Title: How To Save A Life

Author: Cait (aka ADDyke)

Pairing: Jack/Ianto

Rating: M (see warning)

Spoilers: Season One Ep. 4 – Cyberwoman (minor spoilers for 2.12 – Fragments)

Summary: Post-Cyberwoman – How do you save someone who doesn't want to be saved?

WARNING: Contains graphic mature themes (suicide attempt).

DISCLAIMER: Torchwood, Dr Who and all their characters and associated creations do not belong to me – they belong to Auntie Beeb who robs me blind with the telly licence fee, and Russell T Davies, and his fantastic writing team and cast – which is why they live in nice posh flats and I'm living with my parents and trying desperately to get a decent job (thus I'm making no money from this).

No point in suing – you can't get blood from a stone.

The plot however is 'mine all mine'.

Jack looked at the papers on his desk, reading without taking in, barely registering the words that swam in front of him.

It was three o'clock in the morning, but Jack was not going to get any rest, his own thoughts tormenting him, the events of the night before playing through his head like a horror film.

The end of the world, brought into his Hub by a stupid boy who loved too much.

Except he wasn't stupid, was he? Not the way he managed to keep his darkest secret under their noses for so long.

And was it really possible to love too much? It had been so long, so long since Jack had given himself to love he couldn't be the judge of that.

Toshiko's words from that morning, the morning after, kept playing over in his head.

How Ianto wasn't the first member of the team to commit treason to save someone they loved.

Toshiko had betrayed her country, but Ianto had betrayed him. Was it worse because it seemed so personal?

Owen's anger. Gwen's naive empathy. They were simple emotions, understandable reactions to Ianto's grave deeds. Toshiko's quiet understanding was harder to comprehend but still valid – she couldn't bring herself to cast a stone against Ianto, not when she saw herself being guilty of the same crime.

And himself – well, he didn't know what to feel.

All he knew was that he would rather suffer that punch, Ianto's rage or witness him weeping over his mutilated girlfriend, covered in blood than look into Ianto's eyes and see the empty void looking back at him again, that emptiness that seemed to consume him all day.

Some might call that emotion worry or pity. Jack didn't know what it was.

Jack's train of thought was disturbed by the sound of a chair falling over. He rushed into the main body of the Hub to investigate, gun drawn – no-one should be there this time of night, especially not after what had had happened the night before.

At first nothing seemed out of the ordinary, but the slightest movement in the peripheral of his eye caught his attention. He moved slowly towards the source, only to lower his gun in horror.

There, swinging from an overhead metal pipe, was an man wearing an all-too-familiar suit, hanging from his own tie, his legs twitching in a macabre dance…

"Ianto? Ianto! No!" Jack sprinted over in panic, grabbing the hanging man's legs, trying to take some of the weight in a vain attempt to ease the pressure that the tie was exerting on his throat. Jack grabbed the up-turned stool that Ianto had kicked out from under his own legs and climbed on it, still trying to carry some of Ianto's weight with one hand and desperately searching his own pockets 

for his penknife with the other. Holding the knife in a trembling hand, Jack slipped it under the tie stretched around Ianto's neck, and began cutting the taut fabric under the knot.

"Come on!" Jack gasped, as the tie still held fast, but the twitching of Ianto's legs had stopped – he was running out of time.

The tie gave way without warning, and although Jack tried to hold Ianto's deadweight they both fell to the concrete floor.

Jack recovered quickly and tried to turn over Ianto's now prone body – the sickeningly feeling of déjà vu hitting Jack as he remembered pulling the same man from the pond under the water tower a day before.

Ianto wasn't breathing.

Jack cradled his head in his lap, and for the second time in just over 24 hours, saved Ianto Jones's life with a kiss.

"Drink this…" Jack handed Ianto a crystal glass containing a very large, very neat measure of whiskey – Owen may not have thought it medically advisable but Jack had been in enough war zones to know that a measure of whiskey can go a long way.

Ianto took the glass without looking up. He was on the couch behind Tosh's desk, hunched over, physically trembling. He hadn't said a word since he had come round.

Jack was pacing with his own drink in his hand, staring out into the quiet, darkened hub searching for an answer. He caught sight of a file on Owen's desk, so out of place as Ianto normally made sure everyone's filing was up-to-date. He recognised it as a 'Red Tape' file, Owen's nickname for the large amount of paperwork he had to fill out in the event of someone's Torchwood related death. Actually Owen filled out the bare minimum he had to and got Ianto do the rest.

All part of 'cleaning up the shit'.

Jack opened the file out of curiosity, wondering why it had been left out and his heart dropped as he read the front page.

A near-complete death certificate, filled out in that clear scrawl that could only have come from Ianto's fountain pen.

Surname: Jones

First name(s): Ianto

He had filled out his own death certificate, as much as he could.

Cause of Death: Suicide (by hanging/strangulation)

All Owen had to do was sign it.

Ianto had prepped the autopsy forms, and completed the form for the morgue as well, right down to the drawer number – the drawer, which Jack noticed sadly, next to the one in which Ianto had so tenderly placed the metal corrupted form of Lisa earlier that day.

He had left Owen with the bare minimum to do.

"Oh, Ianto…" Jack whispered, looking at the shattered man before him, whose only suicide note was to fill out the paperwork, so he caused no more fuss than he already had.

"Why?" Ianto looked up, suddenly. "Why did you cut me down?"

His eyes, so empty all day, were now burning with emotion again – not anger this time, but desperation.

"Why didn't you leave me there?" His voice was hoarse, damaged. "When you had that gun to my head, why didn't you shoot me when you had the chance?"

The sheen bluntness of the question took Jack by surprise. Despite the multitude of threats they had exchanged during those moments of anger, Jack had never, could never have wanted Ianto dead.

Instead of giving him the real answer though, Jack gave him the official one.

"Canary Wharf claimed two... three more lives last night. I'll be damned if it claims your life as well."

"Jack, I'm not living. I'm existing. There's a difference." Ianto's eyes bore into him, burning as much as Ianto's use of his first name. "I don't have anything left to live for."

Ianto looked away, back to the untouched whiskey glass shaking in his hands.

"They say Torchwood is a job for life – and that's exactly what they take." He whispered.

Jack sat beside him on the couch – he could feel Ianto trembling even through he wasn't even touching him.

"I haven't even got the energy to hate you… after what you did to her…" Ianto said – there was none of the previous venom in his voice. "I'm sick of fighting – I can't do it anymore… why didn't you just let me go?"

"You may be ready to throw your life away but I'm not ready to let you!"

"And who gives you the right to make that decision? Who lives and who dies?" The venomous edge was back in Ianto's voice, despite the hoarseness "Who gave you the right to play God with people's lives?"

"I had to kill the monster she had become, Ianto! Can't you see that?"

"I could still see the girl I loved, can't you see that?" Ianto sighed "I wasn't ready to give up on her... you forced me to. You ordered me to."

Ianto looked at his own hands, still cradling the whiskey glass, with a look of horror and disgust as if he could still see Lisa's blood on them.

"You didn't have to shoot her..." He said very quietly, as if confessing to a priest "You didn't have to pump four bullets into her. My finger was on the trigger. I was going to do it. I would have shot her. I would have followed your orders."

Ianto's whole body shook and his voice broke "I would have killed her."

"I know." Jack said simply "I should never have ordered you back in there – I ordered the team to fire because I knew it had to be done... I wanted to spare you. I never should've made you go in there."

Ianto looked at him with red-rimmed eyes.

"Let me go, Jack, please..." He pleaded.

"I can't do that." Jack wanted to touch him, to shake some sense into him, but he knew that would probably make things worse. "You were there when we first used that glove, you know what he told us... There is nothing after death! Believe me, please! If you kill yourself she is not going to be waiting for you – there's nothing!"

"Nothing is better than this, than living without her, than this emptiness, this pain..." Ianto whispered "Let me go..."

"I'm not going to stand and watch you kill yourself!" Jack snapped.

"You can't save everyone, Jack! You can't save me. I'm not worth saving. I'm beyond all salvation."

"Don't say that, please, Ianto."

"I mean it, Jack... promise me, promise me next time you wouldn't stop me."

"I can't..." Jack shook his head "Promise me there isn't going to be a next time."

"There has to be a next time." Ianto said firmly, but he didn't look at him. "Because I can't go on like this, just existing. What have I got left to stay for?"

"Then find something, some reason to stay!" Jack moved off the sofa and knelt in front of him, forcing him to look him in the eyes. "I'm not losing you, Ianto!"

Jack took the untouched whiskey glass out of Ianto's hands before grabbing his wrists "Here's the deal, Ianto – one year. Stay for one year – try and find something to live for. Find a girlfriend, a boyfriend! Find it in Torchwood or outside it... find it in me, even if it's in hating me. Find something, please!" His voice dropped into a soft whisper "But if you can't, after a year, I wouldn't stop you... I wouldn't save you."

"And if I don't agree..." Ianto asked, turning his face away from Jack.

"I'll retcon you..." Jack said "No more memories of Torchwood, Canary Wharf... no more pain..."

"No more Lisa..." Ianto added sadly "I would lose her forever."

"Yes, you would..."

"I can't do that..." Ianto shook his head "... I couldn't just throw her memory away like that, like she meant nothing..."

"But you would just as easily throw your own life away, like you meant nothing..."

Ianto looked at him, truly looked at him for the first time that night, and Jack shuddered as he realised that was exactly how he felt.

"One year... give me a year to save you." Jack said, hands on still gripping on to Ianto's wrists. "Please."

The silence was deafening and all that Jack could see was the pain in Ianto's eyes, that utter desperation.

"Okay..." Ianto whispered "One year."

"Thank you." Jack said, standing up. He guided the whiskey glass back into Ianto's hands, and walked back over to Owen's desk, and picked up the file once more. He studied the half-completed death certificate for a few more minutes before ripping it in half, then quarters and eights, letting the pieces flutter into the waste paper basket.

When he looked at Ianto again, he had downed about half the whiskey, and the desperation in his eyes was gone, replaced by the emptiness again. His mask, that tailored façade was back, as much as it could be with the ring of bruised and chaffed skin around his upper neck.

Ianto put the glass down and got up from the sofa, dusting off his suit, redoing the top two buttons of his shirt.

"I'm just going to tidy myself up, Sir. The team will be here in a few hours." He said hoarsely.

Jack simply nodded, taken back by the abrupt change in Ianto, back to his proper, butler-like persona.

Ianto excused himself in a nod, and walked away, his posture rod-iron straight, showing no sign of how broken he was inside but unable to hide the heaviness in his step.

Jack watched him as he disappeared towards the locker rooms. He picked up the frayed tie that he had cut from Ianto's neck, and ran his fingers over the silken fabric.

One year. He had one year to save Ianto Jones from himself.

It was an unspoken anniversary that came to pass quietly and with little ceremony.

An anniversary unmarked, except by one.

That week happened to be one of the busiest in Torchwood ever, or at least within Toshiko's memory.

What had started out as a simple case of an UFO where there shouldn't be one ended up with Torchwood dealing with an alien spacecraft crash landing in the Merthyr valley. This turned out to 

be the advance guard of a battle force that had gotten lost in the Rift en route to a planet that even Jack couldn't pronounce the name of.

It was a logistical nightmare; the vaults were full of the alien soldiers (the lack of hospitality due to the fact they had started shooting everything on sight), there was a massive containment of arms on board the craft that needed catalogued and archived, the craft itself was currently parked in the garage and there was the small matter of retconning an entire village, especially the sheep farmer whose flock had been turned into barbequed lamb by the craft's impact.

If Ianto was honest, he was glad that they were so busy, that he was so busy. The large workload meant he didn't have time to dwell on his own thoughts, it meant the others didn't have time to notice how quiet and withdrawn he became as the date approached.

He was surprised how he managed to cope as the day came and went, a whisper against the cacophony of chaos that was a busy day in Torchwood.

He was surprised the waves of depression that had threatened to drown him several times over that year had just ebbed at the edges of his thoughts the day before - the anniversary - that he was coping, that he had started to live again.

And he was clearing up the mess, enjoying the quiet peace of the Hub. The rest of the team had finally headed home for the first time in three days, and it was just him. And Jack.

And as he filled the black bin bag with pizza boxes and empty drinks cans, he realised two things. Firstly he liked the thought of just him and Jack, and it was the first time he actually admitted that to himself.

Secondly he remembered it was another anniversary that night, or rather an expiry date.

One year. One year to learn to live again.

He strolled across the Hub to a darkened corner, where if you knew where to look, there was a dent in the piping of the overhead walkway. Where, exactly one year ago, he had stood on a stool, tied the end of his tie to that pipe and tried to hang himself.

Amazing how much changes in a year.

"I'm sorry I wasn't there for you yesterday..." Ianto heard Jack speaking from behind him. "I know it was difficult for you."

No more difficult as some days, Ianto thought.

"I was fine, Jack – we were busy." Ianto said, still looking at that dent in the piping "The Rift doesn't stop for Christmas, birthdays or even St. David's Day – why would it stop for an anniversary?"

"Still..." Jack stepped closer, until he was standing behind him, his hand reaching for Ianto's shoulder.

"One year." Ianto whispered, laying his own hand on top of Jack's.

"Ianto?" Jack's voice was full of concern. This was the moment of truth and he hoped he had done enough.

"Don't worry, Jack – I'm not going to do anything stupid..." Ianto smiled as he turned to look at him "I think you did it."

"Come here..." Jack said softly, pulling Ianto into an embrace.

Ianto buried his face into Jack's shoulder.

"Thank you, Jack..." He whispered into the fabric "... for saving me."

No, Ianto, Jack thought as he clung to him a little tighter, you saved me.

The End