Thanks ceywoozle as always! I always loved John Hart and wanted to write something about the Time Agency, but in the end I didn't, oops!

Written for Torchwood Fest, Day Four: "Favorite Villain"

Day Four - Favourite villain

He had never felt love before, and even now it didn't feel like everyone said it should feel like. It wasn't love, but it was as close as John would ever get.

He had kept this name. John Hart. He liked it. Maybe because he had invented it on the spur of the moment while talking to Jack. Bloody Jack. That wasn't his name either, but John liked that one, too. Jack wasn't the same man he had known back in the Time Agency, so it made sense he had a different name. And John liked him even more. Loved him. Because he was inaccessible.

In the Agency it had been simple: if he wanted something, he got it. If he wanted Jack, he had him. If he wanted a threesome, he had it. An orgy, too. Now Jack wouldn't even smile at such a proposition, which truly hurt.

Then Jack had gone and the Agency had slowly started dying out. Jeni had also left. And John had been in both teams to track them down. They had captured and tortured and killed Jeni, and John hadn't minded, but he had realised he didn't want to see Jack in the same situation. So he had lied, he had corrupted some files, he had changed coordinates more than once. He had given false reports and accounts, and the Time Agency had fallen by itself before anyone could find Jack again. Which John had at first been glad about, but what had that left him with? Nothing.

He had wandered after that. Then, without any goal in his life, he had given in to his already psychotic tendencies. Sex. Drugs. Alcohol. Torture. Murder. And he was good at everything. But he had wanted a point to his life, something to do, a meaning...

Looking for Gray had been the worst idea he could have come up with. He saw horrific things while searching and almost got caught by the monsters that had attacked Jack's village. He tortured people, murdered others, and when he finally found Gray, it wasn't Gray, but a vengeful, pissed off, broken man whose only goal had been to hurt Jack as much as he himself had suffered. When Gray had understood that hurting John wouldn't be a solution because Jack didn't feel anything for him – though that had hurt, too – he had stopped, and had listened to John instead.

John couldn't have known that Jack's little brother was even worse than he was, that it was all a trap. And Gray had managed to hurt Jack. Not by burying him. John doubted Jack even remembered that – maybe three or four painful breaths before the dust in his lungs had probably prevented him from awakening again – but John knew that, for Jack, losing part of his team had been the worst torture possible. Jack was immortal; he would have lost them eventually, of course, but he hadn't needed for someone to rip them away from him so soon.

John had cried for Jack's losses once he had been alone. Then he had wandered Earth, trying to understand what Jack had found in this tiny planet to keep him here.

Six months later, just when John was thinking about leaving, Jack had come back. Drunk, miserable, broken, asking for meaningless sex.

John had refused. Something he hadn't thought he would ever do, but he had. As much as he wanted Jack, he didn't want him like this. Which was weird. But staying there, John had learned how monogamous this place was. Which meant that Ianto probably was. And as jealous as John was of him – because he had what John would never have – John didn't want Jack to betray that. That was his answer to Jack.

When he learned that Ianto was dead, he just stared at Jack. And he asked the question burning across his mind. "Do you want to die?" Those five words that made Jack sob.

John held him that night. And after a long while, Jack finally answered. He wanted to die. He had tried, had put a gun against his head and pulled the trigger, had looked at a city under his feet and taken a step forward, had knotted a rope around his neck and jumped, had looked at his reflection and kept his head under the water... he had tried to die and to stay dead. It had never worked. He wasn't supposed to die but he had never been supposed to live this long. His heart and brain had never been meant to break this many many times. He hadn't been born to lose so many people and be doomed to this ongoing circle of death.

It had broken John's heart. The first man to ever reach him like this was the most broken man in existence. The first man he truly cared about would never be his because it could never work. John knew it. That was why he had liked Ianto Jones. Because he knew that everything he couldn't give Jack, Ianto could. But as much as he, and he supposed Jack, wanted that to last forever, Ianto was mortal and working for a dangerous organisation. And he had died. Young.

The next few days, John helped Jack. He took care of him, talked him to sleep, watched him during the night, tried to calm his nightmares. He forced him to eat and tried to talk him out of his depression. He tried to explain to him that he would meet other people to love, but Jack dismissed him by saying that he knew, and that was what broke him. He wanted Ianto to be special, he had promised, but he knew deep down there would be others. Some would stay longer, some would be more important and for now, it wasn't what Jack wanted. He wanted to remember Ianto Jones, brilliant Welshman, fantastic coffee maker, handsome and perfect wearer of suits. The man who had managed to find a breach in Jack's wall and to infiltrate his heart after so many years of hiding. Ianto had accepted him, had loved him, and Jack had loved him back. But Jack hadn't made the most of it and he was already regretting it. He already missed him and he was so afraid he'd forget him too soon.

John didn't know what to do. After a while, he left. He couldn't take it any more. He told Jack he was allowed to move on, and he did exactly that for himself. He left Earth, and he knew Jack would do the same eventually. And maybe they'd meet again, but John knew only one thing for sure: he would never have Jack again. And as much as John loved him, he didn't mind. He would have lovers and sex partners, and though Jack would always have a special place in his heart, John found he didn't want to explore that bit. He would stay far, far away from it, and that was fine.