for muses_gonewild... Quote Prompt

"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