life if they screw up. Jack has known a lot of places like it in his long career as Time Agent turned conman. He expects to know a lot more.
He's not looking for employment opportunities right now, however, is only interested in cheap booze and getting as drunk as he can before his immortal healing abilities can sober him up again, so when someone approaches him and takes the barstool beside him, at first he ignores their presence, until a voice with a very familiar accent asks, “Aren’t you even going to say hello? It’s the least you can do after I’ve come all this way.”
Then, all Jack can do is stare, mouth dry, head whirling, even though he’s barely started drinking yet. He’s only on his second glass of the strongest alcoholic beverage the place serves, homemade rotgut that makes Hypervodkas seem as potent as a glass of sherry. He stares, and there’s a lump in his throat the size of a boulder, making it impossible to swallow the contents of the glass in his hand.
Jack wants this to be true, to be real, to not be a dream or a hallucination when he’s had so many of those before, to not be wishful thinking, or his imagination working overtime. He’s been through that too often already, his own desperate longing turning a stranger’s face into a familiar one, times when he’s been so drunk he could barely remember his own name, but couldn’t forget one particular name because he promised he wouldn’t, and he owes his long-dead lover that much at the very least.
He wants this to be true so badly that he can barely draw enough breath into his lungs to speak the name, and he’s afraid to say it anyway, because it might just break the spell he’s under and bring this sweet illusion crashing down around him. Immortal though he is, he’s not convinced he could survive that, but if he doesn’t speak, if he just continues to stare with eyes that burn from not blinking, he thinks this illusion, ghost, whatever it is, might vanish anyway. He doesn’t know which alternative would be worse. He manages at last, in a dry, hoarse, ragged voice barely above a whisper, to speak one word.
“Ianto?”
“Yes, Jack, it’s me, I’m real. You’re not dreaming, or imagining, or hallucinating. I don’t know how, or why, but I’m alive, and I’ve been searching for you for a very long time.”
The End
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Date: 2026-04-13 11:20 pm (UTC)