Jack's Top Tips for Torchwood Trainees
Jan. 21st, 2007 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
laliginFandom: Torchwood (what else?)
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Insanity. One swearword.
Word Count: 3500
Summary: Five things Jack and the Team have learnt while working for Torchwood.
Prompt: 028. Children.
Subtitles: Toys. Sugar Rush. Nostalgia. Sentimental Value. Day Off.
Jack's Top Tips for Torchwood Trainees
Jack had learnt lots of useful things working for Torchwood. And lots of not-so-useful things, too.
One. How to insult your entire team in one go
Everyone was hiding behind Ianto by this point, backing away across the field together in terror as the Filgarn reached towards him with one giant, elongated hand, crooning, “Pretty toy.”
Jack stepped in, slapping the Filgarn’s hand aside and saying sharply, “No. Don’t touch.”
“Wanna play!” said the Filgarn, reaching for Ianto again, and Jack slapped its hand harder, raising his voice to say, “No! You can’t play with them.”
It glared at him, and he told it sternly, “They’re mine. Go home and play with your own toys.”
“You’re not even playing with them!” it protested loudly, and made a grab for Ianto, with a yell of, “Give!”
Ianto leapt backwards, knocking the others over and collapsing in an undignified heap just out of the Filgarn’s range, while Jack hit the alien’s wrist, hard, shouting, “I said don’t touch! I’ll tell your elders!”
There was a momentary pause while the young Filgarn considered this, then it sat down, staring at the group, and burst into noisy tears. While it sat there, wailing, Ianto, Tosh, Owen and Gwen picked themselves up, glaring at Jack. They didn’t get a chance to say anything, though, as the ground started shaking and they fell over again, covering their ears against a sudden series of deep booms. Jack looked round expectantly, and moved out of the way as a mature Filgarn came running out of nowhere and swept the child into its overlong arms, soothing, “Don’t cry, chookums. There there.”
The younger Filgarn wailed, “He won’t let me pla-ay!” and pointed accusingly at Jack.
He waited politely for the creature’s parent to look at him, then raised his voice (it was very tall, after all) to explain, “Your offspring’s been causing some trouble, I’m afraid.”
The elder looked over at the little huddle of confused and nervous Torchwood employees, and said, “I do apologise. I’ll teach my younger some self control.”
“Thank you,” Jack called up. “And I’m sorry if it’d be cutting your holiday short, but I think it might be best if you went home. You’ve been scaring the locals.”
“I’m so sorry,” the elder told him contritely. “We’ll leave at once.”
It looked at his team again, curiously, then reached out with a single finger towards Ianto. Again Jack stepped between them, and said politely (but firmly), “Please don’t. They’re very fragile.”
“Of course, of course,” the elder nodded, withdrawing, and hefting its child in its arms. “But they are beautiful toys.”
“Thanks,” Jack called as it turned away. He watched it go back the way it had come, abruptly vanishing as it walked back inside the shield around its ship. Dusting off his hands as if for a job well done, he turned back to his team, smiling. The looks of anger across all their faces stopped him in his tracks, and he blinked at them, asking, “What?”
“We’re not your bloody toys!” Owen snapped at him, though Ianto, dusting himself down and standing close enough to Jack that no-one else heard him, muttered, “At least, not during office hours.”
Jack ignored that comment, holding out his hands helplessly and saying, “How was I meant to explain that to an alien child? I had to talk to it in ways it would understand!”
With various exclamations of anger, disgust, disbelief and exasperation, the Team stalked away back to the SUV. Jack trailed after them, still trying to explain himself and saying, “Look, I’m sorry, okay? Hey. Hey, are you even listening to me? Wait!”
He’d really thought they had more of a sense of humour.
Two. If it looks tasty, make sure you know what it is before you eat it
“Where the hell did that stuff go?” Owen muttered to himself, lifting up piles of paper and random objects scattered over his desk. One pile started slipping, and he slammed a hand down to catch it, but was too late. Papers flooded onto the floor, taking with them a few keyrings, pens, coins, feathers and free toys from cereal packets. Owen swore.
“What have you lost?” Tosh asked, looking up, then paused, and covered her mouth as she giggled. Owen shot her a dirty look, kneeling and trying to pick everything back up, and she told him, with great amusement, “It’s a good thing Ianto’s not in today. He’d kill you if he saw the mess you’re making.”
Owen paused in his tidy-up to throw a cheap plastic toy from some kids’ TV show at her, and she started laughing outright. That brought Gwen up from her desk to see what was going on, and then she started laughing when she saw the piles and piles of paper on the floor around Owen’s desk.
“Look,” he said after a couple of seconds, “you could be doing something bloody helpful, you know.”
“Such as?” Toshiko asked, and he snapped, “Trying to find that white powder I was analysing yesterday, for one thing.”
Gwen feigned a sympathetic expression, saying, “Aww, lost your cocaine?”
Rolling his eyes, Owen sat back on his heels amongst the piles of stuff, and said, “For the last time, it’s not cocaine, it’s some alien sweetener or something. Looks like sugar, tastes like sugar, but gives you about three hundred times more of an energy burst than sugar.”
There was a deafening silence from the stairs behind Tosh’s workstation, and Gwen and Tosh turned slowly, as Owen leaned to the side to look past them. Jack, standing there holding the cup of coffee he’d just made himself (nearly empty) stared back at them for a second or two, looking frozen. Quietly, he hiccupped.
“Oh shit,” Owen said eloquently.
Three and a half hours later, Gwen wriggled out from under the couch a little, and, seeing Tosh on her computers, hissed, “Tosh. Tosh!” until she glanced around.
“Is it safe?” Gwen asked plaintively, and Tosh nodded a little, raising a finger to her lips and beckoning for her to come out of hiding.
With difficulty, she crawled out, stretched, wincing, and went over to Tosh. Following her pointing finger, she looked over the railing at the area by the base of the fountain. There was a massive pile of paper aeroplanes there, with a few marker pens lying around beside it, and one Jack lying curled up in the middle, snoring a little and clutching a catapult with one hand. God knew where he’d got that from. She suspected Owen had had it hidden away somewhere.
Sighing with relief that he’d finally run out of energy, Gwen backed away from the railing, pausing to pick confetti from her hair and make some attempt to tease apart the side that had been covered in glue, and glanced at the computers Tosh was working on. Her desk wasn’t in too bad a state. The plants that had originally been there had ended up balanced on the top of the shaky tower on the paving stone lift – which had also incorporated Owen’s computer chair, a small house of cards made from box files, the gas mask from Jack’s office, an angle-poise lamp, and the coffee machine – but she’d managed to recover most of the rest of her things.
“What are you doing?” Gwen asked, watching the screen, where Jack appeared to be running backwards (and sometimes forwards, bizarrely enough) and wiping out the felt pen on the walls, dismantling the tower, sucking water bombs back to the catapult and glue back into the pots, smoothing out paper aeroplanes and un-yelling “Sugar and spice and all things nice!” as Tosh rewound the CCTV.
“I’m deleting the last four hours,” she was told. “Somehow I think this is something mankind was never meant to witness.”
“Good move,” Gwen said tiredly, as Owen ventured out from the interrogation room, where he’d locked himself in after the first water bomb exploded on his head. He picked his way towards them, through Jack’s office, pausing briefly to stare at his own desk, which was somehow in an even worse state than usual. Although the paper chains that were piled and draped and glued onto the computer screens and the desk and the floor around gave it a somewhat festive look, if with a touch of insanity. He continued over to stand by Tosh and Gwen, managing to avoid the scattered papers and scraps of balloon, and the puddles of drying glue and poster paints, and stepping over the tripwire, around the makeshift net (made from all their coats, along with some sheets and a pair of trousers – which worried Gwen quite a bit, as everyone was still fully clothed) and on the sign on the floor that read “DANGER – GENIUS AT WURK!” in red felt pen.
Tosh smiled tiredly at him, and said, “Jack’s asleep,” with a gesture towards the paper aeroplane pile.
“Thank Christ for that,” Owen muttered, rubbing at the green stars Jack had drawn on his forehead. Tosh seemed to be the only one who’d escaped relatively unscathed – Gwen wasn’t sure where she’d been hiding, but she’d managed to avoid being attacked in Jack’s over-enthusiastic redecoration of the Hub.
They all looked up suddenly, flinching in united terror at an unexpected sound, but it wasn’t Jack. It was the door opening, bars swinging in as the giant cog rolled back and Ianto stepped in, dabbing at his nose with a tissue.
“I thought you were ill?” Gwen asked, perhaps a little too loudly, as Tosh and Owen hurriedly shushed her, and she heard a rustle as Jack turned over – she could have sworn she heard him mutter, “Sugar ‘n’ spice,” in his sleep, too.
“I felt a bit better,” Ianto started to say, voice thick with cold, and looked up. He stopped. He stared. And, looking around at the utter devastation in the Hub, he sighed.
“Alright,” he said quietly. “This could take a little while.”
Three. Never say, “I wonder what this button does?”
Tosh and Gwen, sitting cross-legged on the floor, were playing a hand-clapping game and singing a song in time to the claps. Jack was sitting nearby, cheating at Solitaire by moving the cards when nobody was looking, glancing around furtively and eating jelly sweets from a white paper bag. Ianto was curled up on the sofa, hunched over a book, utterly absorbed.
“Whatcha reading?” Owen asked him, trying to sneak a look at the pages by leaning over him, jumping up and down beside the armrest.
“Go away,” Ianto muttered, turning the page and hunching over a little more, if that was possible.
Owen made a grab for the book, yelling, “Let’s see, let’s see!” but Ianto was too quick, slamming it closed and clutching it to his chest, shouting back, “Leave me alone, I’m reading! Go away!”
The budding argument was stopped in its tracks when Jack threw a sweet at Owen, who promptly grabbed it when it fell to the floor, saying, “Ten-second rule!” and ate it.
While he was distracted, Jack tilted his head and asked Ianto curiously, “What are you reading?”
Ianto turned the book carefully to show him the cover.
“The Famous Five?” Jack said, and Ianto nodded a little. Jack grinned, and said loudly, “The Famous Five rock.” Then he paused, looked around and said, “You know, there’s five of us. We could be the Famous Five.”
“Who’d you be?” Owen asked around his sweet, and Ianto said, “You’d be Timmy the dog.”
Owen smacked him round the head, and he curled up in a defensive ball, yelling, while Jack rolled around on the floor laughing. Tosh and Gwen stopped their game, looking at them with their hands on their hips, and said, united, “You three are so immature.”
They looked back at each other as Owen sloped off, kicking at the carpet and muttering things about, “Stupid girls think they’re so clever,” while Jack and Ianto sheepishly went back to their own pursuits. Tosh shook her head, saying exasperatedly, “Boys,” and resumed clapping with Gwen.
The relative peace lasted about ten minutes, in which time Ianto took Gwen’s place on the floor when she went to play with the computers, and Tosh started teaching him some Japanese nursery rhymes. Jack had almost completed his game of Solitaire when Owen snuck up behind him, grabbed the bag of sweets, and bolted. Jack scrambled up and gave chase, yelling, “Hey, hey, hey, those are mine! Give them back! Give them back, Owen Harper, or I’ll tell on you!”
The other three looked up, and Tosh started giggling as they went running onto the walkways. Gwen shouted, “Why’re you chasing Owen, Jack? D'you fancy him? Do you, do you? Eww! Jack fancies Owen!”
Simultaneously, she and Tosh started yelling, “Jack and Owen sitting in a tree, K – I – S – S – I –”
And Gwen accidentally pressed the button on the device again. She and Tosh abruptly went silent, reeling a little, while Ianto fell over backwards and curled up, clutching his head with a whimper. Owen skidded to a halt, looking confused, then was knocked flying when Jack ran into him. They scrambled back to their feet, looking across at the others, and then Jack said slowly, “Okay. I’m thinking that device gets locked in the safe, pronto.”
Four. Sometimes, you really need to think laterally
“What is it?” Gwen asked, peering at their find.
“Why are you asking me?” Jack shrugged, poking it, apparently oblivious to the simultaneous flinch of the others as he did so.
Owen answered for them, saying, “You usually at least pretend you know what stuff is.”
“Sorry,” Jack said, standing up straight. “No clue.”
“Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets,” Owen said dryly, and they all took another look at it.
“You are sure it’s alien?” Tosh asked, sounding more than a little sceptical, and Jack nodded. They all went back to staring at the thing, trying to work out what it could be.
It was roughly ovoid in shape, with seven appendages of varying shape and size. Most of its surface was covered by green and blue scales, which glowed softly when touched, and rustled a little when the object was picked up, but there were some seemingly random bare patches, showing dark grey skin underneath. It had no life-signs, and Jack swore blind it was no living creature, nor had ever been, so they’d been more or less alright with poking it and shaking it. It didn’t rattle (just that rustling of the scales) and was found to be squashable and soft when they’d prodded it warily. But they couldn’t work out its purpose.
“I think it’s some kind of anatomical model,” Owen said at last.
“Definitely not,” Jack told him. “What have you been dissecting if you think that’s an accurate representation of any living thing’s insides?”
Tosh interrupted before they could get into an argument.
“It could be some sort of portable data recorder. The scales could be a physical representation of files or folders, those tentacles would be the wires to plug it in anywhere, and it’s all soft and squishy so it can’t get broken in transportation.”
Everyone stared at her, and she blushed a little, ducking her head and saying, “Just a thought.”
Gwen took a closer look at it, and pointed. “Look,” she said, “there’s a line there, on the skin. Could it be a container of some sort? Maybe an alien wallet.”
“Or an alien mobile phone,” Ianto suggested. “It could be transmitting a message when the scales light up.”
Jack raised his eyebrows, looking impressed. “And none of you suggested it might be a weapon. I’m not sure whether to be proud of you or terrified that the safety of the Earth might just be resting in your hands.”
The four of them looked at each other, shuffling their feet uncomfortably. Jack poked the thing again, and then one of the alarms went off. Tosh and Ianto hurried out of Jack’s office to see what was going on, and found that they had two aliens at the tourist information door – one larger than the other, but both clearly of the same species. The three eyes on stalks very much gave that away.
Jack was already heading for the internal lift, carrying the scaled object.
The others gathered around the screens, and watched as Jack eventually opened the outer door, and gave their find to the larger of the aliens. There was some discussion, Jack nodded, and the larger alien gave the object to the smaller, clearly telling it off. Then they were consumed by light and vanished.
Jack came back downstairs, and paused for a moment, looking at them all crowded around Toshiko’s desk. Smiling a little, he walked past them into his office, saying simply, “Teddy bear.”
Five. Expect your team to make mistakes. Frequently
It was quiet in the Hub.
Owen was actually doing some work for once, and as Jack stood in his office doorway, watching in near-amazement, Gwen headed up the stairs to hand in her report on the latest police calls that had been passed on to them – all the hoaxes and strange sightings and inexplicable occurrences. He thanked her, still quite astonished that they were bringing him completed paperwork.
As she was heading back to her desk (to do more work? Unbelievable!) Owen span on his chair and asked, “Where’s Tosh today?”
Distractedly, Gwen said, “Maternity leave,” and both Owen and Jack did a double-take.
“What?” Jack said, while Owen went for, “Since when?”
They exchanged glances, and Jack continued, “She wasn’t showing at all.”
Owen said, “I thought she went for girls, anyway?”
“Shouldn’t I have been told about this?” Jack asked the air, while Gwen started to say, “Um, wait…” and Owen leaned forward, asking, “So who’s she with? I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.”
Ianto, arriving with the coffee, found Gwen looking flustered and trying to stop Jack and Owen from asking her more questions, pleading, “Wait, wait, let me think, I…”
“What are you talking about?” Ianto asked, and Jack said, “Tosh is pregnant!”
This time Ianto did a double-take, and had to put down the tray he was carrying. “Good for her,” he said, “but when did that happen?”
“When’s not the question,” Owen told him. “More like how?”
Ianto gave him a mock worried look, saying, “Good God, and you’re our doctor?”
“Ha ha,” Owen said flatly, while Jack sniggered a little and Gwen said, “Listen, that’s not…”
“What I meant,” Owen continued, “was that Tosh isn’t exactly the baby type, you know?”
Jack snorted, and started to say, “You’d be surprised who is,” at the same time as Ianto said, “And how would you know?” and Gwen tried again, weakly, to say, “Uh, could you shut up for a second…”
“It’s Tosh’s decision,” Ianto told them firmly, and Jack chipped in, “And her boyfriend’s.”
Ianto nodded to him, and continued, “If she wants to have children we shouldn’t be making judgements.”
“I wasn’t making judgements!” Owen protested, cutting straight through Gwen’s feeble, “Can I explain…” to carry on with, “I was just saying! I mean, it’s Tosh! Can you imagine her with kids? It’s just… weird. How’ll she be able to do all her computer hacker stuff with some squalling kid in the background?”
“Clearly you’ve had a lot of experience with children,” Jack said dryly, while Ianto started to tell Owen off for being sexist and promoting stereotypes.
“Shut up for a second…” Gwen tried to say, but Owen and Ianto were busy getting into an argument about the validity of traditional values and gender roles in modern society, while Jack threw in the occasional obscure comment about how gender would be irrelevant compared to species before long.
“Shut up and listen to me!” Gwen yelled at the top of her voice.
Silence fell. She brushed her hair back, suddenly uncomfortable now she was the centre of attention, and said, “Right. Well. As I was trying to say, Tosh called me earlier to say she wasn’t coming in. But I got another call from one of my friends in the police. And… um…”
“You got confused,” supplied Jack, and she nodded.
“I was thinking about them both, and I said the wrong thing.”
Owen sat back in his chair, and said, “So Tosh isn’t pregnant.”
Shaking her head, and blushing a little, Gwen said, “No. She’s babysitting.”
Jack and Owen sighed, disappointed that they’d lost an interesting piece of gossip, and Ianto put all their coffee mugs on the table, then picked up the tray and turned to leave. He patted Gwen’s shoulder as he went past, saying, “At least there was a vague connection. Otherwise we’d be worried you were going mad.”
The Torchwood Team, Gwen reflected as she slunk back to her desk, heartily embarrassed, really knew how to comfort you when you slipped up.
If and when you comment, dear reader, I'd like to make a request. Compliment me if you wish, but don't go away without a cheer for Shadowbyrd - my lovely beta reader (and muse, and friend, and writer, and co-author sometimes, and conscience, and sanity (yes, I do need someone to be my sanity sometimes - didn't the fic tell you that?) and a thousand other things I should be grateful for). And now she'll be horribly embarrassed and she'll kill me when she sees me tomorrow. But still. ^_^
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Insanity. One swearword.
Word Count: 3500
Summary: Five things Jack and the Team have learnt while working for Torchwood.
Prompt: 028. Children.
Subtitles: Toys. Sugar Rush. Nostalgia. Sentimental Value. Day Off.
Jack's Top Tips for Torchwood Trainees
Jack had learnt lots of useful things working for Torchwood. And lots of not-so-useful things, too.
One. How to insult your entire team in one go
Everyone was hiding behind Ianto by this point, backing away across the field together in terror as the Filgarn reached towards him with one giant, elongated hand, crooning, “Pretty toy.”
Jack stepped in, slapping the Filgarn’s hand aside and saying sharply, “No. Don’t touch.”
“Wanna play!” said the Filgarn, reaching for Ianto again, and Jack slapped its hand harder, raising his voice to say, “No! You can’t play with them.”
It glared at him, and he told it sternly, “They’re mine. Go home and play with your own toys.”
“You’re not even playing with them!” it protested loudly, and made a grab for Ianto, with a yell of, “Give!”
Ianto leapt backwards, knocking the others over and collapsing in an undignified heap just out of the Filgarn’s range, while Jack hit the alien’s wrist, hard, shouting, “I said don’t touch! I’ll tell your elders!”
There was a momentary pause while the young Filgarn considered this, then it sat down, staring at the group, and burst into noisy tears. While it sat there, wailing, Ianto, Tosh, Owen and Gwen picked themselves up, glaring at Jack. They didn’t get a chance to say anything, though, as the ground started shaking and they fell over again, covering their ears against a sudden series of deep booms. Jack looked round expectantly, and moved out of the way as a mature Filgarn came running out of nowhere and swept the child into its overlong arms, soothing, “Don’t cry, chookums. There there.”
The younger Filgarn wailed, “He won’t let me pla-ay!” and pointed accusingly at Jack.
He waited politely for the creature’s parent to look at him, then raised his voice (it was very tall, after all) to explain, “Your offspring’s been causing some trouble, I’m afraid.”
The elder looked over at the little huddle of confused and nervous Torchwood employees, and said, “I do apologise. I’ll teach my younger some self control.”
“Thank you,” Jack called up. “And I’m sorry if it’d be cutting your holiday short, but I think it might be best if you went home. You’ve been scaring the locals.”
“I’m so sorry,” the elder told him contritely. “We’ll leave at once.”
It looked at his team again, curiously, then reached out with a single finger towards Ianto. Again Jack stepped between them, and said politely (but firmly), “Please don’t. They’re very fragile.”
“Of course, of course,” the elder nodded, withdrawing, and hefting its child in its arms. “But they are beautiful toys.”
“Thanks,” Jack called as it turned away. He watched it go back the way it had come, abruptly vanishing as it walked back inside the shield around its ship. Dusting off his hands as if for a job well done, he turned back to his team, smiling. The looks of anger across all their faces stopped him in his tracks, and he blinked at them, asking, “What?”
“We’re not your bloody toys!” Owen snapped at him, though Ianto, dusting himself down and standing close enough to Jack that no-one else heard him, muttered, “At least, not during office hours.”
Jack ignored that comment, holding out his hands helplessly and saying, “How was I meant to explain that to an alien child? I had to talk to it in ways it would understand!”
With various exclamations of anger, disgust, disbelief and exasperation, the Team stalked away back to the SUV. Jack trailed after them, still trying to explain himself and saying, “Look, I’m sorry, okay? Hey. Hey, are you even listening to me? Wait!”
He’d really thought they had more of a sense of humour.
Two. If it looks tasty, make sure you know what it is before you eat it
“Where the hell did that stuff go?” Owen muttered to himself, lifting up piles of paper and random objects scattered over his desk. One pile started slipping, and he slammed a hand down to catch it, but was too late. Papers flooded onto the floor, taking with them a few keyrings, pens, coins, feathers and free toys from cereal packets. Owen swore.
“What have you lost?” Tosh asked, looking up, then paused, and covered her mouth as she giggled. Owen shot her a dirty look, kneeling and trying to pick everything back up, and she told him, with great amusement, “It’s a good thing Ianto’s not in today. He’d kill you if he saw the mess you’re making.”
Owen paused in his tidy-up to throw a cheap plastic toy from some kids’ TV show at her, and she started laughing outright. That brought Gwen up from her desk to see what was going on, and then she started laughing when she saw the piles and piles of paper on the floor around Owen’s desk.
“Look,” he said after a couple of seconds, “you could be doing something bloody helpful, you know.”
“Such as?” Toshiko asked, and he snapped, “Trying to find that white powder I was analysing yesterday, for one thing.”
Gwen feigned a sympathetic expression, saying, “Aww, lost your cocaine?”
Rolling his eyes, Owen sat back on his heels amongst the piles of stuff, and said, “For the last time, it’s not cocaine, it’s some alien sweetener or something. Looks like sugar, tastes like sugar, but gives you about three hundred times more of an energy burst than sugar.”
There was a deafening silence from the stairs behind Tosh’s workstation, and Gwen and Tosh turned slowly, as Owen leaned to the side to look past them. Jack, standing there holding the cup of coffee he’d just made himself (nearly empty) stared back at them for a second or two, looking frozen. Quietly, he hiccupped.
“Oh shit,” Owen said eloquently.
Three and a half hours later, Gwen wriggled out from under the couch a little, and, seeing Tosh on her computers, hissed, “Tosh. Tosh!” until she glanced around.
“Is it safe?” Gwen asked plaintively, and Tosh nodded a little, raising a finger to her lips and beckoning for her to come out of hiding.
With difficulty, she crawled out, stretched, wincing, and went over to Tosh. Following her pointing finger, she looked over the railing at the area by the base of the fountain. There was a massive pile of paper aeroplanes there, with a few marker pens lying around beside it, and one Jack lying curled up in the middle, snoring a little and clutching a catapult with one hand. God knew where he’d got that from. She suspected Owen had had it hidden away somewhere.
Sighing with relief that he’d finally run out of energy, Gwen backed away from the railing, pausing to pick confetti from her hair and make some attempt to tease apart the side that had been covered in glue, and glanced at the computers Tosh was working on. Her desk wasn’t in too bad a state. The plants that had originally been there had ended up balanced on the top of the shaky tower on the paving stone lift – which had also incorporated Owen’s computer chair, a small house of cards made from box files, the gas mask from Jack’s office, an angle-poise lamp, and the coffee machine – but she’d managed to recover most of the rest of her things.
“What are you doing?” Gwen asked, watching the screen, where Jack appeared to be running backwards (and sometimes forwards, bizarrely enough) and wiping out the felt pen on the walls, dismantling the tower, sucking water bombs back to the catapult and glue back into the pots, smoothing out paper aeroplanes and un-yelling “Sugar and spice and all things nice!” as Tosh rewound the CCTV.
“I’m deleting the last four hours,” she was told. “Somehow I think this is something mankind was never meant to witness.”
“Good move,” Gwen said tiredly, as Owen ventured out from the interrogation room, where he’d locked himself in after the first water bomb exploded on his head. He picked his way towards them, through Jack’s office, pausing briefly to stare at his own desk, which was somehow in an even worse state than usual. Although the paper chains that were piled and draped and glued onto the computer screens and the desk and the floor around gave it a somewhat festive look, if with a touch of insanity. He continued over to stand by Tosh and Gwen, managing to avoid the scattered papers and scraps of balloon, and the puddles of drying glue and poster paints, and stepping over the tripwire, around the makeshift net (made from all their coats, along with some sheets and a pair of trousers – which worried Gwen quite a bit, as everyone was still fully clothed) and on the sign on the floor that read “DANGER – GENIUS AT WURK!” in red felt pen.
Tosh smiled tiredly at him, and said, “Jack’s asleep,” with a gesture towards the paper aeroplane pile.
“Thank Christ for that,” Owen muttered, rubbing at the green stars Jack had drawn on his forehead. Tosh seemed to be the only one who’d escaped relatively unscathed – Gwen wasn’t sure where she’d been hiding, but she’d managed to avoid being attacked in Jack’s over-enthusiastic redecoration of the Hub.
They all looked up suddenly, flinching in united terror at an unexpected sound, but it wasn’t Jack. It was the door opening, bars swinging in as the giant cog rolled back and Ianto stepped in, dabbing at his nose with a tissue.
“I thought you were ill?” Gwen asked, perhaps a little too loudly, as Tosh and Owen hurriedly shushed her, and she heard a rustle as Jack turned over – she could have sworn she heard him mutter, “Sugar ‘n’ spice,” in his sleep, too.
“I felt a bit better,” Ianto started to say, voice thick with cold, and looked up. He stopped. He stared. And, looking around at the utter devastation in the Hub, he sighed.
“Alright,” he said quietly. “This could take a little while.”
Three. Never say, “I wonder what this button does?”
Tosh and Gwen, sitting cross-legged on the floor, were playing a hand-clapping game and singing a song in time to the claps. Jack was sitting nearby, cheating at Solitaire by moving the cards when nobody was looking, glancing around furtively and eating jelly sweets from a white paper bag. Ianto was curled up on the sofa, hunched over a book, utterly absorbed.
“Whatcha reading?” Owen asked him, trying to sneak a look at the pages by leaning over him, jumping up and down beside the armrest.
“Go away,” Ianto muttered, turning the page and hunching over a little more, if that was possible.
Owen made a grab for the book, yelling, “Let’s see, let’s see!” but Ianto was too quick, slamming it closed and clutching it to his chest, shouting back, “Leave me alone, I’m reading! Go away!”
The budding argument was stopped in its tracks when Jack threw a sweet at Owen, who promptly grabbed it when it fell to the floor, saying, “Ten-second rule!” and ate it.
While he was distracted, Jack tilted his head and asked Ianto curiously, “What are you reading?”
Ianto turned the book carefully to show him the cover.
“The Famous Five?” Jack said, and Ianto nodded a little. Jack grinned, and said loudly, “The Famous Five rock.” Then he paused, looked around and said, “You know, there’s five of us. We could be the Famous Five.”
“Who’d you be?” Owen asked around his sweet, and Ianto said, “You’d be Timmy the dog.”
Owen smacked him round the head, and he curled up in a defensive ball, yelling, while Jack rolled around on the floor laughing. Tosh and Gwen stopped their game, looking at them with their hands on their hips, and said, united, “You three are so immature.”
They looked back at each other as Owen sloped off, kicking at the carpet and muttering things about, “Stupid girls think they’re so clever,” while Jack and Ianto sheepishly went back to their own pursuits. Tosh shook her head, saying exasperatedly, “Boys,” and resumed clapping with Gwen.
The relative peace lasted about ten minutes, in which time Ianto took Gwen’s place on the floor when she went to play with the computers, and Tosh started teaching him some Japanese nursery rhymes. Jack had almost completed his game of Solitaire when Owen snuck up behind him, grabbed the bag of sweets, and bolted. Jack scrambled up and gave chase, yelling, “Hey, hey, hey, those are mine! Give them back! Give them back, Owen Harper, or I’ll tell on you!”
The other three looked up, and Tosh started giggling as they went running onto the walkways. Gwen shouted, “Why’re you chasing Owen, Jack? D'you fancy him? Do you, do you? Eww! Jack fancies Owen!”
Simultaneously, she and Tosh started yelling, “Jack and Owen sitting in a tree, K – I – S – S – I –”
And Gwen accidentally pressed the button on the device again. She and Tosh abruptly went silent, reeling a little, while Ianto fell over backwards and curled up, clutching his head with a whimper. Owen skidded to a halt, looking confused, then was knocked flying when Jack ran into him. They scrambled back to their feet, looking across at the others, and then Jack said slowly, “Okay. I’m thinking that device gets locked in the safe, pronto.”
Four. Sometimes, you really need to think laterally
“What is it?” Gwen asked, peering at their find.
“Why are you asking me?” Jack shrugged, poking it, apparently oblivious to the simultaneous flinch of the others as he did so.
Owen answered for them, saying, “You usually at least pretend you know what stuff is.”
“Sorry,” Jack said, standing up straight. “No clue.”
“Ladies and Gentlemen, place your bets,” Owen said dryly, and they all took another look at it.
“You are sure it’s alien?” Tosh asked, sounding more than a little sceptical, and Jack nodded. They all went back to staring at the thing, trying to work out what it could be.
It was roughly ovoid in shape, with seven appendages of varying shape and size. Most of its surface was covered by green and blue scales, which glowed softly when touched, and rustled a little when the object was picked up, but there were some seemingly random bare patches, showing dark grey skin underneath. It had no life-signs, and Jack swore blind it was no living creature, nor had ever been, so they’d been more or less alright with poking it and shaking it. It didn’t rattle (just that rustling of the scales) and was found to be squashable and soft when they’d prodded it warily. But they couldn’t work out its purpose.
“I think it’s some kind of anatomical model,” Owen said at last.
“Definitely not,” Jack told him. “What have you been dissecting if you think that’s an accurate representation of any living thing’s insides?”
Tosh interrupted before they could get into an argument.
“It could be some sort of portable data recorder. The scales could be a physical representation of files or folders, those tentacles would be the wires to plug it in anywhere, and it’s all soft and squishy so it can’t get broken in transportation.”
Everyone stared at her, and she blushed a little, ducking her head and saying, “Just a thought.”
Gwen took a closer look at it, and pointed. “Look,” she said, “there’s a line there, on the skin. Could it be a container of some sort? Maybe an alien wallet.”
“Or an alien mobile phone,” Ianto suggested. “It could be transmitting a message when the scales light up.”
Jack raised his eyebrows, looking impressed. “And none of you suggested it might be a weapon. I’m not sure whether to be proud of you or terrified that the safety of the Earth might just be resting in your hands.”
The four of them looked at each other, shuffling their feet uncomfortably. Jack poked the thing again, and then one of the alarms went off. Tosh and Ianto hurried out of Jack’s office to see what was going on, and found that they had two aliens at the tourist information door – one larger than the other, but both clearly of the same species. The three eyes on stalks very much gave that away.
Jack was already heading for the internal lift, carrying the scaled object.
The others gathered around the screens, and watched as Jack eventually opened the outer door, and gave their find to the larger of the aliens. There was some discussion, Jack nodded, and the larger alien gave the object to the smaller, clearly telling it off. Then they were consumed by light and vanished.
Jack came back downstairs, and paused for a moment, looking at them all crowded around Toshiko’s desk. Smiling a little, he walked past them into his office, saying simply, “Teddy bear.”
Five. Expect your team to make mistakes. Frequently
It was quiet in the Hub.
Owen was actually doing some work for once, and as Jack stood in his office doorway, watching in near-amazement, Gwen headed up the stairs to hand in her report on the latest police calls that had been passed on to them – all the hoaxes and strange sightings and inexplicable occurrences. He thanked her, still quite astonished that they were bringing him completed paperwork.
As she was heading back to her desk (to do more work? Unbelievable!) Owen span on his chair and asked, “Where’s Tosh today?”
Distractedly, Gwen said, “Maternity leave,” and both Owen and Jack did a double-take.
“What?” Jack said, while Owen went for, “Since when?”
They exchanged glances, and Jack continued, “She wasn’t showing at all.”
Owen said, “I thought she went for girls, anyway?”
“Shouldn’t I have been told about this?” Jack asked the air, while Gwen started to say, “Um, wait…” and Owen leaned forward, asking, “So who’s she with? I didn’t know she had a boyfriend.”
Ianto, arriving with the coffee, found Gwen looking flustered and trying to stop Jack and Owen from asking her more questions, pleading, “Wait, wait, let me think, I…”
“What are you talking about?” Ianto asked, and Jack said, “Tosh is pregnant!”
This time Ianto did a double-take, and had to put down the tray he was carrying. “Good for her,” he said, “but when did that happen?”
“When’s not the question,” Owen told him. “More like how?”
Ianto gave him a mock worried look, saying, “Good God, and you’re our doctor?”
“Ha ha,” Owen said flatly, while Jack sniggered a little and Gwen said, “Listen, that’s not…”
“What I meant,” Owen continued, “was that Tosh isn’t exactly the baby type, you know?”
Jack snorted, and started to say, “You’d be surprised who is,” at the same time as Ianto said, “And how would you know?” and Gwen tried again, weakly, to say, “Uh, could you shut up for a second…”
“It’s Tosh’s decision,” Ianto told them firmly, and Jack chipped in, “And her boyfriend’s.”
Ianto nodded to him, and continued, “If she wants to have children we shouldn’t be making judgements.”
“I wasn’t making judgements!” Owen protested, cutting straight through Gwen’s feeble, “Can I explain…” to carry on with, “I was just saying! I mean, it’s Tosh! Can you imagine her with kids? It’s just… weird. How’ll she be able to do all her computer hacker stuff with some squalling kid in the background?”
“Clearly you’ve had a lot of experience with children,” Jack said dryly, while Ianto started to tell Owen off for being sexist and promoting stereotypes.
“Shut up for a second…” Gwen tried to say, but Owen and Ianto were busy getting into an argument about the validity of traditional values and gender roles in modern society, while Jack threw in the occasional obscure comment about how gender would be irrelevant compared to species before long.
“Shut up and listen to me!” Gwen yelled at the top of her voice.
Silence fell. She brushed her hair back, suddenly uncomfortable now she was the centre of attention, and said, “Right. Well. As I was trying to say, Tosh called me earlier to say she wasn’t coming in. But I got another call from one of my friends in the police. And… um…”
“You got confused,” supplied Jack, and she nodded.
“I was thinking about them both, and I said the wrong thing.”
Owen sat back in his chair, and said, “So Tosh isn’t pregnant.”
Shaking her head, and blushing a little, Gwen said, “No. She’s babysitting.”
Jack and Owen sighed, disappointed that they’d lost an interesting piece of gossip, and Ianto put all their coffee mugs on the table, then picked up the tray and turned to leave. He patted Gwen’s shoulder as he went past, saying, “At least there was a vague connection. Otherwise we’d be worried you were going mad.”
The Torchwood Team, Gwen reflected as she slunk back to her desk, heartily embarrassed, really knew how to comfort you when you slipped up.
If and when you comment, dear reader, I'd like to make a request. Compliment me if you wish, but don't go away without a cheer for Shadowbyrd - my lovely beta reader (and muse, and friend, and writer, and co-author sometimes, and conscience, and sanity (yes, I do need someone to be my sanity sometimes - didn't the fic tell you that?) and a thousand other things I should be grateful for). And now she'll be horribly embarrassed and she'll kill me when she sees me tomorrow. But still. ^_^
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2007-01-21 06:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:34 pm (UTC)"Oh, shit!" - this one had me laughing so hard I cried.
Sweet work on all of them! Thank you (both)!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:(no subject)
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From:(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 06:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 07:46 pm (UTC)I especially love Jacks regression due to alien sugar, and the whole teams as kids. Great job!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:44 pm (UTC)And Jack on sugar was Shadowbyrd-influenced. ^_^ Another reason to be thankful for her.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:00 pm (UTC)I loved this--I love it when fics make me laugh out loud, which was exactly what this did. And slice-of-life things are always wonderful to see. Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:01 pm (UTC)Ps *CHEERS* and *MEXICAN WAVES* for Shadowbyrd!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:47 pm (UTC)*joins in the mexican waves*
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:08 pm (UTC)You and your beta are both absolutely amazing.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 08:53 pm (UTC)I'm not so amazing, but Shadowbyrd surely is. Jack on sugar is her fau- I mean, all credit to her for inspiring that idea... Eheh.
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 10:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 09:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-21 11:45 pm (UTC)Oh dear, I think I lost track of the number of times this made me laugh out loud. It started with the adult Filgarn trying to give Ianto a curious poke, and kept on going all the way through to Tosh and Gwen's chorus about Owen and Jack, and Ianto's “Good God, and you’re our doctor?” Utterly fun and lovely. Bravo!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 09:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 01:51 am (UTC)And yay for Shadowbyrd!
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 09:09 am (UTC)^_^ *will pass on the yay*
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Date: 2007-01-22 04:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 09:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 04:52 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 09:18 am (UTC)Jack gets the best toys. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 09:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 09:19 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 10:20 am (UTC)Yay for you and Shadowbyrd!
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Date: 2007-01-22 11:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 12:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 04:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 03:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 04:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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From:(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 07:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 08:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 09:36 pm (UTC)Thanks for making me laugh so much! [g]
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-23 11:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 10:26 pm (UTC)As for your request...the only reason I'm not killing you right is because of this *lovely* icon (there is so much blood rushing to my face I think I may pass out. If that's possible. If not, I'll do it anyway, just to spite the laws of physics).
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-23 11:01 am (UTC)And spiting the laws of physics is such fun...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-22 10:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2007-01-23 11:06 am (UTC)