Ficlet: The Truth Behind The Lies
Aug. 28th, 2025 06:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: The Truth Behind The Lies
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Team Torchwood.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 556
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: Nobody really believes in aliens, and nobody likes Torchwood, but if they only knew the truth...
Written For:
toomanyghosts’s prompt ‘any ; any ; accepted truths that are absolute lies’, at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Everyone knows there are no such things as aliens, that earth is the only inhabited planet in the galaxy, in ALL the galaxies, in the entire universe, because if aliens really did exist, some trace of them would have been discovered by now. Astronomers would have picked up radio signals, or aliens from some race advanced enough to have developed interstellar travel would have visited our world. Perhaps on a mission of peace, but more likely to invade earth, enslave everyone, and strip the planet of its resources, because that’s what aliens do in all those sci-fi blockbusters that are so popular.
Everyone knows that Torchwood, or ‘Bloody Torchwood’, as they’re more popularly known, are special ops, although that’s about all people DO know, because they’re very hush-hush, and no one’s entirely sure what their purpose is, aside from turfing the police off crime scenes and taking over. Most people are sure they’re either a counter-terrorism unit, or counterintelligence, although a lot of them argue that the country is in BIG trouble if that’s the case, because there’s not much in the way of intelligence on display with that bunch of misfits and their flashy, flirtatious American captain.
Everyone is, of course, completely wrong, because aliens do exist, and both the peaceful, benevolent kind, and the hostile invader kind have been to earth on countless occasions. The peaceful ones usually arrive by accident, since earth is off-limits until such time as humanity has evolved enough to be worth associating with. The visits by the hostile ones are, unsurprisingly, deliberate, with bad intentions towards the planet and its inhabitants, not so different from the kinds of things the aliens in the movies are always trying to do.
But that, of course, is why Torchwood exists; to help the peaceful aliens, and to deal with the hostile ones in the quickest and most effective way possible, all the while making sure that the people of earth keep believing the comforting lies. Because right now, if the human race found out the whole, unvarnished truth… well, let’s just say they’d probably panic, and that would make Torchwood’s job a whole lot harder than it already is.
So they put up with being disparaged, yelled at, spat at, insulted, looked down on by the police and the public alike. They put up with people saying they’re a nuisance, a waste of both space and the taxpayer’s money, a pain in the behind that the whole country would be better off without. They shrug off the complete lack of gratitude, dispense retcon to keep the public in their blissful ignorance, and exchange long-suffering smiles as they clean up the mess left by the latest would-be invaders.
They know they’ll never receive the credit they deserve for saving Cardiff, Wales, the United Kingdom, and on occasion, the whole planet from a fate worse than death, or even complete annihilation, but they don’t do this job for fame and glory. They do it because they have dedicated their lives to protecting ordinary people from things they don’t believe in and wouldn’t understand. They may not get praise or gratitude, but they get the kind of job satisfaction they could never get anywhere else, and sometimes they see things that give them hope for humanity’s future. There’s no other job that could possibly compare.
The End
Everyone knows that Torchwood, or ‘Bloody Torchwood’, as they’re more popularly known, are special ops, although that’s about all people DO know, because they’re very hush-hush, and no one’s entirely sure what their purpose is, aside from turfing the police off crime scenes and taking over. Most people are sure they’re either a counter-terrorism unit, or counterintelligence, although a lot of them argue that the country is in BIG trouble if that’s the case, because there’s not much in the way of intelligence on display with that bunch of misfits and their flashy, flirtatious American captain.
Everyone is, of course, completely wrong, because aliens do exist, and both the peaceful, benevolent kind, and the hostile invader kind have been to earth on countless occasions. The peaceful ones usually arrive by accident, since earth is off-limits until such time as humanity has evolved enough to be worth associating with. The visits by the hostile ones are, unsurprisingly, deliberate, with bad intentions towards the planet and its inhabitants, not so different from the kinds of things the aliens in the movies are always trying to do.
But that, of course, is why Torchwood exists; to help the peaceful aliens, and to deal with the hostile ones in the quickest and most effective way possible, all the while making sure that the people of earth keep believing the comforting lies. Because right now, if the human race found out the whole, unvarnished truth… well, let’s just say they’d probably panic, and that would make Torchwood’s job a whole lot harder than it already is.
So they put up with being disparaged, yelled at, spat at, insulted, looked down on by the police and the public alike. They put up with people saying they’re a nuisance, a waste of both space and the taxpayer’s money, a pain in the behind that the whole country would be better off without. They shrug off the complete lack of gratitude, dispense retcon to keep the public in their blissful ignorance, and exchange long-suffering smiles as they clean up the mess left by the latest would-be invaders.
They know they’ll never receive the credit they deserve for saving Cardiff, Wales, the United Kingdom, and on occasion, the whole planet from a fate worse than death, or even complete annihilation, but they don’t do this job for fame and glory. They do it because they have dedicated their lives to protecting ordinary people from things they don’t believe in and wouldn’t understand. They may not get praise or gratitude, but they get the kind of job satisfaction they could never get anywhere else, and sometimes they see things that give them hope for humanity’s future. There’s no other job that could possibly compare.
The End
(no subject)
Date: 2025-08-28 10:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2025-08-29 09:17 am (UTC)Thank you!