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Jack gasps back to life to find himself dangling upside-down, still strapped into an overturned SUV.
"Good news," Ianto calls from outside. "When the tire exploded, you got us off the road quick. Bad news—in so doing, you wrecked the car."
"I do my best," Jack rasps. When he crawls through the broken window, his coat catches on jagged glass and rips loudly. Ianto pretends not to notice.
"Worse news, there's no reception here and our comms are dead. But, better news!" Ianto waves the handheld Rift detector in the air. "We're close to what we came here for!"
Jack rolls his shoulders, satisfied when they crack into place. "Get out the torches. We can do some exploring until someone rescues us."
* *
"Have you noticed," Jack says some time later, "that we haven't come across a single squirrel or anything else alive?"
"No, but—" Ianto flashes a tree with his torch. "I'm pretty sure we've passed that three times already."
Thunder rumbles overhead. Jack feels water splash on his neck. "Nothing here—guess we should call it a night. I'll clear out the SUV, you can sleep in—"
"Uh, Jack." Ianto points in the opposite direction of where Jack is heading. "It's back that way."
"No, it's this way."
"No, it's that way."
Jack is by now tired and unreasonably irritated. "Look, I know where I'm going, OK?" He storms off—
—and promptly crashes into something big and sticky that had been hidden by a well-placed perception filter.
Ianto stares at the looming gingerbread house above him. "I should've left a trail of breadcrumbs."
* *
It rains.
"This can't be real," Ianto says, Jack's coat pulled over his head. "It should've been eaten."
Jack breaks off a piece of the wall and pops it in his mouth before Ianto can stop him. He doesn't die, but he does gag. "It's real, but it tastes disgusting," he admits.
Ianto tastes it as well, and frowns. "Who'd make gingerbread without sugar?"
Something growls from the darkness in front of them. Jack draws his gun when a purple blob-like creature (with eyes and teeth in the general region of its face) starts to roll towards them menacingly. "That did!"
Jack fires again and again, but the creature keeps rolling forward, absorbing every bullet before also absorbing the noisy human.
Silence reigns once more, broken only by the gentle dripping of the rain.
* *
Jack revives upside-down for the second time.
"Just in time for breakfast," says Ianto from the cage beside him. "You're first course, I'm apparently dessert. Or leftovers." He points to a pile of small bones on the floor. "At least we know what happened to the squirrels."
Jack tries to shift his feet, but he's securely shackled to the ceiling. For a gingerbread house, it certainly is sturdy. "Got any ideas?"
"Several, actually." Thunder crashes outside. "This is like a bad horror movie, isn't it?"
"I was thinking more like a bad fairytale."
Ianto laughs bitterly. "If only we could count on the happy ending."
The blob appears in the doorway and roars. "If you've got ideas," Jack shouts, still working on freeing his feet, "I'm willing to try!"
Ianto searches his pockets and pulls out a white packet. "Here, catch!"
Jack catches it, then does a double-take at the label. "Sugar?!"
"Just open it!"
Jack waits until the alien is directly underneath before ripping the packet and letting it drop. The blob, suddenly covered in white powder, blinks.
A moment later, it explodes.
Jack wipes the purple splatter from his face. "Do you always carry sugar with you?"
"Only when you decide to have your coffee black." Ianto rummages some more and produces a skeleton key. "But I do always carry this."
* *
"Gwen's coming." Ianto closes his mobile. "Jack?"
Jack is lying on the grass, gazing at the clearing sky. "Hansel and Gretel had it good," he declares. "They killed the monster and had mind-blowing sex after."
"If that's a proposition, it's your worst yet." Ianto sits down beside Jack and yawns. "Torchwood saved the day again."
"And we all lived happily ever after," Jack says, wistful, as the sun rises above the trees.