UNTITLED
Takes place after 2.04, "Meat".Gwen watched as Rhys chattered away on the phone, happy and silly as if nothing unusual at all had happened. Like any other day. No underlying layer of stress, no guarded tone that hinted at anything out of sorts. Just completely normal without even trying.
Okay, yes, that could be the meds. Owen did have excellent painkillers at his disposal.
But no, that wasn't only it. It was more than that. For all his excited babbling about pictures and bloody scrapbooks, Rhys knew what was at stake. He knew how to keep secrets. The only person he cared about telling the truth, Gwen knew for a fact, was herself. And she already knew everything.
She felt the pill press into her palm and for a moment it seemed as though it too were alien, trying to infiltrate her body, head straight to her heart. She couldn't do it. This wasn't like telling him about Owen; she didn't feel worse now that he knew. For godsakes, he was a part of it.
He ended his phone call then and strolled back to her, beaming like a loon with his arm cinched tightly against his chest and the tiniest spot of ice cream still clinging to his chin. Something in her face must have betrayed her thoughts, because his smile suddenly disappeared.
"What is it?" he asked, and Gwen cringed at the tendril of mistrust wrapped around the word.
She held out her hand, palm open and pill on display. "Jack wants me to give you this."
"What?" Now he was frowning, his eyebrows narrowed and suspicion dawning in his eyes like the red sky in morning. Trouble brewed.
"It's like what he gave Dale and the others. To make you forget." Before Rhys could protest, Gwen closed her fist around the pill. "I don't want to do it. I don't want to go back how it was. I don't want to have to lie to you anymore."
"Then why . . . ?"
"I'm telling you," she said, stressing that it was still her turn to speak, "because I need to you understand what this will mean. If I go back in there and convince them to let you remember, you have to play by the rules. We can't have scrapbooks, Rhys. We can't meet for lunch at the tea shop and chat about how work is going for me so far today. If I'm not going to lie to you, then we have to be different from other couples."
Rhys interrupted her. "Bloody hell, Gwen, don't you think I realize that? I wasn't being serious about the fucking scrapbooks!"
"And also," she continued, her voice rising to silence him, "you have to accept that I may not be able to talk about everything I do or see. For lots of reasons. Sometimes it will be to keep you safe. Sometimes it will be to . . . to keep you innocent. Pure. Sometimes because I, I just can't stand to think about what I saw for a moment more." She stepped forward, reaching out with her empty hand to stroke his cheek. "Can you understand that, darling? It's not because I don't trust you, or don't think you can handle it. Sometimes it's because I can't handle it."
Rhys didn't say anything at first; he stared down at her hard, searching her eyes for something. She knew, though, the moment he'd found it. His shoulders relaxed and hunched slightly, as they always did when he was content with the world.
"I can accept that, if you promise to talk about those things when it's safe again. Or when you can stand to think of them. And if you'll let me take care of you when you come home completely overwhelmed. Make y'tea, order in some Chinese. Wrap you in blankets and make you watch silly DVDs until you can smile again." His lips quirked. "Can that be a deal?"
Gwen smiled wide and leaned up to kiss him, while she loosened her clenched fist and listened for the soft smack of the pill on the pavement, then took one step to the left and crushed it beneath her shoe. "It's a deal. Now I just have to go convince them. I don't want either of us to have to lie to them, either."
Rhys nodded and stepped back to let her go. She smiled again at him, over her shoulder. Suddenly he called out, "Gwen?" She turned around. "That Jack? Really? You never . . . ?"
She smiled softly and shook her head. "No. I'm fairly certain he's having it off with Ianto, actually."
Rhys's grin could've lit Cardiff for a week. "Well that's all right then."
Gwen laughed, and turned back towards the tourist shop facade they came out of earlier, telling herself that if Rhys was allowed to remember, that would make it easier to get beyond her infatuation with Jack.
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