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m_findlowTitle: Dead and buried
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 94 - Secret lair at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly
Summary: Two friends break away from the main tourist trail in search of long lost allies.
‘This is insane,’ I try to tell Cassie, but she's not listening. Trying to keep up with her is hard. There's too much to stop and look at, but the only thing I should be focusing on is not losing Cassie. Her purposeful strides aren't intended to put distance between us. She's got the bit between her teeth though, and nothing I say can persuade her.
It's been years since I visited this place. To me, it always feels sad and run down. It's not a tourist destination, not really. There's nothing here - no spaceport, no transmat docks. To get here is a two hour ride on the bullet train and even then it only stops here once a day. This is just one of those old places where people like to come and stare at the twee old buildings and stop for a cream tea. They say in the guides not to stay too far from the main street. It's not dangerous, just that everything beyond the prettied up centre of town is abandoned and falling down. It's not what you'd call awe inspiring for the tourism trade, but there's no one to stop those who aren't here for the quaint little slice of prehistoric civic life.
Cassie has been like a sister to me. A pushy, bossy little sister who doesn't know she's supposed to let her older siblings be in charge. I love her to bits - maybe more than I should, but I'd never say so. Romantic entanglements are… well, they've always been so complicated and I never really got the hang of them.
I should have been firmer at the beginning maybe, trying to convince her that this was all just a load of nonsense. Not that she'd have listened. She thinks I'm boring. That my job is boring and the people I work with are boring, and yeah, they kinda are.
‘You said we were coming to Earth One for a weekend getaway. Not to poke our noses around.’
She paused a moment and I caught up. ‘I found a diary. It's got to be nearly eight hundred years old. Most of it is personal stuff, but there's loads of other stuff too. Stuff that sounds exactly like Torchwood stuff.’
‘You found a diary? Where?’ My mistake is in taking too much interest in it. I should have played it cool and not let myself get drawn in. I'd have given my right arm to see it, and maybe she knew that. Curiosity has always been my fatal flaw.
‘It doesn't matter.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘In my bag. I thought, just in case we run into someone we can prove that we're friends.’
I try being rational. ‘Torchwood have been outlawed for more than half a millennia.’
‘Oh, what and you think the secret police of Erebus are going to find us and haul us away for going looking for them?’
‘Not this again, please.’
She rounded on me. ‘Please what? Please no more conspiracy theories? Please no more telling me that the biggest corporation in the universe are the benevolent face of everything? When was the last time we heard anything about the conflict in Ardereacne? Maxon’s president needs a double lung transplant and gets one same day when the organ donor transplant list waiting time is three years? And every other week we're getting news that new colonies are being opened up, but have you heard of anyone booking a place? We've got net zero population growth but the official figures say otherwise. Why do you think Torchwood was outlawed if not because they must have known about all this. If they still exist, we need to find them.’
‘And do what?’
‘Join them. Help them. Just… We can't keep sitting here doing nothing.’
She tugs me by the hand down through crumbling streets. The smell of the seaside hits me with the stench of putrefying seaweed. There's no water lapping the edge of the city. The barrage was destroyed centuries ago and now it's just smelly, muddy tidal flats. All the buildings that once hugged its edge have rotted and fallen down, with only a few wooden pylons still clinging for survival.
Caked in decades of tidal mud is a ramshackle wooden edifice. Sand has piled up against the doorway and salty air has rusted the hinges in place. Even the sea can't get in, but that won't stop Cassie, who's already digging away the accumulation of sand with her hands.
‘Are you sure this is the way in?’ I say, trying to sound nonchalant about it.
‘It's all in the diary. Wooden building at the edge of the bay. Unassuming. Perfectly hidden in plain sight.’
My heart begins to pound in my chest so hard that it feels like I can't breathe. She's going to open that door and what lies on the other side… I grab her arm. ‘Cassie, stop. Please.’
She looks at me and her face flushes with sisterly concern. ‘It's okay. There's nothing to be afraid of.’
‘Yes, there is.’ I swallow hard. ‘Because I know what's behind that door.’
Her face scrunches up so adorably that for a moment I forget where we are. ‘Javic?’
‘Please, just move away from the door.’
‘Why?’
I try to screw up my courage. I never used to be this weak. Once upon a time I'd have taken charge. It's this place, I realise.
‘Because I'm Torchwood. And inside there is just a tomb. Everything I lost so long ago. Earth One tried to fight Erebus and lost. There's no lair full of weapons and technology, or secret agents fighting an underground war. This is all that's left, except for me.’
She frowns at me, likes she's staring at a stranger. It's true. I'm just a fraud. She lifts the flap on her bag and extracts the ancient diary, handing it to me. My heart stops.
‘The Javic in here never would have given up,’ she says, walking away.
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 94 - Secret lair at
fandomweekly Summary: Two friends break away from the main tourist trail in search of long lost allies.
‘This is insane,’ I try to tell Cassie, but she's not listening. Trying to keep up with her is hard. There's too much to stop and look at, but the only thing I should be focusing on is not losing Cassie. Her purposeful strides aren't intended to put distance between us. She's got the bit between her teeth though, and nothing I say can persuade her.
It's been years since I visited this place. To me, it always feels sad and run down. It's not a tourist destination, not really. There's nothing here - no spaceport, no transmat docks. To get here is a two hour ride on the bullet train and even then it only stops here once a day. This is just one of those old places where people like to come and stare at the twee old buildings and stop for a cream tea. They say in the guides not to stay too far from the main street. It's not dangerous, just that everything beyond the prettied up centre of town is abandoned and falling down. It's not what you'd call awe inspiring for the tourism trade, but there's no one to stop those who aren't here for the quaint little slice of prehistoric civic life.
Cassie has been like a sister to me. A pushy, bossy little sister who doesn't know she's supposed to let her older siblings be in charge. I love her to bits - maybe more than I should, but I'd never say so. Romantic entanglements are… well, they've always been so complicated and I never really got the hang of them.
I should have been firmer at the beginning maybe, trying to convince her that this was all just a load of nonsense. Not that she'd have listened. She thinks I'm boring. That my job is boring and the people I work with are boring, and yeah, they kinda are.
‘You said we were coming to Earth One for a weekend getaway. Not to poke our noses around.’
She paused a moment and I caught up. ‘I found a diary. It's got to be nearly eight hundred years old. Most of it is personal stuff, but there's loads of other stuff too. Stuff that sounds exactly like Torchwood stuff.’
‘You found a diary? Where?’ My mistake is in taking too much interest in it. I should have played it cool and not let myself get drawn in. I'd have given my right arm to see it, and maybe she knew that. Curiosity has always been my fatal flaw.
‘It doesn't matter.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘In my bag. I thought, just in case we run into someone we can prove that we're friends.’
I try being rational. ‘Torchwood have been outlawed for more than half a millennia.’
‘Oh, what and you think the secret police of Erebus are going to find us and haul us away for going looking for them?’
‘Not this again, please.’
She rounded on me. ‘Please what? Please no more conspiracy theories? Please no more telling me that the biggest corporation in the universe are the benevolent face of everything? When was the last time we heard anything about the conflict in Ardereacne? Maxon’s president needs a double lung transplant and gets one same day when the organ donor transplant list waiting time is three years? And every other week we're getting news that new colonies are being opened up, but have you heard of anyone booking a place? We've got net zero population growth but the official figures say otherwise. Why do you think Torchwood was outlawed if not because they must have known about all this. If they still exist, we need to find them.’
‘And do what?’
‘Join them. Help them. Just… We can't keep sitting here doing nothing.’
She tugs me by the hand down through crumbling streets. The smell of the seaside hits me with the stench of putrefying seaweed. There's no water lapping the edge of the city. The barrage was destroyed centuries ago and now it's just smelly, muddy tidal flats. All the buildings that once hugged its edge have rotted and fallen down, with only a few wooden pylons still clinging for survival.
Caked in decades of tidal mud is a ramshackle wooden edifice. Sand has piled up against the doorway and salty air has rusted the hinges in place. Even the sea can't get in, but that won't stop Cassie, who's already digging away the accumulation of sand with her hands.
‘Are you sure this is the way in?’ I say, trying to sound nonchalant about it.
‘It's all in the diary. Wooden building at the edge of the bay. Unassuming. Perfectly hidden in plain sight.’
My heart begins to pound in my chest so hard that it feels like I can't breathe. She's going to open that door and what lies on the other side… I grab her arm. ‘Cassie, stop. Please.’
She looks at me and her face flushes with sisterly concern. ‘It's okay. There's nothing to be afraid of.’
‘Yes, there is.’ I swallow hard. ‘Because I know what's behind that door.’
Her face scrunches up so adorably that for a moment I forget where we are. ‘Javic?’
‘Please, just move away from the door.’
‘Why?’
I try to screw up my courage. I never used to be this weak. Once upon a time I'd have taken charge. It's this place, I realise.
‘Because I'm Torchwood. And inside there is just a tomb. Everything I lost so long ago. Earth One tried to fight Erebus and lost. There's no lair full of weapons and technology, or secret agents fighting an underground war. This is all that's left, except for me.’
She frowns at me, likes she's staring at a stranger. It's true. I'm just a fraud. She lifts the flap on her bag and extracts the ancient diary, handing it to me. My heart stops.
‘The Javic in here never would have given up,’ she says, walking away.
