Sorry for the long absence guys. I have no excuse. None. Just so you all don't get too confused, I've messed with the timeline a bit and put several years between Torchwood season 2 and COE. Lots of dialogue and whatnot straight from the episode here, but it's not quite canon. COE has to happen before we can move on to magic stuff though, so there it is.

Disclaimer: You all know exactly what's happening here.

Enjoy!

CHAPTER 8

It was the first of September, three weeks after the date they had chosen as his birthday. Ianto felt a tug on his sleeve and turned around. "Hey, Hayden. What is it?"

Hayden looked at the floor, nervous. He'd never really gotten the hang of telling his family when something was wrong, still worried about them being angry at him for it, despite all evidence to the contrary. He rubbed his arm and looked to the side, avoiding his Tad's face.

Ianto touched his arm gently. "Hayden, let's go sit down," and guided him towards the couch. "What is it, Bychan?"

Hayden still avoided looking up, but seemed to gain a bit of courage from sitting. "Well, I…" He swallowed. "Tom, he's…" Ianto tensed up a bit. He really didn't want to have to change medications again. "He's been… murmuring a lot. More than usual. He sounds pretty angry. Like… I… He keeps talking about a letter. 'He should have gotten the letter by now. Where is it?' He keeps saying that over and over."

"Shh, it's going to be okay. Hayden, you know that you're alright. We love you and we want you to come to us with these things. Always. It's not your fault."

Hayden nodded. "And… 'Maybe he's a squib.' He keeps saying that too."

Ianto rubbed his child's back comfortingly. "It's okay, Hayden. It's okay. You're not a squib, whatever that is, there isn't a letter, and whatever Tom says doesn't matter because you're our amazing boy. Alright?"

Hayden smiled a bit, nodding again.

"Okay, let's go talk to your Dad."

Hayden started to get up when he suddenly froze.

"Hayden?"

"Hayden?" Ianto said a little more frantically, gripping the child's arms. There was no reaction. "Jack!" He yelled. Nothing there either—he was probably at work already-, so Ianto took out his phone and sent a text. There's something wrong with Hayden. I'm calling his doctor.

And then he did, but was met with a busy signal.

Confused and worried, he checked for a pulse and breathing, then did the only thing he could think of—tried to get Hayden into a car so he could take him to a hospital. It was times like these that he missed Owen the most.

Breathing more quickly than normal, and his heart pounding out of his chest, Ianto found his keys and picked up his son to bring him to the car. He was in the process of trying to figure out how to buckle the eleven-year-old in when all of the boy's limbs relaxed and Ianto heard a surprised "Tad?"

The welshman's sigh of relief was huge and he hugged his son tightly, much to the boy's shock. "You froze, Hayden. We're going into the hub. Do you need me to grab anything from the house?"

ooo

"There's something wrong with the kids," Gwen said as soon as he walked in.

"What?" Ianto walked quickly over to where she was standing and looked over her shoulder, only for Jack to come in a few seconds later.

He saw Hayden and was obviously relieved. "Ianto, what happened? That text?"

"I got a busy signal, but he snapped out of it. It wasn't just him, though, look at this."

Jack picked up Hayden and came over. Looking at the screens.

"Fifteen road traffic accidents," Ianto said. "Reports coming in, RTAs in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg, Germany… Jack…" he looked over at Jack and their son.

"Seen anything like this before, Jack?" Gwen asked.

"No way. Kids." Jack shook his head. "Hey, you okay, Kiddo?" he asked the child in his arms.

Hayden nodded, looking confused, but then seemed to remember what he's talked to his tad about earlier and ducked his head down. "Well…"

Ianto caught on and stepped in. "There was an incident this morning, before this incident. It seems to be fine now though."

"What kind of incident?"

"The normal kind, Jack. He came to me though, and we talked about it, right, Bach?"

Hayden nodded, biting his lip.

"Do we need-"

"I don't think so."

"Okay, I'm going to go call UNIT then," he said, putting Hayden back on the floor. "See if we can figure this thing out."

Ianto nodded.

"Oh, and there's a doctor that'll probably follow me. Dark hair, darkish skin, a bit thin, blue scrubs. Keep an eye on him if he shows."

ooo

When Jack came back, Ianto and Gwen were still trying to research, while Hayden sat on a couch and read something in some kind of alien hieroglyphics, giggling at it.

"Of all the times for Martha Jones to go on holiday. I get sergeant Grunt. I'm talking to a sergeant." He smiled at his kid and looked back at Gwen, who was trying to hand him something.

"Don't you dare phone her. She's on her honeymoon." Jack rolled his eyes and looked at the folder that was now in his hands. "What did they say?"

"UNIT bade in Washington has run some tests on a couple of kids: brain scans, blood sugar, checking for radiation. Nothing."

Ianto looked in on the pair quickly. "You're right, he's there."

Jack followed him back to the computers, laughing victoriously. "I said so!"

"What's he doing?"

"Waiting, just like you said. He's been there twenty minutes." The man was pacing across the screen.

"Persistent."

"Good sign."

"Dogmatic."

"Always a plus."

Gwen cursed. "Never work with a couple, you two sound like twins. Now tell me who he is."

"Presumably, he's the new recruit."

"Dr. Patanjali. He saw the hitchhiker."

"We do need a doctor."

"You just let him follow you?" Gwen asked.

"Ask about Torchwood and most people point towards the bay," Ianto responded.

"Oh, you bastards." Jack smiled. "That's exactly what you did to me the first time we met. Well, sod that."

Jack left when she went out to talk to the guy and went back over to Hayden. "You wanna tell me about it?"

"It… he's talking again. But he's just so agitated. It sounds like he's confused. I'm sorry, Dad."

"It's okay, kid. You know that we don't care about what Tom says. You're you, and he's just a bully. Now, what's going on in the story that you think's so funny?"

Hayden laughed again and then started telling the story. He was mid-sentence when he froze again.

"Hayden? Hayden?" Wide-eyed, he yelled, "Ianto!"

At the same time, Gwen tapped into the comms, "Jack, it's happening again!"

"We know! Get down here! Both of you!"

Ianto rushed in and Jack said, "Help me get him to the medbay, would you?"

The two had gotten him onto the table when Hayden opened his mouth and started screaming, then Gwen and the doctor appeared. The "We, we, we," chant started and Jack looked horrified, the doctor looking curious and in awe of his surroundings all at the same time.

"We are, we are, we are," started up and none of them had any idea what to do.

"Gwen, go watch the cameras. See what's going on outside."

"We are coming, we are coming, w—filthy squib! Didn't even qualify for Hogwarts! No wonder… brain so easily infiltrated. Mud—are coming."

"What the hell was that?" Ianto said.

Jack was too shocked to comment.

"We are coming, we are coming, we are coming," and then it stopped. "Dad? Tad? Did it happen again? What's going on?"

"Yes, it happened again, Bach, but you're okay."

"Hayden, do you remember anything?"

Hayden shook his head frantically.

Gwen was replaying video on the computer screens now. "None of the other children said what he did…"

Jack bit his cheek and frowned, thinking hard as he comforted his child as well as he could. "Research. We need to do research. Do a brain scan, check blood. Hayden… you're going to be fine."

Hayden nodded. "I know."

Ianto smiled slightly and brushed Hayden's hair back away from his face, revealing the slightly aggravated scar on his forehead.

Dr. Patanjali had been ignoring a steady beeping for a solid two minutes now and only just seemed to come to his senses. "Oh! They need me back at the hospital." He looked up guiltily.

"He doesn't know the equipment," Jack said. "Give him some retcon and let him go."

"Jack, we need him."

"No we don't."

"Sir-"

"Fine! Gwen, help him figure out what he's doing." Jack squeezed his son's hand tighter for a second before stepping back. "I need to find out what UNIT thinks." And then he ran up to his office.

"I know you think you're needed, Rupesh, but you'll do more here. We can't fix it until we know what it is," Gwen said calmly.

"Right," he replied. "Right, okay." The beeping finally stopped and he stepped down into the med bay.

ooo

Blood samples were quickly taken, but there wasn't much that could be done quickly, and though they had several different scanners now, no one but Owen had figured out how to use them safely. Gwen went off to see Timothy White in East Grinstead though, and Jack, Ianto, and Rupesh were left to brainstorm, Hayden reading from a history text and trying not to worry as Tom murmured in the back of his mind.

"Can you smuggle us into the hospital so we can use the MRI?" Jack asked quickly.

"I… I don't know."

"Do it."

The young doctor gulped and nodded.

"And we need something to test frequencies. If it's a transmission, it's being transmitted somehow."

Ianto nodded and went off quickly to find what they needed.

ooo

They were in the car when Ianto pulled out his phone. "Who are you calling?" Jack asked curiously.

"My sister. Making sure her kids are fine."

"They're fine, Ian. They're all fine."

"Yeah, but I'm making sure. Hey, Rhiannon."

ooo

Nobody had told him that his target had a kid. That made things more difficult. Made his conscience twinge. But as much as he was almost swayed, Jack walked out to make a phone call in private, and after a moment, Rupesh followed. And then Jack was dead. Temporarily.

They were in an awkward part of the hospital for it, but a couple of deployed group managed to get into the surgery prep room. Then Jack was quickly cut open and an object sealed inside him. It took less than a few minutes and Dr. Rupesh Patanjali was left dead on the floor beside the Captain.

Jack rolled over awkwardly and saw the body next to him. "Oh, no." He checked for a pulse, found none, and cursed before tapping the com in his ear. "Ianto, you done with the MRI?"

"Just now, sir, yes."

"Good, we're going."

He made his way quickly back to the MRI room to find Ianto helping Hayden up. "Dr. Patanjali's been shot in the back."

"What happened?"

"I don't know. He was just left there beside me like someone's gloating."

"They killed you?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah."

Ianto closed his eyes and hugged him, burying his face in his lover's shoulder for a moment before pulling back.

Then they all left the building, quickly.

ooo

The MRI hadn't shown anything important-nothing they hadn't seen before—but they got back to the hub and set up everything, ready and waiting for when the aliens tried to speak again. Hayden grinned as widely as the rest of them when they caught Gwen looking at the scan of the fetus inside her.

Gwen looked up at Hayden, smiling. "Thanks, love. I'm sure they'll adore you. But what about this place, and my job?"

"We'll manage," Jack said, placing his hand over hers on the small scanner. "We always do." But then an alarm sounded.

Jack's eyes go wide and he swears, slowly, like he doesn't quite believe it yet.

Ianto obviously can't either, because he's repeating the obvious. "There's a bomb. There's a bomb inside your stomach."

"Get out," Jack said.

They all objected.

"All of you! Right now!"

"It has a blast radius of a mile!"

"There must be something we can do," Gwen started. "Look, we can stop it. We can fix this, okay? We can rip it out of you."

"I'm telling you, get out!"

Gwen still fights it, but although it's the last thing he wants to do, Ianto's already gone, Hayden with him. Jack points out that she's pregnant and Gwen follows, sprinting.

And then the chanting starts again and Ianto barely manages to put his body between his child and the explosion as it comes up behind them. The scream of rage that cuts through the chanting isn't heard. But somehow, when Ianto slams to the ground on top of his son, he doesn't feel the hot debris raining down on them. When he looks up, it's to see a weak energy shield covering them. Just as the blast finishes, the shield collapses, leaving Hayden unconscious on the ground. Ianto took a breath, picked up the eleven year old, and ran.

Leave a review maybe?

Thanks for reading!

-MP