A Torchwood Sideblog

My much longer rec list of Torchwood fics that were never transferred to ao3 is still in the works, but here's a rec list of really amazing older (meaning pre-2013) fics that were transferred to ao3! I'm listing them in no particular order.

The Battle Of Songhu by azn-jack-fiend - "In the long run, we don't have a chance in hell," Captain Buffalo Yang said in English.

Object Permanence by solsticezero - After the events of Exit Wounds, Ianto is left with lingering anxieties about the safety of the people he loves.

Just Another (Bloody) Day At Torchwood by knitwritezombie - Aliens seeking asylum land in Splott, creating an interesting (and long) day for the Torchwood crew.

we rebel against our better judgement (and fall despite our best intentions) by anonymous - Like all great stories, it starts with an ‘I love you’.

In Your Image by blackbird_song - Jack and Ianto sitting in a tree: Torchwood-style

Management Of Dead Bodies In Disaster Situations: A Field Manual by heddychaa - Darragh Edmonds is a so-called "disaster specialist". Called to the site of tsunamis, earth quakes, floods, terrorist attacks, he takes up the grim task of putting order to human remains, and he does it well. Cleaning up after a biological attack on Thames House should make for a comparatively easy day for Darragh: after all, the bodies of Thames House have even been so considerate as to pile themselves right at the front door for him. That is, until he's sworn to secrecy and sent, alone, to collect two bodies from the building's eerie top floor.

Proof Of Your Existence by sarcasticchick - Can you offer me proof of your existence? How can you? When neither modern science nor philosophy can explain what life is.

Roses In December by remuslives23 - Memories of better times assailed him, snippets of his life ticking over in his mind like flashes of scenes from a film, faster and faster until he couldn't breathe then the floodgates flew open, and he couldn't stop the crippling pain from bending him in two.

Tea And Sympathy by osprey_archer - Soon after Jack's disappearance, Owen takes sick. Ianto goes to check on him.

I Am Not My Own by methylethyl - "Torchwood's disability pay is about this big--" Ianto held up his thumb and index finger, about two centimeters apart. "--and comes out of a gun at a thousand meters per second."

Nemo Me Impune Lacessit by derryderrydown - "You let Ianto fall into the Rift," Jack said, with a level of strained calm that had Owen edging towards the door. "Alright." He took a deep breath. "But you should know that nobody sleeps until we find him. And I'm probably going to fire you all."

They Still Write Poetry In The Fifty First Century by golden_d - "Today I looked out," she reads, "and I saw my name among the stars."

A Vision Too Removed To Mention by pocky_slash - In which Ianto is stuck in a time loop that feels more like hell.

Little Separate Incidents by heddychaa - It's June 26th, 2010 and Ianto Jones is alive.

Kingdom Of Air by lookninjas - Torchwood Three is sent to the Himalayas to recover a mysterious artifact. In the thin, cold air of the world's tallest mountains, aliens aren't the only danger. But that's not to say that the mountains are the only danger either.

Shadows Will Fall Behind You by solsticezero - It kept him tethered to the physical, even as his head seemed to expand infinitely, encompass everything, the way the lighthouse did.

PTSD: Post Torchwood Stress Disorder by waldo - It's been two and a half years since Canary Wharf. It's been a year since Lisa. And Jack is just now realizing what the real toll has all been on Ianto and the other survivors of Torchwood One. Now he needs to fix a big thing done badly before anyone else dies.

The Dominant Line Between Life And Death by ladyflowdi - In the space of a heartbeat, between the rhythmic pulse of life itself, Ianto’s world is split in two. There is only the Before and the After, the Once Was and Is Now, as if someone has cut him right down the middle, a perfect sagittal seam that has equal parts guts, eyes, and heart. He is coexisting with himself, and the other Ianto won’t stop screaming.

No Word For Yes by copperbadge - Someday he will have a Jack-to-English dictionary. Though it will contain more than just the words, he supposes. And be unsuitable for children.

Down Time by jadesfire - For all that Jack said it wouldn't, Gwen found it hard to believe that his luck was never going to run out.

To The End by sheldrake - He always means it at the time.

Light Shining Through Water by etharei - Ianto hates not knowing what to do, being uncertain of his place, and thus quite loathes his life these days. But he has enough dignity left to want to do his job, as best as he can, if that is all he can have.

Getting There by zinnith - Time doesn't heal all wounds but it does help numb the pain.

But One Man Loved The Pilgrim Soul In You by lannamichaels - Ianto has never believed in luck. If he survives this, he'll start.

Ceaseless by pocketmouse - The Owen Jack hires is not the Owen we meet in Everything Changes

Lacunae by kenaz - There's quite a bit that Jack has forgotten.

Lessons From Yesterday by demotu - Jack’s experiences have left him broken. Some old friends step in to help him through it.

Klein Bottle by Basingstoke - Right now, Jack is living in linear time. He wasn't in the past. He won't be in the future.

Amends by dsudis - The thing in the dark was what he'd come for, and Ianto had not come empty-handed.

Night That Never Was by xtricks - The night after John Hart rode the Rift out of Cardiff didn't exist. Jack and Ianto take that time for themselves.

Digita1 Gir1 by nancybrown - AU. Lisa is human. Mostly.

Tuesday's Dead by nancybrown - Cutting a möbius strip is harder than it looks.

The Argonaut's Tale by sariagray - “I have a story for you, Captain, should you choose to listen.”

The Quiet Room by copperbadge - "Inside this room, no one talks," Ianto said, his voice carefully neutral. "It isn't allowed. What goes on here stays here and, outside of it, never happened. Other than that there are no rules, in a manner of speaking."

The Master Of His Fate by jadesfire - Post-Countrycide, Ianto gets some answers from Jack.

Gwen Discovers Flat Holm by sarcasticchick - History is not inevitable.

First And Last by leofuller & plotbunniesinc - An early morning phone call brings bad news to Torchwood only weeks after the loss of Tosh and Owen – the police have found the SUV burnt out at the foot of a cliff, and Torchwood have to carry on without Ianto. Jack refuses to accept that Ianto’s not coming back despite all the evidence to the contrary – but maybe there’s more to the crash then they realise…

Things Hidden by silver_sun - A tourist’s film footage posted on the internet leads Jack, Gwen and Ianto to Hen Coed Cwrt, a supposedly haunted manor house in mid Wales. Struggling to work as a team following the deaths of Owen and Tosh this case could be the thing that finally tears them apart or brings them back together.

Stuck In Traffic At The Magic Roundabout by xwingace - "Hold it right there," a voice behind Jack rang, accompanied by the sound of a blaster charging for a shot. Lethal charge, by the sound of the whine. But that wasn't what sent sudden cold shivers down Jack's spine despite the burning midday sun.

Abort, Retry, Fail? by caledonius72 - Rhydygrisiau is picture perfect, a model town. Torchwood knows there is no such thing as perfection. Just what is going on?

Lost Woman Song by apiphile - The first time Gwen wakes up screaming she's at home, and Rhys wakes up beside her with a start.

what do I mean by this? here's an example. when my surgery is delayed multiple times, I spend a little time looking up (there is only one surgeon in the entire area who will perform this surgery on trans people, so every trans person's surgical timeline is bottle-necked and delayed by months every time he goes to a conference or takes a vacation or experiences an injury. in other words, if I was cis, I would not encounter this difficulty in accessing surgery). and then I spend time looking down (due to nonstop harassment and legal threats, this practice now only treats adults and will no longer perform surgeries on minors. in other words, my access to surgery is predicated on adult privilege I have at the direct expense of trans youth's lack of access).

because let us review, in roughly chronological order, the absolutely staggering catalogue of behavior before this action that has apparently not resulted in termination

We are introduced to the entire cast having stolen alien artifacts from work to use in their personal lives, and even after those specific items get returned it’s revealed they ALSO just casually have other stuff. Everyone at Torchwood steals from work like they’re employees at a Spirit Halloween.

Gwen accidentally unleashed an alien organism that killed people through the power of really intense orgasms because she unsafely threw a chisel at another coworker.

Owen used alien technology to stalk and psychologically torment someone outside of work hours which, granted, the guy sucked, but from an HR perspective that sentence alone should have caused the building to implode into a legal singularity.

Ianto secretly smuggled an entire Cyberman into the base, concealed it for who knows how long, continued defending her after she tried converting both the scientist he hired AND Gwen, and somehow retained employment afterward like this was a slightly awkward misunderstanding at a team meeting.

Owen left the keys to Torchwood’s branded SUV sitting in an unlocked vehicle with all of their classified alien tech and sensitive information inside.

Tosh read everyone’s minds without consent and later attempted to sneak her alien girlfriend into the secret underground alien bunker.

and THIS is the environment where Jack suddenly decides “whoa now Gwen, this crosses a line”

my sibling in the cosmos what line.

This organization has the structural integrity of wet cardboard. There is no line. There are vague suggestions of professionalism floating somewhere in the distance like ghosts on the horizon while everyone continues committing increasingly unbelievable workplace violations on company time.

Which is already operating on deeply questionable puzzle logic, but what really gets me is that the only clue they’re given is “Because I could not stop for Death,” which is possibly one of the MOST famous Emily Dickinson poems you could have picked.

That thing has been printed in approximately eight billion anthologies, collected works editions, educational readers, decorative coffee table books, pocket poetry compilations, and probably at least one bathroom calendar somewhere.

Like the answer is hidden inside one of the most widely republished poems in the English language, and somehow the first random edition the police officer on the phone managed to get their hands on just happened to be The Correct One.

like these people operate with the energy of a group project where nobody read the assignment but everyone still showed up convinced they’re doing great

someone, presumably Owen or Ianto, was apparently ordering pizza under the actual name “Torchwood” which is already an unbelievable sentence for a covert extraterrestrial operations unit

imagine being the delivery driver like “huh weird military bunker under the tourist attraction ordering double pepperoni again”

Ianto somehow sneaks an entire Cyberman, a cyber conversion unit, AND a scientist into the base so his cyber-girlfriend can live in the basement undiscovered which raises so many logistical questions it starts sounding like a sitcom plot

they have branded SUVs driving around town like they are a regional plumbing company instead of an allegedly classified organization dealing with alien threats

Owen leaves the keys in the vehicle with all the dangerous classified alien nonsense inside just, because

they’ve apparently distributed 2,008 retcon pills to civilians which means their solution to secrecy is not “prevent exposure” but “well hopefully everyone forgets”

Like a man named Jeff who got through orientation, saw one alien corpse twitch unexpectedly on a metal table, immediately decided “absolutely not,” and simply never came back to work again, yet continues receiving paychecks for YEARS because nobody at Torchwood has enough organizational stability to notice.

And the funniest part is I genuinely believe this could happen because which of these chucklefucks is realistically auditing employee attendance.

Jack Harkness absolutely would not notice. Half the time he barely seems aware of what day it is.

Toshiko Sato would probably notice discrepancies eventually but immediately assume Jack knows about it because surely there’s no way the organization is that dysfunctional. Surely Jeff is on some classified long term assignment. Surely there is a system here. There is not.

Owen Harper is simply not paying enough attention to anything around him for this to register as unusual unless Jeff is actively on fire.

Gwen Cooper might question it at first, but she’s also new enough to assume this is one of those weird Torchwood things she just hasn’t acclimated to yet. Like “okay apparently there’s a Jeff who’s never here but everyone acts like that’s normal, maybe he’s undercover in space or trapped in another dimension or something.”