Wishverse 1.05 - Part 1 of 2
Aug. 7th, 2009 10:45 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+, just to be on the safe side.
Genre: Angst/Romance, for this part. Plus some dark humour.
Series: Wishverse.
Warning: repeated character death(s) in each chapter.
Timeframe: "Small Worlds". 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 05 – SMALL BRAINS, Part 1
Author’s notes:
Originally, I planned to write this part from a different POV. But certain characters have a life of their own, and this one simply insisted. ;).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
His dreams had been haunted lately – since the Cyberwoman episode, actually. He didn’t sleep often… he could go on without sleep for quite a while, and he avoided it if he could… too many ghosts of his past lurking in the darkness, waiting to catch him unaware. And it wasn’t so as if he’d keel over and drop dead from exhaustion – or from anything else, for that matter. Even though sometimes he wished he could.
But the encounter with the Cyberwoman – more the sheer horror of it, of what it could have meant, rather than the physical strain itself – had taken more out of him than he’d have thought. He kept falling asleep at night lately… and the nightmares, long avoided simply by avoiding sleep, kept returning with a vengeance.
That still didn’t explain why he’d dream about the troop train in Lahore three nights in a row, though. About the dead men – his men, his responsibility – with their mouths stuffed with rose petals. Why this memory? He had so many, most of them just as horrid. He doubted it was a coincidence.
He got off his bunk and climbed up to his office. Maybe checking his mail would serve as a distraction. All that stupid spam, offering herbal Viagra and magical penis enlargement (as if he’d need them!) always cheered him up. There was something strangely comforting in the consistency of junk.
Reaching his desk, he came to a sudden halt and sucked in a quick, shocked breath, seeing the single red rose petal. He picked it up, still not quite willing to accept its reality. It felt smooth, cool and solid under his fingertips, and he felt nameless dread come over him, knowing that the nightmares weren’t a coincidence, after all.
“What is it?” a familiar voice with a soft Welsh accent asked.
He turned around and wasn’t the least surprised to see Ianto, standing just outside the office, looking up from a file folder he must have been leafing through. Ianto practically hadn’t left the Hub since allowed back to work after his suspension.
“A warning,” Jack replied slowly. Ianto looked at him with a frown.
“What from?” he asked, nothing but professional interest on his carefully collected face. Jack shrugged.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted, looking at the younger man and recognizing the lines of forcibly suppressed pain under the usual calm exterior. “It’s late. You shouldn’t be here.”
Ianto closed the folder and looked him straight in the eye, for the first time since the Cyberwoman disaster. “Neither should you,” he replied simply. “But neither of us has anywhere else to go, do we?”
With that, he walked over to one of the workstations, sat down and called up something he must have worked on for a while. Jack followed him, not entirely sure why. Ianto practically radiated sorrow and loneliness – the same things Jack had been feeling for days. Ianto had seen so much, had lost so much for someone so young; the cruel twist of fate that had made him unable to die had thoroughly familiarized Jack with that feeling.
Perhaps there was a connection between them still, despite the irreparably broken trust. Only – was it truly irreparable? With Lisa gone, beyond any chance to return, Ianto’s deep-rooted, natural loyalty needed a new object on which to focus. Perhaps this was the real chance for Jack to secure that unique loyalty, those hidden skills for Torchwood – and for himself. With no other agenda on that remarkable mind of his (well, hopefully!), Ianto could finally become as vital for Torchwood Three – and for Jack, personally – as he was rumoured to once have been for Yvonne Hartmann.
“What have you got?” Jack asked, laying a hand on Ianto’s shoulder. Someone had to make the first step, and he was definitely in the better position to do so. They still had a long way to go restoring trust between them – or to build it in the first place – and Ianto needed encouragement.
For a moment, Ianto stiffened under his touch, and Jack feared he’d shake it off. But only for a moment. Then he leaned back, just half an inch, or even less, as if trying to burrow into the warmth of Jack’s touch, and sighed. “Funny sorts of weather patterns.”
Jack felt his hand tighten on Ianto’s shoulder involuntarily. That was not good, not good at all! The nightmares, the rose petal, and now the unusual weather patterns… the clues were frighteningly clear, all of a sudden.
“Show me,” he said, letting go of Ianto’s shoulder (and mourning the loss of connection at once). He pulled up a chair next to the young man’s to get a better look at the screen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When Estelle’s invitation came a few days later, he knew he hadn’t been imagining things… and it made him nervous, frightened even. He was all too aware of the fact that this was a threat he couldn’t protect the ones he loved from.
He took Gwen with him, partly because she still needed constant supervision and partly, well, because she was the most expendable of the team. He didn’t want her to get hurt or killed, not really. It was just so that while it would be hard to replace any of the others, everyone he’d hire in Gwen’s stead would be several magnitudes better at the job.
He began to regret his choice, though, as soon as they reached the lecture room. Her constant scoffing and ridiculing the whole issue was getting on his nerves. Yes, of course he knew that the creatures were far from the shy, friendly, loving fairies Estelle believed them to be, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t exist. They were far too real for his comfort, and the idea of Estelle chasing after them in the woods with the camera at nighttime scared him shitless.
Seeing Estelle as a fragile old woman again was less of a shock than it had been a few years ago. He’d grown used to the sight – and he recognized that he still loved her. The nature of his love might have changed (she was way beyond lust and desire now); the depth of his feelings for her had not.
She seemed happy to see him, as always – he represented a period of her life in which she was happy and in love, and she cherished those memories. She showed him the crappy, blurred photos, her face shining with joy, with faith. She had never been more beautiful than in that moment, despite her wrinkles, despite her white hair, despite the swollen knuckles and all other signs of high age. He’d never loved her more than in that fleeting moment of her perfect happiness. Not even Gwen’s sour, bored face in the background could spoil their moment.
Perhaps he should have brought Ianto, after all. Ianto would have understood; he, too, had believed in something beautiful while all Jack had seen was a monster. It was all a matter of love and devotion, after all, and Ianto, like Estelle, had a surplus of both.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They went to Estelle’s house to look at her other photos. Well, Jack looked at them. Gwen, as usual, was poking around in the room, looking at Estelle’s private photos on the mantle. Of course she had to pick out the one of Jack in uniform. Of course she had to remove it from there, carry it over to him, ask her stupid questions about things that were nowhere close to her business.
In hindsight, Jack couldn’t tell why he’d lied to her. Why he’d said it was his father who’d been in love with Estelle. He should have known she wouldn’t let it be, tactless and nosy cow as she was. That she’d drill first him, then Estelle for details. And she did. Relentlessly. Until Jack had finally gotten enough and declared that they had to leave.
“Estelle, when you next see these creatures you call us immediately, understand?” he pressed. She made agreeing noises, but he could see that she was elsewhere, mentally, so he went on with the warning, even though he knew, deep down, that she wouldn’t listen. “Night or day, it doesn't matter, just call us. And be careful, it's important to me.”
She smiled at him. “But, Jack, I've nothing to worry about,” she chided gently.
Jack sighed and embraced her. “Just be careful. Please.”
He could see Gwen turn back around and stare at them, open-mouthed. As if he wasn’t capable of caring, of gentleness. Oh, to hell with her! He decidedly put her out of his mind, put his arm around Estelle’s shoulders, kissed the top of her head and held her for a long moment. Estelle leaned into him and smiles. It was as if all those years hadn’t gone by at all. As if he’d actually had a chance to grow old with her.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He tried to explain Gwen how dangerous the creatures were - particularly because people wanted to see them as cute and harmless – but she didn’t believe him, of course. She had no sensitivity for myths, for the spirit world… for anything, to be honest. For all that over-emoting, eye-rolling act she constantly put on, she was a remarkably shallow person. If it couldn’t be touched, fought and subdued like a Weevil, it didn’t exist for her. She could understand and accept the existence of aliens by now, but old moments and memories, frozen in time, travelling in time, were beyond her narrow horizon and would always be.
He really should have brought Ianto instead.
Returning to the Hub, the team gathered to review the Cottingley glass plate slides, while Ianto was serving tea, for a change. He made a half-hearted joke about magic mushrooms, and Jack was glad to see him a bit closer to his dry-witted self. But Gwen jumped into their mild banter again, with her superior statement that the photos were fakes. She’d written an essay on them, after all, while at school, and the girls who’d made them had admitted they were fakes, decades later, after all.
Toshiko, as always, ignored Gwen’s self-important blathering. She was getting better at it with each new day. Jack wished he could learn from her how to do it. Owen was sniggering in the background. Despite the unmistakable signs of interest, he never admired Gwen’s brains – not that there would be much to admire.
Toshiko, always the professional, put Estelle’s recent photos up on the wall monitor.
“So where was this sighting then?” she asked. Gwen stood up to look at the monitor, pretending to understand what she was seeing – and fooling nobody. The others simply ignored her.
”In a place called Roundstone Wood,” Jack replied.
Owen raised his head abruptly. “I know it. Has an odd history.”
“How d'you mean odd?” Jack asked with a frown.
Owen shrugged. “It's always stayed wild,” he said. “In the ancient times it was considered bad luck to walk in there or even to collect timber. Even the Romans stayed clear of it.”
”I've had no report of any sighting,” Toshiko said, checking her database.
”You won't,” Jack answered grimly. “These things come in under the radar, but they play tricks with the weather, so set up a program for unnatural weather patterns.”
Toshiko nodded. “Right. Actually, Ianto has already begun watching the patterns. I’ll modify the basic program a little, so that we can locate any changes more efficiently.”
Gwen turned away from the monitor and gave Jack an accusing look. She kept doing that whenever things didn’t go as smoothly as she'd expected them to go.
“Are you saying our machines can't pick them up?” she demanded. She seemed insulted by that fact, which was stupid, but again, with Gwen…
Jack shook his head. “Nothing can,” he said simply. “Tomorrow, we’ll have to go to Roundstone Wood to take readings of the place where Estelle has made her photos.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They did that on the next day, Owen tagging along with them on the forest path, carrying the standard kit. Jack kept fiddling with his wrist strap, trying to get some readings – any readings – as he could feel that they were being watched. But not even his advanced fifty-first-century-equipment could get a hold on something that wasn’t entirely there. That was what frightened him in these creatures most; that they just couldn’t be pinned down. They were from another world, which wasn’t the same as from another dimension. His device would pick up a dimensional shift. These things were there, and somewhere else, in the same time. They travelled time by their very nature, not with the help of any devices – not even an ex-Time Agent could trap them.
It took them about fifteen minutes to reach a similar-looking rock formation. Jack stopped and compared it with the pictures they’d gotten from Estelle.
“These are the stones in the photographs,” he finally decided.
Owen nodded grimly. “I’m not surprised. You know, this whole area was forest in primeval times. Most of the development areas have been built on ley lines. Who knows what used to dwell here thousands of years ago – and what remained and is still lurking somewhere, in the form of psychic energy, engraved memories… whatever.”
Jack was still studying the readings on his wrist-strap. They were still inconclusive, so he only nodded absent-mindedly.
“Oh, come on, boys!” Gwen whined. “Anyone could have made this circle. People have been drawn to weird cults all the time.”
Jack turned to her and gave her an extremely annoyed look. “Why do you keep doubting me? I spell out the dangers, you keep looking for explanations.”
She shrugged, achieving what she considered her superior air. The others considered it her makin a fool of herself. “That's what police work's about.”
“This isn't police work,” Jack replied curtly. She rolled her eyes in a disturbing manner – it made one worried that they would simply fall out of her skull if she kept doing it.
“All right, then science,” she said condescendingly. As if she had the slightest idea what science was about.
“And it's not science,” Jack said dryly.
She pulled a face. “I know. You told me. It's that corner-of-the-eye stuff.”
Her voice took on that annoying, whiny quality again, but both men refused to take the bait. They had a job to finish here, and the less attention they wasted on her, the sooner they could hope to get it done.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Events followed with a dizzying speed after that. First that paedophile, Mark Goodson, was found in his jail cell, dead, his mouth stuffed with rose petals. They could watch him on the CCTV footage, writhing on the floor as something unseen attacked him and choked him to death.
“Well,” Owen commented dryly, “that was… different. Do we know anything about this guy… the victim, I mean?”
Jack nodded. “He was a convicted pedophile, used to hang around schools.”
“In that case, it wasn’t exactly a mistake, whoever did this,” Owen said darkly.
Gwen’s thoughts, as usual, were stuck with the less-than-significant details. “Why the petals in his mouth?”
At first Jack was tempted to explain her at least something about symbolism and forces of nature, but he realized it would have been a waste of his time. So he just shrugged and gave the simplest reply that even her brain could absorb. “Just a bit of fun on their part.”
It seemed, however, that he was still over-estimating Gwen’s mental abilities.
“You call that fun?” she simpered, pointing at the monitor accusingly.
Jack tried very hard not to say anything inexcusably rude. There was only so much stupidity he could deal with; he was too worried about Estelle.
“That's the way these creatures like to do things,” he explained patiently, as if he would be talking to a very slow four-year-old. “They play games, they torment and they kill.“
Gwen looked at her, eyes wide and teary, mouth hanging open in a rather unpleasant display of emotional upheaval. “Why?”
“As a punishment or a warning to others,” Jack replied tiredly. “They protect their own. The chosen ones. Somehow children and the spirit world, they go together.”
“So, how do we stop them?” Toshiko asked with professional detachment, for which Jack was eternally grateful. Another dramatic display of emotions and he would have killed someone. He sat down heavily, counting the problems on his fingers.
“First we have to find out who they want... which is gonna be damn hard to do, as they don’t show up on any surveillance equipment. And we can't trap them. They have control of the elements – fire, water, the air that we breathe. They can drag that air right out of our bodies. Sometimes I think they're part Mara.
Toshiko frowned. “Mara? I don’t think I’ve heard that word before.”
“Kind of malignant wraiths,” Jack explained; talking to someone with actual brains was always such a relief. In such cases he always congratulated himself for having hired Tosh. “It's where the word ‘nightmare’ came from. They suffocate people in their sleep.”
Toshiko nodded in understanding. “I see how that can be a problem. So, is there a way we can beat them?”
Jack didn’t answer at once. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “They’ll retreat when they have what they want… and I don’t think we’ll ever be rid of them. Not completely.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Then the phone rang. It was Estelle’s frightened call that the creatures had come to her home. Jack forgot all about Goodson, ordering everyone into the SUV and rushing to her house – although he feared they would arrive too late.
“It makes no sense,” Toshiko, sitting in the back seat next to Owen – Gwen just had to shoulder her way to Jack’s side again – activated her mobile workstation and zoomed in on a specific spot on the map, which lit up red as a result. “It’s a fine night, yet the weather map says there’s rain.”
Jack felt his heart constrict painfully. For him, it did make sense… horrible sense. Poor Estelle, she really should have left the creatures alone. They didn’t like mere mortals putting their noses into their secrets… until those mortals were chosen, which Estelle clearly was not.
He slammed down the accelerator. There was little hope that they might arrive in time, and even if they did, he knew they wouldn’t be able to do anything against those evil things, but he could at least try.
The SUV sped up and rushed down the road.
~TBC~
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Torchwood
Category: Heavy-duty Gwen bashing.
Rating: 14+, just to be on the safe side.
Genre: Angst/Romance, for this part. Plus some dark humour.
Series: Wishverse.
Warning: repeated character death(s) in each chapter.
Timeframe: "Small Worlds". 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 05 – SMALL BRAINS, Part 1
Author’s notes:
Originally, I planned to write this part from a different POV. But certain characters have a life of their own, and this one simply insisted. ;).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
His dreams had been haunted lately – since the Cyberwoman episode, actually. He didn’t sleep often… he could go on without sleep for quite a while, and he avoided it if he could… too many ghosts of his past lurking in the darkness, waiting to catch him unaware. And it wasn’t so as if he’d keel over and drop dead from exhaustion – or from anything else, for that matter. Even though sometimes he wished he could.
But the encounter with the Cyberwoman – more the sheer horror of it, of what it could have meant, rather than the physical strain itself – had taken more out of him than he’d have thought. He kept falling asleep at night lately… and the nightmares, long avoided simply by avoiding sleep, kept returning with a vengeance.
That still didn’t explain why he’d dream about the troop train in Lahore three nights in a row, though. About the dead men – his men, his responsibility – with their mouths stuffed with rose petals. Why this memory? He had so many, most of them just as horrid. He doubted it was a coincidence.
He got off his bunk and climbed up to his office. Maybe checking his mail would serve as a distraction. All that stupid spam, offering herbal Viagra and magical penis enlargement (as if he’d need them!) always cheered him up. There was something strangely comforting in the consistency of junk.
Reaching his desk, he came to a sudden halt and sucked in a quick, shocked breath, seeing the single red rose petal. He picked it up, still not quite willing to accept its reality. It felt smooth, cool and solid under his fingertips, and he felt nameless dread come over him, knowing that the nightmares weren’t a coincidence, after all.
“What is it?” a familiar voice with a soft Welsh accent asked.
He turned around and wasn’t the least surprised to see Ianto, standing just outside the office, looking up from a file folder he must have been leafing through. Ianto practically hadn’t left the Hub since allowed back to work after his suspension.
“A warning,” Jack replied slowly. Ianto looked at him with a frown.
“What from?” he asked, nothing but professional interest on his carefully collected face. Jack shrugged.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted, looking at the younger man and recognizing the lines of forcibly suppressed pain under the usual calm exterior. “It’s late. You shouldn’t be here.”
Ianto closed the folder and looked him straight in the eye, for the first time since the Cyberwoman disaster. “Neither should you,” he replied simply. “But neither of us has anywhere else to go, do we?”
With that, he walked over to one of the workstations, sat down and called up something he must have worked on for a while. Jack followed him, not entirely sure why. Ianto practically radiated sorrow and loneliness – the same things Jack had been feeling for days. Ianto had seen so much, had lost so much for someone so young; the cruel twist of fate that had made him unable to die had thoroughly familiarized Jack with that feeling.
Perhaps there was a connection between them still, despite the irreparably broken trust. Only – was it truly irreparable? With Lisa gone, beyond any chance to return, Ianto’s deep-rooted, natural loyalty needed a new object on which to focus. Perhaps this was the real chance for Jack to secure that unique loyalty, those hidden skills for Torchwood – and for himself. With no other agenda on that remarkable mind of his (well, hopefully!), Ianto could finally become as vital for Torchwood Three – and for Jack, personally – as he was rumoured to once have been for Yvonne Hartmann.
“What have you got?” Jack asked, laying a hand on Ianto’s shoulder. Someone had to make the first step, and he was definitely in the better position to do so. They still had a long way to go restoring trust between them – or to build it in the first place – and Ianto needed encouragement.
For a moment, Ianto stiffened under his touch, and Jack feared he’d shake it off. But only for a moment. Then he leaned back, just half an inch, or even less, as if trying to burrow into the warmth of Jack’s touch, and sighed. “Funny sorts of weather patterns.”
Jack felt his hand tighten on Ianto’s shoulder involuntarily. That was not good, not good at all! The nightmares, the rose petal, and now the unusual weather patterns… the clues were frighteningly clear, all of a sudden.
“Show me,” he said, letting go of Ianto’s shoulder (and mourning the loss of connection at once). He pulled up a chair next to the young man’s to get a better look at the screen.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When Estelle’s invitation came a few days later, he knew he hadn’t been imagining things… and it made him nervous, frightened even. He was all too aware of the fact that this was a threat he couldn’t protect the ones he loved from.
He took Gwen with him, partly because she still needed constant supervision and partly, well, because she was the most expendable of the team. He didn’t want her to get hurt or killed, not really. It was just so that while it would be hard to replace any of the others, everyone he’d hire in Gwen’s stead would be several magnitudes better at the job.
He began to regret his choice, though, as soon as they reached the lecture room. Her constant scoffing and ridiculing the whole issue was getting on his nerves. Yes, of course he knew that the creatures were far from the shy, friendly, loving fairies Estelle believed them to be, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t exist. They were far too real for his comfort, and the idea of Estelle chasing after them in the woods with the camera at nighttime scared him shitless.
Seeing Estelle as a fragile old woman again was less of a shock than it had been a few years ago. He’d grown used to the sight – and he recognized that he still loved her. The nature of his love might have changed (she was way beyond lust and desire now); the depth of his feelings for her had not.
She seemed happy to see him, as always – he represented a period of her life in which she was happy and in love, and she cherished those memories. She showed him the crappy, blurred photos, her face shining with joy, with faith. She had never been more beautiful than in that moment, despite her wrinkles, despite her white hair, despite the swollen knuckles and all other signs of high age. He’d never loved her more than in that fleeting moment of her perfect happiness. Not even Gwen’s sour, bored face in the background could spoil their moment.
Perhaps he should have brought Ianto, after all. Ianto would have understood; he, too, had believed in something beautiful while all Jack had seen was a monster. It was all a matter of love and devotion, after all, and Ianto, like Estelle, had a surplus of both.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They went to Estelle’s house to look at her other photos. Well, Jack looked at them. Gwen, as usual, was poking around in the room, looking at Estelle’s private photos on the mantle. Of course she had to pick out the one of Jack in uniform. Of course she had to remove it from there, carry it over to him, ask her stupid questions about things that were nowhere close to her business.
In hindsight, Jack couldn’t tell why he’d lied to her. Why he’d said it was his father who’d been in love with Estelle. He should have known she wouldn’t let it be, tactless and nosy cow as she was. That she’d drill first him, then Estelle for details. And she did. Relentlessly. Until Jack had finally gotten enough and declared that they had to leave.
“Estelle, when you next see these creatures you call us immediately, understand?” he pressed. She made agreeing noises, but he could see that she was elsewhere, mentally, so he went on with the warning, even though he knew, deep down, that she wouldn’t listen. “Night or day, it doesn't matter, just call us. And be careful, it's important to me.”
She smiled at him. “But, Jack, I've nothing to worry about,” she chided gently.
Jack sighed and embraced her. “Just be careful. Please.”
He could see Gwen turn back around and stare at them, open-mouthed. As if he wasn’t capable of caring, of gentleness. Oh, to hell with her! He decidedly put her out of his mind, put his arm around Estelle’s shoulders, kissed the top of her head and held her for a long moment. Estelle leaned into him and smiles. It was as if all those years hadn’t gone by at all. As if he’d actually had a chance to grow old with her.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He tried to explain Gwen how dangerous the creatures were - particularly because people wanted to see them as cute and harmless – but she didn’t believe him, of course. She had no sensitivity for myths, for the spirit world… for anything, to be honest. For all that over-emoting, eye-rolling act she constantly put on, she was a remarkably shallow person. If it couldn’t be touched, fought and subdued like a Weevil, it didn’t exist for her. She could understand and accept the existence of aliens by now, but old moments and memories, frozen in time, travelling in time, were beyond her narrow horizon and would always be.
He really should have brought Ianto instead.
Returning to the Hub, the team gathered to review the Cottingley glass plate slides, while Ianto was serving tea, for a change. He made a half-hearted joke about magic mushrooms, and Jack was glad to see him a bit closer to his dry-witted self. But Gwen jumped into their mild banter again, with her superior statement that the photos were fakes. She’d written an essay on them, after all, while at school, and the girls who’d made them had admitted they were fakes, decades later, after all.
Toshiko, as always, ignored Gwen’s self-important blathering. She was getting better at it with each new day. Jack wished he could learn from her how to do it. Owen was sniggering in the background. Despite the unmistakable signs of interest, he never admired Gwen’s brains – not that there would be much to admire.
Toshiko, always the professional, put Estelle’s recent photos up on the wall monitor.
“So where was this sighting then?” she asked. Gwen stood up to look at the monitor, pretending to understand what she was seeing – and fooling nobody. The others simply ignored her.
”In a place called Roundstone Wood,” Jack replied.
Owen raised his head abruptly. “I know it. Has an odd history.”
“How d'you mean odd?” Jack asked with a frown.
Owen shrugged. “It's always stayed wild,” he said. “In the ancient times it was considered bad luck to walk in there or even to collect timber. Even the Romans stayed clear of it.”
”I've had no report of any sighting,” Toshiko said, checking her database.
”You won't,” Jack answered grimly. “These things come in under the radar, but they play tricks with the weather, so set up a program for unnatural weather patterns.”
Toshiko nodded. “Right. Actually, Ianto has already begun watching the patterns. I’ll modify the basic program a little, so that we can locate any changes more efficiently.”
Gwen turned away from the monitor and gave Jack an accusing look. She kept doing that whenever things didn’t go as smoothly as she'd expected them to go.
“Are you saying our machines can't pick them up?” she demanded. She seemed insulted by that fact, which was stupid, but again, with Gwen…
Jack shook his head. “Nothing can,” he said simply. “Tomorrow, we’ll have to go to Roundstone Wood to take readings of the place where Estelle has made her photos.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They did that on the next day, Owen tagging along with them on the forest path, carrying the standard kit. Jack kept fiddling with his wrist strap, trying to get some readings – any readings – as he could feel that they were being watched. But not even his advanced fifty-first-century-equipment could get a hold on something that wasn’t entirely there. That was what frightened him in these creatures most; that they just couldn’t be pinned down. They were from another world, which wasn’t the same as from another dimension. His device would pick up a dimensional shift. These things were there, and somewhere else, in the same time. They travelled time by their very nature, not with the help of any devices – not even an ex-Time Agent could trap them.
It took them about fifteen minutes to reach a similar-looking rock formation. Jack stopped and compared it with the pictures they’d gotten from Estelle.
“These are the stones in the photographs,” he finally decided.
Owen nodded grimly. “I’m not surprised. You know, this whole area was forest in primeval times. Most of the development areas have been built on ley lines. Who knows what used to dwell here thousands of years ago – and what remained and is still lurking somewhere, in the form of psychic energy, engraved memories… whatever.”
Jack was still studying the readings on his wrist-strap. They were still inconclusive, so he only nodded absent-mindedly.
“Oh, come on, boys!” Gwen whined. “Anyone could have made this circle. People have been drawn to weird cults all the time.”
Jack turned to her and gave her an extremely annoyed look. “Why do you keep doubting me? I spell out the dangers, you keep looking for explanations.”
She shrugged, achieving what she considered her superior air. The others considered it her makin a fool of herself. “That's what police work's about.”
“This isn't police work,” Jack replied curtly. She rolled her eyes in a disturbing manner – it made one worried that they would simply fall out of her skull if she kept doing it.
“All right, then science,” she said condescendingly. As if she had the slightest idea what science was about.
“And it's not science,” Jack said dryly.
She pulled a face. “I know. You told me. It's that corner-of-the-eye stuff.”
Her voice took on that annoying, whiny quality again, but both men refused to take the bait. They had a job to finish here, and the less attention they wasted on her, the sooner they could hope to get it done.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Events followed with a dizzying speed after that. First that paedophile, Mark Goodson, was found in his jail cell, dead, his mouth stuffed with rose petals. They could watch him on the CCTV footage, writhing on the floor as something unseen attacked him and choked him to death.
“Well,” Owen commented dryly, “that was… different. Do we know anything about this guy… the victim, I mean?”
Jack nodded. “He was a convicted pedophile, used to hang around schools.”
“In that case, it wasn’t exactly a mistake, whoever did this,” Owen said darkly.
Gwen’s thoughts, as usual, were stuck with the less-than-significant details. “Why the petals in his mouth?”
At first Jack was tempted to explain her at least something about symbolism and forces of nature, but he realized it would have been a waste of his time. So he just shrugged and gave the simplest reply that even her brain could absorb. “Just a bit of fun on their part.”
It seemed, however, that he was still over-estimating Gwen’s mental abilities.
“You call that fun?” she simpered, pointing at the monitor accusingly.
Jack tried very hard not to say anything inexcusably rude. There was only so much stupidity he could deal with; he was too worried about Estelle.
“That's the way these creatures like to do things,” he explained patiently, as if he would be talking to a very slow four-year-old. “They play games, they torment and they kill.“
Gwen looked at her, eyes wide and teary, mouth hanging open in a rather unpleasant display of emotional upheaval. “Why?”
“As a punishment or a warning to others,” Jack replied tiredly. “They protect their own. The chosen ones. Somehow children and the spirit world, they go together.”
“So, how do we stop them?” Toshiko asked with professional detachment, for which Jack was eternally grateful. Another dramatic display of emotions and he would have killed someone. He sat down heavily, counting the problems on his fingers.
“First we have to find out who they want... which is gonna be damn hard to do, as they don’t show up on any surveillance equipment. And we can't trap them. They have control of the elements – fire, water, the air that we breathe. They can drag that air right out of our bodies. Sometimes I think they're part Mara.
Toshiko frowned. “Mara? I don’t think I’ve heard that word before.”
“Kind of malignant wraiths,” Jack explained; talking to someone with actual brains was always such a relief. In such cases he always congratulated himself for having hired Tosh. “It's where the word ‘nightmare’ came from. They suffocate people in their sleep.”
Toshiko nodded in understanding. “I see how that can be a problem. So, is there a way we can beat them?”
Jack didn’t answer at once. Then he shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said slowly. “They’ll retreat when they have what they want… and I don’t think we’ll ever be rid of them. Not completely.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Then the phone rang. It was Estelle’s frightened call that the creatures had come to her home. Jack forgot all about Goodson, ordering everyone into the SUV and rushing to her house – although he feared they would arrive too late.
“It makes no sense,” Toshiko, sitting in the back seat next to Owen – Gwen just had to shoulder her way to Jack’s side again – activated her mobile workstation and zoomed in on a specific spot on the map, which lit up red as a result. “It’s a fine night, yet the weather map says there’s rain.”
Jack felt his heart constrict painfully. For him, it did make sense… horrible sense. Poor Estelle, she really should have left the creatures alone. They didn’t like mere mortals putting their noses into their secrets… until those mortals were chosen, which Estelle clearly was not.
He slammed down the accelerator. There was little hope that they might arrive in time, and even if they did, he knew they wouldn’t be able to do anything against those evil things, but he could at least try.
The SUV sped up and rushed down the road.
~TBC~
