Hot coals danced in his mind, searing the inner eye. Anger washed over his body, an ocean of heat and disbelief and regret. A face appeared and disappeared with the tide of his emotions. A face of love, of hurt, of everything Jack never said. He pushed it away even as he clung to it. Even as he clung to smoke. He wanted to communicate with it. Needed words to seal the space between them, solidify its presence. "Ianto—" he rasped. His hand flew to his throat, unable to continue. The loving expression changed to a scowl, taunting him in its malice. He chewed his tongue for a moment, swallowed. The reappearing face swirled in his mind's eye; he couldn't keep a solid grip on what little reality was relevant at the moment. "…Gray?" A hand flew towards him with bone breaking force. He ducked, crying out useless apologies to whoever the face belonged to now. A tiny hand touched his shoulder.
"Uncle Jack?" Pain shot up his spine at the memory of a beautiful boy, blond and laughing, turned to a shell, leaking at the seams, rendered soul-less by a resonance…no—by him. By the great Jack Harkness, with all the bright, heroic ideas. He stood, turned about to grasp the hand of his grandson, instead finding a vast expanse of darkness scrolled before him. Tears flowed upward from wide eyes, as he searched the black for every face he had seen. There was nothing. He was going mad, without a clue if his eyes were open or closed. He felt as though he was losing grip on his own body, slowly sliding out of it through every pore. A resounding deep sound echoed everywhere, though he wasn't positive how that could happen with no surfaces to ricochet off of. It was everywhere, within and without him. Deep within his anciently new bones, was recognition of this noise. He shivered with the whole of his being, scrunched his eyes tight, his hands shoved roughly through his hair, gripping desperately. The memories flooded to the forefront of his mind: the question he had asked all those resurrected by the glove. What is there after death? What did you see? The desperate answer had always been the same—one begging to be proven wrong, though he could offer no words of reassurance, for he had seen it too many times.
"Nothing. There is nothing." The frantic sobs would begin, then—the denial. But no, the sensory memories so forcibly repressed had no choice but to bob to the surface, bringing with them their ripples of destructive emotion, all strung up in a hierarchy of despair and anger and fear. There was something in the abyss, something that never failed to make an impression on all who entered there. "There's something moving in the darkness. And it's coming, Jack Harkness…it's coming for you."
Sobbing and dry heaving threatened to extract his very bowels. He could sense this beast, with everything he knew. He could hear its anger, taste its bitterness, feel the vibrations its movement made in the lack of air. And it was sickeningly familiar. Its breath took the place of what breathing he no longer had need for. Its anger resonated in him, its true home.
Was it possible he was the beast? Having died so many times, had he left some sort of imprint on this hollow existence?
The darkness was somehow fading, filling with light, with actually feeling his lack of oxygen. He tried again and again to satisfy his drive, a fruitless activity. Bits started leaking through, as he tried to remember what he was thinking about. His thoughts were mixing with those of right before he died and the urgency of the danger his crew was in, in this world.
A gaping breath and it was all urgency and scrambling, wiping dried blood from his face where he had been shot, giving his jaw a good tug to assure it was aligned. Sprinting down the hall to play the hero. Something tugged at his mind, something dark and slow, yet somehow more urgent than any of this. It drove him to protect his team even more. They couldn't die. They couldn't go there. He shook the feeling, all business. Reasons didn't matter. He would die for them, over and over again, frustrating death with his abnormalities of time.
In the darkness something crawled. In the darkness, something pulled through the strings of time, calling for Jack. In the darkness, it will wait.