Torchwood Fic: Lessons from Yesterday
Title: Lessons from Yesterday
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Jack’s experiences have left him broken. Some old friends step in to help him through it.
Warnings: Angst like woah. But, not a depressing end, I think. A healing story for Jack, after the events of Exit Wounds.
Spoilers: Major for Exit Wounds.
Wordcount: 6131
~
Jack stood in his office, staring down at the lower level of the hub, and watched as Ianto and Gwen silently coordinated the cleaning of the mess - Tosh’s blood - from the floor and steps. They’d both come in early, Gwen for once in as soon as Ianto. Jack had stayed barricaded in his office, avoiding Gwen’s shattered looks and Ianto’s coffee, but now that they were preoccupied with the mundane tasks of death, he’d eased out of his chair, his body sore from grief, and walked over to the window to watch.
“You should be helping.”
Jack didn’t start. Instead, he reached up, and placed a hand on the glass.
“I should, shouldn’t I?” he murmured, watching the remains of his team for another moment before turning around to see Owen slouched in his chair.
“Still letting tea-boy clean up your messes?”
“No,” Jack said sharply. “Gwen’s helping- I-” Owen cut off his stuttering.
“Of everyone left, I would have thought you were best equipped to deal with the death of a friend,” he paused, looking thoughtful. “Two friends, I suppose. But then, I was already dead, wasn’t I?”
Jack sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets. “What are you doing here, Owen?”
Owen shrugged, spinning the chair back and forth. “Don’t know, mate. I was hoping you’d have some sort of an idea.”
“But you are a ghost? Right? Or have I gone insane?”
Owen’s face split into a grin. It wasn’t a pretty thing, or a cheerful thing; no, it was the kind of morbid smile only someone fully acquainted with both insanity and death could give. “You just spent two thousand years underground. Buried alive. You think you aren’t a little insane?”
He had a point. Jack walked over to the chair and reached out to push Owen in the chest. His hand went right through to the back of the chair, fingers pressing against the backrest, arm ending obscenely in Owen’s torso. Owen smirked.
“You’re not see-through,” Jack observed, wincing at the inane statement.
“Hate to disappoint. Again.”
“You didn’t disappoint,” Jack protested, but Owen cut him off with a wave of his hand (went straight through Jack’s arm on the way up, he noted) and a grimace.
“I’m not here for forgiveness, Jack. I know that much.”
“Then why are you here?” Jack asked again, frustrated. He had enough ghosts in his life. He didn’t need them manifesting around him.
Owen rolled the chair back and stood up.
“Tell you what, I find out, and I’ll let you know? Now, stop bothering with the dead and go help the living.” He gestured at the door. “Shoo!”
Jack shooed, musing for a moment at the absurdity of one of his dead employees shooing him from his own office. Wouldn’t Owen - the ghost - be bothering him, and not the other way around? When he looked back from the doorway, Owen was gone.
He was going crazy.
~
It was three days After before he ran into Toshiko. Jack had been down in the tunnels, sorting through some equipment, when the sudden panic overtook him. The walls started to close in, the damp smell of dirt, ever present in the lower levels, seeped into his nostrils and Jack took the short route to the surface, up the lift. He had just finished his blissful ascent out of the underground when she coughed.
“I’m assuming you want my attention,” he said, panic bleeding into hysteria as the sun (or rather, the wet grey light of your average day in Cardiff) appeared, “Since dead people really don’t need to be coughing.”
“Jack,” she said, warmly, and he could tell she was smiling but didn’t want to look. The smile she’d given him when she died had broken his heart, because it had said I love you and I forgive you and thank you and all sorts of other things Jack didn’t deserve to hear.
“Are you and Owen teaming up on me, or something? Drive the crazy man totally insane?” He turned to her, wishing he could grab her shoulders to shake her, trying anyway and failing. “Isn’t the grief enough?”
“Well, I can’t speak for Owen, but I’m not here to drive you insane,” she said calmly, reaching up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
“Then why are you here?” Jack asked, too exhausted to put any emotion behind it.
“I don’t know.”
“Fabulous,” replied Jack, staring out at the bay. He walked over to the railing separating shore from sea and leaned against it, breathing in the salt and chemicals that rose up from the water. Tosh came over and leaned next to him.
“I think I need a new base,” Jack said. He couldn’t work out if he was talking to Toshiko or himself.
“Having a hard time being underground?” she asked, clasping her hands together over the railing.
“Yeah. It’s dumb, I know.”
Toshiko looked over at him and rolled her eyes. “Only you could think that, Jack.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t have to be strong all the time,” she said, and Jack wasn’t sure if that was a non-sequitur or if she was answering his question.
“I’m their leader.”
“You’re human, too. Do you really think we begrudged you your humanity, ever?”
Jack pursed his lips and shook his head. “Ianto misses you. So does Gwen, but Ianto misses your company most. He doesn’t have anyone to talk to about the mainframe or the tech anymore.”
“He has you,” she pointed out. Jack shrugged.
“He’s been avoiding me.”
“Oh?” she said, her voice full of mock surprise. “Is that how it goes?” She knew this already, Jack realized. Did she know everything now?
“I’ve been avoiding him, too,” Jack admitted, rocking forward on his toes. “I don’t think we know what to say to each other.”
“Think of something quickly,” she said, putting a hand next to Jack’s.
“Why?”
“Because he’s coming over now.”
Jack spun around and scanned the surroundings, spotting Ianto coming over from the direction of the Tourist’s office. He looked quickly to his side; unsurprisingly, Toshiko was gone. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, leaning back against the railing as Ianto approached.
“Are you okay?” Ianto asked when he reached Jack, voice full of concern. Jack looked back at him for a long moment. Ianto shook himself and mirrored Jack, running a hand through his own hair. “Fuck, I’m sorry. Of course you’re not,” he said under his breath, concern morphing into distress. “That was a stupid question.”
“Just because you know the answer doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it when you ask,” Jack admonished. He watched Ianto digest that before spinning and returning to his contemplation of the waves. Ianto joined him, leaving a small space between their bodies that seemed like light years to Jack. He didn’t know how to fix this distance, bred over two thousand years of despair and death.
“How did you do it?” Ianto asked, adding “survive” when Jack looked at him curiously.
“I don’t have much of a choice in that department,” Jack pointed out. Ianto looked down at his hands, clasped the same way Toshiko’s had been a moment ago. Jack exhaled sharply, and reached out to take one of Ianto’s hands in his own.
“I had to. I needed to save you when I got out. I couldn’t afford to be a lunatic.” Ianto looked over at him, eyes wide and bright. “Wasn’t fast enough,” Jack admitted in a whisper, aloud for the first time.
“None of us were,” Ianto said, bleakly. “At least you had the excuse of-” He cut himself off, clenching his eyes shut and squeezing Jack’s hand.
They stood there in silence for a while. Jack tried to figure out what to say. It had never been hard, conversation with Ianto, but it was now. What did he say to him? I missed you, I missed you more than sunlight? I don’t care that it’s been two thousand years for me, I want to pretend we were never apart? I need you to pretend for me? They weren’t romantics. Think of something.
“I think we need a new base,” he heard himself saying. Ianto stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded, once.
“I’ll look into it.”
~
“Rhys is a good cook, and he likes company. It was his idea, actually,” Gwen finished, looking at Jack expectantly.
“Like a double date?” he asked, hating the puzzled hesitation in his voice. He wasn’t this person, he didn’t know who this person was, all lost and confused and slow to catch on.
“Like family, Jack. You and me and Ianto and Rhys. It would be good for us.” We’re here; her eyes seemed to say. Jack could hear the companion phrase, echoing loudly in his ears; we won’t be here forever.
“I couldn’t leave the Hub,” he said, looking down at the expanse of paperwork. Cardiff being blown up had produced more paperwork than anything else in his hundred and some years at Torchwood. Damned twenty-first century humans and their bureaucracy. He missed Gwen’s sigh, he was so lost in thought, and just caught her ‘alright, another time then’ as she left his office.
“I’d cuff you on the back of your head if I could, you know.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” replied Jack, sifting through the files on his desk.
“What do you think you’re accomplishing, sitting around here?” Owen demanded, coming round to stand in front of Jack’s desk.
“Paperwork?”
“Argh,” said Owen, throwing up his arms. “If they had to send me to haunt someone in my past, why the hell did it have to be you?”
“Penance?” Jack quipped.
“Probably. Look, what’s stopping you from going to Gwen’s little dinner? Enjoying yourself for once? I’m not going to hold a little happiness against you.”
The papers stopped moving as Jack’s fingers froze around them. “I can’t,” he whispered.
“Eat? I’m pretty sure that was the downside of my immortality, not yours.” Owen crossed his arms. “Some immortality that turned out to be.”
Jack dropped his head into his hands. “Be happy,” he said. “Owen, I… you’re a doctor. Tell me, what’s wrong with me?”
“Probably? PTSD of the highest order. Fortunately, you’re a stubborn bastard, so I suspect you’ll get over it.”
“I’ve lost so much,” Jack continued, almost not hearing Owen’s words. “It’s never been like this.”
“Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver,” Owen quoted. “Sophocles. I doubt you ever dated him.”
Jack looked up at Owen, seeing him properly for the first time. “For what is destined for us mortal men, there is no escape.”
“You’ve read Antigone.”
Jack shrugged. “He got it wrong. Death is the escape.”
“Well, you don’t bloody well have that option, do you now?” Owen snapped, slamming his hands down on Jack’s desk. “So buck up and get back out there, Harkness, because the world will wait for you.”
“That makes no sense.”
Owen let out a breath. “From where I’m standing, Jack, you have two options. Mourn for those who didn’t make it for however long you feel is necessary, or get back out there and love those who did.”
Jack shut his eyes. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t do this. Gwen and Rhys’s cheerful flat, conversation around a dinner table, warmth and companionship. His body was here but his heart was still buried under Cardiff and he didn’t think he had it in him to be merry. When he opened his eyes, Owen was still there.
“Not going away this time?”
“Not bloody likely. Not until you listen to me.”
“You’re dead.”
“You’re an idiot,” Owen replied, but there wasn’t any anger in his voice anymore. “Just try it, please? You might find it hard to believe, but watching you sit around empty is a little hard for my sensitive soul.”
Jack almost laughed at that, but reached for his comm. anyway. “If it’s the only way I’ll be able to get you to leave me alone…” Owen nodded. “Fine. Gwen?”
“Yes Jack?” Gwen’s voice crackled back.
“I cleared some things up, and I can do dinner tonight, if it’s good for everyone else.”
“It’s great,” said Gwen, and the utter cheer in her voice made Jack wince. “I’ll confirm with Ianto and let you know, okay?”
“Okay,” he said back, and flicked off the comm. True to his word, Owen was gone. Jack looked down at the paperwork on his desk. Report after report, requests for information on the weevils, the bombs, the nuclear plant, and the deaths of two members of his team. Jack reached out an arm and swept it all off his desk, watching in numb satisfaction as the papers fluttered through the air and settled to the floor in silence.
~
Life poured back into him and Jack sat up with a gasp, fighting for control of his reflexes and staring at Toshiko’s crouched form.
“You all right there?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jack wheezed, pulling himself to his knees and scrubbing blood off his mouth with the back of a hand. “Good as new. You know the drill.”
“Hm,” she said, standing up as he did. “Why are you weevil hunting alone?”
“Somebody has to,” Jack said shortly, looking around the alley for any sign of the aliens.
“You never let us go alone,” she reminded him.
“I did,” he answered.
“Not after we recruited Ianto. Once your team was big enough, you never went by yourself.”
“And now we’re down to three. If I didn’t let them sleep occasionally, I’d lose them as well.”
“Ianto would hate that you’re out here-”
“Alone, yes,” he snapped. “I get it, Toshiko. You think I’m out here, fighting aliens to pass the time, to stop the numbness, to forget, but I’m not.”
“What are you doing, then? You’ve died twice this evening. That’s careless, even for you.”
“Because somebody has to do it!” he cried, spreading his arms out. “Look, Tosh. All of Cardiff, still ignorant despite their close calls. Who else will protect them?”
“Torchwood, of course.”
“And right now, Torchwood is me.”
“And Gwen and Ianto?”
“They’re needed at the Hub. They need their sleep.”
“You’re protecting them, Jack.”
“Damn right I am,” he snarled, and immediately regretted it. Not that Tosh looked particularly disturbed. Rather, she looking like she wanted to give him a hug.
“You can’t protect all of us, all the time.”
“Watch me.”
“They’ll hate you for it, once they figure it out,” she frowned. “Ianto already realizes, doesn’t he?”
“He’s doing all the paperwork, running the mainframe, and sorting the archives. He doesn’t have time for anything else.”
“Which is why he hasn’t said anything. But he knows, Jack. Do you think he wants to be sheltered?”
“He’d not a field agent.”
“Bullshit,” she said calmly. “He’s come a long way in the past year, Jack. You and I both know it. He deserves to be a field agent, not just some secretary.”
“I still need one.”
“Then hire a new one,” Tosh said. “You have to start looking for a new doctor soon. And someone to handle the tech. You won’t find anyone as brilliant as me, but…” she trailed off with a grin.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” Jack said, suddenly finding the alley too dark and narrow, and heading out of it. “I already ruined Gwen’s life, bringing her into this.”
“You saved mine.”
“Don’t say that,” Jack said as he headed for a bench under the yellow glow of a nearby streetlamp. “You died because of me.”
“I died because of my job, Jack. I knew the risks. So did Owen. So do Gwen and Ianto, and so will whomever else you hire.”
Jack sank down on the bench. “This job is too dangerous. It’s not fair.”
“Is that why you think you should do it all? Because you’re ‘safe’?” she asked, sitting next to him. Jack leaned forward, elbows on knees, arms dangling down, and he nodded.
“You’re not safe, Jack. You just get to live. And the rest of us? It’s our planet, too. We have the right to defend it if we want. You don’t get to take that away from us.”
Jack exhaled and shut his eyes. He started to answer when his phone rang.
“It’s Ianto,” Tosh supplied as he dug into his coat. “He’s at the Hub, wondering where you are and why you don’t have a comm.”
Jack flipped open his phone and turned to Toshiko, but she was gone.
“Jack?” came Ianto’s voice from the other end. “Where the hell are you?”
God, thought Jack. He wished he knew.
~
Jack was outside Ianto’s flat, sitting against a low wall and flicking through a PDA, reading rift data. It had been two weeks, and he and Ianto had come to a steady sort of truce, neither pushing for anything more than the occasional cup of coffee and conversation. Jack had been trying to get a little sleep for the first time since his waking from cryostasis, but the whole lying on his back part had been too much to take, and had left him tense and jittery. He’d left the Hub in a hurry, and had driven around for an hour before finding himself parked outside of Ianto’s flat.
“Are you just going to sit out here all night?”
Jack jumped, and then sighed. He should be getting used to his ghosts by now. They were his ghosts, after all; both as ghosts who came to him and as ghosts made by him, indirectly as that might be.
“A man can’t get any peace and quiet anymore, can he?”
“If you were a man, you’d be able to talk to Ianto.”
Jack resolutely didn’t look up from the PDA, flicking through yesterday’s data. “I thought you didn’t approve of my relationship with Ianto.”
“Not then, I didn’t. I was jealous. Thought you were just shagging him-”
“Why, Owen, I didn’t know you were interested,” Jack smirked.
“-and I know better now,” Owen finished loudly. “I didn’t want to shag you, you arrogant sod. I wanted your attention.”
Jack looked up at that, but he didn’t want to talk about Owen. Owen being here at all was hard enough - talking to his ghost about how Jack failed him would be too much. “What do you know now?”
“That he shags you just as often,” Owen said, grinning, and then held up his hands at Jack’s less than amused look. “I know that you love him. And that for some ballsed-up reason, I’m sure, he loves you,” Owen said, shifting on the stones. “Never had much sense in love, tea-boy did.”
“I don’t think it matters,” Jack admitted, putting the PDA down beside him.
“Doesn’t matter than he loves you? Or that you love him?”
“Both. Either. Us, together. It was a bad idea.”
“You hardly are one for abstaining,” Owen pointed out. “You telling me you’re going to be alone for the rest of eternity?”
“It’s not the sex I’m talking about.”
“Of course it’s not,” said Owen, rolling his eyes. “It’s the bloody love. What are you so afraid of? Losing him? Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if you push him away, isn’t it?”
“Some of it’s that,” Jack said, pulling a leg up and resting his chin on it. “But, Owen, I’m not the same person I was two weeks ago, by his reckoning. I’m - I’m almost a hundred times his age. What can I possibly give him that isn’t heartbreak?”
“I don’t think he’s asking for anything.”
“He still deserves more.”
“Nobody deserves anything, Jack,” Owen said, more softly than was usual. “Haven’t you figured that out by now? The world doesn’t work on Karmic principles. Bad shit happens to good people, bad people walk away with the prizes. The best anyone can hope for is a little happiness.”
“Cynical.”
“Not cynical. If we all got what we deserved, we’d all be fucked, don’t you think?”
Jack considered. Part of him suspected the universe had repaid him a thousand times over for his sins, but then, time was on the universe’s side.
“What makes you think he can find happiness with me?”
“Two thousand years old and you still don’t understand the power of love?”
“You’re hardly someone to be lecturing me about it,” Jack snapped, and then regretted it. Owen had loved, he knew that better than anyone else had at Torchwood. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, whatever, Harkness. Don’t tell it to me. I’m dead, there’s no peace to be found here. But up there,” he jerked his head towards Ianto’s window, “you’ve got a chance.”
“Is peace what I need?” Jack wondered aloud.
“Peace, yes. And courage, to go on. A reason to go on.”
“I go on anyway.”
“As a shadow? As a broken man, living for everyone but himself?” Owen shook his head. “I’ve done that, Jack. I’ve walked around like a dead man - actually, as a dead man - thinking there was no reason to go on. But there always is. Not in you, you’ll never find it if you stay wrapped inside your own head, surrounded by ghosts and demons. Out there, though, there are people. People just as - well, almost as - fucked up as you, waiting for someone to make their life worth living. Ianto’s waiting for you, and he will keep waiting until you get the fuck up there and tell him you still love him.”
Jack shut his eyes and shivered, pulling his arms around himself. “There’s nothing left in me, Owen. Just ghosts and sorrow.”
“So find something new to put in. You don’t have to be the one giving, all the time. Lord knows Ianto likes to take care of us all, you included. Let him, for once.”
They sat in silence for a while, the night cooling around them and making Jack shiver. Jack thought about all the times Ianto had come to him after those shitty, shitty days, even before they had fallen into bed together. Ianto had been the one who talked to him after he’d given up Jasmine, who’d told him he’d done the right thing after killing Suzie, who’d told him there was nothing he could do when John killed himself. How had he missed how much he’d relied on Ianto to pick up the pieces when things started falling apart?
“What if-” he started, but Owen interrupted.
“No more what ifs, Jack. I know you’re a mess right now, but you don’t have to be alone.”
“What about you? And Tosh? Are you just here to keep me from going mad?” Jack asked. If they weren’t evidence that he was completely batty in the first place.
“We won’t be here forever,” Owen said, and Jack wasn’t sure if he was scared or relieved to hear that.
“When do you go?”
“I don’t know, mate. I think that’s up to you.”
Jack took a breath and stood up, tucking the PDA into a pocket of his greatcoat. He glanced at Owen and then walked up the stairs to the building entrance, opening the door with his key. He didn’t need to look back to know Owen had vanished.
He climbed up a flight of stairs and came to Ianto’s flat, knocking on the door softly. It was nearly two in the morning, so chances are Ianto wouldn’t hear him - but no, there was the sound of bare feet coming up to the door, the latch clicking open and the door swinging in, just a little, so Ianto could look out. When he registered Jack behind it, he swung the door fully open. He was in a threadbare t-shirt and drawstring trousers, but the television was on, low in the background, so it looked like Jack wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping.
“Jack,” he said, stepping back so Jack could come in, and then closing the door behind him. Ianto reached over to take Jack’s coat from his shoulders, only to hesitate at the last moment. “Are you staying?”
Jack nodded, and turned so Ianto could slip the coat from his shoulders, and watched as Ianto opened his closet and found a hanger.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said, voice just above a whisper. Ianto finished hanging the coat and turned back to him.
“What for?”
“For not being the same.”
“I don’t think it matters,” Ianto said with a sad smile, echoing Jack’s earlier words, and then walked over to the couch, grabbing the remote and flicking off the TV.
“No?”
“No,” said Ianto, coming back and taking Jack’s hand, tugging him along. “You weren’t gone for a whole day, for me. It didn’t change after you’d been gone for months, why would it change now?”
“I can’t promise you anything, Ianto,” Jack warned as Ianto steered him into the bedroom. “A lot-I forgot what you looked like, did you know that?”
Ianto pushed him onto the bed and then bent down, unlacing his boots and pulling them off with gentle hands.
“I’m not surprised.”
Something in his gentle acceptance infuriated Jack, who clamped down on his shoulders and pulled him up so Ianto was kneeling in front of him, face turned upwards and impassive.
“Every time I woke up, I tried to remember you all. What you looked like, what we ate on our last date, how you feel when you’re inside me, what your coffee tastes like. But every time I could remember a little less. I couldn’t remember your face, Ianto,” Jack cried, shaking him roughly.
Ianto licked his lower lip, tongue flicking out for the barest moment. “Did you recognize me?”
The anger slipped out of Jack as quickly as it had come. “Of course.”
“Then it’s okay, Jack,” said Ianto, still on his knees but pressing forward between Jack’s legs. “You don’t have to remember everything we had. You just have to want to try and have it again.” He stroked his hands over Jack’s thighs. “I’m assuming that’s why you’re here, at least.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jack said.
“Then don’t give up on me,” Ianto said sharply, his composure breaking. “God, Jack. I know we can’t go back to what we had, but don’t assume I don’t want to try to make something new. Don’t make these decisions for me. You’re not alone in this.”
Jack stared down at him. Waking up and dying to the realization that he couldn’t picture Ianto’s face anymore had been - well, there weren’t really any words for it. More horrific than the horror that was being buried alive in the first place. It seemed like so long ago, eons, ages, centuries, millennia since he had held him. What was stopping him from picking Ianto up and pulling him down on the bed and kissing him, kissing him for the first time in more lifetimes than Jack had been able to imagine, before?
It was always the same; fear. Jack wasn’t a coward, but something about this had frozen him in place, unable to move forward but unable to go back, too weak to give up his remaining ties to Torchwood. His mind was screaming at him; do something, kiss him, tell him you still love him, but he was stuck, frozen to the bed by his own, damnable fear.
It was Ianto who had all the courage, in the end. It was Ianto who stood up and crawled onto the bed beside him, who urged him up it until they were lying side by side, who took Jack’s hand in his own as he kissed him, and suddenly Jack remembered what Ianto tasted like. Remembered how he felt, arching beneath him in passion, hands scrabbling at Jack’s back and lips pressed against his neck, panting hot breaths and short Jacks and Gods and harders.
Jack’s eyes snapped open and he rolled over top of Ianto, eyes wide and mouth open with the shock of ancient memories assaulting his senses.
“I remember,” he breathed, kissing Ianto once, twice, three times, saying again and again “I remember, I remember, I remember.”
~
He saw Toshiko in the hospital next. He was dozing on a couch in the best room Torchwood’s name could procure, Ianto’s head pillowed in his lap and Gwen’s by the standard hospital-issue pillows on the bed. Rhys had gone home for half an hour to fetch some of Gwen’s things, and he (and Ianto, though Ianto had long since surrendered to the lure of sleep) was standing guard.
“Are you here to tell me this isn’t my fault?” he said, pre-empting her as she came into the room and leaned over Gwen.
“She’s going to be alright,” she said in the voice she used (had used) when a mission was succeeding after a close call.
“So they say.”
“I suppose I am,” Tosh said, answering his first question as she hopped up on the hospital bed at Gwen’s feet and pulled her legs under her. “I see Owen got you to let yourself find a little happiness, for once.”
Jack looked down at Ianto’s face, buried in his thigh and softened by sleep. Jack traced an alien alphabet on his back.
“Yeah. I should thank him.”
“I don’t think you’ll see him again.”
Jack’s head snapped up, taking in Toshiko’s petite, graceful form curled up on the bed.
“Oh,” he said, faintly. “I thought… I was just starting to get used to the idea of having you around forever.”
“He wasn’t here to keep you company,” she said as she smiled at him.
“What was he here for?”
“To remind you to live.”
Jack frowned at that. “And then what are you here for?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I think if Owen was here to tell you to live, I’m here to tell you to accept that we die.”
“I thought I’d done that already,” Jack said, but it wasn’t a protest; his voice was hoarse with regret and defeat.
“You still blame yourself,” she said, sliding forward on the bed so her legs dangled off the side, her small feet linked together. “For me, and for Owen.”
“You were my responsibility. So is Gwen. And yet here she is, recovering from near-fatal injuries. What kind of leader am I if I can’t keep my people safe?”
“Jack,” she admonished. “You’ve lead men and women in more wars than any other human alive. You know that you can’t stop people from dying.”
Jack nodded and looked down, tracing a finger over Ianto’s ear. “If I know that, then why are you here?”
“Gwen’s not going to blame you when she wakes up. I don’t blame you, and neither did Owen. And when Ianto-”
“Don’t,” he said sharply.
“And when Ianto gets hurt, he won’t blame you either. We follow you willingly. And we’d be far worse off if it weren’t for your leadership.”
“You’ve said this much before,” he pointed out tiredly. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“You’re going to live for a lot longer, Jack. If you let everyone take something from you when they die, you’re going to be a broken shell of a man before too long.”
Jack laughed, harsh and too loud and Ianto shifted in his lap. “Are you telling me I’m not already?”
“Yes,” Tosh said firmly, slipping off the bed and coming to stand in front of him. “You already know how to survive this. I need you to promise me you’ll do it.”
“How do I survive it?” he asked, helplessly. “How do I survive it, Tosh? You tell me, because you are so wrong. I have no idea. How do I stop a little piece of me from dying every time one of my loved ones dies? How is that possible?”
“You take something back,” she said, reaching out for a moment as if to touch his face, and then pulling back. “They take a piece of you to the grave, but we get to live forever in you. Hold on to us, Jack. Remember us.”
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I’ll forget. I forgot your faces. I forgot your smells.”
“Did you forget that you loved us?”
Jack shook his head.
“Then you’re okay, Jack. You’re okay. Because that’s all you need to remember.”
Jack let out a sob and covered his face with one hand. “Toshiko, I-” he started, but a nurse walked in and when he uncovered his face Tosh was gone. Panic welled in him. What if she didn’t come back? What if Owen didn’t come back, like she said? He couldn't do this alone, he didn’t know how to live anymore. Two thousand years spent dying, and he couldn’t remember how to live.
“Jack?” came Ianto’s voice from his lap, full of sleep and a deeper kind of exhaustion, the kind that comes from saving your friend’s life. “Who are you talking to?”
Jack shook his head, trying to quell the thoughts in his mind. “I think I’ve gone crazy, Ianto.” Ianto sat up and leaned against him.
“No, you haven’t,” he said simply. “You can be hurting and not be crazy, you know.”
Jack opened his mouth to tell Ianto about Toshiko and Owen, but stopped. “What happens if you die, Ianto? While in the line of duty?”
Ianto looked surprised at the blunt question, but a glance at Gwen’s bed seemed to give reason to the non-sequitur. “Are you asking what happens to me, or what happens to you? Because as for the former, I have no idea.”
“Would you resent me? If I sent you to your death.”
Ianto, of all things, looked amused. “I rather suspect I won’t be resenting much of anything after I die.” His half smile turned into a frown. “You can’t blame yourself for our deaths. They’re all going to happen.”
“Sooner rather than later, if I’m involved.”
“Perhaps,” Ianto shrugged. “Perhaps not. But life, Jack. Life isn’t worth anything unless you live it, and I don’t know about the others, but I’ve never felt so alive as when I’ve worked for you. Even Torchwood London was nothing compared to this. What Toshiko said, in her message? You showed her all the wonders of the universe? We wouldn’t be half as alive if it weren’t for you. So don’t think we resent you, in any shape or form, for the increased risk to our lives.”
Jack leaned forward, cupping his mouth in his hands and resting his elbows on his knees. He could do this without them, he thought. Save the world on his own, never forming any real attachments. Like the Doctor. But even the Doctor, with his detachment and flippant attitude and lack of humanity sometimes loved so hard it hurt. If he failed, what chance did Jack have of succeeding?
“I need you,” he said, softly. “I need you, and I need Gwen. I needed Toshiko and Owen, too. I can’t do this without you.”
“So don’t,” Ianto implored, resting a hand on the back of Jack’s neck.
“And when you’re gone?”
“You find someone new to love.” Ianto squeezed lightly at Jack’s scoff. “You’re a man who knows how to love, Jack. Moving on is never going to be easy, but trying to stop loving people? That’s impossible.”
“So I move on.”
“So you move on,” Ianto agreed.
They sat in silence for a long while, and Jack watched Gwen’s chest rise and fall with each breath. He could do this, he thought. Cherish each breath out of their frail, mortal bodies. Love each moment, good or bad. And when they go, he could let them go, placing down their bodies and carrying the memory of their spirits. Jack wrapped his arm around Ianto’s shoulders and pulled him in, Ianto’s face buried in his neck. It wouldn’t be fun, but it would be better than the alternative.
Suddenly, Tosh was in the room, standing by the door. Their gazes locked, and she smiled at him. He smiled back, pulling Ianto in closer so he couldn’t see, and kept his eyes open for as long as he could, but inevitably, instinct won out and he blinked, and she was gone.
They all would be, someday. But that was someday, and this was now.
~
Comment, you people who are sneaking away! You read that whole thing, it'll only take a moment to let me know what you thought. Love/hate/favourite lines?
Rating: PG-13 for language
Summary: Jack’s experiences have left him broken. Some old friends step in to help him through it.
Warnings: Angst like woah. But, not a depressing end, I think. A healing story for Jack, after the events of Exit Wounds.
Spoilers: Major for Exit Wounds.
Wordcount: 6131
~
Jack stood in his office, staring down at the lower level of the hub, and watched as Ianto and Gwen silently coordinated the cleaning of the mess - Tosh’s blood - from the floor and steps. They’d both come in early, Gwen for once in as soon as Ianto. Jack had stayed barricaded in his office, avoiding Gwen’s shattered looks and Ianto’s coffee, but now that they were preoccupied with the mundane tasks of death, he’d eased out of his chair, his body sore from grief, and walked over to the window to watch.
“You should be helping.”
Jack didn’t start. Instead, he reached up, and placed a hand on the glass.
“I should, shouldn’t I?” he murmured, watching the remains of his team for another moment before turning around to see Owen slouched in his chair.
“Still letting tea-boy clean up your messes?”
“No,” Jack said sharply. “Gwen’s helping- I-” Owen cut off his stuttering.
“Of everyone left, I would have thought you were best equipped to deal with the death of a friend,” he paused, looking thoughtful. “Two friends, I suppose. But then, I was already dead, wasn’t I?”
Jack sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets. “What are you doing here, Owen?”
Owen shrugged, spinning the chair back and forth. “Don’t know, mate. I was hoping you’d have some sort of an idea.”
“But you are a ghost? Right? Or have I gone insane?”
Owen’s face split into a grin. It wasn’t a pretty thing, or a cheerful thing; no, it was the kind of morbid smile only someone fully acquainted with both insanity and death could give. “You just spent two thousand years underground. Buried alive. You think you aren’t a little insane?”
He had a point. Jack walked over to the chair and reached out to push Owen in the chest. His hand went right through to the back of the chair, fingers pressing against the backrest, arm ending obscenely in Owen’s torso. Owen smirked.
“You’re not see-through,” Jack observed, wincing at the inane statement.
“Hate to disappoint. Again.”
“You didn’t disappoint,” Jack protested, but Owen cut him off with a wave of his hand (went straight through Jack’s arm on the way up, he noted) and a grimace.
“I’m not here for forgiveness, Jack. I know that much.”
“Then why are you here?” Jack asked again, frustrated. He had enough ghosts in his life. He didn’t need them manifesting around him.
Owen rolled the chair back and stood up.
“Tell you what, I find out, and I’ll let you know? Now, stop bothering with the dead and go help the living.” He gestured at the door. “Shoo!”
Jack shooed, musing for a moment at the absurdity of one of his dead employees shooing him from his own office. Wouldn’t Owen - the ghost - be bothering him, and not the other way around? When he looked back from the doorway, Owen was gone.
He was going crazy.
~
It was three days After before he ran into Toshiko. Jack had been down in the tunnels, sorting through some equipment, when the sudden panic overtook him. The walls started to close in, the damp smell of dirt, ever present in the lower levels, seeped into his nostrils and Jack took the short route to the surface, up the lift. He had just finished his blissful ascent out of the underground when she coughed.
“I’m assuming you want my attention,” he said, panic bleeding into hysteria as the sun (or rather, the wet grey light of your average day in Cardiff) appeared, “Since dead people really don’t need to be coughing.”
“Jack,” she said, warmly, and he could tell she was smiling but didn’t want to look. The smile she’d given him when she died had broken his heart, because it had said I love you and I forgive you and thank you and all sorts of other things Jack didn’t deserve to hear.
“Are you and Owen teaming up on me, or something? Drive the crazy man totally insane?” He turned to her, wishing he could grab her shoulders to shake her, trying anyway and failing. “Isn’t the grief enough?”
“Well, I can’t speak for Owen, but I’m not here to drive you insane,” she said calmly, reaching up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear.
“Then why are you here?” Jack asked, too exhausted to put any emotion behind it.
“I don’t know.”
“Fabulous,” replied Jack, staring out at the bay. He walked over to the railing separating shore from sea and leaned against it, breathing in the salt and chemicals that rose up from the water. Tosh came over and leaned next to him.
“I think I need a new base,” Jack said. He couldn’t work out if he was talking to Toshiko or himself.
“Having a hard time being underground?” she asked, clasping her hands together over the railing.
“Yeah. It’s dumb, I know.”
Toshiko looked over at him and rolled her eyes. “Only you could think that, Jack.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You don’t have to be strong all the time,” she said, and Jack wasn’t sure if that was a non-sequitur or if she was answering his question.
“I’m their leader.”
“You’re human, too. Do you really think we begrudged you your humanity, ever?”
Jack pursed his lips and shook his head. “Ianto misses you. So does Gwen, but Ianto misses your company most. He doesn’t have anyone to talk to about the mainframe or the tech anymore.”
“He has you,” she pointed out. Jack shrugged.
“He’s been avoiding me.”
“Oh?” she said, her voice full of mock surprise. “Is that how it goes?” She knew this already, Jack realized. Did she know everything now?
“I’ve been avoiding him, too,” Jack admitted, rocking forward on his toes. “I don’t think we know what to say to each other.”
“Think of something quickly,” she said, putting a hand next to Jack’s.
“Why?”
“Because he’s coming over now.”
Jack spun around and scanned the surroundings, spotting Ianto coming over from the direction of the Tourist’s office. He looked quickly to his side; unsurprisingly, Toshiko was gone. He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, leaning back against the railing as Ianto approached.
“Are you okay?” Ianto asked when he reached Jack, voice full of concern. Jack looked back at him for a long moment. Ianto shook himself and mirrored Jack, running a hand through his own hair. “Fuck, I’m sorry. Of course you’re not,” he said under his breath, concern morphing into distress. “That was a stupid question.”
“Just because you know the answer doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate it when you ask,” Jack admonished. He watched Ianto digest that before spinning and returning to his contemplation of the waves. Ianto joined him, leaving a small space between their bodies that seemed like light years to Jack. He didn’t know how to fix this distance, bred over two thousand years of despair and death.
“How did you do it?” Ianto asked, adding “survive” when Jack looked at him curiously.
“I don’t have much of a choice in that department,” Jack pointed out. Ianto looked down at his hands, clasped the same way Toshiko’s had been a moment ago. Jack exhaled sharply, and reached out to take one of Ianto’s hands in his own.
“I had to. I needed to save you when I got out. I couldn’t afford to be a lunatic.” Ianto looked over at him, eyes wide and bright. “Wasn’t fast enough,” Jack admitted in a whisper, aloud for the first time.
“None of us were,” Ianto said, bleakly. “At least you had the excuse of-” He cut himself off, clenching his eyes shut and squeezing Jack’s hand.
They stood there in silence for a while. Jack tried to figure out what to say. It had never been hard, conversation with Ianto, but it was now. What did he say to him? I missed you, I missed you more than sunlight? I don’t care that it’s been two thousand years for me, I want to pretend we were never apart? I need you to pretend for me? They weren’t romantics. Think of something.
“I think we need a new base,” he heard himself saying. Ianto stared at him for a long moment, and then nodded, once.
“I’ll look into it.”
~
“Rhys is a good cook, and he likes company. It was his idea, actually,” Gwen finished, looking at Jack expectantly.
“Like a double date?” he asked, hating the puzzled hesitation in his voice. He wasn’t this person, he didn’t know who this person was, all lost and confused and slow to catch on.
“Like family, Jack. You and me and Ianto and Rhys. It would be good for us.” We’re here; her eyes seemed to say. Jack could hear the companion phrase, echoing loudly in his ears; we won’t be here forever.
“I couldn’t leave the Hub,” he said, looking down at the expanse of paperwork. Cardiff being blown up had produced more paperwork than anything else in his hundred and some years at Torchwood. Damned twenty-first century humans and their bureaucracy. He missed Gwen’s sigh, he was so lost in thought, and just caught her ‘alright, another time then’ as she left his office.
“I’d cuff you on the back of your head if I could, you know.”
“Thanks for letting me know,” replied Jack, sifting through the files on his desk.
“What do you think you’re accomplishing, sitting around here?” Owen demanded, coming round to stand in front of Jack’s desk.
“Paperwork?”
“Argh,” said Owen, throwing up his arms. “If they had to send me to haunt someone in my past, why the hell did it have to be you?”
“Penance?” Jack quipped.
“Probably. Look, what’s stopping you from going to Gwen’s little dinner? Enjoying yourself for once? I’m not going to hold a little happiness against you.”
The papers stopped moving as Jack’s fingers froze around them. “I can’t,” he whispered.
“Eat? I’m pretty sure that was the downside of my immortality, not yours.” Owen crossed his arms. “Some immortality that turned out to be.”
Jack dropped his head into his hands. “Be happy,” he said. “Owen, I… you’re a doctor. Tell me, what’s wrong with me?”
“Probably? PTSD of the highest order. Fortunately, you’re a stubborn bastard, so I suspect you’ll get over it.”
“I’ve lost so much,” Jack continued, almost not hearing Owen’s words. “It’s never been like this.”
“Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver,” Owen quoted. “Sophocles. I doubt you ever dated him.”
Jack looked up at Owen, seeing him properly for the first time. “For what is destined for us mortal men, there is no escape.”
“You’ve read Antigone.”
Jack shrugged. “He got it wrong. Death is the escape.”
“Well, you don’t bloody well have that option, do you now?” Owen snapped, slamming his hands down on Jack’s desk. “So buck up and get back out there, Harkness, because the world will wait for you.”
“That makes no sense.”
Owen let out a breath. “From where I’m standing, Jack, you have two options. Mourn for those who didn’t make it for however long you feel is necessary, or get back out there and love those who did.”
Jack shut his eyes. He couldn’t do this, he couldn’t do this. Gwen and Rhys’s cheerful flat, conversation around a dinner table, warmth and companionship. His body was here but his heart was still buried under Cardiff and he didn’t think he had it in him to be merry. When he opened his eyes, Owen was still there.
“Not going away this time?”
“Not bloody likely. Not until you listen to me.”
“You’re dead.”
“You’re an idiot,” Owen replied, but there wasn’t any anger in his voice anymore. “Just try it, please? You might find it hard to believe, but watching you sit around empty is a little hard for my sensitive soul.”
Jack almost laughed at that, but reached for his comm. anyway. “If it’s the only way I’ll be able to get you to leave me alone…” Owen nodded. “Fine. Gwen?”
“Yes Jack?” Gwen’s voice crackled back.
“I cleared some things up, and I can do dinner tonight, if it’s good for everyone else.”
“It’s great,” said Gwen, and the utter cheer in her voice made Jack wince. “I’ll confirm with Ianto and let you know, okay?”
“Okay,” he said back, and flicked off the comm. True to his word, Owen was gone. Jack looked down at the paperwork on his desk. Report after report, requests for information on the weevils, the bombs, the nuclear plant, and the deaths of two members of his team. Jack reached out an arm and swept it all off his desk, watching in numb satisfaction as the papers fluttered through the air and settled to the floor in silence.
~
Life poured back into him and Jack sat up with a gasp, fighting for control of his reflexes and staring at Toshiko’s crouched form.
“You all right there?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jack wheezed, pulling himself to his knees and scrubbing blood off his mouth with the back of a hand. “Good as new. You know the drill.”
“Hm,” she said, standing up as he did. “Why are you weevil hunting alone?”
“Somebody has to,” Jack said shortly, looking around the alley for any sign of the aliens.
“You never let us go alone,” she reminded him.
“I did,” he answered.
“Not after we recruited Ianto. Once your team was big enough, you never went by yourself.”
“And now we’re down to three. If I didn’t let them sleep occasionally, I’d lose them as well.”
“Ianto would hate that you’re out here-”
“Alone, yes,” he snapped. “I get it, Toshiko. You think I’m out here, fighting aliens to pass the time, to stop the numbness, to forget, but I’m not.”
“What are you doing, then? You’ve died twice this evening. That’s careless, even for you.”
“Because somebody has to do it!” he cried, spreading his arms out. “Look, Tosh. All of Cardiff, still ignorant despite their close calls. Who else will protect them?”
“Torchwood, of course.”
“And right now, Torchwood is me.”
“And Gwen and Ianto?”
“They’re needed at the Hub. They need their sleep.”
“You’re protecting them, Jack.”
“Damn right I am,” he snarled, and immediately regretted it. Not that Tosh looked particularly disturbed. Rather, she looking like she wanted to give him a hug.
“You can’t protect all of us, all the time.”
“Watch me.”
“They’ll hate you for it, once they figure it out,” she frowned. “Ianto already realizes, doesn’t he?”
“He’s doing all the paperwork, running the mainframe, and sorting the archives. He doesn’t have time for anything else.”
“Which is why he hasn’t said anything. But he knows, Jack. Do you think he wants to be sheltered?”
“He’d not a field agent.”
“Bullshit,” she said calmly. “He’s come a long way in the past year, Jack. You and I both know it. He deserves to be a field agent, not just some secretary.”
“I still need one.”
“Then hire a new one,” Tosh said. “You have to start looking for a new doctor soon. And someone to handle the tech. You won’t find anyone as brilliant as me, but…” she trailed off with a grin.
“I don’t know if I can do it,” Jack said, suddenly finding the alley too dark and narrow, and heading out of it. “I already ruined Gwen’s life, bringing her into this.”
“You saved mine.”
“Don’t say that,” Jack said as he headed for a bench under the yellow glow of a nearby streetlamp. “You died because of me.”
“I died because of my job, Jack. I knew the risks. So did Owen. So do Gwen and Ianto, and so will whomever else you hire.”
Jack sank down on the bench. “This job is too dangerous. It’s not fair.”
“Is that why you think you should do it all? Because you’re ‘safe’?” she asked, sitting next to him. Jack leaned forward, elbows on knees, arms dangling down, and he nodded.
“You’re not safe, Jack. You just get to live. And the rest of us? It’s our planet, too. We have the right to defend it if we want. You don’t get to take that away from us.”
Jack exhaled and shut his eyes. He started to answer when his phone rang.
“It’s Ianto,” Tosh supplied as he dug into his coat. “He’s at the Hub, wondering where you are and why you don’t have a comm.”
Jack flipped open his phone and turned to Toshiko, but she was gone.
“Jack?” came Ianto’s voice from the other end. “Where the hell are you?”
God, thought Jack. He wished he knew.
~
Jack was outside Ianto’s flat, sitting against a low wall and flicking through a PDA, reading rift data. It had been two weeks, and he and Ianto had come to a steady sort of truce, neither pushing for anything more than the occasional cup of coffee and conversation. Jack had been trying to get a little sleep for the first time since his waking from cryostasis, but the whole lying on his back part had been too much to take, and had left him tense and jittery. He’d left the Hub in a hurry, and had driven around for an hour before finding himself parked outside of Ianto’s flat.
“Are you just going to sit out here all night?”
Jack jumped, and then sighed. He should be getting used to his ghosts by now. They were his ghosts, after all; both as ghosts who came to him and as ghosts made by him, indirectly as that might be.
“A man can’t get any peace and quiet anymore, can he?”
“If you were a man, you’d be able to talk to Ianto.”
Jack resolutely didn’t look up from the PDA, flicking through yesterday’s data. “I thought you didn’t approve of my relationship with Ianto.”
“Not then, I didn’t. I was jealous. Thought you were just shagging him-”
“Why, Owen, I didn’t know you were interested,” Jack smirked.
“-and I know better now,” Owen finished loudly. “I didn’t want to shag you, you arrogant sod. I wanted your attention.”
Jack looked up at that, but he didn’t want to talk about Owen. Owen being here at all was hard enough - talking to his ghost about how Jack failed him would be too much. “What do you know now?”
“That he shags you just as often,” Owen said, grinning, and then held up his hands at Jack’s less than amused look. “I know that you love him. And that for some ballsed-up reason, I’m sure, he loves you,” Owen said, shifting on the stones. “Never had much sense in love, tea-boy did.”
“I don’t think it matters,” Jack admitted, putting the PDA down beside him.
“Doesn’t matter than he loves you? Or that you love him?”
“Both. Either. Us, together. It was a bad idea.”
“You hardly are one for abstaining,” Owen pointed out. “You telling me you’re going to be alone for the rest of eternity?”
“It’s not the sex I’m talking about.”
“Of course it’s not,” said Owen, rolling his eyes. “It’s the bloody love. What are you so afraid of? Losing him? Bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy if you push him away, isn’t it?”
“Some of it’s that,” Jack said, pulling a leg up and resting his chin on it. “But, Owen, I’m not the same person I was two weeks ago, by his reckoning. I’m - I’m almost a hundred times his age. What can I possibly give him that isn’t heartbreak?”
“I don’t think he’s asking for anything.”
“He still deserves more.”
“Nobody deserves anything, Jack,” Owen said, more softly than was usual. “Haven’t you figured that out by now? The world doesn’t work on Karmic principles. Bad shit happens to good people, bad people walk away with the prizes. The best anyone can hope for is a little happiness.”
“Cynical.”
“Not cynical. If we all got what we deserved, we’d all be fucked, don’t you think?”
Jack considered. Part of him suspected the universe had repaid him a thousand times over for his sins, but then, time was on the universe’s side.
“What makes you think he can find happiness with me?”
“Two thousand years old and you still don’t understand the power of love?”
“You’re hardly someone to be lecturing me about it,” Jack snapped, and then regretted it. Owen had loved, he knew that better than anyone else had at Torchwood. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, whatever, Harkness. Don’t tell it to me. I’m dead, there’s no peace to be found here. But up there,” he jerked his head towards Ianto’s window, “you’ve got a chance.”
“Is peace what I need?” Jack wondered aloud.
“Peace, yes. And courage, to go on. A reason to go on.”
“I go on anyway.”
“As a shadow? As a broken man, living for everyone but himself?” Owen shook his head. “I’ve done that, Jack. I’ve walked around like a dead man - actually, as a dead man - thinking there was no reason to go on. But there always is. Not in you, you’ll never find it if you stay wrapped inside your own head, surrounded by ghosts and demons. Out there, though, there are people. People just as - well, almost as - fucked up as you, waiting for someone to make their life worth living. Ianto’s waiting for you, and he will keep waiting until you get the fuck up there and tell him you still love him.”
Jack shut his eyes and shivered, pulling his arms around himself. “There’s nothing left in me, Owen. Just ghosts and sorrow.”
“So find something new to put in. You don’t have to be the one giving, all the time. Lord knows Ianto likes to take care of us all, you included. Let him, for once.”
They sat in silence for a while, the night cooling around them and making Jack shiver. Jack thought about all the times Ianto had come to him after those shitty, shitty days, even before they had fallen into bed together. Ianto had been the one who talked to him after he’d given up Jasmine, who’d told him he’d done the right thing after killing Suzie, who’d told him there was nothing he could do when John killed himself. How had he missed how much he’d relied on Ianto to pick up the pieces when things started falling apart?
“What if-” he started, but Owen interrupted.
“No more what ifs, Jack. I know you’re a mess right now, but you don’t have to be alone.”
“What about you? And Tosh? Are you just here to keep me from going mad?” Jack asked. If they weren’t evidence that he was completely batty in the first place.
“We won’t be here forever,” Owen said, and Jack wasn’t sure if he was scared or relieved to hear that.
“When do you go?”
“I don’t know, mate. I think that’s up to you.”
Jack took a breath and stood up, tucking the PDA into a pocket of his greatcoat. He glanced at Owen and then walked up the stairs to the building entrance, opening the door with his key. He didn’t need to look back to know Owen had vanished.
He climbed up a flight of stairs and came to Ianto’s flat, knocking on the door softly. It was nearly two in the morning, so chances are Ianto wouldn’t hear him - but no, there was the sound of bare feet coming up to the door, the latch clicking open and the door swinging in, just a little, so Ianto could look out. When he registered Jack behind it, he swung the door fully open. He was in a threadbare t-shirt and drawstring trousers, but the television was on, low in the background, so it looked like Jack wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping.
“Jack,” he said, stepping back so Jack could come in, and then closing the door behind him. Ianto reached over to take Jack’s coat from his shoulders, only to hesitate at the last moment. “Are you staying?”
Jack nodded, and turned so Ianto could slip the coat from his shoulders, and watched as Ianto opened his closet and found a hanger.
“I’m sorry,” Jack said, voice just above a whisper. Ianto finished hanging the coat and turned back to him.
“What for?”
“For not being the same.”
“I don’t think it matters,” Ianto said with a sad smile, echoing Jack’s earlier words, and then walked over to the couch, grabbing the remote and flicking off the TV.
“No?”
“No,” said Ianto, coming back and taking Jack’s hand, tugging him along. “You weren’t gone for a whole day, for me. It didn’t change after you’d been gone for months, why would it change now?”
“I can’t promise you anything, Ianto,” Jack warned as Ianto steered him into the bedroom. “A lot-I forgot what you looked like, did you know that?”
Ianto pushed him onto the bed and then bent down, unlacing his boots and pulling them off with gentle hands.
“I’m not surprised.”
Something in his gentle acceptance infuriated Jack, who clamped down on his shoulders and pulled him up so Ianto was kneeling in front of him, face turned upwards and impassive.
“Every time I woke up, I tried to remember you all. What you looked like, what we ate on our last date, how you feel when you’re inside me, what your coffee tastes like. But every time I could remember a little less. I couldn’t remember your face, Ianto,” Jack cried, shaking him roughly.
Ianto licked his lower lip, tongue flicking out for the barest moment. “Did you recognize me?”
The anger slipped out of Jack as quickly as it had come. “Of course.”
“Then it’s okay, Jack,” said Ianto, still on his knees but pressing forward between Jack’s legs. “You don’t have to remember everything we had. You just have to want to try and have it again.” He stroked his hands over Jack’s thighs. “I’m assuming that’s why you’re here, at least.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Jack said.
“Then don’t give up on me,” Ianto said sharply, his composure breaking. “God, Jack. I know we can’t go back to what we had, but don’t assume I don’t want to try to make something new. Don’t make these decisions for me. You’re not alone in this.”
Jack stared down at him. Waking up and dying to the realization that he couldn’t picture Ianto’s face anymore had been - well, there weren’t really any words for it. More horrific than the horror that was being buried alive in the first place. It seemed like so long ago, eons, ages, centuries, millennia since he had held him. What was stopping him from picking Ianto up and pulling him down on the bed and kissing him, kissing him for the first time in more lifetimes than Jack had been able to imagine, before?
It was always the same; fear. Jack wasn’t a coward, but something about this had frozen him in place, unable to move forward but unable to go back, too weak to give up his remaining ties to Torchwood. His mind was screaming at him; do something, kiss him, tell him you still love him, but he was stuck, frozen to the bed by his own, damnable fear.
It was Ianto who had all the courage, in the end. It was Ianto who stood up and crawled onto the bed beside him, who urged him up it until they were lying side by side, who took Jack’s hand in his own as he kissed him, and suddenly Jack remembered what Ianto tasted like. Remembered how he felt, arching beneath him in passion, hands scrabbling at Jack’s back and lips pressed against his neck, panting hot breaths and short Jacks and Gods and harders.
Jack’s eyes snapped open and he rolled over top of Ianto, eyes wide and mouth open with the shock of ancient memories assaulting his senses.
“I remember,” he breathed, kissing Ianto once, twice, three times, saying again and again “I remember, I remember, I remember.”
~
He saw Toshiko in the hospital next. He was dozing on a couch in the best room Torchwood’s name could procure, Ianto’s head pillowed in his lap and Gwen’s by the standard hospital-issue pillows on the bed. Rhys had gone home for half an hour to fetch some of Gwen’s things, and he (and Ianto, though Ianto had long since surrendered to the lure of sleep) was standing guard.
“Are you here to tell me this isn’t my fault?” he said, pre-empting her as she came into the room and leaned over Gwen.
“She’s going to be alright,” she said in the voice she used (had used) when a mission was succeeding after a close call.
“So they say.”
“I suppose I am,” Tosh said, answering his first question as she hopped up on the hospital bed at Gwen’s feet and pulled her legs under her. “I see Owen got you to let yourself find a little happiness, for once.”
Jack looked down at Ianto’s face, buried in his thigh and softened by sleep. Jack traced an alien alphabet on his back.
“Yeah. I should thank him.”
“I don’t think you’ll see him again.”
Jack’s head snapped up, taking in Toshiko’s petite, graceful form curled up on the bed.
“Oh,” he said, faintly. “I thought… I was just starting to get used to the idea of having you around forever.”
“He wasn’t here to keep you company,” she said as she smiled at him.
“What was he here for?”
“To remind you to live.”
Jack frowned at that. “And then what are you here for?”
“I’ve been thinking about that. I think if Owen was here to tell you to live, I’m here to tell you to accept that we die.”
“I thought I’d done that already,” Jack said, but it wasn’t a protest; his voice was hoarse with regret and defeat.
“You still blame yourself,” she said, sliding forward on the bed so her legs dangled off the side, her small feet linked together. “For me, and for Owen.”
“You were my responsibility. So is Gwen. And yet here she is, recovering from near-fatal injuries. What kind of leader am I if I can’t keep my people safe?”
“Jack,” she admonished. “You’ve lead men and women in more wars than any other human alive. You know that you can’t stop people from dying.”
Jack nodded and looked down, tracing a finger over Ianto’s ear. “If I know that, then why are you here?”
“Gwen’s not going to blame you when she wakes up. I don’t blame you, and neither did Owen. And when Ianto-”
“Don’t,” he said sharply.
“And when Ianto gets hurt, he won’t blame you either. We follow you willingly. And we’d be far worse off if it weren’t for your leadership.”
“You’ve said this much before,” he pointed out tiredly. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“You’re going to live for a lot longer, Jack. If you let everyone take something from you when they die, you’re going to be a broken shell of a man before too long.”
Jack laughed, harsh and too loud and Ianto shifted in his lap. “Are you telling me I’m not already?”
“Yes,” Tosh said firmly, slipping off the bed and coming to stand in front of him. “You already know how to survive this. I need you to promise me you’ll do it.”
“How do I survive it?” he asked, helplessly. “How do I survive it, Tosh? You tell me, because you are so wrong. I have no idea. How do I stop a little piece of me from dying every time one of my loved ones dies? How is that possible?”
“You take something back,” she said, reaching out for a moment as if to touch his face, and then pulling back. “They take a piece of you to the grave, but we get to live forever in you. Hold on to us, Jack. Remember us.”
“I can’t,” he whispered. “I’ll forget. I forgot your faces. I forgot your smells.”
“Did you forget that you loved us?”
Jack shook his head.
“Then you’re okay, Jack. You’re okay. Because that’s all you need to remember.”
Jack let out a sob and covered his face with one hand. “Toshiko, I-” he started, but a nurse walked in and when he uncovered his face Tosh was gone. Panic welled in him. What if she didn’t come back? What if Owen didn’t come back, like she said? He couldn't do this alone, he didn’t know how to live anymore. Two thousand years spent dying, and he couldn’t remember how to live.
“Jack?” came Ianto’s voice from his lap, full of sleep and a deeper kind of exhaustion, the kind that comes from saving your friend’s life. “Who are you talking to?”
Jack shook his head, trying to quell the thoughts in his mind. “I think I’ve gone crazy, Ianto.” Ianto sat up and leaned against him.
“No, you haven’t,” he said simply. “You can be hurting and not be crazy, you know.”
Jack opened his mouth to tell Ianto about Toshiko and Owen, but stopped. “What happens if you die, Ianto? While in the line of duty?”
Ianto looked surprised at the blunt question, but a glance at Gwen’s bed seemed to give reason to the non-sequitur. “Are you asking what happens to me, or what happens to you? Because as for the former, I have no idea.”
“Would you resent me? If I sent you to your death.”
Ianto, of all things, looked amused. “I rather suspect I won’t be resenting much of anything after I die.” His half smile turned into a frown. “You can’t blame yourself for our deaths. They’re all going to happen.”
“Sooner rather than later, if I’m involved.”
“Perhaps,” Ianto shrugged. “Perhaps not. But life, Jack. Life isn’t worth anything unless you live it, and I don’t know about the others, but I’ve never felt so alive as when I’ve worked for you. Even Torchwood London was nothing compared to this. What Toshiko said, in her message? You showed her all the wonders of the universe? We wouldn’t be half as alive if it weren’t for you. So don’t think we resent you, in any shape or form, for the increased risk to our lives.”
Jack leaned forward, cupping his mouth in his hands and resting his elbows on his knees. He could do this without them, he thought. Save the world on his own, never forming any real attachments. Like the Doctor. But even the Doctor, with his detachment and flippant attitude and lack of humanity sometimes loved so hard it hurt. If he failed, what chance did Jack have of succeeding?
“I need you,” he said, softly. “I need you, and I need Gwen. I needed Toshiko and Owen, too. I can’t do this without you.”
“So don’t,” Ianto implored, resting a hand on the back of Jack’s neck.
“And when you’re gone?”
“You find someone new to love.” Ianto squeezed lightly at Jack’s scoff. “You’re a man who knows how to love, Jack. Moving on is never going to be easy, but trying to stop loving people? That’s impossible.”
“So I move on.”
“So you move on,” Ianto agreed.
They sat in silence for a long while, and Jack watched Gwen’s chest rise and fall with each breath. He could do this, he thought. Cherish each breath out of their frail, mortal bodies. Love each moment, good or bad. And when they go, he could let them go, placing down their bodies and carrying the memory of their spirits. Jack wrapped his arm around Ianto’s shoulders and pulled him in, Ianto’s face buried in his neck. It wouldn’t be fun, but it would be better than the alternative.
Suddenly, Tosh was in the room, standing by the door. Their gazes locked, and she smiled at him. He smiled back, pulling Ianto in closer so he couldn’t see, and kept his eyes open for as long as he could, but inevitably, instinct won out and he blinked, and she was gone.
They all would be, someday. But that was someday, and this was now.
~
Comment, you people who are sneaking away! You read that whole thing, it'll only take a moment to let me know what you thought. Love/hate/favourite lines?