Fic: Things Hidden (1/2)
Title: Things Hidden
Rating: pg13
Characters/Pairings: Gwen, Jack/Ianto,
Word count: 3500 of 6000.
Warnings: None apply
A/N This was written for, but wasn't finished in time for, Redisourcolour #26. Words: bandy, broken, shuffle, kaleidoscope. Phrase. “You're being nice. You don't have to be.”
Summary: A tourist’s film footage posted on the internet leads Jack, Gwen and Ianto to Hen Coed Cwrt, a supposedly haunted manor house in mid Wales. Struggling to work as a team following the deaths of Owen and Tosh this case could be the thing that finally tears them apart or brings them back together.
Part two will be posted tomorrow.
It's a grey autumnal afternoon as the SUV turns into the long drive of Hen Coed Cwrt, on the edge of the Black Mountains.
Mist drifts in ragged shreds between the massive, gnarled beech trees that line the driveway up to the 17th century manor house.
Sitting in the front of the SUV beside Jack, Gwen watches the eerie landscape slide by the windows. “Do you think this place really is haunted?”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“What about you?” Gwen turns in her seat to look at Ianto who is sitting in the back. “What do you think?”
“I agree with, Jack.” He looks up from the scan he’s running to detect residual Rift energy. “I believed in them once, but….” He sighs and looks away. “Well we all know how that turned out.”
Gwen manages to catch herself before she asks what was so bad about what happened with Eugene, apart from the whole being dead part. It hadn’t been what he meant at all. No, he’d meant the ghost shift business of a few years ago.
“Oh, right,” Gwen says, not sure where to take the conversation from here, or whether to just let it drop.
Since losing Owen and Tosh it has been like walking on egg shells with the pair of them, she thinks sadly. The business at CERN and then what happened with the planet being moved and Dalek blowing a hole in the side of the Hub hasn’t helped.
They both allow her to lean on them for support. As does Rhys, when she needs something to remind her that there’s still something left outside of Torchwood, a connection to remind her just what they are fighting for.
She can see them both drawing away, refusing help either from her or from one another, in an attempt to prevent the pain and grief of loss in the future.
She wants to help, but has no idea where to start. They’ve been through so much, seen so many horrible things, that sometimes she wonder how they’ve stayed as sane as they have, how they can get up in the morning and face it all.
The worst she’d seen before joining Torchwood had either been a bar fight were a teenage girl had got a glass to the face or man who’d had a cup of scalding hot tea poured on his crotch by his wife after apparently sleeping with her sister. None of it had prepared her for the things she’s seen in the last two years, but she doubts that there’s any job that could.
Staring out the window at the bleak landscape, the trees almost devoid of leaves, Gwen wonders if there'll come a time when she's become like them. When the fear of loss means that she tries to distance herself from those she loves and who love her. She hopes not. But if Torchwood has taught her anything it's that you don't what life has in store for you.
“We’re here,” Jack says breaking her train of thought. Turning to Ianto, he says, “What you got for me?”
“Not much more than we left Cardiff, I'm afraid.” Ianto switches off the monitor he'd been using. “There's nothing to indicate any resent Rift activity here, although there is evidence of there having been a fault line from the main Rift area here in the past.”
“How much in the past?” Jack asks. Then, after checking his Webley, the gun never seeming to leave his belt since the loss of Owen and Tosh, he gets out of the SUV.
“Hard to say,” Ianto says, following him. “It could have been a small event in the last fifty years or so, or something much bigger but longer ago.”
“Do you think it has been here all that time?” Gwen asks peering into the gloom, half expecting to see something lurching out of it towards them. When nothing appears she gets out as well. “What d you think it is anyway?”
“Could be any number of things,” Jack says, thinking for a moment. “It could be a faulty holographic projection, something caught slightly out of sync without time stream, or a gas based life form. Or something we’ve never seen before”
“I suppose the picture was pretty bad,” Gwen says, thinking about the indistinct image of something that seem to be emerging from a piece of wooden panelling. The film footage, which had been taken by a tourist who'd only realised there was something odd in it, had posted on a video sharing site, and had attracted a modest number of views. Most had said that it was a fake, some that it was in fact ball lightning, a faulty light bulb, lens flare or even steam escaping from a central heating vent in cold weather.
The mainframe had picked it up during one of its sweeps of the web, something instigated after the business of the Dogon's Third Eye appearing on an online auction site. A quick check of Rift activity in the area, and they'd decided to check it out.
“Lucky for us it was. Let's see what they have to say for themselves,” Jack says, heading main entrance.
They cross the gravel in front the manor house, the crunch of it under their shoes muffled by the mist that is growing thicker still as the afternoon draws in.
There’s a middle aged man in overalls working at the side of the flowerbeds that spread out in a fan shape from the edge of the gravel.
“You go ahead,” Gwen says, already walking away from Jack and Ianto. “I’ll only be minute.”
“Alright, but if he has tentacles or an extra eye shoot first and ask questions later, okay?”
“I know,” Gwen replies. Once she would have assumed he meant it as a joke. Now, despite the fact that Jack's tone is light, she knows he means it. She wonders what it says about her that she's not going argue about, and that perhaps she even agrees with it now.
“Hi,” Gwen says loudly as she approaches the gardener, not wanting to startle him. “I was wondering if you could tell me more about this place.”
“We’re closed,” he says, not bothering to look round.
“I know.” She walks round the flowerbed so that she’s facing him across it.
“Then why are you here?”
“We’re looking for filming locations,” Gwen says, using the pre-decided story that Jack and Ianto will, by now, be telling any staff they’ve met inside the manor.
“Oh right,” he says sounding less than pleased at the prospect. Wiping his hands on his overalls, he adds, “I suppose you want showing around.”
Gwen looks around. The mist is getting thicker anything more than a couple of hundred metres away taking on an indistinct, fuzzy appearance. “It’s mostly inside we’re interested in.”
“So you’re not going to be digging up the lawn then?”
“No,” Gwen says at a loss as to why he’d even think they might be.
“Only we had some of those archaeology types out here last summer, made right old mess let me tell you.” He makes an annoyed noise, then says, “The place ain’t been right since.”
Deciding that the man’s default state is grumpy with everybody and everything, Gwen says, “We won’t be doing any digging, I promise.”
Looking at a series of low ridges and dents at the edge of the lawn, she asks, “Is that what they did?”
“Those?” He waves a hand at the depressions in the lawn. “They’re part of the old siege works.”
“Siege works?” Gwen says sceptically, expecting the man to launch into some story that’s probably best left for the tourists.
“Civil War, weren’t it?” he says sounding like he thinks that it should have been obvious. “Place held out for nigh on two weeks, until they reckon one of Cromwell’s men did a deal with the devil. The whole household were slaughtered in their beds. That’s why the place is like it is.”
“You believe in that ghosts and monsters stuff?”
“You don’t want to bandy about words like that here, miss,” the grounds man says, eyes darting back and forth to the mist wreathed forest that boarders the edge of the estate. “Things have ears. Ears and eyes and claws.”
“You’ve seen something then?” Gwen asks, curious now. The guy seems genuinely spooked, rather than it being part of an act to draw in the visitors or make the location more attractive for would be film makers.
“Nothing I want to remember,” he says darkly, bundling his tools back into the wheelbarrow. Lifting its handles, he starts to push it down the path. “Now if you don’t mind I want to get this packed up and get out of here before it gets dark. If you and you’re friends have any sense you’ll do the same.”
“Well I'd better let you get on with what you’re doing,” Gwen says realising that she's not going to get anything more out of him. “I'm sure we won't be here long.”
The man makes a noise like he doesn't believe it for moment, then continues on his way round to the back of the house.
“Find anything out?” Jack asks once she's joined him and Ianto in the house.
“Maybe, he’s scared of something,” Gwen says looking around the entrance hall at the heavy tapestries that have been hung wood panelled walls.
“Don’t take any notice of Davy,” a woman says, emerging from the room behind the counter. “He takes the whole haunted house thing far too seriously.”
“It's not serious then?” Gwen asks, pointing at one of the leaflets. It shows a scared looking woman in a old fashioned dress holding a lantern with the heading, Hen Coed Cwrt Halloween spooktackular.
“Only in terms of getting people to part with their cash,” she says with a laugh. “It's not so different from film really.”
“Maybe there could be a part in it for you,” Jack tells her with a beaming smile. “I think you'd do well in front of a camera.”
“You think so?” she says sounding flattered. “Do you act yourself?”
Ianto turns away slightly, looking like he's trying not to laugh.
Jack makes another couple of comments that could be entirely innocent or utterly suggestive depending on just how you want to interpret them, then turning to Gwen and Ianto says, “You two take a look around, I'll go over things with our star in the making.”
He turns back to the woman, “So what's the master bedroom like here? I expect you've got some stories tell. You could show me around if you like. Help me get a feel for the place.”
She laughs again, and then says, “Follow me.”
“You don't mind him doing that, then?” Gwen asks once Jack and the curator have left.
“Doing what?” Ianto reaches over the counter and picks up a tourist leaflet for the manor.
“Flirting with everybody?” Gwen knows that if she saw Rhys doing a quarter of what Jack does he'd be sleeping on the sofa for a few nights.
Opening the leaflet, Ianto spreads it out on the counter. It shows a plan of the parts of Hen Coed Cwrt that are open to the public, each room with a few lines of description.
He runs his finger across the floor plan until he reaches their location in the main entrance hall. “I think we should start at the top and work our way down.”
“Okay.” Gwen looks at the ornate wooden staircase leading to the upper floors of the manor. “But that doesn't really answer my question.”
“There's nothing to answer. He was doing it to get information” He folds the map up and puts it in his pocket. “Any way it's just talk. That's all it is these days.”
There's an edge of frustration to Ianto's voice that Gwen can't fail to miss. The idea that Jack is all talk and no action is almost unthinkable.”
If stress is getting to Jack that much, she thinks, he should take a break. He should take Ianto away for a few days and try to relax. It seems like common sense to her. Only common sense when in comes to their own welbeing seems to be something that Jack and Ianto lack.
“I know that look,” Ianto says when Gwen hasn't replied. “You're planning something.”
“No” It's mostly the truth. She hasn't got a plan beyond telling Jack to take a break and that maybe they should consider hiring some more staff because Ianto and herself need a holiday.
He raises a disbelieving eyebrow.
“I'm not.” She gives him a sympathetic smile. “You know if you need anything I'm always here, don't you?”
Ianto's expression rapidly moves from disbelief through confused to horrified. “Not that I'm not flattered, but I really don't think that it would be a good idea.”
“You don't have to if you don't want to,” Gwen says baffled by his reaction. “But talking about...” She stops, the realisation of what Ianto had thought she’d meant dawning. “You know I meant just talking, don't you?”
“Well I do now.” He looks embarrassed and then says, “I know you're being nice. You don't have to be. I know this must be harder for you than me or Jack. You're not used to it, to losing people.”
“That's bollocks,” Gwen says, annoyed at his attitude. Although whether it's because he thinks she needs protecting or that he's just decided his own feelings don't matter she's not sure, all Gwen knows is that she doesn't like either option. “Nobody should get used to losing people.”
“Can we not do this now?” Ianto says wearily. “I'd like to get this case finished and go home. I'm sure you'd like to get back to Rhys before the early hours of tomorrow morning.”
He's right, they have been far too many times they've worked through the night recently, but it doesn't make it any easier to let the subject drop. Not when she's sure she's right.
“Okay, but don't think you've got out of it that easily,” she says, challenging him to contradict her.
He sighs again, and runs a hand through his hair. “I know you want to help, I really do. But I can't. So please don't ask.”
The look of raw pain and loss in his eyes, halt any objections that Gwen was thinking of making. “Would a trip to the pub with no talking, but plenty of beer be better?”
Ianto seems like he's about to object again, then stops considering it for a moment, before saying, “I'd like that.”
“See that wasn't so hard,” Gwen says giving him an encouraging smile. “Now let’s see if we can find this thing before Jack does.”
Starting at the bottom of the manor they work their way upwards, moving from room to room trying to identify the one where the film had been taken.
Some of the rooms have been furnished in a Tudor theme, in keeping with the age of the house, while others have been decorated to show how styles had changed over the centuries. Still more have been set aside for storage of things not yet on display and as offices and archive rooms for the estate records. And others are just half finished, the furniture covered with dust-sheets while work is still being carried out.
There's something slightly eerie about shrouded furniture in Gwen's opinion. The idea that someone or something other than tables or sofas lurk under the covers never quite goes away.
The tiny diamond pattern leaded glass windows offer little natural light. The thick fog pressed close against the outside of them reducing it still further.
The candle effect bulbs in the sconces on the walls flicker in a way that makes Gwen wonder if they are going to suddenly blink out and plunge them into near total darkness.
“Where next?” she asks eager to leave the room.
Taking the map out of his pocket, Ianto says, “There's only a study and library left on this floor. We have to go to the study first as the only way to the library is through it.”
The study is a work in progress as well, the room in the process of being changed from a replica of Victorian gentleman’s study to a room displaying what had been found during the archaeological excavations earlier that summer.
It's definitely not where the film was taken, as that had been a wood panelled room, while the study is been decorated with rather gloomy dark green and brown paisley patterned wallpaper.
After a brief inspection of some of the artefacts that are already in the display cases to check than none are potentially alien in origin, they aren’t, they move through to the library.
Huge wooden bookcases line three of the walls of the library, broken only by the door and one small window, while the fourth contains a massive fireplace, over which hangs the manorial coat of arms of the family who’d held Hen Coed Cwrt since the Restoration.
The air is dry and dusty, and Gwen wonders when anybody actually last sat down in one of the chairs by the fire to read. She doubts it was in her lifetime.
Looking through the window, she can barely make out the SUV parked on the gravel below, the fog closing in even more thickly than before. Turning back to Ianto, Gwen says, “I hope Jack is having more luck than we are.”
“Shh, did you hear that?” Ianto says holding a finger to his lips.
“No.” Gwen shakes her head. “What was it?”
“I'm not sure.” Crossing the room Ianto stops by the panelling at the side of the fireplace. “I thought I heard something moving.”
Joining him, Gwen leans forward, listening against the wall. “Maybe it's mice?”
A moment later there's a faint noise. Something is moving behind the wall. A shuffling sound interspersed with a clanking that Gwen thinks could be chains.
“You can hear it as well?” Ianto asks, leaning closer.
“Yeah. Do you really think it’s really a...”
Something hits the wall hard from the inside, the wood panelling seeming to distort and bow outward for a moment.
With a startled yell they both jump back.
They look at each other and then back at the wall. Nothing seems to have changed, the wooden panelling in undamaged and the room is silent once more.
“That did just happen, didn't it?” Gwen says, heart still beating a little too fast.
“Yes.” Ianto moves back closer to the wall, and puts his hand against the panelling.
“What are you doing?” Gwen asks, confused and worried as he runs his finger tips over the joins in the panels.
“Looking for a door.” He starts tapping the wood. “There has to be an opening behind here, or it wouldn't be able to move about.”
“You still think it's an alien then?” Gwen asks. The idea that something is lurking inside solid objects like walls here just seems to confirm to her that it must be something like a ghost. After all if fairies were real why not ghosts?
Ianto nods, still concentrating of finding a hinge or catch.
“What kind of alien is it then?” Gwen says wishing she had access to the Torchwood mainframe.
“Jack did say it could be a gaseous one.” Abandoning his search Ianto presses a finger to his ear piece. “I'll let Jack know what we've found, and we can retrieve the portable cell from the SUV.”
Pressing the button on his earpiece, Ianto frowns, and then gets out his mobile. “Oh great,” he mutters under his breath.
“What is it?” Gwen asks, still watching the wall for any sign that something might come through it at them.
“There's no signal.”
Gwen checks her mobile. It's also dead.
“It could just be the thickness of the walls blocking the signal,” Ianto suggests, sounding like he doesn't believe it even for a moment.
“When have we ever been that lucky?” Gwen says heading for the door. “Let's just go and find Jack, and get this finished.”
There's another loud thump from behind the panelling and then the door in front of her slams shut.
Running the last few steps to it, Gwen grabs the handle and pulls. Despite the fact that the door shouldn't be able to lock, there's no keyhole or other locking visible locking mechanism, it remains stuck fast.
“Let me try,” Ianto says sounding as worried as she feels.
“We should try it together.” Gwen glances round at the wall again. Nothing is visible, but the shuffling has got louder, and she realises with growing horror, is closer. The alien, ghost or whatever it is is moving toward them hidden within the bookcase lined walls.
The room seems somehow darker and more oppressive, the air thick and heavy with an underlying smell of smoke.
The small, round handle proves to be impossible for them to both get a grip on at the same time, and Gwen suggests, “Maybe we should just break it down and worry about complaints later?”
Ianto nods. “On three?”
“Okay.”
Taking a few steps back, they get ready to charge the door.
Part two: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/178026.html#cutid1
Rating: pg13
Characters/Pairings: Gwen, Jack/Ianto,
Word count: 3500 of 6000.
Warnings: None apply
A/N This was written for, but wasn't finished in time for, Redisourcolour #26. Words: bandy, broken, shuffle, kaleidoscope. Phrase. “You're being nice. You don't have to be.”
Summary: A tourist’s film footage posted on the internet leads Jack, Gwen and Ianto to Hen Coed Cwrt, a supposedly haunted manor house in mid Wales. Struggling to work as a team following the deaths of Owen and Tosh this case could be the thing that finally tears them apart or brings them back together.
Part two will be posted tomorrow.
It's a grey autumnal afternoon as the SUV turns into the long drive of Hen Coed Cwrt, on the edge of the Black Mountains.
Mist drifts in ragged shreds between the massive, gnarled beech trees that line the driveway up to the 17th century manor house.
Sitting in the front of the SUV beside Jack, Gwen watches the eerie landscape slide by the windows. “Do you think this place really is haunted?”
“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”
“What about you?” Gwen turns in her seat to look at Ianto who is sitting in the back. “What do you think?”
“I agree with, Jack.” He looks up from the scan he’s running to detect residual Rift energy. “I believed in them once, but….” He sighs and looks away. “Well we all know how that turned out.”
Gwen manages to catch herself before she asks what was so bad about what happened with Eugene, apart from the whole being dead part. It hadn’t been what he meant at all. No, he’d meant the ghost shift business of a few years ago.
“Oh, right,” Gwen says, not sure where to take the conversation from here, or whether to just let it drop.
Since losing Owen and Tosh it has been like walking on egg shells with the pair of them, she thinks sadly. The business at CERN and then what happened with the planet being moved and Dalek blowing a hole in the side of the Hub hasn’t helped.
They both allow her to lean on them for support. As does Rhys, when she needs something to remind her that there’s still something left outside of Torchwood, a connection to remind her just what they are fighting for.
She can see them both drawing away, refusing help either from her or from one another, in an attempt to prevent the pain and grief of loss in the future.
She wants to help, but has no idea where to start. They’ve been through so much, seen so many horrible things, that sometimes she wonder how they’ve stayed as sane as they have, how they can get up in the morning and face it all.
The worst she’d seen before joining Torchwood had either been a bar fight were a teenage girl had got a glass to the face or man who’d had a cup of scalding hot tea poured on his crotch by his wife after apparently sleeping with her sister. None of it had prepared her for the things she’s seen in the last two years, but she doubts that there’s any job that could.
Staring out the window at the bleak landscape, the trees almost devoid of leaves, Gwen wonders if there'll come a time when she's become like them. When the fear of loss means that she tries to distance herself from those she loves and who love her. She hopes not. But if Torchwood has taught her anything it's that you don't what life has in store for you.
“We’re here,” Jack says breaking her train of thought. Turning to Ianto, he says, “What you got for me?”
“Not much more than we left Cardiff, I'm afraid.” Ianto switches off the monitor he'd been using. “There's nothing to indicate any resent Rift activity here, although there is evidence of there having been a fault line from the main Rift area here in the past.”
“How much in the past?” Jack asks. Then, after checking his Webley, the gun never seeming to leave his belt since the loss of Owen and Tosh, he gets out of the SUV.
“Hard to say,” Ianto says, following him. “It could have been a small event in the last fifty years or so, or something much bigger but longer ago.”
“Do you think it has been here all that time?” Gwen asks peering into the gloom, half expecting to see something lurching out of it towards them. When nothing appears she gets out as well. “What d you think it is anyway?”
“Could be any number of things,” Jack says, thinking for a moment. “It could be a faulty holographic projection, something caught slightly out of sync without time stream, or a gas based life form. Or something we’ve never seen before”
“I suppose the picture was pretty bad,” Gwen says, thinking about the indistinct image of something that seem to be emerging from a piece of wooden panelling. The film footage, which had been taken by a tourist who'd only realised there was something odd in it, had posted on a video sharing site, and had attracted a modest number of views. Most had said that it was a fake, some that it was in fact ball lightning, a faulty light bulb, lens flare or even steam escaping from a central heating vent in cold weather.
The mainframe had picked it up during one of its sweeps of the web, something instigated after the business of the Dogon's Third Eye appearing on an online auction site. A quick check of Rift activity in the area, and they'd decided to check it out.
“Lucky for us it was. Let's see what they have to say for themselves,” Jack says, heading main entrance.
They cross the gravel in front the manor house, the crunch of it under their shoes muffled by the mist that is growing thicker still as the afternoon draws in.
There’s a middle aged man in overalls working at the side of the flowerbeds that spread out in a fan shape from the edge of the gravel.
“You go ahead,” Gwen says, already walking away from Jack and Ianto. “I’ll only be minute.”
“Alright, but if he has tentacles or an extra eye shoot first and ask questions later, okay?”
“I know,” Gwen replies. Once she would have assumed he meant it as a joke. Now, despite the fact that Jack's tone is light, she knows he means it. She wonders what it says about her that she's not going argue about, and that perhaps she even agrees with it now.
“Hi,” Gwen says loudly as she approaches the gardener, not wanting to startle him. “I was wondering if you could tell me more about this place.”
“We’re closed,” he says, not bothering to look round.
“I know.” She walks round the flowerbed so that she’s facing him across it.
“Then why are you here?”
“We’re looking for filming locations,” Gwen says, using the pre-decided story that Jack and Ianto will, by now, be telling any staff they’ve met inside the manor.
“Oh right,” he says sounding less than pleased at the prospect. Wiping his hands on his overalls, he adds, “I suppose you want showing around.”
Gwen looks around. The mist is getting thicker anything more than a couple of hundred metres away taking on an indistinct, fuzzy appearance. “It’s mostly inside we’re interested in.”
“So you’re not going to be digging up the lawn then?”
“No,” Gwen says at a loss as to why he’d even think they might be.
“Only we had some of those archaeology types out here last summer, made right old mess let me tell you.” He makes an annoyed noise, then says, “The place ain’t been right since.”
Deciding that the man’s default state is grumpy with everybody and everything, Gwen says, “We won’t be doing any digging, I promise.”
Looking at a series of low ridges and dents at the edge of the lawn, she asks, “Is that what they did?”
“Those?” He waves a hand at the depressions in the lawn. “They’re part of the old siege works.”
“Siege works?” Gwen says sceptically, expecting the man to launch into some story that’s probably best left for the tourists.
“Civil War, weren’t it?” he says sounding like he thinks that it should have been obvious. “Place held out for nigh on two weeks, until they reckon one of Cromwell’s men did a deal with the devil. The whole household were slaughtered in their beds. That’s why the place is like it is.”
“You believe in that ghosts and monsters stuff?”
“You don’t want to bandy about words like that here, miss,” the grounds man says, eyes darting back and forth to the mist wreathed forest that boarders the edge of the estate. “Things have ears. Ears and eyes and claws.”
“You’ve seen something then?” Gwen asks, curious now. The guy seems genuinely spooked, rather than it being part of an act to draw in the visitors or make the location more attractive for would be film makers.
“Nothing I want to remember,” he says darkly, bundling his tools back into the wheelbarrow. Lifting its handles, he starts to push it down the path. “Now if you don’t mind I want to get this packed up and get out of here before it gets dark. If you and you’re friends have any sense you’ll do the same.”
“Well I'd better let you get on with what you’re doing,” Gwen says realising that she's not going to get anything more out of him. “I'm sure we won't be here long.”
The man makes a noise like he doesn't believe it for moment, then continues on his way round to the back of the house.
“Find anything out?” Jack asks once she's joined him and Ianto in the house.
“Maybe, he’s scared of something,” Gwen says looking around the entrance hall at the heavy tapestries that have been hung wood panelled walls.
“Don’t take any notice of Davy,” a woman says, emerging from the room behind the counter. “He takes the whole haunted house thing far too seriously.”
“It's not serious then?” Gwen asks, pointing at one of the leaflets. It shows a scared looking woman in a old fashioned dress holding a lantern with the heading, Hen Coed Cwrt Halloween spooktackular.
“Only in terms of getting people to part with their cash,” she says with a laugh. “It's not so different from film really.”
“Maybe there could be a part in it for you,” Jack tells her with a beaming smile. “I think you'd do well in front of a camera.”
“You think so?” she says sounding flattered. “Do you act yourself?”
Ianto turns away slightly, looking like he's trying not to laugh.
Jack makes another couple of comments that could be entirely innocent or utterly suggestive depending on just how you want to interpret them, then turning to Gwen and Ianto says, “You two take a look around, I'll go over things with our star in the making.”
He turns back to the woman, “So what's the master bedroom like here? I expect you've got some stories tell. You could show me around if you like. Help me get a feel for the place.”
She laughs again, and then says, “Follow me.”
“You don't mind him doing that, then?” Gwen asks once Jack and the curator have left.
“Doing what?” Ianto reaches over the counter and picks up a tourist leaflet for the manor.
“Flirting with everybody?” Gwen knows that if she saw Rhys doing a quarter of what Jack does he'd be sleeping on the sofa for a few nights.
Opening the leaflet, Ianto spreads it out on the counter. It shows a plan of the parts of Hen Coed Cwrt that are open to the public, each room with a few lines of description.
He runs his finger across the floor plan until he reaches their location in the main entrance hall. “I think we should start at the top and work our way down.”
“Okay.” Gwen looks at the ornate wooden staircase leading to the upper floors of the manor. “But that doesn't really answer my question.”
“There's nothing to answer. He was doing it to get information” He folds the map up and puts it in his pocket. “Any way it's just talk. That's all it is these days.”
There's an edge of frustration to Ianto's voice that Gwen can't fail to miss. The idea that Jack is all talk and no action is almost unthinkable.”
If stress is getting to Jack that much, she thinks, he should take a break. He should take Ianto away for a few days and try to relax. It seems like common sense to her. Only common sense when in comes to their own welbeing seems to be something that Jack and Ianto lack.
“I know that look,” Ianto says when Gwen hasn't replied. “You're planning something.”
“No” It's mostly the truth. She hasn't got a plan beyond telling Jack to take a break and that maybe they should consider hiring some more staff because Ianto and herself need a holiday.
He raises a disbelieving eyebrow.
“I'm not.” She gives him a sympathetic smile. “You know if you need anything I'm always here, don't you?”
Ianto's expression rapidly moves from disbelief through confused to horrified. “Not that I'm not flattered, but I really don't think that it would be a good idea.”
“You don't have to if you don't want to,” Gwen says baffled by his reaction. “But talking about...” She stops, the realisation of what Ianto had thought she’d meant dawning. “You know I meant just talking, don't you?”
“Well I do now.” He looks embarrassed and then says, “I know you're being nice. You don't have to be. I know this must be harder for you than me or Jack. You're not used to it, to losing people.”
“That's bollocks,” Gwen says, annoyed at his attitude. Although whether it's because he thinks she needs protecting or that he's just decided his own feelings don't matter she's not sure, all Gwen knows is that she doesn't like either option. “Nobody should get used to losing people.”
“Can we not do this now?” Ianto says wearily. “I'd like to get this case finished and go home. I'm sure you'd like to get back to Rhys before the early hours of tomorrow morning.”
He's right, they have been far too many times they've worked through the night recently, but it doesn't make it any easier to let the subject drop. Not when she's sure she's right.
“Okay, but don't think you've got out of it that easily,” she says, challenging him to contradict her.
He sighs again, and runs a hand through his hair. “I know you want to help, I really do. But I can't. So please don't ask.”
The look of raw pain and loss in his eyes, halt any objections that Gwen was thinking of making. “Would a trip to the pub with no talking, but plenty of beer be better?”
Ianto seems like he's about to object again, then stops considering it for a moment, before saying, “I'd like that.”
“See that wasn't so hard,” Gwen says giving him an encouraging smile. “Now let’s see if we can find this thing before Jack does.”
Starting at the bottom of the manor they work their way upwards, moving from room to room trying to identify the one where the film had been taken.
Some of the rooms have been furnished in a Tudor theme, in keeping with the age of the house, while others have been decorated to show how styles had changed over the centuries. Still more have been set aside for storage of things not yet on display and as offices and archive rooms for the estate records. And others are just half finished, the furniture covered with dust-sheets while work is still being carried out.
There's something slightly eerie about shrouded furniture in Gwen's opinion. The idea that someone or something other than tables or sofas lurk under the covers never quite goes away.
The tiny diamond pattern leaded glass windows offer little natural light. The thick fog pressed close against the outside of them reducing it still further.
The candle effect bulbs in the sconces on the walls flicker in a way that makes Gwen wonder if they are going to suddenly blink out and plunge them into near total darkness.
“Where next?” she asks eager to leave the room.
Taking the map out of his pocket, Ianto says, “There's only a study and library left on this floor. We have to go to the study first as the only way to the library is through it.”
The study is a work in progress as well, the room in the process of being changed from a replica of Victorian gentleman’s study to a room displaying what had been found during the archaeological excavations earlier that summer.
It's definitely not where the film was taken, as that had been a wood panelled room, while the study is been decorated with rather gloomy dark green and brown paisley patterned wallpaper.
After a brief inspection of some of the artefacts that are already in the display cases to check than none are potentially alien in origin, they aren’t, they move through to the library.
Huge wooden bookcases line three of the walls of the library, broken only by the door and one small window, while the fourth contains a massive fireplace, over which hangs the manorial coat of arms of the family who’d held Hen Coed Cwrt since the Restoration.
The air is dry and dusty, and Gwen wonders when anybody actually last sat down in one of the chairs by the fire to read. She doubts it was in her lifetime.
Looking through the window, she can barely make out the SUV parked on the gravel below, the fog closing in even more thickly than before. Turning back to Ianto, Gwen says, “I hope Jack is having more luck than we are.”
“Shh, did you hear that?” Ianto says holding a finger to his lips.
“No.” Gwen shakes her head. “What was it?”
“I'm not sure.” Crossing the room Ianto stops by the panelling at the side of the fireplace. “I thought I heard something moving.”
Joining him, Gwen leans forward, listening against the wall. “Maybe it's mice?”
A moment later there's a faint noise. Something is moving behind the wall. A shuffling sound interspersed with a clanking that Gwen thinks could be chains.
“You can hear it as well?” Ianto asks, leaning closer.
“Yeah. Do you really think it’s really a...”
Something hits the wall hard from the inside, the wood panelling seeming to distort and bow outward for a moment.
With a startled yell they both jump back.
They look at each other and then back at the wall. Nothing seems to have changed, the wooden panelling in undamaged and the room is silent once more.
“That did just happen, didn't it?” Gwen says, heart still beating a little too fast.
“Yes.” Ianto moves back closer to the wall, and puts his hand against the panelling.
“What are you doing?” Gwen asks, confused and worried as he runs his finger tips over the joins in the panels.
“Looking for a door.” He starts tapping the wood. “There has to be an opening behind here, or it wouldn't be able to move about.”
“You still think it's an alien then?” Gwen asks. The idea that something is lurking inside solid objects like walls here just seems to confirm to her that it must be something like a ghost. After all if fairies were real why not ghosts?
Ianto nods, still concentrating of finding a hinge or catch.
“What kind of alien is it then?” Gwen says wishing she had access to the Torchwood mainframe.
“Jack did say it could be a gaseous one.” Abandoning his search Ianto presses a finger to his ear piece. “I'll let Jack know what we've found, and we can retrieve the portable cell from the SUV.”
Pressing the button on his earpiece, Ianto frowns, and then gets out his mobile. “Oh great,” he mutters under his breath.
“What is it?” Gwen asks, still watching the wall for any sign that something might come through it at them.
“There's no signal.”
Gwen checks her mobile. It's also dead.
“It could just be the thickness of the walls blocking the signal,” Ianto suggests, sounding like he doesn't believe it even for a moment.
“When have we ever been that lucky?” Gwen says heading for the door. “Let's just go and find Jack, and get this finished.”
There's another loud thump from behind the panelling and then the door in front of her slams shut.
Running the last few steps to it, Gwen grabs the handle and pulls. Despite the fact that the door shouldn't be able to lock, there's no keyhole or other locking visible locking mechanism, it remains stuck fast.
“Let me try,” Ianto says sounding as worried as she feels.
“We should try it together.” Gwen glances round at the wall again. Nothing is visible, but the shuffling has got louder, and she realises with growing horror, is closer. The alien, ghost or whatever it is is moving toward them hidden within the bookcase lined walls.
The room seems somehow darker and more oppressive, the air thick and heavy with an underlying smell of smoke.
The small, round handle proves to be impossible for them to both get a grip on at the same time, and Gwen suggests, “Maybe we should just break it down and worry about complaints later?”
Ianto nods. “On three?”
“Okay.”
Taking a few steps back, they get ready to charge the door.
Part two: http://the-silver-sun.livejournal.com/178026.html#cutid1