DW/TW Fic: Harbour [Part 4]
Title: Harbour
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Ten + appearances by TW Team
Authors: rm & kalichan
Rating/Warning: NC-17, slash, some hints of d/s, toys, romance, angst.
Summary: Everything happens only a certain number of times.
Wordcount: ~30,000 words, posted in 4 parts.
Authors' Notes: This is the final installment of our series, I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling. Next up (eventually): some digressions and interludes, and a dvd commentary! Also, we'll be bringing you a new 'verse, with our as-yet-untitled Jenny/Ianto/Jack fic. Thank you all for coming on this journey with us. We've had a brilliant time.
Previous installments:
1. A Strange Fashion of Forsaking | 2. Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny | 3. To Learn This Holding and the Holding Back | 4. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World | 5. I Imagine You Now in That Other City | 6. Many of My Favorite Things Are Broken | 6.5 Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Truth, Beauty: or, A Child's Guide to Modern Physics | 7. In Our Bedroom After the War | 8. And I Cannot Know How Long She Has Dreamed of All of You [Jack/Nine/Rose] | 9. The Spectacular Catastrophe of Your Endless Childhood [Ianto/OFCs, Ianto/Lisa] | 10. There Are Some Men Who Should Have Mountains To Bear Their Names To Time
Harbour, Part 1
Harbour, Part 2
Harbour, Part 3
There was a moment, just a moment, as they went down towards the tourist office opening where Ianto wanted to panic because he had no idea how to do this, no idea how to be fine, no idea how to keep pretending the future wasn't coming or how to cope with Jack not knowing any of it.
At least he hoped he didn't. In truth, he wasn't actually sure, but Jack was poor at holding his tongue, and Ianto thought that maybe he was safe from whatever terrible conversation lurking between them he would be duty-bound to prevent.
But the fact was, it didn't matter, any of it. He didn't have a choice. He was here now, at Jack's side, and he always would be. Plus, he'd read Oedipus back in school. Running away from your fate was generally how you wound up stuck with it. But that was sort of the problem, as if he no longer knew which way was right and which was left although in a few days or weeks or maybe, if he were really lucky, months... either turn was going to bring him to exactly the same place.
"It'll be strange," he said suddenly, not even sure what he meant by it, but the silence between them and the noise in his head suddenly felt too much to bear.
"You haven't had a lot of sleep. If you want to go straight to bed, I'll fend them off for you."
"No. No, I should see everyone, and it's morning anyway," he said, remembering how Jack had made him say goodbye when they'd left. Just in case. Just in case, indeed. Jack'd had no idea.
The strange thing though, the truly strange thing, was all the ways in which this felt easy. This place was familiar. This life, as if it was somehow the only one he'd ever had, when that wasn't true at all.
But maybe being near Jack really did fix a man in place. Maybe it meant there was no Ianto Jones in any alternate universe anywhere, or maybe, in all those universes he'd always wind up being bound here, to Jack's side, forever, except maybe in some world where Jack was mortal and Lisa never died.
Ianto shrugged at his own thought. It didn't matter. Not really. Not anymore. He'd been ready to die for a long time. Maybe when he lost Lisa, sure, but maybe even back when he just couldn't find anything to do with himself in university, maybe when he'd wandered Europe. He didn't know. Never would. All he was ever going to have was this smugness that somehow, out of all of it, he'd gotten so much more than he deserved. A thief till the end, like all the urchins in books his father had started to read to him and never ever, it seemed, got around to finishing.
Ianto smiled. Maybe he'd fool them all yet. Maybe, whatever it was that creepy, horrifying Torchwood situations kept informing them was moving in the dark, maybe he'd be able to steal that. He didn't want to really, but it sounded funny, in his head at least.
"What are you laughing at?" Jack asked.
"Home is an underground lair with a pterodactyl," he said automatically and wondered if there had ever been a time when he wasn't used to lying.
"We can go to your flat tonight if you want."
Ianto tried not to wince at Jack being solicitous. "We'll see," he said noncommittally. When they got to the last door into the main area of the Hub, Jack put a hand on the small of his back and ushered him through.
Everyone, it seemed, had been waiting for them, and Ianto realized that he had no idea what he was supposed to tell them about where he'd been. Somehow the grand tour of time and space didn't seem like the right answer, not when the rest of his -- and there was simply no other appropriate word -- family had been stuck here, earthbound.
Ravi, Andy and Maeve hung back a bit, and Ianto thought somewhere in the back of his brain about how easily they'd all established their hierarchies these days.
Gwen came forward to greet them, and he looked at her, cataloguing for any changes, but she seemed just the same. More muscled than when she'd joined Torchwood. The faint scar on her cheek. Her eyes more tired, more determined than when he'd first seen her in the Tourist Information Office, but always brimming with affection when they looked at him. And why would anything have changed? For her, it'd just been a week. For him, it felt like half a lifetime crammed into whatever space of time they'd actually been gone.
Her eyes darted to Jack first, as they always would, and she stepped forward into his arms as he bent to kiss the top of her head. But it was only a quick moment before she freed herself and came into his, stretching up to plant a kiss on his cheek and to ruffle his hair. Ianto huffed at her, just as he always had, secretly pleased but trying his utmost not to show it.
"So?" she asked, as the rest of the team came forward to cluster around them. "Everything all right?"
"It is now," Jack said, and Ianto bent his head to hide his smile, because somewhere along the way, though he didn't know how, Jack had learnt something that could be mistaken for tact.
"We figured business as usual," Andy chimed in, "because if you needed us, you'd have called, and if you didn't, we should probably just keep things ticking along."
"Yes, and that was all spear-headed by Andy," Maeve said, "the rest of us just followed along in his wake."
Andy blushed, and Ravi leaned over to pull Maeve's hair. "Be nice!" he suggested. "Jack and Ianto just got back."
"I am perfectly nice," Maeve snapped. "And I'd watch it, if you don't want to lose that hand." Then with a dazzling smile, she added, "Welcome back, boys."
"Thank you," Ianto said, exchanging an amused glance with Jack.
"So what happened?" Gwen asked. "Tell us."
"Most of it, we can't," Jack said quickly.
"What was it like though?" Gwen asked Ianto, and for once, he could see and understand the longing in her eyes, the longing for something that she knew would never happen and didn't even want, but somehow ached for anyway, because wouldn't anyone?
"Terrible," he said simply. "Terrifying. ... And beautiful."
Gwen nodded slowly, and placed her hand in his; Ianto squeezed it and then pulled her in, so he could put his arm around her.
Jack looked at all of them fondly, and then began climbing the stairs to his office.
"Gwen," he called, "with me. I'll want to be filled in on matters imminent and then not so imminent. Then we'll all go down to the pub, and have a lunchtime pint or two. Celebration, huh?"
Gwen smiled at Ianto before slipping out of his arms to follow Jack up the stairs.
The rest of them clustered around Ianto, who felt their presence -- human, familiar, affectionate -- like unaccustomed warmth.
"Oh, and Ianto," Jack bellowed from the landing by his office, "Dinner tonight? Eight?"
"Yes, sir," Ianto said, and felt, for one brief moment, things returning to their usual orbit and clicking back into place. He smiled and then turned back to the rest of the team. "So, what have you lot been doing while we were off?"
He could breathe again. He was home. Even if home were scary, even if home was the hardest work a person could imagine, even if home meant, in the end, death -- he was back. And he was so glad.
~*~
Naturally, no one had thought to take care of the weevil cages while they'd been gone. The more things change, Ianto thought with a sigh two days after their return, as he trudged down to the containment level, in order to take care of it himself.
Torchwood. Not glamourous, perhaps. But all that was on offer.
Besides, it was hard to get safer than mucking out cells. He derided himself for his cowardice, but there was something extremely unnerving about the whole situation. He kept jumping at sounds, wondering if this was it, if this was the moment, if he were ready (and he was actually fairly certain he wouldn't be).
Somehow there was never any doubt in his mind about whether the conclusion he'd come to was true.
Because sure, the Doctor had never said anything to him straight out, and somewhere distantly, Ianto knew he'd never grown out of being a morbid fucker, but still. There was no other way to read what had happened. Somehow -- either he'd seen it, or heard about it, or for all Ianto knew, he'd been told by some future version of Jack -- he'd known that Ianto was going to die. Maybe there were other explanations, but Ianto knew to the core of his being that this was the right one.
And what had the Doctor come up with, with all time and space at his disposal? A solution? A way to save him? No, Ianto thought with a wave of frustration. He'd just taken them on an all-expenses paid tour of the universe. Fun, but useless.
It figured, he found himself thinking rebelliously. Even if it really was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Even if others -- Tosh -- would have been so jealous.
~*~
Whatever hiatus the Rift had taken, it seemed to have come to an end. After the easy times they'd been having, it was almost a shock when the first really horrifying thing for some time came through, several alien killer insects -- sort of intergalactic locusts -- that would, in short time, give birth and devour everything in their path.
They were working all hours, trying to fight the things, which seemed to want to make the Earth their new hive planet. Until Maeve came up with a chemical formula for something they could release into the air which made them sterile, and then it was just a matter of hunting the seven or so left.
After that it was several Arcturan pirates, pulled through the Rift, in the midst of a smuggling operation, who had to be convinced not to open fire on the city streets, sure that their arrival was a trick of some kind, and Torchwood had to frantically broker the negotiations; a Viking ship that had invaded Wales, having been transported through time to their 21st century shores; and a gang of Blowfish who were causing mayhem all through the streets, while alien bounty hunters arrived seemingly to stalk Cardiff's children.
They were spread as thin as they'd ever been in their worst days and everyone at Torchwood was working flat out.
Jack, though, when distributing his team kept Ianto out of it as best he could, for as long as he could. He tried to tell himself he wasn't doing it, but of course, he was. And there were many perfectly good reasons why Ianto was needed to be kept at the Hub monitoring things; they always needed a man there, anyway, and it made sense, strategic sense, for it to be Ianto, Jack told himself repeatedly.
He was on the Viking ship with Andy when his comlink beeped.
"Rift spike," Ianto's voice said into his ear. "And I'm looking on the CCTV, and seeing it... It's odd, it looks like robots? With something like clockwork inside their heads? But we're getting some organic readings too. Just a couple though."
At that, Jack cursed helplessly and made a quick sign to Andy, because he recognized the description -- a 51st century army, with its clockwork gears and living parts, which was undoubtedly sending back a live feed to their sentient masters, whoever they might be -- and he was trapped on this Viking ship, with no hope of getting to shore in time without a fucking teleport. Something inside Jack grew very, very cold.
"Okay," he barked. "We need to get rid of them fast. Where is everybody?"
"Gwen's on the bounty hunters. Looks like Ravi's got a little UNIT task force mustered, and they're closing in on the Blowfish. Maeve's with me."
"Okay, we need you out on the bridge as fast as possible. Both of you. Bring the big guns. There's not a second to waste. And get talking to UNIT."
"Yes, sir," Ianto rapped out, and Jack forced down the sickness rising in his gut. Because there was no point. And Ianto would have hated him forever if he'd done anything different, anyway.
Speeding on their way to the bridge, Maeve looked over at Ianto, who was charging one of the alien weapons they had confiscated from the pirates.
"You all right?" she asked.
"Fine," he said curtly. "Let's just do this." Because he knew if he allowed himself the luxury of freaking out, he would be a useless puddle on the floor.
Oh god, this is it, he thought to himself. This is it.
And then they were there and leaping out of the car.
It was only on the way back to the Hub, after they'd collected all the scraps of alien technology and placed them in the SUV, after Maeve had sewn up the cut on her own arm herself and then popped Ianto's shoulder back in (again, he thought dismally) and bandaged his leg that the pounding in his chest began to slow.
It was then that he began laughing and couldn't stop. Because he was alive, still alive. They'd made it. This time, they'd made it. And it was pure joy.
He'd back-slided a bit, since they'd come back, but now he knew instinctively and with surety that there'd be no more of that. No more of this obsessive counting, of leaping at every noise and sudden jerk. He simply didn't have time. Because he could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Or be shot by a Blowfish. Or slip while having a bath. Or the Rift would suddenly vomit up the bane that had been reserved specially for him when their destinies were being written, perhaps somewhere on the side of a mountain even.
There was no way to know when it was coming. Only that it was.
He thought of a line he'd read once. You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime.
He'd make a list, Ianto thought to himself. Of things he needed to get done. And do them all, as he could. Do everything, the Doctor had told him. And he would. Some of the things he was going to do would be terrible, as were so many of the things they had to do at Torchwood in order to protect this tiny world and each other. Some of them would be small and sweet. The scale hardly mattered.
"Have you gone entirely crackers?" Maeve hissed, as she rounded a corner at a ridiculous speed, clearly having attended the Jack Harkness School of Driving with less than stellar results. "You must be in serious amounts of pain. Why the bloody hell are you laughing?"
"Even if I told you, you'd never believe it," he assured her.
~*~
That night, as he lay with Jack in the room they'd made -- with explosions, with lies, with infinite love -- the place that lay under the foundations of their work, he laughed quietly to himself again.
Because they might not have decided to come to Torchwood of their own volition, either of them -- and of course they hadn't, much as babies don't decide for themselves to be born -- but they had chosen to find here an unexpected home. And they'd chosen to stay. Over and over -- battered and broken, freakish and monstrous, petty and terrible as they were -- he and Jack had constructed their own small, fragile oasis here, carved out for themselves this room, this work, this improbable, impossible existence and written it into being.
And it had been, it was good. He'd do it again. All of it. In a heartbeat.
Ianto didn't believe in god anymore. But, he thought, this life, it was a prayer. It was the only prayer he knew.
"How do you feel?" Jack asked.
"Honestly? Great. Excellent."
"Really?" he said skeptically, eyeing Ianto's various wounds. "Why's that?"
Ianto merely smiled.
Jack looked over at the glitter in his eyes and thought it was like looking into an image as it sharpens into focus, the grainy blur resolving into heightened, intense lines. He had thought the immediate, piercing sweetness of seeing Ianto again, the flood of relief, would have faded in the hours since he'd known he was safe -- this time -- but it hadn't. Not in the slightest.
Don't go, he wanted to scream. Don't leave me behind.
But he couldn't. He had to let him go. When it was time, he'd have to unclench his hand, and let Ianto slide out of it.
Still, he thought defiantly, this was the life they shared and no matter what happened in the future, no matter if someday he woke and could no longer remember the man he was right now, this was theirs. It would never happen again, not like this, not the same. Other loves and other worlds, but this one would be gone forever. And no one else could ever have it.
Something in Jack was ferociously pleased at the thought.
"What are you thinking?" he asked, looking at Ianto's face.
"It's a secret."
"You and your secrets," he said, with a rueful smile.
"I'll tell you," Ianto said, putting his head down on Jack's shoulder, after pressing a kiss into it. "Someday, I promise I'll tell you."
***
Jack --
Hopefully I've guessed right and you're actually reading this and I didn't leave it somewhere that's managed to get itself destroyed in whatever's happened. So you know, he didn't tell me, but he let me guess more than I should have. If you were with me, I'm sorry you had to see that, but I'm glad you were there. If you weren't, it's okay. I'm glad you weren't, and I'm good, I'm great. I mean, every day sometimes is a struggle not to weep that I got to have a life like this. Thank you.
Do whatever with my things. If there's no reason to put it in those awful storage lockers, please don't. If there's still a Torchwood, I'm not going to fight with you about the morgue, but if there's not, and I almost hope there's not, just do what makes you happy. If you bury me, I'd like it to be somewhere lush, but really, whatever suits. Eaten by vultures, I don't care. Although I think I already miss the stars.
So that's it then. Try to keep it together. Whatever this is, it's not the end of the world, and I suppose I'm a little bit sorry for that.
- Ianto
Oh! And I'll see you again. Not for a long time and you won't really even remember me, but I will. I promise. It's already happened.
Be grand.
the end
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Ten + appearances by TW Team
Authors: rm & kalichan
Rating/Warning: NC-17, slash, some hints of d/s, toys, romance, angst.
Summary: Everything happens only a certain number of times.
Wordcount: ~30,000 words, posted in 4 parts.
Authors' Notes: This is the final installment of our series, I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling. Next up (eventually): some digressions and interludes, and a dvd commentary! Also, we'll be bringing you a new 'verse, with our as-yet-untitled Jenny/Ianto/Jack fic. Thank you all for coming on this journey with us. We've had a brilliant time.
Previous installments:
1. A Strange Fashion of Forsaking | 2. Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny | 3. To Learn This Holding and the Holding Back | 4. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World | 5. I Imagine You Now in That Other City | 6. Many of My Favorite Things Are Broken | 6.5 Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Truth, Beauty: or, A Child's Guide to Modern Physics | 7. In Our Bedroom After the War | 8. And I Cannot Know How Long She Has Dreamed of All of You [Jack/Nine/Rose] | 9. The Spectacular Catastrophe of Your Endless Childhood [Ianto/OFCs, Ianto/Lisa] | 10. There Are Some Men Who Should Have Mountains To Bear Their Names To Time
Harbour, Part 1
Harbour, Part 2
Harbour, Part 3
There was a moment, just a moment, as they went down towards the tourist office opening where Ianto wanted to panic because he had no idea how to do this, no idea how to be fine, no idea how to keep pretending the future wasn't coming or how to cope with Jack not knowing any of it.
At least he hoped he didn't. In truth, he wasn't actually sure, but Jack was poor at holding his tongue, and Ianto thought that maybe he was safe from whatever terrible conversation lurking between them he would be duty-bound to prevent.
But the fact was, it didn't matter, any of it. He didn't have a choice. He was here now, at Jack's side, and he always would be. Plus, he'd read Oedipus back in school. Running away from your fate was generally how you wound up stuck with it. But that was sort of the problem, as if he no longer knew which way was right and which was left although in a few days or weeks or maybe, if he were really lucky, months... either turn was going to bring him to exactly the same place.
"It'll be strange," he said suddenly, not even sure what he meant by it, but the silence between them and the noise in his head suddenly felt too much to bear.
"You haven't had a lot of sleep. If you want to go straight to bed, I'll fend them off for you."
"No. No, I should see everyone, and it's morning anyway," he said, remembering how Jack had made him say goodbye when they'd left. Just in case. Just in case, indeed. Jack'd had no idea.
The strange thing though, the truly strange thing, was all the ways in which this felt easy. This place was familiar. This life, as if it was somehow the only one he'd ever had, when that wasn't true at all.
But maybe being near Jack really did fix a man in place. Maybe it meant there was no Ianto Jones in any alternate universe anywhere, or maybe, in all those universes he'd always wind up being bound here, to Jack's side, forever, except maybe in some world where Jack was mortal and Lisa never died.
Ianto shrugged at his own thought. It didn't matter. Not really. Not anymore. He'd been ready to die for a long time. Maybe when he lost Lisa, sure, but maybe even back when he just couldn't find anything to do with himself in university, maybe when he'd wandered Europe. He didn't know. Never would. All he was ever going to have was this smugness that somehow, out of all of it, he'd gotten so much more than he deserved. A thief till the end, like all the urchins in books his father had started to read to him and never ever, it seemed, got around to finishing.
Ianto smiled. Maybe he'd fool them all yet. Maybe, whatever it was that creepy, horrifying Torchwood situations kept informing them was moving in the dark, maybe he'd be able to steal that. He didn't want to really, but it sounded funny, in his head at least.
"What are you laughing at?" Jack asked.
"Home is an underground lair with a pterodactyl," he said automatically and wondered if there had ever been a time when he wasn't used to lying.
"We can go to your flat tonight if you want."
Ianto tried not to wince at Jack being solicitous. "We'll see," he said noncommittally. When they got to the last door into the main area of the Hub, Jack put a hand on the small of his back and ushered him through.
Everyone, it seemed, had been waiting for them, and Ianto realized that he had no idea what he was supposed to tell them about where he'd been. Somehow the grand tour of time and space didn't seem like the right answer, not when the rest of his -- and there was simply no other appropriate word -- family had been stuck here, earthbound.
Ravi, Andy and Maeve hung back a bit, and Ianto thought somewhere in the back of his brain about how easily they'd all established their hierarchies these days.
Gwen came forward to greet them, and he looked at her, cataloguing for any changes, but she seemed just the same. More muscled than when she'd joined Torchwood. The faint scar on her cheek. Her eyes more tired, more determined than when he'd first seen her in the Tourist Information Office, but always brimming with affection when they looked at him. And why would anything have changed? For her, it'd just been a week. For him, it felt like half a lifetime crammed into whatever space of time they'd actually been gone.
Her eyes darted to Jack first, as they always would, and she stepped forward into his arms as he bent to kiss the top of her head. But it was only a quick moment before she freed herself and came into his, stretching up to plant a kiss on his cheek and to ruffle his hair. Ianto huffed at her, just as he always had, secretly pleased but trying his utmost not to show it.
"So?" she asked, as the rest of the team came forward to cluster around them. "Everything all right?"
"It is now," Jack said, and Ianto bent his head to hide his smile, because somewhere along the way, though he didn't know how, Jack had learnt something that could be mistaken for tact.
"We figured business as usual," Andy chimed in, "because if you needed us, you'd have called, and if you didn't, we should probably just keep things ticking along."
"Yes, and that was all spear-headed by Andy," Maeve said, "the rest of us just followed along in his wake."
Andy blushed, and Ravi leaned over to pull Maeve's hair. "Be nice!" he suggested. "Jack and Ianto just got back."
"I am perfectly nice," Maeve snapped. "And I'd watch it, if you don't want to lose that hand." Then with a dazzling smile, she added, "Welcome back, boys."
"Thank you," Ianto said, exchanging an amused glance with Jack.
"So what happened?" Gwen asked. "Tell us."
"Most of it, we can't," Jack said quickly.
"What was it like though?" Gwen asked Ianto, and for once, he could see and understand the longing in her eyes, the longing for something that she knew would never happen and didn't even want, but somehow ached for anyway, because wouldn't anyone?
"Terrible," he said simply. "Terrifying. ... And beautiful."
Gwen nodded slowly, and placed her hand in his; Ianto squeezed it and then pulled her in, so he could put his arm around her.
Jack looked at all of them fondly, and then began climbing the stairs to his office.
"Gwen," he called, "with me. I'll want to be filled in on matters imminent and then not so imminent. Then we'll all go down to the pub, and have a lunchtime pint or two. Celebration, huh?"
Gwen smiled at Ianto before slipping out of his arms to follow Jack up the stairs.
The rest of them clustered around Ianto, who felt their presence -- human, familiar, affectionate -- like unaccustomed warmth.
"Oh, and Ianto," Jack bellowed from the landing by his office, "Dinner tonight? Eight?"
"Yes, sir," Ianto said, and felt, for one brief moment, things returning to their usual orbit and clicking back into place. He smiled and then turned back to the rest of the team. "So, what have you lot been doing while we were off?"
He could breathe again. He was home. Even if home were scary, even if home was the hardest work a person could imagine, even if home meant, in the end, death -- he was back. And he was so glad.
~*~
Naturally, no one had thought to take care of the weevil cages while they'd been gone. The more things change, Ianto thought with a sigh two days after their return, as he trudged down to the containment level, in order to take care of it himself.
Torchwood. Not glamourous, perhaps. But all that was on offer.
Besides, it was hard to get safer than mucking out cells. He derided himself for his cowardice, but there was something extremely unnerving about the whole situation. He kept jumping at sounds, wondering if this was it, if this was the moment, if he were ready (and he was actually fairly certain he wouldn't be).
Somehow there was never any doubt in his mind about whether the conclusion he'd come to was true.
Because sure, the Doctor had never said anything to him straight out, and somewhere distantly, Ianto knew he'd never grown out of being a morbid fucker, but still. There was no other way to read what had happened. Somehow -- either he'd seen it, or heard about it, or for all Ianto knew, he'd been told by some future version of Jack -- he'd known that Ianto was going to die. Maybe there were other explanations, but Ianto knew to the core of his being that this was the right one.
And what had the Doctor come up with, with all time and space at his disposal? A solution? A way to save him? No, Ianto thought with a wave of frustration. He'd just taken them on an all-expenses paid tour of the universe. Fun, but useless.
It figured, he found himself thinking rebelliously. Even if it really was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Even if others -- Tosh -- would have been so jealous.
~*~
Whatever hiatus the Rift had taken, it seemed to have come to an end. After the easy times they'd been having, it was almost a shock when the first really horrifying thing for some time came through, several alien killer insects -- sort of intergalactic locusts -- that would, in short time, give birth and devour everything in their path.
They were working all hours, trying to fight the things, which seemed to want to make the Earth their new hive planet. Until Maeve came up with a chemical formula for something they could release into the air which made them sterile, and then it was just a matter of hunting the seven or so left.
After that it was several Arcturan pirates, pulled through the Rift, in the midst of a smuggling operation, who had to be convinced not to open fire on the city streets, sure that their arrival was a trick of some kind, and Torchwood had to frantically broker the negotiations; a Viking ship that had invaded Wales, having been transported through time to their 21st century shores; and a gang of Blowfish who were causing mayhem all through the streets, while alien bounty hunters arrived seemingly to stalk Cardiff's children.
They were spread as thin as they'd ever been in their worst days and everyone at Torchwood was working flat out.
Jack, though, when distributing his team kept Ianto out of it as best he could, for as long as he could. He tried to tell himself he wasn't doing it, but of course, he was. And there were many perfectly good reasons why Ianto was needed to be kept at the Hub monitoring things; they always needed a man there, anyway, and it made sense, strategic sense, for it to be Ianto, Jack told himself repeatedly.
He was on the Viking ship with Andy when his comlink beeped.
"Rift spike," Ianto's voice said into his ear. "And I'm looking on the CCTV, and seeing it... It's odd, it looks like robots? With something like clockwork inside their heads? But we're getting some organic readings too. Just a couple though."
At that, Jack cursed helplessly and made a quick sign to Andy, because he recognized the description -- a 51st century army, with its clockwork gears and living parts, which was undoubtedly sending back a live feed to their sentient masters, whoever they might be -- and he was trapped on this Viking ship, with no hope of getting to shore in time without a fucking teleport. Something inside Jack grew very, very cold.
"Okay," he barked. "We need to get rid of them fast. Where is everybody?"
"Gwen's on the bounty hunters. Looks like Ravi's got a little UNIT task force mustered, and they're closing in on the Blowfish. Maeve's with me."
"Okay, we need you out on the bridge as fast as possible. Both of you. Bring the big guns. There's not a second to waste. And get talking to UNIT."
"Yes, sir," Ianto rapped out, and Jack forced down the sickness rising in his gut. Because there was no point. And Ianto would have hated him forever if he'd done anything different, anyway.
Speeding on their way to the bridge, Maeve looked over at Ianto, who was charging one of the alien weapons they had confiscated from the pirates.
"You all right?" she asked.
"Fine," he said curtly. "Let's just do this." Because he knew if he allowed himself the luxury of freaking out, he would be a useless puddle on the floor.
Oh god, this is it, he thought to himself. This is it.
And then they were there and leaping out of the car.
It was only on the way back to the Hub, after they'd collected all the scraps of alien technology and placed them in the SUV, after Maeve had sewn up the cut on her own arm herself and then popped Ianto's shoulder back in (again, he thought dismally) and bandaged his leg that the pounding in his chest began to slow.
It was then that he began laughing and couldn't stop. Because he was alive, still alive. They'd made it. This time, they'd made it. And it was pure joy.
He'd back-slided a bit, since they'd come back, but now he knew instinctively and with surety that there'd be no more of that. No more of this obsessive counting, of leaping at every noise and sudden jerk. He simply didn't have time. Because he could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Or be shot by a Blowfish. Or slip while having a bath. Or the Rift would suddenly vomit up the bane that had been reserved specially for him when their destinies were being written, perhaps somewhere on the side of a mountain even.
There was no way to know when it was coming. Only that it was.
He thought of a line he'd read once. You get what everyone gets. You get a lifetime.
He'd make a list, Ianto thought to himself. Of things he needed to get done. And do them all, as he could. Do everything, the Doctor had told him. And he would. Some of the things he was going to do would be terrible, as were so many of the things they had to do at Torchwood in order to protect this tiny world and each other. Some of them would be small and sweet. The scale hardly mattered.
"Have you gone entirely crackers?" Maeve hissed, as she rounded a corner at a ridiculous speed, clearly having attended the Jack Harkness School of Driving with less than stellar results. "You must be in serious amounts of pain. Why the bloody hell are you laughing?"
"Even if I told you, you'd never believe it," he assured her.
~*~
That night, as he lay with Jack in the room they'd made -- with explosions, with lies, with infinite love -- the place that lay under the foundations of their work, he laughed quietly to himself again.
Because they might not have decided to come to Torchwood of their own volition, either of them -- and of course they hadn't, much as babies don't decide for themselves to be born -- but they had chosen to find here an unexpected home. And they'd chosen to stay. Over and over -- battered and broken, freakish and monstrous, petty and terrible as they were -- he and Jack had constructed their own small, fragile oasis here, carved out for themselves this room, this work, this improbable, impossible existence and written it into being.
And it had been, it was good. He'd do it again. All of it. In a heartbeat.
Ianto didn't believe in god anymore. But, he thought, this life, it was a prayer. It was the only prayer he knew.
"How do you feel?" Jack asked.
"Honestly? Great. Excellent."
"Really?" he said skeptically, eyeing Ianto's various wounds. "Why's that?"
Ianto merely smiled.
Jack looked over at the glitter in his eyes and thought it was like looking into an image as it sharpens into focus, the grainy blur resolving into heightened, intense lines. He had thought the immediate, piercing sweetness of seeing Ianto again, the flood of relief, would have faded in the hours since he'd known he was safe -- this time -- but it hadn't. Not in the slightest.
Don't go, he wanted to scream. Don't leave me behind.
But he couldn't. He had to let him go. When it was time, he'd have to unclench his hand, and let Ianto slide out of it.
Still, he thought defiantly, this was the life they shared and no matter what happened in the future, no matter if someday he woke and could no longer remember the man he was right now, this was theirs. It would never happen again, not like this, not the same. Other loves and other worlds, but this one would be gone forever. And no one else could ever have it.
Something in Jack was ferociously pleased at the thought.
"What are you thinking?" he asked, looking at Ianto's face.
"It's a secret."
"You and your secrets," he said, with a rueful smile.
"I'll tell you," Ianto said, putting his head down on Jack's shoulder, after pressing a kiss into it. "Someday, I promise I'll tell you."
***
Jack --
Hopefully I've guessed right and you're actually reading this and I didn't leave it somewhere that's managed to get itself destroyed in whatever's happened. So you know, he didn't tell me, but he let me guess more than I should have. If you were with me, I'm sorry you had to see that, but I'm glad you were there. If you weren't, it's okay. I'm glad you weren't, and I'm good, I'm great. I mean, every day sometimes is a struggle not to weep that I got to have a life like this. Thank you.
Do whatever with my things. If there's no reason to put it in those awful storage lockers, please don't. If there's still a Torchwood, I'm not going to fight with you about the morgue, but if there's not, and I almost hope there's not, just do what makes you happy. If you bury me, I'd like it to be somewhere lush, but really, whatever suits. Eaten by vultures, I don't care. Although I think I already miss the stars.
So that's it then. Try to keep it together. Whatever this is, it's not the end of the world, and I suppose I'm a little bit sorry for that.
- Ianto
Oh! And I'll see you again. Not for a long time and you won't really even remember me, but I will. I promise. It's already happened.
Be grand.
the end