Toshiko
At the computers. She's always at the computers, tapping away at the keys, checking and cross-checking and checking again, making sure everything works and everything's in harmony. Because Toshiko knows that without her, Torchwood falls apart. They need her. Things run smoothly because her late nights and early mornings are spent at those keyboards, behind those desks; she wouldn't be surprised if her darting from one to the other's worn a groove in the floor by now. She fixes things and invents things, makes innovations while they're all off drinking beer or getting takeout or playing basketball, and she tells herself she doesn't mind because they need her.
Toshiko does mind. She minds very much. She wants to be One Of Them.
But for Torchwood to function she can't be; she must be part of the network all the time, holding it all together, packed tightly and organised into her little world of data outside of their existence. Colour, sound, light; they have it. Toshiko only has a dull copy, a simulation. She knew what it was like but it's faded as she's become one with the programs and the wires and the microchips and the system. Toshiko puts herself into the system, and receives all of it in return, every bit of circuitry as though it's a part of her own biology. The others watch her, fingers tapping, flying, eyes aglow and flickering like the monitors, saying poor Tosh, she never goes out, she needs to have some fun.
Toshiko can't have fun. Not while the system needs her. Not while Torchwood needs her and if she leaves the system alone it might malfunction and then Torchwood will no longer be and what will Toshiko do then?
No system means no Torchwood means no them. They exclude her but she needs them nonetheless, because their presence reminds her. Be a person once in a while. Have a home. Talk to people. Function, because if Toshiko can't function then the system malfunctions and then it all falls in on itself.
No Torchwood also means no chance. Maybe someday she can be One Of Them. But not if there's no Torchwood, so she keeps it running. It's an endless cycle and Toshiko can't find a place to leap out and join the world without it all collapsing, but she keeps going in the hope that one day there will be a place.
And Owen.
She smiles at him and makes him sandwiches. Toshiko's never been one for small talk; she's fluent in binary and C+ and the language of the lights and flickers and twisting wires that are her world, and before now she's never wanted to speak anything else. But Owen.
He talks and he grins and he talks and he's such a wondrous thing. He makes her eyes light up from something more than monitors and it's wonderful, and the more Toshiko is near Owen the more Toshiko fits. She keeps things together but she can also go out. She goes out for beer. She doesn't like beer very much and never has, but the others do so she drinks it and looks and listens. And Owen.
He teases her. Toshiko frowns when he can't see her and sometimes when he can, but she can't tell him off; doing so might push him away and then Toshiko won't function anymore --
And now she doesn't need the system, not as much. It still demands the same of her and she gives it, her time and energy and attention, but she no longer loses herself in its sparking electrical highways that she's learned so well. Now Toshiko wants to lose herself in something different. Something more than invention and technology and the system and the circuits. The computers call to her like always but she finds that she can ignore them now, only giving in when she wants, when she chooses. She's different, slowly, changing, adapting. Making innovations. A new Toshiko.
Because, Owen.