About six months after I started at Torchwood, the team was investigating a series of child disappearances around Cardiff. They had started after a major burst of Rift activity, so...we had reason to believe the two were connected.
We tried to trace them, but our big break was - luck, really. We had nothing to go on until I tripped over some complaints to the council, some people working near a condemned warehouse thought there was someone running an unlicensed abattoir out of there. The team went to check it out, and - [She swallows dryly.] - and they were right. There were the remains of a crashed ship, and the crew were - were kidnapping children, and butchering them, and - and eating them.
[She takes a breath.]
I wasn't there. I was just working tech at the time. One of them - I think Suzie, was wearing a camera so I could keep an eye on them from the Hub. No mic. I couldn't - smell the blood, or hear the two little girls they were keeping in an animal crate. I was as far removed as I could possibly have been without just reading the report afterwards, but for weeks, I...I couldn't sleep. I couldn't even go near that part of town. I would be working, doing something completely different, and...the monitor would just turn red. I just felt...numb.
[She swallows hard, shakes her head.]
Megamind, what you're going through is post-traumatic stress. Just because other people were objectively 'worse off' than you doesn't mean you're not allowed to be affected by what happened.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-08-30 11:25 am (UTC)About six months after I started at Torchwood, the team was investigating a series of child disappearances around Cardiff. They had started after a major burst of Rift activity, so...we had reason to believe the two were connected.
We tried to trace them, but our big break was - luck, really. We had nothing to go on until I tripped over some complaints to the council, some people working near a condemned warehouse thought there was someone running an unlicensed abattoir out of there. The team went to check it out, and - [She swallows dryly.] - and they were right. There were the remains of a crashed ship, and the crew were - were kidnapping children, and butchering them, and - and eating them.
[She takes a breath.]
I wasn't there. I was just working tech at the time. One of them - I think Suzie, was wearing a camera so I could keep an eye on them from the Hub. No mic. I couldn't - smell the blood, or hear the two little girls they were keeping in an animal crate. I was as far removed as I could possibly have been without just reading the report afterwards, but for weeks, I...I couldn't sleep. I couldn't even go near that part of town. I would be working, doing something completely different, and...the monitor would just turn red. I just felt...numb.
[She swallows hard, shakes her head.]
Megamind, what you're going through is post-traumatic stress. Just because other people were objectively 'worse off' than you doesn't mean you're not allowed to be affected by what happened.