Fic: Post-Mortem part 2
Fic: Post-Mortem Part 2: Profiling Jack Harkness
Author: CrabbyLioness
Pairings: Team, Jack/Ianto mentioned, Gwen/Owen mentioned
Summary: In the wake of Jack's disappearance, Owen tries to figure out what to do next.
Rating: R for language. It's Owen, what do you expect?
Disclaimer: Don't own them. Don't even like Owen, but "Quincy" has his uses. Not making a penny.
Part 1
Interlude
Owen took another sip of whiskey and pressed the "record" button. "So Jack Harkness-who-isn't-Jack-Harkness, isn't in his late 30s, isn't apparently mortal -- at least not in the conventional sense. But is he human? All the scans we've done of him say he is. I suppose he could be an alien in disguise like Tosh's friend 'Mary'. That would explain why he's physically perfect but there's holes in his social record. That could be it, but why go to all that trouble? It doesn't add up.
"And if he isn't human, why bother to hide that fact from Torchwood? It's not like we didn't have other nonhumans working for us before the Cybermen attack. There was even a zombie in charge of the main Archives, so him not dying shouldn't have been a problem."
He thought back to the morning after Jack disappeared. That morning Owen arrived at the Hub to find Tosh sipping coffee. She smiled at him.
"Hey sweetheart, you look pretty good for someone who's been up all night."
Tosh smiled. "Ianto took over at dawn and brought me breakfast. I just got up from a nap."
"Yeah well, I know its a pain in the arse, but could you put together some background reports on the Rift, Abbadon, and stuff like that for this morning's meeting? Just to help us out, like."
Tosh stared at him. "Owen, that's not my job. Ianto writes the background reports. He's been working on them all morning. He's almost finished."
"Oh. Right, right. Sorry." He remembered that now. Why hadn't he remembered it before? Worrying about background information hadn't been part of his job before. A lot of things hadn't been part of his job before.
"Right. Let's get started." Owen thought. He hadn't had to run a meeting since before he joined Torchwood. Jack never missed a day. Did he need the notes on Jack's clipboard? He stepped into Jack's office and picked up the clipboard.
Something was different. He glanced around, then noticed the sealed hatch over the entrance to Jack's quarters. Ianto, had to be. He knelt down and gave it an experimental tug. Locked of course.
Wait a minute. He ran to the safe and tried the combination. It didn't work. "Ianto!"
"Yes?"
"You changed the combination!"
"Yes."
"Bollocks. I bet you changed the password too."
"In keeping with Torchwood policy, if a combination or password becomes known it must be changed."
"But how do we get in there?"
"You ask the Archivist. That's me."
"Leave him alone Owen. He's doing his job. Come on." Gwen frowned at both of them and jerked her head towards the conference room.
Everyone took their usual seats, Owen and Tosh on one side of the table, Gwen and Ianto on the other. They all tried to avoid looking at the head of the table.
"Here's the background information." Ianto put a large stack of folders on the table, topped by what looked like a four page summary. Owen eyed the stack warily. Was he expected to read all that?
"Is there anything useful in there?" he asked.
"It's too soon to tell. We won't know until something in here correlates with some new information." Ianto managed to not quite sound like he was talking to a preschooler.
"Yes, well give a shout if it does. How's the coverup going?" Owen asked.
"We've had no new requests from the local authorities. The usual internet conspiracy theorists are reporting the usual things about it, but there's no indication any of them actually knows anything. The Home Office and the international agencies still want a copy of our report, but they accept that we're too busy with the cleanup to send anything now. They insist on something by the end of the week though." Ianto said.
"That lot's going to love hearing about battles between demons and undead immortals."
"We'll think of something." Gwen said with a hint of bitterness. "Isn't that what we always do?"
"Tosh, did you turn up any pictures of Jack last night?
Tosh shook her head. "Nothing on any CCTV in Britain. No mention of him on any of our other sources either."
"What did you find out about the Dragon?" Gwen asked. Apparently Ianto's name for whatever took Jack had stuck.
"Nothing conclusive. There was a short segment of Rift-like energies playing when Jack disappeared. I think I've seen something like it before, but there's not enough to tell."
"What did the computer say?" Owen asked.
"It was too small a sample for the computer to analyze. I have to guess at what the rest of the equation looks like. I've made some predictions based on what we have already, but none of them match anything in our database. I don't have enough to go on." Tosh threw up her hands.
"Right. If you find out anything more, let us know." Owen shifted in his seat. "So, what about Jack?"
They looked at each other in bewilderment. Gwen drew a breath and looked at her notes. "Something's taken Jack from the Hub. We don't know what. We don't know how, although it appears to be able to snatch people out of thin air using Rift-like energies."
"But they don't disappear and reappear without a trace." Tosh said. "There's a noise we've never heard before associated with it, and some sort of cage made of light."
Gwen nodded. "We know that much. We also don't know why Jack was taken.
"The most likely suspects are Bilis, something associated with the Rift, something associated with Torchwood, or something associated with Jack. The m.o. doesn't match Bilis. Tosh, what's the Rift activity been like?" Gwen asked.
"We've picked up some minor aftershocks, but nothing out of the ordinary."
"Jack said the Rift would be more unstable than ever now."
Everyone grimaced. "So you're saying something took advantage of the confusion to slip through and take Jack?" Owen asked.
Gwen shook her head. "Maybe. It's a possibility. What about a Torchwood enemy?"
"It doesn't match anything in the main computer." Ianto said. "There may be something in the files I brought down from London after the Battle of Canary Wharf, although all the pertinent information should already be in our database. I haven't had time to go through them all yet."
Gwen nodded. "Do it. That leaves something associated with Jack." She took a deep breath. "I know it's invasive, but I think its time we did a full profile of Jack Harkness."
Owen and Tosh nodded. "Should have done that years ago." Owen muttered. Ianto hunched his shoulders, then nodded.
Gwen opened a notebook and started writing. "Okay. We can't find any mention of him in any external records. The internal records appear to show his initials on records going back to the late 1950s." Gwen turned to Ianto. "Is that right?"
"Yes."
"And that's the paper trail." Gwen snorted, and a tiny chuckle ran around the table. "So now it's time to start interviewing witnesses. That's us then, isn't it? Is there anyone else we know of who would know anything about Jack?"
The others shook their heads.
"I'll go first. Jack is the boss of Torchwood 3. He appears to be in his late 30s but is -- older. He says he holds the rank of Captain, but not where he earned it. He always wears World War 2 era military clothing. He appears to have experience as a military officer.
"He's charming and flirtatious, more affectionate with strangers than any man I've met before. He's a great storyteller. He's very knowledgeable about alien hardware. The only times we've seen him drink is a brandy for funerals. He usually drinks coffee or water.
"And he can't die. I've seen him killed five times. Twice from bullets to the skull, Suzie and -- last week. Twice from electrocution, that was Lisa. All of those times he was back on his feet in under five minutes. With Suzie I, I saw the bullet hole literally closing up on his head." Gwen paused to take a deep breath, then another. Ianto reached over and put his hand on top of hers. She smiled at him, then continued.
"The second time with Lisa it took him longer to recover than the first. He said later he thought she might have finished him. He didn't sound unhappy about that." She squeezed Ianto's fingers in consolation. He pressed her hand.
"The fifth time, with Abbadon, it took him days to recover. Abbadon tried to suck the life out of him, but his -- the energy poured out of him and seemed to overwhelm the creature." Gwen shook her head, trying to explain something she didn't even begin to understand.
"Was it like what he did with Carys?" Tosh asked.
"Something like that, yeah. Only he didn't seem to be in control of it, like he was with her." Gwen took another deep breath. "Does anyone know of any other times?"
Tosh and Owen shook their heads. After a pause Ianto spoke. "There was an incident over Christmas. Jack was with John when John killed himself by inhaling carbon monoxide gas. Jack sat with him in the car the whole time, so he wouldn't die alone."
"Wait, he was there and he didn't stop him? Why?" Gwen asked, shocked.
"Jack said he'd seen John's condition before. He said some people can't handle time travel, especially if there's no way back. They always kill themselves. You can't stop them."
"But how could he be sure?" Tosh asked.
"How was Jack sure of anything?" Ianto waited for an answer, but none came. "He inhaled a huge amount of carbon monoxide, but apparently it didn't kill him. Have you ever see someone who has drunk so much they start excreting alcohol through their pores?"
Owen nodded. "Used to get those cases at the A&E. Big problem with college boys. The have so much alcohol in their blood they begin to excrete it through their skin. They smell like a brewery. The best treatment, if you can find someone who can stand to do it, is to bath them in a hot shower. The hot water opens the pores wider which allows more alcohol out. Scrubbing their skin encourages the process. Course that only makes them stink worse, but it's the fastest way to cleanse their system. It can take hours before you steam all you can get out of them, but usually the hot water or the friend's patience wears out first."
Ianto nodded. "Now picture that with carbon monoxide."
Gwen's eyes widened. "Shit!"
"Christ." Owen shook his head. "Carbon monoxide goes straight into the blood. It would be worse."
"It's a good thing we have an in-line water heater and special vents in the showers."
"Did he just excrete the gas or the gas and the chemical they use to make it stink?" Owen asked curiously.
"Both, fortunately."
"How long --?" Owen began.
"Could we save that discussion for later?" Tosh looked ill.
"Oh, right. Sorry, love. Any other incidents?" Owen asked. They shook their heads.
Gwen resumed speaking. "Okay. After I saw him die the first time, I asked him why he didn't say anything to the rest of you. He said he didn't like to talk about it because it freaks people out. He said that he had died once, a long time ago and very far away, and something had brought him back. Ever since then he couldn't die.
"He said he was looking for a specialist who could explain what had happened to him. I asked him what kind, but all he ever said was 'the right kind'." Gwen shrugged. "I wondered sometimes if he meant an alien. If he was waiting for an alien to come through the Rift who could explain it to him."
She sighed. "That's all. Owen, your turn."
"Well, it's not natural for a human to have all that energy. So either Jack's an alien, or it's coming from an outside source. Judging from the scans, whatever brings Jack back to life doesn't seem to be inside him. It appears to be external."
"Could it be alien tech? Something like the Resurrection Glove?" Gwen asked.
"Maybe. But the Glove needs physical contact to work. And we can't pick up any signs of life energy pouring into Jack like we could when the Glove was used." Tosh said.
Owen tapped his mouth. "When Jack shot Suzy, she didn't die again. She just laughed at us. Her wounds didn't heal. Jack gets shot and he dies. Then he comes back and his wounds heal quickly. It's not the same."
"But if it is something like the Glove, then it's feeding Jack energy from some other lifeform. I've felt the Glove draining me. It nearly sucked me dry in a few hours. Whatever is on the other end of that must be enormous. Powerful. And very protective of Jack." Gwen said.
"So you think that's what happened? Jack's got a private health-care insurer who called him up to talk about the latest bill?" Owen asked.
Gwen shrugged. "Maybe. I don't know."
"Or maybe Jack was snatched by an enemy who was waiting for its chance. We don't know." Owen said.
"Anything else?" Gwen asked.
"Yeah, he was always saying weird shit. That's all."
"Tosh?"
"When we were first transported back to the 1940s Jack was delighted to be there. He was like a kid at Christmas. He wasn't the least bit scared. It was hours later before he began to get worried.
"We met a man who had Jack's name. Our Jack said he had taken the name of a dead man. He was reluctant to talk about it. He kept saying he knew too much, and I wouldn't want to know.
"He finally admitted that he had served in the war in 1941 under the other Captain's name. He said he had been a con man working undercover, and he had taken the name of a pilot who died in battle the day after we arrived. Jack refused to say his real name.
"When I asked him how he came to work for Torchwood he said that someone had brought him back from death. He said it was like 'they' were keeping him alive for something, but he didn't know what or who."
"Could 'they' be Torchwood?" Gwen asked.
Owen shook his head. "Torchwood hasn't got anything like that."
"What about aliens? We seem to keep coming back to that." Gwen turned to Tosh. "You told me you thought Bilis took you back to that date deliberately to unsettle Jack."
Tosh laughed shakily. "Well, he certainly did a good job of unsettling the rest of us the day after."
They all looked around the room, carefully avoiding each other's eyes. Finally Gwen spoke. "He's said twice that some "thing" brought him back to life. It wasn't natural to him, and he didn't understand it. Anything else, Tosh?"
Tosh shook her head.
Gwen nodded. "Okay. Ianto, it's your turn."
He sat hunched over the table. With an effort, he straightened his back and looked at them. "Jack is the longest serving field agent and alien hardware expert at Torchwood. The reason the things he says often sound strange to us is because they're not always documented in our records. Jack knows a lot more about alien tech than Torchwood does."
"But how? Torchwood has the most complete alien tech records in the world." Tosh said.
"What about U.N.I.T. records?" Owen asked.
"I don't have full access to their files, but when I try I to corroborate Jack's information with their shared online database I usually can't. Sometimes I can, but not often."
"Maybe Jack's making it up?" Owen asked.
"Gwen shook her head. "He's right too often. And it's not that he doesn't keep good records. Look how often he asks us to rewrite our reports."
Eyes rolled all around the table.
Owen shifted in his seat. "So that's what? More evidence that Jack encountered aliens before joining Torchwood?"
Gwen said, "Maybe." She opened her mouth to speak again, then shut it.
"What?"
"Later. Anything else, Ianto?"
Ianto thought for a moment. "Just what I told you last night, that it seemed like Jack was waiting for something he couldn't talk about."
"That could be the specialist he mentioned." Owen mused.
"Okay. Anyone have anything else to share?" The others shook their heads. Gwen wrote another line in her notebook and said in her best "policewoman" voice, "And that concludes the interview portion of this investigation. If you think of anything later that could help, please let us know."
The others chuckled.
"So now we need to examine his environment. Come on."
They walked downstairs to the worktable Jack used to examine alien hardware. The table was empty and all the tools were in place. Gwen looked in the cupboards and drawers, then they all stood around the table nervously.
Suddenly Tosh giggled.
"What?" Gwen asked.
"You know how he always whispers endearments to whatever piece of tech he's working on?"
Gwen laughed "'Come on baby, open up and let me have a look at you. That's right, give it to me, oh you're so good. Yeah, now just a little bit more.'" she mimicked.
"Sounds like a one-man porn movie." Owen muttered.
"I know!" Gwen exclaimed. She, Tosh, and Owen doubled over laughing. Ianto folded his arms and stared at them. Gwen caught his eye and straightened up.
"Okay. Let's check out his office."
Owen led the way to Jack's office. It was full of Torchwood stuff and 1940s memorabilia. Owen pulled up Jack's log on the computer and cursed at the size of the daily entries. "Shit. How did he do all this work by himself?"
Gwen looked over his shoulder. "Jack said he never slept."
"Ianto, is that true?"
"Excuse me?", Ianto asked so coldly the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
Owen closed his eyes for a moment and sighed. "Look. You and Jack were shagging, yes?"
Ianto looked at him without speaking for several moments. "Yes."
"So, I don't know what you two did but presumably you were in bed at least some of the time. Did Jack ever sleep?"
A shorter pause, then Ianto said, "It was unusual for him to sleep. Insomnia did not seem to affect him the way it usually affects people. He was capable of working without sleep for weeks on end, perhaps longer."
"When did he sleep?" Ianto said nothing. Owen pressed further. "After sex?"
"He only slept when he was completely relaxed. The slightest tension would keep him awake."
"So he only slept after lots of sex. Right." Ianto's eyes glinted for a moment, but he said nothing. "I'm surprised you could sit down. Or is that why you were always puttering about?"
"Owen!" Gwen cried.
Owen ignored her. "How often did he have you over this desk?"
"That's over the line! We're supposed to be assembling a profile. You don't need to be crude." Tosh exclaimed.
"I am assembling a profile! And I'm sorry if it offends you, but some of the questions are crude. If we're going to find Jack we need to put all the facts together, not just the ones you like." Owen looked at Ianto.
Ianto waited until he had everyone's attention, then quietly spoke. "Assembling a profile is good. But our private life is private, Owen. If you want a soap opera, watch telly."
Gwen spoke up. "Everyone look around and see if you can find anything significant." She gave Owen a "we'll talk later" glare. Several minutes of drawer pulling, cupboard opening, and paper shuffling revealed no surprises. They were all pretty familiar with the contents of Jack's office.
"What about the safe?" Owen asked.
Ianto cocked an eyebrow. "You looked there last week."
"I wasn't looking for the same thing!"
"Ianto, is there anything in the safe that will help us?" Gwen asked quietly.
"No."
She nodded and held his eyes with her own. "Okay. Then it's time we look in Jack's quarters."
Ianto stared at her in silence for a moment. Then he nodded, turned around, and bent over the hatch. Gwen grabbed Tosh and Owen by the arms and marched them to the door of Jack's office where none of them could see what Ianto was doing. They heard a scraping noise.
"It's open."
Gwen let go of Tosh and squeezed Owen's arm tighter. Owen winced in pain.
"Ow! That's where he shot me!"
"Stop picking on Ianto." Gwen whispered.
"He's not the one with a bullet wound!"
Gwen ignored him. "You want to be in charge? Fine. But you can't do it without Ianto. He's the only one who understands how the office works."
"He's just the tea boy." Owen muttered resentfully.
"He runs the Archives, the internal security systems, the cover office, and Jack's had him doing most of the Admin for months now, including signing Jack's name to our checks." Owen stared at her.
"Didn't you notice how Jack's had more time to spend on alien hardware lately? That's why."
Owen pressed his lips together. "He's rubbish in the field."
"He's young, but he's learning fast. He can already bring in a Weevil single-handed. Could you do that at his age?"
"I didn't know what a Weevil was at his age." Owen admitted. "He's a crap shot."
"You haven't seen his latest firing range scores."
"All right, I'll be nice to him because he's the secretary. But he still has to understand who's in charge."
Gwen raised her eyebrows. "I thought Doctors went to university."
"What?"
"You remember what they called the Administrative Secretary at uni?"
"Uh yeah, they called them," Owen thought for a moment. "'God.'"
Gwen nodded.
Owen was starting on an indignant comeback when Tosh called to them, "Gwen, come here! You've got to see this!"
Gwen walked to the open hatch and started down. Owen followed her. The climb down the ladder was agony on his injured shoulder, each jar and jostle sending excruciating pain flaring through his body. Owen uttered a string of curses and concentrated on making it down alive. Behind him, he heard Gwen gasp.
"Oh my God!" She laughed breathlessly. "Now this is different. You won't find that in London Interiors."
Owen turned around and gaped. The sight was so at odds with what he expected to see it took a while to register. Instead of 1940s memorabilia he was in a futuristic-looking metal room with arched walls, lined with cupboards, computer displays, and flickering blue LED-like panels.
He stared for a a moment before he remembered how to speak. "It's a fucking spaceship. That bastard Harkness has got a spaceship under the Hub!"
Ianto smirked quietly. "It's a space shuttle." he corrected Owen. Actually, it's the cabin of the crashed shuttle that supplied our main computer. The engines were a total loss, but the reinforced cabin wasn't scratched. The computer housing is built into the cabin. Rather than risk damaging the computer by removing it, Jack had the whole unit installed under the Hub and turned it into his flat."
Owen turned on his heel, nodding. That explained why the swirling blue lights looked familiar. "Okay," he conceded, "that earns coolness points. Yeah. And he complains about us taking stuff home."
"The difference is this never left the Hub." Tosh murmured, bending over the large computer terminal at one end of the room. Owen realized it must have been the pilot's station. He bent down and flipped up the rug. "There's the tracks for the chairs he took out. I wonder where they ended up?"
Now that his vision had adjusted, he began to notice more details. There was a padded bench built into the wall beside the ladder. Across the room an entertainment center sat on a shelf. On one end of the bench was a pillow and a neatly folded blanket. Owen nodded, he'd sacked out on his own couch many a night.
He looked up and couldn't see Gwen. "Gwen, where are you?"
"In the kitchen."
Ianto pointed at what must have been the shuttle's main door. Owen walked through and found himself outside the shuttle in a small kitchen with ordinary cupboards and appliances. There was a table in the middle of the room with two chairs. A little sideboard next to the table held a selection of mechanical tools and a couple of fist-sized pieces of alien technology. The rest of the room was boringly prosaic, in glaring contrast to the main quarters.
Gwen poked into the cupboards and looked in the fridge. "Lots of ingredients." she said, surprised.
"Jack likes to cook when he has the time." Ianto said. "He says he's just a 'mess cook', but he's pretty good. A few of his ideas about seasonings take some getting used to, though."
Owen wandered back into the shuttle. Tosh was still checking out the computer terminal. Beside her a cupboard had been modified into a flip-top desk. He found an old library card, season's passes for two to the theatre and the symphony going back many years but seldom used, and a receipt for two tickets to the National rugby playoffs.
"I thought Jack didn't follow the rugby."
Tosh looked up. "That was a present for Gwen and Rhys, for interrupting a dinner date."
"Right."
Behind the ladder were shelves of books and discs, and a smaller door leading outside the shuttle to a full-size bathroom. Owen noted two toothbrushes and one razor perched on the counter.
A curtain hung across the back of the shuttle. Gwen was pushing it aside when Owen got back. Beyond it was a large comfortable-looking bed, neatly made. The cupboards around it held the usual things you find in a bedroom, although a drawer near the bed revealed a select but comprehensive collection of lubes and sex toys. Owen whistled in appreciation. Gwen kicked him.
A floor to ceiling cupboard that once held environmental suits had been fitted with a clothes rod. On it hung one of Ianto's suits and some of his shirts, then Jack's period military garb. Beyond that was a few unmatched items of street clothes that looked like they came from different decades. Beyond that was a cloth bag that held a tuxedo which would have passed muster at an establishment with the strictest dress code. At the back of the closet was a leather outfit that would have passed the strictest dress code of a very different establishment.
Gwen fingered an Izod shirt. "No wonder he always wears period military. It doesn't date as badly."
"This doesn't make sense." Tosh said. Owen saw her staring at the bookcase.
"What?" he asked, walking over to stand beside her.
She gestured at the room around them, then at the books. "The flat is a science fiction fan's dream. But look at the books. They're almost all autobiographies and memoirs. Where's the science fiction?"
"He's got a library card. Maybe he checks them out of the library."
Gwen joined them. "Tosh is right. There should be one or two old favorites up there."
"Is there anything else to see, Ianto?" Owen asked.
"There's a laundry beyond the kitchen, and the stair to the garage."
"Right." Owen looked around. "Bloody hell, this is depressing. I knew Jack lived and breathed Torchwood, but I thought there might be something more in his life."
Now that the novelty of his surroundings had worn off, he was increasingly uncomfortable about rifling through his boss' flat. The girls looked like they felt the same way, and Ianto was clearly fighting the impulse to act territorial. "Let's finish up and get back to the boardroom."
Gwen nodded and opened the remaining cupboards. Tosh and Owen went back to the desk, but none of the papers they found inside it seemed unusual.
"Is that everything?" Gwen asked. The others nodded. "Okay, let's go."
The girls climbed out. Owen looked at the ladder. It would hurt his shoulder far worse to climb up than to climb down. He turned to Ianto. "You said something about stairs?"
Ianto pointed back towards the kitchen and turned the lights out behind them.
Part 3.