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fandomweekly2024-03-15 03:11 pm
badly_knitted) wrote in fandomweekly2024-03-15 03:11 pm
Entry tags:
[#212] Never Giving Up (Torchwood)
Theme Prompt: #212 – Hope
Title: Never Giving Up
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: No.
Word Count: 1000
Summary: Jack has lost hope following the events of Children of Earth, but Ianto is determined to find his lover again, and will never give up.
The night he left earth, standing at the top of a hill outside Cardiff in the chill of early spring, Jack was out of hope, out of just about everything. All he knew was that he couldn’t stay, there was nowhere on the entire planet that the pain and the memories couldn’t find him; he doubted he’d find any such place out among the stars either, but leaving was marginally better than hanging around like some kind of restless ghost.
He felt almost nothing as he said goodbye to Gwen and Rhys, nothing but the same cold, hollow emptiness he’d been feeling for the last six months. He never expected to see them after this, they’d be better off without him, no matter what Gwen thought. Part of him hated them, in a distant, distracted way, for being alive and with a baby on the way; they had it all, while he’d lost everything that mattered to him. It wasn’t even a matter of fairness or the lack thereof, just another one of the universe’s cruel tricks played on an immortal man who had no right to exist. Perhaps this was no more than he deserved for being a freak, and for failing so spectacularly.
Oh, he’d found a way to defeat the 456, had saved the children, all except one. He’d sacrificed his own grandson so that no one else on the planet would have to endure having their own children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews wrenched from their arms and handed over to a bunch of drug addicted aliens who wanted to get high. Maybe, just maybe, he could have coped with losing the man he’d loved if he hadn’t been forced to destroy his daughter’s life by turning her son into a weapon, but… Ianto had been right when he’d called Jack a monster.
If he could have found some other way to deal with the alien threat, then he would have; there simply hadn’t been time. The signal had to be passed through a child, and Steven had been the only child he had access to. Still, he hated himself for what he’d done, and he couldn’t understand why Gwen wanted him to stay. Didn’t she realise how dangerous he was to be around?
So he left in a brilliant flash of light, not with any expectation of finding anything out there in the vastness of space, but only with the intention of losing himself, because he couldn’t die and yet he had nothing left worth living for. His continuing existence would be his penance for all the harm he’d done, all the lives he’d failed to save over his long life. Not just Steven and Ianto, but Tosh, Owen, Suzie, Alex, Greg… Too many to count.
OoOoO
As Jack teleported up to the cold fusion cruiser somewhere out on the edge of earth’s solar system, Ianto Jones, restored to life by a strange convergence of events he didn’t fully understand, stood aboard his TARDIS and cursed the limitations the universe had seen fit to force on his new existence. If he and the TARDIS could have intercepted the matter stream, Jack would be with him now, and Ianto could have helped him begin healing from all that he’d endured, but it looked like he’d have to track his lover down the hard way, follow the ship Jack was on, and intercept him when he disembarked.
Well, that would have to be good enough. The ship would have to dock somewhere, and if nothing else, Ianto would surely be able to get a message to Jack. Even if by chance they lost track of the ship while travelling through the vortex, he had a TARDIS, which meant he could, at least in theory, travel through time as well as space. No matter how far Jack travelled, or how long it took, Ianto knew that eventually he’d track him down. With a bit of luck, it wouldn’t take more than a few weeks, but if it took longer, well, he was immortal now; he could spare the time. He hadn’t travelled all the way back to earth just to give up at the first hurdle.
Buoyed up by hope, confident that everything would work out in the end, Ianto urged his TARDIS into the vortex in hot pursuit of his Captain.
OoOoO
Even though things didn’t go exactly to plan, over the next weeks, and months, and even years, Ianto Jones never gave up hope, certain that the universe would never be so cruel as to keep him and Jack apart forever. Perhaps there were other things going on that he didn’t know about, things that needed to happen before he and Jack could finally find each other again, but the reunion would happen. He just needed to be patient. If the universe could bring him back from the dead, make him immortal, and provide him with the perfect form of transport, not to mention companionship, for his travels, surely anything was possible.
OoOoO
Sometimes, Ianto thought afterwards, you just had to trust fate, the universe, the creator, or whatever you believed in, and keep going, no matter what. Through all kinds of adventures, some fun and others terrifying, he’d kept moving forwards, except for that one detour into the recent past. And the twisting, turning path he’d followed had eventually led him to a small ship, adrift in space and almost out of power. There, almost inevitably, he’d found Jack, still broken but gradually beginning to heal.
The future, and indeed all of time and space, stretched out before them now, filled with almost limitless possibilities, and adventures as yet undreamed of. The biggest problem facing them was what they should do first.
Jack smiled at his lover. He was still grieving, might never fully recover from sacrificing Steven, but he was no longer sunk in despair. At last he could look at eternity stretching out before him with a sense of hope for all the wonders yet to come.
The End
He felt almost nothing as he said goodbye to Gwen and Rhys, nothing but the same cold, hollow emptiness he’d been feeling for the last six months. He never expected to see them after this, they’d be better off without him, no matter what Gwen thought. Part of him hated them, in a distant, distracted way, for being alive and with a baby on the way; they had it all, while he’d lost everything that mattered to him. It wasn’t even a matter of fairness or the lack thereof, just another one of the universe’s cruel tricks played on an immortal man who had no right to exist. Perhaps this was no more than he deserved for being a freak, and for failing so spectacularly.
Oh, he’d found a way to defeat the 456, had saved the children, all except one. He’d sacrificed his own grandson so that no one else on the planet would have to endure having their own children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews wrenched from their arms and handed over to a bunch of drug addicted aliens who wanted to get high. Maybe, just maybe, he could have coped with losing the man he’d loved if he hadn’t been forced to destroy his daughter’s life by turning her son into a weapon, but… Ianto had been right when he’d called Jack a monster.
If he could have found some other way to deal with the alien threat, then he would have; there simply hadn’t been time. The signal had to be passed through a child, and Steven had been the only child he had access to. Still, he hated himself for what he’d done, and he couldn’t understand why Gwen wanted him to stay. Didn’t she realise how dangerous he was to be around?
So he left in a brilliant flash of light, not with any expectation of finding anything out there in the vastness of space, but only with the intention of losing himself, because he couldn’t die and yet he had nothing left worth living for. His continuing existence would be his penance for all the harm he’d done, all the lives he’d failed to save over his long life. Not just Steven and Ianto, but Tosh, Owen, Suzie, Alex, Greg… Too many to count.
OoOoO
As Jack teleported up to the cold fusion cruiser somewhere out on the edge of earth’s solar system, Ianto Jones, restored to life by a strange convergence of events he didn’t fully understand, stood aboard his TARDIS and cursed the limitations the universe had seen fit to force on his new existence. If he and the TARDIS could have intercepted the matter stream, Jack would be with him now, and Ianto could have helped him begin healing from all that he’d endured, but it looked like he’d have to track his lover down the hard way, follow the ship Jack was on, and intercept him when he disembarked.
Well, that would have to be good enough. The ship would have to dock somewhere, and if nothing else, Ianto would surely be able to get a message to Jack. Even if by chance they lost track of the ship while travelling through the vortex, he had a TARDIS, which meant he could, at least in theory, travel through time as well as space. No matter how far Jack travelled, or how long it took, Ianto knew that eventually he’d track him down. With a bit of luck, it wouldn’t take more than a few weeks, but if it took longer, well, he was immortal now; he could spare the time. He hadn’t travelled all the way back to earth just to give up at the first hurdle.
Buoyed up by hope, confident that everything would work out in the end, Ianto urged his TARDIS into the vortex in hot pursuit of his Captain.
OoOoO
Even though things didn’t go exactly to plan, over the next weeks, and months, and even years, Ianto Jones never gave up hope, certain that the universe would never be so cruel as to keep him and Jack apart forever. Perhaps there were other things going on that he didn’t know about, things that needed to happen before he and Jack could finally find each other again, but the reunion would happen. He just needed to be patient. If the universe could bring him back from the dead, make him immortal, and provide him with the perfect form of transport, not to mention companionship, for his travels, surely anything was possible.
OoOoO
Sometimes, Ianto thought afterwards, you just had to trust fate, the universe, the creator, or whatever you believed in, and keep going, no matter what. Through all kinds of adventures, some fun and others terrifying, he’d kept moving forwards, except for that one detour into the recent past. And the twisting, turning path he’d followed had eventually led him to a small ship, adrift in space and almost out of power. There, almost inevitably, he’d found Jack, still broken but gradually beginning to heal.
The future, and indeed all of time and space, stretched out before them now, filled with almost limitless possibilities, and adventures as yet undreamed of. The biggest problem facing them was what they should do first.
Jack smiled at his lover. He was still grieving, might never fully recover from sacrificing Steven, but he was no longer sunk in despair. At last he could look at eternity stretching out before him with a sense of hope for all the wonders yet to come.
The End
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