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The end of the world is not fire or flood—because there is no god to blame, only men; it is the sound of a mother screaming for her child. It is a sound that rips the air open like flesh, that claws through bone, that leaves nothing whole. It does not fade; it sears, it echoes, it brands itself into every ear unlucky enough to hear it. Wars may crumble nations, cities may burn to ash, but nothing compares because that scream is the purest ruin, the death of everything tender in a single, endless breath.
It had been six days since Kate, Gordy, Amelia and you had sat together in the travel agency, the last-minute holiday that UNIT somehow had granted you both giving you the opportunity to escape during the summer holidays after all; the warm July sun shining through the window just as brightly as Kate when you chose the holiday home in Brittany.
It had been five days since you’d woken to find Amelia, all brown messy hair and soft breaths, curled between you and Kate, the two of them pressed close against you in a tangle of warmth with only the crowns of their head visible from where they were shoving their faces into the pillows. You had breakfast in bed, Kate’s long figure stretched on the mattress, lazily nibbling on your fingertips, the silver band around your ring finger, and the apples you were trying to get Amelia to like before spending the day sneaking lingering kisses on the playground.
And then, four days ago, on a Monday in July, everything you knew and had changed.
The world went into madness as children stopped and chanted, and politicians scrambled and grasped at straws for solutions against an enemy that demanded the unspeakable.
Four days in which all contact with Torchwood had been severed, four days in which children announced the arrival of something no one could understand, four days in which Torchwood reemerged in London and a small circle of people held the power to decide the fate of children who were not their own.
Four days in which Kate tried to split herself in two to push UNIT to investigate the incidents, only to run into internal walls, all while clinging desperately to Amelia.
Four days in which Kate became a shadow of herself, consumed by a darkness and a resolve to do anything for her daughter—the kind only a mother facing an unknowable threat, abandoned by the very organisation sworn to protect the world, could summon.
And then you, as a UNIT soldier, stepped onto Floor 13 in Thames House, and the fog of confusion and secrets began to lift—yet the reality before you coiled around your throat like wire and pulled itself tight enough to cut off your lungs.
Fire tore through the London skyline, but Kate’s rage burned brighter, colder, when she opens the door to you on the step, your eyes already brimming with tears, your self-loathing swallowing everything.
You had tried everything to get away earlier, to run back home to your fiancée, and you wanted to scream: “They want Amelia, they want to set an example!” but you were caught in a trap. Resistance accomplished nothing—no pleading, no begging, no threats or bribes would work.
People need to be convinced to hand their children over for inoculation, and who can serve that purpose better than the innocent lamb, led blindly to the slaughter, than Kate Lethbridge-Stewart’s daughter?
Soldiers line up the front yard, their boots kicking up the dust of childish chalk drawings on the stones leading up to the wide open door. The colourful flowers never have the chance to burst into the air like their painted counterparts, never to scatter and drift on the wind; everything smears beneath the solid stand of a human wall, fingers pressed to prints of weapons steeped in grey light.
“No one will enter his house without my permission!” Kate yells as she grabs you by the collar of your vest to yank you inside. The door slam rattles through your bones, a painting becomes crooked through the sheer force and vibrations.
You nearly stumble when she pushes you away from her just as quickly as she had pulled you in, the console table meeting your hip in a pain as sharp as the set line of her lips. “Kate—”
“This is all your fault!” Kate interrupts, and the words lodge themselves between your ribs like blades. “You traitor!” Her eyes blazed at you. “How could you let this happen?!”
“I—I didn’t know!” you shouted, hands raised. “There’s nothing I can do, Kate! You have to calm down!”
She lunges forward, furious, a storm incarnate. “Calm down?! Calm down?! My daughter! What kind of monster are you? Offering your own bloody child?” The light bulb above you flickers and highlights the dark circles under her eyes.
“I really had no idea!” You recoil as if slapped, and maybe that would have been better, to feel her brutal punches mark your skin instead of being separated by this abyss of what is to come that rips open a home. Curling your hands around the table, every word is heavy on your tongue: “What the fuck, Kate, do you honestly think that low of me?”
Her silence withers any confidence that you could try to get out of this together.
“Kate,” your voice wobbles, and every breath should be your last as a punishment for not knowing a solution to this, but fate has its cruel claws inside you, and so you inhale again and it feels like poison. “Kate, please.”
There is a bang on the door, the sound of wood breaking and cracking and a lock bending to the force of steel boots. Forceful entry, if necessary—a command that every UNIT soldier had been ordered to when uniformed men and women were sent out into every school in London, and hot tears spill over.
“No, please…”
Kate’s eyes are frantically darting through the room in search of what you could only presume would be useful for her to protect Amelia, a cornered animal flashing teeth, and you both come to the same conclusion at the same time—but you know more than her.
Her hands claw at the holster on your hip, grasping only air as her fear-filled brown eyes lock on yours, and you stammer, “They took it from me, the danger—I wasn’t allowed a weapon, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—Kate, please,” while your tears soak into your clothes and the door beside you explodes inward.
Kate’s face contorts in pain, and she spits the words at your feet, “You’re not even useful for that.”
All you can do is continue crying.
The door bursts wide, splinters skittering across the floor, and six soldiers pour into the hallway. Their boots thunder against the wood, rifles levelled, eyes unreadable beneath their visors. The air fills with the stench of wet fabric and gun oil, a suffocating reminder that this is no negotiation, no appeal left to make.
“Target upstairs,” one of them barks, and if you had anything else but panic racing through your blood stream you would have questioned if you know the people behind the masks, if you work with them day to day, if they had seen pictures of Amelia as you’d shown them in the break room and heard stories about her first day of school when you couldn’t have been any prouder.
Kate flings herself forward before you can stop her, arms wide, barring the narrow path toward the staircase. “Over my dead body!” she shouts, the veins in her throat straining.
You cry out at that. Of course, she wouldn’t go without a fight, but this is military, this is an army she is more than familiar with and in a situation where the world hangs in its balance, they wouldn’t shy away from shooting to follow their orders.
Kate may be a Lethbridge, but she was also in their way.
The soldiers don’t falter. Two break left, two right, closing in to flank her, while the last pair advanced with chilling precision, their rifles tracking past Kate toward the small sobs that carry from upstairs.
You stagger after her, reaching, pleading, but hands seize your arms, pinning you against the wall. Kate is dragged back too, kicking and thrashing, her nails raking against armoured sleeves as she roars, “Don’t touch her! Don’t you dare touch my daughter!”
And above it all, Amelia’s cry pierces down the stairwell, small and afraid: “Mummy! Mum! Don’t let them—!”
The sound guts you more than any blade could.
Your family breaks into a million pieces, all too sharp and jagged to ever be picked up again, right in front of your eyes.
“Let me go!” Kate screams, coiled with all the desperate strength of a mother fighting for her child, every ounce of her instinct raw and untamed. “You don’t take my baby! You hear me? Mine!” Tears streak her face, snot and sweat mixing.
Through the veils of your own tears, you see one of the soldiers coming back down the stairs, the writhing body of a six-year-old girl thrown over their shoulder, and Kate wails louder, her slim frame fighting the hands restraining her, “I will not let you take her! Back! Stay away from my daughter! Get away!”
Amelia’s face is red and twisted, her eyes terrorised and so, so afraid, her green pyjama top crinkled underneath the heavy hand that pins her down, and you shout yourself hoarse, “Please, you can’t…she is only a child, please—”
Your daughter’s cries grow smaller as the soldiers carry her down the hallway, each step a hammering blow to your heart and you sack lifelessly against the wall, while Kate struggles, kicking, pounding, screaming your name and Amelia’s over and over, her voice breaking under the weight of every parent’s worst nightmare.
Finally, with a last, desperate wrench, Kate collapses to her knees, still clutching at empty air, her body shaking, her sobs hollow and endless. You can do nothing, and the house is left ringing with the sound of a mother undone, the echo of her daughter taken and her rage and grief spilling into every corner.
When the soldiers are gone, Kate lifts her head, ruffled blonde hair falling over her expressionless eyes.
“Kate,” you don’t even try to reach for her, just cower further into the wall
“Get out of my life.”