Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, no copyright infringement intended. If you still want to sue bring Ianto back to Jack first.
Warnings: Spoilers for almost everything except novels and comics. Not beta-read and English's not my native language, but I got my usual beta-testing by SOY. No Ianto Jones got harmed during the writing of this chapter.
Back to life
The following morning Jack was awakened by small, delicate and extremely cold hands, prodding curiously at his face. He opened one eye to check his surroundings and he found a little blond girl retreating from him. She drew back even more when he opened the other eye and sat up, smiling warmly at her.
"Good morning, young lady. You must be Mica."
The ten years old girl blushed and nodded, looking curiously at him through long eyelashes.
"Do not harass uncle Jack, Mica. Go 'n' wash your hands!" Rhiannon promptly interrupted as she joined them.
Jack felt a sting of pain at the way he had been called, his thoughts going immediately to his grandson even though he knew he had never been a real uncle to him to begin with. However he still managed to control his feelings well enough to look enquiringly at the woman.
"We don't have an uncle Jack." The girl argued, voicing more or less the same thoughts he'd had.
"He's your uncle Ianto's boyfriend." Rhiannon explained to both of them condescendingly, glaring at Jack's surprised stare and showing her daughter out in the general direction of the bathroom. "That makes him uncle Jack, doesn't it?"
Jack could swear he heard the little girl squeal and giggle as she ran up the stairs, undoubtedly to share the news with her brother, and not to wash her hands like her mother had told her to.
"Sorry 'bout that. Kids."
He stifled a laugh, realizing that he was doing it a lot around Rhiannon. He wondered for a moment why he hadn't popped up at her door sooner, but he had to admit that without the promise to have Ianto back in a short while, the family resemblance would have simply destroyed him further instead of amusing him.
"Had a couple myself, I know what you mean." He said, and to avoid further questions he stood up to help Rhiannon setting the table for breakfast. "Let me be of some help."
She nodded and left him to arrange the dishes and cups she had taken out, moving back near the stove to check on the breakfast.
"You know," She said not much after, attempting some small talk. "Johnny told me about the conversation you two had before bedtime."
Her voice was completely plain, not giving a single hint of her opinion on the matter. Even considering that aspect of her character, Jack couldn't stop comparing the woman to her brother.
"Don't worry, I won't try anything with a married woman." Jack defended himself, hoping that his charming smile could let him get away with everything he was accused of even though Rhiannon wasn't actually looking at him.
"I mean, is nice that you consider yourself still taken after all these years." She explained plainly, looking at him with the corner of her eye to check his reactions.
Jack's jaw fell open and he stared at her, processing slowly the implications of her words. He hadn't actually noticed that lately he had been assuming that he and Ianto would be back together once he was resuscitated.
"I- Well…" He bent down his head and focused back on his task, trying to hide his insecurities. "I didn't consider myself taken for a long time if I have to tell the truth. But… If there's even a slight chance that Ianto returns, I'll do everything I can to have him back at my side. In all possible meanings."
Rhiannon smiled at him. "He will appreciate that, I'm sure of it. Now, you go 'n refresh yourself a bit, and then breakfast, old man. Got my telephone number written on a piece of paper ready for you to pick up before you go."
And with those final words she shooed him away with a satisfied smirk.
*Six days later, 3:27 AM*
"Can't resurrections take place at normal hours under the sunlight?" Rhiannon said as a way of greeting to Jack and Gwen. "Bloody graveyards give me the chills."
Gwen smiled up at her. "Hello to you too, Rhi. Long time no see."
Rhiannon simply nodded and closed her coat tighter around her.
"Hi, Rhia. Sorry for the late call." Jack mumbled, his attention completely focused on the strange device he was holding. It was similar to a box with tentacles, with beeping lights on the top and a small, dead display that covered almost a whole side of it. The captain kept moving the appendages at different angles, but apparently without effectively lighting up the small monitor.
"We had no idea how Ianto was going to come back to us," Gwen explained to her, shrugging uncomfortably. "We settled cameras around here just in case, but they didn't show anything unusual even if we noticed a spike of energy in the area. It traced back exactly here-"
"But the signal disappeared about thirty minutes ago." Jack continued, still busying himself with the box. "And we can't get it back."
"So… What are you doing?" Rhiannon asked with a frown.
"I personally was trying to convince Jack to at least remove the earth over Ianto's coffin, so the rescue would be quicker at the next spike. You know, since the signal boosted right over his tomb, there are reasonably more chances that he could actually come out from here… Still, Jack wanted you here first."
Truth to be told, Rhiannon felt a twinge of pain herself at the suggestion, having still clear in her mind the picture of her beloved little brother, resting pale and unmoving in that very same coffin. Nevertheless she had always been a practical woman and without a doubt Gwen was right, so she simply took a deep breath and tried her best to steady her voice.
"Sounds the most logical thing to do to me. This obviously, if we are willing to go on with this madness."
Her answer shook Jack out of his concentration and he finally looked up at the two expectant Welshwomen. He took a deep breath and nodded, staring at them with an expression that couldn't be called in any other way but 'outnumbered'. He took it over himself to take the shovel and dig the dark earth out of the way, leaving grudgingly the weird shaped box in Gwen's care.
When he had almost reached the coffin, he heard a thump coming from inside and then a cry that sounded suspiciously like his Ianto. They all hastened together to remove the remaining earth and force open the top, realising that it wouldn't took long for the man to die again by lack of oxygen.
Gwen quickly took out something similar to a gun from her pocket and with a click of the trigger she made the nails securing the lid disappear in thin air, leaving Jack and Rhiannon free to finally take it out of the way. As soon as the cover opened, Ianto threw instinctively his arms around the neck of the nearer of the three, who was accidentally his former lover.
No matter how much sure Jack had been that his man was going to come back to him, having Ianto back in his arms froze him to the core. Only when he realized that the dirty man clinging to him was shaking in fear and whimpering softly, he protectively closed his arms around his waist and firmly held him against him.
Ianto panicked getting a so familiar reaction from who he believed to be a stranger, but as soon as Jack's unique scent filled his nostrils, he relaxed again and tightened his grip on the man he himself, glad to be in his lost lover's familiar arms.
After that first moment of comfort though, what had happened slowly came back to him and he hastily freed himself from Jack's embrace to look around himself. The coffin, the fresh earth forming four walls around them, worms crawling all around and…
"Jack… Rhiannon…Gwen." He stated each name every time sounding more and more desperate rather than happy to see them, already dreading the confrontation. He swallowed and stared at each of them in turn with wide eyes. "Ok, from 1 to 10 how busted am I?"
The others' worried stares melted in a smile and they all sniggered at the light joke. Jack leaned dangerously in his personal space, and all Ianto's attention focused back on the captain.
"Let me see. You lied to your friend, lost your sister's car and left your lover alone for four long years." He told him in a fake disappointed scowl. "I should say pretty much over thirty."
Ianto swallowed down his guilt, but was rewarded by the saddest and loving smile Jack ever gave him. "Welcome back, Ianto. You have no idea how much you were missed."
Everyone was fighting the urge to jump on Ianto and hug him tight, but they also guessed it was a bit too early, since he still didn't seem to have gotten over his shock and confusion. It would have been unwise to suffocate him with hugs and questions, especially when they took into account the lost and scared expression on the Welshman's face and his still tearful eyes.
"But… How am I back?"
Jack's smile was the first to fade. "No idea. We hoped that you might know... Do you remember anything weird or strange?"
"Nothing." Ianto answered uncertain, as panic took once again the best of him. "Me dying and then darkness. That's all."
Jack lowered his gaze and also Gwen and Rhiannon looked away from Ianto, a little bit ashamed with themselves for not having thought about an answer to give to him beforehand.
The following silence unfortunately didn't do much good to Ianto's nerves, since the dread for his unpredicted future and the horror for the possible meaning of the others' silence were already making him feel more than a bit uneasy.
He frantically searched around himself for anything unusual, peeked over the edge of the grave to be sure that there wasn't someone suspicious near and then checked behind his head in case his co-workers had managed to retrieve another Risen Mitten, but he was each time more terrified as his researches failed to produce results one after the other.
"But… How much have I got?"
"Be happy about that, love," Gwen said, trying to reassure him with a smile as she stopped her hand from darting forward to pat his hand. "As much as we know, you're in for the long haul."
Instead of feeling reassured, Ianto got even more scared than he already was, as doubts and suspects filled his panicked mind. He felt pretty much alive, but so had Owen when he had discovered he wasn't going to be dead again soon after they used the Risen Mitten on him. He wouldn't stand a half-life like the one his co-worker had been condemned to for a short while: it had been too painful to see. Living it himself wasn't an option.
He checked his own pulse and felt a little bit relieved noticing that his heart seemed to be beating regularly despite the extreme coldness of his skin to his own touch. He stared back at his friends and family. Certainly a lot of time had passed judging from the two women aged appearance, and despite being immortal also his lover looked touched deeply by the passing of time.
Much more aged than the girls, truth to be told... Had they really been just four years for the fixed captain? Was it somehow related to what had happened to him?
What had Jack and Gwen done now?
"And how much do you know exactly?" Ianto barked to both his co-workers, unable to shake away the mistrust and the anger seeping through his voice.
"Calm down, all of you!" Rhiannon interrupted, after she had finally managed to get her voice back after the surprise of seeing her brother actually back among the livings. She knew that Ianto was far too emotional for his wellbeing and had a habit to say things he didn't mean when angered or in distress, so the best thing to do was simply shutting him up. "First of all, let's get out of here. Sitting on a coffin six feet underground will make anyone nervous."
Ianto suspicious glare now was on his sister too, but he knew better than to contradict her, so he unwillingly let Jack help him out from his own grave and followed them few feet away from the graves. When they were all sitting in an open space, Ianto stared expectantly at the others again.
"So, how much do you know?"
"Not much actually." Gwen said a little bit ashamed at their inability to find any clue on the matter despite their researches.
"You knew I was coming back," Ianto reasoned, finding increasingly more difficult to not shout at them. "And you knew it was now, how can it be 'not much'!"
"That" She explained hesitantly, stealing glances at Jack, who had taken a seat next to Ianto. "That was a little bit of cheating on your side."
"My side?" Ianto asked, sounding almost offended.
"Well, not you as in you," She tried again, now a little more confident since her friend appeared to at least be willing to listen. "But in you as your future self. You came here to help us with some aliens three months ago."
Ianto knit his eyebrows in disbelief. "Why on Earth would any Torchwood Three risk a temporal paradox for a bunch of aliens?"
"Because I-" Jack cut between them guiltily. "I kind of… dismantled it. More than once."
"How- I mean…Why?" Ianto asked surprised, his voice wavering.
"I quitted. Left Earth. Came back. Left Cardiff. Came back. Not much room for our organized organization in this, no matter how much Gwen tried to put something together by herself. Besides, the rift seemed to have closed down forever until a few months ago."
"Why?" Ianto repeated, dreading the answer now.
"Why did it close up?"
"Don't joke around, Jack. You know what I mean."
Jack smiled desolately at him and rested his hand on Ianto's one.
"Doesn't matter anymore, you're back. You're alive and we recently managed to rebuild Torchwood the way you knew it. We're back in action and… When you are ready your old job will be waiting for you. Nothing needs to change if you don't want to. Absolutely nothing."
They stared at each other a long time, but none of them dared to spoke, both realizing that Jack's words were referring to much more than just work.
"No more talking now, it's late ok?" Rhiannon said, uncertainly cutting between the two of them. "You stink like a dead man, little brother. You need washing, changing and resting."
She took out a small bag and left it in front of Ianto. "This should be enough for now. Nothing much: just some clothes, your favourite shampoo and shower gel, toothpaste and toothbrush, aftershave…"
"And you can stay with me at the hub until we find you a new flat." Jack offered hopeful, following Rhiannon's lead.
"Oh God" Ianto said, realizing something important only that moment. "I've got nothing left."
Jack's smile faded again and Gwen suddenly found the corner of her jacket really interesting. It was again Rhiannon the one that finally mustered enough courage to move next to her brother and encircle his shoulders, bringing him closer to her. Ianto flinched at the sudden source of warm, but didn't try to escape her hug.
"Don't be stupid, you've got us. We're more important that a few things that had to go, aren't we?"
Ianto nodded and finally let himself relax in his sister's arms. She let him place his head on her shoulder and rested hers over his.
"When the Government released your things to our care, the flat had to go and so did the car. You know how the neighbourhood is, that gorgeous black Audi would have ended up no better than your company car." Ianto winced in her arms, but she simply kissed his forehead tenderly and continued. "Those anyway were the only things gone, and the only part of your inheritance we actually used. Your money and most of your clothes and belongings are still untouched. We never had enough heart to throw everything away."
"You needed the money more than me though, why keep it stocked?" He asked unsurely, feeling deeply regretful to presumably have to take it back from her.
Rhiannon smiled at him and tightened her hold on him. "You should be happy, you dumb sod, now you can buy everything back and I'm in the safe knowledge that your bank account would barely cry."
Ianto raised an eyebrow at her and she simply shrugged. "Well, we had to check how much was there… God, Ianto, they certainly paid you well."
"They know we are not going to see the end of it." He deadpanned.
"Well, maybe you won't see the end of it anyway, but now you can use it for a little bit longer, can't you?"
He looked up at her, hesitation in his eyes. "Can I come home with you?"
Jack's jaw dropped open in surprise hearing the proposition, but Rhiannon came to his rescue before he could make a case of it.
"You can visit me whenever you want. We'll be all here for you… But right now you need to go back with Jack and let your man take care of you. Alright, you dumbass?"
Ianto glanced furtively at Jack, noticing his sad eyes filled with hurt. He tried to retreat more in his sister arms, but she let him go unmercifully and pushed him not-too-gently towards Jack.
"Now, we all go to sleep." Rhiannon ordered. "No draining talking tonight, you three leave it for tomorrow. Have I been clear? Gwen, you want a lift?"
Gwen looked at her friends, worried about the uncertain aura surrounding the two. She knew that if someone could understand how reviving felt and what it did to someone, that person was Jack, so she only had to keep trusting him. Besides Rhiannon was right: soulful talking could wait until after a good night of sleep.
"Thanks, Rhia. I'll take your offer if you don't mind."
The two women left, glancing behind themselves to keep an eye on the two men for as long as they could, just in case they were suddenly needed again. Once alone with Jack, Ianto finally gathered enough courage to look again at his lover, guilt and doubts filling his eyes again.
"How was it for you?"
"Shouldn't we follow your sister advice?" Jack's voice was miserable and unsure, not certainly the one he would have expected from a man who had four years or more to make another life for himself.
"Jack…"
"Yeah, yeah…" Jack admitted, taking Ianto's hand in his own. "I'd like to settle a few things between us right now too, but we can't do that in a graveyard. Your sister was one hundred percent right on that. Let's go back to the hub, the SUV is near."
They walked in silence at a short distance, none of them daring to be the first to confront the other. As soon as they were inside and ready to take the road back to the bay though, Ianto yelped and stared at Jack puzzled.
"I had lost it! How did you manage to get the car back?"
Jack smirked, but kept his focus on driving the car. "I didn't get it back. I had one made from scratch around four months ago. I remade the SUV, the hub… I wanted everything back the way it was. Last time we went to America, I realized I was still running away. So I thought about the only thing that could have made me feel alive again, something that would make me stop running away."
"Torchwood?" Ianto said tentatively, not daring to hope that it was the wrong answer.
"You."
A tiny little fragment of warmth made it through Ianto's hearth, and he had to try his best to not show too much how he was pleased and frightened at the same time by Jack's confession.
"Jack… How many years passed for you? You really look older."
Jack smiled a sad smile, swallowing the lump forming in his throat.
"Only the four years I mentioned before. I wanted to find a place for me on Earth, hoped that I could at least see you again or something… But I ended up making things worse, so I fled and then a friend suggested in his own way that I had to try and be myself again. In the long run it didn't work though. I discovered that I really hadn't been ready to lose you. Not so early, not like that."
"Was it... after you met that future me?" Ianto asked, consciously adding up to his guilt list as he wondered if he had more direct responsibilities in Jack's inability to get over his death.
He had always wanted for his lover to never forget him, to hold his memory close to his heart, but he had never wished for Jack to end up completely wasted with grief. He had never actually thought that would be an issue altogether, since Jack never even told him that he loved him, not even during the few moments they talked before his death. Seeing his lover so worn out was too much to bear though, no matter how much he had craved to be loved deeply by the man.
"No, it was before." The captain answered sincerely, lifting a weight from Ianto's heart.
"Then…?"
"I wanted back what I had." Jack explained, trying to focus on the road and not on his heart breaking. "My plan was to rebuild everything the way it was, come back to the graveyard and bring in the morgue what was left of you, so you could stay forever by my side."
"Jack…" Ianto was at a loss of words on that argument. "What happened to you in these four years?"
"Well I told you about the first six months, but you wouldn't remember the time I actually managed to get you, so… Let's leave it, ok? After that, well, you know how I am when I don't get what I want… I drink, have sex, search for adventures… But everything had lost its flavour. That's what made me come back to Earth first and then Cardiff. Nothing actually changed. Not without you there with me."
"I want to believe you, Jack, but it's hard." Ianto's words were laced with sadness and regret, in a way not much different from the many times in which Jack had managed to royally mess things up and left his lover wondering about his place in the captain's life.
"Why's that?" Jack asked, knowing that the moment had come. The moment to finally confront the doubts he had left Ianto with when they had died together in London.
"We were nothing Jack. What we were didn't have a name, what we had didn't have a name. You don't even love me, even though I can assume from your words that you have sincerely missed me."
Those words hurt Jack even though he was expecting them and he was conscious that Ianto had good reasons to think that. Four years of purgatory couldn't erase his mistakes. He had promised to himself he wouldn't do anything stupid again after The Year That Never Was, but in the end he still proved to be too slow catching up with his lover's feelings as much as his owns.
"Do not cheapen my feelings for you, Ianto Jones." He managed to say, his voice barely a whisper as he tried to keep it straight. "I know it's scary to be back when you thought you were already dead, but… Eventually we'll work it out together, no matter what you choose to do with us. If you still want me, we can be anything… everything. I want to play on your terms this time, no matter what they are."
"Jack, I don't want your pity and I don't want you to feel like you have to right your wrongs nor do moral-wise stuff like that. I'm not your lost case. You had four years to move on, you don't need to go back because I was left behind."
"Have you listened to half of the things I said?" Jack cried out, tightening his grip on the wheel as he did his best to at least keep the car on the road. "I couldn't move on! I turned the hub into a damn mausoleum just because I missed you! Gwen had to swear that you made me promise to make it alive again! The only thing that talked me out of my plan was she yelling at me how you had said that after being back from the death you wouldn't want another grave."
Silence filled the car, and Jack was sure he had said enough to get Ianto angry for the whole next week or so. If this was one of their normal arguments that would have been fine, but right now the only thing he felt like doing was to curl up in his bed and hold Ianto tight with no chance to let him go. To leave him brooding alone was not something he was willing to do at the moment.
"That sounds like me." Ianto replied after a while, easing Jack's worries.
"Damn sure it does! That's why I believed it."
Ianto stifled a laugh and Jack glanced at him, a smile appearing on his lips against his resolve to still look angry. The captain focused back on the road in front of him, letting melancholy fill his heart and words, despite his best attempts to sound neutral.
"I missed your laugh."
Jack mentally swore, realising that his voice didn't still sound as cool as he wanted.
"We laughed a lot together." Ianto's plain voice, seemed to hid in itself the same hurt and nostalgia that four years of grieving had carved in Jack's.
"Because we were happy."
"Because we joked and played a lot, actually." Ianto corrected him with a bitter smirk, and then turned his head to look seriously at his lover. "But yes, we were happy when we were together. When you left, thousands of doubts kept killing me inside... but when we were together, you were only for me."
Jack parked the SUV in the shadows of the Memorial, and took his chance to finally look at his lover directly in the eyes.
"I want that back Ianto. My feelings for you are the same and I gathered enough courage to even say it if you want me to. I don't know how much you've left to live, but as long as we live our life to the fullest day by day… Doesn't an hour together have the same value of three months, and don't three months have the same value of five hundred years? All the time you have left… I would be honoured if you gave it to me, no matter how much it is."
"You're not like this, Jack. You don't do couples, you don't do commitments."
"Because it hurts!" Jack pressed on. "It hurts for me to lose everyone and I'm not just talking about people dying. My wife left me because she thought I was a monster… But you, you loved me and cared for me even though you saw with your own eyes that I was like that… You're smart, handsome, funny, you've great voice, you keep up with me whatever I do and whatever I ask… I've become dependent on you, on you presence, on everything that you are."
Jack took Ianto's hands in his own and lovingly caressed its back with his thumb, trying to breach through the mess that was left of their relationship with the small little gestures that had always made Ianto feel loved.
"When you were around, I kept searching for you and I know you noticed my eyes on you. When you weren't, I thought of what we could do once we were alone and yes, no matter how many times I told you not to do it, I've always worried about where you went or if you were fine. I hated it each time you didn't tell me where you were going or when you were out late. I might have been scared to say it aloud back then, but you must know what name my feelings for you have."
"But… my time is gone." Ianto argued broken heart, and looked away from Jack to hide the tears flowing down his eyes. "You need to be free to do what you have to do, I shouldn't be here stopping you."
"My time has gone too, Ianto. So many times I've lost count." Jack smiled at him and took his chin in his hand, bringing back up Ianto's face so that they could see each other. "I shouldn't be here as well."
"We make a nice couple." Ianto smiled sadly at him.
"Well, we are." Jack returned the smile and leaned towards his lover to give him a kiss on his cheek, but Ianto retreated, still feeling too uneasy to accept even that small sign of affection.
"Ca-can I have that shower now? I still feel like worms are crawling on me, even though they were only outside the coffin."
Jack nodded to him and they exited the car to finally reach the information centre. Once there, Ianto got a clearer idea of what Jack had meant calling the new base a mausoleum for him. Even though there were new cards, posters and updated flyers, everything was eerily identical to his old station. There were no distinctive signs that four years had passed, that changes had been made or that someone else had replaced him.
The main hub was just like tourist office. Different kinds of devices were lying scattered around and he could bet that some of the computers had been changed and updated, but the basic structure of it was essentially the same. He skirted off as soon as he could to have a look at the kitchen, both curious and worried about the changes his co-workers might have done, but there he found everything exactly how he remembered it, except for the shape of a pterodactyl painted on each side of his favourite brand coffee machine.
"We didn't know how you would have liked it." Jack explained, slowly joining him. "The kitchen was your domain, so we left this area like it was. We added the pterodactyl, though, Gwen said it would be cute to paint something there… And I suggested the pterodactyl, 'cause… Well you like Myfanwy..."
"That was a nice idea." Ianto saved him, his lost gaze melting into an amused one at Jack's embarrassment. "A little weird, but nice."
"C'mon, let's get that shower." Jack said snatching Ianto's bag from his lover's grip and taking his hand with his free one.
Due to the obviously awkward tension between them they made individual showers, but none of them complained as they laid together in Jack's small bed, their bodies fitting together like no time at all had passed.
Ianto was still unsure about where they stood, not only after the 456, but also after all those years that Jack had lived without him. Too many things had been left unsaid to make him fully appreciate his lover's proximity, but at the same time he needed to feel him and his familiar pheromones and his warmth, and he knew Jack needed this too.
Four years was a long time to stay dead and to keep it slow could maybe be the only thing that could really make them learn how to feel alive again.
At least for tonight.
