Fic: Casualties (Whoniverse)
Title: Casualties
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Whoniverse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Torchwood Three made it to Canary Wharf a little too late.
Disclaimer: I make no profit. I think everyone would agree that Jack Harkness belongs to the universe and would do anything for free.
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Casualties
------
Jack had been present at the Oklahoma City bombing. It had nothing on Torchwood Tower after Canary Wharf.
As his team stepped out of the SUV, he glanced to either side -- Owen was pale, Toshiko slightly green. There was blood, improbable but stubbornly real, on the outside of the walls. A stain like old rust spread down from a fifth-story window, which Jack didn’t look at too closely.
“Right,” he said, his voice steady and businesslike. Tosh and Owen had never seen Torchwood London in person before now. This was not exactly the circumstance under which Jack would have liked to introduce them to the mother company - he had once hoped for a coup d'etat at worst, or in an ideal world a peaceful transition of power from Yvonne to Jack, but when Jack had given up and severed all ties with London he hadn’t wished this on anyone. How could he have even imagined it? Daleks still alive? His veins had run cold when he’d seen the confirmation that there were Daleks as well as Cybermen, and it had been nearly a century since the last time Jack Harkness had felt terror.
“Jack?” Owen asked quietly.
“Data, Tosh?”
Tosh glanced at the device in her left hand, the one not holding a gun in a trembling grip. “Still reading only human life signs,” she said.
“How many?” asked Jack.
“Forty-seven,” she said. Just then there was a slow rumble that seemed to start in Jack’s sternum and traveled right up through his teeth, crescendoing into a shrieking crash. The building in front of them swayed drunkenly. Tosh nearly dropped the scanner. “Forty-two,” she said faintly. “Forty.... Thirty-five.”
“Floor collapsed,” said Jack. “Stable now, Tosh?”
She kept looking at the tiny screen, the lights flickering and blinking out on it.
“Tosh?” Jack pressed.
“Steady at thirty-two,” Tosh said. She looked up and her face was different. Detached.
Good, thought Jack.
“Okay,” said Jack, raising his Webley. “Comms open, stay on guard.” He strode towards the brushed steel frames of the defunct sliding doors, boots crunching on a thick layer of broken glass, his team following close behind as if he offered some kind of umbrella of safety by his mere presence.
------
There were survivors in the front lobby. Jack was surprised to find them so quickly. Five men and two women in professional dress were scattered throughout the space, shifting rubble off of the computer terminals and bodies. Jack convinced them to leave the bodies and work on the machines. Tosh’s scans confirmed that no one was alive under the debris - no amount of wishing or digging was going to effect any more miraculous rescues. One older man broke down and the young, dark-haired woman standing nearest him caught him before he fell. She held him while he made sounds Jack hadn’t heard in a long time and hadn’t ever wanted to hear again. Real grief was not aesthetic.
“His wife,” the dark-haired woman told Jack. There was a blankness in her eyes. He looked away.
“Thirty life signs, Jack,” said Tosh.
“Take over the technical salvage,” said Jack to Tosh. “We’re your relief,” Jack called to the room at large. “Toshiko here will supervise the salvage. Does anyone need immediate medical attention?”
Slowly, heads shook and eyes turned to Tosh, who shrank under the scrutiny.
“Go, Tosh,” Jack murmured, nudging her. “Act in charge and no one will question you. Get someone to take you to the mainframe, if it hasn’t been crushed. Save what you can and destroy the rest. Where are the other life signs?”
She closed her eyes briefly, then handed Jack the scanner and straightened.
Jack left her to calling out directions and motioned Owen with him. He handed the scanner over and lifted his Webley again. “Put your doctor face on,” Jack murmured.
Owen nodded. “Right, up three floors... careful, if the supports are going...”
-------
The final lineup was twenty. Twenty survivors. Four had rattled their last breaths while Owen was working on them. One had gone in a belch of flame from a cleft-open radiator, and the other six had simply blinked out one by one, meaningless green lights on an animated blueprint. Creaking threatened to drop them another floor. They didn’t try to find the bodies belonging to the snuffed lights; they returned to the lobby after the last one went dark.
Of the survivors, the older man had gone silent and appeared to be breaking the hand of his dark-haired friend in a death grip. She wouldn’t leave his side. There were a group of women from the service section, which had been the farthest away from the center of the chaos -- dinner ladies, Jack thought. We saved the dinner ladies and the woman who takes the drycleaning orders and the man who empties the bins at night. Some receptionists. A handful of junior researchers who had been in the archives, protected by a vault wall. All of their faces were too bloodied and smudged with soot for easy identification. One young man was red-drenched and trembling, but his eyes were alert. He smelled of smoke and hot metal.
Upwards of eight hundred employees had come into work yesterday morning and all of them had gone home alive and healthy yesterday night. Jack could only hope that one or two of them had called in sick to work today. Survivors: twenty and odd change.
Ambulances had arrived in the meantime, and police would be close behind now that the Cybermen had gone and they weren't occupied protecting civilians. “Doctor Harper is going to accompany you to the hospital,” Jack said clearly and firmly to the gaggle of survivors. None of them were seriously injured, but they were all in shock. “Everything is taken care of now. You'll be taken care of.”
Some of them objected. None of them had the strength to do anything about it. Owen and Tosh hustled them outside and handed them off to the ambulances. Owen hopped into the back of the last one with a glance back at Tosh and Jack. He looked relieved to be escaping from the tower.
Jack and Tosh went back inside and set to work. Tosh got one terminal cleared and working, organized a rough packet of information from what she could pull out of the mangled network and then escaped to the outside with a breathless, mumbled apology about the smell.
He watched the silent, grainy CCTV footage of the Doctor. He watched it, and watched it, and watched it.
He’d missed his chance. Two centuries would turn before he’d see the Doctor, that’s what the card-reader had said. Two centuries had turned. What else could she possibly have meant?
And he’d done something wrong. He’d screwed up history. He’d screwed up how this was supposed to happen. Somehow Jack had caused Torchwood London to fall...
No, that was ridiculous. T1 had choked on its own hubris. Cybermen and Daleks together: unstoppable. Only the Doctor could have saved the world, and he had. If Jack had interrupted him, tried to help, would the battle have been lost?
There was a list of the dead -- Jack perused it morosely, tormented with thoughts of missing his chance, until a name caught his eye.
Rose Tyler.
------
Author: ravenclaw42
Fandom: Whoniverse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Torchwood Three made it to Canary Wharf a little too late.
Disclaimer: I make no profit. I think everyone would agree that Jack Harkness belongs to the universe and would do anything for free.
------
Casualties
------
Jack had been present at the Oklahoma City bombing. It had nothing on Torchwood Tower after Canary Wharf.
As his team stepped out of the SUV, he glanced to either side -- Owen was pale, Toshiko slightly green. There was blood, improbable but stubbornly real, on the outside of the walls. A stain like old rust spread down from a fifth-story window, which Jack didn’t look at too closely.
“Right,” he said, his voice steady and businesslike. Tosh and Owen had never seen Torchwood London in person before now. This was not exactly the circumstance under which Jack would have liked to introduce them to the mother company - he had once hoped for a coup d'etat at worst, or in an ideal world a peaceful transition of power from Yvonne to Jack, but when Jack had given up and severed all ties with London he hadn’t wished this on anyone. How could he have even imagined it? Daleks still alive? His veins had run cold when he’d seen the confirmation that there were Daleks as well as Cybermen, and it had been nearly a century since the last time Jack Harkness had felt terror.
“Jack?” Owen asked quietly.
“Data, Tosh?”
Tosh glanced at the device in her left hand, the one not holding a gun in a trembling grip. “Still reading only human life signs,” she said.
“How many?” asked Jack.
“Forty-seven,” she said. Just then there was a slow rumble that seemed to start in Jack’s sternum and traveled right up through his teeth, crescendoing into a shrieking crash. The building in front of them swayed drunkenly. Tosh nearly dropped the scanner. “Forty-two,” she said faintly. “Forty.... Thirty-five.”
“Floor collapsed,” said Jack. “Stable now, Tosh?”
She kept looking at the tiny screen, the lights flickering and blinking out on it.
“Tosh?” Jack pressed.
“Steady at thirty-two,” Tosh said. She looked up and her face was different. Detached.
Good, thought Jack.
“Okay,” said Jack, raising his Webley. “Comms open, stay on guard.” He strode towards the brushed steel frames of the defunct sliding doors, boots crunching on a thick layer of broken glass, his team following close behind as if he offered some kind of umbrella of safety by his mere presence.
------
There were survivors in the front lobby. Jack was surprised to find them so quickly. Five men and two women in professional dress were scattered throughout the space, shifting rubble off of the computer terminals and bodies. Jack convinced them to leave the bodies and work on the machines. Tosh’s scans confirmed that no one was alive under the debris - no amount of wishing or digging was going to effect any more miraculous rescues. One older man broke down and the young, dark-haired woman standing nearest him caught him before he fell. She held him while he made sounds Jack hadn’t heard in a long time and hadn’t ever wanted to hear again. Real grief was not aesthetic.
“His wife,” the dark-haired woman told Jack. There was a blankness in her eyes. He looked away.
“Thirty life signs, Jack,” said Tosh.
“Take over the technical salvage,” said Jack to Tosh. “We’re your relief,” Jack called to the room at large. “Toshiko here will supervise the salvage. Does anyone need immediate medical attention?”
Slowly, heads shook and eyes turned to Tosh, who shrank under the scrutiny.
“Go, Tosh,” Jack murmured, nudging her. “Act in charge and no one will question you. Get someone to take you to the mainframe, if it hasn’t been crushed. Save what you can and destroy the rest. Where are the other life signs?”
She closed her eyes briefly, then handed Jack the scanner and straightened.
Jack left her to calling out directions and motioned Owen with him. He handed the scanner over and lifted his Webley again. “Put your doctor face on,” Jack murmured.
Owen nodded. “Right, up three floors... careful, if the supports are going...”
-------
The final lineup was twenty. Twenty survivors. Four had rattled their last breaths while Owen was working on them. One had gone in a belch of flame from a cleft-open radiator, and the other six had simply blinked out one by one, meaningless green lights on an animated blueprint. Creaking threatened to drop them another floor. They didn’t try to find the bodies belonging to the snuffed lights; they returned to the lobby after the last one went dark.
Of the survivors, the older man had gone silent and appeared to be breaking the hand of his dark-haired friend in a death grip. She wouldn’t leave his side. There were a group of women from the service section, which had been the farthest away from the center of the chaos -- dinner ladies, Jack thought. We saved the dinner ladies and the woman who takes the drycleaning orders and the man who empties the bins at night. Some receptionists. A handful of junior researchers who had been in the archives, protected by a vault wall. All of their faces were too bloodied and smudged with soot for easy identification. One young man was red-drenched and trembling, but his eyes were alert. He smelled of smoke and hot metal.
Upwards of eight hundred employees had come into work yesterday morning and all of them had gone home alive and healthy yesterday night. Jack could only hope that one or two of them had called in sick to work today. Survivors: twenty and odd change.
Ambulances had arrived in the meantime, and police would be close behind now that the Cybermen had gone and they weren't occupied protecting civilians. “Doctor Harper is going to accompany you to the hospital,” Jack said clearly and firmly to the gaggle of survivors. None of them were seriously injured, but they were all in shock. “Everything is taken care of now. You'll be taken care of.”
Some of them objected. None of them had the strength to do anything about it. Owen and Tosh hustled them outside and handed them off to the ambulances. Owen hopped into the back of the last one with a glance back at Tosh and Jack. He looked relieved to be escaping from the tower.
Jack and Tosh went back inside and set to work. Tosh got one terminal cleared and working, organized a rough packet of information from what she could pull out of the mangled network and then escaped to the outside with a breathless, mumbled apology about the smell.
He watched the silent, grainy CCTV footage of the Doctor. He watched it, and watched it, and watched it.
He’d missed his chance. Two centuries would turn before he’d see the Doctor, that’s what the card-reader had said. Two centuries had turned. What else could she possibly have meant?
And he’d done something wrong. He’d screwed up history. He’d screwed up how this was supposed to happen. Somehow Jack had caused Torchwood London to fall...
No, that was ridiculous. T1 had choked on its own hubris. Cybermen and Daleks together: unstoppable. Only the Doctor could have saved the world, and he had. If Jack had interrupted him, tried to help, would the battle have been lost?
There was a list of the dead -- Jack perused it morosely, tormented with thoughts of missing his chance, until a name caught his eye.
Rose Tyler.
------