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The last thing Toshiko remembered was pain. Some part of her had always known she would die with Torchwood, but it still hurt. Dying with Owen.
Then, she woke up. Her whole body ached, a deep reverberating feeling that made her wince, and push herself down into the floor, which was hard and uncomfortable. Eventually, she cracked her eyes open. Slowly blinking to remove the fuzz, and the swimming ceiling came into focus. She was in… the morgue?
Toshiko rubbed her face with her hand, ignoring the pain that jolted down her side as she moved her arm.
“Ugh,”
Toshiko started, hearing a groan within the morgue. She pushed herself up onto unsteady legs, a newborn deer trying to learn to gallop in the forest.
She recognised that shape on the floor, another woman lying supine. She had dark hair spread on the floor around her head, like a fallen halo, and wore a medical gown.
“Suzie?”
The shape- Suzie- lifted up her head, placing a hand on the base of her skull, “Toshiko?” Suzie groaned, “Are you dead too?”
Toshiko moved over to Suzie, and sat down beside her, “I think so. But there’s nothing after death. I think we’re in the morgue.”
That was when Suzie looked around, her eyes frantic.
“Did you plan this?” Toshiko asked, both horrified and hopeful.
Suzie shook her head slowly, and pushed herself up to sit, wincing as her head swung, “Did Torchwood find the second glove?”
It was Toshiko’s turn to be uncomfortable, and she shuddered slightly, “Destroyed. It created a- half life- state. Jack used it.” She took a sharp breath, “On Owen.”
Suzie laughed, a sharp, bitter bark, “That bloody hypocrite.” She started to cough, and Toshiko instinctively wrapped an arm around her, as coughs wracked her body.
“Now, I’m no medical Doctor,” Suzie began, once the coughs ebbed, “but I don’t think that coughing is a side effect of a bullet to the brain. Or chest.”
“Punctured lung,” Toshiko giggled slightly, vaguely hysterical, “but Jack said that his shots didn’t actually do anything.”
Suzie then turned to Toshiko, staring into her soul, “Gwen?”
“She’s- she was fine,” Toshiko froze, “she survived you and. Everything else. Got married to Rhys.” She ignored the ache that grew in her stomach at the mention of Rhys, of how Toshiko wasn’t right for Gwen or for Owen.
Suzie completed the hug, holding Toshiko on the floor of the morgue that they both knew all too intimately.
“We should go upstairs. Jack should be there, at least.”
Suzie’s face contorted, but she nodded her acquiescence.
They supported each other as they walked up the stairs into the centre of the Hub. Toshiko’s desk was as she left it, and she couldn’t stop her eyes flashing to Owen’s autopsy bay, expecting to see blood that didn’t exist. Her fight for survival had been wiped clean with some bleach and a mop. Ianto, probably.
Toshiko laughed again, giggles that grew in volume until Suzie joined in and they slumped onto the floor together, clutching each other in hysterics.
“We died,” Toshiko managed to gasp out, “I bled to death, you shot yourself! We’re dead.”
Suzie nodded grimly, as her laugh petered out, “I died twice. And we’re in the Hub.”
“Tosh?”
She gasped, hearing Gwen’s soft voice from above them in the Hub, probably the board room.
“I’ve been updating my computer, but I can’t find my files. What should I do?”
Toshiko opened her mouth to respond, but Gwen continued talking.
“You’d” she started to sniffle, “you’d probably tell me to do some form of search.” Gwen was fully crying now, a sound Toshiko knew meant her eyes were wide and fat tears were falling down her cheeks “I don’t know how I’m meant to do this without you.”
Toshiko couldn’t stop herself from getting up, even as Suzie grabbed her sleeve- the sleeve of the jacket she’d worn as she died, she noted with a shiver.
“Gwen,”
She heard a sharp intake of breath.
“Did you open the files app and check your Torchwood drive, or did you go into the computer home.”
It was Gwen’s time to laugh now, soft wet chuckles, “That’s it.”
Suzie had followed behind Toshiko, and Gwen looked up from her computer, “Tosh! Suzie?” Gwen’s voice was shrill, “you’re dead! I saw- I saw you die!”
Suzie responded, her voice dry, “Yes, well. It doesn’t seem to stick, here in Torchwood. I know I saw Jack die, I heard that Owen died.”
Toshiko watched Gwen’s hands, knowing full well that she was contacting Jack and Ianto- if Jack and Ianto were still around? Gwen didn’t look any older, so Ianto presumably hadn’t died.
“I’ve missed you. So much.” Gwen’s voice was unsure, still broken by sobs, “I just-”
Toshiko hugged her, then.
Suzie hung back, eyes sorrowful as she watched the women embrace one another. “Death doesn’t seem to stick in Torchwood, huh?”