Running To Stand Still (Tosh/Owen) PG
Title: Running To Stand Still
Rating: PG
Word Count: ~2700
Summary: Owen Harper basically turns Sam Tyler.
Characters: Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper
Spoilers/Warnings: Everything.
A/N: Basically me, ava_leigh_fitz, and finkpishnets are going to be writing AUs for the rest of time. This is me getting started on that. And oh the plausibility of this? Less than zero actually. Viva la AU! (Also much credit to Life On Mars because that's where this all started and any and all historical references were made up so ignore it if it doesn't match up to what you know to be true.)

Once upon a time, a boy loved a girl, and the girl, she loved him right back you see, but wasn't staying for long. Said girl passed from this life to another, and the boy? He was left drifting chin deep in his own grief.

And given enough time, that grief turned black. And that grief turned hard. Before it stole him away all together.

But one day too soon, he met another girl, one that loved him without being asked, without the anticipation of that love being returned (though she couldn't help, but hope her heart straight into the ground) and history was itching to repeat a tragedy he couldn't bear twice.

So the powers at be, those vague, yet not at all ethereal beings in the sky, decided they were going to give boy one last chance at happily ever after.

And his journey began.

Backwards to make his way forward.

-

Being born in the seventies, it wasn't too hard for Owen Harper to realize that he wasn't in modern day Cardiff anymore.

Because from where he sat, in an alley that seemed to be frequented by a family of kittens and one man who let them share his home made entirely of Dixie cups and some stretchy kind of plastic, Bowie was coming to town, a peeling poster meeting his sole, and the radio kept harping about John Lennon and the broad he left England for.

So he time traveled. Not so out of the ordinary with his day job, but the question of why nagged at him as he walked streets that weren't the streets he knew, but the same ones either way, and tried to remember the last thing he did before he woke up. Wherever here was.

In slow motion: Tosh. The plant. He was dying again, again. But beneath the memories he knew were real, the ones he had experienced firsthand, there were others, through someone else's eyes entirely.

A bullet in the gut. Blood pooling the darkest scarlet he's seen to date. Someone calling his name on repeat, struggling for the syllables through a pain that seared its way into every cell, every pore.

And all along, it was her, who was leaving him.

On a corner in Cardiff, in a decade minus the only family he's had these past few years, he slides down a wall, the particular prickling texture of brick snagging at the back of his shirt and he's crying without the tears, sobbing with all the grace of a child.

Owen wasn't ever one for apologies. People got mad as people often did, yet they moved on from it regardless, with or without the half-heartfelt amends, but now, it seems the only word he can stand to say is sorry.

"I'm so sorry, Tosh."

(It breaks him clean to the bone that she'll never hear him say it.)

-

The first time Owen met Tosh, he wrote her off as someone who he didn't need to waste much time on.

She was efficient, more than that in fact. Got her work done without hardly any input from the rest of them, and something about the way she seemed to melt away into the background put him off.

Looking back, he knows it wasn't that at all. Tosh simply reminded him of the one person he couldn't bear to linger on for too long save for in his dreams. Every time she smiled and pretended that everything was okay. Every time she held her own when really all she wanted was for him to express any degree of concern, even when it wasn't required (especially then).

They all loved her. But it was Gwen who messed up on far too many occasions to count. And it was Ianto who expressed his opinion when no one ever asked for it (okay, maybe it was just him who never asked for it). And it was Jack who held them together, bridging them against both their flaws and differences.

Toshiko was the one they could depend on. It was implicit in her nature.

And as such, maybe they took her for granted even when they meant to do no such thing.

This is where it started though. And it's this day, he replays, pausing on her face when he merely nodded his head at her arrival and went back to work.

Bastard, he mutters.

The image sitting across from him, half-hallucinatory and half-real, chuckles to herself.

Yeah, you kind of were.

His grin rises to fall.

-

The immortal thing comes in handy. A living, breathing Owen would be in just a bit of trouble with nothing other than his ID and the wrong date stamped over the other side.

Dead, almost-but-not-quite immortal Owen? He gets on fine.

It does become tiring, in a way that has nothing to do with actual exhaustion on his part, but the mental kind because that, that he can still feel. All too well.

So he spends his days playing ifs. He wonders if they're okay. If someone got to her before the worst transpired. If they're erasing his files from the system finally.

It's a never-ending loop because he's always coming back to the same moment, oblivious miles away (hell, even without the distance, wasn't he always?), as she pleaded with him one last time.

Before this he told her he had nothing. Nothing to offer, and nothing to give, but she stood her ground, brave Toshiko, braver than they ever knew, and it was him, him who deserved so much less for the way he went on.

Still she saw something in him. Something that made it worth the trouble (the heartache), and maybe that was what he should've focused on instead.

Maybe that was what he should've been grateful for.

Don't sell yourself short, Harper.

He turns, dropping his head, unable to manage direct eye contact with someone who isn't really there at all.

And why not? A challenge in the question because this is him we're talking about still.

She shrugs. I never did.

-

Inevitably, he finds the Torchwood Institute, but remembers something Jack said.

'Bout them not being the Torchwood he knew, so he remains off the radar, tries not to attract any attention that would land him in some sort of cell on their compound, but of course, this doesn't go as planned (when does it ever?).

Because it's Jack. In the flesh, and sporting the most ridiculous haircut he's seen in his entire life. (If he could, he would mock him for all eternity. But he can't so bygones.)

Mohawk hybrid intact, he notices him staring, "Can I help you?"

Owen pulls up a chair and decides he bloody well can.

-

They both know the repercussions of trying to change the future and he gets the lecture in full, verbatim thirty plus years in reverse, stealing his eyes against rolling back in his skull because Jack in any era wouldn't have it. He's been there.

"I was sent here for a reason. I must've been."

The drink is offered for the fourth time, and he declines again because lessons learned and all that.

"I'm sure you were." And something changes then, as the draft meets his lips, and he turns his face to inspect his.

"You're undead, I take it?"

There's a nod, and in Jack Harkness's mind, a plan is forming. He can feel it.

And instantly, he stakes the fate of the world on it. Himself, his life (whatever's left of it now), but most importantly hers.

The next time he sees her, on the couch at Jack's place, he says, I'm going to save you. I will.

Oh yeah?

She's amused. Apparently in his imagination, Toshiko is always amused, and he trips himself on the thought of truly setting everything right, before returning the smile and letting it turn smirk, the shift serving to make him feel like himself again.

Bet on it, Sato.

The laughter (sprung from the preserve of Toshisms he has memorized) rings in his head for weeks.

He owes his sanity to it.

-

The years, they pile up, like books on a metaphorical shelf, heaving it down with their weight, and some days, it really is too much to shoulder on his own.

The gulf of yesterdays he has to make it through to meet his today.

But he's got a plan, and he's got a usually drunk Jack to keep him company, and there's her, never when he expects it, and hardly ever when he really does need to see that face set for a frown when she thinks he's not looking, but it's these visits that ease the burden. However long they last for.

The latest:

God, were the nineties really this bad?

He stares out into the world, through a window and shakes his head. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they were.

Their conversations have a kind of ease that allows this. Random observations, in which she asks a question and he answers in the affirmative.

But reliving the musical evolution of contemporary British music? It's a wonder he's not bitten his own hand off or something else vaguely Van Gogh-ish.

That god awful boy band is playing in the next apartment, a wince with the first verse and then twice fold with her reaction: I loved this song!

Snort carrying over the music, he's adamant. You did not. I refuse to believe that. You hear me? Refuse.

But she's laughing and dancing her away from him, as a result immune to any and all comments he might be making, and believe him, there are a lot. Each one just that much louder than the next, her palms coming over her ears in defense.

So he couldn't and will never stand Take That. Yet the sound falls away, the syrupy lyrics along with the pop-driven beat, and what's left is the picture of his Tosh, eyes closed and happier than he'd ever seen when he was actually with her.

That there is what you're fighting for, mate, he thinks. That's it.

She spins in place, and his heart, his broken, numb heart that doesn't beat, he swears he feels it expand, moving outwards so she can finally step in.

His throat sticks when her gaze finds him again. (It was only a matter of time.)

-

Make a bargain with the devil and you're going to lose something. That's just the way it works.

The day's here. But not the one he's been waiting for.

This is the day he becomes one of them, the day he loses everything.

Except that's not going to happen this time around. He's going to make sure of it.

They leave an anonymous tip, all, but kidnap her from their her home, and erase her memory when it's over, letting her back into society without the would-be husband she's loved for the last two years.

This is how it's got to be. He can't play it both ways.

You sure about this?

His silence speaks for itself. (But if you're wondering, he isn't. His Katie seeing another New Year's helps in balancing the scales.)

He's saving two lives with one stone; it's got to be all right.

It's got to be.

-

"I meet you today, don't I? You do know what this means?"

He does, but it's hurting him to acknowledge it. Lonelinless is going to take on a whole new meaning now.

They take the memories of Owen from Jack, and he meets his recently widowed self (wouldn't have ever joined the cause if he knew she had lived you see), with a steady handshake and a grin that isn't quite appropriate for the occasion.

He watches the meeting from a few feet away, a pair of sunglasses on a rainy day, and a cap that hangs low enough to be discrete.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Harper."

"What for?"

"For not being able to save her."

Owen, other Owen, makes it two steps before hitting both knee caps to the curb.

He hears the crack from where he stands and the ring is still on his hand, glistening in the downpour.

-

Moving through the past like the ghost he's fast becoming, it's not an easy task finding new and innovative ways to pass the time.

After reliving the loss of his wife, he sits on a roof, a healthy dose of deja vu in tow, peers down at the people walking below, and tiny legs dangle at his right.

You could've said something.

What? An alien killed the only person I ever loved? Now that's the perfect sob story.

Her hand falls on his knee and it might be due to the fact that she's a mere figment when it comes down to it, if a very comforting one, or his mind essentially catering to his own whims, but he feels the fingers there, small and delicate, placed above the denim.

She was beautiful.

Grin in place, he's having trouble finding words, but she makes up for it, just like she always did, the knack still there.

You were lucky to have her. You were.

Never thought of it like that. He didn't work that way, but as the mental slideshow begins, his head leaning back to rest against cool concrete, he remembers how it was before, and agrees.

He was lucky. Despite events to come.

Thanks, Tosh, and he looks at her right then, dead on and unflinching, before she fades, leaving nothing, but air in her wake.

-

Skip through the years. Skip past the holidays he celebrates alone.

And keep moving until you reach the beginning of this story.

He made a promise, and this is him making sure he follows through with it.

(He will.)

-

It happens like this:

He's literally in two places at once, until he isn't anymore.

One moment he's standing outside the plant he meets his end in, and the next he's in it. And he's got minutes, he knows he has minutes.

But being mostly on his own for basically the duration of what was his living life (and a touch into his next one), he's acquired an excellent memory.

He saves the world with the instructions Tosh gave him, would've given him. Running, he hails the first cab he sees.

He gets there before it happens, and she's yelling at him (of course, she would be yelling at him when he waited all this time to save her life), but he's not having any of it because they're outside, and he's messaged Jack about his brother and everything is going to be all right.

"What's gotten into you?"

Wind whipping her hair a thousand different directions, he's pretty much certain that the expression on her face is one that equates into him getting hurt, healable or not.

"I'll tell you over our date."

He grins through the following silence.

"Our date?"

"That's right."

She almost slaps him, a duck to save himself, and there's thunder in the sky, but it's got nothing on the sound of her laughter. Their laughter.

It's nice hearing the real thing for once.

-

None of them will ever know. And he's not telling a soul.

But he's here, and when it's time to pick her up, he's a half hour early and she's waiting on her frontsteps, hands in lap, eyes cast somewhere in the distance, as he pulls up to the curb.

"You're early."

His head tilts for the left, the flowers he stole from his neighbour's yard sagging comically in his right hand, and a shake to make his point.

"No, I'm right on time."

And for the second time in six hours, Tosh asks him exactly who he is and where is the real Owen.

He can't bring himself to tell her that she's finally meeting just who that is.

That they both are.

-

It's a change. He'll admit it. Going from wishing the moments away as fast as they could take leave to willing those same units of time to linger for longer than they ever will.

But he adjusts because every day is a day to remember (he still has an eternity to survive mind you) and he's felt never more alive, more free.

Welcome to your life, Owen Harper. You got your happy ending after all.

-