A/N: Sorry guys! I tried to get this done yesterday but I was suffering from a severe case of writer's block -which is a rarity for me - and just couldn't get any words out... I fear that this ch isn't very good, but still, I hope that you like it! Oh and should warn, there's a bit near the end which is a little... risque... shall we say? There's no vivid descriptions of anything inappropriate but they are basically naked... it'll make more sense when you get to it! But yeah, thought I'd better warn you! Hannah xxx

Stupid, foolish, idiotic, thick, naïve, crazy… call me whichever and however many of these as you like, it won't make much of a difference. The main point will still remain the same, they'll still add up to the one, main, resulting conclusion: that I was unwise and daft enough to truly believe that we had been through the worst already with Owen. That his death and resurrection to this undead, unrelenting state of life was the absolute rock bottom of the situation, and that from now on it was only conceivably possible that things could improve. That we would get through this somehow, that we'd look after him and he'd be just about ok in some strange, vague sense of the term. But it isn't, or wasn't at least – who knows where the situation stands now – and Owen has been through yet another twenty four hours of absolutely undeserved hell.

I suppose I had to tell myself that things would improve in order to try and get by during the initial twenty four hours after Owen's 'transformation' in order to prevent myself from going insane. Ianto and I had a great deal of fun attempting to distract ourselves (well I suspect his part in the 'fun' was mainly for the benefit of my distraction – but still) from the knowledge of Owen's new circumstances, but we did eventually get to talking about it. I confessed how guilty I felt, how yet again another decent person had been severely injured – more than injured, worse than injured – through Torchwood related means and I failed to help him. That potentially I might have even made things worse. That I'd let Owen down and that I was worried he'd never forgive me. Ianto was understanding and reassuring as always, and somehow I even managed to feel briefly better through talking to him, by getting my feelings out there in the open it had given me the false sense of hope that I would be able to move on from what had happened – but how can I get over things, when things have got so much worse?

Something had happened to Owen overnight, or maybe it had begun happening during the previous day but we hadn't noticed which makes me feel even worse about the situation, either way his condition was rapidly deteriorating, he was becoming 'something else'. When Martha called us in that morning and presented us with the results of her testing I felt my stomach lurch at what she was showing us; the tests had revealed that Owen was about 40% 'something else' something not human, something bad and, most regrettably, something not Owen. Our colleague, our friend was slowly slipping away from us and we had no idea what to do to stop it, every felt tense and anxious and I should have been able to reassure everyone… More importantly I should have been able to help Owen and put a stop to the process there and then somehow, which would have saved his further distress and the lives of twelve innocent people. For goodness sake, I'm their leader, I'm the Captain, I should be able to take charge and smooth over situations like these – but it was too hard, I couldn't just pretend that it wasn't affecting me, I wasn't prepared to pretend that Owen wasn't Owen like Martha had suggested.

I could see her point, especially later on when he was slipping into that terrifying state of blankness and dark eyes and foreign words and became to seem almost monstrous, but no matter what he would – and always will be – our Owen. I've known him for far too long, been through far too much with him, to ever be able to fully detach and pretend as if he were a stranger, treat him as if it wasn't in my best interest to protect him above everything else. First and foremost our duty is to the protection of the human race as a whole – but if you can't do everything under the sun to try and protect your closest friends then what is the point to it all?

Not that I did manage to protect him of course, or even put his mind at rest… I took him down to the Weevil cells after they'd surrounded us when we were out only to spontaneously retreat once Owen had fallen into that almost hypnotic state, to see how they would respond to him. He joked about being the 'King of the Weevils', putting up his usual unserious and sardonic defence, but then he suddenly turned to me, looked me right in the eye and said in the most grave and frightened voice:

"What the bloody hell is happening to me Jack?"

And all I could do was tell him that I didn't know… I wanted to be able to reassure him and tell him that everything was going to be alright, that Martha's test results were all mistakes, that he would then make some joke about 'bloody female doctors waltzing in here trying to do his job', that things would return to normal – that he was absolutely fine. But of course I couldn't because it would have been an outright lie and not solved anything, because the hard, cutting truth is that Owen wasn't fine and maybe never will be again and as much as he might try and joke everything off, or shrug it away with sarcasm, I think he's realised this, understands that he's effectively living on borrowed time.

I think that's how he managed to fight off death, to kill off the evil, soulless being that had been dwelling within him and threatening to take our Owen away from us, because he felt he honestly had nothing left to lose and was prepared to take on the 'grim reaper' of sorts alone, offer himself up risking permanent death in order to put a stop to all of this. And it makes my heart ache, that, although I was in a sense proud of him for facing such a feat with such a level of bravery, that he felt so low and still feels as though he's got nothing.

Obviously, I would have to say that I am closest to Ianto out of all of my team (but this is of course for slightly biased reasons), but I've known Owen for the longest out of all of my current staff and am equally attached to him as to any of the others. It hurts so much to feel so useless and powerless, watching him give up hope, watching him suffering through and wondering what on Earth is happening – and the horrible, guilty, nauseating knowledge that this is largely my fault. I want to be able to restore his faith; I want to be able to tell him that he'll always be safe from now on, but I just don't know what to do with him anymore… which is why I've sent him home for tonight at least while I try and figure out a plan of action. We've completely ruled out the possibility of a repeat performance of what we've seen today, and declared him as unthreatening once more – so he deserves at the very least to be comfortable (ish) in his familiar surroundings, even if he can't eat or drink or sleep or have sex or do anything that a typical 'Owen's evening' would pretty much be comprised of.

As for Ianto and , we I have gone back to his this evening, I just couldn't face spending the night inside that hub – even with Owen as alright as he ever will be again now, and safely returned back to his own apartment. I just need to distance myself from Torchwood for a little while before I become suffocated by the pressure and the guilt and the harsh, bitter realities of our lives; obviously I won't be able to forget for one second Owen's condition and the fact that our days left with him could be few, but I'm hoping that perhaps by staying away from the hub tonight it won't be so garishly, 'in-my-face', and inherently present in my thoughts.

I was worried that perhaps Ianto might feel inclined to cook us a proper meal, and want to sit down and make small talk and watch television or listen to the radio and act completely normally, but I must have forgotten that he has the tendency to call a situation perfectly. Sometimes I really think that that man is a psychic angel sent to me from heaven, he seems to know exactly what I what (or rather what I need which is a hell of a lot better) and exactly how to act around me under certain situations. Tonight for example, instead of us entering his apartment and him launching in to cooking us dinner, he gesture for me to take a seat on the sofa while he poured us both a double whisky. The strong spirit seemed to briefly dull the pain – or perhaps just transfer it from a mental ache to a burning sting in my throat – and certainly helped to relax me a little; but of course there's the unavoidable issue that I burn off the alcohol too quickly…

"So…" Ianto said, joining me on his sofa.

"So", I repeated back, unwilling or unable to make the first launch into 'this conversation'. It would have been a fair assumption for me to make that he would expect me to need to talk about Owen, to purge myself of the pain to him as I so often do, but right now I just feel so sick to my stomach, so in shock and so angry at the now imminent future loss of a dear friend. And I'm sure that the whisky is already losing it's slightly pain softening effect… bloody fast healing liver…

"Are you alright?" He asked outright, seeming a little reluctant to pose the question – I guess the picture of my face right now must expose volumes about how I'm feeling.

"Ianto… No… No offense, but can we not? Not right now at least, it's too fresh. I need to think of nothing for a little while" I replied, knowing that however much for the best it might be to talk about it, that I just wasn't in the right mind-set yet.

"Of course" He said with a small, slightly forlorn smile and I could tell that he understood exactly how I was feeling, because he was feeling it too.

I needed to feel close to him right then. So we sat there on his sofa, curled up together with our limbs entangled more than could be thought physically possible, with neither of us talking, just listening closely to the sounds of each other's breathing and heart beats for a good half an hour. We did eventually put the television on to prevent a deafening silence from claiming our relaxation, but it was just the news and neither of us were really paying a great deal of attention to it.

Then out of the blue Ianto shot up quick as a flash, leaving the warm parts of my body that had been connected with his suddenly cooler, and exited the room saying that he would be back in about ten minutes. If I'm honest, and I know it sounds ridiculous because I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that what happened to Owen couldn't have been prevented by me, but I'm not overly thrilled with letting Ianto out of my sight at the moment… just in case… because if something happened to him while I wasn't there to do everything under the sun to help save him then I don't know how I would live with myself. And also, on a rather less serious note, I was really very comfortable sat there with him like that!

Anyway, as it turns out, in the ten minutes that he was absent from the living room he had not in fact gone and got himself infected with a rare, incurable, alien disease; or been attacked by a Weevil; or had an accident with a toaster – he had just left to run me a bath. A bath… it was such a lovely gesture, I don't think that in all my many years anyone (other than my Mom when I was little obviously) has ran me a bath before. A bath is such a useful thing I always find, whenever you're feeling stressed or upset or are in pain, they can usually make things at least a fraction better; and with the lack of a bath inside the hub I haven't had a good long soak for a while, so I really was quite excited to set foot inside a tub again and I was rather hoping that I might be joined by a certain Welshman…

He walked with me to the bathroom and gave me a loving kiss on the lips, which both provided promising hope that he intended to stay with me, but as I started to remove my clothing he in turn began to leave the room! But, naturally, I was not having any of that.

"The idea of a bath has suddenly become a whole lot less appealing now that I know you won't be joining me" I said grinning but trying to sound disappointed (luckily his back was towards me so I think I successfully got away without him seeing my grin and managed to give a convincingly thwarted performance) so as to guilt trick him into staying.

He turned to face me and raised and elegant eyebrow upwards.

"Please" I begged and closed the gap between us to begin unbuttoning his shirt before he'd even had time to refuse.

Ianto sighed a little – but made no attempt to move my hands away I might add – and eventually relented, allowing me to strip him fully. Ever the gentleman, despite how despicably and persuasively I had just behaved, he allowed me to step into the large tub first which was beneficial for three reasons: 1. I got to claim the non-tap end of the bath as my own; 2. I got to stare at him stood there clothes less for another minute or so And 3. He rather unnecessarily, but very pleasingly, held my hands helping me in to the bath tub as one might do if you were injured or, in Ianto's case, just being lovely. The water was the perfect temperature much to my expectation as, after all, it's a rare occasion when Ianto gets something less than perfect; he'd added just the right amount of bubble bath to the water as well, enough to provide an ample 'bubblishness' across the surface, but not so much that it was almost seeping over the edge of the tub as it probably would have done if I'd been in charge.

Shortly after, he joined me inside the tub and I was robbed of the opportunity to stare voyeuristically at his naked form, but this was a complaint easily consoled by the fact that said naked Welshman was now sitting opposite me in his not-so-large-after-all bath tub. For a couple of seconds neither of us spoke a word, simply trying to get used to this rather peculiar new arrangement, before we both burst out into fits of giggles.

"Well we certainly haven't ever done this before….it's interesting…." I said through my laughter.

"Indeed it is" He laughed back.

"It's a bit… cramped isn't it?"

"Just a tad"

"In a kind of nice way though…"

"If you say so…."

"Oi!" I half shouted "that was a bit rude!"

"Sorry, just being honest" He smiled back so splashed him heartily with soapy water by way of revenge.

Wiping his thunderous looking face and hair free from liquid and bubbles as best as he could he replied: "Now that was uncalled for!" and splashed me right back.

The two of us engaged in a strange form of water fight for a couple of minutes before relapsing back into uncontainable laughter once again, which was only broken when Ianto had a brief little moan about the state of his now soaking bathroom floor. I couldn't help but notice how the splashes of water to his hair was causing it to curl ever so slightly in the longer parts, and his cheeks were flushed slightly from the heat of the bath water making him look even more gorgeous than usual. Oh, and the water fight had rid the bath of most of the bubbles, meaning that the water was left clear and revealing all, a fact which I have little complaints about.

We sat in relative, comfortable silence for another few minutes, just basking in the moment of it all, before Ianto scooped up a handful of the remaining bubbles and blew them into the air, dispersing them in a light spray back on top of the water's surface again. "This is not very manly this is it" He chuckled.

"Probably not" I grinned back, not daring to mention the fact that his excessively pedantic hairstyling and grooming and moisturising habits were not all the manly either.

"Perhaps we should get a toy boat or something, like a battle ship or something to 'man' it up a little" He suggested jokingly.

"Ianto there's barely enough room in here for just the two of us, never mind adding in a battleship too!"

"I thought that you liked not having a lot of room in here" He replied back semi-sarcastically.

"Don't tempt me to show you just I how much I like it" I warned, to which he simply raised a challenging eyebrow. "Right then Mr Jones, if that's the way you're going to play things then I think I demonstration is in order!" I finished grinning, eyes gleaming wickedly – the bathroom floor will more than likely be due to see a great deal more water in the near future…