Ficlet: Endings And Beginnings
Mar. 2nd, 2026 05:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
badly_knittedTitle: Endings And Beginnings
Author:
badly_knittedCharacters: Jack, Ianto.
Rating: PG
Word Count: 683
Spoilers: Nada. Set in my Through Time and Space ‘Verse.
Summary: Jack and Ianto have seen a lot in their travels around the universe, but there are still new things to see.
Written For:
templefugate’s prompt ‘Any, any, life after the end of the world’, at ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
threesentenceficathon.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters.
The universe was vast, beyond anything the human mind could begin to comprehend. Even being immortal didn’t make one all-seeing and all-knowing, although both men were still making a good stab at it. After all this time, they’d certainly seen a great deal of what existed in the far-flung galaxies, the nebulae, the fathomless depths of space between worlds, and the worlds themselves.
They’d learned a lot, and forgotten most of it, only to learn and forget it again countless times. If nothing else, the forgetting part at least kept things new and fresh, and it wasn’t as if they forgot everything. It was more a case of a lot of things simply not being worth remembering long-term. Why let the insignificant and boring stuff clog up their brains when there were so many wonders to think about and remember instead?
Of course, they didn’t always know something would be worth remembering until later, so it was usually worth the effort of making a careful study of anything that appeared a bit different, just in case it proved to be interesting, enlightening, or otherwise entertaining enough to be worth committing to memory, and perhaps added to their scrapbooks.
So far, this event was proving to be a bit of an anticlimax, but then, what had they really been expecting? High drama? A dazzling lightshow? A scintillating explosion, all fire and deafening noise? If they’d been hoping for something along those lines, they were now sadly disappointed. Not everything could live up to the hype.
“Well,” Jack said, sounding singularly underwhelmed by the almost complete lack of spectacle, “the universe ended, and yet we’re still here.”
Ianto snorted and shook his head as he looked fondly at his husband. “A world ended, Jack, not the entire universe. Just one small and rather unremarkable world, in an out of the way corner of space, that few people are ever going to miss, mostly because hardly anyone knew it was there in the first place. It wasn’t even our world, in fact I’m not sure it was anybody’s, just one that was created and never really came to anything, which is sort of sad now that I think about it.” He raised an eyebrow. “We’ve only been wandering around for half a billion years or so, there’s still a lot of worlds we haven’t explored yet. Are you really still so eager for the end? I thought you’d grown out of that.”
“No, not really. I mean sometimes, just occasionally, I wonder what’s gonna happen to us when time runs out and the whole universe does eventually end, but I’m not in any hurry to find out.” Jack smiled sheepishly. “It was supposed to be a joke, just not a very good one, I guess.”
“Ah.” Ianto nodded solemnly. “Your stand-up routine could do with a bit of work.”
“Apparently so.” Jack gazed out from their TARDIS as the small, lonely planet they’d been watching continued to disintegrate, then he leaned forward and pointed. “Look, what’s that?”
Something was expanding in the midst of the devastation, something that shimmered like oil on water against the backdrop of the dying sun that had destroyed the planet. Membranous wings gradually stretched and spread, a long, snakelike neck extended, an equally long, arrow-tipped tail lashed in the vacuum of space, scattering the shards of what had been a planet, clearing the space around it. Then, the newly hatched dragon simply hung there, its wings beating slowly as it gathered its strength, perhaps drawing sustenance from the dying sun itself.
“Beautiful,” Ianto sighed. “Who would have thought? I guess some planets are more than they seem.”
Beside him, Jack nodded slowly, slipping one arm around his husband. “Even after so long, there are still new and amazing things to discover and marvel at; this just proves we haven’t seen everything yet.”
Ianto smiled. “Not even close. I wonder how many other planets like that one might exist out there, tucked away, waiting patiently until conditions are right for them to hatch.”
“Maybe someday, if we’re really lucky, we’ll find out.”
The End
They’d learned a lot, and forgotten most of it, only to learn and forget it again countless times. If nothing else, the forgetting part at least kept things new and fresh, and it wasn’t as if they forgot everything. It was more a case of a lot of things simply not being worth remembering long-term. Why let the insignificant and boring stuff clog up their brains when there were so many wonders to think about and remember instead?
Of course, they didn’t always know something would be worth remembering until later, so it was usually worth the effort of making a careful study of anything that appeared a bit different, just in case it proved to be interesting, enlightening, or otherwise entertaining enough to be worth committing to memory, and perhaps added to their scrapbooks.
So far, this event was proving to be a bit of an anticlimax, but then, what had they really been expecting? High drama? A dazzling lightshow? A scintillating explosion, all fire and deafening noise? If they’d been hoping for something along those lines, they were now sadly disappointed. Not everything could live up to the hype.
“Well,” Jack said, sounding singularly underwhelmed by the almost complete lack of spectacle, “the universe ended, and yet we’re still here.”
Ianto snorted and shook his head as he looked fondly at his husband. “A world ended, Jack, not the entire universe. Just one small and rather unremarkable world, in an out of the way corner of space, that few people are ever going to miss, mostly because hardly anyone knew it was there in the first place. It wasn’t even our world, in fact I’m not sure it was anybody’s, just one that was created and never really came to anything, which is sort of sad now that I think about it.” He raised an eyebrow. “We’ve only been wandering around for half a billion years or so, there’s still a lot of worlds we haven’t explored yet. Are you really still so eager for the end? I thought you’d grown out of that.”
“No, not really. I mean sometimes, just occasionally, I wonder what’s gonna happen to us when time runs out and the whole universe does eventually end, but I’m not in any hurry to find out.” Jack smiled sheepishly. “It was supposed to be a joke, just not a very good one, I guess.”
“Ah.” Ianto nodded solemnly. “Your stand-up routine could do with a bit of work.”
“Apparently so.” Jack gazed out from their TARDIS as the small, lonely planet they’d been watching continued to disintegrate, then he leaned forward and pointed. “Look, what’s that?”
Something was expanding in the midst of the devastation, something that shimmered like oil on water against the backdrop of the dying sun that had destroyed the planet. Membranous wings gradually stretched and spread, a long, snakelike neck extended, an equally long, arrow-tipped tail lashed in the vacuum of space, scattering the shards of what had been a planet, clearing the space around it. Then, the newly hatched dragon simply hung there, its wings beating slowly as it gathered its strength, perhaps drawing sustenance from the dying sun itself.
“Beautiful,” Ianto sighed. “Who would have thought? I guess some planets are more than they seem.”
Beside him, Jack nodded slowly, slipping one arm around his husband. “Even after so long, there are still new and amazing things to discover and marvel at; this just proves we haven’t seen everything yet.”
Ianto smiled. “Not even close. I wonder how many other planets like that one might exist out there, tucked away, waiting patiently until conditions are right for them to hatch.”
“Maybe someday, if we’re really lucky, we’ll find out.”
The End
