Title: Seeing is believing
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 921 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 417 - Amnesty & Challenge 20 - Mythology
Summary: The rift is forever throwing up surprises and today is no exception.



‘He's like a kid in a candy store,’ Gwen said, catching Ianto's unmistakable grin in the rear vision mirror.

‘He is,’ Jack agreed, unable to stop a little smile creeping across his own face at Ianto’s unbridled happiness.

Ianto didn't smile as often as he should, in everyone's opinion. It was nice to see him happy, even if he did look utterly dishevelled. They all were in one way or another.

The rift hadn't let up these past few weeks, forcing them to split up to deal with multiple crises at once. Gwen knew she'd drawn the short straw in wrangling the half dozen hoix running rampant through a Staples store. Jack and Ianto had paired up and scored dragons wreaking havoc in Grangetown. It was like all of Ianto’s boyhood dreams come true if his grin was anything to go by. Even Jack's chipper mood paled in comparison. She could hardly begrudge them the task of having to deal with giant lizard monsters. Being lumbered with a few hoix was getting off lightly. All she’d needed was fifty quid’s worth of mega chip buckets from the local kebab and chippie van. Hoix may have been stupid and eat practically anything, but even they could tell the difference between packets of coloured pencils and something deep fried that might have once been potatoes.

‘What were they like?’ she asked. Naturally, there’d been plenty of footage of them turning up on social media that would have to be wiped, but it was always interesting to hear about it first hand from two men who had seen just about everything and were neither surprised, nor impressed, by much these days. Where did mythological creatures rate on the scale of alien wonders?

‘Big,’ Jack said, giving her a one word reply as he focused on the building peak hour traffic in front of them. ‘Lots of scales.’

‘Not red, either,’ Ianto added. ‘More of a muted green-grey, although there was one that was more blue. Makes sense that they would be better able to camouflage themselves that way.’

Like anything that big was going to be able to go unnoticed, Gwen thought. It could be bright pink with yellow polka dots and be no more obvious.

‘And they didn't smell all that great,’ Jack said, scrunching up his nose as if remembering the scent of them. ‘Could have worked on their B-O, that’s for sure.’

Ianto sighed as he leaned an arm on the passenger window edge, watching a courier on a motorbike whizz past in between the SUV and the cars in the lane next to them, missing the wing mirror by inches. ‘There was no fire breathing,’ he said, sounding disappointed. ‘But then I suppose it would be biologically quite difficult to manage. You can't just create fire out of nothing, especially not the belly of an organic lifeforms. Some of the stories have obviously been exaggerated.’

‘They were exaggerated enough,’ Jack said, sounding displeased by their encounter, honking the horn for good measure to get the hatchback in front of them to close the twenty foot gap between it and the next car. He didn’t like traffic at the best of times, so being tired and dirty as well was never a good combination.

‘You shouldn't have gotten underfoot,’ Ianto chastised. It's your own fault you got trodden on. If you’d been watching where you were going more carefully, not just trying to be all heroic…’

‘Jeez!’ Jack complained. ‘You get stomped on by a dragon and you still can't get any sympathy around here.’

‘I was busy,’ came the slightly vexed reply.

Jack snorted and Gwen caught him in the mirror, rolling his eyes. ‘Busy being enthralled, you mean.’

‘If you insist.’

‘I swear I saw Henry Tudor wandering about at one point.’

‘Oh, please. Now who's exaggerating? The Tudors only came up with the idea of a dragon on their standard. They didn't actually coexist.’

‘Says who?’ Gwen sensed the beginnings of an argument.

‘History, that's who.’

‘And you told me off for calling dragons a myth? What’s to say they didn't come through the rift back then and fly all the way up north?’

‘He's got a point,’ Gwen said, interjecting and hoping she could steer them away from a bickering match.

‘And all the history books just lied about it?’ Ianto's tone was bordering on incredulous. ‘How do you miss mentioning dragons? Not to like there was a fifteenth century Torchwood hanging around, ready to retcon anyone who saw one, is there? Ah!’ He pointed a finger at Jack as he was about to open his mouth. ‘Not a peep out of you. I don't need to hear any stories about you having been there and slept with half the Tudor army in between capturing dragons and doing battle with the English.’

Jack heaved a long-suffering breath. ‘It wasn’t half, just so you know.’

Gwen suppressed a giggle. ‘Rhys will be gutted he missed seeing that.’ The dragons, she felt like clarifying, not Jack’s attempts to conquer and bed an entire medieval army.

Jack spared her a look over his shoulder as they were stopped in a crush of cars and red taillights. ‘You know that they're not dragons, right? They came through the rift. That's makes them ali–’

‘Shut your face,’ Ianto said, cutting him off. ‘You're spoiling the moment.’ He gave a wistful sigh and descended back into some inner place of joy far away from the horrors of the rush hour traffic. ‘Real dragons…’