Title: Treasured

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,603 words

Content notes: None

Author notes: Written for Challenge 390 - Treasure

Summary: Jack has gone to unbury long forgotten treasures.

Their campfire had burned down to embers by the time Ianto awoke, feeling the first morning light just beginning to warm his skin and replace the chill night air. He pushed up from where he lay, letting the sand slide between his fingers where it had provided a remarkably comfortable bed for him. This was the kind of camping that he enjoyed, waking to hear the waves crashing against the shore not that far away. Boeshane really was a tranquil part of the universe, and he was glad that they’d made the journey back here again.

Jack wouldn't normally leave him alone, but here on Jack's boyhood home, there was no one else to be worried about invading their makeshift camp in the night. It was just the two of them here, if you excluded the scorpions and the nettles and the gulls. The few villages that had existed on the outskirts of the city were just crumbling skeletal remnants, and the main structure that Jack described to him as having dominated the coast was gone altogether, pulled down when the outpost had been abandoned.

Ianto didn't have to look far to know that Jack had gone wandering intentionally whilst he’d still been sleeping. A large arrow drawn in the sand pointed in the direction of his travels guiding Ianto to him should he need to find him. He could have waited for Jack to return to their camp but decided that if Jack hadn’t wanted to be found then he wouldn't have left obvious clues for his husband.

Ianto found that Jack sometimes still needed his alone time. There was still so much memory in this place. It was why Ianto insisted they come here every how and again, to give Jack time to reconcile with his past and for it to become a place of their collective history. Ianto had shared his entire life with Jack and to some extent he needed Jack to do the same.

He began to clamber over the dunes, following the signs of Jack's footprints in the soft yellow sand. Even this early in the morning the sun was already beginning to heat the dunes. A few years ago even this early morning heat would have flattened Ianto but now he was as immune to it as Jack. If anything, he relished that hot dry heat. He never would have imagined that, growing up in cold, windy Cardiff.

Dunes shifted over time, many miles in just a few years, yet here it was still close enough to the coast that perhaps they'd only shifted a mile or so even in all the years since Jack had grown up here. A small rocky outcrop marked the edge of the vast sea of dunes that stretched for three thousand miles inland. Out there was inhospitable no man's land yet here, still within sight of the sea it was beautiful. Ianto could picture in his mind’s eye all of Jack's happy childhood memories relived over their camp fire as he became open and talkative, nostalgia giving way to the life that had marked his last years here.

Jack knelt in the lee of the outcrop half buried in the sand. Even without being able to see the expression in his face at this distance, Ianto could feel the burn of emotions running through him, flowing into him via their shared soul bond. Jack wasn’t just sitting there pensively staring out at the desolate vastness of it all. Something had gripped him in grief.

Ianto closed the distance between them in no time at all despite the sand trying to suck his feet down into it. As he reached Jack’s position he knelt down in the sand next to him, though he was still a few inches higher than Jack as Jack's knees sat deep in a drift that had been scooped away by hand.

‘This was our secret place,’ Jack said. ‘Gray and I would come here pretending we were space pirates or intergalactic smugglers. We'd bury our treasures here where no one else would ever find them.’ He cast his gaze down into the sand in front of him where it had been pushed away to form a deep rut, showing Ianto a collection of unearthed children's trinkets – rocks, shells, bits of grass woven into knots, a lone cuttlefish bone. It was astonishing to see them after three hundred years had passed since they been entrusted to the sands by two happy, innocent boys. It was the kind of thing that shouldn't have upset his husband as much as it seemed to have. He’d reconciled with losing Gray so very long ago.

‘Why are you so sad, cariad?’

Jack sat there silently for a moment before Ianto noticed that he had a fist clutched tightly around something as yet unseen. With deferential care Ianto reached out and wrapped his hand gently around Jack's fist. It remained tight for a few moments longer before he finally felt it relax and unfurl, and he let go to reveal whatever Jack had been holding.

‘I found this,’ Jack said, his voice barely a whisper. When Ianto looked down there was a single small object in Jack's palm, golden and glinting in the early morning desert light. It was a ring. Jack turned it in his fingers, rotating it slightly so that Ianto saw the tiny little engraved mark on the inside of it. His hand flew to his mouth as the shock of it hit him in the same way it must have hit Jack.

He'd seen that tiny little curling symbol before. It was the same symbol etched into the otherwise plain gold ring he wore on his right hand. The ring had been given to him by Jack to mark their engagement – his father's wedding band – which he wore on his right hand rather than the left, in the tradition of Jack’s family. The symbol on the inside being a Galactic Standard hybrid of the initials of Jack’s parents' names. It was unique. He and Jack very rarely wore their wedding bands but Ianto always wore Jack's engagement ring. It wasn't new or shiny, rather it was dull and showing the dozens of tiny scratches that it bore from a lifetime of being worn. Ianto could scarcely imagine how Jack had kept it safe all those years after he'd left home and made it all the way to Cardiff in 2010 when he'd finally bestowed it upon Ianto, but Ianto treasured it more than anything else he owned.

He reached out to touch it, turning it ever so slightly with a slender finger to look for a second mark. When Jack had explained the meaning of the marking inside the ring, Jack had then had a second symbol designed of their own two initials translated into Galactic Standard and morphed into their own unique symbol, added next to the first. This ring didn't bear any second marking so Ianto knew it wasn't his, left here in this place and time by him some time off in the distant future. It was the same plain gold band, only slightly smaller in its aperture and Ianto immediately understood what that meant.

‘Your Mum's ring,’ he said, hardly able to bring himself to speak the words. There could be no other two rings that were otherwise identical in every respect, buried here in this place that only Jack knew about.

‘I never saw her take it off,’ Jack said, trapped in memories of so very long ago. She'd been devoted to Jack's father even in death, so Jack had told him. Ianto could empathise. He wouldn't ever take off Jack's ring either. It meant too much to him.

‘She must have thought you'd come back,’ he said.

‘I didn't even know she knew about this place.’

‘Mother's know everything.’ Hadn't Ianto’s mum always known where he kept his secret stuff hidden? It didn't matter if it was his handful of bootlegged cigarettes or that packet of condoms when he'd first dabbled with dating and sex, or the little flick knife he'd owned for all of two days before his mum had confiscated it, telling him that knives only brought trouble. She always found whatever it was he attempted to hide.

He reached an arm around Jack's shoulder and pulled him close, letting his temple press against Jack's own. They sat there huddled in the warm sand for a long time, just taking it in. Those thoughts that Jack’s mother had intentionally left this here for Jack to find, knowing she’d already gifted him his father’s ring before he left Boeshane to join the Time Agency academy, hung heavily here in this otherwise isolated place.

‘I miss her so much,’ Jack said, sounding like he was twelve years old again. “I never came back here to make things right.’

‘You made things right in your own way,’ Ianto replied. ‘I miss my mum, too. But she'll always be with me in my memory.’ He moved to kiss Jack’s cheek, before carefully picking the ring out of Jack’s palm. ‘She wanted you to have this.’ He studied it for a moment. It was the same thickness as his own, just made for a more slender finger. ‘There’s enough to have it resized,’ he said. ‘Finally reunited with its other half.’ He knew how much it would mean to Jack to have a matching ring, knowing that even though both his parents were long gone, he symbol of the love and devotion would carry on.

Jack leaned back into him. ‘The best treasure of all.’