Ficlet: Unintentional
Mar. 20th, 2025 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Unintentional
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Jack.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 569
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Jack really isn’t as stupid as some people think, and this was not intentional.
Written For:
with_rainfall’s prompt: Any, any, set fire to your hair (Dumb Ways to Die), at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Despite what some people seemed to think, Jack wasn’t stupid. Okay, sometimes he was, because despite being immortal, he was still only human, and like anyone else, he was prone to making the occasional really dumb mistake. He never claimed to be perfect, okay? But as a general rule, he wasn’t stupid, he did try to take all the obvious and sensible precautions in dangerous situations, because he didn’t enjoy dying. It wasn’t fun, it was usually painful, messy, and generally unpleasant, so like any normal person, he avoided death wherever possible.
It was just that if there was a risk of someone being seriously injured, or even killed, surely it was better for it be him, because at least then he could be reasonably sure it wouldn’t be permanent. Everyone else only got the one life to live, while he apparently had more lives than every cat that had ever existed, added together and multiplied by a few million. He could afford to use a few of his unlimited lives protecting other people from a more permanent demise, in fact it would be selfish not to.
So no, dying was never what he’d call intentional. Well, with the exception of maybe a handful of occasions when it had felt like the better option; a choice between trying to cope with multiple injuries during an emergency situation, and a quick death, which would allow him to revive fully healed, ready to continue the battle. In the past, there’d been a few times he’d deliberately killed himself just because he’d wanted to escape his existence, even if only for a few short minutes, but he didn’t count those; they were moments of weakness, and he was trying not to give in to that kind of despair anymore.
Most of the time dying was simply an unfortunate side-effect of trying to prevent the death of someone less resilient, but there were also occasions when death just sort of happened, because even with the best will in the world, no one could predict every possible eventuality, and accidents were sometimes unavoidable. Life wasn’t perfect, fate could be cruel, or simply indifferent, and circumstances could sometimes conspire to turn an otherwise harmless sequence of events into a complete and ignominious disaster. Like today.
Yes, he’d used a bit of hairspray, because it was a windy day, and his usual hair gel didn’t always do the trick. Besides, he’d run out a couple of days ago and forgotten to add it to the shopping list when Ianto had gone to pick up supplies. He’d been planning to pick some up himself in the morning, but how was he to know there’d be a Rift alert in the middle of the night, or that a really fascinating piece of alien tech would come through? And surely no one could think he’d done it deliberately; not that he had any intention of telling anyone about the incident, because… Well,
It wasn’t his fault the item had activated so unexpectedly. He’d been examining it, trying to figure out what it was, and he’d been keeping his fingers well clear of the buttons on its side, because one of the first rules of Torchwood was ‘don’t press buttons just to see what happens’, and he didn’t, honest! It must have been faulty or something, perhaps damaged by its trip through the Rift, and he’d only been trying to read what was written on the side when it went off, and…
Bottom line, accidentally setting your own hair on fire with an alien firelighter was a really dumb way to die.
The End
It was just that if there was a risk of someone being seriously injured, or even killed, surely it was better for it be him, because at least then he could be reasonably sure it wouldn’t be permanent. Everyone else only got the one life to live, while he apparently had more lives than every cat that had ever existed, added together and multiplied by a few million. He could afford to use a few of his unlimited lives protecting other people from a more permanent demise, in fact it would be selfish not to.
So no, dying was never what he’d call intentional. Well, with the exception of maybe a handful of occasions when it had felt like the better option; a choice between trying to cope with multiple injuries during an emergency situation, and a quick death, which would allow him to revive fully healed, ready to continue the battle. In the past, there’d been a few times he’d deliberately killed himself just because he’d wanted to escape his existence, even if only for a few short minutes, but he didn’t count those; they were moments of weakness, and he was trying not to give in to that kind of despair anymore.
Most of the time dying was simply an unfortunate side-effect of trying to prevent the death of someone less resilient, but there were also occasions when death just sort of happened, because even with the best will in the world, no one could predict every possible eventuality, and accidents were sometimes unavoidable. Life wasn’t perfect, fate could be cruel, or simply indifferent, and circumstances could sometimes conspire to turn an otherwise harmless sequence of events into a complete and ignominious disaster. Like today.
Yes, he’d used a bit of hairspray, because it was a windy day, and his usual hair gel didn’t always do the trick. Besides, he’d run out a couple of days ago and forgotten to add it to the shopping list when Ianto had gone to pick up supplies. He’d been planning to pick some up himself in the morning, but how was he to know there’d be a Rift alert in the middle of the night, or that a really fascinating piece of alien tech would come through? And surely no one could think he’d done it deliberately; not that he had any intention of telling anyone about the incident, because… Well,
It wasn’t his fault the item had activated so unexpectedly. He’d been examining it, trying to figure out what it was, and he’d been keeping his fingers well clear of the buttons on its side, because one of the first rules of Torchwood was ‘don’t press buttons just to see what happens’, and he didn’t, honest! It must have been faulty or something, perhaps damaged by its trip through the Rift, and he’d only been trying to read what was written on the side when it went off, and…
Bottom line, accidentally setting your own hair on fire with an alien firelighter was a really dumb way to die.
The End
