Author's Note: Because FFN's labeling system is... *ahem* lacking in precision, it should be noted that this is technically a crossover, but it is primarily a Torchwood story that incorporates some characters and creatures from Doctor Who. If you are familiar with Torchwood but not Doctor Who, don't worry; the story will still make sense.

To die, to sleep—
No more—and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep—
To sleep—perchance to dream. Ay, there's the rub!
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.

— Hamlet, Act III, scene 1.

"That," Captain Jack Harkness declared emphatically, "is disgusting."

They were huddled in the empty lot behind an all-night diner, where an overnight busboy had stumbled—literally—onto a corpse near the rubbish bins. The location had coincided with a surge of rift activity, so Jack had called his team in two hours early. Torchwood had taken control of the scene within minutes of the police's arrival.

It was immediately evident that this wasn't an ordinary corpse. While the rest of the body was still in the very early stages of decay, the face was distorted, pale and bloated as though it had been submerged in water for weeks.

"I've never seen anything like it." Gwen Cooper swept the beam of her torch over the ground. "There seems to be a lot of sand around here. And all these weird bits of metal hardware. Where do you suppose those came from?"

Jack knelt beside the body, snapping on a pair of nitrile gloves. "Gwen, light over here, please. Ianto, anything I should be aware of before I poke it?"

"It's saturated with rift energy," Ianto Jones confirmed, glancing from the handheld scanner to his PDA. "Nothing radioactive, nothing else obviously amiss. But from these readings, it definitely came through the rift."

"Shouldn't we be saying 'he,' rather than 'it'?" Gwen looked as though she were doing her best not to vomit. "After all, he is human, isn't he?" She pointed to the Red Dragons logo on his shirt. "He's even a Wrexham fan."

"We'll see," Jack murmured, gingerly grasping the man's forehead to rock his head back and forth. He made a noise of disgust in his throat. "It's sloshy."

Gwen shuddered. "What does 'sloshy' mean, in medical terms?"

"I don't do medical terms. But it feels like his brain has been replaced with some kind of liquid."

"Well, it looks as though he's been underwater," Ianto offered. "Perhaps he drowned?"

"I don't think that would cause this." Jack made a face and palpated around the man's head and throat. "No obvious skull damage that I can feel, though. Just what looks like a puncture at the temple, and some marks below the ear. Maybe a hole from a large needle, and some sort of restraint to hold the head in place?" He shrugged. "We'd need a doctor to open him up to know exactly what happened."

"If only we had one," Gwen sighed.

Jack sat back on his heels and glanced up at her. "I know, Gwen. But I'm not making a cattle call for recruitment. Even if I did, there wouldn't be anyone as good as Owen."

She frowned stubbornly. "I miss them too, Jack, more than I can say. But sooner or later one of us is going to get hurt, and we'll need someone who knows more about specialized alien medicine than whoever's on duty at the A&E. And Ianto's good with tech, but he shouldn't have to cover that, too. We're stretched thin enough as it is."

"For now," Ianto interrupted the recurring argument, "let's just hope that whatever liquefied our Wrexham friend's brain isn't still around." He swept the scanner in a slow arc to cover the surrounding area. "Oh, hello. Another rift energy signature."

Jack stood and stripped off the gloves. "Stationary? Moving?"

Ianto moved the scanner in a large circle. "Stationary. Low to the ground. Possibly another body?"

"Or a creature lying in wait." Jack drew his Webley. "Ianto, stay here and keep scanning. Tell me if anything moves. Gwen, back me up."

Gwen drew her semiautomatic and took a place off to the side of Jack's point position, bracing her torch against the firearm and aiming it in the direction Ianto had indicated. They crept toward the weedy scrub that had sprung up in the space between the diner's back door and the empty lot behind it. Jack was only two steps into the brush when he halted abruptly, staring at the ground.

"Found it," he called. "Gwen, bring the light over here."

They joined him and stared at the second body, lying face-down in the weeds. Unlike the man in the Dragons shirt, this man's clothing was faded with age, and his body was shriveled and emaciated. Skeletal joints were visible through tears in the brittle remains of his shirt. A fine coating of sand seemed embedded in his flesh.

"Think he's in the same condition as our friend over there?" Jack ventured, prodding the body tentatively with the toe of his boot.

"One way to find out," Ianto muttered. He tucked the scanner into the pocket of his coat, then slipped on a pair of gloves before stepping over the body and kneeling beside it.

Jack followed his lead and crouched by the body's other shoulder. "Ready?"

Ianto took a deep breath and held it, then nodded. At the signal, he pushed and Jack pulled, and the body flopped gracelessly onto its back.

An instant later Gwen screeched, Ianto flung himself backward, and even Jack recoiled with a gasp.

"Well," Jack panted when they'd had a moment to recover. "I think we know what happened to our Dragons fan."

The door chime tore Jamiya's attention away from the album she was perusing. She turned to tap the intercom panel on the wall beside her. "Yes?"

"Special delivery," intoned a familiar voice. "Flowers for… let me see… oh, yes, the tag just says 'to the best lady in the Delta-Four quadrant.' I could only assume…"

Leaving the album on the table, Jamiya went to the door and flung it open. A cluster of exotic off-world flowers greeted her, their pungent scent wafting in with the breeze from the door. Over the top of the blooms peeked the sandy hair and mirthful eyes of her guest. "Yolan!" she laughed. "You shouldn't have!"

"Probably not, but I did anyway," Yolan said, stepping inside. "Happy birthday—though they were almost belated. I was afraid they'd wilt before I found where you'd gone." He ducked around the flowers to kiss her cheek.

"I'm sorry about that! I didn't know how to reach you to tell you I'd moved. I registered for half a year of address forwarding, but then, I never know when you'll be dropping by." She took the bouquet from him. "Do these go in water?"

"Milk solution, if you've got it. Or anything with protein. They're carnivorous. Grow on decaying corpses, mostly." Yolan stripped off his battered jacket, revealing a none-too-clean vest beneath, and mopped his brow with the ragged end of a sleeve. "Phew! You'd think with all the technology this planet has, they could do something about the climate."

"The heat is good for the crops." Jamiya cracked open a tin of condensed meat and tipped some of the broth into a vase. "Would you like something cold to drink?"

"Always. And make it a double."

Jamiya finished with the flowers, and a minute later brought two glasses of something pale yellow to the table. "Spiked, not straight. I can't afford your alcohol habit."

Yolan drained half his glass, then frowned at her over the rim. "Hey, do you mean that? How are you fixed for money?"

"Oh, I'm just teasing. Don't worry, I have plenty of work. There's always a demand for generator engineers here." She sipped from her own glass and made a face. "Oh, that's a bit strong, isn't it?"

Yolan took another gulp. "Not to me, but then, I'm used to something with a bit more kick."

She gave him a stern motherly look. "You should cut back on that. I'd hate to have to send you to rehab."

"Already been. Didn't take." Yolan wiped his mouth, then leaned across the table to retrieve the album she'd been looking at. "Is this… Oh. Oh, my. Look at that." He chuckled as he paged through the album's screen displays. "What a scrappy little boy he was. And those squinty eyes!"

"Every child has squinty eyes, here. It's the sun." She leaned closer to look at the pictures with him. "Look, there's the whole family together. Not many of those." She smiled sadly. "We always said we were going to get a proper family portrait, but we never got around to it, and then…" She fell silent.

Yolan tried to page on, but that picture marked the end of the album. "Nothing from later? Nothing when he's older?"

Jamiya shook her head. "Not once they were gone. Things were hard for us for a long time, and it just… never seemed right. And then he left home the day he was old enough to enlist, so there wasn't much opportunity after that." She sighed. "The only picture I have of him older is the one from that advertising campaign—you know the one?"

Yolan gave a snort. "Do I. He wouldn't shut up about it when the agency chose him as a poster boy. Even had a copy of the advert hanging in his quarters, if you can believe it."

"Oh, I can. He always was fond of his own face." She turned thoughtful. "I wonder what he looks like now. How old is he now? I mean—then. The last time you saw him."

Yolan studied the condensation rings his glass was leaving on the table. "Oh, he looks about my age. Still gorgeous, though. He's aged well."

"You know, I can hardly even imagine him grown up." Jamiya's gaze had dropped again to the image in the album, the family of four clustered together in front of a bleak landscape. "I never really knew him as anything but a child." A moment passed, and then she shook her head. "Sorry, I'm just feeling nostalgic today. I suppose birthdays do that, make you look back and think about things. Normally it doesn't bother me, but… sometimes it's hard not to think about… what might have been." Her fingers brushed the smallest figure in the picture. "How things might have been different. How he might have grown up. What he might have looked like."

Yolan considered her in silence, then reached over to touch her hand. "Jamiya, there was a reason I came to see you."

"Oh? Not just because it was my birthday?"

He tilted his head in acknowledgment. "Well, that determined which day I came to see you. But I wanted to come anyway. There's…" He hesitated, conflict tightening his face. "There's something I need to tell you, and I'm not really sure how to say it."

Jamiya's face drained of color. "Oh, no," she breathed. "He's not…? Is he dead, Yolan?"

"What? No! No, he's alive. He's very much alive."

She sagged in relief, then brightened. "Does that mean you've seen him recently, then?"

Yolan nodded. "Yeah, I've seen him. Spent a few days with him, in fact." He shifted in his seat and flinched. "Still got the bruises."

"I'm so glad," she sighed, then shook her head. "Not about the bruises. I mean…"

"Yeah, I get it." Yolan's mouth quirked in a half-grin. "Don't worry, I deserved what I got. He wasn't happy to see me, and I can't really blame him."

"I just wish I could see him again. Things were so strained between us when he left, and I wish… I don't suppose you could convince him to come home for a visit?"

"Not much chance of that, I'm afraid." Yolan braced his arms on the table. "But for once, he's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

"That's a first. Usually, he's all we ever talk about." Jamiya frowned as she examined his face. "What is it, Yolan? I don't think I've ever seen you look so serious."

Yolan sighed and skimmed the album back a few pages, to a picture of two young boys playing in the sand. "It's about your other son."