Torchwood: Fanfic: Like a glove

[m_findlow]

Title: Like a glove
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Yvonne Hartman
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 626 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Torchwood, any, it's not a job for paying the bills, you have to want to do it" at fic_promptly
Summary: Some people are just made for Torchwood

'We're going to die!' The man screamed.

Yvonne groaned her annoyance at him. 'Do you have a gun? she asked. A whole lab full of equipment, surely there was a firearm in here, she thought.

'Y-, yes,' he stuttered

'Give it here,' she ordered, practically ripping it from his shaking hand, as he pulled it from the drawer.

Slide, aim, pull.

Bang!

Bits of alien flew everywhere. Well, that was the end of Project Pollock, she thought.

'You, you shot it!' he stammered, his white lab coat now covered in splatters of grey.

'Yes I did. Now clean up this mess and make sure you have your full report to me by the end of the day,' she said, leaving him to deal with the carnage.

Just as the door slid shut behind her, leaving her standing in the hallway, she paused, brushing a stray hair neatly back into place. God she loved this job!

Her heels clicked in an authoritative manner all the way down the hall. A handful of curt nods in her direction and the odd polite "ma'am", but no one engaged her in proper conversation or dared to stop her mid walk. That was just how it should be. She didn't want to interrupt whatever it was they were doing. Each of them was some tiny but essential cog in the great machine she maintained. It was a beautiful thing, she decided, hitting the button and letting the lift doors slide shut behind her, carrying her upwards, like some angel on its way to heaven.

She stepped out of the lift and floated down towards her office, shutting the door behind her. Hmm, coffee, she thought. She pressed the button on her communications earpiece. 'Rhonda? Coffee, please. Find that nice boy who makes them.'

She eased back in her pristine white leather chair, a handful of files neatly placed in a row across the smoked glass desk. How glorious it was to be in charge, she thought. This wasn't a job for paying the bills, you had to want to do it, and no one wanted it more than she did.

She thought back on her predecessors. A bunch of narrow-minded individuals with degrees in astrophysics and quantum mechanics. What use was that? Torchwood didn't need a rocket scientist to lead it, it needed a captain to steer the ship. No, not a captain; a general. Yes. Keep your analyses of subatomic particles and Newton's Third Law. What this place had needed was someone to take it into the twenty first century. It needed a project manager, someone agile, a "committed to quality" doctrine, and a desire to excel. It needed someone who could inspire and encourage. In short, it needed her.

There was a tiny knock at the door. 'Come,' she ordered.

'Your coffee, ma'am.'

'Ah, yes, thank you.' Oh dear, what was his name again? Something funny, Welsh. Rhonda would know.

He stood there, staring oddly at her. 'Is there something else?'

'You've, er, um,' he began, pointing at his shoulder. She looked at her own, seeing the fleck of grey green flesh there. He handed her a handkerchief.

'Thank you,' she said, picking it off her very expensive suit jacket. She handed it back to him, alien flesh and all. Such a sweet boy. Completely lacking in nouse and ambition, but sweet. He'd make a good doormat for some woman one day.

'Probably best you throw that out,' she said, nodding at the handkerchief. He left her office with minimum fuss.

She eased back into the chair once more, short black in hand, enjoying the aroma before finally taking her first sip. Yes, what a merry little empire this was. Right now, there was nowhere she'd rather be.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Oh the arrogance of Yvonne Hartman! She might think she's in touch with every tiny cog of her 'machine' but I doubt she knows anything that matters about any of them. She feels superior over Ianto, dismisses him, but if she only knew what a remarkable man he is... There's so much more to him than good manners and great coffee.

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

It's true she's not much of a people person, but I kinda like her in her own way. She's very polished and "break the glass ceiling" in how she goes about things and doesn't get flustered by anything. It takes a cool head to run Torchwood and few do that better than her.
I think part of her dislike for Jack stems from that fact that he doesn't fit into her neat little hierarchy. Torchwood One probably could have done a lot of good things with their research and we know all too well that it only takes one little piece of technology to go haywire for it to sending everything crumbling (Cardiff have experienced that more than once).

[bk_forever]

True, but she's power hungry, obsessed with anything that can be used as a weapon, and makes no distinction between hostile aliens and friendly ones, having them all killed or turned into lab rats and confiscating their technology. 'If it's alien it's ours.' I'm not surprised Jack rebelled against Hartman and London.