Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Torchwood team

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,504 words

Content notes: Spoilers for Episode 1.5 - Countrycide
Author notes: Written for Challenge 272 - Law/Lore

Summary: Sometimes even being beyond the police isn't enough.

Jack's heart thudded in his chest and his breaths were heaving and ragged. The gun in his hands felt so good he didn't want to stop. He wanted to kill them, every last one. It was no less than they deserved. They were murderers of the worst kind, sick and twisted. Then again, perhaps death was too good for them. It didn't make him want to kill them any less. He felt that desire growing inside him, hungry like a wild animal, just waiting to be unleashed. He'd done terrible things but in the heat of the moment he never felt any shame or guilt, only the blood pounding in his ears and the voices in his head that told him how good it felt to hurt them and to make them pay. It was a bloodlust and it felt so good just to give in to it. He had the power; he got to choose who lived and who died and it was oh so intoxicating.

'It's okay. It's okay.' Gwen's hushed assurances cut through the silence like a knife.

Jack blinked and the world shifted back into reality. On one side of the room were Owen and Tosh, both looking a little battered but okay. On the other side was Gwen, her arms wrapped tightly around Ianto. It was for him she was giving comfort, not Jack. The world shifted again and he saw the results of his own handiwork. One man clutching his bleeding leg, Owen going over to add pressure to the wound. The husband and wife on opposite sides of the room, both reeling from their own wounds, looking like caged animals, fearful of what Jack might do to them if they moved even an inch. They should be frightened, Jack thought. He only needed the barest of excuses to finish what he'd started, satiating the need inside him to kill.

Gwen had pushed herself to her feet, though she still looked to be in a lot of pain. Whatever drugs Owen had given her hours ago had clearly worn off. 'Owen,' she commanded, 'you control the bleeding and then phone the police.'

Jack was about to protest when Gwen but him off. Her hand on his shoulder was tense, trying to warn him off doing what he wanted to do, deep down. The man he'd shot stared back at him with hate filled eyes, almost daring him to do it. It would have been all too easy to give into it. 'Jack, please give me an hour with him. Don't tell me you don't want to know too.'

He really didn't. There wasn't an explanation in all of his wildest imaginings that could possibly justify what they'd done. He squeezed the handle of his webley tighter, not willing to let it go, but he lowered it all the same. He had to take the temptation put of his own hands.

'This one's gonna need an ambulance,' Owen reported, his hands now covered in blood from being pressed against the gunshot wound. He was watching Tosh carefully as she checked on one of the other villagers, also bleeding profusely from a bullet having grazed his leg. Three more were in various states of agony, griping their own gunshot wounds.

What for? Jack almost said. It felt hard to believe that Owen could be sympathetic in the situation. How could try hippocratic oath trump what they'd been put through? These people, got what they deserved, and probably not even that much.

'They're all in a bad way,' Tosh added, reporting her findings to Owen. Her voice was matter of fact, neither sympathising with them nor condemning Jack for his actions. She twirled, doing a quick quick of the remaining two men, Ianto and Kieran, the boy they'd found in the village. 'Ianto, you okay?' she called out.

Jack watched as the fourth member of his team nodded silently. He looked like hell. Jack immediately regretted bringing him out here.

'Okay,' Gwen replied. 'We'll call in police and ambulance, but let the paramedics know what they're in for. They won't come in here without the all clear from police first.'

'You really wanna trust the coppers around these parts?' Owen scoffed. 'More psychopathic nutters like this one,' he added, pressing a little too hard and eliciting a wince of pain from the local police officer.

'We'll call in the Cardiff Met,' Gwen said. 'I know people there we can trust.'

Jack clenched his teeth together as his team started making decisions around him. He glared at Gwen. 'No police.'

'But Jack,'

'What are they gonna do with them?'

'What are we going to do with them?' she countered. 'They're not aliens. You can't just lock them up.'

Jack stared around the room at the villagers. Just the thought of having them locked up in his hub made him feel sick. He didn't want to be within a hundred miles of these people. 'Who said anything about locking them up?' he replied.

Tosh looked at him in askance. 'Jack, you can't seriously-'

He spun to face her, his face full of fury. 'Why not?' What kind of justice would they get through official channels? What judge was going to preside over human beings killing each other for food? What kind of crime was that? What was the appropriate punishment? Torchwood were supposed to be beyond the police and above the law. What these people had done was so far outside the realms of normal that there was no one else that could even begin to deal with the heinous nature of their crimes.

He'd seen plenty of justice meted out across the universe. The Shadow Proclamation were famous for taking a hard line on crimes that contravened intergalactic law. Just trading in sentient beings as slave labour or as sex workers was punishable by death, or worse - termination. Termination was a nice way to describe being locked inside a pressurised airlock until you were obliterated into atoms, unable to ever be reconstituted by any technology.

Had these crimes been committed by an alien here on Earth, Jack could have had them brought before the Unified Conglomerate's highest court As it was though, the Shadow Proclamation refused to get involved in the affairs of one native being against another, no matter how serious the crime. Planets had to execute their own justice, whatever form that took. If a native being had somehow been caught offending in breach of intergalactic laws, such as developing banned technology or selling illegal goods, he could have had them exiled to a hard labour camp in the farthest reaches of the known galaxy. But these were just ordinary humans - sick, twisted humans - that had sinned against their own. Where was the justice in that?

'We'll get justice for all the people they murdered, I promise,' Gwen said. 'But they have to be brought to trial. That's not us. Let the police deal with them.'

He looked at each of his team in turn. They were all in bad shape. He'd brought the out here thinking they'd be safe. Dangerous aliens he could handle, but this... This was beyond even his comprehension. Could he really trust someone else to uphold the law and see these animals brought to justice? What consolation would it bring to the families of the people who'd lost someone? It was Gwen who had underscored the need for him to care about things like that and now she was asking him to hand that responsibility over to someone he didn't even know. He needed more than Gwen's promise. He needed an absolute guarantee that they'd get exactly what they deserved.

He gazed down at the webley in his hand, knowing there weren't enough bullets left. Maybe two at most. Enough at least for their ringleader but no more. The room had fallen silent as it waited with collective breath to see what he'd do. Would he be the monster who took an eye for an eye or would he rise above it? The old Jack wouldn't have let them live. The Jack who'd been down in that cellar less than an hour ago was ready to do just that to get the answers he wanted.

His jaw ached from being clenched so hard that it was a blessed relief to finally let it relax. 'There's another one down in the cellar of the pub I shot earlier,' he said, sliding his webley back into its holster. 'If he knows what's good for him he won't undo that tourniquet before the paramedics get here.' Jack glared at their ringleader, his eyes never leaving that insane, beady-eyed stare. 'Or maybe he already has, because he's convinced I'm coming back to finish what I started,' Jack threatened. Maybe he couldn't take the law into his own hands on this occasion, but he could let justice take its natural course. He had to believe humans understood the nature of evil and would do whatever they could to stop it.