Fic: The Look of Flowers That Are Looked At (Torchwood/The Gifted, PG-13)
Author: Prochytes.
Fandoms: The Gifted/Torchwood
Rating: PG-13. Angst.
Characters/Pairing: Caitlin Strucker, John Proudstar, Lorna Dane (The Gifted); Gwen Cooper (Torchwood).
Disclaimer: Marvel and the Beeb own the goodies.
Summary: A strange Welshwoman brings tech from beyond the stars to help the Underground. Caitlin investigates the price.
Word Count: 2512.
A/N: Small spoilers for The Gifted to 1x04: “eXit strategy” and Torchwood to 4x01. The title is from “Burnt Norton”, by T. S. Eliot.
Tuesday meant laundry, and all of its attendant complications. The base’s available room was whittled away with each incoming refugee. What the building lacked in floor area, it made up in great and gracious sweeps of vertical space; across this loom, Caitlin strung the weft of her washing-lines. Even so, it was hard, of a Tuesday, to walk the cluttered floors of the HQ without feeling the momentary brush of drying fabric on one’s cheek – the clammy wing-stroke of whichever unreliable angel stands over the house-proud in time of trouble.
Tuesday meant fresh eggs. There was a farmer (somewhere, not too far). She had served with John before returning to her family acres, and did her bit (“salved her conscience”, Lorna would say, mulishly quieting under John’s glare) by regular contributions from her poultry. Caitlin, reluctant convert to the asceticism of the nomad, was trying not to become too dependent on this respite from the reign of macaroni cheese.
Tuesday meant a lot of things. But Caitlin sometimes wondered whether she alone, of all the base’s denizens, meant Tuesday – that is to say, fingered its differences from Monday before and Wednesday beyond like the bead on a rosary. Tuesday was a square like any other on the chequer-board of nights and days across which John (and, increasingly, Reed) plotted out their strategies; Tuesday was a digital progression in the clock behind Sage’s darting eyes. Caitlin, alone, thought Tuesday was Tuesday. She held on to its hebdomadal return, with the fervour of a faith all others had forsaken.
***
It was on a Tuesday morning that Caitlin saw the woman in the grounds.
The woman wore odd clothes, surprisingly well. All that drapery and ribbons, unbounded by anything as bourgeois as a belt, should surely only have flattered the waifish young. This woman was a well-preserved forty, if Caitlin was any judge, with a solid, long-legged frame, a little above the average in height. The final effect was more successfully Woodstock than it really had any right to be.
A large black bag dangled from the woman’s left arm. She held her right hand out before her, the elbow jutting forward and a little sideways from her flank, with the forearm crooking once more inward. The awkward posture at once stirred Caitlin’s professional instincts.
“Excuse me,” she called out from the terrace. “Are you hurt?”
The woman looked back at Caitlin, puzzlement etched on her freckled forehead. “I’m sorry?”
“I can see you’re favouring your arm,” Caitlin pointed. “Would you like me to take a look for you? I’m a nurse.”
The woman’s brow cleared. She smiled, and, slowly, dropped her right arm to her side. “Just out of the cast. I’m a little stiff, but nothing more. You’ve a good eye, er…”
“Caitlin.” Caitlin proffered the name without hesitation. It was unusual for anyone to appear on the grounds other than by the Underground’s own vehicles, but this woman couldn’t have approached from that direction without being vetted by Pedro first. “Caitlin Strucker.”
“… You’ve a good eye, Caitlin Strucker.” The woman hefted her bag. “Is John around?”
“I am.” John walked past Caitlin to join the woman on the lawn. “You’re early.”
“Lucky with the traffic.” The woman smiled again at Caitlin. “John will settle us in. But I hope to meet you properly later, Caitlin.”
“Likewise,” Caitlin replied. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“My name is Gwen Cooper,” the woman said.
***
Elementary math with the younger children kept Caitlin busy for the next hour or so. She was sharing progress reports that arose from the class with John (who took a dutiful, if somewhat perfunctory, interest in how the makeshift school was shaping up) when Gwen Cooper poked her head around the door.
“Settled in OK?” asked John.
“Snug as a bug in a rug.” Gwen Cooper eyed Caitlin. “Is now a bad time?”
Caitlin made as if to rise. “I can go…”
John held up his hand. “No need. It’s time you knew a little more about our logistics. Gwen is one of our… suppliers.”
“Indeed.” Gwen slipped into a chair beside Caitlin, and began placing items from her black bag on the table, amongst the progress reports. “I come bearing gifts. These,” she pointed at a phial containing two small blue crystals, which she had just used to weight the saga of Ellie Brown’s ongoing death-match with Pythagoras, “are Tears of the Silence. Crush one, and it kills all Terran tech in a radius of about one hundred feet for fifteen minutes. Like an EMP, but cleaner, and hard to spot. I know that I always say this, but, for the love of God, make sure that intact ones don’t fall into the hands of the opposition. We’d rather that The War of the Worlds didn’t join The Chrysalids in their spank-bank.”
John nodded.
“A red crystal is inert unless you bring it into contact with a green one. If that happens, there’ll be nine and a half seconds before a bang. Yield’s about the same as a high-end hand-grenade. That might even put a dent in you, so take a tip from me and store them separately.”
“Understood. What does the snow-globe do?”
“The snow-globe’s a snow-globe, John. It snow-globes. I have to bring a prezzie home for Rhys. It’s not as though I go through Duty Free.”
“I’m sorry your husband couldn’t make it, this time.”
“So is he. Pressure of work, I’m afraid. He says ‘hi’.” Gwen shifted in her chair. When she spoke again, it was with a constraint that Caitlin had not heard before. “About our other business…”
“Sonya’s not home yet. She should be here in about three quarters of an hour. We can do it then.”
“Thank you.” Gwen stood up. “I’ll leave you two to your hypotenuses.”
Caitlin discovered, shortly after wrapping up her pedagogical debrief with John, that she had lost a pencil, and went back to the office in search of it. The door was slightly ajar. Caitlin was about to push it further open when she saw through the gap that John was not alone.
Sonya had returned earlier than expected. She was sitting in the office, as was Gwen. John was looking at the only empty chair. Sonya’s dreaming mists languidly rippled between his lips and Gwen’s. The visitor’s eyes were bright with tears.
Caitlin took her hand off the door, and stole away.
***
“Things are different, in the U. K.,” said Gwen. Somewhere close, a bird struck up a two-tone warble, like a car alarm. Caitlin thought that it was possibly a ground dove. She had been getting up natural history for the school, with spotty results. “Earnest opinion pieces in the Guardian; placards soddening under gentle drizzle in Trafalgar Square. It’s all frightfully genteel, until it isn’t. Kids get kicked in behind the bike-sheds, but Hello! will run a two-page spread about a lass with purple hair. The Great British Public doesn’t mind a mutant, as long as she’s posh, and looks good in a swimsuit.” Gwen rested her back against the balustrade. “Also a psychic, though that’s not widely known. My people avoid her; we’re professionally cautious around mind-readers.”
“Except Sonya.” Caitlin was loath to jostle the intimacy that had grown between her and Gwen during this conversation in the sun. But she was inclined to suspect that the Welshwoman, who didn’t seem to miss much, already knew that the strange interlude in the office had been observed.
“Sonya gives me something that I need. And she’s a good woman; I like her. I’ve done the work that Sonya has to do. That sort of cleaning makes you dirty, in a way you can’t scrub out. Her dreams are kinder than my drugs.”
“But you don’t get on with Lorna.”
Gwen cocked her head. “What makes you say that?”
“The way you dress.”
Gwen chuckled. “I said you had a good eye, Caitlin Strucker.” She clambered to her feet. “John and I time my visits so that Lorna isn’t here. I should get cracking, actually, before…” Gwen looked past Caitlin’s shoulder, and sighed. “Oh. Arse. Speak of the devil.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
Lorna’s voice was harsh; spots of colour branded her white cheeks. There were days, Caitlin knew, when a fragile truce held between Lorna and the world, when the life she had to lead didn’t chafe her, quite so much. Today wasn’t one of those days.
“Lorna,” said Caitlin. “I thought you were on a mission.”
“I was. The safe house was already blown; nothing there but bodies.” Lorna turned her attention back to Gwen. “You’re not welcome in this house.”
“I’m sorry you feel that way, Lorna,” said Gwen. “But that decision isn’t yours to make.”
“Maybe it should be.” Lorna advanced on the Welshwoman, pushing her back against the balustrade. “Gives you a kick, doesn’t it, coming here. Wearing compassion like a ribbon for the day.”
“Your hand’s on my neck, Lorna.” Gwen’s tone had not changed. “Only three people get to touch me there. Consider that warning Number One of ‘Not Many’.”
“I think everyone needs to calm dow…”
“Can it, Caitlin.” Lorna leaned in. “You like to play the mysterious stranger, Gwen Cooper. But in the end, you’re just another fucking groupie, who thinks she gets a free pass because of her d…”
It wasn’t actually uncanny. “Uncanny” was a term of art in this new and garish world. Caitlin had seen uncanny speed; the movement of the Welshwoman’s right hand wasn’t that. But it was close.
“Caitlin’s started up a school,” Gwen said, in conversational tones. “Have you seen that? I was impressed. When I was at school, I used to like CDT. Craft, Design, and Technology… did you do the subject here? All those shelves we built for books we never owned. My favourite bit was pottery. Or, to put it another way, ceramics.”
Lorna’s throat was tense beneath the point of the blade that was held against it. Caitlin saw the fingers of her left hand – the one not grasping the Welshwoman’s neck – begin to twitch. Gwen smiled.
“Just worked it out, have you? Some were smarter. I don’t come to this house dressed like a hippy because I’m in mourning for Altamont. No buckles; no zips; no studs.” She lifted herself a little to whisper in Lorna’s ear. “No metal. There’s some on you, of course, and some about. You’re young, and very, very good; perhaps you could bring it in fast enough. Perhaps. Take your hand off my neck, Lorna. I’ve had a shit day, and, by the sound of it, you’ve had a worse one. Neither of us really wants to find out exactly how fast you’d have to be.”
“You know where the gate is.” Lorna released her grip. “Don’t let it smack your ass on the way out.”
Gwen preserved a serene demeanour until Lorna was out of sight. Then, she palmed the blade, and kicked the wall.
“Bollocks. Sorry you had to see that, Caitlin. I prefer to keep my claws sheathed, unlike some.”
“Lorna’s tightly-wound right now,” said Caitlin, carefully. “What’s her problem with you?”
“Lorna thinks I’m a conniving, unreliable bitch who only comes here because she has to. That would be less galling, if it weren’t true.” Gwen exhaled. “I’ll head in and smooth the waters before I go. I know that some manners don’t travel well across the Atlantic, but I’m fairly sure that everyone frowns on almost shanking one of your hosts. Nice to have met you, Caitlin. I hope I can get to know Reed and the kids, the next time I’m around.”
“I’d like that.”
“Good.” Gwen was silent, for a while. The bird resumed its minatory murmur. “Do you remember what it was like?”
Caitlin looked puzzled. “What?”
“To be in a place where you hadn’t counted the exits?”
***
“Looking for this?” John held up a pencil.
“Thanks.” Caitlin slipped into the office, shutting the door behind her. “It’s so annoying to mislay things.”
“I’ll take your word for that.” John handed over the pencil. “Haven’t been able to mislay an object since I was nine.”
“Handy.”
“It is. But sometimes I wish I could.”
Caitlin looked at the shadows beneath his eyes. “I heard about the busted safe-house.”
John nodded, tight-lipped. “That was rough.”
“And I saw the, er, aftermath. Is Lorna OK?”
John’s jaw clenched. “More or less. Gwen came and ate crow, although she’s a picky eater. Sonya finally talked Lorna down.”
“All the way?”
“Enough that she was visible from the ground. That was about as much as could be expected.”
“No one’s happy; everyone’s functional. On the wards, we called that a win.” Caitlin fidgeted with the pencil. “May I ask a question?”
“Shoot.”
“What brings Gwen here?”
“Can’t you guess?”
Caitlin tapped the pencil against the table, considering. Eventually, her brows unknotted. “I think I see. Or rather, I think I didn’t.”
“Go on.”
“When I first met Gwen in the grounds, she said: ‘John will settle us in.’ But whenever I saw her afterwards, she was alone. She was holding her right arm oddly, that first time; she told me that she had just ditched the cast. But that arm didn’t slow her down any when she drew on Lorna. I don’t think that she was holding it that way because she had been injured; I think that she had it wrapped around someone’s shoulders. Someone small,” Caitlin looked up at John, “like a little girl.”
“Her name is Anwen,” John said. “Gwen is Homo sapiens herself, but the X-gene runs in the family. Her great-great-something-aunt could read minds. Gwen’s daughter was very young when her gift began to kick in. Anwen can’t be seen or heard, by any person or machine.”
“Except you.”
“Except me. My tracking is all that overcomes it. Anwen can’t turn her talent off. Gwen keeps tech active that lets her be sure of Anwen’s status and location. She wouldn’t take her anywhere, otherwise. But Gwen hasn’t seen or heard her daughter in four years.”
“So you see and hear Anwen for her.”
“Yes. When they visit, Sonya takes my memories of Anwen, and gives them to Gwen. To her husband, too, when he can make it.”
Caitlin’s lips thinned. “You sell a mother glimpses of her child.”
“We’d probably do it for free. But I won’t pretend Gwen’s gratitude isn’t helpful. Her organization is well-disposed to mutants, but we’re not high up the list of their concerns. This arrangement changes that. Like you said: no one’s happy; everyone’s functional.”
Caitlin thought about Gwen’s eyes, in the dreaming mists. “I guess so.”
“She took a shine to you, you know.” John rose. “Gwen, I mean, although Anwen did tell me you have pretty hair. Gwen guessed that you hadn’t been part of this world long.”
“How?”
The big man looked sad, as he opened the door. “Because you’re still unnerved that you’re so good at it.”
FINIS