Title: Ends
By: ninefics
Characters: Jack Harkness
Rating: All
Warning(s): Character death (non-graphic), angst.
Spoiler(s): No.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. I am not affiliated with the television series Torchwood, nor any of the cast and crew. No harm is intended. It's all just for fun.

Everything changes. It's just a fact of life. It changes even more when you're me, and you don't change. Not much. Not too noticeably. People come and go. They live and die. Buildings are made and destroyed. Plants grow, bloom, wither, and return in the spring. Most people don't see it. It happens so slowly that people don't notice how time has affected things. Changed things.

Me? I've got nothing but time. Life for me is like watching a high-speed progression.

Tosh left after the Daleks came. She said they were one of the only two things she'd seen at Torchwood that terrified her.

The other thing that terrified her was me.

I never really told anyone the circumstances of my first death and resurrection. Not in any detail at least. Just vague terms about aliens and extermination and then being brought back because of a young woman's innocent and terrible wish. It's just like in the fairy tales, I said. Immortality is a curse. In Rose's defense, she didn't know what she was doing. She didn't know it would bring me back. She didn't know it brought me back at all.

I hated the Doctor for not telling her. She would have made him come back for me. I hated him for running. I hated him for avoiding me for so long when he must have known where to find me.

I got over that. Immortality gives you a lot of time to get over some pretty complicated things.

Anyhow, facing the Daleks again brought back a lot of the rage and the feelings of betrayal. Tosh used words like "maniac" and "unhinged" and "suicide mission." But I brought them down. I brought every God damn last one of them down and reduced them to ash and I lost one of my best friends in the process.

Tosh came to me in tears and begged me for the amnesia pill. There was no way I could have refused her. It took a long time to wipe away her years with Torchwood and we had to be careful that we didn't remove anything critical to her survival in the "real" world, but we managed it.

I would see her on the street occasionally, and it always made me smile to see her happy.

Gwen was next. She thought I would be angry, especially losing someone else so soon after Tosh. But she was pregnant. She didn't want to be a liability and she didn't want to risk harming the baby. She officially resigned to become a stay-at-home mother, and she chose not to wipe her memories.

Her daughter eventually came to work for me.

Owen. Brutally slaughtered. Brought down by a pack of aliens that were half-human and half-hyena and who made the Weevils look like nuns. Ianto was the one to find his remains and I was sure that would be the day Ianto asked for his magic pill but for some reason he stayed.

Through it all there were dozens of others. Mike, Clara, Kelly, Elizabeth, James, Sean, Felix, Cathy-with-a-C, Hazel, Cox, Dwight, Mattieu, Scott, Colin, Shelly, Deborah, Heather, Jen, Jenny, and Jennifer (thankfully not all at the same time), Madison the boy, Madison the girl... so many more names. Some died, some quit, some were "asked" to leave.

Ianto did eventually leave. He took the pill, got married and tried to live a normal life. He was back before his first anniversary. His carefully controlled and organized mind wouldn't let him forget.

"I tried so hard to forget all this," he sobbed. "I didn't want to remember any of it. Not even you. But I couldn't. It's so deep inside of me that I can't remove it."

"What do you want me to do?" I asked. I was afraid of the answer.

"Let me come back."

"What about your wife?"

"She'll understand. Her family might not, but she will."



And now it's 2060. So much has changed. Communication with life on other planets is a regular thing. Technology is advancing by leaps and bounds on an almost daily basis. We haven't quite mastered travel to other galaxies, but within our own? We're getting there. The base on Mars is a jumping-off point and we've managed to spread out pretty far outside this solar system.

I still work for Torchwood, but more as a consultant. They think I'm Jack Harkness Junior, a man in his fifties who lives with and cares for his father's lover.

Ianto still makes the best coffee I've ever had.