Torchwood: Fanfic: In a tangle

[m_findlow]

Title: In a tangle
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 884 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, Tangled in ivy" at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack has gotten himself into trouble, going it alone.

Jack knew Ianto would be mad when he found him. Hadn't he been made to promise he wouldn't get into trouble whilst Ianto was in London?

I should have had backup, he thought, having decided to deal with the rift alert all on his own. Big mistake. If only he'd had Tosh here with him, he might have managed to de-program the device so that it would let go of him. Worse still was that now it had its claws on him, it went to phase two, checking him out. It was some kind of medical examination device. He vaguely remembered seeing it in a museum once on Vetus Parsica in the fifty-first century. Known for its brutal explorative methods, it was on display to exhibit just how far modern medicine had come. Boy, but they should have seen the stuff those Victorians used, Jack thought. It was a wonder anyone survived into the twentieth century.

He wished he could say he enjoyed the invasiveness of its ministrations as it began its program, but it chose to stick its probe right through the middle of his chest, and that was the last thing he remembered.

He resurrected a few times during the process. It never lasted long though. Just a few moments to register the trees in the forest overhead, so peaceful and green, before another agonising jolt of pain tore through his chest, sending him back down into the waiting darkness.

It could have been hours, or days, before the device decided it had all the information it wanted, or had simply run out of steam. When Jack finally came to, he knew it hadn't been hours. Whilst he'd been sprawled there on the forest floor, nature had come to claim him for itself. Thick vines of ivy wrapped around his body, trapping him in their own grip, and hiding him almost completely from view.

'Jack! Jack!' There were several calls for him in different voices. Thank the gods!

'Over here!' he yelled out, spitting leaves out as they tried to sneak into his open mouth.

He heard the crack and snap of branches as the team stumbled through the dense undergrowth, trying to pinpoint his location. He kept calling out until they were right on top of him, certain they wouldn't see him otherwise.

'Careful,' Owen said, holding out his arms and stopping the rest of them from getting closer. 'That's poison ivy.'

'We don't get poison ivy in Britain,' Tosh replied.

'Yeah, well there's a lot of stuff we shouldn't get here, but thanks to that bloody rift, now we do. Trust me. I know my plants.'

'Sod it,' Ianto said, pulling his jacket sleeves down and reaching forward and grabbing at it with both hands, tying to strip it away to free his fiancé. Bless you, Jack thought. He'd get a bollocking in the days to come as Ianto suffered through the consequences. The rashes and the blisters would be painful, as would be the itching. Still, he appreciated that they wouldn't just leave him here like this.

Ianto cleared away the worst of it from his arms and face, and Jack helped to pull away some himself, now that he wasn't tethered down by it.

'How did you find me?'

'They've been looking for you since yesterday,' Ianto said, throwing a thumb back at the others. 'They didn't bother to tell me you'd been gone four days.'

'Oi, we just figured he was off on one of those secret little missions of his again,' Owen complained, defending their actions.

'I was only a phone call away,' Ianto retorted. 'You could have mentioned it.'

'Didn't want to bug you,' Owen said. 'We checked all the usual rift readings and stuff.'

Jack managed to get himself into a sitting position, tearing away at the remaining vines around his legs. 'So, how did you find me, then?'

Ianto gave the vines another angry tug. 'I hacked your vortex manipulator for overnight rift alarms and other strange readings. Otherwise we might never have found you. I wish you'd let our computers run a record of everything.'

'Some things are too dangerous for you to get involved with,' Jack insisted. There were things from his timeline that could alter Earth's own progression. He did it to protect them.

'We're involved whether you want us to be or not,' Ianto said, cringing as he finally spotted the huge bloody hole in the back of Jack's shirt, then looked down at the mechanical probe device now limp and inactive where it had lain beneath his body. He gave an involuntary shudder, thinking about what it might have been doing whilst he'd been bored in London, making idle conversation over cups of poorly made coffee. He went to reach up for Jack's face, before remembering his hands were covered in plant oils. At least part of Jack might be spared the torture to come.

'From now on, you don't go anywhere without one of us, you hear me? If it's as dangerous as you say, handling it on your own is just stupid.'

'Got it,' Jack said, feeling as contrite as he sounded. Being buried by forest wasn't fun. Being stabbed through the heart by an alien probe was even less so.

'Until next time,' Owen grumbled.