m_findlow

Title: Haunted by the past
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Owen, Suzie, Tosh, Yvonne Hartman, Ianto, Lisa
Author: m_findlow
Rating: M
Length: 2,318 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 4 - X-Files Reverse Fandom - Ghost in the Machine at ficlet_zone
Summary: Torchwood Three is perplexed by the appearance of ghosts.

Jack stormed through the cog wheel door, the others trailing a good few meters behind him, not wanting to get caught up in his mood. He'd been sullen the whole way back, and each of them kept their thoughts to themselves. This whole business of ethereal creatures turning up all over the city had Jack on edge. It was hardly comforting for the rest of them either, but he seemed to have take it personally. Bloody Torchwood. This was London's doing, though only they knew that. How it was getting reported in the media didn't matter.

'Nearly two months and we've still got no flipping idea,' Owen grumbled, setting his heavy metal case back down.

'We've been busy doing other stuff,' Suzie argued. 'The rift didn't just stop throwing crap at us because of this.'

'And we don't know whether the rift is exacerbating it,' Tosh added, making a mental note to add a further diagnostic simulation to her growing suite of tools analysing the rift readings that came through on a daily basis. 'Although, it doesn't account for why they're turning up all over the globe. If it was a local rift disturbance, it wouldn't go beyond Cardiff.'   

'I wonder what a weevil does if it sees a ghost?' Owen mused.

'Probably tries to eat it,' Suzie suggested. 'At least the don't appear down here in the hub.'

'Yeah,' Owen agreed. 'Thank God for small mercies.' He frowned for a second. 'Why is that? Tosh, have you got some whizz bang anti-ghost thingie set up?'

The question made her frown back in response. 'I honestly don't know why they don't appear in here,' she replied.

'Let's just be grateful, yeah?' Owen said. 'Last thing we bloody need, though it would save us having to traipse around town looking for one to experiment on. Not that they're not everywhere, but it looks a little fucked up messing with one out in the open.'

Suzie paused, her expression thoughtful. 'Was it just me, it did it seem a little bit put out by that scan we did?'  

'How do you tell if it's put out?' Owen asked. 'Not like they have faces.'

'Don't you think so?' Tosh asked, sounding surprised. 'They sort of do. I mean, if you stop and  look hard enough.'

Owen slapped the top of the case. 'Right, well when one turns up with a face and a voice box, why don't we just ask it what's it's doing? Knowing our luck it'll only speak bloody Welsh.'

'Get your questions ready, Owen,' Suzie warned, hanging up her coat. 'It'll be like speed dating.'

Owen chuckled. 'Maybe that's the solution. We should just shag one to find out if it's real or not. Like kissing a frog. What do you reckon, boss?' Owen called out. 'Fancy a quickie with a ghost to get some answers?'

Jack turned on them, his look thunderous. Owen raised his hands up in defense. 'Just a joke. Not like you to be so uptight.'

'Get to work on you've got,' he ordered.

'Which is nothing,' Owen muttered.

'Well, that's not good enough!'

'We only get ten minutes to study them at best,' Tosh replied, coming to Owen's aid, though it was risky to do so. 'It's not exactly a lot of time.'

Jack huffed out an annoyed breath. 'I know. I'm not angry with you. Just do the best you can.'

'There's another shift at two forty-five pm. We'll head out and be ready,' she promised.

Jack seemed to accept the offer, temper abating and the hard angular features of his anger melting from his face.

'Stupid question,' Owen began, 'but why aren't they all hanging around graveyards? I mean, sure they can come pay you a visit if they know where you are, but what of you've moved house since then? How's that work?'

'Psychical resonance,' Jack replied. 'A connection between things that transcends every layer of existence.'

'You just made that up,' Owen challenged. 'That's all fifth dimension, twilight zone stuff.'

'There are a good many things that science can't explain,' he replied.

Suzie folded her arms, looking incredulous. 'So, they are ghosts, then? Don't tell me you believe in that shit?'

'Ghosts are real, but these things, whatever they are, they're not ghosts.'

He cringed even as he said it. If he looked at one long enough he was sure he could make out the facial details of people from his memory long since gone, just as Tosh had suggested. He needed to stop that. It was just his mind trying to rationalise what he was seeing. The real ghosts that wanted to haunt him didn't turn up at an appointed time during the day; they lay in wait for him at night when he was alone and his defences were down. That's how they liked to operate. Whatever this was, it was unnatural and wrong.

'I have a phone call to make,' he announced, turning and leaving them, talking to his office and shutting the door behind him.

Yvonne had been ignoring his repeated attempts to speak to her. She'd rerouted his calls to a hundred different departments, all who gave him the runaround, transferring him somewhere else in the promise that the next transfer would be directly to Ms Hartman's executive assistant who could most certainly help, but always ending up on the end of an answering service. Not this time. He'd hacked the pager of someone who occasionally reported directly to Yvonne, sourcing the concealed number for her private cell phone. His own was being transmitted through his vortex manipulator, bounced and encrypted through three different alien satellites. No amount of fancy Torchwood software was going to divert his call this time.

'Yvonne Hartman,' came the clipped English voice.

'You know it's rude not to return someone's calls,' Jack greeted.

'Ah, if it isn't my favourite captain,' she replied, his accent giving him away instantly, as he knew it would. He could picture her leaning back in her posh white leather chair, settling those expensive stilettos up on the glass desk. 'Have you changed your mind?'

'Not in the slightest,' he said. He wouldn't come back into the fold no matter what. Torchwood One was corrupt and dangerous.

'Pity,' Yvonne replied, as if he were declining nothing more than a glass of water. 'I suppose I don't have to guess why you're calling?'

Jack sat forward, leaning his elbows on the desk, phone clutched tightly to his ear. 'The world suddenly has ghosts appearing on demand and you think I don't wanna know why?'

She gave a chortling little laugh of indifference. 'Marvellous, isn't it?'

'Not the word that sprang to mind.'

'Do I detect a hint of jealousy?'

'Wrong again. Whatever it is you're doing, it needs to stop.'

'You've absolutely nothing to be worried about, Jack. We've got the machine perfectly calibrated. Not that anything we do here is your concern, of course,' she added.

'Everything you do is my concern,' Jack responded, feeling his body tense in anger and frustration. 'What is this machine? How does it work?' He already tried logging into their research systems to download their files on this so-called ghost machine but found that his access had been restricted.

'We're creating a new future here, Jack. One where death ceases to have meaning. It's social re-engineering on a scale that no one could have ever comprehended.'

'It's wrong,' Jack replied. 'Life and death shouldn't coincide.' He knew that better than anyone.

'Why ever not? You'd rather people stick their loved ones in the ground and forget about them?'  

'I'm not convinced that what you've brought into being are even real ghosts.'

'Turn on your television, Jack. Read the papers. People have proven they're real. Not Torchwood, but the world at large. They are all the proof you need.'

'People can be convinced to believe anything,' he replied. 'And the more people want to believe, the more it spreads, until you have every last person on the planet convinced of what they're seeing. What happens when what people belive and reality collide?'

Yvonne tutted. 'You've always been so melodramatic. It's unbecoming of someone in your position.'

Jack clenched his jaw at her dismissive tone. 'Those ghosts you claim to have brought back? They're not real. They have no faces, no voices. They all look the same.' He shook his head. 'Doesn't that tell you something isn't right?'

She let out a tiny exhausted sigh. 'They're ghosts, Jack. How would you like them to look? Besides, the uniformity is just a temporary thing until we can get the projected increases.'

'Projected increases in what?'

'Ghost energy, of course. We're aiming for five thousand gigawatts by the end of the week. They think if we can get it to six thousand, there'll be sufficient energy emitted to generate full physiologies.'

'Six thousand...' He let the thought trail off. 'You need to stop this now. Where is that kind of power even coming from?'

'We have our ways and means,' she replied, remaining coy.

'You don't know what you're doing.'

'In your opinion,' she countered.

'If I have to come down there personally to shut you down, then I will.'

Yvonne laughed at that. 'You won't even get past the front door,' she replied. 'You're the one that wanted out, remember? I gave you that. What we do is no business of yours.'

'Stop this thing, now!' Jack growled.

Yvonne turned serious, her volume lowered to its husky minimum. 'We're not stopping, Jack. You can't make us. We're Torchwood. Outside the government and beyond the police.'

Somewhere in London...

He didn't want to stay home from work, but in the end the decision had been taken out of his hands. If he'd been feeling rubbish last night, it was nothing compared to how he'd felt when he'd woken up - like he'd been run over by a truck.

'About bloody time you took some personal leave,' Lisa had said, brushing a hand over his forehead and feeling it burning hot. 'Worked yourself right into the ground, no doubt.'

'That's all you've got for me?' he complained. 'Some insults thinly veiled as sympathy?'

She smiled and kissed his cheek. 'I'll love you more when you're feeling better. Promise.'

'Shouldn't you stay home to look after me, then?' he asked. He didn't want her to, of course, but it was too opportune a moment to needle her.

'If you've still got energy to be a smart arse, Ianto Jones, then you've got energy enough to make your own bloody soup.'

'Can. Pot. Stove,' he mused. 'Seems complicated.'

'Lucky you're so clever, then,' she beamed. She checked her watch. 'Shit, I've got to go.' She gave him another quick peck. 'Love you. Bye!'

He'd grabbed the duvet and hauled it out to the sofa with him. It might be old and tatty, but it was sinfully comfortable and he didn't want to stay in bed all day. Despite that, he spent most of the morning dozing on and off under the warm confines.

Something woke him just before noon. He could sense it more than anything, like there was a chill in the air from someone having left the door or a window open. He opened his eyes and jolted up at the sight of the thing standing just next to the television.

'Jesus! Fuck!' he cried, scrambling backwards along the sofa to the far end, pressing himself back hard against its softness. There was a ghost. A ghost in their living room. He looked up at the clock. Five minutes to midday. The ghost shift would have started at ten to. That thing had been in here with him for five whole minutes.

He didn't move, rooted to the spot. He'd seen them on television of course, and everyone at work did nothing but talk about them, but he didn't have much at all to do with them personally. They didn't appear down in the sub basement level where he worked, thankfully. There was no one down there but him, cataloging and updating databases. Truth be told, they freaked him out. It wasn't their appearance per se, though the black humanoid shape coated in a halo of white light was altogether disturbing on its own. It was the concept of what they were. Ghosts. Memories of the past.

The more he stared at it, the more the head began to solidify in his mind. Where before there had been an indistinct nothing, now it was forming eyes and a mouth, the shoulders filling out, arms becoming more defined. It looked like... no. He only knew one dead person. There was no way he could be standing there in his living room. He'd left Cardiff to get away from him. He couldn't be here now.

'Dad?'

The ghost took a step forward before it faded away into nothing, the ghost shift ended. Ianto let out a shuddering breath, half terrified, half relieved.

He jumped out of his skin at the sound of his phone beeping. "Just checking in. Hope there's not been any ghosts in our flat. Your landlord will start charging us extra. :) C u 2nite."

He didn't reply. He couldn't admit to Lisa that he though his dad had paid them a visit. He watched the clock anxiously all afternoon as it ticked its way to quarter to three, in time for the second ghost shift. Before it did, he got up and locked himself in their cramped little toilet. There was hardly room for one in there, and certainly not enough for him and a ghost. If it was out there, it didn't make a sound, but then neither did he, not wanting to give away his location. Let it think he'd gone. He stayed in there nearly an hour, just in case.

Tomorrow he'd go back to work, no matter how sick he felt.