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fandomweekly2024-12-13 02:38 pm
badly_knitted) wrote in fandomweekly2024-12-13 02:38 pm
Entry tags:
[#242] Not This Time (Torchwood)
Theme Prompt: #242 – Tragedy
Title: Not This Time
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1000
Summary: Torchwood’s history is littered with tragedy, but maybe this time it can be prevented.
The hardest part of working for Torchwood was knowing that it wasn’t always possible to save everyone, no matter how badly you wanted to, and no matter how hard you tried. They could save Cardiff, and in some cases even the entire planet, but the price for success was often the loss of innocent lives, and that was a difficult thing to accept.
It was why the team had turned against Jack when he’d handed a young girl over to the fae, leaving the girl’s mother distraught and grieving. It had been the right thing to do, the only way to prevent the fae from potentially causing the deaths of everyone on the planet, and Jasmine had wanted to go with them, but it had still seemed wrong, callous, inhuman…
Jack had endured the silent treatment and the angry glares, knowing his team had needed someone to blame, but it had still hurt. They hadn’t seen what the fae could do, not the way he had. What he’d done had been the lesser of two evils, one life sacrificed to save everyone else, not just then but for the entire future of their world, a future the earth would not have had if he’d refused to let Jasmine go.
Tragedy was a part of Torchwood’s history; looking back, the Institute was littered with death, whether that was the deaths of innocents who never even knew what was happening, or the deaths of colleagues and friends who knew only too well. As every soldier understood, sometimes you had to lose a battle in order to win the war.
Tosh and Owen had sacrificed their own lives to prevent an even greater tragedy, one that would have cost thousands, even millions of lives and left a radioactive wasteland in its place. They hadn’t faltered, they’d simply done what was necessary, because there was no one else who could. They’d died as heroes, not that it had been any consolation to them, or to the friends and family members they’d left behind, but right now, Jack couldn’t help wondering if their sacrifice had been worth it.
When the children had started chanting in unison around the world, nobody had understood what was happening, not even Jack himself, even though he’d found out later that he was one of the handful of people who’d ‘encountered’ this particular race of aliens before. Last time they’d visited, they hadn’t taken control of the children, the whole affair had been on a significantly smaller scale. This time, because they wanted so much more from the people of earth, they’d upped the ante, using the children to scare the human race into compliance. And because the British government were a bunch of self-serving idiots and yellow-bellied cowards, they’d given in to the 456’s threats, perfectly willing to hand over ten percent of the world’s children to a bunch of drug-addicted monsters.
That would have been more than bad enough, but then they’d taken one last, insane step and tried to shut down the only people left who might be able to put a stop to both the 456’s and the government’s plans, and prevent tragedy on a global scale.
The kill squad sent after the Torchwood team had mostly failed. Oh, they’d killed Jack a couple of times, destroyed the Hub, and with it most of the team’s resources, and killed Jack some more, but that had just served to piss off the ragged remainder of earth’s first line of defence against alien incursions.
They’d regrouped, rescued Jack, made their way to London, intent on putting a stop to the government’s plans no matter what it took, and now here Jack was, faced with the worst decision he’d ever had to make, to sacrifice his own grandson to save the rest of earth’s children. One single life in exchange for millions, one grieving parent instead of mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents numbering in the hundreds of thousands. It was no choice, it was a matter of logic and of numbers: one life could never be held more important than millions, and yet even after all the sacrifices Jack had been forced to make over his extraordinarily long lifetime, it was the one decision he knew would destroy him utterly, no matter how justified it was.
The scientist, Dekker, was watching him with a gloating expression on his face. He was enjoying this, wanted to kill a child, any child, and watch them fry, but was even more thrilled by the thought of forcing Jack to kill his own flesh and blood. He was a sadist, as much of a monster as the 456 themselves, maybe even more so since he was supposed to be human. The 456 didn’t care about the suffering they intended to cause because it wouldn’t affect them, just as long as they got what they wanted, but Dekker… He was getting off on this.
Outside, rain was falling, like the tears of all the desperate parents whose children were even now being rounded up for delivery to the aliens. Like the tears of the children themselves, being ripped from the arms of their mothers and loaded into buses and trucks like cattle being sent to the slaughter. What was happening here in Britain was being echoed around the world, hundreds of countries following the lead of a small island nation that still considered itself more important than it deserved to be.
Millions of lives were at stake, and all Jack had to do to save them was to condemn one small, trusting boy to a terrifying and agonising death, shatter his only daughter’s heart, and his own heart right along with it.
They were running out of time.
“No,” Ianto said, quiet but resolute. “There’s another way, we just have to find it,” and he delved into the Torchwood servers, face set and fingers flying over the computer keys.
Jack had sacrificed too much already. This time Ianto was putting his foot down.
The End
It was why the team had turned against Jack when he’d handed a young girl over to the fae, leaving the girl’s mother distraught and grieving. It had been the right thing to do, the only way to prevent the fae from potentially causing the deaths of everyone on the planet, and Jasmine had wanted to go with them, but it had still seemed wrong, callous, inhuman…
Jack had endured the silent treatment and the angry glares, knowing his team had needed someone to blame, but it had still hurt. They hadn’t seen what the fae could do, not the way he had. What he’d done had been the lesser of two evils, one life sacrificed to save everyone else, not just then but for the entire future of their world, a future the earth would not have had if he’d refused to let Jasmine go.
Tragedy was a part of Torchwood’s history; looking back, the Institute was littered with death, whether that was the deaths of innocents who never even knew what was happening, or the deaths of colleagues and friends who knew only too well. As every soldier understood, sometimes you had to lose a battle in order to win the war.
Tosh and Owen had sacrificed their own lives to prevent an even greater tragedy, one that would have cost thousands, even millions of lives and left a radioactive wasteland in its place. They hadn’t faltered, they’d simply done what was necessary, because there was no one else who could. They’d died as heroes, not that it had been any consolation to them, or to the friends and family members they’d left behind, but right now, Jack couldn’t help wondering if their sacrifice had been worth it.
When the children had started chanting in unison around the world, nobody had understood what was happening, not even Jack himself, even though he’d found out later that he was one of the handful of people who’d ‘encountered’ this particular race of aliens before. Last time they’d visited, they hadn’t taken control of the children, the whole affair had been on a significantly smaller scale. This time, because they wanted so much more from the people of earth, they’d upped the ante, using the children to scare the human race into compliance. And because the British government were a bunch of self-serving idiots and yellow-bellied cowards, they’d given in to the 456’s threats, perfectly willing to hand over ten percent of the world’s children to a bunch of drug-addicted monsters.
That would have been more than bad enough, but then they’d taken one last, insane step and tried to shut down the only people left who might be able to put a stop to both the 456’s and the government’s plans, and prevent tragedy on a global scale.
The kill squad sent after the Torchwood team had mostly failed. Oh, they’d killed Jack a couple of times, destroyed the Hub, and with it most of the team’s resources, and killed Jack some more, but that had just served to piss off the ragged remainder of earth’s first line of defence against alien incursions.
They’d regrouped, rescued Jack, made their way to London, intent on putting a stop to the government’s plans no matter what it took, and now here Jack was, faced with the worst decision he’d ever had to make, to sacrifice his own grandson to save the rest of earth’s children. One single life in exchange for millions, one grieving parent instead of mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents numbering in the hundreds of thousands. It was no choice, it was a matter of logic and of numbers: one life could never be held more important than millions, and yet even after all the sacrifices Jack had been forced to make over his extraordinarily long lifetime, it was the one decision he knew would destroy him utterly, no matter how justified it was.
The scientist, Dekker, was watching him with a gloating expression on his face. He was enjoying this, wanted to kill a child, any child, and watch them fry, but was even more thrilled by the thought of forcing Jack to kill his own flesh and blood. He was a sadist, as much of a monster as the 456 themselves, maybe even more so since he was supposed to be human. The 456 didn’t care about the suffering they intended to cause because it wouldn’t affect them, just as long as they got what they wanted, but Dekker… He was getting off on this.
Outside, rain was falling, like the tears of all the desperate parents whose children were even now being rounded up for delivery to the aliens. Like the tears of the children themselves, being ripped from the arms of their mothers and loaded into buses and trucks like cattle being sent to the slaughter. What was happening here in Britain was being echoed around the world, hundreds of countries following the lead of a small island nation that still considered itself more important than it deserved to be.
Millions of lives were at stake, and all Jack had to do to save them was to condemn one small, trusting boy to a terrifying and agonising death, shatter his only daughter’s heart, and his own heart right along with it.
They were running out of time.
“No,” Ianto said, quiet but resolute. “There’s another way, we just have to find it,” and he delved into the Torchwood servers, face set and fingers flying over the computer keys.
Jack had sacrificed too much already. This time Ianto was putting his foot down.
The End
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