Rating: PG

Word count: ~ 1,300

Warnings: Aaaangst.

Summary: Jack had once said that he wouldn't wish immortality like his on even his greatest enemy. But Ianto Jones was so, so much more.

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.

A/N: This came into being solely as an excuse to use a Florence + the Machine lyrics-title. Bedroom Hymns is my favorite F+tM song, bar none, and I just…uh, really, there's no excuse, and it turned unbelievably angsty from the first word, but, um. Enjoy it anyway? (Comments are loved/adored/worshiped [as are prompts/ideas, if you want to throw them at me]. Please let me know what you think.)

The poem quoted at the end is T.S. Eliot's Burnt Norton.

As good a place to fall as any (we'll build our altar here)

Silence stretches cool and tight between them, as hard and brittle as frozen glass. Ianto slides around it, under it, carefully inconspicuous, while Jack turns his back on it and carries on the same as ever, but they both feel it.

They can both see it, as thin and full of tension as a violin string, heavy and accusing with everything they cannot bring themselves to say.

For his part, Ianto cannot help but remember Jack's words to Suzie, before he left them.

"I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy."

But now, like this, what does that make Ianto?

If Jack did this to him, without asking and without discussion, a decision made alone even though it should have been Ianto's choice, what does the make Ianto?

What does that make Jack?

Hypocrite, Ianto wants to say, but he's caught somewhere between pity, anger, sympathy, understanding, love, and hate, and the words die in his throat.

The Hub has become a silent battleground in a wordless war, full of darted glances and avoided gazes, evasion turned into a weapon and polite words into knife-edged shields.

Ianto arrives early, while Jack is still shut up in his office, and Jack only comes down once Ianto has retreated to the Archives or the kitchen or the Tourist Office.

They never speak to one another, and that's just another kind of weapon deployed in their soundless struggle.

Gwen, Tosh, and Owen are the helpless civilians trapped in a hostile situation, unable to take sides because they don't understand what either is fighting for. Tosh gravitates towards Ianto, hovering worriedly around him, but receives no answers. Gwen goes to Jack, pushes and pleads and tries to pry it out of him, but he says nothing. Owen, firmly in the middle, simply keeps his head down and prays that the fallout won't spread too far.

"Jack, tell me what's wrong!" Gwen demands, and Jack laughs, low and hollow.

"Are you all right?" Tosh asks desperately, and Ianto simply gives her that ghastly, tired, weary smile that says more clearly than words ever could, 'Do I look all right?'

Owen says nothing, but he watches.

The silence spreads like ripples of destruction from the epicenter of an earthquake, demolishing everything it comes into contact with.

The gun goes off.

There is blood, spilling like the world's cheapest rubies.

There is pain, too, but that's not nearly as important as—

Ianto wakes up.

He is cold and tired.

He is very much alone.

Ianto does not go to work. He stays at home, locks the front door—

Ridiculous, he tells himself. Jack has a key, imbecile—

and cleans his apartment from top to bottom. (Rhiannon used to tease him that he turned into the perfect housewife in times of stress.)

He scrubs the kitchen counters, the bookshelves, the tables, the floors. Vacuums and dusts and sweeps, and tells himself with every motion that he's all right, he's fine, he can move on.

And it's true, all of it.

He just has no choice in the matter, and that's the problem.

At one point in his life, Jack had never had—had never needed to have—an understanding of the word 'forever.' It had been a distant and abstract concept, something to use figuratively rather than literally.

That's not how it is anymore.

Or not entirely, at least.

Forever is still a vast time that he can't quite comprehend, but instead of vague dreaminess it now hangs over his head like a threat, an executioner's axe just waiting to fall.

Forever is two hundred years waiting for a man who abandoned him.

Forever is the time it takes for a lover's body to jerk in a spray of crimson and then fall.

The box came through the Rift on Monday morning, in the middle of a windy day.

Jack found it fifteen minutes later, just moments before it could be picked up by a curious toddler, and immediately recognized it for what it was.

Gallifreyan, of course, recognizable by the unique script.

An energy transfer device, but unlike most, this one transferred energy—specifically Vortex energy—between Time Lords.

He had stared at it for a few moments, marveling over the fact that he was holding a piece of the Doctor's home planet, and then tucked it into his jacket pocket to bring back to the Hub.

Then the world had had to be saved, yet again, and he'd forgotten about it completely.

Jack and Ianto were walking home from their date—the first after Jack's return, and their first real date ever—when it happened.

There were no aliens, no possessed humans or people trying to use alien tech.

Together, Jack and Ianto stepped into an alley, safe in their assurance that Tosh was watching the Rift and there were no alien threats, and walked straight into a mugging.

At 8:27 on a warm Thursday night, Ianto Jones was shot in the chest at point-blank range by a man who wanted the fifty pounds in his wallet.

At 8:29, disregarding Ianto's final, gasping order to remember him but move on, Captain Jack Harkness used a banned Gallifreyan energy transfer device and brought him back to life.

Jack had once said that he wouldn't wish immortality like his on even his greatest enemy.

But Ianto Jones was so, so much more.

On Saturday, almost a month after the bullet hit his chest, Ianto stands on the street in the darkness, staring up at the sky. Cardiff's light blocks out every single star, but the moon is bloated and full, high above the city.

"The view's better from up high," Jack tells him, stepping away from the invisible lift with his hands tucked deep in his pockets.

Ianto looks at him, and then away.

"Forever is a very long time," he says, but instead of anger, his voice holds only weary resignation.

"Yes," Jack answers softly. "I know."

Forever is a very long time, but they have all the time they need.

Ianto opens his eyes as sunlight begins to creep through his bedroom window, feeling the heat of Jack wrapped so tightly around him that they're almost indistinguishable from one another, and then closes them again.

He remembers something from school, a snatch of poetry badly read by another student, that's nevertheless managed to stay with him all these years.

Quick now, here, now, always –

Ridiculous the waste sad time

Stretching before and after.

No more, he thinks to himself, closing his eyes again as Jack's arm tightens around him. No more wasting time, no matter how much we have.

Not even when they have forever.