Torchwood Advent Challenge - 19th December

[m_findlow]

Title: Think before you speak
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Gwen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 4,661 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for prompt "Communications Breakdown"
Summary: Jack's big mouth has landed the team in trouble

'This is the place?' Jack asked.

Gwen checked her PDA readings again. 'Definitely,' she replied, eyeing the pokey little door.

'I don't remember this place,' Ianto said. There were hundreds of little shops tucked away in the city's many arcades, but for the life of him, this one he simply couldn't recall.

'I thought you knew everything?' Jack teased.

'Hmph,' he quietly muttered. He did. He knew there was the mortgage broker, and then next door to it was a shoe repair shop. Why had he never noticed the door squeezed in between?

Jack gave him a cheeky wink and pushed it open, sending a tiny bell tinkling overhead, before disappearing down the narrow stairs to the space below ground.

'Woah,' he said getting his first look inside. It was like a gypsy treasure trove. The place wasn't large, but there was every kind of antique, knick knack and oddment. They were crammed onto narrow shelves and stacked box on top of box, all vying for precious space that didn't exist. The place was also dark and smokey, lit by grimy wall sconces and stained glass lamps perched precariously between piles of collectables, which themselves may have also been up for sale. Perhaps it was luck that they even had enough lamps to light the store. If someone bought them, they'd been in all sorts.

'Can you say kleptomaniac?' Ianto said, staring around at the accumulated horror. It was worst than the archives.

Gwen was studying her PDA, frowning at it. Jack caught the look of frustration.

'Any chance you can narrow it down for us?' he asked. 'We could be here all day at this rate.'

She pointed vaguely over at a spot two rows of tall shelving further away. 'There's a few weaker signals here, too. Too faint to register until we were inside.'

'Is it any wonder junk that's fallen through the rift might have ended up here?' Jack replied.

'Needle in a haystack,' Ianto replied, not looking forward to having to trawl through the mire to find it.

'Let's worry about what we came here for, first,' Jack said.

The pair of men followed Gwen as she navigated awkwardly between haphazard mountains of junk, trying hard not to topple any of the precarious piles. Jack was least successful in that effort, his broad frame and long coat attempting to catch on every corner. Several items clattered loudly to the ground as he accidentally knocked them from their places, receiving a disapproving glance from Ianto for both the noise and the mess. They proceeded as best they could until her PDA almost glowed in proximity to the item, hovering it around the shelf, trying to pick the alien from the kitsch.

'Arcateen signalling beacon,' Jack said, spotting the object immediately and picking it up. 'No wonder the signal was so strong.'

'It's still transmitting?' Ianto asked.

'Just barely,' he said, squinting at the cracked surface. 'Still, when you're capable of sending a signal four thousand light years, even a weak signal is gonna light up our systems like a Christmas tree.'

'Can I help you?' came a small gravelly voice. Somewhere, emerging out from the high shelves was a bent old woman. Her long beaded shawl clacked as she shuffled toward them, looking like some old gypsy.

Jack held up the beacon. 'Thought we might take this,' he replied.

She smiled through a mouth of half missing teeth. 'Twenty quid.'

Twenty quid? It was broken. Even to an Arcateen, it wasn't worth a dime. 'Do you even know what this is?' he asked her.

'It doesn't matter.'

'So how do you know it's worth twenty quid?'

'You want it, so it's worth something.'

Gwen watched the whole exchange, partly amused, and partly annoyed. Who cared what she asked for it? It couldn't stay here, soaked in residual rift radiation. The only safe place for it was Torchwood. Why did Jack feel the need to haggle?

'It's not as if we can't afford it, Jack,' she pleaded.

'Missing the point, Gwen,' he said, determined to haggle down to a lower price. 'Five.'

'Twenty,' the gypsy woman replied.

'Ten.'

'Twenty.'

'Fifteen, and that's my final offer,' Jack said.

'Twenty.'

'Done,' Gwen said. Jack gave her an annoyed look.

'Can I wrap that for you?' the woman asked.

'We might have a bit more of a browse first,' Gwen replied.

'Lots to see,' the gypsy woman said, leaving them alone.

They split up, pawing through the mess and chaos, scanning some things and picking up others for a closer inspection. Some things they easily identified, having come across them before. Others were unknown, but a quick scan showed that they had traces of rift energy clinging to them.

Jack spent half the morning attaching stories to each item he found, telling Gwen about some of his adventures. Ianto had heard several of them before, continuing his own methodical route of the shop, collecting several items himself. Included were a handful of dusty paperbacks, penned in what he identified as Galactic Standard. The DaVinci Code, Sense and Sensibility, The Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick. Strange to think that somewhere else in the universe, aliens were reading novels written on Earth. Not his usual genre, but Jack had been trying to teach him the language with limited resources. Perhaps a bit of self study might help.

By the time they'd finished scouring the shop, the box full for items had cost them over three hundred pounds, none of which Jack was happy about.

'You enjoy robbing people?' Jack muttered, whilst Ianto signed away the credit card slip. He poked at a disturbing little ornament on the counter, three monkeys with creepy little expressions on their faces. One had his hands over his ears, another over his mouth, and the last covered his eyes.

'That's not for sale,' the woman replied, seeing Jack toying with the item.

'Wouldn't want it,' he said. 'It's worthless junk. Like everything else in here. And ugly, too.' Just like everything else in here, he almost added.

'Jack!' Gwen chastised. Where had their charming, affable leader disappeared to?

'Is nothing personal,' the gypsy replied. 'Is just business.'

'Trust me,' Jack said, hefting the box off the counter, 'I know a con man when I see one. I've got a sense for it.'

The gypsy just shrugged and smiled at him.

 

'You could have been a bit nicer,' Gwen said, chastising him as soon as they were out of the shop.

'Most of this stuff isn't worth anything. Not even for us,' Jack protested. 'There's trading and then there's ripping people off.'

'She's just trying to make a living. We're probably the only sale she's had for days.'

'Months, more like,' Ianto added. The shop had been so impossible to find, you'd have to know it was there.

'And next time she picks up something that doesn't belong to her, she'll charge us double,' Jack complained.

 

Back at the hub, the box of items was quickly set aside in favour of other tasks. There was nothing they'd bought that required immediate attention. It would just be added to a mountain of other stuff down in the archives that needed to be properly sorted and archived. For now, there were phone calls, emails and reports that needed doing before the rift decided to interrupt what had so far been an otherwise quiet day.

Jack didn't have to like paperwork, but it was a lot easier to get through it when the world wasn't trying to simultaneously end at the same time. Ianto always joked that Jack couldn't sit still or be quiet for more than five minutes. Today he was proving his lover wrong, having churned through nearly three hours of admin without a break. He was due a reward in his mind, and smiled when he caught a glimpse of movement in the corner of his eye; pinstripes headed for the kitchen. Coffee, yes please. He sat there, waiting the inexorable ten minutes that Ianto would spend getting everything just perfect.

It was the sound of crockery smashing on the floor, that caught Jack's attention immediately. Ianto was no butterfingers. There was a thud and then some more crashing of cups and saucers. Something must be wrong.

He stepped out of his office, seeing Gwen working away completely oblivious to the crash. He went to chastise Gwen for just ignoring the sound, only when he went to raise his voice at her, nothing came out. He tried to clear it and speak again, but no matter how he tried to force his vocal chords to make a sound, nothing came out. Could he not hear his own voice? No, he'd heard the crash in the kitchen. That couldn't be it.

'Jack!' he heard Ianto yell out. He ran toward the sound, ignoring Gwen for the moment.

What's wrong? he went to say, as he caught Ianto standing there looking stricken, but the words wouldn't come out. He reached out instead, putting a hand on Ianto's arm, as Ianto flew around at the touch.

'Jack? Is that you? Oh my God, I can't see. I can't see anything!'

Jack wrapped him in a tight hug, letting him know he was there, even if he couldn't say so.

'What's happened?' Ianto asked, sounding a little frightened. Jack stroked his hair in a reassuring way.

'Jack, what are you not telling me? Please.'

How was he going to explain that he'd suddenly lost his voice? He took Ianto by the hand and slowly lead him out of the kitchen, back towards Gwen's desk. Perhaps he could explain it to her. She could be his voice until he could figure out what was going on.

Gwen still seemed oblivious to them, right up until the point where Jack was standing right behind her.

'Jesus, Jack!' she screamed, having scared her half to death sneaking up on her. Wait, why couldn't she hear herself? She'd just spoken, hadn't she? It only occurred to her at that very moment that it wasn't just her own voice she couldn't hear. Gone were all those tiny little noises the hub made, the ones she barely noticed because they were just always there, white noise in her day. In fact, her world had gone completely silent.

'Jack? I can't hear anything. Can you hear me?' She was sure she was speaking. She could feel the vibration of her vocal chords.

'Gwen?' Ianto said. 'I can hear you.' Gwen could see Ianto was trying to speak, but she couldn't make out the words. Had the same thing happened to him? Next to him, Jack looked very worried. He leant over her and picked up a pen.

"We can hear you," he wrote.

'Whats going on?' she asked.

Jack wrote again. "I can't speak. Ianto can't see. Tell Ianto."

It wasn't until Gwen read the words, that she noticed how unsure Ianto suddenly looked, standing there, but clinging to Jack's arm. 'Ianto?' Gwen began hesitantly, sure she was speaking even if she couldn't hear it. 'Jack says he can't speak.'

Can't speak? Ianto was so confused. Gwen couldn't hear? Jack couldn't speak?

He'd been minding his own business, making coffee when suddenly his whole world had turned pitch black. His first reaction had been to wonder whether he'd forgotten to pay their power bill. Once he was satisfied that he definitely had, and that even if he hadn't, the backup generator would have kicked in, panic set in. It wasn't that hub, it was him.

'Jack? Can you hear me?' Ianto asked. Jack gripped his hand hard. He took that for a yes. 'Okay, so you can hear, and presumably see, but you can't speak?' Another squeeze. 'Right, and Gwen can't hear us, but I can hear her. She can see?' One more squeeze. He heard someone scratching out something on a piece of paper. Presumably that was Jack tying to get a message to Gwen.

'Jack says "nobody panic",' Gwen said.

'I'm not panicking,' Ianto replied, reaching out to make sure Jack didn't wander far from his reach. 'Suddenly blinded, but who's panicking?' he said, adding layer upon layer of sarcasm.

'How are we supposed to talk to one another?' Gwen asked.

It was Ianto who came up with the breakthrough idea. He told Jack to go and fetch the I-Five contact lenses. Gwen might not have been able to hear them, but using their computer and the direct voice input, she'd be able to see everything they said. It would be a whole lot easier than trying to write everything down. Ianto at least could use the microphone to talk directly. Jack would still have to type out his responses, and it would be up to Gwen to translate them for Ianto to hear. Jack in turn set up a text to speech program to run alongside it, so that whatever he typed could be heard by Ianto. It wasn't perfect by any length, but at least now maybe they could collaborate to figure out what was going on and how to stop it.

'Gwen? Can you see what I'm saying?' Ianto asked, checking the software was working once she'd slipped the contact lenses in. She reached over and typed yes, and the mechanical computer voice replied.

'Good.'

'I'm here too,' the computer said, Jack having typed out his own message.

'Yes, Jack, I know,' Ianto replied, feeling a hand resting on his knee where he was sat beside them, fairly certain it wasn't Gwen's hand. He heard Gwen giggle once she read his reply, seeing the expression on Jack's face.

'Is everyone okay? Apart from the obvious,' Jack's computer voice asked.

'Yes,' they both replied.

'Is this some kind of illness?' Gwen asked.

'Wouldn't we all be showing the same symptoms if it was?' Ianto said.

'Neurological maybe,' Jack typed. 'It could be impacting different sections of the brain, suppressing key functions.'

'So, it could spread? 'Gwen asked. They could both hear the fear in her voice.

'Let's not jump to conclusions,' Jack typed. 'It's just one possibility.'

'We were all fine this morning.' Gwen said. 'Could it be something we brought back with us?' She eyed the box sitting beside Ianto's desk.

'It's just junk,' Jack replied.

'What if we missed something?' Ianto asked. 'That place was overflowing with stuff.'

'Something that waited until we arrived to activate? It's unlikely.'

'It must be connected to the shop though,' Gwen said, sounding certain. 'We did paw through a lot of stuff. We might have accidentally triggered something.'

'I think maybe we've each lost the sense we rely upon most,' Ianto said. Jack though about this and then nodded in agreement.

'Are you sure?' Gwen said. 'You don't think it's just random?'

'Well, Jack, you're our leader. You make the decisions and tell us what to do. Being able to talk is essential. Plus, you like to hear your own voice, you talk constantly, often don't listen to the rest of us, and turn a blind eye to mess and paperwork. Losing the ability to talk makes perfect sense.'

Jack squeezed his arm tightly to let him know that he didn't appreciate the thinly veiled insult. Ianto continued undeterred.

'I'm mostly analysing rift data and working in the archives, so without being able to see, I'm basically useless. I'm not much of a talker, so losing my voice wouldn't be the end of the world.'

'You have to be able to see to make amazing coffee,' the computer argued.  

'And me?' Gwen asked.

'You're an investigator by nature. You rely on your hearing for the answers to questions, and listening to people. You're in constant communication with us when you're out in the field, either on your phone or via your comms, tracing down leads or liaising with the police.'

Ianto could hear the keyboard clacking, and then the text to speech voice spoke. 'Seems logical,' it said, voicing Jack's opinion.

'Mind you,' Ianto added. 'Maybe you should've lost your sense of touch, given how, um, tactile you are.' Jack gave his knee a cheeky squeeze in response.

'So, we're agreed it's the shop, then,' Gwen said.

'Hell of a coincidence if it's not,' Ianto replied. He stood up, feeling his way across to the next desk, his own, and typing the address for the shop into the computer. He couldn't see, but he could still touch type.

'Anything?' he asked, having run an historical search, relying on the others to tell him what had come up in the search.

'Nothing,' Gwen replied.

'I was hoping maybe something might come up. Strange occurrences in the area, maybe.' He felt her try to sit down at his desk to widen the search, so he stepped aside to give her room.

'Ianto, watch out!' Gwen cried. Jack spun at her cry and grabbed Ianto tightly around the middle, before he stepped too close to the small set of steps that lead down to the lower section of the hub, tumbling down them. Judging by the tightness with which Jack gripped him, pulling him sideways, he could tell he'd been very close to a serious misstep.

'Thank you,' he said. 'I used to think I knew this place like the back of my hand, and that I could get around blindfolded. Clearly not.' Jack nuzzled his neck. Ianto might not be able to see, but clearly Jack wasn't going to let him out of his sight now.

'According to council permits, this shop doesn't even exist,' Gwen said, digging into the search a little deeper.

'I told you I would've remembered if it was there,' he replied.

'We have to go back,' Gwen said.

'I'll stay here,' Ianto said, feeling very uncertain about moving in any direction.

'You can't,' Gwen replied seeing his response. 'If something happened to us, we all need to be together to fix it.'

Jack gave him a reassuring squeeze on his shoulder, telling him that he agreed.

 

With a bit of help, they managed to all get back in the car and down to the arcade. It was easy enough for Jack and Gwen, but they had to be Ianto's eyes, helping him get in and out of the car, and along the streets. It wasn't always easy. With no voice, Jack couldn't help give him directions; all he could do was wrap and arm around his waist and guide him. To anyone else they probably looked like an ordinary happy couple, wandering around in the afternoon sunshine. It still took Gwen's reassurances that Jack wasn't about to trip him up on some piece of uneven pavement, or run them into a stream of people coming the other way.

They finally reached the shop and slowly clambered down the darkened steps inside. At the sound of the tiny bell over the door, the old woman appeared from some room hidden behind the counter.

'Back already?' she asked.

Gwen was the first to step up and speak. She was the best placed of any of them. She had the I-Fives, and Jack had tweaked the program to directly relay sound from a small lapel microphone she was wearing. It was as close to having all her senses as she could get. There was nothing more they could do to help Jack speak, nor Ianto see.

'I know it sounds mad, but after we left your shop, something strange happened to us. Do you have anything unusual here? Something rare, maybe?'

'I have many rare things,' the woman replied. 'But what you are looking for is not for sale.'

'You know what's happened to us?' Ianto asked, hand still gripped in Jack's own.

'You accused me of robbing you, so I did. I took something each of you values to teach you a lesson.'

Jack thumped his fist down hard on the counter. Ianto didn't have to be able to see to know exactly what Jack wanted to say to the woman.

'Jack says stuff all the time that he shouldn't,' Ianto replied. 'He doesn't mean anything by it. He just can't help himself. That's no reason to punish him.'

'Or us,' Gwen added.

'We paid you for the items we bought,' Ianto continued. 'If it wasn't enough, then say so, but otherwise, please undo what you've done to us. I promise you, Jack has learnt his lesson.'

Jack glared at her as she watched him. He'd be damned if he was going to look contrite.

'Most people I teach learn to accept their new gift.'

'How can you call something you've taken away a gift?' Gwen said, astonished to learn that she'd done this many times before.

'They learn to appreciate what they do have, and to be grateful for it.'

Was she really suggesting that this was permanent? Jack pulled out his webley, tugging back the safety with a loud click.

Ianto heard the sound and reached forward, knowing Jack's body as well as his own, clasping a hand around it. 'Don't,' he said, slowly pushing Jack's hand down and releasing the gun from its grip.

Jack looked at him. Despite not being able to see, it hadn't done anything to quell the pleading expression in his eyes. He cupped Ianto's face in his hands for a moment and placed a gentle kiss on his forehead, before turning back to the woman.

He tugged a small notepad and pen from his pocket and dumped them on the counter, scribbling out a demand.

"Do what you want to me. Please just fix my friends"

The woman sighed at him. 'At least you do have some honour.'

'Jack, you can't,' Gwen said.

'Can't what?' Ianto asked, suddenly worried.

'A trade,' the old woman said. 'Your gifts returned for his.'

'No,' Ianto said. 'You fix all of us, or none of us.' An infinite lifetime of being deaf, blind and mute would destroy Jack.

'That's right,' Gwen agreed. 'You're not letting him sacrifice for us. Give us back what we had. We haven't harmed you in any way.'

'I looked into your souls and saw the wickedness that was there. Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil,' the woman intoned. 'Three gifts I have given you.'

'We don't want your gifts,' Gwen cried.

Ianto felt himself jostled as Jack tried to take back his gun, doing so easily since Ianto couldn't see to defend himself. He bumped into the front counter, grabbing it to steady himself, remembering it from earlier that morning. His hand brushed something at the front of the counter. The ornament Jack had fiddled with whilst he'd been paying; the ugly one with the three monkeys. He could picture it exactly, his eidetic memory having stowed it away with a million other tiny, insignificant details. Hands over ears, hands over eyes, hands over mouth.

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil... Not for sale. Oh my God.

He wrapped an hand around it and held it over his head backing away until he was jutted up against a shelf of books. There was an audible gasp and he knew he had the right of it.

'Put that down!' The woman screamed.

'No.'

'Ianto, what are you doing?' Gwen asked.

'This thing has something to do with what happened to us. Fix us!' he demanded.

'No!' she hissed. She must have made a move to lunge forward, over the counter, but he felt the rush of air from Jack's coat fly in front of him, shielding him from her.

'Give that back!'

'If I do, will you reverse what you've done?'

'The wicked don't deserve their gifts.'

Ianto lofted the object higher. Yes, they'd all done horrible things in the past, but they'd done a lot more good than bad.

'Ianto, don't do anything stupid,' Gwen warned, sensing his next move.

'If she won't fix us, then she won't mind if I break this.' He brought it down hard, hearing the satisfying sound of the ornament smashing to pieces on the ground at his feet. There was a bright flash of light and a burst of energy that billowed out and threw him to the ground, Jack's heavy weight falling back on top of him. That was followed by several items from the shelf above, tumbling down over them. There was a general clatter and rumble as items around the shop tumbled from their places to the floor from the shockwave, and then there was nothing but silence.

'Ow...' he heard a groan. Jack. When Ianto blinked, the world came back into view, darkness fading from his vision.

'Jack? Ianto? Are you alright?' Gwen asked.

'Yeah,' Jack said, sitting up, pulling Ianto up with him, unburying them from the mess.

'I can hear you,' Gwen said.

'Well, that must make us both cured,' Jack replied. 'Ianto?' he asked.

'I've never been so happy to see your face,' he replied, smiling and reaching up to touch it.

'I've never been so happy to be able to tell you how happy I am to hear you say that.'

Ianto frowned. 'And, now it just gets confusing,' he replied.

Gwen looked around at the cramped shop, now in even more disarray than before. 'Where's the old woman? Did she escape?'

They both looked around but there was no sign of her. Jack stepped over the mess and behind the counter, kneeling down to spot a small pile of broken ceramic where she'd been standing just moments before Ianto had struck down the ornament, shattering it.

'Ding dong, the witch is dead,' he muttered, the other two following him and standing just behind, seeing the pile for themselves. 'Good job, Dorothy,' he said, turning to smile up at Ianto.

'I did that? Only meant to break the statue. I didn't mean to kill anyone.'

'I don't think the stuff we bought this morning was the only alien thing around here,' Jack said, standing back up and dusting off his hands.

'She controlled the statue somehow?' Gwen mused.

'Or it controlled her. S'pose we'll never know, now.'

'So, what do we do now?' Ianto asked.

Jack sucked in a breath and let it out. 'Go home, I guess, and be grateful for the little things in life.'

'What about the shop?'

He shrugged. 'Technically it doesn't exist. I think maybe once we leave it'll cease to exist once more.'

'What, like a rift in space?'

'A tiny little pocket of space that was created for a purpose. Without a purpose it'll crumble, and the link between this world and the one where this place really exists will fade into nothing. No one will even notice it's gone. Just like no one noticed it was here in the first place.'

'I'm just glad that breaking that thing worked,' Ianto said. He didn't want to think about what might have happened if he'd broken the one thing that might cure them.

'Just goes to show that you don't always need your eyes to see what's really going on.' Jack beamed with pride at him.

'I'd still rather have them if it's all the same to you. Being blind wasn't fun. I have a newfound respect for blind people and how hard it must be to live like that. And that was just for a few hours.'

'And deaf people,' Gwen added. 'I never thought I'd miss noise so much.' She turned to face Jack. 'And what about you? Glad to have your voice back?'

'You betcha, although my mouth is very talented even when it's not making any sound.' That turned her face bright red.

'Come on, you,' Ianto said, pushing Jack towards the door. 'You and your mouth have said quite enough today, already.'

Jack gave him a shameless grin. If he played his cards right, later the only senses he'd need would be taste and touch. Although, he wouldn't mind the view, and he always enjoyed the sounds that went with it.