Fic: Unexpected Snags
Title: Unexpected Snags
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Gwen, Owen, Jack, Rhys.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Something Borrowed.
Summary: Gwen gets a shock when she wakes up on her wedding day.
Word Count: 552
Written For: juliet316’s prompt ‘Author's choice, author's choice, he's not the father,’ at
fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Gwen wakes on her wedding day and gets the shock of her life; she looks nine months pregnant and the only thing she’s completely certain of is that her husband-to-be is not the father. Freaking out more than a little, in between weird cravings for pickles, which she doesn’t even usually like, she does the only thing she can think of. She phones Jack. He’s her boss and her friend; surely he’ll know what to do?
He knows exactly what to do of course; he drags Owen over to her place to examine her. The news isn’t good.
Firstly, she’s definitely pregnant, with an alien egg no less. She can’t get her head around the idea of getting pregnant from a bite, it makes no sense to her, but Jack insists it can happen. She doesn’t want to believe him, but she can’t ignore what she sees in the mirror.
Jack and Owen both want her to postpone the wedding while Owen takes care of her little problem. Jack’s probably right, most likely she’s not exactly thinking straight, but she’s pregnant with an alien; she’s allowed to be hormonal and irrational. She’s marrying Rhys in five hours and she’s not about to let a little thing like this change her plans. She’s put Rhys through enough, they’re getting married come hell or high water and there’s nothing either of her friends can say that’s going to sway her.
There’s just one thing she has to do first. Oh God, how is she going to tell Rhys that Torchwood has managed to muck up their lives again? On their wedding day, no less! In a way, it’s her own fault. She didn’t have to go out in the field last night, one of the others could have done it, but what with going off on her honeymoon right after the wedding, she’d thought she should at least make sure she pulled her weight beforehand. Picking up her phone, she calls Rhys.
“I need to see you.”
Predictably, he makes a bit of a fuss about it being unlucky for the groom to see the bride before the wedding, but it doesn’t take much to persuade him.
The look on his face when he sets eyes on her vastly pregnant belly would have been hilarious in other circumstances. He’s understandably angry, but at Torchwood, not at her. She lets him rant, does a bit of yelling herself, but she’s not sure if she’s defending Torchwood or her own decisions. In the end it amounts to the same thing. She is who she is, and her job is a big part of that.
Rhys is willing to postpone the wedding, but Gwen isn’t. She’s scared that if they don’t go ahead, her job might keep throwing obstacles in their path until Rhys gives up on her. Losing him doesn’t bear thinking about; he’s her anchor, the one thing that makes sense in her crazy life. She’d be lost without him.
So the wedding will go ahead, because Rhys loves her even though she’s pregnant with something that’s not even human, let alone his. She’s not sure she deserves him, but she knows she loves him more than anything. They’ll get through this together and everything will be okay. It has to be. She’s getting married.
The End