Red Is My Colour Prompt for Day Two
Title: The Wrong Place
Author: blue_fjords
Pairings: Gwen/Rhys, Jack/Ianto
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Rating: PG
Summary: Gwen meets an old acquaintance during a case, which brings up painful memories.
Prompt:
Winter
Joshua Radin
I should know
Who I am by now
I walk
The record stands somehow
Thinking of winter
Your name is the splinter inside me
While I wait
Gwen's breath steamed out in the frigid air. An ice storm had gilded the city in a beautiful, deadly sheen overnight, and now the morning sun lent light sparkling through crystals hanging from the tiny house's roof. If only the sun had also mustered up some warmth.
Gwen sighed, and tamped her feet down securely in her new winter boots. Ianto had bought a pair for all three of them, correctly predicting that this winter would be an icy one. Gwen resolutely turned her back on the door and, gathering her empathy around her like a warm coat, started down the path towards the new widow huddled in the SUV as Jack did some rudimentary first aid on the burn marks down her left forearm.
Jack looked up as she approached. "Ianto?"
"He'd like you to bring the blue box inside when you're ready."
The blue box contained the extra heavy duty cleaning supplies, augmented by some alien chemicals. When a man froze, exploded, and then defrosted, things could get a little messy. Plus, there were the two burnt corpses of his alien attackers. Gwen did not envy Ianto his clean-up job. She did not envy herself her comforting job, either.
Jack tied off the last bandage. "Okay, Maggie," he said gently, giving the widow's right shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "Gwen here is going to sit with you for a bit while my partner and I finish cleaning up inside. It might help if you tell her what you saw." Maggie looked at him with dead eyes. Jack leaned down and kissed her forehead. "I'm so sorry."
Jack moved out of the way, and Gwen crawled inside, shutting the door and cranking the heat up a bit more. She heard Jack wrestle the blue box out of the boot, and waited until he made it back into the house before opening her mouth.
Maggie beat her to it. "You don't remember me, do you, Gwen Cooper?"
Gwen started. She looked at Maggie then, really looked. It had still been dark when they arrived at the house in the pre-dawn, then all the smoke from their flamethrowers (Jack had said they were modified Junavian flame spears, but Gwen and Ianto had privately renamed them flamethrowers), coupled with Maggie literally being in hysterics until just five minutes ago, had not afforded Gwen the best look at the widow. Maggie was about Gwen's height, rounder, with full plump lips and slightly slanted light green eyes. Her hair was streaked with blood and . . . insides . . . but it looked like it could be a dark blonde. She had a tiny mole under the left side of her chin. Gwen's eyes widened.
"Peggy Jones! Oh my God!" She stared at the other woman in shock.
"I go by Maggie now, and it's Clifton, not Jones," she said, looking down at her wedding band. Her eyes filled with tears and Gwen automatically slid into comfort-mode and put her arms around the other woman.
Oh, how she had hated Peggy Jones as a child, and later as a teenager, when hatred had greater outlets. Peggy Jones, who laughed at the gap between Gwen's teeth, made fun of Gwen for being a tomboy, and sneered at Gwen's clothes. All of these were little things, and Gwen had certainly given as much as she had got back. No, it was the matter of Daniel Tanner that had forever blackened Peggy Jones. Daniel Tanner was why Gwen had joined the police force. Daniel Tanner was the unacknowledged ghost in the room whenever Rhys broached the subject of having children. Torchwood was a convenient excuse. Daniel Tanner's corpse is what she pictured while Rhys nattered on about nappies and feedings.
Peggy, now Maggie, began to take hiccupping breaths. Gwen patted her uninjured arm on autopilot as Maggie started to tell her tale. She and her husband had gone to bed early the night before. Cliffie, the husband, needed to get up early to catch a shuttle for a business meeting in London. He was climbing the ranks at the top paper-supplier in Wales, and the company was looking to expand. Maggie had heard a noise downstairs, and thought Cliffie had dropped the coffee maker. She had gone downstairs to help him, and run into a nightmare.
"It's okay, Maggie, we came in soon after that; I know what happened."
Gwen continued to rub her back as Maggie sobbed into her shoulder. Gwen was grateful for her leather coat. At least there was some respite from the deluge. After about fifteen minutes, Maggie's shudders began to subside. Gwen figured it was about time for a sedative. She even had some in the inner pocket of her coat; Ianto's idea since the three of them had to move so much faster nowadays. There was also Retcon in that pocket.
Gwen took a bottle of water from the divider in the front seat and handed it to Maggie with the sedative.
"You need to rest now, Maggie. No dreams, I promise."
Maggie stared at the pill in her hand. Finally she took a deep breath, reached for it, and whispered to Gwen, "I should have told them. I'm sorry, Gwen. I wish I had said something."
Gwen froze, and then had to blink a dampness from her eyes. "Take the pill, Maggie. I'll call your mother."
Gwen watched as the other woman's eyes drifted shut. She lowered Maggie carefully across the back seat and moved up front to do a search for her mother's phone number. Daphne Jones still lived in the same house in Swansea, across the street from Gwen's childhood home. A family named Crain lived next door, in the house that used to belong to the Tanners almost thirteen years ago now. If Daniel Tanner were still alive, he would be considering what he wanted to do in his gap year; arguing with his mates about rugby; rolling his eyes whenever his parents said "Back in my day. . ." Maybe he'd still like to play the guitar, he'd had a toy one, Gwen recalled. Maybe he'd have a steady girlfriend, or boyfriend, and he'd play his young love silly songs on the guitar.
Gwen rubbed at her eyes, remembering. It had been summer, as hot then as it was cold now. Gwen was babysitting little Daniel Tanner, and he wanted to play in the sprinklers the Jones family had set up. This was a long-standing tradition between the Tanners and the Joneses, so Gwen had acquiesced, and next door they went. Mrs. Tanner had arrived home early, and wanted to show something to Gwen back at the house. Gwen could never remember later what it was. She tried, but it always eluded her. Peggy Jones had poked her perfectly coiffed head out her back door and said she would keep an eye on "wee Danny" while Gwen shirked her duties. Gwen had flipped her the bird, and Daniel had laughed, thrown his arms around Gwen, and then run back to the sprinklers. It was the last time she had seen him alive.
They didn't find his body for three days. It came out in the investigation that Peggy had seen a strange man earlier in the day outside their house, but had not mentioned it to police. This same man later confessed to the abduction and murder of Daniel Tanner, and Gwen had never forgiven Peggy Jones. Objectively, she knew that memories could play tricks on you, and after all, she could never remember why she and Mrs. Tanner had left the back garden that day. It didn't matter. Daniel was her special boy, she called him "pet" and they made mud pies in the summer, snowmen in the winter, and had fun always. Gwen had been in the search party that found his corpse, and she would never lose that image.
Ianto rapped lightly on the window, breaking her reverie. Gwen opened the door for him, and he slid into the driver's side.
"Are you okay?" he asked her, a note of concern in his voice.
"Yeah, I just . . . turns out I know her," she half-laughed, gesturing over her shoulder to Maggie in the backseat.
Ianto glanced back at her. "Poor woman. It looks like she and her husband were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Hurs fight in pairs; one freezes and the other, well, explodes things. The Rift dumped them right into the Cliftons' living room, the energy signal is still fading."
Gwen nodded. "How is the clean-up going?"
"It's done; Jack got a phone call while we were finishing up. He should be out in a minute or two."
Gwen nodded again. She seemed to be doing that a lot lately. They should make a Gwen Cooper bobblehead. A little burble of hysterical laughter threatened to escape her. She choked it down.
Ianto gave her a curious look. "Gwen, cariad - "
That's all it took. She couldn't stop the floodgates if she had wanted to, and she really didn't want to. Ianto leaned across the seats and pulled her into his lap, a bit awkwardly because of the steering wheel, but the thing does adjust. Gwen buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed. Her fingers clutched at the back of his shirt and through her haze of tears it finally registered on her that Ianto wasn't wearing his own clothing. This was one of Jack's plain white undershirts and she could see a pair of Jack's boxers poking up over the top of Ianto's rattiest pair of jeans. They had been working so hard and for such long hours, Gwen had no idea when Ianto had last had the time to run home and bring in some new changes of clothes to the Hub. Gwen started to calm down, and Ianto produced one of his own "IJ" kerchiefs from his coat. She wiped her face and blew her nose, then leaned back into Ianto. Ianto smelled like Jack, of course, and cleaning chemicals and smoke and blood from the house, and an undercurrent of fresh cotton and coffee and sex that Gwen privately thought of as Ianto's base smell.
The back of the SUV opened suddenly, bringing with it a draft of cold air as Jack hoisted the blue box inside. He slammed the door and came around to the front, climbing into the passenger seat.
"Are we having a Torchwood Love-In?" he asked with a smile, leaning across to plant a kiss on her forehead, and a not-at-all chaste kiss on Ianto's lips for good measure.
Gwen smiled tremulously back. "Not exactly."
She hoisted herself off of Ianto's lap and crawled across to Jack's.
"This is the address of Maggie's mother. We can drop her off here - I'll call to let her know we're coming - and what were you thinking of telling Andy? Do we have any decent-sized pieces of the body left? How small a dose of Retcon can we give her? . . . "
Gwen continued on as Ianto put the SUV into drive and headed towards Swansea. She kept thinking about what Ianto had said as she phoned Mrs. Jones, and talked with Andy, and ate dinner with Rhys later that evening. "The wrong place at the wrong time" - it could have been her and Rhys, or Jack and Ianto, just as it had been little Daniel Tanner so long ago. Even with all of her training and weapons, there was no absolute way to protect her loved ones. The winter seemed to grow a little colder around her, and she clung to Rhys a little tighter in their nice warm bed, trying to keep the ghosts at bay.