Wishverse 1.06 - Part 3 of 3
Aug. 8th, 2009 10:13 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 3
Author’s note: Continued from Part 02. Obviously. And no, the title doesn’t really mean anything. I just thought it would be… catchy, to use Ianto’s vocabulary.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Owen swore under his breath violently when he saw the blood-soaked bandage. Stupid git, she’s gotten her wounds opened! Now, how the hell was he supposed to fix her again?
As much as he hated to leave her alone, unconscious and unprotected, he had to get back to the pub for his kit… if he could find it in the pitch black, that is. That was why he always hated treating patients; they never listened. Dead Weevils were so much more cooperative. Ah, well, he ought to at least try…
When he returned, he saw with relief that Gwen was still there, in the same position as he’d left her.
He patched her up in a great hurry, holding the torchlight with his teeth. They had no time to waste. It took him what seemed forever, but at last the bandage was changed, and he injected her another dosis of painkillers. After a few minutes Gwen groaned and opened her eyes.
“What happened?” she asked groggily.
“You chose not to listen – again – and then fainted right when you left the house, that’s what bloody happened,” Owen replied angrily while helping her to her feet. “Now, do you think we could perhaps go back to the house and let Jack chase phantoms?”
“We can’t do that,” Gwen protested, leaning heavily on them. “Tosh and Ianto might be in trouble… and we need to find that kid.”
Owen frowned. “You can barely walk. How do you intend to help anyone, let alone yourself? Are you completely bollocks or what?”
“I'm fine,” Gwen replied impatiently. She clearly was not, but Owen was getting tired of her mulish stupidity and didn’t argue. If she wanted to walk around till she bled to her death, ruining all the good work he’d done on her wounds, it was her decision.
Unexpectedly, a police vehicle approached right in front of the drive, sirens wailing and lights flashing. Gwen’s annoyance went up several notches at once.
“That's all we bloody need,” she said. “Let me do the talking, I'll get rid of him.”
“Get rid of him?” Owen repeated incredulously. “Haven’t you heard a word of what Jack said? We’re supposed to fucking call the police, not to send them away!”
The police car came to full stop, and a good-looking young officer, with a vague resemblance of Ianto of all people – apparently, these Welsh blokes all looked the same – gets out of it. He was wearing the same constable uniform Gwen had been when they first met.
“Who are you, please?” he asked in a friendly enough manner.
“Special Ops,” Gwen replied, and Owen groaned inwardly. “From Torchwood, have you heard of Torchwood?”
Sure they had, Owen thought sourly, aren’t we advertising who we really are, sending the police a bulletin every month to keep them infomred? There was a difference between Jack tossing the word “Torchwood” over his shoulder when he invaded any crime scene with a natural born confidence few people would even think to question, and Gwen’s inane babbling.
The officer must have thought something along the same lines because he gave Gwen a good, hard look – and discovered her bandage. “What's that then, a band is it? What's wrong with her?”
Owen shook his head tiredly. “Mate, you wouldn't understand.”
“What's that light over there?” Gwen suddenly asked, and Owen turned into the same direction she was looking.
Over the officer’s shoulder, they could see a light coming through the distance. Strangely enough, the officer glanced behind himself before turning back to Gwen and Owen.
”The Big House?” he asked. “Sort of unofficial village hall. Village meeting tonight, that's why I'm here. Constabulary report.”
By then, Owen had realized that he was leading them on… that they most likely wouldn’t be able to count on him. That didn’t mean that they wouldn’t need to investigate. Tosh or Ianto might have been there.
“Come on,” he said to Gwen, and they ran past the officer, in the direction of the moving light.
“Where do you think you're going?” the officer shouted, and as they didn’t answer, he ran after them.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Owen was the first to reach the source of light, and he froze with shock for a moment, seeing Tosh. She was being choked by a villager who had a distinct resemblance to prehistoric Troglodytes… or how Owen always imagined those anyway.
“No more games,” the Troglodyte grunted, looming over Tosh. “Hush now!”
Tosh gave a horrible gurgling noise, and that finally kicked Owen into action. He pressed the muzzle of his gun at the Troglodyte’s temple.
”Get off her or I'll shoot!” he threatened, not understanding why the police officer was standing nearby, without any attempt to help him. ”Get off her or I'll shoot!”
The Troglodyte continued to choke Tosh. He didn’t care about the gun held to his head. He even chuckled madly. Owen gritted his teeth and kicked the man viciously in the ribs, off Tosh. Tosh gasped for breath, rubbing her throat. Gwen kneeled down to hug her. Owen kicked the man several more times, with all the strength he could muster, to keep him down on the ground. And still, the officer wasn’t moving a finger to help them.
“That was close,” Tosh finally said, voice hoarse, coming from her bruised throat. “How did you find me?”
“We saw the torchlight,” Gwen explained. “What’s happening here, Tosh?”
Tosh shuddered. “They've murdered all the villagers. They're cannibalizing the bodies! Ianto attacked this man, so that I could escape and bring help. I… I don’t know if he’s still alive or not.”
So much about Jack’s confidence that they can take care of themselves, Owen thought angrily. Although not bad from Teaboy. I hope he isn’t dead yet.
Surprisingly enough, the man he was holding down with his foot didn’t seem the least concerned. On the contrary; he grinned up at him madly, demanding, “Put the gun down.”
Owen shot him a nasty look. “You're in no position to negotiate, mate.”
“It’s all right, it's all right,” Gwen said, trying to calm Tosh down. “You're safe.” She looked up at the constable. “You can arrest him now.” The constable didn’t move, and Gwen’s voice rose half an octave. “I said you can arrest him!”
The Troglodyte under Owen’s foot grinned. “You gonna arrest me, Huw?”
The officer, whose name was apparently Huw, grinned back. “That'd be a laugh, wouldn't it? My own uncle.”
He pulled his gun and pointed it at Owen. Owen took a sharp breath but didn’t move his foot off the uncle. Gwen quickly let Tosh go and pointed her own gun at the officer.
“Put the gun down,” she all but screeched. “Don't you hurt him!”
Owen didn’t move from the spot. If he’d learned one thing during his years with Torchwood, I was that you didn’t negotiate with madmen and notorious killers, be they human or extraterrestrial. You eliminated the threat.
From under his foot, the Troglodyte was shouting at the officer. “Shoot the bastard.” The officer moved in closer to Owen, but he didn’t shoot… yet. “Split his skull.”
Gwen’s shouts weren’t any less loud – but a lot more hysterical. “Put the fucking gun down!”
“Shoot!” the Troglodyte yelled at his nephew. The young man was still hesitating.
“I will shoot you!” Gwen threatened. “Put it down.”
The Troglodyte, clearly not believing that she’d be willing to do so, chuckled madly.
“Pull the trigger,” she encountered her, leaning up on his elbows and bulging his eyes in a disturbingly Gwen-like manner. “Kill.”
Gwen and Owen looked at each other. Her lower lip wibbled, and Owen realized that it was no good. She’d never be able to kill a man in cold blood, no matte the risk. Well, he’d been cut from different wood.
“As you wish,” he said calmly, and whirling around, he shot the officer in the head, hitting him square between the eyes. Huw went down like the dead weight he’d suddenly become and hit the ground with a thud.
Unfortunately, Owen couldn’t keep his eyes at the uncle at the same time. While he was killing off his nephew, the older man had jumped to his feet and grabbed the still petrified Gwen, using her as a living shield.
“Now, mate,” he said calmly, “why don't you give me the gun?”
Owen hesitated for a moment. Then he realized that Tosh was being in a really good position to get away. He gave her the signal to do so and handed his gun to the Troglodyte.
“Good boy,” the man said in a condescending manner. “Now you start walking in front of me, right to the Big House. You make one wrong step and she’s dead.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When the Troglodyte pushed them into the common room of the Big House, there were already half a dozen people present. A few more came in from the other rooms.
“Evan, that Asian girl got away,” one of the men reported. “We tried to find her, but she’s way too good at this.”
The Troglodyte, who must have been the village head, shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She can’t get far. We’ll get her in the morning; it’s gonna be a real good hunt. Where’s the kid, Helen?”
“In the kitchen,” a middle-aged woman replied.
”Who are these people?” Gwen whimpered. Her replaced bandages started to get soaked again.
The older woman shrugged. “This is our village,” she replied. She was plain and looked so frighteningly simple and… and normal, although she was clearly not.
“But... but the villagers are all dead,” Gwen said. She couldn’t interpret the amused looks the people in the room exchanged, but Owen suddenly understood it all.
“They're all involved,” he said. “They've all been doing it.”
The village chief nodded, with a smile of horrifying satisfaction on his face. “This is our Harvest. Every generation. Our tradition. Once a decade. Target those travelling through, those most likely to disappear.”
“And butcher them,” Owen finished for him. He felt like throwing up. “You sick fuckers. Only in the bloody countryside!”
“Okay, that’s enough of the pleasantries,” the Troglodyte interrupted. “Get ‘em to the kitchen. We have work to do.”
Two of the men grabbed the prisoners and pushed them into the kitchen area. Evan and the woman he’d called Helen followed.
In the kitchen, the man pushed Owen to his knees. Gwen tore herself free and ran over to the kid who was lying on the dirty floor.
“Are you okay?” she asked; then, as a second thought occurred to her, she looked around searchingly. “Where's Ianto? What have you done with him?”
Instead of answering her, Evan grabbed someone on the floor behind the butcher’s table; the person had a burlap bag over his head, but the clothes were a clear indication. He pulled off the bag, revealing the horrified – and badly bruised – face of Ianto. Owen gritted his teeth. It seemed that they had beaten up Teaboy really badly.
“Wake up, man,” the Troglodyte said cheerfully. “Time to be bled,” he grabbed the meat cleaver off the table and pressed it to Ianto’s throat. A small trickle of blood appeared where the razor sharp tool nicked the skin. “Like veal, it takes a long time. But it definitely makes the meat taste better.”
As Owen watched with horror, wrecking his mind to find a way to save Ianto from being butchered and saw none, he suddenly noticed the glass bowl on the table vibrating. Then came a sound; first faint and far-away, but soon close enough for everyone to hear it. The sounds of motors and rumbling noises got louder and louder.
The Troglodyte let Ianto go and went to the window to check on. “What the fuck... ?” Everyone seemed kind of paralyzed, standing and watching the double doors in morbid fascination.
Then, with a loud crash, the large grey tractor previously standing on the gravelled drive burst through the doors. The Troglodyte ducked out of its way, but he wasn’t fast enough, not by far. The tractor stopped in the middle of the kitchen, and Owen nearly fainted with relief, saying Jack appear with a rifle and shoot the chief cannibal in his leg.
Their fearless leader then continued shooting at anyone standing up, in a gloriously theatrical Wild West manner. Owen and the others ducked to avoid getting hit, and for a moment, Owen seriously considered kissing Jack once he was done with the shooting business – but only for a moment. He did have his limits, and kissing another guy, even if said guy saved him from being eaten by in-bred, cannibalistic madmen, lay beyond those limits.
In the meantime, Jack kept shooting and hit one villager after another. The woman ran to her rifle leaning against the stove, perhaps thinking that he’d hesitate to aim at someone who could be his mother. She couldn’t have any idea about who exactly he was, though… and what that meant. As soon as she grabbed the rifle, Jack shot her without blinking. Then he continued firing at the others.
When the rifle ran out, he grabbed his handgun and shot the remaining villagers, not particularly caring where he would hit them. As long as they went down, it was all right with him. Owen couldn’t help but secretly admire his determination to save his team, although he’d never tell him, of course. Jack’s self-confidence didn’t need any more nurturing, even though he had every right to be confident.
Having hit everyone, Jack stood in the middle of the room and looked around, to see if there would be any more resistance. When he saw none, he dragged the chief cannibal to his feet and put his gun under his chin.
Gwen, having clambered to her feet, grabbed his arm. “No, Jack! Don't do it.”
Jack gave her an irritated look. “These people don't deserve warnings,” he pointed out. Besides, she was blocking his view, and that could be lethal in a situation like this.
“Let me question him,” Gwen insisted. “I have to understand. I want to know why. Otherwise this… this is too much…”
“You’re injured,” Owen reminded her. “You need to get to the hospital, or you’ll bleed to death in no time.”
“And so does Ianto,” Jack stated. “I’m sorry, Gwen, but this is not the time for psychoanalysis. You can’t always understand evil. Sometimes you just have to eliminate it. It’s that simple.” That was the very first lesson hammered into the heads of every new Torchwood recruit. Their job just was like that.
But Gwen wouldn’t have been Gwen if she had let it go, just this one time. “Jack, please give me an hour with him,” she lowered her voice and looked up at him with wide, begging eyes. “Don't tell me you don't want to know, too.”
“Actually...” Jack said dryly, “no, I don’t.” And with that, he calmly shot the Troglodyte’s head to pieces; not caring about the disgusting mess in which that move resulted.
Gwen cried out, angry and disappointed that he’d deny her wish, but in the next moment, two other shots were fired. One from a gun that one of the injured villagers managed to get out from under a cupboard. It hit Gwen in the back, killing her instantly.
The other shot was fired from Toshiko’s gun and killed the villager on the spot. Owen breathed easier to see her; she’d always been a crack shot and rarely hesitated.
“The police – the real police – have arrived,” she said, keeping an eye on the rest of the villagers. “I’ve called the paramedics, too. They’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
“I’m in no hurry to help a bunch of cannibals,” Jack said harshly.
“Neither am I,” Tosh replied. “I called them for Ianto. He’s been beaten savagely when he helped me to escape. And there might be other victims still alive.”
The door opened again and the tall, blond figure of PC Andy Davidson appeared in its frame.
“Miss Sato, you’ve got everything under control?” he asked, professionally keeping whatever they might have with each other out of work’s way.
Tosh nodded, while Owen released Ianto and wrapped him into the blanket he’d fetched from the SUV. Then Andy saw the dead body of Gwen and took a sharp breath.
“What happened to her?” he asked.
“Even the luck of fools runs out eventually,” Jack said grimly- “She escaped death twice during this mission alone. I guess the third time was unlucky.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her,” PC Davidson agreed. “Well, sir, if you can take care of your team, I’ll have these people arrested and locked up; and I’ll send the bodies to the morgue. We’re gonna have a long investigation, I reckon.”
Jack nodded and looked after the competent young officer as he went and organized everything within minutes. Then he glanced at Tosh, while Owen was supporting Ianto to the SUV:
“It seems we’ve got a vacancy again,” he said. “What do you think, Tosh – would he be interested?”
Toshiko shrugged. “I can ask him,” she replied, but even in the semi-darkness, Jack could see her blush, just a little.
~The End – for now~
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 3
Author’s note: Continued from Part 02. Obviously. And no, the title doesn’t really mean anything. I just thought it would be… catchy, to use Ianto’s vocabulary.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Owen swore under his breath violently when he saw the blood-soaked bandage. Stupid git, she’s gotten her wounds opened! Now, how the hell was he supposed to fix her again?
As much as he hated to leave her alone, unconscious and unprotected, he had to get back to the pub for his kit… if he could find it in the pitch black, that is. That was why he always hated treating patients; they never listened. Dead Weevils were so much more cooperative. Ah, well, he ought to at least try…
When he returned, he saw with relief that Gwen was still there, in the same position as he’d left her.
He patched her up in a great hurry, holding the torchlight with his teeth. They had no time to waste. It took him what seemed forever, but at last the bandage was changed, and he injected her another dosis of painkillers. After a few minutes Gwen groaned and opened her eyes.
“What happened?” she asked groggily.
“You chose not to listen – again – and then fainted right when you left the house, that’s what bloody happened,” Owen replied angrily while helping her to her feet. “Now, do you think we could perhaps go back to the house and let Jack chase phantoms?”
“We can’t do that,” Gwen protested, leaning heavily on them. “Tosh and Ianto might be in trouble… and we need to find that kid.”
Owen frowned. “You can barely walk. How do you intend to help anyone, let alone yourself? Are you completely bollocks or what?”
“I'm fine,” Gwen replied impatiently. She clearly was not, but Owen was getting tired of her mulish stupidity and didn’t argue. If she wanted to walk around till she bled to her death, ruining all the good work he’d done on her wounds, it was her decision.
Unexpectedly, a police vehicle approached right in front of the drive, sirens wailing and lights flashing. Gwen’s annoyance went up several notches at once.
“That's all we bloody need,” she said. “Let me do the talking, I'll get rid of him.”
“Get rid of him?” Owen repeated incredulously. “Haven’t you heard a word of what Jack said? We’re supposed to fucking call the police, not to send them away!”
The police car came to full stop, and a good-looking young officer, with a vague resemblance of Ianto of all people – apparently, these Welsh blokes all looked the same – gets out of it. He was wearing the same constable uniform Gwen had been when they first met.
“Who are you, please?” he asked in a friendly enough manner.
“Special Ops,” Gwen replied, and Owen groaned inwardly. “From Torchwood, have you heard of Torchwood?”
Sure they had, Owen thought sourly, aren’t we advertising who we really are, sending the police a bulletin every month to keep them infomred? There was a difference between Jack tossing the word “Torchwood” over his shoulder when he invaded any crime scene with a natural born confidence few people would even think to question, and Gwen’s inane babbling.
The officer must have thought something along the same lines because he gave Gwen a good, hard look – and discovered her bandage. “What's that then, a band is it? What's wrong with her?”
Owen shook his head tiredly. “Mate, you wouldn't understand.”
“What's that light over there?” Gwen suddenly asked, and Owen turned into the same direction she was looking.
Over the officer’s shoulder, they could see a light coming through the distance. Strangely enough, the officer glanced behind himself before turning back to Gwen and Owen.
”The Big House?” he asked. “Sort of unofficial village hall. Village meeting tonight, that's why I'm here. Constabulary report.”
By then, Owen had realized that he was leading them on… that they most likely wouldn’t be able to count on him. That didn’t mean that they wouldn’t need to investigate. Tosh or Ianto might have been there.
“Come on,” he said to Gwen, and they ran past the officer, in the direction of the moving light.
“Where do you think you're going?” the officer shouted, and as they didn’t answer, he ran after them.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Owen was the first to reach the source of light, and he froze with shock for a moment, seeing Tosh. She was being choked by a villager who had a distinct resemblance to prehistoric Troglodytes… or how Owen always imagined those anyway.
“No more games,” the Troglodyte grunted, looming over Tosh. “Hush now!”
Tosh gave a horrible gurgling noise, and that finally kicked Owen into action. He pressed the muzzle of his gun at the Troglodyte’s temple.
”Get off her or I'll shoot!” he threatened, not understanding why the police officer was standing nearby, without any attempt to help him. ”Get off her or I'll shoot!”
The Troglodyte continued to choke Tosh. He didn’t care about the gun held to his head. He even chuckled madly. Owen gritted his teeth and kicked the man viciously in the ribs, off Tosh. Tosh gasped for breath, rubbing her throat. Gwen kneeled down to hug her. Owen kicked the man several more times, with all the strength he could muster, to keep him down on the ground. And still, the officer wasn’t moving a finger to help them.
“That was close,” Tosh finally said, voice hoarse, coming from her bruised throat. “How did you find me?”
“We saw the torchlight,” Gwen explained. “What’s happening here, Tosh?”
Tosh shuddered. “They've murdered all the villagers. They're cannibalizing the bodies! Ianto attacked this man, so that I could escape and bring help. I… I don’t know if he’s still alive or not.”
So much about Jack’s confidence that they can take care of themselves, Owen thought angrily. Although not bad from Teaboy. I hope he isn’t dead yet.
Surprisingly enough, the man he was holding down with his foot didn’t seem the least concerned. On the contrary; he grinned up at him madly, demanding, “Put the gun down.”
Owen shot him a nasty look. “You're in no position to negotiate, mate.”
“It’s all right, it's all right,” Gwen said, trying to calm Tosh down. “You're safe.” She looked up at the constable. “You can arrest him now.” The constable didn’t move, and Gwen’s voice rose half an octave. “I said you can arrest him!”
The Troglodyte under Owen’s foot grinned. “You gonna arrest me, Huw?”
The officer, whose name was apparently Huw, grinned back. “That'd be a laugh, wouldn't it? My own uncle.”
He pulled his gun and pointed it at Owen. Owen took a sharp breath but didn’t move his foot off the uncle. Gwen quickly let Tosh go and pointed her own gun at the officer.
“Put the gun down,” she all but screeched. “Don't you hurt him!”
Owen didn’t move from the spot. If he’d learned one thing during his years with Torchwood, I was that you didn’t negotiate with madmen and notorious killers, be they human or extraterrestrial. You eliminated the threat.
From under his foot, the Troglodyte was shouting at the officer. “Shoot the bastard.” The officer moved in closer to Owen, but he didn’t shoot… yet. “Split his skull.”
Gwen’s shouts weren’t any less loud – but a lot more hysterical. “Put the fucking gun down!”
“Shoot!” the Troglodyte yelled at his nephew. The young man was still hesitating.
“I will shoot you!” Gwen threatened. “Put it down.”
The Troglodyte, clearly not believing that she’d be willing to do so, chuckled madly.
“Pull the trigger,” she encountered her, leaning up on his elbows and bulging his eyes in a disturbingly Gwen-like manner. “Kill.”
Gwen and Owen looked at each other. Her lower lip wibbled, and Owen realized that it was no good. She’d never be able to kill a man in cold blood, no matte the risk. Well, he’d been cut from different wood.
“As you wish,” he said calmly, and whirling around, he shot the officer in the head, hitting him square between the eyes. Huw went down like the dead weight he’d suddenly become and hit the ground with a thud.
Unfortunately, Owen couldn’t keep his eyes at the uncle at the same time. While he was killing off his nephew, the older man had jumped to his feet and grabbed the still petrified Gwen, using her as a living shield.
“Now, mate,” he said calmly, “why don't you give me the gun?”
Owen hesitated for a moment. Then he realized that Tosh was being in a really good position to get away. He gave her the signal to do so and handed his gun to the Troglodyte.
“Good boy,” the man said in a condescending manner. “Now you start walking in front of me, right to the Big House. You make one wrong step and she’s dead.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
When the Troglodyte pushed them into the common room of the Big House, there were already half a dozen people present. A few more came in from the other rooms.
“Evan, that Asian girl got away,” one of the men reported. “We tried to find her, but she’s way too good at this.”
The Troglodyte, who must have been the village head, shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. She can’t get far. We’ll get her in the morning; it’s gonna be a real good hunt. Where’s the kid, Helen?”
“In the kitchen,” a middle-aged woman replied.
”Who are these people?” Gwen whimpered. Her replaced bandages started to get soaked again.
The older woman shrugged. “This is our village,” she replied. She was plain and looked so frighteningly simple and… and normal, although she was clearly not.
“But... but the villagers are all dead,” Gwen said. She couldn’t interpret the amused looks the people in the room exchanged, but Owen suddenly understood it all.
“They're all involved,” he said. “They've all been doing it.”
The village chief nodded, with a smile of horrifying satisfaction on his face. “This is our Harvest. Every generation. Our tradition. Once a decade. Target those travelling through, those most likely to disappear.”
“And butcher them,” Owen finished for him. He felt like throwing up. “You sick fuckers. Only in the bloody countryside!”
“Okay, that’s enough of the pleasantries,” the Troglodyte interrupted. “Get ‘em to the kitchen. We have work to do.”
Two of the men grabbed the prisoners and pushed them into the kitchen area. Evan and the woman he’d called Helen followed.
In the kitchen, the man pushed Owen to his knees. Gwen tore herself free and ran over to the kid who was lying on the dirty floor.
“Are you okay?” she asked; then, as a second thought occurred to her, she looked around searchingly. “Where's Ianto? What have you done with him?”
Instead of answering her, Evan grabbed someone on the floor behind the butcher’s table; the person had a burlap bag over his head, but the clothes were a clear indication. He pulled off the bag, revealing the horrified – and badly bruised – face of Ianto. Owen gritted his teeth. It seemed that they had beaten up Teaboy really badly.
“Wake up, man,” the Troglodyte said cheerfully. “Time to be bled,” he grabbed the meat cleaver off the table and pressed it to Ianto’s throat. A small trickle of blood appeared where the razor sharp tool nicked the skin. “Like veal, it takes a long time. But it definitely makes the meat taste better.”
As Owen watched with horror, wrecking his mind to find a way to save Ianto from being butchered and saw none, he suddenly noticed the glass bowl on the table vibrating. Then came a sound; first faint and far-away, but soon close enough for everyone to hear it. The sounds of motors and rumbling noises got louder and louder.
The Troglodyte let Ianto go and went to the window to check on. “What the fuck... ?” Everyone seemed kind of paralyzed, standing and watching the double doors in morbid fascination.
Then, with a loud crash, the large grey tractor previously standing on the gravelled drive burst through the doors. The Troglodyte ducked out of its way, but he wasn’t fast enough, not by far. The tractor stopped in the middle of the kitchen, and Owen nearly fainted with relief, saying Jack appear with a rifle and shoot the chief cannibal in his leg.
Their fearless leader then continued shooting at anyone standing up, in a gloriously theatrical Wild West manner. Owen and the others ducked to avoid getting hit, and for a moment, Owen seriously considered kissing Jack once he was done with the shooting business – but only for a moment. He did have his limits, and kissing another guy, even if said guy saved him from being eaten by in-bred, cannibalistic madmen, lay beyond those limits.
In the meantime, Jack kept shooting and hit one villager after another. The woman ran to her rifle leaning against the stove, perhaps thinking that he’d hesitate to aim at someone who could be his mother. She couldn’t have any idea about who exactly he was, though… and what that meant. As soon as she grabbed the rifle, Jack shot her without blinking. Then he continued firing at the others.
When the rifle ran out, he grabbed his handgun and shot the remaining villagers, not particularly caring where he would hit them. As long as they went down, it was all right with him. Owen couldn’t help but secretly admire his determination to save his team, although he’d never tell him, of course. Jack’s self-confidence didn’t need any more nurturing, even though he had every right to be confident.
Having hit everyone, Jack stood in the middle of the room and looked around, to see if there would be any more resistance. When he saw none, he dragged the chief cannibal to his feet and put his gun under his chin.
Gwen, having clambered to her feet, grabbed his arm. “No, Jack! Don't do it.”
Jack gave her an irritated look. “These people don't deserve warnings,” he pointed out. Besides, she was blocking his view, and that could be lethal in a situation like this.
“Let me question him,” Gwen insisted. “I have to understand. I want to know why. Otherwise this… this is too much…”
“You’re injured,” Owen reminded her. “You need to get to the hospital, or you’ll bleed to death in no time.”
“And so does Ianto,” Jack stated. “I’m sorry, Gwen, but this is not the time for psychoanalysis. You can’t always understand evil. Sometimes you just have to eliminate it. It’s that simple.” That was the very first lesson hammered into the heads of every new Torchwood recruit. Their job just was like that.
But Gwen wouldn’t have been Gwen if she had let it go, just this one time. “Jack, please give me an hour with him,” she lowered her voice and looked up at him with wide, begging eyes. “Don't tell me you don't want to know, too.”
“Actually...” Jack said dryly, “no, I don’t.” And with that, he calmly shot the Troglodyte’s head to pieces; not caring about the disgusting mess in which that move resulted.
Gwen cried out, angry and disappointed that he’d deny her wish, but in the next moment, two other shots were fired. One from a gun that one of the injured villagers managed to get out from under a cupboard. It hit Gwen in the back, killing her instantly.
The other shot was fired from Toshiko’s gun and killed the villager on the spot. Owen breathed easier to see her; she’d always been a crack shot and rarely hesitated.
“The police – the real police – have arrived,” she said, keeping an eye on the rest of the villagers. “I’ve called the paramedics, too. They’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
“I’m in no hurry to help a bunch of cannibals,” Jack said harshly.
“Neither am I,” Tosh replied. “I called them for Ianto. He’s been beaten savagely when he helped me to escape. And there might be other victims still alive.”
The door opened again and the tall, blond figure of PC Andy Davidson appeared in its frame.
“Miss Sato, you’ve got everything under control?” he asked, professionally keeping whatever they might have with each other out of work’s way.
Tosh nodded, while Owen released Ianto and wrapped him into the blanket he’d fetched from the SUV. Then Andy saw the dead body of Gwen and took a sharp breath.
“What happened to her?” he asked.
“Even the luck of fools runs out eventually,” Jack said grimly- “She escaped death twice during this mission alone. I guess the third time was unlucky.”
“Yeah, that sounds like her,” PC Davidson agreed. “Well, sir, if you can take care of your team, I’ll have these people arrested and locked up; and I’ll send the bodies to the morgue. We’re gonna have a long investigation, I reckon.”
Jack nodded and looked after the competent young officer as he went and organized everything within minutes. Then he glanced at Tosh, while Owen was supporting Ianto to the SUV:
“It seems we’ve got a vacancy again,” he said. “What do you think, Tosh – would he be interested?”
Toshiko shrugged. “I can ask him,” she replied, but even in the semi-darkness, Jack could see her blush, just a little.
~The End – for now~
