Set post-The Stolen Earth/Journey's End. Is likely to contain spoilers for both that and the second series of Torchwood.

Disclaimer: I own no canon characters or places, nor do I have any claim to any of the Whoniverse.

I'd like me some Welsh eye-candy, though. 3

Being immortal really wasn't everything it was made out to be.

It had taken Jack a long time to work that out, though. When your line of work involved throwing yourself into near-death situations on a regular basis, and had done for almost a hundred and fifty years, it was generally quite useful to be unable to die. It had certainly served Jack well; the Daleks hadn't been able to kill him, nor had any other aliens, any kind of weapon, suffocation, radioactive materials, explosions…nothing could. Everybody feared death, even if they didn't realise that they did, and Jack could cheat it on a regular basis. The only other person that he knew of who could cheat death was the Doctor, and even he would die eventually; his ability to regenerate would fail him, or he wouldn't be able to do it quick enough, and he would be just as dead as any human. Jack wouldn't be. He could kill, but not be killed. Whatever happened to him, there wasn't anything that could squeeze the life from Jack.

However, almost two thousand deaths later, and Jack was beginning to get tired of being the one to live while everyone around him died. How many times had he found someone he wished to spend his life with, only for them to die in his arms? How many people had he had to 'disappear' on, because they would notice that he wasn't getting older? Friends, loves, even enemies; every time someone he knew grew old, became frail or ill, and he could do nothing but look on, it broke his heart. He might not have been able to die, but his heart could break a hundred times over.

There was a part of Jack that just wished that the next time he encountered someone who wanted to kill him, it would be the last time that he lived through a bullet in the chest, a poison arrow in the back. How much longer could he cope with this before he gave up? Not that he would give up; while he was alive, there was always work for him to do, and he would always want to do it. Torchwood fought for the future on behalf of the human race, on behalf of the Doctor. Jack had to help with that; he knew what horrors would happen in centuries' time, and he couldn't let the people of this planet go into that unprepared. He didn't want to have to kill races from all over the galaxy – they were so spectacular and had travelled so far – and if he could help them then he would do his best, because alien life had just as much a right to be preserved as that of humans; not all of them wanted trouble, some just wanted to find a place to live or friends in this lonely universe. However, if there was the potential of an invasion or threat to the human race, whether that was his friends here at Torchwood, the citizens of Cardiff or the world in general, then he wasn't going to sit back at let that happen. The people here might not have been willing to accept that aliens existed, even with the evidence right in front of their eyes, but that didn't mean that aliens doubted the existence of a planet as large and bountiful as Earth. There were already many races falling through the rift and causing havoc, so who could say what was going to happen when they came here out of choice? Torchwood would be the first to help the human race fight against whatever happened; they were ready.

Yawning, Jack pushed the paperwork he had been working on to the side of his desk, at the same time mentally pushing any thoughts of death to the side of his mind, and put his feet up on his desk, turning his attention to something infinitely less morbid. Wasn't it great to be your own boss? Had he worked anywhere else, in a normal office, for example (although he did like offices, he had to admit. There was something about the photocopy machine…), there was no way that he would have been allowed to do all the things that he did; feet on desks, a shooting range on site, flirting with everyone in sight were just a few of the things he would miss if he ever had to attempt a normal twenty-first century human life. Yet here, he made the rules; he answered to no-one. Not even London, anymore; since Torchwood One had been closed, Torchwood Three had taken the lead, and hopefully London wouldn't want to reopen for a long time yet – there would be trouble if someone tried to order him around now. Captain Jack Harkness really was a captain for the first time since he had taken that title, and he liked it. Maybe he had even earned the rank by now. He certainly thought that he had.

"I'm off now, Jack." Gwen's head popped round the glass door of Jack's office, coat in her hand. Glancing up at the clock on the wall, Jack nodded. It was late, far later than he'd thought it was, and it was about time she went home. After all, she was the only one of the three of them who had a real life outside of Torchwood, and if she didn't work to keep it afloat, who was to say that her marriage would last the year? Jack liked Gwen a lot, and he would have hated for her to lose Rhys because he made her stay late one time too many. "Okay," he replied, smiling as he turned in his chair to face her. "Go spend some time with your husband. It's late – you deserve some time to yourself." That was one thing he could do without; living here at the Hub meant that Jack had all too much time to himself. Still, there was work to do.

Stretching in his chair as Gwen left through the circular door, into the lift that would take her up to the tourist office that was the front for the Hub, Jack picked up the paperwork he had discarded earlier and concentrated his attention on it again. He had all night and it wasn't anything urgent, but the sooner he got it done, the sooner he could concentrate on more pleasant things. Truth be told, he hated paperwork; being out there where all the action happened was what he enjoyed doing most, however dangerous it could be. After all, however many beings he killed in the name of saving the human race (which was a fair few, given how many aliens seemed to want to invade this little lump of rock for some scheme or another), they couldn't retaliate in kind, though God knew they had tried. Yet, however exciting the day's events were, he always had to come back to his office, sit down and fill out some forms or write some reports. Even sharing the bulk of it between himself and the rest of the team left him, as leader, with more than he would have liked. It seemed that paperwork was a necessary evil, and Jack knew evil better than most.

As he dated the bottom of a form, putting down his pen and getting up to file the sheet in the cabinet across from his desk, Jack heard the clink of cups from Ianto's desk. Locking the cabinet, he opened the door and looked out across the Hub to where he could just see Ianto's head over the coffee machine. Didn't he have a home to go to? Usually it was only Jack who stayed at work this late, mainly because he lived here, although he had noticed that the Welshman seemed to have been working a lot of late nights recently. Maybe, unlike Gwen, he didn't have so much to go home for at the end of the day. Jack had to admit that he'd never really bothered to find out; Ianto had always been there when he'd needed him, and that was all that had mattered. Maybe that was wrong, but Jack had never been one to dig deep into the lives of others; living in the moment was far more important, because what else was there to live for? As long as the team worked hard, didn't take any alien technology out of the Hub without his permission and were up for a good time, it had never concerned him what they got up to back at home. But they were his comrades, the people that he loved. Perhaps now was the time to get to know what they did outside of work. And since Ianto was here, that was where he'd start. There was no guarantee that they'd finish the night talking, but they could at least start it that way. Besides, a cup of coffee would probably do him good. And no-one made coffee better than Ianto.