Reclaiming the Past, for the H/C Bingo prompt: Lost Childhood
Title: Reclaiming the Past
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: G
Characters/pairings: Team Cardiff
Warnings (including spoilers): None
Wordcount: 2,212 words
Summary: The Rift drops a therapy device into Cardiff, and we all know that Team Torchwood could use it! For my 'Lost childhood' square in hc_bingo.
[*]When they woke up after the alien technology turned on, the team reacted differently.
Owen and Ianto, who both appeared to be about six years old, saw each other, grinned, tore off their over-sized pants and began chasing each other around the hub in only their shirts, which more resembled parkas.
Tosh, who looked to be about eight years old, started crying quietly. Before Gwen could say anything, Jack appeared, cuddling her and explaining quietly that everything was all right and that he would take care of her. In no time, the little girl was smiling and climbing up to her desk to play computer games.
Gwen, trying to ignore the crashes coming from the kitchenette area where the boys where playing, picked up the alien tech that had gotten them into the whole mess.
“What is it?” Gwen asked herself, not seeing Jack walk up beside her.
“It’s a therapy device,” he answered, rather rudely in her opinion. Or maybe it was just the unexpectedly nasally voice that was coming out of his unexpectedly young mouth.
“Alright, but what’s it for?” she asked, trying not to blush. Dammit, she’d forgotten she used to do that. And now, somehow de-aged by yet another strange piece of technology from the Rift, she was getting all sorts of teenage hormone surges, not helped at all by the fact that Jack Harkness as a fourteen-year-old was still Jack Harkness.
“It‘s supposed to take you back to a part of your childhood that was lost,” Jack said, taking the device from Gwen’s hands and manipulating it until it beeped. “Just as I suspected. A bit less than an hour and a half. That’s about as long as a galactic hour, in case you didn’t know.”
Gwen glared. Apparently a teenage Jack Harkness was a smart aleck. “I didn’t lose anything as a child. I had a loving family, great friends, we were well-off. Why did it even affect me?”
Jack was giving her a dirty look. “Well aren’t we Miss Special.” At Gwen’s affronted look, he rolled his eyes. “Everyone wants something. What did you want most, around the age the device turned you to?”
Gwen thought back to her teenage years. “Well… my parents loved me, but they didn’t really believe in me, they wanted to make all my decisions for me. I guess I just wanted some trust, some responsibility.”
Jack grinned. “Responsibility. In that case, it can be your job to run after Owen and Ianto.”
Gwen glared. “And what about you?”
“I just…” His smile fell away and he looked around the Hub at Toshiko and the boys. “I wanted to be a good big brother.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Gwen asked, trying to redirect the hint of melancholy. “I mean, do we just make sure they don’t hurt themselves and let the device do its job?”
“Pretty much,” Jack agreed. “If you find out what it is they’re looking for, give it to them. It can only help.” And, with the recognizable precursor to the Harkness Grin, he waved her off in the direction of Ianto and Owen.
[*]Jack pulled up a chair next to Tosh and sat down. Totally focused on her game, the young girl barely seemed to notice his presence. “Whatcha doing?” he asked.
“It’s a maths game,” Tosh answered. “It gives you an equation and you have to solve it within the time limit. Then you get a grade.”
The game looked pretty dull, but Jack was always the outdoorsy type. “Is it fun?” he asked, not wanting to be mean if that was what Tosh liked.
She glanced at him for a moment before clicking another answer. “It improves the mind,” she said, sounding like she was used to telling people that.
“But is it what you really want to do right now?” Jack wheedled.
Tosh paused the game and looked around the Hub.
“Just us here,” he promised.
Tosh bit her lip, then got on her knees on the chair to whisper in his ear. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “I want to play with ponies,” she confided. Then she sat back down. “But my parents say I have to concentrate on my schoolwork so I can get a good job.”
Jack nodded knowingly. “All parents are like that,” he said in a commiserating tone. “But I’m babysitting right now and I say you can play with ponies.”
“Really?” Tosh smiled widely and started bouncing. “Where?”
Jack looked around the Hub, then at the doors that had gone into a soft lockdown when the therapy device turned on. “Um… how about we look online?”
“Great!” Tosh pulled the keyboard off the desk, since it was too high for her otherwise. Her pudgy little fingers moved faster than Jack could type as an adult and in second she was squealing at the screen. “Unicorns!”
Jack wasn’t as excited, worried for a moment that ‘Robot Unicorn Attack’ might be a violent game that he shouldn’t let a sheltered eight-year-old play, but it was apparent within the first few seconds that it was okay. Jack settled back and let Tosh’s gleeful exclamations wash over him.
[*]
When she got down to the level Ianto and Owen were at, Gwen barely stopped herself from gasping like a drama queen. The two boys were playing around the sub-etheric resonator, a delicate piece of tech that Ianto in particular was partial to.
“Stop that!” she cried.
Immediately, both boys quieted and looked at her. “Um… don’t touch that,” she told them, slightly creeped out.
“Sorry,” Ianto said demurely, standing with his head down and his arms at his sides. Gwen instantly felt bad.
“It’s no big problem,” she rushed to reassure them. “You just need to be careful in the Hub, there’s lots of dangerous things about.”
“I thought she would be fun,” Owen muttered. Ianto shushed him.
“No, let him speak,” Gwen said, frowning.
Owen shot her an unhappy look. “It we can’t run around, what else is there to do? It’s not like there’s a playground in here.”
Gwen looked around unsurely. “Um… are you hungry?”
Ianto shook his head, but Owen’s eyes lit up. “Are there biscuits?” he shouted, taking off toward the kitchen. Ianto followed, seemingly more out of instinct than desire, and Gwen followed several steps behind.
By the time they got to the kitchen Owen had torn open a packet of biscuits. “Here!” he said loudly, holding out a small hand to Ianto. “We all get two.”
“Thank you.” Ianto smiled and began nibbling on a biscuit.
Owen shoved another two into Gwen’s belly.
“Thank you,” she told him.
Owen grinned hugely and she noticed he had a tooth missing. “You’re welcome.”
“Is there any milk?” Ianto asked.
“Let’s see.” Gwen opened the refrigerator door and spotted milk on the middle shelf. Before she could pick it up, Owen had darted inside and grabbed it. “I got it!” he called, nearly dropping it to the floor.
“There’s cups up there.” Ianto pointed to a cabinet that, at the moment, only Gwen could reach. She fetched three cups, making sure two of them were big and had handles, like she remembered her cups were as a child.
“Can I pour?” Owen asked, eyes wide an hopeful. Gwen found herself unable to resist the enthusiasm, even though her instincts told her no.
“He’ll spill,” Ianto warned as the other boy unscrewed the milk. Sure enough, as Owen filled the cups Gwen held out, a few splashes landed on the floor and Gwen’s arm.
“I’m sorry!” Owen said loudly. He looked worried, and Gwen had to smile, imagining the curses his adult counterpart would have let lose if he’d spilled milk.
“That’s okay,” she said kindly. “You were very helpful.”
Owen sat down on the floor and drank some of his milk, looking like he was on top of the world. Ianto and Gwen sat beside him and they all finished their biscuits and milk, with some gratuitous slurping from the boys. When they were all done, Gwen fetched some paper towels and wiped milk away from two small mouths and the floor.
“Alright, what do you two want to do now?”
“Can I draw?” Owen answered immediately. “I’m really good. I did a picture in school and my teacher gave me a sticker that said ‘remarkable’.”
“That’s very impressive,” Gwen told him, somehow not lying. It was clear that Owen was very proud and for some reason she found it entirely endearing. “I’ve got paper at my desk and we’ll see what we have for pens.”
Before she could direct him, Owen ran out of the kitchen toward her desk, a little ball of energy and elbows. She laughed and turned to Ianto. “And what about you? Do you want to draw too?”
Ianto rubbed his nose and shuffled his feet. “I usually read books,” he said quietly.
“Well, we haven’t got many childrens’ books here.” Gwen thought about what Jack had said. “Ianto, is there anything you really like to do, but never get to?”
Ianto looked up shyly and Gwen smiled. “One time… my sister pulled all the pans out of the kitchen,” he giggled, “and we banged them together. Mum came in and shouted.”
Gwen clucked, unable to resist ruffling Ianto’s curly hair. “Well, nobody’s going to yell if we get all the spoons and pans and kettles and bang them all together here.”
Ianto giggled again and reached out his hand, and led her to the pans cabinet.
[*]
After so many repetitions of the sole Robot Unicorn Attack song, Jack was almost grateful when an ear-wrenching sound began to emerge from the other side of the Hub. Telling Tosh he would be back soon and receiving a distracted nod in response, he went to check out the source.
He found, to his surprise, a red-faced Ianto laughing and shouting up a storm, smashing a kettle and a steel pan against each other and the floor with uncoordinated young hands. Gwen was sitting beside him, hands over her ears, but laughing nonetheless.
Jack leaned against the doorframe. The sight reminded him of running after Gray in the prairie beyond the beach, threatening him with the Ravenous Bug-Bladder Beast of Traal when he caught him. He laughed as a spatula slipped from Ianto’s little hand and the boy crawled after it, face intense with concentration.
A weight slammed into the back of his legs and bounced off. Owen ran by him into the kitchen without so much as a ‘sorry’ and made a beeline for Gwen, bumping some of Ianto’s pots and pans in the process. Gwen grabbed the boy and swung him into the air, making him shout with excitement and keeping him from disturbing Ianto’s percussion playground.
“Look what I drew!” the boy insisted, waving a piece of paper and nearly taking off Gwen’s nose.
She set him down and took the drawing. “Wow,” she commented, face twisting oddly. “This is very… um…”
“It’s Myfanwy,” Jack said, sneaking a glimpse.
“Oh, I see it! Very good job, Owen,” Gwen praised, offering the picture back to the boy.
He refused to take it. “It’s for you,” he said solemnly.
“Well… thank you! That’s very kind of you.”
The little boy smiled and ran out of the kitchen again.
“I guess you’ve got this sector under control,” Jack commented.
Gwen mocked slugging his arm. “Don’t be fresh with me,” she said sternly. “I’m older than you, remember.”
“Only by a year.”
“Two years!”
Jack was about to retort when Tosh appeared in the doorway. “I found a two-player,” she smiled shyly. “Do you want to play with me?”
Jack smiled. “Of course I do!” And he followed her out.
“Gwen!” Ianto called. “Let’s make a band!”
[*]
An hour later, after Jack was soundly defeated at several children’s games, Gwen carefully nursed a wailing Ianto who’d smashed a finger, and Owen had used up all of Gwen’s printer paper with pen and Sharpie drawings, the therapy device beeped loudly.
“Time for clean-up!” Gwen announced.
Ianto immediately began putting the pots and pans away, as neatly as his clumsy hands could manage. Owen started complaining.
“But I want to draw more!” he whinged.
“You’ve already made so many beautiful pictures,” she consoled him. “Besides, we’ll be adults again soon, and Ianto will be quite angry if the kitchen is covered with paper.”
Owen teared up. “But I don’t wanna be grown-up again!” he cried, and latched his arms around Gwen’s shoulders.
She hugged the boy and looked up unsurely at Jack, who entered the kitchen holding the device and Toshiko’s hand. The little girl patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “It’s likely that we’ll remember what happened, or at least the effects of the therapy will remain in our subconscious.”
Gwen frowned at Jack and he nodded, looking impressed.
“What?” Owen sniveled.
“It’ll all be okay,” Gwen summarized. “We’ll still be here.” She dried his tears and gave him another hug.
Jack rolled his eyes at her watery smile and she stuck her tongue out at him. She knew she wouldn’t forget this, would remember what she’d learned about herself. And Rhys was going to be very happy about it!
My H/C Bingo Card
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: G
Characters/pairings: Team Cardiff
Warnings (including spoilers): None
Wordcount: 2,212 words
Summary: The Rift drops a therapy device into Cardiff, and we all know that Team Torchwood could use it! For my 'Lost childhood' square in hc_bingo.
[*]When they woke up after the alien technology turned on, the team reacted differently.
Owen and Ianto, who both appeared to be about six years old, saw each other, grinned, tore off their over-sized pants and began chasing each other around the hub in only their shirts, which more resembled parkas.
Tosh, who looked to be about eight years old, started crying quietly. Before Gwen could say anything, Jack appeared, cuddling her and explaining quietly that everything was all right and that he would take care of her. In no time, the little girl was smiling and climbing up to her desk to play computer games.
Gwen, trying to ignore the crashes coming from the kitchenette area where the boys where playing, picked up the alien tech that had gotten them into the whole mess.
“What is it?” Gwen asked herself, not seeing Jack walk up beside her.
“It’s a therapy device,” he answered, rather rudely in her opinion. Or maybe it was just the unexpectedly nasally voice that was coming out of his unexpectedly young mouth.
“Alright, but what’s it for?” she asked, trying not to blush. Dammit, she’d forgotten she used to do that. And now, somehow de-aged by yet another strange piece of technology from the Rift, she was getting all sorts of teenage hormone surges, not helped at all by the fact that Jack Harkness as a fourteen-year-old was still Jack Harkness.
“It‘s supposed to take you back to a part of your childhood that was lost,” Jack said, taking the device from Gwen’s hands and manipulating it until it beeped. “Just as I suspected. A bit less than an hour and a half. That’s about as long as a galactic hour, in case you didn’t know.”
Gwen glared. Apparently a teenage Jack Harkness was a smart aleck. “I didn’t lose anything as a child. I had a loving family, great friends, we were well-off. Why did it even affect me?”
Jack was giving her a dirty look. “Well aren’t we Miss Special.” At Gwen’s affronted look, he rolled his eyes. “Everyone wants something. What did you want most, around the age the device turned you to?”
Gwen thought back to her teenage years. “Well… my parents loved me, but they didn’t really believe in me, they wanted to make all my decisions for me. I guess I just wanted some trust, some responsibility.”
Jack grinned. “Responsibility. In that case, it can be your job to run after Owen and Ianto.”
Gwen glared. “And what about you?”
“I just…” His smile fell away and he looked around the Hub at Toshiko and the boys. “I wanted to be a good big brother.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Gwen asked, trying to redirect the hint of melancholy. “I mean, do we just make sure they don’t hurt themselves and let the device do its job?”
“Pretty much,” Jack agreed. “If you find out what it is they’re looking for, give it to them. It can only help.” And, with the recognizable precursor to the Harkness Grin, he waved her off in the direction of Ianto and Owen.
[*]Jack pulled up a chair next to Tosh and sat down. Totally focused on her game, the young girl barely seemed to notice his presence. “Whatcha doing?” he asked.
“It’s a maths game,” Tosh answered. “It gives you an equation and you have to solve it within the time limit. Then you get a grade.”
The game looked pretty dull, but Jack was always the outdoorsy type. “Is it fun?” he asked, not wanting to be mean if that was what Tosh liked.
She glanced at him for a moment before clicking another answer. “It improves the mind,” she said, sounding like she was used to telling people that.
“But is it what you really want to do right now?” Jack wheedled.
Tosh paused the game and looked around the Hub.
“Just us here,” he promised.
Tosh bit her lip, then got on her knees on the chair to whisper in his ear. She cupped her hands around her mouth. “I want to play with ponies,” she confided. Then she sat back down. “But my parents say I have to concentrate on my schoolwork so I can get a good job.”
Jack nodded knowingly. “All parents are like that,” he said in a commiserating tone. “But I’m babysitting right now and I say you can play with ponies.”
“Really?” Tosh smiled widely and started bouncing. “Where?”
Jack looked around the Hub, then at the doors that had gone into a soft lockdown when the therapy device turned on. “Um… how about we look online?”
“Great!” Tosh pulled the keyboard off the desk, since it was too high for her otherwise. Her pudgy little fingers moved faster than Jack could type as an adult and in second she was squealing at the screen. “Unicorns!”
Jack wasn’t as excited, worried for a moment that ‘Robot Unicorn Attack’ might be a violent game that he shouldn’t let a sheltered eight-year-old play, but it was apparent within the first few seconds that it was okay. Jack settled back and let Tosh’s gleeful exclamations wash over him.
[*]
When she got down to the level Ianto and Owen were at, Gwen barely stopped herself from gasping like a drama queen. The two boys were playing around the sub-etheric resonator, a delicate piece of tech that Ianto in particular was partial to.
“Stop that!” she cried.
Immediately, both boys quieted and looked at her. “Um… don’t touch that,” she told them, slightly creeped out.
“Sorry,” Ianto said demurely, standing with his head down and his arms at his sides. Gwen instantly felt bad.
“It’s no big problem,” she rushed to reassure them. “You just need to be careful in the Hub, there’s lots of dangerous things about.”
“I thought she would be fun,” Owen muttered. Ianto shushed him.
“No, let him speak,” Gwen said, frowning.
Owen shot her an unhappy look. “It we can’t run around, what else is there to do? It’s not like there’s a playground in here.”
Gwen looked around unsurely. “Um… are you hungry?”
Ianto shook his head, but Owen’s eyes lit up. “Are there biscuits?” he shouted, taking off toward the kitchen. Ianto followed, seemingly more out of instinct than desire, and Gwen followed several steps behind.
By the time they got to the kitchen Owen had torn open a packet of biscuits. “Here!” he said loudly, holding out a small hand to Ianto. “We all get two.”
“Thank you.” Ianto smiled and began nibbling on a biscuit.
Owen shoved another two into Gwen’s belly.
“Thank you,” she told him.
Owen grinned hugely and she noticed he had a tooth missing. “You’re welcome.”
“Is there any milk?” Ianto asked.
“Let’s see.” Gwen opened the refrigerator door and spotted milk on the middle shelf. Before she could pick it up, Owen had darted inside and grabbed it. “I got it!” he called, nearly dropping it to the floor.
“There’s cups up there.” Ianto pointed to a cabinet that, at the moment, only Gwen could reach. She fetched three cups, making sure two of them were big and had handles, like she remembered her cups were as a child.
“Can I pour?” Owen asked, eyes wide an hopeful. Gwen found herself unable to resist the enthusiasm, even though her instincts told her no.
“He’ll spill,” Ianto warned as the other boy unscrewed the milk. Sure enough, as Owen filled the cups Gwen held out, a few splashes landed on the floor and Gwen’s arm.
“I’m sorry!” Owen said loudly. He looked worried, and Gwen had to smile, imagining the curses his adult counterpart would have let lose if he’d spilled milk.
“That’s okay,” she said kindly. “You were very helpful.”
Owen sat down on the floor and drank some of his milk, looking like he was on top of the world. Ianto and Gwen sat beside him and they all finished their biscuits and milk, with some gratuitous slurping from the boys. When they were all done, Gwen fetched some paper towels and wiped milk away from two small mouths and the floor.
“Alright, what do you two want to do now?”
“Can I draw?” Owen answered immediately. “I’m really good. I did a picture in school and my teacher gave me a sticker that said ‘remarkable’.”
“That’s very impressive,” Gwen told him, somehow not lying. It was clear that Owen was very proud and for some reason she found it entirely endearing. “I’ve got paper at my desk and we’ll see what we have for pens.”
Before she could direct him, Owen ran out of the kitchen toward her desk, a little ball of energy and elbows. She laughed and turned to Ianto. “And what about you? Do you want to draw too?”
Ianto rubbed his nose and shuffled his feet. “I usually read books,” he said quietly.
“Well, we haven’t got many childrens’ books here.” Gwen thought about what Jack had said. “Ianto, is there anything you really like to do, but never get to?”
Ianto looked up shyly and Gwen smiled. “One time… my sister pulled all the pans out of the kitchen,” he giggled, “and we banged them together. Mum came in and shouted.”
Gwen clucked, unable to resist ruffling Ianto’s curly hair. “Well, nobody’s going to yell if we get all the spoons and pans and kettles and bang them all together here.”
Ianto giggled again and reached out his hand, and led her to the pans cabinet.
[*]
After so many repetitions of the sole Robot Unicorn Attack song, Jack was almost grateful when an ear-wrenching sound began to emerge from the other side of the Hub. Telling Tosh he would be back soon and receiving a distracted nod in response, he went to check out the source.
He found, to his surprise, a red-faced Ianto laughing and shouting up a storm, smashing a kettle and a steel pan against each other and the floor with uncoordinated young hands. Gwen was sitting beside him, hands over her ears, but laughing nonetheless.
Jack leaned against the doorframe. The sight reminded him of running after Gray in the prairie beyond the beach, threatening him with the Ravenous Bug-Bladder Beast of Traal when he caught him. He laughed as a spatula slipped from Ianto’s little hand and the boy crawled after it, face intense with concentration.
A weight slammed into the back of his legs and bounced off. Owen ran by him into the kitchen without so much as a ‘sorry’ and made a beeline for Gwen, bumping some of Ianto’s pots and pans in the process. Gwen grabbed the boy and swung him into the air, making him shout with excitement and keeping him from disturbing Ianto’s percussion playground.
“Look what I drew!” the boy insisted, waving a piece of paper and nearly taking off Gwen’s nose.
She set him down and took the drawing. “Wow,” she commented, face twisting oddly. “This is very… um…”
“It’s Myfanwy,” Jack said, sneaking a glimpse.
“Oh, I see it! Very good job, Owen,” Gwen praised, offering the picture back to the boy.
He refused to take it. “It’s for you,” he said solemnly.
“Well… thank you! That’s very kind of you.”
The little boy smiled and ran out of the kitchen again.
“I guess you’ve got this sector under control,” Jack commented.
Gwen mocked slugging his arm. “Don’t be fresh with me,” she said sternly. “I’m older than you, remember.”
“Only by a year.”
“Two years!”
Jack was about to retort when Tosh appeared in the doorway. “I found a two-player,” she smiled shyly. “Do you want to play with me?”
Jack smiled. “Of course I do!” And he followed her out.
“Gwen!” Ianto called. “Let’s make a band!”
[*]
An hour later, after Jack was soundly defeated at several children’s games, Gwen carefully nursed a wailing Ianto who’d smashed a finger, and Owen had used up all of Gwen’s printer paper with pen and Sharpie drawings, the therapy device beeped loudly.
“Time for clean-up!” Gwen announced.
Ianto immediately began putting the pots and pans away, as neatly as his clumsy hands could manage. Owen started complaining.
“But I want to draw more!” he whinged.
“You’ve already made so many beautiful pictures,” she consoled him. “Besides, we’ll be adults again soon, and Ianto will be quite angry if the kitchen is covered with paper.”
Owen teared up. “But I don’t wanna be grown-up again!” he cried, and latched his arms around Gwen’s shoulders.
She hugged the boy and looked up unsurely at Jack, who entered the kitchen holding the device and Toshiko’s hand. The little girl patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “It’s likely that we’ll remember what happened, or at least the effects of the therapy will remain in our subconscious.”
Gwen frowned at Jack and he nodded, looking impressed.
“What?” Owen sniveled.
“It’ll all be okay,” Gwen summarized. “We’ll still be here.” She dried his tears and gave him another hug.
Jack rolled his eyes at her watery smile and she stuck her tongue out at him. She knew she wouldn’t forget this, would remember what she’d learned about herself. And Rhys was going to be very happy about it!
My H/C Bingo Card