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fandomweekly2021-03-22 12:09 pm
m_findlow) wrote in fandomweekly2021-03-22 12:09 pm
Entry tags:
[#088] TRAPPED (TORCHWOOD)
Theme Prompt: #88 - Regrets
Title: Trapped
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Jack feels trapped by the sum total of his life choices.
Jack studied the reading on his vortex manipulator, confirming his suspicions that he'd landed in Cardiff - just not the Cardiff of 2006 where he was supposed to be so that he could hail a ride on the TARDIS and resume normal programming.
Cardiff 1879, the readout reported. At least that much still worked. He looked around at the crowded street with its peasants dressed in ragged whites that were filthy and brown, and browns that were so caked in mud and chimney smoke that they might as well have been black. A bucket of something flew past his legs from the doorway just to his right, soaking into the lucerne scattered around his feet. Oh, yeah. It even smelled like 1879. No public sanitation in sight. He took a step further to the left as a second bucket followed the first, adding to the foul smell. His nose curled up at the second and he had to move away before he gagged, adding to the pile of bodily excrement.
People were giving him strange looks and he realised his clothes were giving him away as someone to be suspicious of. That was the trouble with travelling through time unprepared. More than once he'd been arrested before making it halfway down a street, simply because he looked like he didn't fit in. He slipped down a side street, banked left and right a few times, not having any idea where he was going, but the streets grew narrower and he spotted the line of washing hanging between the narrow gap between ramshackle houses. Without breaking stride he whipped one of the shirts from its peg. It was awful and baggy, with far too much frill for his liking, but at least tucked into the waistband of his leather pants and with his matching vest worn over the top of it, he looked somewhat middle class.
Appearance resolved, he now turned to his much bigger problem - his faithful vortex manipulator. It had taken him all across time and space, never once failing to put him right where he needed to be with only the press of a few buttons. It was genius technology, highly sophisticated and also highly regulated. Even as a Time Agent, or a former one in his case, there were strict protocols about what you could and couldn't do. Never cross your own timeline - that was the big one - and most definitely don't ever meet yourself. He'd heard stories about what happened to agents who had, and that was enough for him. Problem was, no one had ever told him what to do if your vortex manipulator burned itself out trying to jump you from one time and place to another. Admittedly he'd never tried to jump two hundred thousand years before. Maybe there was a limit on what it could do. Someone probably should have mentioned to attempt it in smaller hops, for all the good that did him now. No matter how he fiddled with it, it just wouldn't work.
The street grew dark quickly as sunset came and went in the blink of an eye. The temperature dropped with it and Jack wished he'd had the wherewithal to steal a coat as well. His nose guided him once more, this time to the scent of baking pies and sour ale from the local pub. His stomach clenched itself in knots of hunger without anything on him that would pass as currency in this backwater part of the galaxy. No food and no money for shelter would leave him sleeping out under the stars tonight, until he could use his wits to find a way of earning some local coin.
Still the smell wasn't one he could walk away from willingly. In the side alley behind the pub there was always a chance he could scrounge whatever was thrown out. Unfortunately he wasn't the only one with that idea, finding several hobos already sprawled on crates and under yesterday's broadsheets. He pulled up a crate and sat down on it, leaning back against the brick wall. He toyed with his vortex manipulator a while longer before finally giving it up as an exercise in futility. He was stuck here.
'Yer watch broke?' slurred one scruffy hobo, raising an eye at Jack.
He flipped the leather cover back over it. 'Yeah.'
'Shoo sellit,' he replied. 'Git yerself summa drink.'
Jack snorted at the irony that it was the one thing he would never sell. 'Should've done a lot of things,' he said. He should have stayed in Boeshane and looked after his mother who now had neither husband nor sons to see her through to old age. He should have never accepted his assignment to be partnered up with John Hart. Before that, his career at the Time Agency had been going places. He was one of their youngest and best agents, his star always rising. John had corrupted him, and was probably the reason that the Agency had wiped two years of his memories, resulting in him leaving and never looking back. He should have stayed and just tried to put it behind him, then he wouldn't have turned to a life of crime just to get by. And he never would have met the Doctor who'd shown him all those regrets in the first place, but at least by his side he'd felt he had a chance to redeem some of his mistakes. Now he was trapped here, a hundred and fifty years from where he needed to be to find his Doctor again.
He heaved a sigh at how hopeless everything felt and then the man was hunched over in front of him.
'Ere,' he said, holding out a tiny handful of pie crust in his filthy, blackened hand. 'Were gonna save it fer tomorra. Ave it.'
Jack took it and felt guilty. It seemed life wasn't done with showing him the value of kindness and sacrifice. He should probably learn something from that lesson.
Title: Trapped
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Jack feels trapped by the sum total of his life choices.
Jack studied the reading on his vortex manipulator, confirming his suspicions that he'd landed in Cardiff - just not the Cardiff of 2006 where he was supposed to be so that he could hail a ride on the TARDIS and resume normal programming.
Cardiff 1879, the readout reported. At least that much still worked. He looked around at the crowded street with its peasants dressed in ragged whites that were filthy and brown, and browns that were so caked in mud and chimney smoke that they might as well have been black. A bucket of something flew past his legs from the doorway just to his right, soaking into the lucerne scattered around his feet. Oh, yeah. It even smelled like 1879. No public sanitation in sight. He took a step further to the left as a second bucket followed the first, adding to the foul smell. His nose curled up at the second and he had to move away before he gagged, adding to the pile of bodily excrement.
People were giving him strange looks and he realised his clothes were giving him away as someone to be suspicious of. That was the trouble with travelling through time unprepared. More than once he'd been arrested before making it halfway down a street, simply because he looked like he didn't fit in. He slipped down a side street, banked left and right a few times, not having any idea where he was going, but the streets grew narrower and he spotted the line of washing hanging between the narrow gap between ramshackle houses. Without breaking stride he whipped one of the shirts from its peg. It was awful and baggy, with far too much frill for his liking, but at least tucked into the waistband of his leather pants and with his matching vest worn over the top of it, he looked somewhat middle class.
Appearance resolved, he now turned to his much bigger problem - his faithful vortex manipulator. It had taken him all across time and space, never once failing to put him right where he needed to be with only the press of a few buttons. It was genius technology, highly sophisticated and also highly regulated. Even as a Time Agent, or a former one in his case, there were strict protocols about what you could and couldn't do. Never cross your own timeline - that was the big one - and most definitely don't ever meet yourself. He'd heard stories about what happened to agents who had, and that was enough for him. Problem was, no one had ever told him what to do if your vortex manipulator burned itself out trying to jump you from one time and place to another. Admittedly he'd never tried to jump two hundred thousand years before. Maybe there was a limit on what it could do. Someone probably should have mentioned to attempt it in smaller hops, for all the good that did him now. No matter how he fiddled with it, it just wouldn't work.
The street grew dark quickly as sunset came and went in the blink of an eye. The temperature dropped with it and Jack wished he'd had the wherewithal to steal a coat as well. His nose guided him once more, this time to the scent of baking pies and sour ale from the local pub. His stomach clenched itself in knots of hunger without anything on him that would pass as currency in this backwater part of the galaxy. No food and no money for shelter would leave him sleeping out under the stars tonight, until he could use his wits to find a way of earning some local coin.
Still the smell wasn't one he could walk away from willingly. In the side alley behind the pub there was always a chance he could scrounge whatever was thrown out. Unfortunately he wasn't the only one with that idea, finding several hobos already sprawled on crates and under yesterday's broadsheets. He pulled up a crate and sat down on it, leaning back against the brick wall. He toyed with his vortex manipulator a while longer before finally giving it up as an exercise in futility. He was stuck here.
'Yer watch broke?' slurred one scruffy hobo, raising an eye at Jack.
He flipped the leather cover back over it. 'Yeah.'
'Shoo sellit,' he replied. 'Git yerself summa drink.'
Jack snorted at the irony that it was the one thing he would never sell. 'Should've done a lot of things,' he said. He should have stayed in Boeshane and looked after his mother who now had neither husband nor sons to see her through to old age. He should have never accepted his assignment to be partnered up with John Hart. Before that, his career at the Time Agency had been going places. He was one of their youngest and best agents, his star always rising. John had corrupted him, and was probably the reason that the Agency had wiped two years of his memories, resulting in him leaving and never looking back. He should have stayed and just tried to put it behind him, then he wouldn't have turned to a life of crime just to get by. And he never would have met the Doctor who'd shown him all those regrets in the first place, but at least by his side he'd felt he had a chance to redeem some of his mistakes. Now he was trapped here, a hundred and fifty years from where he needed to be to find his Doctor again.
He heaved a sigh at how hopeless everything felt and then the man was hunched over in front of him.
'Ere,' he said, holding out a tiny handful of pie crust in his filthy, blackened hand. 'Were gonna save it fer tomorra. Ave it.'
Jack took it and felt guilty. It seemed life wasn't done with showing him the value of kindness and sacrifice. He should probably learn something from that lesson.
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