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mtxref_ficAuthor's Note: Written for Torchwood, Ianto/Jack, Tithonus. Detour from Children of Earth, set maybe fifty and then a hundred years after it would have happened.
They could not delay the inevitable forever, even in this time when medical technology had advanced and people were living even longer and healthier lives, through stem cell treatments and special diets. Ianto tried that route, and it lasted for a while, but in his seventies, when he still looked like he was in his forties, Ianto decided that mpre drastic measures were in order: his joints and his heart did not feel right, and there was a tendency toward cancer in his mother's side of the family.
When Jack had found out that Ianto had been using alien technology -- a healing pod that from an Arcturan civilian ambulance that had slipped in through the Rift and gotten as far as Glasgow before it broke up which was when Anwyn Cooper-Williams and her crew had found the wreckage -- he had hit the ceiling with rage.
"There's side effects that you can't anticipate," he snapped.
"Define 'side effects'," Ianto grumbled.
Jack let out a harassed sigh. "It's designed for Arcturans: their physiology is different from ours. They've got black blood and they can breathe gases that would kill us."
"But it's been keeping me from aging," Ianto argued. "I don't want to abandon you."
"You don't know how lucky you are: you're going to die some day. That gives your life meaning," Jack shot back.
"And leave you alone?"
"I've been alone before. I'm used to it: everyone else dies at some point, except for me," Jack replied, voice raspy with anger and despair. "I'm a fixed point in time: you're lucky that you're moving with the fabric of space and time."
"You're being selfish," Ianto snapped. He thought of something, then added, quietly but no less angered, "Does this have anything to do with what I tried to do to save Lisa?"
"No. That was a different matter: what you did there could have allowed the Cybermen to get another foothold on the earth," Jack said, tired. "This would affect you and I and anyone else that knew you, but it wouldn't be as damaging. I don't think. Unless it set off another Miracle Day."
"Don't remind me of that," Ianto muttered, shuddering at the memory. For a time, he had hoped The Miracle meant that he and Jack would be allowed to stay together forever, but the cost had been too great: the world economy was still trying to recover.
"So you see why I want you to stay a common garden human?" Jack said, gloomily.
"I think you're being stubborn, but I'm tired of arguing," Ianto relented.
Even still, even with the healing pod shut up in a containment chamber in the bowels of the Hub, Ianto snuck it out at least once a week for a treatment, careful to keep Jack from finding out what he was up to.
* * * *
But even these efforts could not keep the inevitable at bay forever. Though Ianto had started to age, it was too slow to keep Jack from getting suspicious, unless it was a side effect of that healing pod. It did not seem likely and so he kept a closer eye on the sealed storage units in the Hub.
Sure enough, he caught Ianto in the act of using the very thing he had forbidden his lover to use. That had resulted in a royal fight and nearly ended their relationship then and there. The very thing Ianto had done to try and stay with Jack nearly turned into a wedge to drive them apart.
"Get out of here and don't let me see you again," Jack snarled, as he stood over a beaten, cowed Ianto, lying sprawled and bloodied at his feet. His lover could only obey, getting up and limping away without so much as a backward glance.
Once Ianto had gone, Jack made short work of the healing pod, smashing the bits and sealing the remains in a block of concrete which he later dumped into the ocean.
That was the final blow, as far as Jack was concerned: he could not bear to watch the inevitable, and so he left the earth, leaving Torchwood in Anwyn's capable hands.
He never counted on the girl finding ways to keep tabs on him, but she had her mother's wise intelligence. He had come back to earth fifty years later, ostensibly to see who'd won the Universal Beauty pageant (what used to be Miss Universe, till the "Miss" was declared sexist and exclusive; the new named felt even sillier: Shouldn't a Universal Beauty pageant included beauties from other planets?), but the moment he got to earth, someone pinged his wrist strap, and he knew only one person on earth who knew how to do that.
He returned to Cardiff, returning to the bay, where Anwyn awaited him: even with silver hair, she looked beautiful, though he knew better than to even think about taking her as a dancing partner; she could hand his handsome ass to him if she wanted to and probably still could. She smirked at the sight of him. "You keep coming back: thought you had had enough of this place," she teased.
"I'm like a bad penny," he said. "So what did you need me for?"
She drew in a long breath. "It's Ianto: he's not well," she said.
"Side effects of that thing he used to try and keep pace with me?" he asked.
"Could be: once he stopped using it, he kept fresh for a while, but the past ten years, he went downhill," she said. "He wanted to see you one last time."
"It's better if I don't," he hedged.
She squared her shoulders looking him in the eye. "Better for you or better for him?" she snapped.
She had seen right through him. "All right, it would be better for me: I'd rather have him still young and fresh and pretty in my last memory of him," he admitted. "But if he saw me looking like this, would that make him feel any better?" His temple had started to turn to silver and the lines framing his mouth had deepened.
"He wants to apologize," she said. "He's not angry with you any more: he wants your forgiveness, if you have it in you."
"I never did like goodbyes, but I suppose it has to be this way," he said.
Without further argument, she whisked him to the rest home where she had put up Ianto, a comfortable place, not too far out into the country, but where the houses were not so close together and where the air felt fresher than it did in the city.
Jack hesitated outside the door of his lover's room, steeling his courage to the sticking point. He'd faced down Cybermen and Daleks and Barabbachakals, but he found himself having trouble facing down one old man.
After pacing about for several minutes, he reached out and lifted the latch, stepping into the sunlit room: he had expected something cold and clinical, but the room within made him think of an Edwardian bed sitter.
A wizened figure lay on the bed, propped on pillows, an oxygen tube in his nostrils, eyes closed and sunken deep into their sockets. Jack forced himself to approach the bed, sitting down on a chair set by the head.
Ianto turned his head, opening his eyes, a smile quirking his mouth. "You came," he creaked, his voice like the chirp of a cricket in autumn. "I knew you'd come."
"That's the nature of the beast that I am," he said, smirking, reaching for Ianto's hand, finding the skin as thin as parchment over the bones. Ianto closed his fingers around Jack's, slowly, gently. "I'm impossible to get rid of."
"I'm glad for that," Ianto admitted. He paused, slowly turning his face to stare out the window. Then he turned back to look Jack in the eye. "You were right: you can't stave off the inevitable. I'm still going to die. You're going to live."
"I was away, trying to find a cure," Jack admitted.
"Did you?"
"If I had, I'd use it now, so you won't be going alone," Jack said.
"You're here: I won't be alone," Ianto admitted. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" Jack asked, feigning ignorance.
"For trying to live forever. You were right: it's better to let life run the way it should, let nature take you when it's time," he admitted.
"It's all in the past," Jack said. "You're forgiven. I just wonder... if you can forgive me for walking out."
"You had your reasons: I was wrong, to try reaching the way I did," Ianto confessed.
"You'd better save your strength," Jack said.
"For what?" Ianto asked, dryly.
Jack perched himself on the bed, leaning over Ianto. "For this," he said and leaned down to kiss him, one last time. Ianto's lips felt shriveled, but the flesh still felt soft. He parted his lips slightly in a sigh, letting Jack kiss him harder and deeper.
A moment later, Jack pulled away, laying himself down beside the dying man, slipping an arm under his neck. Ianto put a fragile hand on Jack's before closing his eyes, tiredly.
They remained this way for hours, till the sun moved behind another wing of the house and the light faded into shadow and dusk. Till the last crickets of the season started to chirp rustily under the window, and Jack felt Ianto's chest stop rising and falling...
They could not delay the inevitable forever, even in this time when medical technology had advanced and people were living even longer and healthier lives, through stem cell treatments and special diets. Ianto tried that route, and it lasted for a while, but in his seventies, when he still looked like he was in his forties, Ianto decided that mpre drastic measures were in order: his joints and his heart did not feel right, and there was a tendency toward cancer in his mother's side of the family.
When Jack had found out that Ianto had been using alien technology -- a healing pod that from an Arcturan civilian ambulance that had slipped in through the Rift and gotten as far as Glasgow before it broke up which was when Anwyn Cooper-Williams and her crew had found the wreckage -- he had hit the ceiling with rage.
"There's side effects that you can't anticipate," he snapped.
"Define 'side effects'," Ianto grumbled.
Jack let out a harassed sigh. "It's designed for Arcturans: their physiology is different from ours. They've got black blood and they can breathe gases that would kill us."
"But it's been keeping me from aging," Ianto argued. "I don't want to abandon you."
"You don't know how lucky you are: you're going to die some day. That gives your life meaning," Jack shot back.
"And leave you alone?"
"I've been alone before. I'm used to it: everyone else dies at some point, except for me," Jack replied, voice raspy with anger and despair. "I'm a fixed point in time: you're lucky that you're moving with the fabric of space and time."
"You're being selfish," Ianto snapped. He thought of something, then added, quietly but no less angered, "Does this have anything to do with what I tried to do to save Lisa?"
"No. That was a different matter: what you did there could have allowed the Cybermen to get another foothold on the earth," Jack said, tired. "This would affect you and I and anyone else that knew you, but it wouldn't be as damaging. I don't think. Unless it set off another Miracle Day."
"Don't remind me of that," Ianto muttered, shuddering at the memory. For a time, he had hoped The Miracle meant that he and Jack would be allowed to stay together forever, but the cost had been too great: the world economy was still trying to recover.
"So you see why I want you to stay a common garden human?" Jack said, gloomily.
"I think you're being stubborn, but I'm tired of arguing," Ianto relented.
Even still, even with the healing pod shut up in a containment chamber in the bowels of the Hub, Ianto snuck it out at least once a week for a treatment, careful to keep Jack from finding out what he was up to.
* * * *
But even these efforts could not keep the inevitable at bay forever. Though Ianto had started to age, it was too slow to keep Jack from getting suspicious, unless it was a side effect of that healing pod. It did not seem likely and so he kept a closer eye on the sealed storage units in the Hub.
Sure enough, he caught Ianto in the act of using the very thing he had forbidden his lover to use. That had resulted in a royal fight and nearly ended their relationship then and there. The very thing Ianto had done to try and stay with Jack nearly turned into a wedge to drive them apart.
"Get out of here and don't let me see you again," Jack snarled, as he stood over a beaten, cowed Ianto, lying sprawled and bloodied at his feet. His lover could only obey, getting up and limping away without so much as a backward glance.
Once Ianto had gone, Jack made short work of the healing pod, smashing the bits and sealing the remains in a block of concrete which he later dumped into the ocean.
That was the final blow, as far as Jack was concerned: he could not bear to watch the inevitable, and so he left the earth, leaving Torchwood in Anwyn's capable hands.
He never counted on the girl finding ways to keep tabs on him, but she had her mother's wise intelligence. He had come back to earth fifty years later, ostensibly to see who'd won the Universal Beauty pageant (what used to be Miss Universe, till the "Miss" was declared sexist and exclusive; the new named felt even sillier: Shouldn't a Universal Beauty pageant included beauties from other planets?), but the moment he got to earth, someone pinged his wrist strap, and he knew only one person on earth who knew how to do that.
He returned to Cardiff, returning to the bay, where Anwyn awaited him: even with silver hair, she looked beautiful, though he knew better than to even think about taking her as a dancing partner; she could hand his handsome ass to him if she wanted to and probably still could. She smirked at the sight of him. "You keep coming back: thought you had had enough of this place," she teased.
"I'm like a bad penny," he said. "So what did you need me for?"
She drew in a long breath. "It's Ianto: he's not well," she said.
"Side effects of that thing he used to try and keep pace with me?" he asked.
"Could be: once he stopped using it, he kept fresh for a while, but the past ten years, he went downhill," she said. "He wanted to see you one last time."
"It's better if I don't," he hedged.
She squared her shoulders looking him in the eye. "Better for you or better for him?" she snapped.
She had seen right through him. "All right, it would be better for me: I'd rather have him still young and fresh and pretty in my last memory of him," he admitted. "But if he saw me looking like this, would that make him feel any better?" His temple had started to turn to silver and the lines framing his mouth had deepened.
"He wants to apologize," she said. "He's not angry with you any more: he wants your forgiveness, if you have it in you."
"I never did like goodbyes, but I suppose it has to be this way," he said.
Without further argument, she whisked him to the rest home where she had put up Ianto, a comfortable place, not too far out into the country, but where the houses were not so close together and where the air felt fresher than it did in the city.
Jack hesitated outside the door of his lover's room, steeling his courage to the sticking point. He'd faced down Cybermen and Daleks and Barabbachakals, but he found himself having trouble facing down one old man.
After pacing about for several minutes, he reached out and lifted the latch, stepping into the sunlit room: he had expected something cold and clinical, but the room within made him think of an Edwardian bed sitter.
A wizened figure lay on the bed, propped on pillows, an oxygen tube in his nostrils, eyes closed and sunken deep into their sockets. Jack forced himself to approach the bed, sitting down on a chair set by the head.
Ianto turned his head, opening his eyes, a smile quirking his mouth. "You came," he creaked, his voice like the chirp of a cricket in autumn. "I knew you'd come."
"That's the nature of the beast that I am," he said, smirking, reaching for Ianto's hand, finding the skin as thin as parchment over the bones. Ianto closed his fingers around Jack's, slowly, gently. "I'm impossible to get rid of."
"I'm glad for that," Ianto admitted. He paused, slowly turning his face to stare out the window. Then he turned back to look Jack in the eye. "You were right: you can't stave off the inevitable. I'm still going to die. You're going to live."
"I was away, trying to find a cure," Jack admitted.
"Did you?"
"If I had, I'd use it now, so you won't be going alone," Jack said.
"You're here: I won't be alone," Ianto admitted. "I'm sorry."
"For what?" Jack asked, feigning ignorance.
"For trying to live forever. You were right: it's better to let life run the way it should, let nature take you when it's time," he admitted.
"It's all in the past," Jack said. "You're forgiven. I just wonder... if you can forgive me for walking out."
"You had your reasons: I was wrong, to try reaching the way I did," Ianto confessed.
"You'd better save your strength," Jack said.
"For what?" Ianto asked, dryly.
Jack perched himself on the bed, leaning over Ianto. "For this," he said and leaned down to kiss him, one last time. Ianto's lips felt shriveled, but the flesh still felt soft. He parted his lips slightly in a sigh, letting Jack kiss him harder and deeper.
A moment later, Jack pulled away, laying himself down beside the dying man, slipping an arm under his neck. Ianto put a fragile hand on Jack's before closing his eyes, tiredly.
They remained this way for hours, till the sun moved behind another wing of the house and the light faded into shadow and dusk. Till the last crickets of the season started to chirp rustily under the window, and Jack felt Ianto's chest stop rising and falling...
