Fish sighed as he opened the Hub fridge to get a can of cola for Miranda. Things were finally beginning to settle down after a rather tumultuous month. After the escape pod had fallen through the rift last month, Rhys, Gwen and Fish had stayed behind to wait for Jack, Ianto and Miranda to arrive at the Hub so they could all unload the escape pod together even though Jack had told them all to leave it and go home. Fish had been shocked and dismayed to see Ianto climb out of the back of the SUV with a dead Miranda in his arms, wrapped in Jack's greatcoat. Jack had snapped at them and ordered them all out of the Hub before escaping to the roof of the Millennium Centre.

Rhys and Gwen had reluctantly left but Fish had lingered. Ianto was clearly shaken by whatever he had witnessed and Fish had tried his best to comfort the Welshman. Ianto hadn't revealed any details, telling Fish only that Miranda had faced a challenger and had nearly lost and that that challenger was still alive. He had helped Ianto wrap Miranda's battered and bloodstained body in a sheet before he departed the Hub. He had wanted to stay but Ianto had insisted Fish leave, knowing that Miranda would have been mortified to know anyone had seen her in her broken state.

In the days that followed, Jack had done his best to try and sequester their medic but Miranda had continually disobeyed his orders, going out on field calls and leaving the Hub. There had been many arguments between the two immortals, usually in front of the whole team. After a few days, Jack had simply stopped trying. Miranda winning that particular battle of wills. Fish could certainly see why the two immortals were exes and tried not to think about what their marriage must have been like.

Fish walked across the main Hub with the can of soda in hand. The two Torchwood agents were on night duty together and it had just gone nine. After her quarterly phone call with UNIT had ended, Miranda had retreated to the autopsy bay and hadn't come out since. Jack and Ianto had just returned to the Hub from their dinner date and, after a polite wave of goodnight, had headed to their bunker under Jack's office. Fish truly hoped that the two men had remembered to close the hatch this time. He still blushed a little when he remembered the last night shift when the two men had forgotten and left the hatch wide open. The sounds of their rather energetic evening had echoed across the Hub.

It wasn't lost on the rest of the team that Miranda's relationship with Nora Ashline appeared to have ended. Even though the immortal woman had said nothing, everyone noticed Miranda was now spending all hours at the Hub and burying herself in her work. Fish also noticed that she was also becoming reckless in the field, often throwing herself into danger. If she wasn't immortal, Fish would have wondered if his friend had a death wish.

The chemist found Miranda sitting at her desk, fiddling with the leather and bronze necklace she always wore. It was the first time he had seen it off her neck. She was rolling the leather cord between her fingers, the bronze square spinning back and forth hypnotically.

He put the can of soda down in front of her and pushed himself up so he was sitting on top of her desk. "I've never seen you take that off."

"I haven't, not in a long time," she said. She pinched the leather between her fingers and held out the necklace to Fish, the bronze winking in the light.

Fish took the necklace from her, running his fingers over the warm bronze. It wasn't large, a little smaller and narrower than a playing card. The squared end had two holes that Miranda had looped the leather cord through. The other end was rounded. There was no design, nothing ornate about the pendant at all. It seemed plain for a piece of jewelry and Fish suspected it hadn't always been a necklace.

"What is it?" Fish asked.

"A remembrance," she said cryptically

He didn't question her further, that was as much of an answer as he was going to get. Fish handed the necklace back to Miranda who fastened it around her neck.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine," she said with a smile, one that Fish noticed never reached her eyes.

"You're lying, Evie. You've been sulking around here like suicide on a stick ever since you and Nora broke up. Want to talk about it?"

"There's nothing to talk about, Fish," said Miranda, leaning back in her desk chair. She started to rotate the chair back and forth, releasing some nervous energy.

"When Olivia and I split, I was crushed," Fish said, very interested in his cuticles at the moment. "Everything was booked, the church, the reception hall. My sister had flown in from Perth… and I was over the moon. I thought she was the one. She showed up at my stag night. I was half pissed and she was carrying on about how she loved me but that she wasn't 'in love' with me. It was the most mad 'it's not you it's me' speech I'd ever heard. I thought about you. I could have used a friend. It's not easy, losing someone."

"I didn't lose Nora, I let her go." Miranda rolled her chair backwards and propped her feet up on her desk. "She wants certain things from life that I can never give her. I did the right thing, Fish. I walked away."

"What if what she wanted from life was you?"

"We didn't exactly date long enough for her to know that."

"Well, you didn't give her a chance to figure it out did you? You just walked away," Fish said not without a little bit of anger. Miranda and Jack both tended to condescend to all the mortal members of the team, treating them like wayward children. Fish, who had just turned forty, found it particularly unnerving.

"She wants children. She wants someone to grow old with. I can never give her that," Miranda said defiantly.

"We all start out wanting the happily ever after with the house and the back garden and the kids but life doesn't work out like that sometimes. People change."

"Yeah and it takes centuries," Miranda snapped.

Fish gave his friend a leveled look. "Listen, Evie. You and Jack? The two of you walk about with the weight of the world on your shoulders. You know, I used to think you two thought your immortality was what kept you from having the things that make live worth it but now I'm starting to wonder if maybe you think you don't deserve them. But whatever it is, at least Ianto's helping Jack get over it a little. But you? You need to yank that stick out of your arse."

"You don't understand, Fish-"

"Bullshit," he interrupted hotly. "I'm not a child, Evie. And Nora's not a child either. She's capable of making her own choices."

"I gave her the choice. I told her I couldn't give her the kind of future she wanted."

"But did you make it sound like it was something you couldn't give her? Or did you make it sound like it was something you wouldn't give her?"

"It doesn't matter either way."

"Of course, it matters, Evie! 'Love is not blind. It sees more but because it sees more it is willing to see less.' Did you stop to think that maybe if Nora knew that you couldn't have children, that you couldn't grow old with her that she'd decide to love you anyway? Or did you just hope that she'd see someone who wouldn't give her those things for whatever reason so that you could walk away with a clean conscience?"

Miranda's eyes were hooded and Fish could tell he'd struck the nerve attached to an uncomfortable truth. She didn't speak for a few minutes, digesting what Fish had said.

"I'm not blind, Evie. I see the way you look when you talk about her," said Fish. He shook his head. "You should go after her, before it's too late and you really have lost her. Forty and alone? That's a little sad. Hundreds of years old and alone is a whole new level of pathetic."