Fffc Bingo Card - New ways of doing things

[m_findlow]

Title: New ways of doing things 
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Gwen, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none 
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 88 - Police at fffc
Summary: Gwen is bringing a new mandate to Torchwood's archaic way of dealing with the authorities. 

Jack could practically hear hesitation in Gwen's knock at his doorway. He smiled, wondering how long it would take her to become like the rest of them who never bothered to knock, but simply barged in whenever they wanted to give Jack a piece of their mind. At least Ianto usually brought coffee or biscuits with him. Judging by the look of the bundle in Gwen's arms, it was only more work. 

'Isn't it time you were heading home, Gwen Cooper?' Jack asked, knowing what the answer to that question was already. 

She looked meekly down at the bundle of files, still not quite sure on the correct protocol for answering one of Jack's rhetorical questions. 

' Come in. Sit down. Take a load off. You people make me nervous when you stand there like that, waiting to unload all of the world's problems on my desk. The world surely has enough problems already without you lot adding to them.' 

Gwen stepped over and sat in the chair opposite. The files from her arms were placed on the edge of the desk and then very subtly pushed forward a couple of inches in his direction. He raised his eyes, giving her a questioning look. 'What's all this?' 

'Police files,' she replied. 'Specifically, those that might have some connection to the rift or other alien activity, but which were deemed to be too unimportant to investigate.' 

'How did you…' 

'I got Ianto to find them all for me. He was very helpful. And these are just the ones from the last month.' 

Jack frowned at the like of slim manila folders, adjudging there to be at least a dozen of them there, staring at him like hungry children. He flipped open the one on top, skimming the meagre contents and trying to recall the details before deciding he didn't particularly care all that much. 'What do you want me to do with these?' 

Gwen cocked her head at him and he knew she was passing her own judgment on him and how he ran things around here. 'I would have thought that much was obvious.' 

He wasn't quite so far into the honeymoon period with Gwen that he wasn't going to take that kind of thing personally. 'You know we're busy, right?' 

'Too busy that we can't be bothered helping these people?' 

'The police will sort it out… eventually. And if they don't it's not a big deal.' 

'Not a big deal? This poor woman has voices coming out of the drainpipe by the side of her house, and this old couple here had all the photos from their garden shed vandalised by giving everyone in them three alien heads.' 

'It's petty crime and mischief, Gwen. If the police can't be bothered with it, why should we expend resources?' 

Gwen leaned back in the chair and folded her arms across her chest. It was a decidedly confrontational pose to take. 'Why is it that you hate the police so much?' 

Jack chuckled. 'This could take a few hours.' Where should he begin? 'They stick their noses in where they shouldn't, and that's just the start of it. Do you wanna know how many times they've bungled into a dangerous situation that could have been easily handled if they'd just stayed out of the way?' 

'They're trained to handle difficult situations,' Gwen argued. 

'Yeah,' Jack replied. 'Just like you knew exactly what to do on the last three investigations we took you out on?' 

She had the sense to blush and keep her eyes down, still a little embarrassed that she'd appeared to be a complete novice. 

'I'm not passing judgement on you, if that's what you're worried about. I'm just saying that nobody is trained to face what we do, apart from us. That the police choose to make our lives difficult only proves they don't get it. They hate us. They do whatever they can to create a scene, rolling out the flashing lights and police tape when we could have come in under the radar, dealt with it, and left without anybody the wiser. We go through more retcon on account of the police than anywhere else.' 

'Well,' Gwen began, trying to advocate for her former employer, 'perhaps if you just explained it all to them, then they'd understand.'

'They ask too many questions.' 

'They're the police. That's their job.' 

Jack's eyebrows knitted. 'Okay, then. They ask too many of the wrong questions. How's that?' Forest for the trees kind of stuff. He didn't have time to waste on idiots. Time was precious enough as it was without having to get out the box of crayons to draw a diagram. 

Gwen chewed on this for a moment and then Jack could see the wheels in her mind turning again. 'So if the police are so stupid and useless, why did you hire me?'

Touche, Jack thought. 'You're different.' 

'No, I'm not. I couldn't tell a weevil from a man in a party costume. I couldn't prevent myself from going into a prison cell and nearly being overwhelmed by an alien wanting a bit more than a snog.'

'But you're still alive to talk about it,' Jack countered. 'I couldn't say that about your average police officer. What about that partner of yours? Andy something or other. You think he could've handled that?' 

Gwen but her lip and Jack knew he'd made his point. 'All I'm saying is that maybe you'll find we're not all as stupid as you think.' She tapped the pile of files on the desk. 'And maybe, if we just took a little bit of time for these, we could find a way to work together so that they can help us put these cases to bed. You've got someone on the inside now who knows how police operations work. Let me work on this. They don't even have to know it's alien.' 

Jack smirked. 'You do like a challenge, don't you?'

'That's why you hired me.'