Title: Tears of the Weevil

Summary: The weevil's intentions, and Jack's part in them, are finally explained.

Rating: PG

Disclaimer: Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.

Toshiko Sato was no longer the woman she had once been. Her brilliant technological mind had been slowly engulfed with madness. She had once been able to take apart and reassemble countless alien artefacts that would have baffled the world's leading scientists, but now it was considered a good day is she remembered who everyone was, including herself.

She sat on the floor of her room, idly running a pencil over a sheet of paper, sketching out random contorted lines that could easily resemble the chaos in her mind. "She's getting worse." Jack sighed, his breath tickling Gwen's neck as she leant over the security monitor. "She hasn't been able to live on her own in four months, we had to set up a makeshift apartment in Torchwood for her-"

"I guess I just couldn't cope, huh Jack?" Lacey shoved past him carrying a stack of files, her expression grim. Gwen shot her boss a quizzical look.

"Tosh and Lacey are pretty close. Lacey lived with her, but once she started losing it we had to bring her here for her own good. Lacey was trying her best to look after her on her own, but it's too much of a burden for one kid, she almost wore herself out." Gwen absently ran a finger over the image of her former colleague. How could this have happened to Toshiko? Logical, level headed Tosh who hated chaos and despised disorder? She sat on the floor, still in her pyjamas with her hair haphazardly shoved up, lose strands falling in to her eyes.

"How did it happen? Did she get sick? Have an accident?"

"She was tortured." She spun around to find Owen leaning casually against his desk. "By scared little men who can't handle things being different." His voice was almost a growl, his eyes dark and brooding. He held no trace of his trademark jack the lad attitude, no witty comments or playful banter. Tosh had lost her mind and her independence and on the rare occasion she'd seen the future Jack grin it had been as fake as the smiles Ianto had given them all after Lisa's death. Ianto. Poor Ianto. Was he with Lisa now? Or was Susie right? Was there nothing after this life? She shuddered at the thought and sent a silent prayer that there was something; and Ianto was happy there.

"So, are we going to make this cure or not?" Seeing the pain and loss on all of their faces and understanding why it was there had spurred her on. Her natural desire to help people was kicking in to over drive. She had to make the world right. For Owen's lost wit, Jack's grin, Toshiko's sanity, and Ianto's life. She frowned as Owen laughed at her. Actually laughed at her determination!

"Good one sweetheart. I'll just go invent the cure for cancer while I'm at it yeah?" Although he was laughing she could hear how it hollow it was, he wasn't laughing with mirth, he was laughing so he wouldn't scream in frustration and anger. "Two bloody years me and Gwen were working on finding a cure. And now she's gone, and what hope has humanity got left? We don't know if her blood's even the same as it was now. There are millions of things that could have changed it before we started testing for the cure. She could be worthless." He stormed off, hands shoved in to his pockets and shoulders hunched. Jack shot her a sympathetic smile, but still forced all the same.

"Don't take it too personally, Owen hasn't been right since you died, well before then really, what with the whole being a weevil thing, but he really went off the deep end without you. I doubt being forced to be around you for six months, knowing it wasn't the Gwen from his time, didn't really help him deal with it."

Gwen wasn't entirely sure where forcing Owen to put her up in his spare room came in to helping him deal with the Gwen he'd known for three years being dead. She'd expected him to object, shout and argue, but he'd merely sighed and grabbed his jacket, telling her to meet him in his car. He couldn't even be bothered to whine any more. Jack was right. He was a changed man.

As he took the wrong turning to his flat, a small almost genuine smirk appeared on his face. "How about a drink? If Jack think being stuck in the past for months can make me mental he obviously hasn't seen my try and be tee-total for six months." She let a small smile touch her lips. Maybe he hadn't changed so much.

He took her to a small bar she'd never been in before, telling her that taking her in to one of the regulars they'd haunted would probably be a bad idea, as as far as the staff were concerned she would be haunting the place. They took a seat by the bar and sat in awkward silence as they each cradled their drinks. "So how did it happen? The weevils I mean." He shot a glare at her as the others around them began murmuring and casting them curious glances.

"Drink up. There's a bottle of vodka back at...my place." He hurried her out of the club, constantly looking behind them as they left. Once they were safely in the car and on the way to his flat he explained. "Just for the record love, you don't start a conversation about weevils in the middle of a crowded bar."

"Why not?" Gwen quizzed. "Jack said that sixty something percent of Britain's population are weevils-"

"It's more like seventy now." Owen snapped. It explained the lack of people and traffic down by the bay on a Saturday night. "People don't talk about weevils. They let the government round them up and exterminate them without mumbling a word. No one talks about them any more. And any one who does looks pretty suspicious. If they find out we're Torchwood, we're as good as dead."

Gwen sat in Owen's living room, his flat looked more or less how it had in her time, minimalistic and not lived in. There had been some pictures lying around but he'd quickly removed them before she could see them. Perhaps Jack had ordered him to take them down as they told too much about the future? She held the glass, containing a generous amount of vodka, against her lips, feeling the large mouthful she'd taken burning a path down her throat. "Why would we be killed if people knew we were Torchwood?" Owen looked up from his glass, an absent look on his face as though he'd been somewhere else.

"Because they think it's our fault that the weevils were created." He answered, pausing for a minute he added. "And they're right; It was my fault."