Title: Bright idea
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,289 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 471 - Amnesty, using Challenge 42 - Candles
Summary: Ianto is stuck in the dark and Jack is being less than helpful.



‘Jack.’ Ianto called out his name in the hopes of getting a reply. At least then he'd know if he was still facing the right general direction. He'd always imagined it would be dark in the hub with no lights, but down here in the archives, where there were no emergency backups, it was so dark that Ianto wasn't even sure if he existed any more. He might have been able to feel his body but he certainly could see it, or even imagine he could see it. He definitely couldn't see Jack as a consequence and that was what worried him. If Jack strayed too far, the pair of them might be lost in the archives forever and never even find each other again, let alone a way out of here.

‘I used to think I knew my way around here like the back of my hand,’ he muttered to himself when Jack didn't reply. ‘That I could find my way out of here with my eyes shut.’ It turned out that was a complete fallacy and that he hadn't made it more than a few yards and one turn before becoming completely disoriented. Archives one, Ianto nil.

There was a banging noise just off to his right, a little way ahead. He took a tentative step forward, putting his arms out in front of him to stop him from running into anything. Of course, down here that could also mean disturbing something on the shelves by accident. Perhaps bumping into a shelf was a safer bet than pawing the air in front of him and getting accidentally vaporised by touching something he shouldn't. Not that anything that dangerous was supposed to be down here, but then again, there’d been a lot of decades of people storing stuff down here and not all of them were as careful and meticulous as he was.

He shuffled slowly, still heading in the direction of the noise. Make no mistake, that had to be Jack clanking about just ahead of him. There'd been no one else down here before the power had gone out and it would be a pretty stupid thief that thought to attempt a robbery in the pitch dark. Why the power had gone off he couldn't be sure. Maybe Tosh's tinkering had gone too far and she'd blown up their electric switchboard, or maybe Gwen had spilled her coffee and shorted something out. All he knew was that he wasn't to blame. Their bills were always paid on time, if not early. He'd be well within his rights to point fingers.

He kept shuffling towards the sound. It hadn't seemed that far away and yet he still hadn't reached it, though it was getting a tad louder. ‘Jack? What are you doing?’ It would be just his luck to have his foot caught around something and be dragging it behind him in his vain attempts to exit the archives, assuming he even knew which way that happened to be.

‘I'm looking for the candles,’ came the reply after much clanking and loud rummaging.

‘What candles?’

‘We always kept candles down here for emergencies.’

Ianto snorted. ‘Well, I mean, just so long as you kept matches alongside them,’ he replied. A candle without a way to light it would be sod all use to them. ‘Wouldn't we be better placed to find a torch?’

‘We kept candles, not torches,’ came the blunt reply.

Ianto stepped forward and finally found Jack, inadvertently invading his personal space and receiving a wayward elbow for his troubles as Jack rummaged vigorously. ‘I've been working down here sorting out this mess for two years and I've yet to come across a crate with candles lying in the bottom of it.’ He'd found many a strange thing in boxes and containers that hadn't been touched in half a century or more. If there'd been a filing system back then he couldn't figure it out.

‘They're here,’ Jack insisted. ‘Somewhere,’ had added, Ianto picturing the furrowing of his borrow and the narrowing of eyes that would accompany it.

‘I really think we’d be better served trying to make our way out of here without them,’ Ianto insisted, wishing he hadn't left his phone lying on his desk when he and Jack had gone to fetch spare parts for the sub-etheric resonator so that Jack could do repairs. Of course, even that felt fraught with peril. Ianto didn't like anyone tinkering with the rift machine, not even Jack with his fifty-first century know-how and a copy of the blueprints. Still, his phone and its ability to double as a torchlight would have been very handy right now.

‘We can't see a damn thing unless you can point us in the right direction,’ Jack argued.

‘If I had to guess, I think we should go that way,’ he said, lifting his arm and pointing uselessly, hitting something in the process.

‘Ow, that was my nose! Watch where you're pointing!’

‘Sorry.’

‘Let me just try a few more crates,’ Jack pleaded. ‘We could end up wandering lost for hours without any light.’

‘Let's hope the power outage doesn't last that long.’ True the archives were vast, and some parts on the cusp of being declared unexplored. Ianto had a good sense of where he was most of the time but even he was wont to take a wrong turn every now and then, having to double back and get his bearings.

There was a loud crash and a curse from Jack in some language that wasn't English or Welsh. It might have been Galactic Standard but Ianto was more concerned with the sound of things hitting the concrete floor around the,

‘Good work,’ Ianto said, knowing Jack had pulled the crate too far out from the shelf, causing it to tumble to the ground, spilling its contents.

Ianto knelt down, his hand finding the edge of the upturned crate and pawed around blindly, trying to lay his hands – gently – on the escaped items, slowly putting them back in the box and hoping he didn't miss any that they might trip over. He had no idea what he was picking up, even by the feel of them. Everything was strange in the dark with no visual cues, cold metal or oddly shaped, or sheafs of paper that had come loose from manila files. ‘Hold still while I make sure there’s nothing underfoot,’ he told Jack, crawling around his legs to collect things whilst Jack just stood there, already tackling yet another box. ‘Don't drop that one,’ Ianto warned him. ‘I don't want a crate falling on my head and knocking me out cold. You'll never get out of here if you've got to carry me as well.’

‘Tut,’ Jack said, as if such a thing were nigh on impossible.

Ianto’s hand swept across the floor, finding a clear space free of dropped artefacts until he reached slightly farther away, fingers brushing something that rolled away at his touch. He moved on hands and knees towards it, determined not to let it get away and wrapped his hand around it. It wasn't cold but neither was it warm. It was long and tubular, it had a strange texture. He explored the shape with both hands, finding a little nib at one end that felt slightly brittle. ‘Jack, it sounds mad but I think I found one of your candles.’ He lifted it to his nose and it smelled vaguely waxy. Scratching the side with a fingernail made a small bit give way, lodging under his nail. ‘Yup. Pretty sure that’s what it is.’

‘Brilliant. Now, where is the box of matches?’

Ianto sighed loudly. At this rate they were doomed.