Title: Tears of the Weevil

Summary: The extent of Owen's 'problems' is revealed and it worries the team.

Rating: PG

"Where the hell have you been?" Gwen demanded to know the second he stepped in to the hub. "I've been worried sick!" He felt guilty at how shaken she looked, but he had no idea why he'd left her in the middle of the night.

"I think I was sleep walking. Well sleep driving. I woke up at the hospital." He offered his only explanation. Upon seeing Gwen's eyes widen in horror he added. "I'm fine. I woke up in the car park."

"Everything alright?" Jack appeared behind Gwen, the same smile on his face he'd worn in Owen's nightmare. He suppressed the urge to shudder and forced himself to smile.

"Every thing's fine boss." He lied, thankful that Gwen wasn't objecting. He doubted she'd feel like explaining to Jack or the others that he'd went missing during the night for fear it would lead to the need to explain how she knew he'd gone missing from his bed. She waited the majority of the afternoon, after investigating a false UFO sighting in Tesco's car park, to get him on his own.

"What's really going on Owen? The crash, the sleepwalking...avoiding me like I've got the plague." As she sat on his desk, staring down at him as he sulked in his chair he finally gave up the pretence that everything was fine. He looked so sad and terrified as he began to explain. "I can hear it Gwen. The weevil. Ever since that night it escaped it's always been in my head when I'm here...this little nagging voice, getting louder and louder...and then it stopped being just at work, I hear it when I'm driving home, in my flat, in nightclubs...nothing stops it, and it keeps saying the same thing over and over again."

"Tell me." Gwen urged, her hand reached for his until his gaze darted up at her. It was different. Darker. Resolute. "It wants you Gwen. And it won't leave me alone till it gets you."

Toshiko and Jack came running from his office as they heard a large groan followed by a loud thump. Owen lay unconscious on the floor by his desk, with Gwen standing over him holding a heavy looking folder of paperwork. She looked from Owen to the others and stammered. "He tried to attack me! He said the weevil told him too." Jack sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to stop the headache that he was quickly developing.

"So it's not just when he's asleep any more? This is getting serious." Gwen shot him a look, questioning how it wasn't classed as serious beforehand. "Tosh, get Ianto to help you move Owen to one of the cells...far away from the weevil! Gwen, you're coming with me. I think it's time we had a little chat with our guest."

As usual the weevil stood docile as Gwen stood before it. It had been over a week since she'd last been anywhere near it. It cocked its head from one side to the other, as though contemplating why Owen wasn't there handing her other. Did it know the effect it was having on him? Did weevil intelligence and telepathy really have the ability to control someone? Why hadn't it just effected Gwen instead? "It may have injected something in to Owen through the bite, a parasite maybe?" It was as though Jack had read her mind. "I'll be totally honest with you though Gwen, I've never seen a weevil show any signs of intelligence or response to communication. I don't think they're capable of rational thought. And I don't think they're capable of sending men insane just from a bite."

"Too late Owen." The other three chorused as they all stood sombrely in black. The rain lashed against their tired forms, soaking them to the bone, just as it was doing to him. His eyes swept past them to the catacomb that lay open. They were inside the Torchwood morgue and the missing Torchwod member lay in it. Dressed in simple black, eyes closed peacefully, it would be easy to mistake her for being asleep, had she not been lying in a morgue of course.
"You should have give her up pal." Jack stood smirking again. "Hell at least with the weevil she'd have a fighting chance."

"What did you do to her?" His voice wasn't nearly as angry enough as he'd like, and although he wanted to strangle all signs of life out of Jack's body, he didn't have the energy. He'd been fighting off the weevil's suggestions for weeks, working flat out to drown it out of his head, and he couldn't keep it up. He could barely hold himself up never mind attack Jack.

"She knew too much about me." He replied nonchalantly, as though it were obvious justification for murder. "Can't have that now can we?"

His eyes jerked open, jolted awake by his own screaming. Searching his surroundings he found himself once again questioning where he was. It took a few moments for his brain to register that someone was talking to him. Tosh. "Calm down Owen. You're OK. You went to attack Gwen, so she had to knock you out-"

"Gwen!" He threw himself at the door of the cell, his body connecting painfully with the reinforced glass. "She's in trouble! Jack's going to kill her!" Toshiko looked confused by his outburst. "It wasn't the blood weevil doing this to me! It couldn't have been, it's not advanced enough, but Jack, Captain Mysterious, he could do it. Gwen knows to much about him, so he's trying to send me crazy so I'll off her for him! He's trying to get rid of us both! Don't you get it!"

When the rest of the team finally met up in the boardroom Toshiko was wiping away tears as Gwen sat sullenly in her chair, staring in to space. After sharing what they all knew, they'd come to the conclusion that either Owen had cracked up from the pressure of working for Torchwood for so long, or the weevil was doing it to him. "Why would the weevil want Gwen?" Jack asked the question that no one had dared answer, because the answer was obvious. It wouldn't. She was just another human. Weevils didn't interact with any humans, they couldn't develop bonds with a human, in the wild they fled them or killed them and they certainly didn't use telepathic suggestions to get said human. "And why would Owen?" His words were not meant to sound as sharp or accusing as they did but they cut deep in to her defences. She was more than partly to blame for Owen going off the deep end.