Almost Too Late
Title: Almost Too Late
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Series: Just a Human with Two Hearts
Characters/Pairings: Owen, Tosh, Lacey, implied Owen/Diane, Owen/Gwen
Setting: About two days after the events in Combat
Summary: Two days after returning to work after the cage match with a Weevil, and Owen still can't seem to figure it out.
Notes: Written for the hc_bingo Prompt: Poisoning. Also, there is mention of suicide and this basically is an attempted suicide story, so if you find that triggering, please do not read, It won't hurt my feelings honest.
They almost waited too long to find him. It had been two days since they’d last seen him. He’d come in the day after he was released from the hospital. Lacey had teased him slightly, and Tosh had given him sympathy. Ianto led him down to the cells when he asked, and overall, he seemed very Owen, if a bit distracted. No one blamed him. After all, a Weevil had nearly killed him. So no one was surprised when the next day he didn’t come in and didn’t answer his phone.
Lacey and Ianto both chewed Jack out over the incident, telling him that he pushed Owen too hard too soon. Yes, it was Owen’s own stupidity that nearly got him killed but he had also just lost Diane and hadn’t he ever lost anyone. At that point, Jack sent both out of his office, with just a dark look they knew wasn’t directed at them.
It was the second night that he hadn’t been seen or heard from that Tosh and Lacey started getting concerned. “Do you think he’s ok?” Tosh asked as Lacey slammed her mobile down by the cooling pizzas and warming beers.
“No,” Lacey said, pacing. “His voicemail is full, which means he’s not even checking the messages and deleting them.” She crossed her arms. “I don’t like it Tosh, he’s not even returning our calls. He’s deliberately ignoring free food and booze.” She flung herself down on the sofa. “Think we should head over there?”
Tosh thought for a few minutes. Owen was a fairly private man, even with Lacey and herself. He could just be sulking on his own and would be at work the next day like nothing was wrong. Which would mean he wouldn’t appreciate the two women showing up trying to drag him out of his misery. On the other hand, if he’d already done one thing stupid by getting in the cage with the Weevil, there’s no telling what else he might do. “I think we should.” Rather have a mad friend than a dead one.
Lacey grabbed the keys from the table, jumping to her feet. “Come on then, let’s get over there and let him yell at us for interrupting his moping.” She’d been thinking along the same lines as Tosh. Tosh blamed worry for Owen on her lapse in judgment that allowed Lacey to drive. Still, the Time Lady got them to his building in record time. They parked next to his car, Lacey taking a quick second to make sure he hadn’t passed out drunk in it before rushing inside and up the elevator. “Have you ever notice,” Lacey said, staring at the numbers as the lift ascended, “that these things move impossibly slow when you’re worried?”
Tosh nodded. “Maybe we should have taken the stairs?”
“Are you nuts? He lives like on the top floor the prat. He just had to have the view.”
“He says it impresses women.”
“Oh bullshit, he does it cause he likes to look out over his domain,” She said. “I swear, sometimes he’s worse than the Captain.”
“If he were as bad as Jack he’d hang out on rooftops instead of living in a high rise flat.” She walked out of the lift, and towards his door. Tosh knocked. “Owen? It’s Lacey and Tosh.”
“Open up you slacker!” Lacey called. “Two nights in a row you’ve missed Pizza and beer, I’m beginning to think you don’t love us anymore.” They stood outside the door for several minutes, but there wasn’t an answer, not even a grumbled or slurred go away. “Harper, you Twat, open the fucking door!” Lacey banged harder on the door.
“Maybe he’s not in…Lacey!”
Lacey looked over at Tosh, but the other woman was looking at the carpet in front of the door. The soaked carpet, and the water seemed to be coming from Owen’s flat. Lacey swore. “Tosh call emergency services.” She said, reaching into her pocket. “Just hope we’re not too late.” She used her sonic to unlock the door, slamming it with her shoulder to break the chain. The Time Lady made her way towards the bathroom, and sighed. “Christ you are the luckiest bastard,” she said to the unconscious Owen, his head just barely above the water. She grabbed him, shutting off the water and dragging him towards his bed. She caught a whiff of him, “whew, Tell them it’s alcohol poisoning.” She started pulling his wet clothes off him before wrapping him in towels and blankets to get his core body temperature back up. “Don’t you dare die on me Harper.”
“They’re on their way. They said to make sure his airway’s clear.”
“Yeah, it is. He’s breathing, for now.” She looked up at Tosh, seeing the fear and panic she was barely controlling etched on her friend’s face.
Owen could hear the sounds of medical equipment; having spent so much time around them, he could tell what each one was by the annoying beep. One was a heart monitor, the other sounded like one of the automated blood pressure machines. There was an IV in one hand, and a NC in his nose; he could feel the cold oxygen from it. He opened his eyes, blinking against the dim light, even that hurt.
“Hey there,” Tosh said, smiling slightly.
He looked over. “Hey.” He then looked away, towards the window. Oh look at that, rain. No surprise, it was Cardiff at Christmas time; it should be raining. “I take it you and Lace did this?”
“Damn right we did.” He looked over by the door. The ginger haired Time Lord was standing there, and Owen couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so pissed off. “Damn lucky we did too. Or you would have drowned in that nice little bath you were taking. Oh, but I forgot, that was the plan wasn’t it? To either drown or die from alcohol poisoning, you twat.”
“Lacey,” Tosh said, “We talked about this…”
“No, Tosh, that’s exactly the problem. We haven’t talked about it. We haven’t talked about anything. Diane heads into the Rift, never to return, and we don’t say anything to him, we just let him drink, and then get in a cage with a god damned Weevil.” She looked at Owen. “And then we let it go that he tried to take the coward’s way out, only he was too chickenshit to do it himself the first time and wanted death by fucking weevil. When we wouldn’t let him have that, he drinks himself to death. That’s what not talking does Tosh.” She stormed out of the room.
Tosh and Owen stared after her, before Tosh turned to Owen, an almost sheepish look on her face. “She’s right.” When Owen just gave her a look, she continued. “We’re your friends Owen, you’re supposed to trust us. Why didn’t you come to us? Talk to us?” Owen looked away, towards the window and the rain, not saying a word. Tosh waited, hoping he’d say something, but he didn’t. “She hadn’t left your side, you know,” she said finally, getting up. “Neither of us did.” She turned to leave, before stopping. “Oh and she told Jack. He said something about this time making you actually eat the grapes?” She looked confused by Jack’s message, but got it quite clearly from the eye roll.
Owen didn’t remember falling asleep, but sometime between Jack coming by and being true to his word and now, he must have. Lacey was back, standing by the window, looking out over Cardiff. “It’s not as good as the view from your flat,” she said, not facing him. “You don’t get as good of a view of the bay. None, really. Which is a shame.”
“I thought you hated that my flat was so high,” he said, grumpy that she was acting like that little outburst hadn’t happened.
“I may be terrified of heights, especially when I’m trying to reach my best friend when he’s doing something stupid,” she said, “but the water, reminds me of the lake near the Oakdown estates. The water was a shade of silver that in the sunlight looked like liquid mercury. It was clean and fresh and oh so cold. It’s where I learned to swim.”
“Well, isn’t that nice,” Owen said, feigning sleep again. He really didn’t feel like listening to Lacey go on about her childhood memories, because it always ended with her bawling in his arms in the middle of the night after drinking too much. His head was killing him enough without it.
“It’s also where I lost my first regeneration. I drowned in those waters on my hundredth birthday.” He shifted a bit in the bed, wincing slightly as he pulled awkwardly on the IV. “I deserved it though.”
“And why exactly did you think you deserved to die?”
“Why did you?” She said quietly. “That’s what this is about,” she gestured to him, still healing from the Weevil attack and now sick from alcohol poisoning. “You don’t think you deserve to live.” He looked away. “You hate yourself. You have ever since I’ve met you. You go from one conquest to another, with no concern for them or for yourself. And then you met her.”
“Her name is Diane.”
“Her name could be Mother Theresa for all I care.” Lacey shot back., still looking out of the window. “You fell for her, the first time in god knows when that you actually fell for someone in a long time I’d wager. Maybe she told you she loved you too, maybe she didn’t, but it doesn’t matter does it, because you told her. And the next day she runs off, leaving you behind with a broken heart, no matter how much you begged her to stay, or take you with her.”
“Been in my shoes then,” he said, with a shrug. “You’re not the first.”
“I was in Diane’s shoes.” She stated softly. “There was this girl, another hybrid. Not Time Lord, but we both knew what it was like to be the outcast. Her people were nicer to her than mine, but that didn’t matter. She saved my life, literally.” She chuckled, leaning against the wall. “I was a bit more like my brother as an angry teen. In my nineties I was helping a Federation of Humans and Aliens fight a species that came through a wormhole. She pulled me off the battlefield and got me to my ship after patching me up. And as was usual for me back then, we fell into bed together.”
“Oh of course, what could be more natural? Near death experience followed by shagging.”
“I know, right?” Lacey said, turning only slightly with a small smirk, before continuing. “We kept meeting up, ending up going on wild adventures, ended up in the sack so many times I lost count. She always went back to her job, and I always went back to being a reckless teenager. Then it changed. She admitted she loved me. And I realized I loved her. I dropped her off with a good bye at her own ship the next day, acting like I’d be back, like always, having slipped a note in her pack that told the truth.” She sighed, going back to the window. “I never saw her again. I heard, through various sources that she moved on, found a mate, was happy, but it didn’t help. I had still broken her heart. Because I was a coward.” She leaned against the window. “I did what I always do, bottle it up, went on like nothing was wrong, and then walked out into the lake in the middle of winter. Between the Hypothermia and the weight of my clothes, I drowned before anyone knew I was missing.”
“Seems like a rather useless exercise that, Lace. You’re a bloody Time Lord. You regenerate.”
“I’m half Time Lord,” she reminded him. “It’s not a guarantee. They didn’t think I would regenerate. I was hoping they were right. They weren’t. I was out for two weeks, and my left heart stopped twice during that time. I spent years hating them for keeping me alive, but never said a word about it.” She moved away from the window, towards the bed. “What I’m saying is this, is a waste, Owen. She’s not worth it. I certainly wasn’t. She was the coward, she was wrong.” She sat down. “So, have I bored you to death, made your head worse, or have I actually succeeded in talking some sense into you?”
He smirked at her. “Definitely A and B, but…” and the smirk turned into a real smile for once. “There might have been a bit of C in there. Don’t let it go to your head.” He pointed at her with a ‘watch it’ type look. “And I’m not apologizing to you for saving my life.”
“Wasn’t expecting one,” she said, smiling at him. She knew him well enough to know that’s exactly what happened, and he knew her well enough to know she had accepted it.
Fandom: Doctor Who/Torchwood
Series: Just a Human with Two Hearts
Characters/Pairings: Owen, Tosh, Lacey, implied Owen/Diane, Owen/Gwen
Setting: About two days after the events in Combat
Summary: Two days after returning to work after the cage match with a Weevil, and Owen still can't seem to figure it out.
Notes: Written for the hc_bingo Prompt: Poisoning. Also, there is mention of suicide and this basically is an attempted suicide story, so if you find that triggering, please do not read, It won't hurt my feelings honest.
They almost waited too long to find him. It had been two days since they’d last seen him. He’d come in the day after he was released from the hospital. Lacey had teased him slightly, and Tosh had given him sympathy. Ianto led him down to the cells when he asked, and overall, he seemed very Owen, if a bit distracted. No one blamed him. After all, a Weevil had nearly killed him. So no one was surprised when the next day he didn’t come in and didn’t answer his phone.
Lacey and Ianto both chewed Jack out over the incident, telling him that he pushed Owen too hard too soon. Yes, it was Owen’s own stupidity that nearly got him killed but he had also just lost Diane and hadn’t he ever lost anyone. At that point, Jack sent both out of his office, with just a dark look they knew wasn’t directed at them.
It was the second night that he hadn’t been seen or heard from that Tosh and Lacey started getting concerned. “Do you think he’s ok?” Tosh asked as Lacey slammed her mobile down by the cooling pizzas and warming beers.
“No,” Lacey said, pacing. “His voicemail is full, which means he’s not even checking the messages and deleting them.” She crossed her arms. “I don’t like it Tosh, he’s not even returning our calls. He’s deliberately ignoring free food and booze.” She flung herself down on the sofa. “Think we should head over there?”
Tosh thought for a few minutes. Owen was a fairly private man, even with Lacey and herself. He could just be sulking on his own and would be at work the next day like nothing was wrong. Which would mean he wouldn’t appreciate the two women showing up trying to drag him out of his misery. On the other hand, if he’d already done one thing stupid by getting in the cage with the Weevil, there’s no telling what else he might do. “I think we should.” Rather have a mad friend than a dead one.
Lacey grabbed the keys from the table, jumping to her feet. “Come on then, let’s get over there and let him yell at us for interrupting his moping.” She’d been thinking along the same lines as Tosh. Tosh blamed worry for Owen on her lapse in judgment that allowed Lacey to drive. Still, the Time Lady got them to his building in record time. They parked next to his car, Lacey taking a quick second to make sure he hadn’t passed out drunk in it before rushing inside and up the elevator. “Have you ever notice,” Lacey said, staring at the numbers as the lift ascended, “that these things move impossibly slow when you’re worried?”
Tosh nodded. “Maybe we should have taken the stairs?”
“Are you nuts? He lives like on the top floor the prat. He just had to have the view.”
“He says it impresses women.”
“Oh bullshit, he does it cause he likes to look out over his domain,” She said. “I swear, sometimes he’s worse than the Captain.”
“If he were as bad as Jack he’d hang out on rooftops instead of living in a high rise flat.” She walked out of the lift, and towards his door. Tosh knocked. “Owen? It’s Lacey and Tosh.”
“Open up you slacker!” Lacey called. “Two nights in a row you’ve missed Pizza and beer, I’m beginning to think you don’t love us anymore.” They stood outside the door for several minutes, but there wasn’t an answer, not even a grumbled or slurred go away. “Harper, you Twat, open the fucking door!” Lacey banged harder on the door.
“Maybe he’s not in…Lacey!”
Lacey looked over at Tosh, but the other woman was looking at the carpet in front of the door. The soaked carpet, and the water seemed to be coming from Owen’s flat. Lacey swore. “Tosh call emergency services.” She said, reaching into her pocket. “Just hope we’re not too late.” She used her sonic to unlock the door, slamming it with her shoulder to break the chain. The Time Lady made her way towards the bathroom, and sighed. “Christ you are the luckiest bastard,” she said to the unconscious Owen, his head just barely above the water. She grabbed him, shutting off the water and dragging him towards his bed. She caught a whiff of him, “whew, Tell them it’s alcohol poisoning.” She started pulling his wet clothes off him before wrapping him in towels and blankets to get his core body temperature back up. “Don’t you dare die on me Harper.”
“They’re on their way. They said to make sure his airway’s clear.”
“Yeah, it is. He’s breathing, for now.” She looked up at Tosh, seeing the fear and panic she was barely controlling etched on her friend’s face.
Owen could hear the sounds of medical equipment; having spent so much time around them, he could tell what each one was by the annoying beep. One was a heart monitor, the other sounded like one of the automated blood pressure machines. There was an IV in one hand, and a NC in his nose; he could feel the cold oxygen from it. He opened his eyes, blinking against the dim light, even that hurt.
“Hey there,” Tosh said, smiling slightly.
He looked over. “Hey.” He then looked away, towards the window. Oh look at that, rain. No surprise, it was Cardiff at Christmas time; it should be raining. “I take it you and Lace did this?”
“Damn right we did.” He looked over by the door. The ginger haired Time Lord was standing there, and Owen couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her so pissed off. “Damn lucky we did too. Or you would have drowned in that nice little bath you were taking. Oh, but I forgot, that was the plan wasn’t it? To either drown or die from alcohol poisoning, you twat.”
“Lacey,” Tosh said, “We talked about this…”
“No, Tosh, that’s exactly the problem. We haven’t talked about it. We haven’t talked about anything. Diane heads into the Rift, never to return, and we don’t say anything to him, we just let him drink, and then get in a cage with a god damned Weevil.” She looked at Owen. “And then we let it go that he tried to take the coward’s way out, only he was too chickenshit to do it himself the first time and wanted death by fucking weevil. When we wouldn’t let him have that, he drinks himself to death. That’s what not talking does Tosh.” She stormed out of the room.
Tosh and Owen stared after her, before Tosh turned to Owen, an almost sheepish look on her face. “She’s right.” When Owen just gave her a look, she continued. “We’re your friends Owen, you’re supposed to trust us. Why didn’t you come to us? Talk to us?” Owen looked away, towards the window and the rain, not saying a word. Tosh waited, hoping he’d say something, but he didn’t. “She hadn’t left your side, you know,” she said finally, getting up. “Neither of us did.” She turned to leave, before stopping. “Oh and she told Jack. He said something about this time making you actually eat the grapes?” She looked confused by Jack’s message, but got it quite clearly from the eye roll.
Owen didn’t remember falling asleep, but sometime between Jack coming by and being true to his word and now, he must have. Lacey was back, standing by the window, looking out over Cardiff. “It’s not as good as the view from your flat,” she said, not facing him. “You don’t get as good of a view of the bay. None, really. Which is a shame.”
“I thought you hated that my flat was so high,” he said, grumpy that she was acting like that little outburst hadn’t happened.
“I may be terrified of heights, especially when I’m trying to reach my best friend when he’s doing something stupid,” she said, “but the water, reminds me of the lake near the Oakdown estates. The water was a shade of silver that in the sunlight looked like liquid mercury. It was clean and fresh and oh so cold. It’s where I learned to swim.”
“Well, isn’t that nice,” Owen said, feigning sleep again. He really didn’t feel like listening to Lacey go on about her childhood memories, because it always ended with her bawling in his arms in the middle of the night after drinking too much. His head was killing him enough without it.
“It’s also where I lost my first regeneration. I drowned in those waters on my hundredth birthday.” He shifted a bit in the bed, wincing slightly as he pulled awkwardly on the IV. “I deserved it though.”
“And why exactly did you think you deserved to die?”
“Why did you?” She said quietly. “That’s what this is about,” she gestured to him, still healing from the Weevil attack and now sick from alcohol poisoning. “You don’t think you deserve to live.” He looked away. “You hate yourself. You have ever since I’ve met you. You go from one conquest to another, with no concern for them or for yourself. And then you met her.”
“Her name is Diane.”
“Her name could be Mother Theresa for all I care.” Lacey shot back., still looking out of the window. “You fell for her, the first time in god knows when that you actually fell for someone in a long time I’d wager. Maybe she told you she loved you too, maybe she didn’t, but it doesn’t matter does it, because you told her. And the next day she runs off, leaving you behind with a broken heart, no matter how much you begged her to stay, or take you with her.”
“Been in my shoes then,” he said, with a shrug. “You’re not the first.”
“I was in Diane’s shoes.” She stated softly. “There was this girl, another hybrid. Not Time Lord, but we both knew what it was like to be the outcast. Her people were nicer to her than mine, but that didn’t matter. She saved my life, literally.” She chuckled, leaning against the wall. “I was a bit more like my brother as an angry teen. In my nineties I was helping a Federation of Humans and Aliens fight a species that came through a wormhole. She pulled me off the battlefield and got me to my ship after patching me up. And as was usual for me back then, we fell into bed together.”
“Oh of course, what could be more natural? Near death experience followed by shagging.”
“I know, right?” Lacey said, turning only slightly with a small smirk, before continuing. “We kept meeting up, ending up going on wild adventures, ended up in the sack so many times I lost count. She always went back to her job, and I always went back to being a reckless teenager. Then it changed. She admitted she loved me. And I realized I loved her. I dropped her off with a good bye at her own ship the next day, acting like I’d be back, like always, having slipped a note in her pack that told the truth.” She sighed, going back to the window. “I never saw her again. I heard, through various sources that she moved on, found a mate, was happy, but it didn’t help. I had still broken her heart. Because I was a coward.” She leaned against the window. “I did what I always do, bottle it up, went on like nothing was wrong, and then walked out into the lake in the middle of winter. Between the Hypothermia and the weight of my clothes, I drowned before anyone knew I was missing.”
“Seems like a rather useless exercise that, Lace. You’re a bloody Time Lord. You regenerate.”
“I’m half Time Lord,” she reminded him. “It’s not a guarantee. They didn’t think I would regenerate. I was hoping they were right. They weren’t. I was out for two weeks, and my left heart stopped twice during that time. I spent years hating them for keeping me alive, but never said a word about it.” She moved away from the window, towards the bed. “What I’m saying is this, is a waste, Owen. She’s not worth it. I certainly wasn’t. She was the coward, she was wrong.” She sat down. “So, have I bored you to death, made your head worse, or have I actually succeeded in talking some sense into you?”
He smirked at her. “Definitely A and B, but…” and the smirk turned into a real smile for once. “There might have been a bit of C in there. Don’t let it go to your head.” He pointed at her with a ‘watch it’ type look. “And I’m not apologizing to you for saving my life.”
“Wasn’t expecting one,” she said, smiling at him. She knew him well enough to know that’s exactly what happened, and he knew her well enough to know she had accepted it.