Disclaimer: Torchwood & Doctor Who Characters are the property of the BBC.
A/N: My my, it has been a long time. I apologise sincerely. And with time, a whole new series of Doctor Who and Torchwood has passed. So beware if my story doesn't tie in with them; it is a deliberate action.
Spoiler: For Doomsday [DW] and Adam [TW Season 2], Fragments [TW Season 2]
Worth The Risk- Chapter 7
Ianto had endured all types of trauma throughout his life, physical and psychological. He was beaten during school for being smaller than other kids, he'd been living with next to no money when his job applications were constantly rejected, he was beaten when he was an adult for no other reason than he was walking through the wrong area in Cardiff, Lisa, having false memories implanted in his brain. And just when everything seemed to be going smoothly for him; a steady job, a handful of close friends, a loving relationship with his boss, this new condition blew everything away. His standards of pain had just been lifted to ultimum levels, one no human should ever feel. It felt like he was being held five feet away from a thrashing fire on the inside, but his skin was close to hypothermic levels and his teeth clattered together with such force that it would have been no surprise if his teeth began to chip away.
Not to mention the pain of having to hear from the Doctor, the very prestigious and well-known myth in Torchwood, thanks to Jack, that was supposed to be some sort of walking encyclopaedia that he didn't know, had absolutely no idea what was wrong with Ianto. If the Doctor couldn't help him, what chance did he have of survival?
"What do you mean you have absolutely no idea?!" Jack was on the verge of ripping his hair out, which was saying something.
"Jack, these symptoms don't fit any biological pattern I have seen," The Doctor looked from Ianto's bulbous, blackened legs to his blood stained torso and then his bluish arms and fingertips.
"So, these symptoms are completely new to you?"
"No. I have seen these symptoms before; every symptom Ianto has, but in different cases."
"Owen said that they're all symptoms relating to brain cancer patients." Jack left his team with Ianto and led the Doctor out of the guest room and back towards the main area of the Hub.
"That may have been the case before I arrived. But his swollen legs which are black, as if they've been burned, and then his icy cold skin. His body should be one temperature, not hot and cold."
"So what cases does his symptoms come from?" Jack asked.
"Well, his blue skin and temperature obviously comes from terrestrial hypothermia. Has he been in contact with extremely cold conditions?" The Doctor and Jack stepped over the puddles of melted ice cubes and walked into Jack's office.
"Doctor, this is Cardiff. But even so, even I know that there is nothing around here that could cause that." Jack gestured to the couch and then sat in his own chair behind his desk. The Doctor chose to remain standing, and turned slowly after inspecting every inch of Jack's office.
"Oh, I dunno," he said, looking closely at some mathematical equations Toshiko had drawn up and stuck on Jack's wall, "Doesn't Torchwood have a giant freezer? Perhaps to keep captured aliens and the like inside. Give them more of a feel of their natural habitat while they're imprisoned in another?"
"Would you stop with the cheap shots?" Jack insisted. "This isn't about Torchwood. This is about helping Ianto."
"You're right. This is about helping Ianto. But before I can help, I just want to know one thing. Did you join Torchwood before or after you realised Rose had died?" The Doctor said solemnly, with a hint of harshness in his tone.
Jack winced. He imagined her perfectly round face, whose cheeks stood out every time she smiled. Oh, that smile. It lit up the room and people couldn't help but to smile back. Her brown eyes could be filled with such fire, and then quickly doused with compassion and kindness. Her actions spoke louder than her cockney English accent, and the world seemed a bit less bright without her. Rose Tyler, the angel. "I had joined before I had heard of Rose's death. But it tore me up inside something bad…it still does." Jack repressed the memory of that day that he read Rose and Jackie's name on the list of the missing, assumed dead. He wanted to ask what happened, but was cut off.
" Ianto's bizarre skin pigmentation in his legs derives from a disease from the planet Orycical. Actually, it comes from a fatal bird on that planet," Now, the Doctor took a seat on the couch. "This bird carries a toxic poison in it's beak that is transmitted through the skin pigments of a human if they are pecked by it, turning the skin black, starting with the feet."
Jack was dumbfounded. "A bird?"
"Precisely. Did you happen to catch a maekrica spasiptomis morte recently and just happened to mistake it for a common Iris?"
"Ianto isn't a huge bird enthusiast."
"So, how does he cope with a large pterodactyl living here?"
"You noticed it?"
"Well, my skills of observing the minute living pattern of a pterodactyl isn't too good, but the large droppings that it leaves behind are very obvious," the Doctor pointed out.
Jack rolled his eyes and sighed. "Great. We'll be smelling that for weeks."
"The odour emanating from Ianto's now decaying body will over-power that."
"Decaying?"
"When a human is pecked by maekrica spasiptomis morte, their skin begins to decay before the toxin reaches the major organs." Jack remained silent. "Ianto will literally be falling to pieces before he is dead," the Doctor forced himself to say. He could see the horror building up in Jack's blue eyes, and he was only beginning to understand how much Ianto means to him.
"Is there anything that can be done to reverse it?" Jack tried to erase the vivid images of Ianto's beautiful porcelain skin becoming plagued and haggard.
"There are medicines and treatments available back on Orycical. They keep the disease quarantined, so other planets never know of it. But, because Ianto's case is vicious and unpredictable, we can't estimate if the medicine will reverse the disease's effects or possibly be a catalyst for other symptoms to arise."
His office seemed to become much smaller. Jack was trying to maintain a stable breathing pattern whilst trying to comprehend the information he was just given. A long moment passed without either saying anything.
"What about…Ianto's…other…symptoms?"
"The seizures are a clear indicator of some foreign electrical activity going on in his brain. Unless, Ianto's has a history of seizures."
Jack recalled the incident with a "team member", Adam, who existed by inserting himself as a memory within each every-one else's memories. Ianto had stumbled across who Adam really was, or who he really wasn't and as such Adam had implanted shocking images of Ianto killing innocent women as a warning to not tell the others. "There was a particular incident where Ianto's memories were manipulated. Could that have anything to do with it?"
The Doctor shrugged. "Possibly. The brain is delicate and having to deal with these new memories and then having to fit them in may have added some unwanted stress on it."
"…You don't want to know how that happened?" Jack said, puzzled.
"Nope." He quickly replied. "I'm trying to keep myself and Torchwood fairly separate. And at the moment, it's not going too well…Think of it as me being kind."
Jack grumbled. 'What did I say about the cheap shots?" The Doctor shrugged innocently as Jack stood up from his desk. "Follow me."
Silently, Jack once again found himself leading the Doctor through his Hub. He didn't mind it though. For once, he felt like he had more authority over him.
Shut up! That's Torchwood's way of thinking!
"To assess the problem," Jack said, walking down the stairs to the infirmary, "you might want to know the source." He held up the golden trinket box, showing the Doctor, who fished out his glasses from his trench coat pocket, the large crack.
"Talk about workplace misconduct. Some-one threw this at Ianto?" The Doctor attempted to joke, but received no laughter. "Sorry."
"This washed through the Rift a few days ago and ended up in Cardigan Bay. It was so cold that it burnt the skin and melted plastic and we haven't been able to compile much information on it. Our archives don't even tell us it's origin—"
"But this might." Toshiko came strolling down the stairs with the "locator" in her hands.
"How do you even know what it is?" Both Jack and the Doctor waited for an answer.
She launched into a long progression filled with the technological and extraterrestrial jargon that only employees of Torchwood could understand. Of course, it was Toshiko, the little genius who built a sonic resonator from incorrect planning and got herself locked up in UNIT for it; she had quite an eye for problem solving.
"But, we don't know whether the locator has the trinket box's planet of origin on record. It's like a huge database, really."
Jack tossed without reverence the trinket box to Tosh who awkwardly caught it in her left hand. She instinctively brought her right hand to help steady her catch and there was the distinct clink of metal on metal.
"You know, I always thought Torchwood would be one for protocol and the proper procedure of handling extraterrestrial objects…" The Doctor commented, raising his eyebrow at Jack.
"What? And the last of the Timelords is, as well?" Jack thought about how the Doctor presented himself as a diplomat, always trying to be the mediator between two opposing sides, usually himself and some other race affected by the horrifying Time War, being so noble as to never pick up a gun or weapon, and comparing that with his extremely ostentatious personality.
I suppose being the last of his kind doesn't warrant such a need to be as observant as his ancestors.
The high-pitched sounds coming the "locator" are what broke Jack from his thoughts. Toshiko had set the trinket box down on the metal infirmary table and had begun scanning it. Minutes went passed as Jack, the Doctor and Toshiko eagerly for the "locator" to come up with a result.
The hologram had begun…
This is it…
The luminescent blue light coming from the hologram began to spell out the trinket box's profile…
With this, we can found out what exactly is wrong with Ianto without second-guessing. We can hop in the Doctor's TARDIS and fly there in a matter of seconds and grab ourselves medicine, and Ianto can start getting better by today…I'll have him back, soon.
There was so much anticipation in the room that it felt like every-one was two feet off the ground. They needed this result; Ianto needed this result. For all Jack knew, which wasn't very much in terms of Ianto's illness, he was getting worse by the day, and all he wanted now more than ever was to lie in bed in Ianto's apartment in the better suburbs of Cardiff, cradling Ianto as he lay on his chest and catching the light wind that blew through the window into the bedroom.
It would've been the perfect ending to such a hectic week. But unfortunately, another hectic week was lined up to begin immediately, as the locator displayed:
PLANET OF ORIGIN: UNKNOWN
For a word that generally doesn't sound very harsh, each time it disappeared and reappeared felt like Jack was being shot, and he was quite familiar with the experience. It felt like he had dropped the two feet, but was continuing to fall through the floor to the centre of the earth and his face grew hotter with anger. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't. At least, not in front of the Doctor and Toshiko. At Torchwood, Jack was known for his cool façade. This would not be the best time for him to lose it.
Toshiko was also bummed. It hurt her to see Ianto going through so much pain and not being able to get any help.
The Doctor, however, was not. In fact, it would have seemed mighty offensive to see him as he beamed. The Doctor, although not entirely familiar with the "locator" had known that it would've been highly unlikely for it to come up with a match. Instead, whilst Jack and Tosh were eagerly waiting, the Doctor was contemplating.
"You say that the "locator is like a database?" The Doctor's voice had a hint of hope in it, compared to the gloomy atmosphere that they all stood in.
It was Jack who answered. "Well, yes. When we found it, it had thousands of planets on record and it could take scans and trace where alien artefacts came from. We'd forgotten it until now."
"Well, some databases not only can tell where objects are from, but they can determine where they've been." The Doctor placed emphasis on the last word and watched Jack's and Tosh's face to see their response. They both had caught on to what the Doctor was suggesting and were waiting keenly for the second half of the explanation.
"And I know where an even bigger database is." Keeping true to his character, the Doctor unexpectedly bolted up the stairs towards every-one's workstations. Jack had forgot Gwen and Owen, whom had been working silently. They both simultaneously looked up to see the procession of the Doctor, followed by Jack and then further back was Toshiko, who was obviously finding it difficult to run in her shoes.
"Gwen, open the door!" Jack yelled.
He had barely finished his command before the steel door had began rolling open.
"Where are you guys off to?" Owen asked.
"Just stay here and look after Ianto. I'll be back!" He replied as he chased the Doctor out of the Hub and into the elevator.
Where have I heard that before? Gwen and Owen both thought in unison.
Toshiko, who was not as fast or equipped to run, had to literally leap between the closing doors of the elevators before they shut.
They ascended quickly into the public office of "Torchwood". Jack's stride faltered as he moved out of the elevator into where Ianto often worked. As he ran past the desk, he saw a coffee mug and a stopwatch laying next to the computer keyboard.
We will use it again, he promised.
The light from the sun shocked Toshiko and Jack, whom had been working through the night and into the next day to find anything about Ianto's mysterious ailment. Time had a tendency to mean little when working in Torchwood, with the exception of countdowns, which the Torchwood team had faced many times. It was only when Jack recognised the flaps of the Doctor's brown trench coat did he see exactly where he was running to.
It was as if a spark had ignited within Jack as he bounded off after Jack toward it. He knew exactly what the Doctor meant when he had said he knew where a "bigger database" was.
The Doctor reached the TARDIS first and reached into his brown trench coat to find his key. He found it and pulled it out, and was surprised to find in his hand two TARDIS keys. He knew exactly whom the second key had belonged to, but this was not the time to reminisce about the good ol' days.
By the time that he had unlocked the door, Jack had caught up and they both entered the familiar blue box. The Doctor continued through to its main control area, a circular desk with hundreds of buttons and levers on it with the Time Vortex that sprouted through the middle and went upwards which produced the bluish haze that the inside of the TARDIS basked in.
Jack had forgotten about the awesomeness effect that the TARDIS had on people. It's bigger on the inside. He stood, remembering when he was a welcomed traveller in this vessel. He wasn't so sure how welcome he was now.
The wind was knocked out of his as something heavy crashed into him from behind. His was sent tumbling onto the floor, smothered by Toshiko.
"Owwww…"
"Oh, Jack, I'm so sorry. I didn't—"
"It's okay, Tosh."
They both heaved themselves. Jack walked forward toward the Doctor, but this time, it was Tosh who stood and looked in awe.
Jack joined the Doctor at the control panel and noticed the he wasn't staring at any of the buttons, but at Toshiko, whose eyes were darting every which way.
"Bet you ten quid she says it." The Doctor whispered.
"You're on."
They both watched Toshiko as her eyes danced around the TARDIS. "It's…It's…It's bigger on the…inside!" The Doctor and Jack exploded into cheers and groans.
"See, no matter just how much of a genius you are, no-one can ever ready themselves for it," The Doctor laughed. "I'll grab that money from you later. Now, Tosh, hand me the "locator" please."
Tosh slowly walked up the ascending ramp and joined Jack and handed the alien artefact to the Doctor.
"What do you plan to do?" she asked.
"Oh, a little bit of jiggery pokery," he mused. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and shined it on the "locator", which started to project its blue hologram. He ran around the control panel and thrust the locator into a small crevasse next to a one of many levers. The TARDIS immediately reacted, and the it began to whirl into motion.
Toshiko, not ready for the bumpy journey was thrown into the seat and she held on for dear life as she saw Jack and the Doctor hanging onto the control panel, smiling excitedly.
With one final twirl to the left, the TARDIS stopped abruptly. She was never planning on doing that again. How on earth did he get such good balance?
After that, I doubt we're on earth anymore. Over the rainbow?
"Where are we?" She asked.
"Come on," the Doctor indicated with a flick of the head toward the door. Toshiko slowly stood up from the seat, her legs still shaking from the ride and stood next to the door.
"Have you ever been off earth before?" The Doctor asked casually.
"I've been inside a UNIT holding facility."
"Well, I think you should do the honours."
Tosh looked up at the Doctor, who was looking very smug, as he held out his arm in a gesture to open the door.
Tosh breathed as her heart raced. She took hold of the door handle and gripped it tightly. She had always wanted this day to come. Despite finding new alien artefacts every day, there was no way she could've prepared herself for this moment, because she didn't think it was possible.
"Toshiko, I welcome you to—"
She opened the door.