TW Fic: Got That Friday Feeling Again (3/4)
Title: Got That Friday Feeling Again (3/4)
Author: nancybrown
Prompt: Groundhog Day
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Ianto, Jack, Gwen, Archie, Twelve, Clara
Pairings: Owen/quite a lot of people, Jack/Ianto, past Owen/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys
Words: 18000 (4500 this part)
***
Chapter One
Chapter Two
***
Chapter Three
***
Eyebrows and Clara were nowhere to be found for the next loop, nor the one after. If they only popped in every several hundred loops, he might not see them for an entire year.
He shot himself twice more.
***
Breakfast was finished, and Owen had made a regular habit of making sure his co-workers were fed. Tosh could be tempted with the pastries if he ate one with her. Gwen could be flattered into abandoning her wedding diet for one day. Owen resorted to enlisting Jack's help in embarrassing Ianto into eating, but it worked, and he didn't have to listen to the hungry bitching later.
As they made their way to the SUV, Charlie the hobo asked for spare change. Before Gwen could dig some coins from her purse, Owen palmed him a handshake with fifty quid. "Don't hug me," he said at Charlie's grateful response. "I don't do hugs."
"Owen?" Tosh said, a bit amazed and a lot startled.
He shrugged off their stares as he walked. "Advanced ascites caused by cirrhosis of the liver. He may as well enjoy his last few days on Earth." Owen had tried buying him dinner, dragging him to hospital, treating him himself. Charlie was past help.
"Bless you!" Charlie shouted after him.
No. There were no blessings left for him, only the guilt at knowing there was nothing he could do.
***
He gave himself weekends. Five days of dusty work in a futile effort to find his way out of this mess could be followed by two days of fucking off. He'd spend a day with one of the ladies on his long list, or he'd take a day at the library reading journals, or he'd continue his slow self-taught lessons on the piano. Some days, he just sat and watched the snow all day, catching the flakes and noting the duplicates from last time.
There was a chance he'd gone mad. He might be in Cardiff right now, bunged into Providence Park with an alien lurking inside his brain eating his memories of one day. The thought inspired him, and he dosed himself with about a week's worth of Retcon.
He woke up to the Spice Girls and a headache.
***
If nothing else, he thought forcing himself into an encyclopaedic knowledge of Torchwood Two's archives would be useful in the future as a party game. Quick, name three alien artefacts that could disintegrate any object up to the size of a cat without leaving any radiation trace behind. Owen could jump up with, "Artaxian death ray, Unspecified Alien Firearm sixty-three B, and Holdor Dental Device." Then everyone else would be forced to take a drink whilst he basked in the glow of their esteem or some shit.
Too bad nothing in his inventory appeared to have any bearing on his predicament. When he found something promising, he told Jack about the time loop, sat through the lecture to make Jack happy, then was disappointed over and again when the device he'd so hopefully uncovered turned out to be a memory display, a faulty premonition activator, or an orgasm-extending marital aid which unsubtly found its way into a pocket of the Captain's greatcoat.
On the quiet days, Owen went through boxes of alien documents, talking Toshiko into running them through translation devices or making Jack scrutinise spindly extraterrestrial handwriting and do his best rough translations. Transit papers were filed away with bills of goods, some of which he could go back and cross-reference to items in storage elsewhere. Some of the documents were letters, lost in the galactic void instead of going home to five-armed Mum.
***
"It's me." He chewed his lip in nerves. Years, bloody years stuck here, and he hadn't made this call.
"Oh." He could hear her disappointment across the line. Had she been expecting a different call? "I'm on my way to work."
"Right. I just... I'll call back later."
"Fine."
***
"It's me." It was later, after her shift would be over, and over a week of Fridays since he'd got up the nerve to do this last time.
"Oh." He heard the same disappointment, but then, he'd been hearing that for years. "I was just on my way out."
"Right." He tugged on his own thin hair. "When are you home, Mother?"
"Later," she said, and the line went dead.
***
He called in the middle of the day.
"It's me."
"Oh."
Before she could make an excuse, he said, "Called in today, did you?"
"I left. They were bastards." She'd been sacked. Owen had run a search.
"How are you, Mother?"
"Fine." He could hear her light a cigarette on the other end, the quick hiss and the odd wash of noise from a cupped hand. "What do you want?"
"I just wanted to say hello." He tried out all the words he wanted to say, could say knowing she'd forget them by the next time loop.
"Hello."
"I'm in Glasgow. For business. And I was thinking of you and thought I'd call." He stumbled quickly through the little he'd planned to say. "I'm learning to play the piano."
"Oh. That's. Hm. Nice." She took a drag on her cigarette. "Look, I was just on my way out."
"Right." He listened as the line went dead.
***
HELP HELP HELP HELP
I AM TRAPPED IN A TIME BUBBLE
The magic marker all over the nice chintz wallpaper bled and smeared as Owen wrote in increasingly desperate lettering across the walls. Ls and Ps dragged down, wiggly at the end or drawn out in slashed strokes.
He ignored the pounding on the door frame. He'd shoved the wardrobe in front, which always kept Jack out for twenty three and a half minutes. He ignored the sweat and tears and snot dripping down his face, down his mouth. He ignored the high-pitched singing from his own throat, "If you want my future, forget my past," chanted over and over.
HELP
The door frame gave way. Owen was ready with his gun, pointed at his own temple.
***
He caught sight of the TARDIS outside his window. As he watched, it flickered in and out of view, engines grinding angrily. The landing on the Plass, caught on the CCTV along with Jack's mad dash, had been a smooth purr in comparison. Eyebrows and Clara were bouncing off the day again.
He burst out the door in time to watch it fade from view, and broke down in tears.
Behind him, he heard running feet, and Jack's desperate, "Was that what I think it was?"
"How long did you wait for him?" Owen turned, seeing the others coming up behind their illustrious leader. They wouldn't let Jack leave again, not without them.
Jack stared at the empty pavement. "Almost one hundred and forty years."
"Shit." Owen punched the ground hard enough that he broke his hand. "SHIT!"
***
He spent one loop in his room writing up a detailed plan as to how he would seduce each of his colleagues. Gwen would be first. He knew all her buttons, and all her insecurities. She'd glare at him, and she'd fight with him, and he could take her dog style, wet for his touch and hating herself for wanting him. Jack should be even easier. He'd made his obnoxious flirty comments since the day Owen was hired, and by all accounts, his mouth was a national fucking treasure. For Tosh, Owen would throw in a touch of romance, which she'd eat up like a sweetie, full of blushes as he held her hand and made false confessions. She'd want to be spread wide on the duvet like a new virgin, and she'd cry when she came. Truth be told, Owen could spend the rest of eternity without tapping Ianto's pasty arse. He supposed he may as well collect the whole set, intentionally pushing their rivalry over the edge as he fucked his way into slick, tight heat.
He wrote down times, and patterns of movement, and who would say what when Owen said this or did that. He accounted for the occasional unpredictability in their responses. Something about the butterfly effect was in play: not every action had the exact same reaction every time.
Then he spent ten minutes shredding the paper into tiny bits, and dropped them like confetti on the carpet.
***
He let Gwen witter at him about the wedding. Most of her words cascaded over him, gradually soaking through.
"You're nervous," he told her during one loop. "You spend all this time wondering if you've made the right choice between your great lump and Captain Dental Care, but the truth is, you're worried you're not good enough for Rhys."
Gwen responded to this alternately angry and relieved. "Yeah," she said, looking away. "He stood by me, no matter what I did." Their affair hung between them unspoken in the air. Owen chose not to say the words this time. "I don't deserve him."
"Look, Gwen. A happy relationship is made up of two tossers who secretly believe the other is too good for them. At the level neither of you deserves the other, you and your haulage hunk will be married for the next seventy years. So finish your wedding plans, already. You know this is the right call."
She smiled at him, the first genuine smile he could remember from her in real months, not just these ersatz days piled on days. "Thank you," she said, and excused herself to go outside and call him.
***
In the mornings right after breakfast, he made up an excuse that Rhys had accidentally dialled his mobile, and that Gwen ought to phone him to check in. She returned from her daily call with her cheeks flushed and happy, and ready to climb into the SUV.
***
Ianto didn't speak to him when they worked. Owen had to drag every single conversation out of him.
"You haven't been sleeping," he said, on a particularly unsuccessful loop. "It's the bags under your eyes that give you away."
"You don't have to worry about my sleeping habits." This was where he normally made an excuse to stalk off. Owen stopped him.
"How long have you been having the nightmares?"
Ianto glared at him and tried to push past, but he always pushed left and Owen was a rock. "I'm your doctor. I need to know if your health is impacted by lack of sleep."
"I'm fine."
"Sure, and I'm the bloody queen. Tell me, or I'll make Jack make you tell me."
Ianto grumbled. "It's nothing. It's … It's been a year."
Owen had trouble with dates these days, but he could hazard a guess. A year ago, for everyone else, Gwen was just joining the team, which meant Ianto had been hiding his girlfriend down in the archives. Crazy wife in the attic, crazy robot in the basement, whatever. He'd been looking at a calendar which no longer applied to Owen, and coming up with a lot of bad memories of dead friends and lost love.
"Did I ever tell you about Katie?"
Ianto shook his head. Owen gave him the summary, the bones of what had happened, and watched the understanding crawl over Ianto's face. "The world goes on without her, and you can't imagine how."
"Yeah."
"But you're braver than I am. Me, I'd rather find a bird with no objections for one night, and never think about tempting that heartbreak all over. You? You're willing to go through it all for the sake of falling in love again."
Ianto looked away and down, not blushing but clearly uncomfortable. "It's not like that."
Owen shrugged. "It could be. Win him a Kewpie doll at the festival. He can't get enough of them, fuck knows why."
***
Toshiko was the hardest, and Owen delayed working with her whenever possible. He couldn't stand the look on her face, the need in her eyes.
***
Trying to chip through Jack's defences was like taking a jackhammer to a diamond, and just as pointless. Some days, Owen told him about the loop. Once or twice, he told him the Doctor was involved.
"So what the fuck was it with you two?" he asked Jack, both of them having abandoned their search for the day the minute Owen came clean about where the holoprojector was.
Jack tried to shrug the question off, but Owen pressed. "It's almost like watching two dogs fight, but not. Did you shag him?"
"That's none of your business."
"So no."
Jack paused for a long time. He hated giving up pieces of himself. "No."
"But you could have."
"Things were different when we travelled together. Rose was there. She was the glue."
"Hot?"
"Oh yeah," Jack said with a filthy chuckle.
"You shag her?"
Jack raised his eyebrows and said neither yes nor no.
Another day, another fresh slate. Owen acted as though he'd only been through a few loops instead of the hundreds he'd lost count of. Jack gave him the friendly lecture and told him to let Tosh ask questions. The familiarity of the litany almost gave him away.
"Why the smile?" Jack asked, halted in the middle of his reminiscence of his own regrets.
"No reason."
Jack wouldn't open up in loops when Owen didn't tell his own secret. Owen tried leading questions and he tried outright demands. His boss remained as inscrutable as an onion. At best he might pull out grains of truth about the others from Jack's vast stores, but of himself he gave away nothing on purpose. Still, Owen had found the best way to dig was the same advice Jack himself gave for effective interrogations: act like you know all the facts and are merely clarifying minor details. In this fashion, Owen had managed ten loops of persistent effort to discover the real story behind Toshiko's recruitment. Five more had revealed that Suzie's account of how she'd met Jack wasn't the complete bullshit he'd always believed the tale to be.
"Ianto told me about the nightmares," he said one afternoon, passing Jack a sealed box which he knew contained spare parts for a radio.
Jack went very still. "All right." Perfect. With the right prods, he'd give away more of what was going on with Ianto, which Owen could take back to Ianto in the next loop and use to get him to open up further. He merely had to play his own part carefully.
"It's not unexpected. Past trauma rears its ugly head at anniversaries and other reminders. Any armchair headshrink knows that."
"Yeah."
"I could prescribe something. It's not a good idea," he added, as Jack said abruptly, "No."
Owen offered up a quick, tight smile. "Interfering with the dream cycle isn't a good solution for the long term."
"I'll be fine," said Jack in a curt tone. "Thanks anyway." And shortly thereafter, he made an excuse and went to work in another room.
Oh.
Owen spent more of his brain power than he liked trying not to consider what the other two blokes on their team did in their off hours together. He didn't want to know, and what he did know told him that like any other workplace affair, his own included, it would end up exploding with the shrapnel hitting everyone around them. He preferred not to get involved past the regular STI tests he gave the entire team. None of his business, and he'd intended to keep things that way.
For the first time, he wondered. Ever since Jack had come back from the dead after Abbadon and everything, Owen had assumed whatever was going on, it was a mutual case of wanting someone around who was willing to suck the other off on request. (He'd learned not to walk into room fourteen between the hours of two and three in the afternoon, and he never, ever wanted to know what flap of the butterfly's wings meant which bloke wound up on his knees.) Now, despite himself, he wondered if it wasn't just about the sex. Dark dreams and regrets were a bitch. Someone else there in the night, someone who understood, might be the only thing standing between you and every horror you'd accidentally released and could never take back. The best anyone could hope for in this world was someone who'd wake you from your nightmares and hold you tight and say everything was going to be okay and tell you they love you.
And that, Owen thought, made whatever those two were doing not just an affair any longer, which in turn made it a lot more dangerous to the rest of them should it come to a sudden end.
***
"I'll do the lunch run today," Owen said as Ianto collected their orders.
"Are you sure?" He looked at Owen with suspicion.
"I'm sure." He knew his way around the village roads well enough to get out and back with no trouble, even with the snow. "I just want to get out of here for a bit."
"Fine. Thanks," he said with a grudging look, and handed Owen the keys.
"No problem, mate."
***
They had dinner at the manor house, effected by Owen's joining in with Archie when he suggested it, and broadly lying that the roads were shit. He wanted a chance to check out the private rooms tonight after the others had gone to bed. To sweeten the deal, he'd packed the picnic hamper with good food and plenty of beer over lunch, and had offered to cook. Cookery wasn't a skill he came to easily. Memorising one good recipe was enough to wow them, though, and he basked in the pleasing glow of his colleagues' thanks.
"Perhaps you'll see some ghosts tonight," Archie said to Jack, tipping back a beer. "I'm sure there are one or two spirits rattling around here who remember you fondly."
Jack chuckled, playing with his water glass. "More than one or two, I'd hope."
Ianto flashed a worried smile at Gwen. "And there was me thinking this place was creepy enough." He left off the unspoken fear of spectral intruders coming in to watch whatever it was Owen didn't want to think about them doing tonight.
"It's not so bad," Gwen said. "I've seen plenty of spooky places since I signed on, and this is more quaint than anything."
To his surprise, Tosh agreed, glancing around the dark corners of the great room. "I like it here. Perhaps get in a maid to deal with the worst of the dust, put in a broadband connection and some greenery, and the ghosts can pull up a chair if they like."
"You're both mad," Ianto said.
"I thought you liked antiques," Jack said. Owen was pretty sure Ianto kicked him under the table, but that only made Jack grin more widely.
He let the team search the archives for the next several hours whilst he made his way through the bedrooms. He'd spent his second night of the loop here, which meant this would likely be a bust. He was out of ideas, honestly. None of the artefacts helped, not even the ones he'd learned were misidentified. The only other two people caught in the loop with him were spending it time-hopping in a blue box, and were singularly unhelpful in getting out.
Also unhelpful was every item he found in tonight's search. No alien rubbish had found its way up here, unless Jack was pocketing that toy again for later in the evening. He found old papers, but nothing interesting. The private letters and such had been cleared for incriminating evidence and donated by the Institute to a museum ages ago. Stuffy people in paintings stared out at nothing and glared at nobody. He could research their names if he wanted, he supposed.
"What are you doing?"
Tosh stood in the doorway of the room. The light from the corridor behind her sent eerie shadows on the wood floor.
"Just looking around. I thought I saw something in here." He gestured at the paintings. "I see dead people."
"Hm." She came in. "She looks sad."
Owen squinted in the dull light. "Yeah. I suppose." He cleared his throat. His attempted search was interrupted, though it wasn't as if he'd expected to find much. "You sure this place doesn't give you the creeps?"
"No, it's nice here. Quiet. Even with the dead people." She nodded at the lady in the portrait. "Sorry," Tosh said to her. "About whatever happened."
He'd have expected Gwen to come up with some kind words or some shit for the old pictures, but even Tosh was able to scrape up a bit of empathy for someone who'd been dead for a century. A spot of guilt nibbled at him, unfamiliar and unwelcome, chasing him down the stairs as the pair of them rejoined the others in the main archives.
***
Archie smoked like a chimney and had a tiny speck of cancerous tissue in his left lung. Owen had scanned, prodded, poked, and questioned for loop after loop, knowing he'd find something. "It's the earliest possible detection," he assured Archie, who took the news with bad grace and a fumbled cigar. Owen read up on current cancer treatments in his evening hours, the noise of the festival coming in through his open bedroom window. The cold air helped him think. The rhythm of the same songs, the same happy screams, the steady bustle of people having fun despite the snow, these became a lulling background white noise to his research.
"It'll be fine," he assured Archie, showing him the test results for the first time. "I just read about a remarkable treatment that should have you right as rain. We can start tomorrow."
"Bless you," Archie said, and he clasped Owen's hand.
***
Mrs. McDaniels and Ms. Barlow lived together and owned one Vauxhall Viva older than Owen. Every day, Ms. Barlow popped a tyre on Buchanan Street, and should Mrs. McDaniels try to fix it herself, her heart would give out. Every day, Owen waited with a trolley jack and a spare, with a bullshit story about the auto club and a stern reminder for Mrs. McDaniels to take her tablets on schedule.
***
Louis Mayhew, aged 9, broke his arm every morning falling out of the tree he oughtn't have been climbing before school. Owen set the bone twice before he scrambled out of the bed, threw on clothes whilst the Spice Girls sang at him, and ran pell-mell five streets away to catch the little bastard before he hit the pavement.
"You never thank me!" Owen shouted at the retreating back of the boy.
***
"I'll do the lunch run," Owen said, just as Ianto was collecting their orders.
Ianto's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure?" He clutched the keys in his hand, a nervous gesture Owen had learned to read.
"I'm sure. I've had more practise than you driving on icy roads." Too right, though he'd come up with a cover story for the times Ianto asked when on Earth Owen would have had a chance for that. No further questioning came. Owen added, "Need a break from this place anyway. My eyes are crossing."
"Fine." Reluctant gratitude crossed his face as he handed over the keys and the orders. "Thank you."
"No problem, mate. By the way, Captain Jack needs a hand in room fourteen." He always did on the days Owen remembered to lean that Olandan hoover on its side.
Mr. Thomas took lunch down the pub and ordered a steak, medium well, with a jacket potato. Not that the bloke couldn't do to miss a few meals, Owen always thought as he huffed and chuffed his way through the Heimlich manoeuvre to dislodge a piece of meat from the man's thick throat.
"You're welcome," he said, and yeah, he enjoyed the attention from the other customers quite a bit. No time to stick around for proper thanks. Kerry McWilliam would be slipping on the ice three blocks away soon enough, and if he grabbed her arm in time, she wouldn't crack her head on the pavement.
"You need better shoes," he told her, every day before he dashed off to prevent the bunting collapse, then had a quick chat with Jimmy Paulk before he made a terrible decision.
Some days, he forgot to fetch lunch entirely.
***
The fucking butterfly flapped its bloody wings. Almost every day went precisely as he planned. For all that rubbish about free will and independent thought, his ordeal had taught Owen a human was as easily programmable as an abacus. Move one bead, the others go this way, clean and easy. Compliment Joscelyn on her earrings, and pop open her legs. Hand the winning scratchcards to Maisie for the library, get a snog for his trouble and when he wanted, a fantastic evening later. Give Gwen a nudge, and she'd spend half the day on her mobile telling that fat lump how much she missed him; nudge her a different way and she'd spend the day shouting at him. Mention fucking Kewpie dolls to either Jack or Ianto, and they'd spend the day out of his hair and shagging like weasels that night.
He'd have expected Toshiko to be the most computer-like, considering. He could coax her into eating breakfast, and on the loops where Jack made Owen let her ask questions, she asked the same questions. Except sometimes, she didn't.
"What would you say your current psychological state is?" she asked, pushing her glasses up on her nose as she typed into her data pad.
"Half mental."
"Only half? I don't know how I would survive it," she said. "Nothing new under the sun ever? I couldn't do it."
But one time when she asked, and he replied, she said, "That has to be fascinating. You're experiencing life more fully than anyone ever has. You can live through every single possibility. You can explore every opportunity. There are no missed chances, no regrets."
"Yeah," he said, a little startled. "Done that."
"Everything?" she asked, with a hint of impish grin that covered what he could see was also a hopeful one.
And what to tell her? "Almost everything. I have to give myself something to do tomorrow, right?"
"Right."
The questions returned to their usual pattern, and the next time, she went back to her same old answers.
***
Chapter Four
Author: nancybrown
Prompt: Groundhog Day
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Ianto, Jack, Gwen, Archie, Twelve, Clara
Pairings: Owen/quite a lot of people, Jack/Ianto, past Owen/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys
Words: 18000 (4500 this part)
***
Chapter One
Chapter Two
***
Chapter Three
***
Eyebrows and Clara were nowhere to be found for the next loop, nor the one after. If they only popped in every several hundred loops, he might not see them for an entire year.
He shot himself twice more.
***
Breakfast was finished, and Owen had made a regular habit of making sure his co-workers were fed. Tosh could be tempted with the pastries if he ate one with her. Gwen could be flattered into abandoning her wedding diet for one day. Owen resorted to enlisting Jack's help in embarrassing Ianto into eating, but it worked, and he didn't have to listen to the hungry bitching later.
As they made their way to the SUV, Charlie the hobo asked for spare change. Before Gwen could dig some coins from her purse, Owen palmed him a handshake with fifty quid. "Don't hug me," he said at Charlie's grateful response. "I don't do hugs."
"Owen?" Tosh said, a bit amazed and a lot startled.
He shrugged off their stares as he walked. "Advanced ascites caused by cirrhosis of the liver. He may as well enjoy his last few days on Earth." Owen had tried buying him dinner, dragging him to hospital, treating him himself. Charlie was past help.
"Bless you!" Charlie shouted after him.
No. There were no blessings left for him, only the guilt at knowing there was nothing he could do.
***
He gave himself weekends. Five days of dusty work in a futile effort to find his way out of this mess could be followed by two days of fucking off. He'd spend a day with one of the ladies on his long list, or he'd take a day at the library reading journals, or he'd continue his slow self-taught lessons on the piano. Some days, he just sat and watched the snow all day, catching the flakes and noting the duplicates from last time.
There was a chance he'd gone mad. He might be in Cardiff right now, bunged into Providence Park with an alien lurking inside his brain eating his memories of one day. The thought inspired him, and he dosed himself with about a week's worth of Retcon.
He woke up to the Spice Girls and a headache.
***
If nothing else, he thought forcing himself into an encyclopaedic knowledge of Torchwood Two's archives would be useful in the future as a party game. Quick, name three alien artefacts that could disintegrate any object up to the size of a cat without leaving any radiation trace behind. Owen could jump up with, "Artaxian death ray, Unspecified Alien Firearm sixty-three B, and Holdor Dental Device." Then everyone else would be forced to take a drink whilst he basked in the glow of their esteem or some shit.
Too bad nothing in his inventory appeared to have any bearing on his predicament. When he found something promising, he told Jack about the time loop, sat through the lecture to make Jack happy, then was disappointed over and again when the device he'd so hopefully uncovered turned out to be a memory display, a faulty premonition activator, or an orgasm-extending marital aid which unsubtly found its way into a pocket of the Captain's greatcoat.
On the quiet days, Owen went through boxes of alien documents, talking Toshiko into running them through translation devices or making Jack scrutinise spindly extraterrestrial handwriting and do his best rough translations. Transit papers were filed away with bills of goods, some of which he could go back and cross-reference to items in storage elsewhere. Some of the documents were letters, lost in the galactic void instead of going home to five-armed Mum.
***
"It's me." He chewed his lip in nerves. Years, bloody years stuck here, and he hadn't made this call.
"Oh." He could hear her disappointment across the line. Had she been expecting a different call? "I'm on my way to work."
"Right. I just... I'll call back later."
"Fine."
***
"It's me." It was later, after her shift would be over, and over a week of Fridays since he'd got up the nerve to do this last time.
"Oh." He heard the same disappointment, but then, he'd been hearing that for years. "I was just on my way out."
"Right." He tugged on his own thin hair. "When are you home, Mother?"
"Later," she said, and the line went dead.
***
He called in the middle of the day.
"It's me."
"Oh."
Before she could make an excuse, he said, "Called in today, did you?"
"I left. They were bastards." She'd been sacked. Owen had run a search.
"How are you, Mother?"
"Fine." He could hear her light a cigarette on the other end, the quick hiss and the odd wash of noise from a cupped hand. "What do you want?"
"I just wanted to say hello." He tried out all the words he wanted to say, could say knowing she'd forget them by the next time loop.
"Hello."
"I'm in Glasgow. For business. And I was thinking of you and thought I'd call." He stumbled quickly through the little he'd planned to say. "I'm learning to play the piano."
"Oh. That's. Hm. Nice." She took a drag on her cigarette. "Look, I was just on my way out."
"Right." He listened as the line went dead.
***
HELP HELP HELP HELP
I AM TRAPPED IN A TIME BUBBLE
The magic marker all over the nice chintz wallpaper bled and smeared as Owen wrote in increasingly desperate lettering across the walls. Ls and Ps dragged down, wiggly at the end or drawn out in slashed strokes.
He ignored the pounding on the door frame. He'd shoved the wardrobe in front, which always kept Jack out for twenty three and a half minutes. He ignored the sweat and tears and snot dripping down his face, down his mouth. He ignored the high-pitched singing from his own throat, "If you want my future, forget my past," chanted over and over.
HELP
The door frame gave way. Owen was ready with his gun, pointed at his own temple.
***
He caught sight of the TARDIS outside his window. As he watched, it flickered in and out of view, engines grinding angrily. The landing on the Plass, caught on the CCTV along with Jack's mad dash, had been a smooth purr in comparison. Eyebrows and Clara were bouncing off the day again.
He burst out the door in time to watch it fade from view, and broke down in tears.
Behind him, he heard running feet, and Jack's desperate, "Was that what I think it was?"
"How long did you wait for him?" Owen turned, seeing the others coming up behind their illustrious leader. They wouldn't let Jack leave again, not without them.
Jack stared at the empty pavement. "Almost one hundred and forty years."
"Shit." Owen punched the ground hard enough that he broke his hand. "SHIT!"
***
He spent one loop in his room writing up a detailed plan as to how he would seduce each of his colleagues. Gwen would be first. He knew all her buttons, and all her insecurities. She'd glare at him, and she'd fight with him, and he could take her dog style, wet for his touch and hating herself for wanting him. Jack should be even easier. He'd made his obnoxious flirty comments since the day Owen was hired, and by all accounts, his mouth was a national fucking treasure. For Tosh, Owen would throw in a touch of romance, which she'd eat up like a sweetie, full of blushes as he held her hand and made false confessions. She'd want to be spread wide on the duvet like a new virgin, and she'd cry when she came. Truth be told, Owen could spend the rest of eternity without tapping Ianto's pasty arse. He supposed he may as well collect the whole set, intentionally pushing their rivalry over the edge as he fucked his way into slick, tight heat.
He wrote down times, and patterns of movement, and who would say what when Owen said this or did that. He accounted for the occasional unpredictability in their responses. Something about the butterfly effect was in play: not every action had the exact same reaction every time.
Then he spent ten minutes shredding the paper into tiny bits, and dropped them like confetti on the carpet.
***
He let Gwen witter at him about the wedding. Most of her words cascaded over him, gradually soaking through.
"You're nervous," he told her during one loop. "You spend all this time wondering if you've made the right choice between your great lump and Captain Dental Care, but the truth is, you're worried you're not good enough for Rhys."
Gwen responded to this alternately angry and relieved. "Yeah," she said, looking away. "He stood by me, no matter what I did." Their affair hung between them unspoken in the air. Owen chose not to say the words this time. "I don't deserve him."
"Look, Gwen. A happy relationship is made up of two tossers who secretly believe the other is too good for them. At the level neither of you deserves the other, you and your haulage hunk will be married for the next seventy years. So finish your wedding plans, already. You know this is the right call."
She smiled at him, the first genuine smile he could remember from her in real months, not just these ersatz days piled on days. "Thank you," she said, and excused herself to go outside and call him.
***
In the mornings right after breakfast, he made up an excuse that Rhys had accidentally dialled his mobile, and that Gwen ought to phone him to check in. She returned from her daily call with her cheeks flushed and happy, and ready to climb into the SUV.
***
Ianto didn't speak to him when they worked. Owen had to drag every single conversation out of him.
"You haven't been sleeping," he said, on a particularly unsuccessful loop. "It's the bags under your eyes that give you away."
"You don't have to worry about my sleeping habits." This was where he normally made an excuse to stalk off. Owen stopped him.
"How long have you been having the nightmares?"
Ianto glared at him and tried to push past, but he always pushed left and Owen was a rock. "I'm your doctor. I need to know if your health is impacted by lack of sleep."
"I'm fine."
"Sure, and I'm the bloody queen. Tell me, or I'll make Jack make you tell me."
Ianto grumbled. "It's nothing. It's … It's been a year."
Owen had trouble with dates these days, but he could hazard a guess. A year ago, for everyone else, Gwen was just joining the team, which meant Ianto had been hiding his girlfriend down in the archives. Crazy wife in the attic, crazy robot in the basement, whatever. He'd been looking at a calendar which no longer applied to Owen, and coming up with a lot of bad memories of dead friends and lost love.
"Did I ever tell you about Katie?"
Ianto shook his head. Owen gave him the summary, the bones of what had happened, and watched the understanding crawl over Ianto's face. "The world goes on without her, and you can't imagine how."
"Yeah."
"But you're braver than I am. Me, I'd rather find a bird with no objections for one night, and never think about tempting that heartbreak all over. You? You're willing to go through it all for the sake of falling in love again."
Ianto looked away and down, not blushing but clearly uncomfortable. "It's not like that."
Owen shrugged. "It could be. Win him a Kewpie doll at the festival. He can't get enough of them, fuck knows why."
***
Toshiko was the hardest, and Owen delayed working with her whenever possible. He couldn't stand the look on her face, the need in her eyes.
***
Trying to chip through Jack's defences was like taking a jackhammer to a diamond, and just as pointless. Some days, Owen told him about the loop. Once or twice, he told him the Doctor was involved.
"So what the fuck was it with you two?" he asked Jack, both of them having abandoned their search for the day the minute Owen came clean about where the holoprojector was.
Jack tried to shrug the question off, but Owen pressed. "It's almost like watching two dogs fight, but not. Did you shag him?"
"That's none of your business."
"So no."
Jack paused for a long time. He hated giving up pieces of himself. "No."
"But you could have."
"Things were different when we travelled together. Rose was there. She was the glue."
"Hot?"
"Oh yeah," Jack said with a filthy chuckle.
"You shag her?"
Jack raised his eyebrows and said neither yes nor no.
Another day, another fresh slate. Owen acted as though he'd only been through a few loops instead of the hundreds he'd lost count of. Jack gave him the friendly lecture and told him to let Tosh ask questions. The familiarity of the litany almost gave him away.
"Why the smile?" Jack asked, halted in the middle of his reminiscence of his own regrets.
"No reason."
Jack wouldn't open up in loops when Owen didn't tell his own secret. Owen tried leading questions and he tried outright demands. His boss remained as inscrutable as an onion. At best he might pull out grains of truth about the others from Jack's vast stores, but of himself he gave away nothing on purpose. Still, Owen had found the best way to dig was the same advice Jack himself gave for effective interrogations: act like you know all the facts and are merely clarifying minor details. In this fashion, Owen had managed ten loops of persistent effort to discover the real story behind Toshiko's recruitment. Five more had revealed that Suzie's account of how she'd met Jack wasn't the complete bullshit he'd always believed the tale to be.
"Ianto told me about the nightmares," he said one afternoon, passing Jack a sealed box which he knew contained spare parts for a radio.
Jack went very still. "All right." Perfect. With the right prods, he'd give away more of what was going on with Ianto, which Owen could take back to Ianto in the next loop and use to get him to open up further. He merely had to play his own part carefully.
"It's not unexpected. Past trauma rears its ugly head at anniversaries and other reminders. Any armchair headshrink knows that."
"Yeah."
"I could prescribe something. It's not a good idea," he added, as Jack said abruptly, "No."
Owen offered up a quick, tight smile. "Interfering with the dream cycle isn't a good solution for the long term."
"I'll be fine," said Jack in a curt tone. "Thanks anyway." And shortly thereafter, he made an excuse and went to work in another room.
Oh.
Owen spent more of his brain power than he liked trying not to consider what the other two blokes on their team did in their off hours together. He didn't want to know, and what he did know told him that like any other workplace affair, his own included, it would end up exploding with the shrapnel hitting everyone around them. He preferred not to get involved past the regular STI tests he gave the entire team. None of his business, and he'd intended to keep things that way.
For the first time, he wondered. Ever since Jack had come back from the dead after Abbadon and everything, Owen had assumed whatever was going on, it was a mutual case of wanting someone around who was willing to suck the other off on request. (He'd learned not to walk into room fourteen between the hours of two and three in the afternoon, and he never, ever wanted to know what flap of the butterfly's wings meant which bloke wound up on his knees.) Now, despite himself, he wondered if it wasn't just about the sex. Dark dreams and regrets were a bitch. Someone else there in the night, someone who understood, might be the only thing standing between you and every horror you'd accidentally released and could never take back. The best anyone could hope for in this world was someone who'd wake you from your nightmares and hold you tight and say everything was going to be okay and tell you they love you.
And that, Owen thought, made whatever those two were doing not just an affair any longer, which in turn made it a lot more dangerous to the rest of them should it come to a sudden end.
***
"I'll do the lunch run today," Owen said as Ianto collected their orders.
"Are you sure?" He looked at Owen with suspicion.
"I'm sure." He knew his way around the village roads well enough to get out and back with no trouble, even with the snow. "I just want to get out of here for a bit."
"Fine. Thanks," he said with a grudging look, and handed Owen the keys.
"No problem, mate."
***
They had dinner at the manor house, effected by Owen's joining in with Archie when he suggested it, and broadly lying that the roads were shit. He wanted a chance to check out the private rooms tonight after the others had gone to bed. To sweeten the deal, he'd packed the picnic hamper with good food and plenty of beer over lunch, and had offered to cook. Cookery wasn't a skill he came to easily. Memorising one good recipe was enough to wow them, though, and he basked in the pleasing glow of his colleagues' thanks.
"Perhaps you'll see some ghosts tonight," Archie said to Jack, tipping back a beer. "I'm sure there are one or two spirits rattling around here who remember you fondly."
Jack chuckled, playing with his water glass. "More than one or two, I'd hope."
Ianto flashed a worried smile at Gwen. "And there was me thinking this place was creepy enough." He left off the unspoken fear of spectral intruders coming in to watch whatever it was Owen didn't want to think about them doing tonight.
"It's not so bad," Gwen said. "I've seen plenty of spooky places since I signed on, and this is more quaint than anything."
To his surprise, Tosh agreed, glancing around the dark corners of the great room. "I like it here. Perhaps get in a maid to deal with the worst of the dust, put in a broadband connection and some greenery, and the ghosts can pull up a chair if they like."
"You're both mad," Ianto said.
"I thought you liked antiques," Jack said. Owen was pretty sure Ianto kicked him under the table, but that only made Jack grin more widely.
He let the team search the archives for the next several hours whilst he made his way through the bedrooms. He'd spent his second night of the loop here, which meant this would likely be a bust. He was out of ideas, honestly. None of the artefacts helped, not even the ones he'd learned were misidentified. The only other two people caught in the loop with him were spending it time-hopping in a blue box, and were singularly unhelpful in getting out.
Also unhelpful was every item he found in tonight's search. No alien rubbish had found its way up here, unless Jack was pocketing that toy again for later in the evening. He found old papers, but nothing interesting. The private letters and such had been cleared for incriminating evidence and donated by the Institute to a museum ages ago. Stuffy people in paintings stared out at nothing and glared at nobody. He could research their names if he wanted, he supposed.
"What are you doing?"
Tosh stood in the doorway of the room. The light from the corridor behind her sent eerie shadows on the wood floor.
"Just looking around. I thought I saw something in here." He gestured at the paintings. "I see dead people."
"Hm." She came in. "She looks sad."
Owen squinted in the dull light. "Yeah. I suppose." He cleared his throat. His attempted search was interrupted, though it wasn't as if he'd expected to find much. "You sure this place doesn't give you the creeps?"
"No, it's nice here. Quiet. Even with the dead people." She nodded at the lady in the portrait. "Sorry," Tosh said to her. "About whatever happened."
He'd have expected Gwen to come up with some kind words or some shit for the old pictures, but even Tosh was able to scrape up a bit of empathy for someone who'd been dead for a century. A spot of guilt nibbled at him, unfamiliar and unwelcome, chasing him down the stairs as the pair of them rejoined the others in the main archives.
***
Archie smoked like a chimney and had a tiny speck of cancerous tissue in his left lung. Owen had scanned, prodded, poked, and questioned for loop after loop, knowing he'd find something. "It's the earliest possible detection," he assured Archie, who took the news with bad grace and a fumbled cigar. Owen read up on current cancer treatments in his evening hours, the noise of the festival coming in through his open bedroom window. The cold air helped him think. The rhythm of the same songs, the same happy screams, the steady bustle of people having fun despite the snow, these became a lulling background white noise to his research.
"It'll be fine," he assured Archie, showing him the test results for the first time. "I just read about a remarkable treatment that should have you right as rain. We can start tomorrow."
"Bless you," Archie said, and he clasped Owen's hand.
***
Mrs. McDaniels and Ms. Barlow lived together and owned one Vauxhall Viva older than Owen. Every day, Ms. Barlow popped a tyre on Buchanan Street, and should Mrs. McDaniels try to fix it herself, her heart would give out. Every day, Owen waited with a trolley jack and a spare, with a bullshit story about the auto club and a stern reminder for Mrs. McDaniels to take her tablets on schedule.
***
Louis Mayhew, aged 9, broke his arm every morning falling out of the tree he oughtn't have been climbing before school. Owen set the bone twice before he scrambled out of the bed, threw on clothes whilst the Spice Girls sang at him, and ran pell-mell five streets away to catch the little bastard before he hit the pavement.
"You never thank me!" Owen shouted at the retreating back of the boy.
***
"I'll do the lunch run," Owen said, just as Ianto was collecting their orders.
Ianto's eyes narrowed. "Are you sure?" He clutched the keys in his hand, a nervous gesture Owen had learned to read.
"I'm sure. I've had more practise than you driving on icy roads." Too right, though he'd come up with a cover story for the times Ianto asked when on Earth Owen would have had a chance for that. No further questioning came. Owen added, "Need a break from this place anyway. My eyes are crossing."
"Fine." Reluctant gratitude crossed his face as he handed over the keys and the orders. "Thank you."
"No problem, mate. By the way, Captain Jack needs a hand in room fourteen." He always did on the days Owen remembered to lean that Olandan hoover on its side.
Mr. Thomas took lunch down the pub and ordered a steak, medium well, with a jacket potato. Not that the bloke couldn't do to miss a few meals, Owen always thought as he huffed and chuffed his way through the Heimlich manoeuvre to dislodge a piece of meat from the man's thick throat.
"You're welcome," he said, and yeah, he enjoyed the attention from the other customers quite a bit. No time to stick around for proper thanks. Kerry McWilliam would be slipping on the ice three blocks away soon enough, and if he grabbed her arm in time, she wouldn't crack her head on the pavement.
"You need better shoes," he told her, every day before he dashed off to prevent the bunting collapse, then had a quick chat with Jimmy Paulk before he made a terrible decision.
Some days, he forgot to fetch lunch entirely.
***
The fucking butterfly flapped its bloody wings. Almost every day went precisely as he planned. For all that rubbish about free will and independent thought, his ordeal had taught Owen a human was as easily programmable as an abacus. Move one bead, the others go this way, clean and easy. Compliment Joscelyn on her earrings, and pop open her legs. Hand the winning scratchcards to Maisie for the library, get a snog for his trouble and when he wanted, a fantastic evening later. Give Gwen a nudge, and she'd spend half the day on her mobile telling that fat lump how much she missed him; nudge her a different way and she'd spend the day shouting at him. Mention fucking Kewpie dolls to either Jack or Ianto, and they'd spend the day out of his hair and shagging like weasels that night.
He'd have expected Toshiko to be the most computer-like, considering. He could coax her into eating breakfast, and on the loops where Jack made Owen let her ask questions, she asked the same questions. Except sometimes, she didn't.
"What would you say your current psychological state is?" she asked, pushing her glasses up on her nose as she typed into her data pad.
"Half mental."
"Only half? I don't know how I would survive it," she said. "Nothing new under the sun ever? I couldn't do it."
But one time when she asked, and he replied, she said, "That has to be fascinating. You're experiencing life more fully than anyone ever has. You can live through every single possibility. You can explore every opportunity. There are no missed chances, no regrets."
"Yeah," he said, a little startled. "Done that."
"Everything?" she asked, with a hint of impish grin that covered what he could see was also a hopeful one.
And what to tell her? "Almost everything. I have to give myself something to do tomorrow, right?"
"Right."
The questions returned to their usual pattern, and the next time, she went back to her same old answers.
***
Chapter Four