She's fading fast.
No, no, no, no, not like this.
He grips her hand tight but she's slipping away from him; she's given up, he can see it in her eyes.
Ianto knows. Ianto knows it's over, he can tell from the way he's holding back. It's inevitable, any moment now she'll be gone and just now he can't face that, and perhaps he should call him over, take that decision out of his hands because otherwise should he come to regret it later it will all be too late, no time left for rushed goodbyes because she'll have slipped away, she'll be gone…
Gwen hasn't given up. She's in denial, at least, doesn't want to admit that it's so hopeless, injects the painkiller as though she doesn't realise it will be over long before its effects can be felt. There's no point now, no sense in it all when they have seconds, a couple minutes at the absolute most.
It's Owen. Any doubt Jack had left that Toshiko might just survive this faded away the moment Owen's fate was revealed.
He knows how Toshiko feels about Owen. He'd never let on to her, would never tease her because that isn't Tosh, because while he can joke with her now, progressed on from those first few months following her release into Torchwood custody from that god forsaken UNIT cell, her unrequited love for Owen is one thing he wouldn't touch. It runs too deep, because Toshiko doesn't do meaningless and just for pleasure and Owen doesn't do feelings and commitment that that's exactly why it would never happen, never work, but Jack expects she knows that all too well herself.
He's watched silently, observed as she's fallen for Owen over the years, but he knows exactly what he means to her.
And that's why there's no doubt in Jack's mind that now, faced with an untreated abdominal wound that's at least half an hour old if they're lucky, and the knowledge that Owen is gone, defeated at last by possibly death in the most grim of all its forms, that Toshiko will not survive this.
He's seen that look in her eyes before, that first day he took her from her cell in the depths of a UNIT detention centre and put to her his proposal.
She's simply lost all will to fight on any longer.
And so Jack follows her lead. Perhaps he wouldn't have allowed it to go like this any other day, but he's tired, so tired, weary of it all resentful of this life and all of the suffering it brings upon them all, and yet he can't let her go, can't free her, because even if he could force her to struggle on until she's stable and retcon her, retcon them all, she's the one out of all of them he could never let go.
To let her go, to get her away from Torchwood and all its misery, back into her mother's arms, to erase the pain of Owen's death and all the other trauma Torchwood has brought her over the years would be to hand her right back into the clutches of UNIT.
He can't let her go. Not Toshiko. And so if she wants out, if she's truly given up, who is he to argue with that?
He holds her tight, ignores Gwen's attempts to help her, because if she wants to give herself one last slither of hope then quite frankly that's her problem, she isn't his priority until it's all over. If there was more time left he would be in his office, leave Gwen and Ianto to comfort her whilst he rummaged through his filing cabinet for the phone number he's been forced to keep from her for four years now because screw it, she's slipping away now and so what is it to UNIT if she speaks to her mother one last time?
But there isn't time. She's still already, so bloody still, and then her eyes roll, and…
"Tosh?"
Owen's gruff tones flood into the medical bay via the handheld monitor discarded on the floor.
She barely reacts. He has Toshiko grasped to his chest and yet he barely feels her react; her eyes flutter, suddenly a little more alert than she was before, but she's fading, she's still fading so damn fast and the damage is already done…
"You still there, Tosh?" It's Owen, unmistakably so, inexplicably so because he's sealed, because all the readings projected onto the wall tiles of the medical bay from Tosh's handheld suggest that Owen should be gone, should be on his way to decomposition by now… "Tosh, I'm going to need your help again with this."
There's silence for a moment. The four of them glance between one another- Jack, Gwen, Ianto and John, that is, John still lurking awkwardly at the top of the steps- all of them so utterly thrown by this latest development on top of everything else.
"Owen, it's Jack," he begins, but Owen cuts him off before he can finish, frantic.
"No, that's no use, I mean, no offence, but I need Tosh, where is she? She can't have bloody gone, she was there a minute ago, I know she's brilliant but she's got it wrong this time…"
"Jack…" Ianto begins quietly, and Jack turns to follow his gaze, brings Toshiko with him for all the good it will do, eyes drooping as though she's fighting to keep herself awake, too exhausted to manage anything else now.
Toshiko's readings from the power station flash alarmingly on the wall.
"It's not sealed!" Owen curses. "It's not bloody sealed, Tosh said she'd sealed me in, she said it was that or nuclear meltdown with the whole of Cardiff on the line and I was a prick about it but she did the right thing, I get that really, except this chamber isn't bloody sealed, two minutes of soul searching and asking for forgiveness for my multitude of sins and all that crap and then the doors opened again, and we deactivated the controls here when Tosh did the override, it's all shut down, so I need her to work her technical magic again because I'm a bit out of my depth with this."
"Radiation's rising," Ianto confirms. "This is more Tosh's area than mine, but the reactor's still in meltdown, it has to be."
"Hence sealing the source," Jack finishes.
"Exactly. Meltdown's started, it started right before I lost the connection, it came back online when the doors opened. I told you, I don't have a bloody clue what I'm doing." Muffled sounds, scrabbling, echo over the phone line, Owen's tone increasingly panicked. "Have you got Tosh yet? There must be a way of re-rooting it, she told me the only option was sealing the source of the reactor and she couldn't revert the lockdown when I didn't move fast enough but things have moved on a bit now, okay so the reactor's leaking but there must be a way of sealing it for good before Cardiff becomes another Chernobyl…"
He doesn't know, Jack realises. He can tell from his team's eyes that they've reached the same conclusion. Tosh… her wound is old, not within the last few minutes, at least, she must have coached Owen through the lockdown procedure over the coms with a fresh abdominal wound and not said a word, typical Tosh, selfless until the very end…
There's life in her eyes again, just the faintest trace of it. Her eyes were horribly lifeless when he gathered her into his arms, dull and defeated and beyond his help, and she's still fading away far too fast, there's no getting around that. But suddenly there's something else there too behind the defeat. It's that spark again, that spark Jack remembers so clearly in her eyes, just the faintest glimmer, that first day he had led her into the hub, guided her over to her workstation and told her all of the technology located there was at her disposal, that he trusted her, that he knew she was going to be brilliant, in that moment gifting her back the freedom she had long given up all hope of ever experiencing again.
There's hope now still, Jack's sure of it. Perhaps there wasn't before, not without Owen, but now everything has changed in that sense, if Toshiko was willing to give in before believing that Owen was lost then surely, surely now…
"Owen, Tosh has been shot." There's no easy way of saying it, Jack decides, no time to break it to Owen gently. "Gray, it was Gray, it's my fault…"
"What? Fuck." There's real panic in Owen's voice now, concern, and even that doesn't seem to be enough Tosh to find the energy to move, to speak, shit…
"She was fine," Owen insists, though he's convincing himself, guilt-stricken, it's clear, cursing himself he hadn't picked up on it before. "She was fine, she said it was just her arm, she was brilliant, she worked it all out, she… Tosh? Tosh?"
Jack wills her to respond, something, anything, to reassure Owen she's strong enough to cling on until he can make it back across the city to them, but instead her eyes fill with tears and she shakes her head, slight, pained, and Gwen squeezes her hand and murmurs reassuring, meaningless nonsense to her while Ianto looks on motionless, frozen in shock, and Jack wants to scream because they're falling apart around him and he can't stop it, can't make this right again.
"She's here, Owen, she's here. But she's weak, I didn't know, I swear, none of us knew, if only we hadn't wasted so much time in the cells…"
"You need to get her out of there, Jack," Owen urges. "Call her an ambulance, get her up the surface, tell them anything."
"Hospitals lost power with the explosions," Ianto reminds him grimly. "They're diverting A and E out of the city, there isn't time."
Shit.
Jack knows what he should do. He knows the right thing to do, not the easy decision but the right decision. He's paid to make the right decision, trained, ruthlessly so, didn't exactly walk into the leadership role willingly but he accepted it, took it on, knew what he was letting himself in for only too well.
He knows the right decision, the one he should take, the orders he should issue Owen over Tosh's handheld. He knows he can't be sentimental, that the bigger picture is key now, that the call he makes has to weigh up Tosh against the population of Cardiff, hell, even the population of the whole South West, knows that faced with that choice, there should be no doubt. Hesitation, yes, regret, anger and the lack of another option, a happy ending for all, but no doubt in his mind as to what he must do.
But not today.
There's been too much death already today, too much pain.
This once, just this once, Jack decides, screw it all and let him be selfish.
Not Toshiko. Not Toshiko, not her out of all of them, not Toshiko, the only one of them who didn't sign up to this life willingly.
Perhaps she would have, had it been different. Perhaps Toshiko would have signed the forms as willingly as the rest of them did, perhaps she would have seen it as an escape, a purpose, like Owen, perhaps she would have fought for it like Gwen and Ianto, proved her worth.
But it didn't go like that. Toshiko didn't have a choice, couldn't consent to this faced with the alternative of life in solitary, and Jack is damned if he is going to see it all end like this now.
"Owen, get out of there," Jack orders. "Get back to the Hub. Ianto, clear the route."
He knows Ianto, knows he'll only cope with this if he keeps him preoccupied.
"But the reactor, Jack, meltdown ain't gonna be pretty…"
"So we call in UNIT, we get them to deal with it. They can be here in an hour, tops, from their Bristol base, we let them take over. God knows it's time UNIT make themselves useful for once."
Toshiko cringes against his chest, and Jack curses himself for being so blunt, because however far gone Toshiko is it clearly isn't far enough to let her guard down completely.
"Tell them to evacuate the building, lock up whatever they can, Owen. Get everyone out, let them know UNIT are on their way and then get over here as fast as you can."
So I finally rewatched Exit Wounds after refusing to admit it happened since it aired and so naturally I had to write a fix it fic. I am a total newbie to writing Torchwood and I still have a lot to learn, so please do let me know if this is worth continuing. Reviews would make my day :)