VS3:04 -- "Half-Baked", Part One
There's something funny going on in the kitchen of Fairy Cakes Bakery, but which Torchwood operative will investigate the case? Perhaps Captain Jack Harkness, running around the city of Cardiff on the tail of a dastardly... antique? Or Gwen Cooper, feeling decidedly under-the-weather on what should be a day to relax and revive? Maybe Ianto Jones, when he's done protecting his own flat from unwanted invaders? Or could it be Torchwood's newest member, JJ Namkung, who needs just a bit more training on his new alien lifestyle? No! The task falls to one Rhys Williams, manager Secret Agent Man. It's a difficult job, but if anyone can protect the population of Cardiff from potentially alien cupcakes, biscuits and tarts, he can!
Half-Baked
by: blue_fjords, Galadriel, rm, such_heights
JJ Namkung was not a morning person. Morning was the time for elderly ladies, people with babies, and Captain Jack Harkness. JJ was none of those things. Unfortunately for him, being a reporter was not conducive to lengthy lie-ins, not if he wanted to be a good one, at any rate. And JJ Namkung wanted to be the best damn reporter in the world.
On this Tuesday morning, JJ stumbled out of bed when the third of his four alarm clocks went off. He took his morning piss in a fog. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair in that same fog. He was already out the door by the time he realised he'd forgotten something.
"Probably just to shower," he announced to a stray cat. The cat licked its paw.
He almost fell off the bus when it rumbled to an incomplete stop at the Plass. "Wanker," he mumbled under his breath at the bus driver.
The bus trundled on, unconcerned, leaving a cloud of exhaust to push him toward the Tourist Information Centre. JJ wiped his suddenly clammy hands on his denims, took a breath, and repeated his personal tagline: JJ Namkung, undercover and uncovering the truth. It wasn't quite perfect yet, but it was close. With a deep breath, he entered his new domain, ready to tackle his first day of running the TIC on his own.
He was immediately captivated by the smell of freshly-made tea. There on the counter was a thermos, labelled "JJ's Thermos," fittingly enough, and stamped with the Torchwood logo. He took several large gulps before he realized it had been sitting on a notepad:
JJ - DON'T DRINK THE TEA!
He spit up tea all over the counter. His first day and he was going to die! Tea dripped down his chin, and he looked frantically for something to wipe it up with, or contain it for poison-testing, or, shit, wasn't there supposed to be a panic button around here?! He used the note to wipe his mouth, and saw another note underneath it:
ALWAYS SCAN FOR ALIEN CONTAMINANTS - JUST BECAUSE THE THERMOS SAYS IT'S FOR YOU DOESN'T MEAN THAT WE LEFT IT!
The penmanship abruptly changed on the note:
Good morning, JJ! I have left you some tea. Please rest assured, it is 100% water and tea leaves, 100% from this planet. There's a handheld scanner on the second shelf of the counter if you'd like to check.
JJ fumbled for the device. The second shelf had one copy of "Wuthering Heights" (huh), a maroon box, a tube of Hobnobs (chocolate), some type of camera and what looked like a Tesco's checkout scanner, labelled 'Scanner'. He seized it and aimed it at his thermos, then paused. "Dammit," he muttered, reaching for the note:
You have to turn it on first. That's the blue button on the bottom. Aim it at the substance, and then press the orange button on the left side while holding down the violet button on the right. To see something that's inside something else, pull back on the lever on the left side - NOT THE RIGHT!
Oh, God, he was going to need to grow another arm. But finally the screen flickered to life and reported, "Tea by Ianto Jones, made from Bi Luo Chun and hot water." He sighed with relief and turned back to the note:
GOTCHA, DIDN'T WE?
Moving on. Jack and I have an errand this morning. Gwen theoretically has the day off but will probably come by later. Running the tourist booth is pretty basic - I'll be able to give you a full rundown later today or tomorrow in case there's anything we've missed. In the meantime, why don't you get acquainted with some of the rules and regulations of Torchwood? There's a training video set on the first shelf of the counter. You can watch them right here in the TIC.
We'll be in touch throughout the morning. Ring me if you have any questions, and welcome to Torchwood!
Ianto Jones
DON'T BURN THE PLACE DOWN! - CJH
JJ bent down, pulled out a crumbly cardboard box and hefted it to a dry corner of the counter. The videos looked even older than the brochures and knickknacks on display in the TIC.
He pulled out the first video, "So, You've Joined Torchwood! Jolly Good! Twelve Things Every Operative Must Know in Order to Survive the First Twelve Days." The video slipped from its case and cracked on the counter. JJ sighed. First hour solo in the front office, and he could already tell it was going to be one of those days.
Ianto winced as he watched Jack stroll through the shop like he owned it. Not, at least, in the loud, brash, knock-things-over-and-don't-even-apologise way he sometimes affected, but still, did Jack really have to pick up every single object in the shop to determine if it was alien or not?
Jack ran his hand over the top of an ancient typewriter, the sort that looked like it would shear off a finger if you missed a key.
"Man, I haven't seen one of these since..."
"Jack," Ianto, hissed, nodding his head towards the shop owner, who was clearly watching them and following their conversation.
"My father had one, from the War," Jack corrected, the W always clearly capitalised, even though Jack could have been speaking of any number of wars, several of which hadn't even happened yet. Nonetheless, it was clear the shift to the lie (no one used typewriters in the fifty-first century, surely) was purely for Ianto's benefit.
Except it wasn't, not really. Sure, it was better if the shopkeeper didn't overhear, but Ianto would've actually liked to have known when the last time was Jack had seen a typewriter just like that.
"We're never going to find this thing," Ianto muttered, as Jack picked up a paperweight and began tossing it lightly in his palm.
Jack shrugged. "Come on, isn't this fun? Nice change of pace? An end-of-the-world-free morning. Quality time!" Jack paused and put the paperweight down. "Isn't this the sort of thing you fantasise about?"
"No," Ianto said tersely.
Jack laughed, and then gave a low whistle as something caught his attention.
"And here we are," he said, picking up an object the size of a salad plate that looked suspiciously, Ianto thought, like a spider made of copper, except for the part where it had ten legs, each with five joints.
"Is that it?"
"This is definitely it," Jack said, pleased. "I haven't seen one of these since..."
"Your father? The War?" Ianto teased for the benefit of the shopkeeper.
"Nearly." Jack was distracted. "It's a kid's toy. I had one. Way back. You just have to activate it," Jack said, turning the thing over and looking for the future's equivalent of an on-switch.
As he found it, there was a quick sound of gears and electronics, and the emergence of a small blue flashing light from the miniature metal beast's underside.
"And then you let it go. It's like tag. But with a machine meant to avoid you. Fun stuff," he said, continuing to hold the small robot while its legs moved faster and yet more futilely in the air. "Different model than I had, though," Jack added, gesturing with the thing, which suddenly sparked.
"Ow!"
Ianto watched in mute annoyance and then with something approaching horror as the thing leapt out of Jack's hand, hit the ground, turned itself over and began to scuttle away. He stepped in front of it, thinking that would be enough to arrest its progress, as if it were one of those vacuuming robots, but it seemed content to pick its way over his shoe instead; when he went to grab it, it vaulted away.
"Shit," Jack said, and turned to race after the thing.
"Jack, should I...?"
"No, no, I've got it! I'll be back at the Hub in ten! I swear!" Jack shouted to him as he ran out the door.
Ianto sighed and wondered if Jack had done it on purpose. "I'll go pay off the shopkeeper," Ianto said, resigned. So much for a quiet morning.
Rhys Williams stepped off his front stoop and into bright fall sunshine. It was the kind of perfect fall morning that made him wish he lived in a country cottage in a bucolic little village in the middle of nowhere. The kind of place where people stepped outside on days like today and greeted their neighbours with cheery waves and, "Won't you pop in for tea later?" and little terriers nipped at heels and gave big dumb doggie grins. Not the kind of place where he was greeted by the sight of Marc Daniels from down the road puking into Mrs. McGoogle's rhododendrons after returning from one hell of a bender, and the Johnsons' mutt pissing on his front tyre. Or the kind of place where wives startled like scared rabbits when their husbands tried to kiss them goodbye for the day.
Rhys sighed, shooed the Johnsons' dog away, got into his car and pulled out of the drive. He honked at Marc Daniels and waved, smiling good naturedly, completely ignoring the other man's rather bleary death glare. Daniels was a transplant to Cardiff and always supported England. The man deserved a hangover.
Rhys could feel the sunshine reasserting his good mood as he drove to Harwood's. He spotted a bit of traffic snarl and cleverly avoided it by zipping down a cramped side street, narrowly avoiding a skip that clearly had not been returned to its proper positioning after its last pick-up. He parked in his usual spot at Harwood's and hopped out, whistling the song that'd been playing on the radio.
"Morning, Ruth!" he greeted his secretary as he sailed in. "Any catastrophes so far?" He sniffed the air appreciatively. She'd brought sticky buns, right on!
"Erm," Ruth hedged, and he glanced up at her, mouth full of bun and fingers a sticky, drooly mess. "Mike called in. The baby sicked-up on Vanessa, and you know today's the day her da has his parole hearing for the burgling. And Vanessa had to wash her hair and Mike had to wash the baby, only, you know, it's Mike, and there was an accident with the washing machine and I think it leaked. And, yeah, his brother's a plumber, see."
Rhys swallowed his bun. "So, Mike's not coming in, is that the story?"
"I'm sorry." And she looked very contrite, indeed, mouth downturned and characteristic sparkle in her eyes set to 'dim'.
Rhys looked regretfully at the second sticky bun on his desk. "Where was he going today?"
Ruth opened up her scheduler and trailed her finger over to Mike's name. "Well, it's Tuesday, so it's the Fairy Cake route. You know, in the little van? He goes to the bakery and makes individual deliveries."
Rhys crossed over and peered down at her notebook. She'd decorated the schedule with a different glitter colour for each driver, and he could see at a glance that Tuesday was full of red, green, silver, blue and orange. The only one not driving was the pink line, colour coded for "Rhys Williams, Manager" in Ruth's neat handwriting at the top of the page.
"Right, then. Print me out a route, will you, love? I need to wash the sticky off my hands."
He phoned Gwen from the washroom. She didn't answer. "Gwen! Filling in for Mike today - baby emergency! Sick-up and that sort of thing, the little bugger. Call me if you want something from a bakery, yeah?" He glanced round the washroom, even though he knew he was alone, before adding, "Love you, sweetheart."
Ruth had the route ready for him when he came out, and he heroically offered her his second bun, already thinking about what would be on display at this Fairy Cakes Bakery. She blushed and giggled and wished him good luck. He sighed at the sight of the little delivery van, dwarfed in their lot by all the full-sized lorries. He regretfully patted the side of a big lorry and climbed into the van, firing the ignition. Ruth had marked the location of the bakery with a big pink glitter X. It was on a residential street, Llanishen, off Cathays Cemetery.
Half an hour later, he pulled up in front of a row house that looked exactly like all the other row houses on the street and frowned down at his map. The numbers matched. He wondered if it was strictly legal to run a bakery business out of a house, what with zoning regulations and such. Maybe he'd look that up at some point, just to be on guard for Harwood's best interests.
A tiny elderly man answered the door when he rang the bell and blinked up at him. "Yessss?" he asked, in a quavering hissing voice.
"Rhys Williams, of Harwood's Haulage!" he announced with a bright smile. "I'll be your driver today." The old man continued to look up at him, a rather frozen half-smile, half-frown on his face, and Rhys felt the need to explain. "Uh, Mike is out today, a little problem with his baby and washing machine," and now that he thought about it, that was a bit odd, he should have asked Ruth what Mike was doing with the baby and the washing machine together. "And I'll be making the deliveries. This is Fairy Cakes Bakery, yeah?" It suddenly occurred to him that he could be wrong; after all, Ruth had handwritten it in glitter ink, he should have GPS-ed it or something.
"Identification, please," the old man said finally, and Rhys fumbled for his wallet. The elderly gent's spectacles were smudged and smeared, but he peered from the license to Rhys's face and back again several times before slowly opening the door wider. "Come along."
Rhys pulled the door closed behind him and followed the old man's slow shuffling gait down a dark hall before entering a spacious kitchen. Rhys felt his jaw drop, and he hurriedly closed it, eyes darting around the bakery. He had walked into the Keebler Elves' Retirement Community Bakery.
Four equally tiny senior citizens bustled around low tables grouped in the middle of the room, rolling out dough, mixing batter, and mincing fruit. They hummed while they worked, each one a different song, but the effect was akin to a four-part harmony, although he was certain that the little old lady nearest him was riffing on "Golddigger" and the smallest of them was rumbling a hum to "Three Times a Lady" in an incongruous baritone. More amazing than the noises were the smells! Peach custard, treacle tarts, pumpkin pie, chocolate biscuits… Rhys's mouth began to water and he promptly forgot about the sticky bun he had consumed less than an hour ago. Four large ovens stood along the walls, and a scent pregnant with the promise of mini-cakes wafted from the farthest one, then what looked like red velvet cake, and then apple pie. Something sweet, cream-coloured and soupy simmered on the fourth stove top, just to his left. His stomach rumbled loudly.
His escort did not seem to notice, but gestured to a stack of large white boxes tied with green bows on a table by the door. "Our deliveriesssssss."
Rhys pulled himself together. "Right, I'll be taking these out, then." He gave the man a reassuring smile, and picked up the first few packages. They were deceptively heavy, and it took him several trips to load them all into the van. He could hear his escort arguing with the "Golddigger" hummer as he came back in on his last trip, but he couldn't make out the words. All five little bakers were gathered around the mini-cakes in the far corner. His nose twitched. That creamy soup-like pot, like clotted cream or some-such… surely no one would miss a finger full? He eyed them surreptitiously. They seemed rather involved in their whispered talk. One of them poked at a mini-cake, and the thing caved in on itself, to hoots of derision from the two old ladies. Rhys quickly stuck his finger into the white goop and sucked it off.
Oh. My. God. It tasted like liquid salt. He coughed and gagged as quietly as ever he could, turning away and wiping his hand on his denims. It was bloody terrible.
"Ahem."
Rhys froze, then straightened and turned back to the bakers. They all looked up at him, blinking. It was a little unnerving, but he essayed a rather self-deprecating little smile, clapped his hands together and said, "Well, I'll just get these last boxes here," he jerked his thumb back at the table, "and get out of your hair. Um, it was great to meet you!"
He held out his hand hesitantly, and after a pause, each baker shook it and mumbled something that sounded like "wanker" but he was pretty sure was meant to be "well met." At least, he hoped so. The last baker, the "Golddigger," said nothing. He smiled at her uncertainly. He wondered if the white soupy mixture was her special recipe, and if he should tell her that she'd replaced the sugar with salt. His escort snatched his hand away.
"Five doessssn't sssspeak," he muttered, and it was Rhys's turn to blink. He could have sworn he had heard the two of them arguing, but Five just looked up at him and nodded, the frozen little half-smile, half-frown on her face, too.
"Okay," Rhys said, and hefted the boxes. As he turned to go, he glanced once more at the kitchen over the heads of the bakers, and thus was the only one to see the red velvet cake's oven flip open its own door, reach inside, and take the cake out, sliding the pans onto a cooling rack on one of the low tables in the middle of the floor space. Only the five sets of eyes on him prevented him from dropping the boxes. Don't want to mishandle the clients! His inner voice went to a hysterical edge on the final word, and he firmly told it to shut up. He forced himself to walk at a normal pace to his van. His escort followed him out, and Rhys prided himself on shaking the man's hand before getting in and backing out.
He glanced in his rear-view mirror before driving away. The tiny old man was looking up at the sky and, as Rhys watched, an additional head sprouted up from the man's shoulders, yawned widely, and then fell back down, disappearing into neck folds and tufts of hair and little-old-man cardigan.
Oh, bloody hell.
Gwen sat on the edge of the bathtub, flipping the blister pack from hand to hand. She hadn't missed one. And hey, one skipped period was really only to be expected in this line of work. Besides, she'd had all the other symptoms, the cramps and so on, so a little missed menstruation hadn't felt like the end of the world. But now it was two in a row. Which, well...
"Fuck," Gwen muttered to herself. She dropped the contraceptive pack back onto the counter and left the bathroom, tapping her fingers against her stomach absently.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. She had other plans for today, and honestly, the chances of something untoward happening seemed pretty low. She'd go check in with her GP next time she had a chance; it was probably some kind of deficiency or stress-related issue.
Today was a day off, an almost mythical event in an understaffed Torchwood. JJ was trying, bless him, but as of yet he was no Ianto, and it wasn't as though Jack was going to let him out into the field any time soon. But Jack had insisted that all of them take more or less a day's rest, phones surgically attached to themselves in case of emergency, and Gwen wasn't complaining in the slightest.
She needed to call her parents, and she wanted to pull her weight in the house for once, maybe ring up the estate agents, see if she couldn't organise a viewing or two. She smiled. The sorts of things that once seemed so dull were suddenly exciting in their normality.
She thought she might even make an attempt at dinner, though she hadn't mentioned that to Rhys before he left in the morning, as he held her cooking skills in somewhat dubious regard. She made coffee and sat down in front of her long-neglected personal email account, sorting through missives from elderly relatives with their requisite erratic capitalisation.
She sent off a few carbon copies of the same reply - "Yes, I know, work's been keeping me busy, no, no talk of kids yet, yes, I'm sure I'll see you soon." - and then sat back and started deleting several months' worth of newsletters that she'd signed up for back when she still had the time to read. She took an absent sip of coffee - milky and a little too hot, just the way she liked it - and frowned. The taste sent a twinge of faint nausea right through her. Nausea, two missed periods... Her mouse automatically clicked over to Google.
"Pregnant on the pill" brought up a tonne of results, and she scrolled through, wide-eyed, for a moment before just settling on the top one: a bright pink forum page where mothers were all swapping stories. Someone called "babymamma78" had started a thread about finding out she was pregnant whilst taking the pill and the replies contained similar stories from other women, all laughing merrily about how they couldn't believe they hadn't realised sooner.
Gwen bit her lip, reading further down the page with a sense of dread. A few of the symptoms were clicking with her: the tenderness, the fatigue. Mind you, that was only to be expected with her job, but still. Maybe the tiredness she'd been feeling recently wasn't just due to long hours.
She stared at the computer screen for a long moment before pulling herself together and closing the browser. She could deal with all of this later. Anyway, she reminded herself, there was no sense in leaping to conclusions.
She grabbed the estate agent brochure Rhys had brought home the other day and started going through it with a pen, circling things like 'central location' and 'modern facilities'. Rhys might be after things like a nice garden, but Gwen's priority was speed for those many mornings she spent running out the door and straight into the Hub.
As she kept reading, however, she found her focus shifting. She knew Rhys wanted to move, in part, so they'd one day have space for the kids he had ceased mentioning, sensing it was a tricky subject.
Gwen chewed the end of the pen. She had the whole day; there was no reason she couldn't take a detour from her plans and still get all of her various tasks done. Feeling a sudden rush of resolve, she grabbed her keys and bag, picked up her jacket, and headed out of the flat.
The brisk walk in the cool air felt steadying. This way she could know one way or the other - she'd find out it was nothing, probably, and put it out of her mind. She stopped in at the first chemist's she passed, the door jangling quietly behind her. It was a small shop, and the tests were immediately apparent, lined up on the left, all white and blue and pink. She scanned the array of products, wondering what the difference between all of them could possibly be. She picked up one in the middle of the price range, figuring that would probably be as good as any.
She turned it over in her hands, trying to figure out her plan of attack. She could go and take the test in the Hub. There'd be no one there today apart from JJ, who'd be bombarded with things to do, if Jack and Ianto's matching smirks yesterday were anything to go by. It would be nice and private and out of the way. Perfect. Gwen was about to take the test up to the counter when she paused.
If she was going to the Hub anyway, then surely there'd be a more advanced way of finding out what she wanted to know, one that didn't involve peeing on a stick or any other similar evidence that she'd have to hide. In fact, she was certain Owen had catalogued a whole array of gizmos available for similar purposes.
She put the test back on the shelf. Time to drop in to work after all. Decision made, she realised she felt slightly relieved. A Torchwood-free day just didn't quite make sense to her anymore, it seemed.
Two blocks from the antique shop, Jack watched the metallic spider clamber along the side of a building a good four feet above his reach and considered the very real possibility that he'd grown more stupid during his increasingly long life. He was fairly sure, after all, that these things had not been so hard to catch when he was a kid. Then again, they hadn't, in his experience with them, had a city at their disposal and had stayed confined to relatively open ground. The problem was that the things were designed to learn, so as to more effectively avoid capture, and in Cardiff there was more for them to learn than was strictly appropriate.
Jack briefly considered shooting the thing. He assumed the device was neither clever enough nor fast enough to avoid a shot and, with the amount of input the city was surely providing, it presumably wouldn't detect him drawing his Webley. On the other hand, the people on the street would, and potentially shooting into people's windows over a toy wasn't only something the rest of the team would disapprove of, but something he was fundamentally pretty appalled by, too.
Plus, he really had kind of wanted to show the thing to Ianto. Something from the Rift that was harmless and charming and personal. It had seemed like a good gesture. In the abstract, it still did.
Torchwood, however, was never abstract. Now, if he was lucky, he'd recover the thing, and Ianto would lock it away in the archives with a dryly written and slightly irritated incident report to go along with it. Jack smiled, ruefully. One of these days, there were a hell of a lot of things he was going to have to make up for to that man. Sometimes Jack wondered if he kept letting the list, and others like it, get longer out of some naïve belief that unfinished business would keep those around him alive.
Sighing, he scrubbed a hand over his face. Whether it was in annoyance at the toy for being clever or himself for giving in to nostalgia Jack wasn't sure.
As the training video began, JJ leaned closer to the screen and raised his biro over his spiral-bound notebook. Rote was sometimes the best way to learn, and he was still a reporter after all.
The front door of the TIC banged open and he started, accidentally writing on the palm of his hand. It was the first time the door had opened all day.
"JJ!" Gwen exclaimed. "Wow, I almost... I mean, welcome!" She strode over to the counter and smiled up at him. "How do you like it, so far?"
"Yeah, um, it's great. Just, you know, getting trained," JJ replied, gesturing at the horrible notes that Jack and Ianto had left and at the monitor where Video Instructor Smith was wearing a one-piece bodysuit with attached helmet, boots and gloves.
"What are you watching?" Gwen asked, peering at the screen. Instructor Smith was now on fire.
"The Torchwood training videos. Didn't you watch them?" JJ asked as Instructor Smith walked out of the fire and did a pirouette.
Gwen looked at him blankly.
He hurriedly explained, "Jack and Ianto left them for me. They're supposed to help you not die, or get suckered in by an evil alien, or destroy the world, or get accidentally impregnated… Lots of stuff."
His eyes darted from the screen to her face. Gwen looked a little peaky, but he was missing Instructor Smith's anti-dismemberment lecture and he really wanted to pay attention to that.
Gwen cleared her throat. "I'll leave you to it, shall I? I'll be downstairs if you need anything." She banged on the big black button then pushed impatiently at the secret door and into the corridor, muttering under her breath.
"Ta," JJ called to her back, already distracted as he looked back to the screen. Instructor Smith was bringing in Trainee #1 and Trainee #2 for another demonstration. Both trainees looked a little green as Instructor Smith launched into alien waste clean-up procedures. JJ picked up his biro once more.
Gwen leafed through Owen's notes, a strange, tight feeling growing in her chest as she read further, seeing more and more of Owen in the pages, in his sharp, jagged handwriting, brisk style, and ridiculous doodles. She shook off her memories of the past and focused, reading through until she found a series of grudgingly-written instructions for various devices (at the behest of the coffee boy, and enforced by Harkness. I have much better things to be doing with my time.)
SCANNER:
Does what it says on the tin, kids. Fire it up and put your hand on top of it. Any part of your anatomy would work, but that's no reason to try, Harkness, you sick fuck. The scanner can detect almost anything - illnesses, parasites, you can even x-ray with it if you really feel the urge.
It was then followed by a long list of settings and configurations. Gwen skimmed through until she finally hit on "Pregnancy (Alien or Otherwise)." Laughing to herself, a little shrilly, she entered the appropriate codes.
She was about to place her hand on top of the glass portion of the scanner, rigged up in a corner of the autopsy bay, when she heard a sound. She jumped back from the scanner, startled.
"Hello?" she called out, surprised at how her heart had started pounding. It wasn't as though she were concealing some dread secret, but she wasn't ready to get anyone else involved, not yet, and certainly not the team.
"Gwen?"
It was Ianto and, on balance, Gwen figured he was probably the best option. "Down here. Hang on a second!" she called back.
Ianto's footsteps drew closer, then his face peered over the rails. "What are you doing here?" he asked, a little chiding.
"JJ didn't say anyone else was here."
"Came in through the garage," Ianto said, and Gwen could see by the frown lines on his forehead that he was making a mental note to tell JJ to be more aware of who was coming and going from the Hub through all of the entrances.
"I don't know what to do with free time anymore," Gwen said, finally answering Ianto's question. "Thought I'd come in and do a little paperwork."
"In the autopsy bay?" Ianto looked at her quizzically, then glanced past her at Owen's notes spread out on the table. His face changed. "I used to come here and just tidy things, after," he said quietly. "It helped, feeling like it was being kept right, but then I realised that it was tidier than it ever had been before." He shrugged. "I had to let it go, but it did help."
Gwen nodded, turning to flick the pages, hopefully nonchalantly, but enough so that the specifics of what she'd been reading were concealed. "I just keep thinking he's about to roll in late, hungover from last night's bender, you know?"
Ianto nodded. "I know."
"Anyway..." Gwen smiled as brightly as she could. "What are you doing here? I'm sure Jack meant for you to have the day off, too. Where is he, anyway?"
Ianto rolled his eyes. "When do days off keep any of us away from here? And Jack is... well... I get the impression that he's chasing the result of a fifty-first century Roomba-Furby crossbreeding experiment."
"He's what?" Gwen blinked.
"He assures me that it won't take long to catch it, though - ten minutes tops, apparently." Ianto's tone of voice made it clear that he thought Jack was, among other things, completely full of shit.
"A cuddly cleaning robot from the future," Gwen said slowly. She laughed. "A tenner says it'll take him over an hour."
"Mine says that he'll be asking one of us for help," he replied.
Gwen inclined her head appraisingly; it was a bold bet, but not lacking in possibility. "And swearing the other to secrecy," she added with a smile. They both knew how Jack could be.
Ianto grinned and straightened up a little. Gwen winked, glad to conspire with him for a moment. He pushed himself off the railing. "Right, well, I'd best busy myself until Jack calls begging for my help. I'll... I'll leave you to it."
Gwen's reason for being there came back in a rush, the worse for having been forgotten, if only for a moment. "Right," she said, after too long a pause, Ianto having already turned. Her discomfort must have shown in her voice, because Ianto turned back toward her.
"Is everything all right?" he asked slowly, as if not wanting to startle, or unsure if the inquiry was really welcome even after all this time and tragedy.
"Yeah," she said. "It's just... Oh, you know."
He nodded. "I do. Well, I'm making coffee. Want some?"
Her mind flicked back to that morning and the odd queasiness she'd felt as soon as she'd taken her first sip. She shook her head, perhaps a little emphatically.
Ianto smiled at her gently. "Okay. You know where I am if you need me."
After another slightly searching look, Ianto slipped up the stairs towards the pantry.
Gwen waited until she couldn't hear his footsteps, and then tentatively approached the scanner again, nerves growing even more strongly in her gut now.
"No time like the present," she muttered to herself as she placed her hand nervously atop it, unsure of what would happen. A projection, a read-out? Oh God, hopefully not some kind of audio announcement.
The scanner started moving, green under her hand like she was photocopying herself at an office party or something. Then there was a flash in the corner of her vision, and she turned to see the outline of a figure projected on the back wall. She stared as it slowly rotated, generated solely from the palm of her hand. Well, that was impressive.
A separate panel expanded, zooming in on the figure's pelvis - her pelvis, Gwen thought belatedly. For a moment, there was nothing but the hypnotic rotating outline of her body, but then something began to glow in the centre of the image, a soft pink at first, then gradually blooming out into a solid red circle. Scan complete.
Gwen felt her mouth fall open slightly, her breath growing a little short. Her free hand came to rest on her belly, her fingers tracing out a circle in the centre to match the one on the wall. She stared at the image for a long time, not quite comprehending what she was seeing, until she heard the gurgle of the coffee machine and jumped, stepping away from the scanner and hastily shutting it off. She grabbed her bag, fuelled by a sudden, almost panicked urge to get out of the Hub again.
"Ianto?" she called out. "I'm heading out. Call if you need anything, yeah?"
She thought she heard a muffled reply, but didn't pay much mind to it, tapping her hand against her thigh impatiently while she waited for the Hub door to roll back.
Thoughts were tumbling over themselves in her mind, uncertainties about whether the alien machine could really be accurate when it came to human physiology and a sense of disbelief that this was really happening. Most of all, she had no idea at all about what to do next.
She felt better once she was back out on the street, as though the problem had become entirely human again, ordinary, confined and manageable, as opposed to something awful and strange and so much bigger than herself.
An unsettling thought struck her then. How sure could she be that this was something ordinary and human? It was no Nostrovite. That was for certain, as nothing had bitten her in a while, but still. She passed a hand over her face and decided that she might just have to suck it up and go for a normal approach. She changed direction and headed away from her flat and into the city centre.
Ianto was moving from workstation to workstation tidying, his coffee in one hand, when his phone rang. He smirked, unsurprised, when he saw that it was Jack.
"You've caught it?" he answered, although in truth he really had no such hopes.
The silence gave him his answer. He pulled his stopwatch out of his pocket and clicked it on, waiting to see how long it would take for Jack to remember that being on the phone generally required speech.
"Yeah, no, I haven't," Jack eventually admitted - ashamed or distracted, Ianto wasn't sure. He was breathing slightly more heavily than usual, but only slightly. Due to the chase then, clearly, and nothing more dangerous or adventurous.
Ianto clicked off the stopwatch and slid it back into his pocket as he clamped the phone between his shoulder and ear, and tried to sort the paperwork that had been left arbitrarily on one of the theoretically "unused" workstations.
"Harder than it looks, I take it?" Ianto asked idly.
"Harder than I remember it being," Jack agreed and Ianto could hear half a smile in his voice. "My best time was under a minute, but that was in an enclosed space, not... not a city."
Ianto frowned at some forms that should have been filed weeks ago. He thought he had, but didn't rule out the possibility that it had somehow slipped his mind, what with the way they were each desperately trying to cover all the holes now left in the team.
"Where have you got to now, then?" he asked. He didn't really want to be in the Hub, and was honestly looking forward to Jack asking for help, regardless of his bet with Gwen.
"I'm... I'll call you back... " Jack said and hung up.
Ianto frowned and dropped his mobile onto the desk. The Hub was depressing with no one in it. Even JJ's presence and the ridiculous training materials he and Jack had unearthed didn't cheer him.
He sighed. He supposed it wouldn't kill him to go look in on his flat, collect the mail, all that. He'd automated most of the bills now, though, and didn't expect flipping through all the charity begging letters would really be more cheering, but it did, he knew, have to be done.
Half-Baked: Part Two
Half-Baked
by: blue_fjords, Galadriel, rm, such_heights
JJ Namkung was not a morning person. Morning was the time for elderly ladies, people with babies, and Captain Jack Harkness. JJ was none of those things. Unfortunately for him, being a reporter was not conducive to lengthy lie-ins, not if he wanted to be a good one, at any rate. And JJ Namkung wanted to be the best damn reporter in the world.
On this Tuesday morning, JJ stumbled out of bed when the third of his four alarm clocks went off. He took his morning piss in a fog. He brushed his teeth and combed his hair in that same fog. He was already out the door by the time he realised he'd forgotten something.
"Probably just to shower," he announced to a stray cat. The cat licked its paw.
He almost fell off the bus when it rumbled to an incomplete stop at the Plass. "Wanker," he mumbled under his breath at the bus driver.
The bus trundled on, unconcerned, leaving a cloud of exhaust to push him toward the Tourist Information Centre. JJ wiped his suddenly clammy hands on his denims, took a breath, and repeated his personal tagline: JJ Namkung, undercover and uncovering the truth. It wasn't quite perfect yet, but it was close. With a deep breath, he entered his new domain, ready to tackle his first day of running the TIC on his own.
He was immediately captivated by the smell of freshly-made tea. There on the counter was a thermos, labelled "JJ's Thermos," fittingly enough, and stamped with the Torchwood logo. He took several large gulps before he realized it had been sitting on a notepad:
JJ - DON'T DRINK THE TEA!
He spit up tea all over the counter. His first day and he was going to die! Tea dripped down his chin, and he looked frantically for something to wipe it up with, or contain it for poison-testing, or, shit, wasn't there supposed to be a panic button around here?! He used the note to wipe his mouth, and saw another note underneath it:
ALWAYS SCAN FOR ALIEN CONTAMINANTS - JUST BECAUSE THE THERMOS SAYS IT'S FOR YOU DOESN'T MEAN THAT WE LEFT IT!
The penmanship abruptly changed on the note:
Good morning, JJ! I have left you some tea. Please rest assured, it is 100% water and tea leaves, 100% from this planet. There's a handheld scanner on the second shelf of the counter if you'd like to check.
JJ fumbled for the device. The second shelf had one copy of "Wuthering Heights" (huh), a maroon box, a tube of Hobnobs (chocolate), some type of camera and what looked like a Tesco's checkout scanner, labelled 'Scanner'. He seized it and aimed it at his thermos, then paused. "Dammit," he muttered, reaching for the note:
You have to turn it on first. That's the blue button on the bottom. Aim it at the substance, and then press the orange button on the left side while holding down the violet button on the right. To see something that's inside something else, pull back on the lever on the left side - NOT THE RIGHT!
Oh, God, he was going to need to grow another arm. But finally the screen flickered to life and reported, "Tea by Ianto Jones, made from Bi Luo Chun and hot water." He sighed with relief and turned back to the note:
GOTCHA, DIDN'T WE?
Moving on. Jack and I have an errand this morning. Gwen theoretically has the day off but will probably come by later. Running the tourist booth is pretty basic - I'll be able to give you a full rundown later today or tomorrow in case there's anything we've missed. In the meantime, why don't you get acquainted with some of the rules and regulations of Torchwood? There's a training video set on the first shelf of the counter. You can watch them right here in the TIC.
We'll be in touch throughout the morning. Ring me if you have any questions, and welcome to Torchwood!
Ianto Jones
DON'T BURN THE PLACE DOWN! - CJH
JJ bent down, pulled out a crumbly cardboard box and hefted it to a dry corner of the counter. The videos looked even older than the brochures and knickknacks on display in the TIC.
He pulled out the first video, "So, You've Joined Torchwood! Jolly Good! Twelve Things Every Operative Must Know in Order to Survive the First Twelve Days." The video slipped from its case and cracked on the counter. JJ sighed. First hour solo in the front office, and he could already tell it was going to be one of those days.
Ianto winced as he watched Jack stroll through the shop like he owned it. Not, at least, in the loud, brash, knock-things-over-and-don't-even-apologise way he sometimes affected, but still, did Jack really have to pick up every single object in the shop to determine if it was alien or not?
Jack ran his hand over the top of an ancient typewriter, the sort that looked like it would shear off a finger if you missed a key.
"Man, I haven't seen one of these since..."
"Jack," Ianto, hissed, nodding his head towards the shop owner, who was clearly watching them and following their conversation.
"My father had one, from the War," Jack corrected, the W always clearly capitalised, even though Jack could have been speaking of any number of wars, several of which hadn't even happened yet. Nonetheless, it was clear the shift to the lie (no one used typewriters in the fifty-first century, surely) was purely for Ianto's benefit.
Except it wasn't, not really. Sure, it was better if the shopkeeper didn't overhear, but Ianto would've actually liked to have known when the last time was Jack had seen a typewriter just like that.
"We're never going to find this thing," Ianto muttered, as Jack picked up a paperweight and began tossing it lightly in his palm.
Jack shrugged. "Come on, isn't this fun? Nice change of pace? An end-of-the-world-free morning. Quality time!" Jack paused and put the paperweight down. "Isn't this the sort of thing you fantasise about?"
"No," Ianto said tersely.
Jack laughed, and then gave a low whistle as something caught his attention.
"And here we are," he said, picking up an object the size of a salad plate that looked suspiciously, Ianto thought, like a spider made of copper, except for the part where it had ten legs, each with five joints.
"Is that it?"
"This is definitely it," Jack said, pleased. "I haven't seen one of these since..."
"Your father? The War?" Ianto teased for the benefit of the shopkeeper.
"Nearly." Jack was distracted. "It's a kid's toy. I had one. Way back. You just have to activate it," Jack said, turning the thing over and looking for the future's equivalent of an on-switch.
As he found it, there was a quick sound of gears and electronics, and the emergence of a small blue flashing light from the miniature metal beast's underside.
"And then you let it go. It's like tag. But with a machine meant to avoid you. Fun stuff," he said, continuing to hold the small robot while its legs moved faster and yet more futilely in the air. "Different model than I had, though," Jack added, gesturing with the thing, which suddenly sparked.
"Ow!"
Ianto watched in mute annoyance and then with something approaching horror as the thing leapt out of Jack's hand, hit the ground, turned itself over and began to scuttle away. He stepped in front of it, thinking that would be enough to arrest its progress, as if it were one of those vacuuming robots, but it seemed content to pick its way over his shoe instead; when he went to grab it, it vaulted away.
"Shit," Jack said, and turned to race after the thing.
"Jack, should I...?"
"No, no, I've got it! I'll be back at the Hub in ten! I swear!" Jack shouted to him as he ran out the door.
Ianto sighed and wondered if Jack had done it on purpose. "I'll go pay off the shopkeeper," Ianto said, resigned. So much for a quiet morning.
Rhys Williams stepped off his front stoop and into bright fall sunshine. It was the kind of perfect fall morning that made him wish he lived in a country cottage in a bucolic little village in the middle of nowhere. The kind of place where people stepped outside on days like today and greeted their neighbours with cheery waves and, "Won't you pop in for tea later?" and little terriers nipped at heels and gave big dumb doggie grins. Not the kind of place where he was greeted by the sight of Marc Daniels from down the road puking into Mrs. McGoogle's rhododendrons after returning from one hell of a bender, and the Johnsons' mutt pissing on his front tyre. Or the kind of place where wives startled like scared rabbits when their husbands tried to kiss them goodbye for the day.
Rhys sighed, shooed the Johnsons' dog away, got into his car and pulled out of the drive. He honked at Marc Daniels and waved, smiling good naturedly, completely ignoring the other man's rather bleary death glare. Daniels was a transplant to Cardiff and always supported England. The man deserved a hangover.
Rhys could feel the sunshine reasserting his good mood as he drove to Harwood's. He spotted a bit of traffic snarl and cleverly avoided it by zipping down a cramped side street, narrowly avoiding a skip that clearly had not been returned to its proper positioning after its last pick-up. He parked in his usual spot at Harwood's and hopped out, whistling the song that'd been playing on the radio.
"Morning, Ruth!" he greeted his secretary as he sailed in. "Any catastrophes so far?" He sniffed the air appreciatively. She'd brought sticky buns, right on!
"Erm," Ruth hedged, and he glanced up at her, mouth full of bun and fingers a sticky, drooly mess. "Mike called in. The baby sicked-up on Vanessa, and you know today's the day her da has his parole hearing for the burgling. And Vanessa had to wash her hair and Mike had to wash the baby, only, you know, it's Mike, and there was an accident with the washing machine and I think it leaked. And, yeah, his brother's a plumber, see."
Rhys swallowed his bun. "So, Mike's not coming in, is that the story?"
"I'm sorry." And she looked very contrite, indeed, mouth downturned and characteristic sparkle in her eyes set to 'dim'.
Rhys looked regretfully at the second sticky bun on his desk. "Where was he going today?"
Ruth opened up her scheduler and trailed her finger over to Mike's name. "Well, it's Tuesday, so it's the Fairy Cake route. You know, in the little van? He goes to the bakery and makes individual deliveries."
Rhys crossed over and peered down at her notebook. She'd decorated the schedule with a different glitter colour for each driver, and he could see at a glance that Tuesday was full of red, green, silver, blue and orange. The only one not driving was the pink line, colour coded for "Rhys Williams, Manager" in Ruth's neat handwriting at the top of the page.
"Right, then. Print me out a route, will you, love? I need to wash the sticky off my hands."
He phoned Gwen from the washroom. She didn't answer. "Gwen! Filling in for Mike today - baby emergency! Sick-up and that sort of thing, the little bugger. Call me if you want something from a bakery, yeah?" He glanced round the washroom, even though he knew he was alone, before adding, "Love you, sweetheart."
Ruth had the route ready for him when he came out, and he heroically offered her his second bun, already thinking about what would be on display at this Fairy Cakes Bakery. She blushed and giggled and wished him good luck. He sighed at the sight of the little delivery van, dwarfed in their lot by all the full-sized lorries. He regretfully patted the side of a big lorry and climbed into the van, firing the ignition. Ruth had marked the location of the bakery with a big pink glitter X. It was on a residential street, Llanishen, off Cathays Cemetery.
Half an hour later, he pulled up in front of a row house that looked exactly like all the other row houses on the street and frowned down at his map. The numbers matched. He wondered if it was strictly legal to run a bakery business out of a house, what with zoning regulations and such. Maybe he'd look that up at some point, just to be on guard for Harwood's best interests.
A tiny elderly man answered the door when he rang the bell and blinked up at him. "Yessss?" he asked, in a quavering hissing voice.
"Rhys Williams, of Harwood's Haulage!" he announced with a bright smile. "I'll be your driver today." The old man continued to look up at him, a rather frozen half-smile, half-frown on his face, and Rhys felt the need to explain. "Uh, Mike is out today, a little problem with his baby and washing machine," and now that he thought about it, that was a bit odd, he should have asked Ruth what Mike was doing with the baby and the washing machine together. "And I'll be making the deliveries. This is Fairy Cakes Bakery, yeah?" It suddenly occurred to him that he could be wrong; after all, Ruth had handwritten it in glitter ink, he should have GPS-ed it or something.
"Identification, please," the old man said finally, and Rhys fumbled for his wallet. The elderly gent's spectacles were smudged and smeared, but he peered from the license to Rhys's face and back again several times before slowly opening the door wider. "Come along."
Rhys pulled the door closed behind him and followed the old man's slow shuffling gait down a dark hall before entering a spacious kitchen. Rhys felt his jaw drop, and he hurriedly closed it, eyes darting around the bakery. He had walked into the Keebler Elves' Retirement Community Bakery.
Four equally tiny senior citizens bustled around low tables grouped in the middle of the room, rolling out dough, mixing batter, and mincing fruit. They hummed while they worked, each one a different song, but the effect was akin to a four-part harmony, although he was certain that the little old lady nearest him was riffing on "Golddigger" and the smallest of them was rumbling a hum to "Three Times a Lady" in an incongruous baritone. More amazing than the noises were the smells! Peach custard, treacle tarts, pumpkin pie, chocolate biscuits… Rhys's mouth began to water and he promptly forgot about the sticky bun he had consumed less than an hour ago. Four large ovens stood along the walls, and a scent pregnant with the promise of mini-cakes wafted from the farthest one, then what looked like red velvet cake, and then apple pie. Something sweet, cream-coloured and soupy simmered on the fourth stove top, just to his left. His stomach rumbled loudly.
His escort did not seem to notice, but gestured to a stack of large white boxes tied with green bows on a table by the door. "Our deliveriesssssss."
Rhys pulled himself together. "Right, I'll be taking these out, then." He gave the man a reassuring smile, and picked up the first few packages. They were deceptively heavy, and it took him several trips to load them all into the van. He could hear his escort arguing with the "Golddigger" hummer as he came back in on his last trip, but he couldn't make out the words. All five little bakers were gathered around the mini-cakes in the far corner. His nose twitched. That creamy soup-like pot, like clotted cream or some-such… surely no one would miss a finger full? He eyed them surreptitiously. They seemed rather involved in their whispered talk. One of them poked at a mini-cake, and the thing caved in on itself, to hoots of derision from the two old ladies. Rhys quickly stuck his finger into the white goop and sucked it off.
Oh. My. God. It tasted like liquid salt. He coughed and gagged as quietly as ever he could, turning away and wiping his hand on his denims. It was bloody terrible.
"Ahem."
Rhys froze, then straightened and turned back to the bakers. They all looked up at him, blinking. It was a little unnerving, but he essayed a rather self-deprecating little smile, clapped his hands together and said, "Well, I'll just get these last boxes here," he jerked his thumb back at the table, "and get out of your hair. Um, it was great to meet you!"
He held out his hand hesitantly, and after a pause, each baker shook it and mumbled something that sounded like "wanker" but he was pretty sure was meant to be "well met." At least, he hoped so. The last baker, the "Golddigger," said nothing. He smiled at her uncertainly. He wondered if the white soupy mixture was her special recipe, and if he should tell her that she'd replaced the sugar with salt. His escort snatched his hand away.
"Five doessssn't sssspeak," he muttered, and it was Rhys's turn to blink. He could have sworn he had heard the two of them arguing, but Five just looked up at him and nodded, the frozen little half-smile, half-frown on her face, too.
"Okay," Rhys said, and hefted the boxes. As he turned to go, he glanced once more at the kitchen over the heads of the bakers, and thus was the only one to see the red velvet cake's oven flip open its own door, reach inside, and take the cake out, sliding the pans onto a cooling rack on one of the low tables in the middle of the floor space. Only the five sets of eyes on him prevented him from dropping the boxes. Don't want to mishandle the clients! His inner voice went to a hysterical edge on the final word, and he firmly told it to shut up. He forced himself to walk at a normal pace to his van. His escort followed him out, and Rhys prided himself on shaking the man's hand before getting in and backing out.
He glanced in his rear-view mirror before driving away. The tiny old man was looking up at the sky and, as Rhys watched, an additional head sprouted up from the man's shoulders, yawned widely, and then fell back down, disappearing into neck folds and tufts of hair and little-old-man cardigan.
Oh, bloody hell.
Gwen sat on the edge of the bathtub, flipping the blister pack from hand to hand. She hadn't missed one. And hey, one skipped period was really only to be expected in this line of work. Besides, she'd had all the other symptoms, the cramps and so on, so a little missed menstruation hadn't felt like the end of the world. But now it was two in a row. Which, well...
"Fuck," Gwen muttered to herself. She dropped the contraceptive pack back onto the counter and left the bathroom, tapping her fingers against her stomach absently.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. She had other plans for today, and honestly, the chances of something untoward happening seemed pretty low. She'd go check in with her GP next time she had a chance; it was probably some kind of deficiency or stress-related issue.
Today was a day off, an almost mythical event in an understaffed Torchwood. JJ was trying, bless him, but as of yet he was no Ianto, and it wasn't as though Jack was going to let him out into the field any time soon. But Jack had insisted that all of them take more or less a day's rest, phones surgically attached to themselves in case of emergency, and Gwen wasn't complaining in the slightest.
She needed to call her parents, and she wanted to pull her weight in the house for once, maybe ring up the estate agents, see if she couldn't organise a viewing or two. She smiled. The sorts of things that once seemed so dull were suddenly exciting in their normality.
She thought she might even make an attempt at dinner, though she hadn't mentioned that to Rhys before he left in the morning, as he held her cooking skills in somewhat dubious regard. She made coffee and sat down in front of her long-neglected personal email account, sorting through missives from elderly relatives with their requisite erratic capitalisation.
She sent off a few carbon copies of the same reply - "Yes, I know, work's been keeping me busy, no, no talk of kids yet, yes, I'm sure I'll see you soon." - and then sat back and started deleting several months' worth of newsletters that she'd signed up for back when she still had the time to read. She took an absent sip of coffee - milky and a little too hot, just the way she liked it - and frowned. The taste sent a twinge of faint nausea right through her. Nausea, two missed periods... Her mouse automatically clicked over to Google.
"Pregnant on the pill" brought up a tonne of results, and she scrolled through, wide-eyed, for a moment before just settling on the top one: a bright pink forum page where mothers were all swapping stories. Someone called "babymamma78" had started a thread about finding out she was pregnant whilst taking the pill and the replies contained similar stories from other women, all laughing merrily about how they couldn't believe they hadn't realised sooner.
Gwen bit her lip, reading further down the page with a sense of dread. A few of the symptoms were clicking with her: the tenderness, the fatigue. Mind you, that was only to be expected with her job, but still. Maybe the tiredness she'd been feeling recently wasn't just due to long hours.
She stared at the computer screen for a long moment before pulling herself together and closing the browser. She could deal with all of this later. Anyway, she reminded herself, there was no sense in leaping to conclusions.
She grabbed the estate agent brochure Rhys had brought home the other day and started going through it with a pen, circling things like 'central location' and 'modern facilities'. Rhys might be after things like a nice garden, but Gwen's priority was speed for those many mornings she spent running out the door and straight into the Hub.
As she kept reading, however, she found her focus shifting. She knew Rhys wanted to move, in part, so they'd one day have space for the kids he had ceased mentioning, sensing it was a tricky subject.
Gwen chewed the end of the pen. She had the whole day; there was no reason she couldn't take a detour from her plans and still get all of her various tasks done. Feeling a sudden rush of resolve, she grabbed her keys and bag, picked up her jacket, and headed out of the flat.
The brisk walk in the cool air felt steadying. This way she could know one way or the other - she'd find out it was nothing, probably, and put it out of her mind. She stopped in at the first chemist's she passed, the door jangling quietly behind her. It was a small shop, and the tests were immediately apparent, lined up on the left, all white and blue and pink. She scanned the array of products, wondering what the difference between all of them could possibly be. She picked up one in the middle of the price range, figuring that would probably be as good as any.
She turned it over in her hands, trying to figure out her plan of attack. She could go and take the test in the Hub. There'd be no one there today apart from JJ, who'd be bombarded with things to do, if Jack and Ianto's matching smirks yesterday were anything to go by. It would be nice and private and out of the way. Perfect. Gwen was about to take the test up to the counter when she paused.
If she was going to the Hub anyway, then surely there'd be a more advanced way of finding out what she wanted to know, one that didn't involve peeing on a stick or any other similar evidence that she'd have to hide. In fact, she was certain Owen had catalogued a whole array of gizmos available for similar purposes.
She put the test back on the shelf. Time to drop in to work after all. Decision made, she realised she felt slightly relieved. A Torchwood-free day just didn't quite make sense to her anymore, it seemed.
Two blocks from the antique shop, Jack watched the metallic spider clamber along the side of a building a good four feet above his reach and considered the very real possibility that he'd grown more stupid during his increasingly long life. He was fairly sure, after all, that these things had not been so hard to catch when he was a kid. Then again, they hadn't, in his experience with them, had a city at their disposal and had stayed confined to relatively open ground. The problem was that the things were designed to learn, so as to more effectively avoid capture, and in Cardiff there was more for them to learn than was strictly appropriate.
Jack briefly considered shooting the thing. He assumed the device was neither clever enough nor fast enough to avoid a shot and, with the amount of input the city was surely providing, it presumably wouldn't detect him drawing his Webley. On the other hand, the people on the street would, and potentially shooting into people's windows over a toy wasn't only something the rest of the team would disapprove of, but something he was fundamentally pretty appalled by, too.
Plus, he really had kind of wanted to show the thing to Ianto. Something from the Rift that was harmless and charming and personal. It had seemed like a good gesture. In the abstract, it still did.
Torchwood, however, was never abstract. Now, if he was lucky, he'd recover the thing, and Ianto would lock it away in the archives with a dryly written and slightly irritated incident report to go along with it. Jack smiled, ruefully. One of these days, there were a hell of a lot of things he was going to have to make up for to that man. Sometimes Jack wondered if he kept letting the list, and others like it, get longer out of some naïve belief that unfinished business would keep those around him alive.
Sighing, he scrubbed a hand over his face. Whether it was in annoyance at the toy for being clever or himself for giving in to nostalgia Jack wasn't sure.
As the training video began, JJ leaned closer to the screen and raised his biro over his spiral-bound notebook. Rote was sometimes the best way to learn, and he was still a reporter after all.
The front door of the TIC banged open and he started, accidentally writing on the palm of his hand. It was the first time the door had opened all day.
"JJ!" Gwen exclaimed. "Wow, I almost... I mean, welcome!" She strode over to the counter and smiled up at him. "How do you like it, so far?"
"Yeah, um, it's great. Just, you know, getting trained," JJ replied, gesturing at the horrible notes that Jack and Ianto had left and at the monitor where Video Instructor Smith was wearing a one-piece bodysuit with attached helmet, boots and gloves.
"What are you watching?" Gwen asked, peering at the screen. Instructor Smith was now on fire.
"The Torchwood training videos. Didn't you watch them?" JJ asked as Instructor Smith walked out of the fire and did a pirouette.
Gwen looked at him blankly.
He hurriedly explained, "Jack and Ianto left them for me. They're supposed to help you not die, or get suckered in by an evil alien, or destroy the world, or get accidentally impregnated… Lots of stuff."
His eyes darted from the screen to her face. Gwen looked a little peaky, but he was missing Instructor Smith's anti-dismemberment lecture and he really wanted to pay attention to that.
Gwen cleared her throat. "I'll leave you to it, shall I? I'll be downstairs if you need anything." She banged on the big black button then pushed impatiently at the secret door and into the corridor, muttering under her breath.
"Ta," JJ called to her back, already distracted as he looked back to the screen. Instructor Smith was bringing in Trainee #1 and Trainee #2 for another demonstration. Both trainees looked a little green as Instructor Smith launched into alien waste clean-up procedures. JJ picked up his biro once more.
Gwen leafed through Owen's notes, a strange, tight feeling growing in her chest as she read further, seeing more and more of Owen in the pages, in his sharp, jagged handwriting, brisk style, and ridiculous doodles. She shook off her memories of the past and focused, reading through until she found a series of grudgingly-written instructions for various devices (at the behest of the coffee boy, and enforced by Harkness. I have much better things to be doing with my time.)
SCANNER:
Does what it says on the tin, kids. Fire it up and put your hand on top of it. Any part of your anatomy would work, but that's no reason to try, Harkness, you sick fuck. The scanner can detect almost anything - illnesses, parasites, you can even x-ray with it if you really feel the urge.
It was then followed by a long list of settings and configurations. Gwen skimmed through until she finally hit on "Pregnancy (Alien or Otherwise)." Laughing to herself, a little shrilly, she entered the appropriate codes.
She was about to place her hand on top of the glass portion of the scanner, rigged up in a corner of the autopsy bay, when she heard a sound. She jumped back from the scanner, startled.
"Hello?" she called out, surprised at how her heart had started pounding. It wasn't as though she were concealing some dread secret, but she wasn't ready to get anyone else involved, not yet, and certainly not the team.
"Gwen?"
It was Ianto and, on balance, Gwen figured he was probably the best option. "Down here. Hang on a second!" she called back.
Ianto's footsteps drew closer, then his face peered over the rails. "What are you doing here?" he asked, a little chiding.
"JJ didn't say anyone else was here."
"Came in through the garage," Ianto said, and Gwen could see by the frown lines on his forehead that he was making a mental note to tell JJ to be more aware of who was coming and going from the Hub through all of the entrances.
"I don't know what to do with free time anymore," Gwen said, finally answering Ianto's question. "Thought I'd come in and do a little paperwork."
"In the autopsy bay?" Ianto looked at her quizzically, then glanced past her at Owen's notes spread out on the table. His face changed. "I used to come here and just tidy things, after," he said quietly. "It helped, feeling like it was being kept right, but then I realised that it was tidier than it ever had been before." He shrugged. "I had to let it go, but it did help."
Gwen nodded, turning to flick the pages, hopefully nonchalantly, but enough so that the specifics of what she'd been reading were concealed. "I just keep thinking he's about to roll in late, hungover from last night's bender, you know?"
Ianto nodded. "I know."
"Anyway..." Gwen smiled as brightly as she could. "What are you doing here? I'm sure Jack meant for you to have the day off, too. Where is he, anyway?"
Ianto rolled his eyes. "When do days off keep any of us away from here? And Jack is... well... I get the impression that he's chasing the result of a fifty-first century Roomba-Furby crossbreeding experiment."
"He's what?" Gwen blinked.
"He assures me that it won't take long to catch it, though - ten minutes tops, apparently." Ianto's tone of voice made it clear that he thought Jack was, among other things, completely full of shit.
"A cuddly cleaning robot from the future," Gwen said slowly. She laughed. "A tenner says it'll take him over an hour."
"Mine says that he'll be asking one of us for help," he replied.
Gwen inclined her head appraisingly; it was a bold bet, but not lacking in possibility. "And swearing the other to secrecy," she added with a smile. They both knew how Jack could be.
Ianto grinned and straightened up a little. Gwen winked, glad to conspire with him for a moment. He pushed himself off the railing. "Right, well, I'd best busy myself until Jack calls begging for my help. I'll... I'll leave you to it."
Gwen's reason for being there came back in a rush, the worse for having been forgotten, if only for a moment. "Right," she said, after too long a pause, Ianto having already turned. Her discomfort must have shown in her voice, because Ianto turned back toward her.
"Is everything all right?" he asked slowly, as if not wanting to startle, or unsure if the inquiry was really welcome even after all this time and tragedy.
"Yeah," she said. "It's just... Oh, you know."
He nodded. "I do. Well, I'm making coffee. Want some?"
Her mind flicked back to that morning and the odd queasiness she'd felt as soon as she'd taken her first sip. She shook her head, perhaps a little emphatically.
Ianto smiled at her gently. "Okay. You know where I am if you need me."
After another slightly searching look, Ianto slipped up the stairs towards the pantry.
Gwen waited until she couldn't hear his footsteps, and then tentatively approached the scanner again, nerves growing even more strongly in her gut now.
"No time like the present," she muttered to herself as she placed her hand nervously atop it, unsure of what would happen. A projection, a read-out? Oh God, hopefully not some kind of audio announcement.
The scanner started moving, green under her hand like she was photocopying herself at an office party or something. Then there was a flash in the corner of her vision, and she turned to see the outline of a figure projected on the back wall. She stared as it slowly rotated, generated solely from the palm of her hand. Well, that was impressive.
A separate panel expanded, zooming in on the figure's pelvis - her pelvis, Gwen thought belatedly. For a moment, there was nothing but the hypnotic rotating outline of her body, but then something began to glow in the centre of the image, a soft pink at first, then gradually blooming out into a solid red circle. Scan complete.
Gwen felt her mouth fall open slightly, her breath growing a little short. Her free hand came to rest on her belly, her fingers tracing out a circle in the centre to match the one on the wall. She stared at the image for a long time, not quite comprehending what she was seeing, until she heard the gurgle of the coffee machine and jumped, stepping away from the scanner and hastily shutting it off. She grabbed her bag, fuelled by a sudden, almost panicked urge to get out of the Hub again.
"Ianto?" she called out. "I'm heading out. Call if you need anything, yeah?"
She thought she heard a muffled reply, but didn't pay much mind to it, tapping her hand against her thigh impatiently while she waited for the Hub door to roll back.
Thoughts were tumbling over themselves in her mind, uncertainties about whether the alien machine could really be accurate when it came to human physiology and a sense of disbelief that this was really happening. Most of all, she had no idea at all about what to do next.
She felt better once she was back out on the street, as though the problem had become entirely human again, ordinary, confined and manageable, as opposed to something awful and strange and so much bigger than herself.
An unsettling thought struck her then. How sure could she be that this was something ordinary and human? It was no Nostrovite. That was for certain, as nothing had bitten her in a while, but still. She passed a hand over her face and decided that she might just have to suck it up and go for a normal approach. She changed direction and headed away from her flat and into the city centre.
Ianto was moving from workstation to workstation tidying, his coffee in one hand, when his phone rang. He smirked, unsurprised, when he saw that it was Jack.
"You've caught it?" he answered, although in truth he really had no such hopes.
The silence gave him his answer. He pulled his stopwatch out of his pocket and clicked it on, waiting to see how long it would take for Jack to remember that being on the phone generally required speech.
"Yeah, no, I haven't," Jack eventually admitted - ashamed or distracted, Ianto wasn't sure. He was breathing slightly more heavily than usual, but only slightly. Due to the chase then, clearly, and nothing more dangerous or adventurous.
Ianto clicked off the stopwatch and slid it back into his pocket as he clamped the phone between his shoulder and ear, and tried to sort the paperwork that had been left arbitrarily on one of the theoretically "unused" workstations.
"Harder than it looks, I take it?" Ianto asked idly.
"Harder than I remember it being," Jack agreed and Ianto could hear half a smile in his voice. "My best time was under a minute, but that was in an enclosed space, not... not a city."
Ianto frowned at some forms that should have been filed weeks ago. He thought he had, but didn't rule out the possibility that it had somehow slipped his mind, what with the way they were each desperately trying to cover all the holes now left in the team.
"Where have you got to now, then?" he asked. He didn't really want to be in the Hub, and was honestly looking forward to Jack asking for help, regardless of his bet with Gwen.
"I'm... I'll call you back... " Jack said and hung up.
Ianto frowned and dropped his mobile onto the desk. The Hub was depressing with no one in it. Even JJ's presence and the ridiculous training materials he and Jack had unearthed didn't cheer him.
He sighed. He supposed it wouldn't kill him to go look in on his flat, collect the mail, all that. He'd automated most of the bills now, though, and didn't expect flipping through all the charity begging letters would really be more cheering, but it did, he knew, have to be done.
Half-Baked: Part Two