A Big, Fat Torchwood Wedding

by Soledad

Author's notes: For disclaimer, rating, etc. see the Introduction.

The nanogenes are the same ones Jack accidentally released in "The Empty Child", of course. He's just… erm… withholding that little detail from his colleagues. What's new? *g*

Chapter 11

Tosh reached the east wing of the hotel and looked around uncertainly. There were several doors down the hallway on both sides – which way could have the idiot gone? She made her way down the hallway, paused by one of the room doors and listened. She could hear some faint grunting and groaning, but couldn't decide from which room it was coming.

To her annoyance, at the other end of the hallway a door opened and Banana Boat looked out. Spotting her, he started grinning from ear to ear and walked up to her.

"Hey, baby, if you're looking for my room, you just passed it, mind."

"I'm not," Tosh replied quietly, not wanting to alert the Nostrovite; one could never know how keen their hearing was. "And don't call me baby." The only one she tolerated calling her that was Jack, simply because she couldn't break him of the habit.

She walks past Banana, still trying to find the source of the groans. Unfortunately, the idiot turned and followed her.

"So what shall I call you, then?" he asked flirtatiously. "Beautiful?"

Tosh just about had enough of his folly. She quickly turned, grabbed his arm, twisted it behind him as she slammed him up against the wall. He grunted.

"Don't call me anything," she replied, irritated. "Don't say anything."

The horrible shriek of a dying man interrupted her. She let go of Banana Boat and whirled around, now that she finally had a direction. One of the doors opened, and the married couple looked out, frightened and curious at the same time. Oh no, just what she needed right now!

Tosh cocked her gun and backed away from Banana Boat – who raised his hands automatically – towards the room where the scream had come from.

"Go back into your room, all of you!" she said, sounding a lot more authoritative than she actually felt. "Bolt the doors from the inside and don't come out until we tell you that it's safe."

The husband looked at her a little belligerently. "Who the hell are you to give us orders?"

"I'm Torchwood," Tosh replied grimly, "and if you want to live to see your next anniversary, do as I told you. We'll deal with the situation, but we can't do it when you're in our way. Now, go!"

"C'mon, Mike," the wife dragged her husband backwards. "Do what she says. She seems to know what she's doing."

I wish I did, Tosh thought, but she was glad that at least the wife showed a little common sense.

"You, too," she snapped at Banana Boat, and stormed off in the direction the scream had come from.

In the meantime, the fake wedding party was gathering in the hotel lobby. Rhys, dressed up in a dark suit with a waistcoat of figured gold brocade and a silk tie of the same colour, had come out from the chapel to check things with Jack. His father, dressed in a similar fashion, walked up to him with a frown on his face.

"There's still no sign of Banana Boat," he complained.

"He'll be fine, Tad," Rhys replied absently; he finally managed to reach Jack. "Hey Jack, where the hell are you?" he listened to the answer with visible relief. "Well, hurry up, man! The guests are already gathering, and the situation can easily get out of control," he listened again. "No, they're all here, but no sign of Gwen so far. Yeah, I know, but we can't put out starting forever. Okay, just do your best," he hung up and shook his head in frustration.

His father stared at him, wide-eyed. "Gwen? You expect Gwen to show up at your wedding?"

Rhys sighed. "That, that's why we're doing the rehearsal an hour before the actual wedding, okay? We heard from her… friends that she's planning to make a scene here, and I'm not letting her ruin my actual wedding."

Barry Williams mulled over that for a moment. Knowing his only son's ex as he did, he could vividly imagine that scene; so preventive measures did make sense.

"Still no Banana Boat, though," he then commented.

The friends of his son were another point the two of them often disagreed about. Mr Williams found most of them superficial and unreliable, but Rhys stubbornly stuck to them.

"We won't need him for the rehearsal," Rhys gestured at a blond young man, dressed for the wedding, with a stunningly beautiful black woman, clad in a dream of mauve chiffon, on his arm. "Ross here's gonna play the best man. I don't wanna Gwen and Banana getting into a bitch fight."

That, again, did make some sense. Gwen and Banana could never really stand each other. Mr Williams still had the impression that his son was not telling him everything. Not that that would be new. He'd become very secretive since he'd gone to work for Torchwood.

"And where is the bride?" he asked.

Rhys looked in the direction of the main stairs and grinned. "There she comes!"

Mr. Williams looked in the same direction and saw the young boss of his son, Mr Jones, descending on the stairs, leading a lovely blonde woman in a bridal dress. Something was wrong with the picture, though, and it took him a moment to realize what it was.

"That's not Emma!" he exclaimed.

Rhys grinned. "Of course not. You didn't think I'd let Gwen loose on her, did you? Sally here is good at self-defence, should she need to restrain Gwen."

Mr. Williams shook his head resignedly. "This wedding is becoming a nightmare."

Tosh turned around the corner and kicked in the door from behind which the screams had come. Holding her gun with both hands, she entered, scanning the inside of the room with a trained eye. She spotted the pretty blonde – the Nostrovite – with whom that idiot Mervyn had left. Sitting on the edge of the bed, calmly applying fresh lipstick. The whole scene was so… normal that for a moment she believed she'd been wrong.

Until she saw that there was a lot of blood on the bed. Red blood. Human blood. She'd clearly arrived too late.

"What have you done with him?" she demanded.

She took a couple of steps into the room, and now she could also see the remains of a human body on the other side of the bed. The size and the dark, matted hair made it easy to identify the victim as Mervyn. His fat belly was torn open, his lover body one huge, gaping wound, his eyes were glassy with shock, but his chest still rose and sank shallowly.

Oh God, he was still alive!

"What the hell is going on here?"

The voice broke Tosh's concentration. She turned around, distracted, seeing that Banana Boat – that bloody idiot! – had followed her, and was now staring at the slaughterhouse in wide-eyed shock.

"Get out of here!" she hissed.

Before she could have fully turned back to the Nostrovite, however, it launched from the bed with supernatural speed and punched her in the face, knocking her down. Tosh went out like a light.

The blonde, now not the least pretty with those glowing red eyes and blackened, razor-sharp fangs, snarled and grabbed the neck of the stunned Banana Boat with a monstrous, clawed hand, pushing him up against the open door.

"You're lucky, I'm watching my figure," it hissed. "But maybe I'll keep you for tea."

Banana Boat would deny for the rest of his life that in that moment he fainted like a girl.

Carrie steered her car into the parking lot of the hotel. She and Trina helped Gwen to get out of the back seat and rode the lift to the ground level. A big, ruggedly handsome bloke in a pin-striped suit stopped them at the front desk, asking them where they were going.

"We're friends of Rhys Williams," Carrie explained; she was the best liar from the three of them, so she usually dealt with the necessary explanations. "We've come to his wedding."

The bloke – presumably a desk clerk of some sort – nodded politely. "Chapel's right on the left," he told them.

It didn't occur to Carrie until much later how strange it was that he hadn't asked for their invitations.

They crossed the lobby floor, just as a pretty blonde in an elegant black cocktail dress, adorned with a red corsage, came down the main stairs. As she passed by them, Gwen suddenly gasped and doubled over in pain.

The woman turned back in apparent concern. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, yeah, yeah," Gwen panted. "It was just a twinge."

The blonde woman smiled at her. "He'll be flexing his muscles. Not long to go now."

She swayed past them with a smile that, while friendly enough, gave Carrie the creeps for some reason.

"I hope she's wrong," she muttered to Trina. "Crashing a wedding is one thing, but delivering the groom's baby in front of the wedding party would be a messy business."

Gwen didn't listen to her. "C'mon," she said impertinently. "I don't wanna be late!"

Carrie rolled her eyes. She was getting the impression that things wouldn't necessarily turn out the way their friend was hoping for. But trying to make Gwen reconsider would have been a hopeless endeavour; she was a woman on a mission, and she wouldn't stop now, no matter what.

"Let's go in," she said to Trina resignedly.

Jack and Owen reached the hotel just in time to take their places at the fake wedding. Traffic had been a real bitch, and they had seriously overcrowded the second SUV, with Tom, Lloyd and Doctor Connolly all crammed into the back seat.

"We barely have time to get changed," Jack was uncharacteristically tense. They were late, and that meant a lot of things could go wrong. "Hurry up, people!"

"We can all use the bridal suite," Lloyd suggested. "This is not the time for false modesty."

Jack missed the golden opportunity to make an improper comment, which alone was proof enough how worried he was, and jumped out of the car while it was still almost moving. He activated his earpiece.

"Tosh, Ianto, is everything going according to the plan?"

"Sally and I are just about to go down to the chapel," Ianto's voice answered," but I haven't heard from Tosh for a while."

"What?" That was not good, not good at all, but Jack knew he couldn't afford to panic just now. He touched his earpiece again, trying to switch channels, in case Tosh would be on another one for some reason. "Tosh? Can your hear me? Tosh?"

There was no answer. Jack started worrying in earnest now. "Ianto, we can't reach Tosh, either. Something must have happened to her."

"Wait a minute, Jack, I'm getting a message here," Ianto went silent, presumably listening to somebody on a different channel; then he was back again. "Jack, Private Harris tells me that Gwen's just arrived with two of her lady friends. We must start with the fake wedding, now."

"All right," Jack was thinking feverishly. "The Nostrovite will go wherever Gwen is with its spawn, so as long as it's near the chapel, Tosh would be safe. So we can go and look for her."

"No, Jack," Ianto replied. "We need you and Owen here. You're the only ones who've dealt with Nostrovites before. I'll send Andy and Mickey to find Tosh. They can scan for her comms and help her, as soon as they get a fix on them. Please, come here with the others. We can't put this off any longer."

"Good," Jack gave in after a moment of hesitation, although all his instincts screamed to go and search for Tosh now. "Are you wearing the metal skins?"

"Sally, Rhys and Private Jenkins are," Ianto told him. "Rhys chickened out in the last moment where his parents were concerned; said they won't understand why they were supposed to wear something like that. So we put one on Corporal Bell and the last one on Martha. But Jack, we really must start now!"

"Give us ten minutes to get changed," Jack replied; then he looked at the others. "You heard the man, kids. Make yourselves presentable… and hurry up!"

Tosh came to with the mother of all headaches. The nausea she was feeling indicated a concussion – hopefully a mild one – and she was quite certain that the warm wetness slowly trickling down the left side of her face was blood. Presumably her own. Plus she'd had the feeling as if she'd been tightly wrapped in… something, like a mummy.

She groaned and tried to stir, realizing that her head was resting on someone else's shoulder, so snugly as if they'd been fused together. Squishy sounds ensued with every movement she made, trying to free herself.

"Get away from me!" she hissed at the person stuck to her.

"Well, I wish I could, love," a vaguely familiar voice replied, and she groaned again. Banana Boat! Wrapped in one package with her in some dense black… stuff. Could this day get any worse?

On the other hand, one should never give fate new ideas.

She tried to free herself again, but the only result was the stuff tightening around them even more. That was not good.

"Don't bother," Banana Boat said resignedly. I've tried. We're stuck fast."

Tosh tried to take a look around to make a better impression of their situation. It wasn't promising. The thick black stuff, vaguely reminiscent of latex, was wrapped tightly around them, over the bed and to the bedposts.

"I can't believe it," she said, exasperated. "Can you at least move your hand?" Said hand slid lower on her hip, settling firmly on her posterior. "Away!" she added, with a slightly threatening edge, and the hand moved hurriedly away.

"If it comes back, it's going to kill us, innit?" Banana Boat asked suddenly, his voice sombre.

"Calm down," she replied in a reassuring tone that didn't even fool herself. "I've got friends. They'll find us."

"Yeah, but what if they don't?" Banana Boat was working himself up to a good, old-fashioned panic attack. "What if it comes back? I mean, we're its bloody pack lunch, in't we?"

"More or less," Tosh snapped in a sudden bout of cruelty. She was rapidly losing patience with him, which was unfair, she knew – he wasn't Torchwood, one couldn't expect from him to deal with murderous aliens calmly – but his whining increased her headache.

In the next moment she regretted her answer, because Banana Boat started shouting at the top of his lungs, nearly deafening her. "Help! Help!"

"Shut up!" Tosh hissed through gritted teeth. Her ears were ringing, and that made her nausea worse. She was seconds away from throwing up all over him.

The idiot ignored her and kept shooting. "Help! Someone help!"

"If it hears you screaming, it'll come and shut you up ... permanently!" Tosh warned him. In vain. Banana Boat kept shooting for help.

Tosh'd had enough. She thrust her hand down between the two of them, grabbed his family jewels and squeezed them. Hard. That earned her a very satisfying scream.

"That's enough, unless you want to start singing in falsetto," she threatened him.

"Ah. Ow!" he said in a wounded tone that almost made her feel sorry for him. Almost. "That really hurt."

"You should have listened to me," she replied coldly.

Carrie, Trina and Gwen found three empty seats in one of the back rows in the chapel. Carrie also spotted the creepy blonde in the black cocktail dress sitting a few rows before them. She suppressed a shiver. She had no idea why the unknown chick would cause her to freak out so much – but she did. There was something eerie in her eyes – they were like the eyes of a snake.

The audience stood, interrupting her thoughts. Everyone turned and watched the bride – a pretty blonde – walk up the aisle on the arm of an extremely cute young man in a sharp suit.

"Surely that can't be the father of the bride!" Trina exclaimed; she wasn't exactly drooling, but it was a close thing. "He looks younger than her."

"Perhaps her brother," Carrie guessed. "Oh! There's Rhys! He looks good, I'd say. Boy, is he in for the surprise of his life, though!"

They giggled as the young man led the bride to the front, with Rhys in tow. There he took the seat next to Rhys' parents. Rhys and the bride smiled at each other and took each other's hands, while the audience sat again. The registrar, a middle-aged woman of a somewhat stiff carriage and carefully-sculpted steel grey hair, stepped forth.

"Friends and family of Rhys and Emma, we're here today to celebrate the marriage of two people," she began.

Gwen clambered to her feet and started sneaking up the aisle while everyone else was watching the bride and the groom. Well, everyone save for the creepy blonde chick in black, who had risen from her seat at the same time and followed Gwen's progress, almost mesmerised.

"Rhys and Emma have chosen to solemnize their commitment before you," the registrar continued, sounding as if she was making quite the effort to remember something she'd only recently learned by heart. Which was strange, Carrie found. "But first the law requires me to ask of you all, if there is anyone who knows of any reason why these two may not marry?"

"Stop!" Gwen shouted.

The audience gasped as one and turned around. Rhys and his bride turned around to, seeming… decidedly unsurprised, Carrie thought. Strange.

"Stop the wedding!" Gwen repeated, barrelling up the aisle like a steamroller. All eyes were fixed on her very pregnant belly; Rhys' mother was gaping like a goldfish – Carrie couldn't suppress a smug smile. Like all Gwen's friends, she despised Rhys' mother and was amused to see her in such utter shock.

"Stop the wedding!" Gwen shouted again, her voice rising steadily, at least an octave. "This man belongs to me. And here," she cupped her huge belly with both hands, "here is the proof!"

"In your drunken dreams, cupcake! "The bride returned, sounding rather amused and not the least offended.

What was going on here? Shouldn't she be shocked, outraged? Shouldn't she claw Rhys' eyes out, for his pregnant ex turning up at their wedding?

"Gwen, be reasonable," Rhys was trying to placate his ex. He, too, sounded weary, more than anything else. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Gwen shook her head resolutely. "Rhys, believe me, I'm sorry. But this has to stop now. You've got a responsibility towards your child. Towards our child."

"Hold on!" Rhys' mother rose from her seat indignantly. "There's no way that baby could be Rhys'!"

Carrie felt sorely tempted to agree with that statement.

"Of course it isn't," one of the bridesmaids, a beautiful black woman, said calmly. "She isn't even pregnant at all. She's suffering from a syndrome known as false pregnancy and has escaped from the hospital two days ago," she took an ID from her tiny designer handbag and flashed it. "I'm Doctor Martha Jones, and I came to take the poor dear back to where she belongs. I'm terribly sorry for having disrupted the ceremony; it will be continued as soon as we've dealt with the problem. "Doctor Milligan," she looked at another wedding guest, "could you lend me a hand?"

"Certainly, Doctor Jones," Doctor Milligan – tall, dark and so handsome that Carrie had to fan herself from the mere sight of him – grabbed Gwen's other arm firmly. "Please come with us, Miss Cooper. You'll feel much better once we put you back on medication."

"Well," Trina commented as the two doctors – with the help of some hotel personnel – dragged a kicking and screaming Gwen out of the chapel – that didn't go as Gwen had planned, did it?"

"No," Carrie agreed. "Although you must admit that a hysterical pregnancy is a more convincing explanation than birth control suppressing the symptoms. I could never really buy that."

"Me neither," Trina said. "So, what should we do now? Go home?"

Carrie shook her head. "No, I want to know where they've taken Gwen. She's gonna need us, now more than before."

"Besides," Trina added smugly, "the wedding buffet has surely been delivered by now. Why let all that food go wrong? And we could explore the hotel a bit. It's a classy place."

"There's that," Carrie admitted. "Let's take a look around, then."

In the meantime, Andy and Mickey had reached the corner in the hallway of the east wing. Mickey cocked his gun before turning and checking around it.

"It's clear," he said to Andy, who was holding the scanner.

"Shh," Andy replied, one eye on the readouts. "I've got a fix on Tosh's comms. About six metres before us; that would be the third door on the left."

They moved down the hallway carefully. In front of the third door the scanner started beeping loudly.

"That must be it," Andy murmured. "Gimme some cover."

He pocketed the scanner, exchanged it for a gun – not his usual but one of the big calibre Torchwood special – and kicked the door in. Mickey followed him immediately, only to freeze for a moment when he saw Tosh and Banana Boat tied together on the bed.

"Check out the rest of the room!" Andy said, heading towards them. "Tosh, are you okay?"

"Just get me out of here!" Tosh sounded slightly hysterical, which was a first. She wasn't so easily knocked off-balance as a rule.

Andy gave Banana Boat an unfriendly glare. "What have you done with her?"

"Me?" Banana Boat asked indignantly. "Are you out of your mind, mate? I'm not some murderous psycho; I'm just plain old Banana."

"More like a gooseberry," Tosh commented icily. "Now, get me out of here, would you?"

"Sure, Tosh, sorry," Andy looked around for something to use. "Uh, Mickey, do you happen to have that oversized Army knife on you?" There was no answer. "Mickey?"

"Call Owen," Mickey finally replied in a very strange voice. "And Jack. And don't come here; you'll just throw up again. I'm not so far from it myself. Jesus, this is disgusting…"

Andy had the common sense to obey, and a few minutes later Jack and Owen were storming into the room. Owen ran to the newest victim – and gasped audibly.

"Jack, this bloke's still alive!"

Jack, who was using his disturbingly large folding knife to cut the black stuff away from Tosh, looked up in surprise. "No way!"

"I kid you not!" Owen's voice was shaking so badly he could barely speak. "The Nostrovite must have released a substance into his bloodstream that keeps him in a state of… of coma, I guess. I can't find a better word for it. It probably won't last much longer, but for the moment, he is alive."

Jack handed the knife to Andy. "Help Tosh," he stood, hurried over to the half-eaten man and took a stasis tube, not longer than five inches, out of his pocket. "Here. Use this."

Owen gave the tube a suspicious look. "What the fuck is this?"

"Nanogenes," Jack answered simply. "As long as a human body is still alive, they can repair it."

"Nanogenes?" Owen repeated. "You mean those microscopic little robots from the far future that ain't even supposed to exist in our time?"

Jack nodded. "Yep. These were accidentally released during the London Blitz, caused some damage at first – long story, it has been fixed anyway – and thought to have been destroyed a short time later. Turns out, though, that Torchwood London somehow managed to trap them. They've been kept in the secure storage of Headquarters ever since and happened to come to us with a lot of other stuff after Canary Wharf."

"I had no idea," Owen murmured.

"Neither had I," Jack admitted. "But Ianto apparently knew. He told me about it before we left the Hub today, just in case."

"But are we supposed to use them?" Owen asked doubtfully.

"Probably not," Jack sighed. "But this is Rhys and Emma's wedding. Can you imagine them getting through with it while one of Rhys' friends is lying disembowelled in his hotel room?"

"Not really," Owen agreed. "Still, are these things gonna know what to do with a human body from our time?"

Jack nodded. "These will. Nanogenes are capable of learning, and this batch has already dealt with humans Let me show it. Tosh, come here!"

Tosh shakily obeyed. Jack opened the seal and held the tube close to the bleeding cut on her temple. What seemed like a swarm of tiny golden sparks left the tube and surrounded the cut that slowly closed before their stunned eyes. Then the sparks retreated into the tube.

"How are you feeling?" Jack asked gently.

"Better," Tosh swallowed twice before she could answer. "Headache's gone, and I don't feel like getting sick anymore. You mean these… things can heal this guy, despite him having bee half-eaten by a Nostrovite?"

"They can heal everything, as long as the patient is alive," Jack looked down at the maimed man in concern. "Which this one won't be much longer, so we better hurry up."

But before they could have done anything, the door opened again, and the ear-splitting scream of a woman filled the hallway.

Carrie and Trina parted ways, determined to find out where the doctors had taken Gwen. Despite everything, she was still their friend, and even if her so-called pregnancy was a fake one, she would need their support. Especially if it was a fake one, Trina had argued. Who could be sure that those two were really doctors at all?

Carrie had overheard at the front desk that the wedding party had their rooms in the east wing; and while she didn't think they'd take Gwen to the bridal suit, of all places, that seemed the right direction to go.

She congratulated herself when she spotted one of the doors standing half-open. Several agitated voices sounded from within; one of them female, begging the others to get her out of there. It didn't sound like Gwen's voice, but Carrie didn't want to take any chances. She ran to the door, tossed it fully open and stormed the room.

She could see now that the voice from before couldn't have been Gwen's indeed. The only woman in the room was that Japanese chick Gwen had once shown them from afar; a colleague of hers from when she'd been working for Special Ops or whatnot. What had been the name again? Tomiko or something like that…

In any case, she looked fairly shaken, her face, hands and clothes smudged with some disgusting black stuff – presumably the same thing that was still hanging from the bedposts.

For a moment, Carrie forgot why she'd stormed the room in the first place, because really, a four-post bed in a hotel room? That was really classy! She had to give Rhys that: the man had style. Or his new bride had. And apparently money, too.

But she was reminded that everything wasn't all right in the wedding paradise when she spotted Banana Boat. Rhys' best buddy was sitting on the bed, glassy-eyed with shock and every bit as smeared with the sticky black stuff as the Japanese girl.

What the hell had those two been doing here, instead of attending to the wedding? Was this some kind of sick latex fetish or what? And hadn't Banana Boat been supposed to be the best man?

She was too curious now to simply leave the room and keep looking for Gwen as intended. Instead, she inched inside a little more to see what all those people were doing there. She counted four men, aside from Banana Boat, plus the Japanese girl, and they didn't seem shocked at all. Grim and determined perhaps, but not shocked.

What was going on here?

Another step further into the room, and now she could see the other half of it, behind the bed… wishing that she couldn't. Because on the other side of the bed, in a pool of blood, lay the horribly maimed body of a man. It took her a moment to recognize another one of Rhys' mates: Mad Mervyn, who always played the disc jockey on their parties.

Mad Mervyn, who'd clearly been murdered in a particularly painful and messy fashion.

Carrie screamed like she'd never screamed before. Then she whirled around and ran out of the hotel room as if hunted by wolves, screaming like a banshee all the way.

Her histrionics snapped the Torchwood team back to attention.

"Andy, after the girl!" Jack ordered. "I need this contained. Owen, do your best to save this guy – and hurry up! Tosh, stay here and keep an eye on the other guy…"

Tosh shook her head. "You'll need me, Jack. I saw the shape-shifter. It's a blonde woman in black. I'm the only one to recognize it."

Jack hesitated for a moment – he didn't want to endanger her again, just after they'd saved her from mortal danger – but then he realized that she was right and nodded.

"All right. You'nd Mickey with me. I'll send up Lloyd or Angela to help Owen here. Let's go!"

~TBC~