"I remember...I remember..." - Gwen Cooper, Everything Changes

After some careful maneuvering, Jack collected Susie's bag and weapon, gathered the upset and obviously shocky PC into his arms, and then both of them onto the lift step. He avoided looking too closely at Susie's body, just yet. He still couldn't quite credit that she had been murdering people. Not the Susie he'd known…

He activated the lift, glad that the Cooper seemed to be in a state of shock that precluded hysterical sobbing. He'd held sobbing women in his arms before, but he by far preferred that particular situation to include less clothing, and more moaning.

Once they had cleared the upper reaches of the Hub, he looked down and was surprised to see Ianto making his way over to meet them.

"Ianto?" Jack said as he stood on the descending lift, with what he was already considering his newest Torchwood recruit in his arms. "I thought you were..."

"Couldn't sleep. Decided to do some sorting of the mess the London items are still in." Ianto said, eyeing the silent PC. "What's happened?"

"Susie's…" Jack couldn't help his eyes flicking up toward the roof and the pavement of the Centre above them.

"The glove did something to her." Ianto said with his usual perception. "She's the one…"

"Yes." Jack answered shortly, as the lift reached the main level. "All plans for tonight are officially canceled, I need to get back upstairs and take care of…"

"Understood, sir." Ianto said, and took a step forward to reach his hand out and place it on the PC's still shuddering shoulder. "C'mon then, lets get you settled down with a nice cup of tea, and you can tell me about it, yeah?"

Despite his surprise at seeing Ianto reach out to comfort the woman so easily, Jack noted that when he'd begun speaking to Cooper, his accent had deepened just the slightest bit, softening the vowels in a musical way that always made Jack need to take a deeper breath when Ianto used it, as Cooper raised her head to gaze wide-eyed at the young man.

"No more pills in my drink, thank you…" Cooper said, still not calmly, but with a degree of inner strength that Jack admired.

"No, just a nice hot cuppa with plenty of sugar. You're in shock, and it will help." Ianto glanced at Jack, as he took Cooper's hand, and helped her down, tucking her arm into his. They stood looking as proper as a Victorian couple, but Jack knew Ianto was supporting most of her weight on his arm, as they both turned to look at him.

Jack smiled slightly, and shook his head. "Don't worry about the debrief, Ianto. If you can just get her settled down with a blanket and tea on the couch and keep an eye on her. I'd like you to call Tosh and Owen and tell them if they have anything whatsoever that shouldn't have left the base, to get it and bring it in, please. Tonight. Don't say anything about Susie, I'll explain when they get in, and if you have anything…" Jack pressed the button that began the lift moving upwards again, knowing he didn't need to finish the half-question.

"I don't." Ianto told him, guiding Cooper away toward the grubby couch, as the lift began rising behind them he raised his voice to be heard over the mechanism. "There's nothing belonging here that I have the slightest interest in taking home with me."

"Well, now that's a lie, and we both know it…" Jack called down to him from midway up to the roof, with a laugh.

"Time and a place, Captain." Was the stern remonstrance he heard called back, just before he reached the roof, and lost sight of them.

Ianto guided the PC to the couch, and got her settled as best he could. He hurried down the stairs to the medical bay, grabbed a woolen blanket from a cupboard, and brought it back up to find her gazing with confused eyes up to where the Captain had disappeared again through the roof.

"Did he..?" She trailed off and turned to meet his eyes.

"Yes, he was flirting with me." Ianto knew he wasn't answering the question she was really asking him, "Happens quite often, but he's no more gay than I am…"

Cooper looked at him perceptively, despite the shock he knew she was in, which forced him to raise his estimation of her when she took his cue and ran with it. "That's a misleading answer, since I don't know how gay you might be…"

Ianto's lips twitched into a smirk before he could control it, and he shrugged at her slightly. "It's the closest to an answer to your question you're likely to get from anyone. If you really want to know, you'll have to ask him yourself."

She contemplated that response, as he tucked the blanket around her shoulders carefully, and then nodded in acceptance. "I know you offered tea, but you wouldn't happen to have any coffee instead, would you?"

"Oh, I think I might be able to find something that will suit." Ianto smiled, straightening from the crouch he'd taken next to her. He could already feel that she'd be quick to recover from her shock, and he was inclined to think that the Captain was correct about this PC Cooper; she was going to fit in just fine.

Gwen Cooper sat in something of a daze, sipping the absolutely heavenly coffee the young man in the gorgeous pinstripe suit had provided her… He really did look good in the suit.

Jones; that was his name she remembered now. Ianto Jones. The only Welsh member of Torchwood, by his accent and that ubiquitous Welsh name...

She realized now that after Harkness's almost dismissive introduction she hadn't even remembered Jones enough to mention him in the note she'd tried to write herself when Harkness had drugged her.

She couldn't understand how she had managed that, or maybe she could… Jones had a way about him; despite his attractive looks and the lovely suits, he just sort of melted into the background…

By the look of the way he and Captain Harkness seemed to work together like a choreographed pair of dancers, he did more than 'clean up, and make sure they got everywhere on time' for Torchwood, or at least for Captain Harkness. She also couldn't shake the feeling that Jones had seen everything that happened on the Plass above, and hadn't seemed even the slightest bit surprised. He'd fobbed off her tentative questions with that transparent misdirection about Harkness flirting, but she'd taken the warning for what it was and simply watched them.

The woman… Susie's body had been carried down on the lift by Harkness. Jones had handed Gwen her promised cup of coffee in passing, as he pushed a gurney with a white PVC bag on it over for the Captain to place their former teammate inside. There was whispered conversation, glances in her direction as Harkness removed his heavy woolen coat and the jacket underneath handing them to Jones along with the bag Susie had carried, then began absently rolling up the sleeves of his shirt. Harkness shrugged, and nodded at something Jones said while staring down at the face of the dead woman expressionlessly. Jones rested a hand on the Captain's forearm, and Harkness looked up sharply at whatever the suited young man said to him that time, then his eyes softened as he nodded again, raising his own hand to rest on the side of the younger man's neck for a long moment, before sliding it over his shoulder and down the suited arm while Jones ducked his head almost shyly.

The entire interaction had confused her, the touches weren't sexual, they were almost brotherly, except that the way Harkness watched Jones walk away towards Harkness's own office was anything but, at least until he'd caught her observing. At which point he'd flashed her a flirty grin before seeming to remember himself; looking back down at the body with a sigh that made his shoulders slump as they had before Jones had initiated the contact, he pushed the gurney down a ramp and out of sight.

Then she realized; Jones had comforted him, and he'd accepted it, but like Schrodinger's cat it had been killed by observation, and now that moment of distraction Jones had given Harkness was gone. She could have kicked herself, until she remembered that the man she was empathizing with had cheerfully drugged her only the night before.

For a time she wondered if she'd been drugged again, because the hazy confusion she was in felt like it, but no… Shock, Jones had said; and she knew the symptoms well enough for herself. Besides, watching a man be shot in the head, then arise again like Lazarus should be more than enough, without having discovered the serial killer the police had been searching for, nearly being shot herself, then watching the murderer suicide…

Definitely shock, she confirmed to herself, fingering the edge of the woolen blanket around her shoulders.

"Owen and Tosh are on their way in." Jones called to Harkness from the office, just as the Captain made his way back into the area that seemed to be the main workspace. Gwen wasn't sure how he'd known that his leader was within hearing distance, because the sightline between them was completely blocked, but neither of them seemed to notice the oddity as she had.

"You told them to…"

"I told them. Neither would admit to anything specific, so I had to mention there'd been an incident and the order was a direct result. I left out any mention of whom the incident pertained to…"

"Perfect. Thank you, Ianto." Harkness sighed, and leaned against the railing outside his office, he was staring down toward where she'd seen Susie working the night before. "Get a containment box ready for me as well, would you? Secure Archives, NFU."

"Just the one?"

"I think I'll choose to presume that the other two wouldn't take anything too dangerous out into public, until they prove me wrong."

"For what it's worth, I'm fairly sure your faith is justified," Jones said, finally making his way out to lean against the doorway of the office. "Only things I've noticed missing are that harmless translation device that Tosh was so fascinated by when it came in last week, and the pheromone spray Owen was supposed to be testing on rats. I think he's jealous of your cologne…"

"You know I never wear any…"

"At the moment you're wearing the slight tic beside your left eye that denotes a developing migraine," Jones replied dryly. "I've left a cup of coffee and two paracetamol waiting on your desk. Go try to relax a moment to let them work, before it gets so bad you bite both their heads off when they get here."

"I would call you a mind reader, but if you were really doing that it wouldn't be coffee and painkillers on my desk, right now…"

"I'm afraid that particular thought will have to go the way of any other plans we all had. Owen will need to examine Susie, if only for the official record. Tosh is going to have some work ahead of her making sure that the situation is contained, and you still have PC Cooper to debrief."

Gwen had been so caught up in eavesdropping on their conversation that she started a bit when they both looked directly at her, and all she could do was blink at them.

"Jack, I'm perfectly capable…" Jones began, softly, but Harkness interrupted him with a sharp shake of his head, and then a wince.

"No, I'll speak with her after Owen and Tosh get here and get started. Until then, you never fail to notice when my head seems to think it's supposed to be split down the middle. Your coffee, a couple painkillers and a few moments with my eyes closed will set me right. Just…keep an eye on her, make sure breaking the Retcon hasn't done her any damage, please."

"I'll take care of her." Jones nodded and squeezed Harkness's shoulder as he stepped past him, then went down the stairway and crossed to where Gwen sat.

Gwen continued to watch Harkness, as his eyes followed Jones across the main area, the same emotion she'd seen before was in his eyes, only this time he turned away without acknowledging her observation, and made his way into the office behind him and out of sight.

"How are you feeling, Miss Cooper?" Jones asked, crouching down beside her as he had earlier. He looked genuinely concerned for her, and she couldn't help but believe that he was.

"Call me Gwen, please." She told him with a weak smile, and then answered. "Bit better, the coffee was lovely… Best I've ever had, really."

"I get that a lot around here," he shrugged with a wry smile, and she raised a jaded eyebrow, but he only rolled his eyes. "I make the coffee for everyone. We have a professional machine, but somehow amidst all this advanced technology, I'm the only one willing to admit being able to get the thing to work properly. I spent a bit of time at uni working as a barista in a gourmet cafe for pocket money. So, now they're all utterly spoiled."

"I remember the others now, Owen is the doctor… Toshiko is the computer specialist, Susie… I guess she was second…and Harkness is obviously the leader, but all I know about you is that you're younger than the rest, really do look good in a suit, and worked as a barista. Why are you here?"

"Susie was a very accomplished mechanical engineer, specializing in weapons. As for me, you'll have to come and see, maybe you can figure it out for yourself. You're quite good at that…" Jones rose from his crouch, and held out his hand to her. "We've time before the others will be able to make it in, and the Captain needs a bit of time to himself, so I can take you down to my domain, and show you around a bit. I need to go down there to find a containment unit."

Gwen took his hand, and stood, letting the blanket fall from her shoulders. She felt better, not recovered really, but better by the moment. So when she tucked her arm into his this time, it wasn't for support, it was because she rather enjoyed the touch of old-fashioned manners it embodied.

"Where are you from, then?" Gwen asked, as they made their way down a hallway. "Somewhere nearby?"

"You could say that," He smiled slightly, "Where would your first guess be?"

"Somewhere posh…" Gwen said, wrinkling her nose in thought. He reminded her a bit of Vaughn, who she knew had grown up moneyed, who had worked her way up to head dispatcher because she enjoyed the job, not because she needed to. "Bit posher than me, at any rate."

"You'd be wrong there, love." His accent suddenly changed entirely, sounding like any one of the obnoxious young punters she'd dealt with after an exciting game on the pub telly riled them up. "Estate boy, through and through, I am. Come up on the streets a' Cardiff. M' sister and 'er man've two kids still out to one of the council estates not far offa where we come up at."

"Oh, you bugger!" She laughed, realizing he'd led her right into that one, and appreciating it.

"I got out on my own merits." Jones said, smiling. His voice back to the posher tones that he seemed to use in his daily life. "I probably didn't sound quite that bad even growing up. My sister still does, though I love her all the more for never being ashamed of our roots. I was never as comfortable there, I just didn't fit in. Got into some trouble at times, trying. I was a scholarship boy, though; public schools then on to Oxford. Double Honours in Linguistics and History. Spoke seven languages when I was recruited by Torchwood London just out of school. I got my masters in Linguistics in my first year with them, and also learned three more non-terrestrial languages to bring me up to ten."

"Local boy made very, very good then?" Gwen smiled encouragingly. "I begin to see where you fit in with the rest here, I think."

"Not really." He shrugged. "Apart from one specific area here, I'm just what the Captain described me as. I clean up their messes, make sure they get everywhere they need to be, make the coffee, and keep them all fed. Not a one of them actually realizes that I'm as much a genius in my own field as the rest. Not even the Captain. I rather enjoy them all underestimating me, mind? So don't go ruining my fun. I'm counting on your Welsh honour and fellowship, aye?"

"Oh, aye!" She agreed with a giggle, as he stopped them before one of the doors seemingly identical to all the ones they'd passed in the otherwise empty hallways. Gwen thought they must be several levels down from the main one where the rest did their work. "I'm counting on your Welsh honour and fellowship not to be leading me to some dank place I'll never be heard from again, at the moment. So if yours proves out, I promise mine will, yeah?"

"Well, I wouldn't count on finding my way out on your own from this maze, but since I doubt the rest could either, you're in good company." He laughed, "Just don't go wandering and I'll make sure you don't get lost forever in the bowels of the Hub."

He reached out to a pad on the wall, and punched in a very long series of numbers she couldn't follow, and the door clanked as some interior lock released.

"In here, you'll find the one place where I am absolute king of my Torchwood domain. Other than the coffee station, that is." With that pronouncement, he opened the door and stepped aside to let her precede him.

Gwen stepped in and looked around, and her eyes widened to see shelf after heavily laden shelf going back into the far distance.

"This is the secure archives for Torchwood Cardiff." Jones told her, with pride. "Other than Captain Harkness, no one else knows the code to enter this room; though he was more than happy to pass it on to me when I expressed an interest in doing some organizing down here. He is probably the least organized man I've ever met, so it gives him horrors to think about this room. More than two hundred years of the most dangerous items dropped through the rift and collected by Torchwood. There's no one else here with the knowledge and expertise to safely handle, organize, and account for what's in this room. Doing so was a major part of my job in London, and our archives there were even more extensive than Cardiff's. When Canary Wharf fell, I came here because I knew someone needed to be able to make sure that the things rescued from the wreckage were properly taken care of. Right now we're only here to get this…"

Jones reached down to a pile of empty strong-boxes stacked along the interior wall and took one, then reached to a shelf above and took a large lock to go with it.

"I brought you with me to show you that despite Susie, despite the minor borrowing that Owen and Tosh have let themselves be tempted into, there are two people who take the dangerous items the rift dumps on our heads very seriously." He told her, with a solemn expression. "The things in this room aren't for the hands of anyone, and once they're placed here they do not leave unless the person who requests them fills out forms that would daunt a barrister specializing in tax law, and if they can't justify their request it is summarily refused. What happened to Susie…it was one part her, one part the glove, and one part the Captain, he knows it. So, keep that in mind when you think about what happened tonight and what led up to it. Susie was our teammate; she was a good woman before she was seduced by something none of us understood into letting out that dark side that every human being has. That's the risk we all take, and it's the thing we all fight hardest against every day. Curiosity is in all our natures, or we wouldn't be here. The important thing is to realize when that need to know things is leading you toward something that you might not be able to recover from."

"I think I understand you now." Gwen said, as they made their way back through the halls.

"Do you?" He said, glancing at her without stopping.

"You're the one who takes care." She said, feeling quite positive that she finally had a good read on him. "You've seen things the others haven't, yet. Even if they don't realize it. So, you take care of all of them, and everything else that needs it. You worked in London, and both you and Harkness have told me now that it fell. Canary Wharf, you said. I saw what must have been the cover story, and it was bad enough. Whatever really happened must have been so much worse. They let their need to know things go too far. They didn't take enough care of what they were doing, and of each other, and it destroyed them, and you were there, weren't you?"

"Yep." His answer was short and she sensed that the subject wasn't one he was willing to elaborate on.

"The others might not get it…" She stopped, forcing him to stop with a hand on his arm, waiting for him to turn and make eye-contact before she continued. "The others might not get it, but Harkness does. He sees you. Or at least if he doesn't quite yet, he really, really wants to."

Jones looked at her, and for a moment, no more than an instant, she thought she saw panic in his eyes, before it changed into contemplation. Finally he nodded.

"Yeah, you really are quite good, Gwen Cooper." He smiled at her, but it wasn't a happy smile. "What you don't know is that I was given retirement from Torchwood with full lifetime pension and no prejudice after Canary Wharf. I could have traveled the world, gone back to school, eventually even taken a professorship, or gone into some other field entirely. I'm certainly young enough, aye? Instead of doing any of those things, I came here. Back to the danger, back to the adrenaline. I'm no better than the rest in that. I'm just that slightest bit more careful, because I've already walked through the hell that can come when our reach far exceeds our grasp. That's what Jack Harkness sees when he looks at me, but in the end he'll only be disappointed because what he's looking for is someone who hasn't been tainted by Torchwood, and that's not me."

He strode forward again, and she stood for a moment before she remembered his warning about finding her way alone, and hurried to catch up. She took his arm again in the same old-fashioned way he'd offered it before.

"So…" She said, and turned her head to eye him speculatively, "What are all those languages, then?"

She actually felt the sigh of relief he gave that she'd changed the subject, and mentally patted herself on the back for it.

"English and Welsh, obviously." He told her with a sideways smile then continued. "French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, and Hindi."

"Well, you must be the best dinner date. Never have to worry about not being able to read the menu, do you..?" Gwen counted that up in her head, and then looked at him curiously, "Wait, that's more than the seven you said…"

"Ten, I said." He smirked, "The last three are the non-terrestrial ones. Alien languages."

"But…no."

"Torchwood once had an outpost in India for a reason, and how did you think the Greek got so advanced for their time? And well, those Portuguese…not much needs to be said there." He shook his head with a frown.

"No…Really?"

"No." He laughed at what she could only think was her flabbergasted expression. "I did learn them since I started with Torchwood, but they're extras I picked up because the archives had records written in them, and I was curious to know why. The three non-terrestrial languages I speak are Vinvocchi, because we seem to have had a number of them visiting Earth over the years. They seem to be mostly scientists, the way anthropologists study tribes on an isolated island. Not interfering, just observing to learn about us. Then there are two languages that were entirely accidental. They're the main two languages from a single planet that we happened to come across some sort of teaching device for, and since I was the new language specialist, I got first crack at figuring it out. Pushed a button I shouldn't have; full dump of both languages all at once into my head. I had a banging headache for a week, but eventually sorted it all out. I figured out it was supposed to work that way. Something that race gives to traders and tourists who visit their planet, when they're sending along what passes for their travelers' visa; one time use, but no worry about a language barrier. I was very sad to find out that item didn't make it through the fall of London; I was sort of hoping someone would come along who could reverse-engineer it, and figure out how to set them for other languages. I think Tosh might have been able to make a good try at it."

"Oi! Harkness!" A cockney voice sounded along with the blaring alarms Gwen's still foggy memories associated with the door as Gwen and Ianto made their way into the main workspace. "Why've you got the Teaboy calling us in at the arse-end of the night!?"

"Bloody Owen…" Ianto muttered, rolling his eyes in a show of annoyance that Gwen thought was probably something he wouldn't show to the doctor directly.

"Owen, something's happened…" Gwen heard the voice of the Japanese technician next. "I was here before you. Jack's in his office with the blinds shut, and Suzie and Ianto are nowhere to be found…"

"Ianto's probably in there with Jack…" Owen said, salaciously. "Maybe Susie, as well. She can be a right…"

"You're a right idiot, Owen…" Ianto interrupted him sharply; as he escorted Gwen up the steps they'd paused at upon hearing the others. "I told you there's been an incident…"

"Incident is one way to put it…" Harkness said, from the doorway to his office, where he stood observing them all. "In here. Now."

Harkness spun in place and left the doorway, and Gwen looked to Ianto wondering if they were meant to be included in that order and he nodded slightly.

He escorted her up the stairs to the Captain's office ahead of the other two, and took her over to the side near some filing cabinets where he left her with a nod, and moved to stand next to the Captain, placing the box he'd brought upstairs on the desk as the other two filed in.

"Thought he Retconned her..?" Gwen heard the doctor mutter to the petite technician who frowned and shushed him, her eyes were on the desk and Gwen followed her gaze, only to shudder as she saw the ugly metal glove and its companion knife laid out openly.

"Where's Susie?" Toshiko asked softly, her eyes still on the glove.

"Dead." Harkness bluntly informed them. "She shot herself rather than be taken into custody when the fact she'd been murdering people to have subjects to test the glove was discovered."

"Bloody…" Owen gasped, and fell back a bit to lean against the wall behind him.

Toshiko huddled deeper into her coat, with a sad look on her face. "You're sure it was…" She said, looking to Harkness as if she expected him to somehow make it untrue.

"PC Cooper broke the Retcon, figured it out, and came back here." Harkness nodded in her direction. "Suzie was about to kill her and run, but I stopped her and that's when she shot herself. Owen, I need you to do an exam. I don't think there's a need for a full autopsy, it's fairly obvious how she died. Just sign off on the report so I can put her to rest. Toshiko, I need you to go into the police systems and figure out some way to clean this mess up. I don't want someone else being arrested for Susie's crimes, but we need this buried. Figure it out. Ianto..?"

"The only items still missing from our archives are the pheromone spray, and the text scanner." Ianto said solemnly, and Gwen realized he wasn't reminding Harkness of what he'd told him before. Harkness had intended the younger man to give him the opening and Ianto had done so without a word needing to be spoken between the two.

"The glove seemed harmless enough, too." Harkness said softly, his eyes resting on the glove and knife, and then his voice hardened as he transferred his gaze to the two agents. "Neither it nor the knife should have ever left the base, but they did, and innocent people died. I want those items on my desk in the next five minutes, or Torchwood will be down a couple more operatives before tonight is over."

As his voice echoed off the glass walls of the office, Ianto began silently packing away the glove and knife into the containment box, closing and locking it, and then he carried it to an odd sort of dumbwaiter in the wall. He input a code into the pad next to the dumbwaiter, and it opened to show a lighted interior that he placed the box inside.

As he turned to look back at Harkness, first Toshiko and then Owen pulled out the mentioned items, and placed them on the Captain's desk.

"Alright, get to work." Harkness said. He didn't acknowledge the return of the two items, or the two who had taken them. He looked instead to Ianto, who nodded and took the two items from the desk and left through a second exit, going back downstairs Gwen assumed, to put them away wherever they were supposed to be.

Owen and Toshiko left the room as well, and split in different directions presumably to begin taking care of the things he'd asked them to do, as Gwen stood silently in the corner.

"Let's take a walk." The Captain said to her, and walked to the corner of the room where he took his jacket and heavy coat from the stand, donning them quickly. "I know a good spot to watch the sunrise…"

"Alright…" She said, following his long strides out of the office and down the stairs, but then hesitated. "May I..?"

"Problem?"

"I'd like to say thank you and goodbye to Ianto, before I go…" She told him, with a shrug. "He's been very kind, and I know it can't have been an easy night to entertain an hysterical woman..."

"That's a nice thought, but it won't be necessary." The Captain said, and took her arm to steer her through the cog-door and into the lift. "Besides, you're about as un-hysterical a woman as I can imagine, under the circumstances. I doubt he found you a trial."

"He was lovely, keeping me distracted..." She said, with a sigh. "For seeming so solemn at first, he's a sense of humor on him, he does..."

"Have you got a crush on my general support man, PC Cooper?" The Captain raised an eyebrow and glanced at her with a half-smile.

"Well, I wouldn't want to step on any toes…" She replied archly, matching his raised eyebrow.

"He's had some trouble with that; we had to change where we order our curry 'cause after he joined us the delivery girl would never leave before the food got cold…" The Captain chuckled as the lift doors opened, and he stepped out striding down the hallway.

It wasn't an admission, but it wasn't a denial either.

They were certainly of a like, the Captain and Ianto. Talk your ear off while still being silent as the grave where it counted. Gwen shook her head, and followed the Captain once again.

Author's Note: And so it begins. As I hopefully made fairly obvious, this chapter slots into the missing chunk of time between Susie shooting herself on the Plass, and the scene where Owen and Tosh have obviously been called in to be told about the incident (to steal a phrase from Ianto), and turn in their borrowed tech. I always thought it was interesting that despite him being prominently shown putting away the Glove and Knife into the Secure Archives, Gwen doesn't mention Ianto when she notes the fact that Jack didn't tell Owen and Toshiko about the fact that Susie shot him in the head. That glaring omission is why I decided to base most of this chapter in her POV. She's still an outsider at this point, which makes her more inclined to notice subtle clues in the behavior of Jack and Ianto that the others might miss due to daily exposure. Even ones that Jack himself might not actually notice. I also wanted her to see that Ianto isn't entirely the martinet that he pretends to be around the others. In my opinion, Gwen never really fit the whole "Heart of Torchwood" moniker as much as she fit "The One Who Questions Everything". Really, she always asks the difficult questions, and makes the others think about things they'd sometimes rather not. I actually like that about her, so it's the trait I've chosen to focus on for her in this fic. She'll still have her moments, she wouldn't be Gwen Cooper if she didn't, but I find myself enjoying writing her when I take it from that perspective, so I hope you guys wind up enjoying reading her, too.

Also, I kinda hand-waved the scene with Jack placing Susie's body in storage. It just seemed slightly out of order when you consider the situation. Like they had to shoehorn that scene in there before the final scene on the roof because it was necessary, but it . If you think about it, he wouldn't have had time to do that until much later, probably after the final scenes on the show. Otherwise, what is Gwen doing for that time, just wandering around unsupervised while the others get things done? Taking coffee-making lessons from Ianto? So, I just left it off, and we can all pretend that after he made sure she got home without falling off that roof, Jack came back and took care of it.