Ficlet: Blotting It Out
Title: Blotting It Out
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Owen, Lizzie Lewis.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Ghost Machine.
Summary: Owen has rarely felt so helpless. He just wants to blot out what the Ghost Machine showed him.
Word Count: 493
Written For: juliet316’s prompt ‘Author's choice, author's choice, I need a drink,’ at fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Owen grabs his jacket and starts towards the cog door, desperate to escape. Jack hasn’t told the team they can take off, but he doesn’t care, not today.
“I need a drink.”
No one replies and no one calls him back, so he’s out that door in nothing flat, heading up to the surface in the lift, tapping his foot impatiently. He feels trapped, suffocated; he’s not usually claustrophobic but right now he wants, needs, to be out of there so he can breathe.
Bad days at Torchwood are ten a penny, but this has been one of the worst. Most days he’s already got reasons enough to drown his sorrows in alcohol, still grieving for Katie even after three years, because pain like that never really goes away. Tonight though…
It doesn’t matter that what happened to poor Lizzie Lewis is decades in the past, because for him it isn’t. He was there, right there, watching helplessly as that bastard Ed Morgan… He hadn’t just seen what happened to Lizzie either; he’d felt it, her fear and panic, her pain, her shame, her last, agonised breath, and he’d felt Ed Morgan’s lust and enjoyment as he’d stolen Lizzie’s virtue and then taken her life. She was just seventeen, hardly more than a kid! She should have had her whole life ahead of her: love, marriage, kids, grandkids, but Morgan stole her future just as surely as he stole her life.
It was sickening, disgusting, terrifying; every second of Lizzie’s ordeal is seared into his memory, and all Owen wants is to blot it out, but he’s not sure he can. There probably isn’t even alcohol in Cardiff. Won’t keep him from trying though. Even if he can’t escape the memories completely, maybe if he drinks enough he can dull their edges to the point where he can sleep without dreaming.
Tosh said no one was ever brought to trial for Lizzie’s murder. Morgan got away with what he did back in sixty-three, and as far as Owen knows, he’s still out there somewhere, free as a bird, living his life, while Lizzie’s parents went to their graves never knowing who took their precious daughter from them. It isn’t right! He should be made to pay! This is Wales though, there’s an Ed Morgan around practically every corner, and finding the right one after all this time… Chances are he’s moved away, doesn’t even live in Cardiff anymore.
So just for tonight Owen’s going to take refuge in the bottle, but this isn’t over, not by a long shot. Somehow he’s going to track down Ed Morgan, no matter how long it takes or what he has to do, and then he’s going to make that murdering bastard wish he’d never been born!
Owen can’t bring Lizzie back, can’t undo the past, but he can, and will, get justice for her, because he won’t be able to live with himself if he doesn’t.
The End
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Owen, Lizzie Lewis.
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Ghost Machine.
Summary: Owen has rarely felt so helpless. He just wants to blot out what the Ghost Machine showed him.
Word Count: 493
Written For: juliet316’s prompt ‘Author's choice, author's choice, I need a drink,’ at fic_promptly.
Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.
Owen grabs his jacket and starts towards the cog door, desperate to escape. Jack hasn’t told the team they can take off, but he doesn’t care, not today.
“I need a drink.”
No one replies and no one calls him back, so he’s out that door in nothing flat, heading up to the surface in the lift, tapping his foot impatiently. He feels trapped, suffocated; he’s not usually claustrophobic but right now he wants, needs, to be out of there so he can breathe.
Bad days at Torchwood are ten a penny, but this has been one of the worst. Most days he’s already got reasons enough to drown his sorrows in alcohol, still grieving for Katie even after three years, because pain like that never really goes away. Tonight though…
It doesn’t matter that what happened to poor Lizzie Lewis is decades in the past, because for him it isn’t. He was there, right there, watching helplessly as that bastard Ed Morgan… He hadn’t just seen what happened to Lizzie either; he’d felt it, her fear and panic, her pain, her shame, her last, agonised breath, and he’d felt Ed Morgan’s lust and enjoyment as he’d stolen Lizzie’s virtue and then taken her life. She was just seventeen, hardly more than a kid! She should have had her whole life ahead of her: love, marriage, kids, grandkids, but Morgan stole her future just as surely as he stole her life.
It was sickening, disgusting, terrifying; every second of Lizzie’s ordeal is seared into his memory, and all Owen wants is to blot it out, but he’s not sure he can. There probably isn’t even alcohol in Cardiff. Won’t keep him from trying though. Even if he can’t escape the memories completely, maybe if he drinks enough he can dull their edges to the point where he can sleep without dreaming.
Tosh said no one was ever brought to trial for Lizzie’s murder. Morgan got away with what he did back in sixty-three, and as far as Owen knows, he’s still out there somewhere, free as a bird, living his life, while Lizzie’s parents went to their graves never knowing who took their precious daughter from them. It isn’t right! He should be made to pay! This is Wales though, there’s an Ed Morgan around practically every corner, and finding the right one after all this time… Chances are he’s moved away, doesn’t even live in Cardiff anymore.
So just for tonight Owen’s going to take refuge in the bottle, but this isn’t over, not by a long shot. Somehow he’s going to track down Ed Morgan, no matter how long it takes or what he has to do, and then he’s going to make that murdering bastard wish he’d never been born!
Owen can’t bring Lizzie back, can’t undo the past, but he can, and will, get justice for her, because he won’t be able to live with himself if he doesn’t.
The End