Fic: Desperate Measures (complete in 2 parts)
Title: Desperate Measures (1/2)
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, with the team and Martha.
Rating: PG or there abouts.
Word Count: 4600
Warnings: temporary character deaths
A/N thank you to mcparrot who beta'd some of this for me ages ago. I've probably done so much picking about with it that I probably accidentally added mistakes again. So if you find any, that's down to me.
Written for the prompt: Ianto is the one shot at the end of Reset...does he die, become the living dead or does Ianto find out he is immortal.
I know somebody gave me this prompt ages ago, and I can't remember who. So sorry for the wait whoever you are, I hope you're still around the fandom to read it.
It had all happened so quickly, Jack thought. One moment it had seemed like it had gone well or at least well as it ever went for Torchwood, and the next Doctor Copley was standing at the entrance to the Pharm, a gun pointed at them.
Before he'd been able to do anything Ianto had stepped forwards, putting himself between Martha and Copley, his hands raised placatingly. “It's over. Nobody else has to die.”
Copley gave a snarl of anger and pulled the trigger. The shot struck Ianto high in the chest, just below his collar bone and he crumpled to the ground.
Jack's own shot, fired scant seconds later, took Copley between the eyes, killing him instantly.
“Hold on, you're doing to just fine.” Jack dropped to his knees beside Ianto and pressed a hand over the wound. “Owen, Martha, get over here.”
Ianto stared up at him wide eyed in pain and shock. His mouth opened as if to speak, then closed as he died without a sound.
Behind him Jack heard Owen's sharp intake of breath and Gwen's half stifled sob. In front of him Martha put an arm around Tosh.
“I can fix this,” Jack said, voice scratchy with shock as he laid Ianto's body carefully down on the ground. He wiped blood from his hands where'd tried - failed - to stop the bleeding. “Take him home. I'll be back soon.”
“He's gone,” Martha said, sounding close to tears. She put a hand on his arm. “I'm so sorry, Jack. There's no way to fix this.”
“He's not staying like that.” Jack shook his head, fighting back tears. “I'm not letting him. He doesn't get to go, not like this. Not so soon.”
“Jack...” Gwen began.
“No. You just take him home, you take him back to the Hub.” Jack pushed past her then started to run.
“Let him go,” Owen said, catching hold of Gwen's arm. “He'll be back.”
“Will he? Will he really?” Gwen said staring after Jack.
X0X0X0X
The Hub was quiet when Jack arrived back with an ancient wooden box tucked under his arm. It had taken him a lot longer than he'd expected it to retrieve it; the crypt of the old church where it had been hidden for more than three centuries had been crawling with Weevils.
He'd felt a little guilty calling Martha and the team to meet him up on the Plas and then locking them out, but he knew they'd question what he was about to do and maybe even try to stop him. With what he had to try and to do, he didn't need any interruptions. Five minutes was all he needed to know one way or the other if it would work. It had to work Jack told himself and he hurried down the steps to the autopsy bay. It wasn't allowed to fail and leave him without Ianto for the rest of time. He'd given so damn much keeping the Earth safe with nothing in return for himself, surely this once he could be selfish and demand something in return?
He stopped as he saw Ianto lying on the autopsy table, naked apart from a sheet pulled up to his waist. The blood had been washed away, the wound a small, dark hole between his chest and shoulder. Jack'd seen death so many times before and it never got any easier, especially when the one who was dead was somebody you love.
“It's not ending like this.” Jack shook his head, smiling though tears were threatening to fall. “You're coming back to me Ianto Jones. You'd better believe it.”
Pausing only to take off his greatcoat, he opened the ancient chest. Inside, amongst crumbled remains of centuries old hay was a metal glove. “You always said they came in pairs,” Jack said conversationally to Ianto. “So after that I went looking. I guess I was worried at the time. I was scared you'd find it, maybe turn out like Suzie, hell I don't know, maybe I thought you'd try to bring Lisa back.”
He slipped the glove on and waited to feel the tug and shift of it. It was near immediate and Jack gasped. It felt different, like there was already something else there, something that was already trying to suck energy from him that should have been for Ianto. Angry and frustrated, he took the glove off and slammed it down on the table. He knew he couldn't risk using it with whatever was in it still there. What if it stopped it from working properly? What if it did something to Ianto?
Jack looked at it and then back at him. It had been years since he'd let somebody into his heart in the way that had somehow happened with Ianto and part of him hated the uncertainty and insecurity that came with loving someone, but he couldn't live without love either. He'd tried it, tried to spare himself and the men and women who would end up growing old while he remained the same that pain, but it had left him feeling more dead inside than the immortality ever had.
He'd even tried with Ianto, tried to tell himself it was just sex, that it was no different that picking a stranger up in a bar, that it was just a matter of convenience to have sex at work. Ianto had somehow seen past all that, seen past the brash, flirtatious exterior that had once been who he really was to see him a man who was as lost, lonely and scared as the rest of them. He'd seen him at his worst, whether that was letting a young girl go to save the world from the malevolent fairies, or sick and shaking after nightmares that too often haunted his dreams. And despite all that he wanted to remain at his side, wanted him to be with him for no other reason than love. After the year Jack had had he knew he needed Ianto with him, needed the quiet concern and odd sense of humour more than even the sex.
“I'm not going to let you down, not again,” Jack told Ianto as he picked the glove up and put it back on. If there was something in there it was just going to have to leave, he wasn't going to give it a choice.
“Hungry little thing, aren't you?” he remarked to the glove as he felt energy being pulled from him once more. It was a decidedly unpleasant sensation, not exactly painful, not yet. He knew it could easily become so. The glove felt heavier than it had before, the gaps between the articulations in its fingers filled with fire-flecked smoke.
“That's enough,” Jack said as he started to remove it again. “If you want more you come out here and make me put it back on again.”
The smoke, thick and grey and oily poured from the glove to form a writhing mass on the floor at Jack's feet. Jack leapt back as he felt it reach out for him, trying pull him in and suck him dry.
Denied its chance to feed, it shrieked, shrill and angry, the lights and windows shattering and showering the Hub in glass.
The systems designed to protect the Hub from alien incursion detected its presence and the alarms sounded as the automatic lock-down process was initiated, sealing them in. Jack smiled grimly. At least he wasn't going to get interrupted now.
The smoke-like creature that was rapidly solidifying into a stooped backed, long limbed humanoid figure seemed to realise that it was trapped and turned its half formed face to Jack. There was something ancient and malevolent in the glowing ember like eyes as it launched itself towards him. How something that was apparently still smoke-like and insubstantial could scratch like that Jack had no idea, but in moments his shirt was hanging in tatters, he was bloody and scratched, the entity had opened up his shoulders, back and chest. Not that he was going to let a little discomfort like that stop him.
The creature floated around the room, circling Jack, as it hissed, "I am hunger. I am loss. I am Death.”
There had to be a way of stopping it. Jack looked round for anything that could be used as a weapon, before realising that he was the most dangerous thing in the room. All he needed was for it to get closer.
"I am hunger. I am loss. I am..."
“Yeah, I get it already. You want something to eat?” Jack said, trying to ignore how the glove seemed hot enough to burn his hand, and pushed it into the centre of the now humanoid mass of smoke. “Well choke on this.”
It wasn't as bad as Abaddon, but it hurt and Jack was screaming before the creature gave one last ear-splitting shriek and exploded, stored energy rushing out in a wave that threw Jack backwards into the wall.
Exhausted, his throat raw, he got unsteadily to his feet and staggered back to the table. Part of him knew that that he almost certainly needed to rest before he tried again, but the other part knew that the longer the gap between death and using the glove, the less likely it was to succeed. His legs feel weak, like they were made of jelly. If he stumbled or fell while bringing Ianto back he'd break the connection, he lose him again. He couldn't risk it.
After a moments thought he kicked away the worse of the broken glass and laid his coat down as extra protection over the rest, and then lifted Ianto down from the autopsy table. Sitting on the floor, Jack cradled him in his arms. After pressing a kiss to Ianto's too cold lips he put the glove back on.
It felt cold, just bare metal around his fingers, no spark of anything. Jack took a shuddering breath, trying not to let despair creep in. Maybe the connection needed to be more than just a simple energy transfer; perhaps that was why he'd never been able to get the original glove to work. Maybe it needed mental connection as well. Like Gwen had, she'd wanted to bring Suzie back, she'd put everything into it, heart and soul and that wonderful stubbornness that had got her into Torchwood in the first place.
Every scrap of psychic training he'd received during his time at the Time Agency was screaming at him that this was the worse idea imaginable, but Jack did it anyway. Past caring about himself he dropped any shielding that he had, even the most basic parts that everybody had even though they didn't realise it and reached out to try and find Ianto's mind in the dark.
A second later Ianto gasped, his eyes snapping open. “I'm alive?” Before Jack could answer he glanced sideways and saw the glove. “Oh no, no. Oh god.” He stared at Jack is horror, trying to squirm away from the glove. “Jack why? Why would you do that? That thing...”
“Because I'm not ready to lose you,” Jack said voice cracking as he held him tighter, not willing to let him break the connection. “Now you fight, you hold on.”
“I can't. This shouldn't be happening.” Ianto's eyes closed again. “I'm sorry. I love you, I should have told you. I should...”
“You stay with me. Don't you dare go. Don't you leave me.” Jack pushed more energy through the connection, until his vision started greying at the edges, the dull ache in his shoulder became a fierce biting pain and he could feel the slow, slick slide of blood running down his chest and arm.
Gwen had said that that had happened with Suzie, that she'd felt the shot Suzie had killed herself with slowly boring into her brain. Jack gritted his teeth, he couldn't stop yet not even if it killed him. Just a little longer, he told himself, all he needed was to stay alive until all the damage had transferred to himself and Ianto was healed. It wouldn't matter if he died then, Ianto would be alright. He had to be alright.
Jack closed his eyes and tried to focus. It hurt to breathe, his shoulder was agony, while his arm felt numb and useless and hung limp at his side. He could feel death creeping in, the old familiar slide of life leaving him, so with one last effort he forced what energy he had left through the connection, before consciousness finally fled.
Part 2. http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/238632.html#cutid1
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, with the team and Martha.
Rating: PG or there abouts.
Word Count: 4600
Warnings: temporary character deaths
A/N thank you to mcparrot who beta'd some of this for me ages ago. I've probably done so much picking about with it that I probably accidentally added mistakes again. So if you find any, that's down to me.
Written for the prompt: Ianto is the one shot at the end of Reset...does he die, become the living dead or does Ianto find out he is immortal.
I know somebody gave me this prompt ages ago, and I can't remember who. So sorry for the wait whoever you are, I hope you're still around the fandom to read it.
It had all happened so quickly, Jack thought. One moment it had seemed like it had gone well or at least well as it ever went for Torchwood, and the next Doctor Copley was standing at the entrance to the Pharm, a gun pointed at them.
Before he'd been able to do anything Ianto had stepped forwards, putting himself between Martha and Copley, his hands raised placatingly. “It's over. Nobody else has to die.”
Copley gave a snarl of anger and pulled the trigger. The shot struck Ianto high in the chest, just below his collar bone and he crumpled to the ground.
Jack's own shot, fired scant seconds later, took Copley between the eyes, killing him instantly.
“Hold on, you're doing to just fine.” Jack dropped to his knees beside Ianto and pressed a hand over the wound. “Owen, Martha, get over here.”
Ianto stared up at him wide eyed in pain and shock. His mouth opened as if to speak, then closed as he died without a sound.
Behind him Jack heard Owen's sharp intake of breath and Gwen's half stifled sob. In front of him Martha put an arm around Tosh.
“I can fix this,” Jack said, voice scratchy with shock as he laid Ianto's body carefully down on the ground. He wiped blood from his hands where'd tried - failed - to stop the bleeding. “Take him home. I'll be back soon.”
“He's gone,” Martha said, sounding close to tears. She put a hand on his arm. “I'm so sorry, Jack. There's no way to fix this.”
“He's not staying like that.” Jack shook his head, fighting back tears. “I'm not letting him. He doesn't get to go, not like this. Not so soon.”
“Jack...” Gwen began.
“No. You just take him home, you take him back to the Hub.” Jack pushed past her then started to run.
“Let him go,” Owen said, catching hold of Gwen's arm. “He'll be back.”
“Will he? Will he really?” Gwen said staring after Jack.
X0X0X0X
The Hub was quiet when Jack arrived back with an ancient wooden box tucked under his arm. It had taken him a lot longer than he'd expected it to retrieve it; the crypt of the old church where it had been hidden for more than three centuries had been crawling with Weevils.
He'd felt a little guilty calling Martha and the team to meet him up on the Plas and then locking them out, but he knew they'd question what he was about to do and maybe even try to stop him. With what he had to try and to do, he didn't need any interruptions. Five minutes was all he needed to know one way or the other if it would work. It had to work Jack told himself and he hurried down the steps to the autopsy bay. It wasn't allowed to fail and leave him without Ianto for the rest of time. He'd given so damn much keeping the Earth safe with nothing in return for himself, surely this once he could be selfish and demand something in return?
He stopped as he saw Ianto lying on the autopsy table, naked apart from a sheet pulled up to his waist. The blood had been washed away, the wound a small, dark hole between his chest and shoulder. Jack'd seen death so many times before and it never got any easier, especially when the one who was dead was somebody you love.
“It's not ending like this.” Jack shook his head, smiling though tears were threatening to fall. “You're coming back to me Ianto Jones. You'd better believe it.”
Pausing only to take off his greatcoat, he opened the ancient chest. Inside, amongst crumbled remains of centuries old hay was a metal glove. “You always said they came in pairs,” Jack said conversationally to Ianto. “So after that I went looking. I guess I was worried at the time. I was scared you'd find it, maybe turn out like Suzie, hell I don't know, maybe I thought you'd try to bring Lisa back.”
He slipped the glove on and waited to feel the tug and shift of it. It was near immediate and Jack gasped. It felt different, like there was already something else there, something that was already trying to suck energy from him that should have been for Ianto. Angry and frustrated, he took the glove off and slammed it down on the table. He knew he couldn't risk using it with whatever was in it still there. What if it stopped it from working properly? What if it did something to Ianto?
Jack looked at it and then back at him. It had been years since he'd let somebody into his heart in the way that had somehow happened with Ianto and part of him hated the uncertainty and insecurity that came with loving someone, but he couldn't live without love either. He'd tried it, tried to spare himself and the men and women who would end up growing old while he remained the same that pain, but it had left him feeling more dead inside than the immortality ever had.
He'd even tried with Ianto, tried to tell himself it was just sex, that it was no different that picking a stranger up in a bar, that it was just a matter of convenience to have sex at work. Ianto had somehow seen past all that, seen past the brash, flirtatious exterior that had once been who he really was to see him a man who was as lost, lonely and scared as the rest of them. He'd seen him at his worst, whether that was letting a young girl go to save the world from the malevolent fairies, or sick and shaking after nightmares that too often haunted his dreams. And despite all that he wanted to remain at his side, wanted him to be with him for no other reason than love. After the year Jack had had he knew he needed Ianto with him, needed the quiet concern and odd sense of humour more than even the sex.
“I'm not going to let you down, not again,” Jack told Ianto as he picked the glove up and put it back on. If there was something in there it was just going to have to leave, he wasn't going to give it a choice.
“Hungry little thing, aren't you?” he remarked to the glove as he felt energy being pulled from him once more. It was a decidedly unpleasant sensation, not exactly painful, not yet. He knew it could easily become so. The glove felt heavier than it had before, the gaps between the articulations in its fingers filled with fire-flecked smoke.
“That's enough,” Jack said as he started to remove it again. “If you want more you come out here and make me put it back on again.”
The smoke, thick and grey and oily poured from the glove to form a writhing mass on the floor at Jack's feet. Jack leapt back as he felt it reach out for him, trying pull him in and suck him dry.
Denied its chance to feed, it shrieked, shrill and angry, the lights and windows shattering and showering the Hub in glass.
The systems designed to protect the Hub from alien incursion detected its presence and the alarms sounded as the automatic lock-down process was initiated, sealing them in. Jack smiled grimly. At least he wasn't going to get interrupted now.
The smoke-like creature that was rapidly solidifying into a stooped backed, long limbed humanoid figure seemed to realise that it was trapped and turned its half formed face to Jack. There was something ancient and malevolent in the glowing ember like eyes as it launched itself towards him. How something that was apparently still smoke-like and insubstantial could scratch like that Jack had no idea, but in moments his shirt was hanging in tatters, he was bloody and scratched, the entity had opened up his shoulders, back and chest. Not that he was going to let a little discomfort like that stop him.
The creature floated around the room, circling Jack, as it hissed, "I am hunger. I am loss. I am Death.”
There had to be a way of stopping it. Jack looked round for anything that could be used as a weapon, before realising that he was the most dangerous thing in the room. All he needed was for it to get closer.
"I am hunger. I am loss. I am..."
“Yeah, I get it already. You want something to eat?” Jack said, trying to ignore how the glove seemed hot enough to burn his hand, and pushed it into the centre of the now humanoid mass of smoke. “Well choke on this.”
It wasn't as bad as Abaddon, but it hurt and Jack was screaming before the creature gave one last ear-splitting shriek and exploded, stored energy rushing out in a wave that threw Jack backwards into the wall.
Exhausted, his throat raw, he got unsteadily to his feet and staggered back to the table. Part of him knew that that he almost certainly needed to rest before he tried again, but the other part knew that the longer the gap between death and using the glove, the less likely it was to succeed. His legs feel weak, like they were made of jelly. If he stumbled or fell while bringing Ianto back he'd break the connection, he lose him again. He couldn't risk it.
After a moments thought he kicked away the worse of the broken glass and laid his coat down as extra protection over the rest, and then lifted Ianto down from the autopsy table. Sitting on the floor, Jack cradled him in his arms. After pressing a kiss to Ianto's too cold lips he put the glove back on.
It felt cold, just bare metal around his fingers, no spark of anything. Jack took a shuddering breath, trying not to let despair creep in. Maybe the connection needed to be more than just a simple energy transfer; perhaps that was why he'd never been able to get the original glove to work. Maybe it needed mental connection as well. Like Gwen had, she'd wanted to bring Suzie back, she'd put everything into it, heart and soul and that wonderful stubbornness that had got her into Torchwood in the first place.
Every scrap of psychic training he'd received during his time at the Time Agency was screaming at him that this was the worse idea imaginable, but Jack did it anyway. Past caring about himself he dropped any shielding that he had, even the most basic parts that everybody had even though they didn't realise it and reached out to try and find Ianto's mind in the dark.
A second later Ianto gasped, his eyes snapping open. “I'm alive?” Before Jack could answer he glanced sideways and saw the glove. “Oh no, no. Oh god.” He stared at Jack is horror, trying to squirm away from the glove. “Jack why? Why would you do that? That thing...”
“Because I'm not ready to lose you,” Jack said voice cracking as he held him tighter, not willing to let him break the connection. “Now you fight, you hold on.”
“I can't. This shouldn't be happening.” Ianto's eyes closed again. “I'm sorry. I love you, I should have told you. I should...”
“You stay with me. Don't you dare go. Don't you leave me.” Jack pushed more energy through the connection, until his vision started greying at the edges, the dull ache in his shoulder became a fierce biting pain and he could feel the slow, slick slide of blood running down his chest and arm.
Gwen had said that that had happened with Suzie, that she'd felt the shot Suzie had killed herself with slowly boring into her brain. Jack gritted his teeth, he couldn't stop yet not even if it killed him. Just a little longer, he told himself, all he needed was to stay alive until all the damage had transferred to himself and Ianto was healed. It wouldn't matter if he died then, Ianto would be alright. He had to be alright.
Jack closed his eyes and tried to focus. It hurt to breathe, his shoulder was agony, while his arm felt numb and useless and hung limp at his side. He could feel death creeping in, the old familiar slide of life leaving him, so with one last effort he forced what energy he had left through the connection, before consciousness finally fled.
Part 2. http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/238632.html#cutid1