A/N: Rea, here's the wolf bit. Hope I did it justice.
Disclaimer - Didn't create it, don't own it, in love with those who did.
The retrieval went as smoothly as could be expected, and within an hour the team returned through the tourist office, Carys with them. The retrieval complete, Ianto shut up the tourist office and headed out into Mermaid Quay to pick up the Chinese takeout he'd ordered as soon as Jack had informed him they were on their way in.
It was a pleasant day for a walk - not too cold, not too wet, the rain holding off for the moment - and Ianto slowed his pace accordingly. It wouldn't do to arrive at the Chinese place before their order was ready, so as he walked along Bute Street, he paused and took in the shop windows, pausing to breath in the tangy sea air and noticing what he could about the various shops. Jubilee Pizza was advertising a new special, half off the meat feast for anyone who ordered their new Bayside Supreme combo - whatever that meant. St. David's Shoes had a new poster up, proclaiming boldly that 'My Shoes are On Top of the World" - and Agatha's Antiques had a new window display showcasing "Vintage American Glassware" from several prominent American glassworks companies of the early part of the twentieth century. Why they were focusing on American glassworks when Cardiff had it's own history…
Then the pistols caught his eye. Two glass pistols - one with a screw-top cover blocking the end of the barrel, the other plugged with a cork. Candy Containers - he remembered his Gran had collected old sweet dishes - the summer that he and his sister Rhi had vied for dominance, defending status and honor with the hollow empty pistols.
Before he even realized, he was inside the shop, reaching for the cork-stoppered glass gun. It fit well in his hand - and if he was right, the mouth of the barrel was big enough for a Malteser to fit, just like a bullet. He worked the cork out, ran his finger down the inside of the barrel - yes, it should fit perfectly well. He checked the price label - eighteen pounds. He hadn't studied up on the prices of antique glassware in some time, but given inflation levels, that sounded about right. For a moment, he couldn't decide which would be better - the screw-top or the corked barrel. Both were in very good condition. He ran his finger along the words stamped on the barrel of the screw-top, proclaiming this gun to have come from W. Glass Co, Grapeville Pa. The barrel of the corked pistol, on the other hand, was perfectly smooth.
He and Rhihannon had spent hours and weeks alternately defending and attacking each other with their 'sweetie shooters,' as Rhi had insisted on calling them, and Ianto suddenly decided. Only one glass gun when he could have two would never do - he just had to get them both - one for him, and the other for Lucy's desk.
One more quick sweep around the shop - the guns might be perfect for Lucy (well, ONE of the guns would be perfect - she was only getting one, he would keep the other in memory of his Gran), but she should probably have a larger sweets dish to hold the REST of her stash. Nothing else jumped out at him as being particularly Lucy-perfect - surely there would be something in the archives. Besides, it was time to pick up their takeout.
*** ~~~ 888 ~~~ ***
Fifteen minutes later, he walked in on the team. Honestly, he was gone three quarters of an hour, and they had already devolved into bickering children.
Gwen was glaring at Owen, who was rubbing at her neck and pointedly looking anywhere but at her, Jack kept looking back and forth between them as if he couldn't decide who he was more irritated at, and Tosh and Lucy were watching the whole thing with intense interest as if were yet another scene in the soap opera of Torchwood. Which, sad to say, was probably a reasonable summation of whatever it was that was happening.
Owen stamped over to his desk, crowding Tosh as he pushed past her.
"Newbie tried to strangle me!"
Given the doctor's abrasive nature, Ianto didn't know why he sounded so surprised. Lucy didn't seem to either, since she just laughed.
"We've all tried to strangle you in the past."
"Not on your first day, you haven't." He glared at Lucy, who meandered up the stairs, to the work platform, not even trying to pretend to be working.
At that, Tosh dropped any pretense of productivity.
"What did you do?"
"I...may have mentioned that I was impressed with her interrogation technique, that's all."
"Well then, you deserved it."
Owen half rose from his chair at Tosh's laughing barb, but Jack broke in before things could go any further.
"And as *I* pointed out," Jack paused dramatically, and Ianto resisted the urge to roll his eyes, "throttling the staff is MY job. I'm all for delegation, but there are some things that I like to do myself."
Jack always had to make everything sound...dirty. It was time to step in before things got out of hand.
"So!"
Every eye turned towards the cog door (which none of them had even noticed when it opened several minutes ago) and where he stood with a box full of…
"Who's for Chinese?"
*** ^^^ 888 ^^^ ***
As he'd hoped, the bickering natives (or was that 'children' - surely 'natives' weren't so childish, though he supposed that depending on where they were native to) were easily distracted with the arrival of food, and the preparations everyone contributed to in converting the conference room into a dining room.
The take-out came in plastic containers, and once upon a time everyone would have just eaten directly from the containers, but somehow after Lucy had joined, they'd gotten in the habit of bringing out actual dishes to eat from - plates, cloth napkins, glasses (mismatched though they may be), and either tableware or chopsticks (for those who knew how to use them, which was Tosh and Ianto). It did make more work for Ianto, setting a proper table, but Lu was right - it did feel more like a home when they took the time to use actual place settings.
When Jack left following a particularly disgusting tale of the alien that left piles of black mucus in the bathroom (ironic that his final comment was about aliens having no sense of household hygiene - Ianto could think of quite a few humans who had far worse household hygiene habits than any alien he'd ever encountered), the rest of the team turned to Gwen, to see what she'd spill about what she knew about their enigmatic boss.
She passed the test, as not telling a secret they all already knew really counted, and Ianto quietly sighed with relief. He was more than ready for everything to get back to the duller normal (if Torchwood normal could be called 'dull'), when suddenly...
"What's that sound?"
Ianto glanced over to look at the speaker the sobs were coming from. As Owen reached for the remote - almost relishing the reveal, Ianto thought slightly bitterly - Lucy stiffened and her jaw set firmly.
The CCTV footage of Carys, doubled over in the cells, sobbing her heart out popped up on the plasma-screen tv at the end of the table.
Gwen got up and went to stand by the monitor. She watched Carys for a minute, while jack came back from the loo and settled back into his seat at the head of the table.
"What are we doing eating Chinese while a girl fights for her life?"
Ianto risked a glance over at Lucy. This was not going to be pretty - though it might be interesting. Her hands were below the surface of the table but judging from the tension in her upper arms - in her entire body, actually - he would put money on his guess that they were balled up into fists.
"Actually," Jack's voice broke in, and Lucy relaxed fractionally "while we've been eating the computers have been running a full bio-scan on Carys. Profiling her blood, metabolism, organs, skin, the works."
Gwen just glared at him, while Lucy tensed again. Jack continued, explaining.
"So we can see what effect the alien is having on her. They've also been taking samples of the air in her cell, so we can analyse any changes in the air around her."
"Now, is that enough? Do you want more? - 'cause it gets kind of boring"
He was trying, Ianto had to give him credit for that. If it had been anyone but Gwen, maybe that flippant aside comment would have diffused the situation. For nearly a second, he thought it had worked. Then Gwen looked around at all of them, eyes full of misplaced pity.
"You've been hidden down here too long."
Lucy was trembling, and Ianto remembered her worry the night before, where she had said she didn't know what she'd do if Gwen "went off on one her more human than you rants."
"Spending so much time with the alien stuff," Gwen continued, oblivious "You've forgotten what it means to be human."
He really shouldn't have been amused - it really was inappropriate for Lucy to leap from her seat launch herself at the ex-PC, growling as if she had, indeed, forgotten how to be human. Ianto was on his feet, but with her on the other side of the table he had no chance at containing his flatmate. Fortunately, Owen was also on his feet, and before Lucy had even covered half the distance to the monitor where Gwen was standing, he had his arms wrapped around her, trapping her.
"Let me go!" Lucy yelled, blind with fury
Gwen's eyes widened as she backed away into the wall behind her - nearly knocking the framed black and white photo down hanging behind her when the backs of her knees impacted the I-beam that lined the lower bit of the back wall of the room.
Lucy struggled violently in Owen's grip, but Owen locked his own wrists together and settled in for the long haul.
"Let me go!" She fought with every muscle.
"Not until you calm down."
Lucy turned her anger back on Gwen, who cowered against the wall, shocked at her mentor's sudden transformation.
"I DAMN well know what it means to be human!" Lucy was still growling - a sound that was rather disturbing even to Ianto, who knew her rather well, and was clearly quite terrifying to Gwen. "How dare...GRRR...you have no clue! None at all!"
She spat the final words at Gwen, her lips pulling back almost of their own accord, baring her teeth and trembling with the force of it.
Jack had come around the table, and stepped in front of Gwen, facing Lucy down.
"Right now you're acting more like a wolf than a human." With his head up, his shoulders squared, his eyes staring into Lucy's and his voice calm but very firm, Jack projected fierce calm at the fuming woman clasped between Owen's arms. "Calm down and stop growling. She didn't mean you."
"I don't care!" still, Lucy made a very visible effort and stopped growling. "We're all damn well human! She can't…"
Lucy still trembled with barely controlled rage, and Owen was not letting go of her while Gwen was in the room, but at least now the rage was contained, even if only barely.
Jack turned to Gwen.
"Gwen, just go and get on with some work." Gwen looked nervously between Jack and Lucy, who was still glaring at her, though at least her teeth weren't showing anymore. Jack stepped back, still between Gwen and her nearly-out-of-control colleague, but leaving enough room for her to pass him and get to the conference room door.
"Show us what it means to be human in the twenty-first century." Gwen still hesitated.
"Go" Jack put a hand on the small of Gwen's back and guided her out the door.
With Gwen out of the way, Jack turned back to Lucy. He nodded to Owen, who released his hold.
"AAARGH!" Lucy snatched her plate from the table and hurled it against the wall. Ianto cringed as it impacted the wall where Gwen had been standing, and shattered - spraying broken ceramic and sweet-and-sour sauce all over the grey beams, the cream flooring, and even the lamp on the side table and the ancient books in the edge of the room.
Owen and Tosh fled Lucy's wrath. Ianto could have handled it, but those books needed to be treated quickly of the damage would be permanent - he snatched them up and followed the others, leaving Jack to handle Lucy's melt-down.
At least that answered the question she'd raised the night before, of what she'd do if Gwen went on one of her more human than thou rants - as Ianto hurried down to the archives to collect the supplies to restore the books, he couldn't help smirking as he remembered Lucy's face. He had no intention of ever letting her live this one down. Ever.