Disoriented Cosmos {A Torchwood Story} [COMPLETED]

10. Merry Christmas!

What do people usually do at Christmas? I wonder to myself as I sit at my desk browsing through the personal belongings of someone who's just died from a Weevil attack. I feel bad for just dismissing the fact that a woman was literally murdered today and all I did was pick up the pieces, but at this point in my line of work I'm not surprised that the thought only occurred to me hours later.

In the drugring, when anyone who got harmed in any way, big or small, I mourned them. When nobody else would, for fear of getting in trouble and being abused more than usual, I stepped out of line and wept for them and got angry on their behalf that these pus-filled jerkwads who called themselves our bosses were making the world a worse place.

Now I felt nothing until I actually thought about it. Because in Torchwood, they turn you into a shell of your former self, set on autopilot forever until you yourself die in the line of action. God, it's depressing. But I can't leave - how could I? This is the most eye-opening life I could ever live.

"Happy Christmas!" Suzie rejoices as she floats by, carrying a tinsel banner that she's lining the whole of the room with. I think this is the first time I've ever seen Suzie smile about something that wasn't work related.

"You got any Christmas plans?" I ask her, and she turns to me with a childlike expression, one of excitement and hope.
"Yeah. I'm going to my parents' place on Christmas Eve to the day after Boxing Day - we're planning to help Mum with the roast chicken, go on a few walks around the countryside, watch the classics on the telly; you know, the usual." She sighs in a happy way, looking down briefly at the tinsel then looking back up to me again. "Christmas is the only time Dad likes us all together, me Mum, my brothers and my little sister. It's like we're only a big happy family at Christmas."

She gives me the biggest most genuine smile I've seen her use, all teeth and round rosy cheeks, and goes back to her sticking and hanging.
I swivel in my chair back to the desk, where I find out through council records that the woman has a small house that she shares with four other people around the same age as her. Well, shared.

Having fun with family. It should be such a simple thing, but I can't remember my family at all. I know I had them, because everyone has one at some point, but everything and anything before I got kidnapped and taken to Boss is... nothing. It's murky. It's grey and white and muddy. It's every adjective you can think of for a memory that you're not sure ever existed.

What do people who have no family usually do at Christmas? Would I be one of the staff staged at Torchwood for the front line with nothing better to do? I couldn't even hang out with one of my best friends, Amber, because she's already off at her father-in-law's for Christmas, and then drives up to Leeds for her mum and dad's New Years party.

I stay at the Hub for a long time, longer than Suzie for once, who shoots off exclaiming that she needs to start driving if she wants to get to her parents before midnight turning into Christmas Eve. I stare at the screens in front of me until someone's hand lands on my shoulder, and I look up at Tosh who is giving me a timid smile.

I force myself to smile back. "What's up, Toshiko? On your way to someone's for Christmas?"
She purses her dark lips in the way that movie stars did back in the day, and admits, "Well, I don't actually have anyone to get on my way for. Except for one particularly exceptional woman who has the personality of a giant and no family of her own."

I listen to her reverie, then slowly knit my eyebrows together. Because the only person whom I've ever heard my lovely Japanese friend talk about like that is...
"Me?" I ask, and she nods enthusiastically.
"You want me to come to yours for Christmas?!" I ask more excitedly, and she nods even more excitedly.
"I... don't have anyone for Christmas... and you're really close to me... so if you want," she says in an earnest tone, her brown almond eyes sparkling like the wine I know she has tucked in a cupboard in her kitchen.

I feel a smile break further on my face. "Are you kidding?! Of course I wanna spend Christmas with you! You're one of my best friends!"
"Great! Let me get my things! You can sleep over mine tonight and Christmas Eve!"
Tosh goes to her desk and starts to tidy up, while I swivel back to my desk and clear all my stuff. Before I turn the monitor off I catch myself looking at the woman's council tax form.

For a minute I wonder if I should celebrate with my friend, when there are killers and aliens and psychos still out there. It seems so unfair to the woman that I'm not mourning her.
But then, if I never took a day off, not everything would get solved even then. The world is full of killers and aliens and psychos, and I can't catch them all even if I had all the cunning and execution in the world; it would just tire me out.

Torchwood consumes your life, sure - but does it have to consume your happiness, too?

I decide to shut down the monitor and lock up my safe under my desk that has my pocketwatch and gun and comm in it, and go to grab my coat off the coat hook, which is in Jack's office. Side note, should probably take the coat hook out of Jack's office and place it next to the front door. Mental note, do that when I get back.

As I grab my coat, I see Jack sitting silently at his desk, head bowed, sifting through a bunch of photographs in his hands. I peer closer, and note that the top photo is strangely in black and white - or at least it was, before it grew old and turned sepia and white.
My eyebrows lower, and almost as if he could hear them lower, he looks up and drops the photographs into a small tin box also on his desk.

"Ah, Evelina," he says, smiling in his crocodile-charming Captain Jack Harkness way, "I hear you and Toshiko are heading off to spend Christmas together. Make sure you don't pull all your crackers by yourself." He pulls a cheeky grin with a short laugh, amused at his own innuendo, but for the first time I'm able to see into his eyes and they look... sad. Why only now can I read him? Has Torchwood made me more receptive?

"Jack," I ask, "are you going anywhere for Christmas?"
"Ah, no," he says in a way that to other people would sound like he doesn't care, but with my growing receptiveness means he cares almost too much, "someone has to look after the Hub and make sure no aliens bother us on Christmas 2004."
I don't know what to say other than, "Oh." I'm guessing he doesn't want to come with me and Tosh.

"Uh, goodbye then, Jack."
"See ya, Evelina; have a merry Christmas." He smiles charmingly again, but I can still see the sadness in his eyes, and for the first time, I feel pity for my boss instead of awe and danger and mystery. Whatever this man has been through, it's clear that he wants a rest from it: from whatever is burning behind his retinas, hurting him again and again in his soul.

And here I was thinking he'd lost it after however long he'd been here for.

"Jack, are you sure you don't wanna come with us for Christmas? Even just the 25th?"
"Nah, it's fine, go." He actually stands up and makes motions to shoo me out of his office and towards the front door where Tosh is. "Have fun, Evelina. Enjoy your first Christmas outside of a drugring. You deserve it."

He pushes me next to Tosh and salutes the both of us, then walks back to his desk. Tosh asks if we're ready to go and we start opening the giant cog door.
Before we leave I turn round to look at my boss one more time: he's back at his desk looking at his photographs, a sad smile on his face; there are more things in that little tin he takes out to handle and admire, like he hasn't seen them in a while. A profound wave of sadness hits me - whatever doom and gloom I was feeling about my job earlier, it's already consumed Jack to the point where he can't even accept an invitation from his coworkers for a dinner.

I turn back to Tosh and go back to her apartment; I unpack on her futon and clink glasses with her for a wine night; on Christmas Eve I wake up and decorate the flat with my friend then settle in with a bunch of DVDs; on Christmas Day I wake up early and arrange Tosh's presents around her bed so when she wakes up she laughs at the presentation; we give each other presents and hug each other in thanks, then settle down to watch more telly before putting out the turkey and veggies and sitting down to the best meal I've had in... ever. I have an amazing few days. I don't even worry about the massive spaceship hovering over London, because I know Torchwood London will sort it out.

But every so often, I think of Jack's smile, and I stop in my festivities and wonder how someone so happy could ever be so sad.