Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Owen, Tosh, Ianto

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,427 words

Content notes: Set post "Everything changes"

Author notes: Written for Challenge 222 - Breakdown

Summary: The team deal with the aftermath of Suzie's death.



The three of them sat around Tosh's desk in silence. Owen fidgeted with a pen, clicking it on and off against the desk, whilst Ianto could have been mistaken for a statue, leaning against the edge. There was nothing more any of them could do. In truth, there was precious little they could have done ten hours ago either, yet here they were, because Jack had demanded it of them.

Jack reappeared from the lower levels, striding purposefully across the hub. He'd told Owen in no uncertain terms that he didn't need any help taking Suzie's body down to the morgue, and that had been the end of his involvement as their medical officer.

They watched as he entered his office, grabbed his coat and came back out, slipping it on with practiced ease, all without a word or even a look in their direction. He walked past them and over to the sofa, where Gwen was asleep. Half her luck, Owen thought. The rest of them had been up all night, though there was little any of them could do except be here. How she was even asleep was a wonder. Perhaps Jack had given her something. Anyone else would have been too highly strung at having had a gun held to their head and having lived to tell the tale. Owen considered her lucky. If Suzie meant to shoot something, she rarely missed, and hesitated even less.

It wasn't until they'd arrived that Jack had broken the news of what had happened. Now he continued to ignore them, shaking the young woman awake and asking her to come with him. He lead her out of the hub and that was that.

'What about us, eh?' Owen griped. 'What the hell was the point in dragging us all here?'

'Leave it, Owen,' Tosh said. She was still too shocked by the news to be upset. If anything she felt numbed by it. How could this have happened?

Owen checked his watch. 'Seven am. I'm starving. If he's not coming back I say we go get breakfast.'

'I don't think I could eat anything,' Tosh replied.

'Try,' Owen said, putting a rare consoling hand on her shoulder. 'A bit of greasy bacon will probably do you some good.' Slowly she stood up and followed him towards the door.

'Oi, Teaboy, you coming or what?' Owen said, turning back to see Ianto still standing there looking idle.

'Didn't think I was invited.'

'Course you are. You're paying.'

He gave a slight eye roll and followed.

Even at this hour, the cafes along the bay were bustling, and there was little chance of anyone hearing their conversation over the clanking of cutlery and plates, the hiss of coffee being made and the sizzle of bacon and eggs. Tosh settled for fruit toast and jam whilst both men had plates and sausage and egg, beans and toast.

'What d'you reckon happened?' Owen asked through a mouthful of egg.

'Do we have to talk about it?' Tosh asked.

'Well, what else are we supposed to talk about? It happened. She ain't coming back.'

'She shot herself,' Ianto said.

'So Jack tells us,' Owen replied. 'I wanna know why. You think some copper snooping around is really gonna spook someone like Suzie?'

'If she thought Jack had found out,' Tosh suggested. 'If she was running away because she was scared of what Jack was going to do to her.' She shuddered. What would Jack do if he'd uncovered a serial killer right in their midst? Even now she didn't think she knew him well enough to know what he might do. 'Maybe she had a breakdown,' Tosh added. 'Maybe it was all getting too much, trying to bring people back to life.'

'Breakdown?' Owen repeated. 'Clearly she was broken long before that. I mean, shit, how many murders did we follow up?'

'Three,' Ianto supplied.

'Three that were stabbed in the back. By Suzie with that knife.' He set his own knife and fork down for the moment. 'Three that she asked us to follow officially. Who's to say she didn't kill a few more before that? Before she figured out the knife was somehow connected. Could've tested it on rats, but instead she went for humans. How she ever figured out that's what the glove did I then first place I'll never know. Going out and killing people to test how it worked, that's just screwed up.'

'I told you it was creepy,' Ianto said.

Owen scoffed. 'Since when?'

'When we found it. I said "it's creepy".'

'You think a sink full of dirty dishes is creepy.'

'He's right, though,' Tosh said. 'I always got this bad vibe from it. Someone dumped that thing in the bay on purpose, I'm sure. It could have changed her, made her become a murderer.'

'Or a zealot,' Ianto replied. 'Maybe she just liked the rush of bringing something back to life.'

'Well, you'd have to be pretty fucked up to get a buzz out of that,' Owen said, sculling his orange juice. 'Not like she brought them all the way back is it? Sixty seconds and then they're gone for good. Not worth killing someone over.'

'It could have happened to any one of us,' Tosh said, quietly sipping her tea. 'I mean, we're assuming the glove exerted some kind of influence. Suzie was the one who found it and started studying it. We could have been exposed just the same way.'

'No way would some stupid glove turn me into a psychopath killer,' Owen argued. 'Suzie was predisposed to it. She was always a little bit trigger happy, don't you think?'

'I wouldn't know,' Tosh replied. 'I didn't sleep with her.' There was a brief flicker of looks between Tosh and Ianto and Owen knew immediately it had been Ianto who'd spilled the beans on what he'd though had been a secret fling between coworkers.

'Oh, get off,' Owen said. 'It was only a few weeks. Didn't even work out, did it?' He glared back at Tosh and she quickly ended the conversation.

Ianto kept his eyes fixed firmly on the empty plate in front of him. 'What about Jack?' he said, not looking up.

Owen frowned. 'What about him?'

'Can't be easy,' Ianto replied. 'Another team member losing it and killing themselves.'

'Another? Who else was there?' Tosh asked. For as long as she could remember, it had always been her and Jack right at the very beginning, until Suzie had come along, and the Owen.

Ianto clamped his mouth shut. He'd read all the reports from the millennium incident, but clearly no one else had. Sometimes knowing too much was a dangerous thing. 'Long time ago now,' he said. 'Still, can't be easy.' He'd feel responsible, that much Ianto knew for sure. Who could blame him? One of his own team had lost the plot right under his nose. All of their noses really.

'How did none of us see this coming?' Tosh asked, as if sensing Ianto's thought. 'I never even saw her leave the hub at the times when the victims were supposedly being murdered, but she must have. If she was becoming unstable, shouldn't we have noticed?'

'We did,' Owen replied. 'She was bloody obsessed with that thing, we all knew that. Didn't stop us going out there to see if she could get it working. If anything, we encouraged it. Bloody lucky she didn't decide to kill us next.'

That sobering thought left them all in silence for a minute. A waitress came and cleared away their plates and they all paused whilst she was within earshot. As soon as she was gone though Tosh leaned forward across the table.

'Well, I say we lock it up and never use it again,' Tosh replied. 'And if any of us start acting strange, even just a little bit, I want you to promise you'll say something. I don't want to leave it until it's too late to find out someone's under the influence of something alien and hiding it from the rest of us. Agreed?'

'Yeah, agreed,' Owen said. 'That goes for the boss, too. He's the weirdest one around here. God only knows what he's not telling us. Ianto, you're here more than the rest of us, you'd tell us if something dodgy was going on at the hub, wouldn't you?'

'Absolutely,' he said, hoping they didn't notice the lie.

'Good. Well, that's settled then,' Owen said. 'First and last time we get caught with our pants down.'