Torchwood: Divergence
Book One: Dychwelyd
Chapter 4A
Getting Ianto back to the Hub had been a nightmare. A storm had blown in out of nowhere as the team had mobilized to grab blankets and sample taking equipment. Gwen had sent Rhys and Andy to fetch a box truck from Harwood's since none of their vehicles could safely accommodate their resurrected friend's new wings. Martha had done a cursory check of vital signs while the others had busily gotten vials full of the earth he'd emerged from, as well as collecting what they could of the blood that coated him. It had been pouring rain by the time they'd managed to get him into the tarpaulin lined cargo area of the truck, and the drive back to the Millennium Centre had been slowed by the torrent. Once there, extra tarps had been run between the rear of the box truck and the carefully reconstructed water tower so Rhys could hold the unconscious Jones upright with his wings tucked close, and they'd gotten him inside on the repaired invisible lift. Lucky thing that they'd discovered that in spite of the explosion, the perception filter in the one spot had still been semi-active because it was a spatial phenomenon, not just something in the walkway. Even better, Turlough had known how to stabilize what he'd called the 'Chameleon Effect' to make it one hundred percent functional again.
It had taken nearly two hours to get all the blood scrubbed from Ianto's body, washed from his unexpectedly long hair, and cleaned from his angel-like wings; Lois, Johnson, and Andy having gotten an early out for the night to allow the latter to drop his police vehicle back at the station, while the ladies returned the truck to Harwood's. The clean-up had been frantic, so it hadn't been until Martha had been taking medical samples afterward that Gwen had acknowledged that her unconscious friend was stark naked and had found it hard not to stare...she'd had no idea that the young Archivist was so...well endowed. Once the samples had been ready for processing, they'd bundled the unresponsive Welshman in blankets wings and all, and she'd reluctantly asked Rhys and Turlough to carry him down to one of the refurbished level one cells in the Vaults. They'd settled him with lots of blankets and a few pillows from the storeroom then locked him in, for their safety as well as his. For though Cooper's heart had told her that Ianto had somehow been returned to them, her mind had known all too well that it might be a lie or that he could now be possessed by some dangerous alien life form... like Owen had been.
Gwen sent the rest of the team home around 11:15 pm, with glowing praise for their performance. She and her husband had opted to stay and keep watch over the friend they'd lost to the 456. Martha was the last to leave, pausing to squarely meet her leader's gaze.
"The tests on the soil and blood pool residue are still running," she stated quietly. "And the full pathogen and alien organism screens on the skin scrapings and blood I drew won't be complete until early morning tomorrow at best. But the system's finished the DNA analysis and comparison, and I've looked at the initial body scan. That is definitely the real Ianto Jones, he's very much alive not just reanimated the way Owen was, and those wings are not 'angelic' manifestations. The scans show evidence of a tonne of surgical work where they merge into his back, as well as surgical scars on a lot of other areas of his body but under his skin and on the top layer of muscle, not on the surface where they could be easily seen with the naked eye. There're also signs of some sort of biological alien substance that's been threaded into all his tissues... skin, muscles, organs, nerves, bones, it's even in his bloodstream. Like someone opened him up and carefully stitched it all in by hand, and yet it doesn't register on the DNA tests even though it's in all his cells to some extent. That material is completely dormant at the moment, but I have no idea what it is, or what it might make him do. So be careful, yeah? And I'll see you in the morning."
"Thanks, Martha," Cooper nodded. "Brilliant work. We'll keep a close eye on him."
The young physician nodded in return and headed out through the main entrance.
"Oh, bloody hell," Gwen breathed hoarsely, scrubbing at her face with both hands. "What if he's being controlled by something alien now? God, Rhys, I don't know if I could do it if it comes to killing him or putting him in cryo. I've watched him die in Jack's arms on those damn recordings so many times... still see it in my dreams..."
"Don't think the worst yet," her husband soothed, gently rubbing her shoulders. "Change into something not covered in blood, I'll warm us some coffee, we'll grab a blanket and go sit in the Vaults. Be close when he wakes, yeah? You might be worrying for nothing."
Gwen smiled weakly and briefly squeezed one of his hands.
"I am so glad I married you," she whispered warmly.
Rhys returned her smile and leaned over to gift her with a quick but passionate kiss, then headed for the kitchenette, having already changed into the clean clothes he'd grabbed from his office at Harwood's earlier. It didn't take long for the two of them to get sorted out and settled down in the aisle of the cells, where they could see the winged form past the reworked Lexan polycarbonate door where he lay curled up on and among the multitude of blankets put in the small room for him.
"You know," Williams murmured as the sipped their coffee. "Those wings look more like a hunting bird than an angel's. Strong and slightly tapered for speed, but broad enough to catch updrafts for soaring, and they're not white... more like a glossy silver grey. In fact, if they were black, they'd look like a great giant rook's wings."
"Since when do you know so much about birds?" Gwen prodded, no little surprised by her spouse's apparent knowledge on the subject.
"Been watching nature programmes with Eb, haven't I?" Rhys chuckled. "And our little girl loves her birds. Just squeals and babbles when they're on the telly. She's gonna grow up to be a bird doctor... or a pilot. I'm not sure if it's the birds themselves she likes so much or that they fly."
"You are the most amazing man," Cooer grinned, leaning in for another good snog.
The two were somewhat preoccupied, and didn't realise their cell bound friend was stirring. Not until he cried out in apparent pain and nearly made them both jump out of their skins.
"No..." Ianto was trying to push up onto his hands and knees, and it was unclear if he was awake of simply having a nightmare. "No more... no more knives...please!"
Gwen scurried over to crouch close to the new two-inch-thick poly panel, called out to the young brunette through the lower vent holes.
"Ianto, it's all right, you're safe now," she reassured, trying to wake him up or draw his attention if he was already conscious. "You're in the Vaults at Torchwood. No one can hurt you here."
"All the blood," Jones choked, examining his hands and naked body as if expecting the gore to still be there. "It's everywhere. I can taste it, smell the fires and hot steel... please, Jack, tell them to stop... it's too much... too long... I can't anymore..."
"Ianto," Cooper called sharply, finally getting the obviously traumatized young man to look at her, though his gaze wavered almost drunkenly.
"I need Jack," he insisted, shakily crawling over to push and pull at the recently upgraded door in the cell's Lexan panels. "I need Jack, Gwen... Where is he?"
"I don't know," she answered truthfully, feeling a stab of loss once more as the words left her mouth. "He's gone off again, and I..."
"Let me out," Ianto interrupted, pulling harder at the holes in the molecular-bond sealed door... and actually making it shift slightly. "I need to find Jack."
"I can't open the door, mate," Gwen stated, trying to stay calm. "Something's been done to you, Ianto, and I can't let you out till we know what it is."
"I need him..." Jones sobbed, tears falling once more. "Please... I need Jack... I took it all for him..."
"We don't know if you're safe to be running about," his former co-worker tried to explain, growing alarmed as the altered brunette's tearful attempts to open the door began to show more pronounced and decidedly inhuman results. "Ianto, there's some sort of alien substance inside you, and if I let you go it could make you kill us. Understand? You could have been brought back to life to destroy the human race."
Suddenly the cell block's main door opened, and a familiar figure in a World War II style RAF greatcoat stepped through it.
"He wasn't," the newcomer stated evenly, striding over past where Cooper crouched to unceremoniously key open the door in the polycarbonate wall with the device in his wrist strap, and kneel down to cautiously touch the trembling hand of the man who'd been trying to open it. "Hey, buddy..."
"Jack," Ianto managed a squeaking sob and shakily reached out to the one he'd been needing so desperately to see.
Captain Jack Harkness carefully moved to embrace the naked, partially blanket draped brunette, felt the young man cling to him with frightening strength.
"Oh, my God..." Gwen gaped, too shocked to do anything but stare and try to find the words to express her surprise. "How...?"
"Gwen, Rhys..." Harkness nodded a distracted greeting, trying to comfort the distraught Welshman in his arms and keep his own emotions under control. "Gimme a few minutes, yeah?"
The couple could only watch, as the man they'd thought gone forever tenderly reassured the friend they'd seen die on the Thames House recordings nearly two years before.
"Shh..." Jack shifted to stroke his companion's uncharacteristically long, damp hair, held him close and struggled not to cry as well. "I'm here, Ianto, I'm here. Relax... it's okay. I need you to try to focus for me, and retract your wings... it might hurt the first time, but I know you can do it. Come on... just think about them disappearing. We'll get them tucked away, then we'll all go upstairs where you can have a proper lie down, yeah?"
Gwen and Rhys stared in amazement as Ianto obediently extended his silvery wings as far as he could in the small cell, and then apparently willed the appendages to begin disappearing. A barely perceptible shimmer, like heat waves above a flame began at the points where the wings sprang from his back, then they seemed to melt into his flesh like salt dissolving in water. The young brunette stifled a cry of pain as the wings retracted, trembling and hiding his face against his onetime lover's coat clad chest. And as the tips the of the last glossy grey feathers vanished with a gust of extremely hot air, he suddenly pushed away from Harkness, turning awkwardly to retch in the corner of the cell.
Jack moved to support his now violently shaking companion, a little alarmed to see that what the young Welshman was vomiting up appeared to be nothing but blood. When Jones finally stopped gagging, the older man pulled up the blanket over his back and shoulders, carefully urged him to his feet. Rhys gave Gwen a hand up off the floor as Harkness helped their now wingless friend step out of the cell. They all started toward the main door, but Ianto only managed two tottering strides before his knees buckled. Jack caught him, then simply hefted him up into his arms like a child and nodded for the others to precede him.
The Captain was somewhat disturbed to find that his companion seemed to weigh next to nothing. Yes, he was well able to see that Ianto was massively underweight, little more than bones, hard muscle, and sinew. But he all too clearly remembered the brunette's weight when he'd died in his arms at Thames House, and knew that even the visible weight loss couldn't completely explain the extreme difference. Never the less, he gently carried Jones up from the Vaults, tenderly kissed his forehead as he finally settled him on the big new sofa behind the workstations in the main area of the Hub, and tucked the blanket around him.
"If one of you would be so kind as to get a bottle of water for Ianto and coffee for the rest of us, we'll have a nice talk before you two head home to get some sleep," Jack stated plainly, taking a seat on the couch so he could pillow his much altered friend's head in his lap. "I was surprised you didn't wipe my retinal scans or security codes from the system to be honest. And that you not only got Torchwood running again, but some major upgrades done on the Hub."
"How'd you know he could pull in the wings like that?" Rhys asked as he went to fetch the requested beverages, while Gwen stood staring hard at her former boss who was sitting before her as though he'd never been gone.
"Just a lucky guess really," the coat clad brunette half smiled. "Good job it worked."
"I begged you to stay, Jack," Cooper grated, ignoring the exchange and obviously trying hard not to cry. "Sent countless messages for more than a year through every source possible, grovelling to get you to come back. Why now, Jack? Why bloody now?!"
Harkness didn't reply verbally, he just pointedly shifted his gaze from her face to the huddled figure beside him and back again. The split second of desperate longing Gwen saw in the man's blue eyes as he looked at their resurrected friend said it all, and the tears she'd been holding back broke free.
"But how could you even know Ianto was here?" she wept helplessly. "He only just rose from a sodding pool of boiling blood tonight, Jack... we've video to prove it... How? How did you know?"
The undying brunette's eyes glittered moistly as he met her confused gaze with an apologetic expression. Rhys appeared with the coffee and water, sat the tray on the low table by the settee and went to put his arms around his wife's shoulders.
"After the 456 had been defeated, you and Rhys had new lives to live, free of Torchwood and a baby on the way," Harkness stated quietly, unconsciously stroking his partner's damp hair as he spoke. "There was nothing left for me. Torchwood was gone with no sign it would be rebuilt, I had no team, no resources. But most of all, I had no heart... I was cold and dead inside, Gwen. I willingly sacrificed my own grandson to defeat the 456; my daughter cursed my name and told me I was dead to her too, then committed suicide a month later. I destroyed my families, those by blood and those by choice who worked with me.
"I took Ianto with me into Thames House, even though I had a good idea what that race might be capable of, but not considering that though I'd survive whatever they did, he wouldn't. I had lied to myself and him for so long, swearing I didn't have the capacity to love anymore, that what we had was just a fling no matter how much I could tell he loved me. I'd tried to make myself believe the lie, started finding reasons to force a wedge between us, drive him away. I hurt him over and over, but he stayed by me, trusting me, loving me no matter what. He followed me into a death trap knowing what could happen to him, willing to risk it to be by my side and fight the good fight. At the end, I could see in his eyes that he wanted nothing more than to live. Not because dying scared him, but because he didn't want to leave me. I would've given the 456 every child on Earth to save him, but it wouldn't bargain. And when I felt his heart stop, I begged whatever powers are out there in the Universe to let me stay dead too. Because I finally realised in that moment, that he was the one person in my entire prolonged life that I couldn't bear to lose. Friends, lovers, spouses...I've buried dozens. But I always soldiered on, knowing eventually there'd be someone else. I never let it break me. This time it was different. Losing him didn't just break me, it completely shattered my world. I let Steven die to destroy the 456, not to save the planet, but to make them pay for what they took from me at Thames House. Once they were gone, and I've now made sure they'll never be back... when they were gone, my life was empty. If living on Earth meant living without Ianto, then I didn't want to be here anymore, because nothing I tried could bring him back."
There was silence for several minutes, the blanket clad subject of the discussion appearing to have fallen into a fitful sleep once more.
"That's why you left and why you stayed away," Rhys acknowledged, surprising both of the Torchwood members present. "But how did you know to come back?"
"Someone on your new team apparently has the technology to zero in on the Time Agency mechanisms in my wrist strap," Jack explained with a quirked brow. "And they can broadcast through Space and Time. A month ago, by Earth reckoning, I received a message. All it said was that Torchwood Three had been rebuilt and re-opened in Cardiff, and that the body of Ianto Jones had been stolen from the make-shift morgue in London almost as soon as I'd been removed from the building two years ago. The first part intrigued me; the second really pissed me off. So I started working my way in this direction again. Then I got a second contact about a week ago. This one claimed that Ianto had been sent back to the living world by unknown means, even gave today's date and the time of 11:45 pm as when I needed to get to the Millennium Centre. Both came from an untraceable broadcast point, sent with the call name 'Escaped Exile'."
"Turlough," Gwen breathed sharply, both angry and amazed.
"Skinny red head, spent some time travelling with the Doctor?" Harkness enquired in surprise. "Who managed to recruit him?"
"He sort of recruited himself," Cooper managed after a moment. "He's been helping UNIT off and on for a while now, and volunteered when Martha was looking for people to help me get Torchwood going again."
"Nice rebuild and expansion on the Hub, by the way," her former leader smiled, still unconsciously stroking Ianto's hair. "I take it they found the spare computer gear in the storage area by the level one Vaults when they excavated the crater. Good to know the lower blast doors and tunnel reinforcements did their jobs, yeah?"
"We lost a few pieces of minor alien tech in the Medical Bay," Gwen stated automatically. "They had to jury-rig the Rift Manipulator to keep it running at first, needed to fumigate most of level one and re-work some of the cells because most of the Weevils and other aliens there died of starvation before they got the place dug out, and there was a bit of structural damage. And how can you bloody well act like you've never been fucking gone?!"
"Easy, love," Rhys tried to soothe; surprised she'd managed to hold her anger and frustration in as long as she had.
But the green-eyed brunette was beyond being talked down now, and she strode over to shove the table aside, not caring if the coffee sloshed from the cups her husband had sat atop it, and moving to stand staring down at where the Captain sat on the sofa.
"You selfish, arrogant bastard!" Cooper growled. "You left us. Left the world to fend for itself with the Rift Manipulator half destroyed and UNIT tripping over their own feet trying to keep up with what came through. Then you just breeze in and pick up where you left off, without the slightest thought for the people who've been struggling to piece their lives back together without you. You swan off on your personal pity-party, not giving a damn about other people's families or the holes you left in them, because you'd already torn apart your own."
Jack simply stared at her as she ranted, having gone very still when the verbal assault started.
"Boy or girl?" he asked evenly when she paused for breath.
Gwen's temper snapped completely, one fist flying on its own to cram the words back down his throat. But the blow never connected, her knuckles still several inches from the man's face when her arm stopped as though she'd struck an invisible wall. The former constable stumbled slightly with a gasp of surprise and pain; her wrist caught in an intensely powerful grip.
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AN: I know… rotten place to leave it, yeah?
If you're nice, I might just post Chapter 4B on Monday for my birthday. NM
