![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fic: "Notebird"
Title: Notebird
Pairings/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen
Rating: PG-13
Setting/Spoilers: post-Exit Wounds
Length: 10400
Summary: A note points to nowhere and a bird comes from nowhere, and Torchwood, in the wake of their teammates’ deaths, finds that some experiences shatter things into pieces too small to be fit back together.
Notes: Beta'd by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sanginmychains
A note on the desk, coffee coated - it peeks out from under the beige manila folders. They're called top-secret while the note's called trash; scribbled numbers on dirty paper don't deserve filing under top secret, or anything for that matter. It has shifted from top to middle to bottom as folders have been removed, stacked on, pulled from underneath. Clean papers have been spread over it, a different kind of scribble on them, but they deserve recognition and are slid back into their folders, slid back into their spots in the filing system and the note is sitting there, soaking up the slide of coffee after it has slipped down the cup where lips haven't quite caught it. The note clings to the bottom of the coffee cup when the cup is lifted out of the way. Thumb and index fingers slide it off; it sticks, wanting to stay in the soggy wet, but it gives and is pulled free.
The desk lamp bathes the desk in light and the rest of the world in half-shades. Too late for full lights, or too early, when the night blends into the morning and bloodshot eyes squint at squiggles on paper in semi-darkness. The light can't quite get into the lines on the faces, leaves features more pronounced than usual, eyes more sunken.
"They're coordinates, sir." Coffee slides over the note and drops off its bottom edge to splash to the floorboards as the note is held between thumb and index finger. Ianto peers at it closely, the splash a glimmer of the light's reflection in the darkness, then glances at the note and holds it like a verdict over the desk.
"Yeah." The mumble of the bent head, the hand still scribbling letters onto top-secret papers seem unconvincing in their camouflage. "Just leave them around here."
Eyebrows lift. "They have been left around here. I think they'd appreciate a change of scenery."
"So would I, but I'm still stuck behind this desk." The head rises and the eyes glare, frown lines on the forehead, lips tight. He squints at the note, the coordinates, then looks around the desk. "Might be from one of the folders?" He shifts two to the side, half-hearted attempt, and three on top, then shrugs and waves the note and Ianto out. "Work to do, just put it somewhere, don't care. Doesn't look important. Does it? No, doesn't." The head bends again, its eyes on the paper and scribbles; it makes a show of rapt attention as the pen writes out nonsense syllables.
Ianto waves the note over the desk. Splish splash, two drops of coffee drop to the desk, hitting wood and not paper. A third drop gathers at the bottom right corner, collecting itself to fall. Just two more moments, three more moments: the light shines through the wet note, the coordinates mirrored and reversed.
The drop falls, the head lifts. "What?" Terse tone, terse line of the mouth, terse glare if that was possible.
"I think it's protesting not being important." The wide-eyed look, the naive tone, affronted at the suggestion of being anything but innocent works well in the light of day and times past. In the light of desk lamp and night's shadows, it's curling up for the chastising eyebrow and revealing itself to be bare-threaded and tired. It asks for attention and knows it's not even getting patience.
"Just take it, Ianto. I don't know where it's from and I don't care." The hint of pleading creeps into the tone. It's the days and nights in the bones, the lack of distance from events of days past. There are files that demand answers, phonecalls that are being held up before they even reach the desk. There is no room for memories when actions and words have to be pulled up and dissected moment by moment. There are calls for full reports: Death by Torchwood.
Eyebrows rise.
The tone sharpens. "I don't care!" The hint of pleading is gone.
That is that. The note slips into the hand and walks out in tow with frown lines and dipped corners of a mouth. The rolling eyes come a moment later, as does the shrug of the shoulders. It's too early to give a care, too weary to do more than give up, and disappearing into the low-power lit bowels of the Hub has its own kind of satisfaction. The wetness of the note is a cold wetness, clinging and clammy and raising goosebumps on the skin when felt anywhere other than the palm of the hand.
The note flattens to a desk, the black on wet hard to read in the near-darkness. Ianto sits hunched over the keyboard, watching the screen and the fast-forward zoom in on the location on their mapping system, raw satellite feeds and Google earth. A pin pierces the map, X marks the spot, and Ianto cocks his head at it. He frowns at the note.
"You're not going to Russia!" The disembodied voice rings through the open door and across the floor to curl around Ianto as a faint, echoing warning. It's followed by laughter, still whispy and lingering despite its emptiness, when the first 0 is almost dry.
The frown sets. The note is grabbed and leaves faint marks on the desk, unnoticed but noticeable, as it travels across the Hub floor, up stairs, down stairs, a longing urge for the water and the rubbish bin both, but it merely ends slapped to the counter surface. A long glance to it, then it's left alone in the dark.
It dries, finally, over the course of hours on its own. The light never goes out. It's a sore attempt to keep the vast silence from pointing at empty spaces and having a laugh.
"What's this?" Fingers stroke softly, follow the line of the scribbles. Light is glaring, the Hub awake. "They're coordinates. Ianto? Jack?"
"They're not important." Voice from the office: the laugh ceased existing hours before.
"It's in Russia." Voice to the side.
"I'm pretty sure it's not another Flat Holm so don't even think about it." The office voice again and the door cracks closed, ominous warning or just another flare of temper pushing through after a long night and top-secret files in beige.
The light is on and bloodshot eyes give a small blink, the head a back and forth that is half 'yes' and half 'no', and as an extra a coat of irritation to the posture and the lean of the hip to the counter, another layer of fatigue to the nod of the head and the shrug. The stained note sits innocent and dry between mugs and silverware. One 0 is smudged; the other figures are merely off-color from coffee and possibly time.
"Where did you find it?" she mouths and holds up the note for him and to the light.
"The desk," he says, voice at normal volume. The eyebrows gesture the 'over there' but she has understood that without the hint and gives a small nod.
The note is taken on a flurry of motion down the steps and up the steps and across the small bridge. It almost sails off the desk in a flutter of an escape attempt as it's plunked down on another cold surface. She catches it, creasing the paper.
"He said not to bother." Over her shoulder and right into her ear, hushed with secrecy even as he is pretending to stand up straight and honest. There's the hint of dark rebellion.
"Right. He's saying a lot of that these days." The mouth spills as the fingers fly on the number pad, checking the coordinates themselves. Determination flattens everything in the vicinity.
Hands are shoved into pockets as Ianto leans against the desk, back to Jack's office. The voice remains an under-breath sing-song as the shoe taps out the rhythm of impatience. "He won't give you leave to go to Russia. And he doesn't care."
Glare meets eyebrow before the glare is turned to the screen. The pin prick marks the spot again, and the dissonance is dissolved in a shrug, without further comment. She stares at the map. If there was a clock it would be ticking in dreary monotone. "I can always take time off." That afterthought took more than moment and wavers unconvincingly.
"Yes, Gwen." He smiles indulgently and means 'in your dreams' as he pushes off the desk. The note is pocketed in suit pants and carried around for the day, sitting warm and dry, carefully folded as it moves about the Hub and onto a Weevil chase later that day, then back to the Hub and plunged into light from darkness when it is lifted from the pocket and pushed down on top of a beige folder. Say hello to secrecy, it seems familiar.
"It's not in Russia." The hands are on the hips and the frown is more determined than tired, although it is that, too. The lack of patience and indulgence is illustrated easily in the cutting hand movement.
"Nope." The pen begins to scribble in frantic activity; the eyebrows only lift for a short glance, a brief smile, interest. Amusement makes for a happy face that doesn't sugar coat the sunken eyes and the lines around lips and on the forehead.
"They're not coordinates."
"Nope." He sits back behind the desk, hands crossed behind his head, an excuse for the pen to stop. The neck twists to work out a few cricks. It cracks, and a frown slivers over both of their faces at the sound. The note wavers a little under draught and light.
"It's a phone number." That's pulled from the air with grasping fingers, eyes skyward, ground-ward if one is keeping track of the relations.
A nod helps along a happy smile that stretches the lips. The pen beats out a tap on the corner of the desk. Waiting, while relishing the distraction, has its own sweet heartbeat.
"With degrees and minutes." The tone drops. The hand is back on the hip, joining its other half in the gesture.
"Yup." The smile stretches to the eyes. The con rolls and fails in its stuttering execution.
"You're a liar." The index finger jots once, twice, and the grinding of teeth rumbles down jaw bones and spine.
The smile freezes and hardens, the con exposed. Amusement flees the crinkles around the eyes and leaves only the glazing dark of dull and dead behind. One corner of the lips pulls up in mocking salute. "Yes. And you're not a fool. Or are you? I don't know what this is and I don't particularly care. A note, fine. From one of the folders? Maybe. Does it matter? I have no clue and I have no time to worry about it. Because at least one of us is working around here. Because at least one of us dealing!" The head bends to the folders again, and the pen takes up its tedious nonsense, a shield from questions and answers.
Images, kept at bay by the constant light, are dragged forward and exposed. More than numbers and words on reports, the sensations of sound and smell and touch reply. Eyes close, choked, and open again.
"This is not a game, Jack!" A fist closes around the note, pressing a 0 to a 4, a 5 between 3 and 9, degrees and minutes melt together, find themselves in close embrace, unexpected reunion. The hand slips on a folder, topples two of them to the ground, and a third is caught before it has a chance to follow the others into unknown shadows. Ianto pushes it onto the stack again. The dust enjoys the close cling of fingers for a change.
The eyes implore, long for a response as fingers close tighter on the note, numbers folding in on themselves and the stains, but the head does not lift, remains bent over meaningless scribbles. The push off the desk has the note disappear in the suit pocket again, plunged into unawareness of no response forthcoming.
"Would be a nice change if it was." A cleared throat from behind that desk, unexpected and unsubtle. "A game, would be a nice change if it was a game." The words creep up on the turned back, on the body disappearing right before Jack's eyes into the darkness of everything outside that bit of lamp light.
"You know what this note is?" It poses as a question, the lingering uncertainty on the last syllable on the way out, almost unheard over the defeat of the first lines. A thumb rubs over the wrinkles and creases of the note in the pocket.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you 'no' so just go. It's just a note on a desk full of notes, in an office full of meaningless sh-." He catches himself. There's the tired hand and the pen poised as a weapon. The voice cuts through the darkness. It cuts through defenses and through tendrils of tenderness seeping at their feet. It cuts through the core, splitting them apart like overripe fruit, squelchy and too sweet and nauseating. The jaw sets and plunges the room into silence.
A look, a gesture, and it's helplessness at the desert between them, and the balled up note dampens with sweat in the fist inside the pocket. The tread of the shoes down the steps and across the floor is soft, deceptive, slinking away, slinking out while the silence of no response forthcoming hangs back.
"Where are you going?" An echo. The space makes it timid when it tries to be proud and fearless.
"Russia?" It is a laugh, frayed at the edges, and as forehead meets cog door, just to rest for a moment, it dissolves into one indrawn, shaky breath when steps follow, just for a moment.
"You don't have leave to go to Russia." From in front of the tower, like the king overlooking all that is his - the damp, the dark, the lost and the fallen. Arms crossed, he looks down his nose at Ianto, daring him to look up, daring him to cower. An afterthought, "is it really in Russia?"
"Does it matter?" The defeat has swallowed the uncertainty and the question mark while sweat dissolves ink inside the pocket. The eyes don't meet. Grey metal is appealing, hard and unyielding and everlasting, or close to. It's a wall of another kind. Ianto wants to melt into it, get himself a coat of armor against the games that pretend to be none and the inability to turn back time. Steel had never been salvation, but it feels like it now.
Ianto steps out through the cog door, the great exit and the first early night after too many weeks of clinging to the nights in the Hub like a moth, quiet reassurance of damp walls and dim lights, too much coffee and too little sleep, naps on the sofa and opening eyes to light and light in Jack's office no matter when.
Cardiff is hazy with fog but not rain. It is looking for a place to settle, slink and cotton candy all which lurks in the bowels underneath the city. The note is pulled out, smudged now from sweat and inhales the fog like air to breathe. The note rolls in Ianto's hand, wrinkled and unfazed and another secret on a stack of them. Held out over the bay water lapping at the quay, it wants to drop and roll away with the waves.
It moves idly in the breeze, width and length of palm used, tries to roll off as the hand shifts. The wings spread to take flight.
Footsteps close in on the note and the hand holding it, not creeping but demanding. "Dare you to."
The fingers smash close. Bones crack as they imprison the note once more in sweaty skin. "You would." It's spit like fire to the ocean, going out in a sizzle as it hits. The smoke is still rising when the ember has turned ashen. He turns, his back to the water, and one step back and the body would plummet, suit and shoes and hair and all, swallowed by the waves. "You don't care at all? Not your handwriting is it?"
Silence paints the lips closed, eyes fixed over the shoulder on the docks in mid-distance or an argument in mid-thought.
"Is it?!" The note is pushed forward and hits the coat in a smack-dab sound of damp to unyielding.
"No, it's not and no, I don't care." It's a final blow, gunshot wound still bleeding. It loves the silence in its wake, only broken by a car screeching along wet tarmac on Lloyd-George. As it passes, its headlights move up the buildings, disappear, crawl up the next ones.
"Well then." The note is imprisoned and passes by coat and stony features. The fingers are white around the paper, curled into a fist in the suit pocket. The night beckons for a disappearance or abduction, something dark and unruly to happen, a type of mystery, rift incident, anything that could distract from the darkness.
"Well what?" An alien call over the lapping of water. The cold in the voice gives it its edge. It cuts through carefully sown strings. If one were willing to hear, and one isn't, it would carry a sliver of pleading.
"Nothing. And thanks for clarifying your priorities, sir." He answers the wall with another, erected on shaky ground but erected no smaller or sturdier. He dismisses, with a movement of a hand over the shoulder and the lack of a look back, with nothing to apologize for the tone or the choice of words. Even the footsteps get lost in the screech of another car's wheels, and once the car is gone there is nothing but two dark silhouettes, no faces.
***
The moon pales against the morning sky, disappears altogether as the headlights on Bute contrast less with the world around them. The bird's feathers move with every playful breeze, fluffed in the air one moment and pressed to cold planks the next, melting into chewing gum and wood. The bird sits, innocent and unmoved, propped against the closed tourist office door, the beak open in contemplation of the sound and if listened to very closely a croak might be heard. It has all the aesthetics of a still-life painting, Dürer and the rabbit. A wing flattens to brown wood, chips of old paint catch in off-white feathers and give them a decisive sheen of plastic and artificial intelligence. The bird sits and waits. The small puddle of blood has spread underneath and is dry by the time any definition of morning has begun to apply.
Sharp footsteps vibrate across the wooden planks, the slide and drag of one heel along a raised edge, a half stumble. Dignity is restored a moment later when cold fingers straighten the marine tie and brush through the hair. Black shoes appear on the edge of the bird's glassy vision, close in from the horizon of pier and background buildings until they fill everything there is.
The shoes shuffle, knees bend, hip juts, and while the hand is on the hip the head turns in search left and right before Ianto crouches to the bird's eye level. The ruffling feathers feel the warmth of attention. Contemplation of turning the bird over gives way to distaste over the dried blood and a sigh on the lips. The wing moves and slaps against the door.
If this were just a tourist office, this would be just a dead bird. It isn't. The door creaks as Ianto pushes it open after the quiet slide of key into lock.
"Ianto!" The voice in his ear is insistent.
One step takes him over the bird. The sole of a polished shoe catches on the tip of a wing. The feathers brush past but the smallest of bones cling to the sole's pattern and the bird unfolds. The red gap to its underside is revealed, splayed open in parody of every mystery novel cover.
"Yes?" The touch of fingers to the communicator is accompanied by a mostly professional sigh. The glance shifts from beak to claw, tracking the wound. The breeze drags a candy wrapper in through the door. It somersaults elegantly over off-white wings, speckles of old paint, and finishes with a slide to the shoe. The candy wrapper pink prances in jarring contrast.
"Is it an immediate crisis that keeps you from being here on time or just general tardiness?"
"A dead bird, if you care to know, sir." The grudge adds an undertone to the voice and the lips dip in dismayed frown. The bridges between them are toppling, and how easy is it to blame fate and throw up the hands in its face.
The sun is determined to make the most of the morning and forces everything in its vicinity to squint stupidly into its shine. The bird throws a perfect triangle shadow.
"I'm not paying you for your insolence." The voice from the communicator appears just behind him.
Ianto turns, laughs. Blood rushes in his ears, playing a warning to the deaf but the tongue moves before further contemplation. "You're not paying me for sexual favors either, so stop being such a bloody bastard." The 'sir' hangs in the thoughts, ready to be added, a gleeful bounce to its vowel at the idea, but once discarded it slinks away to happier times.
A breath catches on dry silence, open lips, and the sound of cracks in the structure. It's conned into oblivion a moment later, clear plastic tape to repair the damage.
"What's that?" The boot connects in semi-question with the bird's ribs. The wing gives one bounce before hugging the wooden planks again, its tip giving a slow caress to leather and linoleum.
"Seagull. Care for its taxonomy?"
"You know it?" Amusement drags an indulgent smile along, mild interest and more clear tape.
"Of course, sir. Walking encyclopedia." The smiles plasters itself across the face, straight, and meets the curious gaze over the bird's splay. The pause stretches to pregnancy. The smile slips from the corner of the lips in impatience. "No." It resonates with 'things you should have known' and 'I'm not playing today' in equal parts. The gaze turns back to the bird, denying the interest over a thumping heart and an ache low in the guts.
"It's dead." Jack kicks at it again, and it splays further, entrails dripping from the gap in its body.
Stating the obvious deserves the lift of an eyebrow but not a reply, even if to keep the farce of a conversation going. The bird stares at the men, imploring for truth and action with black eyes.
"Looks like someone left you a gift." Jack pivots in the crouch, spins like a heartbroken ballet dancer to look up at Ianto's unmoving lean to the counter.
"Fair to say that that would be us. Not my name on the door." The eyebrows wait for a challenge but another pivot takes Jack back to the bird.
"Not our name, either. Remind me to pick up wedding bands." The wound is poked and prodded. It's a joke, and a bad one at it.
"Over my dead body." It slips out as a near-whisper, bored with Jack in the crouch, bored with the bird, bored with days blending from one in the other, bored with bloodshot eyes staring back at him whenever he looks into the mirror while brushing his teeth. The scissors to the clear tape, the cracks show, and there's almost an apology on the lips, something to take those words back at least, because he is still here, brushing his teeth every eight hours to pretend that nothing has changed.
"Ianto Torchwood – has a ring, doesn't it? Or would that be Harkness?" That doesn't comment, and it doesn't repair any more damages. The index finger in the wound rotates, searches and spills more bird guts on the tourist office linoleum.
"Careful, your ego is bursting into star dust." Another cut, another step around something he doesn't know how to control. A barely civil smile slips onto lips and avoids the eyes when a tourist looks in through the door. Ianto waves her away and hopes the bird remains the more prominent memory in her mind.
"Captain Stardust? Fancy that." It's a sideline thought as index and middle finger lift entrails from the wound, uncoiling the carefully coiled and still warm. An absent dip of the tongue to the corner of the lips. The entrails recoil in pale grey and blood outside the bird. It could be art if it wasn't so gruesome. Upside down it looks pretty in every morbid way.
"Makes you into a cheap action hero." A pause for effect. "Wait- you are, you have never saved-" Then the roar of blood swallows words unsaid but thought. It's for something other than the cold edges and lack of words, a reaction that is real and not just an attempt at business as usual.
Something breaks. The con is splayed at their feet, and eyes hard and unyielding turn away. There is no comment. "Well, it's-"
"It's not just you." Hissed, breath expelled and fists clenched, it wants to hurt more. "They-"
"Well, it's dead and it's yours."
It isn't the first, and the topic is closed.
Legs stretch and surgical gloves drop from up high. A small wet slapping sound as they hit the bird's entrails. Pale, gloved fingers caress ragged wound edges. The bird's wing moves in the breeze. Another candy wrapper somersaults and sticks to wet guts, and that is all there is.
The greatcoat brushes past Ianto, the smell of apples and a touch of a breeze along Ianto's jaw. So close as to be nothing. Linoleum and secret door are studied respectively and in-depth. There are no words. If there were they would at least tumble angry and rough. Like this, there is only silence, and the pretence of a con still existing under torn clear plastic tape.
"Hey! That's- that was a bird!" The pull of the drapes, nighttime pleasures only thirty minutes past and already forgotten, the last of the huskiness is still in the first syllables but not in the last. Gwen is the only one that still loves, it seems.
Ianto's head swivels up, and Jack uses the break in moment to disappear through the door. The door opens with a slide and falls closed with nary sound, not the bang that came in waves off of Jack's form. Temptation to push his tongue out at a piece of reinforced wood lingers for a moment longer, but the irritated twitch to the eye simply turns back to Gwen as he pushes off the counter. Cardiff Castle postcards slide to the floor. He picks them up before soles make contact too intimate and dirty.
The bird stares at them with dead eyes. It is fear that avoids touch, the horror movie chainsaw lurks at their backs, a trap falling closed maybe. It could be just a bird, but even Torchwood has its healthy dose of paranoid instinct and it is hard to not think of the images that come up, unbidden: stabbed in the back while you were looking the other way.
Lips pull back from teeth, nose wrinkles in disgust as she crouches despite better intentions and takes in the entrails. Ianto crouches next to her, postcards in one hand, the fingers of the other balancing him in the uneasy stance.
"He did that?" she motions and whispers.
"Not that I know of." Ianto shakes his head and thinks of the CCTV feed that Jack would be watching in his office at this moment. Or maybe he has it turned off out of spite and anger or something else and contemplates plans of world revolution or employee torture. "I found it dead this morning. He just pulled it apart."
"Why?" Sleep still lurks behind slow neuronal clusters, inane questions that deserve inane answers.
"He didn't stop to explain." The shrug chases sweet indifference. Fascination enters with pinprick accuracy when the sunlight glints off wet guts.
"He never does." A put-upon sigh ends in a small laugh, excusing the first and ripping it to ragged shreds.
The edge of despair that time of the morning is new and not exactly welcome. A good night's sleep should wipe it from her tone and discipline wipes it from his on a daily basis. Eyes flicker. For a moment, the break for the door seems like a viable possibility, abated by a deep breath.
"He never talked about-"
"I'll clean up here." Straightened knees, cracking joints, in one fluid movement, and the easy smile smoothes the wrinkles of worry. Busy wording cuts her off in mid-sentence. Dark pleasure at the guilty shame flooding her face, the teeth burrowed in the lips - dirty pleasure for that one moment, before the candy wrapper tears loose from the wet guts and spills against the tourist office counter. The guilt edges into the shuffle of Ianto's feet, his movement behind the counter and the press to the button. The door slides open, nary a sound, again, and beckons with its darkness. It's hardly seductive but seductively familiar nonetheless. The nod of his head is perfunctory, impatience when the door falls closed with her inaction, and he presses the button again.
Ianto's posture freezes at a feeble step of hers towards the counter, intent on her face. The wet squeak of a shoe on bird entrails severs that. Her eyes widen, and the spike of pleasure peaks in his head. Cardiff Castle's bricks are falling apart in his grasp. Eyebrows extend the postcard bricks' motion towards the door. The concern swept away by guts, she goes, her gait uneasy as if the bird is still stuck under her sole after all.
The bird surveys damage and control and Ianto. Another pair of surgical gloves is dragged onto fingers adding a blue hue to pale skin. A few steps take him back to the bird and he pulls it fully into the office, joining its guts, to allow the door to close.
"Wonderful gift, sir." The mutter barely makes it to his own ears, but the lips enjoy the movement, the sarcastic slide of tongue on teeth. There's a headache pounding for release. Three hours of non-sleep don't prepare for Torchwood, Jack and dead birds.
The bird is lifted into the plastic bag he pulls from behind the counter. Held by its wings, it enjoys its last flight into the dark unknown. The amused eyes go bleak at the thought of a eulogy to the gull, animalclass of bird. The guts cling to the outside of the bag before they follow their hull into it. They splatter wetly to the bottom, the squelch of a cock in an ass. Odd comfort at odd times. The cries of the gulls outside the tourist office gives the dead bird its last goodbye as the plastic bag is enveloped by the darkness past the secret door.
Neon glare embraces the plastic bag like a halo as the cog door rolls back. You have passed to the lands beyond, welcome. One of the computer monitors is showing the blazing red and deliberately hard-to-miss floating window of rift activity. Gwen is frantic, hair flying about her face. She is also the only one bothered by flashing lights and sirens, Ianto with his plastic bag still in the entrance, until Jack strides from his office.
"What is it?" The tidal wave of annoyance and flaring temper spreads from the steps across the main floor. Defenses have been rebuilt.
"Probably nothing." Fingers thump hard on the keys as she attempts the localization of the activity. The vague sounds that try their hand at reassurance fall flat and slide to puzzled. "Nothing too bad, anyway."
Nervous laughter accompanies the bird in the plastic bag across Hub floors to the autopsy bay. It slinks past the mayhem of flashing screens and only one person on the console and hurries the last few steps to disappear within high walls and veiled secrecy.
"Ianto!"
"Sir?" One foot has reached the safety of the steps down, a hand on the railing. Careful patience is threading already; dread for the day sinks in. "I have no idea what that is." A small attempt at evasion as innocence is tried on for style, a nod at the flashing siren-red across the Hub's main floor.
"What are you doing with that?" Curious cat expression, narrowed eyes and entirely too much interest. Grubby fingers want to dissect for truth; insect spray and chainsaws might help.
Eyes connect. Another apology on the lips, but then there is the insistence that there is nothing worth an apology if everything hides behind walls and lies and clever cons, so Ianto swallows it, but at least refrains from adding anything else.
"Just-" The bird reeks of something other than dead meat. The early dismissal in the tourist office turns it more pungent. Fruit that's been left out for too long, rot taking over sweetness. It's too familiar to ignore. Innocence flutters into Ianto's smile. "It's-"
"Jack!" Urgency takes over her voice and bleeds it raw. It puddles between them, lapping at attempted bridges and drawing attention away to the leaks.
Saved by the rift's bell from the Spanish Inquisition. The eyes hold the contact for two more heartbeats before the attention refocuses, and a few steps take Jack to the main floor and Gwen's side. They converse. Ianto watches with mediocre interest; fingernails dig into the palm of his hand. Water drips down next to him, comes from far higher up. Hope dwells, nurtured by mostly idiocy and a childish wish for a happy end.
"You! Stay! Keep the comms open!" The jabbing finger reduces him to office boy when they make a run for it through the cog door.
The silence is a negative shockwave that forces itself into every nook and cranny. The red is still flashing, playing stark reminder. There's the slick sound of the plastic bag drawing along the railing. Fingers unclench one by one from cold metal and the feet find the steps down. The need for secrecy past, the shoes allow sound as they travel down, quiet orchestration. The bird splays on the table, spreads in pose and show off, the hips raised in lurid display. Wounded dampness smears across the metal table. The guts form a beauty's necklace, decorated to the end.
Access codes entered at Owen's work station and the comm sounds blast through Hub speakers, Dolby surround for action movies, sweet bass. There's hesitation of the fingertips on the keys, an indrawn breath and held and only slowly released, while memory is still playing tricks on him, giving him snark and poison when there is no-one there.
Memory adds a thought of dark offices and red eyes, dismissal of both intent and role. It is someone else, but the feeling of loss is the same, unfairly so, when both of them are still there, alive by any standards, and there is no room to complain when you are still breathing. The bird plays with dustballs. It's a game of catch and the bird is losing fast. Loss is the first lesson Torchwood teaches. It's also the last.
"Gwen- to the left!" The metallic voice blares across the speakers.
Ianto doesn't hesitate and slides the scalpel into the open wound, cuts away at the entrails with erratic movement. Cookies have never tasted this sweet, and the knife wavers only a little when the thrill of the forbidden settles in his stomach. He parts the organs from the body and the blood smears across the table, framing the bird.
"Jack!" Ianto looks up, distracted by the sounds of the comm communication. "Weevil!"
The shout breaks Ianto's concentration; the scalpel slips. Weevils don't usually cause the blaring of the siren. His irritation gives way to action, and he takes the steps up to the main area. The rift is plateauing on a spike on one monitor. On the second, the green dots for Jack and Gwen blink but there is nothing else. If there was a weevil, it should show up on the system.
Ianto taps his comm. "Are you positive it's a weevil?"
"Yes!" Gwen laughs, but the laugh lacks amusement. "It's right here."
"Can't find it on the system, Gwen."
"I'm positive it's waiting to pounce on me, Ianto, I'm not dreaming this one up. It stinks."
"Eew, it does," Jack adds. The strained attempt at humor does a shit job at masking the unease underneath. "You sure you can't locate it? You sure you know what you're doing?" The insult rings in the words but dies on the way through the tone, leaving confusion.
Ianto rolls his eyes, it is all he can spare, and runs the information available to him through several filters. They are the clumsy attempts at communication with a system touched only by one person beyond the user interface and the common key combinations in the past. The colours on the screen alternate between rainbow and black. Adrenaline surges in his body. The identifying software splurts, "2 HUMAN."
It scans for tech and life and alien bacteria and finds only that: "2 HUMAN."
"It doesn't show up." Ianto forces his voice to steady confidence, but the tension still slips into the tone. "It's not on the screens."
Gwen yells; Jack yells something back. The sounds of a scuffle ring over the speakers, gunshots. It comes from behind and above him and makes Ianto part of the encounter even in the Hub. He ducks at a blast. His hand jerks for the gun secured under the desk surface until he forces his palm flat to the desk.
"2 HUMAN."
Ianto calls the CCTV image to one of the monitors. It shows both Jack and Gwen and a weevil in their midst. The weevil has Jack pinned to the wall. Gwen's weight is shifted forward as if she wants to jump the alien from behind.
"Ianto!" Jack's voice is tight.
"I can see it on the CCTV, but it doesn't register with anything here. I don't know how-"
The weevil roars once, twists and takes off down the alley at a gallop.
"What the hell?" Jack on the screen is staring after the weevil. Jack on the comm is panting hard.
"2 HUMAN."
The weevil is out of range before Ianto catches up and adjusts the software to a wider area. The CCTV for that part of the street shows rotting containers and fog. It seems fitting in entirely too awkward ways.
"0." The software flatlines.
"Ianto!" Jack stares up at the CCTV camera, gestures impatiently with the demand for an explanation, no-nonsense. "Full report!"
They are still alive. Ianto exhales, something between laugh and sob. "It ran off, sir."
"Very funny." The tone indicates it's not, except for the relief.
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN." The machine voice rattles it off with every setting applied. "0."
"We'll be back in the Hub. I expect an explanation." Jack on the screen cuts the comm connection and walks out of the camera view.
Still images and flat lines of detection stare blankly around the Hub from the monitors and screens for someone to pay them attention. The red of the rift alarm bathes him in angry hues then doesn't. The water trickles in the background. It attempts to soothe but only stretches tight nerves.
The mechanical voice keeps up the steady repetition of the words while Ianto runs the analysis again.
The cog door rolls back. The recording of the two green dots replays on the screen, synched with the CCTV and the rift activity. The impossibility of their combination makes a headache spread from above Ianto's ears to his forehead.
"Ianto." The boots carry cheap authority down the metal walkway. It sinks into spine and tone as the demand for professionalism singes the air between them.
"It never showed." The nod goes to the monitors' looping images, sounds and data across the Hub. It plays along the wall, projected for show.
"It should have." The coat brushes along Ianto's calves as mud and weevil stink push towards the monitor. Fingers drag dirt across pristine keyboards. It slips into the gaps between keys and spreads underneath, cushioning every keystroke.
"Yes." Agreement comes easily, a balm between them. The shrug follows as Jack engrosses himself in options and variations Ianto has checked before, the same standard commands, the same key combinations that don't slip deeper than the data's skin. The 'no shit' leaves the mouth but never arrives, remaining a stellar whisper.
"It wasn't a ghost." Slime drips from the hair into the collar of the coat. The screen reflects in the eyes, the crazed look of a computer junkie glossing all of them over. It reeks of temper tantrum and a kick to the table. "It was solid! It should've shown up." The fingers fumble with a toy too delicate, uneven movement. "Why didn't it?"
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN,…"
"It would have come up with 'ghost' if it had been a ghost." Arms crossed in front of his chest, lean to the railing, and a tapping foot that stops a few moments later. "I ran those programs, Jack. I know that much." His gaze follows Jack's to the monitors, the exact replica of the analysis Ianto has run twice looking back down at him, showing its manic grin as it laughs in Ianto's face.
"Sure-" The off-hand comment doesn't keep the fingers from searching out the different settings. The rainbow colors cascade through the Hub, leaving them alternately blue, yellow and red.
"What if it's the system?" Gwen asks.
"What if it's the weevil? What if it's just someone being unable to handle added responsibilities? I don't have time for that." The glare catches Ianto unaware and hits hard, crawling into his body to settle low in his guts.
"That is just petty, Jack." Low and raspy, the voice decides to betray the anger and leave Ianto bare.
The shrug is unimpressed and sees no need to justify. There's not even a glance to break the fall as fingers hammer more commands into the computer. The '2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN…' continues its ring throughout the Hub, out of synch with the changing colors.
"Jack, let me-" She reaches over.
"Leave it, Gwen!" The keyboard slips from her fingers, jerked around; the cables screech in wild disconnected sound. "For once. Listen." The glare from the screens is transferred to her, singeing the air. "I'll figure it out. Just leave me. To Figure. It out. Before someone-" Jaws snap close. It ends the conversation in a dead-end, dwindling to its simpering death.
Her mouth opens to reply.
Ianto turns, shrugs, teeth clenched and distaste burning because there is nothing to reply to that and his patience doesn't exist. The bird waits, patiently splayed and the entrails a heap to its side, heart and lung cut out next to it, so he walks back to the medical bay. Jack is hammering on the keyboard as if force could convey the need for an explanation. There is none.
The cut to the bird's underside glares in stark contrast to the dirty white feathers. A chip of paint sticks to a feather, determined not to be parted from the fluff it calls its home. The frown caresses the bird in irritation before it smoothes out, leaving the sounds outside the medical bay to themselves. If there were still a doctor, no doubt they all would be declared unfit to work.
The organs spill into his fingers with easy cuts as the scalpel reflects the strong lights with every twist of the wrist, every cut through layers of muscles and arteries. Blood turns the feathers pink, reminiscent of the candy wrapper, the bird candied in sweetness. Intestines removed, the bird's body cavern stares bleak and empty, white bones show through thin layers of flesh and skin.
Fingertips run along the bones, every white bone a bump, then around the wound's edge, smoother now after the work with the scalpel. The position suggests it was placed, but the bird insists on having carried nothing but its organs.
"I don't care, Gwen!" The shout makes it down into the bay.
Eyes roll and the lips rise into a smirk to quench everything else as he grabs the individual organs to place them on the small scale. The plastic cover of the keyboard crinkles under his fingertips as he pulls up Owen's form for the categorization of alien beings. The weights entered for the organs as he is capable of identifying them offer no information as to the bird's purpose as anything other than 'bird, dead'.
"He's unreasonable." She glances back towards the computer stations, head between her shoulders, as if ears are listening everywhere and only whispers can transport the messages of highest importance.
The gaze catches Gwen's for a moment before the focus shifts back to the screen while she walks down the steps. Defeat curls into his shrug. "So?"
"He's scared."
"No, he isn't." Off-hand and masked by a small laugh, it comes out on a breath. He squints at the numbers, turns back around for the scale to fix the transposed figures. The second shrug follows after a pause, playing catch-up with his thoughts. "Maybe, yes."
"So?"
"So, what?" The liver curls up in his palm. Curiosity is trying to find something that could explain the bird's arrival on their doorstep. The thumb slides along slick skin.
"You don't care?" Exasperation turns her voice dark. There's the edge they all have.
"It's none of my business." Easy honesty leaves the words the one truth that hurts in intimate ways, and the one truth that makes the day-to-day easier to endure. The gasp of death followed by that of life and the cold care interspersed with accidental and not quite touches. The eyebrows wait for rebuttal, but she falls silent, watching him.
The liver gives a wet squelch as it jumps back to the table, landing between heart and kidney. The heart in his palm fits just between knuckles and pad of the thumb. He strokes fingertips along the arteries outside, still full of blood and releasing soft streams of it with every prod.
Little fat, only lean muscle, but it's malleable to the touch like a lover enjoying a slow stroke along the back. The hard knot is a surprise and doesn't yield to a prod and gentle massage. The frown takes residence as the brows draw in concentration.
"What is it?"
The shake of the head begs for silence and patience as bird and guts are pushed to the side of the metal table, just short of falling to the tiles. The scalpel lies easy in his hand, familiar now. It slips into red muscle and brings blood oozing out. One cut has the heart broken, sliced in two, and another quarters it, leaving the quarter with the knot sitting in the center. The scalpel's tip set to the edge, it cuts shallowly, then more deeply, twisting, the lips tight in concentration.
A metal edge pokes its way free, a comic infant dinosaur losing the egg's inner peel. It can't resist the pull of thumb and index finger; it slides free. Coated in blood and muscle fibers, it lies still in the palm of Ianto's hand, seeing the world around it for the first time.
"What is it?" Gwen's breath is hot in his ear, her body warm against his.
"A chip?" The edgy laugh catches in frown lines as slow fingers turn the chip over, pull at the blood and tissue that is determined to outlast the fingers. "It's something."
Determination curls her fingers, begging for their own lick and scrutiny, but it is held just out of reach then set down on the counter. A camera pulled over from the work station takes a photograph; blood-smeared fingers add date and time, description and place of origin. Placed on a dish it looks at them in disdain, daring them to speak its name.
"Jack!" A hitch in the voice swallows half the words as her fingers go for the comm instead of shouting the name in ear-drum-breaking clarity. "Jack, get down here, you have to see this." Frustration pulls her from quiet contemplation of the piece of metal and Ianto. Lips pull back from her teeth. "You need to see this. I'm so not joking."
Her eyes roll, and appreciation swirls around Ianto's chest for the gesture they share. It's quickly masked by the slide of the face to professional and composed, leaving the head free for contemplation. That Jack is scared exists in limbo in the back of his mind. It's a rumor too dark to appreciate and fully comprehend, the lurking sea monster that some call beautiful and some simply hideous.
The boots announce Jack and his temper. It flirts with them before he is in sight, shifting the air to tighten around them. Backs straighten and heads rise; the effect brings a flush of embarrassment to one face. It is not even noticed by the other. Ianto glares at Gwen.
"What?" Steps take him down to the bay, down to them. It's a long walk.
"It was in the bird. Inside the bird's heart." The elaboration feels important when he makes it, cheap a moment later as an attempt of symbolism not intended in the first place. Pushing off the autopsy table leaves his hands in his pocket. Even without the gloves, the memory of blood coats them, slime along the inside pockets of his slacks. The sensation is worthy of a shiver and a frown. The chip looks around the circle of them, its mere presence a smirk chipping Torchwood's armor with barely a gesture. The smirk broadens when Jack catches sight of it.
"In the bird?" Alarm paints the voice dry.
"Yes." Smug satisfaction adds a smile to the thought that very carefully avoids showing on the face or in the tone. 'I was right' fools around between them, juggling one, then the other, amidst the facades and the darker notions underneath.
Both their gazes are on Jack. A perverse triangle that they make, born out of need and loss, clinging to the only constant. It begs for rebellion, but the thought of leaving all that is familiar curbs every survival instinct. The eyes avert. There is denial that he looks just like Gwen, open-mouthed and ready to drink in wisdom from someone he doesn't know but still trusts with all he is. Perversion plays out, but it's not in his eyes as they slide into roles familiar.
"Run the standard analysis." Jack steps back.
Expectation swirls to confusion and exchanged looks, until the dish with the chip slinks up the stairs in hesitation, Gwen and Ianto in tow, and settles under microscopes that analyse for more than just surface structure. Gwen starts the analysis, Jack checks the monitors for the CCTV, and lacking something else to do Ianto joins him like a child.
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN, …"
A hand catches him by the lapel of the suit, pulls him close. Wrinkling, an unconnected batch of cells notes in disdain. The boots are within his field of vision. They are dirty. Eyebrows rise in question as the head does, hands gesture at the insistent fingers. The eye contact holds for a moment longer, then the hand lets go. Lips dip in irritation on both of them.
"It's not easy." Jack's tight-lipped admission barely makes it past tongue and throat, weevil slime fingers on weevil slimed keyboard.
The laugh borders on vexed, confusion plays. "No, it's not." A breath drawn to add more, comfort or irritation, slips between black and white. There are no words, and if there were, there wouldn't be thoughts in the first place.
"You dissected the bird."
Inanity laughs in their faces. "Yes."
"It's not easy."
The layers of the conversation recall the headache in Ianto's head. The shift of weight backwards pulls the cloth free from the hands. "It's bloody. Thanks again for the gift." It wallows between them, half lightness, half petty exhaustion.
A second monitor flickers to life next to the still image of the tourist office entrance, chemical readings on the screen. The lines waver before they settle into clean strips.
"Terrestrial." Levels on analysis switched on the computer station, Ianto focuses on the screen. Pettiness stuck in his throat, he avoids Jack's eyes on him, rather than merely take in any of the readings.
The metal readings flicker; circuit and base metal are pulled apart and slide into a three-dimensional projection on the screen.
Ianto looks up. Jack stares.
"Transmitter." The murmur gets lost in the weevil slime on the shoulder of the coat, the gesture spreads it to jaws and ear. Breathless, uneasy, tired and begging for denial from someone, but there is no-one else. A second too long leaves Torchwood unbalanced, a moment too late, flickering into despair not decision. "Isolate it."
The projection looms on one monitor, then two, is shifted to the beamed image on the far wall. It rotates along its axis. Fingertips dig into the plastic keyboard. Gwen grabs for the box stashed under the desk, security codes tapped in, and shoves the dish and chip into it, locks it.
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN,.."
The scowl is drenched in rainbow colors. The Hub shimmers in alternating red, yellow and blue. Glimmers catch in the sweat of Gwen's face, Jack's eyes reflect the colours with an alien shine. There's beauty in Torchwood.
The black box sits between Jack and Gwen. It reflects the full spectrum of wavelengths, white light and all sounds. Transmission from the inside is an impossibility, the box's walls impenetrable. Equally, their own instruments gnash in futility at innocuous corners and edges, falling flat to beeping warning signals when the existence of 'nothing' stumbles over every system's alarm string. The alarm wail from Torchwood's mainframe adds to the single wails of every system, the music to the pretty colors. Surrealism seventies' style flings gazes between monitors.
Security codes entered drop the Hub into stark realism and relative darkness for the first time. The mainframe admits a science fiction interpretation to leave it back in the seventies of futuristic television exploration and keep the timeline intact. Dramatic heavy breathing adds to the background sounds, their own, not the chainsaw murderers', as they glance at one another.
"Lockdown?" The question is an open hand extended at a moment when a closed fist would have inspired more confidence. A moment later the hand is retracted with a shake of the head, but the confusion settles in its wake. "Gwen, pull the readings on that monitor. Can we determine the frequency? Can we determine the receiver, even the location?"
The name and face swims in their minds, edging from needle to balm. It flirts with guilt and determination before it loses itself between the averted eyes, the cleared throat and the long, clueless glance to the monitor.
"Maybe?" Gwen's voice shakes on the syllables, searching the rotating circuit for answers on a system she can call a fleeting acquaintance.
"Ianto?"
Bloodshot eyes fixed on tired ones make it hard to find something else to stare at, and Gwen has already chosen the circuit for herself. The floor is appealing. Maybe the bird is still bleeding on the table, a eulogy now, after all, definitely a space in storage. AH01.879.7.09, terrestrial animals, iced. That it's coffee he thinks of- "I don't know." Honesty catches expectation in the gaze and disappointment.
"You know everything." Flatlining jokes cool the atmosphere further.
"I-" A word, a sound, an apology on the lips for something that doesn't ask for apology, only acceptance, is swallowed in a small shake of the head. The eyes lift to the weevil in the projected loop playing roughly on Torchwood walls. "I really don't." Gazes connect and disappointment intensifies.
The sense of helplessness suffocates them, car fumes and ozone smell, carbon footprints slipping into their mouths and noses. Silence crawls in the wake of their unresponsive bodies, a pause in conversation and action alike while the chip rotates on the monitor and presumably lies still within the box of 'nothing'.
Silence stretches, wavers. Unease spreads as a scratchy blanket, eyes search for comfort in little things: her hair, a walk by the bay, thoughts of nothing but the sun outside.
Silence stretches, unwavering.
"We're under attack." A cleared throat, a suggestion that has a question mark floating as an afterthought.
It's so absurd and movie-cliched it makes Ianto laugh, gurgling, bubbling, half-caught in throat and lips and allowed free a moment later, a quick release of tension that ricochets off the walls.
She catches his gaze and shrugs, little apology in the gesture even as a smile slips onto her face. "What?" She chuckles.
Ianto shrugs, still grinning.
The shrug catches on the sharp sides of Jack's scowl amidst them before Gwen's gurgling chuckle and Ianto's lopsided smirk breach the high walls and a brief nod allows them their moment of morbid humor. Facades drop when the hand rubs along eyes, cheeks and chin, and the fingers cling to the braces. They dance, indecisive and small, childlike in their movement. They beg. They need. They demand nothing and demand the world. They rarely ask.
"We have to figure this out." Understated and barely comprehensible, it hangs between them, played out by fingers along the braces. The words are lined with fear and the need for full disclosure and a return to normalcy. "This shouldn't have happened. We need to figure this out."
It's a dark rumor that he's scared. It's a beautiful and hideous rumor in one. He is beautiful and hideous in one. If an embrace solved anything, the offer would be there. In light of the exhaustion, the childlike indecision and mourning, a version of it, it feels impossible to stack more bricks for the small bridge between them, and embraces don't solve problems of micro chips and weevils, not in Torchwood.
A look, question in the eyes. The fingers are still: that is when they beg, and they do.
"I'll clean up the bird, first thing." A shrug, and averted gaze. They spell dismissal and only lack a few letters for rejection. The steps take the need for decision away, decision made, even with the pulsing protest in his chest. The sound of bricks crashing into the waves follows him to the autopsy bay. He forces himself not to listen.
Tapping sounds on the keyboard try to fade under the enigmatic silence from leaders who have more questions than answers or choose the action-adventure superhero routine to be seen doing something. Down in the medical bay, the bird stares and couldn't care less for either.
"We need to figure this out." It pleads on its knees, chin held high, swings uneasily. But it's there, shattered honesty spoken out loud.
Ianto has his fingers in the wound of the bird. Something shifts inside and wants to sit in a corner until it's done, the world has ended or not, but then the mocking of scalpels and the utter cleanliness of the medical bay crushes any hope for escape.
The bird has its beak open. Maybe it's a smile, or possibly cynicism has swallowed them whole. That, at least, would be familiar.
"This isn't us." Scalpel in hand, the sluggish words worm up the stairs, while up there the tapping on the keyboard slows, hesitates, punches, is cursed and apologizes a moment later. The bird's wing is bristle under fingers looking for comfort.
"No?" Cold eyes penetrate, and height plays with the obvious in dynamics and disdain when the footfall ceases and boots peek over the abyss towards broken things: bird and the squishy insides of people. The keyboard tapping in the background has ceased, and red-rimmed eyes lurk somewhere behind greatcoat and unfettered willingness to fight, unseen. Gwen has her arms crossed in front of her chest, but it looks more hug and self-comfort than defense, the only thing they have left.
Ianto's flickering gaze traces red-rimmed eyes, boots and the flare of the coat until it comes to rest on the glassy bird eyes, smears of blood on cold metal. The familiarity kills the next breath and heartbeat.
"It's not in Russia? Really?" A feeble hand gestures to the bird, draws lines of fatigue around the feathers and the head. It tries to trick a response but loses itself in tired resignation. The note slips from bloody fingers and flattens itself to the bird. It smells of coffee and something warm but soaks up the blood like it has never known anything else. "This isn't us." The repetition burns in grief amongst cold metal.
The boots scuff along the tiles, hit a pole, and the sound wavers alongside the laugh from pursed lips. Lines around the eyes draw a cold edge. "And when did Torchwood last give you a choice?"
The exhaled breath, part gasp, from behind the coat, without the armor of a keyboard or a gun between them echoes the tight lips in the medical bay, the averted gaze and the rage that burns deep in Ianto's stomach, the need to be somewhere else, somewhere that isn't this. Lips open for a reply.
"There is no choice, and there is no time." Jack grips the rail until his fingers turn white. It slides the last lock into place, clicks shut, and burns any comment, any chance to talk back, anything in the way of disagreement or, in fact, agreement. "We don't have a choice."
Bared. Red eyes find tired eyes find cold eyes, then Jack turns away.
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN,…"
The bird stares up at Ianto with glassy eyes. Ianto flicks at a wing.
"It'll be okay." Gwen's murmur gets lost between the noises of pipes and water, computer analysis and the dead silence.
"Yes."
There is no choice. There is only Torchwood, with its truths and lies and the grey spaces in-between. The note, held between thumb and forefinger, drips blood to the table. It wants to be back on the desk, be part of the fabric of the thin security blanket. Ianto slides it into a small plastic bag because even bloody it is still useful.
There is no air, but it continues to exist.
Pairings/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen
Rating: PG-13
Setting/Spoilers: post-Exit Wounds
Length: 10400
Summary: A note points to nowhere and a bird comes from nowhere, and Torchwood, in the wake of their teammates’ deaths, finds that some experiences shatter things into pieces too small to be fit back together.
Notes: Beta'd by
sanginmychainsA note on the desk, coffee coated - it peeks out from under the beige manila folders. They're called top-secret while the note's called trash; scribbled numbers on dirty paper don't deserve filing under top secret, or anything for that matter. It has shifted from top to middle to bottom as folders have been removed, stacked on, pulled from underneath. Clean papers have been spread over it, a different kind of scribble on them, but they deserve recognition and are slid back into their folders, slid back into their spots in the filing system and the note is sitting there, soaking up the slide of coffee after it has slipped down the cup where lips haven't quite caught it. The note clings to the bottom of the coffee cup when the cup is lifted out of the way. Thumb and index fingers slide it off; it sticks, wanting to stay in the soggy wet, but it gives and is pulled free.
The desk lamp bathes the desk in light and the rest of the world in half-shades. Too late for full lights, or too early, when the night blends into the morning and bloodshot eyes squint at squiggles on paper in semi-darkness. The light can't quite get into the lines on the faces, leaves features more pronounced than usual, eyes more sunken.
"They're coordinates, sir." Coffee slides over the note and drops off its bottom edge to splash to the floorboards as the note is held between thumb and index finger. Ianto peers at it closely, the splash a glimmer of the light's reflection in the darkness, then glances at the note and holds it like a verdict over the desk.
"Yeah." The mumble of the bent head, the hand still scribbling letters onto top-secret papers seem unconvincing in their camouflage. "Just leave them around here."
Eyebrows lift. "They have been left around here. I think they'd appreciate a change of scenery."
"So would I, but I'm still stuck behind this desk." The head rises and the eyes glare, frown lines on the forehead, lips tight. He squints at the note, the coordinates, then looks around the desk. "Might be from one of the folders?" He shifts two to the side, half-hearted attempt, and three on top, then shrugs and waves the note and Ianto out. "Work to do, just put it somewhere, don't care. Doesn't look important. Does it? No, doesn't." The head bends again, its eyes on the paper and scribbles; it makes a show of rapt attention as the pen writes out nonsense syllables.
Ianto waves the note over the desk. Splish splash, two drops of coffee drop to the desk, hitting wood and not paper. A third drop gathers at the bottom right corner, collecting itself to fall. Just two more moments, three more moments: the light shines through the wet note, the coordinates mirrored and reversed.
The drop falls, the head lifts. "What?" Terse tone, terse line of the mouth, terse glare if that was possible.
"I think it's protesting not being important." The wide-eyed look, the naive tone, affronted at the suggestion of being anything but innocent works well in the light of day and times past. In the light of desk lamp and night's shadows, it's curling up for the chastising eyebrow and revealing itself to be bare-threaded and tired. It asks for attention and knows it's not even getting patience.
"Just take it, Ianto. I don't know where it's from and I don't care." The hint of pleading creeps into the tone. It's the days and nights in the bones, the lack of distance from events of days past. There are files that demand answers, phonecalls that are being held up before they even reach the desk. There is no room for memories when actions and words have to be pulled up and dissected moment by moment. There are calls for full reports: Death by Torchwood.
Eyebrows rise.
The tone sharpens. "I don't care!" The hint of pleading is gone.
That is that. The note slips into the hand and walks out in tow with frown lines and dipped corners of a mouth. The rolling eyes come a moment later, as does the shrug of the shoulders. It's too early to give a care, too weary to do more than give up, and disappearing into the low-power lit bowels of the Hub has its own kind of satisfaction. The wetness of the note is a cold wetness, clinging and clammy and raising goosebumps on the skin when felt anywhere other than the palm of the hand.
The note flattens to a desk, the black on wet hard to read in the near-darkness. Ianto sits hunched over the keyboard, watching the screen and the fast-forward zoom in on the location on their mapping system, raw satellite feeds and Google earth. A pin pierces the map, X marks the spot, and Ianto cocks his head at it. He frowns at the note.
"You're not going to Russia!" The disembodied voice rings through the open door and across the floor to curl around Ianto as a faint, echoing warning. It's followed by laughter, still whispy and lingering despite its emptiness, when the first 0 is almost dry.
The frown sets. The note is grabbed and leaves faint marks on the desk, unnoticed but noticeable, as it travels across the Hub floor, up stairs, down stairs, a longing urge for the water and the rubbish bin both, but it merely ends slapped to the counter surface. A long glance to it, then it's left alone in the dark.
It dries, finally, over the course of hours on its own. The light never goes out. It's a sore attempt to keep the vast silence from pointing at empty spaces and having a laugh.
"What's this?" Fingers stroke softly, follow the line of the scribbles. Light is glaring, the Hub awake. "They're coordinates. Ianto? Jack?"
"They're not important." Voice from the office: the laugh ceased existing hours before.
"It's in Russia." Voice to the side.
"I'm pretty sure it's not another Flat Holm so don't even think about it." The office voice again and the door cracks closed, ominous warning or just another flare of temper pushing through after a long night and top-secret files in beige.
The light is on and bloodshot eyes give a small blink, the head a back and forth that is half 'yes' and half 'no', and as an extra a coat of irritation to the posture and the lean of the hip to the counter, another layer of fatigue to the nod of the head and the shrug. The stained note sits innocent and dry between mugs and silverware. One 0 is smudged; the other figures are merely off-color from coffee and possibly time.
"Where did you find it?" she mouths and holds up the note for him and to the light.
"The desk," he says, voice at normal volume. The eyebrows gesture the 'over there' but she has understood that without the hint and gives a small nod.
The note is taken on a flurry of motion down the steps and up the steps and across the small bridge. It almost sails off the desk in a flutter of an escape attempt as it's plunked down on another cold surface. She catches it, creasing the paper.
"He said not to bother." Over her shoulder and right into her ear, hushed with secrecy even as he is pretending to stand up straight and honest. There's the hint of dark rebellion.
"Right. He's saying a lot of that these days." The mouth spills as the fingers fly on the number pad, checking the coordinates themselves. Determination flattens everything in the vicinity.
Hands are shoved into pockets as Ianto leans against the desk, back to Jack's office. The voice remains an under-breath sing-song as the shoe taps out the rhythm of impatience. "He won't give you leave to go to Russia. And he doesn't care."
Glare meets eyebrow before the glare is turned to the screen. The pin prick marks the spot again, and the dissonance is dissolved in a shrug, without further comment. She stares at the map. If there was a clock it would be ticking in dreary monotone. "I can always take time off." That afterthought took more than moment and wavers unconvincingly.
"Yes, Gwen." He smiles indulgently and means 'in your dreams' as he pushes off the desk. The note is pocketed in suit pants and carried around for the day, sitting warm and dry, carefully folded as it moves about the Hub and onto a Weevil chase later that day, then back to the Hub and plunged into light from darkness when it is lifted from the pocket and pushed down on top of a beige folder. Say hello to secrecy, it seems familiar.
"It's not in Russia." The hands are on the hips and the frown is more determined than tired, although it is that, too. The lack of patience and indulgence is illustrated easily in the cutting hand movement.
"Nope." The pen begins to scribble in frantic activity; the eyebrows only lift for a short glance, a brief smile, interest. Amusement makes for a happy face that doesn't sugar coat the sunken eyes and the lines around lips and on the forehead.
"They're not coordinates."
"Nope." He sits back behind the desk, hands crossed behind his head, an excuse for the pen to stop. The neck twists to work out a few cricks. It cracks, and a frown slivers over both of their faces at the sound. The note wavers a little under draught and light.
"It's a phone number." That's pulled from the air with grasping fingers, eyes skyward, ground-ward if one is keeping track of the relations.
A nod helps along a happy smile that stretches the lips. The pen beats out a tap on the corner of the desk. Waiting, while relishing the distraction, has its own sweet heartbeat.
"With degrees and minutes." The tone drops. The hand is back on the hip, joining its other half in the gesture.
"Yup." The smile stretches to the eyes. The con rolls and fails in its stuttering execution.
"You're a liar." The index finger jots once, twice, and the grinding of teeth rumbles down jaw bones and spine.
The smile freezes and hardens, the con exposed. Amusement flees the crinkles around the eyes and leaves only the glazing dark of dull and dead behind. One corner of the lips pulls up in mocking salute. "Yes. And you're not a fool. Or are you? I don't know what this is and I don't particularly care. A note, fine. From one of the folders? Maybe. Does it matter? I have no clue and I have no time to worry about it. Because at least one of us is working around here. Because at least one of us dealing!" The head bends to the folders again, and the pen takes up its tedious nonsense, a shield from questions and answers.
Images, kept at bay by the constant light, are dragged forward and exposed. More than numbers and words on reports, the sensations of sound and smell and touch reply. Eyes close, choked, and open again.
"This is not a game, Jack!" A fist closes around the note, pressing a 0 to a 4, a 5 between 3 and 9, degrees and minutes melt together, find themselves in close embrace, unexpected reunion. The hand slips on a folder, topples two of them to the ground, and a third is caught before it has a chance to follow the others into unknown shadows. Ianto pushes it onto the stack again. The dust enjoys the close cling of fingers for a change.
The eyes implore, long for a response as fingers close tighter on the note, numbers folding in on themselves and the stains, but the head does not lift, remains bent over meaningless scribbles. The push off the desk has the note disappear in the suit pocket again, plunged into unawareness of no response forthcoming.
"Would be a nice change if it was." A cleared throat from behind that desk, unexpected and unsubtle. "A game, would be a nice change if it was a game." The words creep up on the turned back, on the body disappearing right before Jack's eyes into the darkness of everything outside that bit of lamp light.
"You know what this note is?" It poses as a question, the lingering uncertainty on the last syllable on the way out, almost unheard over the defeat of the first lines. A thumb rubs over the wrinkles and creases of the note in the pocket.
"You wouldn't believe me if I told you 'no' so just go. It's just a note on a desk full of notes, in an office full of meaningless sh-." He catches himself. There's the tired hand and the pen poised as a weapon. The voice cuts through the darkness. It cuts through defenses and through tendrils of tenderness seeping at their feet. It cuts through the core, splitting them apart like overripe fruit, squelchy and too sweet and nauseating. The jaw sets and plunges the room into silence.
A look, a gesture, and it's helplessness at the desert between them, and the balled up note dampens with sweat in the fist inside the pocket. The tread of the shoes down the steps and across the floor is soft, deceptive, slinking away, slinking out while the silence of no response forthcoming hangs back.
"Where are you going?" An echo. The space makes it timid when it tries to be proud and fearless.
"Russia?" It is a laugh, frayed at the edges, and as forehead meets cog door, just to rest for a moment, it dissolves into one indrawn, shaky breath when steps follow, just for a moment.
"You don't have leave to go to Russia." From in front of the tower, like the king overlooking all that is his - the damp, the dark, the lost and the fallen. Arms crossed, he looks down his nose at Ianto, daring him to look up, daring him to cower. An afterthought, "is it really in Russia?"
"Does it matter?" The defeat has swallowed the uncertainty and the question mark while sweat dissolves ink inside the pocket. The eyes don't meet. Grey metal is appealing, hard and unyielding and everlasting, or close to. It's a wall of another kind. Ianto wants to melt into it, get himself a coat of armor against the games that pretend to be none and the inability to turn back time. Steel had never been salvation, but it feels like it now.
Ianto steps out through the cog door, the great exit and the first early night after too many weeks of clinging to the nights in the Hub like a moth, quiet reassurance of damp walls and dim lights, too much coffee and too little sleep, naps on the sofa and opening eyes to light and light in Jack's office no matter when.
Cardiff is hazy with fog but not rain. It is looking for a place to settle, slink and cotton candy all which lurks in the bowels underneath the city. The note is pulled out, smudged now from sweat and inhales the fog like air to breathe. The note rolls in Ianto's hand, wrinkled and unfazed and another secret on a stack of them. Held out over the bay water lapping at the quay, it wants to drop and roll away with the waves.
It moves idly in the breeze, width and length of palm used, tries to roll off as the hand shifts. The wings spread to take flight.
Footsteps close in on the note and the hand holding it, not creeping but demanding. "Dare you to."
The fingers smash close. Bones crack as they imprison the note once more in sweaty skin. "You would." It's spit like fire to the ocean, going out in a sizzle as it hits. The smoke is still rising when the ember has turned ashen. He turns, his back to the water, and one step back and the body would plummet, suit and shoes and hair and all, swallowed by the waves. "You don't care at all? Not your handwriting is it?"
Silence paints the lips closed, eyes fixed over the shoulder on the docks in mid-distance or an argument in mid-thought.
"Is it?!" The note is pushed forward and hits the coat in a smack-dab sound of damp to unyielding.
"No, it's not and no, I don't care." It's a final blow, gunshot wound still bleeding. It loves the silence in its wake, only broken by a car screeching along wet tarmac on Lloyd-George. As it passes, its headlights move up the buildings, disappear, crawl up the next ones.
"Well then." The note is imprisoned and passes by coat and stony features. The fingers are white around the paper, curled into a fist in the suit pocket. The night beckons for a disappearance or abduction, something dark and unruly to happen, a type of mystery, rift incident, anything that could distract from the darkness.
"Well what?" An alien call over the lapping of water. The cold in the voice gives it its edge. It cuts through carefully sown strings. If one were willing to hear, and one isn't, it would carry a sliver of pleading.
"Nothing. And thanks for clarifying your priorities, sir." He answers the wall with another, erected on shaky ground but erected no smaller or sturdier. He dismisses, with a movement of a hand over the shoulder and the lack of a look back, with nothing to apologize for the tone or the choice of words. Even the footsteps get lost in the screech of another car's wheels, and once the car is gone there is nothing but two dark silhouettes, no faces.
The moon pales against the morning sky, disappears altogether as the headlights on Bute contrast less with the world around them. The bird's feathers move with every playful breeze, fluffed in the air one moment and pressed to cold planks the next, melting into chewing gum and wood. The bird sits, innocent and unmoved, propped against the closed tourist office door, the beak open in contemplation of the sound and if listened to very closely a croak might be heard. It has all the aesthetics of a still-life painting, Dürer and the rabbit. A wing flattens to brown wood, chips of old paint catch in off-white feathers and give them a decisive sheen of plastic and artificial intelligence. The bird sits and waits. The small puddle of blood has spread underneath and is dry by the time any definition of morning has begun to apply.
Sharp footsteps vibrate across the wooden planks, the slide and drag of one heel along a raised edge, a half stumble. Dignity is restored a moment later when cold fingers straighten the marine tie and brush through the hair. Black shoes appear on the edge of the bird's glassy vision, close in from the horizon of pier and background buildings until they fill everything there is.
The shoes shuffle, knees bend, hip juts, and while the hand is on the hip the head turns in search left and right before Ianto crouches to the bird's eye level. The ruffling feathers feel the warmth of attention. Contemplation of turning the bird over gives way to distaste over the dried blood and a sigh on the lips. The wing moves and slaps against the door.
If this were just a tourist office, this would be just a dead bird. It isn't. The door creaks as Ianto pushes it open after the quiet slide of key into lock.
"Ianto!" The voice in his ear is insistent.
One step takes him over the bird. The sole of a polished shoe catches on the tip of a wing. The feathers brush past but the smallest of bones cling to the sole's pattern and the bird unfolds. The red gap to its underside is revealed, splayed open in parody of every mystery novel cover.
"Yes?" The touch of fingers to the communicator is accompanied by a mostly professional sigh. The glance shifts from beak to claw, tracking the wound. The breeze drags a candy wrapper in through the door. It somersaults elegantly over off-white wings, speckles of old paint, and finishes with a slide to the shoe. The candy wrapper pink prances in jarring contrast.
"Is it an immediate crisis that keeps you from being here on time or just general tardiness?"
"A dead bird, if you care to know, sir." The grudge adds an undertone to the voice and the lips dip in dismayed frown. The bridges between them are toppling, and how easy is it to blame fate and throw up the hands in its face.
The sun is determined to make the most of the morning and forces everything in its vicinity to squint stupidly into its shine. The bird throws a perfect triangle shadow.
"I'm not paying you for your insolence." The voice from the communicator appears just behind him.
Ianto turns, laughs. Blood rushes in his ears, playing a warning to the deaf but the tongue moves before further contemplation. "You're not paying me for sexual favors either, so stop being such a bloody bastard." The 'sir' hangs in the thoughts, ready to be added, a gleeful bounce to its vowel at the idea, but once discarded it slinks away to happier times.
A breath catches on dry silence, open lips, and the sound of cracks in the structure. It's conned into oblivion a moment later, clear plastic tape to repair the damage.
"What's that?" The boot connects in semi-question with the bird's ribs. The wing gives one bounce before hugging the wooden planks again, its tip giving a slow caress to leather and linoleum.
"Seagull. Care for its taxonomy?"
"You know it?" Amusement drags an indulgent smile along, mild interest and more clear tape.
"Of course, sir. Walking encyclopedia." The smiles plasters itself across the face, straight, and meets the curious gaze over the bird's splay. The pause stretches to pregnancy. The smile slips from the corner of the lips in impatience. "No." It resonates with 'things you should have known' and 'I'm not playing today' in equal parts. The gaze turns back to the bird, denying the interest over a thumping heart and an ache low in the guts.
"It's dead." Jack kicks at it again, and it splays further, entrails dripping from the gap in its body.
Stating the obvious deserves the lift of an eyebrow but not a reply, even if to keep the farce of a conversation going. The bird stares at the men, imploring for truth and action with black eyes.
"Looks like someone left you a gift." Jack pivots in the crouch, spins like a heartbroken ballet dancer to look up at Ianto's unmoving lean to the counter.
"Fair to say that that would be us. Not my name on the door." The eyebrows wait for a challenge but another pivot takes Jack back to the bird.
"Not our name, either. Remind me to pick up wedding bands." The wound is poked and prodded. It's a joke, and a bad one at it.
"Over my dead body." It slips out as a near-whisper, bored with Jack in the crouch, bored with the bird, bored with days blending from one in the other, bored with bloodshot eyes staring back at him whenever he looks into the mirror while brushing his teeth. The scissors to the clear tape, the cracks show, and there's almost an apology on the lips, something to take those words back at least, because he is still here, brushing his teeth every eight hours to pretend that nothing has changed.
"Ianto Torchwood – has a ring, doesn't it? Or would that be Harkness?" That doesn't comment, and it doesn't repair any more damages. The index finger in the wound rotates, searches and spills more bird guts on the tourist office linoleum.
"Careful, your ego is bursting into star dust." Another cut, another step around something he doesn't know how to control. A barely civil smile slips onto lips and avoids the eyes when a tourist looks in through the door. Ianto waves her away and hopes the bird remains the more prominent memory in her mind.
"Captain Stardust? Fancy that." It's a sideline thought as index and middle finger lift entrails from the wound, uncoiling the carefully coiled and still warm. An absent dip of the tongue to the corner of the lips. The entrails recoil in pale grey and blood outside the bird. It could be art if it wasn't so gruesome. Upside down it looks pretty in every morbid way.
"Makes you into a cheap action hero." A pause for effect. "Wait- you are, you have never saved-" Then the roar of blood swallows words unsaid but thought. It's for something other than the cold edges and lack of words, a reaction that is real and not just an attempt at business as usual.
Something breaks. The con is splayed at their feet, and eyes hard and unyielding turn away. There is no comment. "Well, it's-"
"It's not just you." Hissed, breath expelled and fists clenched, it wants to hurt more. "They-"
"Well, it's dead and it's yours."
It isn't the first, and the topic is closed.
Legs stretch and surgical gloves drop from up high. A small wet slapping sound as they hit the bird's entrails. Pale, gloved fingers caress ragged wound edges. The bird's wing moves in the breeze. Another candy wrapper somersaults and sticks to wet guts, and that is all there is.
The greatcoat brushes past Ianto, the smell of apples and a touch of a breeze along Ianto's jaw. So close as to be nothing. Linoleum and secret door are studied respectively and in-depth. There are no words. If there were they would at least tumble angry and rough. Like this, there is only silence, and the pretence of a con still existing under torn clear plastic tape.
"Hey! That's- that was a bird!" The pull of the drapes, nighttime pleasures only thirty minutes past and already forgotten, the last of the huskiness is still in the first syllables but not in the last. Gwen is the only one that still loves, it seems.
Ianto's head swivels up, and Jack uses the break in moment to disappear through the door. The door opens with a slide and falls closed with nary sound, not the bang that came in waves off of Jack's form. Temptation to push his tongue out at a piece of reinforced wood lingers for a moment longer, but the irritated twitch to the eye simply turns back to Gwen as he pushes off the counter. Cardiff Castle postcards slide to the floor. He picks them up before soles make contact too intimate and dirty.
The bird stares at them with dead eyes. It is fear that avoids touch, the horror movie chainsaw lurks at their backs, a trap falling closed maybe. It could be just a bird, but even Torchwood has its healthy dose of paranoid instinct and it is hard to not think of the images that come up, unbidden: stabbed in the back while you were looking the other way.
Lips pull back from teeth, nose wrinkles in disgust as she crouches despite better intentions and takes in the entrails. Ianto crouches next to her, postcards in one hand, the fingers of the other balancing him in the uneasy stance.
"He did that?" she motions and whispers.
"Not that I know of." Ianto shakes his head and thinks of the CCTV feed that Jack would be watching in his office at this moment. Or maybe he has it turned off out of spite and anger or something else and contemplates plans of world revolution or employee torture. "I found it dead this morning. He just pulled it apart."
"Why?" Sleep still lurks behind slow neuronal clusters, inane questions that deserve inane answers.
"He didn't stop to explain." The shrug chases sweet indifference. Fascination enters with pinprick accuracy when the sunlight glints off wet guts.
"He never does." A put-upon sigh ends in a small laugh, excusing the first and ripping it to ragged shreds.
The edge of despair that time of the morning is new and not exactly welcome. A good night's sleep should wipe it from her tone and discipline wipes it from his on a daily basis. Eyes flicker. For a moment, the break for the door seems like a viable possibility, abated by a deep breath.
"He never talked about-"
"I'll clean up here." Straightened knees, cracking joints, in one fluid movement, and the easy smile smoothes the wrinkles of worry. Busy wording cuts her off in mid-sentence. Dark pleasure at the guilty shame flooding her face, the teeth burrowed in the lips - dirty pleasure for that one moment, before the candy wrapper tears loose from the wet guts and spills against the tourist office counter. The guilt edges into the shuffle of Ianto's feet, his movement behind the counter and the press to the button. The door slides open, nary a sound, again, and beckons with its darkness. It's hardly seductive but seductively familiar nonetheless. The nod of his head is perfunctory, impatience when the door falls closed with her inaction, and he presses the button again.
Ianto's posture freezes at a feeble step of hers towards the counter, intent on her face. The wet squeak of a shoe on bird entrails severs that. Her eyes widen, and the spike of pleasure peaks in his head. Cardiff Castle's bricks are falling apart in his grasp. Eyebrows extend the postcard bricks' motion towards the door. The concern swept away by guts, she goes, her gait uneasy as if the bird is still stuck under her sole after all.
The bird surveys damage and control and Ianto. Another pair of surgical gloves is dragged onto fingers adding a blue hue to pale skin. A few steps take him back to the bird and he pulls it fully into the office, joining its guts, to allow the door to close.
"Wonderful gift, sir." The mutter barely makes it to his own ears, but the lips enjoy the movement, the sarcastic slide of tongue on teeth. There's a headache pounding for release. Three hours of non-sleep don't prepare for Torchwood, Jack and dead birds.
The bird is lifted into the plastic bag he pulls from behind the counter. Held by its wings, it enjoys its last flight into the dark unknown. The amused eyes go bleak at the thought of a eulogy to the gull, animalclass of bird. The guts cling to the outside of the bag before they follow their hull into it. They splatter wetly to the bottom, the squelch of a cock in an ass. Odd comfort at odd times. The cries of the gulls outside the tourist office gives the dead bird its last goodbye as the plastic bag is enveloped by the darkness past the secret door.
Neon glare embraces the plastic bag like a halo as the cog door rolls back. You have passed to the lands beyond, welcome. One of the computer monitors is showing the blazing red and deliberately hard-to-miss floating window of rift activity. Gwen is frantic, hair flying about her face. She is also the only one bothered by flashing lights and sirens, Ianto with his plastic bag still in the entrance, until Jack strides from his office.
"What is it?" The tidal wave of annoyance and flaring temper spreads from the steps across the main floor. Defenses have been rebuilt.
"Probably nothing." Fingers thump hard on the keys as she attempts the localization of the activity. The vague sounds that try their hand at reassurance fall flat and slide to puzzled. "Nothing too bad, anyway."
Nervous laughter accompanies the bird in the plastic bag across Hub floors to the autopsy bay. It slinks past the mayhem of flashing screens and only one person on the console and hurries the last few steps to disappear within high walls and veiled secrecy.
"Ianto!"
"Sir?" One foot has reached the safety of the steps down, a hand on the railing. Careful patience is threading already; dread for the day sinks in. "I have no idea what that is." A small attempt at evasion as innocence is tried on for style, a nod at the flashing siren-red across the Hub's main floor.
"What are you doing with that?" Curious cat expression, narrowed eyes and entirely too much interest. Grubby fingers want to dissect for truth; insect spray and chainsaws might help.
Eyes connect. Another apology on the lips, but then there is the insistence that there is nothing worth an apology if everything hides behind walls and lies and clever cons, so Ianto swallows it, but at least refrains from adding anything else.
"Just-" The bird reeks of something other than dead meat. The early dismissal in the tourist office turns it more pungent. Fruit that's been left out for too long, rot taking over sweetness. It's too familiar to ignore. Innocence flutters into Ianto's smile. "It's-"
"Jack!" Urgency takes over her voice and bleeds it raw. It puddles between them, lapping at attempted bridges and drawing attention away to the leaks.
Saved by the rift's bell from the Spanish Inquisition. The eyes hold the contact for two more heartbeats before the attention refocuses, and a few steps take Jack to the main floor and Gwen's side. They converse. Ianto watches with mediocre interest; fingernails dig into the palm of his hand. Water drips down next to him, comes from far higher up. Hope dwells, nurtured by mostly idiocy and a childish wish for a happy end.
"You! Stay! Keep the comms open!" The jabbing finger reduces him to office boy when they make a run for it through the cog door.
The silence is a negative shockwave that forces itself into every nook and cranny. The red is still flashing, playing stark reminder. There's the slick sound of the plastic bag drawing along the railing. Fingers unclench one by one from cold metal and the feet find the steps down. The need for secrecy past, the shoes allow sound as they travel down, quiet orchestration. The bird splays on the table, spreads in pose and show off, the hips raised in lurid display. Wounded dampness smears across the metal table. The guts form a beauty's necklace, decorated to the end.
Access codes entered at Owen's work station and the comm sounds blast through Hub speakers, Dolby surround for action movies, sweet bass. There's hesitation of the fingertips on the keys, an indrawn breath and held and only slowly released, while memory is still playing tricks on him, giving him snark and poison when there is no-one there.
Memory adds a thought of dark offices and red eyes, dismissal of both intent and role. It is someone else, but the feeling of loss is the same, unfairly so, when both of them are still there, alive by any standards, and there is no room to complain when you are still breathing. The bird plays with dustballs. It's a game of catch and the bird is losing fast. Loss is the first lesson Torchwood teaches. It's also the last.
"Gwen- to the left!" The metallic voice blares across the speakers.
Ianto doesn't hesitate and slides the scalpel into the open wound, cuts away at the entrails with erratic movement. Cookies have never tasted this sweet, and the knife wavers only a little when the thrill of the forbidden settles in his stomach. He parts the organs from the body and the blood smears across the table, framing the bird.
"Jack!" Ianto looks up, distracted by the sounds of the comm communication. "Weevil!"
The shout breaks Ianto's concentration; the scalpel slips. Weevils don't usually cause the blaring of the siren. His irritation gives way to action, and he takes the steps up to the main area. The rift is plateauing on a spike on one monitor. On the second, the green dots for Jack and Gwen blink but there is nothing else. If there was a weevil, it should show up on the system.
Ianto taps his comm. "Are you positive it's a weevil?"
"Yes!" Gwen laughs, but the laugh lacks amusement. "It's right here."
"Can't find it on the system, Gwen."
"I'm positive it's waiting to pounce on me, Ianto, I'm not dreaming this one up. It stinks."
"Eew, it does," Jack adds. The strained attempt at humor does a shit job at masking the unease underneath. "You sure you can't locate it? You sure you know what you're doing?" The insult rings in the words but dies on the way through the tone, leaving confusion.
Ianto rolls his eyes, it is all he can spare, and runs the information available to him through several filters. They are the clumsy attempts at communication with a system touched only by one person beyond the user interface and the common key combinations in the past. The colours on the screen alternate between rainbow and black. Adrenaline surges in his body. The identifying software splurts, "2 HUMAN."
It scans for tech and life and alien bacteria and finds only that: "2 HUMAN."
"It doesn't show up." Ianto forces his voice to steady confidence, but the tension still slips into the tone. "It's not on the screens."
Gwen yells; Jack yells something back. The sounds of a scuffle ring over the speakers, gunshots. It comes from behind and above him and makes Ianto part of the encounter even in the Hub. He ducks at a blast. His hand jerks for the gun secured under the desk surface until he forces his palm flat to the desk.
"2 HUMAN."
Ianto calls the CCTV image to one of the monitors. It shows both Jack and Gwen and a weevil in their midst. The weevil has Jack pinned to the wall. Gwen's weight is shifted forward as if she wants to jump the alien from behind.
"Ianto!" Jack's voice is tight.
"I can see it on the CCTV, but it doesn't register with anything here. I don't know how-"
The weevil roars once, twists and takes off down the alley at a gallop.
"What the hell?" Jack on the screen is staring after the weevil. Jack on the comm is panting hard.
"2 HUMAN."
The weevil is out of range before Ianto catches up and adjusts the software to a wider area. The CCTV for that part of the street shows rotting containers and fog. It seems fitting in entirely too awkward ways.
"0." The software flatlines.
"Ianto!" Jack stares up at the CCTV camera, gestures impatiently with the demand for an explanation, no-nonsense. "Full report!"
They are still alive. Ianto exhales, something between laugh and sob. "It ran off, sir."
"Very funny." The tone indicates it's not, except for the relief.
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN." The machine voice rattles it off with every setting applied. "0."
"We'll be back in the Hub. I expect an explanation." Jack on the screen cuts the comm connection and walks out of the camera view.
Still images and flat lines of detection stare blankly around the Hub from the monitors and screens for someone to pay them attention. The red of the rift alarm bathes him in angry hues then doesn't. The water trickles in the background. It attempts to soothe but only stretches tight nerves.
The mechanical voice keeps up the steady repetition of the words while Ianto runs the analysis again.
The cog door rolls back. The recording of the two green dots replays on the screen, synched with the CCTV and the rift activity. The impossibility of their combination makes a headache spread from above Ianto's ears to his forehead.
"Ianto." The boots carry cheap authority down the metal walkway. It sinks into spine and tone as the demand for professionalism singes the air between them.
"It never showed." The nod goes to the monitors' looping images, sounds and data across the Hub. It plays along the wall, projected for show.
"It should have." The coat brushes along Ianto's calves as mud and weevil stink push towards the monitor. Fingers drag dirt across pristine keyboards. It slips into the gaps between keys and spreads underneath, cushioning every keystroke.
"Yes." Agreement comes easily, a balm between them. The shrug follows as Jack engrosses himself in options and variations Ianto has checked before, the same standard commands, the same key combinations that don't slip deeper than the data's skin. The 'no shit' leaves the mouth but never arrives, remaining a stellar whisper.
"It wasn't a ghost." Slime drips from the hair into the collar of the coat. The screen reflects in the eyes, the crazed look of a computer junkie glossing all of them over. It reeks of temper tantrum and a kick to the table. "It was solid! It should've shown up." The fingers fumble with a toy too delicate, uneven movement. "Why didn't it?"
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN,…"
"It would have come up with 'ghost' if it had been a ghost." Arms crossed in front of his chest, lean to the railing, and a tapping foot that stops a few moments later. "I ran those programs, Jack. I know that much." His gaze follows Jack's to the monitors, the exact replica of the analysis Ianto has run twice looking back down at him, showing its manic grin as it laughs in Ianto's face.
"Sure-" The off-hand comment doesn't keep the fingers from searching out the different settings. The rainbow colors cascade through the Hub, leaving them alternately blue, yellow and red.
"What if it's the system?" Gwen asks.
"What if it's the weevil? What if it's just someone being unable to handle added responsibilities? I don't have time for that." The glare catches Ianto unaware and hits hard, crawling into his body to settle low in his guts.
"That is just petty, Jack." Low and raspy, the voice decides to betray the anger and leave Ianto bare.
The shrug is unimpressed and sees no need to justify. There's not even a glance to break the fall as fingers hammer more commands into the computer. The '2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN…' continues its ring throughout the Hub, out of synch with the changing colors.
"Jack, let me-" She reaches over.
"Leave it, Gwen!" The keyboard slips from her fingers, jerked around; the cables screech in wild disconnected sound. "For once. Listen." The glare from the screens is transferred to her, singeing the air. "I'll figure it out. Just leave me. To Figure. It out. Before someone-" Jaws snap close. It ends the conversation in a dead-end, dwindling to its simpering death.
Her mouth opens to reply.
Ianto turns, shrugs, teeth clenched and distaste burning because there is nothing to reply to that and his patience doesn't exist. The bird waits, patiently splayed and the entrails a heap to its side, heart and lung cut out next to it, so he walks back to the medical bay. Jack is hammering on the keyboard as if force could convey the need for an explanation. There is none.
The cut to the bird's underside glares in stark contrast to the dirty white feathers. A chip of paint sticks to a feather, determined not to be parted from the fluff it calls its home. The frown caresses the bird in irritation before it smoothes out, leaving the sounds outside the medical bay to themselves. If there were still a doctor, no doubt they all would be declared unfit to work.
The organs spill into his fingers with easy cuts as the scalpel reflects the strong lights with every twist of the wrist, every cut through layers of muscles and arteries. Blood turns the feathers pink, reminiscent of the candy wrapper, the bird candied in sweetness. Intestines removed, the bird's body cavern stares bleak and empty, white bones show through thin layers of flesh and skin.
Fingertips run along the bones, every white bone a bump, then around the wound's edge, smoother now after the work with the scalpel. The position suggests it was placed, but the bird insists on having carried nothing but its organs.
"I don't care, Gwen!" The shout makes it down into the bay.
Eyes roll and the lips rise into a smirk to quench everything else as he grabs the individual organs to place them on the small scale. The plastic cover of the keyboard crinkles under his fingertips as he pulls up Owen's form for the categorization of alien beings. The weights entered for the organs as he is capable of identifying them offer no information as to the bird's purpose as anything other than 'bird, dead'.
"He's unreasonable." She glances back towards the computer stations, head between her shoulders, as if ears are listening everywhere and only whispers can transport the messages of highest importance.
The gaze catches Gwen's for a moment before the focus shifts back to the screen while she walks down the steps. Defeat curls into his shrug. "So?"
"He's scared."
"No, he isn't." Off-hand and masked by a small laugh, it comes out on a breath. He squints at the numbers, turns back around for the scale to fix the transposed figures. The second shrug follows after a pause, playing catch-up with his thoughts. "Maybe, yes."
"So?"
"So, what?" The liver curls up in his palm. Curiosity is trying to find something that could explain the bird's arrival on their doorstep. The thumb slides along slick skin.
"You don't care?" Exasperation turns her voice dark. There's the edge they all have.
"It's none of my business." Easy honesty leaves the words the one truth that hurts in intimate ways, and the one truth that makes the day-to-day easier to endure. The gasp of death followed by that of life and the cold care interspersed with accidental and not quite touches. The eyebrows wait for rebuttal, but she falls silent, watching him.
The liver gives a wet squelch as it jumps back to the table, landing between heart and kidney. The heart in his palm fits just between knuckles and pad of the thumb. He strokes fingertips along the arteries outside, still full of blood and releasing soft streams of it with every prod.
Little fat, only lean muscle, but it's malleable to the touch like a lover enjoying a slow stroke along the back. The hard knot is a surprise and doesn't yield to a prod and gentle massage. The frown takes residence as the brows draw in concentration.
"What is it?"
The shake of the head begs for silence and patience as bird and guts are pushed to the side of the metal table, just short of falling to the tiles. The scalpel lies easy in his hand, familiar now. It slips into red muscle and brings blood oozing out. One cut has the heart broken, sliced in two, and another quarters it, leaving the quarter with the knot sitting in the center. The scalpel's tip set to the edge, it cuts shallowly, then more deeply, twisting, the lips tight in concentration.
A metal edge pokes its way free, a comic infant dinosaur losing the egg's inner peel. It can't resist the pull of thumb and index finger; it slides free. Coated in blood and muscle fibers, it lies still in the palm of Ianto's hand, seeing the world around it for the first time.
"What is it?" Gwen's breath is hot in his ear, her body warm against his.
"A chip?" The edgy laugh catches in frown lines as slow fingers turn the chip over, pull at the blood and tissue that is determined to outlast the fingers. "It's something."
Determination curls her fingers, begging for their own lick and scrutiny, but it is held just out of reach then set down on the counter. A camera pulled over from the work station takes a photograph; blood-smeared fingers add date and time, description and place of origin. Placed on a dish it looks at them in disdain, daring them to speak its name.
"Jack!" A hitch in the voice swallows half the words as her fingers go for the comm instead of shouting the name in ear-drum-breaking clarity. "Jack, get down here, you have to see this." Frustration pulls her from quiet contemplation of the piece of metal and Ianto. Lips pull back from her teeth. "You need to see this. I'm so not joking."
Her eyes roll, and appreciation swirls around Ianto's chest for the gesture they share. It's quickly masked by the slide of the face to professional and composed, leaving the head free for contemplation. That Jack is scared exists in limbo in the back of his mind. It's a rumor too dark to appreciate and fully comprehend, the lurking sea monster that some call beautiful and some simply hideous.
The boots announce Jack and his temper. It flirts with them before he is in sight, shifting the air to tighten around them. Backs straighten and heads rise; the effect brings a flush of embarrassment to one face. It is not even noticed by the other. Ianto glares at Gwen.
"What?" Steps take him down to the bay, down to them. It's a long walk.
"It was in the bird. Inside the bird's heart." The elaboration feels important when he makes it, cheap a moment later as an attempt of symbolism not intended in the first place. Pushing off the autopsy table leaves his hands in his pocket. Even without the gloves, the memory of blood coats them, slime along the inside pockets of his slacks. The sensation is worthy of a shiver and a frown. The chip looks around the circle of them, its mere presence a smirk chipping Torchwood's armor with barely a gesture. The smirk broadens when Jack catches sight of it.
"In the bird?" Alarm paints the voice dry.
"Yes." Smug satisfaction adds a smile to the thought that very carefully avoids showing on the face or in the tone. 'I was right' fools around between them, juggling one, then the other, amidst the facades and the darker notions underneath.
Both their gazes are on Jack. A perverse triangle that they make, born out of need and loss, clinging to the only constant. It begs for rebellion, but the thought of leaving all that is familiar curbs every survival instinct. The eyes avert. There is denial that he looks just like Gwen, open-mouthed and ready to drink in wisdom from someone he doesn't know but still trusts with all he is. Perversion plays out, but it's not in his eyes as they slide into roles familiar.
"Run the standard analysis." Jack steps back.
Expectation swirls to confusion and exchanged looks, until the dish with the chip slinks up the stairs in hesitation, Gwen and Ianto in tow, and settles under microscopes that analyse for more than just surface structure. Gwen starts the analysis, Jack checks the monitors for the CCTV, and lacking something else to do Ianto joins him like a child.
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN, …"
A hand catches him by the lapel of the suit, pulls him close. Wrinkling, an unconnected batch of cells notes in disdain. The boots are within his field of vision. They are dirty. Eyebrows rise in question as the head does, hands gesture at the insistent fingers. The eye contact holds for a moment longer, then the hand lets go. Lips dip in irritation on both of them.
"It's not easy." Jack's tight-lipped admission barely makes it past tongue and throat, weevil slime fingers on weevil slimed keyboard.
The laugh borders on vexed, confusion plays. "No, it's not." A breath drawn to add more, comfort or irritation, slips between black and white. There are no words, and if there were, there wouldn't be thoughts in the first place.
"You dissected the bird."
Inanity laughs in their faces. "Yes."
"It's not easy."
The layers of the conversation recall the headache in Ianto's head. The shift of weight backwards pulls the cloth free from the hands. "It's bloody. Thanks again for the gift." It wallows between them, half lightness, half petty exhaustion.
A second monitor flickers to life next to the still image of the tourist office entrance, chemical readings on the screen. The lines waver before they settle into clean strips.
"Terrestrial." Levels on analysis switched on the computer station, Ianto focuses on the screen. Pettiness stuck in his throat, he avoids Jack's eyes on him, rather than merely take in any of the readings.
The metal readings flicker; circuit and base metal are pulled apart and slide into a three-dimensional projection on the screen.
Ianto looks up. Jack stares.
"Transmitter." The murmur gets lost in the weevil slime on the shoulder of the coat, the gesture spreads it to jaws and ear. Breathless, uneasy, tired and begging for denial from someone, but there is no-one else. A second too long leaves Torchwood unbalanced, a moment too late, flickering into despair not decision. "Isolate it."
The projection looms on one monitor, then two, is shifted to the beamed image on the far wall. It rotates along its axis. Fingertips dig into the plastic keyboard. Gwen grabs for the box stashed under the desk, security codes tapped in, and shoves the dish and chip into it, locks it.
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN,.."
The scowl is drenched in rainbow colors. The Hub shimmers in alternating red, yellow and blue. Glimmers catch in the sweat of Gwen's face, Jack's eyes reflect the colours with an alien shine. There's beauty in Torchwood.
The black box sits between Jack and Gwen. It reflects the full spectrum of wavelengths, white light and all sounds. Transmission from the inside is an impossibility, the box's walls impenetrable. Equally, their own instruments gnash in futility at innocuous corners and edges, falling flat to beeping warning signals when the existence of 'nothing' stumbles over every system's alarm string. The alarm wail from Torchwood's mainframe adds to the single wails of every system, the music to the pretty colors. Surrealism seventies' style flings gazes between monitors.
Security codes entered drop the Hub into stark realism and relative darkness for the first time. The mainframe admits a science fiction interpretation to leave it back in the seventies of futuristic television exploration and keep the timeline intact. Dramatic heavy breathing adds to the background sounds, their own, not the chainsaw murderers', as they glance at one another.
"Lockdown?" The question is an open hand extended at a moment when a closed fist would have inspired more confidence. A moment later the hand is retracted with a shake of the head, but the confusion settles in its wake. "Gwen, pull the readings on that monitor. Can we determine the frequency? Can we determine the receiver, even the location?"
The name and face swims in their minds, edging from needle to balm. It flirts with guilt and determination before it loses itself between the averted eyes, the cleared throat and the long, clueless glance to the monitor.
"Maybe?" Gwen's voice shakes on the syllables, searching the rotating circuit for answers on a system she can call a fleeting acquaintance.
"Ianto?"
Bloodshot eyes fixed on tired ones make it hard to find something else to stare at, and Gwen has already chosen the circuit for herself. The floor is appealing. Maybe the bird is still bleeding on the table, a eulogy now, after all, definitely a space in storage. AH01.879.7.09, terrestrial animals, iced. That it's coffee he thinks of- "I don't know." Honesty catches expectation in the gaze and disappointment.
"You know everything." Flatlining jokes cool the atmosphere further.
"I-" A word, a sound, an apology on the lips for something that doesn't ask for apology, only acceptance, is swallowed in a small shake of the head. The eyes lift to the weevil in the projected loop playing roughly on Torchwood walls. "I really don't." Gazes connect and disappointment intensifies.
The sense of helplessness suffocates them, car fumes and ozone smell, carbon footprints slipping into their mouths and noses. Silence crawls in the wake of their unresponsive bodies, a pause in conversation and action alike while the chip rotates on the monitor and presumably lies still within the box of 'nothing'.
Silence stretches, wavers. Unease spreads as a scratchy blanket, eyes search for comfort in little things: her hair, a walk by the bay, thoughts of nothing but the sun outside.
Silence stretches, unwavering.
"We're under attack." A cleared throat, a suggestion that has a question mark floating as an afterthought.
It's so absurd and movie-cliched it makes Ianto laugh, gurgling, bubbling, half-caught in throat and lips and allowed free a moment later, a quick release of tension that ricochets off the walls.
She catches his gaze and shrugs, little apology in the gesture even as a smile slips onto her face. "What?" She chuckles.
Ianto shrugs, still grinning.
The shrug catches on the sharp sides of Jack's scowl amidst them before Gwen's gurgling chuckle and Ianto's lopsided smirk breach the high walls and a brief nod allows them their moment of morbid humor. Facades drop when the hand rubs along eyes, cheeks and chin, and the fingers cling to the braces. They dance, indecisive and small, childlike in their movement. They beg. They need. They demand nothing and demand the world. They rarely ask.
"We have to figure this out." Understated and barely comprehensible, it hangs between them, played out by fingers along the braces. The words are lined with fear and the need for full disclosure and a return to normalcy. "This shouldn't have happened. We need to figure this out."
It's a dark rumor that he's scared. It's a beautiful and hideous rumor in one. He is beautiful and hideous in one. If an embrace solved anything, the offer would be there. In light of the exhaustion, the childlike indecision and mourning, a version of it, it feels impossible to stack more bricks for the small bridge between them, and embraces don't solve problems of micro chips and weevils, not in Torchwood.
A look, question in the eyes. The fingers are still: that is when they beg, and they do.
"I'll clean up the bird, first thing." A shrug, and averted gaze. They spell dismissal and only lack a few letters for rejection. The steps take the need for decision away, decision made, even with the pulsing protest in his chest. The sound of bricks crashing into the waves follows him to the autopsy bay. He forces himself not to listen.
Tapping sounds on the keyboard try to fade under the enigmatic silence from leaders who have more questions than answers or choose the action-adventure superhero routine to be seen doing something. Down in the medical bay, the bird stares and couldn't care less for either.
"We need to figure this out." It pleads on its knees, chin held high, swings uneasily. But it's there, shattered honesty spoken out loud.
Ianto has his fingers in the wound of the bird. Something shifts inside and wants to sit in a corner until it's done, the world has ended or not, but then the mocking of scalpels and the utter cleanliness of the medical bay crushes any hope for escape.
The bird has its beak open. Maybe it's a smile, or possibly cynicism has swallowed them whole. That, at least, would be familiar.
"This isn't us." Scalpel in hand, the sluggish words worm up the stairs, while up there the tapping on the keyboard slows, hesitates, punches, is cursed and apologizes a moment later. The bird's wing is bristle under fingers looking for comfort.
"No?" Cold eyes penetrate, and height plays with the obvious in dynamics and disdain when the footfall ceases and boots peek over the abyss towards broken things: bird and the squishy insides of people. The keyboard tapping in the background has ceased, and red-rimmed eyes lurk somewhere behind greatcoat and unfettered willingness to fight, unseen. Gwen has her arms crossed in front of her chest, but it looks more hug and self-comfort than defense, the only thing they have left.
Ianto's flickering gaze traces red-rimmed eyes, boots and the flare of the coat until it comes to rest on the glassy bird eyes, smears of blood on cold metal. The familiarity kills the next breath and heartbeat.
"It's not in Russia? Really?" A feeble hand gestures to the bird, draws lines of fatigue around the feathers and the head. It tries to trick a response but loses itself in tired resignation. The note slips from bloody fingers and flattens itself to the bird. It smells of coffee and something warm but soaks up the blood like it has never known anything else. "This isn't us." The repetition burns in grief amongst cold metal.
The boots scuff along the tiles, hit a pole, and the sound wavers alongside the laugh from pursed lips. Lines around the eyes draw a cold edge. "And when did Torchwood last give you a choice?"
The exhaled breath, part gasp, from behind the coat, without the armor of a keyboard or a gun between them echoes the tight lips in the medical bay, the averted gaze and the rage that burns deep in Ianto's stomach, the need to be somewhere else, somewhere that isn't this. Lips open for a reply.
"There is no choice, and there is no time." Jack grips the rail until his fingers turn white. It slides the last lock into place, clicks shut, and burns any comment, any chance to talk back, anything in the way of disagreement or, in fact, agreement. "We don't have a choice."
Bared. Red eyes find tired eyes find cold eyes, then Jack turns away.
"2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN, 2 HUMAN,…"
The bird stares up at Ianto with glassy eyes. Ianto flicks at a wing.
"It'll be okay." Gwen's murmur gets lost between the noises of pipes and water, computer analysis and the dead silence.
"Yes."
There is no choice. There is only Torchwood, with its truths and lies and the grey spaces in-between. The note, held between thumb and forefinger, drips blood to the table. It wants to be back on the desk, be part of the fabric of the thin security blanket. Ianto slides it into a small plastic bag because even bloody it is still useful.
There is no air, but it continues to exist.
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That's all I can say right now.
I totally loved the detached style of your writing, and the last line gutted me.
I'd write something more indepth, but I'm too stunned.
Beautiful and tragic.
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Actually, that's kind of a brilliant move. It's a bit like giving the story itself a characterization that reflects the way the three of them are failing to connect properly. The overall effect is quite good, if a little tricky to follow at first.
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Some of the phrasing in this is quite, quite beautiful, and the dialogue is incredibly spare. It seems so human, so real! (And you'd never get away with that on the show! XD)
Whoof. Nicely done. Though I still want to know what's going on with that transmitter. ^_^' Eheh, sorry. I have an action-plot fixation.
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Glad to hear the dialogue works, especially. You are right that it could never be quite that non-verbal on the show but I do have a hard time picturing them just chatting about everything (also: they just don't have this kind of time on the show).
The transmitter! Indeed it was a bit of a decision to stop it there and leave it with the emotional notes. I do have a backstory in mind, but don't think I'll write it, but hey - maybe after S3, who knows.
Thanks for the comment. It's very much appreciated.
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That was unusual, in the best possible way. I loved Jack's darkness, and Ianto's characterization, but it's the unique story-telling that makes this a truly amazing piece.
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Er, I kind of hate Torchwood after that, the institution that is, not the show. Although, it is what it is, as the bird would attest to.
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I'm glad to hear that this story worked for you, and that the pov with its nuances and small complexities brought the emotion across sufficiently. I'm actually personally happy with how this one turned out, so am very glad to hear it works for other people too and that the pain and the heartache and just general feeling of loss and emptiness kind of come across.
Thanks for the comment, much appreciated.
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I feel like it's a story being watched by something not quite human, something that can slip in and out of everything... basically it doesn't feel like a human perspective - which is spooking and awesome.
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And in Torchwood everything has life, even if it's dead, I kind of - I think there is a message in that somewhere that's pretty damn tragic.
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that is my favorite sentence ever
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(which means, keep it up!)