Fic: Jack Harkness and the Chocolate Factory (2/2)
Title: Jack Harkness and the Chocolate Factory (2/2)
Author: nancybrown
Prompt: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Characters/Pairing(s): Team Torchwood, canon pairings past and present
Rating: R
Warnings: Character death, Owen dialogue, nudity, potential weight gain
Wordcount: 13,000 (7,000 this part)
Spoilers: Up through "Something Borrowed," mention of background info from CoE. Timeline handwaving regarding dates, much like on the series. My advice is to let it go.
Beta: 51stcenturyfox kicked this puppy into shape and has my deepest thanks
Disclaimer: Auntie Beeb and the Dahl estate own them all.
Summary: Little orange aliens, a man in a purple coat and top hat, and five naughty little children, er, Torchwood operatives. What could possibly go wrong? Written for the Reel_Torchwood challenge.
Part One
***
Part Two
***
"Thank you, no," Ianto said to the little orange alien. Since his mobile had cut off, and no amount of effort made it work again, a pile of tiny aliens had been offering him sweets in the cell where he was being kept. Having rejected the chocolate-covered biscuits and the tiramisu-flavoured petit-fours, he now waved away something spongy with sprinkles and, he suspected, currants.
It was very strange.
Ianto was used to strange. He'd been working for Torchwood for almost four years, met dozens of aliens, loved a woman who'd been converted to an alien species, and was now dating a man whose fond reminiscences often included phrases like, "But they were sentient chickens!" Strange was something Ianto nibbled on with coffee every morning. Still, he was having trouble wrapping his head around the idea of pint-sized orange monsters serving him platefuls of Turkish Delight, bon-bons, and marshmallow crèmes.
"No, really, I'm full." His stomach gurgled, putting the lie to his words, but he wasn't accepting anything from his captors. It could be drugged. It could be made of ground-up baby aliens. It could have marzipan. Anyway, the smell of sticky sweets permeated the air, and while it had been pleasant at first, now the mere thought of eating sugar made him feel ill.
He was permitted to get to his feet and pace the two metres square of his clean, spare cell. Fruit-printed wallpaper made the room weirdly cheerful, but he refused to follow the little aliens' example and lick the pictures. He'd made that mistake once at that Green Day concert with Daf when he was seventeen. Never again.
The door had a knob, and the knob was locked. The aliens zoomed in and out via what looked like a cat door, far too small for Ianto to fit even if he did somehow drop ten pounds while imprisoned in the bowels of a candy factory. He and Jack had been eating out a lot lately, and he'd been musing that a gym membership would do them both some good. However, since Jack had gotten banned from over half the gyms in the city, finding one was a problem. It didn't help matters that whenever he'd brought the idea up, Jack immediately suggested much more entertaining ways to work up a sweat. At some point, Ianto was going to create a chart of calories burned per activity. No doubt Jack would take it as an opportunity to time how fast they could check items off the list. And so it went.
An orange alien offered him a plate of jelly babies.
Ianto looked at the doorknob again. "Could I please have a lollipop?"
***
Around them, the air was filled with cloying, sweet smells of chocolates and candied fruits and rich caramel. Gwen privately wondered if she was gaining weight just breathing in the calorie-dense air.
They exited the giant room into a hallway with tightly-closed doors stretching down to an elevator at the end. Gwen watched the holographic man fiddle in his pockets for holographic keys, and then stick one into the lock of the first door. "Here we go!"
If the key was imaginary, then the door wasn't really locked. She stepped behind the others and tried a doorknob behind her. Locked. Perhaps certain doors were locked except for the ones he wanted them to go into, or whoever was really in charge was switching an electronic lock somewhere else in the building. She'd kept her eyes open for cameras, but saw nothing but the little orange aliens watching her. Without another good option, she followed Jack and the rest into the room with the hologram.
"The inventing room!" exclaimed the hologram perkily. In the book, Wonka had been overly cheerful, mischievously so, with a little goatee making him look like Pan causing havoc. He was a trickster and a devil, she'd learned as she'd grown up, but a benevolent one. This Wonka sulked a lot.
"What do you invent?" Gwen asked him, as Tosh grew wide-eyed at the array of alien candy-making machines.
"New delicacies, madam. Something to tempt every palate." He sidled over to her. "And I see you are no stranger to temptation."
Her eyes flicked to Owen and Jack too quickly, but Gwen had learned much at her Gran's knee, and knew how to poke right back. "Are you calling me fat?"
"What?" She was satisfied with the expression of horror that covered the hologram's face. "No, no, my dear lady, I would never … "
"You are. You're calling me fat." She stalked over to him, waving carefully behind herself to the others to indicate that now was a good time to search the room while she had their host's attention. "I'll have you know these are my skinny trousers. They make my bum look tiny."
"Yes, of course they do!" said the hologram, eyes fearful of her wrath. This was … kind of fun. "They make it look very small."
"Oh!" she said, throwing herself into the role. Gran would be proud. "So you're saying my bum just looks small, but is actually huge, are you?"
"I … I … " The hologram was utterly terrified now. Then it glanced over her shoulder. "What are you doing?" he said, and Gwen turned.
Tosh had popped the cover off one of the machines and was inspecting it while Jack and Owen covered her. Good girl.
"Never mind her," Gwen said, "I'm sure she has a perfectly tiny bottom."
The hologram walked right through Gwen. She thought she should feel something, anything, but it was just light. Suddenly three little orange aliens piled one on top of the others' shoulders, and a fourth jumped atop them, ending up at eye height with Gwen.
She felt her mouth make a round little "O" of surprise. This was a mistake. The top alien flung a piece of candy into her mouth, and before she could spit it out, Gwen felt the sugar melt on her tongue, and her body changed.
As the buttons began popping from her blouse, Gwen swore. From her peripheral vision, she could already see her hands turning violet. It didn't hurt, not really, except for the pressure of her clothes against her expanding skin, but the clothes weren't going to last and with a sharp RIIIIIIIIIIIIP, her skinny trousers were no more.
Jack had his gun out again, but this time he'd picked up one of the orange aliens by the scruff of the neck. "You're real, at least. Put her back NOW!"
Tosh just stared. Owen had pulled out his medkit, but what could he do? Gwen felt tears prickling at her eyes; this was too close to her bad dreams of being naked at school. Tosh's paralysis broke, and she came to Gwen's side as Gwen finished puffing up into a blue ball.
"She'll be fine," said the hologram. "A little less concerned with her bum, now, I think."
"I mean it," Jack said. "I've had enough of this."
"Jack," Tosh said in a quiet voice as she shielded Gwen. "Please give me your coat."
"It won't fit," Gwen said.
"It'll help," said Tosh, as Jack shrugged out of the greatcoat and passed it to her. Gwen clutched the fabric to herself, and suddenly, she felt less exposed. Safer. She turned to look at her purplish hand, but her fingers hadn't plumped up like sausages as she'd feared. Her wedding ring was still where it belonged.
Gwen's breath calmed now that the growing had stopped. Working at Torchwood meant you had to be okay with the occasional random nudity in front of your coworkers. Modesty had taken the backseat more than once when they'd all been splattered with corrosive alien guts and needed to hit the showers sooner rather than later. This wasn't much different, except that none of the men were claiming to be cold. She managed a grim smile.
"We're leaving," said Jack. "Come on."
"You're not. You can't cure Ms. Cooper by yourselves, and we still have your other colleague."
Owen said, "You're implying you can cure her."
"We can. We will. But we need your continued cooperation." The hologram held out his hand to Gwen. She held the coat against her more tightly, glanced at the others, and then touched his hand. The world went soft around her, and then she was in a garishly-wallpapered room about two metres to a side.
A little orange alien held up a stick of what looked like gum and made a chirping noise. Gwen bent over with difficulty and took the gum, chewing it irritably. She'd really liked those trousers.
***
Jack had already lost what little patience he had with the games being played. He held onto the little alien. "We get it. We go into different rooms and get picked off one by one. Not interested."
"Think of it like the lottery," said the hologram. "If you don't play, you'll never win."
"We're not playing!" he shouted. At the moment, he wanted to shoot something or someone. Sitting at the edges of the room, he'd seen large vats labeled "Butterscotch" and "Buttergin," and these had only served to remind him that he wanted a drink, too, and that never ended well. His nerves were already on edge, worrying and not wanting to admit he was worrying about what was happening to Ianto and now Gwen while he was being led by the nose through a stupid game. Jack had spent enough time imprisoned by various madmen (and madwomen) for his imagination to provide any number of horrors the two of them might be undergoing at the hands of whoever was behind this.
The hologram stared mildly back at him. For all it had cowered, or pretended to cower, at Gwen's faked rage earlier, the image barely registered Jack's honest anger.
"Are we ready to continue?"
"Yeah," said Owen. "We're ready." Jack stood there fuming for another moment, and then dropped the alien to the ground where it scurried off with its friends.
"I suppose you don't want to hear this song, either."
"We really don't."
"Are you sure? As 'bum' and 'gum' rhyme, the rewrite is practically seamless." The hologram smiled hopefully, but wilted at Jack's glare.
Owen scowled and hit the side of his head. "Fucking earworm," he muttered.
The hologram led them back out into the hallway, where the doors were arranged differently from when they'd come in. Tosh and Owen looked confused, and the hologram seemed disappointed that Jack didn't share the confusion. He'd once found the swimming pool on the TARDIS and gone skinny-dipping with Rose. Nothing about extra-dimensional space fazed him. Jack breathed as the memory calmed him; he and people he cared about had been in worse places than this.
The hologram opened another door. Bottles of fizzy soda stood temptingly on a table. Jack could just make out the words "Bubble Shock!" on the label.
"Drink?" asked the hologram.
"No, thanks."
"It'll make you fly."
Owen said, "It'll make us mind-controlled zombies."
"Not me," Tosh said. "Can't stand the taste."
The hologram closed the door again and led them to the elevator. Sure enough, it was made of glass. "Step aboard!" said the hologram gleefully.
Tosh asked, "How does your projector keep going without losing continuity between rooms?"
"Magic."
Owen rolled his eyes while Tosh grumbled. Jack inspected the buttons. He looked for anything labeled "Prison level," "Evil overlord," or "Out" but nothing appeared.
"Where shall we go?" asked the hologram happily.
Tosh said, "Aren't we supposed to go to the Nut Room next? One of us turns out to be a bad nut?" Her frown turned into a pout. "That'd be me, I guess. I thought Gwen would be Veruca."
The hologram pressed a button. The elevator dropped suddenly and then leaned sharply to the right.
"'Princess'?" Owen said.
Tosh looked at Jack. "It was your fault."
"Mine?"
"You brought Gwen on right after we lost Suzie."
"We needed someone." His gut had told him that someone was Gwen, and except for a misstep here and there, he'd been proven right about her.
"Point of notice," Owen said. "We didn't, actually. We were in fact over headcount because someone's libido was doing the hiring again, and that was conveniently just a few months before Suzie started her killing spree."
"I decide what the headcount is. We were more efficient with five people."
"I'm not saying we weren't," said Owen. "And I think Gwen was a good addition to the team. All I ask is that when I shrug off this immortal coil, you don't hire my replacement with your dick."
"Martha already turned down your job." Besides, Martha wouldn't have him, despite the pleasant banter they shared, and Jack found himself more wistful than anything else. He didn't make a habit of going where he wasn't wanted, not with so many other willing options out there, and he'd always figured if his flirting ever bothered the people being flirted with, they'd tell him to stop one way or another. Owen had, telling him point blank on his first day to quit it, and Jack had dropped the subject. Tosh, Suzie and Gwen had never said a word or shown the least sign in body language of discomfort and if they had, he'd have stopped immediately with them, too. (Ianto had used the word "harassment" more than once, but he'd also mouthed it with his hands fumbling Jack's flies open, so less of an issue there.) The flirting was separate from the job, made the job more fun to have that layer of innuendo coating everything like crushed almonds and caramel.
Okay, so he was getting hungry around all this candy.
Tosh said, "You'd do the same thing with Martha that you did with Gwen, wouldn't you?"
"And that is?"
"Bring on someone new to replace someone we've lost and then tell the rest of us we're not as good as she is."
"That's not what happened."
Tosh said, "Don't get me wrong. Suzie was a murderer, and I'm not sorry to see the back of her. But she never stood there in front of the rest of us and accused us of forgetting what it was like to be human. We'd all been working for Torchwood for years, and Gwen came in, barely knowing us or what we did or how much we'd all already sacrificed to do our job, and she called us heartless. And you let her. You agreed with her. Owen's brought all of us back from the brink of death any number of times. Ianto takes care of everyone like our mum, every single day. You've died for us. I … " She flushed, and Jack reached out to her, touching her face.
"And you're so full of love sometimes it feels like you could burst," he said, because he knew his Toshiko well. She turned away, didn't meet his eyes and definitely didn't look at Owen. Kids.
"It hurt," she said. "You called her the heart of the team, Jack. Made her special. But we're all the heart. Otherwise what's the point?"
He could tell her the point was that he himself sometimes forgot about how to be human, properly human, and needed the occasional boot in his backside to get there, that he'd hired each of them in turn as physical reminders and Gwen had only taken her turn in the rota. If she was more verbal about it than the others, well, Jack had understood even back then that Tosh and Ianto communicated so much better with quiet, loving actions, just as he knew Owen was the piece of his humanity who shouted at Death and spit in His eye every time. Jack needed them all each day to remind him how to be real, so he didn't forget. It was so easy to forget.
But Tosh didn't need to hear any of that now, not lost as she was in her own head. Jack suspected she'd revisited some of the old resentments (and accompanying guilt at feeling them) with the recent wedding, and needed to let it all out so she could finally let it go.
"Anyway," Tosh said, catching her breath. "It's over. I like Gwen. I do. Just … Promise me that when it's time for you to hire my replacement, that you won't stand there and let him tell everyone what a terrible job I did when it was my turn."
So much he wanted to say to her, starting with the fact that she was irreplaceable as far as he was concerned. That they all were. "Never gonna happen. I promise."
The elevator stopped, and while Owen affected not to notice the tears Tosh was trying not to spill, Jack drew her into a quick hug. He felt Tosh smile against his throat before she pulled away and said, "Let's go find some nuts."
***
Gwen had had enough of this. As a wee alien tried to present her with yet another chocolate crème, she grabbed it by the neck and brought it to her eye level. "Now listen to me, you little monster! Let me out of here right now or I'll pop off your head!"
"Gwen?" came Ianto's voice from outside the door.
"Ianto! Are you all right?"
"Yeah. You?"
"I'll be okay. Where are you?"
She heard a sharp click, and the door opened. Ianto held a lollipop in one hand. The little aliens ran for his shins, and he kicked them absently. He showed her the lolly. "The stick is the perfect size to pick locks like this."
"It is?"
"My sister used to lock me out of my room. I had to learn how to get back in." His eyes took in her form. "Are you … all right?"
Gwen glanced down. The blue was fading and the puffiness was gone, thanks to the chewing gum cure. This left her completely normal. Also naked except for Jack's greatcoat wrapped around her. "Oh God. There really is a good explanation for this. I swear."
"I'm sure there is," he said, offering her a hand as they left her cell. "All I ask is that I get to be in the room when you give that explanation to Rhys."
***
The room that opened before them was not filled with squirrels as Owen had expected, but with geese. His jaw dropped.
"I knew it! This isn't the book version. This is that fucking awful movie."
"I liked the movie," Tosh said. She would.
The fucking hologram said, "Welcome! Here we meet the geese … "
"… That lay the golden fucking eggs," Owen said. "We get it."
If looks could kill, the fucking hologram would have slain them all dead by now. Instead, Owen didn't even get a nice tingly feeling. Pity.
Tosh said, "So instead of a bad nut, someone's got to be a bad egg."
Jack asked, "Are they going to have to do a song and dance?" This being Jack, he sounded intrigued.
"You know," said Owen. "Most blokes grow up wanting to be Sid Vicious or Roger Waters. You wanted to be Judy Garland."
"I remind you, I grew up a long time from now."
"Yeah yeah." Owen looked at the fucking hologram. "Singing? Yes or no?" And oh God, there was the stupid fucking Oompa Loompa song in his head again. He was going to have to kick it out once and for all.
"It's not required," said the fucking hologram.
"Good." Owen clapped his hands together and stepped down onto the platform with the fucking geese.
"Owen?" Tosh said. "What are you doing?"
"I've seen this bit. The bitchy little girl does her song here, jumps on top of the scale, and falls to her death."
"She doesn't die," said Tosh. "She gets flushed into the waste chute, avoiding incineration by luck."
"Right. I'm going in."
"No you're not," Jack said. "Too risky."
Owen rolled his eyes. "Look. They're not going to let us get past this room without grabbing one of us, right?" This was to the fucking hologram, who shrugged noncommittally. "Right. If we're going for gender, it's Tosh, hands down. If we're going for personality, I'm a much bigger smartarse than she is."
"Granted," Jack said.
"If you go down the chute, that leaves me and Tosh, and if things go bad from here, I'm no good in a fight. Same problem if Tosh goes down. And finally," Owen said, "I'm already dead. What are they going to do to me?"
"Incinerate you," said Tosh.
"Riddle you with holes," said Jack.
"Feed you to small animals," said Tosh.
"Store you underground with no means of escape and no way to die," said Jack, and Owen did not need that little glimpse into the boss's big fears, thanks.
"I'll be fine. I'll go spring Gwen and Ianto, we'll come meet you." Owen looked at the fucking hologram. "I go down the chute, they move on, yeah?"
The fucking hologram nodded. "Are you a bad egg, Doctor Harper?"
"Oh yeah," he said, stepping up onto the scale. "The worst. Jack, watch out for her." The floor fell from beneath his feet.
He heard Tosh call out for him, and felt himself bump hard on the slide down. He drew his arms in and hoped he didn't break anything. He slid down the rest of the way and landed on something soft. Fantastic.
***
"Owen!"
Jack held Tosh back as she went to go after Owen. She knew he was right, that Owen had been right, but it still hurt to watch him fall, and not to know if he was breaking his arms and legs and ribs on a useless bid for their freedom.
The holoWonka smiled gaily at them. Bastard. "Shall we move on?"
Jack swore at him. Tosh did not give him the pleasure, simply ignored him and walked calmly to the door, waiting to go back into the elevator.
"You okay?" Jack asked her.
"Let's just get the hell through this," she said.
"We'll get them back."
"I know."
The holoWonka opened the glass elevator. "Where shall we go next?"
"Wherever," said Jack.
"Can we skip the television room?"
HoloWonka said, "The television room it is!"
Tosh felt crushed as the elevator zoomed up what felt like twenty storeys in a rush, then zoomed to the right and dropped. Between the ride and the overpowering smells, she was feeling nauseated. Jack's hand at her back was a comfort.
The door yawned open onto the television room.
Against her better judgment, Tosh was intrigued. "Is that a multiphasic visual generator?"
"Good eye, my dear!" said the holoWonka. "Acquired from a Valadian landing party four years ago."
"I remember that," Jack said. "The site was trashed by the time we got there."
"We got there first."
"Obviously," Tosh said, walking around the generator like a new toy. They'd only found broken pieces of equipment from the Valadians, stowed away in the archives to be examined whenever someone had free time. "You've been using Valadian transport technology as well," she said. "That's how you took Gwen and Ianto."
HoloWonka nodded. "Good for short distances only, I'm afraid. But it's a nice effect."
"How did you find out about the site before we did?" Jack asked. "We went out as soon as the sensors went off."
"She knew they were coming," said HoloWonka, and then he smiled that infuriating grin again. "Want to see how it works?"
"No," Jack said.
"Yes," said Tosh. She turned to Jack. "If I could see this in action, we might be able to get some of our scavenged equipment functioning."
"We don't need it."
"Are you certain?" She hated poking him like this, but Jack was the one who kept pestering them about being prepared for the future. And anyway, she'd read the book. She knew only one of them was walking out of this room.
"Tosh … "
"Turn it on," she said to HoloWonka, and she leaned in to examine the workings of the generator. A smile graced her lips. This wasn't so bad, not really, she thought, as the circuit pathways lit up. Oh! Of course!
The world shifted around her, and she was suddenly in a cell with the worst wallpaper she'd ever seen. She let out a little moan of disappointment. She'd wanted to see the generator activate before she'd been captured.
"Tosh?" That was Gwen, from outside the room.
"It's me!" she shouted. "I'm … somewhere. Where are you?"
The door to her cell clicked loudly, and outside stood Gwen wrapped in Jack's coat and Ianto with a lollipop that looked like it had seen better days.
"You okay?" asked Gwen as Ianto kept an eye out down the hallway outside.
Tosh nodded. "Look, about back in the car … "
Gwen stopped her. "Don't. We've all had a go at saying things we didn't mean."
"Or did mean at the time," Tosh said, "and really regret later?"
"Those, too," said Gwen, and there was understanding in her eyes. For the first time, Tosh wondered how many of the little snips she'd quietly held against Gwen were things Gwen herself felt awful about, the same way Tosh did thinking back over her own social miscues. Really, the two of them were long overdue for another night of bonding over a bottle of cheap wine, and Tosh decided they'd remedy that sooner rather than later. Gwen smiled at her as they took hands to help Tosh out of the room.
Tosh looked around them. "Where's Owen?"
The smile dropped.
***
Jack stared at the place where Toshiko had been standing. "Are we done here?"
"Yes," said the hologram. The voice had changed with Tosh's loss, became calmer. The charade, whatever it had been, was over.
"Take me to your leader."
"No," the hologram said, and vanished.
"Dammit!" Jack looked around the room, but he had no idea how to make the Valadian stuff operate. He marched back to the elevator, hoping to find a convenient button. He didn't really care if he met the person in charge of this madhouse. He just wanted his team back and safe before they got out of here.
The elevator door opened, but the elevator wasn't there. Instead, a winding corridor stretched in front of him. Jack took out his Webley and placed his back against the wall before walking slowly towards the other end.
"Y'know," said Jack as he edged around a corner, "I don't sleep much. I've watched a lot of movies but frankly, they stopped being interesting once they started using color. But I'll watch when I've got nothing to do. I read, too. That's something I really enjoy. Certain people," he turned another corner, "claim I read mostly crap. But coming from someone whose idea of great film is the adventures of a spy who keeps his clothes on even less often than I do, I'm going to say taste is relative.
"I've read this book. And you've got us. Five terrible little children who need to learn better before we mess up for good. But you got us wrong, too. Sure, Tosh will go anywhere if you dangle a shiny enough piece of technology in front of her. But if you're looking to punish someone who's all about the pleasures of life … " He ducked around another corner and saw more ahead. Still no doors. " … then let's be blunt here. I'm your man. There are very few pleasures I haven't tried at least once, and I'm just about insatiable when I find one I enjoy. So I should have been picked off pretty early in your game. And if you're looking for a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks who's just trying to make something of himself, you really screwed up on who you let make it through to the end."
One more corner, and there was the door. Simple, old-fashioned, and the same green as the one they'd entered through. Jack approached it slowly, still talking to the person he knew was listening somewhere.
"So you knew us well enough to know that if you took me first, the others would have been worried, but not much. Like Owen said, what were you going to do to me really? They might even have blown your factory just for giggles. That would have hurt, but hell, they've killed me before. I'd get over it."
He stood at the door now. It was locked. He hadn't finished the puzzle.
"No, you had to take someone you knew I'd fight for, and more, that I'd do anything to keep safe, even play through this goddamn stupid fantasy of yours. You knew you'd find me at his flat last night, to leave your little tickets. And that dig at Gwen? Not nice, and not one just anyone could make. You've been watching us all. You know us. So I'm forced to wonder, who would care about us that much? Who knows who we are and where we go and what we do, and gives enough of a crap to tempt us here, but, and this is the only reason I haven't gone through this place with a flamethrower yet, who didn't immediately start killing people when you had a chance?
"We know you, too. Don't we, Suzie?"
The door opened in front of him to darkness, and he heard her laugh.
***
"Owen!" "Owen!" The three of them stuck close together, calling for him. He wasn't in any of the cells, and no amount of interrogating the terrified little aliens helped. Tosh swore she'd seen him go before her, but since he was dropped down a chute instead of transported, he could be anywhere.
Gwen's sidearm had been left behind with her clothes. Ianto and Tosh held theirs at the ready, Ianto with the lollipop now stuck in his mouth like a very tiny unlit fag.
"Owen!"
"Oi!" came the shout from down a hallway, and they ran. Another locked door, but the lolly gave its last to pop the lock. Owen lay in a pile of garbage, surrounded and entrapped by little orange aliens. He was singing something under his breath. Gwen could just make out the words, " … find it, the rainbow connection … " He faded off as they came into the room.
"Shoo!" Tosh said, and they helped disentangle him from the pile. And then as one, they stood back and gave him some air. A lot of air. Poor Owen. And he'd just finally stopped smelling of death, too.
Ianto said, "Where's Jack?"
"Still up there," Tosh said. "Has to be."
Gwen risked her nose to lean in towards Owen as they went to search for Jack. "What was that you were singing?"
"Don't ask. It's a trick someone taught me to get an earworm out of your head." He shuddered. "Cure's worse than the disease."
"You mean you don't like the Oompa Loompa song?"
Owen groaned and grabbed his head again.
***
Suzie sat like a queen on a little wooden chair with only a small desk lamp and the glow of her computer monitor to light her. Jack kept his gun at the ready, but as he approached her, he wondered if he'd need it. She looked tired. On the screen, he saw the empty corridor where he'd been standing outside, saw a much smaller window where he could just make out four familiar forms.
"Shouldn't this all be cut in half? The desk? The lamp?"
She waved her hand. "I thought about it. But half light bulbs don't burn properly, and anyway, everything outside this office is just an illusion caused by the generator. It'll be gone with the flick of a switch and go back to a proper factory. Did you like it?"
"Why aren't you dead?"
Suzie smiled. "I ask myself that almost every day." She held out her hand to him. Jack stared at it, and she nodded at him impatiently. He took her hand and she shook it. "Suzie Costello. Nice to finally meet you."
"We used to work together, Suzie."
"Look again."
He did. And under the light of the desk lamp, he noticed changes in the set of her face, the wrinkles around her eyes. "Tell me."
"There is no Jack Harkness on my world. The Wolzos are time-sensitive. They can see changes in patterns in time. They told me when I asked about you that there aren't any roses on my world, but that's absurd. I had climbing roses outside my flat. They smelled so sweet in late summer." She closed her eyes.
No Rose, no him. Jack hated alternate timelines. "You're not from around here."
"My people, my Torchwood, we created a hole in the space between the universes. We ran into your world, but we set things right at the end. We went back. And then," her breath caught, "then my team died a few years later. It was so sudden. But I survived. I kept going until I didn't see the point any more, and then I remembered the hole we punched, like the glass elevator through the roof of the building. I wanted to fly." A tiny sob escaped her lips. "I wanted to see them again. It'll happen to you someday. You know that."
That wasn't something he wanted to think about, not yet. "You can't hop universes just because the one you're in is disappointing."
"I could. And I did. But the timeline was strange. I landed here six years ago, and there was another me running around, and the Wolzos were attracted to the same spot I came through because of their nature. I couldn't go to Torchwood, but I could watch all of you, and I could take care of the Wolzos, though really, they take care of me these days. And I knew enough of the future to provide for us while I waited and watched."
"You raided alien crash sites and set up a candy factory?"
She smiled lazily, and Jack knew that look. "We did more than that. But. The sweets made them happy, and my team always had running jokes about Willy Wonka. Doesn't yours?"
"Not really."
She made a noise in her throat. "I know what your Suzie was like. I know, mostly, what she did. I can't convince you that I'm not like her, and I'm not going to try."
"Kidnapping my people wasn't a good first step on the road to trust."
"I just wanted to have you all here with me, one last time. And now that you've come, I find I can't bear the thought of going downstairs to see them again. Too many memories, too many differences. Alex killed his team on our world, too, you know. The Cardiff office was left to rot until Owen and I accidentally impressed Yvonne. We didn't even know each other, but he and I were both on the scene when there was an incident with the Judoon, and she offered us the Cardiff branch to rebuild." She coughed. "I think she may have wanted us out from underfoot. She gave us these two kids from the London office to help get us organised."
"Two?"
"Lisa died fighting the Cybermen not long afterwards." Her eyes darkened for a moment, remembering old griefs before she went on, mouth gradually curving into a smile again. "We hired Tosh right out of UNIT. Gwen's still a copper on my world, or was. A good one. Tell her I'm sorry about her clothes."
"Tell her yourself."
She shook her head. "I was holding on for today. I'm not holding on any longer." He knew what the day was, now. Her voice had grown threadier as she'd been speaking, and he could see the weakness in her hands, the sickness in her eyes.
"Let me get Owen. He can take a look at you."
"Owen has never run into the disease I have. He's not going to find a cure in the next ten minutes." The fondness on her face told him she'd loved their doctor a little bit on her world, too. "I've been watching them. They managed to escape, you know, though I didn't make it difficult. A child's lock for a child's story. They're looking for you now. I think I'd like to see them come in all guns blazing to your rescue. I think that'd be lovely." She closed her eyes again.
"Suzie, you can't die right now." He took her hand. "Suzie!"
She opened her eyes. "I'm so tired."
"Why me? You did this for the others. Why did you bring me here?"
"You're special. You'll watch out for the Wolzos for me, long after I'm gone. They've been running this place for years. They don't mean any harm. They like making people happy. It's a telepathic thing. Humans eat the sweets and get happy and the Wolzos feed on that happiness."
"They're psychic vampires."
She shrugged. "With positive emotions, yes. Everyone wins. Don't blow them up. Please."
"I won't."
"Good."
Jack rubbed her hand and touched his comm with his other hand, but there was only static. Her pulse was weakening. "Suzie?"
The door burst open, and sure enough, the others came in with guns blazing.
Suzie managed a weak laugh. "I told you. Lovely." And she never spoke again.
Jack curled her fingers around themselves and placed her hand on her lap before closing her eyes with his hand and kissing her forehead while the others watched, confused.
"Happy birthday," he told her, and knew she wasn't there to hear.
***
Jack insisted they wait by the SUV while he spoke to the Wolzos. Apparently he knew their language, at least enough to tell them they were in charge of the factory now, that they had better keep their noses in line or they'd see the back of his hand in short order. Or something like that. They were also going to attend to the body that wasn't Suzie's and so wouldn't have to be packed away in cold storage, at least according to Jack.
As they waited, Owen kept grumbling about "mindfucks," Gwen was already going through the list of spare clothes she kept at the Hub to see if she had enough to get home decently, and Tosh was making readings as fast as she could with the equipment on the SUV's dash before Jack made them leave. Normal day, really. Shame about not using the C4.
Jack got into the car, more taciturn than usual. Ianto sat behind him, glad to be as far away from Owen right now as possible, and anyway, there were worse places to sit than next to a mostly-naked woman. Tosh seemed to agree; she and Gwen chatted quietly beside him while putting on their seatbelts.
When they were on the road, Gwen asked, "Was it really her?"
"No," Jack said. "And yes."
Owen said, "Definite answers are always helpful."
"It looked like her," said Tosh. "And you said someone was following us, someone who knew us."
"It doesn't matter now," Jack said, and that ended the conversation. He did roll down the window, and Owen took the hint and rolled his down too.
After, when Gwen had found something better to wear than Jack's coat, and Owen had showered (to everyone's relief), and Tosh had entered her data, and Ianto had swept the sweets in the autopsy bay into the largest bin bag they had and hauled it out, and they all had stopped trying to ask Jack questions he wasn't answering anyway, Gwen and Owen and Tosh went home. Jack was busy in his office, and Ianto dithered around at his own desk, filling out a purchase request for heirloom rose bushes to be delivered to the Wilkinson factory. Jack's orders.
When he was finished, and then done making busy work, he knocked on the frame outside Jack's open door. "I'm going home for the night." He still hadn't mastered the nonchalance needed to follow that up with, "Are you coming with me?" so he stood there awkwardly waiting for a response.
Jack was staring into a distance only he could see, and Ianto had a feeling he was intruding. He started to step away, when Jack said, "They didn't hurt you, right? Back at the factory?"
"Not at all."
"Good. I didn't ask, when you called, if you were hurt."
He shrugged. "You asked where I was. I anticipated a heroic rescue in my immediate future."
"Sorry I didn't provide one." A frown had darkened Jack's face, and Ianto was caught between wanting to kiss it away and wanting to back off and give Jack space to work it out on his own.
"We handled it," he said, unable to keep the pride out of his own voice. "It's not every time we get to save you."
Jack said something softly that Ianto didn't catch, something that sounded like, "You save me every day." That made no sense.
Instead of asking Jack what he'd meant, Ianto retreated instead to a safer topic. "What did Suzie want?"
Jack rubbed his hand over his face, as if trying to erase the frown. "I don't know. To make amends, maybe. To say goodbye. Maybe just to see everyone she loved one more time." The catch in his voice wasn't for her, Ianto was certain.
"Definitely not our Suzie, then."
"No." The shadow lingered on Jack's face another moment, and then was gone. "So, you in the mood for dinner?"
"I could be. Nothing sweet, though. If I don't eat sugar again for a week, I'll be happy."
Jack stood and let Ianto help him into his greatcoat which smelled, not unpleasantly, of blueberries. "Right. Skipping dessert. Although," said Jack with a familiar expression on his face, "we could have a special dessert, if you know what I mean."
"Jack, bacteria living under rocks on Mars know what you mean."
Jack laughed, and it was warm and rich, like the best chocolate on Earth.
***
The End
***
ETA: Foxy just linked me to this totally NSFW set of Wonka-related icons for your viewing pleasure.
Author: nancybrown
Prompt: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory
Characters/Pairing(s): Team Torchwood, canon pairings past and present
Rating: R
Warnings: Character death, Owen dialogue, nudity, potential weight gain
Wordcount: 13,000 (7,000 this part)
Spoilers: Up through "Something Borrowed," mention of background info from CoE. Timeline handwaving regarding dates, much like on the series. My advice is to let it go.
Beta: 51stcenturyfox kicked this puppy into shape and has my deepest thanks
Disclaimer: Auntie Beeb and the Dahl estate own them all.
Summary: Little orange aliens, a man in a purple coat and top hat, and five naughty little children, er, Torchwood operatives. What could possibly go wrong? Written for the Reel_Torchwood challenge.
Part One
***
Part Two
***
"Thank you, no," Ianto said to the little orange alien. Since his mobile had cut off, and no amount of effort made it work again, a pile of tiny aliens had been offering him sweets in the cell where he was being kept. Having rejected the chocolate-covered biscuits and the tiramisu-flavoured petit-fours, he now waved away something spongy with sprinkles and, he suspected, currants.
It was very strange.
Ianto was used to strange. He'd been working for Torchwood for almost four years, met dozens of aliens, loved a woman who'd been converted to an alien species, and was now dating a man whose fond reminiscences often included phrases like, "But they were sentient chickens!" Strange was something Ianto nibbled on with coffee every morning. Still, he was having trouble wrapping his head around the idea of pint-sized orange monsters serving him platefuls of Turkish Delight, bon-bons, and marshmallow crèmes.
"No, really, I'm full." His stomach gurgled, putting the lie to his words, but he wasn't accepting anything from his captors. It could be drugged. It could be made of ground-up baby aliens. It could have marzipan. Anyway, the smell of sticky sweets permeated the air, and while it had been pleasant at first, now the mere thought of eating sugar made him feel ill.
He was permitted to get to his feet and pace the two metres square of his clean, spare cell. Fruit-printed wallpaper made the room weirdly cheerful, but he refused to follow the little aliens' example and lick the pictures. He'd made that mistake once at that Green Day concert with Daf when he was seventeen. Never again.
The door had a knob, and the knob was locked. The aliens zoomed in and out via what looked like a cat door, far too small for Ianto to fit even if he did somehow drop ten pounds while imprisoned in the bowels of a candy factory. He and Jack had been eating out a lot lately, and he'd been musing that a gym membership would do them both some good. However, since Jack had gotten banned from over half the gyms in the city, finding one was a problem. It didn't help matters that whenever he'd brought the idea up, Jack immediately suggested much more entertaining ways to work up a sweat. At some point, Ianto was going to create a chart of calories burned per activity. No doubt Jack would take it as an opportunity to time how fast they could check items off the list. And so it went.
An orange alien offered him a plate of jelly babies.
Ianto looked at the doorknob again. "Could I please have a lollipop?"
***
Around them, the air was filled with cloying, sweet smells of chocolates and candied fruits and rich caramel. Gwen privately wondered if she was gaining weight just breathing in the calorie-dense air.
They exited the giant room into a hallway with tightly-closed doors stretching down to an elevator at the end. Gwen watched the holographic man fiddle in his pockets for holographic keys, and then stick one into the lock of the first door. "Here we go!"
If the key was imaginary, then the door wasn't really locked. She stepped behind the others and tried a doorknob behind her. Locked. Perhaps certain doors were locked except for the ones he wanted them to go into, or whoever was really in charge was switching an electronic lock somewhere else in the building. She'd kept her eyes open for cameras, but saw nothing but the little orange aliens watching her. Without another good option, she followed Jack and the rest into the room with the hologram.
"The inventing room!" exclaimed the hologram perkily. In the book, Wonka had been overly cheerful, mischievously so, with a little goatee making him look like Pan causing havoc. He was a trickster and a devil, she'd learned as she'd grown up, but a benevolent one. This Wonka sulked a lot.
"What do you invent?" Gwen asked him, as Tosh grew wide-eyed at the array of alien candy-making machines.
"New delicacies, madam. Something to tempt every palate." He sidled over to her. "And I see you are no stranger to temptation."
Her eyes flicked to Owen and Jack too quickly, but Gwen had learned much at her Gran's knee, and knew how to poke right back. "Are you calling me fat?"
"What?" She was satisfied with the expression of horror that covered the hologram's face. "No, no, my dear lady, I would never … "
"You are. You're calling me fat." She stalked over to him, waving carefully behind herself to the others to indicate that now was a good time to search the room while she had their host's attention. "I'll have you know these are my skinny trousers. They make my bum look tiny."
"Yes, of course they do!" said the hologram, eyes fearful of her wrath. This was … kind of fun. "They make it look very small."
"Oh!" she said, throwing herself into the role. Gran would be proud. "So you're saying my bum just looks small, but is actually huge, are you?"
"I … I … " The hologram was utterly terrified now. Then it glanced over her shoulder. "What are you doing?" he said, and Gwen turned.
Tosh had popped the cover off one of the machines and was inspecting it while Jack and Owen covered her. Good girl.
"Never mind her," Gwen said, "I'm sure she has a perfectly tiny bottom."
The hologram walked right through Gwen. She thought she should feel something, anything, but it was just light. Suddenly three little orange aliens piled one on top of the others' shoulders, and a fourth jumped atop them, ending up at eye height with Gwen.
She felt her mouth make a round little "O" of surprise. This was a mistake. The top alien flung a piece of candy into her mouth, and before she could spit it out, Gwen felt the sugar melt on her tongue, and her body changed.
As the buttons began popping from her blouse, Gwen swore. From her peripheral vision, she could already see her hands turning violet. It didn't hurt, not really, except for the pressure of her clothes against her expanding skin, but the clothes weren't going to last and with a sharp RIIIIIIIIIIIIP, her skinny trousers were no more.
Jack had his gun out again, but this time he'd picked up one of the orange aliens by the scruff of the neck. "You're real, at least. Put her back NOW!"
Tosh just stared. Owen had pulled out his medkit, but what could he do? Gwen felt tears prickling at her eyes; this was too close to her bad dreams of being naked at school. Tosh's paralysis broke, and she came to Gwen's side as Gwen finished puffing up into a blue ball.
"She'll be fine," said the hologram. "A little less concerned with her bum, now, I think."
"I mean it," Jack said. "I've had enough of this."
"Jack," Tosh said in a quiet voice as she shielded Gwen. "Please give me your coat."
"It won't fit," Gwen said.
"It'll help," said Tosh, as Jack shrugged out of the greatcoat and passed it to her. Gwen clutched the fabric to herself, and suddenly, she felt less exposed. Safer. She turned to look at her purplish hand, but her fingers hadn't plumped up like sausages as she'd feared. Her wedding ring was still where it belonged.
Gwen's breath calmed now that the growing had stopped. Working at Torchwood meant you had to be okay with the occasional random nudity in front of your coworkers. Modesty had taken the backseat more than once when they'd all been splattered with corrosive alien guts and needed to hit the showers sooner rather than later. This wasn't much different, except that none of the men were claiming to be cold. She managed a grim smile.
"We're leaving," said Jack. "Come on."
"You're not. You can't cure Ms. Cooper by yourselves, and we still have your other colleague."
Owen said, "You're implying you can cure her."
"We can. We will. But we need your continued cooperation." The hologram held out his hand to Gwen. She held the coat against her more tightly, glanced at the others, and then touched his hand. The world went soft around her, and then she was in a garishly-wallpapered room about two metres to a side.
A little orange alien held up a stick of what looked like gum and made a chirping noise. Gwen bent over with difficulty and took the gum, chewing it irritably. She'd really liked those trousers.
***
Jack had already lost what little patience he had with the games being played. He held onto the little alien. "We get it. We go into different rooms and get picked off one by one. Not interested."
"Think of it like the lottery," said the hologram. "If you don't play, you'll never win."
"We're not playing!" he shouted. At the moment, he wanted to shoot something or someone. Sitting at the edges of the room, he'd seen large vats labeled "Butterscotch" and "Buttergin," and these had only served to remind him that he wanted a drink, too, and that never ended well. His nerves were already on edge, worrying and not wanting to admit he was worrying about what was happening to Ianto and now Gwen while he was being led by the nose through a stupid game. Jack had spent enough time imprisoned by various madmen (and madwomen) for his imagination to provide any number of horrors the two of them might be undergoing at the hands of whoever was behind this.
The hologram stared mildly back at him. For all it had cowered, or pretended to cower, at Gwen's faked rage earlier, the image barely registered Jack's honest anger.
"Are we ready to continue?"
"Yeah," said Owen. "We're ready." Jack stood there fuming for another moment, and then dropped the alien to the ground where it scurried off with its friends.
"I suppose you don't want to hear this song, either."
"We really don't."
"Are you sure? As 'bum' and 'gum' rhyme, the rewrite is practically seamless." The hologram smiled hopefully, but wilted at Jack's glare.
Owen scowled and hit the side of his head. "Fucking earworm," he muttered.
The hologram led them back out into the hallway, where the doors were arranged differently from when they'd come in. Tosh and Owen looked confused, and the hologram seemed disappointed that Jack didn't share the confusion. He'd once found the swimming pool on the TARDIS and gone skinny-dipping with Rose. Nothing about extra-dimensional space fazed him. Jack breathed as the memory calmed him; he and people he cared about had been in worse places than this.
The hologram opened another door. Bottles of fizzy soda stood temptingly on a table. Jack could just make out the words "Bubble Shock!" on the label.
"Drink?" asked the hologram.
"No, thanks."
"It'll make you fly."
Owen said, "It'll make us mind-controlled zombies."
"Not me," Tosh said. "Can't stand the taste."
The hologram closed the door again and led them to the elevator. Sure enough, it was made of glass. "Step aboard!" said the hologram gleefully.
Tosh asked, "How does your projector keep going without losing continuity between rooms?"
"Magic."
Owen rolled his eyes while Tosh grumbled. Jack inspected the buttons. He looked for anything labeled "Prison level," "Evil overlord," or "Out" but nothing appeared.
"Where shall we go?" asked the hologram happily.
Tosh said, "Aren't we supposed to go to the Nut Room next? One of us turns out to be a bad nut?" Her frown turned into a pout. "That'd be me, I guess. I thought Gwen would be Veruca."
The hologram pressed a button. The elevator dropped suddenly and then leaned sharply to the right.
"'Princess'?" Owen said.
Tosh looked at Jack. "It was your fault."
"Mine?"
"You brought Gwen on right after we lost Suzie."
"We needed someone." His gut had told him that someone was Gwen, and except for a misstep here and there, he'd been proven right about her.
"Point of notice," Owen said. "We didn't, actually. We were in fact over headcount because someone's libido was doing the hiring again, and that was conveniently just a few months before Suzie started her killing spree."
"I decide what the headcount is. We were more efficient with five people."
"I'm not saying we weren't," said Owen. "And I think Gwen was a good addition to the team. All I ask is that when I shrug off this immortal coil, you don't hire my replacement with your dick."
"Martha already turned down your job." Besides, Martha wouldn't have him, despite the pleasant banter they shared, and Jack found himself more wistful than anything else. He didn't make a habit of going where he wasn't wanted, not with so many other willing options out there, and he'd always figured if his flirting ever bothered the people being flirted with, they'd tell him to stop one way or another. Owen had, telling him point blank on his first day to quit it, and Jack had dropped the subject. Tosh, Suzie and Gwen had never said a word or shown the least sign in body language of discomfort and if they had, he'd have stopped immediately with them, too. (Ianto had used the word "harassment" more than once, but he'd also mouthed it with his hands fumbling Jack's flies open, so less of an issue there.) The flirting was separate from the job, made the job more fun to have that layer of innuendo coating everything like crushed almonds and caramel.
Okay, so he was getting hungry around all this candy.
Tosh said, "You'd do the same thing with Martha that you did with Gwen, wouldn't you?"
"And that is?"
"Bring on someone new to replace someone we've lost and then tell the rest of us we're not as good as she is."
"That's not what happened."
Tosh said, "Don't get me wrong. Suzie was a murderer, and I'm not sorry to see the back of her. But she never stood there in front of the rest of us and accused us of forgetting what it was like to be human. We'd all been working for Torchwood for years, and Gwen came in, barely knowing us or what we did or how much we'd all already sacrificed to do our job, and she called us heartless. And you let her. You agreed with her. Owen's brought all of us back from the brink of death any number of times. Ianto takes care of everyone like our mum, every single day. You've died for us. I … " She flushed, and Jack reached out to her, touching her face.
"And you're so full of love sometimes it feels like you could burst," he said, because he knew his Toshiko well. She turned away, didn't meet his eyes and definitely didn't look at Owen. Kids.
"It hurt," she said. "You called her the heart of the team, Jack. Made her special. But we're all the heart. Otherwise what's the point?"
He could tell her the point was that he himself sometimes forgot about how to be human, properly human, and needed the occasional boot in his backside to get there, that he'd hired each of them in turn as physical reminders and Gwen had only taken her turn in the rota. If she was more verbal about it than the others, well, Jack had understood even back then that Tosh and Ianto communicated so much better with quiet, loving actions, just as he knew Owen was the piece of his humanity who shouted at Death and spit in His eye every time. Jack needed them all each day to remind him how to be real, so he didn't forget. It was so easy to forget.
But Tosh didn't need to hear any of that now, not lost as she was in her own head. Jack suspected she'd revisited some of the old resentments (and accompanying guilt at feeling them) with the recent wedding, and needed to let it all out so she could finally let it go.
"Anyway," Tosh said, catching her breath. "It's over. I like Gwen. I do. Just … Promise me that when it's time for you to hire my replacement, that you won't stand there and let him tell everyone what a terrible job I did when it was my turn."
So much he wanted to say to her, starting with the fact that she was irreplaceable as far as he was concerned. That they all were. "Never gonna happen. I promise."
The elevator stopped, and while Owen affected not to notice the tears Tosh was trying not to spill, Jack drew her into a quick hug. He felt Tosh smile against his throat before she pulled away and said, "Let's go find some nuts."
***
Gwen had had enough of this. As a wee alien tried to present her with yet another chocolate crème, she grabbed it by the neck and brought it to her eye level. "Now listen to me, you little monster! Let me out of here right now or I'll pop off your head!"
"Gwen?" came Ianto's voice from outside the door.
"Ianto! Are you all right?"
"Yeah. You?"
"I'll be okay. Where are you?"
She heard a sharp click, and the door opened. Ianto held a lollipop in one hand. The little aliens ran for his shins, and he kicked them absently. He showed her the lolly. "The stick is the perfect size to pick locks like this."
"It is?"
"My sister used to lock me out of my room. I had to learn how to get back in." His eyes took in her form. "Are you … all right?"
Gwen glanced down. The blue was fading and the puffiness was gone, thanks to the chewing gum cure. This left her completely normal. Also naked except for Jack's greatcoat wrapped around her. "Oh God. There really is a good explanation for this. I swear."
"I'm sure there is," he said, offering her a hand as they left her cell. "All I ask is that I get to be in the room when you give that explanation to Rhys."
***
The room that opened before them was not filled with squirrels as Owen had expected, but with geese. His jaw dropped.
"I knew it! This isn't the book version. This is that fucking awful movie."
"I liked the movie," Tosh said. She would.
The fucking hologram said, "Welcome! Here we meet the geese … "
"… That lay the golden fucking eggs," Owen said. "We get it."
If looks could kill, the fucking hologram would have slain them all dead by now. Instead, Owen didn't even get a nice tingly feeling. Pity.
Tosh said, "So instead of a bad nut, someone's got to be a bad egg."
Jack asked, "Are they going to have to do a song and dance?" This being Jack, he sounded intrigued.
"You know," said Owen. "Most blokes grow up wanting to be Sid Vicious or Roger Waters. You wanted to be Judy Garland."
"I remind you, I grew up a long time from now."
"Yeah yeah." Owen looked at the fucking hologram. "Singing? Yes or no?" And oh God, there was the stupid fucking Oompa Loompa song in his head again. He was going to have to kick it out once and for all.
"It's not required," said the fucking hologram.
"Good." Owen clapped his hands together and stepped down onto the platform with the fucking geese.
"Owen?" Tosh said. "What are you doing?"
"I've seen this bit. The bitchy little girl does her song here, jumps on top of the scale, and falls to her death."
"She doesn't die," said Tosh. "She gets flushed into the waste chute, avoiding incineration by luck."
"Right. I'm going in."
"No you're not," Jack said. "Too risky."
Owen rolled his eyes. "Look. They're not going to let us get past this room without grabbing one of us, right?" This was to the fucking hologram, who shrugged noncommittally. "Right. If we're going for gender, it's Tosh, hands down. If we're going for personality, I'm a much bigger smartarse than she is."
"Granted," Jack said.
"If you go down the chute, that leaves me and Tosh, and if things go bad from here, I'm no good in a fight. Same problem if Tosh goes down. And finally," Owen said, "I'm already dead. What are they going to do to me?"
"Incinerate you," said Tosh.
"Riddle you with holes," said Jack.
"Feed you to small animals," said Tosh.
"Store you underground with no means of escape and no way to die," said Jack, and Owen did not need that little glimpse into the boss's big fears, thanks.
"I'll be fine. I'll go spring Gwen and Ianto, we'll come meet you." Owen looked at the fucking hologram. "I go down the chute, they move on, yeah?"
The fucking hologram nodded. "Are you a bad egg, Doctor Harper?"
"Oh yeah," he said, stepping up onto the scale. "The worst. Jack, watch out for her." The floor fell from beneath his feet.
He heard Tosh call out for him, and felt himself bump hard on the slide down. He drew his arms in and hoped he didn't break anything. He slid down the rest of the way and landed on something soft. Fantastic.
***
"Owen!"
Jack held Tosh back as she went to go after Owen. She knew he was right, that Owen had been right, but it still hurt to watch him fall, and not to know if he was breaking his arms and legs and ribs on a useless bid for their freedom.
The holoWonka smiled gaily at them. Bastard. "Shall we move on?"
Jack swore at him. Tosh did not give him the pleasure, simply ignored him and walked calmly to the door, waiting to go back into the elevator.
"You okay?" Jack asked her.
"Let's just get the hell through this," she said.
"We'll get them back."
"I know."
The holoWonka opened the glass elevator. "Where shall we go next?"
"Wherever," said Jack.
"Can we skip the television room?"
HoloWonka said, "The television room it is!"
Tosh felt crushed as the elevator zoomed up what felt like twenty storeys in a rush, then zoomed to the right and dropped. Between the ride and the overpowering smells, she was feeling nauseated. Jack's hand at her back was a comfort.
The door yawned open onto the television room.
Against her better judgment, Tosh was intrigued. "Is that a multiphasic visual generator?"
"Good eye, my dear!" said the holoWonka. "Acquired from a Valadian landing party four years ago."
"I remember that," Jack said. "The site was trashed by the time we got there."
"We got there first."
"Obviously," Tosh said, walking around the generator like a new toy. They'd only found broken pieces of equipment from the Valadians, stowed away in the archives to be examined whenever someone had free time. "You've been using Valadian transport technology as well," she said. "That's how you took Gwen and Ianto."
HoloWonka nodded. "Good for short distances only, I'm afraid. But it's a nice effect."
"How did you find out about the site before we did?" Jack asked. "We went out as soon as the sensors went off."
"She knew they were coming," said HoloWonka, and then he smiled that infuriating grin again. "Want to see how it works?"
"No," Jack said.
"Yes," said Tosh. She turned to Jack. "If I could see this in action, we might be able to get some of our scavenged equipment functioning."
"We don't need it."
"Are you certain?" She hated poking him like this, but Jack was the one who kept pestering them about being prepared for the future. And anyway, she'd read the book. She knew only one of them was walking out of this room.
"Tosh … "
"Turn it on," she said to HoloWonka, and she leaned in to examine the workings of the generator. A smile graced her lips. This wasn't so bad, not really, she thought, as the circuit pathways lit up. Oh! Of course!
The world shifted around her, and she was suddenly in a cell with the worst wallpaper she'd ever seen. She let out a little moan of disappointment. She'd wanted to see the generator activate before she'd been captured.
"Tosh?" That was Gwen, from outside the room.
"It's me!" she shouted. "I'm … somewhere. Where are you?"
The door to her cell clicked loudly, and outside stood Gwen wrapped in Jack's coat and Ianto with a lollipop that looked like it had seen better days.
"You okay?" asked Gwen as Ianto kept an eye out down the hallway outside.
Tosh nodded. "Look, about back in the car … "
Gwen stopped her. "Don't. We've all had a go at saying things we didn't mean."
"Or did mean at the time," Tosh said, "and really regret later?"
"Those, too," said Gwen, and there was understanding in her eyes. For the first time, Tosh wondered how many of the little snips she'd quietly held against Gwen were things Gwen herself felt awful about, the same way Tosh did thinking back over her own social miscues. Really, the two of them were long overdue for another night of bonding over a bottle of cheap wine, and Tosh decided they'd remedy that sooner rather than later. Gwen smiled at her as they took hands to help Tosh out of the room.
Tosh looked around them. "Where's Owen?"
The smile dropped.
***
Jack stared at the place where Toshiko had been standing. "Are we done here?"
"Yes," said the hologram. The voice had changed with Tosh's loss, became calmer. The charade, whatever it had been, was over.
"Take me to your leader."
"No," the hologram said, and vanished.
"Dammit!" Jack looked around the room, but he had no idea how to make the Valadian stuff operate. He marched back to the elevator, hoping to find a convenient button. He didn't really care if he met the person in charge of this madhouse. He just wanted his team back and safe before they got out of here.
The elevator door opened, but the elevator wasn't there. Instead, a winding corridor stretched in front of him. Jack took out his Webley and placed his back against the wall before walking slowly towards the other end.
"Y'know," said Jack as he edged around a corner, "I don't sleep much. I've watched a lot of movies but frankly, they stopped being interesting once they started using color. But I'll watch when I've got nothing to do. I read, too. That's something I really enjoy. Certain people," he turned another corner, "claim I read mostly crap. But coming from someone whose idea of great film is the adventures of a spy who keeps his clothes on even less often than I do, I'm going to say taste is relative.
"I've read this book. And you've got us. Five terrible little children who need to learn better before we mess up for good. But you got us wrong, too. Sure, Tosh will go anywhere if you dangle a shiny enough piece of technology in front of her. But if you're looking to punish someone who's all about the pleasures of life … " He ducked around another corner and saw more ahead. Still no doors. " … then let's be blunt here. I'm your man. There are very few pleasures I haven't tried at least once, and I'm just about insatiable when I find one I enjoy. So I should have been picked off pretty early in your game. And if you're looking for a poor kid from the wrong side of the tracks who's just trying to make something of himself, you really screwed up on who you let make it through to the end."
One more corner, and there was the door. Simple, old-fashioned, and the same green as the one they'd entered through. Jack approached it slowly, still talking to the person he knew was listening somewhere.
"So you knew us well enough to know that if you took me first, the others would have been worried, but not much. Like Owen said, what were you going to do to me really? They might even have blown your factory just for giggles. That would have hurt, but hell, they've killed me before. I'd get over it."
He stood at the door now. It was locked. He hadn't finished the puzzle.
"No, you had to take someone you knew I'd fight for, and more, that I'd do anything to keep safe, even play through this goddamn stupid fantasy of yours. You knew you'd find me at his flat last night, to leave your little tickets. And that dig at Gwen? Not nice, and not one just anyone could make. You've been watching us all. You know us. So I'm forced to wonder, who would care about us that much? Who knows who we are and where we go and what we do, and gives enough of a crap to tempt us here, but, and this is the only reason I haven't gone through this place with a flamethrower yet, who didn't immediately start killing people when you had a chance?
"We know you, too. Don't we, Suzie?"
The door opened in front of him to darkness, and he heard her laugh.
***
"Owen!" "Owen!" The three of them stuck close together, calling for him. He wasn't in any of the cells, and no amount of interrogating the terrified little aliens helped. Tosh swore she'd seen him go before her, but since he was dropped down a chute instead of transported, he could be anywhere.
Gwen's sidearm had been left behind with her clothes. Ianto and Tosh held theirs at the ready, Ianto with the lollipop now stuck in his mouth like a very tiny unlit fag.
"Owen!"
"Oi!" came the shout from down a hallway, and they ran. Another locked door, but the lolly gave its last to pop the lock. Owen lay in a pile of garbage, surrounded and entrapped by little orange aliens. He was singing something under his breath. Gwen could just make out the words, " … find it, the rainbow connection … " He faded off as they came into the room.
"Shoo!" Tosh said, and they helped disentangle him from the pile. And then as one, they stood back and gave him some air. A lot of air. Poor Owen. And he'd just finally stopped smelling of death, too.
Ianto said, "Where's Jack?"
"Still up there," Tosh said. "Has to be."
Gwen risked her nose to lean in towards Owen as they went to search for Jack. "What was that you were singing?"
"Don't ask. It's a trick someone taught me to get an earworm out of your head." He shuddered. "Cure's worse than the disease."
"You mean you don't like the Oompa Loompa song?"
Owen groaned and grabbed his head again.
***
Suzie sat like a queen on a little wooden chair with only a small desk lamp and the glow of her computer monitor to light her. Jack kept his gun at the ready, but as he approached her, he wondered if he'd need it. She looked tired. On the screen, he saw the empty corridor where he'd been standing outside, saw a much smaller window where he could just make out four familiar forms.
"Shouldn't this all be cut in half? The desk? The lamp?"
She waved her hand. "I thought about it. But half light bulbs don't burn properly, and anyway, everything outside this office is just an illusion caused by the generator. It'll be gone with the flick of a switch and go back to a proper factory. Did you like it?"
"Why aren't you dead?"
Suzie smiled. "I ask myself that almost every day." She held out her hand to him. Jack stared at it, and she nodded at him impatiently. He took her hand and she shook it. "Suzie Costello. Nice to finally meet you."
"We used to work together, Suzie."
"Look again."
He did. And under the light of the desk lamp, he noticed changes in the set of her face, the wrinkles around her eyes. "Tell me."
"There is no Jack Harkness on my world. The Wolzos are time-sensitive. They can see changes in patterns in time. They told me when I asked about you that there aren't any roses on my world, but that's absurd. I had climbing roses outside my flat. They smelled so sweet in late summer." She closed her eyes.
No Rose, no him. Jack hated alternate timelines. "You're not from around here."
"My people, my Torchwood, we created a hole in the space between the universes. We ran into your world, but we set things right at the end. We went back. And then," her breath caught, "then my team died a few years later. It was so sudden. But I survived. I kept going until I didn't see the point any more, and then I remembered the hole we punched, like the glass elevator through the roof of the building. I wanted to fly." A tiny sob escaped her lips. "I wanted to see them again. It'll happen to you someday. You know that."
That wasn't something he wanted to think about, not yet. "You can't hop universes just because the one you're in is disappointing."
"I could. And I did. But the timeline was strange. I landed here six years ago, and there was another me running around, and the Wolzos were attracted to the same spot I came through because of their nature. I couldn't go to Torchwood, but I could watch all of you, and I could take care of the Wolzos, though really, they take care of me these days. And I knew enough of the future to provide for us while I waited and watched."
"You raided alien crash sites and set up a candy factory?"
She smiled lazily, and Jack knew that look. "We did more than that. But. The sweets made them happy, and my team always had running jokes about Willy Wonka. Doesn't yours?"
"Not really."
She made a noise in her throat. "I know what your Suzie was like. I know, mostly, what she did. I can't convince you that I'm not like her, and I'm not going to try."
"Kidnapping my people wasn't a good first step on the road to trust."
"I just wanted to have you all here with me, one last time. And now that you've come, I find I can't bear the thought of going downstairs to see them again. Too many memories, too many differences. Alex killed his team on our world, too, you know. The Cardiff office was left to rot until Owen and I accidentally impressed Yvonne. We didn't even know each other, but he and I were both on the scene when there was an incident with the Judoon, and she offered us the Cardiff branch to rebuild." She coughed. "I think she may have wanted us out from underfoot. She gave us these two kids from the London office to help get us organised."
"Two?"
"Lisa died fighting the Cybermen not long afterwards." Her eyes darkened for a moment, remembering old griefs before she went on, mouth gradually curving into a smile again. "We hired Tosh right out of UNIT. Gwen's still a copper on my world, or was. A good one. Tell her I'm sorry about her clothes."
"Tell her yourself."
She shook her head. "I was holding on for today. I'm not holding on any longer." He knew what the day was, now. Her voice had grown threadier as she'd been speaking, and he could see the weakness in her hands, the sickness in her eyes.
"Let me get Owen. He can take a look at you."
"Owen has never run into the disease I have. He's not going to find a cure in the next ten minutes." The fondness on her face told him she'd loved their doctor a little bit on her world, too. "I've been watching them. They managed to escape, you know, though I didn't make it difficult. A child's lock for a child's story. They're looking for you now. I think I'd like to see them come in all guns blazing to your rescue. I think that'd be lovely." She closed her eyes again.
"Suzie, you can't die right now." He took her hand. "Suzie!"
She opened her eyes. "I'm so tired."
"Why me? You did this for the others. Why did you bring me here?"
"You're special. You'll watch out for the Wolzos for me, long after I'm gone. They've been running this place for years. They don't mean any harm. They like making people happy. It's a telepathic thing. Humans eat the sweets and get happy and the Wolzos feed on that happiness."
"They're psychic vampires."
She shrugged. "With positive emotions, yes. Everyone wins. Don't blow them up. Please."
"I won't."
"Good."
Jack rubbed her hand and touched his comm with his other hand, but there was only static. Her pulse was weakening. "Suzie?"
The door burst open, and sure enough, the others came in with guns blazing.
Suzie managed a weak laugh. "I told you. Lovely." And she never spoke again.
Jack curled her fingers around themselves and placed her hand on her lap before closing her eyes with his hand and kissing her forehead while the others watched, confused.
"Happy birthday," he told her, and knew she wasn't there to hear.
***
Jack insisted they wait by the SUV while he spoke to the Wolzos. Apparently he knew their language, at least enough to tell them they were in charge of the factory now, that they had better keep their noses in line or they'd see the back of his hand in short order. Or something like that. They were also going to attend to the body that wasn't Suzie's and so wouldn't have to be packed away in cold storage, at least according to Jack.
As they waited, Owen kept grumbling about "mindfucks," Gwen was already going through the list of spare clothes she kept at the Hub to see if she had enough to get home decently, and Tosh was making readings as fast as she could with the equipment on the SUV's dash before Jack made them leave. Normal day, really. Shame about not using the C4.
Jack got into the car, more taciturn than usual. Ianto sat behind him, glad to be as far away from Owen right now as possible, and anyway, there were worse places to sit than next to a mostly-naked woman. Tosh seemed to agree; she and Gwen chatted quietly beside him while putting on their seatbelts.
When they were on the road, Gwen asked, "Was it really her?"
"No," Jack said. "And yes."
Owen said, "Definite answers are always helpful."
"It looked like her," said Tosh. "And you said someone was following us, someone who knew us."
"It doesn't matter now," Jack said, and that ended the conversation. He did roll down the window, and Owen took the hint and rolled his down too.
After, when Gwen had found something better to wear than Jack's coat, and Owen had showered (to everyone's relief), and Tosh had entered her data, and Ianto had swept the sweets in the autopsy bay into the largest bin bag they had and hauled it out, and they all had stopped trying to ask Jack questions he wasn't answering anyway, Gwen and Owen and Tosh went home. Jack was busy in his office, and Ianto dithered around at his own desk, filling out a purchase request for heirloom rose bushes to be delivered to the Wilkinson factory. Jack's orders.
When he was finished, and then done making busy work, he knocked on the frame outside Jack's open door. "I'm going home for the night." He still hadn't mastered the nonchalance needed to follow that up with, "Are you coming with me?" so he stood there awkwardly waiting for a response.
Jack was staring into a distance only he could see, and Ianto had a feeling he was intruding. He started to step away, when Jack said, "They didn't hurt you, right? Back at the factory?"
"Not at all."
"Good. I didn't ask, when you called, if you were hurt."
He shrugged. "You asked where I was. I anticipated a heroic rescue in my immediate future."
"Sorry I didn't provide one." A frown had darkened Jack's face, and Ianto was caught between wanting to kiss it away and wanting to back off and give Jack space to work it out on his own.
"We handled it," he said, unable to keep the pride out of his own voice. "It's not every time we get to save you."
Jack said something softly that Ianto didn't catch, something that sounded like, "You save me every day." That made no sense.
Instead of asking Jack what he'd meant, Ianto retreated instead to a safer topic. "What did Suzie want?"
Jack rubbed his hand over his face, as if trying to erase the frown. "I don't know. To make amends, maybe. To say goodbye. Maybe just to see everyone she loved one more time." The catch in his voice wasn't for her, Ianto was certain.
"Definitely not our Suzie, then."
"No." The shadow lingered on Jack's face another moment, and then was gone. "So, you in the mood for dinner?"
"I could be. Nothing sweet, though. If I don't eat sugar again for a week, I'll be happy."
Jack stood and let Ianto help him into his greatcoat which smelled, not unpleasantly, of blueberries. "Right. Skipping dessert. Although," said Jack with a familiar expression on his face, "we could have a special dessert, if you know what I mean."
"Jack, bacteria living under rocks on Mars know what you mean."
Jack laughed, and it was warm and rich, like the best chocolate on Earth.
***
The End
***
ETA: Foxy just linked me to this totally NSFW set of Wonka-related icons for your viewing pleasure.