Fic: A Sustainable Paradox
Title: A Sustainable Paradox
Author Name: ceresi
Recipient: katzb101
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, hints of John/Jack
Summary: A routine investigation at an old council estate goes wrong when the team meets an old enemy of the Doctor’s. Jack and Ianto find themselves trapped, prisoners of a new life, while Gwen is left to bring them home. Action-adventure fic also featuring Martha, John, some gore, and some creeptastic bad guys - mind the warnings!
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Torchwood and Doctor Who (and probably a chunk of Cardiff and its surrounding environs) are property of BBC & Co., I’m only borrowing them to play with on the Internet.
Warnings: Some gore and horror, arachnophobes beware. Spoilers for all of Torchwood and all of Doctor Who (minus S4), just to be safe.
Word Count: 29,000
Author's Notes: More detailed notes at the end, where they won’t spoil things.
Betas: Thanks to Anonymous for the awesome beta and Anonymous for the Britpick and for catching a bunch of typos. And to everyone who chimed in with ‘integrity’ when my brain failed me.
Part One
Something about this place was familiar.
Ianto shook his head, slamming shut the driver’s side door and blinking in the sunlight. ‘This place’ was a condemned council estate in Penarth, overlooking a chunk of the new and trendy Cardiff Bay. He was fairly certain he’d never been here before, and yet, the feeling tugged at him.
To be honest, there were many places in Cardiff that felt eerily familiar to him. There wasn’t much of it he hadn’t seen, either with his own eyes or through old films and photographs, but it was the sense memory that was most disconcerting. Like now, the smell of asphalt and grass baking in the sun, or a rope of chain swinging between two poles, creaking rustily, reminding him of something from childhood.
“Hey, Ianto!” Jack’s cheerfully demanding bellow startled him from his thoughts. “Hurry it up!”
With a backwards glance at the basketball court, Ianto went.
Gwen and Jack had already begun a slow inspection of the parking lot, sunglasses on to ward off the glare. Jack was walking backwards and talking at the same time. Ianto caught up to them in an old building’s shadow, a breath of relief from the harsh sun.
Gwen was frowning up at a balcony. “Ianto,” she called. “There are still people living in there.”
“Yup.” Ianto began tuning his PDA as Jack removed his sunglasses to follow her gaze upwards. “Squatters. Four or five of them, according to the manager I interviewed.”
“But they’re demolishing the place!” One building was already so reduced, a sad pile of wood and bricks that were once homes. The smell of crushed concrete and plaster was still heavy on the air. Ianto dearly hoped there hadn’t been any asbestos inside - that was all they needed, lung cancer.
“I’m sure they’ve realized,” Ianto said. “They’ll have to move, obviously.”
Gwen was not happy with this. “Kids,” Jack said, cutting her off and pocketing his sunglasses, “let’s try to remember what we’re here for. Ianto, are you picking up anything?”
Ianto held up the PDA. “There are some temporal fluctuations, but they’re within reasonable limits. As far as I can tell, at least.”
And without Tosh, that was the best they were going to get. He wished like hell he’d attempted the tech certification at Torchwood One, but he’d been too busy impressing Lisa with his field exam scores. Not that it had done him any good - a month with Torchwood Three was more educational than a year’s worth of classes in London had ever been.
Jack strode away from them, into the sunlight, struggling to orient himself. “The disappearances happened over there.“ He pointed. “Let’s try those buildings first. Ianto, keep an eye on the scanner. Gwen, keep your eyes peeled.” He glanced around to make sure he wasn’t overlooking anything, and nodded. “Let’s go.”
The building Jack led them to looked exactly like the others, with only slight variations on which balconies were collapsing and how many doors were missing. Jack climbed over the crumbling alley wall, tearing away vines and ambitious weeds, with Ianto and Gwen a beat behind him.
“Anything?” Jack asked.
Glued to his PDA, Ianto shook his head. So did Gwen, brow furrowed at the sight of another occupied flat. “What exactly are we looking for, Jack?”
“Two construction workers disappeared, from this area, around this time yesterday.” Jack hooked his thumbs in his pockets and swiveled slowly, inspecting the five-story buildings on each side. “What do these buildings have that the others don’t?”
Gwen stared around thoughtfully. “We’re . . . closer to the trees,” Ianto offered, without looking up.
“Good point.”
“Let’s take a look around,” Gwen suggested, glancing back at the curtained windows. “Try talking to some people. Maybe Ianto can get some readings.”
Ianto frowned mournfully at the PDA in his hand. The idea that it was covered in Tosh’s fingerprints was just that - an idea - half hallucination and half wild hope. He’d scrubbed the thing near-obsessively before taking it out of the Hub, afraid that some fleck of Tosh’s blood was still clinging in some crack, waiting to smear itself on his fingers. He resisted the urge to check again.
“Sounds good to me,” Jack said. “Gwen, Ianto, you two take the buildings. I’m going to look around the woods.” He tapped on his earbud, and his next words emerged in disconcerting stereo: “Stay in touch.”
~
Gwen wrenched open the stairwell door and stuck her head inside. The narrow metal steps were rusted and decaying, the grey bricks stained with water, fungus, and something that might have been blood. Overhead, the distant sounds of birdsong and wind whistled through the rotting roof. She used her sleeve to cover her nose kicked the door open the rest of the way.
Wan rays of sunlight illuminated the narrow room. Gwen found her torch and switched it on, but any bugs (or axe murderers, or aliens) lying in wait had already fled. All that was left were shadows and thick clusters of spider webs.
Very thick clusters of spider webs. Gwen prodded one with the toe of her boot and moved on.
A short trip down a concrete set of stairs led her to the garden floor entrance, the heavy metal door still standing, if crookedly. This time, the doorknob worked. With a breath to prepare herself, Gwen headed inside.
It was like stepping from a haunted house into a third world country. Gwen gagged helplessly and switched on her comm, staggering backwards. “Are you inside yet, Ianto?”
His voice came back low and wary. “Yup. You?”
“Yes.” Gwen exhaled slowly, fighting another retch. “It smells like-“
“Like someone’s having trouble with their plumbing?” Ianto offered delicately.
“Not what I was going to say, but it works.” One of the walls was spotted with green fungus and purple mold, the peeling yellow wallpaper stained brown. Gwen sidled past it.
Jack’s voice came on. “I think they’ve got a pit latrine out here somewhere. Sure smells like one, anyway.”
Why could drive anyone to live like this? Gwen pushed on further down the hall, counting doors, trying to breathe through her nose. When she was fairly certain she was outside the inhabited flat, she tapped on her comm again. “I’m trying one of the occupants.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Let us know how it goes.”
With one last grimace at the wooden door - it was dark and damp looking, white mold sprouting up along the edges - Gwen rapped her knuckles on the doorframe. After a lengthy silence, she tried again. “Hello? Is anyone home?”
Another pause. Gwen glanced about warily, a crawling feeling passing over her skin. It felt like she was being stared at. “Hello?” She even checked the ceiling above her head, in case someone or something was watching her through a hole. “Anyone there? I’m-“
The sound of a gunshot sent her flying backwards. She had one arm around her back, gun in hand, waiting for the pain to kick in before she realized it wasn’t a gun: it was just the door opening. A hostile brown eye and a shock of white hair peeked through a crack the size of Gwen’s thumb.
“What?” the person - an old lady - demanded. “What d’you want? Scared the ever-loving shit outta me, lovey.”
Gwen relented somewhat, easing herself backwards. “DI Cooper, ma’am,” she said. Her heart was still pounding. “Sorry to startle you. Could you spare a few minutes, please?” The old woman didn’t budge. Gwen continuing soothingly. “Just routine, a few people have gone missing nearby. Could I come in?”
The eye blinked. “Am I under arrest?”
This wasn’t going well. “No, ma’am,” Gwen said. “I’m just looking for eyewitness accounts.”
“I haven’t seen anything. Don’t think I’ll be much help.” Behind the white hair, the flat was a dim ruin of warped bookcases and gaudy trinkets. The windows must have been boarded up - it had that look of diffused sunlight. A telly was spitting static and mangled voices.
“No one new in the area?” Gwen pressed gently. “No raised voices?”
“Just those fools come to tear down my home.” The eye narrowed with sudden hatred. There was, Gwen realized uneasily, something narrow, hard, and black strapped over the old lady’s shoulder, like . . . Gwen didn’t know what. One end was pointed, almost sharp enough to draw blood, and there was some kind of blobby bit near the woman’s shoulder.
“Are you one of them?” The old lady surged forward, mashing her face against the crack, eye bulging. Her voice grew shrill. “You are! You are, aren’t you?”
Gwen stepped back, hands open and extended, but the old lady had already slammed shut the door. There were a few muffled noises from inside the flat, and then silence.
“Hell,” Gwen whispered, and freed her gun from its holster. She kept it safely in hand as she edged down the hallway, senses tuned for any sudden movements or sounds. None were forthcoming. She reached the door and switched her comm back on.
“Nothing,” she said, voice flat. “She didn’t want to help.”
Jack’s voice was warm with concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Gwen said. She thought she saw something moving at the other end of the hall, but when she pointed her light at it, all she saw was wall. She gave her head a firm shake. “I’m going to take a look around the second floor.”
“You might want to come over here first,” Ianto cut in, voice grimmer than usual. “I’m up on the roof and I’ve found something.”
“Like what?” Jack demanded.
“I think. . . .” Ianto hesitated, swallowing audibly. “It’s a bit difficult to tell, but I think it might have been a body.”
Gwen ducked from the stairwell into the open air, hurrying towards the other building at a trot. “Huh,” Jack said. “I’ve found something, too, but yours is more interesting. I’m on my way.”
~
The body, or what was left of it, had been a vagrant at some point, judging by the fragments of clothing that remained. The skin was almost entirely gone, except for some hard brown strips that glistened oddly in the sunlight. Beneath it, the gravel roof was stained black with blood and whatever else. Worst of all, in Ianto’s opinion, were the jagged stumps jutting from what were once hips, the melted skin torn away. They ended far too soon, as if something had begun devouring the body from the feet up.
The ribcage, too, was gone, replaced by a mass white webs. The only thing clearly identifying the wreckage as human was the skull, unmercifully undamaged, dried sinew locking the jaw in a permanent scream.
Ianto suspected the man’s death had been violent. The arms were flung out, the torso wrenched sideways, a permanent expression of surprise. The damage had been done afterwards, he was certain. Or nearly certain.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
“This is horrible,” Gwen said softly, staring at the body. Jack was pacing the roof’s perimeter, fiddling with his wrist-strap and mumbling under his breath. “What could have happened to him? Do you think he was living here?”
Ianto shook his head, as transfixed by the corpse as she was. “I don’t know,” he said simply. “I haven’t had a chance to inspect the flats yet.”
Jack started back towards them and they yanked their heads up. “We should probably take a look around downstairs, see what we can find.” He snapped the manipulator shut and tugged his sleeve over it. “Fifth floor together, I don’t want us splitting up. Keep an eye open for spiders.”
Gwen eyed the webs spilling out of the sunken chest and shivered.
Jack took point, of course, his ancient Webley held at the ready. Gwen and Ianto brought up the rear. They reached the fifth floor without incident, where Jack insisted on the element of surprise, no matter how silly it felt kicking open doors to empty flats. By the time they reached the third storey, Jack had relaxed enough to let them split up.
“But stay in touch,” he called after them.
Gwen and Ianto exchanged glances and headed into the stairwell together. “He’s worse than my mam, these days,” Gwen said, when they’d rounded the corner. “At least she lets me out of her sight for more than an hour.“
Ianto waved her off, amused. Obediently, she checked in with Jack before letting herself into the second-floor hall, and naturally, Ianto did the same. Jack’s replies were brisk, preoccupied, as if he didn’t care, but they both knew he did.
Ianto was finishing with his second flat, checking the closet and a hole in the wall for spiders, when Jack’s voice came back over the comms. “Found something,” he said. “No worries, though, it’s, ah - it’s pretty dead.”
Ianto pointed his light upwards, peering into a hole in the ceiling. “What is ‘it’, exactly?” he wanted to know.
“It’s a spider. A big, dead spider.” Jack’s voice turned mischievous. “Who thinks I should try dropping it down Gwen’s shirt?”
“Oi!” That was Gwen.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, Jack,” Ianto said, pulling the door shut and moving to the next flat. “I believe she’s armed.”
“Damn right, she’s armed,” Gwen growled, as Jack murmured suggestively, “Not like bullets work on me, anyway. . . .”
“Jack!” Gwen was a little shrill. “Don’t you dare!”
This flat was as empty as the last one. The spider webs, he couldn’t help but notice, were getting thicker and more frequent the further he got from the stairs. Another hole in the wall revealed more webbing than insulation. “So, this spider - when you say big, how big do you mean?”
Jack was still laughing at Gwen. “About a foot across, I guess,” he said, between chuckles. “It’s all scrunched up and on its back. Kinda cute, really.”
“You would think so,” Gwen muttered darkly.
“But I don’t think there are any more,” Jack said, more seriously. “At least, I haven’t seen any. Maybe we scared them off.”
Ianto struggled with the door to the third flat. It was well and truly jammed - it took three good kicks to open it even halfway, and then the source of his difficulties was revealed. Someone had nailed it shut. He finished kicking it open and squeezed inside, expecting to find more signs of life. Maybe this was where the vagrant had been living.
But there was nothing other than nails, water-stained carpet, and peeling wallpaper. The windows had also been boarded shut, stubborn light squeezing through the slats. The first bedroom was equally empty. The second, however. . . .
Ianto switched on his comm and entered the room slowly, gun cocked and ready. “You never did tell us what you found,” he said conversationally. “In the woods.”
“Oh, that.” Jack sounded remarkably unconcerned. Maybe he was still playing with his dead spider. “It was like some kind of shrine or mini-graveyard. Very weird, very random. Didn’t show up as anything unusual on my scanner, though.”
The bedroom was full of mirrors. Some of them had been salvaged from the trash, their backs chipped and peeling; others were full-length antiques, silver surfaces spotted. They had been propped against the walls in a ragged circle, where they caught the sunlight pouring through the open window and raised it to blinding levels.
“They seemed familiar, though,” Jack said. There was the sound of creaking as Gwen entered the flat above Ianto’s head. “The statues. Like I’d seen them before. Maybe-“
Someone had written something on the wall.
“Jack,” Ianto said slowly. “There’s a statue in here. A weeping angel.”
The creaking above him stopped. “Where?” Jack demanded.
“In the corner of the room.” Ianto stepped further inside, eyes narrowed against the glare. He couldn’t read whatever was on the wall. “It’s full of mirrors.”
Jack’s voice was a bitten-off snarl. “Which room?”
“Third from the stairs.” He could hear the muffled thud of Gwen’s boots above his head, as she came to help, and then silence.
Frowning, he slid several mirrors aside, trying to read the writing on the wall. Look out, it said. Look out for what? The rest of it was covered by a full-length mirror too ungainly to move. Ianto tipped it forward and craned his neck to peer behind it.
-behind you.
Look out behind you.
Ianto spun, yanking up his gun, and swore in pure shock. “Ianto!” Jack shouted.
He swore again. “It’s moving!” he snapped, and fired a desperate shot. It didn’t even chip the stone. “The statue, it’s-“
It was right in front of him, now. He tried ducking under its outstretched arm, but when he straightened and looked back it had turned to chase after him, terrible mouth open in a silent scream. He stumbled backwards, a mirror colliding with his heel and yanking him to the ground.
Jack was yelling again - Jack was still yelling, he hadn’t stopped. “Ianto, talk to me, what’s it doing, talk to me-“
“Towards me,” Ianto rasped, scrambling backwards. “Fast, it’s so fast, I don’t know how-“
He’d dropped his gun, he realized. He scrambled backwards and searched for it desperately, where was it, where was it - to his right! He grabbed it-
And then the statue was on him. Impossibly fast.
“I looked away,” he realized, a cold, hard jolt of understanding. Like lightning. The stone hand was wrapped around his throat, a block of marble with ice water for veins. He was going to remember that hand for a long, long time. “That’s when it moved.”
The world went dark.
~
“I looked away,” Ianto’s voice said, harsh and shaking. “That’s when it-“
“Ianto?” Gwen was screaming, running down the hall like her life depended on it, slamming into the stairwell with enough force to bruise. “Ianto? Ianto!”
“He’s gone,” Jack’s voice came, foggy and cold. “The room is empty, he’s gone.”
“No,” Gwen whispered, and then something hit her.
Shrieking, she tripped and fell down the stairs, flailing and rolling to a halt. She let out a real scream when she saw what it was - a massive, hairy spider, its mandibles open and aimed at her face. It took both hands on the spider’s furry body to get it off her chest.
It landed on its feet and flipped onto its feet. Gwen fired three shots into it and ran on.
“Jack!” No reply. “Jack, where are you, talk to me!”
Still no reply. She staggered down the hall, bouncing off the walls, and into the empty flat. Empty. Empty, empty, empty. Empty living room, empty kitchen - she kept her gun in the air, finger vibrating on the trigger. One empty bedroom, a short hall, another room-
Mirrors. For a wild moment she thought it was Jack, standing with his back to her, Jack in his long grey coat, but it wasn’t. It was a statue, wings taut and lowered, hands covering its face. Just a statue and a few shattered mirrors, some bright blood staining the carpet, and that was it. That was all. No Ianto, no Jack, oh God, they were gone. She was alone.
She fired an entire clip into the statue’s back to no effect, reloaded the gun and tried again. “Where are they?” she shouted. She could barely hear herself over the roaring in her ears. “Where are they?”
There was something written on the wall. She edged further into the room, keeping the statue in her sights, and flicked a glance over. Look out behind you.
Instinctively, she looked back, and then forward again. Her gun went off accidentally and she had to readjust her aim.
The statue had moved.
“Ah, God,” she breathed. It had moved. It was facing at her now, clawed hands raised, needle-sharp teeth bared. I looked away, Ianto had said. A mini-graveyard, Jack had said. Look out behind you. How many of these things were there? “Ah, God. God.”
She had to leave. She had to leave, or the statue would get her too, and then there would be no one left. “Jack!” she tried, one last time, “Ianto!” If they could hear her, if they were anywhere nearby, they couldn’t reply. Jack would be furious if she let herself be taken, too.
She had to leave.
Shaking, she began to retreat, stooping briefly to grab the nearest mirror. With it held before her her, she was able to keep the statue in her sights even as she rounded the corner. Every so often she would blink and it would come a little closer. Every time she would jump and gasp and curse, and keep moving.
The trip to the SUV was agonizing. Sweat dripped from her face, stinging her eyes, and every faint sound was another statue or another spider sneaking up behind her. She didn’t relax until she’d slammed the car door shut, and then she realized she was whimpering, tiny little moans catching in her throat.
She almost screamed when she realized that she didn’t have the keys. Ianto had had them, and wherever he was now, so were they. When she looked up, the statue was outside, halfway between her and the building, its stone arm flung over its eyes.
“C’mon, Gwen.” The sound of her own shaking voice wasn’t comforting, but it was all she had. “C’mon, don’t fall apart on me now. You can do this.”
There was another way to start the car, of course. Tosh and Ianto had installed the system themselves, after the disaster in the Brecon Beacons. She ripped open the access panel beside the steering wheel and typed in the code, but her hands were shaking so badly that she pressed two wrong keys. The machine blatted offensively and a computerized voice began a countdown.
The statue was closer. She took a deep breath, gaze fixed firmly on the thing (creature? alien? monster?), and used the rearview mirror to check behind her. No others so far. Maybe it was the only one.
Another deep breath. Calmly, she input the correct code.
The countdown stopped and the SUV hummed to life. Politely, the computer apologized for the misunderstanding. “Gwen Cooper SUV Access Code recognized and accepted. Self-destruct disabled, engine ignition proceeding. Have a nice day.”
Gwen snarled, slammed her foot on the gas, and fled.
~
It was pitch-black and cold, wherever he was, and everything hurt. His eyelids felt like they’d been glued shut. Only when Jack landed, flailing and cursing, did he realize he wasn’t dead - Death was, after all, the one place Jack could never follow him.
“Shit!” It was a strange sense of déjà vu, Jack crashing down on him and forcing life back into his lungs. One of his elbows was planted firmly in Ianto’s chest. “Jack,” Ianto groaned, “stop it.”
“Ianto?”
Ianto forced his eyes open. Jack’s face was about a quarter-inch away, looking utterly gob-smacked. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Ianto said, aiming for flippant and sounding mostly strained. “People are going to talk.”
Now Jack was grinning at him, overjoyed. “Ianto!”
Ianto grunted and found himself being kissed and hugged, snowdrift and all. “Mmph,” he said, pushing back at Jack’s tongue with his own and pawing gingerly at his shoulder. “Jack,” he gasped, when Jack pulled back. “Jack, let go.”
Jack rolled to the side and Ianto rolled to the other, mouth watering as his stomach roiled. For a moment he thought his lunch might stay down, but no such luck - he wound up vomiting twice, arm wobbling and nearly pitching him forward. A pair of warm, broad hands came round to hold him up.
“Thanks,” Ianto whispered, and dry heaved.
“Easy, easy.” Jack pressed a handkerchief into his hand and hugged him from behind.“I’ve got you,” he said, pulling them into a sitting position, “easy, now.” After the snow, Jack was nice and warm against Ianto’s back. “Just breathe.”
“What.” Ianto had to pause to follow Jack’s order. Holding his breath hurt, deep breaths hurt more, and short breaths hurt worst. He oscillated between the three options and waited for the pain to stop. “What just happened?”
Jack’s voice was careful, now, reluctant. “I think we may have traveled in time.” He shifted. “Yeah. According to this, we’re in the year eighteen forty-nine. And it’s ten at night, which explains why it’s so dark.”
‘This’ was Jack’s wrist device, the operation of which Ianto had never fully understood. Jack showed it to him and he read the numbers dutifully. There wasn’t anything he could think to say.
“We need to take a look around,” Jack said gently, after a moment had passed.
“All right.” Ianto found his torch and his PDA in his pocket, both still working, and let Jack help him up. A strange, numb feeling had overtaken him. “What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know.” Jack’s mouth was tight, eyes shadowed. There was no trace of his earlier happiness now. “Anything.”
Ianto had heard plenty about time travel, seen some of its victims at Flat Holm, but nothing had prepared him for this. Eighteen forty-nine. He took a breath, and it smelled and tasted like the usual Cardiff winter. The grass and trees were perfectly normal, if somewhat eerie in the moonlight. The sky was the same.
Ianto shook himself and found his gun on the ground, a few feet from where he’d been laying. He holstered it automatically.
“I’m not picking anything up,” Jack said, after a while. They’d been transported from Penarth to a wooded area near Dinas Powys, according to Ianto’s PDA map. “What did you do to your back?”
Ianto shrugged, busy with his own scans. “I’m not getting anything either,” he admitted. Jack frowned at him and stood behind him to look at his back. Ianto ignored him. “The Rift activity is lower than anything I have logged, and it’s range of influence is much smaller, less than a mile from the Bay. There are unusual temporal readings-“ he paused, wincing, as Jack’s fingers prodded a cut.
“It looks like you landed on one of the mirrors,” Jack said. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“No,” Ianto realized.
Jack shook his head and said something about shock. He found Ianto watching him impatiently and sighed, wiping blood off on his trouser. “Sorry,” he said. “Unusual temporal readings?”
He nodded. “The same ones we saw at the estate.”
“Well,” Jack said, “now we know what they were. That statue must have been sending people into the past.”
Ianto rubbed the back of his neck. Jack knocked his hands aside and replaced them with his own, kneading gently. “Why would it have done that?” Ianto asked, as if there could possibly be a logical answer. Eighteen forty-nine, oh, God. He was trapped here. “What do we do?” Torchwood had procedures in place for this, he was certain, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what they were.
Jack shrugged. “No clue,” he said honestly, and came around to stand at Ianto’s side. His faded blue eyes were creased with concern. “Let’s go into town,” he said. “You need to get warm and have those cuts looked at.”
Reluctance gripped him. Ianto looked around the clearing, briefly flooded with visions of the twenty-first century - cars, computers, phones, his flat, his scattered relations, even the Torchwood Hub. All impossibly far away.
“All right,” Ianto said, turning away. “Let’s go.”
***
Part Two
Author Name: ceresi
Recipient: katzb101
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, hints of John/Jack
Summary: A routine investigation at an old council estate goes wrong when the team meets an old enemy of the Doctor’s. Jack and Ianto find themselves trapped, prisoners of a new life, while Gwen is left to bring them home. Action-adventure fic also featuring Martha, John, some gore, and some creeptastic bad guys - mind the warnings!
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Torchwood and Doctor Who (and probably a chunk of Cardiff and its surrounding environs) are property of BBC & Co., I’m only borrowing them to play with on the Internet.
Warnings: Some gore and horror, arachnophobes beware. Spoilers for all of Torchwood and all of Doctor Who (minus S4), just to be safe.
Word Count: 29,000
Author's Notes: More detailed notes at the end, where they won’t spoil things.
Betas: Thanks to Anonymous for the awesome beta and Anonymous for the Britpick and for catching a bunch of typos. And to everyone who chimed in with ‘integrity’ when my brain failed me.
Part One
Something about this place was familiar.
Ianto shook his head, slamming shut the driver’s side door and blinking in the sunlight. ‘This place’ was a condemned council estate in Penarth, overlooking a chunk of the new and trendy Cardiff Bay. He was fairly certain he’d never been here before, and yet, the feeling tugged at him.
To be honest, there were many places in Cardiff that felt eerily familiar to him. There wasn’t much of it he hadn’t seen, either with his own eyes or through old films and photographs, but it was the sense memory that was most disconcerting. Like now, the smell of asphalt and grass baking in the sun, or a rope of chain swinging between two poles, creaking rustily, reminding him of something from childhood.
“Hey, Ianto!” Jack’s cheerfully demanding bellow startled him from his thoughts. “Hurry it up!”
With a backwards glance at the basketball court, Ianto went.
Gwen and Jack had already begun a slow inspection of the parking lot, sunglasses on to ward off the glare. Jack was walking backwards and talking at the same time. Ianto caught up to them in an old building’s shadow, a breath of relief from the harsh sun.
Gwen was frowning up at a balcony. “Ianto,” she called. “There are still people living in there.”
“Yup.” Ianto began tuning his PDA as Jack removed his sunglasses to follow her gaze upwards. “Squatters. Four or five of them, according to the manager I interviewed.”
“But they’re demolishing the place!” One building was already so reduced, a sad pile of wood and bricks that were once homes. The smell of crushed concrete and plaster was still heavy on the air. Ianto dearly hoped there hadn’t been any asbestos inside - that was all they needed, lung cancer.
“I’m sure they’ve realized,” Ianto said. “They’ll have to move, obviously.”
Gwen was not happy with this. “Kids,” Jack said, cutting her off and pocketing his sunglasses, “let’s try to remember what we’re here for. Ianto, are you picking up anything?”
Ianto held up the PDA. “There are some temporal fluctuations, but they’re within reasonable limits. As far as I can tell, at least.”
And without Tosh, that was the best they were going to get. He wished like hell he’d attempted the tech certification at Torchwood One, but he’d been too busy impressing Lisa with his field exam scores. Not that it had done him any good - a month with Torchwood Three was more educational than a year’s worth of classes in London had ever been.
Jack strode away from them, into the sunlight, struggling to orient himself. “The disappearances happened over there.“ He pointed. “Let’s try those buildings first. Ianto, keep an eye on the scanner. Gwen, keep your eyes peeled.” He glanced around to make sure he wasn’t overlooking anything, and nodded. “Let’s go.”
The building Jack led them to looked exactly like the others, with only slight variations on which balconies were collapsing and how many doors were missing. Jack climbed over the crumbling alley wall, tearing away vines and ambitious weeds, with Ianto and Gwen a beat behind him.
“Anything?” Jack asked.
Glued to his PDA, Ianto shook his head. So did Gwen, brow furrowed at the sight of another occupied flat. “What exactly are we looking for, Jack?”
“Two construction workers disappeared, from this area, around this time yesterday.” Jack hooked his thumbs in his pockets and swiveled slowly, inspecting the five-story buildings on each side. “What do these buildings have that the others don’t?”
Gwen stared around thoughtfully. “We’re . . . closer to the trees,” Ianto offered, without looking up.
“Good point.”
“Let’s take a look around,” Gwen suggested, glancing back at the curtained windows. “Try talking to some people. Maybe Ianto can get some readings.”
Ianto frowned mournfully at the PDA in his hand. The idea that it was covered in Tosh’s fingerprints was just that - an idea - half hallucination and half wild hope. He’d scrubbed the thing near-obsessively before taking it out of the Hub, afraid that some fleck of Tosh’s blood was still clinging in some crack, waiting to smear itself on his fingers. He resisted the urge to check again.
“Sounds good to me,” Jack said. “Gwen, Ianto, you two take the buildings. I’m going to look around the woods.” He tapped on his earbud, and his next words emerged in disconcerting stereo: “Stay in touch.”
~
Gwen wrenched open the stairwell door and stuck her head inside. The narrow metal steps were rusted and decaying, the grey bricks stained with water, fungus, and something that might have been blood. Overhead, the distant sounds of birdsong and wind whistled through the rotting roof. She used her sleeve to cover her nose kicked the door open the rest of the way.
Wan rays of sunlight illuminated the narrow room. Gwen found her torch and switched it on, but any bugs (or axe murderers, or aliens) lying in wait had already fled. All that was left were shadows and thick clusters of spider webs.
Very thick clusters of spider webs. Gwen prodded one with the toe of her boot and moved on.
A short trip down a concrete set of stairs led her to the garden floor entrance, the heavy metal door still standing, if crookedly. This time, the doorknob worked. With a breath to prepare herself, Gwen headed inside.
It was like stepping from a haunted house into a third world country. Gwen gagged helplessly and switched on her comm, staggering backwards. “Are you inside yet, Ianto?”
His voice came back low and wary. “Yup. You?”
“Yes.” Gwen exhaled slowly, fighting another retch. “It smells like-“
“Like someone’s having trouble with their plumbing?” Ianto offered delicately.
“Not what I was going to say, but it works.” One of the walls was spotted with green fungus and purple mold, the peeling yellow wallpaper stained brown. Gwen sidled past it.
Jack’s voice came on. “I think they’ve got a pit latrine out here somewhere. Sure smells like one, anyway.”
Why could drive anyone to live like this? Gwen pushed on further down the hall, counting doors, trying to breathe through her nose. When she was fairly certain she was outside the inhabited flat, she tapped on her comm again. “I’m trying one of the occupants.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Let us know how it goes.”
With one last grimace at the wooden door - it was dark and damp looking, white mold sprouting up along the edges - Gwen rapped her knuckles on the doorframe. After a lengthy silence, she tried again. “Hello? Is anyone home?”
Another pause. Gwen glanced about warily, a crawling feeling passing over her skin. It felt like she was being stared at. “Hello?” She even checked the ceiling above her head, in case someone or something was watching her through a hole. “Anyone there? I’m-“
The sound of a gunshot sent her flying backwards. She had one arm around her back, gun in hand, waiting for the pain to kick in before she realized it wasn’t a gun: it was just the door opening. A hostile brown eye and a shock of white hair peeked through a crack the size of Gwen’s thumb.
“What?” the person - an old lady - demanded. “What d’you want? Scared the ever-loving shit outta me, lovey.”
Gwen relented somewhat, easing herself backwards. “DI Cooper, ma’am,” she said. Her heart was still pounding. “Sorry to startle you. Could you spare a few minutes, please?” The old woman didn’t budge. Gwen continuing soothingly. “Just routine, a few people have gone missing nearby. Could I come in?”
The eye blinked. “Am I under arrest?”
This wasn’t going well. “No, ma’am,” Gwen said. “I’m just looking for eyewitness accounts.”
“I haven’t seen anything. Don’t think I’ll be much help.” Behind the white hair, the flat was a dim ruin of warped bookcases and gaudy trinkets. The windows must have been boarded up - it had that look of diffused sunlight. A telly was spitting static and mangled voices.
“No one new in the area?” Gwen pressed gently. “No raised voices?”
“Just those fools come to tear down my home.” The eye narrowed with sudden hatred. There was, Gwen realized uneasily, something narrow, hard, and black strapped over the old lady’s shoulder, like . . . Gwen didn’t know what. One end was pointed, almost sharp enough to draw blood, and there was some kind of blobby bit near the woman’s shoulder.
“Are you one of them?” The old lady surged forward, mashing her face against the crack, eye bulging. Her voice grew shrill. “You are! You are, aren’t you?”
Gwen stepped back, hands open and extended, but the old lady had already slammed shut the door. There were a few muffled noises from inside the flat, and then silence.
“Hell,” Gwen whispered, and freed her gun from its holster. She kept it safely in hand as she edged down the hallway, senses tuned for any sudden movements or sounds. None were forthcoming. She reached the door and switched her comm back on.
“Nothing,” she said, voice flat. “She didn’t want to help.”
Jack’s voice was warm with concern. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” Gwen said. She thought she saw something moving at the other end of the hall, but when she pointed her light at it, all she saw was wall. She gave her head a firm shake. “I’m going to take a look around the second floor.”
“You might want to come over here first,” Ianto cut in, voice grimmer than usual. “I’m up on the roof and I’ve found something.”
“Like what?” Jack demanded.
“I think. . . .” Ianto hesitated, swallowing audibly. “It’s a bit difficult to tell, but I think it might have been a body.”
Gwen ducked from the stairwell into the open air, hurrying towards the other building at a trot. “Huh,” Jack said. “I’ve found something, too, but yours is more interesting. I’m on my way.”
~
The body, or what was left of it, had been a vagrant at some point, judging by the fragments of clothing that remained. The skin was almost entirely gone, except for some hard brown strips that glistened oddly in the sunlight. Beneath it, the gravel roof was stained black with blood and whatever else. Worst of all, in Ianto’s opinion, were the jagged stumps jutting from what were once hips, the melted skin torn away. They ended far too soon, as if something had begun devouring the body from the feet up.
The ribcage, too, was gone, replaced by a mass white webs. The only thing clearly identifying the wreckage as human was the skull, unmercifully undamaged, dried sinew locking the jaw in a permanent scream.
Ianto suspected the man’s death had been violent. The arms were flung out, the torso wrenched sideways, a permanent expression of surprise. The damage had been done afterwards, he was certain. Or nearly certain.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
“This is horrible,” Gwen said softly, staring at the body. Jack was pacing the roof’s perimeter, fiddling with his wrist-strap and mumbling under his breath. “What could have happened to him? Do you think he was living here?”
Ianto shook his head, as transfixed by the corpse as she was. “I don’t know,” he said simply. “I haven’t had a chance to inspect the flats yet.”
Jack started back towards them and they yanked their heads up. “We should probably take a look around downstairs, see what we can find.” He snapped the manipulator shut and tugged his sleeve over it. “Fifth floor together, I don’t want us splitting up. Keep an eye open for spiders.”
Gwen eyed the webs spilling out of the sunken chest and shivered.
Jack took point, of course, his ancient Webley held at the ready. Gwen and Ianto brought up the rear. They reached the fifth floor without incident, where Jack insisted on the element of surprise, no matter how silly it felt kicking open doors to empty flats. By the time they reached the third storey, Jack had relaxed enough to let them split up.
“But stay in touch,” he called after them.
Gwen and Ianto exchanged glances and headed into the stairwell together. “He’s worse than my mam, these days,” Gwen said, when they’d rounded the corner. “At least she lets me out of her sight for more than an hour.“
Ianto waved her off, amused. Obediently, she checked in with Jack before letting herself into the second-floor hall, and naturally, Ianto did the same. Jack’s replies were brisk, preoccupied, as if he didn’t care, but they both knew he did.
Ianto was finishing with his second flat, checking the closet and a hole in the wall for spiders, when Jack’s voice came back over the comms. “Found something,” he said. “No worries, though, it’s, ah - it’s pretty dead.”
Ianto pointed his light upwards, peering into a hole in the ceiling. “What is ‘it’, exactly?” he wanted to know.
“It’s a spider. A big, dead spider.” Jack’s voice turned mischievous. “Who thinks I should try dropping it down Gwen’s shirt?”
“Oi!” That was Gwen.
“I wouldn’t recommend it, Jack,” Ianto said, pulling the door shut and moving to the next flat. “I believe she’s armed.”
“Damn right, she’s armed,” Gwen growled, as Jack murmured suggestively, “Not like bullets work on me, anyway. . . .”
“Jack!” Gwen was a little shrill. “Don’t you dare!”
This flat was as empty as the last one. The spider webs, he couldn’t help but notice, were getting thicker and more frequent the further he got from the stairs. Another hole in the wall revealed more webbing than insulation. “So, this spider - when you say big, how big do you mean?”
Jack was still laughing at Gwen. “About a foot across, I guess,” he said, between chuckles. “It’s all scrunched up and on its back. Kinda cute, really.”
“You would think so,” Gwen muttered darkly.
“But I don’t think there are any more,” Jack said, more seriously. “At least, I haven’t seen any. Maybe we scared them off.”
Ianto struggled with the door to the third flat. It was well and truly jammed - it took three good kicks to open it even halfway, and then the source of his difficulties was revealed. Someone had nailed it shut. He finished kicking it open and squeezed inside, expecting to find more signs of life. Maybe this was where the vagrant had been living.
But there was nothing other than nails, water-stained carpet, and peeling wallpaper. The windows had also been boarded shut, stubborn light squeezing through the slats. The first bedroom was equally empty. The second, however. . . .
Ianto switched on his comm and entered the room slowly, gun cocked and ready. “You never did tell us what you found,” he said conversationally. “In the woods.”
“Oh, that.” Jack sounded remarkably unconcerned. Maybe he was still playing with his dead spider. “It was like some kind of shrine or mini-graveyard. Very weird, very random. Didn’t show up as anything unusual on my scanner, though.”
The bedroom was full of mirrors. Some of them had been salvaged from the trash, their backs chipped and peeling; others were full-length antiques, silver surfaces spotted. They had been propped against the walls in a ragged circle, where they caught the sunlight pouring through the open window and raised it to blinding levels.
“They seemed familiar, though,” Jack said. There was the sound of creaking as Gwen entered the flat above Ianto’s head. “The statues. Like I’d seen them before. Maybe-“
Someone had written something on the wall.
“Jack,” Ianto said slowly. “There’s a statue in here. A weeping angel.”
The creaking above him stopped. “Where?” Jack demanded.
“In the corner of the room.” Ianto stepped further inside, eyes narrowed against the glare. He couldn’t read whatever was on the wall. “It’s full of mirrors.”
Jack’s voice was a bitten-off snarl. “Which room?”
“Third from the stairs.” He could hear the muffled thud of Gwen’s boots above his head, as she came to help, and then silence.
Frowning, he slid several mirrors aside, trying to read the writing on the wall. Look out, it said. Look out for what? The rest of it was covered by a full-length mirror too ungainly to move. Ianto tipped it forward and craned his neck to peer behind it.
-behind you.
Look out behind you.
Ianto spun, yanking up his gun, and swore in pure shock. “Ianto!” Jack shouted.
He swore again. “It’s moving!” he snapped, and fired a desperate shot. It didn’t even chip the stone. “The statue, it’s-“
It was right in front of him, now. He tried ducking under its outstretched arm, but when he straightened and looked back it had turned to chase after him, terrible mouth open in a silent scream. He stumbled backwards, a mirror colliding with his heel and yanking him to the ground.
Jack was yelling again - Jack was still yelling, he hadn’t stopped. “Ianto, talk to me, what’s it doing, talk to me-“
“Towards me,” Ianto rasped, scrambling backwards. “Fast, it’s so fast, I don’t know how-“
He’d dropped his gun, he realized. He scrambled backwards and searched for it desperately, where was it, where was it - to his right! He grabbed it-
And then the statue was on him. Impossibly fast.
“I looked away,” he realized, a cold, hard jolt of understanding. Like lightning. The stone hand was wrapped around his throat, a block of marble with ice water for veins. He was going to remember that hand for a long, long time. “That’s when it moved.”
The world went dark.
~
“I looked away,” Ianto’s voice said, harsh and shaking. “That’s when it-“
“Ianto?” Gwen was screaming, running down the hall like her life depended on it, slamming into the stairwell with enough force to bruise. “Ianto? Ianto!”
“He’s gone,” Jack’s voice came, foggy and cold. “The room is empty, he’s gone.”
“No,” Gwen whispered, and then something hit her.
Shrieking, she tripped and fell down the stairs, flailing and rolling to a halt. She let out a real scream when she saw what it was - a massive, hairy spider, its mandibles open and aimed at her face. It took both hands on the spider’s furry body to get it off her chest.
It landed on its feet and flipped onto its feet. Gwen fired three shots into it and ran on.
“Jack!” No reply. “Jack, where are you, talk to me!”
Still no reply. She staggered down the hall, bouncing off the walls, and into the empty flat. Empty. Empty, empty, empty. Empty living room, empty kitchen - she kept her gun in the air, finger vibrating on the trigger. One empty bedroom, a short hall, another room-
Mirrors. For a wild moment she thought it was Jack, standing with his back to her, Jack in his long grey coat, but it wasn’t. It was a statue, wings taut and lowered, hands covering its face. Just a statue and a few shattered mirrors, some bright blood staining the carpet, and that was it. That was all. No Ianto, no Jack, oh God, they were gone. She was alone.
She fired an entire clip into the statue’s back to no effect, reloaded the gun and tried again. “Where are they?” she shouted. She could barely hear herself over the roaring in her ears. “Where are they?”
There was something written on the wall. She edged further into the room, keeping the statue in her sights, and flicked a glance over. Look out behind you.
Instinctively, she looked back, and then forward again. Her gun went off accidentally and she had to readjust her aim.
The statue had moved.
“Ah, God,” she breathed. It had moved. It was facing at her now, clawed hands raised, needle-sharp teeth bared. I looked away, Ianto had said. A mini-graveyard, Jack had said. Look out behind you. How many of these things were there? “Ah, God. God.”
She had to leave. She had to leave, or the statue would get her too, and then there would be no one left. “Jack!” she tried, one last time, “Ianto!” If they could hear her, if they were anywhere nearby, they couldn’t reply. Jack would be furious if she let herself be taken, too.
She had to leave.
Shaking, she began to retreat, stooping briefly to grab the nearest mirror. With it held before her her, she was able to keep the statue in her sights even as she rounded the corner. Every so often she would blink and it would come a little closer. Every time she would jump and gasp and curse, and keep moving.
The trip to the SUV was agonizing. Sweat dripped from her face, stinging her eyes, and every faint sound was another statue or another spider sneaking up behind her. She didn’t relax until she’d slammed the car door shut, and then she realized she was whimpering, tiny little moans catching in her throat.
She almost screamed when she realized that she didn’t have the keys. Ianto had had them, and wherever he was now, so were they. When she looked up, the statue was outside, halfway between her and the building, its stone arm flung over its eyes.
“C’mon, Gwen.” The sound of her own shaking voice wasn’t comforting, but it was all she had. “C’mon, don’t fall apart on me now. You can do this.”
There was another way to start the car, of course. Tosh and Ianto had installed the system themselves, after the disaster in the Brecon Beacons. She ripped open the access panel beside the steering wheel and typed in the code, but her hands were shaking so badly that she pressed two wrong keys. The machine blatted offensively and a computerized voice began a countdown.
The statue was closer. She took a deep breath, gaze fixed firmly on the thing (creature? alien? monster?), and used the rearview mirror to check behind her. No others so far. Maybe it was the only one.
Another deep breath. Calmly, she input the correct code.
The countdown stopped and the SUV hummed to life. Politely, the computer apologized for the misunderstanding. “Gwen Cooper SUV Access Code recognized and accepted. Self-destruct disabled, engine ignition proceeding. Have a nice day.”
Gwen snarled, slammed her foot on the gas, and fled.
~
It was pitch-black and cold, wherever he was, and everything hurt. His eyelids felt like they’d been glued shut. Only when Jack landed, flailing and cursing, did he realize he wasn’t dead - Death was, after all, the one place Jack could never follow him.
“Shit!” It was a strange sense of déjà vu, Jack crashing down on him and forcing life back into his lungs. One of his elbows was planted firmly in Ianto’s chest. “Jack,” Ianto groaned, “stop it.”
“Ianto?”
Ianto forced his eyes open. Jack’s face was about a quarter-inch away, looking utterly gob-smacked. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Ianto said, aiming for flippant and sounding mostly strained. “People are going to talk.”
Now Jack was grinning at him, overjoyed. “Ianto!”
Ianto grunted and found himself being kissed and hugged, snowdrift and all. “Mmph,” he said, pushing back at Jack’s tongue with his own and pawing gingerly at his shoulder. “Jack,” he gasped, when Jack pulled back. “Jack, let go.”
Jack rolled to the side and Ianto rolled to the other, mouth watering as his stomach roiled. For a moment he thought his lunch might stay down, but no such luck - he wound up vomiting twice, arm wobbling and nearly pitching him forward. A pair of warm, broad hands came round to hold him up.
“Thanks,” Ianto whispered, and dry heaved.
“Easy, easy.” Jack pressed a handkerchief into his hand and hugged him from behind.“I’ve got you,” he said, pulling them into a sitting position, “easy, now.” After the snow, Jack was nice and warm against Ianto’s back. “Just breathe.”
“What.” Ianto had to pause to follow Jack’s order. Holding his breath hurt, deep breaths hurt more, and short breaths hurt worst. He oscillated between the three options and waited for the pain to stop. “What just happened?”
Jack’s voice was careful, now, reluctant. “I think we may have traveled in time.” He shifted. “Yeah. According to this, we’re in the year eighteen forty-nine. And it’s ten at night, which explains why it’s so dark.”
‘This’ was Jack’s wrist device, the operation of which Ianto had never fully understood. Jack showed it to him and he read the numbers dutifully. There wasn’t anything he could think to say.
“We need to take a look around,” Jack said gently, after a moment had passed.
“All right.” Ianto found his torch and his PDA in his pocket, both still working, and let Jack help him up. A strange, numb feeling had overtaken him. “What are we looking for?”
“I don’t know.” Jack’s mouth was tight, eyes shadowed. There was no trace of his earlier happiness now. “Anything.”
Ianto had heard plenty about time travel, seen some of its victims at Flat Holm, but nothing had prepared him for this. Eighteen forty-nine. He took a breath, and it smelled and tasted like the usual Cardiff winter. The grass and trees were perfectly normal, if somewhat eerie in the moonlight. The sky was the same.
Ianto shook himself and found his gun on the ground, a few feet from where he’d been laying. He holstered it automatically.
“I’m not picking anything up,” Jack said, after a while. They’d been transported from Penarth to a wooded area near Dinas Powys, according to Ianto’s PDA map. “What did you do to your back?”
Ianto shrugged, busy with his own scans. “I’m not getting anything either,” he admitted. Jack frowned at him and stood behind him to look at his back. Ianto ignored him. “The Rift activity is lower than anything I have logged, and it’s range of influence is much smaller, less than a mile from the Bay. There are unusual temporal readings-“ he paused, wincing, as Jack’s fingers prodded a cut.
“It looks like you landed on one of the mirrors,” Jack said. “Doesn’t it hurt?”
“No,” Ianto realized.
Jack shook his head and said something about shock. He found Ianto watching him impatiently and sighed, wiping blood off on his trouser. “Sorry,” he said. “Unusual temporal readings?”
He nodded. “The same ones we saw at the estate.”
“Well,” Jack said, “now we know what they were. That statue must have been sending people into the past.”
Ianto rubbed the back of his neck. Jack knocked his hands aside and replaced them with his own, kneading gently. “Why would it have done that?” Ianto asked, as if there could possibly be a logical answer. Eighteen forty-nine, oh, God. He was trapped here. “What do we do?” Torchwood had procedures in place for this, he was certain, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what they were.
Jack shrugged. “No clue,” he said honestly, and came around to stand at Ianto’s side. His faded blue eyes were creased with concern. “Let’s go into town,” he said. “You need to get warm and have those cuts looked at.”
Reluctance gripped him. Ianto looked around the clearing, briefly flooded with visions of the twenty-first century - cars, computers, phones, his flat, his scattered relations, even the Torchwood Hub. All impossibly far away.
“All right,” Ianto said, turning away. “Let’s go.”
***
Part Two