m_findlow | Fffc Bingo Card - Seeing it through

Title: Seeing it through
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Owen
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 78 - Finish at fffc
Summary: Owen is determined to finish what he's started.

Owen knew he'd made a mistake the minute he'd walked out of the hub, leaving all his friends behind. He'd been so mad at Jack that nothing else had mattered in that moment but telling Jack what he really thought about him.

Jack was the man with all the secrets. He always had been. Ever since Owen had joined Torchwood, his boss had been a complete enigma. How many hours had he wasted in boring stake outs or overnight rift duty at the hub speculating with Suzie and Tosh what, if anything, they really knew about the man they worked for. None of them had any answers for all the questions they'd had, and none of them had gotten any closer to being answered when Ianto had joined, or Gwen. Both of them were, in their own way, inquisitive people, but even they, either with their obsessive knowledge of everything down in the archives, or their endless police interrogation style questions, had revealed any more about Captain Jack Harkness - a man who according to most records didn't exist.

In amongst all those secrets, Owen had assumed Jack knew everything there was to know about the rift - even if he wouldn't share it with them. Most importantly, Owen assumed he would know what to do in the event that the rift began to fracture and spread, plunging the rest of the world into the sort of endless chaos that Cardiff endured on a weekly basis. Only it was worse than that. It wasn't just the usual weevils and time traveling garbage that was dropping through on unsuspecting cities. It was people from all across Earth's history - Romans, Vikings, Huns - not to mention ordinary people bringing with them deadly diseases that no one had an immunity or vaccine for. And that was just the humans. What happened when something prehistoric made an appearance, or something from the future that nobody had yet faced. God, what if somewhere off in the future, there were daleks or cybermen lurking that slipped through? What would they be able to do then?

Owen was desperate for the answer to that question. He'd just seen bubonic plague roll in through the doors of Cardiff’s A and E and they were totally unprepared for it. And this was just the beginning. Things were destined to get a whole lot worse if Tosh's projections were anything to go by.

But instead of their resolute leader, standing up to be counted when it mattered most, Jack was pinning the blame for everything that was happening squarely back on them. Well, him and Ianto, he supposed. After all, they were the ones who opened up the rift in the first place. Owen wasn't going to shoulder all of the blame himself. If Ianto had really wanted to stop him, he'd have shot Owen properly. He was good enough with a gun at that distance to have made the shot inch perfect. There was no denying that Ianto had wanted Jack and Tosh back just as much as Owen had. He was just spineless when it came to getting the job done. Owen had needled him relentlessly about it just to get Ianto to work with him instead of against him. It had almost worked except for that last minute attack of guilty conscience when he'd decided that opening the rift wasn't such a great idea, no matter how much he fancied Jack or cared about Tosh.

And how dare Jack pass the buck and blame them? If he hadn't wanted them to open the rift he should never have let Tosh give them those equations. He'd wanted them to find a way to get them back home, he was just too gutless to take responsibility for it now that everything was going to shit. That was what made Owen really mad. They'd done all this for Jack's benefit and here he was pointing the finger at them.

He'd wanted to leave the minute Jack demanded he get out. His astonishment came from Jack actually saying the words. It made him look weak to let Owen stand there and pay out on him for not being their leader when they needed him. In the end it was all Owen could do not to punch the man before leaving with as much dignity as he could muster.

His own resolve had only lasted about two hours. Even though he was still mad at Jack - for his dismissal, and for convincing Dianne that traveling through the rift was an actual thing that could be done, which had resulted in her leaving Owen to take back to the skies - he was also watching the chaos unfolding on the streets.

People were terrified and the police were useless to calm the situation. What the city really needed was Torchwood and here he was standing on the outside looking in. He couldn't live with himself, pretending that he was just an ordinary civilian and unable to help. He'd started this whole chain of events by opening the rift and now he had to be the one to finish it, or die trying. Jack might not want him back but he needed Owen.

And Owen's friends needed him, knowing that had they stood with him against Jack, they'd all have been excommunicated along with him. Like Owen, they knew that the better course of action was to do whatever they could to prevent disaster, and if that meant having to side with Jack then he supposed he could forgive them that. He knew they had his back, even if they couldn't outwardly show it. He genuinely couldn't have asked for better mates and knew the difficult position he'd put them in, time and time again.

Jack might yell at him or try to throw him back out, but if he was any kind of Torchwood agent he'd man up and realise his mistake, hopefully before it was too late for them to save this world from utter destruction.