Torchwood fic: Out of Seven Billion Lights (This is a Love Song) Pt 1
Title: Out of Seven Billion Lights (This is a Love Song) Part One
Words: ~11,500 total
Warnings: Rated 16 for language and violence. Spoilers for Torchwood S1 and S2, and Doctor Who S3. A little hint of the novel The Story of Martha by Dan Abnett too.
Disclaimer: Torchwood and Doctor Who belong to the BBC et al. No copyright infringement intended.
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Owen, Tosh, Ianto, Martha, the Master. Canon pairings.
Notes: My version of what might have happened to the Torchwood team during the Year That Never Was. Also my first ever TW fic. Slightly AU, because Martha will remember.
Gwen Cooper had never been so cold in her life. Her breath froze in clouds around her face and ice sparkled on the edge of her hood. She turned a slow circle. Everything was silver, grey and white. Sky, snow, rocks. Torchwood. Complete lack of monsters or aliens.
"Tell me again why I'm standing on a bloody mountain in the bloody Himalayas freezing my balls off?" Owen said, sharpness marred by chattering teeth. He shoved his gloved hands under his armpits and scowled at Toshiko.
"This is definitely the right place." Tosh sounded mystified. "The readings were very clear."
"Well, there's nothing here." Even Ianto was snapping at her--but he had been in a bad mood ever since Jack's disappearance.
"Look, Tosh," Gwen said, trying and failing to keep the exasperation out of her voice, "your equipment obviously made a mistake. Either there never was an alien-y global disaster about to happen, or we're in the wrong place."
She ignored Ianto muttering 'alien-y?' under his breath.
"The readings I picked up at the Hub were genuine. More likely there's an error in the mobile scanner, and we're standing on top of the problem without seeing it."
Owen groaned.
Gwen was sure Tosh wasn't shivering as much as the rest of them, which wasn't fair at all. She thought wistfully of her flat in Cardiff and the warmth of her bed and Rhys' arms around her, and tried to remember the time difference between India and Wales.
"Here's what we'll do," she said firmly. "If we haven't found anything out of the ordinary by nightfall, we're driving back to the airport and getting the first flight home. Don't worry, I'll be the one explaining to the Prime Minister that it was a wild goose chase."
"I don't know why you're all looking at me that way," Tosh grumbled as she packed away her scanner. "I'm just as eager as you are to get back to warmth and civilization. I'm just telling you that my equipment is not malfunctioning."
"Yeah, that's what they all say." Owen took the lead as they returned to the trail.
Gwen lingered to scan the horizon again. This spot really was peaceful, unmarred by anything other than their bootprints. She had a strange feeling in the back of her throat, though, similar to when the air pressure was about to change. Probably just the altitude and the glare coming off the snow setting her up for a headache later. She'd get some painkillers off Owen and, with any luck, be back at sea level soon.
*
Gwen tilted her head back to watch the sunset fire slide down the sky. Smoke swirled up from the village below her, teasing her with the scents of cooking. It had been a while since their last hot meal.
Pebbles crunched and she turned to see Owen and Ianto returning from the nearby lookout.
"Anything?"
"Not a murmur."
"I spoke to the villagers, as best I could, and they don't seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary."
Tosh was crouched on the path, hunched over her scanner and laptop, but she didn't add anything.
"That's it, then," Gwen tried not to sound too cheerful. "Waste of time and resources, but what can you do? Time to go home."
"What...?" Tosh said, an instant before the world shook around them.
"Tosh?" Owen said as they all regained their balance. "What was that?"
The light was wrong. The air was wrong, sour and full of metal. There was smoke on the horizon. One plume, three, a dozen..."What's happening?" Gwen said sharply.
Another tremor ran through the earth. In the village below, someone started to cry.
"I--I don't know! It's huge, it's everywhere, signals I don't recognise...! Impossible--" Tosh cut off with a gasp.
They crowded around her. She tapped a key and brought up a news feed on the screen.
London. New York. Sydney. Tokyo. Rio. Johannesburg. Egypt. Toronto. Cardiff. The sky ripped open like thin cotton and dark spheres rained down. The laptop speakers wailed and wept and the ground shivered under them and the silence of the mountains grew thicker, inverse to the screaming. Gwen found herself on the path before she'd realised her legs were giving way.
"Oh...my God," Ianto whispered.
Tears ran silently down Toshiko's face. Owen was shaking. "We are in the wrong place," he said hoarsely.
Gwen stared at the screen as the images cut and jumped and the spheres filled city skies like locusts until there was nothing but static and death.
She tipped her head back again and watched the smoke blot out the last of the sun.
"It's the end of the world."
*
The Valiant, three months later
At the sound of whistling, Jack lifted his throbbing head. His lips peeled back from his teeth.
He could handle the pain, and dying and coming back to life to find himself still chained and helpless. He could cope with the myriad humiliations, with the heat and the blank walls and immobility, with the tedium in which he was possessed by thoughts of the Doctor, crippled and at the Master's mercy, and of Martha, alone and hunted on the dying world below. He could deal with the bouts of despair and rage.
What he couldn't stand was that cheery whistle and that self-satisfied smirk.
"Captain Harkness," the Master drawled as he stopped in front of Jack. "Still hanging around, I see. I'm in a very good mood today. Do you know why?"
"You've just heard that there's a cure for a Napoleon complex?"
"I'll tell you," he said, as if Jack hadn't spoken. "I woke up this morning to be greeted by some good news. That's the best way to start the day, don't you think? It's not a big piece of news, really, but...well, I'll tell you in a minute. Do you remember your little group of friends? The ones I sent to the Himalayas? What did you call yourselves...Firewood?"
Jack stared straight ahead. No need to encourage him.
"I believe there were originally four of them, weren't there?"
Jack pressed his teeth hard together. The Master had found a new form of torture.
*
Five days earlier
They limped into the resistance camp. Tosh clutched her bag of scavenged electronics to her chest. Owen helped Ianto, who'd taken a shot to the leg in a near miss with one of those flying monstrosities. Gwen looked around at the straggles of grubby adults and children in the tunnel and their hodge-podge of weapons, guns racked next to garden rakes, and wanted to cry. She was far past that, though. Inside her where there should have been tears was just a dry, aching emptiness.
"Who's in charge here?" she called. They looked at her, half numb, the rest terrified. "Nobody? Well, it shows. We walked straight through your outer perimeter, and you have a chimney leaking smoke. The Toclafane will spot that from miles away. Are you actually trying to survive, or are you just sitting here waiting for them to find you?"
"Gwen," Tosh murmured.
"Who the hell are you?" An old man detached himself from the dank wall of the tunnel. He wore his shrapnel scars and his dog tags like badges, but his hands trembled and his eyes had turned milky. "You're not military, girl, I can tell."
Gwen flicked a glance up and down him, then turned away. She wanted to care, she really did, but there wasn't any space left in her for sympathy.
"We're Torchwood," she said. "And we're here to help you fight."
*
"Gwen, slow down!" Tosh tried not to drop her battered laptop as she jogged across the wet gravel in Gwen's wake. "This is insane!"
Gwen rounded on her, nearly knocking her over. "You said that if we could capture one of those Tocla-thingies you could find a way to beat them."
"Might be able to. But fighters in the resistance have already tried, and every one of them is dead! We should do what we came here to do. Teach them to fight, help the wounded, gather information, and move on."
"Move on to what, Tosh? We show them how to shoot straight, make sure they understand about camouflage and posting guards, put them in touch with the rest of the underground, tell them about the markets that are being set up...It helps, but not enough. It's not nearly enough!"
"I know that!" Toshiko yelled back at her.
The rain thundered around them, and Gwen watched the sky. She was always doing that when they were above ground, waiting for the moment she'd hear that spine-scraping whine, those childish voices chanting down death. She shuddered.
"You're getting careless," Tosh said. Her voice was raw. Her hair hung in clumps over her scratched, dirty face. Gwen knew she looked the same. They were fugitives, and everywhere they stopped they risked bringing disaster down on the people they were trying to help. They had to make that help count for more than it did. They had to make it worth it, had to find a way to make a difference, find some weapon that would work in this hopeless war...
She realised that Tosh was still speaking, and struggled to focus.
"It's not helping anyone. What good does it do if we die? I want to dissect one of those things as badly as you do, but we're on their radar."
"Exactly. They'll recognise us, they'll want us, so we use that. We have to do this!"
Tosh closed her eyes, the fight draining out of her.
"Owen and Ianto?"
"I've already spoken to them. This will work, Tosh, I'll make it work, I promise..."
"I just don't want you to use something I suggested as an excuse to get yourself killed," Tosh whispered.
"I'm making this decision. Me, not you. This is what we do. We're Torchwood." She was saying that more and more these days, she'd noticed, as if it was all she had left to cling to.
"Just...just remember why we're fighting, Gwen. You, of all people, never give up, but recently..." Tosh swallowed. "You're...starting to scare me."
"I know what I'm fighting for," Gwen said flatly. "A world of slaves. Hundreds of millions of people just....snuffed out. How could I give up? We walk in the dust of their bodies, we breathe it in, we drink it. They're inside us, all of the dead...everyone we loved...I can't give up. I have to fight for them, all of them, for him..."
"That's not what I meant," Tosh said softly, but Gwen barely heard her.
"Rhys is dead," she said, and her voice didn't even break on those words anymore; but the dry place inside her ached worse than ever. "They all are."
*
The next day, the Toclafane came to town, and Torchwood was ready.
Gwen directed Ianto to stay back unless he was needed. He couldn't run on that leg. She missed her comm, she missed her mobile, but they'd just have to coordinate this ambush the old-fashioned way. Tosh and Owen were in position. She took a few deep breaths and peered out at the main road.
The Master's soldiers barged through doors, searching, guns ready. A cloud of Toclafane darted around them like flies. Gwen pressed herself back against the wall of her hiding place, heart hammering.
She didn't know what they were looking for, though she heard one of them mention a woman's name. All she knew was that she'd had warning of them coming this way, and she'd thrown together this stupid plan that depended on her outrunning a killer swarm, and she was going to go ahead with it because she didn't know what else to do.
She braced herself, waiting for the right moment.
The scuffing of boots and staccato commands suddenly erupted into shouting. Gwen peeked around the corner again.
They'd caught someone. A man, dirty and torn, rusting tins of food tumbling from his arms. Gwen swore silently. She knew him. She'd spoken to him over a bowl of watery soup in the tunnel the previous evening.
"Please...please don't kill me..." His ragged voice carried through the empty streets. The soldier holding him gave him a rough shake and said something to him in the local language. He jabbered a reply.
"Martha Jones," the commanding officer--British--demanded. "Where is she?"
"Who?" The man was shaking so hard he could barely speak. "I don't know that name. Oh, please, please let me go..."
The soldiers conferred, too quietly for Gwen to hear. She eased her pistol's safety off.
"I know the place," the soldier holding the man said. "It's not far."
"Good." The officer cocked his gun. The other soldier shoved the man to the ground.
"I've told you...I've helped you..." the man sobbed. "You said you'd let me go!"
Gwen didn't wait. There wasn't time. She shoved away from the wall and sprinted for the back door of her hiding place.
The sound of the shot followed her, along with the Toclafane's gleeful giggles.
Owen reared up from his position when he saw her come charging towards him with nothing on her tail.
"Change of plan!" she gasped. "Back to the tunnel, now!"
She ran past without waiting to see if they were following her.
She took the shortest route she remembered back to the camp, the damp air catching in her throat. When she glanced back, Ianto was way behind her, his face grim as he pushed through the pain, but Tosh and Owen had caught her up.
She heard the whine of the Toclafane, above and ahead of her.
"No, no no no," she whispered to herself.
They were too late. The soldiers hadn't arrived yet, but the Toclafane didn't need help. They had already collapsed the tunnel and driven its inhabitants out into the rain. They circled and whirled between them, driving them into a panic.
Gwen saw the first child go down.
She screamed, fury and helplessness tearing out of her. She raised her gun and fired at the Toclafane.
The shot didn't do them any harm, but it drew their attention.
"Leave them!" She waved her arms at the swarm. "Know who I am? Gwen Cooper, Torchwood! You want me, don't you?"
She lowered her voice and her gun. Her breath was coming in painful sobs, but she was almost smiling.
"So come and get me."
She glimpsed Tosh and Owen pulling the children away while the Toclafane were distracted, and she did smile, for an instant.
"Run!" she yelled at the cowering refugees, and turned and did the same.
She headed for the highway at the bottom of the hill, slipping on the wet grass. It snatched at her ankles as if trying to hold her back. She prayed that all the Toclafane were following her. It sounded like it.
Their first shots gouged up the soil near her feet, but she dodged and ploughed on.
"Where is bloody immortal Jack Harkness when you need him?" she gasped.
Her boots came down on tarmac, but the Toclafane were too quick. Half of them had split off and circled ahead of her. Her head whipped around, but she was surrounded.
"Gwen!"
Owen. Tosh. Ianto. Running to her, starting down the hill.
"Go!" she screamed back. "Go, you idiots! Get those people to safety!"
She was afraid they wouldn't listen to her, and she kept shouting, willing them away, trying to drown out the Toclafane's taunts. She emptied her clip at the orbiting spheres, knowing it would make no difference. Her boots skidded on the centre line of the road. She wondered where it led. She didn't even know what country they were in. Back in the mountains, their first instinct had been to find passage home. A dumb, animal reaction, when all the world needed them and home didn't even exist anymore. They'd got as far as Europe, not as far as the radiation pits, but she couldn't put a name to this place. She didn't know where she was going to die.
Her tears had come back. The dry place filled up and overflowed and she couldn't see the others anymore, but she kept yelling at them to get away even as her gun fell from her hand and she threw her head back to the sky.
The Toclafane were laughing at her.
"Rhys," she whispered.
Fire arced across the blur of clouds and rain and grief.
*
Jack stared blindly at the floor. The grating hazed in and out of focus. His hands had gone numb and he couldn't quite remember how to breathe.
"The rest of them did the sensible thing after that and fled," the Master said. "But I'm sure there'll be more news soon."
He tipped his head to the side, taking in Jack's reaction. "Oh, dear. And here I thought you'd appreciate word from home. It's hard, isn't it, getting attached to such brief and fragile creatures? But look on the bright side--the way they breed, there'll always more where that lot came from."
Jack forced a grimace of a smile onto his face. His voice shook, but he kept the tears from falling.
"Some Time Lord you are. Sending a whole army after one girl. And they couldn't find my people either? Three months and it takes Gwen Cooper throwing herself in front of your Toclafane for them to succeed? How much damage do you think my four 'fragile' humans have done to your new world order in that time? I'd be embarrassed, if I were you."
The Master's shrugged. "Or...I could just wonder how your little pets managed to avoid blowing up the planet all that time they were playing with your collection of alien driftwood--when it turns out that they're stupid enough to do my soldiers' work for them."
He straightened his tie, adjusted a cuff link, and turned away from Jack.
"Shoot him," he said offhandedly to the guards as he passed them.
As Jack died, he seemed to feel the devastated world turning below him. Despite all the loss it had already seen, he knew that it was now so much emptier.
Part 2