Fic: A Very Bad Idea
Title: A Very Bad Idea
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Lisa, Jack, Owen, aliens.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Small ones for Cyberwoman.
Summary: People aren’t infallible, Ianto knows that better than most, but even so, Jack sometimes astounds him.
Word Count: 1375
Written For: Prompt 187 - Bad Judgment at fandomweekly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
No one is one hundred percent perfect at all times. Everyone makes errors in judgment, either because they’re not thinking clearly, or they think they are but don’t have all the facts. Sometimes, people do the worst thing they can possibly do out of sheer desperation, because they simply can’t see any other way out of whatever situation they’re in. Sometimes, it even works out, because the universe is a fickle place, and fate can at times display an unexpected sense of whimsy.
On most occasions though, bad judgement results in disaster, like trying to save your half-converted cyberman girlfriend, costing two people their lives and almost destroying the world in the process. Ianto still winces when he thinks of what could have resulted from his misguided attempt to restore Lisa to the woman she’d been before the battle of Canary Wharf. If she’d managed to escape the Hub, every single person on the entire planet would have been doomed, and it would have been his fault. That’s not easy to live with; he’d come perilously close to committing genocide, even though that hadn’t been his intention…
Jack and the rest of the team had made sure the worst didn’t happen by executing the monster Lisa had become, and though Ianto hadn’t exactly appreciated it at the time, in hindsight he’d been able to accept that they’d done the right thing. Losing Lisa had only felt like the end of the world; it was a far better outcome than the alternative.
In a way, it had been a relief to have someone else take charge of sorting out the mess he’d made, because even after he’d started to suspect that Lisa might be too far gone to save, he still could never have killed her; he’d loved her too much. Turning his gun on her after all those months of caring for her, protecting her, fighting to keep her alive, had been out of the question, especially since she’d been all that had kept him going after the massacre. He owed Jack and the others his gratitude for doing what he couldn’t, and while he’d been on suspension he’d even admitted as much to Jack, thanking him for doing what was necessary.
Of course, just because Jack was right on that occasion doesn’t mean his judgment is always sound. He may be immortal and, at this point several hundred years old, if you don’t count the two millennia he spent buried alive beneath Cardiff, but that doesn’t make him infallible. He’s far from perfect, because for all that he’s from three thousand years in the future, he’s still only human, which means he’s just as likely to screw up as anyone else. If that wasn’t the case, then he wouldn’t get himself killed anywhere near as often as he does.
“What were you thinking?” Ianto snaps at his lover. “Or were you even thinking at all? Anyone with half a brain could have told you that was a bad idea!”
“I thought it would work, and it did. Mostly.”
Rolling his eyes so hard that it hurts, Ianto shakes his head in despair. “I can only assume your encounter with that parrot the other day addled your brains.”
“Hey!” Jack pouts, hurt by the insinuation. “That wasn’t my fault; I had right of way, and the parrot should’ve been watching where it was flying. It hit me so hard I got whiplash!”
“How do you figure out right of way in an alley?” Ianto knows he shouldn’t let himself get sidetracked from the issue at hand, but he can’t help himself; there’s a weird fascination to Jack’s skewed logic that he finds hard to resist. Then again, he finds everything about Jack irresistible. He has a horrible feeling that failing will wind up being his downfall someday.
“My alley was the widest,” Jack explains. “The parrot came out of a side-turning, and it didn’t even slow down after it knocked me over, just kept right on going. That makes it a hit and run. I should’ve reported it!”
“It was a bird, Jack! You probably scared it half to death suddenly running out in front of it. What did you expect it to do, land and exchange insurance details?”
If anything, Jack’s pout gets poutier. “It hurt! Parrots have a lot of sharp bits on them.”
“Be that as it may, I think we’re getting a bit off track here.”
“Well, don’t blame me; I’d just as soon forget the whole incident. You’re the one who started talking about parrots.”
Which is, unfortunately, true. Ianto scrambles to get back on topic. “And you’re the one who claimed to know how to deal with those aliens… what did you call them, Fimbuls?”
“Frimbles. They’re totally harmless.”
Ianto pointedly looks down at his tattered suit, and then at Jack, who’s even more battered and bloodstained. “Harmless? That’s not how I’d describe them. They killed you. Twice! It’s a miracle I got out of there in one piece. What on earth possessed you to feed them chocolate?”
“How was I supposed to know they’d react like that? It worked for you when we were trying to catch Myfanwy.”
“Myf is a prehistoric pterosaur, not an alien from another planet, with a completely non-terrestrial body chemistry. It was blind luck that she was able to eat chocolate without it causing her any problems. The Frimbles are another matter entirely.”
Faced with trying to round up approximately two dozen of the furry, six-legged, corgi-sized alien creatures that the Rift had dumped in the car park below the Millennium Centre, Jack had decided their best bet would be to lure them into a trap by using a tempting bait. He’d claimed to know just the thing, and nipping out to a nearby convenience store, had returned having bought their entire stock of chocolate buttons.
He’d used them to lay a trail leading to Torchwood’s underground garage, where the aliens could be contained until they were checked over and moved to the cells, and Ianto had to admit the bait had worked, after a fashion. Having tasted the sweet treat, the Frimbles had been more than willing to follow the enticing trail, eagerly gobbling up the chocolate buttons and surging through the invitingly open doorway like a green and black furry tide.
Unfortunately, the chocolate had affected the Frimbles in a completely unanticipated way, turning what Jack claimed were usually timid, shy creatures into psychotic monsters that had swarmed over him, searching for more chocolate, and savaging him in the process. He’d suffocated the first time, buried beneath the frenzied creatures, then revived only to bleed to death when the Frimbles’ sharp teeth had torn into various parts of his anatomy as they tried to extract more chocolate buttons from wherever he might have hidden them. Ianto had been set upon while he’d been trying to rescue his lover.
Now, with the aliens locked in the garage, still rampaging thanks either to a massive sugar rush or a bizarre and previously unknown chocolate allergy, all the team can do is wait for them to calm down enough to be captured, if they ever do. Ianto isn’t feeling too optimistic at this point, and Owen is reluctant to flood the garage with sedative gas in case that makes the situation worse. Without being able to run some basic tests on the Frimbles, he can’t be sure what, if anything, would be safe to use on them.
Ianto sighs. “In future, let’s all agree not to feed anything to new arrivals until we’ve checked whether it’s compatible with their physiology. We have enough trouble dealing with hostile aliens intent on invading the planet, without turning the supposedly harmless ones into bloodthirsty maniacs. I’d better update what information we have on Frimbles to include a warning that they must not under any circumstances be given chocolate.”
“At least we caught them,” Jack points out.
As the Frimbles continue scrabbling at the door into the main Hub, trying to dig their way through concrete and metal, Ianto closes his eyes and rubs at the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off a headache. “We did, but right now, I’m not convinced we’ubll survive the experience.”
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Lisa, Jack, Owen, aliens.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Small ones for Cyberwoman.
Summary: People aren’t infallible, Ianto knows that better than most, but even so, Jack sometimes astounds him.
Word Count: 1375
Written For: Prompt 187 - Bad Judgment at fandomweekly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
No one is one hundred percent perfect at all times. Everyone makes errors in judgment, either because they’re not thinking clearly, or they think they are but don’t have all the facts. Sometimes, people do the worst thing they can possibly do out of sheer desperation, because they simply can’t see any other way out of whatever situation they’re in. Sometimes, it even works out, because the universe is a fickle place, and fate can at times display an unexpected sense of whimsy.
On most occasions though, bad judgement results in disaster, like trying to save your half-converted cyberman girlfriend, costing two people their lives and almost destroying the world in the process. Ianto still winces when he thinks of what could have resulted from his misguided attempt to restore Lisa to the woman she’d been before the battle of Canary Wharf. If she’d managed to escape the Hub, every single person on the entire planet would have been doomed, and it would have been his fault. That’s not easy to live with; he’d come perilously close to committing genocide, even though that hadn’t been his intention…
Jack and the rest of the team had made sure the worst didn’t happen by executing the monster Lisa had become, and though Ianto hadn’t exactly appreciated it at the time, in hindsight he’d been able to accept that they’d done the right thing. Losing Lisa had only felt like the end of the world; it was a far better outcome than the alternative.
In a way, it had been a relief to have someone else take charge of sorting out the mess he’d made, because even after he’d started to suspect that Lisa might be too far gone to save, he still could never have killed her; he’d loved her too much. Turning his gun on her after all those months of caring for her, protecting her, fighting to keep her alive, had been out of the question, especially since she’d been all that had kept him going after the massacre. He owed Jack and the others his gratitude for doing what he couldn’t, and while he’d been on suspension he’d even admitted as much to Jack, thanking him for doing what was necessary.
Of course, just because Jack was right on that occasion doesn’t mean his judgment is always sound. He may be immortal and, at this point several hundred years old, if you don’t count the two millennia he spent buried alive beneath Cardiff, but that doesn’t make him infallible. He’s far from perfect, because for all that he’s from three thousand years in the future, he’s still only human, which means he’s just as likely to screw up as anyone else. If that wasn’t the case, then he wouldn’t get himself killed anywhere near as often as he does.
“What were you thinking?” Ianto snaps at his lover. “Or were you even thinking at all? Anyone with half a brain could have told you that was a bad idea!”
“I thought it would work, and it did. Mostly.”
Rolling his eyes so hard that it hurts, Ianto shakes his head in despair. “I can only assume your encounter with that parrot the other day addled your brains.”
“Hey!” Jack pouts, hurt by the insinuation. “That wasn’t my fault; I had right of way, and the parrot should’ve been watching where it was flying. It hit me so hard I got whiplash!”
“How do you figure out right of way in an alley?” Ianto knows he shouldn’t let himself get sidetracked from the issue at hand, but he can’t help himself; there’s a weird fascination to Jack’s skewed logic that he finds hard to resist. Then again, he finds everything about Jack irresistible. He has a horrible feeling that failing will wind up being his downfall someday.
“My alley was the widest,” Jack explains. “The parrot came out of a side-turning, and it didn’t even slow down after it knocked me over, just kept right on going. That makes it a hit and run. I should’ve reported it!”
“It was a bird, Jack! You probably scared it half to death suddenly running out in front of it. What did you expect it to do, land and exchange insurance details?”
If anything, Jack’s pout gets poutier. “It hurt! Parrots have a lot of sharp bits on them.”
“Be that as it may, I think we’re getting a bit off track here.”
“Well, don’t blame me; I’d just as soon forget the whole incident. You’re the one who started talking about parrots.”
Which is, unfortunately, true. Ianto scrambles to get back on topic. “And you’re the one who claimed to know how to deal with those aliens… what did you call them, Fimbuls?”
“Frimbles. They’re totally harmless.”
Ianto pointedly looks down at his tattered suit, and then at Jack, who’s even more battered and bloodstained. “Harmless? That’s not how I’d describe them. They killed you. Twice! It’s a miracle I got out of there in one piece. What on earth possessed you to feed them chocolate?”
“How was I supposed to know they’d react like that? It worked for you when we were trying to catch Myfanwy.”
“Myf is a prehistoric pterosaur, not an alien from another planet, with a completely non-terrestrial body chemistry. It was blind luck that she was able to eat chocolate without it causing her any problems. The Frimbles are another matter entirely.”
Faced with trying to round up approximately two dozen of the furry, six-legged, corgi-sized alien creatures that the Rift had dumped in the car park below the Millennium Centre, Jack had decided their best bet would be to lure them into a trap by using a tempting bait. He’d claimed to know just the thing, and nipping out to a nearby convenience store, had returned having bought their entire stock of chocolate buttons.
He’d used them to lay a trail leading to Torchwood’s underground garage, where the aliens could be contained until they were checked over and moved to the cells, and Ianto had to admit the bait had worked, after a fashion. Having tasted the sweet treat, the Frimbles had been more than willing to follow the enticing trail, eagerly gobbling up the chocolate buttons and surging through the invitingly open doorway like a green and black furry tide.
Unfortunately, the chocolate had affected the Frimbles in a completely unanticipated way, turning what Jack claimed were usually timid, shy creatures into psychotic monsters that had swarmed over him, searching for more chocolate, and savaging him in the process. He’d suffocated the first time, buried beneath the frenzied creatures, then revived only to bleed to death when the Frimbles’ sharp teeth had torn into various parts of his anatomy as they tried to extract more chocolate buttons from wherever he might have hidden them. Ianto had been set upon while he’d been trying to rescue his lover.
Now, with the aliens locked in the garage, still rampaging thanks either to a massive sugar rush or a bizarre and previously unknown chocolate allergy, all the team can do is wait for them to calm down enough to be captured, if they ever do. Ianto isn’t feeling too optimistic at this point, and Owen is reluctant to flood the garage with sedative gas in case that makes the situation worse. Without being able to run some basic tests on the Frimbles, he can’t be sure what, if anything, would be safe to use on them.
Ianto sighs. “In future, let’s all agree not to feed anything to new arrivals until we’ve checked whether it’s compatible with their physiology. We have enough trouble dealing with hostile aliens intent on invading the planet, without turning the supposedly harmless ones into bloodthirsty maniacs. I’d better update what information we have on Frimbles to include a warning that they must not under any circumstances be given chocolate.”
“At least we caught them,” Jack points out.
As the Frimbles continue scrabbling at the door into the main Hub, trying to dig their way through concrete and metal, Ianto closes his eyes and rubs at the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off a headache. “We did, but right now, I’m not convinced we’ubll survive the experience.”
The End