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And So It Goes Part 1
Oct. 24th, 2008 11:26 amSet at the end of KKBB
"It’s nothing.” He answered, locking the box of his memories and putting it back where it came from, “Let’s get back to work.”
“We can’t Jack.” Gwen was glaring at him with folded arms, “We’re at the Hub right now, or nearly there. We’ve gone back in time, we’ll cause a paradox or something.” His stomach contracted painfully at the word ‘paradox’, so he stayed quiet whilst she took control again, “Tosh, take Owen to the hospital, get his shoulder looked at, and I’m not taking no for an answer Owen." As they left she turned to Jack and put her hands on her hips, "We need to find somewhere we know we’ve not been today until this is over.”
“Ianto, will you sort us a hotel for the night?” he turned to the younger man to avoid Gwen’s glare, “Easiest solution. Call Owen and Tosh and have them meet us there, and charge it to Torchwood. I’ll sort it from there.” Ianto’s smile made his heart skip a beat, he’d missed it so much, he’d missed him. Even now, seeing him here, he was finding it hard to get rid of the memories of that year. His blood, his empty eyes…
“Jack…” Gwen’s voice drifted through to him, “Jack, are you alright?”
“Yeah.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulder with a plastered on smile as they walked to where Ianto was waiting for them, “I’ll be fine.” She never realised that wasn’t what she’d asked.
In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong
To heal the wounds from lovers past
Until a new one comes along
Ianto paused for a moment before knocking on the door of Jack’s room. The captain had slipped away from what had turned into quite a party in Owen’s room about ten minutes before, which wasn’t like him at all. After an internal war, Ianto had made his excuses and followed him; he had sort of hoped that Jack wouldn’t be here, but there was no going back now as the immortal opened the door.
“Hey.” Jack looked exhausted but managed a smile that was almost convincing, “What’s up?”
“I missed you. I mean… you just sort of disappeared and I thought…” he closed his eyes and swore silently, “Sorry, it’s been a long day and my brain’s not talking to my mouth, I was coming to make sure you’re OK.”
Jack managed a genuine smile at that and opened the door further, inviting him in, “I’m OK, but I appreciate it. Do you want a drink?”
“Thanks.” He smiled and sat down, accepting a tumbler of whiskey from Jack, “Back on the hard stuff?”
“You have no idea.” The captain laughed and downed his own drink, falling back onto the bed, “And yes, ‘John’ has always been a sociopath. I’m struggling to remember what I ever saw in him, although I suspect it was probably just those cheek bones.”
Ianto snorted and put the glass down, letting his head fall back, “I have to say, you have lousy taste.”
“I’d say I used to.” He replied, looking at Ianto for a second before turning his attention to the empty glass in his hand. “I missed you, whilst I was gone. Almost as soon as I left all I wanted to do was come back.”
Ianto felt his heart, frozen since his once lover’s departure, warm slightly at the honesty in Jack’s voice, and break slightly at the pain in it. “Why didn’t you then?” It came out harsher than he’d intended
The captain visibly flinched, as though the question had physically hurt him, “I would have been back two months ago, but the Doctor’s not that good on timings.” He laughed bitterly, “For a Time Lord he’s actually useless with time. I’m sorry Ianto, I…”
“Jack… Don’t apologise, you did what you had to do and I don’t blame you.” Jack finally met his eyes again and Ianto was shocked at the level of pain in them, “Oh Jack, what happened to you? Where were you?”
I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretence
But still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self-defence
Jack clasped his hands between his knees and dropped his gaze to his feet, struggling to keep his emotions in control. “He came, he tried to leave without me again, we ended up at the end of the universe. It was dark, and cold, and empty, but people were still surviving, still clinging on to life at the very end of everything. They were trying to get to Utopia, somewhere where all the other humans in the universe had congregated.” He smiled at the memory, one of the few good ones from his trip, despite the horror that accompanied it, “You know, humans are truly amazing. Of all the species in the universe, it’s humans that survive until the very end.”
“Are you human?” Ianto asked in interest
Jack nodded, more dropping his head before raising it again than a proper nod, “Not fully human, no one was, is, will be by that time, but part human, essentially human.”
“Maybe you were there?”
“Maybe I was, He suggested that, said I was the only man I could ever be happy with.” He chuckled, “Probably the only time he’s ever been wrong.” There was bitterness in his tone that Ianto couldn’t understand, but Jack went on before he could question it, “There was this man there, really intelligent, and we went to help him with getting the ship started. Except that once we did, he turned out to be a psychopathic killer called the Master, a Time Lord that Doctor once knew.”
“He stole the TARDIS, left us to be killed by these aliens called the Futurekind and travelled back in time, to 18 months before I left. Assumed a fake identity, wife, job the whole lot. You’ll never guess who.”
Ianto’s jaw dropped as the pieces dropped into place, “Harold Saxon was an alien?”
Jack nodded silently, his eyes fixed far away from the hotel room in Cardiff where they sat, Ianto in an armchair and him on the bed, close but by no means together, “He took the Earth prisoner. 10% of the population died on the first day, after a year only half survived. It was horrible, every day more would die, people were herded into labour camps to build warships.”
“What about you? You didn’t just sit back and watch it.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement of fact
“I was a prisoner.” Jack’s voice was barely a whisper, “He knew I couldn’t die, so he kept me chained up on the aircraft carrier Valiant for the whole year.”
And every time I’ve held a rose
It seems I’ve only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose
Jack told Ianto the full story of what had happened during that year without really knowing why. As he recalled the pain, the things he’d seen, he felt himself being dragged into the memories, drowning in them as he lost his way.
As soon as Jack started telling him about the tortures he’d suffered at the hands of that madman, Ianto forgave him completely, the tiny nugget of anger that had remained being swept aside in the understanding, the pain and the guilt. If he’d given Jack something to stay for he would have, he knew that. If he’d made him see that he wasn’t broken.
The first tear fell down Jack’s cheek and Ianto couldn’t stand it any more, in seconds he was on the bed beside him and his arms were wrapped around the older man, holding him tightly. Jack turned to cling to him, as if afraid that he would vanish at any second.
“He found out about you.” It caught Ianto off kilter, one minute Jack had been telling him about the interminable deaths, being barely able to tell the passage of time, and then he’d dropped that into conversation with a hitch in his voice and a hesitation. “I wanted to keep you safe, but I forgot that he could read my mind. I was like an open book, and he used you to get to me. He…”
Tears choked him and he couldn’t speak any more; Ianto rubbed his back and murmured quiet reassurances to him, trying to reassure him and support him. Eventually the immortal swallowed and pulled away only slightly, so that he could look at the other man, his voice when he spoke was completely distraught, “He took me to the bridge one day, had me restrained and then brought you in. And then he executed you, right in front of me. Oh God Yan, you never gave in, you were smiling as he shot you…”
Ianto couldn’t find words to respond, so he hugged Jack closer to him, moving to lean against the headboard and pulling the older man with him to lie curled against his chest, hoping that the steady beat of his heart would reassure him slightly. As the captain cried himself to sleep, he finally let his own tears fall, tears for this incredible man and everything he’d suffered, tears for the pain he’d felt at Jack’s departure, tears for the day when he finally left Jack behind for good.
But if my silence made you leave
Then that would be my worst mistake
So I will share this room with you
And you can have this heart to break
As it was wont to do, dawn broke in Cardiff with a combination of wind and rain, but in the hotel room Jack slept. His sleep hadn’t been undisturbed; Ianto had lost count of the nightmares he’d suffered during the night and was glad that he’d come.
A recognisable groan from Jack indicated that the man was close to waking up properly. Ianto was surprised by the smile the sound brought to his lips, it was too long since he’d last heard it. Propping himself up on his elbow, he watched his lover return to the waking world, but the tension that sprang into the older man’s form and the fear in his eyes made his heart clench painfully. “Hey, it’s OK, you’re safe.” He whispered, relieved when Jack relaxed again
The captain smiled gently, but with evident embarrassment, and turned to sit on the edge of the bed to take his boots off. “Thanks Ianto,” he said when he turned back, hesitating a moment before Ianto wrapped an arm around him again and he settled back down against him, “it means a lot.”
“Likewise.” The young man admitted, hugging Jack close to him, “You don’t have to deal with these things alone you know, I’m here with you.”
“I didn’t want you to have to carry that burden. Time reset in the end, Martha broke the Master’s mind control, the Doctor defeated him and I destroyed the paradox machine, everything back to the way it was before… Before everything. The only people who remember are those who were on the Valiant at the start and the finish, only about two dozen all told, mostly UNIT staff.”
“Don’t be dumb Jack.” He chastised softly, threading his fingers through the other man’s hair gently, “Even you can’t bear that alone.” There was silence between them for a while, before Ianto spoke again, “But if you didn’t want to tell me, why did you?”
“You asked.” He whispered, “And I guess losing you once, I couldn’t say no. But I know that telling you that stuff, it’s probably made losing you now more likely.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because now you know how broken I am, and that I’m a failure. I couldn’t save you Yan…”
And this is why my eyes are closed
It’s just as well for all I’ve seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows
His eyes were closed tightly, fighting against tears again, and his whole posture, even though he was curled up against him, clearly showed that he expected to be rejected. “You dozy a’pe’th.” Ianto chuckled, unable to feel even mild annoyance at the older man when he was in this state, “I’m here, with you, because I want to be, and nothing’s going to change that. You did save me; you were the one who broke the paradox, who made time revert. You’re the reason we’re here now together.”
Jack pulled back to stare at him like he was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, which, in Jack’s opinion, he was, “Oh Yan. Lucy Saxon, the master’s wife, he treated her as badly as the rest of them. I tried to protect her, all of them, so she looked after me as much as she could. She arranged, when you died, she made sure that you were buried properly…” Tears fell from his eyes again as he looked across at the coat hanging on the back of a chair, “I wrapped you in my coat before they took you. That was the last time I saw you…” He stifled a sob, “That’s how I knew you were alive too, the Doctor found my coat. God only knows where.” He managed a shaky laugh, “Probably on the TARDIS, she’s always picking up the flotsam and jetsam of the universe, like she picked me up.”
So I would choose to be with you
That’s is the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break
Ianto leant forwards to press a tender kiss to the immortal’s lips; he smiled gently at the shocked, confused and hopeful look on his face afterwards, “Jack, I’m yours, for as long as you’ll have me. I can’t promise forever, but I can promise you today, and tomorrow and as many tomorrows as I can give you. And I promise that I will do my best to make every single today we share wonderful. If you’ll have me?”
There was no need for doubt, not with Jack looking like that, “Oh Ianto… I don’t deserve you.”
“No.” He whispered, “You deserve someone better.”
“No such thing.” He claimed Ianto’s lips again half desperately, half lovingly, determined to show the young man exactly how much he meant to him, and to make up for the mistakes he’d made in the past.
Today, and tomorrow, and all their tomorrows, would be different, he promised.
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you’re the only one who knows
Author’s Note: This is a story I’ve had swimming around for about six months now, all the time I was away on holiday etc, and it’s finally happened. Not quite how I intended it to happen, but it rarely is
“You dozy a’p’eth” is an insult my Mum uses occasionally, which is unusual as I believe it’s a Yorkshire insult and she’s from Cheshire, whereas my Dad’s from Yorkshire and doesn’t use it. Still, it means you’re worth half a penny, I think. Sounds really good in a West Riding accent, but I’m guessing on the spelling and punctuation, it’s not pronounced with all the apostrophes, just straight through. And I don't know why Ianto is using West Riding dialect either
And if you really want to know, the TARDIS did pick up Jack’s coat, and the Doctor found it on a coat hook that wasn’t there before. You see, all the paradox reversal went through her and she put everything back where it came from, but some things couldn’t go back where they came from, like Jack’s coat, which started on him and ended on someone else. Because Jack was inside ‘the eye of the storm’, she couldn’t change him and put it on him, so she kept hold of it instead, dry-cleaned it etc, and HUNG IT UP. She’s good like that, and you can tell she’s female
