Said The Caterpillar
by Bluestar1, aka Crystalshard
Disclaimer: I owneth Torchwood not. It doth belong to the great and wonderful BBC.
Author's Notes: Comments and constructive criticism welcomed! Gwen and Owen are giving me trouble, so they'll be going in Part 2. Part 2 will be a parallel fic.
"One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow shorter." - The Caterpillar, Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
"So, Tosh. Any clues?"
Jack and the rest of the Torchwood team gathered around their newest acquisition with curiosity. If it had been of Earth origin, they'd have called it a walnut box. But no wood on Earth was naturally dark blue, and no box made on the planet would have red luminescent sigils impressed into it.
"Other than the fact it's an alien box? No. I'll have to run some more tests on it." Armoured with heavy gloves, Tosh picked it up gingerly. It was moderately heavy, and clinked as she moved it over to the scanner.
Three hours later, Tosh had pages of notes on it without actually knowing what on earth – or off it – its contents did. One alien box, about the size of a normal box of A4 paper. One handwritten book, dark with age, pages covered in the same strange sigils that covered the box. And one rack of tiny, silicon-glass vials full of some clear liquid.
Removing one vial from the box, Tosh held it up to the light. It went oddly cloudy as she tried to look at it. In exasperation, she put it back down on the edge of her desk. It immediately went clear again.
Rubbing her aching head, Tosh checked her watch and blinked at the time. Half past six in the evening. She looked around at the Hub, seeing that everyone was still there. That wasn't so unusual, the day a case ended. Gwen was over at her desk, furiously typing up reports. Owen was analysing the bio-readings they'd taken, shooting glances at Gwen when he thought nobody was looking and tossing a small rubber ball in one hand. Ianto, nowhere to be seen, but from the clinks and clanks coming from the kitchen, he was brewing more of Jack's industrial strength coffee. Jack in his office, doing . . . well, whatever it was he did.
"I'm going home. See you guys in the morning," Tosh said to the Hub at large. She was answered with a chorus of 'Night, Tosh' and 'See you tomorrow'.
She made it all the way into the lift before she heard a tinkling noise. Before the lift doors closed, she looked back to see a guilty-faced Owen and a bottle that was no longer on the edge of her desk. "I'm going to kill him for that tomorrow," Tosh muttered to herself.
In the lift on the way up, she started yawning. It hadn't been an overly energetic day, but Tosh still felt tired. Perhaps it was the effect of trying to figure out the writing that odd, alien wooden box. Though usually that left her energised, not exhausted.
Tosh made it into the little tourist information shop at the top before collapsing behind the desk, fast asleep.
As soon as the tinkling crash reached his ears, Jack dashed down from his office. "Owen, what the hell just happened?"
Like a naughty schoolboy who'd just been caught kicking a football though the classroom window, Owen swung his chair back and forth. "Well, I was bouncing that rubber ball I found, and I . . . sort of missed my catch."
"It got Tosh's little bottle." Gwen, joining in the conversation, pointed to the shattered remains of the vial next to Tosh's desk.
Jack crouched next to the debris, examining but not touching the dry remains. "Didn't Tosh say there was some kind of liquid in this?"
No answer was forthcoming as Jack yawned heavily and got to his feet. It seemed he was not the only one afflicted with a sudden bout of fatigue, however, as Gwen had fallen asleep in her chair, her head uncomfortably pillowed on her desk. Not far away, Owen was slumped on his own seat, head back and snoring vigorously.
The first thought in Jack's head was for the only unaccounted-for member of Torchwood Three. He stumbled into the kitchen, neutronium legs and blurry vision making it increasingly difficult to point himself in the right direction. There was something very wrong here. He didn't sleep, he . . .
Jack's thoughts were derailed by the sight of Ianto crumpled on the floor of the Hub's tiny kitchen, spilled coffee beans outlining his unconscious form. Knowing Ianto's likely reaction to this, he leant over to try to pick up the beans. And then it was much easier to fall over than get up.
So he did.
There was no-one awake to notice when, a few minutes later, a sweet feminine voice accompanied by a wailing siren announced, "Warning. Warning. Biohazard emergency detected. Initialising biocontainment lockdown. Warning. Warning. Biohazard emergency . . ."
All around the Hub, doors slammed shut and forcefields snapped on.
Ianto stirred, with the impression of having slept deeply and well. Instead of waking in his bed, as he'd expected, he found himself in Torchwood's kitchen. This conundrum vanished from his thoughts when he rolled over and saw that lying by his side, breathing deeply and easily, was Lisa. His free, beautiful Lisa, alive again, without the horrors the partial cyber-conversion had inflicted on her.
Barely daring to touch her, he ran his hand over her cheek, her mouth. And then her dark eyes fluttered open, and she looked at him in utter shock. He snatched his hand back and scrambled upright, barely noticing the coffee beans he crushed underfoot.
"You're dead," Ianto insisted. "This can't be real."
Jack woke, feeling as if he'd slept for the first time in – well, a long time. Someone had their fingers – or something, he was just assuming it was human fingers – on his cheek. Then they brushed down to his mouth, and he opened his eyes to check who it was.
The man who had been touching him – yes, definitely fingers – jumped upright, backing against one of the kitchen cupboards. The coffee beans squashed haphazardly under his feet gave off a scent that flooded Jack's sense of smell. But smell had next to no importance given what his hungry eyes were reporting. He was about to make a 'why are you here'? comment, but the other man spoke first.
"You're dead. This can't be real," said the Doctor in his familiar Northern England accent.
Jack had the nagging feeling that he'd been trying to find someone before he'd gone unconscious, but couldn't remember now. "No, I'm not dead. I woke up, and you'd gone. I had to find my way here, to where I might see you again." Every word that Jack had saved up to say to the Doctor seemed to blow away, like smoke in the breeze.
"But they shot you. I know they shot you. They killed you."
"I came back." How inadequate an explanation that sounded for all the extra years of existence he'd somehow had given to him. He sat up, drinking in the sight of the man who'd changed his life. "I didn't want to leave you. But then you left me."
The Doctor looked anguished. "I didn't know."
"I didn't want to leave you. But then you left me."
The pain in Lisa's eyes shook Ianto, and the guilt hammered though him again. Bad enough to betray Torchwood for Lisa. But then, to turn around and betray Lisa for Torchwood? "I didn't know." And it was true. Ianto no longer cared how Lisa had come back to him, only knowing that she had. "Forgive me?"
Lisa made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh, and launched herself at him. And she was real, and warm, and solid, and Ianto held on to her as if she were a tank of oxygen in an airless environment. "Let's get out of here," she said into his hair.
"Where to?" he murmured back, joy suffusing his tone, willing to go anywhere she wanted. His job, Torchwood, everything he'd worked for seemed meaningless now. This was Lisa.
"Where to?" the Doctor asked, the old fey humour back in his voice. Jack drew a shuddering breath as the feeling of being accepted woke for the first time in a very long while. Here and now, he was home.
"Anywhere. Let's just go." Jack let go of the Doctor's solid form with regret. A brief, puzzled thought wondered if the Doctor had somehow managed to shrink. Jack was sure the Doctor had been a little taller than this. But the thought wisped away, leaving no trace behind as the Doctor grabbed his hand and lead him to the closed door.
"Ow!" The Doctor looked down in puzzlement at his foot, then reached out one hand to the doorway. As before, blue sparks flashed when his hand touched the until-now invisible forcefield that was shielding the door. The Doctor snatched his hand away and shook it. "Hmm. We must be under biocontainment lockdown."
Jack silently agreed. From what he knew, the forcefields acted as particle filters. They were supposed to stop the spread of anything down to the size of a virus. The only problem was that they drained power, so biocontainment situations were the only time they were in operation. "Guess that means we have to stay here, then."
"Guess that means we have to stay here, then." Lisa looked at him and smiled, clearly not worried about being locked in.
"I guess that does." Ianto leaned against the counter and returned Lisa's smile. "Could be quite a while until they come to let us out, though."
Lisa chuckled and mimicked Ianto's pose. "Are you really in any hurry?"
Up in the tourist information office that was Torchwood's cover, Tosh blinked and opened her eyes. Although the clock said that barely twenty minutes had passed since she'd passed out, Tosh felt as refreshed as if she's had a full night's sleep.
"The vial," she muttered to herself, picking herself up and slapping the button that would open the wall into the passageway leading to the Hub. Nothing happened. Repeated pressing had no more effect than the first time, and trying to push the section of wall aside manually left her with stinging fingers from the forcefield blocking off the tiny shop from the outside world.
"It won't work, you know."
Tosh spun, and her eyes widened in surprise as she saw the speaker. Feet up on the desk, cigarette in hand, short black skirt and blonde hair, it was Mary. Just as Tosh had seen her last.
"You're under biocontainment lockdown. You know that."
"Mary?" Tosh asked tentatively, still mildly stunned at the reappearance of her girlfriend.
"Ah. Yes. And then again, no." Mary took a deep drag of her cigarette and Tosh watched as she blew out the smoke in a long stream.
"If you're not Mary, then who are you?" A reasonable question in Tosh's opinion, given that the last Tosh had seen of her lover was her being dragged to her death by an alien transporter.
Mary said nothing, simply holding up her hand. She didn't even look as Tosh tentatively extended her own hand to meet it.
And went through it.
Tosh waved her had a few times through Mary's apparent form, less solid than a breath of air. Mary laughed hollowly. "See? Just your imagination, Toshiko. I'm all in your mind."
"But . . ."
"Maybe the alien liquid is making you see things. Maybe it's making you see what you most want or need to see. But you, Tosh, you wouldn't accept the illusion. Maybe you just got a lighter dose than the others. Or maybe you just wanted the truth. You know all this, somewhere. Otherwise I wouldn't know it." The cigarette had vanished somewhere, and Mary swung her boot-shod feet off the desk. With her familiar cocky grin, she added, "So, you wanted me. Here I am."
"But if you're not here, how am I supposed to . . ." Tosh trailed off, uncertain as to how to end the statement. She perched herself on the edge of the desk and bit her lip, emotions tangled so closely that she didn't know where loss ended and longing began.
Mary reached up with her insubstantial hand, as if to brush Tosh's hair away from her face. "Just because you can't touch me, it doesn't mean I can't hear you. Think about it. You always could talk to me."
And, just for a heartbeat, Mary's touch on Tosh's cheek felt solid.
Hours later, and the sun rose over Cardiff. The night had passed, as it does. It had gone quickly in some parts of the Hub and slowly in others. Tosh had spent half the night working to bypass the biocontainment lockdown set up by Torchwood. A scan of the Hub and the tourist information office she sat in had revealed no trace of whatever alien compound had been detected before. It would be safe to open the doors, if she could just get past the time limit.
But Mary was still there, and had accounted for the other half of Tosh's night. She and Tosh had changed places – now Mary swung her heels as she sat on the edge of the desk, and Tosh sat in the chair at the until-now hidden workstation. Mary grinned as Tosh looked over at her, evoking an involuntary response in kind from Tosh. Mary's presence meant that Tosh was still infected, and yet somehow she couldn't bring herself to care.
"Got it!" Tosh said in delight. The blocks on the screen blinked a reassuring green as the forcefields disengaged and the doors unlocked. Leaving her console, she went to test it by opening the front door.
Her hand reached the door without interference, and the morning sun blazed into her eyes as she opened the door. Tosh winced away, then turned back to Mary.
She was gone.
"Sunlight," Tosh breathed, pushing back this second stab of grief.
One week later, and Tosh had managed to analyse the liquid with some help from Owen. Nobody had mentioned who they'd seen, but she guessed that Owen's and Gwen's experiences hadn't been as pleasant as her own. Now they were all gathered in Jack's office, wanting to know what had happened to them.
"As we suspected, it was a hallucinogen," Tosh began. "I haven't been able to translate much of the book yet, but from what I can gather it was a log of how this drug was produced. It was supposed to be taken by one person at a time, who would then interact with a therapist who'd help them come to terms with – something. The sleepiness is a side effect when taken by humans, as far as I can gather. It was designed to denature rapidly in air, and would be killed in the body by what seems to be infrared light."
"So what's the good news?" Jack asked, leaning back in his chair in a pose of apparent idleness.
"The good news is, that's all it does. No other side effects, no-long-term effects. And it only works on mammals so Myfanwy won't have been affected."
"I should hope not. The last thing we need is a hallucinating pterodactyl. Okay then, everybody back to work." Jack clapped his hands briskly.
As they filed out of Jack's office, Tosh wondered if she'd been right. There wouldn't be any physical long-term effects. But emotional?
Time would tell.