FIC: I Would Rather Be with the People of This Team, Than w/ the Finest People in the World (Part 1)
Title: I Would Rather Be with the People of This Team, Than with the Finest People in the World (Red Is My Colour Prompt for Day Thirty)
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Tosh, Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Jack/Ianto
Words: 3,600
Setting: season two, post-“Something Borrowed” and pre-“Fragments”
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Team Fic! Tosh and Jack get captured; Ianto, Gwen and Owen come to the rescue.
A/N: Just one more to go, y’all! Special Internet cookies (or biscuits) for whoever guesses the 1987 movie I stole a quote from (had to change one word) for the title.
Prompt:
Snow began to fall, and so did the temperature. This, however, did
not bother the Company much, except when they had to bare their
backsides to pass hraka in some nook among the cliffs, wiping with
snow that was happily newly-fallen and soft, not composed of hard
sharp grains. Nor were they troubled much by the rising wind, which
made the snow swirl.
The Fellowship of the Ring, Book ii, Chapter 3
J. R. R. Tolkien
Jack came back to the feel of cold stone beneath him and the smell of sulfur clogging his nostrils, neither of which boded particularly well in his mind. However, he also came back to a hum that he definitely recognized as belonging to one Toshiko Sato, so not a total loss then.
Jack opened his eyes and sighed. This was definitely a cell, and underground at that. Glancing down, he noticed that his wriststrap was missing. Tosh was feeling around the corners, humming a Japanese lullaby, and looked over when Jack stirred.
“Hey!” she threw him a beautiful smile. “I’m glad you’re back!”
“And it’s great to be here! Where’s here?”
“’Here’ is the dungeon belonging to his Wise and Worshipful Kallypopsi the XXVII, and get this - it’s a portable dungeon. Sort of.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “How can it be only a sort of portable dungeon?”
Tosh hedged. “Well . . . okay, here’s the thing,” she continued in a rush. “We’re still on Earth, right? But we’re existing in kind of a bubble. The bubble is both on Earth and on Kallyp.”
“And you know this . . . how, exactly?”
Tosh looked down, took a breath, and crossed over to Jack. “Jack, I saw a dragon!” she whispered excitedly. “That smell? Dragon!”
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shining.
Jack rubbed the back of his neck, and stopped abruptly. He was starting to pick up Ianto’s mannerisms. Next he’d be rolling his eyes every other sentence and brewing fantastic coffee.
He sighed. “A real dragon. Great. How the hell did this happen?”
It happened like this: Andy Davidson, one of Cardiff’s finest, had called Gwen Cooper(-Williams) early that morning to inform her of a spooky-do. The Welsh Committee for the Promotion of Faggots*, Laverbread, and Crempogs (*The Food, Not the Offensive Slur, Everyone Is Welcome at WCPFLC, and Not the Cigarettes, Neither, We’ve Been Trying to Quit) had been interrupted in the middle of their breakfast meeting. According to Andy, a fight had broken out between two factions: those who wanted to add Lob Scows to the Committee’s name, and those who thought Lob Scows were not centralized enough and adding two more words to their 32-word title might make some people talk, besides. The fight had turned into mass hysteria when the dragon on their Committee banner suddenly came to life and started breathing fire. The dragon was no longer there when Andy arrived on the scene, but there were definite scorch marks through the meeting hall and the stench in the air was worse than even the strongest laverbread. Andy had called Gwen, just in case, and the entire Torchwood team had trouped off to the meeting hall to investigate (and to grab a free breakfast - for four of them, at any rate).
Unfortunately, Tosh’s scans picked up definite Rift activity, or at least the echoes of definite Rift activity. Tiny spikes were being set off all over the building, with no apparent purpose. A eureka moment was had when Owen accidentally stumbled through a spike - his entire midsection disappeared in one step, and came slamming back with the next one. Jack recognized the effects of spatial displacement, and Tosh’s scanner confirmed it: there was Something Fishy going on.
They cleared the building of all other humans, and then things quickly took a turn for the worse. Flashes of aliens that Jack hazily recalled from his travels but could not name kept appearing in front of them. Most had oversize butterfly nets, but Team Torchwood could not figure out what they were looking for, though they guessed it was the dragon that had interrupted breakfast, and none of the aliens seemed inclined to talk to them. One of them had even gone so far as to make a definitely rude gesture at Gwen when she had approached it. They decided to split up. Most of the Rift spikes had originated in the basement, but most of the alien sightings had taken place on the second floor. Jack and Tosh went to the basement. Ianto, Gwen and Owen went to the second floor.
Upon reaching the third step into the basement, Jack had suffered one of his most undignified deaths yet when he slipped on a squashed crempog and fell down the stairs, snapping his neck in the process. However, when they got to the bottom of the stairs (Jack by falling, Tosh by running after Jack) they found themselves in an entirely different chamber and were immediately taken captive by an angry mob of Kallyps. As far as Tosh could tell, they had been charged by their leader, the Wise and Worshipful Kallypopsi the XXVII, to bring him 28 dragons for the ceremony that would transfer power from him to the Sexy and Succinct Kallypopsi the XXVIII, otherwise known as SS Kal.
“So why are we being held here?” Jack grumbled.
Tosh hesitated, and her eyes lost a bit of her sparkle. “Um . . . I think we’re supposed to feed the dragons.”
Jack gaped at her.
“Cockles and cawl! We’re supposed to feed them cockles and cawl, not ourselves!” she hurriedly explained. “It’s just, the ceremony for the transfer of power? It’s supposed to last for 28 years.”
Jack looked around. “Well then. I think I’ve had my fill of Kallyp hospitality, how about you?”
Tosh nodded. “Though seeing the dragon was cool.” She pointed to the far side of the cell. “I haven’t gotten to that side yet.”
Jack crossed over and began to feel along the walls, searching for a loose brick, or perhaps a jagged rock he could use as a weapon or tool. Cold air was definitely blowing in through some chinks on this side.
Jack snorted. “This brings back memories.”
Tosh cut her eyes at him. “For me, too.”
Jack paused. Tosh had been in a UNIT cell, the basement of cannibals, and several other little escapades that perhaps did not call to mind the most pleasant of memories. Keeping his tone deliberately light, he asked her, “Did I ever tell you about the time I was stuck on a mountain for a week with John Hart and two other Time Agents?”
Tosh smiled slightly. “Was it a week in real-time?”
“Indeed it was. This was before that other bit. Anyway, we were supposed to be watching for this avalanche. Huh,” he sat back on his heels, “I probably shouldn’t tell you why. Suffice it to say, there was a herd of this goat-like animal that really needed to make it out of that avalanche alive.”
He started up on his section of the wall again. “We were staying in this stone cabin, much like this cell, and the wind would just worm its way through the chinks. I had to - you’re not going to repeat this story to Ianto, are you? - never mind. I kept warm, I’ll leave it at that.”
A brick wriggled under his prying fingers and Jack smiled, digging around it. “The toilet clogged the last day we were there, producing a smell even worse than what we are treated to right now. John decided to go outside, pulled his pants down in front of a pile of fresh snow, and then - ”
Jack started to laugh, remembering. Tosh looked at him, curious for the punchline.
“One of the goat-things was sleeping in that snow! It speared him right through the left butt cheek! And John shrieks so loud, he started the avalanche. So there he was, blood running down his arse and leg, chasing after these weird goats while snow comes thundering down.”
Jack wiped at his eyes, “Wow, I can’t believe I had almost forgotten that story.”
“Yes Jack, I’m thrilled you shared it,” Tosh smiled, easing the sarcasm a bit.
The loose brick in Jack’s section finally fell out. Tosh came over and crouched on her hands and knees to look through the hole. “Damn. They’re at least two-bricks-thick.”
She sighed. “This would be so much easier if there was an actual door.”
Jack leaned back against the wall. “Can you describe how we got in here?”
Tosh closed her eyes. “Okay. We were blindfolded. They couldn’t tell you were dead. We walked about six paces from what had been the stairs. I think we were both then picked up. I felt air whoosh past my face, and then I heard nothing. I took off our blindfolds. They were gone, and we were here.”
She opened her eyes suddenly. “I felt air go past my face . . .” slowly she raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Jack!”
She pointed upwards. There was their door.
***
Meanwhile, outside the bubble in actual Cardiff, Ianto, Gwen and Owen gathered in a broom closet for a war council.
“Right. Let’s lay out the facts of the situation,” Gwen began, taking charge.
“One, Jack and Tosh are missing and cannot be reached on their comms. Two, their trackers say they are in the basement, but they’re not in the basement,” Ianto started.
“That alien was saying that they got two feeders for the dragons. I think it’s safe to assume that he was referring to Jack and Tosh,” Gwen added.
“That doesn’t tell us where they are,” Owen muttered.
Gwen rounded on him. “Weren’t you paying any attention to what Tosh was saying earlier? If bits and pieces of another place were seeping into our ‘here,’ then doesn’t it make sense that we could seep to ‘there’?”
“Okay, genius, how do you propose we get ‘there,’ then?” Owen snapped back. “And once we’re ‘there,’ how do we get back ‘here’?”
Gwen opened her mouth for an angry retort, thought better of it, and instead said, “Those aliens appear to come and go just fine. I think the trick for us will be to get ‘there’ instead of randomly hoping to stumble into it. Then I bet we can walk right out!”
Owen stared. “That’s an awfully big assumption.”
Gwen shrugged. “Well, we’ll have Tosh then, too. She’ll be able to come up with a getaway plan.”
“That’s a shitty plan. But Tosh is brilliant, so . . .”
“Thanks for your support, Owen.” Gwen squared her shoulders. “Now we just have to figure out how to get ‘there’ without getting captured.”
Ianto finally spoke up. “The butterfly nets. The dragon from earlier. Jack and Tosh as dragon feeders. I think it’s obvious: we offer to sell them a dragon.”
Gwen looked startled, and then grinned. “Good one, Ianto!”
He inclined his head. “I think we should borrow a couple of things from Davidson, though, just to be safe. And I have something in the SUV that might help our . . . disguise.”
Part two: blue-fjords.livejournal.com/11116.html#cutid1
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Tosh, Jack, Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Jack/Ianto
Words: 3,600
Setting: season two, post-“Something Borrowed” and pre-“Fragments”
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: Team Fic! Tosh and Jack get captured; Ianto, Gwen and Owen come to the rescue.
A/N: Just one more to go, y’all! Special Internet cookies (or biscuits) for whoever guesses the 1987 movie I stole a quote from (had to change one word) for the title.
Prompt:
Snow began to fall, and so did the temperature. This, however, did
not bother the Company much, except when they had to bare their
backsides to pass hraka in some nook among the cliffs, wiping with
snow that was happily newly-fallen and soft, not composed of hard
sharp grains. Nor were they troubled much by the rising wind, which
made the snow swirl.
The Fellowship of the Ring, Book ii, Chapter 3
J. R. R. Tolkien
Jack came back to the feel of cold stone beneath him and the smell of sulfur clogging his nostrils, neither of which boded particularly well in his mind. However, he also came back to a hum that he definitely recognized as belonging to one Toshiko Sato, so not a total loss then.
Jack opened his eyes and sighed. This was definitely a cell, and underground at that. Glancing down, he noticed that his wriststrap was missing. Tosh was feeling around the corners, humming a Japanese lullaby, and looked over when Jack stirred.
“Hey!” she threw him a beautiful smile. “I’m glad you’re back!”
“And it’s great to be here! Where’s here?”
“’Here’ is the dungeon belonging to his Wise and Worshipful Kallypopsi the XXVII, and get this - it’s a portable dungeon. Sort of.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “How can it be only a sort of portable dungeon?”
Tosh hedged. “Well . . . okay, here’s the thing,” she continued in a rush. “We’re still on Earth, right? But we’re existing in kind of a bubble. The bubble is both on Earth and on Kallyp.”
“And you know this . . . how, exactly?”
Tosh looked down, took a breath, and crossed over to Jack. “Jack, I saw a dragon!” she whispered excitedly. “That smell? Dragon!”
Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were shining.
Jack rubbed the back of his neck, and stopped abruptly. He was starting to pick up Ianto’s mannerisms. Next he’d be rolling his eyes every other sentence and brewing fantastic coffee.
He sighed. “A real dragon. Great. How the hell did this happen?”
It happened like this: Andy Davidson, one of Cardiff’s finest, had called Gwen Cooper(-Williams) early that morning to inform her of a spooky-do. The Welsh Committee for the Promotion of Faggots*, Laverbread, and Crempogs (*The Food, Not the Offensive Slur, Everyone Is Welcome at WCPFLC, and Not the Cigarettes, Neither, We’ve Been Trying to Quit) had been interrupted in the middle of their breakfast meeting. According to Andy, a fight had broken out between two factions: those who wanted to add Lob Scows to the Committee’s name, and those who thought Lob Scows were not centralized enough and adding two more words to their 32-word title might make some people talk, besides. The fight had turned into mass hysteria when the dragon on their Committee banner suddenly came to life and started breathing fire. The dragon was no longer there when Andy arrived on the scene, but there were definite scorch marks through the meeting hall and the stench in the air was worse than even the strongest laverbread. Andy had called Gwen, just in case, and the entire Torchwood team had trouped off to the meeting hall to investigate (and to grab a free breakfast - for four of them, at any rate).
Unfortunately, Tosh’s scans picked up definite Rift activity, or at least the echoes of definite Rift activity. Tiny spikes were being set off all over the building, with no apparent purpose. A eureka moment was had when Owen accidentally stumbled through a spike - his entire midsection disappeared in one step, and came slamming back with the next one. Jack recognized the effects of spatial displacement, and Tosh’s scanner confirmed it: there was Something Fishy going on.
They cleared the building of all other humans, and then things quickly took a turn for the worse. Flashes of aliens that Jack hazily recalled from his travels but could not name kept appearing in front of them. Most had oversize butterfly nets, but Team Torchwood could not figure out what they were looking for, though they guessed it was the dragon that had interrupted breakfast, and none of the aliens seemed inclined to talk to them. One of them had even gone so far as to make a definitely rude gesture at Gwen when she had approached it. They decided to split up. Most of the Rift spikes had originated in the basement, but most of the alien sightings had taken place on the second floor. Jack and Tosh went to the basement. Ianto, Gwen and Owen went to the second floor.
Upon reaching the third step into the basement, Jack had suffered one of his most undignified deaths yet when he slipped on a squashed crempog and fell down the stairs, snapping his neck in the process. However, when they got to the bottom of the stairs (Jack by falling, Tosh by running after Jack) they found themselves in an entirely different chamber and were immediately taken captive by an angry mob of Kallyps. As far as Tosh could tell, they had been charged by their leader, the Wise and Worshipful Kallypopsi the XXVII, to bring him 28 dragons for the ceremony that would transfer power from him to the Sexy and Succinct Kallypopsi the XXVIII, otherwise known as SS Kal.
“So why are we being held here?” Jack grumbled.
Tosh hesitated, and her eyes lost a bit of her sparkle. “Um . . . I think we’re supposed to feed the dragons.”
Jack gaped at her.
“Cockles and cawl! We’re supposed to feed them cockles and cawl, not ourselves!” she hurriedly explained. “It’s just, the ceremony for the transfer of power? It’s supposed to last for 28 years.”
Jack looked around. “Well then. I think I’ve had my fill of Kallyp hospitality, how about you?”
Tosh nodded. “Though seeing the dragon was cool.” She pointed to the far side of the cell. “I haven’t gotten to that side yet.”
Jack crossed over and began to feel along the walls, searching for a loose brick, or perhaps a jagged rock he could use as a weapon or tool. Cold air was definitely blowing in through some chinks on this side.
Jack snorted. “This brings back memories.”
Tosh cut her eyes at him. “For me, too.”
Jack paused. Tosh had been in a UNIT cell, the basement of cannibals, and several other little escapades that perhaps did not call to mind the most pleasant of memories. Keeping his tone deliberately light, he asked her, “Did I ever tell you about the time I was stuck on a mountain for a week with John Hart and two other Time Agents?”
Tosh smiled slightly. “Was it a week in real-time?”
“Indeed it was. This was before that other bit. Anyway, we were supposed to be watching for this avalanche. Huh,” he sat back on his heels, “I probably shouldn’t tell you why. Suffice it to say, there was a herd of this goat-like animal that really needed to make it out of that avalanche alive.”
He started up on his section of the wall again. “We were staying in this stone cabin, much like this cell, and the wind would just worm its way through the chinks. I had to - you’re not going to repeat this story to Ianto, are you? - never mind. I kept warm, I’ll leave it at that.”
A brick wriggled under his prying fingers and Jack smiled, digging around it. “The toilet clogged the last day we were there, producing a smell even worse than what we are treated to right now. John decided to go outside, pulled his pants down in front of a pile of fresh snow, and then - ”
Jack started to laugh, remembering. Tosh looked at him, curious for the punchline.
“One of the goat-things was sleeping in that snow! It speared him right through the left butt cheek! And John shrieks so loud, he started the avalanche. So there he was, blood running down his arse and leg, chasing after these weird goats while snow comes thundering down.”
Jack wiped at his eyes, “Wow, I can’t believe I had almost forgotten that story.”
“Yes Jack, I’m thrilled you shared it,” Tosh smiled, easing the sarcasm a bit.
The loose brick in Jack’s section finally fell out. Tosh came over and crouched on her hands and knees to look through the hole. “Damn. They’re at least two-bricks-thick.”
She sighed. “This would be so much easier if there was an actual door.”
Jack leaned back against the wall. “Can you describe how we got in here?”
Tosh closed her eyes. “Okay. We were blindfolded. They couldn’t tell you were dead. We walked about six paces from what had been the stairs. I think we were both then picked up. I felt air whoosh past my face, and then I heard nothing. I took off our blindfolds. They were gone, and we were here.”
She opened her eyes suddenly. “I felt air go past my face . . .” slowly she raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Jack!”
She pointed upwards. There was their door.
***
Meanwhile, outside the bubble in actual Cardiff, Ianto, Gwen and Owen gathered in a broom closet for a war council.
“Right. Let’s lay out the facts of the situation,” Gwen began, taking charge.
“One, Jack and Tosh are missing and cannot be reached on their comms. Two, their trackers say they are in the basement, but they’re not in the basement,” Ianto started.
“That alien was saying that they got two feeders for the dragons. I think it’s safe to assume that he was referring to Jack and Tosh,” Gwen added.
“That doesn’t tell us where they are,” Owen muttered.
Gwen rounded on him. “Weren’t you paying any attention to what Tosh was saying earlier? If bits and pieces of another place were seeping into our ‘here,’ then doesn’t it make sense that we could seep to ‘there’?”
“Okay, genius, how do you propose we get ‘there,’ then?” Owen snapped back. “And once we’re ‘there,’ how do we get back ‘here’?”
Gwen opened her mouth for an angry retort, thought better of it, and instead said, “Those aliens appear to come and go just fine. I think the trick for us will be to get ‘there’ instead of randomly hoping to stumble into it. Then I bet we can walk right out!”
Owen stared. “That’s an awfully big assumption.”
Gwen shrugged. “Well, we’ll have Tosh then, too. She’ll be able to come up with a getaway plan.”
“That’s a shitty plan. But Tosh is brilliant, so . . .”
“Thanks for your support, Owen.” Gwen squared her shoulders. “Now we just have to figure out how to get ‘there’ without getting captured.”
Ianto finally spoke up. “The butterfly nets. The dragon from earlier. Jack and Tosh as dragon feeders. I think it’s obvious: we offer to sell them a dragon.”
Gwen looked startled, and then grinned. “Good one, Ianto!”
He inclined his head. “I think we should borrow a couple of things from Davidson, though, just to be safe. And I have something in the SUV that might help our . . . disguise.”
Part two: blue-fjords.livejournal.com/11116.html#cutid1