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The wine, the chocolate, and the riveting lecture on advanced trigonometry did little to keep them awake, and both of them were asleep long before two o’ clock that morning.
It was Owen who woke first though. He had barely wondered what time ir was when his stomach rolled in an alarming way and primal instinct from his student days forced him to his feet and towards the bathroom. He yanked the pullstring lightswitch, groaned at the harsh light, and dropped to his knees in front of the toilet.
For her part, Tosh was so deeply asleep that she didn’t feel the movement next to her, hear him stagger around the bed, or register anything at all until the bathroom light flickered on and she instinctively covered her eyes.
“Wh’t?” she groaned into the foam pillow.
“Fuck…” was her only reply. It was followed by a particularly gruesome bout of retching and a splash of vomit into the toilet.
She unwound the sheets from around her legs and fumbled towards the bathroom. “Owen?”
Inside she found him on his knees, gasping for breath, with both hands clutching the toilet seat.
Tosh hovered in the doorway for a while, unable to think of anything constructive to do or say. “Are you ok?” she asked timidly.
“Yeah,” he snapped. “Jus’ leave me alone.”
Biting her lip in sympathy, Tosh had no choice but to go back into the bedroom where she hovered between the bed and the bathroom door for a few moments.
When the nausea hit her as well, it was like a punch to the stomach. She bent double, totally incapacitated, and wrapped her arms protectively around herself. All she had the strength to do was to grab the bin and drop to the floor.
The continued pains of being sick– the nausea, the retching, the gasps for air – are bad enough for ten or twenty seconds. But this was relentless, and carried on for minute after minute. For a while all she could do was go through the motions, the whole process interspersed with Owen, who was using every second he wasn’t actually puking to swear.
When it did end, some ten minutes later, all Tosh had energy left to do was to lean back against the side of the bed and wait for Owen’s agony to be over as well.
After a long while the toilet flushed, and she heard a ‘nngh!’ of pain as Owen stood and came to the bathroom door, where he leaned against the frame. “Next time I want chocolate – do me a favour – shoot me,” he rasped.
Tosh, who had had front row seats for watching the stuff come up the other way, nodded mutely at Owen and pushed the bin away from her. “I think it was the wine.”
“When was the last time you were sick from half a bottle of wine?” he asked as he rounded the bed slowly and flopped onto the covers.
“Um…” said Tosh.
Thankfully she was absorbed with trying to get back onto the bed and missed his smirk.
Tosh switched on her lamp and had to lift the clock all the way up to her face to fully register the time – four o’ clock in the morning. It was still dark outside and the wind was whistling through the ancient window frames.
Neither of them were ready for sleep again, which left nothing for them to do but watch early morning repeats of the Flintstones and (the tea and coffee provisions already used) sip stale water from the bathroom to rinse out their mouths.
They both felt better though, and while neither thought they would be too keen to tuck into a fry up, both were looking forward to the tea, orange juice, and jam on buttered toast that would be provided in the breakfast room at eight.
Owen switched the telly off at six (“It’s only the news – it can’t be that important if we don’t remember it already”) and now they were killing time before breakfast by challenging themselves in their own intellectual ways.
Tosh prised the side off of the Time Lasso in the hopes of taking it to pieces and making it work even better. Owen, to Tosh’s horror, was prodding at the bin full of her sick with a complementary pencil.
Eventually she was so distracted at this gruesome sight that she looked up in exasperation from where she was sitting, pixie-like, on the bed. “Do you have to? It’s a bit…invasive.”
“You’re the technical whiz, I’m the doc. You understand the inner workings of weaponry; I know what I’m talking about when it comes to puke. And trust me, whatever this is, we sure as hell didn’t ingest it.” It now had a consistency of tar and, though it reeked of rotten chocolate, it looked like no vomit he’d ever seen. It was pale grey and smooth, and he wished he’d not flushed his own away for comparison. “Anyway…we are married. What’s mine is yours, and all that.”
“No one anywhere, ever, expected that to include vomit,” sighed Tosh. She paused, unsure of rocking the boat by bringing up the dreaded subject again. “And we’re not married. Not now…not ever.” all of a sudden.
Owen looked up sharply, “Can we just…not have this conversation?”
Tosh’s eye’s flicked back down to the Lasso “You started it.”
“Yeah – and you made a big deal of it.”
The congenial atmosphere frosted over so quickly that Tosh had to reply events in her head several times before she could understand the sudden change fully.
---
Gwen strode into the hub and summed up the three hours of investigating ‘Owen Harvey’ she’d done. “Well, his colleagues think he’s a first class prick. It must be our Owen. Where’s Ianto?”
“He’s dealing with the body,” Jack said – so calmly that Gwen could once again only wonder whether his manners were some kind of defence mechanism, or that he’d seen so much death that the loss of a personal friend could no longer affect him. Perhaps for Jack life was miraculous and death was same old, same old.
Gwen started untangling the various pieces of winter clothing she was wrapped in and carried on while Jack leant against the desk with his arms folded.
“Anyway – it’s definitely him working there. Problem is – he went missing a couple of hours ago.”
“What?” demanded Jack.
Gwen shrugged. “He disappeared around the same time our Tosh and Owen did. No one can get through to him. I even tried tracing his phone – nothing.”
“So his son’s missing and now he is?”
Ianto entered the conversation as he always did - at a respectful distance like some kind of butler but still able to catch the tail end of the conversation. “Well this is going to make your day. I’ve just spent ten minutes looking at an empty morgue. Her – she - the body’s gone, Jack.”
Gwen bit her lip. Three people didn’t just disappear – especially when one of them was dead. She could see it on Jack’s face - he only looked like that when there was a fuck-up with a timeline…
“They’ve broken the rules,” Jack hissed. “They’ve wiped themselves out of fucking existence.”
“But doesn’t that mean…” Gwen swallowed. “You know…disaster on an epic scale?”
Ianto gave a sarcastic snort. “Isn’t that just typical of Owen? You finally get rid of him and he goes and destroys the universe.”
---
Tosh was hiding in the bathroom. She’d taken the Lasso in and locked the door to avoid Owen, who she’d heard drop onto their bed with a huff of frustration and turn the TV up to a painful level.
If he’d done something wrong, she wouldn’t feel as bad, but there’s no pain like knowing you’ve ruined a good day and she was feeling it acutely.
They’d gone out – not really with an aim other than to wander around Cardiff, avoid Torchwood, and do all the touristy things they hadn’t bothered with in all the time they’d lived in Cardiff.
It was an insane idea, looking back, Neither of them had similar tastes and arguments were bound to happen. Even then –Owen was clearly bending backwards to please her.
Perhaps if he had argued, she would have felt better. Because as they went around all the exhibits she wanted to see and he feigned enthusiasm over and over again, all she could think of was how scared was of falling for this image he was creating. She wanted him like this all the time but knew that he wouldn’t be able to keep it up forever. Who knew how long it would be before he cracked and turned into that bitter middle-aged man she’d met in 2008?
So they’d come home – her upset, him frustrated, and she’d been sitting on the bathroom floor ever since. She’d taken the Lasso with her for something to do in there besides consider the distressing smells from Owen’s bilious attack this morning.
The idea came after she’d picked at the wiring for the tenth-or-so time. What would happen if you pointed the thing at yourself? Would you and the Lasso end up in a different time?
It was a long shot – but it would be a way for one of them to get home, and it could be used in the future to Lasso the other one and drag them back too…
She bit her lip, it was dangerous. It could mean seriously messing with the timeline – but they’d coped before hadn’t they?
Feeling lightheaded at the uncontrollable rebellious streak she was barely trying to fight, she reached for the Time Lasso.
There was an unsure rap on the door. “Tosh? I was gonna order some Pizza...”
Tosh leapt like a startled child caught in the act. “Yeah,” she called back faintly. “I, I’m fine.”
She closed her eyes in relief at being stopped before she caused absolute chaos and as she stood very still she decided to go out and be civil.
When she opened them, she felt a jolt of pure terror.
Her reflection was showing two of her – one standing just behind her shoulder. When she blinked, it was gone.
---
Hope you’re following this – it will make sense, I swear! Thanks for reviewing despite my very slow updates…
Oh yes…I had something I wanted to tell you. I’ve created a new comm. on lj called
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characteraday , for all you writers (of any fandom and/or original) out there. Basically I post an interesting picture of a person each day and you create a character from it. The best ideas get mentioned in my end of day summary. It’s in DIRE need of members to get it going – so please go along and look.
Next chapter will be up shortly now that real life is under control and this horrible chapter is written!
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emmyangua's journal
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