Torchwood: Fanfic: Losing yourself

[m_findlow]

Title: Losing yourself
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Gwen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 592 words
Content notes: Spoilers for episode 2.2 Sleeper
Author notes: Written for juliet316's prompt "Torchwood, any, sometimes low moments like these don't make the job worth it" at fic_promptly
Summary: There are bad days, and there are bad days.

She wanted you to shoot her.

Gwen's words still rung in his head and made his stomach churn at the thought. They shouldn't have been so quick to pull the trigger. He couldn't even remember doing it. It was just reflex that made him pull the gun and loose two bullets from its clip. He knew he wasn't alone his actions. The others had each done the same, Jack and Tosh both. Too much training, he thought. We did it without even considering for a moment that we'd been played, and she knew it.

How could he go up there now and do his job? Gwen hadn't moved from where she was knelt, cradling Beth's head in her hands. That poor girl who'd never even known she wasn't who she thought she was. She'd lived so much of her life thinking she was plain and ordinary, and then some alien programming was going to come in and wipe out everything that made her who she was. She'd never really been human at all, but she'd lived all her life thinking she was. Wasn't that the point Gwen had been trying to make? That it didn't matter what you were, only what you believed. That was what made them human.

Only Beth had been smarter than the rest of them. She hadn't trusted herself that believing would be enough. The fear of knowing the alien programming might still take over her mind was too much. She didn't want to be remembered as some murderous alien, that would try to assist its brethren in taking over this planet and killing everyone. She'd rather have died than let that happen.

It make him feel sick. It was the sacrifice they were each prepared to make, to protect the planet from aliens, but no one had asked Beth to make that sacrifice. Yet she had, only she'd done it in such a way that she wanted them to feel as if they'd had no choice, as if she was beyond saving. She wanted them to end her life because she didn't believe her programming would allow her to stop herself from doing the same. She didn't want them to feel guilty for killing her because she'd turned rogue. She wanted them to have a clear conscience that what they done, they'd done out of absolute necessity. Only they hadn't. And that was what was killing him on the inside.

They'd saved the planet from a terrible invasion - come so close to absolute doomsday - yet the victory felt hollow. Moments like these made him hate this job. Without Beth they never would have succeeded, and they thanked her by killing her. Perhaps she'd wanted it, and perhaps it was a relief to her knowing she was taking herself out of harms way, but it still felt like murder.

Gwen caught him out of the corner of her eye, standing there waiting to do something. She swept a quick hand across her eyes, wiping away tears. 'Ianto,' she sniffled, shifting slightly under the weight of the taller woman in her lap.

He reached down and picked up the thing that had been an extension of her arm, that nasty bladed thing that she'd used to threaten them. 'There,' he said, hiding it from view. 'She looks human now.'

'She was human,' Gwen replied. 'More human than any of us.'

More human, indeed. She'd understood the fear humans have of the unknown and the desire to protect their own. Would that they were all so human as she had been.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Poor Beth, but she really did do the only thing she could, knowing that the insidious programming controlling her could not be repressed forever. She'd already killed the man she loved, what did she really have let to live for?