[DV]

[eelseason]

25 Sept. 08 prompt
Who do you work with/live with? What are their daemons like? Do you get along with them? Do you want to do things to them, either good or bad?

I. Toshiko Sato was quite the acquisition for Torchwood Three, and Jack greased no few palms to second her. Technically it wasn't seconding – UNIT had very strict rules about transferring personnel to Torchwood, and it generally required signatures of approval from the person in question and no fewer than two superior officers – but he'd courted them (Tosh and her superiors both, in varying degrees of literal courting) and eventually she came over to the promise of more application and just as much theory.

Haruki, being her dæmon, was not listed on the official transfer papers. One week after they joined up, Jack was already considering adding him to the payroll, though he wasn't sure what one really paid to hares – Toshiko and Haruki made one of the most natural pairs of person and dæmon Jack had ever seen, Toshiko's quiet competence married to Haruki's attentive calm, and what Toshiko didn't pick up on any given topic, Haruki would.

Leighn took to Haruki immediately - she always did like the sensible ones – and made a point to look after him and his human, especially when Jack was preoccupied. Haruki accepted his new rottweiler guardian with, as in everything, quiet appreciation, and it was had to tell if Toshiko noticed, but she probably did.


II. Owen Harper was not exactly a willing recruit, even within Torchwood's expanded definition of "willing." Nor was he exactly an exemplary Torchwood agent for some time after joining up. Still, Jack was willing to put some work into him, and Owen appreciated the hefty paycheck and the low incidence of having to deal with actual people, so they made do with each other.

His dæmon, a white rat named Audrey, was to all appearances as sullen as he was, and mostly kept herself to Owen and didn't interact. She seemed to enjoy baiting Haruki, which Haruki took in ill grace, and whenever Suzie and her dhole dæmon were in the same room, she'd retreat to Owen's shoulder and pretend not to be intimidated. As for Leighn, the two of them managed an uneasy truce and very little more, even as Leighn looked for a connection. In Audrey's mind there was an unspoken line drawn between them, immutable and cold as the Iron Curtain, and so long as they each stayed on their respective sides, things would be perfectly tolerable.


III. Ianto Jones was scavenged from the wreckage of Torchwood One, and for the first few months of his working there, Jack was sure it had been entirely his idea. That was before he learned that Ianto had smuggled his half-cyberized girlfriend into the basement, but until then, the illusion was very convincing.

His beagle dæmon, a little tricolor named Aeronwy, was like Ianto was – quiet and unobtrusive. The difference came in that she never talked, whereas Ianto sometimes did; she seemed constantly nervous, where Ianto rarely did. After the initial shock of Lisa's death faded she began to open up, as Ianto did – she was quite personable, if reserved, once she wasn't trying to keep her partner's ill-advised secrets. But for a long stretch before the Lisa fiasco, Jack and Leighn both gave her a wide berth so as not to overwhelm her.


IV. Gwen Cooper was not an addition to Torchwood anyone had planned on, but she found her role exceedingly quickly. Functioning as the moral centre in an organization which made usual standards of moral greyness look technicolor wasn't something Jack really believed would work out for her, and it did give her trouble on more than one occasion, but on the whole, she performed admirably.

Her dæmon endured no small amount of ribbing from certain parties (mostly Owen and Audrey), because there was only so much time either of them could go before they had to mock the little blue-merle Cardigan corgi trotting after Gwen and acting like the dæmon of a seasoned veteran.

The mockery largely subsided after Dylan, in the midst of some argument or other between Gwen and Jack, took it upon himself to charge Leighn, bowling her over because neither she nor Jack expected it. Even as Gwen apologized, most of the people in Torchwood found themselves with a renewed respect for Gwen and Dylan both.


V. Sam Tyler and his dæmon Eloise took perhaps the most awkward and circuitous route into Torchwood of anyone on official record. But if there was one thing to be said about maniac time-hopping for most of a year before arriving back in Cardiff and an official Torchwood career, it was that bonding under extreme conditions could produce some equally extreme results.

Leighn took to her counterpart with surprising rapidity, partially because she was a sensible one, partially because she was much more open than Sam himself was. She adopted Sam well before Jack had figured out that he had, and Sam had no end of (usually unvoiced) complaints at the fact that whenever something went wrong, he had a human, a rottweiler and a mongoose crowding around and mothering him – despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that Eloise was only too willing to point out that apparently, he needed it.