"Has anyone seen Ianto?" Jack asked as he met the other three members of the team. He did a small double-take as the spotted Owen, his hair slick down and smart-looking rather than his half-arsed, combed and mildly presentable look. His clothes were not his usual style, no bad boy, fuck the police look but more rule-abiding nerd which Owen certainly wasn't. Tosh also caught his eye, her clothes less modest and more out there and confident. Only Gwen looked like herself. But Jack didn't dwell.
"No, actually. I haven't, but Jack, how have we lost six days?" Gwen asked, looking confused as she typed away at her computer.
"What do you mean?"
"None of us can remember a thing."
"The system's blank, the CCTV's been wiped. What's been going on? What have we been doing?" Tosh questioned, sounding a little alarmed.
"I don't know."
"Great." Owen moaned, unimpressed. "That's two days of my life that I'll never get back." Jack moved past him, Ianto's journal still in hand and he stepped into his office.
"Ianto?" The man wasn't there, he wasn't cleaning up Jack's messy desk or dusting off the dark cabinet at the back with the whiskey decanter and tumblers on. The bunker hatch was shut tight and he huffed, stepping to his desk and placing the diary down. Jack put his earpiece in, pressing down on it lightly to activate it. "Ianto?"
The channel was silent apart from the faint buzzing and Jack frowned. "Ianto? Talk to me with those beautiful Welsh vowels." He waited a fraction of a second and nothing came through so Jack routed through his pockets and extracted his phone. Just about to call Ianto, Jack was stopped when a loud and alarming shriek came from Myfanwy followed by another. Jack raced from his office, mobile still clutched in his hand and shot past the others who were just as confused. He climbed up to Myfanwy's nest, half hoping his Welshman was up there too. When he reached the landing, Jack found the creatures almost waiting for him, locked inside her area rather than free to fly about. She sounded distressed if Jack was guessing correctly.
"Hey girl, it's just me." Jack cooed, arms out to settle Myfanwy down so he could get close enough and open the cage. She watched him closely as Jack flipped a switch and the entrance opened up for her to fly free but she didn't leave, instead, heading in further into her den. Jack watched curiously as she came back, stopping right close to him and nudged him with her beak. "What do you want?" He asked although knowing she couldn't reply. Myfanwy just continued to push him forward until he was inside the dimly lit cover.
"I don't know what you want from-" A shape caught his eye and Jack knew that it wasn't a sheep carcass Myfanwy tended to bring home with her if she was let out to fly. He looked at Myfanwy and she made a small noise, urging him closer. Some part of him didn't want to know what it was but Jack knew he had to see. With slight hesitation, Jack stalked forward, shoulders set as he peered through then low light.
The smell hit him first. There's the stench of Pteranodon, of course, a musky smell that could never be pleasing in any sense. Then there was another underlying sense, something sinister that Jack recognised almost immediately because he had smelled it so many times and he wished he hadn't but it wasn't something you could forget so easily. It was the stench of death and decay. The thoughts of it being a sheep carcass or maybe some other unsuspecting animal came back to Jack but some part of him just knew it wasn't an animal. Jack approached it cautiously, shooting a look back at the entrance and knowing he could just run away and never find out the truth but that would be cruel and wrong so Jack kept moving forward, careful where he stood in case of anything littering the ground.
The thing was unmoving, which just confirmed the scent for Jack and when he was close enough he reached out a steady hand, taking a deep breath (he regretted desperately for the smell was disgusting) and touched the unidentified corpse.
What he felt made Jack freeze, sudden realisation springing up at him. Myfanwy's gentle croak-like noise brought him from his shock and Jack everso carefully rolled the body - it was definitely a body - over. The place was just light enough to see who it was and Jack felt himself getting choked up, the smell overwhelming and the sight even worse. Loose and decaying skin, a small bullet-shaped hole which Jack knew would have left a much bigger crater on the other side. He didn't notice he was crying until drops splashed on the all too pale and loose skin, body stiffened and slowly breaking down as Myfanwy had protected him, even in death.
Ianto Jones