"Lick Your Own Wounds", Torchwood, kind of Owen/Martha

[paperclipbitch]

Title: Lick Your Own Wounds
Fandom: Torchwood [Doctor Who]
Characters: Martha [Owen]; Jack, Ianto, Mickey, Gwen
Challenge/Prompt: fanfic100, 032. Sunset
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3340
Genre: Gen
Copyright: Title is from Half The Fun by Snow Patrol.
Summary: Martha thinks about telling him that she’s only joined Torchwood because it’s slightly less sociopathic

Comments

[karaokegal]

Good to see you and your fic back among us!

Sometimes I honestly think you're the only one who sees the TW characters through a glass as dark as my own.

This is TW and LadyPaperclip at their best. All angsty, and tamped down and painful, but with sex always at the edges, exactly the way it should be.

The opening was an absolute gut-wrencher, but so, so inevitable and I absolutely adore the way Owen is haunting
Martha.

You've even got a plausible TW Mickey, which I'm not sure even TW itself is going to be able to do.

Great stuff, all around. *cheers*

[jo02]

Just popping to say I did a pleased double-take at your comment above.

I had been wondering for a while if I were the only one who saw a similarity in both of your writing styles.

You both write really well. You both can do a borderline bleakness and too-painful reality in a way that gets under the skin like very little other TW fic does.

This is a good thing, even if I have to go hunt up Janto fluff afterwards to cheer myself up!

[karaokegal]

The divine Ms. Paper Clip is one of the first writers who really caught my attention when I started reading Housefic and found her OMFGBRILLIANT Hangman series and then when she wrote the ONLY AU I've ever thought was worth a damn, Grey Gardens. I think her writing is far superior to mine in being able to just GET to the heart of a character with a few well-chosen lines and she handles present tense like a master musician in a way that I never could.

I started reading her TW fic before I'd actually seen the show and HER Ianto was someone I could like and wanted more of, either when she absolutely destroyed him or used him as a sexy, snarky, fucked up nemesis for Ianto, in a way I wish the show had. Seriously, IF the on-screen Ianto were more like hers, I'd have a lot more time for writing because I wouldn't have to fight so many wars.

Any comparison is certainly a compliment to me, so thank you, but she is the avatar of angst and I am merely a disciple.

[darthhellokitty]

This is very good, and captures a whole lot about Torchwood that Martha might not want to know. That she has Owen's ghost to help ease her into things is so odd, the show could do it.

Owen, who's a total set collector, poor soul. And the weevils. Eventually it'll sound normal.

[strangecreature]

Oh jeez... I'd been hoping someone would write an Owen-as-ghostly-presence type fic and was even messing around with the concept myself, but this was absolutely perfect. It makes sense that it would be Martha 'haunted' by him. I love how real and gritty your stuff feels without zooming off into melodrama.

(Also, the back and forth post-it notes kind of destroyed me a little. Oh, boys.)

Thanks for sharing this. :-)

[jackarono]

Love the post-its!

And I think Owen was too close to Weevils. :)

[ice_feather]

Although I do like, and have written it myself, flufffic, I've been moaning to people today that there's a stupid lack of darkfic in this fandom. It's Torchwood, for goodness sake...there should be much more stories like this. I love what you've done here. It's very atmospheric and quite suffocating. I feel like I'm Martha, and my heart goes out to her here. I love your style of black humour, too (the post-it notes). It fits in perfectly with the Torchwood universe and the darker side of Doctor Who.

Great piece, glad to see you again.