Fic: Mysterious Creatures
Title: Mysterious Creatures
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Archive Monsters.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: A lot of things stored down in the archives remain a mystery, but the most mysterious things of all are the Archive Monsters.
Word Count: 1233
Written For: Prompt 231 - Mystery at fandomweekly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
There was much about Torchwood that was mysterious, especially to outsiders, who might have heard of the organisation, even seen the big black SUV racing through town, but who had little idea of Torchwood’s actual purpose, never mind who worked there, or where their base was located. There were plenty of rumours, but sorting the fact from the fiction was complicated by Torchwood themselves contributing their own disinformation.
But what the average person on the street would never understand was that aspects of Torchwood were often as mystifying to its employees as to the general public. For a start, they were led by a man who couldn’t stay dead, and a large part of their job was to collect the random, and often unidentifiable, objects, and sometimes creatures, that fell through a Rift in time and space that ran through the city.
A surprisingly large area of their secret underground base was given over to the archives, a veritable warren of interconnecting rooms and passageways where all manner of objects from the past, present, future, and other worlds were stored. There were countless shelves, boxes, and crates full of strange technology and peculiar artefacts, many of which defied explanation even after careful investigation revealed what they could be used for. Who really needed a device that turned everything it touched, whether organic or inorganic, living or dead, into glass, except for wood and anything that already WAS glass? It hardly seemed practical. The same could be said for the inoffensive looking little object that made people cluck like chickens whenever they tried to speak.
Ianto Jones, Torchwood Three’s self-styled Archivist in residence, almost literally since he spent more time in the base than he did at his flat, disappeared into the vast storage area, carved out of the bedrock and covering several sublevels whenever he had a moment to spare from his other duties. He was engaged in an ongoing battle to organise and catalogue everything Torchwood Three had accumulated over the past century or so, identifying what he could, and it wasn’t unusual for him to be down there for hours at a time, only surfacing when he was needed elsewhere. Considering there were thousands of items both on and under the multitude of shelves, or simply heaped wherever there was room, despite all the time and effort he put in, he had his doubts about whether the job would ever be completed.
Not that he minded; he found the self-imposed task fascinating, and enjoyed spending time with either Jack or Tosh, trying to figure out the purpose of various items. Sometimes they came up with a working theory, other times they remained completely baffled, and on very rare occasions, inspiration would strike, and another minor mystery would be solved. Jack always treated those successes as an excuse for celebration, and since such ‘celebrations’ generally involved himself, Ianto, and some decidedly adult activities, Ianto seldom complained.
There was one mystery, however, that Ianto wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to solve, and that was what he’d dubbed the Archive Monsters. Something, or more accurately several somethings, had made their home deep in the Hub’s lower levels.
Ianto didn’t know exactly where; the archives themselves, extensive though they were, still took up only a small percentage of the labyrinthine underground complex, but despite having done a fair amount of exploring, he made no effort to locate the lair of the curious creatures. In his opinion, if they’d been interested in making contact with humans, they would surely have done so long ago. According to Jack, they’d been in residence for over a century, but most of the time they merely lurked in the shadows, silently observing their hosts, their existence only marked by an occasional flicker of movement seen from the corner of the eye, and a vague sense of being watched.
Once Ianto had grown used to their unobtrusive presence, it had stopped bothering him, even become comforting in a way; he appreciated their quiet companionship, and they settled into a comfortable, undemanding coexistence. Sometimes he even spoke to them when he knew they were nearby, never looking their way, just making small talk about the various items he was attempting to identify. They never answered, of course, he had no idea if they could even hear, let alone understand earth languages, but he felt it would be impolite not to at least acknowledge them.
That became even more important to Ianto after the Archive Monsters saved his life. He’d been trapped in a section of the archives undergoing decontamination procedures after an accidental spill of an unknown substance, and he would without a doubt either have died from the effects of the contaminant, or suffocated if the aliens hadn’t come to his aid. As he’d lain there on the cold concrete, resigned to his imminent death, the aliens has somehow constructed a device around his head that had allowed him to breathe safe, filtered air.
Since that day, he’d sensed the Archive Monsters nearby almost every time he’d entered the archives. If someone else, usually Jack or Tosh, was with him, the strange beings would keep completely still and out of sight, but if Ianto was by himself, he’d sometimes catch brief glimpses of a crablike leg, or a feathery antenna, the curve of a carapace momentarily outlined against the background. There was something curiously protective about the way they hovered just on the edge of sight; it felt to Ianto as though they were checking up on him, to make sure he was alright.
He was even more sure of that the day he was studying an odd piece of technology he’d found in a cardboard box stuffed under a shelf. He was trying to make sense of it when his Bluetooth earpiece, which he always wore when he was down in the archives, suddenly clicked several times, as if someone upstairs was trying to contact him, although he couldn’t hear anything coming through.
Abandoning the device, he made his way up to the Hub to see if one of his colleagues needed something, only to find everyone sitting at their desks, completely engrossed in their own work. Since he was already there, he decided to make coffee for the team before going back downstairs with his own cup, where he found the unknown piece of alien technology completely disassembled, and several pieces missing.
When he took the remains upstairs to show Jack, the colour drained from his lover’s face. Apparently, the piece of tech was, or at least had been, a kind of anti-personnel mine, extremely sensitive and packed with two compounds that, when mixed, would have released a concentrated and highly toxic gas. Death would have been almost instantaneous; clearly, the Archive Monsters had saved Ianto again.
So, now, whenever he came across something he thought could be dangerous, even if he didn’t get mysteriously called away from his cataloguing, he’d leave the item on the floor and do some filing or something in another part of the archives, come back after twenty minutes or so, and if the item was still there, in one piece, he figured he could consider it harmless. Occasionally, he’d find a powerpack removed, or an unnoticed compartment opened, and once the entire device was gone when he returned, but that was fine. He trusted the Archive Monsters to keep him safe from harm.
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Archive Monsters.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: A lot of things stored down in the archives remain a mystery, but the most mysterious things of all are the Archive Monsters.
Word Count: 1233
Written For: Prompt 231 - Mystery at fandomweekly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
There was much about Torchwood that was mysterious, especially to outsiders, who might have heard of the organisation, even seen the big black SUV racing through town, but who had little idea of Torchwood’s actual purpose, never mind who worked there, or where their base was located. There were plenty of rumours, but sorting the fact from the fiction was complicated by Torchwood themselves contributing their own disinformation.
But what the average person on the street would never understand was that aspects of Torchwood were often as mystifying to its employees as to the general public. For a start, they were led by a man who couldn’t stay dead, and a large part of their job was to collect the random, and often unidentifiable, objects, and sometimes creatures, that fell through a Rift in time and space that ran through the city.
A surprisingly large area of their secret underground base was given over to the archives, a veritable warren of interconnecting rooms and passageways where all manner of objects from the past, present, future, and other worlds were stored. There were countless shelves, boxes, and crates full of strange technology and peculiar artefacts, many of which defied explanation even after careful investigation revealed what they could be used for. Who really needed a device that turned everything it touched, whether organic or inorganic, living or dead, into glass, except for wood and anything that already WAS glass? It hardly seemed practical. The same could be said for the inoffensive looking little object that made people cluck like chickens whenever they tried to speak.
Ianto Jones, Torchwood Three’s self-styled Archivist in residence, almost literally since he spent more time in the base than he did at his flat, disappeared into the vast storage area, carved out of the bedrock and covering several sublevels whenever he had a moment to spare from his other duties. He was engaged in an ongoing battle to organise and catalogue everything Torchwood Three had accumulated over the past century or so, identifying what he could, and it wasn’t unusual for him to be down there for hours at a time, only surfacing when he was needed elsewhere. Considering there were thousands of items both on and under the multitude of shelves, or simply heaped wherever there was room, despite all the time and effort he put in, he had his doubts about whether the job would ever be completed.
Not that he minded; he found the self-imposed task fascinating, and enjoyed spending time with either Jack or Tosh, trying to figure out the purpose of various items. Sometimes they came up with a working theory, other times they remained completely baffled, and on very rare occasions, inspiration would strike, and another minor mystery would be solved. Jack always treated those successes as an excuse for celebration, and since such ‘celebrations’ generally involved himself, Ianto, and some decidedly adult activities, Ianto seldom complained.
There was one mystery, however, that Ianto wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to solve, and that was what he’d dubbed the Archive Monsters. Something, or more accurately several somethings, had made their home deep in the Hub’s lower levels.
Ianto didn’t know exactly where; the archives themselves, extensive though they were, still took up only a small percentage of the labyrinthine underground complex, but despite having done a fair amount of exploring, he made no effort to locate the lair of the curious creatures. In his opinion, if they’d been interested in making contact with humans, they would surely have done so long ago. According to Jack, they’d been in residence for over a century, but most of the time they merely lurked in the shadows, silently observing their hosts, their existence only marked by an occasional flicker of movement seen from the corner of the eye, and a vague sense of being watched.
Once Ianto had grown used to their unobtrusive presence, it had stopped bothering him, even become comforting in a way; he appreciated their quiet companionship, and they settled into a comfortable, undemanding coexistence. Sometimes he even spoke to them when he knew they were nearby, never looking their way, just making small talk about the various items he was attempting to identify. They never answered, of course, he had no idea if they could even hear, let alone understand earth languages, but he felt it would be impolite not to at least acknowledge them.
That became even more important to Ianto after the Archive Monsters saved his life. He’d been trapped in a section of the archives undergoing decontamination procedures after an accidental spill of an unknown substance, and he would without a doubt either have died from the effects of the contaminant, or suffocated if the aliens hadn’t come to his aid. As he’d lain there on the cold concrete, resigned to his imminent death, the aliens has somehow constructed a device around his head that had allowed him to breathe safe, filtered air.
Since that day, he’d sensed the Archive Monsters nearby almost every time he’d entered the archives. If someone else, usually Jack or Tosh, was with him, the strange beings would keep completely still and out of sight, but if Ianto was by himself, he’d sometimes catch brief glimpses of a crablike leg, or a feathery antenna, the curve of a carapace momentarily outlined against the background. There was something curiously protective about the way they hovered just on the edge of sight; it felt to Ianto as though they were checking up on him, to make sure he was alright.
He was even more sure of that the day he was studying an odd piece of technology he’d found in a cardboard box stuffed under a shelf. He was trying to make sense of it when his Bluetooth earpiece, which he always wore when he was down in the archives, suddenly clicked several times, as if someone upstairs was trying to contact him, although he couldn’t hear anything coming through.
Abandoning the device, he made his way up to the Hub to see if one of his colleagues needed something, only to find everyone sitting at their desks, completely engrossed in their own work. Since he was already there, he decided to make coffee for the team before going back downstairs with his own cup, where he found the unknown piece of alien technology completely disassembled, and several pieces missing.
When he took the remains upstairs to show Jack, the colour drained from his lover’s face. Apparently, the piece of tech was, or at least had been, a kind of anti-personnel mine, extremely sensitive and packed with two compounds that, when mixed, would have released a concentrated and highly toxic gas. Death would have been almost instantaneous; clearly, the Archive Monsters had saved Ianto again.
So, now, whenever he came across something he thought could be dangerous, even if he didn’t get mysteriously called away from his cataloguing, he’d leave the item on the floor and do some filing or something in another part of the archives, come back after twenty minutes or so, and if the item was still there, in one piece, he figured he could consider it harmless. Occasionally, he’d find a powerpack removed, or an unnoticed compartment opened, and once the entire device was gone when he returned, but that was fine. He trusted the Archive Monsters to keep him safe from harm.
The End