Blimey, I'm really powering through these chapters this weekend. I started this weekend with just 34 chapters posted and here we are on Sunday morning (it's 1am) posting chapter 39 and my brain is still writing chapter 40 so I'm pretty sure that one will be going and might even get posted before Sunday is over.
This was not the story I'd been planning on working on this weekend, but this is what you've got so I hope that you are enjoying my hard work.
Chapter Thirty-nine: Welcome Home
*^*^*^*^*^*18th Jan – 2nd April 2008*^*^*^*^*^*
When a week had gone passed and Jack hadn't returned and she heard nothing from him, Raven contacted the Prince Charles and the Queen to let them know. This resulted in her position of second in command being officially upgraded into 'temporary command' until Jack return. She had not assigned anyone as her own secondary, although she did give Ianto a little more responsibility – giving him a little of her old paperwork that wasn't sensitive and didn't reveal any classified secrets.
After only three weeks, she was also forced to ask Ianto to take his arms training and join them out in the field as Gwen kept rubbing against her and Raven couldn't trust the older woman to watch her back on her own. she had to have another member of the team present as well, or simple split the teams so that Gwen was with Owen and or Tosh and she was Ianto. She wasn't happy forcing Ianto outside of his comfort zone, but she was given other choice when Gwen wouldn't back down and the other three wouldn't step up to support her against Gwen's attitude.
With three distortions back-to-back, Cardiff was suffering. The unfocused opening of the rift, followed by the opening of the rift to release Abaddon had already stirred the aliens that had found a home in Cardiff, while also releasing more aliens into their home along with potentially dangerous artefacts. That would have been hard enough to clean up after, but what the Doctor, Jack and Raven hadn't anticipated was that the rewind had resulted in a backlash which focused through the rift and therefore Cardiff.
Keeping the secret was becoming harder and harder then ever. After a month, Raven had completed the new Official Secrecy act for Torchwood employees and those attached, which allowed her to pull several key police officers, social workers and medical staff into the secret so that they could reach out to her when they needed help with something abnormal and she in turn had that option to reach out to if she needed to.
If Jack didn't come back to Torchwood after six months, she would also start hiring staff and she had a short list of people in mind that she wanted to reach out to already. Jack would have to handle any new staff that she hired at that point as he'd left her in charge for so long. Six months was her turning point from temporary to complete lead. She knew that after six months she was going to find it harder to pass the reigns over to Jack as she'd be resigned to the lead and be set in the role, but before then all she could think was that she wanted him back to take command. Her mind set her been very similar in The Year That Never Was, but as this team and the situation was different, it was like her mind set for command had reverted even though she had that experience now.
Every time that Raven got back to base, she felt like she was turning back round in response to another call.
With Gwen finally focusing on her relationship with Ryan, accepting his engagement and progress being made between Tosh and Owen, Raven did her best not to overwork her employees to much so she didn't double shift after double shift. With their lives forming outside of the base, Raven had to let them live their lives, so she stepped up and took hours and went on retrievals that the others didn't know about. On top of all the paperwork that she'd taken over as the new command, plus her old paperwork.
Ianto knew a little of the hours she put in as he had the longest hours of the rest team despite Raven ordering him home several times in a week. Several of the mornings when Ianto would come in before the others and find Raven already working through the large stack of paper in Jack's office, he'd sit down with a coffee and make her move from the desk to the couch. She'd go from doing paperwork to simple touching base with another human being, the only time that she got to do so even if it was just for the ten or twenty minutes it took to drink the coffee/tea.
As March ended and April began, Raven finally felt like they'd gotten a handle on the full out. The number of random artefacts that they were finding and recovering was finally returning to 2006 numbers, which meant it was just lost and inactive artefacts that were popping up after being unburied or accidently activated.
Of course, just as she felt like she was getting her feet under her, there was unusual rift activity. Within ten minutes, the police called them in as there was reports of a man in a blowfish mask stealing from a pharmacy and then stealing a sports car. Raven went to investigate the site of the anomaly while the others got in the SUV to track the alien and hopefully stop him before he becomes more then 'that weirdo in a mask'.
Finding nothing on the car-pack roofing lot other than the slightly increase activity which suggests that there is an easy to open tear there. Raven checked the security cameras to make sure that the blowfish was the only thing that came through the rift, which he was before getting into her car.
Considering the number of times that she'd been forced to split the team up over the last three months, she'd followed Jack's instructions to make sure that the second SUV they had was up to the same standards as the first. For her own transportation, Raven had followed Jack's trend of purchases an old model but she'd adapted hers a little more than he had. His were adapted for protection only, while she'd added a computer system to hers which allowed her to look into the GPS system of the SUV's and find where they were and also receive communications from the base. The rest of the technical communication she received came through her phone, which was being constantly upgraded and adapted.
In the time that she'd taken to scout the grounds, the team had not managed to stop the blowfish but it looked like they had located him and then begun the chase. Their current projection if they didn't turn down a small side road, which wouldn't make sense in a chase like they were in, they were heading to a dead-end cul de sac. If she flawed it, Raven would be able to take short cuts and make it at roughly the same time.
Turning on the police lights and the sirens that she'd installed in her car, Raven got moving at top speed. She'd turn the sirens off as she got closer so as to not alert the blowfish to her approach and make him take drastic measures while surrounded by innocent civilians. Raven didn't tell the team that she was coming, interested whether Owen took charge like he was supposed to when Raven wasn't present or if Gwen had taken charge. Tosh was the only one who might know that she recorded all com communications and that unless they turned the coms off – as she didn't tend to turn the coms off, Raven didn't think that Tosh had checked their internal systems and found that change.
Raven arrived at the cul de sac where she'd predicted the chase to end, to find that the tire had been shot out the rear of the sports car and it had crashed into a fire hydrant. The team had clearly abandoned the SUV in a hurry to follow the blowfish into a house where she could see a front door had been left wide open.
Silently, gun in hand, Raven entered the house to find that her team had walked into a hostage situation. Gwen was at the doorway to the side and had a woman at her back, shielding her and was using a doorframe to keep between her and the blowfish who was in the living room with an injured human male on the floor and a young girl held at gun point. Ianto was stood centre of a large doorway at the Blowfish's front, the backdoor open and at his back. Tosh was to Ianto's right, her scanning device supported next to her gun.
With an injured man on the floor, Ran pulled her phone out and sent a quick but detailed message to her contact at the locate prescient who would dispatch an ambulance and officer. They needed to have this cleaned-up before both arrived.
"…roximately three grammes of cocaine. This fish is wired." Tosh said in disbelief, putting her scanner down as she knew what Raven would say if she was seen holding her gun and scanner like that.
"So, this is Team Torchwood. The teacher's pets." The blowfish mocked.
Raven's eyes narrowed slightly as she moved out of the house and took up position at the living room where she had eyeline on the blowfish. Of the team, only she, Ianto and Jack would risk taking the headshot when a hostage was being held like this. Ianto had the skill, but not the confidence to take the shot and Owen currently had his hands full trying to save the fathers life.
How did this alien know about the team?
"But teacher's gone, hasn't he?" the blowfish continued, with a lilt in his voice which suggested that whatever that caused his knowledge of Torchwood was because of Jack. "Leaving the kiddy kids all alone. And look at you, trying so hard to be all grown up. The doctor, with his hands full of blood. The carer, with her oh-so-beating heart. The technician, with her cold devices. Which leaves me with the office boy, promoted beyond his measure. But where's the teacher's pet? Couldn't she handle the pressure? All of you, lost without your master. All of you, pretending to be so brave. All of you, so scared." He kissed his hostage, making her sob in terror and the mother to restrain herself from pushing passed Gwen into the line of fire.
"So, what about it, minions? Can you do it? how good are you? how sharp is your aim? What if you kill her? What if I kill her first? Can you shoot before I do? can you? dare you? would you? won't you?" Seeing that she wasn't going to learn anything knew, Raven fired but there was an echo of her shot and the blowfish went down with two holes in his head only millimetres appeared.
Raven jumped through the window as the girl ran to her mother's arms and Jack stepped into the house through the back door behind Jack who had fired from over Ianto's shoulder.
"Hey, kids. Did you miss me?" Jack smirked at the shocked team who'd barely registered Raven's entrance through the window.
"Owen, keep that man stabilised. Tosh, go get the body bag from the SUV and Ianto help her get the body concealed before the officers and ambulance arrive. Their ETA is two minutes." Raven desperately wanted to greet Jack, to kiss him, but there was a dead body in the room and an injured man. She'd greet him properly back at the base.
"Gwen, treat the mother and daughter for shock." Raven used the code which suggested the use of the new retcon that she'd had Owen develop which would slowly and naturally cause the woman to go to sleep over the next three hours and they'd wake up knowing they'd been through something traumatic (the scenario could be planted through suggested minus the alien). When someone was injured, they couldn't use the standard retcon since there was physical evidence of the trauma.
With efficiency that she'd forced into them and Jack's very presence stopping Gwen from arguing back, they got to work and they'd handed the victims of too the police and ambulance drivers before travelling back to base. Jack silently slid into Raven's car while the rest of the team escorted the body back.
"I've missed you," Raven reached across the small gap between them and briefly stroked her partners cheek with her thumb before returning her hand to the gear stick.
"The Doctor aimed for January 20th," Jack chuckled, rested his hand on Raven's knee in turn knowing that she didn't like being distracted from driving which was why she hadn't looked at him while touching him.
"It's April 2nd," Raven laughed softly. "How long was it for you since you left to help fix the TARDIS?"
"Thirteen days," Jack answered truthfully.
"Thirteen days for you," Raven repeated. "After that hell you went through, you only took thirteen days?"
"You'd already made me realise where my place was, but in my time with the Doctor, it wasn't just you that I missed. It was the whole team, the whole of Torchwood." Jack explained.
Raven brought her car to a stop in the garage before twisting to Jack, knowing that the SUV would be parked in the back so that Owen could more easily transfer the blowfish to the morgue.
"I died, Jack," Raven whispered, breaching the space between them by placing a hand behind his neck and pulling him close so that she could rest her forehead against his. In response, Jack wrapped his strong hands around her hips and pulled her across the car into his lap to make the position more comfortable for the both of them while also giving them close enough.
"It's been 77 days since I died, since you watched me die," Raven whispered, staring into the old eyes of her love while only inches away from his face. "I remember that whole year. Please, don't hide from me."
"Why didn't you say anything? You made it seem like you didn't remember over the coms." Jack left one hand over her soul-mark but brought the over up to cup the back of her neck in a mirror to how she still had her own hand.
"I wasn't ready for the Doctor to know and ask questions. I wanted you to know first." Raven admitted, smiling sadly even as she stopped the tears from welling up in her eyes and spilling over.
"Do the others know?" Jack asked.
"They've read the skimmed report that I got from the UNIT debrief, but they don't know about my remembering or anything. They don't know details." Raven explained. "They don't know what happened to you. That was censored on the reports, and even what was included was just three lines and no details. The guards were always removed from the room when the Master went to see you, as even they had lines they couldn't cross."
"Good men forced into a bad situation." Jack chose to sidestep that emotionally charged conversation for the time being. "How's your stomach?"
"Healed. I've been on full field duty since fifteen days after you left." Raven promised, even though she'd been doing field duty before her clearance. In the alternate year, she'd been doing more sooner so she'd known that she was okay to go out on 'safe' retrievals.
"I'm glad," Jack whispered before breaching the small gap between their lips and kissing her passionately. Raven responded desperately, using the free hand that she'd rested on Jack's chest to grab his shirt and pull her chest close to his so that they were as close together as they could get with their clothes still on.
"Welcome home," Raven whispered, panting for breath once they broke apart for air.
"It's good to be back." Jack whispered huskily, his eyes drinking in Raven's face hungrily.
"We need to go in, the others will come looking soon." Raven kissed Jack's top lip before releasing his neck and reaching for the door handle and opening the car door. "We'll finish this later; I think we both need some time to get reacquainted."
"Send the team home early, tell them to come in late." Jack agreed, forlornly getting out the car and allowing Raven to put her typical professional separation distance between them.