Wishvere 1.02 - Part 1
Aug. 7th, 2009 10:33 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. Just to be on the safe side.
Genre: Drama, I'd say. Plus a lot of dark humour.
Series: Wishverse.
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 02 – DAY ONE? NO, DAY ZERO! - Part 1
Author’s note: This episode turned out too long, so I broke it into parts. LJ does have its limits.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Toshiko Sato had been one unhappy woman since the day Gwen Cooper had joined Torchwood Three. And it wasn’t simply because she missed Suzie – although she did. When she’d come to Torchwood, Suzie had been a funny, brilliant, sharp-witted woman with whom to work had been a delight a well as a great adventure.
And it hadn’t been all work and no fun, either. Often, the two of them had gone out together, late after work, and even though it had always been Suzie who got picked up in pubs or bars or discos, Toshiko had enjoyed very much that there was something else than Torchwood and its often terrifying secrets nonetheless.
Until the job had finally broken Suzie. Until she’d developed an obsession for “getting inside” the alien tech, as she’d called it, shortly before taking her own life. Until she’d surrendered to it completely, became part of it, so much that not even the perception filter would work on her.
Until she’d started murdering people, just so that she could test the resurrection glove, trying to extend the limits of its working. Until she’d become completely mad. Broken by Torchwood, for good.
Yet Toshiko still missed her. And having Gwen-bloody-Cooper in her stead was bordering on insult. No-one could understand why Jack would hire her in the first place, unless he’d gone completely hormonal. For some unfathomable reason, even reasonably intelligent men seemed to fall for bulging cow-eyes.
“It’s purely atavistic,” Ianto had commented dryly on one afternoon when they’d been left alone in the Hub. “The last remnants of ancient fertility cults in our subconscious. Most of the Earth Mother-type goddesses were displayed as cow, you know. Or as naked women with a cow’s head, like Hathor in Egypt. Although Hathor, of course, was at least a beautiful cow.”
It was comforting that Ianto, at least, appeared to be immune against the cow effect. And he seemed to despise Gwen at least as much as Toshiko did. Perhaps there was some similar motivation: jealousy. Toshiko was having the sinking feeling that sooner or later, Owen might fall victim of the cow effect; and Ianto always stiffened unconsciously when Gwen blundered into the Hub and grabbed Jack to have some deep, meaningful conversation with him. She seemed to suffer from the delusion that by filling the vacancy, she’d automatically inherited Suzie’s position as second in command, and for some reason Jack hadn’t forced her to make a reality check yet.
Besides, Ianto absolutely hated if someone called him “sweetheart” or “love”, and Gwen was calling him both, on a hourly basis. At such times, Ianto would go all quiet and stiff, his lips pressing together into a thin, bloodless line, and his hands would tremble, barely visibly, but they would. Toshiko could never understand why, but she wished Gwen would pull her head out of her arse and see, just once, the effect her words had on other people.
Tonight, however, Jack had given her the day off, telling her to have a life, so they all could stop babysitting her, which was a relief. She tended to poke the wrong things and had gotten hurt twice already. With her out of their hair, they could perhaps do some useful work for a change.
“Do tell me, Jack, why the fuck did you hire her in the first place?” Owen growled, trying to get his alien medical database, which completely fritzed out after Gwen had studied alien species on his computer, getting back into some semblance of working order.
Jack, accepting a steaming cup of coffee from Ianto, shrugged nonchalantly. “Unexpected atatck of nostalgia, I guess,” he replied with one of his trademark lewd grins. “Used to know an alien with eyes like hers once. A tentacled alien, with highly… exciting suction cups along its tentacles… all eight of them.”
Owen made a face as if he’d get sick in any moment, which was no small feat, as very few things could actually gross him out, at least when it came to sexual practices. “You’re a sick man, Harkness,” he declared. “I mean, ewww… not even I would…”
“Not even if it were a female of the species?” Jack inquired with a raised eyebrow.
Toshiko could see Ianto’s shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter, and she had a hard time to pretend innocence, herself. For all his dirty mouth, Owen was surprisingly narrow-minded when picking his numerous bed mates.
“Ewww!” he exclaimed again, turned off by the mere idea of having sex with a bug-eyed octopus, female or otherwise.
Jack grinned at him unrepentantly. “Hey, don’t toss it until you’ve tried it!” he said.
Ianto, who’d turned to one of the surveillance monitors to regain his unflappable composure, cleared his throat twice before he could speak without giggling.
“Sir, I think you should take a look at this,” he said, gesturing at the monitor. It showed a large ball of fire zooming across the night sky very quickly. It seemed to be crashing somewhere.
Jack became deadly serious at once. He could switch in and out his easy-going lecherous persona at will, which was a very useful thing at their kind of work.
“Prepare the SUV?” he ordered. “Take the standard kit. This will be a simple locating and clean up operation. We need to find that meteorite before anyone else gets their hands on it. Ianto, you’ll monitor our progress from here and stand by; just in case we needed help. I’ll call Gwen.”
“Do you have to?” Owen asked sourly.
Jack shot him a sharp look. “Yes, I do,” he replied. “Trained policewoman or not, she needs to learn how we deal with things.”
“It’s her so-called training that makes me worry,” Owen returned. “Even teaboy here is better qualified for field work. At least he knows how to use a gun!”
Ianto pulled a face at the backhanded compliment but didn’t rise to the bait. He had a SUV to prepare; and besides, nothing could annoy Owen more than when he was getting ignored. Toshiko went with him to check on the mobile workstation. Not that Ianto couldn’t do it – although he was more than capable to deal with any computer-related system – but she needed to get away from Owen and his foul mood, at least for a few minutes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When Gwen finally arrived – at least half an hour later than she should have – Owen’s mood had become downright unbearable, drumming with his fingers on the steering wheel and mumbling obscenities under his breath. Jack, sitting on the passenger’s seat, flashed a wide, false smile at Gwen.
“Good to see you,” he said. The unspoken addition finally hung between them in the air, but Gwen obviously failed to recognize it. She was too thrilled to go with them on her first field mission.
She climbed to Toshiko on the back seat, her eyes widening to almost disturbing size when she saw the workstation unsolved in readiness. A red dot started to blink on the virtual map shown on the monitor.
“Oooh, cool, what is this?” Gwen asked in excitement.
“Basic tracking and surveillance,” Toshiko replied curtly. That earned her one of those dumb looks, and she sighed impatiently. “For the crash side,” she explained, extremely irritated that she had to waste time with such baby stuff. “With this we can tap into CCTV networks, national databases… whatever we need.”
“B-but this… this CRIMINT!” Gwen stuttered. “This is the police computer system. You shouldn't have this!”
Toshiko gave her an icy look. “You think so?”
Jack looked back at Gwen, his smile fading to mild annoyance. “You might want to stop saying you and start saying we,” he suggested.
The silence in which they continued to head towards the crash site was everything but pleasant.
“Crash site is one hundred meters ahead,” Toshiko finally reported.
“Shit,” Owen swore and stopped the car. “The amateurs got here first. Thanks for being late,” he added, glaring to Gwen, who didn’t even get the connection.
“What do you mean with amateurs?” she asked.
Nobody answered here – it wasn’t necessary, really. The truckload of soldiers exiting their vehicle, right before their noses, could have been registered by a blind man. The police had already blocked the road and was gathering just outside the barrier.
Jack opened the car door and stood up to see what was happening. ”All right, everyone, get your gear together and get out of the car,” he said. “Usual formation.”
Toshiko grabbed her kit and followed Jack. Gwen rushed forward, without bothering to get hers first.
“What's the usual formation?” she asked.
Owen glanced at her with disgust. “Varies,” he said, joining the others without any further word. Gwen stared after him with a complete lack of understanding.
“How can a usual formation vary?” she asked, nobody in particular. The others ignored her; the police opened the barrier for them, and they went through. That finally reminded her that she didn’t have her kit and turned back to the SUV.
In the meantime the others reached the crash site, taking hold on the lead rope and heading down into the crater, in the centre of which a large, rock-like pod sat. Lights had been placed around it for better view.
“So let's see what we came for,” Jack said; then he looked around with a frown. “Where the hell is Gwen?”
“Not here yet,” Owen replied sourly. “Seems to be a tendency with her.”
Jack’s frown deepened. “Start here without us,” he said. “I’ll go get her.”
Toshiko and Owen exchanged a look and shrugged. It was fine with them to do their jobs without Gwen’s constant interference. Owen opened his kit and sorted a few tools he would need to examine the pod, while Toshiko adjusted her palmtop to access the mobile workstation in the car and transfer sensor data to it.
A few moments later Jack came back, Gwen jogging behind him like a badly groomed – and even more badly trained – poodle.
“What do we know?” he asked.
“Bog standard space debris,” Owen replied distractedly; then, with a look at Gwen’s blank face, he added. “That's a technical term.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Gwen pouted like a four-year old. Jack rolled his eyes.
“So take all the readings and let's get out of here,” he said to Owen, who nodded.
They all opened their kits – well, all but Gwen who was just leaning on the side, watching them – and began to work, tossing tools to each other and catching them, without even looking. They were a well-oiled team, after all. Or had been, at least, with Suzie still there to fill the now gaping breach in the teamwork, each one knowing his or her special task and doing it without much discussion.
Owen took samples from the outer pod shell, then used a stethoscope to listen to possible lifesigns from within. Jack took readings of the air and Toshiko analysed the background radiation, checking with the database of the mobile workstation.
After a few moments of intense work, Owen glared up at their newbie who was still standing around uselessly, watching everyone else work, and very obviously not having a clue what they were doing.
“Make yourself useful, sweetheart!” he scowled. “Pass us the big chisel from the toolbox, would you?”
Gwen put on that pout again; the one that made her look like a fish… and not a particularly intelligent one. “Not sweetheart – Gwen,” she corrected with what she probably thought was a superior air while it only sounded whiny. “One syllable, sure you can manage it.”
“The same way you can manage Ianto’s name?” Toshiko asked with false sweetness. “I’m sure he enjoys being called sweetheart by you, too.”
She could see Jack’s suddenly stiffening back and suppressed a grin. Everyone at Torchwood knew that Jack was, well, interested in their teaboy, as Owen called him (and yes, for the record, Ianto hated that nickname, too, every bit as much as Gwen’s mindless endearments), and that Ianto politely kept him at arm’s length, while never flat-out rejecting his advances. Their witty flirting was a hundred times more interesting than daytime television – not that any of them would have time to actually watch the telly, of course.
“Well, sweetcheeks, you should give up on teaboy already,” Owen continued, enjoying Gwen’s discomfort profoundly. “His heart is well and truly given to the coffee machine in the Hub. You’ll never be half as shiny – or as polished, for that matter – as the bloody thing. Now, do I get that big chisel any time soon?”
Gwen became beet read with anger. “It's a shame your tool's not big enough for the job, darlin',” she snapped, and grabbing fort he chisel, she threw it at Owen. “Catch!”
“Don’t!” Owen shouted, but it was already too late. The chisel, thrown in too high an arc for him to catch, punctured a hole in the pod. Some kind of purple gas escaped out of the pod through the large hole. “Shit!” Owen cursed, shooting Gwen a baleful look.
Jack was the first and quickest to react. He reached into the open kit at his feet and picked up a gas mask. “Owen, catch!” He tossed it to Owen, another one to Toshiko and put one on Gwen’s stunned face while covering his own, too. “Put this on!”
They all obeyed, watching in silence as a large pinkish-purple cloud of living gas rose out of the pod. It spread out and moves around, pulsating for a moment in a vaguely obscene manner, then zooms up into the night sky. Jack lowered his mask and gave Gwen a seriously displeased look. Gwen huffed, turned and looked at Owen accusingly.
Owen glared back at her. “Congratulations,” he said.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ianto had gotten the disaster alarm from Toshiko via text message: MFMLC – Mission Failed, Make Lots of Coffee – so he was not particularly surprised when the team returned to the Hub, wrapped in thunderclouds. With the exception of Gwen, of course, who kept running after Jack like a lovesick poodle, whimpering her endless apologies.
“I'm so sorry,” she repeated again and again, her voice achieving that whiny quality which would make even a Weevil cringle.
Still, Jack tried to be civil with her. “Seriously, stop saying that.”
But Gwen was not so easily stopped. She followed him up the steps to the office area.
“But I am!” she insisted. “I mean, really, I mean really, really sorry. God, I can't believe it.”
Owen, on his way to his workstation, glared at her in annoyance. “Didn't they teach you Health and Safety in the police? I thought you were a trained policewoman.”
Gwen got all teary-eyed in a second. “You two chucked tools at each other, so I...” she defended herself.
Owen’s glare dropped the temperature in the Hub at least five degrees. “We didn't miss,” he said dryly.
“I'll sort it,” Gwen insisted. “Whatever's happened, I'll deal with it.”
“I’d just love to see how she’s planning to do that,” Toshiko muttered, in a voice too low for anyone but Ianto (who was standing right next to her) to pick it up. Ianto gave him a restrained little smile that was, nonetheless, positively evil.
They walked past Gwen to put their equipment down in Cold Storage 1-6, under Ianto’s watchful eye. Sometimes his neat freak nature was a little tiresome, but they all admitted that the Hub would have drowned in chaos without him, so they indulged him… most of the time.
Gwen, in the meantime, was still worrying on her mistake, like a dog on a rubber bone.
“What d'you think has happened?” she whined. “I mean, it was just gas, wasn't it? That can't be too bad, can it?”
Owen gave her an exasperated look. He might not be very choosy when it came to potentially shaggable women, but this level of stupidity seriously pissed him off. “Right, because gas never did anyone any harm,” he replied sharply, and had the satisfaction to see Jack nod in agreement.
“On the plus side, we've got good evidence, relatively undamaged,” Jack said, to smooth the waves over. He opened the box with a sample of the rock and gave it a curious look.
“On the downside, there's an alien on the loose, we don't know where it is, why it's here or what it's going to do,” Owen shot back. Toshiko had a really hard time to hide her grin. Owen on the warpath was a truly endearing sight. Especially when his anger was aimed at the woman he’d been doing the mating dance around for days.
“Give her a break,” she said with false sympathy. Gwen, of course, thought that her support was being genuine… and it inspired her to another bout of useless self-flagellation.
“God, this has been the worst first day ever,” she moaned. At that point, Jack had apparently had enough of her histrionics.
“We all make mistakes,” he said curtly. “Get over it. Now we find and recover whatever came out of there.”
Ianto cleared his throat. Every looked at him. He was standing at the top of the steps with a clipboard. How and when he had gotten up again, nobody could tell, but they’d stopped guessing a long time ago. Ianto had his ways, and they worked. That was enough for everyone.
“This might help,” he said, extending the clipboard to Jack. “Nightclub death been phoned in to 999. Circumstances sound... a little unusual.
Gwen hurried up the steps to snatch the clipboard report from his hands. Tolerantly, Ianto let her have it.
“Might be connected,” he commented simply.
Jack glanced at it over Gwen’s shoulder and nodded. “Let’s go!”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It was early morning when they reached the night club Ianto had mentioned. Toshiko was exhausted beyond belief, and not just physically. The continued exposure to so much Gwen-ness was more than any sane person could take after a sleepless night. She was relieved when the SUV pulled up opposite the club and she could finally get away from her.
A seriously cute police constable – tall, blond, with curly hair, hazel eyes and a smile that could have cured a rainy day – came out of the building at the same moment the Torchwood team hurried across the street. He stopped at the top of the steps next to his partner and frowned at Jack who tried to hurry into the club past him.
“Excuse me, sir, but this is a crime scene,” he said. He had a really pleasant voice; deep, but not overly so. It did funny things to Toshiko’s stomach. Funny, fluttery things.
“Torchwood,” Jack snapped at him, but the young constable no longer listened to him. He was staring at Gwen, of all people, his mouth slightly agape.
“Gwen?“ he finally said, still in a disbelieving manner.
Gwen gave him one of those silly little waves used mostly by pre-school kids. “Hi Andy!”
The cute young policeman, whose name was apparently Andy, shook his head. “Bloody hell!” he said. “Look at you, all posh. Special Ops! We were wondering what happened to you.”
That comment finally made click. Toshiko remembered Gwen mentioning earlier that her partner’s name was Andy. She’d never bothered to mention the man’s surname, though. And, it seemed, she’d never bothered to say her goodbyes to her former colleagues properly, either. Speak about teamwork quality, Toshiko thought sarcastically.
“I meant to call,” Gwen apologized a little lamely. “It's been a bit of a whirlwind.”
Toshiko rolled her eyes – it wasn’t as if Gwen would have done anything worth mentioning since joining Torchwood. All that “whirlwind” had been she causing all sorts of incidents within the Hub as a result of not leaving things she knew nothing about bloody alone and the others having clean up her mess at least twice a day.
PC Andy must have known the feeling, because those lovely eyes of his were twinkling at Toshiko in tolerant amusement. “Go on, then, tell us all,” he encouraged Gwen, while winking at Toshiko over her head. He was tall enough to do that without Gwen realizing it.
Gwen might have launched into some lengthy story on the spot, had Jack not reappeared in the doorway just in the same moment.
“Coming?” he asked impatiently. He might be a terrible flirt – well, truth be told, he was – but he never mixed work with his flirting.
Gwen seemed to realize what was expected from her, for a change. “Yeah, sorry,” she said sheepishly. Then she turned to Andy and added in a superior manner. “You can get away now. No point you freezing your arse off out here.”
There was definite annoyance in those pretty eyes of the young constable now – a feeling Toshiko could relate to.
“Boss of me now, are you?” he asked, but Gwen no longer listened to him. She turned and heads into the club. In the last moment, however, she stopped and turned around again. “Uh, say hi to everyone for me.”
Andy nodded unenthusiastically. “I’m sure everyone will be so excited,” he commented, voice dripping with sarcasm. No longer listening to him – again – Gwen headed inside.
Toshiko smiled at Andy in apology. “I’m sorry,” she said. “She’s new… she still needs to learn proper protocol.” And wasn’t that a good feeling, being able to say so?
Andy shook his head. “Don’t bother,” he replied. “She won’t. I served with her over two years; I should know.”
“If that was supposed to cheer me up, it failed,” Toshiko told her. Andy laughed.
“No,” he said. “That was an attempt to make conversation. I just couldn’t find another shared topic on the top of my head.”
“Well, that’s nice, but I’m afraid I just don’t have the time right now,” Toshiko said, a little regretfully. He was such a nice young man, and it had been forever since anyone tried to flirt with her the last time. “Not in the middle of this.”
“Another time perhaps?” Andy offered. “With out line of work, we might run into each other again. At least I hope so.”
“Perhaps,” Toshiko replied. “This could be a small town sometimes.” And with that, he hurried after the others.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After having examined the pile of dirt on the floor of the ladies bathroom – the one that had supposed to be a horny young man a couple of hours earlier – the team watched the security vid of the young man bursting into gold dust and getting sucked into his sex partner in the night club’s security office. Jack seemed properly impressed by the sight. Toshiko, for her part, felt a little sick.
“Oh, my God!” she whispered in shock. “He just...”
“Came and went,” Jack commented with a face that matched the really bad pun. Owen snickered, of course, but Owen was a sick bastard.
“That's the way I'd like to go,” he deadpanned. Toshiko glared at him in disgust.
“I'm sure we could arrange it,” she said icily. Owen seemed completely unrepentant, and Toshiko asked herself what in seven hells she actually saw in this man.
The club owner, at the very least, appeared upset… and so did Gwen. She’d gone into full police detective mode – despite the fact that she’d never performed a single investigation on her own – grilling the owner about the girl, her name, if she was a regular, whether any of the other staff would know more about her. The man just shook his head – he really didn’t know anything, which, with hundreds of people visiting the club each weekend, wasn’t all that surprising. But Gwen wouldn’t leave it, and finally Jack saw the necessity to intervene.
“Thanks for your help. We've got all we need,” he said, leading the club owner out of the room.
Gwen glared at him in exasperation. “What are you talking about? We haven't got a clue. We don't even know her name!”
Jack gave him a withering looks but didn’t say anything, which was a sure sign that he’d got totally fed up. He turned and let the room, without looking if Gwen followed him or not. Which, of course, she did. She wasn’t so easy to get rid of.
Owen emerged from another back room and joined them. He and Toshiko nodded in unison as Jack issued standard instructions. Take a body from the cryo-chamber, close match to the dead guy’s appearance. Disfigure the face, dump it someplace remote, make it look like a suicide attempt. Business as usual. They’d done the same countless times and will do it again. It was a sad business, but someone had to do.
Heading out, Toshiko could hear Gwen’s whining. “You have a stash of bodies?”
She shook her head and hurried after Owen. Let’s Jack deal with Gwen. They had work to do.
~Part 2~
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Torchwood
Category: Heavy-duty Gwen bashing.
Rating: 14+, for this chapter. Just to be on the safe side.
Genre: Drama, I'd say. Plus a lot of dark humour.
Series: Wishverse.
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 02 – DAY ONE? NO, DAY ZERO! - Part 1
Author’s note: This episode turned out too long, so I broke it into parts. LJ does have its limits.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Toshiko Sato had been one unhappy woman since the day Gwen Cooper had joined Torchwood Three. And it wasn’t simply because she missed Suzie – although she did. When she’d come to Torchwood, Suzie had been a funny, brilliant, sharp-witted woman with whom to work had been a delight a well as a great adventure.
And it hadn’t been all work and no fun, either. Often, the two of them had gone out together, late after work, and even though it had always been Suzie who got picked up in pubs or bars or discos, Toshiko had enjoyed very much that there was something else than Torchwood and its often terrifying secrets nonetheless.
Until the job had finally broken Suzie. Until she’d developed an obsession for “getting inside” the alien tech, as she’d called it, shortly before taking her own life. Until she’d surrendered to it completely, became part of it, so much that not even the perception filter would work on her.
Until she’d started murdering people, just so that she could test the resurrection glove, trying to extend the limits of its working. Until she’d become completely mad. Broken by Torchwood, for good.
Yet Toshiko still missed her. And having Gwen-bloody-Cooper in her stead was bordering on insult. No-one could understand why Jack would hire her in the first place, unless he’d gone completely hormonal. For some unfathomable reason, even reasonably intelligent men seemed to fall for bulging cow-eyes.
“It’s purely atavistic,” Ianto had commented dryly on one afternoon when they’d been left alone in the Hub. “The last remnants of ancient fertility cults in our subconscious. Most of the Earth Mother-type goddesses were displayed as cow, you know. Or as naked women with a cow’s head, like Hathor in Egypt. Although Hathor, of course, was at least a beautiful cow.”
It was comforting that Ianto, at least, appeared to be immune against the cow effect. And he seemed to despise Gwen at least as much as Toshiko did. Perhaps there was some similar motivation: jealousy. Toshiko was having the sinking feeling that sooner or later, Owen might fall victim of the cow effect; and Ianto always stiffened unconsciously when Gwen blundered into the Hub and grabbed Jack to have some deep, meaningful conversation with him. She seemed to suffer from the delusion that by filling the vacancy, she’d automatically inherited Suzie’s position as second in command, and for some reason Jack hadn’t forced her to make a reality check yet.
Besides, Ianto absolutely hated if someone called him “sweetheart” or “love”, and Gwen was calling him both, on a hourly basis. At such times, Ianto would go all quiet and stiff, his lips pressing together into a thin, bloodless line, and his hands would tremble, barely visibly, but they would. Toshiko could never understand why, but she wished Gwen would pull her head out of her arse and see, just once, the effect her words had on other people.
Tonight, however, Jack had given her the day off, telling her to have a life, so they all could stop babysitting her, which was a relief. She tended to poke the wrong things and had gotten hurt twice already. With her out of their hair, they could perhaps do some useful work for a change.
“Do tell me, Jack, why the fuck did you hire her in the first place?” Owen growled, trying to get his alien medical database, which completely fritzed out after Gwen had studied alien species on his computer, getting back into some semblance of working order.
Jack, accepting a steaming cup of coffee from Ianto, shrugged nonchalantly. “Unexpected atatck of nostalgia, I guess,” he replied with one of his trademark lewd grins. “Used to know an alien with eyes like hers once. A tentacled alien, with highly… exciting suction cups along its tentacles… all eight of them.”
Owen made a face as if he’d get sick in any moment, which was no small feat, as very few things could actually gross him out, at least when it came to sexual practices. “You’re a sick man, Harkness,” he declared. “I mean, ewww… not even I would…”
“Not even if it were a female of the species?” Jack inquired with a raised eyebrow.
Toshiko could see Ianto’s shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter, and she had a hard time to pretend innocence, herself. For all his dirty mouth, Owen was surprisingly narrow-minded when picking his numerous bed mates.
“Ewww!” he exclaimed again, turned off by the mere idea of having sex with a bug-eyed octopus, female or otherwise.
Jack grinned at him unrepentantly. “Hey, don’t toss it until you’ve tried it!” he said.
Ianto, who’d turned to one of the surveillance monitors to regain his unflappable composure, cleared his throat twice before he could speak without giggling.
“Sir, I think you should take a look at this,” he said, gesturing at the monitor. It showed a large ball of fire zooming across the night sky very quickly. It seemed to be crashing somewhere.
Jack became deadly serious at once. He could switch in and out his easy-going lecherous persona at will, which was a very useful thing at their kind of work.
“Prepare the SUV?” he ordered. “Take the standard kit. This will be a simple locating and clean up operation. We need to find that meteorite before anyone else gets their hands on it. Ianto, you’ll monitor our progress from here and stand by; just in case we needed help. I’ll call Gwen.”
“Do you have to?” Owen asked sourly.
Jack shot him a sharp look. “Yes, I do,” he replied. “Trained policewoman or not, she needs to learn how we deal with things.”
“It’s her so-called training that makes me worry,” Owen returned. “Even teaboy here is better qualified for field work. At least he knows how to use a gun!”
Ianto pulled a face at the backhanded compliment but didn’t rise to the bait. He had a SUV to prepare; and besides, nothing could annoy Owen more than when he was getting ignored. Toshiko went with him to check on the mobile workstation. Not that Ianto couldn’t do it – although he was more than capable to deal with any computer-related system – but she needed to get away from Owen and his foul mood, at least for a few minutes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When Gwen finally arrived – at least half an hour later than she should have – Owen’s mood had become downright unbearable, drumming with his fingers on the steering wheel and mumbling obscenities under his breath. Jack, sitting on the passenger’s seat, flashed a wide, false smile at Gwen.
“Good to see you,” he said. The unspoken addition finally hung between them in the air, but Gwen obviously failed to recognize it. She was too thrilled to go with them on her first field mission.
She climbed to Toshiko on the back seat, her eyes widening to almost disturbing size when she saw the workstation unsolved in readiness. A red dot started to blink on the virtual map shown on the monitor.
“Oooh, cool, what is this?” Gwen asked in excitement.
“Basic tracking and surveillance,” Toshiko replied curtly. That earned her one of those dumb looks, and she sighed impatiently. “For the crash side,” she explained, extremely irritated that she had to waste time with such baby stuff. “With this we can tap into CCTV networks, national databases… whatever we need.”
“B-but this… this CRIMINT!” Gwen stuttered. “This is the police computer system. You shouldn't have this!”
Toshiko gave her an icy look. “You think so?”
Jack looked back at Gwen, his smile fading to mild annoyance. “You might want to stop saying you and start saying we,” he suggested.
The silence in which they continued to head towards the crash site was everything but pleasant.
“Crash site is one hundred meters ahead,” Toshiko finally reported.
“Shit,” Owen swore and stopped the car. “The amateurs got here first. Thanks for being late,” he added, glaring to Gwen, who didn’t even get the connection.
“What do you mean with amateurs?” she asked.
Nobody answered here – it wasn’t necessary, really. The truckload of soldiers exiting their vehicle, right before their noses, could have been registered by a blind man. The police had already blocked the road and was gathering just outside the barrier.
Jack opened the car door and stood up to see what was happening. ”All right, everyone, get your gear together and get out of the car,” he said. “Usual formation.”
Toshiko grabbed her kit and followed Jack. Gwen rushed forward, without bothering to get hers first.
“What's the usual formation?” she asked.
Owen glanced at her with disgust. “Varies,” he said, joining the others without any further word. Gwen stared after him with a complete lack of understanding.
“How can a usual formation vary?” she asked, nobody in particular. The others ignored her; the police opened the barrier for them, and they went through. That finally reminded her that she didn’t have her kit and turned back to the SUV.
In the meantime the others reached the crash site, taking hold on the lead rope and heading down into the crater, in the centre of which a large, rock-like pod sat. Lights had been placed around it for better view.
“So let's see what we came for,” Jack said; then he looked around with a frown. “Where the hell is Gwen?”
“Not here yet,” Owen replied sourly. “Seems to be a tendency with her.”
Jack’s frown deepened. “Start here without us,” he said. “I’ll go get her.”
Toshiko and Owen exchanged a look and shrugged. It was fine with them to do their jobs without Gwen’s constant interference. Owen opened his kit and sorted a few tools he would need to examine the pod, while Toshiko adjusted her palmtop to access the mobile workstation in the car and transfer sensor data to it.
A few moments later Jack came back, Gwen jogging behind him like a badly groomed – and even more badly trained – poodle.
“What do we know?” he asked.
“Bog standard space debris,” Owen replied distractedly; then, with a look at Gwen’s blank face, he added. “That's a technical term.”
“Yeah, thanks,” Gwen pouted like a four-year old. Jack rolled his eyes.
“So take all the readings and let's get out of here,” he said to Owen, who nodded.
They all opened their kits – well, all but Gwen who was just leaning on the side, watching them – and began to work, tossing tools to each other and catching them, without even looking. They were a well-oiled team, after all. Or had been, at least, with Suzie still there to fill the now gaping breach in the teamwork, each one knowing his or her special task and doing it without much discussion.
Owen took samples from the outer pod shell, then used a stethoscope to listen to possible lifesigns from within. Jack took readings of the air and Toshiko analysed the background radiation, checking with the database of the mobile workstation.
After a few moments of intense work, Owen glared up at their newbie who was still standing around uselessly, watching everyone else work, and very obviously not having a clue what they were doing.
“Make yourself useful, sweetheart!” he scowled. “Pass us the big chisel from the toolbox, would you?”
Gwen put on that pout again; the one that made her look like a fish… and not a particularly intelligent one. “Not sweetheart – Gwen,” she corrected with what she probably thought was a superior air while it only sounded whiny. “One syllable, sure you can manage it.”
“The same way you can manage Ianto’s name?” Toshiko asked with false sweetness. “I’m sure he enjoys being called sweetheart by you, too.”
She could see Jack’s suddenly stiffening back and suppressed a grin. Everyone at Torchwood knew that Jack was, well, interested in their teaboy, as Owen called him (and yes, for the record, Ianto hated that nickname, too, every bit as much as Gwen’s mindless endearments), and that Ianto politely kept him at arm’s length, while never flat-out rejecting his advances. Their witty flirting was a hundred times more interesting than daytime television – not that any of them would have time to actually watch the telly, of course.
“Well, sweetcheeks, you should give up on teaboy already,” Owen continued, enjoying Gwen’s discomfort profoundly. “His heart is well and truly given to the coffee machine in the Hub. You’ll never be half as shiny – or as polished, for that matter – as the bloody thing. Now, do I get that big chisel any time soon?”
Gwen became beet read with anger. “It's a shame your tool's not big enough for the job, darlin',” she snapped, and grabbing fort he chisel, she threw it at Owen. “Catch!”
“Don’t!” Owen shouted, but it was already too late. The chisel, thrown in too high an arc for him to catch, punctured a hole in the pod. Some kind of purple gas escaped out of the pod through the large hole. “Shit!” Owen cursed, shooting Gwen a baleful look.
Jack was the first and quickest to react. He reached into the open kit at his feet and picked up a gas mask. “Owen, catch!” He tossed it to Owen, another one to Toshiko and put one on Gwen’s stunned face while covering his own, too. “Put this on!”
They all obeyed, watching in silence as a large pinkish-purple cloud of living gas rose out of the pod. It spread out and moves around, pulsating for a moment in a vaguely obscene manner, then zooms up into the night sky. Jack lowered his mask and gave Gwen a seriously displeased look. Gwen huffed, turned and looked at Owen accusingly.
Owen glared back at her. “Congratulations,” he said.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ianto had gotten the disaster alarm from Toshiko via text message: MFMLC – Mission Failed, Make Lots of Coffee – so he was not particularly surprised when the team returned to the Hub, wrapped in thunderclouds. With the exception of Gwen, of course, who kept running after Jack like a lovesick poodle, whimpering her endless apologies.
“I'm so sorry,” she repeated again and again, her voice achieving that whiny quality which would make even a Weevil cringle.
Still, Jack tried to be civil with her. “Seriously, stop saying that.”
But Gwen was not so easily stopped. She followed him up the steps to the office area.
“But I am!” she insisted. “I mean, really, I mean really, really sorry. God, I can't believe it.”
Owen, on his way to his workstation, glared at her in annoyance. “Didn't they teach you Health and Safety in the police? I thought you were a trained policewoman.”
Gwen got all teary-eyed in a second. “You two chucked tools at each other, so I...” she defended herself.
Owen’s glare dropped the temperature in the Hub at least five degrees. “We didn't miss,” he said dryly.
“I'll sort it,” Gwen insisted. “Whatever's happened, I'll deal with it.”
“I’d just love to see how she’s planning to do that,” Toshiko muttered, in a voice too low for anyone but Ianto (who was standing right next to her) to pick it up. Ianto gave him a restrained little smile that was, nonetheless, positively evil.
They walked past Gwen to put their equipment down in Cold Storage 1-6, under Ianto’s watchful eye. Sometimes his neat freak nature was a little tiresome, but they all admitted that the Hub would have drowned in chaos without him, so they indulged him… most of the time.
Gwen, in the meantime, was still worrying on her mistake, like a dog on a rubber bone.
“What d'you think has happened?” she whined. “I mean, it was just gas, wasn't it? That can't be too bad, can it?”
Owen gave her an exasperated look. He might not be very choosy when it came to potentially shaggable women, but this level of stupidity seriously pissed him off. “Right, because gas never did anyone any harm,” he replied sharply, and had the satisfaction to see Jack nod in agreement.
“On the plus side, we've got good evidence, relatively undamaged,” Jack said, to smooth the waves over. He opened the box with a sample of the rock and gave it a curious look.
“On the downside, there's an alien on the loose, we don't know where it is, why it's here or what it's going to do,” Owen shot back. Toshiko had a really hard time to hide her grin. Owen on the warpath was a truly endearing sight. Especially when his anger was aimed at the woman he’d been doing the mating dance around for days.
“Give her a break,” she said with false sympathy. Gwen, of course, thought that her support was being genuine… and it inspired her to another bout of useless self-flagellation.
“God, this has been the worst first day ever,” she moaned. At that point, Jack had apparently had enough of her histrionics.
“We all make mistakes,” he said curtly. “Get over it. Now we find and recover whatever came out of there.”
Ianto cleared his throat. Every looked at him. He was standing at the top of the steps with a clipboard. How and when he had gotten up again, nobody could tell, but they’d stopped guessing a long time ago. Ianto had his ways, and they worked. That was enough for everyone.
“This might help,” he said, extending the clipboard to Jack. “Nightclub death been phoned in to 999. Circumstances sound... a little unusual.
Gwen hurried up the steps to snatch the clipboard report from his hands. Tolerantly, Ianto let her have it.
“Might be connected,” he commented simply.
Jack glanced at it over Gwen’s shoulder and nodded. “Let’s go!”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It was early morning when they reached the night club Ianto had mentioned. Toshiko was exhausted beyond belief, and not just physically. The continued exposure to so much Gwen-ness was more than any sane person could take after a sleepless night. She was relieved when the SUV pulled up opposite the club and she could finally get away from her.
A seriously cute police constable – tall, blond, with curly hair, hazel eyes and a smile that could have cured a rainy day – came out of the building at the same moment the Torchwood team hurried across the street. He stopped at the top of the steps next to his partner and frowned at Jack who tried to hurry into the club past him.
“Excuse me, sir, but this is a crime scene,” he said. He had a really pleasant voice; deep, but not overly so. It did funny things to Toshiko’s stomach. Funny, fluttery things.
“Torchwood,” Jack snapped at him, but the young constable no longer listened to him. He was staring at Gwen, of all people, his mouth slightly agape.
“Gwen?“ he finally said, still in a disbelieving manner.
Gwen gave him one of those silly little waves used mostly by pre-school kids. “Hi Andy!”
The cute young policeman, whose name was apparently Andy, shook his head. “Bloody hell!” he said. “Look at you, all posh. Special Ops! We were wondering what happened to you.”
That comment finally made click. Toshiko remembered Gwen mentioning earlier that her partner’s name was Andy. She’d never bothered to mention the man’s surname, though. And, it seemed, she’d never bothered to say her goodbyes to her former colleagues properly, either. Speak about teamwork quality, Toshiko thought sarcastically.
“I meant to call,” Gwen apologized a little lamely. “It's been a bit of a whirlwind.”
Toshiko rolled her eyes – it wasn’t as if Gwen would have done anything worth mentioning since joining Torchwood. All that “whirlwind” had been she causing all sorts of incidents within the Hub as a result of not leaving things she knew nothing about bloody alone and the others having clean up her mess at least twice a day.
PC Andy must have known the feeling, because those lovely eyes of his were twinkling at Toshiko in tolerant amusement. “Go on, then, tell us all,” he encouraged Gwen, while winking at Toshiko over her head. He was tall enough to do that without Gwen realizing it.
Gwen might have launched into some lengthy story on the spot, had Jack not reappeared in the doorway just in the same moment.
“Coming?” he asked impatiently. He might be a terrible flirt – well, truth be told, he was – but he never mixed work with his flirting.
Gwen seemed to realize what was expected from her, for a change. “Yeah, sorry,” she said sheepishly. Then she turned to Andy and added in a superior manner. “You can get away now. No point you freezing your arse off out here.”
There was definite annoyance in those pretty eyes of the young constable now – a feeling Toshiko could relate to.
“Boss of me now, are you?” he asked, but Gwen no longer listened to him. She turned and heads into the club. In the last moment, however, she stopped and turned around again. “Uh, say hi to everyone for me.”
Andy nodded unenthusiastically. “I’m sure everyone will be so excited,” he commented, voice dripping with sarcasm. No longer listening to him – again – Gwen headed inside.
Toshiko smiled at Andy in apology. “I’m sorry,” she said. “She’s new… she still needs to learn proper protocol.” And wasn’t that a good feeling, being able to say so?
Andy shook his head. “Don’t bother,” he replied. “She won’t. I served with her over two years; I should know.”
“If that was supposed to cheer me up, it failed,” Toshiko told her. Andy laughed.
“No,” he said. “That was an attempt to make conversation. I just couldn’t find another shared topic on the top of my head.”
“Well, that’s nice, but I’m afraid I just don’t have the time right now,” Toshiko said, a little regretfully. He was such a nice young man, and it had been forever since anyone tried to flirt with her the last time. “Not in the middle of this.”
“Another time perhaps?” Andy offered. “With out line of work, we might run into each other again. At least I hope so.”
“Perhaps,” Toshiko replied. “This could be a small town sometimes.” And with that, he hurried after the others.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After having examined the pile of dirt on the floor of the ladies bathroom – the one that had supposed to be a horny young man a couple of hours earlier – the team watched the security vid of the young man bursting into gold dust and getting sucked into his sex partner in the night club’s security office. Jack seemed properly impressed by the sight. Toshiko, for her part, felt a little sick.
“Oh, my God!” she whispered in shock. “He just...”
“Came and went,” Jack commented with a face that matched the really bad pun. Owen snickered, of course, but Owen was a sick bastard.
“That's the way I'd like to go,” he deadpanned. Toshiko glared at him in disgust.
“I'm sure we could arrange it,” she said icily. Owen seemed completely unrepentant, and Toshiko asked herself what in seven hells she actually saw in this man.
The club owner, at the very least, appeared upset… and so did Gwen. She’d gone into full police detective mode – despite the fact that she’d never performed a single investigation on her own – grilling the owner about the girl, her name, if she was a regular, whether any of the other staff would know more about her. The man just shook his head – he really didn’t know anything, which, with hundreds of people visiting the club each weekend, wasn’t all that surprising. But Gwen wouldn’t leave it, and finally Jack saw the necessity to intervene.
“Thanks for your help. We've got all we need,” he said, leading the club owner out of the room.
Gwen glared at him in exasperation. “What are you talking about? We haven't got a clue. We don't even know her name!”
Jack gave him a withering looks but didn’t say anything, which was a sure sign that he’d got totally fed up. He turned and let the room, without looking if Gwen followed him or not. Which, of course, she did. She wasn’t so easy to get rid of.
Owen emerged from another back room and joined them. He and Toshiko nodded in unison as Jack issued standard instructions. Take a body from the cryo-chamber, close match to the dead guy’s appearance. Disfigure the face, dump it someplace remote, make it look like a suicide attempt. Business as usual. They’d done the same countless times and will do it again. It was a sad business, but someone had to do.
Heading out, Toshiko could hear Gwen’s whining. “You have a stash of bodies?”
She shook her head and hurried after Owen. Let’s Jack deal with Gwen. They had work to do.
~Part 2~
