Fic: Of all the Things that have been Stolen
A quick note on this fic before we begin! This can be read even if you're not familiar with Torchwood, as none of the general mythology of Torchwood is discussed, and the primary character involved is a very minor character who was on screen for maybe 3 minutes of one episode. So hopefully both fans and non-fans can get something out of it.
Title: Of all the Things that have been Stolen
Author: cookielaura
Characters/Pairing: Katie/Owen
Wordcount: 775
Rating: PG
Spoilers: 2x12 'Fragments'
Warnings: Description of an upsetting illness which is diagnosed (incorrectly) as fast-progressing, early-onset Alzheimer's Disease.
Disclaimer: Torchwood isn't mine.
Notes: Written for the 'serious/life-threatening illness' prompt on my hurt/comfort bingo card. A big thank-you to karaokegal for the beta.
Of all the Things that have been Stolen
Everything changes in a matter of weeks. In February, her life is normal. She is normal. By April, she is lost.
----
The first couple of times it happens, neither she nor Owen think twice about it. These things are common, right? They happen to everyone. Nobody’s perfect. Forgetting to lock the front door or take the laundry out of the machine is not the end of the world.
The next few times it happens, Owen teases her. He looks at her fondly and tells her she’d forget her head these days if it wasn’t screwed on. Once he wonders aloud if she’s putting herself under too much pressure at work and if it’s wearing her out, but mostly he seems to find her absentmindedness to be adorable and a source of amusement.
(In the days and weeks afterwards, he hates himself for this. She tells him it’s fine, that he couldn’t have known what was going on, that it’s not his fault and that she doesn’t blame him. She’s not even lying, not completely.)
The first time she gets scared is when she sees Owen get scared. Owen never gets scared. Owen made it through medical school, through his final exams, through his first surgery and through his residency, without a single moment of real panic, at least not that she saw. But that was the old Owen, fearless and invincible. That Owen disappears forever when she asks to borrow his pen to write down some potential wedding colour schemes, and instead of saying ‘pen’ she says ‘bat’, and she tries to correct herself three times and fails.
Things happen quickly after that. Her mind seems to slide away from her at an alarming rate, faster than she can comprehend. There are tests, scans, questions that she can’t quite answer, followed by complicated, confusing conversations that she lets Owen handle because she can no longer grasp the twisting threads of medical-speak. She does know they’re looking for a tumour, and that this is bad.
After the results come back, she knows they haven’t found one, and that this is worse.
When the diagnosis arrives, Owen fights it. She lets him drag her to different hospitals for a second opinion, a third, a surely-unnecessary fourth. She sits in the corridor outside more than one consultant’s office, listening to Owen try to argue, and insist, and reason the diagnosis away. But she doesn’t have the energy to fight it herself. She’s too busy fighting the symptoms, trying to locate the information she needs from one moment to the next: how to dress, how to put on her make-up, how to re-heat last night’s Chinese… and on the bad days, how to find the way to the kitchen or bathroom in her suddenly-terrifying labyrinth of a one-floor flat.
Owen insists they carry on with the wedding plans. She wants to refuse, wants so badly to be the type of noble, selfless woman who would tell him to go, to make a better life for himself that won’t be marred by this horror. She knows he would stay anyway no matter what she told him, and yet she still can’t bring herself to say it, for fear that’s she’s wrong, that her unreliable mind is telling her Owen is a better man than he is and that he will leave if she gives him the chance. So she sits in Owen’s arms and looks at dresses and place settings, smiling and imagining a wedding she might not remember and a perfect marriage she will never have.
She tries not to think about how it will end. Owen tells her they will find a treatment, or a cure, that it’s not over yet, and she does her best to believe him. Sometimes she succeeds, and manages to dampen the ever-present fear for just a moment.
She is scared of so many things, but the thing she dreads most is forgetting Owen’s name, so she says it over and over to herself, whether he’s there or not. Owen, Owen, Owen.
She is expecting to forget his name, but it doesn’t occur to her that she might forget her own.
She is unprepared, and the sudden absence of its presence in her mind is startling. Of all the things she’s lost, this one is the worst.
It is unacceptable.
Owen holds her as she struggles and cries. He whispers her name to her for hours, until he is hoarse and she has faded into a restless sleep with the word echoing in her mind.
By morning she’s forgotten it again, and she knows that no matter what Owen believes, it's over.
- end -
“Alzheimer’s is the cleverest thief, because she not only steals from you, but she steals the very thing you need to remember what’s been stolen. ”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book Has No Title
Title: Of all the Things that have been Stolen
Author: cookielaura
Characters/Pairing: Katie/Owen
Wordcount: 775
Rating: PG
Spoilers: 2x12 'Fragments'
Warnings: Description of an upsetting illness which is diagnosed (incorrectly) as fast-progressing, early-onset Alzheimer's Disease.
Disclaimer: Torchwood isn't mine.
Notes: Written for the 'serious/life-threatening illness' prompt on my hurt/comfort bingo card. A big thank-you to karaokegal for the beta.
Of all the Things that have been Stolen
Everything changes in a matter of weeks. In February, her life is normal. She is normal. By April, she is lost.
----
The first couple of times it happens, neither she nor Owen think twice about it. These things are common, right? They happen to everyone. Nobody’s perfect. Forgetting to lock the front door or take the laundry out of the machine is not the end of the world.
The next few times it happens, Owen teases her. He looks at her fondly and tells her she’d forget her head these days if it wasn’t screwed on. Once he wonders aloud if she’s putting herself under too much pressure at work and if it’s wearing her out, but mostly he seems to find her absentmindedness to be adorable and a source of amusement.
(In the days and weeks afterwards, he hates himself for this. She tells him it’s fine, that he couldn’t have known what was going on, that it’s not his fault and that she doesn’t blame him. She’s not even lying, not completely.)
The first time she gets scared is when she sees Owen get scared. Owen never gets scared. Owen made it through medical school, through his final exams, through his first surgery and through his residency, without a single moment of real panic, at least not that she saw. But that was the old Owen, fearless and invincible. That Owen disappears forever when she asks to borrow his pen to write down some potential wedding colour schemes, and instead of saying ‘pen’ she says ‘bat’, and she tries to correct herself three times and fails.
Things happen quickly after that. Her mind seems to slide away from her at an alarming rate, faster than she can comprehend. There are tests, scans, questions that she can’t quite answer, followed by complicated, confusing conversations that she lets Owen handle because she can no longer grasp the twisting threads of medical-speak. She does know they’re looking for a tumour, and that this is bad.
After the results come back, she knows they haven’t found one, and that this is worse.
When the diagnosis arrives, Owen fights it. She lets him drag her to different hospitals for a second opinion, a third, a surely-unnecessary fourth. She sits in the corridor outside more than one consultant’s office, listening to Owen try to argue, and insist, and reason the diagnosis away. But she doesn’t have the energy to fight it herself. She’s too busy fighting the symptoms, trying to locate the information she needs from one moment to the next: how to dress, how to put on her make-up, how to re-heat last night’s Chinese… and on the bad days, how to find the way to the kitchen or bathroom in her suddenly-terrifying labyrinth of a one-floor flat.
Owen insists they carry on with the wedding plans. She wants to refuse, wants so badly to be the type of noble, selfless woman who would tell him to go, to make a better life for himself that won’t be marred by this horror. She knows he would stay anyway no matter what she told him, and yet she still can’t bring herself to say it, for fear that’s she’s wrong, that her unreliable mind is telling her Owen is a better man than he is and that he will leave if she gives him the chance. So she sits in Owen’s arms and looks at dresses and place settings, smiling and imagining a wedding she might not remember and a perfect marriage she will never have.
She tries not to think about how it will end. Owen tells her they will find a treatment, or a cure, that it’s not over yet, and she does her best to believe him. Sometimes she succeeds, and manages to dampen the ever-present fear for just a moment.
She is scared of so many things, but the thing she dreads most is forgetting Owen’s name, so she says it over and over to herself, whether he’s there or not. Owen, Owen, Owen.
She is expecting to forget his name, but it doesn’t occur to her that she might forget her own.
She is unprepared, and the sudden absence of its presence in her mind is startling. Of all the things she’s lost, this one is the worst.
It is unacceptable.
Owen holds her as she struggles and cries. He whispers her name to her for hours, until he is hoarse and she has faded into a restless sleep with the word echoing in her mind.
By morning she’s forgotten it again, and she knows that no matter what Owen believes, it's over.
- end -
“Alzheimer’s is the cleverest thief, because she not only steals from you, but she steals the very thing you need to remember what’s been stolen. ”
― Jarod Kintz, This Book Has No Title