Fic: Somewhere Else (Torchwood)
Title: Somewhere Else
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Tosh-centric, mentions of Owen/Tosh
Warnings: Character death, Exit Wounds spoilers, and...extreme atheism?
Disclaimer: All belongs to a variety of people who aren't me
Summary: She's not afraid to die
Notes: I made myself cry a little. But I love the idea that someone like Tosh facing impending doom would take comfort not from religion, but from science.
She's not afraid to die.
Oh it hurts, it hurts like nothing else she's ever experienced, which is unpleasant. But a strange sense of fatalism has settled over her. Her life is a secondary concern. She's Torchwood - she has a job to do. She's not afraid. She would have expected to be, but somehow the expected feeling of impending doom, the night before finals raised to the power of infinity, isn't manifesting.
There was a time when she would have been afraid. A younger and more naive her studying quantum theory and particle physics and coming to the increasingly inescapable conclusion that there was no place for an afterlife or a soul in her understanding of the universe. Who, barely more than a child and faced with the prospect of oblivion, wouldn't be afraid?
But here and now, she is resigned and determined. She understands. As dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return. She is nothing but atoms and chemical reactions, a happenstance arrangement of matter - and matter and energy can never be destroyed. She will not cease to exist. What was once Toshiko Sato will be in the earth and the grass and the trees, in the air and water. She will fade away and become part of everything.
She has regrets. So very many regrets. But maybe there are other worlds out there, parallel universes where someone did something else and everything was different. Somewhere out there, somewhere else, is a better world.
Somewhere there is a world where they aren't dying. Somewhere there is a world where Toshiko Sato was a little more forward and Owen Harper was a little less emotionally crippled and they're happy.
Somewhere out there, in some other universe, a man who never took the name of Jack Harkness was born on a world at peace, and he and his brother grew up together into normal and well-adjusted adults. Somewhere else, a man who may or may not have been called John Hart found a more accommodating focus for his uncanny capacity for devotion, and never troubled anyone again.
There is a world where Suzie Costello is alive and well and has never heard of Torchwood Three.
There is a world where Det. Sergeant Gwen Williams is a happily married mother of two. There is a world where Reset was never made, where a bullet went just astray enough, where they were just a little bit faster and fixed things before the nuclear plant sealed itself. Somewhere out there, there is a happy ending.
Here and now, however, Toshiko Sato smiles at her Captain for the last time, and becomes part of nothing and everything.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Tosh-centric, mentions of Owen/Tosh
Warnings: Character death, Exit Wounds spoilers, and...extreme atheism?
Disclaimer: All belongs to a variety of people who aren't me
Summary: She's not afraid to die
Notes: I made myself cry a little. But I love the idea that someone like Tosh facing impending doom would take comfort not from religion, but from science.
She's not afraid to die.
Oh it hurts, it hurts like nothing else she's ever experienced, which is unpleasant. But a strange sense of fatalism has settled over her. Her life is a secondary concern. She's Torchwood - she has a job to do. She's not afraid. She would have expected to be, but somehow the expected feeling of impending doom, the night before finals raised to the power of infinity, isn't manifesting.
There was a time when she would have been afraid. A younger and more naive her studying quantum theory and particle physics and coming to the increasingly inescapable conclusion that there was no place for an afterlife or a soul in her understanding of the universe. Who, barely more than a child and faced with the prospect of oblivion, wouldn't be afraid?
But here and now, she is resigned and determined. She understands. As dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return. She is nothing but atoms and chemical reactions, a happenstance arrangement of matter - and matter and energy can never be destroyed. She will not cease to exist. What was once Toshiko Sato will be in the earth and the grass and the trees, in the air and water. She will fade away and become part of everything.
She has regrets. So very many regrets. But maybe there are other worlds out there, parallel universes where someone did something else and everything was different. Somewhere out there, somewhere else, is a better world.
Somewhere there is a world where they aren't dying. Somewhere there is a world where Toshiko Sato was a little more forward and Owen Harper was a little less emotionally crippled and they're happy.
Somewhere out there, in some other universe, a man who never took the name of Jack Harkness was born on a world at peace, and he and his brother grew up together into normal and well-adjusted adults. Somewhere else, a man who may or may not have been called John Hart found a more accommodating focus for his uncanny capacity for devotion, and never troubled anyone again.
There is a world where Suzie Costello is alive and well and has never heard of Torchwood Three.
There is a world where Det. Sergeant Gwen Williams is a happily married mother of two. There is a world where Reset was never made, where a bullet went just astray enough, where they were just a little bit faster and fixed things before the nuclear plant sealed itself. Somewhere out there, there is a happy ending.
Here and now, however, Toshiko Sato smiles at her Captain for the last time, and becomes part of nothing and everything.