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 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.

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}}

Spoilers for "Children of Earth"


By 10pm, she is in her pyjamas. The window is open, and the evening wind ripples the curtains and tickles her skin. He won’t be to bed for another half hour, and it is her time, the only time she allows herself in the span of her days, ( to feel the weight of it all against her. )

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Cut for Spoilers for Children of Earth
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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: 164. Her bed (setting)
Verse: Open/Canon
Word Count: 495

10 Books I Own (And Haven’t Read)

+ Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
+ Animal Farm by George Orwell
+ Wales, a History: 2000 Years of Welsh History by Gwynfor Evans
+ The Bible
+ The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
+ Blackstone's Police Operational Handbook 2009
+ I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
+ The Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
+ Madame de Pompadour: Mistress of France by Christine Pevitt Algrant
+ Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

List idea curtosy of ambitious_woman

Make a list of outfits you wore in the last week.

+ Friday: Red short sleeve top, black trousers, red converse. (Black trousers are now torn and un-wearable.)

+ Saturday: Print top, black blazer, jeans, boots. (Left boot eaten by a weevil.)

+ Sunday: One of Rhys’ button down shirt and knickers. (Lazy day at home, couldn’t be bothered.)

+ Monday: A maid’s dress. (Please, don’t ask.)

+ Tuesday: Purple top, Deisel jacket, jeans, new boots with heels. (The right heel is stuck in a gutter now somewhere near Mermaid Quay.)

+ Wednesday: Black top, jeans, red converse. (No damage. Slow day.)

+ Thursday: White button up shirt, jeans, brown leather blazer, black converse. (Blazer has blood stain on sleeve. Ianto, do you think you can have it dry cleaned?)

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