Well, I honestly did think that that chapter was the last one, but then I had an absolutely fantastic Christmas day, and when I'd returned from the family sledging trip and found some dry clothes and checked my bruises and warmed up a bit I thought 'Torchwood need to do this'. And thus another chapter was written.

Yet more thanks to my loyal reviewers: gaia-x-goddess, milady dragon, gernumblies, lysmachine, jimmy-barnes-13 and !

Snow

"SNOW!" Squealed Gwen as she peeked out through the curtains on Christmas morning.

"I'm not falling for that one, love." Rhys smiled from where he was still lying in bed.

"No, it really is."Gwen pulled the curtains wide apart to prove her point and started dancing round the room. "It's a White Christmas! A White Christmas, Rhys! We can go sledging and built a snowman and…"

"Alright, alright. But what about presents and dinner and everything?"

"They can wait, can't they? It's snowing, Rhys!"

***

And so, abandoning all the still-wrapped presents lying underneath the Christmas tree, Rhys and Gwen soon found themselves hurtling down a snowy slope together on a sledge they had hurriedly constructed out of an old plastic sheet.

"Again! Again!" Gwen shrieked as their makeshift sledge came to a halt once more.

Rhys laughed. "I notice it's not you who seems to be carrying it back up every time."

Gwen had just grabbed it off him and was preparing to lug it back up the slope when the sound of voices caught her ears. Up until now their sledging site had been empty apart from them – everyone else was no doubt inside with their presents still – and the snatches of conversation she heard froze what wasn't already frozen to the bone.

"So, you think they'll be alright in London without us, Sir?"

"They'll be fine. Nothing we can do to help anyway. We may as well just enjoy this freak snowfall, eh?"

Gwen rushed over to her husband and whispered urgently; "Let's go back. I don't want to meet anyone."

Rhys looked in the direction of the voices, puzzled. "But they're from your work, aren't they?"

"Come on, Rhys!"

"Gwen!" Jack's voice rang jovially across the snowy field. "Fancy meeting you here! Merry Christmas, Rhys!"

"Merry Christmas, Jack." Gwen replied, sounding for all the world as though she was overjoyed to see her workmates and hadn't just been trying to desperately avoid their company. She had been intending to spend her day's holiday alone with Rhys for once.

Ianto puffed into view, towing a pair of ancient, heavy-duty sledges. "Merry Christmas, Gwen, Rhys."

"Where did you get those?" Rhys asked amazed as he examined the sledges.

It was Jack who replied. "There one of those many things they put in the Hub when they built it just because they thought it was a good idea at the time. As far as I can remember we've never used them yet, and that's quite a long time. Ianto here remembered them this morning and we thought we'd test them out. There were skis as well but apparently I'm not allowed to use those."

"He'd break his neck." Ianto explained to the general company.

"And I told you that's not a problem."

"Nevertheless, it would rather ruin Christmas, sir."

Gwen ignored Rhys' puzzled look at this exchange. "So, are we going sledging or not?"

Jack grinned. "Race you!"

***

Gwen and Rhys were pleased and suprised to find that their piece of plastic actually made a far faster sledge than anything the Hub could offer, even if it was completely unsteerable. For this reason Jack quickly decided to swap to seeing who could get the furthest, knowing that half the time their 'sledge' would veer off course before they could get very far. But Gwen and Rhys still won a considerable number of times.

Jack's next idea was to build a ramp for the sledges to go over once they reached the bottom of the slope, a project they had just completed when they heard another pair of voices approaching:

"It's just frozen water, Tosh."

"Stop complaining, Owen. It was your idea to go sledging."

Gwen shook her head in disbelief. "This is getting ridiculous."

Jack smiled happily and pulled her and Ianto down behind the ramp. "Ssh!" he warned. They all crouched down as the other two drew nearer.

"Looks like someone's been here already." they heard Owen say deprecatingly. "And the tossers have gone and left their sledges."

"Who said the 'tossers' had gone?" Jack asked loudly as he leapt out from behind the ramp. Owen jumped.

"Jack!"

The other three also emerged, brushing snow off their clothes.

"How come you're all here?" Owen asked, sounding slightly rattled.

"No idea." Jack replied. He scrutinised Tosh carefully. "You don't seem surprised." he accused.

"It says 'Torchwood' on the sledges." Tosh explained casually.

The rest of the team looked at the sledges in surprise, not having noticed this. "Do we have to have it on everything?" Ianto asked in disgust. "It's not exactly as if people could return it to us if we lost it."

"They do look impressive though." said Tosh, referring to the sledges.

"Ours is better." said Rhys proudly.

"You're kidding, right?" Tosh asked, looking at the hurriedly cut-out plastic board.

Owen turned on Gwen. "Do you really call that a sledge? It looks like you dragged it out of a skip."

"I'll race you." Gwen replied confidently.

Jack, Tosh and Ianto watched as Gwen and Rhys trudged back up the slope with their sledge whilst Owen followed behind with his own cheap plastic one. True to their challenge Gwen and Rhys' once again proved itself to be the fastest, shooting out far in front of Owen's.

"Hah!" Owen shouted at their grinning faces. "That's only because of your superior weight!"

"Superior weight?" Gwen asked as she brushed snow out of her hair. "You look like you're wearing half your wardrobe! Aren't you too warm?"

Owen scowled at her. Tosh had already teased him for looking like a penguin. "Actually, it's so I won't bruise if I come off."

"So you bounce instead?" Ianto asked. Owen ignored him.

"Rerun, Gwen?"

After a brief argument over comparative weights they agreed to have Tosh and Owen on one sledge and Gwen and Rhys on the other. The latter pair won again. After that everyone wanted a go on their sledge, leading to many more races and an attempt to see how many people could fit on it at once without anyone falling off (three). Eventually, Jack remembered his ramp.

"You can't go over that, Harkness." Owen warned. "It's too dangerous."

Jack, of course, paid no attention, and hurried up the slope carrying one of the Torchwood sledges. The rest of the group watched as he steered straight for the steep ramp and collectively winced as he flew over it and landed several metres further along, sprawled on the snow. They all ran over quickly.

"Jack?" Ianto called worriedly. The other man pulled himself to his feet gingerly, rubbing his arm. "I told you skis would be a bad idea!" Ianto berated him crossly, trying to hide his relief. "Are you alright?"

"I think I broke the sledge." said Jack miserably. He was right. The sledge was definitely smashed beyond repair.

"Never mind." said Gwen bracingly. "It's not as if we needed Torchwood sledges. Anyway, we can replace it with this one." She indicated her own sledge. "All we have to do is write 'Torchwood' on it."

They all continued sledging, apart from Jack, who complained that his arm hurt; although he refused to let Owen have a look at it. So they left him at the bottom of the slope and continued racing. When they next came to check up on him he was examining the snow sculpture he'd just built.

"That's a nice snowman, Jack." Gwen complicated, angling her head to look at the oddly shaped lump more closely and check it wasn't meant to resemble any of them.

"Snowman?" Jack replied, sounding hurt. "Can't you tell it's a weevil?"

Gwen looked at it again. "No." she said truthfully.

"Then you have no artistic imagination at all. Go back to your sledging."

"We've stopped, Jack."

"Did you? When?"

"When Owen and Tosh crashed into Ianto on the sledge." Gwen noticed Jack's surprise. "Did you miss that?"

"We didn't crash…" Owen began to complain.

"Yes you did." said Ianto defiantly. "You're even worse at steering that sledge than you are the SUV!"

"Sorry, Ianto." Tosh apologised in Owen's stead. "We did lose control a little. What shall we do now?"

"We could help Jack with his snowman." Rhys suggested, looking amused at the team's bickering.

"Snow-weevil."

"Snow-what?"

"No way is that a weevil." Owen stated. "Here." He started to reshape the 'weevil's' face.

"That doesn't look any better, Owen." Tosh pointed out.

"What is a weevil?" Rhys asked, now in a state of total perplexion.

"It certainly isn't that." Gwen pointed at Owen's work.

"Who said it was a weevil?" Owen asked. "This is Ianto."

Everyone frowned at the offending snow-thing. "I think it looks more like Gwen." Jack decided eventually. "Hey!" A snowball had just hit him in the back. He quickly turned round, scooping a ball of snow up in his own hands. "Owen!"

Owen raised his hands in the air. "It wasn't me!" he protested quickly. "It came from Gwen's direction."

Jack turned round. Gwen was starting to protest her own innocence when she was interrupted by her husband.

"Sorry, I was aiming for Gwen…" Rhys was hit by two snowballs simultaneously, one from Jack and one from Gwen. Tosh, Owen and Ianto quickly joined in the fight, pelting each other with snowballs.

After a brief free-for-all two sides to the battle quickly developed. One consisted of Jack, Owen and Ianto, the other of the girls and Rhys. They all soon discovered that Jack was an expert snowball thrower, rarely missing his target, though none of the rest of the team were that bad either, having had plenty of chances to practice their aim. Tosh and Gwen were slightly let down by Rhys though, for all his enthusiasm, so Jack conceded them the ramp in order to make it more of a fair fight.

They were at a stalemate for some time as they bombarded each other with hastily-made snowballs and dodged the other team's onslaughts. Then Jack, Ianto and Owen stopped to confer behind the shelter of Owen's sledge and started to advance on the others' fortification, splitting into three and using a pincer motion.

"Cheats!" Rhys shouted, and was hit in the face by a snowball.

Gwen rushed up to Owen as he came round the side and jumped on him, trying to push a handful of snow down the back of his neck. She managed, and Owen yelled in annoyance and threw her off into a snowdrift.

"Rhys! Help!" Gwen yelled as Jack and Owen tried to roll her in the snow. Her husband rushed over dutifully;

"You bury her arms and I'll bury her feet!"

"Rhys!"

***

"Pax!" Ianto panted as Tosh ran up to him with a handful of snow at the ready. She dropped the snow and they stood together watching Jack hold down a struggling Gwen whilst Owen and Rhys tried to bury her. "Shall we go help?" Ianto asked.

"Help who?"

"Gwen. She looks as though she could do with a bit of help." As Ianto spoke Jack started dropping handfuls of snow teasingly on Gwen's face.

"Toooossshhh!"

Tosh and Ianto scooped up fresh handfuls of snow and ran over to the rescue, Ianto dropping his load down Jack's neck whilst Tosh threw hers at the back of Owen's head. Another fight broke out, during which Tosh and Ianto were able to pull Gwen out of her snowdrift. She stood there shivering.

"I'm blooodddyy frrreeeezzziing."

"Come on, love, let's go home." Rhys suggested, taking her hand and leading her away.

"Merry Christmas!" the others shouted after them, and Owen added on; "Call me if she gets frostbite!"

"We should go too." Tosh hinted.

Owen grinned happily and waved cheerfully at Jack and Ianto as he too was led back the way they had come.

Ianto smirked at Jack. "Shall we go home too sir?"

"I think that's an excellent idea, Ianto."

My Christmas day was a lot like that, only with eight of us instead of six. The sheet of plastic is now my favourite sledge, the snowball fight bears remarkable similarity to the one I had on Christmas Eve (only with more actual hits) and Jack's sledge stunt is nearly the same as the one I did, apart from that mine was accidental. And I didn't break the sledge.

I cannot conclusively promise you that that is the final chapter, but it definitely looks it at the moment. You can thank the Yorkshire weather for this extra extra one, by the way. Happy Boxing day!