Title: Tales Untold
Rating: PG
Spoilers (in this chapter): None, takes place post JE, CoT does not exist
Characters (in this chapter): Gwen, Jack, Doctor, Ianto
Archived: ffnet
Disclaimer: Torchwood, Doctor Who, and all related characters, scenes, plotlines, etc. don't belong to me but the rest of this story does. Don't steal.
Warnings: AU
Summary: Just an every day conversation (through), And so it ends...or does it begin? (have)
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Prompt 49 - Through – WC 204 – 10/19/08
"You cannot possibly be serious."
"Gwen…"
"Jack, no. I am NOT going to search every single tourist center in Cardiff."
"The alien…"
"Then find some other way to find it! There are over five hundred locations that fit the description and two hundred of them are likely!"
"I'm not asking you to search ALL of them, just half."
"So instead of five hundred I have to do two hundred and fifty?"
"No, instead of two hundred you have to do ONE hundred. I'll be doing the other hundred."
"One hundred heavily populated major tourist centers."
"Sarcasm doesn't look good on you, Gwen."
"Jack…"
"Well I'm not doing all of them myself!"
"What about the others? If we split it five ways…"
"Tosh will be monitoring the potential sites for activity, Owen is studying the biological material we managed to salvage from the crash, and Ianto hasn't had formal training yet. That leaves us."
"Jack, I can't-."
"You can and you will."
"Hmph."
"Gwen."
"Well, if we focus on the less popular attractions now then we can shift the focus to the others around closing time when there are less people but they aren't closed yet…"
"Sounds good. Let's go."
"…yeah."
"And Gwen? Thanks."
"Hm."
Prompt 50 - Have – WC 1046 – 10/19/08
It was ironic, if you stopped to think about it.
Torchwood was notorious for having a high mortality rate; members did not quit or retire, they were killed. Their bodies went into the freezer if there was enough left. If there wasn't then it was just their possessions that were packed away and forgotten by the world.
Jack thought he was the only agent immune to this law and only because he could not be killed. Some called him immortal but that was a word he personally avoided for several reasons. One, it scared the hell out of him; who would want to live forever? Two, he was still slowly aging which implied that someday, possibly millennia in the future, he would be capable of dying of old age. And three, he still died all the time; it just never stuck. Thanks to the time vortex, he couldn't escape life.
But, while he was the first to be taken by a force as massive as the time vortex, he wasn't the last.
What happened was nobody's fault, not really. Jack would blame the Doctor for several hundred years and the Doctor would blame himself for twice as long but, really, they were barely even part of it.
It was Gwen's personal decision to help the Doctor when he was shot with a molecular destabilization ray, something that would break him down to his component elements without hope of regeneration. She didn't take the energy into herself but she leant him the energy flowing through her body, a result of living and working over a dimensional weakness, the rift, her entire life.
The Doctor used her energy to heal himself but was unable to stop the backlash. Her body was pelted with vortex energy and regeneration energy, the natural result of his body trying to heal himself.
It was a combination no human could survive.
When Ianto heard her scream, he yelled for Jack then ran to her assistance. At the sight of Gwen in a fetal position on the floor, glowing alternately white, gold, and orange, he ran to her side. The Doctor tried to keep him away, to tell him that touching her would simply do the same to him, but he didn't listen.
It took mere moments for Jack to arrive but he was too late to help either of them; they were being ripped apart from the inside out, clinging to each other as if the contact could save them. He brushed the Doctor's explanations off; he could tell they were dying and he refused to let them die alone. Both of them welcomed him into their huddle.
They shouldn't have.
Jack's personal energy had evolved over time from pure time vortex energy to something more constant and stable, the energy of a fixed point. It was the energy Gallifrey had contained (and still does, but that is a story for another day) and the energy that every fixed event contributes to by its very existence.
It was powerful but next to the other energy already in play, Jack thought it was inconsequential.
He was nearly right; it would have done nothing on its own. But it wasn't on its own. The other energy combined with it, using it as a conduit to preserve the host bodies, to continue the circuit that was keeping it in the living world. The fixed point energy gave the unstable vortex and rift energy focus, pulling it away from destroying the humans and pushing it towards prolonging their longevity.
When the process was complete, the Doctor was the only one in the room still conscious and he was pressed into the wall as far away from the other three as possible, forced there by the arcing energy and concussion blasts generated during the settling.
He knew what had happened and that there was nothing he could do about it. The team would want explanations when they woke up but not any he was comfortable giving. So he followed a time honored tradition, the same one he followed the first time Jack died.
He ran.
When the team woke up, the Doctor and the TARDIS were gone. Jack was too happy that they were alive to doubt the Doctor's reasoning; he pushed out lingering doubts by justifying that the Doctor had saved his team's lives. Ianto and Gwen went along with it but both knew something was different; they could feel it in the way the rift seemed to flow through their skin and Jack's manufactured truths fell hollow even though he believed them.
When the truth came out some months later, it was ugly.
Jack called Martha first, then the Doctor to demand an explanation. The Doctor would not come but he told Jack that immortality was only the tip of the iceberg. At that, Martha searched harder and came up with startling results.
Both agents were immortal but neither was a fixed point.
When Jack died, he had been tied to the time vortex and eventually generated fixed point energy. In Gwen and Ianto, the fixed point energy fused together rift and vortex energy, tying them to the rift. They were not generating any of their own energy; they were feeding off what came through the rift. Since the three forces were keeping each other in check, if one decreased or increased without the other two it would destabilize and destroy the host body from the inside. They would die just as they almost had that night with the Doctor. Worse, the destruction would be explosive and probably take out a good kilometer in every direction if it happened.
Their bodies needed a plentiful source of vortex and rift energy as much as food or water.
That meant they needed to live over the rift, the only source of such energy on earth and the only source in the universe they knew was strong enough.
Ianto and Gwen would be Torchwood as long as the rift was active without the promised release of death or even Jack's occasional trips off planet.
It was ironic indeed that the organization known for killing off its agents managed to acquire three immortal ones, two of which would never be able to leave.
The universe has a bitter sense of humor.
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FIN
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Commentary: Prompt 49
I didn't have any original ideas so I just wrote some character interaction. It works.
Commentary: Prompt 50
I thought this was a fitting end.
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Author's Notes:
For some reason, I absolutely adore that final drabble. This is the end of the official drabble series. There will be one more chapter with excess (if someone enters the contest, or if they don't then a few clips I have lying around).
Hope you all enjoyed reading.