You Keep Me Alive
Rating: PG
Characters: Jack, Ianto, The Master, mention of other TW and DW characters
Spoilers: Not really any.
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything. If I did there would be some characters dead, and others alive.
Summary: During The Year That Never Was, Jack is tortured by the Master. The question is, what keeps Jack fighting?
Beta: This was written for one of my college class’. I really cannot say ladyeternal was my beta. She was so much more than just a beta. [People get you minds out of the gutter. I SO did not mean it that way :)] I could have never received the grade that I did without her help.
If you enjoy this part 1, there are 3 more. So please let me know if I should post the rest. Comments are always loved.
Day one:
The Master came in and tormented, tortured and then killed him.
Day two:
The Master came in and tormented, tortured and then killed him.
Day forty-four:
The Master came in and tormented, tortured and then killed him.
Soon time blurred. Jack lost count of the days he had been chained to the same walls, in the same room, of the same ship. He no longer counted, or even cared about, the number of times he had died at the hands of the Master.
“Aren’t you bored yet?” Jack asked, watching his torturer walk into the hot, filthy, makeshift cell Jack had grown very tired of being caged in.
“What else am I supposed to do with all this free time I have?” The Master asked with almost as much hatred toward this man as he had toward the captain’s companion, the Doctor.
“Have you not figured out by now? No matter how many times you kill me, I have the bad habit of always coming back?”
“I know, but it’s so much fun.” The words ground through clenched teeth as the Master swung his fist into Jack’s face with all his strength.
Over the countless days, and endless hours of torture, Jack had figured out how to get the Master riled up. Though thoroughly pissing off the Time Lord was always amusing in itself, Jack had other motives. Whenever the Master was enraged, death always came quickly. During those times, the Master did not want to play mind games. He did not want the pleasure of torturing the ‘freak.’ The Master just wanted the smell of fresh death in the air. The Master obtained what he was seeking only a few moments later as he plunged a knife into Jack's chest.
Captain Jack Harkness watched as his lifeblood flowed down to the end of the metallic object protruding from him and covered the Time Lord’s hand. Death, and its inevitable reversal, had become immutable constants in his life. So much so that Jack no longer cared about the agonizing pain that came with them.
The Master's words echoed in Jack's mind as life slipped away. "Even though death cannot break you, there is something that will. Until I find out what that thing is, I can settle for this... and this can go on for a long, long time, Jack. My life span is almost as long as yours."
Moments later, Jack returned to the living with a gasp. His body desperately seeking the air it hadn’t needed a moment ago. If this is what you can call the living, Jack thought to himself. No matter how many times he had died over the last hundred and eighty years, death was never easy to endure, and reawakening was almost worse.
A person's life can be altered forever by even the smallest event with the making of the most innocuous-seeming friendship. Jack knew that better than most; for him, it had been a con. A con that was supposed to be quick and simple; a con that he'd set up over a century ago. If Jack had never pulled that con, he would never have met the Doctor or Rose. His beloved Rose.
If it had not been for Rose’s uncanny loyalty to those she loved, Jack would not be sentenced to this eternal life. Eternity had been given to him out of love even though it was full of pain, sorrow and constant death. Even with all the pain Jack had endured, and was yet to endure, he would not change it now. If it hadn’t been for Rose's gift of life, he wouldn't have Torchwood… wouldn't have his team. He wouldn't be in Cardiff, which was truly his home now. Above all else though, Jack wouldn't have the one person who would break his heart someday by going to the one place he never could.
The person with that beautiful smile… no smile in the universe could eclipse its light or dampen its warmth. The person with that sharp wit that made everything better especially when combined with those wondrous Welsh vowels in that soothing voice and a warm cup of masterfully-brewed coffee. Those eyes... God, those eyes... flawless blue, drawing him in. Jack could let himself drown in those eyes, eyes that had seen so much pain, but when Jack looked into those eyes he saw none of the sadness and death they had witnessed. Jack only saw compassion, desire and what he sometimes thought could be love.
If it were not for that con, which had gone so horribly wrong, and Rose, Jack Harkness would never have found his beautiful Ianto Jones.
“Please forgive me, Ianto, for what I have done,” Jack said, softer than a whisper.
“Is there anything I can get you before I leave, sir?” Ianto asked, leaning against the frame of Jack's open office door.
“No. Go home, have a good night.” Jack never looked up from the glass of scotch in his hand.
“Good night, then.”
“Aren’t you going to say it too?” The words came out before Jack could stop them, making the beautiful Welshman pause before leaving him.
“What would that be, sir?”
“That I made the wrong decision. That I should have fought them. That I shouldn’t have let her go. That you hate me. Take your pick.” In one quick swallow, Jack drank the last of the liquid down, feeling the burn as it ran across his tongue and down his throat.
“Why would I say that?” Ianto walked back into the office, sitting on the edge of the wooden desk just as Jack poured another glass just a little bit too full.
“That’s what all the others think. They hate me now.” Jack rarely chose to drink, let alone got drunk. Tonight he wanted to get sloshed, downing the newly poured glass of Scotch in one long swallow. Jack couldn't look at Ianto, couldn't handle the thought of Ianto hating him, even though the young man had more reasons to do so than most.
“They don’t hate you, Jack; they just don’t understand. If there had been another way, you’d never have let Jasmine go; I know you. The only thing that Gwen, Owen and Tosh are thinking about right now is that a little girl was taken, and a mother’s heart was broken. They’re not thinking about the 'what if'; not considering what would have happened if you hadn't let her go. Jasmine wanted to go, and countless lives were saved by letting her. Our job is to keep people safe, and that's not always easy… not always without cost. They'll see that you did the right thing, Jack. Just give them time." Ianto put his hand over the top of the tumbler before Jack could refill it. “You can’t save them all, Jack. No matter how hard you try.”
They sat together in silence. Jack's mind replayed everything that had happened with the fairies all those years ago, everything that had happened today and the horrors of what could have been. A comforting hand touched his cheek startling him from his thoughts, and Jack blinked back to reality in the face of compassionate blue eyes.
"Thank you, Ianto."
Nodding, Ianto stood and started to leave. Pausing just as he reached the door, Ianto said softly. "As for me hating you, Jack. I never could as long as the choices you make are for good reasons... no matter how much I want to… or need to sometimes."
As soon as the words were spoken, Ianto was gone, never having turned around to speak his piece. No sooner had Jack's former lover disappeared through the cog door of the Hub and the sirens fallen silent did Jack realize that Ianto hadn't been speaking just about Jasmine and the fairies. Ianto had been talking about Lisa and what Jack ultimately had to do to her as well.
That moment Jack realized he could not let the young Welshman slip away. He could not have said where their relationship, if you could call it that, stood at that point. Their liaison had started as a deception and ended with betrayal. But somehow, after everything Jack Harkness had seen and done and survived, this beautiful, complex 21st century Welshman, who was a contradiction in a paradox wrapped up in an enigma, seemed to make everything worthwhile. Ianto Jones had lived through the horrors of Canary Wharf. He had fought to keep his girlfriend alive through cyber-technology in its aftermath, a fight that had ultimately been lost. Yet Ianto still retained an unbelievable talent to see the positive in things. They were so different, but the differences were like the two sides of the same coin.
Right now, Jack needed the good side. He needed his Ianto back.