What Jack doesn't know haunts him at night.

The family he had once had and lost had plagued his slumber for years.

The family he's building now seems to be no different.

Toshiko's loneliness, for instance. The way she'd hold a gun to his head for a man she knows to be essentially a stranger, because it's better than going to sleep every night, safe, sound and alone in her king sized bed. There might have been a time, a place when she would have cried about it in front of Jack, because he did once promise he'd protect her no matter what, but most of the time, they both get the vague sense that Jack wouldn't understand, or would understand too well to be of any help.

Owen's pain, behind the walls he's erected, is knocking against Jack's subconscious as well, rattling chains like some ghost in a tale about dark, secluded castles. And maybe it's a precise metaphor, maybe Owen's been dying for a while now, ever since Diane disappeared, leaving behind her nothing as proof of her existence but that small crack in Owen's defenses that is bringing him down. Perhaps Jack noticed it, but he has no name for what he cannot handle, so they settle for the old cynicism and snarkiness routine, until something moves in this impasse.

Gwen, she has the most things that she doesn't tell him. Of course, she doesn't have to, because he would refuse to hear her anyway. When she looks at him with her doubts and fear in plain view for all to see, he nods as if he has some words of wisdom for her he's not sharing until the time is right, when really, he has nothing. And he's not even quite sure why.

But of all the dreams he doesn't dream but still wakes up from, unremembering, the one that lingers on most in the abyss of his mind is Ianto.

What Ianto has lost, Jack has been replacing. He's not quite certain if he intended to. Most of the time, he doesn't even know what it is he's giving here, nor what it is that he's taking. So many people speak of love while Jack keeps quiet. He'll gladly jump into any unknown, but not that one.

So if someone knows what it is they're doing, it's not Jack, and he can't guess what Ianto thinks they're doing either. The people he once loved without question can't help him figure this one out, as they're not there. And the memory of Ianto looking up at him, his face lit like an angel's, as innocent as a child's when he proclaims "it's you", right before leaning with a soft sigh into Jack's kiss, that memory isn't quite there either.

That's why all definitions fail him when he finds himself having woken up yet again from another haunted, blurred dream, turning over in his bed, watching Ianto's face as the man sleeps, and despite all that Jack doesn't remember, it's a lot like a kiss.