Torchwood: Fanfic: The night before

[m_findlow]

Title: The night before
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 997 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Torchwood, any, the night before they have to send Tommy back" at fic_promptly
Summary: Sometimes knowing the future is worse than the unknown.

Jack was almost asleep when he felt Ianto's warm body shift next to him in the narrow cot. He'd almost been convinced he was already asleep, having dreamt the past few hours of passionate and tender lovemaking they'd shared. From that very first moment Ianto had seized his face and lips, he knew he was done for. There'd be no more worrying about their current situation until the morning.

Ianto's arm wrapped across his chest, stroking the smooth skin, whilst his own slightly hair-covered chest tickled the side of Jack's arm. 'What's going to happen to Tommy after we send him back?'

Jack sighed but kept his silence. It had been bad enough admitting it once to Toshiko. To say it again felt like he was condemning Tommy personally. 'You didn't read his file?'

He'd dug up a lot of old Torchwood files from the archives, studying the photos of agents long gone, most well before their time. He hoped for Tommy that there was a better ending. 'You told me time is fluid; that it can be changed and altered.'

'Sometimes,' Jack replied.

Ianto sat up on his elbow, still leant across Jack's body, toying with the hair that had flopped over his forehead, brushing it back. 'Not this time, though,' Ianto finished for him.

'Tommy closes the loop on his timeline. Everything that has happened since Torchwood took him from the hospital will disappear as if it never happened to him.'

Ianto thought about this. 'Isn't that for the best?'

Jack stilled Ianto's hand, leaving it to rest on his chest. 'Tommy was in that hospital because he had a mental breakdown. PTSD. He abandoned his platoon in the midst of the fighting, running away from the gunfire instead of towards it. It's enough to earn him execution for treason and cowardice. That's what he's going back to.'

'They'd kill him? For being afraid?' Ianto found the concept shocking. Tommy wasn't any older than him, but he'd already spent a year in the trenches, being scared and shot at day after day, night after night. Was it any wonder he was afraid? 'They can't do that,' he finally said.

'They will,' Jack replied. We like to think the Allies were the heroes; the good guys who stood firm against the Germans and their evil. German troops that turned tail were gunned down by their own men on the battlefields. The only difference is that we chose to hide ours away and kill them behind closed doors. We were no better than them. We refused to accept that there are limitations to what the human mind can suffer.'

'Then we can't send him back,' Ianto said. 'There must be another way. Just because Torchwood left us letters saying they saw Tosh and Tommy in the hospital doesn't mean it has to happen that way.'

'Of course there's another way,' Jack replied. There was always another way, if only he was brave enough to take it. 'All that needs to happen is for someone to pass through the gaps in time and use the rift key to close them once and for all.'

'But then that person would be stuck in 1918, wouldn't they?'

'I can go, use the key, and wait another ninety years to return to my own timeline,' Jack said.

'No.' It was as emphatic an answer as Jack had ever heard. They both knew why. Yes, Jack could live and not age, and come back looking just the same, but he wouldn't be the same. Ninety years to have to live another life waiting to return to this one. It would inevitably change him.

'I could go,' Ianto said. 'Then Tommy wouldn't have to.'

'Absolutely not.'

'Why not?'

'Ianto, you'd have no papers, no identity. Assuming they even let you stay, you'd be drafted straight into the army. They'd send you right back to the place Tommy would have occupied, to be shelled day and night, used as cannon fodder for the British army.' There was absolutely no way Jack would ever let that happen.

'I could work for Torchwood,' Ianto replied. 'That's what I could tell them. They'd have to believe I had come from the future. I wouldn't be crossing my own timeline.' He didn't add that he could meet up with an earlier version of Jack. That wouldn't make it quite so bad, being stuck back in 1918. At least he'd have Jack.

Jack's whole body tensed with the insanity of Ianto's plan, and even more so the seriousness with which he said it. 'You can't.'

'I'd come with you then, if you had to go.'

He reached up and cupped Ianto's cheek with his hand. He adored him for wanting to make the sacrifice. 'We couldn't be together, Ianto.' Homosexuality was just as punishable by death as cowardice. If it came down to sacrificing Tommy over Ianto, then that was the choice Jack would make. Without words, Ianto knew the answer to all his suggestions was no.

'Tosh and Tommy are so happy together,' he said. 'It's not fair.' Why should he and Jack get to keep on living and loving when any one of them could make the sacrifice? No one had yet confirmed whether Tosh would become trapped back in 1918 yet, either.

'I don't want to choose one set of happiness over another,' Jack said. 'But Tosh understands that the future has already happened in the past. We can change it, but we shouldn't. Everything that has brought us to this point in time is a direct result of events that have already happened. Preserving then future will preserve the past. Does that make sense?'

He felt the small nod in the darkness, and pulled Ianto back down on top of him, not wanting to let go. He meant what he'd said earlier. He wouldn't change anything that had happened to him for the world. He'd preserve it with his dying breath if he had to.