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There Is No Right Way

Summary:

When Toshiko befriends Mary, the mysterious stowaway she finds in her quarters, she thinks she's finally found an escape from being neglected and ignored by her crewmates. But Mary is a woman of many secrets and Tosh has only just scratched the surface...

Notes:

Title taken from Someone New by Hozier

Work Text:

Tosh

 

Toshiko hadn't meant to overhear the conversation, really, she hadn't. But sometimes when you're in the loo, crewmates decide to have very personal conversations right outside the door. You'd think on such a huge ship that wouldn't happen to Tosh nearly as often as it does. Sometimes she wonders if the rest of the crew forgets she exists.

“So are we just never gonna talk about what happened?” comes Gwen's voice with her round Welsh vowels.

“Talk about what ?” Owen's voice replies snarkily.

“You snogging me?”

Tosh's eyes widen as she sits silently behind the wooden door.

“What, it was just a last kiss before death,” Owen says, and Tosh can practically picture his facial expression as he says it. It's the face he makes when he doesn't care, usually when he's trying to start an argument for the fun of it, his eyes daring you to tell him he's wrong.

“It's not like I fancy you or anything.”

“Oh please, I could feel your hard-on,” Gwen shoots back before the sound of her black sailor shoes clump away from the door.

Owen makes some spluttering sounds of a man who's just been called out, and he follows Gwen away from the loo door.

Tosh waits for a minute before following them to the top deck. When she arrives, everyone has assumed their positions for setting sail. Ianto and Owen are working on raising the anchor. Gwen gives Ryhs a kiss goodbye on the dock, before heading back onto the ship to open the sails. Tosh heads for the wheel on the quarterdeck. Jack stands at the front of the ship, watching over all of them as his coat billows behind him in the wind.

And just like that, they’re off at sea again.

---

“Who was the last person you snogged?”

Gwen’s question takes Tosh aback. The ship has been relatively quiet until now, with Ianto taking over steering, and the others sitting around in a circle of crates. They had been playing Euchre, but after Jack and Tosh creamed Owen and Gwen for the third time in a row, boredom seems to be sinking in.

“You sound like a child,” Owen says snarkily from across the card circle. “Who the hell says snog?”

“It's just a bit of fun!” Gwen says brightly. “Mine was Rhys.”

“Yeah, well, there’s a surprise,” Owen retorts. Tosh can’t help but laugh a little with him. It does seem a bit silly for Gwen to be the one to bring up the topic of kissing when they had all seen her kiss her fiance goodbye on the port only a few hours ago.

“Tosh, your go,” Gwen says, startling her out of her thoughts.

“It’s easy for you,” Tosh says, buying herself time as she racks her brain. It’s been a while.

“Oh, come on!” Gwen says with such a smile that Tosh knows she doesn’t intend to be rude by asking. But it still puts Tosh in an awkward position.

“Owen,” Tosh says honestly.

“Really?” says Gwen.

“What?” says Owen. He forgot Tosh realizes, which makes sense since Owen is probably the only member of the crew, aside from Jack, who gets around.

“3 am,” Tosh explains, “Christmas Eve. In the crow's nest of the ship. I had mistletoe.”

A look of remembrance dawns on Owen's face.

“You've not had a snog since Christmas?”

”No.” Tosh looks down at her lap in embarrassment. The year is well into May by now.

“So who was yours?” Tosh asks him, hoping to rip the band-aid off early. She sees his eyes shift across the circle and her heart sinks as she remembers.

“Gwen, actually,” Owen says. Gwen's face falls.

“It was a complicated situation,” she says defensively. An uncomfortable silence follows until Owen seems to be the only one to remember there's been a fourth person in the circle who has been silently listening to them.

“Jack?” Owen asks, sounding like he's bracing himself for an answer he may not want to hear.

“Are we including non-human lifeforms?”

“Oh, you haven't!” Gwen gasps.

“That’s disgusting, I never know when you're joking,” Owen says. Tosh can tell he's only pretending to be judgmental. The gears in his head are probably turning with questions of what alien sex would be like. As foreign as the idea seems to her, she's glad Jack has brought the conversation back to a more light-hearted tone.

But of course with this crew, that can only last so long…

“My turn, is it?” Ianto asks from the wheel behind them, and they all turn to look at him. “It was Lisa.”

“Ianto, I’m sorry…” Gwen says quickly. “I just…”

“You forgot…” Ianto fills in. Shame flickers over Gwen. She’s supposed to be the quote-unquote “caring” one of the group and yet she forgot how only a few weeks ago Ianto’s cyberman ex-girlfriend had tried to kill them all and how devastating the aftermath had been for all of them.

Owen loudly suggests another round of euchre but switching up the teams this time. With his and Gwen’s focus on shuffling the cards, Tosh is apparently the only one that notices how Jack and Ianto are exchanging a painful stare. What is it? Longing? Anger? Whatever it is, it’s none of Tosh’s business.

---

When Tosh goes back to her room for the night, a bottle of wine in her hand to ease her to sleep, she finds a woman sitting on her bed. Tosh has a dagger in her non-wine hand before she can even blink.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Ever since the Lisa incident, the crew has all been a little more on edge about invaders on the ship.

“I’m Mary,” the woman says, holding up her hands in surrender. “I’m lost. I’m just a stowaway trying to find my way back home, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to intrude.”

Tosh lowers her blade.

“You’re Toshiko, right?” Mary asks. Her face is framed by golden ringlets, her body clothed in a simple red dress, slightly too big for her as if she’s stolen it from a woman whom it’s meant to fit. One of her hands is wrapped in a bandage.

“How do you know my name?” Tosh still clutches her dagger tightly.

“I kind of know who you are,” Mary says, without a full explanation. “You were born in London 1686, moved to Osaka when you were 2, back to Britain in 1697. Your parents were Japanese pirates, so was your grandfather on your mother’s side. You wanted to be different from them so you started working for various astronomers until 1712 when you joined the crew of Torchwood Three.”

“You know about Torchwood?” Tosh asks. She knows that Torchwood isn’t as secretive as they like to think they are. The outside of their ship is literally plastered with the word “Torchwood.” But, what she’s trying to figure out with her question is if Mary knows what Torchwood does. 

“It just takes some deep digging,” Mary says. “We pick up bits and pieces of alien scrap that-”

“We?” Tosh glances around her tiny room, nervous now that there might be others hiding.

“Scavengers. Collectors. Like you.”

“How many of you are there?”

“Oh don’t think it’s in any way organized, it’s mostly just a bunch of failed academics whose parents aren’t rich enough to buy them wives.”

Tosh puts her dagger away and cautiously sits beside Mary on the bed.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you,” she says.

“So kick me out…”

Tosh knows she should, but some part of her, some curious, desperate part, wants to keep listening to Mary talk. And that’s why Tosh pops open her bottle of wine, offers a match to light Mary’s pipe, and settles in for a long conversation into the night.

---

“The most fascinating part is the similarities with our own culture, which sometimes is sad because we find so many weapons and it just makes you realize everything wages war . But then there are times…we found this thing with symbols on it, and it took me about six months to translate. It was a letter someone had written to their family, their children, about how much they were missing them. And none of the rest of the crew cared because it wasn’t important , but it made me cry because even across unimaginable seas of time, some things will always stay the same. And there’s no one to talk to about this.”

Tosh pauses to take a deep breath of air and an even deeper gulp of wine.

“I could be fired for telling you that,” she says, her lips still poised around the mouth of her glass.

“You won’t,” Mary says, puffing her pipe.

“How do you know?”

“Because I think I know you well enough by now, to know that you won’t tell anyone about finding me here…because you’re kind.”

Tosh feels her face, already warm from drinking, grow even warmer. She turns her head to look at Mary.

“What else do you know about me?”

Tosh hadn’t realized her face was leaning so closely towards Mary’s until Mary gently presses her non-bandaged hand to her cheek to hold her back.

“I know that you’re drunk.”

“Am I?”

Mary nods.

“And I think we both need some sleep.”

She stands from the bed and Tosh’s body slips forward slightly at the sudden lack of Mary’s hand holding her upright. Mary is making herself a bed on the floor by taking off her dress and bundling it into a makeshift pillow. Tosh feels a soft gasp escape her mouth at the sight of Mary in her undergarments, but tries to cover it up with a strangled cough. If Mary catches on, she doesn’t say anything.

“You can have the bed if you want,” Tosh offers, remembering her manners. She sets her empty wine glass aside and goes to stand from the bed.

“No, no, I’m fine,” Mary insists. “I’m only a stowaway.”

Tosh takes offense to Mary belittling herself like that, but is too tired and, she has to admit, drunk, to say anything. She does, however, give Mary her large purple coat to use as a blanket, which is definitely just to keep her warm and not to stop Tosh from losing her mind over a pretty woman in her underwear.

---

Mary stays in Tosh’s room all through the next day, and all the while Tosh is terrified one of her crewmates will find her and kick her out. She’s just trying to find her way back home. She cares just as much for alien life as they do, why can’t they help her out? It’s different from Lisa because Mary isn’t trying to kill them all.

Fortunately, Tosh is so invisible to the rest of the crew that no one seems to notice how on edge and lost in thought she is for the whole day. It makes sense. No one ever really pays that much attention to her.

Unfortunately, Tosh is so invisible to the rest of the crew that, much like the loo incident yesterday, she once again stumbles into overhearing a conversation that she shouldn’t.

“We said just once,” comes a voice from inside Ianto’s room, but it’s not Ianto’s voice, it’s Jack’s.

“I know, and I wasn’t suggesting anything, I just…” Ianto stammers through his reply. Tosh knows she should keep walking, she shouldn’t be hearing this, but she’s baffled by what they could possibly be talking about.

“I had never been with a man before you and…it was surprisingly nice…I’m just confused.”

Oh God . Tosh definitely should not have heard that. She keeps moving down the hallway, past Gwen’s door, past Owen’s door, wait… noises are coming from Owen’s room too. It almost sounds like...Gwen? Oh God oh no. 

Tosh manages to get back to her room without vomiting and immediately plops down on the bed. Mary is already sitting there, her pipe lit and smoking.

“I know that face,” Mary says through an air of smoke. “Which of your friends did you just walk in on?”

“Technically, none of them…but at the same time…” Tosh grimaces, “I think all of them.”

“At once?”

“No, no,” Tosh says hurriedly. “Jack and Ianto. Owen and Gwen. I had already suspected both of them were…Nevermind, I don’t want to think about it.”

“And what would you like to think about?” Mary says. Except that she didn’t say it. She thought it. And Tosh heard it. In her own thoughts.

“How are you doing that?” Tosh asks aloud.

“Just takes practice. You try.” Mary smiles and lays a hand lightly on Tosh’s leg.

“Hello?” Tosh thinks.

“Hello, beautiful,” Mary thinks in response.

There are more thoughts, underneath the ones that float to the surface to be heard. Conscious, subconscious, wandering trains of thought. Tosh sees a particular thought in Mary’s head that startles her.

“I’m not sure that your thoughts are any better than the conversations I just overheard,” she says, turning away from Mary.

“At least they’re consistent.”

Tosh frowns.

“I’m invisible to them,” she says. “It’s like they don’t even see me.”

“I see you,” Mary says. Tosh slowly turns back to her.

“What you’re thinking now…that’s pretty graphic…” Tosh says.

“That wasn’t my thought.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t thinking anything, that wasn’t my thought. Must’ve been yours…”

“That one there…that’s yours?”

“Yeah…”

“I certainly seem to be enjoying myself…”

“You would…you will…”

Tosh kisses Mary, grabbing her face and pulling it towards her own. Their kissing deepens, becoming more passionate. There’s something intoxicating about Mary, something about her that pulls Tosh towards her, something that makes her never want to leave.

Neither of them sleep on the floor tonight. There’s no need when they’re both so comfortable together in the bed.

---

“Toshiko…Toshiko wake up…”

Tosh blinks her eyes open. Her back is pressed against Mary’s front, the thin blanket covering both of them. Tosh turns her head slightly in response to Mary’s whispers.

“I need to show you something,” Mary says.

“Okay,” Tosh says in sleepy confusion. Mary already showed her plenty the night before. What else is there to share?

Mary climbs over Tosh to get out of the bed. She stands in the middle of the room, naked except for her bandage, eyes closed. Slowly, blue light streams over her body, until she disappears completely, replaced by a tall glowing creature, like an elegant squid with a humanoid face. She reaches out one of her long, tentacle-like fingers toward Tosh.

“This is how I know the rest of your crew would never help me.”

Tosh reaches out to touch Mary’s tentacle hand.

“Who are you?”

“Still the person you kissed. The person you caressed.”

With another shimmer of blue light, Mary changes back into her human form.

“So I just shagged a woman and an alien,” Tosh says.

Mary laughs sharply.

“Which is worse?”

“I know which one my parents would say,” Tosh says, thankful for once that her parents are dead so that she never has to explain her love life to them.

“You let me read your thoughts,” Tosh continues. “I didn’t see this. What else are you hiding?”

“As if there could be anything worse than me being an alien?” Mary says, almost offended. “This world is incredible, when I first came here with my crew, I was ready to sail these seas forever. When they marooned me…well now I’m left to explore on my own.”

“And the mind reading?” Tosh asks.

“It’s how my people communicate. Oral communication? So archaic.”

“And you’re a stowaway here because you wanted to join our crew?” Tosh asks, trying to piece together exactly why Mary is here if she loves exploring so much.

Mary nods excitedly.

“I knew you’d understand Toshiko. I would love to see your ship, your technology. I’m sure it’s much better than whatever I used to look at with the scavengers.”

Tosh knows she shouldn’t. Mary is an alien, who she’s only known for two days, who can read people’s thoughts. Jack would kill her if she gave Mary a tour of the ship. But Mary needs help. She needs a place to belong, and maybe Torchwood, like it is for Tosh, is that place of belonging.

“I’ll show you around tonight,” Tosh says. “Once we’re docked and everyone is asleep.”

Mary gives her a kiss as thanks.

---

“Is it true that this is the fastest ship on this side of the world,” Mary asks, running her hand along the smooth wood of the steering wheel.

“Well, Jack claims to have seen faster,” Tosh says, “but as far as I know-”

“And you, the navigation genius, get to steer this thing all day?”

Tosh blushes.

“Yes, I guess I do.”

“You’re amazing, love,” Mary says, brushing past Tosh and skipping down the stairs to the main deck. She leans over the rail, gazing into the ocean as if she’s looking for something.

“It’s coming…” Mary mutters. “I can feel it.”

“What’s coming?” Tosh asks, going to join her.

“My chance…” Mary says cryptically. Her non-bandaged hand moves to close over the bandaged one. “Would you care for a midnight sail, Toshiko?”

The way she says it makes the idea sound almost fun, but it still takes Tosh aback.

“What?”

Suddenly, the ship begins moving all on its own, and Tosh looks at Mary worriedly.

“I didn’t do that,” Mary’s thoughts say, in response to thoughts that Tosh hadn’t even realized she’d had.

They both look up to the quarterdeck to see Jack at the steering wheel.

“Jack, what are you doing?” Tosh asks, a flood of emotions hitting her all at once. Why is Jack up? Why is he moving the boat in the middle of the night? Has he noticed Mary? Is he furious with her?

“He’s beating me to what I was going to do,” Mary says with a laugh.

Jack stays silent, pressing the boat along until the dock behind them is out of sight. Then he lets off the wheel; the ocean currents are now the only thing keeping Torchwood Three on any sort of path. He thuds down the stairs in his boots, a stern look on his sculpted face.

“It’s an honor to finally meet you, Mary,” he says, stopping a few feet away from Tosh and Mary. “It’s about time considering you’ve been living in my walls for over 48 hours now. The last time we had a stowaway it ended with gunshots.”

Mary doesn’t even look phased.

“Did she tell you why she’s here?” Jack asks Tosh.

“She was marooned,” Tosh says. “Her people came from a planet far away to explore the oceans here, and after they abandoned her, she thought she might be able to find refuge here with us.”

“You got half of that right,” Jack says. “Tosh, look at her hand.”

Tosh’s eyes slip down to Mary’s bandage-covered hand, but she doesn’t even have to ask, Mary is already unwrapping it. Tosh gasps at what she sees.

“You have the black spot!”

“I do,” Mary says, holding up her hand to get a better look at it. The dark circle on her palm marks her as belonging to Davy Jones. To the Kraken. To death.

“And I don’t know about you,” Jack says, “but I’m thinking maybe we should get her off our ship before the old Beasty gets here so we don’t all go down with her.”

“Or we could help her!” Tosh exclaims. “There has to be a cure for the black spot!”

She hates how much her cries echo those of Ianto’s from last week. Okay, fine, Mary might be dangerous, but they can’t just kill her.

“There’s no saving me,” Mary says into Tosh’s thoughts. “I pluck out people’s hearts.” 

Tosh feels her own heart tremble at Mary’s words, and not in a good way.

“There is no way to help her, except to send her Davy Jones’s locker,” Jack says. “The Kraken is coming for her and it wants to feed.”

The others are coming up from below deck now, the commotion had woken them.

“All for feeding Mary to the Kraken say aye,” Jack says. There’s a chorus of “ayes” from Ianto, Owen, and Gwen.

“No!” Tosh cries. There has to be another way.

“This form has powers, you know,” Mary says, straying from Tosh’s side and wandering amongst the crew on the deck. “Powers my alien form lacks. I can grab a heart right out of a rib cage.”

“You’ve killed a lot of people,” Owen says, brows knitted together in anger.

“You’ve been killing ever since you got to this planet,” Jack adds. “Your crew didn’t just maroon you, they mutinied, left you for good.”

Mary smiles as if she’s proud of this.

“But then you got the mark…”

Her smile turns tilted.

“Davy Jones isn’t too thrilled about you doing his job for him. You stole bodies that he rightfully owns, so now he’s after you.”

Mary moves quickly, faster than Tosh has ever seen anyone move before, and suddenly she has a knife to Tosh’s neck. Ice-cold metal presses towards Tosh’s throat and she holds her breath. This is what she gets for trusting Mary.

There are shouts from the rest of the crew.

“Tosh!” from Gwen and Owen.

“Let her go, Mary!” from Jack.

A terrified yell from Ianto.

“All I want to do,” Mary says, “is commandeer your ship, leave you all to the Kraken in my place, and sail off into the horizon. You let me do that…and I’ll let her go…”

“That’s unfair, we’re unarmed,” Owen says. He’s right. Mary woke them up in the middle of the night, their guns and swords are back in their rooms.

“That knife has incisors on the blade,” Gwen whispers, grabbing Owen’s arm. “It’ll tear Tosh’s throat out.”

Gwen doesn’t know that Tosh can hear her, but she does, and it only makes her worry more. Her heartbeat pulses through her veins, against the blade at her throat.

“Okay, okay,” Jack says calmingly. “You want the ship, we want Toshiko. That’s a fair swap.”

Mary moves toward the stairs to the quarterdeck, forcing Tosh along with her. Tosh stumbles against Mary’s chest, something that just a few hours ago would have made her giddy, now she feels her life flashing before her eyes. Suddenly, the knife is removed from her throat as Mary shoves her away and runs up the stairs to grab the steering wheel. Tosh falls into the person nearest to her, which happens to be Ianto.

“Alright?” he asks quickly. She manages to nod. Her throat is still intact. But the ship is moving far and fast toward who knows where, and Jack is ushering the crew into one of the escape boats. So really, things are far from alright.

“That’s right,” Mary says. “Just sit there and wait for the Beasty. I’ll be long gone by then.”

Tosh goes to follow her crewmates into the boat, she and Jack are the only ones left to climb in. As she goes to put her foot over the side, Jack leans in and whispers in her ear.

“There’s still a chance to save what’s really important to you…”

He climbs in the boat, leaving her on the deck. Tosh looks back at Mary. She knows what she needs to do.

“Mary!” she calls out. The alien woman turns to look at her from the quarterdeck, red dress billowing out behind her. She’s still beautiful. “At least let me kiss you goodbye.”

At that, Mary grins and abandons the wheel to join Tosh by the rail of the ship.

“You could come with me, you know,” Mary says. “If you want. All I’ve done…it doesn't change the way I feel about you! We have a connection, Toshiko, something real…”

“I know,” Tosh says softly.

“We could be free…together…”

“We already are…” Tosh says. She kisses Mary, hands coming up to grip her shoulders. She feels Mary melt into the kiss, and that’s when Tosh does it. She shoves Mary over the side of the railing, directly into the ocean. The water covers the black spot on her hand. Now the Kraken can’t miss her.

“TOSHIKO!” Mary screams, but her voice is quite distant from all the way down there. Tosh is already busy helping her crewmates back onto the ship from the rowboat.

“I’m sorry Mary!” Tosh calls back. “This is the only way to save what matters!”

“Pirate!” Mary shrieks before the tide pulls her too far away to hear, and the watery moans of the Kraken begin to come near. Tosh bolts for the steering wheel to get them out of there by the time Beasty boy arrives.

---

“She could read my mind,” Tosh says to Jack. “And I could read hers.”

They’re sitting on crates on the main deck, staring up at the stars, procrastinating sleep and the dark dreams that Tosh knows will come.

“It was her way of communication and she taught it to me. She let me into her world and I…let her into mine…”

Tosh looks into Jack’s eyes.

“I suppose I have to be fired now?”

Jack laughs, a reaction which startles Tosh.

“You saved us all in the end, I hardly think it’d be polite to now kick you out. What do regular sea captains do in situations like this? Challenge for a duel?”

Tosh laughs now.

“I don’t think most sea captains would even allow me aboard their ship,” Tosh says, joking about her criminal record, which wouldn’t allow her aboard most naval ships and her femininity, which wouldn’t allow her aboard most pirate ships.

“And even if we did duel,” she continues, “we would tie.”

They both laugh again. Jack doesn’t even try to dispute her, he’s seen her with a sword.

“Jack,” Tosh starts again after a brief pause, “something Mary said…probably just another thing she said to manipulate me…but that stuck with me…she said that she saw me, even when I was invisible to everyone else.”

Jack places a hand on her knee out of comfort.

“I keep overhearing things I shouldn’t…how can I live like this?”

“Whatever you hear, whatever you learn, is never the full story,” Jack says.

Tears fall, slippery and wet, down Tosh’s cheeks. Guilt is consuming her. Everything she heard; him and Ianto, Gwen and Owen, it wasn’t hers to hear.

Jack stands, and Tosh worries she’s made him uncomfortable, but he places a hand on her head gently.

“I guess we just keep on going,” Tosh sniffles, looking up at her captain.

Jack silently wipes a tear off her face with his finger, then walks off into his quarters. There is nothing he could have said to comfort her. This is a battle Tosh has to fight on her own.

That being said, there are still important conversations that need to be had.

---

Tosh knocks on Gwen’s door, a bottle of wine in her hand as a peace offering.

“Come in!”

Opening the door reveals Gwen sitting at a tiny desk, writing a letter to Rhys. Gwen sets her quill back in the inkwell and turns to face Tosh.

“Can we talk?” Tosh asks. “I brought wine.” She holds it up stupidly.

“Of course, darling,” Gwen says. She scoots her chair away from the desk and gestures for Tosh to sit on the bed so that they’re facing each other. What follows is uncomfortable small talk as the two women slowly sip their wine. Once they’ve each consumed a full glass, relaxation sinks in.

“So the other night, I sort of heard something that I shouldn’t,” Tosh says, “as I was walking past Owen’s room…”

“Oh…” Gwen’s white Welsh skin goes as red as the wine.

“I’m sorry,” Tosh adds quickly. “I felt so awkward about it and I didn’t-”

“No, I’m sorry,” Gwen says. “We thought everyone else was asleep, otherwise we wouldn’t have…well really we shouldn’t have done anything…”

“Did…you…?” Tosh can’t bring herself to ask, it’s rude she knows, she’s just so curious. And a little jealous if she’s being completely honest.

“We slept together, yes,” Gwen says, hanging her head. “Which is why I can’t be mad at you for eavesdropping, because I’m already so mad at myself.”

“Are you going to do it again?”

“No,” Gwen says. “No.” More firmly now. She shakes her head. “And I’m writing to Rhys right now to tell him what’s happened. If he calls off the engagement…I can’t say I won’t understand…”

She starts choking up over her words and Tosh leans forward to place a hand on top of one of Gwen’s.

“Everyone makes mistakes,” she says. “We’ve all slept with someone we wish we hadn’t. We’ve all hurt people we love before. You’re going to get through this, Gwen.”

Gwen is still crying. Tosh bites her lip, an idea forming.

“I slept with Mary!” she blurts out.

“What?”

“I was hiding her in my room and one night we…yeah…it was a mistake…”

“Oh Tosh, I had no idea.”

“See, you’re not the only one with bad shag decisions,” Tosh says with a laugh and Gwen laughs too.

“You know,” Gwen says, wiping the tears off her face, “just because Mary didn’t work out, doesn’t mean love is hopeless. You’ll find it for real someday.”

The idea is almost laughable to Tosh, but Gwen is looking at her so knowingly as if she knows just how jealous she is of Gwen being the one to shag Owen.

“Thanks,” Tosh says quietly.

“And I’m here for you if you ever need another chat like this. Hopefully with less crying next time.”

Gwen laughs into her wine and Tosh smiles.

“I’d like that.”

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