Worth The Risk

Chapter 3

Every few minutes or so, Captain Jack Harkness would glance at his watch. It seemed that the seconds hand was moving slower than ever, and he could've sworn that it moved backwards once or twice.

He yawned.

He wasn't used to this. To waiting. Usually, Torchwood arrived at a scene of crime within of few minutes of it coming to some-one's attention in the Hub, usually Tosh or Ianto. They'd sweep in, were able to clear the site of any unwanted police or detectives (the amateurs, Owen calls them), gather the relevant evidence with state-of-the-art technology (sometimes, extraterrestrial) and then retreat back to the Hub. Simple.

He gazed out at the expansion of cars stuck in the same traffic jam in the narrow two-way road. The darkness of the night made them all look the same colour. The rain pelted down and added an illustrious effect on the surface of the vehicles.

"Any new developments, Tosh?"

Tosh typed proficiently on her keyboard and brought up CCTV footage of the broken water pipe site.

"Not really," she said. "Almost half of the road is completely flooded, but some trucks have arrived and have started dredging the water. The pipe has been fixed, so it's just a matter of how fast the water is sucked up."

"And this rain certainly wouldn't be helping," Gwen added.

"How long do you think we'll be stuck here?" Jack asked.

Tosh chewed her bottom lip. "Approximately, a minimum of thirty minutes."

"And after hearing that, I'm just about willing to hop out and help the truckies me'self," said Owen.

Jack tried Ianto's mobile, but it went straight to voice mail, which was extremely rare. Something was happening in the Hub, which made Jack Harkness ever more anxious to return to their base.

---------------------------------------------------

Lisa smiled and revealed a set of white teeth. She looked just like she had before the battle of Canary Wharf. Before the whole cyberman business. When Ianto and herself were head over heels in love with each other. But it wasn't like that now.

"How are you…? I mean, how can you be…?" Ianto stammered between rapid breaths.

"Oh, Ianto," she cocked her head to one side and giggled, "don't look at me like that. You knew deep down that I wasn't going to remain gone forever."

Ianto dared to blink. "You're dead. I saw you die."

"That's right, I did die. Your buddies pumped me full of bullets," she said harshly.

"How can I see you?"

"You Welshmen. Always find fault in something fantastic. Aren't you happy that I'm here? That you can hold me once again?" She took a step forward.

"I must be hallucinating. This is…insane."

Lisa rolled her eyes. "Ianto, you're not hallucinating." There was an awkward pause. "I though you'd be happy to see me."

"Happy to see you?" He repeated. "You're dead! I shouldn't even be seeing you."

"Has your love for me changed so much in the time that I've been away?"

Ianto thought of Jack and his friends firing their weapons at "Lisa" down in the basement. He remembered how he felt when he looked at Jack. He hasn't experienced such feelings since. Who would've thought that in a space of a few months, Ianto's hatred and malice towards Jack transformed into love and affection?

"Have I been replaced already?" she asked coldly.

"What do you mean?"

"Don't be coy with me, Ianto. I know all about your love affair with Jack."

"Affair?"

"You and I never properly broke-up, so it's still an affair."

"What Jack and I have between us is more than just an affair."

"Is it love?"

Ianto paused and quietly whispered yes.

Lisa looked as if she were about to cry. But what Ianto said was true; his love for Jack is his energy source; his oxygen. He can't live without it.

She stalked forwards and stopped in front of him. "Can he do this?"

Lisa embraced Ianto in a spellbinding kiss. It wasn't hard or forceful; it was soft and gentle.

He pulled backwards and looked her deep in the eyes. "I don't know how I'm seeing you, or how you came to be here. But, I do know that you're dead. I witnessed your death, which soon became the turning point in my life. I've moved on and found joy in my life again and let go of your memory. But, if your memory can't let go of me, then I have nothing but pity in my heart for you."

Lisa remained silent. Her beautiful brown eyes swelled up with tears, but she fought to hold them back.

Ianto turned to make his way back up to the autopsy room. He stopped at the door to have one final look at Lisa, but was met with the face of something else. He instinctively repulsed backwards and tripped over his own feet.

"Then we are not compatible."

---------------------------------------------------

"Okay, what's up?" Owen asked, sitting up in his seat.

Jack raised an eyebrow. "I don't follow."

"Why are you anxious?"

"I'm not anxious," Jack said quickly.

"As if. Your eyes are moving every which way, your whole body is tensed and hardly moving, you're checking your watch every two minutes and continuously trying to get in contact with some-one on the phone."

"Do the words "vicious sedated alien" ring any bells?"

"Hold up a minute. Lets just highlight a very significant word in that previous sentence. Sedated."

Gwen smirked in the back. She loved Owen's sense of humour. It was something that Rhys didn't possess, to a certain extent.

"Ianto will be there when we get back. And then you two can do…whatever it is that you two do, which of course, we don't see and hopefully won't be seeing in the future."

"Oh, Owen, don't be some homophobic," Gwen complained from the back.

Owen turned to face her. "Excuse me. I'm one of the last people you should be calling homophobic."

The extensive procession of cars in front of them began to roll forwards, slowly at first but gradually picked up speed.

"Oh thank God. I thought I was gonna pee myself," Gwen cried.

"Thanks for the update."

"I don't care how many speeding tickets you'd get, just speed back to the Hub!"

The black SUV tore past the remainder of trucks dredging up the last of the water.

Jack floored the accelerator as soon as the streets were empty of any pedestrian vehicles.

We're coming, Ianto, Jack thought. We're coming.

---------------------------------------------------

Ianto desperately scrambled backwards to escape Lisa's cyberman fingers coming towards. He stopped for moment when he blindly struck the bottom stair, but this was just long enough for Lisa to grab hold of his shirt and hurl like a discus over the other side of the room. He landed with a thud on his stomach and groaned as he tried to stand.

"Lisa, please," he pleaded.

He felt both hands take hold to the back of his suit jacket and was lunged into the nearest concrete wall. Lisa ignored his cries and continued to fling him about him about the room without a care.

"We are not compatible. You will be deleted."

With the strength he could muster, he charged at Lisa in a hope to push her into a cell. In a blink of an eye, she disappeared right in front of him. Ianto ran straight into an oncoming wall and, once again, everything went black.