Title: a world of goodbye's
Author: finkpishnets
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: R
Characters/Pairing: Team, Ianto/Owen.
Spoilers: Mentions to various things throughout Series 2 but actually AU as of the end of Series 1.
A/N: I actually broke my own heart writing thing, so I apologise in advance for the insane amount of angst. I honestly don't know where it came from.

The destruction of the city happened gradually, so gradually in fact that nobody was surprised when the bombs started falling and the flames engulfed their homes. Night was permanent now, the only source of light coming from the flames and the occasional flicker of a candle or an electrical source flaring briefly. There was smoke and chaos and devastation and it was all anyone could do just to survive another day.

There was no solid proof that the turmoil had spread outside of what had once been Cardiff, but it was likely. Nobody had sent aid, anyway. It was just hundreds of terrified people clinging to the last scraps of normality as they talked and ate and huddled for warmth below ground, all they could do as the darkness took over and the death toll mounted day after day.

And in the middle of it sat Torchwood, trying their hardest to save the whole damn city again and failing because there was no Jack, very little electricity, and this was nothing like they'd experienced before. Everything else, even Canary Wharf, seemed tame in comparison. It was all nothing more than a distant memory.

"Gwen," Ianto Jones called from the second level of the Hub, the only place that had truly remained the same. "There's been a report of Rift activity in Canton. Find out what you can."

Gwen Cooper-Williams nodded, picking up her car keys and taking the sheet of coordinates off of Toshiko Sato as she headed out, eyes hooded from grief and lack of sleep and gun fastened securely by her hip.

"The whole city's one big chaos of Rift activity," Tosh said, voice dead, looking up at Ianto briefly before turning back to the work in front of her.

Ianto sighed. "I know, but we have to do what we can."

He tried not to notice the tear that fell down her cheek as he walked back into his, Jack's, office.

Shutting the door behind him, he fell into the chair and put his head in his hands, taking several deep breaths and trying to remind himself that getting completely pissed on the whisky in the right hand draw was not a good idea. Bad things happened when you let yourself get distracted.

It had been this way for almost a year. At first it had been small things, aliens that slipped through their grasp, technology that they didn't understand getting into the wrong hands. People began to notice that the city no longer belonged to them; they didn't feel safe, and terror soon began to thread itself into every home and every mind. And there was nothing anyone could do about it. It had gone downhill from there.

Torchwood Three had tried their hardest to keep in control, but soon their cells were full to the brim, the city's electricity supply was cut off and they only had their backup generators to run on, and loved ones were dropping like metaphorical flies. It had really hit home when Rhys had died, literally falling into the ground with Gwen unable to reach him, crying and screaming and only incapable of following him because Owen and Ianto were holding her back. That was the first time since it had all started that they'd let themselves cry. Gwen hadn't been the same ever since. As a team they were closer than they'd ever been, all joined in their helplessness and despair, but it wasn't the way that Jack would have wanted. Of course, Ianto thought bitterly, it wasn't like Jack cared what they wanted or he'd still be here. Maybe it would never have happened if he had been. Ianto hated him for that.

He didn't know how or when leadership had fallen on his shoulders. All of the others had given it a try but found it too much to bear, and so Ianto had begun taking charge, slowly at first until they were all looking to him to keep them going. He despised it but someone had to take control and make the decisions that no one else was able (willing) to make, and somewhere along the way that had become him.

The office door opened and Owen Harper walked in looking pale with exhaustion and carrying a bundle of hastily hand written files which he handed to Ianto. "I did the autopsy on the clan we found on Monday, thought you'd want to see the results before I put them away."

"Thanks," Ianto murmured, taking them from him and flicking through half heartedly.

"You okay?" Owen asked, looking down at Ianto with concern.

"Is anyone these days?"

"Look, mate, it's bad enough that everything's on your shoulders as it is. You really need to tell the others."

Ianto shook his head quickly. "Yeah, that'd be great for morale: 'Hey guys! So, the world's ending, everything's going to shit, and I know that I said we'd be alright but I should probably let you know that I'm actually dying of an unknown alien disease and don't know how long it'll be before I drop.'"

Owen quirked an eyebrow. "Yeah," he said. "That sounds about right."

"I'm not telling them Owen. They've enough to deal with as it is; I don't need them worrying about me on top of it. Gwen's barely more than a shell these days, and Tosh is trying so hard to keep going but she's breaking more with every passing hour." He sighed and dropped his head against the desk with a heavy thud.

Owen was about to open his mouth to argue when Tosh's shouts came from down the stairs. Getting up quickly, Ianto hurried down to her, Owen hot on his heels.

"What is it?" Ianto asked seriously.

"It's Gwen; I've lost communication and the stupid CCTV isn't working and I think something might have happened to her!" Tosh cried, tears forming and breathing erratic. Owen put a comforting hand on her back before sharing a look with Ianto.

"Tosh, I need you to stay here and keep trying to get in touch with Gwen. Owen and I are going to go look for her. Let us know if anything happens," Ianto said, picking up his headpiece and sometimes-working mobile phone.

"Okay," Tosh said in a hushed whisper before sitting back down at her desk, trying again to reach their missing colleague.

"You think she'll be alright?" Owen asked as they climbed into the battered SUV.

"I don't know," Ianto told him, honestly.

They found Gwen half an hour later, two dead creatures at her feet and lying in a pool of her own blood. Owen ran to her, medical kit in hand, automatically searching for a pulse before falling back onto his heels.

"It's a head wound," he said, voice hollow. "She's well and truly gone."

Ianto bit his lip, tears welling up in his eyes but refusing to let them fall. He was worried that if he did he wouldn't stop.

"Ianto," Owen said after a moment, his words cracking with emotion. "Ianto, the angle of the shot, the blood pattern, the position of the gun...this...she...Ianto, this was suicide." He stood up clumsily. "SHIT!" he screamed, throwing his med kit at the SUV furiously.

Ianto shut his eyes in despair. "Don't tell Tosh," he whispered after a while, and Owen nodded in silent agreement.

Tosh couldn't stop crying for a week, and even when she did it was only because she'd run out of tears to shed. Up until now it hadn't truly been one of their own to be lost, but now it all felt too real, too close, and Ianto wasn't sure how long they'd all survive it. In the end, Ianto had asked Owen to dose Tosh with a sedative so that she'd finally get some much needed sleep, and then settled her down in Jack's old living quarters, the only place that had remained entirely the same, like a reminder of better times.

Owen found Ianto three hours later down in the archives, a bottle of whisky unopened in front of him, overwhelmed with exhaustion.

"You should get some sleep," the doctor told him, slipping down the wall until he was sitting beside him.

"I can't," Ianto told him.

"Yeah you can. I know we're all relying on you and everything but even leaders need their rest."

"No," Ianto shook his head. "I mean I can't. Every time I close my eyes it's just one ghost after another and eventually it'll drive me mad."

Owen sighed. "Yeah, I know what you mean. Gwen..." he pressed his eyes closed. "It was so much like Suzie."

"Both consumed by the darkness," Ianto agreed, nodding his head.

"Can I kiss you?" Owen asked, suddenly, staring straight forwards.

Ianto turned to look at him in surprise. "Why?"

Owen shrugged. "It's been on my mind for a while. Thought I'd better ask first or else you might shoot me...again."

Ianto smirked at the mention of Before.

"So," Owen asked again. "Can I?"

"Sure," Ianto said, lifting his head as Owen leant over and pressed their mouths together. It was warm and soft and nothing at all like pain and death and that made it all the more important. Ianto pushed upwards, one hand tangling itself in Owen's hair and the other coming to rest on his hip, pulling him closer until Owen was all but sitting on top of him. The feel of Owen's hands beneath his shirt, warm and rough, sent a sharp thrill down Ianto's spine, and he moaned into the older man's mouth. As they fell against the stone flooring, clothing being torn away in a wave of breaths and hands and 'more, oh fuck, yes's, Ianto realised that it was the first time in months that he'd really felt alive.

"I'm not sure how much longer I can cope with all this," Tosh said one morning, letting herself into Ianto's office and sitting helplessly in front of his desk. "Every day it just seems like everything's falling apart more, and I know I can't give up, I know that what I do is vital, but it's just becoming too much."

Ianto stood up and moved to sit beside her, pulling her close and placing a kiss into her hair as she fell against him, tears rolling down her cheeks and holding him tightly. "I know," he told her, "I wish I could make it alright for you again, I really do."

Owen found them in the same position fifteen minutes later when he came to drop off some paperwork. Silently, he sat down on Tosh's other side and joined them in their embrace.

It hurt, more than anything, but they were all each other had.

Six days later, the three of them stood down by the Bay, guns cocked and pointed at the manic beast currently trying to rip the heads off of a family of five. Turning away from its victims, the alien, sensing them to be the bigger threat, headed towards the team. None of the bullets they fired into its chest seemed to have any effect, and then it was there, right in front of them, throwing itself at Owen until he was knocked heavily to the ground, his head smashing painfully against concrete as he lost consciousness, and his weapon skidding to a halt by the creature's feet. It picked it up, looked at it quickly and then pointed it straight at his head.

Before Ianto could do or say anything, Tosh had thrown herself in front of Owen, and as the gun fired and she fell to the ground, Ianto felt his heart break.

Fuelled by anger deeper than he'd ever known, Ianto ran at the beast, his gun firing shot and shot until it was nothing but a lifeless bundle on the ground.

And then he ran to Tosh, ignoring the tears that poured down his cheeks and blurred his vision, clinging to her desperately and hating everything because this was Tosh, and she wasn't supposed to die, not like this.

Except, maybe she was.

After all, she had died saving someone she loved, and received an out in the process, and he thinks that maybe that's all she wanted in the end, anyway.

It was just Ianto and Owen now, the survivors of Torchwood Three, and once upon a time that would have been regarded as a disastrous combination, but not anymore. They've both come to rely on the other, and at night (what they believe to be night, nobody knows for sure) they curl up on Jack's old bed, sometimes shagging, sometimes talking, and sometimes just holding each other as they let loose the emotions threatening to overwhelm them. Ianto's getting worse as the days go by, his immune system slowly shutting down and his energy evaporating at a speed all too quick for Owen's liking. Owen knows he's selfish to think it, but he hopes that Ianto's able to hold on a while longer yet, because he really doesn't want to be the last one to die. It's cruel and unfair, but Owen knows that he isn't strong enough to watch Ianto go.

Not now that he was in love with him.

He doesn't tell Ianto that, any of it, because that really would be selfish.

"Do you ever feel like you're forgetting," Ianto asked Owen one evening as they sat, crossed legged on the autopsy room floor, Ianto wrapped up tightly in a blanket and looking horribly pale. They'd given up answering every disaster call the systems send their way; they were only two people, after all, and they'd been spending their time trying to work on the Bigger Picture, going through the files and the archives in the hope that an answer would appear somewhere. Unsurprisingly, it hadn't.

"Forgetting what?" Owen replied bringing his hands up to rub Ianto's arms as the younger man shivered.

"About what life was like before all this happened. It seems like nothing more than a dream."

"Yeah."

"Oh good," Ianto said with a small smile. "I thought it was only me."

A few minutes later, Ianto let out a frustrated shout. "It's fucking freezing in here!"

Owen looked at him in concern for a while, tempted to point out that it was actually rather hot and that Ianto should really get some sleep, but he knew it was a losing battle. Instead he smirked. "Well, I know one way to warm you up."

Ianto rolled his eyes before chuckling, and pulling Owen over to him, the two of them snorting as they got tangled up in a mass of blanket.

"Well," Ianto said cheekily, "If you insist."

They'd made it another month before the Hub was under attack. So far nothing had been able to remotely touch its perimeters, but everything was failing and there was only so much they could do to keep it safe between them. Without Tosh's natural genius their expertise was pretty limited, and whilst Ianto was also extremely good with the systems, he'd been getting weaker and weaker and his brain just wasn't up to the task.

There were too many of them to fight off, not with the weaponry they had to hand, and as the blasts began to penetrate the outer walls, the only thing they could do was try and lock themselves in.

Except, the only working lockdown mechanism, the only one bound to keep everyone without the right coordinates out, was in the Tourist office, outside of the Hub's protection. And once it had been activated, there was no chance that anyone would make it back through the doors in time.

"If they get in here there's no telling what they'll do," Owen said, gun in hand even though he knew it was useless.

Ianto gripped the edge of Gwen's old desk, trying to steady himself. "I know."

"Right," Owen said after a minute. "That's settled then"

And he kissed Ianto with everything he had left in him, offered him a wide grin, and said, voice strong and honest, "You know, teaboy, I rather love you."

Then he was off, running through the Hub doors and shutting them securely behind him before Ianto could gain his balance enough to chase after him. There was the sound of gunshots ringing through the air and then the circuits clicking into place as the Hub went into total lockdown.

And all Ianto could do was shout a broken "I love you, too" at reinforced steel.

Before Ianto stumbled down into Jack's living quarters (Ianto and Owen's living quarters) to curl up on the overly large bed that held so many memories for the last time, he took his diary out from the locked bottom left draw and left it carefully on the desk, adding ink and teardrops to the first page.

One day, he knew, Jack would return, and when he did he could read everything that had happened to his team since his departure. Ianto didn't do it to be cruel, he did it because each of them deserved to be remembered by someone that had known them and loved them and would until the end of time.

Smiling, he left the leather bound book open so the ink would dry.

The Lives and Deaths of Torchwood Cardiff.

Because the Twenty First Century was when it really did happen.

Gwen Cooper-Williams, 1978-2008

Toshiko Sato, 1975-2008

Doctor Owen Harper, 1980-2009

Ianto Jones, 1983-2009

All brave, all loved, and all fucking brilliant!