Characters: Ianto's POV, rest of team, Jack, OC
Rating: PG, for suicide attempts
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to RTD and the BBC
Spoilers: General for series 1.
Summary: Jack's gone and Ianto's decision to finish it has unforeseen complications.


Jack was gone, but the Earth was still spinning on its axis, the sun still came up in the morning and the Rift kept coughing up the occasional problem that had to be dealt with. Torchwood Three picked itself up, shook itself and continued in its usual shambolic manner, saving the world one crisis at a time.

That lasted about a month.

Jack was gone, and without his presence, things changed. Torchwood London reached out a lazy hand and asserted itself again. They sent a new leader; a taciturn man by the name of Dominic Holden. He tried to impose Torchwood London working practices and ethics on them, until he discovered that the Rift was no respecter of working practices or HR policies and that you had to give up and go with the flow or get out.

After two months, he got out.

Torchwood London tried again, and again. Eventually they gave up and left them to their own devices. Owen was left in charge, which made Ianto’s life that little bit more difficult, since Owen tended to harbour grudges and he hadn’t forgotten the hole Ianto had put in his shoulder. Once the dust settled, Ianto found himself shunted back into his old duties, having been told in no uncertain terms that Owen wanted someone at his back that he could trust.

It should have hurt, but after three months, Ianto was still numb. Besides, it was true.

The new man Owen brought in turned out to be a lot better than the others had dreaded. Ex-military, with what Ianto personally considered an unhealthy interest in pyrotechnics and a reputation for thinking outside the box, Ron Wallace was welcomed into the team and within a month had showed that he was just as much a nut-job as the rest of them. He fitted right in.

Life went on.

Technically, at least. Ianto still breathed in and out, ate, slept, came to work, went home again. Some things, however, had changed. When Jack had gone, he seemed to have taken some part of Ianto with him. That had interested Ianto at first, in a detached kind of way. He knew the others had expected him to be upset that Jack had left without saying a word. At first they thought he had been kidnapped, or had fallen foul of the Rift, and Ianto had been as frantic as the rest of them, but as soon as he had heard the noise that had been recorded on the Hub monitors, he had known what had happened. Anyone who had been at Torchwood One knew about the Doctor. Gwen had then told them about Jack’s occasional remarks about the ‘right kind of Doctor’ and they had realised what had happened. The Doctor had come and Jack had left. Without as much as a second thought or a goodbye note.

Something deep and fundamental inside of Ianto had died at that moment of revelation.

Jack was gone. He was gone because there had been nothing here in Cardiff to keep him. No-one to say goodbye to. Because if he had cared… if he had cared about any of them, then he would have stopped to say goodbye. He could have called out to Gwen, or asked the Doctor for ten minutes, or even spoken out loud for the Hub CCTV to record. He’d done none of those things. He’d left without a single moment of hesitation; shed them all like unwanted dust on his coat.

Even a dog deserved a farewell pat.

So Ianto had the last of his illusions stripped away and he knew that Owen had been right all along. He had been nothing more than a convenient bed-warmer. The odd detachment he was experiencing made it easy for him to see how naïve he had been and how easily Jack had manipulated him into his bed. Emotionally vulnerable after Lisa’s death, Ianto had been easy meat for Jack’s experienced seduction techniques. Desperate to have some kind of meaning in his life, Ianto had swallowed the hook that someone more experienced and cynical – like Owen – would have not only seen, but scorned.

Live and learn. That was a cliché by virtue of being very true. If you survived something, you had to learn the lesson because life didn’t give you a second chance. Ianto had had two relationships. Both had ended with the object of his affections using him until he was no longer useful and then discarding him. He wasn’t about to test the validity of ‘third time lucky’. With his luck, it would probably mean that the third time would wind up with him dead.

Not that being dead was that unattractive an option. In fact his detachment meant that he was able to look at the entire subject with unprejudiced eyes. He amused himself one afternoon by drawing up a table with two columns; one detailing reasons to live and the other reasons to die. The fact that he came up with three reasons for the death column wasn’t surprising, but the fact that it took him nearly twenty minutes to come up with the sole entry for the living column was a little disconcerting. And the fact that that reason was that he didn’t know who would cope with the filing was even more deflating.

Jack was gone, life went on and the oddly euphoric state of detachment continued. He dealt with the mess, the Weevils, the odds bits and pieces that came through the Rift, and nothing penetrated that comforting protective shell that existed around him. He no longer responded to Owen’s jibes. After all, the man had been right about how Jack viewed him, so maybe he was right about how pathetic Ianto was. He had little interest in Gwen’s attempts to ‘put Jack behind him’. Jack was already in the past and since Gwen’s ideas of getting his life back involved going to pubs and clubs where the music and tobacco smoke made his head ache, and meeting people who bored him, he was quite firm with her on the subject. Tosh had simply said that she was available if he ever wanted to talk. Ianto would have rather walked over red-hot coals.

Then Owen took away the sole reason in the living column.

Ianto should have realised something was up when the stunning blond woman turned up at the reception desk, asking after Owen. Assuming that she was yet another ex-girlfriend, Ianto had gone into his ‘bewildered tourist guide receptionist’ mode until Owen had appeared, smiled at the woman – who was apparently called Celine – and invited her inside Torchwood. Mentally labelling this day as being one where some kind of crisis happened, Ianto had then put it out of his mind until he was called in to see Owen and was told that Celine would be taking over the Archives.

For the first time since Jack had left, Ianto felt something very close to an emotion. He’d barely heard Owen telling him that everyone was worried about him and wanted him to take a sabbatical to get his head together. All he heard was the fact that they were taking away the one small thing he had left that gave his life any meaning. Celine had smiled at him and made some kind of comment as to how she hoped she could keep things ticking over until he came back. The mere thought of his precious Archives being reduced to ‘ticking over’ had come close to pulling a sharp response out of him. But there was no use in doing that, because everything had apparently been decided while he was doing something else and he was now officially exiled from Torchwood for three months, effective immediately.

He’d put his foot down about that. Celine hadn’t even seen the Archives and knew nothing about the filing system or codes. Owen might not understand anything about professionalism but Ianto did and he wasn’t leaving until he could convince himself that Celine was safe to be let loose in his Archives. It was probably the fact that he was answering back, after months of near-silent compliance, that threw Owen off-balance enough for him to agree to Ianto working with Celine for a week to get her familiar with the system.

That week was enough to tell Ianto that his time with Torchwood was coming to an end. Owen made no secret of his attraction to Celine, and she flirted back with an enthusiasm that annoyed Tosh and made Gwen snarl uncontrollably. Ianto’s headache became a near-constant migraine, especially when Celine had cast a bright-eyed look around the Archives and started to talk about ‘improving’ the place and ‘tossing out the irrelevant junk’. Tact had obviously not been on the job description Owen had given her.

It was ridiculously easy to obtain something lethal from the Archives on his final day. He had pulled out a phial that Owen had said contained a compound so deadly that a single drop would finish off half of Cardiff. Ianto had carefully decanted a thimble full into a test tube and then sealed it before carefully cushioning it in some padding. He’d then endured his going-away party, where Celine and Owen had spent their time playing footsie under the table, Tosh and Gwen had made bitchy comments and Ianto had wondered if it was actually possible for your head to explode because of a headache.

It took him a week to get his affairs in order and organise details to his satisfaction. He knew that his body would end up in Torchwood, so he didn’t have to worry about a funeral. He spent the week packing away all of his effects into boxes and leaving a list in case someone needed to verify that everything was there. He sorted out the financial side of things, left the various letters of authorisation that would be needed and changed his Will, since he doubted that Jack would be around to inherit any more. Once he was satisfied that everything was done, he poured the contents of the test tube down his throat and lay down on the stripped bed.

Owen’s notes had neglected to say how much it would hurt.

Waking up the following morning at his normal time was an extremely unpleasant shock. He lay there for a while, listening to the birds sing an enthusiastic dawn chorus, and his first impulse was to go down to the Hub and punch Owen in the face. So much for ‘unconditionally lethal’. He didn’t even have a headache until he had been up for about three hours. Deciding that more traditional methods were called for, he spent the afternoon trekking around the shops buying various painkillers, plus a bottle of extremely good brandy and another of equally fine Scotch. It was actually a lot more difficult than he had thought to swallow that many tablets and he was distinctly fuzzy around the edges by the time he finished the brandy and started on the Scotch, but when he finally collapsed back on the bed he was aware of a faint feeling of self-satisfaction.

Birdsong had him clawing his way off the bed with a feeling of panic growing inside him. He spent some time going through the empty pill bottles and packets, half-hoping that he’d made a mistake and swallowed vitamins or child-strength drugs. The truth was there in black and white, however. He should have been very thoroughly dead.

He decided to cut out any possibility of ambiguity and shot himself in the head. He did it in the bathroom to cut down on the mess, something that amused him in a dim, distant way.

Three hours later and he was the one cleaning up the mess, vaguely wondering why he wasn’t having hysterics.

He sat down on the couch, drinking what was left of the Scotch out of the bottle because he had packed away all the glasses. This was… odd. Very, very odd. Last time he had checked, he hadn’t been immortal. Not that he had ever died before, of course, but he had been badly injured and it had taken what seemed like a normal amount of time to get better. A thought occurred to him and he decamped to the bathroom, where he used a penknife to open a shallow but messy gash. It hurt and continued to bleed for quite a while without showing any sign of healing. Ianto gritted his teeth and used the penknife to slit his wrist.

When he came to, there was no sign of either wound.

Both Tosh and Gwen rang to ask how he was. Ianto was genuinely lost for words for a while, trying to figure out how to tell them that he was great apart from being immortal and failing miserably in his suicide attempts. He settled for telling them he was coping and asked after the Archives. Gwen had assured him that the Archives were perfectly all right and Tosh had said that Celine was coping. Feeling a little sick, Ianto had told them that he was thinking of going away for a couple of weeks. He felt the tiniest flicker of guilt over how pleased they sounded, but most of him was trying to think of new and improved ways of doing himself in.

He considered stepping in front of a train but hesitated to inflict that kind of thing on the train driver. He wanted to die, but it was a purely logical decision and didn’t need to involve some poor sod who was only trying to do his job. Ianto knew all about that kind of thing. Besides, if he got up after publicly offing himself there would be all kinds of hell to pay.

After some thought, Ianto made for the coast. He found a nice high cliff overlooking a deserted and extremely rocky shore. Taking a deep breath, he had walked off it.

He came to just in time to drown as the tide came in.

Once he’d come back again, Ianto had clawed his way back up onto the cliffs and spent a long time staring out to sea and thinking. Decapitation sprang to mind but he couldn’t for the life of him work out how to do it without help of some kind. He would probably be able to hire someone who would be willing to do it, but he couldn’t do that here. With a sigh, he got up and made his way back to the car. Dying wasn’t supposed to be this complicated.

He got back to his home and let himself in before realising that there was someone already there. The voice was terribly familiar and he felt his heart clench as he went into the living room and saw that it was indeed Jack, who was pacing the room like a wild thing and shouting into his phone while waving what Ianto realised was his resignation/suicide note in the other.

“-don’t care how difficult it is! I want you to-“ He turned and saw Ianto staring at him. Jack gave a small gasp and then spoke into the phone again. “Tosh, he’s here. Forget what I said. I’ll call you again later.”

He shut off the phone and advanced towards Ianto, who was still trying to get over the fact that Jack was here, in his living room, and apparently not an hallucination. He had that confirmed when Jack grabbed him and shook him before releasing him and waving the letter in front of his face.

“What the fuck is this all about?” he demanded.

Ianto gave him a confused look. “Suicide notes often give closure to people left behind and I can’t very well leave Torchwood without giving notice,” he pointed out reasonably.

“Notice!?” For a moment Jack looked like he was going to hit him.

Ianto wondered how quickly he could get rid of Jack and start looking for someone to help him. Now that he thought about it, decapitation was supposed to be relatively painless, which would be a nice change. “If there’s nothing specific you need, sir, I’d appreciate it if you left. I’m a bit occupied at the moment.”

Jack’s jaw dropped. “Ianto, I know you’re upset but you can stop now, I’m back.”

Ianto gave him a puzzled look. “I know you’re back, sir. I can see you.”

Jack momentarily looked helpless. “Ianto, you don’t understand. I’m back.”

“Yes, sir, I know,” Ianto repeated patiently. Inwardly he was wondering if accessing the police records would be the quickest and easiest way of finding who he needed. He had a feeling an advert in the South Wales Echo wouldn’t end well. “If there’s nothing else, sir…”

He started to edge past Jack to unpack his computer, when he was grabbed and Jack was kissing him. Ianto felt something press heavily against the protective shell that had enveloped him all those months ago and he frowned, disliking the way it made him feel. He pulled away from the kiss and backed up when it looked as though Jack would try again.

“Captain, I really don’t have time for this. If you leave me your number I can call you when I’ve finished. We can have sex then.” He supposed that if he let Jack have sex with him that would momentarily satisfy the other man and he would leave Ianto alone. It really wasn’t a convenient time, though, and Ianto was aware of a mild irritation as he went over to the box containing his computer.

“Is that what you think this is about?” Jack demanded incredulously. “You think I came back just so I can shag you?”

Ianto gave him a nonplussed look. “Of course not, sir, but you are a highly sexual creature and it makes sense for you to take advantage of resources to hand while you do whatever it is you came back to do.” He hauled his laptop out of the box and started it up. “I have no objections to servicing your needs, sir. You were always a skilled and considerate lover, but I have something else I have to do first.”

Jack was staring at him as if he had grown a second head. “Service my needs?” he echoed before collapsing onto the couch beside Ianto. “My God, if that’s what you think…” His lips tightened into a thin line. “I’m not leaving,” he said firmly.

“As you wish, sir,” Ianto said absently. He accessed the police database with ease and tuned Jack out while he located possible accomplices. There were a couple that looked promising-

“You’re not even listening to me, are you?” Jack said explosively.

Startled out of his focus, Ianto gave Jack an inquiring look. “Sir?”

“I was trying,” Jack said through gritted teeth, “to apologise for leaving you all like that.”

Ianto blinked. “No need for that, sir. I’ll admit that I was a bit upset at first, seeing as how I’d leapt to the wrong conclusions, but once I looked at it from your perspective, I realised there was nothing to get angry about. I could have wished that you’d thought to leave behind some handover notes, though. It took us a while to find our feet.”

“You have a way of making me feel two inches tall, do you know that?” Jack said ruefully. He glanced at the computer screen. “What are you after, anyway?”

“Someone who would be willing to cut off my head,” Ianto said absently as he suddenly focused on one ex-offender with a history of using swords and knives. The next thing he knew, the laptop had been wrenched out of his hands and thrown across the room. He winced at the sound of it breaking as it hit the wall. “Captain, that laptop is technically Torchwood property once I’m dead-“

“Stop it! This ends here and now!” Jack shouted. “You are not going to kill yourself, Ianto!”

“No, sir, I realise that. That’s why I need someone else to assist me. Fortunately I memorised the man’s contact details before you destroyed the laptop,” Ianto continued reprovingly.

“Why do you want to cut off your head, for God’s sake?” Jack demanded. “Why not just put a bullet through it?”

“Because that doesn’t work,” Ianto said, feeling some of his patience start to slip. Jack was being needlessly obstructive, in his opinion, and Ianto was a little annoyed about the laptop.

“Oh, you’ve tried it, have you?” Jack said sarcastically. When Ianto said nothing, he reached out to turn him around to face him. “Ianto? Your suicide note was dated five days ago. Have you tried to kill yourself since then?”

Ianto tried for a laugh and failed miserably. “You could say that.” He looked at Jack. “Tell me, Captain, did you realise that your immortality was a contagious disease?”