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fandomweekly2019-01-27 02:09 pm
badly_knitted) wrote in fandomweekly2019-01-27 02:09 pm
Entry tags:
[#004] Hero (Torchwood)
Theme Prompt: #004 – Victory
Title: Hero
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG / None
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 922
Summary: Tommy Brockless saved the world. He was a hero, even if only a handful of people would ever know.
I lean on the railing near the Norwegian church, staring out across the choppy waters of Cardiff Bay, slate grey beneath the clouds. The wind keeps blowing my hair into my eyes but it seems like too much of an effort to do anything about it.
I’m not sure what it is that’s drawn me back here, or on second thoughts, maybe I am; this was one of places we visited when I brought Tommy out of the Hub to see the sights, was it only yesterday? It feels like forever ago. It was raining then too, but that’s Cardiff for you. Back then, the rain couldn’t dampen our mood, but today it matches mine. There’s a weight on my heart, sadness, yes, but guilt too. Tommy was sweet, and kind, and so brave, but I betrayed him. Maybe I didn’t have any choice, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about what I did. It’s something I’ll just have to learn to live with, but that’s going to take time. Right now it just… hurts.
I know what Jack would tell me, that I did the right thing, that I did good, that we won. We kept two time periods from trying to manifest simultaneously, kept time linear, the way it should be, everything happening in the order it’s meant to, and that is a good thing, I don’t need Jack to tell me that, but… What did our victory cost? For us, nothing really, but for Tommy?
I should have been able to find another way, a way that didn’t involve sending him back to 1918, some way for him to use the Rift key at this end of the fracture instead of at his end. There just wasn’t time, which is ironic. Decades between then and now, and all we had were a few short hours. Not long enough to work out a solution to a complex problem bridging two distinct periods of time, just long enough to give Tommy a bit of happiness, something good to remember, even though he wouldn’t, not once he was back in his own time.
Just long enough for me to start falling for him despite Owen’s warnings. Am I so desperate to have love in my life that I’ll fall for anyone, even a frozen soldier I only got to spend one day a year with? But Tommy was handsome, and gallant, a real gentleman, and he liked me. He was so young though; too young, despite being born in 1894; only twenty-four. Is it possible to love someone you’ve only know for four days, spread out over four years? Or is it just that I felt bad for him, knowing he’d soon be sent back to the life he knew before, shell-shocked and hospitalised?
He trusted me, and I repaid him by sending him back to his death, to be executed for cowardice like so many other shell-shocked soldiers. How is that right?
It’s easy to say he would have faced the firing squad anyway, even if he hadn’t been ripped out of his life and frozen just so he could be sent back to stitch the tear in time back together again. Easy to justify what we did as the only possible course of action, because if time had torn apart, nobody would have had much of a life. But Tommy wasn’t just a thing to be used and discarded; he was a person, and he deserved better. He deserved a life, and a future, maybe a wife and children. If we hadn’t sent him back, maybe he could have had all that here, in the future.
Is his death my fault for sending him back to 1918, or should the blame lie with the Torchwood team back then? If they took him from the hospital and froze him once, couldn’t they have done it again? Or they could have recruited him after he did what they needed him to do. They could have done something, but they didn’t, and it’s not fair! He wasn’t a coward, he was a hero!
I can feel raindrops running down my face, or are they tears? When did I start crying, standing here staring out to sea?
I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you, I’m sorry I had to lie to you, but I’m not sorry I knew you. I wouldn’t trade the four days we had for anything, and I’ll never forget you. I promise.
I don’t know when Owen joined me, leaning on the railings by my side, but he’s here now and… I guess I’m glad. Maybe I’m not the only one who’ll remember Tommy and everything he did for us.
“He trusted me right to the end,” I tell him.
“Because you were strong. All of this is still here because of you.”
Owen’s wrong about that, I can’t take the credit; I really didn’t do anything. “Because of Tommy. Let's hope we're worth it.”
Tommy’s sacrifice can’t be for nothing. All the people alive today, wouldn’t be here without him. He was my brave, handsome hero, he saved the world, and nobody else will ever know.
Goodbye, Tommy Brockless, you won a great victory and I’m so proud of you; it was an honour and a privilege to know you.
As I walk away through the rain I have no idea where I’m going, maybe I’ll just walk for a while, but I think maybe I’m going to be okay. Not right now but eventually.
The End
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Victory isn't always about triumph, because there's usually a price to pay.
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Tosh had no way of knowing how many years would pass with Tommy just being woken once a year. She could have grown old and died before Tommy's time came to act for all she knew, but it's hard to think like that when this sweet guy is right there, being so charming... She knew it couldn't last, but still, I don't think she regrets that one night.
Thank you!
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Thanks for sharing it.
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I love Tosh, she's a wonderful character and so beautifully acted, but she had the worst luck when it came to relationships. I wished Tommy could have stayed in the present.
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