Welcome to the wonderful world of my magpie imagination! Everything here was started, considered, and then eventually abandoned to languish in the dusty corners of a folder somewhere. It's all up for adoption, so just PM me if you're interested. You'll also find several fandoms here, though Torchwood has the majority (hence the category). Just check the headers for warnings, pairings, fandoms, etc.

Best,

Kat

Rating: G-ish

Warnings: None.

Fandom: Torchwood

Pairings: None stated.

Premise: Tosh gets the chance to go back in time and try everything again.

Disclaimer: I don't hold the copyrights, I didn't create them, and I make no profit from this.

Tosh's mother always told her that the spirits of her family would watch over her in her life, and Tosh had believed it. She had trusted in something with no scientific proof and let herself be comforted by the thought, even though it was probably a childish, naive notion.

But if this is what that "watching over" was like, she probably shouldn't have put quite so much faith in it.

It makes sense that, even after death, she would focus on Torchwood, the only real family she's in contact with - and they certainly need guidance more than anyone else she knows, without a doubt. Jack is very strong, but deceptively so - if hit at just the right angle, Tosh is sure he'll shatter like glass. Gwen is out of her depth, more than the rest of them and even after so long working for Torchwood. And Ianto...

Oh, Ianto.

Tosh is dead, and it's...not quite what she had expected, when she'd thought of the inevitable day when Torchwood would kill her. There's a vagueness to everything, a sort of fog all around her. She can see the others, can follow them without eyes and hear them without ears and wrap herself around them without arms, but it's always with a laconic kind of concern when she's never, ever been a laconic sort of person. Even focusing on them takes far more effort than it should, and there's no way she can really interfere in anything.

It would be maddening, were she capable of feeling frustration.

As it is, if this is how her ancestors have always watched over her, Tosh is afraid that she trusted them a bit too much. There's nothing she can do, no way she can connect with her team even when they're hurting or depressed or dying, and she's never hated anything quite so much.

That emotion makes it through the fog of apathy, at least.

There's a sort of...collective consciousness to this existence, a shared omnipotence and omnipresence, so when the 456 come, Tosh knows immediately. It's the sort of vast threat that can make her stir herself even through the fog, so she's watching, faintly angry when she should really be feeling rage, when the Hub is destroyed.

She's watching when the sad remnants of her team gather at Thames House.

She's listening when the 456 make their threat, and she can feel it when the invisible poison starts to work its way through her team's lungs.

No, she thinks, and the horror cuts through the fog like a knife as Ianto falls. No, no, this isn't right. No.

No.

But all the denial in the world means nothing when Ianto's heart—the brave, strong heart that has always felt so much, has healed itself so bravely after the tragedy of Torchwood One and Lisa's death—begins to falter.

Ianto, Tosh tries to cry, but it's soundless. Don't die! She wants to shake him like Jack is doing, wants to wrap him in her arms and pull all of the poison right out of his body, wants to do anything to keep him from being lost in this vast, apathetic fog that's ensnared her so tightly, because Ianto is anything but apathetic. He's a friend and a surrogate brother and Batman's Alfred with a Glock and pet pteranadon, and Tosh loves all of her team, loves Jack and loved Owen and even loves Gwen, but Ianto is special and has been ever since he first started.

No, she thinks again, and this time it reverberates through the nothingness of the collective world, through all of the many, many souls who have died and stayed...here, wherever that is, because they couldn't bear to move on and leave their loved ones alive.

Ianto takes a final, ragged breath and doesn't breathe again, and Tosh screams in fury and grief and maddening, aching impotency. She rages against the dim grey lassitude, hurls herself against it full-force, and it cracks.

It cracks right down the middle.

Tosh blinks a bit, blinded by the unexpected sunlight that catches her fully in the face, and raises her head.

She's standing in the middle of the sidewalk outside a neat, sterile apartment building that remains a dull grey, even in one of Cardiff's lovelier afternoons, and there are a few other people on the street, though they're not giving her any strange looks yet. From where she's standing, she can just see Ianto, alive and lovely and as melancholic as some tragic Byronic hero, sitting out on his balcony on the fifth floor.

Her breath catches in her throat, and her grip tightens on the bakery bag in her hand, because she remembers this. It happened about a week after the Cyberwoman incident, eight days into Ianto's suspension. She'd gathered her courage and gone to visit him, trying to show she didn't have any hard feelings and that she regretted what he'd gone through, but the day had ended in disaster. Tosh had said something badly, phrased a statement wrong, and Ianto had overreacted. He'd shouted at her, she'd fled like a coward, and it had taken them until the disastrous trip to Brynblaidd to settle into a tentative friendship once more.

But—

This isn't a dream. Tosh was dead and now she's not, and this is—

"Thank you," she whispers to whatever higher power might be listening, because Tosh has never not appreciated the second chances she's been given—not with Jack and UNIT, not with Owen and the glove, and certainly not now. Even if this—whatever it is—isn't permanent, doesn't last more than an hour or two, Tosh isn't going to waste it.