Somehow Ianto managed to make dinner appealing for everyone out of military rations and leftovers. Jack and John had us laughing, but there were awkward silences when we would remember that the world was crumbling and so many of the people we loved were unaccounted for. I didn't eat much. When it wasn't worry distracting me, it was Ianto. He kept staring at me with an odd mixture of sadness and longing.
After half an hour or so, I excused myself and wandered away from the table, not really watching where I was going... not even caring. Behind me Jack almost said something, but John shook his head. It was subtle, but I saw it and was grateful to him for it. I wound up in the firing range, venting my frustrations on paper targets, wooden targets, everything not alive I could point a gun at. I was raging at them, screaming, not bothering with any kind of protective gear, tears streaming down my face. I had slumped to the floor, two empty guns in front of me, when Ianto finally came in.
He hunkered down behind me, wrapping his arms around me gently, cautiously. "Hey," I said softly.
"Feel any better?" he asked me in his soft, gruff voice.
"No," I admitted, drying my eyes.
"Me neither," he admitted, lifting my hair away from my neck and pressing his lips to the tender spot below my right earlobe, making me gasp. "Sage... I don't know how much longer I can do this," he murmured.
"What?" I blurted, thinking he meant to break things off between us.
"I don't know how much longer I can keep myself in check around you," he admitted.
"Then don't, Ianto," I told him, trembling in his arms.
"I have to," he told me. "I promised."
"Promised whom?" I pressed.
"Myself," he whispered. "I promised myself to take it slower with you. I promised myself it would be beautiful."
"It will be," I whispered back, another traitor tear slipping from my eyes. "Help me up, Ianto? I'd like to go back now. Check the readings. Check the television. Anything."
"All right," he conceded, and that's what we did. We went back up to the others. Went back to our duty. It was, for the moment, the best we could do.
"Hello, John," I murmured, not looking up from Jack's monitor.
"Anything yet?" he asked me, pulling up a chair beside me.
"Static, mostly," I told him. "That and 'stay in your homes, stay out of your cars'... Nothing new for an hour now."
"You're hiding," he pointed out the obvious. "Who from?"
"Leave it, Johnny."
"Eye-Candy," he guessed, pulling one of my Sterling roses from the vase and tickling my face with the petals. I pulled it from his hand, only succeeding in cutting us both with the spines.
"Oh, shit, Johnny, I'm sorry," I blurted, even though I was cut far worse than he was.
"Let me see," he told me, forcing my hand open. I had two long gashes and a puncture to his one small scratch. He very deliberately laid his bleeding palm over mine, wound to wound.
"What are you doing?"
"Making something right," he said enigmatically.
"I'm lost," I admitted.
"Torchwood DNA," he said. "There's a bit of each of them in my blood. Jack and Gwen and Eye-Candy, Toshiko and the doctor... Owen. Now a bit of you. And now they'll live on in you, too," he said.
"How did you get Torchwood DNA?" I asked him.
"Ask Jack," he told me. "It's not a pretty story." He then proceeded to tear a swatch of cloth from his shirt and bind my hand with it.
"John!"
"Not very hygienic," he said apologetically, "but it'll do for the moment. You're dripping. Come on."
"But your shirt!"
"It's material. Doesn't matter. Come on."
"You've changed, Johnny," I remarked as I followed him downstairs.
"Yeah, well, don't put me up for canonization just yet. It's just a shirt, not one of my limbs," he quipped.
"What the hell happened?" Jack asked as we reached the foot of the stairs.
"Roses have thorns, apparently," John said.
"D'ya think? Let me see," he told me. I meekly held out my hand. I was bleeding enough to have soaked through the cloth. "You need stitches, Sage. How did this happen?"
"Roses," I murmured, blanching. "Thorns. It's the thorns that make them beautiful," I whispered before fainting in Jack's arms.
"—wasn't being sarcastic, actually. Most Sterlings don't have thorns," John was saying to Jack, who was carefully stitching my wounded right palm.
"Ianto, irrigate again, please; I can hardly see what I'm doing," Jack said. "I know that, John," he then told the man who was fretting and pacing on the other side of the cot I was lying on. "Kind of surprised that you do, but never mind. Accidents happen."
"My fault," I said muzzily.
"Don't talk, Sage," Ianto murmured. "You nicked a vein in your wrist and you lost a lot of blood, but you're all right."
"Where's Owen?" I asked him, confused.
"She's really out of it," Jack murmured. Ianto looked like someone had just run over his dog.
"Was it '63?" I asked Jack.
"Was what 63?" he asked me, trying to concentrate very hard on putting me back together. He was trying hard not to cry, though.
"Last time you stitched me up. Bar fight," I reminded him. "I got stabbed. No anaesthetic."
"How'd she get stabbed?" John asked Jack.
"Protecting me," he replied. "Same as always. Got between me and this other guy twice her size. As if he could have hurt me."
"Hurts me," I murmured.
"What does, Sage?" Jack asked me.
"Every time you die," I murmured, starting to grey out again.
"No, Sage, don't you dare, you stay awake!" Ianto shouted, raging at me.
"Love you, Ianto," I whispered, drifting. "Sweet boy."
"Loud boy," John remarked. "Mouth, you open your eyes. You're scaring them. Damn it, you're scaring me, too."
"Can't tell him, Johnny," I murmured.
"Who?"
"Jack."
"What can't you tell him?"
"How he dies."
"Jack dies—"
"For forever," I whispered. "Don't tell him."
Jack stayed quiet, giving John a meaningful look, prompting him to ask me. "How does Jack die forever, Sage?"
"Saving us all," I whispered. "Long time from now. Long time. I'll die, too, when Jack dies. Last death for us both. I saw it. I'll feel him go. I'll still be young, like I am now. Still Sage with the Miranda Small face. But I can't live without Jack. Not after losing Ianto. My other heart will break and I'll just fade away... like a rose."
"How will you lose Ianto?" John asked me. Ianto was shaking his head at him. He didn't want to know.
"Ianto?" I called softly, frowning. "I can't feel my hand," I said, opening my eyes, coming out of the haze, the trance... I've seen the CCTV of it since and I'm still not sure what to call it. The thing is, I don't remember seeing what I was talking about. I don't know how or when any of us will die. "Oh... thorns," I remembered suddenly. "Poor Jack. I bet you miss Martha. When was the last time you played doctor? Back in '63, wasn't it?"
"You got between me and a knife," Jack said.
"As if you could ever die," I murmured. "You'll probably outlive the last of the Time Lords," I said. "Hi, Johnny. Is that Ianto's shirt?"
"Jack," Gwen called out. "Something's happening at UNIT. Code Red, Sontaran?"
"My dad," I blurted. "I should have known! Stupid Time War. Of course Sontarans. Shit!"
"Hold still, Sage," Jack told me gently. "Ianto, can you—"
"I can," John interrupted, seeing the look of panic on Ianto's face when Jack attempted to hand over the needle. There wasn't much left to stitch, but Ianto was no soldier. It wasn't something he'd ever had to do before. "Between us we can manage, right, Eye-Candy?" John said diplomatically.
"What the hell are Sontarans, Jack, and why does Sage say she should have known?" Gwen inquired.
"Warrior race," Jack explained as he went to the computer. "Clone warrior race."
"Like in bloody Star Wars?" Rhys blurted. "What next?"
"Sage thinks she should have known because of the components of the gas," Jack told Gwen, ignoring Rhys for the moment.
"But there's an unidentified substance. How would she have known?" Gwen asked him.
"If she'd finished school, she'd have seen through it right away, just like her father must have. They're not just gassing us, Gwen. They're converting our atmosphere."
"Into what?" she pressed.
"Clone soup. That unidentified substance must be what they use to feed the clones during their developmental stage. Is that right, Sage?" he said.
"Exactly right," I called out. "What's UNIT doing?"
"Something stupid. They're going to try to nuke them," he told me.
I chuckled.
"What's so funny?" Gwen asked. "What's funny about nuclear weapons?"
"For one, they won't even scratch a Sontaran ship," Jack told her.
"And for another, my dad won't let them launch, right Jack?" I put in.
Jack was about to say something when his interface with UNIT, which I'd hacked myself when Martha had gone off the screen, suddenly went blank. "What the...? Sage, UNIT's network just crashed."
"Did your dad do that?" Gwen put in.
"Nah, not his way," I said. "He likes to negotiate. We've got a mole. A clone mole."
"So it could be anybody?" Rhys asked.
"It's Martha, isn't it, Jack," I said.
"How long have you known?"
"An hour or so. I saw right before I went to watch the news. Why didn't you tell me she was back on the grid?"
"I wasn't sure if you knew a way past Tosh's deadlock lockdown," he admitted.
"I don't," I told him. "Not yet."
"Why didn't you tell me you knew?"
"Because I was too bloody pissed off at you," I admitted. "Is she at UNIT?"
"Before her GPS went back off the grid, yeah, that's where she went. Or where her clone went, anyway," he said.
"Thanks for not telling me, Jack," I said.
"Did she just thank him for lying to her?" John asked Ianto. He was nearly done with my hand.
"I believe she did. Yeah."
"Why do you sound relieved that Martha's been cloned, Sage? That's the maddest thing I've heard all week, and this has been one hell of a week," Gwen inquired.
"It means she's still alive," Jack explained. "Sontarans need to keep the original alive to maintain an effective operative. A clone with active, living memories."
"Wait, but that means the clone knows about us, Jack," Ianto pointed out.
"We're not a threat to the Sontarans," Jack said, sounding rather calm. "Torchwood One was, and they'd have taken them down, just like they're probably doing to UNIT right now, unless the Doctor got the fact that you can't beat a Sontaran in standard battle through their heads. We're cowards in their minds. Hiding in our little cave. They won't come after us unless the rest of the world falls and they succeed in turning Earth into a cloning base. In which case we're dead anyway."
"No," John put in. "In which case we get the hell off this rock. You lower your deadlock and I get us all the hell out of here."
"It won't come to that," I told him.
"Sage, you can't know—"
"My father will stop this. He has to. Even if it kills him, he'll find a way."
"Sounds like Jack, your father," he murmured, something akin to admiration in his voice.
"No, not really," I told him. "But his enemies had a name for him that might give you some idea of what he's capable of. They called him The Oncoming Storm."