It's never felt like this before.

It feels like Jack's chest is being ripped in two and put through a shredder, and it takes him a moment or two to realize that he's not actually dying. This sound though - this terrible sound that somehow tastes like fruitless tears and agony and loneliness - is tearing its way out of him, and if Jack wasn't past caring about his pride, he'd be ashamed to be sitting here like a petulant child, his hands never leaving the cool flesh beneath them and refusing to believe that it's over.

If he looks away, it's not real. It never happened. But he can't bring his eyes away from the still form, blurry as it is through the flood of tears.

Instead he kisses unresponsive lips over and over again, sharing his tears, because it's got to work sometime. It's got to.

And then he's screaming his pain to the heavens, as if there's something out there that can hear him and fix this, before he's slapping Ianto's cheeks, trying to blink his vision into working again. "Nononono," He whispers desperately, "Ianto wake up, please wake up,"

Jack's been around death for his entire life, but he can't call this death, because it can't be, but it feels like it's killing him too.

It's not like when they died - any of the countless lover's he's had in the past, the people he's loved before they had to pass on much too soon - it's not like them because this was Ianto. This was supposed to be forever.

It's black at the end. There's nothing there. He feels like a little boy again, terrified and lonely, curling up into himself for comfort, to protect himself from this huge expanse of nothingness. He's lived through the end of the world before, but this is different.

This time he wasn't supposed to be alone.