Hi Folks, Sorry it took a while to get this one - total system failure lost the document at just the wrong time!
I hope this is going in the direction you would like, fireworks next time I think. Keep reading folks and many thanksto all of you who have taken the time to leave some feedback.
Ianto stood apologetically at the door to the cell essentially they hadn't changed in over 100 years, hewn out of the bedrock that formed the Bay it was cold and damp. The shelf that could double as a bed or a bench was unforgiving and the bucket in the corner was self-explanatory.
"You should see the hotels they book us into." Said Ianto trying to lighten the situation.
The woman who had agreed to be called Jenny for the foreseeable future sat heavily on the ledge in her official issue boiler suit, her own clothes being mangled by Owen tearing at them to expose her shoulder and the laser burn. She held up her hands to get the handcuffs released and sighed.
"Can I get you anything." He asked.
"I suppose a mattress and a duvet are out of the question?" she said tapping the rock.
"I could do a pillow and a blanket." He replied. "And Owen says if you want anything for the pain I can bring something down."
She shook her head and Ianto backed out of the small room, he wasn't really sure what she was shaking her head at but he had felt uncomfortable just putting her here, it could have been him if Jack hadn't been forgiving over Lisa. He closed the door and turned the key he could hear Janet scrapping at the rock again she could always smell fresh meat, he took the suppressant spray off the wall and squirted a dose in her cell. You just didn't need that sound going through your head on top of everything else.
After running a few errands Ianto returned to the main floor of the Hub where all was not well, Gwen was sticking the photos on any vertical surface and running back to the whiteboard and scratching notes with the squeaky pen and shouting out various facts and statements every two seconds. Tosh was frantically beating the keyboard with a heavier than normal keystroke in time with Gwens shouts and it sounded like Owen was throwing things round in the autopsy room, so nothing new there then. He was about to turn on his heel and hide in the archives when Gwen saw him and shouted across the Hub.
"So spill the beans, what's eating his nibs then?"
Ianto glanced upwards, there was one place where you could catch the reflection of a reflection that could tell you if there was anyone sat at the desk. The desk light was on but he couldn't tell if there was anyone sat there.
"I wouldn't know, I haven't asked." He said quietly.
Gwen turned round to face him,
"Well can you make an educated guess, I thought he was going to kill her in there, don't you think it was a bit out of character?"
"Which question am I supposed to answer first?" asked Ianto quietly looking pointedly up at the glass fronted office.
Gwen plonked herself down on her chair, deflated.
Tosh kept tapping away for a second or two and then gave a quiet hiss of satisfaction as she hit the enter button a last time.
"Guys I have something here." She said quietly, as usual they ignored her as they bickered among themselves.
"Sexual tension, that's what it always boils down to." shouted a voice from the autopsy pit.
"Not useful Owen." Shouted Gwen and picked up a pen from her desk and started tapping her teeth.
"First he seems all happy to get this blast from the past then he turns into psycho boss the second Tosh gives him two file numbers. Look Yan you've got to know something, find the files in the achieves."
Ianto threw his hands in the air and walked behind Tosh, he lowered his voice.
"Please don't bring me into this."
"You don't need to I have the information here." Said Tosh trying to be heard
Gwen started pacing again sucking the pen, picking up papers and putting them down again.
"Owen what is she?"
"Don't know, seen nothing like it before. Gwen I wouldn't do that with the pen." He said wincing from the pit.
"I found nothing on the databases that matches, human form matches are few and far between actually." Said Tosh turning round to find everyone looking the other way.
"What do you mean about the pen Owen?" asked Gwen quickly writing something down.
"Well I think that was the one I dropped when I was doing the post mortem on the slime rat thing last week."
Gwen threw the pen as far as she could and heard the splash as it fell into the lake at the bottom of the obelisk. She started spitting and grabbed an empty cup, Ianto passed her one with last nights coffee in.
"However I have managed to crack the personnel file, if anyone is interested." Said Tosh quietly, continuing tapping away on the keyboard.
It's amazing thought Tosh, she could dance naked round the Hub and still no one would be interested in how she spent a month sorting the alien life form data bank so she could give them that information. Give them gossip however and you could hear a pin drop. Owen ran up the steps two at a time.
"Say that again Tosh, you have the personnel file."
"Doesn't shed that much light on it I'm afraid, joined 1947, worked in a classified position in J section until 1959 when her file is closed. Get this the file is closed due to DIS."
"DIS, Death in Service?" asked Ianto
"Always said that Torchwood don't do pensions." Said Owen leaning over her shoulder and reading the screen. "Now that is interesting, says here car was found by the beach no body was ever recovered cause of death presumed suicide."
"Exactly what the police file said this time." Said Ianto joining the pair looking at the screen.
"Doesn't help with the original question though." Said Gwen still looking at the whiteboard, "What the hell rattled his cage?"
She looked at Ianto again who avoided her gaze and started picking up coffee cups, Owen kept looking at the screen and asked Tosh a really complicated question rather than look at Gwen.
"So I guess I have to go up there then?" she said snappily.
No one contradicted her.
She carried a mug of Iantos best coffee up the metal stairway to Jacks office and paused at the top, the glass door was unusually closed so she paused for a second and tapped on the wooden frame. Jack looked up and motioned for her to come in, as she pushed the door he shoved some papers into a metal tin and slammed his desk drawer. Gwen put the coffee mug down in silence and sat in the chair, the silence told Gwen more than the angry ranting of earlier in the day.
"Would you like to talk about it?" she asked quietly.
Jack shook his head almost imperceptibly and moved a few bits of paper round his desk while Gwen sat waiting for him to speak. Finally the shuffling stopped and they sat in an uncomfortable silence for a few more yawning seconds before Gwen lent forward and stroked his fingers, he turned his hand over and held her hand.
"Jack I've seen you go through a thousand different things, shot aliens, deal with your team dieing and then coming back to life, Hell I've even seen you cope with your own death more than once but never I have seen you phased like that, I thought you were going to have a fit."
He turned over her hand and started tracing a pattern on her palm then suddenly realised what he was doing and pulled his hands back, Gwen looked slightly sheepish and sat with her hands in her lap. He looked directly into her eyes, boring into her soul as only Jacks baby blues could.
"I've meet hundreds, thousands of people and most of then I forget." He smiled "Even I don't have a brain big enough remember everyone, just the ones I like."
"Will you remember me Jack." Asked Gwen quietly.
"Oh yes Gwen you are one of the special ones, stored in a small box in my mind for eternity and that is a very long time"
She smiled at him, god but he loved that little gap in her teeth, the way she still couldn't look him in the eye at times.
"But you said you only met her twice, I would have thought in the scheme of things she would have only been a blip in your time line."
"It was what she stood for at that exact moment in time, a shining beacon in the darkness, two days in a hell that I just can't explain. Over 200 men went over the top that day, just 32 made it back and all for an inch or two of stinking, suffocating mud." The emotions that Jack had been suppressing all day finally welled to the surface and an involuntary tear rolled down one cheek. "I must have taken a pounding because they took me in unconscious and she saved me in every way."
"What do you mean Jack?" she said quietly
"I went to war because it seemed like an awfully big adventure, just like everyone else it was boys own stuff and I was running away from some of the things I had become, I changed my name and kept one step ahead of the Provosts. A few years of blood and friendships made and lost in a hail of bullets I just wanted it all to stop." He paused for a second pulling at his lip in that ever so familiar way. "We connected you know and I knew I had to break that link as soon as it was made, but it wasn't on my terms, so final."
He tried to deflect her attention and took a noisy sip of the coffee but Gwen wasn't put off.
"So why so angry, I would have thought finding someone you knew like that would have been a happy event, well not the shooting part." She said back pedalling quickly.
"A clash of two worlds, a utopian view of a single moment in time with the edges buffed by the sands of time with the stark realisation that you have just spent the last 90 years of your life in love with a monster."
The silence stretched out across the office as they both looked at anything but each other willing the other to say something. Gwen cracked first as they both knew she would.
"And you're so certain she is the devil incarnate are you?"
"You want evidence?" he threw the files across the desk as he spat out the words.
The files knocked over the mug, threatened to tip over the coral garden and pushed a few small slivers of metal that had none earthly atoms onto the floor. Gwen shook her head and grabbed at his hand again, but he pulled it away the link broken.
"Have you read them yet? Are you sure they tell you what you think they say or are you just making an assumption, you know that there are times that Torchwood files aren't as complete as they should be."
Jack just threw up his hands, "Perhaps I don't want to know, perhaps it is even worse than I think, perhaps we should just let sleeping dogs lie."
"And what do we do with the woman currently in the cells, is she supposed to just rot in there while you stick your head in the sand for the rest of eternity?"
"Stop referring to that thing as a woman, it is an alien just the same as the Weevil in the next cell and I don't see you offering to take Janet out for a drink. You are projecting human emotions onto an unknown entity, remember the shape shifters at your wedding, human enough till they wanted to disembowel you."
"No it's not like that with her, let me talk to her Jack, let me find out the truth so you know once and for all."
Jack bowed his head and covered it with his hands for a few seconds before stretching out.
"Fine, talk to it but not alone and no weapons in reach and makes sure…" Gwen cut him off midsentence.
"Let me do my job Jack, trust me to do what you took me on for."
Jack was about to reply when an alarm started sounding in the Hub,
"Talk to me Tosh" he shouted as he ran from the office taking the metal steps two at a time.
"Three separate reports of an attack by a disfigured man in a boiler suit in Splott, police are on their way along with the ambulance."
"Owen, Tosh we're on the move. Gwen remember what I said, Ianto I expect you to keep her safe." He said cryptically before running towards the garage. "Baggsie I drive."
As the door slammed shut silence was only punctuated by the water flowing into the hub, Ianto looked at Gwen, she shrugged and started towards the cells. Ianto followed quickly behind.