Torchwood Hell Hath No Fury - Part 3

[denacacra.livejournal.com]

 Title: Torchwood 2: Hell Hath No Fury

Spoilers: CoE

Characters: Janto, Martha Jones and mention of Owen Harper and Gwen Cooper/Williams. RTD owns them. All other characters are my own and I promise that I take care of my own

Genre: fix-it fiction for CoE via Torchwood 2

Rating: this is 15 probably for some bad language (though it might be a 12 at the moment). It’ll go up to 18 later as it will have adult content later, but nothing yet.

beta'd by janiemc and kelticbanshee - thank you!

 

Ianto fell down. He grunted as his shoulder blades and buttocks hit hard earth, a second before the back of his head slammed down against the compacted dirt. He sat up slowly, tentatively exploring for any damage. There was a dark void above him. He checked his shoulders and ribs with cautious fingers and pulled out some wood splinters  from his sides.

He was in a low tunnel, lit with a faint phosphorescing light. He lay back down and sighed. Waiting. Maybe this was a new twist to the dream. The waking, the gasping, the sense of claustrophobia. Of choking. Now he could add falling. If you land in a falling dream, it meant you were dead.

‘Right,’ he muttered to himself, ‘that’ll help.’

Perhaps it was better not to take children’s viewpoints on dream interpretation. After all, how could they know that?

Children. The children. He was awake now. The one thought had sheared through the swimming uncertainties of place and time and identity which were beginning to assert themselves within his mind.

He sat up, squinting ahead. There was the lightest of air breaths, like the passing of a moth, and a gleaming twine dropped over his head, catching round his throat. He grabbed at it instinctively, and almost snapped his neck as it was pulled taut and he was dragged backwards, kicking and writhing along the dark tunnel. His fingers had caught under the noose and as it bit tighter, his knuckles were driven into his throat, pressing down hard on his windpipe, strangling himself.

With a shuddering gasp, Ianto sat up. He was in a cavern, still all earthen, but with a sense of space that could only be estimated in the weak light. The noose was  gone from him neck and was lying in a shining coil beside him, like loops of spun gold. 

There was movement to one side, caught from the corner of his gaze. He turned, just as two men approached from out of the darkness. He frowned. Perhaps men was an approximation. They were both tall, perhaps six feet, but were rangy in build, and had long hair and beards, ornately plaited and twisted. Gold glinted all over their clothing and their arms fairly glittered with the stuff. They stood over him for a moment, observing him in a way so dispassionately that it was chilling. They were fine boned and large eyed, but there was such an air of menace about them that it negated all their beauty.

Ianto looked around himself once more, then glanced down at himself. The light, although sickly, reflected normally enough off his skin, which meant he had to assume the two men standing before him really were green in complexion.

‘Alright, let’s get this over with right now. When am I? Where am I? And why am I naked?’

The two creatures shook their exquisitely cruel heads. One murmured to the other. Ianto frowned, almost in disbelief. He repeated his questions in Welsh. The taller of the two gave a quick, hard smile and replied, in halting but reasonably understandable tones.

‘There is no time here. You are in the domains of our Queen. We stripped your clothes. They were tattered and of no use to you.’

‘I might have been the judge of that,’ Ianto remarked, trying to sound calm.

‘You are in fear. We can smell you. Do not try to conceal. You will come with us to beg presence with our Queen.’

‘You weren’t what was in that box ... were you? No. ‘Course you weren’t.’

‘Know of no box. You will be silent now. You wrong souled whelp of earth.’

They hauled him to his feet and to his dismay took up the twine again. This time, however, they forced his wrists together and tied them tightly. He gasped. It was gold, hard and bright, but with a strength and fluidity that was not of any human capacity.

‘You will walk. If you do not. Then you will be dragged.’

Ianto peered down at the floor. It was compacted in the cavern, but tree roots snagged their ancient way through it and bones jutted here and there like some remnants of past lives.

‘And there’s rocks. ‘Course there is,’ he said to himself.

‘Dare you speak to the Sidhe?’ demanded one of his captors, as another ten or so of them came into formation behind the others.

Ianto shook his head. There was only one thought in his head now, insistent and pleading. Jack, where are you?

Comments

[wanda1969.livejournal.com]

So glad this is back! I thought you'd stopped posting!