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Entry tags:
Crossover fic: Torchwood/Resident Evil, In the Cold Dim Light, P13/R
Disclaimer: not mine.
length: 3000 words
Rating: PG13/R, violence, language, death
Fandoms: Torchwood, Resident Evil, Marvel's Excalibur/Pete Wisdom stuff (in a tiny little cameo at the very end).
Pairings: Everyone/Everyone.
Set: I haven't actually seen any of season two Torchwood yet, but I know a specific spoiler, which is in here. As for RE, probably not long after the second movie.
Notes: Half of this was written at work quite a while before, mostly because Jill Valentine/Jack Harkness was a hot idea. They're not really the focus of this, though.
In the Cold Dim Light
by ALC Punk!
Jack meets her in the midst of a crowd of zombies. The gunfire which first drew him has dissipated--her guns are slimy with gray matter as she punches and kicks, refusing to go down under the onslaught.
It's not the first time he's seen a crowd of zombies surrounding a human survivor. But this survivor isn't giving up. It's an admirable trait, even if the mini-skirt she's wearing is entirely impractical. Though her legs are quite lovely.
He forces a path to her, the zombies reluctant to bite him. Not that he's surprised--the last time one did, it keeled over, crumbling to dust. His blood was a bit toxic, apparently.
"Jack Harkness," he offers, clubbing the zombie about to bite her. "And you are way too hot to die."
Her fist plunges through a zombie's face, and she snaps, "Jill Valentine," at him over her shoulder before kicking at another.
"I'd make a joke about going up a hill, but you might kill me for it," Jack replies. Though it's a good omen, the names. Omens aren't something he really believe in, of course. Still, it gives him some extra energy to kick zombie ass. Her legs and nicely-displayed breasts help, too.
Ten minutes later, they're locked in a closet, safe for the moment.
Jack would have said something, flirted, maybe, but there wasn't really time for preliminaries. Not with Jill's hand brushing the front of his pants while she pressed up against him, mouth going for his.
The smell of zombie had never really seemed so erotic before.
-=-
Tosh is the second to get infected and Gwen, who still hasn't forgiven herself for Ianto (his mouth gaping as he dove for Rhys and Gwen hates that her training puts a bullet between his eyes) shakes too hard to make the first shot. Owen braces her and she gets off the second before Tosh's mouth can ruin Martha's arm.
Upstairs, out in Cardiff, the plague (infection?) rages, claiming victims with a speed that leaves all of them shell-shocked and wondering how the world can end like this.
-=-
Owen spouts rates of infection, blood versus airborne versus bacteria and then is stupid enough to nick himself on a broken slide.
The infection progresses faster than it had in Tosh, and they're all a little shocked when he launches himself at Gwen, teeth bared in a grin that's insane and wrong. Gwen dodges backwards from him, the destruction of her world making her a little faster than normal.
Martha shouts about idiots as she swings the fire ax.
-=-
Alice claims all of this has happened before.
-=-
None of them remember when Alice first appeared, they just know she's useful. There's no one left alive in the world above (probably), and Alice seems to have a strange ability to survive out there. Martha wonders what they'll do, if Jack will show up and save the day or not. Of course, with Owen dead, Gwen's in charge of their little spot of humanity.
It's not a responsibility Gwen wants.
-=-
It's Rhys who holds Gwen when she finally snaps, crying about the blood on her hands. Owen and Tosh and Ianto are in the deep freeze, waiting for someone who can analyze the virus in their systems, and all she can do is nothing.
Martha says something sharp about it being bloody time, and Gwen just stops dead.
There's something that passes between the two women that Rhys doesn't understand. Alice, standing on one of the upper balconies turns away from it.
Jack's office isn't locked, but the safe is. These days, they know the combination to everything anyway, and Martha starts going through the medical files while Gwen takes up Tosh's notes from before. There's little there that makes sense, but it's something to do. She stares at her fingers, once, as though searching for blood to wash away.
Rhys shoots the dead man in the cellar, making more of a mess of his already hacked corpse.
-=-
Gwen breaks two needles getting a blood sample from Alice--Martha would have done better, but she's strapped in a chair, snarling.
The infection is airborne, now, like Owen predicted far too long ago. She's got no training in synthesizing medicines or antidotes, but Rhys says chemistry is like cooking with a lost look in his eyes she'd like to erase.
No going back, though, there's only forwards.
-=-
Their first test subject dies, and Alice says something cold about life being a commodity and disappears to the world above.
Gwen doesn't try to stop her, aware time is running out. The more test subjects Alice can get for them (however she gets them, Gwen doesn't plan to ever ask), the more chance of success. Gwen hates killing them, though.
-=-
After the fifth subject dies (a child, and Gwen hates Alice a little more), Gwen infects herself. She could test on Martha, but she has her limits. There's already far too much blood on her hands. Besides, if this works, she can cure Martha.
Rhys was patching Alice's latest wounds--the patching more for form than anything else, since she heals incredibly fast--or he would have been able to stop her.
When the world starts to go red, Gwen handcuffs herself to the railing and jabs the second needle into her arm, praying to deities she doesn't really believe in anymore.
-=-
"Let me go, Rhys," she says, her voice purring. "I'll be good."
He can't, though. There's something in her eyes, in the way she moves that has him stepping back until he slams into the gurney still containing the last test subject, a sheet thrown over her more for their convenience than reverence for the dead.
Gwen laughs at him and moves upwards, gripping the pole. "Keys, Rhys."
No. Wrong. He stays away from her as he gets out of the autopsy area and up to the computer. He pokes at it, staring at lines of code and notes that he barely understands. What the fuck has she done? How is he going to fix this?
He doesn't even care that the world has gone to hell and there's no way to save it all.
"You should let me shoot her," says Alice. "It would be a mercy. The T-virus--"
"No." Rhys guesses this is Alice's way of being kind. He shakes his head again, then says, a tired resolution in his voice, "Comes to that, I'll do it."
-=-
Rhys has no compunctions about using Martha as his guinea pig.
Given their track record, he's as surprised as Martha when the third serum works (especially after the first two didn't kill her).
"You're an idiot," Martha suggests after he's freed her. She looks like hell, but she's human. The needle-marks on her arm aren't so pretty, though. "How the hell did you get it right?"
"Just shut up and be grateful," Rhys suggests, wondering when he'll get to sleep again. "I wanted to shoot you, hours ago."
"Well, thank you. I think." To Alice, she says, "Is he for real?"
"I wanted to shoot you the moment you were infected."
-=-
The cure works on three more people Alice retrieves before Rhys is happy enough to try it on Gwen.
It doesn't work.
-=-
Martha works out a way of delivering the cure without having to inject everyone, and sends Alice back up to the surface to start the anti-virus. Not everyone will survive, of course. The seventh person they tried it on was old, and his heart gave out.
But they still can't fix Gwen. Martha goes through her notes, even works out exactly which bits of the virus she infected herself with, and still can't get it right.
-=-
It doesn't even surprise him when Martha figures out a way to bring Tosh and Ianto back to life. Something about side-effects, the rift (he still has no fucking clue what that is), and their having been dead before. Retrieving the bullets makes Martha worry a little about brain damage, but both seem fine, once they're on their feet.
No one even suggests trying to bring Owen back.
-=-
"It's the glove," says Tosh, sitting back in her chair and rubbing her forehead, with a sigh. It's not every week you wake up from being dead of a bullet in the brain. "Gwen's used it. It's messed with her, in some way. And then she infected herself, and the serum she tried was wrong, and it's all tangled."
"That makes sense," agrees Ianto.
Martha shakes her head, "I'm sorry, what? What glove?"
The explanation gives Rhys a headache, something about Suzie and mass murders and hypnotic suggestion. He goes for what feels like his first nap in a year, leaning over Jack's desk, with Gwen's jacket for a pillow.
-=-
"You know in the end, they'll all want to open the rift."
"I know," says Jack. He has Rhys's blood on him, still.
The rift.
Jack's eyes open, and he stares up into the dark, wondering. Jill is curled next to him. They've been out of the closet for two days, and he's pretty sure she doesn't yet realize he doesn't belong where he is. This isn't his Earth. It's a feeling that grows stronger with every day.
If the rift sent him here, what did it send Torchwood?
-=-
Rhys wakes to find Ianto standing in the doorway, looking at him. Either he's tired or Ianto thinks he shouldn't be there. Probably both are true, but he doesn't apologize for daring to sleep on their boss's desk. "Yeah?"
"Nothing--" Ianto moves past the desk to the safe, poking around in it.
Still half-asleep, Rhys rubs his eyes and asks, "Can't you reverse it?"
"Magic doesn't."
"How d'you know that?" Rhys demands, irritable. His girlfriend is stuck as a nymphomaniac zombie, and these people don't seem to even care. "Y'can reverse lots of things, can't you? Take 'em back to what they were before? It's not the same as with cooking, when the ingredients are all blended, and cooking changes their bases--" now he's rambling, if only to fill the continued silence, and it's stupid and dumb, so he stops.
"Like a recipe," mutters Ianto, stance shifting as he glances at Rhys, eyes suddenly wide. "Maybe--yes."
He's gone before Rhys is fully awake enough to ask him what was so right about his stupid rambling.
-=-
Alice nods her approval of the plan Ianto proposes, Tosh looks skeptical, and Martha blank. Rhys has no idea what anyone of them are talking about, at this point, and just hopes it works.
-=-
Reversing time isn't as easy as it looked, once upon a time. Ianto stands on the balcony, looking down at Tosh and the others, and bets Jack would shoot him for actually suggesting all of this.
It's not like you're supposed to re-write history if you don't like the outcome.
A hand lands on his shoulder, and he half-turns to find Jack standing there. "I thought--" Ianto starts.
Jack's finger moves to his lips, and Ianto has time to notice that Jack's different--younger and less the Jack Harkness he knows. There's a lightness to him that was ground out with the loss of too many years of his life. This isn't the man he's used to.
When Jack aims a device at the rift machine, Ianto becomes certain.
-=-
They say the universe is full of the echoes of missed opportunities, threads of moments that didn't quite happen, questions that were answered completely differently. These echoes all connect, under the surface. Pull them back, peel the layers from them, and you're left with overlapping images of the what-have-been-might-once-will-bes.
-
Rhys is holding Gwen's hand, waiting for the miracle to happen when Suzie shoots him in the back of the head.
-
Time reversing upon itself causes space to fold backwards. Owen lives backwards through his own death, breathing in blood and death. Eyes open, he stares up at the interior of the freezer drawer he's shoved in, and tries to remember.
Or forget.
Rhys smashes a fire ax through his skull when he tries to bite Martha.
-=-
It doesn't work.
-=-
Rhys opens his eyes and looks at Gwen, who gives him a creepy smile and stretches, eyes tracking the skin of his face like she'd like to lick it off of him.
A shiver goes through him and he drops her hand and backs away, the memories in his brain telling him he's died twice, now. Tosh curses from her station, the sound drawing his eyes away from Gwen. Alice is leaning over Tosh's chair, the two of them talking low and urgent, as they try to work out what went wrong.
Ianto joins them a moment later, arguing, from his tone of voice and gestures.
Turning away from them, Rhys finds Martha sitting on the stairs, her eyes closed and complexion awful. She's been up as long as any of them--worse, she was infected, too. Rhys reaches over and touches her shoulder, "You should get some sleep."
Martha's eyes open, and she stares at him, her tone dull when she replies, "I can fight infection, I can patch up wounds, and I can cure diseases. But I can't solve this stupid problem, because magic is involved."
"You've done all you can." He doesn't believe that, but he'll say it.
She doesn't believe him, either.
-=-
When Ianto digs out the glove, Martha goes up to look at it. She pokes at it, finding the metal strangely warm. Almost like human flesh. She's too tired to flinch from the thought, and it's too easy to let Ianto get distracted with Alice and Tosh's continuing argument.
She slips away from them and finds herself standing in front of Gwen, the glove in her hands.
Fuck, she doesn't know how to use it, doesn't know magic, doesn't know anything but what her gut is telling her.
Martha's hand slips into the glove, fingers sliding into their proper places easily.
Reaching out, she places the palm against Gwen's breastbone, the other woman watching her silently, almost as though she knows what will happen.
"Does it work like this?" Martha asks, voice soft, "C'mon, Gwen. Help me out, here."
"Who says I want to help?"
"You can't be stupid enough to like being like this."
A giggle escapes Gwen, "Maybe I am." But something in her eyes is pleading at Martha.
Martha closes her eyes, and concentrates. Come back to us, Gwen.
-=-
Alice and Tosh are still arguing when Gwen wanders by to tell them Ianto's gotten them pizza. The unreality of Ianto being able to get pizza clashes with Gwen being normal, and both stare at her, jaws dropped. Gwen points at Martha, sitting on the steps, recovering from the glove and shrugs. "I can't explain it, either."
-=-
Cardiff.
Jack's standing in the approximate place the rift should be, looking at an abandoned city that feels like a wasteland. Behind him, Jill is keeping her eyes on the horizon. "How is this going to get us out of here?"
"I'm not sure."
Untrue. He's sure, he just doesn't think Jill is going to like it.
-=-
It's Rhys who spills the coffee on Tosh's keyboard, leaning over her to jab at something that he seems to think makes sense. The result is a system-wide short that causes the rift machine to switch on for an instant.
-=-
Jill fires again, another zombie goes down, a hole in its head.
She cocks and turns to hit another, but isn't fast enough as it slams into her, mouth intent on any part of her anatomy. "Shit--Jack--"
Hands close on the zombie's head twisting up and to the side, the crack of its neck snapping almost echoing.
Jill scrambles backwards, staring warily at her savior, "I don't--Alice?"
"Come with me," Alice says, diving at her before she has a chance to answer.
They fall backwards.
-=-
Jack stares around Torchwood, shocked to find how glad he is to be there. He'd enjoyed seeing the Doctor again, and Martha Jones, well, she was hot. But this was his team, and his people.
Voices tell him they've noticed his arrival, and he grins as Tosh and Ianto lead the group. It's not until he's kissed Martha Jones and Gwen and shaken Rhys's hand that he notices Owen's not there. Tosh, her arm still around his waist, looks up and whispers, "There was no way to save Owen."
-=-
Pete Wisdom is drunk out of his skull, having challenged Captain Midlands to a drinking contest that Wisdom had lost. So he thinks it's perfectly normal to find two women tumbling out of nowhere in front of him.
The redhead picks herself up, and pulls the brunette to her feet before looking at him, her eyebrows raised, "Are there zombies here?"
Really itching to pull the cigarette he carries from his pocket and light it, Pete shrugs, "We're in Cardiff, what do you think?"
A slight grin touches the woman's face, "My name is Alice. This is Jill. Know where we could find a place to stay for the night?"
Pete wonders if he's gone soft in the head since meeting Brian Braddock. Or maybe it was Moira bloody MacTaggart. He shrugs, "I've got a hotel room I'm not using." Probably. If he got through to Pryde while walking out there, and if she even answered. He was drunk enough to try it. He flipped the key to them. "Should be able to find it, it's in Brian Braddock's name."
Pryde hadn't been the only one who could misappropriate funds on the internet, after all, and his group was a bit underfunded.
Alice caught the key and nodded, "Thanks."
Heading towards the dawning morning light, Wisdom shrugs. He's done stupider things in his time, but he doubts this will bite him on the ass as badly as the last one did.
-f-
length: 3000 words
Rating: PG13/R, violence, language, death
Fandoms: Torchwood, Resident Evil, Marvel's Excalibur/Pete Wisdom stuff (in a tiny little cameo at the very end).
Pairings: Everyone/Everyone.
Set: I haven't actually seen any of season two Torchwood yet, but I know a specific spoiler, which is in here. As for RE, probably not long after the second movie.
Notes: Half of this was written at work quite a while before, mostly because Jill Valentine/Jack Harkness was a hot idea. They're not really the focus of this, though.
In the Cold Dim Light
by ALC Punk!
Jack meets her in the midst of a crowd of zombies. The gunfire which first drew him has dissipated--her guns are slimy with gray matter as she punches and kicks, refusing to go down under the onslaught.
It's not the first time he's seen a crowd of zombies surrounding a human survivor. But this survivor isn't giving up. It's an admirable trait, even if the mini-skirt she's wearing is entirely impractical. Though her legs are quite lovely.
He forces a path to her, the zombies reluctant to bite him. Not that he's surprised--the last time one did, it keeled over, crumbling to dust. His blood was a bit toxic, apparently.
"Jack Harkness," he offers, clubbing the zombie about to bite her. "And you are way too hot to die."
Her fist plunges through a zombie's face, and she snaps, "Jill Valentine," at him over her shoulder before kicking at another.
"I'd make a joke about going up a hill, but you might kill me for it," Jack replies. Though it's a good omen, the names. Omens aren't something he really believe in, of course. Still, it gives him some extra energy to kick zombie ass. Her legs and nicely-displayed breasts help, too.
Ten minutes later, they're locked in a closet, safe for the moment.
Jack would have said something, flirted, maybe, but there wasn't really time for preliminaries. Not with Jill's hand brushing the front of his pants while she pressed up against him, mouth going for his.
The smell of zombie had never really seemed so erotic before.
-=-
Tosh is the second to get infected and Gwen, who still hasn't forgiven herself for Ianto (his mouth gaping as he dove for Rhys and Gwen hates that her training puts a bullet between his eyes) shakes too hard to make the first shot. Owen braces her and she gets off the second before Tosh's mouth can ruin Martha's arm.
Upstairs, out in Cardiff, the plague (infection?) rages, claiming victims with a speed that leaves all of them shell-shocked and wondering how the world can end like this.
-=-
Owen spouts rates of infection, blood versus airborne versus bacteria and then is stupid enough to nick himself on a broken slide.
The infection progresses faster than it had in Tosh, and they're all a little shocked when he launches himself at Gwen, teeth bared in a grin that's insane and wrong. Gwen dodges backwards from him, the destruction of her world making her a little faster than normal.
Martha shouts about idiots as she swings the fire ax.
-=-
Alice claims all of this has happened before.
-=-
None of them remember when Alice first appeared, they just know she's useful. There's no one left alive in the world above (probably), and Alice seems to have a strange ability to survive out there. Martha wonders what they'll do, if Jack will show up and save the day or not. Of course, with Owen dead, Gwen's in charge of their little spot of humanity.
It's not a responsibility Gwen wants.
-=-
It's Rhys who holds Gwen when she finally snaps, crying about the blood on her hands. Owen and Tosh and Ianto are in the deep freeze, waiting for someone who can analyze the virus in their systems, and all she can do is nothing.
Martha says something sharp about it being bloody time, and Gwen just stops dead.
There's something that passes between the two women that Rhys doesn't understand. Alice, standing on one of the upper balconies turns away from it.
Jack's office isn't locked, but the safe is. These days, they know the combination to everything anyway, and Martha starts going through the medical files while Gwen takes up Tosh's notes from before. There's little there that makes sense, but it's something to do. She stares at her fingers, once, as though searching for blood to wash away.
Rhys shoots the dead man in the cellar, making more of a mess of his already hacked corpse.
-=-
Gwen breaks two needles getting a blood sample from Alice--Martha would have done better, but she's strapped in a chair, snarling.
The infection is airborne, now, like Owen predicted far too long ago. She's got no training in synthesizing medicines or antidotes, but Rhys says chemistry is like cooking with a lost look in his eyes she'd like to erase.
No going back, though, there's only forwards.
-=-
Their first test subject dies, and Alice says something cold about life being a commodity and disappears to the world above.
Gwen doesn't try to stop her, aware time is running out. The more test subjects Alice can get for them (however she gets them, Gwen doesn't plan to ever ask), the more chance of success. Gwen hates killing them, though.
-=-
After the fifth subject dies (a child, and Gwen hates Alice a little more), Gwen infects herself. She could test on Martha, but she has her limits. There's already far too much blood on her hands. Besides, if this works, she can cure Martha.
Rhys was patching Alice's latest wounds--the patching more for form than anything else, since she heals incredibly fast--or he would have been able to stop her.
When the world starts to go red, Gwen handcuffs herself to the railing and jabs the second needle into her arm, praying to deities she doesn't really believe in anymore.
-=-
"Let me go, Rhys," she says, her voice purring. "I'll be good."
He can't, though. There's something in her eyes, in the way she moves that has him stepping back until he slams into the gurney still containing the last test subject, a sheet thrown over her more for their convenience than reverence for the dead.
Gwen laughs at him and moves upwards, gripping the pole. "Keys, Rhys."
No. Wrong. He stays away from her as he gets out of the autopsy area and up to the computer. He pokes at it, staring at lines of code and notes that he barely understands. What the fuck has she done? How is he going to fix this?
He doesn't even care that the world has gone to hell and there's no way to save it all.
"You should let me shoot her," says Alice. "It would be a mercy. The T-virus--"
"No." Rhys guesses this is Alice's way of being kind. He shakes his head again, then says, a tired resolution in his voice, "Comes to that, I'll do it."
-=-
Rhys has no compunctions about using Martha as his guinea pig.
Given their track record, he's as surprised as Martha when the third serum works (especially after the first two didn't kill her).
"You're an idiot," Martha suggests after he's freed her. She looks like hell, but she's human. The needle-marks on her arm aren't so pretty, though. "How the hell did you get it right?"
"Just shut up and be grateful," Rhys suggests, wondering when he'll get to sleep again. "I wanted to shoot you, hours ago."
"Well, thank you. I think." To Alice, she says, "Is he for real?"
"I wanted to shoot you the moment you were infected."
-=-
The cure works on three more people Alice retrieves before Rhys is happy enough to try it on Gwen.
It doesn't work.
-=-
Martha works out a way of delivering the cure without having to inject everyone, and sends Alice back up to the surface to start the anti-virus. Not everyone will survive, of course. The seventh person they tried it on was old, and his heart gave out.
But they still can't fix Gwen. Martha goes through her notes, even works out exactly which bits of the virus she infected herself with, and still can't get it right.
-=-
It doesn't even surprise him when Martha figures out a way to bring Tosh and Ianto back to life. Something about side-effects, the rift (he still has no fucking clue what that is), and their having been dead before. Retrieving the bullets makes Martha worry a little about brain damage, but both seem fine, once they're on their feet.
No one even suggests trying to bring Owen back.
-=-
"It's the glove," says Tosh, sitting back in her chair and rubbing her forehead, with a sigh. It's not every week you wake up from being dead of a bullet in the brain. "Gwen's used it. It's messed with her, in some way. And then she infected herself, and the serum she tried was wrong, and it's all tangled."
"That makes sense," agrees Ianto.
Martha shakes her head, "I'm sorry, what? What glove?"
The explanation gives Rhys a headache, something about Suzie and mass murders and hypnotic suggestion. He goes for what feels like his first nap in a year, leaning over Jack's desk, with Gwen's jacket for a pillow.
-=-
"You know in the end, they'll all want to open the rift."
"I know," says Jack. He has Rhys's blood on him, still.
The rift.
Jack's eyes open, and he stares up into the dark, wondering. Jill is curled next to him. They've been out of the closet for two days, and he's pretty sure she doesn't yet realize he doesn't belong where he is. This isn't his Earth. It's a feeling that grows stronger with every day.
If the rift sent him here, what did it send Torchwood?
-=-
Rhys wakes to find Ianto standing in the doorway, looking at him. Either he's tired or Ianto thinks he shouldn't be there. Probably both are true, but he doesn't apologize for daring to sleep on their boss's desk. "Yeah?"
"Nothing--" Ianto moves past the desk to the safe, poking around in it.
Still half-asleep, Rhys rubs his eyes and asks, "Can't you reverse it?"
"Magic doesn't."
"How d'you know that?" Rhys demands, irritable. His girlfriend is stuck as a nymphomaniac zombie, and these people don't seem to even care. "Y'can reverse lots of things, can't you? Take 'em back to what they were before? It's not the same as with cooking, when the ingredients are all blended, and cooking changes their bases--" now he's rambling, if only to fill the continued silence, and it's stupid and dumb, so he stops.
"Like a recipe," mutters Ianto, stance shifting as he glances at Rhys, eyes suddenly wide. "Maybe--yes."
He's gone before Rhys is fully awake enough to ask him what was so right about his stupid rambling.
-=-
Alice nods her approval of the plan Ianto proposes, Tosh looks skeptical, and Martha blank. Rhys has no idea what anyone of them are talking about, at this point, and just hopes it works.
-=-
Reversing time isn't as easy as it looked, once upon a time. Ianto stands on the balcony, looking down at Tosh and the others, and bets Jack would shoot him for actually suggesting all of this.
It's not like you're supposed to re-write history if you don't like the outcome.
A hand lands on his shoulder, and he half-turns to find Jack standing there. "I thought--" Ianto starts.
Jack's finger moves to his lips, and Ianto has time to notice that Jack's different--younger and less the Jack Harkness he knows. There's a lightness to him that was ground out with the loss of too many years of his life. This isn't the man he's used to.
When Jack aims a device at the rift machine, Ianto becomes certain.
-=-
They say the universe is full of the echoes of missed opportunities, threads of moments that didn't quite happen, questions that were answered completely differently. These echoes all connect, under the surface. Pull them back, peel the layers from them, and you're left with overlapping images of the what-have-been-might-once-will-bes.
-
Rhys is holding Gwen's hand, waiting for the miracle to happen when Suzie shoots him in the back of the head.
-
Time reversing upon itself causes space to fold backwards. Owen lives backwards through his own death, breathing in blood and death. Eyes open, he stares up at the interior of the freezer drawer he's shoved in, and tries to remember.
Or forget.
Rhys smashes a fire ax through his skull when he tries to bite Martha.
-=-
It doesn't work.
-=-
Rhys opens his eyes and looks at Gwen, who gives him a creepy smile and stretches, eyes tracking the skin of his face like she'd like to lick it off of him.
A shiver goes through him and he drops her hand and backs away, the memories in his brain telling him he's died twice, now. Tosh curses from her station, the sound drawing his eyes away from Gwen. Alice is leaning over Tosh's chair, the two of them talking low and urgent, as they try to work out what went wrong.
Ianto joins them a moment later, arguing, from his tone of voice and gestures.
Turning away from them, Rhys finds Martha sitting on the stairs, her eyes closed and complexion awful. She's been up as long as any of them--worse, she was infected, too. Rhys reaches over and touches her shoulder, "You should get some sleep."
Martha's eyes open, and she stares at him, her tone dull when she replies, "I can fight infection, I can patch up wounds, and I can cure diseases. But I can't solve this stupid problem, because magic is involved."
"You've done all you can." He doesn't believe that, but he'll say it.
She doesn't believe him, either.
-=-
When Ianto digs out the glove, Martha goes up to look at it. She pokes at it, finding the metal strangely warm. Almost like human flesh. She's too tired to flinch from the thought, and it's too easy to let Ianto get distracted with Alice and Tosh's continuing argument.
She slips away from them and finds herself standing in front of Gwen, the glove in her hands.
Fuck, she doesn't know how to use it, doesn't know magic, doesn't know anything but what her gut is telling her.
Martha's hand slips into the glove, fingers sliding into their proper places easily.
Reaching out, she places the palm against Gwen's breastbone, the other woman watching her silently, almost as though she knows what will happen.
"Does it work like this?" Martha asks, voice soft, "C'mon, Gwen. Help me out, here."
"Who says I want to help?"
"You can't be stupid enough to like being like this."
A giggle escapes Gwen, "Maybe I am." But something in her eyes is pleading at Martha.
Martha closes her eyes, and concentrates. Come back to us, Gwen.
-=-
Alice and Tosh are still arguing when Gwen wanders by to tell them Ianto's gotten them pizza. The unreality of Ianto being able to get pizza clashes with Gwen being normal, and both stare at her, jaws dropped. Gwen points at Martha, sitting on the steps, recovering from the glove and shrugs. "I can't explain it, either."
-=-
Cardiff.
Jack's standing in the approximate place the rift should be, looking at an abandoned city that feels like a wasteland. Behind him, Jill is keeping her eyes on the horizon. "How is this going to get us out of here?"
"I'm not sure."
Untrue. He's sure, he just doesn't think Jill is going to like it.
-=-
It's Rhys who spills the coffee on Tosh's keyboard, leaning over her to jab at something that he seems to think makes sense. The result is a system-wide short that causes the rift machine to switch on for an instant.
-=-
Jill fires again, another zombie goes down, a hole in its head.
She cocks and turns to hit another, but isn't fast enough as it slams into her, mouth intent on any part of her anatomy. "Shit--Jack--"
Hands close on the zombie's head twisting up and to the side, the crack of its neck snapping almost echoing.
Jill scrambles backwards, staring warily at her savior, "I don't--Alice?"
"Come with me," Alice says, diving at her before she has a chance to answer.
They fall backwards.
-=-
Jack stares around Torchwood, shocked to find how glad he is to be there. He'd enjoyed seeing the Doctor again, and Martha Jones, well, she was hot. But this was his team, and his people.
Voices tell him they've noticed his arrival, and he grins as Tosh and Ianto lead the group. It's not until he's kissed Martha Jones and Gwen and shaken Rhys's hand that he notices Owen's not there. Tosh, her arm still around his waist, looks up and whispers, "There was no way to save Owen."
-=-
Pete Wisdom is drunk out of his skull, having challenged Captain Midlands to a drinking contest that Wisdom had lost. So he thinks it's perfectly normal to find two women tumbling out of nowhere in front of him.
The redhead picks herself up, and pulls the brunette to her feet before looking at him, her eyebrows raised, "Are there zombies here?"
Really itching to pull the cigarette he carries from his pocket and light it, Pete shrugs, "We're in Cardiff, what do you think?"
A slight grin touches the woman's face, "My name is Alice. This is Jill. Know where we could find a place to stay for the night?"
Pete wonders if he's gone soft in the head since meeting Brian Braddock. Or maybe it was Moira bloody MacTaggart. He shrugs, "I've got a hotel room I'm not using." Probably. If he got through to Pryde while walking out there, and if she even answered. He was drunk enough to try it. He flipped the key to them. "Should be able to find it, it's in Brian Braddock's name."
Pryde hadn't been the only one who could misappropriate funds on the internet, after all, and his group was a bit underfunded.
Alice caught the key and nodded, "Thanks."
Heading towards the dawning morning light, Wisdom shrugs. He's done stupider things in his time, but he doubts this will bite him on the ass as badly as the last one did.
-f-