I've finally finished planning this fic out. Now I just need to actually finish writing it. But I think it'll probably be about three more chapters before the end.
Enjoy!
Chapter 7
Ianto returned home to find his rabbits scampering to greet him. Toshiko came out of the kitchen at once and looked beyond relieved as she spotted him.
"Oh thank god."
She went to his side and took the bags out of his hands, "Never leave again!" she said, looking flustered.
"That bad?" asked Ianto.
"Ianto, she thought your pets were for eating! It's bad enough she's out of her time, but I had no idea what she said to me, and I'm pretty sure she insulted me twice."
"Ok, ok, calm down. I'll see what happened from her perspective and we'll deal with it."
"Good. I'll take these and you do that." said Toshiko, carrying the bags into the kitchen as Ianto shrugged off the coat and hung it up. He then went into the sitting room, where Catalina was still embroidering.
"¿Princesa?"
She looked up and smiled, "Sr. Ianto, su regreso es más agradable. Su amante ha sido más mal conmigo."
Ianto blinked at her. "¿Mi amante?"
"Sí, la muchacha oriental."
Ianto flushed deeply. Oh dear…
"Erm… Pido disculpas por ella ... en un momento y voy a hablar con ella."
He bowed quickly and rushed out to the kitchen, face hot with embarrassment.
"So… apparently she thinks you're my mistress." he said to Toshiko, who dropped the cabbage in her hand.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I dunno how she came to that conclusion, but apparently you were improper with her and she thinks you're my mistress." Ianto had never felt so mortified in his life.
"Why would she… how was I improper with her?" Toshiko seemed to decide the rudeness was more important than the mistress thing for now.
"I did not ask. I'm sure it's to do with something small, like you did not show proper respect or something."
"Oh for-"
"I know, I know! But until we can send her away, it might be better if we go along with her belief."
"What, that we're…?"
"Yup."
"Why?"
"In her mind, a mistress may not be the, well, best status for a woman, but it will mean she won't have to worry about me being improper. In her head, if I already have a woman in my life, I won't make any passes at her."
"…Why would she think you would?"
"She grew up in a segregated world, and it's not really proper for a woman, married or not, to be alone in the house of a man, without some kind of female attendant. This way might just be easier."
Toshiko stared at him blankly for a moment, then sighed and nodded.
"Ok, I'll go along with whatever you tell her."
"Great, I'll also ask her to be less racist against you."
"Racist too is she?" drawled Toshiko.
"Tudor England. If you weren't English, you weren't as good. I'm just relieved she hasn't twigged I'm Welsh yet. She'd have a very different opinion of me I think if she knew."
"Really?"
Ianto nodded rolling his eyes, "Some things never change."
Toshiko smiled and picked up the cabbage, bringing it over to the sink to wash it off. Bart took a running leap at a leaf left on the floor, but Ianto, not wishing to deal with a rabbit with diarrhoea on top of everything else, picked it up before the tiny bunny could get at it. Bart glared up at him, nose twitching indignantly as Ianto threw the leaf away.
"So what does she want for food?"
"I managed to find pheasant legs. I'm going to cook them slowly and see if she'll eat that."
"If?" repeated Toshiko, looking astonished.
"If." said Ianto firmly. "I'm not going to make her eat the stuff."
Toshiko stared at him for a long moment, then said gently, "You shouldn't feel you have to make up for what we have to do. We're not doing this to be cruel Ianto."
"I know. But…" Ianto sighed and dropped his chin, "I still feel like shit."
Toshiko nodded in understanding and picked up a carrot. "Come on, we'd better get started on the cooking."
Ianto gave her a grateful look and they set to work.
Owen pinched the bridge of his nose and growled to himself.
This was impossible.
He had a blood sample, but it had not yielded any sort of explanation for the infertility of Catalina. It had shown that she was a little anaemic, but that was not uncommon in pregnancy, the same with pre-natal diabetes. But there were no signs of any STD, or any other kind of infection that would explain it. And since he couldn't examine Catalina, he couldn't be more thorough. It did not help that while she was pregnant, Owen could not test her hormone levels.
His computer beeped and he looked around. It was a message from Ianto. The Archivist had promised to track down anything he could from Catalina's life. It appeared he had managed to track down the digital copies of the letters Catalina had written over her life, as well as letters from others about her. They were all long winded and Owen groaned at the thought of having to weed through them all.
However he settled in and started to read.
As letter after letter was read, something began to niggle at the back of Owen's mind. Something important.
It was only when he read a letter from the pope to Prince Henry wherein the pope tells Henry that he had the power to stop Catalina from fasting so much, because it would affect her health and her ability to produce children.
"… no way is it that simple!" he muttered. He quickly started looking up information on the condition and found that, yes, it did fit what Ianto had described. But Owen could hardly believe it was something so… modern.
He pulled out his phone and called Toshiko.
"Hello?"
"Tosh! I need you to do something for me."
"Ok…"
"You've got to help Catalina change, yeah?"
Toshiko gave a long suffering sigh, "Yes."
"Can you weigh her when she's undressed?"
"…Pardon?"
"Weigh her. I need to know what weight she is."
"Um… ok. Why? Do you think it'll help you figure out what'll cause her infertility?"
"I don't wanna say yet, but I think I may have the answer. Just get back to me when you have the numbers."
"Ok."
Gwen lay on her back in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Try as she might, she could not sleep.
"What's up love?" asked Rhys, squinting up at her through sleepy eyes.
"Just can't relax." she mumbled.
"Anything you want to talk about?"
Gwen was about to say no, but instead, she asked, "Do you want kids Rhys?"
Silence stretched between them, Gwen could almost see the question making its way through Rhys' sleep addled brain. Then he let out a sharp breath.
"Jesus… erm… well yeah, course I do. Why? Don't you?"
"I… I dunno. I guess I never really though about it properly, it was like a background feature." Gwen shrugged, still staring at the ceiling.
"Uh… what's brought this on?"
"The thing is…" she said as if she did not hear the question. "I think I'd be really upset if I found out I couldn't."
"Couldn't?"
"Yeah, like… my body wasn't able to do it."
Rhys rubbed his eye with the heel of his hand, sighing thoughtfully. "Well, we can't be sure until we try I guess, or get a test."
"But what if I couldn't? What would that mean for us?"
"I… I guess it would depend on why you couldn't. I mean, 's not clear cut, is it? Not like it's always that everything's broken. Might be we'd need a surrogate, or maybe a donor egg… if it was you I mean. But we could always look at adopting... are we really discussing this right now?"
Gwen sighed and sat up, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to spring this on you. I just… Ianto, my co-worker, he's gotten into my head. We were talking about… about Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII's first wife."
"The one he divorced, yeah?"
"Yeah."
"What about her love?"
"Well, Ianto said the only reason Henry got rid of her was because she couldn't give him a son. I just… I can't imagine how hard that must have been for her, knowing that all she had to do was have a son, and being unable to do it. I just can't… I just don't think I could handle that."
"Gwen, you're not thinking I'm gonna go off if you can't have kids, are you?"
"No! No, nothing like that love. I just… I dunno, it's sad is all."
"Yeah, it is sad, but in fairness, I didn't think much of Henry when I heard about him in school. Seemed like a bastard."
"Yeah… yeah he does."
"Besides, as sad as her life was, she's long dead now. Not like we can do anything about it, eh?"
Gwen closed her eyes and nodded, "Yeah. You're right."
"C'mere." Rhys took hold of her shoulder and pulled her back down so she was back to chest with him, his arm around her. Gwen felt better when he was holding her, but she still could not sleep.
"I can sleep on the couch, really, it's fine."
"Tosh, if you want to, you can, but your back will be in bits and I don't think that's what anyone needs that right now."
Toshiko sighed and glanced at Ianto's king sized bed. It was not like they would be too close to each other, even as tall as Ianto was, he didn't look like the kind of person who tossed and turned in his sleep.
It would make sense to sleep in the bed. But she still felt embarrassed at the idea. It felt far too personal with Ianto. Seeing him in a t-shirt and tracksuit bottoms was strange enough.
Catalina had been settled for the night, but she had been sharp-toned with Toshiko as the computer expert tried to unpin her dress. It was a complicated process to say the least. After that, all Toshiko wanted to do was sleep. So she decided that being embarrassed wasn't worth a bad back and clambered into bed. Ianto, seeming satisfied, did the same and immediately switched the light by his bed off, rolling away from her and burying his head in his pillow. It took Toshiko longer to settle in, but the bed was surprisingly comfy and soon she was drifting away into a sound sleep.
Next chapter will hopefully be soon enough. Reviews and concrit is always appreciated.
Night's Darkness
