TW: Ghost Story (PG-13) 16/18
Title: Ghost Story 16/18
Author:
mad_maudlin
Rating: PG-13
Pairing and Characters: Jack/Ianto, The Doctor, Torchwood, the other Torchwood, OCs, A THOUSAND ELEPHANTS, et cetera.
Length: 70,000
Spoilers: Oh, let's say the whole Rusty era of DW+TW, just to be safe.
Ghost Story
by Mad Maudlin
16. the glaciers and the rocks
I
I I
III
am
am I
a
a
I
I a
I
am
an
I
I an
Ianto--
-\-\-\-\-\-
In the Middle Ages, they used to seal plague victims into their homes with bricks. Lepers used to live in outcast colonies. Quarantines for flu patients, in 1918. Now Thames House had made itself a tomb, and the bodies were piled up ten deep at doors and stairwells.
It was a little surreal, and, Dekker was willing to admit, a little thrilling-to pick his way over the dead, silent as a ghost, moving about with impunity. The last man standing. He carefully maneuvered around a banister, conscious of the baggy folds of his suit and the consequences of a tear. A solider in uniform had collapsed just inside the fire door; made a late break from his post, from the looks of it. Just as doomed as the very first deserter, though, as it happened. Dekker pulled another page off his note pad, wrote TH-13-01 in bold, black letters, and tucked it into the man's bullet-proof vest for the recovery crews.
"Mr. Dekker, have you found anything?"
He pressed the radio against his hood, so he'd be heard through the plastic. "Anyone, you mean. But no. I'm the only survivor."
"You don't have to sound so proud of it, you know."
"Why not?" He climbed over the soldier and looked around the corridor of floor thirteen. "It's a talent of mine."
"How much progress have you made on tagging the bodies? We're awaiting the last round of air-quality tests now."
"Up to floor thirteen now. Doesn't look like many people stayed this high up, though, if you don't mind me saying."
"Well, for God's sake be careful up there. We don't want to antagonize that thing any further."
"Of course, sir. What kind of man do you take me for?"
There were a few other bodies in the corridors, a few in offices, one poor bastard in a toilet with his trousers still around his knees. Dekker tagged them all with loving care, numbering them as he found them. He checked every room thoroughly, going under tables and behind desks just in case, and that meant sooner or later he had to deal with the central meeting room. The ambassadorial suite. Ground zero.
Sooner or later he had to face that thing.
He entered as quietly as he could, the protection of the suit doing nothing to quell a small surge of adrenaline up his spine. The tank and its contents thrumming along nicely, normally, the 456 moving in its inscrutable way in the murky shadows. All the dials and meters were steadily in the green. Two bodies lay on the floor: the Torchwood men, curled up in a cold parody of intimacy, one-half covering the other. He'd heard, in his time, about Captain Jack Harkness, but the man looked just as dead as his friend there among the scattered shell casings; still, Dekker pulled them apart, shoving the other one out of the way, to check Harkness's pulse. Just a precaution.
"HE WILL RETURN."
Dekker looked up at the cell. The "ambassador." It was just as it had been, showing no sign of hunger or fatigue after more than twenty-four hours, no concern at the mass slaughter it had wrought. Or perhaps concern was too human a concept for the 456. Perhaps, for it, this had been no different from fumigation.
"Return, sir?" Dekker asked, standing up. "I'm afraid I don't know who you mean."
"YOU ARE PROTECTED."
So it recognized the suit-they hadn't even been sure it had eyes in the conventional sense, or what it might be able to see through the glass and fog. Dekker took a step closer to the tank, to the being he'd spent most of his professional life studying. The one he had, in some sense, been waiting for. "That's right, yes. I recognized the alarms and protected myself."
"THE OTHERS WERE NOT PROTECTED."
"There was only the one suit," Dekker explained.
The 456 made one of those convulsive movements, God only knew what it meant-Dekker stepped backwards as fluids splashed on the glass, bile or blood or something impossible to identify. "THIS IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY," it declared.
"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call it--"
"THIS IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY."
Dekker thought for a moment. "I suppose it is, in a way. It's kept me alive this long, hasn't it?"
"Mr. Dekker, what's the situation?"
He thumbed the button on the radio. "The ambassador's just as reported, sir. We were just...having a chat."
"Well, get down to the emergency exits. We're sending in the first way of recovery personnel."
"I haven't finished the search of this floor, yet."
"We're sending in the Army. They'll take care of the rest."
"Understood." Dekker switched off the radio and studied the 456 a moment longer. "I'll, ah, I'll just be going now."
No response.
"I must say," he said. "I must say, it's been a pleasure to finally speak to you."
No response from inside the tank, and Dekker supposed he didn't merit one. He hung the radio back on his belt and quickly scribbled out two more notes, TH-13-13 and TH-13-14. He tucked them inside the pockets of the dead men on the floor and left them where they lay, cold and sprawling.
-\-\-\-\-\-
We are, we exist, in oppressive darkness, still and silent, and the only thing I am sure of is that this is not death. This is not life, either; we are absent body, absent senses, swamped in a featureless void, but we are still in some sense Here. We Are.
Perhaps, we Will Be.
This is the place where Jack goes, before the energies of the Vortex haul him back into life, but there are no drums here. Just us. Just me, weakened and maddened and stretched thinly between life and death, stretched to the point of breaking, holding on to a body and something one might call a soul. Holding it all together, within my small power to do so.
It'll be enough, though. It has to be enough.
Please.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Jack opened his eyes to shadowy I-beams, a sodium-arc glow through milky skylights. He was cold; he must've been dead for hours for his body temperature to drop so much. Seeing as he'd been willing himself not to come back at all...
The dark space looked like some kind of gymnasium, and he was draped in plastic. A makeshift morgue for all the dead of Thames House. He sat up, looked out over all the red-wrapped bodies, the latest victims of his hubris. And somewhere among them, somewhere in the room--
He heard a movement to his left and looked. Gwen was there, kneeling, facing away. Of course. Of course they'd be laid out side-by-side, since they'd have been found together.
He didn't want to look. He wanted to lay down again and die a little longer.
But Gwen was quietly sobbing, and dealing with her meant dealing with all of it. Jack carefully moved behind her, put an arm around her shoulder and...looked. Ianto. He had been dead for hours, too, all traces of color gone from his face. In a few hours more they'd have to move him again, for refrigeration or embalming, so they could release him to his family.
Stand up to them, he'd said. The Jack I know would've stood up to them.
And he had wanted to be that Jack, had thought for a minute that he could outrun his basic nature. He'd wanted so very badly to be the man Ianto was in love with, to atone for all he'd done and all he'd failed to do. He should've remembered that forgiveness required a sacrifice.
He'd thought he could save everyone, including himself, but the truth was covered in plastic before him.
"There's nothing we can do," Gwen whimpered, leaning into his shoulder.
-\-\-\-\-\-
The energy of the bioformantic matrix...the energy of me, basically...was enough to keep us here. Keep us fixed in the dark, if just for now. I wasn't the Bad Wolf, though, not even close; I couldn't even make out the way back to Ianto's body, let alone drag us there, not while I was burning myself up just to stay in this twilight place.
I wasn't going to give up. Couldn't give up, for my own sake, our sake, all our sakes. I just...wasn't sure what else I could do. I had waited too long, grown too weak, and dammit, it wasn't supposed to end like this.
Put that on my headstone, I thought miserably as I flew apart at the seams. Too little, too late.
Then I thought, Not the most uplifting epitaph.
No. Not I.
Ianto.
-\-\-\-\-\-
"All right, where the hell's number thirteen?" Fisher asked, looking at his clipboard. "Harkness, Jack? What'd he do, wander off?"
"Lieutenant said never mind it," Collins told him. "Who's next?"
"Number fourteen, Jones, Ianto." Fisher checked the face against the photograph and stuffed the plastic sheet into the biohazard bag. "Present and accounted for, this one."
Collins knelt down and started carefully checking Fourteen's pockets, while Fisher stuck a printed bar code label on a fresh bag. "No jewelry...wrist watch...mobile...fifteen pence...wallet, yep, name confirmed...biro...the fuck, he's got a gun?"
"Doesn't look like he'd know which way to point a gun," Fisher muttered.
Collins shook his head and ejected the gun's empty magazine, then racked the slide to check for a chambered round. "Not even loaded. Fat lot of good it did him, either way, I suppose." He dropped everything into the plastic bag Fisher held out for him, then continued the checked Fourteen's waistcoat. He pulled out a fob watch, the chain coiled under it instead of hooked into place, and after examining it a moment held it to his ear. "Stopped. That's a shame. My granddad had a watch like that."
"Can you shut up about your granddad?" Fisher growled. "I want to get this done by midnight, yeah?"
"I was just saying." He dropped the watch in the bag, and Fisher sealed it and signed over the seal before tossing it onto the cart. Collins put another bar code sticker on a zip tie and fastened it around Fourteen's wrist. "All right, who's next?"
"Fifteen," Fisher read off. "Lowry, Matthew." They moved on down the line, ignoring the other crews in the room who were bagging the bodies and carrying them out to the trucks.
-\-\-\-\-
So this is it, then? Death?
No. Not exactly. Not at all, actually.
Then I take it you're not a skeletal apparition with a taste for human souls.
No. I'm...call me Eiron.
I'm Ianto.
I know.
What is this, then, if I'm not dead?
We're...stuck. We're between.
Between what, exactly?
Life and death. Heaven and Earth. Something like that.
Is that where you came from?
No. No, I'm from a long way away.
From the sound of it, so am I.
You have a point there.
What are we doing here? Just waiting?
Waiting, yeah. Waiting for a miracle.
-\-\-\-\-\-
"We got incoming," Paulson called out, and Holly sighed, dragging herself to her feet again. Jimenez gave her a punch in the arm, but honestly, it was too damn late-or early, really-for cheering up. She'd been just about to go off duty when Paulson called for them all to report, and this was the third or fourth wave of stiffs to come in. Nights like this made her wonder why she'd re-enlisted.
The stiffs started coming down one and two at a time, and Holly caught the first gurney that came her way. "Remember to check the serial numbers," Paulson was calling over the clatter of wheels and the sound of zips. "We don't want anyone getting back a pair of lacy knickers labeled Grampa Joe's, eh?"
Holly opened the bag and checked the sticker on the stiff's wrist against the one attached to the zip. Undressing a corpse was tricky work, especially in a receiving room packed with people, and the stiff was at least six inches taller than her and no lightweight. She got his tie off all right, and shoes and socks were always the easy part, but his waistcoat and shirt were an absolute bitch.
"Need a hand?" Jimenez asked.
"Get your own stiff, I've got it," Holly growled, wrestling a sleeve off a floppy arm. This was the first stiff she'd seen of this lot who had a mark on him-a deep cut on his face, and all kinds of bruises under the clothes, the old kind that had started turning colors and stood out even where his skin was turning dark from the settling blood.
She folded the clothes into a bag-nice clothes, they were, the kind of thing the family would want back-and sealed it with one of the bar code stickers from the body bag. Jimenez took it to the computer for her, while she pulled a white smock onto the stiff. Once he was decent, she zipped him up again and pushed him to the doors of the freezer; someone else took him from there. "That it, then?" she asked, looking around to see all the other stiffs handled.
"Looks like it," Jimenez said. "Think the Lieutenant will let us knock off now?"
"God, I hope so," she said.
Over the intercom, Paulson called out, "Incoming!"
-\-\-\-\-\-
I'm sorry, I thought to the darkness, to myself. I'm really sorry.
For what? Ianto wondered.
I thought I could save us, I explained as I unraveled. I thought I was strong enough.
Ianto was confused, because he knew nothing of this place except what he'd been told, and certainly didn't know anything about me. What do you mean, save us?
I can...I thought I could. But I was burning up, burning out, without the energy to even drag us back from the brink of death, let alone to regenerate...or, I suppose, just generate, this time being the first. Maybe if I'd managed this a thousand years ago. Not now.
What was different a thousand years ago? Ianto asked, because the line between thought and thought-as-speech was treacherous and thin.
I was stronger. I was whole. I was real.
And what are you now? Ianto asked.
I'm a ghost, I confessed. I'm a ghost that never lived. I've been waiting and watching so long that I've become less than a name, and I needed someone, I needed you...but I can't save us. I can't do it. I'm sorry.
This didn't make any sense to Ianto at all. Why me? Why do you need me in particular?
I almost laughed at him. In some sense I did, across the thin line between wanting and doing. There used to be a lot of reasons, I said, but those were a long time ago. All that mattered now was that we loved you. Loved you so much. As much as we loved him. We left him and we lost him and we needed...
Who's him?
I didn't even know anymore; I couldn't explain when I was being pulled apart. We loved you. We needed you. We wanted to save you. But...
But what? He demanded, more confused than ever.
We would change, I admitted. You would change.
You mean, in order to save me? Ianto asked. What do you mean?
I don't know. You're be alive, I added. I'd be whole. But I don't actually know...I don't know what would happen. I could end up trapped again, I could cease to be...
The alternative being death, Ianto pointed out.
There are worse fates, I pointed out, thinking about Owen and Suzie and Gray.
I don't want to die, Ianto said, and he felt very small and scared, reduced to basic, primal fears. He wanted Jack and Gwen and Rhiannon and the kids, he wanted hands and eyes and a heartbeat.
And I, what was left of me, I could do him one better. Literally.
I don't know if I can do it, I said, even if I strained every part of myself, even if I tried.
Is there anything I can do to help? Ianto asked, even though he still didn't have the first clue what was I was talking about or what I meant to do. He just wanted to live.
And in spite of everything, he trusted me. He chose this.
Just be, I said, just be you. Just be...us.
And I stretched out, we stretched ourselves out and reached, strained, for the long climb back, the familiar road, unraveling, giving it all, all we had, all that remained--
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
"So what do you mean by a 'funny one,' Lieutenant?" Dr. Wainwright asked briskly.
Paulson squirmed. "I didn't know how else to put it, sir. One of the attendants noticed it-didn't say anything at the time, but we were all asleep on our feet, don't suppose she thought anything of it--"
"And what did she notice?" Wainwright asked as the elevator came down to the level of the morgue.
"Rigor mortis," Paulson said. "Or, actually, she didn't notice it-she said the body was floppy, the only one of the lot that was."
"How long had the deceased been dead?" Wainwright asked. "Rigor mortis progresses at different rates in different individuals."
"I...don't know, sir," Wainwright said. "They were all brought in together, sir, but we weren't given any records. They're classified," he added, when Wainwright rolled his eyes.
"Just because they were brought in together doesn't mean they died at the same time," he said, as Paulson unlocked the freezer. "Your 'funny one' probably just hadn't gone into rigor mortis yet. Or was past it. What about lividity? Temperature?"
"You can see for yourself, sir," Paulson said stiffly. The freezer wasn't actually freezing-wouldn't do to damage the bodies-but cold enough to make him shiver. He checked his clipboard against the numbers on the body bags. "Over here."
Wainwright unzipped the body bag and lifted the hand, flexing it. For the first time since Paulson had met him upstairs, he looked interested. "How long have they been here, did you say?"
"This one was received at 0100, sir," Paulson said.
"After nearly twelve hours, you'd expect more lividity," Wainwright murmured, unzipping the bag the rest of the way. "Where did these bodies come from again?"
"Classified, sir."
"All right, fine. Can you at least tell us this one's name?"
The body on the gurney suddenly spasmed. A moment later, the freezer was bathed in golden light.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
He was cold. I was cold. Cold and stiff and weak and dark-the room was dark-there were people shouting, and my body was heavy and stiff and didn't like to move. Crinkling black plastic, buzzing white lights. I tried to move--
Oh, hello, that's the floor--
He pushed himself up and looked around, through the dark and the forest of steel gurneys, at his white smock and white hands, and just looking made him dizzy, disconnected. The world was spinning, and he knew it was supposed to do that, but it made him feel sick, like he needed to cling to the ground and hold on. I tried to get up, but sorting out arms and legs was harder than it looks from the outside, and the gurney was no help, rolling away from my hands.
Somebody was standing over me. Somebody had a gun. "Identify yourself!" He tried to speak, but even breathing was different, wrong, and his pulse was racing, like his heart-my hearts--
"I said, identity yourself!"
He...I....we...I looked up and laughed, hardly able to focus, hardly able to speak. "Good question," I think I said, and then I grabbed hold of the gurney and pressed my face to cold metal, waiting for the worst to be over, waiting for the rest to begin.
Chapter One
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Seventeen
Author:
mad_maudlin
Rating: PG-13
Pairing and Characters: Jack/Ianto, The Doctor, Torchwood, the other Torchwood, OCs, A THOUSAND ELEPHANTS, et cetera.
Length: 70,000
Spoilers: Oh, let's say the whole Rusty era of DW+TW, just to be safe.
Ghost Story
by Mad Maudlin
16. the glaciers and the rocks
I
I I
III
am
am I
a
a
I
I a
I
am
an
I
I an
Ianto--
-\-\-\-\-\-
In the Middle Ages, they used to seal plague victims into their homes with bricks. Lepers used to live in outcast colonies. Quarantines for flu patients, in 1918. Now Thames House had made itself a tomb, and the bodies were piled up ten deep at doors and stairwells.
It was a little surreal, and, Dekker was willing to admit, a little thrilling-to pick his way over the dead, silent as a ghost, moving about with impunity. The last man standing. He carefully maneuvered around a banister, conscious of the baggy folds of his suit and the consequences of a tear. A solider in uniform had collapsed just inside the fire door; made a late break from his post, from the looks of it. Just as doomed as the very first deserter, though, as it happened. Dekker pulled another page off his note pad, wrote TH-13-01 in bold, black letters, and tucked it into the man's bullet-proof vest for the recovery crews.
"Mr. Dekker, have you found anything?"
He pressed the radio against his hood, so he'd be heard through the plastic. "Anyone, you mean. But no. I'm the only survivor."
"You don't have to sound so proud of it, you know."
"Why not?" He climbed over the soldier and looked around the corridor of floor thirteen. "It's a talent of mine."
"How much progress have you made on tagging the bodies? We're awaiting the last round of air-quality tests now."
"Up to floor thirteen now. Doesn't look like many people stayed this high up, though, if you don't mind me saying."
"Well, for God's sake be careful up there. We don't want to antagonize that thing any further."
"Of course, sir. What kind of man do you take me for?"
There were a few other bodies in the corridors, a few in offices, one poor bastard in a toilet with his trousers still around his knees. Dekker tagged them all with loving care, numbering them as he found them. He checked every room thoroughly, going under tables and behind desks just in case, and that meant sooner or later he had to deal with the central meeting room. The ambassadorial suite. Ground zero.
Sooner or later he had to face that thing.
He entered as quietly as he could, the protection of the suit doing nothing to quell a small surge of adrenaline up his spine. The tank and its contents thrumming along nicely, normally, the 456 moving in its inscrutable way in the murky shadows. All the dials and meters were steadily in the green. Two bodies lay on the floor: the Torchwood men, curled up in a cold parody of intimacy, one-half covering the other. He'd heard, in his time, about Captain Jack Harkness, but the man looked just as dead as his friend there among the scattered shell casings; still, Dekker pulled them apart, shoving the other one out of the way, to check Harkness's pulse. Just a precaution.
"HE WILL RETURN."
Dekker looked up at the cell. The "ambassador." It was just as it had been, showing no sign of hunger or fatigue after more than twenty-four hours, no concern at the mass slaughter it had wrought. Or perhaps concern was too human a concept for the 456. Perhaps, for it, this had been no different from fumigation.
"Return, sir?" Dekker asked, standing up. "I'm afraid I don't know who you mean."
"YOU ARE PROTECTED."
So it recognized the suit-they hadn't even been sure it had eyes in the conventional sense, or what it might be able to see through the glass and fog. Dekker took a step closer to the tank, to the being he'd spent most of his professional life studying. The one he had, in some sense, been waiting for. "That's right, yes. I recognized the alarms and protected myself."
"THE OTHERS WERE NOT PROTECTED."
"There was only the one suit," Dekker explained.
The 456 made one of those convulsive movements, God only knew what it meant-Dekker stepped backwards as fluids splashed on the glass, bile or blood or something impossible to identify. "THIS IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY," it declared.
"Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call it--"
"THIS IS YOUR PHILOSOPHY."
Dekker thought for a moment. "I suppose it is, in a way. It's kept me alive this long, hasn't it?"
"Mr. Dekker, what's the situation?"
He thumbed the button on the radio. "The ambassador's just as reported, sir. We were just...having a chat."
"Well, get down to the emergency exits. We're sending in the first way of recovery personnel."
"I haven't finished the search of this floor, yet."
"We're sending in the Army. They'll take care of the rest."
"Understood." Dekker switched off the radio and studied the 456 a moment longer. "I'll, ah, I'll just be going now."
No response.
"I must say," he said. "I must say, it's been a pleasure to finally speak to you."
No response from inside the tank, and Dekker supposed he didn't merit one. He hung the radio back on his belt and quickly scribbled out two more notes, TH-13-13 and TH-13-14. He tucked them inside the pockets of the dead men on the floor and left them where they lay, cold and sprawling.
-\-\-\-\-\-
We are, we exist, in oppressive darkness, still and silent, and the only thing I am sure of is that this is not death. This is not life, either; we are absent body, absent senses, swamped in a featureless void, but we are still in some sense Here. We Are.
Perhaps, we Will Be.
This is the place where Jack goes, before the energies of the Vortex haul him back into life, but there are no drums here. Just us. Just me, weakened and maddened and stretched thinly between life and death, stretched to the point of breaking, holding on to a body and something one might call a soul. Holding it all together, within my small power to do so.
It'll be enough, though. It has to be enough.
Please.
-\-\-\-\-\-
Jack opened his eyes to shadowy I-beams, a sodium-arc glow through milky skylights. He was cold; he must've been dead for hours for his body temperature to drop so much. Seeing as he'd been willing himself not to come back at all...
The dark space looked like some kind of gymnasium, and he was draped in plastic. A makeshift morgue for all the dead of Thames House. He sat up, looked out over all the red-wrapped bodies, the latest victims of his hubris. And somewhere among them, somewhere in the room--
He heard a movement to his left and looked. Gwen was there, kneeling, facing away. Of course. Of course they'd be laid out side-by-side, since they'd have been found together.
He didn't want to look. He wanted to lay down again and die a little longer.
But Gwen was quietly sobbing, and dealing with her meant dealing with all of it. Jack carefully moved behind her, put an arm around her shoulder and...looked. Ianto. He had been dead for hours, too, all traces of color gone from his face. In a few hours more they'd have to move him again, for refrigeration or embalming, so they could release him to his family.
Stand up to them, he'd said. The Jack I know would've stood up to them.
And he had wanted to be that Jack, had thought for a minute that he could outrun his basic nature. He'd wanted so very badly to be the man Ianto was in love with, to atone for all he'd done and all he'd failed to do. He should've remembered that forgiveness required a sacrifice.
He'd thought he could save everyone, including himself, but the truth was covered in plastic before him.
"There's nothing we can do," Gwen whimpered, leaning into his shoulder.
-\-\-\-\-\-
The energy of the bioformantic matrix...the energy of me, basically...was enough to keep us here. Keep us fixed in the dark, if just for now. I wasn't the Bad Wolf, though, not even close; I couldn't even make out the way back to Ianto's body, let alone drag us there, not while I was burning myself up just to stay in this twilight place.
I wasn't going to give up. Couldn't give up, for my own sake, our sake, all our sakes. I just...wasn't sure what else I could do. I had waited too long, grown too weak, and dammit, it wasn't supposed to end like this.
Put that on my headstone, I thought miserably as I flew apart at the seams. Too little, too late.
Then I thought, Not the most uplifting epitaph.
No. Not I.
Ianto.
-\-\-\-\-\-
"All right, where the hell's number thirteen?" Fisher asked, looking at his clipboard. "Harkness, Jack? What'd he do, wander off?"
"Lieutenant said never mind it," Collins told him. "Who's next?"
"Number fourteen, Jones, Ianto." Fisher checked the face against the photograph and stuffed the plastic sheet into the biohazard bag. "Present and accounted for, this one."
Collins knelt down and started carefully checking Fourteen's pockets, while Fisher stuck a printed bar code label on a fresh bag. "No jewelry...wrist watch...mobile...fifteen pence...wallet, yep, name confirmed...biro...the fuck, he's got a gun?"
"Doesn't look like he'd know which way to point a gun," Fisher muttered.
Collins shook his head and ejected the gun's empty magazine, then racked the slide to check for a chambered round. "Not even loaded. Fat lot of good it did him, either way, I suppose." He dropped everything into the plastic bag Fisher held out for him, then continued the checked Fourteen's waistcoat. He pulled out a fob watch, the chain coiled under it instead of hooked into place, and after examining it a moment held it to his ear. "Stopped. That's a shame. My granddad had a watch like that."
"Can you shut up about your granddad?" Fisher growled. "I want to get this done by midnight, yeah?"
"I was just saying." He dropped the watch in the bag, and Fisher sealed it and signed over the seal before tossing it onto the cart. Collins put another bar code sticker on a zip tie and fastened it around Fourteen's wrist. "All right, who's next?"
"Fifteen," Fisher read off. "Lowry, Matthew." They moved on down the line, ignoring the other crews in the room who were bagging the bodies and carrying them out to the trucks.
-\-\-\-\-
So this is it, then? Death?
No. Not exactly. Not at all, actually.
Then I take it you're not a skeletal apparition with a taste for human souls.
No. I'm...call me Eiron.
I'm Ianto.
I know.
What is this, then, if I'm not dead?
We're...stuck. We're between.
Between what, exactly?
Life and death. Heaven and Earth. Something like that.
Is that where you came from?
No. No, I'm from a long way away.
From the sound of it, so am I.
You have a point there.
What are we doing here? Just waiting?
Waiting, yeah. Waiting for a miracle.
-\-\-\-\-\-
"We got incoming," Paulson called out, and Holly sighed, dragging herself to her feet again. Jimenez gave her a punch in the arm, but honestly, it was too damn late-or early, really-for cheering up. She'd been just about to go off duty when Paulson called for them all to report, and this was the third or fourth wave of stiffs to come in. Nights like this made her wonder why she'd re-enlisted.
The stiffs started coming down one and two at a time, and Holly caught the first gurney that came her way. "Remember to check the serial numbers," Paulson was calling over the clatter of wheels and the sound of zips. "We don't want anyone getting back a pair of lacy knickers labeled Grampa Joe's, eh?"
Holly opened the bag and checked the sticker on the stiff's wrist against the one attached to the zip. Undressing a corpse was tricky work, especially in a receiving room packed with people, and the stiff was at least six inches taller than her and no lightweight. She got his tie off all right, and shoes and socks were always the easy part, but his waistcoat and shirt were an absolute bitch.
"Need a hand?" Jimenez asked.
"Get your own stiff, I've got it," Holly growled, wrestling a sleeve off a floppy arm. This was the first stiff she'd seen of this lot who had a mark on him-a deep cut on his face, and all kinds of bruises under the clothes, the old kind that had started turning colors and stood out even where his skin was turning dark from the settling blood.
She folded the clothes into a bag-nice clothes, they were, the kind of thing the family would want back-and sealed it with one of the bar code stickers from the body bag. Jimenez took it to the computer for her, while she pulled a white smock onto the stiff. Once he was decent, she zipped him up again and pushed him to the doors of the freezer; someone else took him from there. "That it, then?" she asked, looking around to see all the other stiffs handled.
"Looks like it," Jimenez said. "Think the Lieutenant will let us knock off now?"
"God, I hope so," she said.
Over the intercom, Paulson called out, "Incoming!"
-\-\-\-\-\-
I'm sorry, I thought to the darkness, to myself. I'm really sorry.
For what? Ianto wondered.
I thought I could save us, I explained as I unraveled. I thought I was strong enough.
Ianto was confused, because he knew nothing of this place except what he'd been told, and certainly didn't know anything about me. What do you mean, save us?
I can...I thought I could. But I was burning up, burning out, without the energy to even drag us back from the brink of death, let alone to regenerate...or, I suppose, just generate, this time being the first. Maybe if I'd managed this a thousand years ago. Not now.
What was different a thousand years ago? Ianto asked, because the line between thought and thought-as-speech was treacherous and thin.
I was stronger. I was whole. I was real.
And what are you now? Ianto asked.
I'm a ghost, I confessed. I'm a ghost that never lived. I've been waiting and watching so long that I've become less than a name, and I needed someone, I needed you...but I can't save us. I can't do it. I'm sorry.
This didn't make any sense to Ianto at all. Why me? Why do you need me in particular?
I almost laughed at him. In some sense I did, across the thin line between wanting and doing. There used to be a lot of reasons, I said, but those were a long time ago. All that mattered now was that we loved you. Loved you so much. As much as we loved him. We left him and we lost him and we needed...
Who's him?
I didn't even know anymore; I couldn't explain when I was being pulled apart. We loved you. We needed you. We wanted to save you. But...
But what? He demanded, more confused than ever.
We would change, I admitted. You would change.
You mean, in order to save me? Ianto asked. What do you mean?
I don't know. You're be alive, I added. I'd be whole. But I don't actually know...I don't know what would happen. I could end up trapped again, I could cease to be...
The alternative being death, Ianto pointed out.
There are worse fates, I pointed out, thinking about Owen and Suzie and Gray.
I don't want to die, Ianto said, and he felt very small and scared, reduced to basic, primal fears. He wanted Jack and Gwen and Rhiannon and the kids, he wanted hands and eyes and a heartbeat.
And I, what was left of me, I could do him one better. Literally.
I don't know if I can do it, I said, even if I strained every part of myself, even if I tried.
Is there anything I can do to help? Ianto asked, even though he still didn't have the first clue what was I was talking about or what I meant to do. He just wanted to live.
And in spite of everything, he trusted me. He chose this.
Just be, I said, just be you. Just be...us.
And I stretched out, we stretched ourselves out and reached, strained, for the long climb back, the familiar road, unraveling, giving it all, all we had, all that remained--
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
"So what do you mean by a 'funny one,' Lieutenant?" Dr. Wainwright asked briskly.
Paulson squirmed. "I didn't know how else to put it, sir. One of the attendants noticed it-didn't say anything at the time, but we were all asleep on our feet, don't suppose she thought anything of it--"
"And what did she notice?" Wainwright asked as the elevator came down to the level of the morgue.
"Rigor mortis," Paulson said. "Or, actually, she didn't notice it-she said the body was floppy, the only one of the lot that was."
"How long had the deceased been dead?" Wainwright asked. "Rigor mortis progresses at different rates in different individuals."
"I...don't know, sir," Wainwright said. "They were all brought in together, sir, but we weren't given any records. They're classified," he added, when Wainwright rolled his eyes.
"Just because they were brought in together doesn't mean they died at the same time," he said, as Paulson unlocked the freezer. "Your 'funny one' probably just hadn't gone into rigor mortis yet. Or was past it. What about lividity? Temperature?"
"You can see for yourself, sir," Paulson said stiffly. The freezer wasn't actually freezing-wouldn't do to damage the bodies-but cold enough to make him shiver. He checked his clipboard against the numbers on the body bags. "Over here."
Wainwright unzipped the body bag and lifted the hand, flexing it. For the first time since Paulson had met him upstairs, he looked interested. "How long have they been here, did you say?"
"This one was received at 0100, sir," Paulson said.
"After nearly twelve hours, you'd expect more lividity," Wainwright murmured, unzipping the bag the rest of the way. "Where did these bodies come from again?"
"Classified, sir."
"All right, fine. Can you at least tell us this one's name?"
The body on the gurney suddenly spasmed. A moment later, the freezer was bathed in golden light.
-\-\-\-\-\-\-
He was cold. I was cold. Cold and stiff and weak and dark-the room was dark-there were people shouting, and my body was heavy and stiff and didn't like to move. Crinkling black plastic, buzzing white lights. I tried to move--
Oh, hello, that's the floor--
He pushed himself up and looked around, through the dark and the forest of steel gurneys, at his white smock and white hands, and just looking made him dizzy, disconnected. The world was spinning, and he knew it was supposed to do that, but it made him feel sick, like he needed to cling to the ground and hold on. I tried to get up, but sorting out arms and legs was harder than it looks from the outside, and the gurney was no help, rolling away from my hands.
Somebody was standing over me. Somebody had a gun. "Identify yourself!" He tried to speak, but even breathing was different, wrong, and his pulse was racing, like his heart-my hearts--
"I said, identity yourself!"
He...I....we...I looked up and laughed, hardly able to focus, hardly able to speak. "Good question," I think I said, and then I grabbed hold of the gurney and pressed my face to cold metal, waiting for the worst to be over, waiting for the rest to begin.
Chapter One
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Seventeen