Work Text:
“‘Til death do us part,” Jack had promised to Ianto, feeling the warmth of their interlocked hands as evidence of their beating hearts.
“‘Til death do us part,” Ianto affirmed, as they’d stared at one another knowing the deeper meaning of those words that they’d swear to keep silent.
***
“What do you mean you’re married?” Gwen had asked with a laugh, looking around the rest of the table they’d found in the corner of a pub. “Since when?”
“Not long actually,” Ianto replied, seeming nonchalant at first glance, but all the team could tell he was really happy at the mention of it. “Only a week after yours, when you and Rhys were in Paris.”
Tosh let out a mock offended gasp. “And we weren’t invited?”
Jack shrugged, leaning back in his chair while fighting back a grin. “What can I say - it was a small ceremony.”
“ Really small,” Ianto added, taking a sip of beer. “Us two and an officiant.”
“Why’d you go with no guests?” Tosh asked, leaning forward over the table.
Jack shrugged once again. “Didn’t think it was important. Wanted it to be personal, y’know?” Ianto gave him a look of adoration, and Owen raised his hands up in exasperated surrender.
“Wankers, making the rest of us feel single,” Owen grumbled in jest, letting out a half-laugh. “Besides, I thought you didn’t legally exist?”
“Eh, I’m on UNIT files, got them to pull a few strings,” Jack explained nonchalantly.
“The spiritual aspect was the more important part,” Ianto added, smiling towards Jack. Gwen groaned at the sight, and Ianto suspected that if given the option, she would be throwing a shoe between them.
“God, get a room, you two!”
***
Gwen and Rhys’ wedding had gone very far from planned. Still, it was fun chaos, even if their families didn’t see it at the time, and definitely didn’t remember it as - however that could largely be attributed to the retcon.
Ianto and Jack had danced at the wedding; their bodies so closely intertwined that they could feel one another’s slow breaths, almost hear the blood rushing through their arteries, feel the warmth dissipate through the fabric. All the little things that reminded each other they were alive.
Then the song had changed, and the intimacy of the moment was lost. It was no longer just them on the dance floor; now there was a wide variety of partners (albeit all of them straight) all lost in their own worlds of love and joy, with far less grief burdening their vows left unspoken.
As the night drew on, one by one the guests began to pass out from the retcon. It was never pleasant to watch, but this time was for a more defensible reason. Even Gwen and Rhys conceded the necessity, although denied the same chance to forget. It was a decision forged out of a bravery Ianto wished he had, and so could only commend them for it.
With every other wedding guest passed out, there were 6 sat around the table, drinking cheerfully and speaking amicably. For once, it felt like just a normal group of friends having fun, talking about everything mundane and sharing funny stories about one another. That night had been one of the last night’s Ianto could remember of the team hanging out together - no grudges, no underlying tensions, just the closeness that came with a team like Torchwood. It hadn’t felt like the ending of an era, even if in hindsight, Ianto knew that it was.
That was the last truly happy memory Ianto had of them, before everything fell apart.
***
Ianto and Lisa had never married. They’d discussed the idea, but concluded that since neither even owned a house yet, and both were still paying off large loans (credit card debt and student loans respectively), the cost just wasn’t worth it when neither of them were really attached to the idea of marriage itself.
Of course, they never brought up the other reasons they never wanted to marry. The instability of the job being a major one, alongside the life expectancy. Then there was the smaller reasons; growing up around parents who hated one another set a certain bitter taste regarding marriage in Ianto’s case, and a fear of commitment in Lisa’s. Besides, they were only 2 years into the relationship before it abruptly ended, and it wasn’t as though Ianto’s family were close enough to him to ask why they didn’t even live together yet.
Ianto was glad that they’d never married. It would’ve meant he was the one responsible for filing her death certificate.
***
Ianto had never been able to honestly call his relationship with his father ‘good’. The best he could call it was complicated. A childhood of yelling and emotional instability and hanging around after school to delay returning home tended to do that, before you even factored in the alcoholism and all those snide little comments about him being gay. So it was safe to say ‘complicated’ was the best description Ianto could honestly give.
So why was it even slightly surprising that Ianto hadn’t been able to say goodbye? Hadn’t been willing to have just that one last phone call, because he knew that when his father asked, he wouldn’t be able to say he forgave him. Not even to give a dying man a last moment of solace, not even if it was fake.
It was mostly guilt that drove him to the funeral, then. Shame, but not quite regret, over the absence of a farewell haunted him in the procession car that if he’d had the choice, he probably wouldn’t have ended up in. He hadn’t been planning on going, but then Lisa had found out and told Yvonne, and then he couldn’t justify pulling out.
In the end, he appreciated the closure the funeral granted. It was a lot easier to say goodbye, to pretend he’d had a happy childhood, when the man wasn’t there to say goodbye back.
***
Jack had married once, which he supposed made him a widower. While he wouldn't call it a loveless marriage, it was certainly a desperate one - one forged from the panic of 1940s Britain without much in the way of contraception and the shame of a child out of wedlock. It lasted 10 years until they agreed it was best to split, and so Jack had guiltily left his wife and child in England, and once again deleted the identity he’d made for himself there.
20 years later, he received a call from his estranged son to inform him of his ex-lovers passing. Jack had thanked him for calling and wished him well in his life, yet noted the distinct lack of a funeral invitation. Thinking about it, it was surprising enough that his son knew he even existed, and he guessed explaining why he wasn’t actually dead to the funeral guests would be a tricky matter. Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise.
Jack drank until he passed out from alcohol poisoning that evening, in memory of his mortal wife, and to drunkenly swear to himself that this was the result of emotional attachments, and to never make the same mistake again.
***
Lisa’s funeral had been arranged by her family. The Crown had covered the costs, mostly out of courtesy to the high death toll, and while Ianto had offered to donate some of his compensation to the funeral costs, Lisa’s family had immediately shut that suggestion down. In the end, most of his own compensation went towards transferring Lisa’s body to Torchwood 3, and to paying for her treatment.
Lisa’s family seemed nice enough, but they barely knew him. Ianto knew Lisa rarely spoke with them, and so it tracked that they didn’t grasp how committed their relationship was, but it still stung. He was borderline catatonic from an odd sort of grief, that didn’t make much sense when he still had the body with a weak pulse. He dragged himself to the funeral, yet sat there as the hymns were sung not quite knowing how to feel. He wanted to stop the service, scream that she wasn’t dead yet, wasn’t lost yet. But he knew that would ensure that UNIT would take the body, and everything would be in vain.
He sat in the pews, staring numbly at the empty coffin. He was exhausted from the days pretending nothing was wrong, and the nights spent either crying over all he’d lost or comforting the remnants of the woman he loved and swearing that there was still hope left.
It was going to be okay in the end. After all he’d given, all he was willing to sacrifice, it had to be.
***
Ianto had worn his first suit at his gran’s funeral. He’d been dressed up smart, at 12 years old, in clothes that didn’t feel right for him to wear. One of the funeral directors had mentioned, in a meeting his dad dragged him along to, that he could speak at her funeral. He hadn’t even had time to consider the option before his dad shut it down, saying;
“What could he possibly have to say? He barely knew her.”
He stood there in the front row fighting back tears, because he knew if his father saw, he’d be berated for crying, and called an attention whore for trying to elicit sympathy when he wasn’t even upset.
Ianto didn’t cry at his gran’s funeral, and was called a callous bitch for it.
***
Gray and Franklin Thane had been buried on the same day. Although only one of them was actually buried, as Jack knew that his brother’s coffin was hauntingly empty. He could feel the phantom sensation of hand slipping out of his, that he knew wasn’t real because he hadn’t even noticed when Gray let go.
It was an outdoor ceremony, which was customary, so Jack didn’t know why he was so disillusioned with the prospect. Maybe it was because it just didn’t fit Gray’s bookwormish character, and for as much as his dad had enjoyed sports, Jack remembered him most doing woodwork in the shed. It didn’t feel like what they would’ve wanted, Jack could remember thinking as he watched the first coffin be lowered into the ground.
He looked over at his mother on the other side of the congregation, watching her sob into his aunt’s shoulder. He’d been told when he was younger that he looked a lot like his father. At the time he'd revelled in the links to a figure he admired so much. Now, it just stung every time he looked in the mirror, and he could tell his mother felt the same.
She never looked him in the eye anymore, barely even acknowledged his existence, too busy mourning the dual loss of her husband and son that she forgot there was still one left. And it was fine, really; he was growing old enough that he was meant to be taking a bigger role in the household. Nevermind that he was drowning in his own guilt and grief - he didn't get to mourn for something that was his own fault and he needed to be picking up the slack.
He didn't have a shoulder to cry into at the funeral. Everyone was too busy comforting his mother.
***
Owen and Tosh’s funerals had been small events. Owen had no family to speak of - certainly none who he’d have wanted at his funeral; Tosh on the other hand, had her mother, who was the only one Jack knew of to contact. Martha had surprisingly shown up to both, while a few UNIT acquaintances showed up to Owen’s. Jack, Ianto and Gwen were in attendance of course, the remnants of the Torchwood team comprising half of the guest list.
Neither were religious funerals. When organising them, Jack had realised guiltily that he had no idea whether either were theistic, so went with the Torchwood default of atheism. Working with alien lifeforms tended to induce a crisis of faith anyway.
Nobody really gave speeches at the funerals. The eulogies were brief, although Tosh’s was slightly longer due to the input from her mother. Neither felt right though; neither able to truly capture them. That was in part due to the absence of Torchwood’s inclusion, but also in part that they were both so young . Neither had made it to their 40s. They barely even made it to their 30s.
Jack stopped crying at funerals a long time prior; after all, when you hit your 10th colleague’s funeral, the emotions stopped showing on your face. It didn’t sting any less, each time you had to mark their file as deceased, add their date of death onto their records. Each funeral you had to organise, each family member you had to inform. Every single time fucking hurt like his heart was getting ripped out of his chest.
Ianto squeezed his hand knowingly, and Jack performed the same motion back. The three survivors stood together, at the back of the hall, lost in their shared grief.
***
Jack stood by the grave in silence. It was simple, but not unmarked. It felt far too bland for the man it was meant to represent, reducing his life, his personality, his everything into just a piece of carved stone.
Jack knew it was coming. Knew that when he tethered himself to a lover, swore not to leave, they would be forced apart by death. The one thing Jack could never reach, and everyone else always would. He knew that when he swore to himself not to run away from this one, to stay as long as he could, this would be the end result. This crushing pain and heartache would engulf everything as he stood in this graveyard, swaying with the wind. Staring at the gravestone.
He wanted to scream out at the injustice of it all. Wanted to shut himself down until he couldn’t feel anymore. Wanted to storm into Downing Street and ruin every government minister responsible for his death. Wanted to shoot himself in the head and jump off every high ledge until the death finally stuck, and pray to whatever goddamn higher power was left that he could be with his lover.
He didn’t do any of that. He just stared at the gravestone, still newly decorated with flowers from the funeral service, the lines where the dirt was freshly laid still evident. The inscription was simple, cleanly written. Jack read over the lines again and again and again.
Ianto Jones
1983-2009
Beloved Son, Husband & Friend
Eventually, Jack fell to his knees, fingers tracing the words as if the stone could replace the feeling of his flesh. Trying to simulate what it had been like to be with him, back when he was
alive
.
Overcome with another wave of grief, Jack rested his forehead against the headstone, and began to cry.
***
“I was thinking,” Ianto interrupted Jack, who was in the process of organising archive reports. “With our vows - did you want to add your own spin on them? Something from your hometime?”
Jack paused for a moment, putting the file down onto his desk as he turned around to face Ianto.
“I dunno. Marriage as a thing isn’t as big of a thing in the 51st century.” He shrugged, but his brow was still furrowed in thought. “I say keep it 21st. Feels more like… us. Maybe not me, but us.”
It was Ianto’s turn to pause, glancing down at the sheet of paper in his hand.
“So we want to keep them all the same? Even the last one?”
“You mean ‘till death do us part?” Jack asked.
“Yeah.”
Jack paused for a moment, once again lost in thought before he finally spoke. “Keep it. It’ll be more true for us than for any other couples.”
Ianto looked towards Jack with a playful smile. “Then ‘til death do us part, it shall be.”