Fic: Torchwood et la Bête (Team. Jack/Ianto PG-13) Chapter 18 / 28
Title: Torchwood et la Bête
by wynkat1313
Pairing(s) Team, Jack/Ianto, Tosh/OC, references to Gwen/Rhys
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Enticements: Some mild violence, a near death, romance, and a whole lot of colored lights
Spoilers: Anything is S1 is fair game as this takes place about mid S2
Prompt: Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) written for Reel_Torchwood round one
Beta’d by the amazing and incredibly patient and geeky temporal_witch , bless you hun!
Summary: When the team is invited to France to assist in a UNIT investigation of unusual Rift Activity, they go with dreams of a quick mission and a chance for a little R & R. Instead they find a wall of roses, an alien, and a mystery. Really, you’d think they would know better by now, they are Torchwood after all, and *nothing* in their world is ever simple.
Author's Note:
Since this got REALLY long, I am going to post it chapter by chapter - a little Romance / Action/Adventure Serial-ness for everyone's viewing pleasure :) There are 28 chapter's total, so this will take a bit. If you really want to know how it ends before then, the PDF is still up at my writing journal :D along with a few surprises related to the story, 'cause i could.
Start at Chapter One
Chapter Eighteen
Jack awoke desperate for air, from a dream of claws and fangs chasing him through a series of long tunnels. His legs were tangled in the layers of blankets Owen kept tucking around him. His pillow was pushed high up into the headboard and when Jack looked, he thought it might be cutting off the IV line, but at the moment he didn’t really care. His heart was still racing and he felt like there were eyes watching him from every corner of the room. Not a sensation he liked, ever.
He kicked his legs around, pushing the blankets around until he could move again, then dragged the pillow down and rolled around until he wedged it under his head enough to see the room from the bed. What he wanted to do was throw the damn thing across the room and then get up, pick it up and throw it again until he felt better, but he knew that if Owen didn’t get to him first, his body would. He ran a shaking hand through his sweat-damp hair and sighed. It had been a very long time since he’d been injured in such a way that he couldn’t heal and he was starting to remember why he hated it. Maybe Rose had done him a favor after all. Unless this mess turned out to be forever, and then he was going to hunt her down and wring her pretty little neck.
Jack’s chest ached where Beast had clawed him. Moving around, while satisfying on one level, had aggravated the wound tracks and made everything worse on another level. He closed his eyes and took several slow deep breaths, willing the pain to calm down.
After a while, he felt his heart rate slow and his breathing settle. The pain in his chest was still unpleasant, but not so bad that he was willing to give in and page Owen for more painkillers just yet.
A tremor shook the bed and a low rumbling sound filled the small room. Jack opened his eyes to find everything suffused with purple and blue light.
“What the...?”
His bed stopped shaking and the sound faded. For a moment, the room seemed caught between light and dark and then the underwater lightshow faded and the yellow of the bed side lamp reclaimed the room. Jack started to reach for his comm unit when a sound near the bed caught his attention.
He heard an agonized groan, and then a shadow fell away from the wall to land with a sob against the bed. The shadow resolved into the shuddering form of a man in a black suit that was the right size and shape to be Ianto. When Jack touched the man’s short hair, it was damp to the skin.
“Ianto?” he whispered, stroking the shaking head.
Ianto reached out and grabbed at Jack’s hand, his sobs filling the small room. Jack laced their fingers together and murmured nonsense words until Ianto’s breathing slowed and the cries hiccupped to a halt. At last, Ianto raised his head off his arms, his face a mess of tears and snot. Jack thought it was the most beautiful and hopelessly endearing face he had ever seen.
“Ianto?”
“Yep,” Ianto nodded taking a deep breath. “Yes, it’s me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Long story.” Ianto levered himself to a sitting position. He sniffed several times and dragged a sleeve across he eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I have something for you.”
Ianto took Jack’s hand and placed an object between their hands. ”Hold this.”
Jack looked down. The object was a crystal cube, much like the Mirror Jack had used to find Ianto. It was the same shape and size, but a deeper, darker blue when he looked at it. Along one side there was a carving of a glove.
“Ianto…”
“Just wait.” Ianto pushed a button and the cube flashed a deep blue, washing the room in indigo and cobalt light.
Jack felt a tingling along his palm where it touched the cube that quickly turned to a burning hot liquid wave pulsing along his arm and deep into his chest. Heat flowed into the cuts on his neck and shoulder, pouring down the edges of the wounds and filling them with hot liquid. He was floating and burning at once.
Jack cried out, arching up off the bed.
The pulse of a heartbeat filled his ears, syncing with his own heart’s rhythm. He was breathing with it, breathing in the deep blue liquid from the crystal and breathing out the damaged tissue. Each pulse forced deeper and deeper changes into his body, healing him cell by cell, ocean by ocean.
Through the pounding waves, he felt Ianto’s hands convulse in his. He saw images of Ianto’s life bleeding into the crystal carried on a wave of blood.
Lisa’s broken body, covered in blood.
Jack bleeding to death on the ground.
Tosh’s face riddled with cuts and bruises.
Jack lying in a heap, blood pouring out of a gash in his chest.
Owen in the cage, the Weevil’s claws ripping through his flesh.
Jack dying in Ianto’s arms, blood on both their hands.
Jack tried to pull away, to stop whatever Ianto was doing, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but feel the waters filling him. Another wave of healing took him and he cried out.
Gwen’s stomach bleeding from buckshot.
Blood coating Jack’s face.
Lost to the cube’s effects, Jack barely heard Owen burst through the door.
“Jack! What’s wrong?” Owen shouted.
Jack shuddered, his body tossed back and forth on the bed. He felt strong hands press him down trying to slow his movements. He cried out when Ianto’s hands slid out of his, afraid he was losing everything in that moment. Then the hands were back, wrapped around his arms, part of the weight restraining him.
He felt the waters in his body press against his skin, pushing at the wounds until they shivered and folded in on themselves, healed by the power of the cube. Jack cried out again, screaming through the transition from broken to healed in one searing moment,
Then he died.
Jack gasped back to life to the sound of Ianto screaming.
“No! No! He promised me the crystal would heal him,” Ianto wept, clutching at Jack’s arm.
“Ianto… Ianto!” Owen shouted. “Ianto, mate, calm down!”
Ianto dropped his head on Jack’s chest, sobbing. Jack raised one hand up to pet Ianto’s damp hair very softly. “Shhhhh. It’s okay,” he whispered.
“Jack!”
“How do you feel?” Owen asked.
Jack took a couple of deep breaths. He looked around at the room, trying to get his bearings, and then at Ianto crying beside him. “Ianto, what happened? That cube… what does it do?”
“I thought you were dead.”
Jack smiled tenderly. “I can’t die; you know that.”
“You were stuck, and then you died and I didn’t know…”
“Ianto, you’re not making sense,” Jack said, brushing the hair away from Ianto’s forehead.
“Jack, look at me. How are you? How do you feel?” Owen asked.
“Fine.” Jack stopped and thought more closely about Owen’s question. He really did feel fine; better than he had in a while. He reached up to the bandages on his chest. Owen worked with him to peel the tape away and they all looked at the skin there in wonder. It was perfectly healed with no sign of scarring. No sign that he had ever been so much as scratched by a feather. He looked up at Owen, awed. “It looks normal.”
“It worked then,” Ianto said.
“What worked?” Owen asked, still in shock.
“The Glove.”
“What glove?” Jack asked.
“Beast gave me two of his power sources. They’re crystals.” He dug in his jacket pocket and pulled out a second crystal. This one shimmered gold and silver when he handed it to Jack. “That’s the Key; it activates Beast’s ship. I promised to bring it back to him, with reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements? Wait a minute...”
“He needs our help, Jack,” Ianto said, his voice rising in volume and pitch. “I promised we would help him; please, you have to…”
“Shhh… its okay. We’ll figure something out.” Jack ran a hand along Ianto’s cheek, wiping the fresh tears away. “You said something about a glove?”
“The other crystal is the Glove. It can heal as well as transport people. That’s it, there.” Ianto nodded at the cube that had rolled to the side of Jack’s bed.
Jack reached over and picked up the crystal, turning both over in his hands. “They’re beautiful.”
“Using the Glove comes with a price, though.”
Jack turned back to Ianto and nodded. He had a feeling he already knew the cost Ianto had paid for the healing, but he needed to hear the words from Ianto.
“Which is?”
“Salted liquids - tears and blood - if you use both functions.”
“You bloody fool,” Owen exclaimed, coming around the bed. “No wonder you can’t raise your damn head off your arms!”
Owen took hold of Ianto’s wrist to check Ianto’s pulse. Owen frowned but said nothing, moving on to check Ianto’s temperature, eyes and ears, listen to his breathing, and finally insist that Ianto lie down.
“I need to get you hooked up to a machine so I can monitor your vitals and start you on fluids. You’re a bloody mess, tea-boy. Come on.”
Owen got his arms around Ianto’s chest and tugged him into a standing position. With Owen to lean on, they were able to get Ianto’s jacket off while Jack slid over to the far side of his bed. Then he and Owen jockeyed Ianto onto it beside Jack so he could hug Ianto to him while Owen fussed about medications and foolish Torchwood members.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Ianto mumbled, trying to hide his face from Jack.
Jack took Ianto’s hands and tugged them close to his chest. “Shhhh. You did great. Just rest now, Ianto.”
Ianto turned his head into Jack’s arms and cried. Jack looked up at Owen. He’d seen Ianto in a lot of situations. He’d seen him furious, happy, even sex-drunk and, once or twice during those horrible days after the cannibals, held him while he cried. But Jack had never seen him this hysterical, this out-of-control and this exposed in his grief, and he’d certainly never seen Ianto like this in front of Owen.
“Can you stop the reaction?”
“I don’t even know how the damn thing works. At this point, all I’m sure I can do is keep him alive. He’s going to have to ride out the effects of that thing. At least no one’s ever died from embarrassment.”
Owen got Ianto hooked up to an IV and monitor as he’d threatened, then disconnected Jack from the equipment connected to him since all of his readings indicated that he was perfectly healthy. Owen tucked a blanket around Ianto’s shoulders.
“He needs to sleep,” Owen said with one hand on the door.
Jack nodded. “I know.”
“Really sleep, Jack.”
“I do know the difference between sex and sleep, Owen, and even when sleep is more important,” Jack said, letting his frustration slip its leash just a little. Owen nodded and slipped out of the room.
Jack lay his head down next to Ianto’s and pulled him close. Ianto had stopped crying for the moment, but Jack could sense that there were more waves still to come. He would hold him through whatever came; it was the least he could do.
On to Chapter Nineteen
by wynkat1313
Pairing(s) Team, Jack/Ianto, Tosh/OC, references to Gwen/Rhys
Rating: PG-13
Warnings/Enticements: Some mild violence, a near death, romance, and a whole lot of colored lights
Spoilers: Anything is S1 is fair game as this takes place about mid S2
Prompt: Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête (Beauty and the Beast) written for Reel_Torchwood round one
Beta’d by the amazing and incredibly patient and geeky temporal_witch , bless you hun!
Summary: When the team is invited to France to assist in a UNIT investigation of unusual Rift Activity, they go with dreams of a quick mission and a chance for a little R & R. Instead they find a wall of roses, an alien, and a mystery. Really, you’d think they would know better by now, they are Torchwood after all, and *nothing* in their world is ever simple.
Author's Note:
Since this got REALLY long, I am going to post it chapter by chapter - a little Romance / Action/Adventure Serial-ness for everyone's viewing pleasure :) There are 28 chapter's total, so this will take a bit. If you really want to know how it ends before then, the PDF is still up at my writing journal :D along with a few surprises related to the story, 'cause i could.
Start at Chapter One
Chapter Eighteen
Jack awoke desperate for air, from a dream of claws and fangs chasing him through a series of long tunnels. His legs were tangled in the layers of blankets Owen kept tucking around him. His pillow was pushed high up into the headboard and when Jack looked, he thought it might be cutting off the IV line, but at the moment he didn’t really care. His heart was still racing and he felt like there were eyes watching him from every corner of the room. Not a sensation he liked, ever.
He kicked his legs around, pushing the blankets around until he could move again, then dragged the pillow down and rolled around until he wedged it under his head enough to see the room from the bed. What he wanted to do was throw the damn thing across the room and then get up, pick it up and throw it again until he felt better, but he knew that if Owen didn’t get to him first, his body would. He ran a shaking hand through his sweat-damp hair and sighed. It had been a very long time since he’d been injured in such a way that he couldn’t heal and he was starting to remember why he hated it. Maybe Rose had done him a favor after all. Unless this mess turned out to be forever, and then he was going to hunt her down and wring her pretty little neck.
Jack’s chest ached where Beast had clawed him. Moving around, while satisfying on one level, had aggravated the wound tracks and made everything worse on another level. He closed his eyes and took several slow deep breaths, willing the pain to calm down.
After a while, he felt his heart rate slow and his breathing settle. The pain in his chest was still unpleasant, but not so bad that he was willing to give in and page Owen for more painkillers just yet.
A tremor shook the bed and a low rumbling sound filled the small room. Jack opened his eyes to find everything suffused with purple and blue light.
“What the...?”
His bed stopped shaking and the sound faded. For a moment, the room seemed caught between light and dark and then the underwater lightshow faded and the yellow of the bed side lamp reclaimed the room. Jack started to reach for his comm unit when a sound near the bed caught his attention.
He heard an agonized groan, and then a shadow fell away from the wall to land with a sob against the bed. The shadow resolved into the shuddering form of a man in a black suit that was the right size and shape to be Ianto. When Jack touched the man’s short hair, it was damp to the skin.
“Ianto?” he whispered, stroking the shaking head.
Ianto reached out and grabbed at Jack’s hand, his sobs filling the small room. Jack laced their fingers together and murmured nonsense words until Ianto’s breathing slowed and the cries hiccupped to a halt. At last, Ianto raised his head off his arms, his face a mess of tears and snot. Jack thought it was the most beautiful and hopelessly endearing face he had ever seen.
“Ianto?”
“Yep,” Ianto nodded taking a deep breath. “Yes, it’s me.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Long story.” Ianto levered himself to a sitting position. He sniffed several times and dragged a sleeve across he eyes. “Don’t worry about it. I have something for you.”
Ianto took Jack’s hand and placed an object between their hands. ”Hold this.”
Jack looked down. The object was a crystal cube, much like the Mirror Jack had used to find Ianto. It was the same shape and size, but a deeper, darker blue when he looked at it. Along one side there was a carving of a glove.
“Ianto…”
“Just wait.” Ianto pushed a button and the cube flashed a deep blue, washing the room in indigo and cobalt light.
Jack felt a tingling along his palm where it touched the cube that quickly turned to a burning hot liquid wave pulsing along his arm and deep into his chest. Heat flowed into the cuts on his neck and shoulder, pouring down the edges of the wounds and filling them with hot liquid. He was floating and burning at once.
Jack cried out, arching up off the bed.
The pulse of a heartbeat filled his ears, syncing with his own heart’s rhythm. He was breathing with it, breathing in the deep blue liquid from the crystal and breathing out the damaged tissue. Each pulse forced deeper and deeper changes into his body, healing him cell by cell, ocean by ocean.
Through the pounding waves, he felt Ianto’s hands convulse in his. He saw images of Ianto’s life bleeding into the crystal carried on a wave of blood.
Lisa’s broken body, covered in blood.
Jack bleeding to death on the ground.
Tosh’s face riddled with cuts and bruises.
Jack lying in a heap, blood pouring out of a gash in his chest.
Owen in the cage, the Weevil’s claws ripping through his flesh.
Jack dying in Ianto’s arms, blood on both their hands.
Jack tried to pull away, to stop whatever Ianto was doing, but he couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but feel the waters filling him. Another wave of healing took him and he cried out.
Gwen’s stomach bleeding from buckshot.
Blood coating Jack’s face.
Lost to the cube’s effects, Jack barely heard Owen burst through the door.
“Jack! What’s wrong?” Owen shouted.
Jack shuddered, his body tossed back and forth on the bed. He felt strong hands press him down trying to slow his movements. He cried out when Ianto’s hands slid out of his, afraid he was losing everything in that moment. Then the hands were back, wrapped around his arms, part of the weight restraining him.
He felt the waters in his body press against his skin, pushing at the wounds until they shivered and folded in on themselves, healed by the power of the cube. Jack cried out again, screaming through the transition from broken to healed in one searing moment,
Then he died.
Jack gasped back to life to the sound of Ianto screaming.
“No! No! He promised me the crystal would heal him,” Ianto wept, clutching at Jack’s arm.
“Ianto… Ianto!” Owen shouted. “Ianto, mate, calm down!”
Ianto dropped his head on Jack’s chest, sobbing. Jack raised one hand up to pet Ianto’s damp hair very softly. “Shhhhh. It’s okay,” he whispered.
“Jack!”
“How do you feel?” Owen asked.
Jack took a couple of deep breaths. He looked around at the room, trying to get his bearings, and then at Ianto crying beside him. “Ianto, what happened? That cube… what does it do?”
“I thought you were dead.”
Jack smiled tenderly. “I can’t die; you know that.”
“You were stuck, and then you died and I didn’t know…”
“Ianto, you’re not making sense,” Jack said, brushing the hair away from Ianto’s forehead.
“Jack, look at me. How are you? How do you feel?” Owen asked.
“Fine.” Jack stopped and thought more closely about Owen’s question. He really did feel fine; better than he had in a while. He reached up to the bandages on his chest. Owen worked with him to peel the tape away and they all looked at the skin there in wonder. It was perfectly healed with no sign of scarring. No sign that he had ever been so much as scratched by a feather. He looked up at Owen, awed. “It looks normal.”
“It worked then,” Ianto said.
“What worked?” Owen asked, still in shock.
“The Glove.”
“What glove?” Jack asked.
“Beast gave me two of his power sources. They’re crystals.” He dug in his jacket pocket and pulled out a second crystal. This one shimmered gold and silver when he handed it to Jack. “That’s the Key; it activates Beast’s ship. I promised to bring it back to him, with reinforcements.”
“Reinforcements? Wait a minute...”
“He needs our help, Jack,” Ianto said, his voice rising in volume and pitch. “I promised we would help him; please, you have to…”
“Shhh… its okay. We’ll figure something out.” Jack ran a hand along Ianto’s cheek, wiping the fresh tears away. “You said something about a glove?”
“The other crystal is the Glove. It can heal as well as transport people. That’s it, there.” Ianto nodded at the cube that had rolled to the side of Jack’s bed.
Jack reached over and picked up the crystal, turning both over in his hands. “They’re beautiful.”
“Using the Glove comes with a price, though.”
Jack turned back to Ianto and nodded. He had a feeling he already knew the cost Ianto had paid for the healing, but he needed to hear the words from Ianto.
“Which is?”
“Salted liquids - tears and blood - if you use both functions.”
“You bloody fool,” Owen exclaimed, coming around the bed. “No wonder you can’t raise your damn head off your arms!”
Owen took hold of Ianto’s wrist to check Ianto’s pulse. Owen frowned but said nothing, moving on to check Ianto’s temperature, eyes and ears, listen to his breathing, and finally insist that Ianto lie down.
“I need to get you hooked up to a machine so I can monitor your vitals and start you on fluids. You’re a bloody mess, tea-boy. Come on.”
Owen got his arms around Ianto’s chest and tugged him into a standing position. With Owen to lean on, they were able to get Ianto’s jacket off while Jack slid over to the far side of his bed. Then he and Owen jockeyed Ianto onto it beside Jack so he could hug Ianto to him while Owen fussed about medications and foolish Torchwood members.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Ianto mumbled, trying to hide his face from Jack.
Jack took Ianto’s hands and tugged them close to his chest. “Shhhh. You did great. Just rest now, Ianto.”
Ianto turned his head into Jack’s arms and cried. Jack looked up at Owen. He’d seen Ianto in a lot of situations. He’d seen him furious, happy, even sex-drunk and, once or twice during those horrible days after the cannibals, held him while he cried. But Jack had never seen him this hysterical, this out-of-control and this exposed in his grief, and he’d certainly never seen Ianto like this in front of Owen.
“Can you stop the reaction?”
“I don’t even know how the damn thing works. At this point, all I’m sure I can do is keep him alive. He’s going to have to ride out the effects of that thing. At least no one’s ever died from embarrassment.”
Owen got Ianto hooked up to an IV and monitor as he’d threatened, then disconnected Jack from the equipment connected to him since all of his readings indicated that he was perfectly healthy. Owen tucked a blanket around Ianto’s shoulders.
“He needs to sleep,” Owen said with one hand on the door.
Jack nodded. “I know.”
“Really sleep, Jack.”
“I do know the difference between sex and sleep, Owen, and even when sleep is more important,” Jack said, letting his frustration slip its leash just a little. Owen nodded and slipped out of the room.
Jack lay his head down next to Ianto’s and pulled him close. Ianto had stopped crying for the moment, but Jack could sense that there were more waves still to come. He would hold him through whatever came; it was the least he could do.
On to Chapter Nineteen