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

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

This is how the world ends.

It lay in dust, now, the singular reminder of what had been the end of her old world, and the beginning on her new. She picks up the shoe box, and the dust is coarse against her palm, scratching against the warped, peeling cardboard as she clears it away.

Inside are the memories of a life she once lived, before the world ended. An identification card, with a picture of a woman who had become a stranger. It was unsettling to think that had once been the face she saw, every day, when she looked in the mirror. Her old warrant card from the police; she’d never been told, exactly, to turn it in, so she never did. A few newspaper clippings, the ones that had not been kept in her desk and had not, thus, been lost when her old world had burned.

A single, faded photograph. The smiling face of a familiar stranger, surrounded by the figures of ghosts who have never ventured far from the safe confines of her memory.

( The video tape lay at the bottom. )

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Cut for length and minor spoilers for Children of Earth
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: #300: This is...
Verse: Open Future
Word Count: 497

She made dinner; lasagne, but it had burned ever so slightly, searing a dark mottled brown over the top and around the edges.

He rang, and she answered the phone breathlessly, precariously balancing a tomato in one hand and a bowl in the other.

“I’ll be late,” he said.

“It’s okay,” she replied, because it would be unfair to think otherwise.

( By the time they ate the lasagne was cold and dry, the salad wilted and soggy. He ate it without complaint, pulling away the burnt corners of his meal. )

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Cut for length and minor spoilers for Children of Earth
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: #295: Talk about the weather
Verse: Open/Canon
Word Count: 410

{{A million thank yous to twicedisplaced for the beta. &hearts}}

It never ceases to amaze her, really, how people so easily forget.

The time always comes, after every spectacular event, after every earth-shattering understanding of the greater universe, when Gwen picks up the paper and realises it’s been forgotten. It’s a never ending constant in her life, knowing that the spaceships hovering over London, the mass panic through the streets of Cardiff, the view of her city in flames and devastation, will soon fade into the background noise of petty politics and X-Factor scandals.

But they will never fade for her. The images that flash through her mind, the nightmares that still shake her awake in the dark. She knows it would be easy for her to forget too; to turn in her resignation, to take a single pill that would steal every painful memory and toss them into oblivion. To most, her nightmares are simply stories; black and white print against crinkled paper, accompanied with fuzzy photos impossible to verify. For Gwen, they are constant reminders of the continual danger that haunts her every step.

On the couch, her head tucked snugly against Rhys’ shoulder, her eyes skim the pages of the newspaper as she takes in the stories of the latest disgraced celebrity or politician. The newspaper is now her own escapism, because the world the journalists so freely write about is such a far cry from the world she sees everyday. And she can’t particularly blame them. After all, the world deals with its trauma in the best way it can; by moving on.

In those moments, Gwen knows the true weight of Torchwood. Even through the tears, the terror, and the nightmares, Torchwood continues to fight. And Gwen continues to remember, so the rest of the world can have the gentle luxury to forget.

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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: #293: Talk about a news item
Verse: Open/Canon
Word Count: 495