![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silver_sunThe night had been cold and despite them all trying to sleep separately by morning Jack, Ianto and Owen had huddled together for warmth, Jack's coat covering them like a blanket.
A light mist hung low over the marsh, but the sun was already shining overhead with the promise of it burning off soon.
None of them where morning people and, Ianto reflected as he tried to restart the fire, the lack of coffee was only making it worse. It didn't seem right to complain though, as he had seen the state of the men and woman on Flat Holm, those unfortunate enough to have been taken by the Rift and deposited back alive. Compared to them they were very fortunate indeed.
Eventually he got the fire relit and Jack uprooted some more of the roots they'd eaten the previous night. They weren't any better than the previous ones, but they cooked extra so that they would at least have something at lunch time.
The mist had almost completely gone by the time they'd finished the roots and put out the fire.
Being able to put on dry socks and shoes, Ianto had to admit, helped his mood a little. Provided of course he didn't think about the fact that once they started walking again they were going to end up soaked through again before they'd gone a dozen paces.
Standing at the edge of the dry ground, Ianto looked out over the marsh. Near featureless, it the spread out to the distance wherever he looked. There was no way of telling which way they had arrived from the previous night and the smudge on the horizon that could have been mountain is no longer visible.
He sighed and dug his hands into his pockets. They could wander around the same piece of marsh never getting anywhere and they'd be none the wiser.
“Here you go,” Jack said tapping Ianto on the shoulder to get his attention, and then handing him his greatcoat. “I'll just be a minute.”
“Why? Where are you going?” Ianto asked, a sudden worry twisting in him that Jack had a way to leave that he wasn't going to share with them.
“To climb a tree.” Jack grinned at him. “Though I might be able to get a better view from up there.” He pointed to the largest of the trees on the small island.
Ianto turned and looked at it. It had thick, stubby branches low on the trunk meant that starting the climb should be easy, the branches thinned both in number and size the higher it got increasing the risk and difficulty. He looked back at Jack. “Are you sure that's a good idea?”
“I'll be fine."
"Wouldn't it make more sense if Owen did it?" Ianto said as he looked at how the thin upper branches moved in the wind. "He's lighter than either of us, he'd be able to get higher safer than you."
"Except it'd be bloody pointless as I wouldn't be able to see a thing." Scowling, Owen stomped over to them.
Ianto gave him a puzzled look.
"I wear contact lenses, don't I?" Owen said irritably, as he rubbed his eyes. "Only I can't sleep in them and I couldn't store them so I had to throw them away last night. And I left my glasses back at the Hub, because I don't like wearing them. So don't either of you two go wandering off too far ahead."
"How bad are they?" Jack asked sounding concerned as he put a hand on Owen's arm.
"Not so bad as you need to get all handsy with me." Owen shrugged him off. "If it's about five or six feet or closer I'm fine. Over that and it's a bit fuzzy and if it's more than about fifty you can forget about it unless you don't mind me not being able to tell the difference between you and a tree."
"I'm sure there should be a joke about wood in there," Jack said with a laugh.
"Yeah, well I'm glad you can't find it."
"I will," Jack said walking over to the tree. Standing beneath it, he looked up and then tugged on a few branches testing their strength. Satisfied that the tree was solid enough to hold his weight, Jack climbed easily up into the lower branches.
“Show off,” muttered Owen.
“I heard that,” Jack called down. “If I was showing off I’d do this.” Holding onto a branch above his head with one hand, he shielded his eyes from the bright sun with the other and leant out as far as he could from the tree without falling.
“Jack,” Ianto said exasperated. “Are you trying to break your neck?”
“All right, I’ll be careful.” Jack returned to a safer foot and handhold, before continuing his climb.
“Can you see anything?” Owen called up once Jack stopped climbing and started to look around.
“There's open water that way, a lake maybe.” Jack gestured off at to the right of where Owen and Ianto were standing. “And there might be mountains beyond that. There doesn't seem to be anything else. So we know where we're heading.”
“I suppose we might be able to fish or something. Maybe build a boat,” Ianto said trying to find an upside to the fact that Jack hadn't seen any sign of habitation.
“With what?” Owen asked. “We don't have any...”
There was sudden crack and the seemingly solid branch that Jack had stepped onto in his climb down gave way, the thinner branch he'd been holding onto for balance breaking moments later, unable to hold his weight. He fell with a yell of surprise that rapidly became a cry of pain as he hit the ground.
Ignoring the scrubby bushes that pulled and tugged at their clothes, Ianto and Owen ran to his side.
Jack was lying on the ground, his left leg raised up to almost chest height by a thin branch that had embedded itself into the thickest part of his calf.
“So how long does this sort of thing that to heal?” Owen asked as he crouched down next to Jack. “Because from what we've see of your freaky healing thing it could be anything from ten seconds to three days. And I really don't fancy hang about here for days on end.”
Jack's breath was coming in short pants, his hand gripping his leg tightly above where the branch protruded from it. “About that...” He stopped a groan escaping his as he started to shake. “I got fixed. I'm just.... a normal guy now.”
“What!” Owen looked at him horrified.
“Oh god,” Ianto said quietly, his heart beating so fast the blood seemed to rush in his ears.
“You have fucking awful time timing, you know that?” Owen said as he started to inspect the wound properly. “How long have you known?”
“A....month.” Jack gasped in pain as Owen carefully lifted the ripped material of his trousers to see the where the branch protruded from the flesh.
“Well that's just great,” Owen snapped, fear expressed as anger. “What do you think would have happened if you'd died without telling us? We'd be sat here like lemons waiting for you to come back. How can you be so bloody stupid?”
Jack closed his eyes, pain and maybe guilt overwhelming him. “I'm sorry.”
Jack admitting being sorry for anything, in Ianto's experience, was pretty much limited to times when innocent people got killed by something nasty and alien and he'd been too late to stop it. To hear him actually apologise for his actions like this was somehow almost as shocking as finding out he was just a man now, or the injury itself.
“Yeah, well sorry doesn't fix shit, does it?” Owen pushed up his sleeves. “Why'd you want to go and get rid of it anyway? It seemed like a brilliant thing to have.”
“Because I've seen everybody I've ever known or loved die.” Jack opened his eyes and glared at him. “Any way better now than before you shot me in the head, right Owen?”
“Stop it!” Ianto snapped, accent more pronounced as his grip on his emotions slipped. “Both of you.”
“All right. It's done now, isn't it?” Owen said, anger slowly ebbing away. “Anyway, don't want to annoy him any more or he'll start on us in Welsh.”
“You speak Welsh?” Jack asked fixing on that as a possible distraction from the pain.
“A little. Primary school stuff. We all had to learn,” Ianto replied rather self-consciously. “Me and a few of the other lads thought we could use it as secret language, like spies or something. I think it was about the only thing I liked about Primary school.”
Owen gave a short snort of laughter.
“Look I only shouted at you in it because of those caterpillars,” Ianto said defensively. “We were all hallucinating, remember? You were the one trying to teach the waste paper bin to roll over and fetch.”
“Still in pain here. So can we save the stories for later?”
“Of course,” Ianto said, realising that they were still treating Jack as if he were still the man who couldn't die.
“Normally I'd say don't pull it out, get it removed at a hospital. Only that's really not an option here, is it?”
“Just do something,” Jack snapped.
“All right, just let me think for a second.” Owen closed his eyes. When he opened them a few moments later the anger was finally gone, replaced something calmer and more professional. “Right, Ianto, I need your tie and something to fold up to hold over the wound.”
Ianto nodded and then took off his coat, suit jacket and waistcoat, leaving them draped over a bush. He shivered in the cool morning air as he removed his shirt and tie. The shirt, he hoped, would be sufficient for Owen to use as a bandage as he had little else they could use.
“How you don't get heat stroke wearing all that lot I'll never know,” Owen said taking the shirt and tie from Ianto. “Okay, now you support Jack’s legs, both of them. No point having the other one hanging down and putting you and him off balance.”
Ianto curled his arms under Jack's thighs, keeping his grip away from where Owen would need access to the wound.
“On three, you lift Jack’s legs a little bit higher so there’s no weight on the branch, don't let him move them and don’t drop him.” Owen looked at Jack until he was sure he had his attention. “This is going to hurt, try and keep still and I'll be done as quick as I can.”
Jack nodded, then closed his eyes, tight lipped, trying to prepare himself for the pain.
Ianto shifted his grip on Jack, making sure it was a secure as possible.
“Right then. Here we go. One. Two. Three.” Keeping one hand against Jack's leg, Owen slowly and carefully pulled on the branch. Jack tensed and then as it came free, cried out in pain.
Owen looked at the branch. It was bare and bark-less, the pitted surface worn with exposure to the sun and wind, while the top three inches ran red with Jack's blood. It was whole though, and satisfied that there wasn't any of it remaining in the wound Owen said, “All right, lay him down.”
“Oh that hurt,” Jack said voice scratchy as Ianto lowered his legs to the ground. “Adding that to list of things I'm never doing again.”
Crouching down next to Jack, Owen wasted no time in ripping the torn fabric of his trousers open wider. The edges of the wound were ragged and it was bleeding sluggishly. “You don't seem to have hit anything major like an artery, although there's a fair bit of soft tissue injury, but with the right exercise once its healed you'll hopefully not have too much of a problem with it. But the main problem will be ...”
“Infection,” Jack interrupted through gritted teeth, his grip on Ianto's hand, where he was holding it, painfully tight.
“Yeah, and I haven't got anything I can give you,” Owen admitted miserably. “All right, we'd better get this cleaned the best we can. Ianto, you get him on his feet, I'll just go wash my hands at the spring and then I'll get started. I'd do it here, but I've got nothing to carry the water in.”
"Do you think you can stand if I help you?" Ianto asked, uncertain of what he could do if the answer was no; he supposed that if Jack couldn't then perhaps with Owen's help they could carry him.
Jack thought for a moment and then nodded.
With Jack's arm about his shoulders and helped him over to where Owen was waiting by the spring.
There were a few shreds of lichen around the edges of the wound, and even though Owen worked as quickly and gently as he could by the time he'd cleaned it, Jack was shaking. Tears were running down his face by the time Owen was satisfied that he'd got the injury as clean as he could, given the circumstances.
Jack's fingers had dug into his arm, the whole time Owen had worked on his leg and Ianto knew that there would be bruises, but if it was doing anything to ease the pain etched on Jack's face he knew he'd gladly take more.
“I'll need something clean to re-bandage it with later,” Owen said as he set about ripping the shirt into pieces. Taking what had once been a sleeve he folded it into a pad and secured it over the wound using the tie. "Pretty good job, if I do say so myself. How's it feeling?"
"Better than it was or that might just be because you aren't poking it any more."
"I suppose I'd better start making us a shelter," Ianto said standing up and looking at the trees and wondering just where to start. They had no tools and he had no practical skills in anything even remotely relevant. He knew he had to try though, Jack would need to rest to stand a chance of getting better.
“No, you're not,” Jack said, “Because we're not staying here.”
Owen pointed at Jack's leg. “And you can't walk on that.”
“You mean I shouldn't," Jack replied as he slowly got to his feet leaning heavily against a tree for support. "Different thing. Think about it, both of you. We can't stay here.”
“You can barely stand,” Ianto said concerned that Jack moving about might make the injury worse or make it bleed more. “Do you really think walking is a good idea?”
“It's the only idea that makes sense.” Jack glared at them, challenging them to contradict him. "Trust me on this."
“Jack's right. I hate it, but I think he's right. We should try,” Owen said sound unhappy but resigned to the fact that leaving was actually the best of the bad choices they had available to them. "If you think you can manage it and if there's any possibility of somebody out there who can help us we need to find them as soon as we can. We were lucky last night that it didn't rain, but who knows about tonight? I don't fancy adding exposure or hypothermia to our problems."
Knowing he wasn't going to win the argument and not even sure if the argument for staying could really be made, Ianto sighed and hoped that this was a decision that they wouldn't live to regret.
Link to part three
A light mist hung low over the marsh, but the sun was already shining overhead with the promise of it burning off soon.
None of them where morning people and, Ianto reflected as he tried to restart the fire, the lack of coffee was only making it worse. It didn't seem right to complain though, as he had seen the state of the men and woman on Flat Holm, those unfortunate enough to have been taken by the Rift and deposited back alive. Compared to them they were very fortunate indeed.
Eventually he got the fire relit and Jack uprooted some more of the roots they'd eaten the previous night. They weren't any better than the previous ones, but they cooked extra so that they would at least have something at lunch time.
The mist had almost completely gone by the time they'd finished the roots and put out the fire.
Being able to put on dry socks and shoes, Ianto had to admit, helped his mood a little. Provided of course he didn't think about the fact that once they started walking again they were going to end up soaked through again before they'd gone a dozen paces.
Standing at the edge of the dry ground, Ianto looked out over the marsh. Near featureless, it the spread out to the distance wherever he looked. There was no way of telling which way they had arrived from the previous night and the smudge on the horizon that could have been mountain is no longer visible.
He sighed and dug his hands into his pockets. They could wander around the same piece of marsh never getting anywhere and they'd be none the wiser.
“Here you go,” Jack said tapping Ianto on the shoulder to get his attention, and then handing him his greatcoat. “I'll just be a minute.”
“Why? Where are you going?” Ianto asked, a sudden worry twisting in him that Jack had a way to leave that he wasn't going to share with them.
“To climb a tree.” Jack grinned at him. “Though I might be able to get a better view from up there.” He pointed to the largest of the trees on the small island.
Ianto turned and looked at it. It had thick, stubby branches low on the trunk meant that starting the climb should be easy, the branches thinned both in number and size the higher it got increasing the risk and difficulty. He looked back at Jack. “Are you sure that's a good idea?”
“I'll be fine."
"Wouldn't it make more sense if Owen did it?" Ianto said as he looked at how the thin upper branches moved in the wind. "He's lighter than either of us, he'd be able to get higher safer than you."
"Except it'd be bloody pointless as I wouldn't be able to see a thing." Scowling, Owen stomped over to them.
Ianto gave him a puzzled look.
"I wear contact lenses, don't I?" Owen said irritably, as he rubbed his eyes. "Only I can't sleep in them and I couldn't store them so I had to throw them away last night. And I left my glasses back at the Hub, because I don't like wearing them. So don't either of you two go wandering off too far ahead."
"How bad are they?" Jack asked sounding concerned as he put a hand on Owen's arm.
"Not so bad as you need to get all handsy with me." Owen shrugged him off. "If it's about five or six feet or closer I'm fine. Over that and it's a bit fuzzy and if it's more than about fifty you can forget about it unless you don't mind me not being able to tell the difference between you and a tree."
"I'm sure there should be a joke about wood in there," Jack said with a laugh.
"Yeah, well I'm glad you can't find it."
"I will," Jack said walking over to the tree. Standing beneath it, he looked up and then tugged on a few branches testing their strength. Satisfied that the tree was solid enough to hold his weight, Jack climbed easily up into the lower branches.
“Show off,” muttered Owen.
“I heard that,” Jack called down. “If I was showing off I’d do this.” Holding onto a branch above his head with one hand, he shielded his eyes from the bright sun with the other and leant out as far as he could from the tree without falling.
“Jack,” Ianto said exasperated. “Are you trying to break your neck?”
“All right, I’ll be careful.” Jack returned to a safer foot and handhold, before continuing his climb.
“Can you see anything?” Owen called up once Jack stopped climbing and started to look around.
“There's open water that way, a lake maybe.” Jack gestured off at to the right of where Owen and Ianto were standing. “And there might be mountains beyond that. There doesn't seem to be anything else. So we know where we're heading.”
“I suppose we might be able to fish or something. Maybe build a boat,” Ianto said trying to find an upside to the fact that Jack hadn't seen any sign of habitation.
“With what?” Owen asked. “We don't have any...”
There was sudden crack and the seemingly solid branch that Jack had stepped onto in his climb down gave way, the thinner branch he'd been holding onto for balance breaking moments later, unable to hold his weight. He fell with a yell of surprise that rapidly became a cry of pain as he hit the ground.
Ignoring the scrubby bushes that pulled and tugged at their clothes, Ianto and Owen ran to his side.
Jack was lying on the ground, his left leg raised up to almost chest height by a thin branch that had embedded itself into the thickest part of his calf.
“So how long does this sort of thing that to heal?” Owen asked as he crouched down next to Jack. “Because from what we've see of your freaky healing thing it could be anything from ten seconds to three days. And I really don't fancy hang about here for days on end.”
Jack's breath was coming in short pants, his hand gripping his leg tightly above where the branch protruded from it. “About that...” He stopped a groan escaping his as he started to shake. “I got fixed. I'm just.... a normal guy now.”
“What!” Owen looked at him horrified.
“Oh god,” Ianto said quietly, his heart beating so fast the blood seemed to rush in his ears.
“You have fucking awful time timing, you know that?” Owen said as he started to inspect the wound properly. “How long have you known?”
“A....month.” Jack gasped in pain as Owen carefully lifted the ripped material of his trousers to see the where the branch protruded from the flesh.
“Well that's just great,” Owen snapped, fear expressed as anger. “What do you think would have happened if you'd died without telling us? We'd be sat here like lemons waiting for you to come back. How can you be so bloody stupid?”
Jack closed his eyes, pain and maybe guilt overwhelming him. “I'm sorry.”
Jack admitting being sorry for anything, in Ianto's experience, was pretty much limited to times when innocent people got killed by something nasty and alien and he'd been too late to stop it. To hear him actually apologise for his actions like this was somehow almost as shocking as finding out he was just a man now, or the injury itself.
“Yeah, well sorry doesn't fix shit, does it?” Owen pushed up his sleeves. “Why'd you want to go and get rid of it anyway? It seemed like a brilliant thing to have.”
“Because I've seen everybody I've ever known or loved die.” Jack opened his eyes and glared at him. “Any way better now than before you shot me in the head, right Owen?”
“Stop it!” Ianto snapped, accent more pronounced as his grip on his emotions slipped. “Both of you.”
“All right. It's done now, isn't it?” Owen said, anger slowly ebbing away. “Anyway, don't want to annoy him any more or he'll start on us in Welsh.”
“You speak Welsh?” Jack asked fixing on that as a possible distraction from the pain.
“A little. Primary school stuff. We all had to learn,” Ianto replied rather self-consciously. “Me and a few of the other lads thought we could use it as secret language, like spies or something. I think it was about the only thing I liked about Primary school.”
Owen gave a short snort of laughter.
“Look I only shouted at you in it because of those caterpillars,” Ianto said defensively. “We were all hallucinating, remember? You were the one trying to teach the waste paper bin to roll over and fetch.”
“Still in pain here. So can we save the stories for later?”
“Of course,” Ianto said, realising that they were still treating Jack as if he were still the man who couldn't die.
“Normally I'd say don't pull it out, get it removed at a hospital. Only that's really not an option here, is it?”
“Just do something,” Jack snapped.
“All right, just let me think for a second.” Owen closed his eyes. When he opened them a few moments later the anger was finally gone, replaced something calmer and more professional. “Right, Ianto, I need your tie and something to fold up to hold over the wound.”
Ianto nodded and then took off his coat, suit jacket and waistcoat, leaving them draped over a bush. He shivered in the cool morning air as he removed his shirt and tie. The shirt, he hoped, would be sufficient for Owen to use as a bandage as he had little else they could use.
“How you don't get heat stroke wearing all that lot I'll never know,” Owen said taking the shirt and tie from Ianto. “Okay, now you support Jack’s legs, both of them. No point having the other one hanging down and putting you and him off balance.”
Ianto curled his arms under Jack's thighs, keeping his grip away from where Owen would need access to the wound.
“On three, you lift Jack’s legs a little bit higher so there’s no weight on the branch, don't let him move them and don’t drop him.” Owen looked at Jack until he was sure he had his attention. “This is going to hurt, try and keep still and I'll be done as quick as I can.”
Jack nodded, then closed his eyes, tight lipped, trying to prepare himself for the pain.
Ianto shifted his grip on Jack, making sure it was a secure as possible.
“Right then. Here we go. One. Two. Three.” Keeping one hand against Jack's leg, Owen slowly and carefully pulled on the branch. Jack tensed and then as it came free, cried out in pain.
Owen looked at the branch. It was bare and bark-less, the pitted surface worn with exposure to the sun and wind, while the top three inches ran red with Jack's blood. It was whole though, and satisfied that there wasn't any of it remaining in the wound Owen said, “All right, lay him down.”
“Oh that hurt,” Jack said voice scratchy as Ianto lowered his legs to the ground. “Adding that to list of things I'm never doing again.”
Crouching down next to Jack, Owen wasted no time in ripping the torn fabric of his trousers open wider. The edges of the wound were ragged and it was bleeding sluggishly. “You don't seem to have hit anything major like an artery, although there's a fair bit of soft tissue injury, but with the right exercise once its healed you'll hopefully not have too much of a problem with it. But the main problem will be ...”
“Infection,” Jack interrupted through gritted teeth, his grip on Ianto's hand, where he was holding it, painfully tight.
“Yeah, and I haven't got anything I can give you,” Owen admitted miserably. “All right, we'd better get this cleaned the best we can. Ianto, you get him on his feet, I'll just go wash my hands at the spring and then I'll get started. I'd do it here, but I've got nothing to carry the water in.”
"Do you think you can stand if I help you?" Ianto asked, uncertain of what he could do if the answer was no; he supposed that if Jack couldn't then perhaps with Owen's help they could carry him.
Jack thought for a moment and then nodded.
With Jack's arm about his shoulders and helped him over to where Owen was waiting by the spring.
There were a few shreds of lichen around the edges of the wound, and even though Owen worked as quickly and gently as he could by the time he'd cleaned it, Jack was shaking. Tears were running down his face by the time Owen was satisfied that he'd got the injury as clean as he could, given the circumstances.
Jack's fingers had dug into his arm, the whole time Owen had worked on his leg and Ianto knew that there would be bruises, but if it was doing anything to ease the pain etched on Jack's face he knew he'd gladly take more.
“I'll need something clean to re-bandage it with later,” Owen said as he set about ripping the shirt into pieces. Taking what had once been a sleeve he folded it into a pad and secured it over the wound using the tie. "Pretty good job, if I do say so myself. How's it feeling?"
"Better than it was or that might just be because you aren't poking it any more."
"I suppose I'd better start making us a shelter," Ianto said standing up and looking at the trees and wondering just where to start. They had no tools and he had no practical skills in anything even remotely relevant. He knew he had to try though, Jack would need to rest to stand a chance of getting better.
“No, you're not,” Jack said, “Because we're not staying here.”
Owen pointed at Jack's leg. “And you can't walk on that.”
“You mean I shouldn't," Jack replied as he slowly got to his feet leaning heavily against a tree for support. "Different thing. Think about it, both of you. We can't stay here.”
“You can barely stand,” Ianto said concerned that Jack moving about might make the injury worse or make it bleed more. “Do you really think walking is a good idea?”
“It's the only idea that makes sense.” Jack glared at them, challenging them to contradict him. "Trust me on this."
“Jack's right. I hate it, but I think he's right. We should try,” Owen said sound unhappy but resigned to the fact that leaving was actually the best of the bad choices they had available to them. "If you think you can manage it and if there's any possibility of somebody out there who can help us we need to find them as soon as we can. We were lucky last night that it didn't rain, but who knows about tonight? I don't fancy adding exposure or hypothermia to our problems."
Knowing he wasn't going to win the argument and not even sure if the argument for staying could really be made, Ianto sighed and hoped that this was a decision that they wouldn't live to regret.
Link to part three