The Universe's Mixer

There were a great deal of things wrong with the City, even Kaylee knew that, but it did provide when she really needed something. She was starving hours ago and when she rolled out from under the engine she found a sandwich waiting for her. Whenever she got thirsty there was always strawberry lemonade waiting for her to drink in her glass, even if she emptied it the last time she drank from it. She liked having everything provided for her. But at the same time, as much as she hoped for Serenity to spring to life it wasn't happening. Her mechanical know how was pretty useless when the city was living in the dark ages as far as she was concerned. Mal had his guns, Wash was alive, Simon had the hospital, and Kaylee had a dead engine and more repairs to do to Serenity than she'd ever done before. It was like her baby went through hell and back to get here.

( It was enough to make anyone frustrated. )

It had only been a few weeks since Ianto had moved into Tosh's place on the team, putting his computer and technological knowledge from Canary Warf to use. While he knew he wasn't nearly as brilliant as Tosh had been, he was doing everything that he could to bring some semblance of normalcy back to the Hub after her and Owen's deaths.

It didn't take too long before he had thrown himself into spending most of his time pushing himself harder, working to the brink of exhaustion, doing all those little essential tasks that did, in the end, help them, but nothing that he felt anyone else in Torchwood had the inclination nor need to attend to.

Keeping busy. That had always been his way of soothing himself to the point where he wouldn't have the chance to refine thoughts abandoned for lack of time to examine them. Every thought in his head, every emotion in his heart, shoved far enough aside so they would all seem to fade away, or be placed in the cushioned box of distant memory, where they could lose their bite.

It was further evidence of his unhealthy manner of dealing with grief, which had soon resulted in a predictable firming of the unemotional walls around him. But it kept him from dwelling; the Rift was still discharging all manner of weird and wonderful backwash, so most days he barely had time to breathe, let alone talk.

( This night was no different )

Barbara looked at the rack of pamphlets the cat had led her to. They were bright and kitschy, like something out of the 1950's archives at the Gotham Public Library. New to the City? one of them proclaimed, We've got all the information you need!

She glanced at the back cover of the pamphlet before flipping it open. From the amount of text spread through the pages, it looked like she was going to need a lot of information. It took her ten minutes to read the booklet from cover to cover, and another five to complete processing it. Okay. I've walked into another dimension of some sort. This could be amazing. She dropped the pamphlet into her purse. The sheer possibilities!

It didn't take Barbara long to check in at the front desk of the shelter; she would only be staying for one night after all. They didn't ask her for identification, possibly because many people who ended up in this City might not have one on them. The shelter looked lived-in without being unsanitary, but Barbara was mostly just thankful for the warmth. A quick glance at the clock in the lobby told her she had arrived in the middle of the night, so she padded across the room with the beds to an empty bottom bunk.

But Barbara was far too excited to sleep. She tip-toed out of the room into the common area, in the hopes that someone else would be awake and up for conversation out there.