A/N: Well, my long bout of writers block seems to have ended and my muse is fired up. I've found a new obsession in the incredible DW spinoff Torchwood. I've seen all of seasons (or series) 1-3 and I have to say that Jack and Ianto are now one of my absolute favorite TV show couples. So, naturally, I decided to try my hand at a CoE fix-it. The first couple of chapters are set during the last 2 episodes of "Children of Earth." After that...well, you'll have to wait and see. ;-)

Disclaimer: Torchwood is the property of the BBC and Russell T. Davies. This fanfic is purely for entertainment and I am not making a penny off it.

Out of the dusk a shadow,

Then, a spark;

Out of the cloud a silence,

Then, a lark;

Out of the heart a rapture,

Then, a pain;

Out of the dead, cold ashes,

Life again.

—Evolution by John Banister Tabb

He'd lived a long time. Lost so many people along the way. Lovers, close friends, children. Saw them perish from illness, accident, or the simple passage of time. So many deaths, and they never got any easier. The only way to keep the grief from driving him mad was to keep his distance; hold them at arm's length as long as his resolve held out, then leave them before they were inevitably taken from him.

It wasn't always this way, of course. Back when he hurled himself into Earth's late Nineteenth Century, he hadn't fully understood his own altered state. With his wrist strap broken, he resigned himself to spending the rest of his life there. He met a beautiful girl named Valerie, his first true love. After a whirlwind of a courtship, he found himself doing something he never expected of himself; he married the girl, and the two of them settled in a small cottage in the town Valerie had grown up in.

Their life together was wonderful, until a month later when Valerie developed a cough which soon worsened into pneumonia. The town's doctor (such as he was in this primitive time) held little hope for her recovery.

That night, in tears, Jack kissed his young bride for what he thought was the last time, pouring everything he had into it. By morning, Valerie had miraculously recovered. It wasn't until some time later, when he learned more about himself, that Jack understood it was his kiss that had saved her, healed her somehow.

Life went on. Valerie was soon expecting their first child. If it was a boy, Jack planned to name it Gray.

Valerie went into labor nearly a month early. Even a century later, Jack still had nightmares of waiting helplessly outside their bedroom while his wife's screams echoed behind the wooden door. The doctor and the midwife did everything they could to save her. When they finally let Jack into the room, grim-faced, all he could see was red. Red everywhere. The bed linens soaked crimson, and Valerie lying pale and still at its center. Jack kissed her again, like he had before, willing his life's energy into her body. But it wasn't enough. She was already gone.

The baby was a boy, tiny and frail, his cries so weak they could barely be heard. Both the doctor and the midwife said he would not survive the night. Jack sat on the floor in the cottage's main room with his dying child in his arms. He told the baby all about Valerie, what a beautiful person she'd been and how she would have made a wonderful mother. As the baby started gasping his last breaths, Jack kissed his tiny mouth. When dawn broke the next day, the child was still alive. And the next day. And the next. Feeding voraciously from the makeshift bottle Jack made, getting stronger all the while.

Jack knew he couldn't raise his son. His grief over his wife's death was too overwhelming. So he gave the child to Valerie's brother, whose wife had given birth to a daughter a few weeks earlier. They named the child Elias, and raised him as their own. Every few years Jack would stop by to see how his son was doing. He never approached him, though. By then Jack knew about his immortality. He watched from a distance as Elias grew up and started a family of his own, all without ever learning who his real parents were. But he looked happy. That was all that really mattered to Jack.

Over time, he worked out a little more about how the kiss worked. Those he used it on had to be on the brink of death, but not dead. He also discovered it didn't work if Jack himself was dying, as if he couldn't spare the energy then. Jack used this ability sparingly, especially after Torchwood "recruited" him. The last thing he needed was to wind up in one of their experimental labs again. Jack never told anyone about it. Except Ianto.

Jack couldn't pinpoint a specific moment when it began, but as his relationship with the Welshman deepened, he found himself sharing things with Ianto that he never told anyone before. Jack didn't tell him everything, but still, he realized that Ianto knew him better than anyone else in his long life. And that scared the shit out of him sometimes. Jack kept telling himself it was only a casual thing between them, even though he knew it wasn't. Despite everything, all his years of building up emotional barriers, Ianto somehow managed to find his way through the cracks.

It wasn't one-sided, either. Ianto told him everything, even the things he never shared with Lisa. Jack knew the truth about Ianto's father, his lonely childhood, his strained relationship with his sister and her family. Jack knew all his quirks and his fears, his habits and his secret shames. He knew Ianto liked to sing old commercial jingles in the shower, that he liked honey on his toast, and that he secretly enjoyed watching the occasional romantic comedy.

All those intimate details that every couple learned about, yet Jack stubbornly refused to define his relationship with Ianto as such. "I hate the word 'couple'," he'd said at the hospital when they retrieved the hitchhiker, before everything went to hell. And even though Ianto was quick to agree, Jack saw the hurt that flickered across his face for the briefest moment. They probably would've worked their way up to one hell of a row over the issue eventually, had the arrival of the 456 and the government's desperation to cover its own ass not gotten in the way.

The end of the world proved a great distraction from Jack's personal fears. At first, anyway. He didn't have to dwell on Ianto's increasing desperation to define them. Didn't have to analyze the panic that rose in him whenever he began to consider, in the quieter moments, how much the Welshman really meant to him. How deep those feeling truly ran. Deeper than his feelings for Valerie, or Estelle, or even the Doctor. Because if he let himself acknowledge these things, then he would become all too aware that, someday, inevitably, Jack would lose him.

It was foolishness, of course. All that denial did nothing to spare Jack from the soul-wrenching pain when Ianto collapsed into his arms at Thames House.

"I love you," Ianto sobbed. And all Jack could think was please, not like this. He couldn't say it back. Not while Ianto was dying. If he were less of a coward, Jack would have said the words long before, when they wouldn't have been tainted by desperation. Yet another in a long line of regrets.

Jack begged Ianto not to leave him, but it was beyond either of their control. He placed a last kiss on Ianto's lips, knowing it was hopeless. Jack was dying, and Ianto was already gone. The kiss could not save him. Jack collapsed beside his lover, praying that, this time, he would not wake up.

Fate was no kinder to him now than it was throughout his many other deaths. Jack woke with a quiet gasp, lying on the floor of a gymnasium that served as a makeshift morgue. All around him was red, red everywhere. Hundreds of bodies lying in neat rows, covered in red blankets to render them indistinguishable from each other. Jack wondered how many other rooms were filled with the dead. My fault. All my fault. His arrogant, stupid plan had brought about these deaths. He'd underestimated the 456's ruthlessness, and these people had paid the price.

Jack's head rolled to the left, saw Gwen kneeling with her back to him. She'd drawn the red blanket away from the body lying beside him, revealing Ianto's pale, still features. Jack sat up, put his arms around Gwen, and gazed down with her at his lover's body. Gwen's sobs were subdued. Jack was silent, his face a mask of grief.

The deaths of those he loved always hurt, especially the ones who died because of his actions—and there were more than a few of those. But no matter how long Jack grieved, he always found it in him to move on in the end. But not this time. Jack knew there was no recovering from this loss. The pain ran too deep, a gaping wound on his heavily scarred soul. Because he understood now, Ianto had given him back his soul. And now it was dead. It died with him.

It had been noteworthy the first few times government officials arrived at the station to speak to one or both of the new suspects in custody. These prisoners weren't the run-of-the-mill drunks or burglars that usually graced these cells. Their crimes were of a far higher caliber: treason. The PC in charge of guarding the cells didn't really know the details. The suspects certainly didn't look like spies or terrorists to him. One was a young woman in her twenties, obviously scared. The other was a man who looked to be in his mid-thirties, wearing a vintage military greatcoat and exuding so much sorrow it was hard to look at him.

It had given the PC something of a thrill admitting one government bigwig after another, scrutinizing every i.d. with utmost diligence before unlocking the gate and escorting them to the appropriate cells. Yet by the time his shift was nearing its end, the flow of visitors slowed to a trickle and so had the PC's enthusiasm. So, when the young man in the tailored suit approached and held up his identification, the guard gave it only a cursory glance before having the man sign in and ushering him to the right cell.

"Call out when you're finished," the PC said, locking the door behind the young man.

Jack sat on the cell's thinly padded bunk, shoulders hunched, head down. He didn't bother looking up when his visitor arrived. He didn't care. He just wanted to get this latest interrogation over with so he could be left alone.

"Jack."

That single, half-whispered syllable sent his heart racing and a chill though him at the same time. Jack looked up at the slim figure standing by the door. It can't be. He got to his feet and moved to the opposite end of the cell, his red-rimmed eyes staring in disbelief.

Ianto met his mistrustful gaze with a look of anxious hope. "Jack...please say something."

"You're not here," Jack's voice quavered, "You're dead."

"I don't know what happened," Ianto said, "I woke up on the floor of a gymnasium, in Thames House. Nothing but bodies all around me. There weren't any guards. I stole an i.d. off the body of someone who looked enough like me that I figured I could pass for him. Once I stepped out of the gym, nobody gave me a second look. I guess they figured I must've belonged there. I heard someone say you were in police custody, so I left and got a cab here." He smirked. "Apparently they'll let you in anywhere if you've got a government i.d. on you."

Jack shook his head, getting more and more upset. His hands reached up and tangled themselves in his hair. "No, no, this isn't real," he choked, "I've lost my mind. I'm...I'm hallucinating."

It broke Ianto's heart to see his lover like this. He reached out a hand. "I swear I'm real. I'm alive. I don't know how, but I'm alive." He stepped closer to the cringing man. "Please, cariad, take my hand. You're not hallucinating."

Jack almost refused, almost turned his back on the ghost confronting him, but a small part of him which dared to hope made him quickly reach out and grab hold. Jack gasped at the feel of warm, living flesh which squeezed back when his fingers tightened their grip. "Ianto..."

It was hard to say who yanked the other closer. It was like a magnetic pull. They clung to each other as their mouths collided in a desperate kiss. So lost were they in each other, they didn't notice the less-than-stealthy arrival of several heavily armed, black-clad soldiers until they barged into the cell. If they were shocked to see their target snogging another man, they hid it well. Ianto was roughly shoved away as two of the soldiers grabbed Jack and started dragging him from the cell. He struggled with everything he had and shouted Ianto's name, while Ianto tried to fight his way back to him. One of the soldiers spoke rapidly into his earpiece. Jack heard the name Ianto Jones mentioned, then the soldier, who was obviously in charge of the others, ordered his men to bring Ianto as well. Neither man struggled after that. For the moment, all they really cared about was that they were still together.

They were quickly taken to the roof where a black helicopter arrived and landed before them. They all quickly boarded and Jack and Ianto were spirited away to an unknown destination. Jack didn't even question where they were going, too caught up in the wonder of the man seated across from him, miraculously alive and whole. Even the cut on his cheek, sustained in the Hub explosion, was gone. Not so much as a scar remained. Just like when I revive, Jack thought, All my injuries erased. My body restored. How was it possible? Even when Jack was able to heal someone with the kiss, they didn't recover so perfectly.

Was it that last kiss Jack gave him before they both died? Past experience said this was impossible. Ianto was already dead, Jack dying. It shouldn't have happened, yet it did.

Ianto noticed his scrutiny and smiled; that intimate little smile reserved solely for him. Jack decided right then that he didn't care how the hell it happened. They had their second chance, and Jack wasn't going to waste another second of it with what-ifs. They would get through this. They'd find a way to defeat the 456, and then Jack intended to spend the rest of Ianto's life making the Welshman as deliriously happy as Jack felt at that moment.