Counting the Days Chapter 6
Fifteen days since Jack left
Ianto had no patience for the budget that morning. Instead, he dragged the pile of UNIT communications, inter-agency request forms and reports from various Torchwood contacts up onto the desk and organized them in order of importance. He spent the morning trying to make a dent in the red tape and fielding calls from the Cardiff police, who’d gotten wind of the exploding Anubian incident from the day before and wanted to know who was supposed to clean up the blue goop that covered half a residential street.
When his mobile rang again, Ianto allowed himself a quick fantasy of strangling the public relations liaison before answering it. “We’ll pay for the clean-up but we’re not doing it ourselves, just send the bill,” he said as calmly as possible.
“Where’s Captain Harkness?” a strange voice asked.
Ianto banged his knee on the inside of the desk from jerking in surprise, and paused for a moment so as not to swear into the mobile. “He’s on temporary leave. I’m Ianto Jones, can I help you?”
“Well… I’m only meant to talk to Captain Harkness.”
The speaker sounded young, male, and unsure. Ianto forced himself to calm down. “I understand. If there is an emergency, however, I’m sure Captain Harkness would forgive you for speaking to me.”
“It’s not him I’m worried about gettin’ mad,” the boy said quietly. “But we do need help. Can you come?”
“Just tell me where you are.”
A few minutes later, Ianto emerged from the office and walked to Gwen’s workstation. He had to wave to get her attention so she would take off the mufflers she’d snagged from the gun range in a moment of inspiration against the Branx.
“Got a call-out for you.” He gave her the preliminary report he’d filled out based on the boy’s description, and she skimmed it quickly.
“Alright, I’ll go right now.” She caught his arm before he could head back to the office. “You should come too. You haven’t been in the field in days.”
Ianto hesitated, but thought about the nervous boy who’d called him and gave in.
A half hour later, they pulled up to the address the caller had supplied. It was an old, decrepit flat building on a street full of old, decrepit flat buildings, spaced out by alleys filled with dumpsters and discarded rubbish.
Exchanging a glance, Ianto and Gwen left the Range Rover and headed inside the building. Just as he’d promised, the caller was waiting in the lobby, standing a good distance from the door. When they got near enough to see him in the gloom of the room, they saw why: he was roughly the height and shape of any human teenager, but he had cheekbones that look as though they could literally cut, his skin was a dark green and slick like an amphibian’s, and he squinted until they moved away from the light.
“Sorry to call you out,” he said. “We’re usually pretty self-sufficient, but… I don’t know how to deal with this.” Even with his exotic looks, Ianto could see that he felt ashamed.
“It’s not unusual at all,” Gwen said compassionately. “Can we see her?”
The alien led them deeper into the building, the only light from mostly-boarded up windows and the occasional bare bulb. On the way, he explained that his name was unpronounceable, but suggested they call him Jeff. At the center of the building, in a room that was nearly dark, a few other green teenagers congregated around a cot on the floor. When they stepped inside, a few of the aliens slipped out a back door, but two who stayed looked at Ianto and Gwen with hopeful, yet fearful expressions.
Bundled in blankets on the thin mattress was a girl who looked about Jeff’s age. From what Ianto could see in the shadowy room, her facial features backed up Jeff’s story that she was his sister, but her skin was dry and pale. She was shivering under the blankets.
“What did you say she took?” Gwen asked Jeff quietly.
“I don’t know,” the boy answered, eyes locked on his sister. “Something a blowfish gave her… she knows better, really, but it’s been hard lately, what with the trade route shutting down… she just wanted quiet.”
“What do you mean?”
Ianto listened to Gwen questioning Jeff while he knelt beside the cot. He tugged the afflicted girl’s wrist out from her cocoon and felt for a pulse; he was no doctor, but it seemed fast.
“Humans are too loud,” Jeff was explaining. “We can hear, not your thoughts, exactly, but the sound of your minds working. It wasn’t like this on our own planet. Most of the others were born here, but my sister and I came through the Rift a few cycles ago.”
“And how have you been getting on until now?”
“Captain Harkness brought us medicine. But a few months ago, the supply route changed; the ships that sold him the medicine stopped traveling through this system. It’s been hard, but we were handling it. I don’t know what I’ll do if I lose her!”
Ianto turned around and saw Jeff sobbing into Gwen’s shoulder. She gave him an ‘out of my depth’, wide-eyed look. The other aliens who sat by the girl’s bedside watched Ianto silently, and he felt the weight of their expectations settle on his shoulders.
He pulled out his mobile and nodded to Gwen that he needed to make a call. Ignoring her confusion, he stepped into the hallway and dialed Archie.
A few minutes later, went back inside, fuming. “Gwen, I have to go back to the Hub.”
“What?” she muttered, casting a dismayed look at the aliens, who were now sitting in a ring on the floor around their friend. “We can’t leave them!”
“You’re staying here. I’ll send someone over to help you, be ready to show them in.”
“Ianto, tell me what’s going on!” Gwen demanded. “You’re being more cagey than Jack!”
A mention of their missing leader was exactly what Ianto didn’t need at the moment. “Maybe we both have a good reason for not blabbing all over the place,” he snapped. “Just wait here, Gwen.” He strode out, ignoring the fiery glare he could feel hitting his back.
On the drive back to the Hub, he forced himself to drive the speed limit and waited until he’d calmed down slightly to call Owen. “Where are you and Tosh?” he asked bluntly once the call was picked up.
“Getting lunch.”
“And both of you are needed for that?”
“What’s got your knickers in a twist, Teaboy?” Owen asked acerbically.
“You left the Hub unguarded!” Ianto accused. “Anything could happen with the Rift and we’d be blind-sided!”
“Like we never leave the Hub empty? Oh wait, I forgot, you and your boyfriend practically live there.”
“Get back to work, Owen,” Ianto said in his most threatening voice, and Owen was silent until Ianto hung up.
When he reached the Hub, Ianto did a lightning-fast check of the security system, fighting the warring emotions in his chest when it turned up blank. He hurried to the service entrance and unlocked the sliding door. When he opened it, Archie’s ruddy, scowling face was there to meet him. “And what sort of time do you call this, Jones?”
“I’m sorry, I was in the field. The Branx are this way.” He led the sole member of Torchwood Glasgow through the dark tunnels that he’d long since memorized until they reached the vaults. “They don’t speak English,” Ianto shouted to be heard over the elephantine noises. “We have a translator-”
“Oi, shut up!” Archie roared.
Instantly, there was silence. Ianto’s ears rang from the force of the shout, and he looked at the five and a half foot man with astonishment. Archie looked smug.
“Now, tell them I’ve got a contract with a junker who’ll get them a car a week.”
Once the information was relayed, the Branx were all too happy to leave Torchwood, which one of them claimed was too chaotic. Ianto was utterly speechless at the accusation from the source of a week’s worth of headaches, but said nothing until they were safely waiting in the back of the moving van Archie seemed to own.
Ianto and Tosh had stored the various items Archie had requested in one of the archive rooms near the service entrance, and it only took a few minutes for Ianto and Archie to shift everything. Ianto stopped the other man when he was about to leave.
“There’s something else.”
~~~~~
Gwen was ready to murder Ianto when she returned to the Hub, demanding to know why she’d had to leave the alien siblings in Archie’s care. Once he explained that Archie had colleagues in Glasgow who could take care of the girl, she started to forgive him. He didn’t mention that those colleagues were aliens themselves, or that they lived on Torchwood’s land in the middle of Scotland.
“I’m sorry for being short and ordering you about,” he told her, honestly ashamed. “I was angry at Owen and Tosh, but that wasn’t your fault.”
“We’re all a bit tense,” she said, and patted his arm. “And you seem more stressed than the rest of us. What’s wrong, Ianto? Tell me,” she prodded him gently.
“It’s just… all this,” he gestured at the paperwork. “I’m really starting to understand why Jack hated it so much.”
“Don’t say that,” Gwen whispered. He looked at her curiously, and she stared at him. “You said ‘hated’. Past tense.”
“Well, I…” Ianto swallowed and stared at the desk- Jack’s desk- in front of him.
Gwen’s arms came around his head. “We all miss him, Ianto. But you can’t give up hope. He’ll come back,” she said, quiet but sure, and Ianto nodded.
“We’ll be here when he does,” he replied.
She smiled and gave him a last squeeze before letting go. “I’ll start my report, I know you care about those,” she teased, and he even smiled.
Tosh and Owen returned with a pair of Weevils an hour later, but Ianto ignored them. He tied up the last few loose ends to cover Archie’s trail, filed the reports on the Branx in the Torchwood database and got back to work on his liaison duties. When the others left for the night, he didn’t say goodbye, but kept working.
It was a long time before he shut down the Hub lights, checked the Rift predictor and the Hub security for the last time, and descended into Jack’s room to sleep.
Chapter 7