Title: Again
Summary: Gwen gets wounded on a Torchwood mission. Martha nurses her back to health, and admits something to Gwen about the Year that Never Was. (2014 setting.)
Rating: T for violence
Word Count: 1097
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: Mentions of Martha/Mickey; Mentions of Gwen/Rhys
Contains: gun violence
Warnings: discussion of major character death
"Gwen, no! I can't see you die again! I can't!"
Those were the last words Gwen could remember hearing before everything went dark. They were still ringing in her ears when she woke up. They were clear as bells in her ears, every syllable, but she wasn't sure what they meant.
Well. She'd almost died. She knew that part. She woke up on blood-covered trash bags (Her blood—It must have been the most sanitary thing Martha could find. They weren't dusty, at least.) in a dusty shed somewhere in the freezing Scottish moors. There was a fire going and she had Martha's thickest coat on, as well as her own clothes, and she was still freezing.
She'd been shot before. It didn't feel any better the second time around, but at least she knew roughly what to expect. The pain wasn't as bad now as it had been when it first happened. She sat up, slowly and painfully, and Martha turned around. She looked scared half to death for a moment, and then she smiled.
"You're up!" she breathed. "Thank god." Martha ran over to Gwen and checked her bandages, then made her flex various body parts and asked her a few questions to make sure that Gwen was at least as okay mentally as she was physically. She was. Gwen was in pretty awful pain, but she was fine.
"What's going on?" Gwen asked. "How long have I been out for?"
"A couple of days," Martha said. "You've been in and out, enough for me to feed you and, uh, keep you from making too much of a mess. This is the first time you've spoken to me, though. That's good. Talking is good."
"What's happened? Did the aliens—"
"Nothing's happened, Gwen. Or, if it has, Jack and Mickey did it and they haven't found us yet. I've just been hanging out here, trying to keep you alive."
Gwen nodded. "I'm sorry." She knew it was stupid and self-defeating, but she felt guilty for getting hurt.
"Don't be," Martha said quickly. "It happens."
"Still no cell phone signal?"
Martha shook her head. "I've been checking, believe me."
"We shouldn't have split up," Gwen said. "They could be in trouble. They could be..."
"It's done," Martha said. "And we don't know what's going on with them, and we won't be able to regroup for at least a few more days, when you're well enough to get out of here. There's no use worrying about it."
Gwen didn't argue. She'd give anything to be able to check in on Rhys and Anwen, but Martha's situation was much worse. Martha's husband was in immediate danger, and she couldn't reach him. At least Gwen's husband and child were safe at home.
Martha looked around, and her eyes settled on their packs of food. Gwen would have to recover quickly. Their food would only last a few more days. "Are you hungry?"
"No," Gwen lied. She'd eat when Martha ate, and only as much as Martha ate. She was injured, but Martha wasn't going to suffer more than she already had because of Gwen's injury.
They were quiet for a minute. Gwen crawled a bit closer to the fire. "What was it you said, right before I blacked out?" Gwen asked.
Martha shrugged. "About a hundred variations of 'Please don't die'?"
"No," Gwen said. "I mean... I remember you saying that you couldn't watch me die again."
"Oh," Martha said, her face suddenly going blank and her voice suddenly too steady. "You sure?"
"About as sure as I am of anything that happened during or after my gun fight," Gwen said. "Have you seen me die before?"
Martha swallowed hard and nodded. "Once, yeah."
Gwen raised her eyebrows.
"Sort of!" Martha said.
"So what? Was it like a vision of the future?"
Martha actually smirked. "That wouldn't be the maddest thing to ever happen to us, would it?"
"No," Gwen said. "But what was it, then?"
"The Year That Never Was," Martha said, sitting down next to Gwen by the fire. "Jack tell you about that?"
"A little," Gwen said. He'd told Gwen and Ianto about it and about his entire history with the Doctor, after the Stolen Earth incident.
"Well," Martha said, "When I escaped from the Valiant with Jack's vortex manipulator, I thought... I mean, I knew he had a team and he trusted you with everything, and I knew that you were in the Himalayas somewhere, and it wasn't really hard to figure things out from there. I... I found you."
"You found us dead," Gwen said.
"No," Martha said quickly. "I found you alive and well and—well, cold and frightened and a little bit pissed off at me in a shoot-the-messenger kind of way when I told you that Jack had sent me." She sighed. "We didn't even get out of the mountains before the Toclafane found us. I had this... perception filter. My TARDIS key. So when they found us, they went right past me, but all of you..." Martha swallowed hard. "There was nothing I could do. I didn't even know how to use a gun, back then. You all shot at them but you only took maybe two down and there were dozens of the things. In less than a minute it was just... me and your dead bodies."
Gwen swallowed hard and thought about that for a minute. She wasn't dead. That was good. (All three of the people Martha had watched die up there with her were dead. She couldn't... She didn't want to think about that.) "Was it weird?" she asked. "Coming to Cardiff and meeting us all again?"
"Weirdest thing in the world," Martha said. "That's why I brushed Jack off about it for months. But... I sort of had to get used to it, after what happened. Everywhere I went, there were people who were dead and building that had been destroyed. Nobody had any idea." Martha shook her head. "Watching you all die... I barely knew you, then, and it was one of the worst moments of my life. And then when Owen got shot I just...fuck. I was reliving it. And when you got shot, I went right back, again. Seven long years later and it's just that easy to take me back there..."
Gwen reached over and squeezed her hand.
"I'm okay," Gwen said.
Martha forced a smile. "You'd better be."