MISS COOPER
Disclaimer: Everything belongs to the BBC and the ever-brilliant Mr. T. Davies
Author's Note: Ah, TV weddings. When was the last time one of them went according to plan? I did raise a cup of tea to the hope that Gwen and Rhys would not get married but they did! I wrote this before 'Something Borrowed' was broadcast, so it's not in canon with events but I hope you'll still enjoy it.
Prologue
If you squinted at it, really squinted at it, it looked like a poodle but then if you tilted your head slightly to the left…more like batman.
Gwen rested her forehead against the glass as she stared out of the window at the stillness of sleeping Cardiff, allowing her mind to form shapes from the ribbons of yellow streetlights that stretched into the distance. It was a game she'd played ever since she was a little girl during long car journeys at night. It felt oddly soothing to be playing it again: old and familiar, as if she were still seven years old, when all that kept her awake at night were worries about her times tables.
How things change. The digital clock on the TV read 2:53am. Tomorrow, no; today would be her last day at work before her wedding on Saturday; Jack had very kindly agreed to give her three days holiday. Gwen sighed softly and stared down into her cup of tea. Perhaps 'agreed' was stretching it a little. After frantic calls from her mother every four hours about flowers or distant relatives or…the colours of napkins for the past week or so, she believed Jack's exact words had been something like,
" I want you in Tuesday, but if you set foot in my Hub any day after that I will fire you and give your gun to Myfanwy."
The thing about Jack was that she was never sure whether or not to take him seriously. After the incident with Lisa last year he had said that he would've killed Ianto if he'd had to and she'd refused to believe him, yet sometimes, in the heat of a confrontation with some alien or other there'd be this essence of danger about him; a steely glint in his eye that made her feel less certain of who he was, of what sort of man she worked for.
A loud snore from the bedroom interrupted her thoughts. From the dim light of the reading lamp beside her she could make out Rhys' huddled shape beneath the duvet, one foot sticking out over the edge of the bed. He was laid alone, one arm stretched out to her side of the bed, as if reaching out to something, someone who was not there. She felt a squeeze of guilt at the empty space beside him. So many nights he went to sleep alone, then woke up to find she'd already left, and here she was perched on the windowsill instead of lying next to him. She'd abandoned him again.
An hour previously she'd woken up sweating and shaking, her cheeks wet with tears she hadn't realised she'd shed. A bad dream, she'd told herself, wiping her eyes with the back of her hands as she sat up in bed, struggling for a moment, to remember where she was. A surreal, ridiculous dream; nothing more. Yet, it had just been so vivid. Horridly vivid. She'd been back at Ty Enfys Nursing Home with Jack; she knew instantly that it was Ty Enfys because she'd recognised the smell; a hospital food-like stench, strong bleach and cheap air freshener, which couldn't quite mask the underlying whiff of urine.
There were no residents, though; in the dream she'd been quite alone, save for a figure that had remained always just outside her line of vision, though she somehow innately knew that it was Jack. In this dream she'd wandered down a long corridor of rooms, her trainers making no noise against the white-flecked carpet until she reached the room at the end. The metal handle of the door felt hard and cold beneath her fingertips as she pushed it open. Inside, the lights were glaring and artificial, like the strip lights in a hospital. The room had been sparsely furnished; nothing more than a sliding wardrobe and split wicker bedside table beside the bed. The blankets covering the bed had been old and moth-eaten with a fading pattern that reminded her of her grandma's curtains.
Underneath the blankets…Gwen closed her eyes tightly in an effort to block out the memory of her dream, but to no avail; the awful images stayed in her mind's eye, like some sort of gruesome tattoo and refused to go away. Underneath the blankets had been a decaying body; it's face mangled and bloody, bones peeking through rotten skin. Rhys' body. She knew it was Rhy's body because she recognised his socks: how she knew they were his socks she didn't know, but she knew it had been him. Then…there'd been a shuffling in the shadows to her left and Bilis Manger emerged, laughing manically, his eyes like chunks of coal and said,
" My wife was called Gwen"
She'd whimpered and tried to turn away, tried to run towards Jack; blindly reaching for him but he'd turned his back on her, sneering, his face pinched and cruel. The body on the bed changed…became more feminine…thin strands of white hair splayed across the pillow; the skin grew wrinkled and slack, littered with liver spots. It was herself. She stared down at the frighteningly familiar corpse of an old woman and screamed, crying out for Jack…
Thankfully, her screams had not awoken Rhys. He had lain asleep beside her, his warm bulk taking up most of the bed; his breathing heavy. For a while she had just lain there, frozen, unable to move. Crying silently, her eyes had began to make out familiar shapes in the dark; yesterday's clothes lying discarded in a heap on the floor, a pile of unwritten wedding invitations amongst her bottles of perfume on her dressing table, Rhys' books stacked haphazardly on his bedside cabinet, underpants spilling out its broken drawers. Quietly, she'd slipped out of bed and padded across the flat to the kitchen, scrubbing at her face with a wad of kitchen roll as she waited for the kettle to boil.
Eyes feeling raw and gritty, she'd busied herself making the tea; quietly taking her favourite cup down from the shelf; resisting the urge to re-arrange all the cups so that all the handles faced the same way. Hardly the time. Something about the smell of the steaming hot tea made her feel better; she'd felt less shaky anyway and it reminded her of the times her mum used to leap up and put the kettle on whenever anyone had been troubled, or had had a particularly bad day; the only times her mum ever put sugar in their tea. Sugary tea was for special occasions only.
Gwen had smiled inwardly as she'd heaped two teaspoons of sugar into her tea, watching the fine white flecks swirl and disappear into the brown liquid. She'd always sworn to herself that she would never turn into her mother, yet there she was making tea during the night…it was a scary thought.
Warming her hands on her cup, she'd made her way over to the sofa where she'd picked up a book that a friend had given her ages ago but hadn't got round to reading. It was something about a woman stripping her clothes off and diving in a fountain…wasn't it? Not really her type of book, if she was being honest. What was her type? She couldn't actually remember the last time she'd sat down to read a book. Even when she was in the police force her long shifts meant that all she wanted to do when she got home was go to bed. Now she worked for Torchwood, the idea of her sitting down to read was laughable. When was the last time she'd had five minutes to herself to just relax and not have to do anything? Or had a long bath with candles? Or…paint her nails? Not that she ever painted her nails anyway, but that wasn't the point. Torchwood really did take up most of her life, it wasn't just a job; it had become a part of her. She'd not had dinner with Rhys once this fortnight, and she was going to marry him in less than a week.
She'd caught sight of her reflection in the blank television and saw a pale, troubled looking woman with messy hair; her fringe sticking up in all directions, wearing mismatched pyjamas. Lovely. It'd been a while since she'd actually taken a proper look at herself; more than a quick, my-hair's-washed-and-I'm-wearing-clean-clothes-so-I'll-do sort of look. She'd stared at her eyes, reflecting back at her. Was it just her, or did they look sharper, more alert yet more world-weary than they'd used to? Was it possible, looking at her, to see how much she'd changed? Did her eyes betray all the alien, unearthly stuff she'd seen, all the Weevils, Cannibals, people from the past?
She'd closed her eyes, as if thinking about this caused her pain, and kept them closed. She'd allowed herself to drift…drift peacefully, her head lolling onto her shoulder. Only partially aware that she'd fallen into a light doze, Gwen had jolted awake, slopping tea down her front. Wincing slightly as the hot tea scalded her, she'd moved over to the window. She'd heard a noise outside; a loud bang that shattered through the silence, like a gunshot or a door being kicked in, or…her hand went to her waist, automatically reaching for her gun. Then, she'd felt extremely stupid. For two reasons: one; she was wearing pyjama bottoms, not jeans so she didn't even have her gun on her, two; even if she did have her gun it would be completely unnecessary because the source of the noise had been a cat knocking a bin over, of all things. She'd watched the cat; an overly fat tabby, sauntering down the street, its tail in the air; leaving a mess of thrown-away food containers and old newspapers lying at the foot of her drive, a used take-away carton reflecting the amber glow of the streetlights above.
Here she'd sat for the past half an hour, just staring at her thoughts: her breathing making an O on the glass. She drew a smiley face in the steamed-up window but then smeared it over with her thumb. Her own face was not a smiley one; it was drawn and stony. For as long as she could remember, she'd always had trouble recovering from bad dreams. As a child, she would seek comfort in her mum and dad's bed and crawl in between them, snuggling into their warm embrace, feeling safe. As a teenager, she'd had to learn how to comfort herself, stifling her sobs with a pillow, counting slowly to thirty to calm herself down; even, on occasion rummaging at the back of her wardrobe to bring out one of her old soft toys, just for one night in a desperate bid to have something to cling on to.
Now, well, now she had Rhys to cuddle into, Rhys to hold her at night. It would be so simple; the easiest thing in the world for her to slip off the windowsill now and creep back into bed beside him, to lie close to him and forget her dream, forget the case she'd been working on for the last few days, yet something inside her stopped her. She stayed, sitting on the windowsill, staring out into the night, thinking about what had happened at Ty Enfys and the man she had screamed at and disobeyed, but whom she'd clung on to as if her life depended on it. Definitely not the man she was about to marry; Jack Harkness.
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