Turning Point - 46/64
Title: Turning Point
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: budding Jack/Ianto, references to past Ianto/Lisa
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If I was the one who owned Torchwood, you think I'd admit it now?
Spoilers: Some information and events from s1,2. NONE for s3.
Summary: In the aftermath of Lisa's death, Ianto is struggling to cope - and new surprises don't help matters much. Can his friends on the team at Torchwood help him carry on?
Author's Note: Sequel to Guilt.
Thanks to: My beta cazmalfoy, angelzbabe1989 for idea bouncing, and morbid_sparks for cheerleading even when she doesn'tdidn't know what happens.
Previous chapters at master list
Chapter Forty-Six
“Remind me never, ever to complain again about it being too bloody quiet,” Owen groaned, head against the wall as he, Tosh and Ianto slouched, exhausted, on the ratty Hub sofa. Jack and Gwen sat at their feet, slumped over the coffee table. Ianto wasn’t entirely sure that Gwen wasn’t actually asleep already.
He twisted his arm closer to his face, focussing tiredly on the face of his watch. 1.35pm. Definitely lunchtime, but he doubted any of them had enough energy to move to go make, or collect, lunch - not even Jack, which was a rare event.
He felt like he hadn’t really slept for days, and it wasn’t so far off the truth. He wasn’t sure any of them would be complaining about a bit of quiet for a long time, not after the last few days…
Jack and Gwen’s information finding mission turned up nothing of use. Brightly coloured and about the size of small cats didn’t tell them anything they hadn’t already gleaned from the police report, but the baffled man didn’t seem to know anything else.
Ianto’s fairly brief attempts at research in the archives only told him they didn’t have enough information to narrow anything down; small brightly coloured creatures weren’t exactly the rarest things to come through the Rift.
Thankfully, Tosh and Owen were a little bit luckier with the search of the CCTV network, spotting the creatures in question as they scampered across a street just around the corner from the man’s house.
Even on the black and white camera picture, it was painfully obvious how brightly coloured the creatures were. Unfortunately, the CCTV image was from some time ago, and they were nowhere to be seen in the vicinity now. They needed a better way of locating them.
It was little more than luck when, as Tosh was scrolling out through the city’s CCTV network in the direction of travel, Owen spotted a swift movement along the bottom of the camera.
Closer examination of the footage indicated that these were at least some of their missing aliens, so they contacted Jack and Gwen and set them on the trail.
Forty minutes later - after some more-than-borderline illegal driving on Jack’s part, and rather a lot of running on both Jack and Gwen’s parts, they had managed to catch up with a couple of the small furry creatures and get them back to the Hub.
Close up, they were almost bright enough to be glowing.
As soon as they were back, Tosh and Owen took over. Every test under the sun - and a few that Ianto thought weren’t - was run to find out if there was anything that might help them locate the others. Repeated viewings of the first CCTV footage indicated that at least nine creatures were out there and they had so far contained only two.
As he left Tosh and Owen to their work and headed back to the archives with a handful more information to work with, Ianto hoped that the other seven they’d spotted on the tapes were all of them.
He did have a vague memory of seeing something similar in one of the cabinets he had sorted through a few weeks before, so he set to work digging into the ‘alien sightings and other related incidents’ section of the cabinet he was thinking of.
A short while later and he was in luck, and had a thin folder in hand with information - and a few rather blurry early colour photos - on some creatures that had appeared through the Rift over 60 years before, near the end of World War II. While he couldn’t be certain, they bore more than a little resemblance to the creatures Owen and Tosh had upstairs.
After reading it through quickly, Ianto knew instantly that if these were in fact the same creatures, he had some unfortunate news for the rest of the team. With a gestational period of less than a day, half of Wales could be overrun with small furry aliens within weeks.
The phrase ‘breeding like bunnies’ just couldn’t quite go far enough to describe this.
Still trying to wrap his mind around quite how quickly these things could multiply, Ianto made his way back to the others with the folder.
When he got there, Tosh was no longer down in the autopsy bay with Owen but was typing frantically at her workstation, Jack hanging over her shoulder.
Handing the folder to Jack, Ianto took a closer look at the code she was typing, understanding every third line at best. “What are you trying to do?”
She twisted to look at him very briefly before turning her attention back to the monitor. “Owen and I found a distinctive energy signature these little guys have, although it’s weak and not in a range we normally monitor. I need to recalibrate a few things before we’ll be able to search the city for the energy signature.”
Ianto ran a hand through his hair. “Is it going to take long?” If he was right, their furry little friends could be doubling in number as they spoke.
“Oh dear.” Ianto looked up and saw the look on Jack’s face. He had the folder open in his hands, and Ianto knew which bit of the information he had just read. “Tosh, you might want to sacrifice perfection for speed in this case. If this is right, these things breed like mad. We need to find them as soon as possible.”
Tosh’s ‘quick but not perfect’ program proved very effective at pinpointing the locations of the small creatures, but unfortunately not very fast to run. As a result, by the time two or three of them could make it out to a location, the creatures were sometimes no longer there.
Most scans would result in the location and catching of - at the most - two creatures, and they knew the slower they were in catching them all, the harder it was going to become.
They worked straight through the night that Wednesday, running out to one location or another every hour as an updated scan finished. All night Wednesday turned into all day Thursday.
Ianto found himself drafted into the field by the middle of Thursday morning. They took turns to nap on the sofa in between runs across Cardiff and scrambles through fields on the outskirts of the city.
By Thursday evening their legs were aching and they were exhausted, but the scan was still tossing out results; their work was not yet done.
Thursday evening became Thursday night, and Thursday night, Friday morning.
Two cells in the vaults - one for each gender of the furry creatures, to avoid creating even more of them - were almost full to bursting by the time they returned from the last trip out to discover a clear map on the latest scan.
Almost as one, they had collapsed onto the sofa in a heap, quite happy to not move for a week.
There was a long moment of silence, and despite all his best intentions, Ianto felt himself start to drift off.
Jack’s voice cut through the quiet a minute later. “Did anyone check how long these things live?”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Comments and concrit are loved!
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: budding Jack/Ianto, references to past Ianto/Lisa
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: If I was the one who owned Torchwood, you think I'd admit it now?
Spoilers: Some information and events from s1,2. NONE for s3.
Summary: In the aftermath of Lisa's death, Ianto is struggling to cope - and new surprises don't help matters much. Can his friends on the team at Torchwood help him carry on?
Author's Note: Sequel to Guilt.
Thanks to: My beta cazmalfoy, angelzbabe1989 for idea bouncing, and morbid_sparks for cheerleading even when she doesn'tdidn't know what happens.
Previous chapters at master list
Chapter Forty-Six
“Remind me never, ever to complain again about it being too bloody quiet,” Owen groaned, head against the wall as he, Tosh and Ianto slouched, exhausted, on the ratty Hub sofa. Jack and Gwen sat at their feet, slumped over the coffee table. Ianto wasn’t entirely sure that Gwen wasn’t actually asleep already.
He twisted his arm closer to his face, focussing tiredly on the face of his watch. 1.35pm. Definitely lunchtime, but he doubted any of them had enough energy to move to go make, or collect, lunch - not even Jack, which was a rare event.
He felt like he hadn’t really slept for days, and it wasn’t so far off the truth. He wasn’t sure any of them would be complaining about a bit of quiet for a long time, not after the last few days…
Jack and Gwen’s information finding mission turned up nothing of use. Brightly coloured and about the size of small cats didn’t tell them anything they hadn’t already gleaned from the police report, but the baffled man didn’t seem to know anything else.
Ianto’s fairly brief attempts at research in the archives only told him they didn’t have enough information to narrow anything down; small brightly coloured creatures weren’t exactly the rarest things to come through the Rift.
Thankfully, Tosh and Owen were a little bit luckier with the search of the CCTV network, spotting the creatures in question as they scampered across a street just around the corner from the man’s house.
Even on the black and white camera picture, it was painfully obvious how brightly coloured the creatures were. Unfortunately, the CCTV image was from some time ago, and they were nowhere to be seen in the vicinity now. They needed a better way of locating them.
It was little more than luck when, as Tosh was scrolling out through the city’s CCTV network in the direction of travel, Owen spotted a swift movement along the bottom of the camera.
Closer examination of the footage indicated that these were at least some of their missing aliens, so they contacted Jack and Gwen and set them on the trail.
Forty minutes later - after some more-than-borderline illegal driving on Jack’s part, and rather a lot of running on both Jack and Gwen’s parts, they had managed to catch up with a couple of the small furry creatures and get them back to the Hub.
Close up, they were almost bright enough to be glowing.
As soon as they were back, Tosh and Owen took over. Every test under the sun - and a few that Ianto thought weren’t - was run to find out if there was anything that might help them locate the others. Repeated viewings of the first CCTV footage indicated that at least nine creatures were out there and they had so far contained only two.
As he left Tosh and Owen to their work and headed back to the archives with a handful more information to work with, Ianto hoped that the other seven they’d spotted on the tapes were all of them.
He did have a vague memory of seeing something similar in one of the cabinets he had sorted through a few weeks before, so he set to work digging into the ‘alien sightings and other related incidents’ section of the cabinet he was thinking of.
A short while later and he was in luck, and had a thin folder in hand with information - and a few rather blurry early colour photos - on some creatures that had appeared through the Rift over 60 years before, near the end of World War II. While he couldn’t be certain, they bore more than a little resemblance to the creatures Owen and Tosh had upstairs.
After reading it through quickly, Ianto knew instantly that if these were in fact the same creatures, he had some unfortunate news for the rest of the team. With a gestational period of less than a day, half of Wales could be overrun with small furry aliens within weeks.
The phrase ‘breeding like bunnies’ just couldn’t quite go far enough to describe this.
Still trying to wrap his mind around quite how quickly these things could multiply, Ianto made his way back to the others with the folder.
When he got there, Tosh was no longer down in the autopsy bay with Owen but was typing frantically at her workstation, Jack hanging over her shoulder.
Handing the folder to Jack, Ianto took a closer look at the code she was typing, understanding every third line at best. “What are you trying to do?”
She twisted to look at him very briefly before turning her attention back to the monitor. “Owen and I found a distinctive energy signature these little guys have, although it’s weak and not in a range we normally monitor. I need to recalibrate a few things before we’ll be able to search the city for the energy signature.”
Ianto ran a hand through his hair. “Is it going to take long?” If he was right, their furry little friends could be doubling in number as they spoke.
“Oh dear.” Ianto looked up and saw the look on Jack’s face. He had the folder open in his hands, and Ianto knew which bit of the information he had just read. “Tosh, you might want to sacrifice perfection for speed in this case. If this is right, these things breed like mad. We need to find them as soon as possible.”
Tosh’s ‘quick but not perfect’ program proved very effective at pinpointing the locations of the small creatures, but unfortunately not very fast to run. As a result, by the time two or three of them could make it out to a location, the creatures were sometimes no longer there.
Most scans would result in the location and catching of - at the most - two creatures, and they knew the slower they were in catching them all, the harder it was going to become.
They worked straight through the night that Wednesday, running out to one location or another every hour as an updated scan finished. All night Wednesday turned into all day Thursday.
Ianto found himself drafted into the field by the middle of Thursday morning. They took turns to nap on the sofa in between runs across Cardiff and scrambles through fields on the outskirts of the city.
By Thursday evening their legs were aching and they were exhausted, but the scan was still tossing out results; their work was not yet done.
Thursday evening became Thursday night, and Thursday night, Friday morning.
Two cells in the vaults - one for each gender of the furry creatures, to avoid creating even more of them - were almost full to bursting by the time they returned from the last trip out to discover a clear map on the latest scan.
Almost as one, they had collapsed onto the sofa in a heap, quite happy to not move for a week.
There was a long moment of silence, and despite all his best intentions, Ianto felt himself start to drift off.
Jack’s voice cut through the quiet a minute later. “Did anyone check how long these things live?”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Comments and concrit are loved!