Title: Pointless
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,104 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 486 - Revenge
Summary: Ianto is stuck in a world of hurt, made worse by the fact that he can’t be there beside Jack when he needs him most.


Ianto curled up on his sofa, unable to find sleep despite the bone deep exhaustion he felt. Too much of that weariness came from mental anguish rather than physical tiredness. It was hard to believe that just a few hours had passed since he’d lost two of his best friends. Outside the city was still chaotic, slowly pulling together from the mess left in the destructive wake of one man. There was nothing more Torchwood could do that the police and emergency services couldn’t. They couldn’t heal the wounded or redirect panicked citizens or put out fires and unearth buried victims. They’d already caused more harm than good and so they'd been sent home because they were a loose end that Jack couldn't deal with right now.

Outside Ianto could hear the distant wail of sirens, and from the apartment directly below his, the loud drone of a constant news feed blaring from a television. In his own head they were just white noise, like he was stuck halfway between this dimension and another, trying to process everything that had happened. Destruction and violence were things he was familiar with, but the shock of Jack's past coming back to haunt them was the thing that he found most difficult to comprehend.

Jack had many times asked Ianto about his sister. What was she like, were they close, did she share any of the same quirks that made Ianto tick. Ianto naturally had blithely ducked the more personal questions, keeping things surface level. Siblings were part of life, he'd say, usually annoying even though they loved you. They had their lives, he had his, and sometimes, birthdays and Christmas mostly, they intersected for a brief while. Sometimes he enjoyed the company, or just being around people who didn't judge him, but there were times as well when he was glad to get back to his own life, especially when the questions started getting too pointed about what he did with his life.

Not once though had Jack ever revealed that he too knew what it was like to have siblings. Ianto had always assumed that Jack must have been an only child. He was naturally independent, and though losing a brother at such a young age must have been awful and traumatic, it didn't account for why Jack would simply have ceased to ever mention him again. Perhaps it was shame at having felt responsible for losing him in the first place. How could you live your life having simply erased a family member from your memories, never mentioning them, to remember them and keep that memory alive for as long as you could? He might have lied about them, saying they were dead, or simply living in a far off future that Jack could never return to and let that be that. Instead he’d avoided ever having to talk about his brother to anyone. Jack’s entire family simply hadn’t existed, as if Jack had suddenly just come into being like atoms during the Big Bang, without any lineage or legacy.

Ianto couldn't even begin to understand the kind of deep-seated hatred that would drive someone to want to take revenge in such a brutal and complete way. He'd once imagined that he himself wanted to get revenge against Jack for having killed Lisa but he found that when it came to it, he only felt remorse for what he'd done to Jack, and that there was truly no such thing as revenge or a satisfying feeling at having accomplished it. There was nothing to be gained from it, only more hurt and pain. Even now, as he hurt in places he couldn't even begin to describe from the loss of Tosh and Owen, he never once thought that revenge was an answer. He couldn't bring himself to hate Gray enough to want him dead or to suffer for what he’d done. He wondered if that made him weak, or if he hadn’t loved his friends enough to want to avenge their pointless deaths. How much suffering did you have to endure to be pushed to the point where the goal to make it stop had to be the death of others?

He wanted to be there for Jack, to help him process the agony of having found someone you thought you'd lost only to have them turn on you and tear your word apart ,but he wasn't sure he could even process how that must feel. There was a whole other life that Jack had led long before they'd ever met, of which he knew absolutely nothing. It felt wrong to think he might be able to console Jack or even appreciate the kind of hurt he must be going through. Jack’s old life and his new one had collided without warning and with no chance to reconcile the past. Gray had come here with a plan to destroy Jack and no other course of action would absolve him of his perceived sins.

Perhaps that was the real reason Jack had sent them both home. He knew that neither of them could ever truly understand what drove a man to want to destroy his own brother and everyone he cared about. Perhaps looking in the eyes of those people he loved that had survived was just another form of guilt, having failed to keep them all safe and knowing that they never would be for as long as they remained by his side. There was always going to be someone out there, maybe not today or tomorrow, but someone, somewhere in the future who would come back to take away whatever was left that Jack held dear because of things he'd done in his life. Perhaps he feared that the people he loved might even be the ones that wanted to avenge the friends that they had lost, equally blaming Jack for their woes. That would have been the kind of thing Ianto could believe Jack thinking. That no one was safe as long as they were near him.

He loved Jack and nothing would change that, and he was fairly sure that Jack knew that as well, but it didn't stop him feeling helpless to console Jack at the very time he needed to know that loving people didn't always have to end in hurt. Whatever had happened to Gray wasn't his fault and neither was trying to hurt Jack going to take away any of that pain. He wondered whether Gray had felt that same hollow feeling at the end, knowing that revenge was the most pointless and hurtful act of all.