Moving Forward 2/20
Title: Moving Forward (2/20)
Author: checksandplaid
Pairing: Gwen/Rhys, Gwen/Jack
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3937
Warnings: Spoilers through Children of Earth, character death.
Notes: Beta-d by veritas6_5. Cross posted to jack_and_gwen
Summary: When you have nothing left, how do you live? Where do you go? What do you do? An alternate turn of events to 'Miracle Day'
Chapter 1:http://checksandplaid.livejournal.com/984.html#cutid1
His wife hasn’t moved when Rhys comes out of their bedroom in the morning, doesn’t even turn her head to acknowledge him. He sighs, shoving down the traitorous voice in his head that wonders if she would be this inconsolable over his death. It isn’t a fair thought, and it certainly won’t help either of them get through the next several months, so he does his best to ignore it and begins preparing breakfast. Water in the kettle and bread in the toaster, he comes to sit beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Look. Gwennie. Love. You can’t just go to pieces because he left. You’ve got a daughter now, who needs you to eat and sleep and stay strong for her.” She doesn’t respond, but releases a breath she might have been holding the entire night. He gently covers the photo she is still clutching too tightly. “You’ve gotten through this before, and I swear I’ll get you through this again. I’m with you forever, Gwen Cooper-Williams, and I will take care of you. First thing we’ll do is get you a nice spot of toast with jam and a bit of tea; how’s that sound? And then I’ll drive you to the doctor and we’ll get some more photos of our gorgeous baby girl. Then we’ll come home, I’ll make us up some lunch and then maybe if the weather stays nice we’ll go for a walk in the park. And after that, Gwen, we’ll come home and I want you to tell me everything you loved about Captain Jack Harkness and his Torchwood.” She looks up at him for that. “Yes. Everything. And I want you to have a proper cry over it too. Grief is the start of healing.” He kisses her mouth gently, and helps her to the table.
Gwen allows herself to be led, and doesn’t chastise him for fussing over her. For all she has lost, at least she still has him. She must have married the most wonderful man in the world and right now she needs him desperately. “No jam.”
He smiles gently at her and puts the pot of jam down by his seat. “No jam,” he agrees.
***
Gwen wakes up to a fluorescent light on a white ceiling. Everything is a dull ache. When she tries to sit up, her body protests the sharp stabbing sensation in her side, forcing her to give up halfway and slump back on the bed. Had she fallen asleep during her pre-natal examination? That was odd; the ultrasound image of her daughter growing inside her is her favorite thing about being pregnant. And Rhys would have been far too noisy in his pride and adoration of their child to let anyone sleep. “Where is Rhys?” She asks the nurse entering the room. The soft-eyed middle aged woman doesn’t meet her eyes, and busies herself with the clipboard at the end of Gwen’s bed. “Where is Rhys? Where is my husband?” Why do I hurt so much?
A strange doctor, enters her room and sits on the stool beside her bed, “Good morning, Mrs. Williams. My name is Doctor Johnson. I need to ask you a few questions, if that’s alright with you.” He doesn’t wait for a response before continuing. “What is the last thing you remember?”
“I want my husband.” She frowns at the man in the white coat, shifting as the nurse helps her sit upright, clutching at her side involuntarily.
“Please, we need your cooperation right now. Tell me the last thing you remember.”
He’s using the same unnaturally gentle doctor voice that Owen had used whenever something positively terrible had happened. She’s frightened, and grasps for the nurse’s hand. “I remember…. Breakfast. Toast. With no jam. Why?”
“Do you remember how you got here?”
Gwen furrows her brow. She has to know how she got here. Even if she fell asleep in the car, she must have been awake to get into it, and had to have woken up to walk here. Remember. Remember. You can do it. You broke through Retcon. Remember. I have no idea. “N…no.”
The doctor covers her hand with his, and squeezes gently. “You were in an accident on your way here.”
Gwen’s eyes widen, and her mouth forms an involuntary ‘o’. She can feel a flicker of memory now, a screeching, a deafening bang, a tinkle of glass breaking, and yelling. No, screaming. “Where’s Rhys? Is he all right? Tell me he’s all right!” The nurse comes around and puts a restraining hand on her shoulder.
Doctor Johnson doesn’t flinch from her rising tone. “He died, Mrs. Williams. I am so very sorry for your loss.”
For one blessed moment his words are gibberish; Gwen stares at him blankly. Then reality hits her like a shotgun round. “No! Oh no no no no no…” She lets out an anguished howl, thrashing against the nurse’s strong hands. This is impossible. There is no life without Rhys. It is her destiny to die without knowing this anguish. It’s impossible that something so inherently wrong could possibly be true. Doctors don’t joke about death to patients, but it must be an error. Her Rhys has be laid up somewhere else, a little banged up maybe, but not dead. Surely not. They must have mixed up the medical charts; there must be a different Rhys Williams who died. Her husband can’t be dead. Rationalization calms her down, and she lets out a hiccoughing breath. The hands on her don’t relax; she can feel them trembling on her shoulders. She looks up at the nurse to try and crack a smile, assure the other woman that the worst is over and Gwen is in full control of her faculties. The nurse refuses to make eye contact, staring stonily over her head at the doctor. Gwen takes a deep shuddering breath. She could correct them later on their inaccuracies. They simply could not be correct about Rhys. He is strong. Unbreakable. “Was I hurt? How is my baby? She wasn’t hurt in any of this.” Please just let him nod and pat her hand and tell her everything is going to be okay. “Please.” She doesn’t know who she’s pleading with.
“You cracked three ribs, and suffered minor lacerations of the scalp, face, and arms. Nothing too bad.” He takes a deep breath. “Sometimes, Mrs. Williams, even slight trauma to the mother is enough to terminate a pregnancy.” She’s never heard a doctor’s voice crack like that before. “I am so sorry for your loss.”
Gwen crosses her arms tightly across her engorged abdomen. Is it smaller now than yesterday? She can’t remember. “We were going to name her Anwen.” Her ears roar and even though she can feel the mattress under her, she’s falling and darkness surges around her.
***
Gwen doesn’t know how much time has passed when her parents come in to visit. Days and nights slide into each other seamlessly as the nurses, doctors, and aides parade in and out. All she can do is sit there, lost in the future she should have had. Her stomach wobbles at the sight her parents make, leaning on each other for support. That should have been her and Rhys someday. She doesn’t resist as they surround her in an embrace, tears that aren’t hers dampening her hair and shoulders. She cannot cry. If she cries it will become real and then she will never stop.
“We’ve arranged a funeral for them, love.” Geraint holds her against his shoulder and rocks her without letting go of his wife. “It’s all taken care of. We just want you to be there with us.”
Their sorrows are the first emotion to pierce the vacuum surrounding Gwen since waking up. Her parents loved her husband and her daughter. It isn’t pity coming from them. They need to grieve, even if she doesn’t yet dare to. She nods, “I’ll go.” Maybe doing so will help her accept this reality. And how could she say otherwise without sounding mad? Even if she might be. Even if everything might be.
The door opens and someone out of sight clears his throat, bringing her focus out of the cloud grief her parents have surrounded her in. “Excuse me,” a thin man in a plain blue suit stands in the doorway. “Mrs. Cooper-Williams? I’m UNIT’s Inter-organizational Liaison, Lieutenant William Brown. I need a moment of your time.”
Her father makes a sour face, “I don’t think this is an appropriate time for this, Mister Brown. We’re really in no position to discuss anything related to Gwen’s old job just now.” He moves as though to shut the door in the man’s face.
Unthinking, Gwen catches his sleeve and stares at the newcomer. His voice is familiar. “You’re the man I spoke to back in March about the excavations and designs for a new building?” Back when the world was right or maybe just a little less wrong.
Lieutenant Brown nods shortly. “I know I come at the worst time, but this is urgent. Torchwood cannot cease to exist merely because it is inconvenient for its agents. Those which you protected Cardiff from still exist. It was the grossest misconduct for Captain Harkness to leave as he did. Someone must rebuild a team to protect the citizens of this country; you are the only one in a position to do so. Once a capably functioning Torchwood exists in Cardiff, you may resign immediately, or continue as its head, per your preference.”
A lesser man would have been sundered by the strength of her father’s glare. “I don’t know who you think you are, mister, but my little girl is in no position to accept any such responsibility.”
“I’ll do it.” What else is there in life to do now? What does she have left in life that she can move forward with? What else can she live for, if not this? Any rope thrown is better than drowning.
Lieutenant Brown gives her an unsmiling stare for a moment, as though he can see through her. He nods briefly, and opens a small book produced from a hidden pocket in his coat. “Good. I see you have a funeral to attend tomorrow afternoon. Report to the UNIT foreman at the wreckage site at your earliest convenience following the ceremony. She will have further instructions for you.” He gives her a short bow, “my condolences,” and leaves.
“Gwennie, I don’t think…”
She cuts off her mother’s protest. “I’ll be fine, Mum.”
***
The funeral is much larger than she had expected. She had known her husband’s large extended family and his longtime friends would attend. She hadn’t realized quite the scope of the others who had been deeply affected by her husband’s existence. His secretary she had expected, but not all his drivers and loaders, nor the neighbors from his childhood home, and the families living on the block of their flat. Everyone has something to say about Rhys Williams: if they didn’t rely on his jokes to get through a bad day it was his capacity to care about their troubles and offer assistance; if it wasn’t the fantastic play-off parties he hosted and the brilliant nacho-dip he made, it was his unwavering loyalty. If anyone present notices Gwen’s dry eyes, they have the kindness to say nothing.
A harsh wind blows through the graveyard, yanking the sermon out of the priest’s mouth and carrying it away from the listeners’ ears to the sea. Gwen walks among the mourners of her husband and child, shielded from their grief within an impenetrable layer of numbness. She feels like an intruder from another world, the wind cannot pierce her thin black sweater, sniffles and prayers dissipate before reaching her ears. She gives a speech, but the words that stumble off her tongue are meaningless. “A man of great kindness. My best friend. A very small hero in a very large town. He never stopped trying. He never stopped forgiving. Goodbye my love. Take care of our daughter.” She can’t take her eyes off the gaping hole in the ground. The first splatter of dirt on the wooden coffin twists her stomach with nausea. When the last lumps of fresh earth are in place, the mourners come to the grave slowly, each in their own time, to lay flowers at the tombstone. She stands by the stone, allowing the others to approach her as they wished, embrace her and cry on her shoulder as they needed. She returns the hugs carefully, and says nothing. There is nothing to say. Any belief she held that this would help make it more real seems a sick joke now. This is even more surreal than the morning she woke up and learned he was dead.
The mourners trickle away as the sun sets and the temperature drops. In the end it is the two sets of parents and the widow standing by a small heap of flowers, sheltering delicate white candles from the wind, one last memorial for a beloved man. As the lights sputter and die, Brenda Williams addresses Gwen for the first time all day. They’ve both been waiting for this moment, but after ten years of delicately worded insults and polite excuses, it all becomes meaningless. “He deserved better.”
“I know.” And she does, but with that knowledge comes the understanding that no one gets what they deserve. A kiss for her father in law, her father, and her mother along with instructions not to worry too much over her and Gwen turns and slowly walks to the SUV emblazoned with UNIT waiting for her.
***
The dark young woman in a neat suit driving the car has no trouble silently sitting there in the street until Gwen pulls the threads of her former self together enough to give instructions: first to her flat, then immediately to the site. The driver only breaks the silence to offer assistance when Gwen can’t bring herself to move from the vehicle to go collect some stuff from the flat she had shared with her husband. “Do you need me to go in with you?” She doesn’t know if the words are meant with pity or contempt, but both have the same effect of poking at the smoldering remains of her pride, and somehow she’s up the stairs through the hall ripping through her home like a whirlwind, shoving clothes and toiletries into a backpack, locating the handheld rift observer and a pistol that had become standard in her home when Torchwood became a team of three, and it was no longer logical for someone to be on active Hub duty at all times. She changes quickly into jeans and a tee-shirt, throwing her mourning clothes into a corner, and sprinting back out the door, letting it slam shut behind her and bolting down the stairs, memories dogging her heels the whole way.
The SUV hasn’t moved, but once Gwen is back inside, the driver hands her a hot cup of coffee before driving to the crash site. “Thanks.” The drink burns her tongue and throat, but sits warm in her stomach, a physical awareness she has been lacking in recent days.
The wreckage of Torchwood Three is an odd thing to behold for someone who spent so much time in its heart. The scene is well lit by floodlights giving everyone many dark shadows stretching in all directions, but it’s busier than the last time she was here, men in hard hats and coveralls shifting splinters of concrete, fragments of metal, and crates upon crates of other stuff out of brilliant yellow tents which cover the hole in the ground. This isn’t her second home anymore; she’s a stranger here.
There’s a loud, attention-seeking cough behind her. “Excuse me miss, this is a restricted access site, now if you’d please…” The giant cuts himself off as she turns slowly. “Bloody hell, I’m sorry. You’re Torchwood, aren’t you? Come with me please, you’re expected.” He leads her into a trailer, all four walls plastered with blueprints, schedules, lists, and other papers of indeterminate purpose.
“Gwen Cooper.” A woman stands up from behind a desk dominating the small space, stretching and offering a hand that Gwen shakes automatically. “Thank you for your prompt response to Lieutenant Brown’s request. I’m Foreman Smith; take a seat.” She waits while Gwen removes her backpack and sits carefully in a hard plastic chair. “We estimate that we’ve excavated approximately one fifth of the valuable material in the site, and 95% of the stored cadavers. We’re keeping those in a temporary morgue until you tell us what you want done with them. We ship everything else immediately to a complex by the docks. Those are your temporary headquarters until the permanent relocation is completed. Last I knew it was projected to be finished in six or seven months, but you know how it is. You can check on it in the morning if you would like.” She pauses, and when Gwen declines to comment continues. “But you weren’t summoned here for that. You are all of Torchwood that remains. You alone know the protocols for handling these fluxes of the Rift. Only you know the dangers and powers of the stuff that my boys are removing from that pit. And you’re the only one who knows how to access the data stored on the Torchwood servers. You have the experience in the field, and in the laboratory. We need you to keep Cardiff safe for civilians in such a way that there are no whispers of martial law. Torchwood may have annoyed the locals, but UNIT terrifies them after the last fiasco. But your primary objective is to transfer your knowledge of all this to others. We need you to build a team. Everything else is secondary.” The Foreman returns a set of glasses to her nose and picks up a thick stack of papers. “The transport you arrived in is waiting for you; she will take you to the current site. Any further details or requests for equipment can be made to my aide, Walter, who is currently supervising there.”
Gwen head is spinning in attempt to process everything from the last 24 hours. Right now, there’s no more room for anything except instructions, and contemplating how they can be carried out the best. It is almost like being alive again.
***
As late as it is, there is someone waiting by the door when Gwen exits the car, her small luggage tucked under her arm. “Walter?”
The young man, hair stuck up in that odd way that can only be achieved by running hands through it in agitation takes her bag, “Yes Miss. This way, Miss.” He leads her down a short hallway, mentioning the few locations of interest in a warehouse. “That door to the right goes to the main holding area, on the left is the door to the big office room, we hold most of the paper stuff there, but it has a large table in it, I can get you some chairs too. Down here is another entrance to the main space, and here at the end is your office.” He fumbles a key one handed into the lock, and opens the door to reveal a small office, taken up mostly by a desk crowded with a computer and stacks on stacks of papers. “There’s a bathroom with a shower behind that door and that’s it.” He places her bag behind the desk, and turns, waiting for further instructions.
“Show me the storage space.” She estimates that there’s just enough room in front of the desk for a cot.
“Yes Miss. Follow me.” Another key through a side door of her office, and Gwen gapes around at the sheer amount of space she’s been allowed. “Don’t let it deceive you Miss. It fills up quicker than you’d think.” He leads her around the piles, crates stacked against walls, bins hastily labeled ‘computers’ ‘guns’ ‘personal affects’ crammed to overflow, plus all sorts of other stuff heaped around. “We did as best we could, Miss. The crates we left intact as best we could, everything else…” he shrugs. “There’s a dumpster for all the stuff you deem to be garbage. Someone checks it every few days and calls a truck when it fills, but we knew you’d be coming back and didn’t want to throw out anything important by accident.” He trails off, waiting for a response.
There’s nothing much to say in response. Whatever excuse for an organizational system they devised for items they know nothing about isn’t really their fault. Maybe if she hadn’t taken the last six months off… She cuts that thought short and surveys the reality of her situation. “I’m going to need a bunch more bins like these, more boxes for papers, a sleeping bag and cot, and a proper computer.”
The aide nods, jotting her requests down, and when no more instructions are forthcoming, drops the ring of keys in her hands, scribbles his number on the back of a card, “if you think of anything else you need just call,” and saunters off, thrilled to be off duty so early.
After she hears the door click behind him, Gwen strips off her coat, checks her back pocket to make sure her rift tracker is there and active, then commences with a proper survey of everything. A lot of the stuff looks like construction materials bent into odd shapes; half melted or cracked in half. Garbage, but the other stuff will need to be gone through individually. A simple job made giant by the enormous volume of stuff to examine. She returns to her desk, coaxes the computer on, and selects a sheaf of papers to go through as the elderly machine wheezes to life.
There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the documents, a shuffled mix of catalogued artifacts from four years ago, accounts from their trip to the Himalayas, reports of capturing this or that. Stuff that had been dispersed by the explosion while waiting to be filed. Her heart wrenches as she is notes the handwriting: a delicate and precise copperplate that could only belong to Ianto Jones. Until now it has been easy to disassociate her current duties from her old ones. A different Gwen Copper in a different Torchwood, but this makes it real in a way that observing the wreckage of the Hub hadn’t. She cradles the paper in her hands, staring at it until the words and numbers lost all their meaning and are just a symbol of the careful hand that made them. Hours later she wipes eyes she hadn’t noticed leaking and puts the papers in a corner of the office. Someday she’ll find time to digitize and file them in the archives. Right now they are just one more thing to be tucked away and forgotten. As the sun comes up and she struggles with connecting the computer to the network, there’s a knock at the door. Two youths greet her, supporting a cot-sized box between them, which they place in her office along with a large fragile looking box from the electronics dealer, and a mountain of different sized holding bins. A five quid note and they’re gone, leaving her to numb solitude. She drags the old computer into the larger office, and falls asleep under her desk as she’s trying to hook the new one to the Torchwood network.
Author: checksandplaid
Pairing: Gwen/Rhys, Gwen/Jack
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3937
Warnings: Spoilers through Children of Earth, character death.
Notes: Beta-d by veritas6_5. Cross posted to jack_and_gwen
Summary: When you have nothing left, how do you live? Where do you go? What do you do? An alternate turn of events to 'Miracle Day'
Chapter 1:http://checksandplaid.livejournal.com/984.html#cutid1
His wife hasn’t moved when Rhys comes out of their bedroom in the morning, doesn’t even turn her head to acknowledge him. He sighs, shoving down the traitorous voice in his head that wonders if she would be this inconsolable over his death. It isn’t a fair thought, and it certainly won’t help either of them get through the next several months, so he does his best to ignore it and begins preparing breakfast. Water in the kettle and bread in the toaster, he comes to sit beside her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Look. Gwennie. Love. You can’t just go to pieces because he left. You’ve got a daughter now, who needs you to eat and sleep and stay strong for her.” She doesn’t respond, but releases a breath she might have been holding the entire night. He gently covers the photo she is still clutching too tightly. “You’ve gotten through this before, and I swear I’ll get you through this again. I’m with you forever, Gwen Cooper-Williams, and I will take care of you. First thing we’ll do is get you a nice spot of toast with jam and a bit of tea; how’s that sound? And then I’ll drive you to the doctor and we’ll get some more photos of our gorgeous baby girl. Then we’ll come home, I’ll make us up some lunch and then maybe if the weather stays nice we’ll go for a walk in the park. And after that, Gwen, we’ll come home and I want you to tell me everything you loved about Captain Jack Harkness and his Torchwood.” She looks up at him for that. “Yes. Everything. And I want you to have a proper cry over it too. Grief is the start of healing.” He kisses her mouth gently, and helps her to the table.
Gwen allows herself to be led, and doesn’t chastise him for fussing over her. For all she has lost, at least she still has him. She must have married the most wonderful man in the world and right now she needs him desperately. “No jam.”
He smiles gently at her and puts the pot of jam down by his seat. “No jam,” he agrees.
***
Gwen wakes up to a fluorescent light on a white ceiling. Everything is a dull ache. When she tries to sit up, her body protests the sharp stabbing sensation in her side, forcing her to give up halfway and slump back on the bed. Had she fallen asleep during her pre-natal examination? That was odd; the ultrasound image of her daughter growing inside her is her favorite thing about being pregnant. And Rhys would have been far too noisy in his pride and adoration of their child to let anyone sleep. “Where is Rhys?” She asks the nurse entering the room. The soft-eyed middle aged woman doesn’t meet her eyes, and busies herself with the clipboard at the end of Gwen’s bed. “Where is Rhys? Where is my husband?” Why do I hurt so much?
A strange doctor, enters her room and sits on the stool beside her bed, “Good morning, Mrs. Williams. My name is Doctor Johnson. I need to ask you a few questions, if that’s alright with you.” He doesn’t wait for a response before continuing. “What is the last thing you remember?”
“I want my husband.” She frowns at the man in the white coat, shifting as the nurse helps her sit upright, clutching at her side involuntarily.
“Please, we need your cooperation right now. Tell me the last thing you remember.”
He’s using the same unnaturally gentle doctor voice that Owen had used whenever something positively terrible had happened. She’s frightened, and grasps for the nurse’s hand. “I remember…. Breakfast. Toast. With no jam. Why?”
“Do you remember how you got here?”
Gwen furrows her brow. She has to know how she got here. Even if she fell asleep in the car, she must have been awake to get into it, and had to have woken up to walk here. Remember. Remember. You can do it. You broke through Retcon. Remember. I have no idea. “N…no.”
The doctor covers her hand with his, and squeezes gently. “You were in an accident on your way here.”
Gwen’s eyes widen, and her mouth forms an involuntary ‘o’. She can feel a flicker of memory now, a screeching, a deafening bang, a tinkle of glass breaking, and yelling. No, screaming. “Where’s Rhys? Is he all right? Tell me he’s all right!” The nurse comes around and puts a restraining hand on her shoulder.
Doctor Johnson doesn’t flinch from her rising tone. “He died, Mrs. Williams. I am so very sorry for your loss.”
For one blessed moment his words are gibberish; Gwen stares at him blankly. Then reality hits her like a shotgun round. “No! Oh no no no no no…” She lets out an anguished howl, thrashing against the nurse’s strong hands. This is impossible. There is no life without Rhys. It is her destiny to die without knowing this anguish. It’s impossible that something so inherently wrong could possibly be true. Doctors don’t joke about death to patients, but it must be an error. Her Rhys has be laid up somewhere else, a little banged up maybe, but not dead. Surely not. They must have mixed up the medical charts; there must be a different Rhys Williams who died. Her husband can’t be dead. Rationalization calms her down, and she lets out a hiccoughing breath. The hands on her don’t relax; she can feel them trembling on her shoulders. She looks up at the nurse to try and crack a smile, assure the other woman that the worst is over and Gwen is in full control of her faculties. The nurse refuses to make eye contact, staring stonily over her head at the doctor. Gwen takes a deep shuddering breath. She could correct them later on their inaccuracies. They simply could not be correct about Rhys. He is strong. Unbreakable. “Was I hurt? How is my baby? She wasn’t hurt in any of this.” Please just let him nod and pat her hand and tell her everything is going to be okay. “Please.” She doesn’t know who she’s pleading with.
“You cracked three ribs, and suffered minor lacerations of the scalp, face, and arms. Nothing too bad.” He takes a deep breath. “Sometimes, Mrs. Williams, even slight trauma to the mother is enough to terminate a pregnancy.” She’s never heard a doctor’s voice crack like that before. “I am so sorry for your loss.”
Gwen crosses her arms tightly across her engorged abdomen. Is it smaller now than yesterday? She can’t remember. “We were going to name her Anwen.” Her ears roar and even though she can feel the mattress under her, she’s falling and darkness surges around her.
***
Gwen doesn’t know how much time has passed when her parents come in to visit. Days and nights slide into each other seamlessly as the nurses, doctors, and aides parade in and out. All she can do is sit there, lost in the future she should have had. Her stomach wobbles at the sight her parents make, leaning on each other for support. That should have been her and Rhys someday. She doesn’t resist as they surround her in an embrace, tears that aren’t hers dampening her hair and shoulders. She cannot cry. If she cries it will become real and then she will never stop.
“We’ve arranged a funeral for them, love.” Geraint holds her against his shoulder and rocks her without letting go of his wife. “It’s all taken care of. We just want you to be there with us.”
Their sorrows are the first emotion to pierce the vacuum surrounding Gwen since waking up. Her parents loved her husband and her daughter. It isn’t pity coming from them. They need to grieve, even if she doesn’t yet dare to. She nods, “I’ll go.” Maybe doing so will help her accept this reality. And how could she say otherwise without sounding mad? Even if she might be. Even if everything might be.
The door opens and someone out of sight clears his throat, bringing her focus out of the cloud grief her parents have surrounded her in. “Excuse me,” a thin man in a plain blue suit stands in the doorway. “Mrs. Cooper-Williams? I’m UNIT’s Inter-organizational Liaison, Lieutenant William Brown. I need a moment of your time.”
Her father makes a sour face, “I don’t think this is an appropriate time for this, Mister Brown. We’re really in no position to discuss anything related to Gwen’s old job just now.” He moves as though to shut the door in the man’s face.
Unthinking, Gwen catches his sleeve and stares at the newcomer. His voice is familiar. “You’re the man I spoke to back in March about the excavations and designs for a new building?” Back when the world was right or maybe just a little less wrong.
Lieutenant Brown nods shortly. “I know I come at the worst time, but this is urgent. Torchwood cannot cease to exist merely because it is inconvenient for its agents. Those which you protected Cardiff from still exist. It was the grossest misconduct for Captain Harkness to leave as he did. Someone must rebuild a team to protect the citizens of this country; you are the only one in a position to do so. Once a capably functioning Torchwood exists in Cardiff, you may resign immediately, or continue as its head, per your preference.”
A lesser man would have been sundered by the strength of her father’s glare. “I don’t know who you think you are, mister, but my little girl is in no position to accept any such responsibility.”
“I’ll do it.” What else is there in life to do now? What does she have left in life that she can move forward with? What else can she live for, if not this? Any rope thrown is better than drowning.
Lieutenant Brown gives her an unsmiling stare for a moment, as though he can see through her. He nods briefly, and opens a small book produced from a hidden pocket in his coat. “Good. I see you have a funeral to attend tomorrow afternoon. Report to the UNIT foreman at the wreckage site at your earliest convenience following the ceremony. She will have further instructions for you.” He gives her a short bow, “my condolences,” and leaves.
“Gwennie, I don’t think…”
She cuts off her mother’s protest. “I’ll be fine, Mum.”
***
The funeral is much larger than she had expected. She had known her husband’s large extended family and his longtime friends would attend. She hadn’t realized quite the scope of the others who had been deeply affected by her husband’s existence. His secretary she had expected, but not all his drivers and loaders, nor the neighbors from his childhood home, and the families living on the block of their flat. Everyone has something to say about Rhys Williams: if they didn’t rely on his jokes to get through a bad day it was his capacity to care about their troubles and offer assistance; if it wasn’t the fantastic play-off parties he hosted and the brilliant nacho-dip he made, it was his unwavering loyalty. If anyone present notices Gwen’s dry eyes, they have the kindness to say nothing.
A harsh wind blows through the graveyard, yanking the sermon out of the priest’s mouth and carrying it away from the listeners’ ears to the sea. Gwen walks among the mourners of her husband and child, shielded from their grief within an impenetrable layer of numbness. She feels like an intruder from another world, the wind cannot pierce her thin black sweater, sniffles and prayers dissipate before reaching her ears. She gives a speech, but the words that stumble off her tongue are meaningless. “A man of great kindness. My best friend. A very small hero in a very large town. He never stopped trying. He never stopped forgiving. Goodbye my love. Take care of our daughter.” She can’t take her eyes off the gaping hole in the ground. The first splatter of dirt on the wooden coffin twists her stomach with nausea. When the last lumps of fresh earth are in place, the mourners come to the grave slowly, each in their own time, to lay flowers at the tombstone. She stands by the stone, allowing the others to approach her as they wished, embrace her and cry on her shoulder as they needed. She returns the hugs carefully, and says nothing. There is nothing to say. Any belief she held that this would help make it more real seems a sick joke now. This is even more surreal than the morning she woke up and learned he was dead.
The mourners trickle away as the sun sets and the temperature drops. In the end it is the two sets of parents and the widow standing by a small heap of flowers, sheltering delicate white candles from the wind, one last memorial for a beloved man. As the lights sputter and die, Brenda Williams addresses Gwen for the first time all day. They’ve both been waiting for this moment, but after ten years of delicately worded insults and polite excuses, it all becomes meaningless. “He deserved better.”
“I know.” And she does, but with that knowledge comes the understanding that no one gets what they deserve. A kiss for her father in law, her father, and her mother along with instructions not to worry too much over her and Gwen turns and slowly walks to the SUV emblazoned with UNIT waiting for her.
***
The dark young woman in a neat suit driving the car has no trouble silently sitting there in the street until Gwen pulls the threads of her former self together enough to give instructions: first to her flat, then immediately to the site. The driver only breaks the silence to offer assistance when Gwen can’t bring herself to move from the vehicle to go collect some stuff from the flat she had shared with her husband. “Do you need me to go in with you?” She doesn’t know if the words are meant with pity or contempt, but both have the same effect of poking at the smoldering remains of her pride, and somehow she’s up the stairs through the hall ripping through her home like a whirlwind, shoving clothes and toiletries into a backpack, locating the handheld rift observer and a pistol that had become standard in her home when Torchwood became a team of three, and it was no longer logical for someone to be on active Hub duty at all times. She changes quickly into jeans and a tee-shirt, throwing her mourning clothes into a corner, and sprinting back out the door, letting it slam shut behind her and bolting down the stairs, memories dogging her heels the whole way.
The SUV hasn’t moved, but once Gwen is back inside, the driver hands her a hot cup of coffee before driving to the crash site. “Thanks.” The drink burns her tongue and throat, but sits warm in her stomach, a physical awareness she has been lacking in recent days.
The wreckage of Torchwood Three is an odd thing to behold for someone who spent so much time in its heart. The scene is well lit by floodlights giving everyone many dark shadows stretching in all directions, but it’s busier than the last time she was here, men in hard hats and coveralls shifting splinters of concrete, fragments of metal, and crates upon crates of other stuff out of brilliant yellow tents which cover the hole in the ground. This isn’t her second home anymore; she’s a stranger here.
There’s a loud, attention-seeking cough behind her. “Excuse me miss, this is a restricted access site, now if you’d please…” The giant cuts himself off as she turns slowly. “Bloody hell, I’m sorry. You’re Torchwood, aren’t you? Come with me please, you’re expected.” He leads her into a trailer, all four walls plastered with blueprints, schedules, lists, and other papers of indeterminate purpose.
“Gwen Cooper.” A woman stands up from behind a desk dominating the small space, stretching and offering a hand that Gwen shakes automatically. “Thank you for your prompt response to Lieutenant Brown’s request. I’m Foreman Smith; take a seat.” She waits while Gwen removes her backpack and sits carefully in a hard plastic chair. “We estimate that we’ve excavated approximately one fifth of the valuable material in the site, and 95% of the stored cadavers. We’re keeping those in a temporary morgue until you tell us what you want done with them. We ship everything else immediately to a complex by the docks. Those are your temporary headquarters until the permanent relocation is completed. Last I knew it was projected to be finished in six or seven months, but you know how it is. You can check on it in the morning if you would like.” She pauses, and when Gwen declines to comment continues. “But you weren’t summoned here for that. You are all of Torchwood that remains. You alone know the protocols for handling these fluxes of the Rift. Only you know the dangers and powers of the stuff that my boys are removing from that pit. And you’re the only one who knows how to access the data stored on the Torchwood servers. You have the experience in the field, and in the laboratory. We need you to keep Cardiff safe for civilians in such a way that there are no whispers of martial law. Torchwood may have annoyed the locals, but UNIT terrifies them after the last fiasco. But your primary objective is to transfer your knowledge of all this to others. We need you to build a team. Everything else is secondary.” The Foreman returns a set of glasses to her nose and picks up a thick stack of papers. “The transport you arrived in is waiting for you; she will take you to the current site. Any further details or requests for equipment can be made to my aide, Walter, who is currently supervising there.”
Gwen head is spinning in attempt to process everything from the last 24 hours. Right now, there’s no more room for anything except instructions, and contemplating how they can be carried out the best. It is almost like being alive again.
***
As late as it is, there is someone waiting by the door when Gwen exits the car, her small luggage tucked under her arm. “Walter?”
The young man, hair stuck up in that odd way that can only be achieved by running hands through it in agitation takes her bag, “Yes Miss. This way, Miss.” He leads her down a short hallway, mentioning the few locations of interest in a warehouse. “That door to the right goes to the main holding area, on the left is the door to the big office room, we hold most of the paper stuff there, but it has a large table in it, I can get you some chairs too. Down here is another entrance to the main space, and here at the end is your office.” He fumbles a key one handed into the lock, and opens the door to reveal a small office, taken up mostly by a desk crowded with a computer and stacks on stacks of papers. “There’s a bathroom with a shower behind that door and that’s it.” He places her bag behind the desk, and turns, waiting for further instructions.
“Show me the storage space.” She estimates that there’s just enough room in front of the desk for a cot.
“Yes Miss. Follow me.” Another key through a side door of her office, and Gwen gapes around at the sheer amount of space she’s been allowed. “Don’t let it deceive you Miss. It fills up quicker than you’d think.” He leads her around the piles, crates stacked against walls, bins hastily labeled ‘computers’ ‘guns’ ‘personal affects’ crammed to overflow, plus all sorts of other stuff heaped around. “We did as best we could, Miss. The crates we left intact as best we could, everything else…” he shrugs. “There’s a dumpster for all the stuff you deem to be garbage. Someone checks it every few days and calls a truck when it fills, but we knew you’d be coming back and didn’t want to throw out anything important by accident.” He trails off, waiting for a response.
There’s nothing much to say in response. Whatever excuse for an organizational system they devised for items they know nothing about isn’t really their fault. Maybe if she hadn’t taken the last six months off… She cuts that thought short and surveys the reality of her situation. “I’m going to need a bunch more bins like these, more boxes for papers, a sleeping bag and cot, and a proper computer.”
The aide nods, jotting her requests down, and when no more instructions are forthcoming, drops the ring of keys in her hands, scribbles his number on the back of a card, “if you think of anything else you need just call,” and saunters off, thrilled to be off duty so early.
After she hears the door click behind him, Gwen strips off her coat, checks her back pocket to make sure her rift tracker is there and active, then commences with a proper survey of everything. A lot of the stuff looks like construction materials bent into odd shapes; half melted or cracked in half. Garbage, but the other stuff will need to be gone through individually. A simple job made giant by the enormous volume of stuff to examine. She returns to her desk, coaxes the computer on, and selects a sheaf of papers to go through as the elderly machine wheezes to life.
There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the documents, a shuffled mix of catalogued artifacts from four years ago, accounts from their trip to the Himalayas, reports of capturing this or that. Stuff that had been dispersed by the explosion while waiting to be filed. Her heart wrenches as she is notes the handwriting: a delicate and precise copperplate that could only belong to Ianto Jones. Until now it has been easy to disassociate her current duties from her old ones. A different Gwen Copper in a different Torchwood, but this makes it real in a way that observing the wreckage of the Hub hadn’t. She cradles the paper in her hands, staring at it until the words and numbers lost all their meaning and are just a symbol of the careful hand that made them. Hours later she wipes eyes she hadn’t noticed leaking and puts the papers in a corner of the office. Someday she’ll find time to digitize and file them in the archives. Right now they are just one more thing to be tucked away and forgotten. As the sun comes up and she struggles with connecting the computer to the network, there’s a knock at the door. Two youths greet her, supporting a cot-sized box between them, which they place in her office along with a large fragile looking box from the electronics dealer, and a mountain of different sized holding bins. A five quid note and they’re gone, leaving her to numb solitude. She drags the old computer into the larger office, and falls asleep under her desk as she’s trying to hook the new one to the Torchwood network.