i made a deal with the stars to keep holding
When you are seven, the stars in the sky seem like the most amazing seen you've ever seen and will ever see. They smile at you and laugh with you and they are the friends you never had.
You don't realize then that stars don't usually speak to people, nor that the fact that you can hear them and understand them isn't something common either.
The only person who would have cared (your mother) is dead anyway.
The stars are nice and when they sparkle more brightly one winter night you don't question it and just sigh, wishing you could be a star too.
'You can't,' they laugh, 'but one day you will live forever and see us.'
'I already see you,' you answer. After all, what use is living forever if you don't have anyone to share it with? You've seen what life is like: it's full of losses and disappointment. Why would anyone wish to be alive for forever when living one life is hard enough?
Their laugh is a mixture of mockery and pity, as if they know something you don't.
That night, you get inside early and close your blinds for the first time since you first looked at the night sky.
.x.
When you're nine, it's been a long time since you've forgiven them for bringing a supposed immortality up to you. After all living forever is impossible (it has to be, else it means your mum didn't really have to die, and you're not quite sure you can stand that fact), so there's nothing to worry about.
Stars are talking to you, and that is weird in itself. Why should you believe everything they say, when it's obvious those stars just like to play with you?
(though everything they told you so far was oh so true)
(here's the thing they don't tell you and that you don't remember: once, you were a star too, until you chose to fall. But falling can't make you human – nothing truly can, even if your heart runs on blood now instead of light - and the other stars remember for you.
they remember things that haven't happened to you yet too, because they've already happened to them – after all, isn't the night sky just like a window in the past?)
.x.
You choose to work at Torchwood because it's the closest you'll ever get to the stars.
(in your dreams, you fly among them, and sometimes, you even burn like them too, but then again, in dreams you can do anything, be anyone, so it's not like those really matter, do they?)
(yes, do they?)
It's everything and nothing like what you wanted, but being able to get close to alien technology makes all the questionable decisions you sometimes have to make worthwhile.
.x.
One time, you're in the Archives and find a journal written in a language you can't read. You don't know why, but you take it with you – it's forbidden and you would get fired and retconned for this, but you can't quite stop yourself.
Besides, you cover your tracks well, and two months later, there's no one left to even remember that this journal existed.
Well, no one but you and the stars in the night sky, who were the only witnesses to this one crime of yours, and laughed at you all the while.
(you don't understand why until much later, of course, but that first night with it you pretend you can read it, and find yourself crying at the tale of a whole world lost to war.
something inside keens and thinks 'my people' , but you don't realize – you can't, because in this form, right now, those weren't your people)
.x.
The stars always seem to sparkle a little less brightly when you talk about Lisa. You don't get why until you meet Jack and join Torchwood Three, because then something in the back of your mind goes 'there you are'.
That doesn't make anything easier though, because you're still only doing this to find a way to get Lisa back to her human self, and yet somehow find yourself getting sucked into this weird family Jack has built around himself.
The stars are different when you talk about Jack (because if there's on habit you never really outgrew, it's the one of sharing your days with your friends in the sky), and this ever since he first dismissed your application.
They twinkle with mischief and laugh in a way that reminds you of that one night, all those years ago, when they told you that in time, you'd burn with them too.
.x.
(here's something else you can't remember yet – a woman, coated in Time and gold, who burned brighter than any star ever could, and who promised a young and adventurous star a life among the people he watched over if he only agreed to watch over a friend of hers.
'Why?' The star asked. 'Why me?'
'Because I see you,' the Lady replied, 'and because I always take care of my friends, and this one will love you – I'd see him happy for as long as he can be.'
The star didn't know love, but he had seen it, had learned of it – he had seen what it could do, time and time again. He wasn't sure he wanted it. 'And why should I be responsible for someone else's happiness?'
The woman who wasn't a woman laughed like he was just a silly child – his not-mother had used to laugh in the same way, back when he had barely been more than a spark trying to start the fire he was supposed to burn with, and had told her that it was an impossible task.
'That's not what love is about, little star. Love is a fire that burns but doesn't destroy, and there's no one quite as good as that as you,' said the Goddess, somehow finding just the right words.
'Are you in love then?' The star asked, because if that was what love was, then surely this person who burned without burning would know it.
'Of course,' she answered with a radiance that shone of happiness, 'and somewhere, so could you be.'
In the end, that's what made up his mind – this warm light that he could perhaps learn to feel – and why he agreed to leave his body behind for another.
The Lady smiled and reached
and reached
and then she burned and he burned with her, like he had never burned before
and on another planet, Ianto Jones opened his eyes screaming.)
.x.
(here are the last words the Lady told him:
'One day, you will burn inside out from a fire you can't put out – don't try.'
The star didn't understand why he ever would try to put a fire out – especially one that burned inside of him – but he acquiesced anyway, because the Lady who burned almost like a star but wasn't one knew things he didn't.)
You learned a long time ago that the stars are rubbish with human time. The sun, if he could talk – because yes, not all stars can talk – would probably understand, but the ones you talk to, the ones you've spent your whole life with, they live light-years away and so any story they tell you is happening has probably actually happened centuries ago.
It doesn't quite explain how they always seem to know your future (unless it's their past, a little voice whispers in your head) and that's why you don't resent them for not telling you what was about to happen.
It still hurts though, to know that there was nothing you could have done to actually save Lisa, that all your efforts to help the woman you loved were in vain, but it also makes you realize that although you lost her a long time ago, you also gained something else here.
(and isn't that the story of life, this eternal gaining and losing?)
You could have lost it too, before you even realized that you had it, and that's why you resolve to be better from now on.
.x.
It's not easy, for the team to get over what you did, and for you to find your new place amongst them now that they really know you (well, as well as they can when there's a part of you that even you don't know), but then again nothing worthwhile ever is.
In the end, it's better too. You still miss Lisa fiercely – some part of you suspect that you always will – but the void she left behind in your heart doesn't ache as much.
Life goes on, and you could even convince yourself that this is to be your new normal if not for the way the stars seem to twinkle with anticipation every time you see them these days.
('what is it?' you asks them one day, because you're used to them not giving you answers and taunting you – after all, stars don't have words the way you do – but this feels different.
'do you see us yet?' they ask back, and really, you shouldn't have expected anything less than this cryptic answer.
'of course I see you,' you answer, because they're right there, but the stars don't say anything else.
they rarely do these days – they seem to be waiting mostly, and they refuse to tell you what for. Probably for you to see them, whatever that means)
.x.
You don't actually mean to fall in love with Jack – but then you're pretty sure nobody ever does – but you do anyway. You can't help it. There's something about him, about the way he just cares for the world around him, that makes your heart swell and your lungs contract until your chest feels just that tiny bit too tight.
You know what it means as soon as you feel it – you felt the same for Lisa after all, in what feels like a different life now – and you can't stop your eyes from softening every time you look at him.
Of course, nothing can ever be simple, and just as you actually find yourself building something with Jack, you find out just how different he is.
It's a relief in a way, to know that you don't really have to worry about losing this man you love to death – of course, you could lose him to other things, but it feels so good to know that death won't take him away from you, or at least not for long.
Instead he has to worry about losing you, and it is so unfair that for the first time, you entertain the idea of asking the stars more about why they told you, so many years ago, that you'd burn among them one day.
You don't in the end, mostly because you're afraid of what it'd mean if they said it would still happen, but also because you don't know what you'd do if they didn't.
.x.
Once, when you were a child, you fell from a tree and cut your hand. It's the first time you ever saw your blood, and you couldn't understand why it never seemed quite right for it to be as red.
You couldn't understand why you expected it to glow and be made of light.
You never quite outgrow this habit, even if you get better at hiding it.
(you can't help but think that Jack would understand this, this looking for something that's not there even when you feel it should be)
.x.
You tell Jack about the stars once. You're both lying in bed – your bed, for once – and Jack asks you why you closed the curtains when he knows you love starlight so much.
You're touched he noticed, but you don't quite know how to tell him that while you love the stars, you don't want them to see all that you get up to in the night.
In the end, you tell him everything – that you talk to the stars, and that sometimes, when you're lucky, they talk back.
'It sounds mad, I know,' you end with, and for a moment Jack is silent.
When he talks again, his voice is soft and worried. 'And they never told you to do things you didn't want to?'
You laugh. 'Of course not. Here, let me show you.' You get up and shrug on a dressing gown, ignoring Jack's protestations at that.
You open the curtains wide, and despite how polluted with light the Cardiff sky is, your room is flooded with starlight.
Jack gets up too, far far above the stars laugh, and for a single moment, just before Jack kisses you and drags you back to bed, you see.
('This is hardly the weirdest thing we've seen with this job,' Jacks shrugs the next morning. 'As long as they don't have, you know, nefarious purposes, and it doesn't bother you, then I'm not worried.'
'They don't,' you reassure him, and you think you might be even more in love with this man, for the way he just accepted you so easily.
Later, he'll ask you if they ever tell you important things, and you'll think back on that day, just after your mother died, when they told you that one day you'd live forever, and lie. But that time hasn't come yet, and even then you'll be happy.)
.x.
You dream sometimes, of things you never understand when you wake up.
You dream of warmth and fire, of burning on and on, and of the cold of space around you.
In those dreams you're not human. In those dreams you don't really know what humans are – to you, there are stars and everything else.
The weirdest thing is that you're always you in those dreams, despite how weird they are, and you always wake up sad, like you lost something you can't remember having.
(you have)
(it's fine, you'll get it back sometime)
.x.
The day the 456 come back, the stars are silent. It's the first time you see them so cold and unmoving (is this how they appear to everyone else, you wonder), and something doesn't sit quite right in your stomach.
You don't know how yet, or what, but something is about to go very wrong.
(spoiler: it does)
You're with Jack when it happens, of course, because the universe is nothing but cruel sometimes, and there's nothing you could think of that'd be worse than to have the man you love be forced to hold you and watch as you die in his arms.
You wish you could change things (wish on a star, your mind jokes, you know them all), but you can't.
You burn, inside out, because your lungs can't take in enough air around the toxin that's poisoned you, and you try to memorize Jack's face before you go.
If it's the last thing you see, then maybe you can convince yourself that all this hasn't been for nothing.
(somehow, your last thought is that you were always so sure you'd die under the stars)
But here's the thing: you keep burning for far longer than you should, long after your heart should have stopped pumping blood into your veins, and a voice half-remembered echoes in your head, a voice that tells him 'don't try'.
You don't know why, but you know this voice, and you trust it, and so you let yourself burn.
After a while, it doesn't even hurt anymore, and when you open your eyes, you're back among the stars.
(you'd laugh if you still could, because they told you this would happen, didn't they? The Lady in gold and every other stars you ever talked to, and you never listened, not really.)
(instead you scream, and reach. You reach for that small and so fragile human life you just lived, until you find the smallest thread linking you to it, and you twist it.)
(the Lady did this for you once, but she's not there now – it fine, you don't need her. You know the way.)
.x.
Half an universe away, Ianto Jones tastes oxygen again.
You have a few promises to keep after all, the most important of them all being to stay by Jack's side as long as the man needs you.
(half an universe away, a star keeps burning)