I like the idea of Immortal Ianto because I think he would see immortality differently to the way Jack sees it.
For Jack, it's been a curse from the start - he wakes up on the Game Station, surrounded by corpses, not knowing at that point that he's immortal, only knowing that he's been abandoned by the only people he's given his trust to in who knows how long. People he admires and respects, but they've dumped him.
He gets back to Earth, but finds he's missed his aim by more than a hundred years and believes that he'll die before the Doctor ever returns and that he'll never find out why he was abandoned. Then he finds out he can't be killed and realises that he'll outlive everyone he knows and cares about, that's bad enough, but then Torchwood gets hold of him, tortures him and experiments on him and oh look - there's something even worse than watching those you care about grow old and die. Jack can't see anything good about being immortal, he's fundamentally alone.
Ianto would treat it as a gift - an opportunity to ease Jack's loneliness, to be there for him, so that there's someone Jack won't have to watch grow old and die, someone to help share the burden of protecting Cardiff. He can die sometimes in Jack's place to save Jack a bit of that suffering too. Two will always be better than one, and I think Ianto would embrace that.
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Date: 2010-11-17 11:07 am (UTC)For Jack, it's been a curse from the start - he wakes up on the Game Station, surrounded by corpses, not knowing at that point that he's immortal, only knowing that he's been abandoned by the only people he's given his trust to in who knows how long. People he admires and respects, but they've dumped him.
He gets back to Earth, but finds he's missed his aim by more than a hundred years and believes that he'll die before the Doctor ever returns and that he'll never find out why he was abandoned. Then he finds out he can't be killed and realises that he'll outlive everyone he knows and cares about, that's bad enough, but then Torchwood gets hold of him, tortures him and experiments on him and oh look - there's something even worse than watching those you care about grow old and die. Jack can't see anything good about being immortal, he's fundamentally alone.
Ianto would treat it as a gift - an opportunity to ease Jack's loneliness, to be there for him, so that there's someone Jack won't have to watch grow old and die, someone to help share the burden of protecting Cardiff. He can die sometimes in Jack's place to save Jack a bit of that suffering too. Two will always be better than one, and I think Ianto would embrace that.