Working for the Home Office can be like talking to a stone wall.
There's no coffee? It's alright, Lois can make some. Oh, when you said there's no coffee, you meant there's no coffee in the whole building? It's alright, Lois can buy some. No secretary? Lois can fill in. What do you mean, Lois doesn't know shorthand? She can learn it!
And she can, and she does, and that helps later when she's sent to work for Bridget Spears and has more things on her CV. But still.
She doesn't expect things to get easier, but she doesn't expect them to get harder. She doesn't expect aliens and conspiracies and murder and death and fear and pain and treason and prison—and what will they tell her parents?
We're sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Habiba, your daughter tried to help save the children, but we're selfish bureaucrats and instead of helping, we stuck her in an underground prison. Aliens, what aliens? No, no aliens exist. And if they do, too bad. We're the real villains.
Lois laughs hollowly at the image she's just conjured up. A suited man of indiscriminate age, hair greying and eyes cold, talking to her parents on the porch of her childhood home. The reality is so much more frightening.
She refuses to pull her legs up onto the bench she's sitting at, to bury her face in her knees and cry, so she leans back against the stone wall and closes her eyes.
She will not cry.
Whatever happens, she will not give them the satisfaction.
.oOo.
When Lois is let out, she wants to laugh at her earlier conviction. She didn't cry, but it didn't matter—they're too cold-hearted to feel. Sadistic, yes, but not enough to care about her suffering. It wouldn't have mattered. They weren't watching.
It makes her feel safer.
It makes her feel alone.
Gwen leads her to a helicopter that takes them to Wales. There are tears in Gwen's eyes just like there are in hers, but Gwen leans into a man's side and refuses to let them fall. She's seen so much. Lois is putting all of her energy into not shaking.
It's silly, after everything, to be afraid of heights.
The small dot that is Captain Harkness disappears. Something changed, Lois knows, but she doesn't know what. The air is heavier, sadder. She doesn't want to ask.
The ride is spent in silence.
.oOo.
Torchwood's secret base is blown up. The government is against them.
A policeman meets them when the helicopter lands. He exchanges some words with Gwen, gives her car keys—Lois is barely standing upright against the wind blown around by the helicopter blades, she can't hear a thing, only moves when Gwen's husband nudges her arm and tilts his head towards the car.
Torchwood doesn't have a secret base, but they had a warehouse in London. In Wales, they have a house on a Newport estate.
Gwen leads them in and exchanges words with a woman. They embrace. It looks awkward and so, so, so private. Lois is glad that she's standing too far away to hear what they say, but judging from the smile on the woman's face and the way she clutches at someone's hand—it's a man, he looks like he wants to say something, looks like he's used to being able to talk—the news are unexpectedly good.
"Gwen, Lois, Rhys," Rhys introduces them all quickly when the door shuts. Lois nods when her name is said. "Torchwood!" Rhys adds with a forced laugh. He adds after a moment: "Thank you."
The house is full of children. No parents. Just the woman and man—she introduces them, "Rhiannon, Johnny," almost curtly, and talks for both—and now Torchwood. Lois knows the government is coming. Are they all that stand between these children and the soldiers that are on their way?
.oOo.
Later, as evening falls, Lois stands by the stairs. She's the only one without family. Gwen stands with Rhys, holding his hand like a lifeline; Rhiannon and Johnny are with two children Lois has learned are theirs; other parents, who'd come to fight, are saying their goodbyes and leading their children home, holding them tightly, much to their annoyance. In her other hand, Gwen is holding a phone, squeezing it tighter than she holds Rhys's hand.
They're close enough that Lois hears Rhys whisper, "Andy?"
And Gwen answer: "He got back to hospital alright. No one came for Ianto, they're safe."
"Jack?"
"On his way back."
She turns to Rhys and buries her head in his shoulder. Her shoulders don't shake; Lois doesn't hear tears. She turns away. Maybe this is Gwen's time to finally break.
She rests the side of her head against the wall and looks towards the door. It's dark outside. She can't stay here. Neither can Gwen and Rhys, but it looks like they are. Plucked from her city, a sentence of treason hanging over her head—is it still there?
Lois is too tired to care.
.oOo.
She's offered a job with Torchwood. Lois wants to take it, but she can't, not yet. She can deal with aliens and even organizations that handle them, but the idea of the government willing to sacrifice children to save themselves? She had no illusions about the government caring about their charges, but she thought that children would be exempt from the rule. Somehow.
She bows out of Torchwood and leaves her number. Torchwood can find her without it, but it's a gesture of goodwill.
I want to stay, Lois wants to tell them, but I can't.
She worked for the Home Office for a long time—it was only Bridget and—god—Frobisher that were new. She spent so much time and effort, and for who? Torchwood may be above the government and beyond the police, but they're still too close.
Lois is driven back to London by the same policeman who met them on the helipad.
Her flat is just as she left it. Funny. She thought, just for a moment, that it might have been ransacked, but she knows she's not fooling anyone. Even at Torchwood she would be just a nameless body, a brick in the wall guarding the Earth, easy to break without compromising the integrity of the whole.
Lois has some money, now, dished out by Torchwood to those caught in the crossfire, given by UNIT as apology for imprisonment, transferred from the government to keep her quiet about what she saw in Thames House.
It's enough that she never has to set foot in the Home Office again.
.oOo.
One cannot call London lovely in autumn. Charming, maybe, on the good days, when the skies are clear and the air is nippy rather than biting.
Despite that, every morning, Lois leaves her flat and spends time wandering the streets. She was so focused on getting to work, she never explored them. They're not much to speak of, but it's better than staying inside. She bundles up in a nice coat and walks from coffee shops to bookstores, stopping at libraries and small museums—taking in the city and the open sky.
She doesn't buy an umbrella but invests in several hats that the wind won't blow from her head as obnoxiously as from her hand.
It's a week before Lois feels comfortable closing the windows in her flat—unwise, given the city, but she can't sleep knowing the space is so enclosed.
She finds herself in a park on a rare bright day, sitting on a bench and squinting against the sun. She doesn't carry a purse, her belongings safe in an inner coat pocket, and stays still only for a few minutes before standing and ambling down a pebble-covered path.
The trees are still green, some yellow at the edges, and stray leaves waft down as autumn comes for them. The bright grass holds no flowers, weeds belonging to spring and summer, yet some of the ornate garden arrangements on the path's side still hold. Lois stops at moments and admires them, smelling diluted pollen in the air.
She kneels down at a crossroads where the path diverges—a blue flower is lying on the sand, an aster, and she picks it up. Some of the petals are twisted. The stem is short. Lois holds it and smiles. It's still pretty; it will fit perfectly into a short glass.
Lois hears a chuckle behind her and her shoulders tense up. She stands and turns, holding the flower protectively, trying to look around for a way out without seeming obvious.
"I'm sorry," she doesn't expect to hear, "I wasn't making fun of you, I just thought you looked pretty."
It's a Black woman, around her age, shorter, dressed in an impractical sundress under a jean jacket.
Lois smooths out the side of her coat she can feel got out of place when she knelt. "Thanks."
The woman smiles. "I didn't mean any offence, honest."
"It's alright." She doesn't look like a threat, but one can never know. Still, Lois is struck by the warmth of her eyes and the ease of the words coming from her mouth. "You like flowers?"
The woman nods. "Never got into gardening, but I like drawing them. I spent some time in a place without anything—any flowers—so they're always a nice reminder of—seeing them makes me smile."
Lois agrees. She's always been ambivalent, but now that she has the chance to walk free and see the wonders of the world, she revels in the smallest things most of all.
"I—" She doesn't want the woman to walk away. She's been alone for too long. "Is that what you have there?" She points to the woman's bag, out of which sticks out a thin rod. "Drawing stuff?"
"Painting." She laughs. "I was just chased off the side of the garden for drawing."
"Oh." Lois cannot imagine being chastised by an authority figure now—will she behave, she wonders, reacting out of fear? Or, knowing all they're capable of, will she spit back in their face? She holds out her hand tentatively, aster flower drooping to the side from it. "Would you like to draw it?"
The woman's face lights up.
.oOo.
Later, she takes the flower home.
Lois doesn't feel the loss too keenly, carrying in its stead a leaf from the woman's sketchbook, a colorful flower peeking up at her from it. On the back, there's a signature—Tish Jones—and a phone number.
Later, they go to the botanical gardens.
Later still, Tish tells Lois, vaguely, painfully, withholding something crucial in the same way she saw Gwen do all those months ago, about why she needs to see flowers for real.
Lois holds her as she relates her own story.
Funny, how aliens shook their world and they met casually in a park instead. Funny, how they were so drawn to each other despite knowing the connection, coming together of their own volition and not because of known experiences. Funny, how perfectly they fit together even on the first day, connected by a single flower, damaged yet bright.
.oOo.
Funny, yet all the future.
Now, Tish looks at the flower standing on her kitchen table, drooping over the side of a shot glass, drinking up the water; she looks at the phone in her hand. She has a date tomorrow.