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

Wake up.

There's something.

Just wake up.

She's not really asleep, not really quite unconscious or dead. She's aware of the fact that her legs are moving, even though she can't feel them. She feels her arm around Suzie, the sting of her shoulder as the weight of her body is near-dragged across the pier. She watches the splintered wood as her feet shuffle along, one foot in front of the other, Gwen. Keep moving, keep feeling.

( Wake up. )


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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: #301: Wake Up
Verse: Open/Canon Verse
Word Count: 431

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

"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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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 )

She remembered being that cold and scared once. She had been sixteen, and her schoolmates talked her into jumping into the bay the day they graduated. Through her uniform the cold of the water seeped as if into her bones and her body seared with an aching fire and no matter how hard she laboured she was certain she would never breathe again.

Gwen felt that way now, over ten years later, shivering against the blow of the wind, the echo of pelting rain against the brim of her hat, her uniform soaked through. And when he looked up, his bright eyes cutting through the fog and the rain, her body seared again with that strange and frigid pain, and she couldn’t breath.

She had heard them talking, the strange group beneath her. Seen what they had done; watched them raise the bleeding, stone cold dead man back to life. And when the man in the coat looked up at her, standing next to the now dead-again man, he caught his gaze with her own and shouted, through the rain.

“What do you think?”

And she couldn’t. Couldn’t think through the fog in her mind, couldn’t breath through the air that hovered frozen around her mouth.

So she did the only thing she could do.

She ran.

***

( Rhys’ voice pounded against her ears. )

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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Five Times You Ran and One Time You Didn’t
Verse: Open/Canon
Word Count: 1350

Owen’s flat never really got dark. But she liked it that way; the encompassing windows that soaked up the light of the city, the sparseness of the flat. The absence of photos and most personal items added to the mystery of the man she shared the bed with. It was nothing like her flat; all pictures and décor and noise and Rhys snoring and drawn curtains that let it no light. The light kept the monsters in her mind at bay, and she needed it now.

She rolled towards him and wrapped her arms around him, the feel of a stranger’s skin, a body she didn’t quite know yet. His arms snaked around her waist, his hands beginning another exploration, and she shook her head against his shoulder.

“No,” she breathed, as if her voice would break the protective blanket that kept the monsters away. “Just hold me, okay?”

His hands stilled. The pulsing glow of lights and his warm arms around her body kept the monsters away for one more night.
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Drabble Meme
Verse: Open/Canon
Word Count: 172