Fic: Get Loved, Make More, Try to Stay Alive (8/8)
part 7
The Weevils had seemed to go into hiding after the business with the Daleks, but ever since the weather sorted itself out they'd been back and getting steadily weirder. Not more violent--or not only more violent, though Ianto was still pretty sure he'd hallucinated that night they'd found half a dozen of them picking flowers in a public park, for all Gwen swore she'd seen the same thing.
Then there were nights like tonight, when a dozen ran mad at once.
Ianto usually hated to kill Weevils--because they were dumb beasts who couldn't help what they did, or because he suspected they were intelligent if unintelligible, he could never entirely decide which. It really didn't matter after Jack went down under a horde of the things. He and Mickey and Gwen hadn't taken any prisoners.
Gwen was managing the cleanup; the police were a lot more understanding about that since the night the city was overrun, but Gwen still insisted on being polite about it. Ianto let Gwen worry about talking to the nice constables, and focused on getting Jack's body neatly wrapped up in the blanket they kept in the back of the SUV for this purpose. It was black; it wouldn't show stains.
Mickey silently offered him a handful of metal clips to secure the blanket's edges, and Ianto took them, startled and grateful. He ought to have thought of that; it would make carrying Jack much easier. Mickey helped him without being told, and didn't flinch from the odd wobbliness of their burden. Ianto caught sight of one of the constables' faces--the man looked like he was about to be sick in the street--but Mickey was matter-of-fact, if quiet.
They got him loaded into the back of the SUV, and Mickey said, "Wait for Gwen?"
Ianto shook his head. "He'll upset the police if he wakes up here. She'll get a lift."
Mickey nodded and went round to the passenger seat, and Ianto fished the keys from his pocket. Halfway back to the Hub, Ianto suddenly looked over at him and said, "Is this the first time you've seen him die, then?"
Mickey nodded, staring fixedly at the dashboard. He looked young--Ianto's own age, maybe younger--under the flashes of streetlights. "Is it always that messy?"
Ianto was startled into a laugh, and found he could breathe again on the other side of it; Mickey smiled at him in another streetlight-flash, and he shook his head. "Usually not. Lot of times it's just blunt trauma or something, hardly shows at all. He wakes up faster then, too. This is going to take a little time."
"Right," Mickey said, as they approached the entrance to the garage. "We'll just have to make tea, then. Tea saved the world once, you know, and that was Jackie's tea. Yours'd probably raise the dead even if they weren't Jack."
Jackie, Jackie. He'd heard stories, or at least bits of stories... "Rose Tyler's mum saved the world with tea?"
"Well," Mickey said thoughtfully. "I think I was the one who spilled it, so technically that was all down to me. Or the Doctor, if you like--he did the sword-fighting bit, but really it was the man on the spot with the thermos flask who should get the credit there."
Ianto smiled and parked the SUV. "Quite right. The man on the spot with the thermos flask never gets enough credit."
"See," Mickey said, "this is what I'm saying..."
"Lizzie!" Jack's shout rang out from halfway across the Hub.
Ianto reached for Lucy's hand, shaking his head before she could stand up or speak. "Is that your name?"
Lucy pulled back a little warily from Ianto's touch, but shook her head.
"Don't start by answering to anything that's not your name," Ianto murmured. "Sets a bad precedent with him."
"He could have forgotten," Lucy said, but she went back to flipping through folders as she said it. Ianto watched as she put things in order; she'd grasped his filing system at once, possibly because it had a rational basis, unlike the lunatic hodge-podge he'd discovered when he started.
"He hasn't forgotten," Ianto said. "He's just still resisting the idea that the team needs new people, and that that definition automatically excludes people he's known for years already. He knows your name. He probably knows your gran's name."
"Irene," Jack said brightly. Ianto didn't jump; Lucy did, but she recovered quickly. "Her birthday's next month, don't forget--say, did she live around here when she was your age? Because I swear--"
"Gran's from Bristol," Lucy said, glancing up only briefly at Jack and then tipping the folder of August artifact reports toward Ianto, raising a brow in silent question.
"Reverse chronologically," Ianto said. "Duplicate copies are filed under artifact type."
Lucy nodded and went back to filing. Jack rocked on his heels, giving them another few seconds to notice him, and then said, "So, Lucy, has Ianto revealed to you the divine secrets of the coffee machine yet?"
Ianto rolled his eyes. "No, we're doing coffee after she's mastered filing and self-defense. I'll get it."
Jack followed him to the coffee station; Ianto didn't bother pointing out that Jack was perfectly capable of pouring himself a cup of coffee. Ianto knew a pretext when it took him by the hand and led him into its office--though Jack didn't go quite that far. He just strategically invaded Ianto's personal space, herding him along.
"You're going to like Lucy just fine when you've got used to her," Ianto said, because that was the easiest point on which to reassure Jack.
"I like her now," Jack said, taking an absent sip of his coffee and then setting it down. He wandered restlessly around his office, and Ianto turned his back, sorting idly through the papers on the desk. "I like her even better when she blatantly lies to me about her grandmother not being from Cardiff."
"Ex-girlfriend?" Ianto tested himself on the idea that Lucy was Jack's granddaughter, or might have been. It was weird, but not markedly weirder than most things about Jack.
"Ex-boyfriend's wife," Jack said. "It was like that, you know, back then."
Ianto nodded. That list of computer components Mickey had wanted him to buy last week was on Jack's desk; Ianto pocketed it.
"I like her fine," Jack repeated, which probably meant he didn't, but he would. She was one of his now, part of the team. "But you're... you're training her to do your job."
Ianto turned and faced Jack, folded his arms and waited for Jack to say something slightly less obvious.
Jack quirked an unhappy smile and looked away. "You're getting close to five years since you started in London."
Ianto gave him a nod for that.
Jack transferred his gaze to the ceiling. "I keep having that dream."
That actually deserved an answer, but it took Ianto a moment to summon words. "You know it's not--"
"I know." Jack smiled at the ceiling. "I know! Nobody's ever accused me of being a prophet. But I keep waking up thinking everything's going to be all right, and then I watch you putting everything in order, and writing out procedures, and--" Jack finally looked Ianto in the eye, flinging one hand out in Lucy's general direction--"training your replacement. And I hate it. I hate that you're going to die, and I hate that you know it and you're just going along with the plan."
Ianto shook his head. "Nothing's changed, Jack. I have to--"
"You do not have to. You don't have to accept this, you don't even have to be doing this--"
Second verse, more impassioned than the first. "Jack, I chose Torchwood--"
"Yeah, and what the fuck were you thinking?"
Ianto stopped short and stared at him.
Jack stared back, waiting.
"That's an odd question from a man who's made it his very long life's work."
Jack shook his head. "There's nothing else for me, Ianto. This is who I am, this is what I need to be doing. But you--you were twenty-one years old. You could have had a life, a normal life."
"I could have been dead inside the year from drink or drugs or idiocy, too," Ianto said, and Jack's mouth went tight. "You've read my file. On my own, no family, no plans, banging around London--if Torchwood hadn't recruited me, someone would have. I'd have been one of those who-gives-a-fuck deaths we fake, some druggie kid who blew his mind or blew his own brains out--"
Ianto didn't really see him move; Jack was just there, suddenly, eye to eye with him, pinning him up against the desk. Ianto's heart raced, and it was a struggle to keep his chin up, to keep from pulling away even though he knew he couldn't escape.
"Not you," Jack whispered.
Ianto jerked his chin up higher. "Not by the time you met me. Not once Torchwood had got me."
Jack just shook his head. Didn't speak, didn't step back, didn't drop Ianto's gaze. Ianto couldn't win this one and didn't bother fighting it much; he looked away, and saw that Jack had taken the Amphora--pod--Samyek Tau Twenty-Seven--Indiana--out of the half-hidden spot on the floor. He was up on a shelf now.
"You never come and see him anymore," Jack said quietly, though Ianto could still feel the tension everywhere they touched. "You used to. You'd sit with him and write in your private book, and you--it was like you cared. I thought you cared, for a while."
It was a breathtakingly low blow. Ianto squeezed his eyes shut and saw the leather-bound volume--new and crisp, passing from his own hands to the Doctor's--battered and much-read, when Indy tucked it away in his bag in the failing light.
"I got rid of it," he said, and turned back to face Jack, meeting his eyes. "It was rubbish, just some things I had to write down to sort them out."
"So now you're all sorted and that's it," Jack said. "Now you're just going to lie down and die."
"I don't know what else you want me to do," Ianto snapped. He raised his hands to push Jack away, and Jack caught him by the wrists.
"I want you to tell me you hate this as much as I do," Jack said. His grip tightened, word by word; he'd caught Ianto's wristwatch, as always concealing the bracelet on his left wrist. Jack's hand was driving the beads into his skin, right over the bone, and the pain was startling. "I want you to be angry, or be scared, or--"
Ianto blinked rapidly. "You're hurting me."
"I know what I'm doing," Jack said, nearly shouting. "What are you going to do about it?"
It was going to leave a mark; Jack was going to leave marks all over him. Ianto thought of Gwen, worried about him, while he made jokes about falling down the stairs and walking into doors. He thought of the tiny crescents dug into his wrist by Indy's fingernails. There was only one thing he could say, one thing he had to say, and he was sick to death of saying it, of having to say it, and if dying would mean he never had to say it again, then--
Ianto squeezed his eyes shut. "You have to let me go."
Jack shook him a little, but Ianto just folded forward. It was like hugging a live wire, but he pressed his face to Jack's shoulder and repeated it. "Jack, you have to let me go."
He lost track of how many times he said it. His mouth was dry as sawdust and his hands were numb by the time Jack's grip loosened, and even then Jack didn't release him. Ianto stood with his face pressed to Jack's shoulder and his hands at his sides and still Jack held on.
It was all right. Ianto could wait here as well as anywhere.
Gwen had been sitting at the end of the pier for about an hour when Ianto tracked her down on CCTV. She'd taken her coat and handbag--she was just sitting there, hugging her knees and watching the sun go down. Ianto wavered for a moment, then shut down the monitor and headed out.
He considered stopping along the way. A coffee would give him something to offer her, some reason to be there, something to do with his hands--but it would only be a delaying action, or something to hide behind. He walked on steadily.
Gwen looked up when he was still meters away, and her smile was a little shaky. Ianto didn't let himself hesitate, though he couldn't hold her eyes. He sat down beside her and stared out at the sunset, squinting against the light.
"The thing is," he said, "when you shove something to the bottom of the dustbin, it's on top when you empty it."
Gwen laughed, and that was a little shaky, too. "I was all ready to say something about what a lovely day it was, and how Rhys was going out tonight so there was no point going home yet."
"It is lovely," Ianto agreed. "I wasn't really going to say anything, just that I saw the box. You knew about me before I did, you know, so..."
"I'm sorry I laughed," Gwen said, and rested her head gingerly on his shoulder, settling closer when he didn't pull away. "When I saw on the monitor, do you remember? I laughed. I was so surprised, and I thought--I thought that was something good, instead of what we'd all been thinking."
"It was something good," Ianto said, though he did remember her laughter, and how badly everything had gone downhill from that moment. Still, they'd rallied. "He is, and will be."
Gwen nodded a little, and then said, "It was negative. I wouldn't have thrown it out if it wasn't." Ianto nodded, shifting his hand to cover hers. The ocean was ablaze, the ships casting long shadows back toward them. "I don't even--Rhys and I have talked about it, a little, but we haven't decided anything, and I couldn't--with Torchwood, I couldn't..."
It was almost there, in her voice, and it made Ianto's heart skip--such a slender chance, but a real one.
"My dad used to say that the way to make a hard choice is to toss a coin," Ianto said. "Not because it leaves the thing to chance, but because you realize what you're hoping for when the coin is in the air."
Gwen's hand turned under his, holding on hard, and Ianto turned his cheek against her hair. "I wanted..."
Ianto nodded.
"You could, you know," he said, when Gwen didn't say anything more. "People mostly don't make it after leaving Torchwood, because they've got nowhere to go after. Nothing to leave for. You've got Rhys, and your family. You'll be all right."
Gwen pulled back far enough to look him in the eye, and Ianto met her gaze, only blinking against the dark spots in his vision where the sunset had been. "You won't, though, will you."
It wasn't even a question, but Ianto answered anyway. Gwen, at least, didn't seem to be angry with him for it. "Everything I've got is here. There." He nodded toward the Hub, toward Jack and Indiana and everything that mattered.
Gwen smiled a little. "Jack thinks you've given up."
Ianto smiled back and looked away. The sky was already deep blue above their heads. The stars were coming out behind them. "It has been a long bloody time since Jack has had to think about dying as if it mattered, and from the stories he tells, he never had to spend this much time waiting for it."
Gwen squeezed his hand.
"Someone told me once," Ianto said, and then had to stop and steady his voice. "Someone told me I was going to die bravely. And it's--I'm trying, but it's..."
Gwen's arm went round him, half a hug and still nearly more than he could bear. He put his arm over her shoulders anyway. It was getting cold.
"Ianto," she said, solemnly.
He shook his head. "Just don't go naming him after me, all right? Or her."
Gwen squeezed him a little, but only said, "Her? Who would..."
Ianto looked over. She was wrinkling her nose and staring out at the water, and then she looked back at him and smiled. "Actually, that might be an interesting name for a girl. Ianto."
Ianto buried his face in his hands. "Ianto Williams, that just sounds silly, Gwen."
"Ianto Cooper-Williams, thank you," Gwen said firmly. "I think I like the sound of that. Unusual, but classic."
"Oh, hell," Ianto murmured. He had no one but himself to blame.
Ianto was nearly out the door before it occurred to him that the Hub was empty, and for once he could be really quite sure that no one was going to come running in. He looked toward Jack's office and realized even as he did that he also, for once, had something he wanted to say.
He set down everything he was carrying on Gwen's desk, entered the familiar handful of keystrokes required to shut off surveillance in Jack's office, and went in with his hands open at his sides--nothing to see here.
The Amphora was still up on a shelf, in plain sight over Jack's desk. Ianto touched it for the first time in weeks, and it came readily to life, displays rising up to hover in the air before him. Ianto hesitated a moment--Jack would know--but maybe it would be a little consolation to him, and still save Ianto having to fight with him about it again.
He pressed the button now clearly labeled LIVE MODE ACTIVATE, and Indiana, or at least the little alien prawn-thing that would grow up into Indiana a couple of hundred years from now, fluttered and squirmed. Ianto watched his heart beat for a moment, and then navigated through the menus until he found EXTERNAL AUDIO FEED ACTIVATE.
Softly, not quite singing, Ianto chanted out, "Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. Because if we forgot we'd have to come up with some other reason to have bloody huge fireworks every year, right?"
Indiana seemed to wriggle a bit faster. Ianto smiled.
"Ianto," Jack said in his ear, "tell me you're here somewhere."
"On my way," Ianto said firmly.
"You haven't even left yet."
"I'm on my way, I swear."
Jack sighed hugely. "There's really no point in abusing Torchwood credentials to get a good spot if you're not actually here for the fireworks."
"I'm coming! I'm leaving now."
"It's the first time in--"
Ianto heard the near-simultaneous clicks of everyone else's comms turning on as they joined in, and he rolled his eyes and recited it, too. "Thirty years that there's been half a chance of the whole team being free for bonfire night."
"I will be there," Ianto repeated.
"Traffic's going to be murder," Jack went on. "People are setting things on fire all over the city--"
"Bonfire night, yes," Ianto murmured. "Seen it before."
"Gwen, do you think we can get him a police escort?"
"Leaving now, hanging up now," Ianto said, and shut off his comm, taking it off his ear and dropping it into his pocket.
He laid his hand flat on the surface of the pod, and said softly, "Good night, son, I love you. Don't forget, all right? You're going to love fireworks when you're a bit older."
He killed the audio feed, returned it to stasis mode, and then left Jack's office at a run.
He arrived just in time to see the first one go up. He watched it for a few seconds, then looked around while the white light of the firework lingered. He soon spotted Torchwood, sitting together on a couple of black blankets (they'd been washed since the last time they were used, he was pretty sure).
Jack was sitting right in the center of them all, with Gwen on one side and Martha on the other. Gwen was cuddled close to Rhys, and Martha's Tom had made it back for a little holiday. Mickey was sprawled out with his head nearly in Lucy's lap, and Andy was sitting on Lucy's other side, because Gwen was doing a much better job than Ianto had of slowly introducing Jack to her chosen replacement.
Even from here, in the uneven flashes of light, Ianto could see Mickey flirting with Lucy, and Andy was watching both of them like a kid who wanted to join in the game but hadn't worked out how to play yet. Lucy leaned against him when she laughed, though, and Mickey wasn't looking at either of them like he was sizing up the competition--though he certainly was looking--so Ianto suspected Andy was going to get drafted sooner than he knew.
Ianto stood a while, watching the fireworks, watching his team. Jack loved fireworks as much as Indy was going to, but he loved his team more; he was happy surrounded by his people. He was going to be all right. They all were.
There was a short lull, and in the dark Ianto heard Gwen say, "Isn't Ianto here yet?"
Martha straightened up, looking around, but Jack just pointed. "He's right there. Lurking. Care to join us, Ianto?"
So he did, jogging across the distance, handing off thermoses of coffee and chocolate. Everyone shifted around to open a space for him at Jack's side, and Jack's arm closed firmly around him. Gwen squeezed his hand as the fireworks started up again, and Ianto leaned against Jack and stopped looking around. It was time to look up.
Alone in the cold and the gradually diminishing darkness, Ianto cradled a detonator against his chest and thought about time.
Time was a ball of string, the Doctor had said, but each ordinary person was just a tiny strand, and from inside that strand time looked like a straight line, marching always and only forward. It could be counted in so many ways, arbitrary units recorded like chalk marks on the wall of a tunnel. Measuring time as it passed was just a way to say I was here. I came this far.
Even now his watch ticked along steadily as a metronome--but it measured no more than a metronome did, down here away from the sun and the passing hours. The turn of the earth was no longer a relevant metric.
Take the beat of his heart, then. It was less steady than the tick of the clock, but it drove the waves of pain that washed his body. It battered the tide of blood against the barrier he'd fashioned, the leather belt wrapped around his right thigh and pulled so tight that below the pounding of trapped blood, he could feel nothing at all. His left foot still throbbed in time to his heart, with the prosaic aches of a long climb followed by a longer walk-scramble-fall-crawl, but his right leg was silent. It would wait now for the time of bacteria and bugs and rot. In the borders of his body, time was already out of joint.
He had to step outside himself, then, to look up and see light and movement, to count time by local phenomena. This cavern which had been a coal mine, had been the inside of a mountain, was filling up with a fine golden light, courtesy of the pearl white creatures who swarmed through it now, working on their machinery. There was no knowing what they thought of time, where they had been or how far they had come. They did not seem aware of humans at all, paying them no more or less attention than they did the tons of rock they vaporized. There was no possibility of communication. There was no way to ask them to stop, to ask them not to destroy this world the Rift had poured them into.
So count time by change in size, a universal clock: the golden light of their force field slowly expanded, holding up the mountain as they hollowed it out. The machinery they built grew as well, nearing completion. There was no knowing their intention, but this was not their world to fill or to destroy. They must be stopped.
Ianto had the means to stop them, one piece cradled in his arms like a child, the other lying on the ground at the far end of a barely-dry blood trail. He watched the golden light sweep out, ever closer--I am here; I have come this far--to the cobbled-together device. Set off inside the force field, the electromagnetic pulse would disable their machinery and whatever powered the force field. If that didn't kill them, the mountain falling in would.
And it would take Ianto with it, of course, if he were still here.
But time was a ball of string. All times which happened, happened at once and forever. Outside this cavern Jack was searching for him, trying to find him in time, to get him to safety and do the dangerous work in his place. But somewhere else outside, Jack and Indiana were living within a mile of this spot, free of any menace from strange pearl white alien things. Somewhere else, Indy was traveling time and space with his Time Lady cousin, wearing his dad's old t-shirt and enjoying his gap year. Out there, Ianto had been dead for hundreds of years. He must succeed, because they needed him to have done. He must succeed, because for them he already had.
The golden light flowed closer.
Ianto's communicator came alive with Jack's voice in his ear. "Ianto?"
Ianto closed his eyes. He'd told himself, if he heard Jack before he saw him...
"Get out, Jack."
Jack said nothing.
"There's no time," Ianto said. "It's nearly reached me. You won't get here in time. The pulse will kill my comm."
"Just hold on," Jack said, his voice rough with anger, desperation, anticipated grief.
"No," Ianto said. "It's time. It's my turn. I beat all the averages."
"Ianto," Jack repeated. Ianto listened to Jack's breathing around the word, coming in gasps. He'd stopped walking. He knew, too.
"Go," Ianto repeated. "It's all right."
"I can't just leave you," Jack said. Jack meant, don't leave me.
"You can," Ianto said. "It's very simple. Turn round and walk the other way. You don't want to have to dig out from under this."
Jack's next breath shuddered, but it brought with it the sound of a footfall. Jack obeyed him, just this once.
Ianto watched the golden light envelop the device.
"Lucy will start to bring you coffee in a week or two," Ianto said. "She knows how you like it. I've warned her you'll ignore her the first time, tear her head off the third, and try to shag her the tenth. She won't let you upset her more than you should."
Jack didn't speak, but he was keeping the channel open. Ianto could hear him breathing, could hear the sound stutter and break.
"Jack," Ianto said, because Jack deserved to hear what he wanted to hear this one last time, and because it was true--though the immediacy of it had washed out on a tide of something just now; adrenaline and incipient hypothermia, maybe. Now that the moment had come, Ianto trusted Jack to keep this secret for him.
"Jack--fuck, this hurts, and it's scary, and I hate it. But I can do this, because it has to be done, and because you're with me." It was getting hard to speak properly. His teeth wanted to chatter; his tongue felt thick and clumsy. He flexed his fingers against the detonator to be sure he could still do the job. The golden light was nearly at his toes, now. He'd have to be inside the force field with the device to make certain the detonator would work.
"But I want you to know, Jack. Everything really is going to be all right."
"Ianto," Jack whispered, and it was all there in a word, everything Ianto had ever wanted to hear, ever needed.
"I'm here," Ianto said, and the light was golden against his eyelids as he pressed down on the detonator.
The explosives went with a properly deafening bang; by the time the sound had died the pulse must have gone--he really didn't feel anything. So strange. Everything went dark, the golden light winking out all at once. He wondered if the aliens were making any sounds; he couldn't hear a thing past the roaring deafness from the explosion.
He could feel it, though, in the rock all around him, the grinding rumble of the unsupported earth shifting. The force field had collapsed, and the mountain was sure to follow. He would be buried here, but time would flow on above him, under the sun, as it should. He had said his goodbyes to Indiana, and all his goodbyes to Jack. He had done all he could for this world. It was enough.
"I've come this far," Ianto whispered, as the rocks groaned around him. He reached down and tugged the leather belt free, and let time run out over his fingers.
There was a peal of trumpets and a bright light shining. Before he knew anything else Ianto knew he was safe, knew his family was nearby, and nothing else mattered.
He recognized one of Indiana's more musically-oriented handheld games by the third note--it sounded like he was playing in his room, maybe downstairs if he'd turned the sound all the way up. Ianto dragged his arm up over his eyes, and noticed that it seemed like a greater effort than usual. His body had that distant feeling that suggested that something was very wrong on the other side of some very powerful drugs. His brain, too, or he'd probably find the drugs thing more worrisome.
"Hey," Jack said softly. "You in there?"
Ianto tried to answer, and managed nothing but a hoarse groan.
"Sorry," Jack said, and Ianto felt him shifting on the bed. "Here, have a drink."
There was a straw at his lips. Ianto smiled around it as he recognized the flavor of fruit juice--the same stuff Jack had given him the first morning he was here.
Jack took the straw away, and Ianto painstakingly lowered his arm and blinked a few times. His eyes were gummy and didn't want to focus, but when he squinted Jack was there, leaning over him. Ianto frowned--Jack looked wrong--no, looked right--no, nothing around Jack looked right--nothing matched--
"Shh," Jack said, though as far as Ianto could tell he hadn't made a sound. "Shh, it's all right. You're going to be fine, everything's fine."
Ianto shook his head. Jack was--this was the wrong Jack, Ianto could see the sprinkle of gray hairs, see it on his face and hear it in his voice--he couldn’t really be here, he'd--he'd been doing something important, something important two hundred years ago, and he couldn't move his arm.
"Jack, what--"
"Everything really is going to be all right," Jack repeated. "You're at the med center. The drugs are starting to wear off; a little disorientation is normal."
Ianto looked around wildly; he did recognize the room, though it was impossible. They were in the back room at the med center, the door standing open; he could hear Indy's handheld game, the music floating in from up front somewhere.
"No, Jack. I left."
Jack nodded. "What's the last thing you remember?"
Ianto shut his eyes. "I left," he repeated. "I was in the Hub. I--it was Tuesday, and Gwen's printer was almost out of toner, and Mickey and Lucy were arguing about refilling cartridges while I replaced it."
"Okay," Jack said. "Anything else?"
"Rift monitor," Ianto said. "There were these--alien things. Up in the hills somewhere. Not fighting, not making any demands. They just ignored people. If someone got in their way, they'd just--swat them, like bugs. Like we weren't even there. They got--" His whole body jerked at the memory, but Jack's hands were there, steadying him. "Jack, they got Gwen, they broke Mickey's arm--"
"Shh, it's all right. Gwen woke up a few days later, mad because she missed the excitement. Mickey was fine."
"Mickey--Mickey figured out about their machinery. Vulnerable to EM, just like ours. We used one on them, we thought that was all, and Lucy left to take Gwen and Mickey to hospital while we mopped up. But--we were still showing activity. They were in the mines, underground--we put together more pulse generators and went in, and..."
Ianto reached down with his good hand. He still couldn't feel much below his hip, but he could see his toes wiggle. "I fell--my leg--Jack, I died. I died, and you--" Everything really is going to be all right, he'd said that to Jack, two hundred years ago, an eyeblink. "Were you there somehow? Did you pull me out?"
Jack shook his head, and touched Ianto's immobilized arm. "I couldn't. You had to do what you were going to do--we needed you, you stopped them. I couldn't get there without totally fucking the timestream. But I knew we never recovered your body, so..."
Ianto managed to lift his head enough to look at his left arm. His wrist was bandaged--his left wrist.
"The bracelet?"
Jack laughed, almost a sigh, and nodded. "I was a bit too clever there, nearly drove myself crazy--you remember, when you first came, I said I was always expecting to turn around and see you at Torchwood?"
Ianto nodded. Jack's fingers trailed ticklishly up and down his arm above the bandage. "I really, honestly did, for years--the knot in the bracelet, it wasn't just that I remembered it from seeing it the first time round. I knew it. I learned it as a kid on the Boeshane Peninsula--Sea Scouts--and that knot was the one you'd tie in the end of a line when you'd tested it and knew it was safe to use. It means I may be relied upon."
Ianto stared at him, remembering every time Jack had touched the bracelet, the knot--he'd thought Jack was just obsessed, jealous, but... "Trust me."
Jack met his eyes and nodded. "And I did, but I didn't know who I was trusting--you, or me, or... And I kept having these dreams, these really good dreams--"
Those leftovers from the retcon. Ianto realized with a jolt that he still couldn't tell Jack about that--that was all ahead of them, Indy's childhood crush, Indy's gap year. Ianto hadn't missed it after all. Hell, if Indy was still playing a video game Ianto recognized, he couldn't have missed much at all.
"--and I'd wake up and spend the whole day waiting for you to just walk through the door. Took me years to realize you weren't coming. And then you did, only you weren't safe yet."
The way Jack had looked at him, that first time, searching his face to see when he'd come from. All that time waiting... "But--how?"
Jack smiled. "The Doctor pulled the failsafe circuit out of my wriststrap--I disabled that one myself, when I left the Time Agency. It's meant to detect when the wearer's life signs indicate death is imminent, and then teleport them to a safe time and place. It wasn't reprogrammable, and I really didn't want to wake up on a Time Agency operating table after I'd been running cons like I was. And then," Jack gestured to himself, "sort of pointless, anyway. But the Doctor fixed it, so it brought you back to us--well, to Jana."
Ianto squeezed his eyes shut. The second harmony line had come in on Indy's game, and Ianto found he could wiggle the fingers of his left hand; they tapped in time almost reflexively. "But when you... it blew up."
"Just a little," Jack said. "A bit of tamper-proofing we set off. Hardly even left a mark, anyway. The Doctor put it into one of the beads on the bracelet, and then it was just a little sleight of hand to get it back to me and to Indy to give to you."
Ianto looked up at him again. "You knew I was coming back."
Jack shook his head. "Not until you got here. I couldn't be sure it would work--you could have stopped wearing the bracelet, the EM could have killed the circuit--and if you'd actually died in the cave-in, Jana wouldn't have been able to do much with what was left."
Ianto touched his leg gingerly.
"You bled out, though--that was easy to fix," Jack said. "Ah. The rest is my fault, I'm afraid--the failsafe circuit gave you a pretty bumpy ride without the stabilizers that are built into the wriststrap, and what with you being unconscious..."
Ianto abruptly recognized the slowly-returning sensation. "It dislocated my shoulder again?"
Jack nodded. "And also burst into flames. Well, melted the lead lining we put into the beads to protect against EM, and then burst into flames. But you're almost all healed up already, the nerve block is just a precaution."
Ianto stared up at the ceiling, trying to absorb this. "So... I'm all right, now."
"Yeah," Jack said. "Jana fixed everything up, even some nasty Rift radiation you'd been exposed to--clean bill of health. I, uh, did ask her to leave a scar, for your leg. I thought you might want something to remember it by. But you can get rid of that, if you like."
Ianto shook his head--Jack was right, dying like that ought to leave a mark--dying certainly had, the first time. He realized he was smiling when his face started to hurt. "I have... I have time, now."
He felt Jack moving closer. "Yes, you do. Lots. A century or so, if you stick around somewhere with decent medical care."
A century. He could hardly imagine it. He hadn't been able to really imagine a year, the last time he was here.
"I was hoping," Jack said, and his hand settled lightly on Ianto's chest. "I asked once before, but you had an escape route ready that time." Ianto met his eyes, and Jack looked honestly uncertain, though there was a smile in his eyes. "Stay with us, Ianto Jones? For all the time we've got?"
Indy's game was building to some sort of crescendo. Ianto laughed, and nodded, and Jack kissed him and kept on kissing him, even when they were both laughing and Ianto was wretchedly out of breath.
"Da-ad." The embarrassment sounded exactly the same as it had a year ago, but it was directed equally at both of them now; Ianto could hear it.
Jack lifted his head, and helped Ianto when he struggled to push himself up. Indy was standing in the doorway of the treatment room, still in his school uniform; Ianto recognized the grass stains on his knees from that morning, down by the river, and his hair was still a mess, though at least he'd washed his face. By the light it was late afternoon, but he'd only missed hours, after living out the rest of his life.
Ianto couldn't speak, but raised his right hand and beckoned. Indy came slowly over to the bed, his game still in hand. "Dad?"
"It's all right," Ianto said. "I'm staying this time."
Indy was watching him warily, and Ianto remembered that Indy--an Indy years and years older than the one in front of him, two centuries ago--had said he ran away again on his seventh birthday. He wasn't going to believe it for sure, but Ianto would have time to persuade him. He made a mental note to leave that t-shirt somewhere Indy could find it, later.
"Happy birthday," Ianto added.
Indy smiled suddenly and shyly, and climbed up onto the bed to perch carefully between Ianto's feet. "We could get some cake on the way home," Indy suggested. "It could be welcome-home-get-well-soon cake."
Ianto pushed himself up to a proper sitting position and flexed his left hand; feeling was definitely back, just a dull ache in his shoulder and wrist and thigh. He looked over at Jack, and Jack stood and reached out to help him up. "What do you say, Ianto? Ready to come home?"
Ianto smiled, and took his hand.
epilogues
The Weevils had seemed to go into hiding after the business with the Daleks, but ever since the weather sorted itself out they'd been back and getting steadily weirder. Not more violent--or not only more violent, though Ianto was still pretty sure he'd hallucinated that night they'd found half a dozen of them picking flowers in a public park, for all Gwen swore she'd seen the same thing.
Then there were nights like tonight, when a dozen ran mad at once.
Ianto usually hated to kill Weevils--because they were dumb beasts who couldn't help what they did, or because he suspected they were intelligent if unintelligible, he could never entirely decide which. It really didn't matter after Jack went down under a horde of the things. He and Mickey and Gwen hadn't taken any prisoners.
Gwen was managing the cleanup; the police were a lot more understanding about that since the night the city was overrun, but Gwen still insisted on being polite about it. Ianto let Gwen worry about talking to the nice constables, and focused on getting Jack's body neatly wrapped up in the blanket they kept in the back of the SUV for this purpose. It was black; it wouldn't show stains.
Mickey silently offered him a handful of metal clips to secure the blanket's edges, and Ianto took them, startled and grateful. He ought to have thought of that; it would make carrying Jack much easier. Mickey helped him without being told, and didn't flinch from the odd wobbliness of their burden. Ianto caught sight of one of the constables' faces--the man looked like he was about to be sick in the street--but Mickey was matter-of-fact, if quiet.
They got him loaded into the back of the SUV, and Mickey said, "Wait for Gwen?"
Ianto shook his head. "He'll upset the police if he wakes up here. She'll get a lift."
Mickey nodded and went round to the passenger seat, and Ianto fished the keys from his pocket. Halfway back to the Hub, Ianto suddenly looked over at him and said, "Is this the first time you've seen him die, then?"
Mickey nodded, staring fixedly at the dashboard. He looked young--Ianto's own age, maybe younger--under the flashes of streetlights. "Is it always that messy?"
Ianto was startled into a laugh, and found he could breathe again on the other side of it; Mickey smiled at him in another streetlight-flash, and he shook his head. "Usually not. Lot of times it's just blunt trauma or something, hardly shows at all. He wakes up faster then, too. This is going to take a little time."
"Right," Mickey said, as they approached the entrance to the garage. "We'll just have to make tea, then. Tea saved the world once, you know, and that was Jackie's tea. Yours'd probably raise the dead even if they weren't Jack."
Jackie, Jackie. He'd heard stories, or at least bits of stories... "Rose Tyler's mum saved the world with tea?"
"Well," Mickey said thoughtfully. "I think I was the one who spilled it, so technically that was all down to me. Or the Doctor, if you like--he did the sword-fighting bit, but really it was the man on the spot with the thermos flask who should get the credit there."
Ianto smiled and parked the SUV. "Quite right. The man on the spot with the thermos flask never gets enough credit."
"See," Mickey said, "this is what I'm saying..."
"Lizzie!" Jack's shout rang out from halfway across the Hub.
Ianto reached for Lucy's hand, shaking his head before she could stand up or speak. "Is that your name?"
Lucy pulled back a little warily from Ianto's touch, but shook her head.
"Don't start by answering to anything that's not your name," Ianto murmured. "Sets a bad precedent with him."
"He could have forgotten," Lucy said, but she went back to flipping through folders as she said it. Ianto watched as she put things in order; she'd grasped his filing system at once, possibly because it had a rational basis, unlike the lunatic hodge-podge he'd discovered when he started.
"He hasn't forgotten," Ianto said. "He's just still resisting the idea that the team needs new people, and that that definition automatically excludes people he's known for years already. He knows your name. He probably knows your gran's name."
"Irene," Jack said brightly. Ianto didn't jump; Lucy did, but she recovered quickly. "Her birthday's next month, don't forget--say, did she live around here when she was your age? Because I swear--"
"Gran's from Bristol," Lucy said, glancing up only briefly at Jack and then tipping the folder of August artifact reports toward Ianto, raising a brow in silent question.
"Reverse chronologically," Ianto said. "Duplicate copies are filed under artifact type."
Lucy nodded and went back to filing. Jack rocked on his heels, giving them another few seconds to notice him, and then said, "So, Lucy, has Ianto revealed to you the divine secrets of the coffee machine yet?"
Ianto rolled his eyes. "No, we're doing coffee after she's mastered filing and self-defense. I'll get it."
Jack followed him to the coffee station; Ianto didn't bother pointing out that Jack was perfectly capable of pouring himself a cup of coffee. Ianto knew a pretext when it took him by the hand and led him into its office--though Jack didn't go quite that far. He just strategically invaded Ianto's personal space, herding him along.
"You're going to like Lucy just fine when you've got used to her," Ianto said, because that was the easiest point on which to reassure Jack.
"I like her now," Jack said, taking an absent sip of his coffee and then setting it down. He wandered restlessly around his office, and Ianto turned his back, sorting idly through the papers on the desk. "I like her even better when she blatantly lies to me about her grandmother not being from Cardiff."
"Ex-girlfriend?" Ianto tested himself on the idea that Lucy was Jack's granddaughter, or might have been. It was weird, but not markedly weirder than most things about Jack.
"Ex-boyfriend's wife," Jack said. "It was like that, you know, back then."
Ianto nodded. That list of computer components Mickey had wanted him to buy last week was on Jack's desk; Ianto pocketed it.
"I like her fine," Jack repeated, which probably meant he didn't, but he would. She was one of his now, part of the team. "But you're... you're training her to do your job."
Ianto turned and faced Jack, folded his arms and waited for Jack to say something slightly less obvious.
Jack quirked an unhappy smile and looked away. "You're getting close to five years since you started in London."
Ianto gave him a nod for that.
Jack transferred his gaze to the ceiling. "I keep having that dream."
That actually deserved an answer, but it took Ianto a moment to summon words. "You know it's not--"
"I know." Jack smiled at the ceiling. "I know! Nobody's ever accused me of being a prophet. But I keep waking up thinking everything's going to be all right, and then I watch you putting everything in order, and writing out procedures, and--" Jack finally looked Ianto in the eye, flinging one hand out in Lucy's general direction--"training your replacement. And I hate it. I hate that you're going to die, and I hate that you know it and you're just going along with the plan."
Ianto shook his head. "Nothing's changed, Jack. I have to--"
"You do not have to. You don't have to accept this, you don't even have to be doing this--"
Second verse, more impassioned than the first. "Jack, I chose Torchwood--"
"Yeah, and what the fuck were you thinking?"
Ianto stopped short and stared at him.
Jack stared back, waiting.
"That's an odd question from a man who's made it his very long life's work."
Jack shook his head. "There's nothing else for me, Ianto. This is who I am, this is what I need to be doing. But you--you were twenty-one years old. You could have had a life, a normal life."
"I could have been dead inside the year from drink or drugs or idiocy, too," Ianto said, and Jack's mouth went tight. "You've read my file. On my own, no family, no plans, banging around London--if Torchwood hadn't recruited me, someone would have. I'd have been one of those who-gives-a-fuck deaths we fake, some druggie kid who blew his mind or blew his own brains out--"
Ianto didn't really see him move; Jack was just there, suddenly, eye to eye with him, pinning him up against the desk. Ianto's heart raced, and it was a struggle to keep his chin up, to keep from pulling away even though he knew he couldn't escape.
"Not you," Jack whispered.
Ianto jerked his chin up higher. "Not by the time you met me. Not once Torchwood had got me."
Jack just shook his head. Didn't speak, didn't step back, didn't drop Ianto's gaze. Ianto couldn't win this one and didn't bother fighting it much; he looked away, and saw that Jack had taken the Amphora--pod--Samyek Tau Twenty-Seven--Indiana--out of the half-hidden spot on the floor. He was up on a shelf now.
"You never come and see him anymore," Jack said quietly, though Ianto could still feel the tension everywhere they touched. "You used to. You'd sit with him and write in your private book, and you--it was like you cared. I thought you cared, for a while."
It was a breathtakingly low blow. Ianto squeezed his eyes shut and saw the leather-bound volume--new and crisp, passing from his own hands to the Doctor's--battered and much-read, when Indy tucked it away in his bag in the failing light.
"I got rid of it," he said, and turned back to face Jack, meeting his eyes. "It was rubbish, just some things I had to write down to sort them out."
"So now you're all sorted and that's it," Jack said. "Now you're just going to lie down and die."
"I don't know what else you want me to do," Ianto snapped. He raised his hands to push Jack away, and Jack caught him by the wrists.
"I want you to tell me you hate this as much as I do," Jack said. His grip tightened, word by word; he'd caught Ianto's wristwatch, as always concealing the bracelet on his left wrist. Jack's hand was driving the beads into his skin, right over the bone, and the pain was startling. "I want you to be angry, or be scared, or--"
Ianto blinked rapidly. "You're hurting me."
"I know what I'm doing," Jack said, nearly shouting. "What are you going to do about it?"
It was going to leave a mark; Jack was going to leave marks all over him. Ianto thought of Gwen, worried about him, while he made jokes about falling down the stairs and walking into doors. He thought of the tiny crescents dug into his wrist by Indy's fingernails. There was only one thing he could say, one thing he had to say, and he was sick to death of saying it, of having to say it, and if dying would mean he never had to say it again, then--
Ianto squeezed his eyes shut. "You have to let me go."
Jack shook him a little, but Ianto just folded forward. It was like hugging a live wire, but he pressed his face to Jack's shoulder and repeated it. "Jack, you have to let me go."
He lost track of how many times he said it. His mouth was dry as sawdust and his hands were numb by the time Jack's grip loosened, and even then Jack didn't release him. Ianto stood with his face pressed to Jack's shoulder and his hands at his sides and still Jack held on.
It was all right. Ianto could wait here as well as anywhere.
Gwen had been sitting at the end of the pier for about an hour when Ianto tracked her down on CCTV. She'd taken her coat and handbag--she was just sitting there, hugging her knees and watching the sun go down. Ianto wavered for a moment, then shut down the monitor and headed out.
He considered stopping along the way. A coffee would give him something to offer her, some reason to be there, something to do with his hands--but it would only be a delaying action, or something to hide behind. He walked on steadily.
Gwen looked up when he was still meters away, and her smile was a little shaky. Ianto didn't let himself hesitate, though he couldn't hold her eyes. He sat down beside her and stared out at the sunset, squinting against the light.
"The thing is," he said, "when you shove something to the bottom of the dustbin, it's on top when you empty it."
Gwen laughed, and that was a little shaky, too. "I was all ready to say something about what a lovely day it was, and how Rhys was going out tonight so there was no point going home yet."
"It is lovely," Ianto agreed. "I wasn't really going to say anything, just that I saw the box. You knew about me before I did, you know, so..."
"I'm sorry I laughed," Gwen said, and rested her head gingerly on his shoulder, settling closer when he didn't pull away. "When I saw on the monitor, do you remember? I laughed. I was so surprised, and I thought--I thought that was something good, instead of what we'd all been thinking."
"It was something good," Ianto said, though he did remember her laughter, and how badly everything had gone downhill from that moment. Still, they'd rallied. "He is, and will be."
Gwen nodded a little, and then said, "It was negative. I wouldn't have thrown it out if it wasn't." Ianto nodded, shifting his hand to cover hers. The ocean was ablaze, the ships casting long shadows back toward them. "I don't even--Rhys and I have talked about it, a little, but we haven't decided anything, and I couldn't--with Torchwood, I couldn't..."
It was almost there, in her voice, and it made Ianto's heart skip--such a slender chance, but a real one.
"My dad used to say that the way to make a hard choice is to toss a coin," Ianto said. "Not because it leaves the thing to chance, but because you realize what you're hoping for when the coin is in the air."
Gwen's hand turned under his, holding on hard, and Ianto turned his cheek against her hair. "I wanted..."
Ianto nodded.
"You could, you know," he said, when Gwen didn't say anything more. "People mostly don't make it after leaving Torchwood, because they've got nowhere to go after. Nothing to leave for. You've got Rhys, and your family. You'll be all right."
Gwen pulled back far enough to look him in the eye, and Ianto met her gaze, only blinking against the dark spots in his vision where the sunset had been. "You won't, though, will you."
It wasn't even a question, but Ianto answered anyway. Gwen, at least, didn't seem to be angry with him for it. "Everything I've got is here. There." He nodded toward the Hub, toward Jack and Indiana and everything that mattered.
Gwen smiled a little. "Jack thinks you've given up."
Ianto smiled back and looked away. The sky was already deep blue above their heads. The stars were coming out behind them. "It has been a long bloody time since Jack has had to think about dying as if it mattered, and from the stories he tells, he never had to spend this much time waiting for it."
Gwen squeezed his hand.
"Someone told me once," Ianto said, and then had to stop and steady his voice. "Someone told me I was going to die bravely. And it's--I'm trying, but it's..."
Gwen's arm went round him, half a hug and still nearly more than he could bear. He put his arm over her shoulders anyway. It was getting cold.
"Ianto," she said, solemnly.
He shook his head. "Just don't go naming him after me, all right? Or her."
Gwen squeezed him a little, but only said, "Her? Who would..."
Ianto looked over. She was wrinkling her nose and staring out at the water, and then she looked back at him and smiled. "Actually, that might be an interesting name for a girl. Ianto."
Ianto buried his face in his hands. "Ianto Williams, that just sounds silly, Gwen."
"Ianto Cooper-Williams, thank you," Gwen said firmly. "I think I like the sound of that. Unusual, but classic."
"Oh, hell," Ianto murmured. He had no one but himself to blame.
Ianto was nearly out the door before it occurred to him that the Hub was empty, and for once he could be really quite sure that no one was going to come running in. He looked toward Jack's office and realized even as he did that he also, for once, had something he wanted to say.
He set down everything he was carrying on Gwen's desk, entered the familiar handful of keystrokes required to shut off surveillance in Jack's office, and went in with his hands open at his sides--nothing to see here.
The Amphora was still up on a shelf, in plain sight over Jack's desk. Ianto touched it for the first time in weeks, and it came readily to life, displays rising up to hover in the air before him. Ianto hesitated a moment--Jack would know--but maybe it would be a little consolation to him, and still save Ianto having to fight with him about it again.
He pressed the button now clearly labeled LIVE MODE ACTIVATE, and Indiana, or at least the little alien prawn-thing that would grow up into Indiana a couple of hundred years from now, fluttered and squirmed. Ianto watched his heart beat for a moment, and then navigated through the menus until he found EXTERNAL AUDIO FEED ACTIVATE.
Softly, not quite singing, Ianto chanted out, "Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. Because if we forgot we'd have to come up with some other reason to have bloody huge fireworks every year, right?"
Indiana seemed to wriggle a bit faster. Ianto smiled.
"Ianto," Jack said in his ear, "tell me you're here somewhere."
"On my way," Ianto said firmly.
"You haven't even left yet."
"I'm on my way, I swear."
Jack sighed hugely. "There's really no point in abusing Torchwood credentials to get a good spot if you're not actually here for the fireworks."
"I'm coming! I'm leaving now."
"It's the first time in--"
Ianto heard the near-simultaneous clicks of everyone else's comms turning on as they joined in, and he rolled his eyes and recited it, too. "Thirty years that there's been half a chance of the whole team being free for bonfire night."
"I will be there," Ianto repeated.
"Traffic's going to be murder," Jack went on. "People are setting things on fire all over the city--"
"Bonfire night, yes," Ianto murmured. "Seen it before."
"Gwen, do you think we can get him a police escort?"
"Leaving now, hanging up now," Ianto said, and shut off his comm, taking it off his ear and dropping it into his pocket.
He laid his hand flat on the surface of the pod, and said softly, "Good night, son, I love you. Don't forget, all right? You're going to love fireworks when you're a bit older."
He killed the audio feed, returned it to stasis mode, and then left Jack's office at a run.
He arrived just in time to see the first one go up. He watched it for a few seconds, then looked around while the white light of the firework lingered. He soon spotted Torchwood, sitting together on a couple of black blankets (they'd been washed since the last time they were used, he was pretty sure).
Jack was sitting right in the center of them all, with Gwen on one side and Martha on the other. Gwen was cuddled close to Rhys, and Martha's Tom had made it back for a little holiday. Mickey was sprawled out with his head nearly in Lucy's lap, and Andy was sitting on Lucy's other side, because Gwen was doing a much better job than Ianto had of slowly introducing Jack to her chosen replacement.
Even from here, in the uneven flashes of light, Ianto could see Mickey flirting with Lucy, and Andy was watching both of them like a kid who wanted to join in the game but hadn't worked out how to play yet. Lucy leaned against him when she laughed, though, and Mickey wasn't looking at either of them like he was sizing up the competition--though he certainly was looking--so Ianto suspected Andy was going to get drafted sooner than he knew.
Ianto stood a while, watching the fireworks, watching his team. Jack loved fireworks as much as Indy was going to, but he loved his team more; he was happy surrounded by his people. He was going to be all right. They all were.
There was a short lull, and in the dark Ianto heard Gwen say, "Isn't Ianto here yet?"
Martha straightened up, looking around, but Jack just pointed. "He's right there. Lurking. Care to join us, Ianto?"
So he did, jogging across the distance, handing off thermoses of coffee and chocolate. Everyone shifted around to open a space for him at Jack's side, and Jack's arm closed firmly around him. Gwen squeezed his hand as the fireworks started up again, and Ianto leaned against Jack and stopped looking around. It was time to look up.
Alone in the cold and the gradually diminishing darkness, Ianto cradled a detonator against his chest and thought about time.
Time was a ball of string, the Doctor had said, but each ordinary person was just a tiny strand, and from inside that strand time looked like a straight line, marching always and only forward. It could be counted in so many ways, arbitrary units recorded like chalk marks on the wall of a tunnel. Measuring time as it passed was just a way to say I was here. I came this far.
Even now his watch ticked along steadily as a metronome--but it measured no more than a metronome did, down here away from the sun and the passing hours. The turn of the earth was no longer a relevant metric.
Take the beat of his heart, then. It was less steady than the tick of the clock, but it drove the waves of pain that washed his body. It battered the tide of blood against the barrier he'd fashioned, the leather belt wrapped around his right thigh and pulled so tight that below the pounding of trapped blood, he could feel nothing at all. His left foot still throbbed in time to his heart, with the prosaic aches of a long climb followed by a longer walk-scramble-fall-crawl, but his right leg was silent. It would wait now for the time of bacteria and bugs and rot. In the borders of his body, time was already out of joint.
He had to step outside himself, then, to look up and see light and movement, to count time by local phenomena. This cavern which had been a coal mine, had been the inside of a mountain, was filling up with a fine golden light, courtesy of the pearl white creatures who swarmed through it now, working on their machinery. There was no knowing what they thought of time, where they had been or how far they had come. They did not seem aware of humans at all, paying them no more or less attention than they did the tons of rock they vaporized. There was no possibility of communication. There was no way to ask them to stop, to ask them not to destroy this world the Rift had poured them into.
So count time by change in size, a universal clock: the golden light of their force field slowly expanded, holding up the mountain as they hollowed it out. The machinery they built grew as well, nearing completion. There was no knowing their intention, but this was not their world to fill or to destroy. They must be stopped.
Ianto had the means to stop them, one piece cradled in his arms like a child, the other lying on the ground at the far end of a barely-dry blood trail. He watched the golden light sweep out, ever closer--I am here; I have come this far--to the cobbled-together device. Set off inside the force field, the electromagnetic pulse would disable their machinery and whatever powered the force field. If that didn't kill them, the mountain falling in would.
And it would take Ianto with it, of course, if he were still here.
But time was a ball of string. All times which happened, happened at once and forever. Outside this cavern Jack was searching for him, trying to find him in time, to get him to safety and do the dangerous work in his place. But somewhere else outside, Jack and Indiana were living within a mile of this spot, free of any menace from strange pearl white alien things. Somewhere else, Indy was traveling time and space with his Time Lady cousin, wearing his dad's old t-shirt and enjoying his gap year. Out there, Ianto had been dead for hundreds of years. He must succeed, because they needed him to have done. He must succeed, because for them he already had.
The golden light flowed closer.
Ianto's communicator came alive with Jack's voice in his ear. "Ianto?"
Ianto closed his eyes. He'd told himself, if he heard Jack before he saw him...
"Get out, Jack."
Jack said nothing.
"There's no time," Ianto said. "It's nearly reached me. You won't get here in time. The pulse will kill my comm."
"Just hold on," Jack said, his voice rough with anger, desperation, anticipated grief.
"No," Ianto said. "It's time. It's my turn. I beat all the averages."
"Ianto," Jack repeated. Ianto listened to Jack's breathing around the word, coming in gasps. He'd stopped walking. He knew, too.
"Go," Ianto repeated. "It's all right."
"I can't just leave you," Jack said. Jack meant, don't leave me.
"You can," Ianto said. "It's very simple. Turn round and walk the other way. You don't want to have to dig out from under this."
Jack's next breath shuddered, but it brought with it the sound of a footfall. Jack obeyed him, just this once.
Ianto watched the golden light envelop the device.
"Lucy will start to bring you coffee in a week or two," Ianto said. "She knows how you like it. I've warned her you'll ignore her the first time, tear her head off the third, and try to shag her the tenth. She won't let you upset her more than you should."
Jack didn't speak, but he was keeping the channel open. Ianto could hear him breathing, could hear the sound stutter and break.
"Jack," Ianto said, because Jack deserved to hear what he wanted to hear this one last time, and because it was true--though the immediacy of it had washed out on a tide of something just now; adrenaline and incipient hypothermia, maybe. Now that the moment had come, Ianto trusted Jack to keep this secret for him.
"Jack--fuck, this hurts, and it's scary, and I hate it. But I can do this, because it has to be done, and because you're with me." It was getting hard to speak properly. His teeth wanted to chatter; his tongue felt thick and clumsy. He flexed his fingers against the detonator to be sure he could still do the job. The golden light was nearly at his toes, now. He'd have to be inside the force field with the device to make certain the detonator would work.
"But I want you to know, Jack. Everything really is going to be all right."
"Ianto," Jack whispered, and it was all there in a word, everything Ianto had ever wanted to hear, ever needed.
"I'm here," Ianto said, and the light was golden against his eyelids as he pressed down on the detonator.
The explosives went with a properly deafening bang; by the time the sound had died the pulse must have gone--he really didn't feel anything. So strange. Everything went dark, the golden light winking out all at once. He wondered if the aliens were making any sounds; he couldn't hear a thing past the roaring deafness from the explosion.
He could feel it, though, in the rock all around him, the grinding rumble of the unsupported earth shifting. The force field had collapsed, and the mountain was sure to follow. He would be buried here, but time would flow on above him, under the sun, as it should. He had said his goodbyes to Indiana, and all his goodbyes to Jack. He had done all he could for this world. It was enough.
"I've come this far," Ianto whispered, as the rocks groaned around him. He reached down and tugged the leather belt free, and let time run out over his fingers.
There was a peal of trumpets and a bright light shining. Before he knew anything else Ianto knew he was safe, knew his family was nearby, and nothing else mattered.
He recognized one of Indiana's more musically-oriented handheld games by the third note--it sounded like he was playing in his room, maybe downstairs if he'd turned the sound all the way up. Ianto dragged his arm up over his eyes, and noticed that it seemed like a greater effort than usual. His body had that distant feeling that suggested that something was very wrong on the other side of some very powerful drugs. His brain, too, or he'd probably find the drugs thing more worrisome.
"Hey," Jack said softly. "You in there?"
Ianto tried to answer, and managed nothing but a hoarse groan.
"Sorry," Jack said, and Ianto felt him shifting on the bed. "Here, have a drink."
There was a straw at his lips. Ianto smiled around it as he recognized the flavor of fruit juice--the same stuff Jack had given him the first morning he was here.
Jack took the straw away, and Ianto painstakingly lowered his arm and blinked a few times. His eyes were gummy and didn't want to focus, but when he squinted Jack was there, leaning over him. Ianto frowned--Jack looked wrong--no, looked right--no, nothing around Jack looked right--nothing matched--
"Shh," Jack said, though as far as Ianto could tell he hadn't made a sound. "Shh, it's all right. You're going to be fine, everything's fine."
Ianto shook his head. Jack was--this was the wrong Jack, Ianto could see the sprinkle of gray hairs, see it on his face and hear it in his voice--he couldn’t really be here, he'd--he'd been doing something important, something important two hundred years ago, and he couldn't move his arm.
"Jack, what--"
"Everything really is going to be all right," Jack repeated. "You're at the med center. The drugs are starting to wear off; a little disorientation is normal."
Ianto looked around wildly; he did recognize the room, though it was impossible. They were in the back room at the med center, the door standing open; he could hear Indy's handheld game, the music floating in from up front somewhere.
"No, Jack. I left."
Jack nodded. "What's the last thing you remember?"
Ianto shut his eyes. "I left," he repeated. "I was in the Hub. I--it was Tuesday, and Gwen's printer was almost out of toner, and Mickey and Lucy were arguing about refilling cartridges while I replaced it."
"Okay," Jack said. "Anything else?"
"Rift monitor," Ianto said. "There were these--alien things. Up in the hills somewhere. Not fighting, not making any demands. They just ignored people. If someone got in their way, they'd just--swat them, like bugs. Like we weren't even there. They got--" His whole body jerked at the memory, but Jack's hands were there, steadying him. "Jack, they got Gwen, they broke Mickey's arm--"
"Shh, it's all right. Gwen woke up a few days later, mad because she missed the excitement. Mickey was fine."
"Mickey--Mickey figured out about their machinery. Vulnerable to EM, just like ours. We used one on them, we thought that was all, and Lucy left to take Gwen and Mickey to hospital while we mopped up. But--we were still showing activity. They were in the mines, underground--we put together more pulse generators and went in, and..."
Ianto reached down with his good hand. He still couldn't feel much below his hip, but he could see his toes wiggle. "I fell--my leg--Jack, I died. I died, and you--" Everything really is going to be all right, he'd said that to Jack, two hundred years ago, an eyeblink. "Were you there somehow? Did you pull me out?"
Jack shook his head, and touched Ianto's immobilized arm. "I couldn't. You had to do what you were going to do--we needed you, you stopped them. I couldn't get there without totally fucking the timestream. But I knew we never recovered your body, so..."
Ianto managed to lift his head enough to look at his left arm. His wrist was bandaged--his left wrist.
"The bracelet?"
Jack laughed, almost a sigh, and nodded. "I was a bit too clever there, nearly drove myself crazy--you remember, when you first came, I said I was always expecting to turn around and see you at Torchwood?"
Ianto nodded. Jack's fingers trailed ticklishly up and down his arm above the bandage. "I really, honestly did, for years--the knot in the bracelet, it wasn't just that I remembered it from seeing it the first time round. I knew it. I learned it as a kid on the Boeshane Peninsula--Sea Scouts--and that knot was the one you'd tie in the end of a line when you'd tested it and knew it was safe to use. It means I may be relied upon."
Ianto stared at him, remembering every time Jack had touched the bracelet, the knot--he'd thought Jack was just obsessed, jealous, but... "Trust me."
Jack met his eyes and nodded. "And I did, but I didn't know who I was trusting--you, or me, or... And I kept having these dreams, these really good dreams--"
Those leftovers from the retcon. Ianto realized with a jolt that he still couldn't tell Jack about that--that was all ahead of them, Indy's childhood crush, Indy's gap year. Ianto hadn't missed it after all. Hell, if Indy was still playing a video game Ianto recognized, he couldn't have missed much at all.
"--and I'd wake up and spend the whole day waiting for you to just walk through the door. Took me years to realize you weren't coming. And then you did, only you weren't safe yet."
The way Jack had looked at him, that first time, searching his face to see when he'd come from. All that time waiting... "But--how?"
Jack smiled. "The Doctor pulled the failsafe circuit out of my wriststrap--I disabled that one myself, when I left the Time Agency. It's meant to detect when the wearer's life signs indicate death is imminent, and then teleport them to a safe time and place. It wasn't reprogrammable, and I really didn't want to wake up on a Time Agency operating table after I'd been running cons like I was. And then," Jack gestured to himself, "sort of pointless, anyway. But the Doctor fixed it, so it brought you back to us--well, to Jana."
Ianto squeezed his eyes shut. The second harmony line had come in on Indy's game, and Ianto found he could wiggle the fingers of his left hand; they tapped in time almost reflexively. "But when you... it blew up."
"Just a little," Jack said. "A bit of tamper-proofing we set off. Hardly even left a mark, anyway. The Doctor put it into one of the beads on the bracelet, and then it was just a little sleight of hand to get it back to me and to Indy to give to you."
Ianto looked up at him again. "You knew I was coming back."
Jack shook his head. "Not until you got here. I couldn't be sure it would work--you could have stopped wearing the bracelet, the EM could have killed the circuit--and if you'd actually died in the cave-in, Jana wouldn't have been able to do much with what was left."
Ianto touched his leg gingerly.
"You bled out, though--that was easy to fix," Jack said. "Ah. The rest is my fault, I'm afraid--the failsafe circuit gave you a pretty bumpy ride without the stabilizers that are built into the wriststrap, and what with you being unconscious..."
Ianto abruptly recognized the slowly-returning sensation. "It dislocated my shoulder again?"
Jack nodded. "And also burst into flames. Well, melted the lead lining we put into the beads to protect against EM, and then burst into flames. But you're almost all healed up already, the nerve block is just a precaution."
Ianto stared up at the ceiling, trying to absorb this. "So... I'm all right, now."
"Yeah," Jack said. "Jana fixed everything up, even some nasty Rift radiation you'd been exposed to--clean bill of health. I, uh, did ask her to leave a scar, for your leg. I thought you might want something to remember it by. But you can get rid of that, if you like."
Ianto shook his head--Jack was right, dying like that ought to leave a mark--dying certainly had, the first time. He realized he was smiling when his face started to hurt. "I have... I have time, now."
He felt Jack moving closer. "Yes, you do. Lots. A century or so, if you stick around somewhere with decent medical care."
A century. He could hardly imagine it. He hadn't been able to really imagine a year, the last time he was here.
"I was hoping," Jack said, and his hand settled lightly on Ianto's chest. "I asked once before, but you had an escape route ready that time." Ianto met his eyes, and Jack looked honestly uncertain, though there was a smile in his eyes. "Stay with us, Ianto Jones? For all the time we've got?"
Indy's game was building to some sort of crescendo. Ianto laughed, and nodded, and Jack kissed him and kept on kissing him, even when they were both laughing and Ianto was wretchedly out of breath.
"Da-ad." The embarrassment sounded exactly the same as it had a year ago, but it was directed equally at both of them now; Ianto could hear it.
Jack lifted his head, and helped Ianto when he struggled to push himself up. Indy was standing in the doorway of the treatment room, still in his school uniform; Ianto recognized the grass stains on his knees from that morning, down by the river, and his hair was still a mess, though at least he'd washed his face. By the light it was late afternoon, but he'd only missed hours, after living out the rest of his life.
Ianto couldn't speak, but raised his right hand and beckoned. Indy came slowly over to the bed, his game still in hand. "Dad?"
"It's all right," Ianto said. "I'm staying this time."
Indy was watching him warily, and Ianto remembered that Indy--an Indy years and years older than the one in front of him, two centuries ago--had said he ran away again on his seventh birthday. He wasn't going to believe it for sure, but Ianto would have time to persuade him. He made a mental note to leave that t-shirt somewhere Indy could find it, later.
"Happy birthday," Ianto added.
Indy smiled suddenly and shyly, and climbed up onto the bed to perch carefully between Ianto's feet. "We could get some cake on the way home," Indy suggested. "It could be welcome-home-get-well-soon cake."
Ianto pushed himself up to a proper sitting position and flexed his left hand; feeling was definitely back, just a dull ache in his shoulder and wrist and thigh. He looked over at Jack, and Jack stood and reached out to help him up. "What do you say, Ianto? Ready to come home?"
Ianto smiled, and took his hand.
epilogues