Torchwood: Fanfic: The purge
Apr. 19th, 2025 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
m_findlowTitle: The purge
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 948 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for lakeglitter’s prompt "Any, any, completing another character's detested chore" at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fic_promptly
lakeglitter’s prompt "Any, any, completing another character's detested chore" at fic_promptly Summary: Even Ianto has days where the job gets to him.
Owen thoroughly enjoyed his role as the team’s medic, not so much because it meant he had to patch up the rest of them when they were injured in the line of duty, but because it was Torchwood, which was brilliant and fascinating and dangerous all rolled into one. And because he was the resident medical expert, that meant he also got up close and personal with all kinds of aliens. Doing autopsies on them was one of his favourite parts of the job, seeing what made other species tick from a scientific, completely unemotional point of view. He also didn't mind the fact that, whilst he could never say it out loud in public, he knew that he was the only doctor on the planet that got to do what he did, and that made him feel special.
Of course, when it came to carving up alien corpses, one thing he detested was the cleaning up afterwards. He had no love for dealing with the body after he’d taken it apart, organ by organ, bits of flesh and bone and body fluids all removed and put into specimen jars for later study. Once the cause of death was known and all other useful material extracted, it was, as far as he was concerned, job done. Much like when he’d worked in A & E, he’d patched up the wounded and sent them on their way with outpatient orders, rolled them out on a gurney up to the surgical ward for further patching up, or left it nurses to arrange for the morgue to collect the ones that didn’t make it. Owen did what he could and then once he left the trauma room, he never saw the bodies again.
Except at Torchwood, there were no nurses or orderlies, no creepy porters that liked the mortuary and moved around the corridors like silent harbingers of death. The corpses that Owen dealt with on his metal exam table simply remained there where he walked away from them. Until of course, Ianto came along and dealt with them.
Ianto wasn’t squeamish per se, but he wasn’t enthused by the smell of rotting flesh nor the sight of mutilated flesh. Even large quantities of blood were difficult to stomach. Ever since that time they’d been captured by human cannibals he’d become painfully aware of just how much blood the human body could store and what it looked like when you cut it open and drained all the blood away.
The least Owen might do was to stitch them back up after he was done, like they did on television. Not that there was going to be anyone to see them afterwards; no body to appear presentable in an open casket. They were destined for the incinerators many floors below, where they could be safely disposed of without leaving any trace. After the body was gone, there’d be everything else left to clean up, blood and bodily fluids to be drained, exam table bleached, floors mopped, and implements sterilised in the autoclave before being arranged back into their respective toolsets, ready for use again. It was unglamorous and thankless work, but it was what was expected of someone who wasn’t quite considered a full field agent.
Tonight it was late, and Owen had vacated only fifteen minutes earlier, leaving the task of cleaning up in the hands of the mystery cleaning fairies that did so without complaint. Ianto was strangely keen to get down there. It smelled even worse than usual, that mixture of blood and guts and possibly fecal matter as well. Ianto never ate much if he knew Owen was going to be carving up bodies. It made the task easier knowing there was nothing to bring up when the smell made him gag. The dry retching was bad enough, but tonight Ianto really didn’t want to be here cleaning up Owen's mess. It hadn’t been an easy day for any of them, watching the alien slowly suffer from catastrophic injuries sustained on its journey through the rift. They all knew it would die, but it had clung on for a lot longer than any of them had expected it to, and that was probably worse. Emotions always ran high when there was nothing they could do to help, and though he never showed it, he felt just as much of that pain as the rest of them.
He reached into a cupboard and pulled out a white body bag, shaking it out from its folded package, readying it for being filled. He took one look at the body lying there in a pool of its own blood and sat down heavily on the steps, still clutching the bog as he dropped his head between his knees.
As he tried for a few deep breaths to clear his head, there was a hand on his shoulder, and there standing on the steps beside him was Jack.
Jack gave him a moment and held out a hand and pulled him to his feet, taking the body bag from him as he did so. Slowly and silently, without speaking he helped Ianto to move the body, zip it up into the bag, and carry it down to its final resting place, before returning upstairs, taking the mop and bucket and washing away the worst of it as Ianto slowly binned bandages and tubing and empty syringes. Their movements were slow and deliberate, yet perfectly synchronised, like a pair of dancers sharing the stage, conveying in their careful actions all the collective grief that they felt. None of them liked doing it, but on a night like tonight, it was infinitely easier with two.
Owen thoroughly enjoyed his role as the team’s medic, not so much because it meant he had to patch up the rest of them when they were injured in the line of duty, but because it was Torchwood, which was brilliant and fascinating and dangerous all rolled into one. And because he was the resident medical expert, that meant he also got up close and personal with all kinds of aliens. Doing autopsies on them was one of his favourite parts of the job, seeing what made other species tick from a scientific, completely unemotional point of view. He also didn't mind the fact that, whilst he could never say it out loud in public, he knew that he was the only doctor on the planet that got to do what he did, and that made him feel special.
Of course, when it came to carving up alien corpses, one thing he detested was the cleaning up afterwards. He had no love for dealing with the body after he’d taken it apart, organ by organ, bits of flesh and bone and body fluids all removed and put into specimen jars for later study. Once the cause of death was known and all other useful material extracted, it was, as far as he was concerned, job done. Much like when he’d worked in A & E, he’d patched up the wounded and sent them on their way with outpatient orders, rolled them out on a gurney up to the surgical ward for further patching up, or left it nurses to arrange for the morgue to collect the ones that didn’t make it. Owen did what he could and then once he left the trauma room, he never saw the bodies again.
Except at Torchwood, there were no nurses or orderlies, no creepy porters that liked the mortuary and moved around the corridors like silent harbingers of death. The corpses that Owen dealt with on his metal exam table simply remained there where he walked away from them. Until of course, Ianto came along and dealt with them.
Ianto wasn’t squeamish per se, but he wasn’t enthused by the smell of rotting flesh nor the sight of mutilated flesh. Even large quantities of blood were difficult to stomach. Ever since that time they’d been captured by human cannibals he’d become painfully aware of just how much blood the human body could store and what it looked like when you cut it open and drained all the blood away.
The least Owen might do was to stitch them back up after he was done, like they did on television. Not that there was going to be anyone to see them afterwards; no body to appear presentable in an open casket. They were destined for the incinerators many floors below, where they could be safely disposed of without leaving any trace. After the body was gone, there’d be everything else left to clean up, blood and bodily fluids to be drained, exam table bleached, floors mopped, and implements sterilised in the autoclave before being arranged back into their respective toolsets, ready for use again. It was unglamorous and thankless work, but it was what was expected of someone who wasn’t quite considered a full field agent.
Tonight it was late, and Owen had vacated only fifteen minutes earlier, leaving the task of cleaning up in the hands of the mystery cleaning fairies that did so without complaint. Ianto was strangely keen to get down there. It smelled even worse than usual, that mixture of blood and guts and possibly fecal matter as well. Ianto never ate much if he knew Owen was going to be carving up bodies. It made the task easier knowing there was nothing to bring up when the smell made him gag. The dry retching was bad enough, but tonight Ianto really didn’t want to be here cleaning up Owen's mess. It hadn’t been an easy day for any of them, watching the alien slowly suffer from catastrophic injuries sustained on its journey through the rift. They all knew it would die, but it had clung on for a lot longer than any of them had expected it to, and that was probably worse. Emotions always ran high when there was nothing they could do to help, and though he never showed it, he felt just as much of that pain as the rest of them.
He reached into a cupboard and pulled out a white body bag, shaking it out from its folded package, readying it for being filled. He took one look at the body lying there in a pool of its own blood and sat down heavily on the steps, still clutching the bog as he dropped his head between his knees.
As he tried for a few deep breaths to clear his head, there was a hand on his shoulder, and there standing on the steps beside him was Jack.
Jack gave him a moment and held out a hand and pulled him to his feet, taking the body bag from him as he did so. Slowly and silently, without speaking he helped Ianto to move the body, zip it up into the bag, and carry it down to its final resting place, before returning upstairs, taking the mop and bucket and washing away the worst of it as Ianto slowly binned bandages and tubing and empty syringes. Their movements were slow and deliberate, yet perfectly synchronised, like a pair of dancers sharing the stage, conveying in their careful actions all the collective grief that they felt. None of them liked doing it, but on a night like tonight, it was infinitely easier with two.
