Anythingdrabble Challenge 119 - Striving for the perfect body

[m_findlow]

Title: Striving for the perfect body
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Jack, Ianto
Word Count: 500 words
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for Challenge 119 - Annoying at anythingdrabble
Summary: It isn't always easy cleaning up after the rift.

'Ianto!' Jack called out, his boots echoing around the morgue's enclosed space. 'How are we going sorting out those replacement corpses?'

Ianto sighed, setting down his clipboard, having managed to source only two viable candidates from an exceedingly dwindling store, and even those were a poor match. 'I've got one female in need of some hair dye, and as for the three males you requested, well, unless one of them had a prosthetic left leg...'

Jack sauntered over, frowning at him. 'So, that'd be a no.'

Ianto gritted his teeth at the disappointed tone in Jack's voice. 'To be fair, sir, it's been a busy week and we've had a lot of locals go missing. I can't just whip up an order of dead bodies all the time to meet your exacting specifications.'

'You can't?'

'I am only human,' Ianto reminded him, even if Jack thought otherwise. 'And you do want them to look reasonably similar to the victims. We can only take the ones that nobody claims, after all. Unless you'd like to employ a full time mortician and plastic surgeon.'

Jack leaned back against the wall of the morgue and shoved his hands in his pockets. 'Huh. Well, that's annoying.'

'Could we not come up with more cover stories that didn't require us to furnish a body?' He didn't like to admit it but this whole prepping up dead bodies as victims business made him queasy. He wasn't even particularly fond of watching Owen conduct his autopsies.

Jack sighed, staring around the walls of neat little doors, each one containing either a former agent or a soon to be falsified corpse. 'Gwen keeps telling me we've become too hard, that we've been doing this for so long we've forgotten what it is to be human.'

'A little harsh, perhaps.'

'I keep thinking she's right somehow.' He turned to look Ianto in the eye. 'These people are victims of the rift and what it churns out. They have families and loved ones. Having a body to put in the ground that they can mourn gives them closure. Maybe that's archaic or pointless, but it helps everybody move on. If it was someone you cared about, wouldn't you find some comfort in knowing their final resting place?'

'I suppose,' he answered cagily. The whole conversation felt awkward, knowing Lisa was somewhere down below them, fighting to stay alive. But yes, he would want to have her buried somewhere nice if she didn't make it. 'I could drive over to Bristol,' he offered. 'We've never sourced bodies from any of their mortuaries. Widening the net might yield up a few matches.'

'You'd do that?'

'As you say, sir, we should be doing more for the victims.'

'I'd appreciate that,' he said, clapping Ianto on the shoulder before turning to leave. 'Just let me know if you can't get them here by tonight.'

Tonight? He checked his watch, reading 4.48pm. Just in time for peak hour traffic. Now that would be annoying.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Poor Ianto, his work is just never done =(