Torchwood: Fanfic: Adrift

[m_findlow]

Title: Adrift
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Jack, Ianto, OC
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,187 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for peaceful_sands's prompt "Any, any, he/she hates that he/shecan't fix this " at fic_promptly
Summary: A homeless man outside Owen's apartment block is not what he seems.

Owen sighed as he pulled up outside his apartment block. Someone had dumped a pile of rubbish out on the footpath, right in front of the entrance. It was doubtful the council were coming to pick it up. More likely was that it had just been abandoned. That seemed to be the norm these days. Whenever someone moved out they just left the stuff they no longer wanted out on the street. Somebody else's problem now, they assumed.

Only now that same said pile of broken furniture and bits of rubbish were being pawed through by some homeless guy, no doubt looking for items to add to his paltry collection of effects. It was sad, Owen thought, that in this day and age there were still people living on the streets. It was bad enough having to sleep rough, but it was creeping towards winter, and the nights were already bitterly cold. He'd seen more than his fair share of hypothermic folk brought in by paramedics, no ID, no family that anyone could locate. Get them back on the other side of the line between life and death and then it would be straight back out onto those selfsame streets for them to suffer all over again.

He was tired after a long boring night shift at the hub, but he stopped anyway. It looked like the guy was about to curl up and sleep in amongst the rubble. 'Oi, mate. You can't sleep there.'

The scruffy man gave him an odd look - one of incomprehension and something akin to fear.

'There's a shelter a few blocks from here,' Owen said, pointing in the general direction. 'They've got food and somewhere you can kip for a bit.'

Owen expected to either be ignored or told rather unpolitely to sod off and mind his own business. Instead the man just looked at him blankly, almost staring straight through him. It creeped Owen out a bit if he was honest. 'D'you want me to take you down there?' he offered. He wasn't worried about the smell, or that the man might be having him on, waiting to mug him. What could he possibly do sat in the passenger side of his car?

The man blinked. Owen chanced a few slow steps closer. 'It's okay, mate,' Owen said reaching out a hand. 'I'm just trying to help.'

There was a roar of a car engine behind Owen, and then two car doors that slammed shut.

'It's okay, Owen,' came Jack's voice. 'We'll take it from here.'

Owen spun to find Jack and Ianto standing there, looking grim. 'What? How'd you get here? What d'you want with this bloke?'

'You've had a long night,' Jack replied. 'Why don't you go inside and get some sleep?'

Owen felt confused. 'What for?'

Jack's expression turned serious. 'Like I said, we can take things from here.'

'What is this? Torchwood Volunteers Day? He's just some poor homeless bloke.'

'He came through the rift,' Ianto blurted out and Jack threw a dark look in his direction.

'Can't be. I didn't get any rift activity all shift,' Owen said.

'Then you must have missed it on your way out,' Jack insisted. He sighed. 'Look, doesn't matter. We've got it. You've been up all night. Let us handle it.'

Owen cast a look between the pair of them. He knew something wasn't quite kosher but he couldn't put his finger on it. He involuntarily clenched his jaw, wondering what it was they weren't telling him. 'Fine,' he said. 'It's your shift.'

He gave them another glance over his shoulder as he made his way inside, looking for any signs that would answer the questions burning in the back of his mind. He wished suddenly that his apartment faced the street instead of the waterfront, so that he could spy on them. Jack would have known that of course, but he seemed unconcerned about prying eyes. He just wanted Owen gone. Then again, perhaps he was overthinking things. He was tired and he was off the clock, if there were such a thing. Why not let them handle some petty rift alert? He toed off his shoes, pulled back the duvet and climbed under it, determined not to give it another thought.

'It's okay,' Jack said, turning his attention back to the man. 'We're here to help.' Jack stepped forward.

'Che cosa stai facendo?' the man cried, stepping back quickly. 'Basta!'

'What's he saying?' Ianto asked.

'He's speaking Italian. Sta bene, sta bene,' Jack repeated, holding out his hands in a conciliatory way, trying to calm him.

Ianto looked oddly at Jack. 'You speak Italian? How do you know Ita-' He stopped mid-sentence. 'Never mind.'

Whilst Jack was calming the man down, Ianto pulled out his phone, running a search. 'Yep, got him,' he announced. 'Gianni Varella.'

'Eh!' the man cried out, recognising his own name. 'Mi chiamo Gianni! Gianni Varella! Sono io!'

Ianto consulted his phone further. 'Italian national,' he began, reading the details aloud. 'Reported missing by his family when he didn't return home from a trip to the UK in...' he let out a little sigh, '...1956.'

Jack forced himself to school his features, hiding the frustration and devastation of this latest information. Every time he thought the rift couldn't be any crueler, it dealt them yet another blow. 'Mi chiamo Jack,' he said, placing a hand in his chest. 'Questo è Ianto,' he added pointing sideways. 'Fame? Ti vorrei mangiare?' Jack asked. The man looked exhausted and starving. Gianni nodded.

'Ecco lá,' Jack replied, pointing to a small cafe. 'Ianto?' he said, nodding at his teammate, indicating he should go across there and pick them up something to eat. Ianto obliged without reply.

'Non parli bene Italiano,' Gianni replied, making comment about Jack's poor translation.

'Mi dispiace,' Jack apologised. 'Sono Americano.'

'Eh, baseball, si?' Gianni asked. 'Joe DiMaggio é fantastico!'

Jack rolled his eyes. 'Si.' Their visitor had brightened markedly at the mention of baseball.

Gianni paused for a moment, looking around. 'Dové sono?'

'Cardiff.'

Gianni seemed perplexed. 'Vero?'

Jack nodded. 'Vero,' he said. No doubt it looked nothing like the Cardiff Jack remembered from the fifties. It was still a tin pot port town back then, shipping coal and copper. Nothing like now with its huge concrete apartment blocks and a waterfront view that didn't disappear with the tides.

He watched as Ianto returned, the paper bags in hand, and a two bottles of water tucked under his arm. 'You owe me ten quid.'

'Put it on my tab,' he said, momentarily distracted by the tearing sounds as Gianni ripped open the bag and began wolfing down the baguette. 'Bene?' Jack asked.

'Molto bene.'

Once he'd finished the first roll, Jack offered the second, forgoing breakfast. 'Vieni con noi,' Jack said, indicating the man should come with them.

He looked up at Jack in askance. 'Dové?'

Jack lead them to the big black car. 'Va bene,' he repeated, assuring Gianni that it was okay. Even the car must have seemed like a monster.

He drove them down to the docks, quickly parking and leading them to a small fishing vessel docked on a distant pier. Gianni gave him another questioning look. 'L'isola,' Jack replied, pointing off in the distance, Flat Holm Island invisible at this distance. 'Sanctuario.' Sanctuary. 'Dottore, medicina, cibo...' A promise that there would be medical care and food.

Gianni gazed up earnestly at Jack. 'La mia famiglia?'

Jack shook his head sadly. 'Mi dispiace.'

'Oh. Perche?'

Why indeed, thought Jack. 'Non lo so,' he replied. He hoped Gianni took that to mean he didn't know enough words to explain it. Now was not the time to tell him it was 2007 and that his family were long gone, or had given him up for dead.

Gianni boarded the boat, leaning against the railing and letting the bracing sea air rip through his thick waves of black hair. Jack and Ianto took to the wheelhouse, steering the vessel toward its destination.

'Looks like were going to need a translator out at Flat Holm,' Ianto muttered. He didn't think Jack would be hanging around to provide translation. Jack hated the place and stayed there only as long as he absolutely had to, offloading victims onto people who had more compassion and patience than he did. Perhaps he'd need to set them up with a subscription to "Il Globo". 'That, or he's going to have to learn English,' Ianto said, finishing the thought.

'More luck with English than Welsh,' Jack teased, trying to keep things light. 'I'm sure they can get by for a few weeks with the help of Google.' He appreciated that Ianto wanted to keep things business, but he wasn't ready for it just yet. Flat Holm was a good forty minutes away. Until then, perhaps they could just pretend everything would be okay.

'Fifty years,' Ianto said, letting out a long breath. 'What do you suppose he's been doing all this time?'

'Who knows? He might have only been gone five minutes in his timeline. I mean, look at him. He's still young, mid-thirties. I doubt he's been anywhere more than a few weeks. A few days or even only a few hours perhaps, given how scared and confused he was. Did you find out anything more about him?' He hated asking, but they needed to know.

'The records back in the fifties weren't that good,' he replied. 'We only have the record because it coincided with the negative rift spike.' Every missing person reported within five kilometres of any rift spike had been secretly logged and stored away. Very few returned. 'What about Owen?' he asked. 'What do we tell him?'

Jack's gaze turned cold. 'We could have told him anything, except someone had to go and blurt out that he'd come through the rift.'

Ianto resisted the urge to roll his eyes. How many times would they have this same frustrating argument over and over? 'But there's loads of humans out there across time and space, aren't there?' That's essentially what Jack was, after all. Why couldn't they tell Owen that? Someone from the future, or another colonized world. They could tell Owen they'd somehow sent him back, or resettled him somewhere.

Jack seemed to sense his thoughts. 'With luck he won't be bothered to check the rift readings tomorrow. If he does, we're gonna have a hard time explaining where he came from, thanks to you and your big mouth. '

Ianto didn't reply, just stared out through the small salt crusted window, watching the waves get crushed under the bow, much like his attempts to bring about a resolution. The truth was going to come out one of these says, and it wasn't going to be pretty when it did.

'I fucking hate this job sometimes,' Ianto said, the sudden expletive catching Jack by surprise. Jack couldn't tell if Ianto was angry at him or angry because of the situation. He knew Ianto's feelings about keeping Flat Holm a secret. Small wonder he hadn't confessed everything to Owen right there and then. It was just the opportunity for it and it would have unburdened his conscience considerably.

Jack didn't know what to say, so he chose to say nothing at all. He simply rested a hand on Ianto's back, relieved that he didn't flinch away from it. He couldn't be sure if the feeling of Ianto leaning into the touch was real or imagined. No sooner had he started pondering it then Ianto left the wheelhouse, going to stand and lean out over the railing. Sometimes he wished he'd never dragged Ianto into this mess. Owen would be easy enough to fob off tomorrow, but there would be a leaden weight that the pair of them would carry around silently for days to come yet. Ianto would throw himself into his work, and the others would take it for nothing more than one of his moods. Jack would similarly overcompensate, more jokes and outlandish stories to conceal how he felt on the inside. Fortunately no one ever queried their behaviour, both of them having become suitably accomplished liars.

'Gianni!' he called out from the wheelhouse. He pointed at the craggy island as it came into view. 'Tua casa nouvo.'

'La mia casa?' he asked. 'Ma... Non ho soldi.' He turned out his pockets to emphasise that he was flat broke.

'Non lo bisogno.' Money was no issue. Torchwood would pick up the tab from here on in. It was the least they could do.

'Grazie. Grazie,' Gianni repeated, turning back to admire the island as it rose up larger and closer.

'No, please don't thank us,' Jack muttered, hating himself. He hadn't seen what the next fifty years of his life would look like yet. Jack sighed. On the port side was Gianni, looking towards the island with an excitement at facing the unknown, and on the starboard side was Ianto, staring at the island with a heavy despair, knowing exactly what lay ahead.

Perhaps it was for the best that most of their victims never returned.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Poor Gianni. But poor Jack and Ianto too. There's no happiness here, just a displaced man from another time who'll never see his family again, and two people powerless to do anything to stop the Rift taking people and damaging them beyond repair. =(