Title: Evolution
Summary: Rebuilt Torchwood 3 gets a new doctor that seems to be infatuated with the cold storage for no apparent reason (crossover with Highlander: The Series).
Warning: in the end there will be only one
Pairings: ALL CANON with Methos thrown in the middle
Spoilers: New Who up to "Planet of the Dead" and "Children of Earth" for Torchwood.
Beta: Snakling
A/n: there are days when everybody lives. This is one of these stories.
Obviously, I don't have any legal right.
Chapter 1. Day Seven
A week full of genuine Welsh mud, of unsuccessful attempts at camping and of little green men, that, to tell the truth, weren't all that green, or little, or for that matter that close to humanoid pattern, left Methos seriously doubting his own sanity. And it wasn't the aliens or the fact that Wales apparently had got a Rift in Space and Time. The first was something he'd learned to accept a long time ago and as for the second… truthfully he'd always suspected there was something fishy about Cardiff. No, what he didn't understand was how on Earth he'd joined the merry band calling themselves Torchwood Three. The job was pure madness. And it was dangerous. And he was far far too old for the "Twenty first century is when everything changes..." spiel to work on him. Not after Punic Wars and the invention of the toaster. Still here he was, Dr. Matthew Pierson, eyes wide open and enough fervour to move a small mountain, the newest addition to the collection of the charming Gwen Williams. Obviously he was also too curious for his own well-being and too sentimental as he had fallen for the smile of a woman wearing the face and the name of a dead girl he'd loved in another lifetime.
Cardiff, 1869, December 24
He comes to her every Tuesday and she thinks he is a butcher boy with a lovely smile. He carries a golden ring close to his heart and when spring comes he will ask for her hand and take them away to Naples or maybe Corsica. But now the snow is falling from the sky and Christmas is in the air and he thinks he just might surprise his lovely girl with a modest present and a quick kiss at the back door. His Gwyneth. Singing under his breath he walks along the busy streets and smiles. And then he smells it, the sickily familiar stench of a burned house and crispy human flesh. His heart leaps. He breaks into a run. Then it's all black in his memory. He comes to his senses under the light of a street lamp, cradling her dead charred body and crying like a wild wolf.
But it was past long gone and buried and meant to stay that way, even if he was fool enough to accept a job where it would be clawing at the insides of its metaphorical memory coffin. With an inner sigh of surrender to his own stupidity, Methos bent over the now late representative of the amphibious species that found its end at the hands of angry farmers while stealing sheep, of all things to nick on Earth. At least it was a very native way to die, he mused poking its innards. He vaguely remembered something similar happening to him during the Crusades. He certainly could feel compassion for the poor sod.
And no wonder Gwyneth had searched for a doctor for more than half a year. Young people these days didn't appreciate anymore all the slime and bile and raw flesh. They expected technology to do everything for them. As if! And here it was lying before him: terra incognita – in all its bloody beauty. Ready to be discovered and described. It was fascinating and reminded Methos of his Heidelberg years. His first time as a medic and there was no better time to become one than the fifteenth century. Experiments in the cold vaults, smells that had nothing to do with war, but science and progress.
It was well past midnight when he finally packed the body for storage. Only a funny black boy called Mickey was still in the Hub, everybody else long gone home.
"Need a hand, doc?"
"Nay!" he answered with an easy smile accepting a cup of long gone cold tea. He glanced at the screen with computer code he shouldn't understand. "What's that?"
"A program predicting Rift activity. Five years of refining and it still doesn't work like it should."
He nodded.
"So you've been here… what… five years?"
"Came here only a few months ago myself."
"No regrets so far?"
Mickey wistfully looked at nowhere in particular.
"What regrets? It's Torchwood."
"Right. Look, I'll put our LGM in the freezer. Then we can go out, have a drink or something?"
"Sure. It's a deal."
"Five minutes! I'll be back!"
The corridor leading to the cold storage was noticeably different from the main Hub, where everything still smelled fresh. It was damp and something grew in the corners, he was positive about that. Flickering light wasn't particularly reassuring either, so by the time he was standing at the last door Methos prepared himself for something from trash movies about maniac surgeons, but the morgue was surprisingly normal, if bigger than he anticipated. In the cold bleaching light he gazed at the numerous vaults lining up the walls. No, it wasn't a morgue, but a cemetery for decades now, maybe even more than a century. With light amusement he pushed the cart forward and stepped on the little bit of holy ground. Such a grim place for his colleagues considering Torchwood retirement policy, for him it was now another reminder of who he truly was.
Choosing the nearest chest he quickly put the unlucky alien in the place of its final rest and was ready to leave the damn place till next time, when a familiar din washed over him. Sucking in deep lungfuls of chill air, Methos reached for his gun. No one on the team was immortal. It meant he was alone with an intruder all on his own with one gun. And his Bluetooth was upstairs, so no help. "Holy ground!" he reminded himself rather hysterically and with slightly detached interest wondered what his beautiful boss would think if he blew up her super secret base on his first week. He knew it was a bad idea from the very start to join Torchwood. Shit! He listened carefully, but no sound reached his ears. It was strange. Come to think about it the buzz was strange. It was kind of vibrating and fracturing and breaking into not one, but… two… no three… different sounds, all barely distinguishable… Laughing with relief and embarrassment, Methos leaned against the cold tiles and with shaking hands holstered the gun back. Calming a little bit, he looked with new apprehension at the shelved drawers. He wasn't the first immortal in Torchwood, not by a long shot. The real question was, who were those three? And how come they'd ended up in the basement of Torchwood Three of all places?