Torchwood Fic: Spirit Mirror (3/4)

[merucha]

Title: Spirit Mirror, Part Three of Four

Author: Emma

Characters: Canonical Torchwood Three members… sort of.

Rating: Some chapters definitely not safe for work.

Disclaimer: Oh, please. If I owned them, would I let some of those idiots write the scripts? And if I were making any money off them, would I be where they could find me?

Summary: A cursed mirror sends Owen on a quest for justice… and Gwen stumbles upon a secret.
Author's Note: I'm home with the flu and all I seem to be able to do is write and swill chicken soup, so... here you go. Catherine Deshayes was a real person with, shall we say, a colorful history.

Part One is here; Part Two is here

            Thomas Erasmus Flanagan turned out to be a retired University of Cardiff archaeology professor in his late sixties, still in full control of all his faculties and a bit of a flirt. Gwen flirted back, amused. When she asked him about the incident at the train station, he laughed.

 

            “Oh, my, yes. I was evacuated during the war. The East End was getting a pounding. So was Cardiff, really, but we were going to families out in the countryside. There was a mix-up. London sent one child more than they were supposed to and somehow the news didn’t get back to Cardiff. I had walked away from the group, so when they counted heads, well… I wandered around for a while, scared out of my wits, I don’t think the bombs scared me as much. It all got sorted out. A rail guard found me and called the resettlement people. I was sent out to a farm outside Pontypridd, Mr. and Mrs. Price, uncle and aunty I called them. Then there came news that my mum and sister had been killed. There was nothing for me in London, so I never went back. So tell me, what is this all about?”

 

            “Some sensitives have reported seeing a little boy in nineteen thirties clothes wandering around the station. One of them was able to read your name tag. We just wanted to make sure it wasn’t an unreported disappearance or something.”

 

            He looked at her shrewdly. “Very well, my dear, we’ll leave it at that. Now, how about a cuppa?”

 

            “I’m sorry, I can’t. My partner is waiting outside.” She laughed. “And my boyfriend at home, so I better get going.”

 

            She stepped out into a beautiful, cool evening with a nearly-full moon overhead and a soft breeze rustling in the leaves. If she got lucky she could get home in time to have some moon-watching time with Rhys, on their tiny balcony, with a glass of wine and some cheese or something. Between his job and hers private time was getting hard to find.

 

            Ianto had parked down the street a bit. He was standing outside, speaking with a lovely young woman with dark skin and the most gorgeous braids Gwen had ever seen tumbling down her back to her waist. She had her hands on Ianto’s shoulders and his were around her waist. She got a strange impression of a deeply intimate but strained encounter. When she tried to focus on the girl something pushed her away. Well, some sensitives had very strong privacy shields. Ianto certainly had.

 

            As she approached them her attention was distracted by a rustling behind her, as if someone was trying to walk through the fallen leaves without making sounds. “Oi! Who’s there?”

 

            Nobody answered and there were no more sounds. She must have been mistaken. Turning back, she found Ianto standing near her, gun out.

 

            “Everything all right?”

 

            “Yeah. I thought I heard someone back there but it was probably nothing.” She smiled at him. “So, who was the girl?”

 

            “What girl?”

 

            “The one you were talking to, twpsyn!”

 

            “Oh. Just one the Uni students asking for directions. Let’s go.”

 

            He rushed her into the SUV and peeled off in a hurry. She opened her mouth to tease him a little, but the closed set of his profile made her keep quiet. There was grief and anger there, and a bit of the lost, scared boy she had seen at the station. She hoped for his sake he could bring himself to talk to Mother Katherine, or to Jack, about whatever was troubling him.

 

            When they got to the Hub they found Andy making himself at home, flirting with Tosh and driving Owen spare. “Hello!” he called to them, throwing out his arms extravagantly. “I’m here to steal your sweetest flower, your brightest star…”

 

            “I think Jack is taken,” Ianto murmured in Gwen’s ear, making her burst into giggles. “All right, then,” he said louder, “so that means you’re not waiting around for some coffee.”

 

            “Jamaican beans?”

 

            “Yep.”

 

            “A little anticipation never hurt anyone,” Andy said to Tosh, who slapped him with a file folder, laughing.

 

            “Where is Jack?” Gwen asked.

 

            “Here I am.” Their boss appeared at the door of his office. “I’ve been making phone calls to some experts, but let’s start with Tosh’s research.”

 

            “The mirror is called The Eye of Medusa. It has a long and nasty history. It has changed hands more than two dozen times, and none of them in proper fashion. At one point it belonged to Catherine Deshayes, called La Voisin, a French sorceress who was burned at the stake for sorcery and poisoning. The latest owner was Oliver Richardson, the music mogul who was killed last month when his plane crashed into the Channel. It disappeared from his house a few days after his death.”

 

            Jack held up a piece of paper. “I have good news and bad news. The good news is that there is definitely only one Eye of Medusa, so we’re not likely to have the streets filled with idiots carrying mass-produced focusers and reading people’s minds. The bad news is that it’s really bad news. It was made using a piece of Perseus’s shield. According to my sources, when he cut Medusa’s head off, her blood spattered the shield and fixed her reflection in place.”

 

            “Hold it.” Owen said. “Are you telling me there was really a Perseus?”

 

            “Yes, though not quite like in the story." Jack answered. "The real one was a no-neck bully-boy who went out to make his name by killing monsters. He managed to find himself a Gorgon who wasn’t quite sane. Otherwise he would have been snake lunch.”

 

            “All right, but… why would this make the mirror act like that?”

 

            “Gorgons are both empathic and prophetic, Owen. Something of that must have transferred to the shield.”

 

            “Great. Any more bad news?”

 

            “Yes.” Tosh had been looking at something in her screen. “There was a companion piece, a hairbrush. It’s missing too.”

 

            “Marvelous.” Owen groused.

 

            Gwen sat down next to Tosh. “So, our best bet to find out what's going on and find the brush is to find our thief. Tosh, you said you were following us on CCTV?”

 

            “SOP, straight out of the Torchwood operations manual.”

 

            “All right. Can we find a useful view of him?”

 

            “Ahead of you.” She brought up a still photo showing Gwen wrestling with the man at the station. “I was going to run it through the databases…”

 

            “Don’t bother.” Andy said. “That’s Sean Harris. Nicknamed Bernie, God only knows why. Petty thief. Lives with a Mary Saunders in Splott. She calls herself Madame Hermia, does spiritual readings but if she’s a sensitive I’m the King of France. There’s been some odd things happening with Bernie lately. One of his lady friends jumped in front of a bus. We found out later she hadn’t been quite honest with the proceeds of the till at the job. Then another guy, Ed Morgan…”

 

            “Who did you say?” Owen’s voice was soft and even.

 

            “Ed Morgan. Weird old duck, lives by himself a few streets away from Bernie, never goes out, everything is delivered in. Anyway, he called us and insisted we had to send someone out there, that Bernie was snooping through his windows, that he was trying to kill him. Unhinged, really. And of course, when the constables got there it was nothing doing, sorry officer. The constable did a little snooping and found out Bernie was seen hanging around near Ed’s house at least once, though.” He shrugged. “Like I said, odd stuff, but nothing we can hang an arrest on.”

 

            “Andy, “ Owen asked, “was Ed Morgan ever involved in a criminal case?”

 

            “Not that I know of, but I haven’t been here long…”

 

            “He was,” Tosh said. “In nineteen sixty four a girl called Elizabeth Anne Delmet, Lizzie, was raped and murdered in… the park where you were tonight? Ed Morgan was questioned but he was never charged.”

 

            Owen showed his teeth in what might have passed for a smile. “Tosh, do we have an address on Ed Morgan?”

 

            “Owen,” Jack said. “We can’t get involved in things like this. Leave it to the police.”

 

            “The police missed their chance in ninety sixty four. A vision of mine isn’t evidence so there’s nothing they can do now, either. So it’s up to me. I’m going to find Ed Morgan and I’m going to make him pay for Lizzie Delmet’s death.”

 

edited to edit one sentence and add another. Cold meds play hell with my brain!