He was glad it was Tosh, not Owen, who found him like that, with tears in his eyes and Jack's coat in his hands. She took the coat and hung it up, and replaced a warm cup of tea in Ianto's empty hands.
"Why aren't you sitting with him?" she asked: quietly, not accusingly. "Gwen wouldn't mind, you know. And I thought you two… well, it's just you said…" He didn't say anything, and she let the sentence trail off. She fiddled with her glasses, biting her lip. When she spoke again, her voice trembled. "Do you — you think he's not coming back, don't you."
Ianto wrapped his fingers deliberately around the mug, waiting until he thought he could speak. "I don't know, Tosh," he said finally. "I didn't know that he could come back — but even if he's done it before, there had to be some time his luck ran out, and that…" He stopped. The steam from the tea rose into his face, carrying the scent of chamomile. It would have been comforting, except it erased the unique smell — fifty-first century pheromones — which still clung to Jack's coat. Feeling sick, Ianto set the cup aside. He raised his hands and rubbed his face. "I don't know nearly as much as I thought I did, Tosh," he whispered. "But I know I can't sit there. I just can't."
"But if he would wake up…" she began tentatively.
"He won't, Tosh." Both of them looked around at Owen. The doctor leaned against the doorframe, looking slightly awkward. "I dunno anything about how he came back after the bullets…" he had the grace to look ashamed of that, but Ianto couldn't find any emotion to respond. No anger, not even the icy, choking shock that had gripped him when those shots had rung out in the Hub. When Jack's body had dropped heavily to the ground, an expression of surprise frozen on his face. When the solid foundation of Ianto's shakily rebuilt world had fallen away.
"But he healed, physically," Owen continued in his medical voice. "When there was no more wound, he came back to life. But Abadon didn't wound him — there's nothing to heal. There's no life in him, and that's all."
Tosh and Owen's voices continued, but Ianto had stopped listening. That was why he couldn't sit with Jack's body: there was no life in him, and Jack had been so full of life. The man was vibrant — that was what had drawn Ianto back to him, that life, Ianto's need for a reminder of what it was like to feel so alive.
The white, icy, lifeless thing in the morgue wasn't Jack. It simply couldn't be. And Ianto couldn't bear to look at what was left of him.
He couldn't do that again: sit beside the shell of someone he… cared about. He had done that far too much with Lisa. He wondered, briefly, if it would be better or worse with Jack — without a single doubt that he was gone. He certainly couldn't do it with Gwen there, hoping that Jack would come back. It was an empty hope, like he had hoped Lisa could come back.
But they couldn't. And Ianto couldn't do that again.
…
Author's note: So, my first Torchwood fic — first fic I've posted in a while, now, but I've had these plotbunnies following me around. Maybe some more Torchwood to come, since I do love the characters. Anyway, feel free to tell me what you thought. See ya later!