Spook_me 2020 - Haunted - Chapter 36

[m_findlow]

Title: Haunted
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto, OCs
Author: m_findlow
Rating: M
Length: 50,847 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for spook_me 2020 Prompt - Ghost
Summary: The team investigate rumours of a haunted house in rural Wales.

Jack felt paralysed in the dark and the silence. It took several moments before he could so much as twitch a finger, curling it in and out, before feeling a sense of movement returning to the rest of his body. His head throbbed and he realised he was no longer flat on the floor, but half upright, tangled in a pile of wooden seating that was now overturned against the wall, his head having taken the brunt of the impact.

He reached up to the aching spot near his crown with the hand that wasn't still halfway through healing itself. Bones reformed slowly and painfully in his right hand, distracting him from the head wound.

As he tried to refocus his vision in the dark, he found himself six yards away from where he'd been. Gwen had rolled several yards in the opposite direction and Father Michael was clutching to the table that had stopped him from being thrown any further away.

'Jesus…' Gwen breathed, crawling up onto her knees and brushing her hair out of her face.

Father Michael gave a shuddering breath. 'Not Jesus. God.'

Jack crawled quickly over to Ianto, whose body hadn't moved an inch, being at the epicentre of all of it. 'That is not how I remembered it happening last time,' he said.

Father Michael stayed seated on the floor, still too shaken to attempt putting his feet under him. 'This demon was far more powerful than what we faced previously. I could feel it trying to reach through you. One last attempt to save itself, I suppose.'

Jack nodded. He had felt something trying to pull through him from Ianto - some terrible darkness. It had tried to reach Gwen as well, but she'd relinquished her grip on Jack's hand just in time.

He crouched over the young man, trying to understand if what they’d done had saved him. He was completely still, yet his chest rose and fell with shallow but regular motions. He was still pale but some colour was beginning to return to his face and hands, and as Jack retook Ianto’s hand in his own now healed one, he could feel it warm and soft. He tugged the edges of the thick woolen coat around Ianto and pulled him close, feeling more of that reassuring warmth emanate from the rest of his body.

'Jack?' Gwen's voice was full of tentative worry. She looked the more shaken of the pair. Both he and Elias had seen an exorcism before and were somewhat prepared for it, but there was no real way to prepare anyone for what they'd just experienced.

Jack looked up at her and then across at the priest. 'Father?' he asked, looking for some kind of confirmation.

Father Michael reached out a wrinkled hand and laid it on Ianto's brow. 'Yes, I think it has been purged.' He made the sign of the cross with his thumb over the waxen skin. 'I no longer sense that same dark spirit as before. For the first time in a long time, it feels like a heaviness has lifted from this place.'

'But where has it gone?' Gwen asked.

'Vanquished back to the deepest depths of Hell,' he replied.

'Hell?' she said, her voice laden with that old Torchwood skepticism.

'That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' Jack quoted.

Gwen looked at Jack, then Father Michael and back at him. 'Sometimes I feel it's like I don't understand anything.'

Father Michael rested a hand on her shoulder. 'One cannot expect that understanding will lead to belief. Rather, one must believe in order to be able to finally understand.'

'Did God say that?'

His smile was warm and reassuring. 'No. I did. For I am old and have learned many of the lessons that the young will only obtain with time.'

'And some of us,' Jack added, 'though old we be, still have many lessons to learn.' He clutched Ianto more tightly to his chest. 'Let's get him out of here and some place warm.'

Gwen gave him a concerned look. 'Shouldn't he be awake by now? He is okay, isn't he?'

'The last time we tried this, the young girl we saved took two days to come around. For once, we just have to be patient and trust to something we can't see.'

They carried him back to Father Michael's modest cottage and settled him in the bed. Father Michael brought extra blankets, a small flannel and a bowl filled with warm water that Jack used in gentle strokes across Ianto's face and hands, cleaning away the sweat and grime.

When he was done, he fussed over Gwen instead, carefully prodding her injured shoulder which had made itself evident when he asked her to help him lift Ianto into bed.

'How did you injure it?' he asked, fixing a makeshift sling in place to keep it from moving.

'Oh, you know, just threw myself out of a first floor window. Nothing major.'

He chuckled. 'I tried that too, but my landing was a little softer than yours.'

'You're like a cat with nine lives, Jack. You always land on your feet.'

He shook his head. 'Not always.' He only had to look back at how his past kept coming back to haunt him to know that.

Next chapter...