A/N - I don't own Torchwood.

Jack had finished his preliminary search of the Torchwood hub for Suzie and Gwen. The former Time Agent had encountered many strange and weird things during his time as a Time Agent even before he had become immortal after he had faced those three Daleks before he suddenly popped back to life, where he had encountered aliens he had never heard of even during his time, those years time travelling as a con man before he had met the Doctor and Rose and came face to face with his stupid carelessness when he had lobbed that Chula ambulance at them in the TARDIS, but ever since he had joined Torchwood and they had given him a support net he had encountered more than his fair share of traumas.

But this was not going to be anything like that time when his old boss had slaughtered everyone in the Hub. No way. He would die a thousand times if it meant that was avoided, but right now he was left lost.

Ever since Suzie had been found to be the killer during that bizarre spate of murders where she was forced to use the Resurrection Gauntlet to bring them back, Jack had never liked the thought of using it; as an immortal, the idea of bringing people back from the dead was a ghoulish thing to do, but he had liked this case even less, and it had all begun when a murder had taken place with the word 'TORCHWOOD' scrawled on the wall in the victims' own blood, and everything had pointed to Suzie Costello who was discovered to be a member of a religious talk group called Pilgrim run by the murdered woman Sarah who ran it.

They had brought her back to life to discover answers, something that Jack had been reluctant to do until they had gone through her things and discovered she was a part of the group in secret, and they'd found out one of her friends had been retconned so many times it was a wonder he was still functional. After seeing him go into a ten-second rage which started whenever someone said 'Torchwood' before he became as gentle as a kitten, Jack had made plans with Owen to see about giving him a massive detox to get the traces of retcon out of his blood. They had found it at the scene, and they had to get it out; who knew what Suzie had been doing with it?

But Suzie was still alive, and Owen had called him out of an awkward and really heated argument with Gwen, who blamed him and Torchwood for the entire situation when she discovered Gwen's father was dying of cancer which was why she had gone to such lengths like murder to learn how the gauntlet worked. Why did that stupid woman have to be so fucking self-righteous all the time? Sure, at times her point of view was invaluable, but other times it was frustrating.

Jack had spent decades working for the Time Agency, battling alien monstrosities from Sontarans and Cybermen, and he had faced even the legendary Daleks, and now suddenly he had a woman so arrogant in his life she honestly believed he needed her to hold his hand. Please.

Gwen had been with Torchwood long enough to realise that was not how the organisation worked, but she seemed to think they should be saving people left, right and centre, but some pieces of alien junk found in the rift were too dangerous. But Owen had told them all something grave; the reason Suzie was still alive was that she was draining the life out of Gwen.

"Find them fast," Jack ordered.

At her station, Tosh was already checking their CCTV network. "I can't see them. Hold on. Scanning. Nope. Nothing on internal scans."

"What's going on? Where've they gone?" Owen demanded.

"Just keep looking. Bring up the SUV," Jack ordered.

"Still there. I'll try exteriors. What about Gwen's car?" Tosh asked in realisation before she brought it up on the screen. The image that met his eyes made Jack angrier than he had been all day. On the screen was the blurry picture of Gwen pushing the hunched figure of Suzie in a wheelchair to her car.

"What's she doing?" Owen growled in frustration as they watched Gwen helping Suzie out of her wheelchair and into her car.

Jack was silent for a moment, feeling the anger flow through him. Every memory of how Gwen's self-righteous and holier-than-thou attitude burned in his mind, to say nothing of the way she blissfully ignored the fact Suzie still had a number of questions to answer about this latest mess. She was not getting away with this.

"She is getting herself fired," Jack growled.

God, how could she be so stupid?

Jack knew Gwen was taking Suzie to see her sick father, but surely it had occurred to her that this was a bad idea.

"Unbelievable," Tosh breathed.

"How stupid is that, thinking she could just drive off," Owen shook his head.

They weren't going to do any good just standing there, and talking about it. Jack shook his head out of his reverie. "Come on, let's go get them," he said before suddenly as if on cue, the power goes off and the doors locked down.

Jack looked around the Hub in frustration. "What the hell?" He snapped in frustration; they didn't need this, not right now. "Ianto! Ianto!"

"Captain," the sweet soft Welsh accent was like music, and Jack turned and hurried over to where Ianto was standing holding a torch.

"What happened?" Jack asked.

"But, I thought you must have done it. We've gone into lockdown," Ianto replied.

"Then reverse it."

"I can't. It's a hundred per cent. The doors are sealed. We're locked in."

X

"Sit down, Gwen," Jack said tightly as they got back to the Hub, and went to his office. The former Time Agent was tired despite his immortal nature, and he was still messed up after they had found both Gwen and Suzie. His former second-in-command had been planning on escaping on a ferry and her father was dead.

All thanks to Gwen.

They had spent an hour in the hub, listening to the humiliating laughter of the stupid police force who had preferred mocking them for being locked in.

All thanks to Gwen.

The lockdown had been possible because Max had gone into a trance, endlessly repeating the name Torchwood as part of Suzie's plans, but Suzie had known what a bleeding heart Gwen was, and manipulated her into taking her to see her father, relying on her compassion to leave the Hub. After remembering their argument, Jack knew precisely what had happened. And now not only was their security compromised but a man had been murdered.

All thanks to Gwen.

They had to check over the whole system and make sure it never happened again.

"Jack, I'm tired," Gwen said.

"I don't care. Sit down, Gwen," Jack's voice rose to a shout.

Startled, Gwen sat down.

"Tell me something, Gwen, when you were working as a PC, did you by any chance interfere in any of the cases detectives had?" Jack asked.

"No!"

"Did you ever go to them and offered suggestions, or did you ever tell them what you felt they should be doing, or what they were even thinking? And did you ever take suspects who were known and confirmed criminals out of their cells because they'd told some kind of sob story to make you sympathetic?" Jack glared at her, his eyes chips of ice.

"No!" Gwen was outraged now.

"So what makes you think such things are acceptable in Torchwood? This organisation has been around since the 1880s, and it doesn't need somebody arrogant and self-righteous. I don't care if Suzie threatened to beat you over the head with her wheelchair, you had no right whatsoever to take her out of the Hub. What made you think it would be allowed?" Jack snapped angrily.

Gwen's head was pounding after the residual pain of having a gunshot blasting the back of her head off, she didn't need this. "Jack, she told me her father was dying. I thought it would do them the world of good if they met. He hadn't even known she was dead, for fuck's sake!"

"That's policy. And as for her father dying, that still doesn't give you the right to make a decision like that. Maybe it was the compassionate thing to do, but at the same time, it was the stupidest thing to do when we were in the middle of the investigation. Suzie knew a great deal more about what was going on, and when you brought her back, she began draining the life from you. But you recklessly endangered yourself before we could tell you, and you only discovered that you made a mistake when you got to that hospital. Because partly of your actions, our security was compromised, and we were locked in the Hub and your former colleagues laughed at us for it, and a man died, the same man Suzie gave that sob story to," Jack growled before he shook his head. "You have annoyed and antagonised us too many times with your self-righteousness in the past, Gwen. I have let you get away with it more than once because you have Rhys. I have let you get off early and I have held my tongue when I know if anybody else did what you do, I would either retcon them or knock them back so hard they would end up wishing they hadn't been born."

Gwen was too tired to do anything more than stare back at Jack in horror at what he was saying. "Jack, you can't mean that," she whispered.

"Why not? You are under my command, and I speak not only for Torchwood, but an organisation that is a branch of the Queen herself and has the authority," Jack challenged, his eyes as cold as an arctic blizzard frozen even colder by a day in space.

"Jack, I am sorry," Gwen whispered, suddenly realising that she had made a big mistake.

"You disobeyed my orders. The damage wasn't extreme on the outside, but now Tosh and I will have to go over the entire mainframe of the Hub's security computer to find out just what else Suzie left behind. And we will need to build in safeguards to stop this from ever happening again, but the fact is you took the law into your own hands. As it stands, I can retcon you and throw you back to your life, or I can find a different punishment for you."

Gwen was horrified but she didn't believe him, nor did she believe he would ever take it to those heights. "But you can't! Retcon doesn't work on me-!"

"Whatever gave you that idea, stupid?" Jack's voice was filled with cold contempt. "I gave you that minimum dose because I felt you could help find and expose the killer, who turned out to be Suzie. I knew something was up, but I needed help. That was why I let you investigate Torchwood. Ordinarily, if a police officer tried to dig too deeply like you did, wasting police time and resources, and using your identity to get information about us from the pizza parlour to find the Hub entrance and getting that porter killed in the hospital, then I would have raised the alarm. Torchwood has enough authority with the police to make them back into a corner without even a fight, or did you really think I let you get in so far for the hell of it?" He added challengingly.

Gwen took a deep breath. She hadn't realised the full extent of what she was doing would cause trouble, and she wondered how the hell Jack had managed it, but she realised he had likely had some help, either from Suzie at the time, or Tosh. She was grateful, of course, but she was still numb.

"Get out, I will come up with my decision to deal with you later," Jack snapped and Gwen quickly got up and ran out.

X

Gwen Cooper was retconned for her foolish mistake, leaving the team down a member, but without the self-righteous comments and arguments, things moved on better. Gwen hadn't really contributed much to the fieldwork the Torchwood 3 team conducted, but they knew they would need a new member soon enough. Jack and Ianto got together, as did Owen and Tosh, and life carried on.