m_findlow

Summary: Owen never has to feel like he’s truly alone.

The Torchwood hub never slept, Owen thought as he sat at his desk, slowly working through the backlog of research he’d always been meaning to get around to. There were dozens of projects that had been shelved over the years that had either started in earnest and then died an unnatural death, or those that had simply sounded like an excellent idea and just never gotten off the ground. That was the trouble with working for an organisation like Torchwood; you only even managed to focus on the immediate danger in front of you, and everything else fell to the wayside.

Now he had nothing but time to dedicate to all those things on his wish-list that he’d never found time or inclination for. What else was he supposed to do to fill in the hours between dusk and dawn?

It may have been late, but he wasn’t alone. Even though the others had lives and loves to dedicate time to, they were still here, just like him. Only Gwen had the night off, well deserved for the torrid few days she and Jack had been investigating a series of child killings. He’d only heard bits and pieces of it from the few brief phone calls and moments they’d flitted in and out of the hub, but he knew that kind of case would take its toll on them. Gwen was on three days' forced leave, and Jack, being Jack, carried on just as always, seemingly impervious to anything, or at least making a show that he was. He wasn’t here now, but he was off somewhere, investigating something. He never stopped, so it seemed to Owen. Perhaps when you’d seen as much as he had, it no longer clung to you in quite the same way. Owen supposed he was going to learn that for himself one day, either proving or disproving the concept.

Tosh yawned at the desk beside him, and he spared her a glance. ‘Go home,’ he told her. ‘You’re knackered.’

Her smile was as weary as the rest of her. ‘Is that your medical opinion, Doctor Harper?’

‘No, that’s my opinion as your friend.’

‘Well, then I can’t argue with that.’ With a deft flick of her fingers, she locked her computer, all five screens mounted in front of her ceasing to scroll with endless data streams, replaced by a single swirling blue screensaver. ‘What about you?’ she asked, reaching down for the handbag she kept under her desk. ‘Do you ever sleep?’ She already knew the answer, but it didn’t stop her from asking, as if Owen with his medical expertise, might be able to find a way to make it happen.

‘My body doesn’t produce hormones anymore,’ he told her. ‘It doesn’t get tired.’

‘You should try meditation,’ she said, glossing over the fact that being dead must be awful. ‘It might not be sleep exactly, but you do need to mentally switch off sometimes, too.’

‘No synapses firing, Tosh,’ he said. Even he couldn’t quite work that one out. He shouldn’t be able to move or talk without his brain telling him what to do and yet here he was. Just as jack’s immortality had its caveats, so too, it seemed, did Owen’s permanent state of death.

‘Maybe try it anyway,’ she said, standing and giving him a reassuring squeeze of his shoulder. She yawned again. ‘See you tomorrow?’

‘Nowhere else to be,’ he joked.

He glanced around the hub once she’d left, hearing it continue to click and whirr with the dozens of machines that never slept either, coupled with the ever-present trickle of water down the huge central tower. ‘Just you and me now, Ianto,’ he said, even if Ianto couldn’t hear him. He was curled up on the sofa a few feet away, having given in to sleep hours ago, waiting for Jack to return – a feat that may or may not occur. For all of them, the hub was more home than home itself. It was a part of them, or they were a part of it.

Owen’s attention turned back to his screen. The work at least was interesting and filled in time. Now was the time when he might have once wandered to the kitchen to make himself a brew, but habits like that were becoming hard to reconcile. He could have drunk it, certainly, but there was no saliva production to really get the full flavour of it, and he’d only have to turn himself upside down and inside out to later drain it from his stomach. With no stomach acid, anything down there was just going to sit and rot inside him. All he had now to sustain him was what he could see and hear and smell. So long as he could think about those things, he had something he could contribute.

He didn’t notice the time pass until the cogwheel door opened without all its flashing lights and alarms. Jack had returned, looking like he wasn’t expecting anyone to still be here. Owen gave him a half-hearted mocking salute as he skipped up the steps, before Jack then inclined his head towards his sleeping lover. Owen just shrugged at the silent question as to whether waking him was the right thing to do.

Jack interpreted the response, gently leaning over to shake him awake, before he sat up and without words, took the hand Jack offered him, leading him away to Jack’s office and down into the private bunker underneath. What they planned on doing once they got there was no longer Owen’s concern. They were alive and should make the most of it. Only Jack and Owen now would keep on beyond their lives, though how long that partnership lasted would depend entirely on Owen’s ability to not put his body in harm’s way. It was never going to heal, which meant even life after death had a limited shelf life. Perhaps only after that would he finally get to rest.