-Chapter 3-
"So you're the queer," Agent Lee began in a way which was not a question.
He said it like he was from Norfolk, but to Canton's untrained ear it just sounded English. His face was stone and his eyes were hidden behind dark glasses which matched his dark suit. It might have been more intimidating if Canton hadn't spent twelve years in the FBI and twenty-five years fully aware of his sexuality. Honestly, he was just about done with hiding who he was.
"Is that going to be a problem?" Canton said, putting out his hand, but keeping his face still aside from a raised eyebrow of inquiry.
"Oh, of course not!" Lee burst, his face breaking into a cheshire grin, more unnerving than any posturing could have been. He shook Canton's hand the smallest fraction of a moment too long before breaking, and pulled down his right shirtsleeve to reveal a small tattoo on his inner wrist. It looked like a horseshoe with wings.
"Anglican, you see? No, all that's between you and the aspect of the Almighty of your own choosing far as I'm concerned."
Canton had not been aware the English Church was so liberal in its stance towards homosexuality. But then, he had never been overseas. It certainly explained why Torchwood had been so nonchalant in hiring someone like him.
Sliding back into the booth, Canton began to pick apart the eggs he had ordered while waiting for his new partner. This was the earliest he had been up in fourth months, almost noon now, and he wasn't as interested in Agent Lee's faith as much as he was surviving the morning hours. The eggs helped. The coffee helped less.
"I suppose you're wondering why the boys upstairs flew me over from HQ," Lee began again, maintaining his grin, oblivious to Canton's prioritization. "Across the pond, you know."
"Not really," said Canton, not looking up from his two over-easy and toast.
"I've been drunk for about as long as I've been with the agency. Maybe a bit longer. There's no reason for anyone to think I'd be capable of handling a mission of significant importance."
It was true, and didn't hurt Canton any more than the other uncomfortable truths about himself that he had come to terms with. The receding hairline. The height. The sex with men.
"And can you?" Agent Lee asked, seeming genuinely interested.
"If I have to do something. I do it. No half-measures", Canton replied, pulling down his own darkened glasses to make the point, "But I do it significantly better if I happen to be interested. You boys have my interest. So why don't you fill me in on the specifics?"
"Okay," said Lee, his smile fading, but lasting a bit around the lips, "Let me tell you about Melody Pond."
It was getting worse.
"No," Melody said aloud to herself as she felt the telltale signs she had come to know. The cramping in the stomach, the loud, unbearable beating in the place adjacent from her heart, the glowing. "It's only been a day!"
And before Simon could fully react, himself just woken by her shouts across the floor of the fort, before Melody could get out in the open so as to not blow off the roof, before she could scream, Melody died blazing. Again.
It was almost embarrassing just how easy it had been to catch word of Melody Pond, one girl in a city of eight million. At every other street corner or alleyway, there was some poor fool who had seen or heard tell of the impossible girl who leaped tall buildings, ate pigeons, and even, according to one poor bum, pushing his grocery cart full of essentials, the ability to breath fire. Of course, he also claimed that the night he had seen the girl, he had lost ten years of his life, becoming, as far as he or anyone else could tell, twenty five again. He was quite insistent about this point. The Doctor thanked him, informed the man that the scent he appeared so intent on cultivating would have made him a veritable sex god on no small number of planets in the Andromeda galaxy - well, aside from the problem of his hair - and left. It was tea time, after all. The information still troubled him.
But that's impossible, thought the Doctor, dipping his jammy dodger into his steaming cup of tea, twelfth century Baghdad even though his stocks were running low. Absolutely, utterly, perhaps wonderfully, impossible. Which meant it was true, more than likely. The Doctor sighed as he sat on a park bench, back in Union Square, drying out from the night's rain.
If any of the hundreds of park denizens wondered at the professor in the bow tie using a Tang Dynasty bone china cup and saucer to drink afternoon tea while site on a park bench, well they kept it to themselves. To be fair, the cup and saucer weren't Tang Dynasty style, he had just commissioned them there. It was so hard to find good cups in this century. He should talk to someone about that, after all this Melody stuff was sorted. Maybe he and River could go together. She liked tea, didn't she?
"I suppose I'll have to do something about that," he said to himself, his most reluctant companion. "Maybe some stealth lessons on the side. She's a long way from breaking out of Storm Cage."
The Doctor was suddenly more aware than ever just how staggeringly little he knew about River. Aside from the fact that she was dead. Well, in a computer. Well, dead in a computer. But, everybody dies eventually.
"Everybody lives, too," The Doctor comforted himself, "Sometimes."
Canton was incredulous.
"You mean all this Torchwood nonsense is in response to a half-century grudge concerning the royal family and lycanthropy?" He said, struggling to keep pace with Agent Lee who had the advantage of longer legs with which came superior altitudes.
"Yes, Victoria was quite cross about the whole thing." Agent Lee replied, "I mean really, the Doctor should know better messing around with the royals like that. It never ends well. Did I even tell you about Elizabeth?" Lee didn't turn back to ask this, he was looking for his car.
"You mean the Virgin Queen?" Canton ventured. He wasn't the best with royal lineages, but he recognized the moniker.
"No, the one with the whale, but actually yeah that's another good example" Lee said, the pointed at his found car, walking towards it with even more speed and purpose.
"Come again?" Canton hurried after Lee.
"Oh, right. You might want to keep that all to yourself. Especially the werewolf bit. Won't be common knowledge for fifty-odd years. You can forgive some light treason, can't you, Canton?" He was rummaging around in the trunk of a teal 1964 Rambler.
"Well I suppose if they have some sort of plan towards transparency…" Canton resolved to ignore most of what Lee ranted on about in the interest of staying in control of the situation. It seemed easy to do seeing as he only understood half of it all. Wait, had he mentioned the Doctor?
"Right, good man. Now, what do you think of this?" Lee held up what appeared to be a movie camera which had been built out of an old children's lunch-box.
"I think that I just ate," Canton tried.
"Yes, I noticed the lunchbox too, but this is oh so much more." Lee turned it over and studied it, hungrily.
"The agency found it last year in London. As far as my superiors can tell. Ultra high tech, or it would be if it wasn't made mostly out of old lunch-boxes, movie cameras, transceivers, and a microwave." He looked back at Canton, handing the device to him for inspection.
Canton tried to look interested.
"But still. Alien intelligence in this old hodgepodge. Old High Galifreyan far as our archaeologists can tell." With this, Lee took it back, possessively, "If all the Gallifreyans had had to work with was lunch-boxes, radios, and microwaves."
The point, Canton supposed, was that the Gallifreyans, whoever they were, had had considerably more to work with beyond lunch-boxes, radios, and microwaves. He nodded as if he understood.
"Ah", he said and Lee seemed satisfied. And then, "What does it do?"
"What does it do?" Lee began excitedly, then more sullenly, "Well, honestly, not too much unless you happen to be in the presence of some sort of complicated time/space event." Lee brightened up,"But then! Well, it goes 'ping'." He turned it on, it began going 'ping' immediately.
"Well," Lee said, a little embarrassed, "You have to account for background levels and -"
"Probably me, Canton interrupted, "I was in a time machine once. It's in my file. If they didn't go into it at HQ, I can't really talk about it beyond that."
"Gotcha," Lee said, seeming relieved, "We'll have to calibrate."
"Sorry about that," said Canton, untruthfully. Dealing with the manic Lee would have been test even without the blazing noonday sun and his marked lack of blood alcohol content.
"Not to worry," Lee slammed down his trunk and began tinkering with a dial. "This thing kills birds like you wouldn't believe, don't know what that's all about."
It was going to be a long day.