Torchwood Hallowe'en by a_silver_story | 01
Title: Torchwood Hallowe'en
Chapter: 01/08
Characters: Janto Team!fic
Author: a_silver_story
Genre Horrorrrrrr.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Erm ... hopefully it's scary. Minor gore.
Disclaimer: If I owned anything in this, I'd be a rich rich rich bitch. However, I am not a rich rich rich bitch so you may all, therefore, assume I own nothing. Which I don't. It all belongs RTD and the BBC, in case any of you didn't know.
Summary: Ianto decides to do the decade-ly inventory of the Archives - with rather scary results (and I'm not talking about bad organisation skills). Slight crossover with Doctor Who S3.
Note #1: This story was written the October before 'The Time of Angels' and 'Flesh and Stone' aired, so please don't message me regarding any inconsistencies with canon you may find.
Note #2: I've deleted the original version of this from LJ, and am posting this corrected version one chapter at a time, one day at a time.
Ianto yawned and stretched, his eyes itching as he tried to focus on the papers in front of him. The dim light from his desk lamp in the dark made his eyes ache with the effort of reading, and a drip drip drip sound reverberating from somewhere in the depths of the Archives was driving him insane.
Only three more hours work, and he could finally go home. Well, to Jack's bunker, but that was home enough.
"Whatcha up to?"
'Speak of the Devil …' thought Ianto.
"Once a decade, we have to take an inventory," he sighed, leaning back in his chair as Jack entered the dingy little office. It wasn't the office Ianto usually used. This one was so deep in the belly of the Archives, he hardly even remembered how to find it - never mind clean it or use it. Jack had obviously had to use some form of heat tracking device to find him this deep down.
"Ahhh yes. I remember ... a mention of that …" Jack nodded.
Ianto raised an eyebrow as Jack came to stand behind him and rest hands on his shoulders. "A 'mention'? I sent you about ... five memos."
"Did you draw rude pictures on?" asked Jack, massaging the knots in Ianto's neck and shoulders gently.
"No," Ianto scowled.
"Then why would I bother to read them?"
"Jack!" Ianto tried to shake him off in annoyance.
"Joking! Joking!" he laughed, kissing his head. "How long are you going to be?"
"Another three hours, I should think. Less if you helped ..."
Ianto hoped he'd take the hint.
"Awwww. But it's Hallowe'en! I thought maybe we could go to the wardrobe section and pick out something a bit saucy ... have ourselves some costume sex ..."
"We could ... if I wasn't so far behind."
Jack sighed resignedly. "What do you want me to do?"
Ianto beamed at him, and pushed forward a clipboard with lined paper and a pen. "We need to go down to the level below and write down the names and reference numbers of everything in the first three rooms."
Jack groaned. "Everything?"
"Everything."
"Then what?"
"We need to compare them to the census from 1999 - which, by the way, I can't find ..."
"Of course you can't find it. We never did one."
Ianto blinked. "Why not?"
"Boring," Jack shrugged. "No-one could be bothered."
Ianto muttered darkly to himself about Torchwood lasting longer than anyone would believe given some of its past (and present) employees. Jack didn't seem to notice, picking at the cookie sat by Ianto's cold coffee and stealing as many chocolate Smarties with little spiders on as he could.
Eventually Ianto pushed his chair back and urged Jack to follow suit, shoving the clipboard into his hands and telling him he had to write down everything he was told to, in two neat columns and in legible handwriting.
Jack was happy to do as he was told as long as he was allowed to keep a step behind and watch Ianto's tight trousers hug his buttocks as he walked.
They descended the stairs, the drip of leaking pipe getting louder and echoing down the tunnel they emerged into. Ianto flicked the light switch, tutted loudly when nothing happened, then reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve a torch.
"Make a note of that," Ianto instructed, and Jack obediently began to blindly scribble. "Chances are the electrics need re-wiring anyway. I don't think anyone's been down here for years - oh!"
Ianto had opened the first door expecting to find the typical Archive vault behind, but instead he was greeted by an empty room, dust-filled shelves and another set of lights that weren't working. Jack poked his head in behind him.
"Hmmm," he said. "Nothing to catalogue." Jack shook his head in mock regret, knowing their expected finishing time had just gone down by at least an hour and a half.
Ianto frowned. "All the rooms on this floor are marked as full on every census so far. What happened?"
"Don't know," Jack shrugged. "During stock-taking I generally ... made myself scarce."
"I'll take it as compliment that you're still here now."
Jack smiled sheepishly, then leant over and pecked his cheek. Had Ianto thought the shyness was an act, he'd have rolled his eyes, but found Jack's little smile and slight embarrassment quite genuine.
"Next room?" he suggested, and Jack nodded and followed him down the corridor a little way to the door across the hall.
Again the lights refused to work, and as Ianto shone his torch around they saw it was in pretty much the same shape as the other one. "All this space wasted," sighed Ianto. "Admin error, d'ya think? Or maybe this is where we keep the invisible stuff, only no one's labelled it right."
"Maybe," agreed Jack with a nod.
Ianto rolled his eyes. "It was a joke, Jack."
"I'm bored," Jack declared.
"Aren't you interested to know where the stuff has gone?"
"Or was there any stuff here to start with?" Jack added. Ianto raised an eyebrow. "Ask me again when I'm not horny. I think you'll find I care a lot."
Ianto snatched his clipboard back. "Fine. Go upstairs and wait for me; I'll check if there's anything on this corridor at all."
"And if there is?"
"You'll be waiting a while," Ianto replied curtly.
Jack made an exasperated noise, then began to make his way almost blindly back to the dim light glowing in the stairwell above as Ianto swung the door to the other room shut.
"Jack?"
"Yeah?"
"I'll probably find time to do a bit of cataloguing in the wardrobe section ... if you wanna lend a hand … ?"
Jack grinned. "Maybe I could start ahead of you? Find some of the more interesting exhibits and set them aside for your special attention?"
"Sounds very, very helpful."
Jack winked and bounded up the stairs, and Ianto watched him leave with a smile playing on his lips. With a slight shake he remembered himself, and turned to make his way to the next door on the corridor. He wondered briefly how many rooms were here - usually there were about ten per tunnel, but it varied from level to level. Some tunnels housed only two or three rooms; one of the ones a little further up led to at least thirty.
The next room was the same, as was the next. He hit the end of the tunnel, approximated six rooms on this floor, three either side, and crossed over to start on the opposing ones. He'd already checked the first one on this side earlier, so after finding the other end one empty, moved to the middle one.
He'd expected the final one to be vacant also, so when blinding light hit his eyes so hard he had to slam the door shut again, he was more than a little surprised. He opened the door a crack, waited for his eyes to adjust a little, then peered inside. Realisation hit pretty instantly: the room was so bright because it was lined with mirrors. Even the ceiling and floor were mirrored, faceted to give as many reflections as possible. Large bunches of futuristic light bulbs appeared in clusters at intervals along the walls, and occasionally the mirrors were interrupted by tall tanks of dead insects and creepy-crawlies, mostly ones that Ianto couldn't even identify.
In the centre of this room stood four stone statues; elegant angels, one of which was covering her face as if weeping; the others were stood staring vacantly ahead, their booked hands lowered as if interrupted in their grief. Their eyes were blank, like Grecian statues were, and their stone was chipped and worn. The wings bore the brunt of the damage, with harsh angles cut into the bottom-most feathers. One of them had fingernail marks scratched down her shoulders and over her chest.
Ianto surveyed the montage through squinted eyes, and a sense of foreboding overtook him. He didn't like looking at those statues. They were ... wrong. He reached for the scanner clipped to his belt, and held it up, waiting for it to beep completion. The room was buzzing with Rift energy, and another kind of residual radiation it couldn't identify. With a shiver, Ianto reached over and flicked off the light, biting back annoyance at whomever had left it on for so many years. He jumped in surprise as the lights in the tunnel flickered on at the loss of power to the statue room, and he shut the door firmly behind him to frown up at the fluorescent tube.
The door behind him creaked, and he nearly jumped out of his skin, spinning faster than he ever had in his life. His heart was in his throat, his breath was catching, cold sweat was stinging his brow: fear, he realised. Through the dim light now cast into the room beyond, he could vaguely see one of those stone angels, closer than he'd initially thought, staring vacantly ahead. With deep, calming breaths, he reached out and shut the door again, turning the catch to lock it in case it decided to swing open of its own accord again.
Flicking off his torch and making his way back toward the stairs in the new found light, he decided to leave cataloguing for the night and made a note to check the Archived information on the statues. He decided to name them "Weeping Angels", if they didn't have a name already, and to find out exactly why they were so full of energy and what exactly merited them a special room to themselves on the lower levels of the hub.
Ianto flicked off the lights, and made his way back to the dingy office, shuffling his papers together and boxing them back up.
A crash sounded from somewhere - it was hard to tell where in the echoing Archives - and he assumed Jack had probably just caused him a good hour or so in reorganisation time. He smiled to himself as a rogue spidery-mouse-thing scurried across the floor and out into the main tunnel, and followed it with a whistled tune.
He tutted loudly, and bent down to tie his shoelace, pausing as the back of his neck prickled and the feeling of being watched made his stomach knot. It was dusky in the tunnel - one of the fluorescent tubes wasn't working - and he couldn't make out much in the dark ahead of him.
'It's just the spidery-mouse-thing and the whole 'It's Hallowe'en!' vibe that's getting to you …' he thought to himself, standing and making his way to the main stairs, forgetting his momentary silliness and thinking only of Jack waiting for him.
Little did he know that the spidery-mouse-thing was, indeed watching him. It was the fact it had been watching him, crouched in its shadowy corner and shaking with instinctual terror as it stared at him that had, indeed saved him. Had he turned around, he'd have seen it, too.
A Weeping Angel: cold, vacant eyes; hand and finger extended less than an inch from where his shoulder had only just been, reaching desperately for her prey.
Next Part
When all the parts are posted, I'll upload a wonderful, shiny, coloured and customised .pdf for you all. :)
Chapter: 01/08
Characters: Janto Team!fic
Author: a_silver_story
Genre Horrorrrrrr.
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Erm ... hopefully it's scary. Minor gore.
Disclaimer: If I owned anything in this, I'd be a rich rich rich bitch. However, I am not a rich rich rich bitch so you may all, therefore, assume I own nothing. Which I don't. It all belongs RTD and the BBC, in case any of you didn't know.
Summary: Ianto decides to do the decade-ly inventory of the Archives - with rather scary results (and I'm not talking about bad organisation skills). Slight crossover with Doctor Who S3.
Note #1: This story was written the October before 'The Time of Angels' and 'Flesh and Stone' aired, so please don't message me regarding any inconsistencies with canon you may find.
Note #2: I've deleted the original version of this from LJ, and am posting this corrected version one chapter at a time, one day at a time.
Ianto yawned and stretched, his eyes itching as he tried to focus on the papers in front of him. The dim light from his desk lamp in the dark made his eyes ache with the effort of reading, and a drip drip drip sound reverberating from somewhere in the depths of the Archives was driving him insane.
Only three more hours work, and he could finally go home. Well, to Jack's bunker, but that was home enough.
"Whatcha up to?"
'Speak of the Devil …' thought Ianto.
"Once a decade, we have to take an inventory," he sighed, leaning back in his chair as Jack entered the dingy little office. It wasn't the office Ianto usually used. This one was so deep in the belly of the Archives, he hardly even remembered how to find it - never mind clean it or use it. Jack had obviously had to use some form of heat tracking device to find him this deep down.
"Ahhh yes. I remember ... a mention of that …" Jack nodded.
Ianto raised an eyebrow as Jack came to stand behind him and rest hands on his shoulders. "A 'mention'? I sent you about ... five memos."
"Did you draw rude pictures on?" asked Jack, massaging the knots in Ianto's neck and shoulders gently.
"No," Ianto scowled.
"Then why would I bother to read them?"
"Jack!" Ianto tried to shake him off in annoyance.
"Joking! Joking!" he laughed, kissing his head. "How long are you going to be?"
"Another three hours, I should think. Less if you helped ..."
Ianto hoped he'd take the hint.
"Awwww. But it's Hallowe'en! I thought maybe we could go to the wardrobe section and pick out something a bit saucy ... have ourselves some costume sex ..."
"We could ... if I wasn't so far behind."
Jack sighed resignedly. "What do you want me to do?"
Ianto beamed at him, and pushed forward a clipboard with lined paper and a pen. "We need to go down to the level below and write down the names and reference numbers of everything in the first three rooms."
Jack groaned. "Everything?"
"Everything."
"Then what?"
"We need to compare them to the census from 1999 - which, by the way, I can't find ..."
"Of course you can't find it. We never did one."
Ianto blinked. "Why not?"
"Boring," Jack shrugged. "No-one could be bothered."
Ianto muttered darkly to himself about Torchwood lasting longer than anyone would believe given some of its past (and present) employees. Jack didn't seem to notice, picking at the cookie sat by Ianto's cold coffee and stealing as many chocolate Smarties with little spiders on as he could.
Eventually Ianto pushed his chair back and urged Jack to follow suit, shoving the clipboard into his hands and telling him he had to write down everything he was told to, in two neat columns and in legible handwriting.
Jack was happy to do as he was told as long as he was allowed to keep a step behind and watch Ianto's tight trousers hug his buttocks as he walked.
They descended the stairs, the drip of leaking pipe getting louder and echoing down the tunnel they emerged into. Ianto flicked the light switch, tutted loudly when nothing happened, then reached into his jacket pocket to retrieve a torch.
"Make a note of that," Ianto instructed, and Jack obediently began to blindly scribble. "Chances are the electrics need re-wiring anyway. I don't think anyone's been down here for years - oh!"
Ianto had opened the first door expecting to find the typical Archive vault behind, but instead he was greeted by an empty room, dust-filled shelves and another set of lights that weren't working. Jack poked his head in behind him.
"Hmmm," he said. "Nothing to catalogue." Jack shook his head in mock regret, knowing their expected finishing time had just gone down by at least an hour and a half.
Ianto frowned. "All the rooms on this floor are marked as full on every census so far. What happened?"
"Don't know," Jack shrugged. "During stock-taking I generally ... made myself scarce."
"I'll take it as compliment that you're still here now."
Jack smiled sheepishly, then leant over and pecked his cheek. Had Ianto thought the shyness was an act, he'd have rolled his eyes, but found Jack's little smile and slight embarrassment quite genuine.
"Next room?" he suggested, and Jack nodded and followed him down the corridor a little way to the door across the hall.
Again the lights refused to work, and as Ianto shone his torch around they saw it was in pretty much the same shape as the other one. "All this space wasted," sighed Ianto. "Admin error, d'ya think? Or maybe this is where we keep the invisible stuff, only no one's labelled it right."
"Maybe," agreed Jack with a nod.
Ianto rolled his eyes. "It was a joke, Jack."
"I'm bored," Jack declared.
"Aren't you interested to know where the stuff has gone?"
"Or was there any stuff here to start with?" Jack added. Ianto raised an eyebrow. "Ask me again when I'm not horny. I think you'll find I care a lot."
Ianto snatched his clipboard back. "Fine. Go upstairs and wait for me; I'll check if there's anything on this corridor at all."
"And if there is?"
"You'll be waiting a while," Ianto replied curtly.
Jack made an exasperated noise, then began to make his way almost blindly back to the dim light glowing in the stairwell above as Ianto swung the door to the other room shut.
"Jack?"
"Yeah?"
"I'll probably find time to do a bit of cataloguing in the wardrobe section ... if you wanna lend a hand … ?"
Jack grinned. "Maybe I could start ahead of you? Find some of the more interesting exhibits and set them aside for your special attention?"
"Sounds very, very helpful."
Jack winked and bounded up the stairs, and Ianto watched him leave with a smile playing on his lips. With a slight shake he remembered himself, and turned to make his way to the next door on the corridor. He wondered briefly how many rooms were here - usually there were about ten per tunnel, but it varied from level to level. Some tunnels housed only two or three rooms; one of the ones a little further up led to at least thirty.
The next room was the same, as was the next. He hit the end of the tunnel, approximated six rooms on this floor, three either side, and crossed over to start on the opposing ones. He'd already checked the first one on this side earlier, so after finding the other end one empty, moved to the middle one.
He'd expected the final one to be vacant also, so when blinding light hit his eyes so hard he had to slam the door shut again, he was more than a little surprised. He opened the door a crack, waited for his eyes to adjust a little, then peered inside. Realisation hit pretty instantly: the room was so bright because it was lined with mirrors. Even the ceiling and floor were mirrored, faceted to give as many reflections as possible. Large bunches of futuristic light bulbs appeared in clusters at intervals along the walls, and occasionally the mirrors were interrupted by tall tanks of dead insects and creepy-crawlies, mostly ones that Ianto couldn't even identify.
In the centre of this room stood four stone statues; elegant angels, one of which was covering her face as if weeping; the others were stood staring vacantly ahead, their booked hands lowered as if interrupted in their grief. Their eyes were blank, like Grecian statues were, and their stone was chipped and worn. The wings bore the brunt of the damage, with harsh angles cut into the bottom-most feathers. One of them had fingernail marks scratched down her shoulders and over her chest.
Ianto surveyed the montage through squinted eyes, and a sense of foreboding overtook him. He didn't like looking at those statues. They were ... wrong. He reached for the scanner clipped to his belt, and held it up, waiting for it to beep completion. The room was buzzing with Rift energy, and another kind of residual radiation it couldn't identify. With a shiver, Ianto reached over and flicked off the light, biting back annoyance at whomever had left it on for so many years. He jumped in surprise as the lights in the tunnel flickered on at the loss of power to the statue room, and he shut the door firmly behind him to frown up at the fluorescent tube.
The door behind him creaked, and he nearly jumped out of his skin, spinning faster than he ever had in his life. His heart was in his throat, his breath was catching, cold sweat was stinging his brow: fear, he realised. Through the dim light now cast into the room beyond, he could vaguely see one of those stone angels, closer than he'd initially thought, staring vacantly ahead. With deep, calming breaths, he reached out and shut the door again, turning the catch to lock it in case it decided to swing open of its own accord again.
Flicking off his torch and making his way back toward the stairs in the new found light, he decided to leave cataloguing for the night and made a note to check the Archived information on the statues. He decided to name them "Weeping Angels", if they didn't have a name already, and to find out exactly why they were so full of energy and what exactly merited them a special room to themselves on the lower levels of the hub.
Ianto flicked off the lights, and made his way back to the dingy office, shuffling his papers together and boxing them back up.
A crash sounded from somewhere - it was hard to tell where in the echoing Archives - and he assumed Jack had probably just caused him a good hour or so in reorganisation time. He smiled to himself as a rogue spidery-mouse-thing scurried across the floor and out into the main tunnel, and followed it with a whistled tune.
He tutted loudly, and bent down to tie his shoelace, pausing as the back of his neck prickled and the feeling of being watched made his stomach knot. It was dusky in the tunnel - one of the fluorescent tubes wasn't working - and he couldn't make out much in the dark ahead of him.
'It's just the spidery-mouse-thing and the whole 'It's Hallowe'en!' vibe that's getting to you …' he thought to himself, standing and making his way to the main stairs, forgetting his momentary silliness and thinking only of Jack waiting for him.
Little did he know that the spidery-mouse-thing was, indeed watching him. It was the fact it had been watching him, crouched in its shadowy corner and shaking with instinctual terror as it stared at him that had, indeed saved him. Had he turned around, he'd have seen it, too.
A Weeping Angel: cold, vacant eyes; hand and finger extended less than an inch from where his shoulder had only just been, reaching desperately for her prey.
Next Part
When all the parts are posted, I'll upload a wonderful, shiny, coloured and customised .pdf for you all. :)