Title: Treasured
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,507 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 483 - Amnesty, using Challenge 26 - School
Summary: Ianto has some important documents to file in the archives.


Ianto rolled the trolley full of boxes down the dark endless rows of archive shelving, looking for a suitable gap in the otherwise overflowing collection. He finally spotted a particularly dark spot, identifying the gap where there was nothing protruding. ‘Ah, you’ll do,’ he muttered to himself.

The spot was nice and low, tucked away from all their current archived objects. At least he wouldn't need a ladder to heave them several dozen feet up onto a precarious perch on one of the top shelves, reserved for the dustiest boxes of unwanted detritus. ‘You’ll do very nicely,’ he added, nodding in approval. Space was not yet at a premium, but there was a system to his filing and he didn’t like breaking the system or having to arrange things on account of having run out of room. He likened it to leaving space on your bookshelves for additions so that everything remained in alphabetical order by author, just as it should be. Crammed shelves might look more appealing but how would you ever fit that next bestseller in where it belonged?

Today he was breaking his system in a big way, but out of necessity. Besides which, he would be the only one who knew that, and it was highly unlikely that fact would change. Not unless someone bothered to come down here and just happened upon this particular spot, noticing the three unmarked boxes, missing their barcodes and not registered in the database, nor their contents listed.

He wheeled the trolley to a stop and, before unloading the boxes into their new home, prised open the lid on the one closest to him, slowly pulling out the contents one page at a time to give them a final look before sealing them away. There were no alien artefacts here; no mission reports or research files, dossiers or photographs. Just a hundred moments of childhood that were all but faded memories.

Ianto’s mum had passed away nearly six months ago now. That lump that she’d downplayed had turned out to be just the thing he’d feared, and not long after a bout of aggressive treatment to try and fix it, she’d lost the battle, leaving Ianto a grown up orphan in the world. He hadn’t told anyone, and he assumed that by Jack not having mentioned it, that he also hadn’t found out about it. He didn’t have the words to say it, and that by saying it, it would somehow make it more real, as if it weren’t real enough already.

He couldn't express the loss he felt. His mum had been the one person who knew him better than anyone, even if she’d had no idea about Torchwood and what it was he really did for a living. She might have driven him mad at times with her phone calls and long winded diatribe style voicemails and the insistence that he drop by for tea at least once a week, but now that all those things were gone, he realised just how much he missed them. He missed having someone to talk to who knew he was a closed book, yet still managed to pry out of him all the things he was feeling deep down. She’d worried about him, checking in, feeding him, nagging him about how much sleep he was getting and tucking him up on their battered old sofa for a nap after tea whilst she watched rubbishy soaps, or sat with him at the table afterwards, sipping tea and doing puzzles.

He wished he'd kept the boxes of puzzles now, instead of letting his sister pack them up with almost everything else and handing it off to the local charity shops. What she hadn’t given away had been sold, traded off to friends in need, or binned. He didn’t begrudge her emptying out the house. He couldn't face doing it himself and had avoided the charity shops ever since, unable to imagine how he'd feel if he saw any of her things on the shelves or hanging on clothing racks. Part of his job was a regular sweep through the charity shops for anything alien that found its way there, but he was months overdue on that front, having conned someone new every month to do it for him. Eventually he’d have to return to his responsibilities, but for now he was getting away with it.

The only thing Rhiannon hadn’t cleared out were the last few boxes in the garage. She'd done a good job of boxing everything up in a reasonable sense of order, taking all the photo albums and personal items and promising Ianto that if there were any photos he wanted, she'd make sure to organise copies for him.
The last thing that was left to him to decide on were these three boxes. ‘Mum wasn’t much of a hoarder, but I found these,’ his sister had said, pulling out a couple of pages and showing him as she’d dropped the boxes off for him before the house was put on the market for sale. ‘Didn’t know if you wanted any of this. Didn’t want to chuck it and have you tear shreds off me. If you want it, keep it. If not, happy for you to chuck it.’

He fingered the page in his hand. The edges were curled and yellowing, but the rest remained unchanged in twenty years. His own name stood out on the bottom corner, written in something that was not his best penmanship but was not far off it at the time I. Jones. Grade 2B. It had a sticker on it with a little rocket with a smiley face, saying “Great work!” and fleshed out stick figures of two people walking in the mountains before pointing up and spotting a large red dragon. At the top he’d written “My favourite things.”

There were more pages in the box like it, in varying stages of ageing, more drawings and paintings, a poster he'd drawn up telling people that littering was bad and against the law, a three page essay on his favourite places to go on holidays, which at the time had included Newport, the Porthcawl caravan park, Caerphilly Castle and Blackpool beach. He'd written at length about the penny arcade machines in Blackpool and how they were the best machines ever invented. There was a project he'd done on the deep pit mine, complete with a tiny fragment of steam coal picked up on their excursion there, which he’d used half a roll of sticky tape to attach it to the orange poster paper, making sure it was sealed. He’d always hated going down that mine, but at least he had something tangible to show for his sixty minutes of terror.

On and on it went, up through the ages. There were less of his high school documents tucked away in the boxes because he hadn't brought it home, let alone shown it to his mum and let her have it for safekeeping. A few pages of sheet music, the odd assignment with a half decent grade on it, some sketches from art class and, for some strange reason, an exercise book of notes from a year nine science class.

There was another box full of his sister’s schoolwork, all along similar themes, pages sometimes folded over, or shoved in plastic pockets to keep the dirt out but all getting musty with age. None of it was anything to do with his mum, and yet she’d chosen to keep these things of theirs because they meant something to her, which in turn made them mean something to Ianto. These were the things she was proud of – her children and the things that they'd created. Ianto didn't very often feel proud of himself and what he’d done with his life, but these pages were important to his mum as achievements of his younger self. That validation was perhaps what he missed most now that she was gone. Who now was going to tell him that what he did mattered?

He sniffed, blinking back tears that were trying to form and carefully stacked the pages back together in chronological order before setting them reverently back inside the box. Ianto slid the lid back onto the box and gave the top a slow caress. All that was left of the people they'd been when their mother had been alive was in this box now. He picked it up, bending with his knees, and sliding the box onto an unoccupied space on the shelf, tucked in amongst so many others where no one would look twice at it. It was just another box, one of thousands down there that no one other than him seemed to take any interest in. It would be safe down here for as long as he was around to take care of the archives. Perhaps after he was gone, someone would find it one day and appreciate the legacy, remembering him and remembering the woman who'd kept his memories alive.