Everything I Know About the Earth, a torchwood fanfic

Everything I Know About the Earth I Learned from the Sky.

-----

When she slept, Gwen dreamed in shades of blue. She wandered lost in a maze, a mantle of flame rising behind her, cold as ice, as the chill of a graveyard at midnight. She knew that she'd never get out. But if she could find the door, if she could close the door-

When she woke up, she couldn't for the life of her figure out what the dreams meant. By the time she'd gotten out of bed, she'd almost forgotten them.

-----

It hadn't always been like this. Once she'd dreamed of normal things, fragments of everyday things and childhood fears leaking through from her subconscious and daily life. It wasn't until she went to work for Torchwood that her dreams changed. Not the way you'd expect, though. She didn't have nightmares, at least not about aliens, or cannibals or any of the things that had good reason to be haunting her dreams. Instead of nightmares, she had just that one dream, with blue and flame and mazes and doors. And she hadn't the faintest idea why it was happening.

-----

It started with a kiss. She was sitting on the couch, giving half an ear to the telly in front of her and half an ear to Rhys, over in the kitchen talking about his day as he made dinner. She wasn't listening all that closely to either, and was instead thinking about work, about yesterday's Weevil hunt, and how long she'd spent in the Hub shower trying to get the smell of sewage out of her hair. Eventually they were going to run out of cells if they kept this up. And what were they supposed to do with the Weevils if they ever did run out of space? Was there some other prison facility they could transfer the creatures to, because if not they were going to have to start putting them two to a cell sooner rather than later, and considering the nature of the beasts in question, that was likely to land them with a bunch of dead Weevils. Which would make Owen happy, since he'd been dying to get another look at their insides, but Toshiko would hate the idea, and God only knew what Jack thought about anything, much less-

The pressure of another mouth against hers surprised her, especially as Rhys was still over by the stove talking about Joe's fight with his boss, and as far as she knew, no one else was in the room. Not that you could ever be sure, in her line of work, and it wouldn't be the first time that she'd brought the job home with her, so to speak. She sat up a little and took a careful look around, trying to see if she could spot someone- or more likely, something- in her flat, but there was nothing.

She shook her head at her own imagination. There wasn't anything in her apartment. And even if there was, it wouldn't likely be going about kissing her, now would it? That'd just be silly.

A moment later, Rhys suddenly abandoned his stove and crossed the room. She tilted her head back to look up at him, wondering what he was- And then he leaned down and kissed her.

The kiss was soft, lingering, and felt exactly like the phantom one from a minute ago. Rhys straightened back up with a slightly sheepish look on his face.

"What was that, then?" Gwen asked.

"What, you complaining?" Rhys returned. "I was just thinking about kissing you, a minute ago. So I thought that I would."

"Alright then," she said, and smiled. As soon as he was back at his stove, though, the smile faded. She pressed two fingers to her lips and wondered-

What the hell just happened?

-----

It happened again a week later. Not the phantom kiss, of course, but something else a little bit the same, and just as weird. Jack had sent Owen with her on a routine fact-check mission, as further proof that Jack had an absolutely twisted sense of humor.

Gwen did most of these milk runs alone, since the rest of the team had actual areas of expertise and thus things to do when they weren't embroiled in the middle of a case, but Gwen knew police work, and honestly, she didn't even mind most of these little side trips. Most of the leads took her to a dead end, but every once and a while, mixed in with the generally harmless crazies, there was someone who actually knew what they were talking about. It gave Gwen a rush of satisfaction that endless paperwork never could, when a gently leading conversation had her writing something useful down on her trusty notepad.

Owen, on the other hand, hated it, and made sure to let her know every chance he got. He got a rush off of danger, which she understood all too well, and she had a small constellation of scars on her right side that spoke silent testament to his skill as a field doctor, so he did well on missions, and God knew he was capable of holing himself up in his lab for days on end, but the little fact-checking expeditions like this bored him out of his mind.

And, she was beginning to learn, a bored Owen was a dangerous Owen.

"So," he said, as they left house number four, "that was a complete waste of time. Again. How many more of these do we have to do?"

"There's three more on the list," Gwen said, gritting her teeth. "And then we can go back to the Hub."

"Good," he grumbled, and backed the car out of their spot. "And then I'm going to figure out what I did to piss Jack off, and make sure I never do it again."

Gwen kept silent. She could think of one or two things, but- well, it could just be her guilt talking. Jack noticed a lot more than most people, but she was hoping he hadn't noticed this. It was bad enough that it had happened at all. Having someone else figure it out- Well, that would be intolerable.

When the silence stretched on, she glanced at Owen out of the corner of her eye. He was driving with one hand, and his free arm was propped casually on the open window. He was looking straight ahead, and humming mostly tuneless under his breath.

Then he glanced at her, sidelong, and she got a flash of a thought. I wonder if she's ever had sex in a car. She frowned and looked out her own window, away from Owen. That hadn't felt like her own thought. Or if it had been, then somewhere along the line she'd gotten her personal pronouns very confused. Skinny Owen was, a girl he was not.

"Hey, Gwen," Owen said a second later, in what she recognized as his "causing trouble" voice. "You ever had sex in a car?"

For a second, she couldn't answer. When she'd found her voice again, she said, "Not that it's any of your business, but no."

When the resulting silence got the better of her, she went against better judgment and looked back over at Owen. He'd been waiting for it, and hit her with a smirk as soon as her gaze wandered his way. "You wanna?"

"Owen, this is the Torchwood van," she protested.

"So? We'll get it cleaned up before we head back in," he said.

"We've got work to do," she tried.

He dismissed that with a lazy wave of his hand- his driving hand, she noted with alarm. Luckily, the wave didn't last too long, and his hand was back on the wheel before the SUV could do more than wobble a little on the road. "C'mon, you and I both know we're not going to find a damn thing. And there's nothing back at the Hub for us except your paperwork and my postmortem on that skeleton girl we found at the dig."

In the end, she gave in. She'd known she would. And if later, pinned underneath his wiry body, one hand gripping his hair hard enough to hurt, she thought that maybe she was doing this to distract herself- well, it wasn't the first time, was it?

-----

The dreams kept getting worse and worse. Or- well, they weren't really bad, were they? Just odd. So perhaps she should say they were getting stronger and stronger, to the point that she could remember them after she'd woken up, and then to the point that they haunted her waking thoughts, as well. She took to staying later at work to avoid them, but she just ended up falling asleep at her desk, and on those nights the dreams were strongest of all.

She still didn't know what they meant. Dreams were supposed to be the mind's way of working out problems in your sleep, right? The only problem Gwen had at the moment was Owen, but she didn't see how mazes and mantles of flame had anything to do with that.

Shades of blue, she thought. Shades of blue, a mantle of flame, and a maze. She was lost inside the maze, and she knew that she'd never make it out, but if she could just get to the door, if she could just close the door, then-

Then what? She never reached the door, and never saw what would happen when she did. She'd looked up the symbolism as best she could on the web, but she didn't find anything useful. Apparently doors meant access to places in the mind, but she didn't know what closing the door meant, and there was nothing about mazes anywhere. She could ask one of her friends, she supposed, but- well, she could just imagine that conversation. Tosh wouldn't be any help at all, Owen'd just make fun, and God only knew what Jack would say. Maybe something helpful, but maybe he'd go off into one of his unbelievable and occasionally incomprehensible stories instead. No one bothered Ianto if they didn't have to, and most of her old friends at the station seemed to think she was giving herself airs now that she was with Torchwood, and she'd rather kiss a Weevil than talk to one of them about anything that personal.

She'd just have to grit her teeth and bear it. It wasn't like it was important, after all. They were just dreams. Vivid, annoyingly persistent dreams, but still just dreams. They didn't mean anything.

-----

Tosh was talking about… something. Some sort of language, that much Gwen knew, but beyond that she was clueless. Tosh thought it was interesting, and that was the important thing. She hadn't had that gleam to her eye in a week or so, ever since the amulet and the traitorous alien woman, and Gwen was just happy to see her looking like her old self again. She was willing to sit through any number of excruciatingly boring lectures for that.

Out of nowhere, the image of Owen smiling popped into her head. She frowned. Okay, that was weird. Not the first time, mind you, but still weird. Generally speaking, when Gwen was thinking about Owen, she didn't waste much time thinking about his smile. And yet, every time she was sitting here listening to Tosh talk, she started thinking about Owen, grinning like a little boy with a frog hidden in the hand behind his back. Which was an apt image of Owen, true, but why was it that she only thought about it when she was around Toshiko?

She frowned harder, staring at Toshiko. Was it just because she knew that Tosh knew about the two of them? Or was there some other odd association that had wound itself into her brain?

The next image that came to her mind wasn't of a smiling Owen, but something else a lot more graphic- Toshiko in bed with Mary the back-stabbing alien bitch.

Gwen gasped as a slice of pain slivered down between her eyes and instinctively her hand came up to pinch the bridge of her nose. Jesus, where had that come from?

Toshiko stopped talking and looked at her in concern. "Gwen?" she asked. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Tosh," Gwen said, smiling with an effort. "Keep going."

Toshiko gave her a last concerned once-over, but she was easily distracted back into her lecture. Gwen fought the urge to close her eyes against the pain, and wondered where the hell her headache had come from.

-----

She was sitting at her desk, skimming through a log of last night's emergency calls, when out of nowhere came the inescapable fact that Rhys was lost.

She didn't know why it was such an inescapable fact, since Rhys knew the city better than anyone she'd met, and as long as she'd known him she'd never once heard of him getting lost. And even if he was the type, she couldn't imagine why she was hit with this surety now, of all times. Nothing had happened. Nothing was going to happen. It was just a boring day and she'd been reading too many reports.

Her phone rang. She stared at it like it was a snake that was going to bite her, but when she'd let it ring three times Tosh gave her an odd look- probably wondering why she wasn't answering her bloody phone- so she picked it up and held it, gingerly, up to her ear. "Hello?"

"Gwen, love," Rhys said. "I've a bit of a problem. Joe sent me off to pick something up for his mum, and the store was out of town, and his directions were shite, and I must've made a wrong turn somewhere."

"You're lost," she said stupidly.

"Just a bit, mind you. I was hoping you could look me up on those fancy computers of yours, tell me how to get back where I'm going."

"Give me an address or intersection nearby," she said automatically, bringing up the search interface. He did, and she typed them in, reading the results back to him as soon as they showed.

"Thanks, love," he said. "You're one in a million. Home for dinner tonight?"

"If I can, yeah," she said. She was very conscious of the tuneless humming coming from the direction of the medlab. "Might have to work late tonight."

"Well, if you can make it, I can promise it'll be worth your while," he said. "Alright, later then. Love you."

He hung up before she had a chance to answer, which was really just as well. She set her cell back onto the table and stared at it for a long, long time.

-----

"Weevils," Gwen said. "I have seen the strangest things on this job, fantastic things, and somehow, it always comes back to the bloody Weevils."

Jack came out of the empty room and closed the door behind him. "This one's clear. And it could be worse, you know. You could be back at the Hub, doing filing."

"I'd rather be doing filing than this!" she grumbled. Jack stuck his head in another room and checked it.

"All clear. Well, next time I'll leave you behind to do my paperwork, and Owen can come hunt Weevils."

"Take Ianto," she advised. "He's a better shot."

"Not that Owen would admit it," Jack laughed. "All clear. Alright, this is the last one on the hall. Your turn to pick direction- right or left?"

She looked at the t-intersection of the hallways. "Left," she said.

"Left it is," he said, and gestured for her to get in formation. She pulled her gun and slid behind him, turning the corner with guns pointed ahead. He always took high, she always took low. Easier that way.

"You know, when I was putting my team together," he said, "I made sure to get the best. Owen's a top doctor, for all that his bedside manner needed a little work, and Tosh is a genius with computers, and Susie was one of the most highly-recommended military scientists in the business. And then you managed to track us right to our front doorstep with nothing more than a little commonsense and perseverance. But wouldn't you know it, the one person I need the most, is a secretary."

"What about Ianto, then?" she asked. "He seems to do everything else."

"He hates paperwork," Jack admitted. "Won't even pick up a pen unless you've got a gun to his head. So I do it." He grinned over his shoulder at her. "And you, if I can bribe you into it."

"Bribe's right," she said. "You leave me off the Weevil-hunting trips, and we'll see about your paperwork." It's not like she wasn't used to it, back when she was still with the police. And she didn't mind it so much as some.

"You've got yourself a deal," he said. He stuck his head in the next room. "Do you know there's a piano in here? Who the hell put a baby grand piano in an abandoned warehouse?"

"Uh, Jack," she said cautiously.

"I mean, I know you find the weirdest junk in places like these, but a baby grand? That's a new one."

"Jack," she said a little more urgently.

He came back out. "Yes?"

"Weevil," she said, and pointed.

He spun around and fired three stun shells straight into the growling maw of the Weevil. It went down like a stone, and Jack poked it a couple times with the toe of his boot to make sure it was out before holstering his weapon. "So, left worked out pretty well. Good guess."

"Yeah," she said, and tucked her itchy hands into her pockets. "Good guess."

-----

Sometimes, when her eyes were burning from staring too long at the interface, Gwen would climb up the stairs to the upper balcony, where it was dark and quiet, and just stand there for a while. It was peaceful up there, a moment out of time in the inexorable grind of daily life at Torchwood, a welcome respite when she'd been working too long.

She leaned against the rail and closed her eyes, listening to the sound of Owen bickering with Toshiko, the clack of Jack's keys as he wrote a report, the steady grumble of the generators and the rustling whisper of the pterodactyl's wings as it shifted on its perch, high above her head. Just a moment. She just needed a moment, and then she'd be all right. In a moment she could go back to her desk and finish her work and go home to dinner.

On the backs of her eyelids, she suddenly saw the image of a laughing woman she'd only met in her nightmares.

With a gasp, her eyes snapped open. She looked around, but there was nothing to indicate that something was wrong, just her own white-knuckled hands gripping the railing. She waited a beat, but when nothing else happened, she reluctantly let her eyes slide closed again.

And there she was again- the Cyberwoman. Lisa. Only she wasn't a Cyberwoman now, no binding of metal marring her flesh, just a simple jeans and jacket, with her hair over her shoulders and a smile on her face. Gwen had never met this woman, had never seen even a picture. By rights, she shouldn't know what she looked like before, and yet somehow, she knew that this was it.

And then Lisa wasn't laughing. She wasn't making much of a noise at all, just a series of pained, animal whimpers as the conversion unit went to work on her pristine flesh. Finally, finally, just when Gwen was like to whimper like a dog herself, a hand reached out and shut off the unit. The hand in front of her was male, the distorted face reflected in the metal of the unit Ianto's.

Her eyes snapped open again, and she clung to the railing, feeling like she'd fall down if she let go. Her head was like to split apart from the pain.

"Gwen?" Jack called up. He looked almost small from this height, though he always seemed so much larger than life when you were right up close. "You okay up there?"

"I'm fine," she called back.

"You sure? Can't have you falling off, you know. Bad for my image to lose my new secretary like that."

"I think I can handle it," she said, making her raised voice sound as dry as she could manage. "And I'm not your secretary."

"Well, I do have this report to the Prime Minister-"

"Leave it on my desk," she said. And leave me alone.

He wandered off, and her gaze wandered with him. Just past her desk was the lounge area, and stretched out on the couch was Ianto.

It was just a dream, she thought, but the words didn't carry the usual self-reassurance they did when she told them to herself in the middle of the night. They sounded like the toll of a death knell, like the final nail in her coffin.

It had been a dream. Ianto's dream. And she'd seen it when she closed her eyes, playing out like a film on the backs of her eyelids.

She supposed it was pointless to deny it. It probably had been all along. She hadn't just been daydreaming about Rhys that time she'd felt the kiss. It hadn't been a coincidence that time in the car with Owen. She'd seen the afterimage of Tosh's crush, known that Rhys was lost, known exactly where the Weevil was. And now she'd seen Ianto's dream.

This wasn't like with Tosh's necklace. She wasn't just picking up thoughts. No, this was much more than that, and much more frightening. She had no idea what she was seeing, but whatever it was, there was one thing that she knew for sure.

Her dreams were not just dreams.

-----

The headaches were getting worse. It wasn't just when she saw something now, but all the time, pounding away behind her eyes like Satan's blacksmith, hours out of every day. She'd tried every drugstore remedy she could get her hands on, but none of them made more than a dent in the pain.

She needed something stronger, but she couldn't exactly go to the doctor's and ask. They didn't just hand out migraine medicines; they needed to know why, and how long, and run tests, and put together a nice little file with her name on it. And five minutes after some nice nurse entered that file into a computer somewhere, a copy of it would end up on Jack's desk, and then he'd be asking questions, and he'd have the kind of questions that she really couldn't answer. She just couldn't risk it.

So she went to the next best thing.

Owen's voice was thick with sleep through the intercom when he answered her ring. "Yeah? Who is it?"

She'd known he'd be home. They'd all been up for the last thirty-six hours straight and all any of them wanted to do was crash, but she couldn't sleep and she was desperate. "It's Gwen."

A pause, and then the lock clicked open. "Come on up."

He answered the door still buttoning his jeans and trying to talk through his yawns. "What is it? We've got the day off, and some of us were sleeping."

No easy way to say this; better to just spit it out. "I need a favor."

He blinked. "You're asking me for a favor."

"Yes."

"You, are asking me, for a favor."

"Yes I am."

"I'm still asleep, aren't I?" He flopped backwards onto his couch and she scowled, trying not to look too hard at him, sprawled out shirtless not two feet from her.

"Very funny," she grumbled. "Look, I get these headaches, and they've been getting' worse, and now I can't sleep. I was hoping you'd have something for them."

He scrubbed a hand over the side of his face. "That's what doctors are for, Gwen."

"You keep sayin' you are a doctor."

"And you keep saying I'm not." He threw one arm over his eyes, his voice going muffled. "Look, why do you need me, any way? Painkillers won't solve the problem. You're better off going to see someone who specializes in this sort of thing."

"Owen," she said. Something in her voice must have gotten his attention, because he let his arm fall away and looked at her. "Owen, I can't say. I just can't. Trust me when I tell you it's not something anyone can fix. I just need something for the pain. I'll be fine if I can make the pain go away."

He gave her a narrow-eyed look, and for a moment, she thought that he was going to ask her anyway, but then his face softened and he said, "What makes you think I've got the stuff, anyway? It's not like I can just stroll in and get the stuff, anymore."

She gave him an exasperated look. "I'm not an idiot."

"Alright, alright," he said, and got up. "Be right back."

Once he was out of the room, she sagged with relief. He was giving in. If she could just make the headache go away, just for a little bit, she could get some sleep. She could get some sleep and then she'd be better. She'd be okay.

She was standing straight again by the time he was back. "These are strong," he said. "Take one a day, two if it's an emergency. No more. You get me?"

"Yes!" she said, because he didn't seem likely to hand them over if she didn't.

"Alright then," he said, and started to give them to her.

Only to stop, curling his fingers closed around the bottle just as she was reaching out to take it.

"You're going to tell me one day," he said. It wasn't a question.

She didn't say anything, because she didn't want to lie. He seemed to take her silence as assent, though, and gave her the bottle. She slipped it into her pocket and smiled at him.

"Thanks, Owen," she said.

He shifted uncomfortably. "Yeah, well. Just wait till I'm up next time. Some of us need our sleep, you know."

"Promise," she said, and leaned in briefly to kiss him on the cheek. "See you at work."

The last thing she saw before the door closed behind her was Owen's oddly wondering smile, and his fingertips pressed to his cheek.

-----

She smiled cheerfully at Andy as she passed over his drink. "There you go, just what the doctor ordered," she said. "So, tell me what's been going on with you."

He grinned back at her as he took a pull of his beer. "Not too much," he said. "Couple of pub fights, you know, the usual. Nothing as fancy as you, of course."

"Trust me, it's not as glamorous as you think," she said dryly. "I end up doing all the paperwork." She paused and thought about that one for a minute. "Not all that different from the station, really."

"Right," he said. "I'm sure it's real boring, working in spec ops an' all."

"Well, maybe not boring," she said. "It's a hell of a job, I'll say that. But it's not all fun and glory."

"Nothing ever is," he said. He smiled at her. "Good to see you here, though."

"It's good to be here," she said. "I've missed this, havin' time with you and the lads."

"We've missed you too," he said. "You should come down more often."

"Might do," she agreed. "Long as I've not got work."

"Right." He looked away. When he looked back, he met her gaze full-on for maybe the first time all night.

Who does she think she is, swannin' in here like this, like she bloody owns the place, owns me. Thinks she's above us now, she does, thinks we're just waiting around for her like puppies beggin' for a scrap of attention. Well, bollocks to that. She can take her attitude and shove it up her-

Shocked, she looked away, breaking the eye contact. When she looked up again, he was back to looking just to the left of her, not quite meeting her gaze. The smile on his face was as friendly as ever.

She set her drink down with a thump. "I'm sorry. I've got to go."

He sat straight up, his frowning mouth already forming a protest. "But you've just got here!"

So many things she could say. So many things she could tell him, if it were allowed. They'd been friends, once. The best of friends. The taste of that lay like ashes in her mouth.

"I'm sorry," she repeated helplessly, and left.

-----

There was no getting around it, Gwen thought. She was pissed.

At least this time, she was having her drinks in better company. Across the table, Toshiko giggled and she took another pull of her beer. "I'm having a great time!" she said, her voice raised to be heard over the music pounding away in the background. "I'm so glad you suggested this."

So was Gwen, actually, though if she'd realized she was going to be drinking tonight, she wouldn't have taken a pill earlier. She'd only had a couple pints, but already the room was spinning woozily around her. Definitely not a sound medical combination. But hey, at least she was feeling no pain, and she wasn't even picking up an echo from anyone in the room. If she hadn't spent her former job getting a good look at people who relied too much on booze just to make it through their lives, she'd've put some serious consideration into trying it out for herself.

"We all needed to get away from that place every once in a while," she said. "I'm starting to feel almost as if I live there."

"I know what you mean," Tosh said. "We go out into the field and I think, 'oh, that's what daylight looks like!'"

Gwen laughed. "I'm not quite so bad as all that, but I definitely see more of my desk at the Hub than I see of my bed at home." Or certain other beds, not that she was going to bring that up. Knowing about it was one thing, hearing Gwen go on about it was something else altogether. Tosh had had to deal with entirely too much of that already, thanks to that lovely alien mind-reading pendant.

Which reminded her. "Tosh," she said, "there's something I've been wondering."

"Yes, I slept with her." When Gwen blinked at her in shocked surprise, Tosh buried her sudden blush in her drink. "Sorry. Once Owen got over not talking to me an' all, it's all he would ask about. I just thought-"

"I get it." She exchanged grins with Tosh across the table. "I'm not quite as obsessed with sex as our Dr. Harper, though, so that wasn't actually what I was going to ask."

"Alright then," Tosh said, waving one hand expansively. "Ask away."

"What was it like? When you had the pendant, I mean. What was it like hearing other people's thoughts?"

Tosh stared at her for a long moment, and Gwen knew that that wasn't what Tosh had expected her to ask. "Some of the things that I heard were private-"

"I'm not trying to get you to tell me other people's secrets," Gwen interrupted. "I wouldn't ask you to do that. I mean, what was it like. For you."

"Ah."

There was a long silence while she thought about it, and Gwen was content to let her. She wouldn't ever ask what Tosh had heard, but that didn't mean she didn't wonder about it, sometimes. If maybe she'd heard some of the echoes of Owen's nightmares, or the blinding waves of pain from Ianto, or if she'd picked up anything from Jack at all.

For Gwen, her readings were a multi-sense experience, getting images and words, sounds and smells and the overwhelming surge of human emotion. From what meager description she'd gotten, Tosh had picked up surface thoughts from everyone she looked at, and she'd gotten them all the time. Gwen couldn't help but wonder which was better, or worse. Of course, she'd never ask.

"It was like-" Tosh started, and then paused. She was obviously struggling for words. "It was like… the weight of the world. On my shoulders. All the time. I could take the pendant off, but I could never unlearn what I'd heard. The ultimate curse."

"Yeah," Gwen said morosely, and took another sip of her drink. "I know how that feels."

Tosh didn't ask what she meant. Maybe because she was too drunk, or maybe just because she didn't want to know.

Honestly? Gwen didn't blame her.

-----

She was naked and completely exhausted, her heart still going like mad. The pillow was jammed uncomfortably under her cheek and the sheets were half-strangling her left leg.

She felt fantastic.

If she were a smoker, she'd be having a cigarette right about now. God, but it had been good. Tiring, mind you, but good. She was pretty sure that her legs wouldn't hold her if she tried to stand up just now, but who needed to walk? She was fine, just where she was.

"So," Owen said, propping himself up on one elbow. "Enjoyed yourself, did you?"

"Don't be smug," she said automatically, but there was no heat behind it. Even his gloating couldn't dampen the high she was riding right now.

"Oh, but you give me such good reason," he said. "Those little noises you make- you know, when I-"

She reached out and slapped the back of her hand against his stomach. "That's quite enough out of you, Mister Harper," she said.

"That's Doctor Harper to you," he said, but then he stopped talking, so she didn't care.

She should feel guilty for being here, she thought. Every time this happened, she'd wait for the shame to hit- she was, after all, cheating on her boyfriend of many years. It never did, though, at least not until she got home and saw Rhys again, as sweet as he'd ever been. That's when the shame hit. But now, lying in Owen's bed completely starkers and happy as a clam- no.

Wonder if I can talk her into grabbing a pint or something later.

"No, sorry," she said, with genuine regret. Ever since they'd started sleeping together, the edgy antagonism had disappeared. With sex, oddly enough, had come friendship. "I've got some errands to run before I head home."

He turned and gave her a weird look. "What?"

She returned it. "You said-"

"I didn't say anything," he replied.

Oh, God. "I'm sorry," she said, jerking upright. Her lethargy had vanished in a spike of adrenaline. "God, I'm sorry. I'll just- go."

He pulled himself up to a sitting position as she started hunting around for her clothes. "What the- Gwen, what's going on? You're actin' odd, even for you."

She let out a harsh bark of a laugh and pulled on her jeans and shirt, looking around for her boots. "That's the thing, isn't it. Odd for me."

He stared at her. "Gwen, I didn't say anything. Why are you-" He stopped, and she frantically tugged on the zipper, knowing instinctively that he'd gotten it. "I didn't say anything. But I thought it."

"I've got to go," she said. Boots on, clothes on, keys still in her pocket. She'd left her purse down in the trunk of her car. She'd have to stop somewhere and fix herself up in the bathroom, but it wouldn't be the first time. "I'm sorry."

"Gwen, wait," he said, but she was gone, running away, safe with the knowledge that this time, he wouldn't follow her.

-----

She was getting really damn tired of alien possessions.

Just for variety, this time the alien in question had taken over a man's body instead of a woman's. It was holed up in the sewer system, dining on rats, but Jack thought it might start getting puckish for something a little more human, so down into the tunnels they went. Gwen thought they should go after it anyway, since the poor man the alien had taken host deserved better, but since things were going her way already, she decided not to bring it up. She knew how to pick her battles.

The Hub had its own sewer entrance, which wasn't much of a surprise, considering how much time they spent down there. Once everyone had their waders on and were standing around in the main tunnel, Jack handed out stun guns and organized the search.

"Gwen and Tosh, take Ianto and go thataway. Owen, you're with me."

"Great," Owen muttered, but he followed without too much grumbling. Gwen hid her relief. Not that she usually had a problem working with Owen; when they were in the field like this they both knew how to put it away and do the job, but ever since her slip-up the week before he'd been watching her, and that was the kind of distraction she didn't need right now.

Besides, Ianto really was the better shot.

"All right then, ladies, it seems we're to go this way," Ianto said. He gestured politely. "Shall we?"

"Oh yeah, job to die for," Tosh grumbled as they started down the tunnel. "This is great fun. Adventure of a lifetime, really."

"Why does it always have to be the sewers?" Gwen asked. "Honestly, it takes almost an hour to get the smell out of my hair."

"Have you tried lemons?" Toshiko asked.

"Lemons?"

"Yeah, they work pretty well for me. I've got some in the fridge at the Hub, if you want to go straight to the shower. That's what I always do."

"I was wondering what those were doing in there," Ianto commented from behind them. "I'd assumed that one of you had brought them in to use whenever Owen had a paper cut."

They both giggled, but honestly, Gwen had been tempted a time or two. She'd seen Owen get knocked ten feet back into a solid stone wall and not complain of the bruises, but a tiny little knick on his finger and he went on for hours.

"He does whine, doesn't he?" Toshiko asked. "Oh, and have you seen him with a hangover?"

"Yeah." She'd seen him causing the hangover, too, but she didn't think it was prudent to bring up now. "He takes about half a bottle of pills."

"He used to take a bit of the hair of the dog, too, till Jack caught on," Toshiko said. "The Captain's got a nose like a bloodhound for that sort of thing. Put a stop to it right quick. He's been a lot better ever since."

Not really, Gwen thought. Tosh had never seen him kill half a bottle in one go. But it wasn't any of her business. Private demons were supposed to remain private.

"Well, we'd all be happier if he got hungover less, at least," Gwen said. "He tends to share his misery with-"

And then the lights went out.

That's not good, a little voice in the back of her head said very quietly. Gwen tended to agree. "Tosh? Ianto?" Silence. She clicked on the radio. "Jack? Can you hear me?" Nothing. She took a deep, steadying breath, moved on to step two, and reached out, groping around in the dark for something, anything but empty air.

She almost jumped out of her skin when a hand closed on her arm. "Easy, it's just me," Ianto said. "Can you see Tosh?"

"I can't see anything," she said. "Does your torch work?"

"I'll check." She tracked action by sound- the whisper of fabric as he pulled it out of his pocket, the click as he tried to turn it on, the rattle as he shook it uselessly.

"No," he said. "It's dead."

"I thought it might be," she said. "Comms are down. You've got your gun out, right?"

"Yes," he said.

"Good," she said. "Because I don't really think this is a coincidence, the radios and lights dying all at once. So if we get into trouble, I want to be ready-"

There was a small, powering-up sort of hum, and then the lights came back on.

"Okay," Gwen said. Her voice was absolutely steady. "Where's Tosh?"

"I don't know," Ianto said grimly, "but I think we're going to find out." He clicked the radio. "Jack? Owen? Tosh, are you there?"

Jack answered immediately. "We're both here. Are you three okay?"

"Jack, we can't find Tosh," Gwen said.

Silence. "Pull back," Jack said, grimly. "Now."

Back underneath the Hub entrance, the four of them huddled together while Jack came up with a plan. "Ten to one the alien's holding her hostage," Jack said. "Which means we've got some time, but not much. We'll split up into pairs and go after her, see what we can see."

"We've done this show already, and it sucked the first time 'round," Owen said. "What's to stop him from taking someone else?"

"Nothing," Jack said, and got that terrifying grin he did sometimes, that always meant that they were in real trouble, now. "Have fun, kiddies."

"Stark raving mad," Owen said with a kind of awe, but he grabbed her wrist and tugged her down the tunnel. "Come on. We've got to find Tosh."

"What makes you think we're going to find her?" Gwen wanted to know. Something about the empty tunnel and the threatening possibility of the dark made her pessimistic.

Owen's hand tightened around her wrist. "Because we've got a secret weapon."

"Oh yeah? And what's that?"

"You."

She stopped dead in her tracks. "Owen- I don't know what you-"

"I'm not stupid," he said. "I can put the pieces together. If I'm wrong, if this isn't something you can do, stop me right now, but I don't think I'm wrong. I think that you can find her. If you concentrate."

She wanted to lie. This was her chance to take it back, to make him think it was all in his head.

She couldn't do it. "I-"

"Yeah, I thought so," he said. "Just- concentrate, alright? Think about Tosh. Isn't how these things usually work?"

There's a usual way? she wondered, but then she took his advice and concentrated. She thought about neat, spare Toshiko; sitting half-hidden behind her giant computer screen, drinking coffee with them in the lounge; watching Owen when she thought he wasn't looking; standing in the center of the Hub with tears tracking down her face as her lover was transported into the center of the sun; sitting at the bar with her cheek propped up in the palm of her hand, giggling drunk. Tosh.

"That way," she said, and pointed.

"Jack?" Owen said into his radio. "I think we've got something."

"On our way," Jack replied.

Owen squeezed her wrist, gently, more a question than anything. She didn't look at him.

They were still waiting like that when Jack showed up. Then they were riding off to the rescue, and they didn't have time to think about anything else.

-----

Toshiko was home, safe and sound, if more than a little shaken up, and the bad guy was locked up in the vault. Sooner or later they'd have to figure out how to get the alien out of its host body, but it wasn't really a high priority at the moment, and for once, Gwen didn't really disagree.

Owen managed to catch her before she could leave for the night. She probably should have been able to avoid him, but in her defense, she'd been distracted. Too deep in thought to notice him coming up behind her, which was probably careless, but she had other things on her mind.

She felt guilty that she'd had to concentrate that hard to find Toshiko. If it were any of the others, she wouldn't have had to concentrate like that, she'd've been able to just close her eyes and know. Ianto was slowly letting go of his pain, one grudging piece at a time, but he still shone like a beacon of grief. Owen was easy. She spent too much time with Owen, leaned on him too much, not to know him. In a dark crowded room, with her eyes closed, she would still be able to find him, every single time.

And Jack. She could hear him, if she listened. Which she usually tried not to do, because it frightened her. Much like the crocodile in Peter Pan, you knew Jack was coming when you heard the ticking of a clock.

"There you are," Owen said from right behind her. "We need to have a bit of a chat, you and I."

She glanced around, looking for a way out, but of course, there wasn't one. He smiled grimly when he noticed. "You could make a run for it. 'Course, we could have our conversation right here where anyone could hear us, but somehow I don't think you want to do that."

She always forgot how damn clever he could be, right up until it got her in trouble. You'd think she'd learn.

"Alright," she said, giving in, hating herself, but not really seeing another way out. "Where?"

"My lab," he said. "They won't bother us there."

She doubted that, since all of them had a habit of bothering everyone else, any time they pleased. Since Ianto was busy force-feeding Tosh coffee, which was his solution to everything, and Jack had buggered off to God knows where, for the time being, at least, they were probably safe. She didn't really want to risk it, though.

"No," she said. "Not in here." When he just looked at her, she said, "Please."

"Alright," he said finally. "My place. But if you try and take off, I'll follow you home, and don't think that I won't," he said grimly.

She didn't doubt it. "I won't."

"Alright, then."

On the way over, she tried to figure out what she was going to say. He'd apparently guessed at least some of it, but he couldn't possibly know the scope of the whole. And considering how long he held a grudge against Tosh for eavesdropping, she didn't really want to know what he thought of her now. She couldn't exactly control what she heard, but she doubted that it'd make a difference to Owen.

They ended up staring at each other across the expanse of his living room. She supposed that he wanted to keep his distance from her as much as possible for this particular conversation. She knew that the feeling was mutual.

"So," he said finally.

"So," she returned.

"So, you're psychic."

She shook her head. How typically Owen. "It's not like I'm reading a bloody crystal ball. It doesn't work like that."

"So, explain it to me," he said. "How does it work?"

She took a deep breath, let it out on a sigh, and then gave in a started pacing. "I don't know. I just pick things up, sometimes. I can't control it, and I can't shut it out. It's just there."

"What sort of things?" Owen asked, in a detached voice that she recognized as his "doctor" voice. Was this what he used to be like, back before Jack Harkness and Torchwood had scooped him up?

"Thoughts, sometimes," she said. "Sometimes I know if one of you is in trouble. Sometimes I find things."

"Or people," Owen said.

"Or people," Gwen admitted. "That's it, though. And it just comes and goes. It's not like I can stop it."

"Can't you?" His voice was carefully blank. She whirled and glared at him.

"No, I can't! It just happens."

"Hey, relax," he said defensively, holding his hands up. "I believe you."

"Do you?" she asked. "Or are you just saying so? Are you going to start wondering, just as soon as I'm gone, how hard I've really tried to shut it out. Maybe you'll start thinking about what I've heard. Maybe it'll start creeping you out."

"Gwen-" he said, but she was on a roll.

"Maybe you'll get suspicious. Maybe I'm lying, maybe I'm not who I say I am. Maybe you'll go call Jack, and then he'll come after me, and I'll end up down in the vault with the Weevils. Just another alien threat, right?"

"Okay, Jesus, slow down." On her next pass, he reached out and grabbed her wrist, forcing her to stop. "Gwen. Do you really think I'd do that to you?"

"You could," she muttered rebelliously, but after a moment she sighed and slumped down on the couch next to him, a puppet with its strings cut. "I wouldn't blame you if you did."

"Well, I won't, so relax. Now, have you been to see a doctor at all since this started? When did this start, anyway?"

"Month ago, maybe two," she said. "I dunno. I didn't even realize anything was off at first. And then when I did figure it out, I couldn't risk it. What if the scans showed something odd? You know how it is. Something weird happens to one of us, and there's a report on Jack's desk practically before it happens."

"I think you're giving Jack too little credit, but hey, it's your call. You do need to get some tests run, though." She frowned at him, and he frowned right back. "Listen, I've been the one giving you the pain pills. And you're going through them way faster than if you were just getting the occasional migraine. This is serious stuff, here. Those visions, or whatever the fuck they are, might be doing some damage to your brain. I'd like to make sure they're not."

When she remained skeptical, he hit her with his most charming grin. "Trust me, I'm a doctor."

"Oh for God's sake," she said, but she was fighting a smile and he knew it. "How long have you been waitin' to use that one?"

"A while," he admitted cheerfully, but then his grin faded. "You can, you know," he said seriously. "Trust me, I mean."

"I know," she said, though she didn't, not really. Owen was a bundle of contradictions wrapped in sarcasm, an she never knew quite which way he'd jump. She knew the he was protective of her, possessive even, and that he'd never deliberately hurt her, but he didn't always think things through, either. Either way, she didn't have a choice. She'd just have to wait and see.

She let herself lean against him when he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and wondered which scared her the most: the thought that she might not be able to trust Owen, or the thought that maybe, she could.

-----

That night, the dreams changed.

She was at the end of the maze. The doorway lay just ahead of her, only a couple steps away, only it looked like some sort of empty brick arch. Blue light refracted in front of it, glittering and beautiful. She thought she could hear angels singing. They wanted to go home. They wanted her to open the door.

She was reaching out towards the arch, ready to obey, when she heard a voice, a man's voice, calling to her. Send them back, he begged. They're liars. Send them back.

Liars, she thought, and turned away. There were matches in her hand. She took them out, and lit one. She was so cold. This would warm her up.

The explosion ripped her world apart, and she jerked awake in her bed, gasping for air.

Next to her, Rhys stirred. "'ove?" he mumbled into his pillow. "You alright?"

"'m fine," she said, slowly settled back down. "Just a dream."

She lay awake for hours, staring sightlessly at the empty ceiling, seeing only flame, and angels burning.

-----

She kicked her legs idly, hands braced on either side of her on the table-top. "How long's this going to take?"

"This is extremely sensitive equipment, you know," Owen said. "I have to calibrate it to your genetic signature and then set the scan pattern and intensity so that it doesn't accidentally overload your cerebral cortex."

In the exact same tone, she said, "So… how long's this going to take?"

His sigh was audible even halfway across the room. "You'll know when I do."

"Right." She looked around, searching for something to entertain herself. Big surprise, there wasn't anything. Owen acted like a kid around the rest of the Hub, breaking stuff when he wasn't careful, but his lab was sacred space. He was as much a workaholic as the rest of them; he just hid it better.

"Okay, got it," he said finally, and she sighed with relief. She knew how to sit patiently for hours, as long as she had something to do with her hands, but leave her like this, expressly forbidden to touch everything within reach, and she was like to go mad in no time at all.

He poked some buttons, typed something into his terminal, cursed, gave the top of the scanner a sharp whack, and then smiled when it rewarded him with a reluctant hum. "Right, now, I've just got to run the scan…" he mumbled, more to himself than her. "Shouldn't take more than a minute…"

She waited, trying not to twitch. She couldn't actually feel anything weird, while he was scanning her, but the idea of some sort of invisible beam, or laser or something, being trained on her like that, well, it gave her the creeps. She'd been happier if Owen had been able to do this while she was sitting at her desk, all unaware, but apparently for the level of precision he was looking for, the only places he could do it were here, or in one of the cells downstairs. She'd picked the lesser of two evils and gone meekly enough to his lab. Even if the only place to sit was the table where he did autopsies. The thought of sitting on a table where he cut open dead bodies creeped her out more than the scanner, but standing still was pretty much an impossibility for her when she got like this.

"Huh," he said. And then nothing else.

She glared at him, not that he noticed, damn him. "Was that a good, huh, or a bad, huh?"

He finally looked up from the screen. "It's a huh, Gwen, they don't really come in flavors."

"Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but Jack tends to say that just before something really bad happens," she retorted. "Don't tell me they can't be bad. What did you find?"

"I'm not sure," he said absently, which she found less than reassuring. "There's some differences here, it looks like you're using a higher percentage of your brain than the average human, but there's no increased activity in one particular area. Basically, I can tell that you're using your brain for something besides thinking, but I can't narrow it down."

"So we learned nothing," she concluded.

He frowned at her. "Not nothing. We know that whatever it is, it's definitely running through your brain itself, not some mystical whatsit. There's a science here; we just don't know what it is."

And that was Owen, an annoying pain in the ass and an utter failure as a mainstream doctor, but still a scientist to the core. She'd've been perfectly fine with the mystical whatsit, as long as she knew what it was. Owen was happy to have it a mystery, as long as it was a mystery that could eventually be explained by science. "Could you tell what's causin' the headaches?"

"Besides a strain that your neurons weren't really designed to carry? As far as I can tell, they're not causing any sort of damage, though, so it's not as bad as it could be. I know they hurt like hell, but they're not really serious. More like unusually persistent migraines than any kind of real brain damage."

"Well, that's comforting," she said, and hopped off the table. "And now I have to get back to work."

"Oi, where d'you think you're going? I'm not done yet!"

She gave him the Look. "That was the only scanner that you needed me in here for, right?"

"Well- okay, yeah, but-"

"And it told you nothing."

"Not nothing!" He seemed almost offended. Gwen was a little disturbed that she found it kind of cute. "Didn't you listen to me at all?"

"Mostly nothing," she amended. "I don't have brain damage. That's what you really needed to know, isn't it?"

"Well, yes," he admitted. "But-"

"But, nothing. I've got work to do." She made a face. "And if I have to sit here one more second I'm going to start playing darts with your surgical knives, I swear."

"Right, so you'll just be getting back to work then," he said hastily.

She hid a smile as she went back to her desk. Sometimes- alright, a lot of the time- he threw her for a loop, but other times, he was as easily to manipulate as any other man. It was kind of comforting, made her feel just a little bit more like they were on even footing. And with Owen, you needed all the advantages you could get.

-----

She was up in her usual spot on the walkway, stretched out flat on the metal grilling with her eyes closed. She couldn't hear much this way, and the dark, cool atmosphere helped to alleviate her headache. She could've taken a pill and knocked the pain right out, but Owen had been getting worried for the past couple weeks, and she didn't want to set off another round of tests, he was that twitchy. And it wasn't like he was going to find anything. Nothing new, anyway. No answers, which was all that really mattered.

She felt the vibration of footsteps long before she felt the presence of someone looming over her. "Bugger off," she grumbled, assuming it was Owen. Both Tosh and Jack wore boots that sounded off like gunshots when they walked on metal, and if it was Ianto, she never would have noticed him coming up at all, he was that quiet.

"Not a very nice way to talk to your boss," Jack said, sounding amused. She cracked her eyes open. He looked amused, too, even to her upside-down view.

"Sorry."

"Don't be. It's hardly the first time I've heard it. In fact, I know how to say 'bugger off' in almost ninety-seven languages, now." His grin was huge and silly. "It's funny how often I hear it, actually. If I were anyone else I might get a complex."

Normally Gwen loved these rambling self-directed bits of comedy, but today she was tired and her head hurt and frankly, she just wanted him to go back downstairs and leave her alone. "Was there something you needed?"

The smile faded. "Yeah. You weren't hanging all over the rail like you usually do, so I thought I'd come up and see what was wrong."

Sweet, she thought. Jack could be oddly sweet, in unexpected moments. Sometimes, it almost made up for all the other times when he was hard and unyielding, his way or the highway, and to hell with who he hurt along the way. Sometimes. The rest of the time, no.

Since she couldn't say any of this, she made an effort to smile up at him and said, "Nothing's wrong. Just a bit of a headache is all. Just needed a little peace and quiet, and I'll be fine and back to work in a bit."

"You've been getting headaches a lot more recently, haven't you." It wasn't a question, but it wasn't quite not-a-question, either. Jack's voice was very noncommittal. It made her nervous.

She did her best to answer without sounding like someone who had something to hide. "It's just this job, is all. Bit stressful even on the easiest of days, y'know? And we don't have many of those." She was starting to feel at serious disadvantage, lying on her back like this, but she didn't want to risk him staying for a chat if she went for the greater psychological advantage by sitting up.

"No, we don't, I'll grant you that." He didn't look suspicious, which was a good thing. If anything, he looked thoughtful.

"Did you need anything else?" she prompted, when it started to look like he was just going to keep standing there, lost in thought. He started, and glanced down at her a little sheepishly.

"No, that was it. I'll leave you to your peace and quiet." He shoved his hands in his pockets. "Next time you want to lie down, though, we do have this perfectly good couch in the lounge. I know it doesn't seem like it, but we are perfectly capable of being quiet for half an hour, sometimes even an hour at a time."

She made herself smile. "Thanks for the offer, but it's the light that's the real problem."

"Ah, I see. Well, in that case, I really will leave you alone." He hesitated before leaving, though, so she closed her eyes as a hint.

And immediately she was assaulted with Jack's thoughts. She's the one, they whispered. She's the one, she's the one, she'stheoneshe'stheonetheonetheonetheone.

Her eyes shot open in shocked self-defense against the onslaught, but Jack was already gone.

-----

After everything, it was Owen who took her home. Jack stayed behind to deal with the body and the police, all the unpleasantness there, but Owen was the one who took her back to the Hub, who led her down to the showers and stayed uncharacteristically silent as he undressed and climbed in behind her to help her wash the blood out of her hair.

"It still hurts," she whispered, and his fingers got even more gentle, till she could barely feel them as they rubbed in the shampoo. "God, my head."

"I know where you keep your stash," he said. "I'll get you some as soon as we're out of here, okay?"

"Alright." She let her head droop till her forehead rested against his collarbone, all the knots and tension slowly melting out of her body from the press of the steaming hot water and his hands in her hair. "Thank God that thing is gone."

"Yeah," he said. He rinsed away the shampoo, and she could see the pink tint in the foam, swirling down the drain. "I thought…"

"I know," she said. "It wasn't me, though. This time, it wasn't me. Suzie made the connection. She planned the whole thing. She couldn't've known-"

"What you can do," he finished. "Yeah. But still, it's odd. You have to admit it's odd."

Odd didn't even come close to covering it. "That's why you didn't want me to use it."

"I didn't want you to use it because the last person who used it went crazy." He shut off the water and stepped out of the stall, drying off quick and rough and then holding up a towel as invitation for her to follow. "It didn't have anything to do with anything else, alright?"

She knew that wasn't what he really thought, but that was okay. She didn't think the things were unrelated, either. She'd been able to feel it, when she used the glove. It was just the same as reaching out to find someone she'd lost. It could just be a matter of practice, but somehow, she doubted it.

The strain in Owen's voice prevented her from saying any of this, though. "Alright," she said, and wrapped the towel around herself. "I'm just glad it's over."

"Yeah." He pulled his jeans on, reached for his shirt. "Me too."

She watched him for a minute, until he'd struggled into his shirt and stood there staring at her, his hair going all directions, looking puzzled. "What?"

"Nothing," she said. "Just… Suzie."

"I can see why she's on your mind, but what's she got to do with me?" Owen asked. "You're lookin' at me like I've grown another head."

"Suzie said…" She hesitated, already regretting bringing this up.

"Yeah?"

"She said she'd slept with you too," she admitted all in a rush. "That I was her replacement in every way."

She saw every emotion that ran like water across Owen's face- guilt, disgust, resignation, and finally, anger. "That fucking bitch," he said flatly. "And what, you took the word of a flippin' dead woman?"

"Well, what was I supposed to think?" she demanded.

"I dunno, that she was a lying, murderous bitch?" he said. "Jesus fucking Christ. I'd kill her myself, if she wasn't already dead. Again."

"So it wasn't true," she said.

"Yeah, it was true! But it wasn't like that. It wasn't like she made it sound."

"Great," Gwen said, and turned away. "Always good to know that I'm next in line."

He grabbed her arm, almost hard enough to leave bruises, and spun her around. "It's wasn't like that," he said.

"Wasn't what?" she said. "Wasn't as easy as I was? What?"

"Fuck that, there's nothing easy about you," he said. His gaze met hers and held it, and she couldn't look away, and she couldn't hear a thing. "It wasn't like this. It wasn't you."

And there wasn't a damn thing she could say to that, so she didn't try, just stretched up and kissed him to shut him up, because she wasn't sure she could bear to hear any more. He kissed her back, wrapping his arms around her and holding her tight, as tight as he'd held her on the pier, so tight she could feel her ribs straining against his hold as she fought to breathe. Somewhere between them, her towel gave up the ghost and slithered to the floor. Neither of them noticed.

"She wasn't you," he said into her mouth, but all Gwen could hear was Suzie's voice, saying, She's better than me. She's so much better.

-----

Ianto was some kind of coffee god, she was sure of it. They all took turns doing coffee runs during really late nights, but Ianto was the one who showed up with these blandly unmarked little cups that any self-respecting coffee shop would be ashamed to carry, and they always held pure liquid ambrosia. Gwen was dying to know what the secret recipe was. Or maybe he just stopped at this hole-in-the-wall place no one had ever heard of? It was an interesting mystery, and one that entertained her on many a late night.

Speak of the devil. A coffee cup appeared as if by magic on the corner of her desk, and she grabbed for it, knowing without looking that Ianto was standing right behind her. "Ianto, you're my hero."

She spun her chair around just in time to catch his look of startled pleasure before his face smoothed back into its usual blankly amiable butler-esque mask. "Just doing my job."

"Oh no. This is above and beyond the call of duty. This, my friend, is art." She took the first pleasurable sip, and had to hold back her moan of appreciation. "How do you do it?"

"Trade secret, I'm afraid." He gave her the little close-mouthed smile he was so good at and nodded down at her mess of a desk. "The Ackerman case?"

She nodded mid-sip and swallowed her mouthful before answering. "Jack swears he's seen this sort of thing before, but of course he can't remember when, so I've got to go through decades of reports to see if he knows what he's talking about."

Ianto was silent for a long moment, and she was struck by the impression that he was very carefully considering what he was going to say.

"This isn't your job, you know," he said finally.

"Then whose is it?" she asked, confused. "This doesn't require data-mining tech, and Owen's only useful when it comes to autopsy reports."

"Perhaps Jack's?" Ianto suggested. "Since it was his idea in the first place, after all."

Suddenly, she saw where he was going. And it wasn't a pretty place. "I'm not Jack's secretary," she snapped. Much like women and PMS jokes, she was the only one who got to make that joke, and Jack if she was in a forgiving mood. "I used to be a police officer. This is what I did. It's something I'm good at."

"I wasn't suggesting otherwise," Ianto said.

"What, then?"

"You misunderstood my meaning," Ianto said. "Not a secretary at all. More of a second-in-command."

Even worse. "I'd do a terrible job at any kind of command," she said, aiming for "dry" and landing somewhere around "choked." "I think I'd have to be able to make people mind me, for that sort of thing."

"They do," Ianto said, and he actually seem surprised. "Gwen. You have to know, that if something happened to Jack, we'd all look to you?"

That wasn't exactly what she'd call comforting. "Well, what if I don't want to?" she said. "I don't know anything. I didn't even know what retcon was! What if I'm not ready for that sort of thing?"

His expression turned to something like gentle, which scared her more than anything. "Life doesn't much care whether you're ready or not," he said. "If happens anyway."

Christ, she thought, amazed at her own callousness. Of course, he would know. "I'm sorry," she said. "I just-"

"I understand," he said. "I'll say no more." He turned to leave.

She called him back. "Ianto?"

He turned, back to his patient-butler look. "Yes?"

"Do you still miss her?"

His eyes slid closed, and she knew what he was seeing- Lisa, her hair loose around her shoulders, laughing like she hadn't a care in the world. Then he opened them again and the image was gone. "Every day."

"And how do you survive?" she asked, through a dry throat.

"You adapt," Ianto said. "I've learned how. And I think you will, when you need to."

After he left, she set the coffee aside. She'd lost the taste for it, for some reason.

-----

Her phone rang, for once not in the middle of an emergency or a desperate fight for her life, but instead in the middle of a really intense battle with Jack's forgotten paperwork. She was more than a little glad for the interruption.

"Cooper." She used to say "Gwen Cooper" when she answered the phone, but Suzie had soured her against the sound of her full name. Even introducing herself sounded wrong, now.

"Who's my favorite girl?"

Drunk, she thought automatically, even though there was no hint of it in Rhys' voice. "Hello," she said, trying to sound happy to hear from him and probably failing. "What are you up to, then?"

"I knew you'd be back late, so I went out for a bit of a drink with the boys," he said. "Got to missin' you, so I thought I'd give you a ring and see what you're doing. Long as you can tell me, o'course. Wouldn't want to get myself on someone's list for knowin' too much." He laughed loudly at his own joke. She pinched the bridge of her nose to ward off the spike of pain the noise sent through her head.

"Nothing too spec ops, just a pile of paperwork. The curse of any bureaucracy."

"Well, don't get too bogged down," he said. "I'll be heading home in a bit. Be nice if we could make a night of it for once."

Every word he spoke painted a picture in her mind that she'd do anything to get rid of. She didn't need to know this. She didn't want to know this. "I'm going to be here a few hours yet," she said. "Have another drink, I know you don't get out as much as you'd like." More than he had a couple months ago, though. "Make sure there's someone to drive you home. Don't want you gettin' into an accident on the way."

"I'll be fine, don't worry about me," Rhys said. Which didn't actually answer her question. "You just focus on that paperwork, see if you can get home a bit early for once."

"I'll see what I can do," she said, and then said her goodbyes and hung up.

She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to press away the image. Rhys was out all right. At a strip club, with a stripper hanging off his arm the whole time he was on the phone.

It wasn't that she blamed him. She was never home, and distant when she was, because there were so many things from this life, her other life, that took her away from her safe, comfortable reality, and it was hard to resist the pull even when she wanted to. More and more, she wasn't sure she wanted to. There was too much here to hold her. She didn't even feel right anymore, just sitting down to dinner with her sweet, normal boyfriend.

But she didn't want to know, was the thing. She could have kept on as she was for a while, until it ended, and she would have been happier if it was a surprise. If she could be shocked that Rhys would do something like that. That he'd just end it like that, when they had so many years together already. But now- now she'd be able to see all the little steps downward, and instead of shock and dismay, all she'd be able to feel was a sort of pitying sorrow for the loss of something that could have kept on being good, if only she'd been able to hold up her end of the bargain.

Deciding that now was probably a good time for a break, since there was no way she was going to be able to focus on filing when she was like this, she went out to the lounge to look for something to eat. The 'fridge was pretty bare- she'd have to get a list to Ianto tomorrow- but there was some sort of energy drink hidden away at the back, and that was good enough for now. She popped the cap and took the first wincing sip- god, the stuff tasted awful, she didn't know how Owen drank them- and wandered back towards her desk.

Jack called her in as she passed by his office. "Yeah?" she said. "You need something?"

"You're already doing my paperwork, so no," he said with a smile. "I don't like to push my luck."

"Liar. You push your luck all the time; you just always get away with it, so you never notice."

He leaned back in his chair and ran both hands through his hair. "Yeah, you're probably right," he admitted.

"You know I'm right."

"Now who's pushing their luck?"

She gave him a Look and took another sip of her drink. "So, I repeat- did you need something?"

"No, why? Oh, I called you in here, didn't I?" He shook his head like a dog. "Too much politics. I'm getting old for this sort of thing. Actually, I just wanted to see how you were doing. You looked like someone ran over your dog back there, so I though I'd ask if you wanted to talk."

Not really. But- "Have you ever learned something you'd rather not know?" she found herself asking.

Something flashed across his face, too quick for her to catch. "All the time," he said. "Why?"

"Nothing," she said. "Just wondering."

He gave her a skeptical look. "If you say so."

"I say so."

"Well, that was it, actually. Just wanted to make sure that you were okay."

"Yeah," she said. She wasn't. "I'm fine."

"Alright then," he said. "Good to know."

She stood in the doorway and watched for a moment, while he bent back over his paperwork. Then she opened her inner ear, or eye, or whatever it was, and actively listened in a way she so rarely did, and never, ever around Jack. Not since- Well.

But she needed to know. Today, of all days, as her carefully ordered life collapsed at the center, she needed to know. She needed to know what it all meant.

Tick, went Jack. Tickticktickticktick, tick, tick, tickticktickticktick.

She turned and left the room.

-----

"I've got it!"

Gwen looked up at Owen. "Is it contagious?" she asked.

"You'd better hope not," he shot back, while across the room Tosh did her best to pretend that she was deaf and blind, too, for good measure. "No, I figured out the solution to that… problem, we've been working on."

"Oh," she said. "That problem, right."

"I've got it all up in my lab," he said, "if you want to come take a look."

"Might do, yeah." She turned around and carefully saved her work with hands that were shaking. "Lead the way."

Once they were down in the medlab and safely out of earshot, he started grinning like a maniac. "It was right in front of us the whole time! After the thing with Suzie, I got the brilliant idea of running the scans through a different filter. That's how we knew she was draining you, with the right filter we could see the energy transfer, yeah? And then I remembered that emotions can be used as energy- you know, from that ghost machine? So I tried I couple different frequencies, and I got… this!"

She stared at the screen, and the rainbow of colors that swirled riotously around the picture of her brain. "What in God's name is that?"

"That, my dear," Owen said smugly, "is the Rift."

She felt a distinct need to sit down. Luckily, the lab table was right behind her, and she leaned gratefully against it, for once not caring that he put dead bodies on it. "I have the Rift in my head?"

"Well, not the whole thing," he said, with such condescension, she wanted to smack him.

"Then you shouldn't have said the Rift, if you didn't mean it."

He rolled his eyes. "It's Rift energy," he said. "It's the same stuff we usually use to track down aliens and tech when the Rift spits it out. Only you're not giving off the same sort of signature that we get when someone's traveled through it, which is why we didn't pick it up right off. You're actually absorbing the energy, and something in your brain is converting part of it and interpreting what's left like a sixth sense. Only your body is designed for the standard five, which is why you get the headaches."

She hated to burst his happy-puppy bubble of scientific glee, but- "I still don't Rift energy makes me psychic."

"Oh, c'mon, I just explained-"

"Sixth sense, yeah, I got that bit," she said. "But it's not a movie I want to remake. Why does the Rift energy make me psychic?"

He sighed and settled back in his lab chair, sketching it out with his hands as he talked. "Okay, it's like this. The Rift is, by nature, a doorway. So if you've got Rift energy running around in your brain, then it makes your brain act like a doorway, too. So thoughts, emotions, that sort of thing, tend to just sort of leak in. With me?"

"No, because it doesn't make any sense! You lot have worked here a lot longer than I have. Why don't you lot have doors in your heads?"

"The same reason some of the Weevils go crazy and kill people, and the rest live quiet lives down in the sewers. The Rift affects everyone differently."

She stared at him in horror. "You're telling me that I'm going to go crazy?"

"No! Alright, well, you could, I've seen you when I've got the last chocolate bar and I'm telling you, it looks like you're going to go for my throat, it's not quite right-"

She threw one of the plastic squeeze bottles at his head. He ducked easily and kept going.

"But no, you won't go crazy because of the Rift. Guessing by my large experimental group of one, I'm gonna say that Rift energy tends to turn humans psychic instead."

"Great," she huffed. "Mystery solved. Fantastic. What does it mean?"

"Well-"

"Spit it out," she said with a sigh. "It can't get much worse."

"Well," he said, as hesitantly as Owen ever did, "if the Rift is like a doorway, wouldn't you be kind of like a key?"

She closed her eyes. Shades of blue and a mantle of flame. She had to close the door. All she had to do was close the door.

"I don't want to know this," she said.

The battle cry of a weary psychic. Sometimes she felt like she'd learned an entire universe of things that she was never meant to know. Sometimes she thought about how much was still out there, and that was worse.

"Well, you need to," Owen said callously. "Oh, and you know you need to tell Jack, right?"

She gave him an incredulous look. "I know no such thing."

"Come on, this isn't the same thing anymore. It's not weird, or unexplained, or dangerous."

"It feels bloody dangerous!"

"Not dangerous to us," he clarified. Good to know he cared. "It's something we can use. It's something we might need."

"Owen, no. I can't even control what I see and hear now. How d'you think I'm supposed to control the Rift itself?"

"I have the faintest. But he might."

She remained stubbornly silent.

"Gwen," he said, coaxingly. "You've got to tell Jack."

"Tell me what?"

Gwen turned with a sinking stomach, hoping that it was just a hallucination. But no, there was Jack, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. And he wasn't smiling.

"Tell me what?" he repeated.

Owen nudged her helpfully with one elbow, but she shouldered him away without taking her gaze away from Jack.

"It's nothing," she said evenly.

"It's not nothing," he said, in the same tone. "Something's up with you. In fact, you've been acting weird for a while now. And you know how I feel about friends acting out of character."

"It's nothing," she said.

"Gwen," Owen said.

She didn't turn. "Stay out of it, Owen."

"Like bloody hell I will!" His hand on her arm was so insistent that she had to either turn and face him or risk a dislocated shoulder, so she gave in. He looked more desperate than she'd ever seen him. And she'd seen him in extremis so very many times. Seen him brave, terrified, doubled over with laughter, begging on the bed underneath her. This was different. This was about as far from cozy as it got.

"I'm in this with you whether you like it or not," he said. "And you've got to trust me. I haven't hurt you so far, right?"

Oh, wrong. But nothing he'd done to her was his fault. Sometimes, no matter what you knew or what you did, things were truly beyond your control. If she'd learned nothing else , it was that.

Underneath everything, though, she did trust Owen. And if that wasn't the biggest cosmic joke of all, she didn't know what was.

She slowly swiveled her head, till she was looking right at Jack. And Jack was looking back.

"I'm psychic," she said.

It sounded so silly, said aloud like that. She half expected Jack to throw his head back and laugh.

He didn't. He said, "Oh?" and waited for her to tell me more.

"I hear thoughts, sometimes," she said. It was almost a relief to explain this. Like throwing open the closet doors before you went to sleep. Only now, with Jack, there might be a monster in there after all. She just didn't know. "And I can find people. Or things. I get- visions aren't really the right word. Sometimes I just know things. And it's the Rift that's doing it. There's Rift energy in my head. I'm not an alien, I'd never do anything to hurt any of you, but I can't always control it."

Jack stared at her for a long time. When the silence stretched painfully on, Owen's grip around her elbow got tighter.

And then Jack smiled.

"Finally," he said.

She gaped. No other word for it, though she was sure she looked like a right idiot with her jaw hanging open like that. "What?"

"Finally," he repeated, his smile getting even bigger. "I'd hoped it'd turn out to be you, but I wasn't sure. And then you started acting off, and you kept getting those headaches, and I was sure I was right. I just didn't know if you'd ever tell me."

She was starting to get a horrible suspicion. It had always been odd, the way that he'd decided to bring her into Torchwood- even before Suzie had killed herself and open up a place on the payroll. Why her? He'd made it almost too easy for her to get in- there was no way Ianto would have buzzed her back if Jack hadn't wanted her there in the first place. And then he'd told her those things about him, private, impossible things, things he'd never told the rest of the team- but why? Why her?

And then, the one and only time she'd heard his thoughts- she's the one, he'd thought. He'd been waiting for her. He'd set her up for this from the start.

"You knew," she said. The funny thing was that she wasn't even angry. All of her careful life down the drain like it was nothing, and all because of him, and she wasn't even angry. "You knew this would happen to me."

"I hoped so," Jack said, still grinning. "I went to a lot of effort to make sure that it did."

Yes, he had. "Why?" she said. "What do you need me for, anyway?"

"I've tried everything," he said. "And I still can't figure out what's wrong with me. Even telepaths can't hear me- I just sound dead to them. But you're not a telepath. You're something else entirely, and you can tell me the truth. You can help me."

"I can't," she said softly, hating, even now, to let him down like this. "Jack, I can't hear you any more than Tosh could with her necklace. You wasted your time."

His smile disappeared. "The hell I did." He crossed the room in two long strides and grabbed her shoulders, almost shaking her. "Tell me."

"Hey, get off her!" Owen shoved at Jack, but Jack knocked him away like he was a particularly annoying insect. There was a sickening thump when Owen slid along the side of the table and fell to the floor. He didn't get back up.

"Tell me," he said again.

"I can't!" she cried. His hands on her shoulders were tightening to the point of pain. She was truly afraid of him for the first time. "Jack, there's nothing. I've tried. I can't help you."

"Try harder, damn it!" He did shake her now, hard enough that something in her neck popped. "Tell me!"

"I can't!"

"Tell me!" he roared. "Tell me what I am!"

"Time," she said, like the words were pulled out of her. She closed her eyes, but she could still see him, shining gold in her vision. He looked like sunlight would, if human eyes could comprehend it. Old and cold, but so fucking beautiful like this, with his skin stripped away, just the core of him laid bare in front of her. Beautiful and terrible, and she could go blind like this, and never regret a moment. "The inside of you is made of time. Somewhere along the way, you were gone and then it found you again, and now it doesn't know how to let you go."

His hands fell away from her shoulders, and she opened her eyes again. He just looked like Jack, handsome face and rakish smile and sunglasses hooked through the collar of his shirt, but she wasn't fooled. She'd seen his soul, and nothing in this life or any other could scare her more.

A second later, she was off the table and kneeling on the floor, pulling Owen halfway into her arms as she checked for a pulse. The irony didn't escape her, knowing how many times he'd had to hold her like this- when the headaches got so bad she was almost crying from it, when she fell out of bed because of the nightmares, when she got so drunk she couldn't really stand up anymore, when she almost died. And here he was, and it was because of her, and hoped he'd just bumped his head, because if he died, if he'd died and it was her fault, she'd pull his gun and shoot Jack right through the heart, till he gave up and died or until she couldn't feel her finger on the trigger any more.

But no, he was fine, his pulse strong and steady against her seeking fingertips. She ran an open palm lightly over the back of his head, and found a knot the size of a goose egg. He'd have a hell of a headache when he woke up, but he'd be fine.

She slowly settled him back onto the floor and stood up, facing a jubilant Jack. "If I could, I'd kill you right now," she said.

He didn't seem to hear her. "The Time Vortex! Of course. That's the only way Rose could have gotten the TARDIS back, if she'd accessed the heart of the ship. She must have brought me back. How could I have not seen it before now?"

"Jack," she said, low-voiced. And then, louder- "Jack!"

He blinked and looked up at her. "What?"

It wasn't any use. Captain Jack Harkness, dashing hero, was just as deeply flawed as the rest of the human race- probably a whole lot more. It shouldn't have been as much of a surprise as it was. "So what now?" she asked, instead of what she really wanted to say, because he wouldn't understand her anyway. He never could focus on the little picture.

"Well, if I've got some of the Time Vortex in me, then that means that I've got a link to the TARDIS," Jack said. "I can call it to me. Or I can go to it. It's a little complicated, but either way, I can find the Doctor. I can sort this out."

He didn't even realize what he was doing, she thought. That was the worst part. "And what about the rest of us, then?" she asked. "We're not gonna last a week without you, and you know it. What are we supposed to do?"

He looked down at her, his crazy grin softened to a smile. "It's up to you," he said. "I'm leaving you in charge."

It was like her worst nightmare. "Jack, no. I'm the last person you want running things. I wouldn't even know where to start!"

"The best place," he said, oddly gentle, "is usually the beginning." He reached out and cupped her cheek in one broad palm. "You'll figure something out. I've got faith in you."

Despite everything, those words still managed to thrill her to the core. She supposed she'd never get tired of following him, just like he'd said. Even if she couldn't follow him to wherever he was going now.

And then she realized- "You're leaving now."

"No time like the present, right?" His thumb traced the line of her jaw. "Listen to me, Gwen Cooper. You're going to do great. You're going to do better than great. You're going to save the world a hundred times over, and someday, your name will be listed in the history books when the greatest emperors of the future will be dust in the wind. You're destined for big things. Don't forget that."

She reached up, and wrapped her hand over his. "I won't." Then she reached up on tiptoes, and kissed him on the mouth. Anyone else, she would have gone for the cheek. But this was Jack.

Jack, who was looking at her with something very like wonder in his dark eyes. "What was that for?"

She shrugged, feeling pleased with herself. "One for the road?"

He laughed. "Yeah, that works." His hand dropped away from her face, and he took a step back. "Listen. Someone will show up to help you. I don't know when she'll be here, but she'll make it here eventually. You're not on your own."

She was conscious of Owen, stirring and groaning on the floor only a few feet away. "I know."

"Yeah, I guess you do, don't you?" He smiled, suddenly and brilliantly. "You're something special, you know that? Don't let anyone tell you different." He winked. "Captain Gwen Cooper."

And then he was gone, just like he'd never existed at all.

Gwen spent a long time staring at the spot where he'd been. Then she sighed, and left the room. Tosh and Ianto needed to know what happened, and Owen would need some painkillers pretty soon, when he woke up the rest of the way.

I'm destined for big things, she thought, pausing in the doorway to look out at the Hub. And I guess I'm going to start right here.

It was the first day of the rest of her life. She just wished that she was better prepared. She didn't need to be psychic to know that the road ahead was going to be long and painful. Everything about Torchwood always was.

But she'd have help, she thought. And maybe, in the end, that was all that mattered.