Wishverse 1.06 - Part 2 of 3
Aug. 8th, 2009 10:10 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 2
Author’s note: Continued from Part 01. Obviously.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He was halfway out of the building when he heard the shot. Putting the samples in his kit, he grabbed his gun and ran out of the house. Across the small alley between the two buildings, he could see Jack waving at him frantically from a half-opened door. Gwen was lying in the dirt, clutching her side, her eyes glassy with pain.
“What happened?” Owen asked, grabbing his kit and running over to them.
“Some kid hit her with a shotgun,” Jack replied grimly. “I told her to stay behind, but there was no way holding her back.”
Of course there wasn’t – she was Gwen-bloody-Cooper, after all.
“We need to get her into the house,” Owen said tersely. “I have to take a look at that wound of hers.”
Jack bent forward and picked Gwen up who whimpered in pain. “I got her. Find a suitable surface; they’ll have a kitchen table, if nothing else.”
They – whoever they might have been – did have a kitchen table indeed. Owen cleared it, with the simple yet efficient method of knocking everything to the floor. Jack lowered Gwen onto the table, his jaw working as she grunted from the pain.
“Okay, I'll check upstairs,” he said, running past the kid and heading upstairs.
The kid stood aside, watching them from horrified eyes. Owen ignored him and got to work, putting a blanket under Gwen’s head, who kept moaning his name over and over again. Under different circumstances it might have been flattering, but right now, it was just distracting, and not in a good way. He couldn’t afford to be distracted.
He turned on the light above the table, adjusting it to shine on her wound. His stomach knitted tightly; he was afraid to take a look, knowing that the injury might be too serious for his limited equipment to treat it properly.
“Bet you thought you'd never be glad to see me!” he said, trying to distract her with a lame joke.
But she didn’t seem to understand him – perhaps didn’t even hear him – just kept crying for his help. He grabbed her flailing arms and held them down as he looked at her.
“Listen,” he said through gritted teeth, “I'm going to have a look at your wound now, okay? Just keep calm.” Holding her down proved quite a task, so he added sharply. “Hands off, hands off. Okay.”
Gwen was clearly not getting what he was trying to tell her. “No, don't please!” she wailed. “Don’t!”
Owen rolled his eyes; not that she could see it, as his face was shadowed behind the lamp. He could understand that she hurt, but even she had to understand that a gunshot wound needed to be treated. Dammit, was she completely bollocks or what? Did she want to bleed to the dead?
He pulled her pants band down and lifted up her shirt to look at the wound. Thank God, it didn’t look life-threatening. It would be a bitch to clean it, but she’d live.
“Right, it could've been much worse,” he commented in relief, applying a fresh bandage to the wound and hoping that she would follow his instructions. “Hold this. Apply pressure.”
Surprisingly enough, Gwen automatically applied pressure. Owen let out a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding and looked at the wound. Step #1 had been managed without a lengthy argument. Had he knew that, he’d have probably shot Gwen at various times already.
”Oh, Jesus!” Gwen wailed, and Owen was getting annoyed with her again. Okay, so he hurt; it was a gunshot wound, after all; it ought to hurt. But shouldn’t a supposedly adult woman be able to control her reactions a little better? Especially in the presence of the kid who’d accidentally shot her and he was already out of his mind from sheer terror?
“The bullets are lodged relatively near the surface,” he told her. “You've been bloody lucky, girl. Another inch to the left and any one of your vital organs might've been... “
“What?” Gwen demanded, her eyes widening with alarm. Owen shook his head. Okay, that was a stupid thing to say. Just because he could have told it Tosh – in fact, had told her worse things during similar situations – he shouldn’t have expected Gwen to deal with it like an adult.
He grabbed a syringe to inject her with a local anesthetic. “All right,” he said, trying a dirty joke to distract her. “Do you want a quip about feeling a small prick?”
Gwen gave a sound between a snort and a groan. “No, but thanks for offering.”
Well, at least she sounds more lucid, Owen thought in satisfaction. Dirty talk always did the trick with hysterical patients.
“Here we go,” he said loudly and injected her. “All done.”
Laying the syringe aside, he took his tweezers. Gwen tried to see what he was doing, but from her position she couldn’s see much, and she began to moan again. “Oh, God, it hurts!”
”It will stop hurting in a moment,” Owen encouraged her with forced patience because a full-blown panic attack was the last thing he could use right now. “But we have to get these pellets out, else everything would become a lot worse, do you understand me? “
Gwen nodded weakly and grabbed his shoulder tightly as he began to work. She managed to partly immobilize his hand that way, and he was sure he’d have bruises come tomorrow, but if that kept her in a halfway manageable state, he could work around it. He tried a dirty joke again; it had worked at the first time, after all.
“Right, there's gonna be a certain amount of residue,” he said. “So just lie back and think of Torchwood.”
Gwen snorted again but visibly calmed down a little. “Do you miss being a doctor?” she asked.
Owen suppressed a sigh. People who used to know him during his more conventional job kept asking the same question – as if he could bear to work in a hospital after Katie’s death! Still, those people could be forgiven cos they had no idea. But a fellow Torchwood member asking the same… Course, as it was Gwen, he probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. It was her favourite pastime to poke around in other people’s lives.
“Excuse me,” he said tersely. “I still am a doctor.” I just don't deal with patients any more, that's all. It's ideal. That was the bit I always hated.”
That shut Gwen temporarily up, and he could take out the first pellet without being nagged about things that were not her business. He showed her the found. “Aint it a beauty? Come on. I'm good.”
The comment had such an obvious double-meaning that not even Gwen could miss it. “Not bad, she replied slyly.
They looked at each other for a moment in complete understanding, then she turned away. Owen returned to her side and she removed her hand from his shoulders, allowing circulation to return to the half-numb body part; then she turned her head completely away from him in a badly displayed superior manner. As if all that had passed between them in the recent weeks would have been his fault. Fucking little hypocrite.
The rest of the pellets were relatively easy to remove – assuming one had a steady hand – and Owen was bandaging her wound when Jack returned with a rifle, holding it like the hero of some western movie. He released the chamber and puts it aside, frowning.
“What's taking Tosh and Ianto so long?” he wondered.
“Give them a chance,” Owen returned, not even bothering to look up from his work. “The SUV might be locked up.”
“Or they could be dead!” the kid said, speaking for the first time since they’d got in there. At their doubtful glare, he defiantly added. “Well, everyone else is. “
“Sit down!” Jack snapped at him. The kid sat down obediently, his pupils wide like those of a frightened animal. He clearly feared them, but not half as much as whatever was there outside.
“Tell us what happened here,” Jack instructed him, but the kid wasn’t in the right mental state to give any coherent answer.
“It's not human,” he muttered, hugging himself as if for protection. “My mum won't even know what's happened. They weren’t expecting me back for the weekend. God, why haven’t I gone home for the weekend…”
“We'll get you home okay,” Jack said in his best reassuring manner. Only that this time it didn’t seem to work.
“What are you going to do?” the kid asked.” You can't fight them. They're too strong. The only thing we can do is barricade the door.”
“Well, we’re not exactly weak ourselves,” Jack replied.
“Yeah, and we’d be a lot more efficient, had you not shot one of us, “Owen muttered, opening his kit.
The kid looked from one to the other; then he jumped to his feet and and ran to the door. He didn’t get so far, however. Jack grabbed him halfways and sat him back down.”
“No!” he said. “Splitting up would be a really stupid thing right now,” then he turned to Owen. “We'll make base at the pub.”
Owen finished setting Gwen’s bandage and looked up to him. “What about Tosh and Ianto?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we go after them?”
Jack shook his head determinedly. “Not till we know what we're dealing with.”
Owen didn’t like the sound of that. Whatever he might think of Ianto, he was part of their team; and Tosh was invaluable. “But what if it's too late?”
“They're not children,” Jack replied dismissively. “They know what to do. Let's go.”
He stepped toward Gwen but Owen stopped him. “It's all right. I've got her. You go forward and secure our path.”
Jack hesitated for a moment, but Owen put his foot down firmly. Finally Jack backed away and headed quickly toward the door. Owen put Gwen’s arm around his shoulder to help her up. Gwen sat up and looked after Jack who was already out of the door. The kid stood up and watched as Owen helped Gwen to her feet, without any sign of wanting to help. That annoyed Owen, because shocked or not, he could support a wounded woman, dammit, especially as he’d been the one to shoot her.
And if that hadn’t been enough, bloody Gwen began whining again. “Owen, I want to do it on my own.” Right. With a freshly bandaged gunshot wound in her side and a basic dosis of painkillers in her system that would wear off any minute now. Typical.
Owen had had enough. He let Gwen go without a comment. Her heroic stance was ruined within seconds as she staggered and nearly fell. Owen quickly grabbed her again, refraining from any comment on her idiocy. She didn’t say anything either, just leaned on him and they headed out of the room. The kid followed them docilely.
“I'm sorry about your friends,” he muttered.
Owen looked back at him. “You can apologize later, mate, although none of this is really your fault. Let’s first get to the pub, shan’t we?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Theoretically, the kid’s idea of barricading the door would have ben a sound one. There was one thing that bothered Owen, though, while he and Jack used the furniture to build a barricade in the pub. As expected, the kid didn’t make a move to help them, and in her current state, Gwen was even more useless than usual.
“If we barricade ourselves in, what happens to Tosh and Ianto?” he asked.
Jack gave him an irritated look. “Why are we still talking about this?”
“Cos they’re our team-mates and they’re bloody missing, perhaps?” Owen said in a calm voice that was just a hair’s bredth from complete hysteria. Jack frowned at him.
“Tosh and Ianto can look after themselves,” he said.
“Can they?” Owen challenged. “Could we? Look what’s happened to Gwen! Are you really so sure that Tosh and Ianto can handle this? Teaboy has never been on a field mission before, and Tosh…”
“Tosh is tough,” Jack interrupted, “and thre’s more in Ianto than you might give him credit for. Now, can we focus on our job here? The kid is our first priority and they've already been for him once. They're not going to give up that easily.”
Owen looked at the kid who’d been lying down on the side, his eyes closed and hugging the rifle to his chest. He shook his head.
“I’m not sure I like your priorities, Harkness,” he said harshly.
“Tough,” Jack replied. “That’s the best you get from me.”
“My worries exactly,” Owen muttered, more out of the unexplainable need to be belligerent than out of hope that he might change Jack’s mind. There was preciously little chance for that, as he knew it from previous experience.
A strange, scratching noise interrupted their argument. Looking for its source they saw Gwen at the blackboard that usually served as the menu card of the pub, next to the dartboard. She was writing notes.
“So, have we ever heard of a species who strip human bodies of flesh and organs?” she asked. The whole thing had a ridiculous rememberance of elementary school, although she probably was imitating detective meetings.
Owen walked up to her. “What are you doing? You need to rest.”
“I'm compiling what we've got,” she replied in a self-congratulating tome. “Seeing if it helps.”
Owen snorted. “Yeah, cos we know so bloody much!”
“We have to assume the others who disappeared have been killed, too.” Jack said. “That would certainly explain things, wouldn’t it?”
“So, you think there’s been seventeen deaths?” Gwen asked, and Owen rolled his eyes behind his back, because really, one didn’t need to be a genius to make that conclusion.
“At least,” Jack answered, more to order his own thoughts than to humour her. “These aren't casual killers. Not if the nature of the murders is any indication.”
Gwen wrote more notes on the board. Owen ignored her scribblings, checking his weapon instead. One cartridge meant way too little ammunition in his eyes.
“Okay,” he said grimly. “So all this means is the rift is spreading. It’s dumping aliens and psychos wherever it fancies.”
Jack nodded. “Looks like that, yeah.”
“Great,” Owen said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “This conversation's cheered me up no end.”
Gwen’s gasp interrupted their discussion. “Did you see that?”
“Something outside?” Jack asked, switching into action mode immediately. He was really good at that.
Gwen nodded. Owen turned and saw a shadow move across another window. He turned and points the gun at it.
“Was that the same one or different?” he asked.
Gwen, too, took her gun out and pointed it at a window. Jack walked over to the same window and looked outside, but neither of them could see anything.
Gwen glanced over her shoulder at the kid who was still lying down in the same positure he’d achieved when getting in and hugging the rifle.
“He said they'd come back,” she whispered, her eyes widening in panic.
“Let's not jump to conclusions,” Jack said, although honestly, it wasn’t such a big jump, given the circumstances. “We don't know who they are or what their intentions are.”
“We can make an educated guess, though,” Owen muttered darkly.
At the same moment, the lights went out, plunging them into pitch black. Jack ran out and disappeared down the dark hallway.
”I'm thinking that's not a good sign, Owen commented.
He and Gwen took position to watch the barricaded door. They heard something move somewhere, but they couldn’t determine either the distance or the direction. Gwen gasped, and Owen could positively feel the fear radiating from her – not that he’d blame her, not this time. Then they heard another sound and Gwen gasped again. The kid got up, ready to run for his life.
“They've come back,” he wheezed, apparently in full-blown panic. That kicked Gwen’s protective instincts in gear again.
“Kieran, listen to my voice, okay?” she said as calmly as she could, which, understandably, was not much at the moment. “Just come back. Kieran!”
The kid didn’t answer. They listened carefully and heard the squeak of a door handle turning very slowly, very carefully. Jack turned, looked at the cellar door and swore.
“Great, we didn't check the cellar. We’re really good today!”
The cellar door was chained, but it opened to a split as something pushed it. Fortunately, the measly chain stopped it. Jack turned to brace the door.
“You can't let them in!” the kid shouted, very frightened.
“Come back from the door,” Gwen said, as panicking, the kid turned toward the barricaded door.
“Don't let them in!” he wailed. He was really getting on Owen’s nerves, even though his panic was more than understandable.
“Sit down!” Owen snapped at him. “We've got this under control!” But the kid didn’t listen.
“You don't understand,” he wailed. “You don't know what they're like.”
The chairs stacked up against the front door fell. The kid fired at the door with the shotgun. Someone fired back, breaking and shattering glass. Owen and Gwen huddled under the bar counter. Jack huddled near the cellar door. The previously barricaded door opened. Something took hold on the kid and dragged him out the door.
“No, please...” he begged pitifully, “please, no, not me... !”
Gwen got up from under the counter to help him. “Kieran!” But Jack stopped her before she could have gotten to the door.
The kid whimpered while he was being pulled out the door. “Help me!”
“Kieran!” Gwen shouted, struggling against Jack’s hold. “Dammit, Jack, let me help him!”
“It's pitch black,” Jack pointed out logically, which was a wasted effort on Gwen, but he tried it nonetheless. “You don't have any tracking devices! Do you want to get yourself killed?”
As expected, Gwen didn’t listen to a word he was saying and kept struggling against him. “Get out of my way!”
“Look,” Jack said with the patience of a saint, “whatever's in that cellar took three bullets. I heard it fall. Once we know what it is, then, we'll know how to deal with it.”
“You do that,” Gwen returned. “We'll go after Kieran and the others.”
“Have I asked you to speak for me, too?” Owen muttered under his breath. He didn’t even try speaking up enough for her to hear his words. It wouldn’t make a difference anyway.
“You are wounded!” Jack reminded Gwen, still trying to reason with her… and failing, as expected. She glared at him in a neraly hostile manner.
“Do you think that's gonna stop me?!” she demanded angrily.
“No,” Jack replied, his voice tired. “I hoped it would… but it seems I was way too optimistic. So, since you aren’t being reasonable, someone else has to be for you.”
Despite her injuries, Gwen tossed him aside and stomped out of the building in an over-dramatic display of righteous anger. Jack rolled his eyes and looked at Owen.
“I’ll go to the cellar and catch that… well, whatever it is,” he said. “You go after Gwen and see that she doesn’t get herself killed. Oh, and do call the police. I don”t care if we have to Retcon them all afterwards; I’m not gonna put any more lives at risk here. We’re clearly outnumbered and outgunned.”
Owen nodded and ran out after Gwen. He found her some three feet from the front door, lying in a pool of her own blood.
~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 2
Author’s note: Continued from Part 01. Obviously.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
He was halfway out of the building when he heard the shot. Putting the samples in his kit, he grabbed his gun and ran out of the house. Across the small alley between the two buildings, he could see Jack waving at him frantically from a half-opened door. Gwen was lying in the dirt, clutching her side, her eyes glassy with pain.
“What happened?” Owen asked, grabbing his kit and running over to them.
“Some kid hit her with a shotgun,” Jack replied grimly. “I told her to stay behind, but there was no way holding her back.”
Of course there wasn’t – she was Gwen-bloody-Cooper, after all.
“We need to get her into the house,” Owen said tersely. “I have to take a look at that wound of hers.”
Jack bent forward and picked Gwen up who whimpered in pain. “I got her. Find a suitable surface; they’ll have a kitchen table, if nothing else.”
They – whoever they might have been – did have a kitchen table indeed. Owen cleared it, with the simple yet efficient method of knocking everything to the floor. Jack lowered Gwen onto the table, his jaw working as she grunted from the pain.
“Okay, I'll check upstairs,” he said, running past the kid and heading upstairs.
The kid stood aside, watching them from horrified eyes. Owen ignored him and got to work, putting a blanket under Gwen’s head, who kept moaning his name over and over again. Under different circumstances it might have been flattering, but right now, it was just distracting, and not in a good way. He couldn’t afford to be distracted.
He turned on the light above the table, adjusting it to shine on her wound. His stomach knitted tightly; he was afraid to take a look, knowing that the injury might be too serious for his limited equipment to treat it properly.
“Bet you thought you'd never be glad to see me!” he said, trying to distract her with a lame joke.
But she didn’t seem to understand him – perhaps didn’t even hear him – just kept crying for his help. He grabbed her flailing arms and held them down as he looked at her.
“Listen,” he said through gritted teeth, “I'm going to have a look at your wound now, okay? Just keep calm.” Holding her down proved quite a task, so he added sharply. “Hands off, hands off. Okay.”
Gwen was clearly not getting what he was trying to tell her. “No, don't please!” she wailed. “Don’t!”
Owen rolled his eyes; not that she could see it, as his face was shadowed behind the lamp. He could understand that she hurt, but even she had to understand that a gunshot wound needed to be treated. Dammit, was she completely bollocks or what? Did she want to bleed to the dead?
He pulled her pants band down and lifted up her shirt to look at the wound. Thank God, it didn’t look life-threatening. It would be a bitch to clean it, but she’d live.
“Right, it could've been much worse,” he commented in relief, applying a fresh bandage to the wound and hoping that she would follow his instructions. “Hold this. Apply pressure.”
Surprisingly enough, Gwen automatically applied pressure. Owen let out a breath he wasn’t aware he’d been holding and looked at the wound. Step #1 had been managed without a lengthy argument. Had he knew that, he’d have probably shot Gwen at various times already.
”Oh, Jesus!” Gwen wailed, and Owen was getting annoyed with her again. Okay, so he hurt; it was a gunshot wound, after all; it ought to hurt. But shouldn’t a supposedly adult woman be able to control her reactions a little better? Especially in the presence of the kid who’d accidentally shot her and he was already out of his mind from sheer terror?
“The bullets are lodged relatively near the surface,” he told her. “You've been bloody lucky, girl. Another inch to the left and any one of your vital organs might've been... “
“What?” Gwen demanded, her eyes widening with alarm. Owen shook his head. Okay, that was a stupid thing to say. Just because he could have told it Tosh – in fact, had told her worse things during similar situations – he shouldn’t have expected Gwen to deal with it like an adult.
He grabbed a syringe to inject her with a local anesthetic. “All right,” he said, trying a dirty joke to distract her. “Do you want a quip about feeling a small prick?”
Gwen gave a sound between a snort and a groan. “No, but thanks for offering.”
Well, at least she sounds more lucid, Owen thought in satisfaction. Dirty talk always did the trick with hysterical patients.
“Here we go,” he said loudly and injected her. “All done.”
Laying the syringe aside, he took his tweezers. Gwen tried to see what he was doing, but from her position she couldn’s see much, and she began to moan again. “Oh, God, it hurts!”
”It will stop hurting in a moment,” Owen encouraged her with forced patience because a full-blown panic attack was the last thing he could use right now. “But we have to get these pellets out, else everything would become a lot worse, do you understand me? “
Gwen nodded weakly and grabbed his shoulder tightly as he began to work. She managed to partly immobilize his hand that way, and he was sure he’d have bruises come tomorrow, but if that kept her in a halfway manageable state, he could work around it. He tried a dirty joke again; it had worked at the first time, after all.
“Right, there's gonna be a certain amount of residue,” he said. “So just lie back and think of Torchwood.”
Gwen snorted again but visibly calmed down a little. “Do you miss being a doctor?” she asked.
Owen suppressed a sigh. People who used to know him during his more conventional job kept asking the same question – as if he could bear to work in a hospital after Katie’s death! Still, those people could be forgiven cos they had no idea. But a fellow Torchwood member asking the same… Course, as it was Gwen, he probably shouldn’t have been so surprised. It was her favourite pastime to poke around in other people’s lives.
“Excuse me,” he said tersely. “I still am a doctor.” I just don't deal with patients any more, that's all. It's ideal. That was the bit I always hated.”
That shut Gwen temporarily up, and he could take out the first pellet without being nagged about things that were not her business. He showed her the found. “Aint it a beauty? Come on. I'm good.”
The comment had such an obvious double-meaning that not even Gwen could miss it. “Not bad, she replied slyly.
They looked at each other for a moment in complete understanding, then she turned away. Owen returned to her side and she removed her hand from his shoulders, allowing circulation to return to the half-numb body part; then she turned her head completely away from him in a badly displayed superior manner. As if all that had passed between them in the recent weeks would have been his fault. Fucking little hypocrite.
The rest of the pellets were relatively easy to remove – assuming one had a steady hand – and Owen was bandaging her wound when Jack returned with a rifle, holding it like the hero of some western movie. He released the chamber and puts it aside, frowning.
“What's taking Tosh and Ianto so long?” he wondered.
“Give them a chance,” Owen returned, not even bothering to look up from his work. “The SUV might be locked up.”
“Or they could be dead!” the kid said, speaking for the first time since they’d got in there. At their doubtful glare, he defiantly added. “Well, everyone else is. “
“Sit down!” Jack snapped at him. The kid sat down obediently, his pupils wide like those of a frightened animal. He clearly feared them, but not half as much as whatever was there outside.
“Tell us what happened here,” Jack instructed him, but the kid wasn’t in the right mental state to give any coherent answer.
“It's not human,” he muttered, hugging himself as if for protection. “My mum won't even know what's happened. They weren’t expecting me back for the weekend. God, why haven’t I gone home for the weekend…”
“We'll get you home okay,” Jack said in his best reassuring manner. Only that this time it didn’t seem to work.
“What are you going to do?” the kid asked.” You can't fight them. They're too strong. The only thing we can do is barricade the door.”
“Well, we’re not exactly weak ourselves,” Jack replied.
“Yeah, and we’d be a lot more efficient, had you not shot one of us, “Owen muttered, opening his kit.
The kid looked from one to the other; then he jumped to his feet and and ran to the door. He didn’t get so far, however. Jack grabbed him halfways and sat him back down.”
“No!” he said. “Splitting up would be a really stupid thing right now,” then he turned to Owen. “We'll make base at the pub.”
Owen finished setting Gwen’s bandage and looked up to him. “What about Tosh and Ianto?” he asked. “Shouldn’t we go after them?”
Jack shook his head determinedly. “Not till we know what we're dealing with.”
Owen didn’t like the sound of that. Whatever he might think of Ianto, he was part of their team; and Tosh was invaluable. “But what if it's too late?”
“They're not children,” Jack replied dismissively. “They know what to do. Let's go.”
He stepped toward Gwen but Owen stopped him. “It's all right. I've got her. You go forward and secure our path.”
Jack hesitated for a moment, but Owen put his foot down firmly. Finally Jack backed away and headed quickly toward the door. Owen put Gwen’s arm around his shoulder to help her up. Gwen sat up and looked after Jack who was already out of the door. The kid stood up and watched as Owen helped Gwen to her feet, without any sign of wanting to help. That annoyed Owen, because shocked or not, he could support a wounded woman, dammit, especially as he’d been the one to shoot her.
And if that hadn’t been enough, bloody Gwen began whining again. “Owen, I want to do it on my own.” Right. With a freshly bandaged gunshot wound in her side and a basic dosis of painkillers in her system that would wear off any minute now. Typical.
Owen had had enough. He let Gwen go without a comment. Her heroic stance was ruined within seconds as she staggered and nearly fell. Owen quickly grabbed her again, refraining from any comment on her idiocy. She didn’t say anything either, just leaned on him and they headed out of the room. The kid followed them docilely.
“I'm sorry about your friends,” he muttered.
Owen looked back at him. “You can apologize later, mate, although none of this is really your fault. Let’s first get to the pub, shan’t we?”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Theoretically, the kid’s idea of barricading the door would have ben a sound one. There was one thing that bothered Owen, though, while he and Jack used the furniture to build a barricade in the pub. As expected, the kid didn’t make a move to help them, and in her current state, Gwen was even more useless than usual.
“If we barricade ourselves in, what happens to Tosh and Ianto?” he asked.
Jack gave him an irritated look. “Why are we still talking about this?”
“Cos they’re our team-mates and they’re bloody missing, perhaps?” Owen said in a calm voice that was just a hair’s bredth from complete hysteria. Jack frowned at him.
“Tosh and Ianto can look after themselves,” he said.
“Can they?” Owen challenged. “Could we? Look what’s happened to Gwen! Are you really so sure that Tosh and Ianto can handle this? Teaboy has never been on a field mission before, and Tosh…”
“Tosh is tough,” Jack interrupted, “and thre’s more in Ianto than you might give him credit for. Now, can we focus on our job here? The kid is our first priority and they've already been for him once. They're not going to give up that easily.”
Owen looked at the kid who’d been lying down on the side, his eyes closed and hugging the rifle to his chest. He shook his head.
“I’m not sure I like your priorities, Harkness,” he said harshly.
“Tough,” Jack replied. “That’s the best you get from me.”
“My worries exactly,” Owen muttered, more out of the unexplainable need to be belligerent than out of hope that he might change Jack’s mind. There was preciously little chance for that, as he knew it from previous experience.
A strange, scratching noise interrupted their argument. Looking for its source they saw Gwen at the blackboard that usually served as the menu card of the pub, next to the dartboard. She was writing notes.
“So, have we ever heard of a species who strip human bodies of flesh and organs?” she asked. The whole thing had a ridiculous rememberance of elementary school, although she probably was imitating detective meetings.
Owen walked up to her. “What are you doing? You need to rest.”
“I'm compiling what we've got,” she replied in a self-congratulating tome. “Seeing if it helps.”
Owen snorted. “Yeah, cos we know so bloody much!”
“We have to assume the others who disappeared have been killed, too.” Jack said. “That would certainly explain things, wouldn’t it?”
“So, you think there’s been seventeen deaths?” Gwen asked, and Owen rolled his eyes behind his back, because really, one didn’t need to be a genius to make that conclusion.
“At least,” Jack answered, more to order his own thoughts than to humour her. “These aren't casual killers. Not if the nature of the murders is any indication.”
Gwen wrote more notes on the board. Owen ignored her scribblings, checking his weapon instead. One cartridge meant way too little ammunition in his eyes.
“Okay,” he said grimly. “So all this means is the rift is spreading. It’s dumping aliens and psychos wherever it fancies.”
Jack nodded. “Looks like that, yeah.”
“Great,” Owen said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “This conversation's cheered me up no end.”
Gwen’s gasp interrupted their discussion. “Did you see that?”
“Something outside?” Jack asked, switching into action mode immediately. He was really good at that.
Gwen nodded. Owen turned and saw a shadow move across another window. He turned and points the gun at it.
“Was that the same one or different?” he asked.
Gwen, too, took her gun out and pointed it at a window. Jack walked over to the same window and looked outside, but neither of them could see anything.
Gwen glanced over her shoulder at the kid who was still lying down in the same positure he’d achieved when getting in and hugging the rifle.
“He said they'd come back,” she whispered, her eyes widening in panic.
“Let's not jump to conclusions,” Jack said, although honestly, it wasn’t such a big jump, given the circumstances. “We don't know who they are or what their intentions are.”
“We can make an educated guess, though,” Owen muttered darkly.
At the same moment, the lights went out, plunging them into pitch black. Jack ran out and disappeared down the dark hallway.
”I'm thinking that's not a good sign, Owen commented.
He and Gwen took position to watch the barricaded door. They heard something move somewhere, but they couldn’t determine either the distance or the direction. Gwen gasped, and Owen could positively feel the fear radiating from her – not that he’d blame her, not this time. Then they heard another sound and Gwen gasped again. The kid got up, ready to run for his life.
“They've come back,” he wheezed, apparently in full-blown panic. That kicked Gwen’s protective instincts in gear again.
“Kieran, listen to my voice, okay?” she said as calmly as she could, which, understandably, was not much at the moment. “Just come back. Kieran!”
The kid didn’t answer. They listened carefully and heard the squeak of a door handle turning very slowly, very carefully. Jack turned, looked at the cellar door and swore.
“Great, we didn't check the cellar. We’re really good today!”
The cellar door was chained, but it opened to a split as something pushed it. Fortunately, the measly chain stopped it. Jack turned to brace the door.
“You can't let them in!” the kid shouted, very frightened.
“Come back from the door,” Gwen said, as panicking, the kid turned toward the barricaded door.
“Don't let them in!” he wailed. He was really getting on Owen’s nerves, even though his panic was more than understandable.
“Sit down!” Owen snapped at him. “We've got this under control!” But the kid didn’t listen.
“You don't understand,” he wailed. “You don't know what they're like.”
The chairs stacked up against the front door fell. The kid fired at the door with the shotgun. Someone fired back, breaking and shattering glass. Owen and Gwen huddled under the bar counter. Jack huddled near the cellar door. The previously barricaded door opened. Something took hold on the kid and dragged him out the door.
“No, please...” he begged pitifully, “please, no, not me... !”
Gwen got up from under the counter to help him. “Kieran!” But Jack stopped her before she could have gotten to the door.
The kid whimpered while he was being pulled out the door. “Help me!”
“Kieran!” Gwen shouted, struggling against Jack’s hold. “Dammit, Jack, let me help him!”
“It's pitch black,” Jack pointed out logically, which was a wasted effort on Gwen, but he tried it nonetheless. “You don't have any tracking devices! Do you want to get yourself killed?”
As expected, Gwen didn’t listen to a word he was saying and kept struggling against him. “Get out of my way!”
“Look,” Jack said with the patience of a saint, “whatever's in that cellar took three bullets. I heard it fall. Once we know what it is, then, we'll know how to deal with it.”
“You do that,” Gwen returned. “We'll go after Kieran and the others.”
“Have I asked you to speak for me, too?” Owen muttered under his breath. He didn’t even try speaking up enough for her to hear his words. It wouldn’t make a difference anyway.
“You are wounded!” Jack reminded Gwen, still trying to reason with her… and failing, as expected. She glared at him in a neraly hostile manner.
“Do you think that's gonna stop me?!” she demanded angrily.
“No,” Jack replied, his voice tired. “I hoped it would… but it seems I was way too optimistic. So, since you aren’t being reasonable, someone else has to be for you.”
Despite her injuries, Gwen tossed him aside and stomped out of the building in an over-dramatic display of righteous anger. Jack rolled his eyes and looked at Owen.
“I’ll go to the cellar and catch that… well, whatever it is,” he said. “You go after Gwen and see that she doesn’t get herself killed. Oh, and do call the police. I don”t care if we have to Retcon them all afterwards; I’m not gonna put any more lives at risk here. We’re clearly outnumbered and outgunned.”
Owen nodded and ran out after Gwen. He found her some three feet from the front door, lying in a pool of her own blood.
~TBC~
