Ficlet: Reckless
Title: Reckless
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Small ones for Doctor Who: Utopia/TSoD/LotTL
Summary: Jack’s recklessness appals Ianto, but not as much as the reason for it.
Word Count: 300
Written For: My own prompt ‘Any, any, Reckless,’ at
fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Intellectually, Ianto knows that Jack can’t die; well, not with any degree of permanence anyway. The deaths, every single one of them, are real enough though. Jack gets horribly injured on a regular basis, usually expiring painfully, and often slowly, in a pool of his own blood, but after a while he gasps back to life again, completely healed, with only the blood to prove that he’d even been hurt.
From Ianto’s point of view, the worst thing about Jack’s deaths is that so many of them are completely unnecessary and could easily be avoided. Not to put too fine a point on it, Jack is reckless, bordering on suicidal. He’s forever throwing himself headlong into dangerous situations without a moment’s thought or hesitation, when taking a few minutes to come up with some sort of plan would have resulted in a successful mission without any loss of life.
Put simply, it’s stupid, and it’s about time Jack got that little fact through that thick skull of his.
“Why, Jack? I know you have a hero complex, but there’s absolutely nothing heroic about getting yourself killed repeatedly for no reason!”
“Better that I should be killed or maimed than one of you,” Jack replies firmly. “I can heal, even from death. What’s the point of being immortal if I can’t use my immortality to save others? I’d rather sacrifice my life than let a single person suffer or die because I hesitated.”
“And what about your own suffering?”
“It doesn’t matter. I don’t matter. I’m wrong; I shouldn’t even exist.”
Ianto knows where that idea originated and some day he’ll set the Doctor straight on a few things, but that will have to wait.
“Never think that, Jack,” he says, wrapping his arms around his lover. “You matter to me.”
The End