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nothing_rhymes_with_iantoTitle: In Losing What I Am, I Become Who We Are (Alternate Happy Ending)
Authors:
qafkinnetic & solvingfor42
Characters/Pairings: The Torchwood Team, sans Jack.
Word Count: 43,192
Rating: R
Warnings/Spoilers: Warning for violence and major character death.
Beta:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
snarkymuch, Neil's parents, Tumblr user consultingmidgardian.
Summary: The discovery of a mechanical Weevil beneath Cardiff starts a chain of events that threatens to destroy Torchwood. Jack is still missing, Ianto seems to be going mad after an injury and Owen is forced to confront his worst fears. When the people of Cardiff start turning into clockwork automatons, things seem hopeless. And then, when Owen decides to investigate Ianto’s strange behaviour, they get worse.
Authors' Notes: SO MUCH LOVE for our betas:snarkymuch and Neil's parents, and our Brit-picker, consultingmidgardian. We'd also like to thank The SCP Foundation (http://
This fic was supposed to be short -- we decided to aim for a thousand words, expecting it to expand to two or three times that. But Neil tends to write mostly novel-length fics, and Lex wanted an actual plot, and we found all these great ideas, and the next thing we knew it was over 40,000 words! As Neil said when we were trying to think of a title: 'Somehow I think “The Epic Fic that Would Not End Oh God” would convey the wrong mood.'
We wrote two endings. Neil wrote a happy one and Lex wrote a sad one. This is the alternate happy ending.
[Recap]
Ianto scrolled through the information, flipped past the various CCTV feeds with a flick of his wrist. Grabbed an external connection and checked the situation in Cardiff— news channels, trending internet discussions, emergency radio broadcasts, military communications. He absorbed it quicker than a normal human could hope to follow, then made a gesture with his hand and cleared the screen.
“Ianto?” Gwen asked, voice awed and more than a little afraid.
“WE ARE THE TORCHWOOD ONE ARCHIVE,” he said, just to see the expression on Owen's face.
It was everything he could have hoped for. Watching all the colour drain out of his face as his jaw fell open, Ianto couldn't keep from grinning any longer.
“Ianto?” Owen asked, hovering between relief, disbelief and exasperation.
“Well,” Ianto said, “I'd prefer it to Archibald.”
“Oh, my God!” Gwen yelled, jumping to her feet and throwing her arms round him.
“It worked?” Owen asked. “What happened? Why was it delayed?”
Ianto chuckled and patted Gwen's shoulder. She was crying into the joint of his neck. “We had to want it. The only thing keeping us apart was ourselves.”
Gwen grabbed Owen and pulled him into the hug. He came with a minimum of protest and a poorly hidden smile. “Fine thing to do to your doctor,” he grumbled into Ianto's ear. When they finally separated, Owen cleared his throat and asked, “And you have access to the databases?” Ianto pretended not to notice his eyes were damp.
“Yes. All of it. It's brilliant.” He flicked his fingers and file two-seventeen appeared on the screen. “I believe this is the information we need.”
Owen tapped a measured amount of powder into the reservoir of the inhaler and snapped it shut. The file that Ianto found had contained detailed instructions on the creation of the counter-virus, but manufacturing a synthetic disease was something Owen had never done before. He hoped he'd got it right. At least Ianto had been helping him -- now that he had all the knowledge of the Archive and some sort of wireless connection to the Mainframe, he was an invaluable lab assistant.
"How's this supposed to work?" Gwen asked.
He held up an inhaler, the same kind most people used for their allergies. "Well, if I did it right, this should reverse all the changes the original virus made. Hey, presto, human again."
"That easy?"
"Easy? Obviously you're not the one who spent the last six hours in the lab."
The clang of footsteps on metal announced Ianto's return, leading the automaton that used to be Tosh. She seemed to be following Ianto willingly enough, incurious but cooperative, tiny flumes of steam jetting from her joints with each step. Owen felt the plastic of the inhaler creak under his hand and loosened his grip with an effort. This had to work. Ianto positioned her on the end of the table and moved to one side. He kept a hand on her arm, whether for comfort or restraint Owen couldn't tell.
Gwen watched with a concerned frown, chewing on her lip. "How long should it take?"
Ianto's eyes went slightly out of focus, the way they always seemed to now whenever he accessed the Archive's databases. As if he were looking at something the rest of them couldn't see. His free hand twitched at his side in small, phantom gestures. He'd tried to explain what it was like, but Owen got the feeling it wasn't the sort of thing you could really put into words.
"It's re-patterning the DNA back to its natural structure, so it won't have the same resistance as the original virus. It replicates at a rate of seven generations per second, so with a concentration this dense, it should infect eight million new cells every picosecond." Ianto snapped back to the real world and smiled apologetically. "Almost instantaneously."
Owen took a deep breath and approached Tosh, trying not to look too closely at her expressionless face. He could hear the rhythmic tick-and-hiss of her pneumatic breath. He held the inhaler up to her mouth, timed the inhale, and pressed down on the plunger. The fine green powder sprayed out and coated the lower half of her face and the inside of her mouth. He hoped some of it had made it inside her, too. Physical contact of any sort should be enough, but this was Tosh. He wanted to be sure.
Nothing happened. Owen clenched his hands, tried to wait, tried to be patient, but a familiar sense of failure clogged his throat. He'd screwed up again. He was useless. He—
Tosh jerked and made a garbled sound of pain. A human sound. Owen reached for her shoulders as she doubled over and watched as flesh bloomed over her mechanical body like algae. It happened so fast that by the time his hand landed on her arm he could feel warm muscle and skin under the silk of her blouse. It looked like time-lapse photography.
"Shit," Gwen breathed.
"Are you all right?" Owen demanded when the transformation seemed complete.
Tosh looked up with tears of pain glimmering in her reassuringly human eyes. "I- I think so." Her hair hadn't grown back, and the dark stubble that framed her face made her look vulnerable and waifish.
Owen felt something unclench inside him. He pulled her to him and kissed the top of her prickly head. His arms were trembling, from relief this time, and his eyes were burning. He felt Ianto put a hand on his back. "All right," he said roughly, "I'm going to have to run some tests, just to make sure there aren't any lingering adverse effects, but we shouldn't wait on those to start disseminating the cure. Gwen, Ianto, take your doses. As for the rest of Cardiff—"
"Myfanwy seems to have escaped infection," Ianto said. "I'll give her a bag of the counter-virus with a hole in the bottom to disperse it and send her out hunting to spread it over the city. If we can expose a moderate percentage of the population, the contagiousness of the counter-virus should take care of the rest."
"That'll work." Owen released Tosh and stepped back with a shaky breath.
Gwen threw herself in his arms. "Thank you," she said fervently. "I'll take a dose to Rhys, too."
"Good idea."
Ianto’s hands twitched in the air as he studied the information in archive’s files. "By tonight, Cardiff should be almost back to normal except for the physical damage caused by the riots," he said.
"We did it?" Tosh asked.
"Owen did it," said Ianto.
Owen felt the truth of that, realised he'd pulled through despite his fear and accomplished the nearly-impossible several times. Everyone had been relying on him, and he hadn't failed them. He savoured the feeling of pride and satisfaction for a moment, then shook his head. "We did it," he said.
Authors:
qafkinnetic & solvingfor42Characters/Pairings: The Torchwood Team, sans Jack.
Word Count: 43,192
Rating: R
Warnings/Spoilers: Warning for violence and major character death.
Beta:
snarkymuch, Neil's parents, Tumblr user consultingmidgardian.Summary: The discovery of a mechanical Weevil beneath Cardiff starts a chain of events that threatens to destroy Torchwood. Jack is still missing, Ianto seems to be going mad after an injury and Owen is forced to confront his worst fears. When the people of Cardiff start turning into clockwork automatons, things seem hopeless. And then, when Owen decides to investigate Ianto’s strange behaviour, they get worse.
Authors' Notes: SO MUCH LOVE for our betas:
snarkymuch and Neil's parents, and our Brit-picker, consultingmidgardian. We'd also like to thank The SCP Foundation (http://This fic was supposed to be short -- we decided to aim for a thousand words, expecting it to expand to two or three times that. But Neil tends to write mostly novel-length fics, and Lex wanted an actual plot, and we found all these great ideas, and the next thing we knew it was over 40,000 words! As Neil said when we were trying to think of a title: 'Somehow I think “The Epic Fic that Would Not End Oh God” would convey the wrong mood.'
We wrote two endings. Neil wrote a happy one and Lex wrote a sad one. This is the alternate happy ending.
[Recap]
Ianto scrolled through the information, flipped past the various CCTV feeds with a flick of his wrist. Grabbed an external connection and checked the situation in Cardiff— news channels, trending internet discussions, emergency radio broadcasts, military communications. He absorbed it quicker than a normal human could hope to follow, then made a gesture with his hand and cleared the screen.
“Ianto?” Gwen asked, voice awed and more than a little afraid.
“WE ARE THE TORCHWOOD ONE ARCHIVE,” he said, just to see the expression on Owen's face.
It was everything he could have hoped for. Watching all the colour drain out of his face as his jaw fell open, Ianto couldn't keep from grinning any longer.
“Ianto?” Owen asked, hovering between relief, disbelief and exasperation.
“Well,” Ianto said, “I'd prefer it to Archibald.”
“Oh, my God!” Gwen yelled, jumping to her feet and throwing her arms round him.
“It worked?” Owen asked. “What happened? Why was it delayed?”
Ianto chuckled and patted Gwen's shoulder. She was crying into the joint of his neck. “We had to want it. The only thing keeping us apart was ourselves.”
Gwen grabbed Owen and pulled him into the hug. He came with a minimum of protest and a poorly hidden smile. “Fine thing to do to your doctor,” he grumbled into Ianto's ear. When they finally separated, Owen cleared his throat and asked, “And you have access to the databases?” Ianto pretended not to notice his eyes were damp.
“Yes. All of it. It's brilliant.” He flicked his fingers and file two-seventeen appeared on the screen. “I believe this is the information we need.”
Owen tapped a measured amount of powder into the reservoir of the inhaler and snapped it shut. The file that Ianto found had contained detailed instructions on the creation of the counter-virus, but manufacturing a synthetic disease was something Owen had never done before. He hoped he'd got it right. At least Ianto had been helping him -- now that he had all the knowledge of the Archive and some sort of wireless connection to the Mainframe, he was an invaluable lab assistant.
"How's this supposed to work?" Gwen asked.
He held up an inhaler, the same kind most people used for their allergies. "Well, if I did it right, this should reverse all the changes the original virus made. Hey, presto, human again."
"That easy?"
"Easy? Obviously you're not the one who spent the last six hours in the lab."
The clang of footsteps on metal announced Ianto's return, leading the automaton that used to be Tosh. She seemed to be following Ianto willingly enough, incurious but cooperative, tiny flumes of steam jetting from her joints with each step. Owen felt the plastic of the inhaler creak under his hand and loosened his grip with an effort. This had to work. Ianto positioned her on the end of the table and moved to one side. He kept a hand on her arm, whether for comfort or restraint Owen couldn't tell.
Gwen watched with a concerned frown, chewing on her lip. "How long should it take?"
Ianto's eyes went slightly out of focus, the way they always seemed to now whenever he accessed the Archive's databases. As if he were looking at something the rest of them couldn't see. His free hand twitched at his side in small, phantom gestures. He'd tried to explain what it was like, but Owen got the feeling it wasn't the sort of thing you could really put into words.
"It's re-patterning the DNA back to its natural structure, so it won't have the same resistance as the original virus. It replicates at a rate of seven generations per second, so with a concentration this dense, it should infect eight million new cells every picosecond." Ianto snapped back to the real world and smiled apologetically. "Almost instantaneously."
Owen took a deep breath and approached Tosh, trying not to look too closely at her expressionless face. He could hear the rhythmic tick-and-hiss of her pneumatic breath. He held the inhaler up to her mouth, timed the inhale, and pressed down on the plunger. The fine green powder sprayed out and coated the lower half of her face and the inside of her mouth. He hoped some of it had made it inside her, too. Physical contact of any sort should be enough, but this was Tosh. He wanted to be sure.
Nothing happened. Owen clenched his hands, tried to wait, tried to be patient, but a familiar sense of failure clogged his throat. He'd screwed up again. He was useless. He—
Tosh jerked and made a garbled sound of pain. A human sound. Owen reached for her shoulders as she doubled over and watched as flesh bloomed over her mechanical body like algae. It happened so fast that by the time his hand landed on her arm he could feel warm muscle and skin under the silk of her blouse. It looked like time-lapse photography.
"Shit," Gwen breathed.
"Are you all right?" Owen demanded when the transformation seemed complete.
Tosh looked up with tears of pain glimmering in her reassuringly human eyes. "I- I think so." Her hair hadn't grown back, and the dark stubble that framed her face made her look vulnerable and waifish.
Owen felt something unclench inside him. He pulled her to him and kissed the top of her prickly head. His arms were trembling, from relief this time, and his eyes were burning. He felt Ianto put a hand on his back. "All right," he said roughly, "I'm going to have to run some tests, just to make sure there aren't any lingering adverse effects, but we shouldn't wait on those to start disseminating the cure. Gwen, Ianto, take your doses. As for the rest of Cardiff—"
"Myfanwy seems to have escaped infection," Ianto said. "I'll give her a bag of the counter-virus with a hole in the bottom to disperse it and send her out hunting to spread it over the city. If we can expose a moderate percentage of the population, the contagiousness of the counter-virus should take care of the rest."
"That'll work." Owen released Tosh and stepped back with a shaky breath.
Gwen threw herself in his arms. "Thank you," she said fervently. "I'll take a dose to Rhys, too."
"Good idea."
Ianto’s hands twitched in the air as he studied the information in archive’s files. "By tonight, Cardiff should be almost back to normal except for the physical damage caused by the riots," he said.
"We did it?" Tosh asked.
"Owen did it," said Ianto.
Owen felt the truth of that, realised he'd pulled through despite his fear and accomplished the nearly-impossible several times. Everyone had been relying on him, and he hadn't failed them. He savoured the feeling of pride and satisfaction for a moment, then shook his head. "We did it," he said.
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no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 02:23 am (UTC)And there was plot, with one of the most seriously creepy "monsters of the week" I can recall, right from the first sighting of that weevil. (Have to say it immediately reminded me of the DW episode Girl In the Fireplace, and the clockwork androids.) Loved the initial confusion over what was happening with Ianto. At first I thought something jumped into him from the weevil, then I thought that maybe he had the controller for whatever the virus was, and then finally, we meet Archibald *grin*, which was a great spin on the Ianto-as-archive trope. (And of course it needs coffee to survive.)
The ending was totally unexpected, and devastating. The thought of Ianto alone, the only one unaffected in a world of automatons is just...shudder... Also, when Jack comes back, there's no saying he wouldn't be affected also, even if his dying acts like a reset. (And, OMG, I just flashed on a giant mechanical FOB. ROTFL.)
I also liked the alternate ending as a more expected, Torchwood saves the day, eventually, after a whole bunch of havoc happens. It read like an episode (a great episode). However... I did find that jumping straight into that section from the link was jarring. If I could make a suggestion, I'd recommend that you repeat a small section of Part 5 at the top of the alternate ending page, maybe starting from “WE ARE THE TORCHWOOD ONE ARCHIVE,” That way, there'd be a sort of emotional reset back to when Ianto first merged with the archive, and it would lead into the alternate ending better.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-29 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-01 07:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-02 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-07-11 08:05 pm (UTC)Great job!