Title: Better Man
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Fandom: Torchwood/Doctor Who
Rating: PG-13
Table: 2, letter100
Prompt: 77, Present
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own Ianto Jones, the Tenth Doctor, or Jack Harkness. Please do not sue.

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Dear Jack,

It feels odd to write you a letter, for some reason. I've done it several times before, but I have so much to say that doesn't want to come out, so much in my head and my heart that isn't going to be easy to put into words that will make sense.

I still can't believe how much you've changed from the person you were when we were last together. It's almost as though I've met a different Jack Harkness -- one who still has the same feelings for me, only much more pronounced.

And of course, I still feel just as strongly about you. I never stopped loving you, Jack, not for all the time we were apart. I don't think that I ever could. I tried to convince myself that I didn't, but I knew all the whole that I was lying to myself.

Did you ever do the same thing? Did you ever lie in your lonely bed in the Hub at night, thinking of me and trying to convince yourself that you'd made the right decision in leaving me behind? I know you thought that you had; maybe that notion made a difference to you.

But it was never the right thing for either of us, Jack, and I think you came to realise that, even though it took you a very long time. Being apart only hurt us; but now that we've found each other again, I don't think we'll ever make the same mistake.

The past is something that I'd rather not think of. It's over and done, and we can't change it. That past is part of what's made us the people we are today -- older and, hopefully, wiser. Well, at least wiser about what we both want and need.

There's too much pain in our mutual past for us to dwell on it. It's best if we look at that time of our lives, that point of our relationship, as something that had to happen to get us to the point that we're at in the present, and let sleeping dogs lie.

Besides, even if we could change the past, would we really want to? I don't think so. That past may have been needed, despite all the pain it caused us, for both of us to come to the ultimate realization that we both need each other and that we're best together.

I've done you great wrongs in the past, Jack. I should never have abandoned you when I was in my last incarnation. I know that one of the reasons you walked out on me in the way you did was to pay me back for that, and I accept that I was largely at fault.

But you have to admit that leaving me in that way was also doing me a wrong -- and, as the old saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right. All that either of our actions did was cause us years of pain that it might have been better to avoid.

Still, that's all in the past, all water under the proverbial bridge. I'm really bringing out the clichés today, aren't I? But this particular one is true. The past is something that we need to keep in the past so that we can focus on what's happening in the present.

Even though our shared past has shaped us, it's the present that we have to focus on. We're living in the present, not the past, and I have to remember that. But there are times when my mind latches onto the past, when it doesn't want to let go.

I wish that didn't happen, Jack. I wish that I could bury the past, that I could make peace with it. But I'm having a hard time doing that -- and even though you say you've made your own peace with everything that's happened between us, sometimes I think you have a hard time of it, too.

Maybe we always will. Maybe our past will always be there, standing in the shadows, to come back to us and haunt us when we least expect it to. But I'm going to do my best to make peace with that past, and to integrate it with the present that we're living in now.

You've changed so much, love, and for the better. You're no longer the man who only thinks of his own desires, and not about the feelings of others. And you're not that person who only cares about the here and now, the way you were when we first met.

You've become more caring, more cognizant of others' feelings. And that's never a bad thing. I've always tried to think of that myself -- even though there have been many times in my long life when perhaps I didn't seem to consider anyone else at all.

That's another thing about the present that I'm trying to focus on -- the changes that have taken place within me. I'm not the same man you knew before, Jack. I've changed, too -- and I'd like to think that those changes have also been for the better.

I want to think that I've become a better man in the time that we've been apart, that the experience of losing the love of my life has made me more sensitive to how others might feel because I've known such great emotional pain. I think that may have happened to both of us.

Maybe we've both become better men over the course of the time that we were apart, and here in the present, we'll be able to prove that we have. I certainly hope that's the case, love. I want to be as good a person as I can be, and I think you do, as well.

We've both made mistakes in the past -- mistakes that have cost others, as well as ourselves, a good deal of pain and suffering. I know that we'll probably both make mistakes in the future. Neither of us are saints, nor would we ever pretend to be.

The past is behind us, and we need to live in the present. I'm trying my best to do that, Jack, even though it's hard sometimes to put the past and all of its painful memories behind me. But every day, I think they recede a little further into the mists of time.

I've always loved you, Jack. You know that. But I have to admit that I'm finding it much easier to love the man you've become, the man you are in the present, more than I ever did the man you were in the past. And to be perfectly honest, I'm grateful for that.

We've both become better men in the present than we would have ever thought we could be in the past. I only hope that we'll keep becoming better people -- and that we'll hold on to the happiness that we've been lucky enough to find for ourselves.

Always your

Doctor

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