Gwen walked into the diner, checking her watch. Five minutes late. She looked around. Though she'd never been here before, the place had the same familiar feel as every other dingy little diner she'd ever been in, the same stale smells and collection of cracked vinyl booths and wobbly tables found in these sorts of places. A pair of large men sat in stools by the counter, and even their appearance was familiar, that world-weary, gone-thirteen-rounds-with-life sort that Gwen usually saw brought into the station this time of night for being drunk and disorderly. Gwen pulled out the folded scrap of paper in her pocket and studied the delicately penciled curlique that simply stated a place and time. She doubted that it had been written by either of the barflies.
"They didn't leave a name or number or anything?" Jack had asked, when Gwen had showed him the slip of paper that morning.
"Nothing," Gwen confirmed, handing him the envelope it had come in, "except this."
Jack took the envelope and opened it, pulling out a Polaroid. He'd studied it, frowning in surprise. "Talk about a mug shot."
"I already had Tosh examine it, and she thinks its genuine. It's an alien," Gwen had added, for no other reason than to affirm to her boss that she had accepted the facts.
"It is that. Definitely looking worse for wear."
That was putting it mildly, in Gwen's opinion. The face in the photo was only barely recognisable as such, with both eyes swollen shut between bony cheek ridges and a massive head crest which was severely cracked and dented. The whole head seemed badly bent out of shape. But what had immediately struck Gwen about the photo was in the upper right corner, where a human hand was poised with a bit of blue terrycloth towel, as if preparing to dab at the creature's wounds.
"Tosh couldn't identify the species," Gwen added hopefully.
"Hmm. There's something sort of familiar about it, but..." Jack shook his head and slipped the photo back into the envelope. He turned it over. "No return address and no postage, I see."
"I found it pushed through my letterbox this morning. Whoever sent it knows who I am, Jack."
Jack picked up the scrap of paper and read it again. "Someone who found an alien, and wants to talk to you about it tonight at a diner, but is too paranoid to give you any clue about who they are."
Gwen studied Jack's relaxed posture as he slouched on top of his desk. He didn't look nearly as concerned about this as Gwen felt. She'd been looking over her shoulder all the way to work this morning. "What do you think we should do about it?"
Jack put the paper back in the envelope, and handed it towards Gwen. "I think you should do it."
That wasn't the answer she'd been hoping to hear. "What?"
"Normally we're twisting arms and breaking laws to find out stuff like this. This time somebody's reaching out to us with it. We'd be idiots not to take advantage of that," Jack had explained.
"And what if that's what they're counting on? What if it's a trap or something?"
Jack smirked. "With your track record, I'd bet it was a hoax, first."
Gwen still hadn't lived down the 'Eugene incident' (as everyone else had taken to calling it) and it had only strengthened her reputation as the bleeding heart of Torchwood. Still, she refused to consider open-mindedness and compassion as weaknesses, and despite his teasing, Gwen knew Jack didn't, either.
So here she was, standing inside a seedy little diner, holding a scrap of paper and making damn sure she knew where all the exits were, just in case. That was how she finally spotted the likely author of the note, curled up tightly against the wall in a back booth.
Taking a deep breath, Gwen walked over to the booth and dropped the note on the table. "Did you write this?" she asked in her most official-sounding tone of voice.
The tiny slip of a woman, drowning in an oversized woolly sweater and cradling a mug of coffee, timidly pulled the note towards herself with a fingertip. She cast a furtive glance up at Gwen from beneath a tattered fishing cap and nodded nervously. Then she started to speak, but her voice was so soft that Gwen couldn't make it out.
"Sorry?" Gwen asked, leaning in.
"So you got the picture, then?" the tiny woman repeated, barely any louder.
Noticing that the barflies had begun to take notice of her, Gwen slid into the seat opposite the tiny woman. "Yes. Why did you send it to me?"
The tiny woman clutched at her mug as if it were a security blanket and tried to curl up even tighter into the corner of the booth, as if she were attempting to melt into the very wall itself. "Sorry. I-I didn't know who else to go to. You're not going to arrest and brainwash me, are you?"
Gwen was slightly dumbfounded by the woman's genuinely fearful eyes. "What? No, of course not. I don't even know what this is about." She reached into her pocket and pulled out the photo. She slid it across the table so the woman could see it. "What is this?"
Suddenly, the woman's large eyes were brimming with tears and she struggled to stop a sob from shaking her heavily swaddled frame.
Startled, Gwen reached out to take her hand reassuringly. "It's alright. What's your name?"
The woman swallowed and composed herself as well as she could. "P-Petal Sheppard." She touched the photo with a trembling fingertip. "And that's Pelgas."
Gwen studied Petal's anguished face for a moment as she looked at the photograph. "Okay, Petal," she said gently, "My name is Gwen. Why don't you start at the beginning for me?"
Petal nodded and took a swig from her mug. "Well, I guess it all started on Christmas day."