Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Ianto, Jack

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG-13

Length: 2,194 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 254 - Note and Challenge 196 - Thief (Bingo square)

Summary: Ianto is perplexed by an item that's gone missing.


'Ow!' Ianto cried as his toe hit something hard and pointed in the darkness of the archives. He was usually so adept at navigating through archives in the dark that he hadn't even bothered using his torch in this particular section. Besides which, it was all long rows of shelving. The chances of walking into something were astronomical considering he only had to maintain a straight line.

He pulled a small torch out of his pocket, one that was attached to his keys in the event of emergencies, though not considering this to qualify as an emergency. This was merely an exercise in unveiling the reason for his own clumsiness.

As he shone the small beam of light down at his foot, he cursed quietly under his breath. There on the floor was the small metal containment box which he'd completely forgotten about. The box, and the device housed inside it, were merely on loan from UNIT, specifically, one Martha Jones.

He'd made the request to borrow the device as part of some research he'd been conducting. There were a great many things in the archives that he'd failed to be able to properly classify. As good as the team were at puzzling out mysterious alien artifacts, and as well traveled as Jack might be, there were still things that refused to reveal their secrets.

One such recent rift find had proven itself stubborn on all counts, leaving them utterly baffled. It was box-shaped at one end, tapering into a rather long, suggestive nodule at the other end, with an hourglass curve in the middle, and several bumps on one side that didn't seem to do anything, no matter what combination of touching or pressing was applied.

Owen had cringed at the sight of it, presuming it to be something Jack would no doubt be familiar with, and own several of. Jack disappointed him, confirming that it wasn't any sort of pleasure device he'd ever seen, and that it was way too big for any humanoid species in any case. Weeks of testing it produced zero results, but Ianto wasn't prepared to quite give up on it yet. He had enough things filed in the unknown basket and didn't want one more to add to his collection if he could help it.

He widened his search for anything similar that might already be in the archives. Who knew, there night be some notes from another Torchwood operative somewhere that could give them some clues, even if it was just about where they'd found it and the circumstances surrounding the discovery. He'd learnt not to discount anything.

Oddly the closest thing he could find that matched the description of their mystery object was something housed in UNIT's own research archives. Jack referred to them as Area 61, the British equivalent of the United States own Area 51, but named so on account of the spaceship that had ironically and rather accidentally crash landed right on their doorstep there in 1961. Naturally they'd spent a good deal of resources studying the crashed vessel and its occupants who didn't survive their journey through the rift. Jack had been there personally to confirm it, so he claimed, but that Torchwood was thereafter asked, in very polite terms, to go away and mind their own business.

Of course these days, relations between the two organisations were much improved, and whilst he could have gone through official channels to request a loan of the item, it was just as easy to call up Martha and let her make arrangements to ship it across. He'd been meaning to call her for weeks as it was, so this was the perfect opportunity to do both.

A few days later, it had arrived in the small reinforced containment box. UNIT's own notes on the artifact were contained on a flash drive that accompanied the box, though they didn't take long for Ianto to read through, before opening up the box to examine the item. It was noticeably different to the one they already had, now that he could handle the device in person. It was incredibly light compared to the solid weight of Exhibit A, as he'd begun referring to their original artifact. This one was sort of bulbous at one end and triangular and pointy at the other, but the hourglass stem and the series of little bumps along the side were the same. Perhaps they were some kind of odd pair, he mused, though when he ran a few tests with them side by side, neither one appeared to react to the presence of the other.

It was utterly frustrating. It could be that the two were completely unrelated, but their appearance was still too similar for him to dismiss it out of hand. Instead he went back to UNIT's file notes. He traced the time, date and location where UNIT had logged the item, looking for rift activity around the time. The rift was rarely active so far from Cardiff, but the occasional splinter of rift energy could cause strange things to happen in distant counties. He didn't find any rift activity, but unexpectedly he did find a match for the date and location logged into an old Torchwood One file. Only the time stamp didn't match. The Torchwood file was time stamped hours later, as if the two organisations had been following the same investigation. How curious, he thought, and that was as far as he'd gotten.

He really needed to return the device. Martha must have thought he'd forgotten all about it, which was partly true. It had been weeks since he'd abandoned his research thanks to a flurry of rift alerts. He tried to remember what he'd been doing down here, and then recalled that he'd been searching for the Torchwood One artifacts and file notes for the item that had been found at the same location as the original UNIT artifact. He grabbed the entire box, so he could follow it up later and picked up the UNIT containment box under his other arm.

Once he reached his desk, he dumped both down and flicked open the containment box to double check he'd put back the flash drive that went with the device. The flash drive was there, but surprisingly, the device itself wasn't. What the hell? He was sure it had been there before. He went back to the spot where he'd left the box and scanned it more thoroughly, in case he'd put it on the shelf whilst he'd been looking for the crate, but there was no sign of it. Bloody hell. If he'd lost it, Martha might kill him. Well, not Martha in all likelihood, but someone at UNIT most definitely. It had taken a lot of diplomacy to get them on equal sharing arrangements, and he presumed UNIT would be very happy to renege on those arrangements on the basis that Torchwood took stuff and didn't return it for whatever reason.

He set his hands on his hips and shone the torch around again. It couldn't just walk off on its own, he thought, however it was one of the older sections of the archives, and there was never really any being truly sure that nothing else lurked down here. It seemed absurd of course. He'd never run into anything strange down here, but having a thief in their midst was a very disconcerting thought. What else might they have to taken from the archives, and more importantly, to what end? He shook his head, knowing it sounded crazy but that he was going to have to tell Jack. If there was something down here, then they needed to find it and do something about it.

He quickly made his way back upstairs, finding Jack with a hand on the biscuit jar in their small kitchenette. Without further ado, Jack stuffed the biscuit in his mouth before holding out the tin. 'Want un?'

'Maybe later,' Ianto replied, immune to Jack's oftentimes appalling manners. 'For now we have bigger problems.'

Jack swallowed visibly, straining to force the entire biscuit down in one go so he could reply. 'What's wrong?'

'I think there might be something lurking in the hub, specifically the archives.' There was no point in beating around the bush. The direct approach was always best.

Jack caught the serious look on Ianto's face. 'What makes you say that?'

'That device I borrowed from UNIT? It was in its containment box and now it's gone. I found the empty box down in the archives. It's not anywhere. I've looked.'

Jack furrowed his brow at their usually very organised archivist. 'You mean that thing that looks like a remote control? I thought you were done with it.'

'Hardly. But now it's gone. Someone's taken it.'

Jack folded his arms. 'Are you sure?'

'Of course I'm sure! I'm standing here telling you that there's something in the hub taking things and you're not even pretending to be worried.'

'Because I'm not. At least not about uninvited guest prowling the hub.'

Ianto was stunned by Jack's compete lack of concern. 'But the device...'

'I sent it back,' Jack said, cutting him off. 'I thought you knew.'

'How could I know?'

'I left you a note.'

Ianto felt himself struggling to keep up with that revelations. 'When? More important, where? And why would you be down in the archives and just take it without putting it back in its box?'

'You left it on my desk,' Jack said. 'I didn't even know it came in a box.'

Ianto frowned at him. 'Okay, now I'm confused. Why would I leave it on your desk?'

Jack pulled a face. 'Uh, because I told you to? We had to go out and you came upstairs with it sticking out of your pocket. Don't you remember? I thought you remembered everything?'

Ianto scratched the back of his head. 'I do. At least I thought I did.'

It all came back to him now that Jack mentioned it. The alert had interrupted him mid-search and he'd put it in his pocket whilst he waited for more information, thinking Jack could handle things. When it became apparent from Tosh's report that it was going to be all hands on deck, he'd left immediately. Jack had even made a joke to him. "Is that a crazy alien device in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?" Of course he'd taken it out and left it behind. And then proceeded to forget about it completely apparently.

Ianto narrowed his eyes at Jack. 'You're sure you left me a note?'

'Yes. Well, maybe. Possibly. Actually, maybe I just thought about leaving you a note and got distracted.'

'That seems the more likely scenario,' Ianto quipped. 'More to the point, since when do you bother returning things?'

Jack looked slightly furtive. 'Well it was sort of, y'know, on my way as it were. Two birds with one stone you could say.'

'You had other things to send back to UNIT? Why wasn't I informed?' Ianto liked to make sure anything in their custody had a proper trail of records, and Jack was nothing if not remiss in his paperwork as a general rule.

'It was, um,' he cleared his throat, 'not strictly work related.'

Ianto gave him a challenging look. 'Jack?'

'Okay. So Martha might have been sending me a uniform. You know. One to match? A little reverse role play?' He grew suddenly defensive. 'I don't see why you should get to play commanding officer all the time.'

Ianto smirked at that. His red unit cap and black military uniform had been the source of many a night of enjoyment, barking orders at Jack and just generally making him do whatever Ianto wanted. 'You get to play commanding officer every day, Jack,' he countered.

'That's not the same,' he argued.

Ianto shook his head. Only Jack could make a distinction between being the boss and always getting his way. 'So why send the uniform back?'

Jack snorted, annoyed and slightly embarrassed. 'It didn't fit, can you believe it? I gave Martha the right size, but I don't know what they're feeding those guys. You should've seen how broad the shoulders in the jacket were. They must be bodybuilders or something!'

'Having inadequacy issues?' Ianto teased.

'I'm big enough where it counts,' he replied, to which Ianto just rolled his eyes.

'So, no aliens pilfering stuff in the archives, then,' Ianto surmised, trying to steer the conversation back to what was more important.

'None that I don't already know about,' Jack answered.

'What's that supposed to mean?'

Jack grinned. 'Another story for another time. Can't have you knowing all Torchwood's secrets.'

'Unlikely,' Ianto responded. 'I'm still no closer to knowing what out mystery object is.'

'And now I've gone and sent its cousin back to UNIT. Sorry. I thought I was helping out.'

'Well, whilst I appreciate you trying to be responsible, maybe next time you could be a little less conscientious.' He didn't think Jack would have a problem with that.

'Or I could just remember to leave a note.'

'That too.'