Chapter Text
“No! Not like this. Don’t leave me like this.”
“I have to go, Jack.”
“Ianto, no! I never said it properly before.”
“It doesn’t need saying.”
“Yes! Yes it does. Ianto Jones… I love you.”
“And I love you too, Jack.”
Ianto tightened his grip on the box containing the device to destroy Syriath and close the rift. He’d put on a brave face for Jack, because he’d needed Jack to be okay. Jack had to go on living, while he—
He had to die.
Again.
As deaths went, he supposed this was a good one. Unlike the first time. Not that he could remember it. All he had to go on was what Jack had told him a few minutes ago. That he’d caught some alien virus and died. Maybe it was better that he didn’t remember. Getting sick can’t have been a good way to go out. At least this time he was on his feet and fighting. At least he was saving the world. But did that mean he wouldn’t remember again once it was all over? Because he truly didn’t recall being dead at all. Didn’t have any memories of being on the other side. Maybe there really was nothing but darkness, like Owen had said.
The building around him rumbled and shook, the roof and walls starting to crack, bits of plaster dropping from the ceiling and glass falling out of the windows. One pane tipped out whole and smashed on the table next to him, sending glass shards flying like projectiles. A sharp pain flared in his upper arm and he looked down to see blood staining his shirt. He’d gotten cut. So he was alive. Fully resurrected. He’d thought maybe he was just some really convincing ghost, that he couldn’t have truly left the building with Jack and gone back to his life like he hadn’t died six months ago.
The evidence that he was actually flesh and blood made his courage waver, made him wish he had stepped out into the street with Jack and let the end of the world be someone else’s problem for a change. Except it was too late now. Syriath was rising—some kind of ancient evil, older than the universe itself—and the rift was going to tear right open.
“You always knew it was going to end sooner rather than later,” he told himself, sliding his fingers to the lip of the box. “Because that’s what Torchwood is. It’s the beginning of the end. No one survives it. Especially people who fall in love with Jack bloody Harkness.”
He sucked in a long breath—his last breath—and then opened the box. Energy blasted over him and it all went white, hot, painful and numb. Everything and nothing all at once. Like getting torn apart and smothered in the same instance. It went on for eternity. He lived forever in a state of absolute infinity and total emptiness.
Except just when he’d come to terms with this being it, sensation returned, overwhelming his entire body. Noise, and light, and air rushing out of his lungs. He landed, face down, smacking into something hard and unforgiving. Agony radiated through his entire body, and it was like he’d never felt any kind of pain before. Like he was somehow all brand new, his body and mind didn’t know how to process it. He curled into a ball, clenching his jaw, fisting his hands, riding it out and waiting for some sense of normality to return.
He didn’t know how much time passed, but voices registered. Close by, getting closer. The distraction seemed to work, or maybe his body was finally acclimatising to things—to whatever or wherever he was. He rolled on to his back, panting, the air tasting funny, like it was laced with metals or chemicals or something. After a long moment, he squinted his eyes open, blinking against the light, his vision blurry and too sensitive. Gradually, everything came into focus. Buildings and blue sky.
“There. Over there!” A voice bounced off the nearby buildings and he rolled his head to the side to see two pairs of legs running down the empty street toward him. Funny, but apart from a few unfamiliar buildings, this kind of looked like Cardiff. Had he survived Syriath, and the rift closing, and the pub falling down around him? But where was Jack? He’d been out on the street a minute ago. And it’d been night. Now it was day. Where were all the people and cars and buses and pigeons? The street was weirdly empty apart from the two men who finally reached him, practically skidding to a stop on the cobblestones.
“Get him up.” The two men grabbed him and hauled him upright, making the world spin and his stomach pitch alarmingly. Oh God, he was going to be sick. “Come on, we have to move, they’ll be right on top of us any second now.”
His legs were like undercooked pudding, not supporting his weight properly. But the two men weren’t letting that slow them down. They looped an arm each over their shoulders and practically dragged him down the street at a run. Just as they reached the corner, a high-pitched whine sounded a second before something hit the bricks on the building near his head, spiting tiny shards of bricks and dust outward. Shit. Was someone shooting at them?
“Pick up the pace!” One of the men holding him said.
Even though he had no idea who these people were or what the bloody hell was going on—because his brain wasn’t working all that well—they seemed like the better option than whoever was shooting at them. He concentrated, forcing his legs to cooperate so that he was at least stumbling along with them and not so much of a hindrance.
They rounded another corner, this time into an alleyway. There was some kind of… vehicle parked there, except it looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Like an honest to God space shuttle or flying car thingy.
The men hustled him on, into the back, and a hatch lowered behind them. They unceremoniously dropped him and he landed hard against some sort of crates that had a kind of elastic netting holding them to the floor. He slipped down to sit. Actually it was more like his legs slowly gave out again. The vehicle lifted, smoothly, almost unnoticeably, like going up in an elevator. Were they actually flying? One of the men who’d grabbed him disappeared through a door that slid open, presumably to the front of the vessel, while the other one paused to look down at him.
“Are you okay?”
He swallowed, considering the question carefully now that he’d stopped and was actually sitting still. “Sick. Think I’m going to be sick.”
The man pressed his lips together as if he really didn’t want to be dealing with that, but turned to open a compartment in the wall and grabbed out a sick-bag like they used in hospitals.
Ianto took it, but just held it, forcing himself to breath through the churning in his guts. He didn’t think he actually had anything in his stomach to throw up anyway. Because he’d been dead for six months. And somehow resurrected. Doubtless without whatever he ate last in his belly.
The ridiculous thought worked to distract him and he relaxed back against the crate behind him, taking a deeper breath.
“Better now?” the man asked, crouching down.
“A bit.” He took another look around the vessel. They seemed to be in some kind of cargo hold.
“Think you can walk?”
He shifted his legs. They felt stronger, and his head wasn’t spinning as much anymore.
“Let’s see, shall we?” Using the crate for balance, he slowly got to his feet, relieved when he actually felt okay. “Sorry, but where are we. And what the hell just happened?”
“We were hoping you could tell us. You fell out of the rift. You’re just lucky we got to you before the government did.”
“And you are?”
The man crossed his arms, expression not giving anything away. “Come on, let’s go sit up front with the others.”
Not waiting for a reply, the man stepped past him headed through the automatic sliding door. Ianto followed, his body a little uncoordinated and awkward, like he didn’t quite remember how all his limbs worked.
Just as he stepped through the door, he had to stop again. The craft really was like something out of a sci fi movie. They were flying high into the sky—seemingly headed out into space at an impossible speed. There were six empty seats, various screens with all kinds of information displayed on them. It somehow almost reminded him of the equipment they’d had in the SUV. At the very front, the cockpit—he supposed it was called—was slightly sunken.
Two seats were integrated into the controls. The other man who’d picked him up in the alley sat on the left, half turned and talking to the pilot who—
No. He had to be imaging it. That the back of the pilot’s head looked achingly familiar.
The man he’d been speaking to walked over and offered him a canteen. He hoped there was water in it, he was parched. Apparently dying and falling through the rift were thirsty work.
“Where are we?” he asked, gaze glued to the back of the pilot’s head. But there was no reaction at his words. Surely if it was him, he would have turned around, would have recognized the sound of his voice. He was just imaging something he wanted to be true.
“Leaving the preserved historical sanctuary of Earth,” the man answered.
Preserved historical sanctuary of Earth? What the bloody hell did that even mean? But suddenly pieces started clicking together in his mind and he didn’t like the picture they were forming. Empty streets in Cardiff. Some kind of flying shuttle like straight out of a sci-fi movie. Preserved historical sanctuary of Earth… No. It couldn’t be true. But as scrambled as his brain still felt, it was the only thing that made sense.
“I was just in 2009. No, it might have been 2010. I’m not really clear on that. But what year is it now?”
The man he’d been speaking to glanced over at the other guy sitting on the left of the pilot. They seemed to reach some kind of silent agreement before the man next him returned his attention to him.
“It’s 3157.”
“3157?” he repeated, mind scrabbling over the number. “You mean I fell through the rift over a thousand years into the future?”
Or, had he spent over a thousand years inside the rift, only to fall out now for some reason? It had felt like an eternity had passed in there, but at the same time it’d been like a second.
“Apparently,” the man replied. “So you’ll understand why we have a lot of questions for you.”
“Yeah, you’re not the only one.” He ran a hand through his hair, having trouble coming to terms with his reality. They’d known people could time-jump through the rift after a plane from the 1920s had arrived with three passengers, but that’d been a few decades. This… this was extreme. And the rift. The device to destroy Syriath was meant to seal the rift permanently. That had been the whole point. He'd given up on walking out of that pub with Jack, he'd given up on Jack, so the rift would be closed forever and the world would be safe. Except here he was a thousand years later and he'd fallen out of it again. It'd been for nothing. He should have left the bloody device and taken his chance on stepping out into the street like Jack had wanted.
“How did you know?” he asked them. “Why did you come and get me?”
“We monitor the rift.” The man sitting to the left of the pilot replied. “And we came to get you because otherwise the government would have. And believe me, you don’t want to know what they do to beings that fall out of the rift. We save as many as we can, but sometimes we don’t make it in time.”
“Wait.” He passed another glance around the interior of the ship, suddenly realizing why it had reminded him of the inside of the SUV. “Are you Torchwood?”
A thousand years in the future and Torchwood was still persisting? He didn’t know whether that was hilarious or pathetic.
“Auto-pilot engaged.” A pleasant voice announced from the cockpit.
The pilot spun his chair and stood. “How the hell do you know about Torchwood?”
Ianto’s heart skipped and then tripped into overtime, making his pulse race. Because he hadn’t been imagining things.
“Jack! Thank God.” He started forward, but Jack held out a hand to stop him, expression detached, no emotion, absolutely nothing in his eyes.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?”
His heart that’d been racing a moment ago pretty much flat-lined, making his entire body go numb. He felt like he’d fallen out of the rift all over again, pain radiating through him.
“Bloody hell, Jack. I knew you’d forget me.”