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The Wanderer
by Lilithangel
Ianto and Gwen died so he would have time to seal the Rift permanently. It had hurt no to be able to hold them and say goodbye the way he had with Tosh. but they had all had a job to do and he refused to lessen their sacrifice by failing.
He was tired of sacrifice though. So once he came back to life and confirmed that the Rift would never open again he let Myfanwy out and locked down the Hub. Humanity had finally begun to accept they were not alone so he was hopeful that Myfanwy would be alright, and she deserved to fly free even for a short time.
Ianto and Gwen had survived longer than most Torchwood staff, even outliving the replacements for the replacements of Tosh and Owen, if only by a few hours. He had loved them dearly, but always knew he would lose them one day.
Now he didn't have any reason to stay in Cardiff so he decided not to. He told Martha what he was doing and gave her a phone number to call if she, or the Doctor, needed him. Packed a duffel bag and went for a walk.
He hadn't really seen much on the twenty-first century. He'd settled in Cardiff at the end of the nineteenth and kind of just stayed. Even though the girl had told him he would have to wait until the twenty-first to find the Doctor he'd been too afraid of missing them.
His jaunts away for the wars not withstanding, all he'd really seen of the rest of the world was various government facilities and faceless hotel rooms. He wanted to see the world that he'd sacrificed so much for.
It didn't take John long to find him. The other man looked older but somehow more at rest than he'd ever seen. The alcohol, drug and sex rehabs still hadn't worked but John assured him that murder rehab was almost sticking.
John made him laugh and the sex was still as good as he remembered. John was even able to fill in some of the missing years for him. It was a terrible as he'd been afraid of and better than he'd imagined. He'd done the right thing and the Agency had punished him for it, but that was alright.
John took him through Europe. For a while they fucked their way through the major cities and fought their way out again. To be fair Jack was just as responsible for the problems as John but he tired of it faster. John surprised him by adapting with just a shrug and Jack realised his ex-partner and newly rediscovered lover was getting old.
One morning he woke up and John was gone. The note had an address and a series of dates. The first one for ten years on.
For ten years he travelled alone but seldom slept alone unless he wanted to. He went to the address and John was waiting for him, not looking a day older.
"Can't be with you forever," John said after their usual fight and fuck reunion, "but can stretch our encounters out for a bit." He tapped his wrist strap.
"What happened to being kings of the universe, or at least a small planet?" he asked, idly tracing patterns across John's stomach.
"Time," John said simply. He bit Jack's ear hard and they went for another round.
He wasn't sure how long it carried on, or how long it was for John between meetings. It was always ten years for him and John was always there, slowly getting older.
They changed the address when he decided to travel the Americas. The Earth changed around him as humanity finally reached the stars and gleefully abandoned their mother earth to explore. He stayed because he'd already seen the stars and the Pacific seemed like a nice place to go.
One decade John didn't show. Jack went back three more times but John was never there and he knew John was gone. Dead or dying, he wouldn't come back to Jack for his ending. Vanity was the one sin John never went to rehab for.
Jack left Earth then, there were lots of the stars he hadn't seen yet.
He stumbled across the Doctor and realised it was three hundred years of his own time since he'd seen the Time Lord. It was still the gangly form he recognised but the eyes were older. They didn't talk about the time that had past. He was swept back into adventures until his teeth ached and he asked for a drop off near the Andromeda system for a rest.
They both knew his was a long slow path, but they would see each other again.
He continued to wander, he fell in love a hundred times and broke his heart every time they died, but it was worth it. He saved the universe on his own and with the Doctor. He built an empire and then left it to return to Earth for the third renaissance.
He died and he died and he died until he stopped noticing. That was when the Doctor crashed back into his life.
He met the archaeologist River Song and was glad for his old friend but didn't ask about the sadness in the Doctor's eyes, loss was something he was all too familiar with. She was a fifty-first
century woman and welcomed him into their lives and their bed. He knew that sooner or later she would meet the Doctor for the last time when the Doctor met her for the first. When she left for the Library he got the Doctor very drunk and they didn't talk about anything.
But he carried on wandering, there was so much of the universe to see and the Doctor wouldn't stay.
He met the next one, still not ginger, and fell in love all over again. The following one, several hundred years later, was ginger and a pompous prat, but it didn't stop him falling in love again.
He lost track of his age and the age of the universe. He slept for fifty years to see if he could and woke to find he was woven into legend. So he reinvented himself and went to find what parts of the
universe they had discovered and helped to discover more.
He met the next Doctor and knew what it meant. They travelled together the whole time for the last time and didn't count the years. It was the hardest farewell he'd ever made. The face of every Doctor he'd known and loved returned to him briefly in farewell.
The Doctor gifted him the Tardis and after some negotiations he learnt to fly her the way she wanted to be flown. She had almost followed the Doctor into death but Jack's loneliness sang to her so she stayed.
Free of the Doctor's timeline he went back to the beginning and watched it all happen again. He broke through the walls of the universes and fond a thousand new worlds, but none of them had the
Doctor. So he went back to his own beginnings again to wander and watch everyone he'd ever loved.
He went back again and again; after all he had all the time in the universe.
END