#torchwoodshead

Owen: And I hate you.

Owen: AND I quit.

Jack: ....so see you tomorrow?

Jack’s violent reaction to the noises Owen was making in the vents caught him by surprise and he probably should have been more alarmed and a bit less amused. If he’d been himself, he might have been at least a bit more alarmed by Jack’s violent reaction.

But instead, he cackled loudly, giving himself away a lot sooner than he’d intended. “Shit.” He muttered to himself, the sound echoing throughout the vents in a way that was almost comically chilling.

Solidifying his appearance enough to be seen, Owen crept forward and popped his head out of the vent over Jack’s office.

Owen: Jack, I am really sorry. Something's happened with Rose.

Owen: She's okay, she's back with me at the clinic.

“Rhys,” Gwen whispered. She wasn’t used to waking without that warm spot beside or the warm blanket over her but the benefit of the doubt said this would be her husband’s idea of a joke. She’d certainly been tired enough to fall into a deep sleep even without the pill’s help and they’d been free from the Nightmare long enough to laugh about it, just like the Miracle. 

Even so, the sand was a bit much and the air... well, it wasn’t right for February. Gwen sat bolt upright and kicked her feet in the early stages of what would be a panic or a simple tantrum depending on her next clue. “Rhys!” she called, urgently this time because they went everywhere together apart from when they were working and, if it had to be here, they should at least have been allowed to continue that tradition. But she finally had to take the silence as an answer.

“Cruel world,” Gwen mused aloud as she dragged herself into a standing position, dusted herself off, and checked her pockets: useless phone, useless contacts, and a hopefully unnecessary gun. “I haven’t missed you.” 

It had been five long years of fear and false hope and then nothing, not a clue the Pocket even existed any more. They’d said one sided goodbyes to their friends and their children and they’d tried to move on. Gwen embraced her role as Carer turned Survivor all too well. Now, as fate would have it, she’d have to consider her Torchwood roots. 

The sound of his stomach growling at him in an otherwise silent MedBay reminded Owen that he’d skipped any form of breakfast.  And lunch.  Given how long he’d spent getting his own small corner of the place organized to his liking, odds were good that he was on his way to missing dinner completely if he didn’t take a break and do something about it.  That meant leaving things in flux -- which Owen had to admit he’d become really great at lately.  He sighed, hands reaching up together to massage a knot of tension from the back of his neck, before snagging his jacket from off the chair he’d claimed as his own personal territory.

Temperatures were steady enough that he didn’t really need it.  Still, given how often things tended to vanish around this little pocket of space, Owen wasn’t leaving his precious jacket alone long enough to chance it.  He slung it over his arm before stepping out the door and into the corridor that would take him to the Kitchen.  Maybe he’d see if he could will a few slices of Jubilee’s into existence by wishing really, really hard?  Hey, a bloke could dream.

Owen pulled the door shut behind him right before he noticed that the corridor wasn’t the right one.  Or else the ship had redecorated while he was occupied.  He frowned, hand still on the knob, while casting his eyes back and forth down the rows of doors.  Nothing about here looked familiar.  It’d been all perfectly normal that morning.  Had he gotten himself lost again?

“Well.  This is fuckin’ brilliant.”  He drawled out to the open air, sarcasm thick.  “What’re you on about, Pocket?  I try to apply myself to gettin’ some actual work done for a change and you decide to pull this?  I know that I’ve been wantin’ a change of scenery but this isn’t what I meant.”  The medic’s frustrated tone rang down the corridor to either side.  Owen cuffed his fist against the door frame nearby before twisting around to try to enter the MedBay again.

The door opened up to a room he didn’t recognize.  Owen’s face screwed itself up sullenly.  “Shit.  Not this again.”

Odder still was the fact that there was a door directly across from where he’d come inside.  And someone or something was knocking on the other end.  What were the chances that it wanted to murder him?  Fairly good but there was also the off-hand chance that he could get directions home in the afterlife.  Owen held his breath as he tentatively approached the other door, twisting the lock with an audible click.