Torchwood, Gwen, Team - "Plus One."
it's angst day, and I hate angst, but. broken_lullaby said Torchwood, Gwen, Torchwood wasn't just her team, but her family... and now they were gone. and, this.
Plus One
She tells her mum about the baby over a cup of tea at a shop, the way one does. She's been thinking about it for a while, a week or two, and the flutters in her stomach have become something other than a distraction and the sudden need to purge everything she's eaten the night before. It's too soon, nobody can tell just by looking, but she needs something to think about other than the destruction of the world - of _her_ world - and she knows that her mum will, at least, be happy.
Her mum chatters away about prams and cots and nappies and Gwen thinks she'd like to scream, but she just smiles and nods and sips her milky tea and thinks how she'd much rather have one of Ianto's coffees right now, with a plate of biscuits on the side, or maybe chips and egg, or takeaway from that place round the corner - The place that used to be round the corner, back when there was a corner, back when the Hub was still there and not a crater in the ground with bits of yellow tape around it. She thinks she'd like a proper Torchwood 'do, with Owen printing off inappropriate macros from the internet about chest-bursting aliens and Nostrovites, with Tosh trying very hard not laugh at him because it'll only encourage him to recount yet _again_ that story about that Weevil who birthed babies like spiders down in the cells while Ianto makes soothing noises and gives her first choice of the pizza the girl's brought and Jack -
And Jack stands there, like he does, arms crossed over his chest, coat off, thumbs tucked under the braces, and their eyes meet and he smiles, really, truly _smiles_, because it doesn't matter that there are things to think about like how long she'll have to stop work and is there such a thing as a Torchwood day-nursery, because they're having a _baby_.
A Torchwood baby.
Only, of course, that's not the way you get in. People aren't born into Torchwood; people only die out. There is no Uncle Ianto or Auntie Tosh, there's no day-nursery, and she couldn't really just store the baby on Ianto's desk while she went off for the day to save the world from the next alien come through the rift.
She loves Rhys, she does; she loves him so fiercely that it makes her eyes ache just to look at him, sometimes. He's not perfect, but he's perfect for _her_ and she for him, and it's something like magic the way they ended up together, despite all of her trying like hell to ruin it. She thanks whatever higher power might actually be out there looking after all of them that she has him, someone she can say "aliens" or "rift" or even "Jack" to without him rolling his eyes or looking confused or hurt, because he knows. He knows that she loves him, and their baby, and their life, whatever is going to become of it now. He also knows that there's a hollow, empty ache inside of her that this baby hasn't and will never fill in, and he knows what names that ache carries, and he knows why she wakes up some nights and just weeps for all that has happened.
Mum's talking about schools, now, and do they really think that junior will want to go to a private school, because Mrs. Upjohn's granddaughter is only two and already a genius, so she says, because she can apparently count to fifty in three languages, even though she can't manage to get food into her mouth and not all over herself and that's rather more important than counting, now isn't it? Gwen just smiles and nods and sips her tea and looks out at the bay. Everything is calm and smooth on the water; it's a day just like every other day. A day in the life, and this is her life, now, this is her family, mum and dad and Rhys and the little one, no bigger than a bean inside her.
She knows that there will always be an ache inside her that nobody can fill, and that's okay. It's big, now, all cloudy-gray sadness and she only has to pretend sometimes that this is her normal life again. She watches the skies because she can't stop, and she can't forget, and that's okay, too. One day, there will be something there again, someone, friend or foe, and she'll be ready, because if there is anything that Gwen Cooper Williams has learned about herself in the past few years, it's that nothing, absolutely nothing means anything at all without family.
Plus One
She tells her mum about the baby over a cup of tea at a shop, the way one does. She's been thinking about it for a while, a week or two, and the flutters in her stomach have become something other than a distraction and the sudden need to purge everything she's eaten the night before. It's too soon, nobody can tell just by looking, but she needs something to think about other than the destruction of the world - of _her_ world - and she knows that her mum will, at least, be happy.
Her mum chatters away about prams and cots and nappies and Gwen thinks she'd like to scream, but she just smiles and nods and sips her milky tea and thinks how she'd much rather have one of Ianto's coffees right now, with a plate of biscuits on the side, or maybe chips and egg, or takeaway from that place round the corner - The place that used to be round the corner, back when there was a corner, back when the Hub was still there and not a crater in the ground with bits of yellow tape around it. She thinks she'd like a proper Torchwood 'do, with Owen printing off inappropriate macros from the internet about chest-bursting aliens and Nostrovites, with Tosh trying very hard not laugh at him because it'll only encourage him to recount yet _again_ that story about that Weevil who birthed babies like spiders down in the cells while Ianto makes soothing noises and gives her first choice of the pizza the girl's brought and Jack -
And Jack stands there, like he does, arms crossed over his chest, coat off, thumbs tucked under the braces, and their eyes meet and he smiles, really, truly _smiles_, because it doesn't matter that there are things to think about like how long she'll have to stop work and is there such a thing as a Torchwood day-nursery, because they're having a _baby_.
A Torchwood baby.
Only, of course, that's not the way you get in. People aren't born into Torchwood; people only die out. There is no Uncle Ianto or Auntie Tosh, there's no day-nursery, and she couldn't really just store the baby on Ianto's desk while she went off for the day to save the world from the next alien come through the rift.
She loves Rhys, she does; she loves him so fiercely that it makes her eyes ache just to look at him, sometimes. He's not perfect, but he's perfect for _her_ and she for him, and it's something like magic the way they ended up together, despite all of her trying like hell to ruin it. She thanks whatever higher power might actually be out there looking after all of them that she has him, someone she can say "aliens" or "rift" or even "Jack" to without him rolling his eyes or looking confused or hurt, because he knows. He knows that she loves him, and their baby, and their life, whatever is going to become of it now. He also knows that there's a hollow, empty ache inside of her that this baby hasn't and will never fill in, and he knows what names that ache carries, and he knows why she wakes up some nights and just weeps for all that has happened.
Mum's talking about schools, now, and do they really think that junior will want to go to a private school, because Mrs. Upjohn's granddaughter is only two and already a genius, so she says, because she can apparently count to fifty in three languages, even though she can't manage to get food into her mouth and not all over herself and that's rather more important than counting, now isn't it? Gwen just smiles and nods and sips her tea and looks out at the bay. Everything is calm and smooth on the water; it's a day just like every other day. A day in the life, and this is her life, now, this is her family, mum and dad and Rhys and the little one, no bigger than a bean inside her.
She knows that there will always be an ache inside her that nobody can fill, and that's okay. It's big, now, all cloudy-gray sadness and she only has to pretend sometimes that this is her normal life again. She watches the skies because she can't stop, and she can't forget, and that's okay, too. One day, there will be something there again, someone, friend or foe, and she'll be ready, because if there is anything that Gwen Cooper Williams has learned about herself in the past few years, it's that nothing, absolutely nothing means anything at all without family.