To: Jack[dot] harkness[at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk
From: gwen[dot]cooper[at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk
Date: January 23th, 2011
Re: Cats
Dear Jack,
I reckon the others thought that the new Rift manipulator was going to be a huge game changer. It's a fair assumption, but I knew better. Martha and Los don't know much about Cardiff, or the Rift, and as for Andy, well, he never appreciated how much work we did, did he? To be fair, things have called down a bit, and they're all celebrating it. I can't help but keep one eye open for disaster. Quiet is too quiet when the Rift is concerned. I have to go back to your old log to remember that there was a time that I didn't know that. Still, I'll take the peaceful moments when it comes. My mum assures me that whatever peace the Rift gives me, the baby will take away.
The team is getting on better. Andy makes a point to take Lois Weevil hunting with him. He's exposing her to her fear little-by-little, and I think it's helping. It's that or the fact that we've actually gotten the Weevil spray recipe figured out again, and made a huge batch of it in my new kitchen last week. Rhys was even tolerant of the smell. Anyway, small things like that are helping them. And as for me, I'm properly pregnant now. Huge, really. Rhys moved us into the house whilst I've been building all of this. He's all for wallpapering the nursery at the week-end. To humour him, I stopped by the shop yesterday. D'you think that he'd have a problem with the print of the wee green aliens with blue spaceships? I rather think Ianto would love it.
Look at me, being all domestic. It's not a mark of things being simple around here, that's sure. Actually, we have quite the interesting space junk, a few weapons, and something that looks like an iPod a few decades from now. What I think you'd be most interested in is the refugee (Riftugee?) we're currently housing.
"No, I don't mind, love," Gwen said, letting her feet slide off of her desk so that she could read the memo that Lois had sailed to her in the form of a paper aeroplane. "If you can tolerate dinner with my mum and dad."
She scanned the paper and sighed, twirling a pen over her fingers.
"Nah, no worries. I'll have it all set up by the time you get home."
"Brilliant man. I love you."
"I love you too. Enough to go be a man and provide a crib for my child."
She laughed, and clicked her mobile shut. She then pulled up her email on the screen next to her. "UNIT needs to learn a vernacular," she mused. "When I say the thing looked like a solid mass of glitter, I mean that it escaped from art class, and doesn't get all over your hands."
From across the room, Martha looked up from the alien remains that they had found at a building site the day before. "No one in UNIT ever liked art class."
"We've got yet another missing 5' 8", nineteen-year-old male," Lois called. "This is not a random pattern.
"All right," Gwen murmured, considering her email to the weapons specialist at UNIT. "Let's go-." She paused as her mobile began again. Lois had taken to resetting the ringtone once a week to stop them all going mad.
"Cooper."
"Are you Gwen?"
She bit back the sarcastic "depends on who wants to know", due to the uncertainty in the woman's voice. "Aye, who's this?"
"It doesn't-." There was a long inhalation and Gwen opened her mouth to speak, then the woman cut her off. "It's Alice. Look, I don't want anything to do with you people, but there is something going on in my street that you need to know about."
"All right, I'm listening," Gwen said. She kept her voice firm; knowing that all Alice wanted was a business transaction. She admired the woman for even considering calling Torchwood, when she had every reason to hate the place. She picked up the pen that she had dropped. Lois was still watching her steadily, and she jotted down a note. Call Andy. Go interview the family, and get the records from the police.
Lois nodded, and stood as Alice began speaking again. "I live at Cangham House, 27 Cromer Road. Come down, and I'll show you what I can."
Gwen capped her pen, and looked down at the address. "I'll be there," she said, realizing that she did not recognize the address. She had been there, but had not been aware enough to register where she was. Now she calculated that Alice didn't live too far from Rhys's parents. To think, all that time they had driven out there, never knowing that Jack's daughter was nearby.
"Fine," Alice said, and Gwen snapped he phone shut. Lois and Martha were both watching her. She pressed a quick hand over her eyes, and stood.
"Lois, I said go. I've got an errand to run." She went around the desk, swung her coat on, and grabbed her handbag. Halfway to the door, she turned. "Martha, with me," she ordered. She wasn't entirely sure why she did this, and Martha's eyebrows raised as she reached for her own coat. For some reason, Gwen didn't want to be the one who went off on mysterious errands on her own. She already had to do that enough to make sure Flat Holm island was still running, even without Jack's direction.
"Need a doctor?" Martha asked, as they made their way to Gwen's car.
"That's not all that I hired you for, you know. However, you complain when I use you in any other capacity."
Martha ducked into the passenger seat and bit her lip "It was really just the endless Weevils. They're so-."
"Dirty?" Gwen offered, using one of the other woman's more frequent adjectives Martha used for the creatures.
Martha winced a little at her own descriptor being repeated. "Yeah, I suppose."
Gwen considered as she tapped Alice's address into the GPS. "That's Cardiff. It's how we work here. When you were last here it was all a bit grand, wasn't it? The labs, and death personified chasing us through a sterile hospital. And you and Jack did huge things with the Doctor, didn't you? He makes you feel like everything is on this grand scale. But it's not all like that. You can't be elitist about alien involvement."
It was a conversation they should have had long ago, when Martha first stepped in with her perfectly coiffed hair and pressed skirts. Gwen didn't doubt that she had seen rough conditions during her stint with the Doctor, judging by the small things that Jack let slip, but her time with UNIT had given her an air of superiority.
"I'm not!" Martha protested as they drove away from the Bay. The protest was loud, and insistent, in the way that people protested things that they thought that had hidden from others, and even themselves.
"Sure you are. I see you stick your nose up at slugging through the mud, and chasing after drunks on the Estates. Always asking why we don't let the police do that, and deal with the suspects after. You do it," she added, when Martha opened her mouth to argue again. "But we all see that you don't like it."
"Freelancing wasn't especially tidy," Martha pointed out, with a jutted lip that almost qualified as a pout. "And I've seen things worse than you've dreamed of."
"You don't know what I dream about," Gwen said, thinking of the nightmares that left her shaking silently in the dark. "But that's not the point. What is the point is that you've never done this with the crap recognition and disrespect we continually get. You've seen glory. Martha and this job comes with precious little glory. You've got to find it yourself."
Martha didn't reply to this. Occasional glances showed her still staring out the window, and Gwen didn't push her. it was a careful balancing act to prod her into seeing the truth, without alienating her. It would be rather more impressive on a rooftop, she thought. Next time, I'm taking a leaf out of Jack's book.
All of this was a leaf out of Jack's book, really. Gwen had been hesitant to call her out on this, but it had to be done. He would have done it; he wasn't afraid to confront people about the things that affected job performance. It was the other things he kept silent about. He had known about Gwen and Owen's affair, her betrayal, and he had kept silent. She knew that Andy saw more in Lois than just a receptionist, and she kept silent. Once, she might not have, but now she thought they needed their secrets.
For almost the whole rest of the drive, they were silent. Then, Gwen realized that she should probably debrief Martha on their destination. "You remember that I told you about Jack's daughter?" Martha nodded, perhaps still musing over what Gwen had told her. the knowledge of Alice's story lingered in the air between them. "She has something to show us."
They pulled up to the kerb of the suburban street. A tremour ran through Gwen's body as she found herself searching the pavement for a bright blue box. Shaking this off, she made her way to the steps of the house. Martha hung back as Gwen rapped on the door. It opened swiftly, just after Gwen heard Martha murmur, "it seems so normal." Gwen knew what she meant; one expected anything related to Jack to be eccentric, and abnormal to the nth degree.
"Hello again, Gwen," Alice said. Gwen noticed that there was no formality in her voice. Perhaps she didn't think Gwen deserved respect, or perhaps Torchwood would always be familiar to her.
"Hello. Alice, this is Martha Jones."
"You're both Torchwood?"
"We are." Gwen nodded.
Once again Alice's eyes drifted to the bulge at Gwen's middle, which was much more apparent than it had been when they last met. Four weeks could mean a lot of development for a foetus, Gwen had learned.
"I don't suppose you'd listen when I advised you to get out of this while you can?"
The flat tone made Gwen's heart tighten, and she wanted to fold the broken-looking woman into her arms. She might have, had she not been afraid of being stabbed by the sharp edges that were formed by her features. There was nothing Gwen could do for her, nothing anyone could, probably not even Jack.
Or maybe especially not even Jack.
"You had something we needed to know about?" Gwen prodded, not responding to the question, because everyone present knew her answer. She was invested in Torchwood for better or worse.
"Yes. Down the road, just there," she pointed. "There's an abandoned house where the kids play. Steven's mates." She swallowed. "They have something living there, and it's no animal I've seen. I don't think it's hurting them, or vice versa, but they're in and out all of the time. I'm positive it's not from Earth, so you needed to know."
"Thank you," Gwen said. She reached out to rest a hand on the woman's arm, but Alice jerked away, pulling down the sleeves of her sweater as though they were a protective coating. Gwen took her hand back. "I know you'd have rather not called us."
"Yes, well. I thought protecting the children was your new angle. Some children."
From the corner of her eye, Gwen saw Martha's mouth open, and she stepped back to press her elbow into her side. Alice had earned her bitterness.
"Call us if you need anything," Gwen instructed, going down the steps. to her credit, Alice nodded, rather than reminding her that Torchwood would be the last place to expect her call.
"Cheery. Hard to believe she's Jack's. Couldn't even offer us a cuppa."
"She's well within her rights. The outcome doesn't change what happened. And I'm certain she's Jack's. The pain in their eyes is identical."
Martha didn't say anything, and Gwen hoped she was sobered by the reminder that Gwen had seen a side of Jack that she hadn't, even though they save the world together. Gwen had done that too, more than once.
The approached the house that Alice had pointed to. Gwen tried the door, and was surprised to see that the knob gave under her hand. She took her gun out of its holster and pushed the door open.
"Really, it's time you let someone else go first," Martha murmured as they stepped over the threshold. Gwen turned to glare at her, but was interrupted by the sound of raucous laughter coming from above them.
Gwen began up the stairs, treading carefully, in case any of the stairs were rotten. The house did not seem to be too dilapidated, but you could never be certain. In the upstairs corridor they could identify children's laughter coming from the partially-open door at the end of the hall. Gwen made a beeline for the door, ducking against the wall just before entering. "Let's not go in all guns blazing," she whispered.
Martha nodded, and lowered her gun slightly, though neither put their weapon back in the holster. "Right. One, two-," she mouthed 'three' and they started into the room.
Gwen had seen many strange things over her yeas with Torchwood, and had spent a good amount of time gaping. She liked to think, though, that she had gotten over that, for the most part. The sight that greeted them in the airy bedroom cured her of that notion.
Unconsciously showing her greater experience, Martha was not speechless—or maybe that was just how she was. Never lost for words. "Are we on the CBBC or something?"
Gwen could see where she got the idea. The room was brightly lit, with wide windows and scattered all over it were primary coloured toys, many of which were blinking and making noise. What really made the room look like a nursery school programme on the telly was the human-sized cat standing in the centre of the room with a blond-haired child riding on his shoulders.
"That Rift of yours means business," Martha said as the children began to turn to them with wide-eyed looks of fear.
"Ours," Gwen corrected. "Now, what is it?" Sometimes Martha's experience had its perks, which was why Gwen hadn't chastised her air of privilege more strongly. She did mean well, and have uses.
"The Doctor just called them Cat People. They are an evolved housecat that bred with humans. They don't exist for billions of years. We were in five billion and fifty-three, and they could have evolved earlier but-."
Gwen put up her hand. "Right. Billions of years, got it. More pertinent question: they don't speak English, do they?"
"Well, the TARDIS… no, I assume not."
The Cat Person gently set the child down, and crossed the room to them. Gwen was entranced by its deepset eyes, but as she stared at it, she thought its face seemed rather thin. It was draped, she now saw, in an oversized man's suit.
"Cat," it said, pointing to its own chest. Then, it pointed to the child it had set on the ground, which was now clinging to one orange and white stripped leg. "Michael," it continued. The little boy smiled, revealing pearly white teeth. It continued, pointing out each child clustered around the room. They had all stopped playing, and were staring at Gwen and Martha. "Julie," the cat finished, pointing at a girl in pigtails who was sitting nearby. She looked to be about ten, and the oldest child by far. The cat now watched them expectantly.
"Gwen," she said, and then turned to Martha. "Martha," she added, pointing. The cat repeated their names, and its lips turned upwards in what she assumed was a smile. Did these kind of gestures change after fifty-billion years?
"Where are you from?" Gwen asked, softly. The cat blinked, hiding and revealing its shimmering eyes, and then it shook its head, looking down at the child on its leg.
"Cat appeared," the small boy offered, popping a finger out of his mouth to do so.
Gwen looked down at the boy, over at Martha, and then over at the smiling Cat Person. She sighed. Sometimes "guns blazing" was easier.
In the end, they sent the children home, with reassurances that their friend would be fine. They were banking on adults' faith in a child's imagination, and Gwen planned to monitor the neighbourhood. If necessary, they could have a story printed in the paper regarding children's water intake and hallucinations, but she doubted it would come to that. One little boy burst into tears when they directed that he go home, and Gwen was touched to see the cat crouch down and dry his tears with a paw.
"Good Brennan," the cat said, in a voice like a purr. "Bye."
The boy sniffed, and hugged it tightly, before scampering off with the others. Before Julie left they were able to find out that they had been sneaking food to the Cat Person for three weeks, and that explained its lack of body fat. Only in storybooks could a creature be fed off of table scraps.
She rang Lois, who had returned to the base by then, and told her to search the database for languages from the five-billions. "And bring in food. Fish, preferably."
"I wonder if that's considered stereotyping," Martha mused, as they turned to leave the neighbourhood.
Gwen raised an eyebrow at her, and after a moment they both burst into laughter.
At base Lois went wide-eyed at the sight of the docile Cat Person. To her credit, though, she snapped into action after a second, working Toshiko's translation program. It took some hand motion to convince the Cat to speak in its language into the computer's speaker, but they managed it. Gwen hoped that Tosh had had a chance to rewrite the program after the incident with the plug.
Remembering that time with Owen, she surveyed the room as Lois showed the creature a monitor filled with alien text. Gwen felt the daily longing for the people that she had lost, and imagined Jack was somewhere feeling the same longing, the same pain. It made her feel closer to him for a moment that was broken only by Lois's triumphant, "Got it!" and the cat's startled look as the computer speaker echoed the phrase in a language no human in the room had heard before.
As it turns out, Castos was a nursery school teacher in his time, which explains his hand with the kids. He's a nice bloke (cat?), willing to learn English. We're not quite sure what do to with him. Integrating him into society is a bit of a no-go at this point, when people think all aliens are out to get them. Freda's one thing, but we know for a fact her family was in hiding even in her time, so we can assume there weren't Cat People running about. Our computers, and most other things, are utterly foreign to him, not even in museums. I suppose once the baby is born he could be in charge of the Torchwood crèche. Rhys would love that, wouldn't he?
Hard to believe that there will actually be a baby here, isn't it? In this world, when people can be minding their own business and then suddenly five billion years in the past? Okay, admittedly, Castros had won some sort of contest, and was in a ship investigating the remains of the Earth. He got sucked in by the Rift while spacewalking, or something. I didn't quite understand the story, but still. The danger is there. This baby could have a bad encounter on the street, run afoul of a Weevil, or have their life altered utterly by a man in a blue box. Or a man in a greatcoat.
You can't know what the world will give you. Love. Loves. New people, new places, new times. My mum, well she doesn't know now what I've seen, and couldn't have imagined when I was in that crib that's in my spare bedroom now. You couldn't know what would happen when you held your daughter for the first time—or when you hired me, or Ianto, or Tosh, or Owen. You can only act on what you know at the time, and what you hope.
I hope we find a place for Castros. I hope my baby grows up happy. I hope you find what you're looking for.
I miss you,
Gwen
To: gwen[dot]cooper [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk
From:jack[dot]harkness [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk
Date: January 29th, 2011
Re: RE: Cats
Adrift! A little boat adrift!
And night is coming down!
Will no one guide a little boat
Unto the nearest town?
So Sailors say—on yesterday—
Just as the dusk was brown
One little boat gave up its strife
And gurgled down and down.
So angels say—on yesterday—
Just as the dawn was red
One little boat—o'erspent with gales—
Retrimmed its masts—redecked its sails—
And shot—exultant on!
Emily Dickinson