Thanks a bundle to ... MythStar Black Dragon, PassionPoet, Embzy, Section8grl, starry-eyed-torchwood-lover, Perfect Pirate Captain, tvnut89, GossipGirl17, Lady Clark-Weasley of Books, MistressJonesOfCardiff, anime.de and Diamondsshine4ever. Thank you ... you made my day!! :)
PLEASE READ ... Just to make this clear! In the first chapter I said that Alex's code name was 'Alex Peters'. But in chapter 2 I accidentally changed it to 'Adam Peters'. So now I'm sticking his code name as Adam. Just to make that clear.
6 DAYS UNTIL VLADA COMES OVER!! :D
CHAPTER 4
The SUV swung into the car park of the McDonalds in Kelvin Street, illuminating the road several metres away from it with the above average headlights.
"We could have walked." Owen complained again.
"You could have walked and we could have left you," retorted Tosh.
"How about ... I could have walked and left you two in the car to bicker among yourselves." Martha stopped the SUV and sprang out of the door with obvious relief. "Jesus Christ," she muttered under her breath to no one in particular.
Tosh stuck her head out of the window. "Martha! You can't just walk in there."
"I'm not just walking in there, alright? I'm getting fresh air."
"Martha!" Owen joined Tosh in the sticking your head out of the window club. "Why did you take the SUV?"
"What?" Martha turned towards him, with a bemused expression on her face.
Owen explained with a painful note in his voice, as though he was explaining something for the hundredth time to a very young and very stupid child. "As much as it pains me to say it, Jack isn't that stupid. Even he'd have noticed the SUV driving away with the three of us gone. He's probably on his way now."
"Thanks very much for that Owen. I always considered myself as relatively stupid but now I feel quite good about myself."
"Jack." Tosh broke the awkward silence first with the one syllable name of their very peeved boss who was standing in front of the SUV, assuming a very peeved off position – arms crossed, slight frown and set mouth.
"Tosh."
"Jack."
"Owen."
"Jack."
"Martha."
"Urm ..."
"Well? Explanation as to why you steal the SUV and disappear without telling anyone. What if there'd been an alert?"
Martha and Owen quailed under his fierce glare but Tosh, having worked with him the longest, stepped forwards and admitted "We've found Gwen."
...
The four had retreated back inside the SUV. Jack was sat in the front with Martha, while Tosh and Owen leant forward from the back seat to join in the heated conversation:
"We have to find out what she's saying." Tosh and Martha exchanged a glance. It was typical Jack. He was still so protective of her. It had been so obvious to them all; except to Jack and Gwen that was.
"We all want to find out we can't just all plonk ourselves down next to her, can we Jack?" Owen could argue for England when he wanted to.
"We're Torchwood." Tosh reminded her fiancé gently.
"Whose side are you actually on Tosh?" Owen whirled on her, his eyebrows knitted together in an infuriated scowl.
"Stop acting like a baby Owen." Martha chimed in with an exasperated sigh.
"Exactly." Jack saw and seized the ideal opportunity. "We're Torchwood. One of us goes in. Buys a burger. Sits on the next table and bugs them." Jack used the exact same patronising tone of voice that Owen had been using on Martha when Jack first put in his appearance.
Owen flopped backwards onto the seat, recognising the obvious defeat. "Fine." He agreed grudgingly.
"Brilliant." Before Martha could stop him, he threw open the door and weaved his way through the packed car park to a brightly lit entrance underneath the trademark 'M'.
...
Stood in the 11 person long queue, Jack's eyes swept over the heaving restaurant with a doleful expression upon his face. The place was packed full of hungry punters ; personally Jack couldn't understand their obsession with fast food but as always, he accepted it as one more of the many peculiar human traits. A few people paused to look up from their meals as his gaze scrutinized the area they were sat in and a few of the few widened their eyes slightly or shook their heads to themselves and their pig companions; personally they couldn't understand some peoples obsession with dressing oddly and as always, made their opinion known to the anomaly of society. Jack's search however had already moved onto the next batch of tables. The stares were nothing that he hadn't received before – he had been wearing the same coat for nearing a century now.
To his chagrin, by the time Jack had finally reached the front of the queue, his beady eyes had failed to pick out Gwen from the mass of brightly coloured chairs, Happy Meal boxes littering the floor and gaggle of customers that made up McDonalds.
"Cheeseburger please." It felt so odd ordering the burger – you simply didn't get food like that in Boeshane Peninsula.
Jack cast his mind back to the last time he'd bought such a repulsive food item. To his horror, he found the memory plucked from his lottery of recollections involved the very woman who was the reason that he was stood in the sweaty queue. It had been the day that Rhys had discovered the truth about 'Special Ops'. After Rhys and Gwen had left, the only thing they could all be bothered so he'd offered to buy everyone a meal. The overall vote had swung in favour of KFC so Jack had found himself being served on a night much like tonight when Rhys and Gwen had appeared through the doors. As Jack watched the man his Gwen would be willing to retcon herself for, Gwen herself had slipped up behind him. He'd smelt her first. The pink grapefruit shampoo mixed with the unmistakeable staining smell of blood and sweat – all the products of that day's toil. She'd caught his wrist to spin him around to face and, next thing he knew, she was hugging him tightly, desperately. Then she'd muttered "Thank you" into his ear as she squeezed his hand. The whole thing took under thirty seconds and he watched as she walked, unaffected, to the back of the queue, even pausing to wave at Rhys. She hadn't even spared him a half glance when he staggered past her a minute later, his arms full of Bargain Buckets and Diet Pepsi.
"Hey? Excuse me. Your burger." The man behind the counter waved his miniscule excuse of a cheeseburger in front of him.
"Right. Thanks." Jack snatched the burger away, earning an affronted glare from his server. That was another reason for not liking these places – nobody ever seemed to like him.
There was a small alcove hidden around the corner, protected from the bustle of the main restaurant, which was just big enough for three tables. Two were occupied whilst the middle table was being cleared by another spotty faced employee. Jack came around the corner just as the cleaner moved away.
His breath caught.
Sat on the left table, the furthest away from the window was Gwen (and the kid). He couldn't see her face; there wasn't much light cast over their table on the account of the bulb directly above them being blown or turned off and she was facing the other direction. However, it was obvious that she was Gwen from the moment that he turned the corner.
"Got her." The Torchwood side of his brain automatically snapped to work as he murmured into the comm, thankfully overruling the inevitable inclination to rush over there, grab her and kiss her so hard that she completely forgot about the past eleven years and remembered all the brilliant times they had together ... with the team, as a team (he furiously tried to convince his brain the opposite to what he knew was true).
Sidestepping a group of chattering young girls, he slid into the vacant seat, slamming his burger onto the table with uncalled for force. The girls paused in front of his table, raising their eyebrows as though to chastise him for stealing the table that they were obviously making a beeline for. Jack looked up at them, smiling his dazzling smile. The entire group blushed profusely and, embarrassed, turned away. He still had it ... still sex on legs.
As he turned back to unwrapping the burger, Jack snuck a peek at Gwen and the kid. They were still intent on their food, having seemingly not noticed that he'd arrived.
The burger was an adequate meal for Myfanwy only yet he wolfed it down 'hungrily' so as not to appear suspicious and draw attention as he would if pulled funny faces and retched it back up as he was resisting doing now. He should have bought a Tango to wash it down.
He stood up, reaching into his pocket, filtering through the multitude of bizarre items for his car keys. They slipped through his fingers before he could stop them, landing an inch from the kid's muddy trainer.
While he bent down to pick it up, Jack looked upwards at Gwen.
She was beautiful. She looked down at him, a faint smile gracing her features for the strange man who'd just happened to drop his car keys under her table. A few wrinkles around the eyes and several well defined frown lines had been added to the face that he knew so well. He emerald gaze met Jack's for two seconds until Jack smiled shyly (since when do I do shy?) and, using the table to push himself back to his feet, walked stiffly away.
He turned around briefly at the corner. Gwen had gone back to her meal and the kid hadn't even realised the unspoken exchange that had just occurred had ever occurred. Thank heaven for small mercies. He must be hungry to be so fixated on his food.
Back at the table, Gwen smiled a secret smile to herself. It wasn't uncommon for men at RIS to pay her compliments and they'd flirt outrageously with her almost every day. But that man had a strangely familiar smile.
...
Jack leant against the SUV, breathing in deep gulps of the cool night air. His heart was racing and if someone had checked when Gwen had looked down at him, he was positive that his heart would have stopped for the moment that they caught each other's glance. It had taken all of his will to just smile like he'd never seen her before in his life and walk away. Only one other woman had the power to transform him from Captain Jack Harkness to a flustered man with no self control but she was long dead.
His train of thought was broken by Martha throwing open the door he was leaning on and sending him flying into the side of the red ford next to the SUV.
"Oh my God! Sorry!" Martha yelled out of the car. Jack staggered forwards unsteadily and clambered awkwardly into the SUV, slamming the door behind him. He shot Martha a filthy glare and gingerly felt the back of his head. He winced. A lump already throbbed there. Broken bones and cuts would heal but bruises were the one injury he had to put up with.
Martha looked sheepish as she passed Jack an ice pack from the med kit that they kept permanently in the glove box. "Sorry Jack. I was coming to find you."
"Why were ..."
"Shut up!" Two irritated voices commanded from the back. Jack twisted to look at the back seats. Tosh and Owen were leant as close as was physically possible to their respective doors, both waving a frantic hand to shush them. It took Jack's dizzy mind several seconds to realise that they were leant towards their speakers, several seconds to realise a voice was issuing from the speakers and several seconds more to recognise the voice.
Eleven years.
His mind cleared instantly and he threw the ice pack onto the dashboard to allow him to lean closer to his speaker.
"... enough? You haven't stopped complaining you were starving all day!"
"Mum! Calm down. I ..." The rest of the boy's, Gwen's son's, words were lost amid the flurry of noise inside the SUV. Martha gasped, Owen slammed his fist into the seat beside him, swearing colourfully once while Tosh closed her eyes in resignation and reached out to gently lay her hand on Jack's shoulder. Although they all felt their boss' pain for him, it had been Tosh who had tried to talk to Jack when she first left. Even though 'try' was the operative word, she was still the one who understood the most about Jack's pain due to her own relationship experiences. For Jack however, it took a few moments for the kid's words to sink in and when they did his expression and stance didn't change.
Mum. Gwen had a son. Yeah. That was ... brilliant. She'd been happy. Had a family. Loved someone then. Yeah ... that was just ... good for her.
"Seriously Adam. I was gone for two months and come back to find that you look as though you haven't been eating!"
Gone where?
"Well maybe ... I've been working out. Just being healthy."
The kid didn't sound welsh.
Gwen didn't reply, simply opting for a snort of laughter. "How was Russia then?" Adam (was that his name?) inquired in an evasive tone of voice.
Jack grinned. That was so like Gwen. The way she used to be so stubborn about anything she wanted to know but if you asked her anything that she didn't want to reveal, she'd seamlessly change the subject to something totally unrelated. Jack grinned again. Once she'd been so insistent about a case that he'd kissed her just shut her up ... the feel of his lips pressed forcefully against hers ... the way she'd kissed him back as though he was her lifeline.
He'd missed the last few words.
"... brilliant. I got more bruises from sliding than I did in that sponsored rugby match!"
Adam laughed. "Wish I could have come."
Russia. She'd been to Russia. But by the sounds of it, only for a work conference or group holiday. It sounded like Gwen and her son had been in Wales for the entire time. Was it possible that she'd been so tantalizingly close for so long?
"So do I." The sound of rustling and a low wolf whistle followed her words.
"What?"
"It's 11:30! You've got school tomorrow and I don't want you falling asleep in class on your first day!"
So they'd only just moved here.
"What about the second day?" The kid laughed, presumably at his mother's reaction. "And we've got to tidy up that glass from the photo. Don't see why the old owners couldn't have just taken all their stuff with them when they moved instead of leaving a load of boxes all over our hall. Eight dirty great ..." The kid stopped suddenly.
"What's wrong?" asked Gwen sharply.
The kid answered in a hushed tone, as though someone might overhear him in the rabble of McDonalds. "If there was that photo, do you think there'd be more? One box had baby stuff in, one had little trinkets and crockery and then all the others could have had photo albums or old diaries or home videos."
Several things happened at once.
Inside the restaurant, Gwen exclaimed "Jack!"
"Jack?"
"Jack from the photo." Horror crept into her voice. "He was in here. He was bloody well sat behind us!"
The sound of chairs being thrown backwards filled the SUV just as Owen turned to Tosh, both with horrified expressions on their faces.
"I think that was our flat." whispered Tosh, uncertainly explaining their shocked faces.
A ghastly silence filled every corner of the car, even the noise from the speakers fading to a distant background murmur as Gwen and Adam ran towards the doors that Gwen had watched Jack leave through.
Owen spoke into the silence, summing up everyone's thoughts in one word:
"Shit."
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