m_findlow

Title: Moral imperative
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Jack, Gwen, Ianto
Word Count: 500 words
Rating: PG
Notes: Written for Challenge 164 - Murky at anythingdrabble
Summary: Gwen is struggling to piece together Torchwood's moral imperative.

Gwen's head felt like it might explode with all the information Jack had fed her in the last few days. Torchwood was way more complicated than anything she'd experienced. They were just enjoying remnants of their coffees, debriefing their day when there was a knock at the door.

‘Sir?’ Ianto interrupted. ‘Our corpse has arrived. I thought I'd get a start on it tonight. That way, it'll be ready for the morgue to collect in the morning.’

Jack checked his watch. ‘Good idea.’ He nodded at his newest recruit. ‘Go with him and give him a hand.’

‘Me?’

‘It'll be good for you to get your hands dirty, so to speak. It's not all glamorous, but it is all necessary. Kinda like police work. I'll bet you did your share of crappy jobs.’

Gwen nodded. Oh, yeah. She wouldn't miss making the tea and coffee for the detective squad room, unable to do more than get a quick glimpse of whatever they were working on.

Gwen followed behind the silent young man through the labyrinthine passages of the hub, already hopelessly lost. ‘Corpse?’ she asked, stepping into the small room.

‘The one to replace that woman who was killed by the Efferveeven Strangler plant.’

‘How do you just switch a dead body?’

‘Owen has a solution that damages the outer dermis layer, making fingerprinting impossible. To be fair, it's the tattoos that are the hardest. Tosh can replicate them from body scans and come up with a transferable image that can be imprinted and lasts on the skin for up to three weeks, but there was this one guy, tattoos from head to toe. It must have taken us a whole day.’

‘But the DNA. You can't fake that.’

‘You were in the police. If someone identifies the body do you do a DNA check?’ Ianto began unzipping the body bag, revealing the corpse inside.

‘Who was she?’ Gwen asked, peering at the pale grey skin and lanky blonde-haired woman.

‘Does it matter?’

Her fiery gaze turned on him. ‘Yes, it does.’

‘Jane Doe according to the paperwork, but her real name is Monica Garner. Drug addict and homeless for the last fifteen years.’

‘Don't you think this is a bit morally…’

‘Murky?’

She frowned. ‘I was going to say wrong.’

‘Okay then, let me ask you. Tattoo guy. We could have just said he got caught in a house fire, no remains recoverable. Instead, his family got a body that looked just like him, got to have a proper funeral and bury him. They got to mourn and have closure. Isn't that better?’

‘And what about her family?’ Gwen said, pointing at the body. ‘Don't they get any closure? If you were able to identify her…’

He looked at her for a moment, like it hadn't crossed his mind that this person had a family as well who might be wondering what had happened to her. ‘We do what we can. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing.’