This story takes place after, and contains spoilers for, "Doomsday."
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It wasn't exactly a normal first day at work. Then again, "normal" isn't really a word anyone would apply to Torchwood—not even the people who worked there. I'm not even sure "normal" is in their vocabulary.
Still, even they thought it was strange when I got Ji'kwedalian intestines all over me.
"It doesn't normally do that," Wanda, the team leader, said. "Tanner?"
Tanner shrugged and herded the blue gelatinous alien back into a holding tank. "Don't know, Rose must've upset it. Sea cucumbers do the same thing when they feel threatened."
"Well, try not to do it again," Wanda said, and headed back toward the main complex.
"I didn't do anything!" I said. "Anyway, if it's just an alien sea cucumber, why are my clothes dissolving?" I crossed my arms over my rapidly disintegrating shirt.
"High acid content. This should neutralize it." Tanner sprayed me with a thick, foggy substance so cold it stung. My shirt and pants clung to me in wet tatters, and my mouth hung open in shock.
He tossed me a lab coat. "Welcome to Torchwood."
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The Ji'kwedalian aside, it wasn't so hard to get used to the aliens. Once you'd got used to the idea of aliens, the battle was half over. What was hard for me was what we did with the aliens—the studying, the keeping them in cages and all that. It felt wrong somehow, like they didn't belong. It's a bit like the difference between going on safari and working in a zoo: the adventure's all gone, and it's just a job, and a bit of a dirty one at that.
I asked Jeanne once if it bothered her, because she seemed more sensitive than the others. "Don't you ever get the sense that we're doing something wrong?"
"Not at all. It's not safe letting them run about; you know that. Biologically, we want to survive, and we will prefer the good of our species over any other."
"Haven't we evolved beyond just surviving? Aren't compassion and curiosity what make us human?"
Jeanne shook her head. "At their best, those traits make us better suited to survival. That's all. And if we allow them to impair our survival, they have failed in their purpose."
So much for sensitive. That's what I get for judging based on a cute chubby face and wide eyes. All right, and she smiled. But I guess a Torchwood smile just means you want to show you still have all your teeth. The better to eat you with.
It's not so bad though. It's just different. Not so much of the wonder and the travel. I miss that, and I miss the Doctor. He would have known what to do.
"Sod off about the Doctor," Goran said to me the other day. "He's not here, so he's sod-all use to us right now. Move on."
It was rude of him to say, but what stung the most was that he was right. We didn't have the Doctor to explain things or bail us out. We were stuck with our own best judgments, our own decisions and the consequences of our mistakes.
I remember the night we were all stuck in Cardiff with the Slitheen, trying to decide whether to let her get executed at Roxicocoriphallipatorius. "It isn't always like this, is it?" she said. "The waiting. Having to face what you've done."
She was right. And now it is like that all the time for me. The TARDIS saved her, and it saved the Doctor from making that decision. Sometimes I wish it hadn't, so I could know what he would have done. Because the TARDIS isn't here to save me now.
Every now and then, I sit alone in an abandoned place and listen for the high-pitched sound of the TARDIS. I want it to take me away again. Sometimes I think I hear it, but it never comes.
