85
"So, Allison. What did you do in the Before Place?" Marley was asking with interest, enjoying a new face.
"I was a truck driver" she replied, "I drove delivery trucks. Did some work all over the coast mainly. Also, a bit of an armature thespian. Part of a local playwright society … I do miss that. Loved dressing up and playing the fool on the stage."
"We have a stage" Dean said with interest "We put on shows and write songs and stuff. Do you sing?"
"Ah, yes but Krissy is the real singer. A real baritone" she smiled as the little boy nodded, then shifted in his chair then to her complete confusion a creature entered the room wearing clothing like a human. Kris had frozen, the cup half way to his mouth as he watched the Weevil slide along to tap Dean's shoulder and sign something at him.
"Soon, do you want a sandwich?"
Frank looked at them and singed something else.
"No, from Outpost. Remember they were gonna bring Aunty Bonnie some new tanks? They are the things on the trucks, we will need to get them down to the new room."
Frank made a low growling noise the signed something else as Dean 'listened' then it was Hope who answered "Good idea Frank. We can. Daddy, can we use the hovercraft to transport the tanks? Will it hold their weight?"
"Yes of course" he said as he looked up from Ianto's' face, the animated smiling and laughing making Ianto look so young. He was clearly pleased to see an old friend again.
"Remember Potty?" Kris asked "She made that whistling noise between her teeth all the time?"
"Why did you call her that?" Allison demanded across the table "She was a lovely person and Minnie is nothing like potty."
"She fell in one" Ianto said without tiring to look at her, "her entire foot was stuck. Had to break the bowl of the toilet to get her out. Entire shutdown to the floor, Yvonne was incensed."
"Yeah, she rolled with us for a while. Then … she fell."
"Noticed there are not that many buildings here, where are these tanks going exactly?" Allison asked.
"Below" Frank said in his strange guttural growl that made them both jump with shock "We live below."
"Weevil" Kris said out of nowhere, like an involuntary spasm.
"Yes" Frank regarded him "I am."
"You… you talk."
"Apparently"
Kris blinked then started to laugh softly "Well, I'll be damned."
"No, not really" Dean said as he pushed his chair back to go with Frank "We are not damned, we are the lucky ones."
They wandered off and Allison watched them go with her own mind going back to the last little Weevil she had known, back in the time of the Ghost Shifts when Kris had come to her dishevelled and covered in blood and babbling about tin men and pepper pots. He had wept as he held the tiny Weevil in his arms, had tried to save it but as hard as they tried, it did not flourish and died within weeks. She knew who had helped him get out, the one he had called Toto. She thought he was insane with grief, talking about Toto, tin men and cowardly lions. Now she saw the man he was constantly calling Toto and remembered him now. Whatever had happened in there, the man who had been her childhood friend and then later become her lover after they met again had been speaking the truth.
And the little thing they had tried to save had not been some monkey hybrid like she had thought. He had been truthing as always. Weevil. He had told her it was a Weevil and wept as they tried to save it, telling her they never survived. Clearly this one had and she rose to follow them, interested in the little one only to be stopped by a tiny hand that was stronger than it should be for a toddler, the little man with fine wispy white hair looked at her solemnly from his high chair as he said softly "No. He does not like people."
"And who are you?" she asked with wonder as he should not be speaking like that, fluently and with an authoritive tone. A toddler with an old man's eyes.
"Pip. Our youngest" Ianto said without looking away from Kris, "He is an old soul."
"And where is your mama?"
Pip blinked and looked at Ianto for clarification so Ianto looked over as he explained "She thinks you are of a woman. She does not know about us or our ways. It is not being rude, merely asking a question."
"Ah. Taddy grew me in his tummy like the one in there now" Pip said, then went back to banging a spoon like a baby again.
She blinked.
Kris leaned back seeing the coat falling open for the first time to reveal a small bump.
"Preggers."
"Yes, I can conceive and bear children." Ianto replied sagely, not adding Jack could too.
"Well then" Kris said as he reached for his mug of coffee "That's Torchwood for ya. Wow. Ce Sera Sera."
Jack decided that he hated that saying.