Chapter Text
Jack had spent 19 years in prison trying to get to the Doctor, and within the span of a single day once he broke her out, he knew that their time together would be short and sweet. The Doc had her new companions now and Jack could sense that while he would be welcomed aboard, he didn’t really belong. It was a blessing really that Kai Cooper-Williams managed to get a hold of him and pass along a message from his mother, it sounded like Gwen was still kicking arse and who was he to refuse one of his oldest friends calling him home to Cardiff?
Gwen and Rhys had moved back there after he’d left them for a second time, they were raising a wonderful young man as a son and if Gwen’s message was anything to go by, they had some big news for him. Kai had been awfully tight lipped on the phone when Jack had tried to weasel some clues out of him and had instead just told him to come as quickly as possible, he wouldn’t want to miss this for the world.
So he’d left the Doctor behind before she got the chance to leave him, they’d undoubtedly cross paths in the future but for now she needed to spend time with her new family and he needed to reconnect with his old one.
Seeing Gwen stood waiting for him after all these years, Rhys holding onto her waist from behind and their son, looking all grown up at the mighty age of ten next to them sent a shock of regret down Jacks spine. He’d missed out on so much time with them but what else could he have done? This whole planet was one big, painful reminder of everything, everyone he’d lost. Still, he was home now.
“Oi, oi,” Rhys shouted in Jack’s direction, pointing him out to Gwen as he approached, “look who finally decided to show up!”
42 years old and she hadn’t lost her spark of youth, it was right there nestled deep within her eyes, along with something suspiciously close to mischief. Gwen Cooper-Williams clearly had a secret and she couldn’t wait to tell him.
But teasing had to come first, “What’s this I hear about you stealing your sons boxing gloves to take on the Daleks without me,” Jack grinned as Gwen came running down the path towards him, “miss me, did you?”
“Jack,” Throwing her arms around her old friend, Gwen looked up at his unchanged face and sighed with relief, “you’re back!”
“In the flesh,” pulling away to plant a loud kiss to her cheek, Jack grinned down at his best friend, “it’s good to see you Gwen.”
“We had no idea how to contact you,” guilt was fast worming its way across Gwen’s face in a way Jack was not at all fond of, “I had no idea when you’d next be back, if you even were going to come back and it’s been- we tried Jack, really, even reached out to Martha Jones and Sarah Jane but-”
“Gwen,” Jack placed his hands on her shoulders firmly to ground her as Rhys and Kai made their way over to offer their support which Gwen swiftly batted away, “want to try that again? Breathing this time.”
“It’s Ianto, Jack,” Gwen smiled tearfully, “he’s back.”
-
Waking up after death was traumatising enough, the knowledge of what it felt like to feel life being ripped away from you would drive anyone insane but waking up and knowing, undoubtedly, that you were about to once again feel life slip through your fingers like smoke? Well that was enough to break you, really.
Ianto Jones had no idea how long he spent in such an endless cycle, time had no meaning when you had been buried alive after all. It could have been days, months or even years that he’d spent trying to claw his way out of a frankly ridiculously expensive feeling coffin. He often found himself wondering as the darkness stole him away again and again, if it were Jack or his sister that had picked it out.
He eventually managed to get himself free though, after breaking his fingers more times than he could even count, shredding them on the compressed soil pinning him into the earth. His first breath of fresh air burnt his lungs and he wasn’t even alive long to appreciate it before choking on the dirt in his throat anyway.
The fact he’d managed to rise from the dead unnoticed during the middle of the day was a miracle in itself if he were being honest, then again, he’d apparently come across an abundance of them if he was somehow still alive at this point. It didn’t take him long, even on unsteady feet, to figure out where he was. Cathey Cemetery, half an hours bus ride from the hub, or rather an hour on foot since he’d been buried without his wallet.
It was on his way back to Torchwood, to where Jack and Gwen would hopefully be, that Ianto found something that once again, turned his world upside down. While ‘the sun’ might not be the most reliable source of news, surely they couldn’t cock the date up.
March 1st, 2015.
Six years after he’d died in Thames House.
-
It had been Andy Davidson of all people that had put Ianto back in contact with Gwen. Upon finding that the Tourist office actually was a tourist office now, Ianto had made his way to the station instead, hoping that someone could point him in the right direction. As luck would have it, he’d spotted a familiar, if slightly aged, head of strawberry blond hair leaving the station and Andy was all too happy to take him straight to Gwen, babbling about how spooky it was to see him after all these years and how he should have known, bloody Torchwood.
Gwen’s reaction was somewhat more dramatic, there had been guns pointed, curses shouted and bones nearly crushed in reunion hugs. Oh and tears, a lot of tears. Poor Rhys had been a little bit… overwhelmed at the time. Though Ianto later learned that his rather emotional state was mostly due to a lack of sleep. Kids, eh?
And wasn’t that a surprise, the last time Ianto had spoken to Gwen she had been barely a couple of months pregnant and now she had a whole kid looking up at him with wide, Gwen Cooper eyes.
“Are you my uncle Ianto?” The sweet little girl brushed her wild hair from her face and reached out to poke his funeral suit, “why are you all dusty?”
Both excellent questions that Ianto let Gwen answer on his behalf while Rhys ushered him inside so they could find him something else to wear. He couldn’t help the small smile tugging at his lips as he heard Gwen tell her daughter that he was indeed the young girls uncle. That was, until, he realised that he was going to somehow have to explain this to Rhiannon at some point when he had no idea how it had even happened himself. The joys.
-
Martha Jones was shocked to hear that Ianto Jones had miraculously risen from the dead, but not for long, she’d seen his old coworker walk around as a live corpse after all and Jack was a whole other kettle of fish. So when she heard he was back, she packed up and brought Mickey with her to Cardiff to take a look. The rift was long since dormant but it was probably better safe than sorry for another set of alien aware eyes to take a look at Mr Jones. Just in case.
-
Ianto was disappointed that Jack had apparently taken off after he’d died, even more so that he’d missed him being temporarily mortal but there was no use dwelling in the past, not when the present had so much to offer him. You could say he had a new lease of life, Ianto wanted to start living again.
For a few years that meant spending time with the Cooper-Willaims’, volunteering his time to those in need and keeping an eye out on Cardiff, just in case. Anwen was brilliant, the perfect mix of Gwen’s tenaciousness and Rhys grounded level headed thinking. She of course inherited both their tempers and had no qualms digging her heals in when she thought it was important.
That’s how Gwen and Rhys found out their daughter was indeed their son and when Kai squared his little shoulders across the dinner table to tell his uncle Ianto, he should have known he’d get a soft smile and quiet nod from the man. He, after all, knew everything.
But the quiet life wasn’t really for Ianto, it was a nice way to slowly readjust to his new life but as one year turned to two he grew restless in the monotonous day to day of civilian life. So when Martha Jones approached him for a little job in the south of France, investigating an overweight political leader with the reputation of great flatulance, Ianto was hard pressed to say no.
-
An overnight Forrest that covered half the world, an army of revamped cybermen in the sky, horse sized spiders and Judoons Gloucester kept Ianto, Martha and Mickey busy enough over the next few years, the three of them becoming the unofficial resident experts on extraterrestrial life in Britain. Martha’s old unit contacts would ask for assistance from time to time and with hers and Mickeys status as Companions of The Doctor along with Ianto’s long standing service to Torchwood, they were somewhat infamous by the time the new British Prime minster revealed her ’defence drones’ anyone worth their salt knew to listen to the trio and back the fuck away from the threat presented.
“Daleks!” Martha stared wide eyed at the small screen in Ianto’s crappy London flat, “Mickey, grab your big gun, Ianto- Ianto?” He’d been stood behind her a moment ago, where had he gone?
“Phone,” Mickey grunted as he shoved Ianto’s sofa a few feet back so he could get to the small stash of weapons he knew the paranoid bastard had hidden under the floorboards, “Gwen Cooper.”
Ianto had tried to urge his friend to stay indoors, she had a son, but he should have known that Gwen wouldn’t back down from the fight. Much later he would find a clip of her on the news, sat atop her bright red moped, her sons boxing gloved on her firsts as she squared up against the universes most deadly threat, not without fear but in spite of it.
-
‘It’s Ianto, Jack, he’s back’
Jack didn’t know what to say, he didn’t know what to think when Gwen dropped that bombshell on him, all he did know was that he felt utterly terrified.
Ianto Jones…
The man he’d loved so much he was going to trap himself in the rift just to escape the grief of losing him. He should have known that Ianto would never let him do that, he’d saved him one last time and Jack had run away all over again like the coward he was. But now Gwen was telling him that he was back? Impossible.
“Ianto is trapped in eternal oblivion,” Jack’s forced the words from trembling lips, “he was lost in the space between worlds forever when he blew up the house of the dead,” because dying once to protect the planet wasn’t enough, oh no, he had to sacrifice himself twice.
“I know but he’s back,” Gwen broke out into a tearful grin, “do you really think I would be telling you this if I weren’t 100% certain? I know how much he meant, means to you.” Their conversation was interrupted by a muffled ringtone but far from perturbed, Gwen looked ecstatic as she fished her phone from her bag and saw who was calling, “I think this is for you Jack.”
Taking the offered phone with shaking hands, Jack answered the call and saw a face he’d etched perfectly into his memory staring back, “Ianto,” Jack exhaled all the breath in his lungs, his mind whirling as Ianto’s eyes widened with disbelief. Impossible, utterly impossible.
And then something magical happened, Ianto started to smile and Jack heard something he had thought was lost to him forever, Ianto laughed and on that cold, Welsh afternoon felt the ground shift under his feet. His whole world closed in on the cracked phone screen Gwen had given him, his eyes categorising every pixel of Ianto’s face, the way his eyes shone, how he scrunched up his nose just so when he laughed and- god he was real wasn’t he?
Beautifully impossible.