The Day the Dragons Came (2/4)
Title: The Day the Dragons Came (by Mica Davies, Age 7) (Part 2 of 4)
Author: nancybrown
Prompt: Reign of Fire
Characters: Team, Rhys, Martha, Mickey, Rhiannon, kids
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, Mickey/Martha
Rating: R
Warnings: character death, child endangerment, graphic descriptions of burn wounds
Spoilers: goes AU after "Something Borrowed," TW: COE (characters only), DW: The Stolen Earth, SJA: Death of the Doctor
Word Count: 20,000 (6,900 this part)
Disclaimer: Characters from Torchwood and Doctor Who belong to the BBC. "Reign of Fire" belongs to Spyglass, Touchstone, and Buena Vista. No infraction of their copyright is intended or should be inferred.
Summary: Two years ago, dragons destroyed the world while Torchwood stood by helplessly. It's time to fight back.
Beta: wynkat1313, fide_et_spe, and eldarwannabe did the heavy lifting for the beta on this. amilyn did a fantastic medpick. The remaining errors are all mine.
Author's Notes: Written for reel_torchwood. No familiarity with the film is necessary. (It's a B-movie with dragons. They eat people.)
Chapter One
***
Chapter Two
***
The first rul is always keep both eyes on the sky. The secend rul is always listen to Captin Jack. The third rul is you must never never ever tell a lie. The forth rul is always eat your food. The fith rul is always stay quiet.
***
At twilight, the dragons were at their thickest. The wild dogs and worse that roamed the streets were out then, hunting the cats and rats, but not unwilling to take down a small or unwary human. When the survivors were desperate for supplies, they sometimes ventured forth in the dusk, hoping to find a meal without disturbing the dragons with gunshots for the dogs and Weevils that came too close.
Sometimes the dogs were the meal. After Jack had cleaned the first couple he'd brought back, he'd stopped thinking about it. Their casualties were highest when they went out late; he'd eat a dog if it meant avoiding anyone's painful death, including his own.
When the weather was foggy enough, he went out alone at this time of day bundled in his coat. The first coat, the good coat, had burned ages ago, sending him up like a matchhead under the furnace heat of a dragon's breath. This coat kept out the chill, and allowed him to move.
Few buildings remained of what was once Cardiff's skyline: skeletons of towers, unsafe to be near. Sometimes when one fell, they felt the tremors below and the children cried and the adults waited, wondering if the roof would collapse. Skypoint should have fallen first, its ugly corpse instead jutting up at the sky angrily like an upturned finger. Jack hated the building irrationally, but every evening he could, he climbed what remained of the stairs and clambered up the rest of the way to reach the highest peak left standing in Cardiff.
Then he took out his mobile, the CB radio, and the ham radio, each packed tightly into a heavy rucksack, and he set up the ham, and he called for help. He changed frequencies, scanned across countries, found nothing but static every night, or rarely, a similar cry for help from halfway across the Continent. The mobile was recharged from the Hub and fresh, but he only ever dialled two numbers. If the Doctor answered, Jack would have to fight between asking him for aid, and cursing him for not coming when they'd needed him most.
Without a working tower or network, the mobile that could call the Doctor anywhere in space and time could not dial down the road. But every night, Jack dialled in Alice's number, and held the phone to his ear as it refused to connect.
The night was clearing from the day's fog, with little pinpricks of stars poking through above him. The mobile in his hand looked for service and found none. He closed it, and started to disassemble his equipment when he heard a noise.
Jack spun, ready to be turned into a briquette once again, but the noise was from the radio, spitting out a signal.
"Hello? Come in? Anyone?"
Jack fumbled with the mic and thumbed it on. "Hello, whoever you are, you just became the most beautiful voice I've ever heard."
There was a pause, and Jack twisted, remembering the men who'd tried to break into the Hub. Not every voice was friendly, and not everyone would react to his flirting with a positive reaction, just another damn thing wrong with this whole situation.
The radio made a noise, and then a new voice came on the line: "State your name, rank, and favourite place to take a moonlight stroll, please."
Joy burst through him. "Martha Jones, I love you."
***
The convoy rolled into the street at noon the next day. The nights were filled with great flights of the beasts, roaring and devouring anything unwary enough to be outside, but daytime was usually safe. Dragons often rested by day, only coming out to forage alone for a meal.
Jack led a handful of his people outside to meet the newcomers. Well, he chose to use the word "led," when "was griped at by everyone until he gave in and said okay" would be more appropriate. Ianto refused to leave Jack's side under any circumstances that didn't involve getting eaten or cooked. Gwen had insisted on coming up for this, and no amount of ordering her otherwise would change her mind. Rhys wasn't going to stay below if she wasn't, and by that point, Owen was just too curious not to join the rest of them, and anyway, he'd liked Martha.
They were armed, of course. It could be a trap. It had been a trap the day Andy died.
Jack put on his best smile as the first of three trucks pulled up. Martha slowly stepped out, clearly favouring her right leg as she made her way over for hugs.
"It's good to see all of you," she said.
She was thinner than Jack remembered, and she'd never had an ounce of spare flesh on her to begin with, not when they'd first met, not after the Year That Only Involved Monomaniacal Dictators and Not Goddamned Dragons. Even as she embraced Gwen roundly, there was something hard about Martha that he'd never seen before, and he ached a little, even as he rejoiced that she was alive.
"Oi, a little help here?"
Jack's head shot up to see the other person climbing out of her truck. "Mickey Mouse!"
"Captain Cheesecake," said Mickey pleasantly. He started pulling out the biggest guns Jack had seen in years. Jack elbowed Ianto and the two of them went over to the truck, gleeful as kids at Christmastime. He took Mickey into a quick hug, which Mickey broke first.
As the others in their party unloaded the rest of the trucks, Ianto made his way over to help them carry the weapons.
Jack said to Mickey, "I don't get it. How are you here?"
"It was Rose. Ever since You Know Who stranded her in that parallel world with her mum and dad, she's been tryin' to get back. Our Torchwood developed a dimensional cannon that could shoot someone through. We came."
One of the rules that they didn't say out loud but that everyone knew was not to ask where someone was in case the answer was horrible. Jack didn't ask where Rose was, but he wanted to, and even as the desire welled, he saw the grief on Mickey's face. Jack had grieved her once already, in the wake of Canary Wharf. The new knowledge hit him not as a blow, but instead as a sorrowful finale to a relationship forged from missed chances.
"Does the Doctor know?"
"I think he has to." Mickey looked around. "Don't you think he'd've come by now? But with her gone … "
If Rose had died, the Doctor surely wouldn't abandon Earth. But perhaps he'd find it painful for a while to visit.
"I've been trying to reach him."
"So's Martha. But he's not coming this time."
Jack looked around them in the thin light oozing through the mists, illuminating the ghosts of the jagged-teeth buildings that used to be his city. "No."
"How many do you have here?"
"In the Hub? Fifty-some kids, a little over thirty adults." Ianto knew the exact numbers. Jack had intentionally stopped keeping track months ago.
A small child piled into Mickey's knees, and he picked her up absently as she said, "Is this the place you told us about?"
"Yeah. This is Jack. He's gonna keep everyone safe."
Jack frowned. The Hub was already overcrowded, and now Mickey and Martha had brought more people to his care? "We try," he said instead of, "We're full up." More blankets could be thrown on the floors. They'd find a way.
"What's this?" Ianto called from the last truck, looking over a large arrow curiously.
Martha grinned grimly. "That's a present from a friend."
Mickey said, "You guys used to know a Toshiko Sato?"
Jack stared.
***
He has seen her angry, he has seen her determined. He has never seen her like this.
"I'm going," Tosh says, in a quiet tone that brooks no refusal. Jack didn't even know she had that voice. Over the past few weeks, he's learned many sudden lessons about his team.
Owen says, "I'm going with you." It is the only time he will ever indicate he might be worried for his mother.
"No," Jack says. "We need you both here. You're staying."
Tosh will not be shaken. "I have to find my family."
"They're dead. London is a ruin, Tosh." He hates stating painful truths this way, but he learned a long time ago that nothing else works with her.
"They could have survived. I need to know." Her clothes are in a small sack she can wear on her back. She is taking nothing that they need to survive. The bed she has been using can be given to another of the people they are collecting, the dead-eyed and the frightened and the lost. Despite this, Jack has no intention of letting her go.
"Tosh, you are staying here. We need you. We have to find a way to fight these things."
And he knows the war is over when she says, "We can't."
He can't stop her. But he chains Owen to the wall to keep him there because if they lose their doctor, the rest will die, and Jack can be a bastard for the sakes of the others. Tosh disappears that night. They never see her again.
***
Martha lifted the arrows from where they were held, more precious than the children they picked up in dribs and drabs on their long journey here. "Tosh developed these. One straight shot down the gullet of a dragon will kill it."
Owen was always the one to break the taboos. But he was dead, and there were allowances. "Where's Tosh now?"
Mickey and Martha didn't answer, and that was answer enough. Owen swore, loud and long, carrying in the thin silence, but the elegy brought no peace, and no dragons.
"Come on in," said Jack, and he knew they would need more food.
As the newcomers moved past, Ianto and Gwen quietly counting and sorting them, Jack noticed a tousled blond head. His stomach dropped. He'd stopped hoping over a year ago, this was just a coincidental resemblance, there was nothing …
"Uncle Jack?"
Jack fell to his knees, and Steven bounded into his arms, taller than he remembered, and different, but alive, oh goddess, alive.
"How … "
Mickey grinned without humour, not understanding, of course he didn't understand yet. "Found this one in Bath." He petted Steven's hair fondly. "You know him?"
"Yeah." Jack would be content to hug him forever. But he had to know, had to break the rule. "Steven, your mother … " Steven's face told him the rest.
***
When they were alone, or what passed for alone, Ianto pulled Jack aside. "Is he your son?"
There'd been a time when he never would have asked, as content to let Jack keep his secrets as he was to hide away his own. Jack had liked their arrangement, but secrets had died with privacy in the warren beneath the ruined city, and lies were absolutely forbidden here because lying got people killed. Anyway, Ianto had long since stopped hiding anything from him. He ought to return the favour.
"He's my grandson. His mother was mine. I managed to reach her once before the phones went down." Alice had been terse, neither of them knowing how long the connection would hold. There was nothing left where she lived, but she could take Steven and a few of the other survivors and strike out for shelter. The line had cut out before he could beg her to find a way to Cardiff.
"I'm sorry," Ianto said, because that was what people said, and also because he probably meant it.
Jack's eyes wandered to where Steven sat with the other new children, being given the first lessons of life in the Hub. He mourned Alice, but for the first time in months, his heart was comforted.
***
Martha's leg had been damaged on the first day by shrapnel from a UNIT mortar, and it had never healed properly. She'd treated herself and attempted what physical therapy she could, but even on her good days the old injury slowed her down, and she was stiff after the long drive.
Mickey fell in with her as she came up slowly to the Hub. "How're you feeling?" He was good about asking after her without pressing too deeply unless she indicated he could. She'd have been fine with keeping him in the box of 'handsome man I occasionally shag,' but lately, he'd been giving the other men in their group a keep-off glare and he seemed to be angling for the box labelled 'boyfriend.'
The thought made her smile. Not much else did these days.
"I'll be fine. Just need to stretch." They weren't alone, but no-one who overheard them now would understand. "How did he react?"
"Surprised. Happy."
"Good." She reached for Mickey's hand, and he helped her inside.
***
Martha and Mickey eased into their group like they belonged, though the rest -- scared UNIT soldiers and the scant survivors they'd found along their journey -- were less eager to blend with the Cardiff group. The handful of new children bonded quickly with the children of the Hub. Steven happily devoured pancakes and beans, his mouth full as he laughed at jokes David and the other big boys told.
Rhiannon watched from the sidelines as the adults talked, having discovered for herself long ago the same trick as her brother: a dish flannel and a pile of washing up made her invisible whenever she wanted. She wasn't part of their clique, the ones who kept their sad band intact and fed, not the way Gwen's man was, but she had her own important duties. She oversaw everything in the room Ianto had converted to a primitive kitchen, maintaining the rotation of cooks and stretching their supplies as far as they'd go. She kept the room cosy, encouraging the Torchwood team to meet where she could observe them on her terms. She knew more than she let on, and always listened to every word.
"We've been working on it since the beginning," said Martha. "We tried explosives, lasers, everything. But Tosh figured out this mixture." In her hands, she held an arrow as thick around as a cucumber. Rhi leaned over for a better look, while pretending to reach for another dirty plate.
Mickey said, "Magnesium oxide, C4, a little nitro-glycerine, and a few other things. Send one down the throat of a dragon at the right time, and watch it go boom."
"When's the right time?" asked Gwen, staring at the arrow.
"Right as they go to take a breath. You know, when they're about to flame you."
"Risky," said Rhys. "You'd be standin' right in front of the thing."
Martha said, "It's got to be making fire. You're actually in the path of the flame when it goes." She looked at Jack. "Tosh insisted on testing the prototype herself. She took a big one out with her."
A shiver passed through the table. Rhiannon had only met Tosh briefly before she went outside and never came back. At first glance, she'd seemed shy and self-effacing. At second, there'd been something like steel inside her, and not even Jack had known.
"How many have you killed?" asked Ianto.
"Almost a dozen," Martha said. "I've examined the bodies. There are signs of aging in all of them, like the ones we're seeing are nearing the end of their life cycles. But the really interesting thing is, all of them have been male."
"Could be for a lot of reasons," said Owen. "Males could be more aggressive. Females guard the nests, males go out hunting." Rhi found herself nodding along with his words. The doctor was one of the smartest people left alive, even more than the teachers, and they'd struck up a quiet friendship based on the fact that her little brother was occasionally an annoying prat.
Martha said, "We've only got reports of one nest. We think if we destroy it and take out the mother, we might stop the next generation. The problem is, she's bigger than the others, and meaner."
Mickey added, "And she's got plenty of boyfriends around her to help. We made an assault once. Never seen so many dragons in one place."
Jack said something, but Rhiannon didn't hear him over the sudden laughter from the kids at their table. Steven was grinning ear to ear. Rhiannon frowned.
" ... need your help," said Martha.
"You need someone to stand in front of the dragon, you mean," Ianto said, in that flat voice he used when he was as angry as a bee and didn't want to show it. Dad had used that voice right before his fists came out, but she wasn't about to tell Ianto that.
"There aren't a lot of options left," Martha said. "We've lost dozens of people to this plan already. Some of us got lucky and walked away." She said 'walked' with a hitch. "If we're going to win this, we need to go in with someone we know can survive long enough to take her down."
"Me."
"You're the best bet."
"Yeah. All right. When do we go?" His voice was deceptively light, but his gaze focused on the group of boys.
Ianto said, "Are you serious?"
"Sure. Fry me, bake me, let's get this done. Time?"
Martha smiled thinly. "We were hoping to stay a day or two, refuel if we can find petrol, and then head out."
Mickey said, "We're gonna need more people. The soldiers we brought? They're all we've got left, except for the two we left in London to guard our people there. If the assault's going to succeed, we'll need at least double the number." He glanced out of the mess into the main part of the Hub. Rhiannon followed his eyes.
"Our people here aren't soldiers," said Jack. "We've got some of them trained in basic firearms, but the only ones I'd trust are the people at this table." Rhys looked pleased at being included in that tally. The rest were grim. "I'll go, but the others need to stay."
Gwen said, "Look around. We've got mostly children. We can't leave them unprotected."
"Think about it," said Martha. "If this works, if we're right, we'll be protecting all of them."
Owen said, "We could lock down, make sure they were sealed up tight."
Gwen said, "And trap everyone underground?"
"Better than trapping them up there with the dragons," said Owen.
"We'll talk about it," Jack said. "It'll take a few days to get enough petrol for your trucks together. We've already been out once today." No dragons this morning, Ianto had told her, but they'd gone from street to street and come back with nothing to show for it but two cans of potatoes and one withered squash grown wild in what used to be someone's backyard garden. Rhiannon cut the squash up to put in tonight's soup, saved the seeds, and kept her mouth shut because it could be worse.
"We'll go out with you," said Mickey, hefting an arrow. "Get some of the nastier buggers off your backs."
The little meeting broke up soon after. Gwen excused herself to the loo -- thank God they still had plumbing -- while Mickey and Martha went to check on the other newcomers. Rhiannon watched the pair, the gentle interplay between them and how they finished each other's thoughts.
Of the adults in their own group, many had taken lovers in a casual kind of marriage. All the fights people had had in the old days about who could get properly married, and now the vicars and judges and everyone were all dead. There'd been a time when she would have been shocked to find out her brother was sleeping with a man, and now she practically pronounced their names "JackandIanto." She missed Johnny, missed having a lover of her own. Lovers were there to share your secrets and also your lies.
She set down her washing up and went to the table as Rhys got up. "Have a sec?"
Jack indicated the seat Rhys had vacated. Ianto said, "We'll look for provisions while we're out getting the petrol."
"That's fine. About Steven. You know him?" This was to Jack.
"Yeah." Jack wore that closed-off face he used when he didn't want to tell people something. Ianto's expression was blank, which meant he knew whatever this particular secret was. She hid her sigh, because honestly, did they think no-one knew their tells?
"When he came in, they said found him with his mother, that she was dead." She didn't miss Jack's flinch. Jack was the type who'd leave a couple of kids behind in every port, wasn't he? "But that doesn't make sense."
Jack said quietly, "Steven said she was gone. He's lucky that they found him."
"Too lucky. On the way to see us, and they happen to pick up a child you know right after his mam gets killed?"
"It's Steven. He's not an illusion or something grown out of a vat. I know him." He glanced at Owen, who shook his head. "He's not reanimated, either."
Ianto said, "We find people all the time, Rhi."
"Listen to me, will you? None of you spend time with the children, not really. I do. And I'm telling you, that's not a boy who lost his mam a week ago." She lowered her voice. "When the kids come in right after, they're shocked and scared. He's playing. If his mam died, it was a while ago. That's all I'm saying." She got up from the table without another word. She had work still to do.
***
The foraging team for the afternoon was Jack, Ianto, Mickey, and two of the UNIT soldiers. Martha stayed behind to help Owen with a difficult burn case. Rhys wasn't due on another shift in the rotation, and the pleading in Gwen's eyes kept Jack from asking him anyway. The team loaded up the best-protected of the trucks with all the cans and headed for a car park they occasionally raided for fuel.
Jack held the lookout position, watching and listening and smelling the air, as Ianto picked out the best route to the car park. They'd made this run before, and Jack's concern today was that there weren't many cars left that they hadn't siphoned. So many vehicles and petrol stations had burned in the first wave and then after that he knew they would eventually run out. Raids to the surrounding towns held potential, but the longer they were outside, the more likely it was that they'd attract attention, and it would be for nothing if they lost the whole foraging party and whatever fuel they'd found.
They reached the car park without sighting a dragon, but Jack smelled sulphur on the air. "Let's make this quick." The others took the cans and scattered with the hoses, checking every car they found. Jack stayed with the truck, darting his head around.
Dragons made a noise like a distant train rumbling over tracks in the dead of night, and they smelled like the first strike of a lucifer, back when there'd been such things. He stretched out every sense he had, and he scented danger in the air. Ignoring the scrape of metal on concrete and the wheezing, bubbling sounds of the hoses sipping away at their treasure, he listened.
There was a rush, and the faintest beat of wings.
"We have to go," he said in a low voice that carried. "They're coming."
"One more," said one of the soldiers.
"No time," Ianto said, and he grabbed her can, letting petrol spill noisomely over the pavement. "Go!"
Mickey was the first one back at the truck, but as he dropped his can, he reached in for one of the modified crossbows they'd brought.
"Now's not the time," Jack said, loading the abandoned can.
"Looks like a perfect time to me. Get the others out of here."
Jack made a snap decision. "Give it to me. If it doesn't work, I'll heal."
"Negative, mate. I'm trained on it. You can stick around if you want to watch."
Ianto and the soldiers loaded into the truck. Ianto watched Jack with the same expression he wore every time. If there was another way, Jack would gladly take it, not just to avoid burning to death, but also to be free from that sad, guilty and slightly accusatory look. But there was no other way.
"Go. Come back if it's dead."
Ianto nodded and took off, just as the train noise roared overhead. Jack shouted and ran, trying to distract the dragon away from the truck as well as Mickey. Sometimes he managed to get away. More than once, he'd been eaten. Dull terror filled him as he felt the wind currents shift. The dragon gave chase. He counted the seconds, waiting for the furnace blast to envelop him, for skin to blister and bubble and melt off his bones as his lungs collapsed while he screamed. He never died as quickly as he wished.
"Come here, you ugly brute!" shouted Mickey from where he waited. Jack felt the air move again, and the dragon was no longer chasing him. He kept running, stopped only when he reached the edge of the car park, daring to look back. The dragon had turned to Mickey, was rearing back to draw breath.
Jack's stomach dropped. He'd been standing where Mickey stood now. It always ended in pain.
Mickey grinned, and he fired, and then he ran like hell.
With a sudden understanding, Jack fell to the ground and covered his own head just as the dragon's throat exploded. The great body convulsed, casting limbs over broken cars, destroying the pavement in its death throes. Jack watched, amazed. From across the way, he saw Mickey, hunched down and wary as the tail flopped close to him and then was still.
Jack stood. Carefully, he walked beside the reeking body, trying not to gag at the stench. Mickey joined him at the stump where the dragon's head used to be.
By the time they reached each other, Jack had regained his composure. "Mickey Smith, dragon-slayer," he said with a wide smile. "Never thought I'd see the day."
"You and me both."
Jack heard the crunch of gravel under tyres as the truck came closer. The soldiers got out, unfazed, but Ianto's eyes were like saucers as he looked at the dead dragon. "Shit."
"Yeah."
"It's dead."
"Yeah."
***
Music blared, a mix of MP3s that were still loaded on Mainframe. (It was that or Jack's old records, and Jack had been outvoted.) The party spilled down through the corridors of the Hub, echoing in the disused train tunnel. They had plenty of booze and few enough reasons to celebrate that although Jack had thought about telling the rest to keep it down, he couldn't bear to dampen their spirits. Mickey was greeted as a hero and his companions as saviours come to free them from the bloody dragons once and for all.
Even his team was relaxing, and that was a joy to see. Gwen and Owen weren't drinking, but Rhys and Ianto both had cups of beer. Jack wasn't ready to drink tonight, but when the five of them found one another standing in a quiet corner together, they all raised their glasses of beer or juice (Owen just bowed his head) and had a moment for Tosh. Rhys then set down his cup and took his wife's hands, and pulled her away to dance as she squealed happily. It was a good sound, one Jack intended to treasure.
Ianto swayed a bit to the music. Feeling something was expected of him, Jack leaned over. "Wanna dance?"
"Nope." Ianto took a long drink. As he swallowed, he was suddenly faced with a wall of breathless sister.
"Come on," Rhi said, and grabbed his hand.
Jack worried for a moment that something had happened to one of the kids, but Rhiannon made a beeline for the other dancers. She just wanted someone out there with her. Ianto put on a rictus of horror at being forced to dance with his sister, but she rolled her eyes at him and made him start moving, and soon he was as into the offbeat rhythm as she was. Jack laughed to watch them, to see them both having fun for once.
"I'd give a lot to have my mobile," said Owen.
"Why?"
"I want to show him pictures of this when he's sober."
Jack laughed again. Then he dug into his pocket for his own mobile, the one that never worked. "Go forth. I want copies."
"No dirty pictures, Harkness."
"Damn."
Jack clapped Owen on the back and wandered down to the second party. The children were drinking juice, and Rhiannon had mocked up biscuits with the honey they'd found. The littler ones danced to the music like the adults did, unselfconscious and free. Some of the older kids were pantomiming scenes from Harry Potter and Star Wars to entertain the rest. He found Steven among the makeshift audience, and placed a hand on his shoulder, guiding the boy away from the other children.
He wasn't used to this. The rare times he'd visited Steven, Jack tended to sweep into the house with gifts to spoil him and annoy Alice. So much had happened today that only now was it dawning on him that he was Steven's sole remaining family. Jack had fathered children but never raised them. He wasn't sure what happened next.
"How're you doing, soldier?"
"I'm okay." Steven's face was sticky with juice and crumbs. Jack rubbed at him half-heartedly with his sleeve, only getting himself stuck with crumbs.
"You know you're going to live with me now, right?"
"Sure."
"Do you like it here?"
Steven shrugged. "There's other kids here. There weren't a lot of other kids before."
"Where were you before, Steven?"
Steven's eyes darted away. "With Mum. Before she died."
It hurt all over again. In another world, his friends were dancing and drinking and laughing. "When did your mum die?"
"Last week."
But now that he was listening and watching, the hesitation was obvious. Jack liked to think he wasn't completely stupid, but it was going to sting for a while that Rhiannon had to be the one who pointed the lie out. "Steven, we don't tell lies here. What happened to your mother?"
Steven blinked, and his face went sad. "She died. Doctor Martha said. Mum told me to stay with the others, and she never came back."
"How long ago?"
Steven shrugged. "A while."
"More than a week." He watched Steven. "A lot more." Steven nodded.
"Okay. Thank you for telling me." This was hard, harder than he'd thought. "Why did you say it was a week ago?"
Steven glanced away again and didn't answer.
"Did someone ask you to lie?" A nod. Jack didn't want to know, but he had to be sure. "Was it Doctor Martha?" Another nod. Martha had told Steven about Alice's death, and brought him here, and asked him to lie about it. He tried overlaying this revelation with the Martha Jones he knew, and came up short. He set it aside for now. "Do you want to be in a room with the other kids, or do you want to sleep where I do?"
"Can I stay with you?"
"Yeah. We'll get you sorted out." There really wasn't space for another blanket on the floor in his bunker. Jack would find room somehow, if he had to forcibly evict a roommate or two to his office above. "Go back to your friends and play for a while."
"Okay."
Tonight, space wasn't an issue. Ianto passed out with a gentle snore on the camp bed, and Steven lay contentedly on the floor, while the other two men who shared the bunker never made it back to the little room. Jack wasn't tired tonight, and worked quietly around the Hub, looking up whatever information Mainframe had in her databanks about their guests.
***
Ianto's mouth had a familiar, furry feeling when he dragged himself out of bed, and he got a cup of water from the kitchen. Jack had come to bed -- Ianto remembered the feel of arms enfolding him stirring him from sleep -- and left again sometime late in the night, and now he was nowhere to be found. Everyone else was still abed save for the earliest risers and two or three who had yet to collapse from last night's fun.
As hangovers went, this was milder than he recalled, but then, he rarely drank these days and it hadn't taken much to get him tipsy in the first place. He thought back to that pleasant, warm feeling. They'd killed a dragon. There was something primal and exciting in the thought.
Finally awake, he went up to the Tourist Centre to check on things. The morning was cold with only a bit of cloud cover. Good for spotting dragons, bad for being seen by them.
Today they would venture out to get more petrol and stock up on supplies so there wouldn't have to be many foraging trips when the team was off with Mickey and Martha. Perhaps they'd be on the road by early afternoon, travelling while the monsters slept. He heard the door open behind him, heavy and creaking.
"It's a good day," Ianto said.
"I hope." Jack sniffed at the air. "They've been out here recently."
Ianto frowned. "It's early. We can wait an hour for them to sleep."
"Yeah."
An hour turned into two, as people woke and ate and got on with things. Ianto busied himself with tasks around the Hub, and waited for Jack to give the word. When he saw a handful of UNIT people moving to the car park, he set down his tools and followed in a hurry, only to be stopped by Jack as he reached the door.
"Stay in today," Jack said.
"I never stay in." You need me, he wanted to say, but if he said it, he risked Jack telling him that wasn't really true.
"All the more reason to rest now. I'm going to need you later when we get to the main event."
He relaxed, just a little; Jack knew that there was no way Ianto was letting him go to face the nest alone. "Jack, I know the routes best. You'll be out longer with them."
"Then we're out longer. We can fight back now, right?"
Ianto paused. "Right."
He watched Jack go, itching to run after him and take the wheel of the vehicle, but knowing an order when he heard one. Instead he fretted without showing it, fussing at Rhiannon in the kitchen until she kicked him out, seeing to the maintenance duties around the Hub that he kept as his own tasks, and annoying Owen and Gwen whenever he was close enough. Hours crawled by before the alert came in of something entering the car park, and Ianto gave up his pretence of working to hurry out.
He didn't let himself breathe until he saw Jack emerge from the truck, unharmed and smirking. "Got another one."
The warm feeling returned, along with a faint touch of jealousy. Jack's old friend had come, and suddenly two dragons were dead. Placed next to cans of beans and a jar of honey, the dragons were by far the better catch. Jack's half-joking reassurance yesterday that Mickey was straight did little to prevent the little pangs cropping up as Ianto watched Jack place a comfortable hand on Mickey's shoulder.
Jack's smile dropped. His head spun to the opening to the car park. "They're here! Get underground!" His shout was punctuated by flames that shot past the entrance.
They scurried back into the Hub as the dragons (God, how many were there?) roared, deafening. Jack slammed and bolted the steel door, only to be lifted off his feet as it flew off its hinges under an assault. Ianto heard the explosions, one after another, as the vehicles burned. He counted three explosions, and the pops of the cans, even as he helped Jack to his feet and away from the fire.
"Everyone to the sublevels!" Jack ordered. "Go!"
Shouts and screams and quiet determination pushed people down into the bowels of the Hub, far beneath the bay. Ianto hung back with Jack as everyone was shooed below. The air in the Hub, usually cool and damp, now scorched lungs and crackled dangerously.
"They know," Jack said, mostly to himself, but Ianto nodded. Somehow the dragons were intelligent enough to know what had happened, and whom to blame.
"We can fight them," Ianto said. Mickey stood a few feet away, readying his crossbow with a curt nod.
Jack shivered. "All right." The other crossbows were easy to locate, and easier to load. They had no cameras left, but the sensors not yet shorted out indicated the dragons were focused on the car park. Rumbles still shook the whole structure.
Jack and Ianto went to the lift, with Mickey following in confusion. As they touched the paving stone, Jack activated it with his wrist strap. Mickey stumbled but Jack steadied him as they rose. When the ruined street came into view, Mickey looked at Jack. "Isn't this where we parked the TARDIS?"
Jack smiled.
They could see the dragons, three of them. They circled and flew and spewed fire before them. Ianto felt his legs turn to water as he watched in terror. Every day he went out to face these things, and his only comfort lay in thinking they were dumb beasts that didn't know him from a tasty sheep or Weevil. But these were coordinated, and angry, and as afraid as he always was when he saw one, that had nothing on the fear he had now that he could see they actively wanted him and the rest of the survivors dead.
"Okay," Jack said in a whisper, barely audible above the roars and the rushing wind, the fluttering smoke and rolling flames. "I'll lead them out and away. See if we can separate them and take them down." His lips were dry in the heat, and suddenly Ianto desperately wanted to kiss him, for luck or for farewell, but there was no time. "Go."
Jack dashed off across the way, waiting until he was far enough to start shouting to get their attention. Sure enough, two of the three broke off their attack on the Hub to swoop around after him. Ianto refused to watch, refused to look to see if Jack turned and fired or ran and died. He wouldn't wonder how much pain Jack was in before he died, whether he could feel himself cooking or if the pain synapses shut down in a last vain protection.
"Let's get this one," Mickey said, and he charged, Ianto on his heels as they ran insanely towards the remaining dragon.
"Split up," Ianto said. "I'll get his attention, then when you're ready, shout and fire." Mickey nodded, and veered away.
Ianto took a deep breath. "OI! YOU GREAT BRUTE! OVER HERE!" He shouted and waved, and the dragon twisted its head. One enormous, mad eye stared at him, like a cow that could only look at one half of the world at a time. Ianto's paralysis broke and he ran, bidding the thing give chase and praying that Mickey was ready to take the shot.
"Oi!" came the shout from behind them, and Ianto kept running, as he felt the dragon turn. Oh God, it was turning away, it was looking at Mickey, who laughed somewhere Ianto could not see. He heard the twang and the dragon's head exploded with a meaty thump.
Ianto stopped and looked.
Another dragon, one of the two that had been chasing Jack, swooped in over the body of its fellow, and let out a loud shriek. And Mickey didn't have a second charge, because they each had one. Ianto saw it draw back its head, and without even thinking, he screamed, "Over here!"
The dragon whipped its giant body around to face him, and he had nowhere to run. His bow was already loaded, and his hands fired without conscious thought as the dragon opened its mouth. He saw the fireball coming as he let the arrow fly.
In slow motion, he watched it hit the dragon's cheek and fall, and he threw his hands over his face as the fire came at him like all of Hell in one place, and he no longer had to wonder how it felt.
***
Chapter Three
Author: nancybrown
Prompt: Reign of Fire
Characters: Team, Rhys, Martha, Mickey, Rhiannon, kids
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, Mickey/Martha
Rating: R
Warnings: character death, child endangerment, graphic descriptions of burn wounds
Spoilers: goes AU after "Something Borrowed," TW: COE (characters only), DW: The Stolen Earth, SJA: Death of the Doctor
Word Count: 20,000 (6,900 this part)
Disclaimer: Characters from Torchwood and Doctor Who belong to the BBC. "Reign of Fire" belongs to Spyglass, Touchstone, and Buena Vista. No infraction of their copyright is intended or should be inferred.
Summary: Two years ago, dragons destroyed the world while Torchwood stood by helplessly. It's time to fight back.
Beta: wynkat1313, fide_et_spe, and eldarwannabe did the heavy lifting for the beta on this. amilyn did a fantastic medpick. The remaining errors are all mine.
Author's Notes: Written for reel_torchwood. No familiarity with the film is necessary. (It's a B-movie with dragons. They eat people.)
Chapter One
***
Chapter Two
***
The first rul is always keep both eyes on the sky. The secend rul is always listen to Captin Jack. The third rul is you must never never ever tell a lie. The forth rul is always eat your food. The fith rul is always stay quiet.
***
At twilight, the dragons were at their thickest. The wild dogs and worse that roamed the streets were out then, hunting the cats and rats, but not unwilling to take down a small or unwary human. When the survivors were desperate for supplies, they sometimes ventured forth in the dusk, hoping to find a meal without disturbing the dragons with gunshots for the dogs and Weevils that came too close.
Sometimes the dogs were the meal. After Jack had cleaned the first couple he'd brought back, he'd stopped thinking about it. Their casualties were highest when they went out late; he'd eat a dog if it meant avoiding anyone's painful death, including his own.
When the weather was foggy enough, he went out alone at this time of day bundled in his coat. The first coat, the good coat, had burned ages ago, sending him up like a matchhead under the furnace heat of a dragon's breath. This coat kept out the chill, and allowed him to move.
Few buildings remained of what was once Cardiff's skyline: skeletons of towers, unsafe to be near. Sometimes when one fell, they felt the tremors below and the children cried and the adults waited, wondering if the roof would collapse. Skypoint should have fallen first, its ugly corpse instead jutting up at the sky angrily like an upturned finger. Jack hated the building irrationally, but every evening he could, he climbed what remained of the stairs and clambered up the rest of the way to reach the highest peak left standing in Cardiff.
Then he took out his mobile, the CB radio, and the ham radio, each packed tightly into a heavy rucksack, and he set up the ham, and he called for help. He changed frequencies, scanned across countries, found nothing but static every night, or rarely, a similar cry for help from halfway across the Continent. The mobile was recharged from the Hub and fresh, but he only ever dialled two numbers. If the Doctor answered, Jack would have to fight between asking him for aid, and cursing him for not coming when they'd needed him most.
Without a working tower or network, the mobile that could call the Doctor anywhere in space and time could not dial down the road. But every night, Jack dialled in Alice's number, and held the phone to his ear as it refused to connect.
The night was clearing from the day's fog, with little pinpricks of stars poking through above him. The mobile in his hand looked for service and found none. He closed it, and started to disassemble his equipment when he heard a noise.
Jack spun, ready to be turned into a briquette once again, but the noise was from the radio, spitting out a signal.
"Hello? Come in? Anyone?"
Jack fumbled with the mic and thumbed it on. "Hello, whoever you are, you just became the most beautiful voice I've ever heard."
There was a pause, and Jack twisted, remembering the men who'd tried to break into the Hub. Not every voice was friendly, and not everyone would react to his flirting with a positive reaction, just another damn thing wrong with this whole situation.
The radio made a noise, and then a new voice came on the line: "State your name, rank, and favourite place to take a moonlight stroll, please."
Joy burst through him. "Martha Jones, I love you."
***
The convoy rolled into the street at noon the next day. The nights were filled with great flights of the beasts, roaring and devouring anything unwary enough to be outside, but daytime was usually safe. Dragons often rested by day, only coming out to forage alone for a meal.
Jack led a handful of his people outside to meet the newcomers. Well, he chose to use the word "led," when "was griped at by everyone until he gave in and said okay" would be more appropriate. Ianto refused to leave Jack's side under any circumstances that didn't involve getting eaten or cooked. Gwen had insisted on coming up for this, and no amount of ordering her otherwise would change her mind. Rhys wasn't going to stay below if she wasn't, and by that point, Owen was just too curious not to join the rest of them, and anyway, he'd liked Martha.
They were armed, of course. It could be a trap. It had been a trap the day Andy died.
Jack put on his best smile as the first of three trucks pulled up. Martha slowly stepped out, clearly favouring her right leg as she made her way over for hugs.
"It's good to see all of you," she said.
She was thinner than Jack remembered, and she'd never had an ounce of spare flesh on her to begin with, not when they'd first met, not after the Year That Only Involved Monomaniacal Dictators and Not Goddamned Dragons. Even as she embraced Gwen roundly, there was something hard about Martha that he'd never seen before, and he ached a little, even as he rejoiced that she was alive.
"Oi, a little help here?"
Jack's head shot up to see the other person climbing out of her truck. "Mickey Mouse!"
"Captain Cheesecake," said Mickey pleasantly. He started pulling out the biggest guns Jack had seen in years. Jack elbowed Ianto and the two of them went over to the truck, gleeful as kids at Christmastime. He took Mickey into a quick hug, which Mickey broke first.
As the others in their party unloaded the rest of the trucks, Ianto made his way over to help them carry the weapons.
Jack said to Mickey, "I don't get it. How are you here?"
"It was Rose. Ever since You Know Who stranded her in that parallel world with her mum and dad, she's been tryin' to get back. Our Torchwood developed a dimensional cannon that could shoot someone through. We came."
One of the rules that they didn't say out loud but that everyone knew was not to ask where someone was in case the answer was horrible. Jack didn't ask where Rose was, but he wanted to, and even as the desire welled, he saw the grief on Mickey's face. Jack had grieved her once already, in the wake of Canary Wharf. The new knowledge hit him not as a blow, but instead as a sorrowful finale to a relationship forged from missed chances.
"Does the Doctor know?"
"I think he has to." Mickey looked around. "Don't you think he'd've come by now? But with her gone … "
If Rose had died, the Doctor surely wouldn't abandon Earth. But perhaps he'd find it painful for a while to visit.
"I've been trying to reach him."
"So's Martha. But he's not coming this time."
Jack looked around them in the thin light oozing through the mists, illuminating the ghosts of the jagged-teeth buildings that used to be his city. "No."
"How many do you have here?"
"In the Hub? Fifty-some kids, a little over thirty adults." Ianto knew the exact numbers. Jack had intentionally stopped keeping track months ago.
A small child piled into Mickey's knees, and he picked her up absently as she said, "Is this the place you told us about?"
"Yeah. This is Jack. He's gonna keep everyone safe."
Jack frowned. The Hub was already overcrowded, and now Mickey and Martha had brought more people to his care? "We try," he said instead of, "We're full up." More blankets could be thrown on the floors. They'd find a way.
"What's this?" Ianto called from the last truck, looking over a large arrow curiously.
Martha grinned grimly. "That's a present from a friend."
Mickey said, "You guys used to know a Toshiko Sato?"
Jack stared.
***
He has seen her angry, he has seen her determined. He has never seen her like this.
"I'm going," Tosh says, in a quiet tone that brooks no refusal. Jack didn't even know she had that voice. Over the past few weeks, he's learned many sudden lessons about his team.
Owen says, "I'm going with you." It is the only time he will ever indicate he might be worried for his mother.
"No," Jack says. "We need you both here. You're staying."
Tosh will not be shaken. "I have to find my family."
"They're dead. London is a ruin, Tosh." He hates stating painful truths this way, but he learned a long time ago that nothing else works with her.
"They could have survived. I need to know." Her clothes are in a small sack she can wear on her back. She is taking nothing that they need to survive. The bed she has been using can be given to another of the people they are collecting, the dead-eyed and the frightened and the lost. Despite this, Jack has no intention of letting her go.
"Tosh, you are staying here. We need you. We have to find a way to fight these things."
And he knows the war is over when she says, "We can't."
He can't stop her. But he chains Owen to the wall to keep him there because if they lose their doctor, the rest will die, and Jack can be a bastard for the sakes of the others. Tosh disappears that night. They never see her again.
***
Martha lifted the arrows from where they were held, more precious than the children they picked up in dribs and drabs on their long journey here. "Tosh developed these. One straight shot down the gullet of a dragon will kill it."
Owen was always the one to break the taboos. But he was dead, and there were allowances. "Where's Tosh now?"
Mickey and Martha didn't answer, and that was answer enough. Owen swore, loud and long, carrying in the thin silence, but the elegy brought no peace, and no dragons.
"Come on in," said Jack, and he knew they would need more food.
As the newcomers moved past, Ianto and Gwen quietly counting and sorting them, Jack noticed a tousled blond head. His stomach dropped. He'd stopped hoping over a year ago, this was just a coincidental resemblance, there was nothing …
"Uncle Jack?"
Jack fell to his knees, and Steven bounded into his arms, taller than he remembered, and different, but alive, oh goddess, alive.
"How … "
Mickey grinned without humour, not understanding, of course he didn't understand yet. "Found this one in Bath." He petted Steven's hair fondly. "You know him?"
"Yeah." Jack would be content to hug him forever. But he had to know, had to break the rule. "Steven, your mother … " Steven's face told him the rest.
***
When they were alone, or what passed for alone, Ianto pulled Jack aside. "Is he your son?"
There'd been a time when he never would have asked, as content to let Jack keep his secrets as he was to hide away his own. Jack had liked their arrangement, but secrets had died with privacy in the warren beneath the ruined city, and lies were absolutely forbidden here because lying got people killed. Anyway, Ianto had long since stopped hiding anything from him. He ought to return the favour.
"He's my grandson. His mother was mine. I managed to reach her once before the phones went down." Alice had been terse, neither of them knowing how long the connection would hold. There was nothing left where she lived, but she could take Steven and a few of the other survivors and strike out for shelter. The line had cut out before he could beg her to find a way to Cardiff.
"I'm sorry," Ianto said, because that was what people said, and also because he probably meant it.
Jack's eyes wandered to where Steven sat with the other new children, being given the first lessons of life in the Hub. He mourned Alice, but for the first time in months, his heart was comforted.
***
Martha's leg had been damaged on the first day by shrapnel from a UNIT mortar, and it had never healed properly. She'd treated herself and attempted what physical therapy she could, but even on her good days the old injury slowed her down, and she was stiff after the long drive.
Mickey fell in with her as she came up slowly to the Hub. "How're you feeling?" He was good about asking after her without pressing too deeply unless she indicated he could. She'd have been fine with keeping him in the box of 'handsome man I occasionally shag,' but lately, he'd been giving the other men in their group a keep-off glare and he seemed to be angling for the box labelled 'boyfriend.'
The thought made her smile. Not much else did these days.
"I'll be fine. Just need to stretch." They weren't alone, but no-one who overheard them now would understand. "How did he react?"
"Surprised. Happy."
"Good." She reached for Mickey's hand, and he helped her inside.
***
Martha and Mickey eased into their group like they belonged, though the rest -- scared UNIT soldiers and the scant survivors they'd found along their journey -- were less eager to blend with the Cardiff group. The handful of new children bonded quickly with the children of the Hub. Steven happily devoured pancakes and beans, his mouth full as he laughed at jokes David and the other big boys told.
Rhiannon watched from the sidelines as the adults talked, having discovered for herself long ago the same trick as her brother: a dish flannel and a pile of washing up made her invisible whenever she wanted. She wasn't part of their clique, the ones who kept their sad band intact and fed, not the way Gwen's man was, but she had her own important duties. She oversaw everything in the room Ianto had converted to a primitive kitchen, maintaining the rotation of cooks and stretching their supplies as far as they'd go. She kept the room cosy, encouraging the Torchwood team to meet where she could observe them on her terms. She knew more than she let on, and always listened to every word.
"We've been working on it since the beginning," said Martha. "We tried explosives, lasers, everything. But Tosh figured out this mixture." In her hands, she held an arrow as thick around as a cucumber. Rhi leaned over for a better look, while pretending to reach for another dirty plate.
Mickey said, "Magnesium oxide, C4, a little nitro-glycerine, and a few other things. Send one down the throat of a dragon at the right time, and watch it go boom."
"When's the right time?" asked Gwen, staring at the arrow.
"Right as they go to take a breath. You know, when they're about to flame you."
"Risky," said Rhys. "You'd be standin' right in front of the thing."
Martha said, "It's got to be making fire. You're actually in the path of the flame when it goes." She looked at Jack. "Tosh insisted on testing the prototype herself. She took a big one out with her."
A shiver passed through the table. Rhiannon had only met Tosh briefly before she went outside and never came back. At first glance, she'd seemed shy and self-effacing. At second, there'd been something like steel inside her, and not even Jack had known.
"How many have you killed?" asked Ianto.
"Almost a dozen," Martha said. "I've examined the bodies. There are signs of aging in all of them, like the ones we're seeing are nearing the end of their life cycles. But the really interesting thing is, all of them have been male."
"Could be for a lot of reasons," said Owen. "Males could be more aggressive. Females guard the nests, males go out hunting." Rhi found herself nodding along with his words. The doctor was one of the smartest people left alive, even more than the teachers, and they'd struck up a quiet friendship based on the fact that her little brother was occasionally an annoying prat.
Martha said, "We've only got reports of one nest. We think if we destroy it and take out the mother, we might stop the next generation. The problem is, she's bigger than the others, and meaner."
Mickey added, "And she's got plenty of boyfriends around her to help. We made an assault once. Never seen so many dragons in one place."
Jack said something, but Rhiannon didn't hear him over the sudden laughter from the kids at their table. Steven was grinning ear to ear. Rhiannon frowned.
" ... need your help," said Martha.
"You need someone to stand in front of the dragon, you mean," Ianto said, in that flat voice he used when he was as angry as a bee and didn't want to show it. Dad had used that voice right before his fists came out, but she wasn't about to tell Ianto that.
"There aren't a lot of options left," Martha said. "We've lost dozens of people to this plan already. Some of us got lucky and walked away." She said 'walked' with a hitch. "If we're going to win this, we need to go in with someone we know can survive long enough to take her down."
"Me."
"You're the best bet."
"Yeah. All right. When do we go?" His voice was deceptively light, but his gaze focused on the group of boys.
Ianto said, "Are you serious?"
"Sure. Fry me, bake me, let's get this done. Time?"
Martha smiled thinly. "We were hoping to stay a day or two, refuel if we can find petrol, and then head out."
Mickey said, "We're gonna need more people. The soldiers we brought? They're all we've got left, except for the two we left in London to guard our people there. If the assault's going to succeed, we'll need at least double the number." He glanced out of the mess into the main part of the Hub. Rhiannon followed his eyes.
"Our people here aren't soldiers," said Jack. "We've got some of them trained in basic firearms, but the only ones I'd trust are the people at this table." Rhys looked pleased at being included in that tally. The rest were grim. "I'll go, but the others need to stay."
Gwen said, "Look around. We've got mostly children. We can't leave them unprotected."
"Think about it," said Martha. "If this works, if we're right, we'll be protecting all of them."
Owen said, "We could lock down, make sure they were sealed up tight."
Gwen said, "And trap everyone underground?"
"Better than trapping them up there with the dragons," said Owen.
"We'll talk about it," Jack said. "It'll take a few days to get enough petrol for your trucks together. We've already been out once today." No dragons this morning, Ianto had told her, but they'd gone from street to street and come back with nothing to show for it but two cans of potatoes and one withered squash grown wild in what used to be someone's backyard garden. Rhiannon cut the squash up to put in tonight's soup, saved the seeds, and kept her mouth shut because it could be worse.
"We'll go out with you," said Mickey, hefting an arrow. "Get some of the nastier buggers off your backs."
The little meeting broke up soon after. Gwen excused herself to the loo -- thank God they still had plumbing -- while Mickey and Martha went to check on the other newcomers. Rhiannon watched the pair, the gentle interplay between them and how they finished each other's thoughts.
Of the adults in their own group, many had taken lovers in a casual kind of marriage. All the fights people had had in the old days about who could get properly married, and now the vicars and judges and everyone were all dead. There'd been a time when she would have been shocked to find out her brother was sleeping with a man, and now she practically pronounced their names "JackandIanto." She missed Johnny, missed having a lover of her own. Lovers were there to share your secrets and also your lies.
She set down her washing up and went to the table as Rhys got up. "Have a sec?"
Jack indicated the seat Rhys had vacated. Ianto said, "We'll look for provisions while we're out getting the petrol."
"That's fine. About Steven. You know him?" This was to Jack.
"Yeah." Jack wore that closed-off face he used when he didn't want to tell people something. Ianto's expression was blank, which meant he knew whatever this particular secret was. She hid her sigh, because honestly, did they think no-one knew their tells?
"When he came in, they said found him with his mother, that she was dead." She didn't miss Jack's flinch. Jack was the type who'd leave a couple of kids behind in every port, wasn't he? "But that doesn't make sense."
Jack said quietly, "Steven said she was gone. He's lucky that they found him."
"Too lucky. On the way to see us, and they happen to pick up a child you know right after his mam gets killed?"
"It's Steven. He's not an illusion or something grown out of a vat. I know him." He glanced at Owen, who shook his head. "He's not reanimated, either."
Ianto said, "We find people all the time, Rhi."
"Listen to me, will you? None of you spend time with the children, not really. I do. And I'm telling you, that's not a boy who lost his mam a week ago." She lowered her voice. "When the kids come in right after, they're shocked and scared. He's playing. If his mam died, it was a while ago. That's all I'm saying." She got up from the table without another word. She had work still to do.
***
The foraging team for the afternoon was Jack, Ianto, Mickey, and two of the UNIT soldiers. Martha stayed behind to help Owen with a difficult burn case. Rhys wasn't due on another shift in the rotation, and the pleading in Gwen's eyes kept Jack from asking him anyway. The team loaded up the best-protected of the trucks with all the cans and headed for a car park they occasionally raided for fuel.
Jack held the lookout position, watching and listening and smelling the air, as Ianto picked out the best route to the car park. They'd made this run before, and Jack's concern today was that there weren't many cars left that they hadn't siphoned. So many vehicles and petrol stations had burned in the first wave and then after that he knew they would eventually run out. Raids to the surrounding towns held potential, but the longer they were outside, the more likely it was that they'd attract attention, and it would be for nothing if they lost the whole foraging party and whatever fuel they'd found.
They reached the car park without sighting a dragon, but Jack smelled sulphur on the air. "Let's make this quick." The others took the cans and scattered with the hoses, checking every car they found. Jack stayed with the truck, darting his head around.
Dragons made a noise like a distant train rumbling over tracks in the dead of night, and they smelled like the first strike of a lucifer, back when there'd been such things. He stretched out every sense he had, and he scented danger in the air. Ignoring the scrape of metal on concrete and the wheezing, bubbling sounds of the hoses sipping away at their treasure, he listened.
There was a rush, and the faintest beat of wings.
"We have to go," he said in a low voice that carried. "They're coming."
"One more," said one of the soldiers.
"No time," Ianto said, and he grabbed her can, letting petrol spill noisomely over the pavement. "Go!"
Mickey was the first one back at the truck, but as he dropped his can, he reached in for one of the modified crossbows they'd brought.
"Now's not the time," Jack said, loading the abandoned can.
"Looks like a perfect time to me. Get the others out of here."
Jack made a snap decision. "Give it to me. If it doesn't work, I'll heal."
"Negative, mate. I'm trained on it. You can stick around if you want to watch."
Ianto and the soldiers loaded into the truck. Ianto watched Jack with the same expression he wore every time. If there was another way, Jack would gladly take it, not just to avoid burning to death, but also to be free from that sad, guilty and slightly accusatory look. But there was no other way.
"Go. Come back if it's dead."
Ianto nodded and took off, just as the train noise roared overhead. Jack shouted and ran, trying to distract the dragon away from the truck as well as Mickey. Sometimes he managed to get away. More than once, he'd been eaten. Dull terror filled him as he felt the wind currents shift. The dragon gave chase. He counted the seconds, waiting for the furnace blast to envelop him, for skin to blister and bubble and melt off his bones as his lungs collapsed while he screamed. He never died as quickly as he wished.
"Come here, you ugly brute!" shouted Mickey from where he waited. Jack felt the air move again, and the dragon was no longer chasing him. He kept running, stopped only when he reached the edge of the car park, daring to look back. The dragon had turned to Mickey, was rearing back to draw breath.
Jack's stomach dropped. He'd been standing where Mickey stood now. It always ended in pain.
Mickey grinned, and he fired, and then he ran like hell.
With a sudden understanding, Jack fell to the ground and covered his own head just as the dragon's throat exploded. The great body convulsed, casting limbs over broken cars, destroying the pavement in its death throes. Jack watched, amazed. From across the way, he saw Mickey, hunched down and wary as the tail flopped close to him and then was still.
Jack stood. Carefully, he walked beside the reeking body, trying not to gag at the stench. Mickey joined him at the stump where the dragon's head used to be.
By the time they reached each other, Jack had regained his composure. "Mickey Smith, dragon-slayer," he said with a wide smile. "Never thought I'd see the day."
"You and me both."
Jack heard the crunch of gravel under tyres as the truck came closer. The soldiers got out, unfazed, but Ianto's eyes were like saucers as he looked at the dead dragon. "Shit."
"Yeah."
"It's dead."
"Yeah."
***
Music blared, a mix of MP3s that were still loaded on Mainframe. (It was that or Jack's old records, and Jack had been outvoted.) The party spilled down through the corridors of the Hub, echoing in the disused train tunnel. They had plenty of booze and few enough reasons to celebrate that although Jack had thought about telling the rest to keep it down, he couldn't bear to dampen their spirits. Mickey was greeted as a hero and his companions as saviours come to free them from the bloody dragons once and for all.
Even his team was relaxing, and that was a joy to see. Gwen and Owen weren't drinking, but Rhys and Ianto both had cups of beer. Jack wasn't ready to drink tonight, but when the five of them found one another standing in a quiet corner together, they all raised their glasses of beer or juice (Owen just bowed his head) and had a moment for Tosh. Rhys then set down his cup and took his wife's hands, and pulled her away to dance as she squealed happily. It was a good sound, one Jack intended to treasure.
Ianto swayed a bit to the music. Feeling something was expected of him, Jack leaned over. "Wanna dance?"
"Nope." Ianto took a long drink. As he swallowed, he was suddenly faced with a wall of breathless sister.
"Come on," Rhi said, and grabbed his hand.
Jack worried for a moment that something had happened to one of the kids, but Rhiannon made a beeline for the other dancers. She just wanted someone out there with her. Ianto put on a rictus of horror at being forced to dance with his sister, but she rolled her eyes at him and made him start moving, and soon he was as into the offbeat rhythm as she was. Jack laughed to watch them, to see them both having fun for once.
"I'd give a lot to have my mobile," said Owen.
"Why?"
"I want to show him pictures of this when he's sober."
Jack laughed again. Then he dug into his pocket for his own mobile, the one that never worked. "Go forth. I want copies."
"No dirty pictures, Harkness."
"Damn."
Jack clapped Owen on the back and wandered down to the second party. The children were drinking juice, and Rhiannon had mocked up biscuits with the honey they'd found. The littler ones danced to the music like the adults did, unselfconscious and free. Some of the older kids were pantomiming scenes from Harry Potter and Star Wars to entertain the rest. He found Steven among the makeshift audience, and placed a hand on his shoulder, guiding the boy away from the other children.
He wasn't used to this. The rare times he'd visited Steven, Jack tended to sweep into the house with gifts to spoil him and annoy Alice. So much had happened today that only now was it dawning on him that he was Steven's sole remaining family. Jack had fathered children but never raised them. He wasn't sure what happened next.
"How're you doing, soldier?"
"I'm okay." Steven's face was sticky with juice and crumbs. Jack rubbed at him half-heartedly with his sleeve, only getting himself stuck with crumbs.
"You know you're going to live with me now, right?"
"Sure."
"Do you like it here?"
Steven shrugged. "There's other kids here. There weren't a lot of other kids before."
"Where were you before, Steven?"
Steven's eyes darted away. "With Mum. Before she died."
It hurt all over again. In another world, his friends were dancing and drinking and laughing. "When did your mum die?"
"Last week."
But now that he was listening and watching, the hesitation was obvious. Jack liked to think he wasn't completely stupid, but it was going to sting for a while that Rhiannon had to be the one who pointed the lie out. "Steven, we don't tell lies here. What happened to your mother?"
Steven blinked, and his face went sad. "She died. Doctor Martha said. Mum told me to stay with the others, and she never came back."
"How long ago?"
Steven shrugged. "A while."
"More than a week." He watched Steven. "A lot more." Steven nodded.
"Okay. Thank you for telling me." This was hard, harder than he'd thought. "Why did you say it was a week ago?"
Steven glanced away again and didn't answer.
"Did someone ask you to lie?" A nod. Jack didn't want to know, but he had to be sure. "Was it Doctor Martha?" Another nod. Martha had told Steven about Alice's death, and brought him here, and asked him to lie about it. He tried overlaying this revelation with the Martha Jones he knew, and came up short. He set it aside for now. "Do you want to be in a room with the other kids, or do you want to sleep where I do?"
"Can I stay with you?"
"Yeah. We'll get you sorted out." There really wasn't space for another blanket on the floor in his bunker. Jack would find room somehow, if he had to forcibly evict a roommate or two to his office above. "Go back to your friends and play for a while."
"Okay."
Tonight, space wasn't an issue. Ianto passed out with a gentle snore on the camp bed, and Steven lay contentedly on the floor, while the other two men who shared the bunker never made it back to the little room. Jack wasn't tired tonight, and worked quietly around the Hub, looking up whatever information Mainframe had in her databanks about their guests.
***
Ianto's mouth had a familiar, furry feeling when he dragged himself out of bed, and he got a cup of water from the kitchen. Jack had come to bed -- Ianto remembered the feel of arms enfolding him stirring him from sleep -- and left again sometime late in the night, and now he was nowhere to be found. Everyone else was still abed save for the earliest risers and two or three who had yet to collapse from last night's fun.
As hangovers went, this was milder than he recalled, but then, he rarely drank these days and it hadn't taken much to get him tipsy in the first place. He thought back to that pleasant, warm feeling. They'd killed a dragon. There was something primal and exciting in the thought.
Finally awake, he went up to the Tourist Centre to check on things. The morning was cold with only a bit of cloud cover. Good for spotting dragons, bad for being seen by them.
Today they would venture out to get more petrol and stock up on supplies so there wouldn't have to be many foraging trips when the team was off with Mickey and Martha. Perhaps they'd be on the road by early afternoon, travelling while the monsters slept. He heard the door open behind him, heavy and creaking.
"It's a good day," Ianto said.
"I hope." Jack sniffed at the air. "They've been out here recently."
Ianto frowned. "It's early. We can wait an hour for them to sleep."
"Yeah."
An hour turned into two, as people woke and ate and got on with things. Ianto busied himself with tasks around the Hub, and waited for Jack to give the word. When he saw a handful of UNIT people moving to the car park, he set down his tools and followed in a hurry, only to be stopped by Jack as he reached the door.
"Stay in today," Jack said.
"I never stay in." You need me, he wanted to say, but if he said it, he risked Jack telling him that wasn't really true.
"All the more reason to rest now. I'm going to need you later when we get to the main event."
He relaxed, just a little; Jack knew that there was no way Ianto was letting him go to face the nest alone. "Jack, I know the routes best. You'll be out longer with them."
"Then we're out longer. We can fight back now, right?"
Ianto paused. "Right."
He watched Jack go, itching to run after him and take the wheel of the vehicle, but knowing an order when he heard one. Instead he fretted without showing it, fussing at Rhiannon in the kitchen until she kicked him out, seeing to the maintenance duties around the Hub that he kept as his own tasks, and annoying Owen and Gwen whenever he was close enough. Hours crawled by before the alert came in of something entering the car park, and Ianto gave up his pretence of working to hurry out.
He didn't let himself breathe until he saw Jack emerge from the truck, unharmed and smirking. "Got another one."
The warm feeling returned, along with a faint touch of jealousy. Jack's old friend had come, and suddenly two dragons were dead. Placed next to cans of beans and a jar of honey, the dragons were by far the better catch. Jack's half-joking reassurance yesterday that Mickey was straight did little to prevent the little pangs cropping up as Ianto watched Jack place a comfortable hand on Mickey's shoulder.
Jack's smile dropped. His head spun to the opening to the car park. "They're here! Get underground!" His shout was punctuated by flames that shot past the entrance.
They scurried back into the Hub as the dragons (God, how many were there?) roared, deafening. Jack slammed and bolted the steel door, only to be lifted off his feet as it flew off its hinges under an assault. Ianto heard the explosions, one after another, as the vehicles burned. He counted three explosions, and the pops of the cans, even as he helped Jack to his feet and away from the fire.
"Everyone to the sublevels!" Jack ordered. "Go!"
Shouts and screams and quiet determination pushed people down into the bowels of the Hub, far beneath the bay. Ianto hung back with Jack as everyone was shooed below. The air in the Hub, usually cool and damp, now scorched lungs and crackled dangerously.
"They know," Jack said, mostly to himself, but Ianto nodded. Somehow the dragons were intelligent enough to know what had happened, and whom to blame.
"We can fight them," Ianto said. Mickey stood a few feet away, readying his crossbow with a curt nod.
Jack shivered. "All right." The other crossbows were easy to locate, and easier to load. They had no cameras left, but the sensors not yet shorted out indicated the dragons were focused on the car park. Rumbles still shook the whole structure.
Jack and Ianto went to the lift, with Mickey following in confusion. As they touched the paving stone, Jack activated it with his wrist strap. Mickey stumbled but Jack steadied him as they rose. When the ruined street came into view, Mickey looked at Jack. "Isn't this where we parked the TARDIS?"
Jack smiled.
They could see the dragons, three of them. They circled and flew and spewed fire before them. Ianto felt his legs turn to water as he watched in terror. Every day he went out to face these things, and his only comfort lay in thinking they were dumb beasts that didn't know him from a tasty sheep or Weevil. But these were coordinated, and angry, and as afraid as he always was when he saw one, that had nothing on the fear he had now that he could see they actively wanted him and the rest of the survivors dead.
"Okay," Jack said in a whisper, barely audible above the roars and the rushing wind, the fluttering smoke and rolling flames. "I'll lead them out and away. See if we can separate them and take them down." His lips were dry in the heat, and suddenly Ianto desperately wanted to kiss him, for luck or for farewell, but there was no time. "Go."
Jack dashed off across the way, waiting until he was far enough to start shouting to get their attention. Sure enough, two of the three broke off their attack on the Hub to swoop around after him. Ianto refused to watch, refused to look to see if Jack turned and fired or ran and died. He wouldn't wonder how much pain Jack was in before he died, whether he could feel himself cooking or if the pain synapses shut down in a last vain protection.
"Let's get this one," Mickey said, and he charged, Ianto on his heels as they ran insanely towards the remaining dragon.
"Split up," Ianto said. "I'll get his attention, then when you're ready, shout and fire." Mickey nodded, and veered away.
Ianto took a deep breath. "OI! YOU GREAT BRUTE! OVER HERE!" He shouted and waved, and the dragon twisted its head. One enormous, mad eye stared at him, like a cow that could only look at one half of the world at a time. Ianto's paralysis broke and he ran, bidding the thing give chase and praying that Mickey was ready to take the shot.
"Oi!" came the shout from behind them, and Ianto kept running, as he felt the dragon turn. Oh God, it was turning away, it was looking at Mickey, who laughed somewhere Ianto could not see. He heard the twang and the dragon's head exploded with a meaty thump.
Ianto stopped and looked.
Another dragon, one of the two that had been chasing Jack, swooped in over the body of its fellow, and let out a loud shriek. And Mickey didn't have a second charge, because they each had one. Ianto saw it draw back its head, and without even thinking, he screamed, "Over here!"
The dragon whipped its giant body around to face him, and he had nowhere to run. His bow was already loaded, and his hands fired without conscious thought as the dragon opened its mouth. He saw the fireball coming as he let the arrow fly.
In slow motion, he watched it hit the dragon's cheek and fall, and he threw his hands over his face as the fire came at him like all of Hell in one place, and he no longer had to wonder how it felt.
***
Chapter Three