Fic: First Line Of Defence
Feb. 20th, 2025 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: First Line Of Defence
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Jack, Suzie, Tosh, Owen, Ianto, OCs.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1885
Summary: Right from its inception, Torchwood was meant to be earth’s first line of defence against outside threats.
Spoilers: For the first two series.
Written For: Challenge 461: Line at
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fan_flashworks.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood or any of the characters.
Torchwood’s job was to be earth’s first line of defence against alien threats of all kinds. The Institute had been created for that very purpose decades before UNIT was even thought of, and since it was meant to protect the planet, or at least the British Empire, there had originally been branches in each of the countries that made up the British Isles, and others scattered throughout the colonies.
Then the Empire had gradually crumbled, many of Torchwood’s branches had been shut down, leaving a mere two or three still in existence overseas, barely maintained and mostly forgotten about. All that had remained in full operation had been Torchwood One in London, and two smaller branches, one in Glasgow, and the other in Cardiff, monitoring the Rift in time and space that ran through that city.
There had been a fourth Torchwood branch for a time, but that had vanished at some point during the twentieth century. No one seemed to know what had happened to it, or if they knew, they weren’t saying. Such things happened when Torchwood was involved. Once in a while, someone eager to make a name for themselves might decide to reopen the investigation into its disappearance, but so far, the mystery of Torchwood Four’s fate remained unsolved. No one particularly cared; the three remaining branches were enough to fulfil the Institute’s purpose.
The Cardiff branch had always been kept small, so as not to draw too much attention to itself. It was considered best to keep the existence of the Rift a closely guarded secret, so as not to alarm the city’s residents. The population of earth wasn’t ready to know the truth about aliens; they’d only panic, which would complicate things for the Torchwood Institute, who were busy arming themselves for the future, taking whatever technology fell into their hands, and using it for their own purposes, which, according to the people in charge of Torchwood One, the rest of the world didn’t need to know about.
So everything had ticked along in a more or less orderly fashion until the eve of the millennium, when the head of Torchwood Three had, for reasons nobody quite understood, murdered his entire team before turning his gun on himself. Well, all but one member of his team, since Captain Jack Harkness was blessed, or cursed, with the unique ability to survive being killed.
Being the last man standing, leadership of Torchwood Three had automatically passed to Captain Harkness, Alex Hopkins having nominated him as his successor just before blowing both their brains out. Yvonne Hartman, head of Torchwood One, hadn’t been happy about that, but she’d had other, more pressing matters to deal with at the time, and as annoying as she found Harkness and his constant insubordination, at least running Torchwood Three kept him out of her hair. Mostly.
For his part, Jack had never wanted to be in charge of anything, but now that he was officially the new head of Torchwood Three, as much as he disliked being stuck in a leadership role, with all the paperwork and bureaucracy that entailed, he found it did give him a certain amount of freedom. He could decide which of Torchwood One’s rules to follow, and which to ignore, and there really wasn’t a lot that Hartman and her cronies could do about it, since he was now the only person with the access codes to the base and its extensive archives. He’d changed them all as soon as he’d laid his former colleagues to rest in the Hub’s morgue.
Jack had always hated Torchwood One’s unofficial motto of ‘If it’s alien, it’s ours’. He also hated the Institute’s policy of imprisoning, interrogating, torturing, experimenting on, and subsequently dissecting every alien they came across, no matter how intelligent or peaceful they might be. Left to Hartman and her ilk, by the time earth made official contact with people from other planets, peaceful and mutually beneficial relations would be impossible. Hartman had never met a line she wouldn’t willingly cross in her desire to restore the British Empire to its former glory. In Jack’s opinion, she was a bigger threat to earth than any of the aliens who became stranded on the planet, most of them through no fault of their own, and whenever he had an opportunity to interfere with her plans, he intended to take full advantage of it.
Perhaps most importantly, at least from Jack’s point of view, running the Cardiff branch would give him the opportunity to change at least his small section of the Torchwood Institute for the better, turn it into something the Doctor would approve of. He still didn’t know the full story of how and why the Time Lord had come to be considered Torchwood’s number one enemy, and quite honestly, he didn’t care; he’d travelled with the Doctor, and knew from firsthand experience that far from being a threat to earth, he was someone who could be relied on to protect the planet whenever he was able. Torchwood should be grateful to him for all he’d done for earth over the years. Then again, the bigwigs at Torchwood One were so full of their own importance that they probably resented the Doctor for being better at protecting the human race than their own people were. They did so hate to be told they were wrong.
The main downside Jack could envisage regarding being head of Torchwood Three, even worse than the paperwork, was being in charge of a team. He’d been a ranking officer several times during various wars, had led men into battle more times than he cared to remember, and still recalled the names and faces of every soldier who’d died while under his command. The thought of sending more brave young people out into the field day after day, ordering them to put their lives on the line facing the kinds of threats most people couldn’t begin to imagine, was unbearable. He’d already seen far too many of his colleagues die before they’d really had a chance to live, let alone reach their full potential; life expectancy was pitifully short for Torchwood agents.
In order to avoid dealing with all that, for the first few years he simply didn’t recruit anyone. He couldn’t die, or more accurately, couldn’t stay dead, so it seemed logical to only put his own life at risk. Nevertheless, eventually there came a point when he realised that by trying to avoid having to deliberately send people into dangerous situations, he was risking the lives of innocent bystanders. Reluctantly, he started building a team, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t be everywhere at once.
To start with, there’d been Roger, and Suzie, and Mike, but Mike had only survived three months before being hit by a car while chasing a Weevil. Roger, the team medic, had lasted a whole year before a blowfish shot him in the chest. He was gone by the time Jack got to him.
Tosh was Mike’s replacement, and Carol took over as medic, until it all got too much for her, and she asked to be retconned. Three months later, Jack brought Owen Harper in as team medic.
Then came the battle of Canary Wharf, which was more of a wholesale massacre than a battle, since the humans caught in the middle of it were both outnumbered and outgunned. Daleks and Cyberman swarmed through Torchwood Tower, and by the time it was over, only twenty-seven people were left alive out of over eight hundred employees. Everyone in upper management was dead, deleted, exterminated, or converted, and suddenly Jack was the most senior Torchwood agent left standing.
He didn’t care; Torchwood One had brought their destruction down on themselves, they’d been messing with things they didn’t understand for far too long and had finally got what they deserved. Perhaps it was harsh of him, salvaging whatever tech he and his team could find and ignoring the survivors, probably he should have done something to help them, but he hadn’t considered them his responsibility. He had his own team to look out for. He drew the line at helping people who’d refused to listen to his warnings. He didn’t want anything to do with Torchwood One ever again; as far as he was concerned, the Institute was gone, just like the British Empire it represented. The world would be better off without it.
That lasted until a former Torchwood One agent showed up in Cardiff and started stalking Jack, asking for a job. Jack said no, repeatedly, but Ianto Jones had an interesting way with pick-up lines, complimenting Jack’s coat, offering him truly sublime coffee, tempting him with a pterodactyl of all things… After rolling about on a warehouse floor with the gorgeous Welshman on top of him, Jack’s resolve wavered, which was how he wound up with not only a new guard dog in the form of a prehistoric flying reptile, but a butler and general dogsbody to make the coffee and do all the jobs that nobody else wanted to deal with.
A few short months later, Suzie, obsessed with the resurrection gauntlet, went on a murder spree, then took her own life. Jack hired a young police constable to fill his former second in command’s spot on the team, and then Ianto’s cyber girlfriend went on the rampage, proving that Jack should have more thoroughly investigated his motives for wanting to stay with Torchwood, instead of allowing himself to be swayed by cute suits, fantastic coffee, and a flying dinosaur.
On the other hand, Ianto was amazingly efficient, easy on the eye, and by that point, Torchwood Three would have probably fallen apart without him, so once Jack got over his anger, he let the young Welshman resume his place on the team. Ianto had made a serious error in judgement, true, but what he’d done had been out of love, not a desire to destroy the world, so executing him would have been not merely extreme but also wasteful. If Toshiko deserved a second chance after essentially committing treason to save her mother’s life, then surely Ianto deserved the same consideration.
Aside from Archie and his assistant in Glasgow, Jack and his team were now all that remained of the Torchwood Institute, and now that the executives from head office were no longer issuing orders and breathing down his neck, he was able to run things as he saw fit. That meant helping stranded aliens instead of imprisoning them, and working to improve earth’s reputation among the peaceful races while at the same time dealing harshly with invasion forces, and criminals from other worlds.
He might not have wanted to be in charge, but he was proud of his little team; they were good people, loyal, brave, and dedicated to protecting the planet. They needed to be, because their job was never going to be an easy one; there were only five of them against whatever the Rift threw at them, five people putting everything on the line to defend the planet and its people from threats most of the human race weren’t even aware of.
The twenty-first century was when everything would change, and few in number though they might be, Torchwood was ready.
The End
Then the Empire had gradually crumbled, many of Torchwood’s branches had been shut down, leaving a mere two or three still in existence overseas, barely maintained and mostly forgotten about. All that had remained in full operation had been Torchwood One in London, and two smaller branches, one in Glasgow, and the other in Cardiff, monitoring the Rift in time and space that ran through that city.
There had been a fourth Torchwood branch for a time, but that had vanished at some point during the twentieth century. No one seemed to know what had happened to it, or if they knew, they weren’t saying. Such things happened when Torchwood was involved. Once in a while, someone eager to make a name for themselves might decide to reopen the investigation into its disappearance, but so far, the mystery of Torchwood Four’s fate remained unsolved. No one particularly cared; the three remaining branches were enough to fulfil the Institute’s purpose.
The Cardiff branch had always been kept small, so as not to draw too much attention to itself. It was considered best to keep the existence of the Rift a closely guarded secret, so as not to alarm the city’s residents. The population of earth wasn’t ready to know the truth about aliens; they’d only panic, which would complicate things for the Torchwood Institute, who were busy arming themselves for the future, taking whatever technology fell into their hands, and using it for their own purposes, which, according to the people in charge of Torchwood One, the rest of the world didn’t need to know about.
So everything had ticked along in a more or less orderly fashion until the eve of the millennium, when the head of Torchwood Three had, for reasons nobody quite understood, murdered his entire team before turning his gun on himself. Well, all but one member of his team, since Captain Jack Harkness was blessed, or cursed, with the unique ability to survive being killed.
Being the last man standing, leadership of Torchwood Three had automatically passed to Captain Harkness, Alex Hopkins having nominated him as his successor just before blowing both their brains out. Yvonne Hartman, head of Torchwood One, hadn’t been happy about that, but she’d had other, more pressing matters to deal with at the time, and as annoying as she found Harkness and his constant insubordination, at least running Torchwood Three kept him out of her hair. Mostly.
For his part, Jack had never wanted to be in charge of anything, but now that he was officially the new head of Torchwood Three, as much as he disliked being stuck in a leadership role, with all the paperwork and bureaucracy that entailed, he found it did give him a certain amount of freedom. He could decide which of Torchwood One’s rules to follow, and which to ignore, and there really wasn’t a lot that Hartman and her cronies could do about it, since he was now the only person with the access codes to the base and its extensive archives. He’d changed them all as soon as he’d laid his former colleagues to rest in the Hub’s morgue.
Jack had always hated Torchwood One’s unofficial motto of ‘If it’s alien, it’s ours’. He also hated the Institute’s policy of imprisoning, interrogating, torturing, experimenting on, and subsequently dissecting every alien they came across, no matter how intelligent or peaceful they might be. Left to Hartman and her ilk, by the time earth made official contact with people from other planets, peaceful and mutually beneficial relations would be impossible. Hartman had never met a line she wouldn’t willingly cross in her desire to restore the British Empire to its former glory. In Jack’s opinion, she was a bigger threat to earth than any of the aliens who became stranded on the planet, most of them through no fault of their own, and whenever he had an opportunity to interfere with her plans, he intended to take full advantage of it.
Perhaps most importantly, at least from Jack’s point of view, running the Cardiff branch would give him the opportunity to change at least his small section of the Torchwood Institute for the better, turn it into something the Doctor would approve of. He still didn’t know the full story of how and why the Time Lord had come to be considered Torchwood’s number one enemy, and quite honestly, he didn’t care; he’d travelled with the Doctor, and knew from firsthand experience that far from being a threat to earth, he was someone who could be relied on to protect the planet whenever he was able. Torchwood should be grateful to him for all he’d done for earth over the years. Then again, the bigwigs at Torchwood One were so full of their own importance that they probably resented the Doctor for being better at protecting the human race than their own people were. They did so hate to be told they were wrong.
The main downside Jack could envisage regarding being head of Torchwood Three, even worse than the paperwork, was being in charge of a team. He’d been a ranking officer several times during various wars, had led men into battle more times than he cared to remember, and still recalled the names and faces of every soldier who’d died while under his command. The thought of sending more brave young people out into the field day after day, ordering them to put their lives on the line facing the kinds of threats most people couldn’t begin to imagine, was unbearable. He’d already seen far too many of his colleagues die before they’d really had a chance to live, let alone reach their full potential; life expectancy was pitifully short for Torchwood agents.
In order to avoid dealing with all that, for the first few years he simply didn’t recruit anyone. He couldn’t die, or more accurately, couldn’t stay dead, so it seemed logical to only put his own life at risk. Nevertheless, eventually there came a point when he realised that by trying to avoid having to deliberately send people into dangerous situations, he was risking the lives of innocent bystanders. Reluctantly, he started building a team, because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t be everywhere at once.
To start with, there’d been Roger, and Suzie, and Mike, but Mike had only survived three months before being hit by a car while chasing a Weevil. Roger, the team medic, had lasted a whole year before a blowfish shot him in the chest. He was gone by the time Jack got to him.
Tosh was Mike’s replacement, and Carol took over as medic, until it all got too much for her, and she asked to be retconned. Three months later, Jack brought Owen Harper in as team medic.
Then came the battle of Canary Wharf, which was more of a wholesale massacre than a battle, since the humans caught in the middle of it were both outnumbered and outgunned. Daleks and Cyberman swarmed through Torchwood Tower, and by the time it was over, only twenty-seven people were left alive out of over eight hundred employees. Everyone in upper management was dead, deleted, exterminated, or converted, and suddenly Jack was the most senior Torchwood agent left standing.
He didn’t care; Torchwood One had brought their destruction down on themselves, they’d been messing with things they didn’t understand for far too long and had finally got what they deserved. Perhaps it was harsh of him, salvaging whatever tech he and his team could find and ignoring the survivors, probably he should have done something to help them, but he hadn’t considered them his responsibility. He had his own team to look out for. He drew the line at helping people who’d refused to listen to his warnings. He didn’t want anything to do with Torchwood One ever again; as far as he was concerned, the Institute was gone, just like the British Empire it represented. The world would be better off without it.
That lasted until a former Torchwood One agent showed up in Cardiff and started stalking Jack, asking for a job. Jack said no, repeatedly, but Ianto Jones had an interesting way with pick-up lines, complimenting Jack’s coat, offering him truly sublime coffee, tempting him with a pterodactyl of all things… After rolling about on a warehouse floor with the gorgeous Welshman on top of him, Jack’s resolve wavered, which was how he wound up with not only a new guard dog in the form of a prehistoric flying reptile, but a butler and general dogsbody to make the coffee and do all the jobs that nobody else wanted to deal with.
A few short months later, Suzie, obsessed with the resurrection gauntlet, went on a murder spree, then took her own life. Jack hired a young police constable to fill his former second in command’s spot on the team, and then Ianto’s cyber girlfriend went on the rampage, proving that Jack should have more thoroughly investigated his motives for wanting to stay with Torchwood, instead of allowing himself to be swayed by cute suits, fantastic coffee, and a flying dinosaur.
On the other hand, Ianto was amazingly efficient, easy on the eye, and by that point, Torchwood Three would have probably fallen apart without him, so once Jack got over his anger, he let the young Welshman resume his place on the team. Ianto had made a serious error in judgement, true, but what he’d done had been out of love, not a desire to destroy the world, so executing him would have been not merely extreme but also wasteful. If Toshiko deserved a second chance after essentially committing treason to save her mother’s life, then surely Ianto deserved the same consideration.
Aside from Archie and his assistant in Glasgow, Jack and his team were now all that remained of the Torchwood Institute, and now that the executives from head office were no longer issuing orders and breathing down his neck, he was able to run things as he saw fit. That meant helping stranded aliens instead of imprisoning them, and working to improve earth’s reputation among the peaceful races while at the same time dealing harshly with invasion forces, and criminals from other worlds.
He might not have wanted to be in charge, but he was proud of his little team; they were good people, loyal, brave, and dedicated to protecting the planet. They needed to be, because their job was never going to be an easy one; there were only five of them against whatever the Rift threw at them, five people putting everything on the line to defend the planet and its people from threats most of the human race weren’t even aware of.
The twenty-first century was when everything would change, and few in number though they might be, Torchwood was ready.
The End
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Date: 2025-02-21 01:25 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-02-21 10:36 am (UTC)