Fic: Until Nothing Else Remains.
Title: Until Nothing Else Remains.
Characters: PC Andy Davidson.
Rating: PG13 (nothing worse than you'd see in the show.)
Warning: Post CoE (no fixes). A weevil meeting a rather violent end.
Summary: There are moment in life where everything changes, and the day Andy Davidson turned his back on the police was one of them.
A/N: This should have been for Wrath prompt for tw-lucky-7 so only about a year late then ;)
“This is a load bollocks,” Andy says shoving the paperwork back across the desk at the Inspector.
“It's a generous offer, Constable, and one that you'd be well advised to consider.” Detective Chief Inspector Hale picks up the slightly crumpled document. “Emotions were running high that day. Your conduct until that incident had been exemplary, which is why we are offering you this chance. You deserted your post in the heat of the moment, it was a temporary lapse in judgement.”
“So, I just sign this, and pretend I'm sorry?” Andy asks, unable to keep the anger from his voice. It feels like since that day the anger has been there just below the surface, growing, festering. He's sure he never used to feel like this, never used to feel such helpless rage at the state of the world.
“There's no pretence to this, Constable Davidson,” DCI Hale says sharply. He fixes Andy with a cold stare. “We have rules, and those rules are there for a reason.”
“Those rules were wrong,” Andy says angrily, wondering if before any of this he'd have ever done something so inadvisable as talk back to one of his superiors.
“It doesn't change the fact that you should have done your job. If you had still disagreed with your orders or the conduct of others on the force then you should have lodged a formal complaint through the proper channels afterwards.”
“Like they would have listened. They'd have done what you're doing now, trying to cover it up.”
“You could still find yourself facing a disciplinary hearing, maybe even suspension from the force.”
“You know what? I don't care,” Andy says unclipping his badge, and slamming it down on the desk. “I quit.”
Not bothering to collect his things from his locker, Andy ignores the stares of his colleagues as he walks through the station and out into the pouring rain.
If this were a film, Andy thinks, one of those cheesy '80s buddy cop ones, he'd have stormed out of the DCI's office to find half the station there to applaud him on standing up for what is right. And after that he'd be a offered promotion to some elite unit and the super hot female lead would be all over him.
Only it's not. It's a wet afternoon in Cardiff, and everybody seems to be trying to carefully ignore everything that has happened.
Not that they're making a very good job of it.
Walking through the city Andy sees how mothers and fathers keep their children close, and how nobody under the age of thirteen or fourteen seem to be without one or other parent. He sees the mistrustful, wary looks they get on their faces every time they see the police.
It's a look that he knows will be a long time going. There are still old mining communities where the simmering resentment towards the police from the long past miners strikes of the '80s still linger just below the surface.
He doesn't blame them though. The world has changed, his world has changed, and right now he's not sure how it can ever go back to being the way it was.
Throwing off his uniform had been terrifying, but he knows that if he were in that situation again he'd do exactly the same.
It feels like a switch had been flicked that day, and no matter what he does now he can't go back to being the Andy he was before. Before then he'd believed that if enough people did the right thing, that if they all just worked together that in the end it would all be all right, that underneath most people were basically good. It feels like finding out that he's been lied to all his life.
He knows that what had happened that day had even broken Gwen's normally unflagging optimism. It makes him wonder what chance he ever really had of coming out of this nightmare the same.
Sure he could sell his story to the tabloids, 'brave PC sacked for saving children's lives,' some hack journalist would grab it. But he doesn't want money, he just wants life to make sense again. He doesn't want it to be a world where those in charge sacrifice the most vulnerable members of society just because it's expedient.
He walks through the streets of Cardiff until it starts to get dark, trying to out run or out think the anger that seems to currently cloud all of his thoughts. Tired, and dispirited, Andy decides that a pub seems a better alternative to either going home to an empty flat or going round to his mam's, and having to listen to her tell him that he should just apologise, that he doesn't have to mean it, just tell people what they want to hear, because it's for the best in the long run.
Well he's sick of it. Sick of being good old dependable Andy.
He'd liked his life. He'd known who he was, PC Andy Davidson, a good copper who cared about the people he met, a guy with a sense of humour, and a friend that could be counted on.
It all seems so futile now, that no matter how hard you fight or how much you believe in something it's all going to come to nothing. He'd never completely understood the anger and hopelessness that seemed to drive the alcohol fuelled youths from the council estates into fights every weekend. Now it all makes a depressing kind of sense; life is hard, then you die.
In the end it doesn't take long to find a pub. It's an unfamiliar one, but that's good, going to any of the coppers' usual haunts over by the station, and having friends and colleagues ask questions that he can't or won't answer, isn't something he can face right now.
The rain has stopped by the time he leaves the pub, a little worse for wear, and still without any answers to his current frustration with the world. The fact that he'd overheard people agreeing with the government's solution to sacrifice the some of the most vulnerable children in society for the so called 'greater good' had meant he'd finished his last pint quickly, choosing to leave the bar before he said something that he'd regret.
Still wondering why people like the callous bastards at the bar always seem to do all right out of life while those who try to do the right thing never get a thing, Andy starts his walk home.
He's only a couple of streets from the pub when he hears a choked off scream, an animalistic sounding growl and the noise of a scuffle in a nearby alley way.
Training, the need to feel like he's doing something, and that he actually has some control over his life, take over and Andy hurries over to the alley.
The nearly bald, domed head, clawed fingers and filthy boiler-suit are instantly recognisable as belonging to one of the creatures that had roamed through the city the previous year, and who'd slaughtered half a dozen officers in the station.
Weevils, Gwen had called them.
Andy looks around, the street is otherwise deserted. There's nobody he can call. The police never handled cases like this, and Torchwood is gone. It's all up to him.
Picking up piece of piping from a nearby skip, the sturdy piece of metal feeling reassuringly heavy in his hand, and buoyed up by alcohol he approaches the weevil.
“Hey, you. Yes, you ugly.” Andy hits the wall with the pipe, and the weevil looks up, blood on its face, the girl, now obviously dead sprawled in front of it.
It looks like everything that is wrong with the world, with his city and his life, and he just wants it all to stop.
The weevil snarls at him, moving forwards, the girl's blood smeared on it's face and claws, and Andy swings the pipe, catching it in the face. After that there is nothing but anger.
Later, Andy sinks to his knees beside it, the pipe dropping from his blood slick fingers.
Takes his mobile from his pocket with shaking fingers. Gwen is the only person he can call.
“Gwen, please pick up. I've done something terrible.”
* * *
Six months later.
It's late and Cathays park is deserted as Andy parks his car, the sleek grey of the new metallic paintwork blending into the misty Autumn darkness.
Getting out of the car, Andy checks that nobody is watching, before leaning back inside and taking a gun out of the glove box. There's no capture and contain any more, not until the new Hub is built, and maybe not even then. With Jack gone, and Gwen's baby just a few days old it's all up to him, at least for now, so it doesn't do to take unnecessary risks.
There's a growl from a nearby stand of trees, and Andy takes the safety off his gun. Smiling faintly into the night, satisfied that he's making a difference, he starts towards the sound.
He's Torchwood now, and perhaps the anger is all that's keeping him sane.
Characters: PC Andy Davidson.
Rating: PG13 (nothing worse than you'd see in the show.)
Warning: Post CoE (no fixes). A weevil meeting a rather violent end.
Summary: There are moment in life where everything changes, and the day Andy Davidson turned his back on the police was one of them.
A/N: This should have been for Wrath prompt for tw-lucky-7 so only about a year late then ;)
“This is a load bollocks,” Andy says shoving the paperwork back across the desk at the Inspector.
“It's a generous offer, Constable, and one that you'd be well advised to consider.” Detective Chief Inspector Hale picks up the slightly crumpled document. “Emotions were running high that day. Your conduct until that incident had been exemplary, which is why we are offering you this chance. You deserted your post in the heat of the moment, it was a temporary lapse in judgement.”
“So, I just sign this, and pretend I'm sorry?” Andy asks, unable to keep the anger from his voice. It feels like since that day the anger has been there just below the surface, growing, festering. He's sure he never used to feel like this, never used to feel such helpless rage at the state of the world.
“There's no pretence to this, Constable Davidson,” DCI Hale says sharply. He fixes Andy with a cold stare. “We have rules, and those rules are there for a reason.”
“Those rules were wrong,” Andy says angrily, wondering if before any of this he'd have ever done something so inadvisable as talk back to one of his superiors.
“It doesn't change the fact that you should have done your job. If you had still disagreed with your orders or the conduct of others on the force then you should have lodged a formal complaint through the proper channels afterwards.”
“Like they would have listened. They'd have done what you're doing now, trying to cover it up.”
“You could still find yourself facing a disciplinary hearing, maybe even suspension from the force.”
“You know what? I don't care,” Andy says unclipping his badge, and slamming it down on the desk. “I quit.”
Not bothering to collect his things from his locker, Andy ignores the stares of his colleagues as he walks through the station and out into the pouring rain.
If this were a film, Andy thinks, one of those cheesy '80s buddy cop ones, he'd have stormed out of the DCI's office to find half the station there to applaud him on standing up for what is right. And after that he'd be a offered promotion to some elite unit and the super hot female lead would be all over him.
Only it's not. It's a wet afternoon in Cardiff, and everybody seems to be trying to carefully ignore everything that has happened.
Not that they're making a very good job of it.
Walking through the city Andy sees how mothers and fathers keep their children close, and how nobody under the age of thirteen or fourteen seem to be without one or other parent. He sees the mistrustful, wary looks they get on their faces every time they see the police.
It's a look that he knows will be a long time going. There are still old mining communities where the simmering resentment towards the police from the long past miners strikes of the '80s still linger just below the surface.
He doesn't blame them though. The world has changed, his world has changed, and right now he's not sure how it can ever go back to being the way it was.
Throwing off his uniform had been terrifying, but he knows that if he were in that situation again he'd do exactly the same.
It feels like a switch had been flicked that day, and no matter what he does now he can't go back to being the Andy he was before. Before then he'd believed that if enough people did the right thing, that if they all just worked together that in the end it would all be all right, that underneath most people were basically good. It feels like finding out that he's been lied to all his life.
He knows that what had happened that day had even broken Gwen's normally unflagging optimism. It makes him wonder what chance he ever really had of coming out of this nightmare the same.
Sure he could sell his story to the tabloids, 'brave PC sacked for saving children's lives,' some hack journalist would grab it. But he doesn't want money, he just wants life to make sense again. He doesn't want it to be a world where those in charge sacrifice the most vulnerable members of society just because it's expedient.
He walks through the streets of Cardiff until it starts to get dark, trying to out run or out think the anger that seems to currently cloud all of his thoughts. Tired, and dispirited, Andy decides that a pub seems a better alternative to either going home to an empty flat or going round to his mam's, and having to listen to her tell him that he should just apologise, that he doesn't have to mean it, just tell people what they want to hear, because it's for the best in the long run.
Well he's sick of it. Sick of being good old dependable Andy.
He'd liked his life. He'd known who he was, PC Andy Davidson, a good copper who cared about the people he met, a guy with a sense of humour, and a friend that could be counted on.
It all seems so futile now, that no matter how hard you fight or how much you believe in something it's all going to come to nothing. He'd never completely understood the anger and hopelessness that seemed to drive the alcohol fuelled youths from the council estates into fights every weekend. Now it all makes a depressing kind of sense; life is hard, then you die.
In the end it doesn't take long to find a pub. It's an unfamiliar one, but that's good, going to any of the coppers' usual haunts over by the station, and having friends and colleagues ask questions that he can't or won't answer, isn't something he can face right now.
The rain has stopped by the time he leaves the pub, a little worse for wear, and still without any answers to his current frustration with the world. The fact that he'd overheard people agreeing with the government's solution to sacrifice the some of the most vulnerable children in society for the so called 'greater good' had meant he'd finished his last pint quickly, choosing to leave the bar before he said something that he'd regret.
Still wondering why people like the callous bastards at the bar always seem to do all right out of life while those who try to do the right thing never get a thing, Andy starts his walk home.
He's only a couple of streets from the pub when he hears a choked off scream, an animalistic sounding growl and the noise of a scuffle in a nearby alley way.
Training, the need to feel like he's doing something, and that he actually has some control over his life, take over and Andy hurries over to the alley.
The nearly bald, domed head, clawed fingers and filthy boiler-suit are instantly recognisable as belonging to one of the creatures that had roamed through the city the previous year, and who'd slaughtered half a dozen officers in the station.
Weevils, Gwen had called them.
Andy looks around, the street is otherwise deserted. There's nobody he can call. The police never handled cases like this, and Torchwood is gone. It's all up to him.
Picking up piece of piping from a nearby skip, the sturdy piece of metal feeling reassuringly heavy in his hand, and buoyed up by alcohol he approaches the weevil.
“Hey, you. Yes, you ugly.” Andy hits the wall with the pipe, and the weevil looks up, blood on its face, the girl, now obviously dead sprawled in front of it.
It looks like everything that is wrong with the world, with his city and his life, and he just wants it all to stop.
The weevil snarls at him, moving forwards, the girl's blood smeared on it's face and claws, and Andy swings the pipe, catching it in the face. After that there is nothing but anger.
Later, Andy sinks to his knees beside it, the pipe dropping from his blood slick fingers.
Takes his mobile from his pocket with shaking fingers. Gwen is the only person he can call.
“Gwen, please pick up. I've done something terrible.”
* * *
Six months later.
It's late and Cathays park is deserted as Andy parks his car, the sleek grey of the new metallic paintwork blending into the misty Autumn darkness.
Getting out of the car, Andy checks that nobody is watching, before leaning back inside and taking a gun out of the glove box. There's no capture and contain any more, not until the new Hub is built, and maybe not even then. With Jack gone, and Gwen's baby just a few days old it's all up to him, at least for now, so it doesn't do to take unnecessary risks.
There's a growl from a nearby stand of trees, and Andy takes the safety off his gun. Smiling faintly into the night, satisfied that he's making a difference, he starts towards the sound.
He's Torchwood now, and perhaps the anger is all that's keeping him sane.