survivorship | gwen ; open to snarky_md, house_br0ken
Just a short time past - not too long ago, really - if someone had told Gwen Cooper that aliens existed, that people could be brought back to live with a glove, that there was a Rift in space and time running through the city she'd lived and worked in, that there was a man walking the Earth who could not die ... she would have laughed, called them ( Read more... )
"They keep sending recon groups to the surface, and I keep putting them back together again when they come back ... if they come back.
Sent a team of eight out earlier to investigate rumors of some people unknowingly hiding out near one of the base entrances. Five... and well... a half came back."
He drums his fingers on the arm of the chair, thinking back to the seemingly non-stop flow of injured coming in every day. He's had a some help from some civilians with medical training, but even with that, he's been stretching himself thin.
Looking back at Gwen, he manages a thin smile. "So how have you been holding up? I would have come to see you sooner, but these bloody idiots don't want to give me a break."
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For all the fact that Gwen had once referred to Owen as a doctor in the past-tense, she knows of and appreciates his effort now. Owen had never shown himself to be the most selfless person, but she's rather impressed with the way he's been coming through on this. She hasn't seen him throw himself into his work like this since that Marianne girl who'd died particularly tragically in the Torchwood cells. She reaches over and places a hand on his arm, meaning to be comforting, even as she mentally notes the ones who are lost and subtracts them from the count she's been keeping. Free humans in Britain, now ... well, two and a half less.
"It's okay," she assures him. "I know you've been busy. I've been trying to keep busy." Gwen pauses and frowns. "I feel useless compared to everyone else. I don't have any medical experience, or computer knowledge, or any of that. I couldn't even handle a gun until Jack showed me how. I think I've been stuffed over here to keep me out of the way ( ... )
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Gwen stares blankly at Owen for a moment, blinks, then takes her hand away and just barely resists the urge to smack him with it. "Shut up. Not all of us could have had excellent A-levels and become doctors." She scoffs, rotating her chair back to the computer, and bangs uselessly at the keyboard - and then the monitor shuts off entirely. "Fuckall!"
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"I hate him you know - the Master that is...I'd kill him myself. I'd slit his fucking throat, bring Jack back...and be done with this. Bloody hell, I never thought I'd be the one wanting to have Jack back..."
Owen shook his head as he looked around at all the now useless computers. He had been at a loss when his scanning equipment had went out, and bascially took him back to doing his medical exams on everyone back to the basics. It was just one more thing that had made his life that much harder.
"I'm sorry...I don't know why I'm even talking about this. I've got more important things to worry about right now. I really need to talk to Ianto about having one of the next surface recon groups trying to get some med supplies...I'm starting to run low on some things." Owen said as he started to make a mental list of things that he needed...
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Gwen's gaze goes distant as she listens to Owen. She's thinking wistfully, of course, of how things should be - they should be in Cardiff, in the Hub, hunting down the newest but ultimately relatively harmless (in comparison) alien threat, not ... here. She keeps hoping for it to be a nightmare, an actual thing of bad dreams, that she'll wake up from and get Rhys to pinch her to make sure that was all.
"I think we all want him back," she responds, before turning worriedly back to the computer. Everyone else's computers seem to have gone down. She reaches for one of the phones, and finds that the dial tone is absent. Pushing buttons proves that the phone itself is completely dead. "Nothing's working. All of it's gone out."
Even the screens at the front, connected to what CCTVs are still working (and there aren't many, by now) are completely dead. The only things powered by electricity that still seem to be going are the lights.
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Of all the things Gwen is expecting, she certainly doesn't see that coming - in fact, she's distracted by trying to see through the glass door of Ianto's office whether he's in there, so that she can tell him about the tech failure ... although, certainly, someone else must be doing so by now - and the next thing she knows, Rhys is there and Owen is ... in the floor. She cries out in surprise and alarm, and immediately reaches out to grab her apparently angry boyfriend's arm, even as a couple of other personnel stride over, charged with the containment of any hostilities, civilian or otherwise.
"Rhys!" she shrieks. "What are you doing?!"
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The secuirty detachment came running up at that time, two of them grabbing Rhys by the arms, while a third bent down to check on Owen, who was just beginning to pick himself up off the floor, a line of blood coming out of his nose and his eye already starting to swell up.
"Sir, you'll have to come with us, for the assault on Dr. Harper." One of the security guards says to him as his arms are put behind his back and handcuffs clasped onto his wrists.
As the guards started to walk him off, he turned to see Owen wiping at his nose with a tissue, Gwen still staring at him blankly.
"Oh, and Gwen..I don't think I can forgive you." he said, turning his head back around as the guards led him down the hall.
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His left eye was already starting to swell shut, and he could feel blood soaking through the tissue.
Damn that big bastard got me good.. Owen thought as he waved thanks to the security guard who had picked up his chair.
Sitting down, he leaned his head back, hoping to stem the flow of blood to his nose.
"Wha was dat all about?" Owen asked, looking over at Gwen, who seemed to be not all there at the moment.
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Gwen stares at Rhys as the security detail leads him away, unable to even do anything to protest it. She knows all they're likely to do is deposit him back in the civilian area, anyway; they probably won't bother with detaining him elsewhere. The last thing Torchwood needs to worry about right now is managing a gaol.
"It's ... nothing," she evades the question expertly, sitting back down in her own chair, thoughts of the technological issues set aside for the moment. Gwen scoots her chair closer to Owen's and leans over to check on his nose. "Stop touching it. You're a doctor, you know better. D'you want it to swell the size of a golf ball?"
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"Ya know, I hope he broke his bloody hand." Owen snarked as he leaned towards the computer monitor, looking at his reflection.
"Thats gonna look great in an hour." he says, softly touching his cheek and eyebrow, which have already begun to swell up nicely.
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"I'm - sorry, Owen." Gwen gets to her feet and grabs a legal pad full of notes that she'd been working on before the computers crashed. "It's my fault, but ... it's too much to explain right now. I promise I'll explain later. Right now I need to go talk to Ianto about this, and make sure Rhys is okay."
With that, she walks off in a hurry.
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