Work Text:
Torchwood House was lovely. Gwen didn’t want to seem ungrateful, not exactly, but she’d rather be in some shithole in Cardiff, rather than way up in Scotland. Sure, it was beautiful. But she was alone.
Lord Torchwood, the man she’d married, at the behest of the arrangement, had been there for 2 days. The wedding, and the day after.
She spent her time in the garden mostly, unable to find satisfaction in simple crafts or gardening.
She missed Toshiko.
It was foolish. They knew it could never last, knew that Gwen would have to marry and Toshiko couldn’t risk a scandal, not with how precarious her situation was, being both a woman and Japanese, but nobody could deny her genius.
It made Gwen’s heart flutter, simply to think of her.
It was one day, when she was seated on a stone bench, that the “gardener” arrived.
A pretty woman, a bit older than Gwen, with night dark hair that seemed to swallow the sun.
Gwen was no fool, she’d seen the gun. Suzie Costello was not a normal gardener.
She didn’t even seem to know the difference between a dandelion and a daisy, for God’s sake.
They talked. Mostly. At the start.
And one night, after they tumbled into bed, Suzie vanished.
Disappeared in the night, a rabbit fleeing into its warren.
Once more, Gwen’s days were filled by silence, but no more in the gardens. In the library.
There was a book. Authored by an Alfred Childs.
Something made Gwen pull it off the shelf.
Mathematics. Writing far beyond the comprehension of Gwen, but the pages felt warm in her hands.
She left it on the desk, when she went to bed that night.
An owl cried outside her window, and Gwen bolted awake.
Alfred! Gwen said she’d considered it as a name for a child. It meant “wise counsellor”.
Toshiko had giggled, saying her own name meant genius child.
She lifted the book, carefully, as if it would shatter if she moved one finger wrong.
“Toshiko?”