He hadn't died in a very long time, but it wasn't the kind of sensation he'd forget easily. Eons ago he had reveled in sensation, seeking it out like a junkie satisfying an addiction. But death had always been the exception.
For one thing, there was the pain. Dying always hurt. Getting shot, stabbed, buried alive, tortured, electrocuted, mauled, blown up, broken, drowned, suffocated, entombed—every death had been a nerve-searing torment, whether it was as brief as a second or as long and drawn out as centuries.
After the pain came…well, nothing. Literal nothingness. No color, sound, touch. Nothing. Just the void. And the terror. The soul-ripping fear that this time would be different. That this time he wouldn't come back to life. That this time was the last time and that he would be here, in the void, forever. An eternity of emptiness. Alone.
But just as the terror would begin to take hold, just as he could feel his mind slipping away into hysterical madness, then came the worst part of all. Life. Because no matter how much death hurt, returning to life hurt a thousand, a million times more. Synapses firing like nuclear bombs going off in his head. Bones, muscles, skin moving, growing, crawling back into place. All of the sensations tied to the most recent method of dying returning at once, magnified by his body's efforts to repair. His heart twisting in his chest as it resumed its inexorable beating. And finally, his lungs suddenly remembering their purpose, constricting, sucking in air and thrusting him gasping back into the world, a baby unwillingly born and reborn again and again and again.
This time started out like so many of the other deaths had. He was saving those who needed saving. (The meaningful deaths didn't hurt any less, but they did make the pain a little easier to bear.) But instead of lunging at him, both barrels blazing, this death had been stalking him for a while. He'd felt it moving closer and closer for several decades now, watching him, waiting patiently. But for what, he didn't know. Maybe…but no, it was too much to hope that at last he'd be able to rest, that his long, unforgiving cycle of death and rebirth would finally end.
Friends were with him this time, again like so many times before. He looked at the man kneeling near him, remembered loving him once upon a great long time ago. Remembered love. Over his long lifetime he had given his heart, his body away so many times, to so many people until eventually he had no more heart, no more body. No arms, legs, feet, hands, torso, spine, organs, penis, nothing. Only his head, his brain, his face. The Face.
The newest death nudged at him, hungry for its feast, waiting time over. A burst of energy as a thousand synapses flared and died gave him the strength to speak through a mouth that had not been used for over a million years. "…know this, Time Lord, you are not alone."
Then death washed over him, pulling him into the undertow, and he braced himself for the pain to come.
And felt…nothing.
Literally nothing. He was somehow already in the void, floating in the nothingness, without any pain on the way there. So it seemed that death could surprise even one who was millions of years old. The thought distracted him for a moment, but he all too soon remembered the terror to come.
Except that it didn't come. Just at the point when it usually began, he felt something, but it wasn't terror. It was movement. A gentle rocking motion which soothed away all thoughts, all fear, all memories. The rocking grew and grew until he felt like he was riding on waves which were slowly washing him into shore.
As soon as that thought coalesced, he all at once could see-hear-touch-taste-smell and he realized that he was sitting on a sandy beach, listening to the waves lapping at his legs. The air ruffled his hair, tickling his nose and tongue with its saltiness.
Wait, no, it wasn't a seashore. It was a room, a room with metal walls gracefully curving upwards, reflecting back a warm golden light from an unknown source. He could hear a mechanical sound, as if from processors and engines. Just in front of him, in the center of the room, was a glowing green column, completely surrounded by a circular control panel. The metal deck flooring was cold beneath his hands.
He shook his head, trying to clear the fuzziness so that he could try to figure out where he was, and as soon as he blinked, the scene shifted again. He was back on the seashore once more, the sand gritty between his fingers.
Fingers.
Hands!
He blinked down at his body, arms, legs, torso. He hadn't had a body in so long that he wasn't sure he remembered what his was supposed to look like. But the one he had on seemed right. It felt like it belonged there, at any rate.
He held a hand out in wonder, staring at it, marveling at the play of muscles under the skin, trying to ignore the hazily shifting landscape surrounding him. A scuffling sound drew his attention. When he looked away from his hand, he realized that two little boys were standing in front of him. The one on the left had straight blond hair and brilliant blue eyes. The one on the right had curly, strawberry blond hair and a faint tan.
The boys held their hands out to him silently and he stood up and took them without hesitation, as if his body knew who they were, even if his mind couldn't…quite…remember. He shook off the uncertainty as the boys began to walk him down a corridor leading out of the metal room. Or up a sand dune, away from the seashore. He wasn't sure which it was anymore.
"Where are we going?" he asked. His voice sounded overly loud after the echoing quiet of the void and the hushed noises of the shore and the room.
The boy with the straight hair looked back and said simply, "Onward and upward."
He tightened his grip on their hands, suddenly afraid for some reason that he might lose them. The curly-haired boy turned to him and smiled gently. "Don't worry. I won't let go. And I know that you won't either. Not on purpose." As he looked at the boy, wondering what he meant, the youngster's form rippled and changed into that of a young man with short dark hair and a serious face. The young man grinned and squeezed his hand reassuringly, but was gone again in the blink of an eye, and there was just the curly-haired boy.
He didn't know how long they walked. It could have been seconds, it could have been years. But he gradually became aware that while he could still see the two boys, they were now in front of him, and so they could not be the ones he could feel holding his hands. Startled, he looked to the right and left and realized that he was now accompanied by a man and a woman.
The woman was a full-lipped young blond beauty. The man, however, seemed to be both one man and many men all at the same time. Every time he blinked his eyes, he would see another man standing there. Two of them appeared the most: a man with close-cropped hair, large ears, and a serious face which would occasionally split into the brightest, happiest smile he had ever seen, as if a comet had blazed a trail across his face, and a skinny man with extremely messy brown hair wearing a trim suit and odd shoes. Turning back to look at the woman he realized that another man was walking on the other side of her, a man who was the twin of the one with the wild hair.
This was all so strange and he felt like it had never been like this before. He could vaguely recall that he had died before, but he didn't remember anything like shifting scenery and strange people. Just pain and fear. He wasn't sure which was worse, the painless unknown or the torturous known. "Where are you taking me?" he asked, uncertainly.
"Onward and upward," replied the man beside him cheerfully. Right now he looked like the messy haired man and he was whistling to himself as they walked along. Then a blink and suddenly he was older, with hair that curled wildly and an inconveniently long scarf wrapped around his neck.
The woman tightened her hand on his and said, comfortingly, "Not long now. We're almost there. See?" She pointed in front of them.
He looked where she pointed and saw that the landscape had changed again. They were now walking through a rolling countryside, green and lush. In a valley just in front of them was gathered a huge crowd of people. He couldn't seem to get a count as they were flickering slightly, like the landscape had done previously, but there seemed to be thousands, upon thousands of them. They all stood still and quiet, as if they were waiting patiently for something. Or someone.
"We've never had a group this big," the young woman continued, "but your arrival is special." She smiled at him again.
He stared at her and then back at the crowd of people. There were so many of them. As he drew closer, he began to be able to pick out individuals. Near the front stood a woman who was flickering between two appearances. In one she was an old woman with a cat and in the other she was young and very beautiful. Suddenly he seemed to remember dancing with her younger self and then, an instant later, he had a vision of himself in a garden, holding her lifeless, elderly body. Just down from her stood a dissolute-looking man with bleached blond hair and a red jacket with gold braiding decorating the front. The man blew a kiss at him saucily. Next to him was a tall man with a narrow face and sad eyes. He wore a military uniform and saluted sharply.
Further along, a woman with short dark curls and piercing blue eyes held out her arms. The boy with the straight hair ran to her, hugging her tightly. She hugged him back and smiled slightly over the top of his head. A gorgeous woman with dark skin and sharp cheekbones waved cheerily. She stood beside a young couple dressed in pale clothes. They held out their hands and the boy with the curls hurried over to them.
A small group of people off to one side drew his attention. A woman with straight black hair and a pale dusting of freckles smiled at him, her gap-toothed grin sparkling. She stood holding hands with a friendly-looking, solidly built man. Next to him a hawk-faced man had his arms around the shoulders of two women, one a brunette with long curls and the other an almond-eyed beauty.
Slowly, as if awaking in springtime after a long winter, memories began to surface in his mind. As they rose, they connected with the smiling people in front of him. He saw an alien woman from a million years ago—his wife, he remembered suddenly. The husband they'd married was standing beside her, along with their children and their children's children. He saw fellow soldiers from a thousand wars, lovers from across the galaxies, friends, family, whole planets full of people. Names began to float in his head, faster and faster, swirling and shouting at him: Gwen, Owen, Tosh, Suzie, Martha, Rhys,Alice,Steven,JohnJackEstelleGRAYMOMDAD…Rose. Doctor.
The memories, the thoughts were suddenly too much to bear. Even the hands holding his own seemed too hot, too real after so many, many, many years without touch. Dropping them, he fell to his knees, burying his face in his palms, willing the world to make sense again. The crowd murmured briefly and then fell silent. He felt them moving backward and heard a single set of footsteps coming towards him. Before he could move away from this new presence, he felt…
Hands. Gently stroking over his hair.
Slowly he lifted his head out from his hands and looked up and saw a pair of legs covered in dark suit pants. They bent as their owner knelt in front of him and suddenly his gaze was captured by stormy blue eyes. They stared out at him from a man's face, a comforting face with slightly chubby cheeks, a button nose, and a serious mouth which slowly curved into a small, fond smile.
"Hello, Jack," the man said softly. His voice was warm and deep and beautifully accented.
From the most hidden depths of his mind, where he'd buried it millions of years before, a name began to unearth. His head, his heart, his very soul hurt, ached with the effort of speaking it.
"Ianto?" he asked wonderingly.
The small smile brightened like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. "Yup." The man caressed his cheek with the back of one hand. "Oh, I've missed you, Jack."
At those simple words, his heart broke and died and was reborn again in the horrible, wonderful way he knew so well, emerging whole and new and healed completely. Tears began to course down his cheeks. As he crumpled into sobs, strong arms wrapped around him, pulling him tight to a chest that smelled faintly of coffee and fine cotton. He wept and the man holding him said nothing, just held on and let him cry. The crowd swirled gently around him, making soothing noises and brushing their fingertips comfortingly over his hair, his back, his arms.
Gradually the tears slowed and he looked up at everyone he had ever cared about over a million, million years. "Where am I?"
The Doctor (who currently had the cropped hair, large ears, and leather jacket Jack had first seen him in) replied, "Home, Jack. You're home."
Rose placed a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry it took so long for you to get here."
Jack lifted her hand and kissed the back of it. "It's okay." He smiled up at her and then let his head fall back onto Ianto's shoulder.
He was home. At last.
Author's Note: This is my version of a fix-it fic. [SPOILER for Children of Earth] I was okay with what happened to Ianto. It was terrible, it was tragic, I hated that it happened, but I could accept it. But my mind would not let me accept what had been done to Jack. Or what he did to himself. So, this is my way of fixing it for him.
In case you're wondering, the title comes from an old gospel song. Part of the chorus is: "Going up home to live in green pastures, where we shall live and die nevermore." It seemed to fit.