Achieving Avalon (Epilogue)

[hopenight]

Title: Achieving Avalon
Author: HopeNight
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, past Arthur/Merlin, past Ianto/Lisa, past Ianto/others, Gwen/Rhys
Ianto Jones/Merlin Emrys, Captain Jack Harkness/Arthur Pendragon, Toshiko Sato, Doctor Owen Harper, Gwen Cooper, Rhys Williams, Morgana la Fey/Lady Morgana Farthing, Great Dragon/Cameron Ashmore, Nimueh/Naomi Smith
Warnings: OOC-ness running rampant, rude language, REALLY AU after Cyberwoman, Jack Harkness in general
Rating: PG-13 possibly light R
Current Word Count: 20,001
Artists: chosenfire28
Beta(s): scarlet_reader
Summary: Ianto Jones is a perfectly ordinary man with no past and a not so ordinary job. Merlin Emrys on the other hand? He has a trail of mysticism, magic, death, love, and reincarnation following him like a lost puppy. Somehow it’s up to him to put a little magic back into the Torchwood teams lives especially Jack’s. Why? Well because it’s Jack he falls in love with every lifetime and it’s up to the Captain to get his own memories back.
Notes: This was just a weird little chestnut in my head. So yeah I wrote and I enjoyed it. Thanks to my wonderful beta, scarlet_reader.

“An ending is only a beginning that had given up hope.” –Unknown

I wish I could tell you how this ends. I really do. Nothing would make me happier than to do that. But the trouble with stories is that sometimes they don’t end. They simply continue because there is no set ending. I mean I could go on with the story. It just wouldn’t bring the message across correctly.

So yes, I could go on. If that is what you were wondering.

I could tell you about Torchwood and their adventures after this. I could tell you about how they discovered magic, mystical beings, and the extent of Ianto’s true power (which seemed to go on for eternity). I could tell you how this changed their destinies. How paths were irrevocably changed. I could tell you about how they continued to save the world. I could spin and weave stories about love and loss, friendship and betrayal, and about the beauty and ugliness of human nature.

Then again I could focus on the token couple. Tell you about Jack and Ianto’s relationship. It wasn’t perfect.

Perfect relationships are boring anyway. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows even in their first life together. They fought fiercely but they loved just as hard. It was the perfect blend of fire and slow burning embers. It smoldered bright and true until Jack died for real. I could tell you how sometimes they strayed for years but they always found their way back together. How they made many millennia worth of memories of love and hope and truth and beauty. How they saved planets and moved worlds. Or the decades spent hidden with the two of them making love and being together.

I could tell you how this love was the truest in the entire universe. Even more so then the Doctor and Rose.

Simply because their love was destiny and they chose to accept it.

I could tell you how Arthur continued to be reborn. Or how about they always met and fell in love. How they witnessed the end of the universe and the beginning of the next. As it was written they would together a storm of fire and ice.

I could take you back to the beginning and tell a completely different story. The separate ones of Merlin and Arthur and how they fall in love. How Arthur is the one waiting the centuries for Merlin. How Merlin burned and shone brightly in the immortal king’s life. How no matter what they always find each other.

Beauty, true love, hope, hate, ugliness, human nature, or just the nature of everything is and ever shall be that I can tell you. It’s all here in my head waiting to burst out. It’s at the tips of my fingers waiting to be written. The magic is reaching out to me, whispering words into my ears. As it has done to others before me.

But I won’t write it. The next part is all up for you to imagine.

So I leave you with a kiss and a sword, a dashing hero and his magical lover, a secret organization and their heroic enemy, rebirth and the truest love in the world.

I leave you with the beginning of family.

I leave you with a beginning of a renewed love.

I leave you with the beginning of forever.

And isn’t that what everyone wants?