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FIC: Turf (adult), 1/2
Okay, so some months ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ellen_fremedon made an off-hand remark that got me thinking about crossing over Torchwood and SJA, which may not even technically be a proper crossover, really. This is therefore all her fault. It has been jossed twice (by Exit Wounds and Stolen Earth/Journey's End) and fixed, and I'm not dragging my feet any longer lest it be jossed again by SJA S2.
With thanks to the aboveellen_fremedon, and also sanj and dsudis. Further mistakes are my own, etc. I am not now, nor have I ever been, Russell T. Davies.
ellen_fremedon made an off-hand remark that got me thinking about crossing over Torchwood and SJA, which may not even technically be a proper crossover, really. This is therefore all her fault. It has been jossed twice (by Exit Wounds and Stolen Earth/Journey's End) and fixed, and I'm not dragging my feet any longer lest it be jossed again by SJA S2.With thanks to the above
ellen_fremedon, and also sanj and dsudis. Further mistakes are my own, etc. I am not now, nor have I ever been, Russell T. Davies.TurfPart 2/2
@11,100 words; adult
Torchwood/The Sarah Jane Adventures
"We do have our moments."
Ianto tapped his earpiece. "The pings are under a minute apart now. Should we get out and run?"
"We can't leave the SUV behind." Jack didn't turn his head as he dodged through traffic. "We may need the on-board diagnostics. Mickey, how close are we?"
"Nearly there. It's the next turning on the right -- no, left, left, left!"
"MICKEY!"
"All right, all right, ease up, can't you?"
"Jack!"
"Shit." Jack corrected mid-swerve in order to avoid a couple of kids on bicycles; a fair amount of on-board equipment rattled about as the SUV negotiated the pavement and then carried on while its suspension was still rocking.
"It's, erm," Mickey said after a moment, "the second on the right after the cross street."
Jack pulled over, grim-faced, and parked the SUV. "Thanks, Mickey," Ianto said. "We'll call." He got out and followed Jack up the path, standing behind his left shoulder as he knocked, taking a step back and out of the way when there was no answer after several moments.
"Don't seem to be in much of a hurry, do they?" Jack drew his weapon, but before he could even shift his weight, much less kick the door in, the door was answered by a small middle-aged woman, with a mug of tea in her hand, whom Ianto knew they'd seen before. Jack recognised her as well. "What are you doing here?"
"I live here." Sarah Jane Smith pushed his gun out of her face. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"We had an alert of Rift activity at this address," Ianto said.
She turned to look at him, then blinked a couple of times, rubbed her eyes, and took a step closer. "Ianto Jones," she said. "I thought it might be you, but a teleconference when the world's about to end didn't seem the time to visit memory lane."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Of course, it has been quite a long while. You may not remember the old UNIT gang --"
It was Ianto's turn to blink. "Aunt Sarah?"
Sarah Jane smiled up at him. "That's right! But here you are with Torchwood --"
"Hold it," Jack said, making a time-out sign with his gun and his left hand before shoving the gun back in its holster. He raised his eyebrows at them both. "'Aunt Sarah?'"
Sarah Jane Smith narrowed her eyes at Jack. "I knew Ianto's mother when he was just a boy," she said. "Now what's this about getting alerts from my address?"
Jack pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. Normally he liked that head-spinning sensation; but Sarah Jane had brought them in and given them tea and chatted with Ianto about his family -- and he didn’t know how it was that he’d never known Ianto was a UNIT brat, or rather that he’d never known that there were UNIT brats and Ianto was one, but even if he had known this, he didn’t think there was anything in any world that could have prepared him to hear Ianto Jones referring to Sir Alistair goddamn Lethbridge Stewart as "Uncle Brig" -- and been just as sweet as candy until the moment she'd told them she didn't have any help to give an organisation that spied on her and tried to interfere with her work. That was the kind of head-spinning he didn't care for. "Look, we're not spying on you. We just keep an eye out in case anyone needs a hand."
"For instance," Ianto prompted.
"For instance," Jack agreed, "there are vortisaurs, who knows how many of them, somewhere nearby." He pointed to the device Ianto still carried. "Turning up on our monitors, so obviously you haven't taken care of them on your own."
"There are no vortisaurs here, Harkness," Sarah Jane said, arms folded. "I'd say you're welcome to search the house, but you wouldn't need to if there were vortisaurs in it, would you."
Jack looked at Ianto and then at the weird-shit detector. "That's a fair point," he mused. Why had their instruments brought them here, when there were so obviously no vortisaurs in the place? "Let me see that." He zoomed in on the display -- there was no question they were in the right place according to the directions on the screen, and equally no question that the vortisaurs were close by but not here. He tapped his earpiece. "Mickey, the address you've guided us to is Sarah Jane Smith's place, and we don't have the vortisaurs."
"So what am I meant to do about that?"
"Mickey," Jack warned.
"Yeah, yeah, you're lost and it's the computer's fault, I know. Let me run it through the GPS again." Mickey was silent for a moment; then, "I get the same result, Jack. You're in the right spot."
"Look, the population in this house right now is the three of us and no aliens, all right?"
"Erm," Sarah Jane said.
Jack and Ianto both looked at her. "Hang on, Mickey," Jack said, and tapped his earpiece off.
"Is it possible that your machine is picking up my son?" Sarah Jane said. "You remember I said it was a long story -- he's actually not quite human. He was created in an alien experiment. So it could be that if your monitor is set to --"
"Is he here right now?" Ianto asked.
Sarah Jane shook her head. "He's on a weekend trip with a school group --"
"Then that's not it," Jack interrupted. "Mickey, any luck?"
"Luck doing what? You're exactly where you're meant to be, Jack," Mickey's voice came back. "There's Rift activity ongoing about ten metres from where you're standing."
"If there were Rift activity, there’d be --"
"Rift activity?" Sarah Jane broke in. "Of course if you look for Rift activity, you'll find me. There's a portal upstairs." She seized the weird-shit detector. "Yes, you see, naturally it's brought you here. You need to be searching for aliens -- not alien artefacts, as I said, or you'll get my whole house again and probably one or two of the neighbours --" She started tapping at the monitor. "Can he hear me?"
"Damn it!" It had made perfect sense at the time -- aliens fall through the Rift, so aliens in places other than Cardiff must come in through tiny tears, so find the tear and you'll find the door the aliens came through. How was Jack supposed to anticipate the thousand ways London could find to misbehave? London wasn't his department.
"Mickey," Ianto said, quietly taking over while Jack joined Sarah Jane poking at the weird-shit detector, "can you send us a GPS route to vortisaurs specifically instead of the Rift activity. Fast as you can, please."
But as soon as he'd spoken, before Mickey could answer, the front door banged open and a teenaged girl ran in, out of breath. "Sarah Jane! You've got to come help -- monster -- things! With wings, and claws, and -- like pterodactyls!"
"Where?" Jack asked.
"How big?" said Ianto.
The girl looked at them, still gasping for air; Sarah Jane had gone to her and taken her by the shoulders. "How many monsters?"
"Three or four? Maybe more. Moving so fast." She looked back at Jack and Ianto. "At the station. Trapped in the tunnel. They're big."
"Is your father at home?" The girl shook her head. "Damn." Sarah Jane grabbed her handbag and hastily checked its contents. "Right then, come on, it looks like we're all in this together."
"Hang on ... ?"
"Mickey, we've got it, thanks."
"Who's --"
"Maria Jackson, Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones," Sarah Jane said, nodding to each in turn. "We'll take your SUV -- my car is much too small for the four of us, and anyway I think you've parked me in."
The argument over including Maria cost them only a few minutes. Jack sputtered; Sarah Jane insisted that Maria was as valuable a member of her team as Ianto was of his; Jack declared that this was no place for a kid; Sarah Jane pointed out that she'd been in much thornier situations when she was not much older than Maria -- when she was between Maria's age and Ianto's, in fact, speaking of which --
"Fine, fine." Jack tried to glare at Maria, but didn't do very well. "Up you get." And Maria practically bounced up into the back seat of the SUV, and was leaving her father a phone message saying where she'd be by the time Jack tossed Ianto the keys.
"So when did Torchwood change its policy?" Sarah Jane asked.
Jack stared out the window. "Nineteen ninety-nine," he said. "In Cardiff, at least."
"Indeed? And in London?"
Jack looked over his shoulder at her. "After Canary Wharf," he said, and Ianto hoped Sarah Jane understood from his tone that it wasn't something they should discuss.
She was silent for a moment. "Did he know?" she asked. "That Cardiff was safe all that time, I mean."
Jack looked out the window again. "We were there together a few years ago, but it was before I'd ever heard of Torchwood." He made a frustrated hand-wave. "Time travel is complicated."
"Yes, it is."
Ianto fancied he could hear Sarah Jane smile slightly. He hated the Doctor quite a lot just then, he realised, and couldn't work out why, which he found frustrating. He steered nimbly through a neighbourhood.
"This is it up here."
"What will we need -- vinegar? Aluminium? A burnt stick?"
Ianto parked the SUV approximately parallel to the kerb. "Probably just a net and some red meat," he said, as they all jumped out and ran for the station.
There were five vortisaurs in the tunnel, and however they'd got down there, they couldn't work out how to get out again. Three of them were furious and two scared, if Ianto was reading them right; in about an hour and a half they managed to catch the frightened ones and tranquilise two of the angry ones, and only suffer some bruises and a couple of wrenched joints.
The last vortisaur was the biggest and the meanest, and the felling of its compatriots had it in an hysterical panic as well. "At what point do we give up and try something else?" Sarah Jane called.
"We'll run out of tranquiliser darts soon," Ianto agreed.
"What else can we try?" Maria asked.
"This'll work. It's just a matter of MARIA, GET DOWN!" Jack shouted.
Maria screamed and ducked away from the swooping vortisaur, just as Jack dived in front of her, yelling and waving his arms. The vortisaur screeched and hissed and snapped. Ianto and Sarah Jane shot tranq darts into its neck and underbelly, and it shrieked and flailed and came down with a thud.
Ianto paused and caught his breath long enough for Jack and Maria to fail to get up and dust themselves off. He and Sarah Jane exchanged a swift glance and then rushed to where the vortisaur had landed. "Quickly," he said, as they struggled to shift the creature.
"Give me a rope." Sarah Jane lashed up the vortisaur's beak, and they worked together to heave its body away from their teammates and bind its legs.
"Right," Ianto said, and they turned back to the others.
Jack was dead, of course. Ianto felt for a pulse, but hadn't really expected to find one. He rolled Jack onto his back so he'd be breathing air instead of dirt when he gasped back to life; took a moment to smooth Jack's hair off his forehead; and when he looked up, didn't see the surprise he'd expected from Sarah Jane.
"Is he dead?" she asked.
Ianto nodded. "Only a bit. He'll be all right."
"I've heard that about him. Right, then -- help me over here."
She was cradling Maria's head in one hand and had some kind of device in the other. "What can I --" The anomalous event monitor interrupted him with a squawk. "Oh, hell."
"She seems to be breathing, but I can't feel a pulse."
"No, I shouldn't think so." He clicked his stopwatch and made a mental note to add about a minute and a half. "What's that?"
"Sonic lipstick. Doesn't seem to be doing any good. Does that thing show you what --"
"Vortex," Ianto said, scanning Maria again with the monitor on a more conventional setting, looking for broken bones or haemorrhages and finding none, which at least kept things relatively uncomplicated. If they really moved, they could get back to Sarah Jane's house in less than ten minutes. It would take more than two hours to get her to the Hub, which would be -- he did some quick maths in his head -- very bad indeed. "Have you got a neutron wrangler?"
"Yes."
"Excellent. Can't wait for Jack, then. We'd better hurry." Leaving the monitor for Jack, Ianto picked Maria up and tried to lay her head against his shoulder rather than let it hang backwards. She was quite limp, but her eyelids were fluttering. "Let's go."
"Right behind you."
They hurried up the tunnel and back to the platform, but before they could even get to the emergency stairs a man came running at them. Mickey would have hacked into the police department's computers and had the place closed off ages ago. This guy must have fought past the protective barrier. "My God," he said, "what the hell --"
"She's fine, Alan," Sarah Jane said, stepping in front of Ianto.
"FINE?!"
"Ianto, this is Alan Jackson," Sarah Jane continued doggedly. "Maria's father." Ah. Or Sarah Jane must have told him how to get through to restricted areas, if she was in the habit of trespassing all over London with his daughter. "Alan, Ianto Jones, a colleague of mine from Cardiff." Ianto waved one hand and gave his best all-of-us-going-mad-together smile.
"What have you got her into?! Give her to me --"
"Ah, well, actually, Mr Jackson, best not," Ianto said.
"She's fine," Sarah Jane said again, "really, we promise she's fine --"
"Slight run-in with a vortisaur, but it's not serious. She'll be right as rain once we've reversed the polarity."
"Safest if you let us handle it. Won't take a minute."
They had managed, in keeping Maria away from Alan, to describe a half-circle, but of course if Ianto made a break for it Alan would catch him before he was halfway up the stairs. This interview had already set them back forty-five seconds and counting, which would be closer to an hour at the other end. He shifted Maria in his arms. "Actually," he said, "could you keep an eye on Jack for us?"
"Jack?"
"He's just a little way down the tunnel," Sarah Jane said, "and we've abandoned him, I'm afraid, so if you could look after him and give him a lift back to mine when he's ready, there's a love."
"Cheers," Ianto said over his shoulder as he headed up the stairs. "See you in a bit."
Dying wasn't so bad, but coming back to life again was never going to be Jack's favorite thing. The first breath was like a lungful of the coldest air of the winter, and depending how long he'd been under, it could be whole minutes for the pins and needles to work out of his arms and legs. This time, he apparently hadn't been dead very long, because only the ends of his fingers were tingling when he sat up and banged his head against something that swore and then screamed and then backed away quickly.
Jack touched his forehead gingerly. That was going to leave a bruise. "Who are you?"
The guy who had been checking his pulse was now clinging to a support beam against the tunnel wall, staring at him with a kind of wild-eyed panic. "You were dead!"
And he never got tired of this. "Yeah. Just for a minute, though. Where's Ianto?"
"You were quite definitely dead. You had no heartbeat."
"Or Sarah Jane?"
"And then you opened your eyes and sat up and breathed --"
"I remember that bit, thanks." Jack slowly got to his feet. Crap -- Ianto had dropped the weird-shit detector. What had he and Sarah Jane and the kid got themselves into?
"Stay away from me!" The guy held out a hand to fend him off, and took another couple of steps away.
Jack sighed. "Look, if you were really afraid of me you'd have actually left the tunnel by now," he said. "So can we skip through the freaking out, if you don't mind, because I was with three other people and now I'm alone, which probably means someone needs rescuing, and I could use your help." And he picked up the weird-shit detector and felt in his pockets for his earpiece and other electronic accessories, keeping one eye on the stranger to see how he'd take it.
The guy stared at him and didn't move for another couple of minutes. Jack could almost see the struggle in his mind. Hundred and seventy years, not counting the two thousand spent underground, you get used to it. Usually it ended okay, which Jack counted as anything from horrified fascination right through religious devotion. Maybe one out of every ten times the witness beat the crap out of him, as if killing him again or killing him harder would make it stick. (Didn't look like that was this guy's plan, but Jack laid the odds in case he was wrong: he guessed the guy was in his late thirties and gave him a couple of inches, but he gave himself about twenty pounds, and he decided he could take him in a fight if he had to.) The worst was when people were actually repulsed; there was no way to win that one. As long as they weren't running away, Jack figured he was ahead, and the longer they didn't run away, the less likely it was they eventually would.
"So, erm," the guy said cautiously. "What sort of ... I mean, how can I help?" Jack smiled to himself: got him. "Oh -- Sarah Jane Smith, is it?"
"No." Jack winked and extended his hand. "Captain Jack Harkness. Pleased to meet you."
The guy blushed a bit, but raised an eyebrow as he shook Jack's hand. "Alan Jackson," he said, "and I believe you asked for Sarah Jane Smith a few minutes ago -- she's my neighbour, and she's got my daughter, and I'm to bring you back and we'll swap, I suppose."
"They've gone home? Excellent. Was Ianto with them?" Alan blinked. Ooh, brown eyes. "Tallish. Skinny. Pretty mouth. Welsh."
"Right. Yes. Welsh. Yes, he was."
"Good --" Jack grinned -- "no need to rescue anyone, then, and we can get right to work with this lot." He turned to the vortisaurs the others had thoughtfully left trussed and netted.
"No, but, my daughter," Alan said. "She wasn't moving --"
"She was hurt?"
"They said she'd be all right, but they had to reverse ... something. She was hit by -- is that a --"
"Vortisaur," Jack nodded. "It's a creature that feeds on time. That's what killed me. I was trying to protect her. But listen, if Ianto and Sarah Jane said she'd be all right, then she will, and we have got to get these guys back where they belong."
"I --"
"Alan." Jack clapped one hand on Alan's shoulder and the other on the back of his neck and gave him his best expression of earnest reassurance. "I promise you that Maria will be fine. All you could do for her right now would be sit there next to her and wait for her to catch up out of the vortex. But if we don't get these vortisaurs out of here and back into the vortex, they could get free and cause more chaos and knock people in there hard enough they can't get out." Alan looked unhappily up the tunnel toward the station. "You'll keep her safer in the long run if you help me now." Alan set his jaw and nodded. "Good man. Now let's get to work."
It didn't take long for the weird-shit detector to reveal that the vortisaurs couldn't be sent back the way they had come; the portal they had come through was closed, and the only way to get them back to the vortex was -- Jack laughed out loud.
"What's so funny?"
"Looks like you'll get your wish sooner than we thought." Alan looked startled when Jack glanced back at him. "We're taking the vortisaurs home to Sarah Jane."
Fifteen minutes later, they'd managed to haul one tranquilised vortisaur to the station and were getting set to swing it up onto the platform. "You don't have some ... button you can press ... to make these ... bastards ... weightless or something?" Alan asked through clenched teeth.
"Hey, buddy, gravity's gravity. Ready? On three."
"Three." They heaved the vortisaur over the platform edge.
"That's one." Jack took a few seconds to catch his breath. "Four more. Let's go."
"We're going to take all five at once?"
"Not that this isn't fun, but we can spend more time together when we're through here if that's really what you're anxious about."
Alan smiled and ducked his head. "Yeah -- no, I meant, all we've got is my car. I don't know how we're going to move one of these things, never mind all five."
"Fair point, but I think we're both right. What do you say to a compromise?"
They did drag all five vortisaurs up to the platform rather than leaving them in the tunnel. Another forty minutes after that and they had the first one up to street level, and Jack hung his TARDIS key from its claw before they lashed it as securely as they could to the roof of Alan's car. "I wouldn't rate that for more than about fifteen miles an hour," he said, and Alan nodded nervously and didn't go above ten the whole way back, so the five-minute trip took more like half an hour. Jack leaned back against the headrest and tried to calculate whether the whole job would be done before dark, or even before tomorrow.
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I may have snorted an embarrassingly large amount of milk all over myself at this point.
*goes off to read second part*
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b) Shall I tell you how your username caused a moment (just a moment!) of kind of startling panic over here? My college roommate is
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I wanted to comment earlier but there was computer death - I have never seen SJA, but by the end of this fic I really felt I knew her. I love your characterizations of Jack and Ianto and I thought you did a really great job portraying the dynamics of their open relationship (something too few fics do). But most of all I love the relationship you described between Jack and Alan, it was really bittersweet and wonderful. *favorites*
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I love this comment. :-) I'm really pleased that you liked the story, and I think you should watch SJA at your earliest convenience. Heh.