Five Days to Absolution - Chapter One
Title: Five Days to Absolution (1/4)
Word count: This chapter: 3,280
Characters/Pairings: Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen (cameo only), references to Jack/Ianto
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Children of Earth (Days One to Five)
Warnings: This fiction is very dark and contains scenes that some may find disturbing/upsetting. Sexual content, extreme angst, dark thoughts, self-harm and repeated suicide. There will, however, be some comfort in the next two chapters to counteract all that hurt. I promise.
A/N: This is set post-Children of Earth, and follows the canon therein.
What did Jack do in the first few weeks that followed Children of Earth: Day Five?
Jack now held the tie to his face. It still smelled of him. Just a little, although he knew that would soon fade and he'd only be left with the vague memory of what that scent was once like.
Jack kissed the fabric, and then coiled it up again and placed it on the third shelf down. It would sit there, and he would look at it often.
It would remind him of what he had lost, and it would hurt.
And that was all Jack deserved.
Prologue
They are nothing but two hot bodies, rolling around together on a bed. Kissing and stroking each other's naked flesh.
They are nothing but gasps and moans and physical sensations.
No… They're not just that. It's never been just sex, not really. And that, somehow, scares the hell out of Jack.
"Ianto…" he murmurs, as they finally come to rest, him on his back, the other man lying on top.
Ianto pauses, looking down at Jack; a look of awe in his eyes. The same look he always has when they have sex, like he can't believe they can possibly be doing such a thing together. He's opening his mouth, already forming the first "I" of the three words Jack can't let himself hear. Jack cranes his neck, leaning up and capturing those lips in his, crushing them into another passionate kiss before they can speak.
The kiss is broken, the moment gone. Ianto smiles anyway, and moves down Jack's body; teeth biting gently, tongue flicking, lips kissing, until he has travelled down far enough to take Jack's erection into his mouth, and begins to suck.
"Good… yes, that's good," hisses Jack, his head thrown back, panting. Ianto is so very good, and Jack knows he has never performed this intimate act for anyone else. Never fucked another man. Never had anyone's cock inside him but Jack's.
Pure, just for him.
Good and clean and pure, like a sacrifice.
Jack fills both his hands with Ianto, one gripping hard at a bare, damp shoulder; fingers of the other entwining possessively in thick, dark hair...
"Ianto…" Jack moans again, and opens his eyes.
But Ianto isn't there.
There's no drowsy, murmured response. No warm body curled up next to his. No smell of roasting coffee in the air; no soft kiss to the forehead to wake him gently.
Ianto is dead.
Dead, because of him.
Jack instantly feels guilty, guilty that he's allowed himself to sleep; to dream. And even worse, to have a dream like that.
Jack is naked, and cold, and aching, like he always is these days. He reaches down and briefly squeezes the erection throbbing between his thighs. It would be easy to make himself come, while he thinks about the last time he and Ianto had sex. No... they'd made love.
Easy to let the tears roll down his face when he calls out Ianto's name as he climaxes, knowing that Ianto will never hear him say his name again.
Easy to give himself just one brief spike of pleasure, to ease the pain. Just for a few seconds.
But no. No pleasure for Jack.
He doesn't deserve any pleasure, or comfort; not even with Ianto's face on his mind, or his name croaked through dried, cracking lips.
Jack gets up off the bare, cracked linoleum and goes to the tiny bathroom to wash. It's early, and he has another long day of repentance ahead of him.
Two Days Earlier
It had been three weeks since Jack lost everything. He supposed that evidence of recent events was being cleaned up, censored and tucked away by the Government and UNIT, but he had nothing to do with that. Not any more.
Martha hadn't even been in touch. Perhaps she'd been embargoed from doing so. He missed her.
He'd gone through all those long days filled with interrogations, red tape, questions and answers. All the paperwork and sympathetic smiles, and cup after cup of fucking awful tea. He'd been completely stoical throughout, and as helpful and professional as he could be.
At last, that morning, he'd been discharged. A free man.
The first thing he'd done on his first day as a civilian was to make sure Gwen and Rhys were safe. They were going to buy the nice big house that Rhys had viewed before everything turned to shit; a new start. They could afford it anyway, but Jack had called into the conveyancer's office that morning and paid a large deposit cheque on their behalf, without telling them.
He hadn't seen Gwen for a couple of weeks, not since Ianto's memorial service, and he couldn't really remember much about that.
He hadn't been allowed anywhere near Steven's funeral.
Jack called Gwen's phone number. It would be the last time he spoke to her for a good long while, he knew that, but he needed to make sure they were okay; Gwen, Rhys and the baby.
"What are you going to do now, Jack?" Gwen asked during that last conversation, her voice anxious on the other end of the line.
"I just need to be alone for a while. Gonna rent a flat, or something. Take some time out to relax."
"I'll keep checking on you, whether you like it or not."
Jack had a new mobile phone, Government Issue. Only Gwen had the number. Well… Gwen, and UNIT, and the Government and whoever else were keen to keep an eye on him, he supposed.
"Sure. You take care, okay? All of you."
"We will. Jack…?"
A pause. "What, Gwen?"
"Don't be too hard on yourself."
Jack laughed. An empty, soulless sound, if ever he heard one. "I'm fine. Just need to… think. Come to terms with some stuff."
"Yeah. Of course you do."
Another painful silence.
"Jack. I… I lo…" she breathed in, swallowed a sob. No. Don't say it.
Her voice sounded muffled, like she was wiping her face as she spoke. "I… I hope you feel better soon, sweetheart."
Jack closed his eyes, and felt a warm tear roll down his face.
Gwen took the silence as the only response she was likely to get. "I'll be in touch. Keep that phone of yours charged up and switched on at all times, alright lovely? You hear me?"
"Yes, ma'am."
The call ended. Jack stared at the mobile in his hand for a moment, and then kept the power button pressed in with his thumb until the phone switched itself off.
It had been a busy day. He'd been to tie up a few loose ends, and pick up a couple of personal items from one of his many storage containers. An immortal collects a lot of stuff during their long life, and he'd always been one to put some things aside for a rainy day.
Then he'd visited a second-rate letting agency. He went to view three flats that day. They were all almost dilapidated and in bad areas of town; cheap rent. They had to be cheap, they were all complete shitholes.
Jack had chosen the worst of the three. He'd paid extra on the bond and six months' rent, cash in advance, to be able to move in that day. He was warned that the flat wouldn't be cleaned, but he said that was okay.
Now Jack stood in the living area of his new home. It stank of damp and cat urine. The walls were blackened with mould near the streaky windows, and there were dried out rats' droppings in the corner of the tiny kitchen area. The bathroom was a complete horror show.
The place should have been condemned years ago, Jack reckoned. He wouldn't let a dog, or his worst enemy, live here.
And so it was all Jack deserved.
The flat was advertised as "part-furnished"; those exclusive part-furnishings consisting of an ancient fridge and even more prehistoric cooker in the tiny corner section that masqueraded as a kitchen. The previous occupant's burnt-on grease was still evident on the hob, and Jack didn't have the stomach to open the oven door just yet.
There was a little stool parked up against the small kitchen countertop, as though it could laughingly be described as a breakfast bar. A threadbare fold-out sofa bed with a purple stain on the bare mattress stood sadly against one beige, peeling wall in the main bed-sit area, atop a cracked expanse of 1970's lino.
Oh, and there was a bookshelf, and a hook on the back of the front door.
Jack hung his greatcoat on the door hook, and put down a carrier bag filled with recent purchases. Jack had no belongings to speak of. All he had were the clothes he stood up in, his mobile phone, a few items in his pockets, and something he'd gotten from his personal storage container that morning.
He missed his Webley, the Government had confiscated that, but the revolver he'd taken out of storage felt heavy and reassuring in the waistband of his trousers.
Illegal now, to be carrying a gun. Jack was a criminal.
He smiled grimly to himself at that thought as he crossed to the bookshelf and put his mobile phone on the top shelf, where it would sit from now on, dead and abandoned. Jack's left and inside pockets held several boxes of ammunition and a silencer, which he now affixed to the gun. He carefully placed the gun and bullets on the second shelf down.
In his right pocket, there was a coiled up strip of fabric. He pulled it out and looked at it.
Ianto's purple and grey striped tie. The one he'd been wearing when he died. Jack had unfastened it reverently, once Gwen had left him alone in the makeshift morgue, and had removed it from Ianto's cold, marbled neck.
He'd touched Ianto for the last time, tracing his index finger down the waxy skin of his cold cheek, remembering how it should feel; warm and pliant. Jack had swallowed, set his jaw, and then put the stolen tie into his greatcoat pocket. A keepsake.
It may as well have been a trophy. He may as well have poisoned Ianto with his own hands.
Jack now held the tie to his face. It still smelled of him. Just a little, although he knew that would soon fade and he'd only be left with the vague memory of what that scent was once like.
Jack kissed the fabric, and then coiled it up again and placed it on the third shelf down. It would sit there, and he would look at it often.
It would remind him of what he had lost, and it would hurt.
And that was all Jack deserved.
That first day in the flat, Jack set to work with the bleach and scrubbing sponges he'd bought. He left the living room untouched, but he cleaned the kitchen and bathroom until they were pristine, and his fingers ached and burnt from the caustic in the cleaning solution. Ianto had always been fussy about kitchen areas and personal hygiene, and so Jack made sure those areas were at a level of cleanliness that Ianto would have approved of.
The living room was cold, damp, dim and depressing, and he had no intention of improving anything about it. He closed up the sofa bed; he wouldn't be needing it. Not that Jack was expecting to sleep much anyway. He'd barely slept an hour a night for three weeks.
He never really had slept a lot, not until he and Ianto had begun sharing a bed together regularly. Maybe it was the warmth of another body; maybe it was the comfort of knowing someone liked him enough to want to spend all night lying next to him that had made Jack fall into a regular sleeping pattern for the first time in decades.
Any routine he'd slipped into over the past few years was all shot to shit now. Much like the rest of his life.
Jack sat on his haunches for a good long while, looking at the tie. Thinking.
Then he removed all of his clothes. He folded each article neatly and placed them on the bottom shelf of the tatty bookcase.
He was instantly chilled in the damp air. Instantly uncomfortable.
Good.
Jack crossed back over to the shopping bag he'd left near the front door and withdrew the length of washing line he'd bought from the hardware shop. Good old fashioned thin rope, not the nasty plastic kind.
He unwrapped it from the cellophane and unwound it.
Then he looked up at the light fitting. He wondered if it would take his weight.
Only one way to find out.
He crossed over to grab the stool by the kitchen counter. Rickety, but he only needed to stand on it for a few moments.
"Do it, do it, you heartless, selfish bastard…" hissed the voices of the sacrificed inside his head.
It wouldn't kill him indefinitely of course, but if he did it in the right way, it would be slow, and terrible. Jack had suffocated to death before, more than once. He knew how it felt; and it was something that he sometimes had nightmares about.
As far as deaths go, it was definitely one of the most unpleasant to experience.
And so it was all Jack deserved.
Day Two
Jack came back to life on the floor the following morning, the rope still around his neck. It must have snapped under his weight at some point during the night, while he was dead.
He'd silently wound up the two frayed pieces of rope and deposited them in an otherwise unused kitchen drawer. He didn't know if he'd bother trying that one again. If the rope hadn't snapped, he would have had some difficulty getting down when he revived. He hadn't thought of that.
He'd spent some time, the night before, thinking about his sins. Apologising to the innocents in his head. But when he'd finally stood on the rickety stool, fastened the noose around his neck, and let his feet slip, it didn't feel… right. As terrible as it was, as long as it had taken him to die, it wasn't sufficient.
He hadn't been punished enough. He had to try harder.
Jack went to wash, and then walked, still wet, from the bathroom and pulled open the dusty curtains. There was a mouldy frosted glass door behind them, leading to a small balcony.
He opened the door, feeling the chill of the wind on his still-wet, naked body. He didn't care if anybody saw him. Modesty wasn't something he'd cherished all that much throughout his life, and it hardly mattered now.
He leaned over the balcony and looked down at the graffiti-covered, litter-strewn courtyard below. He was on the third floor. Would it be enough to kill him if he jumped? Maybe if he tried to land head-first. Perhaps he should try to find a way up on to the roof
"You're good on roofs…"
but even then, there were only four stories to the whole building.
He thought, for a moment, about how it would feel if he did jump. A few seconds of weightless silence, a brief rush of wind in his ears, and then he would feel the small vertebrae in his neck and spine compact and crush during the impact, hear the internal crunch as his skull cracked against the concrete.
On the other hand, if he landed awkwardly, he might just suffer concussion and a broken limb or two. Far too inconvenient.
Jack thought about it some more. He could go somewhere better; a taller building, a bridge. But then, even if he did die, it would be too public. Someone might find him before he revived, there'd be an ambulance involved; police… eventually the government. Gwen would see it on the news.
Jack sighed. Bad idea.
Jack went back into the flat and closed the door. He paused for a second, blinking in the light streaming between the opened curtains.
He winces drowsily in the bright light. "Bloody hell, Jack! Close the curtains, and come back to bed."
"We have to be at work in an hour."
Ianto rolls his eyes. "You're the boss! Gwen won't care if we're late. And the rift can wait an extra twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes? I'm insulted."
"Okay. Thirty."
Jack smiles, and draws the curtains.
Jack drew the curtains and slunk back inside his stinking, darkened cocoon.
His body was drying. He looked down at himself. Washed, but not clean. He would never be clean again.
He was thirsty; the hunger pangs were getting painful, but he ignored it.
He crossed over to the almost-empty shopping bag, and withdrew the packet of razor blades.
Then he went into the small, thoroughly clean bathroom, leant over the bath, put in the plug and turned both taps to full. He sat on the closed toilet seat and watched the water begin to cover the base of the bath.
Bleeding to death is quite a calm, painless death, especially in warm water.
Jack leaned over and turned off the hot tap. Just cold water now, glugging slowly into the pitted white porcelain.
The cold water would take his breath away; it would numb his limbs, make him shiver and jolt as the swirling blooms of crimson grew around his body, until he was submerged in nothing but angry scarlet. He would close his eyes and apologise over and over again to the voices in his head, and eventually he would die.
"Do you ever think that one day, your luck will run out?"
"I wish it would," he said out loud. His voice sounded small and tinny in the small tiled room.
He wanted to stay dead. He wanted to stay in the silent, terrible darkness and know that he could never leave it, because that was where almost everyone he'd ever cared about had been sent to rot.
All except Captain Jack Harkness. Jack never stayed in the darkness for long. He woke up every time, gasping and spluttering, hauled over the sharp glass shards of light and life again and again, so that he would have to live with the guilt and pain of his sins.
And, after all, it was all Jack deserved.
Jack didn't remember dying, but suddenly he was reviving in a freezing tarn of diluted blood. It was so cold he found it difficult to inhale enough breath at first. He looked at his wrists and arms. As he thought, there were no marks where he'd opened his veins; no scars where he'd slashed himself over and over again, just to experience the rush of endorphins, to feel how the sharp stinging pain brought merciful relief as it drowned out the angry litany inside his head.
Jack looked at the perfect, tanned skin of his arms, and felt so very ashamed. He sat in the cold, bloodied water for a long time, adding to its volume with tear after hot tear.
"That's it. Feel sorry for yourself, you worthless piece of shit," said the angry voices, and Jack sobbed and let tears and snot run down his face, and apologised over and over.
And it still wasn't enough.
Eventually, he staggered out of the tub, pulled out the plug, and spent the next hour cleaning himself and all the bloody traces of what he'd done. Ianto would expect him to clean up his own mess. Ianto wasn't around to do it for him anymore.
Jack wandered into the dark bedsit and lay on the bare floor, shivering in the cold. He hadn't eaten or drunk anything for two days, and the only time he'd lost consciousness was through death, and not sleep.
Jack licked his dried lips and tasted the salt of his own bitter tears.
He licks slowly at the younger man's thighs, tasting traces of his own juices and the saltine sweat on Ianto's pure, pale skin
Jack curled himself into a ball. He would have given anything to feel familiar warm arms around him.
After a few moments, Jack fell asleep. He slept, and dreamt of Ianto.
TO BE CONTINUED
>> Chapter Two
>> Chapter Three
>> Chapter Four
...
Word count: This chapter: 3,280
Characters/Pairings: Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen (cameo only), references to Jack/Ianto
Rating: NC-17
Spoilers: Children of Earth (Days One to Five)
Warnings: This fiction is very dark and contains scenes that some may find disturbing/upsetting. Sexual content, extreme angst, dark thoughts, self-harm and repeated suicide. There will, however, be some comfort in the next two chapters to counteract all that hurt. I promise.
A/N: This is set post-Children of Earth, and follows the canon therein.
What did Jack do in the first few weeks that followed Children of Earth: Day Five?
Jack now held the tie to his face. It still smelled of him. Just a little, although he knew that would soon fade and he'd only be left with the vague memory of what that scent was once like.
Jack kissed the fabric, and then coiled it up again and placed it on the third shelf down. It would sit there, and he would look at it often.
It would remind him of what he had lost, and it would hurt.
And that was all Jack deserved.
Prologue
They are nothing but two hot bodies, rolling around together on a bed. Kissing and stroking each other's naked flesh.
They are nothing but gasps and moans and physical sensations.
No… They're not just that. It's never been just sex, not really. And that, somehow, scares the hell out of Jack.
"Ianto…" he murmurs, as they finally come to rest, him on his back, the other man lying on top.
Ianto pauses, looking down at Jack; a look of awe in his eyes. The same look he always has when they have sex, like he can't believe they can possibly be doing such a thing together. He's opening his mouth, already forming the first "I" of the three words Jack can't let himself hear. Jack cranes his neck, leaning up and capturing those lips in his, crushing them into another passionate kiss before they can speak.
The kiss is broken, the moment gone. Ianto smiles anyway, and moves down Jack's body; teeth biting gently, tongue flicking, lips kissing, until he has travelled down far enough to take Jack's erection into his mouth, and begins to suck.
"Good… yes, that's good," hisses Jack, his head thrown back, panting. Ianto is so very good, and Jack knows he has never performed this intimate act for anyone else. Never fucked another man. Never had anyone's cock inside him but Jack's.
Pure, just for him.
Good and clean and pure, like a sacrifice.
Jack fills both his hands with Ianto, one gripping hard at a bare, damp shoulder; fingers of the other entwining possessively in thick, dark hair...
"Ianto…" Jack moans again, and opens his eyes.
But Ianto isn't there.
There's no drowsy, murmured response. No warm body curled up next to his. No smell of roasting coffee in the air; no soft kiss to the forehead to wake him gently.
Ianto is dead.
Dead, because of him.
Jack instantly feels guilty, guilty that he's allowed himself to sleep; to dream. And even worse, to have a dream like that.
Jack is naked, and cold, and aching, like he always is these days. He reaches down and briefly squeezes the erection throbbing between his thighs. It would be easy to make himself come, while he thinks about the last time he and Ianto had sex. No... they'd made love.
Easy to let the tears roll down his face when he calls out Ianto's name as he climaxes, knowing that Ianto will never hear him say his name again.
Easy to give himself just one brief spike of pleasure, to ease the pain. Just for a few seconds.
But no. No pleasure for Jack.
He doesn't deserve any pleasure, or comfort; not even with Ianto's face on his mind, or his name croaked through dried, cracking lips.
Jack gets up off the bare, cracked linoleum and goes to the tiny bathroom to wash. It's early, and he has another long day of repentance ahead of him.
Two Days Earlier
It had been three weeks since Jack lost everything. He supposed that evidence of recent events was being cleaned up, censored and tucked away by the Government and UNIT, but he had nothing to do with that. Not any more.
Martha hadn't even been in touch. Perhaps she'd been embargoed from doing so. He missed her.
He'd gone through all those long days filled with interrogations, red tape, questions and answers. All the paperwork and sympathetic smiles, and cup after cup of fucking awful tea. He'd been completely stoical throughout, and as helpful and professional as he could be.
At last, that morning, he'd been discharged. A free man.
The first thing he'd done on his first day as a civilian was to make sure Gwen and Rhys were safe. They were going to buy the nice big house that Rhys had viewed before everything turned to shit; a new start. They could afford it anyway, but Jack had called into the conveyancer's office that morning and paid a large deposit cheque on their behalf, without telling them.
He hadn't seen Gwen for a couple of weeks, not since Ianto's memorial service, and he couldn't really remember much about that.
He hadn't been allowed anywhere near Steven's funeral.
Jack called Gwen's phone number. It would be the last time he spoke to her for a good long while, he knew that, but he needed to make sure they were okay; Gwen, Rhys and the baby.
"What are you going to do now, Jack?" Gwen asked during that last conversation, her voice anxious on the other end of the line.
"I just need to be alone for a while. Gonna rent a flat, or something. Take some time out to relax."
"I'll keep checking on you, whether you like it or not."
Jack had a new mobile phone, Government Issue. Only Gwen had the number. Well… Gwen, and UNIT, and the Government and whoever else were keen to keep an eye on him, he supposed.
"Sure. You take care, okay? All of you."
"We will. Jack…?"
A pause. "What, Gwen?"
"Don't be too hard on yourself."
Jack laughed. An empty, soulless sound, if ever he heard one. "I'm fine. Just need to… think. Come to terms with some stuff."
"Yeah. Of course you do."
Another painful silence.
"Jack. I… I lo…" she breathed in, swallowed a sob. No. Don't say it.
Her voice sounded muffled, like she was wiping her face as she spoke. "I… I hope you feel better soon, sweetheart."
Jack closed his eyes, and felt a warm tear roll down his face.
Gwen took the silence as the only response she was likely to get. "I'll be in touch. Keep that phone of yours charged up and switched on at all times, alright lovely? You hear me?"
"Yes, ma'am."
The call ended. Jack stared at the mobile in his hand for a moment, and then kept the power button pressed in with his thumb until the phone switched itself off.
It had been a busy day. He'd been to tie up a few loose ends, and pick up a couple of personal items from one of his many storage containers. An immortal collects a lot of stuff during their long life, and he'd always been one to put some things aside for a rainy day.
Then he'd visited a second-rate letting agency. He went to view three flats that day. They were all almost dilapidated and in bad areas of town; cheap rent. They had to be cheap, they were all complete shitholes.
Jack had chosen the worst of the three. He'd paid extra on the bond and six months' rent, cash in advance, to be able to move in that day. He was warned that the flat wouldn't be cleaned, but he said that was okay.
Now Jack stood in the living area of his new home. It stank of damp and cat urine. The walls were blackened with mould near the streaky windows, and there were dried out rats' droppings in the corner of the tiny kitchen area. The bathroom was a complete horror show.
The place should have been condemned years ago, Jack reckoned. He wouldn't let a dog, or his worst enemy, live here.
And so it was all Jack deserved.
The flat was advertised as "part-furnished"; those exclusive part-furnishings consisting of an ancient fridge and even more prehistoric cooker in the tiny corner section that masqueraded as a kitchen. The previous occupant's burnt-on grease was still evident on the hob, and Jack didn't have the stomach to open the oven door just yet.
There was a little stool parked up against the small kitchen countertop, as though it could laughingly be described as a breakfast bar. A threadbare fold-out sofa bed with a purple stain on the bare mattress stood sadly against one beige, peeling wall in the main bed-sit area, atop a cracked expanse of 1970's lino.
Oh, and there was a bookshelf, and a hook on the back of the front door.
Jack hung his greatcoat on the door hook, and put down a carrier bag filled with recent purchases. Jack had no belongings to speak of. All he had were the clothes he stood up in, his mobile phone, a few items in his pockets, and something he'd gotten from his personal storage container that morning.
He missed his Webley, the Government had confiscated that, but the revolver he'd taken out of storage felt heavy and reassuring in the waistband of his trousers.
Illegal now, to be carrying a gun. Jack was a criminal.
He smiled grimly to himself at that thought as he crossed to the bookshelf and put his mobile phone on the top shelf, where it would sit from now on, dead and abandoned. Jack's left and inside pockets held several boxes of ammunition and a silencer, which he now affixed to the gun. He carefully placed the gun and bullets on the second shelf down.
In his right pocket, there was a coiled up strip of fabric. He pulled it out and looked at it.
Ianto's purple and grey striped tie. The one he'd been wearing when he died. Jack had unfastened it reverently, once Gwen had left him alone in the makeshift morgue, and had removed it from Ianto's cold, marbled neck.
He'd touched Ianto for the last time, tracing his index finger down the waxy skin of his cold cheek, remembering how it should feel; warm and pliant. Jack had swallowed, set his jaw, and then put the stolen tie into his greatcoat pocket. A keepsake.
It may as well have been a trophy. He may as well have poisoned Ianto with his own hands.
Jack now held the tie to his face. It still smelled of him. Just a little, although he knew that would soon fade and he'd only be left with the vague memory of what that scent was once like.
Jack kissed the fabric, and then coiled it up again and placed it on the third shelf down. It would sit there, and he would look at it often.
It would remind him of what he had lost, and it would hurt.
And that was all Jack deserved.
That first day in the flat, Jack set to work with the bleach and scrubbing sponges he'd bought. He left the living room untouched, but he cleaned the kitchen and bathroom until they were pristine, and his fingers ached and burnt from the caustic in the cleaning solution. Ianto had always been fussy about kitchen areas and personal hygiene, and so Jack made sure those areas were at a level of cleanliness that Ianto would have approved of.
The living room was cold, damp, dim and depressing, and he had no intention of improving anything about it. He closed up the sofa bed; he wouldn't be needing it. Not that Jack was expecting to sleep much anyway. He'd barely slept an hour a night for three weeks.
He never really had slept a lot, not until he and Ianto had begun sharing a bed together regularly. Maybe it was the warmth of another body; maybe it was the comfort of knowing someone liked him enough to want to spend all night lying next to him that had made Jack fall into a regular sleeping pattern for the first time in decades.
Any routine he'd slipped into over the past few years was all shot to shit now. Much like the rest of his life.
Jack sat on his haunches for a good long while, looking at the tie. Thinking.
Then he removed all of his clothes. He folded each article neatly and placed them on the bottom shelf of the tatty bookcase.
He was instantly chilled in the damp air. Instantly uncomfortable.
Good.
Jack crossed back over to the shopping bag he'd left near the front door and withdrew the length of washing line he'd bought from the hardware shop. Good old fashioned thin rope, not the nasty plastic kind.
He unwrapped it from the cellophane and unwound it.
Then he looked up at the light fitting. He wondered if it would take his weight.
Only one way to find out.
He crossed over to grab the stool by the kitchen counter. Rickety, but he only needed to stand on it for a few moments.
"Do it, do it, you heartless, selfish bastard…" hissed the voices of the sacrificed inside his head.
It wouldn't kill him indefinitely of course, but if he did it in the right way, it would be slow, and terrible. Jack had suffocated to death before, more than once. He knew how it felt; and it was something that he sometimes had nightmares about.
As far as deaths go, it was definitely one of the most unpleasant to experience.
And so it was all Jack deserved.
Day Two
Jack came back to life on the floor the following morning, the rope still around his neck. It must have snapped under his weight at some point during the night, while he was dead.
He'd silently wound up the two frayed pieces of rope and deposited them in an otherwise unused kitchen drawer. He didn't know if he'd bother trying that one again. If the rope hadn't snapped, he would have had some difficulty getting down when he revived. He hadn't thought of that.
He'd spent some time, the night before, thinking about his sins. Apologising to the innocents in his head. But when he'd finally stood on the rickety stool, fastened the noose around his neck, and let his feet slip, it didn't feel… right. As terrible as it was, as long as it had taken him to die, it wasn't sufficient.
He hadn't been punished enough. He had to try harder.
Jack went to wash, and then walked, still wet, from the bathroom and pulled open the dusty curtains. There was a mouldy frosted glass door behind them, leading to a small balcony.
He opened the door, feeling the chill of the wind on his still-wet, naked body. He didn't care if anybody saw him. Modesty wasn't something he'd cherished all that much throughout his life, and it hardly mattered now.
He leaned over the balcony and looked down at the graffiti-covered, litter-strewn courtyard below. He was on the third floor. Would it be enough to kill him if he jumped? Maybe if he tried to land head-first. Perhaps he should try to find a way up on to the roof
"You're good on roofs…"
but even then, there were only four stories to the whole building.
He thought, for a moment, about how it would feel if he did jump. A few seconds of weightless silence, a brief rush of wind in his ears, and then he would feel the small vertebrae in his neck and spine compact and crush during the impact, hear the internal crunch as his skull cracked against the concrete.
On the other hand, if he landed awkwardly, he might just suffer concussion and a broken limb or two. Far too inconvenient.
Jack thought about it some more. He could go somewhere better; a taller building, a bridge. But then, even if he did die, it would be too public. Someone might find him before he revived, there'd be an ambulance involved; police… eventually the government. Gwen would see it on the news.
Jack sighed. Bad idea.
Jack went back into the flat and closed the door. He paused for a second, blinking in the light streaming between the opened curtains.
He winces drowsily in the bright light. "Bloody hell, Jack! Close the curtains, and come back to bed."
"We have to be at work in an hour."
Ianto rolls his eyes. "You're the boss! Gwen won't care if we're late. And the rift can wait an extra twenty minutes."
"Twenty minutes? I'm insulted."
"Okay. Thirty."
Jack smiles, and draws the curtains.
Jack drew the curtains and slunk back inside his stinking, darkened cocoon.
His body was drying. He looked down at himself. Washed, but not clean. He would never be clean again.
He was thirsty; the hunger pangs were getting painful, but he ignored it.
He crossed over to the almost-empty shopping bag, and withdrew the packet of razor blades.
Then he went into the small, thoroughly clean bathroom, leant over the bath, put in the plug and turned both taps to full. He sat on the closed toilet seat and watched the water begin to cover the base of the bath.
Bleeding to death is quite a calm, painless death, especially in warm water.
Jack leaned over and turned off the hot tap. Just cold water now, glugging slowly into the pitted white porcelain.
The cold water would take his breath away; it would numb his limbs, make him shiver and jolt as the swirling blooms of crimson grew around his body, until he was submerged in nothing but angry scarlet. He would close his eyes and apologise over and over again to the voices in his head, and eventually he would die.
"Do you ever think that one day, your luck will run out?"
"I wish it would," he said out loud. His voice sounded small and tinny in the small tiled room.
He wanted to stay dead. He wanted to stay in the silent, terrible darkness and know that he could never leave it, because that was where almost everyone he'd ever cared about had been sent to rot.
All except Captain Jack Harkness. Jack never stayed in the darkness for long. He woke up every time, gasping and spluttering, hauled over the sharp glass shards of light and life again and again, so that he would have to live with the guilt and pain of his sins.
And, after all, it was all Jack deserved.
Jack didn't remember dying, but suddenly he was reviving in a freezing tarn of diluted blood. It was so cold he found it difficult to inhale enough breath at first. He looked at his wrists and arms. As he thought, there were no marks where he'd opened his veins; no scars where he'd slashed himself over and over again, just to experience the rush of endorphins, to feel how the sharp stinging pain brought merciful relief as it drowned out the angry litany inside his head.
Jack looked at the perfect, tanned skin of his arms, and felt so very ashamed. He sat in the cold, bloodied water for a long time, adding to its volume with tear after hot tear.
"That's it. Feel sorry for yourself, you worthless piece of shit," said the angry voices, and Jack sobbed and let tears and snot run down his face, and apologised over and over.
And it still wasn't enough.
Eventually, he staggered out of the tub, pulled out the plug, and spent the next hour cleaning himself and all the bloody traces of what he'd done. Ianto would expect him to clean up his own mess. Ianto wasn't around to do it for him anymore.
Jack wandered into the dark bedsit and lay on the bare floor, shivering in the cold. He hadn't eaten or drunk anything for two days, and the only time he'd lost consciousness was through death, and not sleep.
Jack licked his dried lips and tasted the salt of his own bitter tears.
He licks slowly at the younger man's thighs, tasting traces of his own juices and the saltine sweat on Ianto's pure, pale skin
Jack curled himself into a ball. He would have given anything to feel familiar warm arms around him.
After a few moments, Jack fell asleep. He slept, and dreamt of Ianto.
TO BE CONTINUED
>> Chapter Two
>> Chapter Three
>> Chapter Four
...