Torchwood: Fanfic: Starry nights and sandy beaches

[m_findlow]

Title: Starry nights and sandy beaches
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Torchwood team
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,985 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Any, any, treasure washed up on a beach" at fic_promptly
Summary: The team uncover buried treasure on the beach.

'You know, normally I wouldn't mind a trip to the beach,' Owen began, 'but it's bloody freezing down here.'

'It's so hard to tell with you,' Gwen replied, 'since you hate anything outdoors.'

'Well, if you want to work outside in the middle of winter be my guest. I'm perfectly happy to stay inside.'

'It's why you love the hothouse so much,' Ianto teased. 'That's as much of the outdoors as you can cope with.'

'Yeah, well at least I admit it. Can we just hurry up and find this damn thing, whatever it is?'

The four of them spread out and began searching the beach in earnest, from the thick grassy dunes near the SUV, right down to the rocky shore and the waves that gently crashed in.

Gwen stepped up onto a large boulder near the shore, trying to get a better aerial view of the beach to aid in their search. The wind whipped hair in her face and she brushed it back as she scanned the area, before spotting something. 'What's that over there?' she yelled out, pointing off in the distance.

Tosh and Owen were closest, trekking along the sand until they finally caught sight of the object Gwen had seen. It was half wedged in the sand, but it was clear that whatever it was, it didn't belong naturally on a beach. Tosh stood over it and pulled it back by the edge so she could get a proper look, before stepping back in shock. 'Is that a...?'

Owen frowned, coming around to take a look for himself. 'Nah, couldn't be,' he said. 'Just looks a whole lot like one.' There was absolutely no way that was a painting, let alone Starry Night. He had no interest in art unless it was pop art, but even he knew enough to identify a Van Gogh when he saw one.

'I'm not sure, Owen. I mean, just look at it. That's not a poster. It's framed and everything.'

'Then it's a fake. Just a really good one.'

By the time they'd started discussing it, Gwen and Ianto had come over to join them, getting their own glimpse of the artwork as Owen pulled it all the way out of the sand and lay it flat on the sand.

'The chances of it being real are astronomical,' Gwen said.

'All the same, I think maybe we should be careful with it,' Ianto said.

'It's washed up on a beach. I don't think we could damage it any further than it already is,' Owen replied. He picked it up and put it under his arm. 'Let's go. We can debate it somewhere warm.'

Once it was returned to the hub and propped up on Tosh's desk to run the usual gamut of tests for residual rift radiation, it was getting late in the evening. No one was particularly fussed over it since it wasn't threatening the existence of planet Earth. Hunger was much more the order of the day, but the pizzas they'd ordered for lunch and then abandoned thanks to the rift alert, were now cold. They could have reheated them, but no one could be bothered.

'Um, so this is awkward,' Ianto said, walking up to them as they hovered together around the sofa with their cold leftover pizza. 'So, I called the Museum of Modern Art in New York and asked them if they'd reported a Van Gogh going missing. Needless to say they became very concerned and immediately went to check. I think they tried to trace my call to report it to the police, but luckily I was on a secure line. They were quite interested in how I might know if it was potentially missing. They did say it was still there, but that they were taking it off display to confirm it was still the genuine article.'

'See, what did I tell you?' Owen said, wrapping the words around a huge mouthful of pizza. 'It's a fake.'

'Uh, actually there's a bit more to the story. Whilst they were sending security down to check on the painting, the curator did mention that this wasn't the first time the painting had allegedly gone missing.'

'When you say allegedly?' Gwen queried.

'In 1993 the painting went missing for forty-eight hours. The whole gallery was in a panic, and then, just as they were about to report the theft to Interpol, the painting was suddenly returned.'

'Returned how?' she asked.

'Back on the wall, as if it had never been moved. Nothing tripped their security alarms, CCTV showed nothing, and no one could find any fingerprints on it that suggested it had been touched. They apparently have this magic paint stuff they put on the frames that comes off when you touch it, so even if you wear gloves, they can tell it's been tampered with.'

Tosh leaned forward, intrigued. 'So, what are we saying? The rift stole the painting and we have to put it back?'

'Or, we need to arrange for the rift to collect it and send it back where it belongs.'

'Isn't that a little risky, letting the rift be responsible?' Gwen said. 'Wouldn't it be safer to return it some other way?'

'If you have a time machine that can take us back to 1993 then please let me know,' Ianto replied. What a pity Jack had a friend who had one, but that both he and Jack were currently incommunicado and God only knew where.

'Well,' Tosh began, 'we know that in the current timeline, the painting did find its way back somehow.'

'So, we don't do anything?' Owen asked.

Tosh frowned. 'Not necessarily. We know how the past played out, but it's the future actions that protect what happened in the past.'

Owen groaned. 'I'm confused and my head hurts.'

'What Tosh is saying is that it will only make it back to 1993 if we do something that ensures the timeline is preserved,' Ianto explained. 'If not, we could change the past, and who knows what the implications of that could be. It might change nothing, but what if someone sees that painting back in the nineties and it changes their lives somehow?'

'And that has a ripple effect that we simply cannot calculate,' Tosh finished.

'So, you're saying we could fuck up the future?'

'More or less,' Ianto replied.

'So, what do we do, then?' Gwen asked .

Ianto looked at Tosh. 'Tosh, we'd have the rift records for 1993 right?'

'Sure.'

'And we'd be able to review what happened back then at the exact moment the painting made its return?'

Gwen tried to follow Ianto's train of thought, but failed. 'How does that help?'

'It's like closing a circuit,' Tosh explained. 'Each rift spike has a unique signature. We get the data from the rift flare in 1993 and we can extrapolate enough data to be able to predict the location of the matching spike here. Hopefully.'

'Like sticking it though the returns chute at the library,' Ianto added.

'I'll need some time to pull up the data and run a few models,' Tosh said.

'Do it. We have no idea when this spike is going to happen,' Gwen said. 'It could be tomorrow or next week, or five minutes from now, and we need to be in position when it does.'

It didn't take Tosh long to locate the records from their database and analyse the particular characteristics that defined one rift spike from another. She loaded several variables into her models until she could match that up with her rift predictor program. That program was still a work in progress itself, but it was better than nothing, and she really didn't want to be responsible for screwing up the future.

'Okay,' she said, looking tired despite the three coffees that had kept her working through the night. 'I think I've got the time of the rift spike that's going to occur.'

'I thought stuff only comes one way through the rift?' Owen asked.

'Well, it must get caught up in the spike somehow.' That was a problem for later.

'So, when is this rift spike?'

'Six thirteen am tomorrow morning, er, today, actually,' she said, checking her watch.

'And the location?' Gwen asked.

'Yes. Um, thats a bit trickier.'

Ianto ran a hand across the back of his neck. 'Please tell me it's not in New York.'

'No, it's in Cardiff.'

'Thank God.'

'But it's down near where we found it in the first place.'

Owen snorted. 'So, why's that a problem?'

'Well, the actual exact location for the spike is somewhere out over the water.'

'So, we take it out on a boat,' Ianto replied. 'There's a couple down in the Torchwood dock. I'm sure one of them at least is suitable.'

Tosh sucked in a breath. 'Except there's a chance that anyone out on the boat might also get caught up in the rift spike.'

'Which we obviously don't want,' Gwen said.

'What about an amphibious drone or something?' Owen suggested. 'Remote control and all that.'

Ianto looked horrified. 'You want to stick it out on a drone in the middle of the Bristol Channel and hope to God we don't destroy one of the world's most famous paintings by having it drowned by a freak wave?'

'You got a better plan?'

'Actually, no.'

'Right. So, if no one has any better ideas, I say we run with that. And,' he said, checking his watch, 'we'd better bloody hurry.'

Tosh was still putting the finishing touches on the drone as Owen sped them towards the isolated Welsh beach. As a precaution, they'd wrapped the artwork in plastic, with more tape than had ever been used on any present in history. To hell with ensuring the past stayed exactly the way it had. If someone had to unwrap it at the other end back in 1993, then so be it. Ianto wouldn't have it on his conscience that they'd ruined an international treasure.

Once they arrived, they carried it quickly down the beach and into the water, the priceless painting resting on top. Owen and Ianto were charged with taking the drone out beyond the breaking waves to ensure it didn't get toppled, before Tosh could drive it the rest of the way out to sea.

Gwen kept a close eye on her PDA as their six am deadline crept towards the predicted spike. Right on the dot of six thirteen, it went crazy, alerting them to the spike about a mile offshore. A few minutes later, all traces of the rift energy dissipated, and Tosh directed the drone back toward the beach, before the boys could retrieve it from the water. Whether it had been sucked under by a wave, or the rift, the painting was now gone.

'So, how do we know if it worked?' Owen said, teeth chattering as he wrapped a towel around him, cold and wet from his foray out into the water.

Ianto tugged his phone out of his jacket pocket, still dry from where he'd left it lying on the sand, and dialled. 'Yes, is that the Museum of Modern Art? I'm flying into New York tomorrow for the weekend and wanted to visit the gallery whilst I'm there. Can you tell me, will Van Gogh's Starry Night be on display? Excellent. I'm looking forward to seeing it. Thank you.'

'Sounds like it worked,' Gwen said, smiling.

'That or the museum has put a really good replica in its place and hushed up the whole thing for the last thirteen years,' Ianto argued.

'Let's go with the idea that it worked,' Gwen replied. 'And that the future has played out exactly how it was supposed to.'

'I'll reserve judgment until I go home,' Ianto replied. 'If my living room curtains haven't changed from beige to bright green, I think we'll be okay.'