Drabble_weekly Challenge 153 - The cost of victory

[m_findlow]

Title: The cost of victory
Fandom: Torchwood
Author: m_findlow
Characters/Pairing: Jack
Rating: PG
Challenge: 153 - Not a hero at drabble_weekly
Warnings: none
Spoilers: CoE
Summary: Jack pays the ultimate price for victory. A double drabble.

Screaming. All Jack could hear was the screaming. It pierced him like a knife, that sound which was innately programmed into his subconscious, even if he hadn't heard it in thirty years. It was a survival mechanism, a parent immediately being able to discern their own child's cries from those of the pack so that the parent might intercede and protect them.

The alien threat was gone, vanquished by his actions, but there was no way of stopping his daughter's horrific wails as they tore away at his existence. He was their root cause, the one to be blamed. In order to save humankind, he'd sacrificed the one thing they both held dear in this world. The rest of the world would never know what he'd done, but he was no hero. Only the greatest villain that had ever existed would kill their own flesh and blood.

Perhaps people might understand if they knew, but it wouldn't make them hold their own children any less tightly, secretly glad it wasn't their child who'd been made to be sacrificed for the sake of all others. He couldn't blame them for their selfishness, but now he'd have to live with his own.

Comments

[mscatmoon.livejournal.com]

Ouch. I'm not even a parent, but I can't bare to think about that scene. Actually, Jack is too *much* of a hero. He's sacrificed so much, for a planet that isn't even his.

[bk_forever]

Poor Jack, backed into a corner with no alternative course of action open to him. But if he hadn't done it, one of the others would have, Johnson or the scientist. =(