Please note that I do not own Torchwood or its characters. If I did, then you wouldn't see much else other than Jack and Ianto :)
I don't know how people will enjoy this story. It may seem confusing…but it is fun to write xD It's set after 'Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang', but before 'Reset', so everyone is alive and well :3
Please review if you wish; all comments are greatly appreciated =D
~ Dragon
A Change of Heart
"Jack … you dropped it in the water."
"I'll fish it out, don't worry."
"It's malfunctioning!"
"Oh, shit."
"Jack, it's turned blue!"
"I can see that, Gwen!"
"Do something!"
"Oh bugger, now it is showering sparks. Great. That's all we need."
"How the hell do we fix this?"
Two days earlier
The rift alarm beeped insistently.
"We've got rift activity just north of the city!" Tosh called out to nobody in particular. She knew everyone could hear her. Sure enough, in a matter of moments, Jack was out of his office, buckling his belt, straightening his braces, smoothing down his hair. Tosh smirked quietly to herself. Ianto will come out now, waiting a few minutes, just so it seems that he and Jack haven't been…doing anything.
Sure enough, Ianto scooted out of Jack's office, his hair perfect, his suit immaculate, but his cheeks still coloured red.
The three team mates made their way to the boardroom, where a very bored-looking Owen was already lounging in his chair, and a flustered Gwen was flapping about something that nobody really cared about.
The rest of Torchwood Three took their seats as Jack strode to the head of the table, placing his hands on the glass top and leaning forwards, as if to share juicy gossip.
"It seems to be feeding from something that we can't see; we've got to try and find out what. And we need to find out what it is, obviously. It must have just dropped through the rift," Jack frowned as he thought something over. "Somebody's been playing with our toys."
"How can you tell?" Gwen asked, raising an eyebrow. Jack's gaze flickered to her, to Ianto, then to all of them.
"I can always tell," Jack said, a grin spreading across his face. "Come on, guys. We're going to go raid Toys 'R Us."
-x-x-x-
He hadn't been kidding.
Jack stood proudly in front of the automatic doors, hands on hips. He looked like…well, like a little kid about to enter a toy store. The shop was quite far from Cardiff, actually, though Jack had kept up a long stream of banter in the SUV so nobody really noticed the time passing.
Owen turned to Ianto, an eyebrow raised. Ianto shrugged his shoulders, baffled. Gwen frowned at the gaudy lettering above the doors, and Tosh just stood, clutching her PDA.
"Well," Jack said finally, "Let's go find us an alien device!" He breezed into the shop, and his team looked at each other helplessly before following him inside. Owen muttered something about having to piss, and stalked off by himself, grumbling beneath his breath.
Jack skipped down the various aisles, his face beaming. Ianto thought, worried, that Jack knew the layout of this store a little too well.
"Now, if I were an alien device in a toy store, where would I hide…?" Jack thought to himself.
He stopped abruptly in the middle of a collection of Tintin memorabilia. The American knelt on the floor, and, when Tosh, Gwen and Ianto peered around him, they saw two people laying flat out, a strange, black object set in the middle of them.
The first person to meet the eye was a young woman, maybe in her late twenties. Something about her awkward position made Jack think that she was caught off-guard; fainted, perhaps. He gave her a quick go-over, before being satisfied that she was alive and breathing. The second person was a man, about thirty-five, with a clean-shaven face, but clothes that looked like they'd just been torn off the back of a hobo. Jack winced as he prodded the man, and was reassured that he, too, was alive.
He then turned to the strange black object. It was the size of a tennis ball, though it was shaped more like a pyramid. At the large, flat base, an aberrant liquid seemed to swirl, two lights floating amongst the grey matter. Jack picked it up, looking it over once, before turning to his team. Owen had rejoined the others, his arms folded, his face a blank mask.
"Lets go," Jack said simply, seeming slightly disappointed at having to leave the toy store so soon. After a quick sweep of his team, Jack strode off, whilst Gwen and Tosh moved the two people to somewhere where they would be more comfortable (bean bag chair aisle).
The five people crammed into the SUV, and Jack again began babbling, thrusting the pyramid object at Owen in the seat next to him.
-x-x-x-
Callista Holmes woke up with a screaming headache. She sat up slowly, peering around herself. She was sitting in a bean bag, her butt so far down she was brushing the floor. She leapt to her feet, lurching forwards suddenly. Her torso suddenly felt a lot bulkier. She raised a hand to run her fingers through her hair, and screamed.
Her hand met the short, spiky hair of her husband.
Ieuan Holmes jerked awake at the sound of his wife screaming. He didn't remember much; only picking an odd, pyramid-shaped toy from a shelf, and then everything going black.
He turned to reassure his wife that everything was ok, when his mouth dropped open.
He was looking at himself.
His body raised its head, fear streaking across the eyes as dark as peat pools. "Ieuan?" The man whispered, eyebrows knitted together in worry. "Why am I looking at myself?"
Basically, a body switchover.
One person's mind in another's body.
Can't turn out well, can it? xD
I was playing with the title for this fic, but settled eventually.
Check soon for updates!