Times Arrow (5/?)
Title: "Time's Arrow, Chapter 5"
Copyright Notice: All characters owned by the BBC, BBC America and Tiger Aspect Media.
Plot spoilers: Torchwood: Season 2, Doctor Who: Season 4, Robin Hood: Season 2 Up to ends of Current Seasons of all Three Shows.
Pairings: Gwen/Martha, Ianto/Jack, Robin/Much
Warnings: None for this chapter
Rating: PG- 13 (For suggestive slash content)
Summary: Fifth chapter of my multichapter, multi fandom, fic. This series brings together characters from Robin Hood, Torchwood, and Doctor Who.
Previous Chapters Below:
Cover Art, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4
Dedicated to my ever patient beta,
zooeyrye
She turns my alien gibberish into human english.
Chapter 5: Not So Merry Men
Things quickly returned to normal within the next couple of days, or at least as normal as they could be in the Hub. Robin and Much had settled in while Ianto and Gwen went shopping for proper clothes for the two men. Standing next to Ianto, Jack wolf whistled as Robin came out of the locker room in a dark grey blazer, t-shirt and jeans just tight enough in the right places to be interesting. The young lord liked the Italian loafers much better than the sneakers he had been wearing and it showed on his face. The archer gave them an amused grin, "I guess you approve?"
Jack’s interest peaked, "Approve? Why I..."
"He likes it very much," Ianto finished, meeting Jack’s lecherous look with his firm gaze.
Jack leaned in to Ianto, "I wonder how he would look in a-"
"Oi! I wear the suits around here!" Ianto quietly reminded him firmly.
"And you do such a good job of it too," Jack acquiesced.
Ianto took his coffee mug out of his hand and headed for the kitchen. He said softly, "Damn right, twll tin."
"I know what that means, by the way!" Jack called with a wide grin at the Welshman. Ianto stopped for a second, rolled his eyes, and muttered how he shouldn’t have gotten Jack that Welsh to English dictionary for Christmas.
Much was quite the improvement as well in a thick cream coloured, cable knit, turtleneck sweater and jeans. His head was now securely covered in a beige stocking cap that echoed his beloved skull cap in shape and colour. Jack mused that he looked like a handsome mariner he once knew in that outfit, then spent the next five minutes explaining to the former servant what a mariner was.
Robin and Much made themselves at home in the Hub. Gwen supplied them with videos to watch and access to the computer so they could familiarize themselves with modern English terms better. Their initial fear of Myfanwy turned to fascination at the graceful pterodactyl. Much spent his idle time slathering meat scraps with her special sauce and tossing them up for the reptile to catch when he wasn’t helping Martha stock the infirmary or following her around like a love struck puppy.
Robin leaned over Gwen’s shoulder watching as she collected every bit of information she could about his life, the rift and the area he and Much were found in. He would laugh at the sillier parts of the poems and ballads and point out their inaccuracies.
"It is amazing how the minstrels and story tellers flavoured things," He noted.
"You’re a legend," she smiled. "800 years gives a legend a lot of time to grow-metamorph into something larger than life. Dates get changed, and characters get added. Till now we haven’t had the person causing the events around to act as fact checker."
Robin looked amused, "Sir Robert, the Fact Checker of Torchwood, I can add that to my list of titles."
They both giggled at this and Gwen realized why people followed him so willingly; Robin was a lot like Jack and it was quite easy to get caught up in his charms.
Had she not been married to Rhys, she was afraid she would and could fall quite hard for this scruffy faced, walking history figure. Grinning warmly she laughed, "Oi! So, you should Sir Robert! Shall I knight thee?"
She picked up a letter opener from her desk and playfully touched each if his shoulders with it. "I, Lady Gwyneth, invested with all the powers of Torchwood Three and his lordship, Captain Jack Harkness, do solemnly bestow on this loyal subject, Sir Robert, Earl of Huntington, Lord of Locksley, Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest," She took a symbolic deep breath in feigned exhaustion, suppressing a giggle, "The title of , ‘Sir Robert, Fact Checker of Torchwood Three.’ Use your powers for good and not for evil, Sir Robert and may the force be with you!"
"Milady," He snickered as he thanked her and kissed her hand causing them both to roar with laugher.
Leaning from his perch on the top of the stairs, Jack yelled, "Hey! No knighting or hand kissing unless I’m involved or at least have a good place to watch!" His wide grin seemed to say, ‘I wanna play too!’
"Aye Captain!" Gwen gave a mock salute to Jack who had cleared the stairs to stand beside Robin with amazing speed.
He absently rubbed her shoulder "So, Lady Gwyneth, what else are you up to besides handing out titles of nobility and getting your hand kissed?"
"Jealous?" She crowed, looking sideways and winking at Robin.
"Only if I don’t get to watch or participate," He returned with a coy grin.
Gwen sobered slightly before carrying on, "Robin and I were sortin’ out what happened to them in history, and what they could do to correct it. I downloaded as much historical data as I could about the area we found them in and have been monitoring it for further rift activity."
"And?" Jack shot an eyebrow up.
"So far nothing," She sighed, "I have also been going over Torchwood records for any documentation of rift activity in Sherwood Forest and came up empty handed."
Gwen looked away from her screen to Jack who was scratching his head, squinting his eyes in thought, "Something just doesn’t feel right. Why did they come through here, in Cardiff, over 200 kilometres from Sherwood Forest? Something extended the rift temporarily. We know that from our monitors and only a manipulator like ours can do that."
"You’re thinking rift flotsam?" Gwen brightened at Jack, her large eyes echoed his raised eyebrows.
"Yup!"
Robin gently cleared his throat, "If I may ask, what is ‘rift flotsam’?"
Gwen sheepishly grinned at Robin realizing his naïveté with rift mechanics. "Oh sorry, Robin-we know the rift takes living things and people and brings them to other places but it also does the same thing with inanimate objects as well."
"Like driftwood and garbage from other lands washing up on seashore?" Robin added beginning to grasp the concept.
"Exactly." Jack smiled and leaned in towards the clever archer and caught a whiff of his cologne, "I knew you were quick but, wow!"
"Anyways," Gwen said breaking the awkward tension of Jack getting too friendly with Robin again. "Some alien rift device could have landed in 12th century Cardiff, got transported to Sherwood Forest somehow and activated when you and Much passed close to it or touched it. It’s the only way to explain how you ended up here. The device must have been tuned to transport whatever it picked up back to its origin point, here in this time, in Cardiff."
"What would such a device look like?" Robin inquired cautiously.
"It could be anything." Jack said raising his eyebrow in wonder again. "A box, or a type of gun, or even-"
"A Pendant," Robin said forlornly.
Jack gave Robin a quizzical look as he watched the archer’s face turn ashen. "What did it look like?"
Robin described the strange stone, how they had acquired it, and how Much had referred to it as ‘enchanted.’
"Well it was in a way," Jack explained. "It was a vortex manipulator. It acted as a time gateway that reset itself back to the time and place it came from. Landing in Cardiff and being exposed to the unstable rift must have thrown it off. It sent the next person to touch it back to where it came from but in the wrong time."
"Could it be from your century, Jack?" Gwen was growing concerned at the increasingly distressed look Robin was showing.
Jack held up the advanced but bulky device on his wrist. "Not anything that fancy. I heard they were working to develop a failsafe circuit at the Time Agency that restored a VM to its previous location if the wearer lost it. After a few mishaps, it seemed like a good idea. They thought it would come in real handy after orgies."
Gwen rolled her eyes, "This had to be an improved model then."
"Apparently not so improved, if it was so sensitive, it let itself get scrambled by a time/space rift and sent it’s user to the wrong century by mistake." Jack covered his mouth, "RRREEECAAALLL! Bet the old ‘TA’ got a lot of complaints on that one."
Robin had walked away from the others and was leaning against the steps of the walkway. His sullen look caused Gwen to excuse herself from Jack and she went to him. Jack watched on admiringly as she did what he hired her for. If he was the brains of Torchwood Three, Martha the spirit, Ianto and Mickey the strength, Gwen was the heart. She was the one that made it all matter. He wondered what would have happened if she was lost instead of Tosh or Owen; the Torchwood he knew might not have made it. Torchwood 3 would have gone on. As he already knew, teams could be rebuilt and new people recruited, but the magic would be missing and he would have wanted no part of it.
"Talk to me Robin," Gwen said coaxingly, rubbing his shoulder.
Robin turned to her with tears running down his boyish face, fixing his gaze across the way to Much and Martha who were laughing and busying themselves in the infirmary. "I did this."
"Did what Robin?" Gwen already knew the answer but hearing him say it was tearing out her heart.
"I brought us here. Got us lost in time, and now we might never go home." He took a deep breath, wiped his face with the back of his hand and looked remorsefully at his friend. He admired the easy way Much lived in the moment, always fussing, but making the best of a less than ideal life. He wanted to run to him, get on his knees and beg him for forgiveness. He was worthless as a friend, to a man that saw him as a god, and it hurt his soul.
Gwen put her hand on Robin’s shoulder. "There now, you didn’t know. How could you know?"
"But I should have known! He trusted me and his safety was my responsibility!" Robin glared angrily at Gwen then turned and stormed back to the guest quarters.
Gwen shot Robin a look of confusion and hurt, then looked at Jack. He gave her a sympathetic look, put his hands in his pockets and walked back toward the office. Gwen turned sadly back to her console. She looked back towards Jack who was staring down at her with the same hopeless look on his face, his hand to the back of his neck. She smiled the best gap-toothed grin she could muster and he returned it with a polite nod, then business as usual. She looked at her red phone beside the keyboard. She found herself flipping and dialling before she even realized.
"Hullo you big idiot," she smiled, sounding as convincingly happy as possible.
The voice on the other end, so warm in her ear, piped back, "Oi! Don’t you be callin’ now missy! My lovely wife might be home from saving the world any minute!"
"Oi! I see you have more than one then," she grinned, still glancing up at Jack, who had his back turned to the window now.
"Oh trust me, the one is quite a hand full," Rhys returned cheekily. "When you comin’ home?"
She had planned on staying longer but she desperately needed to get away. "As soon as I can get out the door."
"Dinner’s waiting for ya."
"And wine?" She asked hopefully.
"A nice merlot, open and breathing, with your name on it," came the comforting words.
"Then I’ll be right there." She hung up musing about the day. She hoped he was wearing an absorbent shirt as it was going to be another one of those nights.
Next Week....
Chapter 6: Paper Targets!
Copyright Notice: All characters owned by the BBC, BBC America and Tiger Aspect Media.
Plot spoilers: Torchwood: Season 2, Doctor Who: Season 4, Robin Hood: Season 2 Up to ends of Current Seasons of all Three Shows.
Pairings: Gwen/Martha, Ianto/Jack, Robin/Much
Warnings: None for this chapter
Rating: PG- 13 (For suggestive slash content)
Summary: Fifth chapter of my multichapter, multi fandom, fic. This series brings together characters from Robin Hood, Torchwood, and Doctor Who.
Previous Chapters Below:
Cover Art, Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4
Dedicated to my ever patient beta,
zooeyrye
She turns my alien gibberish into human english.
Chapter 5: Not So Merry Men
Things quickly returned to normal within the next couple of days, or at least as normal as they could be in the Hub. Robin and Much had settled in while Ianto and Gwen went shopping for proper clothes for the two men. Standing next to Ianto, Jack wolf whistled as Robin came out of the locker room in a dark grey blazer, t-shirt and jeans just tight enough in the right places to be interesting. The young lord liked the Italian loafers much better than the sneakers he had been wearing and it showed on his face. The archer gave them an amused grin, "I guess you approve?"
Jack’s interest peaked, "Approve? Why I..."
"He likes it very much," Ianto finished, meeting Jack’s lecherous look with his firm gaze.
Jack leaned in to Ianto, "I wonder how he would look in a-"
"Oi! I wear the suits around here!" Ianto quietly reminded him firmly.
"And you do such a good job of it too," Jack acquiesced.
Ianto took his coffee mug out of his hand and headed for the kitchen. He said softly, "Damn right, twll tin."
"I know what that means, by the way!" Jack called with a wide grin at the Welshman. Ianto stopped for a second, rolled his eyes, and muttered how he shouldn’t have gotten Jack that Welsh to English dictionary for Christmas.
Much was quite the improvement as well in a thick cream coloured, cable knit, turtleneck sweater and jeans. His head was now securely covered in a beige stocking cap that echoed his beloved skull cap in shape and colour. Jack mused that he looked like a handsome mariner he once knew in that outfit, then spent the next five minutes explaining to the former servant what a mariner was.
Robin and Much made themselves at home in the Hub. Gwen supplied them with videos to watch and access to the computer so they could familiarize themselves with modern English terms better. Their initial fear of Myfanwy turned to fascination at the graceful pterodactyl. Much spent his idle time slathering meat scraps with her special sauce and tossing them up for the reptile to catch when he wasn’t helping Martha stock the infirmary or following her around like a love struck puppy.
Robin leaned over Gwen’s shoulder watching as she collected every bit of information she could about his life, the rift and the area he and Much were found in. He would laugh at the sillier parts of the poems and ballads and point out their inaccuracies.
"It is amazing how the minstrels and story tellers flavoured things," He noted.
"You’re a legend," she smiled. "800 years gives a legend a lot of time to grow-metamorph into something larger than life. Dates get changed, and characters get added. Till now we haven’t had the person causing the events around to act as fact checker."
Robin looked amused, "Sir Robert, the Fact Checker of Torchwood, I can add that to my list of titles."
They both giggled at this and Gwen realized why people followed him so willingly; Robin was a lot like Jack and it was quite easy to get caught up in his charms.
Had she not been married to Rhys, she was afraid she would and could fall quite hard for this scruffy faced, walking history figure. Grinning warmly she laughed, "Oi! So, you should Sir Robert! Shall I knight thee?"
She picked up a letter opener from her desk and playfully touched each if his shoulders with it. "I, Lady Gwyneth, invested with all the powers of Torchwood Three and his lordship, Captain Jack Harkness, do solemnly bestow on this loyal subject, Sir Robert, Earl of Huntington, Lord of Locksley, Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest," She took a symbolic deep breath in feigned exhaustion, suppressing a giggle, "The title of , ‘Sir Robert, Fact Checker of Torchwood Three.’ Use your powers for good and not for evil, Sir Robert and may the force be with you!"
"Milady," He snickered as he thanked her and kissed her hand causing them both to roar with laugher.
Leaning from his perch on the top of the stairs, Jack yelled, "Hey! No knighting or hand kissing unless I’m involved or at least have a good place to watch!" His wide grin seemed to say, ‘I wanna play too!’
"Aye Captain!" Gwen gave a mock salute to Jack who had cleared the stairs to stand beside Robin with amazing speed.
He absently rubbed her shoulder "So, Lady Gwyneth, what else are you up to besides handing out titles of nobility and getting your hand kissed?"
"Jealous?" She crowed, looking sideways and winking at Robin.
"Only if I don’t get to watch or participate," He returned with a coy grin.
Gwen sobered slightly before carrying on, "Robin and I were sortin’ out what happened to them in history, and what they could do to correct it. I downloaded as much historical data as I could about the area we found them in and have been monitoring it for further rift activity."
"And?" Jack shot an eyebrow up.
"So far nothing," She sighed, "I have also been going over Torchwood records for any documentation of rift activity in Sherwood Forest and came up empty handed."
Gwen looked away from her screen to Jack who was scratching his head, squinting his eyes in thought, "Something just doesn’t feel right. Why did they come through here, in Cardiff, over 200 kilometres from Sherwood Forest? Something extended the rift temporarily. We know that from our monitors and only a manipulator like ours can do that."
"You’re thinking rift flotsam?" Gwen brightened at Jack, her large eyes echoed his raised eyebrows.
"Yup!"
Robin gently cleared his throat, "If I may ask, what is ‘rift flotsam’?"
Gwen sheepishly grinned at Robin realizing his naïveté with rift mechanics. "Oh sorry, Robin-we know the rift takes living things and people and brings them to other places but it also does the same thing with inanimate objects as well."
"Like driftwood and garbage from other lands washing up on seashore?" Robin added beginning to grasp the concept.
"Exactly." Jack smiled and leaned in towards the clever archer and caught a whiff of his cologne, "I knew you were quick but, wow!"
"Anyways," Gwen said breaking the awkward tension of Jack getting too friendly with Robin again. "Some alien rift device could have landed in 12th century Cardiff, got transported to Sherwood Forest somehow and activated when you and Much passed close to it or touched it. It’s the only way to explain how you ended up here. The device must have been tuned to transport whatever it picked up back to its origin point, here in this time, in Cardiff."
"What would such a device look like?" Robin inquired cautiously.
"It could be anything." Jack said raising his eyebrow in wonder again. "A box, or a type of gun, or even-"
"A Pendant," Robin said forlornly.
Jack gave Robin a quizzical look as he watched the archer’s face turn ashen. "What did it look like?"
Robin described the strange stone, how they had acquired it, and how Much had referred to it as ‘enchanted.’
"Well it was in a way," Jack explained. "It was a vortex manipulator. It acted as a time gateway that reset itself back to the time and place it came from. Landing in Cardiff and being exposed to the unstable rift must have thrown it off. It sent the next person to touch it back to where it came from but in the wrong time."
"Could it be from your century, Jack?" Gwen was growing concerned at the increasingly distressed look Robin was showing.
Jack held up the advanced but bulky device on his wrist. "Not anything that fancy. I heard they were working to develop a failsafe circuit at the Time Agency that restored a VM to its previous location if the wearer lost it. After a few mishaps, it seemed like a good idea. They thought it would come in real handy after orgies."
Gwen rolled her eyes, "This had to be an improved model then."
"Apparently not so improved, if it was so sensitive, it let itself get scrambled by a time/space rift and sent it’s user to the wrong century by mistake." Jack covered his mouth, "RRREEECAAALLL! Bet the old ‘TA’ got a lot of complaints on that one."
Robin had walked away from the others and was leaning against the steps of the walkway. His sullen look caused Gwen to excuse herself from Jack and she went to him. Jack watched on admiringly as she did what he hired her for. If he was the brains of Torchwood Three, Martha the spirit, Ianto and Mickey the strength, Gwen was the heart. She was the one that made it all matter. He wondered what would have happened if she was lost instead of Tosh or Owen; the Torchwood he knew might not have made it. Torchwood 3 would have gone on. As he already knew, teams could be rebuilt and new people recruited, but the magic would be missing and he would have wanted no part of it.
"Talk to me Robin," Gwen said coaxingly, rubbing his shoulder.
Robin turned to her with tears running down his boyish face, fixing his gaze across the way to Much and Martha who were laughing and busying themselves in the infirmary. "I did this."
"Did what Robin?" Gwen already knew the answer but hearing him say it was tearing out her heart.
"I brought us here. Got us lost in time, and now we might never go home." He took a deep breath, wiped his face with the back of his hand and looked remorsefully at his friend. He admired the easy way Much lived in the moment, always fussing, but making the best of a less than ideal life. He wanted to run to him, get on his knees and beg him for forgiveness. He was worthless as a friend, to a man that saw him as a god, and it hurt his soul.
Gwen put her hand on Robin’s shoulder. "There now, you didn’t know. How could you know?"
"But I should have known! He trusted me and his safety was my responsibility!" Robin glared angrily at Gwen then turned and stormed back to the guest quarters.
Gwen shot Robin a look of confusion and hurt, then looked at Jack. He gave her a sympathetic look, put his hands in his pockets and walked back toward the office. Gwen turned sadly back to her console. She looked back towards Jack who was staring down at her with the same hopeless look on his face, his hand to the back of his neck. She smiled the best gap-toothed grin she could muster and he returned it with a polite nod, then business as usual. She looked at her red phone beside the keyboard. She found herself flipping and dialling before she even realized.
"Hullo you big idiot," she smiled, sounding as convincingly happy as possible.
The voice on the other end, so warm in her ear, piped back, "Oi! Don’t you be callin’ now missy! My lovely wife might be home from saving the world any minute!"
"Oi! I see you have more than one then," she grinned, still glancing up at Jack, who had his back turned to the window now.
"Oh trust me, the one is quite a hand full," Rhys returned cheekily. "When you comin’ home?"
She had planned on staying longer but she desperately needed to get away. "As soon as I can get out the door."
"Dinner’s waiting for ya."
"And wine?" She asked hopefully.
"A nice merlot, open and breathing, with your name on it," came the comforting words.
"Then I’ll be right there." She hung up musing about the day. She hoped he was wearing an absorbent shirt as it was going to be another one of those nights.
Next Week....
Chapter 6: Paper Targets!