Title: Cuts like a knife
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,970 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 401 - Cut
Summary: The awful reality of Jack’s existence hits home.


Jack heaved back into life and was suddenly wracked by a terrible cough as he came to and remembered he was still trapped in the car full of noxious fumes. He fumbled with the door a couple of times before finally spilling out of it, falling to his knees on the concrete and coughing until he could get his breath back. Even the garage itself was still choked with fumes.

He finally pulled himself to his feet and reluctantly but carefully leaned back inside the car and reached across to turn the ignition off. It didn't matter anymore. John Ellis was dead. It had served its purpose, killing Jack in the process.

At least he'd hung on long enough to watch John go as peacefully as a man could go when he no longer wished to live. It made Jack wish he could follow in John's footsteps, but dying wasn't meant for him and that was the most painful part of it. There was never going to be an escape for him the way he currently was. It made him yearn for his Doctor all the more, hoping beyond hope that when he found him again that the Doctor could fix him and make him mortal again. He'd had so much life already and seeing what it did to others had ruined him. He didn't want to carry on seeing that anymore.

He walked over and pushed the garage doors open just a few inches to let some of the awful fumes out of the small space. Not enough to attract any attention, just enough to clear his own head. He stood by the gap and sucked in that crisp clear. Air from outside, feeling everything rush back to him with a clarity that hadn't been there before. As much as he hated himself for it, he was glad of the clean air and the buzz of life surging around his body. Jack physically reacted to an all consuming sense of existence and then promptly threw up on the pavement just outside the door, retching and heaving up nothing until his body was satisfied that it had purged him of death completely. He gripped the edges of the doors tightly until the dizzying nausea abated, leaving him able to stand without falling down.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialled. 'Yeah, it's me. I found him. Meet me here?'

Jack had to wait longer than usual. Since John had stolen Ianto’s car and Jack had the SUV, he was waiting for a taxi to bring Ianto to the scene. He should have been able to handle one dead man on his own but tonight he just couldn't.

He slumped down on the pavement, pulling his knees up and leaning back against the rickety wooden garage doors and waited. If anyone saw him and wondered why he was sitting there on the street late at night he'd tell them that he'd been kicked out by his boyfriend and was waiting for a friend to pick him up so that he could kip on their sofa. He needn't have worried. This part of Grangetown was old and run down. It was unlikely anyone would wander around these streets at night and cause him trouble. He'd been the one to bring trouble here.

Ianto's polished footsteps eventually clicked as he approached Jack, hearing the rumble of a car engine pulling away down the road and passing them both on its way to its next job. Jack pulled himself to his feet.

'Where's John?' It was an obvious question given that Jack was standing there alone. Even more so when he considered they were also missing a car, with the SUV parked not half a block further along the road where Jack had left it.

He nodded his head sideways. 'In there.'

Ianto's face crumpled into inscrutable incomprehension. 'Is he okay?'

Jack's head dropped, unable to look Ianto in the eye. 'No.'

'What happened?' Ianto asked, as he pushed open the garage door, revealing his missing car with John lying dead in the driver's side, window still blocked with extra tags to keep the fumes inside the car.

Jack lowered himself down on the front of the car's bonnet, partly to steady himself and partly so he wouldn't have to see John's waxen face. Ianto perched gently next to him, nose wrinkling for a moment, smelling the way Jack's coat and hair must have reeked of petrol fumes. He felt it clinging to his skin like a thick layer of tar, suffocating him. 'He couldn't do it anymore. Killed himself.'

He watched Ianto visibly swallow as his eye flicked over Jack's shoulder for just a second, as if he didn't quite believe him yet. 'Oh God. Wasn't there anything you could do?'

He adored Ianto for his unwavering belief that Jack could fix everything. 'I stopped him. Once,' he clarified. 'We talked. He'd already lived his life. He didn't want to start over again. There was nothing more any of us could do and so I let him do it. Stayed with him until the end to make sure he didn't suffer any more than he had to.'

There was a frown of confusion on Ianto’s face. 'You stayed? But you're…'

'I held my breath as much as I could,' Jack replied, concealing the lie once more. It was quick enough for a man who wanted it to end. No one ever seemed to doubt Jack when he told them his tales of miraculous survival. They all just assumed he was bulletproof without actually knowing just how true that was.

'He seemed like he was better,' Ianto observed. 'Coping.'

Jack had thought so too. A few bumps in the road, perhaps, but acclimatising. 'Like we all thought when you lost Lisa?'

'Point taken.' He sighed and reached out, letting his hand drift over the top of Jack's and just leaving it there in a subtle demonstration of empathy. They stayed silent for a few minutes until Ianto uncharacteristically spoke, breaking the silence. 'I was thinking about it after you left,' he began. Trying to imagine what it would be like to suddenly be transported to another time, unable to go back. I started thinking, going back to the past wouldn't be quite so bad. If you know what's going to happen, that must make it easier to adjust. Nothing is new and scary. But to end up somewhere off in the future, where everyone you know is gone, everything is uncertain…' He paused before carrying on.' I'm twenty five, Jack. Look at just how much the world has changed since I was born. I can't imagine what the world will look like in another twenty five, fifty, a hundred… Even with everything we see working here at Torchwood I…' he gave Jack's hand the tiniest squeeze. 'I think I understand why John felt the way he did. When I think about it now, I'm not sure I'd have been cut out for life in another time either.'

Jack swallowed the lump in the back of his throat and turned his head just slightly away so that Ianto wouldn't see the tears beginning to well in his eyes as he did his best to force them back inside. He and John had been cut from the same cloth. They'd had lives, been comfortable in having shaped their own destinies and reaping the rewards of their efforts, only to have it all roll torn away from them in a heartbeat.

He wanted so much to tell Ianto everything in that moment, how he'd wanted to join John in death as the fumes made him light-headed and drowsy, just able to drift off one and for all and not have to fear coming back to face it all again. He'd been in John's shoes a thousand times before, unable to bear it a moment longer. Ianto was wrong on one count though – being thrust back into the past was no easier than being flung into the future. He thought back to earlier in the afternoon, watching John count out coppers in his hand in front of a gathering queue of irate bus passengers. He'd come so close to making it and then all of it had shattered around him. Paying for something as simple as a bus fare had broken him, leaving him a weeping mess in Jack's arms. Jack was younger than John had been, but now he felt so very old and tired. When was it ever going to end for him?

He took another deep breath and swallowed back his own trauma. 'I know you, Ianto Jones. You're stronger than you think.' Jack had done it, hadn't he, and he wasn't nearly as strong as everyone thought he was.

'I still wish there was something we could have done to help John.' Jack noticed the way Ianto didn't turn his head any more than he had to in order to look at Jack, but not catch John's body in his peripheral vision.

'I'm sorry about your car.' It seemed so trivial and yet how could you ever shift that image of a man lying dead there, even if he now appeared to be at peace for the first time since he'd been plucked from his life back in 1953.

There was another subtle squeeze of Jack's hand, though firmer than the first. 'Jack, I don't care about the car. I care about you.'

'I failed him. Right until the end.' Even now it still felt hollow.

'He wanted to die, yes?'

Jack's nose scrunched at the acrid smell still hanging in the air, suddenly repulsive and offending his senses. 'Said he'd smile and pretend everything was okay until I turned my back, and then he'd do it properly.'

'So you helped him go with as much dignity as you could.'

'He should have lived,' Jack argued, thinking he hadn't tried hard enough. 'He still had so much life ahead of him.' Jack concluded bitterly that he wasn't cut out for this – life in the twenty-first century, leading Torchwood, none of it. No more than John might sell furniture in an antique shop or run his own convenience store. His time was gone too, never to return. The fifty-first century, the time agency, even the Doctor and Rose. All of them were gone now.

'So do you,' Ianto replied, which made Jack frown as he'd lost the train of what they were talking about.

'Huh?'

'Living, Jack. You have so much life ahead of you.'

Jack stared down at his feet. 'More than you will ever know.'

Ianto's thumb brushed over the back of his hand. 'Go home,' he told Jack. 'Take the SUV. I'll take John back and make sure he's looked after. My Christmas present to you.'

Jack was taken aback. He'd forgotten all about the fact that it was Christmas Eve. 'You don't have to do that. You should be home spending Christmas with the important people in your life.' That solitude Jack felt being stuck here in a time that wasn't his own cut even more deeply.

A hand cupped his cheek, followed by soft lips that ignored how awful his skin must have tasted. 'I am spending it with someone important, and right now he's hurting because he blames himself for what happened. I don't think for a second that you didn't do everything you could to help John. If I have to face the end, I know there's no one else I'd rather have there with me.'

Jack's jaw clenched painfully. It would happen one day, he knew that, and he'd have to keep on living after it. No way out for him. An endless lifetime of Johns and Iantos paving his solitary road to hell.