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Title: Shadows of the World (3/4)
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; Part two is here
“He didn't tell me.”
I turned back from the painting I had been examining. “You knew.”
Jack's request had sent me running from the conservatory, but not before I had seen the look on Ianto's face. He had looked worried, yes, but not surprised. Panicked, I had headed for the one place in the Gray house where I would feel safe. In the gallery, surrounded by my works, track lighting subtly enhancing the lushness of bloom and leaf, I could avoid thinking about the Talent I had buried the day I had buried my husband.
Ianto moved to stand in front of the painting. “It wasn't difficult to figure out, Rhi. When you paint, you go beyond the botanical. Even beyond the beautiful. When I look at this hibiscus, I see all its history, down to the seed.”
“That's just your Talent,” I tried to scoff through dry lips.
“Some of it is. But people without a smidge of Talent have mentioned how much they see in your paintings.” He took my hands between his and rubbed them gently. “What's wrong, chwaer fach?”
“I'm your big sister and don't you forget it!” His raised eyebrow was the only answer I got. I sighed. “I'm stalling. I found out what I was capable of and it scared me witless. I'm scared of what you'll think of me if I tell you.”
“There's nothing you can tell me that will change how I much I love you, Rhi.”
He had put enough of himself in the words that I could Hear the truth in them. I led him to one of the padded benches near the fireplace and pulled him down to sit besides me. “When we moved to London, I was already pregnant with Mica. I was over the moon. It meant postponing my own education, but I didn't mind. Our townhouse had a tiny conservatory at the back, good lighting, so I set up there and painted. John was consumed by his work. By the time Daffyd came along, he was barely around and when he was he was distracted and snappish. I decided I would paint a portrait of our family for him to put in his office, something to remind him he was a husband and father as well as a researcher.”
“Oh, Rhi.” Ianto put his arm around me.
“Tad had explained how Talent can emerge under stress but I hadn't really paid any attention. I never thought I had any of my own, you see. The ugly duckling in a family of swans.”
“You were the first person I Sensed. Mam is still ticked off about that.”
I couldn't help it. I giggled. “Yes, but those were small things. I thought of Talent as the sort of thing you had. Big neon lights. Mine was a candle. But then I painted John.”
“And you saw what he had become.”
“It was horrible. There was nothing left of the boy I had married. Something about Canary Wharf had rotted him from the inside.” I shivered. “I started educating myself on his work. The more I knew, the more terrified I was. I got as many wards and protections around the kids as I could, he ignored them most of the time, but he would have noticed anything on me, so I just prayed a lot. Then that day... he came home and wanted to take the kids with him. One of the bigwigs had brought his own children in and they were going to have a party, sort of a team-building exercise, he said. By then I could read him as easy as reading a book. They were going to use the children to entice the.. whatever it was they were trying to catch.”
His arm tightened around me, and I rested my head on his shoulder. We had done the same thing as children, except that then I had been the one with my arm around him.
“I couldn't let him take the children,” I whispered into his shirt. “When I went upstairs to get the kids, I got the little flechette gun Uncle Max gave me for target practice and...” I snuffled into his shirt. “I shot him. From the stairs. I didn't give him a chance to defend himself.”
“And you managed to get the body back to Canary Wharf? Duw. You were in the middle of all that?”
“By the time I got there everything had gone to hell. I don't think they even noticed me.”
He rocked me as if I were Mica. “And you thought I would be ashamed of you? Rhi, the only thing I am ashamed of is of not seeing how bad John was getting. How bad everything was getting for you.”
“I was good at putting up a front.” I took a deep breath and pulled away. “I never painted another portrait. Seeing people's souls is not conducive to peace of mind.”
Ianto chuckled. “That's the Ecosystem's own truth. But I don't think that's what you do, Rhi.” He raised a hand to stop the rush of argument he could see coming. “What is the First Gift of the Achlesydd ?”
The answer came without thought, fully internalized after years of chanting the prayer. “To see the Ecosystem as it truly is... oh.” Sudden certainty flooded my mind. “It's what I do when I look for you with my mind. I look for disturbances in the microsystem.”
“Exactly. Even the beating of a butterfly's wing,” I chanted the rest of it with him, “leaves its mark. Even the rustling of a leaf leaves it mark. Even the breath of a man leaves its mark.” He looked at me, waiting. “What I do, then,” I said, trying to arrange my thoughts in the proper pattern, “is more or less what you do. Except you use it directly and I go through my paint and brushes.”
I sighed. Part of me wanted to tell him to go and tell Jack that I wanted no part of the world they inhabited, but I knew Jack wouldn't have asked me if he didn't think it was important. Ultimately I couldn't escape what I had grown up with. It is the responsibility of each Achlesydd to restore balance to the Ecosystem. The moment I had seen Leonora's Shadow she had become my responsibility.
“All right. Let's go talk to Jack.”
We walked back into the conservatory hand in hand. Owen had arrived. He was examining Rose, who clung to Leonora's hand and whimpered. I watched him work. There had been a change since his near-death at the Farm. He had always been a good doctor, but now every movement seemed directed by a knowledge beyond the one found in medical books. I opened my mind gingerly and reached for him as I had done earlier with Ianto. And found, not blazing power, but something so vast and profound as to have passed beyond the human.
He turned his head to look at me and winked. “Come here and tell me what you See.”
“Did everyone but me know about this?” I grumbled as I crossed the room. “I don't know what I'm doing, you know.”
“You don't need to overthink it.” Owen's tartness reminded me that the cockney doctor with the bad attitude was not completely gone. “Just do it.”
I didn't need to do much of anything to know there was something terribly wrong with Rose. The air around her was thick like honey, but it smelled like a stagnant pond. Things moved around her, wishes and curses taking visible form, keeping her mind dulled and pliable.
“Someone has been working on her for a long time, haven't they?” I asked Owen. “This is old work.”
“It is.” He stroked Rose's forehead. “Undoing this mess will hurt.” He looked at Leonora. “I better take her to the Bishop's infirmary. The nurses there are trained to care for the psychically hurt.”
“I'll go with you,” she said.
“Leonora, no!” Carlos nearly leaped out of his chair. “Sweetheart, you can't...”
He skidded to a stop, having said something he hadn't intended to say, but not ashamed of having said it. For some reason my eyes skewed to Jack, and I caught a pleased smile that flashed and was gone in a second. I looked back at Leonora and grinned myself. She looked like someone blindsided by Christmas.
“Come with me,” she whispered. “Hold me up if I lose my courage.”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her against his chest. “All right.”
“I'll go bring the SUV to the door,” Owen said. “She should be kept as warm as possible.”
He left, moving fast. Leonora and Carlos helped Rose to her feet. The old woman was shaking but she clung to Leonora and allowed herself to be led. As I turned to follow, Jack held out a hand.
“I need you to stay here with Ianto. Go through the house with a fine tooth comb. There has to be something here that is reinforcing the original curse.” I must have looked as startled as I suddenly felt, because he smiled at me. “You just figured it out.”
I nodded, remembering tad-cu's lectures. “Someone bent Leonora's might be into a new path. But it wasn't a natural path. There was never any old curse, so this what is was never a possibility. That kind of distortion needs constant reinforcement or the ecosystem will return to its proper balance.” I shivered as the full horror of it hit me. “Most people aren't strong enough to do that on their own.”
“Exactly.” His voice held the winter's chill. “They got help.”
I shivered. That kind of help came with a very high price. Then I got hit with another revelation. “You think it was...”
“Of course it was. Who else? When you push aside all the supernatural trappings, it's all about human greed and hate.”
I sighed. “All right, I'll stay with Ianto.” I glanced at my brother. “Where do we start?”
Ianto took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Now that I knew what to look for, I could feel his perception flow outwards, every human sense amplified by Power. Tentatively, I reached out to touch it and found myself flowing into a gentle coolness that reminded me of our blessed places in the forest. Below that there was heat, and I suddenly knew it was Jack, separate and yet joined, and I finally understood that they had been foreordained for each other from the beginning, their powers opposite and yet perfectly matched. The confluence was beyond anything I had ever felt, and I let my focus waver as I wallowed in their warmth.
Pay attention. The ghostly tap on the back of my head made me giggle. Do you see it?
I followed his perception. A thing crouched among the books in the old library. It reeked of everything that was not as it wove its curse in and out of the house's soul, poisoning everything it touched. Filaments the color of diseased blood extended outwards from its maw, tangling everything and everyone it touched. One of them, thick as one of my wrists, extended beyond the house to wrap around something I couldn't see. It writhed and snapped, and I knew that it battled to control whatever it held. Then suddenly it jerked hard, and for a brief moment my breath was cut off.
It is nothing but hatred. Jack said. Whoever Summoned it was consumed by hatred and It used hatred to create the bond. His hand made a complicated gesture and the thing hissed, drawing back into itself. The movement made the filaments arch as if straining to maintain their hold. Then the thing expanded again, and I could feel its satisfaction as a loud explosion made me clap my hands over my ears.
It took me only a few seconds to realize that the sound had been a shot, but I was slow compared to Jack and Ianto. I ran after them, but we didn't make it to the conservatory door. They flew open and Leonora and Carlos stumbled in, followed by a woman holding a shotgun. There was a smile on her lips, and I shivered when I realized that the thing was looking out of her eyes.
“I think you were wrong, Jack,” I whispered, pushing the words past the constriction in my throat. “I don't have to paint Leonora. I have to paint her.”
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; Part two is here
“He didn't tell me.”
I turned back from the painting I had been examining. “You knew.”
Jack's request had sent me running from the conservatory, but not before I had seen the look on Ianto's face. He had looked worried, yes, but not surprised. Panicked, I had headed for the one place in the Gray house where I would feel safe. In the gallery, surrounded by my works, track lighting subtly enhancing the lushness of bloom and leaf, I could avoid thinking about the Talent I had buried the day I had buried my husband.
Ianto moved to stand in front of the painting. “It wasn't difficult to figure out, Rhi. When you paint, you go beyond the botanical. Even beyond the beautiful. When I look at this hibiscus, I see all its history, down to the seed.”
“That's just your Talent,” I tried to scoff through dry lips.
“Some of it is. But people without a smidge of Talent have mentioned how much they see in your paintings.” He took my hands between his and rubbed them gently. “What's wrong, chwaer fach?”
“I'm your big sister and don't you forget it!” His raised eyebrow was the only answer I got. I sighed. “I'm stalling. I found out what I was capable of and it scared me witless. I'm scared of what you'll think of me if I tell you.”
“There's nothing you can tell me that will change how I much I love you, Rhi.”
He had put enough of himself in the words that I could Hear the truth in them. I led him to one of the padded benches near the fireplace and pulled him down to sit besides me. “When we moved to London, I was already pregnant with Mica. I was over the moon. It meant postponing my own education, but I didn't mind. Our townhouse had a tiny conservatory at the back, good lighting, so I set up there and painted. John was consumed by his work. By the time Daffyd came along, he was barely around and when he was he was distracted and snappish. I decided I would paint a portrait of our family for him to put in his office, something to remind him he was a husband and father as well as a researcher.”
“Oh, Rhi.” Ianto put his arm around me.
“Tad had explained how Talent can emerge under stress but I hadn't really paid any attention. I never thought I had any of my own, you see. The ugly duckling in a family of swans.”
“You were the first person I Sensed. Mam is still ticked off about that.”
I couldn't help it. I giggled. “Yes, but those were small things. I thought of Talent as the sort of thing you had. Big neon lights. Mine was a candle. But then I painted John.”
“And you saw what he had become.”
“It was horrible. There was nothing left of the boy I had married. Something about Canary Wharf had rotted him from the inside.” I shivered. “I started educating myself on his work. The more I knew, the more terrified I was. I got as many wards and protections around the kids as I could, he ignored them most of the time, but he would have noticed anything on me, so I just prayed a lot. Then that day... he came home and wanted to take the kids with him. One of the bigwigs had brought his own children in and they were going to have a party, sort of a team-building exercise, he said. By then I could read him as easy as reading a book. They were going to use the children to entice the.. whatever it was they were trying to catch.”
His arm tightened around me, and I rested my head on his shoulder. We had done the same thing as children, except that then I had been the one with my arm around him.
“I couldn't let him take the children,” I whispered into his shirt. “When I went upstairs to get the kids, I got the little flechette gun Uncle Max gave me for target practice and...” I snuffled into his shirt. “I shot him. From the stairs. I didn't give him a chance to defend himself.”
“And you managed to get the body back to Canary Wharf? Duw. You were in the middle of all that?”
“By the time I got there everything had gone to hell. I don't think they even noticed me.”
He rocked me as if I were Mica. “And you thought I would be ashamed of you? Rhi, the only thing I am ashamed of is of not seeing how bad John was getting. How bad everything was getting for you.”
“I was good at putting up a front.” I took a deep breath and pulled away. “I never painted another portrait. Seeing people's souls is not conducive to peace of mind.”
Ianto chuckled. “That's the Ecosystem's own truth. But I don't think that's what you do, Rhi.” He raised a hand to stop the rush of argument he could see coming. “What is the First Gift of the Achlesydd ?”
The answer came without thought, fully internalized after years of chanting the prayer. “To see the Ecosystem as it truly is... oh.” Sudden certainty flooded my mind. “It's what I do when I look for you with my mind. I look for disturbances in the microsystem.”
“Exactly. Even the beating of a butterfly's wing,” I chanted the rest of it with him, “leaves its mark. Even the rustling of a leaf leaves it mark. Even the breath of a man leaves its mark.” He looked at me, waiting. “What I do, then,” I said, trying to arrange my thoughts in the proper pattern, “is more or less what you do. Except you use it directly and I go through my paint and brushes.”
I sighed. Part of me wanted to tell him to go and tell Jack that I wanted no part of the world they inhabited, but I knew Jack wouldn't have asked me if he didn't think it was important. Ultimately I couldn't escape what I had grown up with. It is the responsibility of each Achlesydd to restore balance to the Ecosystem. The moment I had seen Leonora's Shadow she had become my responsibility.
“All right. Let's go talk to Jack.”
We walked back into the conservatory hand in hand. Owen had arrived. He was examining Rose, who clung to Leonora's hand and whimpered. I watched him work. There had been a change since his near-death at the Farm. He had always been a good doctor, but now every movement seemed directed by a knowledge beyond the one found in medical books. I opened my mind gingerly and reached for him as I had done earlier with Ianto. And found, not blazing power, but something so vast and profound as to have passed beyond the human.
He turned his head to look at me and winked. “Come here and tell me what you See.”
“Did everyone but me know about this?” I grumbled as I crossed the room. “I don't know what I'm doing, you know.”
“You don't need to overthink it.” Owen's tartness reminded me that the cockney doctor with the bad attitude was not completely gone. “Just do it.”
I didn't need to do much of anything to know there was something terribly wrong with Rose. The air around her was thick like honey, but it smelled like a stagnant pond. Things moved around her, wishes and curses taking visible form, keeping her mind dulled and pliable.
“Someone has been working on her for a long time, haven't they?” I asked Owen. “This is old work.”
“It is.” He stroked Rose's forehead. “Undoing this mess will hurt.” He looked at Leonora. “I better take her to the Bishop's infirmary. The nurses there are trained to care for the psychically hurt.”
“I'll go with you,” she said.
“Leonora, no!” Carlos nearly leaped out of his chair. “Sweetheart, you can't...”
He skidded to a stop, having said something he hadn't intended to say, but not ashamed of having said it. For some reason my eyes skewed to Jack, and I caught a pleased smile that flashed and was gone in a second. I looked back at Leonora and grinned myself. She looked like someone blindsided by Christmas.
“Come with me,” she whispered. “Hold me up if I lose my courage.”
He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her against his chest. “All right.”
“I'll go bring the SUV to the door,” Owen said. “She should be kept as warm as possible.”
He left, moving fast. Leonora and Carlos helped Rose to her feet. The old woman was shaking but she clung to Leonora and allowed herself to be led. As I turned to follow, Jack held out a hand.
“I need you to stay here with Ianto. Go through the house with a fine tooth comb. There has to be something here that is reinforcing the original curse.” I must have looked as startled as I suddenly felt, because he smiled at me. “You just figured it out.”
I nodded, remembering tad-cu's lectures. “Someone bent Leonora's might be into a new path. But it wasn't a natural path. There was never any old curse, so this what is was never a possibility. That kind of distortion needs constant reinforcement or the ecosystem will return to its proper balance.” I shivered as the full horror of it hit me. “Most people aren't strong enough to do that on their own.”
“Exactly.” His voice held the winter's chill. “They got help.”
I shivered. That kind of help came with a very high price. Then I got hit with another revelation. “You think it was...”
“Of course it was. Who else? When you push aside all the supernatural trappings, it's all about human greed and hate.”
I sighed. “All right, I'll stay with Ianto.” I glanced at my brother. “Where do we start?”
Ianto took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Now that I knew what to look for, I could feel his perception flow outwards, every human sense amplified by Power. Tentatively, I reached out to touch it and found myself flowing into a gentle coolness that reminded me of our blessed places in the forest. Below that there was heat, and I suddenly knew it was Jack, separate and yet joined, and I finally understood that they had been foreordained for each other from the beginning, their powers opposite and yet perfectly matched. The confluence was beyond anything I had ever felt, and I let my focus waver as I wallowed in their warmth.
Pay attention. The ghostly tap on the back of my head made me giggle. Do you see it?
I followed his perception. A thing crouched among the books in the old library. It reeked of everything that was not as it wove its curse in and out of the house's soul, poisoning everything it touched. Filaments the color of diseased blood extended outwards from its maw, tangling everything and everyone it touched. One of them, thick as one of my wrists, extended beyond the house to wrap around something I couldn't see. It writhed and snapped, and I knew that it battled to control whatever it held. Then suddenly it jerked hard, and for a brief moment my breath was cut off.
It is nothing but hatred. Jack said. Whoever Summoned it was consumed by hatred and It used hatred to create the bond. His hand made a complicated gesture and the thing hissed, drawing back into itself. The movement made the filaments arch as if straining to maintain their hold. Then the thing expanded again, and I could feel its satisfaction as a loud explosion made me clap my hands over my ears.
It took me only a few seconds to realize that the sound had been a shot, but I was slow compared to Jack and Ianto. I ran after them, but we didn't make it to the conservatory door. They flew open and Leonora and Carlos stumbled in, followed by a woman holding a shotgun. There was a smile on her lips, and I shivered when I realized that the thing was looking out of her eyes.
“I think you were wrong, Jack,” I whispered, pushing the words past the constriction in my throat. “I don't have to paint Leonora. I have to paint her.”
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