Title: Every Time We Say Goodbye
Author: Marguerite
Word count: 1815
Rating: PG-13 to be on the safe side, suggestion of sex
Characters: all, suggestion of Jack/Gwen
Spoilers: all currently-aired episodes (up to 1.10). This will be
rendered AU shortly, if my guess is right.
Beta: christinekh, who is worth her weight in gold AND Ianto's coffee.
Summary: Every time we say goodbye, I die a little. (Cole Porter)

The twenty-first century ticks along as usual, at least in the eyes of
the billions of people who don't work for Torchwood.

Jack tells his team, as he locks the office door for the last time,
that the hazard of doing your job incredibly well is that no one
notices.

Torchwoods Two, Three, and Four - the "missing" Four had turned out to
be a couple of rogue FBI agents freelancing across the United States -
manage to outlive their own usefulness. They hoist the alien invasion
on its own petard, technologically slick though it may be, thereby
making Torchwood redundant. Competence can be a real bitch.

None of the others is completely sure where Jack ends up. Owen's
theory is that Jack still lives at the remnant of the base, tossing
raw hamburgers at Myfanwy. It's not as if he could send her to the
RSPCA, after all. Toshiko thinks Jack might be traveling to someplace
sunny after all his years in the darkness and the fog. Gwen agrees
that he's traveling, but she hopes it's in time, with his old friends.

If Ianto knows Jack's whereabouts, he keeps that information to
himself.

Toshiko takes up teaching neural computing at Cardiff University. Gwen
rejoins the police force and works her way up to Deputy Inspector.
Ianto, to no one's surprise, becomes a librarian.

There is one surprise. Out of the group, only Owen marries. At one of
their impromptu get-togethers he tells them that he's marrying another
doctor at St. David's Hospital. Everyone looks at Gwen. Rhys couldn't
deal with the job in the end, and she's been alone ever since. Gwen
splashes her drink on Owen, calls him a bastard, then throws her arms
around him and wishes him all the best in the world.

A year later, she and Ianto are John Harper's godparents. As the
minister blesses the dark-haired baby, Gwen thinks she sees Jack
standing at the back of the church.

Gwen often thinks she sees Jack. Sometimes she can almost see him
standing next to her desk, hands in his pockets, braces slipping down
his shoulders. Every night she is so sure that he's sitting on the
edge of her bed while she brushes her hair, so, so sure that she
thinks she could catch a glimpse of him if only she could look into
the mirror just the right way. He's close, she thinks every night for
eight years, so close she can smell the wool-and-cognac scent of his
gray coat.

Bollocks, she says to herself every night for eight years.

Ianto takes Owen's son camping some weekends, because Owen still hates
the outdoors. John is an imp like his father, mercurial and energetic.
He is a little afraid of Toshiko and her endless stream of questions
about school, but he adores "Auntie" Gwen, never understanding why his
mother doesn't feel the same way.

Auntie Gwen is the only one John can tell about The Man, the one who
lives just beyond the boundaries of John's eyesight. You don't need to
be afraid, she says. He's the good kind of man. Sometimes, she
confesses to the solemn little boy, I see him too, and it makes me
glad.

In the ninth year after the end of Torchwood, they suffer their first
loss.

It is Ianto. No hero's death, he merely steps out into traffic at
exactly the moment when a drunk driver squeals the wrong way down the
street, and he's gone.

Gwen puts on black and brushes her hair. She picks up the
wool-and-cognac scent again and shakes her head wistfully. It's not
time for bed yet, Jack.

I know.

And it's him, voice and body and weary blue eyes with the weight of
History in them. I had to come, Jack says. I had to say goodbye.

Come with me, Gwen offers, and they attend the service hand in hand.

Jack looks exactly the same. Tosh has lines around her eyes, Owen's
hair is thinning, and Gwen isn't as lithe as she used to be, but Jack
is Jack is Jack and he came to her.

Over drinks, afterwards, Jack confesses his secret to Toshiko and
Owen. They linger over the concept of eternity, of forever, of Jack
outlasting them all and still looking the way he does tonight, all
cleft chin and strong shoulders that will always have to carry the
burden of life. He'll always be here, watching them leave him one by
one.

One by one they will leave him, and every time, he promises, he will
come to say goodbye.

He doesn't have to make good on that promise for many years, until
John Harper is a doctor himself and his father simply puts down his
books one day and stops breathing. Jack steps up to the coffin, one
arm linked through Tosh's and the other wrapped around Gwen's
shoulders, as they look at the face that never looked that still or
peaceful when Owen was alive. John Harper never gets a straight answer
about this Captain Harkness, who can't be Dad's famous Captain
Harkness because surely he was just a story.

John sees the Captain again three years later when they come to bury
Toshiko. Her casket is closed, as Ianto's was, because she had been
stricken by a form of leukemia that no one had ever seen. Gwen has it,
too, and there is talk that the same disease carried off Owen as well
as the old man from Torchwood Two and the Americans from Torchwood
Four. Gwen, gray-haired and frail, is the only one left.

Gwen wears a hat with a veil and won't let Jack see her face, even
when they are back in her own bedroom after the burial. Jack dries her
tears with his immaculate linen handkerchief, trying to peek at her,
but she keeps her head lowered. Why the subterfuge, he asks as he
kneels at the foot of the bed and clasps her arthritic hands in his
smooth, strong ones.

Because I'm a fright, and I'll never see you again. The next time you
say goodbye, it'll be to me, but I won't know it, and I don't want you
to remember me like this.

He pushes the hat off her head with two fingers, then lifts her chin
so she has to look at him. She catches sight of herself in the mirror
and groans, putting a mottled hand over her face.

Jack moves, sitting behind her on the bed and wrapping his arms around
her waist. Now see what I see, he tells her. With his cheek against
hers, he coaxes her to look into the mirror again.

Reflected with him, she is young and vibrant once more, dark hair
spilling over her shoulders, her eyes wide and sparkling.

This is how I'll remember you. He leans over and brushes her neck with
a feather-soft kiss. And this. If...if you want me. My Gwen.

Jack has loved her, then, all this time. He'll always love her. He'll
always remember her smiling up at him with her hair scattered on the
pillow, loving him with all the passion of her long-gone youth. What
more could she hope for than the way Jack whispers her name?

My Gwen.

She hears him weeping just before dawn, as she falls into eternal
sleep in his arms. Jack holds her and keens, mourning for lost time
and the damnation of spending eternity without her.

My Gwen.

Two days later, flowers still fresh in the chapel from Tosh's funeral,
Gwen watches Jack lean over her coffin. He looks old, God, he looks
old, once you get beyond the beauty of his face and see his soul. His
lips move.

My Gwen.

She can't feel Jack's tears falling on Old Gwen's face, for she is
hovering just at his side, her iridescent fingers using the last of
their corporeal strength to stroke his dark, mussed hair.

My Gwen.

She's going to see the rest of them soon. She can feel them gathering
to greet her, just a few feet away, beckoning to her from where the
light warms her and makes her whole again.

My Gwen.

John Harper puts his hand on Jack's shoulder. Dad said he knew a
Captain Jack Harkness, who'd never get old and would never die. That's
you, isn't it? You're real? You're going to live...

Forever. Without my Gwen.

Gwen can't stay in this world any longer. Owen and Tosh are beckoning
her, and Ianto is waiting with fresh coffee. Coffee and almond
biscotti, the way Gran always made for Christmas.

Goodbye, Jack, Gwen calls, although her voice is the merest suggestion
of a whisper.

Jack and John turn. John's eyes are wide and fearful, but Jack's are
alight with wonder. He knows. He was wrong. Something is waiting
there, something that will be there for her, for them both, if only he
can get to her.

Goodbye, Jack.

Jack is calling to her, hands outstretched. Tell Owen that John will
help me. I'll find a way.

I know.

But in the meanwhile, they have to say goodbye.

END