So, unfortunately, this is it guys. This is the end of this rollercoaster of a story that I have absolutely adored writing. It's captured my heart in a way I never imagined it could. I have loved every sentence, every word, every syllable of this story, and I really hope you guys have to. I've allowed myself to grow as a writer, and I'm so happy that all of you lovely readers have kept up, and kept reviewing, and kept loving this story as much as I have.

I hope I do it justice – I know a lot of people won't want to read this chapter because it's COE, but, well...I like to think I rounded it off nicely. I would really appreciate as many of you guys reading and reviewing this as possible, I'd love to give Better Left Unsaid a huge send off from it's amazing fans. I love you guys so much, you've really made this a truly amazing experience for me. Thank you.

It'd only been a day, but if felt like years. And, sitting out in the rain, freezing cold and soaking, Jack Harkness mused that it might always feel this way. He'd almost forgotten. That cold, sharp sting of waking up alone, no smiles, no coffee, nothing. Because it was all gone now.

He knew that this wasn't just the raw ache of losing Ianto – he'd only just scraped the surface of the long-suffering years that fell ahead of him, bruised and drowning in misery without the man he loved – it was Stephen, too. Hell, it was still even Tosh and Owen. Jack couldn't be surprised at how much it hurt.

"It's too late..."

And it was that – the fact that Ianto had already given up from the second the 4-5-6 told them it was over. He had believed it. He hadn't even struggled. Ianto probably wanted to make it as painless as possible for Jack. He'd known resistance was futile, and so he hadn't fought.

He'd let death succumb him, and he'd left Jack behind. Stranded on a world that felt completely and utterly empty without Ianto – everyone else on the face of the Earth may as well have died with him. It wouldn't have made this any harder – in fact, probably easier. He wouldn't have to do the inevitable right now. He wondered idly if he should feel bad for thinking that. He shrugged, realising that the part of his heart which allowed him feeling had probably died alongside Ianto. Every other wrecked, torn shred of his heart had.

Jack knew that Gwen had already told Rhiannon – but the announcement must have been so rushed and insincere that Jack felt that he couldn't let it go like this. Rhiannon deserved the truth, even if the immortal would have to retcon it out of her later.

His blank eyes followed the passing cars, fixing on each one momentarily in a vain attempt to find a distraction. Rhiannon would be here any minute and he had to compose himself. He could blame his damp face on the rain, but his blank insides? He'd ran out of excuses a long time ago.

One car, he noticed, had pulled up outside the bleak, abandoned park. A woman was stepping out of it, only carrying a small handbag, but Jack could see from here the overwhelming weight of the emotional baggage she was dragging behind her.

This was Rhiannon. This was it. The closest to Ianto he'd ever get again. It wasn't enough – how could it ever be? – but it was almost comforting. There was someone in the world who had lost nearly as much as he had.

Her stance was hunched, walk nervous; the dingy clang of heavy-soled shoes against paving was doing little to enhance her overall outlook. Jack didn't suppose she cared. He'd stopped giving a damn a long time ago. People could stop and stare all they liked, poke at the insides of his black heart until they were satisfied with how broken he was – he'd even let them. What was the point in fighting? There was nothing to fight for anymore, Jack knew that.

"I suppose you're Jack." Rhiannon said, settling onto the bench next to him. They didn't touch – the immortal would have recoiled and probably vomited at any physical contact right now. He couldn't let himself be comforted.

"You suppose correct," he replied, in a voice that Rhiannon mentally chalked down to 'scarily monotone.' She supposed that he had lost more than she could ever imagine; any fool could see that. The empty, vacant gape in his eyes and in his heart could have been tattooed across his forehead and it wouldn't have made it any clearer.

"You picked a hell of a day to have a chat." Rhiannon remarked, crossing her arms securely across her chest, protectively. A man this broken scared her.

"It seems...right. If the sun had been shining, it would have been both stupidly ironic and scarily inappropriate." Jack told her, still staring straight ahead at something that wasn't there.

"I guess so." Rhiannon mused. "If you think I'm going to ask what happened, I'm not. I don't think I could bare it. But...were you there?" She asked, in a voice that Jack suspected was uncharacteristically timid. But then again, how would he know? He hadn't made an effort to meet Ianto's family before, and now he was paying the price.

"Until the bitter end," Jack nodded, trying not to let memories cloud his mind. He wouldn't have been able to reminisce and not break down, and he couldn't burden Rhiannon with that.

"How did you survive?" She asked, genuinely curiously. The immortal supposed that it was any excuse to steer away from the subject of her little brother.

He wished he could explain properly, but instead settled with, "Long story."

"Isn't everything, nowadays?" Rhiannon sighed. "Ianto's job, long story. Ianto's girlfriend, long story. Ianto's social life, long story. And you," she turned her head to look at him with dark, penetrating eyes, "you were always a hell of a long story." She finished, fixing him with a glare that almost lived up to the serenity of Ianto's.

"What did he tell you?" Jack asked, quietly. He almost didn't want to know.

"He didn't have to say much;" Rhiannon told him, "the look in his eyes made it plain. Just that you were gorgeous, special, and his boss. Which makes me wonder how you were involved in all this. His death and...whatnot."

Jack had to applaud her – mentally, of course – on her ability to stay so calm. He supposed that she was like him – composed on the outside, screaming and broken on the inside. "I had to watch it happen."

Rhiannon's hand lifted up off of her upper arm, and hovered hesitantly in the air for a few minutes, before she returned it, clearly thinking better of any physical contact. "I would say you poor sod, but I don't think that would even scrape the surface."

"It wouldn't." Jack agreed, sincerely. "After everything that had happened...it was too much for me. I'm leaving," he told her, and before Rhiannon could even open her mouth to ask any of the questions beginning with w that Jack had learnt to detest over his many years, he had answered with, "as soon as fucking possible."

Rhiannon leant back against the creaking wood of the bench, sighing heavily. "He meant a lot to you, I gather?"

Jack just nodded.

"Bloody hope so too. If you were enough to keep him from...well, I would say living, but...in that one time he came back whilst he was...doing whatever with you, he looked more alive than I've seen him in months. So, if you were keeping him from...everything else, he must have regarded you in the same way." Rhiannon told him, blinking back tears that she had been shedding for the hours since she'd been informed of her brother's death.

"I like to think so." Jack allowed some emotion to seep into his monotone, and Rhiannon almost wished he hadn't. Broken vowels ripped out of his mouth, bitter words forming sentences which turned into streams of nostalgia and nausea. "He was a hell of a man, and I just wish I'd met him...before it was too late, I suppose. I wish I could have saved him, more than you'll ever believe. The truth is, just loving him saved my life. He saved me so many times, I prayed that one day I could return the favour. But I couldn't, I just couldn't." Jack let the tears fall, unashamedly. "I failed him so badly. I let him down."

"Hey, hey," Rhiannon shushed him, voice low and unbearably soothing. "It's okay."

"I hate it when people say that," Jack growled, head dropped into his shaking hands in a picture of desperation. "It's not o-fucking-kay. Because I failed."

"You're a proud man, right?" Rhiannon teased, gently.

"This isn't about my pride," the immortal snarled back, jaded. "This is about me not being able to save the man I love. How can I ever live with myself?"

"Then don't." Rhiannon replied, as if it was that simple. He wished it was.

"I wish I didn't have to. If I could give up now, I would. But believe me when I say I can't." Jack told her, voice surprisingly steady for how cut up he was feeling.

Rhiannon thought better than to question that, but she had a sneaking suspicion that she wouldn't want to know the answer even if the older man had given it to her. "Where will you go?" She asked, quietly.

"I don't know." Jack answered, truthfully. "Anywhere that doesn't have these memories." Though, he considered, he was running out of places that he hadn't imprinted with his immortality.

"Desperate to forget, are we?" Rhiannon said, only half-teasing.

"Wouldn't you be?" Jack snarled, but then bit his tongue lightly, scolding himself. "Sorry...I just..."

"I understand," Rhiannon told him, gently. Of course, she didn't, but Jack chose not to pick her up on that.

"I won't forget." Jack replied. "I never could. I just...want to remember in a way I can handle. This..." he looked around him, helplessly. "I just can't handle it. I loved him, and that's all I want to remember. But that's just a wish, like I could ever truly forget him."

"Be careful what you wish for." Rhiannon warned, in a voice that sounded so similar to Ianto's that Jack could have cried to it.

Alone, sat in some stupid, achingly heterosexual – though he wouldn't have preferred a homosexual one, pulling was the last thought on his mind right now – bar in the middle of a town on a planet he didn't care to recall the name of, Jack Harkness sat down for the first time in days. He'd almost forgotten how, at a loss when he saw the cushiony barstool; it looked more alien to him than the green, slimy blobs that inhabited this planet.

He'd been working himself life a machine for the last week. After leaving Earth – the six months of obsessive drinking and frequent death seemed to do nothing to ease the thumping ache of guilt and hurt and loneliness gnawing on his heart. That pain was the only confirmation that his heart was still there; he wouldn't have been surprised to see a heart-shaped hole in his chest where the organ had been. He wouldn't have noticed the pain – on the outside, he just felt numb.

He'd left Earth, leaving the scars and memories behind – he'd always wondered about leaving but something had always held him back. That something, he realised now, had been Ianto. Losing him had pushed the immortal off of the edge. Since he'd arrived on this God-forsaken planet, he'd mapped out his whole journey. Renting a large, airy room in a block of some similar, he'd pinned a solitary, wall-covering map up, depicting the exact patterns the many millions of planets around here were played out into.

He was going to go everywhere.

He wouldn't give himself the time to rest, as he hadn't this week. He hadn't given himself time to think. Every time he did...well, it was inevitable who his thoughts would race to. As they always did. He hadn't slept, sat, stopped once. He couldn't, wouldn't let himself. He knew all too well what a dark place his mind would end up in if he allowed it to wander.

He just couldn't do it anymore.

Jack Harkness stopped drinking, settling the intricately carved glass on the cool surface of the bar. He reached into his coat pocket, and pulled out the email that Owen had sent him all those months ago. He'd printed it out, and it was one of the few things he'd brought with him from Earth, amongst some of them were Ianto's stopwatch – too beautiful and memory-stricken and heartbreaking to leave behind – and his memory box that was normally stowed into his draw at the Hub, until he'd been forced to leave it at Ianto's flat one night. It was among one of the best decisions he'd ever made.

He also pulled out the notepad that Ianto had once suggested he carried about his person. Albeit good for SOS notes – which Jack had had to send out startling quantities of in his life – and adorning notes left for Ianto around the Hub, it had also made a surprisingly good make-shift diary. But now it was for one thing – a letter. A letter he should have written a long time ago.

Suppressing the threatening tears, Jack twirled his biro in his grasp, which felt achingly lonely without someone there to fill the gaps between his fingers. He supposed he would have to get used to it.

What else could he do?

Dear Owen,

...I wish I knew where to start. I suppose that there's no words to describe how these last few months have played out. I don't think any such wicked words should be used, should be allowed to be used by anyone. I suppose devastating, catastrophic, hellish...they maybe come close for some people. But, for me, they barely scrape the surface of what's happened.

I don't know how it all started. I suppose in the past - as most of these things seem to nowadays. I did...something bad. And when I say bad, I'm not talking letting a few Weevils loose or causing a few deaths. Oh, how I wish it was that simple.

I suppose you can see right through this, can't you? You had every right to...back then. But...Owen, you see, these things that have happened...I don't think you could ever forgive me for what I've done. To everyone.

I've torn families, cities, worlds apart. The newspapers can blame the aliens, claim it was all their fault. They could pin it on the politicians who agreed to it. But, for me, the crime I committed better those petty ones a million times. Well, I suppose better is the wrong word. What I've done is really, truly unforgivable.

I suppose I should just get on with it, huh? I think...maybe saying it out loud, or rather writing it, might confirm it in my head. I don't know if I can deal with that, Owen. But, then again, you deserve the truth. You deserve to know what a failure I am. If you thought I'd messed up before...well, you haven't seen anything yet.

Ianto's dead. There, I said it. I wish I didn't have to say it, I wish I could undo it more than anything. And do you know the worst part? I led him to his death. He was following me, just like he always does. But this time...well, the consequences were like never before.

He died in my arms, at the hands of the 4-5-6. You wouldn't have heard of them and you wouldn't have wanted to. They poisoned the air in Thames House – the bastards; they let thousands die. He died a hero, Owen. He died, trying to save everyone. He succeeded like never before. We won.

But, the costs of winning were worse than we could have ever imagined. I didn't just lose Ianto, Owen, I lost my grandson too. I had to sacrifice him to save everyone else. I wish I could say it had been worth it.

But, the truth is, losing Ianto and Stephen have hit me harder than I could have ever imagined. I've left Earth, and I don't intend to go back. How could I?

How could I face it all, knowing what I've done?

I just can't, Owen. I know you told me to look after him, and I really tried. I did. But...I couldn't save him. I sometimes wonder...would he have been better off if he'd have chosen you? Would you have failed him like I have?

I know you told me not to, but I fucked up. I really, really fucked up. And I don't know what I'm going to do now. I hope...wherever you and Tosh and Ianto are – because I can't believe there's nothing for you guys, I just can't – I hope he finds you in the darkness. And I hope you take better care of him than I ever could. Set his heart on fire the way I never managed. He deserves it.

Yours truly,

Captain Jack Harkness.

THE END.