"Oi, Teaboy!"
Ianto froze as he crossed the walkover between the greenhouse and the conference room. A quick scan of the Hub floor revealed the offending party to be sticking his scrawny head out of the autopsy bay and peering up at him with the very same look he'd given Brad the Weevil when Ianto had shown him the cells a week ago.
"Excuse me," Ianto said, attempting to retain his dignity in the face of such an insult. "If you're speaking to me, I have a name. Unless the formaldehyde has warped your brain…?"
Owen appeared unperturbed by the rebuke.
"I need coffee down here, now!"
"When I'm done with the artefacts on Tosh's desk," Ianto told him tersely. "I'm sure you can wait until then."
"No, the bloody artefacts can wait. I can't."
Ianto could feel his jaw tightening in reaction to Owen's attitude. It had been like this all week. The only person in the Hub that he'd shown even a modicum of respect to was Toshiko. He'd taken to calling Jack 'Captain Innuendo', and Ianto seemed to have been awarded the nickname 'Teaboy'. It seemed that Owen was trying to make good on his promise to piss everyone off. It was certainly working where Ianto was concerned.
"Owen…"
"That's Dr Harper to you. Listen, you bloody Welsh upstart. You jump to and make coffee for Captain bloody America whenever he wants it. You can ruddy well do the same for me. Coffee. Black. Four sugars. Now!"
Owen's head vanished back inside the autopsy bay, putting a block on any further protests.
"Teaboy," Ianto fumed. "I'm going to kill him. He's not been with us a whole week, and I'm going to kill him."
He crossed to the coffee machine, and was just contemplating whether to salt to the beverage instead of sugar when his Bluetooth comm. buzzed to life in his ear.
"Ianto, are you there?"
A chill went through Ianto at the sound of Tosh's strained tones.
"I'm here, Tosh. What's wrong?"
"I was just wondering, how much has Jack told Owen? About himself, I mean. Do you know?"
The chill began to spread.
"Nothing, as far as I'm aware. Why? Tosh, what's happened?"
"That Fyllian scout ship wasn't a scout ship, and it wasn't Fyllian. It was Clyreney, and they were on an illegal hunt."
"Oh god," Ianto whispered. "Are you all right?"
"Just cuts and bruises," she answered. "I'm afraid Jack wasn't so lucky."
A groan escaped Ianto's lips.
"No, he never is, is he? How bad is it?"
"If Owen doesn't already know the truth about Jack, then I think he's about to find out. He's dying, Ianto, and I don't think there's anything we can do to stop it."
"All right. Where are you? Do you need us to come and find you?"
"No, it's all right. Well, it's not all right, but you know what I mean. We're coming down on the invisible lift right now."
Ianto's gaze rose just in time to see the stone paving move, and begin its descent into the Hub.
"Is that el Capitan?" Owen shouted, emerging once more from the autopsy bay. "We'll see what he thinks about you depriving me of coffee."
"Will you forget the bloody coffee?" Ianto snapped as he hurried down to the Hub's floor level. Owen's face darkened into a deeper frown, but any objections he might have intended to make were cut short when Tosh and Jack came into sight.
"Fuck me!" Owen burst out. Jack, who was cradled in Tosh's arms, uttered a rasping laugh.
"Sorry… Not in the mood."
"Jack, hush," Tosh murmured. "Ianto…?"
Ianto had no chance to say or do anything and, for the first time, they finally got a look at Owen in professional doctor mode.
"Ianto, get your arse down to the med bay, and grab one of the oxygen masks and the portable stretcher," Owen ordered as he crouched down to get a closer look at Jack's many wounds. "And bring my black case from autopsy. Now!"
Unlike when Owen had demanded coffee only minutes ago, Ianto found himself obeying the issued orders without protest. Upon returning, he barely had time to deposit the bag on the floor before Owen had it open and was uncapping a new syringe, and quickly filling it from one of many small vials visible within the bag's confines.
He injected the contents into Jack's neck, while at the same time expertly slipping the oxygen mask over Jack's face with one hand.
"Easy, Captain," Owen murmured as the anaesthetic quickly took effect. "Try to relax."
"Owen, what are you doing?" Tosh asked cautiously. If Owen heard anything suspicious in her tone, he gave no indication of it.
"We need to get him down into autopsy before I can start treating him properly, but I will not even attempt to move him until I can provide him with some degree of pain relief."
Ianto met Toshiko's gaze, and smiled knowingly as she nodded wordlessly in approval. They both suspected that nothing could be done to save Jack from suffering another death, but Owen didn't yet know about his new boss's penchant for defying death and it encouraged them both that he was so willing to fight when, as a skilled doctor, he had to know how hopeless it was.
Ianto felt Jack's body relax slightly under his touch, and a quick glance told him that the medication was working.
"Okay, quickly now," Owen said grimly. "This is still going to hurt him, but it won't be as bad as it could have been."
Ianto complied and between them they managed to manoeuvre Jack onto the waiting stretcher. Sobs of pain, whimpers and moans flowed from Jack's lips, but the sounds were dulled, and Jack seemed to be growing less aware with every moment that slipped by.
They carried him down to autopsy and lifted him, stretcher and all, onto the table. There, they were all finally able to take full stock of Jack's injuries.
Jack's body had been pierced by not one, but four arrows. It appeared to Ianto that Jack had been caught in an ambush, judging from the varying angles and directions of each arrow.
Two arrows protruded from Jack's chest; one from his side, just above his right hip; and a fourth had gone clean through his left thigh. It was the arrow piercing his thigh that warned them that these were not ordinary arrows, and would not be easily extracted.
The arrow lodged in Jack's thigh was metal; light but strong, and impossible to break off. At each end there were long, sharp barbs that bent around and pointed inwards, making pushing it impossible to through. It was painfully clear to all of them that the arrows had been designed to do equally as much damage in the process of removing them, as they'd done in the original assault.
"Bloody hell," Owen whispered. "Tosh, what caused these burns?"
Ianto's attention was drawn from the cruel arrows, to Jack's face, and it was all he could do not to openly sob out loud at the sight. Whilst one side of Jack's face was unmarked, the other side had suffered burns unlike anything Ianto had ever seen before. Parts of the other man's skull and jawbone were visible, through the burned flesh. Right at that moment, Ianto thought with a churning stomach, Jack looked very much like Two-Face from the Batman comics.
He reached out tentatively, and touched his fingertips to the uninjured side of Jack's face.
"Cariad…"
"I know," Jack whispered in a barely audible voice. "Not so pretty anymore. Lucky it's not permanent."
"Hush, love," Ianto told him gently. "Owen…?"
He met Owen's gaze, and at that moment felt placated from the aggravation he'd experienced earlier. Owen had changed completely from brash and sarcastic to the epitome of concern and professionalism.
"Ianto, grab that cutter over there, quickly."
Again, Ianto found himself complying without protest. As he was handing the tool in question to Owen, though, Jack suddenly convulsed on the table and blood spilled from his mouth.
"Fuck!" Owen snarled as he grabbed a nearby stethoscope and listened quickly and intently to Jack's chest. "I'm guessing one of those arrows has gone through a lung. He's drowning in his own blood."
"Yan…" Jack croaked out. His voice sounded as though he was trying to speak underwater. Ianto grasped his hand firmly. He knew well enough what Jack was trying to tell him.
"Owen," he said softly, "you don't need to…"
Owen looked up at him with an expression that would have frozen lava.
"Don't you bloody tell me what I do or don't need to do. Unless you've got a medical qualification I wasn't aware of?"
Ianto clamped his jaw shut, and Owen nodded grimly.
"Didn't think so. Now, I've never quit on a patient before, and I'm not going to start now. So you just hold on, Jack. Do you hear me? Don't you dare quit on me."
Again, Ianto exchanged looks with Toshiko, and the young Welshman knew he would be getting a hearty 'I told you so' from her later on. She was right, he knew. The only problem now was that in fighting to keep Jack alive, Owen was actually only prolonging the Captain's pain. Ianto just didn't know how to tell him that without having Owen think they were just giving up and letting Jack die, or without him thinking they were out of their minds.
Jack convulsed again, and a gurgling noise echoed up from within his chest and throat. Far from looking panicked, though, calm descended over him, and he reached out weakly to catch Owen's arm before he could start work on trying to remove the first of the arrows.
"D… Don't…"
"What?" Owen asked incredulously. Jack coughed, and more blood bubbled up out of his mouth.
"Just… wait…"
"Jack, I can't wait," Owen told him with a growing touch of desperation in his voice. "You're drowning in your own blood. If I wait, you're going to die!"
"S'okay," Jack whispered. "Really. Just… please… get 'em out 'fore I come back."
Owen looked from Toshiko to Ianto anxiously.
"What the hell is he talking about? Back from what?"
"Tell him," Jack whispered to Ianto. He coughed once more, explosively, spraying blood everywhere. His body shuddered once more, violently, and then finally fell still and silent.
As though in shock, no one moved or spoke. Then, abruptly, Owen swore and abandoned the metal cutter to grab a case that held defibrillation paddles.
"Owen…" Ianto said.
"Stand back," Owen ordered as he charged the paddles.
"Owen, you don't…"
"I've got the medical degree, remember?" Owen snarled as he tore away the remnants of Jack's shirt and placed the paddles on Jack's chest. "Now stand back!"
Ianto winced as Jack's body arched off the table as electricity surged through him. That was going to leave an unwanted ache when Jack resurrected.
Owen cursed again, colourfully, when he didn't get a pulse, and began to charge the paddles again.
"All right," Ianto said firmly. "Your tenacity is very comforting, but that's enough. All you're going to achieve now is to give him one hell of a pain in the chest when he comes back. Just stop."
The young doctor eyed Ianto like he'd grown a second head.
"Are you out of your fucking mind? He's dead, Ianto. If I can't revive him now, that's it. There'll be no coming back." He looked around at Toshiko for help and, possibly, an extra-strong sedative for the Welshman. "Tosh? Will you please help me out here?"
To Owen's frustration, Toshiko only smiled and patted his arm soothingly.
"It's all right, Owen. At least, it will be, but we don't have time to explain yet. We have to hurry and get these arrows out as fast as we can."
"You're bloody mad, both of you," Owen muttered as Ianto picked up the cutter and began to work on the removal of the arrows.
"We'll debate that later," Ianto told him. "Will you please just help us do this?"
Shaking his head, Owen conceded with reluctance.
The arrow that had pierced Jack's torso came out relatively easily, but the arrow in his thigh had gone clean through the bone, and it took force to get it out.
"That's going to leave a serious residual ache," Ianto remarked ruefully as the arrow was finally removed. Owen tossed the offending piece of metal into a nearby bin for secure disposal.
"All right. They're out. Now what?"
"Now we wait," Toshiko answered. Ianto hurried out of the autopsy bay, only to return a minute later with a bowl of water and several washcloths. He began to clean the blood from Jack's body with a tenderness that couldn't possibly be mistaken for anything but love.
"He hates waking up still covered in blood," Ianto explained to no one in particular. Owen looked from him to Toshiko, looking as though he would have liked to throttle the Welshman. Toshiko sighed softly.
"Owen, Jack is… different. He can't die."
Incredulity blossomed across Owen's face.
"Are you mad, or blind? Look at him! He is dead!"
"Well, more accurately, he doesn't stay dead," she corrected herself. Owen stood still and quiet for nearly a minute, trying to process her words, and equate them with the scarily brilliant and beautiful young woman he was still getting to know.
"Let me get this straight. Are you trying to tell me that he's going to come back to life? Like Lazarus?"
Toshiko was starting to look just the tiniest bit nervous, as though she'd just realised how it sounded.
"Well… Yes. Now that we've removed the arrows. His body will heal, and he'll come back. It's happened before, Owen."
Owen shook his head again.
"I was wrong. You're not mad. You're bloody certifiable!"
Ianto sighed softly as he finished cleaning the blood from Jack's leg.
"Look at Jack's face."
Owen looked, and his eyes widened almost comically. Where half as Jack's face had been marred and disfigured by laser burns only minutes previously, the flesh was now unblemished in any way.
"How the fuck…?"
"I'll explain later," Ianto said, echoing Tosh's earlier words. "Can you help me get him into the med bay? I really don't want him to wake up on the autopsy table. His resurrections are traumatic enough as it is."
Still speechless at the sight of Jack's now unmarred face, Owen lifted Jack's legs off the autopsy table, and he and Ianto carried their Captain through into the med bay and depositing him on the nearest bed. He then stood back and watched as Ianto gently gathered Jack's limp body into his arms to await his resurrection.
"Tosh?" Ianto queried.
"Almost," she confirmed. Her gaze went to Owen, and she spoke tentatively. "Owen, there's something else that you need to know. When Jack comes back to life, he might seem a little less… mature than usual. He tends to regress a little, particularly if the death is a traumatic one."
Owen's eyebrows shot up. In his opinion, the whole situation was descending rapidly from the bizarre to the utterly ridiculous, but that statement struck him as particularly ludicrous.
"You're telling me that he suffers deaths that aren't traumatic?"
"Fair point," Ianto conceded. "I don't have time to explain it all to you right now, Owen..."
"Yeah, so you keep saying."
Ianto grimaced.
"I promise I will explain it, but all I can tell you right now is that when Jack comes back to life, he more often than not regresses back to a child-like personality. So please, keep any nasty remarks to yourself, at least while you're where he can hear you."
"Hey, I may be a prat a lot of the time," Owen growled, "but I have never, ever been cruel to someone suffering any sort of trauma, and I'm not about to start now."
"Good," Tosh said. "Now here's your chance to prove that, Owen. He's coming back."
Almost on cue, Jack resurrected with a strangled gasp, clutching instinctively at Ianto's arms.
"Yan," he whimpered, and Ianto tightened his hold on the older man.
"I've got you, cariad. You're okay. Do you hear me, love? You're fine."
"Hurts still," Jack choked out in between violent tremors.
"Where does it hurt, Jack?" Owen asked before Ianto had a chance to. His tone was gentle and soothing, a stark contrast to anything either Ianto or Tosh had previously heard from him.
"Everywhere. Leg... Chest... Back..."
"Where the arrows went in?"
"Uh huh."
"Well, they're all gone now. Just try to stay calm. What you're feeling is like an aftershock. It'll fade, I promise."
Jack answered with a whimper and clung to Ianto unashamedly, burying his face in Ianto's shirt. Gradually, though, his grip loosened and the tremors eased.
"How is it now?" Ianto asked.
"A little achy," Jack mumbled. "I'm tired, Yan."
"All right. Shut your eyes, then, and have a sleep. It's all right, Jack. You're safe, I've got you."
"Wait!" Jack burst out abruptly, panic flaring suddenly in his eyes. "Where's Tosh? Is she okay?"
Tosh hurried around into Jack's line of sight, and made no objections when he pulled her into his embrace.
"I'm fine, Jack. Really, I am. You saved me... again."
"You're worth saving," Jack mumbled, even as his hold on both her and Ianto slipped, and he began to drift off. "Do it again... anytime..."
"Well, that's a relief," Owen muttered as Jack slipped into a healing sleep. "I really didn't want to have to sedate him if I didn't need to."
Ianto looked around at Owen with a dark frown as he gently laid Jack down flat on the bed.
"Why, exactly, would you want to sedate him? If you think you're going to start running tests on him, I swear to God I'll retcon you back to your nappies."
"Shut it, you paranoid git," Owen told him dispassionately. "The only one I want to run tests on is you, for hearing impairment. I said, I didn't want to sedate him. It was pretty bloody obvious that he needed rest after going through that. I just didn't want to have to sedate him to make sure that he'd get it!"
Ianto felt his face heat up as he realised Owen was right.
"Oh. I'm sorry, Owen. It's just, when it comes to Jack, I guess I tend to be a little over-protective."
"Yeah," Owen agreed dryly. "I did notice that. You ought to be careful, teaboy. You'll give him a complex. Assuming you haven't already, that is."
Ianto's expression shifted once more into a frown.
"Absolutely amazing that I could go from being grateful, to wanting to throttle you, and all in the space of a couple of minutes."
The smug grin on Owen's face had Ianto itching to get out the retcon.
"What can I say? It's a gift. Now, unless you have something else to say, I think I've earned the right to go out and get a drink."
He was out of the med-room before Ianto could even begin to formulate an argument.
"He's going to drive us all mad," Ianto said ruefully.
"Yes, but you have to admit, he's good at what he does," Tosh pointed out. "This whole incident could have been so much worse for Jack if Owen hadn't been here. Ianto, are you going to tell him the truth? About what happened to Jack, I mean."
"I don't know," Ianto admitted. "Personally, I'd rather not. At least, not at this stage, but I have a suspicion that he's going to find out sooner or later anyway. It's probably best that I tell him. Jack shouldn't have to keep on reliving it."
"It was hard enough when you both told me what happened," Tosh agreed.
Ianto shut his eyes for a moment, and tried to determine how they'd reached this point so quickly.
"Tosh, I need some fresh air. I'm sorry, but would you mind staying with Jack, just in case he wakes up?"
She answered him with a warm smile.
"Of course. Go on."
"Thankyou. I won't be long."
Rather than take the lift up to the Plass – it still had Jack's blood on it, and Ianto simply wasn't prepared to clean it yet. Instead, he took the long way up, via the stairs and the currently non-functional tourist office. He hoped that, given time, he might be able to turn what was at the moment just a front into a genuine office – if only to deflect curiosity. God knew they had enough tourists every day who tried to get in.
Opening the door that led out onto the boardwalk, Ianto stepped out into the sun and almost straight into a person standing on the other side of the door. Only a quick side-step avoided a direct collision, but he couldn't avoid contact completely.
"Careful, there!" the woman burst out as shoulders collided painfully. Ianto held his tongue, and swallowed his irritation at her instantly foisting the blame onto him. After all, had she not been the one who was foolishly standing right on the other side of a doorway?
Shaking off any remaining disorientation, he forced himself to focus on the stranger, and finally registered the uniform she wore. She was a police officer, he noted with the first hint of foreboding. Not a detective, it seemed, but a constable. Or, as Jack had so ineloquently taken to calling them, one of the local plods.
He didn't smile at her, or play pretend at being nice. He didn't feel like it, not in the aftermath of watching Jack suffer such a horrendous death, and equally painful resurrection. Right then, what he wanted more than anything to clear his head and get his thoughts in order before Jack woke up again. He wanted some privacy.
"Excuse me, Ma'am. Were you looking for something? Or someone? Because if you are, I sincerely doubt you're going to find them around here."
She looked taken aback, as though she wasn't used to people brushing her off, and Ianto caught a slight hardening in her expression. Female in what was traditionally a male's occupation, he mused. She clearly felt she had something to prove, and he supposed he couldn't blame her, but he had neither the time nor the inclination to pander to her.
"Who are you, exactly?" she asked.
"The name's Jones. Ianto Jones."
"Right, Mr Jones. Work here, do you?"
"Yep."
She looked sceptical, and didn't hesitate to voice that scepticism.
"Don't lie to me, Mr Jones. It's well known that this tourist office is never open."
"We're in the process of renovating," Ianto replied smoothly.
"Renovating?" came the mildly incredulous reply. "It doesn't look like it to me."
"It's been slow-going," Ianto answered passively. "Structural issues. Sorry, PC....?"
"Oh, sorry. PC Gwen Cooper."
Ianto forced himself to smile, hoping it didn't look as much like a grimace as he felt it did.
"Right then, PC Gwen Cooper. Was there something specific you wanted? Because I only have a short break before I have to go back to work."
It was painfully obvious that PC Gwen Cooper was not happy about being rushed but, to her credit, she only smiled at him in an admirable show of patience.
"I just have a few questions about an incident that happened out on the Plass about half an hour ago."
A slight chill went through Ianto. Half an hour ago, Jack and Tosh had arrived back on the Plass, but Ianto had not thought to ask how. He had a sickening suspicion that he was about to find out. Nonetheless, the amiable smile plastered onto his face never faltered.
"I'm sorry. I've been stuck inside since early this morning. What incident would that be?"
To Ianto's interest, the PC suddenly lost some of her brashness, and uncertainty crept into her eyes.
"Well, to be honest, it's nothing... official. I mean, no one even seemed to notice..."
Ianto raised an eyebrow, and resisted an urge to ask her just how long she'd been a PC for.
"If you could hurry along and get to the point, PC Cooper? As I said, I'm on limited time here."
"Right... Look, I was patrolling the Plass and these two people... a man and a woman... they just appeared out of nowhere. The bloke looked like he was pretty badly hurt. I was going to call for an ambulance but then they just disappeared, and nobody except me seems to have seen it! I was asking around because I hoped someone..."
She trailed off, taking in the expression on Ianto's face, and her own face promptly heated up.
"I suppose I sound a little bit mad, don't I?"
"Just a little bit," Ianto answered with what he hoped was a sympathetic smile. He desperately wanted to get rid of this woman while she was still at the stage of questioning her own sanity. It seemed his gentle agreement was enough to tip the proverbial scales, and with a muttered apology for wasting his time, PC Gwen Cooper hurried away as quickly as her dignity would allow.
"Bloody hell," Ianto muttered, once the woman was gone. He knew what it was that she had seen... or hadn't seen, as the case may have been.
Jack and Tosh's sudden appearance on the Plass meant they'd arrived via Jack's vortex manipulator, and their equally abrupt disappearance had to be them making it onto the step that was shielded by the perception filter. He wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know what had happened to the SUV, but he suspected he'd find out before too long.
What it all pointed to was Jack and Tosh having to flee fairly quickly, meaning the responsible aliens were still on Earth. Ianto sucked in a long, hissing breath as he walked a short way along the boardwalk. It was not good, and it would be even worse once the Clyreney hunting party learnt of Jack's inability to stay dead. Someone like the Captain would truly be a prize catch, to take with them back to their home world where he could be hunted again, and again.
Ianto slowed to a halt, and had to make a conscious effort to stop gritting his teeth as anger spread through him at the thought of Jack being abused in such a way. There was only one solution, and that was for him to deal with the aliens before they found out the truth about Jack.
"Do you make a habit of standing around, staring into space?"
The abrasive voice cut into his train of thought, and he came back to reality to find Owen staring at him.
"I thought you were getting a drink?" Ianto muttered, and Owen answered with a shrug.
"Guess it was a little early after all. Seriously, though, mate. I've been watching you for nearly ten minutes now. You just stood there staring into space. I'm starting to wonder what sort of loony bin I've walked into."
"Would you rather be back in London, working A&E?" Ianto asked tersely as he began to walk again.
"Good point," Owen frowned a little as he realised Ianto was not actually head back in the direction of the tourist office entrance. "Where are we going?"
"To get my car."
"Why?"
"We're going to deal with the Clyreney. Right now, they think Jack is dead. If we don't act now, it won't be long before they find out that he's not. They'll want to know why."
"And that's important because...?"
"The Clyreney are born hunters, Owen. They pride themselves on being the best in the universe."
"You mean, like that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie? Predator?"
Ianto spared him a wry glance.
"Where do you think the idea for the alien came from?"
"Fuck..."
"Exactly."
Ianto watched out of the corner of his eye as Owen frowned, visibly chewing it all over in his mind. He led the way into the Torchwood garage, and was well into sorting out weapons before the young doctor spoke again.
"Jack would be like some ultimate catch then, wouldn't he? Because he'll just keep coming back to life?"
"Right," Ianto confirmed. He closed the boot firmly and indicated to Owen to get in. "So we either have to get them off the planet and send them on their way before they find out, or we're going to have to kill every one of them." He paused as he climbed in behind the wheel. "It's just us, Owen. Tosh needs to stay here, and try to keep Jack from coming after us."
"Plus, she's already faced them once," Owen added with growing determination. "I don't care to let those bastards have another shot at her. All right, tea boy. Just us, then."
Ianto smiled with relief and didn't bother arguing with Owen's use that much loathed nickname.
"Thankyou."
"I'll make a deal with you, though," Owen added, sending a twinge of apprehension through Ianto.
"What sort of deal?"
"I come with you, and we deal with these alien scumbags together, but you have to tell me the whole truth."
"The whole truth?"
"That's right. There's something about El Capitan that you're not telling me, and I want to know what it is. Like, what's with the personality regression? Well? Do we have a deal?"
Ianto nodded slowly, hoping quietly that Jack wouldn't be angry with him for telling the story ahead of time.
"Yes, Owen. We have a deal. It's a forty minute drive to the location. I'll give you the abridged version."
Owen grimaced as he settled back in the seat.
"Great. Let's get moving, then."
to be continued....