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Fandomweekly Challenge 230 - Sky full of stars
Title: Sky full of stars
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: Post-canon AU.
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: Post-canon AU.
Author notes: Written for Challenge 230 - Stargazing at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly
fandomweeklySummary: Ianto is overwhelmed by the task of trying to figure out where he is.
Ianto gazed up at the sky, searching the stars and adding dots to the notebook resting on his knees illuminated only by the dim light of a small torch so as not to blind his eyes to searching the darkness. He had pages and pages of dots, each one covering a small square of sky. It wasn't very precise trying to map the sky with only a pencil and a pad of paper using his eye, but it was all he had.
‘You must be getting very cold up here, Little Jones,’ came a deep voice. A large bipedal alien stood there, towering over him on the top of the hillside, its blue skin almost shimmering from being bathed in starlight. It was at least nine feet tall, all arms and legs but it and all its species had been gentle and kind towards him. For that he was eminently grateful.
Ianto shivered involuntarily, forgetting that he'd been here for hours absorbed in his task. It had been warm during the day but now that the sun’s warmth had burned away, the night was cool and clear. He reached for the jacket beside him and shrugged it on. It was five sizes too big for him, but it was the smallest they could offer him in place of any clothes of his own, and even this was a children's size. “Little Jones” was the name Ardjulus had given him, simply because Ianto was little compared to everyone else by a long way. Even Ardjulus was considered not overly tall.
Ardjulus tilted its head at him. ‘May I sit with you, Little Jones?’
‘Of course.’
The tall alien lowered itself gracefully onto the grass just a few feet away. ‘Please carry on as you were.’
Slightly warmed by the added clothing and the company, Ianto picked up his pencil and carried on marking dots before holding the notebook up and comparing what he'd jotted down to what he could see. He twisted the notebook page this way and that, studying it from different angles.
‘Can I ask what it is you are doing?’
Ianto turned to reply. ‘Trying to map the sky, figure out where I am, looking for recognisable stars and constellations to triangulate this location.’ He twisted the notebook in several different directions again and then sighed. ‘I know it's stupid.’
‘Why?’
Why? He wanted to laugh. Because he couldn't measure the distance between stars with the naked eye. Because he couldn't tell the distance of a star from where he sat to where it was in space. Because nothing he'd scrawled in any way shape or form was recognisable in the slightest. ‘Because I need a radio telescope and some pretty complicated technology, and I don't have either.’ He sighed and dropped the notebook beside him. ‘Well, gold star for effort, I suppose.’
Ardjulus looked up at the sky. ‘Which one is the gold one? They all look white to me.’
‘Oh no, not up there,’ Ianto replied. ‘It's just a saying.’
The alien attempted a frown of confusion. ‘What does it mean?’
Ianto paused trying to think how to explain the idiom and then gave up, lying back on the grass and staring uselessly at the stars. ‘Doesn't matter. It's a stupid saying anyway.’
‘Do you now have some sense for where you were?’
Ianto shook his head. ‘I was unconscious for a long time in that escape pod.’ He was still mad that the crew had dragged him unconscious from their doomed ship and put him in the sole escape vessel, sparing his life while the rest of them perished in the explosion. He didn’t deserve to be saved. He’d just been there, doing a job, sent by the Shadow Proclamation to help. ‘I would have been light years away from the ship by the time it was gone.’
'Even if they sent out a distress beacon before that, there'll be nothing left of it now.' Everyone was going to assume he’d perished along with everyone else. Instead here he was, crashed on a planet that had no technology capable of transmitting a message over significant distances, let alone any kind of spacecraft. It was even more primitive than his home on Earth. He needed to know where he was in the grand scheme of planets and waystations, trying to find a way to get a message to the closest available outpost and let them know he was here, alive.
‘Strange,’ was the only response Ardjulus offered, raising its head to the sky. ‘I have never before considered the night sky. It is quite beautiful, all those tiny lights.’
Talk about unlucky, Ianto thought. Bad enough that the technology here was non-existent, their species had never even studied the stars. Even the ancient Greeks and Egyptians had figured out all of that thousand of years before modern mankind. 'Every one of those stars is a sun, and every sun is part of a solar system surrounded by planets which might support life,' he explained.
‘Is your home up there somewhere?’
Ianto gazed up and searched the black depths of the sky, dusted with a hundred thousand stars, free from the light pollution that made them virtually invisible on most worlds. Assuming it was even the right time of year and the right part of the sky to look at, he didn't think so. ‘My home is so small I don't think you could find it even with a telescope.’ It was out there somewhere, but like Ianto it was a long way from anywhere anybody knew to look for it. Worse, he knew that somewhere out there amongst those stars was his husband, who must be convinced that he was dead or his atoms scattered to the depths of space, unable to ever be reconstituted.
No. Jack wouldn't give up on him that easy. Not until he’d searched every corner of the universe. He just needed to find one tiny star in a sky of trillions.
‘You must be getting very cold up here, Little Jones,’ came a deep voice. A large bipedal alien stood there, towering over him on the top of the hillside, its blue skin almost shimmering from being bathed in starlight. It was at least nine feet tall, all arms and legs but it and all its species had been gentle and kind towards him. For that he was eminently grateful.
Ianto shivered involuntarily, forgetting that he'd been here for hours absorbed in his task. It had been warm during the day but now that the sun’s warmth had burned away, the night was cool and clear. He reached for the jacket beside him and shrugged it on. It was five sizes too big for him, but it was the smallest they could offer him in place of any clothes of his own, and even this was a children's size. “Little Jones” was the name Ardjulus had given him, simply because Ianto was little compared to everyone else by a long way. Even Ardjulus was considered not overly tall.
Ardjulus tilted its head at him. ‘May I sit with you, Little Jones?’
‘Of course.’
The tall alien lowered itself gracefully onto the grass just a few feet away. ‘Please carry on as you were.’
Slightly warmed by the added clothing and the company, Ianto picked up his pencil and carried on marking dots before holding the notebook up and comparing what he'd jotted down to what he could see. He twisted the notebook page this way and that, studying it from different angles.
‘Can I ask what it is you are doing?’
Ianto turned to reply. ‘Trying to map the sky, figure out where I am, looking for recognisable stars and constellations to triangulate this location.’ He twisted the notebook in several different directions again and then sighed. ‘I know it's stupid.’
‘Why?’
Why? He wanted to laugh. Because he couldn't measure the distance between stars with the naked eye. Because he couldn't tell the distance of a star from where he sat to where it was in space. Because nothing he'd scrawled in any way shape or form was recognisable in the slightest. ‘Because I need a radio telescope and some pretty complicated technology, and I don't have either.’ He sighed and dropped the notebook beside him. ‘Well, gold star for effort, I suppose.’
Ardjulus looked up at the sky. ‘Which one is the gold one? They all look white to me.’
‘Oh no, not up there,’ Ianto replied. ‘It's just a saying.’
The alien attempted a frown of confusion. ‘What does it mean?’
Ianto paused trying to think how to explain the idiom and then gave up, lying back on the grass and staring uselessly at the stars. ‘Doesn't matter. It's a stupid saying anyway.’
‘Do you now have some sense for where you were?’
Ianto shook his head. ‘I was unconscious for a long time in that escape pod.’ He was still mad that the crew had dragged him unconscious from their doomed ship and put him in the sole escape vessel, sparing his life while the rest of them perished in the explosion. He didn’t deserve to be saved. He’d just been there, doing a job, sent by the Shadow Proclamation to help. ‘I would have been light years away from the ship by the time it was gone.’
'Even if they sent out a distress beacon before that, there'll be nothing left of it now.' Everyone was going to assume he’d perished along with everyone else. Instead here he was, crashed on a planet that had no technology capable of transmitting a message over significant distances, let alone any kind of spacecraft. It was even more primitive than his home on Earth. He needed to know where he was in the grand scheme of planets and waystations, trying to find a way to get a message to the closest available outpost and let them know he was here, alive.
‘Strange,’ was the only response Ardjulus offered, raising its head to the sky. ‘I have never before considered the night sky. It is quite beautiful, all those tiny lights.’
Talk about unlucky, Ianto thought. Bad enough that the technology here was non-existent, their species had never even studied the stars. Even the ancient Greeks and Egyptians had figured out all of that thousand of years before modern mankind. 'Every one of those stars is a sun, and every sun is part of a solar system surrounded by planets which might support life,' he explained.
‘Is your home up there somewhere?’
Ianto gazed up and searched the black depths of the sky, dusted with a hundred thousand stars, free from the light pollution that made them virtually invisible on most worlds. Assuming it was even the right time of year and the right part of the sky to look at, he didn't think so. ‘My home is so small I don't think you could find it even with a telescope.’ It was out there somewhere, but like Ianto it was a long way from anywhere anybody knew to look for it. Worse, he knew that somewhere out there amongst those stars was his husband, who must be convinced that he was dead or his atoms scattered to the depths of space, unable to ever be reconstituted.
No. Jack wouldn't give up on him that easy. Not until he’d searched every corner of the universe. He just needed to find one tiny star in a sky of trillions.