Bloody lj said it was too long.
Part One
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Owen cut her down, and Ianto caught her. Tosh didn’t want to get involved, and neither man blamed her. Gwen’s face was pale, her neck bruised, skin discoloured from suffocation. They didn’t speak. There were no words. Nothing that could make this right.
“I’ll never forgive her for this,” Owen said, when they’d zipped her up and put her in a drawer above Suzie’s. Ianto turned helpless eyes on him.
“You cunt,” he snarled, words ripping the awkward silence between them, “You really don’t give a fuck, do you?”
Owen can’t really remember what happened next. He’s lost half an hour of some kind, and all he really knows is that at the end of that half hour he was lying crying on the floor with a cut lip and a bloody nose, and he could not stop sobbing.
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“What about this one?” Greg pokes the perfectly round scar on Owen’s shoulder. “Looks like a gunshot wound.”
“Mmm.” Owen doesn’t open his eyes. They can’t stay here, because sitting out in the open on the hood of a fucking huge car is sort of begging to be killed, but his limbs feel impossibly heavy and everyone needs a break now and then.
“Tell me,” Greg insists, he sounds curious, almost amused.
“A colleague shot me, because I was acting like a twat,” Owen sighs. He doesn’t like to remember the time that wasn’t his finest hour {if he doesn’t think about it too hard, maybe it didn’t happen}. He thinks Greg would probably like some further form of justification, but he can’t bring himself to explain Torchwood, all its senseless little intricacies. No one understands and no one should. These things happen.
What Greg actually asks is: “And what did you to him?”
What Owen doesn’t reply is: “I paid him back in kind.”
.
All they really had to do was get on a train to Gatwick, get on a plane, and get out of London. With one gun, and thousands, possibly even millions, of Them on the streets. Ianto was the one allowed to carry their weapon, since he was the one intelligent enough not to get his original gun stolen. They both knew that only one of them was going to make it out alive.
For a while, it seemed like they were going to get away with it, but then They seemed to work out what Owen and Ianto were planning, and it became uncomfortably aware that they were being followed.
“One of us could hold Them off,” Ianto pointed out when they were running, three streets ahead of an army that wasn’t ever going to stop, and they couldn’t stay ahead forever. “One of us could probably distract Them long enough for the other to escape.”
They always knew it was going to come down to this. But Owen never expected Ianto to attack first.
.
Jack would probably have been safer for longer if he hadn’t insisted on trying to negotiate with Them; it turned out that the patented Jack Harkness Charm didn’t work on everyone.
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“Why are you here?” Greg asks, his shoulder is pressed against Owen’s, and they both know that they’re going to have to move in exactly five minutes; leave it any longer and it’ll be too late to start running. “Why did you risk your life to get here when you knew you couldn’t do anything?”
“To show that I could,” Owen replies dully, “Because I was the last one left from Torchwood and someone had to be here.”
“So that’s it.” Greg almost laughs. “You’re here to prove a point.”
Owen doesn’t tell him what he had to do to Ianto in order to get here, doesn’t mention Tosh being dragged away across the railway lines or the air hostess whose screams echoed around the arrivals hall as Owen took a dead man’s rifle and ran for his life without daring to look back.
“Why are you here?” he snarls. Greg looks tired.
“Because Sara was meant to be here and she was killed a day before you arrived.”
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It’s too painful to remember, but forgetting isn’t an option.
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“So you’re the last one left of your team?” Owen slides off the hood of the car, discards the sunglasses, leaving them in the road to be smashed. Greg gets in on the passenger side of the car, and Owen hopes that he’s capable of driving, sunblind and sick to his stomach.
“Catherine killed herself,” Greg says almost dreamily, when Owen starts the car again, “And Grissom got taken, and I don’t know what happened to Warrick but I haven’t seen him in months, and Nick was-” He falters for a moment, “Nick was- was killed and Sara was meant to be here.”
“Ianto was meant to be here,” Owen admits, finally, keeping his gaze on the road.
{By rights, they should both be dead.}
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When Ianto kicked Owen’s legs out from under him, Owen’s mind went momentarily blank with shock, and he dragged Ianto down with him, hard. Ianto hit his head on the pavement, and there wasn’t much time; one of them had to get out of this, before They arrived.
They fought, desperate men, Owen tugged the gun from Ianto’s belt and threw it across the street, tried to run for it, Ianto elbowed him in the face and they were both bleeding and shouting and someone had to win quickly, or they were both killed and that would be it for Torchwood. This would be the moment to be selfless, to wait and let Ianto go. Ianto would know what to do.
Owen’s head cracked on the ground, blood got in his eyes and his thoughts split and he shoved his foot in the direction of Ianto’s ribs, maybe one of them broke, maybe one of them didn’t, Ianto gasped in agony, and Owen took his chance, running over and scooping the gun up from where it had fallen.
He had no choice. They both knew that. Ianto would have done the same to him.
But he had the gun.
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“Who was Ianto?” Greg asks. Owen wonders if he’s going to kill them both, driving erratically and unable to focus on anything. Maybe it’s ironic, that he stopped Greg from crashing the car and now he’s probably going to do it.
“The one who shot me that time,” Owen mutters. He tries to slow down, he can’t move his foot from the accelerator. “He’d be better at this than I am.”
“What happened to him?” Greg’s voice is tentative. “Was he taken? They took Sara. I shot so many of Them, she nearly got away, but…” he winces, “It wasn’t enough.”
Greg tried to save his friend. Owen should’ve tried.
But he had the gun.
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Ianto was on his feet, but it was too late. Owen had the gun and he was going to live. He felt so sick that he could barely move and the shock was making his hands shake. Ianto took two steps forward; Owen took the safety off.
He didn’t apologise; he meant to. They both remembered, simultaneously, the promise made months ago - “I won’t let Them take you.” Owen should’ve stepped back, should’ve stayed, but he was scared and tired and while They were distracted with Ianto he’d have the time to get completely away.
Ianto looked at him, face pale and a little bloody, and took another deliberate step forward. He’d do it, Owen realised. He really would attack, and win this time, and leave Owen behind to die. Owen promised, but-
He shot. And Ianto’s hands clasped over his stomach, blood slid through his fingers.
“I’m letting you off the hook,” he said, and Owen didn’t want his forgiveness.
“You bastard,” he hissed, and They were coming into view, he’d lingered too long, and Ianto’s knees gave out beneath him with a breathless laugh; and Owen ran.
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There’s a wall coming up ahead of them and he can’t think.
Owen brakes too fast, whacks his forehead on the steering wheel. He doesn’t raise his head, breathing too hard and Greg says nothing. Everyone has things they don’t want to remember, things they’ve done to survive that they wish they hadn’t.
“You’re bloody lucky I didn’t kill us both,” Owen mumbles, eyes shut, “Just- just don’t ask.”
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{Suzie was right about him, you know.}
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“If you want to kill yourself too, go ahead,” Owen told Tosh one evening, when Ianto was somewhere else. “I won’t hold it against you.”
Tosh looked exhausted, dark circles around her eyes and shaking hands.
“I have no idea why I was ever in love with you,” she hissed. None of them had ever really been all that empathetic or tactful, Torchwood didn’t hire people because they could connect with others {for God’s sake, what kind of a place do you think we’re running here?}, and it was getting worse every day that the world continued falling apart.
“I’m not bad-looking in certain lighting?” Owen suggested.
“You’re a dick,” Tosh replied, rubbing a hand over her face. “And no, I’m not going to kill myself. I understand why Gwen did what she did, but I’m not going to give in just because the chances are I’m going to be murdered and my body is going to be forced to walk around the streets killing innocent people.”
There was a pause.
“Actually,” Tosh added thoughtfully, “When it’s put like that…”
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For two days, they don’t talk to each other. They wander, aimless, around what’s left of Las Vegas, and Greg remains very quiet and Owen doesn’t trust himself to speak. Occasionally, they meet people, people who are scared but resolute. There’s a supermarket, that sells food at the inflated prices, and a Pizza Hut that still has garlic bread that almost tastes decent, and a cinema that’s still playing a few of last summer’s blockbusters {no one’s made a film since - someone should be filming this though. Someone should remember}.
“You loved him, and you killed him to save yourself,” Greg says at the end of the third day. “Right? Now, let’s move on from that because I’m tired of having an uncomfortable silence all the time.”
The hotel room is small and cramped and has a double bed in it.
“I didn’t love him,” Owen protests, and then wonders what it says about him that that’s the part he chooses to dispute.
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They were waiting for the train from Cardiff, the platform was crowded and everyone was armed with whatever they could get their hands on. It was almost funny, because none of it would do any good when push came to shove. The setting sun glinted off knives and firearms and in a way it was poetically beautiful.
“When did we stop thinking we could fight this?” Tosh asked. She was leant against Ianto, and shivering, even though the evening was warm.
“If we can’t fight this, then why are we giving all we can to get to America?” Ianto enquired quietly.
“Someone’s got to pretend we tried,” Owen reminded him. “We’re Torchwood, we’re meant to know what to do about this kind of thing.”
“Torchwood One unleashed Cybermen and Daleks on the streets of London,” Ianto pointed out, something that wasn’t quite a smile twisting his mouth, “And between us we broke open the Rift and temporarily ended the world.” He paused. “Torchwood is really good at causing the world to end, I don’t think we’re really that good at fixing it.”
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Owen is awake, and staring at the light fitting, illuminated vaguely by a crack in the boards over the windows, thin moonlight. He wants to rest, to be able to stop thinking, but he can’t. Beside him, exhausted, Greg is breathing softly but deeply. Owen hopes, for his sake, that he isn’t dreaming. Dreams these days are dark and incomprehensible and tinged with guilt.
Greg rolls over in his sleep, curling against Owen’s spine, instinctively reaching out for something. Owen can’t push him away, clenches his eyes shut, but his body reacts anyway, blood rushes to his cock and he bites his mouth together.
It’s been a while. Long enough since anyone touched him for any sort of contact to make his mind go blank.
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Ianto’s gun was clenched tight in Owen’s hands, palms slick with sweat. He pressed his forehead against the train’s streaked window, watching houses flash past. The train was going too fast, the driver clearly determined to reach their destination as fast as possible, lower the risk.
Owen found himself wondering if he had enough bad luck to bring Them down on a train another time. Divine retribution or something like it.
He was bleeding in several places and aching like mad, as the adrenalin began to wear off and the tragic madness of his situation began to truly sink in. He was alone now, barely armed and facing a future that he had no idea how to deal with. It was Ianto’s right to be here. Owen deserved to be dead.
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They shut themselves in the Hub, when Jack was gone. The safety net ripped out from under them again, and they slept in various rooms on various levels and barely ventured out into the world, where They patrolled the streets and the people of Cardiff hid or died.
Owen stopped calling out for pizza somewhere around the time the delivery boy had his throat cut metres from the tourist office’s door, tumbling from the bike, getting blood on the boxes of pepperoni.
“We’ve got to stop getting delivery people killed,” Ianto observed that evening, with his hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee.
“What?” Tosh turned, confused.
“You might not remember what Lisa did to that girl, but I do.” Ianto’s voice was steady, though his eyes were completely empty.
“What we really need to do is stop deliberately forgetting when we get innocent people killed,” Owen said into the silence.
Tosh thought about this for a while, tapping fingers on the edge of the table.
“If we didn’t forget, we wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves,” she said finally. “You know that, Owen.”
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People don’t like to get attached to each other these days. No point befriending strangers only to watch them be murdered tomorrow. No point at all. Sometimes, a few courtesies are exchanged, a couple of tentative questions. Nothing meaningful. It’s best to remain alone, aloof, than get hurt when you lose everyone around you.
“Are you all right?”
Owen was shaking so violently that he probably looked as though he was on the point of having a fit, and was pressed hard against the window, wanting simply not to think until he got to Gatwick.
“Excuse me, but are you all right?”
A woman’s voice, concerned. Owen didn’t want anyone to be concerned about him. He sure as hell wasn’t asking anyone to care about him. He turned around. God knows what kind of expression was on his face, but it made the woman take a step back.
“Leave me alone,” he practically spat, “Just fuck off, ok?”
She didn’t need telling twice. Owen turned back to the window, breathing too hard, shaking fit to break.
.
Even Owen’s brain feels gritty. He takes a shower in bitterly cold water, and makes himself a cup of tea with the kettle in the hotel room, enjoying the momentary quiet.
“You can’t be that much of a stereotype,” Greg says, still sounding tired, his hair mussed from sleep.
“I don’t drink coffee any more,” Owen replies shortly. The tea is black and he tipped in two packets of white sugar, and it still tastes impossibly astringent.
“Bad reaction to caffeine?” Greg asks, with something that’s almost a sympathetic smile. Owen scrapes one up in return.
“Something like that, yeah.”
{The truth is just too painful and stupid and complicated to admit.}
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“Are you still in love with Jack?” Owen asked, when he got his breath back.
Ianto stared at him, mouth looking bruised and swollen, hair wild and a mark on his sweaty shoulder that Owen was fairly sure he’d put there.
“You’ve got to work on your timing,” he observed mildly, rolling away from Owen, onto the other side of the bed.
“I’m not getting fobbed off just because you think I’m insensitive arsehole,” Owen replied. “I know that part. I’m just wondering.”
“He hasn’t been gone a week, and already you’re-”
“So you are then.” It had never really been an issue before, how Ianto felt or didn’t feel about their irritatingly enigmatic boss, but with Jack stolen and the world ending around them, Owen was finally curious.
“I didn’t say that.” Ianto sighed. “There are just better places and better times to ask.” He considered it for a while longer. “No. I’m not. I think I gave up on falling in love a long time ago.”
Owen smirked. “So you’re not in love with me then?”
Ianto was too close to breaking point, and they were both pushing it.
“Oh fuck you, Owen,” he snapped.
“Where’ve you been for the last half hour?” Owen replied, which didn’t help matters at all.
.
“Tell me about Torchwood,” Greg says, when they’re walking the silent streets, looking for somewhere to hide today. Greg drank an instant coffee for breakfast and the lingering scent is making Owen’s brain go places he doesn’t want it to.
“Why do you want to know?” he asks, sticking his hands in his jeans pockets. There’s no more ammunition for the rifle, he left the weapon in the hotel. No point in dead weight.
“All I know is that you worked for a secret government organisation that dealt with aliens,” Greg points out, “And, present circumstances aside, that’s really damn cool. So.”
“The truth isn’t pretty,” Owen tells him.
“It never is.” Greg smiles suddenly, really smiles, it lights up his whole face and reminds Owen that under other circumstances Greg would be really quite good-looking. “Come on. I’ve worked for the crime lab in Vegas for nearly ten years. You can’t shock me.”
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“I really thought you were omnipotent,” Owen told Jack, early on, before the worldwide panic set in {and by then it was already too late}.
“Can’t think where you’d get that idea from,” Jack replied distractedly; he appeared to be emailing the Prime Minister and in the main Hub Tosh and Gwen were laughing about something. Torchwood was still just about functioning then, still following Weevils around and pretending that everything was fine.
“It’s the constant references to events that haven’t happened yet,” Owen informed him. “How old are you, by the way?”
Jack shrugged. “I’ve died a lot,” he murmured, tone offhand, “I can’t remember.”
{He wouldn’t remember. Owen understands that now.}
Owen couldn’t even admit to himself how much seeing Jack helpless scared him.
.
It spills out, not in chronological order, not even in a logical order. Owen tells Greg everything, though he doesn’t initially mean to. But Greg listens and keeps asking questions and Owen finally admits to all of it.
He tells Greg about being sacked from the hospital, how he first met Jack and got recruited. He tells him about shagging Suzie, and Gwen, and Diane, and, later, Ianto. He tells Greg about Weevils and cannibals and fairies and Cybermen and the Rift. He tells Greg about alien technology and pheromone sprays and, sniggering, about aliens that fucked people to death, no, seriously.
When they’re sitting in the one Starbucks left standing, Owen tells Greg about Jack, who wouldn’t die and wouldn’t tell the truth if a lie would be more entertaining; about Suzie, who slipped up so badly that she paid for it in blood; about Tosh, who was in love with him for years and never seemed to become as jaded as she should; about Gwen, who used to be a policewoman, and who fell so hard into the Torchwood mindset that it broke her completely. And he finally tells Greg about Ianto, who made the coffee, who shot him once {and shagged him twice in a tent in the Himalayas}, who had a wicked sense of humour and looked bloody amazing in a suit, who survived Torchwood One and Torchwood Three and all the things in between but went down laughing in a street somewhere in London.
.
Much later, when Gwen was dead and Ianto wouldn’t touch him, Owen found himself leaving the Hub more often. They were on the streets, quiet, malevolent, taking people seemingly at random. Killing, calmly, with Their bare hands, or with knives. They have no facial expressions, They move stiffly as though unused to wearing skin. They know what they’re doing, but They seem to be succeeding largely by accident {which really stings, surely Earth should be putting up a better fight than this}.
Jack had this thing, where he stood on top of buildings and looked over the city with an anguished expression. Owen called it pretentious, once upon a time; but found himself getting onto the roof of the Millennium Centre from time to time, watching the city slowly stop functioning as the days passed and Their hold became ever stronger.
Ianto came to find him, once, said nothing but sat beside him and they watched the stars together.
{They made love then, naked on the roof.}
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Half asleep, four-thirty this morning, Greg mumbled Nick into Owen’s shoulder, and woke him up.
.
Driving around aimlessly again, trying to find somewhere to sleep, Greg plays with the radio dial, and finds a crackly reception. No news, but there’s music; angry lyrics, screamed over an almost violent blend of metallic sound.
Owen takes his eyes off the road, to turn and look at him.
“In real life, I’d have hated you,” he says mildly.
Greg shrugs, and turns the music up.
“Real life ended months ago,” he points out.
.
Tosh told him she was scared at three in the afternoon.
It was a quiet day; They were slitting the throats of 300,000 Mexicans {but this wasn’t found out until much later}, and Torchwood wasn’t trying very hard to save the world. They were in a rut, no information, no motivation {by the time Nick Stokes called, Gwen had been dead two hours and things were splintered beyond repair}. The situation was getting worse and worse and they were completely powerless.
“I know that we’re in a better position than most,” Tosh murmured, looking at her hands, “Or, at least, we’re kidding ourselves that we are. But it’s going to end the same way.”
“It’s not,” Owen tried to say.
“There isn’t any way out of this,” Tosh reminded him. “No matter how hard we try to hide, They’re going to kill us in the end, aren’t they.”
Owen said nothing. He couldn’t bring himself to lie to her.
.
Next morning, they’re on foot again.
“We should get ourselves a plan,” Owen mumbles. “‘Wandering around aimlessly’ is not a plan.”
Greg just laughs. He sleeps better than Owen does {he has less to remember}.
Without warning, the sound of Their footsteps echoes through the street.
Owen thinks something along the lines of fuckingpissingshit, because blind panic does tend to rob people of eloquence. He grabs Greg’s arm, and they run for their lives.
.
“Do you think,” Owen began, “That maybe if we used the Rift manipulator, and opened up the Rift, we could-”
“That isn’t even an option,” Ianto snapped. “It will never be an option.”
“Well,” Tosh added after a moment’s thought, “It won’t be an option for at least another week, anyway.”
.
Sooner or later, They are going to catch up. Owen and Greg end up hiding in a narrow, far too short alley. Spur-of-the-moment, Owen pushes Greg against the bricks, leaning in close enough so that from certain angles it must look like they’re kissing.
“I’m not sure I want to ask what you’re doing,” Greg murmurs.
“Look, if They really wanted to, They’d have wiped out everyone on the planet by now,” Owen whispers, “But They haven’t. I think that They have criteria.”
“I think that you’re insane,” Greg mutters back.
“They take people who are alone,” Owen points out. “Always one single person. Not two.”
Greg considers this.
“This isn’t going to work.”
“It always works in-”
“This isn’t a movie,” Greg almost snaps.
“I had noticed that, funnily enough,” Owen snarls back.
But neither of them move.
.
Gwen was slightly drunk, Jack’s bottom-drawer stash of whisky. Her hands were trembling.
“I saw him,” she said quietly. “I saw Rhys.”
The words were enough to make Owen’s stomach feel icy and hard. Tosh and Ianto had gone home for the night - one of the last times they ever did - and it was just Gwen and Owen alone in the Hub.
“Where?” Owen asked, sitting down beside her on the sofa.
“He’s one of Them now,” Gwen explained, tone matter-of-fact. “He’s not Rhys any more.”
“I’m so sorry.” Owen couldn’t think what to say, wasn’t sure whether he should touch her or not.
“Rhys isn’t Rhys and Jack isn’t here,” Gwen’s tone was almost singsong, “What are we going to do now?”
She cried against Owen’s shoulder for the best part of an hour.
.
Owen can feel Greg trembling, Their footsteps are regimented, even, an army patrolling the streets. Violence is sudden and unpredictable; but Owen’s been getting away with it for so long.
When They pass by and eventually disappear altogether, Owen feels Greg’s sigh of relief against his face.
“That was a little too close for comfort,” he says, shakily, closing his eyes for a moment. Owen wants to agree but the ability to speak seems to have deserted him. There’s a pause where they both shiver and breathe, pressed so close together that any second this could tip into something else.
“Well?” Greg looks up at Owen almost expectantly, mouth ever so slightly open. Owen pulls away too fast.
“We need to move. They might come back.”
{Greg doesn’t actually tell him that he’s an asshole, but it’s implied.}
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That night, there are people screaming on the streets and they’re hiding in the en suite bathroom because there are no windows. Greg is sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest. Owen has his back against the door, a meagre barricade.
“This is not going to end well,” he murmurs.
Greg doesn’t look up for a long time.
“No,” he says at last, “But at least it’ll end.”
.
They locked down the Hub when they left; Tosh held Ianto’s hand and they all knew they were leaving together for the last time. Owen came dangerously close to breaking down, he bit his mouth together and didn’t dare speak until they were at the station.
.
It’s almost a surprise, when they survive the night. Owen begins to suspect that They are toying with him and Greg; letting them get so far, before They snatch them back.
“Paranoid,” Greg singsongs, the car is going at nearly a hundred and sixty miles an hour, and they’re both feeling a little reckless.
“We should go back to Cardiff,” Owen says. It’s an idea that he’s been toying with for a while. “If we can get into the Hub, we’ll be safe there. And there will be weapons and reference files and maybe we’ll find a way to kill Them. If not, at least we can go and live in the basement forever.”
“How the hell are we going to get back to Cardiff?” Greg asks, taking a corner too sharply.
“There must be an airport that still works somewhere,” Owen shrugs. “If not, there are planes all over the place.”
“Can you fly a plane?”
Owen shrugs.
“I shagged a pilot a few times,” he offers.
.
It was amazing, the way that Ianto could shut himself off. It half-terrified Owen. He didn’t want to have to care about Ianto, on that exhausting journey from the middle of nowhere to London, but having Ianto acting cold and hard and detached was more painful than he thought it would be. They weren’t in a relationship, they didn’t even like each other all that much, but it had lasted longer than it was ever meant to and Ianto couldn’t even look him in the eye when it became increasingly apparent that there was no way both of them could survive.
.
The anti-climax that is their lives now niggles away at Owen. He focused so hard on getting here, that now he’s made it to Vegas and nothing’s better and a whole lot of things are worse, it’s a disappointment. Wandering the streets and hiding out in empty hotels. He has no illusions. He knows that the world is over and that there’s not a whole lot he and Greg can do to change this, but somehow he hoped that the sacrifices they all made would amount to more.
Greg is leant against the headboard, murmuring abut someone called Nick; too much is left to implication, and Owen isn’t listening anyway, but he recognises the wistful tone, the edge in Greg’s voice, and maybe Owen isn’t the only one with survivor’s guilt, missing one man than he would ever have thought possible. Sighing, he sits on the bed beside Greg.
They’ll probably get killed tomorrow, and then it won’t matter anyway.
Greg has stopped talking and is looking at him thoughtfully.
{Oh, seriously, don’t, please, Owen thinks. You’ll only regret it later.}
“I’m going to kiss you now,” Greg says.
.
He only saw Ianto break down once, when Tosh was trying to found out how they were going to get to Vegas, and Ianto was making them all some coffee because that seemed to be his default setting.
Between them, they were holding it together. Just about. It hadn’t been discussed, but it was sort of acknowledged that if one of them cracked, they all would. And going crazy, falling apart into pieces of grief, wasn’t going to get anything done. Torchwood is full of selfish people, except when it really matters. When it really matters, they can’t think of themselves at all.
Ianto had his sleeves rolled up, there was a broken mug on the floor and he was leaning on the sideboard beside the coffee machine, head in hands, sobbing. Owen stood and watched and couldn’t work out if he should try and make things better. He was only too aware that he was unsympathetic to a fault.
Finally, Ianto raised his head, cheeks wet and eyes red and a horrible expression on his face.
He looked at Owen, standing frozen, and said-
You know what? Owen is fucking sick of remembering. He doesn’t want to remember any more.
.
Somewhere along the line, Greg says: “If you stop talking, and you stop thinking, this will probably be a lot more fun.”
Owen laughs, teeth against Greg’s neck, the edge of a curling scar under his mouth. They’re both too damaged to do this properly, it’s sort of amusing and ridiculous at the same time.
“You don’t want much, do you?” he murmurs, but gives it a go anyway.
.
The windows of this hotel aren’t boarded up and there’s moonlight on Owen’s face when he tries to sleep. He’s got bruises in thoroughly inappropriate places and he feels guilty more than anything. He’s not entirely sure why.
Outside, some suicidal bastard is playing the radio in their car. Owen closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at Greg sprawled naked under the sheets {there’s something too intimate, too frightening about it}, but the moonlight is still on his eyelids. And the music is too loud and keeping him awake too.
Plaintive female voices: so tell me now, and I won’t ask again: will you still love me tomorrow?
Owen sighs.
“I doubt it.”
.
.
Owen cut her down, and Ianto caught her. Tosh didn’t want to get involved, and neither man blamed her. Gwen’s face was pale, her neck bruised, skin discoloured from suffocation. They didn’t speak. There were no words. Nothing that could make this right.
“I’ll never forgive her for this,” Owen said, when they’d zipped her up and put her in a drawer above Suzie’s. Ianto turned helpless eyes on him.
“You cunt,” he snarled, words ripping the awkward silence between them, “You really don’t give a fuck, do you?”
Owen can’t really remember what happened next. He’s lost half an hour of some kind, and all he really knows is that at the end of that half hour he was lying crying on the floor with a cut lip and a bloody nose, and he could not stop sobbing.
.
“What about this one?” Greg pokes the perfectly round scar on Owen’s shoulder. “Looks like a gunshot wound.”
“Mmm.” Owen doesn’t open his eyes. They can’t stay here, because sitting out in the open on the hood of a fucking huge car is sort of begging to be killed, but his limbs feel impossibly heavy and everyone needs a break now and then.
“Tell me,” Greg insists, he sounds curious, almost amused.
“A colleague shot me, because I was acting like a twat,” Owen sighs. He doesn’t like to remember the time that wasn’t his finest hour {if he doesn’t think about it too hard, maybe it didn’t happen}. He thinks Greg would probably like some further form of justification, but he can’t bring himself to explain Torchwood, all its senseless little intricacies. No one understands and no one should. These things happen.
What Greg actually asks is: “And what did you to him?”
What Owen doesn’t reply is: “I paid him back in kind.”
.
All they really had to do was get on a train to Gatwick, get on a plane, and get out of London. With one gun, and thousands, possibly even millions, of Them on the streets. Ianto was the one allowed to carry their weapon, since he was the one intelligent enough not to get his original gun stolen. They both knew that only one of them was going to make it out alive.
For a while, it seemed like they were going to get away with it, but then They seemed to work out what Owen and Ianto were planning, and it became uncomfortably aware that they were being followed.
“One of us could hold Them off,” Ianto pointed out when they were running, three streets ahead of an army that wasn’t ever going to stop, and they couldn’t stay ahead forever. “One of us could probably distract Them long enough for the other to escape.”
They always knew it was going to come down to this. But Owen never expected Ianto to attack first.
.
Jack would probably have been safer for longer if he hadn’t insisted on trying to negotiate with Them; it turned out that the patented Jack Harkness Charm didn’t work on everyone.
.
“Why are you here?” Greg asks, his shoulder is pressed against Owen’s, and they both know that they’re going to have to move in exactly five minutes; leave it any longer and it’ll be too late to start running. “Why did you risk your life to get here when you knew you couldn’t do anything?”
“To show that I could,” Owen replies dully, “Because I was the last one left from Torchwood and someone had to be here.”
“So that’s it.” Greg almost laughs. “You’re here to prove a point.”
Owen doesn’t tell him what he had to do to Ianto in order to get here, doesn’t mention Tosh being dragged away across the railway lines or the air hostess whose screams echoed around the arrivals hall as Owen took a dead man’s rifle and ran for his life without daring to look back.
“Why are you here?” he snarls. Greg looks tired.
“Because Sara was meant to be here and she was killed a day before you arrived.”
.
It’s too painful to remember, but forgetting isn’t an option.
.
“So you’re the last one left of your team?” Owen slides off the hood of the car, discards the sunglasses, leaving them in the road to be smashed. Greg gets in on the passenger side of the car, and Owen hopes that he’s capable of driving, sunblind and sick to his stomach.
“Catherine killed herself,” Greg says almost dreamily, when Owen starts the car again, “And Grissom got taken, and I don’t know what happened to Warrick but I haven’t seen him in months, and Nick was-” He falters for a moment, “Nick was- was killed and Sara was meant to be here.”
“Ianto was meant to be here,” Owen admits, finally, keeping his gaze on the road.
{By rights, they should both be dead.}
.
When Ianto kicked Owen’s legs out from under him, Owen’s mind went momentarily blank with shock, and he dragged Ianto down with him, hard. Ianto hit his head on the pavement, and there wasn’t much time; one of them had to get out of this, before They arrived.
They fought, desperate men, Owen tugged the gun from Ianto’s belt and threw it across the street, tried to run for it, Ianto elbowed him in the face and they were both bleeding and shouting and someone had to win quickly, or they were both killed and that would be it for Torchwood. This would be the moment to be selfless, to wait and let Ianto go. Ianto would know what to do.
Owen’s head cracked on the ground, blood got in his eyes and his thoughts split and he shoved his foot in the direction of Ianto’s ribs, maybe one of them broke, maybe one of them didn’t, Ianto gasped in agony, and Owen took his chance, running over and scooping the gun up from where it had fallen.
He had no choice. They both knew that. Ianto would have done the same to him.
But he had the gun.
.
“Who was Ianto?” Greg asks. Owen wonders if he’s going to kill them both, driving erratically and unable to focus on anything. Maybe it’s ironic, that he stopped Greg from crashing the car and now he’s probably going to do it.
“The one who shot me that time,” Owen mutters. He tries to slow down, he can’t move his foot from the accelerator. “He’d be better at this than I am.”
“What happened to him?” Greg’s voice is tentative. “Was he taken? They took Sara. I shot so many of Them, she nearly got away, but…” he winces, “It wasn’t enough.”
Greg tried to save his friend. Owen should’ve tried.
But he had the gun.
.
Ianto was on his feet, but it was too late. Owen had the gun and he was going to live. He felt so sick that he could barely move and the shock was making his hands shake. Ianto took two steps forward; Owen took the safety off.
He didn’t apologise; he meant to. They both remembered, simultaneously, the promise made months ago - “I won’t let Them take you.” Owen should’ve stepped back, should’ve stayed, but he was scared and tired and while They were distracted with Ianto he’d have the time to get completely away.
Ianto looked at him, face pale and a little bloody, and took another deliberate step forward. He’d do it, Owen realised. He really would attack, and win this time, and leave Owen behind to die. Owen promised, but-
He shot. And Ianto’s hands clasped over his stomach, blood slid through his fingers.
“I’m letting you off the hook,” he said, and Owen didn’t want his forgiveness.
“You bastard,” he hissed, and They were coming into view, he’d lingered too long, and Ianto’s knees gave out beneath him with a breathless laugh; and Owen ran.
.
There’s a wall coming up ahead of them and he can’t think.
Owen brakes too fast, whacks his forehead on the steering wheel. He doesn’t raise his head, breathing too hard and Greg says nothing. Everyone has things they don’t want to remember, things they’ve done to survive that they wish they hadn’t.
“You’re bloody lucky I didn’t kill us both,” Owen mumbles, eyes shut, “Just- just don’t ask.”
.
{Suzie was right about him, you know.}
.
“If you want to kill yourself too, go ahead,” Owen told Tosh one evening, when Ianto was somewhere else. “I won’t hold it against you.”
Tosh looked exhausted, dark circles around her eyes and shaking hands.
“I have no idea why I was ever in love with you,” she hissed. None of them had ever really been all that empathetic or tactful, Torchwood didn’t hire people because they could connect with others {for God’s sake, what kind of a place do you think we’re running here?}, and it was getting worse every day that the world continued falling apart.
“I’m not bad-looking in certain lighting?” Owen suggested.
“You’re a dick,” Tosh replied, rubbing a hand over her face. “And no, I’m not going to kill myself. I understand why Gwen did what she did, but I’m not going to give in just because the chances are I’m going to be murdered and my body is going to be forced to walk around the streets killing innocent people.”
There was a pause.
“Actually,” Tosh added thoughtfully, “When it’s put like that…”
.
For two days, they don’t talk to each other. They wander, aimless, around what’s left of Las Vegas, and Greg remains very quiet and Owen doesn’t trust himself to speak. Occasionally, they meet people, people who are scared but resolute. There’s a supermarket, that sells food at the inflated prices, and a Pizza Hut that still has garlic bread that almost tastes decent, and a cinema that’s still playing a few of last summer’s blockbusters {no one’s made a film since - someone should be filming this though. Someone should remember}.
“You loved him, and you killed him to save yourself,” Greg says at the end of the third day. “Right? Now, let’s move on from that because I’m tired of having an uncomfortable silence all the time.”
The hotel room is small and cramped and has a double bed in it.
“I didn’t love him,” Owen protests, and then wonders what it says about him that that’s the part he chooses to dispute.
.
They were waiting for the train from Cardiff, the platform was crowded and everyone was armed with whatever they could get their hands on. It was almost funny, because none of it would do any good when push came to shove. The setting sun glinted off knives and firearms and in a way it was poetically beautiful.
“When did we stop thinking we could fight this?” Tosh asked. She was leant against Ianto, and shivering, even though the evening was warm.
“If we can’t fight this, then why are we giving all we can to get to America?” Ianto enquired quietly.
“Someone’s got to pretend we tried,” Owen reminded him. “We’re Torchwood, we’re meant to know what to do about this kind of thing.”
“Torchwood One unleashed Cybermen and Daleks on the streets of London,” Ianto pointed out, something that wasn’t quite a smile twisting his mouth, “And between us we broke open the Rift and temporarily ended the world.” He paused. “Torchwood is really good at causing the world to end, I don’t think we’re really that good at fixing it.”
.
Owen is awake, and staring at the light fitting, illuminated vaguely by a crack in the boards over the windows, thin moonlight. He wants to rest, to be able to stop thinking, but he can’t. Beside him, exhausted, Greg is breathing softly but deeply. Owen hopes, for his sake, that he isn’t dreaming. Dreams these days are dark and incomprehensible and tinged with guilt.
Greg rolls over in his sleep, curling against Owen’s spine, instinctively reaching out for something. Owen can’t push him away, clenches his eyes shut, but his body reacts anyway, blood rushes to his cock and he bites his mouth together.
It’s been a while. Long enough since anyone touched him for any sort of contact to make his mind go blank.
.
Ianto’s gun was clenched tight in Owen’s hands, palms slick with sweat. He pressed his forehead against the train’s streaked window, watching houses flash past. The train was going too fast, the driver clearly determined to reach their destination as fast as possible, lower the risk.
Owen found himself wondering if he had enough bad luck to bring Them down on a train another time. Divine retribution or something like it.
He was bleeding in several places and aching like mad, as the adrenalin began to wear off and the tragic madness of his situation began to truly sink in. He was alone now, barely armed and facing a future that he had no idea how to deal with. It was Ianto’s right to be here. Owen deserved to be dead.
.
They shut themselves in the Hub, when Jack was gone. The safety net ripped out from under them again, and they slept in various rooms on various levels and barely ventured out into the world, where They patrolled the streets and the people of Cardiff hid or died.
Owen stopped calling out for pizza somewhere around the time the delivery boy had his throat cut metres from the tourist office’s door, tumbling from the bike, getting blood on the boxes of pepperoni.
“We’ve got to stop getting delivery people killed,” Ianto observed that evening, with his hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee.
“What?” Tosh turned, confused.
“You might not remember what Lisa did to that girl, but I do.” Ianto’s voice was steady, though his eyes were completely empty.
“What we really need to do is stop deliberately forgetting when we get innocent people killed,” Owen said into the silence.
Tosh thought about this for a while, tapping fingers on the edge of the table.
“If we didn’t forget, we wouldn’t be able to live with ourselves,” she said finally. “You know that, Owen.”
.
People don’t like to get attached to each other these days. No point befriending strangers only to watch them be murdered tomorrow. No point at all. Sometimes, a few courtesies are exchanged, a couple of tentative questions. Nothing meaningful. It’s best to remain alone, aloof, than get hurt when you lose everyone around you.
“Are you all right?”
Owen was shaking so violently that he probably looked as though he was on the point of having a fit, and was pressed hard against the window, wanting simply not to think until he got to Gatwick.
“Excuse me, but are you all right?”
A woman’s voice, concerned. Owen didn’t want anyone to be concerned about him. He sure as hell wasn’t asking anyone to care about him. He turned around. God knows what kind of expression was on his face, but it made the woman take a step back.
“Leave me alone,” he practically spat, “Just fuck off, ok?”
She didn’t need telling twice. Owen turned back to the window, breathing too hard, shaking fit to break.
.
Even Owen’s brain feels gritty. He takes a shower in bitterly cold water, and makes himself a cup of tea with the kettle in the hotel room, enjoying the momentary quiet.
“You can’t be that much of a stereotype,” Greg says, still sounding tired, his hair mussed from sleep.
“I don’t drink coffee any more,” Owen replies shortly. The tea is black and he tipped in two packets of white sugar, and it still tastes impossibly astringent.
“Bad reaction to caffeine?” Greg asks, with something that’s almost a sympathetic smile. Owen scrapes one up in return.
“Something like that, yeah.”
{The truth is just too painful and stupid and complicated to admit.}
.
“Are you still in love with Jack?” Owen asked, when he got his breath back.
Ianto stared at him, mouth looking bruised and swollen, hair wild and a mark on his sweaty shoulder that Owen was fairly sure he’d put there.
“You’ve got to work on your timing,” he observed mildly, rolling away from Owen, onto the other side of the bed.
“I’m not getting fobbed off just because you think I’m insensitive arsehole,” Owen replied. “I know that part. I’m just wondering.”
“He hasn’t been gone a week, and already you’re-”
“So you are then.” It had never really been an issue before, how Ianto felt or didn’t feel about their irritatingly enigmatic boss, but with Jack stolen and the world ending around them, Owen was finally curious.
“I didn’t say that.” Ianto sighed. “There are just better places and better times to ask.” He considered it for a while longer. “No. I’m not. I think I gave up on falling in love a long time ago.”
Owen smirked. “So you’re not in love with me then?”
Ianto was too close to breaking point, and they were both pushing it.
“Oh fuck you, Owen,” he snapped.
“Where’ve you been for the last half hour?” Owen replied, which didn’t help matters at all.
.
“Tell me about Torchwood,” Greg says, when they’re walking the silent streets, looking for somewhere to hide today. Greg drank an instant coffee for breakfast and the lingering scent is making Owen’s brain go places he doesn’t want it to.
“Why do you want to know?” he asks, sticking his hands in his jeans pockets. There’s no more ammunition for the rifle, he left the weapon in the hotel. No point in dead weight.
“All I know is that you worked for a secret government organisation that dealt with aliens,” Greg points out, “And, present circumstances aside, that’s really damn cool. So.”
“The truth isn’t pretty,” Owen tells him.
“It never is.” Greg smiles suddenly, really smiles, it lights up his whole face and reminds Owen that under other circumstances Greg would be really quite good-looking. “Come on. I’ve worked for the crime lab in Vegas for nearly ten years. You can’t shock me.”
.
“I really thought you were omnipotent,” Owen told Jack, early on, before the worldwide panic set in {and by then it was already too late}.
“Can’t think where you’d get that idea from,” Jack replied distractedly; he appeared to be emailing the Prime Minister and in the main Hub Tosh and Gwen were laughing about something. Torchwood was still just about functioning then, still following Weevils around and pretending that everything was fine.
“It’s the constant references to events that haven’t happened yet,” Owen informed him. “How old are you, by the way?”
Jack shrugged. “I’ve died a lot,” he murmured, tone offhand, “I can’t remember.”
{He wouldn’t remember. Owen understands that now.}
Owen couldn’t even admit to himself how much seeing Jack helpless scared him.
.
It spills out, not in chronological order, not even in a logical order. Owen tells Greg everything, though he doesn’t initially mean to. But Greg listens and keeps asking questions and Owen finally admits to all of it.
He tells Greg about being sacked from the hospital, how he first met Jack and got recruited. He tells him about shagging Suzie, and Gwen, and Diane, and, later, Ianto. He tells Greg about Weevils and cannibals and fairies and Cybermen and the Rift. He tells Greg about alien technology and pheromone sprays and, sniggering, about aliens that fucked people to death, no, seriously.
When they’re sitting in the one Starbucks left standing, Owen tells Greg about Jack, who wouldn’t die and wouldn’t tell the truth if a lie would be more entertaining; about Suzie, who slipped up so badly that she paid for it in blood; about Tosh, who was in love with him for years and never seemed to become as jaded as she should; about Gwen, who used to be a policewoman, and who fell so hard into the Torchwood mindset that it broke her completely. And he finally tells Greg about Ianto, who made the coffee, who shot him once {and shagged him twice in a tent in the Himalayas}, who had a wicked sense of humour and looked bloody amazing in a suit, who survived Torchwood One and Torchwood Three and all the things in between but went down laughing in a street somewhere in London.
.
Much later, when Gwen was dead and Ianto wouldn’t touch him, Owen found himself leaving the Hub more often. They were on the streets, quiet, malevolent, taking people seemingly at random. Killing, calmly, with Their bare hands, or with knives. They have no facial expressions, They move stiffly as though unused to wearing skin. They know what they’re doing, but They seem to be succeeding largely by accident {which really stings, surely Earth should be putting up a better fight than this}.
Jack had this thing, where he stood on top of buildings and looked over the city with an anguished expression. Owen called it pretentious, once upon a time; but found himself getting onto the roof of the Millennium Centre from time to time, watching the city slowly stop functioning as the days passed and Their hold became ever stronger.
Ianto came to find him, once, said nothing but sat beside him and they watched the stars together.
{They made love then, naked on the roof.}
.
Half asleep, four-thirty this morning, Greg mumbled Nick into Owen’s shoulder, and woke him up.
.
Driving around aimlessly again, trying to find somewhere to sleep, Greg plays with the radio dial, and finds a crackly reception. No news, but there’s music; angry lyrics, screamed over an almost violent blend of metallic sound.
Owen takes his eyes off the road, to turn and look at him.
“In real life, I’d have hated you,” he says mildly.
Greg shrugs, and turns the music up.
“Real life ended months ago,” he points out.
.
Tosh told him she was scared at three in the afternoon.
It was a quiet day; They were slitting the throats of 300,000 Mexicans {but this wasn’t found out until much later}, and Torchwood wasn’t trying very hard to save the world. They were in a rut, no information, no motivation {by the time Nick Stokes called, Gwen had been dead two hours and things were splintered beyond repair}. The situation was getting worse and worse and they were completely powerless.
“I know that we’re in a better position than most,” Tosh murmured, looking at her hands, “Or, at least, we’re kidding ourselves that we are. But it’s going to end the same way.”
“It’s not,” Owen tried to say.
“There isn’t any way out of this,” Tosh reminded him. “No matter how hard we try to hide, They’re going to kill us in the end, aren’t they.”
Owen said nothing. He couldn’t bring himself to lie to her.
.
Next morning, they’re on foot again.
“We should get ourselves a plan,” Owen mumbles. “‘Wandering around aimlessly’ is not a plan.”
Greg just laughs. He sleeps better than Owen does {he has less to remember}.
Without warning, the sound of Their footsteps echoes through the street.
Owen thinks something along the lines of fuckingpissingshit, because blind panic does tend to rob people of eloquence. He grabs Greg’s arm, and they run for their lives.
.
“Do you think,” Owen began, “That maybe if we used the Rift manipulator, and opened up the Rift, we could-”
“That isn’t even an option,” Ianto snapped. “It will never be an option.”
“Well,” Tosh added after a moment’s thought, “It won’t be an option for at least another week, anyway.”
.
Sooner or later, They are going to catch up. Owen and Greg end up hiding in a narrow, far too short alley. Spur-of-the-moment, Owen pushes Greg against the bricks, leaning in close enough so that from certain angles it must look like they’re kissing.
“I’m not sure I want to ask what you’re doing,” Greg murmurs.
“Look, if They really wanted to, They’d have wiped out everyone on the planet by now,” Owen whispers, “But They haven’t. I think that They have criteria.”
“I think that you’re insane,” Greg mutters back.
“They take people who are alone,” Owen points out. “Always one single person. Not two.”
Greg considers this.
“This isn’t going to work.”
“It always works in-”
“This isn’t a movie,” Greg almost snaps.
“I had noticed that, funnily enough,” Owen snarls back.
But neither of them move.
.
Gwen was slightly drunk, Jack’s bottom-drawer stash of whisky. Her hands were trembling.
“I saw him,” she said quietly. “I saw Rhys.”
The words were enough to make Owen’s stomach feel icy and hard. Tosh and Ianto had gone home for the night - one of the last times they ever did - and it was just Gwen and Owen alone in the Hub.
“Where?” Owen asked, sitting down beside her on the sofa.
“He’s one of Them now,” Gwen explained, tone matter-of-fact. “He’s not Rhys any more.”
“I’m so sorry.” Owen couldn’t think what to say, wasn’t sure whether he should touch her or not.
“Rhys isn’t Rhys and Jack isn’t here,” Gwen’s tone was almost singsong, “What are we going to do now?”
She cried against Owen’s shoulder for the best part of an hour.
.
Owen can feel Greg trembling, Their footsteps are regimented, even, an army patrolling the streets. Violence is sudden and unpredictable; but Owen’s been getting away with it for so long.
When They pass by and eventually disappear altogether, Owen feels Greg’s sigh of relief against his face.
“That was a little too close for comfort,” he says, shakily, closing his eyes for a moment. Owen wants to agree but the ability to speak seems to have deserted him. There’s a pause where they both shiver and breathe, pressed so close together that any second this could tip into something else.
“Well?” Greg looks up at Owen almost expectantly, mouth ever so slightly open. Owen pulls away too fast.
“We need to move. They might come back.”
{Greg doesn’t actually tell him that he’s an asshole, but it’s implied.}
.
That night, there are people screaming on the streets and they’re hiding in the en suite bathroom because there are no windows. Greg is sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest. Owen has his back against the door, a meagre barricade.
“This is not going to end well,” he murmurs.
Greg doesn’t look up for a long time.
“No,” he says at last, “But at least it’ll end.”
.
They locked down the Hub when they left; Tosh held Ianto’s hand and they all knew they were leaving together for the last time. Owen came dangerously close to breaking down, he bit his mouth together and didn’t dare speak until they were at the station.
.
It’s almost a surprise, when they survive the night. Owen begins to suspect that They are toying with him and Greg; letting them get so far, before They snatch them back.
“Paranoid,” Greg singsongs, the car is going at nearly a hundred and sixty miles an hour, and they’re both feeling a little reckless.
“We should go back to Cardiff,” Owen says. It’s an idea that he’s been toying with for a while. “If we can get into the Hub, we’ll be safe there. And there will be weapons and reference files and maybe we’ll find a way to kill Them. If not, at least we can go and live in the basement forever.”
“How the hell are we going to get back to Cardiff?” Greg asks, taking a corner too sharply.
“There must be an airport that still works somewhere,” Owen shrugs. “If not, there are planes all over the place.”
“Can you fly a plane?”
Owen shrugs.
“I shagged a pilot a few times,” he offers.
.
It was amazing, the way that Ianto could shut himself off. It half-terrified Owen. He didn’t want to have to care about Ianto, on that exhausting journey from the middle of nowhere to London, but having Ianto acting cold and hard and detached was more painful than he thought it would be. They weren’t in a relationship, they didn’t even like each other all that much, but it had lasted longer than it was ever meant to and Ianto couldn’t even look him in the eye when it became increasingly apparent that there was no way both of them could survive.
.
The anti-climax that is their lives now niggles away at Owen. He focused so hard on getting here, that now he’s made it to Vegas and nothing’s better and a whole lot of things are worse, it’s a disappointment. Wandering the streets and hiding out in empty hotels. He has no illusions. He knows that the world is over and that there’s not a whole lot he and Greg can do to change this, but somehow he hoped that the sacrifices they all made would amount to more.
Greg is leant against the headboard, murmuring abut someone called Nick; too much is left to implication, and Owen isn’t listening anyway, but he recognises the wistful tone, the edge in Greg’s voice, and maybe Owen isn’t the only one with survivor’s guilt, missing one man than he would ever have thought possible. Sighing, he sits on the bed beside Greg.
They’ll probably get killed tomorrow, and then it won’t matter anyway.
Greg has stopped talking and is looking at him thoughtfully.
{Oh, seriously, don’t, please, Owen thinks. You’ll only regret it later.}
“I’m going to kiss you now,” Greg says.
.
He only saw Ianto break down once, when Tosh was trying to found out how they were going to get to Vegas, and Ianto was making them all some coffee because that seemed to be his default setting.
Between them, they were holding it together. Just about. It hadn’t been discussed, but it was sort of acknowledged that if one of them cracked, they all would. And going crazy, falling apart into pieces of grief, wasn’t going to get anything done. Torchwood is full of selfish people, except when it really matters. When it really matters, they can’t think of themselves at all.
Ianto had his sleeves rolled up, there was a broken mug on the floor and he was leaning on the sideboard beside the coffee machine, head in hands, sobbing. Owen stood and watched and couldn’t work out if he should try and make things better. He was only too aware that he was unsympathetic to a fault.
Finally, Ianto raised his head, cheeks wet and eyes red and a horrible expression on his face.
He looked at Owen, standing frozen, and said-
You know what? Owen is fucking sick of remembering. He doesn’t want to remember any more.
.
Somewhere along the line, Greg says: “If you stop talking, and you stop thinking, this will probably be a lot more fun.”
Owen laughs, teeth against Greg’s neck, the edge of a curling scar under his mouth. They’re both too damaged to do this properly, it’s sort of amusing and ridiculous at the same time.
“You don’t want much, do you?” he murmurs, but gives it a go anyway.
.
The windows of this hotel aren’t boarded up and there’s moonlight on Owen’s face when he tries to sleep. He’s got bruises in thoroughly inappropriate places and he feels guilty more than anything. He’s not entirely sure why.
Outside, some suicidal bastard is playing the radio in their car. Owen closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at Greg sprawled naked under the sheets {there’s something too intimate, too frightening about it}, but the moonlight is still on his eyelids. And the music is too loud and keeping him awake too.
Plaintive female voices: so tell me now, and I won’t ask again: will you still love me tomorrow?
Owen sighs.
“I doubt it.”
.