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fandomweekly2025-09-05 04:30 pm
badly_knitted) wrote in fandomweekly2025-09-05 04:30 pm
Entry tags:
[#272] Can't Save Everyone (Torchwood)
Theme Prompt: #272 – Choose Your Battles
Title: Can't Save Everyone
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1000
Summary: No matter how hard the team try, it’s not always possible to keep people from dying. That’s a fact Gwen has yet to accept.
“We can’t fix everything,” Jack said quietly. He knew that wasn’t what his newest team member wanted to hear, but it was the truth. “We do what we can, when we can, but sometimes people are still going to die. The best we can do is save as many as we can, and I know that’s hard to accept, but we’re a small team…”
“Then make the team bigger!” Gwen demanded, red-eyed from crying and red-faced with anger. “Maybe if we’d had more people out there…”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything, Gwen, except that there would have been a greater chance of losing more people. We nearly lost Tosh as it was. More feet on the ground doesn’t necessarily equate to a greater chance of victory, it just means more people in the line of fire, more injuries, more deaths. That’s how it is during wars. The more people each side has, the more people are going to die.”
If any among them would know that, it was Jack. He’d fought, and died, in enough wars, seen men under his command lose their lives.
This wasn’t exactly a war, and the Torchwood team weren’t an army, but they still had battles to fight, every time another band of aliens showed up with designs on earth. Sometimes it wasn’t even invaders, just aliens that were lost and afraid, or dangerous creatures from other planets, or even toxic plant life, and this time three people had lost their lives to the alien flora, fauna, or a possible combination of the two. A man had already been dead when the team had arrived, but Gwen still believed the other two, a woman and her child, should have been saved.
“They were already terminal,” Owen confirmed, coming out of his lab. “And we don’t know enough about this… whatever it was to come up with even the beginnings of an antidote for whatever toxins it was spreading. I wouldn’t know where to start.” The medic looked tired but resigned to the fact that some things were simply beyond his ability to fix. The universe was home to such a wide variety of lifeforms, many of them with weird body chemistries that the science of twenty-first century earth couldn’t begin to fathom.
“And now you’ll never be able to come up with one, because those idiots destroyed that thing!” Gwen snapped angrily.
“And how many others might have died if we hadn’t used the flamethrowers?” Ianto asked mildly, setting down a tray laden with streaming coffee mugs.
Jack immediately reached for his, taking a big gulp even though it was surely hot enough to burn all the way down. Ianto was by now convinced that Torchwood’s leader had a cast-iron gullet.
“Fire,” Jack said, leaning back against the nearest workstation, “was the only thing that might stand a chance of completely destroying both the toxins and their source. If we hadn’t acted when we did, Tosh would be in the morgue now, along with the other victims.”
“Not in the morgue,” Owen corrected. “All biological material that came into contact with that thing has gone in the incinerator, including all the samples I took. It’s too toxic to take any chances with. We’re just lucky it didn’t have a chance to seed, or spawn, or whatever else it might’ve done. One was bad enough, but if there’d been more…” He shook his head. “Goodbye human race.”
“Don’t exaggerate!” Gwen scowled at the doctor.
“I’m not. Even one tiny droplet of that toxin could have killed hundreds, possibly thousands.”
“The fact that there were only three casualties is a miracle,” Jack agreed. “We were lucky.”
“That woman and her kid weren’t.” Gwen folded her arms over her chest, fixing Jack with an angry look. “You didn’t even try to help them! You just… you shot them!”
“They had blisters forming on their faces,” Owen cut in. “They were already done for. Did you want them to die the same way the other one did? No one should have to suffer like that. What Jack did was the kindest thing he could’ve done for them. I’d have done it myself if he hadn’t.”
“You’re a doctor! You’re supposed to save lives, not kill people!”
“And I do, when they CAN be saved. But I’m realistic enough to know it’s not always possible. When you’ve been here a few years, maybe you’ll understand that the universe doesn’t always play nice. Part of being a doctor is helping people who’re suffering, and this time the only help that could be offered was to make sure they wouldn’t suffer an agonising death.”
“Well, it’s not good enough! We need to do better!”
Ianto raised an eyebrow. “And how are we to do that? Do you have some kind of magic wand you can wave that will fix everything, save everyone, neutralise poisons and toxins, cure disease, and make everything dangerous disappear?”
“No, of course not, but…”
“We are already doing all we can, Gwen,” Jack interrupted. “We don’t know everything, and we can’t fix everything, we’re just feeling our way from one crisis to another, trying not to make anything worse. Not all battles can be won, and not all battles should even be fought. We fight the ones we have a chance of winning, and the ones where we don’t have any choice but to fight. The rest, all we can hope for is to implement damage control and clean up the aftermath.”
“Which usually winds up being left to me,” Ianto said.
Jack patted his shoulder. “Because you have a talent for it.”
“There are talents I’d rather have.”
“I can’t believe you’re all okay with this!” Gwen stared at her teammates in horror.
“We’re not.” Jack set his empty mug back on the tray. “We just accept that there are limits to what we can do. We pick our battles with that in mind, and try to keep casualties to a minimum. That’s all anyone should expect.”
The End
“Then make the team bigger!” Gwen demanded, red-eyed from crying and red-faced with anger. “Maybe if we’d had more people out there…”
“It wouldn’t have changed anything, Gwen, except that there would have been a greater chance of losing more people. We nearly lost Tosh as it was. More feet on the ground doesn’t necessarily equate to a greater chance of victory, it just means more people in the line of fire, more injuries, more deaths. That’s how it is during wars. The more people each side has, the more people are going to die.”
If any among them would know that, it was Jack. He’d fought, and died, in enough wars, seen men under his command lose their lives.
This wasn’t exactly a war, and the Torchwood team weren’t an army, but they still had battles to fight, every time another band of aliens showed up with designs on earth. Sometimes it wasn’t even invaders, just aliens that were lost and afraid, or dangerous creatures from other planets, or even toxic plant life, and this time three people had lost their lives to the alien flora, fauna, or a possible combination of the two. A man had already been dead when the team had arrived, but Gwen still believed the other two, a woman and her child, should have been saved.
“They were already terminal,” Owen confirmed, coming out of his lab. “And we don’t know enough about this… whatever it was to come up with even the beginnings of an antidote for whatever toxins it was spreading. I wouldn’t know where to start.” The medic looked tired but resigned to the fact that some things were simply beyond his ability to fix. The universe was home to such a wide variety of lifeforms, many of them with weird body chemistries that the science of twenty-first century earth couldn’t begin to fathom.
“And now you’ll never be able to come up with one, because those idiots destroyed that thing!” Gwen snapped angrily.
“And how many others might have died if we hadn’t used the flamethrowers?” Ianto asked mildly, setting down a tray laden with streaming coffee mugs.
Jack immediately reached for his, taking a big gulp even though it was surely hot enough to burn all the way down. Ianto was by now convinced that Torchwood’s leader had a cast-iron gullet.
“Fire,” Jack said, leaning back against the nearest workstation, “was the only thing that might stand a chance of completely destroying both the toxins and their source. If we hadn’t acted when we did, Tosh would be in the morgue now, along with the other victims.”
“Not in the morgue,” Owen corrected. “All biological material that came into contact with that thing has gone in the incinerator, including all the samples I took. It’s too toxic to take any chances with. We’re just lucky it didn’t have a chance to seed, or spawn, or whatever else it might’ve done. One was bad enough, but if there’d been more…” He shook his head. “Goodbye human race.”
“Don’t exaggerate!” Gwen scowled at the doctor.
“I’m not. Even one tiny droplet of that toxin could have killed hundreds, possibly thousands.”
“The fact that there were only three casualties is a miracle,” Jack agreed. “We were lucky.”
“That woman and her kid weren’t.” Gwen folded her arms over her chest, fixing Jack with an angry look. “You didn’t even try to help them! You just… you shot them!”
“They had blisters forming on their faces,” Owen cut in. “They were already done for. Did you want them to die the same way the other one did? No one should have to suffer like that. What Jack did was the kindest thing he could’ve done for them. I’d have done it myself if he hadn’t.”
“You’re a doctor! You’re supposed to save lives, not kill people!”
“And I do, when they CAN be saved. But I’m realistic enough to know it’s not always possible. When you’ve been here a few years, maybe you’ll understand that the universe doesn’t always play nice. Part of being a doctor is helping people who’re suffering, and this time the only help that could be offered was to make sure they wouldn’t suffer an agonising death.”
“Well, it’s not good enough! We need to do better!”
Ianto raised an eyebrow. “And how are we to do that? Do you have some kind of magic wand you can wave that will fix everything, save everyone, neutralise poisons and toxins, cure disease, and make everything dangerous disappear?”
“No, of course not, but…”
“We are already doing all we can, Gwen,” Jack interrupted. “We don’t know everything, and we can’t fix everything, we’re just feeling our way from one crisis to another, trying not to make anything worse. Not all battles can be won, and not all battles should even be fought. We fight the ones we have a chance of winning, and the ones where we don’t have any choice but to fight. The rest, all we can hope for is to implement damage control and clean up the aftermath.”
“Which usually winds up being left to me,” Ianto said.
Jack patted his shoulder. “Because you have a talent for it.”
“There are talents I’d rather have.”
“I can’t believe you’re all okay with this!” Gwen stared at her teammates in horror.
“We’re not.” Jack set his empty mug back on the tray. “We just accept that there are limits to what we can do. We pick our battles with that in mind, and try to keep casualties to a minimum. That’s all anyone should expect.”
The End
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