[TW fic] From The Underground Kingdoms...
Title: From The Underground Kingdoms: personal journal fragments, unknown Torchwood operative, Earth, mid-20th century.
Characters: Jack, WWII-era team
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for writerinadrawer 4.08. Original prompt required story to be 1,000 words or less. I accidentally dropped two words in a sentence; I have now fixed that here, and removed two other words to compensate. I also wished I could have done this written out by hand and scanned in, but that was outside the rules, I may still do it to make the actual thing.
7 July, 1939
Jack came back yesterday from killing Auggie Haverton and brought us a gramophone. Tilda asked if he stole it from the man's house after he shot him, but Jack said no, that actually he bought it, all honest and proper like, with money he swiped out of coffee cans in man's shed. Tilda frowned, and Greg looked so awkward about it, but that's what happens, I suppose, when Jack's paid to murder people and yet can't stop staring at you.
It is still raining above, and that makes six of the last seven days.
9 July, 1939
Today Jack showed up with a case of champagne. Greg asked what the occasion was and then looked stricken when he realized he was flirting. It's a terrible business, being under Jack's gaze. Means you'll be dying soon, I think - for him, of him, without him.
I think Greg knows it too, or else maybe he just worries about what his mother would think, but like the rest of us, all he can do is watch as Jack unloads the champagne into drawer 28 of the morgue.
It is, he says, the safest place for it.
15 July, 1939
And to think, I once wrote every day. Maybe it's best that now I have so little time. This is not a job, Tilda reminds me, that is meant to be documented. And neither are these such times.
Today Jack came with a camera, records for the gramophone, and a new journal for me. He said I'll need it soon and then went to chase after Greg before I could ask what he meant. It is the worst sort of wishful thinking for me to wonder if now I am dead too.
It has rained for twelve of the last fourteen days. Jack says it's the rainiest July on record for Wales. I wonder why he knows these things and when it will end. At this rate, we should perhaps be more afraid of the Bay than the Germans. Or so I would like to pretend.
16 July, 1939
Jack just froze five pounds of strawberries and a sack of tomatoes in morgue drawer 27.
17 July, 1939
Last night the storms got so bad we all stayed here and slept in hospital beds. We told ghost stories, as if we need them, and Jack said soon they will begin evacuating civilians from London, but he can't recall if it is planned for this month or the next.
I asked how he knew, but Tilda said I was not to ask and that Jack was not to answer.
In the dark, Greg patted his hand. I cannot imagine from what, if anything, Jack needs consoling.
23 July, 1939
Despite Tilda's objections, Jack and Greg insist on playing the gramophone during lunch, even if lunch is sometimes, usually even, when we should be having tea. If we're lucky.
Today it is Billie Holiday and when Jack sings along - I've got my love to keep me warm - everyone looks at him. And me? I just look at everyone but. Gives me away, maybe, but someone has to know that Tilda is scared and Greg is shy and Rhydian wishes the goddamn war would just get here already.
If you can't use coarse language in your own journal, where can you use it?
30 July, 1939
It is still raining.
A Weevil drowned three days looks remarkably similar to a man who has suffered the same.
4 August, 1939
Will you go and fight?
It is all anyone asks, in the shops, in the pubs and here, under Cardiff, in our secret place.
Jacks and Greg and Rhydian ask it too, to each other, to the blowfish that came in last Thursday and remains, for now, water-logged in our cells.
Sometimes they forget and even ask Tilda, who proudly says she would fly a plane - didn't they all know? - better, even, than Jack could.
Today, Jack laughed and asked if she'd like to wager on it. For a moment, she looked happy, and like she wanted to kiss him, before telling him sharply that there's to be no gambling on the Crown's time. Rhydian snorted, and Greg fled down into the archives.
Before he followed him down, Jack stopped at my desk and said that in a war, everything's a currency.
And just now Greg came to my desk and reported that there is now an entire cabinet, Fe - Fl in the archives, filled with stockings, for which we should perhaps insist Jack find a better place.
25 August, 1939
It is a strange thing, the signing of treaties for the start of wars instead of the end.
Jack says he's never thought of it that way. Tilda just says he never thinks.
1 September, 1939
It is still raining, and even here in Cardiff, I feel as if we are leaving London behind. I told Jack so, and he looked at me like a child. In truth, it made me grateful, because I was one once, until just before they hired me here.
Then he asked if I think of myself as a civilian, and I stopped being grateful.
4 September, 1939
The war isn't coming; it is here. But Jack says I don't know what here means. Not yet.
He brought steaks today and shoved them in next to the berries in 27. I asked him if he could bring peaches next time, just in case, and he said he'd try.
I am grateful, and yet worry somehow over eating faerie fruit that could trap us here, forever, dreaming in our tunnels.
Jack, I suspect, knows it when people are thinking something strange, because his hand lingered too long on my shoulder and then his eyes looked right at mine as I once so wished they would and now really quite wish they wouldn't.
At Torchwood, I suppose, one way or another, we all live underground.
Characters: Jack, WWII-era team
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for writerinadrawer 4.08. Original prompt required story to be 1,000 words or less. I accidentally dropped two words in a sentence; I have now fixed that here, and removed two other words to compensate. I also wished I could have done this written out by hand and scanned in, but that was outside the rules, I may still do it to make the actual thing.
7 July, 1939
Jack came back yesterday from killing Auggie Haverton and brought us a gramophone. Tilda asked if he stole it from the man's house after he shot him, but Jack said no, that actually he bought it, all honest and proper like, with money he swiped out of coffee cans in man's shed. Tilda frowned, and Greg looked so awkward about it, but that's what happens, I suppose, when Jack's paid to murder people and yet can't stop staring at you.
It is still raining above, and that makes six of the last seven days.
9 July, 1939
Today Jack showed up with a case of champagne. Greg asked what the occasion was and then looked stricken when he realized he was flirting. It's a terrible business, being under Jack's gaze. Means you'll be dying soon, I think - for him, of him, without him.
I think Greg knows it too, or else maybe he just worries about what his mother would think, but like the rest of us, all he can do is watch as Jack unloads the champagne into drawer 28 of the morgue.
It is, he says, the safest place for it.
15 July, 1939
And to think, I once wrote every day. Maybe it's best that now I have so little time. This is not a job, Tilda reminds me, that is meant to be documented. And neither are these such times.
Today Jack came with a camera, records for the gramophone, and a new journal for me. He said I'll need it soon and then went to chase after Greg before I could ask what he meant. It is the worst sort of wishful thinking for me to wonder if now I am dead too.
It has rained for twelve of the last fourteen days. Jack says it's the rainiest July on record for Wales. I wonder why he knows these things and when it will end. At this rate, we should perhaps be more afraid of the Bay than the Germans. Or so I would like to pretend.
16 July, 1939
Jack just froze five pounds of strawberries and a sack of tomatoes in morgue drawer 27.
17 July, 1939
Last night the storms got so bad we all stayed here and slept in hospital beds. We told ghost stories, as if we need them, and Jack said soon they will begin evacuating civilians from London, but he can't recall if it is planned for this month or the next.
I asked how he knew, but Tilda said I was not to ask and that Jack was not to answer.
In the dark, Greg patted his hand. I cannot imagine from what, if anything, Jack needs consoling.
23 July, 1939
Despite Tilda's objections, Jack and Greg insist on playing the gramophone during lunch, even if lunch is sometimes, usually even, when we should be having tea. If we're lucky.
Today it is Billie Holiday and when Jack sings along - I've got my love to keep me warm - everyone looks at him. And me? I just look at everyone but. Gives me away, maybe, but someone has to know that Tilda is scared and Greg is shy and Rhydian wishes the goddamn war would just get here already.
If you can't use coarse language in your own journal, where can you use it?
30 July, 1939
It is still raining.
A Weevil drowned three days looks remarkably similar to a man who has suffered the same.
4 August, 1939
Will you go and fight?
It is all anyone asks, in the shops, in the pubs and here, under Cardiff, in our secret place.
Jacks and Greg and Rhydian ask it too, to each other, to the blowfish that came in last Thursday and remains, for now, water-logged in our cells.
Sometimes they forget and even ask Tilda, who proudly says she would fly a plane - didn't they all know? - better, even, than Jack could.
Today, Jack laughed and asked if she'd like to wager on it. For a moment, she looked happy, and like she wanted to kiss him, before telling him sharply that there's to be no gambling on the Crown's time. Rhydian snorted, and Greg fled down into the archives.
Before he followed him down, Jack stopped at my desk and said that in a war, everything's a currency.
And just now Greg came to my desk and reported that there is now an entire cabinet, Fe - Fl in the archives, filled with stockings, for which we should perhaps insist Jack find a better place.
25 August, 1939
It is a strange thing, the signing of treaties for the start of wars instead of the end.
Jack says he's never thought of it that way. Tilda just says he never thinks.
1 September, 1939
It is still raining, and even here in Cardiff, I feel as if we are leaving London behind. I told Jack so, and he looked at me like a child. In truth, it made me grateful, because I was one once, until just before they hired me here.
Then he asked if I think of myself as a civilian, and I stopped being grateful.
4 September, 1939
The war isn't coming; it is here. But Jack says I don't know what here means. Not yet.
He brought steaks today and shoved them in next to the berries in 27. I asked him if he could bring peaches next time, just in case, and he said he'd try.
I am grateful, and yet worry somehow over eating faerie fruit that could trap us here, forever, dreaming in our tunnels.
Jack, I suspect, knows it when people are thinking something strange, because his hand lingered too long on my shoulder and then his eyes looked right at mine as I once so wished they would and now really quite wish they wouldn't.
At Torchwood, I suppose, one way or another, we all live underground.