Torchwood: Fanfic: Trapped in exile

[m_findlow]

Title: Trapped in exile
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 559 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for paceisthetrick’s prompt "any, any, exiled" at fic_promptly
Summary: Jack finds himself on the outside

He's amazed she hasn't put him on the first transport ship out of here, sending him off to some far flung corner of the galaxy. Then again, transport ships are a rarity in these parts, and they've had to learn to make do for themselves without the aid of regular food and supplies. That was the problem with living on a new colony world. Until they were properly established, trade routes wouldn't divert for the sake of a few tens of thousands of people. It didn't matter that the colony had been going for nearly seventy years, in the grand scheme of things, it was still in its infancy.

That was half the reason why when they were attacked, there had been no real defence. It was the risk that people living in the colonies were forced to accept.

Jack had come to realise that she didn't have to put him on a ship and send him far away. Sometimes he was as far from her mind as it was possible to be, but still be in the same room. His youngest version couldn't understand why she didn't hate him. When the creatures had come and attacked she'd lost her husband, his father, and then she'd lost her youngest son. Jack knew that it was his fault. He shouldn't have let his dad go back, he should have stayed with him, they all should have stuck together. If they had then maybe he wouldn't have been so scared. He could hardly remember fleeing from them, hearing their high pitched squeals, Gray's hand sweaty in his own. When had he lost that grip? They were running so hard, and the only other sound was that of the blood pounding in his ears. Did Gray cry out when he let go? Did he trip and fall? Wasn't he right beside him, or at least right behind him?

His mother's beseeching look tore through him as he had to explain what had happened. He couldn't even process the scene before him, his father gone. His mother crying and sobbing for her little boy. Jack was not her little boy, that was Gray. He was the brother who should have saved her little boy.

In the months and years that followed he should have felt his own grief and sorrow at their loss. Instead he felt nothing but guilt. His mother tried to be caring and consoling, for they only had each other now, but he could always feel her own grief creating a chasm between them. Her eyes never held the same warm glow when she looked at him anymore, and her embraces and touch were tinged with reticence, as if he were somehow poisonous. Memories faded slowly and they occasionally found something trite or mundane that they could laugh about, but then the moment would pass, just as if it had never existed and the chasm grew wider again.

Jack didn't need to be sent away for what had happened. Exile came in many different forms, and though they shared the same home, there may as well have been a million light years separating them. When he was recruited for the Time Agency, he didn't feel sad at leaving his childhood home. If anything, it was like being released from a solitary confinement prison sentence he hadn't known he'd been serving.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Oh poor Jack! How heartbreaking!