"You cannot run away." Those had been her last words to him.
He'd tried. Good Lord had he tried. He'd drank the fires of Tos'raha in the hidden recesses of Delta Vega, swallowed the dream-water of Marith, buried himself in the strongest dissociative drug on this side of the Horsehead Nebula.
It never helped. Just as Gray had been his first thought every morning for years, for centuries. Gray, whom he had intended to save, after all this time- a frozen body torn apart in the wreckage of Torchwood Three. He still thought of Gray, every hour of every day, and Ianto, and Stephen, of all the lives he never managed to save.
Sand between his fingers, but he could never get the sand out of his mind. He dreamed of them, he woke to them, he cried to them, breaking under the weight of his empty life.
He'd tried so hard to find a new life, away from his sandy childhood, away from life of lies traveling the galaxy, away from his too-human centuries in Cardiff. There was nothing left in the Universe he saw that brought light to his eyes.
Death was a shadow, lingering, laughing as it sank it's fingers into everyone he knew one by one.
Even the Doctor had run out of reincarnations by now. It was just him- him and this vast, empty world.
Nothing.
"Let this end," he begged softly, the drugs raging through his system useless to him now. He would die from overdose faster than they couldn't help him, and be cleared when he came alive again. Immune to forgetfulness.
There were no more lives to find.
He existed like a ghost. Sometimes someone would find him, and send him across space, or across time, back and forward and sideways.
He found himself on Earth again, centuries later. Centuries, at least, to him, but as the newspaper told him it had been precious little. Gwen's child could not be more than a half-year old.
But it was not her doorstep he found himself at, and his eyes were already wet with tears by the time a shorter, plump woman in magenta open the door. "Can I help you?" She asked.
"Jack Harkness," he replied hollowly, sticking his hand out. She shook it gingerly, looking at him uncertainly. "Do you... Would you mind terribly if I came in? I just. I just want to talk to you about... ahh. I'm sorry, I just."
She moved out of the way slowly. The whole thing seemed rather unusual, and you had to be careful in this neighborhood sometimes, but there was something broken about the handsome man before her. The way he was babbling, fighting his words, speaking in a disused voice, eyes seeming to be turning green against the tears that refused to fall.
She sat him on the couch and asked if he wanted anything- without any sort of response, the man lapsing into distant silence, she busied herself making drinks.
She was startled when, upon handing him a mug of coffee, he burst into tears, hunching over, fingers buried in his hair.
She sat beside him; deeply confused yet bearing a famous mothering instinct, she wrapped her arms around him and held and rocked him until he calmed.
"You've never heard my name, then," he breathed, barely loud enough for her ears to catch.
"Ah. No. Should I have?"
"I. I was Ianto's boss. I-"
She sat up, looking at him with new eyes, keeping an arm around his shoulders even as her expression turned to one of appraisal.
"You're Ianto's lover?"
"Was," he answered in a strangled voice, curling up on himself. "I'm so sorry, it was my fault he died, I wasn't good enough, strong enough, I-"
"Now look, you!" She told him, sternly, shaking his shoulder lightly. "My brother died a hero, do you understand! He saved us, saved our kids! Don't you go taking credit for that!"
She felt, of course, a fresh wave of pain at the mention of her deceased sibling, but it would have to wait. No crying now. And, at the same time, she felt somewhat relieved. She had worried about this boss of Ianto's. He'd spoke with such a softness about this man, when they'd still had time, and to know that the mysterious loved had felt so deeply for him, still did now. Well, she was proud. Happy.
"You don't understand! He shouldn't have been there, I shouldn't have let him, I-"
"Shut up! Now you bloody stop that. Look, I know it's hard, God knows I know it's hard, but he's gone now, and you have to go forward. We all have to. He would've wanted-"
"He wanted me to remember him," he answered softly, fingers clasped together, still shaking. "He just wanted me to remember, forever."
"Then remember his bloody smile, you idiot! Remember how he laughed, remember how he knew everything, remember how he was in love with Cardiff, remember how he was in love with you!"
"It hurts."
"Yeah, well. Deal with it!"
He stilled slowly, and she stayed on the couch with him. He drank his coffee eventually, though it was lukewarm by then. He joked, through tears, that obviously that was more his talent, and she answered with a smile that it was because he was bloody bad at cooking instead.
They talked about him through the day, and when they kids came home she sent them to the neighbors, and when her husband came home she sent him to the pub with his mates, and Jack stayed until it was far past dark, eyes vulnerable and smile tender. He kissed her on the cheek when he left, and thanked her with all his heart.
She went to Ianto's grave the next day, smiling as she crouched before the carved angel, arranging a bouquet of white lilies in the stone vase as she held a parasol in the crook of her elbow.
"You were right, Yan, he's bloody amazing, and look at that, he's completely broken up over you. He really does love you. Silly thing, you didn't know, but it only took me a minute to sort out what your relationship was, you lovers you. Aught just get married next time, you daft git."
She wiped her tears back as she smoothed her fingers along carved letters. "Maybe you'll find each other in the next lifetime, yea?"
Maybe he already had.