Shadows of the World (2/4)

[merucha]

Title: Shadows of the World (2/4)
Author: Merucha
Characters: Canonical Torchwood Three members… sort of.
Rating: Some chapters definitely not safe for work.
Disclaimer: Oh, please. If I owned them, would I let some of those idiots write the scripts? And if I were making any money off them, would I be where they could find me?
Summary: Torchwood battles a terrible curse to save a beautiful woman
Author's Note: This takes the place of A Day in the Death

Part one is here

 Jack set down his tea cup and smiled at Leonora. “Tell us.”

I shivered at the amount of power behind those two simple words. This was the first time I had seen Jack at work, and the difference between the lovely bloke who was going to marry my brother and the Swordbearer was absolutely staggering.

"There's no way to say this without sounding melodramatic,” Leonora said, gripping Carlos's hand. “There's a curse on the Gray family. Specifically on the oldest daughters of the house.”

  We were still in the conservatory. Jack and Ianto had arrived less than twenty minutes after my call. Rose had brought in tea and sandwiches, lips clamped together so hard that the skin around them was a white halo. She had given Jack a wide berth, making the old-fashioned sign against the evil eye when she thought nobody was looking. Jack had taken the seat next to Leonora on the couch and applied himself to charming her.

 Ianto stood by the fireplace, playing his old I'm not really that interesting so you don't need to pay attention to me at all game. It had driven me demented when we were kids and I had to mind him while Mam cooked or cleaned, until I realized that I could somehow sense, not him, but the changes his presence made in the environment around him. I had stopped doing it after he had returned home from the hospital; what Elaine de Cussac had done to him had made his presence a thing of shadows and sorrow. I reached out impulsively and found him.

 I was never so grateful for my mother's insistence on practising self-control. It felt like I was thrusting my hand inside a fireplace. He blazed with power, and for a moment it terrified me. Then he looked at me and grinned and it was just my little brother taking the piss one more time. I suppressed the impulse to stick out my tongue at him. Instead I gave him a big-sisterly look and returned my attention to the conversation between Jack and Leonora.

 “I've never heard of it,” Jack said. “And I would have sworn I knew everything there is to know about Cardiff's first families.”

 “They managed to keep it quiet. Or perhaps they didn't believe in it. After all, it's the kind of story that can mean anything or nothing.” Leonora chuckled bitterly. “No hounds with burning eyes here.”

 “How did you find out about it?”

 “By accident, actually. The year I turned fifteen my father's sister and her husband were killed in a car accident. They had emigrated to the California Republics right after their wedding, and there was some sort of bad feeling between them and father, because they didn't really keep in touch. He certainly never spoke of them.”

 She reached for her cup blindly and nearly knocked it over. Carlos took her hand back and their fingers twinned again. I don't think either of them noticed Jack's glance at Ianto, or the way Ianto moved back until he was completely out of view.

 “My aunt had two children and they had no other relatives, so father did his duty and brought them to live with us. It may have been duty to him but it was a revelation to me. I was a withdrawn, shy child. They were adventurous, fearless, and they dragged me along with them.”

 “Sounds like fun,” Jack said.

 “It was! Oh, it was! It terrified me, but it never stopped me. I'd lived in Cardiff all my life and I had never seen it before. That winter was marvelous. Alexander taught me to snowboard and Anne taught me to ice skate. I'd never done any of it. After my mother's death by father had turned very protective. Smothering. They were freedom to me.” She smiled at the memories, then sighed. “Then we got hit by an ice storm. Everything was paralyzed for days. We were reduced to exploring in the house. Alexander loved the library, so he dragooned us into helping him find some old Greek text or another. And that's when we found it.”

 “It?” Jack's voice was almost a whisper.

 “An envelope. Very old. Inside it there was a document, even older. Anne started to read it, turned white as a sheet, and tried to put it back. Alexander and I were curious, so he grabbed her and I grabbed the envelope.” She laughed bitterly. “I should have left well enough alone.”

 “Do you still have it?”

 Leonora looked around as if expecting to find it casually lying about. “It's upstairs. Bedside table.” Her hands fluttered. “Silver casket...”

 “I'll go get it,” I said, afraid if she went upstairs she wouldn't be able to find the courage to come back down again. “Where is your room?”

 “Up the stairs, turn right, second door on the right.”

 She offered me a key. I took it and walked out of the conservatory as calmly as if I were going to the kitchen for more sandwiches. Once out of sight I ran, taking the stairs two by two. As I passed the screen I glanced at the carvings, making a mental note to return later for a leisurely examination. Right now I wanted that document. Leonora was at the tipping point between hope and despair and one little misstep would send her back into her shell.

 The moment I turned down the corridor I started to feel resistance. At the same moment I realized a part of my mind had been expecting it. My hands began moving in familiar patterns. Not the complex ones I had learned later during my formal training; those required concentration and possibly more skill than I had. I used the small magics my mother had taught me as a child, little spells meant to dispel nightmares. Whatever it was backed away, but I thought I heard a snarl as it left.

 Leonora’s room was a showpiece of Art Deco design, but it felt somehow unused, as if its proper occupant had abandoned it a long time before. I kept thinking that the furniture should have been covered in white sheets. There was a presence here too, but it was more of a sad expectation than a threat. It made me want to weep.

 I found the casket and decided to take the whole thing downstairs. Impressions, feelings, all sort of real things seep into objects; Jack might have an use for it. I grabbed it and turned to leave, only to find Rose standing in my way. The kitchen knife in her hand seemed impossibly huge.

 “What are you doing, Rose?”

 “You’re not taking that downstairs, witch.” Her eyes were oddly vacant. “She must not... leave. She must not... she will die if she does. She must not...”

 “Not what, Rose? Live? Be happy?” I started forward, holding the casket tight to my chest. “Do you hate her that much?”

 “No! I don’t... but she must...not... leave!”

 She lunged at me, knife held high over her head, mouth open in a soundless scream. All I could think of was that she looked like the stereotypical madwoman in really bad horror movies. I threw myself across the bed, reaching for the eighteenth century silver candle holder that sat on the bedside table beside the latest model net-book. Rose kept going, as if trying to move through the bed, then made a strange sound deep in her throat and turned as if to run around the foot board.

Then, suddenly, Ianto was there, standing in Rose's path. He grabbed her hand, forcing it down,and removed the knife. The sudden loss of the weapon made Rose howl. The sound made my my hackles rise; it was the sound of a wild dog crying out in loss.

 It wasn't until much later that I realized how much sheer power it had taken for Ianto to blank himself out of the physical as completely as he did. And as easily.

 He put his arm around Rose, holding her in a comfortable, but unbreakable, grip. “Let's go downstairs. Her behavior was not normal. Call Andy, he's on Hub duty tonight. Tell him to send Owen.”

 I followed him out of the bedroom, holding the phone to my ear with one hand and the box in the other. Andy answered on the second ring. I gave him Ianto's message. He swore in his own personal mix of Welsh, English, and Irish, then informed me Dr. Harper would be along as soon as he could roust him out of bed and hung up unceremoniously.

I grinned, happy in spite of all that was happening. My beloved, otherwise as attentive as any woman could wish, was all business when he was manning the Hub. If someone had told me six months before that I would fall in love with a Torchwood man again, I would have laughed in their face. Of course, this Torchwood was so different from Torchwood London that there was no way to compare, the Ecosystem be praised.

When we re-entered the conservatory, Leonora surged to her feet, staring at Ianto holding Rose firmly to his side. Rose had given up the struggle and hung limply, moving only when Ianto prompted her. All her usual energy was gone, and every year of her life showed in her lined, haggard face.

 “What did you do, Rosie-mam?” Leonora whispered.

“More like, what was done to her,” Ianto said, gently lowering the old woman into one of the chairs. “Someone has been working on her mind for years.” He glanced at Jack. “I sent for Owen.”

 I offered the casket to Leonora. She placed it on the table in front of Jack. As she reached for the lock, his hand shot out to intercept hers.

“Let me.”

He ran his fingers along the sides and top of the casket. I could see energy flickering wherever his fingers touched. Finally, he flipped up the lid and extracted a long, narrow envelope, brownish-yellow with age. He opened, removed the document inside, and glanced through it.

“Interesting.” He offered the paper to Ianto. “What do you think?”

Ianto took it and held it up to the light. I tried to see what he saw, but got nothing but a faint impression of something disgustingly slimy, like the paths of snails.

“Strange.” Ianto handed it back. “The paper is old, but the thing itself is not.”

Carlos stared at him, wild hope in his eyes. “A forgery?”

“That's not possible.” Leonora reached into the casket and pulled out another envelope, this one large and square. “Anne insisted that we get it authenticated. Here's the appraisal.”

Ianto took it from her and scanned the papers. “We have better resources at our disposal.”

As I listened to the conversation, I wondered if they were not all missing the point. Old or new, it was the curse that was important. I reached for the letter in Jack's hand, but he held it away.

“Not yet. There's something I want you to do for me first.”

I stared into his eyes, and I knew my own doom had arrived. “What is it?”

“I want you to paint her.”