Kingdom of Air, Chapter Four: Belay
Title: Kindom of Air, Chapter Four: Belay
Author: lookninjas
Characters: Gwen, Ianto, Owen, Tosh, OCs.
Rating: R for language and character death.
Spoilers for: Torchwood Season One, Dr. Who episodes "Army of Ghosts," "Doomsday," "Utopia," and "The Sound of Drums."

Summary: Belay: (v) To protect a climber from falling by using rope, friction, and an anchor.


Disclaimer: I own neither Torchwood nor Dr. Who.

Previous Chapters: Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three

I can never say enough nice things about my beta, seize.



4 October 2008


The storm broke at around midnight, and the sky is clear now, the stars bright and brittle overhead. Owen is shaking and shivering and coughing; Gwen is holding his hand.

The snow is probably thigh-deep in places, and Ianto's got everyone's gear on his own back. It doesn't matter now. He'll get them down safely. He has to.

Hillary, the sherpas, and the men from London have gathered for the final push up to the artifact. In the light of Ianto's headlamp, Hillary looks resigned, Tenzing grim and stoic. Steve's eyes glitter madly. Scott's face is pale and his eyes are unfocused.

"Come with us," Ianto says, one last time. "Please. It isn't safe."

Steve only turns away. Scott wets his lips, shakes his head. "I'm sorry," he says, and his voice is already slurred. "I can't..."

"Think of your girl," Gwen says softly. "Think of your Linda. Don't you want to see her again?"

Scott lets out a short, pained laugh. "You really don't understand, do you?" he asks. "I am thinking of Linda," he says. "This is for her. To keep her safe."

"If Saxon's threatened her..." Gwen says. "We can help. We can --"

"You don't understand," Scott says, and turns away.

"Please," Gwen says, and Ianto lays a hand on her shoulder. She falls silent.

Ianto nods at Hillary and Tenzing. "We'll meet you back at Base Camp," he says, even though he doesn't believe it for a second.

Hillary raises his hand and Tenzing nods back.

"Come on," Ianto says, and ushers his team towards the fixed ropes leading down the mountain. He isn't surprised to find that they're completely buried in the snow. In the distance, he can hear the soft ksssssh-shusssshhhh hissing as snow breaks loose from the mountain and tumbles down, small avalanches everywhere.

He isn't frightened. There just isn't room for it right now.

He pulls a coil of rope from his pack, ties an end of it to Gwen's harness, the tightest, strongest knot he knows. Owen is next. "We'll have to rope together right now, and hope that the fixed ropes are clear further down. I'll go first and set the trail. All you have to do is follow me. All right?"

Gwen nods, and after a moment, Owen does, too.

Ianto stares down the slope for a moment, searching. He sees a boulder he recognizes, one just above Yellow Boots' hollow. "Right. Here we go, then."

All around him, he can hear small avalanches sweeping down the mountain's flank. Owen puffs for air. There's chatter from above as Hillary ushers the rest of the team up and up, towards their precious artifact.

Ianto doesn't look back. He keeps his eyes focused on the trail going down, back to Base Camp, and safety, and home.

Their pace is necessarily slow, more for Ianto's sake than for Owen's this time around. He's breaking trail through snow that laps up his calves, up to his thighs in some points, and it's tiring work. He gasps for air with every step, the cold burning his throat and lungs. But a curious calm has swept over him, and he embraces it, lets it carry him along. Even when avalanches sweep the slope bare just a few yards away from where they're climbing, there's nothing, no emotion. He waits for the swirling, blowing snow to settle on the slopes, then finds the next landmark and sets a course towards it. It's four breaths for every step now, sometimes five or even six, but it doesn't matter. It's taking them as long to hike down as it did to climb up. That doesn't matter either.

He'll do everything in his power to keep them safe. It's all he can control. The rest is up to the mountain.

They're at the technical sections just above Camp One, carefully cramponing their way down a nearly vertical slope, when Owen fails to get his points in all the way. Ianto sees him scrabbling for purchase, sees that he won't make it, and slams the pick of his ice axe into the slope, wrapping the rope around it, around his shoulders and arms. His body curls, knees pressing into the slope as he twists to the side. "Gwen! Owen's falling!" Then Owen slides past, his crampons slicing into the shoulder of Ianto's down suit and spilling feathers everywhere, white on white on the snow, and Gwen is being dragged down with him, and there's nothing Ianto can do but hold on.

The rope goes taut, stretching just enough, and Ianto feels a heavy weight pulling at him, but he's got his ice axe well planted, and he holds on. "Owen!" he shouts. "Gwen!"

"I'm all right," Gwen pants. "I've stopped." Ianto glances back over his shoulder, and sees Gwen's axe planted in the slope, holding her up several feet below him. "I'm all right. Owen, love?"

Owen coughs and coughs, and Ianto takes a deep breath, because if Owen's coughing, it means he's still alive. "Banged up a bit," Owen says, finally, his voice an exhausted croak. "Can't seem to get my footing."

Ianto closes his eyes. "Right. Gwen, can you get down and help him?"

"Yes," she says, no hesitation.

"All right," Ianto says. "Take it slowly. I've got you."

"I know," Gwen says.

He holds on as tight as he can, the rope cutting into his shoulders, a stripe of cold fire down his upper arm where Owen's crampons grazed him. He listens to Gwen's steps crunching into the slope, solid and firm, and ignores the pain in his shoulders, the way his hands are going numb. Finally, the rope goes slack. "Christ," Owen rasps, his voice little more than an exhausted wheeze. "Bloody harness is murder on the bollocks."

Ianto's shoulders shake, but he isn't sure if he's laughing or not.

"Ianto?" Gwen asks.

"Fine." The word is breathed into the ice, nothing more. "Let's keep going." He begins to descend again, slow and careful.

Gwen's found a small ledge, just enough for all three of them to stand on, leaning against the mountain. Owen's face is badly scraped from his fall, but the damage looks superficial. He's hunched over slightly, obviously in pain, one hand clutching at his separated ribs. The real concern, however, is his gloves. He's lost them. Ianto's eyebrow quirks upward, and his eyes meet Owen's.

Owen shakes his head. "Nuh-uh." His voice is weak, pained, exhausted. "You need those gloves."

"So do you." Ianto plants his ice axe in the slope again and begins to pull his gloves off. "You're the doctor. We'll need your hands."

"And you're the sodding climber, and we'll need your hands," Owen growls back.

Ianto looks at Owen a bit longer, then pulls the thin liners out of his gloves. "Fine." He hands the gloves to Owen, and pulls the liners back on. "It won't be comfortable, but it'll do 'til we're at Camp One."

Owen doesn't look satisfied, doesn't move, and finally Gwen takes his hands and puts the gloves on him herself. "Stupid stubborn git," she mutters.

Ianto takes the opportunity to look down again. There's the fin of rock that Tenzing pointed out to him days ago, and not far beneath it, Camp One. And there's something else as well. A few hundred yards from Camp One, something bright green protruding from a snow drift.

He swallows hard, and glances back at his team. "Right. Shall we keep going?"

They look at each other for a few more seconds, the space of a deep breath, and then Ianto carefully leads them over the side of the ledge and down.

Twenty minutes of very careful climbing sees them finally at the remains of Camp One. Some of the tents have been flattened by the wind and snow, or shredded. Some are simply gone. Ianto looks up and over at the fin of rock, and sees the blaze of bright green. He already knows that it's someone in a down suit. He just doesn't know who they are, if they're alive, and if he can save them if they are.

He unclips from the rope that's bound him to Owen and Gwen, pulls the overloaded pack off his back, and begins rummaging through it. Every movement brings a stinging tug in his upper arm; there's no doubt that Owen's crampons cut straight through the down suit and into Ianto's flesh, and now the blood is sticking to the pile long underwear he's got on underneath, perhaps frozen there. But he isn't bleeding to death, so he'll deal with it later.

His hands close on a small first aid kit; antiseptic wipes, gauze, medical tape. He passes them over to Gwen. "Take care of Owen," he says. "I'll be right back."

Gwen's fingers close over his and don't let go. "Where are you going?" she asks, her voice only a bit shaky.

Ianto glances at the green speck on the mountainside again. "I just need to check on something. I won't be long, I promise."

When he looks back at Owen and Gwen, they've seen the body too. Gwen looks pale, and Owen's jaw is set and tight. "Be careful," Owen says, quietly.

"I always am," Ianto replies, but he cannot manage a smile. He gives Gwen's shoulder a squeeze, trying to reassure her, and then sets off, climbing up a small shoulder of rock before setting off on the traverse, that bit of green always just at the corner of his eye.

Some of the sherpas had green down suits, he remembers.

He keeps moving.

The wind lashes at him, numbing his hands in their thin protection, making his fingers feel clumsy and huge. It's difficult to get a good footing in the dry, powdery snow, and he's been panting for breath for so long that his lungs are starting to feel scorched, his throat frozen.

He keeps moving.

There are two bodies, he realizes at last. Two bodies curled in an alcove in the rock, the larger wrapped around the smaller, apparently in a last ditch effort to provide protection from the storm. The large one is in green, the small one is in purple. Their faces are towards the mountains, their backs to the wind, a pack within easy reach of their hands, an empty water bottle on the ledge near them.

They are so still that they cannot be anything but dead.

"Hey!" Ianto shouts, hoping for some sort of startle reflex, hoping to be wrong, even though he knows that if they're still alive, they're far past saving. "You there! Hello! Hello!" They don't move.

He pulls himself into their little hollow, shakes their boots, shouts at them. "Hey! Hey! If you can hear me, move your hands!" When he turns the man in the green suit onto his back, the body goes stiffly, as if frozen into place. Even though he already knows, Ianto keeps trying, stripping off one glove liner to press his fingers to the man's throat, checking for a pulse. The man's skin looks perfectly ordinary, but it's hard, almost like marble, and so cold. There's a thick layer of ice over the man's face; Ianto carefully chips it away with his stiff, unwieldy fingers.

It's one of the sherpas who evacuated Big Pemba. Ianto can't be sure, but he thinks the man's name was Jamling. His eyes are closed, mercifully enough. He could almost be asleep. But he isn't.

If the man in green is Jamling, then the smaller figure, the one in purple...

Ianto goes through his routine again, checking for pulse, chipping the ice away, occasionally stopping to put his hands inside his down suit and warm them up. The sun is rising in the sky by the time Big Pemba's face is uncovered, frozen into a pained grimace. There's no pretending that the boy is only sleeping, not with this. He died. They both died.

He sits with them for a few minutes, in the little shelter they created, their last-ditch bivouac. He doesn't know what happened, but he can guess. Big Pemba collapsed and couldn't be moved. Jamling stayed with him. The third member of their group continued downwards, to Tosh, to get help from the sherpas still waiting at Base Camp. But help never came.

They died.

At least they had each other. At least they weren't alone. It isn't really comforting, but it's all Ianto has.

After a moment's hesitation, he pulls the gloves from Jamling's hands, takes off his own glove liners and stows them in his pockets to give to Owen. Jamling's gloves are cold from two nights in the open on dead hands, but they'll warm.

Owen's right. Ianto needs his hands to get them off the mountain and to safety.

There ought to be an apology for this, for what happened to them, for what Ianto has had to do. But there isn't. He shifts Jamling and Big Pemba, rearranging their frozen limbs until they're laying as he found them, faces turned towards the rock, bodies curled together. Then he pats Jamling's leg, shakes his head, and leaves them to their rest.

His hands are already warmer.

Ianto makes his way back to Camp One, careful step by careful step. Owen and Gwen are there, waiting for him. Owen's face is bandaged, and Gwen is biting her lip. They don't ask him where he went or why. They don't wonder where he got the gloves on his hands. They don't say anything when he gives Owen his own glove liners.

Instead, Gwen hands Ianto a bottle of water. He takes a long pull, the water easing the pain in his throat, then hands it back to her. He closes up his pack, struggles into it, then ropes them all together and leads them down again.

Half an hour later, he hears Owen's voice from above. "Was it just the one body, then?"

Ianto makes sure he's got a good footing when he stops, panting for breath. "No," he says, his voice rough and scratchy. "Two."

"Ah." Owen's tone is almost conversational. Probably he's in shock. Probably they're all in shock. The sun is blazing merrily away, making the slope unstable, the hissing of minor avalanches coming louder, more frequently. They've been lucky so far, but they need to get to safety soon. "Because there's three more, just to the left there."

Ianto doesn't want to look, but he does anyway. He sees a tangle of limbs in colorful down suits, neon green and orange and yellow, bright against the snow. He draws in a deep breath. "Hey!" The effort of shouting tears at his throat, and there's no answering movement. Not even a twitch.

"Tosh was wearing pink," Gwen says, sounding a bit dazed.

Owen takes a few sideways steps, stops when a small torrent of snow cascades from under his foot. "They could still be alive," he says, as if trying to convince himself to move a just a little further.

"They've been there for a while," Ianto points out, his own voice so calm, too calm really. "One night at least, maybe more." But he starts climbing back up anyway, even though the snow is increasingly precarious. "Hey!" he shouts again. No movement, no answering groans.

Owen takes another step, and almost loses his balance, clinging to a small spur of rock for support. "No good," he says, shuffling back to the path Ianto has made for them. "I can't get over there."

Ianto closes his eyes, does a quick risk assessment. "We have to leave them," he says, finally.

Neither Gwen nor Owen argue. They resume their descent, leaving the dead (or dying... no, he can't think like that, not now; he has to think of the team) behind them.

The slope grows gentler, then gentler still. They crawl down slowly, crippled by exhaustion, pausing frequently to catch their breath but never really stopping. None of them say anything. The less attention Ianto has to pay to climbing, the more energy he has to think about it. There are five dead bodies on the slopes of Dhaulagiri. Two sherpas had been left behind to help Tosh maintain Base Camp. Two more were sent down with Big Pemba. If Tosh is still at Base Camp, she's alone. She's been alone for two days.

It's too much to think about, and Ianto feels his mind turn away from it, back to the climb.

Finally, they come around the last large outcropping, and see a small figure in pink waiting for them on the flat ground of Base Camp. Ianto's heart gives a painful lurch, and he imagines that if he had the strength left, he'd run, but he can't. He plods on at the same painful pace, his thighs burning with strain, his lungs scorched and aching, his pulse hammering through him. Step after step after step, and then he's gone as far down as he can, and his eyes are filled with pink, black hair brushing against his face, Tosh clutching at him so hard he wonders if she could break him. She's very strong, Tosh is, stronger than he'd thought. And she's crying; her tears are wet and hot and burning on his cheek.

It takes him a few moments to remember how to lift his arms, to hug her back.

"God, I was so scared," she sobs, clinging even tighter, and he manages a slight squeeze. "I was so scared."

Me too, he thinks, and says aloud "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

She finally lets go, and he stumbles; she catches his arm to put him back on his feet. "You look exhausted," she says, wiping her eyes with her hands. "Owen! What happened?"

"I took a tumble," Owen says, as Tosh flies to him, her gloved hands gently touching the gauze covering his face. "It's all right, Tosh, really."

Numb, moving on automatic, Ianto strips his stolen gloves off and begins untying them from the rope that bound them together: first himself, then Owen, then Gwen. Beneath the ice that's frozen his insides, he can feel the stirrings of loss, too enormous to comprehend. Bodies -- no, people, people he knew -- on the slopes of Dhaulagiri.

"The others aren't coming with you," Tosh says, finally. It isn't a question, but Ianto answers as though it were.

"No. Steve and Scott..." He pauses, gropes for words, finds none. "And Hillary wasn't going to let them go alone. He's a good guide."

Gwen is standing a little away from them, looking up. "You can just see them," she says, pointing. And there they are, visible on the mountain's face, small dots, brightly colored. One small bunch, gathered not far from Camp Two, not really moving. Three more, scattered wide, almost touching the bronze-gold gleam of the artifact.

Ianto's heart stops for a few seconds, then begins to pound, hammering loud and fast like a drumbeat, like a warning. "Move," he croaks, his voice aching and unfamiliar.

None of them budges.

He'd shout, but his throat is too frozen. "Move!" he says again, plucking at Owen's sleeve, and they're moving, unable to do much more than stagger along, tripping over their own feet. There's a short, sharp report, like a gunshot, and Ianto's legs go out from under him, his wounded shoulder connecting with the hard ice first, sending a blaze of pain through him, making him cry out. Someone tumbles on top of him, arms spread out as if to protect him.

"The arti fact," Tosh says, breathless, her voice still shaking with tears.

There's a rumble and roar like a tidal wave, as if half the mountain has broken away. Ianto pushes up, expecting to see death sweeping down over them, and the arms around him tighten. It's Gwen, pressed against him; Owen and Tosh crouch nearby, Owen coughing convulsively as they watch a wall of snow sweep with lethal speed and strength down the slope, crushing the eastern half of the camp, leaving them untouched, huddled together.

The last of his strength burnt up, Ianto's arms give out, and he collapses face first on the ground.

"Shit," Owen says, rather eloquently. "Gwen, get off the poor bastard, yeah?"

Then surprisingly gentle hands are pulling him up, tugging the pack off his shoulders, and he hisses as the strap goes down his injured arm. "He's bleeding," Gwen says.

Tosh grunts. "Christ, what's in this pack?"

"Stubborn Welsh bastard," Owen says, helping Gwen lift Ianto into a kneeling position. His snow goggles are pulled off, and Owen's face fills Ianto's vision. Fingers pry Ianto's eyes wide open, Owen peering at him intently. "Wouldn't let us carry anything." Owen draws back, raising an arm to his face to muffle a coughing spasm. When it's done, he takes a shaky breath and admits, "Granted, I'm in shit shape at this point, but still."

Tosh pulls the pack onto her own back with surprising ease. She folds her arms and looks down at them, Gwen holding Ianto up, Owen with one hand clutching his side, still coughing slightly. "I think the mess tent is still standing," she says, after a few seconds, and reaches out a hand to pull Owen to his feet.

Gwen tries to pick Ianto up, and he tries to stand, but it isn't working. Then Tosh is pulling Ianto's arm around her shoulders, and even with the pack, she's able to help Gwen get him to his feet. He stands for a moment, legs wobbly, head spinning with a thousand things, and looks back up at the face of Dhaulagiri. There's no more bronze glint, no more brightly colored specks crawling around. Just a few patches of white where the snow still clings, and lots of black, ice-covered rock. "They were all up there," he says, very quietly.

He can feel Tosh's shoulders rise and fall under his arm, as she takes a deep breath. "There's nothing you can do anymore," she says, quietly. Then she and Gwen are dragging him towards the mess tent, and he can only stumble along between them.

In the tent, Ianto is dumped unceremoniously on a bench, his body seemingly beyond his control, and all he can think is that when you see an avalanche, you're supposed to start the rescue immediately, but he can't make his arms or legs work. Owen collapses across from him, coughing, coughing, and Gwen is practically grey with exhaustion. There's no one else to call. There is no one else. Just them.

Tosh kneels at his feet and strips his crampons off, then his boots. Her hands are barely shaking.

"I'm sorry, Tosh," he says again, although he isn't exactly sure why.

She looks at him, brushes a strand of black hair out of her eyes. "Don't be," she says, and her voice is very crisp now, very businesslike, as it always is when she's suppressing strong emotions. "You brought them back. Lean on me, now." He rests his forearms on her shoulders and lets her unzip his down suit, lets her manipulate his useless limbs, one arm around his waist as she pulls his arms from the sleeves, pushes the suit down his torso, sits him back down on the bench and tugs the suit off his legs.

He lets out a hiss as her hands find the long cut Owen's crampons left on his arm, gently teasing the blood-soaked fabric of his long underwear away from the skin. "That's going to need stitches," she says.

Gwen disappears from Ianto's line of sight, reappears moments later with a bowl of water and a washcloth. "You're prepared," Gwen says, quietly.

"I was expecting casualties; I just didn't know who they'd be," Tosh replies. She pulls Ianto's top off, trying to be gentle, but the fabric is stuck to his skin, and he flinches when she yanks it free. Then Tosh is looking at him, looking hard, and she shakes her head. "You've got thin," she says, at last.

"So have you," Ianto replies, and he isn't lying. Tosh's cheekbones protrude more than ever, and her jaw is very sharp.

Tosh manages a smile. "You never had any to spare." The cloth dabs at his arm, warm and wet and soothing, wiping away the blood. "Keep this up and you'll look like Owen."

"I'm still in the room, you know," Owen protests, feebly, then coughs for a long time. "And I'm wiry."

"You're a skinny bastard," Ianto says, as though Owen's voice isn't shaking, as though this were completely normal. Gwen hands Tosh a long, curved needle, and Ianto closes his eyes. "And really, Tosh should be fussing over you, not me." He bites the inside corner of his lip and holds absolutely still as the needle goes in, the thread pulling through his skin, pulling tight.

"And I'm a doctor, and can say with absolute certainty that you need the fussing more than I do right now, so let the woman work," Owen says.

Ianto wants to say something more, but all his cleverness has gone away. The needle goes in and out, and the thread pulls through, tightening, pulling him together again. He doesn't move as he's stitched up; doesn't open his eyes until Tosh strokes the cloth down his arm and says, "There. All done." She musters another smile for him, then turns to Owen.

Gwen is carefully peeling the bandages away from Owen's face, and he isn't even swearing at her, though it must hurt like hell. The scrapes are sticky and raw-looking; Owen wasn't exactly pretty before, but he looks dreadful now. Tosh crosses to them, swats Gwen's hands away gently. "Sit down. You look exhausted."

"I am," Gwen admits, but crosses over to the stove instead, and busies herself making tea.

Ianto forces himself to sit up a bit, move his arms and legs, attempt to get comfortable although comfort seems impossible at the moment. Everything hurts; every muscle burns; his thighs ache from breaking trail through the snow; his shoulders are strained from the impromptu self-arrest he performed when Owen fell; the small of his back complains of the too-heavy pack he forced himself to carry. He doesn't mind; every twinge and sting distracts from the hollow agony of bodies on the mountain. So many. "We found the sherpas," he says at last. "I'm sorry, Tosh."

Her back stiffens slightly, but she doesn't stop picking bits of scree from Owen's face. "It was snowing so hard," she says, her voice still firm. "But I had to let them try. I knew by morning that they weren't ever going to come down."

Two days alone at Base Camp, no word from any of them, alone with the blizzard howling around her. Ianto tries to imagine it, but his mind just turns away. "I'm sorry," he says again.

Tosh turns and looks at him, one eyebrow up, her face almost daunting. "Ianto," she says, sternly. "Stop apologizing."

Gwen emerges from behind the stove with mugs of tea; she hands one to Ianto and another to Owen, and sets Tosh's near her, but not so near that Tosh could knock it down. Her own mug clutched in both hands, like a child's, she stares into the steam. "It blew up. The artifact blew up."

"That looks to be about the size of it, yeah," Owen says, but he can't quite manage the nonchalant tone he's striving for.

"It was a trap. Saxon meant to kill us," Gwen says. "Why?"

Ianto manages to lift the mug to his lips, cherishes the warmth of it. "No idea. We'll have to ask him when we get back."

It's hitting him, though, really hitting him. They were meant to die. Thirteen people are dead, dead or at least dying. Nothing he could do to save them, nothing he could do to stop it happening. Jamling's body curled around Big Pemba's, the two of them freezing to death on the mountain, exposed to the storm, no hope of rescue...

"We can't stay here," Gwen says, as Tosh smooths a new bandage over Owen's battered face. "What if he finds out? He'll be looking for us."

Tosh pulls away from Owen, picks up her mug of tea, curls her fingers around it. "Sit down, Gwen. We can't go anywhere right now. The three of you need to rest."

"But --" Gwen's starting to look a bit panicky, her eyes going huge, her hands shaking.

"Sit down, Gwen," Ianto says, and much to his surprise, she does so, collapsing next to him. "Tosh is right. We're in no fit state to go anywhere."

"You're in no fit state to go anywhere," Owen says, an undertone of worry apparent in his voice.

Ianto raises his eyebrow. "Neither are you."

Owen touches his face, then lets his hand drift down to his ribs. "Fair point."

"We have to rest. We have to reorganize. If we panic now..." Ianto shakes his head.

Tosh frowns at all of them equally, her arms folded. "Food first," she says, decisively. "Then the three of you are going to get some sleep. No arguing."

"We're in your hands," Owen says, and closes his eyes.


5 October 2008


Ianto can only stand and stare at the enormous mound of fresh snow that's buried the eastern side of Base Camp. There's no way they'll be able to get to anything underneath it. All of their comm equipment, all the tech they brought with them, most of their supplies... all gone.

Nor will they be able to cross the snow, to find the path that brought them here. They'll have to find another way home.

Ianto spots a tiny bit of gold, picks it up. It's plastic. Harold Saxon's mysterious artifact, the one they flew halfway around the world for, the one they got so obsessed with, the one that so many people died for... Cheap plastic. Like a child's toy. A shiny trinket to lure them in close enough to be killed.

It doesn't make sense, and Ianto wonders if he'll ever understand any of it. He wouldn't mind the chance to ask why, though. He wouldn't mind a chance to get his hands on Harold Saxon and get an explanation, something, anything, any reason why thirteen people had to die.

Not far from the bit of gold plastic is a scrap of fabric. Red fabric. Probably from Steve's down suit. Steve would have been nearest to the artifact, of course, the first to touch it. Steve was Saxon's creature, through and through. He never had a chance to say no. Ianto wonders absently what Steve might have been like in his real life, if he'd had a family, a girlfriend or a boyfriend, any children. He wasn't any older than the rest of them; probably his parents are still alive. Probably they'll mourn him now that he's gone.

Ianto's gaze skims the surface of the snow. It's clean, white, unblemished, like a shroud. Who was with Steve at that last moment? Not Scott, of course. Ianto remembers the small clump of people motionless on the face of the mountain, remembers Scott's slurred speech and Owen's dire predictions. At some point during the climb, Scott must have collapsed for good. Steve stepped over him and kept going, dragging some of the sherpas with him. Tenzing would have stayed behind. Hillary would have, too. They would have tried to keep Scott alive.

They were probably still trying when the mountain fell on top of them.

Ianto's eyes blur with tears, and he blinks them away.

Then there's someone next to him, a small someone in a pink down suit. Her arm slips around his waist, and he leans on her a little bit, because he knows how strong she is now. "The first rule of avalanche rescue is that you don't wait," he says, trying to keep his voice from shaking. "There's a 92% chance of survival if you can pull them out within fifteen minutes. After half an hour it's down to 30%. After two hours..."

Tosh squeezes him a little bit tighter. "There wasn't anything you could have done. Even if you'd had the strength, you'd never have gotten to them in time."

"We should never have come here," he says, quietly.

Tosh turns him round to face her, pulls his face down so he can't look away from her eyes. "But we are here, Ianto," she says. "And we need you to get us home. You promised."

She's right. Of course she's right. So he forces the grief and the guilt and the terror back down, and manages a shaky smile. "And I keep my promises, Tosh."

It earns him a smile back, a smile that's enough to keep him going for another day at least. "I know you do." Tosh pulls him down to kiss his forehead, then takes his arm and leads him back to the mess tent.

*

That night, Ianto gets out his stack of trekking maps, the souvenirs he grabbed in Pokhara, long before any of them knew what they were getting into. They're cheap and flimsy, but they're still maps. He sorts through them, finally pulling one out that says "Dhaulagiri Circuit." There's a path marked on it, a path that might just get them home after all. Out to the west, down the glacier’s other edge and through Italian Base Camp, roughly following the line of the river.

Ianto traces the path with his finger. There aren't any nearby villages. The nearest, a dot on the map labelled "Muri," has to be at least four or five days' journey away. Everything before that is probably wild country, faint trails. It’s been years since Ianto’s had to navigate through unknown territory, and he’s never had to do it in quite these circumstances, but there isn’t any choice.

It’s funny, really. All that alien tech back at the Hub, guns and organic computers and a sodding pterodactyl, and right now, they’re forced to rely on a compass and a cheap map. Soon they’ll be starting fires by rubbing two sticks together and making tools out of bits of stone.

Ianto drops his head and takes a few deep breaths, because he knows he’s getting hysterical again, and he really doesn’t have the time for that sort of nonsense. Tosh is right; like it or not, it’s up to him to get them back to safety.

He breathes and breathes until finally, he can concentrate on the map again, tracing the route with his fingers. The good news is that from now on, they’ll be moving down and not up. There isn’t any need to acclimatize, so they can walk for longer. They can walk for as long as their feet will carry them.

But they've spent weeks in the mountains, suffering the effects of high altitude. He's not sure they have the strength left for a long trek And with Owen's cough to think about, the pain that's still plaguing him....

Then, too, there isn’t much food, nor is there much fuel. Maybe a week’s worth, maybe less. Nor can they be sure if there are many water sources along the route.

But if there are any, Ianto's still got his water purification tablets. That has to count for something.

If they stick to one tent, it’ll free up room to carry other things, medicine, food, more water, fuel. Their combined body heat might allow them to conserve the stove for cooking and boiling water. It’ll be a tight fit, but right now, he’s not sure any of them are in a mood to complain.

He looks up from his map, sees the tangle of sleeping bags in the center of the tent, the way the others have crowded together in their sleep, seeking warmth and comfort. No, he doesn’t think any of them are going to complain at all about being cozy.

Ianto folds the map up and sighs. He doesn’t feel prepared at all for this, but staring at the map isn’t going to help him, and he needs the sleep. They start moving tomorrow. Away from the mountain, back towards home. Home.

He pulls his sleeping bag a little bit closer to Gwen’s, snuggles in, and tries to sleep.

(The title of this chapter was inspired by the Belay.)