Title: Death by a thousand cuts
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,017 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 394 - Preparation
Summary: John Ellis is ready to face the one thing that Jack never can.


There were few times in Jack's life when he could have honestly said that someone had taught him a valuable lesson about living, and an even more valuable lesson about dying. For Jack, he'd long ago reconciled with the fact that he was never going to die – not permanently – and that had led him to believe that there was no such thing as a good death. Life was all that there was. Death came for everyone, except him, and even so, there was no way of knowing when or how. There was no way of preparing for the moment when life would end. And the nothingness that lay beyond it came to claim you.
Meeting John Ellis had changed all that. Here was a man who was prepared to die and to accept that there was nothing on the other side, compared to the known unknowns of living.

Jack had always admired the men and women who ran the local businesses in town. Fifty years ago it was even more of a challenge for someone to run a general store. There were no preservatives and only basic refrigeration in those days. Anything that didn't come canned would spoil in a matter of days. Yet the local grocer always knew just how much of any one item to order, how long it would take to arrive, how long it would last on the shelves, and how many of its customers would come in to buy it, making sure that nothing spoiled or went to waste. That kind of thing took deep thought and preparation to make sure that no customer went without, if it could be helped.

John Ellis had been one of those who served the streets of Bristol for years, building his business from nothing. Jack had seen the photos he'd taken in the few days before he'd taken aboard that fateful plane that had propelled him through the rift, fifty years into the future. Photos of John with his energetic son Alan, with his beloved wife, and those of John Ellis standing proudly outside the store he'd built from nothing, and which had become a permanent fixture of the local high street. It had been so successful that he'd been travelling to Dublin to discuss opening a second shop there. Now he could scarcely count out the change required to buy a ticket for the bus.

In much the same way as he had ordered his life, John had made provisions for his death as well. He had known where Ianto parked his car, where he kept the keys, how to obtain the keys without Ianto's knowledge, and a place John might drive the car where he could park it in the confines of a garage and let the car's exhaust fumes do the rest. The only thing he hadn't counted on was Jack tracking him down. He'd accounted for all things except that Jack would have had a lo jack tracker on Ianto's car – as he did the cars of all his employees – so that they could be found if need be. It was the kind of technology that a man like John Ellis could scarcely comprehend existing. Not that Jack needed it. If Jack could have hazarded a guess where John might go, it would be the now abandoned and derelict Grangetown home in which he'd left only yesterday. The place was boarded up, but the old key lock garage stood proudly facing the road, the padlock now hanging loose at its base.

Jack's heart ached for him. He knew what it was to lose your entire family and to feel lost and displaced in time. Unlike John, he didn't have the luxury of choosing whether or not to start over. John was right when he'd dismissed Jack's pleas that he should at least try. He'd already done all the things a man wanted to achieve in his lifetime – to make a name for himself, to marry the woman he loved and to raise a family. To try and do all of that again was too much. To pretend that he hadn't already, was an even bigger lie.

Jack had started over more times than he could count and yet it never seemed to get any easier. Nothing, not in all the long years of his life, had prepared him for the idea that he would have to keep starting over again and again and again. It was the kind of unbearable pain that he usually stowed so deeply that he couldn't even put it into words, and yet here he was trying to tell another man that he could do the same when there was an alternative.

What might Jack have given to know that there was a way off the merry-go-round that had become his existence? What mightn't he do to make that a possibility. Wasn't that why he'd waited all these years hoping to reunite with his Doctor and to become mortal again? He'd already had so much life. He'd done so many things, and now, like John, he wanted to know that there would be an end, and perhaps, that he too might get a say in when and how that happened. How could he possibly deny John the dignity of choosing his own path. Yes, there was a chance to begin again, but what if like Jack, he didn't want to. John was prepared to accept that there was nothing more beyond this world. The least Jack could do was let him finish what he started.

He had it all set out, a simple yet effective way of ending it all. As deaths went, Jack could hardly have chosen a better one for him. A slow descent into sleep, the carbon monoxide poisoning them without their knowing. And Jack would stay there by his side to make sure that it happened, just the way he'd planned it. No more interruptions, no more last minute attempts to grasp into life. Just peace in knowing that he could give one man the thing he wanted more than anything for himself.