Chapter Text
Sherlock was not certain how he had found himself in the present situation- hand-in-hand with Rose Tyler and running for his life from something that he would have sworn this morning was entirely impossible. Yet, as Rose’s laugh filled the air as she pulled him on ever faster, he found that he couldn’t regret it.
~?~?~?~?~
Sherlock Holmes was stuck in Cardiff for 24 hours. Why could zeppelins never create a schedule that did not involve a lengthy layover in an inconvenient location?
He was coming from a frustratingly simple case in Plymouth. A number of local churches had discovered sheep’s blood smeared across the altars causing people to panic that a Satanic Cult had moved into town. Sherlock had had such high hopes for the case, but once he had arrived he had found nothing but university-aged pranksters and an incompetent police force. After finding the fools who had been splashing blood all over the place, he had booked a seat on the first zeppelin North without checking the schedule. Now he was here.
Sherlock Holmes was in Cardiff for 24 hours and he was bored.
He hadn’t had a case that was, as John put it, ‘blog-worthy’ in three months. He’d begun feeling twitchy, reckless and self-destructive approximately eight weeks ago. Normally it didn’t take that long, but he’d had something occupying his mind in the previous weeks. However, She had bowed out of his life, and he could not think of a way (or a reason) to return Her to it. He had taken to reading the gossip magazines to even get a glimpse of Her, though he would never admit it to John or Mrs. Hudson. She had been absent from the papers for two weeks, however. They were speculating that She was on a cruise, though no one seemed able to decide if it was to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean or Alaska.
Sherlock had gone rushing off after any case that looked halfway interesting, and so it was that Sherlock found himself in Cardiff for 24 hours looking for trouble. The inconvenient fact, however, was that nothing ever happened in Cardiff.
Sherlock stalked up and down Millennium Square and the surrounding streets. He poked his nose into the back rooms of shops and restaurants. He wandered down alleys. He glared at men who looked like they were spoiling for a fight.
Nothing happened. He got into no fights, found no murder victims, and not a single robbery in process. Over the course of the hour, he reached seven times for a pack of cigarettes that he did not have. Food held no savour for him, so none of the restaurants appealed, and the same held true for the pubs and bars. Everything here was so painfully ordinary that he wanted to scream or rip his hair out.
Finally, after nearly two hours during which Sherlock grew ever more deranged, he sat on the edge of the Millennium Fountain and pulled out his mobile. It was time for desperate measures.
In Cardiff 24 hrs. Give me work. SH.
He pressed ‘send’ and the message disappeared from his screen on its way to Mycroft. If anyone knew what might be happening in Wales, it would be he.
Five minutes later, Sherlock’s phone lit up with a text. There was an address and a short message:
Police called to above earlier. No news since. Nothing else. Mycroft.
Mycroft must be in a meeting, else he would have called. However, Sherlock now had a destination and, after pulling up a city map on his phone, took off in the direction of the bay.
~?~?~?~?~
Rose leaned her head back on the headrest in the Jeep as Mickey drove to the next in what had been an endless series of calls for their team since coming to Cardiff a fortnight ago.
“I hate Cardiff,” she said in an offhand way. “Every time we end up here, the world nearly ends, and we all nearly die at least twice.”
“You know, if we quit managing to actually save the world, we wouldn’t have to fill out the world-ending paperwork,” Gwen observed from the back.
“And,” Tosh continued from beside Gwen, her lightly accented voice shaking with suppressed laughter, “if we let Owen get killed, we wouldn’t have to deal with his bitching and moaning any longer.”
“Oi!” came Owen’s indignant response from the seat behind Mickey.
“No, if Owen dies we’d have to fill out the ‘you let one of your team members get killed, even if he is a total pillock’ form,” Rose said, ignoring Owen. “It’s quite lengthy and specific. Gets filled out in triplicate and everything.”
“My mum is always pleased when we go to Cardiff,” Tosh observed. “She says there’s too much trouble in London and Cardiff must be so relaxing for us.”
The entire team burst into shocked laughter. With a massive rift in time and space running through the city, ‘relaxing’ was the last word that could be used by the visiting Torchwood team.
“My mum’s the same way,” Rose agreed, once she had her breath back. “Pete won’t tell her what it means when he sends us down here ‘cause he’d get slapped silly.”
“Nearly there, Boss,” Mickey said, pointing to the GPS device on the dash.
“All right, team, I want everyone with a stunner, a smoke pack, and a breather. Stay in your groups of two- Angel and Cherry Blossom from above, Reverend and Pillock in the front door, and Mr. Idiot and myself will come from beneath. If the tip was right and we’re dealing with Apians, the smoke packs should be all we need. They’ll go into a bit of a trance, we can call clean-up from Torchwood 3, and we can finish the paperwork in time to be at the pub before last call. Drinks on Pete.”
Everyone cheered at this last.
“Everyone okay with that?”
“Why do I have to be Pillock? I said I wanted my code name to be The Doctor,” Owen griped.
“And I said that The Doctor isn’t allowed. If you’d picked an appropriate name and not acted like a pillock, you wouldn’t be Pillock,” Rose answered.
“Just ‘cause you’ve got a lady boner for some alien idiot called The Doctor-“ Owen began, but was cut off there.
“Harper!” Mickey barked. “You are getting perilously close to insubordination. Now it’s too much damn paperwork to have you court martialed, but I’d be very happy to knock your lights out myself. Are we clear?”
“Crystal, sir,” Owen said with a slight sneer in his voice.
“In conclusion, Harper,” Jake said, not looking up from his laptop screen as he addressed the man beside him, “this is why you’re Pillock. It’s mostly because Asshole will get us all sent to Human Resources.”
Owen continued grumbling until Tosh took a rolled up magazine and smacked him on the back of the head.
Rose sighed to herself. Owen was the best xenobiologist in Europe and was haughty with the fact. Rose didn’t mind working with geniuses, even geniuses with dubious social skills, but Dr. Owen Harper was a trial.
Mickey pulled up to the warehouse that the call had been about. Some hysterical woman had called the police about massive bees. She’d explained that she didn’t mean two inches massive, she meant five feet massive, and the police had informed Torchwood. Everyone present knew that bees as humans knew them were not originally Terran creatures, so they’d assumed that they were dealing with Apians, the original species from which honey bees were descended. They were peaceful, much like their decedents on Earth, but unsettling to look at.
Each member of the team took a smoker (exactly the same device that beekeepers on Earth used, but larger to deal with a larger animal) breathers (so they wouldn’t take in too much smoke) and a stunner (just in case the worst happened).
Tosh and Gwen climbed the stairs on the outside of the building to get to the roof. Jake and Owen moved around the perimeter to the front door, and Mickey and Rose found the entrance to the cooling tunnels beneath the warehouse.