Exhibit, Part Three
Part Two
Ned wasn't sure of a time he'd been more excited. The Face, having sent the humans away, had requested for a brief walk through the museum on his way out, and the curator had jumped on the chance to lead him on a personal tour. He enlisted four of the museum's highest-rated guides, ready and able to answer any question the Face could possibly care to ask. Ned was ready to the lead the way himself, and he prepared his notes on his implant, just in case he blanked out from pure exhilaration.
He was hurriedly prepping his team of hand-chosen guides when the Face's attendant tapped him on the shoulder.
"Professor Uquiccax?" he said.
"Yes, er, sir?" Ned said, realizing he couldn't remember the young man's name. He must have said it at one point, but with all the excitement of the Face… "How can I help you?"
The attendant smiled politely. "The Face of Boe has asked me to thank you on his behalf for a wonderful experience. Your exhibit is exquisite, and we hope you find much success upon its opening."
"Er," Ned said, accepting the offered handshake. "Thank you? Ah, I was… I was under the impression the Face was planning on taking a tour of the rest of the museum, I'm sorry for the wait, we're just ready to accompany you now."
"That will not be necessary," the attendant said. "I'm afraid the Face of Boe needs some peace and quiet after such an exciting day. If it is all right with you, we will see what we can of your excellent museum on our own, on the way out."
"Oh." Ned's whole face drooped a little. "Yes, of course. That will be fine. If you should need anything, don't hesitate to call, of course, we'll be right there to attend to anything - "
"Of course. Thank you."
The Face nodded politely to the extremely disappointed Ned and his company as he took his leave, his attendant following the slowly moving jar with his tail swishing behind them. They continued on in silence, undisturbed by museum staff and with no need to speak between them.
The museum was strangely silent without the usual crowds filling the hall. The only sounds came from the Face's own equipment and the footfalls of his companion. Other than that, there was the quiet hum of the lights, and a barely audible tapping sound from the walls.
The Face paused to gaze up at an ancient Atraxi wall hanging.
"I can hear you there, you know," he said without turning. His attendant looked up, curiously. "There's no need to hide yourself."
"I wasn't hiding," answered a quiet voice. "I was practicing."
"I see," said the Face, and he turned to see the speaker. She fidgeted under his gaze, and her fur turned from the beige wall color to it's natural blue-green.
"Who are you?" asked the little girl. "The museum's closed."
"It is," the Face agreed. "I could ask the same of you."
"I live here," she said defensively.
"In the museum?"
"In a flat. With my mum. But I got lost."
"Perhaps you would like me to help you find her?"
"If you like," she said, shuffling her furry feet on the floor. When the Face moved for the exit, she followed.
She slowly opened up as they traversed the halls. At the Face's urgings, she began to describe all the exhibits in surprising detail and accuracy. The Face just smiled and listened to her childish voice.
"Thank you," he said, when they returned to the front entrance of the museum. "You make a wonderful tour guide."
"I don' wanna be a guide," she said with a scrunched up nose. "I wanna be a researcher. An ark-ologist."
"Well, in that case," the Face said, "let me give you something."
"A present?"
"A past and a future," the Face corrected, "But a gift for you, as well."
The Face nodded to his attendant. He stepped forwards at the beckon, and delicately pulled something from a compartment in the Face's jar.
The attendant waited for the girl to hold out both her furry blue hands before opening his own padded brown ones. He carefully dropped into her hands a golden chain with a small round marble.
The marble was transparent, and inside swirled eddies of a golden substance, twisting and turning in the confines like a nervous snake.
The girl took it gingerly. "It's amazing," she whispered, her big green eyes wide and locked firmly on the bauble.
"Take good care of it for me," the Face said, closing his eyes. "It's very important to me."
"I will," she said, clutching it to her chest. Then she frowned. "Why're you giving it to me, 'f it's so import'nt?"
"I always intended to pass it on," the Face replied with a smile. "And when the time is right, you will pass it to someone else. Don't worry," he interrupted, seeing that she was about to speak up again, "You will understand when the time comes."
With that, the Face nodded to his attendant, who stepped forwards to hold on to the jar. They both disappeared with a small flash of light, leaving the girl standing alone in the entryway.
She opened her paw, letting the marble dangle from its chain. The golden substance inside swirled up towards her hand in an hourglass-shaped curl of energy, stopped short by the glass.
Her ears pricked forwards at a voice echoing down the hall.
"Moshe?" it called, somewhere between worried and annoyed, "Moshe, are you here?"
At her mother's voice, she quickly tugged the chain around her neck and tucked the marble into her shirt before darting away into the closed off museum, her fur once again a mottled beige.
~~
The exhibit opened.
The Face's visit and glowing review resulted in a surge of visitors for the first couple of days. Ned was thrilled. He started spending his time in the exhibit, personally giving tours to the throng, until his colleagues reminded him that he was the Museum Director, and he had other, more important duties to attend to.
The throng itself petered out within a week. Even with the publicity given by the Face of Boe himself, the exhibit didn't exactly pander to the general audience, so far out from the Earth colonies. Soon, the patrons who visited the exhibit were limited to regulars, the occasional Earth enthusiast, and the usual people who just wandered from exhibit to exhibit, not really caring about anything but fulfilling some urge to visit every place in the museum while they were there.
The team spent quite a bit of time out in the exhibit, but the novelty of it wore off even quicker for them than it had for the visitors. Tosh in particular did not take well to being ogled all day, and Owen just found it somewhat boring. It was all rather dull in comparison to what they had actually accomplished at Torchwood, alien clientele of all shapes and sizes notwithstanding.
Ianto took to it a bit easier. He'd always enjoyed people watching, and his duties at the Tourist Office gave him some experience with working with the masses. He stayed out in the museum proper longer than the others - while Tosh went back to her room to do whatever it was she was doing, plotting, probably, and Owen got called off to be examined or experimented on, Ianto sat behind his desk, answering questions and even making the occasional hot beverage for curious visitors.
It was satisfying, in a way. He knew that they were still prisoners, being taken advantage of, but it was nice to be useful again.
~~
Toshiko used the exhibit's opening to her advantage. She stuck around with Ianto for the first couple hours (the return of his amazing coffee guaranteed her presence for the morning at least), but then she would wander around the museum.
The exhibits were interesting, to be sure. Under other circumstances, Tosh would be thrilled to learn about alien cultures and new technologies, but she couldn't let herself get distracted. She did her best to memorize the layout of the halls, analyzed which exhibits could possibly be broken into for use as weapons. She couldn't exit the museum itself (yet), so the docking bay and flats were inaccessible, but she knew their general location, and they weren't her top priority just yet. First, she needed to hack into the security system.
~~
Owen was usually back before the other two. Xarchac's examinations hadn't changed much with the opening, but they were more frequent and he seemed even more impatient and angry than usual.
"Waste of time and resources," he spat, if the topic was breached. "The stupid thing's not doing its job. Nerranderot's gotten carried away, as usual, and forgotten our purpose."
"And what would that be?"
All that did was earn Owen a glare, but it did seem to cut the examinations shorter than they would be otherwise. Then Owen was free to go back to his room.
Not that his room was any more interesting. Like Tosh, he took to wandering around the museum. The exhibits didn't really excite him either, and the crowd was frankly annoying most of the time, so when Xarchac booted him from the room, he stayed in the science corridor and looked around. Backstage at the museum was much more interesting.
He found the room with the Time Gate again. It was locked, far beyond his meager security clearance, but there was a window in the door. The archway was dark. It was deactivated, and nobody was attending it, quite unlike Owen's first experience with the thing.
The timer on his wrist implant bleeped. Museum was closing. Time to head back and wait for the others.
Muffled voices emerged from the closed door, words unintelligible. Owen paused, curious. He had been sure the Time Gate’s room was empty, but perhaps he was mistaken. His wrist kept bleeping, though, and sticking around wasn’t doing him any good. He left the voices behind him.
~~
The computer chimed. An alert popped up on the screen, flashing red. The computer waited the allotted thirty seconds before chiming again and adding a voice alert.
"Warning," it said. "Fuel reservoir at 14%."
The pilot cursed and pushed his chair over to look at the display.
"Where's the nearest place to refuel, then?"
"Nearest refueling station: Kalakkar Alpha, estimated distance one - "
"No, no, no. What's the next closest?"
"Planet Alrassa, estimated distance two point - "
"No!" He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "What's the nearest place to refuel that doesn't have a warrant for my arrest?"
"Calculating."
The computer thought about it.
"…Or the warrant's expired, that works too."
"The nearest refueling station with specified parameters is Adris One."
"Tell me about it."
"Adris One is built into an asteroid, and is home to the Adris Science and History Museum. The museum's newest exhibit is pre-interplanetary civilizations, with particular emphasis on pre-First-Contact Earth. Highlights include - "
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Sounds great. Mute sounds." He watched the muted advertisement the computer had brought on display for about five seconds before turning away. "How long will it take to get there?"
"Estimated arrival time: three weeks."
The pilot swore again. "How much time do we have left with the fuel we have left?"
"At current energy levels, fuel will be depleted in 7-10 days."
"Fuck." He leaned back in his chair and glared out the front window at the stars. "Okay. Listen up, computer. Set course for Adris One, use engines as little as possible. Let our momentum carry us. Turn off all non-vital systems: that includes environmental and life support."
"Warning: disconnecting life support may cause serious injury or death to personnel."
"No shit. Shut it down anyway."
"Affirmative."
"Turn it back on when we're about three hours away from the station, and set an alarm to go off an hour after that."
"Alarm set."
"Great. See you then." The display was still showing a view of the inside of the museum, panning around the brand new Earth exhibit proudly, advertising the free testimonies from actual pre-first-contact humans. He shut it off without looking.
The small bed was built into the wall. He pulled it down with a grunt, already feeling the lack of oxygen in the tiny ship. He slipped beneath the blankets, relaxing into them as he stared at the lights dancing behind his own eyelids.
The ship went dark as it powered down. The engines flared briefly, and it drifted towards its destination.
~~
Tosh always fell asleep first. Whatever she was up to all day, it was wearing her out. Looking into escape, no doubt. It was an obsession with her, not that Owen could blame her. Much as Ned tried to make them comfortable, it was hard to forget that they were stuck on Adris One for the foreseeable future. If not for Xarchac's research, he'd be with her all the way.
She was lying sideways on her bed, feet still dangling off the edge, and held loosely by Ianto's arms. He fell asleep not long after she had, as usual not bothering to go back to his room. At this point, all they really had left was each other and Owen.... Well, Owen couldn't exactly comfort her like that.
He sighed, leaning back in Tosh's chair and staring at the ceiling. After a few minutes like that he rocked forwards again and stared at the two of them.
Ianto was snoring just slightly, rustling Tosh's hair with his breath. He hadn't shown any signs of respiratory pain since their first week or so, but Owen knew from experience how good Ianto was at hiding pain. He still kept an eye out for any signs of infection or relapse. There hadn't been any.
Tosh had her arms curled up at her chest like she was cold, her right hand gripping her left wrist. Owen frowned, and gently reached over to pull her sleeve up. Tosh muttered in her sleep but didn't waken, just loosening her grip enough that Owen could see what she was favoring.
The palm side of her wrist was raw and slightly bloody. She had apparently been digging into it to get at the implant beneath her skin. The gently pulsing green light shone brighter then it did on either Owen or Ianto, closer to the surface. Owen scowled but didn’t wake her. It didn’t look inflamed or infected, and telling her off about it would just start off another fight about how Owen didn't even care about escaping, and how Tosh was the only one willing to get her hands dirty any more. They'd done the fight a dozen times already. It was getting redundant.
He sat back and found he was out of medical excuses to be staring at his teammates. That meant he was just being creepy, watching the two of them sleep. Again. Owen wished for the millionth time since his death that he could join them. He stared jealously at Tosh's chest moving up and down with each breath, at her hair rustling with each of Ianto's.
His eyes wandered back to her bloody wrist. He reached over and covered it again with her sleeve.
It wasn't that Owen didn't want to escape. He did. Very much. He was sick of the museum and the fake Torchwood and all the gawking aliens and Xarchac's stupid tests. He'd been taken apart and put back together more than a jigsaw puzzle by now, scanned and examined and scanned again.
He was sick of it. The only thing keeping him from lashing out, attacking the alien doctor, stealing a weapon and running the fuck out of there with Tosh and Ianto in tow was the idea that maybe, maybe this would actually work, that he would live again. The Face of Boe had said he would. Owen only wished he knew when. Or how. Was he just wasting his time here with Ned and Xarchac?
Tosh mumbled something in her sleep that sounded like "muffins."
Owen smirked at her. Once this is over, he thought, I'm taking you out for that date. Maybe even sooner than that. You've had enough waiting around. He reached out and fondly brushed her hair out of her face.
Toshiko shuddered as his cold hand brushed her forehead. She wrapped her arms around herself and burrowed backwards, further into Ianto's warm embrace. He stirred a little, mumbling, and adjusted his grip around her.
Owen glared at them, frozen. It's just not fucking fair, he thought.
He stood up, pushing the chair back in place silently, careful not to wake them even in his temper. He angrily punched in the door's override code Tosh had discovered, gestured at his implant to turn the lights off, and stalked off into the hall.
~~
The only other thing for a dead man to do at night, besides stare at his friends' slumber like a creepy stalker or be bored at the computer for hours, was to walk. Owen had spent a lot of time walking since his death, even back on Earth. He'd wandered the streets and sat in cafés pretending to drink and watched the world go by. He'd even caught the occasional alien miscreant Torchwood would have missed otherwise, asleep as they all were, and dragged it back to the Hub for a mildly disheveled Jack and a very disheveled and slightly limping Ianto to take care of.
There was nothing quite that exciting on the asteroid.
He wandered the science wing again, pausing by the room with the Time Gate. It was still locked. In the grey darkness, a little handwritten sign lay on the floor, apparently fallen from one of the large consoles that controlled the arch. 'Out of Order.'
A bit further down the hall, he found the medical bay. He spent a while looking in all the drawers and cabinets at the equipment, just for something to do. Bandages, painkillers, sedatives, inoculations, tongue depressors, thermometers... It was all pretty typical. Strange how alien medicine was so similar to humanity's.
Back downstairs to the grand ballroom. You will breathe, and you will live again, he thought. Yeah right. He stared out the giant window into space. The stars twinkled silently at him. He wondered of he could see Earth from here, if he knew how to look for it. The landing lights on the docking bay pulsed red every two seconds, the left and then the right. Some of the flats on the other end of the asteroid had their lights on still.
Back out into the hall, up more stairs, staff living quarters, mess hall, special event rooms, reserved for research, down the stairs again, security office, lost and found... He gave up on backstage and wandered out into the museum.
It was easier to look at the exhibits when they weren't filled with crowds. He'd already seen all of the top three floors on previous bouts of restlessness, so he went down to the entrance to start from there.
Nights on Adris One lasted for ten hours. The days were sixteen. Owen still had five before the earliest risers got up, and probably up to seven before Tosh and Ianto followed suit.
He made it up to the third floor (relative to the entrance, which actually had four more floors beneath it), where he found himself back in the familiar Torchwood exhibit. He sighed and threw himself into his chair. He closed his eyes, facing the ceiling, and willed his brain to go blank.
The room was absolutely silent. There was no hum of electricity from the meager lighting, and with no blood flow to make him fidget, no breath, no heartbeat, Owen was equally noiseless.
That made the footsteps, light as they were, rather obvious.
Owen sat up, curious.
A small figure wearing bright yellow gasped at the sudden movement. It dropped to all fours and scampered out of the room. The footsteps cut abruptly off with a thump and a high-pitched squeal.
Owen stood and followed the figure out to the hall. It sat, huddled at the bottom of the stairs, whimpering.
Its fur had turned the same color as the wall, but its bright dress eliminated any hope of camouflage. It clutched its knee, big eyes full of tears, pointed ears flat against its head, long tail wrapped around its body protectively.
Alien or not, there was something universal about a little girl in a sundress with a skinned knee.
"You alright?" Owen asked.
She looked up, frightened, and scooted back against the wall, lifting one paw from her leg to clutch at something around her neck. "'m fine," she whispered.
Owen raised an eyebrow and knelt down. "Come on, let me see. That was quite a fall."
She shook her head.
"I'm a doctor, you can trust me. Doctor Harper. Or Owen, if you prefer."
She stared at him with wide eyes.
"Come on sweetheart, what's your name?"
"...Moshe," she finally answered.
"Alright, Moshe, it's nice to meet you. Now, are you going to let me have a look at that knee or what?"
Moshe hesitated before dropping her furry hands from her knee. The scrape wasn't too deep, but the fur had been pulled out or embedded in the skin and it was bleeding slightly.
"Doesn't look too bad," he assured her, "But we should get it cleaned off and put a plaster on it. What do you think?"
Moshe didn't say anything, but she nodded.
"Do you think you can walk?"
She shook her head.
That was bullshit, of course. Her wound could barely be called a wound. Nevertheless, he offered her his hand and she cautiously climbed up into his arms. Her long tail hung loosely around him.
"What're you doing out here anyway?"
"I got lost," Moshe muttered shyly. "I can't find my mummy."
"Have you been here all night?" Owen asked, a little skeptical.
She nodded.
"Do you live on the station?"
She nodded again. "We have a flat."
"You come here often then?"
Another nod. "I like the museum."
She thought about it. "Do you work here?"
Owen snorted. "Yeah, well, sort of," he said. "It's more like I'm part of the damn exhibit."
Moshe perked up conspicuously. "You're part of the museum?!" she squealed. "Which exhibit?"
Owen jerked his head back towards the fake Hub. "21st Century Earth," he drawled. "A genuine antique, I am."
Moshe squeaked in excitement. He looked back at her to see a huge smile on her furry face. The fur itself had changed from the beige of the walls to a bright green-blue. "That's so cool!" she said.
Owen raised an eyebrow at her. "You like history then?"
Moshe nodded so enthusiastically Owen nearly lost his grip on her. Her tail curled tighter around his shoulders. "I wanna be an ark-ologist when I grow up and find all kinds of ancient things and learn all about ancient history and technology and stuff!"
Owen awkwardly shifted her to one arm as he put in the override for the door again, slipping into the behind-the-scenes hallways once again.
"Will you tell me about it?" Moshe asked excitedly.
"Tell you about what?"
"About your exhibit and stuff!"
Owen rolled his eyes, but he had a small smile on his face. Opening the door to the medical bay, he started to tell her about Torchwood.
~~
"I never thought he was the type to be so good with children," Ianto remarked.
Tosh shrugged, watching Moshe run up to her exasperated mother. The woman thanked Owen profusely, bowing even with the little girl in her arms. Owen took it in stride, waving off the thanks and apologies alike.
Moshe waved excitedly. "Bye bye Tosh! Bye bye 'yanto! Bye Doctor Harper!"
They waved back as her mother pulled her away towards home.
Ianto raised an eyebrow as Owen rejoined them.
"What?" Owen said, already braced for the teasing.
"You were just so cute with her," Tosh said, smiling as she sipped her hot chocolate. Ianto had made it for all of them, insisting coffee wasn't proper for children.
"What, she was hurt. I'm not allowed to have a good bedside manner?"
"You don't have a good bedside manner," Ianto teased.
"I'll have you know I have an amazing bedside manner," Owen said loftily. "I just don't always choose to use it."
Tosh laughed into her mug. "Bedside manner or not, that was an impressive display of babysitting prowess."
Owen shrugged. "Just because I'm rude to you lot doesn't mean I go around yelling at kids. Before I worked at Torchwood I was great with kids. I have a whole drawer in my file cabinet at home filled with nothing but crayon drawings and thank you letters."
"I know," Ianto said uncomfortably. "I saw it when Gwen and I were… cleaning it out."
They fell into an awkward silence, as they tended to whenever the subject of one of their deaths was breached.
Moshe came back the next day, excited to see them all and making Owen come with her to other exhibits. She was back two days later. And the next day. She always seemed to have ‘lost’ her mother. Owen let her drag him all over the museum, showing him passages and shortcuts he wasn't sure even Ned knew about. Tosh would want to hear about it for sure.
And so the weeks passed.
~~
The museum lobby wasn't too crowded. They didn't have to wait in line for their passes - which weren't paper or plastic or anything like the ones back on Earth, but a small flashing green device that latched on to their wrists and beeped and supposedly would start up a spoken tour when they were close to an exhibit and pressed on it - but the room was full of typical museum-goers milling about, looking at the pamphlets, chatting with each other, yelling at the information kiosk.
Never mind that they were the only humans in the room. The familiarity of the setting was nice. Amy loved museums.
"'Welcome, friends, to the Adris Science and History Museum,'" the Doctor read from his own pamphlet. "'Adris One has many exciting attractions and activities…. Cofounded by the honored professors Uquiccax and Xarchac' - ooh, that's interesting, brilliant fellow, helped invent a prototype Nanogene you know - blah blah blah 'recently endorsed by the Face of Boe' really that's quite a claim, wonder if a little place like this can really back that up…."
Amy plucked the pamphlet out of his hands and flipped it over to look at the map. "Right, that's all very nice, where's that exhibit that was on the advertisement?"
The Doctor peered over her shoulder. "Third floor, I think. Wait, which floor is this?"
"What's so exciting about 21st Century Earth?" Rory asked, looking up from his examination of a severed nine-fingered claw in a display case. "We're from 21st Century Earth."
"I want to see what they got wrong," Amy said simply.
"Quite right," the Doctor agreed, "Loads of fun, they always get the simplest details wrong. Oh, look, there's a shop! Where is that? I love a good little shop."
"Yeah, loads of fun, right," Rory repeated, otherwise occupied with a sign that read Medieval Kagarr Weaponry -->
"Oh come on, it'll be interesting!" Amy insisted.
"There's the shop!" the Doctor exclaimed in delight.
When Amy turned around he was already dodging into the Gift Shop.
"Doctor!" she shouted after him, to no avail. She whirled back around to face Rory, who was similarly disappearing down a flight of steps, following the signs to the Kagarr Weaponry. "Rory!"
She was left alone in the corridor, her hands on her hips, scowling.
"Boys," she snarled to no one in particular.
"We'll just meet back here for lunch, then?" she shouted, earning her a stare from a green gelatinous-looking fellow with three eyes.
She glared at the map again. "Third floor. To the left. Fine. It'll be great."
~~
"Oh sweet heaven, is that real, honest-to-God coffee you've got?"
Ianto looked up from where he'd been watching two gaseous life forms argue over something in the Autopsy Bay. A human woman with long red hair had somehow made her way over to his seat at his desk without his notice. She was leaning over him, practically drooling over the percolator.
"Had it specially imported," Ianto said, raising his mug. "Would you like some?"
The woman melted. "It's been ages since I've had a proper coffee," she explained, helping herself to a seat on Ianto's desk. "The kitchen's loaded with all kinds of tea, but never any coffee, and Rory doesn't seem to care since he got addicted to those energy drinks back in med school, so I get stuck trying to find something similar on whatever ridiculous planet we end up on."
Ianto smiled. "I know how you feel," he said. "It took quite some convincing to get Ned to both get this thing working and keep it in supply. I eventually managed to convince him it would be an interactive part of the exhibit, tasting ancient and exotic drinks, and all that."
The woman took a deep whiff from her mug before she sipped at the foam on top. "God I've missed this," she said.
Ianto leaned back in his chair. "It's nice to see another human around here for once," he said. "We've had a couple curious passersby but nobody really interested in the exhibit."
"Oh yes, we're rather far out from the… colonies, aren't we?"
"I suppose we are," Ianto said, having no idea. Tosh probably knew. "Ianto Jones, nice to meet you."
"Amy Pond," the woman replied, taking his offered hand with her own. "Likewise."
"You're just visiting, I take it? I haven't heard of any humans living in the flats."
"Just passing through," Amy said. "I'm with my husband and a friend of ours, we just go wherever and see the sights. We caught an ad for the exhibit, and it caught our - well, my interest anyway, the boys left to look and swords and things."
"You're interested in Earth history?"
"Oh, this and that, you know." Amy looked around at the various displays, filled with Torchwood paraphernalia and alien weaponry and anachronistic gadgets. "I can't say much of this looks like the 21st Century I'm familiar with, though."
"The exhibit covers a rather specialized part of the era, yes," Ianto said, finishing his mug.
He offered Amy his hand and led her over to the first display. He didn't have a spiel like the docents, but he certainly knew Torchwood well enough that his worst attempts at winging it were still more accurate and honest than their best-written scripts. He gave her a tour of the whole of the exhibit, while she exclaimed and looked at all the displays and asked all the right questions.
"I had no idea any of this was going on," she said, staring up at the Gallery of Intergalactic Fiends in amazement. "I mean, I heard about some of it, but I just kind of dismissed it as rumors and legends and crazy people."
"Some of it was," Ianto confessed, trying to look like he wasn't trying to avoid looking at the Cyberman mask staring down at them. "But a lot of it was real. Legends and crazy people are just an easy way to cover things up."
"How do you know so much about all this?" Amy asked, turning away from the replica Dalek. "Are you some kind of Earth-alien-relations-through-history expert? Seems like a strange thing to specify in."
"Tell that to Ned," Ianto muttered. "No, I'm not really an expert, I'm just speaking from experience."
"Experience?" Amy frowned. Her eyes widened in realization. "Are you from the 21st Century? How did you come to work here at the museum then?!"
"I don't, exactly."
"What, you just traveled through time to hang out in a space station museum and give tours to travelers?"
"No," Ianto said, feeling strangely defensive as Amy put her hands on her hips and glared at him. It was sort of like dealing with Gwen, only that kind of glare was usually focused on an unsuspecting witness/culprit or Jack, and Ianto wasn't certain how to deal with it head on.
So they slowly made their way back to his desk, and he poured them both some more coffee, and he told her all about Ned and Xarchac and their Time Gate and the resurrection machine. Throughout his story, her eyes narrowed, and she gripped her mug handle harder than was strictly necessary, and she started staring around the museum with a hard look in her eye.
"You're prisoners," she said, when he had finished.
Ianto shrugged. "It's not that bad," he said. "And it's not like there's anywhere else for us to go."
Amy scowled. "They're treating you like slaves! You're working here, and you're not getting paid, and you're not allowed to leave! How is that fair?"
Ianto just shrugged again. He'd already been through this a number of times with Toshiko, and he just didn't feel up to worrying about it when it was obvious they had nowhere to go. He'd do what Tosh figured out in the end, sure, but he wasn't up to arguing about it.
"Maybe you could come with us," Amy continued.
"What?" Ianto said, startled.
"Listen, I'm going to go ask. I'm sure it'll be fine, this is the kind of stuff we do all the time. We can take you wherever you want, no problem, just… get your friends and meet me back here, okay?"
She handed her mug back to him without waiting for an answer, and ran back out into the hall.
~~
Tosh was huddled within a nook in the wall, irritably poking at the device in her wrist. Owen might disapprove, but the only way she could work at it was by digging into her own flesh. It had already started healing over from her last attempt, but it had become part of her routine now, digging in with a stolen knife so she could poke at the device within.
She'd moved from the privacy of her own room for a number of reasons - neither Owen nor Ianto had gotten suspicious when she had begun wearing exclusively long-sleeved tops, and she didn't want them to until after she had a certain way out - and today she was going to test the results of her tinkering.
The nook was right outside the security office. She had convinced the computer on previous attempts that she was actually the head of security, but the doors logged every person who passed through, which meant she had to reset the chip after each try.
Today, she was going to get into the office and begin her escape.
"Come on, work already," she snarled at the chip as she poked at it with a hairpin. "You've worked for me before!"
"That looks nasty! You should get it looked at."
Toshiko jolted, tugging her sleeve down instinctively and staring wide-eyed at the man who had suddenly appeared before her.
He peered down at her curiously.
"I was just…" she started, but had no idea what to say.
"Itchy?" he suggested brightly. "Those implants can be a real pain, I know."
He knelt down next to her and pulled out her arm to look at it.
"Of course," he said, pulling out some sort wand-like device and holding its glowing green tip over the reddened and gently oozing surface of her wrist, "Yours seems to be malfunctioning."
He flipped the wand over with a flourish, and it snapped open further. He peered at it thoughtfully. "Says you're head chef for the little cafe on the fourth floor. No offense, but you don't look much like a Thraanian curry expert. They tend to have more arms."
Toshiko snatched her hand away. "It's just an error," she said.
"Really. Because it looks to me like you've been trying to alter it to break into this very ominous looking door that should definitely not be broken into."
He grinned at her.
"Are you with the museum?"
"Naaaah," he said, flipping his device shut and putting it in the inner pocket of his jacket. "Just passing through. Visiting. Had a nice look around the shop, then realized I don't have any money and thought I'd wander around the exhibits. Only the exhibits didn't really catch my attention nearly as much as an anachronistic humanoid with pilfered cutlery in her arm."
"Are you going to turn me in?"
He cocked his head at her. "Now why would I do that."
He jumped to his feet and stepped over Tosh's legs to get to the panel next to the security office door.
"You see, I love a good escape myself," he said, poking at the panel. "Unjust imprisonment, sneaking around, relying on your own devices to get out, it really pokes all my interests at once. And you're human, I must confess, I've grown just a little biased over the years, humans are definitely some of the most interesting aliens I've met."
He stepped back from the panel and peered at her. "This only grants access to people with the highest security passes. It scans your DNA."
"I know," Toshiko said irritably, back on her feet. "It took me three tries to convince it otherwise."
The man clapped his hands in delight. "Oh you're good," he said. "You got in just by hardwiring that little chip in your arm?"
"It does the job," Tosh said, and stepped forwards to work at the panel herself. The man stepped aside with a little hop. "Only if you mess with it now I'm liable to get caught."
"Sorry to intrude."
Tosh held her arm up to the scanner. It flashed green, and the door opened.
"Oh lovely," the man said. He followed her into the office and looked around. "Gosh, just look at these robots. These are probably worth more than the exhibits they protect!"
He knocked on one of the many robots' deep red shells. Toshiko ignored him, sitting down at the security chief's desk sideways, with one leg through the hole for his tail.
"So what's the plan then? When are you doing your daring escape?"
"As soon as possible," Tosh said, "And I'm not telling you how, I still don't know you won't just turn me in when this is all over."
The man looked hurt. "Hey, I'm on your side," he said, and put his hands on either side of his chest. "Cross my hearts. Anyway, if there's anything I can do for you, you just let me know. I am here to help. I can whisk you away from here in a blink if you like."
Tosh finally looked up at him. He grinned down at her from the other side of the desk.
"Thanks," she said. "But I think I'd rather keep going on my own."
"Oh I understand. Makes more sense not to trust the stranger, I'm sure. I'm not offering again."
"I'm not asking," Tosh replied, but she smiled as she looked back down at the screen. "Besides, I can't leave without the others."
The man nodded his approval, and walked around to see what she was doing. "Docking schedule. Stealing a ship? Stowing away? You'd better make sure you choose a peaceful ship, don't take that one, for instance, Judoon tend to execute for even the most trivial things, I can't begin to tell you how many times I've run for my life because of littering."
"That's one option," Tosh said. "Frankly I'm more interested in the ones heading for the area near the Colonies."
Her wrist bleeped at her. She looked at it in alarm. "Shit," she said.
"What's going on?"
"Five minute warning. Security's coming back."
The man watched her close everything down silently.
"You've been doing this often?"
"Fourth successful attempt. I only have a thirty-minute window while he takes his break. Half of that is just reprogramming the damn chip every time. If I do it anywhere else it attracts attention."
She hurried out of the room, stopping to tap wildly at the panel to erase the record. The man followed her, watching as she frantically tapped the reset on her wrist chip.
"Isn't it suspicious having that blank every time you finish?"
"I can put the other data back on later, right now I just need it to identify as me again."
The man smirked, pulling his wand device out again. "I think I can help you there."
He shone the buzzing gadget on her arm again, then on the panel. Tosh watched in amazement as the displays changed.
"What did you do?"
"Oh nothing much, you'd have figured it out on your own, I'm sure, I just happen to have a tool quite suited for reprogramming identification chips and security records. It also does wonders with locks."
He grabbed her sleeve and pulled her through the door back into the hall. "From now on," he said, hooking his arm around hers, "Whenever you enter that hallway, you become head of security, Roc Ingersol. Once you exit, you can be yourself again. Should save you a bit of time. And a bit of arm. Good luck!"
He winked at her and gave a little bow before bounding up the stairs.
Toshiko watched him, rubbing her arm absently. The display on her chip blinked, cheerfully displaying her name and ID number. She smiled a little, then turned to head back to her room. There was still planning to do.
~~
Rory, though enthralled with the various weapon displays, eventually realized neither Amy nor the Doctor was anywhere nearby, and started back up the stairs to find them. Within minutes, he was completely turned around.
"You'd think all those years as a security guard would make navigating museums easier," he muttered, trying to decipher a directory. YOU ARE HERE never really helped him as much as he thought it should have. "21st Century," he read. "Third floor. Which is… five floors above this one. Okay."
He turned around again and walked back to the last set of stairs he'd seen. Starting up them, he was shortly bowled over by something small and fuzzy.
"Can't catch me!" it sang, in a young, feminine voice. Rory looked up from clinging to the handrail to see a little blue, furry alien in a dress dancing at the top of the stairs.
"Damn it, Moshe, watch where you're going!"
A man - human, much to Rory's surprise - jogged up behind him. He paused to help Rory to his feet.
"You alright, mate?" he asked.
"Yeah, fine," Rory replied. He pulled his hand away awkwardly. The man's hand was oddly cool and... wrong, somehow.
"Kids're kids, alien or not, right?" he said with a smirk. He wasn't even out of breath from chasing the girl. "See ya 'round, then," he said, and bounded up the stairs after the girl, who shrieked in delight, turned green, and pranced away.
Rory shook his head and followed them up at a more leisurely pace.
Part Four
Master Post
Ned wasn't sure of a time he'd been more excited. The Face, having sent the humans away, had requested for a brief walk through the museum on his way out, and the curator had jumped on the chance to lead him on a personal tour. He enlisted four of the museum's highest-rated guides, ready and able to answer any question the Face could possibly care to ask. Ned was ready to the lead the way himself, and he prepared his notes on his implant, just in case he blanked out from pure exhilaration.
He was hurriedly prepping his team of hand-chosen guides when the Face's attendant tapped him on the shoulder.
"Professor Uquiccax?" he said.
"Yes, er, sir?" Ned said, realizing he couldn't remember the young man's name. He must have said it at one point, but with all the excitement of the Face… "How can I help you?"
The attendant smiled politely. "The Face of Boe has asked me to thank you on his behalf for a wonderful experience. Your exhibit is exquisite, and we hope you find much success upon its opening."
"Er," Ned said, accepting the offered handshake. "Thank you? Ah, I was… I was under the impression the Face was planning on taking a tour of the rest of the museum, I'm sorry for the wait, we're just ready to accompany you now."
"That will not be necessary," the attendant said. "I'm afraid the Face of Boe needs some peace and quiet after such an exciting day. If it is all right with you, we will see what we can of your excellent museum on our own, on the way out."
"Oh." Ned's whole face drooped a little. "Yes, of course. That will be fine. If you should need anything, don't hesitate to call, of course, we'll be right there to attend to anything - "
"Of course. Thank you."
The Face nodded politely to the extremely disappointed Ned and his company as he took his leave, his attendant following the slowly moving jar with his tail swishing behind them. They continued on in silence, undisturbed by museum staff and with no need to speak between them.
The museum was strangely silent without the usual crowds filling the hall. The only sounds came from the Face's own equipment and the footfalls of his companion. Other than that, there was the quiet hum of the lights, and a barely audible tapping sound from the walls.
The Face paused to gaze up at an ancient Atraxi wall hanging.
"I can hear you there, you know," he said without turning. His attendant looked up, curiously. "There's no need to hide yourself."
"I wasn't hiding," answered a quiet voice. "I was practicing."
"I see," said the Face, and he turned to see the speaker. She fidgeted under his gaze, and her fur turned from the beige wall color to it's natural blue-green.
"Who are you?" asked the little girl. "The museum's closed."
"It is," the Face agreed. "I could ask the same of you."
"I live here," she said defensively.
"In the museum?"
"In a flat. With my mum. But I got lost."
"Perhaps you would like me to help you find her?"
"If you like," she said, shuffling her furry feet on the floor. When the Face moved for the exit, she followed.
She slowly opened up as they traversed the halls. At the Face's urgings, she began to describe all the exhibits in surprising detail and accuracy. The Face just smiled and listened to her childish voice.
"Thank you," he said, when they returned to the front entrance of the museum. "You make a wonderful tour guide."
"I don' wanna be a guide," she said with a scrunched up nose. "I wanna be a researcher. An ark-ologist."
"Well, in that case," the Face said, "let me give you something."
"A present?"
"A past and a future," the Face corrected, "But a gift for you, as well."
The Face nodded to his attendant. He stepped forwards at the beckon, and delicately pulled something from a compartment in the Face's jar.
The attendant waited for the girl to hold out both her furry blue hands before opening his own padded brown ones. He carefully dropped into her hands a golden chain with a small round marble.
The marble was transparent, and inside swirled eddies of a golden substance, twisting and turning in the confines like a nervous snake.
The girl took it gingerly. "It's amazing," she whispered, her big green eyes wide and locked firmly on the bauble.
"Take good care of it for me," the Face said, closing his eyes. "It's very important to me."
"I will," she said, clutching it to her chest. Then she frowned. "Why're you giving it to me, 'f it's so import'nt?"
"I always intended to pass it on," the Face replied with a smile. "And when the time is right, you will pass it to someone else. Don't worry," he interrupted, seeing that she was about to speak up again, "You will understand when the time comes."
With that, the Face nodded to his attendant, who stepped forwards to hold on to the jar. They both disappeared with a small flash of light, leaving the girl standing alone in the entryway.
She opened her paw, letting the marble dangle from its chain. The golden substance inside swirled up towards her hand in an hourglass-shaped curl of energy, stopped short by the glass.
Her ears pricked forwards at a voice echoing down the hall.
"Moshe?" it called, somewhere between worried and annoyed, "Moshe, are you here?"
At her mother's voice, she quickly tugged the chain around her neck and tucked the marble into her shirt before darting away into the closed off museum, her fur once again a mottled beige.
~~
The exhibit opened.
The Face's visit and glowing review resulted in a surge of visitors for the first couple of days. Ned was thrilled. He started spending his time in the exhibit, personally giving tours to the throng, until his colleagues reminded him that he was the Museum Director, and he had other, more important duties to attend to.
The throng itself petered out within a week. Even with the publicity given by the Face of Boe himself, the exhibit didn't exactly pander to the general audience, so far out from the Earth colonies. Soon, the patrons who visited the exhibit were limited to regulars, the occasional Earth enthusiast, and the usual people who just wandered from exhibit to exhibit, not really caring about anything but fulfilling some urge to visit every place in the museum while they were there.
The team spent quite a bit of time out in the exhibit, but the novelty of it wore off even quicker for them than it had for the visitors. Tosh in particular did not take well to being ogled all day, and Owen just found it somewhat boring. It was all rather dull in comparison to what they had actually accomplished at Torchwood, alien clientele of all shapes and sizes notwithstanding.
Ianto took to it a bit easier. He'd always enjoyed people watching, and his duties at the Tourist Office gave him some experience with working with the masses. He stayed out in the museum proper longer than the others - while Tosh went back to her room to do whatever it was she was doing, plotting, probably, and Owen got called off to be examined or experimented on, Ianto sat behind his desk, answering questions and even making the occasional hot beverage for curious visitors.
It was satisfying, in a way. He knew that they were still prisoners, being taken advantage of, but it was nice to be useful again.
~~
Toshiko used the exhibit's opening to her advantage. She stuck around with Ianto for the first couple hours (the return of his amazing coffee guaranteed her presence for the morning at least), but then she would wander around the museum.
The exhibits were interesting, to be sure. Under other circumstances, Tosh would be thrilled to learn about alien cultures and new technologies, but she couldn't let herself get distracted. She did her best to memorize the layout of the halls, analyzed which exhibits could possibly be broken into for use as weapons. She couldn't exit the museum itself (yet), so the docking bay and flats were inaccessible, but she knew their general location, and they weren't her top priority just yet. First, she needed to hack into the security system.
~~
Owen was usually back before the other two. Xarchac's examinations hadn't changed much with the opening, but they were more frequent and he seemed even more impatient and angry than usual.
"Waste of time and resources," he spat, if the topic was breached. "The stupid thing's not doing its job. Nerranderot's gotten carried away, as usual, and forgotten our purpose."
"And what would that be?"
All that did was earn Owen a glare, but it did seem to cut the examinations shorter than they would be otherwise. Then Owen was free to go back to his room.
Not that his room was any more interesting. Like Tosh, he took to wandering around the museum. The exhibits didn't really excite him either, and the crowd was frankly annoying most of the time, so when Xarchac booted him from the room, he stayed in the science corridor and looked around. Backstage at the museum was much more interesting.
He found the room with the Time Gate again. It was locked, far beyond his meager security clearance, but there was a window in the door. The archway was dark. It was deactivated, and nobody was attending it, quite unlike Owen's first experience with the thing.
The timer on his wrist implant bleeped. Museum was closing. Time to head back and wait for the others.
Muffled voices emerged from the closed door, words unintelligible. Owen paused, curious. He had been sure the Time Gate’s room was empty, but perhaps he was mistaken. His wrist kept bleeping, though, and sticking around wasn’t doing him any good. He left the voices behind him.
~~
The computer chimed. An alert popped up on the screen, flashing red. The computer waited the allotted thirty seconds before chiming again and adding a voice alert.
"Warning," it said. "Fuel reservoir at 14%."
The pilot cursed and pushed his chair over to look at the display.
"Where's the nearest place to refuel, then?"
"Nearest refueling station: Kalakkar Alpha, estimated distance one - "
"No, no, no. What's the next closest?"
"Planet Alrassa, estimated distance two point - "
"No!" He sighed and rubbed his forehead. "What's the nearest place to refuel that doesn't have a warrant for my arrest?"
"Calculating."
The computer thought about it.
"…Or the warrant's expired, that works too."
"The nearest refueling station with specified parameters is Adris One."
"Tell me about it."
"Adris One is built into an asteroid, and is home to the Adris Science and History Museum. The museum's newest exhibit is pre-interplanetary civilizations, with particular emphasis on pre-First-Contact Earth. Highlights include - "
"Yeah, yeah, I get it. Sounds great. Mute sounds." He watched the muted advertisement the computer had brought on display for about five seconds before turning away. "How long will it take to get there?"
"Estimated arrival time: three weeks."
The pilot swore again. "How much time do we have left with the fuel we have left?"
"At current energy levels, fuel will be depleted in 7-10 days."
"Fuck." He leaned back in his chair and glared out the front window at the stars. "Okay. Listen up, computer. Set course for Adris One, use engines as little as possible. Let our momentum carry us. Turn off all non-vital systems: that includes environmental and life support."
"Warning: disconnecting life support may cause serious injury or death to personnel."
"No shit. Shut it down anyway."
"Affirmative."
"Turn it back on when we're about three hours away from the station, and set an alarm to go off an hour after that."
"Alarm set."
"Great. See you then." The display was still showing a view of the inside of the museum, panning around the brand new Earth exhibit proudly, advertising the free testimonies from actual pre-first-contact humans. He shut it off without looking.
The small bed was built into the wall. He pulled it down with a grunt, already feeling the lack of oxygen in the tiny ship. He slipped beneath the blankets, relaxing into them as he stared at the lights dancing behind his own eyelids.
The ship went dark as it powered down. The engines flared briefly, and it drifted towards its destination.
~~
Tosh always fell asleep first. Whatever she was up to all day, it was wearing her out. Looking into escape, no doubt. It was an obsession with her, not that Owen could blame her. Much as Ned tried to make them comfortable, it was hard to forget that they were stuck on Adris One for the foreseeable future. If not for Xarchac's research, he'd be with her all the way.
She was lying sideways on her bed, feet still dangling off the edge, and held loosely by Ianto's arms. He fell asleep not long after she had, as usual not bothering to go back to his room. At this point, all they really had left was each other and Owen.... Well, Owen couldn't exactly comfort her like that.
He sighed, leaning back in Tosh's chair and staring at the ceiling. After a few minutes like that he rocked forwards again and stared at the two of them.
Ianto was snoring just slightly, rustling Tosh's hair with his breath. He hadn't shown any signs of respiratory pain since their first week or so, but Owen knew from experience how good Ianto was at hiding pain. He still kept an eye out for any signs of infection or relapse. There hadn't been any.
Tosh had her arms curled up at her chest like she was cold, her right hand gripping her left wrist. Owen frowned, and gently reached over to pull her sleeve up. Tosh muttered in her sleep but didn't waken, just loosening her grip enough that Owen could see what she was favoring.
The palm side of her wrist was raw and slightly bloody. She had apparently been digging into it to get at the implant beneath her skin. The gently pulsing green light shone brighter then it did on either Owen or Ianto, closer to the surface. Owen scowled but didn’t wake her. It didn’t look inflamed or infected, and telling her off about it would just start off another fight about how Owen didn't even care about escaping, and how Tosh was the only one willing to get her hands dirty any more. They'd done the fight a dozen times already. It was getting redundant.
He sat back and found he was out of medical excuses to be staring at his teammates. That meant he was just being creepy, watching the two of them sleep. Again. Owen wished for the millionth time since his death that he could join them. He stared jealously at Tosh's chest moving up and down with each breath, at her hair rustling with each of Ianto's.
His eyes wandered back to her bloody wrist. He reached over and covered it again with her sleeve.
It wasn't that Owen didn't want to escape. He did. Very much. He was sick of the museum and the fake Torchwood and all the gawking aliens and Xarchac's stupid tests. He'd been taken apart and put back together more than a jigsaw puzzle by now, scanned and examined and scanned again.
He was sick of it. The only thing keeping him from lashing out, attacking the alien doctor, stealing a weapon and running the fuck out of there with Tosh and Ianto in tow was the idea that maybe, maybe this would actually work, that he would live again. The Face of Boe had said he would. Owen only wished he knew when. Or how. Was he just wasting his time here with Ned and Xarchac?
Tosh mumbled something in her sleep that sounded like "muffins."
Owen smirked at her. Once this is over, he thought, I'm taking you out for that date. Maybe even sooner than that. You've had enough waiting around. He reached out and fondly brushed her hair out of her face.
Toshiko shuddered as his cold hand brushed her forehead. She wrapped her arms around herself and burrowed backwards, further into Ianto's warm embrace. He stirred a little, mumbling, and adjusted his grip around her.
Owen glared at them, frozen. It's just not fucking fair, he thought.
He stood up, pushing the chair back in place silently, careful not to wake them even in his temper. He angrily punched in the door's override code Tosh had discovered, gestured at his implant to turn the lights off, and stalked off into the hall.
~~
The only other thing for a dead man to do at night, besides stare at his friends' slumber like a creepy stalker or be bored at the computer for hours, was to walk. Owen had spent a lot of time walking since his death, even back on Earth. He'd wandered the streets and sat in cafés pretending to drink and watched the world go by. He'd even caught the occasional alien miscreant Torchwood would have missed otherwise, asleep as they all were, and dragged it back to the Hub for a mildly disheveled Jack and a very disheveled and slightly limping Ianto to take care of.
There was nothing quite that exciting on the asteroid.
He wandered the science wing again, pausing by the room with the Time Gate. It was still locked. In the grey darkness, a little handwritten sign lay on the floor, apparently fallen from one of the large consoles that controlled the arch. 'Out of Order.'
A bit further down the hall, he found the medical bay. He spent a while looking in all the drawers and cabinets at the equipment, just for something to do. Bandages, painkillers, sedatives, inoculations, tongue depressors, thermometers... It was all pretty typical. Strange how alien medicine was so similar to humanity's.
Back downstairs to the grand ballroom. You will breathe, and you will live again, he thought. Yeah right. He stared out the giant window into space. The stars twinkled silently at him. He wondered of he could see Earth from here, if he knew how to look for it. The landing lights on the docking bay pulsed red every two seconds, the left and then the right. Some of the flats on the other end of the asteroid had their lights on still.
Back out into the hall, up more stairs, staff living quarters, mess hall, special event rooms, reserved for research, down the stairs again, security office, lost and found... He gave up on backstage and wandered out into the museum.
It was easier to look at the exhibits when they weren't filled with crowds. He'd already seen all of the top three floors on previous bouts of restlessness, so he went down to the entrance to start from there.
Nights on Adris One lasted for ten hours. The days were sixteen. Owen still had five before the earliest risers got up, and probably up to seven before Tosh and Ianto followed suit.
He made it up to the third floor (relative to the entrance, which actually had four more floors beneath it), where he found himself back in the familiar Torchwood exhibit. He sighed and threw himself into his chair. He closed his eyes, facing the ceiling, and willed his brain to go blank.
The room was absolutely silent. There was no hum of electricity from the meager lighting, and with no blood flow to make him fidget, no breath, no heartbeat, Owen was equally noiseless.
That made the footsteps, light as they were, rather obvious.
Owen sat up, curious.
A small figure wearing bright yellow gasped at the sudden movement. It dropped to all fours and scampered out of the room. The footsteps cut abruptly off with a thump and a high-pitched squeal.
Owen stood and followed the figure out to the hall. It sat, huddled at the bottom of the stairs, whimpering.
Its fur had turned the same color as the wall, but its bright dress eliminated any hope of camouflage. It clutched its knee, big eyes full of tears, pointed ears flat against its head, long tail wrapped around its body protectively.
Alien or not, there was something universal about a little girl in a sundress with a skinned knee.
"You alright?" Owen asked.
She looked up, frightened, and scooted back against the wall, lifting one paw from her leg to clutch at something around her neck. "'m fine," she whispered.
Owen raised an eyebrow and knelt down. "Come on, let me see. That was quite a fall."
She shook her head.
"I'm a doctor, you can trust me. Doctor Harper. Or Owen, if you prefer."
She stared at him with wide eyes.
"Come on sweetheart, what's your name?"
"...Moshe," she finally answered.
"Alright, Moshe, it's nice to meet you. Now, are you going to let me have a look at that knee or what?"
Moshe hesitated before dropping her furry hands from her knee. The scrape wasn't too deep, but the fur had been pulled out or embedded in the skin and it was bleeding slightly.
"Doesn't look too bad," he assured her, "But we should get it cleaned off and put a plaster on it. What do you think?"
Moshe didn't say anything, but she nodded.
"Do you think you can walk?"
She shook her head.
That was bullshit, of course. Her wound could barely be called a wound. Nevertheless, he offered her his hand and she cautiously climbed up into his arms. Her long tail hung loosely around him.
"What're you doing out here anyway?"
"I got lost," Moshe muttered shyly. "I can't find my mummy."
"Have you been here all night?" Owen asked, a little skeptical.
She nodded.
"Do you live on the station?"
She nodded again. "We have a flat."
"You come here often then?"
Another nod. "I like the museum."
She thought about it. "Do you work here?"
Owen snorted. "Yeah, well, sort of," he said. "It's more like I'm part of the damn exhibit."
Moshe perked up conspicuously. "You're part of the museum?!" she squealed. "Which exhibit?"
Owen jerked his head back towards the fake Hub. "21st Century Earth," he drawled. "A genuine antique, I am."
Moshe squeaked in excitement. He looked back at her to see a huge smile on her furry face. The fur itself had changed from the beige of the walls to a bright green-blue. "That's so cool!" she said.
Owen raised an eyebrow at her. "You like history then?"
Moshe nodded so enthusiastically Owen nearly lost his grip on her. Her tail curled tighter around his shoulders. "I wanna be an ark-ologist when I grow up and find all kinds of ancient things and learn all about ancient history and technology and stuff!"
Owen awkwardly shifted her to one arm as he put in the override for the door again, slipping into the behind-the-scenes hallways once again.
"Will you tell me about it?" Moshe asked excitedly.
"Tell you about what?"
"About your exhibit and stuff!"
Owen rolled his eyes, but he had a small smile on his face. Opening the door to the medical bay, he started to tell her about Torchwood.
~~
"I never thought he was the type to be so good with children," Ianto remarked.
Tosh shrugged, watching Moshe run up to her exasperated mother. The woman thanked Owen profusely, bowing even with the little girl in her arms. Owen took it in stride, waving off the thanks and apologies alike.
Moshe waved excitedly. "Bye bye Tosh! Bye bye 'yanto! Bye Doctor Harper!"
They waved back as her mother pulled her away towards home.
Ianto raised an eyebrow as Owen rejoined them.
"What?" Owen said, already braced for the teasing.
"You were just so cute with her," Tosh said, smiling as she sipped her hot chocolate. Ianto had made it for all of them, insisting coffee wasn't proper for children.
"What, she was hurt. I'm not allowed to have a good bedside manner?"
"You don't have a good bedside manner," Ianto teased.
"I'll have you know I have an amazing bedside manner," Owen said loftily. "I just don't always choose to use it."
Tosh laughed into her mug. "Bedside manner or not, that was an impressive display of babysitting prowess."
Owen shrugged. "Just because I'm rude to you lot doesn't mean I go around yelling at kids. Before I worked at Torchwood I was great with kids. I have a whole drawer in my file cabinet at home filled with nothing but crayon drawings and thank you letters."
"I know," Ianto said uncomfortably. "I saw it when Gwen and I were… cleaning it out."
They fell into an awkward silence, as they tended to whenever the subject of one of their deaths was breached.
Moshe came back the next day, excited to see them all and making Owen come with her to other exhibits. She was back two days later. And the next day. She always seemed to have ‘lost’ her mother. Owen let her drag him all over the museum, showing him passages and shortcuts he wasn't sure even Ned knew about. Tosh would want to hear about it for sure.
And so the weeks passed.
~~
The museum lobby wasn't too crowded. They didn't have to wait in line for their passes - which weren't paper or plastic or anything like the ones back on Earth, but a small flashing green device that latched on to their wrists and beeped and supposedly would start up a spoken tour when they were close to an exhibit and pressed on it - but the room was full of typical museum-goers milling about, looking at the pamphlets, chatting with each other, yelling at the information kiosk.
Never mind that they were the only humans in the room. The familiarity of the setting was nice. Amy loved museums.
"'Welcome, friends, to the Adris Science and History Museum,'" the Doctor read from his own pamphlet. "'Adris One has many exciting attractions and activities…. Cofounded by the honored professors Uquiccax and Xarchac' - ooh, that's interesting, brilliant fellow, helped invent a prototype Nanogene you know - blah blah blah 'recently endorsed by the Face of Boe' really that's quite a claim, wonder if a little place like this can really back that up…."
Amy plucked the pamphlet out of his hands and flipped it over to look at the map. "Right, that's all very nice, where's that exhibit that was on the advertisement?"
The Doctor peered over her shoulder. "Third floor, I think. Wait, which floor is this?"
"What's so exciting about 21st Century Earth?" Rory asked, looking up from his examination of a severed nine-fingered claw in a display case. "We're from 21st Century Earth."
"I want to see what they got wrong," Amy said simply.
"Quite right," the Doctor agreed, "Loads of fun, they always get the simplest details wrong. Oh, look, there's a shop! Where is that? I love a good little shop."
"Yeah, loads of fun, right," Rory repeated, otherwise occupied with a sign that read Medieval Kagarr Weaponry -->
"Oh come on, it'll be interesting!" Amy insisted.
"There's the shop!" the Doctor exclaimed in delight.
When Amy turned around he was already dodging into the Gift Shop.
"Doctor!" she shouted after him, to no avail. She whirled back around to face Rory, who was similarly disappearing down a flight of steps, following the signs to the Kagarr Weaponry. "Rory!"
She was left alone in the corridor, her hands on her hips, scowling.
"Boys," she snarled to no one in particular.
"We'll just meet back here for lunch, then?" she shouted, earning her a stare from a green gelatinous-looking fellow with three eyes.
She glared at the map again. "Third floor. To the left. Fine. It'll be great."
~~
"Oh sweet heaven, is that real, honest-to-God coffee you've got?"
Ianto looked up from where he'd been watching two gaseous life forms argue over something in the Autopsy Bay. A human woman with long red hair had somehow made her way over to his seat at his desk without his notice. She was leaning over him, practically drooling over the percolator.
"Had it specially imported," Ianto said, raising his mug. "Would you like some?"
The woman melted. "It's been ages since I've had a proper coffee," she explained, helping herself to a seat on Ianto's desk. "The kitchen's loaded with all kinds of tea, but never any coffee, and Rory doesn't seem to care since he got addicted to those energy drinks back in med school, so I get stuck trying to find something similar on whatever ridiculous planet we end up on."
Ianto smiled. "I know how you feel," he said. "It took quite some convincing to get Ned to both get this thing working and keep it in supply. I eventually managed to convince him it would be an interactive part of the exhibit, tasting ancient and exotic drinks, and all that."
The woman took a deep whiff from her mug before she sipped at the foam on top. "God I've missed this," she said.
Ianto leaned back in his chair. "It's nice to see another human around here for once," he said. "We've had a couple curious passersby but nobody really interested in the exhibit."
"Oh yes, we're rather far out from the… colonies, aren't we?"
"I suppose we are," Ianto said, having no idea. Tosh probably knew. "Ianto Jones, nice to meet you."
"Amy Pond," the woman replied, taking his offered hand with her own. "Likewise."
"You're just visiting, I take it? I haven't heard of any humans living in the flats."
"Just passing through," Amy said. "I'm with my husband and a friend of ours, we just go wherever and see the sights. We caught an ad for the exhibit, and it caught our - well, my interest anyway, the boys left to look and swords and things."
"You're interested in Earth history?"
"Oh, this and that, you know." Amy looked around at the various displays, filled with Torchwood paraphernalia and alien weaponry and anachronistic gadgets. "I can't say much of this looks like the 21st Century I'm familiar with, though."
"The exhibit covers a rather specialized part of the era, yes," Ianto said, finishing his mug.
He offered Amy his hand and led her over to the first display. He didn't have a spiel like the docents, but he certainly knew Torchwood well enough that his worst attempts at winging it were still more accurate and honest than their best-written scripts. He gave her a tour of the whole of the exhibit, while she exclaimed and looked at all the displays and asked all the right questions.
"I had no idea any of this was going on," she said, staring up at the Gallery of Intergalactic Fiends in amazement. "I mean, I heard about some of it, but I just kind of dismissed it as rumors and legends and crazy people."
"Some of it was," Ianto confessed, trying to look like he wasn't trying to avoid looking at the Cyberman mask staring down at them. "But a lot of it was real. Legends and crazy people are just an easy way to cover things up."
"How do you know so much about all this?" Amy asked, turning away from the replica Dalek. "Are you some kind of Earth-alien-relations-through-history expert? Seems like a strange thing to specify in."
"Tell that to Ned," Ianto muttered. "No, I'm not really an expert, I'm just speaking from experience."
"Experience?" Amy frowned. Her eyes widened in realization. "Are you from the 21st Century? How did you come to work here at the museum then?!"
"I don't, exactly."
"What, you just traveled through time to hang out in a space station museum and give tours to travelers?"
"No," Ianto said, feeling strangely defensive as Amy put her hands on her hips and glared at him. It was sort of like dealing with Gwen, only that kind of glare was usually focused on an unsuspecting witness/culprit or Jack, and Ianto wasn't certain how to deal with it head on.
So they slowly made their way back to his desk, and he poured them both some more coffee, and he told her all about Ned and Xarchac and their Time Gate and the resurrection machine. Throughout his story, her eyes narrowed, and she gripped her mug handle harder than was strictly necessary, and she started staring around the museum with a hard look in her eye.
"You're prisoners," she said, when he had finished.
Ianto shrugged. "It's not that bad," he said. "And it's not like there's anywhere else for us to go."
Amy scowled. "They're treating you like slaves! You're working here, and you're not getting paid, and you're not allowed to leave! How is that fair?"
Ianto just shrugged again. He'd already been through this a number of times with Toshiko, and he just didn't feel up to worrying about it when it was obvious they had nowhere to go. He'd do what Tosh figured out in the end, sure, but he wasn't up to arguing about it.
"Maybe you could come with us," Amy continued.
"What?" Ianto said, startled.
"Listen, I'm going to go ask. I'm sure it'll be fine, this is the kind of stuff we do all the time. We can take you wherever you want, no problem, just… get your friends and meet me back here, okay?"
She handed her mug back to him without waiting for an answer, and ran back out into the hall.
~~
Tosh was huddled within a nook in the wall, irritably poking at the device in her wrist. Owen might disapprove, but the only way she could work at it was by digging into her own flesh. It had already started healing over from her last attempt, but it had become part of her routine now, digging in with a stolen knife so she could poke at the device within.
She'd moved from the privacy of her own room for a number of reasons - neither Owen nor Ianto had gotten suspicious when she had begun wearing exclusively long-sleeved tops, and she didn't want them to until after she had a certain way out - and today she was going to test the results of her tinkering.
The nook was right outside the security office. She had convinced the computer on previous attempts that she was actually the head of security, but the doors logged every person who passed through, which meant she had to reset the chip after each try.
Today, she was going to get into the office and begin her escape.
"Come on, work already," she snarled at the chip as she poked at it with a hairpin. "You've worked for me before!"
"That looks nasty! You should get it looked at."
Toshiko jolted, tugging her sleeve down instinctively and staring wide-eyed at the man who had suddenly appeared before her.
He peered down at her curiously.
"I was just…" she started, but had no idea what to say.
"Itchy?" he suggested brightly. "Those implants can be a real pain, I know."
He knelt down next to her and pulled out her arm to look at it.
"Of course," he said, pulling out some sort wand-like device and holding its glowing green tip over the reddened and gently oozing surface of her wrist, "Yours seems to be malfunctioning."
He flipped the wand over with a flourish, and it snapped open further. He peered at it thoughtfully. "Says you're head chef for the little cafe on the fourth floor. No offense, but you don't look much like a Thraanian curry expert. They tend to have more arms."
Toshiko snatched her hand away. "It's just an error," she said.
"Really. Because it looks to me like you've been trying to alter it to break into this very ominous looking door that should definitely not be broken into."
He grinned at her.
"Are you with the museum?"
"Naaaah," he said, flipping his device shut and putting it in the inner pocket of his jacket. "Just passing through. Visiting. Had a nice look around the shop, then realized I don't have any money and thought I'd wander around the exhibits. Only the exhibits didn't really catch my attention nearly as much as an anachronistic humanoid with pilfered cutlery in her arm."
"Are you going to turn me in?"
He cocked his head at her. "Now why would I do that."
He jumped to his feet and stepped over Tosh's legs to get to the panel next to the security office door.
"You see, I love a good escape myself," he said, poking at the panel. "Unjust imprisonment, sneaking around, relying on your own devices to get out, it really pokes all my interests at once. And you're human, I must confess, I've grown just a little biased over the years, humans are definitely some of the most interesting aliens I've met."
He stepped back from the panel and peered at her. "This only grants access to people with the highest security passes. It scans your DNA."
"I know," Toshiko said irritably, back on her feet. "It took me three tries to convince it otherwise."
The man clapped his hands in delight. "Oh you're good," he said. "You got in just by hardwiring that little chip in your arm?"
"It does the job," Tosh said, and stepped forwards to work at the panel herself. The man stepped aside with a little hop. "Only if you mess with it now I'm liable to get caught."
"Sorry to intrude."
Tosh held her arm up to the scanner. It flashed green, and the door opened.
"Oh lovely," the man said. He followed her into the office and looked around. "Gosh, just look at these robots. These are probably worth more than the exhibits they protect!"
He knocked on one of the many robots' deep red shells. Toshiko ignored him, sitting down at the security chief's desk sideways, with one leg through the hole for his tail.
"So what's the plan then? When are you doing your daring escape?"
"As soon as possible," Tosh said, "And I'm not telling you how, I still don't know you won't just turn me in when this is all over."
The man looked hurt. "Hey, I'm on your side," he said, and put his hands on either side of his chest. "Cross my hearts. Anyway, if there's anything I can do for you, you just let me know. I am here to help. I can whisk you away from here in a blink if you like."
Tosh finally looked up at him. He grinned down at her from the other side of the desk.
"Thanks," she said. "But I think I'd rather keep going on my own."
"Oh I understand. Makes more sense not to trust the stranger, I'm sure. I'm not offering again."
"I'm not asking," Tosh replied, but she smiled as she looked back down at the screen. "Besides, I can't leave without the others."
The man nodded his approval, and walked around to see what she was doing. "Docking schedule. Stealing a ship? Stowing away? You'd better make sure you choose a peaceful ship, don't take that one, for instance, Judoon tend to execute for even the most trivial things, I can't begin to tell you how many times I've run for my life because of littering."
"That's one option," Tosh said. "Frankly I'm more interested in the ones heading for the area near the Colonies."
Her wrist bleeped at her. She looked at it in alarm. "Shit," she said.
"What's going on?"
"Five minute warning. Security's coming back."
The man watched her close everything down silently.
"You've been doing this often?"
"Fourth successful attempt. I only have a thirty-minute window while he takes his break. Half of that is just reprogramming the damn chip every time. If I do it anywhere else it attracts attention."
She hurried out of the room, stopping to tap wildly at the panel to erase the record. The man followed her, watching as she frantically tapped the reset on her wrist chip.
"Isn't it suspicious having that blank every time you finish?"
"I can put the other data back on later, right now I just need it to identify as me again."
The man smirked, pulling his wand device out again. "I think I can help you there."
He shone the buzzing gadget on her arm again, then on the panel. Tosh watched in amazement as the displays changed.
"What did you do?"
"Oh nothing much, you'd have figured it out on your own, I'm sure, I just happen to have a tool quite suited for reprogramming identification chips and security records. It also does wonders with locks."
He grabbed her sleeve and pulled her through the door back into the hall. "From now on," he said, hooking his arm around hers, "Whenever you enter that hallway, you become head of security, Roc Ingersol. Once you exit, you can be yourself again. Should save you a bit of time. And a bit of arm. Good luck!"
He winked at her and gave a little bow before bounding up the stairs.
Toshiko watched him, rubbing her arm absently. The display on her chip blinked, cheerfully displaying her name and ID number. She smiled a little, then turned to head back to her room. There was still planning to do.
~~
Rory, though enthralled with the various weapon displays, eventually realized neither Amy nor the Doctor was anywhere nearby, and started back up the stairs to find them. Within minutes, he was completely turned around.
"You'd think all those years as a security guard would make navigating museums easier," he muttered, trying to decipher a directory. YOU ARE HERE never really helped him as much as he thought it should have. "21st Century," he read. "Third floor. Which is… five floors above this one. Okay."
He turned around again and walked back to the last set of stairs he'd seen. Starting up them, he was shortly bowled over by something small and fuzzy.
"Can't catch me!" it sang, in a young, feminine voice. Rory looked up from clinging to the handrail to see a little blue, furry alien in a dress dancing at the top of the stairs.
"Damn it, Moshe, watch where you're going!"
A man - human, much to Rory's surprise - jogged up behind him. He paused to help Rory to his feet.
"You alright, mate?" he asked.
"Yeah, fine," Rory replied. He pulled his hand away awkwardly. The man's hand was oddly cool and... wrong, somehow.
"Kids're kids, alien or not, right?" he said with a smirk. He wasn't even out of breath from chasing the girl. "See ya 'round, then," he said, and bounded up the stairs after the girl, who shrieked in delight, turned green, and pranced away.
Rory shook his head and followed them up at a more leisurely pace.
Part Four
Master Post