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Ianto had always expected to die young, that was just how it always went for Torchwood agents, especially those working for the Cardiff branch. Unlike London, it was a small operation, little more than an outpost, and five people made for such a small team to deal with everything that came through the Rift. It wasn’t just the weird and often unidentifiable technology and artefacts; if it had been then a small team might have been more than enough, but the Rift didn’t restrict itself. There were weapons and explosives, Weevils and various alien animals, some harmless and some most definitely not, lost travellers, the advance scouts for invading armies, even occasional localised weather disturbances and the odd toxic substance or pathogen… They could never be entirely sure what they would have to deal with until it was located.
Taking all of that into account, the fact that Torchwood Three agents seldom lasted more than a few years was not at all surprising, and now that he thought about it, Ianto supposed, technically speaking, he HAD died young. At only twenty-six years old, he’d breathed his last lying on the floor in Thames House, London of all places, ravaged by an alien virus, while his immortal lover and an evil alien emissary looked on… It hadn’t been the heroic death he’d hoped for, but he couldn’t really complain… Well, he could, but what would be the point? When you were dead, you were dead, or at least that was the case for most people.
But then, against all the odds, against his own expectations, against all that could be considered natural or normal, he’d come back to life again, and that had only been the first of many occasions that he’d died and revived since that fateful day when his life had changed forever. Now here he was, almost a thousand years later, still looking no older than he had that long ago day when he’d stood at Jack’s side to defy the aliens who were demanding ten percent of earth’s most precious commodity: its children.
And he was still at Jack’s side, even after so many centuries, despite all the inevitable ups and downs of their relationship, all the disagreements, arguments, and outright fights, the weeks of not talking to each other, the distances, the separations, the falling out, and the falling back in again. It had to be that way, and in truth neither of them would have it any other way, because they were the only two of their kind in the universe, and no matter how much they sometimes got on each other’s nerves, there would never be anyone who understood either of them the way they understood each other.
They’d seen and done things no one else could even begin to imagine, and they belonged together in ways they couldn’t begin to explain to anyone who wasn’t immortal. No ordinary, mortal human could ever understand what it was like to live, die, then live again, over and over, healing from fatal injuries as if they were no worse than a papercut. And no matter how many times they might go their separate ways, needing some space from each other, they would always find their way back together, to reconnect and fall in love all over again.
The End