I found this lurking in a forgotten folder. I thought I'd never write a 'Year that Wasn't' fic but looks like I already have! Not quite fluff - more like angst with fluff topping.

Warnings for some nasty bits including death and near-death. Please don't read if that will upset you.
All will be fixed by the end.

Papers spiraled through the air in the wake of the Tardis, driven by a wind too sharp, too icy, too other to have been born on Earth.

A single tear warmed a path through the dust left on Ianto's cheek by the swirling vortex as it faded and died. Ianto didn't bother wiping it away. There was a certain comfort, almost pride, in knowing this was the last tear he'd shed for the faithless Captain. No more hopes, no more illusions. He'd been a fool to think it meant something, finally, when Jack kissed him in front of the rest of the team. Jack had left them, left him, without so much as a wave, let alone a goodbye. So it hadn't meant anything, after all. Just another game. Another way to make sure it hurt.

Ianto supposed Jack hadn't really finished punishing him for Lisa.

-XXX-

There were no windows in the boiler room of the Valiant. Nothing much to see except various bits of metal - walls, pipes, chains. Cold metal, but never cold enough to numb. You'd have thought a boiler room would be hot, but obviously the Master had decided cold would be less comfortable.

There was nothing to look at, but Jack decided months ago that metal walls were his favorite view. Boring walls meant he was alone. Alone wasn't Jack's favorite state of being, but alone meant no one had come to play with the Freak. Alone meant Jack didn't have to summon the ever-greater effort to cloak himself in the illusion he assumed for Tish, for her family, for the few who weren't completely under The Master's thrall. For them, Jack cloaked himself with pasted-on smiles and gallows humor, a façade of sanity, projecting a false confidence to kindle a spark of hope in his fellow captives. Because, after trading weak jokes with Jack, the rest of the Master's servants would huddle together and tell each other that if Jack could cope, then so could they.

Jack kept the truth behind his eyes, behind his eyelids, and when he closed them he saw Ianto, and Ianto saw the truth with him, saw it for him, and Ianto took the pain away, and kept Jack safe and warm inside his mind, while the rest of him screamed.

-XXX-

Torchwood found its feet and stumbled on as the weeks passed without Jack. Ianto decided he had to forget, put everything they had or hadn't been behind him and do it without the use of Retcon. He would push the memories into the back of his mind, forget every time Jack had made him feel like…..well, made him feel after all those numb weeks, months, hiding Lisa, mourning Lisa.

He could forget. He would. He would try. He would find other arms to hold him, other hands to light a fire within his veins, other voices to whisper his name.

There were other arms, other hands. Smaller, feminine hands, and sometimes they touched the same places, or drew the same sounds from his lips. Sometimes the other hands kindled a flicker of flame in his blood, and Ianto forgot, if only for a while, how much hotter the fire used to burn.

-XXX-

Most of the time, the boiler room hummed with noise, so constant that Jack reached the point where he could disregard the assault on his ears. But sometimes the sound of the engines died from a roar to a murmur, and other sounds bled through from outside the ship's skin. Jack learned to dread those times, for all that his senses sobbed in relief at the relative silence. Because the ship only stilled so the Master could gloat over another victory.

This time, as the Master summoned everyone up on deck to watch another country being destroyed, Jack tried to tell himself that the howling outside was just the wind wrapping around the ship. But the part of his mind which wasn't sunk in denial knew he was hearing the echoes of screams drifting up from below, as the islands of Japan burned.

The sounds grew louder as the ship drifted lower. The metal on his Jack's wrists and against his back began to lose its chill. For a moment he was almost comfortable. They were closer to the surface, to give the gleeful minions and the unwilling captives a better view. Closer to the incineration of another proud, ancient culture. Jack fought against his restraints as the heat from outside crept into the ship, leaching into the metal of the chains and cuffs. When the ship was empty the Master didn't bother with niceties like insulation or climate control for the areas where he kept his pets, his freaks, the ones that would survive anything.

Jack smelled his skin burning and tried to hide in his memories. He scrabbled through his head for Ianto, finding nothing to link to the scent of cooking flesh, because they'd never done dates, never done domestic, but they would, they would if he got back, when he got back….. Jack fled back, back, back into the past, clutching to the memory of Sunday roasts, back when he was married, back when he'd dared to try being happy, back when he was safe. Skin blistered and crackled, and by the time he couldn't feel anything at all Jack had at least found a pleasant memory to take into the dark with him.

-XXX-

They debated long and fiercely about the summons to the Himalayas. Outside the Government, they reminded each other, so they didn't have to obey. But Torchwood was a ship without its Captain, and the former Defense Minister could be trusted at the helm, couldn't he? And they'd all voted for Saxon, so in a way they'd already accepted his leadership.

Owen's skill saved them from succumbing to frostbite, but they were too numb from the cold to be grateful, and who needed fingers and toes when hypothermia was just a dream away?

At least it didn't hurt, Ianto thought vaguely, as the cold numbed him past feeling, chilled him to the point where ice began to burn. Memories danced across his fading vision, memories mingled with dreams, Jack wrapped his arms around him, and Ianto vanished in a fold of greatcoat, warm and safe at last.

-XXX-

The metal had cooled by the time Jack returned to his waking nightmare. No more wind, no more screaming. The islands of Japan were gone, burnt to a crisp the way that one roast had been, when he'd come back home after two weeks away on a mission and the joint had cooked unnoticed, forgotten in the joy of reunion. Below, another culture died, another part of humanity was erased. Jack hoped Tosh wasn't down there, but she might have been, oh she might have been, with the rest of the team beside her, perhaps. And it hurt, oh it hurt. Hurt more than the healing burns from the cuffs around his wrist. Hurt more than the sloughing away of the melted fabric on his back which had fused into his shedding skin.

Jack closed his eyes and took himself to the place where he could heal in Ianto's arms, smiling even in the midst of his fantasy because Ianto felt so cool against his scalded flesh. And every time he healed and died and woke again Jack clung to the thought that if Ianto was cold he couldn't have been in Japan, couldn't have burnt, and that meant the rest of the team was safe too.

-XXX-

It wasn't Jack's coat, after all. It wasn't the soft old wool drawing him back from the grip of the ice. It was blanket. Just a scratchy old blanket, wielded by a doctor. A doctor, not The Doctor, but close enough. A doctor who'd traveled with the Doctor. A doctor who wore Jack's treasured vortex manipulator, and had followed its urgent signals to a cave halfway up a mountain. The Torchwood team huddled together, their bodies thawing slowly, their hearts warming faster from this proof that Jack hadn't deserted them after all, at least not completely.

Her name was Martha, and she was the doctor who would help The Doctor save them all, including Jack, if they would only believe.

Ianto hadn't had a huge store of faith to begin with. Lisa drained most of it and whatever she'd left began running out when Jack ran out on them all. When the time came he closed his eyes and hoped what was left would be enough.

-XXX-

Ianto woke in his bed, wracked with shivers but drenched in sweat. The nightmare had been so graphic, so real. His fists were clenched around handfuls of his duvet, and the softness was reassuring, given that he'd somehow expected to be clutching a scratchy blanket instead.

Ianto moved sluggishly through his morning routine, still working on dispelling the uneasy grip of his nighttime vision. He wondered if perhaps he was getting sick, suffering from something more fever dream than genuine nightmare.

If that was the case, he mused as he tied his tie, then it was lucky for him they'd ignored that summons from the Prime Minister. It'd be miserable trekking around Nepal if he was getting sick.

As Ianto made his morning coffee, the radio announcer babbled about the death of the Prime Minister. Ianto shook his head and wondered why he'd voted for that tosser in the first place. He drank his coffee slowly, wrapping his hands around the mug to warm them, because he wouldn't be home long enough for the heater to make a difference, and the one who used to warm him right through was gone.

The roads were icy this morning, which was another good thing, because navigating the frost-laced roads was almost enough to stop Ianto wondering again whether Jack ever thought about them, wherever he was. Whether Jack ever thought about him.

-XXX-

The office lights were dim, saving energy, Jack supposed. And he assumed they dropped the air-conditioning overnight, too. Because Jack's hands were shaking just the slightest bit as he followed Ianto around the scattered desks, and it had to be from the cold, because Captain Jack Harkness didn't get nervous about asking someone on a date.

But they'd never dated, never done domestic, and he'd regretted that for so long, and it was a regret easily addressed, if his voice would just stop shaking even more than his hands were.

"….Dinner….A movie…."

Jack watched the heat rise in Ianto's cheeks, and it warmed him right through. Who needed climate control when they could have a Welshman?

-XXX-

Ianto woke, cold and sweat-soaked again. But the sweat was leftover from a much more pleasant activity than a nightmare, and doubtless he was cold because Jack had stolen the duvet – again.

Except the duvet was nowhere to be seen and beside him Jack thrashed in his sleep. Ianto sighed, concern banishing all the witty comments regarding sheet-thieves. Another nightmare.

Jack woke to the feel of strong arms around him, the sound of a voice murmuring soothing nonsense into his ears, and the sight of anxious blue eyes looking into his own.

"Jack? Are you OK?"

"Cold," Jack murmured, trying to snuggle closer to the warm body beside him.

"You threw the duvet off," Ianto explained, evading the grasping arms as he slipped away to retrieve it from the floor.

Jack settled back against the pillows, feeling quite indecently satisfied as Ianto draped the retrieved duvet around them both. They were dating. They were doing domestic. How many people actually got to have their dreams come true?

"Are you still cold?" Ianto asked. "Or maybe you're too warm. Maybe that's why you threw the duvet off…"

A cool hand rested briefly on Jack's forehead, checking for fever the way no-one had since he was a child. He thought he'd probably tire of the fussing one day, but not yet.

Jack peeled the hand off his forehead and arranged it back around his waist. He was tired and for the first time he could remember it felt safe to sleep. Ianto had chased the waking nightmares away from a whole year, and now he was doing the same for the sleeping ones.

Jack yawned and snuggled into the welcoming arms. "Not cold," he mumbled. "Not hot. Just right."

Ianto blinked away tears as Jack's eyes drifted closed. He'd sworn never to shed another for Jack, but it looked like that would be another promise he wouldn't keep. Ianto tightened his arms protectively around his sleeping lover and kissed the top of the head nestled trustingly against his chest.

"Sleep, Goldilocks," Ianto whispered. "I've got you."

Hope the happy ending made up for the angst.