Fic: Torchwood et la Bête (Team. Jack/Ianto PG-13) Chapter 1 / 28
Title: Torchwood et la Bête
by wynkat1313
Pairing(s) Team, Jack/Ianto, Tosh/OC, references to Gwen/Rhys
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Enticements: Some mild violence, a near death, romance, and a whole lot of colored lights
Spoilers: Anything is S1 is fair game as this takes place about mid S2
Prompt: Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast)
Beta’d by the amazing and incredibly patient and geeky temporal_witch , bless you hun!
Summary: When the team is invited to France to assist in a UNIT investigation of unusual Rift Activity, they go with dreams of a quick mission and a chance for a little R & R. Instead they find a wall of roses, an alien, and a mystery. Really, you’d think they would know better by now, they are Torchwood after all, and *nothing* in their world is ever simple.
Author's Note:
Since this got REALLY long, I am going to post it chapter by chapter - a little Romance / Action/Adventure Serial-ness for everyone's viewing pleasure :) There are 28 chapter's total, so this will take a bit. If you really want to know how it ends before then, the PDF is still up at my writing journal :D along with a few surprises related to the story, 'cause i could.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part One ~ The Rose
Chapter One
Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can bring drama to a family. They believe that the hands of a beast will smoke when he kills a victim, and that this beast will be shamed when confronted by compassion. They believe in a thousand other simple things. I ask of you a little of this childlike simplicity, and to bring us luck let me speak four truly magic words, childhood's Open Sesame:
Once upon a time...
Our story begins not so very long ago and not so very far away. Amongst the soft green hills of the Isle valley in Boudreaux, France, lies the ancient town of Perigueux. It was a town loved by the Gauls and the Romans for its fertility and proximity to the ocean. Crusaders called it home after their victories and their defeats, while Renaissance painters and sculptors walked its streets dreaming in conte. So many have found refuge and pleasure here that even aliens from other worlds come to Perigueux looking for safety out of the stars.
In the twilight of a spring evening a team of heroes are doing what they do best, tracking signs of alien life and that strange energy known as Rift Activity. The Captain of this intrepid crew, Jack Harkness, with Toshiko Sato, their brilliant scientist, by his side, are driving through the twilight led by a lilting Welsh voice and the rolling Rs of a nearly-native French speaker. The Welsh belongs to the team’s youngest member and organizer extraordinaire, Ianto Jones, and the French to the team’s contact in Perigueux, UNIT Special Services Agent Avenant desEtranger.
“Ok, now where?” Jack asked.
As they sped along the road out of town, they were passed by a handful of cars heading into town for the evening. With the last warm fingers of sunlight slipping away below the horizon, Jack flipped on the headlight of their borrowed SUV.
“Take your next turn,” Avenant said over the comm system, the waves of his accent making every word sound like an impressionist painting in the darkness. “- Rue des Menestriers du Perigord. It should turn into a dirt road after about 1500 meters. The signal is somewhere along the dirt road.”
“Got it. Rue des Menestriers du Perigord. Dirt road. Alien signal.” Jack turned and flashed a smile to Tosh “At least the scenery is nice.”
Tosh looked over at Jack and grinned back. “It’s so different from Cardiff.”
“I thought you liked Cardiff!”
“I do, but you know, it’s nice to see other places once in a while.” Tosh pointed to a street sign gleaming in the car’s headlights. “There’s the turnoff.”
“Got it.” Jack slowed the car and made the turn onto the new road. Tosh looked down at the scanner in her hands.
“Anything?”
Tosh shook her head. “Nothing new.”
Suburbs gave way to country as the road left the hubbub of city life behind. The trees grew larger, weaving branches overhead to create a tunnel of quiet solitude. The only light came from the beams of the SUV’s headlights carving through the night before them.
The road under them shifted and Jack felt the change through the vehicle’s tires. “We have dirt road.”
“Good,” Ianto said over the comm. “The signal is not far from your location.”
“Or not.” Tosh pointed out the front window of the vehicle. A wall of plant life loomed up out of the darkness, crossing the road in front of them. “It’s a dead end.” Tosh said.
Jack hit the brakes. “Damn.”
“Can’t be,” Ianto said. “According to the map the road goes on for at least another 1000 meters.”
“Not this way it doesn’t.” Jack looked through the side window at the area around them. The whole road was filled by a wall of foliage nearly fifteen feet high. “It’s all overgrown. No way around it.”
“There must be some mistake,” Avenant growled in their ears.
“At least it’s pretty mistake,” Tosh said.
“A wall of roses,” Jack added.
“Well, you did say you were going to bring me a dozen roses, sir,” Ianto quipped.
“When did I say that?”
Ianto coughed discreetly.
“Oh,” Jack said, a flash of memory warming his whole body. “Right.”
“I will find the local ordinance maps. Perhaps the city planners created a re-route that has yet to make on to the national maps,” Avenant said.
“Good. Tosh and I’ll see if we can’t find a way through the roses, and pick Ianto some while I’m here. Which would you prefer, red or pink?”
“Ah… Perhaps you should wait on the picking until we are certain that they are not the source of the Rift energy?”
“Good point.”
Jack tapped off his com as he got out of the car and settled his greatcoat more comfortably across his shoulders. With the darkness, the temperature was dropping. Tosh joined him, buttoning up the front of her burgundy leather coat and pulling her scanner from the depths of a pocket. Together they approached the wall.
Scattered among the rich green leaves and wicked looking thorns were deep pink roses with shadow-black centers. In the growing darkness the colors were so dark that the flowers looked like someone had dipped each of them in blood and let them dry overnight.
“Apple,” Tosh said with a wistful smile.
Jack nodded realizing she was right. The smell was spicy and rich, but under it all was a hint of apples. “Good nose.”
Jack leaned in to a cluster of roses at shoulder height, drawn by the powerful scent and colors.
“Jack, no!”
“What?”
“What if they’re… toxic or something?” Tosh shrugged.
“Relax, they’re just roses.” Jack nudged the center of the closest rose with his nose, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. “Mmmm.”
“I thought you didn’t like roses?”
“What?” Jack looked at her in surprise and then realized what she meant. “No. Well, not fairy roses. Normal ones I like just fine.”
“Oh. So are you going to bring some back for Ianto?”
“Maybe.” Jack grinned.
They walked along the wall looking for any sign of break or change. Jack pushed a branch out of Tosh’s way and saw her smile, her eyes gone distant with some memory.
“So… how was dinner?”
“What?” Tosh asked, a blush creeping along her cheeks. Jack’s grin grew wider. So he was right about where her thoughts had taken her. Good to know.
“Dinner? With our cute new UNIT boy, Avenant?”
“Jack! He’ll hear you.”
“Please! I put the comms on mute as soon as we got out of the car.”
“Oh.”
Tosh looked down at her scanner. “Rift energy is definitely coming from the other side of this wall, Jack. The signature is identical to the one UNIT has been monitoring for the last three weeks.”
“Can you find us a way in?”
“Searching now.”
“Did he take you somewhere nice?”
Tosh looked up quickly then back to her scanner with a smile. “Yes. It was a little bistro along the river that friends of his have run for years. It was really very sweet.”
“And?”
She shrugged, but the smile stayed in her eyes. “It was nice.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“I barely know him.”
“You know him better than the rest of us do.”
“Please!” Tosh fussed with the scarf at her neck, tugging sharply on one end. Jack wondered what she was really twisting with those slender fingers. Then she tossed the tasseled end over her shoulder and walked past him. “Email is hardly a way to get to know someone.”
“Seems to be what all the cool kids are doing these days.” Jack grinned. “Besides, it was your contact with him that got us invited to this little shindig. That counts for a lot in my book.”
“Well… “
Jack caught up with Tosh and pulled on her arm to get her to look at him. “Enjoy yourself, Tosh. You deserve it.”
Tosh smiled. “Thank you.”
“And if he hurts you, I’ll lock him in the lowest level of the morgue for the rest of eternity.”
“Jack!!”
“Kidding!” Jack held up his hands in mock surrender.
Tosh’s smile expanded and she laughed along with Jack.
They walked for a while in companionable silence, Tosh keeping her eyes on her scanner and Jack being the eyes for both of them in the physical world. He tugged her to one side, out of range of a low-hanging branch, and used the back of his long coat to push a particularly thorny patch of rose bush out of their way.
“There’s a shift in the energy pattern a few meters this way.” Tosh indicated along the wall of roses. They walked forward to a nearly hidden gate.
“That’s my Tosh!” Jack taped his comm again. “Ianto, Avenant, we’ve found a gate through the rose wall. Tosh’s readings indicate that the Rift energy is coming from the other side.”
“Agreed,” Ianto replied on the other end of the line. “Whatever came through the Rift landed about 800 meters from where you are standing. Do you want me to have Gwen and Owen meet you there?”
“No. Let them finish up in town. Tosh and I will do an initial scan, see what we can find and then meet you all back at the UNIT base.”
“Very good, sir.”
Jack turned back to watch Tosh massage her scanning program. Her skill and joy with electronics never ceased to delight him, and the fact that she put all that skill to use for Torchwood was like the sweetest frosting on the best cake. Jack grinned. Apparently France was making him as giddy and romantic as it was his team. Gwen had sworn that she wasn’t leaving until she found the perfect gift to bring back to share with Rhys and even Owen had mumbled something about wanting to explore the local color. And he hadn’t even sneered! Maybe they did need to take vacations more often.
A faint green glow pulled Jack’s attention to the gate in front of them, lines of green light shimmering faintly across its surface. He looked back down over Tosh’s shoulder and watched her intently tapping numbers and letters into the machine.
“Got it!” Tosh declared, and a moment later a brilliant flash of emerald green light filled the night starting at the center of the gate and spreading out along the length of rose wall. Jack threw up an arm to shield his eyes and noticed Tosh doing the same.
When the glow behind his eyelids faded, Jack opened his eyes. The gate was fully outlined in emerald green light.
“Jack, the gate’s opening!”
As they watched, the gate swung silently outward. The light lines on the gate and along the wall faded, but didn’t go out completely.
“Well…” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Tosh agreed with a nervous giggle.
Jack stepped forward, drawing his Webley. He heard the soft slide of Tosh’s gun coming out of its holster. He looked over as she stepped up beside him, gun in one hand, scanner in the other.
“Ready?”
Tosh nodded.
They stepped through the gate together and crossed into a completely different land.
Where the world outside the wall had been overgrown and nearly impassable, inside the wall was beautiful and nearly contained. Outside the wall, humanity had no say in the direction or choices that nature took. Inside, nature and humanity seemed to have found a balance. Here was a place of ordered beauty interwoven with controlled chaos.
“Oh!” Tosh said as she stepped on to a cobblestone pathway wide enough for ten large men.
The path was lined with trees that were taller than the wall of roses they had just passed, yet they had not seen them from the road. Jack reached a hand out to one thick gray trunk and looked up as far as his neck would tolerate and still couldn’t see the where the canopy touched the sky.
Someone had taken pains to plant alternating ash and maples along what must have once served as a drive of some sort. Jack imagined that it would have been an impressive sight to see the silver bark of the ash trees interweaving with the darker brown of the maples, each tree heavy with bright green leaves. Now it was a different, wilder kind of beauty, as several varieties of oak, and even a few willows, competed with the ashes and maples for space along the road.
“There are no weeds in the stones,” Tosh whispered.
Jack looked back over his shoulder at her. “Hm?”
“No weeds.” She pointed to the stone at her feet that was dusty but uniformly gray in color. “Some of those trees have to be at least half a century old, Jack. There’s no other way they could be that tall or that wide around. With that much growth, there should be weeds along this path. Actually, there shouldn’t really be a road left at all.”
Jack nodded and kept walking.
A quarter of a mile or more past the gate, Jack stopped and waited for Tosh to catch up with him. When she did, her face broke into a huge grin as she looked from the scene before her to Jack.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Just visible ahead of them, between the trees at the end of the drive was a large stone building with four circular turrets connected by a series of long crenellated walls.
“Yup.” Jack tapped his ear piece. “Avenant… are you folks missing a castle?”
“A what?” Static hissed along the line.
“Large building. Stone fortifications, crenellations along the top of the walls. Couple of big towers at each corner.”
“Do you mean a château?” Avenant asked.
“Castle, chateau, what’s the difference?” Jack asked.
“French,” Avenant said.
“Right.” Jack rolled his eyes and smiled. Tosh grinned and turned back to the view of the castle. “Well, are you missing either one?
“Ah… yes, actually.” Avenant’s voice was lost in a burst of static. “A medieval château disappeared from this area about 500 years ago.” Avenant paused. “Are you saying you found it?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s beautiful,” Tosh said just as her scanner pinged. “Jack! I’m getting multiple energy readings. Several from inside the castle and more from the somewhere on the left side of building off in the grounds.”
“Okay, we split up. I’ll take the outside area, you check inside. Nothing fancy, though; just a quick in and out to check what’s there.”
Tosh nodded.
“Ianto, see if you can localize the readings, get us a better idea of what we are looking for.”
“I’m on it.”
Leaving Tosh to explore the inside of the castle, Jack headed around to the left, hugging the castle wall in the dark. He followed the curve of a turret crawling with ivy, and then continued past a side wall to a wide patio lined with fragrant orange trees. A broad set of steps led from the patio to a D-shaped pool and a second trellised patio heavy with wisteria that glowed like clusters of purple stars against its night-dark foliage.
Double checking the readings on his vortex manipulator, Jack ducked under a thick vine of wisteria and walked into the heart of the poolside patio. Long thin leaves crunched underfoot and a thick scent filled the air around him. He closed his eyes, drank in the fragrance and remembered Estelle’s gardens.
No matter where they lived, Estelle managed to plant something somewhere. First in pots in the tiny flat they had shared before the war, and later in larger and larger bits of land as time and circumstances allowed. She would plant odd splashes of color in every direction and in any spot, no matter how unlikely. And the smells! Wisterias had been her favorite; she loved that such an explosion of color and scent could come from such a small flower, but there were always a half dozen or so antique roses scattered among the herbs and vegetables. No trumped up “modern” hybrids that didn’t know how to produce a proper scent for her. Jack smiled, remembering Estelle brandishing a gardening catalogue at him in a rare moment of temper. Don’t they understand what’s important in roses! she had said. He’d taken her in his arms and hugged her like he used to, like his “father” used to, and kissed the top of her head. Nope, was all he said in response. She’d pushed at his arm, a punch of sorts: Oh you! But she’d laughed as she’d said it and relented. He’d sent her an Empress Josephine rose for her birthday that year. In his note he said the color reminded him of the pink in her cheeks when she laughed.
Jack bowed his head, sadness and joy mixing in his heart. Memories of Estelle always seemed to do that to him. There had not been enough time with her, and yet what time they’d had had been so filled with delight that she would be mad at him if he forgot those moments in his grief.
Resolutely opening his eyes, Jack noticed an odd shape among the bracken. He crouched to get a better look. It was a little smaller than his fist, and shaped like a child’s letter block, but with softly rounded edges. It glowed faintly pink in the dim light. He tilted his head and the color shifted to deep green. When he tilted his head again, looking directly down over the cube, the glow shifted again, going so dark and colorless that it seemed to disappear into the shadows.
Jack brought his wrist up and flipped open the leather strap. He tapped a command, running a scan over the cube. When all signs pointed to the thing being harmless, he flipped the strapped closed and reached down to dislodge the cube and stood.
Under his fingers, Jack felt a raised design on one of the sides. He turned the cube over in his hands and held it up to see the image. There, glowing in the pink light that came from within the cube, was the image of a rose carved onto its surface.
“Well, what’d ya know!”
Grinning, Jack tapped the comm unit at his ear. “Hey Ianto! It seems I found you a rose after all!”
Static hissed back across the line.
“Ianto? Avenant?”
Jack tossed the cubed into the air once, his worried eyes tracking its movement. He caught the cube as it descended towards his palm, slipped it into an inside pocket of his greatcoat as he tapped the unit at his ear again.
“Tosh, can you hear me?”
Silence replaced static in his ear.
“Damn.”
Jack turned toward the castle but stopped as he came face to face with the strangest creature he had seen in a long time.
Before him stood a being whose head and neck looked for all the world like a large cat, but who wore the body and clothing of a man, and had the tail of a wolf thrashing angrily at his side. The vertically slit yellow eyes stared at Jack with clear intelligence even as they hinted at wildness, while the triangular wide-set ears kept swiveling, as if testing the air at each creak of tree and cry of night bird.
The creature’s head and neck were covered in silky sable fur that held a hint of lighter stripes when he moved, but over his wrists the fur appeared coarser and lighter in color, like a timber wolf. The creature’s hands were large and smooth with an iridescent shimmer to them, like scales of a snake. And each tensely-clenched finger ended in a finely-tipped claw. To top the whole thing off, the beast was wearing a costume that made Jack’s RAF coat look positively ahead of the curve.
He was like something out of movie about knights and maidens - regal and strong, yet no more meant for this time than Jack was. The being wore a calf-length tunic that was decorated with a thick and richly embroidered collar. Jack caught hints of gemstones among the gold chase work. There was a suggestion of finely made leather boots under the tunic. And draped over the beast’s shoulders was a long black velvet cloak, held in place with a gold pin in the shape of a rose.
“You dare to steal the Rose from me?” the creature demanded, stalking towards Jack. “Of all the things in my home, the Rose is the most precious. You could have taken anything else and I would have let you pass.”
“Look, mister...”
“No one calls me mister or sir! I am ‘Beast’ I have no other name.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”
“Compliments and fancy words will not save you. The penalty for such a simple theft is death.” Beast howled and charged at Jack.
“Stop!” Jack yelled, or tried to, as Beast knocked him to the ground, robbing him of breath and vision.
Jack kicked out blindly and heard Beast hiss as his booted foot connected with something above him. He kicked again and missed, but managed to roll out from under Beast’s weight and get to his knees. He knelt in the dark, breathing heavily.
“Listen, I’m sorry…”
Beast howled again and ran snarling towards Jack. “You will die for your actions!”
Jack scrambled sideways and back into a dense wall of wisteria vines. He tugged on the closest vine, showering them both with lavender petals and heady fragrance. Beast didn’t stop. He pulled the vine out of Jack’s hand with one powerful arm and reached for Jack’s neck with the other.
Praying to any being that might be on his side today, Jack punched at Beast’s head, connecting hard enough to see the cat-like head rock backwards. Beast shook his head and snarled. Jack brought his fist up to punch again and Beast slashed towards him with the claws of his free hand. Jack saw the strike coming and tried to shift out of the way. The blade-sharp claws sliced down, tearing long parallel gashes through his coat and deep into his shoulder and chest.
Jack let out a gasp of surprise as Beast’s claws pulled out of his skin and Beast’s other hand released his neck. He dropped to the ground, struggling for air and confused by the odd flavor of the pain in his chest. Ice and fire burned along the gashes, radiating out in bands of alternating waves of heat and cold. Visions of home and places he had called home passed through his thoughts, pulling him back through time. The bedroom he’d shared with Gray in the family compound on the Boeshane Peninsula. His room in the TARDIS with its big soft bed and blue and copper walls that smelled of cinnamon. His cubby of a room in the Officers Quarters at Pembroke Dock RAF base. The large easy chair in Ianto’s flat. It was like nothing he had felt before. He felt stretched and pulled, his body struggling to breath in the garden while his soul swam in comfort in a dozen other places from his memory.
He looked down, saw the blood turning his shirt and vest black and knew that Ianto was going to give him hell for ruining yet more clothes. He pressed a hand to the slash nearest his shoulder and felt bone slide under his fingers. Too many bits of him were exposed. Beast was right: he was going to die to pay the debt.
Jack coughed and felt blood in his lungs. His vision fading, he sank farther down onto the ground, sitting with a heavy thud as his legs gave out. He leaned into the wisteria vine that had caused him trouble and looked up. Beast was standing in front of him watching and for just a moment Jack could have sworn he saw sadness in those inhuman eyes.
on to Chapter Two
by wynkat1313
Pairing(s) Team, Jack/Ianto, Tosh/OC, references to Gwen/Rhys
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Enticements: Some mild violence, a near death, romance, and a whole lot of colored lights
Spoilers: Anything is S1 is fair game as this takes place about mid S2
Prompt: Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast)
Beta’d by the amazing and incredibly patient and geeky temporal_witch , bless you hun!
Summary: When the team is invited to France to assist in a UNIT investigation of unusual Rift Activity, they go with dreams of a quick mission and a chance for a little R & R. Instead they find a wall of roses, an alien, and a mystery. Really, you’d think they would know better by now, they are Torchwood after all, and *nothing* in their world is ever simple.
Author's Note:
Since this got REALLY long, I am going to post it chapter by chapter - a little Romance / Action/Adventure Serial-ness for everyone's viewing pleasure :) There are 28 chapter's total, so this will take a bit. If you really want to know how it ends before then, the PDF is still up at my writing journal :D along with a few surprises related to the story, 'cause i could.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Part One ~ The Rose
Chapter One
Children believe what we tell them. They have complete faith in us. They believe that a rose plucked from a garden can bring drama to a family. They believe that the hands of a beast will smoke when he kills a victim, and that this beast will be shamed when confronted by compassion. They believe in a thousand other simple things. I ask of you a little of this childlike simplicity, and to bring us luck let me speak four truly magic words, childhood's Open Sesame:
Once upon a time...
Our story begins not so very long ago and not so very far away. Amongst the soft green hills of the Isle valley in Boudreaux, France, lies the ancient town of Perigueux. It was a town loved by the Gauls and the Romans for its fertility and proximity to the ocean. Crusaders called it home after their victories and their defeats, while Renaissance painters and sculptors walked its streets dreaming in conte. So many have found refuge and pleasure here that even aliens from other worlds come to Perigueux looking for safety out of the stars.
In the twilight of a spring evening a team of heroes are doing what they do best, tracking signs of alien life and that strange energy known as Rift Activity. The Captain of this intrepid crew, Jack Harkness, with Toshiko Sato, their brilliant scientist, by his side, are driving through the twilight led by a lilting Welsh voice and the rolling Rs of a nearly-native French speaker. The Welsh belongs to the team’s youngest member and organizer extraordinaire, Ianto Jones, and the French to the team’s contact in Perigueux, UNIT Special Services Agent Avenant desEtranger.
“Ok, now where?” Jack asked.
As they sped along the road out of town, they were passed by a handful of cars heading into town for the evening. With the last warm fingers of sunlight slipping away below the horizon, Jack flipped on the headlight of their borrowed SUV.
“Take your next turn,” Avenant said over the comm system, the waves of his accent making every word sound like an impressionist painting in the darkness. “- Rue des Menestriers du Perigord. It should turn into a dirt road after about 1500 meters. The signal is somewhere along the dirt road.”
“Got it. Rue des Menestriers du Perigord. Dirt road. Alien signal.” Jack turned and flashed a smile to Tosh “At least the scenery is nice.”
Tosh looked over at Jack and grinned back. “It’s so different from Cardiff.”
“I thought you liked Cardiff!”
“I do, but you know, it’s nice to see other places once in a while.” Tosh pointed to a street sign gleaming in the car’s headlights. “There’s the turnoff.”
“Got it.” Jack slowed the car and made the turn onto the new road. Tosh looked down at the scanner in her hands.
“Anything?”
Tosh shook her head. “Nothing new.”
Suburbs gave way to country as the road left the hubbub of city life behind. The trees grew larger, weaving branches overhead to create a tunnel of quiet solitude. The only light came from the beams of the SUV’s headlights carving through the night before them.
The road under them shifted and Jack felt the change through the vehicle’s tires. “We have dirt road.”
“Good,” Ianto said over the comm. “The signal is not far from your location.”
“Or not.” Tosh pointed out the front window of the vehicle. A wall of plant life loomed up out of the darkness, crossing the road in front of them. “It’s a dead end.” Tosh said.
Jack hit the brakes. “Damn.”
“Can’t be,” Ianto said. “According to the map the road goes on for at least another 1000 meters.”
“Not this way it doesn’t.” Jack looked through the side window at the area around them. The whole road was filled by a wall of foliage nearly fifteen feet high. “It’s all overgrown. No way around it.”
“There must be some mistake,” Avenant growled in their ears.
“At least it’s pretty mistake,” Tosh said.
“A wall of roses,” Jack added.
“Well, you did say you were going to bring me a dozen roses, sir,” Ianto quipped.
“When did I say that?”
Ianto coughed discreetly.
“Oh,” Jack said, a flash of memory warming his whole body. “Right.”
“I will find the local ordinance maps. Perhaps the city planners created a re-route that has yet to make on to the national maps,” Avenant said.
“Good. Tosh and I’ll see if we can’t find a way through the roses, and pick Ianto some while I’m here. Which would you prefer, red or pink?”
“Ah… Perhaps you should wait on the picking until we are certain that they are not the source of the Rift energy?”
“Good point.”
Jack tapped off his com as he got out of the car and settled his greatcoat more comfortably across his shoulders. With the darkness, the temperature was dropping. Tosh joined him, buttoning up the front of her burgundy leather coat and pulling her scanner from the depths of a pocket. Together they approached the wall.
Scattered among the rich green leaves and wicked looking thorns were deep pink roses with shadow-black centers. In the growing darkness the colors were so dark that the flowers looked like someone had dipped each of them in blood and let them dry overnight.
“Apple,” Tosh said with a wistful smile.
Jack nodded realizing she was right. The smell was spicy and rich, but under it all was a hint of apples. “Good nose.”
Jack leaned in to a cluster of roses at shoulder height, drawn by the powerful scent and colors.
“Jack, no!”
“What?”
“What if they’re… toxic or something?” Tosh shrugged.
“Relax, they’re just roses.” Jack nudged the center of the closest rose with his nose, closed his eyes, and inhaled deeply. “Mmmm.”
“I thought you didn’t like roses?”
“What?” Jack looked at her in surprise and then realized what she meant. “No. Well, not fairy roses. Normal ones I like just fine.”
“Oh. So are you going to bring some back for Ianto?”
“Maybe.” Jack grinned.
They walked along the wall looking for any sign of break or change. Jack pushed a branch out of Tosh’s way and saw her smile, her eyes gone distant with some memory.
“So… how was dinner?”
“What?” Tosh asked, a blush creeping along her cheeks. Jack’s grin grew wider. So he was right about where her thoughts had taken her. Good to know.
“Dinner? With our cute new UNIT boy, Avenant?”
“Jack! He’ll hear you.”
“Please! I put the comms on mute as soon as we got out of the car.”
“Oh.”
Tosh looked down at her scanner. “Rift energy is definitely coming from the other side of this wall, Jack. The signature is identical to the one UNIT has been monitoring for the last three weeks.”
“Can you find us a way in?”
“Searching now.”
“Did he take you somewhere nice?”
Tosh looked up quickly then back to her scanner with a smile. “Yes. It was a little bistro along the river that friends of his have run for years. It was really very sweet.”
“And?”
She shrugged, but the smile stayed in her eyes. “It was nice.”
“You like him, don’t you?”
“I barely know him.”
“You know him better than the rest of us do.”
“Please!” Tosh fussed with the scarf at her neck, tugging sharply on one end. Jack wondered what she was really twisting with those slender fingers. Then she tossed the tasseled end over her shoulder and walked past him. “Email is hardly a way to get to know someone.”
“Seems to be what all the cool kids are doing these days.” Jack grinned. “Besides, it was your contact with him that got us invited to this little shindig. That counts for a lot in my book.”
“Well… “
Jack caught up with Tosh and pulled on her arm to get her to look at him. “Enjoy yourself, Tosh. You deserve it.”
Tosh smiled. “Thank you.”
“And if he hurts you, I’ll lock him in the lowest level of the morgue for the rest of eternity.”
“Jack!!”
“Kidding!” Jack held up his hands in mock surrender.
Tosh’s smile expanded and she laughed along with Jack.
They walked for a while in companionable silence, Tosh keeping her eyes on her scanner and Jack being the eyes for both of them in the physical world. He tugged her to one side, out of range of a low-hanging branch, and used the back of his long coat to push a particularly thorny patch of rose bush out of their way.
“There’s a shift in the energy pattern a few meters this way.” Tosh indicated along the wall of roses. They walked forward to a nearly hidden gate.
“That’s my Tosh!” Jack taped his comm again. “Ianto, Avenant, we’ve found a gate through the rose wall. Tosh’s readings indicate that the Rift energy is coming from the other side.”
“Agreed,” Ianto replied on the other end of the line. “Whatever came through the Rift landed about 800 meters from where you are standing. Do you want me to have Gwen and Owen meet you there?”
“No. Let them finish up in town. Tosh and I will do an initial scan, see what we can find and then meet you all back at the UNIT base.”
“Very good, sir.”
Jack turned back to watch Tosh massage her scanning program. Her skill and joy with electronics never ceased to delight him, and the fact that she put all that skill to use for Torchwood was like the sweetest frosting on the best cake. Jack grinned. Apparently France was making him as giddy and romantic as it was his team. Gwen had sworn that she wasn’t leaving until she found the perfect gift to bring back to share with Rhys and even Owen had mumbled something about wanting to explore the local color. And he hadn’t even sneered! Maybe they did need to take vacations more often.
A faint green glow pulled Jack’s attention to the gate in front of them, lines of green light shimmering faintly across its surface. He looked back down over Tosh’s shoulder and watched her intently tapping numbers and letters into the machine.
“Got it!” Tosh declared, and a moment later a brilliant flash of emerald green light filled the night starting at the center of the gate and spreading out along the length of rose wall. Jack threw up an arm to shield his eyes and noticed Tosh doing the same.
When the glow behind his eyelids faded, Jack opened his eyes. The gate was fully outlined in emerald green light.
“Jack, the gate’s opening!”
As they watched, the gate swung silently outward. The light lines on the gate and along the wall faded, but didn’t go out completely.
“Well…” Jack said.
“Yeah,” Tosh agreed with a nervous giggle.
Jack stepped forward, drawing his Webley. He heard the soft slide of Tosh’s gun coming out of its holster. He looked over as she stepped up beside him, gun in one hand, scanner in the other.
“Ready?”
Tosh nodded.
They stepped through the gate together and crossed into a completely different land.
Where the world outside the wall had been overgrown and nearly impassable, inside the wall was beautiful and nearly contained. Outside the wall, humanity had no say in the direction or choices that nature took. Inside, nature and humanity seemed to have found a balance. Here was a place of ordered beauty interwoven with controlled chaos.
“Oh!” Tosh said as she stepped on to a cobblestone pathway wide enough for ten large men.
The path was lined with trees that were taller than the wall of roses they had just passed, yet they had not seen them from the road. Jack reached a hand out to one thick gray trunk and looked up as far as his neck would tolerate and still couldn’t see the where the canopy touched the sky.
Someone had taken pains to plant alternating ash and maples along what must have once served as a drive of some sort. Jack imagined that it would have been an impressive sight to see the silver bark of the ash trees interweaving with the darker brown of the maples, each tree heavy with bright green leaves. Now it was a different, wilder kind of beauty, as several varieties of oak, and even a few willows, competed with the ashes and maples for space along the road.
“There are no weeds in the stones,” Tosh whispered.
Jack looked back over his shoulder at her. “Hm?”
“No weeds.” She pointed to the stone at her feet that was dusty but uniformly gray in color. “Some of those trees have to be at least half a century old, Jack. There’s no other way they could be that tall or that wide around. With that much growth, there should be weeds along this path. Actually, there shouldn’t really be a road left at all.”
Jack nodded and kept walking.
A quarter of a mile or more past the gate, Jack stopped and waited for Tosh to catch up with him. When she did, her face broke into a huge grin as she looked from the scene before her to Jack.
“Is that what I think it is?”
Just visible ahead of them, between the trees at the end of the drive was a large stone building with four circular turrets connected by a series of long crenellated walls.
“Yup.” Jack tapped his ear piece. “Avenant… are you folks missing a castle?”
“A what?” Static hissed along the line.
“Large building. Stone fortifications, crenellations along the top of the walls. Couple of big towers at each corner.”
“Do you mean a château?” Avenant asked.
“Castle, chateau, what’s the difference?” Jack asked.
“French,” Avenant said.
“Right.” Jack rolled his eyes and smiled. Tosh grinned and turned back to the view of the castle. “Well, are you missing either one?
“Ah… yes, actually.” Avenant’s voice was lost in a burst of static. “A medieval château disappeared from this area about 500 years ago.” Avenant paused. “Are you saying you found it?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s beautiful,” Tosh said just as her scanner pinged. “Jack! I’m getting multiple energy readings. Several from inside the castle and more from the somewhere on the left side of building off in the grounds.”
“Okay, we split up. I’ll take the outside area, you check inside. Nothing fancy, though; just a quick in and out to check what’s there.”
Tosh nodded.
“Ianto, see if you can localize the readings, get us a better idea of what we are looking for.”
“I’m on it.”
Leaving Tosh to explore the inside of the castle, Jack headed around to the left, hugging the castle wall in the dark. He followed the curve of a turret crawling with ivy, and then continued past a side wall to a wide patio lined with fragrant orange trees. A broad set of steps led from the patio to a D-shaped pool and a second trellised patio heavy with wisteria that glowed like clusters of purple stars against its night-dark foliage.
Double checking the readings on his vortex manipulator, Jack ducked under a thick vine of wisteria and walked into the heart of the poolside patio. Long thin leaves crunched underfoot and a thick scent filled the air around him. He closed his eyes, drank in the fragrance and remembered Estelle’s gardens.
No matter where they lived, Estelle managed to plant something somewhere. First in pots in the tiny flat they had shared before the war, and later in larger and larger bits of land as time and circumstances allowed. She would plant odd splashes of color in every direction and in any spot, no matter how unlikely. And the smells! Wisterias had been her favorite; she loved that such an explosion of color and scent could come from such a small flower, but there were always a half dozen or so antique roses scattered among the herbs and vegetables. No trumped up “modern” hybrids that didn’t know how to produce a proper scent for her. Jack smiled, remembering Estelle brandishing a gardening catalogue at him in a rare moment of temper. Don’t they understand what’s important in roses! she had said. He’d taken her in his arms and hugged her like he used to, like his “father” used to, and kissed the top of her head. Nope, was all he said in response. She’d pushed at his arm, a punch of sorts: Oh you! But she’d laughed as she’d said it and relented. He’d sent her an Empress Josephine rose for her birthday that year. In his note he said the color reminded him of the pink in her cheeks when she laughed.
Jack bowed his head, sadness and joy mixing in his heart. Memories of Estelle always seemed to do that to him. There had not been enough time with her, and yet what time they’d had had been so filled with delight that she would be mad at him if he forgot those moments in his grief.
Resolutely opening his eyes, Jack noticed an odd shape among the bracken. He crouched to get a better look. It was a little smaller than his fist, and shaped like a child’s letter block, but with softly rounded edges. It glowed faintly pink in the dim light. He tilted his head and the color shifted to deep green. When he tilted his head again, looking directly down over the cube, the glow shifted again, going so dark and colorless that it seemed to disappear into the shadows.
Jack brought his wrist up and flipped open the leather strap. He tapped a command, running a scan over the cube. When all signs pointed to the thing being harmless, he flipped the strapped closed and reached down to dislodge the cube and stood.
Under his fingers, Jack felt a raised design on one of the sides. He turned the cube over in his hands and held it up to see the image. There, glowing in the pink light that came from within the cube, was the image of a rose carved onto its surface.
“Well, what’d ya know!”
Grinning, Jack tapped the comm unit at his ear. “Hey Ianto! It seems I found you a rose after all!”
Static hissed back across the line.
“Ianto? Avenant?”
Jack tossed the cubed into the air once, his worried eyes tracking its movement. He caught the cube as it descended towards his palm, slipped it into an inside pocket of his greatcoat as he tapped the unit at his ear again.
“Tosh, can you hear me?”
Silence replaced static in his ear.
“Damn.”
Jack turned toward the castle but stopped as he came face to face with the strangest creature he had seen in a long time.
Before him stood a being whose head and neck looked for all the world like a large cat, but who wore the body and clothing of a man, and had the tail of a wolf thrashing angrily at his side. The vertically slit yellow eyes stared at Jack with clear intelligence even as they hinted at wildness, while the triangular wide-set ears kept swiveling, as if testing the air at each creak of tree and cry of night bird.
The creature’s head and neck were covered in silky sable fur that held a hint of lighter stripes when he moved, but over his wrists the fur appeared coarser and lighter in color, like a timber wolf. The creature’s hands were large and smooth with an iridescent shimmer to them, like scales of a snake. And each tensely-clenched finger ended in a finely-tipped claw. To top the whole thing off, the beast was wearing a costume that made Jack’s RAF coat look positively ahead of the curve.
He was like something out of movie about knights and maidens - regal and strong, yet no more meant for this time than Jack was. The being wore a calf-length tunic that was decorated with a thick and richly embroidered collar. Jack caught hints of gemstones among the gold chase work. There was a suggestion of finely made leather boots under the tunic. And draped over the beast’s shoulders was a long black velvet cloak, held in place with a gold pin in the shape of a rose.
“You dare to steal the Rose from me?” the creature demanded, stalking towards Jack. “Of all the things in my home, the Rose is the most precious. You could have taken anything else and I would have let you pass.”
“Look, mister...”
“No one calls me mister or sir! I am ‘Beast’ I have no other name.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”
“Compliments and fancy words will not save you. The penalty for such a simple theft is death.” Beast howled and charged at Jack.
“Stop!” Jack yelled, or tried to, as Beast knocked him to the ground, robbing him of breath and vision.
Jack kicked out blindly and heard Beast hiss as his booted foot connected with something above him. He kicked again and missed, but managed to roll out from under Beast’s weight and get to his knees. He knelt in the dark, breathing heavily.
“Listen, I’m sorry…”
Beast howled again and ran snarling towards Jack. “You will die for your actions!”
Jack scrambled sideways and back into a dense wall of wisteria vines. He tugged on the closest vine, showering them both with lavender petals and heady fragrance. Beast didn’t stop. He pulled the vine out of Jack’s hand with one powerful arm and reached for Jack’s neck with the other.
Praying to any being that might be on his side today, Jack punched at Beast’s head, connecting hard enough to see the cat-like head rock backwards. Beast shook his head and snarled. Jack brought his fist up to punch again and Beast slashed towards him with the claws of his free hand. Jack saw the strike coming and tried to shift out of the way. The blade-sharp claws sliced down, tearing long parallel gashes through his coat and deep into his shoulder and chest.
Jack let out a gasp of surprise as Beast’s claws pulled out of his skin and Beast’s other hand released his neck. He dropped to the ground, struggling for air and confused by the odd flavor of the pain in his chest. Ice and fire burned along the gashes, radiating out in bands of alternating waves of heat and cold. Visions of home and places he had called home passed through his thoughts, pulling him back through time. The bedroom he’d shared with Gray in the family compound on the Boeshane Peninsula. His room in the TARDIS with its big soft bed and blue and copper walls that smelled of cinnamon. His cubby of a room in the Officers Quarters at Pembroke Dock RAF base. The large easy chair in Ianto’s flat. It was like nothing he had felt before. He felt stretched and pulled, his body struggling to breath in the garden while his soul swam in comfort in a dozen other places from his memory.
He looked down, saw the blood turning his shirt and vest black and knew that Ianto was going to give him hell for ruining yet more clothes. He pressed a hand to the slash nearest his shoulder and felt bone slide under his fingers. Too many bits of him were exposed. Beast was right: he was going to die to pay the debt.
Jack coughed and felt blood in his lungs. His vision fading, he sank farther down onto the ground, sitting with a heavy thud as his legs gave out. He leaned into the wisteria vine that had caused him trouble and looked up. Beast was standing in front of him watching and for just a moment Jack could have sworn he saw sadness in those inhuman eyes.
on to Chapter Two