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So here's the thing. Captain Jack Harkness has a serious weakness for accents. He thinks it might be because he went so long without them. Everyone spoke the same in the Boeshane Peninsula where he grew up, and when he ran away to war he was confronted with such an array of languages and dialects, accents and bits of slang, that he never quite managed to sort through them all. For three months of training he revelled in the diversity of it, immersed himself in it, and came out top in all three of his language classes - although that might have been because he was sleeping with his instructor. He wasn't the only one, but looking back on it Jack is sure that, even at such a tender age, he was the best.
Six months in and he was heartily sick of the languages, of decoding enemy messages. Two years, and he was relieved to be back in Boeshane, where everything sounded flat and the same, and none of it reminded him of the cries of his best friend as he was tortured to death.
Two years on from that he was recruited into the Time Agency, first from his province, the Face of Boe, and he was still sleeping with the language instructor, even if his marks weren't quite so good. It was then, though, that he began to forget accents. The Time Agency had such a polyglot of people that it didn't have time to teach them every language they might need; instead basic kit included a telepathic translator. They still learnt language basics, in case something went wrong, but essentially, everyone sounded the same to Jack. The translator gave a good approximation of someone's voice, but it was still only covered about a dozen or so accents.
The TARDIS came next, and it did a much better job of translating than the wrist strap which was all he had left of the Agency. People's real voices came through, and the sudden diversity of language had just been so much fun. Jack revelled in it.
It was a shock then, to land in 19th century Cardiff and realise how much the TARDIS had been keeping from him. The Welsh people had such strident voices, such a rippling up and down cadence to their words that at times Jack could barely understand them. People's voices were their own all of a sudden, rich and diverse, and Jack had to learn how to speak like them; couldn't count on a broken wrist strap or an absent Time-Lord to take the meaning of his words and make people understand. It was a challenge, and it was really no wonder he brought enough attention on himself to get Torchwood interested.
He was lucky, he supposed, that he sounded American, and that he'd landed somewhen where people knew the American accent. If he's been born just a few centuries earlier, or in one of the other colonies - well, some of the 51st century languages had evolved (or devolved, depending on who you asked) to whistles and clicks, or odd, unctuous sounds which made speaking in any kind of early Earth language very difficult.
Once he got the hang of it, though, he began to love the Welsh accent. He hung carefully on to his own, needing to remain separate from them, but he loved sorting through voices, finding the chords that worked well and those that rang false. He once claimed, at some point during the 1950's, that he could tell a lie or a truth after listening to just a few words. He then claimed that he could predict the success of a relationship (or at least a night in bed) based on two peoples' voices, upon which he was promptly asked to demonstrate on the one couple Torchwood happened to house at the time. He never mentioned it again (although he was right, as it turned out).
So when he meets a man with what he thinks has to be the most beautiful voice in the world saying "Thanks," he pays attention. Of course, he is a little distracted by the Weevil bite in his neck at the time, or he might have realised that there's something odd about latching onto a single syllable from a stranger with an unconscious Weevil on the ground between them. The voice he thinks, even as he presses his hand to his neck, is the only reason he looks at him twice, no matter how pretty he is, because even Jack has his limits, and flirting with a stranger who knows a little too much about Torchwood while he is recovering from almost dying (again) might be one of them.
Ianto's voice is confident every time he asks Jack for a job, barely a change when he appears in a three piece suit instead of jeans. Jack isn't sure which he finds sexier, but he misses the flirtatious note he found in Ianto's voice; it told him they would have been amazing in bed together, and the presence of the suit dims it noticeably.
When he coaxes a pre-historic creature much the way he was trying to coax Jack just moments before Jack decides to hire him, well before the thing is actually caught. This improvisation, this care for something not human which Jack can hear in his voice is so very different to the arrogant English tones of Torchwood One which Jack despised. It had been the main reason Jack had wanted him nowhere near his Hub, or his team, but he sees Ianto then, hears the fear in his voice and the effort he makes to mask it; hears how much he wants this creature caught, not dead. Hears the hitch in his breath as Jack almost, almost, kisses him. This, Jack thinks as he gets to his feet, is the real Ianto Jones, and they could do with someone like him at Torchwood Three.
From the day Ianto Jones arrives at Torchwood he begins to disappear. That character which Jack heard in his voice leaks out, until he actually becomes the butler he asked to be. He makes coffee, organises the Hub and the archives, and helps Jack on with his coat, but when he speaks, even as Jack enjoys the beautiful Welsh tones, there is nothing of himself inside his voice.
The first time Jack fucks Ianto he thinks he succeeds in what he set out to do: bring Ianto back to life. In hiring Ianto Jones he hired a very proficient employee, but not the man he thought he had and he wants, desperately, to hear that man's voice. Ianto is loud, unexpectedly so. He moans, and sighs and gasps; he even begs and pleads, and Jack feels alive inside his body. Then he puts his suit back on and goes back to work, his voice as dead as ever. Jack is never sure if Ianto wants what is happening between them; he lies so well with his voice, but he keeps fucking him anyway, because when Ianto calls out his name he feels as if, just for a moment, he hears the real Ianto Jones.
The real Ianto Jones turns out to be distraught and desperate; his voice cracks as he screeches out his pain, as he accuses the whole team of ignoring him, or caring nothing for him, and Jack's heart breaks with guilt, because it's so horribly, terribly, true. He noticed, heard just how dead Ianto was every time he spoke, and thought only of how it affected him, of how he wanted the real thing back. He closes his eyes on death, kisses life back into Ianto, and knows, with his whole being, that every sound Ianto has ever given him was a lie.
When Ianto Jones reminds Captain Jack Harkness that there are many uses for a stopwatch with barely a trace of innuendo in his voice Jack laughs, and feels his heat break and mend all at the same time. He doesn't know if that means Ianto is better or worse, doesn't know if the laughter, the happiness, he hears in his voice when he starts the stopwatch for ten minutes, is real. He has no idea and he has never wanted to know so badly. He does what Ianto needs though, because he's Captain Jack Harkness, lets Ianto use his body, lets his own moans mingle with the other man's and hopes that this time, they aren't a lie. Hopes with every fibre of his being that he is doing as needed, and pushing out those painful memories along with Ianto's pleasure filled cries.
He's never sure how much Ianto has healed, realises that the answer is barely at all when he sees him standing with the others against him, when he watches him work frantically to save his dead love, to open the rift - to kill Jack and doom the world. He can't say anything when Jack returns to them, whole and alive and for once Jack doesn't want him to, so he kisses him, swallowing his gasp, and letting him feel the forgiveness for his mistakes - Jack has made many which are far far worse.
When Jack hears screams, even half dead and exhausted, even without seeing the sufferer's face, he knows who they belong to. The Master grins at him before pulling Ianto into the area Jack is chained in, letting Jack see the skin literally hanging off him in strips. The team were all caught months ago; Gwen dead, Tosh put to work, then killed when she attempted to free Jack. Owen alive, on the ground, thinking of the Doctor, being a doctor himself. The Master broke Jack's telepathic shields around the same time; he knows what Ianto means to him. He saves him for last. "Say hello to Jack, tea boy," he orders smirking, smugness thick in his voice.
He digs his fingers into a wound on Ianto's side. Ianto screams again before slumping into the Master's arms. "Fuck," he rasps out, "you." Voice like sandpaper over glass, barely any trace of any accent left, but he's still Ianto Jones. The closest Jack has even been, perhaps, to seeing the real Ianto Jones. He's literally being taken apart in strips, no way of fighting but with words, and he uses them, defiance in every syllable.
"Your choice, Jack," the Master says. "I can kill him now - if you're prepared to die the way he was supposed to. Or I can carry it out on him, really take him to pieces before I let him go." He sounds like a kid at his birthday party. If Jack didn't believe so much in the Doctor's plan - and he does believe, he has to - he might consider condemning Ianto to that, just on the off chance that he might get free, be able to free him as well. But he has faith, absolute faith, that Martha and the Doctor can pull it off, that he will one day hear that voice again, and it will never have been ripped apart by torture. So he makes the only choice he can.
Asking someone out on a date might not be the best way to say hello after disappearing for months (a year, more than that), but Jack pulls it off. He thinks. Ianto says yes, anyway, even if he sounds slightly hesitant.
Ianto and Jack go on a date, something neither have done in a long time, and sitting in a tiny Italian restaurant, listening to Ianto's voice, strong and animated and happy, Jack is certain that he has never met the real Ianto Jones, but that he wants to spend forever searching for him, hearing every story and every thought in the man's head, all wrapped up for him in that beautiful Welsh cadence.
Ianto is recovering finally, recovering from Lisa, and Abbadon, recovered completely from the torture which never happened, and he is extraordinary. Jack thought he had made a study of voices, but researching Ianto's in his master work. He loves the dry humour he's been listening to for over a year, but delights in the snarky sarcastic side which is suddenly emerging as he regains confidence in himself. He smirks every time Ianto calls him 'Sir' at work, because he can never get him to do it anywhere else.
He listens as Ianto jokes and lectures and complains about bloody wedding dresses and the stupid judgmental people which sell them. His blood runs hot when Ianto's voice lowers, and he laughs when it goes high as Jack tickles him. He has never heard anything as beautiful as Ianto's laughter. He never feels a moment of doubt with Ianto in the bedroom anymore (when they make it there anyway). They might not have a conventional relationship, but neither one is using the other, he's sure about that, and so they both become more adventurous, more inventive, and Jack seeks out every new sound he can push through Ianto's mouth.
When he finally returns to Torchwood after being buried alive by his brother his senses feel as if they should be dead; every piece of sensory input is painful, but he has no time to pay attention to them. Heartsore and weary he wakes up, one hundred and seven years later. He kills his brother, rescues some of his team and saves the world. He does and says all the right things, and he doesn't register any of it. It's not until later that he really comes to his senses.
He's in the Torchwood shower, water sluicing down over him, and he is being held by a fully clothed Ianto who is whispering into his ear. "It's alright, Jack; its ok, cariad. It's all going to be alright. Shh, cariad, let it go. I'm going to make sure everything's alright." It's nonsense and he and Ianto both know it, but right then, that voice is the only thing holding him together.
He finds the Doctor and Rose, and he helps to save the world again, while the man and woman he loves, who depend on him and are all that are left of his team, shoot bullets at Daleks, bullets he knows won't stop them. Once upon a god forsaken time ago he thought finding the Doctor and his Bad Wolf would mean the world to him, but holding Gwen, and hearing Ianto's voice in his ear, he knows he's found a new reason for living. He needs one, so desperately, this man who can't die.
Jack hates the word 'couple'; hates the way it makes Ianto nervous, hates the way that Ianto hates it. He hates it all, the labels this stupid century puts on every different way of loving, forcing people into tiny boxes. Hates that Ianto isn't quite sure what to do with the two of them, and it's not the concerns he should be having, the concerns which his wife had and his daughter has inherited. It's not the fact that he can't die; it's not the fact that he's from the 51st century, or that he's so much older than Ianto, not even the fear that Jack might run away again, no matter how much he promised not to. Jack hates the fact that the hesitation in Ianto's voice is all because they are both men.
Ianto's voice though, is normally calm and reassuring in a crisis; and Jack, terrified of this death - he's never been blown up before - is not comforted by the fact that even Ianto can't stay calm about this. It still helps to hear him though, voice desperate and cracking and scared, and Jack wishes he could ask him to stay. He sends him away with a kiss.
Ianto saves his life and keeps him together through the rest of it, as calm as he can, even as Rhys and Gwen comfort each other, even as the world falls into madness. His voice steadies Jack as the British government discusses the best way to give in to the demands of insane galactic junkies, never worrying, as Jack didn't all those years ago, what would happen when they needed another, bigger hit to get them high.
His voice is still so calm when he says "It's too late. I breathed the air," that for a moment, a single blessed moment, Jack doesn't believe him. He sounds so like himself, but he also sounds just like he did the day Jack met him. And Jack knows him better now, can catch his voice in a lie. Knows better than to believe the calm, even tone.
Jack shakes his head when Ianto says "I love you," because it sounds too much like goodbye. He wants to say it back, but he loses his chance in denial. He dies kissing Ianto. When he wakes up he sees Gwen sitting beside Ianto's body, and waits for him to speak. It's only when he doesn't that he realises Ianto is actually dead.
He curses the day that he stopped to listen to a beautiful voice when it introduced itself, asked for a job, asked for his help in hunting a pterodactyl, because if he hadn't, Ianto Jones might still be alive. He goes on to do something so much worse that day, and closes his ears to the cries of his daughter, and his grandson.
He flees then, across the galaxy, across time, from the memories and the silence which wait for him on Earth. He meets so many different races and learns their languages, but never finds a voice like Ianto's. He lives and loves, and is never called Captain Jack Harkness again, but he never forgets Ianto, not in hundreds of millions of years.
Eventually he ages, though it happens so gradually that a single lifetime would not let you see it. He is no longer beautiful, not the way most races would think of it, but he sees the beauty in everything, and he is thought to be benevolent and kind. At his age (whatever that might be) it finally matters more.
When he begins to be known, once again, as the Face of Boe, he knows how his life will end, for he still remembers the Doctor and Master and the Year-That-Never-Happened, for all that it seems sometimes insignificant now. He still remembers Ianto's screams. He meets the Doctor and Rose again and wonders that this being, who seems very much like a child to him, was once the centre of his universe. He saves the City of New New York, and waits for Death, a little afraid, but so very tired that he longs for rest.
He actually dies several times in the process, although his keeper never realises, and he knows each time that it will not be the one, because the Doctor isn't there. He arrives, finally, with Martha, the woman who will save the Earth with a story, millions of years in the past, and Jack Harkness (he can be Jack he thinks, just this once again, with the Doctor, even if the Doctor doesn't know it) tells his last great secret.
The Last of the Timelords isn't the last one - not yet.
Jack is afraid of Death; after all, he never remembers anything but black - no one ever has. Perhaps there is nothing there at all. But he is tired, so tired now, and so ready to rest. He has lost so many, and they have never become meaningless to him; he remembers them all.
Dying with the Doctor, Captain Jack Harkness remembers his own team, the only one he put together and stayed with in all his long life - the only people he dared to stay with: Suzie, who betrayed him; Tosh and Owen, who died at the hand of his own brother - who he killed himself, not in revenge, but because there was no other choice; Gwen, who lived a long life with Rhys and their child. Ianto, who died loving him, who had the most beautiful voice he ever heard.
And as he slips away for the last, final time, Captain Jack Harkness thinks he hears someone say "Welcome home, cariad," in the most beautiful voice he has ever heard, or will hear again.