[#108] Sleepless In Cardiff (Torchwood)

[badly_knitted]

Theme Prompt: #108 – After Midnight
Title: Sleepless In Cardiff
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1000
Summary: Torchwood isn’t nine-to-five, and the Rift drops things off whenever it wants, so it’s not unusual to get dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to look for something.




Torchwood didn’t have regular working hours in the first place; day or night, it was all the same. The Rift dropped off its gifts whenever it wanted to, and Weevils, if they came up out of the sewers at all, were generally more active after dark. Midnight wasn’t the witching hour; it was simply business as usual.

“What time is it?” Ianto mumbled through a yawn as he and Jack made their way across Bute Park by the light of their torches and the stars hanging overhead in the clear night sky. It had already been well past midnight when Jack had woken him from a sound sleep to tell him there’d been a Rift alert, and in the mad half-asleep scramble to get into clothing suitable for a night-time jaunt he’d forgotten to put his watch on.

“Does it matter? It’s late, I can tell you that much. Or early. Depends how you look at it.”

“I’ll go with ‘late’ since you dragged me out of bed.”

“You dragged yourself out of bed. I just picked you up on my way here.”

“Don’t split hairs; it’s too early in the morning.” Ianto yawned again.

“Didn’t you just tell me it’s late?”

“No, that was you; I just agreed with you.”

“But you just said…”

“Shut up. I’m not having this conversation, it’s too confusing, not to mention weird. You dragged me out here to help you with something living that’s come through the Rift. Shouldn’t we be trying to find it?”

“I thought we were.”

“Right.” Ianto checked his scanner and changed direction slightly. The Rift energy readings it was picking up appeared to be emanating from some trees a few degrees to the left. He blinked, wishing he could rub the sleep from his eyes, but he had the scanner in one hand and his torch in the other, and really when he thought about it, humans had a lot of design flaws. ‘An extra pair of hands would come in handy,’ he mused, unsucessfully stifling a chuckle.

“What’s funny?”

“What? Nothing. Let’s just find this thing so I can go back to bed. How big did you say it is?”

“I didn’t.”

“Well that’s helpful! Did you even bother to check? What if it’s a Bozog, or something else big and nasty? There’s only two of us; you should’ve called the rest of the team.”

“Relax, it’s not big enough to be anything like that. According to the Rift monitor, it’s about the size of a big cat, maybe a bit bigger.”

“When you say big cat…” Ianto trailed off, glancing uncertainly at his lover.

“Big house cat, not a lion, or tiger, or whatever.”

“Oh. Good. Still, something doesn’t have to be big to be nasty.”

“You brought your gun, didn’t you, just in case?”

“Of course I did. I’m not that stupid.” Ianto winced; that didn’t come out right. “Can you see anything?” They were approaching the group of trees by now.

“Grass, trees, a few bushes.”

They kept moving forwards, Ianto keeping one eye on his scanner and the other on the ground ahead, because the last thing he needed was to trip over something and fall flat on his face. His reflexes weren’t what they should be right now, mostly because he’d had less than two hours’ sleep in the last two days. None of the team had got to bed the previous night, thanks to an incident involving three Weevils, a drunk reveller, and several bottles of cheap whiskey. Don’t ask; suffice to say that Weevils and alcohol do not mix, and hungover Weevils are downright cranky.

“Eyes,” Jack said suddenly.

“Huh?” Ianto had zoned out to the point where he was practically sleepwalking.

“You asked if I could see anything. I see eyes, or I think they’re eyes. The light’s reflecting off something.”

“Where?”

“The bushes.”

Sure enough, when Ianto looked he could see… He blinked, tucked his torch under one arm and rubbed his eyes. Nope, he wasn’t seeing things; there were three glowing yellow eyes peering out of the bushes.

“Safe to say it’s something alien.” Ianto sighed; he’d been hoping for a nice, innocuous earth creature, a puppy, or a lamb, or maybe a cuddly baby panda, not some unknown and probably unidentifiable alien beastie that might be carnivorous, venomous, or otherwise toxic to humans. “I’ll stay this side; you work your way around behind it.”

“Don’t fall asleep on me.”

“With some kind of three-eyed something staring out at me?” Ianto might have been sleepy before, at least partly because it was a warm and muggy night without so much as a breath of breeze, but he was wide awake now. Potential danger had that effect on him.

Jack moved off to the left, making a wide circle around the bushes to come at them from behind, while Ianto kept watching the eyes. One blinked, then the second, and then the third. Ianto blinked too, it was impossible not to, but the eyes remained where they were.

It was surprising how quietly Jack could move when he had to. His eyesight being better than that of a twenty-first century human, he’d turned his torch off and let the stars and the now risen quarter-moon light his way, sneaking right up behind the alien and grabbing it. Unsurprisingly it shrieked and struggled, but Jack held on tight as Ianto ran to help.

“Put me down, you big oaf!” a squeaky voice yelped in Galactic Standard.

“Oops, sorry. No offence meant,” Jack replied in the same language. “We thought… well, we didn’t know you were a sentient being.”

Three yellow eyes blinked up at Jack, one at a time. Now Ianto could see it, the alien did look somewhat pandalike, short and cuddly, but pink and wearing clothes.

“No harm done.”

“If you’ll accompany us to our base, we’ll see about getting you home.”

“That is acceptable.”

Ianto sighed. Looked like he wouldn’t be getting back to bed tonight.


The End