There's a tattered, leather bound book that sits on her nightstand. No one opens it but her, and even she rarely writes in it. Usually she doesn't think about it, but every now and again, an overwhelming need overcomes her to write down the things she can no longer say. ( The secrets she no longer has anyone to tell. )


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Cut for length and spoilers for Children of Earth.
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: #311 - Thank somebody for something.
Verse: Open Verse
Word Count: 461

The Pass a Note!Meme

The Rules:

-Pass a note! To another character in your muse's canon, or to someone else's muse!
-It can be text, whipped up in photoshop, done by hand and scanned in, doesn't matter!
-Spread a little love old-school style (no pun intended)

( Gwen's note to Jack )

"The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office."
- Robert Frost

Even on the clearest of Cardiff days, when the wind from the bay hardly chills her bones on the walk towards the Plas and her coffee from the local cafe tastes a bit better than usual, she still knows all that doesn't mean just because she's at work her brain got there, too.

Working for Torchwood has it moments of frustration. Some days, that frustration caps at her inability to locate the "Select All" button on her e-mail before she hits "Delete."

( Gwen's Inbox )

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Cut for an image
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Quote from Robert Frost
Verse: Open/Crack
Word Count: 82 + image
Note: Liberties with canon timeline have been taken.

"We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people."
- Arthur Schopenhauer


The gunfire broke the air around them. The spring wind of Cardiff burned Gwen’s nose, tinted with gunpowder, smoke, and the tangy scent of blood. Familiar smells.

She ducked down behind the burned out shell of a car. Jack crouched next to her, shouting orders across the yard at Ianto, most of his orders unnecessary and lost in the gunfire. The team worked like a single entity during these times, moving around each other like water flowing across rocks, parting long enough to do their duties before seamlessly running back together. They were three parts of the same mind, and words, at times, were unneeded.

Gwen popped up from behind the car and fired off her gun before crouching back down. She looked at Jack, and then her eyes roved around looking for the girl. The one that had helped him. She was an alien, of course, but a good one, a lost one, who had warned them against the small invasion that drew near.

The condemned warehouse that had been the meeting place for the small, dangerous band of aliens towered over them, and Gwen’s eyes moved to the door. Six dead bodies littered across the yard. If it hadn’t been for their green blood glinting in the gentle Cardiff sun, Gwen would have thought they were human.

Gwen glimpsed the girl as she slipped into the door of the warehouse. She appeared young, only about sixteen, although she claimed she was much older. She had been posing among humans for years, until she found Torchwood.

Really, she had found Gwen. Outside the Hub, two days before. Jack hadn’t believed the girl at first, but she was gentle and persuasive. Gwen sat with her for hours in the interrogation room, and they drank strong, black coffee that Ianto served them with a dark, foreboding look on his silent face.

( They all knew how things would end, she supposed, because things always ended the same way. )

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Cut for Length
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Quote from Arthur Schopenhauer
Verse: Open/Canon
Word Count: 1016

It’s something, Gwen Cooper thought, being a lost child. Always moving, always blown by the wind.

She thought being a Child of Time would fill the void that settled within her, the wound that festered and burned and itched her soul. What was left of her soul, anyway. It was a pathway that had been paved before her, by those greater, those stronger, those he probably loved much, much more. With all she had seen, all she had done, it seemed the next logical step.

( A companion. )

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Cut for Length
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Sexual Relations Meme
Verse: Open
Word Count: 677

Trust is one of those words that people use, to often, to generally. Like love and loyalty and honesty. Used so often it loses meaning, after a while, because it just rests on your tongue like something you would say to anyone, any day, without thinking about what it really means, without understand the power you have behind being able to say it.

You can’t know what it’s like to trust until you have something to actually entrust with someone. I have a secret like that. One I can’t share with anybody, because it doesn’t matter anymore who I trust.

I trust Jack… with my life. With my heart. With a million other things he probably doesn’t deserve. I trust Ianto, with my well being, to keep me strong. I know I can trust Martha, to be here when Jack rings. He can trust her, so I can too.

I trust the Doctor. Or Sarah Jane Smith. But they aren’t my friends, rather just names I’ve read and faces I know will be there when they are called upon to fight beside us.

I can trust Rhys. Finally. He deserves every little bit I can give him, because he’s part of it now.

Then there is everyone else. Mum, dad, my friends. The girls I knew at college, girls I’ve known most of my life. Andy. Old lovers, new lovers, the lovers in between. I can’t say I trust them. Because if I did, I would tell them, without the threat of worry or retcon or what Jack will say. I have one secret. One pressing, dark, festering bloody secret I can’t tell a single one of them. Who I trust doesn’t matter anymore. It’s about who Torchwood trusts. And I am Torchwood, and Torchwood is me.

I still trust. And I still have friends. But they can’t always be one in same.

It has such power, a word like trust. A power that is no longer mine to control.

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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Do you trust your friends?
Verse: Open/Canon
Word Count: 329

It started as a hiccup in the system, a miss-spelled name.

Gwen Coooper.

“Bloody hell, Ianto,” I barked, hitting the keyboard after my third failed log-on attempt. I was trying to not be angry, to not want to slam the taunting computer screen with my fist, but to no possible avail. I was worried I would start crying. “It’s not letting me do a thing. I can’t log into the damn system.”

Ianto came up behind me, his presence working like a soothing cream across the flashes of anger that surged. I wasn’t sure what to do without him, and Jack. The Hub, once filled with laughter and smite and, yes, sometimes even sex, had faded into an echo of silence. Sometimes, alone at night, I thought I could hear the echo of the weevils crying in the dark. It was like every ghost story come to life.

“What do you mean?” he asked, peering over my shoulder.

“My account has been corrupted,” I replied. “Or… something. I don’t know, it was working fine yesterday.”

He pointed at the screen. “Your name is miss-spelled.”

“I know that. It keeps telling me I need a system administrator password to make changes.”

He cleared his throat. “Well, we can just ask T-” his words seemed to choke in his throat, and my hands stilled carefully over the keyboard.

( It wasn’t like him, to forget. It wasn’t like any of us. )

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Cut for Length
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Misspelled Names
Verse: Open/Canon
Word Count: 1195

A while back I did a meme where people requested certain Gwens to write about. I haven't forgotten about them, I've just been taking my time writing them! So here are two I wrote a while back and simply forgot to post, and there should be more over time.

for itsthecoat, Playful!Gwen

2 a.m. was the best time for the game.

Overwhelmed with work and rigid on continual cups of coffee, Gwen wandered up behind Jack’s desk where he sat, deep in concentration over a stack of paperwork that couldn’t possibly be getting smaller.

She prepared her fingers, pointing them towards him and took a deep, prepared breath for what was to come. She pounced.

And somehow, he always knew. He spun around, before her fingers could reach their target, and he began to tickle her. She squealed and jumped away, speeding out of the office, listening to his footsteps following her. He would catch her – he always did. That was her favourite part of the game.

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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Drabble Meme
Verse: Open
Word Count: 116

for goodathart, Naked!Gwen

“What the bloody hell are you doing in here?”

Gwen leaped, naked, across the room and threw a towel over her body. The Torchwood bathroom was very cold, but an exhausted Gwen had no intention of going back to her flat covered in that day’s lot of alien goo, and put up with the cold for a quick wash. On the other hand, she wasn’t expecting to pop out and find a smirking Captain John Hart.

“Get out!”

John laughed, almost doubled over, and shook his head. “Don’t worry, sweetheart, it’s not like I’m interested, just went through the wrong door.”

“Not on your life!” she shouted. She grabbed her shoe and launched it at his head, missing by about half a metre.

“Definitely not on my life!” He was near hysterics, and paused long enough to wink at her before her headed for the door. She picked up her other shoe and threw it with all her might, watching it bounce against the door soundly as it shut quickly behind him.

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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Drabble Meme
Verse: Open/Crack
Word Count: 172

"Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies." - Ann Landers

Gwen Cooper knew too well what dying felt like. After all, she had died before.

At least, she was pretty sure Suzie had killed her, at least for a moment. But there had only been darkness there, and even now, she refused to believe in the blackness of death.

That was Suzie’s darkness, not her own.

She turned her head and her cheek slapped against cold pavement. She watched thick blood pool from her side, mottled in the dust speckled light streaming through the warehouse. She wanted to scream for Jack and Ianto, but her mouth was too dry, her lips cracked and the tearing pain in every inch of her body was too much to fight through to form words. She tried to detach herself, and concentrated on the way her vision swam, the way her stomach tightened with nausea, the way the musty smell of blood filled her nostrils.

They wouldn’t find her in time; that she was sure of. But to concentrate on anything other than the pain was enough. She realised this must have been how Tosh felt, when the life was drained from her own body. At least she had the warmth of dying in Jack’s arms.

The warehouse stone was cold against her back.

She closed her eyes against the darkness.

***

( Owen’s hands were on her. )

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Cut for Length
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: 136. "Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies." - Ann Landers
Verse: Open
Word Count: 1150

Gwen carefully wrapped the presents and too care that they were sent out in time for Christmas. Some were easy to deliver (just plopping them on the desk Christmas Eve before heading back to the flat) and some a little harder (even though intergalactic parcel delivery was becoming much easier, considering her contacts.). Each were wrapped the same, with the same bow, and a tiny card with a personalized note.

( To Jack )

( To Ianto )

( To Owen )

( To Katie )

( To the Other Doctor )

( To Jenny )

( To The Doctor )

( To The Master )

( To Captain John Hart )

( To the UNIT People )

The last one she gave next to the lit Christmas tree, in the wee hours of the morning, accompanied with a kiss.

( To Rhys )