Title: For the Fallen
Author: Outside Edge
Pairing: gen
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters merely borrow them from time to time.
Summary: 31 July - An anniversary that most of the Torchwood team would like to forget. But can they help Jack escape the horror of his past?

***

"What's that noise?" Gwen asked, as she came through the main door of the Hub.
"Where the hell have you been?" Owen demanded loudly.
"Jack gave me the morning off and what has that got to do with you?" Gwen bridled.
Owen frowned, it was clear that he hadn't heard her.
Toshiko came over and handed her two bright orange earplugs.
"These will help drown it out" she said, over-loudly and returned to her desk.
"Owen!" Gwen grabbed at Owens sleeve.
Scrunching his face up, Owen removed his earplugs.
"What?"
"What's that noise?" Gwen asked again.
"Jack" Owen simply said. "Oi Ianto!!" he shouted.
Ianto continued on his way to Toshiko's desk with a tray of coffee, he apparently had not heard Owens shout.
Owen took aim with his earplug and tossed it in Ianto's direction. It landed with a plop in the cup of coffee Ianto was about to serve to Tosh.
"Owen" Tosh cried." That's disgusting!"
"I was aiming for the tea boy but missed." Owen said in his defence. Tosh frowned trying to make out what Owen was saying.
"Oh I bloody well give up!" Owen said
"Will someone please tell me what the hell is going on?" Gwen demanded loudly just as Ianto and Tosh removed their earplugs and the noise stopped.
"No need to shout, we're not deaf," Ianto admonished, "at least not yet."
"Like I said darlin' it's Jack." Owen said.
"It's July 31st" Tosh supplied.
"And that, if I'm not mistaken was Lillie Marlene" Ianto supplied "For the fifth time this morning" he added.
"Sixth" Tosh corrected him "You were upstairs last time."
"My mistake" Ianto replied.
"I thought I told you to soundproof that room after last year." Owen said to Ianto.
"Jack hid the key." Ianto said, mournfully.
"This has happened before?" Gwen asked.
"It happens every year." Tosh supplied.
"Anniversary of the death of his grandfathers best buddy in the Great War or something." Owen said. "I don't know what it's got to do with him though."
"And because of this Jack is playing the harmonica badly." Gwen said.
"Oh it starts off quite good." Tosh said, brightly
"And then gets gradually worse as he get drunk." Owen said. "Ianto, weren't you supposed to take the harmonica off of him this year?"
"How d'you think I got this?" Ianto indicated the bruise on his cheekbone.
"Point taken." Owen said. "D'you want me to take a look at that?"
Ianto shook his head.
"I've had worse."
"Didn't we agree to water down his whiskey?" Tosh asked.
"I did. He told me it tasted like cats pee." Ianto replied.
"And?"
"And he frogmarched me at gunpoint to get the real stuff. I had no choice."
"A Webley to the head can do that." Owen agreed.
"So let me get this straight" Gwen said, "Jack is sitting by himself in the basement."
"Yep."
"Playing the harmonica."
"Uh-huh."
"And getting drunk."
"Yeah."
"Pretty normal day for us then." Gwen said, brightly.

The mournful wailing of the harmonica started up again, this time just about recognisable as being "It's a long way to Tipperary."
"Oh God" Owen groaned, "Not that again."
"Have you got Plan C ready?" Ianto asked.
"Yeah, here you go." Owen tossed a silver hip flask in Ianto's direction.
"What's that?" Gwen asked.
"Brandy with a little added extra." Owen said, smugly.
"Are you sure it'll do the trick, I don't want him waking up again." Ianto warned, figuring his cheek.
"Ianto, I've put enough sedative in there to keep an elephant down."
"Owen!" Gwen exclaimed.
"D'you want to listen to that for the rest of the day?" Owen asked.
"Plan C it is then." Ianto said with a smile and headed off to the basement.

###

July 31 1917

Just before down the artillery barrage abruptly stopped. The silence was unreal like the clam before the storm. In the trenches men waited trembling with anticipation.

At 3.50am, hundreds of thousands of soldiers began clambering out of their trenches. There was no light. The skies were cloud covered, dark and rain swollen.

Their destination: Sanctuary Wood. A wood in name only. A malevolent morass of stumps and shell holes, which someone at headquarters still had the nerve to call a 'wood'. Greasy mud. Shattered stumps, interspersed by barbed wire. Machine guns spat out from a seemingly endless concentration of German pillboxes.

It began to rain.

As the day wore on the rain began to fill up the shell holes that the British were fighting from and they were forced to abandon them. Those wounded who had sought refuge in the craters began to drown. Unwounded men sank, sometimes up to their armpits, in mud holes.

###

Jack paused his harmonica playing to take another swig from the bottle of whiskey at this side. Finding it empty, he furled it at the wall and reached for the next one.
"Don't you thing you've had enough sir?" Ianto asked from the doorway.
"Don't you ever, ever ask me that again!" Jack spat. "Have you any idea what it's like. The mud. The cold. The rats and God Almighty don't mention the lice!" He downed another swig of liquor. "We try to dig trenches, but all we come across are bodies and the holes we dig fill up with stinking water with God-knows what in it. At night we can hear them, you know, out there in no-mans land. The wounded, moaning, calling, begging us to come and get them back to safety."
Jack took another long drink and shook his head.
"But we can't cause if we do the bastard Hun will let rip with their machine guns and cut us to shreds."
Jack gave Ianto a rueful smile and patted the floor next to where he was sitting.
"Sit."
Ianto sat down.
"Here have some." Jack said, thrusting the bottle in Ianto's direction.
"I brought my own. Thought you might like some brandy." Ianto said, offering Jack the hip flask.
Jack flashed a drunken smile.
"Boy like you will go far." He said, taking the hip flask and taking a deep drink from it.
"Robbie was like you" Jack continued, "Young, organised. Fantastic Batman. He died you know. Shot by those stinking Huns. He died in my arms and there was nothing I could do. He died in my arms screaming for his mother in a stinking shell hole that was filling up with water and mud and there wasn't a god-damned thing I could do about it" Jack swayed slightly. Owens sedative was starting to take effect.
"Any more of that brandy?" Jack asked, his speech starting to slur.
Ianto put his arm around Jacks shoulders.
"Perhaps you've had enough Sir." He said, quietly.

###

Gwen scanned through the information displayed on her computer. Owen had said that Jack's behaviour was due to something happening to a friend of Jack's grandfather. Gwen had a hunch that this didn't ring true.

She was so engrossed in her screen that she didn't hear Ianto come up behind her, having finished putting Jack to bed.
"July 31st 1917. Pashendale, officially known as the 3rd Battle of Ypres." Ianto said.
Gwen looked up at him.
"Infamous not only for the scale of casualties but also for the mud."
"What else do you know Ianto?" Gwen asked, quietly.
"A Captain Jack Harkness commanded a company of 240 men, tasked to take a position called Sanctuary Wood near Zillebeke outside Ypres, Belgium."
Ianto leant forward and clicked a few buttons on the computer. A sepia photograph of a young man filled the screen.
"Robert Rawlings" Ianto said. "Jacks Batman."
"Batman, as in Batman and Robin?" Gwen giggled.
"As in officers servant." Ianto said seriously.
"Sorry." Gwen apologised.
"Aged 18. Joined up when he was 16. He had been with Jack about 6 months where they were sent to the front at Ypres."
"What happened to him?"
"During the battle Robbie was injured. Jack tried to get him back to the British lines, but had to take cover in a shell hole. He was found there two days later up to his waist in water, with the dead body of Robbie in his arms."
"God how awful."
"Medical records show that Jack was evacuated to a field hospital suffering from shell shock. When he was ordered back to the front he refused. He was court-martialled for cowardice and shot at dawn."
"Ianto, how do you know all this? Did Jack tell you?"
"It's all in the archives if you know where to look." Ianto said.

###

1 August dawned, chilly, but with the promise of a glorious day ahead.
Jack stood on top of the Millennium Centre, high above the city, hands thrust deep in the pockets of his greatcoat, staring out at the mist receding from the Bay.
"Coffee Sir?" Ianto's voice came from behind him.
Jack smiled his thanks as Ianto handed him a thermos cup of his industrial strength coffee. He sniffed it appreciatively.
"Nothing in this I hope." He commented.
"As if I would Sir." Ianto replied.
They exchanged a knowing look.
"Is my harmonica playing that bad?" Jack asked.
"Owen asked me to give you this." Ianto said, giving Jack a small compacted cube of metal. "Your harmonica."
Jack laughed.
"Point taken."


They shall not grown old, as we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

'For the Fallen' Laurence Binyon (1869-1943)

***