Isn't Worth Living: Chapter 7

[galadriel1010]

“Oh, right…” he repeated, “well that… that might complicate things a little.” He continued to stare at the tip of the remote with its glowing nanobot cloud and reached out absentmindedly for the lights and the door mechanism. As soon as it had repaired sufficiently it dropped open and Gwen and Owen tumbled in.

“What the hell?” Gwen asked breathlessly, her eyes wide as the computer system crackled into life again. Without a word, Jack swung himself into one of the seats and cancelled the defence programs, the radar, scanners, signals, everything. The last thing they needed was this sending out an SOS signal: he’d probably answer it and create an enormous paradox.

Still, he couldn’t help smiling, not his usual grin but a proper smile that just grew and grew, like the glowing cloud. He waved it around and their eyes followed it in amazement. As he caught sight of Gwen’s hands, which Owen had bandaged after they left, he beckoned her towards him and took hold of her hands, as he had done once for a young blonde in a Union Flag T-shirt. He gave her a reassuring smile and directed the glow towards her hands and couldn’t stop it spreading as the two of them stared at the rapidly disappearing cuts. “Nanogenes.” He finally explained, with a comment which could in no way be dignified with the description ‘an explanation’. “Nanobots and nanogenes, the air’s full of them. Sub atomic robots, when the system’s activated the nanobots scurry round and repair anything that’s wrong with the ship, quite a lot in this case, and the nanogenes heal the occupants. You have to tell them to heal anyone else.”

“Like me, for example…” Gwen was still staring, but now she was staring at him, at his goofy grin. “Jack this is impossible.”

“You think this is impossible, these are quite early ones. Some of the last nanogenes I…” he drew in a breath, “encountered, those ones were about three generations beyond these and could bring people back to life.”

“Don’t be dumb, Jack.” Owen snarked, “We’ve heard all your stories before.”

“It’s true!” he pouted but still couldn’t hide that smile, it felt so good. But boy did he miss them, Rose… Don’t go there, not when he was in a happy place, “Nanogenes, they’re Fantastic!”

Gwen heard the capital letter drop into place and worried about their boss, but she reasoned that anything that made Jack that deliriously happy and still in control of all his faculties was probably a good thing. She did make a mental note to ask Ianto about it when they got back though. “Do you think we should get out, Jack?”

Suddenly he was the Captain again, slamming up the walls that had been deconstructed by the memories and she regretted it, “Right, yes. We need to get back to Cardiff. I have here,” and here he grabbed a handheld console from down the side of one of the seats, “a device which will help us to track the jettisoned escape pod.”

“There definitely was one?” Owen asked

“Computer?” Lights flashed and Owen and Gwen escaped an exasperated glance, he ignored them, “Locate escape pod.”

A surprisingly biological voice, but not speaking any language they recognised responded. Jack seemed to understand it though, because he nodded and turned to them, “See?”

“No, Jack, we’re not all fluent in Klingon. Let’s get out of here and back to Tosh and Ianto.” Owen turned abruptly and stalked out through the door. Gwen gave Jack an amused smile and followed Owen, leaving Jack to bring up the rear for once.

They thanked the UNIT forces and Jack gave them an update on the situation and headed back to the SUV. It wasn’t until he was ensconced in the driver’s seat that he turned round to give Owen his usual hundred megawatt grin, “You know, you really ought to think about learning Klingon Owen, a surprising number of alien species use it as a middle ground language. They may come from opposite ends of the universe, but if they’ve seen Star Trek they’re OK. Sindarin’s used for the same purpose.”

“Sindarin?” Owen just looked sceptical

“The language of the grey elves in Lord of the Rings.”

“I bet I know someone who speaks that…”

“Tosh, Ianto and I all do, which is why we do most of the communicating with alien species. Who needs a translator when you have a knowledge of Tolkein?”

Owen looked disgusted, “I can believe it of Tosh, but Tea-boy? Don’t tell me he’s into LARPs or MMORPGs too?”

“I don’t even know what the last two are, Owen, and please don’t enlighten me. Lord of the Rings is Ianto’s favourite book, he and Lisa used to talk and write to each other in Sindarin to stop people understanding them; by the time she died she’d forgotten all she knew.”

There was an uncomfortable silence after that, broken eventually by Gwen, “Is he going to be OK, Jack?”

He sighed, suddenly weary, feeling his true age and the full weight of the years crushing down on his heart, “Yes, he’ll be OK. I don’t know how long it’ll take, but he’ll get there.” He didn’t mention the fact that he only knew about Lisa loving Tolkein because he’d called Ianto ‘Nîn kal’ a few days ago, and that Ianto had broken down at that because Lisa had called him it, or that Ianto hadn’t had an uninterrupted night’s sleep so far since, or that it ripped him apart inside every time he had to hold him late at night or early in the morning because he cared too much and there was nothing he could do to help apart from be there. Too often he’d watched someone he cared about fall apart and had to pick up the pieces. Too often he hadn’t been strong enough.

He blinked suddenly and realised that they were near Bristol, he’d been on autopilot most of the way to this point, which scared him, but apparently it had done wonders for his driving. Gwen had actually nodded off in the front passenger seat, which had to be a first. They’d become a really, really strange little family, but it was the closest thing he’d had to family since two wonderful years in a blue police phone box. Even his wives hadn’t been family; family required shared strength, solidarity and usually bitchiness. And Torchwood, Torchwood was everything. He wiped a tear from his cheek and hoped that Owen hadn’t noticed, if he had he didn’t mention it, and concentrated on the road again. At the next service station he pulled off, got out and passed the keys to Owen, slipping into the back to work with the computers to find the escape pod.

Owen watched his boss carefully, worried that there’s been something in the air in that spaceship, besides the sub-atomic robots that Jack had harped on about. The Captain had swung from over-the-moon cheerful to miserable and on to, if Owen wasn’t mistaken, sentimental. And he had yet to make an inappropriate comment to Gwen, which was definitely cause for concern.

The phone rang just on the edge of Cardiff and he answered it distractedly, “Yeah, what’s up?” he called as he tried to suppress the road-rage at a particularly stupid learner driver. Gwen chuckling at him wasn’t helping.

“Erm… we’ve located the other Watulah.” Ianto’s voice came over the coms and the three in the car immediately tensed, something in the young man’s tone told them that all was not right, “Or I think it might be more accurate to say that he’s located us.” He was choosing his words carefully.

“Where is he?” there was a barely noticeable trace of panic in Jack’s voice as he pulled up the Sat Nav systems from the back.

“Erm…” there was a pause and the team held their breaths, “In the conference room, actually. Drinking tea, I hasten to add.”

“De-caff?” Jack’s brain had shut down, apparently, all he could think about was the fact that caffeine was poisonous to Watulahs, not that his best friend was in the same building as one of the deadliest killers in the universe and he was too far away to be any use. He gestured at Owen to go faster, so the medic let rip with the accelerator.

“Yes, I got some in for Gwen the other day, lucky I did really.” There was an argument that they could barely hear at the other end of the line, then Ianto came back speaking in a fractured but beautiful language that Owen and Gwen couldn’t understand. Jack groaned and responded in the same language, then rolled his eyes at Gwen and Owen,

“Our guest is insisting that Ianto speaks Sindarin, so that he knows what’s going on. Ni tul Ianto.”

“Ni is, Jack.”

Jack willed Owen faster, cursing himself for leaving Tosh and Ianto alone at the Hub, especially when the intelligence he had suggested that there would be another Watulah around. Who knows what else could have happened? As his mind dredged up a seemingly never-ending list of possibilities he started on a new list of options for when they reached the Hub. Ianto would hopefully have talked the Watulah into cooperating, at least for a while, or at least have distracted him with tea and cake. Then when they got there they could take him out, or take him back to the ship if he was prepared to cooperate further. But what if they went back to an empty Hub, what if Ianto didn’t manage to calm him? What if he got back to find that, after everything, the too young Welshman had died and it was all his fault?

They pulled up in a squeal of brakes outside the TI office and stormed through the doorway. When they reached the bottom the cog door was jammed open and the Hub was silent; half drawing his weapon, Jack led the way up to the conference room, dreading what he would find up there.

---

Author’s note:

Don’t ask me where all the Elvish came from, apart from www.uib.no/people/hnohf, a wonderful website if you ever want to use some (and I will be using it more in the future, I have a wonderful fic planned using lots of Elvish. Hopefully I’ll also learn Welsh too.) Story is now vaguely back on track, apart from the unexpected alien invasion of Cardiff of course

Translations used:

Nîn kal – My hero
Ni tul – I’m coming (I come, technically)
Ni is – I know