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The first picture of Ianto is the one Tosh takes on his first day in Torchwood Three. It's for the face recognition software so that the Hub won’t go into lockdown when Ianto decides to use the entrances that Jack didn’t tell him but he knows about anyway. It’s the picture they put in file for his security pass and for any fake IDs he might need in the future.
Tosh makes him stand against the tiled walls of the Autopsy Bay and he smiles a nervous smile and blinks when the flash goes off. His forehead looks a little too big but his lips look very red. Owen looks at it and complains about his own photo, because Owen didn’t get his picture taken by Tosh, instead they just used the one that was on his driver’s license. Tosh takes Owen’s picture just to shut him up.
From there, everyone’s picture gets taken, even Suzie who liked to maintain her distance from the team (except Owen, on special occasions.)
Snap. Jack playfully kissing Tosh’s cheeks.
Snap. Ianto making everyone a first of many cups of coffee.
Snap. Owen posing heroically in his lab coat with a scalpel, over a corpse who died from ingesting alien slime.
Snap. Suzie smiling brightly between Jack and Owen.
Snap. A beautifully intricate alien artifact held aloft by a petite hand.
But only Ianto’s picture gets uploaded and printed later because the Rift alarm flares up and everyone is busy for the next four days and the camera lies forgotten. Later, Tosh picks up the camera again and asks Jack to take a picture of her and Owen and when she goes to print it, she finds all those pictures, waiting for her. She codes a small program to display the pictures on her screen.
Suzie hands Ianto his security pass and he carefully takes it and deposits it in one of his neatly pressed suit pockets. He thanks her quietly and asks if she would like a cup of coffee.
When Jack looks at it, the tiny inch wide picture on the card, months later, he thinks he can see the ghost of Lisa in Ianto’s eyes.
Jack’s glad that he doesn’t have to look at it, years later, because the Hub blew up so there is no need for final log out procedures, because if he does, he thinks he might cry.
-
Jack has a picture of Ianto on his phone. He doesn’t use his mobile often because he doesn’t have a friend to call for a drink and he uses his comm to talk to his team. The only time he takes out his phone is to call Alice, when he can’t use the phone in his office. This is why he doesn’t discover the camera function until the phone is beat up and scratched on the surface.
It is a blurry picture of Ianto, coming into his office, just as Jack was experimenting with the camera.
Ianto simply raises his eyebrow and ignores the Jack’s proposition involving phone cameras and late night calls.
Later that night, Ianto sends Jack a picture of Jack that he must’ve taken in the Hub, when Jack wasn’t watching. He’s standing behind Tosh and Gwen as the girls point something to the screen. His arms are crossed and he looks quite serious even though, he remembers, that they were only showing him a video on Youtube that they thought had aliens in it. It turned out to be a false alarm.
This is the night Jack discovers text messaging because Ianto sent some pretty descriptive suggestions with Jack’s picture. It takes him a few tries to get used to the tiny buttons, which no doubt amuses Ianto in his own flat across town. But Jack has always been a fast learner with technology and they spend the night sending each other things that makes them share secret looks in the Hub the next morning.
The blurry photo of Ianto in Jack’s camera lays forgotten because Jack is Jack and he has much more flattering and naked images of Ianto in his phone. When Owen accidently stumbles into them, Jack laughs and Owen calls him names that he doesn’t really mean. Ianto tells Jack over his dead body even before Jack can suggest anything.
After everything, Jack can’t bring himself to delete that one blurry photo so instead he turns his mobile off and puts it in the box marked I. Jones.
-
The security camera footages are still stored in the Torchwood servers, and even though the Hub might be gone, they’re still there. Once, Ianto used the security footages to help Lisa, by deleting them. Once, Ianto used the security footages to get Gwen a beautiful wedding dress. Gwen was looking for the scan records, when she finds them, the one she took, just before they found the bomb inside of Jack. She’s a criminal now and they can’t hardly go to a doctor to see if her baby is okay.
She misses Owen even though his bedside manners were terrible and would have probably given her grief about being pregnant. Sweet Tosh, she thinks, would have congratulated her, and Gwen would have invited her to the baby shower.
The footage shows Jack and Ianto leaving the Hub. Ianto helps Jack into his coat, as always, and Jack pockets something, the new laser cutter and mender, and he leans towards Ianto. Gwen feels like she’s walked in on them again - oh that was an embarrassing day - and a little bit voyeuristic. But they don’t do anything too revealing. Jack gives Ianto a peck on the cheek and they both leave the Hub, out of the security camera’s range.
Gwen saves the file onto the stolen laptop she’s using. She doesn’t know why she saves it or what she’s going to do with it, maybe tease Ianto,but she knows that her heart tingles and that she’s happy for them.
When Ianto comes back from a supply run, she asks Ianto how long he’s been serious with Jack, like a couple, not whatever they were before, if albeit cheekily. Ianto scowls and mumbles something about beans and Rhys and Gwen laughs because she knows how thick Rhys can be.
She captures an image from the footage and e-mails it to herself so she can print it out. She likes to think that they’ll all live through until her baby is born and then Jack and Ianto can tell him (or her) about their adventures and she’ll have that picture in a frame. Because Gwen is the heart of the team and she can hope.
When she returns after talking to Ianto’s sister, she deletes the footage from the laptop and then she wipes the laptop. She throws it away because she’s throwing everything away, everything that reminds her of Torchwood. She finds the picture in her inbox weeks later, when she finally feels brave enough and she prints it out in a tiny little rectangle.
She tucks it away, behind a picture of Rhys in her wallet because they were her best friends.
-
The image is burned into the back of her retina, behind her eyelids. Sometimes when he sleeps, when he does sleep, sleep like he used to long long ago, she can hear his dreams and see what he sees. She believes that he lets her watch his dreams so that she can escape the court house full of corpses and death, so that she wouldn't get lonely.
He tells her and shows her and sings to her all about his life when he can because he’s been so exhausted now and she fears that his end is coming near. He tells her about the adventures he’s had in the past and sometimes she doesn’t believe him because he is a giant head in a jar. But most times, she allows herself to submerge herself in his ancient lullabies and she can’t tell the difference the between his truths and lies anymore. Not that it matters.
He tells her about a girl who had eyes like a doe (she doesn’t know what a doe is but doesn’t tell him that), who wore her heart on her sleeve, who was so young.
He tells her about a doctor who lost his great love many times over and never stopped saving the world,the world that he hated so much but loved so much because he couldn’t bare to see people in suffering.
He tells her about a woman who was so lonely because she was so extraordinary, so sweet because she was so lonely, who glowed like the brightest star when he held her hand.
He tells her about a killer who was selfish because she missed her mother, her mother who sang to her, who he was too late to save in the end.
But the person she sees, burned into her eyes, is a man.
It’s a man, a human and he’s always in a neat little suit that is unfamiliar to what the humans around her used to wear. He speaks like he’s singing and smells like tea. When she closes her eyes, she can hear him talk, tell her about the man he loved, a man named Ianto Jones.
A man named Ianto Jones who loved a woman so much that he would have sacrificed the universe for her and who loved a man so much that he would have given him his whole world, and he tells her all about Ianto Jones who introduced himself as Jones, Ianto Jones. She doesn’t know why but it makes her giggle.
When it all ends, all he asks is that she remember him, because once upon a time, he had asked to be remembered, because he was never a blip in a time and he doesn't need to be put away like pictures do.