Ficlet: Waiting For Death

[bk_forever]

Title: Waiting For Death

Author: badly_knitted

Characters: Jack. Ianto, Alice, Emily, Alex, Others.

Rating: PG

Spoilers: Fragments.

Summary: In the aftermath of the bombs going off, Jack lays in the wreckage, trapped and waiting to die.

Word Count: 428

Written For: juliet316’s prompt ‘Torchwood, Jack/Ianto, As I lay dying,’ at fic_promptly.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.

As Jack lay dying in an abandoned warehouse, beneath a pile of rubble, his mind flitted back through the years and the deaths, all the little moments that had brought him to this place and time. He drew another shallow, laboured, pain-filed breath. The slow deaths were always the worst; they allowed far too much time for thoughts and reminiscences. It was true that your life flashed before your eyes at times like this.

Once again he saw himself reviving in a filthy alley, a broken bottle jammed in his belly, and two women watching him with dispassionate curiosity. He’d tried to flirt with them, but they’d restrained and chloroformed him, and the next time he’d revived he’d been tied to a chair in some sort of basement.

If he’d thought bleeding out from a gut wound was bad, it was nothing to what those two women, Alice and Emily, had put him through in the days and weeks that followed, until he’d eventually agreed to work for their organisation, Torchwood, just to make them stop. They’d proven very inventive when it came to inflicting pain.

His thoughts moved on.

He remembered an alehouse, and a girl with Tarot cards, her eyes far too old for her face. She’d told him how long he would have to wait before he found his Doctor again, and his heart had sunk with the knowledge. A hundred years. It might as well have been eternity

Year after year of his interminable life flowed by as he waited to breathe his last breath. Estelle, Michael, Greg, Lucia and their baby, hundreds of names and faces swept past him in an endless stream. Finally, the eve of the Millennium loomed and in his mind, he relived the moment he returned to the Hub only to find all his colleagues dead, gunned down by their leader. Alex had turned his gun on himself, but not before telling Jack that he’d seen the future and they just weren’t ready for what was to come.

He recalled building his own team then, recruiting Suzie, Tosh, Owen, Ianto…

Oh, Ianto. Was his lover also trapped in the wreckage, or had he got out? Was he even still alive? The last thing that passed through Jack’s mind before death claimed him was a silent prayer that Ianto, and the rest of his team, would be alright.

OoOoOoO

Elsewhere in the warehouse, pinned beneath half the ceiling, Ianto regained consciousness, fingers scrabbling for purchase among the shards of masonry and splinters of wood as he tried to pull himself free.

The End

Comments

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Oh, God, that poor man. :(

[bk_forever]

I know. Poor Jack. And poor Ianto, because he's injured too =(

Thank you!

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

I'm curious, because I don't know: What exactly happened to the rest of the team, anyway? I never got further than 'Cyberwoman', though I've seen Miracle Day.

[bk_forever]

Jack's brother came back, bombed hell out of Cardiff, kidnapped Jack and buried him alive 2000 years in the past, Owen was at the nuclear plant following Tosh's instructions to prevent meltdown but got trapped in a room that the radioactive waste was vented into, and Tosh died of a bullet to the stomach, courtesy of Jack's insane brother.

Oh, Owen was already an undead zombie because he jumped in front of a bullet meant for Martha and then Jack brought him back using another one of those gloves, but he couldn't eat, drink, sleep, shag, or heal so it wasn't much of a life.

The Ianto was killed by a virus released by the 456 during Children Of Earth. RTD really did have it in for every character who wasn't Gwen. Darling Gwennie coasted through those episodes with not so much as a scratch or a broken fingernail =[

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

My God. Makes me kinda glad I was never able to get into the show, then! I like Gwen, but it sounds like she had no business surviving any of this.

[bk_forever]

You would most likely have changed your mind about Gwen if you'd kept watching. I know some people like her, but after she had an affair with Owen, then when he moved on to someone else, she confessed to Rhys but only after dosing him with retcon so he wouldn't remember her confession. She did it to salve her conscience and get forgiveness without having to deal with the consequences. And the viewers were supposed to sympathise with her... Nope!

[but_can_i_be_trusted]

Oh, yeah, I do remember reading about that. That is so fucked-up. :-/

[bk_forever]

And that was just one example of her self-involved behaviour. One of the biggest, yes, but not the only thing that annoyed a lot of folks about her.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

Usually spin-offs are optomistic despite the angst.

[bk_forever]

Not Torchwood. RTD wanted realism, which basically meant, 'Everyone dies except Gwen, because she's so pure and perfect and everybody loves her.' *rolls eyes*

Thank you.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

Realism equals misery?

I feel like I got nothing out of my loyalty from watching the whole series.

Instead of reminiscing, I keep on thinking of what could have been.

Oh well.

[bk_forever]

Same here, hence the fanfic writing. At least I can make Torchwood a happier place with less abject misery in my stories.

[cynthia2015.livejournal.com]

I could just imagine your stories actually happened in between all the on-screen stories.

I can stay in denial of what happened to Donna by writing silly Ten & Donna Fics.

Although there are those recent audio stories.

[bk_forever]

I've seen the Big Finish audio dramas are available, and it's tempting, buy=t I already paid out for the second season of Torchwood audio dramas so I can't afford more extravagance.

I'm glad my fics work to fill the gaps =)

[owensheart.livejournal.com]

Jack yas had a very hard time through his life with Torchwood.

Great ficlet

[bk_forever]

He did, and taking over Torchwood Three made it even harder in a lot of ways.

Thank you.

[too-beauty.livejournal.com]

Oh! poor boys. I really want to know what happened after! pretty, please??????

[bk_forever]

Well, you should already know, because this is from Fragments, when the warehouse blew up with team Torchwood inside. I think I posted Ianto's thoughts a few weeks ago in a fic called Aftermath (yes, I posted them in the wrong order because I wrote them at different times and forgot that they fit together, lol!)

Thank you!