| Date: 11 January 2008
Characters: Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato Location: outside? Link to IJ: thread #31305 |
 He felt more like himself. At least, physically. That helped. He didn't feel nearly as vulnerable now that he had most of his strength back, and there was still several heavy mental and emotional burdens weighing him down. And one of those burdens was currently resting within his link of sight. He'd frozen when he saw her, standing there like nothing had ever happened. And in all likelihood, nothing ever had. He'd been momentarily fixed in place, unable to think, unable to move, and it wasn't until his lungs started to burn that he realized that he'd forgotten to breath."Tosh?" Owen called, the name almost dying on his lips, falling off at the end. "Tosh!" |
 Tosh turned at the sound of the familiar voice, eyes widening in surprise."Owen!" she said. "When did you get here!?" She still wasn't used to assuming that anyone she met wasn't her version of the person. |
| Answering the question could wait. Closing the distance between the two of them, Owen wrapped his arms tightly around Tosh, pulling her close and giving her a near crushing hug, "Oh, you beautiful brilliant woman!" Owen said, laughing, half out of delight and half out of a sheer stress reaction. Leaning back and releasing her, Owen raised his hands, resting them on the side of her face and he leaned forward and kissed her. It wasn't something he'd ever thought about doing before. Tosh was, well, she was his best friend. And kissing your best friend tended to make things awkward. But, hell, seeing her here and all right, it just seemed like the right thing to do. |
| To say Toshiko was surprised would be an understatement. She was still processing the hug and the look on Owen's face when he kissed her. It wasn't as if she hadn't imagined him doing it before. She had. Sort of. She'd never quite imagined it like this. Specifically in a place like this. That was one of the problems with Toshiko when it came to interpersonal relationships, and, well kissing. She tended to think instead of react. And she was thinking this wasn't her Owen. And she was wondering what his Toshiko was like that he'd kiss her and not, well, her. Most of the way through the kiss she realized she wasn't kissing him back and tried to make up for lost time. She ended up bumping their noses together roughly. "Shit. Sorry. Sorry. I. Owen?" |
| Awkward. Definitely awkward, but it was a good kind of awkward. When he pulled back, there were tears pooled in his eyes, but he hadn't even realized it. Or at least, hadn't decided at acknowledge it as he grinned at her. "Should have given you a bit more warning, shouldn't I?" Owen asked, blinking his eyes to clear them. "God, it's good to see you." There was a little too much relief and desperation in his tone than Owen ever would have consciously use before. If anything, when greeting Tosh before, he'd been aloof and taunting about it. And he'd always tried really hard not to let on how glad he really was that she was around. |
| It was his tone and the tears that got to her more than anything. She reached out and took his hand, squeezing it gently. "I'm glad to be seen. And yeah, you did surprise me a bit," she said with a half-smile. "My. The Owen I know ... we're not quite as friendly." |
| Owen shook his head slowly. He'd treated her like crap. He knew he had. He'd taken out more than enough frustrations on her, and that was mostly because (other than Suzie), she had been the person in the office that he'd known the best, the one least likely to tell him to go fuck himself and never talk to him again when he got too mouthy. "When did you come in from?" Owen asked, squeezing her hand right back. "Jack went and disappeared yet?" |
| "Just," she confirmed. "We'd only been looking for him for a short while when I went to get coffee and ended up here. He's here, you know. Or, a version of him is at least. You?" She almost dreaded hearing the answer. She wasn't sure she wanted to know what could cause such a change in him. |
| "You don't want to know," Owen said softly. She was safe for awhile yet, at least. Maybe if he could convince her to stay her for awhile...or find some kind of paper and shove some kind of notes in her pocket to make sure that she knew what was going to happen and stopped it. "Let's just say...later." |
| She studied him for a long moment. Now she did want to know but she also felt she had no right to press, not if it was going to cause him pain. "All right," she said with a nod, squeezing his hand again. |
| Owen smiled gently at her, leaning forward and kissing her forehead affectionately, so glad to see it fully intact for the first time in months. He'd taken everything for granted, all of them. If only he could go back and do it all again... If only. "How long have you been here?" Owen asked her the same question that he'd neglected to answer. |
| "You still owe me the answer to that same question, mister," she said, poking his chest. No, she hadn't forgotten. |
| "Not long. Maybe a week," Owen said, flinching a bit at the poke as he narrowed his eyes playfully at her. "Careful where you stick that thing, Tosh." |
| "Why? Oh don't tell me, you've been here a week and you've already gotten into a fight with someone?" |
| "Two, actually," Owen said, grinning sheepishly as he raised a hand to rub the back of his neck. Not that either one had really went anywhere. He hadn't had the strength to kill either one of them. Not that he'd really wanted to kill Jack after he'd figured out that it was the Jack he'd known before. |
| She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "How badly are you injured?" she asked. Probably not too badly or he'd be someplace whining to whoever would listen and looking to be coddled a bit. |
| "Not as badly as I was when I first got here," Owen said. In fact, other than a few hunger pains at the moment, he was feeling better than he had in a long time. "You know how I said that nothing could ever make me kiss the walking petri dish we know as our fearless leader?" |
| "Yeeesss?" she said hesitantly, wondering where this was headed. |
| "Apparently all I had to do was get into a situation where I could barely move." |
| "He healed you?" |
| Owen nodded, "Yeah. Was in pretty rough shape before," He said, shrugging. "But it doesn't matter now because hell if I'm going back." He paused, smiling and moving to hug her again, "I like it better here." |
| This time she could see the hug coming and returned it. "You're going to have to tell me some time," she said quietly. "Or it'll drive me crazy, not knowing." |
| "I'll tell you, eventually," Owen said, looking over at her with a soft, worried look in his eye. "But it's not a nice story, Tosh." |
| "Cannibals, Owen," she reminded him. "Tell me when you're ready." |
| "Worse than cannibals," Owen said, his tone indicating that he truly believed it. They had come out of the cannibal thing mostly intact. They were all still alive, even if haunted by what they'd seen and had to endure. |
| "I believe you. I just ... didn't want you to think that I was weak, that I wouldn't be able to take it," she admitted. |
| "That's the last thing that I think," Owen said earnestly. "I just don't want to burden you with my problems." |
| "We're friends," she said, looking just a tiny bit hurt. Owen never wanted to open up to her. "If you want to talk, of course I want to hear." |
| "Of course we're friends," Owen said. "I know I ga- give you a lot of shit, Tosh, but if I have a best friend, it's you." He could see the hurt on her face, and that made him feel guilty, no matter how much he thought that keeping her from the full truth was for her own good. "We were captured, Tosh. Harold Saxon, that officer from the Ministry of Defense we ran checks on after that incident last Christmas. He isn't who he seems to be." |
| "Harold Saxon?" she asked, frowning. "The bloke who is running for prime minister?" |
| "Yeah. That one," Owen said, scowling. "There's a reason that the whole invasion that happened on Christmas didn't phase him. He's a fucking alien. And a psychotic one." |
| "Why am I not surprised?" she said, rubbing her temple. |
| "Because this kind of stuff always happens to us?" Owen asked with a bitter grin. "He wins, by the way. The election. And from what I've been gathered, our dear fearless leader is with him." And that come out with a near feral growl, "If I come across a Jack from after he disappeared, I'm going to kill him, Tosh. I am, for all the good it's going to do me." |
| She frowned at the growl and what it implied about what he'd said. "I. That doesn't sound like Jack," she said, shaking her head. "Not our Jack. And killing him won't do any good. You've done it before and all you felt after was guilt." |
| "That doesn't sound like Jack. Jack wouldn't do that to us. Jack, Jack, Jack. That was all all of you could talk about, but a hell of a lot of good Captain Jack Harkness was to us. Ran off without a single word, leaving us to fend for ourselves, deal with all of the shit that got thrown at us without any direction," Owen snapped. He'd heard the 'Jack wouldn't do this to us' speech far too much from ALL of them, as he watched each one fade and die from what Jack was helping happen. He wasn't going to hear it again. "A lot of shit happened after Jack disappeared, Tosh. A lot of shit that we had to clean up all by ourselves, that we were barely equipped to handle. He left us shorthanded. And when he did come back, it was just to help a madman lock us up and torture us." |
| She pulled away from him, turned her back while she tried to control a myriad of emotions that were assaulting her and wrapped her arms around herself. "I can't believe you, Owen." |
| "None of you believed it," Owen said, looking over at Tosh, a heavily haunted look in his eyes. "You can't let it happen, Tosh. It can't happen." |
| She turned back to him, but her arms were still crossed around herself. "I can't promise you that, Owen," she said sadly. "I don't know what's going to happen, if what happened to you is what will happen to us. If we try to change it, what's to say that something worse won't happen? If there's one thing this place has taught me, it that there's no use supposing anything." |
| Owen nodded slowly, watching Tosh before he stepped over and pulled her into a hug again, closing his eyes as he did, whispering, "I just don't want to lose you. I didn't realize how much it would hurt until it happened." |
| "I'm sorry," she murmured as she wrapped her arms around him, tucking herself in under his chin. "I'm sorry you had to go through that, whatever it was. I'm sorry I can't promise you it won't happen in my world. I'm ... I'm not sorry it woke you up a little." |
| Owen laughed weakly before murmuring, "Kinda shitty that it took each of you dying for me to realize just how much you meant to me. Didn't realize that my head was really that hard." |
| "You avoided a lot," she said quietly. "Put up shields, protected yourself with your bitter snipes and attitude and held yourself away even when you thought you were just joshing around. I think... I think Diane was the first person who really got to you in a long time." That was hard for her to admit. |
| "It was easier," Owen said. It was. He'd been hurt too many times before, before he joined Torchwood. He'd lost so much, and it was easier to fool himself into thinking that he didn't really care about the people that he surrounded himself with. And then she said the name 'Diane', and his heart seized in his chest, "Don't talk about her," He said, his voice hard. She'd left him. She'd left, willingly, just like so many people before, people that didn't care enough to stay. He'd opened himself up to getting hurt when he'd allowed himself to care about her and be honest about it. And he didn't want to think about on top of everything else. |
| "I just need to say this one thing, and then I'll stop," she said, moving back a little so she could look him in the eye. "I envied her. Her and Gwen. Because..." She looked down, shook her head and took a deep breath before steeling herself to look him in the eye. "Because they had what I wanted, even if it was for just a little bit." |
| If Owen could have looked more stunned...no, he couldn't have. There was no way his eyes could have gotten any wider. "Wait. What?" Was the best his mind could manage to say. There was no possible way that could mean what he thought it meant. Was there? |
| "I. Never mind. I shouldn't have said anything." She pulled away again. Stupid, stupid Tosh. There wasn't any way he would feel like that for her, no matter what he'd been through. Friends, remember. He'd just been glad to see her because they'd been friends and that's it. She shouldn't have pushed. |
| "No, Tosh..." Owen said, mentally kicking himself. He always seemed to do this, say or do something that would make her close off. He'd never cared too much about it before, but now, he wasn't going to just let it go by. "Do you mean that the way I think you do?" He asked, looking slightly confused. |
| "That would depend on how you think I mean," she said with a soft snort. |
| Owen smiled at Tosh, a very teasing expression on his face, "That you like me," He said in a sing-song voice. |
| "Stop it!" she exclaimed and tried not to laugh. |
| "You do. You like me," Owen said, a broad grin spreading across his face as he stepped forward, reaching down and snagging her around the waist, tickling her. |
| "Owen! Stop it!" She was laughing now and pushing ineffectually at his hand. "Stop!" |
| Owen beamed as he scooped Tosh up, throwing her over his shoulder and smacking her on the bum, "Comfortable?" |
| "No!" she exclaimed, letting out a very undignified squeak when he smacked her. Two could play this game. She reached down and yanked hard at the waist of his pants. |
| "Ow! TOSH!" Owen yelped, spinning for a moment with her on his shoulder, setting her rather quickly back on her feet as he wiggled in an undignified manner, trying to wedge his pants out from a very uncomfortable area. "That is so not fair." |
| "Says the man who had me tossed over his shoulder," she said, laughing at him triumphantly. |
| "But I didn't hike your dress up, did I?" Owen asked, glaring at her despite the amusement in his features. God, he'd missed this, just being able to play around. "I could. But I didn't." |
| "As if smacking me in the bum wasn't bad enough!" she exclaimed, throwing her hands in the air. |
| "Oh, come on, you love it," Owen said, winking at her as he reached out and took her around the waist, dipping her. |
| "I've never been a fan of pain," she said primly but her eyes were sparkling. |
| "Pain can be a good thing to some people," He said, grinning wickedly at her as he pulled her to her feet and hug her again. "Am I being a bit too clingy?" Owen asked after a moment. |
| "I don't mind," she said. She was storing it up for when he went back to being sarcastic and bitter. |
| Sarcastic and bitter would come eventually. But right now, Owen was indulging in an area that was teetering dangerously close to being sappy. "Good," Owen said, reluctantly letting her go. "Because I'm probably going to be acting like a right ponce for awhile yet." |
| "Think I'll notice a difference?" she teased and then offered him her hand. "Come on, after all of this, I think you owe me at least one drink." |
| Owen rolled his eyes, reaching down and taking her hand, giving it a squeeze, "Sorry. But I'm only half a ponce, usually," He said with a wry grin. "There's some pretty nice bars around here. Shame that there seems to be a dearth when it comes to the population." |
| "Would you really want the general populace here?" she asked as she started to walk toward the pub. "I had enough trouble dealing with it myself, I can't imagine what it would be like for someone who had no experience in this sort of thing." |
| "Point. Besides, I like not being surrounded by morons for once," Owen said, grinning sideways at her. |
| "You were never surrounded by idiots," she said. "Just people who happened to act idiotically sometimes." She counted both herself and him in that lot. |
| "I'd count that bloody Cardiff police force as a lot of idiots, Tosh," Owen said. "And the A&E staff. And a good lot of the regular population." |
| "The regular population is something altogether different. And I wouldn't count the police -- they do the best they can with the information they've got. Sometimes they're just ... outclassed." |
| "Understatement of the century, that," Owen said, smirking at her. |