Fic: TW: Walking Dead: GEN
Title: Walking Dead
Author: weaselett
Prompt: Iron Man
Pairings: None
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some mention of serious injury and some mild swear words.
Word Count: 1,877
Spoilers: Up to mid way through season two of Torchwood, none for Iron Man
Disclaimer: I own neither Torchwood nor Iron Man they belong to their respective owners (BBC and Marvel) - I just borrowed them for a little while
Summary: What if some things had gone a little differently?
Author's Notes: Beta'd by the ever lovely charlies_dragon - Written for reel_torchwood. This is a little later than planned due to Mr David Lloyd (seriously - was in preston until an hour or so ago).
"Owen." Martha’s voice is insistent and closer than the others, but the darkness is much more tempting. "Owen!"
He blinks so slowly; his existence is just the pain now. He can’t feel the warmth spreading across his chest, or the cold in his fingers tips. He can barely hear Martha, even though he thinks she must be screaming at him as the veins around her eyes bulge.
He blinks again, much slower than the last time, his gaze wanders to the night sky above him as the pain seemed to fade. He blinks one more time, aware of only that and the tug of the dark; the escape from the pain that he knows is still there, waiting for him.
It’s easy, letting his eyes slid shut. Half of a blink and it all just fades away.
-
"Jack!" Gwen yells, stopping in the archway leading into the main hub, unwilling to move any further away from her friend lying on the autopsy table below. "You can’t leave, not now."
Jack just waves a hand, continuing his flight towards the cog door and ignoring the tears of frustration running down Gwen’s cheeks.
"Jack!" She screams one last time as the cog door starts to roll shut, the tail of Jack’s coat the only part of him still visible. She curses him loudly when he doesn’t come back, before wiping at her face and turning back to the others. Typically Jack Bloody Harkness always running away when they needed him, never telling them anything, even when they really needed him to.
Martha and Ianto stand over the autopsy table, their hands bloody as they work, Tosh hovering just a few inches away, handing Martha whatever she asks for. Ianto’s holding pressure on one part of Owen’s chest while Martha works on another, eyes narrowed in concentration.
Gwen’s hand strays absently to her side, where she still bears the scars from the Brecon Beacons, swallowing hard as she remembers Owen leaning over her, carrying out a similar procedure to the one Martha is now.
Only the gun that had been used to inflict this on Owen hadn’t been of human design. Gwen bites her lip, fighting hard not to replay what Jack had told them before. Owen is not going to die. Owen is stronger than that; Martha is better than that.
She has to be.
-
Gwen hovers just a few feet from Ianto, having followed him automatically when he’d headed down the stairs into the archives. She had wanted something to do, but now she isn’t sure that there is anything for her to do.
She watches quietly for a long moment as he seeks out each of the items on the list in his head and she wonders if he’s even aware of her presence, or his own rumpled state. There’s blood on his shirt, and on his arms, but he doesn’t notice, he’s too focused on his task.
She hurries forward when he starts to drag a box off one of the shelves, silently taking one side of it and helping him carry it over the one of the empty tables. She steps back as he starts opening the box, hunting through the mass of odd shaped objects that are piled within. It’s clear that this box originated long before Ianto’s tenure in the archives had begun.
"You know," she moves forwards again, almost reaching out to him before thinking better of it, "we might be more productive if you include me."
He glances sideways at her briefly, making a vague noise of recognition before he’s back to hunting though the box.
Gwen frowns, shifting her weight, fighting the urge to yell at him, or hit something or, just, something. She fights back angry tears and the image of Owen lying so still and so pale on the gurney upstairs.
Ianto finally finds what he was looking for, a small cylinder that looks unsettlingly like the nose of a warhead.
"Ianto?" Gwen breaths his name, making it a question, she remembers her first week and the talk on ‘if it looks like something dangerous, it’s best to assume it is dangerous and act accordingly’, but now Ianto’s hitting the end of the object with a hammer retrieved from the shelf beside the table.
She’s moving forwards, just about to pull him back from the table and away from the object, when the end falls off, exposing the objects innards. She stares for a moment, surprised by how, ordinary, it all looks.
"What is that?" She asks, watching as Ianto pulls something out of the mass of wiring and circuits, the thing glinting dully in a way that metal shouldn’t, at least in Gwen’s experience.
"That’s palladium, zero point one five grams," Ianto answers, looking up at her and actually seeing her this time, "we need at least one point six for Tosh’s plan to have a chance to work."
Gwen stares at the tiny piece of metal in Ianto’s hand for a minute before she nods her understanding.
"What do you need me to get?"
-
Owen wakes quietly, or at least he’s quiet until he realizes that there’s a tube down his throat and then they all know he’s awake. The sound of his spluttering indignation carries easily though the silent hub.
Martha moves quickly, hauling herself up off the battered old sofa and jogging down into the autopsy bay before Owen can do himself any more harm than he doubtless already has.
She reaches him just as he tries to roll over, aware of Tosh following just a few steps behind. Ianto and Gwen are still lost in the depths of the hub and Jack hasn’t come back from wherever he ran off to.
"I wouldn’t do that if I were you." Martha cautions as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, moving to grab Owen’s hands before he can do any damage, to himself or anyone else, fighting the urge to stare at his chest rather than meet his gaze. She knows what’s hiding under those bandages, but Owen obviously hasn’t realised yet.
Owen glares at her, pulling his hands out of her grip and shifting on the bed, trying to find a more comfortable position. He stills as he finally realises that he’s tethered to something, by his chest. He looks down, his whole body going stiff as he catches sight of the bandages and then he’s moving before Martha can stop him, tearing at the bandages to see what lies beneath them.
He should have more sense than that, but then, Martha thinks, if it were her she probably wouldn’t be thinking all that hard either. He rips the last bandage off, exposing the ugly metal that they’ve embedded in his chest. His brushes it with the tips of his fingers.
"What the hell d'you do to me?"
"What we had to." Tosh speaks before Martha can, leaning over the railing to look down at Owen, her eyes soft with concern and something else much more private.
Owen laughs harshly, ignoring Tosh’s sincerity as he turns his anger on Martha, the closer target.
"What the hell did you do to me?"
"What we did was save your life." Martha replies, calmer than she should be considering the fact that she had her hands buried in his chest less than six hours ago. He shouldn’t be awake, shouldn’t be moving, let alone yelling at them for doing what they had had to do to save him.
"I removed all the shrapnel I could, but there’s a lot left, it’s headed into your atrial septum." Martha reached out, picking up one of the glass vials that she had filled with shrapnel and held it out to Owen.
"I’ve seen wounds like that before," she still remembers those months, somewhere new almost every week, but they’d never really been new. By the time the year had been up most of the world had looked the same, battered and ground down to almost nothing. "They called them the walking dead because it would take about a week for the barbs to reach the vital organs."
His gaze drops from hers when she stops speaking and he stares at the tiny fragments encased in glass for the longest time, not reacting until he finally looks up at Tosh, "What is this?" He taps the metal plate on his chest with a finger, wincing as he learned that it wasn’t a good idea.
"That, is an electromagnet," Tosh answers, sounding like a school teacher explaining something to a very young pupil, "it’s hooked up to a car battery and it’s keeping the shrapnel from entering your heart."
-
Jack’s back and he’s brought one of those bloody gloves with him, none of them are impressed, least of all Owen, chained in place as he is by the cables attaching him to the car battery that rests just a metre from him, it hums, just enough for them all to notice. It seems like a heart beat, even though it’s nothing like one, it’s the knowledge that it’s the one thing keeping Owen alive, playing tricks on them all.
Ianto stands over the work bench that he and Tosh have set up on the lower level, a small mobile forge set up on one side. Tosh holds a crucible over the heat, studiously ignoring the distinctly battered looking and utterly bemused Jack.
Martha understands why, the look on Jack’s face, the way he’s looking at Owen, he didn’t expect to find the other man alive when he got back. Ianto looks up for a moment, taking in Jack’s appearance with one look before returning his attention to Tosh, ready to give her whatever help she needs.
Martha exchanges a look with Gwen before she moves over to Jack, taking his hand and pulling him towards his office. She’ll keep him out of the way, let Tosh and Ianto work, while Gwen continues her vigil over Owen.
-
Tosh’s grin lit up the room as the device slid easily into the new plate that they’ve fitted into Owen’s chest, a softer more organic hum taking over from the car battery. A blue glow suffused the room, casting a strange light over Owen’s features as he tried to look at his chest.
Jack and Ianto stand above them, leaning over the railings, while Gwen stands beside Martha on the other side from Tosh. Owen reaches up a hand, brushing his new accessory with his fingers, just as he had the older ‘basic model’ as Tosh had referred to it.
It’s a relief, Owen sitting up on the gurney, the marks across his chest and his new pacemaker the only true signs that anything has happened. Martha smiles, he’s alive when by all rights he shouldn’t be and regardless of what UNIT might say, if she had ever thought to tell them about this, it isn’t a misuse of technology, nor does it disobey any of the conditions of Tosh’s release. It’s a small miracle.
"Like a bloody Care Bear." Owen mutters under his breath before he looks up to glare at them all, his typical bravo back in place.
"Do you’d mind? Can’t a bloke get dressed in peace?"
----
AND as a bonus - art - which I made before I wrote the fic :
:D
_
Author: weaselett
Prompt: Iron Man
Pairings: None
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Some mention of serious injury and some mild swear words.
Word Count: 1,877
Spoilers: Up to mid way through season two of Torchwood, none for Iron Man
Disclaimer: I own neither Torchwood nor Iron Man they belong to their respective owners (BBC and Marvel) - I just borrowed them for a little while
Summary: What if some things had gone a little differently?
Author's Notes: Beta'd by the ever lovely charlies_dragon - Written for reel_torchwood. This is a little later than planned due to Mr David Lloyd (seriously - was in preston until an hour or so ago).
"Owen." Martha’s voice is insistent and closer than the others, but the darkness is much more tempting. "Owen!"
He blinks so slowly; his existence is just the pain now. He can’t feel the warmth spreading across his chest, or the cold in his fingers tips. He can barely hear Martha, even though he thinks she must be screaming at him as the veins around her eyes bulge.
He blinks again, much slower than the last time, his gaze wanders to the night sky above him as the pain seemed to fade. He blinks one more time, aware of only that and the tug of the dark; the escape from the pain that he knows is still there, waiting for him.
It’s easy, letting his eyes slid shut. Half of a blink and it all just fades away.
-
"Jack!" Gwen yells, stopping in the archway leading into the main hub, unwilling to move any further away from her friend lying on the autopsy table below. "You can’t leave, not now."
Jack just waves a hand, continuing his flight towards the cog door and ignoring the tears of frustration running down Gwen’s cheeks.
"Jack!" She screams one last time as the cog door starts to roll shut, the tail of Jack’s coat the only part of him still visible. She curses him loudly when he doesn’t come back, before wiping at her face and turning back to the others. Typically Jack Bloody Harkness always running away when they needed him, never telling them anything, even when they really needed him to.
Martha and Ianto stand over the autopsy table, their hands bloody as they work, Tosh hovering just a few inches away, handing Martha whatever she asks for. Ianto’s holding pressure on one part of Owen’s chest while Martha works on another, eyes narrowed in concentration.
Gwen’s hand strays absently to her side, where she still bears the scars from the Brecon Beacons, swallowing hard as she remembers Owen leaning over her, carrying out a similar procedure to the one Martha is now.
Only the gun that had been used to inflict this on Owen hadn’t been of human design. Gwen bites her lip, fighting hard not to replay what Jack had told them before. Owen is not going to die. Owen is stronger than that; Martha is better than that.
She has to be.
-
Gwen hovers just a few feet from Ianto, having followed him automatically when he’d headed down the stairs into the archives. She had wanted something to do, but now she isn’t sure that there is anything for her to do.
She watches quietly for a long moment as he seeks out each of the items on the list in his head and she wonders if he’s even aware of her presence, or his own rumpled state. There’s blood on his shirt, and on his arms, but he doesn’t notice, he’s too focused on his task.
She hurries forward when he starts to drag a box off one of the shelves, silently taking one side of it and helping him carry it over the one of the empty tables. She steps back as he starts opening the box, hunting through the mass of odd shaped objects that are piled within. It’s clear that this box originated long before Ianto’s tenure in the archives had begun.
"You know," she moves forwards again, almost reaching out to him before thinking better of it, "we might be more productive if you include me."
He glances sideways at her briefly, making a vague noise of recognition before he’s back to hunting though the box.
Gwen frowns, shifting her weight, fighting the urge to yell at him, or hit something or, just, something. She fights back angry tears and the image of Owen lying so still and so pale on the gurney upstairs.
Ianto finally finds what he was looking for, a small cylinder that looks unsettlingly like the nose of a warhead.
"Ianto?" Gwen breaths his name, making it a question, she remembers her first week and the talk on ‘if it looks like something dangerous, it’s best to assume it is dangerous and act accordingly’, but now Ianto’s hitting the end of the object with a hammer retrieved from the shelf beside the table.
She’s moving forwards, just about to pull him back from the table and away from the object, when the end falls off, exposing the objects innards. She stares for a moment, surprised by how, ordinary, it all looks.
"What is that?" She asks, watching as Ianto pulls something out of the mass of wiring and circuits, the thing glinting dully in a way that metal shouldn’t, at least in Gwen’s experience.
"That’s palladium, zero point one five grams," Ianto answers, looking up at her and actually seeing her this time, "we need at least one point six for Tosh’s plan to have a chance to work."
Gwen stares at the tiny piece of metal in Ianto’s hand for a minute before she nods her understanding.
"What do you need me to get?"
-
Owen wakes quietly, or at least he’s quiet until he realizes that there’s a tube down his throat and then they all know he’s awake. The sound of his spluttering indignation carries easily though the silent hub.
Martha moves quickly, hauling herself up off the battered old sofa and jogging down into the autopsy bay before Owen can do himself any more harm than he doubtless already has.
She reaches him just as he tries to roll over, aware of Tosh following just a few steps behind. Ianto and Gwen are still lost in the depths of the hub and Jack hasn’t come back from wherever he ran off to.
"I wouldn’t do that if I were you." Martha cautions as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, moving to grab Owen’s hands before he can do any damage, to himself or anyone else, fighting the urge to stare at his chest rather than meet his gaze. She knows what’s hiding under those bandages, but Owen obviously hasn’t realised yet.
Owen glares at her, pulling his hands out of her grip and shifting on the bed, trying to find a more comfortable position. He stills as he finally realises that he’s tethered to something, by his chest. He looks down, his whole body going stiff as he catches sight of the bandages and then he’s moving before Martha can stop him, tearing at the bandages to see what lies beneath them.
He should have more sense than that, but then, Martha thinks, if it were her she probably wouldn’t be thinking all that hard either. He rips the last bandage off, exposing the ugly metal that they’ve embedded in his chest. His brushes it with the tips of his fingers.
"What the hell d'you do to me?"
"What we had to." Tosh speaks before Martha can, leaning over the railing to look down at Owen, her eyes soft with concern and something else much more private.
Owen laughs harshly, ignoring Tosh’s sincerity as he turns his anger on Martha, the closer target.
"What the hell did you do to me?"
"What we did was save your life." Martha replies, calmer than she should be considering the fact that she had her hands buried in his chest less than six hours ago. He shouldn’t be awake, shouldn’t be moving, let alone yelling at them for doing what they had had to do to save him.
"I removed all the shrapnel I could, but there’s a lot left, it’s headed into your atrial septum." Martha reached out, picking up one of the glass vials that she had filled with shrapnel and held it out to Owen.
"I’ve seen wounds like that before," she still remembers those months, somewhere new almost every week, but they’d never really been new. By the time the year had been up most of the world had looked the same, battered and ground down to almost nothing. "They called them the walking dead because it would take about a week for the barbs to reach the vital organs."
His gaze drops from hers when she stops speaking and he stares at the tiny fragments encased in glass for the longest time, not reacting until he finally looks up at Tosh, "What is this?" He taps the metal plate on his chest with a finger, wincing as he learned that it wasn’t a good idea.
"That, is an electromagnet," Tosh answers, sounding like a school teacher explaining something to a very young pupil, "it’s hooked up to a car battery and it’s keeping the shrapnel from entering your heart."
-
Jack’s back and he’s brought one of those bloody gloves with him, none of them are impressed, least of all Owen, chained in place as he is by the cables attaching him to the car battery that rests just a metre from him, it hums, just enough for them all to notice. It seems like a heart beat, even though it’s nothing like one, it’s the knowledge that it’s the one thing keeping Owen alive, playing tricks on them all.
Ianto stands over the work bench that he and Tosh have set up on the lower level, a small mobile forge set up on one side. Tosh holds a crucible over the heat, studiously ignoring the distinctly battered looking and utterly bemused Jack.
Martha understands why, the look on Jack’s face, the way he’s looking at Owen, he didn’t expect to find the other man alive when he got back. Ianto looks up for a moment, taking in Jack’s appearance with one look before returning his attention to Tosh, ready to give her whatever help she needs.
Martha exchanges a look with Gwen before she moves over to Jack, taking his hand and pulling him towards his office. She’ll keep him out of the way, let Tosh and Ianto work, while Gwen continues her vigil over Owen.
-
Tosh’s grin lit up the room as the device slid easily into the new plate that they’ve fitted into Owen’s chest, a softer more organic hum taking over from the car battery. A blue glow suffused the room, casting a strange light over Owen’s features as he tried to look at his chest.
Jack and Ianto stand above them, leaning over the railings, while Gwen stands beside Martha on the other side from Tosh. Owen reaches up a hand, brushing his new accessory with his fingers, just as he had the older ‘basic model’ as Tosh had referred to it.
It’s a relief, Owen sitting up on the gurney, the marks across his chest and his new pacemaker the only true signs that anything has happened. Martha smiles, he’s alive when by all rights he shouldn’t be and regardless of what UNIT might say, if she had ever thought to tell them about this, it isn’t a misuse of technology, nor does it disobey any of the conditions of Tosh’s release. It’s a small miracle.
"Like a bloody Care Bear." Owen mutters under his breath before he looks up to glare at them all, his typical bravo back in place.
"Do you’d mind? Can’t a bloke get dressed in peace?"
----
AND as a bonus - art - which I made before I wrote the fic :
:D
_