FIC: The Carriage held but just Ourselves (Pt. 3/10)
Title: The Carriage held but just Ourselves (Pt. 3/10)
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Gwen, Jack, Ianto, Tosh, Rhys, Owen, PC Andy, Kathy Swanson, Suzie
Words: ~2,000 (this part)
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: AU Crime Novel w/ alternating PC Gwen Cooper and CIA Agent Jack Harkness chapters. Each section contains a chapter (lengths may vary) from Gwen and Jack.
A/N: Thanks awfully to my beta, paragraphs, once again! Posting early again! Y'all, this is actually my one-year anniversary on LJ -- zoinks! This section is a little humorous, followed by a little melodramatic. Title from Emily Dickinson.
Gwen
“Brilliant! Paperwork!” Gwen shrugged out of her coat and turned on the computer. Andy stared at her in horror over his own monitor.
“Gwen, you’re lacking the appropriate level of sarcasm this morning.” He tapped his ear and furrowed his brow at her. “It sounds to me like you are actually happy to be updating the department’s traffic incident database.”
Gwen looked down at the messy stack of slips and scrawled notes on both their desks. “Just looking forward to a day off my feet,” she said. That was certainly true.
Andy snorted and turned back to his own pile. “And tomorrow we’ll have square bums and carpal tunnel,” he muttered to himself.
Gwen grimaced. She’d have to buy Andy a round to apologize for getting him saddled with this. At the same time, computer time meant Emily Dickinson time. And as for the Interpol agents … she checked her lunch box. Fairy Cake a la Rhys Williams. Donna Noble, the morning shift’s dispatcher, could not resist a good Fairy Cake, and she knew everything that happened in the station. If DI Swanson was working with Interpol on a case, Donna would know. Gwen flexed her fingers, started a search on Emily Dickinson, and began entering the first of her stack.
Two hours later, she was of the opinion that Emily Dickinson was unhealthily obsessed with death and immortality. She wished she had paid stricter attention to the subject of literary analysis in school, but it was not her particular strong suit. Bits of poems ran across her screen, quickly minimized at the approach of a fellow copper, until she realized that no one was paying her the slightest attention.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
---
Good-by to the life I used to live,
And the world I used to know;
And kiss the hills for me, just once;
Now I am ready to go!
---
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
“Gwen? Break?” Andy was peering around his monitor again, a hopeful expression on his face.
“I’ll catch up with you. Grab me a seat, yeah?” She gripped her Fairy Cake in one hand and fixed on her most charming smile as she approached Donna Noble at the dispatch desk. Donna fixated on the sweet immediately.
“Gwen Cooper! Looking to winkle something out of me, are you?” She stood, fist on hip, but there was a twinkle in her eye.
“I would never resort to bribery!” She placed the cake on the counter and leaned forward. “Strawberry sugar crystals,” she whispered conspiratorially.
Donna looked down at the cake and stretched out a lacquered nail to touch a crystal. “We-ell. I already know what it is you’re going to ask.” She broke off a piece of the cake and chewed it slowly, an expression of bliss on her face. “All right. Those Interpol agents? They were closeted in with Swanson all afternoon. The bloke’s only in his mid-twenties, I swear. Much too young to be carrying a gun. Traveling the world, hunting killers. Enforcing the law… with cuffs …” She trailed off for a moment, slack-jawed, and Gwen got an uncomfortable glimpse into the inner fantasy world of Donna Noble. “Anyway. They’re looking for someone named Dickinson - ” Gwen schooled her face to smoothness “-and there was a breakthrough on the murder weapon.”
“There was?” she asked, leaning closer.
“Indeed there was, Cooper!” DI Swanson’s sounded behind her, and Gwen jumped.
“Er -” she started.
“Forget it, Cooper. I knew you wouldn’t let it go. You want to be helpful? I need to go to court.” She gave Gwen a level look. “Dr. Harper has some very sensitive information for me. Go get it and meet me back here.” She filched a piece of the cake off Donna’s desk and swallowed it, already moving down the hall and out the door. “Just to me!” she called over her shoulder.
“Yes, ma’am!” Gwen called back. She and Donna looked at each other.
“Well. Looks like you got what you wanted,” Donna said.
“Yeah,” Gwen replied, beginning to smile.
“Be careful with that Dr. Harper,” Donna warned her as she turned away. “He’ll try to make a grab for your tits.”
Jack
“. . . and there really is no finer hospital in Wales for cosmetic surgery, I can assure you, Mr. Hart.” The handsome young doctor flashed the smile of handsome young doctors the world over and held the door open for Jack. Twit. Jack stifled a wave of annoyance and bared his teeth in a smile of sorts as he walked into the office.
“That sounds fascinating, Dr. Patanjali, but I’m really not at Spire to inquire for myself,” Jack said, settling gingerly onto the spare chair, an airy concoction indubitably provided to make perfectly healthy people feel the need for a tummy tuck.
Dr. Patanjali plastered on a look of interest. “Oh?”
“You have a patient at your hospital; an old family friend. He’s in very poor condition, but I would like to see him before I return home to Virginia,” Jack lied smoothly.
Dr. Patanjali leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. Trying to look older and wiser. “We like to provide a little privacy for our guests, as you know, due to the, ah, nature of much of our surgeries,” he said, essaying a half-smile.
“Mr. Costello is not here for cosmetic surgery.”
“Mr. Costello, is it?” Dr. Patanjali frowned. “You know Max, of course.”
Who? “Of course.” Jack gave him a reassuring smile.
“Well, then.” The doctor’s face cleared, and he rose to his feet. “I’ll let you go talk to Max, Mr. Hart. He’s a most attentive bodyguard. Room 456.”
Jack took out his mobile in the stairwell, hesitated for a moment over the numbers, and called Jones. He answered straight away. “Jones.”
“It’s Jack. Listen -”
***
“So that man in there is why Suzie Costello came back to Cardiff, you think?” Jones craned his neck around the corner. Max the Bodyguard overflowed his little chair outside Costello’s room on the fourth floor.
“Yup,” Jack confirmed. “Thought you might want in on a chat with him.”
They both leaned back against the wall around the corner. Jones raised a skeptical brow. “Is Mr. Costello able to talk at all?”
“I hope so. I wasn’t counting on a bodyguard,” Jack admitted. “The question is …”
“Did he hire a bodyguard,” Jones completed his thought, “or did Suzie, to keep him alive until she’s - what? Finished the spree you think she’s on?”
Jack stiffened. “You agree you’re on the trail of a serial killer here.”
Jones nodded. “Yes. It’s just - you have to admit the motivation is off. There’s no connection between the victims.”
Jack shook his head. “Yes there is. We’re just missing it!” His voice rose higher, and Jones looked round the corner quickly to make sure Max had not noticed. Jack sighed. “So what are you thinking then, Mr. International Police? We shouldn’t talk to Max at all?”
Jones pushed himself off the wall, and Jack noted how his coat bulged around his gun. Jack had his own gun in an ankle holster and CIA clearance, somewhat fudged for his “vacation,” strapped to his calf, and he allowed himself to contemplate for a moment teaching Jones how best to conceal a weapon.
“I want to run a check on this Max before we go in,” Jones said, and took off down the hall. “Come on.”
Jack paused, slightly taken aback, and watched him for a moment, before rolling his shoulders and following. Their strides matched as they neared the stairs. Jones led him out of the hospital and to his SUV. “I can access our database from here,” Jones muttered, pulling his PDA from his pocket and punching in codes, before hooking the device into a kind of cradle between them and settling back in his seat. Jack climbed in beside him and pulled the door closed.
They sat in silence but for the soft pinging of the search engine in the background. Jack contemplated the other man. Ianto Jones was turned out immaculately in a three piece suit. Every hair was in place, his fingernails were trim and tidy, his shoes well polished. But Jack could see a slight redness around the eyes, more than could be accounted for by the three whiskys he’d drunk the night before, and Jones was worrying his lower lip between his teeth. He shook his head to clear it of the daydream of reaching out and taking that lower lip between his own teeth, and turned his mind instead to the why. Five years of working with a moody man like Alex Hopkins had taught him he had better pay attention to his partner.
“Last night, when I first met you,” he began, opting for the direct approach, “you told Toshiko you needed to check in at the hospital. You didn’t mean this hospital. So what’s your deal, Ianto Jones?”
Jones leaned over his machine. “Max doesn’t have a record in the UK,” he said.
“I bet he’s a saint,” Jack said sharply. “Quit avoiding the question. What are you hiding?”
Jones sighed and leaned back in the seat. “It’s personal, Jack. Trust me, it has nothing to do with this case.”
“And it’s … not a distraction at all, is that right? You’re not going to, say, duck out of hospitals to run a search you could easily do on your PDA, just so you could leave the hospital where, I might add, our only solid lead on this case is slipping closer and closer into the realm of brain-dead vegetable?”
Jones flushed and looked away. “You fucking prick,” he muttered, more in despair than anger. “You don’t know -” He paused, and took a deep breath. “Don’t call him a vegetable.”
Jack leaned forward. He was much too close, crowding Jones’ space, but he didn’t care. He could see each individual eyelash, the beads of sweat on the other man’s forehead. “Why not?”
“My wife is brain-dead.” It came out in a whisper, but Jack still flinched. Shit. SHIT.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the automatic, woefully inadequate knee-jerk response.
Jones smiled humorlessly. “You didn’t do it.”
“No, but I … do you need to … why did you come to Cardiff, then?” As soon as he asked, he wished he could stuff the words back into his mouth. Tact, Harkness. Show a little fucking tact.
Jones’s eyes flashed. “How could I leave her side, do you mean?” He looked, unseeing, out the window, his jaw tightening. “Lisa doesn’t react. You know how they say people in comas will react to their loved ones’ voices? Maybe some do. Lisa does not. She also … there’s a blood clot, they keep operating on it, and it keeps coming back. It’s going to kill her. Maybe tomorrow, maybe one hour from now, maybe in five years. Lisa would … she would be furious with me.” His voice was so soft now, Jack had to strain to hear. “If she thought I was trapped at her side. If she knew she was trapped. But I can’t …” His voice trailed off.
Jack held his breath, then slowly reached out and laid his hand on the other man’s knee. “Is there anything I can do for you, Jones?”
Jones looked down at the hand on his knee, and Jack hastily withdrew it. “Let’s just find Suzie Costello as quickly as possible.”
Jack nodded, and reached over to open the door. “Right. Let’s go talk to Saint Max, then, Jones.”
Jones crawled out behind him. “Jack? You could call me Ianto, you know.”
Jack allowed himself a small smile. Ianto, then.
Part Four
Author: blue_fjords
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Gwen, Jack, Ianto, Tosh, Rhys, Owen, PC Andy, Kathy Swanson, Suzie
Words: ~2,000 (this part)
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Summary: AU Crime Novel w/ alternating PC Gwen Cooper and CIA Agent Jack Harkness chapters. Each section contains a chapter (lengths may vary) from Gwen and Jack.
A/N: Thanks awfully to my beta, paragraphs, once again! Posting early again! Y'all, this is actually my one-year anniversary on LJ -- zoinks! This section is a little humorous, followed by a little melodramatic. Title from Emily Dickinson.
Gwen
“Brilliant! Paperwork!” Gwen shrugged out of her coat and turned on the computer. Andy stared at her in horror over his own monitor.
“Gwen, you’re lacking the appropriate level of sarcasm this morning.” He tapped his ear and furrowed his brow at her. “It sounds to me like you are actually happy to be updating the department’s traffic incident database.”
Gwen looked down at the messy stack of slips and scrawled notes on both their desks. “Just looking forward to a day off my feet,” she said. That was certainly true.
Andy snorted and turned back to his own pile. “And tomorrow we’ll have square bums and carpal tunnel,” he muttered to himself.
Gwen grimaced. She’d have to buy Andy a round to apologize for getting him saddled with this. At the same time, computer time meant Emily Dickinson time. And as for the Interpol agents … she checked her lunch box. Fairy Cake a la Rhys Williams. Donna Noble, the morning shift’s dispatcher, could not resist a good Fairy Cake, and she knew everything that happened in the station. If DI Swanson was working with Interpol on a case, Donna would know. Gwen flexed her fingers, started a search on Emily Dickinson, and began entering the first of her stack.
Two hours later, she was of the opinion that Emily Dickinson was unhealthily obsessed with death and immortality. She wished she had paid stricter attention to the subject of literary analysis in school, but it was not her particular strong suit. Bits of poems ran across her screen, quickly minimized at the approach of a fellow copper, until she realized that no one was paying her the slightest attention.
I wonder if it hurts to live,
And if they have to try,
And whether, could they choose between,
They would not rather die.
---
Good-by to the life I used to live,
And the world I used to know;
And kiss the hills for me, just once;
Now I am ready to go!
---
Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
“Gwen? Break?” Andy was peering around his monitor again, a hopeful expression on his face.
“I’ll catch up with you. Grab me a seat, yeah?” She gripped her Fairy Cake in one hand and fixed on her most charming smile as she approached Donna Noble at the dispatch desk. Donna fixated on the sweet immediately.
“Gwen Cooper! Looking to winkle something out of me, are you?” She stood, fist on hip, but there was a twinkle in her eye.
“I would never resort to bribery!” She placed the cake on the counter and leaned forward. “Strawberry sugar crystals,” she whispered conspiratorially.
Donna looked down at the cake and stretched out a lacquered nail to touch a crystal. “We-ell. I already know what it is you’re going to ask.” She broke off a piece of the cake and chewed it slowly, an expression of bliss on her face. “All right. Those Interpol agents? They were closeted in with Swanson all afternoon. The bloke’s only in his mid-twenties, I swear. Much too young to be carrying a gun. Traveling the world, hunting killers. Enforcing the law… with cuffs …” She trailed off for a moment, slack-jawed, and Gwen got an uncomfortable glimpse into the inner fantasy world of Donna Noble. “Anyway. They’re looking for someone named Dickinson - ” Gwen schooled her face to smoothness “-and there was a breakthrough on the murder weapon.”
“There was?” she asked, leaning closer.
“Indeed there was, Cooper!” DI Swanson’s sounded behind her, and Gwen jumped.
“Er -” she started.
“Forget it, Cooper. I knew you wouldn’t let it go. You want to be helpful? I need to go to court.” She gave Gwen a level look. “Dr. Harper has some very sensitive information for me. Go get it and meet me back here.” She filched a piece of the cake off Donna’s desk and swallowed it, already moving down the hall and out the door. “Just to me!” she called over her shoulder.
“Yes, ma’am!” Gwen called back. She and Donna looked at each other.
“Well. Looks like you got what you wanted,” Donna said.
“Yeah,” Gwen replied, beginning to smile.
“Be careful with that Dr. Harper,” Donna warned her as she turned away. “He’ll try to make a grab for your tits.”
Jack
“. . . and there really is no finer hospital in Wales for cosmetic surgery, I can assure you, Mr. Hart.” The handsome young doctor flashed the smile of handsome young doctors the world over and held the door open for Jack. Twit. Jack stifled a wave of annoyance and bared his teeth in a smile of sorts as he walked into the office.
“That sounds fascinating, Dr. Patanjali, but I’m really not at Spire to inquire for myself,” Jack said, settling gingerly onto the spare chair, an airy concoction indubitably provided to make perfectly healthy people feel the need for a tummy tuck.
Dr. Patanjali plastered on a look of interest. “Oh?”
“You have a patient at your hospital; an old family friend. He’s in very poor condition, but I would like to see him before I return home to Virginia,” Jack lied smoothly.
Dr. Patanjali leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. Trying to look older and wiser. “We like to provide a little privacy for our guests, as you know, due to the, ah, nature of much of our surgeries,” he said, essaying a half-smile.
“Mr. Costello is not here for cosmetic surgery.”
“Mr. Costello, is it?” Dr. Patanjali frowned. “You know Max, of course.”
Who? “Of course.” Jack gave him a reassuring smile.
“Well, then.” The doctor’s face cleared, and he rose to his feet. “I’ll let you go talk to Max, Mr. Hart. He’s a most attentive bodyguard. Room 456.”
Jack took out his mobile in the stairwell, hesitated for a moment over the numbers, and called Jones. He answered straight away. “Jones.”
“It’s Jack. Listen -”
***
“So that man in there is why Suzie Costello came back to Cardiff, you think?” Jones craned his neck around the corner. Max the Bodyguard overflowed his little chair outside Costello’s room on the fourth floor.
“Yup,” Jack confirmed. “Thought you might want in on a chat with him.”
They both leaned back against the wall around the corner. Jones raised a skeptical brow. “Is Mr. Costello able to talk at all?”
“I hope so. I wasn’t counting on a bodyguard,” Jack admitted. “The question is …”
“Did he hire a bodyguard,” Jones completed his thought, “or did Suzie, to keep him alive until she’s - what? Finished the spree you think she’s on?”
Jack stiffened. “You agree you’re on the trail of a serial killer here.”
Jones nodded. “Yes. It’s just - you have to admit the motivation is off. There’s no connection between the victims.”
Jack shook his head. “Yes there is. We’re just missing it!” His voice rose higher, and Jones looked round the corner quickly to make sure Max had not noticed. Jack sighed. “So what are you thinking then, Mr. International Police? We shouldn’t talk to Max at all?”
Jones pushed himself off the wall, and Jack noted how his coat bulged around his gun. Jack had his own gun in an ankle holster and CIA clearance, somewhat fudged for his “vacation,” strapped to his calf, and he allowed himself to contemplate for a moment teaching Jones how best to conceal a weapon.
“I want to run a check on this Max before we go in,” Jones said, and took off down the hall. “Come on.”
Jack paused, slightly taken aback, and watched him for a moment, before rolling his shoulders and following. Their strides matched as they neared the stairs. Jones led him out of the hospital and to his SUV. “I can access our database from here,” Jones muttered, pulling his PDA from his pocket and punching in codes, before hooking the device into a kind of cradle between them and settling back in his seat. Jack climbed in beside him and pulled the door closed.
They sat in silence but for the soft pinging of the search engine in the background. Jack contemplated the other man. Ianto Jones was turned out immaculately in a three piece suit. Every hair was in place, his fingernails were trim and tidy, his shoes well polished. But Jack could see a slight redness around the eyes, more than could be accounted for by the three whiskys he’d drunk the night before, and Jones was worrying his lower lip between his teeth. He shook his head to clear it of the daydream of reaching out and taking that lower lip between his own teeth, and turned his mind instead to the why. Five years of working with a moody man like Alex Hopkins had taught him he had better pay attention to his partner.
“Last night, when I first met you,” he began, opting for the direct approach, “you told Toshiko you needed to check in at the hospital. You didn’t mean this hospital. So what’s your deal, Ianto Jones?”
Jones leaned over his machine. “Max doesn’t have a record in the UK,” he said.
“I bet he’s a saint,” Jack said sharply. “Quit avoiding the question. What are you hiding?”
Jones sighed and leaned back in the seat. “It’s personal, Jack. Trust me, it has nothing to do with this case.”
“And it’s … not a distraction at all, is that right? You’re not going to, say, duck out of hospitals to run a search you could easily do on your PDA, just so you could leave the hospital where, I might add, our only solid lead on this case is slipping closer and closer into the realm of brain-dead vegetable?”
Jones flushed and looked away. “You fucking prick,” he muttered, more in despair than anger. “You don’t know -” He paused, and took a deep breath. “Don’t call him a vegetable.”
Jack leaned forward. He was much too close, crowding Jones’ space, but he didn’t care. He could see each individual eyelash, the beads of sweat on the other man’s forehead. “Why not?”
“My wife is brain-dead.” It came out in a whisper, but Jack still flinched. Shit. SHIT.
“I’m sorry,” he said, the automatic, woefully inadequate knee-jerk response.
Jones smiled humorlessly. “You didn’t do it.”
“No, but I … do you need to … why did you come to Cardiff, then?” As soon as he asked, he wished he could stuff the words back into his mouth. Tact, Harkness. Show a little fucking tact.
Jones’s eyes flashed. “How could I leave her side, do you mean?” He looked, unseeing, out the window, his jaw tightening. “Lisa doesn’t react. You know how they say people in comas will react to their loved ones’ voices? Maybe some do. Lisa does not. She also … there’s a blood clot, they keep operating on it, and it keeps coming back. It’s going to kill her. Maybe tomorrow, maybe one hour from now, maybe in five years. Lisa would … she would be furious with me.” His voice was so soft now, Jack had to strain to hear. “If she thought I was trapped at her side. If she knew she was trapped. But I can’t …” His voice trailed off.
Jack held his breath, then slowly reached out and laid his hand on the other man’s knee. “Is there anything I can do for you, Jones?”
Jones looked down at the hand on his knee, and Jack hastily withdrew it. “Let’s just find Suzie Costello as quickly as possible.”
Jack nodded, and reached over to open the door. “Right. Let’s go talk to Saint Max, then, Jones.”
Jones crawled out behind him. “Jack? You could call me Ianto, you know.”
Jack allowed himself a small smile. Ianto, then.
Part Four