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AN: This takes place after Jack and Owen's failed attempt to gain access to the Pharm; as always, what you don't see happened the same way it did originally

Old Faces, New Hopes

"Didn't go well, I take it?" the Doctor asked Jack as he and Owen walked back into the Hub, both of them looking more than slightly frustrated; clearly their attempt to get a better look at what was going on in the Pharm hadn't worked out like they'd hoped it would.

"Well, we didn't get into the Pharm, Copley 'assured' us that there was nothing strange going on and that Whitehall would back him up if we attempted to gain access to the place, and scans of the facility showed the highest concentration of alien life this side of the Rift; I'd say I've had better," Jack replied with a brief nod before he turned to Tosh. "Any chance we could trick the systems into granting us access?"

"No luck," Tosh replied apologetically. "The Doctor and I have done what we could, but they're using some highly sophisticated firewalls; a brute-force approach would give us away and we don't anything else that could do the job."

"We need a way in there..." the Doctor muttered, shaking his head in frustration as he thoughtfully tapped his lips. "Preferably not something which involves me disguising myself as the cleaning-lady again..."

His voice trailed off as he noticed the rest of the room's inhabitants looking at him in surprise. "What?"

"You disguised yourself as a cleaning lady?" Martha repeated incredulously.

"It was back when I wore frills and velvet; I looked a bit more... weathered back then, and can we move on to the more serious matter at hand here?" the Doctor asked, waving aside his embarrassed flush as he waved a hand at a computer screen displaying various pieces of information about the Pharm. "According to this, the Pharm's advertising for volunteer test subjects, so if we can get somebody inside the facility-"

"No," Jack said, shaking his head as he looked pointedly at the Doctor. "It's a good idea, but we don't know enough about what's going on in there; there are too many variables, and this isn't the kind of situation you're used to dealing with-"

"Just because I focus on potentially world-ending cataclysms when you travelled with me doesn't mean I can't spare time for more minor things, Jack-" the Doctor began.

"Look, it doesn't matter anyway; no matter what we think of, there's really only one way we can get what we're after without anyone finding out," Martha cut in. "We need a medic who knows what to look for to go into the Pharm and scout it out, and since Doctor Copley already knows who Owen is, and any in-depth examination would give away that the Doctor's not human before he could actually find anything, I'm the only real candidate-"

"What?" the Doctor said, looking over at Martha incredulously. "Martha, you can't-"

"We both know I've been through worse, Doctor," Martha reminded him, looking back at him with a pointed small smile that simultaneously expressed satisfaction and a grim resolution. "Trust me; if I can handle that, I can handle this."

As the rest of the Torchwood team looked uncertainly between the two time travellers, the Doctor and Martha exchanged silent stares with each other for a while, before the Doctor walked over and brief wrapped his arms around Martha, before he pulled back to kiss her briefly on the lips.

"Be safe," he said simply.

"When am I not?" Martha replied with a slightly flirtatious grin.

"Jack-" Owen began, looking over at the ex-Time Agent uncertainly.

"Trust me, Owen," Jack said, nodding at the young medical student with a reassuring smile, "you can trust Martha to the ends of the Earth... as the Doctor and I can attest, really."

"Looking at more immediate issues," Martha said, clapping her hands sharply together as she looked around at the rest of the Torchwood staff, "what do we know about the place so I know what to look for when I'm in there?"

"Seriously; you called her Samantha Jones?" the Doctor said a few hours later as he sat alongside Tosh near the monitors which had earlier been displaying Martha's meeting with Doctor Copley; Martha had been provided with special contact lenses which would allow them to see what she saw while infiltrating the facility- using the assumed identity of creative writing student and ex-hepatitis sufferer Samantha Jones-, allowing the rest of the team to wait and watch what she was doing without anyone knowing.

"Is there something wrong with that name?" Tosh asked, raising a curious eyebrow as she smiled at the Doctor. The Doctor may have been spending most of his time here studying the equations the two of them had written out earlier for the Rift manipulator, but his interest in Martha's safety was undeniable; right now nothing much was happening apart from Martha settling in for the night, but Tosh had a feeling that once Martha began her investigation of the grounds- she and Ianto had gone over the blueprints for the Pharm before her departure- the Doctor would be studying the screens with the same intensity he was now showing the equations; spending time with Jack might have meant she was used to more flamboyant displays of affection, but that didn't mean the subtle signs shown by the Doctor and Martha had gone unnoticed either. "I mean, you and Martha both seemed to be a bit surprised by that choice of name..."

"Nothing wrong, exactly, it's just an odd coincidence," the Doctor replied with a brief smile. "I actually travelled with a Samantha Jones a couple of centuries back; the fact that you ended up choosing that name for Martha just strikes me as a bit... amusing, really."

"Really?" Tosh said, a slight smile on her face at the implausible coincidence the Doctor had just revealed. "What was she like?"

"Not like Martha, for one thing; blonde teenage environmentalist activist who became a bit of a political speaker after she left me," the Doctor replied, smiling slightly at the memory. "Lovely girl, of course, but her history was... complicated."

"Complicated how?" Tosh asked.

"Complicated," the Doctor said simply, before he sighed and stood up; his attempt to avoid an uncomfortable conversation was obvious, but Tosh didn't see any point in pressing him for information that he clearly didn't want to share. "Well, I'm just going to nip off and get some tea; might as well see if Ianto's as good at his job as everyone says he is."

For a moment after the Doctor walked off, Tosh simply sat in silence as she stared at the screen before Owen walked up behind her, two mugs of coffee in his hands.

"Getting along well with him, then?" he said, looking at her with a brief nod as he indicated the direction that the Doctor had just walked off in.

"After everything I read about him at UNIT?" Tosh said, smiling slightly back at her friend (Her time in UNIT might have ended badly, but what she'd read about the actions of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and his UNIT team during the seventies had left her wishing that she'd been able to work for them even before she'd read about the full extent of the Doctor's history). "It's... it's like meeting the guy you've read about and learning that for once he isn't all hype; he really is like everything you imagined..."

"Oh, he was like that in the UNIT files?" Owen said with a feigned nonchalance that did little to fool anyone who was really listening to him. "Cute, chatty, smart..."

"Actually, most of his official employment records describe him as a distinguished older man in velvet," Tosh cut in with a brief smile, enjoying the confused look on Owen's face as he turned around to stare at her in confusion. "He changes his face a lot, really; that face was just the one he had when he was regularly employed by UNIT, while all the others just dropped in now and again to help out. When I was with them UNIT had six different faces listed as the Doctor's identification pictures if you had the right clearance- and two we weren't meant to talk to because he wouldn't know us or something like that-, and I even ran into another one during that incident on your first day."

Owen blinked.

"There's ten of him?" he said incredulously.

"Yep," Tosh replied, unable to stop a slight smile on her face as she realised what she'd just said; she'd been spending too long 'geeking out' with the Doctor...

"Uh... so," Owen said, looking slightly awkwardly at her as something else seemed to occur to him, "what happened to that... pool tournament thing you were organising?"

"That?" Tosh said, looking back at him with a briefly amused smile. "It was never a tournament."

"What was it, then?" Owen asked.

"It was supposed to be a date," Tosh replied.

She wasn't sure precisely where that had come from- maybe her time with the Doctor and Martha had rubbed off on her already; the Doctor alone had a habit of saying what was on his mind, and Martha definitely didn't lack for nerve either-, but it was out in the open now, and all she could do was wait and see his reaction.

"Sorry?" Owen asked.

"I was asking you out on a date," Tosh replied.

"A... a date?" Owen repeated.

"You didn't realise?" she asked with a slightly sceptical smile.

"You and me?" Owen said; evidently he was in the stage where you try to determine if something's the case by asking it in a variety of different ways.

"Yeah."

"I see," Owen said, slightly uncertainly. "And... you still... want that?"

"Yeah," Tosh replied briefly.

"Right..." Owen said, his voice trailing off uncertainly.

For a moment, a momentary uncomfortable silence settled over the room as the two stared at each other (Tosh thought she saw the Doctor standing off to one side behind a few monitors out of the corner of her eye, but she couldn't be certain and concluded that it didn't matter; if he hadn't interrupted yet, he probably wasn't about to do anything until this was over).

"I just thought if we spent some time together, an evening-" she began at last, trying to defuse the suddenly uncomfortable situation that had settled over them.

"All right," Owen said.

Tosh could only blink.

"Sorry?" she said.

"Just do it," Owen replied.

"Are you being sarcastic?" she asked; after spending so long feeling uncomfortable about just the idea of asking Owen out, he was just... accepting this?

"No," Owen replied briefly.

"You're being polite," Tosh said, still unable to fully believe what she was hearing. "You'll stand me up-"

"I've just said yes, haven't I?" Owen replied; he actually sounded slightly offended at the idea that he'd do that. "One date, see how it goes, which might be nowhere."

"That's fine," Tosh said quickly. "A drink."

"OK."

"Yeah."

"And I'm going to keep flirting with people, OK?" Owen added, almost as an afterthought. "Just 'cause of this, doesn't mean I'm going to stop flirting."

"You can be king of flirts," Tosh replied with a broad grin; in the long run, she could accept Owen still flirting with others so long as he was staying with her at the end of the day.

"OK," Own said after a brief pause. "We should... concentrate on Martha."

"Yeah," Tosh replied, turning back to the monitor as the Doctor walked out, smiling nonchalantly at them as he placed three cups on the desk in front of the monitors.

"All good here?" he asked, a casual smile on his face that made it impossible to be sure if he was genuinely interested in learning the truth or was merely feigning ignorance for their sake.