Originally published on an RP forum, (just one post), and then expanded on Archive of Our Own, republished here.
Buried
Chapter 1
He was buried beneath the earth.
His long-lost brother had stabbed him. And his beloved partner-the friend he had once trusted before they became so wrapped up in destroying each other as a part of the Time Agency-threw in the ring and the dirt.
He closed his eyes, and let himself be buried because that was all he could do-flinching as the clods of dirt hit his face. The ring rested on his chest, and he eventually clutched it, thinking to himself that it meant something, even though he couldn't quite figure out what-maybe it had a tracer signal?
In any case, he slipped it onto his finger as soon as he could, for it offered him the chance to be discovered. But this was it as far as he was concerned.
After everything that he had gone through, to spend eternity at the bottom of a hole-was this how he wanted to live and die? For every time that he tried to dig himself out with his handcuffed hands, he would be buried again, pressed down into the earth with the weight of the soil above him.
There was no way to escape the cycle; live, breathe in dirt, dig, be buried, die. He could not escape. Trapped and bound, hands and legs, beneath the earth-
And what was worse-to be buried so long ago...he was in Cardiff, yes, literally in Cardiff's soil, but it was Cardiff before it was properly established. 27 A.D., almost 2,000 years before he was put in charge of Torchwood Three's team.
How could he do this? How could he survive that long? 2,000 years...2,000 years from now, Torchwood Three would be dealing with the aftermath of John Hart's destruction of the city, and he couldn't do anything about it.
He couldn't help them. And he certainly couldn't help himself, trapped here like this-it hurt too much.
Jack tried to calm himself down, telling himself that it would hurt less if he let himself die-without struggling too much. But it was no use; he struggled, thinking about Gray. How he wanted to destroy him for everything he had done to himself and his team, and how he wanted to love him and forgive him for what he had done, after losing him so many years ago.
John-why did he have to do this, why did he have to destroy everything Jack held dear? Well-attached to a bomb, and basically forced to do anything that Gray wanted him to do...but still, it hurt Jack to see John reduced to this.
And his team-Tosh, Owen, Gwen, Ianto-all of them, what were they doing without him? He couldn't imagine how they would be able to handle everything without him, with him gone, but then again, they were a pretty capable team. He was proud of them for everything they had done in the past; even their goof-ups had a way of fixing themselves up.
Yet even though he could forgive them of just about anything by now, he could not forgive himself for abandoning them-no matter the circumstances. They would have a long, uphill battle ahead of them without him there-with John, and with Gray to contend with.
How many hours? How many days? How many months, how many years, since he had been buried?
He could not figure it-if he died 10, 20, or 100 times during a day, it was still a long way ahead of him. If there was anything ahead of him-except for this.
He just kept digging.