Title: Back Home
Author: Van Donovan
Characters: Vislor Turlough, Tegan Jovanka, Jack Harkness, Owen Harper and the rest of the Torchwood lackeys.
Pairing(s): Turlough/Owen, Turlough/Tegan, misc. others.
Rating: Hard-R, for sex and swearing.
Word Count This Chapter: 1,987.
Word Count Overall: 14,000.
Notes: Set in the three month glossed-over gap in Torchwood, somewhere probably late 2007, early 2008. Spoilers for all of the Fifth Doctor's run.
Summary: Turlough returns to Earth, but things have changed.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. I made no money from this, but if you want to hire me, I'm cheap. Betaing provided by Starkiller.
--

Turlough hadn’t noticed it, when he’d arrived, as the air had still been thick with electric energy, and his thoughts had otherwise been distracted, but Tegan’s house smelled like cedar. That was probably attributable to the large hutch against the far wall of her front room, but it was a nice, natural smell that he didn’t find off putting. He settled back down on Tegan’s couch again, wrapping the towel that smelled of her detergent around his damp shoulders.

With Torchwood now gone, the house was too quiet, and he reached out for his tea, sipping it just to have something to do. “I was going to look you up,” he lied. “Eventually.”

“No you weren’t,” she said, standing before him. “You run and hide from the things that scare you, and facing me again has got to be top of the list, now.”

“You flatter yourself, Tegan,” he said, leaning back, crossing his legs. “I thought I’d spare you the awkwardness.”

She surprised him next by saying, “You look good. How long’s it been for you?”

He supposed he thought they’d fight. They’d always had the best fights and arguments, in the end usually over absurd or trivial things. He hadn’t really missed them when she’d left, but they had become such a part of life on the TARDIS that things had seemed somehow off when she’d left. Not fighting now seemed just as off. “About five years,” he replied. He thought about explaining to her about Sarn, and Malkon and Peri, and how when he’d returned to Trion he’d found himself living nearly twenty-years in his own future, utterly unable to readjust.

He decided she didn’t need to know any of it.

“Five years,” she said. “That’s hardly any time at all.”

Turlough had thought about her when he’d decided to choose Earth over Rizon, but he’d dismissed her out of hand. He knew that when he arrived, nearly twenty-five years on Earth would have passed since he’d last seen her. Tegan, Ibbotson, even Peri—all of them, he knew, would be a quarter-century older, some possibly even dead. To nip the curiosity and awkwardness in the bud, he’d just decided not to try to contact any of them. “I’m not sure I can sit here and play catch up,” he admitted.

Tegan didn’t miss a beat, just switched the subject without batting an eye. “How did you know to come here? I somehow doubt Marriner put out a sign.”

“I could feel it in the air,” he said, aware how ridiculous that sounded even as the words came out of his mouth. “Earth has changed, since I left. Everything’s sharper now, more intense. Any rift in time or space stands out clear to me. I was nearby, just happened to feel it, and followed it here.”

“It has changed,” she agreed. She crossed to the adjoining kitchen, where she picked up a frying pan off the floor. “I was making dinner,” she added, putting it in the sink. “I can double it.”

Turlough glanced about, searching for an escape, an excuse to leave, and then wondered why he was. Tegan was a friend, or at least she had been. Why did he feel it was all right to use a stranger for a free meal or a clean bed, but not her?

She grew tired of waiting for his reply, and just shrugged. He watched her disappear further into the kitchen, listening as she opened the refrigerator to get more food. It was then that he realized that it was because she was a friend that he couldn’t use her. You couldn’t treat your friends like you treated your anonymous fuck partners. He couldn’t take Tegan’s food and kindness and then steal her coat or umbrella. The rules for friends were different, and he’d never been good at playing by them.

“You’re awfully quiet,” she called over her shoulder.

He forced himself to his feet. “What do you think Marriner wants?” he asked, crossing to the kitchen. She handed him a knife, some vegetables, and said nothing. He set about washing and chopping them.

“He told me that I’m the only one who’s ever understood him,” she said. “Which is absurd. I knew him for a few hours twenty-some years ago.” She began cracking eggs into a fresh pan. “Rabbits,” she cursed and began fishing out a piece of eggshell with her finger. Turlough studied her as she did, and he decided that the creases in her eyes and at her mouth were just superficial; she still looked great, especially considering she was probably fifty.

“They did flee, you know.”

“And just what ‘Time War’ are you talking about?” she asked.

Turlough found he didn’t want explain that. “He’s going to come back, of course. He might even have to take another Ephemeral to do it.”

“I know,” Tegan said, flicking the eggshell into the sink. “I’ll deal with it.”

Turlough neatly chopped down the vegetables, ridiculously pleased with how evenly they were all coming out. “How?”

“I don’t know, I just will,” she snapped.

He looked up. “If you want me to go, I will. You don’t owe me anything.”

“It’s not you,” she said. Then she hung her head, “Well, maybe it is you.” Her chin lifted as she went to work, scrambling the eggs in her pan. “Twenty-five years I hear nothing, Turlough. I stop paying attention to the UFO sightings and turn a blind eye to things I know I should care about. We had a Cyberman invasion a year ago, and do you know I didn’t even leave my house to look for him? I thought I was over it; I’d finally gotten it out of my system. And then all in one day Marriner shows up, and Torchwood with its alien hunters, and now you.”

“Tegan,” he began, uncertain how to comfort anyone, let alone her, but she just shook her head, shrugged and carried on.
--

Unsurprisingly, their conversation centered almost solely on the one thing they had in common: the Doctor, and their travels with him. Turlough had enjoyed the reminiscing at first, embarrassedly bowing his head at her recollection of his foolish attempts to kill the Doctor, his misguided allegiance with the Black Guardian, his old Brendon uniform. They talked about Nyssa, and the Master, and of Daleks and Cybermen, realizing just how much they’d experienced together in the few short years they’d traveled with the Doctor.

It wasn’t until Tegan was prattling on about the time she’d been kidnapped and dressed up as the Queen of May that Turlough realized quite exactly what was going on. She had hated that trip, hated the dress she’d been forced into and how Turlough had teased her about it afterward. She’d hated seeing her grandfather’s town so corrupted, and yet here she was, going on and on about it, as though it had been one of the best days of her life.

When she confessed that her grandfather had died a few years after they’d visited him and she could no longer talk about it with him, Turlough pushed himself to his feet. Dinner wasn’t over, but he was full and the food just wasn’t that good. “I should go,” he announced.

Tegan’s expression looked wounded as the smile she’d had on her face at the memories slipped right off. He could see her wracking her mind, wondering what she’d said that had caused him to go from laughing amiably as she reminisced to departing so quickly. “All right,” she said, clearly unable to come to a conclusion and unwilling to stall longer. “I’ll let you know if Marriner comes back.”

“Look,” he said, his hands fidgeting, “maybe we shouldn’t.”

“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded, suddenly all hard and all Tegan.

He smirked. It was easy to be cold, to be cruel; he knew how to do that. “Outside of the Doctor, we have nothing in common, you and I. After twenty-five years, you’ve got a lot of memories you want to relive, and no one to relive them with. Whatever rose-colored glasses you’re now wearing to remember it all . . . well, I’m not.”

“You don’t want to play catch up, and you don’t want to talk about the past. What else is there to talk about?” Tegan demanded, pushing herself to her feet as well.

“I think that’s just it,” Turlough said. “We were only ever friends of circumstance.”

They’d been reunited just over an hour, and already he’d made her speechless. He probably shouldn’t have been proud of that achievement, but he was. Next, he supposed they’d have a fight.

“Fine. If that’s the way you see it.” He could tell that Tegan was clearly hurt by his words, and was struggling hard not to let it show.

Turlough had nothing more to say, and no energy to fight with. He just took a sweeping glance around the dining room before turning around, stalking down the hall and let himself out the front door.

He could feel Tegan’s eyes on him until he turned a corner out of sight, but he never once glanced back to her.
--

It was still raining when Turlough walked out, and the streets were slick and muddy as he hustled down them. Without a hat or an umbrella, he was drenched within a few minutes, and he had no idea where he was. His skin reeked of the pollutants that had washed down with the rain: smoke and carbon dioxide and dirt. When he finally found a taxi to hail, the cabbie refused to take him because he was completely soaked.

It took him two hours to find his way and get back home. His fingers were so numb that he fumbled and dropped his keys three times as he tried to unlock the front door. The digital display on the microwave told him it was almost eleven and the only good thing about that was it meant Robert had passed out already.

He dropped his keys on the kitchen counter, stepped out of his waterlogged shoes and collapsed down in the ratty old recliner. His body sagged into the old fabric, his shoulders slumping while his hands dangled between his knees.

He hadn’t wanted to leave.

He hadn’t wanted to leave Trion all those years ago, and he hadn’t wanted to leave the Doctor when he did. He hadn’t wanted to come back to Earth, and he hadn’t wanted to leave Tegan’s bright, warm house. But he did leave; that’s what he did. Often, it was easier to leave than to face the alternative. Tegan had correctly pegged that as his desire to run away from things that were difficult.

After his time with the Doctor, he thought he’d got over it. He’d willfully gone back to face the Daleks. What was there to run from, if he could face them?

He peeled off his sodden coat and shirt and tried to convince himself that he didn’t want to pass out in the easy chair. He mentally argued with himself that Robert had probably spent more than one night masturbating on the chair, and really, what more reason did he need to spring up off it and go take a hot shower? But his legs wouldn’t hold him.

There was a reason he was alone, more or less exiled to a small, backwater planet, living in a rundown, seedy apartment. --
Turlough tried for a week to get someone from one of his clubs to take him home for a night, without success. It was as if after finding himself unworthy, everyone else could sense the same thing off him. He ate less and traveled more, and did his best not to think about Tegan or the Doctor at all.

When the interdimensional rift opened over London one day at lunch, Turlough ignored it. Tegan said she could handle Marriner, and if she couldn’t, well, there was always Torchwood.

He went about his business at work, doing his best to ignore the pulsing white hole in the sky, and the smell of burning ozone and bleeding time. He returned home at dusk, trudging his feet up the stairwell to his flat, and looked up only when he sensed a presence before him.

“Here he is!” Ianto called into Turlough’s flat, after spying him.

The door had been kicked open and now precariously hung off only its top hinge. Ianto was stationed by the front door, but he could hear footsteps stalking out toward him.

“Don’t you have an apocalypse to be stopping, or something?” Turlough bitingly asked as he came face to face with Jack. He shouldered roughly past him as he entered his apartment, uninterested in dealing with them or their bullshit.

Like a flash, Jack’s hand reached out and grabbed Turlough on the shoulder. Turlough spun around quickly, ducking out of the touch, and within a second found his wrist gripped tightly by the mirthless American. “We’ve got a little problem and need your help,” Jack said. His tone was flat and his eyes serious.

Turlough’s eyes focused not on Jack’s face, but on the hand Jack had against his wrist. There was something burning-hot about Jack’s touch: electric and cold. It reminded him of when he’d touched the Doctor’s first incarnation during their bout in the Death Zone. It was so familiar to how touching the Doctor felt, and yet so utterly alien. He knew Jack was human, so to feel that Time Lord sensation from him was unsettling. “Don’t touch me,” Turlough snapped, jerking his wrist away.

“Tegan’s in trouble,” Jack said without preface. “Marriner has come back and taken over. She asked for you.”

“Taken over?” Turlough asked, rubbing his wrist. His eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, taken over?”

Ianto hurried into the flat, a hand to the headpiece in his ear. “Jack!” he called, his voice tight with anxiousness. “It’s started.”

“Come on,” Jack said, ushering Turlough out after Ianto. “I’ll explain on the way.”
--

.. to part five