Title: The Velocity Of A Kebab
Rating: Teen [language and sexual situations]
Characters: PC Andy/Tosh, Owen, Jack, Ianto, Rhys
Advisories: AU, character death
Disclaimer: I'm denying I speak English at this point
Note: Written for

tw_bigbang 2009

Summary: The flap of a wing, a slight change of angle, and the task of chasing after the spooky-do's could have fallen to another of Cardiff's finest...

**********

"Look, I don't blame you for not coming to the wedding, I know it's still a bit much."

Rhys shifted uncomfortably. He'd set the invite beside the ansaphone when it had come in the post, fully intending to pick it up later to sort his reply, and there it had sat for the next three months, gathering reproachful dust whilst somewhere in the back of his mind green eyes scolded him for his cowardice. "Must have been mental, I keep hearing stories about the bride going after your Mam with a chainsaw?"

"Does Toshiko weigh nine stone in wet clothes?" Andy countered, although his eyes had gone guarded. Must have been one cracking do. Should have gone, aye, but all he'd have been able to see would have been how Gwen would have liked this dress or Gwen would have hated these flowers or Gwen would have been laughing herself sick at the thought of poor silly Andy finding anybody to marry at all. (What was she, half his size?)

But at least Andy seemed to be getting on with his life. That was what he was supposed to be doing, wasn't it, getting on with it all. Seeing his mates, climbing the ladder at Harwood's, scolding himself for eating too many chips. And he tried, he did try. Even if he sometimes wondered what the point of pretending to care anymore was. "You didn't ring me just to have a coffee," the ex-copper said as Rhys absent-mindedly poured a third sugar into his cup.

"Might have done."

"You hate the coffee here, you've been on about it as long as I've known you. And before you say it you haven't ordered any chips."

"Still a copper then, can't get anything past you." (He'd meant to, actually, only he'd been stuck in the bloody traffic on the way over and barely got here before Andy'd walked in. And it wasn't as if he needed the sarky remarks if he could help it...) Rhys settled back in his seat. "So, this woman I work with, her sister's boy disappeared, right? He's fifteen, ordinary kid, only she swears he was abducted by aliens. I know, 's probably rubbish, yeah? But you can't tell me after that ruddy space-whale things like that wouldn't be going on in this city."

Andy drew in a deep breath before he replied, calmly, "First off, what about the regular police? There are channels for these things that aren't to do with me anymore."

Rhys gave him his best Look. "Course she's been to the police! But it's like none of them seem to care, I mean, Gwen would've, you would've, but to the rest of the plodders he's just another kid's run off, they're not sat with his auntie listening to her crying down the phone with his Mam every tea-break. And when kids disappear they don't just disappear, y'see? Not into thin air on the middle of the barrage."

He had Andy's attention now. "Thin air."

"'S why I rang you, aye? One minute he's texting her he's on his way home, she can see him from her window even, the next it's like something came along and -- beamed him up. So the first thing I've been thinking is tell it to your lot, yeah? And even if it isn't aliens, maybe your special-ops mates could at least do something to convince her that he's been looked for properly, given it the time and tech and all that. Otherwise what do we have this bloody Big Brother CCTV police-state for? You must be able to do all those sci-fi computer things to a video and tell what your suspect had for breakfast."

He could see Andy was wavering, the same slight furrow appearing between his brows that Gwen had always got when something tripped her into full-on investigating officer mode. "I could ask Tosh to run a check on the footage from the barrage that night," he said. "No promises, I mean, it's just working from the same information that the police would have had, but... She is good."

From the fond little smile the former copper was still in the stage of it all where he couldn't believe his luck. And Rhys wished them both all the best, really, Gwen would have been so -- He shied away from completing that thought and got up to go, leaving the barely-tasted coffee sitting lonely on the table. "Right, well then, ring me later, aye? If you find out anything, or if you don't... yeah."

(He was not going to order chips on his way out. Not whilst Andy was still here to see it. He'd just have to double back later, after his shift...)

***

Same chippie, same bloody awful coffee. Its only saving grace was that their tea was even worse. They just had to go and make the best flippin' chips he'd ever tasted, the contrary sods. Rhys stuffed the last one into his mouth and tried to look innocent as Andy slid into the seat opposite. "Any news then?"

Andy's was not a face that ought to be made to look that glum, he just couldn't quite get it not to come off like a schoolboy who'd been caught out smoking in the lav. "Nothing they could make of the data. Tosh said it was like expecting her to be able to flip round a photo of the back of someone's head so you could see their face."

Rhys blinked at him. "That's it then?"

"If it's nothing to do with us, then yeah, pretty much. Kids do just go missing sometimes. Hate to break it to you, but it's hardly ever aliens, you know."

Rhys leant back in his seat and stared at his -- yeah, admit it, you're friends, without Gwen to have a go at each other over. "What's got into you, mate? You're talking like all the rest of the coppers his Mam's knocked heads with. I know you can be a right bastard sometimes but you were never this hard."

"Well, people change, yeah?"

"The biggest bloody marshmallow on the force? Gwen always said if you ever bought it on the job it'd be breaking your neck helping some kiddie down from a tree. It's this Torchwood, man, they've got inside your head."

"Maybe they've had to. And kids disappear, Rhys. Every day. The ones the police find later covered in trackmarks are the lucky ones, half of them. At least those there's an answer."

"Are you gonna tell that to his Mam, then? To all of their Mams?"

"I don't know what more you expect me to do."

"Your bloody job, maybe," Rhys snapped, standing up to wrestle angrily into his jacket. "'Special ops', it's all bollocks, isn't it. You and your flash bastards don't have any more idea what's gone on than the rest of us. If Gwen were here she'd have been all over this and you bloody well know it. And if you're going to decide that this time me remembering her isn't worth not setting your mates on me to bugger up my memory, then you can just do what you have to do, but you're the one has to live with it, aye?" Rhys stalked out of the shop, leaving Andy to gawp unattractively after him.

***

Rhys fumbled for his mobile, trying to focus on the number ringing him up at -- half six? "Changed your mind, then, you bastard?"

"What? I -- Listen, can you meet me at the harbour in twenty minutes? It's about that kid. I think."

"You think. You've rung me up it's barely light out and you're not even sure?"

"Look, do you want my help or not?"

"Yeah, yeah, I do, I... thirty alright?"

Andy grunted his acceptance and rang off. Rhys thought for a moment and then left a message at work to say he might be in late. Or not at all, if this was some excuse to get him out on the water somewhere and leave him off to think that he was an amnesiac waiter in Minorca for all he bloody knew...

The former copper met Rhys at a boat slip, looking gormless as always, although the wife appeared to have made some headway already dressing him better, with a cuppa in each hand and a rucksack slung over one shoulder. "No bloody guarantees," he warned as Rhys reached out for one of the cups, and pulled a dog-eared paper from his pocket. "But I think it's a lead."

Rhys unfolded a sheet of A4 that looked like it had come out of an overworked public printer, just an internet map showing bits of coast and the Bristol Channel. "Going treasure-hunting then, are we? Proper pirate map would have an X marks the spot."

"It's centred on Flat Holm island," Andy said, tapping the speck in the middle of the graphic. "Maybe your 'alien abductors' are an unusually aggressive colony of seagulls?" He heaved a sigh. "At least if we're being messed about it's not so far to go chasing after."

"Could have sent you out to Lundy I suppose," Rhys agreed, trying to make the best of it. "And this was all you got out of them? Who's the one playing silly buggers with the new bloke, then?"

"Dunno, bag was on my chair when I got in but everyone was already on a call."

Must have had to get in half-five, the poor sods. Rhys almost felt a little bad for him. Almost.

It wasn't that long of a trip out to Flat Holm, not even long enough for Andy to properly finish his story of how their PA bloke seemed to have somehow become a zombie since the last time Rhys had got mixed up in one of Torchwood's mental operations. Although he was still trying to tie off the threads as they stepped off the boat onto a rickety jetty. "They, erm -- there's a reason Jack never tried to discourage me and Tosh on the fraternisation. Erm." Rhys was pretty sure that Andy was blushing. "Anyway. He's your missing kid, where do you think we should start with this?"

Oh, right, put this on his head so Andy didn't have to be the one facing up to the Mam when this turned out to be his new mates having a go? Rhys squinted up the cliff at the scrubby landscape. "Get up into the lighthouse, we can see where we're at, yeah? Faster than walking all round the island looking in the bushes."

Andy was impressed. He was going to be as much of a bastard about it as he could, Rhys couldn't fault him for the way the game was played, but they'd both know which one of them wasn't as thick as he looked this morning. "Fiver says it's locked."

"Out here? Bloody seagulls gonna use it as a lookout when they're taking over the shipping lanes?" Rhys shook his head. "Take the copper out of the city, mate..."

It was padlocked, actually. Rhys dug in his wallet with a frustrated sigh as Andy murmured something about the universality of vandalism. "Right, well, that's that then, you want to go round one way whilst I --"

"I never said it was going to stop us, did I?" Andy was rummaging inside his jacket for something.

And pulled out a gun --

"Jesus christ, man! Where did you get that?"

"Work."

Rhys took another step back as Andy lined up and sighted on the lock. "Bloody hell, is that place special ops or MI6? Do you know how to use that thing?"

"First thing I learnt." Andy took the padlock off with one neat shot. "Jack is... a very good teacher. Wouldn't recommend his methods, exactly, but they are effective." He kicked at the panel when it jammed on rusty hinges and it yielded with a howl someone'd probably be wondering at back on the mainland.

One hundred and seventy-one bastard, sodding, bastard stairs later, they had as pretty a view of the Channel as ever Rhys could have asked for, if he hadn't been too busy wondering if he was about to die to appreciate it properly. "If you say... one word... about chips..."

Andy had collapsed against the windows at the other side of the lantern room, looking a bit green himself. "So much for the notion of retiring to be a lighthouse keeper somewhere. Bugger, all I can see is Somerset. Anything on yours?"

Rhys had the sightline back to Cardiff, graceless hump of the Millennium Centre visible if he strained, but it was the patch of scrub below that they'd fought their way up here to survey; "Few buildings. Bunkers from the war and all that. Look ruined mostly. But..."

Andy had made it back to his feet by now, the benefit of staying in trim to run down suspects. "What?"

"That bit there, to the left: everything's overgrown, but that looks as if someone's been messing it about. Ground's bare like people come in and out a lot. Nothing over there to interest that many bloody tours, is it?"

"If that's a nest of blue-arsed slow-worms you're buying when we get back, mate."

But he'd wrung a reluctant smile from the copper. Rhys found it in him to grin back. "Not so bad at this special-ops bollocks, am I?"

They wouldn't have found anything without that bird's-eye look, not much to tell one slightly scruffier patch in the scrub from another down here in it, but alerted for breaks in the pattern it wasn't so difficult to locate an entryway in the clump of bunkers where the grass was too trampled down for the casual traffic of ecotourists to account for it properly. Down the corridor beyond they came to a blast-door fitted with a suspiciously newer-looking electronic bell. "Do we ring it?"

Andy shrugged and pressed the button. Rhys couldn't help but jump at the rattling buzz, realising he'd not expected it to work at all. "Maybe no one's in," the ex-copper said after a few moments without any sort of response.

"Popped down to the shops, yeah?" Rhys chuckled uneasily, wondering if he were just as happy to have this mad errand end here. "Island this size, must have at least two Starbucks --"

"Yes, yes, I'm coming, who's there?" A woman's voice, at least, probably not some seven-foot alien goon behind that door ready to eat them both then. Or was that Making Assumptions like Gwen would have warned him about --

"Torchwood," Andy told the intercom, and rattled off a string of numbers. Authorisation code, sounded like. My god, what had these Torchwood people got him into? Like something out of a bloody spy thriller, this was. Bond, Andy Bond. Sounded more like a comedy sketch. "Erm, Jack sent me out?"

The door groaned and opened just wide enough to reveal a short (good that, right?) woman dressed in maroon hospital scrubs like a porter. "He didn't say, but then you know Jack, always with his surprises. And this one is...?"

"He's, erm, trainee, Jack asked me to bring him out here for the tour."

Rhys smiled pleasantly and tried to look like a green recruit to a high-tech special-ops team. Not that he'd really know what one of those looked like, but then apparently neither did the porter, because she only returned his nervous grin and stepped back to let them both in.

***

The sun glittered off the waves breaking against the cliff below, in and back, in and back, steady beat of his world's heart. In, and back. Finally Andy spoke: "I didn't know, I swear."

There were sandwiches in the satchel, in case they'd been caught out by the boat returning late. Rhys didn't much feel like eating, the thought of it like ashes in his mouth (or, he didn't know, was that a bad metaphor, after?) but he took the cup from the thermos and managed to hold it steady as Andy topped it off with coffee. Very, very good coffee. "What are we gonna tell his Mam?"

"Dunno." Andy had been turning over in his fingers a small paper packet with if you should need it written on in an elegant hand. Looked more like pills than prophylactics. "The truth, maybe."

"You think we could?"

"I'm not sure what I think anymore. But it seems to be the one thing no one's tried." Andy crushed the paper into a twist and hurled it into the wind off the sea. "We should go. Don't want to make the boat wait."