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m_findlowTitle: A heartbeat too late
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Agent Johnson
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG. Spoilers for Children of Earth.
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 175 - Late arrival at![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomweekly
Summary: Ianto's miraculous survival comes too late to save the soul of the man he loves.
Ianto rushed up to the Thames House entrance, breathing hard. He'd finally made it.
'You can't come in here, sir,' one of the soldiers told him. 'We are currently operating under a Terrorism Alert Level Four . No persons in or out of the building.'
'I'm Torchwood, I can go wherever the hell I bloody well want,' he told them in no uncertain terms. 'Now, take me to Jack Harkness right now or find somebody who can.'
There was a look of annoyance. 'You deaf or something? I don't care if you're the bloody Queen. Building's being decontaminated, so unless you'd like to go in there and get yourself killed.'
'I already was in there. And I did get killed.' At least he was fairly sure he had been.
'Don't look dead to me.'
'No.' He didn't have any other explanation to offer. He'd simply woken up, totally confused as to why heaven looked a lot like a poorly funded NHS facility. There simply wasn't time to ponder it, not when the world was collapsing around them.
'So bugger off. And take your conspiracy theories with you.'
Ianto trudged down the street in a fury. There wasn't time for this! At the first convenience store he found he bought a prepaid phone with what little cash he had in his pocket. It was all he needed to link up to the Torchwood mainframe.
What he found troubled him. Torchwood had gone dark. The last recorded images from the live feed inside Thames House replayed the awful final moments of what he'd assumed was his death, Jack collapsing beside him. After that, nothing. Instead he used their systems to hack MI-5 and discovered that they'd gone rogue. Jack had been arrested by the government but a splinter cell of MI-5 had broken him out of detention, fearing that the government had lost control of the situation unfolding. A pity it had taken MI-5 until now to realise Torchwood were their allies and not their enemies.
He ran the brutal three miles to the warehouse they were using as their base of operations, each stride burning his lungs and giving him pause to appreciate that they were burning at all. He had died. He was sure of it. And yet here he was, alive. Could the alien poison have been ineffective on some people? Was he just insanely lucky?
When he arrived, there was no resistance from the single guard posted by the entrance. He simply pointed the way and called for lead Agent Johnson, who was prompt in appearing.
'Jones,' she said, apparently already knowing him by sight.
'I need an update. Where are we at? Have the 456 made any further demands? Have any of the children been surrendered yet? Where's Jack?'
'It's over, Jones.'
'What?' His stomach dropped. Please say they hadn't just sacrificed millions of children to the 456 for an eternity of suffering.
'They're gone. Harkness and Dekker found a way to use the children against them.' She escorted him through to a room where they were slowly packing up equipment and gestured to a metal platform. 'Killing one kid was all it took. I'll never forget that, watching him shake and fit, blood coming out of his ears and nose, mother screaming for her only child. Monstrous.'
Most of the words temporarily washed over Ianto. It was over, the enemy defeated. 'Where's Jack?' he repeated.
Johnson's expression hardened. 'Left with his tail between his legs. There's no victory in it, is there?'
Ianto considered how much it would hurt Jack to sacrifice anyone but himself. He'd arrived too late to do anything more than take in the aftermath. He sunk down onto his haunches and put his head in his hands.
'There's still time to catch up with him,' Johnson said. 'He can't have gone far.'
A mirthless sound emanated from him as he remained hunched over, just staring blankly at the metal platform, trying to imagine what had played out and finding that he couldn't reconcile it. 'I think we're out of time,' he told her. Jack thought he was dead and everything that had happened since then was his fault. If he'd been here then Jack wouldn't have done what he'd done. There would have been another alternative – there simply had to be one. He would have found it, or at least convinced Jack that they weren't yet out of options. Grief and urgency, and a healthy dose of encouragement from total strangers who didn't face these kinds of decisions all the time, had contributed to this.
'Where did you get the child from?' he asked, wishing he didn't want to know.
'Isn't it obvious?' she replied. 'This is where we were keeping Harkness' daughter and grandson.'
Ianto's head whipped around at the statement, nearly toppling himself over in the process. The enormity of it made him go cold all over. No. Jack wouldn't do that. A stranger's child was hard enough to comprehend, but his own flesh and blood? No, that wasn't Jack. It just couldn't be. He'd see the anguish on Jack's face when he'd finally confided that his daughter and grandson had been kidnapped and held hostage as leverage so that Jack would back down. However deep that secret ran, Jack must have loved them dearly. He would never have callously murdered his own grandson. 'No,' he finally whispered.
'One child or millions,' Johnson reminded him.
Ianto's hand clasped tightly over his mouth in shock as much as to prevent himself from being sick all over the floor. Tears pricked and burned his eyes. This was all his fault. He never should have left Jack's side, even if dying could hardly be something one could stop themselves from doing. He'd broken Jack and Jack had broken the world. Twelve children sacrificed in 1965 that had led to this point, when only the child of the sacrificer would be sufficient repayment for the suffering he'd already caused. For Jack, everything truly was over.
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Agent Johnson
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG. Spoilers for Children of Earth.
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: None
Author notes: Written for Challenge 175 - Late arrival at
fandomweeklySummary: Ianto's miraculous survival comes too late to save the soul of the man he loves.
Ianto rushed up to the Thames House entrance, breathing hard. He'd finally made it.
'You can't come in here, sir,' one of the soldiers told him. 'We are currently operating under a Terrorism Alert Level Four . No persons in or out of the building.'
'I'm Torchwood, I can go wherever the hell I bloody well want,' he told them in no uncertain terms. 'Now, take me to Jack Harkness right now or find somebody who can.'
There was a look of annoyance. 'You deaf or something? I don't care if you're the bloody Queen. Building's being decontaminated, so unless you'd like to go in there and get yourself killed.'
'I already was in there. And I did get killed.' At least he was fairly sure he had been.
'Don't look dead to me.'
'No.' He didn't have any other explanation to offer. He'd simply woken up, totally confused as to why heaven looked a lot like a poorly funded NHS facility. There simply wasn't time to ponder it, not when the world was collapsing around them.
'So bugger off. And take your conspiracy theories with you.'
Ianto trudged down the street in a fury. There wasn't time for this! At the first convenience store he found he bought a prepaid phone with what little cash he had in his pocket. It was all he needed to link up to the Torchwood mainframe.
What he found troubled him. Torchwood had gone dark. The last recorded images from the live feed inside Thames House replayed the awful final moments of what he'd assumed was his death, Jack collapsing beside him. After that, nothing. Instead he used their systems to hack MI-5 and discovered that they'd gone rogue. Jack had been arrested by the government but a splinter cell of MI-5 had broken him out of detention, fearing that the government had lost control of the situation unfolding. A pity it had taken MI-5 until now to realise Torchwood were their allies and not their enemies.
He ran the brutal three miles to the warehouse they were using as their base of operations, each stride burning his lungs and giving him pause to appreciate that they were burning at all. He had died. He was sure of it. And yet here he was, alive. Could the alien poison have been ineffective on some people? Was he just insanely lucky?
When he arrived, there was no resistance from the single guard posted by the entrance. He simply pointed the way and called for lead Agent Johnson, who was prompt in appearing.
'Jones,' she said, apparently already knowing him by sight.
'I need an update. Where are we at? Have the 456 made any further demands? Have any of the children been surrendered yet? Where's Jack?'
'It's over, Jones.'
'What?' His stomach dropped. Please say they hadn't just sacrificed millions of children to the 456 for an eternity of suffering.
'They're gone. Harkness and Dekker found a way to use the children against them.' She escorted him through to a room where they were slowly packing up equipment and gestured to a metal platform. 'Killing one kid was all it took. I'll never forget that, watching him shake and fit, blood coming out of his ears and nose, mother screaming for her only child. Monstrous.'
Most of the words temporarily washed over Ianto. It was over, the enemy defeated. 'Where's Jack?' he repeated.
Johnson's expression hardened. 'Left with his tail between his legs. There's no victory in it, is there?'
Ianto considered how much it would hurt Jack to sacrifice anyone but himself. He'd arrived too late to do anything more than take in the aftermath. He sunk down onto his haunches and put his head in his hands.
'There's still time to catch up with him,' Johnson said. 'He can't have gone far.'
A mirthless sound emanated from him as he remained hunched over, just staring blankly at the metal platform, trying to imagine what had played out and finding that he couldn't reconcile it. 'I think we're out of time,' he told her. Jack thought he was dead and everything that had happened since then was his fault. If he'd been here then Jack wouldn't have done what he'd done. There would have been another alternative – there simply had to be one. He would have found it, or at least convinced Jack that they weren't yet out of options. Grief and urgency, and a healthy dose of encouragement from total strangers who didn't face these kinds of decisions all the time, had contributed to this.
'Where did you get the child from?' he asked, wishing he didn't want to know.
'Isn't it obvious?' she replied. 'This is where we were keeping Harkness' daughter and grandson.'
Ianto's head whipped around at the statement, nearly toppling himself over in the process. The enormity of it made him go cold all over. No. Jack wouldn't do that. A stranger's child was hard enough to comprehend, but his own flesh and blood? No, that wasn't Jack. It just couldn't be. He'd see the anguish on Jack's face when he'd finally confided that his daughter and grandson had been kidnapped and held hostage as leverage so that Jack would back down. However deep that secret ran, Jack must have loved them dearly. He would never have callously murdered his own grandson. 'No,' he finally whispered.
'One child or millions,' Johnson reminded him.
Ianto's hand clasped tightly over his mouth in shock as much as to prevent himself from being sick all over the floor. Tears pricked and burned his eyes. This was all his fault. He never should have left Jack's side, even if dying could hardly be something one could stop themselves from doing. He'd broken Jack and Jack had broken the world. Twelve children sacrificed in 1965 that had led to this point, when only the child of the sacrificer would be sufficient repayment for the suffering he'd already caused. For Jack, everything truly was over.
