Fic: Devil may care (9/30) ... continued
1. Chapter, 2. Chapter, 3. Chapter, 4. Chapter, 5. Chapter, 6. Chapter, 7. Chapter, 8. Chapter, 9. Chapter (part 1)
"You callin' me rookie?"
"It's that or Groupie," she teased, a delicate blush dusting her cheeks.
"Oh, you are a devil."
"Tosh? Tosh! Why the hell is your comm turned off?" Owen's urgent voice suddenly pulled them out of their banter. The screen was flashing the words 'Connection established' once again.
"I can hear you, Owen. I've just switched my earpiece off because I put you on speakerph-"
"No time to listen to you waffle on all day," Owen cut in rudely. "How many Weevils did the cyclist say he saw?"
"Two. He said he saw two tall figures outside the building-"
"Thanks, I think I know what a Weevil looks like," the doctor snapped at her again.
"Owen, is everything alright?" Toshiko's voice had taken on a worried tone.
"We've killed the two buggers. They were extremely aggressive. Same as yesterday. Don't know what's got their knickers in a twist all of a sudden … Anyway, Gwen and Ianto are carrying the bodies to the SUV at the moment. But Jack insists he can still hear sounds drifting out of- Shit! Jack!" Owen shouted suddenly, his voice cracking with panic. "Jack! Behind you! There's a third o-"
But whatever Owen said was drowned out by a horrifying, bloodcurdling scream, that caused the speaker to shake on the desk, and a couple of gunshots, that followed shortly thereafter, echoing loudly in the Hub.
The Captain leaped to his feet, heart slamming into his chest like a fist. "That's Jack. Jesus! That was Jack's voice!" he exclaimed, wild panic coursing throughout his entire body.
"Tosh, it's Jack," Owen's voice announced solemnly over the speaker. "He is-"
But whatever the man had wanted to say was cut off when Toshiko switched the speaker off with one swift movement of her hand. Then she tapped her earpiece again. "Owen? I'm here … What happened? … Yes …"
"We've gotta help Jack. Is he-? Please ask him if Jack is alright?" the Captain tried to get her attention, not understanding how she could stay so collected when his heart was practically beating out of his chest and he could feel sweat forming on his brow.
"Yes … yes … You shot it? … Good … Just go find Ianto, okay? You know how Jack hates it when the first thing he sees upon coming to is your face … yes … yes … Just go get Ianto; he always knows what to do …" Her end of the conversation sounded calm and careless like some casual chitchat over a cup of tea.
"Please, Toshiko. What's going on?" the Captain tried again, noticing how hoarse his voice sounded.
She clicked off her earpiece and looked up at him, a too-bright, slightly forced, smile on her face. "Everything's fine."
"Is Jack alright?"
"Of course, he is. Takes more than a Weevil to take out our Jack."
The Captain didn't know what a Weevil was, but he did know that the scream he had heard had been hair-raising.
"Really. Don't worry. Owen's a good doctor; he knows what he's doing," Toshiko reassured him with a smile. "Come on, I'll take your photo."
"What? What for?" he asked in confusion, still reeling from what he had just heard over the speaker.
"For your new passport … Smile." She had snatched up a tiny silver camera from the desk, and for a second, he was blinded by a bright flash of blue light where he was still standing beside his chair.
"Uh … Don't we need a white background for the photograph? I mean, there are rusty old stairs behind me." He jerked his thumb in the direction of Jack's office.
"Oh, don't worry. We can switch backgrounds afterwards."
"How?" he asked, even more confused now.
Instead of responding, she just pressed a button, and his picture appeared on the screen.
He gaped at it. "Okay, that was impressive."
The petite, bespectacled woman beamed up at him. "Now look …" Her fingers started flying over the keyboard at an amazing speed, and the background of the photograph changed to white, then black, then bottle-green, and then … a whole lot of eagle badges started to pop up all over the screen, complete with crown and 'Let us to the battle' inscription.
He laughed in quiet surprise.
Another flash went off.
Apparently, the sneaky girl had taken advantage of the moment to snap another picture of him.
"You look friendlier in this one," she grinned, pulling the image up on the screen as well. "Shame we can't use that green background for your passport; it really brings out your eyes."
They took a few more pictures, Toshiko asking him to turn his head like this or look straight into the camera like that. Apparently, he managed to get it wrong every single time, sheepish grin slowly spreading across his face as she started to fuss. "… and there's a crease in your collar. Let me straighten that for you … Here you go … Now, straight into the camera … No, no, no, what happened to your hair?!"
They both ended up laughing.
Then he snapped a few pictures of her, careful not to drop the small camera when she showed him which buttons to push. (The thing was so tiny that even his slender hands looked big wrapped around it.)
"And now, one of the two of us together. Come on, just for fun," she insisted, a trace of insecurity in her voice and in the way her cheeks flushed prettily at his doubtful look.
She quickly got up and placed the camera on one of the stairs, setting the auto-timer and rushing back to his side to get into the frame.
It was strange, the way this delicate little woman felt leaning against him. He noticed how very small she was when the side of her head connected slightly with his bicep, frail shoulder bumping into him, jasmine perfume wafting up to his nose. It was a pleasant, unobtrusive scent, and yet it left him feeling vaguely uncomfortable.
It was the same awkward feeling he had gotten whenever Nancy had smiled at him. This strange realization that she was flirting with him and that he had no idea how to react. An uneasy feeling of emptiness whenever he had put his arms around her graceful waist on the dance floor. Like a man who was absolutely famished and had been handed a beautiful flower instead of food. Yes, it was a fair little thing. But what the hell was he supposed to do with it?
'Probably just too shy. Never been much of a womanizer,' he thought, smiling to himself. The camera flashed brightly, capturing the moment on film.
After that, he relaxed a bit, catching on to Toshiko's playful mood, and they started snapping one picture after another, striking ridiculous poses and laughing. The monitor later revealed that, in one of them, she had held up 'rabbit ears' behind his head without him even noticing. He laughed, realizing that he had obviously underestimated this quiet, well-mannered person's mischievous ways.
Watching her skim through the pictures and play around with their background colors, he had completely lost track of time when suddenly the alarm went off, indicating that the cog door had started to roll open once again.
The other four Torchwood members walked in, and the Captain released a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.
Ianto had a cut across his cheekbone, that looked like a cat scratch, and it was just astounding how much Owen was fussing over him, considering that they were allegedly arch-enemies. Even after the doctor had dragged the young man into the medical bay, his concerned voice and Ianto's meek protests kept resounding throughout the Hub.
"Three Weevils. And in the middle of the day at that. Would you believe it, Tosh?!" Gwen exclaimed, stepping over to Toshiko's workstation, where the Captain was still sitting beside the Japanese girl.
"And Gwen almost bloody shot me," Owen cried out from the medical bay. "She should really spend more time on the shooting range, Jack!"
When there was no answer, the Captain looked over to Jack.
It was clear, at first glance, that the leader of Torchwood Three was not in a good mood anymore; his demeanor had shifted from upbeat cheerfulness to one of tightly wound tension, and his face had turned pale under the tan, an almost tangible tiredness around his eyes now.
"What a nice picture of the two of you!" Gwen exclaimed, pointing at the forgotten screen in front of the Captain and Toshiko. "Can I have a copy? I'd just love to show Rhys what our new teammate looks like."
Jack made his way over to them. "So, what did you get up to while you had the place to yourselves?" he asked, sounding a bit weary.
The Captain noticed that Jack's greatcoat was now buttoned up to his throat and that the man was flinching away from the bluish light of the monitor almost imperceptibly - like someone with a throbbing headache.
"What's this?" Jack inquired curtly, casting a glance at the picture on the screen, his voice going from exhausted to keenly alert in the matter of a second.
"Just a bit of fun, Jack," Toshiko replied, an apologetic tone in her voice. "I took the Captain's picture for the documents, and we got bored … Are you alright?"
"Never been better!" Jack bit out sharply. Something was flashing in his eyes, some hidden emotion that the Captain couldn't read … As if the photographs were irritating him for some mysterious reason.
"Oh, look at this one! It's lovely, the way you've put your arm around Tosh's shoulder," Gwen's enthusiastic voice rang out behind them.
There was a visible flinch in Jack's stance. "No need to scream, Gwen. We can hear you just fine."
The Captain looked up at Jack, who was now standing beside his chair. The man had a sickly look to his eyes like someone with a severe migraine coming on. But there was something else as well, some deeper, darker emotion, something intense flickering in his frown … And at that moment, realization hit the Captain like a punch to the gut. 'Jealousy. Jack's jealous!'
Their conversation at the Ritz came back to him. He had asked Jack if Toshiko was his woman, and Jack's bitter voice had replied, 'No. There's no one.'
'Well, maybe it wasn't true,' the Captain pondered. 'Maybe he lied. Maybe he is with Toshiko, after all. Or maybe he didn't lie, and she wasn't his girl back then, but now she is.' Lots of things could have changed in the months that had passed for Jack, the Captain realized with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. 'Or maybe she isn't his girl, but he would like her to be, and she just doesn't know it yet …' Whichever way he looked at it, the pictures had to look very inappropriate and downright hurtful to Jack.
'God, and I just threw myself at him at the Ritz,' the Captain thought, an unnamable feeling of guilt and shame and desperation descending upon him. 'He was probably just trying to be nice and I … I kept insisting on- God!' He didn't even care anymore that what he had done was wrong. (He was probably going to hell in a handbasket, anyway. In fact, maybe this place here was Hell already.) But the idea of how he had most likely forced Jack to do something that the man hadn't wanted to do seemed deeply troubling to him.
And yet he couldn't suppress this confusing hunger he was feeling inside himself. This pent-up aggression that he couldn't take out on anything now that he was trapped in this bunker and couldn't sweat and curse and turn enemy planes into fireballs. It was building up inside of him like a black thunderstorm on the horizon. And he had no idea how to turn around …
It didn't exactly help that Toshiko chose that moment to happily pull up the next picture, which turned out to be one in which the Captain had, yet again, put his arm around her shoulder. (God, where were the 'rabbit ears' when you needed them?)
Jack shot her a withering look. "Had a blast, didn't you?" Irritation was clearly evident in his voice now. "Let's see …" He reached over her shoulder to press a key on the keyboard, leaning toward the Captain for a second.
And that was when the Captain saw it: the swift movement had caused the wide collar of the greatcoat to slide to the side a few inches, revealing, for a fraction of a second, a glimpse of a shirt completely drenched in blood.
The Captain reeled back in his chair, letting out a silent gasp. Had he seen right?
The girls' eyes were still firmly fixed on the screen in front of them; they couldn't have seen anything.
But there had been blood. Definitely. An abundance of angry crimson on Jack's shirt. How the man could even stand upright was a mystery.
"Phone call from the Queen in about five minutes, Jack," Ianto's voice suddenly rang out behind them.
"Right …" Jack shot Toshiko one last look of warning, straightened up and disappeared into his office.
______________________________
10. Chapter: More questions
"You callin' me rookie?"
"It's that or Groupie," she teased, a delicate blush dusting her cheeks.
"Oh, you are a devil."
"Tosh? Tosh! Why the hell is your comm turned off?" Owen's urgent voice suddenly pulled them out of their banter. The screen was flashing the words 'Connection established' once again.
"I can hear you, Owen. I've just switched my earpiece off because I put you on speakerph-"
"No time to listen to you waffle on all day," Owen cut in rudely. "How many Weevils did the cyclist say he saw?"
"Two. He said he saw two tall figures outside the building-"
"Thanks, I think I know what a Weevil looks like," the doctor snapped at her again.
"Owen, is everything alright?" Toshiko's voice had taken on a worried tone.
"We've killed the two buggers. They were extremely aggressive. Same as yesterday. Don't know what's got their knickers in a twist all of a sudden … Anyway, Gwen and Ianto are carrying the bodies to the SUV at the moment. But Jack insists he can still hear sounds drifting out of- Shit! Jack!" Owen shouted suddenly, his voice cracking with panic. "Jack! Behind you! There's a third o-"
But whatever Owen said was drowned out by a horrifying, bloodcurdling scream, that caused the speaker to shake on the desk, and a couple of gunshots, that followed shortly thereafter, echoing loudly in the Hub.
The Captain leaped to his feet, heart slamming into his chest like a fist. "That's Jack. Jesus! That was Jack's voice!" he exclaimed, wild panic coursing throughout his entire body.
"Tosh, it's Jack," Owen's voice announced solemnly over the speaker. "He is-"
But whatever the man had wanted to say was cut off when Toshiko switched the speaker off with one swift movement of her hand. Then she tapped her earpiece again. "Owen? I'm here … What happened? … Yes …"
"We've gotta help Jack. Is he-? Please ask him if Jack is alright?" the Captain tried to get her attention, not understanding how she could stay so collected when his heart was practically beating out of his chest and he could feel sweat forming on his brow.
"Yes … yes … You shot it? … Good … Just go find Ianto, okay? You know how Jack hates it when the first thing he sees upon coming to is your face … yes … yes … Just go get Ianto; he always knows what to do …" Her end of the conversation sounded calm and careless like some casual chitchat over a cup of tea.
"Please, Toshiko. What's going on?" the Captain tried again, noticing how hoarse his voice sounded.
She clicked off her earpiece and looked up at him, a too-bright, slightly forced, smile on her face. "Everything's fine."
"Is Jack alright?"
"Of course, he is. Takes more than a Weevil to take out our Jack."
The Captain didn't know what a Weevil was, but he did know that the scream he had heard had been hair-raising.
"Really. Don't worry. Owen's a good doctor; he knows what he's doing," Toshiko reassured him with a smile. "Come on, I'll take your photo."
"What? What for?" he asked in confusion, still reeling from what he had just heard over the speaker.
"For your new passport … Smile." She had snatched up a tiny silver camera from the desk, and for a second, he was blinded by a bright flash of blue light where he was still standing beside his chair.
"Uh … Don't we need a white background for the photograph? I mean, there are rusty old stairs behind me." He jerked his thumb in the direction of Jack's office.
"Oh, don't worry. We can switch backgrounds afterwards."
"How?" he asked, even more confused now.
Instead of responding, she just pressed a button, and his picture appeared on the screen.
He gaped at it. "Okay, that was impressive."
The petite, bespectacled woman beamed up at him. "Now look …" Her fingers started flying over the keyboard at an amazing speed, and the background of the photograph changed to white, then black, then bottle-green, and then … a whole lot of eagle badges started to pop up all over the screen, complete with crown and 'Let us to the battle' inscription.
He laughed in quiet surprise.
Another flash went off.
Apparently, the sneaky girl had taken advantage of the moment to snap another picture of him.
"You look friendlier in this one," she grinned, pulling the image up on the screen as well. "Shame we can't use that green background for your passport; it really brings out your eyes."
They took a few more pictures, Toshiko asking him to turn his head like this or look straight into the camera like that. Apparently, he managed to get it wrong every single time, sheepish grin slowly spreading across his face as she started to fuss. "… and there's a crease in your collar. Let me straighten that for you … Here you go … Now, straight into the camera … No, no, no, what happened to your hair?!"
They both ended up laughing.
Then he snapped a few pictures of her, careful not to drop the small camera when she showed him which buttons to push. (The thing was so tiny that even his slender hands looked big wrapped around it.)
"And now, one of the two of us together. Come on, just for fun," she insisted, a trace of insecurity in her voice and in the way her cheeks flushed prettily at his doubtful look.
She quickly got up and placed the camera on one of the stairs, setting the auto-timer and rushing back to his side to get into the frame.
It was strange, the way this delicate little woman felt leaning against him. He noticed how very small she was when the side of her head connected slightly with his bicep, frail shoulder bumping into him, jasmine perfume wafting up to his nose. It was a pleasant, unobtrusive scent, and yet it left him feeling vaguely uncomfortable.
It was the same awkward feeling he had gotten whenever Nancy had smiled at him. This strange realization that she was flirting with him and that he had no idea how to react. An uneasy feeling of emptiness whenever he had put his arms around her graceful waist on the dance floor. Like a man who was absolutely famished and had been handed a beautiful flower instead of food. Yes, it was a fair little thing. But what the hell was he supposed to do with it?
'Probably just too shy. Never been much of a womanizer,' he thought, smiling to himself. The camera flashed brightly, capturing the moment on film.
After that, he relaxed a bit, catching on to Toshiko's playful mood, and they started snapping one picture after another, striking ridiculous poses and laughing. The monitor later revealed that, in one of them, she had held up 'rabbit ears' behind his head without him even noticing. He laughed, realizing that he had obviously underestimated this quiet, well-mannered person's mischievous ways.
Watching her skim through the pictures and play around with their background colors, he had completely lost track of time when suddenly the alarm went off, indicating that the cog door had started to roll open once again.
The other four Torchwood members walked in, and the Captain released a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding.
Ianto had a cut across his cheekbone, that looked like a cat scratch, and it was just astounding how much Owen was fussing over him, considering that they were allegedly arch-enemies. Even after the doctor had dragged the young man into the medical bay, his concerned voice and Ianto's meek protests kept resounding throughout the Hub.
"Three Weevils. And in the middle of the day at that. Would you believe it, Tosh?!" Gwen exclaimed, stepping over to Toshiko's workstation, where the Captain was still sitting beside the Japanese girl.
"And Gwen almost bloody shot me," Owen cried out from the medical bay. "She should really spend more time on the shooting range, Jack!"
When there was no answer, the Captain looked over to Jack.
It was clear, at first glance, that the leader of Torchwood Three was not in a good mood anymore; his demeanor had shifted from upbeat cheerfulness to one of tightly wound tension, and his face had turned pale under the tan, an almost tangible tiredness around his eyes now.
"What a nice picture of the two of you!" Gwen exclaimed, pointing at the forgotten screen in front of the Captain and Toshiko. "Can I have a copy? I'd just love to show Rhys what our new teammate looks like."
Jack made his way over to them. "So, what did you get up to while you had the place to yourselves?" he asked, sounding a bit weary.
The Captain noticed that Jack's greatcoat was now buttoned up to his throat and that the man was flinching away from the bluish light of the monitor almost imperceptibly - like someone with a throbbing headache.
"What's this?" Jack inquired curtly, casting a glance at the picture on the screen, his voice going from exhausted to keenly alert in the matter of a second.
"Just a bit of fun, Jack," Toshiko replied, an apologetic tone in her voice. "I took the Captain's picture for the documents, and we got bored … Are you alright?"
"Never been better!" Jack bit out sharply. Something was flashing in his eyes, some hidden emotion that the Captain couldn't read … As if the photographs were irritating him for some mysterious reason.
"Oh, look at this one! It's lovely, the way you've put your arm around Tosh's shoulder," Gwen's enthusiastic voice rang out behind them.
There was a visible flinch in Jack's stance. "No need to scream, Gwen. We can hear you just fine."
The Captain looked up at Jack, who was now standing beside his chair. The man had a sickly look to his eyes like someone with a severe migraine coming on. But there was something else as well, some deeper, darker emotion, something intense flickering in his frown … And at that moment, realization hit the Captain like a punch to the gut. 'Jealousy. Jack's jealous!'
Their conversation at the Ritz came back to him. He had asked Jack if Toshiko was his woman, and Jack's bitter voice had replied, 'No. There's no one.'
'Well, maybe it wasn't true,' the Captain pondered. 'Maybe he lied. Maybe he is with Toshiko, after all. Or maybe he didn't lie, and she wasn't his girl back then, but now she is.' Lots of things could have changed in the months that had passed for Jack, the Captain realized with a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. 'Or maybe she isn't his girl, but he would like her to be, and she just doesn't know it yet …' Whichever way he looked at it, the pictures had to look very inappropriate and downright hurtful to Jack.
'God, and I just threw myself at him at the Ritz,' the Captain thought, an unnamable feeling of guilt and shame and desperation descending upon him. 'He was probably just trying to be nice and I … I kept insisting on- God!' He didn't even care anymore that what he had done was wrong. (He was probably going to hell in a handbasket, anyway. In fact, maybe this place here was Hell already.) But the idea of how he had most likely forced Jack to do something that the man hadn't wanted to do seemed deeply troubling to him.
And yet he couldn't suppress this confusing hunger he was feeling inside himself. This pent-up aggression that he couldn't take out on anything now that he was trapped in this bunker and couldn't sweat and curse and turn enemy planes into fireballs. It was building up inside of him like a black thunderstorm on the horizon. And he had no idea how to turn around …
It didn't exactly help that Toshiko chose that moment to happily pull up the next picture, which turned out to be one in which the Captain had, yet again, put his arm around her shoulder. (God, where were the 'rabbit ears' when you needed them?)
Jack shot her a withering look. "Had a blast, didn't you?" Irritation was clearly evident in his voice now. "Let's see …" He reached over her shoulder to press a key on the keyboard, leaning toward the Captain for a second.
And that was when the Captain saw it: the swift movement had caused the wide collar of the greatcoat to slide to the side a few inches, revealing, for a fraction of a second, a glimpse of a shirt completely drenched in blood.
The Captain reeled back in his chair, letting out a silent gasp. Had he seen right?
The girls' eyes were still firmly fixed on the screen in front of them; they couldn't have seen anything.
But there had been blood. Definitely. An abundance of angry crimson on Jack's shirt. How the man could even stand upright was a mystery.
"Phone call from the Queen in about five minutes, Jack," Ianto's voice suddenly rang out behind them.
"Right …" Jack shot Toshiko one last look of warning, straightened up and disappeared into his office.
______________________________
10. Chapter: More questions