Alone. Another night alone at his desk drinking cold coffee and sitting amongst piles and piles of paperwork. Jack sighes, glances at the clock on the cold cement wall of his cold, cement office and shoves the papers away with a disheartened groan. He pours the remains of his foul coffee into the wastebasket beside his desk and heaves himself out of his lush desk chair, feeling every bit as old as he was, which is to say, pratically ancient but not born yet either. The thought of this makes him sigh and he stretches out before hauling on his trusty coat, heading downstairs and down to the hub morgue.
For three hours he sits there, alone in his rebuilt hub beneath the fountain, a long way from home but close to the only thing that ever felt like home to him. Ianto. The previous Hub was blown to smithereens, but the morgue has somehow remained intact, presumably because it was almost seven floors beneath the Hub itself. He sits on the ice cold stone floor and stares at the wall of the dead, An entire wall of compartments containing the cryogenically frozen bodies of the people he had loved and lost. He feels isolated, but less lonely than he had in a long time. He hasn't visited Ianto since that day so long ago, when aliens filled his body with poisonous toxins and Jack had watched him die, given him a final kiss and died alongside him. Only this time, Jack wished he'd never woken back into the land of the living.
Jack reads each name and remembers each person as vividly as if they were sitting on the dank floor beside him. Toshiko, With her soft smiles and rare jokes, the way she bit her lip in anger when she couldn't figure something out, which almost never happened but was a sight to see. Owen, the smartass who didn't realise what he was missing until a bullet pulverized his heart and left him literally walking dead. Gray, his brother who'd both loved him and eventually hated him, the boy who always snuck into Jack's bed while they were children, when he'd had a terrifying dream.
Gerald, an old friend and leader of Torchwood 3 back in the early 1920's, ice cold and long dead. Harriet, Charles, Alice. Everyone from the old torchwood.. all gone.
After a few hours, Jack stands and pulls open Tosh's compartment. He would have opened Ianto's.. but not yet. The container hisses as he pries it open with ice cold fingers and smiles sadly down at Toshiko's body, Still perfect. She could have been sleeping. She lies in the cryo box frozen and wearing a hospital robe from the medic bay upstairs, Gwen had cleaned her up pretty well, no blood or dirty, tear stained cheeks. She wore the same necklace she always wore, a silver locket, Inside was a tiny photograph of her mother, it lay against the skin of her throat as Toshiko's only possession still with her. Jack slips his hand into hers and squeezes her fingers as though his wishing none of them weren't dead would make any difference.
A single tear falls onto Tosh's cheek and Jack realises he's crying, wipes the tear from her pale cheek and gives her one last kiss on the forehead before shutting the box and sliding her back into the wall. He pulls out Owen next, stares at the box and knows Owen's body isn't in there. The box is empty when Jack opens it, save for a bottle of beer. Jack could laugh at the idea of Owen sneaking down here after his first death, putting it there as a joke. It takes the captain a moment to realise the cheeky bugger wrote something on the bottle. "Have a drink on me" And a smile ghosts across Jack's lips, On him. Ha. On his cryo box, where he should be laying, not lost out there in the wide world, long lost particles of a funny man, swept away and gone forever. Jack slides the box shut and leaves the beer where it is, only token of Owen left.
Another hour passes and the ancient man is just staring at the name on the compartment.
Ianto Jones.
(1983-2009)
Member of Torchwood 1 & 3.
And just like that, his life was summed up in three lines. It's enough to make Jack weep and for a moment the sobbing man contemplates walking away and never coming back down here, but he has to see him. Once, just once. After Jack opens the box and waves away the mist, Ianto lies there, skin slightly tinged blue but he has that same loving soft smile he had as Jack kissed him goodbye. For a moment Jack can almost here him "Need me to do any attacking sir? They know more about this place than I do. Nobody knows more than I do! Hello? Anyone there? No! Cause the phones aren't working! It's almost obscene what you do to security systems. All the better for having you back, sir" Jack thinks back to the coffee pooled in the bottom of his bin, the papers piled up. "I'm back, saving the world. But I wish I were saving it with you. The coffee's bad, the works unending but I do it for you. So.. If you are watching over me, I just want you to be proud of me. And I know I never really said I love you, I was scared if I did I'd get hurt. But I didn't and it happened anyway. I'm sorry Yan. I miss you. I miss your coffee and how you'd call me Cariad. I love you" Jack leans into the box and places a kiss on Ianto's ice cold lips. Jack shuts the box and slides it back into the wall of the dead and a thought crosses his mind, That maybe, Just maybe, He'd lived this long and come so far, just to meet Ianto Jones.
"There was nobody else, and I don't think there'll ever be anyone else, as crazy as that seems. It was always you"
Jack turns and walks out of the morgue, locking it behind him and promising himself he'll never return, until he's lying in a box beside Ianto, which he hopes, someday will happen. As he turns away from the door he remembers his goodbye to Ianto.
The captain grabs Ianto, "We've gotta get you outta here. I can survive anything, but you can't" The immortal man can almost feel his heart break as Ianto replies "Too late. I breathed the air" It's all Jack can do not to scream "There's gotta be something. There's gotta be an antidote!" But he barely hears the 456 speaking "You said you would fight" Jack releases Ianto and turns to face the aliens in the tank "Then I take it back, alright? I take it all back, but not him!" Ianto collapses and Jack just manages to catch him as he falls "No! No no no, no, no. Ianto!" The next thing Ianto know's, he's lying in Jack's arms, like he has so many times. "I love you" He murmers, his voice breaking. Jack pauses "Don't. Ianto, Stay with me. Stay with me. Please! Stay with me, please, please.." Ianto briefly opens his eyes "Hey. It was good yeah?" Jack feels tears pouring and holds Ianto while his life slips away "Yeah". For a moment Ianto lies there breathing slowly before speaking again. "Don't forget me" He pleads and it's too much for Jack to bear "Never could" he vows. "A thousand years time? You won't remember me" "Yes I will. I promise. I will". Finally Ianto closes his eyes and doesn't reopen them, There's a single, last though going through Jack's head as he kisses Ianto goodbye for the final time before slumping down beside him, holding on to him even in his death.
I Love You.