After Jack and Ianto had left the hotel, Martha had Gwen lay on the bed so she could go through her usual routine. Rhys hovered nervously by Gwen's side as he always did, holding her hand and holding his breath until he heard their baby's heartbeat beating loud and strong. Even Gwen gave a high-pitched nervous giggle at the sound, looking over at Rhys and beaming. This was his favourite smile, Rhys decided. Though he loved all her smiles, the wide grin and eyes that sparkled with excitement when she heard the thrum of their child's heartbeat was the best. Gwen might moan that she was missing that 'pregnancy glow' that magazines and mummy bloggers bragged about, Rhys thought that when she smiled that special smile, she couldn't possibly glow any brighter. She was stunning.

"Your blood pressure's a little high again," Martha mused, almost to herself.

"Well, so's yours," Gwen snapped back. "Turn that thing on yourself and have a look. Sky-high, I'm betting."

Martha chuckled, well used to Gwen after all these months. And this time she was right. "Fair point. But you know we need to keep it down. Having high blood pressure can lead to-"

"Lead to a premature birth and slash or having a low-birthweight infant," Gwen interrupted, rolling her eyes at him with a grin.

"Then you know why it's important to keep it down," Martha sighed.

Rhys cleared his throat. "What about pre-eclampsia? I read in one of those books that that can happen because of stress."

"Pre-eclampsia is often linked to those with chronic hypertension –that's high blood pressure to the rest of us – but stress itself should only cause short term spikes in blood pressure. Even chronic stress doesn't cause long-term hypertension."

"Oh. Sorry, I just read a lot about it, and I was worried…"

Martha smiled kindly. "Don't be. It's a common misconception, from what I've read. It affects about 5% of births, but as it can kill both mother and child, there's obviously a lot of information out there. It's better to be safe than sorry."

"And Gwen…?"

"Should be fine. High blood pressure alone isn't enough to suggest pre-eclampsia; it's common in about ten to fifteen per cent of pregnancies. And she's had no protein in her urine so far, but I'll be testing that in a minute anyway."

"Lovely," Gwen muttered under her breath.

Martha rolled her eyes and Gwen stuck out her tongue at her and grinned.

"The baby's growing well, too" Martha continued. "Right on target. At 28 weeks, Gwen's a couple of weeks past when pre-eclampsia is most likely to occur. But we'll need to keep an eye on her blood pressure just to be cautious. It's all about avoiding risk, because the fewer risk factors we can face, the better the outcome. I would be advising the same to all patients the same - if I had any other patients, that is. But even if she doesn't manage to keep her blood pressure down and she did give birth before 37 weeks, then both she and your child are still likely to be okay. Preterm births happen every day, with statistics showing that about one in thirteen babies are born prematurely. Most will survive, but they are more likely to need medical intervention. I've learnt the best I can from Tom, but I've never fully trained as a paediatrician or a midwife. There is a chance that you'll have to go into hospital, but you've got your cover documents already in place, so we've got everything covered the best we can."

Rhys nodded, still worried but slightly reassured. Martha carried on with her examination, asking a few more questions about what Gwen had been eating and how much she was managing to sleep and how bad her backache was.

As friendly as Martha was, and a brilliant Doctor too, Rhys couldn't help but have some concerns. Having midwife appointments in a hotel room with a friend because you were still semi-on-the-run and didn't know who you could trust whilst your wife's ex-boss and former best friend (former because they had died, not because they were replaced) were out clothes shopping was not quite where he'd imagined he'd end up.

Had it only been three years since Gwen had joined Torchwood? No, almost, but not quite. Rhys couldn't quite comprehend how much his life had changed since then. He'd been so proud of her when she'd gotten her promotion from a PC to a job of a Special Ops team. Secondment, Gwen had told him back then. Mostly admin. He'd soon seen through that lie when the night before she was supposed to join, she'd had to run off in the middle of dinner to go to work. Three months later she came home from what was meant to be an overnight trip in the Brecon Beacons for a team bonding exercise with a cluster of gunshot wounds in her side.

Her phone call from the hospital had been one of the worst moments in his life so far. He was used to knowing that there was little he could do to protect her whilst she was out on the beat, not that he liked it even then, but learning that her new position was far from the safe office work she had vaguely hinted at was something different. They hadn't known, Gwen had cried, exhausted and high on painkillers, about the cannibal group that lived in Brynblaidd. Seventeen people had gone missing within a twenty-mile radius. They'd just gone to have a look around, talk to the locals, see if they could find anything that the police had missed. That was their job, as part of Special Ops. Even they hadn't expected that the locals themselves were responsible for the missing, that they were eating them.

It had suddenly made sense why he felt he was losing her. No wonder, he had thought, that she was so distant these days. No wonder she was changing. Late nights and early morning call outs, they seemed to miss each other like ships passing in the night. He'd known that she was becoming someone different, and it wasn't always her fault that she couldn't talk to him because of the Official Secrets Act papers she'd had to sign, but Rhys hadn't known the half of it. Yet, even with the deception and downright lies she would tell him, he was still so proud of her.

He loved her.

But sometimes he also hated her.

By the time the new year came, he'd felt she was drifting even further. She had been so distant those last few months, ever since she'd come home from hospital really. And he really, really hated her for it. Her new job took her away from him, and he'd started to resent that. Even now, he resented Torchwood for taking away the love of his life, placing her in danger every single day. And that terrified him. It would terrify him to the end of his life because he feared deep in his heart, that she would always choose Torchwood over plain and boring Rhys Williams.

But back then, she hadn't listened to him, and she wouldn't talk to him. She wasn't even coming home to him at the end of the day. Gwen strayed even further. But even then he still loved her so much.

And then her boss had gone missing. It was only a small team that was suddenly leaderless. Gwen was suddenly spending even more time at work, trying to catch up. Or at least, that's what she said.

By the time March came, apparently she and the team had decided that their boss had gone undercover somewhere without word, and they didn't know when he'd be back. Yet still Gwen worried. All she ever talked about was work, in the few hours that they might spend together. One of their team had a drinking problem; he'd lost someone he'd loved on Christmas morning and was struggling to cope with his grief and guilt. Someone else was working too much – and how anyone could be working more than Gwen, Rhys didn't know – and she didn't know how to help him realise that there was more to life than this. She wanted to befriend someone who was a bit reclusive and geeky, but she didn't know how to approach it. Someone was moving house – probably the one with the drinking problem was his guess, as Gwen never mentioned names – and did he know of a good removals company. They only needed a small van, not a Harwoods lorry, as they barely had any furniture they wanted to take. Someone else was moving house too, what was that company's name again?

But rather than resenting Gwen's obsession, in it, Rhys had found the woman he loved again. The passionate determined woman who would stop at nothing to find a way to help people. That was the woman he had fallen in love with, all those years ago when they met at college. Ever since their first kiss in a supermarket queue, he'd known he was going to marry her. He loved her. And though Gwen was changing again, feeling like she was losing herself to the secret organisation, Rhys had never loved her more.

Okay, the proposal hadn't actually been planned – it was more of a spontaneous thing that just happened at home one evening in April even if he'd already had the ring– but Rhys had known just the thing to ground her. It hadn't been perfect, what with him throwing out his back trying to get down on one knee in the tight gap between the sofa and coffee table, but Gwen had said yes, eyes sparkling brighter than the diamond ring he presented to her. What more could he have asked for?

Within a month, she was off to the Himalayas for a couple of days with the team, specially requested by the government. She'd come back tired and grumpy but then her boss was back, and things returned to their new normal. Rhys still had dreams of settling down and having a family. Granted, it wasn't quite the same dream as before where Gwen was a happily married desk sergeant with a couple of kids, but he didn't mind being a househusband if it meant that Gwen would still come home most evenings with that light in her eyes.

But all of that changed when he was finally introduced to Torchwood.

Captain Jack Harkness, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato, Ianto Jones, and his fiancée, Gwen Cooper.

Plus, a pterodactyl and an alien or two in the basement.

This was Torchwood. And Rhys's life was never the same.

Gwen didn't have to lie to him anymore, but sometimes he wished she still did. Oh, he'd known all along that she'd been hiding something big, and it was awful to know that the woman that you loved so much could lie to you as easily as she breathed, but some of the secrets she brought home with her were horrific. Other times, he knew that she was still lying to him and he wondered what on earth could be even worse than those terrible secrets that she did share.

It would only be another six months until he finally understood the true horrors of Torchwood. It had been bad enough at their wedding a few months before, but at the time he hadn't realised how lucky they had been. He hadn't known how much worse things could have gone.

Cardiff was almost destroyed.

Doctor Owen Harper was killed in action when the nuclear power plant went into overload. Toshiko Sato died in Gwen's arms from a gunshot wound to the stomach, having worked with Owen to control the damage. In the weeks that followed, Gwen had a good go at trying to kill herself through alcohol poisoning. That was the worse holiday they ever went on.

There were moments when Torchwood was fun, sure, but for him, the bad often far outweighed the good. He was still so proud of his girl, though. Someone had to keep the planet safe, and Gwen Cooper had chosen that life. And as much as Rhys hated it sometimes, he could understand why she had. Her kindness and compassion had been what had drawn him to her to start with. It would be hypocritical of him to stop loving her just because of that.

But even though the worst of times, he still wished that she shared his wish to start a family together. After all, what was she fighting for if not the right for ordinary people to live their lives? For people to buy a flat without the risk of aliens using it as a dumping ground for all their shit, for people to get married without an uninvited shapeshifting alien turning up hell-bent on killing the bride, for people to have children and not have them taken away by the government to give to some aliens who just wanted to use them as drugs. That was the life she was fighting for. That was the life they had been fighting for, together. Otherwise, what was the point of this nightmare she had freely joined and dragged him into?

But then Torchwood was gone. They were supposed to be starting their life together as a family, just like he had always wanted. But instead, they were still in hiding, relying on the medical care of Martha rather than a midwife because they were both terrified of what would happen if the government found out where they were. Their fears now were not about Torchwood constantly demanding Gwen's attention when she was needed at home but rather that their unborn child could be used as leverage against them. Aliens could be monsters, but he should have realised from the beginning that humans could be far more inhumane than any other creature out there in the big wide universe.

And now Torchwood was back. Just as before, it was Jack Harkness's call that sent Gwen running. He knew that she would jump right back into Torchwood's murky depths without question because that was who she was. He hated her for it. He loved her for it. Only this time, they had their child to consider. Gwen might do almost anything for Torchwood, but Rhys Williams was determined to do almost anything for their child.