Why we did it
Author note: Set at the end of end of days before Jack comes back to life. Ianto's POV. My attempt to explain the team's betrayal and spack fill some of Russell's plot holes. Spoilers for season one, and up to three in my disclaimer.
Disclaimer: I own Torchwood. Stole it from Russell and I'm not giving it back. Well I might give Jack and Gwen back for season 4, but the rest of the team, discarded so carelessly, are mine.
I think we did it to save Rhys. Well except Owen, he did it because of some sort of father issues way too complex to decipher. But the rest of us, we did it to save Rhys.
And that's Jack's fault. From day one, fed into our lives until it became habitual, protect Gwen and Rhys, protect their relationship. Their lives built up in to a fairytale of normalcy to which we couldn't aspire, but from association with Gwen, could connect. Rhys and Gwen were normal, we had Gwen, so we were normal, or at least had a passing glimpse. Real life had walked into our hub holding a pizza and we didn't want to let it go.
"Go home Gwen," said so often that it stopped being just Jack who said it. All our activities designed to get Gwen home, keep her life, a life so mundane that for us it was extraordinary.
It wasn't something we could have.
Not Jack. Impossible Jack, fixed firmly in the land of aliens, fantastic and phantasmagorical. So far from reality, there was no going back. Only now, I realise how impossible he actually was.
Not Owen, numbing himself with physical sensation, drinking and fucking and fighting. Forcing himself away from normality. Sleeping with Gwen to destroy what was true and good. Then Dianne Homes, breaking what was already broke. Leaving fragments behind to rip us apart. What patience it would take to mend that shattered mind.
Not Tosh. It doesn't matter how many times she has said she has no time to meet somebody, it's always a lie. She didn't want time for dating, clinging to a dream of Owen just so she didn't have to look outside the reinforced walls of the hub, secure under the ground. Crazy danger made Tosh feel safe because she didn't need to feel or touch or interact. Safe and secure with her technology.
And certainly not me. I sympathised with Tosh. Easier here where everyone is damaged and it was not so apparent how screwed up we'd all become. I bound myself here so strongly that there was no prising me loose. To Jack with my body, to Torchwood my mind, my heart in the basement where the metal woman ripped it out.
But even though we were trapped in Torchwood, there was still a window to see out - just by overhearing Gwen on the phone to Rhys, about washing and pot roasts and parents. But with Rhys gone there was no window, leaving us rotting in darkness, under the ground.
When the too familiar blood drained from the body of Prince Charming, and we watched Jack wash Gwen's hand that would never be clean, we knew we'd do anything. Anything to protect our slice of reality.
And then there was a solution, simple and easy, open the rift, suck the bad back in and spit the good back out. Bring back normality. We didn't realise what it would cost.
We don't deserve normality. We are creatures of darkness, more alien than the aliens. So now we will rot down here, till the end of days.
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