les jours tristes [open for torchies]

[Gwen Cooper]

Gwen sat on the sofa, opposite two now empty workplaces, staring at them, still not believing it really was so. How long had it been now? Not too long, since they had boxed all their belongings and they had found the message Tosh had recorded. It had made it a little easier, but not much. Yes, working for Torchwood was wonderful, but these things were just indescribable. It was difficult to believe, still, but there was hardly anything to do about it, after all, people hardly ever come back from the dead. And the only times she knew of that happened were because of the Risen Mitten, as Iantho had dubbed them, and those were destroyed. More time passed, and the thought that she probably shouldn't be here right now crossed her mind. A few days after Owen and Tosh' deaths, Jack had told her to take a few days off, try and get over the losses, so she had. It had made Rhys happy, at first, and it made her feel better, but after some time she had begun to feel ineffective. There were only three of them left, and there was no way the Rift would slow down, so she had come here, pretending it had been to keep an eye out for Rift activity, but it had stayed silent.

Another slice of pizza from the green box beside her, and a slim smile appeared on her lips, thinking back of when she had first come here. Pizza boxes in her hands, staring around in wide eyed wonder. And Tosh and Owen, both still fully alive, bursting out in laughter when they saw her. It was sort of weird, thinking of them when they had been alive, but comforting. She took another bite from the pizza slice, another look around the Hub, before getting up, reaching for the picture on the table. She smiled at it, touching both faces on it with a finger, "I miss you guys." After finding a magnet, she walked towards her far off workplace, putting the picture in place, next to her screen. "And now best back to life as it is."

[ooc: heh, seeing as this is pretty much my first post as Gwen, I apologize for the crappyness. Once I get more in character, it'll get better, trust me ]

[Ianto Jones]

Ianto still couldn't believe what he saw. Were his eyes just tricking him? Too much caffeine maybe? That had to be it, because Jack just wouldn't do that to them, not after knowing how much it tore up their team. At least, that's what he kept telling himself.

Maybe it wasn't a cause of too much caffeine, maybe he simply needed more caffeine. With that thought in mind, he spun from where he was watching the CCTV and picked up his bags, intent on finally getting to his 'kitchen' area and starting up a pot.

He was almost there, too, when he heard some subtle noises coming from over in Gwen's area. She's not supposed to be here, so what could that be? he wondered and cautiously turned in that direction. He sat his bags on a nearby table and drew his gun -- better to be safe than sorry.

The site that met his eyes had him reholstering his weapon and taking the last few steps with a sigh.

"Gwen, what are you doing here? I thought Jack gave you vacation time?"

[Gwen Cooper]

Plopping down on the chair near her desk again, Gwen let out a sigh. It really was going to take some getting used to, the Hub a lot more quiet, with only three of them to fill it. And Owen had usually played at least some sort of music when he'd been at work in autopsy, which most of the times could be heard at the other side of the building, because of the acoustics. She swiveled around on the chair, looking over to the other side.

When Tosh and Owen had still been alive she had had at least some contact with the others, even when everyone was at work on their own station. Maybe she should move to the other side of the Hub. Maybe. After this had processed. She swallowed once, before looking up, as she heard some noises.

When nothing happened, she decided it must have been Myfanwy. The Pteranodon could be heard making weird noises, from some pipe she slept in. If it was a she. She turned back around again, getting up, and went over to her workplace, setting to work to put some order in it. Usually she wasn't much of the chaotic type, when it came to work, but it had all been a bit much. Explosions around Cardiff, losing two team members, pretty much being forced to take a few days off.

She did this for some five minutes, before once again hearing something, something that sounded more like footsteps on the iron steps of the stairs, and she spun around, one hand on the the gun on her desk. Maybe Suzie had been right. Maybe this job did drive you mad. Least it did was make you paranoid, that much was for sure. She let out a small sigh of relief, her defensive position falling away, as she saw it was a familiar face instead of... Of whatever the hell she could have thought was creeping up on her.

"Ianto." She gave him a small smile, a twitch of the lips, and shrugged as he asked what she doing here. He was right. Jack had technically given her a couple of days off, though giving might have been too much of a word indicating she had wanted those days off. However, she did have the sense to look a least a little guilty for being here, as it hadn't been without reason she'd been 'given' days off, she had been listless, mostly.

"He did. I just..." she shrugged again, "What with the two of you probably having more fun things to do, I thought I'd watch the Rift." Admittedly, even to herself that excuse sounded as lame as it probably was.

[Ianto Jones]

Ianto sighed and rubbed the back of his neck as he walked over and hoisted himself into a sitting position on her desk. He understood her position all too well -- he, himself, would probably go crazy within the first 24 hours of 'vacation time'. With this job, you'd think that that would be all you wanted, was to relax on vacation like a 'normal' person. Of course normal was all relative and, once you got on vacation, the first thought that usually crossed through a Torchwood team member's mind was 'when can I go back?'

So, Ianto simply nodded in understanding and stared off into space, his eye catching the picture that was now next to Gwen's screen. "It's hard to believe that they're really gone," he muttered, staring into the smiling faces of Tosh and Owen. "In fact, I could have sworn I saw Tosh on the CCTV just a few minutes ago." He shook his head and set the picture down. "I really think I'm starting to lose it."

[Gwen Cooper]

She stared at Ianto for a couple of moments, before awkwardly looking around, and then stared at the ground again. She knew she shouldn't be here, as it wasn't helping any anyway, but it had become somewhat of an imperative. Juggling work and private was one thing in a normal job, but in a job like Torchwood, it all became a lot more difficult.

She doubted a regular office clerk had to deal with the bitter little brother of their bosses blowing up colleagues they could do nothing else but trust on. Cause that was most important in this job, having colleagues you could trust, as had been proven during one of her first months there, where Jack had actually threatened to shoot Ianto because he had smuggled in a half converted Cyberman. And from that little trust network, two had fallen away.

As he spoke up, Gwen looked up again, towards the picture she had put on the frame of her screen only a few minutes before. She nodded mutely. However, Ianto's next words took obviously longer for her to process. As she had been sunken into somewhat of a dull, only a few words of the sentence had actually filtered in to her brain. Tosh. CCTV. Seen.

She frowned, shaking her head, as if to remove the dust that seemed to have gathered in her ears, or brains, or whatever. "You've seen..." She fell silent for a bit, mulling it over, even taking his comment that he might be starting to lose it in consideration, before shoving that thought aside. "You've seen Tosh," Gwen's tone unbelieving, before standing up straight, and walking with a firm pace to the place that had been Tosh's place, where all CCTV footage was gathered, every now and again muttering phrases of disbelief. Jack wouldn't lie to them. Would he? He had before, or maybe not lied to them, but he certainly hadn't told them the truth either.

[Ianto Jones]

"You've seen Tosh?"

Ianto closed his eyes against the hope he heard in Gwen's voice and silently followed her to Tosh's old work station. He didn't want to get the poor girl's hope up -- having to deal with his own was hard enough -- but he needed to talk to somebody about it and she was the only one there at the moment.

"Don't get your hopes up, I said I thought I saw her," he murmured, carefully rewinding the footage to the right time -- another set of eyes on it might be helpful.

"Alright, this is right before it starts," he said, leaning against the desk beside the monitor. He watched the inactivity in front of the water tower for a few moments before exclaiming, "There!" and pointing at the screen when she appeared. It seemed that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him before, it was either Toshiko Sato alive and well or she had a twin that none of them had known about.

"Do you think it could really be her -- would Jack really do that to us?" he asked, hope and pain filtering through in his voice.