The Darkness Between Heartbeats - Torchwood - Gen (Jack)

Title: The Darkness Between Heartbeats
Characters: Jack, Tosh, Owen (some Tosh/Owen)
Word Count: 1500
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Written for 7_lies
Summary: The afterlife can never hold him long.


Jack opens his eyes in the darkness and knows that he won't be here long: he never is. The blackness can't claim him. Usually he hears the whispers from afar. People he doesn't know, strangers, giving him weeping messages to pass onto their loved ones. He never does. They wouldn't believe him anyway.

Yet this time is different. This time there is a voice he recognises and a girl he knows standing just a few paces away. He blinks, watching her. He wants to speak, wants to be able to say anything to her; he can remember holding her as she died. He watched her take her last breath, killed by his own brother, and now he can't find the words to tell her he's sorry.

Tosh crouches down so that she is at eye-level, and those eyes… They are wide and sad, accepting and unbelieving. The dress she is wearing is long and black, but the bare skin of her arms seems to sparkle like stars at night.

"He's not here," she whispers to him. Her black eyes blink. "He never came here."

Who? he wants to ask but his voice is still frozen. Who?

"Find him – he's lost. You have to find him, Jack."

She reaches out to him. Her arm spans the space between them, the whole universe. She is close and she is far. Nothing is concrete in the black beyond.

"Jack," she repeats. "Jack."

He opens his eyes and his heart is beating, his lungs are gasping for the cold sweep of oxygen. Gwen looks down at him with full-bodied concern. "Jack, are you alright?"

No, no. He shakes his head and knows that they need to keep moving but his mind is locked back in that place. He's not alright at all.

*

He dies again three weeks later, his chest ripped open by dagger-like talons, and he enters the blackness screaming. Her hands hold him. "Shh," she whispers, her fingers running through his hair as his head rests in her lap. She rocks back and forth. "Shh, you're okay. It's all okay now."

It's not.

There is blackness all around and her eyes are soulless. The hand in his hair is not warm, is not cold, is not real. She's an echoing fragment left behind, left wandering the dark.

"I'm sorry," he whispers when his mouth decides to work. His voice makes no sound but she seems to hear him anyway.

She smiles, tear-stained, and shakes her head. "Don't apologise," she says. "Please, don't. I can't stand it."

"I should've been there. I should've stopped it."

Should have done a hundred things differently: should have protected her. Shouldn’t have left his brother behind in the first place, all those hundreds of years ago. She hushes him again. "It's alright. It's alright, Jack. It's alright."

He doesn't know how many times she says it, whispering it as she soothes him. Forever. A second. He needs to breathe soon. He needs to come back.

"Find him," she whispers, her mantra changing just as he gasps for air and wakes up to see Ianto wrestling with the eagle-esque alien that had killed him. He forgets, once more, to ask who.

*

He waits until the Hub is empty that night, echoing around him. At this time of night he used to still be able to hear the sound of Tosh's abused keyboard as she worked late into the night: sometimes he had to come and place his hands on her shoulders to remind her that, despite her wishes to the contrary, she was still human. She still had to sleep.

They haven't found anyone qualified enough to take her position yet so he sits in her old chair. It doesn't smell like her any more but sometimes he'll imagine that it does. Sometimes he'll sit here and pretend that none of the last few months ever happened; that tomorrow Tosh and Owen will wander into work like normal. Jack has lived a long time. He has seen countless deaths. It never gets any easier.

He takes out his gun, thinking of Tosh. There isn't time to feel the pain as he pulls the trigger.

"Who?" he says immediately as he sees her standing in front of him. Her dress has changed. It's a little shorter now – and he's definitely not complaining about that – and her hair has been pulled back from her face. "Who do you need me to find, Toshiko?"

She stares at him, head tilted to the side. The expression on her face isn't human. It is so much more than that, but so much less as well. Half-way between the two. Perhaps the Doctor would have a name for what she is now, Jack thinks. Perhaps the Doctor could explain it. Perhaps he could fix it.

Then again, perhaps not. Not even the Doctor can fight death.

Tosh smiles, soft and serene. "You already know," she whispers – and when he wakes up, slumped in her chair, he realises that he does.

*

Yet knowing is one thing – and knowing how to fix it is another.

Ianto thinks he's gone mad and maybe he's right. Jack doesn't feel sane any more, endless searching for an answer to what might have happened to keep Owen from his afterlife. Unfinished business isn't a valid reason. He stands on top of the building and looks down at the long fall that awaits him. The wind whips at his ankles and pulls at his coat. It's hard to make himself jump, but he has to do it.

He opens his eyes in the black and she's waiting for him, waiting like she always is these days. The dress is different. Longer, but it covers her shoulders now. He thinks he can see the sparkle of sequins lining the hemline: he'd compliment her on her taste, figure-hugging and just revealing enough, but something tells him that now isn't the time.

"Owen," he gasps, sitting up and getting his bearings. "What do I have to do to help him?"

"The glove still exists, Jack," Tosh says.

"What?" No, that isn't right. Can't be right. "Owen destroyed it."

"Destroyed its form but not the glove itself. The shards still exist."

Shards. All of this because of shards of metal?

"Jack, please. You need to help him. Help me."

And he will. He has to. He doesn't know how – but, damn it, he'll find a way.

*

And he does. He does because he's Captain Jack Harkness, because finding a way is what he does and because he has eternity to try.

It takes him too long. It takes him over two hundred deaths before every single piece that binds Owen to this world is gone. Ianto's gone by now too. Gwen is still alive, somewhere, but she and Rhys have left Torchwood, left Cardiff, left him behind. Everything changes. Nothing stays the same.

He does it once he's watched the last pinprick-sized glob of metal bubble and disappear. The tension doesn't fade, but it eases away like a weight has been lifted. The sound that leaves him might be a laugh or it might be a sob: it doesn't really matter anyway.

He's told himself that he won't do this again – what if one day he pulls the trigger and doesn't come back? – but he needs to know if it worked. He needs to know if he's finally taken care of his team like he should have when they were all alive. The metal tastes bland in his mouth.

He opens his eyes to the black and they're there, all of them. Tosh's dress is even shorter this time, the sleeves are longer, and around her shoulders Owen's arm rests. He's dressed in a shirt and tie, the tie slack, the top button undone. He looks like he's just come to the end of a fantastic wedding. Sitting on the ground – in as much as there is any ground here – Ianto is grinning. The rich purple of his shirt is a bright dab of colour in this place.

Jack can't speak again. There are no words to be said.

Owen nods at him, a thank you. "I owe you one, mate," he says. Tosh rests her head against his shoulder and smiles. She looks so happy, happier than he ever saw her when she was alive. "Thank you."

Jack can only shake his head: no need for thanks, he was just…

"Just being a great bloody hero, I know." Owen rolls his eyes. "I'm glad I met you, Captain. Turned my life around."

Not necessarily in the right direction. Where would Owen be now if Jack hadn't recruited him? Where would any of them be – their lives could have been so different. They could have still been alive.

Tosh's smile is indulgent. "We made our choice," she says, "and we stick to it."

"No regrets," Ianto chimes in.

They watch him with the warm eyes of a grandparent watching their grandchild's first steps. "Take care of yourself, boss," Owen says. "It's been a pleasure…"

And that's it.

He opens his eyes and that is it, alone in the Hub. Over. Done. Finished.

Goodbye.