Cursed

“Wait,” Hermione said, staring at Jack as he tried to hold Ianto steady.  More accurately, it felt as though she was staring through Jack, focused on something none of the others could see as they all fought their own panic.  “Wait,” she repeated. 

Jack was being hit by as much of the magic as Ianto was, and it was starting to sting.  He wasn’t sure how long he could withstand the onslaught before it started doing him real damage.  He looked at Hermione, who seemed strangely calm.  “What?” he asked.

“I don’t think there’s any way to stop this,” Bill said, falling to his knees next to Hermione and waving his wand at Ianto to confirm his suspicions.  “His spark.  It’s actually gone.” 

“Bad Wolf,” Hermione said.

In that moment, her voice was the only sound in the room.

“What did you just say?” Jack asked, stunned.

“I read it in one of the ancient spell books, when we were on the run,” she said.  “Bad Wolf.  It’s a spell that calls upon the vortex to help anchor someone’s magic, if it has become unmoored.”

“But that helps an existing spark to anchor someone’s magic,” Bill argued.  “His spark is gone, Hermione!  Extinguished!”

“But we know where to find another spark, don’t we?” Hermione smiled at Jack.  “Do you have any control over it?”

“A bit,” Jack admitted.  He had used that control before, to help Carys Fletcher survive the sex gas alien, and to bring Ianto back, when the Cyberman with Lisa Hallett’s face had tossed him like a rag doll across the hub.  Despite his burning rage, Jack hadn’t been able to bear the thought of Ianto dying, so he’d used the vortex to save him.

“Ianto,” Hermione came as close to them as she could.  Ianto looked at her, his eyes empty and exhausted.  “Jack is going to give you a spark of his vortex.  We need for you to focus,” she placed her wand in his hand.  “I’ll help you.”

“I can’t,” he breathed, closing his eyes.

“Yes, you can.  Damn it, you are not allowed to give up, now.  We’re so close.  Come on, Neville!”

“Neville is dead!” he shouted, then collapsed back against Jack.  “That spark that just died, that was the last of him,” he whispered.  He looked up at the magic swirling violently around them.  It was wild and so beautiful.  It took his breath away.  “That’s his magic,” he said miserably.

Hermione took his face in her hands.  “Then you take it, and make it yours, Ianto Jones!”  She wrapped her hand around his, tightening his hold on her wand.  “Like everything else you’ve done, to carve out a new identity.  That is your magic, you hear me?  That means you can use it, even if it’s not anchored.  So use it to capture a spark from Jack, and then use the spark to anchor your magic.  Do you know the Bad Wolf spell?”

He nodded.  “Every book I opened in the Room of Requirement referenced it.  It was even written in the margins of a copy of Quidditch Through the Ages.”

Hermione frowned, wanting to ask more, but the whirling magic was getting more and more out of hand.  “Okay, so when you feel the spark from Jack, use the spell.  It will settle the spark in your body and then ground your magic.  Ianto, you can do this!  You have to!”

Ianto turned to Jack, who grinned.  “Ready?”

“No.”

Jack chuckled and leaned down, kissing Ianto fervently.  It wasn’t the strange not-a-kiss that he had performed in the hub to bring Ianto back to life, but an actual kiss.  But as he kissed Ianto, he marshalled the vortex and focused on directing it towards the younger man.

At first, Ianto was too weak to return the kiss.  But then, Jack felt Ianto’s free hand – the one not wrapped around Hermione’s wand – tangling in his hair, clutching the back of his head, holding them together, locked in a passionate embrace.

Jack felt the vortex bending towards Ianto, pouring into him.  It seemed like far more than a mere spark, but he was distracted.  He vaguely heard Hermione shout.

“Now, Ianto!”

Ianto broke the kiss only long enough to growl, “Lupus Malum,” as the wand twitched in his hand.  Hermione merely held him steady as he drew on all of the magic swirling through the room before latching onto Jack’s lips, once more.

Jack could not have described the sensation.  He felt the vortex settling into Ianto’s body, and the magic quickly following, funneling into him and filling all of the empty spaces between and within the atoms of his body.  But the vortex continued to dance between them.  Even as Jack felt it settle into Ianto’s body, it still felt connected to him.  It felt as though a cord now connected them, umbilicus to umbilicus.  And then, he felt the sensation of Ianto diving into him. 

For a moment, they were one. 

And Jack felt a strange sort of tightening in his sacrum, like…

He gasped, but Ianto kept him locked in the kiss, and Jack dove back in, eager to see what his wizard was doing to him.  He had a feeling he knew, could only hope he was right.  But to feel it happening was incredible.

When Rose had brought him back, he had hardly noticed, but in the days following the revival from his first death, it had felt like his back had been flayed open.  Arguably, if Hermione’s magical theory classes were to be believed, it had.  What should have been a small opening had been rent open, violently and – he had thought – permanently.

But now, he felt the gaping hole shrinking.  Normalizing.  Healing.  It felt strange and uncomfortable and right.  Had he the ability to separate from Ianto (not that he wanted to), he would have wept.  In the next moment, it was once again a window, and the flow of the vortex had slowed to accommodate the smaller aperture. 

And then, a moment later, the window gently closed, allowing the exhausting, unending flow to cease.

Jack still had an overabundance of vortex surging through his being, but it was no longer infinite.  The terrifying, overwhelming endlessness was gone.  There was peace.  There was silence.  And for a moment, the entire universe contracted into a singularity consisting only of Jack and Ianto, vortex and magic.  With startling clarity, Jack realized that all of these things were, in the end, just one thing.

Love.

And then the universe expanded, once more.  Jack was Jack, by himself and feeling a bit bereft as Ianto was once more Ianto, not only separate but withdrawing from the most incredible snog, ever.  The air tasted of vortex and magic and Ianto, and Jack was surprised to note that he still felt that connection to Ianto, that…  

Cord? 

Tether? 

Bond?

“What?” he asked, dazedly looking around before noticing Ianto, going slack and unconscious in his arms.  “What?” he asked again before passing out.

***

Jack woke slowly.  How it transpired brought to mind layer after layer of cotton wool being carefully removed from an heirloom ornament, slowly revealing it to the light of day so it can be added to the Christmas tree…

As consciousness slowly returned, he was relieved to find his mental faculties remained intact as three different innuendos about baubles and being hung sprang immediately to mind.  He rested in a lovely, comfortable place, feeling like he was floating, weightless.  There was a beautiful light surrounding him, a sort of gold and violet glow that held and comforted him like a lover’s embrace.

That thought opened his eyes, quite literally, as he remembered Ianto slipping away from him after… 

After.

For a moment, Jack kept himself still as he tried to get his bearings in the silent room.  It was the same room at St. Mungo’s, and someone had conjured a bed for him, on which he had been carefully arranged on his left side, in the recovery position.  He could clearly see Ianto laid out in a similar fashion in the bed next to him.

Slowly, because he felt every bit as fragile as that heirloom bauble, he sat up.  He felt shaky and lightheaded.  He looked around the room and saw that there were several chairs occupied by sleeping witches and wizards.  Bill was sprawled out in one, sleeping deeply after the taxing efforts of the past few days.

Hermione was curled up in Ron’s lap in a second chair, their arms around one another.  Susan and Harry were in two more, Harry with his head resting at an alarming angle and his mouth wide open.  Jack was touched that they had all stayed to watch over them.  He checked his vortex manipulator and saw that he had been out for almost four hours, and his vitals weren’t quite back to normal, yet.  He shook his head, trying to clear it, and frowned. 

What had happened?

His eyes were drawn back to Ianto, who was either asleep or unconscious.  But there was a worrying tension in the younger man.  Something seemed off.  Jack stood on wobbly legs that almost did not support him as he staggered the three steps to Ianto’s bed.  He realized that Ianto was shivering.

Without a second thought, Jack stripped off the robes he was wearing, and then his socks – because who wants to be that guy? – and then he pulled Ianto’s blanket down in order to divest him of his robes, as well. 

He slid under the covers with Ianto, noting that this bed was slightly larger than the camp bed in his bunker, and its mattress and linens were vastly superior.  They would have a bit more room than usual, but he did not think they would need it.  They never did.  He pressed himself close to Ianto, draping himself over the younger man and establishing as much skin-to-skin contact as he could manage.

They often slept thus; Ianto was a belly sleeper, so they usually slept either with Jack covering Ianto as he was now, or with Ianto splayed over Jack’s back or, more often, his chest, like the best kind of weighted blanket.  In fact, the only time Jack ever slept through the night was when Ianto fell asleep on top of him, lulled to sleep by his heartbeat. 

As Jack settled, he took Ianto’s hand.  Instinctively, Ianto pulled Jack’s hand to his chest and heaved a great sigh, his body noticeably relaxing into a more peaceful rest.  His shivering subsided as Jack’s warmth began to seep into his chilled body.  As Jack kissed the soft skin where Ianto’s neck met his shoulder and settled his head onto the pillow, he felt Ianto’s body temperature begin to regulate.  Feeling an almost physical relief that Ianto seemed more at ease, Jack slept again.

***