Author's Note: I got sick of continuous stories with chapter after chapter... So I went and found some prompts! I then applied Torchwood to them.

So, most of these little vignettes will be rated differently, possibly with different warnings. Only warning here is mentioned nudity (read prompt below).

Prompt: Write for at least 500 words about a desert, a lack of pants and a foreign language.

Challenge: Include a feeling of sadness

Disclaimer: Torchwood is not mine to claim.

Desert Awakening

When Jack awoke with his trademark gasp for air, he immediately sat up and tried to get his bearings. It was always a bit difficult to remember much of anything in the first few moments, and he wasn't sure how he had gotten in this place. A vast desert, miles and miles of sand.

He checked himself over, feeling for what was sore, trying to figure out what it was that made him die this time. To his own surprise, he found he was missing something. He was missing pants.

For a moment, he just looked confused. Then, he burst out laughing, wondering what it was that he could have possibly done to die in this way.

His laugh stopped short as he felt a cold point on his back, metal on flesh.

"Alright, no need for that," Jack said calmly, "Why don't we put the weapon down and-"

He was interrupted by a growling mangle of consonants and vowels. Not a language he recognized, if it was even an intelligent language, and not some primal animal growling.

The point in his back nudged closer to his skin, nearly cutting him. He saw a hand out of the corner of his eye telling motioning for him to get up. Slowly, slowly, he raised himself to a crouch, then stood, feeling his sore muscles ache in protest. Whatever had happened, it now resonated like a low pulse in his body as his insides continued to stitch themselves back up. Even if he did come back to life, dying still hurt like hell.

"Alright, alright," he said, "I'm up." He slowly began to shuffle in a circle, turning to face whoever held the blade at a painstaking pace. If he had a gun, things would have been different. As it was, there was nothing stashed in his coat pocket, and his belt was as gone as his pants.

The creatures said something to him once more, speaking rapidly. Granted, probably not as rapidly as the Doctor.

And then it hit him. His death wasn't an accident. Not this time. This was no falling off a building, contracting a deadly disease, or even running straight into the line of fire. This was different, although not unheard of. This was more painful. Backstabbed in the midle of the night, as he slept, thinking for once in his life he was safe. And then the truth came shattering down on him as he was told to grab his coat. There was no time for pants.

He remembered the fall, the heart-breaking descent as he dropped to his death, knowing it was only because of the betrayal of a close friend that he was to perish. Those seconds of free fall were worse than dying. The wounds and aches didn't heal when they weren't physical.

A tear slipped down his face as he remembered the grim face of the man who pushed him. The one man he trusted with his life. And that man took his life.

The small, cloaked creatures of whatever strange planet he was on, in whatever time, led him at knife-point to a sandstone building. It could have been a building of never-ending torture, for all Jack knew. But he didn't care. His life was ruined, his heart broken.

"Why, Doctor?" he asked the empty sky.