A.N: Still don't own anything. All rights belong to RTD and the BBC. I make no money, but I do live for reviews!
At the end of what would be called 'The Year That Never Was', but was, at the moment, 'The Year That Was Very Much Still Happening', Jack hadn't lost hope, but he knew everything else was lost. In the beginning, he'd been able to fantasize that his friends were still alive. If anyone would be able to make it out alive, surely those four could. Sometimes he'd think of all the things he wanted to tell them. When he was awake, he imagined telling Gwen he loved her. He imagined hearing her say it back. It was a paltry fantasy, but it got him by.
When he slept, or passed out, he would dream that Ianto was there, telling him to stay strong, telling him to come home. Sometimes, in his dreams, Ianto would say that he loved him, too. They were always nice, bittersweet dreams, because it was both what jack wanted, and what he knew would never happen. They'd had a fling, Jack out of loneliness and Ianto out of grief, but that was all there was. Even if Jack wanted there to be more, and sometimes he did, he didn't think it was what Ianto wanted. There was a hell of a difference between a relationship, and a few quick shags in your downtime, and Jack knew where he stood. Then, of course, there was Gwen. Jack loved Gwen. He loved Ianto too, he couldn't hide that from himself, but with Gwen, he saw something of a future. She wanted him the way he wanted her, and Jack wasn't sure the same could be said of Ianto.
Sometimes, at the beginning, he would imagine what life was like for them now. He would wonder if Gwen was still compassionate, if she was helping people through the bad times. He imagined that she was. He wondered if Rhys was still alive, and he hoped so. He wondered about Ianto, and he thought that he was probably the leader of a resistance movement, somewhere. Ianto wasn't the type to go gently into any good night. It hurt Jack to imagine him hardened and killing, surviving, but Jack knew that if he was alive, that was where he'd be. He wondered if Tosh was with him, if they'd ever gotten together as he'd once thought they should, and he was bitter as he hoped so. Jack wondered if Tosh was pulling through, and if Owen was holding up. He could imagine that they were.
That was at the beginning, when hope for such things didn't seem so foolish. By the time six months had gone by, Jack knew that there was little hope that any of them had survived. If someone had, he assumed it would have been Gwen. He still fantasized.
By the time the year was closing out, Jack had given up on all of them, except for brief flashes of hope so strong it felt like absolute knowledge that Ianto had survived. Gorgeous, mad, persistent Ianto. Maddening, vicious, unbreakable Ianto. Sweet, kind, beautiful Ianto. Perfect Ianto, who had always been a little hard, and who Jack knew could survive anything. If one of them had survived, Jack thought near the end, it would have been him.
More than likely, it was none of them. Jack knew that, but he didn't accept it. He couldn't if he wanted to make it out of this, with the Doctor, intact. If they were alive, Jack would go home to them, just as Ianto always beckoned him to, in his dreams. If they were alive, he would tell Gwen he loved her, and he would let Ianto go to make the kind of life for himself that he wanted. Marriage and kids, probably. A nice house, with a nice garden, and a nice wife who gave him nice children. Everything Ianto deserved, Jack aimed to see that he got it. If he was still alive, which Jack didn't really hope for anymore.
Near the end, he was saving all of his hope for Martha.