Title: Aliens and Motherhood
Summary: Torchwood doesn't always mix well with parenthood. Anwen got into something she shouldn't have, Martha is confused, and Gwen is distraught.
Rating: T for non-graphic references to child illness and death.
Word Count: 1876
Other Chapters: No.
Disclaimer: The British Broadcasting Corporation owns Torchwood and all related characters, settings, and trademarks. I do not profit in any way from this material.
Pairings: gen; Gwen Cooper/Rhys Williams (mentioned); Martha Jones/Mickey Smith (mentioned); Jack Harkness/Lucia Moretti (mentioned)
Contains: Parenthood, family
Warnings: Child illness
"Go ahead and say it," Gwen said, when she thought Martha had recovered from the shock. "I'm the worst mother in the world."
"Wasn't even thinking that," Martha said quickly, shaking her head. "Accidents happen, Gwen."
"Not like this!" She gestured to Anwen, who was sitting on Martha's counter looking perfectly happy and healthy, except that she was glowing. Literally glowing in the dark. She was the only light on in Martha's kitchen, in fact.
Martha worried her lower lip between her teeth and took a deep breath. "Not usually, no, but she looks fine. How do you feel, Anwen?"
"Fine," Anwen said, clicking her flowered white shoes together in boredom.
"Why don't you tell me what happened?" Martha said, as Mickey arrived in the kitchen with her basic medical kit.
Mickey froze when he realized where the light was coming from, then slowly looked from Anwen to Gwen to Rhys. "I don't think kids are supposed to do that, mate," he said quietly.
Gwen and Rhys both just shook their heads.
Martha turned the kitchen light back on, picked a couple of basic check-up tools out of her bag, then smiled at Anwen. "Tell me what happened," she said again.
"Uncle Jack brought over candy—" Anwen said.
"—It wasn't candy," Gwen said for the thirtieth time or so.
"—And I ate it."
"That couldn't have tasted very good," Martha said.
Anwen shrugged.
"We're not as sure as we'd like to be that she actually has taste-buds," Gwen said.
"Well," Martha said, "If Jack brought it over, does Jack know what it was?"
"Not a bloody clue," Gwen said. "He brought it over so that I could run some tests on it," Gwen said. "With no base, we've been keeping a lot of the equipment in my attic." She shrugged and shook her head. "I left the jar sitting on the kitchen table, planning to bring it up later, and she climbed up onto the chair and grabbed it while I was on the phone." It took a lot of effort for Gwen not to slap herself. "Jack said the symbol on the outside looked like an Artesian medical symbol, so I guess it's some New Age gunk for aliens from the future. Bloody perfect."
Martha and Mickey were both quiet for a minute.
"You two look like you need a drink," Mickey said. "Can I get you something?"
"Yes," Rhys said, and Gwen was sure she heard him mutter "Bloody Torchwood," as Mickey pulled two ciders out of the fridge and they walked into the living room.
Gwen stayed.
"You've already induced vomiting?" Martha asked.
"Yeah," Gwen said as Martha started doing a perfectly routine paediatric check-up. "We figured we shouldn't wait until we got her to London to try that." They couldn't have taken her to a doctor in Cardiff, or even anywhere in Wales. What would they have said? It had to be Martha.
"Good," Martha said. "And there haven't been any signs that any thing's wrong so far?"
"Martha, she's glowing."
"Yes, but she's not been dizzy or incoherent or violently ill or anything?"
"No." Gwen bounced in place nervously as she watched Martha work. She almost wished she had gone to have a drink with the men, but she knew that if she had, she'd be driving herself out of her mind with worry right now.
"I might have to draw B-L-O-O-D and send it off for testing," Martha said. "She gonna be okay with that?"
"Nooooo," Gwen said. She held up a finger, walked over to her child, and lifted her from the counter. "Come here, sweetie... Gwen carried Anwen into the dinning room, then sat down at the table and pulled Anwen into her lap. She covered Anwen's eyes with her left hand and grabbed her daughters right arm with her right hand, and flipped it so that the vein was exposed for Martha.
"Mummy, what are you doing?" Anwen asked as Martha walked into the room with a bag and a a needle.
"Nothing, sweetie, just stay like this."
As soon as Martha poked Anwen, she started to whine. She held still until Martha pulled the needle out, but didn't give Martha time to get a bandaid on her before she screamed and wiggled out of Gwen's arms.
"Anwen!" Gwen yelled, jumping up, but she didn't calm down and, in that exact moment, Rhys came running into the kitchen and Anwen flung herself into his arms and sobbed incoherently into his shoulder.
"What happened?!" Rhys said.
"Oh, she's just upset because Martha had to draw blood. Just take her into the other room! We're done for now!"
Rhys nodded stiffly and carried Anwen back to the living room. Gwen collapsed back onto the dining room chair, not really caring that it was hard and wood and that it hurt to hit it so hard, and she buried her face in her hands and grunted frustratedly. "This doesn't happen," she said.
"What?"
"This doesn't happen!" Gwen said. "Not to anyone but me! My family!" She took a deep breath to keep herself from sobbing. "What am I doing to my child?"
"Stop it," Martha said. "Kids get into things all the time. It's just... what they do. She's young. She'll grow out of it."
"If she gets a chance to!" Gwen said. "For all we know, that stuff could kill her tomorrow!"
"Don't think that way!" Martha said. "You've done everything right! You induced vomiting and you brought her straight to me and as far as I can tell so far, she seems fine. Yeah, she's glowing, but that's the only thing that we know for sure is wrong, and that's not so bad, so it? She's alright. I'm texting my colleagues at UNIT right now about the blood tests—" She showed Martha her phone, "—and maybe one of them will know what we're actually dealing with here. I'll also try to get in touch with the Doctor—if anyone'll know what this stuff is, it'll be him—and if anything serious iswrong, we'll know very soon and we'll get it fixed. I promise. She's fine and she's going to stay fine."
Gwen took another deep breath. "How long will the blood tests take?"
"With all the tests I'm going to have to run?" Martha said. "Twenty-four hours. But when they're done, we'll know for sure if any thing's happening." Martha squatted down and hugged Gwen. "But I really think everything's okay."
"Then I'm lucky, but still a bloody awful mother. Rhys is furious."
"Rhys is scared, same as you," Martha said. "This sort of thing happens all the time."
"Really? Kids accidentally eat unknown alien medicine all the time? Is that the sort of thing UNIT regularly gets calls about, because in all my years at Torchwood I have never—"
"Kids regularly get into things they're not supposed to," Martha said sharply. "It was a slightly weirder thing with you than it generally is, okay, but that's got to happen all the time with parents whose jobs put them in contact with dangerous chemicals. Somewhere in London there's a chemistry teacher or something with the exact same story. It happens. You're not a terrible parent."
Gwen worried her lip for a second and looked at Martha. "Jack sent his daughter away. Just... when she was two years old, she and her mother got new names and moved to Wiltshire and Jack saw her every other weekend and occasionally on holidays. He doesn't talk about it much, but he told me. Said he was actually glad that I wasn't making his mistakes, that I've been keeping my home life together, but I'm starting to wonder if maybeI made the mistake and he was right all along. This isn't a safe job to have kids around."
"No," Martha said quickly, shaking her head. "Gwen, don't say that. This is your life. Torchwood and Anwen are both part of your life and you can have them both."
"What makes you so sure of that?"
"I'm not sure!" Martha snapped. "But I need it to be true! Mickey and I have been talking and—" She choked. "I just need it to be possible to have kids and Torchwood. UNIT officials had kids all the time. Soldiers, police officers, they all have kids. So why not us? We shouldn't have to give upeverything for this job."
"Martha, are you and Mickey...?"
"We've been talking," she repeated. She shook her head and sighed. "We know it's selfish." She looked back up at Gwen. "And it is selfish, yeah. But... I mean, isn't it usually selfish to have kids? People usually do it for themselves. You're not a bad person for not choosing between your job and your family, no matter how dangerous or important your job is. And Jack's been there. Jack made his choice and we know how much good it did him in the end. So maybe we should trust him."
"Do you think it would have made any difference with Jack, if he had stayed with her mother and tried to raise her in Cardiff?"
Martha shrugged. "I don't think think there's much point in guessing. There's always Sarah Jane, though. Everything worked out fine for her."
"Lucky Sarah Jane."
Martha smiled slightly. "It's always 90% luck, isn't it?" She hugged Gwen. "You're a good mother, Gwen. You really are. You do the best you can with some insane circumstances, and that's what this is all about."
"Yeah," Gwen said, "Tell that to my kid when she becomes a circus freak because it's the only job a girl who glows in the dark can actually do."
"She's not going to glow in the dark forever," Martha promised. "UNIT will be over any minute now to collect the blood sample, and we'll get her fixed up. We really will. She seems fine now, and if it were poisonous or something she'd probably already be having some kind of reaction to it. I want you to stay the night here, just to be safe, but everything will be okay. I promise."
Everything was okay, in the end. The spent the night and waited anxiously all through the next day for news, and absolutely nothing bad happened. The blood tests came back normal. The Doctor did call Martha back at around lunch time, and after hearing Gwen describe exactly what Anwen had taken over the phone, he said it was probably nothing to worry about, and the glowing would go away on its own in time. It was nearly six months before they let Anwen go to slumber parties again, but she survived and seemed to be perfectly normal by the end of the year. Rhys' anger cooled, and Gwen's guilt faded in time. After all, even when she'd been undercover and Anwen had just been a baby, there'd been days when she felt like a terrible mother. It really was all luck, much of the time. Aliens and parenthood were only as mutually exclusive as she wanted them to be, and at this point in Gwen's life, she couldn't imagine choosing between them. She just had to be a lot more careful about leaving brightly coloured alien goo within her four-year-old's reach.