Does Africa Know A Song Of Me? - Part 1/10
Title: Does Africa Know A Song Of Me?
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, mentions of Gwen/Rhys, Martha/Tom
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Torchwood. Things would be rather different if I did.
Spoilers: Set sometime late in an alternate version of S2 (where no one is dead)
Summary: Jack gets a call from UNIT. They need his help... in Namibia. And when they arrive, Jack and Ianto (because Jack wouldn't leave him behind) discover the only communication they have with the team is letters...
Author's Note: The title is taken from a quote from the film 'Out Of Africa'. This was written for tw_bigbang
Thanks to: The wonderful morbid_sparks for beta'ing, cheerleading and letting me complain about not knowing where the plot was going.
Also huge thanks to my lovely bigbang artist, wrenriddle - find her fanmix and beautiful cover art for this story here.
Does Africa Know A Song of Me?
Torchwood Namibia!
Dijoutu Safari Station
nr Otjinene
Omaheke
Namibia
13th April 2008
Dear Tosh, Gwen and Owen,
We are here, finally. And when I say finally, I really mean it. I feel like we’ve been travelling for days.
We have been travelling for days. Well, a day and a half, anyway.
Okay, Jack’s right, yes, we have, but it feels like even longer than that. Maybe even weeks. We’ve spent far too many hours hanging around airports waiting for flights, too many hours actually on the planes, and it didn’t help that the last several hours were spend crammed into the back of an aging Jeep over… I’d hesitate to call some of them roads, even. And what they neglected to mention - or possibly what Jack just didn’t bother to listen to - is that there’s no phone signal here. Even the landline (well, our closest landline, which is just over ten miles away) is very patchy and we can forget about internet access.
Oi! I resent that implication! I listened very carefully, I’ll have you all know. They just didn’t mention it.
Okay, so it was probably that they didn’t mention it. Probably. But anyway, the upshot is that the only way we can communicate at all really is through snail mail. Jack tried to do… something, with that wriststrap of his, to see if we could rig anything up through it, I think, but it looked to me like he was just randomly pressing buttons to see if anything happened.
I was not just randomly pressing buttons. I was experimenting with various combinations and sequences of commands on the off-chance that… okay, so I was more or less randomly pressing buttons. But something might have worked!
It didn’t.
Anyway, the locals (well, the ones Jack hasn’t managed to scare off already) tell me the postal service is ‘quite good’, but I don’t know what that’s in relation to. (If it’s the evenness of the road surfaces we’re, well, screwed.)
We will be posting this letter today - see date at the top. Please let us know when you reply when it gets there. Hopefully it won’t be like sending a postcard home from a holiday - you know, when you get back before the postcard does.
I didn’t think I had been taking the ease of communications we’re used to under regular circumstances for granted quite so much. Jack claims that, having lived through all of the 20th Century, including a time when hardly anyone had a telephone (and certainly not mobile ones!), he doesn’t take it for granted at all and will be just fine with letters as our mode of communication. I’m not sure I believe him.
That’s because I will be fine. You people are just way too entrenched in your own time period. You have no idea. The world got by just fine without mobile phones and the internet for quite some time - I know, I was there.
By the way, Tosh, good thinking on suggesting the Elaxorian generator. We do have electricity in our little office here, but like the telephone lines, it’s a little bit… unreliable.
He calls it an office, I call it a hut. Maybe a cabin, on a good day. I’ll send a photo once I get my camera unpacked and let you see for yourselves. I was amazed they even had running water (although we do have to be careful with that, as we are technically in a desert). The ‘work’ area (which was obviously originally intended as a living room of some sort) is only just big enough for the two of us to walk around in without tripping over each other, let alone actually get any work done
He’s protesting too much. He likes tripping over me, really. Actually, this one time, we were
and the less said about the ‘living’ quarters the better, really. I don’t know why I signed on for this - oh wait, I didn’t. Jack oh-so-helpfully ‘volunteered’ me.
Again, not quite the truth. He wanted to come with. He really did.
Let me state this once and for all, for the record: I did not volunteer to come out here and live in a hut in the desert with no phone and no coffee for months. UNIT wanted Jack out here, and somehow I managed to get conned into playing assistant. And no, I’m not telling you how I let myself get conned.
I might, if you really, really ask very nicely.
Anyway, we’re here, and we’ve more or less got everything unpacked.
Lieutenant Halse is coming back tomorrow to fill us in on the rest of the details of the problem, and take us on a bit of a tour of the area, I think. Show us where things have been happening. Or where the locals have reported things happening, at least.
We’ll let you know if we need anything sent over once we know more.
Please keep us up to date with what is going on back there.
Yours,
Ianto
and Jack
P.S. Please don’t address letters to ‘Torchwood Namibia’. Jack clearly has even less idea of what the word ‘secret’ in the phrase ‘secret organisation’ means than I thought he did. (I know fine well what it means, and it was only supposed to be a JOKE. You would have known not to put it on the envelope anyway, right?)
The ‘Tourist Information Office’
Mermaid Quay
Cardiff
Wales
15th April 2008
Dear Jack and Ianto,
As you can see from the date on this letter, yours only took two days to arrive here. Which is a big score one on the behalf of the Namibian postal service, we think (and pretty amazing even for the Royal Mail - I’ve seen letters take 2 days to get from here to Newport). Hopefully they will keep it up - and it won’t take a week for this one to get back to you. (By the way, the Namibian stamps you put on the letter were really pretty - are they all like that?)
If you do manage to get a stable landline connection occasionally, a phone call wouldn’t be unwelcome. Just so that we don’t forget what your voices sound like, of course.
Everything has been pretty quiet since you left. Well, we had a Weevil sighting come in last night, but we managed to chase it back into the sewers without even having to bring it in first. Owen thinks he might finally have perfected that new formulation of Weevil spray that just mildly disorients them and sort of wards them off a bit, persuades them that they want to go back to their den, or whatever it is that Weevils live in in the sewers.
He says he doesn’t think it will replace the other, stronger, one… just maybe we can take both on Weevil shouts and only use the old one if there’s been an attack or if it’s really aggressive. We’re going to keep testing it when reports come in, so we will keep you updated with how that is going.
The Rift has been almost so quiet as to be silent - Tosh is worried that it is working up to something big, although the predictor isn’t indicating anything of the sort. We’ll handle it if something does come up though - you two going out there to assist UNIT seems to have worked wonders on the inter-agency cooperation on this end (at least for now) and they have pledged to send us a few men (or women, I guess, although they didn’t actually say - are there many female soldiers in UNIT?) for back-up if we need them in a situation. Hopefully we won’t need them, but it’s nice to know they’re there, just in case.
Oh, Tosh has just reminded me of something. Ianto, do you know where the broken bits of that laser-y gun thing we found just before Christmas were put in the archives? Tosh thinks that some of it could be used to fix a bit of the tech that came through in that minor Rift spike just before you left. We’d just go looking, but Tosh says that’s probably not advisable and would more than likely get us on decaf for months after you got back. I’m not sure what she’s implying, but we decided to wait and ask you first anyway.
In other news, Rhys and I finally found a photographer for the wedding who looks like he can do a good job without charging the moon for it - I don’t understand why they have to charge so much just for taking some nice pictures. Oh, and just so you know I will be very annoyed with you - the both of you - if you don’t get back here in time for the big day. It’s not until July, so you have nearly three whole months to sort things out for UNIT and get back here - plenty of time, yes? Actually, I don’t care if it’s not, whether you’ve fixed things out there or not, I want you both back here for my wedding. I’m only planning on doing this the once, and I want - no, demand that all of my friends are there to see it.
And take care of yourselves out there. I don’t want to get a letter saying that one of you has been attacked by a tiger or something. Just be careful, we all want you back in one piece. Or well, two pieces, one piece each. But you know what I mean. Be safe.
Love,
Gwen
P.S. Oi! Teaboy! You and Jack better get that… whatever it is you find out there sorted out soon and get back here, ‘cause I’m spending a bloody fortune in Starbucks without you. And their coffee tastes like drain water compared to yours. - Owen
Part Two
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, mentions of Gwen/Rhys, Martha/Tom
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: No, I don't own Torchwood. Things would be rather different if I did.
Spoilers: Set sometime late in an alternate version of S2 (where no one is dead)
Summary: Jack gets a call from UNIT. They need his help... in Namibia. And when they arrive, Jack and Ianto (because Jack wouldn't leave him behind) discover the only communication they have with the team is letters...
Author's Note: The title is taken from a quote from the film 'Out Of Africa'. This was written for tw_bigbang
Thanks to: The wonderful morbid_sparks for beta'ing, cheerleading and letting me complain about not knowing where the plot was going.
Also huge thanks to my lovely bigbang artist, wrenriddle - find her fanmix and beautiful cover art for this story here.
Does Africa Know A Song of Me?
Torchwood Namibia!
Dijoutu Safari Station
nr Otjinene
Omaheke
Namibia
13th April 2008
Dear Tosh, Gwen and Owen,
We are here, finally. And when I say finally, I really mean it. I feel like we’ve been travelling for days.
We have been travelling for days. Well, a day and a half, anyway.
Okay, Jack’s right, yes, we have, but it feels like even longer than that. Maybe even weeks. We’ve spent far too many hours hanging around airports waiting for flights, too many hours actually on the planes, and it didn’t help that the last several hours were spend crammed into the back of an aging Jeep over… I’d hesitate to call some of them roads, even. And what they neglected to mention - or possibly what Jack just didn’t bother to listen to - is that there’s no phone signal here. Even the landline (well, our closest landline, which is just over ten miles away) is very patchy and we can forget about internet access.
Oi! I resent that implication! I listened very carefully, I’ll have you all know. They just didn’t mention it.
Okay, so it was probably that they didn’t mention it. Probably. But anyway, the upshot is that the only way we can communicate at all really is through snail mail. Jack tried to do… something, with that wriststrap of his, to see if we could rig anything up through it, I think, but it looked to me like he was just randomly pressing buttons to see if anything happened.
I was not just randomly pressing buttons. I was experimenting with various combinations and sequences of commands on the off-chance that… okay, so I was more or less randomly pressing buttons. But something might have worked!
It didn’t.
Anyway, the locals (well, the ones Jack hasn’t managed to scare off already) tell me the postal service is ‘quite good’, but I don’t know what that’s in relation to. (If it’s the evenness of the road surfaces we’re, well, screwed.)
We will be posting this letter today - see date at the top. Please let us know when you reply when it gets there. Hopefully it won’t be like sending a postcard home from a holiday - you know, when you get back before the postcard does.
I didn’t think I had been taking the ease of communications we’re used to under regular circumstances for granted quite so much. Jack claims that, having lived through all of the 20th Century, including a time when hardly anyone had a telephone (and certainly not mobile ones!), he doesn’t take it for granted at all and will be just fine with letters as our mode of communication. I’m not sure I believe him.
That’s because I will be fine. You people are just way too entrenched in your own time period. You have no idea. The world got by just fine without mobile phones and the internet for quite some time - I know, I was there.
By the way, Tosh, good thinking on suggesting the Elaxorian generator. We do have electricity in our little office here, but like the telephone lines, it’s a little bit… unreliable.
He calls it an office, I call it a hut. Maybe a cabin, on a good day. I’ll send a photo once I get my camera unpacked and let you see for yourselves. I was amazed they even had running water (although we do have to be careful with that, as we are technically in a desert). The ‘work’ area (which was obviously originally intended as a living room of some sort) is only just big enough for the two of us to walk around in without tripping over each other, let alone actually get any work done
He’s protesting too much. He likes tripping over me, really. Actually, this one time, we were
and the less said about the ‘living’ quarters the better, really. I don’t know why I signed on for this - oh wait, I didn’t. Jack oh-so-helpfully ‘volunteered’ me.
Again, not quite the truth. He wanted to come with. He really did.
Let me state this once and for all, for the record: I did not volunteer to come out here and live in a hut in the desert with no phone and no coffee for months. UNIT wanted Jack out here, and somehow I managed to get conned into playing assistant. And no, I’m not telling you how I let myself get conned.
I might, if you really, really ask very nicely.
Anyway, we’re here, and we’ve more or less got everything unpacked.
Lieutenant Halse is coming back tomorrow to fill us in on the rest of the details of the problem, and take us on a bit of a tour of the area, I think. Show us where things have been happening. Or where the locals have reported things happening, at least.
We’ll let you know if we need anything sent over once we know more.
Please keep us up to date with what is going on back there.
Yours,
Ianto
and Jack
P.S. Please don’t address letters to ‘Torchwood Namibia’. Jack clearly has even less idea of what the word ‘secret’ in the phrase ‘secret organisation’ means than I thought he did. (I know fine well what it means, and it was only supposed to be a JOKE. You would have known not to put it on the envelope anyway, right?)
The ‘Tourist Information Office’
Mermaid Quay
Cardiff
Wales
15th April 2008
Dear Jack and Ianto,
As you can see from the date on this letter, yours only took two days to arrive here. Which is a big score one on the behalf of the Namibian postal service, we think (and pretty amazing even for the Royal Mail - I’ve seen letters take 2 days to get from here to Newport). Hopefully they will keep it up - and it won’t take a week for this one to get back to you. (By the way, the Namibian stamps you put on the letter were really pretty - are they all like that?)
If you do manage to get a stable landline connection occasionally, a phone call wouldn’t be unwelcome. Just so that we don’t forget what your voices sound like, of course.
Everything has been pretty quiet since you left. Well, we had a Weevil sighting come in last night, but we managed to chase it back into the sewers without even having to bring it in first. Owen thinks he might finally have perfected that new formulation of Weevil spray that just mildly disorients them and sort of wards them off a bit, persuades them that they want to go back to their den, or whatever it is that Weevils live in in the sewers.
He says he doesn’t think it will replace the other, stronger, one… just maybe we can take both on Weevil shouts and only use the old one if there’s been an attack or if it’s really aggressive. We’re going to keep testing it when reports come in, so we will keep you updated with how that is going.
The Rift has been almost so quiet as to be silent - Tosh is worried that it is working up to something big, although the predictor isn’t indicating anything of the sort. We’ll handle it if something does come up though - you two going out there to assist UNIT seems to have worked wonders on the inter-agency cooperation on this end (at least for now) and they have pledged to send us a few men (or women, I guess, although they didn’t actually say - are there many female soldiers in UNIT?) for back-up if we need them in a situation. Hopefully we won’t need them, but it’s nice to know they’re there, just in case.
Oh, Tosh has just reminded me of something. Ianto, do you know where the broken bits of that laser-y gun thing we found just before Christmas were put in the archives? Tosh thinks that some of it could be used to fix a bit of the tech that came through in that minor Rift spike just before you left. We’d just go looking, but Tosh says that’s probably not advisable and would more than likely get us on decaf for months after you got back. I’m not sure what she’s implying, but we decided to wait and ask you first anyway.
In other news, Rhys and I finally found a photographer for the wedding who looks like he can do a good job without charging the moon for it - I don’t understand why they have to charge so much just for taking some nice pictures. Oh, and just so you know I will be very annoyed with you - the both of you - if you don’t get back here in time for the big day. It’s not until July, so you have nearly three whole months to sort things out for UNIT and get back here - plenty of time, yes? Actually, I don’t care if it’s not, whether you’ve fixed things out there or not, I want you both back here for my wedding. I’m only planning on doing this the once, and I want - no, demand that all of my friends are there to see it.
And take care of yourselves out there. I don’t want to get a letter saying that one of you has been attacked by a tiger or something. Just be careful, we all want you back in one piece. Or well, two pieces, one piece each. But you know what I mean. Be safe.
Love,
Gwen
P.S. Oi! Teaboy! You and Jack better get that… whatever it is you find out there sorted out soon and get back here, ‘cause I’m spending a bloody fortune in Starbucks without you. And their coffee tastes like drain water compared to yours. - Owen
Part Two