57 seconds. His world had stopped long before, eons ago, in fifty-seven seconds. It was less than a heartbeat to some, a lifetime to others. It had ended with gasping breaths and whispered reminders and tears and internal screams and echoes of a silently breaking heart.
He wasn't sure how the regeneration had allowed him to live, to bring him back, when everything inside of him was dead. Perhaps it hadn't, and the emptiness he felt was physical rather than emotional. A missing heart and stomach and lungs rather than this…THIS.
It would explain so much. It hurt. Breathing was so hard. He had died, smelling that sweet musk that always seemed to cling to Ianto's skin. So many times he had rather suffocated than let loose the breath, rather than exhaling the fading scent of him.
His dry-cleaning still hanging in the closet, where Jack had sat, door closed, breathing in the faint scent. This was where he had hid, inhaling without exhaling, trying so hard to absorb those last traces of him into his body. Checking, every time he awoke, to see if the reanimation had let him keep that smell inside of him, in his lungs, in his nasal cavity, anywhere. "Please, don't leave me."
Immortal he may be, but his body still withered when too may missed meals were spent in memories. The scent of coffee would stop him in his tracks. The food in his fridge long since expired, an homage to the empty shell that he had last seen in the morgue. The leftovers from their last date, still there, a time capsule holding proof of that last happy moment.
The dark was empty now. There was no hair to kiss goodnight, no arms to wrap around himself, no heartbeat to lull him to sleep, no soft snoring to cherish and tease about come dawn. The hours never stopped, never started. The dawn never came until forever had already passed in memories and half-awake dreams.
In fifty-seven seconds, he had lost everything. For fifty-seven seconds, he had held his beloved in his arms, pleading for him to return, pleading to go with him, to never return to life, to follow him, be with him, to remember him and to never forget him. An eternity in fifty-seven seconds, wrapped around his Ianto, wishing to follow wherever he had gone and never awake.
Fifty-seven seconds, stopped, and his heart with it. In his pocket now always, the silver stopwatch they shared, stopped at fifty-seven seconds. After all, there were many things one could do with a stopwatch. Eternity in fifty-seven second increments sounded about right.