m_findlow

Title: Last night of the world
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 714 words
Content notes: House of the Dead spoliers
Author notes: Written for slippy's prompt "Any, any, A ghost gets its own living body" at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto gets one last chance to put things right

The blood pounded through his head as the truth of the situation sunk into his brain. Then again, perhaps the pounding was just a figment of his imagination, just like everything else.

He'd thought that this was all real. He'd been standing in the pub, talking to people, moving around, and people were taking notice of him. How could he be dead? Ghosts didn't interact with the physical world, and yet he was there, climbing stairs, pushing open doors and the like.

And that wasn't the worst part of it. No, Jack was here too, but apparently he was real. He'd touched him, gently wiped the blood from his head when the innkeeper had knocked him out cold, leaving him lying injured and unconscious on the floor. Ghosts couldn't touch people, could they?

No, Jack must have been wrong. He wasn't dead. He couldn't be dead. Else he wouldn't be here now, arguing with him about it. Could he?

It was too much. Jack was telling him he was dead, had died in his arms, and that Jack had wanted him back so bad that his mind had brought his ghost here, just for one last night together, until the rift was finally closed for good.

He should have been happy that Jack cared, but then he'd gone and confessed that he'd left, not long after Ianto had died. He hadn't even gone to the funeral. What did that say about how much he cared? Perhaps this was just his selfish way of wanting him, but with no strings attached. Wasn't that how their relationship had always been? Ianto just giving Jack what he wanted, and never asking for anything in return other than what Jack was prepared to give him. He felt so angry at Jack for being so callous. Did ghosts get angry?

As if that hadn't been bad enough, he'd been convinced that he must be real because he was in the House of the Dead, being visited by his own father. That was too much to take. He didn't want his father to forgive him for not being there when he'd died, and for running away when it all got too hard. He was angry at himself that his father could be so forgiving, and now he was taking out that anger on Jack. He didn't want to forgive him anything right now.

He tried to remember the feeling of Jack holding him in that upstairs room not all that long ago. He hadn't felt any different. You couldn't hug a ghost, that much he was sure of. Whatever was going on here with Syriath, perhaps Jack had gotten it wrong. He wasn't dead. She could bring people's souls back, but she couldn't create bodies for them.

Gwen agreed with him that Jack had been acting strangely. That must be it. There was something wrong with Jack instead. He had to stop the seance first, and worry about Jack's odd behaviour later.

No, Jack said. He wasn't going mad. Syriath had used powerful magic to reach into Jack's mind and recreate Ianto's memory, bringing him here to the most haunted pub in all of Wales, on top of a rift in time and space, in the place where the seance had opened up that rift even wider, allowing the dead to come back through and claim this world for their own.

So it was true after all. He was dead. The body wasn't real. It couldn't be with Jack and join him in the living world, no matter what Syriath, or his father, or anyone else said. Jack was clutching to impossible hope. The same impossible hope that had brought his spirit back here in the first place.

That wasn't what he wanted. He wanted Jack and to be with him, but he didn't want the world to be destroyed so that he could come back and be real and physically present. He also couldn't let Jack go ahead with his suicidal plan to blow himself permanently into tiny atoms, trapped in the void between universes. If he couldn't go on living, he couldn't bear the thought of Jack not living either. He might be here just for tonight, but he would gladly sacrifice himself again to save Jack's soul.