m-findlow.livejournal.com

Title: In need of a hand
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,684 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 165 - Amnesty & Challenge 139 - Hand
Summary: Jack offers to lend everyone a helping hand

Ianto cracked open an eye, the sudden burst of light making his head hurt as he realised he was lying on the ground, somewhere near the door to Jack's office. Then he remembered why he was ostensibly lying here. He'd been standing next to Jack's desk whilst he was showing him their latest rift find, something that looked uncannily like a large cheese grater. Then there'd been a strange buzzing and a flash of light. It must have exploded or something,  throwing him halfway across the room. He struggled up, needing to find out if Jack was okay.

He found Jack on the floor under his desk, unconscious with his chair fallen on top of him.  He pulled the furniture away, revealing the hand that had been amputated from Jack's wrist. It horrified him and fascinated him at the same time. It wasn't torn away or bloody, it was completely removed, and Jack's arm was just a fleshy stump at the end.

'Ow,' Jack groaned, coming to. 'Ianto?'

'I'm here. In one piece, I think,' he added, quickly checking himself for hands and feet.

Jack tried to sit himself up, moving to push himself for the floor only to notice the missing hand.

'Woah! Where's my hand?' he cried, looking stunned at the end of his arm, sleeve, wristwatch, then nothing.

Ianto pointed at the hand, just a foot away.

'But, how? It should have reattached when I came back.'

'You didn't die,' Ianto confirmed. 'At least I don't think so.'

Jack looked a little confused, and shocked. Ianto sympathised. Then he felt something touching his own hand. He looked down and found Jack's amputated hand trying to grasp his own. He cried out and backed away.

'It's moving. On its own!'

'Hey, that's weird,' Jack replied. 'I thought I was reaching out. I'd forgotten there was no hand there anymore. You don't suppose,'

He stopped for a moment and concentrated, bringing his arm back towards himself. His hand followed, finally coming to rest on his knee.

'It might be detached, but it looks like I've still got control of it somehow. That's gotta count for something, right?'

'That's, uh, creepy.' Ianto said, still looking nervously at the hand. It gave him a little wave.

'Erm, right. Well, I suppose I'd better fetch Owen.'

The team couldn't tell if Owen was frustrated at a lack of a proper medical diagnosis, or the fact that Jack had quickly learned how to maintain control of his newly freed extremity, and was making Owen chase it around the autopsy bay table.

'I've got to check the nerve endings, and the only way to do that is with a pin prick test,' he grumbled, trying to grab the hand each time it moved, and failing, reminding him of those stupid arcade games where they'd frittered away hours as teenagers trying to bop weasels with a hammer.

'Sit still!'

'I am! But I don't like needles.'

'Man up for Christ's sake,' Owen complained.

Ianto casually leaned a hand on the edge of the table and Jack's hand automatically went for it. As soon as Jack's hand ensnared his own, Ianto gripped it firmly, and Jack realised that he was now the one ensnared.

'That's cheating!' Jack moaned when Ianto kept his grip on it long enough for Owen to complete his tests.

'No, that's knowing you too well,' Ianto replied, always amused by his own cleverness and cunning when it came to outwitting Jack.

'Well,' Owen said, pulling off his gloves, 'there doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with it, apart from the obvious.'

'Yes, but how do we get it back where it belongs?' Ianto clarified, realising he was still holding it, letting go.

'Tosh is investigating that thing you blew up but there's a lot of damage and it could take a while. I suppose we should at least be glad it only took your hand.'

'Indeed,' Ianto agreed. 'Can you imagine if it had done a number on Jack's head?'

'I don't think it's his head he was worried about,' Owen jibed.

'I'm still here guys,' Jack reminded them.

'And you won't be driving in that condition, either,' Owen added.

'Which ought to save the rest of us a few dismembered appendages,' Ianto quipped.

For a long while, Jack's hand was treated with a reasonable level of suspicion, and rightly so. Whilst it may have appeared to respond to Jack's thoughts and actions, everyone was tentatively waiting for the moment when it would possibly turn rogue. It was an awkward moment when Ianto insisted that they lock it in a box overnight whilst they slept. He didn't want to wake up suddenly to find Jack's hand strangling him in the dark.

The problem continued for several days, stretching out to a week with no luck in analysing, fixing or reprogramming their alien cheese grater.

In the interim, once their suspicions about its intent were satisfied, Jack's spare hand became both a blessing and a curse, depending on who you asked and when.

Ianto had actually found some good uses for it, making Jack send it under the very tight crawlspace beneath their bed to clean up all the random mess that had accumulated under there. They were now several cufflinks, two tubes of lube, and fourteen pounds fifty the richer for it. Tosh had him similarly employed to creep inside the confines of the rift machine to tighten a few screws and replace a temporal undulation plate which would have otherwise required them to dismantle a whole section to reach.

In response, Jack had come up with some creative uses of his own, sneaking the last slice of pizza off Owen's plate when he wasn't watching, carrying it back to his office. When Owen started on his rampage, Jack innocently shrugged.

'I've been in my office the whole time. Ask anyone.'

As if to prove the point, his hand was separately writing a report whilst Owen was arguing with him.

'Does it look like I've stolen it?' Jack asked, pointing at his hand working away on his desk.

'That's seriously fucking disturbing, Harkness,' he said, watching the dismembered hand doing its own thing.

Gwen caught him several times making inroads on the cookie jar in the kitchen,  thieving even more biscuits than he would normally have pilfered when people could see him headed in the general direction of the kitchen.

'If I catch that hand in the jar one more time I might just put the lid on and leave it in there, since you seem to like it so much,' she threatened.

'You wouldn't.'

'Try me.'

He'd also managed to get Ianto well and truly hot under the collar, finding any excuse to creep up on the young man and mess with him. He'd spent a whole afternoon, resting his hand in Ianto's lap down in the archives. It wasn't quite the same, but it was equally amusing watching him on CCTV whilst Jack's hand pleasured him from afar.

They were all surprised at just how far the connection went, and Jack was testing the maximum distance by setting his hand wandering around the hub. Having an appendage that could operate long distance could come in "handy", he'd explained. Then it all went pear shaped.

'I've lost my hand,' he complained to Ianto, standing over him as he worked at his desk.

'That joke's not funny anymore,' he replied, having heard it ad nauseum. It was a terrible pun the first time around. Why Jack though he could get mileage out of it was anyone's guess.

'No, I mean, it's lost.'

'Lost?'

'I was moving it around down in the lower levels of the hub. I think I took too many left turns after junction 86, and now I don't know where it is.'

'You and your wandering hands,' Ianto sighed, rolling his eyes.

'Hey, I didn't hear you complaining about them this morning.'

'No, you were too busy making noises of your own. Come on.'

After an hour of navigating the labyrinth of passages, they finally managed to locate Jack's hand. At the sight of them, or more to the point, Jack's sight of his own hand, since it had no eyes of its own, it tottered happily over to them on fingertips. Ianto couldn't help but find it all very Adam's family. He  picked it up and handed it back to Jack, like a lost pet, noting the filthy state of the fingers that had been crawling around along the dirty floors of the lower corridors.  

'I never know what to do with it now that it's not attached to the end of my arm. I never had to worry about keeping track of it before,' Jack said.

'Maybe put it in your pocket,' Ianto suggested. 'At least then you'll know where it is if you need it. And Tosh it still working on a way to get it reattached. That device really took a beating when you set it off.'

Jack took Ianto's advice and shoved it into his large pocket.

'I'd be careful with that,' Ianto warned. 'It might not have your regeneration capabilities in its unattached state.'

Jack admitted he hadn't thought about that, and so his hand was kept reasonably close by after that, with the exception of when he left it in Ianto's custody, at which point he reasoned it couldn't be in safer hands. Ianto threatened to withhold sex if  Jack made any more hand related humour, only to have Jack point out that he'd just used the term "withhold". That earned him no coffee and no sex.

A few days later and still they hadn't made any headway. Jack's hand was conveniently hiding in a drawer because Ianto had made the suggestion that he could use it to get into the tight corners of the SUV's boot and give them a proper clean. Then the rift alert came through.

'Same location as where we found the thing that took off your hand,' Ianto observed, noting the mysterious reappearance of Jack's hand just as things were getting interesting.

'We should go check it out.'

After twenty minutes of trudging through the drizzle and the boggy earth near the wetlands, they found they item soaked in rift energy. It was a brown paper parcel, though now unwrapped, like a small child had attacked it. Inside the ruinous wrappings was a book and a letter.

'Hey, this book has pictures of that thing inside it,' Jack said, flipping through the soggy pages.

'Correct me if I'm wrong, but that looks rather like some kind of operating manual.'

'I think you're right, Mr Jones. Let's get this back to the hub and through the hub's translator program.'

Back at the hub, Tosh was able to finally make sense of the device, having consulted a translated version of the manual, able to first fix it, then understand how to operate it so that they could fix Jack's hand back onto his arm. In truth, the machine wasn't meant to reattach items, only to dissect them, but with enough of the device's mechanical knowledge, Tosh was able to reverse the process.

The less pleasant part had been the reattaching itself. Jack would have to literally grate both his hand and arm again the metal side of the device before they could be glued back together. There was no doubt it would be both painful and gruesome, so Owen delivered a local anesthetic before they proceeded.

When both ends were suitably ragged and bloodied, Tosh, attempting hard not to lose her lunch at the sight, instructed Owen to hold the two together.

'I'm not going to end up attached to him as well, am I?' he asked, looking concerned.

'That would certainly spice things up in the bedroom,' Jack replied, not at all phased by the bloody mess at the end of his arm. Perhaps Owen had given him too much anesthetic, Ianto thought, looking equally pale as Tosh, at the mangled and bloodied stump. Surely there had to be a better way to do things in the future.

'Please God, no,' he muttered, still remembering the last time he and Owen had been tethered together by alien bracelets, forced to share a room, whilst Jack insisted they continue to share the same bed as if nothing at all was wrong with the idea.

There was a bright burst of light and a shockwave that sent them all tumbling to the floor.

They managed to pick themselves up and checked themselves over, making sure all the important bits were still attached.

'Did it work?'

The all looked across at Jack who was eyeing off his newly reattached hand. Owen came over to inspect it.

'Can you move it?' he asked.

'I dunno. It's all still numb and tingly,' he replied, grinning stupidly, as he waved it about uselessly.  

They gave it an hour for Owen's meds to wear off before he could perform any proper tests to make sure that everything had been reattached properly, checking the bones, nerves and muscle tissue, before giving Jack a clean bill of health.

Jack rejoined Tosh and Ianto at Tosh's desk, where she was still working away on the device,  trying to learn more about its function and purpose.

'Anything I need to know?' he asked. 'Have we figured out what it actually is?'

'That I might be able to shed some light on,' Ianto replied. 'Do you remember the letter that we found with the book?'

'Yeah.'

'I took the liberty of having it translated. It appears to be a very firmly worded letter to the manufacturer stating that the device did not perform to the standards advertised, and that it did not slice his double chocolate cherry blaming upside down mousse cake into ten perfect, equal slices as promised, and that its failure cost him first prize at the intergalactic gelatinous baking awards. He's requesting a full refund or the purchase price, and compensation for the emotional damage suffered because his great aunt thrice removed had travelled five thousand two hundred light years to attend the awards and had not let him live it down since.'

'A galactic cake slicer?' Jack said, sounding disappointed that it wasn't something far more exciting, or at least something useful. He'd been hoping it was a medical apparatus, or a transporter of some kind. What use would that be in arming them against the future?

'I  believe the term they used in the manual was a universal culinary disunification generator, but yes, slice-o-matic has a much better ring to it.'

'They didn't have your amazing naming skills.'

'All the same,' Ianto said, trying not to blush at Jack's sidewards compliment, 'I think the secure archives might be a safer place for it. I'd much rather put my trust in a good old fashioned knife, and live with something just less than perfection.'

'Who says the old ways are dead?' Jack joked.

'We're just lucky you found the user guide,' Tosh added. 'There was no way I could have ever figured it out without that manual.'

'I guess the rift decided we were owed a bit of luck.'

Half an hour later, Jack was perched comfortably behind his desk, awaiting the hot mug of coffee that was about to arrive. Clutching it gratefully in both hands, he savored the simple act of holding it, letting it warm his hands, before taking a long sip and putting it down.

'I must admit, I am going to miss some of the perks of having a hand that can go anywhere,' he said, inspecting it as if expecting it to detach again at any moment.

Ianto grabbed it firmly and entwined it with his own, glad for the feeling of the strong arm once again attached to it.

'Well I for one am very glad to have it back where it belongs. At least if you're planning on sneaking up on me now, I have a chance of knowing you're coming.'

'That sounds like a double entendre I can live with.'