Fffc Bingo Card - Forgotten identities

[m_findlow]

Title: Forgotten identities 
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none 
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 16 - Numbers at fffc
Summary: Owen is peeved about Jack's lasseiz faire approach to retcon. 

‘Someone had a rough night,’ Owen said, smirking at the way Jack slumped over his desk. He might have fallen asleep had Owen's arrival not made his elbow slip on the desk where it had been propping up his head. It wasn't often their captain looked anything other than bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. 

Jack rubbed a hand over his face and absently reached for his mug. Owen watched him wince as it hit his lips, clearly well past cold and drinkable. ‘Urgh,’ he groaned, setting it back down with a pained expression. 

‘What was it last night?’ Owen asked, inviting himself to sit in the chair opposite Jack's desk, crossing his arms over and waiting. 

‘Just a weevil,’ Jack replied, searching around his desk and finally landing on a bottle of water, screwing off the cap and downing half of it in one go, before wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. 

‘No one says it was just a weevil and turns up looking like shit like you do.’ 

Jack didn't bite at the comment. ‘It was hanging out by the Merthyr Road estate in Splott before it broke into one of the apartment blocks. I spent half the night retconning all the residents.’ 

‘Fucking Splott,’ Owen muttered. ‘Didn't we hit that place up only a few weeks back?’ 

Jack nodded, stifling a yawn. 

‘We need a better way of keeping track of this stuff. How many pills did you hand out?’ 

Jack rubbed his hands over his eyes again. ‘I dunno. Forty? Fifty?’ 

‘You've got no clue, have you?’ 

Jack's fists came back down, hitting the desk in frustration. ‘It was a busy night! I was lucky we even had enough in the SUV. ‘

Owen just shook his head. ‘I'm serious, Jack. We need to start keeping track better. We need to know how many people have had it, who's had it, where they live.’ 

‘I wasn't in the mood for collecting National Insurance numbers.’ 

‘Well, we'd better start. What if we fry someone's brain because they've been given it too many times? We don't even know what a critical dose might look like, or whether there is one. Does it build up in the human body? Do people become resistant to it? Shit, I mean, even I've had it and I have no idea what the long term effects are.’ 

‘Can we have this discussion when I've had a bit more sleep?’ 

‘No,’ Owen said, suddenly with a head full of steam. ‘How long has retcon been around?’ 

Jack shook his head. ‘Ten years, maybe.’ 

‘Always the same formulation as what we use now?’

‘I tweaked it along the way,’ Jack confessed. 

Owen shook his head. ‘Those first poor bastards were just experiments, weren't they?’

Jack's expression turned grim. ‘Nobody ever got hurt. I was as careful as I could be. Couldn't exactly test it out any other way.’ 

‘So what you're telling me is that there's hundreds and hundreds of people out there who've had it and we don't even know who half of them are.’ 

‘I documented it in our mission logs as best I could.’

Owen groaned, knowing he was about to put his hand up for a job he didn't really want. One of us is going to have to scour those records and try to make heads or tails of it. We need to be able to know who, when, how much so that we don't accidentally end up killing someone. This stuff is the equivalent of a class four prescription substance.’ 

‘I once put a whole lot of it in the local water supply.’

‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ Owen groaned. He rubbed a hand across his own face, suddenly feeling as tired as Jack. How bad did things have to be before there was no option but to drug the entire city? 

‘There was no other option. But you're right. We should know who and how many as much as possible. Get Ianto to help you.’ 

‘Why?’ 

‘Because he knows where to find every mission log since September 1996, and where I filed all of the notes on the working formulas for retcon. You can review the chemical compounds yourself. If we've done the wrong thing I need to know. If there are people who are at risk if we give them another dose, I want to know. If you can think of any way to test the long term effects of relevant dosages, I want to know that too.’ 

Owen nodded. ‘I can do some tests on rats, see what it takes to kill one or at least scramble its brain.’ 

Jack looks more awake now, like he's got a purpose. It disturbs Owen slightly how he can go from looking like hell to wide awake just like that. ‘Whatever you need to do. Oh, and one more thing, actually.’ 

‘What's that?’ 

Jack leaned forward over the desk, lowering his head. Owen leaned it, mentally trying to prepare himself for whatever secret Jack is about to reveal. ‘I've had experiences where retcon doesn't work. Where people wake up the next morning and it's like nothing happened.’ 

‘How'd you know?’ 

‘I might've…’ he paused and squirmed in the chair, then cleared his throat. ‘He knew who I was beforehand. Told me I'd ruined his life and he never wanted to see me again.’ 

‘You don't think maybe that was just a bad relationship?’ 

‘That or knowing me was enough to retrigger the memories. Except that I dosed him again.’

‘You what?’

‘With his consent,’ Jack added, sounding affronted. ‘He practically begged me to do it, so I did. It was for the best.’ 

‘For him or you?’ 

‘Then he accosted me in the street months later. It didn't work, even that stronger dosage. I wanna know why. If it's widespread immunity or resistance, we've got bigger problems.’ 

Owen grimaced. ‘I can tell you more once we've got some actual data to work with.’ This was one job he wished he hadn't asked for.