...baby's first Torchwood fic? Woo?

[mondschein1]

So, I like Torchwood. I am aware that most of you guys reading this probably didn't even know I watched TW prior to the last couple of days, but I do, and I like it immensely, probably even more than Doctor Who (and not just because I'm a slasher sometimes).

But I had not, previously, dared write TW fic. Why? Because, said I, it is far too cracked out. There is nothing I could possibly think to do that they have not already done upside-down, naked, and handcuffed to a carnivorous plant. No, said I, I shall be happy to sit and watch their naked, upside-down, handcuffed antics, and that shall be all.


Of course, then I watched Children of Earth. And my brain broke, and I cried, and then I sat around in listless shock for a little while, and then I blithered on LJ about all the stuff flying around in my head. And then I woke up the next day with an idea in my head, and by noon I was feverishly typing, and by 7:30 I had cranked this thing out and was staring at it with some astonishment.

Because here's my thing about deathfic. I like deathfic. I like to write it and I like to read it. But a good author, I think, always either builds their reader slowly up to a significant character's death, or slowly helps their reader down from it, or both. You can't just spring it on them from nowhere and then run off and hope they'll manage. And I do think the writers of TW know this and plan to do it, probably when Jack next appears in Doctor Who (I can't imagine that little me has figured out something about audiences that they haven't in all their years dealing with them), but I need my slow letdown now. So I wrote it, and here it is. If it were my primary fandom, I might have the arrogance to say, "Hey! This will probably make you less sad!" but it's not, so I'm not going to. I'm just saying, writing it has made me feel better, so maybe, you know, give it a go.

This is not a fix-it fic; Ianto's still dead. I will probably also be jossed in very short order -- by December, in fact, if IMDb is to be believed -- but until then, I could so TOTALLY be right. :-P

With all the talk out of the way, allow me to present the actual story. Oh, yes, there is one.

3568 words. Ianto/Jack, post-COE, reference to character death, ANGST. Spoilers through Doctor Who s4 and TW:COE. Rated PG-13 for the boys necking.


[Disclaimer: I am not the BBC. I am not even remotely British. Therefore, I cannot be responsible for the creation of a British TV show. Don't sweat it.]
Saving Ianto Jones

Jack had decided to leave Cardiff, once and for all, no second thoughts or second chances and definitely no looking back -- but before he could even make a start, he found himself standing in front of Ianto's flat, with not a clue as to why he was there.

He wanted to run. But he didn't.

The elevator ride up wasn't odd, but the empty apartment itself was. Ianto could tell if Jack had been there while he was out and hated it, and though Jack had done it a couple of times just to annoy him, he'd resisted the impulse for nearly a year. The immaculate sofa and kitchen seemed to watch him suspiciously, as if they knew he wasn't supposed to be there.

And he wasn't. He was supposed to be far away, or as far away as this planet would let him get. He had betrayed this place -- the apartment, the city, the country -- and it wanted no part of him, and he wanted no part of it. To hell with this, he thought, and turned on his heel to leave.

Then he saw the faint blue glow straining through the crack under the bedroom door.

It wasn't like Earth technology didn't glow -- Jack had been startled more than once by an especially flashy cell phone or pager -- but for some reason, alien tech always seemed a little more enthusiastic about it. So Jack knew, beyond any reasonable doubt, that Ianto had some kind of alien tech tucked away in his bedroom. Why, or even when, Ianto had put it there was a mystery.

Curiosity killed the cat, but Jack couldn't die, not from guilt or shame or even a broken heart. So he crossed the livingroom, turned the doorknob, and let himself in.

The room was bathed in the eerie blue light, and again, Jack wanted to run; again, he did not. On the nightside table sat a translucent crystal box, pulsing brightly and nearly humming with energy. Jack watched it grimly. This was definitely alien; Earth tech was always a lot more user-friendly and, as a result, a little chunkier. This, on the other hand, bore all the signs of a thing that had a variety of invisible switches and knobs and would always do something unpredictable if you touched it, which was why you were never supposed to.

Jack touched it.

And then he staggered three steps back, because Ianto was standing right in front of him.

Ianto, just as Jack remembered him, three dimensional and gorgeous and frowning at the box with that skeptical expression that Jack knew so well -- and, well, shimmering, and not quite solid, and tinged a little bluer than normal. A hologram. That's all it was. Just a hologram.

Jack blinked back tears of disappointment, and was about to reach out and try to turn the box off when Ianto spoke.

"Think it's working now...can't be sure." The hologram straightened suddenly, looked straight at him, and Jack's breath caught. He'd never seen that kind of behavior in a hologram before. "Well, Jack," it -- he -- said quietly. "I bet you're wondering what this is, so let me tell you -- at least, let me tell you what we think it is, we never finished translating all the help files it came with." He looked slightly embarrassed at that, and Jack almost laughed. Just like Ianto, to be embarrassed about something the rest of them took for granted. "It's Calacynthian. We think it was called a Ghost Machine, or a Spirit Fabricator, or something like that, the computer spit out half a dozen names that all sounded like a rip-off. Anyway, the Calacynthians used it as a sort of ornamentation on tombs. The box stores a neural imprint of a person, and upon their death -- "

"Stop," Jack whispered, his cheeks wet, but either the hologram couldn't respond or just couldn't hear him. It kept talking, gaze still fixed directly on him.

" -- it turns on and waits to be activated by a blood relative, whose veracity is determined by extrapolating from a sample of DNA." Ianto coughed delicately. "I'm supposed to use mine, but I used yours instead. I hope you don't mind. It's not like I could show this to my sister, anyhow." Looking distinctly uncomfortable, Ianto straightened his tie, as though that were the cause of his distress. "So I guess, if you're watching this now, I'm -- dead." He looked down abruptly, smiling sadly and rubbing at the back of his head. Jack ached to touch him, but knew that if he tried, he would only touch air, and that would be unbearable. "Guess I shouldn't be surprised. I'm already well overdue, for Torchwood."

Jack shook his head, nearly overwhelmed with rage that Ianto, of all people, was talking about himself like -- like overripe produce. "Don't," he breathed, but again the apparition ignored him.

"Doesn't really matter how I went. I hope it was a good death, but even if it wasn't, the important part is that you'll survive." Ianto looked up again, jaw set and eyes flashing, and Jack hadn't known that he'd had this kind of sheer faith. "I know you will. You always do. Even when -- even when you don't want to. So I thought, if I could leave something, some part of me that would last forever, then maybe that would help. And then I found this, and -- well, I don't even know if it'll work, but if it does, that would be something, wouldn't it? That is, it couldn't hurt?"

But the naked hope in Ianto's voice did hurt; it hurt nearly as badly as watching him die all over again. Is this what Ianto had meant, when he'd said, "don't forget me?" Or had he just meant --

"In any case, it's up to you," Ianto said, face abruptly going blank, the way it did when he knew he'd shown Jack too much. "You can take the box with you, if you want. Or you can leave it where you found it, or you can destroy it. It's entirely up to you."

And with that, the image shimmered and jerked, and Jack was sure that it would shut off, but it still stood there and watched him intently. And though there was nothing obviously different about it, there was something -- something in the eyes, something in the tilt of the head -- and all of a sudden everything added up, everything Ianto had said, about lasting forever and a neural fucking imprint --

He wanted to run away -- and so, finally, he did. He ran until he was out of the apartment, 'til he'd run out of Cardiff and out of Wales and out of Britain and leaped headlong into the North Sea, and even as he tried to convince his aching muscles to propel him farther through the icy waters, he couldn't forget that one solitary word that had chased him out Ianto's door: "Jack?"

It was six months before Jack could convince himself to come back to Cardiff. By then, he'd been almost everywhere else on Earth, and had died a hundred and seventy eight separate times. He'd frozen to death while watching the northern lights (oddly pleasant, even if he had been horribly stiff in the morning), been trampled in a wildebeast stampede (an accident, and one he didn't intend to repeat), starved to death (penance), and been burned alive (it had been stupid to think that would work, since the bomb hadn't, but he had to try everything at least once).

He'd seen the whole planet, and he still couldn't find anywhere on it where he could forget everything he'd done. Nowhere except the last delirious seconds before hypothermia finally did him in, and even then he always remembered when he woke up. It was impossible to live with himself, and impossible to die, and though he didn't know how he'd come up with it he knew the only solution was to get off this planet.

Cardiff, he realized as soon as he arrived, was harder to stand than everywhere else. Even worse than London, where they were still rebuilding from that disastrous day, because Cardiff had been his home, and he had gambled everything he had and lost it all to a stupid, stupid mistake. He'd saved the children, and he'd saved Gwen, but sometimes he didn't know if it was worth the price. In fact, he almost never thought it was.

He'd look Gwen up, he decided. She'd help him get away. He knew she would, because as much as he hated it, he knew she loved him, still. They were family. He could blow the entire fucking planet apart, and at the end of that day Gwen would still forgive him. There was nothing he could do, really, that she wouldn't forgive, short of murdering Rhys. Yes, he thought, he would find Gwen.

But he didn't have the heart to do it. Wherever she was, she was probably happy, with a husband and a baby on the way and all aliens firmly out of her life. So he wandered, avoiding the working ladies and gentlemen of Cardiff as they milled about their city. They'd rebuilt the Millenium Center, and if the roof had still been as high as it used to be, he probably would have ended up there. As it was, it wasn't, and he ended up on the sidewalk beneath Ianto's flat, staring up at it, wondering.

He'd been prepared to find the place completely changed. After this much time, surely they had sold it, thrown all Ianto's possessions into a dumpster. But the spare key was still in its usual place, wedged behind the doorjamb, and when he opened the door the apartment looked just as it always had, even if it was dustier than Ianto would have ever kept it.

And the bedroom, he could see clearly through the door he'd left ajar months ago, was still lit blue. Jack sighed; if he could have resisted, he would have, but of course he couldn't.

Ianto materialized immediately at his touch, looking not even slightly dazed, though he looked distinctly relieved when he realized who Jack was. "Jack," he said softly, his gaze intent. "How long has it been?"

Jack hesitated. "Six months," he croaked finally, barely able to look Ianto in the eye. "Couldn't you tell?"

Ianto shook his head. "I don't know anything when you're not here," he murmured. "Where did you go?"

Jack ignored the question. "The apartment," he muttered. "How'd you keep the apartment?"

Ianto frowned, not sidetracked in the least, but at least he answered the question. "My will. I told my sister to pay the rent as long as she could, though where she found the money to pay for it this long, I'll never know." He licked his lip, took a step closer. "Jack -- "

Jack took a step back, looking at Ianto's left shoe. Same shoes as always, patent leathers, never lacking style. "The government paid her millions after you -- after. Compensation." As though they could compensate. "Guess she couldn't find anything else to use it for."

"I suppose not. We're lucky."

"If you say so."

"I do." Ianto paused, knowing better than to try and come closer again. "Jack. Where did you go?"

"Everywhere. Nowhere." Jack shrank away from Ianto's eyes -- had he been this penetrating in life? Surely not. At least, not to Jack. "It's not important."

"You've got another white hair," Ianto accused, and Jack had in fact noticed that. He might not age, but apparently dying a hundred and seventy eight times in only just over that many days had put a lot of stress on him. "It's important." When Jack still didn't answer, Ianto rolled his eyes up to the ceiling and groaned. "Right, then. Tell me how I died."

Jack's head snapped up. "What?" he whispered.

"You heard me. I admit, I was trying to avoid that particular morbid detail, but you clearly can't just forget about it and move on, so -- "

"No."

"Jack. I want to forgive you." Ianto's eyes were soft, and it wasn't just a side effect of the hologram. "And you know I can't really do that unless you tell me."

Jack leaned back against the wall and slid down it to sit on the floor, too overwhelmed by the task to stand straight. Ianto looked at him for a moment, then did the same, though he couldn't have needed to do it. Jack just -- breathed, for a few minutes, and Ianto watched him, waiting. "How much do you remember?" he asked finally. He'd thought about this for a while, and he knew that Ianto would've known, at best, only what he'd known at the time he'd made the neural imprint. Then there was the inevitable loss of information over the transfer, and whatever degradation the device underwent as time went on. And Jack wasn't just going to give him his last moments. Ianto deserved to know everything: why they'd been there, and why it was all Jack's fault.

Ianto pursed his lips for a moment, then shook his head. "Remembering doesn't come easy," he said, "I'm not used to it. Ask me something."

Jack nodded, then tilted his head back against the wall and shut his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at Ianto's blue-tinged face. "The 456."

"No."

Right, so not the really recent stuff. He'd been a fool to think it would be that easy. "Uh, Myfanwy."

"Of course I remember Myfanwy, you idiot," Ianto chided, but Jack could tell he was smiling.

Jack didn't smile back. "Gwen's wedding."

"...yes."

Jack swallowed hard. "Grey."

Ianto didn't respond right away, so Jack opened his eyes, and found Ianto kneeling forward, hand extended to touch his face -- only of course he couldn't. He was only a hologram. Jack's heart pounded hard, his throat painfully tight. "I remember," Ianto said finally, voice breaking. "They -- they put you in -- "

"I deserved it," Jack said flatly.

Ianto shook his head, but seemed almost resigned about it, as though he remembered the countless futile arguments they'd had about that. And suddenly, it made sense: Jack could just picture Ianto as he was then, trying to grasp the enormity of two thousand years spent in the ground, failing, feeling so small and inadequate though Jack had assured him a million times that he could barely remember any of those years. That Ianto would have wanted this. That Ianto would have needed this: immortality, after a fashion.

Jack blinked back the tears and cleared his throat. "Good news," he said, trying for cheerful but still sounding too thick to manage it. "You haven't lost too much time." And he told Ianto everything, about the children speaking in unison and the bomb in his guts and the terrible, stupid, apathetic mistake he'd made when Ianto hadn't yet been born. He confessed everything under the light of the Calacynthian crystal box, emptied it all under Ianto's attentive gaze, and when he was done he looked up at Ianto and found his eyes glistening. Holographic tears.

"You did the right thing," Ianto whispered wetly. "In the end, you did the right thing. Jack, I forgive -- "

"No." Jack shot to his feet, feeling sick. Ianto's head jerked to look up at him, startled. "No. Ianto, I'm sorry, you can't." He moved closer to the nightstand, and felt Ianto turn his head to watch him. When he had nearly made it there, he choked out, "I murdered my grandson. My flesh and blood, just a kid. No one can forgive me for that."

Only then did Ianto realize what he was about to do, and he lunged across the bed to grab Jack's hand -- but he was still only a hologram, and couldn't stop Jack from touching the crystal box any more than a breath of air. The box subsided to a dimmer glow, and Ianto vanished.

Jack took the box to Ianto's sister's, and didn't explain -- just asked her to keep it safe, told her she could stop paying the rent on Ianto's flat, and asked to borrow her phone. He had to find Gwen. If he didn't get off Earth soon, he was going to bury himself, and find out how another two millenia felt.

The Doctor had always had a knack for showing up when you needed him most, but expected him the least, which translated to the middle of a Sontaran barfight that Jack really couldn't have helped getting involved in, as smashed as he was. The Doctor had had a new, younger face, and just when Jack had been getting used to the last one, too. But when Jack told him about Ianto, he'd gotten that look in his eye: something ancient and sad, something Jack was pretty sure only Time Lords were supposed to feel. The Doctor'd had it when they'd first met, too, only back then it had been on his face nearly all the time. After all those years in Torchwood, Jack even had a pretty good idea as to why that was, and not just because of the information he'd dug up.

The Doctor couldn't bring Ianto back, and he couldn't kill Jack. But, he said, he did know of a very special place.

It took a while and some work with the sonic screwdriver to get the computer to read the Calacynthian box, and even more work to get it to let Jack in. But eventually Jack opens his eyes and sees a clear blue sky above him that hadn't been there a moment before, rolls onto his side in the completely unfamiliar grass and watches the figure stretched out next to him while it stirs and groans and tries to sit up.

"Ianto," Jack breathes, and the other man first freezes and then flips himself over to stare at him properly.

"Oh, my God, Jack," Ianto says thickly, and Jack hardly has time to brace himself before Ianto's weight -- Ianto's wonderful, warm, real weight -- drops on top of him and starts to squeeze all the breath out of him. Then the mouth, hot and wet and infinitely soft against his own, and if he'd been trying to get any air, he would have protested.

But Jack can't die. Neither of them can, now, and so the kiss goes on until Ianto gets enough of his brain cells together to start asking questions. "Jack," Ianto gasps against his chest, "Jack, where are we?"

Jack knots a hand in Ianto's hair, laughing at him and not really sure why. "In a library," he says shortly, and pulls him in for another kiss.

"This is not a library," Ianto observes, several seconds later. "Libraries have ceilings and walls and floors and books, Jack -- "

"A special library," Jack says, and pushes them upright so he can push his hands up under Ianto's suit jacket while he kisses him. Ianto goes limp, then pushes hard back against him, then pulls away again.

"You -- "

"The Doctor brought me here," Jack interrupts, anticipating, and Ianto's eyes narrow. He understands how it is for Jack with the Doctor, understands maybe better than Jack himself does. "He says you'll live forever, here. And there are other people here, he wanted you to meet this woman, name of River Song -- "

"You're not staying," Ianto states flatly, and Jack wonders what he'd done to make Ianto think that's something he shouldn't be arguing about.

He hesitates. "I'm not all right," he says, electing for the most truth he can find to give. "I've got a lot of work to do before I'll be all right."

"And you can't do that here."

Jack shakes his head. "The Doctor's going to help me. I think he's the only one who really can, Ianto -- he's the only one who knows what it's like. Never dying, not really. Always coming back to find that everybody you love got killed while you were dead. Never being able to bring them back."

Ianto's thumb brushes hard against Jack's cheek, leaving a smear of cold salty damp behind. "So you're going with the Doctor. On another of your adventures."

Jack nods, cupping Ianto's face roughly with his palm. "I'll be back," he promises tightly, wanting to give anything to make that shuttered look go away from Ianto's face. "I'll be back when -- when I'm better. I swear."

Ianto nods distantly, eyes fixed at some point just through Jack's chest -- and then abruptly they flick up, and he leans in and grabs Jack by the collar. "But right now, you're mine. Yes?"

Jack nods, eyes wide, and then does his best not to get in the way while Ianto rips their clothes off.

Jack opens his eyes on a room packed to the ceiling with books, still breathing a little heavily.

"Ianto Jones," the computer tells him politely, "has been saved."

Jack shuts his eyes again, remembers warm sunshine on green grass, his hand agains the skin of Ianto's back, the feel of soft dirt under his bare knees. He'll be back. Soon.

--fin