Thank you again for the warm response and kind reviews this story has gotten.

And as always HUGE thank yous to my beta reader :-)

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Chapter Seven: Settling In

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Cardiff, Wales (UK):

Bobby rolled over, fumbling half asleep for the mobile phone; Ianto had neglected to mention that he'd programmed it with the world's most annoying ring tone. All Bobby wanted it to do was stop. "Yeah… hello?"

Instead of a Welsh accent on the other end, it was an American one: "We just got another call from Detective Swanson," said Jack, getting straight down to business. "We'll be there to pick you up in ten minutes."

Neither bothered with 'goodbye'.

Bobby pulled himself out of bed, silently making vow to change the ring-tone at the first free moment he got. His body protested the movement as spasms of pain shot through every bruised, strained muscle. He felt even worse than he had when he had crawled into bed a few short hours ago, and he still wasn't sure of his ability to do his job.

He got dressed anyway, pulling a clean shirt and jeans out of his bag; he was reasonably sure that at three o'clock in the morning, ties were more than just optional, they were completely unnecessary.

After splashing some cold water on his face, he downed a couple of the painkillers Liz had sent him home with, with a glass of juice, and was downstairs waiting at the curb before the SUV pulled up.

Ianto passed over a thermos of hot coffee as he slid into the back seat. Bobby smiled his appreciation as the warm, wonderful liquid filled him. "God, if you weren't taken, I'd ask you to marry me. And I don't even swing that way."

"Never know until you try," was Jack's merry response.

Bobby took another moment to enjoy the coffee before asking what they were headed into.

Ianto was already at the computer, "An hour ago, a man named Steve Fuller came home from the pub to find his girlfriend's charred remains in bed, like she'd been sleeping there waiting for him."

"Hell of a thing to come home to."

"We're picking Gwen up on the way," Jack glanced over his shoulder.

Bobby understood just what he wasn't saying; they were picking Gwen up, but not Liz. He was on his own. He was pretty sure this wasn't the time to tell Jack how scared he was. He probably already knows.

………………………………………………………

"The sheet's barely singed," Gwen observed when she walked into the bedroom with Bobby.

"Just like the floor from the Miller place," he handed her some menthol salve to make the stench easier to endure.

She nodded her thanks and looked around. The bedroom reminded her of hers and Rhys'. There was a basket of folded laundry waiting to be put away, a few photos, a bowling trophy. There didn't seem to be anything unusual about the people who lived here. She looked at the bed. "What could burn up a body but not touch anything around it? Something that just acts on living tissue maybe?"

He shook his head, leaning in to examine the corpse more closely. "Miller's clothes were burned with the rest of him. And it looks like she might have been wearing a shirt," he used his pen to pick up what could be a badly burned piece of cloth.

"I'm starting to think Jack is wrong about spontaneous human combustion. I looked it up on the internet and found all kinds of articles."

Bobby smiled at her, "All of which were written by quacks," he told her. "There's no such thing."

"Like we have any right to judge. Most people don't believe in aliens, you know."

"That's different."

"How?"

"Spontaneous human combustion is a myth, it's been scientifically disproven."

"Well you explain this, then," she nodded at the remains in the bed.

"That's my job, isn't it?" he didn't mean to snap and wasn't even fully aware that he had until he found Gwen's dark eyes focused in on him. He was suddenly glad that Jack and Ianto were dealing with the police and the neighbours. "Sorry."

"No, it's all right. It's not your fault I'm not a morning person," she flashed a vaguely apologetic smile.

"I'm not even sure if this qualifies as morning or night," Bobby forced a smile of his own as he slid on a pair of latex gloves. He passed another pair over to the dark haired Welsh woman.

"It is that in between time, isn't it? All right then, where do we start?"

He looked over the body, "There has to be something to connect this woman and Harold Miller. You searched the Miller place…"

"And didn't find anything that would explain this."

"There's got to be something. Assuming it's environmental, rather than supernatural," he shot her a look, but tempered it with a smile, "There has to be something common to both victims' lives besides the way they died." He realized his frustration was showing, but Gwen didn't seem to mind; if anything, she seemed to sympathize.

"We'll find it."

He nodded and surveyed the body, trying to decide what to do first. It was nearly impossible to estimate time of death, but as he was puzzling over it, he realized something. "Hey, Gwen, if you heat something up, it takes it a while to cool down, right? And the hotter it is, the longer it takes to cool?"

"You're the doctor," she gave him a good natured smile over her shoulder. "But yeah, why?"

"The boyfriend said he left about ten o'clock. That's barely five hours ago."

"And the heat necessary to do that must be pretty intense…"

"But she's stone cold," Bobby finished for her.

"You're sure there's no such thing as spontaneous human combustion?"

"Even if I thought there were, it wouldn't explain why the body is cold less than five hours after she died. And Miller was cool enough to handle, I just didn't think about it at the time."

"So whatever's doing this causes intense heat and rapid cooling?"

He nodded. "The energy dissipates quickly, taking the heat with it." He filed the thought away and began taking pictures before trying to move the body. Like the last one, he expected it to crumble as soon as he touched it.

…………………………………………………..

"Good idea wrapping it in the sheet for transport," Liz told him when she arrived at the Hub, several hours later. The victim, Leslie Anne Warren, had still crumbled, but at least she didn't look like a bad jigsaw puzzle.

"Thanks. I just wish I had some answers."

"Each victim gives us more clues. I know," she added to his skeptical look, "That isn't really a comforting thought, it's just the best thing I've got right now. You want to catch a nap?"

He shook his head. "I'll be fine. Here's what I've got so far," he handed her a clipboard with his test results and leant against the counter, his arms folded over his chest. "It's definitely the same energy signature as Miller. Jack's set up a program to monitor the city for it, so next time we'll at least know before the police. I doubt that'll save any lives, though. Whatever this is, it's there and gone before anyone can blink."

Liz set the clipboard down and leant next to him, "This is difficult for you, isn't it?"

Bobby didn't answer. He didn't look directly at her, either, preferring a spot on the wall just to the left of her head.

"You're used to saving lives," Liz went on anyway. "I looked at your file when Jack told me you were coming. You worked with one of the most celebrated diagnosticians in the United States."

He made a rude noise, "If you'd ever met him, I doubt you'd use the word 'celebrated.'"

"Why did he fire you?"

"I got pissed. I told him what I thought. The one thing House can't stand is someone standing up to him. But you wanna know the funny part? After that we actually almost got to be…friendly."

"Friendly?"

"House doesn't have friends. Well… he has one. God only knows why the guy sticks around through his shit." God only knows why I miss working for him some days.

"You still admire this Dr. House, don't you?"

"He's brilliant. And arrogant. Reckless. Did I mention arrogant?" He repeated with a smile. She laughed and he continued, "I wouldn't trade in the three years I worked with him for anything, but nothing I saw there prepared me for this," he glanced at the body laid out on the autopsy table. It had survived the trip better than Miller, with more bones in tact, but for someone to have died like that… The only comfort Bobby could give himself is that it must have been so fast she never saw it coming, never felt it happening.

"The success rate of the diagnostics team you were a part of was amazing. It still is."

"Over eighty percent of the patients we treated walked out of there cured. Most of the ones that didn't had something that couldn't be cured, but at least they had an answer, a treatment. Something. I can't think of more than a handful of lives we lost."

"And chances are everybody you're going to see in here is going to already be dead."

He nodded, "Yeah."

"You had to know that coming in."

"I hadn't thought about it," he admitted, facing her at last.

She shifted meeting his gaze directly. "So what were you thinking when you said yes to Jack?"

"I don't know. I was thinking about… Sontarans. The Atmos incident. I was thinking about London, when Jack dove right between me and that Dagon," he shook his head. "Before that moment I hadn't believed in aliens. To be honest, I'd never given it much thought. I mean, come on, crop circles?" he said in an incredulous tone. "Even the things that didn't sound like obvious hoaxes usually turned out to be people seeing things and then attributing them to something more fantastic, like turning weather balloons into UFO's. I thought it was all drunken kids or bored housewives, people who jump at shadows and see things that aren't really there because their own lives are so dull. But there I was, confronted with the impossible, an alien with thirteen eyes and a very big gun. And there was Jack," he smiled at the memory.

"Something of the impossible himself," Liz agreed.

"How did you meet him?"

"That's a long story."

"The patient isn't getting any deader."

"Come on, let's go take a walk. You look like you could use some fresh air. Has Jack shown you the 'lift' up to the Plass, yet?"

His brows furrowed, "The what?"

"Just as I suspected," Liz ushered him up the medical bay steps, telling the others that they were going to get a bit of fresh air and promising to come back with something from the bakery while they were at it. "Best way to get a few minutes to yourself around here," she whispered to Bobby with a conspiratorial wink as she directed him to the lift. "Promise to come back with something. I find that sweets are best," she added.

Bobby found himself smiling despite his mood. Liz guided him over to a section of floor that looked a bit like a concrete block and instructed him step onto it with her. She slid her arm into his as the block began to rise up; Jack called out something about pineapple muffins. Liz assured him that she'd check.

As they rose slowly up through the Hub, Myfanwy swooped by, but payed them little heed. He wondered if he was ever really going to get used to working in this place. Only Jack would think of something like this, he thought as they ascended up into the plaza, just in front of the water tower. It took him a moment to realize that passers by were ignoring them completely. "Why aren't people noticing us?"

"They don't see us. There's a bit of a time-space distortion right on this spot."

"Incredible. But as soon as we step off…"

"As soon as we step off, they'll notice us, but not think anything of it."

He stepped off the block… and sure enough, a young woman glanced in his direction, but didn't seem particularly startled by his sudden appearance out of nowhere.

The sky overhead was still grey with cloud cover, but it seemed to be clearing. There was a hint of summer in the mid-morning air, a freshness and warmth to the breeze. It might have made him happy if he hadn't been up for six hours trying to figure out what had burned a twenty six year old bank teller to an unrecognizable crisp.

"You do look at the world differently after the things you've seen," Liz headed towards the Millennium Centre. "All these people, going about their business, shopping, taking photos… they're all just specks in the galaxy. We're just… just particles of dust."

"That's about how I feel right now," he admitted. "I've got a patient who's already dead and no idea how to save the next one before they wind up on my table, too." Liz was right, every patient he saw now going to be dead, either a victim or a killer. "It's like nothing I do down there is even going to matter."

Her sharp look surprised him, "Because no one will notice?"

"Because I can't save anyone. Not here. Not ever again."

"You specialized in critical care, didn't you?"

"Not exactly the best specialty for this job, huh?"

"Oh, I don't know. It means you must care about people, about saving lives. That's what Torchwood does, you know. You may not be able to save Harold Miller or Leslie Warren, but by finding out how they died, you could save hundreds of other lives." She nodded towards the people coming and going around them, "These people will never know it, never even know your name, but you'll know what you've done. I will. Jack. Gwen. Ianto. We know what we do. We know it matters."

When they got to the door into the Millennium Centre, Bobby opened it for her. Following Liz in, he looked around him, taking in the architecture, the lights, the people coming and going; even early in the day there were a fair number of people out and about.

"Amazing, isn't it?"

"More amazing that they have no idea what's in the basement."

She chuckled, "More amazing than that that is we sometimes forget what's sitting right on top of us."

He sighed and looked around. "Specks of dust."

"And what are stars made of, Bobby, but so much dust swirling together, spinning faster and faster until something sparks inside it, igniting the whole thing. All life starts as a speck of dust. Each speck of dust is the centre of its own universe."

He laughed so suddenly that it startled her. "Sorry. It's just my old boss." Liz had just confirmed House's theory that he was the centre of the universe. "Maybe I do need a nap."

She smiled up at him, "Come on then, we'll just pick up something for the others and then you can go crash on one of the sofas for a few hours."

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"You never did tell me how you met him," Bobby reminded her as they finished up their selections at the sweet shop and the bakery, which did, indeed have pineapple muffins that morning.

Liz smiled, "Jack and I have a friend in common. While he was looking for him, he found me."

"Another old boyfriend?" he asked; he'd heard a few of Jack's old boyfriend stories.

Her smile turned into a laugh, "I don't think it ever got that far, although not for lack of trying on the Captain's part."

He laughed, too, holding the door for her as they left the centre. "Thanks, Liz. I needed this."

"You're quite welcome."

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Princeton, NJ (USA):

"Dr. Cameron… " Cuddy seemed startled to see Allison Cameron waiting in her office.

"Hi. I know it's just House getting to me, but I'm really starting to worry about Robert."

"What do you mean?"

"He left three days ago and I haven't heard from him. No one has. I know how it sounds," she added to Cuddy's look. "But he should have contacted someone… unless you've heard from him?" her tone was hopeful.

"No." Cuddy's tone told Allison that she wasn't the only person worrying. "If he doesn't call or contact someone in the next couple of days, I'll make some calls, but that's the best I can do. You… you may just have to face up to the fact that he doesn't want to be found."

"It's not just that he hasn't called or emailed anybody. It's that this Torchwood Institute he supposed went to go work for doesn't seem to exist."

The other woman frowned.

"Go ahead, look it up. There's nothing online but a bunch of stupid conspiracy websites."

"Conspiracy websites?"

"Crop circles, men in black, there's even some group the Queen Victoria founded after some Duke or Lord or something was killed under 'mysterious circumstances'. And some group calling itself LINDA."

"Linda?"

Allison shrugged, "I think… I think something's wrong. I what that sounds like, but I think something is really wrong."

"Let me make a few phone calls. Maybe I can get through to somebody. I'll let you know if I find anything, but I'm sure he's fine."

"Thanks."

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Three hours later, Lisa Cuddy had been told 'I'm sorry Ma'am, that's classified' so many times her head hurt.

Three days later, Allison broke into Robert's apartment and found the ring. Fresh tears stung at her eyes as she finally understood how badly she'd hurt him. She never would have guessed that he'd go so far as to buy a ring.

But maybe I should have realized. Maybe I should have remembered all those Tuesdays…

Tuesday, the random day he'd chosen to come up to her and tell her that he liked her. For a month of Tuesdays he'd asked her to go out with him and for a month of Tuesdays she'd turned him down, after having broken off their sexual affair because he told her he liked her.

He was right, she had feelings for puppies and for people she'd never even met, so of course she had feelings for him. That's what scared her. It scared her even more that she felt so empty and lost and alone without him.

That I love him and I want him to come home…

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Cardiff, Wales (UK):

The tree came up fast and hard against Bobby's spine. The six foot tall 'bug' came at him harder and faster. He just managed to duck out of its way before it body slammed the tree right where he'd been standing.

"I don't suppose the cavalry's on its way?" He asked into the com while the insect-like alien shook itself, recovering its senses a lot faster than he had after the collision with the same tree.

"We're not far," Ianto called back.

Not far was probably too far. Right. He ducked another hit and pulled the syringe full of sedative out of his bag, along with the stun gun. It was time to prove to himself that he could do this job…

By the time Ianto and Jack arrived on the scene, Bobby was leaning up next to the large, unconscious insect. He was out of breath, and had a few new bruises, but he was victorious. "This time," he grinned up at Jack, "You carry it back to the SUV."

The Captain laughed, "Just as long as we're clear who does the paperwork."

Ianto shot him a look and offered Bobby his hand. "So what is that thing, anyway?" he asked Jack.

"Looks like a Foamasi, although usually they're a peaceful species."

"Apparently he didn't get the memo," Ianto drawled as Jack hefted the thing up over his shoulders.

Bobby followed them back to the vehicle where Gwen was waiting, having been manning the computer in case they lost sight of the alien and needed to track it.

She looked up as they approached, "I just got another one of those spontaneous human combustion spike energy readings."

"For the last time, there's no such thing," Jack dropped the bug at her feet.

Gwen made a face, "What's that?" she asked in disdain.

"Never mind," said Jack. "Talk to me about that energy reading."

She swiveled the monitor in his direction so he could see it for himself, "The police haven't been notified yet."

He turned to Ianto and Gwen, "You two get our insectoid friend here back to the Hub and we'll go check this out. Sorry, Bobby," he added when he realized that the medic had yet to get a full night's sleep.

The other man just nodded and reached past Gwen for the thermos of Ianto's coffee. "Give me enough caffeine and I'll be fine."

"I knew I liked you," Jack grinned in return. His expression softened when his gaze settled on Ianto's face. "See you when I get back."

Ianto just nodded, his expression a near carbon copy of Jack's. "Careful out there."

"Always."