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Title: Chromaticity
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: none
Characters: Owen, Ianto
Set post Reset but no spoilers
Notes: Written for Round 3.5 of the Writer in a drawer challenge on Livejournal.
Prompt: Unexpected side-effect. Added element: Something your mother would tell you
Note: This scored rather badly, and almost had me voted out. I'm posting as is (with 1 missing word replaced) and would appreciate con crit
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters, but even on my worst writing day, I still treat them better than COE did.
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"Are you *quite* sure that the grafter was working properly?" asked Ianto he sat on the edge of the table.
Owen looked up from the far side of the autopsy bay where he had been entering data into the computer. Writing reports had always been his least favourite part of the job. Well, that and dealing with annoying patients who treated him like he was there solely to solve all their problems. Which he wasn't. At least not the non-physical ones.
Working for Torchwood though, not only did he rarely have to deal with actual live patients, but when he did, he had a whole stash of cool looking gadgets to use on them. The only drawback was that every time he used them, he was expected to write up detailed reports on how he had used them and whether said usage had been successful or not. All in the aid of improving Torchwood's knowledge of all things alien. Owen being just the latest in a long line of medics who'd contributed to these records.
Most of the data on file had been retrieved from Torchwood One. There was a long list of alien artefacts that had been found to have useful medical applications. There had been a second list, of those artefacts that could also be utilized as weapons. That list hadn't been updated since the battle of Canary Wharf, and Owen was pretty sure it never would be.
It hadn't been until Owen had died and acquired an extra eight hours in his working day, that he'd managed to make much headway in sorting through the list of medical tech that had been stashed in Torchwood Three over the years.
Owen frowned as he made his way over to his patient. Ianto had been testing an alien stun gun when it had overloaded, leaving him with nasty burns on both hands. He'd shown up in the autopsy bay demonstrating his extensive knowledge of tongue twisting Welsh curses. Owen had told him to wash his mouth out with soap and water, and had then proceeded to do the same to Ianto's injuries. Well, with saline and water anyway.
Now as he looked at the blue skin on the palms of Ianto's hands, Owen wondered if maybe he should have stuck to simple saline solution and good old-fashioned dressings. But he'd come across the Lednuran skin grafter a few months earlier, and he'd been curious to try it out. He'd checked with the medical database first of course, to confirm that it was compatible with human skin.
Owen prodded at Ianto's hand with a tongue depressor. "Feel any pain?"
"No," said Ianto, "But you will if you don't fix this."
"Well, the good news is that the grafter worked," said Owen. "Not a trace of a burn or blister anywhere."
"The bad news being that the palms of my hands are blue. Very blue. Owen, did you perhaps think to check what skin colour Lednuran's are before you used me as a guinea pig?"
"Course I did," snapped Owen. "And no, they don't look like Smurfs. Besides, it's supposed to pick up on the tones from the surrounding undamaged skin, and use it as a template."
"And yet my hands are blue."
"Maybe it picked the skin above your veins to copy from," said Owen. "Lednuran's don't have visible veins so their skin is pretty much uniform in colour. Varies from individual to individual of course."
"Which is all fascinating, I'm sure," said Ianto, "But we're still faced with the inescapable problem of my hands being *blue*,"
"I'm pretty sure it's only temporary," said Owen, mentally crossing his fingers.
"Pretty sure?"
"Yeah. See the grafter basically just creates a high tech bandage. Soon as your own skin's healed, the 'bandage' will shed, and hey presto, back to normal." He clapped Ianto on the shoulder. "Well, what passes for normal in this place."
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Owen updated the database to include a warning about possible pigmentation problems with the grafter. Ianto meanwhile went shopping for some gloves and was later able to add yet another item to the list of Jack's turn ons. But that's another story.
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The End