Dark Fest: The Road to Hell

[czarina_kitty]

Title:  The Road to Hell
Author: czarina_kitty 
Beta:  Thank you to jolinarjackson without whom I would have talked myself out of posting this.
Fandom: Torchwood/Dr. Who
Characters/Pairings:  Jack Harkness, 10^th Doctor, Ianto Jones
Rating:  PG
Warnings:  Implied character death
Prompt:  any, any,  Don't worry, I know the way to Hell, I'll walk my own self there.
Summary:  Sometimes the price of a miracle is higher than expected.
A/N: Set post-COE, post WoM.   Written for dark_fest . 

 

 

 

The road to Hell isn’t paved with good intentions...

 

            He’s halfway through his second bottle of whatever passes for alcohol in this dive when the Doctor finds him.

            “Jack,” says the young looking man in a bow tie.  “Good, I found you.  I need your help.”

            “Not interested, Doc,” Jack replies.  “Save the universe yourself, I want nothing to do with it.”

            “Come on Jack,” the Doctor cajoles.  “You’re needed back on Earth…”

            “There is nothing left on that planet for me.  I’m never going back.”

            “Nah, you’ll always have a connection to Earth.  You’ll be there when the planet dies…but, never mind that.  We need to get you back there now, history kind of derailed and I need you to help get it back on track.”

            “I said I’m not going back there,” Jacks says bitterly.  “Ianto is dead, Stephen is dead, my daughter hates me.  Gwen is better off without me.  Hell, all of Earth is better off without me.”

            “That’s part of the problem Jack,” the Doctor says softly.  “They shouldn’t be dead.”

“What do you mean?”

            “You know about fixed points, right?  Events in history that can’t be changed?”

            “Yeah.  I was a Time Agent, went to the Academy and everything.”

            “The 456 coming to Earth was a fixed point.  It had to play out a certain way.  Only, somehow, you changed it—two fixed points collided and the universe changed.  Ianto wasn’t meant to die.  Stephen certainly wasn’t meant to die the way he did.  Torchwood was not meant to defeat the 456; there were other heroes and villains meant to emerge.  You altered the course of history and set the universe on a very different path.  Human development has been slowed dramatically: space exploration has been set back almost a century and I’m sure you can work out the repercussions that will have.  We have to fix this.”

            “And if we do, Ianto and Stephen survive?  I don’t kill them both?”

            “Well, you don’t kill them both now…  The future is a little murky on their ultimate fates; you may well kill them both later, but let’s not worry about that.  We need to stop Torchwood from intervening in the government’s handling of the 456.”

 

 

…It’s paved with every day decisions that change the course of history.

 

            “I thought you said the government would handle the situation!” Jack rages, slamming his fist into the console of the Tardis.  “They’re going to just give them the children!”

            “I said we were going to restore the proper timeline, I didn’t say anything about saving the children,” replies the Doctor, blinking back tears.  “I’m sorry.  This is the way it is meant to happen.”

            “So we’re supposed to just sit here and let this happen?” Jack asks, forcing himself to be calm.

            “Yes.  It’s a fixed point; it has to happen this way.”

            “How does this possibly benefit the human race?” Ianto asks quietly.  It’s the first thing he has said since Jack stopped him from commandeering a forklift, convincing him that he had been mistaken in the belief that Jack was encased in concrete.   

            “This galvanizes people to overthrow their governments,” the Doctor replies.  “Revolutions all around the world.”

            “That will happen anyway.  People aren’t just going to forget this,” Jack reasons.

            “Like everyone remembered the Cybermen?” the Doctor replies.  “Or the Daleks?  The Master?  Any one of the dozens of alien contacts over the past few years?  It’s too easy for people to ignore and forget what they don’t understand.  Believe me, if we stop this from happening, no one will remember in a week’s time and nothing will change.  If you defeat the 456 without giving up the children, with no obvious consequences to the rest of the world, this is all too easy to forget, too easy to deny.  The world keeps on the way it is and nothing changes for the better.”

            “We can still stop this,” Ianto says to Jack.  “We have to stop this.”

            “We did,” Jack tells him.  “You died doing it and I did something I will always regret.  I can’t…”

            “Jack, if my dying saves millions of children, it’s worth it.”

            “No,” the Doctor interrupts.  “You have to see the benefit in this.  The way the children are being selected, it’s…thinning the herd.  Taking out the weak and the sick, leaving the resources for the strong and the healthy.  Human arrogance and the belief that every child is special, that everyone should be protected and saved, it’s weakened the species.”

“And this accelerates human progress, how?” Ianto asks.

            “It re-establishes the natural order, survival of the fittest.  Without having to support the underachievers, everyone else is free to work on other problems.  Funds that would have gone to humanitarian causes, to feed and clothe and house the poor, are redirected to research and development.  Not to mention that the 456 themselves contribute some groundbreaking discoveries about human physiology and endocrinology.  They figure out how to replicate the chemicals they feed off eventually and that lays the foundation for the modifications needed to allow humans to survive space travel.”

            “This all sounds like Nazi propaganda to me.  No one should have the right to decide who lives and who dies like this,” Ianto snarls.

            “The Nazis weren’t the first to come up with those ideas and believe me, they won’t be the last,” the Doctor says calmly.

            “That doesn’t make it right.  I’m stopping this,” Ianto says, heading for the door.

            “No,” Jack says resignedly, grabbing Ianto by the shoulder.  “The Doctor is right.  It’s a fixed point.  It has to happen this way.  The children are taken, the people rebel, governments fall and the human race is reborn from the ashes—stronger, smarter, and prepared for the future.  And Torchwood is here to lead the way.”

            “Lead the way?” Ianto asks incredulously.  “Lead the way to Hell, you mean.”

            “Maybe,” says the Doctor.  “But Jack and I have been there before, we know where we’re going.”