Fic: Picking Up The Pieces
Title: Picking Up The Pieces
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Martha, Mickey, Andy, Gwen, Rhys.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1272
Spoilers: Set mainly post-CoE, but with Ianto surviving.
Summary: The remains of the Torchwood Team try to pick up the pieces after defeating the 456, but was Ianto’s resurrection just a fluke or has he been changed somehow?
Written For: Challenge 382: Healing at fan_flashworks.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Immortal didn’t mean indestructible, that was something Ianto had learned shortly after discovering that for Jack, death was more of a temporary setback than the permanent end to life it would be for anyone else. He’d already seen Jack die far too many times, had sat with his lover’s dead body waiting for the first signs of healing to become evident so often that he sometimes wondered whether he should have grown accustomed to it by now. He hadn’t though. Dead was dead. Even though Jack always revived, or had so far, Ianto could never entirely silence the little voice in the back of his mind asking, ‘But what if this time he doesn’t?’
Since they’d met, Ianto had been an unwilling witness as Jack had bled out, been shot, stabbed, mauled by Weevils, disembowelled, burned, suffocated, drowned, trampled to death, electrocuted, and more, but no matter what was done to him, the vortex energy running through him always repaired the damage, leaving him physically as good as new, but a little more damaged inside. Jack hid it well from everyone else, but Ianto could see right though his carefully constructed façade. All he had to do was look.
Then, over the space of a few days, Jack had been shot, had a bomb implanted in him, been blown to pieces, literally, had regrown all of his missing parts, been entombed in unfeasibly fast-drying concrete, which had to have been some kind of secret UNIT invention or something, been dropped off a cliff, shot again, and gassed by farting aliens. And yet, even after all that, he was alive. Again. Ianto had checked him over thoroughly. Twice. And then again, just to be absolutely certain.
Of course, while Ianto had been doing that, Jack had been carrying out equally thorough checks on Ianto’s wellbeing. Ianto had only died the once, as a result of the alien virus or poison gas released by the 456, but once was quite enough, thank you very much. As deaths went, it hadn’t been so dreadful. Painful and unpleasant, yes, but relatively quick, and the revival afterwards had been more disconcerting than anything. Nevertheless, he’d really prefer not to have to go through that again, because next time he might not be so lucky; there was no guarantee he’d survive dying a second time.
Jack hadn’t been eager to test Ianto’s resurrection abilities either, so on their return to Cardiff things had continued on much the way they had before the 456 had made their return visit, with a few necessary changes. There hadn’t been a Hub to work out of for a start, so they’d been forced to make do with Torchwood’s old storage warehouse, and hadn’t that been fun? Well, actually no, it hadn’t, but needs must…
There’d been more Jack deaths of course, much to Ianto’s displeasure. Ianto knew Jack didn’t enjoy dying any more than he liked seeing his lover die, but he was also aware that Jack was… overcompensating a bit, being even more protective than usual, and trying to keep him away from potential danger. Only problem was, with Gwen pregnant there was only Ianto and Jack to deal with fieldwork, and there’d been a lot of that. Sensitive souls that they were, Cardiff’s Weevil population were still unsettled from the explosion that had destroyed the Hub, and Jack into the bargain.
Still, after yet another avoidable death, Ianto was finally able to convince Jack that Torchwood Three needed more personnel. They signed ex-PC Andy onto the payroll, along with Mickey Smith, headhunted Martha Jones from UNIT, which was simple enough since half of UNIT’s upper echelon were being indited for treason, and put out feelers with the idea of adding a couple more team members. Rhys came onboard too, as General Support, freeing Ianto up to supervise the rebuilding of the Hub when he wasn’t needed in the field. Someone had to do it, and he knew the ins and outs of their underground base better than anyone.
Naturally, just when everyone was settling into their new normal, and Jack was sure that Ianto was as safe as he could be while still being a Torchwood Agent, things took a turn for the worse. On what should have been a relatively routine rescue mission, Ianto found himself harpooned of all things by a particularly nasty and aggressive alien who’d crash-landed up in the Beacons. Jack, Ianto, and Mickey had driven out to offer assistance, and far from being grateful, the alien had attacked them.
On the plus side, Ianto hadn’t been killed, but the drive back to Cardiff had been less than pleasant, with Mickey behind the wheel, and Jack cradling Ianto in the backseat. The alien, shot dead by Jack before Ianto had hit the ground, was unceremoniously thrown in the boot. Jack would have left it behind, but Ianto had been making a fuss about littering.
Martha had gone into action as soon as they’d arrived at the temporary Hub, getting Jack and Mickey to load Ianto onto a gurney and wheel him into the treatment area, where she examined him, relieved to find that the harpoon had somehow missed his vital organs. She’d shot him full of painkillers before cutting away his ruined clothes, slicing through the barbed weapon with a laser knife, and carefully pulling it out, ready to clean and stitch the wound.
“Well?” Jack said, when she just stood there staring. “Why aren’t you doing anything? Shouldn’t you be sewing him up? Or are you waiting for him to bleed to death?”
Ianto thought that was a bit unfair of his lover since he wasn’t bleeding. At all.
“I don’t think he’s going to need stitches.” Martha sounded a bit distracted.
“What’s that supposed to mean? There’s a hole right through my Ianto!”
“Um,” Ianto said, looking at the entrance hole, which appeared to be getting smaller. It was a bit like watching timelapse photography in reverse. “Jack, am I seeing things, or am I healing like you do?”
Jack moved closer, looking at the exit wound just above Ianto’s left hip. Before his eyes it shrank away to nothing, not leaving so much as a scar to show where it had been.
“This doesn’t mean you’re immortal,” he said when he finally found his voice.
“No, it doesn’t, but it does mean you could’ve pulled that bloody harpoon out over an hour ago and I wouldn’t have had to spend the trip back in excruciating pain while doing my impression of a kebab.”
“How was I supposed to know you’d just heal like that?” Jack snapped. “For all I knew, if I’d pulled the harpoon out you might have bled to death miles from anywhere, and that’s a risk I wasn’t willing to take!”
“Right, sorry.” Ianto sat up. “So, maybe we should call the Doctor and have him tell us whether or not I’m like you now. It would probably be a good idea to find out for sure, might save us both a lot of stress. I mean, I might just be a bit like you, fast healing without the immortality bit. If anyone can tell us, it’d be him.”
Jack sighed. “Fine, I’ll call him.”
Picking up the ruins of his suit jacket, Ianto gazed at it mournfully; another piece of sartorial elegance had bitten the dust, fit only to be consigned to the furnace. “While you’re at it, ask whether there’s any chance he can make our clothes indestructible, or at the very least self-repairing. Otherwise, the way things are going we’ll both end up with nothing to wear.”
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Martha, Mickey, Andy, Gwen, Rhys.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1272
Spoilers: Set mainly post-CoE, but with Ianto surviving.
Summary: The remains of the Torchwood Team try to pick up the pieces after defeating the 456, but was Ianto’s resurrection just a fluke or has he been changed somehow?
Written For: Challenge 382: Healing at fan_flashworks.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Immortal didn’t mean indestructible, that was something Ianto had learned shortly after discovering that for Jack, death was more of a temporary setback than the permanent end to life it would be for anyone else. He’d already seen Jack die far too many times, had sat with his lover’s dead body waiting for the first signs of healing to become evident so often that he sometimes wondered whether he should have grown accustomed to it by now. He hadn’t though. Dead was dead. Even though Jack always revived, or had so far, Ianto could never entirely silence the little voice in the back of his mind asking, ‘But what if this time he doesn’t?’
Since they’d met, Ianto had been an unwilling witness as Jack had bled out, been shot, stabbed, mauled by Weevils, disembowelled, burned, suffocated, drowned, trampled to death, electrocuted, and more, but no matter what was done to him, the vortex energy running through him always repaired the damage, leaving him physically as good as new, but a little more damaged inside. Jack hid it well from everyone else, but Ianto could see right though his carefully constructed façade. All he had to do was look.
Then, over the space of a few days, Jack had been shot, had a bomb implanted in him, been blown to pieces, literally, had regrown all of his missing parts, been entombed in unfeasibly fast-drying concrete, which had to have been some kind of secret UNIT invention or something, been dropped off a cliff, shot again, and gassed by farting aliens. And yet, even after all that, he was alive. Again. Ianto had checked him over thoroughly. Twice. And then again, just to be absolutely certain.
Of course, while Ianto had been doing that, Jack had been carrying out equally thorough checks on Ianto’s wellbeing. Ianto had only died the once, as a result of the alien virus or poison gas released by the 456, but once was quite enough, thank you very much. As deaths went, it hadn’t been so dreadful. Painful and unpleasant, yes, but relatively quick, and the revival afterwards had been more disconcerting than anything. Nevertheless, he’d really prefer not to have to go through that again, because next time he might not be so lucky; there was no guarantee he’d survive dying a second time.
Jack hadn’t been eager to test Ianto’s resurrection abilities either, so on their return to Cardiff things had continued on much the way they had before the 456 had made their return visit, with a few necessary changes. There hadn’t been a Hub to work out of for a start, so they’d been forced to make do with Torchwood’s old storage warehouse, and hadn’t that been fun? Well, actually no, it hadn’t, but needs must…
There’d been more Jack deaths of course, much to Ianto’s displeasure. Ianto knew Jack didn’t enjoy dying any more than he liked seeing his lover die, but he was also aware that Jack was… overcompensating a bit, being even more protective than usual, and trying to keep him away from potential danger. Only problem was, with Gwen pregnant there was only Ianto and Jack to deal with fieldwork, and there’d been a lot of that. Sensitive souls that they were, Cardiff’s Weevil population were still unsettled from the explosion that had destroyed the Hub, and Jack into the bargain.
Still, after yet another avoidable death, Ianto was finally able to convince Jack that Torchwood Three needed more personnel. They signed ex-PC Andy onto the payroll, along with Mickey Smith, headhunted Martha Jones from UNIT, which was simple enough since half of UNIT’s upper echelon were being indited for treason, and put out feelers with the idea of adding a couple more team members. Rhys came onboard too, as General Support, freeing Ianto up to supervise the rebuilding of the Hub when he wasn’t needed in the field. Someone had to do it, and he knew the ins and outs of their underground base better than anyone.
Naturally, just when everyone was settling into their new normal, and Jack was sure that Ianto was as safe as he could be while still being a Torchwood Agent, things took a turn for the worse. On what should have been a relatively routine rescue mission, Ianto found himself harpooned of all things by a particularly nasty and aggressive alien who’d crash-landed up in the Beacons. Jack, Ianto, and Mickey had driven out to offer assistance, and far from being grateful, the alien had attacked them.
On the plus side, Ianto hadn’t been killed, but the drive back to Cardiff had been less than pleasant, with Mickey behind the wheel, and Jack cradling Ianto in the backseat. The alien, shot dead by Jack before Ianto had hit the ground, was unceremoniously thrown in the boot. Jack would have left it behind, but Ianto had been making a fuss about littering.
Martha had gone into action as soon as they’d arrived at the temporary Hub, getting Jack and Mickey to load Ianto onto a gurney and wheel him into the treatment area, where she examined him, relieved to find that the harpoon had somehow missed his vital organs. She’d shot him full of painkillers before cutting away his ruined clothes, slicing through the barbed weapon with a laser knife, and carefully pulling it out, ready to clean and stitch the wound.
“Well?” Jack said, when she just stood there staring. “Why aren’t you doing anything? Shouldn’t you be sewing him up? Or are you waiting for him to bleed to death?”
Ianto thought that was a bit unfair of his lover since he wasn’t bleeding. At all.
“I don’t think he’s going to need stitches.” Martha sounded a bit distracted.
“What’s that supposed to mean? There’s a hole right through my Ianto!”
“Um,” Ianto said, looking at the entrance hole, which appeared to be getting smaller. It was a bit like watching timelapse photography in reverse. “Jack, am I seeing things, or am I healing like you do?”
Jack moved closer, looking at the exit wound just above Ianto’s left hip. Before his eyes it shrank away to nothing, not leaving so much as a scar to show where it had been.
“This doesn’t mean you’re immortal,” he said when he finally found his voice.
“No, it doesn’t, but it does mean you could’ve pulled that bloody harpoon out over an hour ago and I wouldn’t have had to spend the trip back in excruciating pain while doing my impression of a kebab.”
“How was I supposed to know you’d just heal like that?” Jack snapped. “For all I knew, if I’d pulled the harpoon out you might have bled to death miles from anywhere, and that’s a risk I wasn’t willing to take!”
“Right, sorry.” Ianto sat up. “So, maybe we should call the Doctor and have him tell us whether or not I’m like you now. It would probably be a good idea to find out for sure, might save us both a lot of stress. I mean, I might just be a bit like you, fast healing without the immortality bit. If anyone can tell us, it’d be him.”
Jack sighed. “Fine, I’ll call him.”
Picking up the ruins of his suit jacket, Ianto gazed at it mournfully; another piece of sartorial elegance had bitten the dust, fit only to be consigned to the furnace. “While you’re at it, ask whether there’s any chance he can make our clothes indestructible, or at the very least self-repairing. Otherwise, the way things are going we’ll both end up with nothing to wear.”
The End