Seeking Sanctuary
Owen
They thought Owen escaped to the pubs and clubs of Cardiff, most ,if not every time they were released from the Hub early enough to do anything other than collapse into exhausted, fitful sleep for a few hours, before getting up to do it all again. Owen did nothing to dissuade them from their ideas, though in truth since the disappearance of Diane, he hasn't felt much like a night of drunken debauchery, which he has to reflect, is most unlike him.
Everything, everyone, he meets is so transient and now he finds himself longing for something stable and guaranteed in his life, something other than the inconvenient phone calls from Jack Harkness that he will never be able to escape.
He finds now that he understands Suzie's desperate need to talk to someone outside the walls of work, and while he almost admires the depth of thought she put into her scheming, he will never forgive her casual disregard for other people. They worked so hard to keep this city safe, this planet safe, and while he may groan and curse about it, he can't ever imagine deliberately harming a civilian. He still can't quite believe he shot Jack, and the fact he did still wakes him up at night in a cold sweat of guilt. The trouble is they're stuck between a rock and a hard place; the only people who understands them is each other, and sometimes that was who they needed to moan about. Even if you weren't moaning about the Team everyone else was too busy maintaining their own tenuous grip on sanity, and could ill afford to loosen it to shoulder someone else's troubles.
Initially he'd taken to walking, just setting off in a direction and seeing where his feet took him. It soon came to his notice though that it was a lonely pastime, and he really didn't know Cardiff as well as he should for someone who had lived here for three years. That had been perfectly obvious the night his Bluetooth had crackled into life and Ianto's calm voice had advised him that he probably shouldn't go any further down the street he was on if he wished to escape with his wallet, and his life. Owen had promptly turned around with a mutter about "nannying butlers," but to his credit Ianto had never said a word about it, just left a sheet of neatly written names of streets to avoid and a pamphlet of local walks from the tourist office on Owen's desk with his coffee one morning.
Owen never mentioned it either. But he did make sure that he did the lunch run that day as a thank you.
In the end, Owen had rescued a dog. Or perhaps, the dog had rescued Owen. She was an old golden cocker spaniel, content with a gentle stroll and lots of strokes on the sofa. The moment she had pinned Owen with those black soleful eyes, he knew that she would end up in his flat, because he couldn't live with the guilt he would have felt if he had left her on the street. The pathetic gratefulness with which she'd licked his fingers had melted his heart and for once, Owen had a stable relationship with a female with whom he could share the tales of his day. And though she couldn't answer him, he felt better for telling his stories.
She was his secret, and he told no one on the team about her, although eerily Ianto had left a Walks For Dogs pamphlet and some Pedigree Treats with his coffee one morning. Torchwood was not the ideal job for dog owning, he was forced to concede quickly, luckily Lucy, as he'd named her, was quick to garner some attention from his neighbour in the opposite flat. Owen had never spoken to the quiet, retired woman before, but they had bonded over a shared love of dogs, and on the nights Owen didn't come home she would let herself in, take Lucy for a stroll around the park on the corner, feed her, and lavish her with attention.
So when Owen left for the night, making cracks about finding a girl to spend the night with, he didn't really have to try very hard: and she was always guaranteed to end up in bed with him, no matter how many times he told her she wasn't allowed on the duvet.