Title: Some Blessed Hope
Rating(s): PG-13
Pairing(s)/Character(s): Jack/Ianto
Summary: Jack loves Ianto. It doesn't matter which version of Jack, or which version of Ianto. Some things are constant.
Author's Notes: Pretty much a they-were-meant-to-be fic. This was actually inspired by a comment left on another one of my fics - to quote, I am convinced that Ianto Jones from any dimension, universe, or imagination would be a) beautiful, b) intelligent, and c) loved by Jack. So this is dedicated to you,
dd0206, for inadvertently prompting this fic. =D
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
- “The Darkling Thrush,” Thomas Hardy
Some Blessed Hope
“Went shopping today,” Jack announced, sauntering through the door.
“For groceries or sex toys?” someone called out.
“Both,” Jack said. “Clearly.” He deposited the bags in the kitchen and began putting everything away. “Although, technically speaking, there are a few things in the groceries bag that we could use as sex toys as well -”
“Jack!”
“Or just aids, you know,” Jack continued unrepentantly. “Chocolate sauce. Strawberries. Whipped cream.”
“Do we actually have all that?” The voice seemed intrigued rather than scandalised now.
“You wanted me to make cheesecake, didn’t you?” Jack said. “I might have gotten a bit more than I need, strictly speaking.”
A laugh. “Of course you did.”
Groceries safely stowed, Jack tossed the remaining bags on the couch and took to the stairs, heading for the large open-plan bedroom on the second floor. Then he stopped in surprise, taking in the sight of his lover lying on the bed naked and stroking himself.
“Should I get the stuff I bought?” Jack asked.
“We can do that later,” his lover said, lazily rolling over onto the pillow beside him. He turned his head and gave Jack an inviting look. “Fuck me?”
“Oh, hell,” Jack groaned, as he began to strip hastily. “You’re going to kill me, Ianto Jones.”
Jack woke slowly, which was rather peculiar. He was accustomed to the transition between sleep and wakefulness being so abrupt as to be practically non-existent. As a child, he’d slept with an ear open, ever aware that an attack could occur at any moment. As a Time Agent, that self-training had been augmented and polished until the only times he ever woke slowly were when he’d been drugged or knocked unconscious.
That wasn’t the case here. He was fading slowly into wakefulness, blanketed by a feeling of warm security like he’d never felt before.
It was a peculiar dream, he thought, rolling over so that his inevitable erection was pressed between his bed and belly. A bit more domestic than he preferred, but at least it had soon gone in the usual direction. He moved his hips gently, the friction making him suck a quiet, anticipatory gasp of breath through his teeth.
Who had he been dreaming of? The memories came to him in snatches, in pieces; a Welsh accent, blue eyes, an impish smile. No one he knew, and so he must have invented him, have put together a lover from the men he’d been looking at but not been allowed to touch, these past months. Sweet blue eyes, and a big body that would wrap around him and cover him and keep him safe, and Jack reached down and jerked himself hard, ungentle and rough, and came.
Safe, he thought afterwards, sitting by the window and watching the hansom cabs roll by, watching the girls in long dresses and boys in tunics darting by on errands for their parents. Moments like these made him feel keenly the loss of his time, made him wish to be anywhere but 1870. They also made him remember the TARDIS vanishing, leaving him behind because he’d not been worth saving.
He didn’t deserve safety.
Just follow the screams, Jack thought to himself.
The rogue Flek was easy enough to track down. When he found it, it had cornered a young lady in an alley. There was a suspiciously body-shaped lump next to her. Damn, Jack thought, and fired.
The Flek roared and lunged forward, prompting another terrified shriek from the girl, who scrambled backwards.
The Flek collapsed right on top of her friend.
The girl screamed again, and kept screaming.
Jack holstered his gun and stepped forward to check on the Flek. Definitely dead. Pity he hadn’t been able to rescue this one, but it had been in heat and there was just no reasoning with a female Flek in heat. He’d decide what to do with the body later.
“Help me with this?” he asked the girl.
She kept screaming.
“Suit yourself,” he said, and with a supreme effort, rolled the Flek over. The body underneath it, as it turned out, wasn’t as dead as Jack had thought it to be.
“Oh,” he said, looking down at pained blue eyes. “You know, you’re probably better off unconscious. Flek poison hurts kind of a lot.”
The blue eyes managed to convey total derision without ever moving.
“And the paralysis, yes, there’s that,” Jack agreed, eyeing the man. Cute guy, really. Probably about nineteen years old, twenty, something like that, same as his girlfriend. He’d do him, Jack decided, then pushed the thought aside.
“Hey, stop screaming,” Jack told the girl. She didn’t seem inclined to listen. “Seriously. You’re safe now. You’re also making me go deaf.”
She whimpered, but at least she stopped screaming.
“Thanks,” he said, flashing his most charming grin at her. He dug around in his pocket for the small flask he always kept with him, and offered it to her. “Here, have a bit, it’ll settle your nerves.”
She chugged the whole bottle down without stopping. Jack was duly impressed.
“So, you’re not hurt, right?” he asked.
She stared at him. Then she stared at the alien.
“Are you?” Jack pressed.
She stared at the Flek a moment longer, then scrambled to her feet and took off running.
“Hey!” Jack called after her. “Agh, always annoying when they do that.” He returned to the prone body on the ground. “Sorry about your friend. Look, you can stay with me for a bit while the poison wears off, yeah, and then you can be on your way.”
The guy looked a bit depressed.
“Oh, don’t blame her,” Jack said, pulling the guy up and into a secure hold. “People tend to freak out when they nearly get eaten by an alien. Well, not so much me. Or you. I didn’t hear you scream. Unless you hit really, really high notes when you scream, but I think that was your girlfriend who led me to you. Come to think of it, I’m surprised no one else is here yet, she’s got some set of lungs on her.”
The guy twitched.
“Hey, I felt movement,” Jack said in delight. “Good, you’ll be back on your feet sooner than I thought. So, yeah, that thing was an alien. It’s called a Flek. Carnivores - big surprise, right - no natural predators on their home planet. They’re not,” he added confidentially, “used to being beaten up on by other people. And here we are.”
He carefully lowered the guy’s legs and braced him between the car and his own body, then got out his keys and opened the passenger door.
“All without dropping you,” Jack said brightly. “Can you talk yet?”
“Ah ‘ink sho,” the guy said. He was slurring a lot, but Jack could make out what he was saying.
“Good,” Jack said. “So, what’s your name?”
“Intah,” the guy said.
Jack thought about it. “That sounded like ‘into,’” he said, “which can’t be right. Welsh-type name? Into, into…”
“Antuh,” the guy said insistently.
Jack snapped his fingers. “Ianto,” he said.
“Yus,” the guy said, relieved.
“Knew a couple of Iantos once,” Jack said conversationally, finally getting Ianto settled in the seat. “One was nice. The other one tried to kill me.”
Blue eyes glimmered in good humour.
“Wonder which one you’ll be like?” Jack asked. “Sit tight, I’m just going to get the Flek.”
He locked Ianto in before leaving. The guy might be cute, but Jack didn’t trust him just yet. Although, to be fair, he’d taken the whole affair with remarkable aplomb. Maybe, Jack thought, he’d offer the guy a job instead of Retconning him like he had the girl. Ever since Alex had killed the entire team two years ago, Jack had been running Torchwood Three solo, with only occasional aid from London. He was managing, but it was definitely a strain.
“So,” Jack said once he’d returned with the Flek and stashed it in the back of the car. “Limbs starting to regain feeling?”
“Maybe,” Ianto said. “Heavy.”
“Sounds about right,” Jack said, leaning over the centre console to take Ianto’s wrist. His heartbeat was sluggish, but not dangerously so. “Looks good to me.” He looked up and found his gaze caught by clear blue eyes.
“Good?” Ianto asked.
Jack’s lips curled in a slow smirk. “Very good.”
Jack woke up feeling simultaneously happy and irritated. After a few moments, the happiness won out.
It had been a few weeks since he’d dreamed of his imaginary lover. Once, he’d have been nervous about such a long gap between dreams, but now, he knew it was fairly normal. The dreams never stopped altogether, and he’d long since stopped being scared that they would. They were the usual sort, ones that Jack woke up from with an aching erection.
There was something pathetic, Jack thought sometimes, about looking forward to a dream lover the way he did.
It was odd, though. This hadn’t been an erotic dream in any way, shape or form. Except maybe right at the end; maybe it had been heading that way if he hadn’t woken up. But mostly it had been about chasing down an alien he’d only ever seen in holograms. And he distinctly remembered thinking about having lost his team. Torchwood. What did that mean?
Jack rolled out of bed with a heavy sigh. No point thinking about it. It was just a dream, for heaven’s sake. He had more important things to be concerned about, such as finding the Doctor and figuring out exactly why he’d suddenly developed such an allergy to death.
The boy was very good at hiding, even when there wasn’t anywhere to hide.
“What’s your name?” he asked. The boy was tucked up in the corner, making himself so small and unassuming that no one paid any attention to him. “Mine’s Sterling,” he added, crouching down. The chains clanked uncomfortably and he winced.
The boy stayed quiet, watching him with wide, fearful eyes. It had been that naked terror that had caught his eye in the first place.
“It might not be too bad,” he told the boy. “I mean, people who get caught on these raids, they go all over, right? We might go somewhere at least decent.”
The boy looked perilously close to bursting into tears. Sterling cast about desperately for something to cheer him up with.
“Don’t you know anyone here?” he asked finally. It was an unnecessary question; he knew the answer from the way the boy acted. “Well, that’s all right. You know me now. How about we be friends?”
The boy looked up at him with a startled expression in those big blue eyes. Sterling fell a little in love with those eyes and that expression.
“Just stick with me,” he said. “I’ll take care of you. Where’re you from, anyway?”
And finally, an answer. “Cardiff?” the boy said quietly.
Sterling frowned. “Not heard of it,” he admitted. “Where’s that?”
“Wales,” the boy said, then elaborated on seeing Sterling’s befuddled expression. “Britain? Earth?” And now he was back to being a terrified little creature.
“As in, New Earth?” Sterling asked. “Or New New Earth?”
The boy blinked. “As in Earth Earth,” he finally said.
“Wait,” Sterling said. “Wait, wait. What year are you from?”
The boy hesitated. “It’s, um, nineteen-ninety-two,” he finally said in a tiny voice.
Sterling stared at him. He’d had a niggling suspicion, but he hadn’t expected to be proven right. And from so very long ago! He’d never have imagined it, the boy seemed so - well, normal. “That explains it,” he finally said. “It’s the year fifty-eighty-three now. I didn’t know the raiders were doing time jumps too! Was anyone else taken with you? What was it like back then? Wait, that means you’re pure human, aren’t you? Wow!”
The boy looked thoroughly terrified. Sterling managed to rein himself in with some effort. But really, he was determined to find something to be cheerful about on this godforsaken ship. The boy seemed a good choice. Besides, something about him, something about that vulnerability on his face, just made Sterling want to protect him. Maybe also something about the way the boy was unconsciously inching closer to him, looking at everyone else as if they might eat him.
Seemed the boy had already picked him as protector. That was a role Sterling could perform well enough.
“I have a brother, y’know,” Sterling said, settling against the wall. He shoved the chains off his lap, letting his hands fall to his sides so they wouldn’t have to support the weight of the manacles. When he was as comfortable as he was going to get, he indicated for the boy to do the same.
“His name’s Grey,” Sterling continued once the boy was settled, half against the wall and half against him. “When this last raid came, dad told me to protect Grey, to not let go of him.” A rueful smile touched Sterling’s lips. “I had to, though, ‘cause they caught me. But it’s okay, Grey’s with mama and daddy and they’ll be fine. So I reckon, I just need to get through this too and then I can find them. You’ll come with me, of course,” he added impulsively, and the grateful look in those blue eyes made him glad he’d said it. But the look passed soon, and the boy’s eyes began to droop, and Sterling realised that he was finally starting to flag. The hyper-alertness he’d maintained all this while was finally taking its toll, and so Sterling made his voice as gentle and soft as possible and watched as the boy slowly fell asleep on his shoulder.
“And when we’re back on Boeshane - that’s where I’m from - we’ll go to the Time Agency or something and get you back to your time. Maybe we could have some adventures together before that! Imagine it, flying through space, just you and me, on our own spaceship. That’d be cool, wouldn’t it, and we could go to Dallima, mama says they make the best eats there...”
Were dreams a kind of wish fulfilment or something?
Jack struggled awake. For once, he didn’t particularly feel like hanging on to his fictional blue-eyed lover. For one thing, the child had been far too young (even if he’d been about the same age in the dream) and for another thing -
Jack kicked the sheets off and sat up, groaning. It had been a few years since he’d thought of Grey. The dream reminded him of everything that could have been, if he’d been just a little quicker, just a little more careful. Just a little better.
He spent the rest of the day trying to convince the vortex manipulator to work. He failed. Then, in the evening, he got a message from Torchwood. They had more work for him.
He scowled at nothing in particular. At least he’d finally learned what Torchwood was. There was something peculiar about these dreams, about how real they were. A part of him was almost looking forward to finding out if everyone in Torchwood really would die.
Anything to get away from them.
Carl whistled as he sauntered down the large marble staircase in search of the kitchen and some breakfast. The elaborate staircase was ostentatious and tacky, like everything else in the house, but the wealth on display had him seriously considering becoming a boy-toy. It seemed like it would be lucrative. He ran a hand over the polished wood of the staircase railing, studying the flawless carvings. The opulence clearly wasn’t a smokescreen. He’d known families that came from old money, families which had spent all that money and continued pretending to be rich when they were actually in debt. This wasn’t one of them.
They just had bad taste.
Then again, since this house belonged to the youngest son of the family, maybe he was the only one of the lot who had no concept of tasteful elegance. At least he was decent in bed; that might be his sole saving grace. Not good enough that Carl would be tempted to stick around for too long, but -
“Coffee, sir?”
Carl stopped in his tracks, taking in the clear blue eyes and tall body hidden by a well-tailored suit. Butler, he thought dazedly, the guy looked like a butler, who the hell even had a butler these days, though maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised given what he’d seen of the place.
“Sir?” the butler asked in a tone perfectly modulated to convey concern, but mask the ‘are you an idiot or do you just enjoy wasting my time’ beneath it.
Carl thought he might be in love.
Jack had a grin on his face the whole morning. He wasn’t used to feeling off-kilter when he met someone hot. But damn, his imaginary blue-eyed lover had looked edible in that tailored suit.
His blue-eyed boy, who was never afraid to call him out, but always in private, who would never embarrass him in public, but had a distinctly wild, frisky side to him. He wasn’t perfect. At times, he was insecure, jealous, petulant. But Jack liked him, in all the incarnations he’d seen him, and he seemed to like Jack too. That had to mean something.
The dreams felt more like memories than inventions, but he’d definitely never encountered the man in real life before. He remembered dreaming the names of places and things he'd only encounter years later, remembered dreaming events, some of which had already come to pass - enough to make Jack a little uneasy about the nature of his dreams. His recurring lover, though, was someone he was yet to meet. And if he’d ever dreamed his lover’s name, he never remembered it when he woke up, so he had nothing more than blue eyes and a familiar face to go on; no way of searching for him, finding out if he actually existed, learning if his dreams had any basis at all in reality. It was just one more question to ask the Doctor, when he finally found the elusive alien.
He kept the memory of his blue-eyed boy in his thoughts all day. It made shooting himself in the head for a circus trick a little easier to bear.
Shane had been going to the cafe every day for almost a month, often enough that he’d become a familiar face there. When he’d studied the entire area and planned out his escape routes, he arranged to meet Cassidy there.
Cassidy, who in fourteen years (for him) would meet a younger Shane for the first time, when he sentenced Shane to losing two years of his memories.
It had taken some doing to get Cassidy to meet him. The man was practically jumping out of his skin when anyone so much as looked at him. Shane wasn’t surprised; this was Cassidy’s first mission as team leader, and it had gone quite badly. He had a team-member down, no medical supplies, a damaged vortex manipulator, no means of contact with Primary, and to top everything off, they weren’t due for pick-up for another month. Cassidy was a nervous wreck, as he watched his team-mate deteriorate every day.
This Cassidy was a far cry from the stoic judge he’d be in fourteen years’ time. It was lucky for Cassidy that Shane McCale, as a retired Time Agent living in the past, had recognised the tell-tale signs of another Time Agent.
Luckier for Shane, if he pulled this off right.
“Did you bring it?” Cassidy demanded, sliding into the seat opposite Shane.
“Said I would,” Shane said calmly, and pushed a bag over to Cassidy. Then he reached out and smacked Cassidy’s hand when he made to open it.
“Can I get you anything?” the waiter enquired.
Cassidy flinched. “Uh, tea,” he said hurriedly.
“Top-up?” Shane asked, tapping his coffee mug. “Shot of hazelnut.”
“Of course,” the waiter said, taking Shane’s mug. “Any particular type of tea for you?” he asked Cassidy.
“No, just -” Cassidy said, frowning.
“Earl Grey,” Shane suggested. “He’ll have it black.”
“Of course,” the waiter said, one eyebrow arched. Too late, Shane remembered what ordering for someone else looked like in this century. Oops.
“Sub-dermal regenerator in here?” Cassidy said in an undertone, once the waiter had left.
“Yep,” Shane said. “Have the anti-particulate injector?”
“Here,” Cassidy said, fishing a small container out of his pocket and dropping it in Shane’s hand. “More than worth it for this,” he added, giving Shane a relieved smile. “Have fun playing with that.”
“I will,” Shane said. Cassidy got up and left without waiting for his drink. Shane watched him go, wondering what he’d do when he found out that the sub-dermal regenerator didn’t actually work.
Shane wasn’t entirely without a heart. He’d pre-programmed a distress signal to be sent to the Time Agency in a few hours. By that time, Shane would be long gone, with the anti-particulate injector he’d been trying so long to find, and which no one outside of a Time Agent would ever have been allowed access to.
“That looked a lot like a drug transaction, I hope you know,” the waiter said, putting Shane’s coffee down in front of him. He hadn’t brought any tea.
“Gonna turn me in?” Shane asked, batting his lashes at the waiter. Same one who was always here when he came, he noticed, with pretty blue eyes and a cute, up-turned nose. Hm, he did have a bit of time before he had to leave.
“Oh, absolutely,” the waiter said. “There’re cops waiting for you right outside, you see.”
Shane deliberately looked out the window, his eyes roving over the empty sidewalk.
“Invisible cops,” the waiter said blandly.
Shane laughed delightedly. Then, for the first time in a long while, he made an impulsive decision. “Hey -” he glanced at the waiter’s name-tag. “Ianto, nice name. Ianto, have you ever wondered what it would be like to go travelling through time?”
Sometimes, Jack thought that he was a very bad person.
He’d once wished that what he’d dreamed would come true, that all of Torchwood would get killed. They had. He hadn’t liked the reality as much. It made him wonder about his blue-eyed boy. Would he like the reality as much? Something told him he would, but he was starting to second-guess himself now.
The dreams varied wildly. Once he’d met his boy while they were both attempting to escape a hungry velociraptor. It had been an interesting bonding experience. Another time, his boy had been on the Board of the Shadow Proclamation, and Jack had been his bodyguard. Every time, there was some new facet of his boy’s personality for him to discover. He thought that if he did meet his boy in real life - and the dreams were too real and too frequent to be mere dreams - then he would still like his boy. Would still fall for his boy, no matter what the reality turned out to be.
His blue-eyed boy had kept him sane through the decades of waiting. Jack was too invested in him to let go, whether he wanted to or not.
But would his boy want him, that was the question. Jack had wished Torchwood dead, and they were. First Three, on New Year’s, and now all of Torchwood One. It didn’t reduce the anger at what London had tried to do, but it did make him wonder what right he had to call himself better than them.
He’d lured broken, lonely Suzie in with promises of power and importance. He’d kidnapped broken, scared Toshiko and made her trade one master for another. He’d taken advantage of broken, grieving Owen and manipulated his love for his fiancée to make him join. He was no better, when it came down to it, than the monsters he professed to hunt.
And surely his blue-eyed boy would see that. Surely his boy would want nothing to do with him.
The Weevil took full advantage of Jack’s distraction and sank its teeth into Jack’s neck. Jack howled, struggling to get free, and get his anti-Weevil spray out. The angle was all wrong, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to get to his weapons before the Weevil killed him. A small part of him thought that maybe he deserved it.
Then the Weevil let go and rolled off him with a disgruntled growl. Jack looked up, gasping, and saw someone swing a stick at the Weevil. The alien staggered, stunned for a moment, but recovered quickly and jumped at the Samaritan who’d come to Jack’s aid.
Jack took a moment to grab his Weevil spray, then returned the favour, getting the Weevil off the guy and finally subduing it. He could feel the skin on his neck knitting back together.
The guy who’d helped him, his skin wouldn’t have mended so easily. Jack wondered if he could ever be selfless enough to help someone. Even if it was just something small. Something that his blue-eyed boy might appreciate, something that might make him worthy of his boy. But there wasn’t time to think of that now; he needed to do damage control.
Jack looked up at the man who’d saved him, and found himself looking into familiar blue eyes.
The first time Jack saw the kid was in a shopping centre.
“Put it back,” Jack told him.
“Put what back?” the kid asked.
Jack smiled at him. “Put it back and I won’t call security on you. Or take matters into my own hands.”
The kid eyed him for a brief moment, then shoved past him and took off out the door. Jack sighed, picked up the CD the kid had dropped, and headed for the cashier.
He found the kid outside the shopping centre, kicking a can around idly. “Was it a bet?” he asked casually. The kid stiffened, but didn’t turn. “Or are you just that broke?”
The kid shrugged. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, and kicked the can violently. It flew up, smashed against the concrete divider, and tumbled back down.
“I’m guessing broke,” Jack said, walking towards the kid. “Not worth it, kid. Try and get a job.” He tapped the kid’s head with the CD, then left it there.
The kid jerked, startled. The CD started to slide off his head, and he reached out and caught it as Jack walked on by. Jack didn’t bother looking back to see how the kid was taking having been gifted the CD. The quality of the quietness he’d left behind him spoke volumes.
The second time Jack saw the kid was in the same shopping centre.
“How’s it going?” Jack asked, smiling broadly.
“Well enough,” the kid said. “Is that all, sir?”
Jack pushed the two CDs across the cashier’s counter and watched as the kid deftly scanned them. “Yep, that’s it.”
Jack spent the first few days in the TARDIS recovering. A bed had never felt so good to him before. He’d thought he’d known what it was like to go without, to survive on the bare minimum. Now, his small bed under his office seemed like all he needed, and a spare room in the TARDIS was the height of luxury.
After a time, he decided that he had himself under control. Enough, at least, to be civil to the Doctor. Even the Doctor could be fooled by a good enough actor, and Jack was a very good actor.
“I have a question,” Jack said casually.
“Go on, then,” the Doctor said distractedly, as he fiddled with some component or other. Jack suspected it was make-work.
“How exactly did Rose make me immortal?”
“Told you,” the Doctor said, pursing his lips. “Time Vortex, in human, not a good idea.”
“But how exactly,” Jack said. “What does that even mean, a fixed point in time and space?”
The Doctor sighed. “There are a lot of dimensions out there, Jack,” he said patiently. “Infinite ones, in fact. With infinite copies of ourselves, all slightly different, running around in them. What Rose did was wipe out every other version of you. You’re the sole Jack Harkness in all the dimensions, in all of time-space, and that just isn’t meant to happen. The only place you exist is along your linear timeline. It’s wrong.”
“You’ve mentioned,” Jack said dryly. “What happens to these other universes? Their Jacks just - vanish?”
“It’d be like they never existed,” the Doctor corrected. “Everyone’s lives would go on, and they’d never know there was supposed to be a Jack Harkness there.”
Jack thought about that. Then he tried not to think about it.
“And that’s why I’m immortal?” he asked. “How does that even connect?”
The Doctor slid aside a panel in the wall and ducked inside. His voice echoed oddly as he spoke. “You’re not tied to the time-stream anymore. You can’t die if you’re not tied to the time-stream. You’d just keep returning to the same point.” He re-emerged and gave Jack a vaguely exasperated look. “It’s hard to explain. Humans can’t really understand it.”
Jack gave him a black look.
“I’m not being patronising,” the Doctor insisted. “You really can’t. You can’t see the flow of time, and it’s not something you can understand unless you can do that.” He made a vague gesture. This Doctor liked to talk with his hands. “Time flows through everything, that’s the natural order. But not you, Jack. Time goes around you. It doesn’t touch you.”
Jack shook his head. “Any other side effects?” he asked. “Other than immortality?”
“Not that I know of,” the Doctor said. “There shouldn’t be any backlash.”
“Backlash?”
“From Rose wiping out your alternate selves,” the Doctor explained. “But no, I don’t think anything would have happened from that.”
Except it had. Jack nodded absently and left the room without saying good-bye.
His dreams weren’t dreams. He’d always known that, but he’d never expected them to be memories of his other selves from other dimensions, various versions of Jack Harkness that no longer existed. Had never existed. He had no way of proving the theory right, and he had no desire to run it by the Doctor, but he felt absolutely certain that that was what the dreams were.
Lives he might have lived. Lives he almost felt he had. Lives he wanted to live up to.
And his blue-eyed boy was instrumental to the happiest of those lives.
“Oh, hi,” Jack gasped out.
“Hi,” the man he’d just crashed into said. Blue eyes stared down at him in shock. “Um, you’re bleeding.”
“Hadn’t noticed,” Jack said flippantly. “Help me up, would you?”
“Agent Hinder!” someone yelled. “You know you can’t get away. Give up!”
“I’ll pass,” Jack muttered, as Blue Eyes hauled him up. Jack took a step forward, then felt his legs folding beneath him again.
“Ow,” Jack commented breathlessly.
“I think I’ve seen this film before,” Blue Eyes said. “The sidekick always dies. This is a very bad idea.” And then he bent and heaved Jack into his arms, and took off down the road.
“If we don’t die,” Jack told him, “I’ll make this worth your while.”
“Not dying is a good thing,” Blue Eyes wheezed. “You need to go on a diet.”
“This body is perfect the way it is,” Jack said indignantly.
“I need to hit the gym more,” Blue Eyes said.
“I’d say that body’s perfect the way it is, too,” Jack said, giving Blue Eyes his best lecherous look. It didn’t work very well, given that Jack more closely resembled a corpse than anything else.
“Are you trying to make me drop you?” Blue Eyes demanded, and turned into a quiet building. Jack peered over his shoulder as Blue Eyes slowly gasped his way up the stairs. No blood trail that he could see, so hopefully the Time Agents tracking him wouldn’t think to come here. He certainly wouldn’t have entered a flat of his own accord; he’d never have put anyone else at risk.
Jack closed his eyes and rested his head against Blue Eyes’ chest. Vaguely, he registered the shifting of his body, the click of a door, and finally, cool sheets under him.
“Lucky I live here,” Blue Eyes panted. “Don’t think I could have carried you much more.” A pause. “Shit. Shit. Hey, you alive still?”
Jack made a vague sound of assent.
“Hospital?” Blue Eyes asked. Jack made a sound he hoped was a negative. “Shit. What, I’m supposed to fix this myself? They didn’t cover this in our CPR course!”
But for all the panicking in his voice, Blue Eyes’ hands were efficient and soothing as they wrapped up the worst of Jack’s wounds. The bleeding was slowing and Jack was fairly certain he’d pull through all right. There were advantages to being in the past; the Agents chasing him hadn’t been able to use their sonic weapons in public, and Jack’s genetically advanced body was more than capable of recovering from a couple of gunshot wounds.
Especially with Blue Eyes helping him. Who, Jack wondered, did something like this for a perfect stranger? Blue Eyes clearly knew that he might have made the wrong choice, that Jack might be on the wrong side of the law - hell, technically, he was, at least as far as the Time Agency was concerned. And yet he’d decided to help him anyway, even at the risk of getting caught up in something that had nothing to do with him.
Jack couldn’t think of many people in his time, let alone this, who’d do something like that.
“Can I keep you?” Jack asked sleepily.
Blue Eyes’ hands stilled on him momentarily. “You’re the stray,” he finally said, “who followed me home. I think that’s my line.”
Jack was still grinning when he finally fell asleep.
Jack slipped into the flat quietly, toeing his shoes off in the doorway and stealthily making his way into the living room. Ianto was on the balcony, leaning against the railing and looking out at the night.
He’d been so scared to hire Ianto. He knew what kind of life expectancy most Torchwood agents had. But Ianto had been persistent enough that Jack had known he’d had some other agenda. And so Jack had taken him in, hoping to help him, hoping Ianto would trust him, never expecting the way things had blown up, never expecting that Ianto would eventually learn to trust him again after all that had happened. Never expecting that this universe’s Ianto might also want him, just like in his dreams. The prospect of losing Ianto terrified him, and he could find only the slightest solace in knowing that at least the dreams would never stop.
Jack slid his arms around Ianto’s waist, relishing the little jump Ianto made.
“Miss me?” Jack asked, nuzzling Ianto’s neck.
“Don’t I always,” Ianto replied, leaning back into Jack’s hold. “Did it go all right?”
“Weevils secured and awaiting tagging tomorrow,” Jack said. “No deaths or injuries. Do I get a reward?”
Ianto turned in Jack’s arms and kissed the tip of his nose. “One day I’ll be old and bald,” he said, ignoring the most likely option for his future. “And this isn’t going to work anymore.”
“Why not?” Jack asked, licking Ianto’s chin. Stubble rasped against his tongue.
“You’ll need some young, fresh thing,” Ianto said. “Imagine me at ninety, and unable to get it up.”
Jack laughed softly. “Still don’t want anyone else,” he told Ianto. “Ninety, with no sex drive, with Alzheimer’s and having forgotten me, I’m staying. I’ll take you for as long as I can have you.”
Ianto went very still.
“Come to bed,” Jack said, and kissed Ianto. “I want to feel you.”
He was sitting on Mrs Carlson’s front porch when Jack first saw him.
“Hey,” he said, leaning over his fence to study the new arrival. Sharp blue eyes, grey hair, a bit of a paunch but in much better shape than most guys his age. Good-looking, Jack decided. He must’ve been popular when he was younger. “You new around here?”
“Could say that,” the man replied. “This is my daughter’s place.”
The guy had a gorgeous accent, but one entirely unlike Ariana Carlson’s, or for that matter, any of their neighbours in their little corner of Illinois. He certainly wasn’t American, but at the same time, the accent sounded like something Jack had heard before. Peculiar.
“Moving in with her, or just visiting?” Jack asked, as he absently tried to place the accent.
“Bit of both,” the man admitted. “If I like it, I’ll be staying.” He tapped his leg. “Can’t get around too well on this anymore, so it’s this or a live-in caretaker.”
“Only if she’s pretty,” Jack said before he could think it through. He was vastly relieved when the man grinned back.
“Be something to look forward to, at least,” the man said. “But knowing my luck…”
Jack laughed. “Jack Harkness, by the way,” he said, waving.
“Ianto Jones,” the man replied.
“Welsh!” Jack said in delight. “I knew I’d heard that accent somewhere before.” Back in Cardiff, when they’d stopped Margaret Blaine from blowing up the place, and he’d decided to leave the Doctor and Rose after that, to get the Doctor to drop him off a few decades into the future, and to make his own way because really, he had to be able to stand on his own feet at some point, right?
“You’re the first person I’ve met here who’s got it without me telling them,” Ianto said with a smile. “Why don’t you come on over here, Jack? I’m too old to be yelling across the street.”
“Not afraid I’m a mad serial killer?” Jack asked, dutifully crossing the street. He unlatched the Carlsons’ gate and went in, seating himself on the porch stairs.
“If you are, you’ve got my girl good and deceived,” Ianto said. “She’s told me all about you already.”
“They’re all lies,” Jack said instantly.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say all,” Ianto said. “Maybe half. She did say you were very handsome. Like a movie star, she said.”
“Thank you,” Jack said, preening. Then he stopped and frowned. “Wait, are you saying that was a lie or not?”
Ianto just grinned at him.
“Mean,” Jack said with a pout. He liked talking to this guy already. And he was easy on the eyes. And not all that old. And Ariana had told him that her mother had passed away when she was a child, and that her father had never remarried. Stop it, he chided himself.
“Never,” Ianto replied. “So, now my daughter’s gone and run off her husband, are you going to step in?”
Jack laughed. “She’s a bit young for me.” Fifteen years wasn’t huge, to him, but she acted a lot less mature than thirty. “And besides, now I’ve set my eyes on you...” He nearly bit his tongue off. Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that.
“Stolen your heart, have I?” Ianto asked casually. “Guess I’ll have to let my girl down easy.”
Jack felt lighter than he had in a long time.
~fin