We were in a big tent, inspecting the mess someone had dug up.
"Once, just once, I'd like to walk into one of these tents and find it's a party. You know, food, drink, people dancing, girl crying in the corner," Jack said.
"Is it alien?" Gwen asked.
"And how," Jack said. He switched his wrist gadget to a scan setting. "I'm picking up traces of ilmenite, pyroxene, and even Dark Matter," he said.
"Any idea what it is?" I asked, referring to a big rusty, angular object.
"Not a clue," he said, examining it. "Could be a weapon, or a really big stapler. How's our friend there?" Jack asked of the corpse nearby.
"She's dead," Owen said.
"Yeah, thanks, Quincy," Jack said."
"She?" I asked.
"Judging by the size of her skull," Owen said.
"How long have they been here, Tosh?" Jack asked.
"From the depth they found them... I'd say 196 years, 11 to 11 and a half months. The earth's been disturbed so I'm afraid I can't be more accurate," she said.
"What killed her? The stapler?" Gwen asked.
"Nah. See those shattered ribs? I reckon she was shot," Owen said.
"Well, let's get her back to the Hub and find out," Jack said.|
Gwen pulled Owen up out of the hole. "You're so light! You're like a girl," Gwen said.
"I'm not light, I'm wiry. Fat girls go mad for it. But I guess I don't need to tell you that," he said, looking at Gwen. I stared at him oddly as Gwen blushed and looked away.

I was at my station, working, when I heard a giggle from behind me. I turned, to see Owen and Gwen under Tosh's desk. I got up and walked over. I bent down to peek under.
"What in the tarnation are you doing?" I asked.
They looked up at me a bit guiltily.
"Well... uhmm..." Gwen scrambled a bit.
I'm really sorry, I think your computer might be dead.
"What's going on?" Tosh asked, walking over. I stepped back, shaking my head.
"I was just trying to find out," I said. I looked at Owen and Gwen, now out from under the desk.
"Umm, well, we think your computer might be dead," Owen said.
"You're kidding. What happened?" Tosh asked, running around to the front of the station.
"OK, so she said I was no good at sport... Hello? So I said, 'Throw something to me and-"
"What happened to the computer?" Tosh demanded.
"Oh. I kicked out the plug," Owen said.
"What? It was running a translation program I'd written. I'd collated every scrap of alien language we've got, and broken it down into binary threads to see if there was a common derivation," Tosh said.
"That's a bit of a mouthful," Owen said. I glared at him.
"Sorry. Private joke. Um, stupid joke," Gwen said, looking a lot more guilty than Owen.
"We're supposed to be professionals. We've got a job to do," Tosh said.
"She's right. You're right, Tosh, I'm sorry," Gwen said, walking away.
"Do you know what, Tosh? Sometimes I think even that stick up your arse has got a stick up its arse," Owen said. He walked away too. I looked at Tosh.
"Do you need help with anything?" I offered.
SHe shook her head, plopping herself down in her chair.
"No, I'll be fine," she said.
I nodded, and went back to my station.

It was the next morning, and I was walking out of my car into the office, when I noticed a few very odd things centered around Gwen's car. First off, it was bouncing, and the windows were all steamed up. and also, when I walked past, I heard low moans issuing from inside. My eyes widened, and I ran past. I crouched behind another car, and waited, hoping my hunch was wrong.
My hopes were shattered a few minutes later when Owen and Gwen walked out of the car. I crouched down further, hoping they wouldn't notice me. They didn't though, and I waited a for a few minutes after they went in to get up.
I passed Ianto on the way in, but hardly noticed. I was thinking. Maybe it just wasn't fair to feel this way, but the fact that Owen and Gwen now seemed to have something more than a friendly relationship going on really bugged me. Maybe I was being unfair, because to be honest, it just made me mad that he was happy. But to justify this anger to myself, I told myself that I didn't want Gwen to get hurt. As far as I could tell, Owen used women, and moved on. He'd done so with me. Gwen's relationship with her Rhys would be ruined, and when Owen and Rhys both left her, she'd get her heart broked twice. No good could come of it.
I spent the rest of the day brooding in the same fashion, hardly noticing Tosh when she came in. She stared at me oddly for a few minutes, and moved away, eyes wide. I kept eyeing Gwen and Owen, wondering what, if anything I was going to do about this.

I took a different route home than Owen that might. He would assume I'd gone out. Instead, I went right back, and watched the door to his apartment. Sure enough, after a while, along came Gwen.
So this was certainly most out of hand. Highly disturbed, I went into my apartment.

The next day, my brooding was interrupted by some clangs and singing. I got up from my station, and went into the autopsy room.
Owen was in the room itself, and Gwen was sort of dancing around on the walkway. Owen was throwing things, mostly at Gwen. Jack was just standing there, laughing.
"Plodders!" Owen yelled, and I ducked as something almost hit me.
"The leg bone's connected to the hip bone... " Gwen sang.
"Please stop singing. Anything to stop you singing!" Owen yelled. He threw something at Jack.
"I don't know what you're laughing at!" he yelled.
"Stop singing, please don't sing, please don't sing. Not listening, mmmmmmm," Owen hummed with his fingers in his ears.
"Hey,what's going on now?' I asked.
"You remember the skeleton we found at the building site? Well, Amanda Burton here has just completed the post-mortem," Gwen said, indicating Owen.
"OK, I can explain," he said, turning to me.
"As you may remember, at the building site, Owen said this was a woman killed by a single gunshot," Gwen said.
"I'd been there, like, a minute?" Owen protested.
"Since then he's had to 'tweak' some of his initial conclusions. The first being that this isn't, in fact, a woman, but a man," Gwen said. I looked at Owen.
"Really?" I asked.
"A young man. A very girly man," Owen said defensively.
"But still ultimately a man," Gwen said. "Then there was the cause of death. Owen said GSW. Uh-UHH! The correct answer was..."
"Unidentified trauma," Owen said, looking up at the roof.
"Unidentified trauma?" Tosh asked, walking in. She looked around in confusion.
I pointed at the skeleton. "It's a man, not a woman, and the cause of death was an unidentified trauma, not a gunshot wound," I said, trying not to laugh.
"You see it in RTAs, when something like a steering column or a post goes into a body at great velocity," Gwen explained for Tosh. She turned back to Owen. "But the one thing that could be ruled out was..."
"Gunshot wound," Owen said.
"Gunshot wound. Was there, in fact, any part of your prognosis that was right?" Gwen asked.
"I got that it was a...skeleton," Owen said. I snorted, unable to stop myself.
"Yes, you did," Gwen said, her tone similar to one that would be used to congratulate a puppy.
"You..." he mumbled, and I couldn't hear what he said. "You've just passed the point of-"
"Where did you train Owen?" I broke in. He looked at me.
Gwen pointed at him. "Yes, where did you train? Did you train?" she asked. Owen started throwing things again, and I ducked out of the room, going back to my workstation, giggling all the way.

I sat up in bed,sweating after a bit of a nightmare. I was in my apartment, and according to the clock, it was 5:34 in the morning. I lay back down, hands on my face. I was starting to become obsessed with this Owen/Gwen thing. I was even dreaming about it. "
I was just starting to drift back to sleep, when the phone rang. I stumbled out of bed, into the kitchen, and picked it up off the counter.
"Yeah?" I asked, raking my hair out of my face.
"Get to the hub, as fast as you can," someone said.
"Jack? Is that you?' I asked.
"Yeah," he said.
"What's going on?" I asked.
"Hurry up, I'll explain when you get here," he said. He hung up, and I stared at the phone for a minute, before grabbing my purse and coat, slipping on some shoes, and heading out the door, not bothering to change out of my pajamas.

I watched from around a corner as Tosh and another woman came in.
"'In Xanadu, did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree... Where Alph the sacred river ran through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea.' So, where is it, lover?" the other woman asked.
"Stay here. Jack, my boss, has got it," Tosh said. I looked at Gwen.
"Be quick. I've a long journey ahead of me. I might need something to eat before I go," I heard the other woman say.
"This what you're looking for?" Jack asked. Gwen and I stepped out from around the corner.
"Jack!" Tosh cried. Jack, who had been up on the walkway, started walking down towards them slowly.
"Friend of mine - let's call him Vincent. That was his name, after all. Regular guy, girlfriend, likes his sport, likes a beer. He starts acting a little... strange, a little distracted. Suddenly he disappears for a couple of months. He comes back, and we've gotta start calling him Vanessa. Since then I've always been a little nervous when a friend behaves out of character," Jack said. He looked at the other woman. "I'm sorry, we haven't been introduced. Jack Harkness. My guess is you're not from around these parts. Now this... This is incredible. You know what it is?" he asked, referring to the rusty object from the grave site which he was holding in his hands.
"It's a transporter," Tosh said. "Mary was a political prisoner - she was exiled here. Look, Jack-"
"You've got half of it right. Mary... It is Mary, isn't it? You want to tell her the really interesting bit? No? Chatty, isn't she? I don't know how you got a word in edgeways, Tosh. It's a two-man transporter. Or whatever you people may be. You might be squids, for all I know. A two-squid transporter. Room for one prisoner and one guard. You want to tell us what happened to the guard, Mary?" Jack asked.
"I killed him. But I was disturbed," Mary said. She looked around at the rest of us. "A woman, this body, walked out of the woods. I took it. I would need to blend in on this planet after all. Then another came - a soldier. He tried to shoot me. So I plunged my new human hand into his chest and plucked out his heart."

"And that's what you've been doing ever since," Owen said.
"This form needs to be fed," Mary said.
"All the punctures were all about the size of a fist. My God, all those people. You killed all those people," Owen said.
"I fled before any more soldiers came. I had so much to explore! And how I loved this body. So soft. So wicked. The power such a body has in this world. Within a few years the forest had gone, transporter was safely buried under the spread of the city. I didn't care, I wasn't exactly in a hurry to get home," Mary said.

"And you've been killing ever since," Jack said.
"I knew there might come a time when my situation here became complicated, but I was safe, as long as I knew where the transporter was," Mary said. I noticed Tosh putting on a kind of pendant. I wondered what it was.
"And then the machine was uncovered," Jack said.
"As soon as the air touched its surface, I could feel it," Mary said.
"So I found my Toshiko. My beautiful Toshiko," Mary said, looking at Tosh. Oh god, is she talking about... i let that thought go, not wanting to follow it.
"Owen, NO!" Tosh yelled. He lunged for her, and Mary grabbed Tosh, pulling out a knife that went right to her throat.

"Let her go, Mary!" Jack yelled.
"Don't," Owen said.
"Let her go!" I said.
"Toshiko, tell them to give me the transporter," Mary said.
"I can't, Mary," Tosh said.
"How's this? I'll exchange Toshiko for that one," she said, pointing at Gwen. "Your choice," she said.
"Did you hear him? He didn't want to, did he?" Mary said to Tosh. I looked at them in confusion.
"Please, don't..." Owen said.
"That's what they think of you. That's who you've been working with for all these years," Mary said. I made a connection.
{Tosh, are you reading our thoughts?} I directed the thought at her specifically. Her eyes settled on me, and I knew that she head.
"It's not true, Tosh, don't listen," Owen said.
"But not me. Whatever I've done, it doesn't change the way I feel about you. We have a connection, Toshiko, something real," Mary said.
{Tosh, don't listen to her,} I said.
{You too. What do you think of Toshiko?} Mary asked. I looked at her in shock. Class 8 telepath? Impressive. She smirked at me.
{Tosh, you know we don't think that,} I sent at her.
"Please," Tosh said.
"OK, you want the transporter, we want Toshiko. I think that's a fair swap,"Jack said, stepping forward. "Keep the knife and I'll give you the transporter myself."
Mary let Tosh go, she ran to Ianto.
Jack brought the transporter over to her. They were both holding it, so they were really close to one another.
"You smell... different to them," Mary said.
"That's nothing. It's when you compare teeth with a British guy, that's when it's really scary," Jack said.
"What are you?" Mary asked.
"I don't know," Jack said. I moved over to Tosh, and put my hand on her shoulder. She looked at me, and I wondered what she'd heard. My eyes settled on the pendant, and I realized that it was probably how she was hearing. She nodded, and I knew that my guess was right.
"And you would have put me in a cage?" Mary asked Jack. A beep came from the transporter. "What's happening?" Mary asked.
"Oh, that. I re-programmed it for you. It's set to enable," Jack said. There was a bright light, and a whoosh.
"Sort of now," Jack said. The light faded, and Mary and the transporter were gone. Tosh, in tears, took the pendant off.
"What did she...? Has she gone home?" Tosh asked Jack.
"I reset the co-ordinates," Jack said.
"Where to?" Tosh asked.
"To the centre of the sun. It shouldn't be hot. I mean, we sent her there at night and everything," Jack said.

"You killed her," Tosh said.
"Yes," Jack said. Tosh glared at Jack for a lng moment, and then Jack walked away.

I considered talking to Gwen about this thing with Owen, but I decided it was none of my business. I hated Owen, but our job was dangerous. I didn't want to be in a situation where I needed his help, and have him mad at me. So I dropped the matter.