fractured_agent | Sacrifice [for slayers

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Sacrifice [for slayers_desire]

The city of Cardiff is eerily quiet in the aftermath of Abbadon's passing. Those who died beneath his shadow had their life forces returned once the demon died... all but one.

Captain Jack Harkness lies in the Torchwood Three morgue, cold as stone. Gwen sits at his side, waiting patiently for him to revive. But where he only took minutes to come back from the dead before, there isn't even a whisper of life from him now.

Lost without their leader, who they so recently betrayed, the team drifts in uncertainty.

It's Tosh who finds April's contact information in Jack's antique Rolodex, and gives her a call, not sure if this is a plea for help or a final death notice.

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Even with everything that happened today, April is impressed that they dedicated to their duty.

It's easy to find normalcy in routine, something to hold onto when everything else has gone crazy. It was all that was keeping some of them together when Jack was dead, with them thinking they were on their own now.

Owen has had the least amount of work to do to keep him busy and keep his mind off things. So he's the one who breaks first. "Jack.... how are you not dead?"

It's a difficult question to answer. It always has been. "I don't know."

April doesn't know how to answer that question any better. Strangely, this would be an easier question to answer if she had been shot, and revived.

"Gwen says you've done this before," Tosh says. "Coming back from the dead." And you said you served in the war...

"More times than I can count," Jack admits. "But I don't know how, or why."

"Jack has an endless sense of time about him. He didn't always have these abilities... but he does now."

"And you... you know an awful lot more than just a plain old telepath would know," Owen says, doing his best not to be confrontational about it. Today's been a tough day and he's fucked up several times, and he doesn't want to make anything worse. He's had enough.

"A plain old telepath?" April chuckles at that. She honestly never heard the phrase before.

"Jack and I have been friends a long time. I know about this, and he knows things about me."

"Like, how I am not just a plain old telepath. I have very strong psychic and telepathic powers."

Tosh is bursting with questions, but she doesn't want to disrespect April's privacy by revealing her secrets without her permission. "That's how you helped bring Jack back."

"Yes. I am familiar with his condition myself."

"I have already mentioned this to Tosh, but the rest of you might as well know... I am not human."

"Kinda guessed that," Owen says. "What are you, then? Rift refugee?" It happens sometimes, that aliens who look human enough are given cover stories and homes so they can live among the humans. But only since Jack came to be in charge six years ago.

"No. I never came through the Rift." She is trying to stay honest, without revealing anything about the Nexus.

Honestly, she is nervous about their reaction. "I am a vampire."

There's an immediate thought of Vampires aren't real from Owen, but he doesn't say it out loud. He used to think aliens weren't real either. And that people couldn't come back from the dead.

Gwen's eyes go wide. "You mean like the blood-drinking kind of vampire?"

"Yes. I drink blood."

"I also have a vampiric form. And enhanced abilities of my species."

"Of course, not all vampires are telepathic... but I inherited my abilities from my mother."

Ianto had looked up from cleaning the bloodstain when she revealed her secret. Now he looks down at it again in realization. No wonder she wanted to avoid it...

"Now before anyone goes for their guns," Jack says, to diffuse any tension before it starts, "you've got my personal guarantee that April does not eat people." None of them had been planning on it, but putting it in a more lighthearted way might help smooth things over.

"Besides, getting shot is unpleasant, and is ineffective against a vampire." April gives her same heart-warming smile. Because she is still the same person, no matter the recent information.

Owen casts his medic's eye over her critically, even though he's encountered her before. She's warm, color's right, breathes like a normal human being. So maybe the literature is wrong about that. "Saying it's unpleasant is a bloody understatement," he says, still feeling the pain from the fresh bullet wound in his shoulder from yesterday.

"Not one of my favorite things either," Jack says. He knows that his team are going to be thinking about Owen shooting him because of it, but the more he acts like it doesn't deeply bother him, he's hoping they'll start treating it as normal too. The worst part about Torchwood in the past was most people treating him like a freak.

She can sense his critical medic eye on her. "When I take my vampiric form... I go cold. I have no pulse. No breath. No heartbeat."

"If you want to see it..." She leaves the offer open. It doesn't bother her, taking that form.

"You don't have to," Gwen says quickly. She's still trying to process all the events of the day and she's a bit overwhelmed. She certainly doesn't want to make April uncomfortable after all she's done to help Torchwood, regardless of if she drinks blood or not.

Jack stays quiet, watching the rest of his team for their reactions. He has faith in them to do the right thing, even after they all turned on him to open the Rift. He handpicked them all for a reason.

Tosh isn't sure what to say, she stays quiet too. "Sure," Owen says, leaning forward a little so he can watch better. He's used to analyzing different species to learn about them, so it's easy for him to take refuge in his scientific mindset instead of dwelling on what happened today.

Part of Ianto wants a closer look, but he's still cleaning up the bloodstain, and if April wanted to avoid it he doesn't want to make anything worse. So he continues as he was, scrubbing the concrete.

"It doesn't hurt. And it doesn't change my personality, or who I am. This is a part of me," April gently explains to Gwen. She can sense that Gwen just wants April to be comfortable.

Her eyes go red first. Her facial features aren't quite as drastic as typical Buffyverse vampires, but there is a difference to her bone structure. Her fangs elongate.

She consciously stops breathing. Stops her heart. And holds out a hand to Owen... letting him be scientific.

For Owen, immersing himself in the scientific side of things is one of his biggest coping mechanisms, and he really needs that right now. He takes her hand, turning it over to inspect it for any differences in the skin texture and tone, her nails, every little detail that might tell him something. He puts two fingers against the pulse point on her wrist. "No pulse. Body temperature's slightly cooler than normal." He makes a note of that, wondering if the cooling will continue the longer she's in this other form.

He starts to reach for her neck, then stops, reminding himself that this isn't a corpse like he normally examines. "May I?"

"Go right ahead. I don't bite..." A small joke.

"I bloody hope not," Owen mutters absent-mindedly. He double checks her pulse against her carotid artery, then lays his palm flat against her throat. Seems slightly more appropriate than feeling up her chest to check for breathing, and he doesn't have a mirror on-hand. "Do you breathe when you speak?"

Jack is pleased and impressed with how well Owen is handling this, especially so soon after the most stressful day Torchwood has ever had. I knew I hired him for a reason.

"I don't even know if I should describe the experience to you..." April tilts her head. "No. I don't."

That's backed up by what he feels, or rather doesn't feel when she speaks, and he makes note of that too. Must be some other mechanism. Owen drops his hand and looks closely at her face, noting the color of her eyes, the fangs, the shift in her facial structure. God, I'd love to get her under a microscope. He's not going to ask, though. Even he has limits to his rudeness. And he doubts that giving him permission to study her outwardly also extends to making her a lab subject. If she was a hostile, that would be one thing.

Ianto is the one who speaks up in the silence, as he puts the bloody cleaning cloths and his rubber gloves into a biohazard bag and seals it. "Is it the smell that bothers you, ma'am?"

"I wouldn't use the word bother... it is a temptation."

"I had the same reaction when Owen was shot."

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