To: {at}torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk
From: [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk
Date: February 28th 2010
Re: Dementors?

Dear Jack,
The rain hasn't stopped for weeks. The gloom that I've felt constantly for months has washed over Cardiff this February. Castros is doing well, but I think homesickness and culture shock are wearing on him. Lois has taken over the role of English teacher, but there are days when the translation program makes that feel redundant. We've rigged up quite the costume to get him in and out of the base. It's not like we would leave a creature cooped up in that warehouse all the time. Well, at least not a sentient communicative one. He's not a Weevil. Is that a mark of my influence on Torchwood, Jack? That I see a humanoid being as not a Weevil, and would not be okay with shooting him, or locking him in the vaults?

Teaching English to a cat—well Cat Person, as he reminds us- is far from the worst the Rift has thrown at us this month. Andy is of the opinion that the hail is Rift-tainted and that's why it seems to go straight for humans and cars. There's more than that of course, but listening to flashcard drills is much easier than focusing on revising reports of some of our darkest days. I understand, now, why you encouraged frivolity in the Hub. I always wondered if Owen, Tosh and I didn't get out of hand sometimes. You would just stand above us, watching with that indulgent smirk and crossed arms, while we played basketball and knocked down wires. Was it because we were still always ready for action? I'd love frivolity here, but we're still working on readiness. The shocked looks when the monitors go off frustrate me to no end.

Martha and I are almost always the ones to take the remote monitor home. Not because Lois or Andy would ignore it or anything, it's just…. In case. I reckon it's not the best way to train them, but it's safe. Well, it's the closest thing to safe that we have, and that's all I can cling onto.

The Hub is coming along well, though it will be a long time until it's done. Still, we're getting there. That's a light at the end of the tunnel, isn't it? Still, there's so much to do. So much and they don't see all that's out there in the night. They don't see what makes it worth it, either. I realized that recently. We're working on that. Torchwood…we're not there yet. We're not Torchwood… that word holds so much weight, that sometimes I wish I'd never heard it.

*_*_*

Gwen shook off her umbrella violently as she stepped over the threshold of the house that still smelled like fresh paint.

"Couldn't be Gwen!" a voice called from the kitchen.

She smiled to herself and slid the still-damp umbrella into the stand by the door. "Nah, it's an alien doppelganger," she yelled back. She shrugged out of her coat, and slid her boots off. This at least gave her a feeling of being drier than she had been, which was about all she could hope for until the damp of the day left her bones.

In the kitchen, Rhys was standing at the counter with a salad bowl in front of him. "I'll do that," she offered, holding her hand out for the tongs he was using to toss it. He slid the bowl across towards her, and kept watching her with a curious tilt of the had.

"What? Still got purple gook on me, do I?" she asked, sliding a hand over her cheek. "We're really lucky that thing's venom wasn't poisonous, at least not to humans. Andy looked like a grape, he was so covered in it."

He shook his head. "No, you're fine. Gorgeous, actually. It's just—you haven't joked about your work like that in a long while. Not about Torchwood, or anything really."

She paused in her salad tossing, resting one hand lightly on the clean countertop. She considered his statement, catching the edge of her lip under her teeth. Her first instinct was to chide him for being ridiculous, but an honest voice in the back of her head told her that he had a point.

"Well… I am now," she said. "Someone's got to see the humour in our lives. I'll go mad if I don't. Wouldn't want that, would we?"

Rhys smirked and slid around behind her. He rested his hands on the counter, on either side of her. He sounded her, and leaned in to kiss her neck. "There are times that I like you mad."

A shiver coursed down her spine, and she turned her head to meet his lips. They were warm and familiar. It amazed her that after days spent running from monsters that wanted to eliminate her with one shot of poison, he could still feels safe in her husband's human embrace.

She tried to forget that there was a time when she hadn't felt safe with Rhys. Torchwood had felt safer, sheltered by Jack and Owen's experience. Now she was the shield for the team, and she needed Rhys's separation from it all to anchor her.

"I didn't let it drift," she whispered.

"What's that?" Rhys said, kissing her behind the ear.

"Nothing. I love you. Let's eat, if we're going to. The meal looks lovely."

"I can think of things I'd rather eat," he growled.

She laughed, to stop herself moaning a little. "Mmm, so can I. They can wait though. I'm ravenous. Feed your wife and child, caveman."

"Fine," he grumbled, the vibrations from his voice reverberating against her back. He kissed the top of her head before he pulled away. She expected to feel cold when he left her to go over to the stove, but the fire in the living room gave the even the centrally heated kitchen a cozy glow that kept them connected.

They spoke little during supper, but not for lack of things to say. Somehow, she realized there would be the time for that later. All day she had been racing against time, always believing that they had so little time. Yet they had made it this far. They had what time they had, there was no need to rush through it. Things might go unsaid, she knew, but these moments were too precious to waste trying to spit out everything you might want someone to know. She realized that she was learning to accept the constant loom of death without always focusing on it.

"You're awfully thoughtful tonight, love. Anything troubling you?" Rhys asked, after they had finished eating. "Any thing new?" he added, with a small smile.

She shrugged, and stood to help him clear the plates from the table. "No. Well, we had a nasty creature running about Cathys, and Lois caught her first Weevil today, so I can finally reconfigure the Weevil hunting roster."

"Oh, I owe her a pint, then."

"She was so proud, and I just remembered when I felt that. Proud and amazed at what we did, even if it was horrible. I'd gotten so used to it, so jaded by the negatives. But we saved a woman's baby, and tomorrow's her wedding day. Castros had such a horrible thing happen to him, and he's in such good spirits most of the time. There is good in it. I forgot that. Sometime between losing Ianto, and Jack I forgot that. I even had it back for just a second when all those kids were safe, but it flitted away again. I've got to hold onto it, because if I don't, my team never will."

"Maybe that's why Jack left," Rhys mused. She looked up, startled. He never mentioned Jack's name to her. "He couldn't hold onto the good anymore, but he knew it would still be there."

"How did he know?" she asked.

He took the last plate fro her hand and set it in the sink. "There's you in it, that's how," he averred. "My good Gwen."

She reached up and put a hand on his bicep. Squeezing gently, she leaned in and kissed him, hard, latching onto his lips.

They didn't make it to the bedroom. Rather, they stumbled into the living room. He laid her on the couch. So often lately when they made love, she let him take her, relieved to have one responsibility that wasn't hers. Now, she pushed up, grasping his belt and turning them so now he was on the sofa.

"Gwen," he murmured as she undid the belt, and straddled him. His hands rested on her swollen belly, caressing her as he slid her sweater over her head. She put her hands on his shoulders, and together they forgot about the rest of the world.

Afterward there wasn't the wine that there once had been, but there was the fire. They wrapped themselves in blankets and lay on the sofa. Gwen felt more relaxed than she had in months. So, of course, her mobile rang.

"Sometimes I wish I didn't know better than to tell you to leave it." He rose behind her as she shuffled into the kitchen for her phone, and didn't see the pensive look that crossed over her face. When had she missed his acceptance of this fact?

He held her as she flipped open the mobile. "Lois?"

"Gwen, I'm really sorry to bother you. Only, it's Andy."

"What about him?" she asked, bracing herself against the counter.

"He had the Rift monitor tonight, right? Well, I left my wallet at the base, so Castros and I went to get it. The alarms were going mad, and he's not answering his mobile."

Gwen bit back the chastisement for taking Castros all over town. They'd leased a flat in Lois's building and his disguise worked for going in between, but it was all temporary until they could have a Hub where he could have a decent living space, like Jack had had. She wanted to create some kind of perception filter for him too, so he could go out some, but a mask and some heavy clothing were not the same.

"You phoned his flat?"

"I went by there. He's not there. I would have called Martha, but she and Mickey went to London to see her parents, so…"

"No, yeah, I know. It's fine. See if you can get a track on his car. I'll leave the house in a minute and try to find him, all right?"

"All right. See you soon."

Gwen clamped the phone shut. "They're like teenagers. Give them an inch of responsibility, and they go missing."

"Too much to hope for that then they show up in the morning with a bad hangover?" Rhys mumbled, resting his chin on her shoulder.

"Not since Owen's day," she quipped. "Come on. Let's go find my clothes. I've no idea where my bra landed."

"Far, far away is where I was aiming for," he agreed.

She shook her head, and smiled at him, but a part of her brain was focused on trying to figure out where in the world Andy might be.

She dressed quickly in the living room, fixed her hair in the hall mirror and donned her coat and boots once again. As she was about to dash out the door, Rhys appeared and shoved a thermos of tea into her hands. "It'll keep you warm when I can't.

For just a moment she felt tears well in her eyes. "Want to ride along?" she asked.

"Nah. Someone's got to hold down the fort here." He kissed her, and ten held open the door for her. "I'll be here when you get back."

She smiled at him, and then darted out into the still-pounding rain. Once in her car, she slipped the tea into its cup holder, and rang Lois. "His car is stopped on the east side of Bute Park. Near the uni."

"Oh, god, so this time the uni's there and he's disappeared," Gwen muttered, starting the car and turning it around on the road so it headed west.

"Looks that way," Lois agreed, and then gave Gwen the coordinates. "D'you want me to head up that way as well?"

Gwen considered for a moment. She might need back-up, and while she wanted someone at base to monitor the computers, with no one else in the field she had to agree. "Yeah. Does Castros know enough about our tech to be of use if we need him?"

"Yeah, he's quite good with it."

"Perfect. See you in a bit."

She hung up the phone, and concentrated on driving, the tea in its open thermos surrounding her with an aroma that made her feel as though she hadn't really left Rhys's tight embrace.

When she pulled up next to Andy's abandoned car, though, she knew very well that she was far away from the comforts of home. The nearby gate to the park was still open, so she ran towards it through the rain. Not too far off she could make up a ring of dark, shadowy shapes. They were crouched in a ring, around something. She was willing to bet that that something was a someone, and that she knew who it was.

It was getting to the point that running was not a skill that she could claim mastery at any more. Still, she moved as fast as she could without over balancing. She slid her gun out of the holster as she approached, and when she saw Andy kneeling at the centre of the circle, she shot at the nearest shadowy figure.

It fell, and the others turned on her. She had a moment's vision of a dozen or so tall, wiry figures. They looked to be made of tendons, and their turning was like the movement of a marionette's wires, without the solidity of the puppet. Her bullets flew right through them, it seemed, and they began to float towards her.s

One shaking hand reached up to touch her comm. "Castros," she said, hoping that the transfer of the translation program to the comms had worked in the way that Mickey had said it was supposed to. They really needed a tech guru of their own. "See what you can find on creatures that look as though they're made of rubber bands… and…" She paused as they grew closer to her, forming a ring around her as they had around Andy. She was suddenly aware of how dark the night was. The cold and rain seeped under her skin.

She remembered the grey clouds of the day, how dreary they made the whole world feel. It never would be good again would i? She was kidding herself, really. With her in charge they were just a gang of ragamuffins running around after aliens. It was all a great joke, without Jack. She might as well let these creatures swoop down on her, eliminate her, take her away from this mess. Then the others would realize how fruitless this was. Rhys could find himself a proper wife, and the baby wouldn't have to come out in a world of darkness.

It all made sense to her, in that moment, when she was so sure that the world was never going to get better. It was a deeper sense of despair than she had felt in the time of the 456; then she had felt desperation more than despair. She had been grabbing at straws to find a solution. Now she was quite all right with giving up, with giving into the rattling breath sounds surrounding her. The creatures descended, making deep sucking noises. It was almost as though they were sucking the hope from her, she realized with a drab awareness of the fact.

She bit her lip in preparation for what she knew was coming, not out of fear, but out of preparation. Her tongue caught a drop of tea that had lingered on her upper lift from a hasty gulp as she drove up to the park. A flash of memory darted into her conscious; Rhys's smile when he realized that she was now able to joke about Torchwood once more. She blinked, and for a second the clouds that had engulfed her vision dissipated a little. She thought of Rhys's arms around her that night. As she thought of him, the creatures moved back a little bit, and she held onto the memory.

Other faces flashed into her consciousness. Lois's triumphant cry as she maneuvered a Weevil into the cell in the base, Martha's laugh whenever Castros managed a pun in English—his own not the translator's—. Then there were others, faces that initially made the creatures descend again when they appeared in her mind's eye, but Gwen shook her head slightly. Tosh lying dead on a medbay chair became Tosh rolling her eyes at one of Ianto's deadpan quips, or sharing a boys are stupid, aren't they? look with Gwen over their Chinese takeaway. Owen's hostile snarl on the day they stopped their affair became the look of contentedness he had during those few days with Diane.

Then there was Jack. At first she thought that this was going to be it. He was, in a way, the source of her unhappiness. Surely now her brain would oppress all happiness that could be discovered when it focused on Captain Jack Harkness. Instead, though, the first thing she saw was Jack's laughing eyes looking up at her from across the Hub, the easy smile he wore as he surveyed them working diligently, and then caught her eye. He had had such fun running Torchwood, finding light in all of the dark, and now he had left. Though he had never directly charged her with this task, she was going to take it upon herself. She could find the light in the dark, even when Jack couldn't.

"We're not hopeless!" she said aloud. "We may be a small planet, and maybe it's easier to pick up off one-by-one and feed off of our sadness, but we're far from hopeless!" She held onto the certainty she wished she had about these words, focused on the joy she had found in Torchwood. All things told, she still loved her job. She wasn't sure why she knew that this knowledge was what would keep the creatures away, but it worked. They began to drift and as she worried about their getting loosed on Cardiff, they commenced disintegration, joining the clouds in the foggy sky.

"Gwen? Oh my God, Andy!"

Holding up a hand to keep Lois away from the remants of the creatures, Gwen turned to check on Andy. He was slowly rising from his knees, but there was a hollow look in his eyes. Gween figured that the best thing for it was to get him away from there, so she put a hand on his shoulder and led him towards her car. On the way to the base she made him drink from the thermos of tea, purposefully omitting the fact that it was from Rhys with love.

He stared straight ahead the whole drive, and got out without a word, heading for the warehouse door. "What was it?" Lois asked, following him.

"JK Rowling had to get her ideas somewhere, I expect. Andy, with me." She jerked her head to the back where they had a camp bed set up on the other side of the cells. She made him sit down, and stared into his eyes, searching for any kind of change.

His eyes were human, but they seemed changed somehow. There was a hollow despair that surrounded his pupils. Even though his eyes were on her, he didn't seem to be seeing her. "Look at me," she ordered.

He blinked, and seemed to focus a bit more. There was still something missing in his aaze, and she cast about, trying to figure out what it was. Then she realized. His eyes were missing that slightly hang-dog expression he still got when he watched her. At first she wondered if he might have given it up when she wasn't paying attention, but no. She saw the crinkling smile he had given her while handing her a mug of tea earlier in the day. That was missing.

He had given up.

Later, she would decide that this was the day on which she had realized that she had gained instincts. She once again knew what to do without knowing how she had gained the knowledge. Without a word, she leant forward, cupped his face in her hand and kissed him, hard.

There was no response for a moment, and she wondered if she'd been wrong. Then, Andy pressed back, deepening the kiss. She let it go on for a minute, and then broke away. He stared at her, gaping-mouthed, his eyes swimming in confusion. She smiled.

"Good, you're back." She brushed her hair behind her ears. She bit her lip, and his eyes bored into her for a moment until she turned on her heels and marched towards the door, passing Lois and Castros who were both staring at her. "I hope the three of you can at least hold down the fort until the morning. Not a big ask, is it?"

They called out assents, but she wasn't really listening. She had a husband to get back to.

*_*_*
Maybe there were other ways to handle the situation, I don't know. It seemed like something you might do, to be honest. I'm not as great a sex symbol as you with the ever-expanding football I keep under my blouse, but it did snap him to.

We've nearly finished the Hub. We'll start moving in next month, and then go from there. We're a rag-tag team, but Torchwood always is, isn't it? I did some digging in the archives after that incident, because I wanted to see if there were any encounters with those creatures before. I'd never done much down there before, it was always Ianto's place, wasn't it? Anyway, from what I saw, teams were always losing and gaining members. Having issues with togetherness—and I at least think we're unlikely to have a mutiny.

I miss you every day. I always wonder what you would do. When I can come up with it sometimes I do it.

Oh Jack, if I could just see you. Most of all I worry that you're OK. Please let me know that you really are.

To: [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk
From: [at]torchwood[dot]nongov[dot]uk
Date: February 28th 2010
Re: re: Dementors?

March 26th. 11PM on the crest of the hill where Owen found the asteroid, and we went stargazing.

A/N can't believe I forgot to update this over here.