How could I tell him?
I stood there as he pushed me gently out the door and told me to go home.
Home.
Everything I owned, everything that owned me, it was all inside that door that closed in my face.
I knew he could not hear me, the blood rushing as he tried not to snarl at me and I knew that if I said anything at all it would come out as another apology and he might actually shoot me. If I know one thing about this man it was that he means it.
So I shuffle along the sidewalk knowing he is watching me on the camera and then slide off through the park. I also know he stops watching me here, he always does as his CCTV feed logs tell me so and I am now free to change direction.
It is too late for the bed that would have been waiting if I had left at my usual time so I go to the station where the locker sits waiting, pulling out my necklace and the key jangles against the others as I open the locker for the grab bag and head into the bathroom to get changed. I have found that it I roll the suit carefully around the spare track suit it doesn't crinkle too much and I can steam it in the morning. The other suits are back there.
In hell.
I then take the bedroll and replace it with the now carefully rolled suit. I won't need it for a few days apparently, seems I am on suspension. Probably without pay. Least of my worries right now as I head to my secondary sleeping spot, trying not to think if the YMCA and that bed I could have been in tonight. Damn it all to hell.
Where I belong I guess.
As I walk I try not to think too much about it. What happened went so wrong so spectacularly and I can only wonder how long I really have. Did he mean it? Come back on a month? Really?
I know Retcon is probably being prepared for me now and I can't help but wonder who will be sent to administer it. I imagine Gwen with her bleeding heart, her kind words as she tries to appear calm, then weeping as she begs me to explain what happened. No. He won't send her. Not his favourite.
Tosh would probably refuse, pointing out her own mixed feelings on the matter and Jack would listen, and then nod as he pats her shoulder and whispers that it's OK.
Owen?
Yeah, he would volunteer. Eagerly demand it in fact, probably is right now. Jack looking at him and shaking his head as he says that it is his job. Yeah. How do I tell him? Things so twisted now?
I turn another corner and know I am being followed.
Not one of them.
I listen to the footfalls and recognise trainers, several sets. Ah. Great. Chavs. Just what I need. I try to ignore them hoping they will turn another corner but their giggling and strange cooing is getting right up me nose and I know they are looking to chav me. Great.
I spend a couple of minutes going over that in me head. Chavving means to steal. Is that why they are called Chavs? Or did the word come from them doing it? What came first the yobo or the title? I think it's an old word. Chavs and tinkers, Romani word meaning child. Chavi. Right? First in a dictionary in 1950 with the note saying 1850 word? Weird how things go around. God. my brain is whirring tonight, random thoughts popping in like adverts in the middle of your program.
I must have snorted or something because now one of them is snarling at me and I really can't give a toss so I tell him to stuff off. He doesn't like that and grabs at my bed roll. Any other night I would have simply tried to reason with them, talk chav back to show I am one of them in need of some fucking peace. Luckily I am not in my suit so I at least look the part.
But tonight I really don't give a fuck as I swing to face them and count four little thugs, one with a knife already prepared.
Look, and here is one I prepared earlier. Ya know, like those TV commercials.
I know I must seem weird to them, my sigh as I drop my bedroll and step towards them. They probably think I am about to have some sort of argument, plead for my life or at least some compassion. You see, the problem with that is that I was in their shoes once. I was a nasty little shit running about with the other nasty little shits. My Parkour used for things other than peaceful recreation if ya now what I mean. Yah. I was a fucking Hoodlum and it's like muscle memory. You simply stop thinking about it and let yourself move.
The first one with the sneer that reminds me of Owen staunches up, his accent so blatheringly bad that I am having to resist replying in proper Chav just to teach the wee prick how it's done. However as I said earlier, I ain't in the mood bruv.
A simple rabbit punch to his solar plexus takes care of him and he is still standing there with a look of shock as the second dweeb, the one with the knife, swings. It's all too easy and I actually feel sorry for them. There are a lot of good marks out tonight, they could have gone home with a tidy wee swag but they chose me. Silly bastards. I slap at the knife wielding hand, closing my hand around the wrist as I move forward and twist. Sill bugger is just as shocked as his mates when he stabs himself on the thigh. I let go and step back, not really wanting to hurt them and now I feel even more shitty as yet another person bleeds for me tonight.
"Sorry" I mutter as I take another step back and one looks at me more closely then curses as he recognises me. I seen him before too, around the estate where Rhiannon lives. Yeah. Too late he recognises they attacked one of their own and he is telling them so as I pick up my bed roll and slip away.
A flesh wound, I tell myself, just a flesh would. A nice scar for some lie to tell people.
I leave them there, heading though the park to the restaurant Jack took me to once. It was not long after I started and was supposed to be a 'get to know you' polite interrogation sort of thing but I was onto him and we spent the evening dancing around each other's curiosity.
I think of those smiles.
Those before the anger, resentment and disappointment.
Gone now.
Right?
Everything I had. Back there behind that tourist centre door. All gone.
Owen had scoffed at me as he told me to piss off then, go find someone else to give a blow job too for a while. I trued to explain, I had nowhere to go. No where else. Everything I had was right there in that room.
"Well it's all fucking ash now, isn't it" he had scoffed, "All fed to Ferdinand, not a single fucking thing left. All gone. The books, the photos, the fucking blankets, those stuffed toys and half dead roses in the vase. All of it. All gone. In the furnace. Everything wiped clean. Can you taste it? The ash in the back of your mouth? That's the taste of betrayal."
"Owen!" Jack had barked, silencing him and the little bull dog had snorted once more to show his sharp little teeth before stepping back.
How do I tell him?
The dumpster is open one side, it always is this time of night and the food is still warm if I pick carefully. It only takes a minute to climb in, pulling at some packages and making room for me. I unroll the sleeping bag and the other plastic bag that keeps it clean. I wriggle in and pull some of the cardboard boxes over myself for added insulation before letting the food bags fall back down.
There under the closed half of the lid I am safe from rain, safe from prying eyes.
I wonder.
Is it Jack driving with the Retcon in his pocket? Pill or needle?
I snuggle down and feel it, the lump by my feet and I wriggle down to pull up something I thought I had lost.
Lisa's bobble hat.
I hold it tightly and then pull it on for added warmth. The only thing I have left of her now.
And Jack's anger.
Yes I was thinking of him wasn't I. His warm arms, soft mouth and that tongue that could turn me inside out. God, but he could make me beg. That's gone now too, right? Was it ever real? When did we stop playing a game and start actually living the parts we played? Or was it all a game for him? To have turned on me like that, to coldly look at me like that.
He will have reached it by now.
My address.
Is he surprised?
Confused as he stares at the vacant lot. That sad sorry patch of land Lisa and I purchased to build on one day. Silly buggers that we were, thinking there would be a 'one day' eh?
Voices, staff talking as they come out to dump the latest rubbish and I wait patiently, the smell enticing and I rip a bag open to find some lovely gifts. I do like this restaurant.
No. We never did build, I never did get that home with a dog, picket fence and a couple of little hoodies of my own. No. I got Torchwood and Torchwood got me.
Right?
No. This is where I belong.
Garbage.
No. It's all gone now. Everything, like Owen said. All turned to ash and I don't know what to do.
How do I tell him? How do I explain?
Everything I had in the world is there in that Hub?
Jack was all I had.
Nothing left to do.
I curl on my side and drift in and out of sleep.
I weep for my lost love.
For Jack.