Chapter Text
Owen had made plans for Christmas, which he hadn’t really done since Katie died. Torchwood did try to have a little bit of holiday festivity - Jack played Christmas pop songs to the point that they featured in his nightmares, Tosh put a tasteful amount of tinsel up on the stairwells and computers and drank truly ungodly quantities of peppermint hot chocolate, and Suzie designed terrifying ornaments out of scrap metal and dusted off her holiday-themed earrings. He didn’t know what Gwen and Ianto did - Gwen had said something about a poinsettia once, and Ianto hadn’t brought it up at all. Of course, they hadn’t really had time this year, with the Sky Gypsy and trying to find a place for the “Rift refugees”. Owen hadn’t cared, though, because he wanted to spend Christmas with Diane, he knew Gwen was going to call Emma once she got to London, and Jack would monitor John or something. But then Diane had flown back into the Rift and left Owen behind praying to God-knows-what that she would be safe even though he hadn’t believed there was anything there for a long time, Gwen had come back from seeing Emma off crying and had ignored two call from Rhys, and Jack had come back to the Hub with Ianto’s car, John’s body, and a shadowed look in his eyes.
His new plan was staying at his flat the entire day and getting utterly pissed. And, of course, ignoring calls from everyone else. The only message he got, though, was a text from Ianto early in the morning that said he could take the day off and that Ianto had made sure nobody else would contact him unless there was an emergency. He mustered up the energy to reply Thanks mate. Christmas emergencies are pretty much exclusive to London though, so probably no need to worry , then flopped back onto the couch with a sigh. There wasn’t anything he could do to distract himself, since he’d been keeping his flat clean ever since Diane started staying over. He got up a few minutes later and moved to the drinks cabinet, staring at the wine he’d planned on sharing with her that evening, then closed it, opened his fridge, and grabbed four beers. Halfway back to the couch he sighed, turned around, and put two of them back. If there was an emergency he needed to be in good enough shape to help, and there was a chance he’d jinxed Cardiff by texting Ianto earlier.
Because he had only had two beers and one miserable, solitary glass of wine, he was sober enough to get a very bad feeling when he saw what looked like an alien spaceship hovering over the Thames. He grabbed his phone and dialed Jack.
“Owen, are you -”
“Jack, turn on the news, call UNIT, and ask what their plan is,” he cut him off.
There was a soft buzzing silence on the other end of the phone for a few seconds before Jack breathed “ Shit, ” then added “ ‘Christmas Star?’ How did the human race ever even reach Mars?”
He shook his head before saying “I called because it’s the first year Torchwood hasn’t been in London.”
“Right,” Jack replied distractedly, “I’ll call them now. Thanks, Owen,” before hanging up.
He turned back to the TV and watched the star hovering over the river. Then he watched as it started moving closer and closer to the ground. He watched UNIT fire ineffectually at it as it continued to descend. And he watched as it blew up the Thames.
He got to the Tourist Office at the same time as Gwen.
She smiled wanly at him, then sighed “I thought if I refused to turn the telly on and stayed in I could have one alien-free night.”
“You don’t know?” he asked, frowning.
“Know what? Jack just said I needed to get to the Hub right away,” she replied.
He grimaced. “An alien spaceship just blew up the Thames. UNIT tried stopping it. They failed.”
She gaped at him, eyes wide. “What do you mean, ‘blew up’ ?”
“It looks like it flooded, and it’s somehow maintaining an electric current of some kind,” Tosh called over from her computer monitor, looking up and waving as they stepped through the grate door. “Hi, guys.”
Hi Tosh,” Gwen replied. “Is anyone hurt?”
Owen tuned out their conversation as he moved deeper into the Hub, glancing around. Jack was on the phone in his office, pacing and gesticulating angrily. There was no sign of Ianto, so he moved to his own computer to check for life signs in the Archives. He needed to check on him, but he wasn’t going to spend half an hour hunting him down in the stacks - there was a crisis unfolding, after all.
“Gotcha,” he muttered to the blinking red light, then headed downstairs.
When Owen got to Ianto, he was standing in front of an open file cabinet, eyes closed and hands braced against the cabinets on either side of it.
He stepped back a few feet. Out of Ianto’s line of sight, and scuffed his shoes on the floor a bit before calling “Jones, where are you?”
“Here,” Ianto called back, stepping around the corner with a file in his hand. “It might have been a Racnoss web ship using a high-powered electric charge.”
“Well,” he said, “That’s specific.”
Ianto chuckled briefly. “A bit of their tech fell through the Rift about four months ago. Suzie had been working on fixing it.”
He hummed and nodded, then squinted at him. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Ianto grumbled.
He squinted harder.
Ianto sighed. “Last year, it was the Sycorax. A third of our employees were hypnotized, but we still fixed it. Now the Thames is flooded and electrically charged, and we’re completely helpless.”
“No, we’re not,” Owen promised. “Even if we can’t fix the river, we can make sure UNIT can keep the civilians safe and help with the recovery efforts.” He resisted the urge to add that London wasn’t their job anyway; Ianto wouldn’t appreciate it, and he knew they were going to help, so there was no point saying they didn’t need to.
Ianto nodded. “Right. Best get these to Jack, then.”
As they neared the bottom of the stairs, Ianto half turned towards him and said quietly “Thank you.”
Owen gave him a slight grin. “Just returning the favour, mate.”
As soon as they got upstairs, he could tell something was wrong. Jack was no longer pacing, but sitting behind his desk, hands covering his face. Gwen looked more than a bit confused, and was flipping through an enormous stack of files.
Tosh looked up from her computer. “UNIT found a body underneath the Thames,” she said, then lowered her voice further. “They’re saying the Doctor is dead.”