Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood. You know that.
Don't Blink
In the blink of an eye, everything changes. The world you see before you is completely different to the one which existed before your eyes fluttered shut. One blink is enough for something, anything, to creep up on you without your notice. One blink and you could be dead. In the blink of an eye, everything changes. Everything. And if everything changes, then how do you live in the new world? Should you be fearful, or surprised? What happens when you're immortal, and a blink of your eye, a tiny ripple in your bottomless wellspring of time, lasts for so much longer? Blink and you'll miss it. Miss what? How much do you miss in one blink?
In the blink of an eye, Ianto Jones was gone. In the blink of an eye, Torchwood Three was no more. In the blink of an eye, Jack lost everything. One blink, and everything was gone. Everything changed. And he didn't know anymore. What was he meant to do, in this world that was so different to the one he had just left? How could he live again when all that he had was a blink away in the past? He did the only thing he could do.
He closed his eyes.
There was nothing to tie him to Earth in this new world. The Cardiff Rift was all but dead, gone in the single blink of an eye, and taking everything he had known with it, into the darkness of death, the forever of the void, scattered into the fine nothing that gave the universe life. So he wandered again, drifting from shore to distant shore, never stopping, never staying, because when he stopped, when he surfaced for air, he was inevitably plunged again, into the dark despair that plagued his past. He should have seen it. He should have known. He should have protected them all. It was his fault everything was gone. It was his fault he blinked.
It was only centuries later, in his own, personal timeline, that he found himself back on Earth. He hadn't set out to avoid the planet, but unconsciously, he had never sought it out again. Earth reminded him of too much. Too much loss. Too much pain. Too much regret. Earth was his past, shadowed with darkness. Earth was that one moment when he knew everything was doomed, the one, tiny fragment of time just before his eyes closed, that he knew everything was about to change. Earth reminded him of his guilt. Because Earth reminded him of Ianto. Earth plagued the back of his mind, telling him he should have been quicker, he should have saved them. Or at least, Earth told him, he should have given Ianto more, should have treasured every moment. Earth reminded him of arguments, small things that blew up between them. Earth whispered in his mind, saying that last day at least, there should have been no argument. That last second before he blinked, he should have…he should have… The oceans of Earth were Jack's guilt, Jack's tears, Jack's pain.
After his job was done, he wandered into a bar somewhere in the middle of London. Through the wall he had built around his memories, a small whisper slipped out. A fragment of a memory that he didn't want to face.
He closed his eyes. He didn't want this. But the fragment could not be ignored.
Ianto, lying curled up against him as he stared at the ceiling and stroked Ianto's hair with a hand that felt far too heavy to be his own.
"I love you." Ianto's voice slurred as he murmured in Jack's ear, half asleep, "You were my first you know."
Jack just snuggled closer to Ianto, feeling quite delirious and strangely sated. "I love you too. Forever. Always. End of time."
'Bar in London." Ianto added with a lopsided grin. Okay. They were a little drunk.
Jack nodded. "Good bar. Should go again."
They drifted to sleep in each other's arms.
Jack sighed and stared into his glass of – what was this stuff? Where was his hypervodka? The memories were trickling out now, through the gap in his defences. Some made him smile. All made his heart wrench. He needed to get drunk. No. That wasn't it. He needed Ianto. He always had.
Centuries hadn't been enough to find another he was willing to commit to. Or maybe that was just it, he wasn't willing to commit. Of course, it hadn't helped that he'd never stopped running after it all, after his death. At times he had almost been tempted to cross his own timeline, cross Ianto's timeline.
One time – literally – he'd accidentally stumbled across a holiday of theirs and lapsed into bouts of disorientation as memory overlapped with what he heard and saw. His body had reacted, and then he'd giggled insanely as memory swamped him again and reminded him of Ianto commenting the next morning about an audience. He even remembered reassuring him that it was just them, just him and Ianto. It made Jack feel like a voyeur. He was one. It felt almost dirty, peeping in on his own relationship like that. He hadn't meant to, but once he realised, he couldn't help it.
And actually, now, as the memories flooded through him again, he realised there was a brighter side to Earth to balance out the darkness he had seen before. The stain of guilt was slowly scrubbing itself away, as if something had relented and admitted there was nothing he could do and nothing he could have done He had to blink. He had to live. The two went hand in hand. Trying to go without blinking was a fool's ideal. It was like…being afraid of the night because it brought darkness. But without night, there is no day. Without darkness, light cannot exist. They come hand in hand. The world turns. Everything has dark and light sides. Everything changes, everything dies. And everyone blinks.
Jack opened his eyes.
And for the first time in far too long, he smiled.