Part 2 of this fanfic (specifically "Devastation Day") was written after the Torchwood Season 2 finale, during Doctor Who Season 4, and pre Children of Earth. It is a diligently-researched work of love that I never intended to make public; I began it for my own enjoyment, and continued it out of love, and as a means of coping with some of the grief left behind by TW Season 2. With that in mind, R&R, and I hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: Torchwood and Doctor Who are franchises that don't belong to me. I simply like to visit their 'verse and play.

Primarily, what's not mine belongs to Russell T. Davies et al. of the current incarnation of the Whoniverse.


My name is Sage, and I am a Time Lord. Sort of. But that doesn't matter right now. The story of the Fall of Gallifrey and the Time War are long ago and far away to me. I'm here to talk about today.

Today is Devastation Day. Ianto named it, just before he left the room. Left me to view the wreckage I had not been here to prevent. Left to mourn the loss of two colleagues and friends.

Doctor Owen Harper, Torchwood Officer 565. Deceased. Died while containing the meltdown of Turnmill Nuclear Power Station. Toshiko Sato, Torchwood Officer 563. (1) Deceased. Gunshot wound; bled to death while remotely assisting Doctor Harper to contain the Turnmill incident.

All roads in and out of Cardiff were rendered inaccessible by several large explosions. Oddly enough, this will make my job easier. Cover-up duty.

I'm Torchwood Officer 000. I don't exist.

In the morning, I'll have to lie about how they died.

But first... I'm to revisit how they lived.

Jack, Ianto, and Gwen have already taken down and stored Tosh and Owen's personal effects that were in the Hub. Owen's lab coat, Tosh's reading glasses... the small things we use every day and never think of as reminders of who we are... never think of how our friends will see them as reflections of us when we are gone.

As Ianto closed Toshiko's personnel file, a video she'd embedded in the system some time ago surfaced. She told her friends it would all be okay. But it's not. It's really not.

Jack has already decided that the story we will tell their families is that they died in the explosions, their bodies vaporized. Ianto volunteered to speak to Toshiko's family. I volunteered to tell Owen's mother. Owen had sent Jack an email once, the first time he died (long story), that he'd like his gravestone to state the number of times he'd saved the world. To have them both gone this way, with no gravestones and no funerals, no one knowing how bravely they faced death to save us all... just feels wrong. This is the true devastation. I think this is what Ianto meant all along.

I'm at Tosh's flat, packing everything she owns into boxes labelled with the Torchwood logo. I drove her car here to do it. It smelled of her favourite sandalwood perfume, and so does her room. I laid down on her bed for a while and cried. I couldn't help it. I hardly knew her, but she'd been the closest thing to a girl friend I'd ever had in those few days that had passed so fast and ended so badly. I packed her clothes away, her bedding, her books. So many books! Well-loved... you could tell by the wear in the binding, bent but not broken, just as my books had always been before I'd gone blind. I don't know where my own books are now; I'll have to ask Jack.

Everything Toshiko left behind will be locked up in a storage shed. Such a sad end to such an amazing life! I emptied every drawer of all of her things, instructed only to dispose of anything perishable and to leave the furniture bare. As I took a garbage bag to her kitchen, I saw a photo pinned to the fridge of Tosh and Owen together, smiling... so young... and I burst into tears again. I was glad I had taken this duty, though. It would have been too much for Gwen or Ianto, or even Jack, to bear. I slipped the photo into my pocket. I'm going to keep it. Let Jack try and stop me.

Owen's flat was a quicker job than I'd expected after dropping off Tosh's effects at the storage depot. It was also much harder than I'd expected. I'd been in his apartment once before, back when I couldn't see. Now it was mostly empty. He'd thrown away practically everything after the first time he died. He couldn't "eat, sleep, or shag", he said, and he didn't need to bathe very often, since he no longer had sweat or tears or bodily fluids of any kind, so he'd chucked almost everything.

I turned on his iPod as I stowed what little was left in those sterile Torchwood cartons. Music makes almost any job go faster, I find. I'd done the same at Tosh's, her MP3 player being the last thing I'd packed. Owen's was a different matter, though. As I was fishing an old porno mag from underneath his sofa, Moby's "One of These Mornings" (2) played, shocking me so badly I hit my head and laid on the floor as I cried.

One of these mornings/ Won't be very long/ You will look for me/ And I'll be gone.

I cried so hard it's a wonder the neighbours didn't bang on the door or call the police. Of course, they may have still been shell-shocked themselves.

Owen Harper… He'd been a medic at Cardiff A&E before Jack recruited him to Torchwood. He was no stranger to loss. He very nearly had a mental breakdown after his fiancée, Kate, had been killed by an alien parasite. Torchwood had covered it up, but Owen had been persistent. He'd always believed that saving lives was the only thing that made his own existence worthwhile. He died saving lives, both times, and that's what I'm going to tell his mother. The story behind it will be fake, but she should know who her son really was. She hardly gave him a chance to be a good person, but he was one anyway, beneath the layers of cynicism and sarcasm. And he saved lives every day, beyond his last breath.

Owen Harper. A good man.

I've just come across something he missed when he cleaned out his bathroom. A bottle of moisturizer. Of all the things… I never expected to come across this. It was the same scent he'd had on his face and hands the night I'd come home with him all those years ago. The container was on the floor, behind the toilet. I suppose it had bounced. I don't care. I've just rinsed it off and put it in my other pocket.

Someday Tosh's photo will fade. Someday Owen's lotion will stop smelling of Owen and smell of age. I don't care. If this is all I can have to lay my hands on when I miss them, then I'm keeping these things.

No graves to visit. Tosh is in Cryo Bay 38, (3) next to Suzie Costello, and I suppose that's the closest thing to a headstone she'll ever have. Owen will have nothing.

The wounds are still so fresh. It's hard to believe that someday they will fade. All we'll have will be our memories of them. I suppose it should be somewhat comforting that immortal Jack and long-living Sage will be two of the people remembering them. Somehow, in that way, they'll live forever. But where I'm standing, staring at myself in Owen's bathroom mirror, I'm not comforted. Because the pain will live forever, too.

1) Guessing at a number here. Owen is 565, and was recruited after Toshiko. I placed Suzie between them, but Suzie may have been recruited before Toshiko. This is unknown.

2) This song is actually on Toshiko's iPod in the episode "To the Last Man", not Owen's.

3) Suzie is indeed in Bay 37. Since Torchwood personnel seem to be kept in certain rows, I assigned Toshiko to Bay 38.