Fic: Plant Trouble
Mar. 21st, 2025 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Plant Trouble
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Ianto, Jack.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2849
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: There are some alien plants that are too dangerous for even Torchwood to cultivate.
Written For: Weekend Challenge Prompt, ‘Don't Feed The Plants’ at
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
1_million_words.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Jack had told everyone on the team often enough that they weren’t bound by the usual rules. They were outside the government, and beyond the police, so the laws everyone else, or at least anyone who wasn’t a criminal, were expected to obey didn’t apply to Torchwood.
“There are no rules for us except for the ones we make for our own safety,” he insisted. “We can’t allow arbitrary rules and regulations to affect our ability to do our jobs; that puts lives in danger, the general public’s as much as, or even more than, our own, because we know what we’re dealing with, and they don’t.”
That wasn’t strictly true, because as often as not, Torchwood had no idea what they were dealing with, other than that it was alien, or of alien origin, and therefore potentially dangerous in as yet undetermined ways. Everything they dealt with had to be considered a threat unless it could be proven otherwise. In that at least, Jack preferred not to take too many chances, and in the opinion of the various team members, that was fair enough.
All of them had experienced the hazards of their job in various ways, from being attacked by Weevils or other hostile alien entities, to getting accidentally transformed into something else by the random actions of technology that had fallen through the Rift from elsewhere in the universe. That being the case, the team mostly took Torchwood’s rules for the safe handling of alien objects quite seriously, even if they weren’t always effective. Other people’s rules, on the other hand, everything from speed limits, to ‘No Parking’ and ‘No Entry’ signs, to the chain of command at police crime scenes, they simply trampled all over.
In a round-about way - which had included a hair-raising instant when Jack, ignoring traffic signs, had driven the wrong way around a roundabout in order to shave a few seconds off their journey, paying no mind at all to the one-way system or other drivers - that was how he and Ianto came to be here, at Pontcanna Fields in the early hours of a Sunday morning.
Ianto stepped a little shakily out of the SUV, glad there hadn’t been too much traffic on the roads, although he suspected Jack’s driving had left every other road user they’d encountered deeply traumatised. He frowned at his lover, having to almost jog to keep up with Jack’s purposeful strides.
“While I appreciate there was some moderate need to get here quickly, I’d appreciate it if in future you’d bear in mind that unlike you, I’m not immortal. Was saving five seconds back there at the roundabout really worth playing chicken with that truck?” Ianto would have liked to close his eyes at that point, but had thought it wiser to keep them open, so he could see what was about to hit them and maybe take evasive action, if at all possible.
“Sorry, but yes, it was. I’ve dealt with these things before, and if we don’t have it contained before first light, it’ll release millions of spores, and then we’ll REALLY have a problem. Do you want carnivorous plants popping up everywhere?”
“Not especially, no.”
“Thought not. It wouldn’t be like Little Shop of Horrors; these things are mobile, they grow fast, and they’re not going to stay where they germinate for long. Within a week, they’ll be almost two feet tall, and then… Well, once they can uproot themselves, there’s no place to hide from them. We have to locate this one while it’s rooted and mostly dormant, contain it, kill it, and make sure we do that before the spore capsule erupts. If we don’t, the spores could be spread across the whole of Britain by the end of the month, and if that happens, every living creature, humans included, will be doomed.”
Ianto didn’t like the sound of any of that, but… “MOSTLY dormant?”
“They take root when the sun sets, start moving around again at dawn. In the hours between, they don’t sleep as such, but they slow right down. Once we get close enough, this one will probably be aware that it’s in danger, but it should be too sluggish to do much to defend itself.” Jack checked the scanner in his hand and altered course, veering right by a few degrees. “We’re lucky it came through at night. The lack of sunlight will have caused it to take root where it arrived. Use your torch and tread carefully. We don’t want to run headlong into it if we can avoid it.”
“What does it look like? I should at least know what I’m looking for.”
“Oh, trust me, you’ll know it when you see it.”
Jack was right; the plant was immediately recognisable as something NOT of earth. It was just under three feet tall, but the stem was nearly four inches in diameter and ended in ten evenly spaced ‘roots’ that were dug into the ground. Even from a good fifteen feet away, Ianto could see the stem, in the light of his torch, was olive green steaked with mustard yellow and reddish brown, making it look a bit like spoiled meat. Three pairs of broad, flat leaves stuck out at intervals, each pair accompanied by two tightly coiled tendrils in the same ugly colour combination. Near the top was what looked like a flower bud, except that it stuck out from the side if the stem, because right at the top was another swelling, mainly that unhealthy yellowish colour with streaks of greyish green. The whole plant looked waxy. Ianto didn’t much like the thought of having to touch it.
Before he could get too close, Jack pulled him back. “Switch your torch to infrared and put your goggles on. We don’t want the light disturbing it.”
Ianto did as instructed, then turned the torch on the plant again. Infrared light did nothing to improve its appearance.
“Ugly thing, isn’t it?”
“Matches its personality.”
“Now what do we do. Pull it up?”
“No, that wouldn’t kill it, and it would probably try to defend itself. It’s not helpless, even like this. I would have liked to use
the flamethrower, deal with the problem from a distance, but it’s been dry lately and I don’t want to start a fire.”
“No, that should probably be avoided,” Ianto agreed. “We’d just be trading one danger for another.”
“Which means we’ll have to do this up close and personal. Riskier for us, but probably safer and more thorough in the long run.” Jack took a reinforced plastic specimen bag from his pocket. “First, we need get the spore pod contained, the thing at the top. Seal it in this. We’re lucky this one isn’t quite ripe, so there’s no chance of it bursting the moment it’s touched.” He shook the bag open. “I’ll drop this over the pod and pull the drawstrings tight, then I’ll need you to cut through the stem at its narrowest point, an inch or so below the pod.”
“That’ll be tricky, I’ve only got my pocketknife. If I’d known…”
“I came fully prepared,” Jack interrupted. “Use these.” He passed Ianto a pair of secateurs. “Watch out for the tendrils though, they sting. The venom isn’t powerful enough to do much harm to a human, we’re considerably bigger than their usual prey, but it feels like being bitten by a swarm of red ants. As soon as you’ve snipped the pod free, start cutting the tendrils. I’ll take care of the flower myself.”
“Great. I get the stinging tendrils, and you get the flower?”
“Carnivorous plant, remember? The flower is where the teeth are.”
“A flower with teeth.” Ianto stared off into the darkness, wrapping his head around the concept. “Nasty.”
“You have no idea. If anyone’s going to get fingers bitten off, I’d rather it was me. You just concentrate on the tendrils. Once we’ve disarmed it, then we can pull it up, cut it into pieces, take all the bits back to the Hub, and throw the lot into the incinerator. Fire is about the only thing that will totally destroy these menaces.”
“That sounds a bit brutal.”
Jack paused, looking at his lover. “If you’d rather sit this one out…”
“No, it’s fine, it’s just… We don’t usually hack alien invaders to pieces.”
“Two points. One, it’s not part of an invasion force, it’s just our bad luck that the Rift dumped one of these on us. Two, they’re not sentient.”
“They’re not?”
“Not even close. They’re an apex predator, almost a cross between plant and animal, all instinct and not much brain. On their own planet, they’re at the top of the food chain, but growing conditions are harsh. It’s very dry there, so most of the spores don’t survive long, that’s why the plants have to release so many, so there’s a better chance of a few coming to rest somewhere they can germinate. They grow slowly, and the local herbivores eat a lot of them before they’re big enough to defend themselves.”
“Hold on a minute, I thought you said they grow fast, that they’d be two feet tall in a week.” Ianto was frowning.
“They would be, if they grew here. Rich soil, plenty of water, there’d be nothing to stop them. Germination here would likely be upwards of ninety-five percent. On their home planet, it would probably be below five percent, with less than one percent surviving to adulthood.” Jack glanced at the sky. “Enough talk, we need to get on with this. Sunrise today is at fourteen after six, I checked before we left, so that gives us…” He checked his watch, “thirty-three minutes to deal with the threat, before it deals with us.”
“Right, can’t have that.” Ianto snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “Wish I’d brought some gardening gloves with me.”
“You didn’t?” Jack feigned surprise. “I thought you were always prepared for anything!”
“You didn’t tell me what we were after until we were already on our way. I’ll just have to hope our regular latex gloves provide some protection from the stingers.” Ianto unfastened the safety catch from his secateurs. “Time to do some proactive pruning then. Ready when you are.”
“Okay, here goes.” Jack moved cautiously towards the plant, approaching it from what Ianto assumed was the back, since it made sense for the flower, with its teeth, to be on the front. Slowly and carefully, he lowered the specimen bag over the bulging spore pod.
Ianto moved in close behind him, torch gripped between his teeth, and secateurs at the ready, as Jack took hold of the drawstrings and in one quick move, snapped them tight. As they closed around the stem, the plant stiffened, the drooping flower starting to tilt upwards, like someone awakening from a nap, and the coiled tendrils beginning to unfurl… Quickly he closed the blades of the secateurs around the stem, snipping through it, allowing Jack to tighten the drawstrings further so that the whole pod, stump of stem and all, was safely contained, although to be extra safe, Jack put everything into a second bag before tossing it into the containment box they’d brought with them.
Not that Ianto saw any of that, since he was already doing battle with the lashing tendrils; plant it might be, but it clearly still experienced pain, judging by the way it started thrashing as soon as he cut through the stem. One barbed tendril was already wound tightly around his coat sleeve, like a band of iron, while one of the lowest pair was trying to get a grip on his leg. Ianto ignored those two for the moment, snipping off the nearest of the upper pair, which was flailing at his face, and letting it fall to the ground, still twitching. Then he tackled the second of the upper tendrils and the furthest of the middle pair, since the closer one, occupied with his coat, didn’t seem to be an immediate threat.
As he bent after the lowest pair, his coat sleeve pulled up, exposing perhaps an inch of bare wrist, and he winced at the fiery, burning sensation that flared across his skin as the tendril made contact. Abandoning his plans to deal with the bottom pair first, he cut the one around his arm close to the stem, although that left it still clinging to his sleeve, the previously concealed barbs sunk deep into the fabric.
Cutting off the last pair of tendrils, Ianto stepped back, disentangling himself from the two that had latched onto his clothing, before turning to see how Jack was faring against the greater threat of the flower.
He wasn’t doing too well. It was fully open now, the petals fleshy, brownish red streaked with thick, white veins. That would have been unpleasant enough to look at, but from the centre of the flower protruded a telescopic structure that reminded Ianto uncomfortably of the alien queen’s mouthparts in the Alien movies, glossy black with several rows of serrated, almost metallic teeth, gnashing at the air, extending further than should have been possible.
Jack’s left hand was already bleeding, and no matter which way he stepped, the flower followed his movements. Worse, Ianto could see the plant had already pulled almost half of its roots from the ground; any minute now, it would be fully mobile… Not stopping to think, Ianto stepped in close again, closed the blades of his pruners around the base of the flower and started to cut, squeezing the handles together as hard as he could, one gripped in each hand. It was like trying to cut through a steel cable.
The plant screeched, a high-pitched sound reminiscent of fingernails down a blackboard, and Ianto made a mental note to add earplugs and a set of heavy-duty loppers to the standard equipment kept in the back of the SUV, just in case they ever had another of these things fall through the Rift. Secateurs simply weren’t designed for this. Still, he persevered, twisting the blades back and forth, feeling them gradually biting deeper and deeper into the point where flower met stem, sawing away to separate what passed for its head from its body.
The stem squirmed, trying to break free, and more of the roots pulled out of the ground. Gritting his teeth, probably leaving toothmarks in the rubbering of his torch, Ianto squeezed harder, and just when he thought the secateurs might simply snap from the strain, the flower fell to the ground with a heavy thud, and the plant went limp.
Ianto stepped back, panting. “Bloody Hell!”
“Thanks. This one was livelier than I was expecting.” Jack was nursing his injured hand, and Ianto noted two new fingers were growing. He wondered if the plant had swallowed the ones it had bitten off, and he shuddered, deciding that leafy greens might be off the menu for a bit.
Pulling his infrared goggles off, Ianto shoved them in his pocket, took the torch from his mouth, and flicked it back to LED mode, shedding a brighter illumination over the carnage in the greyness of pre-dawn.
“We need better equipment to deal with things like this.” He looked at the secateurs in distaste, coated as they were in sticky, bloodlike sap. “Portable infrared lamps for a start, so we don’t have to use torches, and a decent set of loppers with long handles. Maybe some ratchet pruners too. I thought these were going to snap before I got halfway through!”
“You can go shopping with the Torchwood card,” Jack promised.
“Right. Good. Suppose we’d better clear this mess up then.” Ianto made his way over to the containment box, dropped the secateurs and his latex gloves into it, and pulled on a fresh pair. His wrist still burned painfully from where the tendril had brushed against it. Pointing his torch at the ground around the plant, he gathered up the six tendrils, handling them gingerly, and consigned them to the box as Jack picked the flower up with his good hand.
“Maybe Owen would like to take a look at this before we burn it.”
Ianto shuddered. “Just be sure it’s completely dead before you offer it to him.” He bent again to carefully extract the last three roots from the ground, taking care not to leave even a fragment behind, and crammed the remains into the plastic box on top of the flower, then went back to check the ground one final time, finding two sadly shrivelled fingers. Apparently the plant hadn’t eaten them, and they were withering away as the new ones grew. Weird. “Looks like that’s everything.”
“Good work.” Jack waggled his new fingers at his lover. “Let’s head back. I’ll carry the box; you’ve done enough.”
“No argument from me.”
The sun was just coming up as they reached the SUV, and Ianto smiled. It hasn’t exactly been a fun outing, but thanks to Torchwood, it looked like earth was safe from invasion by marauding carnivorous plants. For now.
The End
“There are no rules for us except for the ones we make for our own safety,” he insisted. “We can’t allow arbitrary rules and regulations to affect our ability to do our jobs; that puts lives in danger, the general public’s as much as, or even more than, our own, because we know what we’re dealing with, and they don’t.”
That wasn’t strictly true, because as often as not, Torchwood had no idea what they were dealing with, other than that it was alien, or of alien origin, and therefore potentially dangerous in as yet undetermined ways. Everything they dealt with had to be considered a threat unless it could be proven otherwise. In that at least, Jack preferred not to take too many chances, and in the opinion of the various team members, that was fair enough.
All of them had experienced the hazards of their job in various ways, from being attacked by Weevils or other hostile alien entities, to getting accidentally transformed into something else by the random actions of technology that had fallen through the Rift from elsewhere in the universe. That being the case, the team mostly took Torchwood’s rules for the safe handling of alien objects quite seriously, even if they weren’t always effective. Other people’s rules, on the other hand, everything from speed limits, to ‘No Parking’ and ‘No Entry’ signs, to the chain of command at police crime scenes, they simply trampled all over.
In a round-about way - which had included a hair-raising instant when Jack, ignoring traffic signs, had driven the wrong way around a roundabout in order to shave a few seconds off their journey, paying no mind at all to the one-way system or other drivers - that was how he and Ianto came to be here, at Pontcanna Fields in the early hours of a Sunday morning.
Ianto stepped a little shakily out of the SUV, glad there hadn’t been too much traffic on the roads, although he suspected Jack’s driving had left every other road user they’d encountered deeply traumatised. He frowned at his lover, having to almost jog to keep up with Jack’s purposeful strides.
“While I appreciate there was some moderate need to get here quickly, I’d appreciate it if in future you’d bear in mind that unlike you, I’m not immortal. Was saving five seconds back there at the roundabout really worth playing chicken with that truck?” Ianto would have liked to close his eyes at that point, but had thought it wiser to keep them open, so he could see what was about to hit them and maybe take evasive action, if at all possible.
“Sorry, but yes, it was. I’ve dealt with these things before, and if we don’t have it contained before first light, it’ll release millions of spores, and then we’ll REALLY have a problem. Do you want carnivorous plants popping up everywhere?”
“Not especially, no.”
“Thought not. It wouldn’t be like Little Shop of Horrors; these things are mobile, they grow fast, and they’re not going to stay where they germinate for long. Within a week, they’ll be almost two feet tall, and then… Well, once they can uproot themselves, there’s no place to hide from them. We have to locate this one while it’s rooted and mostly dormant, contain it, kill it, and make sure we do that before the spore capsule erupts. If we don’t, the spores could be spread across the whole of Britain by the end of the month, and if that happens, every living creature, humans included, will be doomed.”
Ianto didn’t like the sound of any of that, but… “MOSTLY dormant?”
“They take root when the sun sets, start moving around again at dawn. In the hours between, they don’t sleep as such, but they slow right down. Once we get close enough, this one will probably be aware that it’s in danger, but it should be too sluggish to do much to defend itself.” Jack checked the scanner in his hand and altered course, veering right by a few degrees. “We’re lucky it came through at night. The lack of sunlight will have caused it to take root where it arrived. Use your torch and tread carefully. We don’t want to run headlong into it if we can avoid it.”
“What does it look like? I should at least know what I’m looking for.”
“Oh, trust me, you’ll know it when you see it.”
Jack was right; the plant was immediately recognisable as something NOT of earth. It was just under three feet tall, but the stem was nearly four inches in diameter and ended in ten evenly spaced ‘roots’ that were dug into the ground. Even from a good fifteen feet away, Ianto could see the stem, in the light of his torch, was olive green steaked with mustard yellow and reddish brown, making it look a bit like spoiled meat. Three pairs of broad, flat leaves stuck out at intervals, each pair accompanied by two tightly coiled tendrils in the same ugly colour combination. Near the top was what looked like a flower bud, except that it stuck out from the side if the stem, because right at the top was another swelling, mainly that unhealthy yellowish colour with streaks of greyish green. The whole plant looked waxy. Ianto didn’t much like the thought of having to touch it.
Before he could get too close, Jack pulled him back. “Switch your torch to infrared and put your goggles on. We don’t want the light disturbing it.”
Ianto did as instructed, then turned the torch on the plant again. Infrared light did nothing to improve its appearance.
“Ugly thing, isn’t it?”
“Matches its personality.”
“Now what do we do. Pull it up?”
“No, that wouldn’t kill it, and it would probably try to defend itself. It’s not helpless, even like this. I would have liked to use
the flamethrower, deal with the problem from a distance, but it’s been dry lately and I don’t want to start a fire.”
“No, that should probably be avoided,” Ianto agreed. “We’d just be trading one danger for another.”
“Which means we’ll have to do this up close and personal. Riskier for us, but probably safer and more thorough in the long run.” Jack took a reinforced plastic specimen bag from his pocket. “First, we need get the spore pod contained, the thing at the top. Seal it in this. We’re lucky this one isn’t quite ripe, so there’s no chance of it bursting the moment it’s touched.” He shook the bag open. “I’ll drop this over the pod and pull the drawstrings tight, then I’ll need you to cut through the stem at its narrowest point, an inch or so below the pod.”
“That’ll be tricky, I’ve only got my pocketknife. If I’d known…”
“I came fully prepared,” Jack interrupted. “Use these.” He passed Ianto a pair of secateurs. “Watch out for the tendrils though, they sting. The venom isn’t powerful enough to do much harm to a human, we’re considerably bigger than their usual prey, but it feels like being bitten by a swarm of red ants. As soon as you’ve snipped the pod free, start cutting the tendrils. I’ll take care of the flower myself.”
“Great. I get the stinging tendrils, and you get the flower?”
“Carnivorous plant, remember? The flower is where the teeth are.”
“A flower with teeth.” Ianto stared off into the darkness, wrapping his head around the concept. “Nasty.”
“You have no idea. If anyone’s going to get fingers bitten off, I’d rather it was me. You just concentrate on the tendrils. Once we’ve disarmed it, then we can pull it up, cut it into pieces, take all the bits back to the Hub, and throw the lot into the incinerator. Fire is about the only thing that will totally destroy these menaces.”
“That sounds a bit brutal.”
Jack paused, looking at his lover. “If you’d rather sit this one out…”
“No, it’s fine, it’s just… We don’t usually hack alien invaders to pieces.”
“Two points. One, it’s not part of an invasion force, it’s just our bad luck that the Rift dumped one of these on us. Two, they’re not sentient.”
“They’re not?”
“Not even close. They’re an apex predator, almost a cross between plant and animal, all instinct and not much brain. On their own planet, they’re at the top of the food chain, but growing conditions are harsh. It’s very dry there, so most of the spores don’t survive long, that’s why the plants have to release so many, so there’s a better chance of a few coming to rest somewhere they can germinate. They grow slowly, and the local herbivores eat a lot of them before they’re big enough to defend themselves.”
“Hold on a minute, I thought you said they grow fast, that they’d be two feet tall in a week.” Ianto was frowning.
“They would be, if they grew here. Rich soil, plenty of water, there’d be nothing to stop them. Germination here would likely be upwards of ninety-five percent. On their home planet, it would probably be below five percent, with less than one percent surviving to adulthood.” Jack glanced at the sky. “Enough talk, we need to get on with this. Sunrise today is at fourteen after six, I checked before we left, so that gives us…” He checked his watch, “thirty-three minutes to deal with the threat, before it deals with us.”
“Right, can’t have that.” Ianto snapped on a pair of latex gloves. “Wish I’d brought some gardening gloves with me.”
“You didn’t?” Jack feigned surprise. “I thought you were always prepared for anything!”
“You didn’t tell me what we were after until we were already on our way. I’ll just have to hope our regular latex gloves provide some protection from the stingers.” Ianto unfastened the safety catch from his secateurs. “Time to do some proactive pruning then. Ready when you are.”
“Okay, here goes.” Jack moved cautiously towards the plant, approaching it from what Ianto assumed was the back, since it made sense for the flower, with its teeth, to be on the front. Slowly and carefully, he lowered the specimen bag over the bulging spore pod.
Ianto moved in close behind him, torch gripped between his teeth, and secateurs at the ready, as Jack took hold of the drawstrings and in one quick move, snapped them tight. As they closed around the stem, the plant stiffened, the drooping flower starting to tilt upwards, like someone awakening from a nap, and the coiled tendrils beginning to unfurl… Quickly he closed the blades of the secateurs around the stem, snipping through it, allowing Jack to tighten the drawstrings further so that the whole pod, stump of stem and all, was safely contained, although to be extra safe, Jack put everything into a second bag before tossing it into the containment box they’d brought with them.
Not that Ianto saw any of that, since he was already doing battle with the lashing tendrils; plant it might be, but it clearly still experienced pain, judging by the way it started thrashing as soon as he cut through the stem. One barbed tendril was already wound tightly around his coat sleeve, like a band of iron, while one of the lowest pair was trying to get a grip on his leg. Ianto ignored those two for the moment, snipping off the nearest of the upper pair, which was flailing at his face, and letting it fall to the ground, still twitching. Then he tackled the second of the upper tendrils and the furthest of the middle pair, since the closer one, occupied with his coat, didn’t seem to be an immediate threat.
As he bent after the lowest pair, his coat sleeve pulled up, exposing perhaps an inch of bare wrist, and he winced at the fiery, burning sensation that flared across his skin as the tendril made contact. Abandoning his plans to deal with the bottom pair first, he cut the one around his arm close to the stem, although that left it still clinging to his sleeve, the previously concealed barbs sunk deep into the fabric.
Cutting off the last pair of tendrils, Ianto stepped back, disentangling himself from the two that had latched onto his clothing, before turning to see how Jack was faring against the greater threat of the flower.
He wasn’t doing too well. It was fully open now, the petals fleshy, brownish red streaked with thick, white veins. That would have been unpleasant enough to look at, but from the centre of the flower protruded a telescopic structure that reminded Ianto uncomfortably of the alien queen’s mouthparts in the Alien movies, glossy black with several rows of serrated, almost metallic teeth, gnashing at the air, extending further than should have been possible.
Jack’s left hand was already bleeding, and no matter which way he stepped, the flower followed his movements. Worse, Ianto could see the plant had already pulled almost half of its roots from the ground; any minute now, it would be fully mobile… Not stopping to think, Ianto stepped in close again, closed the blades of his pruners around the base of the flower and started to cut, squeezing the handles together as hard as he could, one gripped in each hand. It was like trying to cut through a steel cable.
The plant screeched, a high-pitched sound reminiscent of fingernails down a blackboard, and Ianto made a mental note to add earplugs and a set of heavy-duty loppers to the standard equipment kept in the back of the SUV, just in case they ever had another of these things fall through the Rift. Secateurs simply weren’t designed for this. Still, he persevered, twisting the blades back and forth, feeling them gradually biting deeper and deeper into the point where flower met stem, sawing away to separate what passed for its head from its body.
The stem squirmed, trying to break free, and more of the roots pulled out of the ground. Gritting his teeth, probably leaving toothmarks in the rubbering of his torch, Ianto squeezed harder, and just when he thought the secateurs might simply snap from the strain, the flower fell to the ground with a heavy thud, and the plant went limp.
Ianto stepped back, panting. “Bloody Hell!”
“Thanks. This one was livelier than I was expecting.” Jack was nursing his injured hand, and Ianto noted two new fingers were growing. He wondered if the plant had swallowed the ones it had bitten off, and he shuddered, deciding that leafy greens might be off the menu for a bit.
Pulling his infrared goggles off, Ianto shoved them in his pocket, took the torch from his mouth, and flicked it back to LED mode, shedding a brighter illumination over the carnage in the greyness of pre-dawn.
“We need better equipment to deal with things like this.” He looked at the secateurs in distaste, coated as they were in sticky, bloodlike sap. “Portable infrared lamps for a start, so we don’t have to use torches, and a decent set of loppers with long handles. Maybe some ratchet pruners too. I thought these were going to snap before I got halfway through!”
“You can go shopping with the Torchwood card,” Jack promised.
“Right. Good. Suppose we’d better clear this mess up then.” Ianto made his way over to the containment box, dropped the secateurs and his latex gloves into it, and pulled on a fresh pair. His wrist still burned painfully from where the tendril had brushed against it. Pointing his torch at the ground around the plant, he gathered up the six tendrils, handling them gingerly, and consigned them to the box as Jack picked the flower up with his good hand.
“Maybe Owen would like to take a look at this before we burn it.”
Ianto shuddered. “Just be sure it’s completely dead before you offer it to him.” He bent again to carefully extract the last three roots from the ground, taking care not to leave even a fragment behind, and crammed the remains into the plastic box on top of the flower, then went back to check the ground one final time, finding two sadly shrivelled fingers. Apparently the plant hadn’t eaten them, and they were withering away as the new ones grew. Weird. “Looks like that’s everything.”
“Good work.” Jack waggled his new fingers at his lover. “Let’s head back. I’ll carry the box; you’ve done enough.”
“No argument from me.”
The sun was just coming up as they reached the SUV, and Ianto smiled. It hasn’t exactly been a fun outing, but thanks to Torchwood, it looked like earth was safe from invasion by marauding carnivorous plants. For now.
The End
