Jack stared at the piece of paper on his desk, luxury stationery soaking up the blue ink of his signature. His eyes felt like burned holes in his skull, exhausted from too much to do and not enough people to do it any more. There hadn't been enough people for a while now, not really, it was a tight ship when Tosh and Owen were still alive, and since Gray...
He swallowed, that ancient hurt as fresh as the day he had let go of his brother's hand and let him be taken by Them. (Could it be called ancient when it hadn't happened yet in linear time? By subjective time it was nearly two centuries ago, but it technically wouldn't happen for over three thousand years...) He couldn't think of him, not now - there was no time to sort out the Hub with Torchwood overseeing the return of the children, no time to see if anything had survived the explosion. Or the scavenging done after.
Time. He had hoped for more time, even with the job they had. Even with the Doctor and the Daleks and the Weevils and all the other shit they dealt with and defeated and saved the Earth again and again and again... But he'd forgotten, in those final days, that the rules were different for everyone else. He'd forgotten that Ianto was mortal like everyone else, fragile like everyone else; forgotten that Ianto Jones, for all his efficiency and capability was only human. So he'd taken him into the heart of the enemy's camp, spoken proud words in a reckless bluff, and it had taken Ianto Jones away from him - just like that.
His eyes had found the sheet of paper again, rereading that first sentence over and over again. Regret to inform you, Ianto Jones is dead. And with him the last of Captain Jack Harkness's ties to Earth.
Jack's eyes burned in their sockets, but he didn't shed a tear. Captain Jack Harkness wasn't human enough to cry.
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