A/n: My first Torchwood fic, and what do I produce? Pure, unadulterated CRACK, inspired by a kids' story I read once and can't remember the author of. I apologise heartily.
For the nitpickers, timeline reference is someplace in Series Two, after Meat and before the Mess Involving Martha. (That makes it sound like the mess was Martha's fault, which it wasn't, for those of you who have not yet seen it. Some of it was aliens, and most of it was Jack, really. I shall not go into any more detail than that.)
I do not own the Torchwood Institute, nor the cousins who have worked there, nor the fine people who brought their work into the public eye.
Once upon a time, about two years ago, there was a Torchwood in Cardiff under the Millennium Square, and it had five people in it. There was Gwen, and Owen, and Toshiko, and Ianto, and Captain Jack Harkness who was the leader of them all. He was quite a good leader, and the other four all liked him-but he was terribly annoying.
He flirted with everyone he met, from Gwen's fiancée to Ianto's cat. And because he was so tall and strong and handsome, a lot of the people he flirted with liked it and flirted back. But that wasn't the most annoying thing about him.
He drove as though he had never learned to tell the difference between Real Life and the dodgems at a fairground, and until they had gotten accustomed to it, every time he drove his team anywhere in their big black car, they could not immediately spring into action when they got wherever they were going because they had to stop first to be sick. But that wasn't the most annoying thing about him.
One time he disappeared without warning into a police phone box which then disappeared itself, and was gone for months, and everybody went out of their heads worrying about him. And when he did finally reappear he refused to explain any of it. But even that wasn't the most annoying thing about him.
No, the problem was that due to an interesting incident a long time ago that had involved a pretty blonde girl who didn't know what she was doing because she hadn't read any instruction manuals, Captain Jack Harkness could not die. And the problem with that was that, since nothing could kill him or even hurt him for very long-
"He isn't scared of anything!" said his team to each other. "He must be the Bravest Man In The World." And they were very annoyed indeed, because it really did not seem fair to them that Captain Jack should be allowed to go around being not scared of anything(which they were)because he was unkillable(which they were not). And they often-when Captain Jack was not around to hear-grumbled about it.
One day when there weren't many aliens, they were all sitting around grumbling together over mugs of coffee, which Ianto had made, and a double-sized packet of party ring biscuits, which Toshiko had brought in and Owen was stealing more than his fair share of. He had just managed to capture the last two and had shoved them both in his mouth, whole, at once, when Gwen said:
"Well, he must be scared of something. Everybody's scared of something. It's just a question of finding out what."
"Bffmffshp," said Owen, and then had to cough very loudly because his throat was full of crumbs.
"Serve you right," said Ianto. "I only had one."
"Have another drink to wash it down," said Toshiko, and then, "So, are you suggesting we carry out tests to find out what?"
"No!" replied Gwen, very shocked, and then, after considering it for a moment, "Actually, yes. It'd do that man good to be knocked off his high horse."
"A-bloody-men!" agreed Owen, who had gotten over his coughing. "And about time too."
"I'm not sure about this idea," said Toshiko doubtfully.
"I like it," said Ianto.
"There you go," said Owen very cheerfully, "we've got his boyfriend's consent so it's obviously all right. Are there any more biscuits?"
At this point the other three knocked him down and sat on him.
Toshiko was the first to try scaring Captain Jack, but her heart was not really in it. Still, one night she burst into his office, where he was snoozing with his head on the desk. (Captain Jack always slept in his office, and tried to get away with it by claiming he never slept at all. It was another of the annoying things about him.)
"Jack!" shrieked Toshiko, trying to look terrified. "Jack!"
"Wstfgl?" said Captain Jack drowsily, then, "Just resting my eyes. What is it?" He suppressed a yawn.
"Er," said Toshiko, whose mind had gone blank. She had made up some utterly Horrible News to tell him, but put on the spot like this she found she couldn't remember it. Clutching at the first thing she could think of, she found herself saying hopelessly, "The roof is on fire?"
"'We don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn,'" mumbled Jack, and went back to sleep again. He snored very loudly.
Captain Jack Harkness was ambling unhurriedly around the Torchwood vaults, checking that everything was where it was supposed to be, when a Weevil jumped out at him going "RRRAGHhaaah!"
"Hi, Owen," Jack said to the Weevil.
"I'm not Owen," said the Weevil. "I'm a Weevil. RAARGHAAARRRRAAH!"
"Weevils don't wear trainers," pointed out Jack.
The Weevil looked down at its feet. "They might do sometimes," it said defensively.
"They don't speak English either," Jack added.
"I'm not! Am I?" asked the Weevil.
"Yes you are," said Jack. "In an East End accent."
"Bugger," said the Weevil.
"It's a good mask, though," said Jack, encouragingly.
"Myfanwy," said Ianto firmly. "It was difficult enough catching her to begin with. He has to be at least a little bit scared of Myfanwy."
Myfanwy was the pterodactyl that lived in Torchwood because they had not been able to find anywhere else to put her. Mostly she was no trouble, but nevertheless Ianto always felt a bit nervous when she shrieked like a bicycle being murdered while he was minding his own business making the coffee.
Ianto was certain that she would be able to scare Captain Jack. Myfanwy, however, did not feel inclined to cooperate.
"Go on," Ianto told her. "Go and screech at him or something."
Myfanwy just hung from her perch and looked at him disinterestedly.
"I'll give you a fish," promised Ianto. (Pterodactyls like fish. Myfanwy had a particular taste for smoked salmon, which they had discovered by accident the time Toshiko brought some in on a bagel for lunch.)
Myfanwy rustled her wings.
"What are you doing, Ianto?" asked Captain Jack, coming up behind him.
"Um," said Ianto, who couldn't think of a good excuse. "What are you doing?"
"I brought Myfanwy a fish," said Jack, holding up a fishy-smelling carrier bag. Myfanwy perked up visibly and fixed one beady eye on it. "Good girl! Here you go!" He produced a large halibut from the bag, and tossed it up towards the pterodactyl, who snapped it neatly out of the air, then swooped down and buffeted Jack with her wings in a friendly fashion.
"So much for that," muttered Ianto to himself.
"Did you say something?" asked Jack, straightening his greatcoat.
"YARK!" said Myfanwy.
"Oh, you are all hopeless," Gwen said, giggling.
"You think of better, then," Owen demanded grumpily.
Gwen stopped giggling, because she couldn't, and they went down from Ianto's office to the proper part of Torchwood to get on with work.
It was a slow day. Owen watered his plants. Toshiko fiddled with the Torchwood firewalls, which were quite good enough already, but which she thought it was better to be safe than sorry about. Ianto and Jack checked the emergency weapons to make sure they were all working correctly and had ammunition and so on. Gwen wrote up a not-very-interesting event for the record. (There had indeed been an alien involved. But he had only stopped at Earth to ask directions, and once he had them had got back into his ship and gone off again without making any trouble.)
Gwen had just finished her report, and was just considering the merits of going out for doughnuts, when a delicate silk thread lowered itself from the ceiling just above her computer, with a very small money spider on the end of it.
"Hullo there," she said to it. Gwen was quite fond of spiders, even though her fiancée Rhys kept asking her to remove them from the bath. "What are you doing in here? There aren't any flies for you, well, maybe there's some godawful alien ones the size of golf carts." She smiled, and held out her hand for the spider to lower itself into.
"Who're you talking to, Gwen?" asked Jack, coming over to see.
"Just this little fellow," she told him, holding out her hand to show him.
Captain Jack Harkness looked at the tiny creature making its way across Gwen's palm...
...and went pale...
...and screamed.
Everyone came running at that.
"Uhh, Jack, what's the problem?" asked Gwen.
"Good grief," said Ianto, and began to laugh.
"I do not believe this," said Toshiko, going goggle-eyed.
"It's only a bloody spider!" said Owen.
"YAAAARK!" said Myfanwy, who thought she had heard another pterodactyl, and had gotten excited.
And:
"Take it away! Take it away!" begged the bravest man in the world.
