Hope (2/?)
Title: Hope (2/?)
Fandom, Pairing: Torchwood, Jack/Ianto
Rating: Low PG (for now ;D)
Genre: Angst, Drama, Romance
Disclaimer: Not mine. If they were... well series 3 would have been very different
Warnings: Spoilers for all of Torchwood i think. Especially CoE.
Short Summary: a young girl, a long way from home, could be the answer to everything. If only they had the strength to hope.
Notes: Edited Version. Was once a couple of very short posts, but i've put them together, as well as making them a whole lot better x
Prologue
Part 1
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She looks awful. She can’t be getting enough sleep. Martha sighed. I just wish there was something I could do. Anything, She tucked her hair behind her ears and sneaked a quick glance at her team-mate from the passenger seat of the recovered Torchwood SUV. Gwen stared straight ahead, her hands grasping the steering wheel tightly, knuckles white.
Really, it was out of pity for Gwen that Martha joined Torchwood. She was sitting in her flat, missing Jack, and suddenly it twigged with her that if she was missing Jack, it had to be a million times worse for Gwen. She was alone, completely alone. Martha had had to do something about it.
“You alright?” She asked, taking in Gwen’s tight features, grey looking skin and dull eyes.
“I’m fine,” She flashed Martha a quick smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “Honestly,” She focused again on the winding road.
Yeah right.
An uncomfortable silence filled the SUV. Chris shifted uncomfortably on the backseat.
We’ve worked together for a year and a half now, and we still aren’t a proper team, Martha sighed, We need you Jack. We really do.
It had been worse in the beginning; Gwen would hardly talk to them. She barely even spoke to Rhys. It had gotten slightly better, Martha had noticed, when Gwen gave birth. The pregnancy hormones hadn’t been doing anyone any favours.
Martha stayed quiet, looking around at the interior of the car. Those poor thugs didn’t stand a chance, she smiled to herself, remembering running into one of them in town a few weeks ago with Gwen. Martha pondered on what exactly Gwen had done to them for stealing the SUV, wishing she’d been there to witness it. Judging from the look on the boy’s face, it had been good.
“We’d better hurry up. This says the first ship will arrive in about twenty minutes,” Chris leaned forward from the backseat, peering through the windscreen and the heavy rain, “There!” He pointed down a rather beaten old track.
Gwen turned the SUV obediently down the winding country lane. The estimated landing site was a field at the end of the long track, empty and neglected, with hedges overgrown with brambles and thistles littering the grass.
“Ten minutes,” Chris informed them, slamming the door of the SUV and squinting up through the rain, “Bloody welsh weather; you can’t see a freaking thing.” The girls followed after him, huddling up against the rain and bitterly cold wind. He was tall and well built for someone of his age; Martha and Gwen were grateful for his warmth.
Martha, always prepared, produced a flask of tea - not coffee, never coffee - seemingly from nowhere and they stood, ankle deep in mud, sipping from plastic cups.
“Nothing left to do now but wait,” Martha sighed, gazing up at the sky and shivering against the freezing wind, “How big is this thing anyway, hadn’t we better get out of the way?”
Chris shook his head, eyes still trained on the device in his hands, “It’s only small, barely even a ship really. As far as I can work out, it’s going to land down the other end of this field. Even at the speed it’s currently travelling at, there’s no way it’s going to do us any harm… I think.”
* * * * * * *
“Here we go,” Chris pulled himself out of the SUV where Torchwood Three had been hiding from the mercies of the Welsh weather, brushing biscuit crumbs off his coat, “Should be arriving any moment now,” He wandered a little way into the field, eyes flickering from the little monitor in his hands to squinting up through the rain, “Somewhere over there,” He waved vaguely over to the left.
“How much time have we got?” Martha called, clutching onto Gwen as the mud threatened to pull her under.
“Seconds,” Chris murmured, pulling binoculars, alien binoculars obviously, out of his bag, “If we get a gap in the bloody clouds, we might see it coming.”
Gwen pulled out her gun, her eye brows knitted together in worry. She hated not knowing what to expect. Especially being one man down. Of course, when you work for Torchwood, there’s never going to be a good time to go on your honeymoon, and Gwen had banned anyone from calling Louis while she was on hers; a decision she rather regretted now, “Wha-”
“Look!” Chris cried, cutting Gwen off, “I think I see it,” He took the binoculars away from his eyes and peered up searchingly at the night sky. He pointed upwards, “There. That speck of light. It matches up with the coordinates of the ship,” He frowned, glancing at his tracker again, “That’s weird, it says the ship’s still above the clouds. We shouldn’t be able to see it…”
“What does that mean?” Martha asked, squinting up at the rapidly expanding speck of light.
“Not sure. It’s most likely that an increase in speed has caused the entrance into our atmosphere to affect the ship more drastically and so we can see the ship, even through the clouds,” He glanced down at his co-workers, “Effectively, what we’re seeing is the atmosphere destroying the ship before it even arrives.”
The women gasped, gazing up at the ship, “What can we do?” Martha half whispered.
“Nothing,” Chris sighed, “Nothing at all. Just hope that it arrives in more or less one piece,” He gazed up at the ship again, the light almost too bright now, “That’s all it comes down to in the end. Hope.”
* * * * * * *
It started as just a low buzzing that seemed to float down towards them.
The noise increased in volume and pitch, and combined with the roar of an engine, erratic and stuttering.
The light was brighter now, far too bright, like another sun, burning away in the black of night.
The team clung together, guns drawn, out of their depth.
The ship rocketed towards them, the sky filling with intense, white hot light.
The whine of the engine grew louder and louder.
Gwen, Martha and Chris fell to the floor, blinded and deafened.
And then, just as it seemed to get too much, just as the light threatened to burn out their eyes, and the noise burst their eardrums, there came an almighty crash.
A surge of light.
Shockwaves rippling out through the field.
Dirt and metal and dust.
Silence.
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liking it? Comments please!! xo
Part 3 Here