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Numair was trying very hard to sleep. He had his eyes closed, and he was attempting not to think, but his mind would not keep still.
The weevils can travel worlds.
The weevils can travel worlds.
I have to tell the others.
I hope Daine will be safe, curse her, she's going to come back bleeding, I just know it.
The animals will protect her, won't they? What if Jack shoots her by accident?
Don't be stupid, Numair. She'll be fine. Think of something else.
Like the weevils.
Which have large teeth. And Daine can barely hold them.
Shakith curse it. I hope she's okay.
Concentrate, Numair.
The weevils can travel worlds.
The weevils can travel worlds.
The weevils—
"—can travel worlds." He blinked.
Gainel, the Dream God himself, was standing there, and there was a man next to him. He was a study of contrasts: pale skin with dark hair and eyes, clothing unmistakably leather. The man's face was wide with high cheekbones, and his curly hair cropped short.
"What did you just say?" he demanded, accent strange to Numair's ears.
"The weevils can travel worlds," Numair repeated urgently. "You must be Owen Harper."
--Can they cross realms?—Gainel asked immediately, not questioning the information.
"I have no idea," Numair replied, bewildered. "Has something happened?"
"You better believe it, buddy," the man that Numair thought was Owen said. "They found the Guardian."
"They found the—" Numair gaped and then, slowly, began to smile.
"Don't look so happy," the man snapped harshly. "They're stuck in the darkness; they can't get out. There's two Coldfangs after them, and the Guardian's dying."
Numair stared and then swore colorfully. "So we need the weevils. Now."
"Yes," the man sneered. "Now."
--Tell the others,-- Gainel ordered him, and he paled.
"I can't go back there—" he said desperately.
--Owen Harper, you will do as you are told,-- Gainel growled, wrapping power around himself like a cloak. –Everything rests upon this, do you understand? Everything. You must tell the others. I need to speak to my brothers and sisters. Numair Salmalin, you must wake up.—
Before Numair could get a word in edgewise, he felt his body start as though struck by lightning. He shot up, and George did as well, spluttering and blinking.
"The weevils," George gasped, "they travel worlds."
"I know," Numair said urgently. "Now get up! We have to find the others."
George rolled out of bed, grabbing several knives and thrusting them up his sleeves. "Can't be too prepared," he said darkly.
Numair nodded and held out one hand, palm down. Black fire gathered around it. It pulled something deep within him, like stepping with a slightly sore calf muscle, but he did not care. He could rest later—had the Nepthalae, which seemed so long ago now, really taken that much out of him? He turned his hand over.
"Daine," he said into the fire in his palm.
"Numair?" Jack's voice, echoed by Daine and Alanna.
"Daine, you have to get one of the weevils to open a crack, or whatever it is they do," he said urgently. "Rikash, Tosh and Ianto have found the Guardian, but he's dying. They can't get out of the spaces between realms, and if they don't, the Guardian will die. Come back to camp, you need—"
He was interrupted by a string of swears from the three of them; by the time both Daine and Alanna had run out, Jack was still going, speaking languages from planets that Numair was sure were beyond any of their imaginations.
"We'll be there right away," Alanna said over Jack's horrified voice.
"And I can call the weevils, too," Daine added darkly. "I can call a bunch of them. I don't know if they can get to the spaces between, but—"
"We're going to try," Jack interrupted her, firmly.
"Good. I'll see you soon." Numair closed the spell.
"Now we wait?" George asked, pacing around the dwindling fire pit.
"Now we wait," Numair growled, moving to join him.
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Rikash spiraled lower, as close to the Guardian as he dared, and the two Coldfangs hissed and snarled.
"Bad idea, bad idea!" Ianto scolded when the Stormwing got too close, and he spiraled up again.
"I'm not a dog," Rikash muttered, but he sounded amused, despite the dire situation.
"Of course not," Tosh agreed with her own brand of sarcasm. "Is there anything else we can do?"
The Guardian was down, lying still in the darkness, and his color, bright gray and white streaked, was fading slowly. He had become transparent, and now seemed hardly able to lift his head. The two Coldfangs paced around him in a circle, guarding him, rattling the bones on the ends of their tails.
"I don't think so," Rikash murmured regretfully. "Not unless Owen gets help."
"What I wouldn't do for a comm," Tosh muttered, referring to the communications device they had used at Torchwood.
"Think we're a bit out of range," Ianto said dryly.
"Just a bit," Tosh agreed, and there was a brief silence.
One of the Coldfangs stopped pacing and hissed, mouth opening so that its extra fangs dropped. The second stopped as well, tail rattling ominously.
"Oi!" said Owen's voice as he stood on the edges of Rikash, Ianto and Tosh's light. "I'm here by order of the dream god Gainel, I'm not here to steal your prey, so back the fuck off."
"Owen!" Tosh called, and Ianto squeezed her tighter.
Owen strode closer, but the nearest Coldfang hissed, snapping its jaws threateningly. He stopped short, staring into its eyes as if hypnotized.
"Numair Salmalin spoke to me," Owen said softly, but it was so quiet in the darkness that his voice carried without a problem, even over the harsh rattling of the Coldfangs' tails. Ianto heard Tosh catch her breath. "He said that they have weevils in Tortall, and they can travel worlds." The Coldfang stalked him, watching his eyes, tail hissing alarmingly.
"Owen—" Ianto warned him, trying to snap him out of whatever spell the animal had cast.
"Veralidaine Sarassri is calling them now," Owen continued in his flat monotone, eyes locked with the Coldfang. The creature weaved its head as it slowly approached and Owen swayed slightly, as if to distant music. "Then they're going to try to help you."
"That's great, now you're going to want to move!" Rikash snapped, and the last word came out as an eagle's scream when the Coldfang lunged. Owen snarled and leaped back.
"I'm not even alive, you moron!" he told the Immortal, although whether he was speaking to Rikash or the Coldfang was unclear. "And I'm under the fucking dream god's—fuck off!" he cried as the second one lunged at him. Owen disappeared angrily from the dead space, presumably going back to Dream.
"They're coming!" His voice echoed, and then only the rattles of the Coldfangs remained.
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"How can I let go of this? I bring life." The Bad Wolf blinks, and somewhere on the wrecked space station Jack Harkness gasps back to life for the first time. Somewhere else, everywhere else, he gasps back to life again —and again and again and again into infinity, all in one moment. She wants him to live, and so live he does; she can see him now, through all of time and space. So alone, like her poor Doctor.
But this is wrong! The Doctor cries, his voice so important that it echoes across Everything. You can't control life and death!
"But I can," Rose says simply, taking all of her effort to focus on him, only him, even though part of her is, was, will always be elsewhere. "The sun and the moon. The day and the night. But why do they hurt?"
And they do, they hurt, a thin, wailing note of discord winds through them all: the Doctor's loneliness eclipsed by her friend's, and she never meant to hurt Jack.
The power's gonna kill you and it's my fault, the Doctor mourns, and his pain is so intense, so wrong, that she is helpless to think of anything else.
Yet everything else pounds into her head, so much information. Suns and moons and one universe, two universes, a beach called Darlig ulv Strandon and The Big Bad Wolf, Jack Harkness sitting on a rooftop wishing that jumping would kill him—
She didn't mean to hurt him.
"I can see everything. All that is. All that was. All that ever could be—"
But that's what I see. All the time. And doesn't it drive you mad?
She loves him. God, god, she loved this man, this Time Lord, who had destroyed his world for the sake of the universe.
"My head… is killing me…"
The Bad Wolf is not invincible, and as her own power destroys her mortal form, spiraling out of control, anchoring her back to liner Time, she suddenly understands why the universe hurts, and why Jack does, too.
She reaches, once, and the Doctor kisses her, pulling the Time Vortex out of Rose Tyler's body. Father Universe wails and Queen Uusoae shrills with laughter when Rose forces her way into a distant pocket universe; she can do nothing for the Doctor and she mourns, grieves and rages inside, but Jack will get a gift, just one, just the one, to ease the hurt—
With that last effort, she collapses into her Doctor's arms, all thoughts of her lost friend wiped from her mind. The Time Lord releases the energy that the human girl had absorbed, and staggers with her back to his time ship, abandoning Jack Harkness, newly immortal, centuries younger, on an empty space station called Satellite Five.
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Please leave a review! Remember, Torchwood category in chapter 21, which will be posted in two weeks :)