For the first time, Gwen felt a wave of the awful loneliness Ianto had talked about sensing. The sheer despair and hollowness of being entirely alone.
'It's not the parts that make the sound.' Jack eased forward and was within reach of the boy. 'It's the person. Alive. We're not machines.'
The alien's hand hovered, and for a second it moved just the tiniest bit away from the boy's neck, the contact broken. Jack crouched ready to move, and Gwen prepared to take the boy from him and run.
'Look!' In the doorway, Ceri gasped out the word and pointed.
On the floor, Ryan had reached up, his small hand touching the alien's face.
Cutler cursed from the doorway, and Gwen shared his exasperation. The moment was gone. The alien was focused back on the boy again, its own hand once again touching his throat.
Ceri let out a small laugh. 'He's never done that. He's never touched
He's never even shown any indication that he knows anyone else exists!' Clapping her hands together, she held them to her face with joy, as if there were no dead woman on the carpet and no alien seated in the middle of the room. Gwen stared at her and then looked over to Jack. He watched the boy and the alien for a long time and then slid the prison device back into the hidden pocket of his jacket before backing away.
'Jack?' Gwen frowned. What the hell was he doing?
Jack stood up. 'He's never done anything like this before?'
The nurse shook her head. 'Never. He just sings. Has done since he could speak. It keeps the world out.'
'What are you thinking, Jack?' Gwen tapped her foot. They needed to save the boy before this thing disappeared on them again.
He didn't look at Gwen, fascinated instead by the boy's hands on the alien's face. 'I'm thinking that these two are made for each other.'
'What?'
'It makes perfect sense. It will make them happier.'
'I'm out in the cold here, Harkness,' Cutler said from the doorway. 'Although this is Torchwood, so I don't know why I should expect any different.'
Jack looked from the alien to the boy and back again.
'Jack?' Gwen growled. It was one thing Cutler being out of the loop, but she was one of the team. And it didn't help that she had Ianto in her ear pushing to know what was going on.
'They need to become one. Look at them.' Jack's face carried a weight of seriousness that Gwen had only seen rarely, and always when he was struggling with a decision that went against all he believed about the sanctity of humanity. Gwen felt her own frustration ebbing away. Looking to the door, she saw Ceri was nodding.
'Yes.' She smiled. 'Yes.'
'What are we doing, Jack?' Gwen's eyes darted between the humans and the alien.
For the first time, Jack looked up at her and smiled gently. 'Don't you get it, Gwen? Here, this boy is different because he doesn't want the world. He
the isolation; to be completely alone. He doesn't understand the concept of society, of company, of communication…' Jack didn't bother keeping his voice low, instead becoming more animated as he explained. 'Everything that is part of our world he hides from behind his singing.' He turned to Ceri. 'Have I got that about right?'
The nurse nodded, tears still making tracks and carrying her mascara down her cheeks.
'And I should imagine that on the Silent Planet our visitor here is their equivalent of autistic. He wants to connect with someone or something. That's why he followed the music.' He looked up at Cutler. 'And that's why he killed the best singers. For the power of emotion in their performance. To be able to share emotion.' He shook his head slightly.
'The terrible isolated loneliness Ianto felt…' Gwen felt understanding prickle on her skin. 'That was the alien's emotion. How it's lived all its life.'
Jack nodded. 'Awful, isn't it? Imagine no light, no sound, nothing but the essence of your being. No memories to cherish. No sense of love. To be reviled by any of your kind you tried to connect with. Totally alone.'
Gwen tilted her head. 'So what are you saying we do? Let him go? Send him back?'
'No. We need to make existence easier for both of them.'
'How?' Gwen frowned. She wasn't getting it.
'The boy needs isolation, and the alien needs something to make the isolation easier.'
'Just speak bloody English, Jack.'
'Instead of absorbing the vocal cords, it needs to absorb the whole child.'
Gwen felt stunned. 'You can't be serious. How can we let it do that?'
The dark and frustrating eyebrow rose. 'How can we not?'
'Because…' Gwen stepped forward. 'Because he's just a little boy. We need to get him away from that thing and send it back.'
Jack shook his head. 'Don't think of his life in your terms. This is hell for him. And if we send this creature back, then we're condemning it. Can you really live with that?'
'He's right.' Ceri whispered softly. 'It's what Ryan needs. His mother's dead. We haven't seen his father since he came in here. He has no one.' She paused. 'And he hates the world.'
'This is crazy.' Cutler shook his head. 'But it makes a crazy kind of sense.'
Gwen looked at the perfect child, his blond hair stained with his mother's blood, his tiny hands paying the fractured creature more attention than he'd ever given the woman that bore him. She saw the want in those hands, greedily drinking in the creature's dark years of emptiness as his young voice continued to steadily create the aching music so out of place next to the cooling, damaged body.
'It's pulling me back.' The creature gargled the words. 'You have nothing more to fear from me.'
'Tell me.' Jack crouched between them. 'Can you absorb the whole? Can you make the boy part of you? Without killing him?'
The creature nodded.
Jack looked over to Gwen. 'Agreed?'
'Agreed.' And she was. Cutler mumbled his yes, and Gwen didn't have to look at the nurse to know what she thought.
Jack smiled. 'Then do it.' Standing up, he joined Gwen against the wall.
The alien opened the cavern of its mouth and tilted its head backwards, stretching out its thick neck. The fractures in the smooth skull grew wider and Gwen stared, both fascinated and horrified, as its solid form began to disintegrate. Where Ryan's fingers touched its cheek, the chubby childish digits dissolved as they became one with the dark cloud that had only seconds before been a solid form, his particles lighter than the mass of the alien until the two sets danced into one thick cloud. Gwen was sure she saw a light smile tickle his face just before it unravelled.
The dark shadow hovered above them for a perfectly still moment, and then it slid out of the window and was gone, disappearing into the sky, and the Rift, and the universe beyond.
The last strains of 'Pie Jesu' hung in the air like the memory of a taste just out of reach; the ghost of all the music that Ryan had used to hide from the world behind. And then eventually they were left in silence.
The clock on the wall ticked loudly, insisting that the world move relentlessly onward, and finally Jack smiled. 'Now there goes a big step forward in interplanetary relationships.' He winked at Gwen. 'I mean, let's face it. You can't get closer than those two are now.'
'Harkness?' Cutler leaned against the doorframe. Folding his arms across his chest, he nodded towards the nurse. Ceri wandered into the small room, looking out of the smashed window, her face a mask of awe despite the rain falling into her open eyes. 'I think she could use a stiff drink.'
'Oh, trust me, we can do better than that.'
'In the meantime,' said Cutler, pulling his mobile out of his pocket, 'I'll call my team to clean this up. Unless you have any objections?'
'Go ahead. We don't need her for anything.'
