Mermaids [fic]
Title: Mermaids
Author: shadowbyrd
Rating: PG - 13
Pairing[s]: Tosh/Pearl
Word Count: 916
Summary: Pearl learns to get with the times. Unfortunately for Tosh...
Tosh was starting home early, just leaving a last-minute memo to Jack about the recent Rift activity when she heard the noise.
“Hello?”
She trotted back to her workstation and checked the comm signals. Jack and Ianto seemed to be on their way back from Providence Park, while Gwen and Owen were still making enquiries at the hospital.
She was alone, alright. Very alone. Not in a good way.
She sent a brief message to Jack and Ianto to hurry them back and drew her gun out from under her desk, checking the cells via the CCTV. There didn’t seem to be anything missing, but Tosh decided she ought to double check herself. Better safe than sorry.
She started down towards the lower levels. Then stopped and turned around.
As she watched, a steady stream of bubbles drifted to the surface of the pool surrounding the water tower. Tosh clicked the safety off and approached slowly. It couldn’t be one of the Weevils - they hated water.
Suddenly, the bubbles stopped.
She waited a minute, and then another, but no more bubbles came. Tosh hesitated, then leant forward slightly, peering at the water’s the dark glass smooth surface. She had a moment to consider her own ghostly reflection, when the water erupted in a sudden cascade. A pair of pale hands crashed from the water and snatched her wrists. Tosh fired on reflex, but it missed by miles. Deathly hands wrenched hers around and against the joints. Her finger went loose around her gun, causing it to splash and sink into the water. Her wrists were twisted further, jerking her forward into the girl’s bone-pale face.
The girl smiled, her breath misting before Toshiko’s eyes. “Hello, pretty.”
Toshiko kicked out with both legs. The hands released her wrists, only to grab at her ankles and drag her down and under. Tosh clung to the railing and tried to pull back out.
“Come on in, pretty girl,” the girl cooed, voice frail as a child’s. She sounded almost friendly. Those hands, lithe and so much stronger than they looked, smoothed up her legs and grabbed at her waist. She leant forward, cold lips moving against Tosh’s cheek. “Come play with me.”
With a wordless yell Tosh kicked out again and scrambled backwards onto dry land. The girl followed, clambering out in way that anyone else would have made look ungainly.
Tosh got to her feet and backed away, shoving back the panic and trying to think. What would work? What would hurt her?
“Don’t you want to?” asked the girl in terrible little sing-song.
“Toshiko!”
Tosh whipped her head around and almost sagged with relief. Jack and Ianto were back, guns out and ready. She turned back and her blood ran cold. The girl had disappeared.
“There, see?” Tosh pointed at the screen.
Jack nodded slowly. “One of the Night Travellers.”
Tosh shuddered. “She was freezing.”
“She will be. She’s been dead at least fifty years.”
“That why she didn’t raise any of the alarms?” asked Ianto.
Jack shrugged. “They’re all basically fragments of film, just so much light and shadow. They could get in anywhere.”
Ianto glared at Jack over Tosh’s head, but before he could say anything Jack’s mobile rang.
“That was Bernard. More of the footage is missing.” Jack started toward the door, tapping Ianto on the arm as he passed. “Let’s go.”
Tosh spent the next couple of days quietly spooling through CCTV footage and missing persons files as per Gwen’s directions.
No one saw the screen flicker on in the boardroom, flicking through the Hub’s own CCTV, and later they were too focused on the little showdown playing out before them to notice the small puddles slowly evaporating under the constant barrage of air conditioning.
Pearl had never been allowed to hold the flask; all that time she spent underwater, things used to just slip through her fingers, and they couldn’t have that. Not with something so precious. Except now the Ghost Maker had been destroyed she had no way of continuing to capture an audience on her own.
Which wasn’t to say that she couldn’t catch people. Or take their breath away. It just meant she couldn’t keep them as long. So she had to wring out every last drop from them. All of them.
Her favourite was the small Japanese woman. She was easy to snatch and easy to hold just under the surface. Pearl watched in fascination as she thrashed against her, as though in the throes of passion, her eyes rolling wide with panic and fear. That the moment Pearl loved; that moment where the realisation hit that there was no hope of escape, that moment when the fear was almost wonder. Almost.
She drew this one out, sure to let her pretty girl just claw at the air with her fingers, just gasp at it with her lips before pushing her under again. The moment finally came, though, when her limbs went limp, moving where the water pushed them, and her head lolled back, finally submitting to her fate.
Pearl licked her lips and drew her out of the water, putting the girl’s blue-lipped mouth, full to the teeth with water, against her own, drinking it down. She was sure she could almost taste those last moments of terror and desperation.
They found her floating Ophelia-like on the surface of the pool, a few withered, rotting flowers and a ticket of wet pink sugar paper in her hands.
Author: shadowbyrd
Rating: PG - 13
Pairing[s]: Tosh/Pearl
Word Count: 916
Summary: Pearl learns to get with the times. Unfortunately for Tosh...
Tosh was starting home early, just leaving a last-minute memo to Jack about the recent Rift activity when she heard the noise.
“Hello?”
She trotted back to her workstation and checked the comm signals. Jack and Ianto seemed to be on their way back from Providence Park, while Gwen and Owen were still making enquiries at the hospital.
She was alone, alright. Very alone. Not in a good way.
She sent a brief message to Jack and Ianto to hurry them back and drew her gun out from under her desk, checking the cells via the CCTV. There didn’t seem to be anything missing, but Tosh decided she ought to double check herself. Better safe than sorry.
She started down towards the lower levels. Then stopped and turned around.
As she watched, a steady stream of bubbles drifted to the surface of the pool surrounding the water tower. Tosh clicked the safety off and approached slowly. It couldn’t be one of the Weevils - they hated water.
Suddenly, the bubbles stopped.
She waited a minute, and then another, but no more bubbles came. Tosh hesitated, then leant forward slightly, peering at the water’s the dark glass smooth surface. She had a moment to consider her own ghostly reflection, when the water erupted in a sudden cascade. A pair of pale hands crashed from the water and snatched her wrists. Tosh fired on reflex, but it missed by miles. Deathly hands wrenched hers around and against the joints. Her finger went loose around her gun, causing it to splash and sink into the water. Her wrists were twisted further, jerking her forward into the girl’s bone-pale face.
The girl smiled, her breath misting before Toshiko’s eyes. “Hello, pretty.”
Toshiko kicked out with both legs. The hands released her wrists, only to grab at her ankles and drag her down and under. Tosh clung to the railing and tried to pull back out.
“Come on in, pretty girl,” the girl cooed, voice frail as a child’s. She sounded almost friendly. Those hands, lithe and so much stronger than they looked, smoothed up her legs and grabbed at her waist. She leant forward, cold lips moving against Tosh’s cheek. “Come play with me.”
With a wordless yell Tosh kicked out again and scrambled backwards onto dry land. The girl followed, clambering out in way that anyone else would have made look ungainly.
Tosh got to her feet and backed away, shoving back the panic and trying to think. What would work? What would hurt her?
“Don’t you want to?” asked the girl in terrible little sing-song.
“Toshiko!”
Tosh whipped her head around and almost sagged with relief. Jack and Ianto were back, guns out and ready. She turned back and her blood ran cold. The girl had disappeared.
“There, see?” Tosh pointed at the screen.
Jack nodded slowly. “One of the Night Travellers.”
Tosh shuddered. “She was freezing.”
“She will be. She’s been dead at least fifty years.”
“That why she didn’t raise any of the alarms?” asked Ianto.
Jack shrugged. “They’re all basically fragments of film, just so much light and shadow. They could get in anywhere.”
Ianto glared at Jack over Tosh’s head, but before he could say anything Jack’s mobile rang.
“That was Bernard. More of the footage is missing.” Jack started toward the door, tapping Ianto on the arm as he passed. “Let’s go.”
Tosh spent the next couple of days quietly spooling through CCTV footage and missing persons files as per Gwen’s directions.
No one saw the screen flicker on in the boardroom, flicking through the Hub’s own CCTV, and later they were too focused on the little showdown playing out before them to notice the small puddles slowly evaporating under the constant barrage of air conditioning.
Pearl had never been allowed to hold the flask; all that time she spent underwater, things used to just slip through her fingers, and they couldn’t have that. Not with something so precious. Except now the Ghost Maker had been destroyed she had no way of continuing to capture an audience on her own.
Which wasn’t to say that she couldn’t catch people. Or take their breath away. It just meant she couldn’t keep them as long. So she had to wring out every last drop from them. All of them.
Her favourite was the small Japanese woman. She was easy to snatch and easy to hold just under the surface. Pearl watched in fascination as she thrashed against her, as though in the throes of passion, her eyes rolling wide with panic and fear. That the moment Pearl loved; that moment where the realisation hit that there was no hope of escape, that moment when the fear was almost wonder. Almost.
She drew this one out, sure to let her pretty girl just claw at the air with her fingers, just gasp at it with her lips before pushing her under again. The moment finally came, though, when her limbs went limp, moving where the water pushed them, and her head lolled back, finally submitting to her fate.
Pearl licked her lips and drew her out of the water, putting the girl’s blue-lipped mouth, full to the teeth with water, against her own, drinking it down. She was sure she could almost taste those last moments of terror and desperation.
They found her floating Ophelia-like on the surface of the pool, a few withered, rotting flowers and a ticket of wet pink sugar paper in her hands.