Sparkling Cosmos {A Torchwood Story Two} [COMPLETED]

28. Crimson Crucible

This chapter is dedicated to HarleyQuinn9921 who reads and likes every single chapter of my Torchwood fics. My heart goes out to you queen 💘

Time is splintering around me, and all I can do is absorb it.

The Weevils, the Roman, Owen... it's all in my head, thrashing around, never ceasing to give me some peace.

Is this what it feels like to die?

Since he walked out, I've opened a psychic link to Owen. I can't help it: the man is intertwined with me, or at least will be for the next 24 hours. Or perhaps Jack will forget whilst he's trying to figure out how to put the world back together again.

He's been drinking. Again. Nonstop. I guess this time I can't really fault him - but I think he's had enough when Diane shows up.
I feel his breath catch in his throat, how I wish he would've done with me; his emotions are rising again, hot, scared, relieved, everything all at once. It hurts me as much as it hurts him.

"Please, bring me back, Owen," she says, and tears roll down my cheeks and sink into the fabric of the sofa. This is breaking my heart.
"Open the Rift," is the last thing she tells him before she disappears, and now he's crying too.

I can't break down. I can't. When I came back from Owen's arms in the Quay, I insisted he wouldn't distract me from finding Bilis and containing all the time flotsam and jetsam. Nobody looked like they believed me, but Jack knew he had to. I'm a Time Lord: I can see and feel everything, and although I'm currently unable to even freaking move, that counts for a lot.

Gwen comes back into the Hub after locking her boyfriend away in the cells. She thinks that Rhys is gonna get killed at their home. I mean, it's true, but he's gonna die no matter where he is - I know Bilis will do anything to get us to open the Rift. And, honestly? At this point I'm not sure it's a bad idea.
"Tosh, can you bring up the CCTV of the vaults?" she asks, and on the sofa I just close my eyes and prepare for the screams.

It's like the Rift has blown open a synapse or something in my brain - I can see every possible present and future, stretching out in different paths longer than my mind's eye can see. It scratches my insides and leaves me raw with agony.

"It's not gonna happen," is Jack's last sentence before the Hub shuts down from a security breach, and I know. I know what's about to happen.

The worst thing is... I don't know how to stop it. I don't know anything anymore. It's like all this pain has pushed out my knowledge and all that's left of me is a receptacle for the Rift.

~∆~

So. Rhys is dead.

Gwen sits next to his body in the autopsy room, her eyes trained only on him as Jack cleans the blood off her hand. Her eyes are bloodshot and she looks like she's aged ten years.

I'm not judging. I've aged about a hundred since this morning.

As the rest of them talk, I sit leaning over the edge of the autopsy room floor and absorb it all. Gwen's pain, Rhys's death; I feel everything. My throat has closed up, my legs stopped working ages ago - all I can do is breathe out of my nose and drag myself about.

Gwen looks around at us all, tears staining her cheeks, her skin paler than ever. "This is what happens here. We all end up alone. Not me. No way. You bring him back."
"No," is Jack's immediate response, and honestly, I thought he knew Welsh determination was stronger than that.