Ficlet: What A Year
Feb. 20th, 2026 05:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: What A Year
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Ianto, Gwen, Tosh.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 567
Spoilers: Nada.
Summary: The Torchwood Team are working overtime, trying to keep Cardiff safe from an endless string of problems only they can handle.
Written For: The prompt ‘any, any, “What a year it's been.” “It's February”,’ at
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threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
Working for Torchwood was a full-time job unlike any other. It wasn’t nine to five, six days a week, with Christmas and bank holidays off, and two weeks in the summer, it was twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, and half the time it felt like they were trying to fit more hours into each day than actually existed. There were times when work was so relentless that the team didn’t even know what month it was, never mind what day. They just had to keep going, dealing with one potentially catastrophic crisis after another, because if they didn’t deal with it, who would?
It had been that way recently, with no one getting enough sleep, or even a half-day off to catch up with things like laundry, grocery shopping, and sleep. They were surviving, if it could be called that, on copious cups of coffee, and whatever they could grab to eat, which mostly meant pizza since they could get that delivered to the Tourist Office. That was not only convenient, it saved them a lot of effort. How much longer they could keep going at that pace, no one wanted to hazard a guess at. They were all too tired to do much thinking anyway, outside of whatever was absolutely essential to do their jobs, hopefully without making anything worse.
Ianto collapsed bonelessly onto the Hub sofa with a heartfelt groan, relieved at being able to take his weight off his aching feet, even if just for a few minutes. “What a year it’s been,” he said, slumping against the cushions, and closing his eyes. He wondered if he could spare the time for a brief nap; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had more than two hours of sleep in a row.
“Year? It’s barely February,” Gwen said, frowning.
“You’re sure about that, are you? We’ve repelled four invasion attempts, captured, rehabilitated, and released nineteen rogue Weevils and euthanized a further seven, dealt with three Hoix, a Bozog, five stranded spacecraft, eleven parties of lost alien tourists. On top of that, we’ve retrieved forty-seven Rift gifts, including three explosive devices and something that made a field full of sheep spontaneously combust, and had to turn the mayor and half the city council back into themselves after they accidentally got turned into wombats. As if all that wasn’t enough, we’ve also captured a blowfish in a dustbin lorry, returned a stolen planet to its rightful owner, confiscated a load of alien drugs that made people’s hair fall out, and then there was that infestation of woozles building nests out of chewed up books in the central library…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Does that sound like the kind of workload that would fit into a mere five weeks?”
“Ianto’s right,” Tosh said, sinking wearily onto the sofa beside her friend. “It’s been one hell of a year, can’t we just rewind it, start it over, and spread everything out over the full twelve months so we don’t have to deal with it all at once? If it keeps on like this for the rest of the year, I don’t know how we’ll cope. Do you think Jack would consider expanding the team? A few more pairs of hand would help.”
Ianto didn’t reply. He might not have time for a nap, but he was taking one anyway.
The End
It had been that way recently, with no one getting enough sleep, or even a half-day off to catch up with things like laundry, grocery shopping, and sleep. They were surviving, if it could be called that, on copious cups of coffee, and whatever they could grab to eat, which mostly meant pizza since they could get that delivered to the Tourist Office. That was not only convenient, it saved them a lot of effort. How much longer they could keep going at that pace, no one wanted to hazard a guess at. They were all too tired to do much thinking anyway, outside of whatever was absolutely essential to do their jobs, hopefully without making anything worse.
Ianto collapsed bonelessly onto the Hub sofa with a heartfelt groan, relieved at being able to take his weight off his aching feet, even if just for a few minutes. “What a year it’s been,” he said, slumping against the cushions, and closing his eyes. He wondered if he could spare the time for a brief nap; he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had more than two hours of sleep in a row.
“Year? It’s barely February,” Gwen said, frowning.
“You’re sure about that, are you? We’ve repelled four invasion attempts, captured, rehabilitated, and released nineteen rogue Weevils and euthanized a further seven, dealt with three Hoix, a Bozog, five stranded spacecraft, eleven parties of lost alien tourists. On top of that, we’ve retrieved forty-seven Rift gifts, including three explosive devices and something that made a field full of sheep spontaneously combust, and had to turn the mayor and half the city council back into themselves after they accidentally got turned into wombats. As if all that wasn’t enough, we’ve also captured a blowfish in a dustbin lorry, returned a stolen planet to its rightful owner, confiscated a load of alien drugs that made people’s hair fall out, and then there was that infestation of woozles building nests out of chewed up books in the central library…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “Does that sound like the kind of workload that would fit into a mere five weeks?”
“Ianto’s right,” Tosh said, sinking wearily onto the sofa beside her friend. “It’s been one hell of a year, can’t we just rewind it, start it over, and spread everything out over the full twelve months so we don’t have to deal with it all at once? If it keeps on like this for the rest of the year, I don’t know how we’ll cope. Do you think Jack would consider expanding the team? A few more pairs of hand would help.”
Ianto didn’t reply. He might not have time for a nap, but he was taking one anyway.
The End
