Wishverse 1.06 - Part 1 of 3
Aug. 8th, 2009 10:03 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: 18+, for really disturbing images..
Genre: Horror/Angst, for this part. No humour in this one.
Series: Wishverse.
Warning: repeated character death(s) in each chapter.
Timeframe: "Countrycide". 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 06 – BIG BARBECUE ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, Part 1
Author’s notes:
Again, a POV I haven’t considered before, but who am I to argue with the characters if they want to offer their insight? Also, I gave one of the team-intern relationships a twist; I hope you don’t mind. There will be one or two more parts to this, depending on how the story turns out.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dr. Owen Harper had repeatedly asked himself in the recent days what had possessed him to begin an affair with Gwen Cooper. Granted, he preferred to sleep with people in so-called stable relationships, because that way he could be sure he wouldn’t end up with the woman in the long run. After Katie’s death, he didn’t want to be with anyone for more than the occasional shag.
The other reason was that he got some perverse satisfaction out of the knowledge that he’d managed to undermine such a relationship. Since he had never gotten the chance to settle down with Katie in married bliss, he enjoyed to take at least the bliss part from seemingly happy couples. It was sick, yes – but again, he worked for Torchwood and was on first name basis with Weevils and a pterodactyl. How much weirder could a person’s life possibly get?
Sitting in the SUV, next to Jack, while they were racing towards the Brecon Beacons, he couldn’t possibly have a clue that his rhetoric question would soon be answered… in the most unpleasant way one could imagine. He was too busy ranting about their current mission.
The countryside. God, how he hated the countryside! It was dirty, it was unhygienic, it smelled of the strangest things, it crawled with insects and other smaller and greater animals… Why would anyone in their right minds choose to live there when they could have perfectly good cities and, well, you know, civilization?
Come to think about it, what were they doing here to begin with? Okay, seventeen people have vanished without a trace in the last five months, all within a twenty-mile radius, but wasn’t that the job of the police? It wasn’t so as if there had been sightings of visiting UFOs or tentacled aliens who ate housecats. Even Rift activity had been unusually low in the recent weeks. Why should Torchwood bother with what was most likely the work of a very human serial killer? Living out there would drive any self-reflecting man raving mad, so not even the motivation was so hard to guess.
He knew the reason, of course. Detective Swanson, the only copper who was willing to cooperate with them (well, sometimes) had called Ianto and asked for help. As the “public face” of Torchwood, Ianto was the one who usually dealt with the police (so much about Gwen’s oh-so-original idea of having a police liaison), and as much as Owen hated to admit it, their teaboy was more than capable of getting rid of them if they called for trivial reasons. So, this one had to be one of the important calls.
Still, he couldn’t understand why Jack would want to make a full-team event of it, dragging even Ianto out of his archives, blathering something about team bonding or whatnot. At least it was obvious that Ianto hated the idea, too – although it didn’t keep him from providing foot for the team with the same efficiency as back in the Hub. Even if all he could come up were some lousy burgers.
“Come on,” Owen grumbled, “aliens aren't gonna bother hanging around out here. Probably some sort of weird suicide club with people choosing the same spot to end it all. God knows, if I had to spend too long up here, I'd want to top myself, too.”
Ianto chose this moment to pass him a burger. “Here you go. Careful, they're hot. Sure you don't want anything, Tosh?”
He handed burgers to Gwen and Jack, too. They unwrapped the food and were about to take a bite when Toshiko answered.
“Really sure,” she said with a grimace. “A friend of mine caught hepatitis off a burger from one of these places.”
Trust Tosh to ruin everyone’s appetite, Owen thought as Jack abruptly put his burger back down on the car hood. Gwen, on the other hand, started to stuff her face undisturbed. Owen wished that she hadn’t. Her half-open mouth, full of burger, was not the most appealing sight – had he been momentarily insane to start anything with her? He lowered his own burger mid-bite, his appetite suddenly gone.
He looked up sharply, however, when he heard Jack say something about a “camp”. As if having dropped the word deliberately, Jack smiled at him in the most infuriating manner he was capable of – and that was a broad scale indeed.
“What's the matter with a hotel?” he demanded, helping Jack to drag the tent gear out of the SUV. Jack gave him his most superior raised eyebrow.
“People are going missing round here,” he reminded. “Do you really wanna stay in a place run by strangers?”
Owen gave him a baleful look. “Cos sleeping outside is a lot safer.”
Jack grinned. “No other race in the universe goes camping,” he said cheerfully – a lot more cheerfully than any sane person should be in the bloody countryside. “Celebrate your own uniqueness.” But again, Owen had often questioned his boss’s sanity.
He dropped the tent gear on the grass and looked at it in disgust. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
The other two tents were already up and secured. Tosh and Ianto had done a good job with them, under Gwen’s so-called supervision.
“Need a hand getting it up, Owen?” Tosh asked helpfully, seeing his awkwardness around the whole stuff. That irritated him to no end – he hated to look incompetent, and that in front of women. Even if they were co-workers.
“If I did, I wouldn't ask you,” he snapped at her nastily.
He didn’t really mean to say that – it just slipped out, and he felt vaguely uncomfortable when Tosh’s face fell, as if he’d slapped her. She turned and stalked away, with Gwen looking after her with a vaguely satisfied smile on her face.
Owen kicked the tent gear in anger. Granted, he didn’t always treat Tosh well, but he didn’t act that way to please Gwen-bloody-Cooper, dammit! He acted so because he was a twat sometimes, but that didn’t give Gwen the right to patronize Tosh. Fucking newbie, what did she think of herself?
He looked down at the tent gear again. “Some pieces are missing!” he said accusingly, just to find a reason to blame someone else.
“No,” Ianto replied calmly. “I checked.” And with that, their teaboy headed for the tents to help the girls to set up the tables and other stuff.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When the tents finally all stood, the girls had already arranged the tables in the centre of their little camp. Gwen seemed in an awfully good mood, and when Owen joned them, he could finally realize what kind of “fun” she was having.
“Oh, come on!” she whined. “It's just a bit of fun! Who was the last person you snogged?”
Owen dropped onto the folding bench and turned to pick on her, finding the whole thing annoyingly ridiculous. “See! You even sound like an eight-year-old!”
He could see Jack sitting in the front set of the SUV and grinning.
”Who the hell says snog?” he continued, just to rile Gwen up, but it didn’t work. She was too satisfied in her knowledge that she had something the others utterly lacked.
“Mine was... Rhys!” she announced proudly, and the others exchanged exasperated looks.
“Yeah, well, there's a surprise,” Owen commented sarcastically… although, in theory, it could have been him – not that Gwen would ever admit it in front of the others, fucking little hypocrite that she was.
“Tosh, your go,” she said.
For some reason, Tosh seemed to want to evade an answer. “It's easy for you!” she said defensively; but nobody could fend off Gwen Cooper when she wanted to know something, whether it was her bloody business or not.
“Oh, come on!” she pushed. “Spill the beans!”
Tosh gave her a funny look; then she looked at Owen briefly, then back at Gwen, and finally said slowly, deliberately. “It was Andy. Your former partner. After we’ve cleaned up things in the Conway Clinic. Happy now?”
Gwen was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t even close her mouth. Jack was grinning like an idiot; Ianto ignored the entire thing, or at least pretended to ignore it. Owen couldn’t blame him. It was a stupid game that only Gwen could find funny – until someone ruined her amusement.
Tosh used the chance that Gwen was momentarily speechless and turned to him. “So, Owen. Who was yours?”
Owen suddenly felt the irresistible urge to be vicious. He looked at Gwen and saw her eyes widen with alarm, to an extent that they were literally bulging out of her head.
“Gwen, actually,” he replied with a nasty little smirk. Even Jack looked up surprised at this revelation.
Tosh turned and looked at Gwen with a suddenly hardening face. “When was this?”
Owen raised his eyebrows at Gwen, daring her to tell the truth – although, as he’d expected, she would not.
“It was… complicated,” she said evasively.
“Didn't take you long to get your feet under the table,” Tosh muttered bitterly. Snogging PC Andy or not, it apparently bothered her a great deal, although Owen couldn’t for his life understand why.
“What?” Gwen asked; it wasn’t that Tosh would have spoken too quietly, but Gwen rarely paid her any attention.
Tosh ignored her in exchange and turned to Owen. “So was it just a kiss, or...” she trailed off, not entirely sure how to continue. Unlike Gwen, she had class.
Jack put his clipboard down on the SUV seat and headed over to join the group. Owen was never more grateful for his presence. Not that he’d particularly want to hide his sorry affair with Gwen from the others, but he wasn’t willing to answer all the uncomfortable questions alone.
“Tosh, leave it,” Gwen said in an attempt of false superiority, and Owen hurriedly turned to their boss before things could escalate between the girls.
“Jack? Care to share the nasty details with us?”
Jack grinned. “Are we including non-human lifeforms?”
“Oh, you haven't!” Gwen exclaimed in horrified disgust, which was ridiculous, since Jack spent a great deal of time describing his hair-raising sexual esclapades with various aliens, including a bug-eyed, tentacled monster that, as he’d secretly admitted to Owen, reminded him of Gwen.
“You're a sick man, Harkness!” Owen declared, just to raise the bait, but there was open admiration in his voice. “That is disgusting!”
“I never know when he's joking,” Gwen complied. Jack grinned at them but didn’t answer the original question.
Ianto, who’d been sitting among them quietly (and not showing any particular interest for the silly game) now looked at them.
“It's my turn, is it?” he said in an even, emotionless voice. “It was Lisa.”
Jack’s smile fell. The others froze mid-teasing, feeling uncomfortable. Only Gwen was stupid and tactless enough to start babbling again. “Ianto, I'm sorry...”
“Sorry she's dead?” Ianto asked. “Or sorry you mentioned it?” There was no anger in his voice, no accusation. It just sounded tired.
“I just didn't think,” Gwen apologized lamely, and it was the truest thing she could have said about herself. She just never though.
“You forgot,” Ianto finished for her with that terribly empty smile that was worse than if he had screemed at them.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ianto’s bland answer to Gwen’s stupid babbling securely killed the fun for everyone – as much as there had been any in the first place. Owen sighed and rose from the bench. Sure, Teaboy had endangered them all by hiding his murderous cyber-girlfriend in the basement, but they had killed the woman – the creature – he’d still seen as his beloved. The fact that he’d been clearly delusional didn’t change the magnitude of his loss.
Owen knew he’d have done the same for Katie. And that was what had made him so angry at Ianto; because Ianto had managed to keep Lisa, even after all rational hope had long been lost, while he’d never gotten the chance to at least try to help Kathie.
“We should get some firewood,” he said. He wasn’t the least surprised when Gwen jumped to her feet and offered to give him a hand.
As expected, barely were they out of earshot, Gwen whirled around and snapped at him. “Couldn't you have kept that to yourself?”
“What's the matter,” Owen asked with a sly grin, “you embarrassed?”
She stomped with her foot like a small child. “You're such an arrogant shit sometimes, Owen!”
“Am I?” Owen asked slowly. “Then why have you been coming back for more ever since?” She just glared at him, her mouth hanging open, unable to find a much-needed snappy answer. He nodded. “I’ll tell you why: cos your sex life ain't up to much.”
In her outrage, she grabbed him and pushed him up against the tree. “You might want to shut up before I lamp you one!” she threatened, sounding like an eight-year-old again. Like a very dim-witted eight-year-old.
Owen laughed, turned her and pushed her up back against the tree, grinding his groin into her provocatively.
“Are you telling me you don’t like it?” he demanded. “That you don’t like screwing half the night while old Rhys believes you’re working on some mysterious case? That you don’t come so hard and so long when you’re with me that you forget where you are? If you got that from your boyfriend, you’d never come to me.”
Gwen opened her mouth to say something, but in that moment she saw some movement from the corner of her eye, and they had to go to investigate.
Ten minutes later Owen wished they hadn’t. Even for a doctor, it isn’t a daily event to find a skinless, meatless skeletal corpse. He wished he hadn’t eaten that burger earlier.
Of course, he had the honour to examine the gory found. Jack and Tosh helped him, while Gwen was leaning up against a far tree and couldn’t be moved to come any closer. Not that they’d come to any useful results. The body had been stripped of the flesh and bodily organs. Only the carcass was left, so he couldn’t determine the actual cause of death. At least they could rule out the involvement of Weevils; as Jack said the aliens didn’t finish off their victims like that.
When only moments later the SUV was stolen, though, they realized that they had much more urgent problems, Especially Owen, who had to face a seething Tosh as she was trying to collect her scattered stuff in the demolished camp.
“All right!” he snapped. “I've said I'm sorry!”
“Basic security protocols, Owen!” she pointed out, still fuming.
“Oh, get off your high horse, Tosh!” he snapped. “I was carrying that stupid gear.”
“What, the whole time?” she rolled her eyes.
“And then I was trying to put that bloody tent up,” he replied. “And then ... well, yeah, I sort of forgot that I'd left them in there. But I'm sorry. I'm human. I ballsed up. “
“If you’d try to think with your head instead of your dick just once, this wouldn’t have happened,” she retorted angrily.
Their argument could have escalated into something really ugly, had Jack not interfered and turned their attention back to the really important things. Fortunately, he did.
“Looks like that body wasn't a warning,” he said grimly. “More of a decoy.”
“That would mean we've been watched since we've arrived,” Gwen stated the glaringly obvious, doing the wide-eyed, lip-trembling routine again. Jack ignored him.
“Tosh, can you get a tracking signal?” he asked.
“Already done,” Ianto said in Tosh’s stead. “I took the liberty.” He waved his PDA, looking intolerably smug. “It's currently 3.4 miles west from here.”
“Gunning at ninety, no doubt,” Owen said sourly, because it irritated him that their office boy proved more useful than he, an experienced field agent. “You steal a piece of equipment like that, you drive straight on till morning.”
“Actually, no,” Ianto managed to keep the smugness on an almost bearable level, which was a good thing, or else Owen would have punched him. “It's been stationary for the past four minutes. I'd go so far as to say it was parked.”
Gwen checked the map. “There's a small village in that area,” she said. “Other than that, nothing for thirty miles.”
Tosh pulled a face. “Call me suspicious, but this has all the hallmarks of a trap.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing,” Jack said grimly. Then, after a beat, he asked. “Anyone fancy a walk?”
Without waiting for an answer, he headed out. Gwen turned and looked at Owen. Ianto and Toshi looked at each other. Neither of them liked the idea of walking into a trap with their eyes wide open, but what else could they do? They groaned collectively and followed Jack.
Owen’s hatred for the countryside went up another notch.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They came upon a building out in the distance in font of them. It looked like the – rather shabby – settings of some medieval sword-and-sorcery movie, Owen found, if it weren’t for the grey tractor standing in front, upon the equally grey graveled drive. The stone walls fot he building were grey and withered with age, too… and likely cold and damp in the inside. Owen shuddered with disgust.
“Why would anyone want to live out here?” he asked rhetorically.
Jack ignored him, having more important concerns at the moment. “Has the SUV moved yet?” he asked from Ianto, who checked his PDA and his watch.
“Not for an hour now,” he replied.
“All right,” Jack said, putting on his ‘determined leader’ posture. “Tosh, Ianto – follow the signal, find the SUV. Owen, Gwen, let’s see if there’s any room in at inn.”
There was no sign on the longhouse building, but it could hardly be anything else than the village in. It was only logical to start the investigations there; the inn – or the pub – was traditionally the centre of social life in any village. The team split up; Jack, Gwen and Owen headed for the building.
Getting into what had to be the main didning room, they found it empty. Jack motioned for them to look around. Gwen went behind the bar, making a great show of doing proper plice work: opening the cash register, looking at the bills in the till... unfortunately, without remembering to put on rubber gloves first. Owen grinned and stepped up to the bar.
“Pint of best please, love,” he said jovially. “And em, yeah, get one for yourself.”
She levelled a look at him that could have frozen Hell over. Jack smiled behind her back, which she, fortuantely, couldn’t see, or else she’d have throuwn another tantrum. So she was forced to actually do her job for a while... or at least try. It didn’t last long, though.
“Where is everybody?” she asked in frustration, putting the till down.
Jack shrugged, took his gun out and motioned for her to follow him. Owen remained behind for a moment to check out the rest of the dining room, but he found nothing conclusive. So he went after them soon enough.
He found them in what was probably the kitchen of the inn – or, at least, had once been. Right now, it was the most disgusting mess he’d ever seen… and he had seen his fair share of ugly places. The curtains were all pulled closed – he couldn’te ven gues what colour they might have originally been – and dirty post and dishes lay in the sink and on the counters. The only illumination came from a bug like hanging from the ceiling.
In the middle of the room, Gwen was holding the counter top and throwing up on the floor.
“That burger coming back to haunt you?” Owen asked sarcastically. Then he passed Jack and saw it… another skinless, meatless corpse on the floor, about a foot from where Gwen was standing. “Oh, my God…”
Somewhere far away a door slammed shut. That woke them all of their petrification.
“We need to get out of here,” Jack said with that unnatural calmness that only came over him at times of serious danger. “Now, Gwen!” he added sharply, and was out of the door already.
Owen moved on after Jack automatically. He’d long learned to obey without quiestion when their boss was in that particular mood. After a moment of hesitation, Gwen ran after them, down the stairs leading to the front door.
To their great relief, it was only closed, not locked. All three of them made it out onto the graveled drive, where Gwen doubled over again, retching and caughing. For once, Owen didn’t blame her. Even after all that he’d seen in his years with Torchwood, this was highly disturbing.
”There’s another building behind the trees,” Jack said. “Let’s take a look in there… but be careful!”
They headed to the other building, Jack first, his gun at the ready, but he stopped on one side of it, waiting for Gwen to catch up. Gwen put a hand on the doorknot and silently counted to three. Owen rolled his eyes at the bloody movie cliché. Besids, shouldn’t Gwen have let Jack go first? Jack had experience with that sort of stuff, for Pete’s sake! – whereas Gwen hadn’t got a clue. Why she kept insisting on playing the hero all the time was everybody’s guess.
At three, Gwen threw the door open and stepped inside, wih her gun raised. Jack followed her in, assuming the same stance, the same position Owen had seen him in many dangerous actions.
“Go,” he whispered.
Gwen moved forward and stepped into something. She looked down – and freaked, if the extreme bulging of her eyes were any indication. Owen pushed by Jack to take a closer look at it; it looked like a pool of blood.
“What is it?” Jack asked from where he was securing the door, seeing Gwen slowly back away. It took her three separate efforts till she finally could answer.
“There's another body in there.”
Jack glanced behind himself, not entirely happy with their backs being unprotected. “Same as the other?”
Instead of answering, Gwen began to wail, her voice getting higher by the second. “What did this, Jack? Cos whatever it is, it can't be human. How far is this going to spread?” Clearly, she was losing it. But asking questions Jack was unable to answer didn’t really help.
“Stay focused,” Jack saod sharply, taking up position beside the open door. Gwen didn’t move; her eyes were focused on the body. She was freaking, big time.
“I should be at home having dinner with Rhys,” she lamented. “What am I doing here with you?!”
“I don’t know,” Jack replied calmly. “You were the one who wanted to join Torchwood. I certainly tried to keep you away.”
She stared at him with big, accusing eyes. “Don't you ever get scared, Jack?”
Jack ignored the unphrased demand to comfort her. This was not the time; if she couldn’t take what the job threw at them, then she didn’t have a place among them.
“There's another two houses,” he said colly. “We'd better take a look.”
He left the room, without throwing a look back. Gwen stared after him, disturbed by what she’d seen, before following him out
Owen remained behind to take samples from the budy, for later identification. The victim might have had family, or friends, who’d wish to know what happened to him – even if they’d never learn the whole truth.
Done with that, he stood and looked down at what once had been a person.
”Whatever they were, I hope you put up a good fight,” he said grimly and went out to join Jack and Gwen.
This has gone too far. They needed to do something about it.
~TBC~
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Torchwood
Category: Heavy-duty Gwen bashing.
Rating: 18+, for really disturbing images..
Genre: Horror/Angst, for this part. No humour in this one.
Series: Wishverse.
Warning: repeated character death(s) in each chapter.
Timeframe: "Countrycide". 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 06 – BIG BARBECUE ON THE COUNTRYSIDE, Part 1
Author’s notes:
Again, a POV I haven’t considered before, but who am I to argue with the characters if they want to offer their insight? Also, I gave one of the team-intern relationships a twist; I hope you don’t mind. There will be one or two more parts to this, depending on how the story turns out.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Dr. Owen Harper had repeatedly asked himself in the recent days what had possessed him to begin an affair with Gwen Cooper. Granted, he preferred to sleep with people in so-called stable relationships, because that way he could be sure he wouldn’t end up with the woman in the long run. After Katie’s death, he didn’t want to be with anyone for more than the occasional shag.
The other reason was that he got some perverse satisfaction out of the knowledge that he’d managed to undermine such a relationship. Since he had never gotten the chance to settle down with Katie in married bliss, he enjoyed to take at least the bliss part from seemingly happy couples. It was sick, yes – but again, he worked for Torchwood and was on first name basis with Weevils and a pterodactyl. How much weirder could a person’s life possibly get?
Sitting in the SUV, next to Jack, while they were racing towards the Brecon Beacons, he couldn’t possibly have a clue that his rhetoric question would soon be answered… in the most unpleasant way one could imagine. He was too busy ranting about their current mission.
The countryside. God, how he hated the countryside! It was dirty, it was unhygienic, it smelled of the strangest things, it crawled with insects and other smaller and greater animals… Why would anyone in their right minds choose to live there when they could have perfectly good cities and, well, you know, civilization?
Come to think about it, what were they doing here to begin with? Okay, seventeen people have vanished without a trace in the last five months, all within a twenty-mile radius, but wasn’t that the job of the police? It wasn’t so as if there had been sightings of visiting UFOs or tentacled aliens who ate housecats. Even Rift activity had been unusually low in the recent weeks. Why should Torchwood bother with what was most likely the work of a very human serial killer? Living out there would drive any self-reflecting man raving mad, so not even the motivation was so hard to guess.
He knew the reason, of course. Detective Swanson, the only copper who was willing to cooperate with them (well, sometimes) had called Ianto and asked for help. As the “public face” of Torchwood, Ianto was the one who usually dealt with the police (so much about Gwen’s oh-so-original idea of having a police liaison), and as much as Owen hated to admit it, their teaboy was more than capable of getting rid of them if they called for trivial reasons. So, this one had to be one of the important calls.
Still, he couldn’t understand why Jack would want to make a full-team event of it, dragging even Ianto out of his archives, blathering something about team bonding or whatnot. At least it was obvious that Ianto hated the idea, too – although it didn’t keep him from providing foot for the team with the same efficiency as back in the Hub. Even if all he could come up were some lousy burgers.
“Come on,” Owen grumbled, “aliens aren't gonna bother hanging around out here. Probably some sort of weird suicide club with people choosing the same spot to end it all. God knows, if I had to spend too long up here, I'd want to top myself, too.”
Ianto chose this moment to pass him a burger. “Here you go. Careful, they're hot. Sure you don't want anything, Tosh?”
He handed burgers to Gwen and Jack, too. They unwrapped the food and were about to take a bite when Toshiko answered.
“Really sure,” she said with a grimace. “A friend of mine caught hepatitis off a burger from one of these places.”
Trust Tosh to ruin everyone’s appetite, Owen thought as Jack abruptly put his burger back down on the car hood. Gwen, on the other hand, started to stuff her face undisturbed. Owen wished that she hadn’t. Her half-open mouth, full of burger, was not the most appealing sight – had he been momentarily insane to start anything with her? He lowered his own burger mid-bite, his appetite suddenly gone.
He looked up sharply, however, when he heard Jack say something about a “camp”. As if having dropped the word deliberately, Jack smiled at him in the most infuriating manner he was capable of – and that was a broad scale indeed.
“What's the matter with a hotel?” he demanded, helping Jack to drag the tent gear out of the SUV. Jack gave him his most superior raised eyebrow.
“People are going missing round here,” he reminded. “Do you really wanna stay in a place run by strangers?”
Owen gave him a baleful look. “Cos sleeping outside is a lot safer.”
Jack grinned. “No other race in the universe goes camping,” he said cheerfully – a lot more cheerfully than any sane person should be in the bloody countryside. “Celebrate your own uniqueness.” But again, Owen had often questioned his boss’s sanity.
He dropped the tent gear on the grass and looked at it in disgust. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
The other two tents were already up and secured. Tosh and Ianto had done a good job with them, under Gwen’s so-called supervision.
“Need a hand getting it up, Owen?” Tosh asked helpfully, seeing his awkwardness around the whole stuff. That irritated him to no end – he hated to look incompetent, and that in front of women. Even if they were co-workers.
“If I did, I wouldn't ask you,” he snapped at her nastily.
He didn’t really mean to say that – it just slipped out, and he felt vaguely uncomfortable when Tosh’s face fell, as if he’d slapped her. She turned and stalked away, with Gwen looking after her with a vaguely satisfied smile on her face.
Owen kicked the tent gear in anger. Granted, he didn’t always treat Tosh well, but he didn’t act that way to please Gwen-bloody-Cooper, dammit! He acted so because he was a twat sometimes, but that didn’t give Gwen the right to patronize Tosh. Fucking newbie, what did she think of herself?
He looked down at the tent gear again. “Some pieces are missing!” he said accusingly, just to find a reason to blame someone else.
“No,” Ianto replied calmly. “I checked.” And with that, their teaboy headed for the tents to help the girls to set up the tables and other stuff.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When the tents finally all stood, the girls had already arranged the tables in the centre of their little camp. Gwen seemed in an awfully good mood, and when Owen joned them, he could finally realize what kind of “fun” she was having.
“Oh, come on!” she whined. “It's just a bit of fun! Who was the last person you snogged?”
Owen dropped onto the folding bench and turned to pick on her, finding the whole thing annoyingly ridiculous. “See! You even sound like an eight-year-old!”
He could see Jack sitting in the front set of the SUV and grinning.
”Who the hell says snog?” he continued, just to rile Gwen up, but it didn’t work. She was too satisfied in her knowledge that she had something the others utterly lacked.
“Mine was... Rhys!” she announced proudly, and the others exchanged exasperated looks.
“Yeah, well, there's a surprise,” Owen commented sarcastically… although, in theory, it could have been him – not that Gwen would ever admit it in front of the others, fucking little hypocrite that she was.
“Tosh, your go,” she said.
For some reason, Tosh seemed to want to evade an answer. “It's easy for you!” she said defensively; but nobody could fend off Gwen Cooper when she wanted to know something, whether it was her bloody business or not.
“Oh, come on!” she pushed. “Spill the beans!”
Tosh gave her a funny look; then she looked at Owen briefly, then back at Gwen, and finally said slowly, deliberately. “It was Andy. Your former partner. After we’ve cleaned up things in the Conway Clinic. Happy now?”
Gwen was so shocked that for a moment she couldn’t even close her mouth. Jack was grinning like an idiot; Ianto ignored the entire thing, or at least pretended to ignore it. Owen couldn’t blame him. It was a stupid game that only Gwen could find funny – until someone ruined her amusement.
Tosh used the chance that Gwen was momentarily speechless and turned to him. “So, Owen. Who was yours?”
Owen suddenly felt the irresistible urge to be vicious. He looked at Gwen and saw her eyes widen with alarm, to an extent that they were literally bulging out of her head.
“Gwen, actually,” he replied with a nasty little smirk. Even Jack looked up surprised at this revelation.
Tosh turned and looked at Gwen with a suddenly hardening face. “When was this?”
Owen raised his eyebrows at Gwen, daring her to tell the truth – although, as he’d expected, she would not.
“It was… complicated,” she said evasively.
“Didn't take you long to get your feet under the table,” Tosh muttered bitterly. Snogging PC Andy or not, it apparently bothered her a great deal, although Owen couldn’t for his life understand why.
“What?” Gwen asked; it wasn’t that Tosh would have spoken too quietly, but Gwen rarely paid her any attention.
Tosh ignored her in exchange and turned to Owen. “So was it just a kiss, or...” she trailed off, not entirely sure how to continue. Unlike Gwen, she had class.
Jack put his clipboard down on the SUV seat and headed over to join the group. Owen was never more grateful for his presence. Not that he’d particularly want to hide his sorry affair with Gwen from the others, but he wasn’t willing to answer all the uncomfortable questions alone.
“Tosh, leave it,” Gwen said in an attempt of false superiority, and Owen hurriedly turned to their boss before things could escalate between the girls.
“Jack? Care to share the nasty details with us?”
Jack grinned. “Are we including non-human lifeforms?”
“Oh, you haven't!” Gwen exclaimed in horrified disgust, which was ridiculous, since Jack spent a great deal of time describing his hair-raising sexual esclapades with various aliens, including a bug-eyed, tentacled monster that, as he’d secretly admitted to Owen, reminded him of Gwen.
“You're a sick man, Harkness!” Owen declared, just to raise the bait, but there was open admiration in his voice. “That is disgusting!”
“I never know when he's joking,” Gwen complied. Jack grinned at them but didn’t answer the original question.
Ianto, who’d been sitting among them quietly (and not showing any particular interest for the silly game) now looked at them.
“It's my turn, is it?” he said in an even, emotionless voice. “It was Lisa.”
Jack’s smile fell. The others froze mid-teasing, feeling uncomfortable. Only Gwen was stupid and tactless enough to start babbling again. “Ianto, I'm sorry...”
“Sorry she's dead?” Ianto asked. “Or sorry you mentioned it?” There was no anger in his voice, no accusation. It just sounded tired.
“I just didn't think,” Gwen apologized lamely, and it was the truest thing she could have said about herself. She just never though.
“You forgot,” Ianto finished for her with that terribly empty smile that was worse than if he had screemed at them.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Ianto’s bland answer to Gwen’s stupid babbling securely killed the fun for everyone – as much as there had been any in the first place. Owen sighed and rose from the bench. Sure, Teaboy had endangered them all by hiding his murderous cyber-girlfriend in the basement, but they had killed the woman – the creature – he’d still seen as his beloved. The fact that he’d been clearly delusional didn’t change the magnitude of his loss.
Owen knew he’d have done the same for Katie. And that was what had made him so angry at Ianto; because Ianto had managed to keep Lisa, even after all rational hope had long been lost, while he’d never gotten the chance to at least try to help Kathie.
“We should get some firewood,” he said. He wasn’t the least surprised when Gwen jumped to her feet and offered to give him a hand.
As expected, barely were they out of earshot, Gwen whirled around and snapped at him. “Couldn't you have kept that to yourself?”
“What's the matter,” Owen asked with a sly grin, “you embarrassed?”
She stomped with her foot like a small child. “You're such an arrogant shit sometimes, Owen!”
“Am I?” Owen asked slowly. “Then why have you been coming back for more ever since?” She just glared at him, her mouth hanging open, unable to find a much-needed snappy answer. He nodded. “I’ll tell you why: cos your sex life ain't up to much.”
In her outrage, she grabbed him and pushed him up against the tree. “You might want to shut up before I lamp you one!” she threatened, sounding like an eight-year-old again. Like a very dim-witted eight-year-old.
Owen laughed, turned her and pushed her up back against the tree, grinding his groin into her provocatively.
“Are you telling me you don’t like it?” he demanded. “That you don’t like screwing half the night while old Rhys believes you’re working on some mysterious case? That you don’t come so hard and so long when you’re with me that you forget where you are? If you got that from your boyfriend, you’d never come to me.”
Gwen opened her mouth to say something, but in that moment she saw some movement from the corner of her eye, and they had to go to investigate.
Ten minutes later Owen wished they hadn’t. Even for a doctor, it isn’t a daily event to find a skinless, meatless skeletal corpse. He wished he hadn’t eaten that burger earlier.
Of course, he had the honour to examine the gory found. Jack and Tosh helped him, while Gwen was leaning up against a far tree and couldn’t be moved to come any closer. Not that they’d come to any useful results. The body had been stripped of the flesh and bodily organs. Only the carcass was left, so he couldn’t determine the actual cause of death. At least they could rule out the involvement of Weevils; as Jack said the aliens didn’t finish off their victims like that.
When only moments later the SUV was stolen, though, they realized that they had much more urgent problems, Especially Owen, who had to face a seething Tosh as she was trying to collect her scattered stuff in the demolished camp.
“All right!” he snapped. “I've said I'm sorry!”
“Basic security protocols, Owen!” she pointed out, still fuming.
“Oh, get off your high horse, Tosh!” he snapped. “I was carrying that stupid gear.”
“What, the whole time?” she rolled her eyes.
“And then I was trying to put that bloody tent up,” he replied. “And then ... well, yeah, I sort of forgot that I'd left them in there. But I'm sorry. I'm human. I ballsed up. “
“If you’d try to think with your head instead of your dick just once, this wouldn’t have happened,” she retorted angrily.
Their argument could have escalated into something really ugly, had Jack not interfered and turned their attention back to the really important things. Fortunately, he did.
“Looks like that body wasn't a warning,” he said grimly. “More of a decoy.”
“That would mean we've been watched since we've arrived,” Gwen stated the glaringly obvious, doing the wide-eyed, lip-trembling routine again. Jack ignored him.
“Tosh, can you get a tracking signal?” he asked.
“Already done,” Ianto said in Tosh’s stead. “I took the liberty.” He waved his PDA, looking intolerably smug. “It's currently 3.4 miles west from here.”
“Gunning at ninety, no doubt,” Owen said sourly, because it irritated him that their office boy proved more useful than he, an experienced field agent. “You steal a piece of equipment like that, you drive straight on till morning.”
“Actually, no,” Ianto managed to keep the smugness on an almost bearable level, which was a good thing, or else Owen would have punched him. “It's been stationary for the past four minutes. I'd go so far as to say it was parked.”
Gwen checked the map. “There's a small village in that area,” she said. “Other than that, nothing for thirty miles.”
Tosh pulled a face. “Call me suspicious, but this has all the hallmarks of a trap.”
“Yeah, I was just thinking the same thing,” Jack said grimly. Then, after a beat, he asked. “Anyone fancy a walk?”
Without waiting for an answer, he headed out. Gwen turned and looked at Owen. Ianto and Toshi looked at each other. Neither of them liked the idea of walking into a trap with their eyes wide open, but what else could they do? They groaned collectively and followed Jack.
Owen’s hatred for the countryside went up another notch.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
They came upon a building out in the distance in font of them. It looked like the – rather shabby – settings of some medieval sword-and-sorcery movie, Owen found, if it weren’t for the grey tractor standing in front, upon the equally grey graveled drive. The stone walls fot he building were grey and withered with age, too… and likely cold and damp in the inside. Owen shuddered with disgust.
“Why would anyone want to live out here?” he asked rhetorically.
Jack ignored him, having more important concerns at the moment. “Has the SUV moved yet?” he asked from Ianto, who checked his PDA and his watch.
“Not for an hour now,” he replied.
“All right,” Jack said, putting on his ‘determined leader’ posture. “Tosh, Ianto – follow the signal, find the SUV. Owen, Gwen, let’s see if there’s any room in at inn.”
There was no sign on the longhouse building, but it could hardly be anything else than the village in. It was only logical to start the investigations there; the inn – or the pub – was traditionally the centre of social life in any village. The team split up; Jack, Gwen and Owen headed for the building.
Getting into what had to be the main didning room, they found it empty. Jack motioned for them to look around. Gwen went behind the bar, making a great show of doing proper plice work: opening the cash register, looking at the bills in the till... unfortunately, without remembering to put on rubber gloves first. Owen grinned and stepped up to the bar.
“Pint of best please, love,” he said jovially. “And em, yeah, get one for yourself.”
She levelled a look at him that could have frozen Hell over. Jack smiled behind her back, which she, fortuantely, couldn’t see, or else she’d have throuwn another tantrum. So she was forced to actually do her job for a while... or at least try. It didn’t last long, though.
“Where is everybody?” she asked in frustration, putting the till down.
Jack shrugged, took his gun out and motioned for her to follow him. Owen remained behind for a moment to check out the rest of the dining room, but he found nothing conclusive. So he went after them soon enough.
He found them in what was probably the kitchen of the inn – or, at least, had once been. Right now, it was the most disgusting mess he’d ever seen… and he had seen his fair share of ugly places. The curtains were all pulled closed – he couldn’te ven gues what colour they might have originally been – and dirty post and dishes lay in the sink and on the counters. The only illumination came from a bug like hanging from the ceiling.
In the middle of the room, Gwen was holding the counter top and throwing up on the floor.
“That burger coming back to haunt you?” Owen asked sarcastically. Then he passed Jack and saw it… another skinless, meatless corpse on the floor, about a foot from where Gwen was standing. “Oh, my God…”
Somewhere far away a door slammed shut. That woke them all of their petrification.
“We need to get out of here,” Jack said with that unnatural calmness that only came over him at times of serious danger. “Now, Gwen!” he added sharply, and was out of the door already.
Owen moved on after Jack automatically. He’d long learned to obey without quiestion when their boss was in that particular mood. After a moment of hesitation, Gwen ran after them, down the stairs leading to the front door.
To their great relief, it was only closed, not locked. All three of them made it out onto the graveled drive, where Gwen doubled over again, retching and caughing. For once, Owen didn’t blame her. Even after all that he’d seen in his years with Torchwood, this was highly disturbing.
”There’s another building behind the trees,” Jack said. “Let’s take a look in there… but be careful!”
They headed to the other building, Jack first, his gun at the ready, but he stopped on one side of it, waiting for Gwen to catch up. Gwen put a hand on the doorknot and silently counted to three. Owen rolled his eyes at the bloody movie cliché. Besids, shouldn’t Gwen have let Jack go first? Jack had experience with that sort of stuff, for Pete’s sake! – whereas Gwen hadn’t got a clue. Why she kept insisting on playing the hero all the time was everybody’s guess.
At three, Gwen threw the door open and stepped inside, wih her gun raised. Jack followed her in, assuming the same stance, the same position Owen had seen him in many dangerous actions.
“Go,” he whispered.
Gwen moved forward and stepped into something. She looked down – and freaked, if the extreme bulging of her eyes were any indication. Owen pushed by Jack to take a closer look at it; it looked like a pool of blood.
“What is it?” Jack asked from where he was securing the door, seeing Gwen slowly back away. It took her three separate efforts till she finally could answer.
“There's another body in there.”
Jack glanced behind himself, not entirely happy with their backs being unprotected. “Same as the other?”
Instead of answering, Gwen began to wail, her voice getting higher by the second. “What did this, Jack? Cos whatever it is, it can't be human. How far is this going to spread?” Clearly, she was losing it. But asking questions Jack was unable to answer didn’t really help.
“Stay focused,” Jack saod sharply, taking up position beside the open door. Gwen didn’t move; her eyes were focused on the body. She was freaking, big time.
“I should be at home having dinner with Rhys,” she lamented. “What am I doing here with you?!”
“I don’t know,” Jack replied calmly. “You were the one who wanted to join Torchwood. I certainly tried to keep you away.”
She stared at him with big, accusing eyes. “Don't you ever get scared, Jack?”
Jack ignored the unphrased demand to comfort her. This was not the time; if she couldn’t take what the job threw at them, then she didn’t have a place among them.
“There's another two houses,” he said colly. “We'd better take a look.”
He left the room, without throwing a look back. Gwen stared after him, disturbed by what she’d seen, before following him out
Owen remained behind to take samples from the budy, for later identification. The victim might have had family, or friends, who’d wish to know what happened to him – even if they’d never learn the whole truth.
Done with that, he stood and looked down at what once had been a person.
”Whatever they were, I hope you put up a good fight,” he said grimly and went out to join Jack and Gwen.
This has gone too far. They needed to do something about it.
~TBC~
