Solitude Standing (2/2)
Solitude Standing (2/2)
(written for Torchwood minibang, never got the art done, so never posted)
Wordcount: ~8k
Characters/Pairings: Ianto/Tosh, Tosh/OFC, Tosh/Mary, Ianto/Jack, Owen/Gwen
Warnings: Sex, Violence
Rating: R (kinda)
Summary: Begins after Countryside and continues to the start of the Year That Never Was, touching on important events in Toshiko's life and the way that her experiences shaped and changed her. As the months pass, her budding relationship with Ianto turns into something more until she ruins everything.
Beta: xandraklr
Part 1
Pretending
On Monday morning she slept in. The alarm never went off, and she woke up to the quiet buzz of her vibrating phone going off her the pocket of her coat lying on the floor next to her bed. She leaned over the side and fumbled tiredly for the device.
“Hello?”
The person on the other ended grunted. “Tosh? Where are you? Where you planning on telling us that you weren’t coming in today?”
Tosh groaned at Owen’s angry words. “I’ll be in soon Owen. Give me thirty minutes. Want me to pick up anything on my way in?”
“Yeah, enough coffee to get us through the day. Ianto called in and he’s taking the day off. We need you Tosh, I’m not doing all his job and yours too.”
She shut off the phone and rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling. At least she wasn’t going to have to face Ianto so soon after messing everything up. Instead only the grief that Gwen and Owen were giving off would fill the hub and Jack’s ghost would be behind every corner and watch them from his office.
The cog door ground open before her and Tosh stepped through, balancing the tray of coffees carefully. Beyond the door, the echoing sounds of shouting reached her ears and she made her way in, trying to figure out what had set Gwen and Owen off this time.
“Coffee!” Tosh called out, making her way to her desk, hearing the tail end of the argument that seemed to center around ways to cook rice and cleaning out the Weevil cages.
Owen came out the autopsy bay, ignoring the last few digs Gwen tried to get in as she tagged along
behind him. “You’re a lifesaver Tosh. Could have used this a few hours ago.” He stared at her questioningly, “Is something wrong?”
She shook her head. “Just a problem with my alarm. Won’t happen again.”
Gwen took the coffee with a distracted, “Thank you” and sat down at her desk, opening her email and doing something that looked to be not related to work in any way.
Tosh woke up her computer systems, running through her usual checks and diagnostics and checking her long running programs. The linguistics programs and monitoring software that used to mean everything to her seemed simple and boring now. She clicked through the latest results on the alien language decoding. It saddened her that finding a possible three letters in a language that she would never use had classified a great day.
The rest of the day passed in unbroken monotony. Owen ordered in pizza that was undercooked and cold and Gwen asked her to check a dozen online auctions for alien artefacts but none of them were the real thing. By the time it five o’clock they were out of things to do.
“Well, I’m done for today.” Owen said, pulling on his jacket and tossing his things into his backpack. “Tosh, call me if anything comes up tonight.”
Gwen followed a few minutes later, leaving a mess of the computers and pizza at her workstation. Tosh bit her lip and threw the garbage out before shutting the computers down properly. Jack had always taken good care of the technology and Ianto never let anyone leave if their computers weren’t properly secured.
It didn’t take her long to reroute the Rift Alerts to her phone and double check to make sure that it was no longer set to vibrate. She walked through the vaults before leaving, the Weevil cages were clean enough and they’d been fed that morning; it probably wasn’t necessary to feed them again.
She headed home, it was still light out and the city was humming with activity. Children playing and teenagers hanging out with friends, people in cars going places, and she watched them all enviously. It didn’t seem fair that they got to live their lives without knowing what was going on around them, and even the aliens that inhabited the city had other aliens to turn to when times were tough.
A few blocks away from her house, Tosh made a decision and turned into the parking lot of a pub. It was alien owned and she had only ever been there for inspections, but they had food and drinks for humans and maybe even a decent conversationalist or two.
Tosh entered the pub and looked around as she made her way to the bar. It was nice to hold some of the cards here, she knew their secrets and they didn’t have anything on her. She ordered and took a booth, staring out at the aliens around her.
The food was good, if a little plain. Jack had introduced her to the wonders of cuisine from various alien planets years ago; she’d never thought to thank him for that. She really had never properly thanked him for anything that he had done for her. She finished her plate of food and nursed her glass of wine as she looked around the filling pub.
How many of them knew that Jack was gone? Was it going to make a difference? Jack had always commanded respect in a way that Owen and Ianto had never been able too. With him gone Tosh wondered if the streets were going to be filled with weevils on rampages and some of the more obviously nonhuman types that were usually confined to dark back rooms in secluded houses.
It took another twenty minutes for one of them to approach her. Tosh blinked for a moment, trying to remember where she knew the feline face from.
The young cat offered a furry paw. “Hi Tosh. What brings you here tonight? Need more coffee and some companionship?”
Tosh nodded and shook her hand, realising where she knew the cat from. Under a heavy disguise, she worked in the coffee shop across from the hub. She’d asked for a Torchwood visa to do more, maybe go off to university, but Jack had been unsure and erred on the side of caution and now she probably would never get permission to change her life.
The woman slipped onto the seat across from her, her nose twitching at the scent from the food drippings left on Tosh’s plate. She looked quite different with her fur and catlike features revealed, she was usually constrained to long sleeves and some kind of head scarf with a device that hid her more obvious feline attributes from the coffee shop’s everyday clientele.
Tosh had never let go of the paw she had been offered and she ran her fingers through the fur, letting the softness of it and the gentle tips of the claws fill her senses. She studied the cat’s face, she seemed to be enjoying it to, petting, all cats liked it. Tosh wondered if she was steryotyping, there was no reason to assume that Catkind and cats were anything alike.
“Do you have plans for tonight?” she asked abruptly, downing the rest of her wine a little more quickly than was prudent.
The cat looked at her from behind half lidded eyes and beyond drooping whiskers. “I don’t know. Would you like me to?”
Tosh almost growled tossed a few notes out of her purse onto the table before taking the feline’s hand more securely in hers and pulling her to the door.
“Just a moment please.” The cat raised the hood of her shirt up over her head and swung a scarf across her face until only her eyes were visible, glowing like a cat’s in the dim light. “Now we may go.”
They couldn’t get to the car fast enough for Tosh. Walking across the parking lot seemed to take hours rather than seconds and it took even longer for her to dig her keys out of her purse and get the passenger door open for the cat.
It took long enough that Tosh pushed the feline back onto the seat, tugging at the scarf until it revealed furred lips and a pink tongue that were happy to press against hers. Everywhere their bodies pressed together, even covered in cloth, felt warmed and she was feeling alive and sparkling inside again.
The cat made a hissing sound and pushed Tosh back a little. "Let’s get somewhere a little more discrete. I’m sure the CCTV here has already captured a little too much fur."
Tosh climbed into the driver’s seat and drove home, with little memory of the trip. She wasn’t sure how many traffic laws she broke, but they were of no importance to her at the time. And the roads were empty enough that no one was in danger.
She parked on the wrong side of the road and was jerking at the zipper on her skirt before she made it to the door. The cat captured her hand and ran her claws lightly over the top.
“I’ll do that. You just get the door open.”
Somehow Tosh’s fingers managed to find her house keys and open the door so that they could fall inside, leaving a puddle of clothes in the entrance way before remembering to close the door.
“Which way?” The cat asked, her breath coming in gasps that made her seem even more inhuman and ever more attractive in Tosh’s eyes.
Tosh guided her into the living room, there was no way that she could make it down the hall to the bed and the couch was more comfortable than the floor.
Breaking
She wore long sleeves the next morning and more makeup than usual, but even that couldn’t hide all the results of the previous night. Tosh came in last, regretting it, she didn’t want to attract more attention to herself, but she had been too exhausted to get up when her alarm had gone off.
It wasn’t until lunch, when Gwen came by and put a hand on her shoulder, “Tosh, there’s Chinese in the conference room. Come have lunch with us.” And Tosh turned around and Gwen gasped, that she realised how truly awful she looked.
“Tosh are you okay? Did you go Weevil hunting last night? Have you seen Owen?” Gwen was pending over, peering at the scratches on her face, Tosh leaned away and wishing that she had put more makeup on or just called in sick again.
She tried to protest, it was fine, and they were shallow, but Gwen was already gone, calling Owen and getting a cloth to clean the makeup off her face, not that she needed anything but to be left alone.
Owen came over with a container of takeaway in his hand and a mouth full of noodles of some kind when he saw her. He put it down and his face took on a more serious look, the kind that Tosh had when she was working on a bit of fickle alien hardware.
“Tosh, what did this to you?” He asked, pressing his fingers to either end of the longer gouge on her cheek.
She sighed, “It’s nothing, it was just a cat.”
“It had to be really big then, it wasn’t a Weevil or anything?”
“No Owen, it was a cat, the feline who works in the coffee shop and I didn’t even realise that she had scratched me until later. It was nothing then and it is nothing now, kindly leave me alone.”
Gwen pulled her desk chair over and sat across from Tosh, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder while Owen ran off to fetch a medkit and whatever else he needed. “Tosh, this doesn’t mean that you are weak. We can help you , but only if you’ll tell us that there’s a problem. It’s alright to need help, many women find themselves in situations that-”
“Oh Gwen, relax.” Tosh shook her hand off and stood up. “I’m not in an abusive relationship. I had a one night stand with someone that has claws. Honestly, get over it.”
She turned her back on Gwen and met Owen in the autopsy bay, wondering if the other woman would ever learn to stop poking her nose into things that were none of her business. Or if the problem was that she couldn't accept that Tosh was a real person, not just someone that played with computers all day and all night.
Owen cleaned her cuts and insisted she have a Tetanus shot before finally allowing everyone back to lunch in the conference room, holding her back for a moment to warn her about the symptoms of cat scratch fever. Ianto had cleared away most of the excess trash and his own food carton was empty and off to the side, he was standing in front of the table, his arms crossed and an odd look on his face.
“A call came in from the Prime Minister’s Office while the rest of you were occupied.” He passed around a few packages of paper. “We’ve been ordered to investigate an alien incursion in the Himalayas. A contact with more information will meet us there.” He waited and as if that didn’t sound bad enough he added, “We’re to leave immediately.”