Wishverse 1.05 - Part 2 of 2
Aug. 7th, 2009 10:47 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 2
Author’s notes:
Directly continued from Part 1. Obviously. Ianto and Lisa’s past is entirely my invention.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It was near midnight when they finally reached Estelle’s home. Jack pulled up the SUV in the front with screeching tyres and slammed down on the brake. Leaving it to Gwen to park the car properly, he got out and ran up the front walk, pounding on the front door with both fists.
“Estelle! Estelle!” There was no answer from within, and the door was locked. He gave up and ran around the side of the house. “Estelle!”
He found her in the garden, lying on her face on the ground, dead. He didn’t dare to get any closer, out of fear that he’d break down spectacularly in front of the entire team. He made a vague gesture in Owen’s direction, who seemed to understand its meaning because he came forth to check on Estelle.
“Looks like she died from drowning,” he murmured, clearly stunned. “The rest of the garden's dry as a bone.”
Jack nodded, the numbness that had been spreading in his heart with every loss of a loved one in his unnaturally long life growing another inch. Sometimes he wondered how long it would take till his heart turned to stone entirely.
He kneeled next to Estelle and closed her eyes with gentle fingers. Then he lifted her up and held her in his lap for one last time, wrapping his arms around her fragile frame and dying a little in the inside, like every time when he had to let someone go who meant something to him.
Owen and Tosh stepped away tactfully, let him mourn undisturbed. But Gwen-bloody-Cooper just had to ruin even his last moment with Estelle. She couldn’t allow him this one moment of grief.
“It wasn't your dad that was in love with her all those years ago, was it?” she asked with fake sympathy that could not quite conceal her satisfaction about having finally figured it all out. “It was you.”
Jack glanced up at her with such hatred that it appeared to pierce even her callous, self-centered mind.
“We once made a vow: that we'd be with each other till we died,” he said, tears running down his face freely. “I’ve failed to keep that promise. And you… you have to take the last moment from us, haven’t you? You selfish bitch! Go to hell and leave us the fuck alone, or I won’t guarantee what I’m gonna do next! Go, get lost! I don’t wanna see that stupid face of yours ever again!”
Tosh, always great at self-preservance, dragged the stunned Gwen back to the SUV. Jack kept crying for he didn’t even know how long. Then, when there weren’t any more tears to shed, he kissed the top of Estelle’s head tenderly, put her back down on the ground and stood up. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to find his composure again.
“I need a drink,” he said, without looking at Owen.
Owen pulled a flat metal flask from his pocket and tossed at him. Jack caught it, screwed it open and took a big swallow of the industrial strength whiskey. Then he looked at the doctor and raised an impressed eyebrow.
“Only for medical purposes, of course,” Owen said with a croked smile.
“Of course,” Jack screwed the bottle shut. “Would you call Ianto for me? Have him initiate standard clean-up procedures? I… I don’t think I can deal with this just now.”
Owen nodded. “You want her in the vaults?”
Jack shook his head. “No, she was in no way attached to Tochwood. She deserves a proper funeral.”
Owen nodded again. “I’m sure Teaboy will mange. He does proper very well… when he isn’t hiding murderous Cybermen in our basement, that is. Are we done with the case entirely?”
“Oh, no,” Jack said slowly. “I’m afraid it has just begun.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When he got back to the Hub, everyone but Ianto had already gone home. Ianto, as always, was waiting for him, with the reliability of those faithful sevants one only met in old-fashioned novels, helping him out of his coat and placing a tumbler of old whiskey in front of him.
“Have one with me,” Jack murmured, wishing to prolong the moment when he’d be left alone a little longer. It seemed a frightening perspective right now.
If the invitation surprised Ianto, he showed no sign. He poured a drink for himself, too, and sat down on the other side of Jack’s desk expectantly, ready to listen if Jack was willing to talk. However, Jack was all too aware of the fact that the young man had just suffered a similar loss and was somewhat reluctant to burden him with even more sorrow. In fact, he wanted the exact opposite – to forget his own grief by listening to someone else.
“May I ask you something?” he asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence. “Where did you and Lisa met?”
For a moment, there was intense pain on Ianto’s face. Then it slowly eased into fond rememberance.
“During our third year at university,” he replied. “She studied mechanical and electrical engineering; I studied economics and computer science. We attended certain lectures together,” a rarely-seen, honest smile appeared on his face. “I was so surprised when she started showing interest for me – she was so beautiful, not to mention smart and witty, she could have had anyone… and yet she chose me, of all people. I felt… I felt as if I had been given the world on a silver plate…”
He trailed off, not exactly sure how much more Jack wanted to hear. But Jack’s thoughts were already somewhere else.
“I met Estelle in London at the Astoria ballroom a few weeks before Christmas, during World War II,” he murmured. “She was seventeen years old and she was beautiful. I loved her at first sight. But nothing lasted back then. Promises were always being broken. Estelle ... to have to die like that…” he swallowed his drink. “You were together with Lisa for how long?”
“Four years,” Ianto replied quietly. “Not counting the three years after the Battle of Canary Wharf. That was… different.”
“Seven years,” Jack murmured. “That’s seven years more than I was able to give Estelle. You know, I almost envy you.”
Ianto gave him a look that was hard to interpret. “Don’t,” he said dryly.
For a moment, they were silent. Then Ianto shifted his weight in the armchair, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Sir, the rose petals,” he began. “You found one on your desk that night, right? And you knew at once that it meant no good. How could you know that? Have you seen anything like that before?”
Jack hesitated for a moment. But all he could see on Ianto’s face was professional interest. Besides, Ianto was their archivist. He needed to know the background of their current case. So Jack leaned back in his armchair and shared with the young man the memories that had spawned his most recent nightmares.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In the next morning, a highly agitated Gwen appreared in the Hub, whining and ranting about having found her entire flat a mess the previous night. Apparently, the furniture had been tipped over, and the dirt from the potted plants have been scattered on the floor along with red rose petals.
That last little detail finally caught Jack’s attention. He decided to take a look at the crime scene, taking Ianto with him to document things for the archives.
The flat was indeed in a sorry state. But what truly caught Jack’s interest was the roundstone rock formation made up of stones, leaves, twigs and red rose petals on the floor in the middle of the living room.
“Make a few photos,” he instructed Ianto. “Perhaps you can find similar patterns in the historical databases.”
“That’s all you have to say?” Gwen fumed. “In the whole of my working life I have never had to bring the bad times home with me. I have never had to feel threatened in my own home. But not any more, because this means these creatures can invade my life whenever they feel like it and I am scared, Jack.”
“Of course you’re scared,” Jack replied coldly. “What bad times did you have to bring home as a simple constable? A couple of drunken blokes in a bar? A cup of bad coffee? You haven’t even touched real evil before you elbowed your way into Torchwood. You can’t blame me for it – I haven’t forced you; in fact, I did my best to keep you away, but you just wouldn’t leave things alone.”
“You need me,” Gwen retorted. “You’re so caught up with all that alien stuff that you don’t even know how to live anymore. See how helpless you all are now that it isn’t about Weevils or some weird alien tech? What can you do against these… these things? What chance did Estelle have? What chance do any of us have?”
Jack shook his head and said nothing. He just didn’t have the nerve to deal with Gwen’s hysterics right now. He hurt in the inside too much.
Not getting the answers she’d hoped for, Gwen stopped and got ahold of herself – for the moment anyway – while Jack continued to survey the room and Ianto kept making photos.
“You said these creatures protect their own,” she began in a more collected manner.
Jack nodded absently. “Yeah.“
“You mentioned the chosen ones,” Gwen continued, the pitch of her voice rising again. “What are they? How many are there?”
Jack picked up the rocks from the formation and looked at them, taking a few readings with a hand-held scanner. As he didn’t answer her, she began to shout at him. “Tell me, Jack!”
Jack gave her a long-suffering look but knew it would be easier to answer her than to have her nag him all day. Even if she wouldn’t understand the answer, which was a distinct possibility. She was incredibly narrow-minded at times.
“All these so-called fairies were children once from different moments in time, going back millennia,” he said. “Part of the lost lands.”
“Lost lands?” she parroted. “What?”
Okay, the explanation obviously hadn’t been a success. “The lands that belong to them,” he replied with forced patience.
“What exactly do they want?” she insisted. “Why are they here?”
Jack turned away from the rock formation, finished with his readings, and looked at her. “They want what's theirs – the next chosen one.”
”And if they get it,” she went on doggedly, “will they go away? Or do I have to count on being terrorised by these… these things for the rest of my life? Will I have a peaceful moment ever again, a moment when I can feel safe?”
“Oh, shut up already,” Jack replied tiredly. “Your furniture is ruined, yes, and it’s unpleasant, but Estelle is dead, and there’s a child somewhere that the creatures will take, soon, and we don’t even know who it is, not to mention how to save him… her… whatever. So, if you don’t have anything useful to say, at least do us the favour and stop whining!”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After returning from Gwen’s, Toshiko alerted them to the abnormal weather pattern found at Coed y Garreg Primary School, and the team rushed there to investigate. As soon as they’d asked a few questions, it quickly became clear for Jack that the strange little girl, Jasmine Pearce, was the chosen one whom the creatures really wanted.
They went directly to he house of the girl’s mother, where they found the creatures crashing the five-year-anniversary party of the mother and her current partner. The little girl was standing on the side, watching one of the creatures stick its hand down her stepfather’s throat, suffocating him.
Another one of them kept Gwen and Jack from helping the poor man. It climbed onto Jack, tilting his head back with irresistible force, and for a moment Jack was taken by the wild hope that perhaps this time he actually would be able to die. These ceratures were so far outside the usual rules that they might be able to break the never-ending circle of resurrection and set him free.
But Gwen Cooper, who always knew everything better, just had to interfere again. She lounged at them, knocking him to the ground and out of the creature’s reach. The… thing got off him and jumped up into the trees, to the others, leaving him with a profound feeling of loss.
The little girl, Jasmine, gave her dead stepfather, whose mouth was stuffed with red rose petals, an unemotional look. Then she turned and slipped through the hole one of the creatures had just torn in the fence, and headed for the forest. Jack and Gwen ran after her.
When they caught up with her, the little girl was standing on a small lightning, looking up at the trees, smiling. Jack followed her look – and saw the “fairies” for the first time. They were demonic-looking creatures, with wings like dragonflies and razor-sharp teeth. Their knobby, green-grey limbs melded with the tree-branches and twigs almost seamlessly.
“Do you know you're walking in an old forest?” Jasmine asked in a dreamy voice, without turning to them. “Well, you are. It looks like a very old forest, and it's magical. I want to stay in it.”
“You can see this forest?” Jack asked, remembering what Owen had told him about the Roundstone Wood, revealing a direction of interest he’d never had expected from the cynical doctor.
Jasmine nodded. ”Yes. And it will come back – when they take me to it.”
Gwen looked at Jasmine, shock clearly written in her pale face. “They told you this?” she asked. Jasmine nodded, Gwen tried another approach, bringing in the human side, as she called it, not realizing that the child she was arguing with was barely human anymore. “But what about your mother? Don't you want to stay with her?”
Jasmine gave her an annoyed look and shook her head. An unnatural wind came up, pushing Gwen back away from Jasmine. She gasped. “Jack, do something!”
Jack sighed and looked up. High above them in the treetops, the creatures were sitting on the branches. “Come on,” he said. “The child isn't sure.”
But he knew it wasn’t true, and was not the least surprised by Jasmine’s forceful announcement: “I am sure!”
The creatures couldn’t take the child without her consent; that much had become clear from the myths Ianto had managed to dig up from the archives. As soon as she had given her consent, however, there wasn’t a thing anyone could have done for her. Which didn’t mean that Jack wouldn’t try, of course.
“Leave her alone,” he said, looking up at the nightmarish creatures sitting in the trees. “Find another chosen one.”
The creatures moved closer. “Too late,” one of them said in a raspy, ethereal voice that sent cold shivers down his spine… and not in a good way. “She belongs with us.”
“The child belongs here,” Jack argued, but he knew already he’d lost. Jasmine took a step away from him, trying to get to the creatures. He pulled her back to him.
Jasmine didn’t try to free herself, just looked at him with those frighteningly ancient eyes that seemed so unnatural in the face of such a small child. “Next time they'll kill everyone at my school… like they killed Roy and that man and your friend,” she warned.
Gwen stared at her with open mouth – it wasn’t a particularly endearing sight. “How do you know these things?”
Jasmine looked back at her, and there was almost something like pity on her face… the kind of pity children feel for adults who can’t understand the simplest things.
“If they want to they can make great storms, wild seas, turn the world to ice,” she said calmly. “Kill every living thing.” She looked at Jack, knowing somehow that he would understand the implications. “Let me go!”
Jack glanced up to the trees where the creatures were still sitting, waiting with the inhuman patience of beings not restricted by space or time. It was a feeling that he shared, to a certain extent – and he knew he had no choice to keep the girl here if she wanted to go. Which she obviously did, very much.
“The child won't be harmed?” he asked slowly. He hated to allow Estelle’s murderers to take her, but there was simply too much at stake. He only wanted to know that Jasmine would be all right in the mystical world she had chosen for herself.
“Jack, you can't...” Gwen protested, not understanding the deeper meaning of things; just like she never did. He ignored her.
“Answer me!” he demanded from the creatures. “She won't be harmed?”
The leader of the creatures looked down at him. There was a moment of strange understanding between them. “We told you,” that raspy, ethereal voice answered. “She lives forever.”
“A dead world,” Jasmine said quietly. “Is that what you want?”
Jack kneeled and looked into her eyes. “What good is that to you? There would be no more chosen ones.”
“They'll find us,” Jasmine replied, and now her voice was as raspy and ethereal as that of the creatures. “Back in time.”
The change of her voice made Jack understand that there was no way back for the girl. He touched Jasmine’s cheek, giving her one last memory of human touch before she would go on into that other, strange, dangerous world that would be her home forever.
”Take her,” he said simply. Few words had ever been harder to speak. But he knew there was no other way. He only wished they could have come to an understanding before Estelle had to die.
Jasmine stepped away from them. The creatures turned into lights and descended from the treetops to surround her.
“Jack, no!” Gwen screeched and ran after Jasmine, but Jack grabbed her and held onto her.
“You asked me what chance we had against them,” he said harshly. “For the sake of the world, this is our only chance.”
Gwen pulled away from his grip and dashed after Jasmine who was walking determinedly toward the trees. She caught up with the girl and grabbed her with stubborn determination. Jack tried to rush to her aid, but two of the creatures caught him and immobilized him with their ice-cold, iron grip. He had to watch helplessly as another one of the things opened Gwen’s mouth and slammed its hand down her throat.
He could do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why couldn’t she just listen? Had he not warned her enough times? Why had she always had to be so thick-headed?
When Gwen stopped struggling, the creature dropped her body to the ground carelessly. The other two released Jack, as there wasn’t anything he could do. Jasmine skipped away down the path into the woods, the fairy lights surrounding her as she went.
Tosh and Owen had arrived just in time to see the outcome of things. There was nothing any of them could have done. Wtihout a word, they headed back to the car, neither of them willing to look at Jack. That angered him a bit, although somewhere deep down he could understand them.
“What else could I do?” he asked tiredly. They did’t answer him. Together, they loaded Gwen’s lifeless body into the car and left him standing outside. Jack sighed, shook his head, walked around to the driver’s side and got into the car. There was no use to start arguing with them. They would come to terms with the events on their own, eventually.
Besides, he still felt raw in the inside – and it wasn’t mainly for the girl. It was for Estelle, first and foremost. But nobody else seemed to care about Estelle… or about all the other victims. People were strange with their pity sometimes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He dropped them off at their repective places and returned to the Hub alone. As usual, he found Ianto still in, sitting at Tosh’s workplace.
“I think you should see this, sir,” he said quietly.
Jack stepped at behind him and took a look at the various fairy photos strewn around the conference table. Ianto switched the monitor on in front of them, and the image of a Cottingley glass-plate photo appeared on it. It showed a girl surrounded by fairies.
“Look at this,” Ianto picked up Toshiko’s pad and stylus. He zoomed in on one of the fairy images. Then he zoomed in even closer to the individual fairy face.
Jack took a deep, shocked breath. “It’s Jasmine!”
“So it is,” Ianto replied simply. “You’ve made the only possible choice, sir. You always do; no matter the costs. That’s why you’re the boss here.”
Jack looked up at him and saw nothing but understanding in his haunted eyes.
“Can you stay here tonight?” he asked. “I dread the thought of being alone right now.”
“Of course, sir,” Ianto replied simply. “Where else could I possibly go?”
~The End – for now~
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 2
Author’s notes:
Directly continued from Part 1. Obviously. Ianto and Lisa’s past is entirely my invention.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
It was near midnight when they finally reached Estelle’s home. Jack pulled up the SUV in the front with screeching tyres and slammed down on the brake. Leaving it to Gwen to park the car properly, he got out and ran up the front walk, pounding on the front door with both fists.
“Estelle! Estelle!” There was no answer from within, and the door was locked. He gave up and ran around the side of the house. “Estelle!”
He found her in the garden, lying on her face on the ground, dead. He didn’t dare to get any closer, out of fear that he’d break down spectacularly in front of the entire team. He made a vague gesture in Owen’s direction, who seemed to understand its meaning because he came forth to check on Estelle.
“Looks like she died from drowning,” he murmured, clearly stunned. “The rest of the garden's dry as a bone.”
Jack nodded, the numbness that had been spreading in his heart with every loss of a loved one in his unnaturally long life growing another inch. Sometimes he wondered how long it would take till his heart turned to stone entirely.
He kneeled next to Estelle and closed her eyes with gentle fingers. Then he lifted her up and held her in his lap for one last time, wrapping his arms around her fragile frame and dying a little in the inside, like every time when he had to let someone go who meant something to him.
Owen and Tosh stepped away tactfully, let him mourn undisturbed. But Gwen-bloody-Cooper just had to ruin even his last moment with Estelle. She couldn’t allow him this one moment of grief.
“It wasn't your dad that was in love with her all those years ago, was it?” she asked with fake sympathy that could not quite conceal her satisfaction about having finally figured it all out. “It was you.”
Jack glanced up at her with such hatred that it appeared to pierce even her callous, self-centered mind.
“We once made a vow: that we'd be with each other till we died,” he said, tears running down his face freely. “I’ve failed to keep that promise. And you… you have to take the last moment from us, haven’t you? You selfish bitch! Go to hell and leave us the fuck alone, or I won’t guarantee what I’m gonna do next! Go, get lost! I don’t wanna see that stupid face of yours ever again!”
Tosh, always great at self-preservance, dragged the stunned Gwen back to the SUV. Jack kept crying for he didn’t even know how long. Then, when there weren’t any more tears to shed, he kissed the top of Estelle’s head tenderly, put her back down on the ground and stood up. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to find his composure again.
“I need a drink,” he said, without looking at Owen.
Owen pulled a flat metal flask from his pocket and tossed at him. Jack caught it, screwed it open and took a big swallow of the industrial strength whiskey. Then he looked at the doctor and raised an impressed eyebrow.
“Only for medical purposes, of course,” Owen said with a croked smile.
“Of course,” Jack screwed the bottle shut. “Would you call Ianto for me? Have him initiate standard clean-up procedures? I… I don’t think I can deal with this just now.”
Owen nodded. “You want her in the vaults?”
Jack shook his head. “No, she was in no way attached to Tochwood. She deserves a proper funeral.”
Owen nodded again. “I’m sure Teaboy will mange. He does proper very well… when he isn’t hiding murderous Cybermen in our basement, that is. Are we done with the case entirely?”
“Oh, no,” Jack said slowly. “I’m afraid it has just begun.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When he got back to the Hub, everyone but Ianto had already gone home. Ianto, as always, was waiting for him, with the reliability of those faithful sevants one only met in old-fashioned novels, helping him out of his coat and placing a tumbler of old whiskey in front of him.
“Have one with me,” Jack murmured, wishing to prolong the moment when he’d be left alone a little longer. It seemed a frightening perspective right now.
If the invitation surprised Ianto, he showed no sign. He poured a drink for himself, too, and sat down on the other side of Jack’s desk expectantly, ready to listen if Jack was willing to talk. However, Jack was all too aware of the fact that the young man had just suffered a similar loss and was somewhat reluctant to burden him with even more sorrow. In fact, he wanted the exact opposite – to forget his own grief by listening to someone else.
“May I ask you something?” he asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence. “Where did you and Lisa met?”
For a moment, there was intense pain on Ianto’s face. Then it slowly eased into fond rememberance.
“During our third year at university,” he replied. “She studied mechanical and electrical engineering; I studied economics and computer science. We attended certain lectures together,” a rarely-seen, honest smile appeared on his face. “I was so surprised when she started showing interest for me – she was so beautiful, not to mention smart and witty, she could have had anyone… and yet she chose me, of all people. I felt… I felt as if I had been given the world on a silver plate…”
He trailed off, not exactly sure how much more Jack wanted to hear. But Jack’s thoughts were already somewhere else.
“I met Estelle in London at the Astoria ballroom a few weeks before Christmas, during World War II,” he murmured. “She was seventeen years old and she was beautiful. I loved her at first sight. But nothing lasted back then. Promises were always being broken. Estelle ... to have to die like that…” he swallowed his drink. “You were together with Lisa for how long?”
“Four years,” Ianto replied quietly. “Not counting the three years after the Battle of Canary Wharf. That was… different.”
“Seven years,” Jack murmured. “That’s seven years more than I was able to give Estelle. You know, I almost envy you.”
Ianto gave him a look that was hard to interpret. “Don’t,” he said dryly.
For a moment, they were silent. Then Ianto shifted his weight in the armchair, looking a little uncomfortable.
“Sir, the rose petals,” he began. “You found one on your desk that night, right? And you knew at once that it meant no good. How could you know that? Have you seen anything like that before?”
Jack hesitated for a moment. But all he could see on Ianto’s face was professional interest. Besides, Ianto was their archivist. He needed to know the background of their current case. So Jack leaned back in his armchair and shared with the young man the memories that had spawned his most recent nightmares.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
In the next morning, a highly agitated Gwen appreared in the Hub, whining and ranting about having found her entire flat a mess the previous night. Apparently, the furniture had been tipped over, and the dirt from the potted plants have been scattered on the floor along with red rose petals.
That last little detail finally caught Jack’s attention. He decided to take a look at the crime scene, taking Ianto with him to document things for the archives.
The flat was indeed in a sorry state. But what truly caught Jack’s interest was the roundstone rock formation made up of stones, leaves, twigs and red rose petals on the floor in the middle of the living room.
“Make a few photos,” he instructed Ianto. “Perhaps you can find similar patterns in the historical databases.”
“That’s all you have to say?” Gwen fumed. “In the whole of my working life I have never had to bring the bad times home with me. I have never had to feel threatened in my own home. But not any more, because this means these creatures can invade my life whenever they feel like it and I am scared, Jack.”
“Of course you’re scared,” Jack replied coldly. “What bad times did you have to bring home as a simple constable? A couple of drunken blokes in a bar? A cup of bad coffee? You haven’t even touched real evil before you elbowed your way into Torchwood. You can’t blame me for it – I haven’t forced you; in fact, I did my best to keep you away, but you just wouldn’t leave things alone.”
“You need me,” Gwen retorted. “You’re so caught up with all that alien stuff that you don’t even know how to live anymore. See how helpless you all are now that it isn’t about Weevils or some weird alien tech? What can you do against these… these things? What chance did Estelle have? What chance do any of us have?”
Jack shook his head and said nothing. He just didn’t have the nerve to deal with Gwen’s hysterics right now. He hurt in the inside too much.
Not getting the answers she’d hoped for, Gwen stopped and got ahold of herself – for the moment anyway – while Jack continued to survey the room and Ianto kept making photos.
“You said these creatures protect their own,” she began in a more collected manner.
Jack nodded absently. “Yeah.“
“You mentioned the chosen ones,” Gwen continued, the pitch of her voice rising again. “What are they? How many are there?”
Jack picked up the rocks from the formation and looked at them, taking a few readings with a hand-held scanner. As he didn’t answer her, she began to shout at him. “Tell me, Jack!”
Jack gave her a long-suffering look but knew it would be easier to answer her than to have her nag him all day. Even if she wouldn’t understand the answer, which was a distinct possibility. She was incredibly narrow-minded at times.
“All these so-called fairies were children once from different moments in time, going back millennia,” he said. “Part of the lost lands.”
“Lost lands?” she parroted. “What?”
Okay, the explanation obviously hadn’t been a success. “The lands that belong to them,” he replied with forced patience.
“What exactly do they want?” she insisted. “Why are they here?”
Jack turned away from the rock formation, finished with his readings, and looked at her. “They want what's theirs – the next chosen one.”
”And if they get it,” she went on doggedly, “will they go away? Or do I have to count on being terrorised by these… these things for the rest of my life? Will I have a peaceful moment ever again, a moment when I can feel safe?”
“Oh, shut up already,” Jack replied tiredly. “Your furniture is ruined, yes, and it’s unpleasant, but Estelle is dead, and there’s a child somewhere that the creatures will take, soon, and we don’t even know who it is, not to mention how to save him… her… whatever. So, if you don’t have anything useful to say, at least do us the favour and stop whining!”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
After returning from Gwen’s, Toshiko alerted them to the abnormal weather pattern found at Coed y Garreg Primary School, and the team rushed there to investigate. As soon as they’d asked a few questions, it quickly became clear for Jack that the strange little girl, Jasmine Pearce, was the chosen one whom the creatures really wanted.
They went directly to he house of the girl’s mother, where they found the creatures crashing the five-year-anniversary party of the mother and her current partner. The little girl was standing on the side, watching one of the creatures stick its hand down her stepfather’s throat, suffocating him.
Another one of them kept Gwen and Jack from helping the poor man. It climbed onto Jack, tilting his head back with irresistible force, and for a moment Jack was taken by the wild hope that perhaps this time he actually would be able to die. These ceratures were so far outside the usual rules that they might be able to break the never-ending circle of resurrection and set him free.
But Gwen Cooper, who always knew everything better, just had to interfere again. She lounged at them, knocking him to the ground and out of the creature’s reach. The… thing got off him and jumped up into the trees, to the others, leaving him with a profound feeling of loss.
The little girl, Jasmine, gave her dead stepfather, whose mouth was stuffed with red rose petals, an unemotional look. Then she turned and slipped through the hole one of the creatures had just torn in the fence, and headed for the forest. Jack and Gwen ran after her.
When they caught up with her, the little girl was standing on a small lightning, looking up at the trees, smiling. Jack followed her look – and saw the “fairies” for the first time. They were demonic-looking creatures, with wings like dragonflies and razor-sharp teeth. Their knobby, green-grey limbs melded with the tree-branches and twigs almost seamlessly.
“Do you know you're walking in an old forest?” Jasmine asked in a dreamy voice, without turning to them. “Well, you are. It looks like a very old forest, and it's magical. I want to stay in it.”
“You can see this forest?” Jack asked, remembering what Owen had told him about the Roundstone Wood, revealing a direction of interest he’d never had expected from the cynical doctor.
Jasmine nodded. ”Yes. And it will come back – when they take me to it.”
Gwen looked at Jasmine, shock clearly written in her pale face. “They told you this?” she asked. Jasmine nodded, Gwen tried another approach, bringing in the human side, as she called it, not realizing that the child she was arguing with was barely human anymore. “But what about your mother? Don't you want to stay with her?”
Jasmine gave her an annoyed look and shook her head. An unnatural wind came up, pushing Gwen back away from Jasmine. She gasped. “Jack, do something!”
Jack sighed and looked up. High above them in the treetops, the creatures were sitting on the branches. “Come on,” he said. “The child isn't sure.”
But he knew it wasn’t true, and was not the least surprised by Jasmine’s forceful announcement: “I am sure!”
The creatures couldn’t take the child without her consent; that much had become clear from the myths Ianto had managed to dig up from the archives. As soon as she had given her consent, however, there wasn’t a thing anyone could have done for her. Which didn’t mean that Jack wouldn’t try, of course.
“Leave her alone,” he said, looking up at the nightmarish creatures sitting in the trees. “Find another chosen one.”
The creatures moved closer. “Too late,” one of them said in a raspy, ethereal voice that sent cold shivers down his spine… and not in a good way. “She belongs with us.”
“The child belongs here,” Jack argued, but he knew already he’d lost. Jasmine took a step away from him, trying to get to the creatures. He pulled her back to him.
Jasmine didn’t try to free herself, just looked at him with those frighteningly ancient eyes that seemed so unnatural in the face of such a small child. “Next time they'll kill everyone at my school… like they killed Roy and that man and your friend,” she warned.
Gwen stared at her with open mouth – it wasn’t a particularly endearing sight. “How do you know these things?”
Jasmine looked back at her, and there was almost something like pity on her face… the kind of pity children feel for adults who can’t understand the simplest things.
“If they want to they can make great storms, wild seas, turn the world to ice,” she said calmly. “Kill every living thing.” She looked at Jack, knowing somehow that he would understand the implications. “Let me go!”
Jack glanced up to the trees where the creatures were still sitting, waiting with the inhuman patience of beings not restricted by space or time. It was a feeling that he shared, to a certain extent – and he knew he had no choice to keep the girl here if she wanted to go. Which she obviously did, very much.
“The child won't be harmed?” he asked slowly. He hated to allow Estelle’s murderers to take her, but there was simply too much at stake. He only wanted to know that Jasmine would be all right in the mystical world she had chosen for herself.
“Jack, you can't...” Gwen protested, not understanding the deeper meaning of things; just like she never did. He ignored her.
“Answer me!” he demanded from the creatures. “She won't be harmed?”
The leader of the creatures looked down at him. There was a moment of strange understanding between them. “We told you,” that raspy, ethereal voice answered. “She lives forever.”
“A dead world,” Jasmine said quietly. “Is that what you want?”
Jack kneeled and looked into her eyes. “What good is that to you? There would be no more chosen ones.”
“They'll find us,” Jasmine replied, and now her voice was as raspy and ethereal as that of the creatures. “Back in time.”
The change of her voice made Jack understand that there was no way back for the girl. He touched Jasmine’s cheek, giving her one last memory of human touch before she would go on into that other, strange, dangerous world that would be her home forever.
”Take her,” he said simply. Few words had ever been harder to speak. But he knew there was no other way. He only wished they could have come to an understanding before Estelle had to die.
Jasmine stepped away from them. The creatures turned into lights and descended from the treetops to surround her.
“Jack, no!” Gwen screeched and ran after Jasmine, but Jack grabbed her and held onto her.
“You asked me what chance we had against them,” he said harshly. “For the sake of the world, this is our only chance.”
Gwen pulled away from his grip and dashed after Jasmine who was walking determinedly toward the trees. She caught up with the girl and grabbed her with stubborn determination. Jack tried to rush to her aid, but two of the creatures caught him and immobilized him with their ice-cold, iron grip. He had to watch helplessly as another one of the things opened Gwen’s mouth and slammed its hand down her throat.
He could do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why couldn’t she just listen? Had he not warned her enough times? Why had she always had to be so thick-headed?
When Gwen stopped struggling, the creature dropped her body to the ground carelessly. The other two released Jack, as there wasn’t anything he could do. Jasmine skipped away down the path into the woods, the fairy lights surrounding her as she went.
Tosh and Owen had arrived just in time to see the outcome of things. There was nothing any of them could have done. Wtihout a word, they headed back to the car, neither of them willing to look at Jack. That angered him a bit, although somewhere deep down he could understand them.
“What else could I do?” he asked tiredly. They did’t answer him. Together, they loaded Gwen’s lifeless body into the car and left him standing outside. Jack sighed, shook his head, walked around to the driver’s side and got into the car. There was no use to start arguing with them. They would come to terms with the events on their own, eventually.
Besides, he still felt raw in the inside – and it wasn’t mainly for the girl. It was for Estelle, first and foremost. But nobody else seemed to care about Estelle… or about all the other victims. People were strange with their pity sometimes.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He dropped them off at their repective places and returned to the Hub alone. As usual, he found Ianto still in, sitting at Tosh’s workplace.
“I think you should see this, sir,” he said quietly.
Jack stepped at behind him and took a look at the various fairy photos strewn around the conference table. Ianto switched the monitor on in front of them, and the image of a Cottingley glass-plate photo appeared on it. It showed a girl surrounded by fairies.
“Look at this,” Ianto picked up Toshiko’s pad and stylus. He zoomed in on one of the fairy images. Then he zoomed in even closer to the individual fairy face.
Jack took a deep, shocked breath. “It’s Jasmine!”
“So it is,” Ianto replied simply. “You’ve made the only possible choice, sir. You always do; no matter the costs. That’s why you’re the boss here.”
Jack looked up at him and saw nothing but understanding in his haunted eyes.
“Can you stay here tonight?” he asked. “I dread the thought of being alone right now.”
“Of course, sir,” Ianto replied simply. “Where else could I possibly go?”
~The End – for now~
