Ianto stepped back into the Hub. "Jack?" he called. "Jack, are you still here?" It was eerily silent. Tosh, Owen, and Gwen had all gone home, but Ianto knew that the Hub was the only home that Jack had anymore. And after the events of that day, with Jack's return, and the arrival and departure of the mysterious John Hart, he couldn't imagine Jack leaving that night to go anywhere.
"Jack?" he said again, a bit louder, his voice echoing up through the Hub's high ceiling. Suddenly, he was afraid that Jack had left again. He didn't know if they could handle it again so soon. He wandered slowly over to Jack's office. Maybe he was asleep. In that case, it would not go well if Ianto woke him up.
Then, all of a sudden, there was a gunshot, a huge crash, and a sort of strangled scream from behind the closed door of Jack's office. Without hesitating, Ianto ran straight in, throwing the door open and almost slipping.
The floor was covered in Jack's blood. Jack was half lying, half sitting on the floor, gasping for air.
"Oh, no," Ianto said, dropping to his knees, tugging the shotgun out of Jack's hands. "Jack, Jack, look at me! Hey!" He grabbed Jack by the shoulders, throwing the gun across the floor. Jack, breathing hard, looked at Ianto.
"I…" he said softly, "I just…" Then he stopped breathing, and slumped in Ianto's arms.
"Sh**," Ianto muttered. Placing Jack's body gently down, he looked at his own hands, red with blood. He shuddered, and lifted Jack partway off the ground, bringing him to the small bed built into the wall of the office. He sat on the edge of the bed and waited, worried and slightly irritated about this turn of events. As far as he knew, Jack had never killed himself before. "What were you thinking, cariad?" he said quietly, using the Welsh term of endearment, which he never would dare to use if Jack had been listening.
Less than a minute later, Jack gave the all-too-familiar gasp of revival, sitting bolt upright, looking around wildly. "What…I…"
"Hey," Ianto said.
Jack focused on him. He reached out, and Ianto took his hand. "Yan."
Ianto shook his head. "And what the hell did you think you were going to accomplish by this, Captain Jack Harkness?" His voice was harsh and frustrated.
Jack looked startled at Ianto's hard words. He looked down at the bloodstains on his shirt. "I don't know," he whispered. "I wish I did." There were a few tears running down his face. "Earlier, when Owen asked if the Doctor had fixed me…He couldn't, he can't. That's what he told me. He told me I would just keep going, forever. And I saw…" Jack had to break off. He was sobbing. Ianto had never seen him like this before, and he didn't know what to do. "I saw…the end…of the universe…Ianto…And I couldn't help thinking…If I won't ever, ever die, I was out there somewhere, in the emptiness of space…Ianto, all of the stars had gone out!"
"Jack…" Ianto said helplessly.
"What do I do?" Jack shouted. "What do I DO?!" He pushed past Ianto to stand up. Then he gave a scream of rage and disappointment and pain, and hit the wall as hard as he could with a closed fist. Ianto jumped up and grabbed his wrist before he could do it again, for his friend's hand was bleeding now. Jack wrenched his hand free, but didn't keep hitting the wall. "Tell me, Ianto, what the hell do I do? What happens when I'm the last person alive in the whole universe, when the universe comes to an end, when there's nothing but nothingness left in all of reality?"
Ianto shook his head wordlessly. Jack continued talking, not really to Ianto anymore. "And every single person I have ever known and loved will be dead, gone, until it's just ME! I'll always be alone. I'll never be able to risk loving anyone again, because I will never be able to keep them. I'll be all by myself, Ianto, for eternity, and I don't want to keep living like this, I just want it to end, just want to die, I just want to die." He sat down in his chair behind his long desk, sobbing dry and brokenly. "I…can't…"
Ianto came over to him. He put his hands on Jack's shoulders, standing just behind him, and let him keep talking. There were tears in his own eyes, seeing his friend totally broken, raging against the unfairness of the universe. Jack cried and spoke of things Ianto didn't fully understand, about the Doctor, and a girl called Rose, who was apparently trapped in a parallel universe, and a girl named Martha, and Daleks, and dying and waking up all alone, trapped on a spaceship in the far future, of the last life in the universe, desperately searching for Utopia.
He spoke of a year he had been bound up, tortured and killed over and over again, imprisoned by someone called the Master, who was apparently also the Prime Minister candidate Harold Saxon (Ianto wasn't actually sure how that worked out, nor what regeneration was, but the point wasn't that Jack was explaining these things to him: maybe someday.) and the pain of seeing a friend lose the only other member of his species left. Ianto couldn't help wincing with horror as Jack described his experiences and explained how, in this time, where everything that had happened was reversed but he could still remember it all, he had seen each of the team killed slowly by the Master in an attempt to break the immortal captain.
Jack talked about the first time he had gone to war, with a childhood friend whom he was captured with and the friend was tortured because Jack had been the stronger of the two. And a lot of other things, too, of Torchwood before Ianto had joined, when there was a different team who had all died, and of people he had known and loved and lost.
As he listened, an idea began to form in Ianto's mind. He tried to repress it, unable to imagine the consequences of such an action. But as Jack's sobs reached a point where there weren't even any tears anymore, and he couldn't get a single word out, Ianto decided that the risk might be worth it. And it wasn't his decision to make, anyway. "Jack, come with me," he ordered softly, taking Jack's hands and pulling him out of the chair. Jack was still trembling and shaking, and followed Ianto blindly, out of the office and down into the depths of the Torchwood Hub.
They stood in the doorway to the cryogenics freezing morgue. "Jack," Ianto began gently. "If you truly want to die…" Ianto bit his lip. "If you were frozen here, I mean, you wouldn't really be dead. So you wouldn't come back to life. But it would be like you were dead, and you wouldn't be…alive, not really. Like, you know Tommy, the soldier we keep and bring back once a year, in case of the time…whatever? He isn't aware of the year he spends frozen. His consciousness is only awake on the single day a year. But if you were to stay in here forever…" There was no need to keep explaining. Jack understood.
He let go of Ianto's hand and walked forward slowly. The room lined with the drawer-like cryogenic coffins seemed very empty, a wide expanse of floor with just a single man standing alone in a bloodstained shirt and pants. Jack reached out and trailed a finger along the cold metal doors. "They'd come looking for me," he said softly.
Ianto knew who he was talking about. "I would lie to them," he said simply. "I could say that you ran—went away again, to be with the Doctor. I'd change the records in the computer, make up someone who was frozen instead of you, so no one would ever disturb it."
Jack turned around, staring at Ianto with wide, tear-stained eyes. "You would do that?" he asked wonderingly.
"Or course."
Jack trembled with indecision. He pressed his hand against the wall again, placing his forehead against it, too. "I don't know."
"Take your time."
"All right."
Several minutes passed in silence. Ianto closed his eyes and waited. He heard Jack take a long, deep, shuddering breath. "I don't think I can do it," he whispered.
"Why not?"
Jack walked away from the wall and back to Ianto. "Because…I'm scared," he said. "Isn't that stupid?" He laughed bitterly. "All of that saying that I want to die, and when it comes down to it, the immortal is too scared." He threw his arms out, spinning around as if to confront the world. "Too frightened to let go of life, unwilling to keep hold of it either. What a fantastic dilemma, eh?" He looked back at Ianto, and his blue eyes were bright with tears, but his voice was clearer now.
"I'm sorry, Jack," Ianto said, "I thought it would help." He looked down. "I've just made things worse, haven't I?"
Jack shook his head. "No, no, Ianto, none of this is your fault. I need that option. Promise me…promise me that if I ever need that, if I ever need to leave, if I ever just can't go on, you'll arrange that it's possible. For me. I'm never going to take it, but…Just in case. Please?"
"Yeah, I can arrange that," Ianto murmured. He knew what Jack meant by "arranged," too. He'd set up a system, somehow, that, even when he had died, somewhere in the distant or not-too-distant future, would figure everything out. He might have to ask Tosh to help, but he knew she would understand, and wouldn't tell anyone else. Because in Torchwood, death could come at any time. Susie had shown them that. Death could come to anyone, at any day…except Jack.
Jack breathed a sigh of relief. "Thank you." They stood quietly for a moment. Jack rubbed his eye, wiping away a tear that was threatening to fall at the same time.
"Um," Ianto said awkwardly. He wasn't sure how this conversation was going to continue now.
Jack smiled sadly. He walked slowly past Ianto, giving one last look back into the cryogenics morgue. Then he stopped. He took Ianto's hand and pulled him along, too. They stopped outside of Jack's office.
"Good night, Ianto Jones," Jack said. "Go home. I'll see you tomorrow."
Ianto looked at him quizzically. "Are you going to be alright now, Jack?"
"Of course."
"I mean, really all right? No more shooting yourself?"
Jack nodded decisively. "I'm okay now. Good night."
Ianto got the message, but he gave Jack a hug first. "Good night," he said.
Jack held Ianto tightly, and then released him. Then he kissed him. Once, quickly, but Ianto blinked in surprise. He hadn't been expecting that.
-the end-
That was a rather abrupt ending, I suppose. But I really wanted to leave what happens next fairly open. Does Ianto go home, or does he stay? Should I write a sequel? I have a few ideas if anyone thinks I should. Please tell me what you think! Thank you for reading, and I hope I did the characters justice! I love them quite a lot.