Title: Tempus Fugit (Latin for "Time Flies")

Author: Your Angel of Music

Category: Torchwood

Pairings/Characters: Mainly Ianto centric, with Jack/Ianto and Past Ianto/Lisa

Rating: T (For angst and not-quite-graphic slashy scenes)

A/N: This was conceived after I read an interview with Gareth David-Lloyd for Torchwod Magazine, in which he mentioned that Ianto has a seeming fascination with timeless things: diaries, stopwatches, old movies, Jack... (Plus, writing Ianto as a child is both cute and irresistable)

This started life as a drabble, turned into a musing and then finally gained the title of prolongued waffle.

Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, but I am forming plans on how to get Gareth drunk at the Hub Convention so I can steal him. Then I will own him. Mwa Ha Ha.

Tempus Fugit

Tempus Fugit.

For as long as he could recall, Ianto Jones has been fascinated by the workings of time.

As a child, he had spent endless hours gazing at the gilded clock that sat atop his mother's mantle piece, transfixed by the endless, steady movement of the hands. His eyes had followed the slow circles, moving in perfect harmony with the robotic jerking of the bronze-coloured needles, his young mind entranced by the notion that of such constancy.

After a time (time being, in Ianto's mind, the ultimate decider) these sessions had become more and more irregular, until finally they had ceased to be altogether. They were replaced with a multitude of activities that one could only expect of a child of his age and curiosity. But the essence of his childish musings had never dissipated.

His wrist was permanently adorned with a watch, so that in snatches of freedom he could glance quickly down, comforted by the fact that time continued to roll forward, consistent and trustworthy in its marching. The tick tick ticking of a clock was more soothing to Ianto's ears than any other sound.

Time was so simple. It carried on, unrelenting in its pursuit of the future. There was nothing that could halt its progress, and therefore, Ianto had determined, there was no reason to try. This peaceful reconciliation with the world was something that had served to give him peace through the less envious moments of adolescence. He could still recall the nights spent in wakefulness, his mind flitting from one dilemma or another, staring incessantly at the ever-ticking, never-ceasing clock. Comforted, assured, relieved at its order.

His mother had long since realised that the gilded clock could be put to better use than simply lying forgotten on the mantelpiece. Ignoring his feeble – and quite insincere – protests, she had positioned it on his bedside table, angled so that the glimmer of the streetlight could reflect its shining face into Ianto's eyes.

With the passing of his father, when Ianto was just nineteen, he had clung on to the scraps of time he could salvage, hauling back into existence memories he had long since buried or ceased to use. Time offered him comfort that soothing words could never give; it would always be there, never hampered by the trivialities of age and death. He had realised at that moment that everything dies, and in the bleakness of his realisation all he could cling to was the knowledge that time would remain constant.

Whatever happened, that hand would keep ticking.

When Ianto had moved to London, during his years of drifting, the clock had been the first thing secured in his bags. He had been frugal with his packing, taking only a few necessary essentials. Food, clothes, toothbrush…and the reassuring hand of time.

That constancy that had reassured him since childhood. That knowledge that the gilded hand would continue to turn, counting down the seconds, the minutes, the hours…that knowledge kept him grounded, sane perhaps, at a time when the grief of his father's death and the wonders of new life, new love and – well, aliens – may have been too much for his mind to absorb.

It was only with the passing of time that his grief began to evaporate, turning instead into fond memories. It was only with the passing of time that his life moved forward, heading boldly in a direction that even his child self could not have imagine. It was time that led him to love.

And it was time that snatched it away again.

Time was something that you could never escape from. No matter what you did, it always caught up with you, in one way or another. It could be your enemy or your friend; the passing of time before a birthday or Christmas…or the counting down of months left to live.

Suddenly, the constant march of time became the most hated of enemies. Not knowing what it was going to bring, how the passing of time was going to affect Lisa's condition…the ticking hands of his watch stopped bringing comfort and induced anxiety. The constant reminder that every second was a second closer towards the end was enough to tear him in two. So he stopped wearing watches.

And his mother's clock was locked securely away, out of sight and unwanted.

The longing to be reassured by the passing of time was replaced by the desperate need to halt its progress. The need to quell the fear that ached in the back of his skull in every waking - and sleeping – moment, the need to halt the marching army, headed towards him with spears sharpened and outstretched.

He lashed out, trying in vain to grasp hold of something that could not be touched, to pull back something that could not be returned.

When death hit again, he curled into himself. He no longer felt the inclination to attack time – instead, he hid from it, knowing that it would only erode his memories and his grief. And in the madness of survivor-guilt, he could not imagine anything worse. His pain defined him. To strip it away…what sort of man would he be then, to forget what it was like to feel such burning agony following him everywhere?

It was during his suspension from Torchwood, that he began to rummage half-heartedly through some of the boxes his mother had dropped on his doorstep upon realising that he was back in his own country.

And that was when he discovered the stopwatch.

It had been discovered in a box of things left by his father, with a note declaring it to now be in the possession of his son:

Tempus Fugit, Ianto, but it does not rule.

It was a thing of beauty, one could not dare to deny it. It shimmered with a weather-beaten glory, proclaiming itself to have taken on the ravages of time and won.

It was, as he had so eloquently put it to Owen, a few months later, all about the button on the top. Because with that button he had the power, if only artificially, to stop the never-ending march of the clock hand. He truly was in control of time, and it empowered him in a way that he had never experienced before.

He sought timelessness, desperate to find a way in which he could at least create a crack in the arsenal of time. He dug out his old journal, recording furiously, declaring that time could take his body but he, Ianto Jones, had defeated its power to strip him away from history. He suddenly understood his father's love of old cinema, and looked back on their visits in a new light; whilst he had wondered at the strangeness of this world he did not know, his father had drawn strength from the time that had been captured forever.

Tempus Fugit, but it does not rule.

Time could be beaten. Ianto's unfaltering respect for the power of time never ceased, but with every day he realised that, even if it could not be beaten, it could be cheated. And the fear that had followed him since the death of Lisa began to leave him…he could never forget her. The photographs that remained stored in his boxes would be a permanent reminder of the light that she had shone into his life; the memories of laughter, of love….time could never take them from him.

And then there was Jack.

Jack who had done what Ianto sought to do, and had won. Jack who defied time in its very nature, who seemed to throw two fingers in the face of decay.

Ianto's fascination with Jack, coupled with that strange stirring in the pit of his stomach, had everything and nothing to do with time. Time had marched forward, but Jack had refused to be swept along with it; Ianto marvelled and envied, whilst forever feeling drawn to the man he had once promised to hate.

Time moves. And Ianto is not Jack.

The fascination remains, but it is overshadowed by something else. Something that he knows even he is not quite willing to admit to himself yet. That strange stirring, which time has sought to nurture and tend, grows ever more pronounced with every passing minute. Every single touch, ever word, ever look that Jack gives him…is seared onto his memory, branded onto the inside of his skull.

Jack Harkness is timeless. In everything he does.

Contrary to popular belief, he and Jack's "weevil-hunting" is not a euphemism to disguise any of their more illicit activities. The surge of adrenaline that comes with the chase is addictive for both of them; almost animalistic, feral in its nature. And he would concede that, more often than not, that adrenaline leads to less practical activities. But the hunt itself is not a fabrication. And, as such, it has not always gone as smoothly as it should.

At least three times, Jack has fallen at the hands of one of their prey, his last breath leaving him in short gasps as the blood from his singular or many wounds runs, almost peacefully, into the grass. And every time, Ianto's feels his blood running cold, wondering whether this is the moment when time truly gets the better of the Captain who seems oh-so-eager to outrun it.

But it never does. Because Jack always gets the upper hand, over everything and everyone. And most importantly for Ianto…he has the power to defeat time.

The night of Tosh and Owen's death, that primal, violent need for some sort of solace grips them again, as it had done on the night of their first encounter. Clinging tightly, seeking for some pain other than the one that tears too violently through their hearts. Cold tears falling on hot skin as they sink into some state of detachment from the reality that time has, once again, defeated them.

Tempus Fugit.

And, as the frenzy abates, through the remnants of their breaths, Ianto can hear the steady thrumming of Jack's heart.

A child again, staring wide-eyed at the ever moving bronze hands, he is transfixed by it. He moves his hand, ever so slightly, until it comes to rest over the warm, slightly vibrating skin. It beats an incessant beat, its shockwaves rising through Jack's flesh and into Ianto's own.

Thump Thump Thump.

Tick Tick Tick.

He casts his mind back to the clock on his mother's mantelpiece, still stored away in a box in his flat; he remembers that soothing knowledge that time would never cease to move forward. He recalls the brief moment of panic when the clock stopped counting, and then the relief as his mother would rewind it, returning it to its soothing purpose.

And sometimes, Jack stopped. But Jack could not be defeated…time could not be defeated. Like clockwork, Jack was wound up again, crashing back into existence to continue his endless procession.

Thump Thump Thump

Tick Tick Tick

Suddenly, Ianto realises the truth. The truth that has been so blatant and yet so vague for so long; the truth as to why he feels as drawn to Jack as his child-self had been drawn to the ticking hands of a clock.

The realisation that Jack does not defeat time.

Jack is time.

The incarnation of something that has no form.

Thump Thump Thump

Tick Tick Tick

Ianto moved is head ever so slightly, soothed once more by the promise of that never ending march towards inevitability. Beneath him, Jack's heart continues its eternal rhythm.

Thump Thump Thump

Ianto smiles.

Tempus Fugit.

And Jack will always fly with it.

As always, all mistakes are my own, and I beg for your holy forgiveness on such matters. Good? Bad? Suicidally terrible? Reviews are love and result in much squealing on my part.