Title: Tintinnabulation
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Team
Rating: PG13/T
Word Count: ~2000
Spoilers: The whole series, including CoE
Warnings: Language, slight sexual implications, death (canon).
Disclaimer: I do not own or make money off of Torchwood. This is for entertainment purposes only.
Author's Note: Based on Edgar Allan Poe's The Bells. Reference to the Scottish play written by Shakespeare. Originally posted on my LiveJournal of the same name.

Tintinnabulation

I

Hear the sledges with the bells -

Silver bells!

What a world of merriment their melody foretells!

How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,

In the icy air of night!

While the stars that oversprinkle

All the heavens seem to twinkle

With a crystalline delight;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells

From the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells -

From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

There is a light film of snow on the ground and, when the wind picks it up, it swirls and glistens like tiny flecks of glitter. Although Christmas has passed, its trimmings still hang with joyous pride and will continue to do so until after the New Year. These simple decorations (twinkling fairy lights, swathes of evergreen, red velvet bows, sparkling bells of silver) lend warmth to the cold night sky and pale moonlight in a manner that complements rather than overshadows.

This is no lovers' stroll, though it isn't a mission, either. While Jack's gait is purposeful and Ianto's is efficient, it is merely a basic attempt to return to Ianto's flat. There is only the romance of atmosphere here – the nostalgic longing for blazing hearths and cocoa, the red-cheeked and healthy glow that only seems to occur in winter, the feel of being cloaked in warm wool.

Jack leans his head back to look at the stars with the same distant wonder as any earthbound man might, but he also watches the white puffs of breath coming from Ianto's mouth as though the small clouds are a holy affirmation; perhaps, to him, they are.

Ianto catches his sideways glances and questions them with the quirk of an eyebrow as Jack chuckles dismissively.

"Winter suits you," Jack teases with a grin.

"I'm Welsh," comes the simple retort and Jack laughs outright this time.

In the time it takes to inhale one breath and exhale another, the world is washed clean and threats are blanketed by the thin layer of snow. Though the half-life of this instant is short, it soothes like a balm and Jack reaches out for Ianto's hand. For once, he doesn't flinch or pull away. He simply entwines their fingers and keeps walking, leaving Jack at a breathless loss of words.

The moment, however temporary, is as weighted, as delicate, and as valuable as crystal. As they approach the dark, squat building in which Ianto takes up rented residence, both men look at each other and, by some unspoken accord, continue to walk on past its promised warmth.

But this is no lovers' stroll, no, no; they simply need the exercise.

II

Hear the mellow wedding bells -

Golden bells!

What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!

Through the balmy air of night

How they ring out their delight!

From the molten-golden notes,

And all in tune,

What a liquid ditty floats

To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats

On the moon!

Oh, from out the sounding cells

What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!

How it swells!

How it dwells

On the Future! -how it tells

Of the rapture that impels

To the swinging and the ringing

Of the bells, bells, bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells -

To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

Jack shuffles through his tidy stack of photographs and daguerreotypes, his deck of sepia memories, and smiles with a soft reminiscence. His fingers alight over the bent edges as he mentally erases the patina of age from the faces of those he's loved. Each glance beckons a remembrance; a rolling hearty laugh, a twinkling eye illuminated by the flicker of an oil lamp, an affectionate scowl.

So lost is he in his recollections, he barely registers the ringing of the proximity alarm. He replaces his tokens in their tin mausoleum and, frowning, climbs the rickety ladder to his office. It is only when he hears the familiar huff of annoyance that he allows his battle-tense muscles to relax and a smile to flicker across his face.

"Thought I told you to go home, get some sleep," he chastises as he leans against his desk, arms folded.

"Thought I told you to stop leaving messes for me to clean," Ianto counters, turning to face Jack.

Jack shrugs slightly. "I was feeling…celebratory."

"Hmmm," he nods. "Next time you start to feel that way, please try to refrain from tossing confetti. I've already cleaned up enough for one night."

"That you have," Jack chuckles and crosses over to wrap his arms around Ianto in a quietly tender embrace.

"So that means you get to clean it up."

"I was going to! I swear!"

There is a pause as disbelief flickers across Ianto's face, but then he smiles slightly. "It ended up a lovely wedding, at least."

"It did," Jack murmurs distantly as he gently rests his forehead against Ianto's temple. "I'm happy for them – for her."

He feels Ianto stiffen slightly in his arms, the muscles of his back going rigid with apprehension. Jack turns his head slightly and presses a soft, tentative kiss to his forehead and smiles with genuine affection.

"Hey," he says softly, almost a reprimand.

Ianto looks at him directly and nods. "I'm happy for them, too."

"They…I know what it's like to love someone the way she loves him."

There is a sudden palpable tension in the air, like a band that has been stretched beyond its means, but the ambiance is far from anxious. Just as rapidly as it descends over them, it strains and snaps fiercely and leaves them both with a feeling like whiplash.

As though compelled by an invisible force, Ianto raises his hands to grasp Jack's braces and pulls him closer, their mouths meeting by quiet agreement. Jack's lips are almost hesitant, overwhelmed, as Ianto kisses him in desperate, hopeful acknowledgement. He runs a tongue against Jack's lower lip, nibbles it slightly; Jack grabs his hips in an attempt to both steady himself and pull his lover closer.

They pull away simultaneously as their lungs burn with a frantic demand for oxygen. Wordlessly, still catching his breath, Jack leads him to the ladder. As he descends it, Ianto notices the small tin on Jack's desk. In a moment of premonition, he knows that he will one day be relegated to that box (or another quite like it), his spirit captured on a small bit of glossy paper to be aired in brief moments of nostalgia throughout eternity. He finds the thought surprisingly cheering; it's more than most ever get.

III

Hear the loud alarum bells -

Brazen bells!

What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!

In the startled ear of night

How they scream out their affright!

Too much horrified to speak,

They can only shriek, shriek,

Out of tune,

In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,

In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,

Leaping higher, higher, higher,

With a desperate desire,

And a resolute endeavor

Now -now to sit or never,

By the side of the pale-faced moon.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

What a tale their terror tells

Of despair!

How they clang, and clash, and roar!

What a horror they outpour

On the bosom of the palpitating air!

Yet the ear it fully knows,

By the twanging

And the clanging,

How the danger ebbs and flows;

Yet the ear distinctly tells,

In the jangling

And the wrangling,

How the danger sinks and swells,

By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells -

Of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells -

In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

They sit across from one another: Jack is attempting to compose a formal letter to the Prime Minister that doesn't include petty threats, while Ianto reviews expense reports and a requisition request from UNIT. The hush that has settled over them is comfortable, a moment of quiet normalcy and ease.

Of course, as often happens to such bouts of stillness, the hazy world of solitude implodes into sharp focus as the air is rent with the cacophonous klaxon of alarms. A brief flicker of uncertainty and then Jack is up from his chair and charging out of his office, Ianto close behind. Their muscles are taut with anticipation as their hearts pound in an attempt to pump adrenaline-rich blood throughout their bodies, both different wildcats prepared to pounce.

"What've you got?" Jack loudly demands as he approaches Tosh.

She types with furious abandon, her fingers flying over the keyboard with the same rapid grace as a piano player. She glances furtively between monitors.

"Rift spike," she answers automatically.

Owen has sidled up alongside her, glancing over her shoulder at the latest readings. "Fucking huge," he mutters, his voice a strange cross between exasperation and awe.

"Do we know what's causing it?"

"Not yet." Tosh takes a moment to adjust her glasses before diving back into her work. "I'm not picking up anything recognizable on the scanner, but whatever it is, it's big."

"Okay," Jack decides, slipping into the greatcoat that he hadn't noticed Ianto retrieve, "You and Owen stay here, coordinate. See if any police reports come in. Ianto, Gwen, with me. We'll go take a look."

Owen frowns and crosses his arms. "Yeah? And what if you need –"

"You're dead," Jack reminds him with a hard scowl. "You stay here."

As Jack collects and sights his gun, Ianto glances at him with a raised eyebrow. Jack nods resolutely, his concern-marked face severe in the sickly fluorescent lighting. Shadows play over his features and in his eyes, so Ianto nods back with resolute reassurance.

Jack watches as Gwen and Ianto prepare themselves, too, and wonders when he became the haughty king that sends his closest companions off to die for him.

"Toshiko, turn that thing off already!" he shouts in annoyance, mostly to drown out the sound of his thoughts.

"I can't, Jack. It won't let me." She pounds at the keys as if to physically demonstrate the mental force she's exerting.

"Bloody fucking – you mean I have to sit here and listen to that?" Owen mutters and scowls.

Jack simply shakes his head, pulls up his collar and walks out of the Hub. As he passes Ianto, he grasps his hand and squeezes quickly, looking him directly in the eye. It's as if the sirens had been silenced and the light dimmed for all they notice of their surroundings in those brief, fleeting seconds.

Finally, Jack steels and centers himself in reality. "I'll pull 'round the SUV."

"Jack," Tosh calls out, looking up from her monitor for the first time since the alarms began to blare. "I'm tracking – no, wait. Got a centralized location. Bute Park."

Ianto clears his throat, blinks, and offers a small, sardonic smile. "Well, at least it's not Splott."

Coming up from behind Jack, Gwen beams with false cheer. "Can't be that bad, then, right?"

As the alarms clang their ill-omened warning in his throbbing head, Jack grins at them both with encouragement, although all he's thinking is the hope that he isn't sending either of them to their deaths. At least not this time.

IV

Hear the tolling of the bells -

Iron bells!

What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!

In the silence of the night,

How we shiver with affright

At the melancholy menace of their tone!

For every sound that floats

From the rust within their throats

Is a groan.

And the people -ah, the people -

They that dwell up in the steeple,

All alone,

And who tolling, tolling, tolling,

In that muffled monotone,

Feel a glory in so rolling

On the human heart a stone -

They are neither man nor woman -

They are neither brute nor human -

They are Ghouls:

And their king it is who tolls;

And he rolls, rolls, rolls,

Rolls

A paean from the bells!

And his merry bosom swells

With the paean of the bells!

And he dances, and he yells;

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the paean of the bells,

Of the bells -

Keeping time, time, time,

In a sort of Runic rhyme,

To the throbbing of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells -

To the sobbing of the bells;

Keeping time, time, time,

As he knells, knells, knells,

In a happy Runic rhyme,

To the rolling of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells -

To the tolling of the bells,

Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,

Bells, bells, bells -

To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Jack kneels, a man alone, against the cold, frostbit ground. The stab of painful pressure on his knees is heartbreakingly familiar; just days ago...

Time whorls in a cacophony of cries around him and there is nothing he can do to stop the spinning, the turning, of the dark grey sky. He had left with the other mourners long ago, only to return by the compelling tug of his heart, his conscience, his need to give way to grief. Now, without Gwen, the freedom to submit to anguish is frighteningly overwhelming. He is tempted to rend his clothing and rub ashes on his face, but he resists (mostly for the knowledge that both actions would send Ianto into fits – he almost laughs at the thought).

Instead, he quotes to himself from a play Ianto had once dragged him to see. His lips move faintly with the words in his head, "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

Jack suspects his actions could be mistaken for prayer. Then again, maybe it is a sort of supplication. It is, at least, a condemnation of fate and so he clings to it.

Bitterly, he bemoans his own fate; he is alone if he closes his heart, abandoned if he opens it. Either way, he is forsaken. Either way, he waters graves with tears in the faint (vain!) hope that flowers may bloom should Spring ever finally return.

Even their final moments together were comprised of a dire miscommunication only to be revealed in one immortal's compulsively masochistic hindsight. It is as if they were destined to be ships passing in the night, finding port only by brief stormy chance.

In quiet, dark ways Jack had spoken his devoted affection: in the soft predawn moments, the secret glances from under dark eyelashes, the languorous kisses that had no agenda of progression, the cryptic words and promises that were so layered with meaning as to be devastatingly opaque…but when it really mattered? Just three simple syllables a child could utter without hesitation. But he couldn't, not with the hard lump in his throat.

The church bells, those heavy burdensome vespers, toll the late hour. "Don't. Don't. Don't," they mock.

"I love you," Jack finally responds aloud, a whisper that echoes, into the freshly-turned earth. "I love you" – as if emphasizing the sentiment is the one thing that could bring the dead back to life.

"Too late," they chime with exuberant glee. "Too late."

End