Title: Liquid Life

Author: caz251
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: Pg
Character/Pairing: Ianto Jones/Jack Harkness, mentions of OFC!Sandra, Yvonne Hartmann and Lisa Hallet.
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood.
Summary: Ianto takes a trip down to London to meet with a member of one of the research teams from Torchwood One, she has quite the impact on his life that day.

Spoilers: General spoilers for Torchwood, Doctor Who Series 2 Episodes 12 & 13, Doctor Who The Caves Of Androzani (Peter Davidson Era - Last story).

AN: Written for cliche_bingo Prompt: friend in need

Ianto Jones had never thought much on the work of the other researchers in the Torchwood Institute, preferring to concern himself with his work only, so as not to take the risk of someone thinking he was trying to steal their work. After the fall of the tower he hadn't given much thought to his own research let alone anyone else's. To suddenly get a call about a research project that he had been a very minor part of wasn't something that he had expected, especially as not many had survived the battle at the tower, a mere twenty-seven out of thousands. It seemed bizarre to him that out of all the staff and different areas that he and another from the same research project had both managed to survive. Getting a call, insisting that he join them to help them was even more strange, but he had never been able to say no to Sandra, she was always too nice to everyone. She was one of the few that he would have classed as a friend within the tower.

What surprised Ianto the most when he visited Sandra was how much she had changed, how much she had aged in the few years since he had last seen her. She had only looked to be around fifty at the time of the battle, and he had found out when she contacted him that she had been on secondment to Torchwood House during the weeks preceding the battle and was out of the tower during the fighting. He hadn't been too surprised therefore that she hadn't been injured or killed, Torchwood House was rather remote, but certainly well-protected, and all they had to deal with was the odd cyberman.

When he met with Sandra though she looked nothing like the vivacious woman she had been, in fact if he had to guess her age he would have estimated her to be around the hundred year old mark. She certainly didn't look like the Sandra that he remembered, but she was there in spirit and personality. He had only just made it through her doorway before she was pouring tea down his throat and trying to find out everything that had been happening to him. The older woman was surprisingly well-informed for someone who had dissolved all ties she had with the Institute. She hadn't taken retcon, the sheer amount of memories that would have been erased would have done her permanent damage, but she had signed several confidentiality agreements, even more than when she had joined the institute. One such form was that she would never talk about her research or share it with those who hadn't been a part of the research. Obviously the people who had made her sign the forms hadn't realised that there was another survivor from one of the research projects or they wouldn't have left such a loophole.

Ianto remembered the project that they had worked together on, but he had not been an integral part of it, while Sandra had been the main researcher. He hadn't even had a look at any of the research notes or discoveries, they were strictly Sandra's purview, only she and the Director had ever seen them as far as he was aware. It was one of the few projects that he knew of in the Institute with such a level of security, and now it seemed that she wanted to speak about it. He supposed that as he was the only one left that she could talk to that it made sense, but he hadn't been privy to any real details at the time. All he had really done at the time was research all the different species of terrestrial bats, something that he hadn't really known the relevance of, especially in regards to such a top secret project. Maybe within another organisation terrestrial bats may have been something that could be classified as top secret, but Torchwood had mainly dealt with extraterrestrial beings.

It was that meeting and that conversation that changed his life forever. He had always thought of Sandra as such a kind woman who was devoted to her research and not politics and others thoughts, he had never expected that she would be the type of person to slip something into his drink. Once she had done that she then went on to talk to him as if nothing was wrong before finally arriving at the topic that she wanted to discuss. He had always wondered why he had been researching bats, and his question was finally answered as the old woman led him into her guest bedroom. In that room there must have been five bats all staring out at him from cocoons of white substance. He looked at Sandra in perplexity, wondering if this was what they had been researching, and a nod confirmed it. What he wondered the most however was how she had gotten them out of the tower.

Sandra smiled at him and began to explain her life's work. "I found a pair of them when I was younger, around my forties. It took me ten years to work out the properties of their nests or cocoons, and be able to use those properties to their full extent. There full cycle in the cocoon is three years so you can only harvest after that point, by which point the bats are starting to make their next cocoon. Don't whatever you do touch the nest however at any point, it is toxic to humans. We never did get the chance to test it on other species, but I suppose we can't have everything. Dexxie will help you harvest the nests and convert them into a form that can be used by you."

Sandra let out a shrill whistle and a few moments later a little robot appeared in the room and began to survey the room, its focus landing on Ianto. "Dexxie, this is your new Master Ianto, he will look after you now. You will follow his orders to the letter, and answer anything he asks of you."

"Yes Mistress Sandra" A small voice spoke, surprisingly not a robotic one, but one that sounded almost human.

A questioning look towards Sandra had her explaining all. "I am turning all my research over to you Jones. I'm old and my bats can only help me so much, I gave you my last of my stocks in your tea. This lot are almost at the end of their nesting cycle, a few hours away actually, but I can't deny the inevitable any longer. There is no reason for me to continue on anymore, I have learnt all that I can from these little beauties, maybe they will allow you to learn more. Dexxie will help you, she's been with me almost sixty years now, since the very beginning of this project. Her programmer was a little bit mad though, I'm sure you heard tales of her in the tower. Dexxie was Mad Millie's greatest project and my greatest help, Millie gave her her voice box when she was nearing her end, it was her way of leaving something of herself in the world other than a legacy of machinery that she had built for the Empire."

Ianto waited until she paused for a breath to begin his questioning, he had heard all that she had said so far, but the main thing that he had heard was that she had put something in his drink. "What did you give me Sandra?" he asked calmly, he knew that there was no point in getting angry at Sandra, angered words and loud voices were things that she had always shrugged off. She had even ignored when Yvonne had shouted at her, there wasn't much that he could shout at her that would have any affect.

"Nothing harmful, Jones. It is a gift if you will it. How old did you think I was when you worked with me five years ago?" She asked a smile on her face.

"Fifty at the most." Ianto replied, wondering where she was going with this line of thought, and couldn't help but wonder if her rapid aging had something to do with the bats that she seemed to be passing into his care.

"I was ninety-six. I've just had my hundred and first birthday, Jones. That is the power of the bats nests, and what I have given you, a prolonged life. If you don't take the serum for more than a week you start to age again, back to your proper age. I stopped taking my serum a month ago in preparation for this day. I had to have some serum left for you, and the bats can only be moved once they leave the nests. I have arranged everything for you, there will be a moving company here soon to transport them and you back to Cardiff. You can take them back to the Institute with you if you wish, I'm sure that Harkness won't have a problem with them taking up some space in one of his storage rooms. The bats themselves are harmless and Dexxie will make sure that their nests are handled properly. All you have to do is reap the benefits of the bats natural lifecycles. They make thousands of nests in their lifetime, but have no purpose for each nest after they leave it; all we are doing is recycling it."

Ianto wasn't sure what to think of anything that had been said so far. Sandra was adamant that nothing that she was doing was hurting the bats, and Dexxie seemed to be rather equipped at her job, or so Sandra had boasted. What he wanted to know however was why she was passing this onto him, and why she had given him the serum, especially if she didn't mind him taking them back to the hub. He could understand if she wanted him to keep them hidden, give him some of the serum so that he would want to keep the bats and keep them hidden. He also wanted to know how she had managed to smuggle both the bats and Dexxie out of Torchwood Tower, he was sure that Yvonne would have had problems with the woman taking a valuable resource out of her line of sight. When he posed the question to her she just laughed at him.

"Me and my bats were at the institute longer than she'd been alive, and my bats had always stayed with me since not long after the beginning. There was a bit of trouble with a few young researchers who couldn't listen, or who wanted to steal my glory. Unfortunately they touched the nests, it wasn't very pretty, after that the Director decided that the bats should stay with me. I didn't mind, they aren't nosy like most other bats, and they are rather dissimilar to all the terrestrial bats that we had you looking into. We were trying to discover if they were a crossbreed of terrestrial bats or not, but there was no conclusive findings." Sandra stated.

Ianto nodded, he could understand Yvonne not changing a directive that had been in place longer than she was in place. The woman had been all for the Empire, and bringing Britain back into that glorious age. "What happened to the researchers?" He asked with trepidation, Sandra had said that the nests were toxic.

Sandra sighed, "It really wasn't pretty. The first stage was just a rash and itching, but that is never good, especially in our line of work, that can be the start of an outbreak of alien influenza or something. The second stage was cramping, and after that the third stage, that was when their bodies started shutting down. The first stage took about two hours to become apparent, then four hours after that the cramping started, a couple of hours after that their bodies functions started to fail, it took in some cases two days before their bodies shut down completely. In that time though we were unable to find an antidote, myself and the Director at the time were sure that there was no antidote that could be found while the bats were still in the cocoons. Their nests create the toxin, they must also produce an antidote, or that is what we hypothesised anyway. We of course had no way to test it or even work out what from the bats could be the antidote. It was then that the director ordered that no human should touch the nests, even wearing protective clothing, I was sent Dexxie after that, she had a lovely robotic voice at the time, but I suppose still being able to have a chat in a way with Millie is a comfort at times, we were both looked on as dotty old woman in the Institute at times. Dexxie soon took over the care of the bats, and the Director gave me permission to bring them home with me and I focused on the research instead of the care of the bats. It was not long after the first time they shed their nests that I worked out what could be done with them. I had wanted to study the nests so had asked Dexxie to try and detoxify them without stripping them of any of their properties. It was a refining process in a way, and we were soon left with a refined form of the nests, refined into a liquid. My discovery of what that liquid could do, I must admit, was a complete accident. I hadn't meant to ingest any of it, I'd been doing various tests on a small sample and the liquid exploded, I then ingested some of it. I had waited a full three days for something to happen to me like with those who had been subjected to the toxicity of the nests before. No such things occurred, although I did start to feel and look that little bit younger. "

Ianto noticed that the old woman seemed to be rather lost in her reminiscence and didn't want to break that little piece of the past that she seemed to be trying to recall, but he really needed to know what this would mean for him. He began to ask her what would happen to him now that he had drunk some of the serum when the woman began to speak again.

"I then from that day had a little of the serum each day, and anti-aging tonic I always referred to it in my head. Only a small amount mind, probably about a millimetre each day I took. The only times I took more than that was when I started to feel ill, the common cold still has no cure, but this allowed me to combat it as I would as I was younger, rather than a frail old woman. You won't need to drink anymore of the serum if you don't want to Jones, but it will give you maybe double your natural lifespan with a millimetre each day. Even at a hundred and one I still feel full of health and life, but this isn't the life for me anymore. You will take the bats with you, and even if you don't use the serum, you'll look after them, Dexxie and my research for me, won't you Jones."

Ianto found himself agreeing with Sandra, being unable to tell her no. He wasn't sure whether or not he would use the serum again, but he had to admit that the stress and tension that he had been feeling the last couple of days seemed to be seeping out of his bones. He turned once more to look at the nests as Sandra indicated and watched as the nests fell from the ceiling, landing on the ground. Dexxie appeared immediately, scooping all the nests together and collecting them in a box, sealing it to work on later, before hosing down the box to make sure that there was no toxic residue on the outside of the crate that could harm anyone. Dexxie then began to shepherd the bats into a transport carrier that had seen better days. Ianto supposed that it was the carrier that they had come to Sandra's flat in all those years before, Dexxie then began to disinfect the room itself before settling into a crate herself. A look at Sandra showed that she was smiling at the precision with which her friend had carried out the tasks, she then left the room, leaving Ianto with two crates and a pet carrier full of bats.

She returned carrying a laptop which she handed to Ianto. "It's all my electronic files on there. I've tried over the years to input all my notes, but there are still some to go. The paper files that I had here are packaged to go. I have no idea what files were still in the tower, or if any of them survived, but you would be the man to find out Jones. Do this for me and know that you have helped an old woman die happy. I may still have time left, but I'm not going to spend it doing nothing but studying bats and caring for this research. I have no-one left Jones, but if you take on this path that has been offered you, well you will have the Captain at your side for as long as you decide to take the serum. There are no guarantees in our job, but this will give you more time, it will certainly stave off a natural death for double your lifespan, but you must be careful in the other aspects of the job and life, it is not a magic bullet with instant immortality, just a prolonged lifespan."

Ianto didn't get to say anything else on the subject as she was ushering him out the door, a few men entering the flat as he left, then following out carrying the crates. He just nodded at the woman, he knew that Sandra wanted him to, no she needed him to, look after her life's work and there was no way that he would refuse her that, she had been his friend in the tower after all. There hadn't been many people who would actually make friends in the tower due to the nature of their work, but sometimes there were people like Sandra and like Lisa who wouldn't take no for an answer. They were the people who you wouldn't regret making friends with because they were the ones who would make your life better and brighter. Sandra was his friends, there was no way that he would deny the request of a friend in need if he could help it, he'd look after her work for her and try to further it.

Three years later Ianto found himself travelling back to Sandra's apartment in London, this time with Jack by his side, and Dexxie wearing a perception filter. There were a few people there, but not many, and none of which Ianto recognised. Maybe they were friends that the woman had made after she had passed the bats off into his care. They had left from the flat after Jack had done a quick sweep to find out if there was anything left in the flat that should be taken by Torchwood before it was cleared out by Sandra's lawyers. The trip to the graveyard in which Sandra was going to be buried was sombre, especially as both Jack and Ianto knew that the coffin was empty, Sandra being sent on her way back to Cardiff already to take a space in their vaults. Sandra's friends however stood at her graveside, watching as the coffin was lowered and smiled sadly. Ianto heard Dexxie muttering in her soft little voice, the words "Goodbye Mistress Sandra" standing out above everything else. As they left the graveyard and began to make their way back to Cardiff Ianto couldn't help but smile at the thought of the woman who had given him the chance of a longer life, but it was tinged with regret that even though the woman was no longer Torchwood that she had to be sealed away as such because of the serum residue in her system. He knew that in the future the same fate awaited him, but for now he would make use of all the time he had left.