Four
"Merelyn! Merelyn Evans!"
Merelyn turned without thinking. What now? She was so knackered that the hand on the door to exit the hospital was shaking like a Motor Neurone sufferer. Her shift had finished hours ago, but because of those interfering shits at Torchwood mucking things up, she'd been shoved yet again on a dayshift on the Admin floor, cleaning toilets for staff whose minds were full of frustration and boredom at a computer go-slow when they were trying to finalise pay accounts, so she'd had to get to her patients after, same as the day before. She'd spent far too long around little Jade Richards; the nursing staff on the kids' ortho ward weren't used to seeing her much, tendrils of suspicion had headed her way by the time she left. Shouldn't really have been there at all, the child's injuries didn't justify the energy she'd expended, but Jade's leg was knitting straight and fast now, and she'd eased her grandparents' grief just a little. And she hadn't been able to stay away; the little girl was so like her brother. Davy's mam she'd put off until the very last. Stupid, that. Should have seen her first, when she'd the most energy. The senior staff on the adult trauma ward knew her well, ignored her even though visiting time was long over. They'd sedated the woman, so she'd been able to simply sit, hold her hand, ease, lighten, feel her way down the broken spine, find the cracked vertebrae and damaged nerves, try to straighten the mess, while holding back the guilt that wanted to whisper, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, over and over.
"Merelyn?" came the man's voice again as he hurried across reception. It was the new senior forensic pathologist, Doctor Williams. In his late forties, tall and spare with a slight stoop, his ascetic features and shaved head had already earned him the nickname of Doctor Death. He looked down at her a little uncertainly, his gaze switching from the 'Lyn Evans' nametag to her face. "You are Merelyn's daughter?" he asked, his Welsh accent flattened by an overlay of southern English. "Julia said…" he added, using the name of UHW's chief administrator like an entry ticket. "Are you really a cleaner?"
His astonishment that she was a mere cleaner, at how she looked, warred with urgency and hope. Merelyn's lips compressed. "I'm not as well qualified as my Mam. What do you want?" she asked, too tired to be diplomatic.
Urgency overrode doubt. "Your help."
Merelyn put her hand on the door again. "Can't it wait? I need to get out of here." Emotions from everyone in reception and beyond, from A and E, were beginning to leak past her block, all the fears and anxieties pulling her down. The beginning of one hell of a headache was starting to thud behind her eyes.
"'Scuse me," muttered a woman trying to get through the door.
The pathologist caught Merelyn's arm, drew her aside. "Of course, it can't wait!"
She gave him a really filthy look, coupled with as strong a mental command of, Hands off! as she could muster.
Immediately, he backed off, holding up his hands. "I'm sorry. That was incredibly rude. I do know better, only it's been so long I forgot." He offered his hand with a genuine smile. "Please, take it. Then you'll know."
His apology was gracious. Despite her near exhaustion, she paid him the compliment of being gracious back. She made the corners of her mouth lift. "Thank you, but I don't need to. You're wide open. My Mam taught you, I think. You worked with her?"
He nodded. "Here, when I was young and very green. She was a beautiful woman, in all kinds of ways." Merelyn felt admiration for her mother, good-humoured envy of her father, then sorrow. "When I heard… I was at the Radcliffe, Oxford, by then, couldn't even make the funeral." She inclined her head in acceptance of his unspoken condolences. "And your gran - Mamo - too."
"Mamo, at least, deserved her rest."
An old woman chuckled contentedly.
A slippery newborn, red-faced, squalled a protest at his expulsion from the warm cocoon of his mother's womb. "Mamo delivered you," said Merelyn. "I'd know her touch anywhere."
He nodded. "I'm Llanmyrddin born."
Ignoring her thumping head, Merelyn shook off her exhaustion as best she could. "What do you need me for? 'Tisn't as though you've a patient for me."
His smile was grim. "I have a body. There was another murder last night."
"Another murder?"
"Where have you been all week? Haven't you read the papers? Cardiff's got its very own serial killer. What a way to hit the headlines! Three victims - so far. Stabbings. The weapon's unusual. The cut's very clean with this last one. If you read it, give us the shape of the weapon, the police will have more to go on." Expectancy uppermost now, and exasperation. "They've got computer programmes for it now, of course, but the bloody technician's got the flu and no-one else knows how to use the damn programme."
Merelyn couldn't stop her shoulders hunching. "I can't do all my Mam did. I'm not as strong."
"But Julia said-"
"Julia should know better."
Disappointment and frustration. "But if we wait…" Fear loomed, connected with a bigger picture that was just out of her reach. "Please."
So. It had begun. The well-intentioned pleading that would one day lead to demands and then to threats, because there'd always be more than one small, insignificant talent could cope with.
So don't let it start. You're too tired. Say no. Leave. Now. Put your hand on the door, push it wide and go. Say it. Say no.
"Okay, I'll try." What did it matter? What the fuck else was she going to do with her life anyway? "But I can't promise anything."
The morgue was cold, more so after the warmth of the wards and Merelyn pulled her hoodie zip higher, wrinkling her nose at the stronger than usual smell of disinfectant.
Doctor Williams held up a gown. "I suppose we better, even though you'll need to touch him. I've finished anyway. Habit, really." He pulled a wry face. "Don't know why I even bothered after…"
"Torchwood?"
"You should have heard SOCO swearing; they'd just set themselves up and got told to hop it. And who barges in as though they own the place, mucking up the crime scene yet again? Bloody Torchwood." Again that worry, clearer now she was becoming used to his thinking, that something bigger was going on. Other deaths of a different type, muggings, drownings, that he wasn't happy with. But how was he going to explain that teeth were involved, teeth that left bite-marks from jaws shaped unlike any he'd ever come across in his career? He'd be laughed out of court.
Well, none of that was her problem. She shivered. Until it was everyone's problem.
The pathologist carefully peeled back the sheet from the body on the slab.
A teenager, a red-headed boy, his pale cheek still as smooth as a child's, the paler skin of his torso disfigured by a long Y of autopsy stitches. "Has he been identified yet?"
"John Tucker, nineteen, of -"
"I meant formally."
He nodded. "Parents." She picked up pictures from his mind. John's da was as red-headed as his son, his mam brunette, both more bewildered than distressed. At first.
"You're well remembered then, John Tucker," she said, laying her hand gently on the cold forehead.
And she was John Tucker, yet herself also.
Dragged back from a black abyss, she dragged air into lungs that were empty, that some force made function, despite the great gaping hole in one. Rain poured down in utter silence all around, but not over her. She was wet, though, wet and so cold. Toshiko Sato knelt over her, drenched through, water running down her face. She spoke to her, to John, but Merelyn heard no sounds. The woman's face was urgent, questioning, but John could give no answers. Confusion gripped him. Owen Harper knelt by him also. Toshiko moved aside and the Captain took over. Satisfaction washed over Merelyn at the sight of one side of his face reddened by gravel rash. Then she realised fear filled John, and despair, and he was falling again into the abyss, dragging her with him. She fell headlong into the dark. Black, empty nothingness rushed to meet her…
No. Go back. An old woman's voice, stern and loving.
Merelyn jerked her hand away. Dear God, they'd brought him back. Somehow, with something, they'd resurrected him. Then lost him again when he was terrified almost to insanity. Legs buckling, she braced her hands on the slab, her mouth working to hold back vomit.
"Are you alright?" The pathologist was reaching out his hand.
She forced her spine to straighten, managed a small, shaky smile. "Fine. I'm fine." She looked down at the boy's body, didn't dare touch his face again. "Goodbye, John." She turned to the pathologist. "The wound's in the back. Turn him, please."
Her business-like manner galvanised him into action, and he moved to the other side of the slab and carefully rolled the body onto its side. Merelyn hauled in a breath, spread her hand over the damaged flesh.
No vision this time, other than the usual feeling her way past the entry, following the clean incision down, exactly as she would if John was alive. Her confidence grew at the ease with which she could follow its course and she poured in more of herself to follow it deeper, through flesh and shattered bone, into the soft tissue of the lung. A triple-bladed shape formed in her mind, and she knew it for the counterpart of what had brought John back, then felt a memory, saw the actual blade. Then its location.
The black abyss opened again. And swallowed her.
- - - - - - - -
Merelyn's eyelids flickered.
"Thank God." The pathologist was perched by her side on the edge of the counselling room's small settee, checking her pulse. "Steady as a rock, just like it's been the last couple of hours." Blinking, Merelyn lifted her head. "It's okay. You can sit up," he said, offering a helping hand. "I caught you as you went down; heads and tiles don't mix." He smiled reassuringly, but she caught the uncertainty, the slight worry.
She straightened, sat up properly. "I'm alright."
He was uneasy about repercussions - for himself and for her - that's why she was here and not in A & E. "It isn't like when your mother was here," he said, his tone apologetic. "Julia said not many know about you. Not that we spread it about back then, either, of course. Your mother did that once - collapse - after a motorway pile-up. Luckily, your dad was there, said she just needed sleep, that she was asleep…"
He kept talking, but Merelyn didn't hear, her mind had gone into overdrive. Not Ianto. Not Ianto, thank God, she'd have felt the other two murders; Ianto's mind was filled only with lost love and despair. Besides, he didn't have murder in him. But it could have been any of the others. But why? Gwion had said Torchwood existed to help humanity not destroy it. She cursed silently. If only she'd touched them all when she'd the chance, she might have felt something. But then, with the training they'd obviously had to stop talents from reading them… They never learned, were still the same paranoid, big-headed, pig-headed shits Gwion had called them. Especially that black wall of a captain. The Captain.
She grabbed the pathologist's sleeve. "John Tucker. When did he die? What time?"
"Between 9.15 and 9.30pm."
"You can be that accurate?"
He pulled a wry smile at her disbelieving face. "He left his mates at the pub at 9.10, left early because he was starting a new job today." The pathologist shook his head at the irony. "He was dead by 9.30, when the rain started. No water in the nasal passages or the undamaged lung."
So not the Captain - at least, not for John Tucker. Merelyn let go a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. She didn't want it to be the Captain, even if he was a flashy arsehole. She had to see him. She had to try to find out who without the whole team being jeopardised - especially Ianto - if there was only one, or perhaps two, involved. The Captain was right about one thing; Torchwood was important, far too important to be destroyed by a rogue. It could still be the Captain; he might still be involved with the other two deaths. It was a risk she had to take, hanging on to the fact that he couldn't have killed John Tucker. She began to heave herself off the settee. "I have to go."
Dr Williams caught her arm, let go almost straight away. "Sorry. Did you see it?" he demanded. She must have looked completely blank because he carried on, "The weapon? Did you see it?"
John Tucker was dead, an innocent was dead because of Torchwood.
Dark. So Dark.
All innocents dead without Torchwood.
"No," she said. I'm sorry, John.
Disappointment flooded through the pathologist.
"I'm sorry," she repeated, aloud this time.
"Don't look so woebegone." He put out his hand as though to lay it on hers, but stopped the gesture and simply smiled instead. "You tried. We'll find out anyway, as soon as that virus-whacked technician can lift a shaking hand to his keyboard." He stood. "Come on. Let's get you home."
"S'okay. My car's in the carpark." She hauled herself to her feet - and grabbed at him as her head swam.
"Drive? I think not. I'll give you a lift."
"No," she said quickly. "Just stick me in a taxi. There's bound to be one up by A & E." His eyes reflected the concern in his mind. "Your wife's going to be pissed you're so late again."
"Picked that up, did you?" He shrugged. "You'd think she'd be used to it by now. Alright, but if there isn't a taxi, I'm driving you."
Their progress to A & E was painfully slow and his concern grew. "I just need more sleep," she reassured him.
Thankfully there was a taxi and he helped her in, but left the door open. "Half a mo'." He disappeared into A & E, came running back with a Mars Bar from the vending machine. "Here. Your mam always used to be starving after. Make sure you eat more before you sleep." A sudden warm smile softened his austere features, took ten years off him. "I know the good you do. You're your mother's daughter, Merelyn Evans."
She gave a small smile at his accolade and he shut the door. The taxi pulled away and Merelyn sank back into the cushioning of the seat, managed to tear the wrapper off the bar with fingers that felt like uncooked sausages and began wolfing it down.
"So where we going, then, love?"
She mumbled around a huge mouthful of caramel and chocolate.
"Say again?"
She swallowed hard. "Roald Dahl Plass," she said thickly.
So, do you like Merelyn? Hate her? What do you think of the melding of the TV eps in this AU of mine? Please review.