Burning Cosmos {A Torchwood Story Three}

7. Love Hurts

Owen's POV

We're all back in the board room, however this time it's anything but jolly. I have my hands on my hips, Evy is lying her overwhelmed head on the table, Jack is watching Tosh and Tommy with his 'official' face, and the lovebirds are looking torn. Torn between Jack's declaration that Tommy's time is bleeding into ours, and their cute little date which I overheard was gonna end at hers. I really do feel for her, poor girl.

The Captain orders Tosh and I to set up devices to take readings at the hospital. We all walk back into the main room, and at the same time Tosh looks at Tommy, I glance at Evy. She kneels beside the Rift Manipulator again, with Jack this time, and they begin to engage in a heated conversation about her abilities.
I wish I could do something to help her. I wish I could do a lot of things for Evelina.

Toshiko hitches a ride in my sports car to the hospital, and we start putting everything up. After I finish the corridors, I walk over.
"Need a hand?" I ask regarding the devices, and she chucks a few more at me. I smile in companionship and go to the same wall as her to put everything up, but the whole time I want to talk to her. About Evy, about Tommy, about how we're both in love with people who can slip away at any point. And I would know a lot about that.

"Listen, Tosh," I start, "I've been meaning to say, uh, just... be careful."
"What do you mean?"
I bite the inside of my mouth. "You're very close to Tommy."
Toshiko looks at me like it's the first time she's realised I pay attention. "I've only known him for four days," she says as she bends down to get more tools.
"Yeah," I agree, moving a broken lamp away. "You've fallen for him, ain't ya?"
"I can be myself around him. Don't need to pretend."
"No, I understand. I didn't think you had some weird fetish for defrosted men," I say with a broken smile, and she raises an eyebrow. I cough and say slowly, tentatively, "I just um, don't want you to get hurt, that's all. If you have to say goodbye."

She looks into my eyes with a soulful stare, and it unnerves me because it's like she's seeing inside my mind. Where three women, Evy and Diane and Katie, dance around with their different beginnings and endings. I know what she's going through because I've been there too. In this instant, Toshiko and I have never been closer.

"Owen, can you hear me?" Gwen's voice cuts through my brain from my comm, and I automatically click on.
"What is it?"
"I need you to go down to the East wing of the hospital; head down to the second floor, what used to be the radiology section. I think that area contains a clue to the time shift."
I nod to Toshiko as I leave the room and go to the East wing, where I find debris of a past life. I pause to soak in the cries and lives that must've happened in here, my own little bow of respect, before I carry on searching the room.

Gwen reads out a field report from 1918 Torchwood whilst I scan the floor and knock on walls until I spot a tear in the boarding the workmen have put up.
"Got it," I tell her as I move random junk out my way and peer through the hole. In front of me, on the wall opposite the hospital, is exactly the picture Gwen just described to me.
"It's, uh, it's some kind of advert, for car insurance. The sounds must be traffic." As I look across the hospital room, I'm struck with a realisation - and it'll hurt them more than it hurts me.

"It's not years in the future; it's now."

A plethora of beeps and wails sound from the corridors, and I run out of the room to see all our tech rioting. I follow the line of them til I'm back in the room with Tosh, who's staring at the walls in surprise.

"Hey, it's okay, it'll just be another anomaly," I soothe, and she nods uncertainly.
"We have to go back to the Hub," she says. I nod and help her pack up.
We're both silent as we walk out of the hospital, but at the front door she stops me by placing a hand on my arm. I look back at her, my keys in my hand. Her face is afraid.