Child of the Cold [Gwen/Tosh] (Family)
Pairing: Gwen/Tosh, Gwen/Rhys
Challenge: Family
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: I don't want to say incest... but it definitely deserves some kind of warning.
Spoilers: Torchwood series 2 finale, Torchwood series 3
Summary: Gwen is pregnant, and this time it's not an alien egg.
The computer was switched off. To Gwen this, more than the empty seats on the conference table, more than the unused mugs in the kitchen, was a reminder of what they had lost. The computer had almost never been switched off before, because Tosh had always been working on it. If she wasn’t there it was still running, working on some translation, some calculations she had made it start the day before - first thing in the morning she went to her computer, turned on the screen to check the progress her programs had made over night. Gwen stared at the empty spot where the chair used to be and pictured her standing there, a frown on her pretty face as she tried to figure out why the results weren’t what they were supposed to be, or the little smile that graced her features when things went well. In her mind the other woman turned around and caught her staring, blushing as she turned back to her screen, but not before giving her a shy smile…
Now the computer was only used for the most basic of tasks, neither of the remaining members of Torchwood able to understand what Toshiko had been doing with it. The surveillance ran over a Jack’s own computer now - less complicated, easier for them to access. The loss echoed cold through the halls.
Slowly, quietly so as not to wake Jack who would be sleeping in his hole now Gwen moved on.
-
Her child is restless again. Gwen places both hands over then curve of her belly, feeling little legs kicking from the inside.
“It’s alright,” she murmurs as she leaves the surgery of her gynaecologist. “You’re safe in there.” For just a little longer.
It’s a girl, the doctor told her today. She can’t wait to tell Rhys.
-
“It’s a cloning device?”
“Oh, it’s much more than that. It doesn’t just create a biological copy, it also transfers personality and memories up to the moment when the genetic sample was taken.”
Tosh was listening, fascinated. Gwen watched her as she pushed a lock of hair out of her face. It fell back one second later.
She had a new haircut. Gwen wondered if anyone had told her yet how good it looked.
“What for?” she wanted to know.
Jack threw the device from one hand to the other and Tosh flinched - she had spend two weeks repairing the thing, without even knowing what it was good for. Only by coincidence had they discovered that Jack had been on the planet it originated from, once.
“So they won’t lose their best scientists after their death,” he said, as if it was obvious. “This thing here creates the basis for the copy and then it gets injected into the womb of a woman, just like that. Such a copy gets born like any other child, but with all the memories, all the brilliance. It doesn’t have to re-learn all of that. Their institutes are full of very bright children.”
“They get born with the memories of a lifetime in their heads?” Gwen shuddered at the thought of a newborn, with a fully developed personality, the intellect of an adult, stuck in an infant body. Jack put an end to the idea.
“No. They are born as normal children. The memories come up gradually as their mind develops. They aren’t done before they reach puberty.”
It wasn’t that much better than her initial thought. Gwen didn’t like the concept, didn’t know if she felt sorry for those children or was creped out by them. She imagined a copy of a copy of a copy, with the memories of several lifetimes in their mind.
How would it feel to grow up and realise that she couldn’t be herself because she already was someone else?
“I see the point,” Tosh said thoughtfully. “But I wouldn’t want to have a copy of myself running around.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack grinned and handed back the device. “I’d know a lot of things I’d do with another me. And we’d both love it!”
-
Gwen climbed down the stairs into the empty medical area. No Owen here to fill it. No Owen ever again.
In her mind the anger and irritation he made her feel mingled with the attraction, the affection that had started their affair. It was all washed away by a wave of grief. She quickly got what she wanted, returned upstairs. Beneath her feet she could see traces of blood in the dim light.
There was no blood anymore. It had all been removed, cleaned away. But wandering through the empty hub Gwen imagined time as a number of rooms, one after the other, and in one of those rooms Tosh was bleeding to death, right now, and they were so close and never thought of looking for her.
The door opened soundlessly - Ianto still kept it oiled. Gwen switched on the lights before she silently went down the stairs to the basement, not wanting to slip and break her neck. It would be inconvenient.
Two days ago she might not have minded so much.
-
Gwen didn’t actually like billiard, because she used to lose. She loved the little tournaments the team sometimes made, when the rift gave them time for it; it was one of the few times Tosh got over her shyness and just had fun. Gwen relished these times, feeling happy despite her own repeated failure when she saw the other woman do a little dance of triumph and laugh at Jack’s wail of frustration as he lost to her once again.
“You’re really good,” Gwen commented later, after the group had called it a night and parted ways. “Do you play often?”
They had all had a little too much to drink to drive a car tonight. Tosh lived nearby. She’d offered everyone a place for the night and Owen was the first to decline. Seeing the look of disappointment on her face Gwen had had no choice but to take her up on the offer. She didn’t feel like calling for a Taxi anyway.
Jack was staying at Ianto’s place. Gwen found she wasn’t particularly sad about that.
Tosh shook her head.
“Only with the team,” she answered. “I don’t feel like playing alone. But I have, when I was younger.”
Her breath formed clouds in the cold night air. Delicate, translucent forms that lasted only for a second. Children of the frost.
“You don’t go to bars on dates?” Gwen wanted to know, receiving a half-smile in return.
“What dates? Torchwood doesn’t exactly give me much chance for a private life.”
She could still have had one, if she’d really wanted to. Gwen could have reminded her that she herself was engaged, that she had a life outside the team, but she didn’t. Tosh was too romantic for one-night stands anyway, and the one she wanted regularly forgot she existed. Gwen felt sorry for her, but also felt the urge to grab her shoulders and shake her, tell her to stop pinning over Owen and find someone else. To live a little.
She was pretty. She was brilliant and fun to be around. There were many people out there who would have made her happy, if only she gave them a chance.
They walked around a corner and Gwen saw the building her friend lived in, the windows of her apartment dark and empty. Mary had betrayed her, Tommy had been doomed. Gwen, who was engaged to a man she loved and who loved her and still hadn’t found the strength to end the affair with Owen herself realised that she wasn’t in a position to tell her how to live.
Tosh got hurt, Gwen kept hurting others. They were living on opposite sides of the coin.
Tosh deserved someone who wouldn’t leave her, who didn’t take more than he gave. And Gwen was drunk and had a fiancé she wouldn’t leave for anyone. She knew she had no right to push the other woman against the door of her apartment and kiss her.
But she did so anyway.
-
There’s traffic jam on the way back. Gwen isn’t in a hurry. No work today - Jack has forced a vacation on her, saying hunting aliens is too dangerous for a pregnant woman. For once Gwen didn’t argue. She sees his point, and a part of her is glad she doesn’t have to be among the others now, to see Mickey Smith sitting in front of Tosh’s computer. A part of her is was feeling uneasy around them those last few days at work, always thinking they knew her dirty little secret.
Things will be different from now on. She can’t give Torchwood as much time as she has before, not when she will soon have a helpless little girl to guard and protect. Jack will have to understand.
Of course Rhys will help her. He’s so exited about her pregnancy that she feels even worse for the knowledge that she can’t keep the truth from him for much longer. But he’ll forgive her. He might not understand but in the end he’ll forgive her if she finds the right words to tell him. The right little lies.
And once he’s held their daughter for the first time he won’t be able to let her go anyway. Gwen knows him. He’ll love this child.
Even if it’s not his own.
-
Before one week was over Gwen knew she was going too far.
It would have been easy to blame the alcohol, never mention it again after a day of embarrassed silence, but waking up in the morning with Tosh seeking her warmth in her sleep she couldn’t do that.
And she didn’t want this to have been the only time.
So it went on. Tosh seemed braced for rejection, was surprised and happy when it didn’t come. Gwen did her best not to let her relationship with Rhys suffer because of this affair, and Tosh understood. They never talked about that. The other woman just took what Gwen was able to offer and was grateful.
They went out after work sometimes. Went to the movies, played billiard like the best friends they were, and then they ended up in Tosh’s apartment, and made love. Slowly, tenderly, not passionately and rushed like the sex with Owen had been. This was nothing like Owen.
Gwen realised it after five days, when she lay in bed with her friend the second time and knew this attraction went too deep. She’d thought her affection for the other woman had been caused by pity at first, by the wish to help her get a life, but it wasn’t just guilt and pity that made her stay.
In those days Tosh was happier, more lively, even at work. Sometimes when Gwen watched her she seemed to glow. Once again the former policewoman noted how much love suited her.
It was then that she realised that Tosh really did love her, and it made her feel happy, made her miserable. Once again her friend had opened up to someone who could only disappoint her.
But Tosh knew that s well as Gwen did. Every so often Gwen caught her watching her with sadness in her eyes, and she understood that Tosh had given her her love but not her heart, knowing she would break it. Gwen would never choose her. This wouldn’t go on forever. It wouldn’t even go on for very long.
-
Members of Torchwood weren’t put in the ground. They had no graves for their friends and families to visit, just a long drawer in the morgue. Frozen and stored away, like artefacts, like old documents. Gwen stared at the marked little doors in front of her. Owen wasn’t here. There was no Owen anymore.
Suzie Costello, right in the middle. Next to her the place that had once been occupied, for a short time, by Jack. Somewhere in here slept the man who had murdered Tosh. Gwen kept her hands from clenching. Murder wasn’t what she’d come here for.
Toshiko had been put to rest in the lower right corner. Gwen pulled out the drawer and couldn’t keep herself from running her hand though that thick, soft black hair. It was cold to the touch.
Her friend looked so small lying there, so pale and peaceful. So pretty. So dead.
Gwen didn’t whisper her apologies as there was no one here to hear her. She just pulled out a single hair and pushed her beloved back into her cold resting place.
-
The line was drawn with Gwen’s wedding. There was no specific moment that marked the end of their affair, no awkward conversation or angry shouting. It just stopped. Tosh knew it would. They sat in Gwen’s room that day, after Tosh had brought her the dress, and Gwen spoke of Tosh’s future with Owen. Their eyes met and Gwen felt she had to apologize. She never did. Always thought one day she would, would make it up to her friend somehow. Explain things, tell her she still loved her, had loved her all along. That it hadn’t been a game to her. That she was sorry. That she would have stayed if not for Rhys. But the moment escaped her, over and over again. Until she knelt on the cold floor of the hub and watched Jack rock Toshiko’s dead body in his arms.
-
Rhys wanted to accompany her to the doctor but his work has kept from it. He comes home shortly after Gwen does, eager to hear the new she could have told him ages ago.
“It’s a girl,” she reveals and he laughs and spins her around, overjoyed.
He would have been just as happy about a boy. No matter what, she knows he’ll make a wonderful dad.
For her beloved little daughter.
Now they know the gender they can finally start thinking in earnest about names he says later that evening, when they have dinner in the light of candles. Gwen smiles at him.
“I’ve given it some thought already,” she confesses. “If you don’t mind I would like to name her after a late friend.”
July 19, 2008
Challenge: Family
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: I don't want to say incest... but it definitely deserves some kind of warning.
Spoilers: Torchwood series 2 finale, Torchwood series 3
Summary: Gwen is pregnant, and this time it's not an alien egg.
The computer was switched off. To Gwen this, more than the empty seats on the conference table, more than the unused mugs in the kitchen, was a reminder of what they had lost. The computer had almost never been switched off before, because Tosh had always been working on it. If she wasn’t there it was still running, working on some translation, some calculations she had made it start the day before - first thing in the morning she went to her computer, turned on the screen to check the progress her programs had made over night. Gwen stared at the empty spot where the chair used to be and pictured her standing there, a frown on her pretty face as she tried to figure out why the results weren’t what they were supposed to be, or the little smile that graced her features when things went well. In her mind the other woman turned around and caught her staring, blushing as she turned back to her screen, but not before giving her a shy smile…
Now the computer was only used for the most basic of tasks, neither of the remaining members of Torchwood able to understand what Toshiko had been doing with it. The surveillance ran over a Jack’s own computer now - less complicated, easier for them to access. The loss echoed cold through the halls.
Slowly, quietly so as not to wake Jack who would be sleeping in his hole now Gwen moved on.
-
Her child is restless again. Gwen places both hands over then curve of her belly, feeling little legs kicking from the inside.
“It’s alright,” she murmurs as she leaves the surgery of her gynaecologist. “You’re safe in there.” For just a little longer.
It’s a girl, the doctor told her today. She can’t wait to tell Rhys.
-
“It’s a cloning device?”
“Oh, it’s much more than that. It doesn’t just create a biological copy, it also transfers personality and memories up to the moment when the genetic sample was taken.”
Tosh was listening, fascinated. Gwen watched her as she pushed a lock of hair out of her face. It fell back one second later.
She had a new haircut. Gwen wondered if anyone had told her yet how good it looked.
“What for?” she wanted to know.
Jack threw the device from one hand to the other and Tosh flinched - she had spend two weeks repairing the thing, without even knowing what it was good for. Only by coincidence had they discovered that Jack had been on the planet it originated from, once.
“So they won’t lose their best scientists after their death,” he said, as if it was obvious. “This thing here creates the basis for the copy and then it gets injected into the womb of a woman, just like that. Such a copy gets born like any other child, but with all the memories, all the brilliance. It doesn’t have to re-learn all of that. Their institutes are full of very bright children.”
“They get born with the memories of a lifetime in their heads?” Gwen shuddered at the thought of a newborn, with a fully developed personality, the intellect of an adult, stuck in an infant body. Jack put an end to the idea.
“No. They are born as normal children. The memories come up gradually as their mind develops. They aren’t done before they reach puberty.”
It wasn’t that much better than her initial thought. Gwen didn’t like the concept, didn’t know if she felt sorry for those children or was creped out by them. She imagined a copy of a copy of a copy, with the memories of several lifetimes in their mind.
How would it feel to grow up and realise that she couldn’t be herself because she already was someone else?
“I see the point,” Tosh said thoughtfully. “But I wouldn’t want to have a copy of myself running around.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Jack grinned and handed back the device. “I’d know a lot of things I’d do with another me. And we’d both love it!”
-
Gwen climbed down the stairs into the empty medical area. No Owen here to fill it. No Owen ever again.
In her mind the anger and irritation he made her feel mingled with the attraction, the affection that had started their affair. It was all washed away by a wave of grief. She quickly got what she wanted, returned upstairs. Beneath her feet she could see traces of blood in the dim light.
There was no blood anymore. It had all been removed, cleaned away. But wandering through the empty hub Gwen imagined time as a number of rooms, one after the other, and in one of those rooms Tosh was bleeding to death, right now, and they were so close and never thought of looking for her.
The door opened soundlessly - Ianto still kept it oiled. Gwen switched on the lights before she silently went down the stairs to the basement, not wanting to slip and break her neck. It would be inconvenient.
Two days ago she might not have minded so much.
-
Gwen didn’t actually like billiard, because she used to lose. She loved the little tournaments the team sometimes made, when the rift gave them time for it; it was one of the few times Tosh got over her shyness and just had fun. Gwen relished these times, feeling happy despite her own repeated failure when she saw the other woman do a little dance of triumph and laugh at Jack’s wail of frustration as he lost to her once again.
“You’re really good,” Gwen commented later, after the group had called it a night and parted ways. “Do you play often?”
They had all had a little too much to drink to drive a car tonight. Tosh lived nearby. She’d offered everyone a place for the night and Owen was the first to decline. Seeing the look of disappointment on her face Gwen had had no choice but to take her up on the offer. She didn’t feel like calling for a Taxi anyway.
Jack was staying at Ianto’s place. Gwen found she wasn’t particularly sad about that.
Tosh shook her head.
“Only with the team,” she answered. “I don’t feel like playing alone. But I have, when I was younger.”
Her breath formed clouds in the cold night air. Delicate, translucent forms that lasted only for a second. Children of the frost.
“You don’t go to bars on dates?” Gwen wanted to know, receiving a half-smile in return.
“What dates? Torchwood doesn’t exactly give me much chance for a private life.”
She could still have had one, if she’d really wanted to. Gwen could have reminded her that she herself was engaged, that she had a life outside the team, but she didn’t. Tosh was too romantic for one-night stands anyway, and the one she wanted regularly forgot she existed. Gwen felt sorry for her, but also felt the urge to grab her shoulders and shake her, tell her to stop pinning over Owen and find someone else. To live a little.
She was pretty. She was brilliant and fun to be around. There were many people out there who would have made her happy, if only she gave them a chance.
They walked around a corner and Gwen saw the building her friend lived in, the windows of her apartment dark and empty. Mary had betrayed her, Tommy had been doomed. Gwen, who was engaged to a man she loved and who loved her and still hadn’t found the strength to end the affair with Owen herself realised that she wasn’t in a position to tell her how to live.
Tosh got hurt, Gwen kept hurting others. They were living on opposite sides of the coin.
Tosh deserved someone who wouldn’t leave her, who didn’t take more than he gave. And Gwen was drunk and had a fiancé she wouldn’t leave for anyone. She knew she had no right to push the other woman against the door of her apartment and kiss her.
But she did so anyway.
-
There’s traffic jam on the way back. Gwen isn’t in a hurry. No work today - Jack has forced a vacation on her, saying hunting aliens is too dangerous for a pregnant woman. For once Gwen didn’t argue. She sees his point, and a part of her is glad she doesn’t have to be among the others now, to see Mickey Smith sitting in front of Tosh’s computer. A part of her is was feeling uneasy around them those last few days at work, always thinking they knew her dirty little secret.
Things will be different from now on. She can’t give Torchwood as much time as she has before, not when she will soon have a helpless little girl to guard and protect. Jack will have to understand.
Of course Rhys will help her. He’s so exited about her pregnancy that she feels even worse for the knowledge that she can’t keep the truth from him for much longer. But he’ll forgive her. He might not understand but in the end he’ll forgive her if she finds the right words to tell him. The right little lies.
And once he’s held their daughter for the first time he won’t be able to let her go anyway. Gwen knows him. He’ll love this child.
Even if it’s not his own.
-
Before one week was over Gwen knew she was going too far.
It would have been easy to blame the alcohol, never mention it again after a day of embarrassed silence, but waking up in the morning with Tosh seeking her warmth in her sleep she couldn’t do that.
And she didn’t want this to have been the only time.
So it went on. Tosh seemed braced for rejection, was surprised and happy when it didn’t come. Gwen did her best not to let her relationship with Rhys suffer because of this affair, and Tosh understood. They never talked about that. The other woman just took what Gwen was able to offer and was grateful.
They went out after work sometimes. Went to the movies, played billiard like the best friends they were, and then they ended up in Tosh’s apartment, and made love. Slowly, tenderly, not passionately and rushed like the sex with Owen had been. This was nothing like Owen.
Gwen realised it after five days, when she lay in bed with her friend the second time and knew this attraction went too deep. She’d thought her affection for the other woman had been caused by pity at first, by the wish to help her get a life, but it wasn’t just guilt and pity that made her stay.
In those days Tosh was happier, more lively, even at work. Sometimes when Gwen watched her she seemed to glow. Once again the former policewoman noted how much love suited her.
It was then that she realised that Tosh really did love her, and it made her feel happy, made her miserable. Once again her friend had opened up to someone who could only disappoint her.
But Tosh knew that s well as Gwen did. Every so often Gwen caught her watching her with sadness in her eyes, and she understood that Tosh had given her her love but not her heart, knowing she would break it. Gwen would never choose her. This wouldn’t go on forever. It wouldn’t even go on for very long.
-
Members of Torchwood weren’t put in the ground. They had no graves for their friends and families to visit, just a long drawer in the morgue. Frozen and stored away, like artefacts, like old documents. Gwen stared at the marked little doors in front of her. Owen wasn’t here. There was no Owen anymore.
Suzie Costello, right in the middle. Next to her the place that had once been occupied, for a short time, by Jack. Somewhere in here slept the man who had murdered Tosh. Gwen kept her hands from clenching. Murder wasn’t what she’d come here for.
Toshiko had been put to rest in the lower right corner. Gwen pulled out the drawer and couldn’t keep herself from running her hand though that thick, soft black hair. It was cold to the touch.
Her friend looked so small lying there, so pale and peaceful. So pretty. So dead.
Gwen didn’t whisper her apologies as there was no one here to hear her. She just pulled out a single hair and pushed her beloved back into her cold resting place.
-
The line was drawn with Gwen’s wedding. There was no specific moment that marked the end of their affair, no awkward conversation or angry shouting. It just stopped. Tosh knew it would. They sat in Gwen’s room that day, after Tosh had brought her the dress, and Gwen spoke of Tosh’s future with Owen. Their eyes met and Gwen felt she had to apologize. She never did. Always thought one day she would, would make it up to her friend somehow. Explain things, tell her she still loved her, had loved her all along. That it hadn’t been a game to her. That she was sorry. That she would have stayed if not for Rhys. But the moment escaped her, over and over again. Until she knelt on the cold floor of the hub and watched Jack rock Toshiko’s dead body in his arms.
-
Rhys wanted to accompany her to the doctor but his work has kept from it. He comes home shortly after Gwen does, eager to hear the new she could have told him ages ago.
“It’s a girl,” she reveals and he laughs and spins her around, overjoyed.
He would have been just as happy about a boy. No matter what, she knows he’ll make a wonderful dad.
For her beloved little daughter.
Now they know the gender they can finally start thinking in earnest about names he says later that evening, when they have dinner in the light of candles. Gwen smiles at him.
“I’ve given it some thought already,” she confesses. “If you don’t mind I would like to name her after a late friend.”
July 19, 2008