Wishverse 1.07 - Part 4 of 6
Aug. 8th, 2009 10:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wiseheartTitle: The Many Departures of Gwen Cooper
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Torchwood
Category: Heavy-duty Gwen bashing.
Rating: 14+, just to be on the safe side.
Genre: Romance/Angst, for this part. Plus some dark humour.
Series: Wishverse.
Warning: repeated character death(s) in each chapter.
Timeframe: "Greeks Bearing Gifts". 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 07 – GIFT HORSES, Part 4
Author’s notes: Continued from Part 2. Obviously.
This story will be posted in several short parts rather than in one big chunk, as it serves better the development of the relationship(s).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Torchwood’s general go-to-guy, currently disguised as the clerk of the tourist office, which, in turn, served as camouflage for the entire Torchwood base, looked impeccable, as always, in his well-fitted dark suit, blue dress shirt and red tie. He gave Andy his trademark, bland receptionist smile… then his blue eyes filled with warmth upon the sight of Toshiko.
“Hi Tosh,” he said gently. “Are you okay?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Sure, why shouldn’t I?”
“Inspector Henderson has just called Jack,” Ianto explained. “He was most impressed… and so was Jack, in fact. He’s already asked where you are.”
“We’ve taken a short break,” Andy intervened. “She needed a little time to unwind; surely you can understand that?”
“Me and everyone else,” Ianto assured them both. “You’ve missed Owen’s big moment of humiliation, though… unless Little Miss Sensitive would be still cooing in triumph when you get down.”
Toshiko snickered, and Andy had no doubts, either, who was meant under that nickname. Ianto’s dryly sarcastic tone spoke volumes.
“What happened?” Toshiko asked.
Ianto’s smile grew wider. “Remember the skeleton you found at the building site?”
“Of course,” Toshiko replied. “You mean Owen has actually found the time to complete the post-mortem? Took him long enough.”
“I reckon he was… distracted,” Ianto coughed discretely, his smug expression leaving little doubt by what exactly their doctor might have been distracted… or whom. “In any case, as you may remember, Owen’s preliminary report said this was a woman killed by a single gunshot.”
“I was there, Ianto…” Toshiko trailed off; then she guffawed. “You mean it wasn’t?”
“Not exactly,” Ianto’s eyes were twinkling with amusement. “Firstly, it isn’t a woman at all, but a man.”
“Ow!” Toshiko groaned sympathetically. “That provides Gwen with blackmail material for the next ten years or so. Poor Owen, he’ll never live this down. Never.”
“Well, to his defence, he had neither the time nor the right tools to properly examine the corpse,” Ianto said fairly. “According to him, it was a young man. A very… girly man.”
“Oh, my!” Toshiko snorted. “I can imagine the fun Gwen was having with that fact.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ianto admitted. “She was laughing herself silly and all but dancing around the walkway, singing that stupid song about the leg bone being connected the hipbone. Owen was sticking his fingers into his ears and yelling at her to stop – I don’t blame him, actually, Gwen isn’t exactly opera singer material. And Jack was watching them and laughing his head off.”
“Ouch!” Toshiko winced in sympathy. “Jack and Gwen ganging up against Owen – he did hate that, I presume.”
“Oh yeah,” Ianto replied, with an almost manic gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “And then there’s the cause of death, of course.”
“What’s with that?” Toshiko asked. “Owen said it was a gunshot wound.”
“He did,” Ianto agreed. “In the meantime, however, he's had to tweak some of his initial conclusions.”
“So, the correct answer is...?” Toshiko trailed off.
“Unidentified trauma,” Ianto answered.
“Unidentified trauma?” Toshiko repeated with a frown.
“You often see things like that in RTAs, when something like a steering column or a post goes into a body at great velocity,” Andy explained. “It’s not a pleasant sight, by far. The first couple of times as a newbie I got sick; after a few years, though, you get used to it. Sad, but true.”
“Do we know what caused the trauma?” Toshiko asked.
Ianto shook his head. “Nope. By a two-hundred-year-old desiccated corpse, it’s hard to define. But the one thing that could be ruled out was...”
“Gunshot wound,” Toshiko guessed.
“Gunshot wound,” Ianto agreed, grinning in evil satisfaction.
“Was there, in fact, any part of your doctor’s prognosis that was right?” Andy snickered.
Ianto gave him a bland look. “Well, he did get that it was a skeleton.”
Toshiko punched him in the biceps. “Don’t be so mean, Ianto!”
“I can’t help it,” Ianto answered serenely. “I so love to see Owen taken down a peg or two. Makes my entire day, in fact.”
“And Gwen, after having seen dozens of RTAs since she joined the police, couldn’t even make a single suggestion about the cause of the trauma?” Andy asked in exasperation.
“I guess she was too busy making fun of Owen,” Ianto replied. “Lover’s spat and all that, you know.”
Toshiko’s face suddenly crumpled in misery, and Andy felt the urge to kick Ianto in the shin for the tactless remark. Didn’t he know that she had a thing for their doctor? Could he really be that blind, despite working with them?
“I know,” she said in such a sad voice it nearly broke Andy’s heart. “God, I wish I didn’t.”
Ianto leaned over the counter and looked at her with sympathy. “Tosh,” he said gently. “He’s not worth it.”
Okay, so not so blind, after all. And Toshiko accepted his opinion without protesting. They must be good friends, Andy thought.
“I could take a look at that skeleton of yours,” he offered. “From the different perspective of a police officer, I mean. Perhaps I’d see something you’ve overlooked.”
“That could prove helpful,” Toshiko agreed. “We do tend to be a bit too specific sometimes.” But Ianto shook his head.
“I don’t think Jack would like the idea,” he said.
“Why not?” Toshiko asked. “He supposedly hired Gwen for her skills learned in police service. Well, the only skills she’s displayed so far were being taken hostage, getting shot and shagging Owen. Perhaps a police officer who actually knows what he’s doing would be a useful thing, for a change.”
“Besides,” Andy added with a shrug, “you can always make me forget afterwards. That’s how Torchwood deals with witnesses, isn’t it? With the good old amnesia pill.”
“It’s not that simple,” Ianto sighed. “I’ve already Retconned you twice since Gwen joined us. After a while, one builds up a kind of immunity against it; and the cumulative effect of Retcon can be dangerous. We still have no real facts concerning long-time effects.”
Andy stared at him in open-mouthed shock.
“You’ve already Retconned me?” he repeated, unable to believe what he’d just heard. “You’ve really done that to me? Twice?”
“With Gwen spewing nonsense about highly sensitive stuff within your earshot every time she commandeers you to come here, it’s a wonder I only had to do it twice,” Ianto replied with an elegant shrug. He did elegant very well; one had to give him that. “In my opinion, it would be a lot easier for everyone involved to hire you as a freelance agent; in fact, I’ve already suggested it to Jack. But his recent experiences with Gwen have made him somewhat… doubtful about the competence of our police. A shame, really.”
“No shit, man,” Andy agreed. “My career has suffered greatly from the fact that I used to have her as my partner. Otherwise, I’d have made Desk Sergeant years ago. It’s a tad frustrating, though, that even here, she must be the stone that brings me to fall.”
“You’d like to work for Torchwood?” Ianto asked in surprise. “After what happened to your uncle?”
Andy shrugged. “Well, I’d prefer to make it Detective, but I’m afraid I’m getting too old for going back to school. Torchwood would be, like, the closest thing; and Uncle Meirion liked to work for your organization.”
Ianto seemed to consider that aspect for a moment; then he shrugged and pushed some button hidden under the counter. Part of the wall on Andy’s right turned to the side, like the secret door that it was.
“Go on then,” he said, nodding in the direction of the doorway.
Toshiko already hurried forward, and after a moment of hesitation, Andy followed her through the passageway, into a dark stone corridor. He turned for a moment and looked both ways. At one end, an elevator door opened. Toshiko was heading for the door and stepped into the elevator without hesitation. Andy hurried after her. Before he could change his mind, the door closed and the elevator began to descend.
After a fairly long way down, the back elevator doors opened at Sublevel 4 – at least that was written on the door. Toshiko left the cabin, Andy stepping into her footprints. In front of them, a circular door stood open between two concrete columns, one of which had the message “THIS STAIRCASE HAS 105 STEPS” on it. Andy’s heart beat in his throat, as he realized that he was just about to enter the Hub, the central headquarters for Torchwood Three, where his Uncle Meirion had worked for decades… and possibly died.
In the back of the large central room, there was a highly sophisticated computer terminal; he assumed that would be Toshiko’s workplace. As soon as they entered the Hub, the circular outer door closed. So did the inner barred gate, effectively sealing them inside. That was a little disturbing, but since Toshiko didn’t show any signs of concern, it had to be the normal procedure.
The light stopped flashing. Andy’s eyes were involuntarily drawn to a large severed hand in a tank of bubbled liquid. He gulped, trying not to get sick, cos that really wouldn’t have made a good impression. It was bad enough that Gwen had already managed to ruin the police’s reputation with these people; he couldn’t add insult to injury right now. Other than them both, the huge room seemed empty. There was a central power column rising up to the high ceiling, reminding him of the Warp core of some Star Trek spaceship. He snickered at the geeky allusion.
There were also other rooms on two more levels with large glass windows facing the Hub. Above their heads, Jack Harkness was standing at a desk in some office on the second floor and was dialling on his mobile phone. As always, he looked just a wee bit out of place in his old-fashioned trousers and red braces.
“Security visa 45895. Harkness,” he spoke into the phone with marked impatience in his voice, apparently waiting for someone to be rerouted his call to on the other end of the connection. Then he spotted Toshiko, covered the phone mic and called down to her. “Hey! What's happening with that list for UNIT?”
“Hmm?” Toshiko seemed decidedly guilty. “Oh, yeah. I'm still working on it.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Right. Well, you know, when you're ready...” he broke off, having reached the right person on the phone. “Prime Minister, is this a secure line? Can you tell me why Torchwood operations have become part of your security briefings to the leader of the Opposition? Well the deal is, no...”
For a moment, Andy just stood there, completely dumbfolded. Had he just heard Jack Harkness telling off the Prime Minister? Who were these guys? Uncle Meirion had said they were influential, but yelling at the PM? That wasn’t a possibility Andy had ever considered.
Toshiko tugged on his sleeve. “Come on! Let’s go to the autopsy bay before he realizes you’re here and bites my head off.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Unsurprisingly, they found Gwen in the autopsy bay, too – making big go-go eyes at their doctor, who, for a change, was ignoring her. Instead, he was staring at the skeleton on his autopsy table moodily. When they entered, he looked up, giving Andy a decidedly unfriendly glare.
“What’s he doing here?” he asked. “Aren’t we blessed with the invaluable help of one constable already?”
“He offered to take a look at the wound,” Toshiko explained.
“What for?” Gwen asked in a rather hostile manner. “I already did it and came up with nothing.”
“Which is exactly why you used to be assigned to me,” Andy replied sharply. “To learn; it isn’t my fault that you were always unwilling to do so.”
Owen snickered, and even knowing about his affair with Gwen, Andy could understand his amusement. According to Ianto, Gwen had just insulted his professional pride – he must have liked to see her suffering the same.
“Well, if you think you can find anything, be my guest,” the doctor said, making an exaggeratedly inviting gesture. Andy stepped up to the autopsy table, eager to learn more, and gave the desiccated corpse a thorough visual examination.
“Exit wound in the chest,” he murmured. “Shape and size are rather unusual… not even an axe-pole would cause so much damage. What the hell was this bloke impaled on anyway? I’ve never seen anything like this, and I have seen my fair share of trauma victims.”
“I haven’t got a clue,” the doctor admitted. “And there’s something even more disturbing: I haven’t found any sign of an entry wound on this guy’s back.”
“What?” Andy frowned. “But that’s impossible! Unless…”
“Yeah,” Owen agreed. “Unless something – or someone – simply reached into his chest and plucked his heart out.”
“Ewww!” Gwen rolled her eyes. “You shouldn’t be so morbidly fascinated by that thought, you know.”
Owen ignored her, taking a mug of coffee from the almost magically appearing Ianto, without bothering to thank him, and sipped from it.
“It can be done, you know,” he said thoughtfully. “The amount and variety of torture instruments used in the past are amazing… in a sick, disgusting way, that is. So, since this isn't a gunshot or a musket shot, or whatever they had then, maybe it was some kind of ritual. I’ve already started looking into devil-worship and stuff from that era, see if there's anything about plucking out hearts, and would you believe it? There's nothing. They ate eyeballs, they drank blood, they had sex with animals, but they did not pluck out each other's hearts. Cos, obviously, that would have been weird,” he added with a sarcastic eyeroll. He did sarcastic very well.
Andy listened to him with growing respect. Owen Harper might have been a first class bastard when it came to women, but he was clearly a bright and thorough one.
“Why are you so bothered by this?” Toshiko asked. “Whoever did this is hardly a threat to society any more.”
“Yeah, I know,” the doctor replied impatiently. “It's just, there's something... Does that remind you of anything?”
“Um... That bit in Alien where that thing bursts out of John Hurt?” Toshiko asked, half-jokingly. Owen gave her a sour look.
“I'm sorry,” he said as if he’d be talking to a particularly stupid child. “I should have been more specific. Does that remind you of anything helpful?”
Toshiko shrugged. “No. Sorry.“
“Right,” Owen said. “Erm, just go over there, do your computer stuff and think about shoes, eh? Thank you.”
Toshiko’s eyes clouded over with hurt, and Andy glared at Owen with disapproval. How could he treat a lady like Toshiko in such a rude manner?
“You know what, doc?” he said. “You’re a prick.”
“And you, Constable Davidson, are apparently a good judge of character,” Jack Harkness said, entering the autopsy bay. “But it isn’t his charming personality alone why we keep him.”
“What is it then?” Gwen asked, snickering. “It can hardly be his professional competence, right? He couldn’t even tell a trauma from a gunshot wound!”
The bright blue eyes of their boss grew a little cold as he looked from the doctor’s insulted face to Gwen’s smug one.
“Gwen, there are copies of that Michael Hamilton statement on your desk,” he told her coldly. “He's still seeing Cybermen outside his mother's house. I thought you were supposed to deal with that case, oh, two days ago?”
“Okay, I'll phone Social Services, see if there's a history of mental illness,” Gwen left hurriedly, and Andy suppressed a giggle. Gwen Cooper not doing her job – that was really a big surprise… not!
As if he’d heard Andy’s thoughts, Jack turned to him. “And you, PC Davidson, would you kindly tell me what are you doing down here, in our supposedly secret base?”
“You could also ask Teaboy why he’d let him in,” Owen commented. “Although with Teaboy, you can never know. He does have the hang to smuggling people into the basement behind our backs, doesn’t he?”
“And you, Owen Harper, do have the hang to being a complete and utter bastard,” Toshiko replied quietly. “I wonder sometimes why we still put up with you. Jack’s right; it sure as hell isn’t for your charming personality.”
“Ianto let me in because he knows me,” Andy interrupted, before things could get really ugly. “Torchwood Three hasn’t started with your fairly new little team, doc; it has been there for a century and a half, and lots of other people have worked for it during that time,” he turned to Jack who was listening to him intently. “I assume you knew my uncle, sir? Meirion Gwynedd, the former archivist of this place?”
Jack nodded grimly. “I found his dead body down in the Archives myself. I’m surprised, though, that Torchwood One didn’t make you forget him entirely,” he said.
Andy shrugged. “They did a lousy job, apparently. They found my Mum but not me.”
“Apparently,” Jack agreed dryly; then he looked at Owen again. “Any new insights?”
“Not really,” the doctor admitted reluctantly. “PC Andy here seems to agree with me that this is an exit wound without an entry wound, unlikely as it sounds, but other than that… We might check if there were any hospitals nearby two hundred years ago. Could have been someone died in an operation, considering the barbaric methods the used back then.”
“Or a Weevil simply bit his heart out,” Jack suggested.
Owen shook his head. “Nope. The wound would be larger, the damage much greater, had it been caused by a Weevil.”
“I wonder if there had been similar murders between their times and now,” Andy said thoughtfully. “Might be worth the try to check old, unsolved murder cases.”
“You have that level of security clearance?” Jack asked in surprise.
Andy smiled. “Nah. But you do.”
“Might bring something,” Jack allowed. “Perhaps Ianto was right about you. Okay, work with Owen on the case – see what you can find out.”
“Yes, sir,” Andy could barely keep his excitement under control. He was going to work for Torchwood Three, just like Uncle Meirion – and while keeping his daily job, too!
“This doesn’t mean I won’t still Retcon you back to kindergarten if I find it necessary,” Jack warned him.
“I understand, sir,” Andy replied. “But there won’t be need for that. You won’t regret letting me on the case, I promise.”
“I hope so,” Jack said dryly. “One bad choice pro year is the limit I can get away with.” He turned to leave the autopsy bay but stopped in the open door for a moment. “By the way, Tosh, I've just come from a really interesting conversation with a Detective Inspector Henderson.”
Toshiko made a really good job keeping a poker face. “You have?”
Jack nodded. “Interesting because, firstly, the man had the biggest hands I've ever seen, and secondly... because of the story he told me about you saving a woman and her kid from being murdered by her ex-husband.”
Toshiko shifted her weight uncomfortably. “Yeah, no, I was going to tell you about that.”
“So why didn't you?” Jack asked logically.
Toshiko shrugged. “I don't know, it wasn't a work thing, just a... thing thing. Stuff happens all the time that's not pertinent to here. Besides, when we came in – we’ve just come from the crime site – we got caught up with this whole skeleton examination, and I forgot about it.”
Jack looked at him intently, clearly not buying it. “You do this all the time?” he asked. “So you secretly fight crime, is that it, Tosh?”
“I didn't want it to look like I was showing off,” Toshiko replied, blushing.
“The guy they arrested, Henderson said you heard him muttering to himself as he was walking along, and that's what tipped you off,” Jack said, leaving the end of the sentence float as if it was a question.
Toshiko nodded. “Mm. I couldn't really work out what he was saying at first, and then it was like, Jesus!”
“She was amazing,” Andy commented. “Calm, level-headed, cool like a cucumber. Inspector Henderson was most impressed.”
“So am I, actually,” Jack said. “Well, I hope Henderson’s gonna send me a detailed report when they’ve finished the investigation, cos this is really something I wan to read.”
That was said in a casual manner, and yet Toshiko seemed a bit uncomfortable. Andy didn’t blame her. Captain Harkness had the reputation to find out everything about things – or persons – that caught his interest.
“I’ll remind the inspector of that,” he said politely.
“Good,” Jack replied. “Now, let’s go on with our work, shall we? We still don’t know a single fact from this victim – or the gadget he was buried with. And somehow I’ve got the bad feeling that we don’t have much time to figure things out.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Andy followed Jack and Toshiko out of the autopsy bay into the main area of the Hub. Once there, Jack picked up the strange alien artefact found on the building site from one of the empty-looking workstations and turned it from one side to the other, trying to pull on certain bets.
“This is that gizmo, the one found together with the skeleton, isn’t it?” Andy asked. “I was wondering how you were getting on with this.”
Jack shrugged, pulled at different its – without any visible results. “It's ongoing,” he replied absent-mindedly.
“Are you trying to dismantle it?” Toshiko asked. There was something in her voice that made Andy shoot her a quick glance. He saw that she was wearing that bloody pendant again – when had she put it on?”
“Like I said, it's ongoing,” Jack replied, not really paying her much attention. He was frowning at the uncooperative artefact. Andy, however, could see Toshiko touching the pendant well enough. Was that how she read other people’s minds? Was she doing it again? Was he required to warn the others? Or did they know about it already? They were Torchwood, after all; creepy things were their area of expertise.
Suddenly Jack looked up and stared at Toshiko in surprise. She stared back at him, equally baffled. Andy wondered what the staring contest could mean. Had Jack caught her peeking? Could one realize when someone else was intruding their thoughts? Was that part of the regular Torchwood training, or was this a specific ability of the great Captain Harkness?
”What?” Jack finally asked. “Have I got something on my face? Is it food?”
Toshiko shook her head. “No. Sorry. I zoned out.”
But she was clearly hiding something – something that apparently frightened her – and Jack clearly realized that. Still, he didn’t dig any deeper. Not yet anyway. Andy was quite sure that he wouldn’t let Toshiko get away with it. Not in the long run.
“Well,” he said, “you did well today. Good work, Tosh. Now, if you could finish those lists for UNIT for me…”
“Already on it,” Tosh walked over to her workstation.
Jack looked at Andy, his face unreadable, but somehow Andy knew that the enigmatic boss of Torchwood Three knew that he, too, was hiding something. Covering for her. At the moment, however, Jack didn’t pursue the issue.
“That one over there is Owen’s desk,” he said. “You can start the search already; we have a permanent link to the police databases. Owen will join you as soon as he’s shut the skeleton away.”
~TBC~
Author: Soledad
Fandom: Torchwood
Category: Heavy-duty Gwen bashing.
Rating: 14+, just to be on the safe side.
Genre: Romance/Angst, for this part. Plus some dark humour.
Series: Wishverse.
Warning: repeated character death(s) in each chapter.
Timeframe: "Greeks Bearing Gifts". 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 07 – GIFT HORSES, Part 4
Author’s notes: Continued from Part 2. Obviously.
This story will be posted in several short parts rather than in one big chunk, as it serves better the development of the relationship(s).
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Torchwood’s general go-to-guy, currently disguised as the clerk of the tourist office, which, in turn, served as camouflage for the entire Torchwood base, looked impeccable, as always, in his well-fitted dark suit, blue dress shirt and red tie. He gave Andy his trademark, bland receptionist smile… then his blue eyes filled with warmth upon the sight of Toshiko.
“Hi Tosh,” he said gently. “Are you okay?”
She looked at him in surprise. “Sure, why shouldn’t I?”
“Inspector Henderson has just called Jack,” Ianto explained. “He was most impressed… and so was Jack, in fact. He’s already asked where you are.”
“We’ve taken a short break,” Andy intervened. “She needed a little time to unwind; surely you can understand that?”
“Me and everyone else,” Ianto assured them both. “You’ve missed Owen’s big moment of humiliation, though… unless Little Miss Sensitive would be still cooing in triumph when you get down.”
Toshiko snickered, and Andy had no doubts, either, who was meant under that nickname. Ianto’s dryly sarcastic tone spoke volumes.
“What happened?” Toshiko asked.
Ianto’s smile grew wider. “Remember the skeleton you found at the building site?”
“Of course,” Toshiko replied. “You mean Owen has actually found the time to complete the post-mortem? Took him long enough.”
“I reckon he was… distracted,” Ianto coughed discretely, his smug expression leaving little doubt by what exactly their doctor might have been distracted… or whom. “In any case, as you may remember, Owen’s preliminary report said this was a woman killed by a single gunshot.”
“I was there, Ianto…” Toshiko trailed off; then she guffawed. “You mean it wasn’t?”
“Not exactly,” Ianto’s eyes were twinkling with amusement. “Firstly, it isn’t a woman at all, but a man.”
“Ow!” Toshiko groaned sympathetically. “That provides Gwen with blackmail material for the next ten years or so. Poor Owen, he’ll never live this down. Never.”
“Well, to his defence, he had neither the time nor the right tools to properly examine the corpse,” Ianto said fairly. “According to him, it was a young man. A very… girly man.”
“Oh, my!” Toshiko snorted. “I can imagine the fun Gwen was having with that fact.”
“Oh, yeah,” Ianto admitted. “She was laughing herself silly and all but dancing around the walkway, singing that stupid song about the leg bone being connected the hipbone. Owen was sticking his fingers into his ears and yelling at her to stop – I don’t blame him, actually, Gwen isn’t exactly opera singer material. And Jack was watching them and laughing his head off.”
“Ouch!” Toshiko winced in sympathy. “Jack and Gwen ganging up against Owen – he did hate that, I presume.”
“Oh yeah,” Ianto replied, with an almost manic gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “And then there’s the cause of death, of course.”
“What’s with that?” Toshiko asked. “Owen said it was a gunshot wound.”
“He did,” Ianto agreed. “In the meantime, however, he's had to tweak some of his initial conclusions.”
“So, the correct answer is...?” Toshiko trailed off.
“Unidentified trauma,” Ianto answered.
“Unidentified trauma?” Toshiko repeated with a frown.
“You often see things like that in RTAs, when something like a steering column or a post goes into a body at great velocity,” Andy explained. “It’s not a pleasant sight, by far. The first couple of times as a newbie I got sick; after a few years, though, you get used to it. Sad, but true.”
“Do we know what caused the trauma?” Toshiko asked.
Ianto shook his head. “Nope. By a two-hundred-year-old desiccated corpse, it’s hard to define. But the one thing that could be ruled out was...”
“Gunshot wound,” Toshiko guessed.
“Gunshot wound,” Ianto agreed, grinning in evil satisfaction.
“Was there, in fact, any part of your doctor’s prognosis that was right?” Andy snickered.
Ianto gave him a bland look. “Well, he did get that it was a skeleton.”
Toshiko punched him in the biceps. “Don’t be so mean, Ianto!”
“I can’t help it,” Ianto answered serenely. “I so love to see Owen taken down a peg or two. Makes my entire day, in fact.”
“And Gwen, after having seen dozens of RTAs since she joined the police, couldn’t even make a single suggestion about the cause of the trauma?” Andy asked in exasperation.
“I guess she was too busy making fun of Owen,” Ianto replied. “Lover’s spat and all that, you know.”
Toshiko’s face suddenly crumpled in misery, and Andy felt the urge to kick Ianto in the shin for the tactless remark. Didn’t he know that she had a thing for their doctor? Could he really be that blind, despite working with them?
“I know,” she said in such a sad voice it nearly broke Andy’s heart. “God, I wish I didn’t.”
Ianto leaned over the counter and looked at her with sympathy. “Tosh,” he said gently. “He’s not worth it.”
Okay, so not so blind, after all. And Toshiko accepted his opinion without protesting. They must be good friends, Andy thought.
“I could take a look at that skeleton of yours,” he offered. “From the different perspective of a police officer, I mean. Perhaps I’d see something you’ve overlooked.”
“That could prove helpful,” Toshiko agreed. “We do tend to be a bit too specific sometimes.” But Ianto shook his head.
“I don’t think Jack would like the idea,” he said.
“Why not?” Toshiko asked. “He supposedly hired Gwen for her skills learned in police service. Well, the only skills she’s displayed so far were being taken hostage, getting shot and shagging Owen. Perhaps a police officer who actually knows what he’s doing would be a useful thing, for a change.”
“Besides,” Andy added with a shrug, “you can always make me forget afterwards. That’s how Torchwood deals with witnesses, isn’t it? With the good old amnesia pill.”
“It’s not that simple,” Ianto sighed. “I’ve already Retconned you twice since Gwen joined us. After a while, one builds up a kind of immunity against it; and the cumulative effect of Retcon can be dangerous. We still have no real facts concerning long-time effects.”
Andy stared at him in open-mouthed shock.
“You’ve already Retconned me?” he repeated, unable to believe what he’d just heard. “You’ve really done that to me? Twice?”
“With Gwen spewing nonsense about highly sensitive stuff within your earshot every time she commandeers you to come here, it’s a wonder I only had to do it twice,” Ianto replied with an elegant shrug. He did elegant very well; one had to give him that. “In my opinion, it would be a lot easier for everyone involved to hire you as a freelance agent; in fact, I’ve already suggested it to Jack. But his recent experiences with Gwen have made him somewhat… doubtful about the competence of our police. A shame, really.”
“No shit, man,” Andy agreed. “My career has suffered greatly from the fact that I used to have her as my partner. Otherwise, I’d have made Desk Sergeant years ago. It’s a tad frustrating, though, that even here, she must be the stone that brings me to fall.”
“You’d like to work for Torchwood?” Ianto asked in surprise. “After what happened to your uncle?”
Andy shrugged. “Well, I’d prefer to make it Detective, but I’m afraid I’m getting too old for going back to school. Torchwood would be, like, the closest thing; and Uncle Meirion liked to work for your organization.”
Ianto seemed to consider that aspect for a moment; then he shrugged and pushed some button hidden under the counter. Part of the wall on Andy’s right turned to the side, like the secret door that it was.
“Go on then,” he said, nodding in the direction of the doorway.
Toshiko already hurried forward, and after a moment of hesitation, Andy followed her through the passageway, into a dark stone corridor. He turned for a moment and looked both ways. At one end, an elevator door opened. Toshiko was heading for the door and stepped into the elevator without hesitation. Andy hurried after her. Before he could change his mind, the door closed and the elevator began to descend.
After a fairly long way down, the back elevator doors opened at Sublevel 4 – at least that was written on the door. Toshiko left the cabin, Andy stepping into her footprints. In front of them, a circular door stood open between two concrete columns, one of which had the message “THIS STAIRCASE HAS 105 STEPS” on it. Andy’s heart beat in his throat, as he realized that he was just about to enter the Hub, the central headquarters for Torchwood Three, where his Uncle Meirion had worked for decades… and possibly died.
In the back of the large central room, there was a highly sophisticated computer terminal; he assumed that would be Toshiko’s workplace. As soon as they entered the Hub, the circular outer door closed. So did the inner barred gate, effectively sealing them inside. That was a little disturbing, but since Toshiko didn’t show any signs of concern, it had to be the normal procedure.
The light stopped flashing. Andy’s eyes were involuntarily drawn to a large severed hand in a tank of bubbled liquid. He gulped, trying not to get sick, cos that really wouldn’t have made a good impression. It was bad enough that Gwen had already managed to ruin the police’s reputation with these people; he couldn’t add insult to injury right now. Other than them both, the huge room seemed empty. There was a central power column rising up to the high ceiling, reminding him of the Warp core of some Star Trek spaceship. He snickered at the geeky allusion.
There were also other rooms on two more levels with large glass windows facing the Hub. Above their heads, Jack Harkness was standing at a desk in some office on the second floor and was dialling on his mobile phone. As always, he looked just a wee bit out of place in his old-fashioned trousers and red braces.
“Security visa 45895. Harkness,” he spoke into the phone with marked impatience in his voice, apparently waiting for someone to be rerouted his call to on the other end of the connection. Then he spotted Toshiko, covered the phone mic and called down to her. “Hey! What's happening with that list for UNIT?”
“Hmm?” Toshiko seemed decidedly guilty. “Oh, yeah. I'm still working on it.”
Jack rolled his eyes. “Right. Well, you know, when you're ready...” he broke off, having reached the right person on the phone. “Prime Minister, is this a secure line? Can you tell me why Torchwood operations have become part of your security briefings to the leader of the Opposition? Well the deal is, no...”
For a moment, Andy just stood there, completely dumbfolded. Had he just heard Jack Harkness telling off the Prime Minister? Who were these guys? Uncle Meirion had said they were influential, but yelling at the PM? That wasn’t a possibility Andy had ever considered.
Toshiko tugged on his sleeve. “Come on! Let’s go to the autopsy bay before he realizes you’re here and bites my head off.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Unsurprisingly, they found Gwen in the autopsy bay, too – making big go-go eyes at their doctor, who, for a change, was ignoring her. Instead, he was staring at the skeleton on his autopsy table moodily. When they entered, he looked up, giving Andy a decidedly unfriendly glare.
“What’s he doing here?” he asked. “Aren’t we blessed with the invaluable help of one constable already?”
“He offered to take a look at the wound,” Toshiko explained.
“What for?” Gwen asked in a rather hostile manner. “I already did it and came up with nothing.”
“Which is exactly why you used to be assigned to me,” Andy replied sharply. “To learn; it isn’t my fault that you were always unwilling to do so.”
Owen snickered, and even knowing about his affair with Gwen, Andy could understand his amusement. According to Ianto, Gwen had just insulted his professional pride – he must have liked to see her suffering the same.
“Well, if you think you can find anything, be my guest,” the doctor said, making an exaggeratedly inviting gesture. Andy stepped up to the autopsy table, eager to learn more, and gave the desiccated corpse a thorough visual examination.
“Exit wound in the chest,” he murmured. “Shape and size are rather unusual… not even an axe-pole would cause so much damage. What the hell was this bloke impaled on anyway? I’ve never seen anything like this, and I have seen my fair share of trauma victims.”
“I haven’t got a clue,” the doctor admitted. “And there’s something even more disturbing: I haven’t found any sign of an entry wound on this guy’s back.”
“What?” Andy frowned. “But that’s impossible! Unless…”
“Yeah,” Owen agreed. “Unless something – or someone – simply reached into his chest and plucked his heart out.”
“Ewww!” Gwen rolled her eyes. “You shouldn’t be so morbidly fascinated by that thought, you know.”
Owen ignored her, taking a mug of coffee from the almost magically appearing Ianto, without bothering to thank him, and sipped from it.
“It can be done, you know,” he said thoughtfully. “The amount and variety of torture instruments used in the past are amazing… in a sick, disgusting way, that is. So, since this isn't a gunshot or a musket shot, or whatever they had then, maybe it was some kind of ritual. I’ve already started looking into devil-worship and stuff from that era, see if there's anything about plucking out hearts, and would you believe it? There's nothing. They ate eyeballs, they drank blood, they had sex with animals, but they did not pluck out each other's hearts. Cos, obviously, that would have been weird,” he added with a sarcastic eyeroll. He did sarcastic very well.
Andy listened to him with growing respect. Owen Harper might have been a first class bastard when it came to women, but he was clearly a bright and thorough one.
“Why are you so bothered by this?” Toshiko asked. “Whoever did this is hardly a threat to society any more.”
“Yeah, I know,” the doctor replied impatiently. “It's just, there's something... Does that remind you of anything?”
“Um... That bit in Alien where that thing bursts out of John Hurt?” Toshiko asked, half-jokingly. Owen gave her a sour look.
“I'm sorry,” he said as if he’d be talking to a particularly stupid child. “I should have been more specific. Does that remind you of anything helpful?”
Toshiko shrugged. “No. Sorry.“
“Right,” Owen said. “Erm, just go over there, do your computer stuff and think about shoes, eh? Thank you.”
Toshiko’s eyes clouded over with hurt, and Andy glared at Owen with disapproval. How could he treat a lady like Toshiko in such a rude manner?
“You know what, doc?” he said. “You’re a prick.”
“And you, Constable Davidson, are apparently a good judge of character,” Jack Harkness said, entering the autopsy bay. “But it isn’t his charming personality alone why we keep him.”
“What is it then?” Gwen asked, snickering. “It can hardly be his professional competence, right? He couldn’t even tell a trauma from a gunshot wound!”
The bright blue eyes of their boss grew a little cold as he looked from the doctor’s insulted face to Gwen’s smug one.
“Gwen, there are copies of that Michael Hamilton statement on your desk,” he told her coldly. “He's still seeing Cybermen outside his mother's house. I thought you were supposed to deal with that case, oh, two days ago?”
“Okay, I'll phone Social Services, see if there's a history of mental illness,” Gwen left hurriedly, and Andy suppressed a giggle. Gwen Cooper not doing her job – that was really a big surprise… not!
As if he’d heard Andy’s thoughts, Jack turned to him. “And you, PC Davidson, would you kindly tell me what are you doing down here, in our supposedly secret base?”
“You could also ask Teaboy why he’d let him in,” Owen commented. “Although with Teaboy, you can never know. He does have the hang to smuggling people into the basement behind our backs, doesn’t he?”
“And you, Owen Harper, do have the hang to being a complete and utter bastard,” Toshiko replied quietly. “I wonder sometimes why we still put up with you. Jack’s right; it sure as hell isn’t for your charming personality.”
“Ianto let me in because he knows me,” Andy interrupted, before things could get really ugly. “Torchwood Three hasn’t started with your fairly new little team, doc; it has been there for a century and a half, and lots of other people have worked for it during that time,” he turned to Jack who was listening to him intently. “I assume you knew my uncle, sir? Meirion Gwynedd, the former archivist of this place?”
Jack nodded grimly. “I found his dead body down in the Archives myself. I’m surprised, though, that Torchwood One didn’t make you forget him entirely,” he said.
Andy shrugged. “They did a lousy job, apparently. They found my Mum but not me.”
“Apparently,” Jack agreed dryly; then he looked at Owen again. “Any new insights?”
“Not really,” the doctor admitted reluctantly. “PC Andy here seems to agree with me that this is an exit wound without an entry wound, unlikely as it sounds, but other than that… We might check if there were any hospitals nearby two hundred years ago. Could have been someone died in an operation, considering the barbaric methods the used back then.”
“Or a Weevil simply bit his heart out,” Jack suggested.
Owen shook his head. “Nope. The wound would be larger, the damage much greater, had it been caused by a Weevil.”
“I wonder if there had been similar murders between their times and now,” Andy said thoughtfully. “Might be worth the try to check old, unsolved murder cases.”
“You have that level of security clearance?” Jack asked in surprise.
Andy smiled. “Nah. But you do.”
“Might bring something,” Jack allowed. “Perhaps Ianto was right about you. Okay, work with Owen on the case – see what you can find out.”
“Yes, sir,” Andy could barely keep his excitement under control. He was going to work for Torchwood Three, just like Uncle Meirion – and while keeping his daily job, too!
“This doesn’t mean I won’t still Retcon you back to kindergarten if I find it necessary,” Jack warned him.
“I understand, sir,” Andy replied. “But there won’t be need for that. You won’t regret letting me on the case, I promise.”
“I hope so,” Jack said dryly. “One bad choice pro year is the limit I can get away with.” He turned to leave the autopsy bay but stopped in the open door for a moment. “By the way, Tosh, I've just come from a really interesting conversation with a Detective Inspector Henderson.”
Toshiko made a really good job keeping a poker face. “You have?”
Jack nodded. “Interesting because, firstly, the man had the biggest hands I've ever seen, and secondly... because of the story he told me about you saving a woman and her kid from being murdered by her ex-husband.”
Toshiko shifted her weight uncomfortably. “Yeah, no, I was going to tell you about that.”
“So why didn't you?” Jack asked logically.
Toshiko shrugged. “I don't know, it wasn't a work thing, just a... thing thing. Stuff happens all the time that's not pertinent to here. Besides, when we came in – we’ve just come from the crime site – we got caught up with this whole skeleton examination, and I forgot about it.”
Jack looked at him intently, clearly not buying it. “You do this all the time?” he asked. “So you secretly fight crime, is that it, Tosh?”
“I didn't want it to look like I was showing off,” Toshiko replied, blushing.
“The guy they arrested, Henderson said you heard him muttering to himself as he was walking along, and that's what tipped you off,” Jack said, leaving the end of the sentence float as if it was a question.
Toshiko nodded. “Mm. I couldn't really work out what he was saying at first, and then it was like, Jesus!”
“She was amazing,” Andy commented. “Calm, level-headed, cool like a cucumber. Inspector Henderson was most impressed.”
“So am I, actually,” Jack said. “Well, I hope Henderson’s gonna send me a detailed report when they’ve finished the investigation, cos this is really something I wan to read.”
That was said in a casual manner, and yet Toshiko seemed a bit uncomfortable. Andy didn’t blame her. Captain Harkness had the reputation to find out everything about things – or persons – that caught his interest.
“I’ll remind the inspector of that,” he said politely.
“Good,” Jack replied. “Now, let’s go on with our work, shall we? We still don’t know a single fact from this victim – or the gadget he was buried with. And somehow I’ve got the bad feeling that we don’t have much time to figure things out.”
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Andy followed Jack and Toshiko out of the autopsy bay into the main area of the Hub. Once there, Jack picked up the strange alien artefact found on the building site from one of the empty-looking workstations and turned it from one side to the other, trying to pull on certain bets.
“This is that gizmo, the one found together with the skeleton, isn’t it?” Andy asked. “I was wondering how you were getting on with this.”
Jack shrugged, pulled at different its – without any visible results. “It's ongoing,” he replied absent-mindedly.
“Are you trying to dismantle it?” Toshiko asked. There was something in her voice that made Andy shoot her a quick glance. He saw that she was wearing that bloody pendant again – when had she put it on?”
“Like I said, it's ongoing,” Jack replied, not really paying her much attention. He was frowning at the uncooperative artefact. Andy, however, could see Toshiko touching the pendant well enough. Was that how she read other people’s minds? Was she doing it again? Was he required to warn the others? Or did they know about it already? They were Torchwood, after all; creepy things were their area of expertise.
Suddenly Jack looked up and stared at Toshiko in surprise. She stared back at him, equally baffled. Andy wondered what the staring contest could mean. Had Jack caught her peeking? Could one realize when someone else was intruding their thoughts? Was that part of the regular Torchwood training, or was this a specific ability of the great Captain Harkness?
”What?” Jack finally asked. “Have I got something on my face? Is it food?”
Toshiko shook her head. “No. Sorry. I zoned out.”
But she was clearly hiding something – something that apparently frightened her – and Jack clearly realized that. Still, he didn’t dig any deeper. Not yet anyway. Andy was quite sure that he wouldn’t let Toshiko get away with it. Not in the long run.
“Well,” he said, “you did well today. Good work, Tosh. Now, if you could finish those lists for UNIT for me…”
“Already on it,” Tosh walked over to her workstation.
Jack looked at Andy, his face unreadable, but somehow Andy knew that the enigmatic boss of Torchwood Three knew that he, too, was hiding something. Covering for her. At the moment, however, Jack didn’t pursue the issue.
“That one over there is Owen’s desk,” he said. “You can start the search already; we have a permanent link to the police databases. Owen will join you as soon as he’s shut the skeleton away.”
~TBC~
