fic: All the Myths are True [PG-13] 5/? Torchwood/Abney Park crossover
Title: All the Myths are True
Author: A Lanart
Fandom: Abney Park/Torchwood
Pairing: None
Characters: Abney Park circa 06-08 - Robert, Kristina, Magdalene, Finn, Nathaniel, Jean-Paul, Daniel. Torchwood Team
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: crack!fic Mid S2 in the Torchwood scheme of things
Summary: Abney Park are a steampunk band with alter-egos as Airship Pirates. It just so happens that in this universe, all the myths are true; this is the story of one Captain Robert, his merry band and how they acquired the Airship Ophelia from a certain top-secret government agency, and then had to explain it decades later...
Disclaimer: None of this is mine except for the freaky plot bunny. I even nicked the title from Abney Park - it kind of seemed appropriate.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
~*~
Torchwood Cardiff 2008
*
“Jack, I think you should come and look at this!”
Jack bounded out of his office and over to Toshiko’s workstation with characteristic enthusiasm.
“What’s the problem, Tosh?”
“It’s not a problem as such, it’s just the rift is throwing off some very strange readings. Mainframe recognises them as familiar but I keep on getting errors when I try to interrogate it as to *why* they are familiar, almost as if it is trying to stop me from discovering more. So far the only concrete thing I’ve been able to find is that the highest concentration of similar readings was in 2006 and there was an isolated blip some months later.”
“Can you tell if anything has come through?”
“There’s nothing yet. If anything it looks more like temporal resonances from a particular event.” She turned away from the screen and removed her glasses before meeting Jack’s eyes. “From right around the time we *all* went for training, when you told us not to worry about the rift and we came back to find that there’d been an ‘earthquake’.”
Jack sighed, frowning slightly as he shook his head to stall any further query. He couldn’t explain about having to get them out of the way so he, and they, didn’t meet his younger self, not even to Toshiko.
“So, resonances you say?” He commented as he drew closer, focusing her attention back on the immediate problem.
“Yes, and it looks like they go backward in time too, though I can’t tell how far.” She’d put her glasses back on and was tapping away at her keyboard. Jack rested a hand on her shoulder as he glanced at the screens.
“And you’re sure nothing has come through?” He asked again, just to be certain. She gave him a tiny, but firm nod.
“Positive.”
“Then keep a close eye on the rift, I have a bad feeling about this.” Jack knew he had no need to elaborate further, Tosh trusted his instinct about the Rift almost as much as she trusted the computers and when the 2 tallied that only made her more vigilant.
*
Jack made a point of checking in with Tosh frequently that day, and found himself becoming frustrated by her constant assurances of ‘nothing yet’. He *knew* something was brewing and he also knew that it wouldn’t necessarily be good given the state of the Plass, and the Hub, after the original disturbance when the rift was forced open by the actions of Blon Fel-Fotch Slitheen. However, until something actually looked like it might happen there wasn’t an awful lot he or the team could do besides watch, no matter how frustrating it might be.
The first indication that something *was* happening was when Ianto came in absolutely soaked, and headed straight for Tosh’s work station, peeling his coat off as he went, with hardly a glance in Jack’s direction. Unexpected rain storms weren’t exactly unusual in Cardiff, so obviously something about this one had piqued Ianto’s interest. Jack wandered over to Tosh’s workstation, where Ianto was valiantly trying not to drip on her computers while he gave her the rundown on what was happening above. As Jack drew closer he finally received acknowledgement of his presence, but in the way that Ianto had, he also managed to make it a warning.
“Jack,” he said. No more, just that one word, but Jack could tell that there was a riot of things going on behind Ianto’s seemingly unflappable exterior.
“What’s up?”
“This is no ordinary storm,” Ianto said. Jack trusted him on that; Ianto was Cardiff born and bred and had a sometimes preternatural awareness of what was ‘right’ with the city, probably a consequence of the living on top of the rift for most of his life. “Look...” Ianto indicated the pictures now scudding across one of Tosh’s monitors and Jack moved around so he could see the screen more easily. He realised at that point that they were watching footage from Ianto’s phone. Footage that showed sickly coloured twists of what didn’t - quite- look like lightning curving through the sky. The twisting in Jack’s gut echoed what he saw on the screen.
“Shit. If Tosh’s right and we’re getting echoes and resonances of a previous event we’ve got the echo of a Rift Storm happening right over our heads.”
“An echo is better than the real thing, though. Isn’t it?” Ianto sounded like he was fishing for reassurance. Jack wished he had some to give him. The truth was he didn’t exactly know what the echo of a rift storm would bring.
“I guess,” he sighed. “Call the others in; we’re probably going to have a busy night.”
“They’re already on their way.”
*
“Pull up, Pull up! Land ahoy!” Finn’s shout was as loud as a trained pair of lungs could make it, which at least meant everyone heard her.
Robert didn’t think he’d ever been so glad to hear something in his life. If there was land then they’d made it through the storm. He kissed the nearest bit of Ophelia he could reach.
“Thank you for holding together, babe. It’s much appreciated.” He patted her absently and then looked around. Everyone *seemed* to be in one piece, but it would be prudent to check. He cleared his throat experimentally, somewhat hoarse from all the yelling he’d been doing. “Is everyone OK? All present and correct?”
“I’m not sure about correct, but I’m definitely present.” Daniel’s voice was muffled, but he sounded surprisingly cheerful. His affirmative answer was echoed by the others and Robert breathed a sigh of relief. It was time to find out where and when they happened to be, and if they could do anything about it as although his vm seemed to be in working order he had no idea what sort of repairs the Ophelia would need.
“OK guys. Report?”
*
Jack acknowledged Gwen’s arrival with a brief nod, she said nothing, merely joined them around Tosh’s workstation, glancing at the pictures streaming across the screens.
“Jack says it’s the echo of a Rift storm,” Ianto informed her. “Unfortunately we don’t know exactly what the outcome will be.”
“Might be nothing, but then it’s almost as likely that everything might go to hell,” Jack said.
“Nothing like being optimistic, eh, Jack?” Gwen teased. Jack gave her a half-hearted smile back, which did more to quell further comments from that direction than anything he could have said. The resulting near-silence was eerie, the usual sounds of the Hub overlaid by the frantic tapping of Tosh’s fingers as they flew over her keyboard, but no-one seemed to want to break it; it was as if they were holding their breath.
Tosh’s computer beeped shrilly into the silence.
“Rift Activity!” Tosh said, her fingers flying even faster over the keyboard - the images onscreen changing as she entered more commands. “Something’s coming through,” she continued.
“Can you tell what?” Jack asked.
“Not yet, but it’s pretty big. Clearing up the data stream.”
Jack found himself pushed away from the screen as Ianto leaned in for a closer look, intent on the screen
“It’s not centred on the rift, seems to be holding position beyond Penarth,” Ianto commented. Jack shot a glance at Ianto, his guts tightening unpleasantly with the implications.
“That’s the middle of the Bristol Channel,” he said “...out towards...” he trailed off, throwing another glance in Ianto’s direction. Ianto met his eyes and nodded.
“Flat Holm. Yes.”
Jack held his breath, hoping that certain decisions weren’t going to blow up in his face. This would *not* be a good time for that to happen. Luckily Tosh interrupted his train of thought.
“Receiving visuals. Just give me a second to clean up the signal...”
The static on the screen slowly cleared to produce a recognisable, albeit still slightly fuzzy, image.
Tosh frowned. “That can’t be right. Let me see if I can clean that up some more... Oh.”
They all stared at the screen in startled silence - Tosh seated at her desk, the others crowded around and behind her. For long moments, no-one even seemed to breathe.
“Jack, I don’t suppose you have any idea why there might be an airship hovering over the Bristol Channel, do you?” Gwen asked.
“And not just any airship - that looks like the Ophelia,” Ianto added.
“What? It can’t be! Let me see...” Jack pushed Ianto and Gwen out of the way in his hurry to get a closer look at the screen. The image that met his eyes was unmistakeable; it was the Airship Ophelia - albeit somewhat battered and broken - last seen in Torchwood London in the 1920s. “It’s the Ophelia all right.” He turned to Ianto. “But what I want to know is how *you* recognised her - and don’t give me that spiel about knowing everything, Ianto.”
To Jack’s surprise, Ianto smiled.
“You can thank Peter Nichols for that,” he said. “The Ophelia’s disappearance and subsequent sightings were his personal project for over 15 years.” Jack remembered Peter as an intense young man with a thirst for knowledge, in a way not so different from a certain Welshman, and the memory brought a smile to his own face.
“Then what happened?” He asked.
“1939. He didn’t have the time or the inclination to continue his journal after that.”
The sound of Tosh pointedly clearing her throat interrupted any further discussion.
“This is all fascinating, but don’t you think we’d better do something about the immediate problem?” She indicated the screen, where the Ophelia now appeared to be listing slightly. “If we want to keep this quiet, we need to move quickly.”
“Actually, I think it might be a little too late to keep it quiet,” Gwen said from Owen’s workstation.
“What do you mean?”
“According to this, the Ophelia is the transport of choice for a bunch of Airship Pirates, otherwise known as steampunk band Abney Park.”
“Airship Pirates. Oh come on, Gwen...” Jack turned from watching Tosh and made his way over to the other workstation. Gwen glanced over her shoulder at him before turning her attention back to the screen.
“That’s what it says here, Jack. And they’re led by one Captain Robert...”
Author: A Lanart
Fandom: Abney Park/Torchwood
Pairing: None
Characters: Abney Park circa 06-08 - Robert, Kristina, Magdalene, Finn, Nathaniel, Jean-Paul, Daniel. Torchwood Team
Rating: PG
Warnings/Spoilers: crack!fic Mid S2 in the Torchwood scheme of things
Summary: Abney Park are a steampunk band with alter-egos as Airship Pirates. It just so happens that in this universe, all the myths are true; this is the story of one Captain Robert, his merry band and how they acquired the Airship Ophelia from a certain top-secret government agency, and then had to explain it decades later...
Disclaimer: None of this is mine except for the freaky plot bunny. I even nicked the title from Abney Park - it kind of seemed appropriate.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
~*~
Torchwood Cardiff 2008
*
“Jack, I think you should come and look at this!”
Jack bounded out of his office and over to Toshiko’s workstation with characteristic enthusiasm.
“What’s the problem, Tosh?”
“It’s not a problem as such, it’s just the rift is throwing off some very strange readings. Mainframe recognises them as familiar but I keep on getting errors when I try to interrogate it as to *why* they are familiar, almost as if it is trying to stop me from discovering more. So far the only concrete thing I’ve been able to find is that the highest concentration of similar readings was in 2006 and there was an isolated blip some months later.”
“Can you tell if anything has come through?”
“There’s nothing yet. If anything it looks more like temporal resonances from a particular event.” She turned away from the screen and removed her glasses before meeting Jack’s eyes. “From right around the time we *all* went for training, when you told us not to worry about the rift and we came back to find that there’d been an ‘earthquake’.”
Jack sighed, frowning slightly as he shook his head to stall any further query. He couldn’t explain about having to get them out of the way so he, and they, didn’t meet his younger self, not even to Toshiko.
“So, resonances you say?” He commented as he drew closer, focusing her attention back on the immediate problem.
“Yes, and it looks like they go backward in time too, though I can’t tell how far.” She’d put her glasses back on and was tapping away at her keyboard. Jack rested a hand on her shoulder as he glanced at the screens.
“And you’re sure nothing has come through?” He asked again, just to be certain. She gave him a tiny, but firm nod.
“Positive.”
“Then keep a close eye on the rift, I have a bad feeling about this.” Jack knew he had no need to elaborate further, Tosh trusted his instinct about the Rift almost as much as she trusted the computers and when the 2 tallied that only made her more vigilant.
*
Jack made a point of checking in with Tosh frequently that day, and found himself becoming frustrated by her constant assurances of ‘nothing yet’. He *knew* something was brewing and he also knew that it wouldn’t necessarily be good given the state of the Plass, and the Hub, after the original disturbance when the rift was forced open by the actions of Blon Fel-Fotch Slitheen. However, until something actually looked like it might happen there wasn’t an awful lot he or the team could do besides watch, no matter how frustrating it might be.
The first indication that something *was* happening was when Ianto came in absolutely soaked, and headed straight for Tosh’s work station, peeling his coat off as he went, with hardly a glance in Jack’s direction. Unexpected rain storms weren’t exactly unusual in Cardiff, so obviously something about this one had piqued Ianto’s interest. Jack wandered over to Tosh’s workstation, where Ianto was valiantly trying not to drip on her computers while he gave her the rundown on what was happening above. As Jack drew closer he finally received acknowledgement of his presence, but in the way that Ianto had, he also managed to make it a warning.
“Jack,” he said. No more, just that one word, but Jack could tell that there was a riot of things going on behind Ianto’s seemingly unflappable exterior.
“What’s up?”
“This is no ordinary storm,” Ianto said. Jack trusted him on that; Ianto was Cardiff born and bred and had a sometimes preternatural awareness of what was ‘right’ with the city, probably a consequence of the living on top of the rift for most of his life. “Look...” Ianto indicated the pictures now scudding across one of Tosh’s monitors and Jack moved around so he could see the screen more easily. He realised at that point that they were watching footage from Ianto’s phone. Footage that showed sickly coloured twists of what didn’t - quite- look like lightning curving through the sky. The twisting in Jack’s gut echoed what he saw on the screen.
“Shit. If Tosh’s right and we’re getting echoes and resonances of a previous event we’ve got the echo of a Rift Storm happening right over our heads.”
“An echo is better than the real thing, though. Isn’t it?” Ianto sounded like he was fishing for reassurance. Jack wished he had some to give him. The truth was he didn’t exactly know what the echo of a rift storm would bring.
“I guess,” he sighed. “Call the others in; we’re probably going to have a busy night.”
“They’re already on their way.”
*
“Pull up, Pull up! Land ahoy!” Finn’s shout was as loud as a trained pair of lungs could make it, which at least meant everyone heard her.
Robert didn’t think he’d ever been so glad to hear something in his life. If there was land then they’d made it through the storm. He kissed the nearest bit of Ophelia he could reach.
“Thank you for holding together, babe. It’s much appreciated.” He patted her absently and then looked around. Everyone *seemed* to be in one piece, but it would be prudent to check. He cleared his throat experimentally, somewhat hoarse from all the yelling he’d been doing. “Is everyone OK? All present and correct?”
“I’m not sure about correct, but I’m definitely present.” Daniel’s voice was muffled, but he sounded surprisingly cheerful. His affirmative answer was echoed by the others and Robert breathed a sigh of relief. It was time to find out where and when they happened to be, and if they could do anything about it as although his vm seemed to be in working order he had no idea what sort of repairs the Ophelia would need.
“OK guys. Report?”
*
Jack acknowledged Gwen’s arrival with a brief nod, she said nothing, merely joined them around Tosh’s workstation, glancing at the pictures streaming across the screens.
“Jack says it’s the echo of a Rift storm,” Ianto informed her. “Unfortunately we don’t know exactly what the outcome will be.”
“Might be nothing, but then it’s almost as likely that everything might go to hell,” Jack said.
“Nothing like being optimistic, eh, Jack?” Gwen teased. Jack gave her a half-hearted smile back, which did more to quell further comments from that direction than anything he could have said. The resulting near-silence was eerie, the usual sounds of the Hub overlaid by the frantic tapping of Tosh’s fingers as they flew over her keyboard, but no-one seemed to want to break it; it was as if they were holding their breath.
Tosh’s computer beeped shrilly into the silence.
“Rift Activity!” Tosh said, her fingers flying even faster over the keyboard - the images onscreen changing as she entered more commands. “Something’s coming through,” she continued.
“Can you tell what?” Jack asked.
“Not yet, but it’s pretty big. Clearing up the data stream.”
Jack found himself pushed away from the screen as Ianto leaned in for a closer look, intent on the screen
“It’s not centred on the rift, seems to be holding position beyond Penarth,” Ianto commented. Jack shot a glance at Ianto, his guts tightening unpleasantly with the implications.
“That’s the middle of the Bristol Channel,” he said “...out towards...” he trailed off, throwing another glance in Ianto’s direction. Ianto met his eyes and nodded.
“Flat Holm. Yes.”
Jack held his breath, hoping that certain decisions weren’t going to blow up in his face. This would *not* be a good time for that to happen. Luckily Tosh interrupted his train of thought.
“Receiving visuals. Just give me a second to clean up the signal...”
The static on the screen slowly cleared to produce a recognisable, albeit still slightly fuzzy, image.
Tosh frowned. “That can’t be right. Let me see if I can clean that up some more... Oh.”
They all stared at the screen in startled silence - Tosh seated at her desk, the others crowded around and behind her. For long moments, no-one even seemed to breathe.
“Jack, I don’t suppose you have any idea why there might be an airship hovering over the Bristol Channel, do you?” Gwen asked.
“And not just any airship - that looks like the Ophelia,” Ianto added.
“What? It can’t be! Let me see...” Jack pushed Ianto and Gwen out of the way in his hurry to get a closer look at the screen. The image that met his eyes was unmistakeable; it was the Airship Ophelia - albeit somewhat battered and broken - last seen in Torchwood London in the 1920s. “It’s the Ophelia all right.” He turned to Ianto. “But what I want to know is how *you* recognised her - and don’t give me that spiel about knowing everything, Ianto.”
To Jack’s surprise, Ianto smiled.
“You can thank Peter Nichols for that,” he said. “The Ophelia’s disappearance and subsequent sightings were his personal project for over 15 years.” Jack remembered Peter as an intense young man with a thirst for knowledge, in a way not so different from a certain Welshman, and the memory brought a smile to his own face.
“Then what happened?” He asked.
“1939. He didn’t have the time or the inclination to continue his journal after that.”
The sound of Tosh pointedly clearing her throat interrupted any further discussion.
“This is all fascinating, but don’t you think we’d better do something about the immediate problem?” She indicated the screen, where the Ophelia now appeared to be listing slightly. “If we want to keep this quiet, we need to move quickly.”
“Actually, I think it might be a little too late to keep it quiet,” Gwen said from Owen’s workstation.
“What do you mean?”
“According to this, the Ophelia is the transport of choice for a bunch of Airship Pirates, otherwise known as steampunk band Abney Park.”
“Airship Pirates. Oh come on, Gwen...” Jack turned from watching Tosh and made his way over to the other workstation. Gwen glanced over her shoulder at him before turning her attention back to the screen.
“That’s what it says here, Jack. And they’re led by one Captain Robert...”