'Where's eye candy?'

Jack groaned as he looked up at the empty bottle, he was hearing things, he had to be hearing things. Please dear gods in all of the heavens he'd ever seen, let him be hearing things. He looked up but the gods were ignoring him today as his pleas fell on deaf ears. 'John Hart, as I live and breathe, fuck off.'

'That's hardly the way to greet an old friend.'

Jack slurred his words. 'We aren't fri, friends, fuck off.'

John pulled a chair up and tried to find a bottle that wasn't empty, tossing them over his shoulder as each one failed to reveal any alcohol. 'So much for Mr I don't drink any more, you could have saved some for me.' He waved at a nervous looking waiter. 'You, sexy, bring me something very alcoholic, now.' He looked at Jack, the man was a mess. 'And when's the last time you had a bath or even waved a can of deodorant in your general direction?' Gone was the perfect hair and the clean shirt crisply ironed. His hair was long and greasy, combined with a scraggly beard making him look like an escapee from the hippy commune on Stellus Nine. Although those boys had known how to party. John sighed, this was shaping up worse than he thought. 'Seriously, where's the latest wife, where's eye candy?'

Jack shook his head. 'He's not fucking here is he, so fuck off.'

'Honeymoon over already is it.'

'No honeymoon, we didn't get married and we didn't split up so you can fuck right off John fucking Hart.'

'You never used to cuss like that.' John frowned. 'So not married, didn't split up, that just leaves kidnapping which I'm guessing is a no. Or he's.' John stopped. 'Oh. Look I'm sorry Jack, I really am.'

'Yeah.' Jack belched and dragged a stained sleeve across his mouth. 'Everyone's always so sorry. Why, did you kill him? No. So -.'

'Yeah, I know, fuck off, right.'

Jack nodded. 'Yes. And leave me alone, you forgot the leaving me alone.'

John shook his head, the man was actually crying. Leaving him conflicted and reminded of why Jack had stopped drinking in the first place. What ever was going to happen next, it wasn't going to end well.

Jack wiped his eyes and looked at John, as if only just noticing his presence. 'Hello John, what are you doing here? What scam are you running this, this time? Whose life are you trying to ruin?'

'I never ruined your life, I left your little planet like you asked me to.'

'Yeah, you did. And I'm asking you to leave me alone.'

'What happened Jack?'

He shook his head. 'I'm not sure. One minute we were in love, actual love, genuine lets talk about buying a house and getting jobs that wont kill us love.'

'Real love.'

Jack nodded. 'Ah ha but the world needed saving, again, is what happened, didn't it.' He waved his arm. 'Why couldn't it stay saved. He used to ask me why we did it, you know. Why did we keep saving the world if it kept needing to be saved.'

'Go on Jack, why did you keep saving everything?'

'Like you care.'

'I'm sensing some hostility.' He looked around for the waiter with his drink, he was too sober for this conversation.

'Fine.' He spat. 'I told him it was our job. It's our job Ianto, it's what we do. But who saves us? No one saved him, I couldn't save him. Why not John.' He giggled before bursting into tears again. Not attractive, gently welling pools of cuteness but gut wrenching, ugly, twist your face up like a dogs arse, tears.

The waiter arrived with a bottle for John. He handed over some local currency, declining the glass as he drained the bottle. 'You got a room Jack? Or do they just let you sleep under the table when you pass out.' Jack handed him a room key. He checked the address and nodded. 'That's just across the street, just as well really. Come on lover, lets get you to bed.'

'Always with the sex with you.' Jack slurred. 'It used to be like that with Ianto. Lots of sex.'

'You are way to drunk for any of that and you definitely wouldn't thank either of us in the morning.' He manipulated Jack out the door and into the rooming house across the street. He wasn't sure what had happened but this wasn't the Jack he'd known. It must have been serious with him and eye candy. And if he was going to start being honest with himself, he was jealous. He'd heard rumours of an ex time agent tearing though the universe ripping holes in everything because he'd lost his lover. He'd rather hoped it hadn't been Jack. Even if just a fraction of the stories were true Jack had been doing some damage in his travels.

He managed to get him through the door and found a creepy shrine to Ianto Jones. Photos covered the walls, and was that a ticket stub for an opera framed with girly love hearts? He looked a little closer at some of the pictures, Jack momentarily forgotten as he slid to the floor. Some of the pictures made even him blush. Eye candy would not have thanked him for seeing these. They looked like stills taken from CCTV footage. Jack had a slight obsession.

He looked down at Jack and found him trying to wriggle out of his clothes on the floor and he shook his head. Hauling him to his feet he watched the man strip to his boxers and a grey tee shirt before throwing himself onto the bed. He wasn't quite sure how he felt about watching Jack hold the pillow, wearing the most ghastly green boxers he'd ever seen, whimpering. John sat next to Jack and reached out, his hesitant hand patting the man's shoulder.

Jack looked at John but didn't really see him. 'I killed him. My pride destroyed the one good thing in my life. I forgot you see, that I would life forever and he wouldn't.' He closed his eyes against the memories but they still poured in like he was reliving it. He'd lost count of how many times he'd held Ianto in his arms as his beautiful Welshman had lain, dying as he said he loved him. How many opportunities had he missed to hear those beautiful little words. How many lives had he wasted. How many worlds would he destroy to get Ianto back. 'There were these things, several slimy heads, evil fuckers really but I killed them. I killed my grandson and they killed my Ianto but I killed every last one of them.'

Now he was really lost. 'Grandson, Jack?'

'Not Jack, Steven. My daughter hates me, but it was the only way. What else could I have done? It was one child or millions.' He pulled the pillow in tighter. 'Millions saved but I lost everything.' He remembered waking in a make shift morgue and not knowing if Ianto had lived or died. He'd saved Ianto once before, it had been enough but not this time. Not knowing until he'd seen the body of the man he loved. He knew he was broken. And if he could have gone back he would have told Ianto every day how much he loved him. 'I wasted so many opportunities.'

He knew, he couldn't go back, it wasn't possible without destroying the very fabric of time itself. He couldn't cross his own time line and there was no magic button that could undo what was done. Ianto Jones was dead and he was going to stay that way. It didn't matter where he looked and he'd roamed further than he thought he ever could. But he hadn't found a way to save Ianto and he wasn't able to bring him back. He had however, found the home planet of the 456. What was left of it was still orbiting it's sun, as several chunks of space debris.

A smile that faded at the memory of saying good bye, in that pub, but being able to touch Ianto had been enough to drive him mad. He had never expected a corporeal Ianto and when he'd been given the choice of saving a world that always needed to be saved, and Ianto. This time he'd chosen Ianto, even if it would have destroyed everything. But now he was drunk and he wasn't sure any more. Maybe Ianto would have been free to be with him and the world would have been okay. Even drunk and aching for Ianto, he knew his sweet lover wouldn't have been happy for the world to be destroyed, just to save him.

It didn't make it any easier to walk away from a lifetime of the possibilities they could have had, knowing the right decision had been made. He mourned Ianto and he mourned the life they could have shared. All the wonders he could have shown the man and the dreams they'd shared in whispered darkness. But it was the lost chances to to say "I love you" that were gone, all the posibilities stolen. He'd been so afraid of loving his Welshman that he'd nearly destroyed their relationship over and over. Until, in his arrogance, Ianto died. Final dead, not the sort of dead you came back from.

All this, culminating in one drunken state of utter despair, and it was being witnessed by John. His rock bottom. He hoped this was rock bottom, he didn't think he could go any deeper into his sorrow and grief. He didn't want to feel. And he couldn't truly die. Forever was both a reality and a curse and what was the point if he didn't have the one soul he craved. He'd lost the light and was cast into darkness and John was there to see it happen. Lovely. Even death was an impermanent state that didn't give him the sweet release from pain. He craved an oblivion that was denied him. So he had wondered, wounded and alone. He looked at John. 'Did you want something, Vera?'

He chuckled. 'I'd forgotten about that, I'm really sorry. How is the green eyed beauty?'

'How the fuck would I know.'

'This really isn't like you.'

'Have you ever loved anyone John.' His voice pale in the half lit darkness of his room. 'I mean really actually truly loved someone? With your actual heart, body, mind and soul.'

'Only you Jack.'

He shook his head as he looked up at John. 'I'm not sure you loved me John, not really.'

'I did, you can't tell me how I felt about you, how I still feel about you.'

'I love him John. When, if, I get him back, I want to spend every day of his life telling him I love him.'

'How are you going to do that, you can't cross time lines.' John narrowed his gaze. 'Please tell me you didn't try.'

'And press the magical non-existent reset button? Even Harry Potter couldn't bring back the dead.'

'Harry Potter?'

'Doesn't' matter. But no, of course not. I wanted to, but I can't.' Jack sighed and gave up as consciousness slipped past him and darkness welcomed him home.

John made a decision as he kicked his shoes off and climbed into the bed with Jack. If ever a man looked like he needed a friend, it was this one. And even if Jack didn't love him back, he still cared. In his own way he'd always cared and he was truly sorry for his part in the death of Jack's friends. If he could have fixed it all he would have, but some things just weren't able to be fixed, no matter how many lifetimes Jack had.

Jack felt the weight of an arm over his body as he crawled into a hungover state of wakefulness. His first thought, it wasn't Ianto. The smell was wrong, and the man wasn't even the right height. He groaned as he tried to remember bringing someone back to his rooms and couldn't. He listened to breathing that also didn't sound like Ianto. He bolted out of bed and dropped to the floor under the crushing weight of the pounding in his head. He'd had deaths that were less painful than this. And what was John doing in his bed? How drunk had he gotten? He looked down and saw he was still wearing his boxers.

John yawned as he rolled out of bed, his nose wrinkling. 'God you stink.'

Jack lay on the floor clutching his head, whimpering softly.

He shook his head. 'Oh relax, your honour is intact, even I have some standards and frankly, I'm offended. We were always so good together, we could be again you know.' He hauled Jack off the floor and into the attached bathroom where he dumped him in the shower. Water on he decided the man's clothes could use a wash too. He just wished it was gong to be as easy to fix the rest of Jack as he adjusted the water temperature. 'Oi, you get busy washing yourself or I'm stripping off and coming in there, with you.' He decided it was a measure of how bad Jack felt that the man didn't move. Or he'd passed out again. Shrugging John stripped down and stepped under the water with Jack.

Jack let John undress him, lather him up with soap and he just stood there with his eyes closed to stop the room spinning. He let John help him, it felt good to be helped, or that could have been John helping himself. The man was being extremely diligent in the washing of his cock and balls, although he did draw the line at the finger probing his arse.

John grinned as Jack slapped his hand away, it had been worth a shot.

'No offence but my heart and my arse, belong to my Welshman.'

He refrained from pointing out the very obvious fact that said Welshman was deceased so he just shrugged. 'It wouldn't be me if I didn't try.'

'Do you want me to fuck you? To shove you against the wall and fill you with every inch of that?' Pointing to his cock still in John's hand.

John surprised himself by shaking his head. He wasn't sure where this new found streak of moral fibre came from and it tingled. 'Not like this.' He looked down at the garish green boxers, now on the floor of the shower. The colour was giving him a hangover and he hadn't really been drinking. 'Um, Jack. Please tell me you have other underwear.'

Jack looked at the puddle of chartreuse silk and burst into tears. 'Ianto always hated them. He said the colour was awful.'

Privately John had to agree. 'He was always very elegantly dressed your Ianto. I know I appreciated the suits.' He wanted the Jack back who'd ordered him off Earth and out of his life. He didn't know what to make of the sobbing, hungover and broken version of the man he'd once been partners with. He reached out in a rare gesture of compassion, pulling the sobbing man into his arms and they stood there until the water ran cold.