Torchwood: Fanfic: An open and shut case

[m_findlow]

Title: An open and shut case
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,335 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, Discovering what's behind the mysterious door" at fic_promptly
Summary: The team have a new mystery to unlock

Jack and Ianto stood there, staring at it.

'You seriously don't know what's behind that door?' Ianto asked.

'Nope. Never opened it. Never noticed it. Never even knew if there was a key.'

'How could you have gone all these years without wondering what it was for?'

'How many times do you think I've been this far down? Besides, you make it sound like I've been running Torchwood for centuries. I was just a runner for a hundred years, doing their dirty work.'

'That's a fair point,' Ianto conceded. 'Still, aren't you curious?'

'What does it say on the maps?'

'That's the thing,' Ianto said. 'I couldn't find any reference to this room on any of the blueprints in the archives. According to the plans, this room doesn't exist.'

'Well, there could be blueprints missing. They did do a lot of changes to the place over the years. That's why it's such a rabbit warren of tunnels and rooms.'

'And why we now have a proper system in place to number all the corridors so no one can get lost in future,' Ianto said, sounding pleased with himself.

'Did this door get a number?'

'No. Why do you think I asked? I've spent the better part of two weeks labeling every door and passage down here according to the plans. That's when I found this.'

'Hmm,' Jack looked at the door in earnest. It could have been an honest oversight when they were drawing up the plans, or perhaps the builders has mucked up and put in an extra room where there wasn't meant to be one. Then again, it could be a quirk, some remnant from the rift, a shape shifter hanging out in the boringness of their lowest corridors, just waiting for someone to come along. It could be a door that opened to another dimension, or maybe to a secret passage where they were keeping super secret alien technology. Who knew, but the boyish curiosity was getting stronger and stronger the longer he stared at it, considering all of the possibilities.

'The door's pretty thick, so it's not like we could just use a crowbar,' Ianto said. 'It looks old and rusted in place in any case. We'd have to loosen the joints and the lock.'

'Hmm,' Jack mused. Thick doors were generally reserved for things you don't want people getting into, or getting out of perhaps.

'Maybe we should run a scan first, just to check there's nothing nasty lurking behind there.'

'Already done.'

Jack looked at him in askance

'What? I knew you couldn't resist knowing if you didn't already, and I didn't want you blundering in if it was likely to be dangerous.'

'That's you always looking out for me,' he replied with a small amount of pride and tenderness. Owen would have said "sod it," and just blown the door off and let whatever nasty was lurking in there chew him to death before he'd even had time to call for help.

'Someone has to,' Ianto replied.

'Okay, so what did the scans show?'

'Nothing I could get a fix on. Whatever is behind there it's dense. At least as dense as the surrounding walls. I couldn't get a read on how big the space behind it is. Could just be that the door itself is dense.'

Dense could be bad. Dense could be a collapsed warp star, slowly forming into a black hole. Hopefully it wasn't that bad, any black hole should have breached a door like this by now, but you never knew. That or it could be some kind of expanding goo alien, which could drown them when they opened it. Or perhaps there was something in there that had been cemented inside as a last resort from stopping it from taking over the world.

Ianto pinched his arm.

'What?'

'You've been standing there just staring at it for five minutes, so I know you're just dreaming up all of the horrible things it could possibly be.'

'It could be a massive stash of sex toys,' Jack offered.

'With an improbability factor of twenty five million to one and rising,' Ianto said, rolling his eyes.

'Better than zero.'

Ianto just shrugged in agreement.

'So what do you think?' Jack said, inspecting the edges of the door. 'Blowtorch?'

'Probably safer if we don't apply heat. Could be explosive or flammable, whatever is in there.'

'Good point. So, brute force?'

'Brute force it is. With a little forward planning.'

Fetching hammers and chisels, crowbars and wedges, they set to work chipping away the rust around the edges, breaking away the collected muck that had built up, effectively sealing the door. Once they'd broken away enough to create a gap between the door and the door way, Jack pressed his cheek up against it.

'I can't feel any draft coming through,' he said.

Ianto was knelt down inspecting the handle and the lock.

'Think you can pick it?' Jack asked.

'I think that if it's as rusted as the rest, picking won't work. Looks like bolts top and bottom. Tosh has a solvent upstairs that can melt through most metals and doesn't require heat. Should do the trick.'

Twenty minutes later, having navigated his way back through the labyrinth of passages, pleased to have memorised the most direct route thanks to the new signage system. He returned with the small tube of solvent, squeezing a little in the places where the bolts were holding the door locked. He also slipped a decent amount of WD40 on the handle, hoping to loosen it.

'Hope whatever it is, that we don't need to relock the door in a hurry,' Jack said, as they waited for the solvent to melt the locks.

'Mmm,' Ianto agreed. 'If it is sex toys, there'll be no stopping you,' he smirked.

A few minutes more and they were ready to open it.

Jack adjusted the setting on his stun gun to maximum, whilst Ianto did the same. They were going to be prepared for anything on the other side. Jack grabbed the handle.

'Ready?'

'We probably should have told the others we were down here, but yeah, ready,' he replied, paused on the opposite side to Jack, gun poised. Neither of them could wait a minute longer to discover what was hidden behind it, regardless of the potential danger.

Jack pushed down on the handle, but nothing happened.

'It's still stuck,' he said, pushing it harder, then rattling it.

'Let me help,' Ianto said, pocketing his gun as they had all four hands on it, trying desperately to loosen it enough to open.

'Almost got it,' Jack puffed, pulling hard.

Finally the handle gave way, and the door flew open, throwing them both back on the floor along with it. They sat up and stared at the sight beyond the door, speechless.

'I don't believe it,' Jack said.

'You know, people who work for Torchwood have a sick sense of humour,' Ianto added.

Behind the door had been nothing more than a continuation of the wall on both sides. There was no secret hidden room, no black holes, and no alien goo monsters. Just a door that lead to nowhere.

'Maybe they put the door in and forgot the excavate the room behind it?' Ianto suggested.

'Or maybe they had one extra and didn't know what to do with it. Or maybe there used to be a room and the rift stole it.'

'Can the rift steal rooms?'

'I dunno. If one ever mysteriously turns up somewhere it shouldn't, then I guess we'll know.'

They continued to sit there and just stare at the wall. It was about the most anticlimactic thing either of them had ever seen. All that effort wasted for nothing.

'I'm going to need a coffee,' Ianto finally declared.

'Me too,' Jack agreed. 'Then I'm going shopping.'

'Shopping?'

'I'm going to excavate a room behind that door and fill it full of sex toys. No point a perfectly good door going to waste.'

Comments

[bk_forever]

Maybe the Rift took it... ROFLMAO!

Ah, Jack, as impractical as ever! Wonder how long it'll take to excavate a decent sized room...

Thanks for the fill!


Reading this made me think of one of my favourite Torchwood fics - don't know if you've ever read it...

http://tw-flashfic.livejournal.com/2801.html

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

That is a good fic. I suspect their missing room might go the same place as all the others, wherever that might be, rather like the basement they later came to inherit.