Burning Cosmos {A Torchwood Story Three} [COMPLETED]

33. Some Time Lord Shit

Hours ago, a period of time which feels like ancient history, when Jack asked me what I was going through the first time Owen died, I didn't tell him.

I didn't tell him how everything was background noise. Static. I was thinking everything and nothing at once. Just minutes ago I was about to confess to the love of my life, and there he was, turning cold in my arms. I held him, even though I knew it would hurt me more, but I couldn't bear to not. Even if I can't die, a part of me did, then. My heart felt like someone had poked their claws through the middle and was ripping apart from the inside out.

At that time... Nothing hurt more.

I'm the only one to brave checking the power station. There wasn't really any other option: the only ones who couldn't die from the leftover radiation are Jack and I, and we've left him to have a last goodbye to his little brother, Gray.

Knots form inside my stomach just thinking about how, if Gray hadn't started this, it wouldn't have ended like this. With me holding my dying best friend in my arms, watching a screen showing me my lover's death. I would've killed him myself if I could've been a bit earlier on the time travel. Just another thing I've fucked up.

The building is a mess. Where the nuclear fuel broke loose before being vented, lies nothing. Deteriorated ground giving way to dirt. If concrete can't survive, I don't know why I'm hoping to find Owen.

With a deep gulp of air, I open the door to the containment room. Leftover gusts of nuclear radiation spill out of the room - not enough to injure anyone, but enough that I need to close this building off until the team can properly deal with it. Thank God Cardiff has a backup of electric power.

Leaning the door further open, I survey the room. Nearly everything is either decayed, or decaying. The radiation is still working its way through stands and dials. The endless screens have now turned to nothing, and plastic and metal dust coat the floor.

I move around the room like a zombie, switching off and checking everything I need, my soul withering. He's not here, nothing of him. Why did I bother?

My rising anger finally gets the best of me as I kick a holey bucket, launching it across the room. I scream, primally, gutterally, until there's nothing left in me, and I crouch to the floor. I fumble and fall, my hands scraping on the shards of glass.
Let it hurt. It can no more than my heart.

My fingertips, stretched across the ground, graze against something smooth. Rubbery. My hand withdraws automatically, the sensation making me want to scratch it away, but then I peer closer. Take off the piece of steel almost smashing it and...

His hand.

My heart skips a beat. His hand. Moving to kneel, I pick up and cradle his hand, torn off and mothbitten at the end. Unable to give up, my eyes scan the rest of the ground and find more. A knee with part of the thigh, a bit of torso... and his head.

I want to throw up and cry at the same time.

I can't look at it, so I take off my coat and place every body part of him that I can find inside, then carefully wrap it all up, haul the coat over my shoulder, and run back to the SUV.

As I put the heavy coat into a popup box and start driving, tears covering my face until it's slippery to the touch, a lightbulb warms up in my mind. By the time I'm at the Hub, laying the coat's contents out on a gurney next to poor Toshiko's body, the lightbulb has been fully turned on.

I run out of the autopsy room, startling Jack and Gwen, just catching Ianto asking, "What are you gonna do?"
I call over my shoulder, "Some Time Lord shit."

I sprint to the Rift Manipulator and kneel beside it, screwing my eyes tightly shut. I can barely hear anything over the beating of blood in my ears, but I have to concentrate. I've been training for this.
Using my own power and all the power of the Rift, I contact the Doctor, and as soon as I locate his TARDIS I open the Manipulator door.