Title: Triggers
By: nixa_jane
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R
Summary: Jack knows better than most how easy it is to forget.

When he first wakes up, he's not sure where he is. It takes a moment for his surroundings to shift together enough he can make them out and realize he's in his bed, in the Hub, staring up at the hole in the ceiling that leads to his office floor.

He's wearing more clothes than he usually does when he lays here trying to sleep, but his boots have been carefully sat against the opposite wall, and his coat is hanging from a coat hook he hadn't even known he had. There was something wrong, something off, he just couldn’t quite place what it was.

Ianto is making coffee when Jack finally makes his way up the ladder to his office. He runs a hand through his hair, looking around for any sign of why he feels so strange, but he can't seem to find one. Everything's exactly the way he remembers, exactly the way it all should be.

Ianto's eyes widen when he sees him, and he comes rushing over, grabbing Jack by his shoulders and promptly pushing him down into his chair. "Ianto, what--"

"Should you be walking around yet?" Ianto asks, kneeling in front of him with narrowed eyes, and placing a hand to his forehead.

Jack shakes his hand off. "What? What happened?"

"Abaddon," Ianto says. "You've been sleeping for almost two weeks. You don't remember?"

Jack does remember, vaguely, but it seems like something out of the distant past, months maybe, not only weeks, but thinking back, he realizes that it's the last memory he has. "Right," he says. "Two weeks?"

Ianto nods. "You woke up for awhile after the first week, the week we'd spent thinking you were dead--but then you went to sleep, I didn't know you even did sleep, and we couldn't wake you up. You really have to stop worrying us, sir."

Jack nods vaguely. "Sorry," he says, and glances around. "Where's everyone?"

"It's four in the morning," Ianto says. "They're not in yet."

Jack gives a slight smile. "Then what are you doing here?" he asks.

Ianto gives him that enigmatic smile of his own and rises effortlessly to his feet. "I'm always here, sir," he says, and then he brings Jack coffee, and says nothing else.

Jack notices that he watches him, though, a little like he's afraid to look away.

-----

Gwen and Tosh and Owen are all acting a little strangely. Gwen grabbed him in a fierce hug the moment she came in, but Owen hung back like he didn't know what to say, or do, and Tosh just leaned into him for a moment, and gave him a chaste kiss on his cheek.

He's sure they've already done this. He remembers holding Owen and telling him he forgives him, he remembers Gwen's grin when he finally opened his eyes, Tosh's surprise and relief. Ianto, standing there so shaken, looking like he was about to collapse.

He knows they've done this before, but if they need it, he supposes he'll just have to do it all again.

"So, what have I missed?" Jack asks them, rocking on his heels, hands in his pockets.

They're all still watching him, like they can't believe he's there, and it's setting him on edge. He tries not to notice, but so many years of noticing everything isn't so easily undone.

"Not much," Tosh says eventually. "We've spent most of our time trying to figure out what happened to you." She bites her lip and looks away. "What that creature had done to you."

Jack's not sure what her hesitation is about, but he figures it's just a bit of leftover shock and lets it go. "Well, let's get back in the game then, shall we?" he asks. "I'm sure there's something alien floating around somewhere just calling our names."

Gwen smiles bravely and Owen stares at his hands. Tosh is still looking at the wall. Ianto's the only one actually looking at him. He grabs his coat and starts down the stairs, stopping when he turns the corner and sees the Doctor's hand--the world tilts for a moment and he's sure it's moving, only when he blinks, he sees clearly that it's not, and hasn't.

And before he can even wonder what that was all about Ianto is stepping smoothly between him and the hand, looking him straight in the eye. "I'd like to come with you, if you don't mind, sir," Ianto says.

Jack grins widely, forgetting all about the hand, because Ianto hasn't volunteered for field work, well, ever, but especially not since that one time the cannibals tried to eat him. "Of course," he says, then looks him up and down. "But you might want to slip into something more comfortable," he adds.

"Because period military is so fitting for our line of work," Ianto says smoothly.

Jack gives him a wry grin. "You're more than welcome to borrow something of mine if you think it'd be fitting," he says.

"I think I'll just keep the suit, sir," Ianto says.

Jack laughs. "Alright," he says, then winks. "It's not like you can't pull it off."

-----

Jack has the strangest feeling that conversations stop when he enters a room. Gwen and Owen glancing guiltily away, silent, though he'd heard them whispering a moment before he stepped in. He puts it down to having something to do with that affair of theirs from awhile back that they seem to think was so secret, and tries not to notice, later that day, when the same thing happens with Gwen and Tosh.

It's not out of the realm of possibilities that Gwen and Tosh have been having an affair too, so he just ignores it, and hopes Gwen isn't going to come after him next.

They found nothing on their patrol the other day, Jack sitting in the passenger seat while Ianto calmly drove, obeying every traffic law in existence all the while, much to Jack's dismay. It all seemed very quiet in Cardiff.

Jack wonders if maybe the rift is still holding itself together. Then he worries what will happen when it finally splits apart again.

He turns the corner to start up the stairs to his office and then pauses, caught by the sight of the hand again, just sitting there, the way he last left it. He can almost hear the Tardis in the back of his head, that siren sound, feel the wind pushing against his hair--and then it's over, gone, silent again.

"Sir?" Ianto says. He never seems very far away these days. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," Jack says, distractedly. "I'm fine."

"Would you like some coffee?" Ianto asks.

-----

On Thursday, a Weevil gets loose in the Hub. Ianto's usually more careful about making sure they don't get out when he feeds them, but Jack's so grateful for a little excitement that he doesn't even bother to rebuke him.

Tosh and Owen and Gwen all have their guns out in instant and manage to put the Weevil down before Jack can even make it to his office for his. It's a little disappointing, and he sighs and leans over the balcony, looking down.

That's when he notices Ianto, standing over the glass shards and the bubbling liquid, holding a smoking a gun. His heart clenches and Jack's down the stairs as fast he can, dropping to his knees beside the mess.

Ianto looks white and disbelieving and Jack imagines he probably looks much the same. Ianto's always been a good a shot. Jack doesn't know how he missed by that much--the dead Weevil is at least eight feet to the right. He looks over the wreckage, and the hand is still twitching, with a bullet hole dead center in the palm.

"I'm so sorry," Ianto says. "I can find another jar."

Jack keeps staring at it, something tickling the back of his mind. The hand stops moving after one last curl of the fingers and then Jack shakes his head. "No," he says. "Just dispose of it."

"Jack--" Ianto says, and Jack pauses, the way he always does when Ianto calls him by his name. "I really am sorry," he says softly.

Jack has the strangest feeling that he's not really apologizing for this.

-----

He keeps dreaming about the Doctor, whenever he allows himself to sleep at all. Only it's not the Doctor, not the way he remembers him, exactly, his features are blurred but smoother, smaller, with the barest hint of glasses frames.

"You can't be here," the Doctor always says. "It's wrong. You're wrong. You have to--I'm sorry, but you--"

And then he comes gasping awake, laughter in the back of his head, sounding a little bit too much like Rose. Bad Wolf Rising, he hears in a whisper, and gets to his feet.

"I'm sorry," he hears, but this time it's not the Doctor and it's not Rose, it's Ianto, somewhere very far away, "I didn't have a choice."

Jack climbs the ladder to his office and searches the room, but Ianto isn't there.

He closes his eyes and breathes slow and deep, and then there's the Tardis again, familiar as a heartbeat, and he can hear his own pounding feet, chasing the past, or the future, depending on where you're coming from, and which way you're headed.

-----

He tears his office apart for signs. Someone's carved 'bad wolf' into the surface of his desk with a penknife and some of his things have gone missing, other things have appeared, a photograph of himself that he doesn't remember in the third drawer and a vial of poison that's disappeared into thin air.

He's forgetting something.

Jack presses the palms of his hands against his eyes and resists the urge to scream, because he knows it's not that easy, he knows this. Knows because he's lost two years like this before and never remembered them--not because he didn't have the willpower, but because somewhere deep inside he didn't really want to.

He needs to know, he tells himself. He needs to know what's happened this time, because he thinks he's maybe seen the Doctor, and that's a memory he won't let oblivion keep.

Except he can't. He closes his eyes and he can't and he knows it must be bad.

It's a good thing he's got the formula for the antidote.

-----

The staircase is dark and Jack laughs as he trips and skips a couple steps before catching himself on the rail. The lights come on then, and there's Ianto, standing beside his desk, eyes wide and innocent and Jack knows he's not, that no one is.

"Jack?" he says.

Jack would like to say something to him, like hello maybe, nice to see ya, but he's too far gone. He's been gone so long. "It occurs to me," he says instead, "that I never said goodbye. Best remedy that while I still can."

Jack pulls a little silver stone from his jacket pocket and stares at it. It starts to glow, glow glow glow, and Jack can feel it tug at him, pulling him where it's dark and cold and he shouldn't want to go there, but he's decided--anything is better than this.

"What are you doing?" Ianto asks, urgently.

Jack doesn't even fight back when Ianto rips it from his grasp. He's got time. Jack's always had time. It was so meaningless once you'd mastered it.

"Where have you been?" Ianto asks, sticking the stone in his own pocket, forcing Jack to sit down.

Jack's half drunk on death, the taste of it, the Doctor's last gift. For when you're ready the Doctor had said before he left, and Jack had almost laughed, then, too, because really, what did he expect? He was ready the moment the Doctor was gone.

"I had a Doctor's appointment," Jack tells him. "Now give back my medicine."

"Something's wrong with you," Ianto says, clever clever Ianto, most people would have just assumed he really was drunk, but Ianto watched, always watched, and he knew Jack could go through three bottles of wine and not even get buzzed.

"I'm dying," Jack says. "Finally, I'm dying. It was the least he could do."

-----

Jack comes awake gasping, a taste like cotton on his tongue from the retconn antidote and the room is spinning, circling like the Tardis before a fall.

He found the Doctor. God. He remembers now. He found him different, and Rose gone, but not dead at Canary Warf as he had feared--just a little to the left of them, in some other world, and Jack wonders briefly if he's in that one too.

The Doctor could barely stand to be near him the whole time, Jack remembers that, with a heartache, sick to his soul--I know it's not your fault, the Doctor had said. But what's done is done.

So he'd been sent on his way again, with another pat on the head, and the Doctor had given him a piece of the Tardis before he left. Said it would drain the life out of him. Said not to use it till he was ready.

Jack doesn't know why he's only recalling this now, but he knows who to ask.

-----

"I don't know what you're talking about," Ianto says. He's tidying Jack's desk, trying to put things back where they go, but Jack had made a mess of things and not even Ianto was going to be able to put it all back right.

"I wasn't sleeping those two weeks, for starters," Jack snaps. "You lied to me."

Ianto polishes his coffee cup and doesn't meet his eyes. "Do you remember that time you kissed me? Not this latest time, mind you, or the few before that, but the first time? Do you remember, Jack?"

"I remember," Jack says.

"I didn't want to live then," Ianto says. "You didn't give me a choice."

"I don't see where you're going with this," Jack says. "I want to know--"

"I said I'd watch you suffer and die," Ianto continues, undaunted. "But I've done that enough times already, and it was a childish thing to say in the first place."

"Ianto," Jack yells. "Tell me what happened."

"I don't know what really happened," Ianto says finally. "I only know what it did to you."

-----

"You can't stop it," Jack tells him. "It's too late to stop it. I've been here too long as it is."

"Drink," is all Ianto says, and places a cup of coffee in front of him.

Jack's hands are almost white they've gone so pale and he feels like he's fading right out of time, out of space, out of everything. He's not scared.

"Humor me," Ianto continues. "And drink."

Jack drinks the coffee, figures he deserves one last cup of Cardiff's finest, brewed by Cardiff's very own finest, and he lets it slip down his throat before grabbing at Ianto's wrist, and reaching for his pocket, trying to take back his stone.

Ianto glares at him when Jack's fingers grasp it and he gets to his feet, holding it in the palm of his hand. "You have to understand," Jack tells him. "It's time."

"It's that then," Ianto says, nodding at the stone. "That's doing it."

"I want to die," Jack tells him. "I can't do it anymore, Ianto, I can't, I can't keep waiting, always fucking waiting, and I can't."

Ianto takes the stone from Jack's shaking hand. "You're going to be fine," he says, calmer than he feels.

"I'm not," Jack says. "I won't ever be."

"You will," Ianto says. "Because you're not going to remember this. You won't remember any of it."

Jack's eyes are confused at first, then they go betrayed. "You didn't," he says. "You wouldn't."

"I had to," Ianto says, and for the first time his voice breaks.


-----

"You did this," Jack says, as it comes back, and Ianto watches him blankly, looking anything but sorry. "Where is it? Where is it, Ianto?"

"Somewhere you won't find," Ianto says. "Hate me if you want, Jack, but I'm selfish, you know that. I'll destroy the world to get what I want, you know that too."

"You just might," Jack snaps. "I'm not supposed to be here, not in this time, not alive, not like this--"

"I don't care," Ianto says. "You are. And you're staying."

"You have no idea what you're dealing with!" Jack shouts.

"I don't care!" Ianto yells back at him. "I couldn't lose you. I've lost you too many times already, I've lost too many people too many fucking times already, and I'm not going to lose you. Not again."

"Do you know how many years I've spent looking for that?" Jack asks. "For something, anything, that could make me human again?"

"It was going to kill you," Ianto says.

"That's part of being human," Jack says. "I was never scared of death. Not before and certainly not now. You want to know what scares the hell out of me, Ianto? Everlasting life. Never ending life. Watching the end of the universe and being the only thing left."

"You'll find it before then, can use it before then," Ianto says finally. "You're just not going to find it in my lifetime. That's a promise."

"You can't do this to me," Jack says. "I can't do this."

Ianto frames Jack's face with his hands. "I thought that once. Hurt to even move. Thought death was the only thing left for me. Life is scary as hell, I get that. But that's human, Jack--that's more human than death, you can't tell me it's not. You want to be human again? Then survive."

"I don't think I can," Jack tells him.

"That's human too," Ianto says, and kisses him softly. "But you will. You always do."