Sacrifice
Title: Sacrifice
Series: Something that starts with "S", part nineteen
Characters: Jack & Ianto, Gwen, Martha, OFC
Rating: R
Summary: It's Tuesday, it must be the Apocalypse. Something huge comes through the rift, and it takes all of TW to set things right.
A/N: for horizonssing day 29. A whole lot of random DW references thrown in this one folks. Seriously, Mister Toad's wild ride has nothing on this.
Jack dropped the broken LP to the floor, "right; work to do. Gwen, get the scanners working on whatever is up there- we need to see what's going on. Ianto, what about the time lock?" Jack opened the secured storage box on his desk and slid an item into his pocket. Ianto eyed Jack suspiciously, he knew what the red box contained, and could only imagine which of the horrors within Jack decided was needed.
"The time lock won't work because of the instability, but if we push the system; it can create an inverse wave to maybe create some level of stasis- that might give us a bit more time to move whatever it is out to sea." Ianto was pulling up the tactical schematics, "we'll need to place repeaters in these locations," Ianto was pointing to the locations around the Plass, "to maximize the yield. Tosh built portable units, we'll need to get them out and up there right away. Ianto was already heading for the storage room to grab the three large crates. "Martha and Gwen can set the two ground level ones; I'll put the third on the roof of the Millenium centre." Jack made to protest, but one look at Ianto had the words die in his throat. "Gwen, you put this one right at the base of the fountain- the lights will turn green when its located properly." Gwen nodded and headed for the lift. "Martha, this one goes out by the Carousel, probably best to go through the garage. Jack, keep an eye on the readouts, in case iTosh decides they need to be moved."
"Everyone keep their comms open, and no heroics. Look but don't touch, at least not yet." Jack received nods from his team as they ran to place the modules.
"Incoming message. Message translation completed." The voice of Toshiko Sato echoed through the empty hub. "Tvogs gsv Svok. Fh Svok. Tvogs gsv Krgb." It sounded like gibberish to Jack. "Incompatible life forms detected."
"Everyone report in, what do you see out there?" Jack was trying to get a clear image on the CCTV, but all the cameras could detect was bright waving lights and grainy smudges.
Gwen was already coming down the lift, "Jack, it looks like a shipping container, but it keeps fading in and out; then it ripples and, well, maybe you need to go up and look?"
"Absolutely not!" Surprisingly it was Martha yelling down the comms and not Ianto. "You stay down in the hub Jack. I'm doing medical scans up here and these distortions could be harmful. Gwen, I need you to get the secured med bay in archives online while Jack keeps monitoring, okay?" Gwen turned and headed for the archive levels. She knew it had been a mistake to suggest Jack going up there; but she didn't know how to describe what she saw. "Jack, I'm going to set up a couple medical scanners and that camera based on the same technology as the contact lenses, maybe it will get a better picture." Martha clicked off.
Jack was concerned that Ianto hadn't said anything, but he knew better. Ianto would check in when he was done; he wouldn't clutter the comms with idle chatter. Jack fingered the small crystal in his pocket; it was a weapon of last resort and he had an awful feeling it would be needed in this case.
"Rift activity detected. Grid location, Nash Point." Jack spun to look at the rift predictor program, sure enough, the spikes were exactly like the last time.
"Damn. Just what we need." Jack was preparing to contact everyone on the comm when his buzzed off.
"Actually, its exactly what you need Captain." Jack spun around to face Branwen, she was walking up from the rift pool. "You can't do this alone. Your plan will work, but its going to need our help." Jack looked at her, seeing the determination in her eyes and the set of her jaw. He'd been told that he was good at looking danger in the eye, and Ianto- well even Jack was scared of how Ianto could hold things together- but the young woman, she combined the force of will and determination of both of them and raised it to exponential levels. "I've blocked the comms, you really should upgrade those things; I mean, how many people wiping your comms out will it take before you dig in the junk piles downstairs?" She walked over to a work station and dropped a box which quickly tethered itself into the hub computers. The mainframe began to signal an intrusion, but quickly went quiescent as new data poured into its waiting systems.
"Torchwood mainframe point one synchronized to mainframe point three. Incoming program accepted and online." The mainframe displayed a new application window Jack had never seen; but recognized some of the technology as Sontaran, but the rest was most definitely.
"That's!" Jack looked at her with awe.
"Yeah, well; we found a wounded one and mainframe was able to make an imprint of its synaptic pathways before it died. We called him as soon as we found it; but he didn't arrive until it was over. You know how bad he is about getting anywhere on time." Branwen gave him a little smirk. "We've done this before, we can push the crashed vessel out to where the rift will be in the future- then the modified wave from this rift manipulator will pull and our manipulator can push it back in and they'll end up where and when they should."
Jack was getting frustrated at the cryptic words, but didn't push it. "So, what do we need to do here? It sounds like you've got this well in hand." Jack noticed that her eyes started to glisten like Ianto's before he wept. "Branwen, what do I need to do?"
She looked at him, not even trying to hold the tears. "You have to be the hero, Captain."
---
Ianto had just activated the repeater on the roof of the centre. He was looking down at the area and could see the large object appearing to phase in and out of reality with brilliant flashes of light. He remembered the flashes speeding up last time before the explosion, so hopefully the system was either working, or they just hadn't approached critical yet. He could see Martha slowly working her way back towards the lift but no sign of Gwen- she was probably back in the hub by now. He activated his comm to report.
"Jack?" Ianto heard nothing but static on his comm.
"Hello Ianto." Ianto felt a shiver run down his spine as he spun around to see Jack standing several feet behind him. Ianto made to yell at him for being out here, but then he noticed the differences.
"You shouldn't be here." Ianto said. It was true.
Jack walked over and placed a hand on Ianto's cheek, "yes, I should. I need you to trust me Ianto. Trust me that this is the only way." Jack ran his hand down to Ianto's chest, resting it over his heart. "I'm sorry."
Ianto's eyes shot open and turned back to look at the Plass, he could see Jack- his Jack with greatcoat blowing in the breeze stepping off the lift. Ianto slammed on his comm, "Jack! Jack! Get back in the hub now! Martha! You've got to stop him! Don't let him do whatever he's doing." Ianto made to run for the stairs down, but was quickly wrapped in strong warm arms so familiar; but wrong. Jack, but not his Jack. This other Jack, in a three piece suit holding him tightly not letting him stop what he knew was about to happen. "No!" Ianto kept fighting as he saw the glint of the warp star in his Jack's hand as he placed it in the small device they'd built to activate it. He couldn't hear anything, only saw in slow motion as Jack tossed the device at the distortion and felt the energy wave as it blasted like searing heat over him. He saw his Jack fall to the ground in a heap as the thing blinked out of the Plass. He crumpled to the ground, still in this other Jack's arms, "no."
"Ianto. Ianto look at me." The older Jack- in a suit Ianto would surely wear- was turning Ianto's head in his hands. "It will be alright. I'm sorry. Martha will take care of it, you and Gwen need to get to Nash Point as quickly as possible. Meet us at the lighthouse. Hurry Ianto. I promise it will be okay." Not-his-Jack kissed Ianto and stepped away, "hurry Ianto. Work to do." And he walked into a wash of rift energy and vanished.
---
Martha didn't know what had happened. She'd been making her way to the lift, and then she saw Jack throw something into the anomaly followed by a blast of heat. Once she got her bearings, she was horrified to see Jack lying on the ground- she'd seen him like that before, that very dead look, but he was pregnant this time. The child couldn't survive long enough for him to revive. Martha began running towards him, pulling the pathetically small medical kit from her back as she yelled down the comms, "Ianto! Gwen! Medical emergency on the Plass. Jack's down- I need your help now!" She dropped down next to him, turning him so he was flat on his back. There was no pulse, he was dead and from training she knew that every second passed meant less likelihood the child would survive. "Gwen! I need the big medical kit, bring it up here now!" Martha tore Jack's shirts open and was opening her kit, she only had basic medical tools here, nothing remotely like what she needed to deliver a baby by c-section. "Gwen! Ianto!"
"Do what you have to Martha. Gwen, meet me at the garage, priority one, condition one." Ianto sounded dead in her ear.
"Ianto, you don't understand. If I don't start now." Martha was frantically trying not to say the words.
"I know. He'll survive whatever you do Martha, the baby." Ianto faltered, "Jack's dead, she's not. You know how it got the name Caesarean. Just. Just do it Martha." Ianto's comm cut out.
Martha was shaking. Lex Caesarea, Roman law that a child be cut from it's mother womb if she was dying, the mother was expendable. Martha took a deep breath and pulled the scalpel from her kit- no time for pretty or carful, she needed to work fast. She took little comfort in the fact that Jack would heal up before he revived. With a quickly whispered prayer to anything or anyone that might be listening, she started the incision.
---
"Ianto, where are we going? What happened to Jack and Martha?" Gwen was trying to get an answer from Ianto, but his eyes were fixed on the road and his hand were gripping the wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. While Jack's driving was nerve wracking because he was sloppy, Ianto's driving was terrifying when he got like this. Gwen dared to look at the speedometer and nearly gasped- she didn't think anyone could drive that fast and be this in control. "Ianto, you need to talk to me! What happened to Jack!" Gwen was nearly frantic but went cold at Ianto's quiet controlled voice.
"He's dead."
Gwen nearly vomited in the wheel well. It wasn't that Jack died- Jack had died many times and come back- it was that Jack died while he was carrying a child. Gwen felt the bile rising in her throat, she wanted to scream and cry and hit something, but all she could do was look at Ianto- how he was holding it together by the most fragile string- and she decided she could do no less. "Martha will save her. She'll be okay Ianto, and Jack. Well, we know Jack don't we." Gwen carefully reached over to place her hand on Ianto's cheek for a moment. She felt, rather than heard the stuttering gasp escape him. "She's strong Ianto. Considering what a pair of stubborn arses she has for parents, she's no choice."
Ianto looked over at Gwen with a little smile, "good thing she'll have a godmother like you to keep her in line." Ianto stopped for a moment at Gwen's wide-eyed look, "that is, if you think your up to the job? She'll need someone with their feet firmly planted on the ground considering the flighty nature of who Jack wants to be her godfather."
Gwen leaned over and kissed Ianto's cheek before wiping away his tears under the guise of removing her lipstick, "I'll do my very best Ianto. You can count on it." Gwen noticed the road sign as Ianto flipped the SUV around the corner far too quickly. "Bloody hell, not here again!"
The SUV came to a screeching halt in the small lot attached to the lighthouse. Below them on the beach they could see the flashing and phase shifting ship from the rift. Off to the side, a few thousand metres away was the radio tower they'd visited before. Gwen checked her gun and pulled the heavy weapons kit from behind the seat while Ianto grabbed something from the rear and tucked it in the back of his trousers. They saw them standing by the building at the base of the lighthouse, and Gwen gasped. "But, how?"
"Its not our Jack. He's her Jack." Ianto continued towards Branwen and the future Jack Harkness in his three piece suit. "We're here. Now what."
The older Jack smiled, "welcome to the next home of Torchwood Three, in another twelve years give or take. Hello Gwen, its good to see you." He walked over and placed a kiss on her cheek, "nice to be in the field with you again." Gwen pulled back and looked at him. He shook his head, "by choice, not like that."
"Cut the chatter Captain, let's get this done so we can all get back to where we belong." Branwen bruskly cut across any further talking and dropped the box she was carrying to the ground. The box quickly shot several tethers out which sank into the ground while a virtual display appeared. "I've got a positive connection to the Cardiff mainframe and a tachyon link to our mainframe. Tosh, status report. The disembodied voice of Toshiko Sato issued from Branwen's bracelet.
"I have control of the Cardiff rift manipulator and the augments are active. Nash manipulator at full power ready to proceed. Destination coordinates required for temporal cannon activation." Ianto was peering at the display, seeing an active window to their own mainframe.
"How did you patch into our mainframe?" Ianto was curious.
Branwen continued to work on the system, "I installed a link, when this is over, the unit will remove its tracks and be pulled back to our base. Self-cleaning as Captain Dad always says." She looked at Ianto with a small smile before saying quietly, "there wasn't a choice Tad, he had to do it- he was the only one that could." Ianto was visibly shaken, but nodded.
"So what exactly do you need us for? Last time you basically told us to bugger off, but now we were needed? So far, it sure looks like you've got this covered." Gwen was frustrated. She hated the temporal paradox lessons Ianto had given her. "Come on, what can we do?"
Jack smiled at Gwen, "you can start by never changing Gwen Williams, but right this second? Place your hand on that circle." Jack lead her over to the pulsing screen which changed on contact with her skin. They watched as a lineage tree sprung from a new window, going backwards from Gwen's birth, back well into the eighteenth century. Her eyes grew wide as she saw the tree start to grow forward from her name but Jack quickly hit a button to blank that, "ah, nope, don't need to see that part. Well, we've got three hundred years, that's a bit vague." He looked at Branwen who shrugged. "Should we scan this Ianto?"
"That's not it. Their lines converge at this point, but only Gwen's tracks back. We just don't know how far it should go." Branwen looked at Ianto, "we need to find the right time for this thing in the past. We don't know the date, but its somewhere along the Cardiff rift in the past, some ancestor of Gwen's is related to it and now its up to you to put the pieces together."
Ianto looked at her, then Jack, "why didn't you just ask your Ianto? If I already did this, he should know."
Before Ianto could continue with the line of reasoning, Jack cut in, "wibbley-wobbley timey-whimey. Trust me, it has to be the you now that does this, not the you that will be." Jack became flustered, "god I hate keeping the tenses correct. Just use that brain of yours. Please? I'd offer to make it worth your while, but I'm sure I'd get slapped." Jack gave Branwen a sheepish grin as she shot daggers at him.
Ianto tried to process the information they had. Someone in Gwen's heritage had something to do with this, it happened in the past, in Cardiff. "I need more information, our mainframe received what we thought was an SOS, we got a word, Tvogs; but the transmission didn't seem right. Was there more received?" Ianto looked at Branwen, who was accessing the mainframe at Torchwood. She looked at him and nodded. "Can you play it, please and display the text?"
"Tvogs gsv Svok. Fh Svok. Tvogs gsv Krgb."
Ianto concentrated on the words. "Mainframe detected something aberrant about the transmission, can you get the data?" Branwen started scanning through the information.
"The signal was upside down, or something like that," Gwen offered.
Branwen ignored Gwen and spoke to Ianto, "the report states that the message was inverted." Ianto added the data to his mental search, the message was inverted, like it was traveling backwards.
Ianto's eyes widened, "Backwards! It's not inverted, its literally backwards- the whole message is back to front. Tvogs, reverse the alphabet! Gelth!" Ianto's mind was rushing. "Gelth, violent non-coporeal race that tried to come through the rift Christmas Eve 1869, references found in journals kept by Lord MacLeish stored at Torchwood House saying a housemaid named Gwyneth died to trap them. A man called 'Doctor' and a blond woman where seen leaving the building when it exploded." Ianto's eyes widened as Gwen gapped at him and he smiled at her, "spacial genetic multiplicity- guess we know what he meant now."
Jack and Branwen were almost as stunned as Gwen before Jack let out a giant laugh, "well, I guess he really does know everything! Bran, there's your temporal coordinates. Cardiff, December 1869." She turned back to her virtual terminal and entered the data.
The Tosh AI responded, "temporal cannon primed, opening Cardiff Rift, Nash Rift to maximum power. Temporal shot in ten, nine, eight..."
"There's people coming out of the ship!" Gwen was pointing down at the beach where what looked like people were emerging from the shifting vessel. "They don't look solid."
Branwen looked over in concern, "they can't leave the distortion, it'll cause the shot to fail." She looked at Jack, "how do we stop them?" Jack didn't have an answer and was about to speak when Ianto walked over to the edge and pointed a gun down at the distortion.
"No." With that frightening coldness that only an enraged Ianto could embody, he took aim and fired into the distortion and watched several of the blueish non-coporeal people drop to the ground.
"Three, Two, One. Temporal cannon activated."
The effect was frightening; waves of gold rift energy cascaded around the distortion before the entire mass collapsed down into a single point before vanishing. They were all pulled forward by the rush of air created by the vacuum left in its wake.
"Cannon shot completed. Temporal stability confirmed. Shutting down Cardiff and Nash manipulators." The display shutdown and the tethers retracted into the box.
Jack walked over to Ianto, "what the hell was that?"
Ianto smiled sadly at this Jack, so much like his own; then over at Gwen and Branwen. "The redemption of Torchwood One." He dropped the magazine from the gun, pulled a bullet out and handed it to Jack. "Bullets made from the Dalek void ship. When we started having temporally unstable bits fall through; it was the only thing I could think of that might work on them. The ship was made to travel in between time and space, so I thought maybe it would stop something not in time or space." He looked at Branwen and gave her a smile, "and no copper in sight, thank you."
Gwen laughed, "bloody hell. Is it over now? Because I'd really like to get back to the hub and check." Gwen stopped and glanced at Ianto.
Ianto nodded to her, "I'd like to check on them too. Not that seeing you here as you will be isn't nice." Ianto looked at the future Jack Harkness, sans greatcoat and sporting a suit Ianto is sure he probably bought him, and the daughter who nearly wasn't even born, "but I think its time we went to check on you in the here and now." Jack nodded, but Ianto went and kissed him and whispered, "I'll forgive you; but I'll make you suffer some first," making Jack chuckle before turning to Branwen, "if today is how you come in to the world, I fear for my sanity what the future brings."
Ianto noticed how tight her smile was, as if he might have struck a chord, but as he hugged her she said quietly, "I love you Tad, I'm rubbish at saying it, but I really do." They pulled apart and looked at each other for a moment.
"As much as I've enjoyed our visit, I think its time to go now!" Gwen was pulling at Ianto's arm to get him to the SUV. They stopped long enough to see Jack and Branwen walk hand in hand into a wave of rift energy and disappear.
---
"Any answer?" Ianto was setting records returning to the hub.
"Nothing, not on the comms, or any phone number that I try. What the hell is wrong?" Gwen was getting frustrated. Martha or Jack should have answered on something by now. "I'm going to call Andy and Rhys and send them to the hub. They'll at least answer my calls.
Ianto set his jaw and continued to drive. He knew they were alright, they had to be.
The story continues in Shattered
Series: Something that starts with "S", part nineteen
Characters: Jack & Ianto, Gwen, Martha, OFC
Rating: R
Summary: It's Tuesday, it must be the Apocalypse. Something huge comes through the rift, and it takes all of TW to set things right.
A/N: for horizonssing day 29. A whole lot of random DW references thrown in this one folks. Seriously, Mister Toad's wild ride has nothing on this.
Jack dropped the broken LP to the floor, "right; work to do. Gwen, get the scanners working on whatever is up there- we need to see what's going on. Ianto, what about the time lock?" Jack opened the secured storage box on his desk and slid an item into his pocket. Ianto eyed Jack suspiciously, he knew what the red box contained, and could only imagine which of the horrors within Jack decided was needed.
"The time lock won't work because of the instability, but if we push the system; it can create an inverse wave to maybe create some level of stasis- that might give us a bit more time to move whatever it is out to sea." Ianto was pulling up the tactical schematics, "we'll need to place repeaters in these locations," Ianto was pointing to the locations around the Plass, "to maximize the yield. Tosh built portable units, we'll need to get them out and up there right away. Ianto was already heading for the storage room to grab the three large crates. "Martha and Gwen can set the two ground level ones; I'll put the third on the roof of the Millenium centre." Jack made to protest, but one look at Ianto had the words die in his throat. "Gwen, you put this one right at the base of the fountain- the lights will turn green when its located properly." Gwen nodded and headed for the lift. "Martha, this one goes out by the Carousel, probably best to go through the garage. Jack, keep an eye on the readouts, in case iTosh decides they need to be moved."
"Everyone keep their comms open, and no heroics. Look but don't touch, at least not yet." Jack received nods from his team as they ran to place the modules.
"Incoming message. Message translation completed." The voice of Toshiko Sato echoed through the empty hub. "Tvogs gsv Svok. Fh Svok. Tvogs gsv Krgb." It sounded like gibberish to Jack. "Incompatible life forms detected."
"Everyone report in, what do you see out there?" Jack was trying to get a clear image on the CCTV, but all the cameras could detect was bright waving lights and grainy smudges.
Gwen was already coming down the lift, "Jack, it looks like a shipping container, but it keeps fading in and out; then it ripples and, well, maybe you need to go up and look?"
"Absolutely not!" Surprisingly it was Martha yelling down the comms and not Ianto. "You stay down in the hub Jack. I'm doing medical scans up here and these distortions could be harmful. Gwen, I need you to get the secured med bay in archives online while Jack keeps monitoring, okay?" Gwen turned and headed for the archive levels. She knew it had been a mistake to suggest Jack going up there; but she didn't know how to describe what she saw. "Jack, I'm going to set up a couple medical scanners and that camera based on the same technology as the contact lenses, maybe it will get a better picture." Martha clicked off.
Jack was concerned that Ianto hadn't said anything, but he knew better. Ianto would check in when he was done; he wouldn't clutter the comms with idle chatter. Jack fingered the small crystal in his pocket; it was a weapon of last resort and he had an awful feeling it would be needed in this case.
"Rift activity detected. Grid location, Nash Point." Jack spun to look at the rift predictor program, sure enough, the spikes were exactly like the last time.
"Damn. Just what we need." Jack was preparing to contact everyone on the comm when his buzzed off.
"Actually, its exactly what you need Captain." Jack spun around to face Branwen, she was walking up from the rift pool. "You can't do this alone. Your plan will work, but its going to need our help." Jack looked at her, seeing the determination in her eyes and the set of her jaw. He'd been told that he was good at looking danger in the eye, and Ianto- well even Jack was scared of how Ianto could hold things together- but the young woman, she combined the force of will and determination of both of them and raised it to exponential levels. "I've blocked the comms, you really should upgrade those things; I mean, how many people wiping your comms out will it take before you dig in the junk piles downstairs?" She walked over to a work station and dropped a box which quickly tethered itself into the hub computers. The mainframe began to signal an intrusion, but quickly went quiescent as new data poured into its waiting systems.
"Torchwood mainframe point one synchronized to mainframe point three. Incoming program accepted and online." The mainframe displayed a new application window Jack had never seen; but recognized some of the technology as Sontaran, but the rest was most definitely.
"That's!" Jack looked at her with awe.
"Yeah, well; we found a wounded one and mainframe was able to make an imprint of its synaptic pathways before it died. We called him as soon as we found it; but he didn't arrive until it was over. You know how bad he is about getting anywhere on time." Branwen gave him a little smirk. "We've done this before, we can push the crashed vessel out to where the rift will be in the future- then the modified wave from this rift manipulator will pull and our manipulator can push it back in and they'll end up where and when they should."
Jack was getting frustrated at the cryptic words, but didn't push it. "So, what do we need to do here? It sounds like you've got this well in hand." Jack noticed that her eyes started to glisten like Ianto's before he wept. "Branwen, what do I need to do?"
She looked at him, not even trying to hold the tears. "You have to be the hero, Captain."
---
Ianto had just activated the repeater on the roof of the centre. He was looking down at the area and could see the large object appearing to phase in and out of reality with brilliant flashes of light. He remembered the flashes speeding up last time before the explosion, so hopefully the system was either working, or they just hadn't approached critical yet. He could see Martha slowly working her way back towards the lift but no sign of Gwen- she was probably back in the hub by now. He activated his comm to report.
"Jack?" Ianto heard nothing but static on his comm.
"Hello Ianto." Ianto felt a shiver run down his spine as he spun around to see Jack standing several feet behind him. Ianto made to yell at him for being out here, but then he noticed the differences.
"You shouldn't be here." Ianto said. It was true.
Jack walked over and placed a hand on Ianto's cheek, "yes, I should. I need you to trust me Ianto. Trust me that this is the only way." Jack ran his hand down to Ianto's chest, resting it over his heart. "I'm sorry."
Ianto's eyes shot open and turned back to look at the Plass, he could see Jack- his Jack with greatcoat blowing in the breeze stepping off the lift. Ianto slammed on his comm, "Jack! Jack! Get back in the hub now! Martha! You've got to stop him! Don't let him do whatever he's doing." Ianto made to run for the stairs down, but was quickly wrapped in strong warm arms so familiar; but wrong. Jack, but not his Jack. This other Jack, in a three piece suit holding him tightly not letting him stop what he knew was about to happen. "No!" Ianto kept fighting as he saw the glint of the warp star in his Jack's hand as he placed it in the small device they'd built to activate it. He couldn't hear anything, only saw in slow motion as Jack tossed the device at the distortion and felt the energy wave as it blasted like searing heat over him. He saw his Jack fall to the ground in a heap as the thing blinked out of the Plass. He crumpled to the ground, still in this other Jack's arms, "no."
"Ianto. Ianto look at me." The older Jack- in a suit Ianto would surely wear- was turning Ianto's head in his hands. "It will be alright. I'm sorry. Martha will take care of it, you and Gwen need to get to Nash Point as quickly as possible. Meet us at the lighthouse. Hurry Ianto. I promise it will be okay." Not-his-Jack kissed Ianto and stepped away, "hurry Ianto. Work to do." And he walked into a wash of rift energy and vanished.
---
Martha didn't know what had happened. She'd been making her way to the lift, and then she saw Jack throw something into the anomaly followed by a blast of heat. Once she got her bearings, she was horrified to see Jack lying on the ground- she'd seen him like that before, that very dead look, but he was pregnant this time. The child couldn't survive long enough for him to revive. Martha began running towards him, pulling the pathetically small medical kit from her back as she yelled down the comms, "Ianto! Gwen! Medical emergency on the Plass. Jack's down- I need your help now!" She dropped down next to him, turning him so he was flat on his back. There was no pulse, he was dead and from training she knew that every second passed meant less likelihood the child would survive. "Gwen! I need the big medical kit, bring it up here now!" Martha tore Jack's shirts open and was opening her kit, she only had basic medical tools here, nothing remotely like what she needed to deliver a baby by c-section. "Gwen! Ianto!"
"Do what you have to Martha. Gwen, meet me at the garage, priority one, condition one." Ianto sounded dead in her ear.
"Ianto, you don't understand. If I don't start now." Martha was frantically trying not to say the words.
"I know. He'll survive whatever you do Martha, the baby." Ianto faltered, "Jack's dead, she's not. You know how it got the name Caesarean. Just. Just do it Martha." Ianto's comm cut out.
Martha was shaking. Lex Caesarea, Roman law that a child be cut from it's mother womb if she was dying, the mother was expendable. Martha took a deep breath and pulled the scalpel from her kit- no time for pretty or carful, she needed to work fast. She took little comfort in the fact that Jack would heal up before he revived. With a quickly whispered prayer to anything or anyone that might be listening, she started the incision.
---
"Ianto, where are we going? What happened to Jack and Martha?" Gwen was trying to get an answer from Ianto, but his eyes were fixed on the road and his hand were gripping the wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. While Jack's driving was nerve wracking because he was sloppy, Ianto's driving was terrifying when he got like this. Gwen dared to look at the speedometer and nearly gasped- she didn't think anyone could drive that fast and be this in control. "Ianto, you need to talk to me! What happened to Jack!" Gwen was nearly frantic but went cold at Ianto's quiet controlled voice.
"He's dead."
Gwen nearly vomited in the wheel well. It wasn't that Jack died- Jack had died many times and come back- it was that Jack died while he was carrying a child. Gwen felt the bile rising in her throat, she wanted to scream and cry and hit something, but all she could do was look at Ianto- how he was holding it together by the most fragile string- and she decided she could do no less. "Martha will save her. She'll be okay Ianto, and Jack. Well, we know Jack don't we." Gwen carefully reached over to place her hand on Ianto's cheek for a moment. She felt, rather than heard the stuttering gasp escape him. "She's strong Ianto. Considering what a pair of stubborn arses she has for parents, she's no choice."
Ianto looked over at Gwen with a little smile, "good thing she'll have a godmother like you to keep her in line." Ianto stopped for a moment at Gwen's wide-eyed look, "that is, if you think your up to the job? She'll need someone with their feet firmly planted on the ground considering the flighty nature of who Jack wants to be her godfather."
Gwen leaned over and kissed Ianto's cheek before wiping away his tears under the guise of removing her lipstick, "I'll do my very best Ianto. You can count on it." Gwen noticed the road sign as Ianto flipped the SUV around the corner far too quickly. "Bloody hell, not here again!"
The SUV came to a screeching halt in the small lot attached to the lighthouse. Below them on the beach they could see the flashing and phase shifting ship from the rift. Off to the side, a few thousand metres away was the radio tower they'd visited before. Gwen checked her gun and pulled the heavy weapons kit from behind the seat while Ianto grabbed something from the rear and tucked it in the back of his trousers. They saw them standing by the building at the base of the lighthouse, and Gwen gasped. "But, how?"
"Its not our Jack. He's her Jack." Ianto continued towards Branwen and the future Jack Harkness in his three piece suit. "We're here. Now what."
The older Jack smiled, "welcome to the next home of Torchwood Three, in another twelve years give or take. Hello Gwen, its good to see you." He walked over and placed a kiss on her cheek, "nice to be in the field with you again." Gwen pulled back and looked at him. He shook his head, "by choice, not like that."
"Cut the chatter Captain, let's get this done so we can all get back to where we belong." Branwen bruskly cut across any further talking and dropped the box she was carrying to the ground. The box quickly shot several tethers out which sank into the ground while a virtual display appeared. "I've got a positive connection to the Cardiff mainframe and a tachyon link to our mainframe. Tosh, status report. The disembodied voice of Toshiko Sato issued from Branwen's bracelet.
"I have control of the Cardiff rift manipulator and the augments are active. Nash manipulator at full power ready to proceed. Destination coordinates required for temporal cannon activation." Ianto was peering at the display, seeing an active window to their own mainframe.
"How did you patch into our mainframe?" Ianto was curious.
Branwen continued to work on the system, "I installed a link, when this is over, the unit will remove its tracks and be pulled back to our base. Self-cleaning as Captain Dad always says." She looked at Ianto with a small smile before saying quietly, "there wasn't a choice Tad, he had to do it- he was the only one that could." Ianto was visibly shaken, but nodded.
"So what exactly do you need us for? Last time you basically told us to bugger off, but now we were needed? So far, it sure looks like you've got this covered." Gwen was frustrated. She hated the temporal paradox lessons Ianto had given her. "Come on, what can we do?"
Jack smiled at Gwen, "you can start by never changing Gwen Williams, but right this second? Place your hand on that circle." Jack lead her over to the pulsing screen which changed on contact with her skin. They watched as a lineage tree sprung from a new window, going backwards from Gwen's birth, back well into the eighteenth century. Her eyes grew wide as she saw the tree start to grow forward from her name but Jack quickly hit a button to blank that, "ah, nope, don't need to see that part. Well, we've got three hundred years, that's a bit vague." He looked at Branwen who shrugged. "Should we scan this Ianto?"
"That's not it. Their lines converge at this point, but only Gwen's tracks back. We just don't know how far it should go." Branwen looked at Ianto, "we need to find the right time for this thing in the past. We don't know the date, but its somewhere along the Cardiff rift in the past, some ancestor of Gwen's is related to it and now its up to you to put the pieces together."
Ianto looked at her, then Jack, "why didn't you just ask your Ianto? If I already did this, he should know."
Before Ianto could continue with the line of reasoning, Jack cut in, "wibbley-wobbley timey-whimey. Trust me, it has to be the you now that does this, not the you that will be." Jack became flustered, "god I hate keeping the tenses correct. Just use that brain of yours. Please? I'd offer to make it worth your while, but I'm sure I'd get slapped." Jack gave Branwen a sheepish grin as she shot daggers at him.
Ianto tried to process the information they had. Someone in Gwen's heritage had something to do with this, it happened in the past, in Cardiff. "I need more information, our mainframe received what we thought was an SOS, we got a word, Tvogs; but the transmission didn't seem right. Was there more received?" Ianto looked at Branwen, who was accessing the mainframe at Torchwood. She looked at him and nodded. "Can you play it, please and display the text?"
"Tvogs gsv Svok. Fh Svok. Tvogs gsv Krgb."
Ianto concentrated on the words. "Mainframe detected something aberrant about the transmission, can you get the data?" Branwen started scanning through the information.
"The signal was upside down, or something like that," Gwen offered.
Branwen ignored Gwen and spoke to Ianto, "the report states that the message was inverted." Ianto added the data to his mental search, the message was inverted, like it was traveling backwards.
Ianto's eyes widened, "Backwards! It's not inverted, its literally backwards- the whole message is back to front. Tvogs, reverse the alphabet! Gelth!" Ianto's mind was rushing. "Gelth, violent non-coporeal race that tried to come through the rift Christmas Eve 1869, references found in journals kept by Lord MacLeish stored at Torchwood House saying a housemaid named Gwyneth died to trap them. A man called 'Doctor' and a blond woman where seen leaving the building when it exploded." Ianto's eyes widened as Gwen gapped at him and he smiled at her, "spacial genetic multiplicity- guess we know what he meant now."
Jack and Branwen were almost as stunned as Gwen before Jack let out a giant laugh, "well, I guess he really does know everything! Bran, there's your temporal coordinates. Cardiff, December 1869." She turned back to her virtual terminal and entered the data.
The Tosh AI responded, "temporal cannon primed, opening Cardiff Rift, Nash Rift to maximum power. Temporal shot in ten, nine, eight..."
"There's people coming out of the ship!" Gwen was pointing down at the beach where what looked like people were emerging from the shifting vessel. "They don't look solid."
Branwen looked over in concern, "they can't leave the distortion, it'll cause the shot to fail." She looked at Jack, "how do we stop them?" Jack didn't have an answer and was about to speak when Ianto walked over to the edge and pointed a gun down at the distortion.
"No." With that frightening coldness that only an enraged Ianto could embody, he took aim and fired into the distortion and watched several of the blueish non-coporeal people drop to the ground.
"Three, Two, One. Temporal cannon activated."
The effect was frightening; waves of gold rift energy cascaded around the distortion before the entire mass collapsed down into a single point before vanishing. They were all pulled forward by the rush of air created by the vacuum left in its wake.
"Cannon shot completed. Temporal stability confirmed. Shutting down Cardiff and Nash manipulators." The display shutdown and the tethers retracted into the box.
Jack walked over to Ianto, "what the hell was that?"
Ianto smiled sadly at this Jack, so much like his own; then over at Gwen and Branwen. "The redemption of Torchwood One." He dropped the magazine from the gun, pulled a bullet out and handed it to Jack. "Bullets made from the Dalek void ship. When we started having temporally unstable bits fall through; it was the only thing I could think of that might work on them. The ship was made to travel in between time and space, so I thought maybe it would stop something not in time or space." He looked at Branwen and gave her a smile, "and no copper in sight, thank you."
Gwen laughed, "bloody hell. Is it over now? Because I'd really like to get back to the hub and check." Gwen stopped and glanced at Ianto.
Ianto nodded to her, "I'd like to check on them too. Not that seeing you here as you will be isn't nice." Ianto looked at the future Jack Harkness, sans greatcoat and sporting a suit Ianto is sure he probably bought him, and the daughter who nearly wasn't even born, "but I think its time we went to check on you in the here and now." Jack nodded, but Ianto went and kissed him and whispered, "I'll forgive you; but I'll make you suffer some first," making Jack chuckle before turning to Branwen, "if today is how you come in to the world, I fear for my sanity what the future brings."
Ianto noticed how tight her smile was, as if he might have struck a chord, but as he hugged her she said quietly, "I love you Tad, I'm rubbish at saying it, but I really do." They pulled apart and looked at each other for a moment.
"As much as I've enjoyed our visit, I think its time to go now!" Gwen was pulling at Ianto's arm to get him to the SUV. They stopped long enough to see Jack and Branwen walk hand in hand into a wave of rift energy and disappear.
---
"Any answer?" Ianto was setting records returning to the hub.
"Nothing, not on the comms, or any phone number that I try. What the hell is wrong?" Gwen was getting frustrated. Martha or Jack should have answered on something by now. "I'm going to call Andy and Rhys and send them to the hub. They'll at least answer my calls.
Ianto set his jaw and continued to drive. He knew they were alright, they had to be.
The story continues in Shattered