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fandomweekly2025-03-23 11:37 am
m_findlow) wrote in fandomweekly2025-03-23 11:37 am
Entry tags:
[#253] HOPE (TORCHWOOD)
Theme Prompt: #253 - A light in the dark
Title: Hope
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Ianto knows things are dire, but there’s still something to cling to.
Ianto had been running, and then there’d been something that had hit him from behind. The world had spun upside down for a moment and then there’d been nothing.
Nothing until he woke up and the pain hit him.
Subconsciously, he knew he was lucky to be able to feel anything at all. He’d been searching the multi-storey warehouse along with the rest of the team, having split up to cover more ground, taking the uppermost floor and hoping to clear it quickly so he could rejoin the others lower down to help with their search. What he hadn't expected to find was the large metal cube, nor the words that came through his earpiece as they’d been chatting about the possibilities for the two signals they were tracking. He posited that maybe the reason things were so quiet was that their quarry were not alive yet, but hatching. Tosh had then suggested they might not be creatures at all and that was when he found the devices. ‘Just explosive devices,’ came Jack’s awful precursor as the display on the top of it showed two seconds and counting.
The explosion had caught Ianto from behind, obliterating the floor underneath it. He might have fallen all the way through the crater it had made except for the fact that part of the roof and wall had been damaged in the process, falling in around it and pinning his upper body between the edge of the hole and the safety of the warehouse floor just a few feet away. Two more seconds and he might have dodged clear of it altogether. Instead he was caught in its blast radius. If the concrete shifted, it would take him back down through the hole with it, probably crushing him in the process. He was alive for now, but how long that lasted remained to be seen.
He pushed aside a chunk of concrete with his left hand, which unlike the rest of him, hadn’t been pinned in the blast. If he could just use it to pull himself further from the edge, he might be able to…
The pain that shot down his arm and all along the left hand side of his body was exquisite. He cried out as it lanced through him, immediately stopping the motion and staring at it as all the strength left it.
Dislocated shoulder, he diagnosed. His arm might as well have been stuck like the rest of him. It didn't stop him giving it another go as he felt the concrete weight pressing against his back, crushing his chest against the ragged edge, making it hard to breathe. The pain was even worse this time as he desperately tried to pull himself free of the wreckage, and his vision swam before it all faded away into a hazy grey.
Everything had gone quiet again, except for the occasional creak and sprinkling of dust falling from overhead as the building threatened to lose integrity. There were no sounds of his teammates over his headset earpiece, assuming it was still in his ear at all. No sound of anyone alive and coming to his aid. They might all be dead right now, with him the last survivor, until he too met his inevitable fate.
He closed his eyes for a moment and let that thought sink in. It was getting harder to breathe as the weight pressed more firmly. It couldn’t hold forever, and all he could do was scrabble uselessly at the floor with bloody fingertips, unable to pull himself from danger. The grey haze consumed him, and as it did, memories of how he’d come to be here began to play themselves.
It hasn't been easy, he remembered. Jack hadn’t wanted to take him on. Torchwood Three wasn’t hiring, and they most certainly weren’t hiring anyone who had survived the massacre of Torchwood One. Ianto had persisted though, because he had to. Lisa needed help and Torchwood was the only place Ianto could think of with the resources and technology to keep her alive. He wouldn't leave Cardiff without the job. Even if he had to storm their facility by force, he would get what he needed because Lisa was the only thing he had in his life.
Jack fought him at every turn, neither of them the least bit romantically attracted to the other. The only thing they had in common was a shared stubbornness. Jack eventually relented but Ianto's win was short-lived. Lisa was gone and there’d been nothing even Torchwood could do to save her. All of it had been for nothing.
‘What are we holding on to?’ Ianto had asked Jack in a moment of weakness, when the pain of having lost Lisa was still too raw and the despair of ever feeling happiness again still too distant.
‘Hope,’ came the one word answer. ‘Without hope, we're all lost.’
Hope, Ianto repeated silently in his head when a moment of lucidity came upon him once more. He wasn't dead yet, and Jack was somewhere below him, injured, perhaps even dead, but he’d survive because that’s what Jack did. He couldn't die permanently and, just so long as that was the case, there was always the possibility that Jack would make it out of here and try to rescue the rest of them. Jack never gave up on them, even when they betrayed him, or hurt him, or used him. He always forgave them their humanity and their inherent flaws. Ianto might have come to Torchwood out of his love for Lisa, but he stayed now because of his love for Jack. However awful things seemed, Jack was a singular light in all of the darkness.
‘Ianto! Ianto!’ Jack’s voice was suddenly right there, calling out his name, searching for him. The sound filled Ianto with a warmth he couldn't explain and that hope that Jack had once described to him. He no longer felt lost but rather right where he needed to be.
Title: Hope
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1,000 words
Summary: Ianto knows things are dire, but there’s still something to cling to.
Ianto had been running, and then there’d been something that had hit him from behind. The world had spun upside down for a moment and then there’d been nothing.
Nothing until he woke up and the pain hit him.
Subconsciously, he knew he was lucky to be able to feel anything at all. He’d been searching the multi-storey warehouse along with the rest of the team, having split up to cover more ground, taking the uppermost floor and hoping to clear it quickly so he could rejoin the others lower down to help with their search. What he hadn't expected to find was the large metal cube, nor the words that came through his earpiece as they’d been chatting about the possibilities for the two signals they were tracking. He posited that maybe the reason things were so quiet was that their quarry were not alive yet, but hatching. Tosh had then suggested they might not be creatures at all and that was when he found the devices. ‘Just explosive devices,’ came Jack’s awful precursor as the display on the top of it showed two seconds and counting.
The explosion had caught Ianto from behind, obliterating the floor underneath it. He might have fallen all the way through the crater it had made except for the fact that part of the roof and wall had been damaged in the process, falling in around it and pinning his upper body between the edge of the hole and the safety of the warehouse floor just a few feet away. Two more seconds and he might have dodged clear of it altogether. Instead he was caught in its blast radius. If the concrete shifted, it would take him back down through the hole with it, probably crushing him in the process. He was alive for now, but how long that lasted remained to be seen.
He pushed aside a chunk of concrete with his left hand, which unlike the rest of him, hadn’t been pinned in the blast. If he could just use it to pull himself further from the edge, he might be able to…
The pain that shot down his arm and all along the left hand side of his body was exquisite. He cried out as it lanced through him, immediately stopping the motion and staring at it as all the strength left it.
Dislocated shoulder, he diagnosed. His arm might as well have been stuck like the rest of him. It didn't stop him giving it another go as he felt the concrete weight pressing against his back, crushing his chest against the ragged edge, making it hard to breathe. The pain was even worse this time as he desperately tried to pull himself free of the wreckage, and his vision swam before it all faded away into a hazy grey.
Everything had gone quiet again, except for the occasional creak and sprinkling of dust falling from overhead as the building threatened to lose integrity. There were no sounds of his teammates over his headset earpiece, assuming it was still in his ear at all. No sound of anyone alive and coming to his aid. They might all be dead right now, with him the last survivor, until he too met his inevitable fate.
He closed his eyes for a moment and let that thought sink in. It was getting harder to breathe as the weight pressed more firmly. It couldn’t hold forever, and all he could do was scrabble uselessly at the floor with bloody fingertips, unable to pull himself from danger. The grey haze consumed him, and as it did, memories of how he’d come to be here began to play themselves.
It hasn't been easy, he remembered. Jack hadn’t wanted to take him on. Torchwood Three wasn’t hiring, and they most certainly weren’t hiring anyone who had survived the massacre of Torchwood One. Ianto had persisted though, because he had to. Lisa needed help and Torchwood was the only place Ianto could think of with the resources and technology to keep her alive. He wouldn't leave Cardiff without the job. Even if he had to storm their facility by force, he would get what he needed because Lisa was the only thing he had in his life.
Jack fought him at every turn, neither of them the least bit romantically attracted to the other. The only thing they had in common was a shared stubbornness. Jack eventually relented but Ianto's win was short-lived. Lisa was gone and there’d been nothing even Torchwood could do to save her. All of it had been for nothing.
‘What are we holding on to?’ Ianto had asked Jack in a moment of weakness, when the pain of having lost Lisa was still too raw and the despair of ever feeling happiness again still too distant.
‘Hope,’ came the one word answer. ‘Without hope, we're all lost.’
Hope, Ianto repeated silently in his head when a moment of lucidity came upon him once more. He wasn't dead yet, and Jack was somewhere below him, injured, perhaps even dead, but he’d survive because that’s what Jack did. He couldn't die permanently and, just so long as that was the case, there was always the possibility that Jack would make it out of here and try to rescue the rest of them. Jack never gave up on them, even when they betrayed him, or hurt him, or used him. He always forgave them their humanity and their inherent flaws. Ianto might have come to Torchwood out of his love for Lisa, but he stayed now because of his love for Jack. However awful things seemed, Jack was a singular light in all of the darkness.
‘Ianto! Ianto!’ Jack’s voice was suddenly right there, calling out his name, searching for him. The sound filled Ianto with a warmth he couldn't explain and that hope that Jack had once described to him. He no longer felt lost but rather right where he needed to be.
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