TW fic: Getting There (R)
Jack cleans up the blood himself even though you offer to do it. You can see his hunched shoulders as he scrubs the tiles in the infirmary until they’re white again, see how the muscles are tight and tense like it’s taking everything he has just to hold himself together.
Later that night, after Gwen has left and you and Jack are alone in the achingly empty Hub, you let him fuck you. You spread you legs and let him move in you with quiet determination. His eyes are screwed shut, and there’s a hint of desperation in the touch of his breath against your neck, in the way his fingers hold your hips. You distantly wonder if Gwen is doing the same thing to Rhys tonight, if she’s pinning him down in their bed, covering him with frantic kisses, using his body to escape herself. But then you’re too busy coming, spilling hard and bitter between your bodies and holding Jack as he shudders through his own release.
* * *
After the battle of Canary Wharf, you couldn’t afford to fall apart. You had to keep your wits about you, for Lisa’s sake. You sifted through the ruins of Torchwood One, you kept up appearances.
So you know how to do this; the trick is to go on as usual, to hold to your normal routines. When morning comes you get out of bed, put on a fresh suit, and make coffee. After all, you have a city to put back together and people to look after.
Jack takes the coffee mug (black and strong) from your hand like it’s any other morning, but he lets his fingers brush against yours and there’s a look of hollow-eyed gratitude on his face. Gwen comes in a little later, pale and bruised around the eyes, and when you hand over her cup (milk, one sugar) she looks like she’s about to start crying again.
But you have no time for tears. You have damage control to do. Gwen goes off to the police station, Jack to God knows where. You stay in the Hub to monitor the Rift activity and repair the damage Gray and John did to the equipment.
It’s like any other day and when you find the coffee mug Tosh left on her desk the day before yesterday you just take it away, wash it out and put it back on the shelf with the others, not even reflecting over the fact that this was the last thing her lips touched.
You’ll get through this. You’ll get them through it. Later, when everything is back to normal, you can allow yourself to fall apart. Until then, you’ll go on as usual, do what you always do.
* * *
Gwen cries a lot the first days. The simplest things set her off. Like when he checks her e-mail and finds the link Owen sent you all to a YouTube video with monkeys scratching their butts. Like when Jack asks her to read through the letter he’s written to Tosh’s mother. You’re partly irritated with her for being so generous with the waterworks, and partly grateful because her tears are an excuse to wrap your arms around her and hold her, to remind yourself that she’s still here.
Jack is quiet. His smile is forced, his jokes and innuendos fall flat. He pulls away, doesn’t reach out and touch you like he used to, holes up in his office when he’s not out. You know that he’s seen generations of Torchwood die around him. Suzie, Owen, Tosh, they’re not the first and they certainly won’t be the last. No one should ever have to get used to that, but you’re afraid that Jack is beginning to. That he’s trying to distance himself, become this inhuman thing, trapped out of time where other people’s lives can’t touch him.
You won’t accept that. When Gwen leaves in the evening, you go to Jack. You push his chair away from the desk and kneel between his legs. He doesn’t protest, it’s not like Jack Harkness to ever turn down sex. But the sound he makes when he comes is close to a sob, like your lips around his cock is tearing his heart out. You’re glad; Jack needs to let it out, needs to let himself be human. He returns the favour by bending you over his desk, touching every inch of your skin, and you think that maybe you need to be human too. Just not quite yet.
* * *
When your were a baby you’d sometimes scream so hard you passed out. When you got older, you threw temper tantrums that scared your mother. You were an angry child, not prepared to accept the unfairness of the world.
You’ve learned to control yourself better since then, but there are still times when the force of your own rage frightens you. You dream of bringing Gray out of the freezer, of beating him to death with your bare hands. You want to see his blood over the floor in the infirmary and you think maybe that would wash away the memory of Tosh’s.
It would break Jack’s heart - that’s the only thing that holds you back. So you go about your day as usual, try not to think of the monster that lies sleeping beneath your feet. But you can’t help but think that someone should be punished, someone should pay.
You feel robbed. You had your teammates, your friends taken from you, and you don’t know how you can possibly go on living with this torn bleeding place inside you, without getting some kind of revenge to soothe the wounds.
But you do. There’s nothing else you can do.
* * *
The funny thing is, most of the time you didn’t even like Owen that much. He was a smug cocky bastard, inconsiderate and rude. He always knew exactly which of your buttons to push and he enjoyed pushing them and watching your reactions. You don’t know how many times you wanted to punch him in the face, and you took a perverse pleasure in shooting him that one time. It got a little better after he died, he seemed to mellow out some. Maybe he realised he’d been given a second chance, you don’t really know. It doesn’t matter now anyway.
But you remember what a wreck you were after Lisa’s death, and you remember that Owen was the one to drive you home that night. You remember how you couldn’t stop shaking, and you remember the sharp needleprick in your arm, sending you to sleep.
You remember that when you woke up, several hours later, Owen was still there. You’re pretty sure Jack ordered him to stay with you until they could be sure that you wouldn’t eat your gun. But you know that Jack didn’t order him to help you take a shower and make you tea and fetch you blankets when you thought you’d never be warm again. He bitched and complained the entire time, criticised everything from your choice of furniture to the contents of your fridge, but he stayed and when you look back you know that he probably saved your life that night.
Sometimes you wonder how someone with such a cynical view of the human race could fight with everything he had to save it. At other times, you wonder if Owen wasn’t the best of you all - how he always met adversity head-on, cursing and spitting in its face. No matter how grim things were, he never gave up.
You keep Owen’s plants alive. He probably wouldn’t thank you if he knew, but you know he would have appreciated it.
* * *
Rebuilding Cardiff is slow tedious work. The weevils are still restless and people are wary and suspicious. You don’t blame them - all they know is that someone bombed their city and that Torchwood was involved. You don’t know if you’ve ever had their trust in the first place and it’s going to be hard to gain it back.
Gwen does most of the work in public. She keeps the police force on their feet. She talks to the press. She calms people down, gives them back the feeling of safety, of being watched over. In many ways, Gwen becomes Torchwood, an embodiment of the Torchwood Jack created. She’s strong in ways you can’t even begin to understand. Even after everything she’s seen and experienced, she still believes in people. She still has hope.
A lot of that, you know, is because of Rhys. She has the luxury of coming home every day to a husband who loves her and supports her, who holds her steady and grounds her. You hate to admit it, but part of you, an ugly dark little part, is insanely jealous of her. You want that, you had that once, and no matter how much you pretend, you know you’ll never get it back.
But you’re not that much of a bastard that you begrudge her that happiness. She’s your friend, and you depend on her, both you and Jack. She brings brightness to your life, she brings wonder, the world view of someone who hasn’t lost her illusions, not yet. So you try to be happy for her that she’s got Rhys to lean on, and at work, you let her lean on you. You listen when she needs to talk. You get a little sloshed with her after the particularly bad days. You hold her up in the hope that maybe she’ll be there for you when it’s your turn to need support.
* * *
You miss Tosh so much that your don’t know how to bear it. The two of you had a special relationship. You never needed to pretend with each other, never had to feel uncomfortable in each other’s presence. Tosh was the first to forgive you after Lisa. She was the one who never forgot to give you a smile and a thanks when you brought her coffee (milk, no sugar) when the others just took you for granted.
Maybe it was because you were so alike. You both did your best work behind the scenes - the clean-up, the research, all the things that made the team function smoothly. Torchwood would’ve fallen apart without the two of you. You both knew it and were united in that knowledge.
You wonder if she ever knew how adored she was. How her gentle laugh never failed to make you smile. How her brilliant mind never ceased to amaze you. How much you enjoyed it when she let out some of that wicked streak that she usually kept so well hidden. Your heart bleeds when you think of her loneliness. She had so much love to give and never got the chance to bestow it on anyone.
She shouldn’t have spent her life underground. She should’ve been outside in the sunshine, where everyone could see her beauty and her radiance.
You curse the world for always letting the worst things happen to the best people.
* * *
Jack never lies to you, but he never tells the truth either. Everything is riddles with him - he talks but he never says what he means. You know something bad happened to him during those months he was away, but when you asked him, he just answered, “It doesn’t matter, it never happened anyway.”
This time is different, you know what happened and you can see the traces of it in Jack. He doesn’t act any different - he still flirts with everything that moves and he can’t seem to take his hands off you some days, but you can see the small changes, the signs which show that not all is well with Captain Jack. For one, he’s no longer comfortable underground. When you go into the sewers to hunt down weevils, he’s twitchy and tense and stays that way even after you reach the surface again.
It’s understandable of course, and you wonder what you can do to help, to make it better. You remember the months after he came back, how he’d sometimes wake up screaming. He doesn’t do that now, but you suspect it’s because he simply doesn’t sleep. You know he doesn’t really need to, but you also know that he can’t keep it all inside him for long. No-one could, not even Jack, and you wish you could take it away from him, that he would let you carry a little bit of his guilt and his grief.
Some days you are so very close to acting on your impulse of waking Gray and just ending him. Not only because of what he did to Tosh and Owen, but because of what he did to Jack. You know he wasn’t right in the head, that he was sick and twisted, destroyed inside, but it doesn’t change how you feel about him. He tore apart your team and now you’re the only one left who can pick up the pieces, you have to hold them together when some days it’s all you can do to find the strength to keep yourself breathing. But your hate for him is nowhere close enough to rival Jack’s love, so you hold back. You concentrate on Jack, on being there for him.
There are days when he seems to live in another world to the rest of you. When he gets lost, stares vacantly into space, and walks around like you and Gwen aren’t even there. Those are the days when you bring him home with you in the evening. You don’t want him to spend the night in the Hub alone when he’s like that.
One afternoon, you find him sitting on the floor in the infirmary, staring at Gray’s drawer. He doesn’t answer when you talk to him, so you pull him to his feet and steer him to your car, thinking that it’s like handling a zombie and feeling a sharp stab of pain when you remember Owen and the jokes he used as a coping mechanism after he died.
Back at your place, you undress him and pull him down on top of you, hold him close, let him find relief in your body. After he finishes, he goes limp, his weight holding you down, his face buried in your shoulder. It’s nice at first, but after a while he becomes heavy, a little too heavy, so you try to push him off, panting, “Jack, I can’t breathe.”
You’re not prepared when he starts suddenly and nearly falls off the bed, his face chalk white. His eyes are open but he’s not tracking, and it’s like he’s seeing something in his own head, in his own memories. He was buried alive, you know, died from suffocation over and over again until they dug him up, and it’s a wonder he’s not a gibbering wreck. You can’t even imagine what he’s been through, what you can possibly do to help, but you’re so very thankful to finally get a reaction from him, a hint that maybe he hasn’t lost his humanity after all. So you hold him while he shakes in your arms, until he finally, mercifully, falls asleep. This time, it’s your turn to stay awake through the night, to stroke his hair and soothe away the nightmares.
* * *
You’re undermanned. You all know it, but you never mention it, even when it feels like you spend every waking hour working. You take over most of Tosh’s duties, Gwen keeps the infirmary stocked, and you all have some basic medical training, but it’s painfully clear that you’re eventually going to need to bring in new people to replace Tosh and Owen.
It feels wrong. You have learned to function with just the three of you. You have learned to stretch yourselves to fill the empty spaces. There are still imprints of Tosh and Owen all over the Hub, like their spirits are still left in the walls. You can’t imagine letting anyone else in to take their place. They can’t be replaced. How are you ever going to find someone as gentle and brilliant as Tosh? Someone as blunt and stubborn as Owen? It can’t be done. So you struggle on instead, even when the work threatens to drown you or eat you alive.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it does numb the pain.
* * *
The first time Jack dies afterwards, you’re not prepared. As deaths go, it’s nothing special, nothing you haven’t seen him suffer through before. A weevil attack, his jugular is slit and he bleeds out almost immediately, only to gasp back to life a moment later, a little wild-eyed but as good as new.
You don’t expect it to break you. Jack dying and coming back is nothing new, a little unsettling maybe, but it’s amazing what you can get used to. But when you see him sprawled on the ground, pale and still, you freeze and drop the weevil spray. The world slows down around you, becomes sticky and thick like molasses, and you can’t seem to get any air into your lungs.
You’re dimly aware of Gwen subduing the weevil and cuffing it to a lamppost. You can’t tear your eyes away from Jack, how his back arches off the ground when he revives, how he coughs and pants for a moment before he sits up and glares at the blood all over his new shirt. Your legs feel too weak to hold you, you’re dizzy, light-headed, and for a moment you’re certain you’re going to faint. You can hear the blood rushing in your ears and then Gwen is by your side, holding you up, asking if you’re okay.
You don’t know what to answer, you’re not okay, haven’t been okay for a long time, and it’s like everything just hits you at once. God, how did you even manage this long? How did you survive, when life is so frail around you, when any moment you could lose everything.
Jack gets to his feet and when he looks at you it’s like he really sees you for the first time in months. His eyes go dark and soft and he raises bloodstained fingers to your face. You grab him and bury your face in his coat, couldn’t let go if your life depended on it, and he holds you close while Gwen wraps her arms around both of you.
You don’t know how long you’re standing there, with the cuffed weevil growling in the background. Jack whispers things in your ear, silly words that have no meaning and you’re crying, finally allowing yourself to let the tears flow. The sobs tear at your throat and it hurts, every cell of your body hurts with the loss and the grief and the anger and the awfulness of having to live in a world where Tosh and Owen aren’t alive.
Jack and Gwen stay with you while you fall apart and you trust them to put you back together again.
* * *
You don’t know how you get through it, but you do. You mark the milestones. The first time Gwen’s laughter echoes through the Hub again. The first time Jack’s smile reaches his eyes. The first time one of you mentions Owen or Tosh’s name in passing without all of you going quiet. The first time Jack sleeps through the night. The first time you prepare three cups of coffee and don’t automatically think it should be five.
It’s not easy and it shouldn’t be. Every day is a struggle. But you wake up in the morning and the world is still there, and even though it’s missing two crucial pieces, the loss eventually gets easier to bear.
The Rift keeps spitting out alien things. It’s been three months when the alien plague hits Cardiff. The doctors at the hospital are baffled by the way it spreads and they can’t seem to find a way to stop it. After several days Jack finally contacts Torchwood Two and they send an epidemiologist by the name of Dr Mairi McDonald. After the initial awe that accompanies all new arrivals to the Hub, she gets to work, quickly and efficiently. She’s a no-nonsense sort of woman, cool and collected, with a dry sense of humour, and for some reason, watching her appropriate the space that used to be Owen’s doesn’t hurt as much as you expected it to.
So you stand on top of the stairs leading down to the infirmary and ask her, “How do you take your coffee?” and you think that maybe you’ll be okay after all.
-fin-
Later that night, after Gwen has left and you and Jack are alone in the achingly empty Hub, you let him fuck you. You spread you legs and let him move in you with quiet determination. His eyes are screwed shut, and there’s a hint of desperation in the touch of his breath against your neck, in the way his fingers hold your hips. You distantly wonder if Gwen is doing the same thing to Rhys tonight, if she’s pinning him down in their bed, covering him with frantic kisses, using his body to escape herself. But then you’re too busy coming, spilling hard and bitter between your bodies and holding Jack as he shudders through his own release.
* * *
After the battle of Canary Wharf, you couldn’t afford to fall apart. You had to keep your wits about you, for Lisa’s sake. You sifted through the ruins of Torchwood One, you kept up appearances.
So you know how to do this; the trick is to go on as usual, to hold to your normal routines. When morning comes you get out of bed, put on a fresh suit, and make coffee. After all, you have a city to put back together and people to look after.
Jack takes the coffee mug (black and strong) from your hand like it’s any other morning, but he lets his fingers brush against yours and there’s a look of hollow-eyed gratitude on his face. Gwen comes in a little later, pale and bruised around the eyes, and when you hand over her cup (milk, one sugar) she looks like she’s about to start crying again.
But you have no time for tears. You have damage control to do. Gwen goes off to the police station, Jack to God knows where. You stay in the Hub to monitor the Rift activity and repair the damage Gray and John did to the equipment.
It’s like any other day and when you find the coffee mug Tosh left on her desk the day before yesterday you just take it away, wash it out and put it back on the shelf with the others, not even reflecting over the fact that this was the last thing her lips touched.
You’ll get through this. You’ll get them through it. Later, when everything is back to normal, you can allow yourself to fall apart. Until then, you’ll go on as usual, do what you always do.
* * *
Gwen cries a lot the first days. The simplest things set her off. Like when he checks her e-mail and finds the link Owen sent you all to a YouTube video with monkeys scratching their butts. Like when Jack asks her to read through the letter he’s written to Tosh’s mother. You’re partly irritated with her for being so generous with the waterworks, and partly grateful because her tears are an excuse to wrap your arms around her and hold her, to remind yourself that she’s still here.
Jack is quiet. His smile is forced, his jokes and innuendos fall flat. He pulls away, doesn’t reach out and touch you like he used to, holes up in his office when he’s not out. You know that he’s seen generations of Torchwood die around him. Suzie, Owen, Tosh, they’re not the first and they certainly won’t be the last. No one should ever have to get used to that, but you’re afraid that Jack is beginning to. That he’s trying to distance himself, become this inhuman thing, trapped out of time where other people’s lives can’t touch him.
You won’t accept that. When Gwen leaves in the evening, you go to Jack. You push his chair away from the desk and kneel between his legs. He doesn’t protest, it’s not like Jack Harkness to ever turn down sex. But the sound he makes when he comes is close to a sob, like your lips around his cock is tearing his heart out. You’re glad; Jack needs to let it out, needs to let himself be human. He returns the favour by bending you over his desk, touching every inch of your skin, and you think that maybe you need to be human too. Just not quite yet.
* * *
When your were a baby you’d sometimes scream so hard you passed out. When you got older, you threw temper tantrums that scared your mother. You were an angry child, not prepared to accept the unfairness of the world.
You’ve learned to control yourself better since then, but there are still times when the force of your own rage frightens you. You dream of bringing Gray out of the freezer, of beating him to death with your bare hands. You want to see his blood over the floor in the infirmary and you think maybe that would wash away the memory of Tosh’s.
It would break Jack’s heart - that’s the only thing that holds you back. So you go about your day as usual, try not to think of the monster that lies sleeping beneath your feet. But you can’t help but think that someone should be punished, someone should pay.
You feel robbed. You had your teammates, your friends taken from you, and you don’t know how you can possibly go on living with this torn bleeding place inside you, without getting some kind of revenge to soothe the wounds.
But you do. There’s nothing else you can do.
* * *
The funny thing is, most of the time you didn’t even like Owen that much. He was a smug cocky bastard, inconsiderate and rude. He always knew exactly which of your buttons to push and he enjoyed pushing them and watching your reactions. You don’t know how many times you wanted to punch him in the face, and you took a perverse pleasure in shooting him that one time. It got a little better after he died, he seemed to mellow out some. Maybe he realised he’d been given a second chance, you don’t really know. It doesn’t matter now anyway.
But you remember what a wreck you were after Lisa’s death, and you remember that Owen was the one to drive you home that night. You remember how you couldn’t stop shaking, and you remember the sharp needleprick in your arm, sending you to sleep.
You remember that when you woke up, several hours later, Owen was still there. You’re pretty sure Jack ordered him to stay with you until they could be sure that you wouldn’t eat your gun. But you know that Jack didn’t order him to help you take a shower and make you tea and fetch you blankets when you thought you’d never be warm again. He bitched and complained the entire time, criticised everything from your choice of furniture to the contents of your fridge, but he stayed and when you look back you know that he probably saved your life that night.
Sometimes you wonder how someone with such a cynical view of the human race could fight with everything he had to save it. At other times, you wonder if Owen wasn’t the best of you all - how he always met adversity head-on, cursing and spitting in its face. No matter how grim things were, he never gave up.
You keep Owen’s plants alive. He probably wouldn’t thank you if he knew, but you know he would have appreciated it.
* * *
Rebuilding Cardiff is slow tedious work. The weevils are still restless and people are wary and suspicious. You don’t blame them - all they know is that someone bombed their city and that Torchwood was involved. You don’t know if you’ve ever had their trust in the first place and it’s going to be hard to gain it back.
Gwen does most of the work in public. She keeps the police force on their feet. She talks to the press. She calms people down, gives them back the feeling of safety, of being watched over. In many ways, Gwen becomes Torchwood, an embodiment of the Torchwood Jack created. She’s strong in ways you can’t even begin to understand. Even after everything she’s seen and experienced, she still believes in people. She still has hope.
A lot of that, you know, is because of Rhys. She has the luxury of coming home every day to a husband who loves her and supports her, who holds her steady and grounds her. You hate to admit it, but part of you, an ugly dark little part, is insanely jealous of her. You want that, you had that once, and no matter how much you pretend, you know you’ll never get it back.
But you’re not that much of a bastard that you begrudge her that happiness. She’s your friend, and you depend on her, both you and Jack. She brings brightness to your life, she brings wonder, the world view of someone who hasn’t lost her illusions, not yet. So you try to be happy for her that she’s got Rhys to lean on, and at work, you let her lean on you. You listen when she needs to talk. You get a little sloshed with her after the particularly bad days. You hold her up in the hope that maybe she’ll be there for you when it’s your turn to need support.
* * *
You miss Tosh so much that your don’t know how to bear it. The two of you had a special relationship. You never needed to pretend with each other, never had to feel uncomfortable in each other’s presence. Tosh was the first to forgive you after Lisa. She was the one who never forgot to give you a smile and a thanks when you brought her coffee (milk, no sugar) when the others just took you for granted.
Maybe it was because you were so alike. You both did your best work behind the scenes - the clean-up, the research, all the things that made the team function smoothly. Torchwood would’ve fallen apart without the two of you. You both knew it and were united in that knowledge.
You wonder if she ever knew how adored she was. How her gentle laugh never failed to make you smile. How her brilliant mind never ceased to amaze you. How much you enjoyed it when she let out some of that wicked streak that she usually kept so well hidden. Your heart bleeds when you think of her loneliness. She had so much love to give and never got the chance to bestow it on anyone.
She shouldn’t have spent her life underground. She should’ve been outside in the sunshine, where everyone could see her beauty and her radiance.
You curse the world for always letting the worst things happen to the best people.
* * *
Jack never lies to you, but he never tells the truth either. Everything is riddles with him - he talks but he never says what he means. You know something bad happened to him during those months he was away, but when you asked him, he just answered, “It doesn’t matter, it never happened anyway.”
This time is different, you know what happened and you can see the traces of it in Jack. He doesn’t act any different - he still flirts with everything that moves and he can’t seem to take his hands off you some days, but you can see the small changes, the signs which show that not all is well with Captain Jack. For one, he’s no longer comfortable underground. When you go into the sewers to hunt down weevils, he’s twitchy and tense and stays that way even after you reach the surface again.
It’s understandable of course, and you wonder what you can do to help, to make it better. You remember the months after he came back, how he’d sometimes wake up screaming. He doesn’t do that now, but you suspect it’s because he simply doesn’t sleep. You know he doesn’t really need to, but you also know that he can’t keep it all inside him for long. No-one could, not even Jack, and you wish you could take it away from him, that he would let you carry a little bit of his guilt and his grief.
Some days you are so very close to acting on your impulse of waking Gray and just ending him. Not only because of what he did to Tosh and Owen, but because of what he did to Jack. You know he wasn’t right in the head, that he was sick and twisted, destroyed inside, but it doesn’t change how you feel about him. He tore apart your team and now you’re the only one left who can pick up the pieces, you have to hold them together when some days it’s all you can do to find the strength to keep yourself breathing. But your hate for him is nowhere close enough to rival Jack’s love, so you hold back. You concentrate on Jack, on being there for him.
There are days when he seems to live in another world to the rest of you. When he gets lost, stares vacantly into space, and walks around like you and Gwen aren’t even there. Those are the days when you bring him home with you in the evening. You don’t want him to spend the night in the Hub alone when he’s like that.
One afternoon, you find him sitting on the floor in the infirmary, staring at Gray’s drawer. He doesn’t answer when you talk to him, so you pull him to his feet and steer him to your car, thinking that it’s like handling a zombie and feeling a sharp stab of pain when you remember Owen and the jokes he used as a coping mechanism after he died.
Back at your place, you undress him and pull him down on top of you, hold him close, let him find relief in your body. After he finishes, he goes limp, his weight holding you down, his face buried in your shoulder. It’s nice at first, but after a while he becomes heavy, a little too heavy, so you try to push him off, panting, “Jack, I can’t breathe.”
You’re not prepared when he starts suddenly and nearly falls off the bed, his face chalk white. His eyes are open but he’s not tracking, and it’s like he’s seeing something in his own head, in his own memories. He was buried alive, you know, died from suffocation over and over again until they dug him up, and it’s a wonder he’s not a gibbering wreck. You can’t even imagine what he’s been through, what you can possibly do to help, but you’re so very thankful to finally get a reaction from him, a hint that maybe he hasn’t lost his humanity after all. So you hold him while he shakes in your arms, until he finally, mercifully, falls asleep. This time, it’s your turn to stay awake through the night, to stroke his hair and soothe away the nightmares.
* * *
You’re undermanned. You all know it, but you never mention it, even when it feels like you spend every waking hour working. You take over most of Tosh’s duties, Gwen keeps the infirmary stocked, and you all have some basic medical training, but it’s painfully clear that you’re eventually going to need to bring in new people to replace Tosh and Owen.
It feels wrong. You have learned to function with just the three of you. You have learned to stretch yourselves to fill the empty spaces. There are still imprints of Tosh and Owen all over the Hub, like their spirits are still left in the walls. You can’t imagine letting anyone else in to take their place. They can’t be replaced. How are you ever going to find someone as gentle and brilliant as Tosh? Someone as blunt and stubborn as Owen? It can’t be done. So you struggle on instead, even when the work threatens to drown you or eat you alive.
Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it does numb the pain.
* * *
The first time Jack dies afterwards, you’re not prepared. As deaths go, it’s nothing special, nothing you haven’t seen him suffer through before. A weevil attack, his jugular is slit and he bleeds out almost immediately, only to gasp back to life a moment later, a little wild-eyed but as good as new.
You don’t expect it to break you. Jack dying and coming back is nothing new, a little unsettling maybe, but it’s amazing what you can get used to. But when you see him sprawled on the ground, pale and still, you freeze and drop the weevil spray. The world slows down around you, becomes sticky and thick like molasses, and you can’t seem to get any air into your lungs.
You’re dimly aware of Gwen subduing the weevil and cuffing it to a lamppost. You can’t tear your eyes away from Jack, how his back arches off the ground when he revives, how he coughs and pants for a moment before he sits up and glares at the blood all over his new shirt. Your legs feel too weak to hold you, you’re dizzy, light-headed, and for a moment you’re certain you’re going to faint. You can hear the blood rushing in your ears and then Gwen is by your side, holding you up, asking if you’re okay.
You don’t know what to answer, you’re not okay, haven’t been okay for a long time, and it’s like everything just hits you at once. God, how did you even manage this long? How did you survive, when life is so frail around you, when any moment you could lose everything.
Jack gets to his feet and when he looks at you it’s like he really sees you for the first time in months. His eyes go dark and soft and he raises bloodstained fingers to your face. You grab him and bury your face in his coat, couldn’t let go if your life depended on it, and he holds you close while Gwen wraps her arms around both of you.
You don’t know how long you’re standing there, with the cuffed weevil growling in the background. Jack whispers things in your ear, silly words that have no meaning and you’re crying, finally allowing yourself to let the tears flow. The sobs tear at your throat and it hurts, every cell of your body hurts with the loss and the grief and the anger and the awfulness of having to live in a world where Tosh and Owen aren’t alive.
Jack and Gwen stay with you while you fall apart and you trust them to put you back together again.
* * *
You don’t know how you get through it, but you do. You mark the milestones. The first time Gwen’s laughter echoes through the Hub again. The first time Jack’s smile reaches his eyes. The first time one of you mentions Owen or Tosh’s name in passing without all of you going quiet. The first time Jack sleeps through the night. The first time you prepare three cups of coffee and don’t automatically think it should be five.
It’s not easy and it shouldn’t be. Every day is a struggle. But you wake up in the morning and the world is still there, and even though it’s missing two crucial pieces, the loss eventually gets easier to bear.
The Rift keeps spitting out alien things. It’s been three months when the alien plague hits Cardiff. The doctors at the hospital are baffled by the way it spreads and they can’t seem to find a way to stop it. After several days Jack finally contacts Torchwood Two and they send an epidemiologist by the name of Dr Mairi McDonald. After the initial awe that accompanies all new arrivals to the Hub, she gets to work, quickly and efficiently. She’s a no-nonsense sort of woman, cool and collected, with a dry sense of humour, and for some reason, watching her appropriate the space that used to be Owen’s doesn’t hurt as much as you expected it to.
So you stand on top of the stairs leading down to the infirmary and ask her, “How do you take your coffee?” and you think that maybe you’ll be okay after all.
-fin-