Torchwood fic: The Seaweed Is Always Greener | Owen, Tosh | PG
Title: The Seaweed Is Always Greener
Author: rustydog
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Jack
Rating: PG
Words: 2400
Beta: donutsweeper, most helpful! Any remaining problems are mine.
Notes: This is the last of a fluffy series of sorts, though it should be able to be read on its own. Preceding it were drabbles and a ficlet:
1. Idle and Blessed
2. Inevitable Disaster
3. Nemo
4. Congratulations, It's a Beautiful, Healthy Fish!
The creature formerly known as Nemo seemed to be bored with just lying on the stainless steel instrument tray Owen was using as an examination table. She got up, balanced on her hind feet, and reached out her tiny hands to grab the diagnostic wand Owen was using. Then she began rubbing her delicate gills against it. She had quite a case of the giggles - something about the frequency of the scanning waves, Owen supposed.
Tosh and Gwen had fallen in love with her the instant Jack pulled her out of the water on his fishing line. (Had he been fishing? Had he known what they would find? Owen made a mental note to accuse him sometime and see what came of it.) Though in Gwen's case, Owen suspected her adoration had as much to do with the annoyance it caused him.
Annoyance aside, this little alien was something of a welcome change from potentially dangerous Rift migrants they usually dealt with. She wasn't much bigger than a sparrow, with delicate, lavender gray skin, thin arms and legs, and sticky fingers like a gecko's. It seemed impossible that her tiny body could support the head, which seemed to be about half her mass. Her wide, puppet-like mouth had two rows of teeth so small they were just like sandpaper. Owen was loath to admit it even to himself, but she was pretty cute. Those huge eyes were just- well, they should be freakish, but somehow they just made her lovable.
Which made it all the more important that she be returned to the bay soon. Before anyone - all right, before he got too fond of her. Before she got too used to living here. As much as it might appear sometimes, the Hub was not an alien zoo.
~
Then little blighter took to singing. Or something resembling it. When she was alone in a room, they would overhear her high-pitched hum sliding between pitches like a Chinese stringed instrument. If Owen walked in on her she would stop singing, rise and balance on her hind feet, and give him a series of chirps that went right down the scale. It reminded him of a comedy sound effect for a failed joke. It always made him laugh.
Owen wanted to get her in the water with some recording equipment and find out whether the singing sound might function as some sort of distance communication. But that would be acting like he cared.
Clearly the situation was desperate.
~
This was the problem with pets: people got gushy about them, and before long they were demanding the same treatment for an animal that they'd expect for a member of their own family. And then you were spending valuable work time solving problems related to a three-ounce, bug-eyed alien frog with arms.
The condition Jack had set for the creature's release - sterilization - was giving Owen fits. There was an egg sac in there that had to be removed or neutralized, but Torchwood had no noninvasive surgical equipment that he could operate reliably on such a small scale. He flirted briefly with the idea of chemically induced abortion, but didn't think a membrane holding half an ounce of alien caviar would likely respond the same as a foetus.
All that remained was the old-fashioned way. At least he had a device that could seal and heal without sutures. When she was back among her marine friends, she wouldn't have to feel ashamed about unsightly surgery scars on her smooth, slimy skin.
~
It had taken almost a day to work out what anaesthesia would be safe, but finally Owen had been able to begin the procedure. It was going well, but he wasn't a fan of the spectators who wouldn't shut up.
"Jack," Owen growled, "please don't interrupt me while I'm performing an extremely tiny hysterectomy."
He couldn't turn his head, but he heard Gwen giggling from the landing above the autopsy room. "Thank you for taking this seriously, Tosh," he said quietly. She was holding the suction hose with the miniature attachment he had built for it.
"You're welcome," she replied, but then coughed as if she were trying to suppress something. "'Tiny hysterectomy,'" she whispered. Her shoulders shook, but her hand was steady.
A minute later, apparently recovered, she said, "I thought we could call her Ariel."
"Okay," Owen agreed.
"That was easy," Tosh remarked, sounding surprised. "I thought you'd object to another cartoon character name."
"Hey," Owen said, taking the last snip that freed the egg sac, "If you want to choose a name that reminds me of a gorgeous redhead in a shell bra, a highlight of my adolescence, who am I to stop you?"
~
As fragile as she looked, Ariel was resilient. She was singing again within hours of the surgery, and within a day she was helping herself to Owen's headlice (or so Ianto remarked when he saw her exploring Owen's hair).
Despite her healthy behavior, Owen did a couple of scans before he was satisfied she was well recovered. Then he rang a bloke he knew at the marina and arranged to hire a boat. He had planned to take Ariel out when no one in the Hub was paying attention - minimize the possibility of tearful scenes. But when he arrived at the dock with the little creature in his jacket pocket, Tosh was waiting for him.
"Hi. Ianto noticed you rang the marina," she explained.
Owen rolled his eyes. "Tosh."
"I'm not here to stop you. I just thought you might want some moral support."
"I'm the only one around here who doesn't need moral support, thank you."
"I also thought Ariel would like a friendly face around."
That didn't encourage Owen to stop rolling his eyes, but it wasn't worth arguing. "Fine," he said, and walked past Tosh to step into the boat. He started to make his way toward the motor, then paused, turned around, and held up his hand to help Tosh down. "Come on, then. Let's get this over with."
~
The morning's weather had been fine, but as Owen headed the boat out into the bay, they could see clouds on the horizon like distant piled-up towers of whipped cream. Once they were clear of the traffic in the bay, he increased their speed and the small craft flew over the water, bucking occasionally when it encountered a large wave. The smell of the spray reminded Owen of the last time they were here, a golden day of relaxation Jack had arranged.
Tosh clamped her hands over her hat to keep from losing it in the stronger gusts of wind. Owen thought the water looked darker than it had last time they were out.
He felt something next to his chest, inside his jacket. Ariel was a good wriggler; she had found her way out of his pocket, into the jacket, and up to the pocket of his shirt. She'd be inside his collar soon if he wasn't careful.
Finally, at what he judged to be about eight kilometres from shore, Owen slowed the boat and cut the motor.
Tosh was looking at a device she'd brought along in her bag. "I think we were a few hundred metres to the east," she said.
"What?"
"Before. When we found her. We were a little way off from here."
Owen sighed and turned the motor on again. Ariel was clinging to his ear now.
~
She didn't want to go.
He had held her out over the edge of the boat so she could see the enticing depths. Tosh had leaned out, scooped up some seawater in her hand and poured it over Ariel's belly, hoping it would remind her of home. But she was still clinging to Owen's fingers like a leech, making staccato chirping noises.
Owen cleared his throat and raised his hand so that he was looking the creature right in the enormous, cloudy eyes. He couldn't believe he had to do this, especially with Tosh here, but-
"Look, we've enjoyed having you-" he glanced defensively at Tosh "-fine, I said it, but don't you dare tell Ianto." He returned his attention to the creature. "But you don't belong in a secret base. Especially a secret base with a fish-eating dinosaur. You'd be much happier with all this room to swim, right? Exercise those gills? It's much nicer out here than in Jack's coffee cup, trust me. Anyway, if you took one more swim in there, Jack would be the one to kill you."
It wasn't like he thought she would understand him, but he thought maybe his tone of voice would make her relax her grip. Instead, she seemed to be getting excited. She lifted her head and stared at him, almost bouncing up and down to his intonation. Then the wind died down a bit and Owen realized she was singing to him.
This was impossible.
He raised his arm up behind his head. "You have to stay-" He grunted as he flung his hand forward hard, causing Ariel to be dislodged and pitch out over the waves a good ten metres. "-here." Ariel dropped into the water and slipped below a churning dark green wave before she even knew what was happening.
Tosh had gasped. Owen ignored her and turned to the motor, scowling. "Weather's not looking good. We have to get back." Tosh didn't look at him.
Before they reached the marina and tied up the boat, a very respectable storm had kicked up, and they were soaked by the time they climbed onto the dock. It wasn't even worth running to escape the rain. Just before they separated to go to their respective vehicles to return to the Hub, Tosh grabbed Owen's arm, pulled him over, and kissed his cheek. "It's okay," she shouted over the roar of the rain.
~
Tosh might have forgiven him for his abrupt treatment of Ariel, but she hadn't put Ariel behind her. Before she left work that night, Owen caught her tweaking a program that he was pretty sure was scanning portions of the sea.
~
By midnight, the storm still hadn't let up. Owen was home, but he couldn't sleep. After two hours of staring at the ceiling, then the wall, then out the window while drinking whisky, he gave up. Cursing himself, he pulled on a shirt and jeans and caught a taxi to the Hub.
No one was around; Jack was most likely down in his quarters, or out doing whatever Jack did in Cardiff at night-something broody, no doubt. Monitors blinked, running their diagnostics and surveillance programs. The Rift monitor was comfortingly, or perhaps eerily, quiet.
Owen went to Tosh's computer and scanned through the recent activity. He had no trouble finding what he wanted: the program was named 'Ariel.' Obviously Tosh wasn't worried about keeping it a secret. He opened the program's map view and played with it until he found the area he thought they had left Ariel that afternoon. It looked like Tosh was using a satellite for the scans, but how she had filtered for one particular life form, especially one so small, he had no idea.
The scans had been working for hours, but he couldn't find any evidence of the target organism within a three mile radius of the point of origin.
Damn. He hoped Tosh's program was flawed.
~
He spent the last couple of hours of the night re-organizing his medical supplies. Jack shook him awake around six; he'd fallen asleep with his head on the instrument tray. It would take awhile for the red, indented impression of the hemostat to disappear from his cheek.
~
The next two days were business as usual. A Weevil here and there, a "chicken man" reported lurking in a carpark in Splott, neo-huon particles being emitted from a storm drain in Carmathen. Owen had a late night hunting, and came in the next morning around ten.
"Owen!" Gwen chirped when she saw him. God, that was annoying before he'd had his coffee. His respect for Rhys went up a notch. Then again, he'd seen seen Gwen when she was just out of bed in the morning, and it was a visual that tended to mitigate any annoyance her cheeriness might cause.
"I thought you'd released Ariel back into the bay," Gwen said brightly. "Were you keeping her at your place? Come on, admit it."
Owen had been headed toward the coffee, but he stopped. Before he had a chance to ask Gwen what she meant, he heard it.
Singing.
"Ianto found her in the coffeepot this morning. Why didn't you refill her tank if you were bringing her back to the Hub? God, she's cute. Just to warn you, Ianto's going to complain about having to fill the tank himself, but trust me, he didn't mind. She looked at him with those darling eyes..."
Without replying to Gwen, Owen went over to the tank, where Ariel was sitting on a large stone, humming to herself. Then she sensed him and gave a series of greeting chirrups more excited than he'd ever heard from her. She sprang from the rock right up to the lapel of his shirt and climbed up to sit on his shoulder, stroking his ear.
Tosh had come up from behind, and now she stood near the tank next to him. "I've been trying to track her," she admitted in a half-whisper.
"Yeah. I know."
"I was looking in the wrong place. Somehow she moved very quickly, and last night she showed up in the bay right next to the Hub. You know the sea access, where Torchwood used to keep a submersible?"
"You're kidding."
"She must have got through the filters there. You know, if we ever need a homing pigeon for underwater work..."
Owen snorted, just as Jack practically bounded up to join them.
“Owen!”
Oi, he must have had a few cups of coffee himself.
Jack nodded toward Owen’s shoulder. “That looks good on you, you should wear it more often.” He grinned. Owen felt obligated to roll his eyes dramatically.
"Well, miss," Jack said, looking solemnly at the creature, "we have a tradition around here: persistence pays. Welcome to Torchwood Three."
After Jack had gone, Owen allowed himself a very slight smile. This wouldn’t be so bad.
Author: rustydog
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Jack
Rating: PG
Words: 2400
Beta: donutsweeper, most helpful! Any remaining problems are mine.
Notes: This is the last of a fluffy series of sorts, though it should be able to be read on its own. Preceding it were drabbles and a ficlet:
1. Idle and Blessed
2. Inevitable Disaster
3. Nemo
4. Congratulations, It's a Beautiful, Healthy Fish!
The creature formerly known as Nemo seemed to be bored with just lying on the stainless steel instrument tray Owen was using as an examination table. She got up, balanced on her hind feet, and reached out her tiny hands to grab the diagnostic wand Owen was using. Then she began rubbing her delicate gills against it. She had quite a case of the giggles - something about the frequency of the scanning waves, Owen supposed.
Tosh and Gwen had fallen in love with her the instant Jack pulled her out of the water on his fishing line. (Had he been fishing? Had he known what they would find? Owen made a mental note to accuse him sometime and see what came of it.) Though in Gwen's case, Owen suspected her adoration had as much to do with the annoyance it caused him.
Annoyance aside, this little alien was something of a welcome change from potentially dangerous Rift migrants they usually dealt with. She wasn't much bigger than a sparrow, with delicate, lavender gray skin, thin arms and legs, and sticky fingers like a gecko's. It seemed impossible that her tiny body could support the head, which seemed to be about half her mass. Her wide, puppet-like mouth had two rows of teeth so small they were just like sandpaper. Owen was loath to admit it even to himself, but she was pretty cute. Those huge eyes were just- well, they should be freakish, but somehow they just made her lovable.
Which made it all the more important that she be returned to the bay soon. Before anyone - all right, before he got too fond of her. Before she got too used to living here. As much as it might appear sometimes, the Hub was not an alien zoo.
~
Then little blighter took to singing. Or something resembling it. When she was alone in a room, they would overhear her high-pitched hum sliding between pitches like a Chinese stringed instrument. If Owen walked in on her she would stop singing, rise and balance on her hind feet, and give him a series of chirps that went right down the scale. It reminded him of a comedy sound effect for a failed joke. It always made him laugh.
Owen wanted to get her in the water with some recording equipment and find out whether the singing sound might function as some sort of distance communication. But that would be acting like he cared.
Clearly the situation was desperate.
~
This was the problem with pets: people got gushy about them, and before long they were demanding the same treatment for an animal that they'd expect for a member of their own family. And then you were spending valuable work time solving problems related to a three-ounce, bug-eyed alien frog with arms.
The condition Jack had set for the creature's release - sterilization - was giving Owen fits. There was an egg sac in there that had to be removed or neutralized, but Torchwood had no noninvasive surgical equipment that he could operate reliably on such a small scale. He flirted briefly with the idea of chemically induced abortion, but didn't think a membrane holding half an ounce of alien caviar would likely respond the same as a foetus.
All that remained was the old-fashioned way. At least he had a device that could seal and heal without sutures. When she was back among her marine friends, she wouldn't have to feel ashamed about unsightly surgery scars on her smooth, slimy skin.
~
It had taken almost a day to work out what anaesthesia would be safe, but finally Owen had been able to begin the procedure. It was going well, but he wasn't a fan of the spectators who wouldn't shut up.
"Jack," Owen growled, "please don't interrupt me while I'm performing an extremely tiny hysterectomy."
He couldn't turn his head, but he heard Gwen giggling from the landing above the autopsy room. "Thank you for taking this seriously, Tosh," he said quietly. She was holding the suction hose with the miniature attachment he had built for it.
"You're welcome," she replied, but then coughed as if she were trying to suppress something. "'Tiny hysterectomy,'" she whispered. Her shoulders shook, but her hand was steady.
A minute later, apparently recovered, she said, "I thought we could call her Ariel."
"Okay," Owen agreed.
"That was easy," Tosh remarked, sounding surprised. "I thought you'd object to another cartoon character name."
"Hey," Owen said, taking the last snip that freed the egg sac, "If you want to choose a name that reminds me of a gorgeous redhead in a shell bra, a highlight of my adolescence, who am I to stop you?"
~
As fragile as she looked, Ariel was resilient. She was singing again within hours of the surgery, and within a day she was helping herself to Owen's headlice (or so Ianto remarked when he saw her exploring Owen's hair).
Despite her healthy behavior, Owen did a couple of scans before he was satisfied she was well recovered. Then he rang a bloke he knew at the marina and arranged to hire a boat. He had planned to take Ariel out when no one in the Hub was paying attention - minimize the possibility of tearful scenes. But when he arrived at the dock with the little creature in his jacket pocket, Tosh was waiting for him.
"Hi. Ianto noticed you rang the marina," she explained.
Owen rolled his eyes. "Tosh."
"I'm not here to stop you. I just thought you might want some moral support."
"I'm the only one around here who doesn't need moral support, thank you."
"I also thought Ariel would like a friendly face around."
That didn't encourage Owen to stop rolling his eyes, but it wasn't worth arguing. "Fine," he said, and walked past Tosh to step into the boat. He started to make his way toward the motor, then paused, turned around, and held up his hand to help Tosh down. "Come on, then. Let's get this over with."
~
The morning's weather had been fine, but as Owen headed the boat out into the bay, they could see clouds on the horizon like distant piled-up towers of whipped cream. Once they were clear of the traffic in the bay, he increased their speed and the small craft flew over the water, bucking occasionally when it encountered a large wave. The smell of the spray reminded Owen of the last time they were here, a golden day of relaxation Jack had arranged.
Tosh clamped her hands over her hat to keep from losing it in the stronger gusts of wind. Owen thought the water looked darker than it had last time they were out.
He felt something next to his chest, inside his jacket. Ariel was a good wriggler; she had found her way out of his pocket, into the jacket, and up to the pocket of his shirt. She'd be inside his collar soon if he wasn't careful.
Finally, at what he judged to be about eight kilometres from shore, Owen slowed the boat and cut the motor.
Tosh was looking at a device she'd brought along in her bag. "I think we were a few hundred metres to the east," she said.
"What?"
"Before. When we found her. We were a little way off from here."
Owen sighed and turned the motor on again. Ariel was clinging to his ear now.
~
She didn't want to go.
He had held her out over the edge of the boat so she could see the enticing depths. Tosh had leaned out, scooped up some seawater in her hand and poured it over Ariel's belly, hoping it would remind her of home. But she was still clinging to Owen's fingers like a leech, making staccato chirping noises.
Owen cleared his throat and raised his hand so that he was looking the creature right in the enormous, cloudy eyes. He couldn't believe he had to do this, especially with Tosh here, but-
"Look, we've enjoyed having you-" he glanced defensively at Tosh "-fine, I said it, but don't you dare tell Ianto." He returned his attention to the creature. "But you don't belong in a secret base. Especially a secret base with a fish-eating dinosaur. You'd be much happier with all this room to swim, right? Exercise those gills? It's much nicer out here than in Jack's coffee cup, trust me. Anyway, if you took one more swim in there, Jack would be the one to kill you."
It wasn't like he thought she would understand him, but he thought maybe his tone of voice would make her relax her grip. Instead, she seemed to be getting excited. She lifted her head and stared at him, almost bouncing up and down to his intonation. Then the wind died down a bit and Owen realized she was singing to him.
This was impossible.
He raised his arm up behind his head. "You have to stay-" He grunted as he flung his hand forward hard, causing Ariel to be dislodged and pitch out over the waves a good ten metres. "-here." Ariel dropped into the water and slipped below a churning dark green wave before she even knew what was happening.
Tosh had gasped. Owen ignored her and turned to the motor, scowling. "Weather's not looking good. We have to get back." Tosh didn't look at him.
Before they reached the marina and tied up the boat, a very respectable storm had kicked up, and they were soaked by the time they climbed onto the dock. It wasn't even worth running to escape the rain. Just before they separated to go to their respective vehicles to return to the Hub, Tosh grabbed Owen's arm, pulled him over, and kissed his cheek. "It's okay," she shouted over the roar of the rain.
~
Tosh might have forgiven him for his abrupt treatment of Ariel, but she hadn't put Ariel behind her. Before she left work that night, Owen caught her tweaking a program that he was pretty sure was scanning portions of the sea.
~
By midnight, the storm still hadn't let up. Owen was home, but he couldn't sleep. After two hours of staring at the ceiling, then the wall, then out the window while drinking whisky, he gave up. Cursing himself, he pulled on a shirt and jeans and caught a taxi to the Hub.
No one was around; Jack was most likely down in his quarters, or out doing whatever Jack did in Cardiff at night-something broody, no doubt. Monitors blinked, running their diagnostics and surveillance programs. The Rift monitor was comfortingly, or perhaps eerily, quiet.
Owen went to Tosh's computer and scanned through the recent activity. He had no trouble finding what he wanted: the program was named 'Ariel.' Obviously Tosh wasn't worried about keeping it a secret. He opened the program's map view and played with it until he found the area he thought they had left Ariel that afternoon. It looked like Tosh was using a satellite for the scans, but how she had filtered for one particular life form, especially one so small, he had no idea.
The scans had been working for hours, but he couldn't find any evidence of the target organism within a three mile radius of the point of origin.
Damn. He hoped Tosh's program was flawed.
~
He spent the last couple of hours of the night re-organizing his medical supplies. Jack shook him awake around six; he'd fallen asleep with his head on the instrument tray. It would take awhile for the red, indented impression of the hemostat to disappear from his cheek.
~
The next two days were business as usual. A Weevil here and there, a "chicken man" reported lurking in a carpark in Splott, neo-huon particles being emitted from a storm drain in Carmathen. Owen had a late night hunting, and came in the next morning around ten.
"Owen!" Gwen chirped when she saw him. God, that was annoying before he'd had his coffee. His respect for Rhys went up a notch. Then again, he'd seen seen Gwen when she was just out of bed in the morning, and it was a visual that tended to mitigate any annoyance her cheeriness might cause.
"I thought you'd released Ariel back into the bay," Gwen said brightly. "Were you keeping her at your place? Come on, admit it."
Owen had been headed toward the coffee, but he stopped. Before he had a chance to ask Gwen what she meant, he heard it.
Singing.
"Ianto found her in the coffeepot this morning. Why didn't you refill her tank if you were bringing her back to the Hub? God, she's cute. Just to warn you, Ianto's going to complain about having to fill the tank himself, but trust me, he didn't mind. She looked at him with those darling eyes..."
Without replying to Gwen, Owen went over to the tank, where Ariel was sitting on a large stone, humming to herself. Then she sensed him and gave a series of greeting chirrups more excited than he'd ever heard from her. She sprang from the rock right up to the lapel of his shirt and climbed up to sit on his shoulder, stroking his ear.
Tosh had come up from behind, and now she stood near the tank next to him. "I've been trying to track her," she admitted in a half-whisper.
"Yeah. I know."
"I was looking in the wrong place. Somehow she moved very quickly, and last night she showed up in the bay right next to the Hub. You know the sea access, where Torchwood used to keep a submersible?"
"You're kidding."
"She must have got through the filters there. You know, if we ever need a homing pigeon for underwater work..."
Owen snorted, just as Jack practically bounded up to join them.
“Owen!”
Oi, he must have had a few cups of coffee himself.
Jack nodded toward Owen’s shoulder. “That looks good on you, you should wear it more often.” He grinned. Owen felt obligated to roll his eyes dramatically.
"Well, miss," Jack said, looking solemnly at the creature, "we have a tradition around here: persistence pays. Welcome to Torchwood Three."
After Jack had gone, Owen allowed himself a very slight smile. This wouldn’t be so bad.