m_findlow

Title: Blind fury
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 7 - Needless at fffc
Summary: Jack needs to let off some steam after a mission that hasn't gone well.

Jack surveyed the cache of weapons lying on the small table in front of him. He was rarely ever in a bind to choose which one he wanted to practice with. As much as he loved his webley and would never go anywhere without it, he was just as skilled with all the other weapons in their armory. It was all part of the job.

Part of the job. The thought tumbled angrily around inside his head. Days like today he absolutely hated the job. He wanted to walk away from it and never look back. This job was going to destroy him. Maybe it couldn't kill him outright but it could chip away at him day by day, little by little, like water wearing away rock. One day he was going to wake up and simply cease to be, not enough of him left to fill a coffee cup.

His gaze landed on the colt 45. It was a big heavy handgun, heavier even than his webley, all metal and plenty of recoil. It was a good choice since he needed something to fight against. It would be his ally and his enemy all in one. He loaded the clip and felt the ice cold handgrip refuse to warm up in the palm of his hand. He used a two-handed grip, picking out his first target and enjoying the loud crack as the bullet exploded from the chamber, sending a shockwave back up through his arm and into his shoulder. It felt good having that much power in his hands. He shot again, picking out another target, then changing angles to take out a third. All of his shots went high, missing the torso completely. These were head shots, designed to kill out of revenge instead of need.

He emptied one clip and fed in another, ignoring all the other weapons on the table. The more he fired the more he felt like he and the gun were one entity. Not only that, there wasn't time to dally and take a few pot shots with each gun. The more he aimed at each target, the more they seemed to multiply and crowd around him. There were enemies everywhere and only him there to face them, no backup, no team. It was him or them.

The weevil targets were interspersed with human mock-ups, the point to being to hit the weevils but not the civilians. Tonight however, Jack hadn't hit a single weevil amongst the dozens splayed around the training field. It was the civilians Jack was targeting. When he saw a weevil he saw an innocent beast that had ended up here through no fault of its own. It was alien and it needed their protection from the human race. All the human targets however, be they man, woman or child began to look the same to Jack. Each and every one of them had Dale's face, and had Dale's gun gripped in their hands, ready to kill anyone who got in his way. Jack wanted him dead, no matter how many bullets it took to remove his head from his shoulders. Dale was the real enemy here.

‘Jack! Jack!’ An invisible disembodied voice he barely noticed between the thunderous gunshots eventually grew loud enough to break through his concentration. He spun at the sound, gun still raised.

‘Easy!’ Ianto said, throwing up his hands in surrender. ‘It's just me. Prefer if I didn't have someone else trying to shoot me today if it's all the same to you.’

Jack's teeth clenched as his hand squeezed painfully around the handgrip. He ejected the clip and spun again, hurling the heavy weapon as hard as he could. It hit a cutout of a weevil removing its snarling head completely as Jack yelled in frustration.

‘Thought I'd come check on you. See how you're doing.’ Ianto cast his eyes around the bullet-riddled civilians. ‘Not good, I'm guessing.’

Jack dropped to his haunches in the middle of the room, running both hands through his hair and barely noticing the destruction he'd caused. Ianto kept his distance, leaning against the doorway with his hands in his pockets. How he could be so casual after today boggled Jack's mind. If not for the fact that Dale's gun had run out of bullets, he'd be dead right now. It shocked Jack more than he liked to admit, Ianto coming that close to dying.

‘I know it probably won't make you feel any better,’ Ianto said, pushing away from the wall to slowly step over to Jack's position, ‘but Tosh and I double checked all the rift logs. No sign that anything that size had come through in the last six months. We couldn't have known it was here, or how they found it, got it to that warehouse, decided it was worth chopping up.’

Jack cringed at the plaintive language. It had been such an innocent creature and it had fallen into the hands of those butchers. It had suffered so needlessly for months on end and not a single one of them had ever stopped to consider that what they were doing was absolute torture. They were beneath inhuman. Jack couldn't even think of a word that could describe what they were, and they'd gotten off with a massive dose of retcon, able to carry on their lives as if they'd done nothing wrong. That poor creature had suffered so much that all they could do in the end was kill it. It wasn't right and it wasn't fair. Everything should have been the other way around.

‘Up you get,’ Ianto said, gently pulling Jack to a standing position, trying to lead him out of the room. ‘I've got a glass of scotch upstairs with your name on it.’

Jack noticed some purpling on the back of Ianto's right hand. He gently touched the slightly swollen knuckles.

‘One of Dale's cronies didn't want to come along quietly. Stunning him just didn't feel right.’