Chapter Fifty-Five

Only another five chapters to go! :-D

8 reviews, last chapter? Really? :-( Please let me know if it's dragging on/getting boring/without enough X or Y.

Anon – give my best wishes to your friend. I really hope they get better soon.

Disclaimer: Alas, I do not own Torchwood. *cries in corner*

Ianto stared out across the iron-grey water, his face being whipped raw by the bitingly cold wind. The ferry lurched and rolled beneath his feet.

Ianto felt hollow, an aching emptiness spreading through him from the inside out. Could your soul shrink? he wondered idly, tightening his grip on the cold steel railing running around the top deck of the ferry.

"Ianto?"

Ianto looked to his right to see Jack approaching, his RAF greatcoat buttoned right up under his chin. He looked tired, Ianto thought. Old.

"I just got a call from Gwen," he said, reaching Ianto's side and leaning his forearms on the rail. He too turned his ice-blue gaze out across the waves. "She wanted to know how you were."

"I'm fine," Ianto said numbly. He could no longer feel the chill of the wind.

Jack let out his breath in a sigh, clearly exasperated by Ianto's lack of animation. "Ianto..."

"What is there to say, Jack?" Ianto snapped. "He died because of me – and you didn't even have the guts to tell him!"

Jack was quiet for a moment. Ianto didn't look around at him, almost afraid of what he might see on the captain's face. Afraid of seeing understanding there.

"He died, and now I've just got to smile, go back to Cardiff and carry on with life as if nothing happened," Ianto said, not bothering to curb his bitter tone. "Everybody I touch dies, somehow. I just wonder how long the rest of you have left."

Jack didn't touch him, for which Ianto was eternally grateful. He knew that if Jack touched him, now, he would collapse – breaking and crumbling into Jack's arms.

He had to stay strong. He didn't deserve to be allowed to break. He didn't deserve any of it.

Jack sighed again, a sigh of exhaustion and energy and wisdom and naivety and age and youth and every possible contradiction wrapped up in one exhalation of air. "Everything dies, Ianto."

"Except you."

Jack inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the truth of that statement. "Everything, apart from me, dies – there's no stopping it. You didn't kill him. Or any of them."

"I as good as," Ianto said softly, still refusing to look at Jack, and instead gazing out at the horizon, where the misshapen lumps of the islands had faded a few minutes ago, before his very eyes. "What gives me the right to live when they don't?"

Again, Jack was silent.

"What gives me the right to carry on with my life and be happy, when they didn't get the chance? We destroyed his life completely – the only thing he had left was his life. Then I took that, too."

"It was you or him. He knew that, and decided that you had more of a future than he did," Jack said forcefully. "He'd done the whole settling down thing—"

"But he didn't get to finish," Ianto said. "He'd only just started." Finally, he felt he could face Jack, look him in his guarded blue eyes without cracking. "Do you know what his ambitions were? Do you know what he wanted to do for Christmas this year? What he wanted for his birthday? Where he wanted to go on holiday?"

Jack looked down and away. "No."

"Then how can you say that he'd 'done' it all?" Ianto demanded, not caring that his voice was getting louder and louder.

"I..." Jack shifted uncomfortably, straightening up and resting an uncertain hand on Ianto's shoulder.

Ianto shrugged it off, hating himself for the hurt look that briefly flashed in Jack's eyes before the captain hid it behind a fake toothy smile.

"I'll just go and leave you to your moping then, shall I?" Jack said brightly, his voice brittle. "Don't catch cold."

Ianto watched him stride off, the wind flapping the coat-tails around Jack's legs and the captain's head held high. Ianto felt the hole inside of him grow that little bit more; he wrapped his arms around his torso, in a joint attempt to hold himself together and to warm up a little. He considered running after Jack, like the obedient little butler he pretended to be, and letting Jack coddle him to within an inch of his life, until he remembered that he didn't deserve to be looked after and – dare he say it – loved.

-T-

"Jack!" Gwen almost yelped as she hurtled across the car-park towards them. She grabbed Jack in a fierce hug, then turned to Ianto, feeling a surge of protectiveness that she had never felt before. "You look like you haven't eaten in days," she said chidingly. "Good thing Rhys is cooking dinner for you both, right now."

"That's nice," Jack said, smiling tersely down at her. "How's the Rift been?"

"Barely a blip," Gwen said, still beaming. "Tosh's got all the data for you back at the Hub." She paused, surveying them both for a moment. "You have no idea how good it is to have you back."

As they walked across the car-park to where Gwen's blue Audi was parked beneath a spreading chestnut tree, Gwen couldn't help but notice the grey cloud that seemed to cling to Ianto.

His movements were all slower than she remembered, although they retained the same grace; his shoulders seemed ... slumped, almost. His face was gaunter than she liked, and he looked tired – not the sort of tired that a good night's sleep would sort, but the kind of soul-weary exhaustion seen on the faces of war-veterans when they think that nobody's looking.

"Are you okay, Ianto?" she ventured, reaching out to touch his arm.

Ianto gave her a plastic smile, his eyes unreadable. "'Course I am. Just a bit tired."

Out of the corner of her eye, Gwen saw Jack shoot Ianto an anxious, uncertain look; a look that Ianto pointedly ignored and which cinched it for Gwen: Ianto was not alright, and Gwen intended to find out why.

-T-

"Hey, kids!" Jack called as they stepped through the cog-wheel door into the Hub, amidst blaring klaxons and flashing lights.

Gwen smiled at his flamboyant entrance; it really was good to have the captain back.

Tosh was up from her workstation in a flash, hurrying as fast as her heels would allow. "You're back!" she said in delight, her delicate features breaking into a relieved smile. "You will not believe what's been—"

"Finally decided to come back, then?" Owen interrupted, leaning casually against the wall by the door to the cells, like a loitering teenager outside a shop. "Thought you'd abandoned us in favour of the sun."

"When I could have Cardiff? Never." Jack grinned, his entire face lighting up as he gazed around the Hub again.

Once Jack had bounded off up to his office and Ianto ensconced himself by his coffee machine once more, Gwen frowned at Owen. "What were you doing down in the vaults?" she demanded in an undertone.

"Having wild, rampant sex with Janet," Owen retorted, although he too kept his voice down.

Gwen made a face. "Don't even joke about that," she said. "But seriously, why were you down there?"

Owen sighed, shoving his hands in his pockets and frowning at the brick floor. "We've been keeping him sedated, as you know, but he seems to be having some sort of reaction—"

"Reaction? Are you sure?" Gwen asked. "What sort of reaction?"

"His brain activity keeps going off the scale," Owen said, lowering his voice to an almost-whisper when Ianto looked around curiously. "We think it's a psychic reaction to something, but we can work out f**k all."

"Is it bad?" Gwen asked. "Potentially dangerous?"

"No," Owen said. "Although we really need to run further tests. Martha's down there right now."

"Martha's down there?" Gwen asked, feeling cold dread sitting heavy in her gut. "By herself?"

At that moment, an ear-splitting scream rattled throughout the Hub.

How awesome was "The Dead Line"? I am in love with it. Seriously. I just can't stop listening to it... Ianto and Rhys are both FTW! :-)

2 DAYS TIL CoE!!!!!!!!! XD

Reviews? Please? I'm a bit anxious about this chapter, as I wrote it by hand rather than straight onto the computer, which changes my style and pace slightly. :-S