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Owen always knew Captain Jack Harkness was a law unto himself.
He swans in talking about alien parasites like it's completely normal and the love of Owen's life isn't laying dead on the operating table.
Then knocks him out and packs off without a trace, leaving Owen trying to pick up the pieces when he doesn't know where doubts about his own memory end and real grief begins.
Nobody believes him, he can't find evidence and he can't stop wondering - this American seemed to know all about the alien parasite. Could he have saved her?
His days are empty without Katie and he can't go back to his old life, so instead he researches. Everything from blogs trying to prove the existence of aliens, to the supposed explanations for every member of Katie's operating team dying on the same day. (Official files say different, but he knows the truth. Right?)
He racks his grief-ravaged memory for anything about the American. He was wearing a military coat Owen can't place and mentioned something called Torchwood. But it's nowhere to be seen on the Internet. Like looking for a needle in a haystack. An invisible needle.
By Katie's funeral he's starting to wonder if he really did imagine it all. Sometimes he thinks it would be better that way. Then he might let this obsession go and find a way to carry on as best he can.
Until he sees him again, standing like a sentinel at the other side of the graveyard. All his repressed anger hits him like a brick wall and he turns it on the man who had the audacity to ruin his life and disappear, but it quickly washes over him and leaves him with the same gaping emotional emptiness as before.
Owen accepts the job. What else can he do? His life fell apart around him and now he's standing in the ruins, ready to grasp at the one thing still connecting him to Katie.
He couldn't save her. But maybe he can use this new knowledge to save the next person. Do good in her memory. Then it won't all be for nothing.
Even now Jack - that's his name, allegedly, Captain Jack Harkness - won't tell him the first thing about himself. But that's alright, Owen thinks, because he has plenty of time to look.
-
Throughout his first few weeks - between performing alien autopsies, pulling bullets out of his colleagues and getting drunk out of his mind - he continues his investigation.
There are a few people by the name of Jack Harkness in the phonebook, but not who he's looking for.
So he enlists his colleague Toshiko, the computer genius. If anyone can find a record of him, it's her.
"Nothing," she says, frowning at the screen. "No US citizen by the name of Jack Harkness born in the last 50 years."
"Maybe he's not American," Owen suggests. "Or it's not his real name."
"That's possible," Tosh agrees.
"Come on, there has to be something," Owen says, his frustration mounting. "We work for this guy and we don't know anything about him."
Tosh turns from the screen to look at him. "We know what he's done since we joined. He saved our lives and the lives of people endangered by the Rift. I trust him."
Owen nods, but his gaze drifts to the door of Jack's office.
-
Two weeks later, Jack gets shot.
They are chasing an alien all over Cardiff at night when an over-enthusiastic civilian gets hold of Owen's gun and takes a shot at the alien, hitting Jack instead.
In the dark it's impossible to tell how badly he's hurt, but since Jack is still running around and their priority is to secure the alien while keeping the civilians safe, Owen doesn't get a chance to check until they get back to the Hub.
Suzie had grazed her arm when she fell during the chase, so Owen gives the scrape an antiseptic wipe and puts a plaster on it while Jack secures the alien in a cell.
Owen hears Jack talking to Tosh in the main room and glances up, watching them from over the railing surrounding the medical room. A large bloodstain covers the side of Jack's shirt.
"All done," Owen tells Suzie. She hops off the chair and heads back upstairs.
Then Owen calls, "Jack! I need to take a look at that gunshot wound now."
Jack stands in the doorway, arms folded like he's trying to hide the blood. "I'm fine."
"Yeah, yeah, 'tis but a scratch." Owen pats the chair. "Sit down." When Jack still doesn't move, he continues, "I'm your doctor and I'm not taking no for an answer. Sit."
Reluctantly, Jack descends the stairs and sits in the medical chair, carefully removing his coat.
"Can you take your shirt off?" Owen asks, putting on surgical gloves.
"I've heard that one before," Jack replies with a wink.
"I'll take that as a yes." Owen finishes collecting the supplies he needs. "Shirt off please."
Jack removes his shirt and Owen cleans away the blood, noticing that the graze seems much smaller than the amount of bleeding would indicate. Like it just caught the side of his chest and missed anything deeper. Doesn't even need stitches.
"I'd say you got very lucky," Owen says. "But I don't recommend getting in the way of another bullet any time soon."
"Alright." Jack grabs his coat and stands up. "I'll take that under advisement."
-
When Ianto's cybergirlfriend escapes the basement and goes rogue on them, Owen sees Jack get electrocuted.
He passed med school with flying colours and he may not know much about cybermen, but he does know how much electrical charge would kill someone. That was clearly more than enough.
As Jack lays on the floor, Owen is holding onto Gwen while the cyberwoman turns slowly in search of another victim. Will they be next? Death by cyber-electrocution looked horribly painful, but at least it was quick.
Then Jack gets up.
"How did he survive that?" Owen whispers. It shouldn't be possible. Even if the charge was much lower than expected, there's no way he could recover fast enough to stand and talk.
The cyberwoman shocks him again, holding on for longer, and Jack falls to his knees with the electrical current visibly sparking throughout his body until he collapses. This is it, Owen thinks.
"We can't help him," Owen tells Gwen and pulls her towards the medical room. Jack's sacrifice has bought them time, now they need to use it if they want a chance of surviving. Honour his memory.
It's a slim chance, though, Owen knows that, and adrenaline is coursing through his blood with the knowledge that every second could be his last.
Everything they try fails and, as they run out of the medical room, Owen worries they're out of options.
Until Jack is standing there with a blowtorch.
Their boss. Alive.
"You should be dead," Owen tells him.
"I'm the stubborn type. Get behind me."
Not a denial, Owen notes. Then turns his attention back to fighting for his life.
Once it's over, he insists on examining everyone.
Tosh doesn't say anything. Gwen sits stiffly and runs out of the room before he's finished saying she can go. Ianto stares into space and gives one-word answers to Owen's questions.
And Jack is completely fine. No residual sign of electrocution, not even a scratch or a bruise from being punched by Ianto.
Strange, Owen thinks. But he's starting to understand.
-
When they use the Risen Mitten (thanks, Ianto) to resurrect Suzie, Owen wonders if he isn't the only one to notice something strange about Jack.
Everyone is trying to do their jobs, treat her as just another part of the investigation like she didn't spend months as a serial killer right under their noses.
Following the distress and disorientation of being resurrected, she seems to grasp the situation very quickly. Probably because, unlike most resurectees, she knows what the gauntlet does.
She remembers how she died, then asks Jack, "Wait a minute. Didn't I kill you?"
Jack doesn't bat an eyelid and says, "Never mind that. We need names and details."
Owen looks up, the cogs in his head turning. Again, Jack doesn't deny it and wasn't surprised to hear he should be dead.
Well, they deal with aliens and live on a Rift in space and time. What's to say their boss couldn't be immortal?
-
After Diane leaves, Owen oscillates between empty and angry, doing whatever he can to drown out his mind, just like when he lost Katie. Serves him right for opening himself up to love again.
The evening after Jack blunders in and saves him from the Weevil, yanking him away from the peace he craved and back into the world of pain, he has an idea.
Diane was from 1953. There are no records of Jack from the last 50 years. What if he looked back further?
While Tosh is out with Gwen, Owen uses her computer to run a search.
Captain Jack Harkness. An American member of the RAF who disappeared in 1941.
Even now Diane was helping him.
Digging deeper, he finds out that during a training exercise in Cardiff, Captain Harkness destroyed 3 enemy aircrafts and saved his entire squadron. His plane caught fire and somehow he survived, going on to serve briefly in London then disappear.
Owen recalls Jack's in-depth and seemingly firsthand knowledge of history, how nothing ever fazes him, how he's never been injured despite constantly throwing himself into risky situations.
Yep, he decides. Immortal.
-
Owen never confronts Jack about this, never asks for more than he's willing to volunteer. Until the Rift is open and reality as they know it is collapsing.
Every disease from all across time is raging through Cardiff Royal Infirmary and Owen is a doctor. He knows exactly how bad things can get. But he doesn't know what to do about it.
So he appeals to Jack's expertise, his experience. They haven't yet come across something he didn't have a solution for. Even if they don't have a clue how he accumulated all that knowledge.
"You're the big man here. You keep all the secrets. Well, now's the time to tell us a few and tell us how the hell we'll get out of this."
"You want to know a secret? There is no solution. I can't fix this. Because this was never meant to happen. The first thing you learned when you joined Torchwood was don't mess with the Rift. But you disobeyed those orders, and now everything that's happening is down to you."
Throwing blame around like that's going to help. Owen was just trying to do the right thing. "I only disobeyed instructions to get you back."
"And now people are dying."
"What, so I shouldn't have bothered?" Owen gives him one last chance to open up. "Who the fuck are you anyway? Jack Harkness? You don't even exist. We've looked. So, if you're not even a real person, then why the hell should I follow your orders?"
Jack fires him. Calls him out for not giving his complete trust, even though he kept it to himself that he wasn't risking his life every day when the rest of them were.
Takes away Owen's chance to fix the mess he helped create. If it's his fault, surely he should help. He's a doctor, swore to do no harm, he can't just stand idle when people are dying.
Gwen, ever the bleeding heart, tries getting them to work together. But Jack Harkness has never budged on an issue in his life.
Nobody comes with him. He doesn't blame them - he wouldn't want to be stuck with him either.
When Owen leaves the Hub, he feels like the walls are closing in and his heart is pounding so hard he feels sick.
He messed up the world and now he'll be Retconned and discarded like so much garbage. Stripped of the only family he has and the only thing giving his life meaning. And in a few hours he won't even know.
Like he always does when things go south, he tries to drown his sorrows. Diane appears in front of him, for a second he wonders just how drunk he is. She asks him to bring her back - by opening the Rift.
That's what started all this chaos, maybe it's the way to end it too. Diane is still watching over him. He has to try.
So he goes back.
Gwen is sobbing and Rhys lies dead on the autopsy table. If he had any lingering doubt, this makes up his mind. "How many other people have got to suffer?" he asks Jack. "I'm gonna fix this. I'm opening the Rift."
Jack tells them not to and does what he does best - keeps his secrets and asserts that he knows best. Their immortal boss.
Later, when Owen pulls the trigger, he just hopes he isn't wrong.