Chapter four — the stuff of legends
"You're crazy," she stated.
"I'm not. That's you," answered Ianto teasingly. He wondered what would happen if Jack heard that sentence. He would have realized that Ianto had a teasing side too. Right after that he would've died of shock, then came back to make dirty jokes about it. Secretly Ianto Jones, the explosive expert and second in command of parallel-Torchwood Three has always loved those comments. But Ianto Jones, general support, was an other question. He was punctual, well-behaved, and anal. The teaboy was the mask Ianto wore to keep his secret safe.
"You can't tell them about my problem. Owen'd probably shoot me," she exclaimed.
"But you can't keep it a secret. You might endanger us. We have to be ready if something happens to you," argued back Ianto.
"Then I'll tell them when I'm ready. Look, it won't happen soon. I have enough pills for a couple of months."
"Weren't you the one who asked about medicine stealing? Well, I haven't answered yet. And I don't think I'll have to. Just check your bag," he ordered.
Rose did as she was told, and opened her bag. She dug into the little pocket on its bottom, searching for her pills. She found nothing. Somebody's already stolen them. She straightened up, and looked at Ianto. She realized that she had no choice, so she reluctantly agreed to Ianto's plan. She also asked him to tell the team instead of her. Ianto nodded then left.
Five minutes later she saw Gwen hurrying into the room, towards her. Rose had a guess what she wanted to talk about.
"Hi Lily," greeted her the other woman and Rose felt guilty for lying. Then she shook the feeling off, preparing herself for a long 'I feel with you' speech. But to her suprise there were no pity or fake sympathie in her eyes. She still looked at her as an equal.
"Ianto told us about you. I wanted to say that I'm sorry, and that you can come to me if you need anything."
"Thanks," answered Rose, still feeling a little wary. A few hours ago this woman was pressing a gun into her skull, now she was making friends.
"Now you're thinking 'what the hell does she want? She almost killed me a few hours ago'," she smiled knowingly.
"Are you a psychic or something," she asked, "or am I that transparent?"
"No, but if I were you I'd think the same," replied Gwen. "Anyway I came to tell you, that if you're bored, we have a couple of writings you could try to translate. We found them in the Himalayas six months ago." And without another word she started to walk away.
"I'd like that. And Gwen?" she called after her, and the woman looked back at her. "Thanks for not treating me as an invalid."
"You're welcome."
MW-MW-MW-MW-MW-MW
Rose was getting annoyed. She's been sitting at the desk in the kitchen for an hour now, trying to understand the text. It was written in the same style as her last work in the parallel universe. When she departed, she packed up that script's copy, and now she was grateful for that.
She was trying to find other similarities between the two texts, beside the style. So far, she found a couple. She had no doubt, that the same person —or being- wrote both. The only big difference was the thing it was written on. The first was carved into stone, the new one was on a copper table.
But doesn't matter how hard she was trying, she couldn't understand four things.
One: both of the texts contained a strange symbol. They were in their left corners. She's never seen any language like this. She suspected that it might be an artificial language, that's why she couldn't understand. Somehow they didn't belong anywhere, they weren't the natural part of time and history.
Two: how were the artefacts made. One was carved into stone, the other into copper, but it looked like, that with the help of a laser.
Three: why did the aliens left their writings in two different worlds.
Four: how could the writer hide that damned code so well. There had to be one, there was no way that a sentinent being would waste time with sending fairitales to different universes.
After two more hours of struggling and trying out different code-patterns, she gave up. She brought the text back to Gwen, along with her translation. When she arrived to the door of the attic —which housed Tosh's and Owen's necessary equipments- she heard them arguing inside. Rose hoped it wasn't about her. She opened the door a little, trying to find out what the argument was about. In other words she was snooping.
"We can't give up the search. Not yet!" That was Gwen.
"Why not? He took off almost a year ago, not dissappeared. We have better things to do. Namely to survive," shouted back Owen.
"But he is our boss. Our friend," yelled Gwen.
"We understand what you feel, we want to find him too. But we have to face the facts. As Owen said, it was more than a year ago. Even if he is in the country, he's probably hiding, or dead. We can't do anything for him. But we can save the people here," tried to soothe her Tosh.
"But...but he would search for us," said Gwen, slightly sobbing.
"We tried, Gwen. We even climbed those bloody mountains. But we have to concentrate on our job now. Jack'd want us to save as many people as we can," said Owen, in a suprisingly soft voice.
Rose didn't know who they were talking about, but she automatically thought of her Jack. She often tried to find out what happened to him, but she couldn't find him. Thanks to the Time Vortex, usually she could find anybody she wanted, when- and wherever they were in time and space. But Jack just disappeared.
Fortunately she came out of her thoughts when the voices from inside died down. She quietly closed the door, then knocked. Ianto answered it, suprised to see Rose there.
"Hi. What are you doing here?"
"I translated the script Gwen gave me." Seeing the man's confused face, she added, "The one you brought back from Asia."
"Ah. Come in."
Gwen looked up when she entered the room, then her expression changed when she realized why Rose's come. She was shocked that Rose finished her work so quickly.
"You're already finished?" she asked.
"Yeah, I am."
"Wow. You're really good. And what are they about?" asked Tosh.
Rose gave a copy of the papers to her. She looked over it, then frowned. "Lily, are you sure it's the good translation? It sounds like and eight year old druggie wrote it," she asked.
"I'm sure. In Torchwood One I encountered another text like this."
"But it's talking about immortals, caged gods and restless wanderers. It's like a tale for children. The good wins, the bad falls..."
"I know. The other script was about scarred skies and devouring monsters...," she trailed off, and looked at the others. They all came to the same conclusion.
"Doesn't it sound like our situation?" asked Tosh.
"But it's about two thousand years old," spoke up Gwen, calmer then minutes earlier. "How could have they known about the events in the 21th century England?"
"They couldn't. Unless it's some kind of.." answered Tosh, but was cut off by Owen.
"You can't mean that it's a...You're joking, right?"
When he received no answer, he continued, "You're a scientist for God's sake. You can't believe it's a..a..."
"...a.prophecy?" finished Ianto, then after a pause he said, "Let's believe it is. I say we go over the whole text, including the one Lily found in London and search for more similarities."
The others nodded, sat down and got ready for the session. Then they looked at Ianto, silently asking him to start. He did. For a moment Rose could see the second in command he was in the parallel world, behind the mask of the always neat teaboy.
"Well, if it's really a prophecy, I have a guess who the immortal is," started Ianto, and Rose was snapped out of her musings.
"What are you talking about? You know an immortal?" asked Rose, hoping that they meant the Doctor.
The others looked at each other, then nodded in unision. Rose felt like an entire conversation passed between them.
"Our boss, Jack. He... can't die," explained Gwen, stuttering over the can't die part. "He went missing a year ago, as you might have heard while you were standing outside."
"Sorry. I didn't meant to eavesdrop."
"Anyways as Ianto said, if it's a prophecy, then he might be the immortal."
"So he's the slayer of the..." she checked her copy, "the Great Devourer?"
"Abbaddon. It was before the last time we saw him. He died while killing the beast, came back, then disappeared."
"I'm sorry," she said, then asked, "What was his name, again?"
"Jack Harkness," answered Toshiko, and the name made the blood run cold in Rose's veins.
"Jack Harkness?" she stuttered. "As in Captain Jack Harkness," the others nodded, confused that the new girl knows their boss, "Jack Flash, the omnisexual captain of the Innuendo Squad?"
"Well, I've never heard the last one, but it fits him," said Owen, amused despite the recent events. "If this helps, he's tall, has black hair and blue eyes."
Rose was speechless. The Jack they were talking about was actually her captain. Suddenly she had an idea who the caged god might be. She knew that the Doctor would've done something to save Earth, and the only thing that could've stopped him was death or capture.
"You're her," whispered Gwen, suddenly enlightened by the outburst of the younger woman. "The girl on the picture." She turned to the others and said, "There is a picture on his desk about him, a blonde teenager and a tall man in leather jacket."
"Is there a council estate in the background?" Gwen nodded. "Then it's me," she sighed, "Oh, God. I thought he was dead."
"Believe me, he isn't. And probably won't be in the near future," commented Owen.
Before Tosh could make a snarky comment about Owen's insensibility, Ianto quickly spoke up, rather loud, "You know, while the whole reunion thing is very nice, could we concentrate on the real problem? Namely the texts?"
The members of the Cardiff-branch were taken aback. They've never heard Ianto raise his voice or take command like he did in the last ten minutes. He was always quiet and reserved. They didn't know what cause the change, but all of them suspected that it had something to do with the new girl.
"That's a good idea," agreed Owen. "So, Lily, you said you have another text. Could you tell us what it is about?"
"It's the same style as the asian one. The first part talks about a red monster tearing the sky open. The second one is about the red monster holding a gate open to let its children/minions to devour Earth."
"Okay. The part about the scar and the minions are correct. But what's the red beast?"
"It might be some kind of time-manipulating device," deducted Rose, and an idea was forming in her head.
"Why do you think that?" asked Tosh.
"I read an article about paradoxes in time and space. It said that the creation of a paradox somehow rips the fabric of the universe, hence the scar," she lied. She wasn't ready to tell them about her encounter with reapers.
"But in that case the paradox ends the world," argued Tosh, the only one that could understand what she was talking about.
"Not if said time-thing keeps it going somehow. Like a paradox-machine. And that could explain the prophecy too."
"What do you mean?" asked Gwen.
"We've just assumed that the texts were written by somebody who lived in that age. But what if the writings are paradoxes too? I mean, by the looks of it, the scar is the original paradox. What if somebody, maybe a time traveller, created a second one —a paradox in a paradox. It wouldn't affect either the original one, or the world."
"So it might be a warning from someone who was from our time and knew the orignal texts," deducted Ianto.
"Yep. Somebody who knows the original script, sent or will send it back in time to the places we've found them at," finished Rose.
"It might be an accident too," spoke up Owen, causing the others to look at him. "We're sitting on a Rift in time and space..."
"That'd make sense," the computer genius agreed.
"Okay, let's move on," said Ianto, "What is the second text about?"
"The restless wanderer travelling the world, keeping the faith of the people alive, the immortal destroying the beast, while the caged god, freed by the power of the words, defeats it's master..." she was cut off by Gwen.
"The Master. Ring any bells?" she asked sarcastically.
"...and the tyrant will die by the hands of the...," continued Rose, not bothered by the input.
"By whose hand?" asked Tosh.
„Dunno," mumbled Rose, also confused, „the sentence stops here."
"So we just wait for Jack and the 'caged god' to save us and a third person to finish off the lunatic?" asked Ianto, breaking the silence.
"Looks like it," answered Rose, then changed the topic, noticing the weird looks the others were sending in Ianto's direction. "I wanted to ask you something. I found this symbol on both of the writings. Do you have any idea what it might mean? I've never seen anything like this before." And with that she showed them the sign.
"Oh, I know what to do," exclaimed Tosh, "I got hold of a new code system before we went to our little field trip."
"So can you tell me its meaning?"
"Yes, let me scan it. This might take a couple of minutes."
"No need for the program," cut her off Ianto. "I know that sign."
"Where from?" asked Rose.
Without a word the man pulled up the sleeve of his shirt, exposing a tattoo on his right forearm. It was the symbol from the texts.
Rose was going to ask if he was sure about the meaning, but was cut off by the knock on the door. Gwen called out, and a young girl stepped in.
"What happened? Is it the Toclafanes?" asked Gwen, worried.
"No. But there is a strange woman with red hair at the door. She says that her name is Donna Noble, and she knows Martha Jones."