The Coffee Shop I Know Everything by Claudia Lindner

Ianto Jones was special for me in Torchwood. He was calm and thoughtful, but also so smart and funny. I loved his dry humour which he never lost, not even in the most desperate situations. One of these moments  if not the best, was the one when the world was about to end (again) in the 'Sleepers' episode of Season Two where Jack, Gwen and the sleeper alien tried to prevent a global disaster while Ianto was left in the hub with Tosh and Owen, fearing the worst. 

After Ianto explained to Owen in his very own special way what it means when the entire telephone network is down and with the world about to end Owen suggested having sex, at which Ianto's comment only was: "And I thought, the end of the world couldn't get any worse." I just cracked with laughter when I first watched that scene. With just one sentence, Ianto could say it all. And there were so many of those Ianto moments which made me giggle. 

Be it the stopwatch banter, be it the Owen-teasing about Tintin or the measuring tape – Ianto's silent fuck! after Jack made it clear he read in the diary - and countless others. Sometimes it wasn't even something he said, it can also have been just the look on his face which made you chuckle or smile, like the one he had contemplating Jack's bordering on the avant garde dabbling.

I especially loved it when Ianto was teasing his boss/lover Jack with his cheeky and ironic comments or answers which was something no one else did and showed intimacy and that there was more to their relationship than met the eye (or was shown in the episodes).

Ianto was like the secret ingredient giving a dish that extra something which would make it extraordinary, so that it couldn't be complete without it.

Ianto's sense of humour surprised me so often when I watched the episodes and it became his own, very special trademark which I missed so desperately in the 4th season. There are certainly some things which were just wrong with Miracle Day, but the worst sure was the total lack of Ianto.

Ianto in team with Jack would have done wonders to Miracle Day. At Jack's side, the ideal companion...and wasn't it Jack who longed for a companion, telling Angelo about it? Of course that was before Ianto timeline-wise, but when it turned out Angelo couldn't be that companion, Jack had a long time to wait until he  finally found Ianto. So he asked the  old Angelo who had watched him his entire life if he had seen Ianto and that he would have liked him. For me, this also was a Ianto moment and showed me once more the meaning of Ianto in Jack's life.

As loyalty was one of Ianto's great traits of character, I had many Ianto moments when he was defending Jack. Remember that scene in the hub when Jack and Tosh were lost in 1941 and Owen was basically mutinying and messing with the rift manipulator. But Ianto's loyalty applied to the whole team, even to Owen when the doctor was ended up as a dead man walking.

Surely Ianto had a hard time living with Jack's complicated past and his secretiveness, though and because he loved him. The barrages Jack had built around himself weren't easy to push down in order to lead a relationship with him. And of course he was still a bit insecure about it himself which became obvious in their couple talk as well as with the conversation Ianto had with his sister Rhiannon. This was a very sweet Ianto moment:“It's just him. It's only him“ - that said it all.

Yes, Ianto was the perfect companion. He was strong, so he survived and managed to rescue Jack out of the concrete after UNIT blew up the hub and tried to kill the team. Besides, he acted and always did what had to be done, (even if it meant doing dull jobs like cleaning and clearing the hub in season 1) And Ianto, the companion, going to Thames house to fight the 456 side by side with Jack was a very sexy Ianto indeed.

One of my favourite Ianto moments was one which showed what a sensitive human being he was. He surely had a lot of what some people would call emotional intelligence and understood things better than others. Ianto realised what painful experience it was for Jack to die and being dragged back to life over and over again, so he was there for him after Jack was shot by Clem and held him safely in his arms.

Apart from the fact that red was his colour and that his dad wasn't a master taylor after all, there were many things we never got to know about Ianto Jones. For example would I have loved to see his apartment. What kind of pictures would have hung on the walls and which books would have been on the shelves? It's a pity that we will never know, and I wish the Torchwood writers would have given Ianto more space and us the chance to get to know him better.

Being a rather modest person who always put other people first, in the end, when he died in Jack's arms at Thames house in that scene which still brings tears to my eyes even thinking of it, the only thing he asked for was not to be forgotten. Never!