Chapter 8: Adjusting
Inspired by interactions in the Hotel California Panfandom RPG, this is a joint project between two women who adored the idea of Jack recruiting Buffy to Torchwood. Perhaps they adored it a little too much, but that remains to be seen.
Title: So Buffy Met Jack...
Authors: Amy tainted_crimson & Sarah magicom
Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Torchwood
Spoilers: Through Buffy / Angel series finales and Torchwood Series 2 / Doctor Who Series 4. (Some elements borrowed from Season 8 comics)
Rating: FR-15
Disclaimer: Everything is owned by Joss/Fox and Russell/BBC!
Summary: After spending a few weeks trapped in an extratemporal holding cell together, Captain Jack Harkness offered Buffy Summers a job at Torchwood. And how could she ever turn down an offer like that?
Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07
ADJUSTING
Jack was walking across the Hub, his first cup of coffee in one hand, when the cog door rolled open. He looked up sharply. Buffy was looking a little worse for wear.
Ianto was already in (alright, he hadn't, technically, left - unless you counted the fact that he'd gone out early that morning to buy milk for the coffee) and Gwen hadn't yet arrived.
Jack grinned as Buffy stepped over the threshold. "Let me guess," he said with a laugh, "jetlag?"
She hadn't gotten more than three steps inside the door when Ianto was putting a clearly much-needed coffee in her hand. He'd seen her coming on the CCTV. He gave her the drink and slipped back to his computer terminal, all without a word.
"How did it go last night?" Jack asked, stepping to the side to allow her to get to her own desk. "Did you manage to find your way home without getting lost?"
"Mmm," she groaned sleepily, feeling like someone had hit her in the head with a mallet. And she really did know how that felt, so it was an apt comparison! "Got home, wasn't killed by boxes. Managed to get three of them unpacked, ate free pizza... I declare it a win," she mumbled out, carefully plopping into her chair and setting her messenger bag on her desk.
Taking a long drink of the coffee beverage Ianto had given her, she once again nearly melted right into the floor. "I love Ianto Jones' coffee making skills!" she called out, knowing the man in question would hear her and hoping it landed him back in Flusterland.
Ianto looked over at Buffy, startled, then realized she was looking at him. His eyes flitted briefly to Jack, who looked entirely too amused for Ianto's liking and would clearly be no help at all. He turned his gaze emphatically back to his computer screen, trying very hard to pointedly ignore the both of them, for all that he could practically hear Jack snickering into his coffee. Great. Now there were two of them. He wondered if his face was as flushed as it felt.
Jack leaned over Buffy's desk slightly. "Well done," he said. He glanced at his watch. "And within five minutes of arriving." He straightened up again. "Take twenty minutes to settle in and finish your coffee, then you're coming down to the firing range with me," he told her. He didn't wait for a reply before turning to take his daily morning tour of the vaults to check on their 'guests'. It had been neither a question nor a suggestion.
Buffy scowled at his back as he retreated, and she wondered for a moment if he could dodge flying objects as well as Xander -- the carpenter-turned-Watcher had learned that skill very quickly when he'd been put in charge of dozens of teenage girls with lots of mood swings and chocolate cravings.
After a few minutes of sipping the heavenly coffee and wandering through the alien database (she found another suspiciously demony alien), she sighed and heaved herself out of her chair that was surprisingly comfortable when suffering from jet-lag. Grabbing a file folder from her bag, she walked over to Ianto's station with an innocent smile. "Oh Ianto... How ya doin'?"
Ianto turned his attention away from his screen long enough to look at her suspiciously. The smile alone made him certain she had some kind of evil ulterior motives. "Why?" he asked, drawing the syllable out warily.
Laughing at his very appropriate reaction, she waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna terrorize you anymore right now," she said between giggles, then pulled a few pages out of the folder. "This is what you gave me for my coat," she said, handing them to him. "And I was told to talk to you about stuff for a training room, down in one of the little cubbies not being used."
"Stuff for a training room?" he said a little distractedly as he read over her form. "You can fill out paperwork," he said, clearly a little impressed. "I guess I'll let Jack keep you," he told her, sliding the papers into a folder on his desk. He turned to look at her again. "What kind of stuff?" he continued from his previous train of thought, then held up a hand before she could say. "Wait." He took another set of forms out and gave them to her. "Just fill these in."
She'd gotten excited for a moment when he'd asked her about the kind of stuff, but then she just narrowed her eyes at him and took the forms. "...'kay," she finally said, turning and continuing to give him the Buffyesque Evil Eye until she was halfway back to her desk. At that point she just couldn't take it and had to stumble back to her chair amid another fit of giggles. He really was way too much fun.
Ianto looked over at her, suppressed a smile without a great degree of success, shook his head at her, then turned back to his work. He heard Jack coming before he appeared.
"Buffy," Jack called from the doorway. "Down here," he said, waiting for her at the top of the stairs. Time for her firearms proficiency.
Sighing like a kid being carted off for the first day of school, Buffy gulped down the last of her coffee and left the mug and her new paperwork on her desk for when she returned. She sent a pout Ianto's way, hoping to get another smile out of him, then trudged over to the stairs. "Let's go," she said with a resigned tone and a broad gesture of an arm.
Ianto gave her a slightly amused raised eyebrow and watched them disappear into the sublevels of the Hub. He glanced up at the CCTV. Gwen's car was in the carpark now. She'd be arriving any moment. He started her coffee.
Jack lead Buffy down narrow corridors to Torchwood's firing range. He didn't say anything as he allowed her to enter in front of him. An array of paper weevils were scattered through the tunnel-like room and a variety of firearms were on the table. "Don't worry about those," he told her, picking up a pair of yellow-tinted glasses and handing a pair to her. "Your personal sidearm will do just fine."
She looked at the glasses with distaste before slipping them on, then pulled out her 'personal sidearm' as he called it (she called it the Gun of Personal Doom) from where she'd kept it at the small of her back. It was the only place it felt natural, since she'd spent so many years toting around a stake in the same way.
"I can do those too, if you want to be really thorough," she commented, hoping she didn't sound as pouty and sarcastic as she felt. She couldn't help it -- she'd do what he'd asked, she understood that part of the game and was willing to play by the rules, but that didn't mean that she was ever going to grow to be happy about it.
"How do you want me to do this, exactly?" she questioned, wanting to get it over and done with so she could get back to bothering Ianto and planning her personal Torchwood space.
He only raised an unamused eyebrow at her comment about the other guns and plucked her gun from her grasp as she finished talking, setting it down on the table.
"Alright," he said calmly, but without any of the lightheartedness that usually coloured his tone. "Let's have this conversation. You don't like guns. I get that. I've worked with people who object to them before. I don't have a problem with that philosophy on principle. However, I have to think of the safety of the people on this team. I think you understand your role here and I believe you're aware of what lead to it." He made a vague gesture towards the ceiling. "They're not fighters. They were brought here for other skills. Yes, they've been trained to defend themselves, but it's not in any way their natural inclination. Of course, you have to protect yourself, first of all. You're no good to yourself or anyone else if you're dead. Your next duty is to protect them. Now," he said, spreading his arms to encompass the table, "you have no gun. You come on the scene and there's a situation. It's the critical moment and it's three metres away," he said, pointing to one of the paper targets in the tunnel. "You have exactly two seconds to take care of it before someone dies. What are you going to do about it?" He crossed his arms. "Gunless," he reminded her. He looked at her for a moment. "Because you're fast, but you're not that fast."
Buffy stared at him with a storm building inside her, a hurricane of calm anger that brought the Slayer to the surface and left her wanting to break something. She waited until he'd finished speaking to find her own voice, quiet and calm and clearly holding in a great deal of emotion. "What do I do about it?" she repeated, her fingers tightening around the gun in her hand. "I make sure I'm the one that dies."
Grabbing the gun from the table and stepping forward, her hands were a flurry of movement and she took only half a second to aim before pulling the trigger. The bullet hit the target at dead center and she turned back to him with fury in her eyes. "It's what I do, Jack. I protect people and I die for them, because it's what I was born to do. 'Death is my gift,'" she spat out, not bothering to try shielding him from the cold fury she'd turned on her closest friends whenever they had questioned her motives or her strength.
"You think I don't know why I'm here?" she all but demanded of him. "I've gone from one death wish to another, and I'm okay with that. I will do whatever I have to to protect your people, whether I like it or not. Don't you dare question that about me again or we will have serious problems."
He watched her carefully as she spoke. His expression didn't waver and he didn't flinch when she pulled the trigger. "Yeah, I just have one issue with that," he told her firmly. "There's no 'dying instead' clause in your contract. It's not an option, and if you think it is, then you weren't listening." He stepped back, turning slightly to face the array of targets instead of Buffy. He turned the conversation back to business, effectively closing the discussion. "Since this test is in the interest of accuracy, rather than humanitarianism," he announced, "just shoot all the targets in the head, then you can go back upstairs."
Turning back away from him, she did as told, squeezing the trigger in quick succession and watching each bullet slice through paper in just the right spot every time. It was easy for a Slayer to fire a gun and not miss their target, but the weapon felt strange in her hand. She and her abilities were ancient and it was new and wrong. But she was still a perfect shot.
She tossed the pair of glasses on the table as she went past, heading out of the room without another word.
Jack didn't follow her out of the firing range. He took his time removing the damaged targets and replacing them with fresh ones for whoever used the room next. He could have left the job for Ianto, but he felt like doing it. When the room had been tidied up and was ready for its next use, then - and only then - did he head upstairs. He passed through the main area of the Hub without speaking to or smiling at anyone, walking up into his office. Ianto glanced at Gwen, who clearly had no idea what the problem was, then looked at Buffy, who had also been uncharacteristically quiet since she'd rejoined them.
"Went that well, did it?" Ianto remarked. His voice was soft, but in the relative silence of the room, it carried.
Buffy had been sitting at her desk, staring down at the empty space in the forms Ianto had given her, when she heard Jack come up the stairs. She hadn't looked and he hadn't paused. It was only when Ianto spoke that she looked up, a sadness replacing the anger in her eyes. "Just about," she confirmed quietly, finally picking up a pen to start writing in requested items.
Ianto made Buffy and Jack each a coffee, silently setting Buffy's on her desk before heading up to Jack's office. Gwen caught his eyes on the way past. One of them had to go. His gaze told her that he had this one.
He put the mug on Jack's desk and sat down. Jack was intently signing forms. When he realized Ianto wasn't leaving, he spoke - still without looking up. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked without any actual pleasure in his voice.
"Well, you're both doing your paperwork. I probably shouldn't complain," Ianto said smoothly.
Jack put his pen down and looked at Ianto, finally. "We had a small difference of opinion."
Ianto nodded sagely. "Ah. The true first test."
Jack raised his eyebrows. "Oh? What's that supposed to mean?" he asked. There was no accusation in his voice. Just a tiny amount of defensiveness, if anything.
"Professional differences of opinion tend to end with you laying down the law, and well they should. You can be as good-natured as you like the rest of the time, but you still have to be the boss at the end of the day. If she can handle that without walking, then she can handle working here."
Jack considered that for a moment. "Am I too easy-going the rest of the time?"
Ianto shrugged. "I'm not complaining," he replied, standing up.
"Can you send Buffy in, please?" Jack asked, picking up his pen again. He turned his attention back to the paperwork.
Ianto caught Buffy's eyes as he left Jack's office and nodded towards its door to let her know Jack wanted to see her.
If Jack hadn't asked for her, Buffy would have gone herself before too long. Sitting at her desk like an obedient worker was just code for extensive thinking on touch subjects. She tended to do that quickly these days -- the older she got, the more precious time seemed. There had been too many chances to put things right that had been wasted because of the Summers' Stubbornness.
Pulling another folder from her bag, she took a deep breath before walking up to Jack's office, silently opening and closing the door behind her. Approaching the desk, she quickly held up a hand and hurriedly said, "Before you say anything: I'm sorry. For how things happened earlier. I just... I get very defensive when people question me like that, because it's been happening for years, but while I don't regret what I said, I shouldn't had acted like that."
"And," she continued in a quieter voice, carefully setting the folder on the desk in front of him, "this is what we talked about yesterday."
The forms about procedures following her death. The request was for either Torchwood or the New Council to dispose of her body via cremation, and for the ashes to be given to her sister, Dawn Summers, for safekeeping within the protected New Council Headquarters.
And then there was an explanation as to why. A very detailed rationale that had taken her the better part of the night and almost the entire pizza to create, and then an early call to her sister for a little proofreading. It detailed the events surrounding all three of her deaths and resurrections, including things that she'd previously been pretty vague about with Jack. She wanted there to be no doubt for him when he signed that last page.
Jack nodded as he took it. He made a clear space by shifting some of Ianto's paperwork and set it down. "I'm going to put it right here, for now," he told her, "because I want to make sure I read it properly." He folded his hands on the desk in front of him. He hoped she understood that she was free to sit, if she wanted to.
"I'm not going to say you were wrong, because I understand where you're coming from," he told her, "but there was one thing that you said that bothered me and I touched on it already." He took a sip of his coffee before he continued. "I know this is a big transition for you. You're not used to this kind of work environment and you sure as hell aren't used to this side of me. The thing I want to make sure is absolutely clear, is that there are no acceptable casualties here. I only have a good day when everyone comes back here alive. None of your lives is worth more or less than any of the others, so I don't want any more of this talk of noble self-sacrifice, okay? I don't pretend to know what was expected of you when you were the Slayer, but you're on a team now." He let a smile form. "And that is, apparently, the whether you like it or not bit, because Ianto just came in here to bat for you and he doesn't do that for just anyone."
A small smile formed in response to his words and she let herself glance out the glass at the man who seemed to be so diligently working on something. "It's the shrine," she admitted with a smirk, turning her attention back to Jack. "I sent him the plans this morning."
Returning to seriousness, she carefully sat in the chair in front of his desk, a signal that things had moved well out of hostile territory. "I was always told I was part of a 'team'," she told him quietly, "but it was never true. In my line of work, Slayers were always alone, despite how many people tried to help me. I was the one who had to make the tough choices and be blamed for the consequences." She looked down at her lap, her hands wringing themselves into white. "I can promise that I'll try to find another way, but I'll always make the call of someone else over me. It's just the way I am."
"I understand that," he said, "and it's part of your charm, but you don't have to make those calls anymore. That's my job. I appreciate your input, same as them," he said with a nod towards the window that looked out on their teammates in the Hub, "and I don't want you to keep your opinions to yourself, but I make the final call. Also, if saving the day requires throwing somebody into harm's way? It's going to be me. I get up again. Clear?" His tone was gentle but broached no argument.
She smiled and nodded, acknowledging that she wasn't the one in the difficult position anymore, but also thinking to herself that he wouldn't always be there, as much as he tried to be. "You know, you and me, we have that whole not staying dead thing in common," she confided with a smirk. "Except I do it with a bit more style."
"Maybe, but I do it with consistency and I like to think that counts for something." He grinned. "I do everything else with style, so I suppose I can let you have that one."
He studied her for a moment. "And, disappointingly, the power struggle again ends without the need for naked wrestling," he remarked with an exaggerated sigh. "I have to get a bit of a megalomaniac in here sometime."
Buffy stared at him with an incredulous look. "I don't think there is ever going to be a need for naked wrestling, long as I'm involved," she informed him, then chuckled quietly. "Though I definitely know my boyfriend would go for the idea, but he'd probably beat you up for the prime spot."
Jack leaned forward. "That's the spirit," he said before letting a wicked grin spread across his features. He sat back again. "Tell you what, though, we'll let you wrestle the winner."
Narrowing her eyes like a kid whose sibling had just declared intentions for something despicable that called for instant payback. She pointed a finger at him in a threatening promise and said, "I'm telling Ianto on you," then rose and headed for the door.
Jack smiled like the Cheshire Cat as he called after her, "Go ahead if you think you can tell him anything about my behaviour that would surprise him!"
Turning at the door, she stuck her tongue out at him like a four-year-old, then laughed as she headed back down to her station. When she passed Ianto, she informed him that, "He's being impossible again."
"Glad to hear it," Ianto remarked mildly. Buffy was doing that giggling thing again. They'd apparently worked things out.
About half an hour passed before an alert came up on Ianto's screen. "Jack!" he called. Jack poked his head around the office doorway. "We have a report of a weevil in the Grangetown Rail Station."
Jack looked at Buffy. "You're with me," he told her. "Time to bag your first weevil." He glanced at Gwen as Ianto appeared with his coat and slid it up over his shoulders with practiced ease. "Hold the fort." He looked at Ianto. "Let us know if it moves."
Having given his instructions, he swept out the door, waiting in the lift for Buffy to catch up before heading up to the surface.
Buffy grabbed her jacket, something cheap and denim that she'd found in the first box she'd unpacked and wouldn't mind if it got ruined, and hurried after him, slipping into the jacket as they rode up to the surface. "Oh goodie, my first 'Torchwood vamp'," she said with a hint of sarcasm, using her self-assigned classification for the creatures they seemed to deal with as often as she'd had vampires running around Sunnydale.
They sped towards Grangetown Station in the SUV. They were maybe half-way there when Ianto's voice came over the comms. Today, Buffy would be able to hear it, if she remembered to wear her communicator.
"Jack, it's on the move. Reports that it's moving north along Clive Street, towards Penarth Road. A security guard at the rail station was injured, by the way. He's being taken to hospital with lacerations to his arm and shoulder."
Jack touched his ear to activate the device. "Understood," he replied. He looked at Buffy. "Keep your eyes open. They don't usually come out in the streets during the day and I don't like it when they start acting all weird. It usually means something bad is going on that I don't know about."
"I know the feeling," she commented, watching the streets that were still unfamiliar as they raced past. Buffy was suddenly very glad that she'd remembered the earpierce thingy just before she'd left her building that morning, and that she'd thought it important enough to go back for it. She would have looked pretty stupid if she'd forgotten it on her second day of work.
Glancing at Jack, she confided, "Things going wonky in Sunnydale almost always meant impending apocalypse and a new Big Bad to deal with."
Jack nodded. "Well, hopefully we're dealing with one crazy weevil here and not an impending emergency of weevil-agitating proportions."
He reached up to activate his earpiece again. "Ianto, where is it?" They'd sped up Corporation Road and had reached Penarth Road, but he didn't know if the weevil had gotten that far yet. They could really motor when they wanted to.
"Turn right," Ianto instructed him. "Reports have it moving east along Penarth Road, just past the bridge. It seems to be headed towards the city centre."
Jack glanced at Buffy a little uneasily, then made the right that Ianto had indicated. They were soon on top of the weevil. It was loping along the side of the road. It actually looked terrified... well, as terrified as a weevil's face was capable of looking. Jack pulled over, parking the SUV half on the pavement. "We have to take it on foot," he explained as he opened his door. As he came around the front of the vehicle, he tossed Buffy a small aerosol can. "This spray temporarily subdues them," he told her. "Well, 'subdue' is a strong word..." he added thoughtfully as he took off at a run after the weevil. It seemed to sense that it was suddenly being chased and increased its pace.
Buffy had only ever seen the weevils that were in Torchwood's holding cells, but something about this one still struck her as different. Odd. Wrong. And that did not have her going 'I have a good feeling about this.'
She barely had to call on any of her Slayer speed to get ahead of Jack, closing the distance between her and the weevil without breaking a sweat. She tackled it easily, the both of them crashing to the pavement as the thing snarled at her. What was with all the aliens and their snarlfests? She was seriously starting to suspect that demons and aliens were distantly related, maybe one of those ancient genetic things she hadn't paid attention to in high school.
The weevil had turned on her in an instant, trying to go for her neck with its sharp teeth, and again she found herself making that comparison with fledglings. Weevils really did equal Torchwood Vampires. A good punch left it stunned for a second, shaking its head as she tried to regain the upper hand.
"The spray!" Jack shouted as he caught up. Pedestrians were stopping to watch at this point. He ignored them. He pulled a black cloth bag out of his coat pocket, ready to cover its head as soon as Buffy had it under control.
Buffy felt like she was pepper-spraying a stupid mugger as she sprayed the poor alien creature, watching as it almost immediately stopped fighting. Good thing, too, considering their growing audience. She wondered if they could use the PCP excuse in Cardiff...
Jack quickly slid the bag over the creature's head and then heaved it up over his shoulder, striding the distance back to the SUV without acknowledging the small audience in any way. He slung the weevil into the reinforced rear of the vehicle and slammed it closed before climbing into the driver's seat. He did a u-turn in the road and sped away the moment Buffy got in.
He activated the comm. "We've got the weevil," he said.
"I know," Ianto told him. "Mobile phone camera footage is already up on YouTube. Isn't technology grand? I'll erase it after I've traced the source."
Jack looked at Buffy, rolling his eyes before he continued the conversation. "I don't suppose there's anything else suspicious going on?" he asked. "Any notable rift activity, for example?"
There was a pause, likely while Ianto checked. "Nothing in particular," Ianto told him. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Why?"
"Just wondering if weird weevil behaviour is this week's portent of doom."
"If it is, doom is keeping its head down," Ianto assured him. "So far, at least."
Buffy rolled her eyes at the mention of YouTube; the Minis spent far too much time on that website for her own personal well-being. And apparently it was just going to give poor Ianto some extra work... but she'd bet a handful of kittens that he'd do it efficiently and with his typical Ianto style.
Glancing over at Jack, she asked, "Do you guys generally run checks on odd causes of deaths, even if they don't have the whole police red flag thing going on? Just wondering. That's usually my version of This Week's Message of Doom Is..."
Jack nodded. "Yeah, we have programs running in our computer systems that monitor news reports and police reports and blogs and... well, every source of information we can get into - for things that might interest us, whether they've been flagged that way or not. It filters out results and sends them to Ianto. He keeps an eye on them in case something comes up that we need to look into," Jack explained. "Odd causes of death included."
She nodded slowly, turning to look toward the back of the SUV, slightly uncomfortable with the weevil just being back there. It made her feel like she was sitting on a fresh grave just waiting for a newly turned vamp to pop up at her.
"Maybe we should look at non-odd deaths then," she suggested, feeling so much like the new girl who had no idea how things worked and so every suggestion ended up being completely redundant. "I once had to fight a demon that preyed on sick kids, and the only sign of weird stuff was kids dying of a bad flu strain."
Jack nodded. "But wouldn't there have been more than usual? The program would flag that. We're going to have to wait for something to surface. Sometimes, you just can't take the fight to your adversary until they bother showing up."
They arrived back at the Hub, Jack, again, carrying the weevil out of the SUV and all the way down to the vaults. He showed Buffy how the door mechanisms worked, in case she needed to use them at some point.
Buffy followed obediently, watching everything Jack did and doing her best to memorize it so she wouldn't have to ask about it later. She really did want things with this job to go well, and so far she'd just ended up feeling like a kid who kept doing everything wrong. It was strange to be back in that sort of situation; it was exactly how she'd felt when she'd started college. She hadn't liked it then and she didn't like it now.
Ianto met them at the top of the stairs. "Jack, I managed to hack into our videographer's Blackberry and erase the original video, then I erased the copy on YouTube. There's a problem, however, as the BBC has somehow managed to get a copy of it and are running it as one of the headlines on the 24 hour news."
Jack sighed. "Alright, let me make a couple of calls. Anything else?"
"The Prime Minister called," Ianto began. Jack groaned. "He wanted to come here tomorrow," Ianto continued, as though the interruption had never happened. "But I told him that wasn't possible. He wants to schedule it for next week. I told him we'd get back to him."
"Tell him 'never' is good for us," Jack said.
"He wants to talk to you, Jack."
"I thought keeping him off my back was the skill that impressed him so much," Jack countered, striding towards his office before the conversation got any more unpleasant. "Show it off."
"Also, the mayor saw the video and wants to know why you assaulted and abducted one of his citizens in broad daylight."
Jack stopped and spun around. "Seriously?" he asked incredulously.
"No," Ianto replied calmly. "I just wanted to get your attention." He handed Jack the mug of coffee he'd been carrying. "BBC."
Jack was about to say something, but let himself be distracted by the coffee. "Yeah, I'll call right now," he said, stepping towards his office. "But I'm not talking to the Prime Minister. Keep him out of my hair," he called over his shoulder. "I'm serious."
Ianto gave a very put-upon nod to Jack's back as he turned to go back to his own workspace.
"How was weevil hunting?" he asked Buffy as he passed her.
"Kinda boring," she admitted, watching Gwen seem to debate something and then head off to follow Jack rather than stay and chat with the newbie. She didn't blame her. Arguing with a national television network sounded like a lot more fun. "I'm used to getting a bit more fight out of my baddies, and a lot more talking, lot less snarling. Makes me kinda wish there was a higher rate of vamp activity around here... Stupid Rift," she grumbled, hands in her pockets as she leaned against the edge of her desk.
"You know," Buffy started, a grin slowly blossoming, "if you ever want someone else to field the calls from the PM, you can count me as a volunteer. I think he'd be more than a little surprised at having to deal with me again." She had to admit, she'd made a sizable effort last time to leave an impression.
"Jack told me that he'd offered you a job, as well. Something about twelve shades of embarrassed? I thought we'd save you for when he visits. Kind of a surprise," he said, packing a lot of evil into a very small smile.
"Ooh, very nice," she said approvingly, giving him a mischievous smile. "Better make sure to have a camera on hand for when he trips over his own oversized feet. Believe me, it's something you don't want to miss."
Still leaning against her desk, she sort of twiddled her thumbs in the pockets of her coat, quietly thinking and changing hesitant glances over at Ianto. Finally, she pushed away from the desk and walked over to him, uncertainty etched along the edges of her otherwise calm expression. "Is there something I should be doing?" she asked him, completely serious and almost a little nervous. "Or... something I could do? Cause that paperwork from earlier is gonna take me ten minutes, twenty tops, and then I'll have to start playing with office supplies and seeing what I can balance on my nose, and that just doesn't seem like a productive use of time."
Ianto turned his attention to her when she approached, but he really hadn't been expecting her to ask for more work. He couldn't remember the last time someone had finished their assigned work and asked for more at Torchwood. Usually they just invented some new and disruptive way to fuck around. He glanced over at the papers on her desk. "I suppose when that training room is done and you've run out of work, you'll be doing that," he mused. "So I suppose if there's anything you need to learn, you'll have to learn it now."
He looked at her. "How long have you actually been in Cardiff?" he asked. "Only, I heard you telling Jack that you hadn't unpacked yet. You said you didn't know your way around? You could look at some maps and read about the city... try to get a feel for it before you go out there and explore it. That would be productive, especially once you've gotten established here and get sent somewhere on your own in the course of an investigation." He put his pen down. "And just a recommendation? Your first day off, go be a tourist. By 'be a tourist', I mean go do all the most touristy things you can find. There are brochures upstairs in the tourist office. Walk along the harbour, go to the market, visit the castle. There are some nice views of the city from the top of the Keep on a clear day." He turned back to his work. "Someone recommended that to me when I moved to London to work at Canary Wharf," he told her as he glanced through some forms. "I was skeptical about it, but it helped a lot."
Nodding slowly as she took in his suggestions, she gave him a small smile. "Okay, I'll do that," she agreed, taking a few backward steps, not wanting to bother him and not feeling playful enough to pull out the flirting. "Thanks, Ianto." And then she turned and went back to her desk, sitting there for a moment and just thinking before returning to the paperwork for her training room.
The Hub seemed too quiet, even with the sounds of their prehistoric watchdog flying overhead. It was quiet and strange and she was suddenly hit with the strangest sense of homesickness... for Cleveland.
She missed her friends. She missed having Faith send her weird faces from the other side of a conference room or very inappropriate text messages, both in timing and subject. She missed hearing Xander complain about the latest teen girl fad, and Willow beaming about the magically inclined wizkids they'd found that week. She missed seeing Giles clean his glasses and try not to scream in British frustration...
But no matter how much she missed them, she knew they were part of what had been holding her back all these years. She'd spent so much of her life living up to people's expectations and being afraid of another person she loved leaving her that she'd missed the memo of living her life for her, just for Buffy. It was something she'd known for quite some time, but it was Jack who had finally given her the perfect opportunity. She just had to make it through and not let herself run back to the familiar at the first sign of trouble.
She could do it. She was Buffy, the Slayer who had defeated the First Evil and changed the course of history. She could do anything she put her mind to, damnit!
Title: So Buffy Met Jack...
Authors: Amy tainted_crimson & Sarah magicom
Crossover: Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Torchwood
Spoilers: Through Buffy / Angel series finales and Torchwood Series 2 / Doctor Who Series 4. (Some elements borrowed from Season 8 comics)
Rating: FR-15
Disclaimer: Everything is owned by Joss/Fox and Russell/BBC!
Summary: After spending a few weeks trapped in an extratemporal holding cell together, Captain Jack Harkness offered Buffy Summers a job at Torchwood. And how could she ever turn down an offer like that?
Chapters: 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07
ADJUSTING
Jack was walking across the Hub, his first cup of coffee in one hand, when the cog door rolled open. He looked up sharply. Buffy was looking a little worse for wear.
Ianto was already in (alright, he hadn't, technically, left - unless you counted the fact that he'd gone out early that morning to buy milk for the coffee) and Gwen hadn't yet arrived.
Jack grinned as Buffy stepped over the threshold. "Let me guess," he said with a laugh, "jetlag?"
She hadn't gotten more than three steps inside the door when Ianto was putting a clearly much-needed coffee in her hand. He'd seen her coming on the CCTV. He gave her the drink and slipped back to his computer terminal, all without a word.
"How did it go last night?" Jack asked, stepping to the side to allow her to get to her own desk. "Did you manage to find your way home without getting lost?"
"Mmm," she groaned sleepily, feeling like someone had hit her in the head with a mallet. And she really did know how that felt, so it was an apt comparison! "Got home, wasn't killed by boxes. Managed to get three of them unpacked, ate free pizza... I declare it a win," she mumbled out, carefully plopping into her chair and setting her messenger bag on her desk.
Taking a long drink of the coffee beverage Ianto had given her, she once again nearly melted right into the floor. "I love Ianto Jones' coffee making skills!" she called out, knowing the man in question would hear her and hoping it landed him back in Flusterland.
Ianto looked over at Buffy, startled, then realized she was looking at him. His eyes flitted briefly to Jack, who looked entirely too amused for Ianto's liking and would clearly be no help at all. He turned his gaze emphatically back to his computer screen, trying very hard to pointedly ignore the both of them, for all that he could practically hear Jack snickering into his coffee. Great. Now there were two of them. He wondered if his face was as flushed as it felt.
Jack leaned over Buffy's desk slightly. "Well done," he said. He glanced at his watch. "And within five minutes of arriving." He straightened up again. "Take twenty minutes to settle in and finish your coffee, then you're coming down to the firing range with me," he told her. He didn't wait for a reply before turning to take his daily morning tour of the vaults to check on their 'guests'. It had been neither a question nor a suggestion.
Buffy scowled at his back as he retreated, and she wondered for a moment if he could dodge flying objects as well as Xander -- the carpenter-turned-Watcher had learned that skill very quickly when he'd been put in charge of dozens of teenage girls with lots of mood swings and chocolate cravings.
After a few minutes of sipping the heavenly coffee and wandering through the alien database (she found another suspiciously demony alien), she sighed and heaved herself out of her chair that was surprisingly comfortable when suffering from jet-lag. Grabbing a file folder from her bag, she walked over to Ianto's station with an innocent smile. "Oh Ianto... How ya doin'?"
Ianto turned his attention away from his screen long enough to look at her suspiciously. The smile alone made him certain she had some kind of evil ulterior motives. "Why?" he asked, drawing the syllable out warily.
Laughing at his very appropriate reaction, she waved a hand dismissively. "Don't worry, I'm not gonna terrorize you anymore right now," she said between giggles, then pulled a few pages out of the folder. "This is what you gave me for my coat," she said, handing them to him. "And I was told to talk to you about stuff for a training room, down in one of the little cubbies not being used."
"Stuff for a training room?" he said a little distractedly as he read over her form. "You can fill out paperwork," he said, clearly a little impressed. "I guess I'll let Jack keep you," he told her, sliding the papers into a folder on his desk. He turned to look at her again. "What kind of stuff?" he continued from his previous train of thought, then held up a hand before she could say. "Wait." He took another set of forms out and gave them to her. "Just fill these in."
She'd gotten excited for a moment when he'd asked her about the kind of stuff, but then she just narrowed her eyes at him and took the forms. "...'kay," she finally said, turning and continuing to give him the Buffyesque Evil Eye until she was halfway back to her desk. At that point she just couldn't take it and had to stumble back to her chair amid another fit of giggles. He really was way too much fun.
Ianto looked over at her, suppressed a smile without a great degree of success, shook his head at her, then turned back to his work. He heard Jack coming before he appeared.
"Buffy," Jack called from the doorway. "Down here," he said, waiting for her at the top of the stairs. Time for her firearms proficiency.
Sighing like a kid being carted off for the first day of school, Buffy gulped down the last of her coffee and left the mug and her new paperwork on her desk for when she returned. She sent a pout Ianto's way, hoping to get another smile out of him, then trudged over to the stairs. "Let's go," she said with a resigned tone and a broad gesture of an arm.
Ianto gave her a slightly amused raised eyebrow and watched them disappear into the sublevels of the Hub. He glanced up at the CCTV. Gwen's car was in the carpark now. She'd be arriving any moment. He started her coffee.
Jack lead Buffy down narrow corridors to Torchwood's firing range. He didn't say anything as he allowed her to enter in front of him. An array of paper weevils were scattered through the tunnel-like room and a variety of firearms were on the table. "Don't worry about those," he told her, picking up a pair of yellow-tinted glasses and handing a pair to her. "Your personal sidearm will do just fine."
She looked at the glasses with distaste before slipping them on, then pulled out her 'personal sidearm' as he called it (she called it the Gun of Personal Doom) from where she'd kept it at the small of her back. It was the only place it felt natural, since she'd spent so many years toting around a stake in the same way.
"I can do those too, if you want to be really thorough," she commented, hoping she didn't sound as pouty and sarcastic as she felt. She couldn't help it -- she'd do what he'd asked, she understood that part of the game and was willing to play by the rules, but that didn't mean that she was ever going to grow to be happy about it.
"How do you want me to do this, exactly?" she questioned, wanting to get it over and done with so she could get back to bothering Ianto and planning her personal Torchwood space.
He only raised an unamused eyebrow at her comment about the other guns and plucked her gun from her grasp as she finished talking, setting it down on the table.
"Alright," he said calmly, but without any of the lightheartedness that usually coloured his tone. "Let's have this conversation. You don't like guns. I get that. I've worked with people who object to them before. I don't have a problem with that philosophy on principle. However, I have to think of the safety of the people on this team. I think you understand your role here and I believe you're aware of what lead to it." He made a vague gesture towards the ceiling. "They're not fighters. They were brought here for other skills. Yes, they've been trained to defend themselves, but it's not in any way their natural inclination. Of course, you have to protect yourself, first of all. You're no good to yourself or anyone else if you're dead. Your next duty is to protect them. Now," he said, spreading his arms to encompass the table, "you have no gun. You come on the scene and there's a situation. It's the critical moment and it's three metres away," he said, pointing to one of the paper targets in the tunnel. "You have exactly two seconds to take care of it before someone dies. What are you going to do about it?" He crossed his arms. "Gunless," he reminded her. He looked at her for a moment. "Because you're fast, but you're not that fast."
Buffy stared at him with a storm building inside her, a hurricane of calm anger that brought the Slayer to the surface and left her wanting to break something. She waited until he'd finished speaking to find her own voice, quiet and calm and clearly holding in a great deal of emotion. "What do I do about it?" she repeated, her fingers tightening around the gun in her hand. "I make sure I'm the one that dies."
Grabbing the gun from the table and stepping forward, her hands were a flurry of movement and she took only half a second to aim before pulling the trigger. The bullet hit the target at dead center and she turned back to him with fury in her eyes. "It's what I do, Jack. I protect people and I die for them, because it's what I was born to do. 'Death is my gift,'" she spat out, not bothering to try shielding him from the cold fury she'd turned on her closest friends whenever they had questioned her motives or her strength.
"You think I don't know why I'm here?" she all but demanded of him. "I've gone from one death wish to another, and I'm okay with that. I will do whatever I have to to protect your people, whether I like it or not. Don't you dare question that about me again or we will have serious problems."
He watched her carefully as she spoke. His expression didn't waver and he didn't flinch when she pulled the trigger. "Yeah, I just have one issue with that," he told her firmly. "There's no 'dying instead' clause in your contract. It's not an option, and if you think it is, then you weren't listening." He stepped back, turning slightly to face the array of targets instead of Buffy. He turned the conversation back to business, effectively closing the discussion. "Since this test is in the interest of accuracy, rather than humanitarianism," he announced, "just shoot all the targets in the head, then you can go back upstairs."
Turning back away from him, she did as told, squeezing the trigger in quick succession and watching each bullet slice through paper in just the right spot every time. It was easy for a Slayer to fire a gun and not miss their target, but the weapon felt strange in her hand. She and her abilities were ancient and it was new and wrong. But she was still a perfect shot.
She tossed the pair of glasses on the table as she went past, heading out of the room without another word.
Jack didn't follow her out of the firing range. He took his time removing the damaged targets and replacing them with fresh ones for whoever used the room next. He could have left the job for Ianto, but he felt like doing it. When the room had been tidied up and was ready for its next use, then - and only then - did he head upstairs. He passed through the main area of the Hub without speaking to or smiling at anyone, walking up into his office. Ianto glanced at Gwen, who clearly had no idea what the problem was, then looked at Buffy, who had also been uncharacteristically quiet since she'd rejoined them.
"Went that well, did it?" Ianto remarked. His voice was soft, but in the relative silence of the room, it carried.
Buffy had been sitting at her desk, staring down at the empty space in the forms Ianto had given her, when she heard Jack come up the stairs. She hadn't looked and he hadn't paused. It was only when Ianto spoke that she looked up, a sadness replacing the anger in her eyes. "Just about," she confirmed quietly, finally picking up a pen to start writing in requested items.
Ianto made Buffy and Jack each a coffee, silently setting Buffy's on her desk before heading up to Jack's office. Gwen caught his eyes on the way past. One of them had to go. His gaze told her that he had this one.
He put the mug on Jack's desk and sat down. Jack was intently signing forms. When he realized Ianto wasn't leaving, he spoke - still without looking up. "To what do I owe the pleasure?" he asked without any actual pleasure in his voice.
"Well, you're both doing your paperwork. I probably shouldn't complain," Ianto said smoothly.
Jack put his pen down and looked at Ianto, finally. "We had a small difference of opinion."
Ianto nodded sagely. "Ah. The true first test."
Jack raised his eyebrows. "Oh? What's that supposed to mean?" he asked. There was no accusation in his voice. Just a tiny amount of defensiveness, if anything.
"Professional differences of opinion tend to end with you laying down the law, and well they should. You can be as good-natured as you like the rest of the time, but you still have to be the boss at the end of the day. If she can handle that without walking, then she can handle working here."
Jack considered that for a moment. "Am I too easy-going the rest of the time?"
Ianto shrugged. "I'm not complaining," he replied, standing up.
"Can you send Buffy in, please?" Jack asked, picking up his pen again. He turned his attention back to the paperwork.
Ianto caught Buffy's eyes as he left Jack's office and nodded towards its door to let her know Jack wanted to see her.
If Jack hadn't asked for her, Buffy would have gone herself before too long. Sitting at her desk like an obedient worker was just code for extensive thinking on touch subjects. She tended to do that quickly these days -- the older she got, the more precious time seemed. There had been too many chances to put things right that had been wasted because of the Summers' Stubbornness.
Pulling another folder from her bag, she took a deep breath before walking up to Jack's office, silently opening and closing the door behind her. Approaching the desk, she quickly held up a hand and hurriedly said, "Before you say anything: I'm sorry. For how things happened earlier. I just... I get very defensive when people question me like that, because it's been happening for years, but while I don't regret what I said, I shouldn't had acted like that."
"And," she continued in a quieter voice, carefully setting the folder on the desk in front of him, "this is what we talked about yesterday."
The forms about procedures following her death. The request was for either Torchwood or the New Council to dispose of her body via cremation, and for the ashes to be given to her sister, Dawn Summers, for safekeeping within the protected New Council Headquarters.
And then there was an explanation as to why. A very detailed rationale that had taken her the better part of the night and almost the entire pizza to create, and then an early call to her sister for a little proofreading. It detailed the events surrounding all three of her deaths and resurrections, including things that she'd previously been pretty vague about with Jack. She wanted there to be no doubt for him when he signed that last page.
Jack nodded as he took it. He made a clear space by shifting some of Ianto's paperwork and set it down. "I'm going to put it right here, for now," he told her, "because I want to make sure I read it properly." He folded his hands on the desk in front of him. He hoped she understood that she was free to sit, if she wanted to.
"I'm not going to say you were wrong, because I understand where you're coming from," he told her, "but there was one thing that you said that bothered me and I touched on it already." He took a sip of his coffee before he continued. "I know this is a big transition for you. You're not used to this kind of work environment and you sure as hell aren't used to this side of me. The thing I want to make sure is absolutely clear, is that there are no acceptable casualties here. I only have a good day when everyone comes back here alive. None of your lives is worth more or less than any of the others, so I don't want any more of this talk of noble self-sacrifice, okay? I don't pretend to know what was expected of you when you were the Slayer, but you're on a team now." He let a smile form. "And that is, apparently, the whether you like it or not bit, because Ianto just came in here to bat for you and he doesn't do that for just anyone."
A small smile formed in response to his words and she let herself glance out the glass at the man who seemed to be so diligently working on something. "It's the shrine," she admitted with a smirk, turning her attention back to Jack. "I sent him the plans this morning."
Returning to seriousness, she carefully sat in the chair in front of his desk, a signal that things had moved well out of hostile territory. "I was always told I was part of a 'team'," she told him quietly, "but it was never true. In my line of work, Slayers were always alone, despite how many people tried to help me. I was the one who had to make the tough choices and be blamed for the consequences." She looked down at her lap, her hands wringing themselves into white. "I can promise that I'll try to find another way, but I'll always make the call of someone else over me. It's just the way I am."
"I understand that," he said, "and it's part of your charm, but you don't have to make those calls anymore. That's my job. I appreciate your input, same as them," he said with a nod towards the window that looked out on their teammates in the Hub, "and I don't want you to keep your opinions to yourself, but I make the final call. Also, if saving the day requires throwing somebody into harm's way? It's going to be me. I get up again. Clear?" His tone was gentle but broached no argument.
She smiled and nodded, acknowledging that she wasn't the one in the difficult position anymore, but also thinking to herself that he wouldn't always be there, as much as he tried to be. "You know, you and me, we have that whole not staying dead thing in common," she confided with a smirk. "Except I do it with a bit more style."
"Maybe, but I do it with consistency and I like to think that counts for something." He grinned. "I do everything else with style, so I suppose I can let you have that one."
He studied her for a moment. "And, disappointingly, the power struggle again ends without the need for naked wrestling," he remarked with an exaggerated sigh. "I have to get a bit of a megalomaniac in here sometime."
Buffy stared at him with an incredulous look. "I don't think there is ever going to be a need for naked wrestling, long as I'm involved," she informed him, then chuckled quietly. "Though I definitely know my boyfriend would go for the idea, but he'd probably beat you up for the prime spot."
Jack leaned forward. "That's the spirit," he said before letting a wicked grin spread across his features. He sat back again. "Tell you what, though, we'll let you wrestle the winner."
Narrowing her eyes like a kid whose sibling had just declared intentions for something despicable that called for instant payback. She pointed a finger at him in a threatening promise and said, "I'm telling Ianto on you," then rose and headed for the door.
Jack smiled like the Cheshire Cat as he called after her, "Go ahead if you think you can tell him anything about my behaviour that would surprise him!"
Turning at the door, she stuck her tongue out at him like a four-year-old, then laughed as she headed back down to her station. When she passed Ianto, she informed him that, "He's being impossible again."
"Glad to hear it," Ianto remarked mildly. Buffy was doing that giggling thing again. They'd apparently worked things out.
About half an hour passed before an alert came up on Ianto's screen. "Jack!" he called. Jack poked his head around the office doorway. "We have a report of a weevil in the Grangetown Rail Station."
Jack looked at Buffy. "You're with me," he told her. "Time to bag your first weevil." He glanced at Gwen as Ianto appeared with his coat and slid it up over his shoulders with practiced ease. "Hold the fort." He looked at Ianto. "Let us know if it moves."
Having given his instructions, he swept out the door, waiting in the lift for Buffy to catch up before heading up to the surface.
Buffy grabbed her jacket, something cheap and denim that she'd found in the first box she'd unpacked and wouldn't mind if it got ruined, and hurried after him, slipping into the jacket as they rode up to the surface. "Oh goodie, my first 'Torchwood vamp'," she said with a hint of sarcasm, using her self-assigned classification for the creatures they seemed to deal with as often as she'd had vampires running around Sunnydale.
They sped towards Grangetown Station in the SUV. They were maybe half-way there when Ianto's voice came over the comms. Today, Buffy would be able to hear it, if she remembered to wear her communicator.
"Jack, it's on the move. Reports that it's moving north along Clive Street, towards Penarth Road. A security guard at the rail station was injured, by the way. He's being taken to hospital with lacerations to his arm and shoulder."
Jack touched his ear to activate the device. "Understood," he replied. He looked at Buffy. "Keep your eyes open. They don't usually come out in the streets during the day and I don't like it when they start acting all weird. It usually means something bad is going on that I don't know about."
"I know the feeling," she commented, watching the streets that were still unfamiliar as they raced past. Buffy was suddenly very glad that she'd remembered the earpierce thingy just before she'd left her building that morning, and that she'd thought it important enough to go back for it. She would have looked pretty stupid if she'd forgotten it on her second day of work.
Glancing at Jack, she confided, "Things going wonky in Sunnydale almost always meant impending apocalypse and a new Big Bad to deal with."
Jack nodded. "Well, hopefully we're dealing with one crazy weevil here and not an impending emergency of weevil-agitating proportions."
He reached up to activate his earpiece again. "Ianto, where is it?" They'd sped up Corporation Road and had reached Penarth Road, but he didn't know if the weevil had gotten that far yet. They could really motor when they wanted to.
"Turn right," Ianto instructed him. "Reports have it moving east along Penarth Road, just past the bridge. It seems to be headed towards the city centre."
Jack glanced at Buffy a little uneasily, then made the right that Ianto had indicated. They were soon on top of the weevil. It was loping along the side of the road. It actually looked terrified... well, as terrified as a weevil's face was capable of looking. Jack pulled over, parking the SUV half on the pavement. "We have to take it on foot," he explained as he opened his door. As he came around the front of the vehicle, he tossed Buffy a small aerosol can. "This spray temporarily subdues them," he told her. "Well, 'subdue' is a strong word..." he added thoughtfully as he took off at a run after the weevil. It seemed to sense that it was suddenly being chased and increased its pace.
Buffy had only ever seen the weevils that were in Torchwood's holding cells, but something about this one still struck her as different. Odd. Wrong. And that did not have her going 'I have a good feeling about this.'
She barely had to call on any of her Slayer speed to get ahead of Jack, closing the distance between her and the weevil without breaking a sweat. She tackled it easily, the both of them crashing to the pavement as the thing snarled at her. What was with all the aliens and their snarlfests? She was seriously starting to suspect that demons and aliens were distantly related, maybe one of those ancient genetic things she hadn't paid attention to in high school.
The weevil had turned on her in an instant, trying to go for her neck with its sharp teeth, and again she found herself making that comparison with fledglings. Weevils really did equal Torchwood Vampires. A good punch left it stunned for a second, shaking its head as she tried to regain the upper hand.
"The spray!" Jack shouted as he caught up. Pedestrians were stopping to watch at this point. He ignored them. He pulled a black cloth bag out of his coat pocket, ready to cover its head as soon as Buffy had it under control.
Buffy felt like she was pepper-spraying a stupid mugger as she sprayed the poor alien creature, watching as it almost immediately stopped fighting. Good thing, too, considering their growing audience. She wondered if they could use the PCP excuse in Cardiff...
Jack quickly slid the bag over the creature's head and then heaved it up over his shoulder, striding the distance back to the SUV without acknowledging the small audience in any way. He slung the weevil into the reinforced rear of the vehicle and slammed it closed before climbing into the driver's seat. He did a u-turn in the road and sped away the moment Buffy got in.
He activated the comm. "We've got the weevil," he said.
"I know," Ianto told him. "Mobile phone camera footage is already up on YouTube. Isn't technology grand? I'll erase it after I've traced the source."
Jack looked at Buffy, rolling his eyes before he continued the conversation. "I don't suppose there's anything else suspicious going on?" he asked. "Any notable rift activity, for example?"
There was a pause, likely while Ianto checked. "Nothing in particular," Ianto told him. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Why?"
"Just wondering if weird weevil behaviour is this week's portent of doom."
"If it is, doom is keeping its head down," Ianto assured him. "So far, at least."
Buffy rolled her eyes at the mention of YouTube; the Minis spent far too much time on that website for her own personal well-being. And apparently it was just going to give poor Ianto some extra work... but she'd bet a handful of kittens that he'd do it efficiently and with his typical Ianto style.
Glancing over at Jack, she asked, "Do you guys generally run checks on odd causes of deaths, even if they don't have the whole police red flag thing going on? Just wondering. That's usually my version of This Week's Message of Doom Is..."
Jack nodded. "Yeah, we have programs running in our computer systems that monitor news reports and police reports and blogs and... well, every source of information we can get into - for things that might interest us, whether they've been flagged that way or not. It filters out results and sends them to Ianto. He keeps an eye on them in case something comes up that we need to look into," Jack explained. "Odd causes of death included."
She nodded slowly, turning to look toward the back of the SUV, slightly uncomfortable with the weevil just being back there. It made her feel like she was sitting on a fresh grave just waiting for a newly turned vamp to pop up at her.
"Maybe we should look at non-odd deaths then," she suggested, feeling so much like the new girl who had no idea how things worked and so every suggestion ended up being completely redundant. "I once had to fight a demon that preyed on sick kids, and the only sign of weird stuff was kids dying of a bad flu strain."
Jack nodded. "But wouldn't there have been more than usual? The program would flag that. We're going to have to wait for something to surface. Sometimes, you just can't take the fight to your adversary until they bother showing up."
They arrived back at the Hub, Jack, again, carrying the weevil out of the SUV and all the way down to the vaults. He showed Buffy how the door mechanisms worked, in case she needed to use them at some point.
Buffy followed obediently, watching everything Jack did and doing her best to memorize it so she wouldn't have to ask about it later. She really did want things with this job to go well, and so far she'd just ended up feeling like a kid who kept doing everything wrong. It was strange to be back in that sort of situation; it was exactly how she'd felt when she'd started college. She hadn't liked it then and she didn't like it now.
Ianto met them at the top of the stairs. "Jack, I managed to hack into our videographer's Blackberry and erase the original video, then I erased the copy on YouTube. There's a problem, however, as the BBC has somehow managed to get a copy of it and are running it as one of the headlines on the 24 hour news."
Jack sighed. "Alright, let me make a couple of calls. Anything else?"
"The Prime Minister called," Ianto began. Jack groaned. "He wanted to come here tomorrow," Ianto continued, as though the interruption had never happened. "But I told him that wasn't possible. He wants to schedule it for next week. I told him we'd get back to him."
"Tell him 'never' is good for us," Jack said.
"He wants to talk to you, Jack."
"I thought keeping him off my back was the skill that impressed him so much," Jack countered, striding towards his office before the conversation got any more unpleasant. "Show it off."
"Also, the mayor saw the video and wants to know why you assaulted and abducted one of his citizens in broad daylight."
Jack stopped and spun around. "Seriously?" he asked incredulously.
"No," Ianto replied calmly. "I just wanted to get your attention." He handed Jack the mug of coffee he'd been carrying. "BBC."
Jack was about to say something, but let himself be distracted by the coffee. "Yeah, I'll call right now," he said, stepping towards his office. "But I'm not talking to the Prime Minister. Keep him out of my hair," he called over his shoulder. "I'm serious."
Ianto gave a very put-upon nod to Jack's back as he turned to go back to his own workspace.
"How was weevil hunting?" he asked Buffy as he passed her.
"Kinda boring," she admitted, watching Gwen seem to debate something and then head off to follow Jack rather than stay and chat with the newbie. She didn't blame her. Arguing with a national television network sounded like a lot more fun. "I'm used to getting a bit more fight out of my baddies, and a lot more talking, lot less snarling. Makes me kinda wish there was a higher rate of vamp activity around here... Stupid Rift," she grumbled, hands in her pockets as she leaned against the edge of her desk.
"You know," Buffy started, a grin slowly blossoming, "if you ever want someone else to field the calls from the PM, you can count me as a volunteer. I think he'd be more than a little surprised at having to deal with me again." She had to admit, she'd made a sizable effort last time to leave an impression.
"Jack told me that he'd offered you a job, as well. Something about twelve shades of embarrassed? I thought we'd save you for when he visits. Kind of a surprise," he said, packing a lot of evil into a very small smile.
"Ooh, very nice," she said approvingly, giving him a mischievous smile. "Better make sure to have a camera on hand for when he trips over his own oversized feet. Believe me, it's something you don't want to miss."
Still leaning against her desk, she sort of twiddled her thumbs in the pockets of her coat, quietly thinking and changing hesitant glances over at Ianto. Finally, she pushed away from the desk and walked over to him, uncertainty etched along the edges of her otherwise calm expression. "Is there something I should be doing?" she asked him, completely serious and almost a little nervous. "Or... something I could do? Cause that paperwork from earlier is gonna take me ten minutes, twenty tops, and then I'll have to start playing with office supplies and seeing what I can balance on my nose, and that just doesn't seem like a productive use of time."
Ianto turned his attention to her when she approached, but he really hadn't been expecting her to ask for more work. He couldn't remember the last time someone had finished their assigned work and asked for more at Torchwood. Usually they just invented some new and disruptive way to fuck around. He glanced over at the papers on her desk. "I suppose when that training room is done and you've run out of work, you'll be doing that," he mused. "So I suppose if there's anything you need to learn, you'll have to learn it now."
He looked at her. "How long have you actually been in Cardiff?" he asked. "Only, I heard you telling Jack that you hadn't unpacked yet. You said you didn't know your way around? You could look at some maps and read about the city... try to get a feel for it before you go out there and explore it. That would be productive, especially once you've gotten established here and get sent somewhere on your own in the course of an investigation." He put his pen down. "And just a recommendation? Your first day off, go be a tourist. By 'be a tourist', I mean go do all the most touristy things you can find. There are brochures upstairs in the tourist office. Walk along the harbour, go to the market, visit the castle. There are some nice views of the city from the top of the Keep on a clear day." He turned back to his work. "Someone recommended that to me when I moved to London to work at Canary Wharf," he told her as he glanced through some forms. "I was skeptical about it, but it helped a lot."
Nodding slowly as she took in his suggestions, she gave him a small smile. "Okay, I'll do that," she agreed, taking a few backward steps, not wanting to bother him and not feeling playful enough to pull out the flirting. "Thanks, Ianto." And then she turned and went back to her desk, sitting there for a moment and just thinking before returning to the paperwork for her training room.
The Hub seemed too quiet, even with the sounds of their prehistoric watchdog flying overhead. It was quiet and strange and she was suddenly hit with the strangest sense of homesickness... for Cleveland.
She missed her friends. She missed having Faith send her weird faces from the other side of a conference room or very inappropriate text messages, both in timing and subject. She missed hearing Xander complain about the latest teen girl fad, and Willow beaming about the magically inclined wizkids they'd found that week. She missed seeing Giles clean his glasses and try not to scream in British frustration...
But no matter how much she missed them, she knew they were part of what had been holding her back all these years. She'd spent so much of her life living up to people's expectations and being afraid of another person she loved leaving her that she'd missed the memo of living her life for her, just for Buffy. It was something she'd known for quite some time, but it was Jack who had finally given her the perfect opportunity. She just had to make it through and not let herself run back to the familiar at the first sign of trouble.
She could do it. She was Buffy, the Slayer who had defeated the First Evil and changed the course of history. She could do anything she put her mind to, damnit!