Fic: They Come In Pairs 4/4
Title: They Come in Pairs
Series: Mutual Service
Author: Kei
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A sunny day brings questions that desperately need answers as the team races to catch a serial killer before he strikes again... or unleashes the very essence of death upon Cardiff.
A/N: I did what fact checking I could on the locations of buildings etc around the Plass before writing this. Most of that information is from 2009, though, where the fic is set in 2006, so I'm just going to go with it and hope it's correct. If not, well, it's not the most unbelievable thing in the verse. :P
There was only one blessing about this whole damned mess, Ianto decided as he moved through the shadows of the buildings surrounding the Plass, and that was the fact that, at 2.07 in the morning even on a Friday night, there were very few people around to be endangered by either Suzie or the energy that had come out of her. (It felt stupid to call it Death. Stupid and ridiculous and yes, they were a secret underground alien fighting agency with a pterodactyl and an immortal boss who liked to stand on rooftops in a 1940s Air Force greatcoat, but they had standards, dammit.)
He wished they knew what it looked like, at least. And, say, how to stop it, exactly. He wasn't entirely certain there was much it could do to him or Jack, but he didn't really want to find out - or risk the possibility that it could eat their souls over and over again. Not exactly a comforting idea.
There was movement off to his right, and he glanced over to see the light from the waning moon glint of a gun barrel. Tosh, he realised, identifying her petite figure and clothing. He nodded at her and gestured ahead to indicate that he was going to circle around the edge of the buildings, waiting until she nodded back before looking away again. Over the comms he could hear the reassuring check ins from the rest of the team, scattered words here and there that he could tune out for the most part and simply remain aware that all five of them were responding as per normal and hadn't run into any trouble. Yet.
As it turned out, he was the first to find anything at all. He hadn't seen Max's corpse after Jack had come across it in the cells, but they'd all been given a brief description of the condition of it. Still, it hadn't quite been enough to prepare him for the actual thing.
He was fairly certain the body he came across had been a woman when she was alive, albeit one with stylishly short hair. But she looked as though she'd died long ago, only to be kept in some kind of extremely dry environment, the sort that leeched the moisture out of her body and left her withered and shrunken, skin like brittle parchment. He had, of course, seen dead bodies before, and after Canary Wharf he usually liked to think that nothing much would shock him anymore (though other times, he felt as though the mere hint of something similar, a disembodied limb or a burns victim perhaps, would send him spiraling into nightmarish flashbacks), but even with all his experience with Torchwood he'd never been cut off enough from the world to not feel a shock upon discovering a corpse.
Especially when the thing that had done it could be anywhere.
He flattened himself against a wall, scanning the area nervously as he reached up to tap at his earpiece. "Just found another body," he reported - it would do the double duty of informing them that they were that much closer to thirteen, and reassuring them that he hadn't been eaten by anything. "Down by the Brasserie, coming onto the actual Plass."
"I see you," Owen confirmed, and he couldn't quite stop himself from looking around wildly trying to place their doctor. There were other things moving, though, things that were neither ally nor potential victim nor particularly threatening - night birds and the odd stray animal, rubbish blown across pavement by the brisk sea air - and it was hard to pin anything down.
"Good," added Jack, and his voice seemed warm, somehow, in Ianto's ear. "Keep moving. We'll come back for them when we've got the area secured."
Despite the fact that he doubted even Toshiko or Owen could see him that well, Ianto nodded at the command, shifting the grip on his gun slightly as he continued his slow slink over the pavement. He was uncomfortably aware that Suzie might have left the area already, not to mention the energy being, and wondered if they shouldn't have left someone inside to cover the CCTV cameras. It was times like these that a bigger staff would be really helpful; they'd never had a problem finding someone when he'd worked at London. Typically they'd have whole departments for each function, and in the event that they did need extras on a particular project, it was easy enough to borrow someone who had similar or transferable experience. He'd been seconded to Archives a couple of times when something big had come in and the usual staff were overwhelmed by the sheer number of items in need of categorising, writing up, cross-referencing, filing and storing. It had been a definite shock to the system to come to Cardiff and find that the team that Jack had been so adamant was complete consisted of four people, half of whom seemed incapable of basic alphabetising. Of course, coming on the heels of a rather more significant shock to the system, and in the greater framework of trying desperately to save Lisa, it had been easy to shake off, but the feeling that they were substantially understaffed still lingered at times - ironically, considering the current situation, only underlined by the replacement of Suzie with Gwen, who did indeed have very good people skills, but who knew substantially less about the things they dealt with than Suzie had. Considering the current situation, that was possibly a good thing.
Gwen herself was the next to report anything new: "Two more, Jack. Looks like a couple, probably out for some fun." That brought them to four, and was shortly followed by Jack's revised instructions,
"Ianto, stay around the bay. Toshiko, come further north, we need to spread out a bit more. Keep the lines open, and if you get in trouble - make sure to scream real loud."
Ianto snorted softly at the last part, which was so very much a Jack thing to say. At least, he thought, they weren't in a highly residential area where they'd wake anyone up. Such things were important considerations when attempting not to indirectly accidentally cause an apocalypse. Apparently it had not been quite soft enough, as it was met with a mock-chiding "I heard that!" that, if the answering giggles were anything to go by, actually managed to dissipate a little of their tension.
Obeying the order, he circled back around in a circuit that would take him back towards the water, moving over to the Pierhead Building. He felt exposed, crossing the open space, and the skin down his back prickled as though he could feel someone - or something - watching him. Imagination, he told himself, but made no effort to relax. It would be safer to keep his senses on high alert, whether it was a case of paranoia or not.
The Plass might have been lit, the pillars that lined the outside edges reaching up towards the night sky and casting their glow over the area except for long fingers of shadow, but the Pierhead Building still loomed darkly ahead of him. It seemed huge and ominous, the clock tower piercing even higher than the pillars and if he had wanted to the see the top of it he felt like he would have had to bend over backwards to get the angle right. Needless to say, it was not at the top of his list of priorities right now.
There was a noise to his left and he spun quickly, the soles of his shoes scraping on stone with the sudden motion, but it didn't take long for him to locate Owen over by one of the benches off the Plass. There was a cardboard box or something not far from him, and Ianto rolled his eyes a little as he realised the sound must have just been Owen kicking it. Startling, but harmless. Turning back, his gaze passed over the old vintage carousel towards the bay itself. --And back again as he did a double take at a sign of movement in the shadows of the horses.
He paused, eyes narrowed a little as he tried to make out what was what, part of the carousel or darkness or rubbish or something alive. His footfalls were soft as he moved forward, each step made carefully and slowly so as not to spook-- whoever, if it was a person.
A few metres closer and he was fairly sure that it was. A person hunched up against the centre of the carousel, sitting on the floor in a forest of children's mechanical riding horses in the middle of the night, something he was sure was probably not the new big thing with kids in Cardiff looking for a thrill. Slowly, he reached up to make sure the mic on his ear piece was turned off. If he turned out to need it, he had practice at turning it back on quickly enough, but for now he'd rather have a go at talking to her, and he'd rather not have an audience for that. "Suzie?" he called softly, and was rewarded when the figure lifted her head. Bingo.
She laughed, and there was a faintly hysterical tinge to it. "Come to kill me, have you? What are you going to do, keep shooting until I don't get back up?"
"No." He relaxed a little - not entirely, not enough to put the gun away - and stepped up onto the carousel, winding his way around the horses to find her. She was huddled there, the scarf they'd found her gone from her head and her long hair tied messily behind her, locks of it bumping up over the top of her skull as though she hadn't had a brush and had used her fingers instead. Glancing around, he spotted a piece of fabric next to her that was probably the scarf. "We're a bit more worried about whatever came out of you."
"You know what it is, don't you?" she asked. "You've felt it. Waiting. Until I brought it out." She laughed again. "Didn't even look twice at me, if it can even see. Oh, god."
"You're already dead," he pointed out. He didn't want to sit down - even if she didn't seem threatening at the moment, that was a little too relaxed for him. Instead, he leaned back against one of the horses, gripping the pole with his free hand. A quick look revealed that it was a unicorn, actually. How sparkly.
"Yeah, just rub it in. Maybe you should shoot me. I was never good for anything anyway. You and Gwen, you just waltzed in and everyone loved you, none of them spared a thought for little old Suzie. I was all used up."
For a moment he couldn't really think of anything to say to that. It was patently absurd, for a start, but at the same time it was almost familiar. He'd felt that, he'd felt the black feelings creeping in silently so you didn't even notice until you looked around and the world looked like a poorly done black and white movie, the backdrops fake and the acting bad and sitting through until the end seemed like the most excruciating torment of all. He remembered how every movement was a struggle. Every charitable thought was squashed under the weight of a thousand bitter ones, and most of them aimed at yourself. It was like walking through another world, and people might look at you and talk to you but you were wearing a mask and could never quite get there. Oh, he'd been there, and it had brought him to the end of a rope. "I know," he said finally, voice low enough that for a couple of beats of stillness he almost thought she hadn't heard him, until she looked up. "I know how it feels."
"How does it stop?" There was something in her voice that said she might have been crying, if she'd been able to, and he wondered what it would be like to be unable to cry. It was a horrible thought. Something they all just took for granted and didn't even think about how important it was, but he'd spent himself so many times that way that he knew too well how sometimes it was the only way to feel a little bit better, just for a while.
Slowly, he slid the barrel of his gun back into the holster. Suzie wasn't going to hurt him. She was more likely to hurt herself, and unlike him, she wouldn't heal. She already had a hole in the back of her head, she didn't need anything else on top of that.
A startled yelp broke the quiet and he started, banging his spine against the unicorn he was leaning against and wincing before hurriedly reaching up to turn his mic back on.
"I think I've found our monster!" Gwen told them, fear easy to read in her words. "South side of the Millenium Stadium!"
Suddenly, something coalesced in Ianto's mind, pieces clicking together with an easy snap that made him wonder how he hadn't realised it before. It was always the way of it with riddles, they'd nag at you all day until you found out the answer, and then it all seemed so very simple. "Gwen, can you lead it down to the bay?" he asked before anyone else could cut in. He kept his gaze on Suzie, watching her face, watching her to see if she had realised what he was doing, but she was just looking at him in confusion and wariness. It was for her benefit as well as everyone else's that he kept speaking, trying to explain so they wouldn't think he was going completely mad. "Back in 1479, the priest discovered that Death needed thirteen souls to walk the earth for eternity. It was Faith. Not belief, Faith. The little girl who was brought back to life, her name was Faith. She stopped it. Suzie can stop it, Suzie's the only one who can stop it."
"How?" Jack demanded. "And why the bay?"
"She's here."
Apparently that was good enough for Jack. "Gwen, do as he says! Everyone else, keep away. We don't want it to try to go for easier prey. Gwen, when you find them, keep going, get somewhere safe."
"We're at the carousel," Ianto added, and clicked the mic back off. He looked at Suzie. "This is how it stops, Suzie. You fight Death, and you beat it. You save everyone."
"I don't know how!" she protested, eyes wide.
He ignored that, leaning down to hold out a hand for her, trying to contain his impatience until she reached up to take it. Her skin was cool and dry in his, but her grip was strong, and he pulled her up until they were face to face and eye to eye. "You said yourself it didn't want anything from you. You don't have anything for it. All we have to do is clear the area so you can fight it. This is what you wanted to do with the glove, you wanted to save people. Now you can do that."
"I'm scared," she whispered, and he nodded.
"I know."
Then they both turned, facing north as the slap slap slap of shoes on pavement came towards them, Gwen running full pelt with a cloud of black mist in pursuit. Her hair whipped behind her but for the lock that crossed her face, stuck in her mouth, Gwen ignoring it in favour of just running, running.
Ianto squeezed Suzie's shoulder, and moved to jump off the carousel. He waved to Gwen and started to sprint in the direction of the tourist office. She could follow him and they could lock themselves in. As long as Owen and Jack had cleared the area, Suzie would be alone with the thing.
God, he hoped this worked.
*
Gwen wasn't entirely sure how long she'd been lying on the ground for. Ianto had fairly dragged her into the tourist office, slapping the button to open the secret passage (and really, it still amused her, just a bit, that the secret entrance to their secret base was a big black button) so they could get into it. Neither of them wanted to take the risk that a standard door was enough to stop Death. The concept was just too ludicrous. After running for their lives, though, making their way further into the Hub seemed like too much effort, so for now, Ianto was sitting against the wall as she sprawled out on the stone floor. It was probably cleaner than she was, after all, particularly after sweating through her shirt trying to outrun Death.
She wished they had a way to see what was going on from there. The CCTV downstairs seemed so far away, and she felt a little less lazy when she recalled that it actually was, with the main room of the Hub being underneath the water tower at the other end of the Plass. How would they know when it was over? And how would they know if it had worked?
After a time, as the adrenalin wore off and her breathing returned to normal, the discomfit of lying on a stone floor began to get to her, and she carefully levered herself into a sitting position opposite Ianto. He looked... pensive. From experience, she knew that that was a slippery slope - Torchwood was the kind of place where, when something was happening, it was all out and exhilarating and amazing, but when it calmed down again you were in high danger of thinking far too much about things best left alone. "How did you get Suzie to agree?" she asked Ianto, hoping it would draw him out a little. The time would pass better if they were talking, anyway.
He shrugged, expression marginally similar to the one he wore when Jack complimented his work. Modest but pleased, though with a little less of the pleased tonight, it seemed. "She's not evil, just afraid. I only told her that she was the only one who could do it." He looked up, eyes bright in the dimly lit corridor. "She needed a way to save herself."
There was something he was trying to say, Gwen thought, that she wasn't quite understanding. It was frustrating but not entirely unfamiliar, the way Ianto would make obscure jokes with an utterly straight face that she was never entirely sure she got. They might have been the only two Welsh members of the team, but sometimes she felt like they spoke completely different languages. (Actually, that was probably true, since her Welsh extended to about half a dozen words, and with the suits and the name and the accent he was quite possibly the sort of middle class that grew up speaking it.) "Were you friends?"
"Not really. I wasn't friends with any of them, really, back then."
"So this thing with Tosh, that's pretty new?" She was too tired to censor herself or she never would have asked that, and from the expression on his face Ianto was just as surprised as her that she had. Probably he'd thought no one else knew, or at least no one besides the two of them and Jack. She couldn't quite see Jack not knowing, with Ianto staying at the Hub and Jack watching over them all so closely.
"A few weeks, I think. She's been good."
Gwen nodded, smiling as though the conversation were not stilted or awkward. She was glad when a noise outside made them both look towards the panel in the wall and Ianto lunged to his feet, checking the screen that showed the tourist office interior before pushing the lever to open the door. Not that it was likely to be anyone dangerous or unauthorised, but she had to admit, she would have done the same.
It was Suzie, stumbling in through the outside door, looking exhausted and strained. "I did it," she told them, half-collapsing into Ianto's arms, and Gwen's stomach twisted a little as she looked at them. They both looked so normal, it was hard to believe that Suzie was an undead serial killer and Ianto was... what he was. "I did it, I beat it."
Ianto just hugged her, swaying slightly as though he was rocking a child, and when Suzie shifted a little Gwen saw that she was smiling.
*
Epilogue:
Throughout the years Jack had watched any number of autopsies and quite the handful of embalmings. This was the first time that the one being embalmed had still been moving and speaking so shortly before the process. The Hub was actually fairly quiet at the moment, which seemed right somehow - he'd given Gwen the day off after their late night; Toshiko and Ianto too, and Owen with the exception of this task, though Gwen was the only one who'd taken him up on it. It seemed right that they all be there, and evidently they all felt the same way, despite none of them talking about it.
Sleeping in, of course, still took priority, and it was nearly noon when Suzie lay on a sheet-covered gurney in the autopsy bay. She seemed calm, he thought, but after the long talk they'd had it wasn't surprising. They'd gotten a lot of things out, and he was finding now that he didn't actually blame her for what she'd done. It had been the glove, after all. His fault for letting her get so hooked on it. Somehow, though, events had worked themselves to exactly the right end, and even if it was through Suzie's own machinations that the situation had arisen, he thought that what they'd all remember was how it had ended. It was certainly what he was choosing to take with him.
He glanced sideways at Toshiko and Ianto, standing side by side against the railings a couple of feet away, Toshiko leaning against his shoulder and Ianto's arm around her. The sight made him smile a little before he turned back to the scene before them and Owen's careful, professional preparations.
"Right," he said finally, holding up a rather large needle. "Well, Suzie, you still scare the hell out of me, but then you always did. So, uh, anyone got anything else to say?"
Jack shook his head; he and Suzie had already said everything they had to. Beside him, Toshiko ducked her head, hair falling over her face, and Ianto's gaze flicked over both of them before he nodded shortly. "I'm sorry, Suzie. I'll make sure the records are good."
"Thanks." She shifted a little, resettling herself, and nodded to Owen. "Okay, I'm ready. Let's do this."
Though there was no way to sedate her, she closed her eyes, looking (if he ignored the gunshot entry wound under her jaw) as though she were enjoying a relaxing session in a sunbed or a quick nap. She barely moved as Owen found the carotid artery and slid the needle in, or when he put the drainage tube into the jugular vein. She'd redeemed herself, and now it was time to move on.
The entire process would take hours, Jack knew, but he could spare the time. Ianto and Toshiko would probably leave before it was done but it was only right that he remain. He'd brought Suzie into this, and he had to see her out.
Series: Mutual Service
Author: Kei
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A sunny day brings questions that desperately need answers as the team races to catch a serial killer before he strikes again... or unleashes the very essence of death upon Cardiff.
A/N: I did what fact checking I could on the locations of buildings etc around the Plass before writing this. Most of that information is from 2009, though, where the fic is set in 2006, so I'm just going to go with it and hope it's correct. If not, well, it's not the most unbelievable thing in the verse. :P
There was only one blessing about this whole damned mess, Ianto decided as he moved through the shadows of the buildings surrounding the Plass, and that was the fact that, at 2.07 in the morning even on a Friday night, there were very few people around to be endangered by either Suzie or the energy that had come out of her. (It felt stupid to call it Death. Stupid and ridiculous and yes, they were a secret underground alien fighting agency with a pterodactyl and an immortal boss who liked to stand on rooftops in a 1940s Air Force greatcoat, but they had standards, dammit.)
He wished they knew what it looked like, at least. And, say, how to stop it, exactly. He wasn't entirely certain there was much it could do to him or Jack, but he didn't really want to find out - or risk the possibility that it could eat their souls over and over again. Not exactly a comforting idea.
There was movement off to his right, and he glanced over to see the light from the waning moon glint of a gun barrel. Tosh, he realised, identifying her petite figure and clothing. He nodded at her and gestured ahead to indicate that he was going to circle around the edge of the buildings, waiting until she nodded back before looking away again. Over the comms he could hear the reassuring check ins from the rest of the team, scattered words here and there that he could tune out for the most part and simply remain aware that all five of them were responding as per normal and hadn't run into any trouble. Yet.
As it turned out, he was the first to find anything at all. He hadn't seen Max's corpse after Jack had come across it in the cells, but they'd all been given a brief description of the condition of it. Still, it hadn't quite been enough to prepare him for the actual thing.
He was fairly certain the body he came across had been a woman when she was alive, albeit one with stylishly short hair. But she looked as though she'd died long ago, only to be kept in some kind of extremely dry environment, the sort that leeched the moisture out of her body and left her withered and shrunken, skin like brittle parchment. He had, of course, seen dead bodies before, and after Canary Wharf he usually liked to think that nothing much would shock him anymore (though other times, he felt as though the mere hint of something similar, a disembodied limb or a burns victim perhaps, would send him spiraling into nightmarish flashbacks), but even with all his experience with Torchwood he'd never been cut off enough from the world to not feel a shock upon discovering a corpse.
Especially when the thing that had done it could be anywhere.
He flattened himself against a wall, scanning the area nervously as he reached up to tap at his earpiece. "Just found another body," he reported - it would do the double duty of informing them that they were that much closer to thirteen, and reassuring them that he hadn't been eaten by anything. "Down by the Brasserie, coming onto the actual Plass."
"I see you," Owen confirmed, and he couldn't quite stop himself from looking around wildly trying to place their doctor. There were other things moving, though, things that were neither ally nor potential victim nor particularly threatening - night birds and the odd stray animal, rubbish blown across pavement by the brisk sea air - and it was hard to pin anything down.
"Good," added Jack, and his voice seemed warm, somehow, in Ianto's ear. "Keep moving. We'll come back for them when we've got the area secured."
Despite the fact that he doubted even Toshiko or Owen could see him that well, Ianto nodded at the command, shifting the grip on his gun slightly as he continued his slow slink over the pavement. He was uncomfortably aware that Suzie might have left the area already, not to mention the energy being, and wondered if they shouldn't have left someone inside to cover the CCTV cameras. It was times like these that a bigger staff would be really helpful; they'd never had a problem finding someone when he'd worked at London. Typically they'd have whole departments for each function, and in the event that they did need extras on a particular project, it was easy enough to borrow someone who had similar or transferable experience. He'd been seconded to Archives a couple of times when something big had come in and the usual staff were overwhelmed by the sheer number of items in need of categorising, writing up, cross-referencing, filing and storing. It had been a definite shock to the system to come to Cardiff and find that the team that Jack had been so adamant was complete consisted of four people, half of whom seemed incapable of basic alphabetising. Of course, coming on the heels of a rather more significant shock to the system, and in the greater framework of trying desperately to save Lisa, it had been easy to shake off, but the feeling that they were substantially understaffed still lingered at times - ironically, considering the current situation, only underlined by the replacement of Suzie with Gwen, who did indeed have very good people skills, but who knew substantially less about the things they dealt with than Suzie had. Considering the current situation, that was possibly a good thing.
Gwen herself was the next to report anything new: "Two more, Jack. Looks like a couple, probably out for some fun." That brought them to four, and was shortly followed by Jack's revised instructions,
"Ianto, stay around the bay. Toshiko, come further north, we need to spread out a bit more. Keep the lines open, and if you get in trouble - make sure to scream real loud."
Ianto snorted softly at the last part, which was so very much a Jack thing to say. At least, he thought, they weren't in a highly residential area where they'd wake anyone up. Such things were important considerations when attempting not to indirectly accidentally cause an apocalypse. Apparently it had not been quite soft enough, as it was met with a mock-chiding "I heard that!" that, if the answering giggles were anything to go by, actually managed to dissipate a little of their tension.
Obeying the order, he circled back around in a circuit that would take him back towards the water, moving over to the Pierhead Building. He felt exposed, crossing the open space, and the skin down his back prickled as though he could feel someone - or something - watching him. Imagination, he told himself, but made no effort to relax. It would be safer to keep his senses on high alert, whether it was a case of paranoia or not.
The Plass might have been lit, the pillars that lined the outside edges reaching up towards the night sky and casting their glow over the area except for long fingers of shadow, but the Pierhead Building still loomed darkly ahead of him. It seemed huge and ominous, the clock tower piercing even higher than the pillars and if he had wanted to the see the top of it he felt like he would have had to bend over backwards to get the angle right. Needless to say, it was not at the top of his list of priorities right now.
There was a noise to his left and he spun quickly, the soles of his shoes scraping on stone with the sudden motion, but it didn't take long for him to locate Owen over by one of the benches off the Plass. There was a cardboard box or something not far from him, and Ianto rolled his eyes a little as he realised the sound must have just been Owen kicking it. Startling, but harmless. Turning back, his gaze passed over the old vintage carousel towards the bay itself. --And back again as he did a double take at a sign of movement in the shadows of the horses.
He paused, eyes narrowed a little as he tried to make out what was what, part of the carousel or darkness or rubbish or something alive. His footfalls were soft as he moved forward, each step made carefully and slowly so as not to spook-- whoever, if it was a person.
A few metres closer and he was fairly sure that it was. A person hunched up against the centre of the carousel, sitting on the floor in a forest of children's mechanical riding horses in the middle of the night, something he was sure was probably not the new big thing with kids in Cardiff looking for a thrill. Slowly, he reached up to make sure the mic on his ear piece was turned off. If he turned out to need it, he had practice at turning it back on quickly enough, but for now he'd rather have a go at talking to her, and he'd rather not have an audience for that. "Suzie?" he called softly, and was rewarded when the figure lifted her head. Bingo.
She laughed, and there was a faintly hysterical tinge to it. "Come to kill me, have you? What are you going to do, keep shooting until I don't get back up?"
"No." He relaxed a little - not entirely, not enough to put the gun away - and stepped up onto the carousel, winding his way around the horses to find her. She was huddled there, the scarf they'd found her gone from her head and her long hair tied messily behind her, locks of it bumping up over the top of her skull as though she hadn't had a brush and had used her fingers instead. Glancing around, he spotted a piece of fabric next to her that was probably the scarf. "We're a bit more worried about whatever came out of you."
"You know what it is, don't you?" she asked. "You've felt it. Waiting. Until I brought it out." She laughed again. "Didn't even look twice at me, if it can even see. Oh, god."
"You're already dead," he pointed out. He didn't want to sit down - even if she didn't seem threatening at the moment, that was a little too relaxed for him. Instead, he leaned back against one of the horses, gripping the pole with his free hand. A quick look revealed that it was a unicorn, actually. How sparkly.
"Yeah, just rub it in. Maybe you should shoot me. I was never good for anything anyway. You and Gwen, you just waltzed in and everyone loved you, none of them spared a thought for little old Suzie. I was all used up."
For a moment he couldn't really think of anything to say to that. It was patently absurd, for a start, but at the same time it was almost familiar. He'd felt that, he'd felt the black feelings creeping in silently so you didn't even notice until you looked around and the world looked like a poorly done black and white movie, the backdrops fake and the acting bad and sitting through until the end seemed like the most excruciating torment of all. He remembered how every movement was a struggle. Every charitable thought was squashed under the weight of a thousand bitter ones, and most of them aimed at yourself. It was like walking through another world, and people might look at you and talk to you but you were wearing a mask and could never quite get there. Oh, he'd been there, and it had brought him to the end of a rope. "I know," he said finally, voice low enough that for a couple of beats of stillness he almost thought she hadn't heard him, until she looked up. "I know how it feels."
"How does it stop?" There was something in her voice that said she might have been crying, if she'd been able to, and he wondered what it would be like to be unable to cry. It was a horrible thought. Something they all just took for granted and didn't even think about how important it was, but he'd spent himself so many times that way that he knew too well how sometimes it was the only way to feel a little bit better, just for a while.
Slowly, he slid the barrel of his gun back into the holster. Suzie wasn't going to hurt him. She was more likely to hurt herself, and unlike him, she wouldn't heal. She already had a hole in the back of her head, she didn't need anything else on top of that.
A startled yelp broke the quiet and he started, banging his spine against the unicorn he was leaning against and wincing before hurriedly reaching up to turn his mic back on.
"I think I've found our monster!" Gwen told them, fear easy to read in her words. "South side of the Millenium Stadium!"
Suddenly, something coalesced in Ianto's mind, pieces clicking together with an easy snap that made him wonder how he hadn't realised it before. It was always the way of it with riddles, they'd nag at you all day until you found out the answer, and then it all seemed so very simple. "Gwen, can you lead it down to the bay?" he asked before anyone else could cut in. He kept his gaze on Suzie, watching her face, watching her to see if she had realised what he was doing, but she was just looking at him in confusion and wariness. It was for her benefit as well as everyone else's that he kept speaking, trying to explain so they wouldn't think he was going completely mad. "Back in 1479, the priest discovered that Death needed thirteen souls to walk the earth for eternity. It was Faith. Not belief, Faith. The little girl who was brought back to life, her name was Faith. She stopped it. Suzie can stop it, Suzie's the only one who can stop it."
"How?" Jack demanded. "And why the bay?"
"She's here."
Apparently that was good enough for Jack. "Gwen, do as he says! Everyone else, keep away. We don't want it to try to go for easier prey. Gwen, when you find them, keep going, get somewhere safe."
"We're at the carousel," Ianto added, and clicked the mic back off. He looked at Suzie. "This is how it stops, Suzie. You fight Death, and you beat it. You save everyone."
"I don't know how!" she protested, eyes wide.
He ignored that, leaning down to hold out a hand for her, trying to contain his impatience until she reached up to take it. Her skin was cool and dry in his, but her grip was strong, and he pulled her up until they were face to face and eye to eye. "You said yourself it didn't want anything from you. You don't have anything for it. All we have to do is clear the area so you can fight it. This is what you wanted to do with the glove, you wanted to save people. Now you can do that."
"I'm scared," she whispered, and he nodded.
"I know."
Then they both turned, facing north as the slap slap slap of shoes on pavement came towards them, Gwen running full pelt with a cloud of black mist in pursuit. Her hair whipped behind her but for the lock that crossed her face, stuck in her mouth, Gwen ignoring it in favour of just running, running.
Ianto squeezed Suzie's shoulder, and moved to jump off the carousel. He waved to Gwen and started to sprint in the direction of the tourist office. She could follow him and they could lock themselves in. As long as Owen and Jack had cleared the area, Suzie would be alone with the thing.
God, he hoped this worked.
*
Gwen wasn't entirely sure how long she'd been lying on the ground for. Ianto had fairly dragged her into the tourist office, slapping the button to open the secret passage (and really, it still amused her, just a bit, that the secret entrance to their secret base was a big black button) so they could get into it. Neither of them wanted to take the risk that a standard door was enough to stop Death. The concept was just too ludicrous. After running for their lives, though, making their way further into the Hub seemed like too much effort, so for now, Ianto was sitting against the wall as she sprawled out on the stone floor. It was probably cleaner than she was, after all, particularly after sweating through her shirt trying to outrun Death.
She wished they had a way to see what was going on from there. The CCTV downstairs seemed so far away, and she felt a little less lazy when she recalled that it actually was, with the main room of the Hub being underneath the water tower at the other end of the Plass. How would they know when it was over? And how would they know if it had worked?
After a time, as the adrenalin wore off and her breathing returned to normal, the discomfit of lying on a stone floor began to get to her, and she carefully levered herself into a sitting position opposite Ianto. He looked... pensive. From experience, she knew that that was a slippery slope - Torchwood was the kind of place where, when something was happening, it was all out and exhilarating and amazing, but when it calmed down again you were in high danger of thinking far too much about things best left alone. "How did you get Suzie to agree?" she asked Ianto, hoping it would draw him out a little. The time would pass better if they were talking, anyway.
He shrugged, expression marginally similar to the one he wore when Jack complimented his work. Modest but pleased, though with a little less of the pleased tonight, it seemed. "She's not evil, just afraid. I only told her that she was the only one who could do it." He looked up, eyes bright in the dimly lit corridor. "She needed a way to save herself."
There was something he was trying to say, Gwen thought, that she wasn't quite understanding. It was frustrating but not entirely unfamiliar, the way Ianto would make obscure jokes with an utterly straight face that she was never entirely sure she got. They might have been the only two Welsh members of the team, but sometimes she felt like they spoke completely different languages. (Actually, that was probably true, since her Welsh extended to about half a dozen words, and with the suits and the name and the accent he was quite possibly the sort of middle class that grew up speaking it.) "Were you friends?"
"Not really. I wasn't friends with any of them, really, back then."
"So this thing with Tosh, that's pretty new?" She was too tired to censor herself or she never would have asked that, and from the expression on his face Ianto was just as surprised as her that she had. Probably he'd thought no one else knew, or at least no one besides the two of them and Jack. She couldn't quite see Jack not knowing, with Ianto staying at the Hub and Jack watching over them all so closely.
"A few weeks, I think. She's been good."
Gwen nodded, smiling as though the conversation were not stilted or awkward. She was glad when a noise outside made them both look towards the panel in the wall and Ianto lunged to his feet, checking the screen that showed the tourist office interior before pushing the lever to open the door. Not that it was likely to be anyone dangerous or unauthorised, but she had to admit, she would have done the same.
It was Suzie, stumbling in through the outside door, looking exhausted and strained. "I did it," she told them, half-collapsing into Ianto's arms, and Gwen's stomach twisted a little as she looked at them. They both looked so normal, it was hard to believe that Suzie was an undead serial killer and Ianto was... what he was. "I did it, I beat it."
Ianto just hugged her, swaying slightly as though he was rocking a child, and when Suzie shifted a little Gwen saw that she was smiling.
*
Epilogue:
Throughout the years Jack had watched any number of autopsies and quite the handful of embalmings. This was the first time that the one being embalmed had still been moving and speaking so shortly before the process. The Hub was actually fairly quiet at the moment, which seemed right somehow - he'd given Gwen the day off after their late night; Toshiko and Ianto too, and Owen with the exception of this task, though Gwen was the only one who'd taken him up on it. It seemed right that they all be there, and evidently they all felt the same way, despite none of them talking about it.
Sleeping in, of course, still took priority, and it was nearly noon when Suzie lay on a sheet-covered gurney in the autopsy bay. She seemed calm, he thought, but after the long talk they'd had it wasn't surprising. They'd gotten a lot of things out, and he was finding now that he didn't actually blame her for what she'd done. It had been the glove, after all. His fault for letting her get so hooked on it. Somehow, though, events had worked themselves to exactly the right end, and even if it was through Suzie's own machinations that the situation had arisen, he thought that what they'd all remember was how it had ended. It was certainly what he was choosing to take with him.
He glanced sideways at Toshiko and Ianto, standing side by side against the railings a couple of feet away, Toshiko leaning against his shoulder and Ianto's arm around her. The sight made him smile a little before he turned back to the scene before them and Owen's careful, professional preparations.
"Right," he said finally, holding up a rather large needle. "Well, Suzie, you still scare the hell out of me, but then you always did. So, uh, anyone got anything else to say?"
Jack shook his head; he and Suzie had already said everything they had to. Beside him, Toshiko ducked her head, hair falling over her face, and Ianto's gaze flicked over both of them before he nodded shortly. "I'm sorry, Suzie. I'll make sure the records are good."
"Thanks." She shifted a little, resettling herself, and nodded to Owen. "Okay, I'm ready. Let's do this."
Though there was no way to sedate her, she closed her eyes, looking (if he ignored the gunshot entry wound under her jaw) as though she were enjoying a relaxing session in a sunbed or a quick nap. She barely moved as Owen found the carotid artery and slid the needle in, or when he put the drainage tube into the jugular vein. She'd redeemed herself, and now it was time to move on.
The entire process would take hours, Jack knew, but he could spare the time. Ianto and Toshiko would probably leave before it was done but it was only right that he remain. He'd brought Suzie into this, and he had to see her out.