Title: Remember Me
Author: M. E. McCombs
Rating: G/PG
Summary: One thousand years later.
Spoilers: Torchwood: Children of Earth, The Dead Line
Disclaimer: Torchwood is ©2006-2009 British Broadcasting Service Wales (BBC Wales). Copyrighted material is used without permission of the BBC with no intention of profit from the works contained herein.
Author's Notes: Rigel Kentaurus is also known as Alpha Centari. It is the third brightest star in the sky and is the closest to Earth at only 4.3 light years away. It is also a triple star system.
Original Publication/Copywrite: 13 July 2009

Remember Me

Rigel Kentaurus III – 3109.08.19 (Sol III) Galactic Standard
Easing away from his bedmate, he slipped out onto the still cool terrace outside their bedroom. He’d woken early. Long before the triple stars crested the distant horizon, but late enough that the first hints of light had brightened the darkness of the night. A storm was brewing in the distance. It turned the early morning sky from its normal crisp clear blue to a stormy blue gray. The storms were one of the reasons he’d chosen to settle on this planet when he’d finally stopped running from his past. A vivid reminder of a very slowly fading memory, those stormy skies helped reinforce his memory fix it in place for another thousand years. He had a promise to keep after all.

The early morning breeze, crisp and chill without the heat the triple sun produced within moments of rising, caressed his naked body. He dropped his head back, closed his eyes and listened closely. Sometimes, just sometimes, in those brief moments before dawn, he thought he could hear a much loved voice murmuring a name he hadn’t answered to in a millennium. More than a millennium, if he counted properly, but who counted time so specifically aside from him anymore. He lowered his head, rested his hands on the railing in front of him, and licked his lips.

He’d chosen this planet, in this time, for three reasons. First, there was no outpost of Torchwood here. For all that Rigel Kentaurus was one of the closest stars to Earth, the tiny colony here had nothing to give the monolithic corporation that the Torchwood Institute had become over the years. In another millennium, Torchwood would morph into an entirely different agency, still policing the universe though the mandate would change to policing time rather than defending the Earth and her colonies from alien threats. Already the first steps toward the Time Agency had begun in their London headquarters.

Second reason, it was tiny. A small place like this would never come under attack. He knew that from his own history. He needed that. He’d buried himself in wars – good wars, bad wars, useless wars – any excuse to justify his repeated deaths for far too long. A punishment for living when all he loved was gone, so very gone. He needed peace. He could finally accept there had been no other choice. He had done what was necessary at the time. A centuries old quotation teased at the edge of his mind until he could actually recall the words, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. He’d done what was needed, regardless of the personal cost, just as he’d always done.

The third reason, oh, the third reason was so very personal. Newydd Caerdydd had been settled by a hardy, independent people determined to retain their own identity. They wanted to preserve their culture, their language, their past before the Great Human Empire swallowed them up and destroyed it all. In the future, beginning a mere century from now, they would rise from these tiny roots to become one of the power players of the universe. They would fight the Empire, the Daleks, never taking anything lying down, just as their ancestors had a thousand years before when their government had declared them expendable people to be gifted to a race of drug addicted aliens.

That determination to retain their language allowed them to retain their accent, soft rolling vowels that even now sounded so beautiful. Oh, there’d been shifts in the language, subtle ones for the most part and not many. It still sounded the same to his ear. Sometimes, with his eyes closed, he wouldn’t hear those around him speaking but other voices, teased from the depths of his memory to echo across the landscape of his mind.

The breeze picked up, becoming a proper wind, as the clouds obscured the dawn. It teased at his hair the way long dead fingers had once upon a time, brushed across his parted lips in a painful echo of teasing kisses. In the rustle of wind through the surrounding trees he heard that most loved voice murmur softly to him.

“Cariad…”

A soft beep from his vortex manipulator drew him out of his memories. He reached up, brushed away tears he hadn’t realized he’d been crying, and again licked his lips. He flipped the cover open, pushed the button to shut off the alarm and scanned the sky. There, low on the horizon, barely visible amongst the clouds and rapidly fading as Rigel Kentaurus Alpha rose into the sky was the star he always sought out when he woke so early. He focused on it and smiled a smile he saved only for this moment. “You never were just a blip in time. Not for me,” he murmured. He glanced down for the briefest of moments, just to confirm the date and time as it would be in that far away system. Then, he looked up again, tears on his cheeks as the one regret of that long ago life once again tore at his heart. “Happy birthday, Ianto. I love you.”