Wishverse 1.02 - Part 2
Aug. 7th, 2009 10:35 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: "Day One". 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 2
Author’s note: Continued from Part 1 There will be one more part, and then it's done.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When they finally returned to the Hub – ignoring Gwen’s self-important ranting all along the way with growing impatience – Ianto was there, wearing a fresh suit, perfectly groomed as always, serving them industrial strength coffee and almost-fresh-looking biscuits from the previous day.
“We found the same elements we’d recorded at the crash site in the alleyway behind the club,” Jack told him, accepting the mug and inhaling deeply. “God, Ianto, you’re a godsend.”
“I do my best, sir,” Ianto replied simply. “You were saying…”
“Traces were all over the club,” Jack continued, handing him his hand-held scanning and recording device, “but strongest in this area. Something definitely happened here.”
“Were there any CCTV records?” Ianto asked.
Jack nodded. “Yeah, we got the tape from the club’s security office. See for yourself.”
They all watched the record of some girl being attacked by purple gas in the alleyway in grim silence. There could be no doubt that it was the same one that had escaped from the pod earlier.
“It's my fault,” Gwen wailed, going all teary-eyed again. “If it weren't for me, he'd still be alive.”
“That'll get you nowhere, that sort of thinking,” Jack replied dismissively. “At least now we know a little more. The alien's taken on a host body.”
Gwen looked up at him in anguish, her bottom lip trembling. “We can't let her kill again!” she protested.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Owen muttered sotto voce. Jack gave him an unfriendly look.
“We won’t,” he said to Gwen reassuringly. “Look, why don’t you have a little sleep over there, on the couch, while we do some research. It was a hard case for us all.”
“B-but I… I want to help!” Gwen protested.
“When there’s something you can help with, we’ll wake you up,” Jack promised. “Now go and rest a little.”
Gwen didn’t seem to be willing, but she started to yawn, almost against her will, and her eyes fell shut. Jack caught her in the last moment and carried her to the sofa, covering her with an old blanket. Then he looked at Ianto suspiciously.
“Did you have a hand in this, Ianto? What did you give her?”
The young Welshman tilted his head to the side and smiled enigmatically. “Just a mild sedative, sir. She did need the rest – and so do the others.”
Jack rubbed his temples, feeling the raging headache that had been building for an hour or so ebb away slowly. “I could kiss you for that.”
Ianto smiled. “And that would be harassment, sir,” he replied. “Now, if you don’t mind, we should do some work while we have the peace and quiet for it.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“I’ve taken the liberty of using satellite-tracking data to determine the inward trajectory of the meteorite, sir,” Ianto was saying some two and a half hours later, handing Jack a report. “I’ve also marked its route, as far as the computer was able to calculate it,” he pointed with the penlight at a long, curved line of small dots on the clearboard map of the universe.
Gwen, who’d just woken up, stared at Toshiko stupidly. “He did what?”
“He tried to find out where it came from,” Toshiko explained dryly, wishing Ianto had given their newbie a higher dosis of that sedative. A much higher dosis.
Jack, probably thinking the same thing, gave them a mock-reproving look. “Hey!” he declared. “Sometimes technobabble is good for the soul.”
Ianto inclined his head. “Indeed, sir. Plus it adds to my air of mystery, which is always a good feeling. It confuses those who believe I can do nothing else but clean up their shit to no end.”
Toshiko suppressed a grin, although it wasn’t easy. Jack snickered openly, eyeing Ianto with almost proprietary pride. Owen shot Ianto a nasty look that promised retribution, but Ianto smiled back at him blandly. In the long run, Toshiko’s money would be on the teaboy. Ianto could be awfully sneaky.
Gwen missed the point completely, of course. It wasn’t the first time, and it didn’t surprise anyone by now.
“So, is this some sort of route planner?” she asked, looking at the clearboard. Toshiko found that extreme simplification as typical for Gwen as stupid, but answered nonetheless.
“Not far off, actually – just in the galactic scale.”
“Cool!” Gwen said, happy to finally understand at least something of what her colleagues were doing. “Rhys, my boyfriend, is a transport manager for Luckley's the printers. He does this sort of stuff. On a slightly smaller scale, though.”
Toshiko stared at her in surprise. “You have a boyfriend?” She was sorely tempted to ask whether the man in question was blind or stupid or both, but she managed to stop herself just in time, remembering Owen and even Jack looking at her with a certain… hunger in their eyes. Men and their bloody hormones. Although, considering that Jack had done it with a bug-eyed, tentacled alien, it did explain a lot.
“Yeah,” Gwen declared proudly. “Have you?”
Toshiko shook her head, wondering when had she fallen down the rabbit hole and landed in some stupid American high school soap opera instead of Torchwood. “Don’t have time with this job.” Although, she added in thought, if the job would lead her to run into that cute constable Andy again, she wouldn’t actually mind.
Gwen turned to Owen, with that indiscreet curiosity burning in her eyes that one could usually find on the face of lonely old women who spied after their neighbours with binoculars, stating that they were actually watching the birds.
“What about you?” she asked. “You seeing anyone?”
Owen glared at her with disgust. He might have the hots for her, for some reason Toshiko would never understand, but at the same time, he didn’t tolerate stupidity well. “You've gotta be joking,” he said. “Why should I do that? I can get all the grief I need here.”
Toshiko could see Jack listen quietly to the conversation as he worked. His deepening frown revealed that he didn’t particularly like the direction all this was taking, but he couldn’t find any good reason to interrupt the chat just yet.
“None of you have partners?” Gwen asked, completely dumbfolded. Her walnut-sized brain apparently hadn’t come to understand yet that Torchwood didn’t leave the time for a life outside the Hub. Add the sensitivity of their work, and they were all securely hindered from having any kind of working relationship outside their little circle. It was just the nature of the beast. They’d all accepted it years ago, even if sometimes it was really hard.
“Just you, newbie,” Owen replied, no longer actually listening to her. He’d had enough.
Gwen, of course, couldn’t just leave it alone. She just had to twist the knife one more time.
“I'm not being rude or anything, but...” seeing the looks Toshiko exchanged with Ianto, she back-pedalled a little. “Well, maybe I am, but... how do you switch off from all this stuff? What do you do to relax?”
At first, nobody answered her. Jack looked up at Owen, who looked at Toshiko, who looked at Ianto. Ianto stared at the coffee machine stonily. It was Owen who finally gave an answer.
“I torture people in happy relationships,” he said, grinning like a shark.
“Go back to sleep, Gwen,” Jack said tiredly. She tried to protest again, but he cut it short. “Go back to sleep, or I’ll have Ianto drive you home to play domestic bliss with your boyfriend. Let us lonely freaks work in peace. Please.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Around half past ten in the morning Ianto carried around another tray of cups for everyone. Toshiko, sitting at her workstation, running the image of the alien-obsessed girl through the database, smiled at him and nodded her thanks.
“Gas traces confirmed as Vorax and Suranium,” she then said, turning to jack, who nodded and took a cup from Ianto’s tray.
“Great, my two favourite gases,” he said half-jokingly. “Can we do a check, and find out what we know about them?”
“I'm all over it,” Owen replied from his own workstation.
The talking woke up Gwen who’d been sleeping on the sofa for a couple of hours. She yawned, stretched and walked over to Toshiko’s station, to take a look at her monitor. Toshiko stiffened; she really hated it when people looked over her shoulder; and besides, Gwen could use a shower. They all could, to be honest, with the exception of the always impeccable Ianto, who always managed to be at his best-groomed self. It wasn’t natural; but at least he was pleasant to have around. Unlike Gwen at the moment, but somehow Toshiko managed not to shove her away… barely.
“So,” Gwen asked intelligently. “What’s this doing?”
“What does it look like?” Toshiko replied, considerably less friendly than she would have, had she had the chance to sleep a few hours. “Face recognition, that’s what it is. I’ve taken an image of the girl from the CCTV. This software cross-checks her face with the UK population, so that we can get an ID.”
Gwen stared at her, with mouth hanging open. It wasn’t a particularly endearing sight, especially as she was doing that weird eye-bulging thing again. Sometimes Toshiko asked herself how long it would take her to have nightmares about Gwen’s ever-expanding eyeballs. And about her gap-toothed smile. Seriously, it wasn’t that expensive to have your basic dental work done!
“But… but you can't have every face in the UK on there!” Gwen protested. “That would be against civil liberties, data protection, all that stuff...”
“Call the police,” Ianto suggested dryly, glancing at Jack. Jack sipped from his coffee, nodding his thanks to Ianto and earning one of those reserved little smiles in exchange.
“Still doing that you instead of we thing, doesn’t she?” he said drolly. “Tosh, is that scan finished yet?”
“Yes,” Tosh frowned. “Oh. We’ve got a hundred and nineteen possible matches.”
“Great,” Owen commented sourly. “That’s a hundred and nineteen potential suspects. I thought this thing was supposed to give us a single match.”
“The CCTV was too low res,” Toshiko defended her software. “I've tried magnifying and augmenting but it just breaks up. Which means that the software can't function properly. We can do a lot, but we can’t solve every problem!”
“Well, at least it's narrowed the numbers down,” Ianto studied the results for a moment. “I could check through the rest if you want me. You know, the old fashioned way – with my eyes,” he smiled blandly and pointed at his eyes.
Everyone laughed, except Gwen, who apparently couldn’t understand why they were taking the investigation so lightly. This was a serious matter, after all – a man had already died, and who knew how many others were endangered at this very moment?
“What about the fingerprints I took off the alley wall?” she insisted.
Owen rolled his eyes. “Freckles, have you any idea how many people have pawed on that frigging wall just yesterday?”
“I’m running it through the police database,” Toshiko intervened smoothly before Gwen could have launched another inane rant about their unprofessional methods… as if she had been doing crime scene investigations all her life. After a moment, large square letters blinked up on the screen, announcing: NO MATCH FOUND. She sighed. “It was a long-shot, anyway.”
“But, of course, we had to try it,” Owen commented. “Cos, of course, we were so bloody sure that those were her fingerprints anyway.”
Gwen shot him an annoyed look. “Least I'm trying to do something,” she said.
“No, sweetcheeks,” Owen returned. “You’re trying anything.”
“All right, you two, that’s enough,” Jack finally saw the necessity to interfere; Toshiko wished he’d done it earlier. A lot earlier. “The CCTV must have picked up her arrival at the club. Tosh, can you reformat the image recognition software to trace her journey backwards via the street camera network?”
Toshiko shrugged. “Sure, but it’ll take a while to process. Every possible turn on every street corner means hundreds of thousands of probabilities.”
“Have a go,” Jack said. “At least we'll know where she started the evening.”
“We could cross-reference that with the addresses on the remaining face matches,” Gwen added. For a moment, there was stunned silence in the Hub. The fact that she’d actually suggested something useful for a change took everyone’s breath away.
“Good one, newbie!” Owen admitted a bit reluctantly. “That's a bit more like it!”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Toshiko felt bone weary when they finally got back to the Hub. While they had managed to track down and contain the girl who was playing unwilling host body to the alien – not thanks to Gwen-stupid-Cooper, oh-so-well-trained policewoman, who’d nearly let her get away, by the way – but Jack was really pissed at Owen, who, once again, had taken alien tech out of the Hub without his express permission. And when Jack was pissed, the team suffered.
Toshiko guessed that Ianto would be pissed, too. Ianto took regulations seriously – it must have been that rigorous Torchwood One training surfacing every time – and his methods to punish transgressions could go way beyond just serving the culprit decaf. Under that sleek surface lurked a truly devious and inventive mind; underestimating Ianto Jones would have been a grave error. Toshiko almost felt sorry for Owen. Almost.
Fortunately for Owen, Ianto was nowhere to see when thy got back – which, of course, didn’t mean he wasn’t watching them on one of the security monitors, which would explain how he seemed to know just about everything that was going on in the Hub – so Jack kept the inflatable cell for the time being. He ordered Gwen to put the girl into one of the cells and see what she can find out from her. Then he headed upstairs to help Toshiko start running the standard scans and analyses.
“But-but… aren't you going to help me?” Gwen whined, doing that eye-bulging, lip-trembling thing again. “I don't know what I'm doing.”
Jack stopped for a moment. “Usually better if you don't say that in front of the prisoner,” he commented dryly, before following the guffawing Owen.
They took their places at the respective workstations and started the usual data-gathering process.
“Owen, keep an eye on the CCTV,” Jack said while working in tandem with Toshiko. “I hope Gwen doesn’t screw up this time, but just in case we need to intervene…”
“Oh, for the love of God!" Owen sighed loudly. “What did that bloody woman learn in all those years with the police? Even beat cops ought to know how to arrest someone and do a standard investigation.”
“Yeah, but you forget about her human quality,” Toshiko reminded him with a fine, ironic smile. “It’s that big, compassionate heart that always gets her in trouble, isn’t it?”
“I’m not gonna watch her making a complete fool of herself,” Owen declared. “Let’s teaboy do it – where is he anyway? I could use some coffee.”
“He’s manning the tourist office and hacking security cameras all over the city,” Jack replied. “A lot of this disaster happened in rather public places; clean-up’s gonna be a bitch. And I dread the thought how many people we’ll have to Retcon this time.”
Owen scowled a little – he didn’t like being assigned to what he saw as menial tasks – but after just having ignored the rules (again) he couldn’t afford to confront Jack openly. So he glanced up at the monitors from time to time, to see how their newbie was doing – and then stopped.
“Now that gives the phrase ‘first encounter with an alien’ a whole new meaning,” he murmured, grinning in evil delight. “Oi, you lot,” he called out to jack and Toshiko. “Wanna treat? Our newbie seems to have discovered true enthusiasm for her work.”
Jack and Toshiko headed over to enjoy the show – well, Jack appeared to enjoy it anyway.
“I’d never thought she had it in her,” he commented with a lewd grin. Toshiko shot him an irritated look. Men could really be pigs sometimes, even the best of them.
“I thought she had a boyfriend,” she said. If she thought about it, some women weren’t any better, either. If Gwen was living in such a happy relationship, what was she doing there, snogging murderous alien gas in a pretty girl’s body?
Jack rolled his eyes. “You people and your quaint little categories,” he said. For some reason, that comment made Toshiko really angry. She whirled around, glaring daggers at her snickering boss.
“You might find them funny, Jack,” she hissed, “but the bottom line is, it’s all about respect. Respect for the person we chose, whom we’ve promised that they’d be something special for us. Where I’m sitting, that doesn’t include shagging anything on two legs. Or, in your case, in eight tentacles. Although I’m not sure you – either of you – can truly understand what I mean.”
“Perhaps,” Owen snickered, “but at least we have fun. What do you have, Tosh?”
She gave him a disgusted look. “Self-respect,” she relied curtly. “Now, could we go down and get her out of that cell before she explodes?”
“Do we have to?” Owen asked, but jack was already running off, with Toshiko hot on his heels.
“Yeah, yeah, Captain Harkness to the rescue,” Owen snickered, punching a few buttons on his keyboard. “I’ll just, uh… record a bit first.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Toshiko didn’t know afterwards whether she was relieved or secretly disappointed that female orgasms apparently didn’t do it for the alien. When they got down to the cells, Gwen was already out and cooing to her boyfriend on the phone. It made Toshiko want to throw up all over her unbuttoned blouse. Such a fucking hypocrite!
Owen seemed to think the same, because he couldn’t resist confronting Gwen upon her return to the Hub.
“Way to go, newbie!” he said, clapping like in the theatre. “That is what I call a methodical investigation. I can't wait to see you take down her particulars.”
Gwen rushed up the stairs and grabbed Owen by his shirt, pushing him back against the railing. She held him tightly enough to cut off his breath, at least partially.
“What are you doing?!” Owen protested. “Get off me! “
Instead getting off him Gwen got into his face, which really wasn’t such a pleasant experience. “That girl's body is being overrun by I don't know what,” she hissed. “And you think it's a joke?”
Owen rolled his eyes because really, Gwen had the least right to sit on the moral high horse right now. “All right! Jesus! I'm sorry.”
“We should be helping her,” Gwen kept lecturing. “She's not some lab rat.”
“No,” Owen said slowly, “she's a murderer. You were the one who wanted her caught. How come suddenly she's your best friend?”
Before Gwen could have answered – not that there would have been any right answer, considering the circumstances – Jack stepped between them.
“You know,” he said to Gwen conversationally, “strictly speaking, throttling the staff is my job. So – just back off, won’t you?”
Gwen stared at Owen with barely controlled fury. Then she releases him and stormed away.
The tension was broken by the appearance of Ianto, who came in, smiling as always, carrying a box of takeout.
“So ... who's for Chinese?” he asked pleasantly.
The others were taken aback for a moment, then started down the stairs. Dinner seemed a very good idea. Toshiko wondered what sixth sense could make Ianto appear in the exactly right moment, providing the exact thing they needed all the time. It was… well, almost freakish on some days.
Passing by her, Ianto stopped for a moment.
“I’ve spoken to Owen,” he murmured. “We’re gonna do this tonight. Perhaps if she keeps buggering him about his secrets long enough, Jack will finally Retcon and fire her.”
“But we’ll need Jack out of earshot for a few minutes for that!” Toshiko reminded him. Ianto smiled tolerantly.
“Really, Tosh, you still think I can’t slip him something without anyone noticing it? He will be out of earshot long enough for us to plant the seed.”
Toshiko looked at him in unabashed admiration.
“You’re a sneaky bastard, Ianto Jones!” she declared.
“One of my many talents,” Ianto returned nonchalantly and continued down the stairs.
~Part 3~
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: "Day One". 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.
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EPISODE 02 – DAY ONE? NO, DAY ZERO! - Part 2
Author’s note: Continued from Part 1 There will be one more part, and then it's done.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When they finally returned to the Hub – ignoring Gwen’s self-important ranting all along the way with growing impatience – Ianto was there, wearing a fresh suit, perfectly groomed as always, serving them industrial strength coffee and almost-fresh-looking biscuits from the previous day.
“We found the same elements we’d recorded at the crash site in the alleyway behind the club,” Jack told him, accepting the mug and inhaling deeply. “God, Ianto, you’re a godsend.”
“I do my best, sir,” Ianto replied simply. “You were saying…”
“Traces were all over the club,” Jack continued, handing him his hand-held scanning and recording device, “but strongest in this area. Something definitely happened here.”
“Were there any CCTV records?” Ianto asked.
Jack nodded. “Yeah, we got the tape from the club’s security office. See for yourself.”
They all watched the record of some girl being attacked by purple gas in the alleyway in grim silence. There could be no doubt that it was the same one that had escaped from the pod earlier.
“It's my fault,” Gwen wailed, going all teary-eyed again. “If it weren't for me, he'd still be alive.”
“That'll get you nowhere, that sort of thinking,” Jack replied dismissively. “At least now we know a little more. The alien's taken on a host body.”
Gwen looked up at him in anguish, her bottom lip trembling. “We can't let her kill again!” she protested.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Owen muttered sotto voce. Jack gave him an unfriendly look.
“We won’t,” he said to Gwen reassuringly. “Look, why don’t you have a little sleep over there, on the couch, while we do some research. It was a hard case for us all.”
“B-but I… I want to help!” Gwen protested.
“When there’s something you can help with, we’ll wake you up,” Jack promised. “Now go and rest a little.”
Gwen didn’t seem to be willing, but she started to yawn, almost against her will, and her eyes fell shut. Jack caught her in the last moment and carried her to the sofa, covering her with an old blanket. Then he looked at Ianto suspiciously.
“Did you have a hand in this, Ianto? What did you give her?”
The young Welshman tilted his head to the side and smiled enigmatically. “Just a mild sedative, sir. She did need the rest – and so do the others.”
Jack rubbed his temples, feeling the raging headache that had been building for an hour or so ebb away slowly. “I could kiss you for that.”
Ianto smiled. “And that would be harassment, sir,” he replied. “Now, if you don’t mind, we should do some work while we have the peace and quiet for it.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
“I’ve taken the liberty of using satellite-tracking data to determine the inward trajectory of the meteorite, sir,” Ianto was saying some two and a half hours later, handing Jack a report. “I’ve also marked its route, as far as the computer was able to calculate it,” he pointed with the penlight at a long, curved line of small dots on the clearboard map of the universe.
Gwen, who’d just woken up, stared at Toshiko stupidly. “He did what?”
“He tried to find out where it came from,” Toshiko explained dryly, wishing Ianto had given their newbie a higher dosis of that sedative. A much higher dosis.
Jack, probably thinking the same thing, gave them a mock-reproving look. “Hey!” he declared. “Sometimes technobabble is good for the soul.”
Ianto inclined his head. “Indeed, sir. Plus it adds to my air of mystery, which is always a good feeling. It confuses those who believe I can do nothing else but clean up their shit to no end.”
Toshiko suppressed a grin, although it wasn’t easy. Jack snickered openly, eyeing Ianto with almost proprietary pride. Owen shot Ianto a nasty look that promised retribution, but Ianto smiled back at him blandly. In the long run, Toshiko’s money would be on the teaboy. Ianto could be awfully sneaky.
Gwen missed the point completely, of course. It wasn’t the first time, and it didn’t surprise anyone by now.
“So, is this some sort of route planner?” she asked, looking at the clearboard. Toshiko found that extreme simplification as typical for Gwen as stupid, but answered nonetheless.
“Not far off, actually – just in the galactic scale.”
“Cool!” Gwen said, happy to finally understand at least something of what her colleagues were doing. “Rhys, my boyfriend, is a transport manager for Luckley's the printers. He does this sort of stuff. On a slightly smaller scale, though.”
Toshiko stared at her in surprise. “You have a boyfriend?” She was sorely tempted to ask whether the man in question was blind or stupid or both, but she managed to stop herself just in time, remembering Owen and even Jack looking at her with a certain… hunger in their eyes. Men and their bloody hormones. Although, considering that Jack had done it with a bug-eyed, tentacled alien, it did explain a lot.
“Yeah,” Gwen declared proudly. “Have you?”
Toshiko shook her head, wondering when had she fallen down the rabbit hole and landed in some stupid American high school soap opera instead of Torchwood. “Don’t have time with this job.” Although, she added in thought, if the job would lead her to run into that cute constable Andy again, she wouldn’t actually mind.
Gwen turned to Owen, with that indiscreet curiosity burning in her eyes that one could usually find on the face of lonely old women who spied after their neighbours with binoculars, stating that they were actually watching the birds.
“What about you?” she asked. “You seeing anyone?”
Owen glared at her with disgust. He might have the hots for her, for some reason Toshiko would never understand, but at the same time, he didn’t tolerate stupidity well. “You've gotta be joking,” he said. “Why should I do that? I can get all the grief I need here.”
Toshiko could see Jack listen quietly to the conversation as he worked. His deepening frown revealed that he didn’t particularly like the direction all this was taking, but he couldn’t find any good reason to interrupt the chat just yet.
“None of you have partners?” Gwen asked, completely dumbfolded. Her walnut-sized brain apparently hadn’t come to understand yet that Torchwood didn’t leave the time for a life outside the Hub. Add the sensitivity of their work, and they were all securely hindered from having any kind of working relationship outside their little circle. It was just the nature of the beast. They’d all accepted it years ago, even if sometimes it was really hard.
“Just you, newbie,” Owen replied, no longer actually listening to her. He’d had enough.
Gwen, of course, couldn’t just leave it alone. She just had to twist the knife one more time.
“I'm not being rude or anything, but...” seeing the looks Toshiko exchanged with Ianto, she back-pedalled a little. “Well, maybe I am, but... how do you switch off from all this stuff? What do you do to relax?”
At first, nobody answered her. Jack looked up at Owen, who looked at Toshiko, who looked at Ianto. Ianto stared at the coffee machine stonily. It was Owen who finally gave an answer.
“I torture people in happy relationships,” he said, grinning like a shark.
“Go back to sleep, Gwen,” Jack said tiredly. She tried to protest again, but he cut it short. “Go back to sleep, or I’ll have Ianto drive you home to play domestic bliss with your boyfriend. Let us lonely freaks work in peace. Please.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Around half past ten in the morning Ianto carried around another tray of cups for everyone. Toshiko, sitting at her workstation, running the image of the alien-obsessed girl through the database, smiled at him and nodded her thanks.
“Gas traces confirmed as Vorax and Suranium,” she then said, turning to jack, who nodded and took a cup from Ianto’s tray.
“Great, my two favourite gases,” he said half-jokingly. “Can we do a check, and find out what we know about them?”
“I'm all over it,” Owen replied from his own workstation.
The talking woke up Gwen who’d been sleeping on the sofa for a couple of hours. She yawned, stretched and walked over to Toshiko’s station, to take a look at her monitor. Toshiko stiffened; she really hated it when people looked over her shoulder; and besides, Gwen could use a shower. They all could, to be honest, with the exception of the always impeccable Ianto, who always managed to be at his best-groomed self. It wasn’t natural; but at least he was pleasant to have around. Unlike Gwen at the moment, but somehow Toshiko managed not to shove her away… barely.
“So,” Gwen asked intelligently. “What’s this doing?”
“What does it look like?” Toshiko replied, considerably less friendly than she would have, had she had the chance to sleep a few hours. “Face recognition, that’s what it is. I’ve taken an image of the girl from the CCTV. This software cross-checks her face with the UK population, so that we can get an ID.”
Gwen stared at her, with mouth hanging open. It wasn’t a particularly endearing sight, especially as she was doing that weird eye-bulging thing again. Sometimes Toshiko asked herself how long it would take her to have nightmares about Gwen’s ever-expanding eyeballs. And about her gap-toothed smile. Seriously, it wasn’t that expensive to have your basic dental work done!
“But… but you can't have every face in the UK on there!” Gwen protested. “That would be against civil liberties, data protection, all that stuff...”
“Call the police,” Ianto suggested dryly, glancing at Jack. Jack sipped from his coffee, nodding his thanks to Ianto and earning one of those reserved little smiles in exchange.
“Still doing that you instead of we thing, doesn’t she?” he said drolly. “Tosh, is that scan finished yet?”
“Yes,” Tosh frowned. “Oh. We’ve got a hundred and nineteen possible matches.”
“Great,” Owen commented sourly. “That’s a hundred and nineteen potential suspects. I thought this thing was supposed to give us a single match.”
“The CCTV was too low res,” Toshiko defended her software. “I've tried magnifying and augmenting but it just breaks up. Which means that the software can't function properly. We can do a lot, but we can’t solve every problem!”
“Well, at least it's narrowed the numbers down,” Ianto studied the results for a moment. “I could check through the rest if you want me. You know, the old fashioned way – with my eyes,” he smiled blandly and pointed at his eyes.
Everyone laughed, except Gwen, who apparently couldn’t understand why they were taking the investigation so lightly. This was a serious matter, after all – a man had already died, and who knew how many others were endangered at this very moment?
“What about the fingerprints I took off the alley wall?” she insisted.
Owen rolled his eyes. “Freckles, have you any idea how many people have pawed on that frigging wall just yesterday?”
“I’m running it through the police database,” Toshiko intervened smoothly before Gwen could have launched another inane rant about their unprofessional methods… as if she had been doing crime scene investigations all her life. After a moment, large square letters blinked up on the screen, announcing: NO MATCH FOUND. She sighed. “It was a long-shot, anyway.”
“But, of course, we had to try it,” Owen commented. “Cos, of course, we were so bloody sure that those were her fingerprints anyway.”
Gwen shot him an annoyed look. “Least I'm trying to do something,” she said.
“No, sweetcheeks,” Owen returned. “You’re trying anything.”
“All right, you two, that’s enough,” Jack finally saw the necessity to interfere; Toshiko wished he’d done it earlier. A lot earlier. “The CCTV must have picked up her arrival at the club. Tosh, can you reformat the image recognition software to trace her journey backwards via the street camera network?”
Toshiko shrugged. “Sure, but it’ll take a while to process. Every possible turn on every street corner means hundreds of thousands of probabilities.”
“Have a go,” Jack said. “At least we'll know where she started the evening.”
“We could cross-reference that with the addresses on the remaining face matches,” Gwen added. For a moment, there was stunned silence in the Hub. The fact that she’d actually suggested something useful for a change took everyone’s breath away.
“Good one, newbie!” Owen admitted a bit reluctantly. “That's a bit more like it!”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Toshiko felt bone weary when they finally got back to the Hub. While they had managed to track down and contain the girl who was playing unwilling host body to the alien – not thanks to Gwen-stupid-Cooper, oh-so-well-trained policewoman, who’d nearly let her get away, by the way – but Jack was really pissed at Owen, who, once again, had taken alien tech out of the Hub without his express permission. And when Jack was pissed, the team suffered.
Toshiko guessed that Ianto would be pissed, too. Ianto took regulations seriously – it must have been that rigorous Torchwood One training surfacing every time – and his methods to punish transgressions could go way beyond just serving the culprit decaf. Under that sleek surface lurked a truly devious and inventive mind; underestimating Ianto Jones would have been a grave error. Toshiko almost felt sorry for Owen. Almost.
Fortunately for Owen, Ianto was nowhere to see when thy got back – which, of course, didn’t mean he wasn’t watching them on one of the security monitors, which would explain how he seemed to know just about everything that was going on in the Hub – so Jack kept the inflatable cell for the time being. He ordered Gwen to put the girl into one of the cells and see what she can find out from her. Then he headed upstairs to help Toshiko start running the standard scans and analyses.
“But-but… aren't you going to help me?” Gwen whined, doing that eye-bulging, lip-trembling thing again. “I don't know what I'm doing.”
Jack stopped for a moment. “Usually better if you don't say that in front of the prisoner,” he commented dryly, before following the guffawing Owen.
They took their places at the respective workstations and started the usual data-gathering process.
“Owen, keep an eye on the CCTV,” Jack said while working in tandem with Toshiko. “I hope Gwen doesn’t screw up this time, but just in case we need to intervene…”
“Oh, for the love of God!" Owen sighed loudly. “What did that bloody woman learn in all those years with the police? Even beat cops ought to know how to arrest someone and do a standard investigation.”
“Yeah, but you forget about her human quality,” Toshiko reminded him with a fine, ironic smile. “It’s that big, compassionate heart that always gets her in trouble, isn’t it?”
“I’m not gonna watch her making a complete fool of herself,” Owen declared. “Let’s teaboy do it – where is he anyway? I could use some coffee.”
“He’s manning the tourist office and hacking security cameras all over the city,” Jack replied. “A lot of this disaster happened in rather public places; clean-up’s gonna be a bitch. And I dread the thought how many people we’ll have to Retcon this time.”
Owen scowled a little – he didn’t like being assigned to what he saw as menial tasks – but after just having ignored the rules (again) he couldn’t afford to confront Jack openly. So he glanced up at the monitors from time to time, to see how their newbie was doing – and then stopped.
“Now that gives the phrase ‘first encounter with an alien’ a whole new meaning,” he murmured, grinning in evil delight. “Oi, you lot,” he called out to jack and Toshiko. “Wanna treat? Our newbie seems to have discovered true enthusiasm for her work.”
Jack and Toshiko headed over to enjoy the show – well, Jack appeared to enjoy it anyway.
“I’d never thought she had it in her,” he commented with a lewd grin. Toshiko shot him an irritated look. Men could really be pigs sometimes, even the best of them.
“I thought she had a boyfriend,” she said. If she thought about it, some women weren’t any better, either. If Gwen was living in such a happy relationship, what was she doing there, snogging murderous alien gas in a pretty girl’s body?
Jack rolled his eyes. “You people and your quaint little categories,” he said. For some reason, that comment made Toshiko really angry. She whirled around, glaring daggers at her snickering boss.
“You might find them funny, Jack,” she hissed, “but the bottom line is, it’s all about respect. Respect for the person we chose, whom we’ve promised that they’d be something special for us. Where I’m sitting, that doesn’t include shagging anything on two legs. Or, in your case, in eight tentacles. Although I’m not sure you – either of you – can truly understand what I mean.”
“Perhaps,” Owen snickered, “but at least we have fun. What do you have, Tosh?”
She gave him a disgusted look. “Self-respect,” she relied curtly. “Now, could we go down and get her out of that cell before she explodes?”
“Do we have to?” Owen asked, but jack was already running off, with Toshiko hot on his heels.
“Yeah, yeah, Captain Harkness to the rescue,” Owen snickered, punching a few buttons on his keyboard. “I’ll just, uh… record a bit first.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Toshiko didn’t know afterwards whether she was relieved or secretly disappointed that female orgasms apparently didn’t do it for the alien. When they got down to the cells, Gwen was already out and cooing to her boyfriend on the phone. It made Toshiko want to throw up all over her unbuttoned blouse. Such a fucking hypocrite!
Owen seemed to think the same, because he couldn’t resist confronting Gwen upon her return to the Hub.
“Way to go, newbie!” he said, clapping like in the theatre. “That is what I call a methodical investigation. I can't wait to see you take down her particulars.”
Gwen rushed up the stairs and grabbed Owen by his shirt, pushing him back against the railing. She held him tightly enough to cut off his breath, at least partially.
“What are you doing?!” Owen protested. “Get off me! “
Instead getting off him Gwen got into his face, which really wasn’t such a pleasant experience. “That girl's body is being overrun by I don't know what,” she hissed. “And you think it's a joke?”
Owen rolled his eyes because really, Gwen had the least right to sit on the moral high horse right now. “All right! Jesus! I'm sorry.”
“We should be helping her,” Gwen kept lecturing. “She's not some lab rat.”
“No,” Owen said slowly, “she's a murderer. You were the one who wanted her caught. How come suddenly she's your best friend?”
Before Gwen could have answered – not that there would have been any right answer, considering the circumstances – Jack stepped between them.
“You know,” he said to Gwen conversationally, “strictly speaking, throttling the staff is my job. So – just back off, won’t you?”
Gwen stared at Owen with barely controlled fury. Then she releases him and stormed away.
The tension was broken by the appearance of Ianto, who came in, smiling as always, carrying a box of takeout.
“So ... who's for Chinese?” he asked pleasantly.
The others were taken aback for a moment, then started down the stairs. Dinner seemed a very good idea. Toshiko wondered what sixth sense could make Ianto appear in the exactly right moment, providing the exact thing they needed all the time. It was… well, almost freakish on some days.
Passing by her, Ianto stopped for a moment.
“I’ve spoken to Owen,” he murmured. “We’re gonna do this tonight. Perhaps if she keeps buggering him about his secrets long enough, Jack will finally Retcon and fire her.”
“But we’ll need Jack out of earshot for a few minutes for that!” Toshiko reminded him. Ianto smiled tolerantly.
“Really, Tosh, you still think I can’t slip him something without anyone noticing it? He will be out of earshot long enough for us to plant the seed.”
Toshiko looked at him in unabashed admiration.
“You’re a sneaky bastard, Ianto Jones!” she declared.
“One of my many talents,” Ianto returned nonchalantly and continued down the stairs.
~Part 3~
