InsaneJournal

Fic: The Essential Condition of Life 3/3
Title: Mutual Service: The Essential Condition of Life 3/3
Author: Kei
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Set in the Mutual Service verse. I highly recommend you read at least that that first, or this won't make much sense.
Summary: Ianto's resurrection has consequences, consequences that the Doctor has taken enough interest in to travel to Cardiff for.


Nothing was happening, and Jack wondered how long they would have to wait. Stuck on the slow path like this, one might be forgiven for thinking he was good at waiting, but still he ached for the ease of time travel, for being able to skip ahead in the story. The trenches had been like this too - "hurry up and wait", they called it, long periods of inactivity followed by desperate bursts of adrenalin and fear and violence and the bonds forged there were so intense, so strong, because no one understood it who hadn't been there.

Torchwood was like that, sometimes. Different, but somehow the same.

It didn't mean he had to like it. The anticipation made every moment drag on, and he suspected he was beginning to annoy Tosh with his too-frequent check ups, asking her if anything was happening and demanding she demonstrate a sweep of the whole Hub "just in case" as though she couldn't do her own job when he never would have looked twice at her UNIT file if that had been the case.

He forced himself not to go back over, to trust her to be brilliant on her own watch. It would be better if he was doing something constructive while he waited, probably - there were reports and requisition forms that needed checking and signing off on, and he had a folder in his email for things he needed to deal with that was never empty. It was hard enough to force himself to do those tasks at the best of times, though. He'd never wanted to be an administrator. Half the time, he wasn't sure he wanted to be a leader, either.

"Jack!" Tosh's voice was a welcome relief and he launched himself out of his chair, clattering out of his office and navigating the metal walkways to her station. "Something's happening in the Archives, I think--"

She didn't have time to explain before the Doctor burst into the room, Ianto behind him, already rattling on. "--I should have seen it earlier, of course, but I never expected to see it here, and of course it was always purely academic because it was never supposed to get this far, not in your species! And Jack, well, you're like powering a hundred watt lightbulb with the sun, you are."

He seemed to realise then that they were all staring at him and broke out into a broad grin, one that, though Jack was unfamiliar with the quirks of this new regeneration, seemed to loudly declare, "I am brilliant!"

"Ianto Jones," the Doctor said significantly, "is not sad."

Jack blinked, looking at Ianto, who simply shrugged. No clues there, then. "Well that's great, but... mind cluing us in on what that means?"

"The circuit! Well, more specifically, the glove. It's a conductor! Which is fantastic, really, if you understand the theory behind it, which is all very complicated and far beyond anything you have here, but the thing is, your brains were never meant to be compatible with it. In the Thraxxicilians it works wonders. Their brains are wired up like Christmas trees, electricity zipping around all over the place, but compared to them you humans are so dense you can only get a short burst through the circuit, like-- like static. Enough for maybe two or three minutes of activity. And then you come along, Jack. And you dazzle. Normally the glove wouldn't accept that, you'd be incompatible, but somehow you overrode that and connected the circuit anyway and now it's been thrown out of balance and all that extra energy is whizzing through the air causing all sorts of problems."

He'd been pacing as he spoke, gesticulating wildly to demonstrate points. Jack knew that if he actually got the Doctor to sit down and talk about it properly, most of it would go well over his head - maybe Owen would have slightly better luck, but there was so much they didn't know in this time period, all sorts of things about physics and technology and the mind. It was never more obvious than in times like this, the Doctor ranting on about something, and though Jack could sort of see it, he knew that the picture forming in his mind had to be incredibly basic compared to all the nuances and meanings that the Doctor just instinctively knew.

"So what do we do?" asked Ianto, and it was only because Jack was watching, listening, that he noticed the faintest tension in the question. "Destroy the glove?"

"Oh, no, no, no. Well, yes, you could." The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, just making it stick out even more messily. "That would be a bit wasteful, though. And probably send a shockwave through the circuit that would fry your brain. No, all you have to do is take it out of the circuit."

"How do we do that?" Tosh asked, and it was only then that Jack realised she'd been typing the whole time, notes on what the Doctor was saying that she'd undoubtably fill in later in greater detail. He didn't think anyone could type fast enough to follow the Doctor when he was in full-on explaining mode, not even Tosh who sometimes amazed him with the dexterity in her fingers as they flew over keyboards, tapping with complete and utter accuracy. "Complete containment? We have some security boxes that might be able to block the field it's producing."

It occurred to Jack that she and the Doctor would probably be amazing together. Amazing or awful. They were both bright like this, the Doctor practically thrumming with excited energy and Tosh intense and utterly focused. Neither of them were looking at Ianto, who seemed to want to ask but be afraid, terrified to at the same time.

Jack would have touched him if he'd been standing closer, a light connection of hand on arm or shoulder. Instead, he hoped he could communicate in a glance what he was thinking - you can trust me to ask the hard questions for you. It wasn't much, as promises went, but it was something. "More importantly," he broke in, "what would happen to Ianto?"

Ianto's eyes flew to him in-- surprise? before his expression softened into something like gratitude, and it struck Jack as incredibly sad that someone like that would be surprised by simple human kindness. He wished he understood more about this beautiful, broken man who was at turns sarcastic and silent, as though he couldn't quite decide whether or not he deserved a place here.

"Oh, nothing," the Doctor assured him, and then sobered suddenly, halting the relief that had just started swelling up at his reply. "I can't fix you, Jack. Either of you. You've got enough energy in you to last the both of you for-- a long, long time. I can put that glove in a box or take it with me, pull it out of the circuit, and you'll just shift to compensate. No more energy will leak out and you'll both live and not a thing in the universe could stop you. But if I do that, even destroying the glove wouldn't do anything. The only way to break this is to do it now."

Oh, god. It was one thing to... assume something, to hope or to fear it, but to have it stated like that was fact. And even though he wasn't being offered a choice, he wondered if he could even make it if he had been. Die now, right now, or live forever? It seemed... so, so impossibly cruel.

He couldn't read anything in Ianto's face, and that terrified him too.

*

According to the police reports that Gwen was still receiving there had been at least two suicides definitely linked to the ghosts, both having had witnesses, but this information didn't fill Ianto with any sense of urgency.

To be honest he felt a little bit numb, sitting in the room that he'd converted into living quarters. They weren't anything special - double bed in a corner, which he was sitting on now, walls to his back and side as though they were shielding him; desk, wardrobe, bookshelves. He had a laptop in here, connected to the Torchwood network, and a radio so he could play his music, though no tv - he had to go out into the actual Hub for that. No kitchen or laundry, though there was a small bathroom (toilet, sink, small cabinet, mirror) through a couple of doors and of course the massive Victorian shower rooms. It was nice, though, cosy, and he liked it more than he'd liked his flat, which had been a place of convenience with crappy water pressure and a shower that was either too hot or too cold.

This was a place of convenience too, of course. He didn't know if it was enough - if Torchwood was enough - if whatever possibilities he had with Jack was enough - to throw away his chances at death for, though.

He didn't even know what life without death was. It was one of those things common to everyone, death, one of the subjects that every culture, every mythology, was obsessed with. Creation, sex, death. Whether it was an afterlife that you believed in or just the peace of eternal rest, it was a release from life, something to be feared and longed for. He'd made that decision, once, and now he had to make it again, only there was no third option. No 'wait and see'. No leaving it up to chance.

Die now. Or live forever.

He couldn't even comprehend forever. The human brain wasn't wired for it, couldn't visualise large numbers. He knew intellectually how much a thousand was but he couldn't imagine what a crowd of a thousand people would look like, exactly, couldn't imagine a thousand years of life. Ten thousand. A million.

God, how he envied Jack for having this forced on him. Some choices were too terrible for anyone to have to make. He wasn't even sure if knowing that Jack would always be there made it easier or harder - because he would, always, be there, and they'd really only known each other for a matter of weeks. It was like a grain of sand on a beach. A grain of sand in a desert. How long would they even get on? Would they come to hate each other? Would Jack come to resent him, having to take his pain every time something happened to him? (For that matter, what would happen to the circuit if they were apart, the galaxy stretched between them, or even separated through time? The Doctor had said nothing could fix them, but had he accounted for distances like that?)

His head ached and he wanted to hide somewhere deep inside the Hub where no one could find him and just go to sleep. Let someone else think about the universe for a while.

A knock at the door startled him, and he looked up, called, "Yeah?" He wasn't sure entirely who he was expecting - probably Jack, maybe Tosh, or Gwen, who he didn't like as much as Tosh but knew she liked to give advice. It made her feel important, maybe, or at least useful.

Instead, though, it was Martha, and she looked around the room with interest as she entered, coming over to sit on the bed a few feet from him. "You really were dead, weren't you?"

"Yup."

She shook her head in amazement, staring across the room, though he doubted she was looking at anything in particular. "All this time, everything the Doctor shows me, and I can still be surprised. There's so much out there, and I never knew. I never knew."

"Is that supposed to help?" he asked; it came out sharper than he'd intended, or perhaps not quite sharp enough. He knew there was more out there, of course he did. He'd worked for Torchwood for over two years, he'd seen more than just daleks and Cybermen, and then there were the nights when Jack got into a talking mood. He didn't say much that was blatantly out of place, but Ianto was good at putting pieces together. While the others pushed and asked questions that Jack never answered, he just listened.

Martha shook her head slowly, though he thought it was more because she didn't know what to say than an answer to his query. "Forever's a long time. I don't even know how old the Doctor is. Sometimes he seems like a little boy, but then he gets this look like... he's lived through everything. I can't even imagine. The things he says, it's like he's seen the most terrible things the universe has to offer." She glanced over at him, finally, pulling a leg up to curl in front of her. "You said... you were at Canary Wharf. I had a cousin there. They said it was a terrorist attack, even though everyone's seen, and I thought... I just couldn't believe people were accepting that. Coz I can't, you know, even though everything was just people dying, I thought there had to be wonderful things too."

It was true, he supposed, about the wonderful things. Even if it was just small things, like the Doctor's amusement at the device that matched colours, or the toys that fell through the rift that Jack showed them how to play with sometimes. But was that enough? God, it was so hard to say. "I know," he said, voice quiet in the room. Somehow it really felt like they were underground - maybe that was what he liked about this room. It was nothing like Torchwood Tower. It was solid, built into the Earth, not apart from it. "But it was, sort of, a terrorist attack. You can't know unless you were there."

"First time I met the Doctor I went to the moon. Half the Earth was almost destroyed, and it was one of the best days of my life." She smiled, a little, then reached over to pat him on the leg. "Sorry for barging in. I'd better go back to the Doctor before he gets into anything."

She left, and Ianto leaned back against the brickwork, back of his head not-quite-fitting into the ninety degree angle of the corner. He wasn't any closer to a decision than when he'd started.

*

Jack kicked the rest of the team out eventually, even though it was the middle of the day and the problem wasn't solved yet. It was all just waiting anyway, and he could sense how uncomfortable they were - none of them knowing what to say and not wanting to look at him.

He wished he knew what Ianto was thinking. It felt as though they were waiting for a jury to come back. Either way the world would be saved, of course - or Cardiff's emotional stability, at least - but the decision was still so weighty.

They shared stories to pass the time, some that the others didn't know or the Doctor falling into the pattern of "do you remember when--" with one or the other of them. No, Jack corrected himself, they weren't waiting for a jury, it was the night before a battle, and the troops were sitting in the barracks passing the time. (He knew, really, that there wasn't a comparison that fit, but somehow it made him feel better, thinking of them.)

He stopped listening to Martha when he became aware of footsteps approaching. Not the usual brisk pace of Ianto working, but slow and unsure, and he had to force himself to stay sitting, not to get up and rush him.

Ianto came in with the glove in his hands, free of the box it had been in - they had taken it out of the safe before he left to think, and Jack wondered if he'd been holding it this whole time.

For a moment Ianto glanced around, probably taking in empty stations and absent colleagues, then he walked over to the trio, and there was something childlike in his hesitance that Jack wanted to wrap himself around and hold onto. God, they were all so young, his people.

"Take it away." Ianto's voice was raw as he held the glove out to the Doctor; it matched something inside Jack's chest that couldn't decide if it wanted to ache or sing, and all he really knew, right now, was that he didn't want to look away from the man in front of him.

The Doctor took the glove, silent in due deference to the mood of the moment, and Ianto turned to look back at Jack, their eyes meeting. Strangely, inexplicably, Jack felt like crying.


Epilogue:

"Yes."

Ianto stands in the doorway of Jack's office, nothing in his hands. Normally he will come up here with a cup of coffee or a file, some excuse for the intrusion, but tonight it is only him, leaning on the jamb as Jack looks up in confusion.

"I didn't ask a question."

The honest bewilderment in his expression makes Ianto smile, just a little, and he walks further into the room - not to the seat opposite Jack, but to the sofa. This is not a discussion that pertains to their jobs. Jack is curious, of course, curious enough to follow him. "Yes," Ianto repeats, and his smile comes easier this time, genuinely amused at the situation, at the memory. "I'm into necrophilia."

One heartbeat, two, and then Jack grins, laughter bubbling out of his throat. "Ianto Jones," he says, leaning forward to touch a hand to Ianto's jaw; he can feel the callouses against his skin, and the warmth of Jack, and turns into it. "One day I'm going to show you all the worlds of creation."

"I believe you." Before Jack can reply he reaches out to tug him closer, pressing their lips together in a kiss - and though it isn't perfect, and neither are they, he has wanted this since the night they caught Myfanwy. They can worry about forever in the future. For now, there is this.