Wishverse 1.01 - Take Two
Aug. 7th, 2009 10:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiseheartTitle: The Many Departures of Gwen Cooper
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Torchwood
Category: Heavy-duty Gwen bashing.
Rating: 14+, for this chapter.
Series: If Wishes Were Horses aka The Many Departures of Gwen Cooper, called the Wishverse, just to make it short.
Warning: repeated character death(s) in each chapter.
Timeframe: All along both Series One and Two. Major spoilers. This is an AU, though.
Summary: Many different ways to get rid of Gwen Cooper, while keeping the episodes as canonical as possible.
Disclaimer: the usual: don’t own, don’t sue! Everything belongs to RTD and BBC. I used a great deal of rewritten original dialogue, though.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
EPISODE 01 – NOTHING CHANGES, TAKE TWO
Author’s notes:
To certain episodes, there are two or more different versions. The pilot is one of those. The first two paragraphs are the same as in Take One, but in this version Gwen manages to survive a little longer.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Police Constable Andy Davidson was not a religious man. At least, he didn’t go to church, unless him mother came to visit and dragged him there. However, he firmly believed in karma. He believed that one’s deeds had consequences, and one had to live with those consequences, whether one liked it or not.
And so he accepted the fact that having walk the beat with Gwen Cooper, of all people, was the well-earned punishment for that moment of weakness (or insanity) two years ago. For the fact that – after a particularly stressful day – he’d kept comforting Gwen Cooper till they’d ended up shagging like bunnies in the police station’s broom closet. Speak about horrible clichés.
Still, there was such thing as deleting one’s bad karma points – which was kinda inevitable in a person’s life – and then was such thing as the universe torturing one, just to be pointlessly cruel. His ongoing partnership with Gwen-bloody-Cooper definitely belonged to the latter category.
It had been bad enough while Gwen had just been bossy, demanding, incompetent, delusional and downright stupid, destroying both of their careers piece by piece due to all those endearing qualities. But since she’d run into those Torchwood blokes she’d been literally obsessed with them. Leaving her post, so that Andy had to walk in the rain for an hour so until he finally found her. Ranting about strange murder cases and weird creatures in hospital corridors. Harassing Yvonne and that fella from the DVLA to find out the person their car was licensed to. Lying to Rhys about urgent cases that never existed in the first place, just so that she could hunt for the Torchwood people.
Personally, Andy could never understand what was supposed to be so exciting about Special Ops. Those blokes had no rules to follow, could shoot people at will, no investigations allowed, could use methods he didn’t even want to think about – frankly, they were just creepy. Andy wasn’t sure Torchwood was one of those agencies to begin with, but he wasn’t all that eager to find out, either.
Gwen saw these things differently. Firstly, she was nosy by her very nature; she just couldn’t stand not to know things that were nowhere her business. She just had to intervene with people’s lives, to find out their little secrets, so that she then could preach her so-called high morale.
Andy sometimes wished her high morale would include basic working ethics as well. Perhaps then he wouldn’t have to write her reports all the time when she left early to spend some ‘quality time’ with Rhys. And seriously, was that bloke blind or brain-damaged? He could have done so much better – why did he want a woman who couldn’t even cook, hated his friends and drank beer like the fish drank water? Not to mention her other… special interests.
Oh, Andy knew all too well what – or, to be more accurate who – was the other reason for Gwen’s dogged interest in Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness. A dashing and mysterious secret agent in a billowing greatcoat, with piercing blue eyes, an American accent and a thousand megawatt smile. A fearless hero who’d saved poor little Gwen’s life in the corridor, when the hospital’s porter was supposedly murdered by some nightmarish creature.
Never mind that all hospital personnel had been present and accounted for when he’d given in to her nagging and checked. No, Gwen kept babbling about the murdered porter (who hadn’t even been on duty that day), about a man in a Hellraiser sort of mask – or some sort of rabid mutant, depending on the version she was telling – lashing out and killing the poor bloke right before her eyes, and then Captain Jack Harkness riding in with the cavalry (although she never went into any detail about whom that cavalry actually consisted) and saving the day, just to vanish into thin air somewhere around the Millennium Centre. Where a dripping wet and accordingly pissed Andy had finally found her and their shared police car, after having walked across half the town.
He was still digesting that bit. She didn’t have the right to simply take the car and leave him behind while still on duty. That was no way to treat one’s partner.
He’d chalked it all down to Gwen having hit her head really hard in that bar brawl earlier that day and taken her down to Rhys, who’d promised to look after her. Only that when Andy later tried to check on her through phone, a perplexed Rhys told him that she’d gotten back to work.
Andy didn’t want to cause any domestic trouble between them (as it would have meant to listen to Gwen’s whining all day during their next duty shift), so he lied something about logistic mistakes from Dispatch and misunderstandings. It was fortunate that Rhys was so gullible – fortunate for Gwen, that is. She could never have misled any other man quite so easily.
Actually, it was fortunate for Andy, too, as he didn’t have to spin complicated webs of lies to cover for his errant partner. Partners were supposed to cover for each other, after that, that was one of the unwritten rules of police service; even though Andy was getting tired of the one-sidedness of it. Gwen seemed to think that their single episode in the broom closet had made him her personal servant or whatnot.
In any case, he did have an educated guess of where Gwen might have gone while making Rhys believe that she was working an extra shift tonight. He hesitated for a moment – using the police car for surveillance of one’s own partner wasn’t exactly matching the rules, but that way he could get to places where his own car wouldn’t be allowed.
Line opposite that small tourist shop at the Millennium Centre. He parked the car in one of the side lanes and took out his binoculars, waiting for Gwen to appear. He knew she would come sooner or later. She was as stubborn as a mule. She just couldn’t let things be, even if they only existed in her overdeveloped imagination. No wonder Temple went regularly nuts when she was as much as mentioned. Too bad that her stupidity sabotaged Andy’s own chances for promotion as well. Partners depended on each other in every possible way, and sometimes that was a liability.
He’d barely waited ten minutes or so when he indeed spotted Gwen, coming out of Jubilee Pizza, carrying two boxes of pizza. She walked along the wharf, heading directly for the tourist shop. Andy shook his head in exasperation. What was the bloody woman up to? If the Special Ops people, or whatever they were, kept a cover shop there, they wouldn’t let her just walk in, would they? Well, he couldn’t do anything else than wait and see what would happen. He only hoped it wouldn’t take too long. They had early shift on the next day.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Half an hour alter Gwen was still in that sodding tourist shop – and come to think of, what tourist shop was still open in the middle of the night? Andy shook his head in exasperation. What has Gwen gotten herself into again? Those Special Ops people usually didn’t like outsiders blunder into their territory.
Another twenty minutes later he was ready to storm into the tourist shop himself. Gwen was a plague, for sure, but he didn’t want to get her killed out of sheer stupidity. Although he had to admit that in moments like these he was sorely tempted. Wasting his precious off-time on chasing Gwen-bloody-Cooper after ghosts was not his idea of a nice evening.
He was just about to get out of the car when the door on the passenger’s side opened and a cute Japanese chick peered into the vehicle.
“Excuse me,” she said, as if it had been the most normal thing in the world, “are you Police Constable Davidson? The partner of Miss Cooper?”
“Yes, I am,” Andy was getting really freaked out now. What the bloody hell was Gwen thinking, getting him involved in her mess as well? Oh, wait, wasn’t the problem with Gwen that she rarely stopped to actually think before she did something phenomenally stupid? Getting him in trouble all the time, too?
Still, a cute chick with glasses was better than some beefy security guards as trouble was considered. “And who are you?” Andy asked.
To his surprise, she got into the car without as much as by-your-leave. Well, at least she wasn’t pointing a gun at his head or whatnot. Yet.
“I’m Torchwood,” she replied simply. “I could tell you my name, of course, but then I’d have to make you forget, and that can be a bit messy sometimes, so the less I tell you the better for you.”
She smiled at him. She was probably a few years older than him, thirty-something or so, but she was freaking cute for a ruthless secret agent or whatever she might be. And she seemed a very smart person. Andy liked smart chicks, even if they were a little older than him; that didn’t bother him at all, as long as they looked like this.
“What about not telling me anything?” he suggested. “We could go and have a drink instead.”
She blushed very prettily, as if unused to people making a pass at her. She had to be working with very stupid men who didn’t realize what a classy lady she was if they never asked her out.
“That’s a tempting offer,” she said, “but I’ll have to opt out, I’m afraid. It would only lead to… complications.”
Probably because of all that top secret stuff, Andy guessed. It was a shame, really; but unlike Gwen, he knew when not to press an issue.
“All right, then,” he said. “What do you need to tell me? Because as sad as it is, I’m sure you haven’t gotten over here just because of my pretty face.”
She gave him a grateful little smile (she was awfully cute when she smiled really); then she became very serious again. Way too serious for Andy’s peace of mind.
“Mr Davidson,” she said slowly, as if willing him to listen and not to ask any questions she wouldn’t be able to answer, “your partner has recently stumbled into something she was not supposed to witness.
Andy suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. “That man, at the hospital, that porter – she was right about him, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him? Was he really attacked?”
“He's dead,” she said simply.
Andy shook his head. “That’s impossible. I’ve checked it myself. No-one’s missing from the hospital staff.”
She sighed. “Those things can be righted afterwards. We took the body, retrospectively changed the work rota, planted a false witness who saw him leaving the hospital, giving him an alibi for the next forty-eight hours, so when his body's pulled out of the docks next Tuesday night, he's only been missing for three days.”
“He was murdered?” Andy asked, still a bit doubtful; for one of Gwen’s harebrained theories to be proven true… well, it was hard to believe.
“Yes,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“And you covered it up?” Andy wasn’t all that surprised, to be honest. Special Ops was supposed to do such things, or they wouldn’t be needed.
She shrugged. “That's my job.”
“Why telling me about it at all, then?” Andy asked. “Won’t you have to brainwash me now, or whatever it is you do with unwanted witnesses?”
“It’s nothing so dramatic,” she corrected him with a small, flipping hand wave. “It's just a little amnesia pill. With a touch of denial and a dash of Retcon, as our boss likes to say. He’s administering it to your partner as we’re speaking. When she wakes up tomorrow morning, she'll have forgotten everything about Torchwood.”
“Again: why me?” Andy insisted.
She sighed. “She might have talked to other people about the issue. There can always be things that might trigger a repressed memory. We want you to watch her for us. You’re her partner; you can do so easily.”
“True,” Andy said. “I’m just not sure why I should do so.”
“For her own safety,” she seemed completely honest about it. “This is dangerous knowledge, especially for someone as untrained as she is. We don’t want her any harm, but we can’t allow her to keep interfering. There’s simply too much at stake.” She gave him one of those pre-paid phones. “Should she start remembering again – or should you discover anyone whom she managed to get involved – use this. It will reach me, and me alone. Oh, and don’t bother to try tracking us through it. It won’t work.”
“What are you gonna do with her if the amnesia pill doesn’t work?” Andy asked.
She shrugged. “We’ll have to dose her again… probably even move her to another town. We have our resources. She won’t be harmed, I promise.”
“I wish I could really believe you,” Andy murmured. “Who says you won’t be giving me the same pill as soon as you can be sure about Gwen?”
“I don’t know whether we’ll ever be sure about her,” she replied. “She’s the kind of person that keeps popping up like a bad penny. But once you’re no longer needed to watch her, we’ll give you the chance to decide if you want to forget about the whole affair or not.”
“You won’t trust her but you would trust me?” Andy had a hard time to believe that. “Why?”
“Background research,” she answered simply. “We’ve got a high enough security clearance to read your psychological profile. Jack might even offer you a job, should you want to leave the police. We do need new members from time to time. There’s always more work than we can manage on our own.”
“I don’t wanna do Special Ops,” Andy declared forcefully. “I’m happy enough to protect and serve… as long as my partner lets me do my job.”
“We’re not Special Ops,” she replied, smiling that endearing little smile of hers again.
“So what are you then?” Andy asked. She shrugged, her smile gaining an enigmatic quality.
“Something entirely different,” she said. And he knew that was all the answer he’d ever get from her, unless they decided to hire him full time.
“All right,” he sighed. “I’ll do it – but I have one condition.”
“Oh? And that would be?”
“That if this is all over, you’ll go out with me. On a proper date: dinner, perhaps a movie, nothing fancy.”
She seemed genuinely surprised by the request. Yep, working with idiots, no doubt about that. Then she smiled again, holding out a small but surprisingly strong hand to him.
“You’ve got a deal.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And so Police Constable Andy Davidson became a freelance agent of Torchwood, for the promise of a proper date with the cute lady whose name he’d never learned, his only task being to keep an eye on the unpredictable actions of Gwen Cooper. Which, if he wanted to be honest, was a full-time job on a good day. Now that he knew what to look for, it became even more complicated.
Still, the amnesia pill must have worked, because when they met Yvonne in the next morning, and she asked if they had any luck with Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen just stared at her unblinkingly and told her she had no idea what Yvonne was talking about. Yvonne, whom she must have asked to do some unofficial research for her, sniffed indignantly.
“Oh, well don't worry about me, just go ahead, wasting my time,” she said, walking past them. Gwen stared after her in confusion, but Andy knew he’d have to find out how much Gwen had actually told Yvonne. And then he’d have to use that one-way phone. He hoped they have to wipe Yvonne’s memory, too, but they needed to know about a potential leak.
Later on that day, Gwen talked him into visiting the filing cabinets to see what headway had been made I the serial murder case. For once, Andy didn’t really mind. He was interested in detective work, even hoped to become a detective one day; although, burdened with a partner like Gwen, he saw that chance vanishing more and more with each passing day. Still, keeping in touch with the other departments couldn’t hurt.
Sergeant Vaughan, a big, round-faced and slightly pot-bellied man in his late thirties, passed them on the way to his desk. He was a good-natured fellow who had taken Andy under his wings since the younger man’s first day with the police.
“Aye, aye,” he said with twinkling eyes,” if that’s not our eager little constable! Come to see where the real work's done?”
“Yes, sir, that's right, sir,” Gwen babbled, completely ignoring the fact that she wasn’t the one who’d been asked. She wasn’t the one having a regular beer or two with Sergeant Vaughan on Friday evenings at Slimbo’s, either. “How's it going?” she added in a tone she hoped was professional but didn’t sound that way at all.
The sergeant rolled his eyes, headed over to his desk and sat on it, facing the victim board. “See for yourself,” he said.
Gwen didn’t wait for any further invitation. She hurried to the board, checking it for any additional information.
“This drawing here,” she pointed at the sketch of a knife that had two smaller blades protruding out from either side of the primary blade. “Is this the murder weapon?”
The sergeant nodded. “Seems to be, aye. They worked it all out on a computer, they did. Took measurements from the stab wounds, calculated the shape of the blade and stuff, even those prongs – I don't know how they do it. Nasty-looking beast, though. That hooked design does more damage coming out than going in. Seen anything like it somewhere?”
Gwen stared at the picture insecurely and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so,” he replied absent-mindedly, but Andy could almost hear all the little cogwheels in that stubborn head of hers running at high speed.
That made him extremely uncomfortable, because the only place she could have seen that nasty weapon without actually remembering would be Torchwood. Could they have been involved in all those murder cases? And if yes, could he alarm them and endanger Gwen’s life? Sure, the cute Japanese chick had promised they wouldn't harm her, but was she telling the truth?
After some hesitation, Andy decided not to make the call just yet. Perhaps things would reassert themselves without intervention just this one time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Of course, he’d made his estimate without taking Gwen’s mulish nature into consideration. As always, she couldn’t just leave things bloody alone. She was distracted all day – more so than usual, and that was saying a lot – sketching that blasted knife from memory over and over again.
What made Andy truly concerned, though, was that her drawings were more sleek, more detailed than the computer-generated picture on the victim board. That wasn’t good, not good at all! Still, Andy couldn’t struggle himself through to make the call. There had to be some other solution.
He followed Gwen home and parked opposite her house. He was so relieved when he saw the lights go out in their flat. Perhaps Rhys had managed to distract her somehow. But Andy waited for a little longer, just in case. This was Gwen Cooper, after all. One had to expect the unexpected when it came to her – and not necessarily in a good way.
And lo! Like a self-fulfilling prophecy coming true, Gwen emerged from the house again, in the middle of the night, fully clothed and getting into her car. Andy sighed regretfully. Now he couldn’t delay making that call any longer. He flipped the phone open and pushed the button.
“Torchwood,” the now-familiar female voice replied almost immediately. Did these people never sleep? “What’s it, Constable Davidson?”
“I’m not sure,” Andy replied, “but Gwen has just left home. I think she’s on her way to you lot. She has seen a drawing of the possible murder weapon in one of the recent cases, and… well, if you have something to do with covering it up, then we all have a problem.”
“Understood,” she replied. “We’re monitoring the Plass. There’s no need for you to follow her; we’ll deal with the problem. Torchwood out.”
She hung up, but Andy decided to follow Gwen anyway. She was his responsibility; and besides, he couldn’t be entirely sure that she was, in fact, going to the Millennium Centre.
Right, and whom are you trying to fool, mate? He asked himself grimly, while trying not to lose Gwen along the way. He wasn’t entirely successful. She always tended to drive a bit recklessly, but tonight, her only concern seemed to be to reach her destination as quickly as possible, and traffic rules are damned. It was a good thing that Andy already had an inkling where to look for her.
When he reached the Millennium Centre, Gwen was already standing at the water structure – and she was not alone. An exotic-looking woman in a dark jacket was staring at her from the other side of the water sculpture, pointing a large handgun at Gwen, ranting about something. Andy could barely hear her, and could only understand a few things.
“You were right, you know,” she was saying when Andy got into earshot. “You told Jack we should liaise with the police, but arrogant fool that he is, he didn’t listen. Neither did the others. I was the only one who bothered. So, I was the only one who saw the report. I must give them one thing: They got a good likeness."
Andy inched closer, thinking feverishly about chances to distract the madwoman (for the chick clearly wasn’t lucid!) who was aiming a gun at his partner. It didn’t help, of course, that Gwen had absolutely no sense of self-preservation. She just stared at the madwoman with eyes that got bigger by the second, trying to sound crisp and professional.
“I'm arresting you for...” she began, but trailed off uncertainly, realizing that she didn’t even know why she wanted to arrest the other chick. “Wait a minute, how do I know you?”
The other chick shook her head regretfully. “You had to come back, hadn’t you? I thought you might have seen the knife; and that can trip the amnesia, just one image if you’re lucky… or unlucky, it depends. Anyway, you’re the one who could make the link. I can’t allow that to happen.”
Andy decided he had to influence. The Torchwood people apparently weren’t coming in time – or they’d simply decided to let Gwen be killed and be rid of her that way, without making their hands dirty. But he couldn’t just let this crazy chick shoot Gwen in cold blood. That was against his training as a constable – and against his ethics.
He stepped forth, flashing his badge, and said in a voice that was a lot more stable than he really felt in the inside. “Andrew Davidson, CID. Out the weapon down, missy. No-one needs to get hurt today.”
She looked at him with that almost-regret in her dark eyes. “I can’t let her go,” she answered wit the chilling inner logic of the insane.
“Yes, you can,” Andy said firmly. “Killing her won’t help you a bit. You’d have to kill me, too, and I’ve already alarmed Torchwood.”
She seemed uncertain for a moment, and Andy had almost begun to hope that they all might come out of this alive. Unfortunately, Gwen chose this very moment to become heroic and attacked the crazy chick frontally. As it could be expected, the woman pulled the trigger – more as a reflex than with full intent – hitting her square between the eyes. Gwen fell onto the ground between them, her mouth gaping open, an expression of absurd surprise on her face.
The crazy chick whirled around, cocking the gun and pointing it at Andy. Bizarrely enough, she was all but crying. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you go, either.”
Andy checked Gwen’s pulse, out of routine, but, as he’d expected, found none. “You’ll never get away with this.”
“He’s right, you know,” a voice said, and out of nowhere, a tall man in a heavy grey coat appeared behind the crazy chick. “Suzie, it’s over.” He held out a large hand to her. “Now, come with me.”
The woman turned and looked at him, her eyes frantically looking for a way of escape. Two other people emerged from the shadows, flanking her from all sides: the Japanese chick and a shorter, thinner, black-haired man with a sour expression on his face. The madwoman was trapped, and she knew it.
“Suzie,” the man in the greatcoat said again, his smooth voice full of sorrow. “It’s over. Put down the gun.”
The chick looked around again, but all ways were blocked – unless she wanted to shoot he way free, which Andy wouldn’t put entirely beyond her. Then, before they could disarm her, she put the gun muzzle under her own chin, fired, and fell to the ground, dead.
Looking from one dead woman to another, Andy fell to his hands and knees and threw up.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
An hour later, he was sitting in Torchwood’s impressive underground base with the cute chick, whose name was apparently Toshiko and was a computer wizard (and just how cool was that?), the man in the greatcoat, who turned out to be the very same Captain Jack Harkness about whom Gwen had been bugging Yvonne the other day, being served coffee by a friendly young man in an impeccable suit. He had been listening to the explanations for the last hour and was now way beyond the stage of freaking out.
“So what now?” he asked tiredly. “Toshiko here said you wouldn’t wipe my memory as you did with Gwen, unless I wanted it.”
“Why would I do that?” Captain Harkness, whom everyone but the young man in the suit seemed to call simply Jack, asked with a shrug. “You appear to be a level-headed sort of guy, and Torchwood’s got a vacancy. Job going spare right now. Do you want it?”
Andy looked at him suspiciously, but the captain seemed genuine enough. Toshiko was beaming at him encouragingly – and the coffee boy didn’t seem to care.
“What would you possibly need me for?” he asked.
Jack shrugged again. “We can always use more field agents, with Rift activity increasing as it has been lately. You’ve got the local knowledge, you’ve got the experience… there are several places you would fit in, if you’re interested.”
Andy looked at Toshiko who was still smiling at him beatifically, and knew he’d never be able to reject such an offer.
“Yeah,” he said. “Oh yeah, I am interested.”
~The End –for now~
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Torchwood
Category: Heavy-duty Gwen bashing.
Rating: 14+, for this chapter.
Series: If Wishes Were Horses aka The Many Departures of Gwen Cooper, called the Wishverse, just to make it short.
Warning: repeated character death(s) in each chapter.
Timeframe: All along both Series One and Two. Major spoilers. This is an AU, though.
Summary: Many different ways to get rid of Gwen Cooper, while keeping the episodes as canonical as possible.
Disclaimer: the usual: don’t own, don’t sue! Everything belongs to RTD and BBC. I used a great deal of rewritten original dialogue, though.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
EPISODE 01 – NOTHING CHANGES, TAKE TWO
Author’s notes:
To certain episodes, there are two or more different versions. The pilot is one of those. The first two paragraphs are the same as in Take One, but in this version Gwen manages to survive a little longer.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Police Constable Andy Davidson was not a religious man. At least, he didn’t go to church, unless him mother came to visit and dragged him there. However, he firmly believed in karma. He believed that one’s deeds had consequences, and one had to live with those consequences, whether one liked it or not.
And so he accepted the fact that having walk the beat with Gwen Cooper, of all people, was the well-earned punishment for that moment of weakness (or insanity) two years ago. For the fact that – after a particularly stressful day – he’d kept comforting Gwen Cooper till they’d ended up shagging like bunnies in the police station’s broom closet. Speak about horrible clichés.
Still, there was such thing as deleting one’s bad karma points – which was kinda inevitable in a person’s life – and then was such thing as the universe torturing one, just to be pointlessly cruel. His ongoing partnership with Gwen-bloody-Cooper definitely belonged to the latter category.
It had been bad enough while Gwen had just been bossy, demanding, incompetent, delusional and downright stupid, destroying both of their careers piece by piece due to all those endearing qualities. But since she’d run into those Torchwood blokes she’d been literally obsessed with them. Leaving her post, so that Andy had to walk in the rain for an hour so until he finally found her. Ranting about strange murder cases and weird creatures in hospital corridors. Harassing Yvonne and that fella from the DVLA to find out the person their car was licensed to. Lying to Rhys about urgent cases that never existed in the first place, just so that she could hunt for the Torchwood people.
Personally, Andy could never understand what was supposed to be so exciting about Special Ops. Those blokes had no rules to follow, could shoot people at will, no investigations allowed, could use methods he didn’t even want to think about – frankly, they were just creepy. Andy wasn’t sure Torchwood was one of those agencies to begin with, but he wasn’t all that eager to find out, either.
Gwen saw these things differently. Firstly, she was nosy by her very nature; she just couldn’t stand not to know things that were nowhere her business. She just had to intervene with people’s lives, to find out their little secrets, so that she then could preach her so-called high morale.
Andy sometimes wished her high morale would include basic working ethics as well. Perhaps then he wouldn’t have to write her reports all the time when she left early to spend some ‘quality time’ with Rhys. And seriously, was that bloke blind or brain-damaged? He could have done so much better – why did he want a woman who couldn’t even cook, hated his friends and drank beer like the fish drank water? Not to mention her other… special interests.
Oh, Andy knew all too well what – or, to be more accurate who – was the other reason for Gwen’s dogged interest in Torchwood: Captain Jack Harkness. A dashing and mysterious secret agent in a billowing greatcoat, with piercing blue eyes, an American accent and a thousand megawatt smile. A fearless hero who’d saved poor little Gwen’s life in the corridor, when the hospital’s porter was supposedly murdered by some nightmarish creature.
Never mind that all hospital personnel had been present and accounted for when he’d given in to her nagging and checked. No, Gwen kept babbling about the murdered porter (who hadn’t even been on duty that day), about a man in a Hellraiser sort of mask – or some sort of rabid mutant, depending on the version she was telling – lashing out and killing the poor bloke right before her eyes, and then Captain Jack Harkness riding in with the cavalry (although she never went into any detail about whom that cavalry actually consisted) and saving the day, just to vanish into thin air somewhere around the Millennium Centre. Where a dripping wet and accordingly pissed Andy had finally found her and their shared police car, after having walked across half the town.
He was still digesting that bit. She didn’t have the right to simply take the car and leave him behind while still on duty. That was no way to treat one’s partner.
He’d chalked it all down to Gwen having hit her head really hard in that bar brawl earlier that day and taken her down to Rhys, who’d promised to look after her. Only that when Andy later tried to check on her through phone, a perplexed Rhys told him that she’d gotten back to work.
Andy didn’t want to cause any domestic trouble between them (as it would have meant to listen to Gwen’s whining all day during their next duty shift), so he lied something about logistic mistakes from Dispatch and misunderstandings. It was fortunate that Rhys was so gullible – fortunate for Gwen, that is. She could never have misled any other man quite so easily.
Actually, it was fortunate for Andy, too, as he didn’t have to spin complicated webs of lies to cover for his errant partner. Partners were supposed to cover for each other, after that, that was one of the unwritten rules of police service; even though Andy was getting tired of the one-sidedness of it. Gwen seemed to think that their single episode in the broom closet had made him her personal servant or whatnot.
In any case, he did have an educated guess of where Gwen might have gone while making Rhys believe that she was working an extra shift tonight. He hesitated for a moment – using the police car for surveillance of one’s own partner wasn’t exactly matching the rules, but that way he could get to places where his own car wouldn’t be allowed.
Line opposite that small tourist shop at the Millennium Centre. He parked the car in one of the side lanes and took out his binoculars, waiting for Gwen to appear. He knew she would come sooner or later. She was as stubborn as a mule. She just couldn’t let things be, even if they only existed in her overdeveloped imagination. No wonder Temple went regularly nuts when she was as much as mentioned. Too bad that her stupidity sabotaged Andy’s own chances for promotion as well. Partners depended on each other in every possible way, and sometimes that was a liability.
He’d barely waited ten minutes or so when he indeed spotted Gwen, coming out of Jubilee Pizza, carrying two boxes of pizza. She walked along the wharf, heading directly for the tourist shop. Andy shook his head in exasperation. What was the bloody woman up to? If the Special Ops people, or whatever they were, kept a cover shop there, they wouldn’t let her just walk in, would they? Well, he couldn’t do anything else than wait and see what would happen. He only hoped it wouldn’t take too long. They had early shift on the next day.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Half an hour alter Gwen was still in that sodding tourist shop – and come to think of, what tourist shop was still open in the middle of the night? Andy shook his head in exasperation. What has Gwen gotten herself into again? Those Special Ops people usually didn’t like outsiders blunder into their territory.
Another twenty minutes later he was ready to storm into the tourist shop himself. Gwen was a plague, for sure, but he didn’t want to get her killed out of sheer stupidity. Although he had to admit that in moments like these he was sorely tempted. Wasting his precious off-time on chasing Gwen-bloody-Cooper after ghosts was not his idea of a nice evening.
He was just about to get out of the car when the door on the passenger’s side opened and a cute Japanese chick peered into the vehicle.
“Excuse me,” she said, as if it had been the most normal thing in the world, “are you Police Constable Davidson? The partner of Miss Cooper?”
“Yes, I am,” Andy was getting really freaked out now. What the bloody hell was Gwen thinking, getting him involved in her mess as well? Oh, wait, wasn’t the problem with Gwen that she rarely stopped to actually think before she did something phenomenally stupid? Getting him in trouble all the time, too?
Still, a cute chick with glasses was better than some beefy security guards as trouble was considered. “And who are you?” Andy asked.
To his surprise, she got into the car without as much as by-your-leave. Well, at least she wasn’t pointing a gun at his head or whatnot. Yet.
“I’m Torchwood,” she replied simply. “I could tell you my name, of course, but then I’d have to make you forget, and that can be a bit messy sometimes, so the less I tell you the better for you.”
She smiled at him. She was probably a few years older than him, thirty-something or so, but she was freaking cute for a ruthless secret agent or whatever she might be. And she seemed a very smart person. Andy liked smart chicks, even if they were a little older than him; that didn’t bother him at all, as long as they looked like this.
“What about not telling me anything?” he suggested. “We could go and have a drink instead.”
She blushed very prettily, as if unused to people making a pass at her. She had to be working with very stupid men who didn’t realize what a classy lady she was if they never asked her out.
“That’s a tempting offer,” she said, “but I’ll have to opt out, I’m afraid. It would only lead to… complications.”
Probably because of all that top secret stuff, Andy guessed. It was a shame, really; but unlike Gwen, he knew when not to press an issue.
“All right, then,” he said. “What do you need to tell me? Because as sad as it is, I’m sure you haven’t gotten over here just because of my pretty face.”
She gave him a grateful little smile (she was awfully cute when she smiled really); then she became very serious again. Way too serious for Andy’s peace of mind.
“Mr Davidson,” she said slowly, as if willing him to listen and not to ask any questions she wouldn’t be able to answer, “your partner has recently stumbled into something she was not supposed to witness.
Andy suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. “That man, at the hospital, that porter – she was right about him, wasn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to him? Was he really attacked?”
“He's dead,” she said simply.
Andy shook his head. “That’s impossible. I’ve checked it myself. No-one’s missing from the hospital staff.”
She sighed. “Those things can be righted afterwards. We took the body, retrospectively changed the work rota, planted a false witness who saw him leaving the hospital, giving him an alibi for the next forty-eight hours, so when his body's pulled out of the docks next Tuesday night, he's only been missing for three days.”
“He was murdered?” Andy asked, still a bit doubtful; for one of Gwen’s harebrained theories to be proven true… well, it was hard to believe.
“Yes,” she replied matter-of-factly.
“And you covered it up?” Andy wasn’t all that surprised, to be honest. Special Ops was supposed to do such things, or they wouldn’t be needed.
She shrugged. “That's my job.”
“Why telling me about it at all, then?” Andy asked. “Won’t you have to brainwash me now, or whatever it is you do with unwanted witnesses?”
“It’s nothing so dramatic,” she corrected him with a small, flipping hand wave. “It's just a little amnesia pill. With a touch of denial and a dash of Retcon, as our boss likes to say. He’s administering it to your partner as we’re speaking. When she wakes up tomorrow morning, she'll have forgotten everything about Torchwood.”
“Again: why me?” Andy insisted.
She sighed. “She might have talked to other people about the issue. There can always be things that might trigger a repressed memory. We want you to watch her for us. You’re her partner; you can do so easily.”
“True,” Andy said. “I’m just not sure why I should do so.”
“For her own safety,” she seemed completely honest about it. “This is dangerous knowledge, especially for someone as untrained as she is. We don’t want her any harm, but we can’t allow her to keep interfering. There’s simply too much at stake.” She gave him one of those pre-paid phones. “Should she start remembering again – or should you discover anyone whom she managed to get involved – use this. It will reach me, and me alone. Oh, and don’t bother to try tracking us through it. It won’t work.”
“What are you gonna do with her if the amnesia pill doesn’t work?” Andy asked.
She shrugged. “We’ll have to dose her again… probably even move her to another town. We have our resources. She won’t be harmed, I promise.”
“I wish I could really believe you,” Andy murmured. “Who says you won’t be giving me the same pill as soon as you can be sure about Gwen?”
“I don’t know whether we’ll ever be sure about her,” she replied. “She’s the kind of person that keeps popping up like a bad penny. But once you’re no longer needed to watch her, we’ll give you the chance to decide if you want to forget about the whole affair or not.”
“You won’t trust her but you would trust me?” Andy had a hard time to believe that. “Why?”
“Background research,” she answered simply. “We’ve got a high enough security clearance to read your psychological profile. Jack might even offer you a job, should you want to leave the police. We do need new members from time to time. There’s always more work than we can manage on our own.”
“I don’t wanna do Special Ops,” Andy declared forcefully. “I’m happy enough to protect and serve… as long as my partner lets me do my job.”
“We’re not Special Ops,” she replied, smiling that endearing little smile of hers again.
“So what are you then?” Andy asked. She shrugged, her smile gaining an enigmatic quality.
“Something entirely different,” she said. And he knew that was all the answer he’d ever get from her, unless they decided to hire him full time.
“All right,” he sighed. “I’ll do it – but I have one condition.”
“Oh? And that would be?”
“That if this is all over, you’ll go out with me. On a proper date: dinner, perhaps a movie, nothing fancy.”
She seemed genuinely surprised by the request. Yep, working with idiots, no doubt about that. Then she smiled again, holding out a small but surprisingly strong hand to him.
“You’ve got a deal.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
And so Police Constable Andy Davidson became a freelance agent of Torchwood, for the promise of a proper date with the cute lady whose name he’d never learned, his only task being to keep an eye on the unpredictable actions of Gwen Cooper. Which, if he wanted to be honest, was a full-time job on a good day. Now that he knew what to look for, it became even more complicated.
Still, the amnesia pill must have worked, because when they met Yvonne in the next morning, and she asked if they had any luck with Captain Jack Harkness, Gwen just stared at her unblinkingly and told her she had no idea what Yvonne was talking about. Yvonne, whom she must have asked to do some unofficial research for her, sniffed indignantly.
“Oh, well don't worry about me, just go ahead, wasting my time,” she said, walking past them. Gwen stared after her in confusion, but Andy knew he’d have to find out how much Gwen had actually told Yvonne. And then he’d have to use that one-way phone. He hoped they have to wipe Yvonne’s memory, too, but they needed to know about a potential leak.
Later on that day, Gwen talked him into visiting the filing cabinets to see what headway had been made I the serial murder case. For once, Andy didn’t really mind. He was interested in detective work, even hoped to become a detective one day; although, burdened with a partner like Gwen, he saw that chance vanishing more and more with each passing day. Still, keeping in touch with the other departments couldn’t hurt.
Sergeant Vaughan, a big, round-faced and slightly pot-bellied man in his late thirties, passed them on the way to his desk. He was a good-natured fellow who had taken Andy under his wings since the younger man’s first day with the police.
“Aye, aye,” he said with twinkling eyes,” if that’s not our eager little constable! Come to see where the real work's done?”
“Yes, sir, that's right, sir,” Gwen babbled, completely ignoring the fact that she wasn’t the one who’d been asked. She wasn’t the one having a regular beer or two with Sergeant Vaughan on Friday evenings at Slimbo’s, either. “How's it going?” she added in a tone she hoped was professional but didn’t sound that way at all.
The sergeant rolled his eyes, headed over to his desk and sat on it, facing the victim board. “See for yourself,” he said.
Gwen didn’t wait for any further invitation. She hurried to the board, checking it for any additional information.
“This drawing here,” she pointed at the sketch of a knife that had two smaller blades protruding out from either side of the primary blade. “Is this the murder weapon?”
The sergeant nodded. “Seems to be, aye. They worked it all out on a computer, they did. Took measurements from the stab wounds, calculated the shape of the blade and stuff, even those prongs – I don't know how they do it. Nasty-looking beast, though. That hooked design does more damage coming out than going in. Seen anything like it somewhere?”
Gwen stared at the picture insecurely and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so,” he replied absent-mindedly, but Andy could almost hear all the little cogwheels in that stubborn head of hers running at high speed.
That made him extremely uncomfortable, because the only place she could have seen that nasty weapon without actually remembering would be Torchwood. Could they have been involved in all those murder cases? And if yes, could he alarm them and endanger Gwen’s life? Sure, the cute Japanese chick had promised they wouldn't harm her, but was she telling the truth?
After some hesitation, Andy decided not to make the call just yet. Perhaps things would reassert themselves without intervention just this one time.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Of course, he’d made his estimate without taking Gwen’s mulish nature into consideration. As always, she couldn’t just leave things bloody alone. She was distracted all day – more so than usual, and that was saying a lot – sketching that blasted knife from memory over and over again.
What made Andy truly concerned, though, was that her drawings were more sleek, more detailed than the computer-generated picture on the victim board. That wasn’t good, not good at all! Still, Andy couldn’t struggle himself through to make the call. There had to be some other solution.
He followed Gwen home and parked opposite her house. He was so relieved when he saw the lights go out in their flat. Perhaps Rhys had managed to distract her somehow. But Andy waited for a little longer, just in case. This was Gwen Cooper, after all. One had to expect the unexpected when it came to her – and not necessarily in a good way.
And lo! Like a self-fulfilling prophecy coming true, Gwen emerged from the house again, in the middle of the night, fully clothed and getting into her car. Andy sighed regretfully. Now he couldn’t delay making that call any longer. He flipped the phone open and pushed the button.
“Torchwood,” the now-familiar female voice replied almost immediately. Did these people never sleep? “What’s it, Constable Davidson?”
“I’m not sure,” Andy replied, “but Gwen has just left home. I think she’s on her way to you lot. She has seen a drawing of the possible murder weapon in one of the recent cases, and… well, if you have something to do with covering it up, then we all have a problem.”
“Understood,” she replied. “We’re monitoring the Plass. There’s no need for you to follow her; we’ll deal with the problem. Torchwood out.”
She hung up, but Andy decided to follow Gwen anyway. She was his responsibility; and besides, he couldn’t be entirely sure that she was, in fact, going to the Millennium Centre.
Right, and whom are you trying to fool, mate? He asked himself grimly, while trying not to lose Gwen along the way. He wasn’t entirely successful. She always tended to drive a bit recklessly, but tonight, her only concern seemed to be to reach her destination as quickly as possible, and traffic rules are damned. It was a good thing that Andy already had an inkling where to look for her.
When he reached the Millennium Centre, Gwen was already standing at the water structure – and she was not alone. An exotic-looking woman in a dark jacket was staring at her from the other side of the water sculpture, pointing a large handgun at Gwen, ranting about something. Andy could barely hear her, and could only understand a few things.
“You were right, you know,” she was saying when Andy got into earshot. “You told Jack we should liaise with the police, but arrogant fool that he is, he didn’t listen. Neither did the others. I was the only one who bothered. So, I was the only one who saw the report. I must give them one thing: They got a good likeness."
Andy inched closer, thinking feverishly about chances to distract the madwoman (for the chick clearly wasn’t lucid!) who was aiming a gun at his partner. It didn’t help, of course, that Gwen had absolutely no sense of self-preservation. She just stared at the madwoman with eyes that got bigger by the second, trying to sound crisp and professional.
“I'm arresting you for...” she began, but trailed off uncertainly, realizing that she didn’t even know why she wanted to arrest the other chick. “Wait a minute, how do I know you?”
The other chick shook her head regretfully. “You had to come back, hadn’t you? I thought you might have seen the knife; and that can trip the amnesia, just one image if you’re lucky… or unlucky, it depends. Anyway, you’re the one who could make the link. I can’t allow that to happen.”
Andy decided he had to influence. The Torchwood people apparently weren’t coming in time – or they’d simply decided to let Gwen be killed and be rid of her that way, without making their hands dirty. But he couldn’t just let this crazy chick shoot Gwen in cold blood. That was against his training as a constable – and against his ethics.
He stepped forth, flashing his badge, and said in a voice that was a lot more stable than he really felt in the inside. “Andrew Davidson, CID. Out the weapon down, missy. No-one needs to get hurt today.”
She looked at him with that almost-regret in her dark eyes. “I can’t let her go,” she answered wit the chilling inner logic of the insane.
“Yes, you can,” Andy said firmly. “Killing her won’t help you a bit. You’d have to kill me, too, and I’ve already alarmed Torchwood.”
She seemed uncertain for a moment, and Andy had almost begun to hope that they all might come out of this alive. Unfortunately, Gwen chose this very moment to become heroic and attacked the crazy chick frontally. As it could be expected, the woman pulled the trigger – more as a reflex than with full intent – hitting her square between the eyes. Gwen fell onto the ground between them, her mouth gaping open, an expression of absurd surprise on her face.
The crazy chick whirled around, cocking the gun and pointing it at Andy. Bizarrely enough, she was all but crying. “I’m sorry. I can’t let you go, either.”
Andy checked Gwen’s pulse, out of routine, but, as he’d expected, found none. “You’ll never get away with this.”
“He’s right, you know,” a voice said, and out of nowhere, a tall man in a heavy grey coat appeared behind the crazy chick. “Suzie, it’s over.” He held out a large hand to her. “Now, come with me.”
The woman turned and looked at him, her eyes frantically looking for a way of escape. Two other people emerged from the shadows, flanking her from all sides: the Japanese chick and a shorter, thinner, black-haired man with a sour expression on his face. The madwoman was trapped, and she knew it.
“Suzie,” the man in the greatcoat said again, his smooth voice full of sorrow. “It’s over. Put down the gun.”
The chick looked around again, but all ways were blocked – unless she wanted to shoot he way free, which Andy wouldn’t put entirely beyond her. Then, before they could disarm her, she put the gun muzzle under her own chin, fired, and fell to the ground, dead.
Looking from one dead woman to another, Andy fell to his hands and knees and threw up.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
An hour later, he was sitting in Torchwood’s impressive underground base with the cute chick, whose name was apparently Toshiko and was a computer wizard (and just how cool was that?), the man in the greatcoat, who turned out to be the very same Captain Jack Harkness about whom Gwen had been bugging Yvonne the other day, being served coffee by a friendly young man in an impeccable suit. He had been listening to the explanations for the last hour and was now way beyond the stage of freaking out.
“So what now?” he asked tiredly. “Toshiko here said you wouldn’t wipe my memory as you did with Gwen, unless I wanted it.”
“Why would I do that?” Captain Harkness, whom everyone but the young man in the suit seemed to call simply Jack, asked with a shrug. “You appear to be a level-headed sort of guy, and Torchwood’s got a vacancy. Job going spare right now. Do you want it?”
Andy looked at him suspiciously, but the captain seemed genuine enough. Toshiko was beaming at him encouragingly – and the coffee boy didn’t seem to care.
“What would you possibly need me for?” he asked.
Jack shrugged again. “We can always use more field agents, with Rift activity increasing as it has been lately. You’ve got the local knowledge, you’ve got the experience… there are several places you would fit in, if you’re interested.”
Andy looked at Toshiko who was still smiling at him beatifically, and knew he’d never be able to reject such an offer.
“Yeah,” he said. “Oh yeah, I am interested.”
~The End –for now~
