m_findlow

Title: On the corner
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 813 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for lexigent’s prompt "any, any, his/her forehead had an intimate acquaintance with that street corner" at fic_promptly
Summary: A grudge match of a different kind

Corner of Westgate and Quay.

Once upon a time it had been a printers, then a general store. For a while it had been a temporary office for recruiting volunteer servicemen for the war. After that, the old front was demolished and a new three story building was put there, housing commercial offices for bankers and lawyers. Someone decided to open a cafe on the bottom floor many years ago, but that went out of business last year. Now it was selling vacuum cleaners, and the upper floors had been converted into cheap student accommodation.

For some reason it had become special over the years. Special probably wasn't the right word. Over a hundred years in Cardiff, and he'd seen plenty of deaths thanks to run ins with the locals and the not so locals. But for some reason his forehead had an intimate acquaintance with this corner, and he'd found himself face first and gasping for life's precious breath on this particular spot more than any other in town. Sure there were worse places in town, and he'd visited them all. He'd been mauled by weevils by the docks, had an arm chewed off by a hoix in Butetown, and don't even get him started on Splott. It was getting all rave reviews on Nasty Alien TripAdvisor as the place to be.

No, for some reason, all of life's ironic deaths had occurred just here. From the pub brawl when he first arrived in Cardiff and tried to drink away the days until The Doctor would return, to the night he'd returned on leave from his unit after five months in the trenches in France, only to be accidentally shot by a young sergeant who'who'd been excitedly showing off his pistol to a few mates.

Then there was the storm of 1957, when the rain was coming down so hard and fast that the streets were coated in seven inches of rain. There must have been something hidden under the water because he caught it under his foot, crashing to the ground and knocking himself unconscious. It wasn't the fall that killed him per se, but rather the flooded street that drowned him while his head lay partially submerged in the torrent of water.

There was the night Alice Guppy shot him with her revolver on that street corner. Not for any particularly good reason, merely that they'd been lumped together on the mission and Jack had been pressing her buttons all evening. Since she was well aware he couldn't die, she felt absolutely no compunction about putting a bullet in him, if only to get ten minutes peace.

One occasion he was accidentally trampled by a policeman on horseback during a riot in the streets. He hadn't even meant to be there when it all kicked off, but the crowd was in the hundreds, tightly packed between the shop fronts and market stalls. All it took was one shove that rippled through the masses of people and suddenly he was on the ground and directly in the path of the frightened creature as its owner tried to navigate a way out.

He'd even managed to fall from the top of the building that sat on the corner, and land in a shattered, bloody mess on the pavement below, much to the horror of the passing pedestrians. Negotiations with blowfish never ended well.

There was another similar incident chasing down a rogue Arcateenian, who ambushed him in the corner shop. By the time he came to, the shop was well alight, with him trapped inside. It hadn't happened on the street but he still counted it amongst the others.

He'd been clubbed over the back of the head by a broken bottle when he got in the way of some very drunken late night revellers, whilst trying to track down a nearby weevil. When he'd woken, dawn was beginning to break, and there was another body not far from where he lay. Apparently the weevil had found Jack's sozzled assailant. He almost didn't feel sorry for the guy.

Then there was the accident just a few months ago when Jack crashed the SUV into a "no standing" pole sat on this very corner. He'd been driving in his usual fashion in pursuit of a wayward robot. Tosh had told him to get closer so she would be in range to use the device to deactivate it, but he may have misjudged just how much room he needed to make the turn. Luckily Tosh and Owen had survived the impact, even if Jack hadn't, though Owen was mightily displeased by the ankle fracture and the crutches he had to use for the next three weeks.

He'd been shot, stabbed, strangled, bled out, and a dozen other curious incidents that had resulted in death.

Whatever it was, this street corner did not like him.