Jack Harkness was dying. Again.

But, instead of his life flashing before his eyes time seemed to slow down and stretch. He screamed in pain as the blood poured from his body, flying into The Blessing as if pulled by a magnet. He knew that while this was happing to him in Shanghai the same thing was happening to Rex in Buenos Aires.

And for the first time in a long time – if not the first time ever – Jack prayed. He had been through so much, lived through so much death and war and bloodshed that he was ready to close his eyes to it forever. He had lost too much in recent years that he welcomed the dark as it closed in around him.

He was mortal, Bad Wolf's gift had been stripped from him and given to the whole world, and now he was setting that right, not knowing if he would ever come out of the dark again. But there was comfort in the peace of death and maybe, just maybe…

He had a theory, but no proof. Every time he died he was in the dark place; the nothingness. Suzie had said the same and Owen as well. But they had come back to life and so had he. Perhaps the dark was purgatory, a waiting room where they had been plagued by demons. Owen had come back possessed and Suzie… she had done some wicked things in her time on Earth – not that Jack had any right to judge her. Jack hoped that Tosh and Ianto had no demons in the dark.

Personally he had never seen these things, not even during his longer stretches of death. So perhaps the afterlife was catered to each life force.

He was falling, the dark rushing in, and he prayed for final death. Prayed that his good karma accumulated for saving the world would outweigh the bad. He wanted the dark. He wanted peace. And if there was something waiting for him on the other side, he wanted it to be his lover.

"Ianto…"

Jack sat up with a gasp as the air rushed back into his lungs. He was in hell. People were screaming and it felt like he was riding the tremor of an earthquake.

"Jack!" Gwen was running towards him, pulling him up.

He was alive and they were in the warehouse in Shanghai. Oswald had a bomb and the whole place was coming down.

"Go," Oswald yelled. He would see to it that everything was destroyed.

"Shit, Gwen move it!"

Jack didn't have time to think about coming back from death, if his blood had fixed things Gwen was mortal. So they ran, explosion at their backs.

And Jack realized, in that moment, as the blast threw him forward, that he was living in his own personal hell. Rose had saved him from death, prolonged his judgement on the other side, but hell was living forever and watching worlds decay. Hell was living forever and not being able to save Tosh or Owen, or Steven or Angelo.

And hell was living forever without Ianto; living with the knowledge that he couldn't save his lover. But the worst punishment was living with the knowledge that he hadn't said "I love you" as Ianto died in his arms.