[Torchwood] A Piece of the Sky is Falling (2/2)
UNIT's fighter planes had already lifted off by the time Ianto got back into UNIT's temporary base and slid in beside Tosh to watch the video links of half a dozen fighter jets making their way towards the sphere. The room waited in a tense silent as the minutes ticked by watching the screen, in a way they were gambling that enough fire power would hopefully take down the sphere instead of just annoying it, whatever it was. As the seconds counted down and all eyes stayed glued to the screen, the planes fired their missiles in waves at their target. The group watched slack jawed as the ship ate the missiles, there was no other word for it, the missiles flew towards the sphere and disappeared into it with little silvery ripples. Then an almost familiar crackle of golden light played across the surface of the sphere before quieting down.
"Return to base," Colonel King ordered the pilots in a gravely voice. They watched as the six jets circled wide around and began to make their way back to the airstrip.
As soon as the jets flew far enough away and it did not appear as if the sphere would make any moves against them, the UNIT conference room sparked to life and the officers began making plans to bring in better armament. Their scientists worked diligently to bring the sphere down, each of them pulling files after files of alien weaponry they could use on the ship.
Tosh and Ianto left the conference room and the UNIT officers to their plans. They returned to their secondary base and what she'd been fiddling with all afternoon. A RC helicopter and a cannibalized alien scanner stood on her desk, a thin black bracelet nested within wires and alien technology. UNIT scientists had scoffed at the toy when Tosh brought up the idea of communicating with the ship at the first meeting.
***
After Tosh and Ianto left UNIT’s base, Colonel King called another meeting with his officers. He had a number of files, some thicker than others on his desk and handed them out to the group as they settled down to business.
“Owen Harper,” Colonel King began as he flipped opened his own copy of the file, “top of his class, lost his fiance to a brain tumor before Harkness hired him.” The file was thin and not very exciting; it listed his name, age, education, previous occupation and the number of years working for Torchwood Three.
“Toshiko Sato, is a complete mystery before Torchwood hired her,” Colonel King continued to the next file, it was at least a couple inches thick but when opened, most of it has been blacked out, even the names of her parents did not escape deletion. “Harkness somehow was able to lure her into Torchwood and sealed her file, we can’t even Google her name without getting our hard-drives melted, I don’t suggest you try.”
“Ianto Jones, the youngest of Harkness’ group of misfits,” Colonel King turned his attention to the last file and easily twice the size of Tosh’s. “No eduction to speak of, worked for Torchwood One as a junior researcher, survived Canary Wharf by hiding in the archive.” The rest of his file consisted of post Canary Wharf interviews and investigations, nothing UNIT hadn’t already known prior to the whole mess.
“I don’t like them, I don’t trust them, they’re undisciplined and unstructured. If past experiences are any indication, I’m positive they’re hiding something. I want them watched at all times and given restricted access to our reports.” They then began making plans on what weapons they had at their disposal and when they could catch the next earliest flight out.
***
Jack and Ianto were walking home from school, two little boys walking down the pavement as a car bearing a military crest rolls past, the military trucks and soldiers are an almost familiar presence in their city streets-
fizzle
Jack is meeting Ianto at the front gate of their secondary school, it’s the new school year and-
fizzle
Jack is trying to convince Ianto to enroll into the military after school ends along with him, they are lying on the grass in a park, fingers tangled together as they stare up at the clouds.
“Come on Ianto,” Jack coaxes, “it’ll be-
fizzle
Jack feels great, they’re at the local pub celebrating his promotion, on his left sits Gwen who’s telling them a story about one of her students. He turns to his right and watches Ianto take a sip from his beer, they makes eye contact and then Ianto quirks his lip and leans forward to whisper hotly in Jack’s ear.
“Congratulation Captain Jack Harkness.”
Ianto then moves and captures Jack’s mouth in a kiss, all wet and passionate for all the world to see, something at the back of Jack’s mind going ping in alarm-
fizzle
***
As the night progressed, the sphere's growth rate had slowed and then stopped altogether early the next morning, golden light played across its surface at a constant rate making it a giant shiny beacon that hung over the Plass. UNIT had cordoned off the area but the sphere could still be seen from a long way off.
Ianto had mumbled about going back to the hospital to check on Jack after Tosh had caught him sleeping on his feet; hopefully Owen would make him sleep there.
Waking up after having fallen asleep at her work station a couple of hours earlier, Tosh had finished upgrading the helicopter and launched her toy into the dark early morning skies before the sun had even risen. Along with the communication device, she’d also installed what she secretly called a catch-all scanner to her helicopter. So far the results from both devices had been disappointing and wrong. The mass report from her scanner jumped from zero to something that could rival the size of a football stadium, other scans like life forms and weapons yielded equally unreliable numbers. She'd also been sending short bursts of messages in different frequencies to the sphere in hopes of a response, but it was taking a long time since she'd routed the entire thing through Mainframe's translation program first. Then just as she was about to send off the last message before bringing the helicopter back to check her wiring in the scanner, the computer froze. Tosh huffed a sigh and mentally berated the useless machine. As she contemplated rebooting the system and perhaps sneaking back into the Hub to work, the computer gave a beep and a few alien symbols popped up on her screen.
The translation program was an unwieldy looking hodgepodge of different elements lifted directly out of other programs, from the easily recognisable graphic program canvas to the split screen of any online translator. A genius Toshiko might have been, a designer she was not.
The alien symbols - text - swirled and looped across the canvas side of the screen, if the tides and the trees had a written language, it might have looked something similar. The translation program was slow, but one by one, words appeared on the other half of the screen.
Can. I. Tell. You. A. Story?
Excited, Tosh quickly typed her response back to the ship.
Yes.
Tosh brought her helicopter back and checked then double checked her wiring as she waited for the sphere to respond. Everything appeared to be in order when she relaunched her helicopter, after her next scans brought back the same results, she began looking into other possible explanations for the wildly disparate reports. As she cross reference the results she was getting from her scanner to the existing data in Mainframe, she began to fret that the alien on board didn't understood her or perhaps her translation program was incorrect, a million tiny things could go wrong. Then a block of alien script scrolled across her screen.
***
"UNIT one this is Blue Boy," the speakers in the conference room cracked to life. "We are in position, I repeat we are in position."
"Copy Blue Boy," Colonel King ordered, "on my mark.” The entire room held their breath. "Fire!"
Twin beams of alien weaponry from the plane flew towards the sphere and an ugly black crack blemished the mirror surface of the sphere. UNIT officers around the room cheered when they saw the damage and the Colonel ordered the planes back for a second run.
"Negative UNIT one," Blue Boy replied. "We need at least three hours to recharge the weapons."
"Understood Blue Boy, return to base."
Excited chatter broke out in the room again, everyone so sure that they could go home by the end of the day that no one noticed the next crackle of light that played across the sphere’s surface was red instead of gold.
***
The central tower of the city flashes a brilliant gold before it dulls down to a drab grey and fine lines appear on it surface. It shone from beneath as if a bright light is breaking through. The lines spread, running across the ground and up buildings like spider webs. Ianto looks up to the sky and he can see the lines forming on the blue canvas.
"What's going on Jack?"
Jack stares at him, wide eyed, cracks of light running across his face. "You're-"
Ianto looks down at his hands, they too are covered with fine lines of light as the dream world comes crashing down around their ears.
***
Owen looked up from his PDA in alarm when every machine in the ICU started screaming. A quick look at Jack, Gwen and James' monitor screens showed their vitals went through the roof. On the other side of the room, the UNIT doctors rushed to and fro from their patients.
***
Tosh watched from the safety of her computer screen as UNIT’s plane attacked the sphere, neither of them had realized that UNIT would be launching the next offence so soon. She tried to call the rest of the team when the proximity alert back at the Hub flashed across her screen, drawing her attention away from the puzzling scans reports and the slowly translating story from the sphere. Though Tosh was beginning to suspect the sphere was actually a ship, most likely caught in time if it coming out of the rift was any indication.
“Come on guys, pick up.”
Tosh was watching the ship intently as it happened, the ugly gash on its surface disappeared, she blinked at the screen and the now perfect sphere. The ringing phone forgotten in light of the new development, she then rewound the surveillance footage and clicked through the frames one by one, and saw the flaw disappeared from one frame to the next. Then she noticed the little clock at the corner of the film between the two frames, the time in the second frame with the perfect sphere had jumped back two hours behind the first frame.
“That can’t be good,” she muttered to herself as she checked her helicopter logs on those time periods.
***
Ianto woke up with a start. A glance around told him he’d fallen asleep in one of empty beds at the hospital, his head was pounding fiercely and something at the back of his mind was niggling at him, telling him there was something he’d missed. He staggered out of bed, black spots appearing in his vision briefly before they subsided and slowly made his way towards the ICU. He spotted Owen busily checking on Gwen, looking as if he was running of fumes, as did the other UNIT doctors in the room. One of them was sprawled on a chair slightly dozing.
“Owen,” Ianto said, head still woozy. He was beginning to see double.
Owen looked up from beside Gwen and then swiftly made his way towards Ianto to greet him. “You look like shit mate.”
“You’re one to talk,” Ianto shot back without any heat and compliantly sat in the chair Owen steered him towards. “Woke up with a headache, saw black spots when I sat up and I’m now seeing double. There’s also that strange dream I kept having every time I go to sleep.”
At a look from Owen, Ianto elaborated: “It’s a continuous dream of watching as Jack grows up in a strange city.”
“When where you going to tell me about that?” Owen demanded pulling out his medical scanner and thumbing it on. Ianto looked at him sheepishly.
“I thought they were just dreams caused by stress.”
“And the subject matter had nothing to do with your not telling me? I specifically told you to tell me of anything strange,” Owen fumed and jabbed Ianto unnecessarily with the scanner as he ran the tests. “Strange dreams definitely count. Is it always the same one?”
“Yes.”
“I would like to test this, or observe this but we don’t exactly have the time for it. Let’s see what we’ve got here, maybe I will put you under for some controlled observation later.”
***
On the other side of town, hidden in Torchwood Three’s secondary base Tosh stared at her screen in silent amazement, at the faultless sphere hanging above the Hub, at the gigabytes worth of data she’d just received from her helicopter. Heart pounding with excitement, she double-checked her scan reports again.
“I’ve got it.”
Tosh glanced at the other computer, where the translation program was plugging away at the alien story. A few strokes of the keys put the program in the background and then brought up a new window with a flashing cursor. She chewed on her lower lip contemplating what to ask before she slowly typed in her question and sent it off to the ship.
Are you in need of help?
While she waited for a reply from the ship she called Owen. It was Ianto who answered the phone on the second ring, Tosh was surprised but happy that he was up and about.
“Oh good you’re all right, I was just about to update Owen on my latest theory but now I can tell the both of you at once.”
At the hospital, Ianto waved Owen to a quite corner of the room and switched the phone to speaker so he and Owen could listen together. Owen crowded close to Ianto who was holding the phone, both their heads bent down in concentration to listen from the tiny speaker.
“The alien ship also sent me a story or perhaps a history would be a better term for it. Listen to this-”
“The lady president from the other city pleaded with the ruling council to rethink their decision, because their enemy are systematically destroying every civilization in their path, if they all pooled their resources together, they could win the war.”
“I think the ship might be a military vessel or an escape pod, there’s something about a ship being bigger on the inside at the beginning.“
There was a buzzing in Ianto’s ears while he listened and a film of murky shadow passed before his eyes, and like the final piece of the puzzle, everything slotted into place. There was no supporting evidence other than a few lines from a story. A story that Jack told him in a dream, a dream where life was normal if a little dull, where he and Jack were childhood sweethearts out of a bad cliché ridden romance. He shook his head to rid himself of the cobwebs and tried to pay attention to Tosh.
“I was also pulling out some old reports from Mainframe for comparison,” Tosh had continued with an explanation of her theory as she pulled out graphs and numbers on her monitor and tried to describe them to Owen and Ianto. “Time is in flux around and possibly inside the ship, now that I know what I’m looking for, I can see there are gaping holes of nothingness in there. The ship is being erased by time as we watch, this is out of my field of experience but I wouldn’t want to be around when the ship disappears completely since-”
Ianto didn’t hear anymore as suddenly he felt the room tilt sideways and the ground rushed to meet him, the mobile slipped from his fingers and clattered onto the ground. The last thing he heard was Owen calling frantically for him to wake up.
***
If Jack stands on his tiptoes, he can just reach the doorbell with the tip of his fingers, he press the little button and not a minute later an elderly lady opens the door.
“Hi,” Jack flashes her a big smile, “I’m looking for Ianto.”
fizzle
Jack is sitting at the pub with his friends, on his left sits Gwen who’s regaling his friends with a story about her student’s antics. He turns to his right to smile at the man sitting there, then frowns in puzzlement when a stranger looks back at him.
“Who-” Jack begins but Gwen interrupts him by standing up and taping the side of her glass with a fork.
“A toast to Jack,” Gwen began and smiles at him. “Congratulation on making Captain.”
His friends cheers-
fizzle fizzle
***
“How soon can our next planes take off?” Colonel King asked his aide after they watched the sphere healed itself after the last attack, they sent the latest progress report back to headquarters and a request for more planes to take the sphere down at one go.
“In one hour sir,” the officer replied. “We’ve got top priority.”
“Good, I want to be out of this city by nightfall.”
Another officer with a file in hand interrupted them for the Colonel’s attention. “Sir, you’ve asked us to monitor Torchwood, we’ve picked up this transmission at the hospital fifteen minutes ago.”
“Good, lets see what you’ve got.” Colonel King replied reaching out his hand for the file and flipped through it.
***
Owen was busy hooking Ianto to half a dozen machines when Toshiko called him back again. Ianto had woken up not long after they got him into bed and was insisting he felt fine, but Owen was not taking any chances. “Not now Tosh,” he snapped at her, but she was insistent.
“We have a problem. After the last time UNIT didn’t inform us of their plan to attack the ship, I’ve errr... started monitoring their communication,” she continued in a rush. Even though she was alone in the base, a guilty flush crept up her face, but she ploughed determinately on.
“It’s a good thing I did, because they’re sending out more planes to destroy the ship, and with the already unstable-” Tosh paused mid-sentence to stare at one of the screens monitoring the ship.
“What is it Tosh?”
The ship opened like a flower, it reminded Tosh of a lotus, all alien and sharp curves. Then the ‘petals’ broke off and hovered in midair like falling leaves captured in a photograph.
“New development with the ship, I’ll call you back.” She cut the call in the middle of Owen’s protest but didn’t put the phone down.
The next call Tosh made was to UNIT.
“Colonel King, I’ve been taking scans of the ship and I think you should reconsider attacking the ship.” She said as soon as she got the Colonel on line.
“Ms.Sato,” the Colonel greeted her, and while Tosh didn’t usually care about her title, she felt that he’d somehow deliberately slighted her.
“Colonel,” Tosh continued despite the unfriendly tone of the Colonel. “I know Torchwood and UNIT hasn’t been working together as we should have, but this is important. I’m sending my reports and findings to you as we speak, the ship is still caught in time, and given the mass of it, destroying it would be a terrible idea.”
“Thank you for your concern Ms.Sato, I will pass on your report to our scientists.”
Tosh growled in frustration as the Colonel ended the call without further ado.
***
“As your doctor, I think this is a monumentally stupid idea,” Owen complained and raged as he hooked Ianto up to half a dozen monitoring equipments. “But as Owen Harper, I think good riddance, you stupid teaboy, trying to play the hero.”
“We’re running out of time,” Ianto said. He was tired and had dark circles under his eyes despite the fact he probably slept the most out of the three of them.
But Owen wasn’t hearing any of it as he worked himself up for a rant. “There are plenty of other things we can try, Tosh is communicating with the ship as well as working on something to steady the time flux inside before it kills us all. UNIT is going to blow that ship out of the sky, I’m not military but I think that idea didn’t work so well the last few times we tried it. We don’t even know if this would work, you don’t have to do this, I’ll pull you out if I don’t like any of these monitoring reports.”
“I trust you,” Ianto said simply. Owen snorted in reply but otherwise said nothing and instead hooked the last of his equipment up to Ianto before looking him in the eyes, a challenge and a last chance to change his mind.
“Ready?”
“Yeah.”
Owen then clicked the black bracelet around Ianto’s wrist and watched as he fell asleep.
***
Ianto opened his eyes to a now familiar looking city, he half expected it to look as he last saw it, with cracks running every which way and falling apart.
“Hi Ianto,” came a voice from behind him.
He turned around and his breath hitched in his throat, a kid - Jack - watched him warily, one hand clasped tightly around the hand of another little boy - Gray - who looked more like a mannequin with his blank stare and dull eyes. Ianto knelt down so he could be eye level to his boss, partner a corner of his mind insists, while another insecure part of him thinks part time shag.
“Hey Jack,” he said softly as if talking to a skittish horse.
***
Owen was on the phone with Tosh even as he sent her live feeds of Ianto’s condition from the various machines for Mainframe to analyse. He was watching when Ianto’s sleeping form flickered on the hospital bed like those cheap special effects from B horror movies; once, twice, and then accompanied by a bright light, Ianto disappeared leaving behind dangling wires and a sharp scent of ozone in the air.
“Shit!” Owen swore loudly startling Tosh, at the same time as Mainframe flashed a warning across her screen.
“What happened?” she asked, feeling stupid as she stared at the screen in front of her that was telling her that the subject had been disconnected from the machines at the hospital.
“Ianto disappeared.”
“Disappeared?”
“As in disappeared, vanished, gone, evaporated, dispersed, fade away, I don’t know he just-” Owen waved his hand towards the empty bed, even though he knew Tosh wouldn’t be able to see it.
“Hold on, point your scanner towards were Ianto was,” Tosh ordered and Owen could hear the clicking of the keyboard in the background while Tosh did whatever she did best.
A few tense minutes ticked by as Owen busied himself with switching off the machines scattered around the bed waiting for Tosh’s verdict; there was a triumphant sound from her over the phone followed quickly by a soft ‘oh’.
“Well? What is it?” Owen demanded as he switched off the last of his machines.
“I think,” Tosh began carefully, “I think the ship teleported him away.”
“What?”
***
Ianto woke up on the icy cold floor of an unfamiliar room, he sat up and took stock of his surroundings: the circular room was silvery blue that seemed to glow with its own inner light. Thick wires or cables twisted up the walls as far as the eye can see, where large pods like fruits hung against the wall in rows.
Looking around, he spotted a person, hands against their sides and head bowed standing by what looked like some sort of control panel, if the buttons and screen were any sort of clue. The person before it was short, with white shoulder length hair, they were dressed in a black uniform giving them a stark contrast to the silver room.
“Hello?” Ianto asked as he walked towards them. When he got close, he was disappointed to find the screen flickering with white noise. He turned towards the other person and saw a teenage girl staring blankly at the controls.
“Hello?” He asked again and then slowly reached out to touch her gently only for his hand to completely pass through her shoulder. She seemed to come alive, blue eyes staring at Ianto and spoke. The language was nothing he’d heard before, but was somehow as an echo of every language on Earth.
***
The relatively simple mission had turned into a mess of fear and adrenaline; a dozen UNIT fighter jets armed with alien weaponry, ready to shoot down a stationary target were situated over Roald Dahl Plass. There was a slight danger of being fired upon if they flew too close; as was evident with the previous attempts, but Colonel King had been certain that everything was to come to a head within the next few minutes; but what happened was just not what he expected.
As the jets closed in and lined up in attack formation, the hovering petals around the ship began to unfold and buzzed around the ship like angry bees. Before the Colonel could give counter orders the petals darted towards the oncoming planes, their intent as clear as daylight.
UNIT’s plane scattered from formation as the petals flew towards them, and while it didn’t appear as if they had any air to air combat capabilities, they were much faster and were able to turn on a dime, even reverse flight in mid-air chasing the earth made planes. UNIT’s first casualty came as one of the petals got close to the plane, and, using its edge like a knife, it cleaved the plane in half from nose to tail. The two sides of the plane were momentarily apart, the insides opened for all to see, and for one giddy moment, the Colonel was reminded of those science books with cross sections of rockets, satellites, engines and anything else the publisher deemed interesting. Then the plane exploded in mid-air, twin fireballs lit the sky as twisted bits of shrapnel rained down and littered the Plass below.
“Retreat!” Colonel King ordered as it became clear they were not going to get any closer to the sphere, much less be able to fire upon it. The planes turned back the way they came with the petals close behind, and it wasn’t until the planes were well away from the sphere before the petals gave up the chase.
Colonel King watched silently as the petals flew back towards their sphere and took up a defensive position once more.
***
Now that Ianto was close enough to look properly, the girl - or avatar - was slightly translucent in places and there was an off quality about her that made her as cold as the ship, but Ianto supposed he shouldn’t apply human emotions to something clearly alien in origin. The avatar stepped back and allowed Ianto access to the control panel where the screen flickered in time with the avatar as she babbled in her incomprehensible tongue at Ianto. He touched a jeweled button. When nothing happened he touched the screen to the same result. After listening, and inspecting the panel for some time, he realized the avatar was saying the same thing over and over in a loop.
Ianto addressed the avatar warily, “I don’t suppose you know any 21st Century Earth languages?”
The avatar paused mid speech before saying something new to Ianto. Not having any point of references to go by he supposed it was an apology for not knowing English. Ianto raked his hand through his hair in frustration and spied the black bracelet around his wrist, with nothing else to do but to try, Ianto slowly rested the bracelet on one of the jeweled buttons. To his immense relief, the screen before him came to life. While he couldn’t understand what was written, with the help of the bracelet he could understand what the avatar was saying.
“This is the Eternal, Special Project Two Two Zero Five, Code Blue, final message from the Captain, view content?”
“Yes, please.”
The screen before him changed and a woman in a pristine white uniform with blue trims, white hair pulled into a severer bun and blue eyes looked out at him. She was neither young nor old and while she looked human, like the avatar beside him, there was an alien quality about her, in the tilt of her jaws and the lit of her eyes.
“I’m Captain Cibo of the Eternal- -We’re an escape vessel from- -The ship’s- -wake me- -zero nine- -we’ve lost the war, may you never meet our enemy.”
The message was broken into pieces, Ianto thought the face of tiredness and hopelessness might be universal. He was about to turn away from the screen when the image of the Captain flickered away to another scene, it was exactly like watching from a CCTV camera.
The film was grainy with an overlay of flashing magenta lights, the noises garbed with too many voices speaking at once, but Ianto could feel to the very depth of his soul that he was watching the last few moments of this ship before whatever had happened to it happened.
“Captain, we’ve lost all communication with the rest of the crew,” one officer shouted, a panel of flashing red lights in front of him.
“I’ve stabilised a portion of the time flux around the ship,” another officer said aloud in the din.
“We’ve lost all control of the ship, we’re just being carried along on the leading edge,” the pilot said to the captain.
Captain Cibo thought for a moment and addressed her crew. “The explosion that originated from sector G square, it’s re-writing time and erasing things from the timeline, we’re caught in the wake of the explosion. Officer Sune, I want you to open the time stream, we’ll take the Eternal in there so we won’t be erased.”
“Yes ma'am,” the officer who was stabilising the time flux answered.
“It will be some time before the Eternal repairs itself, I want you all to get in your stasis chambers. I’ve ordered the ship’s automatic response to wake me if there’s any problem. Once you’re finished with your duties, you’re dismissed.”
“Yes ma’am,” the crew said as one.
One by one, the officers filed out of the bridge and to the chambers. As soon as her last officer left, Captain Cibo collapsed back onto her chair with a sigh as if all her strings had been cut.
“Eternal,” the Captain ordered aloud and the ship’s avatar materialised beside her.
“Yes, Captain?”
“Code Seven Two Eight defense. If anything else happens, remember how father was once brave and honorable?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“If the worst should happen, find someone like that. They will know to do the right thing.”
The film cut off there, making Ianto feel as if a great burden had been placed on his shoulders by someone he’d never met. He sighed and looked around the room and at the rows and rows of stasis chambers, thinking he might as well go and find the Captain first.
Curious about the occupant of the stasis chambers, Ianto peeked into the closest one and watched in fascinated horror as the child inside grew old in front of his eyes. Limbs lengthened and features changed, from the round face of a child to a more angular adult; before he realised it, Ianto found himself staring at a corpse as it mummified and collapsed in on itself before it reverted back to a child and began the whole process over again. He reeled back from the chamber, feeling a bit sick, the contents of his stomach rolled and threatened to come back up. He looked around the room, at the lines of stasis chambers running up the walls and imagined each one of them with a person inside, stuck in limbo as time fast forwarded then rewound itself in endless loops.
“I don’t think I can wake anyone up if they’re all like this,” Ianto addressed the ship, “can you show me where the Captain is?” The avatar answered with an affirmative and lead Ianto towards her Captain’s chamber.
She looked softer somehow, so different from the tired and hopeless woman in the ship’s log as she ordered her crew to their final sleep and let the ship adrift in the void. Did she know they and their precious cargo would never wake up? Caught in time as they were, dreaming away the eons until the rift finally spat them out again in Cardiff, millions of light years away from their home in both time and distance.
Ianto hesitated at opening the chamber. He didn’t understand any of the technology used, he couldn’t even be sure the Captain was still alive. An insane idea took shape in his head, and trusting his instinct he addressed the ship, its avatar a silent present by his side.
“I need to get into the dream world and speak with your Captain, is it possible?” The ship hummed as it processed his request.
“Yes,” it replied and one of the still empty chambers opened up.
***
Ianto was walking towards a young girl playing on the swings. Her white hair and blue eyes reminded him of the Captain, but that’s where the similarities end; she looks like she is no older than ten.
“Captain Cibo?” Ianto asks, not quite sure if she is the person he’s seeking.
“Yes?” She looks up to meet his eyes and he can see for all the apparent youth, her eyes have the world weariness of someone used to making all the decisions. They remind him of Jack’s eyes.
“I’m Ianto Jones of Torchwood Three,” Ianto begins, and then describes what has happened in the past couple of days and what Tosh has found out about the ship. All the while the Captain listens intently, only interrupting to ask questions to clarify certain points. “So I came here hoping you can help.”
The Captain nods and a soft sad look comes into her eyes, that of a person who has done everything she can but has still been defeated in the end. “Yes, I think it’s time,” and she tells him what he must do.
Ianto thanks her and is just about to leave when he remembers one other thing he has to do. “My friends, I believe they’re also here in this dream world, can you let them wake up?”
She answers with a smile. “Certainly.” Her image freezes as she gives orders to the ship, and Ianto doesn’t think he will ever get used to watching something like that. A moment passes before the Captain blinks and her attention focuses on him again, an intent stare as if he’s being judged. “There’s a slight complication, I think it’s best you speak to him yourself.”
Ianto agreed and before he knew it, he was standing before Jack, an adult Jack who was still in the dream world instead of waking up at the hospital. Lips curve downwards in a frown, he’s staring intently at the ground as if the answers to all the secrets of the universe was written there.
“Jack,” Ianto said and Jack flinch at the voice and slowly looks up.
"Please Jack," Ianto looks Jack in the eye. "You must wake up, this isn't real, Torchwood is waiting for you, I- we need you."
"But I like it here," Jack replies petulantly.
"This isn't real."
“You’re lying,” Jack said flatly.
Ianto sigh and took Jack’s hand into his. “Think Jack, you’re the leader of Torchwood Three, you’ve lived longer than the rest of your team combined, you’ve traveled with the Doctor and I’m very certain you’re not from our time. You must have noticed that this world doesn’t work quite right, at least not 21st century Earth."
“I don’t know everything, I don’t know who Gray is or what your parents are really like. Though from what little I’ve seen of this world, I think I can guess, but Jack, this is just a dream. They’re not really your parents and that little boy was never Gray, I promise I would be there in the real world waiting for you, it’s not perfect but it’ll have to do, just- please wake up.”
Jack visibly deflates and whispers, “I know this isn’t real, but I can love you better here.”
Ianto smile back sadly.
“Time to wake up.”
Jack nods and visibly steeled himself, and then slowly fade from view as he wakes up back in the real world.
"Good bye Jack," Ianto said softly to the empty space where Jack used to be. There was still work to be done.
***
Jake woke with a heavy feeling of dread and that he missed something important.
"Where's Ianto?" Jack asked Owen as he pointed his scanner at Jack.
Owen frowned at Jack and tried to make him sit still while he compared the medical readings he had between Gwen and Jack. He was trying to put off answering that question for as long as possible, however little tact he knows he possess, there is no simple way to tell someone when a person went missing.
“I don’t know what happened,” Owen finally opted to say without looking at Jack, instead pretend to concentrate on his scanner’s read out even though it had already cheerfully given both Gwen and Jack a clean bill of health.
“All I know is that Ianto gave me a garbed retelling of communicating with you when he slept, but something happened when UNIT blew a hole in that sphere and he wanted to try using that alien communication bracelet.” Owen continued as he jabbed at a couple of buttons on his scanner.
“And you let him?” Jack exploded, angry at himself for not being there for his team, and angry at Owen for letting Ianto take such a risk.
“We didn’t know what else to do,” Owen snapped back, glaring at Jack defiantly.
“Where is he now?” Jack asked impatiently.
“My best guess is the ship took him.” Owen said mulishly.
“What?”
“That’s what I said to Tosh, but that’s what she said.”
***
Ianto opened the door he came through and found himself looking at what must be the bridge, a circular room with a wall of screens that fizzled and flickered showing the world outside, while other screens displayed a scroll of alien text, one screen in particular caught Ianto's eyes, it was a still shot of what he could only assumed as the fabled city. An uncomfortable looking chair rested on the raised platform in the middle of the room, high back and what could only be described as contemporary. Ianto sat down. The chair was deceptively warm and it hummed underneath him as the ship fed him information directly into his mind, images and knowledge on how to reopen the rift, pilot the ship and even use the self destruct. Other things weaved themselves into his mind, a long dead language, pieces of music the scientist who built this ship once loved and memories of a city on a different planet long ago.
"This is Ianto Jones of Torchwood Three, acting captain of the-" As Ianto spoke, he knew he was no longer speaking English or Welsh or any of the thousand languages on Earth as passwords and orders passed through his lips.
The ship prompted him for a name.
“Ianto Jones,” he said with a slight frown of puzzlement.
The ship prompted him again, and it slowly dawned on him that the ship’s original name no longer fit.
Ianto paused and looked around the room, of this once beloved ship with its hidden rooms and corridors and the picture of a dead city on its wall. “Memory,” he renamed the ship.
Beautiful and delicate looking controls rose up from the ground around him, thin silvery wires curled and twined together to form a base and panels, jeweled buttons grew like fruits. He flicked switches and turned dials, then read the ship's system reports and knew it was dying. Ianto reopened the rift with ease, then marveled at doing something Jack had warned them time and again to never do and slowly guided the ship through.
***
The ship was glowing, a bright white light that could have been seen for miles around and signaling for self destruct. Jack shielded his eyes with one hand as he squints at the pulsing light and step on the gas. He was still driving towards the Plass when it happened, and he watched wide eyed and helpless behind the wheel as the ship slowly disappeared back through the rift, taking Ianto with it.
"Ianto!" Jack yelled and the evening Cardiff skies lite up like a summer morning as the ship self destructed before the rift fully closed behind it.
He slowly stumbled his way towards the Water Tower like a dead man, the closest he'd get to Ianto minus a helicopter and the rift opening up again, there wasn't even going to be a body for burial. Everything looked blurry and he just couldn't focus on anything, his mind already going through the motion of shutting down. For tonight only, he'd grieve, drink too much and just be human, because tomorrow, tomorrow he'd have to be Captain Jack Harkness, leader of Torchwood Three. From far off, Jack could just make out a figure standing by the Water Tower, white shirt and dark pants, intruding on what Jack thought was going to be his private moment. He stalked up to the man intent on driving him away, then slowed as he drew near and the figure become clearer, the familiar stance of the man looking up at the sky. Heart thumping wildly in his chest, blood rushing in his ears, half hopeful because surely, surely he had not done enough for the past how many hundred years to merit this grace. His very atoms thrummed and focused on this man before him, something primal crawling its way out of his throat.
He must have made a noise at that point because the other man turned around and gave him a large smile. "Jack!"
***
Let me tell you a story:
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful city in the stars, it's people where clever even if they were not all kind. They loved art and music as much as they detested war, and the objects they created were equally beautiful as they could be destructive. They did not mean for their arts to be made into weapons of war, they were meant to be symbols of power, means of saying to other cities without using as many words 'do not bring war to us, we are clever and we are protected, we will defend ourselves'. The pride of their creation was a ship that held a hundred thousand rooms and could fit inside one's coat pocket at the same time. It was silvery in colour and the shape of a marble, the scientists who dreamed her gave her a name. Eternal.
When the War That Broke Time began, the people of this beautiful city did not participate, even as the darkness ate away at the light. One evening, the lady president of one of the cities fighting against the darkness visited the beautiful city.
"Please," she beseeched them. "You're a clever people, you must see the darkness is slowly winning, join with us in the war so our children can have a better future."
The people of the beautiful city were prideful. "Leave our city and do not sully our doorstep with your talk of wars," the ruling council replied and politely escorted the lady president back to her people.
As everything came to an end, the darkness came for the people of the beautiful city and they realized that while they were clever, that alone cannot save them from the darkness who does not fear and does not rest. Slowly, all their paths were cut off as their beautiful and deadly machines were proved useless against an unrelenting foe, their only path left was to flee their city and join with one of the few remaining cities standing up to the darkness or hide until the darkness pass and light returns.
The dying people began to put things into this ship; laughter, music and love. They put their children in the ship, each of them hooked into a little pod, so they could sleep and dream together until it was safe for them to wake again. The ship filled with all the hope of their little city took to the skies to outrace this darkness coming for them.
Far away in another city, the same city the lady president came from, but she was no longer president when it happened, something was smashed. It rippled out like a rock thrown in a pond, rewriting and reshaping everything in its path and the little ship with it hundred thousand rooms and the size of a marble was caught in its wake. Time twisted around the little ship, it's occupants caught between the past and the future, as they grow old and die before time rewinds and they die again at a dizzying pace.
Eventually their journey through time brought them to a city by the sea, the cloak of time around the ship was in tatters and she felt very very old, she had even forgotten her name and her purpose. Parts of her no longer exists, erased by time, and if one was to go through all her hundred thousand rooms, they would find gaping black holes where rooms should be but now were just a void of nothingness. Because none of her systems were working as they should, a boy from this city by the sea came on board, the first since she left her own city an eon ago. The boy was foolish, yet brave and selfless, qualities someone who once loved her wanted her dreamers to have, so she listened and tried to help the boy when her captain told him what he must do.
It has been forever and never, their beautiful city destroyed, the people themselves caught in a web of time, trapped between nothing, a shade, a song of time long past. It was time to go. The boy, with the help of a ship that once held a hundred thousand rooms slowly disappearing in time, whom the boy had renamed Memory, opened up time and hurled them through. As a parting gift, because the boy had been selfless and brave, the ship - Memory - returns him to his city by the sea and left him with a song to remember them by.
-end-