Get up real early in the morning, don't get up 'til the afternoon; son, I see the day is dawning?

[der_weevilkonig]

Sometime around eight in the morning, Owen Harper is in the Kashtta Tower infirmary with his back to the door, cleaning and re-dressing a set of fairly deep healing clawmarks on his forearms. He's managed to keep them out of sight so far by washing them at odd hours and wearing long-sleeve shirts, because he doesn't particularly want to have a

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[chimaerasaurus]

Be jumpy, Owen. Be very jumpy. Abby is on her way to the infirmary to redress some claw marks of her own. She was at the zoo. One of the lions was ill.

She has ways of making you... let her near the animals.

Anyway. She helped. So she's in a good mood.

[der_weevilkonig]

Jump Owen is jumpy!

He looks around at the noise, then hurriedly finishes off one bandage and tugs his sleeve down over it. The other... well. He'll just... get that done as soon as he can, why doesn't he? Very quickly.

"Abby." Don't mind the brusqueness. It's an Owen thing. "You need something?"

[chimaerasaurus]

She rolls up her sleeves, displaying several ugly cuts criss-crossed over existing scars. "Nope! Just disinfectant and... bandages. Like those. What happened to you?"

[der_weevilkonig]

"Wild animal. You?"

Yeah, and that's brusque even for Owen. Usually he'd take the time to grumble a bit more, or at least be an ass about something.

He finishes wiping down the cuts on his right arm and takes out a few more bandages, tossing a couple of extras on the counter and making room at the sink. He doesn't need to explain these to anyone. Really. Everything is fine.

[chimaerasaurus]

"Lion. What kind of animal?"

Abby wanders over to the sink, keeping an eye on Owen while she scrubs her arms gingerly and pats them dry. Abby helps herself to disinfectant and swabs. She's still frowning at his arm. "Not local fauna, that's for sure."

[der_weevilkonig]

"Lions aren't exactly local fauna either," Owen says. "Unless you're referring to Tyler's boyfriend." He slaps on the bandage, making only a slight hiss and securing it. "Some Rift monster. Find the things wandering the streets, these days."

Which isn't technically a lie. Just a lie in implication. He is not telling Abby that he picked a fight with a demoncat.

[chimaerasaurus]

"I was at the zoo. It was sick. ...Tyler's boyfriend?"

She remembers Sam, vaguely, from soon after Rex showed up. Of course, it's impossible to tell if Owen actually means the boyfriend bit.

Abby works on her own cuts, frowning at Own. She smells a rat. Or a demoncat, as the case may be.

"You know, most animals don't attack without good reason."

[der_weevilkonig]

"Hunt. He's one of the Mancs wandering around." Owen makes a vague gesture to the building. If he pays attention, he can tell exactly where Hunt is at the moment, but to be honest... he doesn't care nearly enough. "Maybe not his boyfriend. I haven't been paying that much attention."

Fix another bandage. Secure it. He'd like this conversation to be done now.

"Really? Nothing ever seemed to need a reason back in Cardiff."

[chimaerasaurus]

"No offense, but I don't think you Torchwood lot give much priority to animal husbandry."

She eyes him. "What was it?"

Part of her is just damn curious. She loved the creatures that the anomalies spit out, even if her first priority was to get them home.

[der_weevilkonig]

"No, we're usually the ones trying to save Cardiff from whatever alien monstrosity's come through, not the ones rehabilitating it." Leave that to... who knows. The Doctor. Or someone. He finishes up the second bandage and pulls his sleeve down. All cuts and wrappings nice and out of sight. Then he exhales, once, sharply.

"I didn't recognize the species. If I had to describe it, the phrase 'hideous catbeast' comes to mind."

He puts back the supplies he's used, everything in its place. Whether that's because he takes pride in an orderly infirmary (true) or because he doesn't want anyone to be able to tell it's been used (also true) is up for debate.

Then he turns to the door.

Then he pauses. Then he sighs, though mostly inwardly. He is Torchwood's medic, goddamnit, and that means that as much as he's like to get out of here, he has to at least appear to be at injured people's disposal.

"You need... any help with that?"

[chimaerasaurus]

"You know," Abby snaps, "you'd think getting dumped in Chicago would give you a little more respect for how the animals might feel being ripped out of their natural habitat and thrown in with a bunch of stupid, smelly humans in a stupid, smelly city. I would rampage too if it wouldn't get me arrested."

She mutters something else about how he obviously can't appreciate the beauty of utility and almost drops the bandages in the sink.

And then he offers to help. Okay. Not like she didn't know he was a freak already.

"Yeah. Fine."

[der_weevilkonig]

Hostility? Oh, Owen is good friends with hostility. He doesn't even blink as he pulls out the disinfectant and moves to finish up one of her arms.

"Didn't say they didn't have a good reason for trying to knock over everything," he says. "But we didn't exactly make the Rift either, and it's not as if letting them wreck the city would make them feel better either." He reaches for a bandage. "Besides. In this city rampaging would get you strung up by the CLF before it got you arrested."

[chimaerasaurus]

Right. CLF. She sighs and rubs her face against her shoulder, trying to scratch an itch while her hands are indisposed.

...there's an unpleasant thought.

"What do you suppose they do to the creatures that come through?" Her lips tug down at the corners. "Kill them? Ship them off somewhere to get picked apart?"

What would that be like, working for a group where there isn't the option to send the intruding species home? Not that the CLF cares about sending people back so much as killing the ones already here.

[der_weevilkonig]

"Kill, probably." And yes, that... actually is bitterness you hear in Owen's voice, Abby. Even Torchwood tried not to kill them unless absolutely necessary. There was a reason for those interminable lines of goddamn cells. ...he'd sometimes suspected Jack had something else to do with the ones they did take in; the cell blocks never seemed as full as they should have. "Don't strike me as the sorts who have a lab set up anywhere. You? Just thugs with guns."

He secures the bandage firmly over one set of marks. A bastard Owen Harper may be, but he does know his way around an infirmary, and he is good at his job. ...if he wasn't, the bastardliness would have seen him fired long before now.

[chimaerasaurus]

Abby scowls at the bandage, though she's not being critical of his work. It's way better than she would have done one-handed.

"Thugs with guns."

She sighs and rubs her eyes. "You think they'd let me set up a zoo on some of the unused floors?"

She's half-joking. Only half, though.

[der_weevilkonig]

Owen inspects the other set of cuts, reaching for the disinfectant. "The way things've been around here? Open question, if anyone would notice." He cleans the edges of a particularly ragged cut, only paying half-attention to what he's saying. "Might have to worry about the building sending them off to Narnia, but that's nothing new."

And no more than you'd have to contend with in any other zoo, really.