In Amnion 9a/?
by Meredith Bronwen Mallory (garnettrees)
Startled, Jack instinctively moved to shield Ianto's body with his own, glaring at his guest over a bare shoulder. Too full of relief, adrenaline and cresting energy of his own resurrection, Jack knew he hadn't fallen asleep. Not even for a moment, as clearly evinced by the fact Wei was just now exiting the kitchen. Never the less, he couldn't shake the sullen ache in his bones- that jump in perception and consciousness , like the tiniest of fissures in time. The same jittery touch lingered over pilots when they reached certain altitudes; it fell against soldiers in the heat of battle, doctors when the surgery was at its most delicate; sages sought it at the core of each fast. It was there even for the most dedicated and exhausted of grad students, filling their minds with the buzz of static as night deepened and the dorm lights seemed to gain physical texture. Not a terribly unfamiliar sensation, but one Jack distrusted all the same. His gaze flickered automatically towards The Box, which sat unconcerned and pewter-dull on the workbench stool.
"Not listening, obviously," Wei answered herself, scrubbing tiredly at her eyes. Retrieving a small container from the valise, she approached The Box with the knife held as a natural extension of her dominant hand. "Is there anything between your ears to hold in my words?"
"Plenty," Jack replied dryly, turning his attention back to Ianto. He placed a soft kiss at the corner of that relaxed, vowel-rounded mouth, thumb brushing against the cut on Ianto's right cheek. Absently, he considered that it would probably scar.
"We are not finished." There was something hard underneath the annoyance in those dark soprano tones. Swallowing his own irritation, the Captain forced himself to roll off the bed and shrugged on his shirt, barely bothering with a few buttons before returning to smooth the comforter over Ianto's sleeping form. Wide hands arranged the pillows and pulled the blanket down to cover the sleeping man's feet.
"You're right," he said vaguely. "Excuse me if I've been a little preoccupied." Standing straight, he made himself look directly into her black, ironwood eyes. Grudgingly, but with honesty, "Do jeh saai."
She waved his thanks away with an imperious hand, "I told you not to bother with politeness." He raised an eyebrow, but she ignored him, instead turning to The Box with a caution that surprised him. The burnt remnants of Jack's previous heart still lay atop it, jagged piles like a ruined city skyline. Movements precise, Wei took her knife and began to carefully scrape the ash and ruined tissue off, catching it in her plastic bowl.
"You and that knife of yours," he muttered, sitting down on the very edge of the bed. "I suppose you want your payment now?"
"No." Snapping the lid closed, Wei set the container aside and wiped the blade on the silky edge of her qipao. "I said to you, this is not finished. When it is, I will take this information you have stored, so I can be a true shadow." Her fingers trailed daintily along the sides of The Box, almost a caress. The sight made Jack's heart chill, but he didn't think Wei was even aware she was doing it. That impossibly youthful face had taken on a blank look, like the inward gaze of the alien thing she held. "Yes, I stabbed you again, but why be angry?" Voice almost a whisper, now. "I told you, the best currency is blood. I remember Canton when the Japanese came. Paper money, ha! Better for burning, to keep yourself warm- worth nothing at all. Gold, gems and jade; those work only through the avarice of the human heart. What use do the gods have for such things? And nowadays!" She looked up at him, lip curling with disgust. "Riches stored in computers, all theory and plastic cards, little green numbers on a screen I say to you, this will not last. At the very end, only blood will do." A little laugh sprung from her and, though Harkness couldn't fathom why, it sounded strangled. "What is the English? 'To take it out in trade'?"
"Yes." The Captain responded, clamping his lips closed to keep it just that short. Behind his clenched jaws, there were other words. Oh, honey, you have no idea. He imagined the Toclafane, singing, laughing Martha's name from their shells of decaying flesh and steel. The longer his gaze unwillingly held to The Box, the more that opaque ebony seemed like the armor of those horrible, childish spheres. Mercifully, Wei chose that moment to wrap her artifact in silk again, swaddling it almost as one would a small child. Cradling it that same way, she lowered it back into the valise.
"This," she gestured towards the covered bowl, "I will cook for you."
Jack stumbled over this, blinking away the memories. "I'm sorry?"
"Aiya! Don't you know anything?" Her hands were thrown up in a gesture of dismay. "All those weapons, all that technology, and men know not even the simplest mechanics of power! This left over bit of you, your heart. Do you think I should just throw it away?"
"Frankly, I didn't think there'd be anything left at all."
"Well, there is. And it is not trash! Someone else could take this piece of you, and thus consume some of your power. Therefore, you must take it back into yourself." Jack nodded to show his comprehension, but Lan Wei was not impressed. Instead, a coy smile twitched on her lips, the sick flicker of a pinned butterfly. "Unless, of course, you'd prefer to eat it raw?"
"I'll pass, thanks." The Captain curled his fists against his knees, silently willing her to leave. In the candlelit darkness, the apartment still swelled with wax, the twinge of oily citrus, and Wei's disease-petal perfume. He wanted to snuff out those candles, open the windows to the humid but clean Macao night. With only the lights from the city to cast shadows, he'd sit beside Ianto and watch that beloved face. He had, after all, worlds and time to wait. Thrumming with tension and all its latest abuse, Jack willed his body to relax but couldn't even uncoil a single locked muscle. Blearily, he glanced over at the clock, which etched time time- 11:42 pm- in little red blocks. Oblivious- or simply unconcerned- Wei finished packing and began slinking along the corners of the room, as if she herself was a part of the gloom. The candles were extinguished one by one and, without warning, Lan Wei almost viscously flicked on the lights.
Of their own volition, Jack's hands moved to shade his eyes from the artificial glow, glaring vaguely in her general direction. Pulse sluggish and wrist aching, he felt almost certain she had broken some spell- the same way vain woman shatters her traitorous mirror. He disregarded the painful spots of color in his vision, turning violently towards Ianto. That newborn, almost translucent sensation of connection held, anchoring Jack even as he looked fully at his lover's form. The harsh lighting revealed a bit of dried blood clinging to the hollow of his throat, but that was all. It was fully Ianto now, sleeping quietly in bed, brow furrowed ever so slightly as he dreamed. Jack's heart had known this while those beloved lips suckled at his wrist; known it, and rejoiced. Now his mind, the surface of logic and self-preservation coating his psyche instinct, understood it as well. This was real, this was something he was seeing with his own two eyes. For the first time since waking after Thames House, the grate of reality against Jack's skin was gone. He hadn't even registered that painful scrape until it stopped, but he sagged gratefully all the same.
"Ianto. Ianto's here." His relieved laughter mingled with Wei's- he knew her amusement was unpleasant and directed at him, but he didn't care.
"Now will you listen?" she said, hiding her giggles behind her hand in the manner of cultured ladies. "You must know how to care for your boy. Your..." A moment of earnest frustration with the sounds. "... Ee-ahn-tow."
"I'm all ears."
"Do not try to put English sayings into Chinese," she scolded, bending to collect the cooler as well. The green lid closed over the morass of melting ice and diluted blood, and she nudged it away with her foot. "I took four jars of blood from you when I stabbed you." There was a little flash of mental vertigo for Jack at the casual comment. He thought of John Hart, plucking a tiny key from the lining of his own throat, smiling at Gwen and saying there were no hard feelings. Wei had that same, business-pleasant mien. For all her hatred of the 'modern' era, it occurred to Jack that she had the heart of a true Vegas Galaxy bandit.
"Four jars," Jack smirked right back at her, keeping up the thrust and parry. "Busy girl."
"Very fresh. These will last four days, then the potency will go out of them. On the morning of the fourth day, you will come see me and we will get more. You will feed him with this." From somewhere in the slim folds of her qipao, she produced a small glass eyedropper. Handing it to him, she poked a sharp manicured nail against the fabric of his dress shirt. "Every two hours, as with an infant."
"Of course," he nodded, frowning down at the eyedropper in his open palm. His eyes ran naturally to the raised line of still-healing flesh on his wrist. "But why not-"
"Why not straight from the vein?" Oh, pleasant facade or no, those dusky eyes were lit with amusement. "Does it ache?" She moved as if to touch the wound, and he jerked away frantically, surprised at himself. The skin did ache, but it was not with the familiar itch of his more than human resilience. This throb was distant but firm, the sensation of slow warmth right against the hip bone. His mind seized on the memory of Ianto feeding with tender clarity, and Jack felt again that rush of intimacy and giving that had swept through him. Like a match to dry grass, even the thought was enough to make the ache sweeten unbearably.
"It does," he admitted at last.
"And it will continue to do so." She arched an eyebrow back at him. "You will be tempted, but you must not do this. The connection is too strong, too raw. He has only just come back from the borders of No-Place. You must not strain him."
"I understand," Harkness said, pulling his shirt cuff down to cover the sensitive skin.
"If you are tempted, go out. Walk, eat, do something until it passes." She rolled her eyes at his look of alarm. "He will be fine. Every two hours you must feed him, but he will not wake for a few days. Not everyone bounds back gasping like you do-" Wei's smile was sharp, "- a vagrant kicked out by the Lords of Hell."
"Charming." He flexed his own con-man grin once more, before his tone became contemplative. "Why does it ache? Do you know?"
"I told you, he will only ever want to feed from you." Wei turned with a sigh, as if discontent with the direction of the conversation. Picking up with cooler with one hand and the valise with the other, she marched purposefully towards the door. Jack followed her in a mixture of fascination and polite habit. "But just as he will hunger to take, you will hunger to give." The Captain opened the door for her, never taking his eyes off that resentful, little-girl face. "This is mating, not marriage. Here, there is equality. Balance."
(Balance.
Mother worships at the altar of Science and Logic, the child of an in-world that glitters with its crown of towers and technology. Papa has occasionally been known to pray, somewhat distractedly, to Goshen, the Lady of Harvests- in spite of the indulgent looks from Ahmah and Mother. And what of Ahmah, who passed before all-consuming white of the crèche, before Mama knelt screaming in the sand, and even before Grey's hand slipped free? If she has gods, she hides them well- she worships the freedom and clean air of Boeshane, and her curses always call back the mechanical drones and furnaces of her industrial homeworld. And yet... there's a disc of glass against her breastbone, black and white blurring like snakes devouring each other's tails. It is not a Yin-Yang, but Jack thinks now that might not matter.
She says the cosmos craves Balance above all else.)
"Binding and bound." Jack rubs the back of his skull, where the phantom warmth of Ianto's rhythmic, ocean mind seems to manifest. "More than you know, probably."
"More than you know," Wei spits, suddenly all offense, like a cat with its spine arched in anger. "I tell you now, to be careful of spirits and dreams. Care not just for his body in this world, but his spirit beneath the skin. You cannot enact sheng without also beginning the cycle of ke. There will be traps."
"I don't know those words." He repeated 'sheng' and 'ke', this time as questions.
"'Creation'- as when we brought your boy back. And 'destruction', which is the death we saved him from." Before the Captain could open his mouth again, Lan Wei stepped fully beyond the door and out onto the walkway. For a moment, she stood there, hands fisted around handles, glaring up at him mutinously. Then, she pulled her lips away from her teeth and spat, just outside the threshold. "I hate you," she said. "Do not forget this."
Jack wrinkled his nose at the pink-tinged saliva on the walkway cement. As the evening breeze touched against him lightly, he was even more aware of Wei's acidic smell, deepening to blooms so rotten they seeped into the tomb. "Forget? I'd say you make that awfully difficult, don't you?"
"When you feel you are getting what you want, Jack Harkness, you forget things." Her words were merciless, a reflection in her own selfish glass. "You see tools, not people."
(Ianto, kneeling in the darkened hub, amidst the debris of flesh, metal and misplaced hopes.
"I clean up your shit, no questions asked." Blue eyes so hard, the chill of the ice that refused to know the sun. "And that's the way you like it.")
Jack's jaw barely twitched but, somehow, Lan Wei knew. She nodded to herself, as if confirming the clip of a bullet against the mark. Even in the poor walkway lighting, her neck flashed pale under the black Mandarin collar. Harkness held his anger in his fisted hands, and did not reach for it. The look Wei gave him in return was knowing, almost sultry, but Jack was certain she wasn't really seeing him. It suddenly came to him that she would sleep tonight on the same creamy, flowered quilt that Ahn Mei once shivered under. He did not know how he knew this- Lan Wei was no more a psychic entity than she was a human one- but he didn't question that it felt like fact. She had kept it, long after it ceased smelling of the woman she'd embroidered it for. From city to city, through the Japanese, the Kuomintang, and the Communist regime- it traveled with her, just as Ahn Mei's portrait on its venerated shelf. Tonight, she would take the length of fabric from its place of honor in a cedar-lined box and, despite the close and ungentle summer darkness, she'd curl around that fading memory of safety. The image was visceral, but it inspired no pity in him. The stink of her resentment was the stink of urine in a hospice ward, all humiliation and despair. She just... she needed to be gone. Wrung out, it seemed his new heart was capable not only of hope, but also of avarice. He wanted to look at Ianto, freshly ransomed from the Void, look at him and just know.
"You have your boy." Lan Wei said again. And what do I have? The words were palpable, but hung unspoken between them. Turning on her heel, she walked away briskly, never once looking back.
Jack closed and bolted the door firmly behind her.
.
GLOSSARY:
[+] Do jeh saai- Thank you (so) much. Particularly used for a 'gift'.
[+] Sheng- 'Creation'. According to I Ching, Sheng (written with the same symbol as 'life') is the force that generates interaction between the five elements.
[+] Ke- 'Destruction'. In I Ching, this is the force that overcomes the interaction of elements generated by Sheng. These forces are supposed to be kept in constant but balanced opposition.
[+] In the 1920's, Kuomintang (or Chinese Nationalist Party) were fighting against various powerful warlords in China. In order to further their goals, they came to an agreement with Communist forces also fighting in China. In 1927, under Chiang Kai Shek, they would become an opposing force against the Communists in an attempt to spread past the southern provinces and unify China. The Kuomintang (KMT) are still the dominant political party in Taiwan.
[+] In 1938, the Japanese captured Canton during a campaign to seize important port cities, thus blocking supplies and communication to inner China, which was their next desired target. ... My Chinese History Professor would be so proud of me for remembering all that! Though I very much doubt he would have imagined this use for it. Opps. ^_^;;;