There's a moment before panic when the brain has to process the information and decide how to react to it. In that moment a person becomes acutely aware of their heart beating, of the face they are making, of the fact that they should be doing something but feel utterly helpless and uncertain. In this moment the body freezes and the mind spins in place, trying to regain traction on a brand new idea that has been thrust into it without warning and without any frame of reference. There has been no time to prepare for it and it is a moment that slows everything else down for the briefest of times before abruptly catching on the information and taking off at full speed.
After this the panic sets in and there comes a completely new feeling of helplessness that rather than hollows the mind like the moment before, fills it to the brim with useless intentions and no way to sort through them.
Jack went through this process, staring dumbly at Ianto before suddenly needing to do something but not knowing what. Phone still pressed to his ear he could vaguely hear Tosh demanding to know if Ianto had just said what she thought he had said and it was all he could do to blurt out, "What?"
"Jack, I'm having a heart attack," his friend repeating, looking considerably more at grips with the situation than the Captain was feeling. "Or a panic attack maybe? I don't know. But something's wrong, something's wrong with my heart. Oh God, Jack, I'm having a heart attack." The fear in his voice was building and his chest was beginning to heave as hyperventilation invaded his lungs.
Still not entirely past the processing stage, Jack cursed and fumbled at Ianto's chest as though pressing his hand to the bare skin would slow the frantic muscle before finally bringing his hand to the man's face and commanding into the phone, "Tosh, call Owen. Tell him Ianto's having a heart attack."
"A heart attack?" Tosh cried back at him. "Why is he having a heart attack?"
"I don't know!" He was shouting now, the panic leaking in. "Call Owen, get him over here now." He hung up before Tosh could respond and turned his full focus to Ianto, who was staring back at him, bug-eyed.
"Jack, I don't think this is a heart attack," he heaved.
"What is it, then, a panic attack?"
"No, it doesn't feel like it." He closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. "I've had panic attacks before, but this is different." He could hardly speak through spasming lungs, but he managed to push through, the logical part of his mind trying to take over, attempting to overthrow the terror. Jack could tell he was trying to shut down the fear, but wasn't having the easiest time. "Fuck, it hurts."
"Your heart?"
"Yes, my heart. Christ, Jack, pull yourself together, I don't know what to do and I need you t- AUGH!" He threw his head back in agony and clutched his arms around his stomach. "Fuck!"
Jack tried to pull out of his stupor, but he honestly didn't know what to do either. Feeling useless he wrapped his arms around his young friend, wanting to help, but not knowing how. Tosh was calling Owen and it was pretty obvious Ianto shouldn't or even couldn't be moved and there was no way they could let paramedics into the Hub so an ambulance was out of the question. So all he could think to do was comfort.
"It's okay, I'm here," he managed. He pressed a kiss to Ianto's forehead and furiously tried to come up with something he could do to help. "I'm here, Owen's on his way, you'll be fine, just breathe."
"Everything hurts," Ianto heaved. "Not just my heart. Oh god my stomach, my head, Jesus, even my skin. It's everything." He let out a moan that grew into a shout. His face contorted in pure pain, and he twisted and writhed in Jack's arms. The Captain brought a hand up behind his head to keep him from banging it off the wall. "God dammit!" Ianto screamed, kicking the desk and knocking over the guest chair. "What's happening, Jack?" The pain momentarily subsided and he weakly curled his legs up, holding tightly to Jack's protective arms. "What is this? What's happening to me?"
"I don't know."
A sheen of sweat had developed on Ianto's forehead and the Captain gently wiped it away and smoothed back the equally sweaty hair. Another spasm ran through Ianto's body and Jack struggled to hold onto him, wanting to cry at the sight of such pain. The next scream started as a barked "Jack!" before devolving into wordless cries that just seemed to go on and on.
He could feel Ianto's burning muscles flex and twitch under the skin, his heart still pounding away amidst the wreckage, and suddenly he became aware of something else moving deep beneath the flesh. Craning his neck to avoid being clocked by Ianto's thrashing head he caught sight of a disturbing change that was taking place.
The Welshman's feet, strained and flexed, were beginning to grow. The bones had become evident under rapidly stretching skin as they extended. Blue veins bulged between translucent flesh and ridging bone, patched of dark red blossoming where they broke from stress and blood began to pool.
A vicious jerk tore Ianto from his arms and the poor man writhed on the floor of his office and it became clear that his feet were not the only things changing. His spine rose above his ribcage and his shoulder blades migrated apart, pushing arms down toward a narrowing chest. Nails elongated and thickened, becoming claws and fingers withdrew and swelled.
Perhaps the most horrifying transformation was Ianto's face. Tears streamed from his eyes as his jaw and nose protruded grotesquely, thinning lips on a broadening mouth revealed teeth so large and sharp they could easily puncture metal. His ears became pointed and his flattening cranium mixed with the snout gave the appearance that his entire skull was being stretched out.
Jack sat back against the wall, terrified as he watched his friend, still screaming, go through the excruciating process. Black hair was sprouting from Ianto's pale skin, but it was his eyes that confirmed to him what was happening. Eyes once so blue had been consumed by their irises and flooded by amber. Dog eyes, Jack thought. He clasped a hand to his own mouth as fear and disgust fought for dominance in his chest.
The deep scream became an even deeper howling moan before fading away completely. There was no denying now, the change complete, the fur annexing his entire body, the once immaculate Welshman had become something else, something horrifyingly familiar.
The form of the dog lay motionless on the floor, sides heaving with desperate breaths that slowly subsided to an easy rise and fall. Jack was tempted to reach out and touch it, him – Ianto, his Ianto – but restrained himself. Instead he leaned forward warily and whispered, "Ianto?"
The dog huffed as though in surprise before heaving itself upright and twisting its head around to look Jack in the eyes, yellow to blue, animal to man.
"Ianto," Jack breathed. "Oh God, what's happened to you."
There was a brief moment in which there was nothing, silence between two still bodies. A charge was lit between them, but Jack was lost in his own head, the revelation of what was happening sinking in before he was pulled out of his sorrow and horror by the sound of a growl deep in the dog's throat. Its lips were pulled back to bare those so-sharp teeth and Jack could feel no small amount of fear in the back of his mind. "Ianto," he repeated, a warning this time. In response, the animal lunged.
.oOo.
Owen grumbled as he stumbled his way from the bus stop across the Plass. One hell of a headache was pounding away in his skull and his mouth was drier than the Sahara. Sunglasses weren't enough to keep his eyes from burning in otherwise direct sunlight. He felt like crap and if it hadn't been for all of those damn missed calls he wouldn't have bothered coming into work at all today, never mind he was already nearly an hour late.
Great night though, what he could remember of it. Numbers from two different smoking hot chicks and steamy encounters from another less intimidating specimen. It had been someone's birthday at the first bar he had gone to so there were two non-consecutive free rounds and plenty of drunken partygoers who were more than a little handsy. Owen could hold his own though, and he had survived there long enough to make it safely to the second bar where a pretty girl near the bathrooms was rebounding hard.
Yes, a very good night, spoiled only by the painful reality that was the morning after and the realization that he didn't know where his car was. Buses were filthy, he hated the bus, but he didn't exactly have any other options, taxis were ridiculously overpriced.
Apparently things had been busy last night as he had collected five missed calls from Tosh and two from Gwen, but he refused to listen to the messages on the grounds that he didn't care. His day was finished, he'd done his time. By the time he got to the tourist office door it was closing on 8:45, and to his surprise the sign on the door was still switched to "CLOSED." He didn't think much of it, however, figuring Ianto had just gotten caught up in one of this other numerous duties and not realized what time it was. A rare occurrence, but it had been known to happen.
He let himself through the secret door to the lift and took the time going down to massage his aching temples. Shouldn't have done those last three vodka shots, always a bad move and yet he always did it. "Idiot," he muttered as the cog door spun open, shooting off its stupid blaring alarms and sending a wave of pain through his poor brain.
Letting loose a stream of curses under his breath he trotted down the steps and into the main area where the rest of the team seemed to have congregated around a chair. Sitting in the chair was Ianto, looking deeply disturbed and wrapped up in a blanket while the other three spoke hurriedly to one another as though he was not there.
"How is that even possible?" Gwen was asking, arms crossed and looking concerned. "There's no such thing."
"You'd be surprised what's out there," Jack told her, entirely serious. "If I hadn't seen it for myself I wouldn't believe it either, but it happened. There's no getting around it." Whatever Owen had walked in one was clearly no laughing matter. He took off his sunglasses as he approached and Jack, noticing his appearance, took on a much darker countenance. "And where the hell were you?" he hissed.
"Out," Owen spat back.
"Is that the best you can do?" Gwen asked shrilly. She did that a lot, why did she always do that?
"Yes, I was out. Christ, what's got you lot so pissy?"
"Didn't you get our messages?" Tosh asked, significantly calmer than their colleagues. She seemed to be the only one to remember Ianto's presence and had her hand resting on his cloaked shoulder.
"No I did not, what's happened?"
Jack frowned and turned to glance at the archivist who continued to stare at the floor. "There was an incident last night."
Owen pulled up another chair and took a seat, eyeing the Welshman with a combination of irritation and concern. "What sort of incident?"
Jack spun the doctor's chair around to face the computer where he hit play on a recording that had already been set up on the screen. It was from the camera just outside the Captain's office and at first there was nothing Owen could really see of any significance. If it weren't for the time noted in the corner progressing he would have thought it a still image. But soon movement caught his eye and he watched as the office door was flung open and a large black shape galloped out. Owen frowned as the footage switched to another camera, an overview of the Hub from the water tower, where the shape, a dog he realized, raced frantically about. It crashed into a work station, sending papers flying, jumped onto then off of the couch before reaching a table holding the energy gun Tosh had been running tests on where it grabbed at the cables wired into it and yanked the gun onto the floor.
Jack paused the video, the dog frozen in place, body coiled to launch itself across the Hub for a second round of destruction. "So a dog got in last night?" Owen asked, still not convinced this was anything he needed to be worried about. "Wait, how did a dog get in?"
"This isn't any normal dog," Jack said in a low voice. "Remember that night about a month ago when Ianto and I were attacked during a weevil hunt?"
"You can't possibly be suggesting this is that same dog?"
"I'm not."
"So there just happen to be two gigantic dogs on the run in Cardiff and no one has reported it to animal control?"
Jack sighed and cast another glance to Ianto before running a hand down his face. "That's not a dog."
Owen looked between his friends, confused and a little wary. They were all looking downcast as though some great loss had befallen them while he was out for the night. "What do you mean, that's not a dog?" he asked slowly.
For the first time since Owen had arrived Ianto spoke. "It's me," he told him in an unsteady voice.
"That's… you." When there was no response he turned to Tosh and then to Gwen for confirmation and when both women looked away with small nods the doctor looked back to the archivist. He was clearly shaken, eyes fixed back to their gaze at the floor and blanket held tightly about him. "You're a dog?"
"I need a shower," Ianto muttered, standing up. Blanket still around his shoulders he retreated into the showers leaving Owen at a loss.
"Last night," Jack took over. "In my office Ianto heart started racing and he said he was in a lot of pain. Then he started having seizures of some sort and… he changed."
"Bloody hell," was all Owen could manage.
"I tried calling you," Tosh told him. "When you didn't answer I called for an ambulance, but there was no one to let them into the Hub."
"Not that we could have let them down here anyways," Jack argued.
"I didn't know what was happening," Tosh continued, defensive and full of concern. "All I knew was that Ianto was having a heart attack and since you were unreachable-"
"Where were you, by the way?" Gwen interrupted, casting a glare to Owen. "I tried calling too. Were you so busy on the pull you couldn't pick up your bloody phone?"
"It's not like I knew what you were calling me about," Owen retorted, avoiding the fact that he had been too drunk to even notice his phone had been going off.
"You're our doctor," Jack bellowed. "When something happens I expect you to be there!"
Owen scowled at the Captain. "I do have a life, you know, something the rest of you should try sometime."
"So it's up to the rest of us to do your job?" Gwen insisted. "You're too drunk so we have to be the ones to come in here and pick up the pieces when things fall apart because you're out enjoying a pint?"
"I do my job!" Owen stood up, hangover elevating from irritable to furious, the pounding in his head only fueling his rage. "And it's because of my job that I have to fucking drink! Do you know what I deal with on the daily? Do you really think you could handle the things that I put up with because this twat can't stay alive?" He pointed to Jack who stepped forward to challenge him, anger burning hot on his features.
"Please stop, do you really think this is helping?" Tosh broke in; voice raised in a way it so rarely was. "Ianto's in trouble, we need to figure this out and the three of you getting all emotional isn't going to solve anything." Jack and Owen backed away from one another looking suitably cowed and Gwen folded her arms across her chest as she put her head down. "Thank you," Tosh said in a much more restricted tone. "Now let's gather the facts and work this problem out."
"Sorry to interrupt," came a calling voice. They turned to fins Ianto clad in nothing but a towel, hair damp and a sickly look on his face. "But I think I just threw up a finger."
.oOo.
When Tosh arrived Jack was already dead.
After he had hung up on her she had called Owen like the Captain had ordered, but after a few tries and no response she called 999 instead. She had gotten as far as giving them the address to the tourist center before realizing they could never be let into the Hub, so she apologized and excused the false alarm. Instead she got in a cab herself to go to the Hub, calling Gwen along the way to tell her what was happening. Rhys answered and told her brusquely to call back in the morning as Gwen had only just gotten home an hour ago and deserved a little time without Torchwood breathing down her neck. So Tosh instead texted the situation to Gwen in the hopes she would see it and convince her boyfriend to let her go.
It wasn't very late, only nine or so at night, but it was dark when she reached the Plass and the quay was nearly empty, so Tosh hurried through the secret door, down the elevator and into an overturned Hub. With no sign of Jack or Ianto she went to look for them in Jack's office and was greatly disturbed to find the Captain twisted up on himself, half eaten, mostly naked, and completely dead.
Frightened of what could have caused this she shut the office door and waited with him until his body had healed itself enough for him to wake up. By then it was nearly 10:30 and there was still no sign of Ianto. She hoped he had not been trapped somewhere else with whatever had destroyed the computers and paperwork, but when Jack rose he informed her this was indeed not the case.
When the story had been told of what had occurred after-hours at the Torchwood Hub, Tosh was skeptical, but using Jack's laptop she was able to get into the security system and see for herself that everything he had said was the truth. They decided to wait and watch, hidden away in the safety of Jack's office, behind his desk for good measure. Around 11:15 Gwen called saying she had just read the text and was on her way and Tosh was forced to warn her away, unable to say really what had happened as she wasn't entirely certain herself. Gwen reluctantly agreed and said to call her when things were safe enough for her to come in.
They waited all night, huddled together in the dim light of a desk lamp with the computer propped up between them. They were able to locate and track the beast for several hours before it disappeared from view. Early in the morning they were able to find it again, thrashing about on the floor of an archival room, and Tosh watched in alarm as the monster distorted and broke and changed, becoming in all its lashing out a man she recognized.
When the transformation was complete, Ianto remained crouched on all fours before he collapsed into a heap on the floor, apparently unconscious. They waited and watched for another hour before deciding it was safe to venture out. Jack went first, creeping silently up to his lover to make sure he really was human. Identity confirmed, Tosh called Gwen, telling her it was safe to come in and at seven in the morning the three of them were standing over their co-worker, observing him warily.
Gwen was the one who woke him and he seemed just as surprised to be there as they were to find him there. After covering himself up, thoroughly embarrassed, he listened to what they had to say and only after watching he video footage of the second transformation was he able to understand this was no ill-conceived joke.
They attempted calling Owen again, but with no reply they were forced to wait, discussing the implications of the nights events. Debate on legitimacy and talk of possible causes could only produce one ruling, no matter how ridiculous and impossible it seemed.
Ianto Jones was a werewolf.
A/N But are things really as simple as they seem? Pfft, of course not, this is just the beginning. Hold onto your hats, things are about to go off - LL
Don't own Torchwood
Please review (it feeds me)