Disclaimer: Still own none of this. My birthday's in 6 months, if wants to make me hugely happy and buy me some rights over things. Until them, a snippet of Jack's less than stable mind during Dead Man Walking.

There was a lot about living a year that never was that was unfair. Especially when that year hadn't exactly been spent in the comforts of a five star hotel. So the truth was, Jack expected the jumpiness, the nightmares, they were old friends, an unfairness he was prepared for.

What he hadn't expected, hadn't even let himself consider, was the extreme unfairness of knowing exactly how each member of his team looked, dead. Brutal death, screaming and clawing and fighting to the end (Gwen), quiet death, caught unawares and too quickly to even grimace (Toshiko), prolonged, exquisite agony (Ianto- the Master had particularly enjoyed his reaction to that one, and wanted to draw it out), and Owen…

The last time Jack saw Owen die (the first. He'd hoped it would be the last), it'd been the very opposite of peaceful. He hadn't been the last to go- after both Tosh and Gwen had been taken, he'd come after them.. He and Ianto had managed to sneak in and get close to the Master despite being hunted outlaws under his regime. Ianto had stuck to the plan. Owen, reckless as ever, didn't. Guns blazing, snarling curses, he rushed in at the guards. The Master had showed Jack the video record, full-sized and vivid, over and over again, Owen's body convulsing in a grotesque dance as dozens of bullets hit him from all directions. By the time he hit the ground, he wasn't recognizable at all. Ianto was caught shortly after and brought in for the Master's enjoyment- but Jack wasn't thinking about that, now.

Now, sitting in the autopsy bay, looking down at the peaceful body, only one ugly wound marring blue-tinged skin, Jack thought that it really was terribly, horribly unfair that he remembered feeling this way once already. The pain like a gunshot wound, the guilt and loss and the sounds of someone crying in the background. Not himself, this time. Last time it had been. Holding the cold hand as he hadn't been able to before, wondering if Owen had ever considered death as a real option. Yes, he had a will written out and filed away, but that was standard procedure. They all had. Jack sometimes made a point of updating his own, as a morbid little game. But was Owen…prepared for death? It wasn't something people his age ever thought of, not even Torchwood operatives. Not even a doctor who'd dealt death and handled death and struggled against it every day.

They never had a chance to say goodbye. Again.

Owen had died alone, without the benefit of final words or a final kindness. Again.

Well, Jack wouldn't go through it again. Once was about all he could handle, and barely that. He thought about it desperately after finally leaving the autopsy bay so it could be used for its normal, grisly purpose. There had to be a way. A loophole. i I don't deserve this twice. He doesn't either. None of them do. /i

It took him long to get past the flashes of the same face, once calm and cold, the other a mangled mess of blood and tissue, to get his thoughts in order. Too long, almost, before he finally decided to call in a favor from a highly reliable, highly dangerous source. If anybody could find that loophole…

Jack had died enough times not to fear it. He'd had a long time to always be prepared for death, certain he'd come back from that yawning, echoing emptiness. None of them deserved to die. Not twice.

But if Owen had to die, he'd damn well go in prepared. It was the final kindness Jack could off him, this one time in the year that came after another year that wasn't really. This death was real.

Funny, he thought bitterly as he launched himself out of the Hub past the others' startled, shocked looks. Not many people got to die three times inside a year.