Conversations with the Dead (2/2)
Title: Conversations with the (repeatedly) Dead
Summary: "Earth's going to hell in a handbasket. If this isn't the perfect time to crack, then I don't know."
Fandom(s): Torchwood
Characters: Jack/Ianto
Spoilers: Everything of 'Children of Earth'
Rating/Warnings: None for this chapter, be sure to read the warnings for chapter one, though
Word count: 3194
Notes: Huge thanks to xwingace and aeron_lanart for their invaluable help as betas. After a Year that Never Was fic, you now get Children of Earth fic in this chapter... not exactly AU, not exactly fixit. Make of it what you will. Concrit is love.
Fic Masterlist: Here, archived at alien_sands
Chapter One
But I'm just a traveller in time
Trying so hard to pay for my crime
- Uriah Heep, Traveler in Time
***
Time... it's such a peculiar thing. We don't really know it at all; we can't see it, we can't smell it. And yet we claim it's there, that it's running through our fingers when we're not looking, that we don't have it when we need it. I have all the time in the world, some say, and yet still it runs through my fingers awfully quickly. It's not fair.
*
"I was wondering if you'd turn up again," Jack said to the hallucination as it sat down next to him on the small cell bed. He could hear Lois calling out to him from across the little corridor, demanding that he do something, anything at all. Jack simply sighed, and leant back to stare at the ceiling. The hallucination watched him for a little longer, then straightened its tie.
"I'm dead, aren't I?" It asked.
"We had that conversation on the Valiant already." Jack was too tired for his mind to play tricks again, so he closed his eyes to block out the sight of a dead man looking at him strangely.
"I --" the hallucination frowned. "Oddly enough, I suddenly remember that."
"Well, I remember, so it's only logical that you do, too. My mind's a bit wonky right now. Must be the being blown to bits." Jack refused to open his eyes, to let the familiar voice penetrate any of his carefully constructed walls of Not Giving A Shit. The world was ending in just a few hours, and if he could ignore that, he could also ignore a dead Welshman.
"Oh, so we're back to me being a figment of your imagination, then," the figment in question said, its annoyed tone so utterly familiar that it made Jack squeeze his eyes shut even harder.
"Seems like it. I'm losing it, which might be just as well. Earth's going to hell in a handbasket soon. If this isn't the perfect time to crack, then I don't know."
"The world's always ending, isn't that what I said before?" the hallucination asked, but Jack was in no mood to listen to his mind's pep talks.
"This is different." He sighed, trying to block out Lois' desperate voice and the presence of the dead man next to him.
"Why?" it asked, its voice too close to ignore.
"I'm so tired of this crap. All of it." Jack sighed again, not really knowing why he even talked to the hallucination that couldn't be a ghost. At least not on any world he'd ever been on.
"I know you. You won't ever stop fighting." The sheer belief in the hallucination's words made Jack's eyes seek his. He got lost for a moment in the familiar blue he thought he'd never see again. The trust in them was still as strong as when the life had fled Ianto's body. It made Jack swallow, feelings painfully stuck in his throat.
He looked away, and when he turned around again, he was alone in the little cell.
Jack breathed out heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to get his thoughts back into some semblance of order. Ianto's (no, he corrected himself, the ghost's) last sentence hung in his mind and refused to go away.
When the time for fighting back came, he was ready.
*
You saved me so many times, but when it mattered, I could never return the favour. And how could I? I get only one chance. You all have only one life to lose, after all.
*
The corridor he sat in was empty and small, caging his thoughts, not letting them turn away from the things that had happened today. The small mouldy place had two doorways, both leading to places he didn't want to face.
Both destinations now contained only grief, both would bring accusations and more pain, and he couldn't change a thing about any of it.
One led outside and into the evening light, and would ultimately bring him back to Cardiff, a ruined Hub and Ianto still being dead. The other door would take him inside, to his grieving daughter and a dead grandson.
He didn't want to face either.
So he simply sat in the small and strangely quiet corridor, waiting for the world to stop. It didn't. Of course it didn't. It never would, not for him.
"You know, they say that when you save the life of just one person, you save the entire world," Ianto said, sitting down next to him and resting his head against the concrete wall.
"I have no idea how that saying goes when you saved ten percent of humanity, but you know what I mean." His suit was as immaculate as on the day he died. It was hard to believe that that had only been yesterday.
"Yeah." Jack rubbed his eyes, ignoring the ghost. Between thinking about grief and Would've Beens he'd been wondering if it would turn up again, which was probably why it had. "See if I can make myself believe that someday," he answered, the hallucination smiling weakly.
His daughter came and went again, her pain so obvious that he'd probably still remember it when she will have been dead for decades. He glanced back, the dingy bench now empty. Time, he thought, that was all he had. And ghosts enough to haunt him for several lifetimes.
Jack sighed once more, deciding to walk out into the light of the setting sun. He's always been better at dealing with ghosts than with the present.
*
People sooner or later claim that my immortality isn't right, you know. Even the Doctor called me wrong. But what they really mean, and what even the Doctor doesn't understand, is this: Mortality is unjust. Death is wrong. Of course it is, you know that best. It's always unfair. I understand that now. But it never gets easier.
*
"Ah, the Taj Mahal. Always wanted to see it, brilliant!" The Doctor exclaimed, and he patted the TARDIS's panelling affectionately, this random destination the perfect distraction from everything he'd left behind in London. Not a very far temporal jump away from Donna's timeline, but far enough in space to maybe shake some of the memories off. New places always helped a lot.
He sniffed the air and caught a whiff of something he really didn't like, a mixture of fear and despair, of an atmosphere that should never be on Earth, making him wrinkle his nose.
He watched the people around him, looking for clues. He'd missed something, but he had no idea what. Nothing seemed wrong, of course. Fewer people were visiting the Taj than he'd expected in the early 21st century, on the cusp of the tourism hype.
The weather was breathtaking, the white marble of the Taj bathing the surrounding gardens in clear bright light. It was stunningly peaceful, but still people seemed wary. Mothers held their daughters just a tad too tight, fathers never let their sons out of their sight. And not one of the children was complaining. He'd missed something very important, obviously. He decided that a short detour to Cardiff was in order soon, and another one to wherever Martha Jones spent her honeymoon (maybe nip back to her wedding later on), but first, he'd go and see the sights. He had a time machine, after all. He looked at the white palace in front of him, smiling because of its beauty.
"It's a grave," a voice behind him said, a voice he'd recognise anywhere and anywhen, even without that slight tingly feeling that made the hairs on his neck stand up. Jack, still wearing his army greatcoat in the middle of the Indian heat, was sitting on the lawn, staring at the temple in front of them.
The scent seemed to cling to the unmoving figure, seeping from his coat and his hair, mixing with the human tang of desperation and loss. It was a potent smell the Doctor was only too well acquainted with. It took him back to the day a limping TARDIS had brought him to Earth after the war, how he had sat there, staring at the sky, only seeing a dying world circling a dying sun.
He shook out of the memories, returning to his more cheerful self. "Jack!" he exclaimed, his friend a pleasant surprise in a place like this. Saved him a trip, at least. But wasn't Torchwood India closed down a long time ago?
"It's a grave." Jack's voice was curiously devoid of any emotion, his eyes still fixed on the building, not wavering when the Doctor approached. This destination was everything but random, the Doctor realised as he took in the look on Jack's face. Seemed like the TARDIS had landed nearly in the immortal's lap. His instinct was right, it seemed. Something had happened, something terrible.
"Most people forget, because it's so beautiful." Jack continued, rolling a blade of grass between his fingers, his face tired and his eyes bleak.
The Doctor nodded, asking the obvious question. "Shouldn't you be in Cardiff? Protecting the Earth and all that?" He smiled, not able to keep the pride out of his voice. When Jack didn't answer, he sat down next to him, admiring the graceful curve of the Taj's dome, and waited for Jack to speak again. The silence between them stretched as they watched families taking pictures, reading in guide books and complaining about the souvenirs. It was such a mundane place that it made the Doctor smile again, made him forget about that painfully familiar smell for a moment too long.
"It's a grave," Jack repeated finally, throwing the blade of grass away and getting up in one fluid movement. "The whole world is a grave," he added as he turned around, patting the TARDIS once before starting to walk away.
When the Doctor finally shook off his shock and started to his feet, Jack was already no more than a small grey spot in the distance, and the Doctor had to run to catch up with him.
*
Do you know the ancient legend of Pandora's box? The Gods entrusted her with a treasure, as a punishment to all of humanity. She wasn't evil, she didn't strive for power, she was immortal and content, like all humans were back then. But she was oh so human. She released it all, death and disease and at the very bottom of the box there lay hope. Hope... that was the most cruel punishment of all.
*
He stared at the face looking back at him from the cheap hotel mirror, trying to ignore the other face being reflected there, of a young man leaning against the bathroom tiles behind him.
"Maybe it really is the Rift, have you ever thought about that?"
"And what the heck should've caused something this freaky?" Jack answered, trying to concentrate on the grey hair at his temple, tearing it out viciously.
The mirage (that was so definitely not Ianto) shrugged. "All that naked hide and seek atop a dimensional fault line must've been good for something."
For the first time in months, Jack laughed. Laughed and laughed until he couldn't see past the tears in his eyes. He couldn't stop when the world tilted and he had to slide down to the floor when the laugh turned into something more hysterical, robbing him of breath and self-control. He sat there for quite a while, waiting for the world to just stop. But of course, the universe rarely stopped when it mattered. The ghost slid down beside him, not even disturbing the air when it leaned close.
"You're running away again?" It wasn't a question, and they both knew it.
"Oh yes." It was what he was back in Cardiff for, after all. He'd needed some gear for it, and his wristcomp. He tried to tell himself that those were the only reasons for this last visit on Earth.
"I'm..." the ghost faltered. "I'm not sure I can follow."
"That's kind of the idea," Jack answered.
"At least say goodbye to me this time."
Jack closed his eyes, remembering white gas and deep alien voices. "I already did," he said to the empty bathroom.
*
Time heals all wounds... but what if Time itself is the disease? It eats away at all of us, every day, every second that ticks by. It is worse than cancer, worse than war, because we can't fight back. I tried, I tried so many times, but Time always wins.
*
It takes him some time, but with his old conman tricks, lots of money and pressure on certain parts of the Shadow Proclamation, he finally tracks down the 456's home planet.
"Welcome to D'olichoderia," a pleasant female voice greets him through the speakers of his warship, the planet below bathed in the white nebula that has haunted his dreams ever since Thames House.
The weapon systems aboard are powerful enough to blow this world to pieces, but are carefully hidden from overly enthusiastic scanners. For all their technology, they won't see their demise coming. He can still be merciful, sometimes.
"I have a proposition to make," Jack sneers through the speakers as he presses a button to transmit the details of a fake deal. It will give him even more satisfaction to know that their last moments are spent with watering mandibles, yearning for a good Earth child kick.
It's so damn easy, he smiles to himself, his target system locking on to the major cities.
"We don't deal with the likes of you," the voice snarls back after reading his transmission, "you will find none of your business here. Leave this place before we make you." Under the vapour he can detect global weapon systems booting.
"You don't do drugs? Any of you?" Jack asks, honestly gobsmacked. Jack Harkness hesitates for the first time in years, his hands wavering over the trigger.
"Only the utmost scum of every species does," another female voice snarls over frequency 456, the transmission coming in from another continent. The utter loathing is clear even through the machine translator. "Our children will not be corrupted by the likes of you. You will be executed for your crimes."
His finger is still over the trigger, just one button to make this world burn, ignite the atmosphere, turn the surface into a radioactive wasteland. They deserve this. They all deserve this. He doesn't know why he hesitates. Next to him, Ianto Jones is watching him carefully, a raised eyebrow saying more than the white noise of old ghosts suddenly whispering inside his head.
"Never doubted him, never will," the ghost looking like Ianto says, his voice clear over the ocean of noise. For the first time in years, Jack is looking at himself, and what he sees makes him pull back his hand from the trigger as if burned.
He turns his ship around, fires up the engines and runs, and runs, and runs.
*
They say 'Live in the present'. But look at me, standing here in the middle of nowhere, freezing on a hill to watch my city for one last time. I'm waiting for my past turn up to say goodbye. Is that even possible?
*
Jack wasn't surprised when the hallucination walked up to him, staring out over the sea with him. He'd been waiting for the ghost to show up, after all.
"I killed you." Jack said, not for the first time talking to thin air and not minding the strange looks that passers-by could shoot him. It was his way of greeting an old ghost in a now ancient city that held so many of those.
"No, giant insect aliens killed me," the hallucination answered, still wearing the same suit he did on the day that he died. No, Jack corrected himself, on the day Ianto died, this was just his mind running a bit crazy. Maybe. Other options were possible, he could admit that now. He'd seen stranger things happen.
"You know what I mean." Jack sighed, tearing his eyes away from the young man to watch the ocean, unwilling to start an argument with himself. Again.
"And you know what I mean." Ianto huffed, and looked him up and down interestedly. "Love the coat... is that still the one I bought for you?"
Jack nodded. "Took good care of it. Contrary to you, it survived long past its time." He sighed, the familiar pain as present as the coat around his shoulders.
"By being stuffed into a box together with some moth balls, no doubt." They both smiled at Ianto's quip. Jack had missed the banter. He'd missed the hallucination of a man he'd lost such a long time ago, he realised, even though it seemed to turn up whenever it was needed. Or when his mind thought he needed it. Whatever.
"Why's it only you I see? I mean, there're thousands of ghosts my mind could conjure up." It was a rhetorical question, Jack was sure his subconscious wouldn't answer.
"Maybe I'm real," the ghost that was Ianto said. "Maybe it's the Rift, it does all kind of crazy things," the hallucination said, analysing all possibilities like the real Ianto had always done.
"Or maybe I really am crazy," Jack shot back.
"I thought that was a given." The hallucination grinned, and Jack couldn't care less if it was indeed a figment of his mind or something else.
"What is this place?" Ianto finally asked, looking at the sea, which probably never really changed throughout the entire history of mankind. At least not on the surface.
"Cardiff," Jack said, pointing at the silvery fountain behind him. It only looked vaguely like the one that had stood there in Ianto's lifetime, but the similarities were still visible. It was a memorial now, for a cause that had been long forgotten.
"Looks different... has it been a thousand years yet?" Ianto asked, and it made Jack smile.
"Oh, Ianto Jones, you have no idea." Jack grinned, opening his wristcomp to press two buttons at the same time. There was a short beep, but nothing happened. Ianto frowned.
"What was that supposed to do?" Ianto asked, glancing around to see if something around them had changed. When Jack's hand extended to shove him, he jumped back, staring in bewilderment at the hand that had come to rest on his arm. He opened his mouth several times to speak, but closed it again.
"I'm not crazy. The Rift is." Jack's voice was cool, but he couldn’t help but grasp the other man painfully hard. "Especially on a day like this, when time lines meet and get all tangled up with the future and the past." Jack smiled, shaking the suddenly corporeal form of Ianto Jones some more, just to be sure." All that radiation will go out with a bang, it seemed like a shame to miss the chance."
Together, they watched the sun rise, a giant fireball that had already swallowed Mercury and Venus.
"Welcome to the last day on Earth, Ianto Jones." Jack finally said, and pulled the other man into a hug.
***
Summary: "Earth's going to hell in a handbasket. If this isn't the perfect time to crack, then I don't know."
Fandom(s): Torchwood
Characters: Jack/Ianto
Spoilers: Everything of 'Children of Earth'
Rating/Warnings: None for this chapter, be sure to read the warnings for chapter one, though
Word count: 3194
Notes: Huge thanks to xwingace and aeron_lanart for their invaluable help as betas. After a Year that Never Was fic, you now get Children of Earth fic in this chapter... not exactly AU, not exactly fixit. Make of it what you will. Concrit is love.
Fic Masterlist: Here, archived at alien_sands
Chapter One
But I'm just a traveller in time
Trying so hard to pay for my crime
- Uriah Heep, Traveler in Time
***
Time... it's such a peculiar thing. We don't really know it at all; we can't see it, we can't smell it. And yet we claim it's there, that it's running through our fingers when we're not looking, that we don't have it when we need it. I have all the time in the world, some say, and yet still it runs through my fingers awfully quickly. It's not fair.
*
"I was wondering if you'd turn up again," Jack said to the hallucination as it sat down next to him on the small cell bed. He could hear Lois calling out to him from across the little corridor, demanding that he do something, anything at all. Jack simply sighed, and leant back to stare at the ceiling. The hallucination watched him for a little longer, then straightened its tie.
"I'm dead, aren't I?" It asked.
"We had that conversation on the Valiant already." Jack was too tired for his mind to play tricks again, so he closed his eyes to block out the sight of a dead man looking at him strangely.
"I --" the hallucination frowned. "Oddly enough, I suddenly remember that."
"Well, I remember, so it's only logical that you do, too. My mind's a bit wonky right now. Must be the being blown to bits." Jack refused to open his eyes, to let the familiar voice penetrate any of his carefully constructed walls of Not Giving A Shit. The world was ending in just a few hours, and if he could ignore that, he could also ignore a dead Welshman.
"Oh, so we're back to me being a figment of your imagination, then," the figment in question said, its annoyed tone so utterly familiar that it made Jack squeeze his eyes shut even harder.
"Seems like it. I'm losing it, which might be just as well. Earth's going to hell in a handbasket soon. If this isn't the perfect time to crack, then I don't know."
"The world's always ending, isn't that what I said before?" the hallucination asked, but Jack was in no mood to listen to his mind's pep talks.
"This is different." He sighed, trying to block out Lois' desperate voice and the presence of the dead man next to him.
"Why?" it asked, its voice too close to ignore.
"I'm so tired of this crap. All of it." Jack sighed again, not really knowing why he even talked to the hallucination that couldn't be a ghost. At least not on any world he'd ever been on.
"I know you. You won't ever stop fighting." The sheer belief in the hallucination's words made Jack's eyes seek his. He got lost for a moment in the familiar blue he thought he'd never see again. The trust in them was still as strong as when the life had fled Ianto's body. It made Jack swallow, feelings painfully stuck in his throat.
He looked away, and when he turned around again, he was alone in the little cell.
Jack breathed out heavily, pinching the bridge of his nose, trying to get his thoughts back into some semblance of order. Ianto's (no, he corrected himself, the ghost's) last sentence hung in his mind and refused to go away.
When the time for fighting back came, he was ready.
*
You saved me so many times, but when it mattered, I could never return the favour. And how could I? I get only one chance. You all have only one life to lose, after all.
*
The corridor he sat in was empty and small, caging his thoughts, not letting them turn away from the things that had happened today. The small mouldy place had two doorways, both leading to places he didn't want to face.
Both destinations now contained only grief, both would bring accusations and more pain, and he couldn't change a thing about any of it.
One led outside and into the evening light, and would ultimately bring him back to Cardiff, a ruined Hub and Ianto still being dead. The other door would take him inside, to his grieving daughter and a dead grandson.
He didn't want to face either.
So he simply sat in the small and strangely quiet corridor, waiting for the world to stop. It didn't. Of course it didn't. It never would, not for him.
"You know, they say that when you save the life of just one person, you save the entire world," Ianto said, sitting down next to him and resting his head against the concrete wall.
"I have no idea how that saying goes when you saved ten percent of humanity, but you know what I mean." His suit was as immaculate as on the day he died. It was hard to believe that that had only been yesterday.
"Yeah." Jack rubbed his eyes, ignoring the ghost. Between thinking about grief and Would've Beens he'd been wondering if it would turn up again, which was probably why it had. "See if I can make myself believe that someday," he answered, the hallucination smiling weakly.
His daughter came and went again, her pain so obvious that he'd probably still remember it when she will have been dead for decades. He glanced back, the dingy bench now empty. Time, he thought, that was all he had. And ghosts enough to haunt him for several lifetimes.
Jack sighed once more, deciding to walk out into the light of the setting sun. He's always been better at dealing with ghosts than with the present.
*
People sooner or later claim that my immortality isn't right, you know. Even the Doctor called me wrong. But what they really mean, and what even the Doctor doesn't understand, is this: Mortality is unjust. Death is wrong. Of course it is, you know that best. It's always unfair. I understand that now. But it never gets easier.
*
"Ah, the Taj Mahal. Always wanted to see it, brilliant!" The Doctor exclaimed, and he patted the TARDIS's panelling affectionately, this random destination the perfect distraction from everything he'd left behind in London. Not a very far temporal jump away from Donna's timeline, but far enough in space to maybe shake some of the memories off. New places always helped a lot.
He sniffed the air and caught a whiff of something he really didn't like, a mixture of fear and despair, of an atmosphere that should never be on Earth, making him wrinkle his nose.
He watched the people around him, looking for clues. He'd missed something, but he had no idea what. Nothing seemed wrong, of course. Fewer people were visiting the Taj than he'd expected in the early 21st century, on the cusp of the tourism hype.
The weather was breathtaking, the white marble of the Taj bathing the surrounding gardens in clear bright light. It was stunningly peaceful, but still people seemed wary. Mothers held their daughters just a tad too tight, fathers never let their sons out of their sight. And not one of the children was complaining. He'd missed something very important, obviously. He decided that a short detour to Cardiff was in order soon, and another one to wherever Martha Jones spent her honeymoon (maybe nip back to her wedding later on), but first, he'd go and see the sights. He had a time machine, after all. He looked at the white palace in front of him, smiling because of its beauty.
"It's a grave," a voice behind him said, a voice he'd recognise anywhere and anywhen, even without that slight tingly feeling that made the hairs on his neck stand up. Jack, still wearing his army greatcoat in the middle of the Indian heat, was sitting on the lawn, staring at the temple in front of them.
The scent seemed to cling to the unmoving figure, seeping from his coat and his hair, mixing with the human tang of desperation and loss. It was a potent smell the Doctor was only too well acquainted with. It took him back to the day a limping TARDIS had brought him to Earth after the war, how he had sat there, staring at the sky, only seeing a dying world circling a dying sun.
He shook out of the memories, returning to his more cheerful self. "Jack!" he exclaimed, his friend a pleasant surprise in a place like this. Saved him a trip, at least. But wasn't Torchwood India closed down a long time ago?
"It's a grave." Jack's voice was curiously devoid of any emotion, his eyes still fixed on the building, not wavering when the Doctor approached. This destination was everything but random, the Doctor realised as he took in the look on Jack's face. Seemed like the TARDIS had landed nearly in the immortal's lap. His instinct was right, it seemed. Something had happened, something terrible.
"Most people forget, because it's so beautiful." Jack continued, rolling a blade of grass between his fingers, his face tired and his eyes bleak.
The Doctor nodded, asking the obvious question. "Shouldn't you be in Cardiff? Protecting the Earth and all that?" He smiled, not able to keep the pride out of his voice. When Jack didn't answer, he sat down next to him, admiring the graceful curve of the Taj's dome, and waited for Jack to speak again. The silence between them stretched as they watched families taking pictures, reading in guide books and complaining about the souvenirs. It was such a mundane place that it made the Doctor smile again, made him forget about that painfully familiar smell for a moment too long.
"It's a grave," Jack repeated finally, throwing the blade of grass away and getting up in one fluid movement. "The whole world is a grave," he added as he turned around, patting the TARDIS once before starting to walk away.
When the Doctor finally shook off his shock and started to his feet, Jack was already no more than a small grey spot in the distance, and the Doctor had to run to catch up with him.
*
Do you know the ancient legend of Pandora's box? The Gods entrusted her with a treasure, as a punishment to all of humanity. She wasn't evil, she didn't strive for power, she was immortal and content, like all humans were back then. But she was oh so human. She released it all, death and disease and at the very bottom of the box there lay hope. Hope... that was the most cruel punishment of all.
*
He stared at the face looking back at him from the cheap hotel mirror, trying to ignore the other face being reflected there, of a young man leaning against the bathroom tiles behind him.
"Maybe it really is the Rift, have you ever thought about that?"
"And what the heck should've caused something this freaky?" Jack answered, trying to concentrate on the grey hair at his temple, tearing it out viciously.
The mirage (that was so definitely not Ianto) shrugged. "All that naked hide and seek atop a dimensional fault line must've been good for something."
For the first time in months, Jack laughed. Laughed and laughed until he couldn't see past the tears in his eyes. He couldn't stop when the world tilted and he had to slide down to the floor when the laugh turned into something more hysterical, robbing him of breath and self-control. He sat there for quite a while, waiting for the world to just stop. But of course, the universe rarely stopped when it mattered. The ghost slid down beside him, not even disturbing the air when it leaned close.
"You're running away again?" It wasn't a question, and they both knew it.
"Oh yes." It was what he was back in Cardiff for, after all. He'd needed some gear for it, and his wristcomp. He tried to tell himself that those were the only reasons for this last visit on Earth.
"I'm..." the ghost faltered. "I'm not sure I can follow."
"That's kind of the idea," Jack answered.
"At least say goodbye to me this time."
Jack closed his eyes, remembering white gas and deep alien voices. "I already did," he said to the empty bathroom.
*
Time heals all wounds... but what if Time itself is the disease? It eats away at all of us, every day, every second that ticks by. It is worse than cancer, worse than war, because we can't fight back. I tried, I tried so many times, but Time always wins.
*
It takes him some time, but with his old conman tricks, lots of money and pressure on certain parts of the Shadow Proclamation, he finally tracks down the 456's home planet.
"Welcome to D'olichoderia," a pleasant female voice greets him through the speakers of his warship, the planet below bathed in the white nebula that has haunted his dreams ever since Thames House.
The weapon systems aboard are powerful enough to blow this world to pieces, but are carefully hidden from overly enthusiastic scanners. For all their technology, they won't see their demise coming. He can still be merciful, sometimes.
"I have a proposition to make," Jack sneers through the speakers as he presses a button to transmit the details of a fake deal. It will give him even more satisfaction to know that their last moments are spent with watering mandibles, yearning for a good Earth child kick.
It's so damn easy, he smiles to himself, his target system locking on to the major cities.
"We don't deal with the likes of you," the voice snarls back after reading his transmission, "you will find none of your business here. Leave this place before we make you." Under the vapour he can detect global weapon systems booting.
"You don't do drugs? Any of you?" Jack asks, honestly gobsmacked. Jack Harkness hesitates for the first time in years, his hands wavering over the trigger.
"Only the utmost scum of every species does," another female voice snarls over frequency 456, the transmission coming in from another continent. The utter loathing is clear even through the machine translator. "Our children will not be corrupted by the likes of you. You will be executed for your crimes."
His finger is still over the trigger, just one button to make this world burn, ignite the atmosphere, turn the surface into a radioactive wasteland. They deserve this. They all deserve this. He doesn't know why he hesitates. Next to him, Ianto Jones is watching him carefully, a raised eyebrow saying more than the white noise of old ghosts suddenly whispering inside his head.
"Never doubted him, never will," the ghost looking like Ianto says, his voice clear over the ocean of noise. For the first time in years, Jack is looking at himself, and what he sees makes him pull back his hand from the trigger as if burned.
He turns his ship around, fires up the engines and runs, and runs, and runs.
*
They say 'Live in the present'. But look at me, standing here in the middle of nowhere, freezing on a hill to watch my city for one last time. I'm waiting for my past turn up to say goodbye. Is that even possible?
*
Jack wasn't surprised when the hallucination walked up to him, staring out over the sea with him. He'd been waiting for the ghost to show up, after all.
"I killed you." Jack said, not for the first time talking to thin air and not minding the strange looks that passers-by could shoot him. It was his way of greeting an old ghost in a now ancient city that held so many of those.
"No, giant insect aliens killed me," the hallucination answered, still wearing the same suit he did on the day that he died. No, Jack corrected himself, on the day Ianto died, this was just his mind running a bit crazy. Maybe. Other options were possible, he could admit that now. He'd seen stranger things happen.
"You know what I mean." Jack sighed, tearing his eyes away from the young man to watch the ocean, unwilling to start an argument with himself. Again.
"And you know what I mean." Ianto huffed, and looked him up and down interestedly. "Love the coat... is that still the one I bought for you?"
Jack nodded. "Took good care of it. Contrary to you, it survived long past its time." He sighed, the familiar pain as present as the coat around his shoulders.
"By being stuffed into a box together with some moth balls, no doubt." They both smiled at Ianto's quip. Jack had missed the banter. He'd missed the hallucination of a man he'd lost such a long time ago, he realised, even though it seemed to turn up whenever it was needed. Or when his mind thought he needed it. Whatever.
"Why's it only you I see? I mean, there're thousands of ghosts my mind could conjure up." It was a rhetorical question, Jack was sure his subconscious wouldn't answer.
"Maybe I'm real," the ghost that was Ianto said. "Maybe it's the Rift, it does all kind of crazy things," the hallucination said, analysing all possibilities like the real Ianto had always done.
"Or maybe I really am crazy," Jack shot back.
"I thought that was a given." The hallucination grinned, and Jack couldn't care less if it was indeed a figment of his mind or something else.
"What is this place?" Ianto finally asked, looking at the sea, which probably never really changed throughout the entire history of mankind. At least not on the surface.
"Cardiff," Jack said, pointing at the silvery fountain behind him. It only looked vaguely like the one that had stood there in Ianto's lifetime, but the similarities were still visible. It was a memorial now, for a cause that had been long forgotten.
"Looks different... has it been a thousand years yet?" Ianto asked, and it made Jack smile.
"Oh, Ianto Jones, you have no idea." Jack grinned, opening his wristcomp to press two buttons at the same time. There was a short beep, but nothing happened. Ianto frowned.
"What was that supposed to do?" Ianto asked, glancing around to see if something around them had changed. When Jack's hand extended to shove him, he jumped back, staring in bewilderment at the hand that had come to rest on his arm. He opened his mouth several times to speak, but closed it again.
"I'm not crazy. The Rift is." Jack's voice was cool, but he couldn’t help but grasp the other man painfully hard. "Especially on a day like this, when time lines meet and get all tangled up with the future and the past." Jack smiled, shaking the suddenly corporeal form of Ianto Jones some more, just to be sure." All that radiation will go out with a bang, it seemed like a shame to miss the chance."
Together, they watched the sun rise, a giant fireball that had already swallowed Mercury and Venus.
"Welcome to the last day on Earth, Ianto Jones." Jack finally said, and pulled the other man into a hug.
***