Kathy Swanson was not the least bit surprised when Gwen Cooper turned up at CID headquarters, demanding the release of the Torchwood SUV, and all other items belonging to Jack that were currently being held as evidence. She went to the front desk, hoping but not hopeful that she might be able to negotiate with the younger woman.
"Miss Cooper," she said, struggling to keep the tension out of her voice. The last thing she needed was an all-in argument with the feisty Torchwood operative in front of all her colleagues. "Come with me, and we'll talk about the situation."
"There's nothing to talk about, Detective Swanson," Gwen answered. "We want the SUV, and everything of Jack's that you still have. That's not negotiable."
"It's all registered evidence, Miss Cooper," Swanson insisted. "As a former police officer, you should know that we can't just hand it all over to you! This is not a Torchwood matter, no matter how much you might try to pretend otherwise. You have to let us handle this."
Gwen shut her eyes briefly, struggling to fend off a threatening headache. She didn't want to be here, arguing with a woman who did not want to recognise the authority of Torchwood.
"Detective Swanson, I'd like this to be as simple and painless as possible for all of us. I am asking you to hand over what belongs to Torchwood. Don't force me to order you in front of your colleagues."
Swanson stared at Gwen, her face set in stone as she realised the corner that she'd been effectively backed into. There was no apparent way out, no negotiation possible, and with the loss of that evidence, it was possible they might have well lost any chance of successfully catching and prosecuting the perpetrators.
"Come with me," she stated coolly, and led the way out of the building, to the yard in which the Torchwood SUV was being kept.
Fifteen minutes later, they were standing by the SUV, waiting for the clothing items to be delivered.
"Nothing was removed from the car by us," Swanson told her sourly. "Nothing's even been processed properly yet. We're so bloody backlogged…"
"I am sorry," Gwen told her sincerely, "really. But we need the car, and Jack needs the clothes."
"For what?" Swanson demanded to know. "It's not as if he'll be moving from that bed anytime soon!"
Gwen didn't respond immediately. Technically she was right, and there was no way that the woman could be allowed to know that Jack had recovered fully from his physical injuries. She made a snap decision and spoke again, all the while trying not to think too hard about all the ways that Jack was going to kill her if he ever found out what she'd done.
"Jack's clothes… How badly damaged are they?"
Swanson looked grim.
"Irreparable. He wasn't just stripped, Miss Cooper. His clothes were pretty torn off his body. They were all destroyed, except for that coat of his. It has a scorch mark on the back of the collar, and some blood on it, but that's about all. Why?"
"Because I'll let you keep the rest of the clothing if you'll let me take his coat."
The detective hesitated.
"You'd turn a blind eye to that?"
"All he wants is his coat," Gwen told her softly. "Damned thing is like a security blanket to him. Now, I'm sorry but I really do need to take the SUV, and everything in it. You can keep the rest of his clothes, though. I doubt he'll miss them."
"Well, I suppose that's better than nothing," Swanson conceded. "About the SUV, though. Like I said, we haven't taken anything about it, but it's more than likely that the attackers did."
"Don't worry, we'll deal with that," Gwen stated firmly. Swanson looked bitter as she turned to go and collect the greatcoat.
"I thought you might."
Half an hour later, Gwen was on her way back to the Hub with the SUV, and Jack's beloved greatcoat. They would need to take inventory, of course, but she had seen at a glance that there were items missing. The stun guns, most noticeably, were all gone, and that deeply worried her. She tried to concentrate on driving, making an admirable effort to ignore the cracked driver's side window, as well as a very noticeable blood stain on the back seat.
Gwen thought she could guess the basics of what had happened, judging by the state of the vehicle. Jack had taken the SUV to a pub somewhere. Whether he'd planned on simply getting drunk, or had actually intended on bedding someone, she had no way of knowingwithout speaking to Jack. She didn't think it was the latter, though. After all, they all knew Jack and Ianto were together, and though Jack still flirted with everything that breathed, it was clear that he'd slept with no one but Ianto since coming home.
Either way, it baffled her. What had Jack been thinking, going to a pub the night before he was supposed to be spending Christmas Day with Ianto and the rest of the Jones clan? Nerves? Possibly, she mused, but then again she didn't picture Jack as being the type to get nervous at meeting the parents. If anyone was nervous, it should have been Ianto. After all, Jack had such a loud, proud and booming personality, it was all too easy to feel overwhelmed around him. Especially considering the man had no shame, and had a rather painful tendency to embarrass those around him, whether he meant to or not. No, she wouldn't have blamed Ianto for being the nervous one, not at all.
Her gaze was drawn once again to the bloodstain on the backseat. Perhaps, she though, it would be worth it to get it cleaned professionally, rather than subject Ianto to the task.
Blood covered the backseat in thick streaks. Detective Swanson had said that, with the exception of the greatcoat, Jack's clothing had been pretty much destroyed. By the looks of it, they'd been shredded whilst he was still wearing them. She tried hard to stop thinking of that, but all it served to do was trigger her memory of walking into that hospital room, and seeing Jack so cruelly battered and abused, and that in turn led to other, still darker thoughts.
Jack had apparently been naked when he was found, according to the few details Kathy Swanson had given her – naked and secured to a bed. A person didn't need to be a genius to know what that suggested. Tears welled up in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks before she could stop them. She had yet to get Owen alone, and find out whether he knew for sure what she so strongly suspected. Oh, she hoped she was wrong, she really did. But the story that was slowly unfolding seemed bleak indeed.
Jack, of course, was unlikely to admit the truth. In the relatively short time she'd known him, Jack had proven to be notoriously hard to get personal information out of. Even now, he still would not discuss where he had gone or what he'd done when he disappeared with his 'Doctor'.
Gwen just couldn't see Jack even admitting to having been raped, let alone being affected by it in any way. If that was what had happened, though, then they were all in for a very rough ride – Jack most of all.
Kathy Swanson watched as the Torchwood SUV pulled away, silently cursing Gwen Cooper and the not-so-secret agency that she represented. She knew she shouldn't have been surprised, but she made a vow right then and there to rip into Jack Harkness the next time she was allowed to see him, regardless of his physical state.
"Swanson?"
She looked around to see her Superintendent standing just behind her, a slightly amused look on his face.
"Yes, sir?"
"You let Torchwood take their vehicle."
There was no criticism in his voice, just simple resignation. He knew as well as she did that they had no possibility of usurping Torchwood's authority.
"Yes, sir."
"And you told the woman...?"
"That nothing had been processed yet."
The Superintendent couldn't quite hide a smirk.
"They'll have our hides when they find out."
"Hopefully we'll have found the men who attacked Captain Harkness long before they do find out."
"We're not doing this to show up Torchwood," he stated quietly, and she shook her head.
"No, sir."
"All right. Just tell me that you have multiple hard copies of all the processed evidence? You know that lot can hack our systems."
Swanson answered with a nod.
"Yes, sir. I made sure to give..."
He held a hand up, silencing her.
"No. I don't want to know. Better if I don't. Just make sure you come to me when you're ready to make an arrest. I'll need to be the one to get the warrant."
She nodded again, watching with a smile as he turned and strode from the room.
"Yes, sir."
"Do you think he's resting?" Toshiko asked nervously as Owen attempted to concentrate on a multitude of tests that he was running.
"I don't know, Tosh. I hope he is, but you know what Jack is like."
"Well, if anyone can get him to relax, it's Ianto."
It was a very deliberately made remark, and it got a reaction. Owen's gaze snapped up to meet hers, and Tosh did not like what she saw there.
"Owen, what's going on?" she asked tensely. "Please talk to me. You know why Jack didn't leave with Ianto on Christmas Eve, don't you?"
He wanted to brush off the question, he really did. Instead, though, he found himself telling her the truth.
"Jack didn't leave with Ianto because our wonderful teaboy took back his invitation. He decided that pretending he was straight in front of his family was more important in the end."
Tosh stared at Owen in shock and disbelief.
"What? Ianto wouldn't have done that!"
"Oh no? What, you think Jack's the only one capable of being a bastard? Take off the rose-tinted glasses, Tosh. Don't you remember how quiet Jack was over the couple of days before Christmas? Not a single innuendo or inappropriate comment to any of us. And you know what the worst of it is? I think Jack believes it's his fault. I think that he thinks he's done something to deserve Ianto giving him the cold shoulder."
Toshiko fell silent, contemplating Owen's words. It made a bitter kind of sense. Now she thought of it, she remembered thinking that Jack's behaviour was a little on the odd side. He seemed to go out of his way to help Ianto out... almost as though he was trying to make up for something.
"Well... maybe Jack did do or say something..." she said tentatively, trying to make a show of support for the young Welshman who had become such a good friend.
"Not this time, Tosh," Owen said bluntly. "This time, it was all Ianto. Jack's only crime was not having the discretion to hide who he is."
Tosh took a moment to digest what Owen was telling her, and her stomach rolled unpleasantly.
"Oh god... So Ianto took back the invitation... Jack goes off somewhere on his own instead... You think he might have been looking... you know... for someone to..."
"Shag? Maybe. Couldn't say I blame him, either. I knew something had upset him before Christmas. Just never imagined it might have been Ianto." Owen uttered a short, bitter laugh. "And you and Gwen were so fucking worried that Ianto was going to get hurt, being involved with Jack."
Just at that moment, the large cog door of the Hub rolled back, and Gwen walked in, Jack's greatcoat folded up in her arms.
"Got the coat," she announced. "Couldn't get the rest of his clothes, though. Totally destroyed. There wasn't anything left to bring back."
"Well, what about the SUV?" Owen wondered. "You didn't forget that, did you?"
"Don't be a prat, Owen. It's in the garage. Listen, I think we need to call someone in to repair the damage. We can't expect Ianto to do it. Especially the backseat. It's covered in Jack's blood."
Owen stared at her, frowning for a long moment before switching to another line of inquiry.
"You collected all of their reports, didn't you?"
"No, it'll all be on computer," Gwen answered. "Trust me, they don't make hard copies of anything these days. It's all electronic. And she said nothing had been processed, but I don't believe that. Tosh, you'll need to hack the system and clean it out."
"Consider it done," Tosh said, grateful to have something to focus on after her discomforting conversation with Owen.
"Where's Ianto?" Gwen asked, looking around carefully. "With Jack?"
"Yeah," Owen confirmed. "It was the only way to get the dear Captain to go and rest."
"Well, can I have a word, then?" she asked, trying to keep her tone as passive as she could. She wondered, though, if he already knew what she wanted to ask, because he turned and led the way to the upper gantry, bypassing the boardroom in favour of the greenhouse.
"All right, Gwen, out with it. What do you want to know?"
She decided not to pull any punches.
"Was Jack raped?"
For a good several seconds, Owen could only blink at her in shock. He'd half anticipated that was what she wanted to know, but he also hadn't been prepared for hyper-sensitive Gwen to just blurt it out, either. He knew there was no denying it, though. She already knew, and was just waiting for him to confirm it.
Owen's shoulders slumped in defeat.
"Yes," he answered dully. "He was."
Silence blanketed them, and Owen shifted uncomfortably under Gwen's inscrutable stare.
"What?" he asked finally. "Spit it out, will you?"
She shook her head.
"Sorry. I was just waiting for you to make some crack about it being no big deal for Jack."
The look on Owen's face at that could only be described as cold fury.
"You fucking bitch, Gwen Cooper. I'm a blood doctor, in case you'd forgotten. I'm tipping I saw more rape cases in A&E than you ever did as a bloody PC. I know what rape can do to a person, no matter who they are or what they do. I will not trivialise what happened to Jack just because he can have a tendency to act slutty, and fuck you for assuming I would!"
Gwen sucked in a long breath, looking suitably chastened for her crass assumption.
"I'm sorry, Owen. I just assumed... I'm sorry, really sorry."
He nodded, slightly placated by the sincere apology.
"Okay, then."
"So... how is he, then?"
"Not good," Owen admitted unhappily. "Oh, he was trying to act like everything was fine, but it's not. He's not fine, not by a long shot."
"What do we do, then?" Gwen wondered, feeling all the more distressed. "I mean, it's not like we can send him to a shrink. We can't even let him out of the Hub yet! We'll never be able to explain how he healed so fast!"
"Shit, you're right," Owen muttered. "How the fuck do we keep him shut away down here, without freaking him out?"
Neither had an answer for that, and they were still contemplating their very limited possibilities when Tosh's voice came through clearly on their comms.
"Owen, Gwen, we have a slight problem. You'd both better come down here."
They went at a hurry, compelled by the distress they could hear in Tosh's voice and dreading what they were going to see. Tosh was standing by her monitor, motioning in agitation to the screen.
"Someone leaked the story to the media! It's on nearly every channel! They identified Jack by name!"
"Oh god," Gwen whispered as they watched a fairly lengthy news bulletin that reported the grim details of what happened to Jack, complete with three particularly graphic pictures of Jack from the crime scene, his supposed current physical state and finished by informing the public that police were proceeding as best as they could, given Torchwood's 'disappointing level of cooperation'.
"Those bloody fuckers!" Owen exploded. "If they think they're going to get us to cooperate like that, then they've got another thing coming. Tosh, get cracking on those computer files... but make sure you make copies for us before deleting them from the police computers."
"What are you thinking?" Gwen asked.
"Jack said he wanted the investigation shut down totally. I'm sorry, but I can't do that. Those sick fucks raped him, for God's sake!"
Where she was sitting at her monitor, Tosh froze, staring up at Owen in horror. He didn't acknowledge her reaction directly, but wondered silently just what she'd been expecting to hear.
"We're going to deal with this ourself, in our own way," Owen went on fiercely. "We are gonna find the bastards who hurt our Captain, and make sure they can't hurt him or anyone else again."
At the same time elsewhere in Cardiff, Kathy Swanson stood in stony silence as the news broadcast played out. Until now, the identity of Jack as the Christmas Day assault victim had stayed a closely kept secret. Now, though, his name was being splashed all over the media, along with a few fairly graphic crime scene photos.
She could feel her blood pressure rising with every second that passed. Torchwood was going to be beyond pissed at this, and for once she believed they had every right to be. Turning, she stalked out of the room to go in search of the one colleague whom she knew for a fact was enough of a bastard to do that to a victim.
She found Derek Lloyd in the break room, laughin raucously with a number of colleagues. There was no need to wait and listen – she knew exactly what... and who... Lloyd and his mates were laughing at. Storming forward, she ploughed through the group of officers and, upon reaching Lloyd, punched him as hard as she could in his face.
Another wave of laughter swept over the group, only to be silenced by the fury on the woman's face.
"You fucking bastard, Lloyd," she snarled. "You leaked Harkness's name to the media, didn't you! Along with those pictures!"
Lloyd glared up at her sourly. His nose was already free-flowing blood.
"So what if I did? Why should he get anymore special treatment than anyone else? Why the fuck should we worry about protecting him?"
"Because he's the victim here, you sorry sack of shit!" she exploded. "Not the bloody perpetrator. I don't care how much you... any of you hate the man personally. He deserved to have his dignity protected, and you just went an crushed it into the ground. I hope you feel really proud of yourself."
By that time, Lloyd had managed to get to his feet, but even though he towered over her in phyical stature, she suddenly seemed much taller than him in the eyes of her colleagues.
"He's an arrogant bastard, Kathy," Lloyd argued. "So I've knocked him a peg or two, what's the fucking big deal? Not like his ego couldn't do with a reality check."
She glared at him with a look that would have frozen fire.
"From where I'm standing, it isn't Jack Harkness whose ego needs a reality check. It's yours."
She turned to go, only to hear Lloyd mutter under his breath.
"I can't believe you're actually defending that sick fuck..."
She stopped almost in mid-stride, and turned slowly back to face him.
"You can't believe it? Is that right? Well, Lloyd, let me tell you who it is that I'm standing here defending, since you apparently don't have a clue. Three days ago, a man was ambushed while going about his own business."
"You mean on the pull for some pretty boy, probably," someone snorted derisively. Swanson glowered in the general direction the remark had come from.
"What if he was? Since when have we been in the business of making moral judgements? I don't recall hearing similar comments when that prostitute was raped three months ago."
An uncomfortable silence reigned as they each reluctantly acknowledged the truth of her words. She went on in a fractionally more subdued tone.
"Three days ago, a man was ambushed and taken against his will. He was restrained with fucking barbed wire, and then he was beaten, tortured, raped and sodomised, and eventually left for dead. Most people would have died after enduring what this man did, but he didn't. He held on until he was found. Then, on top of what he'd already been through, he had to suffer a stream of coppers parading through and laughing at him! When they bloody well should have been doing whatever they could to offer support! But even then, he didn't quit. He didn't quit when he was screaming in pain while they cut him free, and he didn't quit when he had to undergo over two hours of surgery to get the barbed wire out of his skin. I saw him yesterday. Torchwood let me in to see him, and talk to him. He was laid up in bed, couldn't move or talk and was in more pain than I reckon any of us here could cope with, but he still managed to find a way to communicate and tell me the number of men who attacked him.
"Now, love him or hate him, Jack Harkness survived an ordeal that no one should ever have to endure, and you all bloody well owe him respect! If you can't give him that much, at least... Well, then you don't deserve your ranks."
She favoured them all with a furious look before finally storming out. It wasn't until he was sure she'd gone that Lloyd dared to speak again.
"Un-fucking-believable! Not two months ago, she was bitching about him right along with the rest of us!"
"She's right, though," someone spoke up in a noticeably quiet voice. "Doesn't matter who he is, or what we think of him. He's still the victim here. You shouldn't have leaked his name to the media like that, Derek. Or those pictures."
Lloyd scowled, unrepentant and all the more annoyed that he seemed to be losing the support of his mates.
"C'mon! It's Jack fucking Harkness! Since when did we give a shit about his sensitivities? Since when did he even have any fucking sensitivities?"
Silence, and then...
"Fuck, Kathy was right. You are a heartless bastard."
And then Lloyd was left standing there in helpless silence as his colleagues filed from the room. The last one to leave hesitated in the doorway and shot Lloyd a sympathetic look.
"If I were you, Derek, I wouldn't be worried about Kathy Swanson."
"Oh?" Lloyd growled defensively. "And why's that?"
"Because when Torchwood gets a hold of you, you are seriously fucked."
Swanson virtually threw herself into her chair, frustrated and angry. She'd hoped to have been able to get Lloyd to see her point of view, but he was apparently not going to be dissuaded from his prejudices. He had been right in one respect, though. She had no real liking for Jack Harkness, not personally. However, she'd meant what she said. She respected him as a survivor. What she wanted now was to give him the justice and closure that she honestly believed he would need in order to carry on surviving.
Unfortunately, Lloyd's heartless actions had only made that so much more difficult for Jack to do.
"Excuse me, Detective Swanson?"
She looked up to find one of the PCs assigned to her office standing there, waiting for her to respond.
"What is it?" she asked, not particularly in the mood to be talking to anyone right then. Right then, all she wanted was to be left alone to brood.
"What is it?" she asked, the question coming out a fraction sharper than she'd really intended it to. The young constable, however, was not put off by her surly attitude.
"Ma'am, I was asked to come and get you. There's a couple at the front desk with their twelve year-old lad."
"And...? What's your point, Constable?"
"Well, Ma'am, apparently the boy was playing near the Bute Park estates on Christmas Eve and... well, it appears that we might have a witness to the Harkness assault."
tbc...