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This was not what Ianto expected death to be like.
From what Suzie, Owen and Jack all said, he wasn’t supposed to be able to see, feel or hear anything. Everything was meant to just go black.
Instead, he was standing in a small cell.
The door opened with a clank and none other than Captain Jack Harkness stepped in, hands cuffed behind his back, looking more dead than he ever had with bullet holes in his head or chest.
“Jack!” Ianto cried out, reaching out to him, but his hand simply went through. Jack didn’t even shiver.
Figures. Of course he’d be the one to end up as a ghost. Couldn’t even have a proper afterlife.
“Jack? Can you hear me?” Ianto tried, but Jack just sat down heavily on the bench. “I’m here. I’m here with you.”
Jack put his head in his hands. Ianto watched, helplessly, as Jack’s shoulders began to shake.
The next few hours passed in silence. One of the other cells opened and closed. Jack had stopped crying, simply laying down on the small shelf, eyes dry, as though he ran out of tears. Ianto sits next to him, watching him, wishing he could give him some comfort.
“On the floor, on the floor!” someone shouted outside, and Ianto was immediately on his feet, for a moment forgetting he couldn’t touch anyone. Jack was up only a second later, pressed against the tiny window in the door. “Stay down!” The door was yanked open suddenly and Jack was dragged out. “Go, go, go!”
“What’s going on?” Jack shouted, but the soldiers didn't reply, simply continued pulling him out of the cell and down the hall. Ianto hurried after them, ignoring the odd sensation of some of them passing through him as he did so.
He had to stay with Jack.
There’s not enough room in the helicopter, but Ianto didn’t seem to be governed by the laws of physics anymore. Everyone and everything swayed around him, but he remained upright. It was mildly nauseating, but Ianto doubted he could throw up in his current state.
They set down a short while later, and Jack was once more dragged out and down a corridor, down a maze of them, until–
“Uncle Jack!” A child ran up to them, hugging Jack around the middle.
“Hey, soldier!” Jack replied with a smile Ianto knew well. It didn’t take him more than a second to connect the dots: this was Jack’s grandson. And that meant the woman he was being told to go back to was his mother.
Ianto tried not to think too hard about how she looked older than him.
Their reunion was cut short and Jack was led down corridors again, Ianto following a step behind.
They ended up in a large open space filled with machinery, and then Jack’s handcuffs were undone and the woman turned to him.
“This should be everything you need. And if it’s not, we’ll find it.”
“For what?” Jack asked.
“Wavelengths,” she said. “The 456 are named after a wavelength, and that's got to be the key to fighting back.”
“You’re wasting your time,” the man who was being led before them said, still rubbing his recently uncuffed wrists. “There’s nothing you can do. I’ve analysed those transmissions for forty years and never broke ‘em.”
The woman turned and with a quick, well aimed shot, shot him in the leg. “What do you think, captain? She told me you were good. Was she right?”
Jack turned to look at his daughter, and Ianto knew this expression, too – not that he ever saw it on Jack – but that was the look of a father getting praised by his child. Muted almost beyond recognition, but still.
“Let’s get to work.” Jack shrugged off his coat and threw it over a crate, and how Ianto longed to pick it up and place it somewhere proper. That didn’t matter. Jack rushed over to one of the commuters and started typing. “Give me access to the Torchwood software.” Jack raced to the other computer and started typing there too. “Log onto the servers, and–” he hit a few last keys on the keyboard and the flowing blue background of the Torchwood servers flashed up on the screen. “Welcome back.”
“It still won’t work,” the man said, leaning against one of the crates and clutching his leg. “There’s nothing on there. It’s useless.”
“We’ve got technology way beyond you,” Jack shot over his shoulder.
“We hacked into Torchwood years ago, you idiot. There’s nothing.”
Jack rolled his eyes and Ianto smiled. They both knew just how secure their systems were. Tosh had led them down countless false ends.
“Bring him over here,” the woman said.
“Dad, come and look at this.” Jack walked over to his daughter as the man was dragged over to the woman. “It’s some sort of pirate station. They’re trying to get the story out to the public. But they’re taking the kids!” The footage on screen was blue and blurry, but still clearly showed what was going on.
Ianto closed his eyes and attempted to breathe, though he likely couldn’t in his new form. They had failed. He died for nothing.
“If we cycle the wavelength back at them–”
“I know what you’re trying to do,” the man said, and Jack looked back at him. “A constructive wave. Do you think people aren’t working on that all over the world? But it’s never going to work. The effect would be like shouting at the 456, that’s all. Just shouting.”
Jack’s eyebrows furrowed. “Why did Clem die?”
“It was the 456 that killed him,” the woman said.
“But how did they do it? Why did they do it?”
“We’ve got the recording here.” The woman moved to yet another computer.
“His mind must have synced to the 456 back when he was a child. But they didn’t need to kill him. He wasn’t any threat. Unless, maybe that connection hurt them.”
“This is the 456 at the moment of his death.” She pressed the play button, and a painful but quiet shriek sounded. Ianto couldn’t imagine being in the room with it. “We’ve lifted the sound from the Themes House link.”
“That sound, Mister Decker, what’s that sound?”
The man, Decker, considered. “I don’t know. It’s new.”
There was a new confidence in Jack. “Exactly. It’s new. We don’t have to analyse the wavelength, just copy it. Turn it into a constructive wave.”Jack shifted. “But we’ve got no way of transmitting.”
A slow grin grew on Decker’s face, and dread settled in Ianto’s stomach. “Of course you have.”
Jack’s face fell. “Shut up,” he whispered.
“Same way as them.” And that’s when Ianto caught on, the dread turning solid, heavy.
“I’ll find something else.”
“What does he mean?” the woman asked insistently.
“Don’t listen to him,” Jack said.
“Decker, tell me.”
“The 456 used children, to establish the resonance.”
Ianto wasn’t looking at Decker or the woman as they continued talking. He was too focused on the cloud falling over Jack’s expression.
“Meaning what?”
“We need a child.”
“What do you mean?” Alice asked, joining the conversation for the first time, and Ianto watched Jack’s face turn sour.
“Centre of the resonance. Oh-oh,” Decker chuckled, “that child’s gonna fry.”
Horror filled Alice’s eyes as she realised. Jack glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes, that half-look he did when he wasn’t to avoid seeing someone’s reaction but couldn’t help his curiosity.
“No, Dad.” Alice’s voice was almost silent, but the rest of the room was quieter. “Tell them no.”
“One child or millions,” the woman interjected.
“Dad, no. Dad, tell them no!”
“We’re running out of time.”
Ianto watched the decision solidify behind Jack’s eyes.
“Dad, no! No, Dad!” She was screaming now.
“Captain!” the woman insisted.
Jack nodded.
“Steven!” Alice ran, and Ianto’s dread turned to horror as he realised what she already had. They didn’t have time. There was only one child in the building.
“Fuck,” Ianto said, out loud, for the first time in hours. No one noticed him.
Alice’s heels hitting the ground echoed around the room, even as soldiers followed her out. Barely a minute later they were back, Steven hauled over one of them’s shoulder. He was placed in the middle of the room gently enough, but Ianto couldn’t help but feel that was the worst part.
Jack was rushing around, typing, setting things up, very specifically not looking at his grandson.
“What are we doing, Uncle Jack?” Steven asked, and Ianto could feel tears welling in his eyes at that innocent tone of voice. “What’s happening?” Jack didn’t reply, just continued typing. “What do you want me to do?”
Alice banged on the closed door, then on the window next to it. “Steven! Steven!” If Ianto could, he would have opened the door for her. As it was, he could only stare in growing horror. “Run! Run!”
Jack pressed the enter button, tears already welling in his eyes, and took a step back.
Slowly, the shriek began, coming out of Steven’s open mouth. The dead-eyed expression was almost worse than the sound; that is, until it grew in volume. And grew. And grew. Steven jerked on the platform, his entire body shaking until he became blurred, but the blood trickling down his nose was clearly visible.
Everyone simply watched. Ianto wanted to stop. He wanted to shake them all and get them to stop staring, to get some sense.
But, on some level, he knew this was the correct thing to do. Save the majority by sacrificing one.
Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.
Ianto averted his eyes from the limp form on the platform as Alice raced into the room.
Jack’s face wasn’t a much better sight. There were tear tracks on his cheeks. Ianto couldn’t recall ever having seen him cry. His own eyes were dry. Turns out ghosts can’t cry.
Alice cried out for help behind him, but there was nothing anyone, especially Ianto, could do now.
Someone else cleaned up the room. Jack and Ianto didn’t stick around. Ianto wasn’t sure why Jack had chosen to sit on a bench still inside the horrible building, but he sat with him. When Alice came in, just for a moment, Ianto hoped they could reconcile. He knew that was impossible, but he wanted Jack to have someone, anyone, who still cared for him.
But she left. With a sigh, Jack turned towards the door.
And froze.
“Ianto?”
His voice was full of awe, and Ianto’s eyes widened. Jack was staring right at him.
“Yes! Yes, Jack, I’m here.”
“But…how?”
Ianto smiled sadly. “I’m a ghost, I think. Something’s keeping me here. Attached to you.”
Jack’s eyes widened. “You saw that.”
Ianto swallowed reflexively. “Yes.”
“Oh, god.” Jack closed his eyes. “You weren’t meant to be there.”
Ianto attempted to place his hand on Jack’s shoulder, but as before it passed right through. “I understand why you did it,” he said softly. “You had no choice. It was him or millions.”
“I know. God, of course I know that. It doesn’t make it right.”
Ianto never wished he could hold Jack more than in that moment.
Instead, he said, “I still love you.”
Jack’s head snapped up, eyes wide and wet.
“I always will,” Ianto continued. “Always. You did these things while I was alive, too. I understand why. I will never condemn you for this. Please try not to do that yourself.”
“Ianto, what I did….”
“Was the only option.”
Jack looked at him like he was the sun, the moon, and the stars. Then, between one blink and the next, he was gone.
Everything was gone.
Ianto was finally dead.