Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Ianto, Jack

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 2,724 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 245 - Mountain

Summary: Ianto had no idea what he was volunteering himself for.


Jack sucked in a breath through his teeth as he watched the young man standing next to him. 'So, that's the end of the fifty cent tour,' he announced. Ianto just nodded silently, unsure what came next.

Jack pulled a hand from his pocket, running it through his hair in a way that was decidedly nervous. 'I'll be honest with you, Ianto Jones,' he began, 'I really don't know what I'm supposed to do with you.'

Ah, so that was the problem, Ianto thought. He'd been wondering when they'd get to that. He was immensely grateful that Jack was the impetuous sort, who'd decided at the very last minute to give Ianto a chance to prove himself at Torchwood Three. He wasn't expecting Jack to give him a field operative role. He didn't want that, and wouldn't even know where to start. Last night, capturing Myfanwy had been sufficient heart pumping action to confirm that he was quite happy to stay in a more low key role. Last night had been a fluke, but he wasn't about to tell Jack that, just on the off chance he changed his mind.

'Can I be honest with you, sir?' Ianto asked.

Jack folded his arms and gave him a questioning glance. 'Of course. I wouldn't expect any less.'

'Well,' Ianto said, pausing to clear his throat and consider how to word his next comment. 'The place is all over the shop, and I mean that in the sense of there just being stuff left everywhere, not to mention the amount of rubbish quite a literally littered everywhere.'

He could see the gears ticking in Jack's mind, recalling his comments from last night: guard dog, dry cleaning, butler.

'I didn't hire you to be the maid,' Jack replied, trying not to sound standoffish.

'Perhaps not,' Ianto conceded, 'but it is a fact that the place could use a good tidy. Unless you've got an alien that eats rubbish puttering around here somewhere?'

'Yeah, alright, I get your point.' He didn't like being told that he had made a mess of the place, but nor could he deny it. 'So, what are you saying?'

Ianto tugged at the cuff of his shirt. 'Well, when I was at Torchwood One.'

Jack held up a hand. 'Stop there. We're not Torchwood One.' Ianto could tell from his tone that he didn't want anything at all to do with Torchwood One, even if it was a good idea.

'I only meant to say, that when I worked there, I had a project to tidy up some of their old records and filing systems. I assume you have records here?'

Jack scoffed a chuckle at that. 'Only a hundred and thirty years worth.'

'Right. So I imagine that you probably haven't digitized them all yet? I could do that. Set up some metadata tags and help get old files into a system that would help you reference them.'

Jack gave him a thoughtful look. Ianto could tell that the idea hadn't ever crossed the Captain's mind, but that now he'd suggested it, it seemed like the sort of thing he had no interest in doing himself. Having someone especially sort it out however...

'You'll need to talk to Tosh,' Jack qualified. 'She's our systems expert. Don't want you stepping on any toes,' Jack said. 'She should be able to show you what our current databases look like. As for the archives?' He set his hands on his hips and let out a heavy sigh. 'Perhaps it's just best I show you.'

Ianto had perhaps expected that the Torchwood Three archives might be a bit of a mess, given the state of that hub many floors above him, but he most certainly didn't expect the sight Jack showed him.

'It's not so bad, I guess,' Ianto said, trying to save face for Jack, and tentatively peeking into one of the rusted filing cabinets, which had papers stuffed haphazardly into it, some spilling out of the top of the partway open drawer.

'The paperwork isn't so bad,' Jack admitted, 'at least it don't think so. But it's the accumulation of artifacts that is problematic.'

Ianto took in the large room. He was sure it looked worse than it was. 'It might take a few months, but I'm sure I could get it in some sort of order,' he said. 'Torchwood One's archive was much larger than this.'

Jack gave him a look of surprise at the nonchalance of his reply. 'I think you misunderstand me, Ianto. This is just one of our archive vaults.'

'Oh.' He looked around at the large space again. 'Um, how many do you have?'

Jack frowned and thought about this for a moment. 'Thirty two is my best recollection, but I mean, this place is like a rabbit warren. There could be more. To be honest, I've never really gone that deep. We've never had anything from that deep inside the hub cause a problem, so I think it's all safe stuff, but then again, no one's touched it for decades either.' He rested a hand on Ianto's shoulder. 'Come to think of it, probably best you don't touch anything down there.'

'Duly noted,' Ianto replied.

'I'm not gonna lie, but it'd actually be really good to have someone sort this place out. I'm glad you mentioned it. I mean, obviously it'd still be great if you gave us a hand upstairs, and maybe some of that coffee too?'

Ianto resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Jack's hopeful look was one he couldn't deny, let alone suffer looking at for more than a moment. His coffee had been something of a favourite in London, and to be fair, he'd used it as a weapon to get the Captain's interest in the first place. He could hardly be blamed for requesting a repeat performance of Ianto's coffee making skills now that he'd sampled it.

'I'm sure I could juggle both,' he promised, just glad that Jack hadn't changed his mind and sent Ianto packing. 'And Myfanwy?'

Jack gave him a perplexed look. 'Who?'

'The pterodactyl.'

'Oh,' Jack said, folding his arms, a curious expression crossing his face. 'You named her?'

'Unless of course you've already taken that liberty,' he deftly replied.

'Uh, no. Myfanwy, you say?'

'It's Welsh. It means beloved.'

Jack gave him a smile he reserved for special occasions. Ianto could tell he'd scored himself points somehow. 'I like it.' Jack's eyes narrowed. 'What about her?'

'I assume she can't be sent back through your rift thing?'

'Probably not,' Jack conceded. 'Are you offering to look after her as well?' Jack gave a good humored chuckle. 'You do like a challenge, don't you?'

'I like to be useful.'

Jack clapped him on the back. 'Then welcome to Torchwood Cardiff!'




If he'd known the veritable mountain of work he'd set himself, he would have kept his big mouth shut. Funny how he rarely ever had the problem of speaking out of turn in his previous employ. He'd barely said two words there that didn't need to be said. He hadn't said much more since arriving back in his old hometown, but what few he had said had resulted in his current situation.

He knew it was bad when his new teammates looked at him with something akin to sympathy and Owen made the comment 'I'd say it's been nice knowing you, but we don't know you yet.' He was sure that was Owen's gruff way of saying he was battling a lost cause.

He didn't even go down to the archives in the days that followed. He found more than enough things that needed doing around the main hub, and getting to know its people and where everything was. When he wasn't doing that, he was using their systems to familiarise himself with the layout of the hub, trying to find a way to get Lisa inside and hidden away where his new team wouldn't find her. He'd thought perhaps the archives might prove a good hiding place, but in the end he'd discounted it on the basis that there was too much chaos. Instead he'd managed to find a tiny little room tucked away in the back of beyond where he could seal them both away from prying eyes. Sorting out Torchwood's archives would just be an excellent excuse to always be downstairs and out of sight.

He'd never really meant to do the job in earnest. It was just supposed to be a ruse, since he wasn't planning on staying any longer than it took to source the right technology to fix Lisa. Once she was better, they'd be gone. The process of working through the mess however did soothe his mind when he was fraught with worry over Lisa's condition and the amount of pain she was in. Even Owen's best drugs - the ones he'd stolen and surreptitiously replaced within days - were doing little, and his own agony at her suffering abated only when his mind became firmly fixed elsewhere. Becoming engrossed in the job helped, and he'd never done anything by halves so it became natural to fix what he could and put it in order. He reaped the rewards of his own labour, twice finding valuable components to enhance the support system keeping Lisa alive. Who knew what else was down here if he got it all sorted.

Then it had all come crumbling down around him. His big secret uncovered, the team turned against him and all hope of saving the one person he loved in this world gone. He expected that would be the end. Jack would kill him or retcon him back to a time where Torchwood didn't exist in his mind. Perhaps that might have been for the best. Instead Jack had punished him by keeping him close. At least it felt like punishment at the time.

Just like when he'd first started there however, Jack genuinely had no idea what to do with him now. Perhaps Ianto should've done what Suzie had and rid them all of the problem by taking his own llfe. But he didn't. The weeks and months that followed were a blur. He was sure that Torchwood had come close to world ending on a couple of occasions but he couldn't recall them precisely now. Everything from that time was a haze of pity and self loathing, mixed in with an unrelenting weariness. He'd disappear down to the archives for days on end, just to avoid the baleful stares from Owen, the prodding, quasi-sympathetic questions from Gwen, the piteous looks from Tosh and the cold, often oblivious disregard from Jack.

He's still not sure what he was doing down there all that time, whether he just wandered aimlessly, sat there in the dark, or whether he was doing something constructive. He supposed it must have been the latter because when the darkness finally lifted away, there were neat drawers stacked in rows, their contents sorted chronologically and alphabetically. Artifacts had been carefully boxed and tagged, set on shelves in a way that was seemingly logical. Either there were fairies down in the archives that came out at night and put everything in order or else he'd been very busy indeed whilst his mind had been elsewhere.

He kept at it because despite being given a chance to be more active in the team, what he most enjoyed was still his own company and the satisfaction of having achieved something. That didn't mean he didn't think the others weren't doing a good job - they were the ones putting their life on the line every other day, and he didn't begrudge them that. But no one wanted his job, so if he didn't do it, it wasn't going to get done.

Jack often made comments during meetings that somewhere they had a something or other that could help with their investigations, but its location was a mystery. If you lot had put things away properly, Ianto felt like saying, then I wouldn't have to spend hours searching for them. He didn't though. He could hardly blame Jack for poor housekeeping for something he remembered picking up from the rift in 1930 that no one had seen since. He'd lost count of the number of times he'd brought something back from the archives, having checked the file notes and making a suggestion that it could be useful, only to have Jack reply "huh, I've been wondering where that got to. You should've been there when we found this. Back in 1976...". And so it went. Everything had a story attached to it and, time consuming as it was to sit there and listen to Jack prattle on about his glory days, it did often shed light on the artifact's function and purpose - things Ianto could add to the database entry that had been neglected the first time around. It was a sad indictment that the only way to ascertain a description for many of the archive's items was by stroking Jack's ego.




Ianto pulled a ratty wooden crate from the shelf, coughing as a spray of dust kicked up from its disturbance. How long has this box been here, he wondered. Twenty years, or a hundred? Setting it on the floor, he surveyed the contents with a carefully gloved hand. Half a dozen brown beer bottles, their labels faded and peeling, a porcelain doll with an eye missing, a roll of bright green wallpaper, no doubt riddled with arsenic dyes, a leather bound book whose words were clearly written in Galactic Standard, and a small silver ovoid object, untagged, purpose unknown. Definitely a hundred years, he decided, considering the collection of Victorian vintage objects mixed in with the alien and unknown.

'Ianto?' came the call from some distance.

'Over here,' he called back, hearing the familiar, heavy footfalls approach.

'There you are,' Jack said. 'Have you seen the time?' he said, holding out his wrist so that Ianto could read the display on Jack's watch.

Ianto sighed. How was it eight o'clock already? 'You know, I've been here six years Jack, and it never feels like I'm making any progress down here.'

Jack leaned a hand against the shelf, apparently unconcerned about whether it could withstand the added pressure. 'It's a hundred and forty years worth of junk, Ianto. Did you think it was gonna happen overnight? It's a lifetime's work to get this place in order.'

'My lifetime, so it would seem,' he replied.

'You have a system,' Jack responded, giving him a shrug of his shoulders. 'Far be it from me to mess that up by bringing in someone new.'

Ianto was taken aback by the comment. Jack had never mentioned help before. He could really use an assistant to do the leg work. He was certainly over being covered in dust and grime, or being buried alive under shelves that were held together by dust and the grace of God alone. 'Let's not dismiss that idea completely out of hand.'

Jack just shrugged again. Perhaps freeing up Ianto for other things wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Ianto reached into the box and handed him the thick tome with its embossed lettering. 'What's the title?' He knew enough to recognise Galactic Standard, but reading it was an altogether different proposition. Learning the language was just another thing on his long list of to-dos. Once he got the archives in order, obviously.

Jack wiped a layer of dust off the cover, before cleaning his hand on his trouser leg, making Ianto cringe. 'The life and times of Eugenius Calliopous,' Jack said.

'And who's he?'

'Intergalactically renowned mountain climber and adventurer.'

'You can be famous for climbing mountains?'

Jack chuckled. 'Very famous. Hilary has nothing on this guy. Makes Everest look like a molehill. The places he's climbed can take weeks or months, they're so huge. And a lot of them are dangerous too. You need some real mental fortitude to tackle places like that.'

Ianto sighed and stared up at the twenty foot high shelves, packed to the brim with old crates and boxes, still sitting there and waiting for him to unveiling their contents and do something with them. 'I think I know how he feels, then.'