Fic: What?
Feb. 27th, 2025 05:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: What?
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Ianto, Jack, Team.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3900
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Ianto has seen a lot of peculiar things come through the Rift, but the latest one takes the cake.
Written For: Weekend Challenge Prompt, ‘Laws Say What Now?’ at
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1_million_words.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Having a Rift in time and space running through the middle of Cardiff understandably led to some weird situations. The Rift was the sole reason that Torchwood Three was even located in Cardiff, rather than some other Welsh city since, at the time the small outpost was first set up, Cardiff wasn’t the Welsh capital, just a moderately-sized town in the principality, and not even under consideration for the honour. The Rift was already in place, however, and it had seemed a good idea to monitor it, and to collect whatever happened to fall through it, for the safety and security of not only the locals, but the British Isles in general.
Since that time, Cardiff had grown into a rather splendid coastal city, and a popular tourist destination. Unfortunately, as the city had expanded, so had the Rift, something that no one had really anticipated. It had also become more active over the past few decades, while the team based there to deal with the flotsam and jetsam that passed through it had actually become smaller.
Part of that was because of technological advances that made it easier to identify, pin down, and get to the coordinates of Rift events much faster than had been possible in the first half of the previous century. The other reason was that, after the massacre of the previous team on New Year’s Eve of ‘ninety-nine, Jack had made the executive decision to hand-pick his new recruits rather than accepting the team Torchwood One had tried to foist on him.
The downside of having a smaller team meant that sometimes, team members had to deal with Rift events by themselves instead of having backup, but that was balanced out by the fact that the new Rift monitoring programs could not only accurately predict the location, but also give a fair idea of the size of the object that had come through, whether or not it was alive, and in many cases, give some indication of chemical composition, even if at times that only meant differentiating between something made of metal and something made of plastic. CCTV camera footage could provide a view of the object or creature in question, but unfortunately there were still large areas of the city that didn’t benefit from CCTV coverage, especially the open expanses of the city’s parks, and some residential areas.
Today, Ianto had fetched his personal car and driven across the city by himself to assess a Rift arrival while the rest of the team were dealing with a small, and not particularly threatening, invasion attempt by a group of Tilpar, who were somewhat demoralised by the fact that the race they were trying to conquer were at least four times their height. He would have preferred to stay with his teammates and help round up the fourteen-inch-tall invaders, but the Rift alert had rudely interrupted proceedings, and since whatever had come through was quite sizeable, it had been decided that someone should check it out. The team had drawn straws to see who would go, and… Well, Ianto had drawn the short straw.
“Ianto? Are you there yet?” Jack’s voice came through Ianto’s earpiece as he was standing in a very muddy area at the edge of Roath Park Lake, taking in the bizarre sight in front of him, and wondering what he should do about it. He was perfectly competent to deal with just about anything the Rift threw at him, but sometimes situations had to be assessed, and a plan formulated before action was taken, and this was definitely one of those occasions.
“I’m here,” Ianto replied, with impressive calmness, if he said so himself.
“Did you find what you’re looking for?”
“Yep. It would be a bit difficult to miss.”
One particular quirk of the Rift should probably be mentioned: while most of the items it dropped on Cardiff were from other worlds, albeit from any time, past, present, or future, every so often it would scoop something from another time period on planet earth, dragging it forwards or backwards across the ages to the present day. That was how Torchwood Three had come to acquire a pet Pteranodon.
Thankfully, this object wasn’t from prehistoric times, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
“Well, what is it? Do you need help with it? We’re about done here; I could send someone to give you a hand.”
“I might need more than one extra pair of hands,” Ianto admitted, still staring in bemusement at what was bobbing in the water some dozen or so yards from the shore. “A truck as well, and possibly a boat. And a vet.”
“What? Why?”
“There’s what appears to be an old tin bathtub floating on Roath Lake.”
“An old bath?”
“Yes…” Ianto’s voice trailed off.
“And? I get the feeling there’s more.” Jack could be surprisingly perceptive at times. Provided he wasn’t being distracted.
“There’s a donkey in the bath. A very wet, very confused donkey. Hence the need for a vet. Not that I know all that much about the physical and mental health of donkeys, but if it came through the Rift, it could be injured. It’s almost certainly suffering from trauma.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It looks catatonic, it’s just sitting there, staring straight ahead, and its ears look a bit… droopy.”
“Huh. Maybe it always looks like that. Why would a donkey be in a bathtub?”
“How should I know, Jack? Maybe its owner was giving it a bath when the Rift snatched it. Donkeys live in fields, they get muddy, they probably need washing occasionally. I’m not an expert on donkey care.”
“And you’re sure it’s a donkey?”
“I suppose it could be a mule, or an ass, but it looks like a donkey to me.”
“And it’s in a tin bath, on the lake?”
“Approximately thirty-five feet from shore, which is where the boat comes in. It’s not like I can throw a rope to the donkey and tell it to catch, so someone needs to go out and tie a rope to the bath so it can be pulled to shore. We can’t just leave the donkey floating there; the state it’s in, it might fall into the water and drown. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”
“Fine, we’ll be there in about twenty minutes. See if you can borrow a rowing boat from someone. I’ll have Gwen contact Rhys, see if he can get us a truck.”
“A horsebox might be better. Something with a ramp at least.”
“I’ll take that into consideration. Where on the lake are you?”
“The far end, where the islands are, near the junction of Lake Road West and Wild Gardens Road, which is probably why no one’s spotted the donkey yet. The islands are blocking the view.”
“Okay, we’ll be there as soon as we can. Try not to let your donkey wander off.”
“It’s out on the lake, Jack. Where would it go? And it isn’t MY donkey!”
There was no reply, and with a sigh, Ianto got back into his car and drove down Lake Road to the boathouse, to see if he could borrow or rent someone’s boat for an hour or so.
By the time the rest of the team arrived in the SUV, Ianto was back at the far end of the lake in a rowboat he’d been able to rent. Jack waved cheerfully as he got out of the driving seat.
“That looks like fun. We should go boating again, when the weather’s a bit better.” A chilly wind was ruffling the lake’s surface, making the boat, and the old tin bath, bob up and down on the surface.
“Jack, focus, please.” Ianto pointed at the donkey, which still seemed frozen in place, only twitching occasionally. “Donkey rescue, remember? Now get the rope from the boot and toss one end to me. I’ll tie it to the bath, then you can pull it to shore. Did you find a vet?”
“No, not yet; Tosh is looking into that.” Jack waved vaguely in the direction of the SUV, parked at the side of the road with its lights flashing. Ianto could just see his friend in the backseat, busy with the onboard computers. “We’ll be fine though, we’ve got Owen.”
“Oi!” Owen protested. “I’m not a horse doctor! I treat people!”
“You treat whatever needs treating,” Jack told him. “Human, alien, donkey, shouldn’t make much difference.”
“Which just shows how much you don’t know about medicine. Can’t treat a donkey the way I would a shocky human. I might kill it, and then we’d be stuck with a dead donkey.”
“Jack!” Ianto shouted over the argument. “The rope, please? I’m not planning on sitting here all day while you two argue.”
“Right, sorry.” Jack hurried to fetch the coil of rope Ianto kept in the SUV’s boot, keeping hold of one end while tossing the rest into the boat with Ianto, who rowed over to the donkey-laden bathtub and firmly knotted the rope to the handle. The donkey still didn’t react.
“Okay, start pulling!” Ianto said into his comms. “I’ll try to use the boat to push from behind.”
It worked pretty well; Jack kept up steady tension on the rope, Ianto set the stern of the rowboat against the tin bath and slowly pulled on the oars, and the bath gradually moved towards the shore. It rocked a bit, but the donkey didn’t panic; it seemed past caring what happened to it. In less than ten minutes, they had the bath and its passenger right up against the bank. Ianto pulled the boat alongside and scrambled out, passing the mooring line to Gwen. The donkey remained in the bathtub, looking like it was glued in place.
“What next?” Jack looked at Ianto with his usual confident belief that his lover would have the answer, regardless of the situation. It was nice that Jack had such complete faith in his abilities, but it would have been even nicer if someone else could have made a few suggestions.
“We have to get the donkey out of the bath and onto dry… well, dryish ground. Doesn’t look like we can rely on it to get out by itself.”
“Poor donkey,” Gwen said, her eyes wide. “We should have brought a carrot with us, or some sugar.”
“Doubt that would help.” Owen was crouched down on the edge of the lake, studying the animal. “Looks like this donkey’s checked right out.”
“Can’t say I blame it,” Ianto said. “Hauled through the Rift and dumped in a lake… that would be hard enough for a sentient being to deal with, never mind an animal of a nervous disposition. Donkeys can be very sensitive.”
Jack frowned at his lover. “I thought you said you didn’t know much about them.”
“I don’t, not when it comes to their mental and physical health. I do know they can sometimes decide to just… give up.”
“This one’s not dead yet.” Owen stood up. “How about using the antigravity clamps to lift everything out of the water?”
“We could try that, but at least one of us would have to get in the water to lift from behind,” Ianto pointed out.
“I’ll do it,” Jack volunteered, stripping off his coat and handing it to Ianto. “Drop that in the car for me while you’re getting the clamps, would you?” He grinned disarmingly, as only Jack could. “I’d do it myself, but I have to take my boots off and roll my pants up if I’m going paddling.”
Owen was busy scanning the donkey, and Gwen was keeping the rented rowboat from floating away, so Ianto simply shrugged and went to do as asked, checking in with Tosh on the way.
“Any luck finding us a vet?”
“Not so far, sorry. There don’t seem to be any within the city who deal with livestock. All the ones who might have experience with equines are too far away. They’d take at least a couple of hours to get here.”
“Keep trying. Maybe the zoo has a vet on retainer.”
“Tried that already, but their specialist in exotic animals is based even further away.”
“Well, just go for the best of the small animal vets that’re available if you have to. Owen’s all very well, but I’d rather have someone who knows at least something about animals take a look at the donkey.” Dropping Jack’s coat on the driver’s seat, Ianto fetched two pairs of antigravity clamps from the boot, kept there for situations like… well, not exactly like this one, obviously, as far as Ianto knew this was Torchwood’s first donkey delivery, but for occasions when something heavy might need to be moved. It wasn’t a particularly large donkey, but it was wet, which would probably make it heavier than it normally would be, and then there was the bath as well, so…
Returning to the lake’s edge, he handed one set of clamps to Jack, who was already in the water, talking to the donkey, which was still unresponsive. Passing one of the second pair to Owen, he crouched to attach the last clamp to the side of the bath, turning in on. Owen did the same on the other side, and then the three of them carefully lifted the bath, trying not to tip its passenger out, and slid it onto solid ground.
Jack scrambled out of the water, stamping his feet on the grass to warm them after the chill of the lake. Ianto fetched his lover’s coat, then grabbed some towels from the boot, handing one to Jack so he could dry his feet, and tossing another to Owen.
“What’s this for? I didn’t get wet.”
“The donkey,” Ianto said, rolling his eyes. “We should try to dry it off a bit, get its circulation going or something.”
“Oh, right. I don’t really like donkeys. They’ve got those big teeth.”
“Fine. You can row the boat back to the landing stage and fetch my car. Gwen can help me with the donkey.” Ianto dug his car keys out of his pocket and exchanged them for the towel. “You remember which is my car, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, the black Audi. Can you BE any more boring?”
“I prefer something reliable over a flashy sports car that doesn’t even have a backseat.”
Leaving Owen to get himself into the rowing boat, Ianto turned his attention back to the donkey and started giving it a brisk rubdown. He was soon joined by Jack, wielding the towel he’d dried his feet with, and Gwen; between the three of them, they got the parts of the donkey they could get at mostly dry, and Ianto sent Gwen to the SUV to grab one of the foil blankets from the emergency kit. At this point, about all they could do for the donkey was keep it warm and hope it perked up.
Jack was talking to it again, patting its neck and whispering in one long ear, trying to encourage it onto its feet and out of the bathtub, when Owen arrived in Ianto’s car, closely followed by Rhys with a horse trailer hitched to the back of his Corsa.
“Okay, I’m impressed,” Ianto said as Gwen’s husband got out. “Where’d you get that?”
“Ruth, my secretary, her brother’s kid has a pony, competes in gymkhanas and stuff. I told her there was a donkey needing help, and she called her brother right away, got him to let me borrow his trailer.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he looked at the donkey. “Why’s it in an old bath?”
“It arrived that way,” Ianto explained. “Why it was in the bath in the first place is a matter for debate.”
“It’s in shock,” Owen said, getting out of Ianto’s car and standing as tall and straight as he could, intimidated by Rhys’ height. “It won’t get out.”
“Anyone tried offering it a peppermint? Used to be a donkey in the field next to my gran’s old house when I was a kid. Crazy for peppermints, it was.”
Everyone looked at each other, and Jack dug in his coat pockets, but only came up with an empty wrapper.
Rhys sighed. “Thought so. Good thing I had some polos in my desk at work.” He produced an open packet and took out a mint, holding it under the donkey’s muzzle. Nothing happened for a long moment, then an ear twitched and the donkey blinked. It gave a bewildered honk, and lipped the mint off Rhys’ palm, crunching it up. Rhys grinned. “There you go! Instant cure!” He offered the donkey another mint, which vanished rather faster than the first.
“It’s still in the bathtub,” Owen pointed out.
“Been in there so long, its legs have probably cramped up,” Ianto said. “We might have to lend a helping hand.”
Owen frowned. “Are you suggestin’ we try to pick it up? Do you have any idea how much a donkey that size probably weighs?”
Ianto sized up the donkey. “At a rough guess, somewhere between five- and seven-hundred pounds.”
“We’re not weightlifters, and it’s not like we can slap the antigravity clamps on it!”
“There’re four of us now, five if we include Gwen. Get a couple of towels under it, snap the clamps onto those…” Ianto cocked his head to one side. “Once it’s upright, it might feel more inclined to move. I know they have a reputation for being a bit stubborn…”
“A bit?” Owen interrupted.
“Can’t be worse than Jack.”
“Hey!” Jack glared at his lover. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’re a bit set in your ways?”
Jack pouted. “I’m not that bad.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Ianto picked up the discarded towels. “Right, let’s get our donkey sorted.”
“Ours? You want to keep it?” Owen sounded even more incredulous now.
“We can’t send in back where it came from, wherever that was, and we can’t simply abandon it.”
“We can take it out to the reservation, let it live out its life in peace and freedom,” Jack suggested.
“Donkeys prefer being around other donkeys, or horses. I’m sure we can find a good home for it, or send it to a donkey sanctuary.” Ianto crouched to slide two of the towels under the donkey behind its forelegs.
Rhys looked thoughtful. “I’ve been tryin’ to remember something. A year or two back, I was bored one night, Gwennie was working late, so I went on the internet and, don’t know what I was looking for, but I ended up readin’ this article about weird laws from around the world and I remember one from somewhere in America about not lettin’ donkeys sleep in bathtubs…”
“Seriously?” Jack stared at Rhys, surprised. “Donkeys have a habit of doing that, do they?”
“Don’t think so, not as a rule, but the law came about ‘cause there was one that liked doing that, until a dam burst, and it got swept away. You think this might be that donkey?”
“If it is, all the more reason for it being traumatised,” Ianto said. “Swept away on a tidal wave before being sucked through the Rift and dumped on a small lake in Wales.” He looked up. “Okay, everyone grab a clamp and latch on. We’ll carry the donkey into the horse trailer, then two of us can keep it upright while the rest massage its legs until it can stand by itself. Gwen, lower the ramp, would you?”
“On it.”
With their improvised donkey sling, moving the poor creature wasn’t too difficult, and thankfully the donkey itself didn’t protest, it just seemed a bit bemused by proceedings as it was seemingly levitated out of the bath, across the grass, and up into a dry place, out of the wind, where the floor was covered in straw, and a hay net hung within easy reach.
While Rhys and Jack kept the donkey more or less on its feet, Ianto draped the emergency blanket back over it, then he and Gwen scrubbed at its hind legs with handfuls of dry straw.
Tosh poked her head through the open door. “I found a vet; he should be here in about fifteen minutes. Small animal practice, but he’s worked with horses and ponies in the past. I told him the donkey had been dumped in the lake and abandoned. I didn’t mention the bit about the bath.”
“Okay, good.” Jack nodded. “Gwen, you and Tosh get the bath into the back of the SUV, out of sight. We should hide the clamps too. Ianto, d’you think our four-legged friend can stand on its own now?”
“Nor sure, but you should be able to manage without the clamps. Or tie some rope to the towels and hook it up that way.” He stood up, dusting his trousers off. “I can rig that; Owen can take the antigrav clamps and stow them.”
“You are good with knots,” Jack said, grinning. He winked at Rhys. “Ianto was a Boy Scout. Always prepared.”
“Just be careful you don’t damage this trailer.” Rhys sounded worried.
“Don’t worry; if there’s any damage, we’ll pay for repairs.”
“We’ll pay for the loan anyway,” Ianto added, beginning to knot ropes to the towels supporting the donkey’s undercarriage. “It’s a boy, by the way.”
“That figures,” Gwen joked, coming back from stowing the bath. “He was probably showing off for the lady donkeys. Boys are always landing themselves in trouble doing stuff like that.”
Tying off the last rope, Ianto handed the remaining clamp to Owen, then rearranged the donkey’s blanket.
Owen passed the clamp to Gwen and got out his scanner, running it over the patient again. “Looks better than it did when we found it.”
“I should hope so.” Ianto made his way down the ramp and took a quick look around the area, making sure nothing had been left out that shouldn’t be in the public eye. The SUV’s doors and boot were now firmly shut, and apart from the grass by the lake being a bit churned up by all the foot traffic, everywhere looked normal.
Moments later, the vet’s car pulled up and he got out. Ianto greeted him, leading him into the horsebox, where he was suitably impressed with the care the unfortunate donkey had received.
“You say it was in the lake?”
Ianto nodded. “It seemed dazed, like it had been thrown in the water. Completely unresponsive at first. Our medic thought it might be in shock, so we thought drying it off and keeping it warm was the best approach. None of us know much about donkeys though. We’ll have to find a good home for it.”
“Assuming no one shows up to claim him, and provided he’s otherwise healthy,” the vet said, examining the patient, who was beginning to show interest in the net of hay, “I know of a couple who keep two or three rescued donkeys. I’m sure they’d have room for one more.”
“That would be perfect. Donkeys should be with other donkeys.” And that settled the matter.
Torchwood would probably never know for sure where the donkey had come from, but they all visited with peppermints once he was settled into his new home, even Owen.
Don’t you just love a happy ending?
The End
Since that time, Cardiff had grown into a rather splendid coastal city, and a popular tourist destination. Unfortunately, as the city had expanded, so had the Rift, something that no one had really anticipated. It had also become more active over the past few decades, while the team based there to deal with the flotsam and jetsam that passed through it had actually become smaller.
Part of that was because of technological advances that made it easier to identify, pin down, and get to the coordinates of Rift events much faster than had been possible in the first half of the previous century. The other reason was that, after the massacre of the previous team on New Year’s Eve of ‘ninety-nine, Jack had made the executive decision to hand-pick his new recruits rather than accepting the team Torchwood One had tried to foist on him.
The downside of having a smaller team meant that sometimes, team members had to deal with Rift events by themselves instead of having backup, but that was balanced out by the fact that the new Rift monitoring programs could not only accurately predict the location, but also give a fair idea of the size of the object that had come through, whether or not it was alive, and in many cases, give some indication of chemical composition, even if at times that only meant differentiating between something made of metal and something made of plastic. CCTV camera footage could provide a view of the object or creature in question, but unfortunately there were still large areas of the city that didn’t benefit from CCTV coverage, especially the open expanses of the city’s parks, and some residential areas.
Today, Ianto had fetched his personal car and driven across the city by himself to assess a Rift arrival while the rest of the team were dealing with a small, and not particularly threatening, invasion attempt by a group of Tilpar, who were somewhat demoralised by the fact that the race they were trying to conquer were at least four times their height. He would have preferred to stay with his teammates and help round up the fourteen-inch-tall invaders, but the Rift alert had rudely interrupted proceedings, and since whatever had come through was quite sizeable, it had been decided that someone should check it out. The team had drawn straws to see who would go, and… Well, Ianto had drawn the short straw.
“Ianto? Are you there yet?” Jack’s voice came through Ianto’s earpiece as he was standing in a very muddy area at the edge of Roath Park Lake, taking in the bizarre sight in front of him, and wondering what he should do about it. He was perfectly competent to deal with just about anything the Rift threw at him, but sometimes situations had to be assessed, and a plan formulated before action was taken, and this was definitely one of those occasions.
“I’m here,” Ianto replied, with impressive calmness, if he said so himself.
“Did you find what you’re looking for?”
“Yep. It would be a bit difficult to miss.”
One particular quirk of the Rift should probably be mentioned: while most of the items it dropped on Cardiff were from other worlds, albeit from any time, past, present, or future, every so often it would scoop something from another time period on planet earth, dragging it forwards or backwards across the ages to the present day. That was how Torchwood Three had come to acquire a pet Pteranodon.
Thankfully, this object wasn’t from prehistoric times, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.
“Well, what is it? Do you need help with it? We’re about done here; I could send someone to give you a hand.”
“I might need more than one extra pair of hands,” Ianto admitted, still staring in bemusement at what was bobbing in the water some dozen or so yards from the shore. “A truck as well, and possibly a boat. And a vet.”
“What? Why?”
“There’s what appears to be an old tin bathtub floating on Roath Lake.”
“An old bath?”
“Yes…” Ianto’s voice trailed off.
“And? I get the feeling there’s more.” Jack could be surprisingly perceptive at times. Provided he wasn’t being distracted.
“There’s a donkey in the bath. A very wet, very confused donkey. Hence the need for a vet. Not that I know all that much about the physical and mental health of donkeys, but if it came through the Rift, it could be injured. It’s almost certainly suffering from trauma.”
“What makes you say that?”
“It looks catatonic, it’s just sitting there, staring straight ahead, and its ears look a bit… droopy.”
“Huh. Maybe it always looks like that. Why would a donkey be in a bathtub?”
“How should I know, Jack? Maybe its owner was giving it a bath when the Rift snatched it. Donkeys live in fields, they get muddy, they probably need washing occasionally. I’m not an expert on donkey care.”
“And you’re sure it’s a donkey?”
“I suppose it could be a mule, or an ass, but it looks like a donkey to me.”
“And it’s in a tin bath, on the lake?”
“Approximately thirty-five feet from shore, which is where the boat comes in. It’s not like I can throw a rope to the donkey and tell it to catch, so someone needs to go out and tie a rope to the bath so it can be pulled to shore. We can’t just leave the donkey floating there; the state it’s in, it might fall into the water and drown. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”
“Fine, we’ll be there in about twenty minutes. See if you can borrow a rowing boat from someone. I’ll have Gwen contact Rhys, see if he can get us a truck.”
“A horsebox might be better. Something with a ramp at least.”
“I’ll take that into consideration. Where on the lake are you?”
“The far end, where the islands are, near the junction of Lake Road West and Wild Gardens Road, which is probably why no one’s spotted the donkey yet. The islands are blocking the view.”
“Okay, we’ll be there as soon as we can. Try not to let your donkey wander off.”
“It’s out on the lake, Jack. Where would it go? And it isn’t MY donkey!”
There was no reply, and with a sigh, Ianto got back into his car and drove down Lake Road to the boathouse, to see if he could borrow or rent someone’s boat for an hour or so.
By the time the rest of the team arrived in the SUV, Ianto was back at the far end of the lake in a rowboat he’d been able to rent. Jack waved cheerfully as he got out of the driving seat.
“That looks like fun. We should go boating again, when the weather’s a bit better.” A chilly wind was ruffling the lake’s surface, making the boat, and the old tin bath, bob up and down on the surface.
“Jack, focus, please.” Ianto pointed at the donkey, which still seemed frozen in place, only twitching occasionally. “Donkey rescue, remember? Now get the rope from the boot and toss one end to me. I’ll tie it to the bath, then you can pull it to shore. Did you find a vet?”
“No, not yet; Tosh is looking into that.” Jack waved vaguely in the direction of the SUV, parked at the side of the road with its lights flashing. Ianto could just see his friend in the backseat, busy with the onboard computers. “We’ll be fine though, we’ve got Owen.”
“Oi!” Owen protested. “I’m not a horse doctor! I treat people!”
“You treat whatever needs treating,” Jack told him. “Human, alien, donkey, shouldn’t make much difference.”
“Which just shows how much you don’t know about medicine. Can’t treat a donkey the way I would a shocky human. I might kill it, and then we’d be stuck with a dead donkey.”
“Jack!” Ianto shouted over the argument. “The rope, please? I’m not planning on sitting here all day while you two argue.”
“Right, sorry.” Jack hurried to fetch the coil of rope Ianto kept in the SUV’s boot, keeping hold of one end while tossing the rest into the boat with Ianto, who rowed over to the donkey-laden bathtub and firmly knotted the rope to the handle. The donkey still didn’t react.
“Okay, start pulling!” Ianto said into his comms. “I’ll try to use the boat to push from behind.”
It worked pretty well; Jack kept up steady tension on the rope, Ianto set the stern of the rowboat against the tin bath and slowly pulled on the oars, and the bath gradually moved towards the shore. It rocked a bit, but the donkey didn’t panic; it seemed past caring what happened to it. In less than ten minutes, they had the bath and its passenger right up against the bank. Ianto pulled the boat alongside and scrambled out, passing the mooring line to Gwen. The donkey remained in the bathtub, looking like it was glued in place.
“What next?” Jack looked at Ianto with his usual confident belief that his lover would have the answer, regardless of the situation. It was nice that Jack had such complete faith in his abilities, but it would have been even nicer if someone else could have made a few suggestions.
“We have to get the donkey out of the bath and onto dry… well, dryish ground. Doesn’t look like we can rely on it to get out by itself.”
“Poor donkey,” Gwen said, her eyes wide. “We should have brought a carrot with us, or some sugar.”
“Doubt that would help.” Owen was crouched down on the edge of the lake, studying the animal. “Looks like this donkey’s checked right out.”
“Can’t say I blame it,” Ianto said. “Hauled through the Rift and dumped in a lake… that would be hard enough for a sentient being to deal with, never mind an animal of a nervous disposition. Donkeys can be very sensitive.”
Jack frowned at his lover. “I thought you said you didn’t know much about them.”
“I don’t, not when it comes to their mental and physical health. I do know they can sometimes decide to just… give up.”
“This one’s not dead yet.” Owen stood up. “How about using the antigravity clamps to lift everything out of the water?”
“We could try that, but at least one of us would have to get in the water to lift from behind,” Ianto pointed out.
“I’ll do it,” Jack volunteered, stripping off his coat and handing it to Ianto. “Drop that in the car for me while you’re getting the clamps, would you?” He grinned disarmingly, as only Jack could. “I’d do it myself, but I have to take my boots off and roll my pants up if I’m going paddling.”
Owen was busy scanning the donkey, and Gwen was keeping the rented rowboat from floating away, so Ianto simply shrugged and went to do as asked, checking in with Tosh on the way.
“Any luck finding us a vet?”
“Not so far, sorry. There don’t seem to be any within the city who deal with livestock. All the ones who might have experience with equines are too far away. They’d take at least a couple of hours to get here.”
“Keep trying. Maybe the zoo has a vet on retainer.”
“Tried that already, but their specialist in exotic animals is based even further away.”
“Well, just go for the best of the small animal vets that’re available if you have to. Owen’s all very well, but I’d rather have someone who knows at least something about animals take a look at the donkey.” Dropping Jack’s coat on the driver’s seat, Ianto fetched two pairs of antigravity clamps from the boot, kept there for situations like… well, not exactly like this one, obviously, as far as Ianto knew this was Torchwood’s first donkey delivery, but for occasions when something heavy might need to be moved. It wasn’t a particularly large donkey, but it was wet, which would probably make it heavier than it normally would be, and then there was the bath as well, so…
Returning to the lake’s edge, he handed one set of clamps to Jack, who was already in the water, talking to the donkey, which was still unresponsive. Passing one of the second pair to Owen, he crouched to attach the last clamp to the side of the bath, turning in on. Owen did the same on the other side, and then the three of them carefully lifted the bath, trying not to tip its passenger out, and slid it onto solid ground.
Jack scrambled out of the water, stamping his feet on the grass to warm them after the chill of the lake. Ianto fetched his lover’s coat, then grabbed some towels from the boot, handing one to Jack so he could dry his feet, and tossing another to Owen.
“What’s this for? I didn’t get wet.”
“The donkey,” Ianto said, rolling his eyes. “We should try to dry it off a bit, get its circulation going or something.”
“Oh, right. I don’t really like donkeys. They’ve got those big teeth.”
“Fine. You can row the boat back to the landing stage and fetch my car. Gwen can help me with the donkey.” Ianto dug his car keys out of his pocket and exchanged them for the towel. “You remember which is my car, right?”
“Yeah, yeah, the black Audi. Can you BE any more boring?”
“I prefer something reliable over a flashy sports car that doesn’t even have a backseat.”
Leaving Owen to get himself into the rowing boat, Ianto turned his attention back to the donkey and started giving it a brisk rubdown. He was soon joined by Jack, wielding the towel he’d dried his feet with, and Gwen; between the three of them, they got the parts of the donkey they could get at mostly dry, and Ianto sent Gwen to the SUV to grab one of the foil blankets from the emergency kit. At this point, about all they could do for the donkey was keep it warm and hope it perked up.
Jack was talking to it again, patting its neck and whispering in one long ear, trying to encourage it onto its feet and out of the bathtub, when Owen arrived in Ianto’s car, closely followed by Rhys with a horse trailer hitched to the back of his Corsa.
“Okay, I’m impressed,” Ianto said as Gwen’s husband got out. “Where’d you get that?”
“Ruth, my secretary, her brother’s kid has a pony, competes in gymkhanas and stuff. I told her there was a donkey needing help, and she called her brother right away, got him to let me borrow his trailer.” Shoving his hands in his pockets, he looked at the donkey. “Why’s it in an old bath?”
“It arrived that way,” Ianto explained. “Why it was in the bath in the first place is a matter for debate.”
“It’s in shock,” Owen said, getting out of Ianto’s car and standing as tall and straight as he could, intimidated by Rhys’ height. “It won’t get out.”
“Anyone tried offering it a peppermint? Used to be a donkey in the field next to my gran’s old house when I was a kid. Crazy for peppermints, it was.”
Everyone looked at each other, and Jack dug in his coat pockets, but only came up with an empty wrapper.
Rhys sighed. “Thought so. Good thing I had some polos in my desk at work.” He produced an open packet and took out a mint, holding it under the donkey’s muzzle. Nothing happened for a long moment, then an ear twitched and the donkey blinked. It gave a bewildered honk, and lipped the mint off Rhys’ palm, crunching it up. Rhys grinned. “There you go! Instant cure!” He offered the donkey another mint, which vanished rather faster than the first.
“It’s still in the bathtub,” Owen pointed out.
“Been in there so long, its legs have probably cramped up,” Ianto said. “We might have to lend a helping hand.”
Owen frowned. “Are you suggestin’ we try to pick it up? Do you have any idea how much a donkey that size probably weighs?”
Ianto sized up the donkey. “At a rough guess, somewhere between five- and seven-hundred pounds.”
“We’re not weightlifters, and it’s not like we can slap the antigravity clamps on it!”
“There’re four of us now, five if we include Gwen. Get a couple of towels under it, snap the clamps onto those…” Ianto cocked his head to one side. “Once it’s upright, it might feel more inclined to move. I know they have a reputation for being a bit stubborn…”
“A bit?” Owen interrupted.
“Can’t be worse than Jack.”
“Hey!” Jack glared at his lover. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That you’re a bit set in your ways?”
Jack pouted. “I’m not that bad.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Ianto picked up the discarded towels. “Right, let’s get our donkey sorted.”
“Ours? You want to keep it?” Owen sounded even more incredulous now.
“We can’t send in back where it came from, wherever that was, and we can’t simply abandon it.”
“We can take it out to the reservation, let it live out its life in peace and freedom,” Jack suggested.
“Donkeys prefer being around other donkeys, or horses. I’m sure we can find a good home for it, or send it to a donkey sanctuary.” Ianto crouched to slide two of the towels under the donkey behind its forelegs.
Rhys looked thoughtful. “I’ve been tryin’ to remember something. A year or two back, I was bored one night, Gwennie was working late, so I went on the internet and, don’t know what I was looking for, but I ended up readin’ this article about weird laws from around the world and I remember one from somewhere in America about not lettin’ donkeys sleep in bathtubs…”
“Seriously?” Jack stared at Rhys, surprised. “Donkeys have a habit of doing that, do they?”
“Don’t think so, not as a rule, but the law came about ‘cause there was one that liked doing that, until a dam burst, and it got swept away. You think this might be that donkey?”
“If it is, all the more reason for it being traumatised,” Ianto said. “Swept away on a tidal wave before being sucked through the Rift and dumped on a small lake in Wales.” He looked up. “Okay, everyone grab a clamp and latch on. We’ll carry the donkey into the horse trailer, then two of us can keep it upright while the rest massage its legs until it can stand by itself. Gwen, lower the ramp, would you?”
“On it.”
With their improvised donkey sling, moving the poor creature wasn’t too difficult, and thankfully the donkey itself didn’t protest, it just seemed a bit bemused by proceedings as it was seemingly levitated out of the bath, across the grass, and up into a dry place, out of the wind, where the floor was covered in straw, and a hay net hung within easy reach.
While Rhys and Jack kept the donkey more or less on its feet, Ianto draped the emergency blanket back over it, then he and Gwen scrubbed at its hind legs with handfuls of dry straw.
Tosh poked her head through the open door. “I found a vet; he should be here in about fifteen minutes. Small animal practice, but he’s worked with horses and ponies in the past. I told him the donkey had been dumped in the lake and abandoned. I didn’t mention the bit about the bath.”
“Okay, good.” Jack nodded. “Gwen, you and Tosh get the bath into the back of the SUV, out of sight. We should hide the clamps too. Ianto, d’you think our four-legged friend can stand on its own now?”
“Nor sure, but you should be able to manage without the clamps. Or tie some rope to the towels and hook it up that way.” He stood up, dusting his trousers off. “I can rig that; Owen can take the antigrav clamps and stow them.”
“You are good with knots,” Jack said, grinning. He winked at Rhys. “Ianto was a Boy Scout. Always prepared.”
“Just be careful you don’t damage this trailer.” Rhys sounded worried.
“Don’t worry; if there’s any damage, we’ll pay for repairs.”
“We’ll pay for the loan anyway,” Ianto added, beginning to knot ropes to the towels supporting the donkey’s undercarriage. “It’s a boy, by the way.”
“That figures,” Gwen joked, coming back from stowing the bath. “He was probably showing off for the lady donkeys. Boys are always landing themselves in trouble doing stuff like that.”
Tying off the last rope, Ianto handed the remaining clamp to Owen, then rearranged the donkey’s blanket.
Owen passed the clamp to Gwen and got out his scanner, running it over the patient again. “Looks better than it did when we found it.”
“I should hope so.” Ianto made his way down the ramp and took a quick look around the area, making sure nothing had been left out that shouldn’t be in the public eye. The SUV’s doors and boot were now firmly shut, and apart from the grass by the lake being a bit churned up by all the foot traffic, everywhere looked normal.
Moments later, the vet’s car pulled up and he got out. Ianto greeted him, leading him into the horsebox, where he was suitably impressed with the care the unfortunate donkey had received.
“You say it was in the lake?”
Ianto nodded. “It seemed dazed, like it had been thrown in the water. Completely unresponsive at first. Our medic thought it might be in shock, so we thought drying it off and keeping it warm was the best approach. None of us know much about donkeys though. We’ll have to find a good home for it.”
“Assuming no one shows up to claim him, and provided he’s otherwise healthy,” the vet said, examining the patient, who was beginning to show interest in the net of hay, “I know of a couple who keep two or three rescued donkeys. I’m sure they’d have room for one more.”
“That would be perfect. Donkeys should be with other donkeys.” And that settled the matter.
Torchwood would probably never know for sure where the donkey had come from, but they all visited with peppermints once he was settled into his new home, even Owen.
Don’t you just love a happy ending?
The End
