TW:R CH9
Title: Torchwood: Resurrection - Chapter 9
Author: Z and TWTL
Rating: PG-13 (just to be safe with the swearing)
Disclaimer: Doctor Who/Torchwood are owned by the BBC, not us. This is non-profit fanfiction.
Notes: AU After Children of Earth, and Doctor Who: Planet of the Dead
She was in his eyes beautiful first thing in the morning. Her dirty blonde hair disheveled. That single tuft of dark brown hanging in front of her face. Sometimes curled, sometimes knotted. She would always straighten it back out before heading off to work ahead of him.
She was everything a woman should be. Fit, quirky, and drop dead gorgeous. He envied her for what was naturally bestowed on her. He even coveted her perfect brown eyes despite having a matching set of his own.
For all his jealousy, Eddie admired his big sister. Confidence flowed off her in waves, and she herself seemed to be oblivious to her own genetic charms. He would have done anything for her, just to see her smile.
But for this moment, as she staggered across their kitchen, she groaned as if she were dying, and fumbled around for an empty beaker for her coffee. "Mornin," she managed to get out as she sloshed the hot black liquid into the ceramic cup, spilling more of it on the counter than actually pouring it where it was intended.
One, two. Three. Four large spoonfuls of sugar, followed by a creamer cube followed as she rubbed at her eyes with one hand. The other stirring the contents of the beaker together into a liquid form of caffeinated crack.
"Mornin," he called back, looking up from the computer. He was still working on the tablet. Though unable to bring the actual artifact home with him, he had made some high-res scans to use for comparison to other languages for a possible similarity. He had already nixed the recipe idea, having realized that it was indeed a list, but not of ingredients to his knowledge. Certain syllables repeated far too often to be a list of foodstuffs. His new theory was that it had been a list of names, dates, and deeds. What for, he hadn't a clue. But it was something that needed to be figured out.
She mumbled something at him in passing as she continued her morning ritual. Sloshing back the coffee as she looked through the scarcity of the fridge. Chinese take-away from over a week before. Something orange and green and possibly blue had made a little colony of.. well... something orange and green and possibly blue in the back on the third shelf down.
"I think the bagels are still good," Eddie said, trying to sound hopeful. "And if you scrape the furry stuff off the cream cheese-"
"Bagel..." Mattie mumbled, sounding as if she might be drooling at the thought.
Moving with cup in hand towards their breadbox, she stopped, looked down at her cup, and turned to Eddie. "What time is it?"
He checked the clock in the corner of his screen. "Quarter past five," he said.
"Morning?"
He nodded. She groaned, putting her cup down and starting back for her bedroom. "Oi!" Eddie called after her. "Still on for London today?"
"In an hour," she grumbled back, shutting the door behind her and crawling back under the soft, warm sheets she saw far less often than she'd liked.
Eddie sighed, using his good hand to scratch at the edge of his plastic cast. Unlike his dear sister Mattie, his sleep the night before was far less sound. The painkillers Quincy had given him did the trick alright. They dulled the pain down to a manageable level. They had knocked him out cold for a few hours.
But those few hours when his mind should have been resting with the body had been the strangest couple of hours he'd had for a long time. And he'd had some strange ones in the last year and a half. It had spooked him far more than he would admit.
The tablet would get his mind off things. Keep his mind focused on a single, inane but obsessive task. And keep thoughts of a voluptuous moonlight skinned temptress from his consciousness.
- - -
As promised, Mattie rose an hour later at 6:15 in the morning. Far more refreshed than she had been the first time she had crawled out of her warm bed. She groaned at first, tasting a syrupy yet coffee flavor in her mouth. What the hell had she been drinking?
Sitting up, she stretched and then turned to shut off her alarm. Her hand skimmed over the ear-pod beside the lamp before pulling back again. "Maybe not today..." she said to herself, throwing back the blankets and getting out of bed with a yawn. First thing was first. She needed to call her mum. Let her know she was coming to London to stay the night. Maybe two.
"Mattie!" came a shout from beyond her door. With a sigh, she pulled up her sweatpants and ventured outside of her bedroom.
"What?" she snapped groggily before softening her harshness with a gentle smile.
Eddie was waving her over. Had he moved from that spot at their small kitchen table since her half-conscious coffee run an hour earlier? Yawning and stretching her arms once again, she went to him and leaned over his shoulder. "What am I looking at?"
"You left a pile of papers on the counter last night. I've only just now had a chance to look over them."
"You..." she turned her face to look at him, a mortified expression in her eyes. "You saw them?"
"Hard to miss when you leave them out in the open like that."
"I can explain-"
"Look," Eddie insisted, pointing at the screen. "I've fed this into the facial recognition program. Something about it didn't peg me as normal."
"It's mum and dad's-"
"I know. And we've seen it a thousand times. At first, I just glanced at it. Then I saw him," he said, still pointing at the screen. She let her eyes drift back to what he was showing her. He spoke on and on at length about whatever it is nerds talked about before she heard a name.
"Wait... say that again."
"I found it cross referenced to the tablet I've been working on, and-"
"No no. Before that."
"Which part."
She smacked him in the back of the head, causing him to yelp. "Hey! Don't hit the cripple!"
"What, who did you say before."
He took a deep breath, calling up page after page of information. "That guy, he's everywhere, but he's nowhere. Like some kind of ghost. Most of it all drops off about 25 years ago. Before you and me were ever born. But then..." he said, using the small joystick in the center of his keyboard to mouse over another picture.
"This was taken in 2018. Nine years after the last sighting. Roughly nine or ten after mum and dad got married."
"Is that... But the bloke didn't look that old."
"It's him alright. Captain Jack Harkness. Unless there's a glitch in my system, and therefore the Hub's systems." He turned in his seat as best he could, looking at his sister as she stared at the man on the screen. "This is why you're really going to London, isn't it?"
"Eddie," she said slowly, straightening up as she easily dodged his question. "You looked through the rest of the pile, right?"
He nodded. "Yeah. Haven't gotten around to the rest of it yet though."
"I need a favor. There's a memo in the pile. Says it's from Jack Harkness."
He nodded again, biting his lip. "You're not going to try and get info out of mum again, are you?" After seeing the determined look she always gave to their leader when trying to get her way, he sighed as he knew there was no way out of this. "Make sure you toss a bottle of brain bleach in your purse. I'll call you if I get anything else."
"Good boy." She smiled as she headed back to her room to get changed. If she hurried, she could still make it down to the train station in time for the 7:45 rail.
"Don't provoke her again!" Eddie called back to her. "Last time you had to brain bleach the whole block!"
"What was I supposed to do, Eds?" she called back to him while hopping around on one foot, trying to swap out her sweatpants for a pair of dark denim. "Let her get a hold of UNIT? There was peanut butter raining from the sky and blobs of jelly trying to eat the people!"
"Would have been better than shooting da in the foot!"
She muttered under her breath as she changed her top, deciding on a plain green vintage t-shirt about recycling and saving the planet. Ironic, yes. Amusing, doubly so. After pulling on a pair of sneakers, best for running to catch a train in anyway, she tossed a few clothes into an overnight bag.
"Aren't you going to grab a bite?"
"I'll eat at the station if there's time," she said back as she came out from her room. "There's take away menus on the counter next to the coffee tin. Don't splurge, and please for the love of God don't call up that one place with the weird little Hoolaroo working there. Blue food makes you sick."
"I know, I know," he said. "Give mum my love."
"I will. Don't forget to call in and let the Admiral know about the jump points not working. Don't need Luke suddenly materializing in Splott when he wants to pop out for a look around the Bay."
"Will do," he said, watching as she started to rush out the door. "Matts!" he called at the last second. She poked her head inside.
"What now?"
He grinned. "You've got your ear-pod sticking out of your pocket. Might wanna either put it on or tuck it somewhere safer. Lose another one and the boss'll kill you."
She smiled and gave him a nod. "Thanks, bro."
"Sure thing sis. Now hurry up. Gonna miss that train."
- - -
She'd been on the train for an hour already, using that time to catch up on her sleep, when her PRM went off. Mattie hadn't noticed it at first until the second time it started to vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out to look at the LCD screen, hoping it was Eddie with news. Instead, she found a quick little note from Quincy. Reminding her that overdosing her parents with brain bleach was not a good idea. There would also be a rental car waiting for her. It would be yellow.
She smiled softly as she read the message. Even on their days off, Quincy made sure everyone was sorted. He was a real good chap. A bit dense at times she thought, but she still liked him. In his short tenure on their team, he'd become like family to her. A brother even. A sneaky older brother that would often come up behind you and talk without you ever hearing him coming.
The remaining hour and ten minutes she spent staring at the morning clouds. It looked like for once, it wasn't going to rain on her parade. She only hoped that this uplifting feeling would last the day. Something in her gut told her she was going to need it.
- - -
He'd called Quin. He hadn't wanted to. But he felt so exhausted. Knowing Mattie as he did, he knew she'd hit the bus, or hike it to their parents home. That wouldn't be a good idea, just in case they all got called back suddenly. Not that it would happen. The Admiral was there, and she would no doubt have called one of her own minions to man the fort with her while she dealt with the man in the vault.
They hadn't told him that's why she was there. But it was a process of elimination. And the choices were limited to start with. He'd asked Quin to arrange a rental for Mattie. He agreed... only after demanding his blue-ray disks of the entire Harry Potter collection back.
Eddie had put up a half-hearted argument that he hadn't had the time to copy them all off for himself yet, since they were rare collectibles meant to be savored and enjoyed rather than rushed through.
He looked at the stack of papers he'd built up around himself. Print outs of old newspaper articles. Documents he'd found buried deep in the Hub's servers. But all of it pointed to dead ends. Nothing beyond 2018. Even that sighting was scarce at best. A brawl at a police academy in the American midwest. Why, and how, he didn't want to know.
Now, however, Eddie had gotten up to get some fresh air. Standing on the balcony of his shared appartment, he tried to clear his head. Numbers and symbols and names had all been his attempts at distraction. Even monitoring the Rift from home despite the fact he knew he wasn't supposed to. None of it worked. The morning had dragged on into the afternoon, and he wanted to sleep but couldn't.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw a pair of menacing yellow irises staring back at him. And he heard the siren's song. Calling out to him, longing for him.
Summoning him to sleep.
But the breeze seemed to help some. He could see the bay from his balcony. He could see the start of the crater where records stated his predecessors had lived and worked in secret just as he did now. He scratched at his neck with a groan before placing his hand under his chin and using it to gently push his head to stretch his neck first left, then right. The pain in his ribs was coming back, making itself known slowly as if it were trying to sneak up on him again. The pain pills sat beside his scanner.
He decided to stay out in the warm sun a while longer, breathing the clean air in deeply before shuffling back into the stuffy appartment again.