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fandomweekly2024-06-24 07:46 pm
m_findlow) wrote in fandomweekly2024-06-24 07:46 pm
Entry tags:
[#224] FORCED TO LIVE (TORCHWOOD)
Theme Prompt: #224 - Guilt
Title: Forced to live
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG. Spoilers for Season 1.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Jack has made some terrible decisions in his life, but this might be the worst.
‘Owen Harper, Torchwood Officer 565, I'm relieving you of your position.’ The words were ones Jack never thought he'd hear himself saying. They went down about as well as he imagined they might, only made worse by Ianto's intervention to relieve Owen of his gun and his security pass. Adding insult to injury was having to tell Owen that he’d be replaced by Martha Jones, doing his job, and poking him full of holes until they could figure out whether Owen was, or ever would be, fit to resume normal duties. Job done. Bandaid ripped off. So why did Jack feel so rubbish?
Ianto tugged Owen’s gun from out of the back of his belt and laid it on the desk in front of Jack. ‘Well, that went well,’ he muttered, referring to Owen's bitter exchanges at being told he was being stood down from active duty and a suggestion that he might make the coffees to fill in time. That wasn’t going to go down well with either Owen or Ianto. How many people’s noses was Jack going to put out of joint today?
Jack didn't let himself be baited by the comment. ‘I did what I had to do.’ Neither of them had wanted to be in the room, but it was the kind of thing that simply had to be done. Ianto could handle the administrative side of things, cancelling Owen's security pass and changing all the pincodes. A necessary evil just in case there was any way that Owen wasn't really Owen.
Jack let the gun sit untouched on the desk, just staring at it for a few agonising seconds before pushing up from the desk. ‘I'm going out,’ he declared, reaching for his greatcoat from the stand and throwing it on before Ianto had a chance to offer to help him slide his arms into the sleeves and to fix up the collar.
‘When will you be back?’
The comment annoyed him unusually. ‘When I'm back.’ He didn't wait for the imperceptible nod of acceptance before brushing past his right hand man and heading for the door. He did however manage one last look around the hub before the cogwheel door spun closed behind him, seeing Gwen and Tosh at their desks. There was a calm about them, going about their work like nothing had happened. They were just glad that Owen was alive and back with them, falling into their usual routine as if everything was back how it should be. As Jack punched the button in the lift to take him up to the surface, he knew things were far from how they should be.
As he marched from the tourist office entrance door and across Roald Dahl Plass, he didn't feel the chill of the air off the bay striking his face, nor take in the faces of the people going by, brushing the edges of his coat as it flapped around his body and got in their way. He walked on, head up, but unseeing and just kept walking until his feet led him to the one place he could be alone with his thoughts.
His legs didn't even burn, taking the fourteen flights of stairs to the roof, stepping out into a peaceful calm where his only companions were the clouds of steam billowing from commercial air handling units installed on the roof, pulling in cold Cardiff air and pumping out warm condensation to the occupants on the floors below.
He stepped all the way to the edge and just stared out over the city. His eyes drifted down Lloyd George Avenue, along Bute Street, catching the bronze curved roof of the Millennium Centre and then the glimmering mirrored surface of the water tower, hiding the fact that the hub lay deep beneath it. Somewhere down there was Owen, reeling from being ostracised from the one place he felt truly at home. Jack knew what it was to have nowhere else to go, but he also didn't have a choice. He was going to live forever. There was no death for him. So why had he done the unthinkable, using a dangerous technology to bring Owen back from death? He wasn't even alive – not in the sense of being the opposite to being dead. He just was; trapped in some middle place and it was all Jack’s fault.
When was he going to admit to himself that he had done the thing for the selfish reason that he hadn't wanted Owen to leave him? They all would eventually. Everyone he knew would end up dead, either because of him or as a mere consequence of knowing him and loving him. It was the fate he'd been bound to for more than a hundred years. Everyone got to die except him, and now here he was, trying to inflict life on others so that he wouldn't be alone.
Jack couldn't understand what had happened. The technology should have worked the same way it had with Suzie. It should be drawing Jack's life essence into Owen, converting him back into a fully functioning alive human being, whilst draining the other of their essence. Except that Jack was no mere mortal. He could keep on giving life forever and still never run out. Except that wasn't what was happening. Owen had no pulse, no heartbeat, not a breath of air in his lungs. He was alive in all the ways that Jack wasn't dead. Inexplicable, unexplainable, and it frightened Jack.
What had he done? Jack had wanted to undo the mistake of letting Owen get killed on his watch. He'd thought he knew how to fix things but now he'd just made them ten times worse. Just when he’d thought that never being able to die was the worst thing that could ever be inflicted on someone, he realised that never being able to live again was so much worse. He'd done that. Condemned Owen to something worse than death. A living hell.
Title: Forced to live
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG. Spoilers for Season 1.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Jack has made some terrible decisions in his life, but this might be the worst.
‘Owen Harper, Torchwood Officer 565, I'm relieving you of your position.’ The words were ones Jack never thought he'd hear himself saying. They went down about as well as he imagined they might, only made worse by Ianto's intervention to relieve Owen of his gun and his security pass. Adding insult to injury was having to tell Owen that he’d be replaced by Martha Jones, doing his job, and poking him full of holes until they could figure out whether Owen was, or ever would be, fit to resume normal duties. Job done. Bandaid ripped off. So why did Jack feel so rubbish?
Ianto tugged Owen’s gun from out of the back of his belt and laid it on the desk in front of Jack. ‘Well, that went well,’ he muttered, referring to Owen's bitter exchanges at being told he was being stood down from active duty and a suggestion that he might make the coffees to fill in time. That wasn’t going to go down well with either Owen or Ianto. How many people’s noses was Jack going to put out of joint today?
Jack didn't let himself be baited by the comment. ‘I did what I had to do.’ Neither of them had wanted to be in the room, but it was the kind of thing that simply had to be done. Ianto could handle the administrative side of things, cancelling Owen's security pass and changing all the pincodes. A necessary evil just in case there was any way that Owen wasn't really Owen.
Jack let the gun sit untouched on the desk, just staring at it for a few agonising seconds before pushing up from the desk. ‘I'm going out,’ he declared, reaching for his greatcoat from the stand and throwing it on before Ianto had a chance to offer to help him slide his arms into the sleeves and to fix up the collar.
‘When will you be back?’
The comment annoyed him unusually. ‘When I'm back.’ He didn't wait for the imperceptible nod of acceptance before brushing past his right hand man and heading for the door. He did however manage one last look around the hub before the cogwheel door spun closed behind him, seeing Gwen and Tosh at their desks. There was a calm about them, going about their work like nothing had happened. They were just glad that Owen was alive and back with them, falling into their usual routine as if everything was back how it should be. As Jack punched the button in the lift to take him up to the surface, he knew things were far from how they should be.
As he marched from the tourist office entrance door and across Roald Dahl Plass, he didn't feel the chill of the air off the bay striking his face, nor take in the faces of the people going by, brushing the edges of his coat as it flapped around his body and got in their way. He walked on, head up, but unseeing and just kept walking until his feet led him to the one place he could be alone with his thoughts.
His legs didn't even burn, taking the fourteen flights of stairs to the roof, stepping out into a peaceful calm where his only companions were the clouds of steam billowing from commercial air handling units installed on the roof, pulling in cold Cardiff air and pumping out warm condensation to the occupants on the floors below.
He stepped all the way to the edge and just stared out over the city. His eyes drifted down Lloyd George Avenue, along Bute Street, catching the bronze curved roof of the Millennium Centre and then the glimmering mirrored surface of the water tower, hiding the fact that the hub lay deep beneath it. Somewhere down there was Owen, reeling from being ostracised from the one place he felt truly at home. Jack knew what it was to have nowhere else to go, but he also didn't have a choice. He was going to live forever. There was no death for him. So why had he done the unthinkable, using a dangerous technology to bring Owen back from death? He wasn't even alive – not in the sense of being the opposite to being dead. He just was; trapped in some middle place and it was all Jack’s fault.
When was he going to admit to himself that he had done the thing for the selfish reason that he hadn't wanted Owen to leave him? They all would eventually. Everyone he knew would end up dead, either because of him or as a mere consequence of knowing him and loving him. It was the fate he'd been bound to for more than a hundred years. Everyone got to die except him, and now here he was, trying to inflict life on others so that he wouldn't be alone.
Jack couldn't understand what had happened. The technology should have worked the same way it had with Suzie. It should be drawing Jack's life essence into Owen, converting him back into a fully functioning alive human being, whilst draining the other of their essence. Except that Jack was no mere mortal. He could keep on giving life forever and still never run out. Except that wasn't what was happening. Owen had no pulse, no heartbeat, not a breath of air in his lungs. He was alive in all the ways that Jack wasn't dead. Inexplicable, unexplainable, and it frightened Jack.
What had he done? Jack had wanted to undo the mistake of letting Owen get killed on his watch. He'd thought he knew how to fix things but now he'd just made them ten times worse. Just when he’d thought that never being able to die was the worst thing that could ever be inflicted on someone, he realised that never being able to live again was so much worse. He'd done that. Condemned Owen to something worse than death. A living hell.
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