Chapter Text
Gwen
She’d felt him at her back but he was silent. She shook inside as the tears fell but she couldn’t rightly say if she was grieving Ianto or that they’d lost. That there was nothing they could do for the children of the world.
She kept her hand at the center of Ianto’s chest as if doing so would bring the rhythm back, the steady beat that tapped Jack against the walls of him for longer than Gwen realized.
That was the thing about Jack. She didn’t know a person whose heart didn’t beat for him in one way or another.
“There’s nothing we can do,” she said as her fingers curled into the softness of Ianto’s vest. Then she moved, bent towards Ianto’s face, and Jack’s hand became heavier on her shoulder.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice a shattered thing that cut into the air, and her, like glass.
Gwen shifted and finally looked at him. In all the time she’d known Jack, he moved through the losses with conviction to forward motion. She’d seen grief with Tosh and Owen, but it had been muted by the will to go on. It was always the end of the world and he knew it. He’d seen and done too much to save it so often. She’d always understood it as self-preservation and perhaps, that’s why she understood Jack and how he was. With her, with Ianto, with anyone who couldn’t resist looking at him like the world began and would end with him.
She looked at him and this wasn’t that Jack. He was wrecked, battling the body that was coming back to life still despite something she knew was dead inside. That had died with Ianto.
Then he moved again and bent himself, pressing his own lips to Ianto’s. He whispered something, something meant for the two of them but Gwen parsed as, “Don’t leave me.”
Then he was up and he was moving, his hand out to her. She took it to stand but he said, “I need your phone.”
Gwen stuttered over it but shakily pulled her phone from her back pocket. He took it and without haste, was talking into it. “I need a favor,” he said. “I need you to pick up a body,” he paused, his face moving through what Gwen could only think was a dozen different emotions. “Freeze… store… Martha, please.”
When he’d cut the call with a quieter thank you, he gave Gwen back the phone. “No one touches him. Just Martha.”
And he was moving again.
“Jack,” she called, making to go after him.
He whirled around, the conviction tinged with something entirely new to her, was back. “Do. Not. Leave. Him. Do you understand me?”
She looked from him to Ianto’s lifeless body. “Jack, he’s gone and there are millions of children…”
She stopped with the flare of cheeks and how his eyes seemed to go black with fury. It was, perhaps, the first time she was afraid of Jack Harkness. “How long?” She asked.
“She’s on her way.”
Jack
The days were never a blur to Jack. His existence was brimming with memories, both good and bad, and the things he’d seen should have driven him mad. He was never able to understand what exactly Rose had done to him beyond immortality but he’d spent decades taking the Doctor at his word that he was a fixed point on the timeline.
The thing about Jack was that he rarely played by the rules or listened to anyone but himself.
He was acutely aware of every moment after Ianto took his last breath. So much of his life he’d been used to empty and loss and the fleeting wonder of joy that came from love. He’d been used to moving on and forward and doing what needed to be done. He blamed the Doctor for that last part. For making him want to be better even when he couldn’t always live up to it.
He was meticulous in every move, in having Martha care for Ianto’s body, in each visit he paid to UNIT to kiss Ianto’s lips and assure him that he was coming for him. He had ideas and they consumed him even as the planet planned to bend itself to the will of the 456.
There were too many times in Jack Harkness’s existence that asked too much of him. He always boxed it up and put it into unreachable compartments. He’d done that with the children he’d given to the 456 but when it ended this time and he’d sacrificed Steven for all of them, he knew he couldn’t this time.
Not when he was holding onto Ianto. Not when he was allowing himself to feel every moment this time.
Maybe it was feeling it all that allowed him to let go of Torchwood, to accept its death, and walk away. Feeling it all was what drove him not to run away, but towards. This time, towards.