To Be the Wolf
"They say the wolf bestows its happy spirit to help people. Women who obtain this spirit become skilled in creative endeavors and experience a strengthening of the senses. I would like to think there is some truth to this in my own life."
~ Judi Rideout
~.o0o.~
Rose hopped off the last step from the zeppelin, waving farewell to the pilot as she shifted the rucksack on her shoulder, and strode off to face her next great adventure. Okay, so maybe Cardiff wasn't an adventure, per se. But it was familiar enough to be homey without actually being London, and right now that was exactly what she felt she needed.
She scanned the crowd at the terminal, but didn't see her contact. She'd heard good things about the Torchwood 3 office; well, good in terms of what it meant for her, although the higher ups at Canary Wharf were understandably miffed with the lot of them. The team stationed in Cardiff was supposed to be insular and fairly independent, and it wasn't unheard of for them to disregard orders from Torchwood leadership. This was just as well; even when Pete was at the helm, Mickey and Jake in Ops and Rose in R&D, there were more than enough bureaucrats left in London to make a right cock-up of things.
Rose let her eyes drift over the crowd one last time before sidling up to the terminal bar, dropping her bag, and ordering a scotch on the rocks. When her drink arrived, she scrubbed a hand through her close-cropped hair as she leaned against the bar top to wait. If the Doctor could see me now, Rose thought ruefully, he'd be laughing his arse off.
She raised the tumbler to her lips and tipped her head back, relishing the burn as the scotch slid down her throat, licking her lips in appreciation as she set the glass back down and motioned for a refill. Her right hand began to stroke the tattoo on her side absently, and Rose allowed her mind to wander in memory.
~0~0~0~
The first time someone outside of her family noticed that she wasn't ageing, she had been able to laugh it off as good genetics. She was only 31, hardly old, and her mother had retained her own youthfulness long enough to make it a plausible lie. After that, she began using a lot less makeup, trying to play out her flaws, and then used makeup to highlight them. It worked, for a while.
The second time, it was her own fault. She had wanted to go out dancing with her sister Lily, and hadn't taken enough care to disguise her appearance. One of the Torchwood xenobiologists recognized her at a nightclub, and Rose had woken up the next day in a containment cell. Pete, Mickey, and Jake had been in Austria, personally overseeing the clean-up of a rather large crash-landing, and the interrogators had somehow gotten the impression that Pete's absence gave them free reign to pick back up with old bad habits.
She was in containment for a week; more than enough time to be vivisected, twice. The second time, she'd been kept conscious. Mickey had burst in and demanded she be let loose, and Pete had fired those responsible, but the damage was done. The scars faded to nothing quickly, far too quickly for her to even pretend that things were 'normal' anymore. She stopped trying to make herself look older.
She'd left England a few months later, and Pete was able to do her the last favor of faking her death to keep the tabloids at bay. Officially, she'd burned to death in a car wreck. She was forty.
She spent the first couple of years wandering wherever the trains and ferries on the continent would take her. Three months in Amsterdam, six in Prague. Two lonely weeks spent lying on the beach at Darlig Ulv Stranden at high summer, struggling to remember exactly what his voice had sounded like during those last few precious moments.
She discovered the practicalities behind his always wearing the same thing, and her own uniform took shape. The pink midriff wrap top and navy tweed jacket with leather elbow patches drew odd looks, but she ignored them the same way he had for his brown pinstripes and chucks. She didn't have to worry about money; her mother had insisted that Pete set up an anonymous bank account for her with a monthly stipend paid with funds from VitEx, bless them both.
Eventually, she made her way farther east, spending a few months in Calcutta, then Singapore. There were still wild places there, throw backs to earlier eras, and when she stumbled across the back alleys of these cities she felt more at ease than she ever had in London. Wandering through streets that hadn't changed since the 18th century was cathartic.
She shaved her head after spending six weeks in a Buddhist temple meditating, and felt like a weight was lifted from her shoulders. She vowed never to dye her hair again, and when the monks addressed her as Huai Lang, she did nothing to deny the title. She had the calligraphy for the words painted on her skin the day she left, and made permanent the next. The world seemed a little clearer for it.
Four years on, the notice for Pete's funeral reached her in Shanghai, three weeks after the date printed on the card. She cried and raged in her room at the hostel for days, and when the proprietor asked, all she could manage to get out in her broken Mandarin was, "Last time he died, I was there to hold his hand."
A letter from Mickey arrived not long after. Pete's death had been a quiet one, a stroke in his sleep. The fallout at Torchwood was tremendous, and when the dust had settled Jake had taken over where Pete had left off. The head of Torchwood 3 had quit in disgust, having had some sort of feud with Jake years ago, refusing to be part of the Institute if Jake was at the helm.
She thought things over for another week before finally giving in and calling Mickey up, asking if they needed her kind of experience in Cardiff. She heard Mickey shout something at Jake over the phone line, about owing him ten quid–he'd won the bet about how long it would take for her to ask for the job.
Perhaps it was time to get back closer to home.
~0~0~0~
Rose blinked and shook her head out of her reverie, gripping the tumbler again and knocking back her second glass. It was very good scotch, and the burn on her throat and tongue was pleasant. She placed the glass back on the bar top, along with a couple of random notes from her pocket (she never kept any bill less than a fiver on her, so she knew there was more than enough there for the drinks and a considerable tip), and turned to scan the crowd again.
Standing not too far away was a man in his late forties, wearing an impeccably pressed suit, smoothing down his tie and scanning the crowd in the same manner she was. His eyes drifted over her, and his brow furrowed in an expression of mild disapproval before he went back to searching the mass of humanity surrounding them. Rose allowed the corner of her mouth to twitch up in an amused half-smile before shouldering her rucksack and heading in his direction.
"Ianto Jones, I presume?"
The man's eyebrows shot up towards his forehead, and Rose had to stifle a giggle. He composed himself again, and nodded his head in acknowledgement. "Miss Tyler," he began, allowing her to see that he was taking stock of her, and finding her appearance somewhat lacking, "you are not what I expected."
The half-smile graced Rose's features again, as she shot back, "I'm never what anyone expects. Like the Spanish Inquisition, me, without the red robes." She could see Ianto hesitate, and after a moment he returned her amused expression.
He motioned for her to follow him out of the terminal, and asked politely, "May I carry your bag, Miss Tyler?" She waved for him to keep moving with her free hand.
"No, Mr. Jones, I'll be fine." She took a deep, bracing breath as she stepped out into this universe's Cardiff for the first time. "I'll be just fine."