Your comments are unbelievably eloquent, so thank you.

Jack impatient yet with so much time; Ianto so patient even though he could be snuffed out in a moment.

Ahh, that sums them up so well. Thank you! It's another one of those dichotomies that's so fascinating. With Doctor Who, I am often fascinated by the message: everything has its time, and everything ends. And yet Death is the Doctor's most constant companion, but also his enemy. It's a juxtaposition that I sort of find endlessly intriguing.

even though he still has essence of Jack

*laughs* yes! That, exactly. I think rm had the same response as you to the revelations re: Face of Boe; I was just blown away by it all at first. Now we both just find it intensely perfect, but we are sick puppies and are, as she says somewhere later, very heavily into the beauty of sadness and loss. And also, it's sort of grotesquely funny, and yeah. It still just enraptures me. The second we realized that we were writing a series, I was like, somehow, we have to have Ianto meet the Face of Boe. Because he had to absorb this information just as we do, and come to terms with it.

Thank you again for your fabulous comments!