Infiltrator - Part Two
Title: Infiltrator - Part Two.
Author: magicom
Rating: Maybe PG at the worst.
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or any of its characters. No money being made.
Paring/Characters: Jack, Ianto, (Jack/Ianto), Gwen, Doctor Rupesh Patanjali, Johnson (well, off-screen).
Spoilers: Takes into consideration all of S1, S2 and Day One of CoE.
Summary: As a whole: He's a doctor... they need a doctor. What if the 456 fuckery didn't happen and Torchwood actually did recruit Rupesh, who was trying to get the gig to spy on them for Johnson, as discussed in Day One? This part: Shooting lessons and lies.
Warnings: None to speak of.
Notes: Takes place starting just before and during CoE: Day One and goes AU from there onwards.
2
Rupesh arrived at the tourist office entrance shortly before nine in the morning, as Gwen had instructed him to do. He’d exited that way the night before, but he hadn’t entered that way. Once he was inside the cramped room, he wasn’t sure how to get the wall to open from this side. He glanced around for a moment, then began searching the wall itself for some kind of hidden switch.
He heard a rustling sound behind him and turned around to see Jones emerge from behind a beaded curtain with a cup of coffee in his hand. Dressed in another immaculate three piece suit, he hit a button on the back of the desk that seemed obvious to Rupesh in retrospect, and made a sweeping gesture for Rupesh to go ahead into the now-open secret passageway.
Jones followed, silently sipping his coffee as they walked down the hallway. Rupesh glanced at him a couple of times, but he seemed to feel no pressure to make small talk. Rupesh, on the other hand, was supposed to be gathering intelligence about these people and what they did. He wasn’t going to learn anything about Jones by watching him drink coffee in a lift.
“Quiet morning so far?” he asked.
“Nobody’s been mauled by anything yet,” Jones answered mildly, following the statement with a casual sip of coffee.
Rupesh looked at him for a moment. “What happened in the church yesterday,” he said slowly, “is that normal around here?”
Jones shrugged. “If you ever find you can define what qualifies as ‘normal’ around here, feel free to enlighten us,” he suggested.
At that point, the cog door rolled open and they stepped into the Hub. Jones strode away, towards Harkness’ office. Rupesh was unsure as to whether he should follow. He decided to go to his own desk and explore the computer system. Maybe he could find some useful information in their files.
Before long, Jones emerged from Harkness’ office, only to disappear through another door that Rupesh recalled being told led down to the archives when Gwen gave him his tour. Gwen arrived shortly after that, flashing him a bright smile and a cheerful ‘good morning’ before going to her desk. The next thing he knew, Harkness was bounding down from his office, passing Rupesh’s station with a curt “With me,” not waiting to see if Rupesh got up to follow. Of course Rupesh did.
Harkness led him down into the Hub’s lower levels, into an area he remembered sighting briefly on the previous day’s tour. It was a shooting range. Paper targets were set up at different distances in the tunnel-like room and an array of firearms was laid out on a table.
“Ever fired a gun before?” Harkness asked him, loading a weapon with practiced ease, not even looking at what his hands were doing.
“No,” Rupesh lied.
Harkness handed him the gun. It was a semiautomatic with ‘Torchwood’ inscribed on the side of the barrel. It was clearly the standard issue weapon around here, but didn’t resemble the strange gun Jones had been holding the previous afternoon.
He must have had a fairly puzzled expression on his face, because Harkness raised an eyebrow at him.
“Trying to figure out which end to hold?” he asked.
Rupesh looked over at him, startled out of his thoughts. “Oh… no. I was just… Mister Jones had a gun in the church and it just… didn’t look like this.”
Harkness nodded. “Mister Jones,” he explained, clearly amused by Rupesh’s formality, “had a stun gun in the church.”
A stun gun? Rupesh thought. He frowned. “You mean that… thing… it isn’t dead?”
Harkness was watching him carefully then. “No.”
“Oh,” Rupesh managed, realizing his reaction to all this counted for… something. It was a test of his character, perhaps.
“Shoot the targets,” Harkness instructed, reminding him why they were actually there.
“Right,” Rupesh said. He started to line up the shot the way Johnson had showed him, then remembered he wasn’t supposed to know how to fire a gun. He missed the closest target on purpose, hoping he hadn’t given himself away.
Harkness didn’t say anything right away. He seemed to be assessing Rupesh in more ways than one.
“Your stance isn’t bad,” he remarked. “Your grip is good.” He glanced at the targets. “All things considered, your aim is a lot more crap than it should be.”
Rupesh shrugged. “You can only go so far with what you see on the telly,” he pointed out, as though he was imitating his favourite programme and not the training he’d been given.
Harkness moved over towards him and gestured for him to resume his stance. The captain then stood close - much closer than Rupesh was strictly comfortable with - and adjusted Rupesh’s grip slightly, then squared the doctor’s hips to the target, a hand on each side of his pelvis. When Harkness spoke to give him instructions, it was right in Rupesh’s ear. He’d assumed that Harkness was pretending to be gay when he and Jones had come to the hospital posing as partners, but by that point he wasn’t so sure. He found it immensely distracting and didn’t have to try to miss the target. He squirmed out of Harkness’ grip, his face flushing slightly.
“Look, um, I’d like to just practice on my own, if you don’t mind,” he said, a little flustered.
Harkness looked at him sceptically. “You’ve had five minutes of training.”
“Well, I… prefer the kind of hands-on training that involves lots of practice and little to no inappropriate touching,” Rupesh informed him. “If you don’t mind.”
Jack smirked and made a sweeping gesture towards the targets. “I’ll be upstairs if you need something,” he said, leaving the room.
Rupesh waited until he left, then decided he did, in fact, need to get in some practice. It had been months since he’d trained with Johnson and he might really need to defend himself in this job. The monster from the previous day was all the evidence he needed of that.
An hour or so later, Rupesh put the gun down on the table and headed back upstairs himself. He’d barely put his foot on the top step when Jones appeared, asking him to give him a hand in the cells. Back down into the depths of the underground base they went. The creature from the previous day was awake and Rupesh could hear it snarl at them as they passed its cell door. Jones didn’t spare it so much as a glance, so Rupesh attempted to do the same.
Jones opened one of the cell doors and gestured for Rupesh to precede him inside. Rupesh did so. By the time he stopped gawking at the inside of the cell long enough to notice that Harkness was standing beyond the glass at the far end, Jones was already shutting the door behind him. Instinctively, he rushed back to the door and tried it first, but it was locked. He moved back to the glass and looked at Harkness, who had yet to say anything.
“What is this?” Rupesh demanded a little shakily. “What are you doing?”
Jones joined Harkness on the other side of the glass, standing shoulder to shoulder as they had the day he’d met them. Rupesh looked from one to the other, a small knot of panic beginning to form in his stomach.
“I don’t have a lot of patience for people who lie to me,” Harkness finally said.
“What?” Rupesh said weakly.
“You’ve fired a gun before,” Harkness told him. He raised his eyebrows at Rupesh expectantly. “We were watching,” he clarified.
Rupesh was getting that sinking feeling. His mind reeled, trying to think of a reasonable explanation.
“I was on holiday in America last year,” he told them. “I went to a shooting range. We got a free lesson and then we got to just… try it.”
Harkness was clearly unconvinced. “And you would lie about something like that… why?”
“I was just on holiday!” Rupesh protested. “I didn’t think it counted. We were… we were playing! It wasn’t like it was real! I mean, it was real, we used live ammunition, but… it was just one afternoon on holiday.”
Harkness and Jones exchanged a look.
“I swear!” Rupesh insisted.
Harkness looked at him for a long moment then gave Jones a nod. Jones moved off and, a few moments later, the door behind Rupesh opened.
“Hey,” Harkness said sharply as Rupesh turned to leave the cell, causing Rupesh to stop and look at him warily. “If I find out you’re hiding things from me again, you’re done here.”
Rupesh had some idea what ‘done here’ entailed without being told. He nodded numbly and walked out of the cell. Jones closed the door after him and gestured for Rupesh to go back up the stairs.
_____
Part One -- Part Three
Would love to hear what you think!