Title: Crescendo
Author: theohsocurlyone
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Jack/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys, Owen/Suzie, Tosh/Tommy. Whew.
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood, more's the pity. The things I could do with that Hub...
A/N: This is based on a meme I discovered; the writer puts an i-pod or mp3 player on shuffle and writes based on whatever song appears, within the time it plays. The results of my shuffling; ten drabble-esque fics, about any and all Torchwood characters. Angst and fluff, Winehouse and Hendrix. And more. Spoilers for both series.
Summary: He feels them, he hears them, as he falls. And above it all, he hears music.

***

You Know I'm No Good - Amy Winehouse

Owen is embarrassingly, horribly drunk.

"I was gonna be married." he slurs, slumped over the bar, clutching his drink as if would vanish any second. "Married. Me! Big old wedding; veil, cake, flowers, the fuckin' lot." He turns and fixes his blurry gaze on Suzie. "In't that weird?"

"Well, not to me," she replies smoothly, sounding so sober he thinks he hates her, just a bit. "I did read your file, you know."

"Shit." he murmurs incoherently, taking a sip. The music continues around them, filling the air with bass and meaningless white noise. After a long while, where Suzie sips her drink and just gazes at him, in that strange way that she does, he says; "I would've been good, y'know. Done the whole husband thing."

She snorts. "What, and if some blonde with legs up to her armpits had come up to you and whispered come fuck me now in your ear, you'd have refused like the gentleman you are?"

He stares at her for a while, as she turns away, a wry smile playing at her lips. Fucking bitch. Taking Suzie out was meant to make him forget, for God's sake.

There again, he's slumped over a bar, pissed up to the eyeballs, out with a woman he barely knows, who creeps him out regardless, and who he is still shagging six ways from Sunday, despite everything. She's got a point.

"Depends," he says expansively, too loudly. "Is she a natural blonde?"




All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix

"You know," exclaims Jack, splashing through his third puddle, "I really wasn't planning on spending my weekend like this."

When Ianto turns the torch on him, Jack's brushing ineffectively at his trouser leg, which is already covered in mud and soaked through, to boot. He fights against the urge to laugh.

"Haven't you ever considered having a spare set of clothes for jobs like this?"

The look Jack gives him could freeze a bonfire. "What am I, a painter? We're saving the world, Mr Jones! Don't have time to change into new gear every time we get a call."

Before Ianto can reply, there is a deafening howl from the end of the sewer; long and harrowing, echoing from the walls and reverberating in his ears.

Jack looks at him, and grins, his face clearly saying, Jackpot.

"Come on, then." He starts to run. "Maybe next time I'll try wearing a suit."

"Nope, that one's mine!" says Ianto, already hot in his heels. Jack looks behind him and grins, before they speed full-pelt through the dark.

Time to save the world, again.


Voodoo Child - Jimi Hendrix

He's lived for twenty-seven years, and all he has to show for it is a multitude of failed romances, and a bullet hole through his chest. The saying has a certain ring to it, a certain dry irony that could be repeated at parties to interested listeners. Well, it does for the first few days, until it begins to dawn on him that he's still dead. He's dead.

The phrase is more alien than anything else he's ever come across. Slime and guts and gore are nothing compared to pressing his fingers to his wrist and feeling nothing, walking along the Cardiff streets knowing that he belongs in a coffin, in a cemetery, in ashes floating away with the wind, anywhere but here. He finds himself looking at strangers' faces; making eye contact with passers-by, wondering what they would say if they knew.

I'm dead. That scare you?

Dead, dead, dead. Dead organs, dead skin, dead bones. Died, deceased, departed, an ex-Owen. Even in his most lucid moments, sitting in an empty flat surrounded by nothing, he can't quite absorb the word into himself.

It takes a chain-smoking woman on a rooftop, a quiet girl who's never been thanked for saving the world, and an old man who remains defiant whilst lying on piss-soaked sheets, to make him realise that his soul hasn't died just yet. Perhaps it never will.


He Can Only Hold Her - Amy Winehouse

Every time Gwen leaves, her eyes remain on him until he's shut the door; as if she's drinking him in, afraid that this time, unlike any other times, will definitely be the last.

Every time she leaves, the kisses seem to last forever; languid, slow, aching. He feels like the most insensitive bastard when he notices that she uses her tongue for longer now, it seems. But it's true; every touch could be one last time, every kiss a goodbye, every item he touches could be, next time she sees it, stuck in a storage facility; the last remnants of him, locked out of her reach.

He would rather her vacant, forgetful, even insensitive, like she used to be; attached to her work so tightly he has to force her away; than possessing this desperate love that Tosh and Owen's deaths have brought. She knows what she has, knows how quickly she could lose it, but it's fringed with a frantic paranoia, a determination to embrace him before it is his time; which, in her mind, seems to be so soon.

She clings, more than she ever did, but he still believes he is losing her.


Lady Madonna - The Beatles

"Okay, Tosh, your turn!" says Gwen, idly twiddling the empty bottle with a fingertip. "Spill."

"Okay." Tosh takes a deep breath. "When I was small, I was sent to a...well, I suppose you could call it a tiny tots behavioural centre. For the really, really bad kids."

Gwen laughs uproariously. "You? Miss Toshiko Butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth..."

"...yet-I-could-hack-your-system-in-under-two-minutes Sato?" Jack finishes with a huge smile.

"Mmm." Tosh smiles at them, small and oddly secretive, which only makes them laugh louder. "Trashed rooms, pulled hair, screamed, swore. I was awful."

"That's crazy," says Jack, shaking his head. "I'm guessing you were cured, right?"

"Well, obviously!" exclaims Gwen, waving her hand in Tosh's direction. "Look at her! Calmer than any of us are. Well, except Ianto."

From behind them, a computer starts to beep and Tosh gets up, reaching for her glasses.

"People can surprise you, I suppose," she says, quietly, and with a fleeting, unreadable glance at Jack, goes back to her work.


In the Mood - Glenn Miller

Jack can never escape thoughts of wartime. The women's perfectly coiffed heads, wireless broadcasts attempting to escape the static, living life like there was nothing to lose; thinking about the 1940s, even after all this time, forward and back and around and around, still brings back the same sensations, the same snatches of memory he can't (and won't) dislodge. The taste of champagne, the rough feel of an army uniform, Estelle's soft body in his arms, her holding him as if he's the only tangible thing in her life left to cling to. It all remains, and more often than not, surrounded by fading sepia photographs, he feels he cannot convey it to anyone else.

When he gathers Ianto in his arms for an impromptu dance as the gramophone plays, he's not surprised that Ianto seems to understand. He sees in him a slight reflection of himself; an attachment to the past, to when people relied on their own will, their own strength, over the value of technology and relative comfort. He adores the nostalgia that emanates from him; the smell of books, the three-piece suits. He wants to drown in it, but he keeps Mum. He never tells, but Ianto knows.

"Lead," Ianto murmurs, his lips close enough to kiss, "And I'll follow. Just this once."


One Thing - Amerie

She'll never admit it to him, because she somehow feels she'll lose his trust in her, but Jack scares Gwen, sometimes. More than sometimes, in fact. His knowledge is depthless, his desperation and love, terrifying. He has died for her and Ianto more times than she cares to count, and it still unnerves her, sets her belly alight with fear, when she sees his body.

He's ruthless, he's dangerous, he's violent. She can't watch action films anymore, because she knows that however hard an action hero is, whatever he has to resort to in order to survive, it's not real, it's a sham. Jack is the closest thing to a superhero she can think of, hard as nails to those who cross him, willing to torture, and yet he's so breakable; he exists behind a barrier of memory and regret that even she and Ianto can't reach through. Every loss to him is fresh, and raw, tears another layer of him away, and she could never, ever help with that pain. Even the concept of his feelings, all his time, leaves her breathless. He's the most remarkable man she's ever known.

She thinks he hasn't noticed how she feels, but one evening, after Ianto's been sent home to rest after hurting himself, and they've both raided Jack's alcohol store, he looks up at her from his position on the sofa, eyes shadowed.

"We'd destroy each other, you know. Eventually. If we..." he trails off.

For a moment she doesn't understand. Then it sinks in, and she nods, her head feeling heavy.

"You're right."

"You know what, though?" he murmurs, before draining his glass and getting up, moving away from her, "It would be worth it."


Someone to Watch Over Me - Amy Winehouse

Explaining things to Tommy, Tosh decides, is both the most confusing and the most fun thing in the world to do.

"It basically works the same way as a satellite interview. They're just making it a little fancier for the audience."

"But..." Tommy touches the screen, his fingers running over the image of the woman, hologrammed into the news studio, chatting with the presenter. "That's...she's not even there!"

"Well, neither are people who you have phone conversations with." points out Tosh, with a smile.

Tommy grins and digs her in the ribs. "Yeah, all right, Miss Clever. It's just..." he gestures to the television screen, where the presenter is fiddling with a touch screen, flicking through maps and graphs, "There's something new every time, and I try and get it, and I just...can't. I don't even know where to start. It's insane."

"It must be strange." says Tosh, inwardly wincing at her choice of words. Waking up once a year from cryogenic storage, eighty-seven times since 1918 with the world rapidly developing in his absence, yes; that's a little strange.

"It's, like..." he gestures to the comm sets lying on the desk, which Tosh is in the process of unwiring. "How do they...?"

He looks at her, all fresh eagerness and bright, curious eyes, and she feels her stomach flip.

"Well, basically..."


That's Life - Frank Sinatra

He feels them, he hears them, as he falls. He can taste Toshiko's kisses on his lips, feel Ianto's fear radiating from him, entering his own head and making him woozy with pleasure. The bleeps, the blood, the roars of the Hub, surround him as he feels his power fade.

And, over it all, he hears music.

"You should have left them alone," mutters Jack through the glass, his voice hoarse. "This is all they have, what they're left with, when the city burns. They have each other." The look Jack gives him burns through him, mixes with the deafening sound and blinding regret invading his brain, as he begins to fade. "Thank God I got them out, huh?"

The music gets louder; melancholy tunes echoing through an empty space, tunes from another time. A better time.

"I can help," Adam cries, choking. "I can help you live a better life."

Jack's gaze hurts.

"Pass." the Captain murmurs, tears forming in his eyes.

The music swells as he takes out the pill, rising to a bloody crescendo, loud and frenetic and furious inside his brain.

Jack swallows, and it crashes down to nothing.

In the silence, Adam's mind screams.


Blue Moon - Billie Holiday

"Soo..." Jack says, fiddling with the machinery. "Any New Year's wishes?"

"Fewer aliens." says Gwen, decidedly, huddling into her thick coat, head barely visible underneath her hat.

"Or, at the very least, friendlier aliens." replies Ianto, handing a hot thermos to Gwen, who looks at him as if he's an angel.

"Empty hope." Gwen tells him, sipping coffee. She stares down at the buildings below, then the sky, then back at Jack. "Are you sure this comet-y thing is happening tonight?"

"Couldn't be more certain!" replies Jack, breezily. Ianto and Gwen exchange a look, part scepticism, part amusement. It's strange how quickly they've got used to using it.

"Okay, I think we're ready," says Jack. "One, two, three!"

He presses a button and the sky explodes with light; beautiful blue and green and pink beams of light, and flashes, and spirals of sparks, fill the space above them, rising higher and higher with deafening pops and whines. It's unknown, from the stars, just like everything else they encounter. But, unlike everything else, this is beautiful.

"Happy New Year, kids." murmurs Jack, looking up at the lights, his face transformed with quiet joy.

Gwen's cold hand finds Ianto's, and squeezes it.

They started from the end, and they've begun to live again.

***