Okay, this was originally concieved as a cracky one shot between friends, but it...grew. The prompt was to take a fan, throw her into canon, write it well and write it believably. Hopefully, it worked. Mad props to the speedy beta by mortok, whose Headcase/Headache stories are awesome.
On with the show!
She opened her eyes, more than a bit surprised. Stretching out in front of her was water, perhaps the ocean, and under her bare feet was rough hardwood. Turning her head to the side, she could see a large building with indecipherable words on it. To the right of her was a large shiny column with water running down it. This place felt very familiar to her, she somehow felt detached from it, like she had only ever heard about it or seen it on T.V., but not ever been. She couldn't explain it very clearly; she felt disoriented and dizzy.
One thing she was sure of, though, was that she didn't belong here. She needed help. She needed directions. She needed...information. An information office. Thankfully, she knew exactly where one was.
Ianto Jones was having an ordinary day. He had come in at seven o'clock exactly, fed the pterodactyl and the random aliens in the cells, replaced the Post-Its on Jack's desk and had done some general cleaning around the Hub. All-in-all, a quiet, ordinary day. There hadn't even been any Weevil sightings that they had had to go investigate before dawn. Perhaps that should have been a clue; after all, the rift doesn't exactly have opening hours.
Now it was eight o'clock, and Ianto had just opened up the tourist office. He was going through the daily mandatory rift check when the door blew open and a haggard looking young woman in her pyjamas blew in. Ianto stood up and carefully hid his surprise, showing it only in his raised eyebrow.
''Could I help you with something, Miss?'' Ever the professional was the young receptionist.
The woman looked up, apparently startled to see him. He noticed what might have been recognition flash across her face.
''What the hell are you doing here?'' The unknown woman demanded, looking rather cross. Although taken aback, Ianto let none of his surprise slip past the mask he always wore.
''I am here to provide information to tourists or to anyone else if they desire. That is why it's called an information office.'' Ianto couldn't help but let some of his annoyance slip through as sarcasm, but if crazy people in pyjamas wanted to harass him, then he could hardly be blamed for a little irritation on his part.
This wasn't right. The fog was starting to clear, and now she knew why everything looked familiar. Apparently she was dreaming, or had finally cracked, or something, because there was no way in hell she was inside a T.V. show.
And now her hallucination was getting lippy. Excellent.
''Okay, either you're a product of my imagination, or I'm on candid camera. Since I'm not willing to deal with idea of me being clinically insane, I'm gonna go with option B. So, now that I've figured this whole retarded game, can you stop pretending and can I go home?''
For a moment, a small amount of surprise showed on his face before the cool professional mask was back again.
''If you are lost and need directions to get home, I can help you. If not, you're going to have to tell me what's wrong and how this involves me before I can help you out.''
She snorted disbelievingly at him before speaking in a sarcastic tone, ''Right. If you're gonna keep the act up, I'll play along. You're Ianto Jones, working in a seemingly ordinary tourist office under the docks, but really you work for a super secret organization that is hidden under a major landmark. You have a button on you're seemingly ordinary desk that opens the door to a magical place where aliens exist!''. To emphasize her point she reached over the desk to indicate said imaginary button.
Except it wasn't imaginary at all. She blinked, surprised for a moment, before continuing on in a shaky, but still sarcastic tone, ''Ooo-kay, there really is a button. But I betcha anything the whole slidey doors thing was CGI.'' With that, she slapped the button, then jumped when an innocuous looking part of the wall slid open.
Mouth open disbelievingly, she shakily muttered something about realistic sets and hesitantly stepped forward and poked the doorway, as though expecting it to blow up.
''Maybe Jack should take a look at you.'' The girl spun around looking like she had forgotten he was there, which she had, in a way. She could only really concentrate on one weird thing at a time.
Still sticking to her rapidly deteriorating story, she managed a small giggle and said, ''Sure, you could try, but I don't think that'll work, seeing how he's, ya know, a fictional character an' all.''
Ianto grasped the still nattering head case firmly through the secret door, closing it immediately. Screw the shop, there was a security breach going on right in front of him. For a short minute, he thought of the old days back at Torchwood One, before it burned, where security breaches were always dealt with by other people. Mentally shaking himself out of it before other memories of London could return, he focused on the present, where he always seemed to have to deal with the nutters and drunks who often came into his store. He usually disposed of them by keeping professional and gently ushering them out. For a second, Ianto debated bringing Jack into this.
But this one, she wasn't normal. She had known his name, but worse than that, she had known about Torchwood. Perhaps she was an alien spy, although, he reflected on that, she didn't look alien, and bursting out with highly classified information was not exactly stealthy. Maybe she was a human, a highly skilled human that hacked into the system and found out about the aliens. But Ianto vetoed that idea too; there was just no way that a human could get past Tosh's alien and futuristic firewalls. Whatever she was, Jack could figure it out. Jack always managed to, especially with the bizarre and unexplainable. Two adjectives that fit the unknown beside him to a tee.
Seriously, why pyjamas?
She watched fascinated as the stone walls slipped past her as she was half-dragged, half-led through the secret passage. Despite herself, she found she was excited. After all, it's not every day that one gets to walk down a secret tunnel with the star of one's favourite T.V. show beside one. Her head still felt muggy, and so she tripped a lot. She felt her face grow warm with embarrassment. She ducked her head to hide her growing blush at her clumsiness and blinked with astonishment when she spotted her attire. Here she was, walking down an imaginary corridor in her pyjamas to...something. If she was watching everything on the television, the way it was supposed to be, she would have immediately said the Hub, usually followed by a duh!. But now that she was hallucinating, anything could happen. She could be going to Sea World, for God's sake.
She groaned slightly. Her mind started to whirl and the corridor spun around her. Her last thought before blacking out was, ''Dear God, please don't let me on T.V. looking like this.''.
All in all, not the best last thought.
Jack was sitting at his desk doing the yearly tax return (for all his talk about outside the government, taxes were inevitable for humans and he was no exception) when Ianto walked into the Hub with a figure in pyjamas over his shoulder. Needless to say, he was a bit surprised.
Ianto glanced up for a second as Jack jogged down the stairs from his office, but kept his gait steady as he headed down to the cells. Torchwood regulations stated that anyone not ignorant of their existence and unknown was a potential threat, which meant the cells for the strange young woman. Once he detained the girl he could explain everything he needed to, but until he did that Jack would just have to wait.
The receptionist had hardly reached the corridor that eventually led to the cells before his boss had caught up with him. Ianto sighed softly as the requisite dirty joke was made (something about him being kinky, he never really paid attention), but didn't react until Jack got to the point.
"Seems as though we have a level 3 breach. Regulations say to contain said breach before interrogation."
"Yeah, remind me again, what's a level 3 breach?" Jack looked both confused and amused, which only Jack could pull off while still looking sexy.
Ianto shook himself out of it before Jack could catch him staring. "A level 3 breach is someone or something managing to infiltrate without violence. She also presents knowledge of Torchwood, such as the location of the entrances and the existence of aliens. It's all in the charter, you know." He added disapprovingly.
Jack had the grace to look sheepish before glancing back at the young woman thrown over Ianto's shoulder. His brow furrowed quizzically at Ianto as he motioned at her attire. Ianto answered with a shrug.
Lights. Bright lights. Heaven? Ow. Too bright. Smells too. Bad smells. Roars, somewhere close. Cold. Very cold.
She shivered and gingerly wrapped an arm around herself. Her head felt too heavy to move and her vision swam as the bright lights above her slowly took the shape of fluorescent lights. She experimentally moved her head to both sides, seeing only discoloured concrete. Gingerly she sat up and looked all around, feeling a strong sense of deja-vu as she took in the grimy floor, the reddish-greenish-blueish walls and the stained plexi-glass window. All of a sudden the realisation of where exactly she had seen this before and the memories of this morning hit her like a ton of bricks.
Oh god. She was stuck inside Torchwood, and it wasn't all a very, very realistic dream. A small part of her was flailing and raving with excitement (she was gonna meet Captain Jack Harkness!), and another small part of herself had curled up in a dark corner somewhere denying everything. The part that was running her body was the most curious part, which was why she was now investigating the mysterious stains on the window (some kind of food?).
The roars that she had been managing to block out as background noise grew louder. The sound of footsteps grew closer and she disregarded her health for a moment as she pressed her cheek against the glass, hoping to see the owner of the ominous-sounding footprints.
Slowly, a blurry Jack came into view.
And that's all for now, folks. Can be persuaded to post more if bribed with reviews and cookies. If there are no cookies to be had, reviews will be fine on their own. Oh, and please, please alert me at the first sign of Sueishness.
And I do have a name in mind for the OC, but I can be persuaded to change it if you've got 'the perfect one'.
Now, REVIEW!