Gwil's Guide to Growing Up Torchwood: Year 3, Chapter 4

[amuly]

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Title: Gwil's Guide to Growing Up Torchwood: Year 3, Chapter 4
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Gwil, + Team
Word Count: 3,875
Rating: R
Summary: When a seven-year-old boy falls through the Rift, Ianto and Jack decide to adopt him. This is the story of his life at Torchwood.
Chapter Summary: Jack dies (more permanently than usual); Ianto, Owen, and Tosh work to bring him back; Gwil sees this and freaks out.
Warnings: pretty major gore-squick, CSI or House-levels
A/N: Wooooo Red Sox! Anyway. Enjoy. NB: What foreshadowing?!?! *shifty eyes*
 
 

Previous Chapters:

               Prologue          |          The First Year:          |          The Second Year:          |          The Third Year:
                       1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10         1, 1.PWP, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7              1, 2, 3
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17               8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13      

 

 

Ianto grunted as he hauled Jack's corpse onto the gurney, Owen leaping out of the SUV to help him out. As Owen started to wheel Jack into the Hub, Ianto ran over to Tosh and grabbed at her. She stared up at him, eyes wide, grip tight around the tablet in her right hand. “What's going on?” he growled.

“It's keeping him dead.”

Ianto couldn't think about that, couldn't deal with that piece of information. So he released Tosh and turned away from her, running to follow Owen to the medical bay.

Tosh caught up with him a few seconds later, fingers flying over her tablet. “It's giving his heart a shock every time it starts to beat. Like some sort of reverse pacemaker.”

Ianto didn't look at Tosh as they came out into the main area of the Hub, Owen already hard at work attaching sensors to Jack's lifeless body. “We need to cut it out of him,” Ianto ordered.

“No!” Tosh's shout startled Ianto into looking at her. He wished he hadn't. Her face was tear-stained, her eyes bright and frightened. After taking a moment to calm herself, she handed the tablet over to Ianto. “We can't. The readings I'm getting indicate that it's got some sort of fail safe, or automatic trigger that'll sense any attempt to tamper with it.” She looked over at Owen as Ianto scrutinized the tablet. “It'll explode if we try to take it out of Jack.”

Owen threw his scalpel at the wall, causing Ianto's head to jerk up. From what he could tell, Tosh was right in her initial assessment. “Well that's just great,” the doctor yelled. “What exactly do we do, then?”

Jack's entire body shuddered, then went still. Owen and Tosh studiously avoided looking at it, but Ianto couldn't look away. It was what Jack had been doing since the strange little mechanical device had flown out of the shadows of a toy store and implanted itself inside his chest. Ianto knew that the shudder was Jack starting to come back to life. And the movement stopped when the device activated, killing him again.

Coming to a decision, Ianto walked over to the medical bay and down the stairs. He took Jack's cold, limp hand in his own, then turned to Tosh. He ignored the way she looked like she might cry again at his simple action. They had a problem to solve. Now wasn't the time to get emotional, or think about what-ifs. They needed to find a way to bring Jack back. And they would.

“We could...” Ianto took a breath, the swallowed. He tried not to think about the next words to come out of his mouth. “We could take him somewhere and detonated the device remotely.”

Tosh was shaking her head. “It's too big. Judging by the energy coming off of the device, it could take out all of Europe if it went off. There's no where we could take him on Earth that'd be safe.”

Owen threw his hands up. “So, short of detonating the good Captain in space, we've got shit.”

Ianto checked his watch, still holding onto Jack's hand. Andy would still be dealing with clean-up at the toy store: retconning everyone and making sure there were no other malicious devices hiding on the shelves. He frowned at the time. Just gone four. Was it already that late? Jack's hand shuddered in Ianto's, then went still again. Ianto did his best to ignore it. If it was four, then...

“Tad? Dad? What... is he...”

Ianto sprang into action, releasing Jack's hand and rushing over to Gwil. The little boy was standing at the top of the stairs to the medical bay, eyes wide and frightened. He started to rush forward, toward Jack. Ianto stepped in his way and scooped him up.

“Dad? Dad! Dad!”

Without thinking Ianto clutched Gwil to his chest and carried him to their stairs, ignoring the scratches and bruises he received in the process. “Tad, let me go! Put me down! Dad!”

Ianto didn't say anything or look at Gwil until he reached Gwil's room, setting the still-struggling boy on his bed. Immediately Gwil jumped up, trying to run past him and out the door. Ianto stopped him with an iron grip around Gwil's upper arm. “Sit down.”

Gwil's eyes widened at Ianto's tone. He gazed up at his tad's face for a moment before bursting into tears. Ianto hesitated, suddenly unsure of what to do. He had been in Torchwood mode, in witness-handling mode. But now he had to be in Tad mode. And he wasn't sure he could do that right now.

“Dad's fine.” His throat stuck on the lie, so he swallowed and tried again. “He's hurt. But he'll be fine.” That one came more easily.

Gwil wasn't convinced in the slightest. Tears flowed down his face in earnest, entire body shaking with terror and sobs. “He's not! He's not! He's not breathing! He's dead, I know he is!”

The door behind them opened, and Gwen rushed in. “Ianto, I-”

He silenced her with a look. “Watch Gwil,” he ordered. “I need to...” she nodded.

“No! No, let me see him!” Gwil was up from the bed again, struggling to get past Ianto and Gwen to the door. Ianto held him in place with one hand, begging Gwen with his eyes. Gwen nodded her understanding.

“Come here, sweetheart.” Gwen scooped Gwil up in her arms, and he quieted slightly. “I just saw your dad, and he's going to be okay. He's hurt, but he'll be fine.”

Gwil snuffled and shoved his face in Gwen's neck, rubbing snot and tears all over her shirt. Ianto frowned and made a note to get the top cleaned for Gwen. Better to focus on those little problems he could handle, right now, rather than the rather large problem he had no idea how to solve.

Gwen continued to shush Gwil. “Remember when your Tad was hurt?” Gwil nodded, face still buried in Gwen's shoulder. “Well, that's how your dad is now. But he'll be fine. Just like how your tad was.”

This comparison seemed to sooth Gwil a little, and he lifted his head, peering up at Ianto. “Dad'll be okay?”

Ianto nodded, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “Yup.”

“You promise?”

It was even harder to speak this time, but Ianto managed. “Yup.”

Gwil's eyes were searching Ianto's face, so he kept it a smooth mask, smiling tightly at Gwil. “Go on,” he encouraged. “Stay with Auntie Gwen. I'm going to go help Auntie Tosh and Uncle Owen take care of Dad. As soon as I can, I'll come down and bring you up to see him, okay?”

Gwil nodded again, though his expression was still skeptical as Ianto turned away and headed for the door. Once outside, Ianto took a moment to walk over to his and Jack's room and shut the door. He collapsed back against it, letting the tears fall that he had been so desperately controlling while he talked to Gwil. He gasped, pressing the heel of his hand to his eye. What if Owen and Tosh couldn't figure this out? What if they just didn't have the technology for it? Would they have to put Jack in cryo? Keep him in storage, until the technology came along to fix it? And then would Jack just have to keep dying, over and over again, until that day?

Ianto pushed himself away from the door, tugging at his waistcoat. With a steeliness he didn't remotely feel, he squared his shoulders, wiped the tears from his face, and left the room. There had to be a way to fix this. With him, Owen, and Tosh working together, there was no way they wouldn't be able to find some sort of solution. If not them, then perhaps Martha or Mickey would find a way.

But there had to be one. Jack couldn't stay in this perpetual cycle of reviving and immediately dying again forever.

When Ianto reached the medical bay again, his face was dry, his eyes clear. Still, Owen and Tosh didn't quite meet his eyes, instead looking at each other or their display screens as they spoke. “What do you have?” Ianto asked, placing his hands on his hips in a gesture of casual certainty he didn't even remotely feel.

Tosh passed her tablet off to Ianto, not quite meeting his eyes. “We had a thought,” she started, voice begging caution without her having to say it. “An EMP might give us the window of opportunity we need to cut the device out of Jack without it detonating.”

Owen twirled a scalpel casually between his fingers, staring at his screens instead of Ianto. “But Tosh reckons I'll have a max of fifteen seconds to get it out of him and into a containment unit.” Ianto nodded, waiting for more. “Which means I can't really go for the careful incision.”

Ianto stepped forward, already knowing where this was going. “Where is the device?” He peered over Owen's shoulder and at the display, where an angry red dot was blinking in the vicinity of Jack's heart.

Indeed, that assessment seemed to be accurate. “Looks like it's lodged in his left atrium.” Owen pointed the scalpel at the screen, before slowly spinning himself around in his chair. He made eye contact with Ianto, expression apologetic. “I'm going to have to crack his chest open and dig out his heart.” Owen held his hands out in supplication, shoulders shrugging. “I've got to do it fast, and-”

“Okay.” Ianto nodded, not looking at Owen. “Fine. Let me get the proper containment box ready.” Ianto made to turn away before he hesitated, thinking the plan through before turning to Owen again. “Is...” he swallowed before continuing in a more intimate tone. Owen leaned forward to hear him. “Is there a way to not have his heart in the containment box? To separate the device...”

He trailed off as Owen shook his head grimly. “Sorry, Ian. I know, with his condition, you don't want his bits around...” Owen shook his head again. “But nothing I can do. If I try and separate it, for one, the time it takes might push us past the deadline, and for another, Tosh reckons its safer to keep it attached to some piece of Jack. More chance of it not exploding.”

Ianto nodded. He had figured as much.

He turned to go get the containment unit when Owen spoke again, touching Ianto lightly on the elbow. “Hey, he won't grow back or something, will he? Two Jacks?”

Ianto shook his head. “From what I understand, no. Otherwise we'd be knee-deep in Jack clones by now.” With that sickening bit of grim humor, Ianto hurried off to Jack's office to see if he had the classification of containment unit they needed for the task at hand.

**

There wasn't the sound of a single person breathing as Tosh double-checked her tablet for the final time, EMP gun sitting on the medical table in front of her. Owen was on the opposite side of Jack's corpse, sledgehammer in his hand, wicked-looking rib spreaders and knife waiting on the table on his side of the medical bay. If it weren't for the latex gloves and white coat, he'd look more like someone about to practice a ritualistic sacrifice than a doctor. Ianto stood at Jack's feet, containment box open and awaiting Owen.

“Ready?” Tosh checked with the two men, setting her tablet to the side and picking up the gun. She braced herself, pointing it at Jack's corpse.

“Any last words?” Owen half-heartedly joked as he shot a nervous glance at Tosh's gun. “I'd just like to say: I regret not taking that bird up on that blow job last week. Looked like she could suck a football through a straw.”

Ianto nodded. “Right. Good to know. Tosh?”

Tosh closed her eyes as she pointed the gun at Jack's heart. “One... two... three!”

The gun fired.

Jack didn't explode.

Owen set to work, slamming the sledgehammer down on Jack's chest, caving it in. Ianto wanted to vomit. Jack's entire chest turned concave, collapsing inward under the force of the blow. The knife came next, Owen stabbing into the disgusting, malformed area of skin and bones that used to be Jack's chest. He ripped a hunk of skin away the size of Tosh's tablet, throwing it to the floor with a wet splat. Ianto could see pieces of bone and muscle still attached to it, and even more littering the hole in Jack's chest.

Owen abandoned the rib spreader in exchange for shoving his hands in, yanking the mass of broken bones apart and exposing Jack's heart. Ianto could see the alien device attached to it, artificial construction setting it obviously apart from all the bone and muscle and skin. Reaching in with his left hand, Owen gripped Jack's heart, cutting it away from the arteries and veins with his right. He turned, Jack's heart slowly dripping half-coagulated blood onto his corpse and the medical bay floor.

Ianto was at his side in an instant, holding open the box for Owen to drop Jack's heart into. The moment he did Ianto snapped the lid shut, sealing it and tapping the activation code into the lid. The box beeped once, then went silent.

The three Torchwood team members waited as Ianto held the box.

Fifteen seconds passed. Then thirty. When a minute did, Ianto dared to breathe again. Still alive, then. He set the containment case down, eyeing it cautiously. It stayed inactive.

Owen laughed, throwing his knife down on the medical table. “Wow.”

Tosh laughed, hugging the EMP gun to her chest. “It worked!”

Ianto slumped against the half-wall of the medical bay, sinking down until he was sitting next to the containment unit. He stared up at Jack's bloody corpse. “Nothing else in him? Stopping him?”

Tosh was already shaking her head as she tapped away at her tablet, Owen running a similar scan simultaneously. “Everything looks normal,” she reassured Ianto.

“How long?” Owen nodded between Jack's corpse and Ianto. “And don't pretend like you don't know, because I've seen you timing his 'recoveries' before.”

Ianto looked wearily down at his watch. Owen was right: he had timed this before. He had even timed how long it took Jack to regrow his heart, when a still-unidentified beast had shoved its fist into Jack's chest and eaten his heart. “Ten minutes. Give or take.”

Owen and Tosh set about cleaning up their areas, Tosh greeting Andy when he returned from the clean-up on site. Ianto ignored them, opting instead to stand next to Jack, holding his hand as he watched Jack's chest slowly set itself to rights: bones fusing together and slotting back in place, muscles and tissues moving around, skin molding together. Ianto only saw a quarter of his heart regrow before Jack's skin fused up, but he continued to stare down at Jack's chest as if he could still see the healing process.

It was closer to twenty minutes later when Jack's body heaved on the table, shuddering back to life. Ianto didn't realize he was waiting for Jack to die again until Jack was coughing weakly beside him, tugging at Ianto's hand. “Hey. Hey! What happened?”

Ianto breathed: a deep, shaking breath that moved through his whole body, releasing all of the tension that was there. He turned to Jack, who was hauling himself upright and poking at his bare chest.

“Where did my shirt go? And why do I feel like someone just beat me with a sledgehammer?”

“Ah, he's awake, then.” Owen waved down at Jack from the top of the medical bay, freshly-cleaned tools in his hands. He stormed down the steps, twirling the sledgehammer cheekily. “And I might have the answer to your question, Harkness.”

Jack's eyes went wide. “What?! What happened?” He pointed an accusing finger at Owen. “Why'd you hit me with a sledgehammer?”

Owen just cackled as he put his tools away, Jack's eyes going wide as he took in the knife and rib spreader, then even wider as he caught sight of a hunk of his own skin in the medical wastebasket.

“Jack,” Ianto interrupted. Jack turned to Ianto, all grin and bluster, before he caught sight of Ianto's expression. He sobered immediately.

“What is it? Did someone get hurt?”

Choosing to ignore the ridiculousness of Jack's question when the man himself had just revived from death, Ianto continued. “Gwil saw you when you were... out. I left him with Gwen, but he's scared.”

Jack's face went through confused, horrified, and scared in quick succession, before settling into a sad, serious expression. “Go get him. Don't want him scared any longer than he needs to be.”

Ianto nodded, squeezing Jack's hand as he turned to go. Jack stopped him, however: refusing to let go of his hand and tugging Ianto back to him. “Hey.” Ianto smiled tightly at Jack in what he hoped was a reassuring manner. Jack's knowing smile said otherwise. “You okay?”

“Just good to have you back,” Ianto quipped. “It was... uncertain. For a short time.”

Jack nodded, understanding painting his features. He squeezed Ianto's hand, bringing it to his mouth and kissing it. “I'm sure I'll get to read about it in the report.”

“Absolutely,” Ianto reassured him.

Jack kissed Ianto's hand one more time before releasing it. “Just remember,” he teased, “it's me. It's going to take a lot more than a piece of alien junk hiding out in a toy store to finish me off for good.”

Ianto breathed in, shakiness receding with every moment Jack was alive. He smiled. “I'll keep that in mind.” He turned away, calling over his shoulder: “Back in a moment!”

Jack must have taken the few minutes Ianto was gone to get himself presentable. When Ianto returned with Gwil, it was to find Jack lying on the couch, hand over his head and fresh shirt on. Gwil screamed as soon as he caught sight of Jack lying on the couch, rushing toward him. “Dad?”

Jack levered himself upright, wincing only slightly with the movement. Ianto made a note to draw him a bath, later. All those deaths in such a short time had to take a toll on him. “Hey, champ!” Gwil threw himself at Jack, crying as he let himself be scooped up in Jack's arms. “Hey, hey,” Jack rubbed Gwil's back, eyes closed as he waited for him to stop crying. “It's okay. I'm okay.”

Gwil snuffled and shook his head, clinging tightly to Jack. “You looked dead! Your chest wasn't moving, an' you were white, an' you were dead, weren't you? I know you were dead!”

Jack shook his head, eyes sliding open slowly as he glanced at Ianto. “I'm fine, champ. I'm right here. Just ask your tad.”

Ianto hesitated as Gwil turned to him, small hands wiping at his dripping nose and eyes. He looked to Jack, seeking his permission. They had to tell Gwil eventually, after all. And maybe it would be better for Gwil to find out sooner rather than later. Children were adaptable like that, after all. Teenagers or young men, not so much.

But Jack shook his head, just slightly. So Ianto turned to Gwil with his excuse and explanations ready. It was what he was good at, after all. “Dad died, just a little bit,” he offered the half-truth to Gwil, knowing he was already too old to believe a full lie. “But Auntie Tosh and Uncle Owen brought him back. It's what they do.”

Jack nodded his approval at Ianto, big hand stroking through Gwil's hair. The movement seemed to be as much a comfort to Jack as it was to Gwil. Ianto joined them on the couch, moving Jack's feet out of the way and onto his thighs to make space. He tugged Gwil off of Jack and onto his lap once he was settled, in order to give Jack a reprieve. Jack sank back into his prone position gratefully. “Come along,” Ianto said to Gwil. “Why don't I make us all some hot chocolate, okay? Go downstairs and get the mugs ready. Your dad and I'll be down in a moment.”

Gwil squirmed away from Ianto and back over to Jack, peppering his face with kisses and hugging him tight. “Don't die again, Dad. Please.”

Ianto looked away, knowing his expression was a storm cloud of conflicting emotions. Jack's voice was tight as he replied. “I'll do my best. Now get downstairs; do as your tad says. We'll be with you in just a minute.”

With one last fearsome snuggle, Gwil reluctantly released Jack and headed down to their kitchen, throwing worried glances over his shoulder every couple of feet.

Ianto sat with Jack's feet on his thighs for a minute, stroking absently at his ankles. Jack spoke first. “Not yet.”

“The younger he-”

“Not yet.”

Ianto nodded. He knew it'd be better if they told Gwil now. The longer they put the conversation off, the worse it would be for Gwil. He'd feel betrayed, confused, hurt... depending what sort of teenager he was, he might even hate them, or do something rash because of it. If they told him now, he'd accept it: just like he accepted the existence of aliens, and Myfanwy, and Janet, and living beneath the Plass. But the longer they waited, the longer they had to keep it from Gwil, and the more chances of misunderstandings or even injury there were.

But it was up to Jack. Ianto chanced a glance at Jack, who was staring down at his newly-mended chest. It was selfish of Jack to keep this a secret from Gwil, to pretend for a little while longer that they were something resembling a normal family.

Ianto stroked Jack's ankle one more time before patting his thigh and standing up. As he helped Jack to his feet, Ianto kissed him, then wrapped an arm around Jack's shoulders. Jack leaned heavily on Ianto as they slowly made their way downstairs to Gwil.

It might be selfish of Jack to keep this a secret, but Ianto was willing to allow Jack this small bout of selfishness. Jack deserved it, after everything he did. So Ianto would lie to Gwil for Jack, and wouldn't broach the subject until another crisis occurred. Which it would, of course. But Ianto wouldn't say anything to Gwil about it until Jack was ready, or it was completely unavoidable. Ianto could only hope the former would come about before the latter.



Continue on to Chapter 5.