Epilogue

This hasn't been the worst week of his life. Even living through the carnage of Canary Wharf ranks below watching helplessly as his colleagues shot the woman he loved, and those bad memories are matched with the week he lost two of his best friends in a day, and the week he died. Comparatively speaking, this week has been like a holiday somewhere sunny. Still, he's glad it's over.

Also, he's glad they really are on holiday.

Jack makes a noise from the bed. He sleeps more these days than he used to. Ianto should be asleep right now, content beside him, but instead he's wrapped up in a quilt, sitting in the room's lone stuffed armchair and looking out into the still night over the sea. For the first place they came to, this tiny hotel has a spectacular view. He suspects Jack booked a reservation and then played at finding this spot at random. It doesn't matter. He'd have done the same.

A half moon hovers overhead, sending dim highlights to pulse over the steady rocking of the waves: white lace cast on black water. He's not much of a poet, but half-lit nights are made for poetry. Someone better with words ought to capture the contrast of moonlight and waves, and the sleepy god in his bed, because Ianto's words are trapped with the swell in his throat before a single syllable springs forth. It's a beautiful place to be, it's a perfect night to die. He closes his eyes against the waves, but can hear them even through the window glass.

Everything is hard.

Jack let him come back to work, but there isn't room for him on the team. Lois has taken all his old duties, Albert all his new ones. He can make space for himself, did when he first carved out his own fifth position on a team of four, and he can adjust to accusing stares all over again. But every day is difficult, and he struggles to remind himself why he wants this life back. Even Gwen is forgetting he was gone; just yesterday, she casually mentioned events from "when you were off on your trip" and it took him a moment's calculation to realise she was referring to when he was dead. He couldn't form a reply, and Jack merely watched her, not correcting her.

Later, he told Ianto in a regretful voice, "She doesn't mean to. Time is rewriting for her."

"And for you?" He covered his fear with a world-weary tone he'd perfected back when he was seventeen, but Jack drew him into a very non-professional hug with his lips against Ianto's cheek.

"Not for me. Never for me."

Memory, and faith, and the warm light emitting from Jack's private sun, these are keeping Ianto alive and sane. Amy cannot dream anyone alive again. That's what he told Sally over the phone, what he made certain she understood and could tell the others: group together, be warm together, dream one another into being. Nareen's family believes in her. Hal and Karl believe in each other. Sally has enough faith in herself to power a small city, but she promised to pass along the message.

Were he able to muster the necessary poetry for the evening, Ianto would surmise this short holiday - two days which are the most they will squeeze out from their normal lives - is about faith, and Jack's need to prove he can be the sun as well as the moon and stars.

The sun, moon, and stars take this opportunity to let out a snore that's part hippopotamus, and then he's still again.

Ianto's mobile vibrates, whirring in the otherwise quiet room. He carries the phone outside to the small balcony, naked but for his tightly-wrapped quilt. "Hi."

"Hi."

"Another nightmare?"

"Yeah."

They talked earlier this afternoon, going over the details of Steven's day. He played with some new friends, children he didn't know before. Ianto hoped things were looking up, but a call this late indicates otherwise.

"Tell me about it."

"You were screaming at me that you never wanted to see me again."

The cool night air shivers down beneath the frayed patchwork. He's always assumed Steven's nightmares have been of death and of whatever terrors brought him to Amy's doorstep.

"Well, you're awake now. Do you know that's not true?"

There's a pause. "Yeah. It just scared me."

"I know. I get scared about not seeing you again, too."

"You do?"

"All the time." Ianto looks at the half-moon, and he thinks when this moon comes again, the month will have passed, and they will be surviving in the lives they have, or they will be casting out on an unknown sea together.

Steven says, "I think I'm going to be okay now," and he doesn't mean just from the bad dream. "Will you call tomorrow?"

"Of course."

"Okay. Good night."

"Good night."

He goes back in, and drops the quilt onto the chair. He's cold, but the bed is toasty warm. Even mostly asleep, Jack wraps him in his arms as soon as they are under the covers together.

"Steven?" he asks with half a yawn.

"Yeah."

"Is he okay?"

"Yeah."

Jack doesn't ask Ianto if he's okay. He pivots and wriggles until they are nose-to-nose and toes-to-toes, and everything in between. The kisses start out slow, but Jack's waking up, and as the sleepiness falls away, his attention turns solely to Ianto.

Even broken, always broken, Jack's so real he bends reality around him, forces illusions to be real. When Ianto and Steven were hiding in plain sight, he was the first to believe, and the first to break the spell even without the help of the TARDIS key. As long as Ianto is with him, no matter how thin he's stretched, no matter how much the voice of the Vortex in his head tells him he doesn't belong, the light shining inside Jack burns away all doubts.

Jack speaks to him tonight in his cradle tongue, adoring whispers between each kiss. There's no room here for the ghosts of the dead between them, no pause for sorrow, or the past. Just hands, with fingers pressed together like they are holding up the world against each other. Just mouths, familiar with the bite and press and suck and tender motions. Just the waves outside and the warmth of the sun in here. Just two hearts beating, learning to live again, one shared breath at a time.

The End

A/N: The fic following up on this is Home, Take One. Eldabe wrote another fic in this storyverse called "Suspend." Look for it on Archive of Our Own, or at Eldarwannabe on Livejournal.

My three favourite words are, "I liked this."