Owen stood on the pavement that was concealed by the perception filter, watching as Kathy Swanson approached. He was positive that this was a bad idea that would come back to bite them all in the rear, but Jack had been singularly determined that he wanted to see her. God only knew why, Owen thought bemusedly. Every time they'd crossed paths with the woman since the Suzie incident, she'd done nothing but snidely asked them if they'd locked themselves in again lately.

And now, Jack wanted to see her? After what had happened to him…?

He couldn't, for the life of him, understand why Jack was so willing to open himself up to further abuse by allowing the woman into the Hub. In the end, though, all he could do was be there, and make sure the situation didn't get out of hand, and that she wasn't given the opportunity to hurt Jack even worse.

She was standing almost right in front of him, now, and he pondered briefly the wisdom of reaching out and grabbing her shoulder. Then she turned and he caught sight of the gun sitting against her hip, and he decided that perhaps scaring her wasn't the greatest idea he'd ever had.

Sighing inwardly, he stepped off the pavement, and into clear sight.

To Swanson's credit, she didn't scream. All that escaped her lips was a squeak of surprise, which was quickly followed up by an angry glower.

"You did that on purpose!"

Owen paused, and then shrugged.

"Well... Yes." He indicated the pavement. "Shall we?"

Frowning, she nonetheless stepped up onto the pavement with him. A moment later, the lift began its steady descent into the Hub.

"Oh my god," Swanson whispered as she looked around, her eyes wide. "You all kept using the word base... but I never imagined anything like this."

Owen smirked, gratified by her reaction.

"Wait till you see Myfanwy."

She shot him a suspicious look, but chose to say nothing. They rode the rest of the way down in silence, and it was broken only when they reached the floor of the Hub, when Owen promptly turned to face her.

"Weapons, please."

She arched an eyebrow at him, incredulous.

"Excuse me? You are not taking my gun."

Owen didn't so much as flinch or blink.

"Give me your gun, Detective, or I'm taking you straight back up. You aren't going anywhere near Jack with a gun."

Her eyebrows both shot up at that, and the look on her face was one step shy of murderous.

"I am not going to bloody shoot him, Harper!"

Owen was unapologetic, though.

"Regulations, Detective. It's not that I don't trust you... which I don't, by the way. But regulations strictly state that only Torchwood personnel may be armed whilst on the premises."

"You lot don't particularly strike me as the type to follow regulations," Swanson grumbled, but she unholstered her gun and handed it to Owen all the same. "Anything else?"

It took a great deal of self control for Owen to resist making a smart-mouthed remark, and to keep his face neutral. But oh, the things he would have liked to have said...

"That's it. Thankyou. Now, if you'll come with me?"

She followed him at a brisk trot, torn between wanting to stop and stare at everything around her, and needing to keep up with Owen.

"Where the hell have you got him stashed, anyway?" she asked as they headed down into the lower levels of the Hub, and eventually turned down a long corridor. Owen halted so abruptly, that she narrowly avoided running straight into him, and he whirled around to stare at her with a dark and angry glare.

"Stashed him? Where have stashed him? And you fucking wonder why we got him out of the bloody hospital!"

Swanson took an instinctive step back from him, taken aback by the very real anger in his eyes.

"I'm sorry," she apologised softly. "I didn't mean it like that. It just doesn't seem like there could be anywhere in this place where he could be... you know... comfortable."

Abruptly, Owen turned and continued walking, forcing her to jog to catch up to him.

"You'd be surprised, Detective."

He led her to a door some ways along. Before opening the door to let her through, though, Owen turned sharply to face her.

"We're letting you see him now, because for some reason Jack trusts you. I don't know why, but he does. The rest of us, however, don't, and I swear to God right now that if you do anything... anything at all... to make this worse for him than it already is..."

She held up her hands defensively.

"That's not why I'm here, Dr Harper. I promise you that."

Owen nodded, making no effort to conceal his suspicion.

"You'd better not be."

Jack had been dozing on and off for the last hour or so, unable to rest properly for the sheer amount of pain he was in. Owen had opted against any degree of sedation, instead putting a minor shot of morphine through the IV in an attempt to minimise his discomfort. The young medic had warned Jack, though, that the moment Kathy Swanson was gone, he would be fully sedating him.

For once, Jack had no objections to that. Right then, he was almost fully consumed by the constant pain, and the only positive he could find was that it took his mind off the memories that accompanied the pain. He sensed movement, and a moment later Ianto moved back into his line of sight. The Welshman's behaviour had succeeded in thoroughly confusing him, to the point where he'd finally given up trying to understand what was going on with him.

"Jack?" Ianto asked, and Jack blinked once to tell Ianto that he was paying attention. "Owen's coming with Detective Swanson," he said quietly.

Jack shut his eyes, feeling a relief that he had no way of expressing. He knew that none of the team understood why he wanted to see her. He knew they didn't trust her, and he supposed he could understand that. He didn't care, though. He couldn't explain to any of his team that it had been Kathy who had been there at his side when the rescue workers had cut him free from the bed; that it had been Kathy who had talked to him, and tried to reassure him when the pain was so bad that he had literally screamed himself unconscious.

He doubted he could have explained it to them even if he had been able to speak, primarily because he wasn't sure he understood it even in his own mind. It wasn't that he felt that he owed her. That wasn't it at all.

Her actions towards him had been unexpectedly kind, and as a result he found himself doing something completely unexpected. He found himself starting to trust her. Subsequently, he wanted to see her, even if he had no way of answering the questions that she would surely have... Even if he had no way to thank her.

The door opened, and Owen ushered her through. She stopped just inside the doorway, and their eyes met for a lengthy moment. Then, before either Ianto or Owen had a chance to speak, she walked quickly over to the bedside, her concern reflected in her eyes.

"Dear God, Jack..."

He watched her, feeling an entirely different sort of pain that he had no real explanation for. He wanted to speak, and was beyond frustrated that he couldn't.

Carefully, she reached out to lay her hand against the top of his head, and rubbed her thumb gently across his forehead and temple. She sat with great care on the edge of the bed, and made no attempt to touch him in any other way. Then, she threw an angry look at Owen and Ianto.

"You selfish bastards, you should never have taken him out of hospital!"

Neither Owen nor Ianto flinched in the face of her rebuke, even though she was certain she could see at least some degree of guilt in Ianto's eyes.

"It's got nothing to do with us and our feelings, Detective," Owen said flatly. "Don't criticise what you can't possibly understand."

She looked away from Owen, frustrated and angry. She could see the pain Jack was in so clearly that she could almost feel it herself, and yet they still seemed to think that they knew what was best.

"You can both go out," she told them tersely. "I want to talk to him alone."

Again, Ianto and Owen exchanged looks. Neither man was particularly happy with that directive — Ianto especially.

"You seriously expect us to just leave you alone with him?" Owen demanded to know. She glared impatiently at him.

"What the hell am I going to do?" Get up and walk out with him? Bloody grow up, you prat."

Still reluctant to go, Owen looked to Jack.

"Jack? Do you need us to stay, mate?"

Both Ianto and Owen were one step shy of gob smacked when Jack blinked twice. Kathy regarded them with a smug grin.

"I'm assuming that's a 'no'?"

Scowling, Owen took a step back.

"Fine. But we'll be watching on the CCTV, though. If you say or do anything at all..."

"I know," she retorted. "You'll boot me out arse first."

Owen snorted as he and Ianto headed out of the room.

"You don't know the half of it, lady. You really fucking don't."

Once the door swung shut, Kathy turned her attention fully back to Jack, and the aggravation melted away from her face, to be replaced with genuine concern, as well as mild bemusement.

"Some team you've got there, Captain," she said wryly, and he responded with one blink. She sighed softly. "Well, I suppose that they at least care about you, even if it is a little misguided. But they still should have left you in the bloody hospital!"

Jack blinked twice, firmly, and she was taken aback by the apparent meaning in that simple gesture.

"No? You don't agree?"

He didn't respond, but stared at her through bruised and pale eyes. She could see the meaning there as clear as day. It was unmistakable.

"Jack, for God's sake, you nearly died! You should be in hospital, not shut away in some dank little room underground! Surely you don't agree with what they did?"

It was her turn to be gobsmacked when he blinked once, firmly.

"You can't be serious."

Again, one blink, and she could read another look in his eyes now, as clear as anything. It was telling her exactly what the medic had told her just a few minutes ago.

Don't criticise what you don't understand...

Realising she would get no satisfaction on that subject, she decided it was time to switch to a more official line of questioning.

"Jack, do you remember any of what happened to you?"

And suddenly, he was wishing they were back on the subject of whether or not he should have been smuggled out of the hospital. Because yes, he remembered only too well what had happened to him, and he wished desperately that he could forget as completely as he'd forgotten those two years that the Time Agency had erased from his mind.

"Okay," Kathy murmured. She'd seen the distress on his face, and was anxious to keep any potential stress to a minimum, lest one of Jack's team come back in and kick her out. "I'm going to ask a few questions, Jack. Just… answer them as best as you can, okay? And I promise, I'll stick to blink-enabled answers, okay?"

He couldn't smile, but she thought she saw a spark of amusement in his blue eyes. Then, slowly, he offered her a single, tentative blink. It was so easy to tell how much he didn't want to do this, and yet he didn't refuse. It only made her respect him all the more, knowing damn well how hard it had to be for him.

"Okay. Can you tell me, was there more than one person involved?"

One blink. She nodded, not particularly surprised by the revelation. It seemed to be a given in her mind that the likes of Jack Harkness would not be brought down by a single man, and all else aside it had already been established by her own department that more than one person had been in on the attack.

"Was it two men?" she asked. He blinked twice, and she felt the beginnings of unease deep in her gut.

"Three?"

Two blinks. She was starting to feel slightly ill.

"Jack, how many men attacked you?"

He answered with slow and steady blinks. One, two, three, four, five, six…

"Oh my god," she whispered, shutting her eyes in an effort to suppress the horror she felt. "All right… Do you know if they were deliberately targeting you?"

Two blinks. No, he didn't know. She thought he possibly suspected, but wasn't certain enough to decide one way or the other.

"Do you know who any of them were? Did you recognise any of them?"

Jack hesitated for a long moment, searching his slightly hazy recollection for some familiarity, but there was none. He answered with two slow blinks, not quite able to conceal the relief he felt.

"Okay," Kathy murmured. "Jack, when did they grab you? Was it on Christmas Eve?"

One blink.

"Yes. Okay… Can you tell me where you were taken from? Was it from this place?"

He blinked twice, having no way to tell her that six humans would never have been able to breach the Hub security to walk in and snatch him.

"From your home?"

Two blinks. She couldn't know that the Hub was the only home he had.

"Were you at a bar, maybe? Or a pub?"

He blinked once, quickly. Though his memories were still a little hazy, he had a fairly clear memory of going there. Unfortunately he had no way of telling her which pub he'd gone to. She didn't seem fazed by the lack of details.

"Okay, that's good. That's a start. Jack, I'm sorry, hon, but can you stay with me for just a few more minutes?"

He blinked again, not so much in affirmation of her plea as an attempt to focus his blurring vision on her.

"Good. You're doing really well, Jack. Now, do you remember anything that might have happened while you were in there? Did anyone perhaps pay you particularly close attention? Or was there someone who made you feel especially uncomfortable?"

He didn't answer straight away, and as he searched his mind for an answer, he slowly became lost in his memories…

tbc...