m-findlow.livejournal.com

Title: Out on a limb
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Yvonne Hartman
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,403 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 165 - Amnesty & Challenge 116 - Refusal
Summary: Jack despises London for a number of reasons, adding one more.

He hated having to come here, hat in hand, asking for breadcrumbs. He hated that he had to deal with them at all, but the two organisations were invariably connected, and would continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

Though he had reasonably free reign to run the show as he liked, he still begrudgingly had to tow the line on some things, and money was one of them. It didn't grow on trees, not on Earth, anyway, and without their support, they wouldn't even be able to afford to keep the lights on.

Though he hated administration, budgeting had become just another essential part of being the leader of Torchwood Three. Every penny needed to be accounted for and justified, and he didn't have the manpower to allot the task to anyone else. That and the bean counters in London would take a fine toothed comb to anything he produced, so not only did it have to be reviewed by him, it had to be kosher enough to stand up to their scrutiny.

He'd spent hours and hours working on the proposal, outlining the various costings. The amount it cost to actually keep the place ticking over was a horrendous sum. The utilities alone sunk a massive hole in their expenditure, with enough electricity to keep all their equipment purring, lighting, electric locks on vaults and cells, and heating the cavernous main hub area to a temperature hovering just a few degrees above freezing in the coldest parts of a Welsh winter.

They exhausted a sizeable amount on supplies of medical equipment, chemicals for the lab, constant upgrades for computers and other machinery, fuel and food. And that was to say nothing of the payroll costs, even for just the four of them. Danger pay didn't even come close to describing what they received.

They didn't have money for half of what they really needed to function properly, and Jack had been tipping in his own savings from the last century, just to tide them over. That situation was becoming untenable, and so he'd worked late into the night, ramping up their efforts to get a proper budget in place. The report had been sent off to London for review, and now he'd been requested personally to come and discuss the matter. He ground his teeth the entire way there, memorising the contents and all the explanations.

Sitting across the desk now, he could tell that he hadn't been invited here to discuss the contents, insomuch as he was here to be told.

She sat there and made a show of still reading it when he was escorted into her sleek office interior and asked to sit down. They might have both been leaders of their respective branches, but there was no doubt in his mind that within these four walls, they were not equals.

Jack cringed as Yvonne gave him that look of smugness that irritated him so, putting down the report on her desk.

'We've considered your report, Captain, but decided that the risk of such an event occurring is minimal. Your request for funding is denied.'

He was flabbergasted. 'How can you say that?'

She cocked her head at him. 'It's not all protecting the planet, you know. We have to balance the books as well.'

He made a show of looking around her office, and out of the frosted glass panels to the modern workstations parked just outside, one of several hundred spaces in the tall, sparkling edifice that was the Torchwood Tower at Canary Wharf.

'Your budget doesn't seem to be lacking,' he observed, trying to keep his tone casual.

'We're under just as much pressure as you to make ends meet, I assure you.'

'I somehow doubt that,' he replied, knowing full well that their research and development unit received more funding in a month than Cardiff could raise in an entire year. Their explorations and enforcement division was equally well supported, being half subsidised by UNIT, though the marriage didn't extend beyond London. He felt sorry for Archie, who received even less funding than they did, though he was up there in Scotland on his own, in little more than a glorified storage unit, rather than a proper Torchwood base. And last he'd checked, no one had made provision in any budget for finding out where the hell Torchwood Two had gotten to.

'I just can't see any grounds for extending resources to Cardiff,' she said, interrupting his thoughts.

'We're not just some little outpost,' Jack countered. 'The rift is dumping aliens and artifacts from other worlds in the city every week, and it's increasing more and more. If we can't police the stuff that comes through, who knows what will happen. We're the front line, and the only thing stopping them from coming here and taking over completely.'

She gave a haughty little laugh. 'Oh, Captain Harkness, you talk about Torchwood Three as if stands alone in the defense of the realm. London has more technology and resources than even you can possibly imagine. I assure you, the entire sum total of our assets are at your disposal in the very unlikely event that you should be subject to serious alien incursion.'

'Define serious,' he seethed.

Yvonne leaned forward on her desk, crossing her arms. 'Last I checked, you'd already had one alien mayor, and that didn't end up in disaster.'

Jack felt like telling her that the mayor had been a Slitheen hell bent on blowing up Cardiff's nuclear plant, but that was already in a report somewhere else, which she seemed to have conveniently forgotten.

'You think aliens are going to get as far as the Severn tollbridge and turn back?' he said, incredulous that they were even contemplating leaving him out to dry.

'We're vastly underresourced. There's just four of us trying to protect a city of nearly a million people. With weevil sightings on the rise and the rift becoming more and more active, how do you expect us to be able monitor it all? Something somewhere is going to slip through the cracks, and when it does, I can't guarantee that we'll be able to stop it.'

'I had our department thoroughly reviewed your costings, and we believe that with certain reallocation of resources, it's more than manageable. This migration housing policy of yours for a start can go. If aliens want to stay and live here in peace, then let them make their own ends meet. We shouldn't have to pay their way.'

'They're here because they can't go home,' Jack growled. 'And last I checked, Tesco's weren't in the habit of hiring anyone with six tentacles and one eye.'

'Then you'll just have to find the money from somewhere else,' she replied, exasperated that he was still here. Couldn't the man just take no for an answer and be done with it?

'You want me to work for free?'

'Do it for Queen and country,' she replied. 'Then again, perhaps that's not incentive enough, given your, shall we say, interesting history.'

It rankled him that she would suggest he was only in it for the money. For better or worse, he was stuck here, and though he hadn't always been so philanthropic, this world had become his adopted home, its people had taken him in, and doing this job had become important to him. It's what The Doctor would have wanted, even if the Institute had been set up for the express purpose of preventing him and his kind from their world.

'Fine,' he said. He knew he wasn't going to get any satisfaction out of her. She'd already made up her mind, and he was not going to sit here and grovel, nor was he going to let her think that she had the upper hand, choking the life out of his organisation one dollar at a time.

'We'll make do with what we have.'

'I'm so glad you agree. We all have to be responsible for our own operations, and Her Majesty has been more than generous in that respect.'

He stood up and made it as far as the polished glass door before he stopped, unable to resist having the last word on the matter, turning back to face her.

'Just remember that if we ever have to come here and clean up your mess, that London will be footing the bill.'