Dying, more often than not, is painful. Jack supposes it's because of his job description. When dealing with aliens, death is usually violent and often involves explosions of colossal proportions. He's died literally hundreds, maybe thousands, of times and he never gets used to the pain.

Worse, is the pain he's faced upon waking. It's all desperate gasps and frantic blinking. And there's this sudden rush of senses as he jolts back to life that Jack just can't tolerate without facing the urge to throw up.

It's physically painful. Jack hates it. Waking up is so much worse than dying.

The death itself, Jack can't really explain. He's heard both Suzie and Owen describe it to him, but even then it never seems to be quite the same. Of course, he can match what they said to what he's experienced. When they spoke of the never-ending darkness, he could see it. When they looked up at him, lost and broken, he could understand it. He could remember looking in the mirror and seeing eyes just like those staring back at him. He could identify with them. He understood.

Jack has always expected that death would be the same dark place with the same terrifying feeling that someone is watching you. He's never thought that maybe one day, he won't be able to relate the stories Suzie and Owen had told.

Everything changes after Ianto Jones dies.

Not just because Torchwood falls to pieces, Gwen hates him and he's taken to running to every corner of the universe he possibly can. They're all pretty big changes, but even those don't hold a candle to the biggest change of all.

It's death that changes the most.

Dying is still mostly painful. Waking is still always painful. But the death...nothing's the same with death. He still can't explain it, but it's not in the way he couldn't explain it before. Before, it was more that Jack would prefer to repress the memory of death. But now, it's just that death suddenly doesn't feel anything like he knows that death is supposed to.

It's no longer cold and dark. It's no longer an experience that frightens Jack. It's no longer lonely. It's no longer something that Jack hates.

You see, it's different now. He has company. When Jack's dead, he has Ianto.

He doesn't know how it happened and he couldn't explain it if he tried. He can't even come up with a theory. All he knows is that death is old Torchwood base and that no matter where, how and why he dies, Ianto is always there.

He's real. They talk. Jack can reach out and touch him. If he didn't wake up gasping for air a few minutes later, Jack swears that sometimes he could almost be convinced that Ianto's not gone and that Jack, for the moment, isn't dead.

It's wonderful, which makes it all the more awful. Death isn't supposed to be wonderful. He isn't supposed to like it. He isn't supposed to want to be dead. He's not supposed to go looking for dangerous situations just so that he can be with Ianto again. Hell, he's not supposed to have the privilege of seeing Ianto again.

It's all wrong. It's not natural. It's completely insane and Jack can't even begin to understand it.

All he knows is that seeing Ianto makes him happy and that when he wakes up, all he feels is grief and overwhelming guilt. Jack wants to die. Permanently. He doesn't want to wake up.

He just wants to stay with Ianto. Is that too much to ask?