"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.

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

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

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

The Cardiff night rests heavily over the city.

The cold whip of the rain trails across Gwen's skin, like an icy finger, like death tickling down the curve of her neck.

She shivers.

The rain washes the streets, the puddles ripple beneath the remaining drops that fall. Ahead of her, Jack and Ianto trot, buried deep in the warmth of their jackets. They lean into one another now and again, brushing their arms together and swerving around puddles.

Gwen struggles against the biting air, and the two figures seem to move further ahead.

She wonders how they feel the absence. For Gwen, there should be footsteps beside her, the overwhelming splash of boots through street water. There should be the shouting of five voices through the rain and night air, all laughing and tripping and joking.

Instead, now and again rises a mutter she can grasp between the two ahead, and a word or two here and there that loses its meaning in the wind.

She says nothing.

They have each other. She has them, sometimes, but mostly it is quiet and lonely, the cups of coffee cooling on the desks and muted whispers across halls. She always sits on the opposite side of the boardroom table from them. It was never deliberate. Just how things worked out.

A splash on the street grabs her attention, and when she looks up, Jack beckons to her. "Come on, Gwen!" he shouts, he smiles, and she smiles back. She trudges through the forming flood, her trainers soaked, her jacket wrapped taut around her body.

He turns back to Ianto, his lips forming lost words.

"I'm coming," she offers, and it is stolen by the wind.

She never quite catches up.

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Muse: Gwen Cooper, Torchwood
Prompt: Third wheel
Verse: Canon/Open
Word Count: 287