A/N: sorry about the lack of coherency. Um. I dunno. It needs to be expanded into an actual story, but I'm actually astoundingly bad with plots, so unless someone has any idea... hahaha. Anyway.
There was a click of a gun and the feel of a cold cylinder pressed against the nape of his neck. Not something so unusual, not for Jack. He hadn't experienced it too often these days, prefering to keep to himself as he watched the universe change around him. Most often then not it was one of the incredibly large amount of people he had managed to piss off while he was wandering about as a Time Agent, or as a con man immediately after. Even though those years had been a tiny part of his life compared to how long he had lived now, a scant half-century compared to the two hundred or so he had spent with Torchwood. (Or two thousand and two hundred, but those two thousand years had been stasis.) He'd stopped trying to keep track of specific numbers ages ago, though some didn't go away. Two years the time agency had stolen from him. Ianto's age when the barely-more-than-a-boy man had died in his arms.
Time, as an exact definition, was more or less useless. His memory had many better things to occupy him.
History. People. Voices, faces, eyes. Smiles, long, round vowels. Gasps in the dark. He shut his eyes and waited.
"Captain Jack Harkness." His name was pronounced carefully, the voice cold, sharp and certain. He'd never resigned the title- his past, before the Doctor? He'd been more than willing to put that coward behind him. But Captain Jack? It was the creation of this new creature. One day he would change again, no doubt, but not today. Not this century. Perhaps when he was the old, wizened sage, when he had come to terms with everything that had happened to him- maybe. But now he was still fighting, struggling again a gaping hole, that universal question. 'Why?' "Finally, I've found you. And now you'll explain."
But this voice. The language was wrong, the accent an echo of what it might have been, but there was nothing uncertain about the familiarity of that raspy 'I'm angry at you now' voice he'd remembered so sharply. He turned so slowly, fearing what he might see, what he might not.
But it was just as he expected- somewhat. The man was dressed in black, pants roomy for movement and covered in pockets, his shirt tight across muscle, his jacket heavy and riddled with more zippered pockets. His hair was short, jaw rough with two-day-old stubble, but there was nothing mistakable about the clear blue of the man's eyes. "Ianto?" It slid from his lips like a prayer, soft with quiet uncertainty.
He stepped closer and the shorter man neither flinched nor stepped away, cocking back the safety on his revolver. Who carried those anymore, seriously? He frowned instead, a neat line between his brows that made Jack suck in a breath.
"I don't understand," he whispered, reaching towards the younger man, dropping his hand when a deliberate bullet grazed his ear. He pressed his fingers against it, white-hot pain duling his senses; they came away with minimal blood.
"Yeah, me neither," the man answered with a sneer, though it was evident by the mix of emotions on his face that he was feeling anything but confident in that moment. "All I know is that all my life I've had the memory of this man in my head- not much, just these eyes and a damnable smile and this laugh ringing in my ears and it's been driving me damned crazy. But years later I came across this picture, and I remembered somebody crying and it was you. Captain Jack Harkness." He stepped closer, eyes dark with confusion, pressing the barrel of his gun against the man's chest. "So you're going to explain to me what the hell it means."
He gaped, expression slack but hands trembling. "Oh God, Ianto."
"Why are you calling me that?" He hissed, pressing the metal harder against an unyielding chest.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," he answered softly.
"It's a new age," he answered with a shark's smile. "Time machines, now. All sorts of odd things are popping up." He gestured to the wristband that Jack had missed, and the older man had to swallow the medley of emotions cropping up. "I've even been recruited to this cute little team. Time Agents, you hear of them? Been around a decade now, I'd say. But I'd guess you know that," he growled, expression twisting, "because I've been tracking you through so much time."
"Why didn't you just go back and find me where you'd known I'd be?" He replied hollowly, knowing just as well as any- better than any- the sort of paradox that might accidentally create. Going left instead of right. He'd never known there was a boy like Ianto in the Time Agents. Probably wouldn't have cared, at the time. Not that this was Ianto, all shackles raised and making himself big in defense. Gods he more than looked like him, more than sounded like him. He smelled like him, even though nobody could, not with the way human biology had changed. He bet, dazed, that this man would taste like him, too.
"Rules," he growled, "but that has nothing to do with this. Why do I know you?"
"A long time ago, a man just like you died in my arms."
"Are you saying this is a very specific racial memory? You're encoded in my DNA?" He laughed, low and bitter. Jack swallowed.
"Maybe you're the same," he answered softly, wishing it to be true, the pain of it melting through him.
"Reincarnation was disproved already," he answered sharply. "There's nothing after death, just a black nothing."
"If there's nothing, how do we come back from it?"
"Electrical currents through the brain, like data ghosts. No soul, but a brain map."
"Then if your DNA is the same-"
"A map you create while you're alive, not before!"
"Then explain how you remember me," he answered, stone cold, fighting the hope trying to claw it's way out of his throat.
"I CAN'T!"
Jack was against him then, taking the gun and twisting it away, wrapping his arms tightly against him and crushing their mouths together. This man-that-wasn't-Ianto fought against it only for the moment it took him to comprehend, and then he was fighting for it, all teeth and tongue and nails, desperation and need, hot and more than willing.
Days later Jack had yet to let the man out of his sight, touching him as often as possible. The majority of Ianto's defensive posturing had faded into something dangerously close to the personality Jack had loved so many centuries ago. His coffee was pretty damn orgasmic, too. They were stretched on an expanse of thick grass somewhere in Feudal Japan, hiding from Ianto's ex-Time Agency partner. Evidently, he'd only joined to find and eliminate this ghost of a man that had been haunting his mind all his life, and having found and failed completely at eliminating the image wanted little more to do with the adventure-and-meddle hungry organization.
Ianto was stretched on his back, blue eyes trained on the sky, Jack with his arms wrapped around the smaller man's waist and his cheek pressed against his stomach.
"So. I was thinking. Maybe when people die, that darkness... Someone once told me it was endless nothing, but he had felt something moving in it, so... it's not really 'nothing.' But it's just not possible to deal with 'nothing,' so after a while you start fading into it, becoming nothing itself because its the only way to adjust." He sighed softly as fingers ran through his hair. "So, maybe, the point to the emptiness is to clear the mind for the next life, so nothing is holding you back."
"And therefore I'm just astoundingly stubborn."
"There is that," Jack answered with a smile, turning his head to press a kiss against the man's palm. "I once promised I would never forget you," he told him, whistful, happiness like honey in his tone. "Perhaps you thought it would be insensitive not to respond in kind."
"That would be quite rude," Ianto agreed with a laugh, bending forward to press a kiss against Jack's temple. "I'll say I'm glad I did, because you never would've tracked me down, lazy bastard."
"And forgive me for that. I'll know better for next time."
Ianto smiled at the sky, though sadly, a shadow of uncertainty across his face. "It can't last forever. Races die, species die, whole planets die, solar systems, galaxies. Not even 'souls' can last forever."
Jack crawled up until he was just above the man, his head blocking out the sun. "I will find you," he told him, soft but seriously, unyielding, "until there is nothing left to be found."
Ianto regarded him for a long moment before smiling, running his fingers through his hair again and pulling the man down for a soft kiss. "I trust you."