Title: Running from your Sorrows
By: kiss_her_theta
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: AO
Spoilers: All of 'Children of Earth', particularly Days Four and Five
Note: 'Children of Earth' fix-it fic
Warning: WiP
Summary: Jack had to keep running to escape his past. That was, until the man who ran caught him.

***

Prologue

Jack gently inhaled as he woke, and opened his eyes. He felt whatever humanity he had left inside him escape with his breath.

Ianto…

With a blinding intensity he felt the pain, the unbearable pain of his lover's death hit him all over again. Just as the loss he felt over Tosh and Owen's deaths had started to numb, he had lost the most important person to him in this world. As whilst he knew that he would grieve for the rest of his lives for their losses, or for as long as memory could allow, the bereavement he had experienced then was only a small percentage of the overwhelming emotion he felt right now.

The knowledge that in one hundred years from now, no one would remember the immense sacrifice Ianto had made burned him. No one would remember the soft smiles he blessed Jack with whenever their hands touched as Ianto passed Jack his blue and white striped mug, the dry sense of humour that always came out whenever someone had said something odd, or the way that the usually polite and impeccable man transformed into a passionate lover.

He slowly took in his surroundings. His eyes scanned over the sea of red body bags that surrounded him, and he wished he at least knew the names of the people who had died as a consequence of his ultimatum to the 456. His musings were interrupted by a gentle sob to the left of him, and he saw Gwen hunched on the floor next to Ianto's lifeless form. He sat up and pulled himself out of his own body bag, moving closer to Gwen and Ianto. It never stopped shocking him how blue the dead went. Despite the hundreds, possibly even thousands of deaths that he had seen over his lifetime, this always struck him. And he hoped it always would- he didn't want to become used to it, to seeing those he loved, or people he didn't even know without their flush of life. Tears rolled down his face as he gazed upon Ianto's body.

Some people say that the dead can look like they're just sleeping. Ianto didn't. There was no small smile or tiny flickers of the eyelids that Jack had grown used to as he watched him sleep. No pulse softly thrumming against his neck that Jack had loved to kiss. It had always reassured him that Ianto was so alive, when all of the death in his own life felt like too much to bear. Ianto would wake up, smiling across at Jack and hold him, allowing his warmth and heartbeat to heal his lover.

But now that was all gone. He lay amongst they multitude of other bodies, as just another number to those who had found them. Well, Jack had promised Ianto that he would remember him, and he knew that he always would.

He knew that he would deal with the 456, and somehow stop them from stealing any more precious lives. No matter how many times he had to die, or how long it took him.

But once he had, he would run.

***