Disclaimer: Torchwood and its characters are owned by the BBC, not by me.
Worth The Risk
Chapter 5
Jack watched his lover sleeping soundly in one of the guest bedrooms, which was hardly ever used. After his seizure upstairs, he was uncertain as whether to move him from the autopsy table so soon afterwards, so Ianto was left on the cold metal table for about an hour, during which Jack never left his side, despite the towering mound of paperwork yet to be completed.
"How's he doing?" Came Gwen's comforting voice from the doorway.
"He's just sleeping. Hasn't moved since his seizure. He was been sleep talking though, which is comforting."
"Comforting? How is that comforting?" Gwen said when she came inside the door and pulled up a chair next to her boss.
"Having spent almost every night with him, I think I know what he does in his sleep," he said with a smirk.
There came an awkward silence afterwards, but Jack seemed unaffected by it.
"Jack, there was something I wanted to ask you…"
Jack continued to stare at the sleeping Ianto. Gwen continued with her question.
"What did you mean when you said to Owen that he wasn't the "type of Doctor" you needed anymore?" Gwen had heard Jack mention this mysterious "Doctor" several times since she was recruited to Torchwood, but was never given any solid information about whom he actually was.
"It means exactly like it sounds. This is something beyond what any normal human doctor can treat."
Gwen shifted uncomfortably. "Do you have a plans on how you intend to get him here?"
"I have a hunch, but it's no guarantee that it'll work." Abruptly, Jack got up from his chair and left the room, whipping away a tear as he did so.
Once again, the main area of Torchwood was silent; Owen and Toshiko were out getting lunch. Jack walked directly into his office straight to his computer in the corner. He brought up a web browser and typed in "The Doctor TARDIS". Within a split second, the computer had come up with 248, 635 results, most of which were about different doctors, with no mention of the TARDIS.
He went back into the search bar and added in the word "Timelord". After a longer wait for results, the computer came up with 6 results.
Jack clicked every link, scanning the information that was brought to the screen. Four of the six had absolutely nothing to do with the Doctor; one link was even about a giraffe in Sydney, Australia. The final link had much more promising information relating to the Doctor. There was no name or contact left anywhere on the web page, just various pieces of information about the lonely wanderer, with no information enclosed on how you could contact him.
Jack slumped back into his chair and sighed.
It was a long shot.
And then it struck him. That imaginary light bulb above his head immediately lit up and shone brightly. Leaving his office in a flurry, Jack strode down the stairs in the direction of the archives. He rarely came down here; nobody ever came down here. Except for Ianto. Quite regularly, if there wasn't anything important to do, Ianto was down in the cold and murky corridors of the archives, organising it all; his personal hobby.
Jack recalled Ianto telling him about an alien device in particular. A device that has the ability to trace the origin of any object. When it was tested, back when Suzie was still employed in Torchwood, this device- called the "locator" which was named by Owen, came back with some interesting results.
The team tested a bizarre banana shaped gadget, which resembled something like a shrunken bow. The "locator" proved that his object had come from a planet in another galaxy called Klaxucious, home to the Hoadilites, a civilisation that had the ability to see far away distances due to their extremely long necks.
Jack navigated his way hopelessly through the dark and mouldy smelling corridors. Four small fluorescent lights cemented into the wall illuminated each corridor, which was no way near the amount of light needed, considering the length of some of the walkways.
He felt like he was halfway to London before Jack found the right room. You could easily tell Ianto had been down here, judging by the boxes neatly stacked according to a certain characteristic. Back when the "locator" had been tested, Jack had specifically asked Ianto to place the "locator" in a box by itself at the far end of the first shelf.
And he had been true to his word.
There, at the far end of the first shelf, sat a lone box, with a thin layer of dust accumulating on the top. Jack snatched up the box and removed the lid and to reveal the locator, unmoved in several years and now called upon in the desperation of finding the Doctor.
Jack lightly jogged back, using his photographic memory to guide him back to the main area of Torchwood. A crack in the wall turn left, puddle in the middle of the floor go straight ahead, busted light bulb turn right. Running straight past the water tower into his office and retrieved the mysterious hand in the glass jar. Unscrewing the top, he stuck his hand into the bubbling liquid and pulled out the Doctor's hand. Activating the "locator", he scanned the Doctor's hand up and down and waited for the "locator" to get some results. It was not uncommon for the "locator" to not have any record of the object's origin, so Jack prayed extra hard that there was a result.
After many minutes waiting, the "locator" projected a hologram with its results.
ORIGIN: GALLIFREY
LOCATION: PLANET BARCELONA
Jack knew the planet Barcelona quite well. Of all the peculiar sights of this exotic planet, the one thing that continues to amaze him are the dogs without noses.
It's just so…unearthly! He remembered thinking.
Jack began fumbling around with the "locator" feeling its surface to find one specific spot in particular that you couldn't actually see. The glorious thing about the "locator" is that it held an extra-added bonus: the ability to send a transmission to the planet's main control tower or something of that nature if you were able to feed the "locator" the correct coordinates. Jack ran his forefinger over the indentation he was looking for and pressed it. For alien technology, it seemed surprisingly human.
"This transmission is for the Doctor. He travels in a blue police box known as the TARDIS- Time And Relative Dimension In Space. This is Captain Jack Harkness representing the Torchwood Institute from the planet Earth. I repeat this message is for the Doctor. Doctor, we are in need of your help. We need urgent medical assistance, and only you can provide the information we need. It is of the upmost importance that you get to Earth as soon as you can. Some-one could die."
Jack ended the transmission there and punched in the coordinates for the planet Barcelona. He then rushed back down to the guest rooms to tell Gwen and the sleeping Ianto the news.
He reached the guest room door and pushed it open and was greeted with a bizarre sight. On Ianto's bed most have been twenty blood soaked tissues, with Gwen holding one more to Ianto's nose.
"What happened?"
"I don't know. His nose just started gushing with blood and I've been here for the last five minutes trying to stop the blood flow," Gwen replied, replacing the now blood soaked tissue with a new, clean one.
"Hasn't he woken up?"
"No. I've tried waking him up, but he's not responding. But, he's put a pulse and he's breathing."
"Ianto…" Jack whispered in his ear, but caused Ianto's eyes to flutter slightly. He whispered in his ear again, but this time, Ianto didn't respond.
Jack eased Gwen's hand away from Ianto's nose.
"What are you doing?" she protested.
Just as she described, blood came free willingly gushing out of both of Ianto's nostrils.
"Where is this blood coming from?" Gwen wondered, reapplying pressure.
"I'll go upstairs to get more tissues and some ice," Jack said, jogging back toward the main of Torchwood. He ran straight to the both, located near the armoury and pulled a box of tissues and the first aid kit from underneath the sink placed them at the base of the stairs before he went up them, taking three stairs at a time to made his way to the fridge, grabbing a tea towel off the table. He poured all the ice that was in the freezer into the tea cloth to make an ice pack. He turned around to head back down the stairs, not concentrating on where he was going, and bumped into something solid, causing him to stumble backwards and fall over. He looked up to see an unfamiliar face in front of him, a tall man wearing a pin-stripe suit and a long brown trench coat.
"Gosh, Jack, you should really watch where you're going next time," the mysterious man said, looking at his surroundings rather than at Jack.
"Do I know you?" Jack said off the ground.
The man smiled, revealing a pair of straight what teeth. "I'm the Doctor."
A/N: Apologies that it has taken this long to update. I'd like to thank those who added this story to their faves and also to those who reviewed. And special thanks to Lauren H for the inspiration. R&R! Thanks.