Torchwood: Fanfic: Tripping out

[m_findlow]

Title: Tripping out
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Tosh, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,951 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for scarletmorning's prompt "Any, any, its all in your head" at fic_promptly
Summary: Owen has a bad trip

It was a relatively quiet day at the hub. Gwen and Ianto had gone down to the National Archives to check out something they’d found amongst their own research. Owen couldn’t remember exactly what Gwen had said, but it sounded incredibly boring all the same, thus why he decided to leave them to it. It didn't strike Owen as something Jack would be interested in either, but he’d chosen to tag along nonetheless. No doubt it was simply an excuse not to finish the mountain of reports piling up on his desk. They’d still be there when he got back, but for now he could stave off the inevitable.

For Owen, it was a chance to catch up on his own work, knowing that Tosh would happily work on her own equally boring projects and not bother him.

He studied the large perspex box currently sitting in his autopsy bay, its occupant still for the moment. It wouldn’t stay that way, he was sure. As soon as he made any move towards the box, it would rile itself up again. It was about the size and shape of a wombat, thickset and heavy looking with lank brown fur, dark beady eyes and a soppy wet nose. It had been picked up from a rural animal shelter whose usual occupants never ranged far from foxes, badgers and squirrels. The call the shelter had made to a local city zoo had been flagged by their systems. No one was about to believe a wombat had hopped on a plane and made its own way to Wales.

There was no question that it was alien. By the time they’d arrived at the shelter, nestled in the mountainous beacons, there was chaos everywhere, people screaming and ranting, pulling clothes off, running around in mad circles and drawing images of devils and other macabre images all over the walls.

'Make sure you keep a distance,' Jack had warned. 'If it’s what I think it is, it ejects saliva at anything threatening it. It’s highly hallucinogenic.'

Well, that explained the staff that had gone completely bonkers, Owen thought.

He still wasn't quite sure how, but Jack had finally managed to corner the creature, letting it spit wildly at him, but each time only managing to hit his coat. He studied the box now, and the creature sensed him watching it, turning around to face him and snarling.

'Do your worst, you furry little freak,' Owen replied, letting it spit at him, each wad of saliva hitting the wall of the containment unit and running uselessly down its side.

'Disgusting,' Owen muttered. As much as he had his own interest in learning what he could from whatever came through the rift, he’d not made any friends with this particular critter.

'I won’t miss you,' he told it as it growled again. 'As soon as we get a bit of rift activity, you’re getting a one way trip back wherever it is you came from.' It spat at him again in response as if it understood him perfectly.

'Whatever,' Owen replied, wandering off up the stairs to his desk. 'Take a chill pill.'

He’d been busy churning through half finished reports and research, for once enjoying the fact that he was getting something done. Even Teaboy would be proud of him, he thought, clicking save on another finished document. More days like this wouldn’t be half so bad.

Even as he was finishing the thought, he could hear a ruckus coming from nearby. He looked around towards Tosh’s desk, seeing it empty. Oh, that’s right. She mentioned something about heading down to check on their servers downstairs. Well, that ruled out her as the source of the noise. The sound grew louder and more insistent and it dawned on him that it was coming from down in autopsy. Bollocks, he thought as he heard the almighty crash, rushing across the hub and down the steps.

In the middle of the floor was box that had held his furry captive. It had been on the autopsy table before, but now it was smashed into several large pieces on the ground, and one very angry little creature was now free. It must have thrashed around until the box went tumbling off the table, he thought. Even then, it must have been pretty violent. Those units were designed to withstand a fair amount of pressure.

It was just a split second as he heard the growl in the corner underneath a set of high-mounted cupboards. Owen made to lunge at it and capture it before it could get away, cornered as it was. It flung a wad of spit towards him and he dodged it, but a second one followed quickly after, hitting him square in the face.

'Son of a...' But that was as far as his expletive got before the creature was making a break for it up the stairs and into the main area of the hub.

He ran up the stairs after it, seeing the blur of fur rush past his desk and into Jack’s office. Without thinking he grabbed his gun which had been lying of his desk, and not safely tucked away in the drawer where it should have been. As he turned to follow its path, his vision blurred and he stumbled, tripping over Tosh’s chair. He staggered imto Jack’s office and saw another flash of movement back out of the other side, but there were bright twinkling lights darting at him from all directions and he swatted at them madly, trying to get them out of his way as they buzzed. He wiped his face, feeling the slick gob of goo burning against his skin. That was the reason for all the lights, he realised, trying to blink hard and clear them from his vision. God but that stuff was fast acting.

He tripped over several more times trying to find his way out of Jack’s office, past giant hay bales that probably weren’t really there, clamouring and banging the whole way. Right now he didn’t care about animal rights, he was going to shoot the bloody thing if it killed him.

Finally making his way back out the other side of Jack’s office and across the metal grating that wrapped around the water tower, he caught sight of it, only it was so much bigger now. Where before it had been the size of a small dog, now it was more like a lion.

'Owen, what are you doing?' Tosh asked, seeing him standing there, gun gripped in his hand and looking thoroughly dishevelled.

Bloody hell, now he was imagining the thing was Tosh and that it was talking to him. He pulled back on the slide of the gun, preparing to fire whilst he had it cornered near the water tower.

'Owen, that’s not funny. Put the gun down.'

No chance. He knew that this thing was messing with his mind. He wasn't going to fall for that. Probably a defense mechanism so that it had time to escape whilst he was thinking he was dealing with someone else.

'Say your prayers, Rocky,' Owen said, levelling the gun and trying to sure up his aim. It was bloody hard with everything swirling, hearing a dozen other voices whispering in his ear. He looked back at the creature and once more it reverted to its former self, albeit much larger again, and no longer looking like Tosh.

'Owen stop,' Tosh repeated, putting her hands up. 'You’re scaring me.'

It was only as he was steadying to pull the trigger that he caught his reflection in the mirrored panels of the water tower. All week the council had been doing maintenance works on it, and so had turned off the water that usually ran down its surface, all the way beneath the pavement and down into the shallow pool at its base, a hundred feel below. It upset the tourists who’d come to see it, but it was a necessary evil.

When he looked, he saw himself, gun held directly Tosh. Not only that, but he saw his reflection acting of its own accord, pulling the trigger and laughing madly, watching as Tosh collapsed in a bloody mess, and still he laughed some more. It was only then that some small part of his brain registered that it wasn’t the creature at all, but that it really was Tosh. He blinked hard, trying to focus on what was real and what wasn’t, but now he couldn’t be entirely sure. His other self in the mirror was still waving the gun around, and the creature was running circles around him. He looked back against Tosh, only she was gone again, and now the creature was standing there again, normal sized but growling viciously at him.

'Owen, please put the gun down,' Tosh pleaded.

Owen saw his reflection again, and saw the other Tosh lying there in a pool of blood, unmoving. All the while, in front of him was a tiny growling creature just tempting him to take the shot.

The gun in his hand wavered and he tried to pull reality together. Colours and noises began to vie for his attention, growing louder and louder, brighter and brighter, and the image of himself in the water tower became sinister and menacing. Make it stop, he begged his mind. He pulled the trigger, and the mirrored glass shattered in an explosion of noise and light before the gun fell from his hand and he crumpled to the ground, curling into a ball as the noise consumed him whole.

'Owen.' He heard his voice as if through a haze.

'Owen,' the voice came again. It was familiar and warm, reassuring.

'Come on, you can't lie there and sleep forever.'

Owen cracked open an eye, finding himself tucked up in one of the beds that was in the recuperation room several floors down inside the hub.

'You gave us quite a scare,' Jack said, leaning over him, 'but not quite as much as I think you gave Tosh.'

Owen groaned, the memories slowing coming back to him. 'God, please tell me I didn't hurt her.'

'Tosh is fine. A little shaken, but fine. Can't same the same about the water tower, though. Ianto's had a right job of cleaning up all that broken glass.'

'What happened?'

'Tosh called me. Said you'd gone off the reservation. My words, not hers. We got back and found you catatonic on the floor. Then we found the mess down in autopsy and put two and two together.'

'What about the creature? Did you find it?'

'Oh yeah. Turns out they're mortally afraid of pterodactyls. Myf had it cornered and begging for its mummy when we got here. Made for a nice easy retrieval, although I've reconsidered how we house it. Clearly it was much stronger than we anticipated. It won't be making any more escapes now.'

Owen slumped back against the pillow. 'Good. I couldn't tell what was real. Used to think party drugs were a good thing.'

'You had a bad trip is all,' Jack said, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. 'No harm done, luckily. Tosh says there's a rift charge likely to crop up tomorrow morning, so it'll be going back economy class as soon as we get the all clear.'

'Least I wasn't tripping out on images of you, I spose,' Owen muttered as Jack stood up to leave. Propbably would've shot you, he thought to himself.

'More's the pity,' Jack replied. 'But if you'd like, I can leave you with some of the private CCTV collection whilst you recuperate.'

'Get out,' Owen replied, 'before I do something that you'll need to recuperate from.'

Comments

[bk_forever]

Ooh, scary! For a while there I thought Owen was going to actually shoot Tosh! So glad he didn't.

Don't think I like the alien Wombat though. Definitely dangerous.