Chapter Text
That odd time between christmas and new years day always felt a little unreal. There was nothing to really do and the returning snow hadn’t helped. It had melted off, returned, melted off, returned and it had now decided to stick around for a bit. Not that most people minded. Any excuse to keep the relatives from visiting. The hub was still decorated as it had been for most of the month and likely would be until at least January the fifth, rift allowing. Myfanwy had decided that the next ice age had arrived so she was hunkered down in her nest, only venturing out once in a while to stretch her wings and vocal chords. Below, the team were ‘working’. They were in work, yes, but was any work actually being done? No.
Gwen had decided that she had to be in work, even if her soon to be mother in law was visiting. It just couldn’t be helped. She’d offer to let Rhys pretend to be possessed by an alien to get him out of it too, but he’d said that knowing his mother she’d track him down on instinct alone and even Torchwood wasn’t ready for that. Tosh and Jack had been playing fetch with Ammit as if the large robot was a dog. It seemed to be enjoying the game anyway. The sound of the cog door rolling back pulled their attention. Melody entered, wrapped up in a thick coat, scarf, hat and gloves. Her heavy boots covered in snow. She slipped a large backpack from her shoulders before pulling her scarf down from her face.
“I swear it’s getting colder out there.” She said, pulling off her gloves. “But I did manage to get sandwiches, pastries and snacks.”
Ianto walked over to greet her and grab the bag. “I left your spare shoes over by the sofa. Has it started snowing again?”
“Thanks, and yep. It’s a blizzard out there.”
“Would you like a hot chocolate?”
“Yes please.” She smiled brightly, unbuttoning her coat and slipping off her boots.
Owen put down the book he’d been reading. “Didn’t you say your girlfriend was staying with you for a few days?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Then why are you here when you don’t actually have to be?”
“Heather had business calls to deal with all day so it’s just easier for me to be here for the day. We were going to go out later but if it keeps snowing like this I think we’re going to be staying in.”
“Plenty you can do when you’re stuck at home.” He smirked.
She blushed brightly, the red of her cheeks almost seeming to glow as it brightened under the slight wind burn running across her skin. “That’s for tomorrow. Long business calls don’t exactly set the mood.”
“So your sex life runs on a rota? That’s the nerdiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Certain things need planning.” She shrugged. “By the way, you still need to confirm the annual physical date. It’s been penciled into a two week maybe for three months.”
“I like to be flexible.”
“At least narrow it down to a few days?”
“Why? You hiding a drug habit I don’t know about?”
“No. Of course not.”
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Stop winding her up.”
“It was a legitimate question. Don’t need her selling off Myfanwy for smack.” He said, amused.
“Ignore him.”
Mel got a slightly mischievous smile on her face as she slipped on her dry shoes. “It’s ok Gwen. I just don’t want to ask Heather to stay over the day before so I don’t have to answer any questions about rope burn.” She said plainly before walking off to put her boots away in her locker.
“Wait. What?” Owen called after her and Gwen fell into a fit of giggles.
After lunch the team had relaxed into simply sitting around chatting, but their peace was interrupted by an alert. Tosh walked over to the nearest computer to check the message.
“What is it?” Asked Jack.
She glanced over at him then back to the screen. “A body’s been found frozen solid in Blackweir.”
“Not unheard of in this weather.”
“Not just frozen. Frozen solid. Standing by the roadside.”
“Ok, that’s a bit more unusual.”
“He’s having to be moved with the piece of pavement he was standing on. Should I reroute the body?”
“Tell them not to move it. I’ll go and meet them there. Owen?”
Owen looked very unimpressed about being dragged out into the cold but work was work. “I thought the rift gave us a break in the snow.”
“So you don’t want to find out what happened to this ice man?”
“Yea, I just wish I didn’t have to freeze to do it.” He grumbled, going to grab his coat.
The man would easily have been missed as a thick layer of snow had stuck to him. He had only been discovered when a group of kids, having a snowball fight, had hit him and knocked off enough snow to show his dead eyes and blue skinned face. With the snow brushed away you could see that he’d been dressed for the weather: thick coat pulled tightly around him, hat pulled down over his ears, thermal gloves holding what heat they could to stave off frostbite. He didn’t look terrified like you’d expect but simply tired, as if he’d been walking in the snow for hours.
“Going on the thickness of the snow that’s collected on his head and shoulders I’d say he’s only been here for six to eight hours.” Owen said, brushing more snow from the mans face. “I doubt there’s anything left from whatever froze him.”
Jack looked around at the houses. “And noone heard anything?” He said to himself, frowning. “They were most likely in so why.” He approached one of the officers that had been posted at the edge of the taped off area. “Have the residents been questioned?”
“Yes sir. They all say the same thing. They didn’t hear anything, just found the poor bloke when the kids hit him with a snowball.” The officer said plainly.
“Nothing strange?”
“Nothing at all.”
He turned back to the body. “I guess we’ll just have to get him unfrozen from the floor.” He moved over next to Owen. “Do you think we can move him in one piece?”
“Oh yea, the problem is we might need a forklift just to move him” The doctor grumbled, his breath rising in clouds into the air. “Is it me or has it actually gotten colder?”
“The blizzard isn’t helping.”
“Have we got a chisel and hammer?”
“No, but I think we have something better.” He walked back to the SUV, pulling his coat tightly around himself to block out some of the cold. He grabbed a device from the SUV that was essentially a portable acetylene cutting torch. Great for heavy metal doors, steel girders and now frozen solid bodies that didn’t want to be separated from the path.
It took a while for the body to defrost enough for Owen to do anything. It was literally frozen solid. Each blood cell was damaged by the ice crystals expanding. It wasn’t possible. Even if he’d been showered in liquid nitrogen this wouldn’t have happened. He was ready to say that it had happened instantly before he’d managed to pry off the mans boots and realised he had frostbite in his toes. It was the same when his gloves were pulled back. The mans fingers blackened with the advanced stages of frostbite. There just wasn’t enough time for this to happen, with what he was wearing he should have been able to walk around all night without that level of damage. It didn’t make sense.
“Tosh, are you sure we had no spikes in rift activity last night?” He asked from the archway.
Tosh glanced over. “I’m certain, why?”
“He looks like he should have been out in the cold for days, not a few hours. Any sign of a temporal distortion in the area?”
“No. I even looked for smaller spikes, but the area was completely calm. That said, an isolated distortion controlled by an outside force wouldn’t raise an alarm.”
“Trapped in a time bubble.”
“Or some kind of temporary pocket dimension.”
“That might explain how he was still on his feet when he was flash frozen. Do me a favour, come and have a look at his face. Something’s bugging me.”
She pushed herself away from her desk and followed him into the medical bay, the temperature dropping a few degrees just from moving through the archway. She looked down at the partially thawed body, its moment of death perfectly preserved. “He looks exhausted but… Is he smiling a little?”
“That’s what I thought. I just don’t know why. He must have been in agony. Even if he was hallucinating he wouldn’t be smiling like that.”
“Maybe he thought he saw someone coming to rescue him. Can you send me a picture of his face? I can try and identify him while he defrosts a little more.”
“Will do, thanks Tosh.”
“Of course.” She smiled softly, turning to head back to her desk.
“Oh, and if you see Ianto can you get him to bring me a coffee? I’m bloody freezing.”
She paused. “Why don’t you come up for a bit? He’s not going to thaw that quickly.”
“Yea, I suppose.” He pulled off his gloves and tossed them into the bin before washing his hands. The water felt hot running over his cold fingers. Maybe he needed a thicker coat if it was going to be staying as cold as it was outside. It had felt much too cold to actively snow but maybe it was just the windchill. He made his way over behind Tosh and slipped his hands under the sides of her shirt, making her squeak and jump at the sudden cold. He laughed as she wriggled.
“You're freezing! Go warm your hands up on a radiator!” She huffed.
He didn’t move his hands, a cheeky grin on his face. “I think this is working pretty well.”
“You’re lucky I love you.”
“Yea I am.” He kissed her on the cheek and leaned on her shoulder. “Hopefully when the body defrosts he’ll have a wallet or something.”
“I can find out faster if you get me that picture.”
“Ok, ok.” He pulled his hands away and took out his phone, going to get a picture of the mans face. He attached it to an email and sent it to her before returning to his previous position, his hands somewhat warmer than they had been the first time.
Toshikos fingers danced across her keyboard, setting up search terms and letting one of her many programmes take over the identification process. It didn’t take long to bring up a match.
“Lewis Darwin, fifty two years old, lived only two streets away from where he was found.” She said. “Do you think he was just walking home?”
“Hate to say it but it’s possible. Did he have any family?”
“A daughter but she lives in the US. He’s divorced and has been for six years. Lives alone… The last he used his debit card was ten thirty four last night. By the looks of it he was probably walking home from the pub.”
He looked over to Gwen. “Fancy a trip to the pub? Pick up some security tapes?”
“Oh you’re so generous.” Gwen sighed. “Ok, but I’m in control of the heating in the SUV.”
“Fine.”
The tapes only showed Lewis leaving the pub alone but not much more. As the blizzard got even harder Jack sent his team home. There wasn’t much they could do until the body had defrosted a bit more and the roads, even gritted, were becoming a nightmare to traverse. Ianto spent the evening double checking that the boiler in the hub wasn’t going to give out then went to find Jack who was sitting inside the fishers enclosure. The sand was kept warm so it was rather comfortable. Peaches was digging around in Jacks pocket, looking for shiny objects or snacks. Raspberry was busy eating a prawn, using his little hands to pull away pieces of its shell.
“The boiler should hold. Having fun?” Ianto asked.
Jack smiled brightly. “I was making sure they were warm enough.”
“You were spoiling them again.”
“They’re supposed to be a bit…”
“Fat?”
“Chunky.”
“They seem happy enough. What would they do in winter in their natural habitat?”
“We didn’t really have winter. Not like this anyway. In the colder season you’d only need a light coat unless you were out in the desert at night. Not that you’d ever be out there at night unless you wanted to die, or worse.”
Ianto let himself into the cell and sat on the sand. “How do you handle the winters here?”
“Practice.” He shooed Peaches out of his pocket. “I have somewhere to hide out and someone to stay warm with so I can cope.”
Ianto smiled. “Very smooth.”
“We could visit my home. Before the invasion of course.”
“I’d like that.”
“It’s a long way off. I’ve been thinking of making a list. All the places we could visit.”
“I’m pretty happy here for now.” He petted Raspberry who had finished his snack and looked like he wanted to settle for the night. “I think we’re being kicked out.”
Jack chuckled warmly. “I think you might be right.”
