Title: Tears of the Weevil
Summary: Gwen feels alienated from the remaining members of Torchwood and worries what they're not telling her.
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Don't own Torchwood, the characters or anything related to the show.
"He knew." Gwen repeated for the second time, still sounding as disbelieving as the first time she'd said it. "He could have stopped this all from happening! Ianto! Toshiko! All of it!"
"He didn't know everything." Owen sighed, trying to calm the near hysterical woman down."
"Did you know he knew?" She looked even more shocked he hadn't told her himself.
"I found out when you did, well back in '08 in when you heard the first time. We all got mad and made up, so can we drop it?"
He sighed as the Welshwoman began to sob in to her hands. "Look I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout at you." She shook her head as he sat beside her and held her comfortingly.
"I'm sick of not knowing anything." She cried. "You all just keep forgetting to tell me things I need to know. So, is there anything else?" He looked up at her and nodded.
"Loads…but I can't tell you."
"How am I supposed to live here, try and resettle my life, when you won't even tell me about what I've missed-"
"Because it would send you as mad as the rest of us." He answered honestly, his slightly feral gaze fixed upon her.
"Least I'd fit in."
He laughed, the intensity in his gaze completely gone, and kissed her forehead. "You're still mad enough to qualify for membership." He teased. After only a few weeks of living in the future she'd been physically and emotionally pushed to her limits. She wanted it to be over and as much as she loved the older, more mature Owen she wanted her old life back. She didn't know how much longer she could survive in the bewildering future.
"You want to go back don't you?" It was like he could use the low-level psychic aptitude to read her mind, but it was written all over her face. The way she'd look a million miles away when sitting in the Hub. Remembering the way things had been; it was only weeks ago to her, yet years ago to the rest of the team.
"Can you blame me?"
He shook his head. They'd brought her in to a future in which almost all of her closest friends were dead, insane or simply gone. Dumped her in at the deep end and expected her to stay afloat. "Just give me a chance." He pleaded with her, looking as vulnerable as he had in that cage while the weevil had been attacking him. "If things don't get better after all of this is over then I swear I'll find a way to get you back." She nodded, accepting his promise. She wanted to stay with him, a loving Owen Harper she thought could never exist, but she couldn't see things getting any better. Since she'd arrived in the future her life had gone from bad to worse.
"Sorry to interrupt but I need you both in the boardroom ASAP." Jack called from the top of the stairs, Lacey by his side.
"What's wrong?" Gwen quizzed, pulling away from Owen's embrace and getting to her feet.
"There's something you both need to see!"
The screen on the boardroom wall was once again filled with the image of the evening news. Emmerich stood in front of the cameras, a snarling weevil being restrained behind her. "After hours of hard work my dedicated team have finally completed their work, despite Torchwood's best efforts to destroy it, we have finally made the cure. Observe!" She took a hypodermic needle and approached the struggling weevil. Unceremoniously sinking it in to the weevil's arm she plunged the contents in to its blood stream. Owen froze, as though the needle had been put in his own arm and his eyes became vacant and glazed over.
"He's turned." He spoke before the weevil had even began to change, but sure enough the weevil on the screen began to twitch and shake as its fangs receded, its hair grew and it's muscles depleted until finally a human man in his thirties stood in its place. He looked around widely at the people and the media; fear evident on his face.
"It's alright." Emmerich reassured him as her staff wrapped a blanket around his still shaking body and helped him to stay on his feet. "You're free now."
"Tell me that wasn't real!" Jack shouted, his face contorted with anger and fear. "Was he a higher?" All eyes fell on Owen as he shook his head.
"The cure worked. I felt him change." He choked out, the shock of the experience still leaving him struggling for breath. It had been like the weevil had been ripped out of his very being once it had began to revert to its humanity.
"This is not good people."
"Surely this is a good thing?" Gwen quizzed, after all a cure was why they'd brought her to the future.
"We want a cure to immunize humans, to stop the virus from spreading." Jack corrected her. "Curing a lower level would be like giving a wild lion a conscience. There's nothing we can do for them."
"We can kill Emmerich?" Lacey suggested as though she were simply deciding where to eat rather than talking about killing someone. It worried Gwen how easily the young woman could suggest such a thing. Even before Toshiko's death she hadn't been the most well balanced individual. Jack shook his head.
"We kill her and someone else takes her place. Not to mention the bad press we'll get from it. Let's get one thing straight people." He stood with his hands on his hips and his chest puffed out, demanding attention and obedience. "We're terrorists to the rest of the world. There are only four of us against the big bad world."