Chapter Text
Jack woke harshly with a name on his lips that he hadn’t heard spoken aloud in several hundred years. He squinted his eyes and took in his location nestled behind a pile of refuse and overturned bins in a back alley. He had forgotten the name of the city and planet he was on, but didn’t waste a moment of shock at the scantily dressed people filing past the mouth of the alley, their purple skin luminous in what little light glinted off of them. Their world seemed perfectly normal and domestic, completely oblivious to the man lying just feet away who had been dead not minutes ago.
The sun hung low in the sky, though that didn’t tell him much. He had no idea how the hours and days worked on this planet. The gravity seemed heavier than he was used to, he noted as he heaved himself to his feet, wobbling slightly. Though he might have just been weak from his recent death. He could never be sure anymore. He ran his hand through his hair to try and dissuade the headache that was forming. He noted dimly that he needed a haircut, but not as badly as he should for as long it had been since his last.
He took stock of the rest of his body. He still had two arms and two legs. His clothes were badly tattered from whatever fight he had gotten in last night, but he couldn’t be bothered to care. He checked his pockets and found everything that had been there the night before. Relieved, he finally allowed himself to look down at the knife lodged in his abdomen. It had a small laser edging the blade that was burning at the wound with a light hiss. Seemed expensive. That was always a plus.
Through the echoing quiet of the alley came a noise that Jack hadn’t heard for centuries. He pulled the knife from his gut and stood, trying to look halfway presentable before he gazed, bewildered at the slowly appearing blue box. He scrambled to support himself on a nearby rubbish bin as his legs gave way underneath him.
The door creaked open and a face poked out of it, peering around the small alley. Jack searched through his memory desperately, but couldn’t recognize the man. He finally realized with a gasp when the stranger’s eyes settled onto his.
“Doctor,” he said, trying to sound casual and failing miserably. He quickly gave up all pretense, his mask falling before it was even properly placed, “where the hell have you been? It’s been centuries!”
The Doctor grimaced as he took in Jack’s disheveled appearance, “I didn’t realize you’d need a babysitter,” he said in a low voice, forcing Jack’s eyes to wince away, “the hell have you been up to?”
“Oh, this and that,” Jack muttered quietly, a sad huff in his voice. The Doctor’s frown deepened. “Mostly just er… not much for me to do when the humans can take care of their own monsters.”
“No…” the timelord agreed, stepping out of the TARDIS fully. “You’ve got nothing on at the moment?”
“No,” Jack’s shoulders hunched, “haven’t for a while.” He could see the bob of a thick swallow in the Doctor’s throat, the way he held his eyes to the ground waveringly. “Why are you here?”
“I… I have something for you, Jack. Someone, rather. Someone you should see.”
Jack’s heart stuttered, his brow drawing up, tense in contemplation, “someone? Who?”
Instead of responding, the Doctor heaved out a great sigh, stepping aside to beckon him into his ship.
Jack didn’t even feel his legs as they jolted forward, entering the ship at a slow pace. He took in his surroundings, so different from how he remembered them. Running a hand along the smooth wall of the entrance, his eyes traced it up to the ceiling and down the pillar bobbing in the center of the room.
“You redecorated,” He joked, voice shaking.
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Ianto’s back straightened with a start as he heard the door reopen and the Doctor come back in, another set of footsteps following behind. Jack’s footsteps. He felt his heart leap with nerves and fear and excitement, all that had been building in him was bursting forward. He swallowed and stood, still hidden behind the central column.
“You redecorated,” he heard, separated from him only by a few feet of metal and wire. Forcing back the tears that threatened to seep from his eyes, he took a step into view.
The moment Jack saw him, his face froze. His eyebrows pinched together at the center. Recognition rose and fell in waves from his eyes. The two stood there for what seemed like hours, holding eye contact, holding their breath to see if he would be able to find a name in his memories. Ianto decided he had waited long enough.
“Jack,” he said, hoping his voice would spark something, anything in the older man’s head. Jack closed his eyes, kept them tightly knitted together as he concentrated on the memories just barely out of his reach. His eyes jolted open, finding what he was looking for.
“Jones,” he stated, pausing only a second as the rest came to him, “Ianto Jones.”
Ianto gave him a stiff nod, his face stony as he forced himself not to show his relief that he had been remembered.
“How?”
Ianto tried to think of the words to tell him everything he had been through since Jack had last seen him, falling away into the rift. How could he tell Jack that after how long they had both waited that he was back, and to stay? There were no words for it. He opened his mouth and only a gust of air came out, his vocal chords refusing to decide on a single sentence.
“The rift dropped him off in 1892,” The Doctor supplied for him, “I just happened to be in the area, so I figured…” he trailed off awkwardly. They were silent for a few seconds, Jack nodding minutely. Ianto could tell it meant more to them than either let on.
“But he’s--I mean, you’re alive?” He choked out, taking a wavering step closer.
“Yes, Jack.”
“How?”
“Do you remember the last time you saw me? At--,”
“The House of the Dead,” Jack finished, “you closed the rift.”
“And I trapped myself inside it. Jack, it…” His voice cut out, a lump slowly rising in his throat. “It changed me.”
It took several seconds to swallow the lump away, forcing the impending tears out of his eyes. “I can’t die. I’m like you.”
Jack took a shaking step away from him, horror painted across his face. Minutely his head shook, refusing to believe and unable to respond.
Neither of them heard the Doctor shuffle past them to the console and setting the ship in motion, so focused on each other to take in anything else.
“How?” Jack gasped out.
“He absorbed rift energy,” The Doctor responded when Ianto couldn’t, “too much of it, just like the way Rose pushed it into you.”
Silence filled the TARDIS as it landed, the creaking whirr of the ship falling away. Jack and Ianto still refused to look away from each other for more than a moment, their eyes locked.
“This should be your home, Jack,” the Doctor muttered, “where you’re living, anyway.”
He nodded, closing his eyes finally and walking out of the TARDIS doors. Ianto held his breath, holding a sob in his throat.
“What do I do?” He whined under his breath, looking up to the Doctor, helpless.
He nodded to where Jack had left, “go on.”
“But he--”
“Wants to see you.”
“How do you know?”
“Because...if I had a chance like he does right now, I’d take it. He needs someone.”
Ianto shuddered, staring at the closed doors, “I was right, then. You shouldn’t be alone, either.”
“Not important,” the timelord grumbled back at him, “just go. Talk to him.”
He grimaced, watching the Doctor’s stubborn frown.
“What if he doesn’t want me back?”
“He does,” he stated again. “And… I suppose, if he somehow doesn’t you can call me with this,” He threw him a strange little device, beeping and pulsing in his hand. He pocketed it and looked up with sad, scared eyes, “I really don’t think you’ll need it, though. Go on.”
Ianto threw him one last pitiful glance before stepping away, “take care of yourself, Doctor. And others,” he muttered as he stepped down into Jack’s shabby kitchen.
Only seconds later he heard the whooshing behind him that told him the Doctor had gone back to fester above his tree with nothing but his ship and his memories. Scanning the dimly lit room around him, he easily noticed that Jack was staying here alone. The second thing he would do was attempt to clean. Wrappers from food brands he'd never heard of littered every inch of the floor where dirty clothing wasn't present.
He wondered where Jack had shambled off to. It surprised him how quietly his captain moved through the house. It was so much different than the boisterous man he had grown to love during his time working for Torchwood. He doubted again if he should have looked for him.
He shook his head and flexed his hands, forcing the mood and doubt from him. After a deep breath he stepped through the arch that led to the hall.
It was darker there, and Ianto had to stand in the entryway for a few seconds to adjust to the light. Dust filled his lungs as he waited. When he was finally able to see his surroundings, he noticed the starkly blank walls. The paint was cracked and chipped from age, and there were nails sticking out with nothing hung on them, each gathering more dust than the last.
Finally he made his way to an old sitting room, full of furniture that would have looked antique in the twenty-first century, let alone now. Jack sat, facing away from him with purpose, back bent with sorrows of decades past. Ianto wanted nothing more than contact with him, but knew him better than to actually follow through without finding out what was wrong.
"Why are you sulking?" Ianto asked the considerably older man in front of him. He hoped again that he hadn't made a mistake in returning to his once lover. He hadn't seen Ianto in more than a thousand years. He may not have forgotten him, but what if he didn't want him back? Now he was forced into spending the rest of his long life with him. Of course he could cast him from his life, move to the other side of the universe, but they were the only immortals in this dimension. They were bound to meet time and time again. Maybe Jack didn't want that reminder of his past.
"Should I... not have come?" Ianto asked him tentatively. The previously hunched and unmoving captain jolted into motion at this, quickly looking into Ianto's eyes. The young Welshman couldn't help but notice the age present there.
"What do you mean?" The older man asked him, a slight aggravation to his voice.
"Did you not want to see me?" He clarified hesitantly. "It can't be easy, seeing me after all this time. Maybe you didn't want to."
"I loved you,” was all Jack offered in response.
"You've probably loved hundreds of people in your life. It could have been anyone, why would you want it to be me?" Jack turned to face him standing almost at his full height. Blue eyes locked with even more blue. Ianto felt uncomfortable under the scrutiny of the man he loved.
"Yes, I've loved so many people." Jack spat out in Ianto's direction like acid. "But I've loved some more than others. Do you know how guilty that makes me?"
"Jack-" Ianto tried to interject before he was silenced.
"I have names written down who's faces I've long since forgotten. Rings that I've forgotten the names and faces and vows attached to them. I've seen pictures wither and turn into dust with the memories of the people in them."
"I'm sorry-" He tried to say again before Jack continued.
"And then there was you, Ianto Jones. Sometimes I'd close my eyes, and there you'd be. I'd never forget your face. Oh, but I'd forgotten the almost perfect lilt of your voice. Suddenly it's all rushing back to me, and you ask me whether you shouldn't have come?"
"You were upset. I just thought-"
"Thought that you meant nothing to me. How? After all we shared, how did you think that?"
"I didn't know! How was I to know that you bloody loved me if you only said it when I was falling into eternal nothingness?"
"Yeah, seems pretty eternal."
"And aren't you fucking disappointed at that? I mean... fuck, Jack. I travel all this way, trying to get back to you, and I find this?" He shouted, running his hands through his hair in nervousness and desperation. He couldn't even feel the tears running down his cheeks, even if he knew they were there.
"It's been a thousand years. Did you really expect the same man?"
"No. Of course not, but I expected someone that would at least be happy to see me." Jack began laughing. It was a hollow, humorless laugh that shook into Ianto's bones, and made him recoil. It felt like there was a glare coming off of the captain's face, something he couldn't look directly at.
"You think I'm not happy to see you?!" He shouted bitterly. It was only then that Ianto noticed that Jack had begun crying as well.
"What am I supposed to think? I show up and you're so upset that you can't even look at me."
"I was upset because I know what's in store for you. Do you have any idea what living for so long can do to someone? The human race grows to have a longer life span farther in the future, but they can never comprehend the length of a thousand years. The heaviness age weighs on your heart, even if it's not in your bones, is something no human could ever be prepared for. It just keeps getting heavier every year, every moment. I don't want that for you. Even immortals grow old."
"Yeah, I can see that for myself." Ianto commented, finally feeling too defeated to shout. Jack turned away from him once more as he realized the scrutiny he was under. Ianto raised a hand, wanting to place it on the man's shoulder, wanting to reassure him like he used to be so good at. Just before he made contact, his fingers curled in on themselves, refusing the gesture. Breath caught in his throat the longer he looked at the man he loved, the man who once loved him.
"I missed you." Was all he could think to say, and as soon as he did, he saw Jack's shoulders fall back into place from where they were hunched over in defense. Slowly he turned back around and stood, gazing at Ianto with blotchy reddened eyes.
"I missed you, too." He choked out. Ianto paused to stare at him again. He noticed a hint of the spark in his warm blue eyes. He saw just a hint of the coldness underneath that could make itself known at just a fraction of a second. The longer and harder he searched his face, the more he noticed how much he was still the same man.
They held the eye contact, both wondering what the other would do, and how they would react. Ianto saw rather than felt his arm drift closer to the captain. Jack's eyes darted to and away from it, warily keeping track of where it would go.
Finally he made contact. It was like a bolt of electricity connecting them from just where they were joined at the fingertips, Jack stared at the connected hands and the way they fit together. Small sparks seemed to appear and fade from him as more memories came to his mind.
He took a step closer and then another. Both men could feel the breath of the other on their faces, but neither dared to close the remaining space between them.
"Ianto." Jack whispered, letting it finally sink in that it was the same man, that he was alive and that he always would be. That tiny word was all it took for the younger immortal to lean forward, just barely pressing his lips against Jack's. After a few seconds, Jack finally responded and deepened the kiss minutely, squeezing his hand in reassurance. It was like all the stomach churning tension suddenly swept from Ianto's body. He brought the hand that wasn't held tightly in the other man's up to thread it through his hair, drawing him ever closer to his lips.
It was like he had been without his lover for all the centuries that Jack had been without him, and it was finally at an end.
All too soon they broke apart, not letting their eyes stray from each other's for even a second. Ianto felt hysterical laughter rise in his throat as relief overtook him. He forced it back down, though the smile was still plastered on his face. He pulled Jack towards himself, resting his head on his shoulder. His arms coiled around Jack's torso. He could feel himself shaking, he didn't know whether it was from happiness or the fear that had just left him, but none of that mattered. After all this time, Jack was finally there again to hold him steady, and he would do the same for his lover.
He could hear Jack's sniffling breaths as he tried to keep his crying in check. Ianto picked his head up and gazed at Jack's watery eyes. He knew he was still smiling, but he couldn't manage to stop himself as he slid his free arm from where it lay on Jack's back to wipe at his cheeks.
"You still smell the same." Jack mentioned, "I remember how you smell."
"Surprised I don't smell like shit... Victorian London."
"Yeah...remember that, too." He chuckled, voice still wet from the tears that had yet to stop flowing.
"Hope you're not just mixing them up." He laughed back at him, hand still resting on Jack's face, holding him steady so that he could examine every detail. He noted all the pieces that had stayed the same through all those years, and the tiny changes that were almost hidden from him now. He wondered if Jack could see any changes in him, but he wouldn’t ask. Not yet.
“Still have coffee nowadays?” He hummed, a smirk gracing his features. He frowned as he noticed the blank shock that instantly overcame Jack, “God, do they not?”
“No, they do!” Jack assured him, then paused, “something like it anyway. I just… forgot how perfect yours was.”
“You forgot?!” He scoffed, horrified, “I obviously hadn’t been doing my job the--,” Jack swiftly cut him off with a deep kiss.
“You did more than your job, Ianto. You saved me. Made me,” he said, kissing him over again. It was all Ianto could do to nod his understanding, draping his arms over his broad shoulders as he lost himself in the kiss.
“You’re really here…” Jack whined, tears falling again.
“Yeah, I am, Jack. And I’m not going anywhere if you don’t want me to.”
“I don’t. I never did,” he said, adding with an air of finality, "I never will."
Ianto nodded back, it finally settling in that this was forever. He had forever to be with Jack. Neither would ever lose the other again. They would never be alone. He never had to wonder when this all would end and Jack would be left to himself and his demons.
Because he wouldn’t.
There was still mourning to do. He knew that. But he also knew he could do that from the comfort of Jack’s arms. He could feel the solid warmth of him for as long as he needed it and he could linger there if he wanted to.
He had time. They had all the time in the world.