Gwen stared at the tickets in her hand, when Jack had said that Torchwood Two had arranged her transport this had not been what she had expected. If she was expected to travel to Glasgow from Cardiff she had at least wanted to fly, but no, here she was at Cardiff bus station, waiting for a bus to take her to Edinburgh from where she would get another bus to Glasgow. Looking at her tickets again she held in a scream of frustration when she realised that her first bus journey would be just over fourteen hours. What was she going to do on a bus for fourteen hours? She supposed she could sleep, she had done that before, slept on a bus journey, it hadn't been too bad, that was it she'd sleep and be completely refreshed to deal with the Director of Torchwood Two and the strange quirks that he apparently possessed.
She hadn't been able to find out much information about the other Director, Owen and Toshiko not knowing much. Jack had been unwilling to chat about the other man, and Ianto had been rather vague when she had asked him, only stating that the man had many idiosyncrasies and that he was brilliant at what he did. He also warned her that Torchwood Two's offices were slightly different to what she was used to, but she shrugged it off. She supposed that he just meant that it wasn't as organised without her there to direct everything.
She got on the bus, waving half-heartedly at Rhys who had brought her to the bus station before finding what she thought looked to be a good seat. The bus soon filled up and she almost immediately regretted her seating choice when she realised that the air conditioner above her seat didn't work and a child who seemed to take pleasure in kicking chairs was sat behind her. There wasn't anywhere that she could move to though, so she was determined not to let it get to her, if she got too hot she could take off a layer, and she could always get the kid to stop, it would have to listen to her after all, she was Gwen Cooper of Torchwood, she was much more powerful than anyone else on the bus. So naturally she was the one in charge of the bus and therefore everyone would do as she told them.
She tried to settle in comfortably and get some sleep but with the child kicking her chair it seemed to be impossible, she growled to herself and went to confront the parents but neither of them listened to her. She let out a huff and sat forward in her seat waiting for the child to fall asleep before she leant back again. The seats weren't the comfiest, but they were more comfortable than the couch that she had been sleeping on for the last couple of evenings. She soon drifted off to sleep, but her dreams weren't pleasant. She couldn't help but dream of what had happened in the last couple of days and how horrible everyone seemed to have been to her, didn't they realise that she had done nothing wrong.
Gwen was exhausted by time she got off the bus, the journey was the worst one she could ever remember undertaking, there had always been someone or something keeping her awake during her trip. At first it had been the child, then her own dreams, then she had been too hot, the woman in front of her on the phone to her boyfriend, the drivers tuneless whistling and then she had been too cold. A worse journey she didn't think was possible and she could wait to get to Torchwood Two so that they could set her up in her hotel.
Luckily for her she only had a ten minute wait between her bus from Cardiff and the one to Glasgow, so she was soon sat on another bus, this time only for just about an hour. That journey was no less torturous as she used the time to catch up on her emails. She had several, despite having only left the night before, something that told her she really was needed at Torchwood. She had an email from Owen, one from Toshiko and two from Ianto, yet no email from Jack. She supposed that he didn't want to use internal email to check on her as it may give the wrong impression to anyone monitoring internal email like Ianto. She knew that Jack didn't want him to know how he felt about her, so she felt a bit better thinking that he would contact her later. She read the emails from the others, expecting that it was requests for information or knowledge about something that only she could tell them.
Owen wanted her to pass on a file to the Director of Torchwood two for him, something that he had attached to the email, Tosh to remind her to pay attention to what she would be learning as Tosh had no time to retrain her, something that Gwen thought was just insubordination and something she would deal with when she got back to Cardiff. Ianto's emails were the worst though, one was her instructions for when she reached Glasgow as to how she would go about getting to Torchwood two, and the other was a badly worded request, it was almost a demand, that she do her paperwork. Gwen huffed, why she had to do her own paperwork as the second in command she didn't know, that was what Ianto was there for after all. Her instructions also annoyed her, she had thought that Torchwood two were arranging her transport, why she had to get a taxi from the bus station she didn't know, surely the Director could spare someone to come and collect her and take her to their offices, or even straight to her hotel.
She let out a groan as she got off the bus, carrying her bags, one on her shoulder and one on her back making her way to where she saw a line of taxis. The driver was very unsympathetic about her journey and ignored her pretty much the whole way to Torchwood two's offices. She was sure when they arrived that she was in the wrong place, but the driver assured her that this was the place that she wanted to go. She paid him for the journey rather reluctantly, after all he hadn't been the best taxi driver around, he had had no care for the needs of his passengers, and got out of the taxi to stare at the building in front of her.
Gwen looked at the front of the building a look of distaste crossing her face, why on earth would Torchwood Two set up in a block of flats, there was no logic in it. She took out her phone and called the number Ianto had given her, waiting less than two rings for it to be answered. "Hi, it's Gwen Cooper. I'm looking for Archie."
"I'm Archie, the door is open, but the lifts aren't working. You'll need to take the stairs to the topmost floor you can reach, I'll leave the door open for you." The voice on the other end of the line replied before he abruptly hung up on her.
She pulled open the door and made her way straight to the lifts, after all how did he know for sure that they were broken, they would work for her she was sure of it. She must have stood for five minutes trying to get the lifts to open before giving up and beginning the trek up to the top of the staircase. She didn't know how many stairs it was, but she was almost positive that they were alien in origin as she should not have been as tired as she was when she reached the top of them.
At the top of the stairs was a metal gate that had the Torchwood logo emblazoned all over it, and Gwen realised that despite her misgivings she must be in the right place. Why they had chosen this location was beyond her, the top of a high rise, it just didn't make sense. Why somewhere so public, surely dragging weevils up those stairs wasn't very feasible, people might see. It would be different if the lifts worked, but they had obviously been broken beyond repair for a long time if they refused to work for her.
She pushed the gate and found that it was open, walking through it she jumped as it swung shut almost as soon as she had walked through it. She took in the sight of the landing she was on and noticed only one door, unlike all the other levels that she had stopped on to catch her breath. There was another set of stairs that seemed to be blocked off and Gwen considered going up them to check what was up there, surely it was something that would be of no problems to her but she decided against it after realising that it was just more stairs that she would have to climb.
She walked towards the only door, throwing it open and entering Torchwood Two like she owned the place. In a way she technically did, Jack was the Director of the Institute and as his Second Torchwood Two was hers by right. Not that she really wanted it, there was no way she would want to live in Glasgow when Jack was back in Cardiff.
She dropped her bags on the floor beside the door and entered the room a bit more cautiously, having thought about what she had heard about the strange Director. She had no idea what he was really like, and for all she knew he could leave dangerous things out all over the place. Looking around the room she was in she was surprised that it looked just like a hallway of a flat, just a lot longer than normal, obviously stretching the length of the building.
She made her way through the open door in front of her, looking about for the Director, mildly annoyed at the fact that he hadn't been at the door to great her and take her bags. It was something that she would bring up to Jack when she called him later that evening, the man was not being very hospitable. Sat to the side of the doorway that she had just gone through was a man who looked to be in his late forties sat calmly, a phone to the side of him and a file in his hand.
"Gwen Elizabeth Cooper, Torchwood Operative from the Cardiff Branch Torchwood Three. Police and Community Liaison." He began looking her up and down as she turned to face him. "You're late."