Chapter Twenty-One

"Dis here's a situation where Ah coul' really use a soundtrack." Remy rolled his head, cracking his neck in anticipation.

Stark glanced over to him. "JARVIS, hook me into some appropriate mixes."

Remy grinned as the outside speakers of the nightclubs all turned on, broadcasting a playlist of KMFDM. "Well, t'ain' zydeco, but it'll do. Ah like dat suit." He spun with the beat, swinging his bô in an arc upward to slam into the face of a beefy man in coveralls. The man staggered back, sprouting a pair of bull's horns from his temples, then charged. Remy sidestepped him easily. "Olé! Check it, Ah'm da Cajun matador!"

"Don't get cocky, kid!" Logan closed his hands into fists, his claws flashing out as he took on a teenager with a bad case of acne and a mohawk. His claws went straight through as the mutant turned to liquid, then back to solid to swing ineffectually at his adamantium-reinforced jaw. "Yeah, good luck with that," Logan offered. "Anyone got a towel?"

Warren dodged a shower of sharp-edged scales thrown by a reptilian-skinned woman by taking flight. "I don't get it, Logan! Their powers are fully developed!"

"Ja, some of zem are really strong." Kurt slammed his tipped tail into a heavy-set man with bubbling skin, whipping it back as the man belched fire at him. Margali threw up her hand, shielding them from the blast.

"That's not exactly fair, is it?" John swung a fist at a fanged woman, sending her flying through the window of an eatery. He glanced sideways as the sounds of mayhem ensued with those who had taken refuge from the power storm inside. "Don't blame me for that."

Martha blasted a path through some of the lighter mutants with her repulsors. "Tony, Melehan's up to something!"

Stark backhanded a furred mutant, the man's neck making a sickening crack as his head snapped back. "Out of my way, muppet." He switched to scan mode, focusing on the end of the street where the mage had knelt down, driving the golden sword into the asphalt in front of him, and was now in the process of winding the amulet's chain around the hilt. "I'll take care of him." He grabbed another mutant as she lunged, soaring upward thirty meters before dropping her, his focus still on the mage as he arced downward to get behind the crowd of mutants.

Melehan looked up from his preparations, raising a brow as the gleaming metal armor dropped in front of him. "What is it?"

"Relieving you of stolen property," answered Stark, reaching for the sword.

"Aren't we suddenly Mr. Morality." Melehan smirked, grabbing Stark's wrist as he touched the hilt. "What a marvelous power source you make."

Stark's suit froze in place, bolts of dark energy dancing over the skin as the beam in his chest started to glow at full strength. "Energy drain detected," intoned JARVIS. "Power at eighty-seven percent and dropping."

Tosh jumped from the SUV, running with Gwen for the front door of Bilis Manger's clock repair shop. "I can disable the security system, but it might take about three minutes."

Owen pushed past the women, drawing his sword. He swung his arm backwards across his body, the hilt shattering the glass of the door, then ducked under the crossbar to get inside, using the blade of the sword to cut the power to the alarm. "Now you can turn it off from his office."

"Or.. that works, too." Tosh followed him in, moving for the back of the shop to get to the office.

"What do you want me to do, Owen?" Gwen straightened after ducking in behind them.

"Bring me every clock and watch in the place." Owen started on the left wall, running his hand over the antique clocks on display. "I'll know it when I touch it."

The battle engaging around him seemed muted and irrelevant to Jack as he held Ianto's cold fingers to his cheek. He had been here before, watching those he loved dying in front of him, cursing his inability to either join them or keep them with him. Ianto was supposed to become Kyhl, but as a Time Agent and later a companion of a Time Lord Jack knew time was fluid; the future itself could be altered irrevocably with a single second. Melehan would never save the life of anyone he had no use for and time was almost up for a last minute reprieve. Part of him was trying to believe that Ianto was now like him, unable to die, but the conviction faltered as he kissed his lifeless lips, feeling no spark connecting them as it had that first time he had kissed him.

He closed his eyes, his vision filled with recollections from Verdun and the Somme, Ardennes, and a hundred other battles he'd lived through, his ears filled with the cries of a thousand men he'd failed to save who had counted on him in those battles, many younger than Ianto, a few of them as physically familiar with him. He had just come to hope he wouldn't be alone again though, and now he was facing losing that hope and a man who meant more to him than he wanted to admit, a man who never flinched from the secrets he learned about Jack, who knew he could be a monster and accepted him anyway. Without Ianto, without Kyhl, what would be the point to his unlikely existence, who would remind him he could be a man, too?

He clung to the memories that threatened to die with his lover. Catching the Welshman dancing to his ipod in the info centre when he thought he was alone, seeing him whirl as he realized he wasn't and laughing at his blush. Trying to keep up as he rattled off rugby scores as if he expected Jack to be as enthusiastic about the sport as he was. Coming downstairs at his maisonette to find him making breakfast, dressed in nothing but Jack's great coat, giving a tantalizing glimpse of bare hip as it billowed with his turn from fridge to cooker. Fighting for control of the radio in the SUV as they drove to a mission, trying to impress on him how timeless Sinatra was while Ianto kept flipping it back to something called Mindless Self Indulgence and begging him to give the relentless pounding noise a chance, even though the only words Jack could make out in the song was the chorus of 'you stupid mother fucker'. Knowing just how playful he was feeling by whether or not he attempted to cover up his Welsh accent. Countless shared cups of coffee, Ianto leaning over his desk to sip from Jack's mug, the small action almost as intimate as sex somehow.

He opened his eyes with the sensation of cold steel piercing his chest, looking up to see a man in front of him, his glowing eyes turning away already as he pulled his arm back, the limb turned from flesh to a large metallic spike. A laugh of irony escaped him as he thought about how much it was like the antagonist in the second Terminator movie. Ianto loved the whole trilogy, mouthing along with the dialog when they watched it together until Jack had been forced to smother his mouth with a snog. Jack was more bothered by the fact that he couldn't remember what happened in the rest of the movie than by the stain of red that spread across his shirt as the spike was pulled out of him. He dropped forward, falling into the very familiar darkness that swallowed him with every death.

He waited for the intense pain of isolation to strike him, but instead he felt something catch him, hold him. He could still see nothing, but he knew who it was.

Ianto, you're with me. I want to stay here now.

No, Jack. You don't belong here and you know it. Death doesn't like you and you're needed up there.

But so are you. I need you, Ianto. I can't lose anyone else. I can't lose you.

Then don't. I'm not dead yet. I felt your hand holding mine. I felt your kiss. I heard you call to me. I don't want to die and leave you, either. You remember why you hired me?

You look damn good in pinstripes and I knew you wanted me, so I had to keep you around me long enough to get you out of that suit.

You're so vain, you know that? I prefer to think you hired me because you realized I don't give up easily.

I know you don't. You always wind up getting your way.

So now is the time you don't give up, or I swear you'll regret it. I didn't do this so you could piss it away by letting Melehan win.

What do you want me to do?

Do what you do best, Jack. I love you.

I love you, too, Ianto.

He felt the darkness recede like an ocean spitting him up onto a beach, felt the heaviness of his limbs and the cold throb of healing tissues as the hole in his chest closed up. He opened his eyes and looked down at Ianto's face, kissing him once more before pushing himself up to his knees. His hand struck something hard and he looked down to see the antique-looking side sword tied at Ianto's waist. He chuckled, drawing it as he got to his feet, remembering fencing lessons given to him by Kyhl, always losing to the master fencer. "You can't know how much I hate using a sword, Ianto. Thanks, though." He spun to drive the blade through the back of the mutant who had speared him, preventing him from thrusting the same weapon on Remy from behind.

Remy cast a look back over his shoulder, tipping his head in acknowledgment. "Merci, Jacques. Glad to see you back."

"Coming back is what I do best."