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[ for Alex ]

As much as Tosh has given up on finding a way out of Darrow and back to Cardiff, she still tracks distortions and anomalies, trying to come up with any sort of pattern. Two years nearly and she's been unable to come up with anything. Sometimes when people arrive there are disturbances, sometimes there aren't. It's frustrating, and that only makes her more determined to come up with something.

She's mostly given up for the evening, after trying to get residual readings from the last few places she's heard that people have appeared. Her equipment is shoved back in her leather carry bag, the tablet the last thing to go in. A drink seems best, and there's a small wine bar down the road she likes. Tosh takes out her phone to text Owen, but hesitates, putting it back in her bag. Maybe later.

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Jason must've been rubbing off on her, Alex thought from her perch on a roof. She was still in information gathering mode, though, and a good vantage point for observation helped, especially with the rifle scope she'd picked up. Just the scope - no rifle... yet - but it gave her some distance when she first saw the woman and still let Alex see some of the equipment being tucked into the woman's bag.

The tech sent Alex's thoughts to Birkhoff and she shoved them down along with the worry for him, Nikita, and the others. She didn't have time for that. The best way to protect them and herself was to figure out what was going on here first. Just maybe the woman and her equipment might know something that could help.

Guessing at the direction the woman would take from the start she'd made while wavering over her phone, Alex made her way off the roof and on an intercept course. If she timed things right, and the woman didn't turn off before then, they should get to the crosswalk at about the same time.

It likely says something about how used to Darrow Tosh is that she offers the woman at the crosswalk a small smile and a hello. In Cardiff or London she would have avoided eye contact at all costs, but here she's relaxed, more than she thinks. "This light always takes forever."

"Especially if you're looking forward to your day being over?" Alex suggested with a smile and quirk of her eyebrows. It hadn't looked like the other woman was rushing now, but whatever she'd been doing before had looked more like work than fun. Or maybe she was the type where it was both.

"It's not that bad," she says, almost sheepishly, thought there's no way that the other woman can know that work realy is her life. Work, an attentive dog and that was about it. Even in her head she thought it made her sound boring. "It's jsut been a few late nights."

"Those add up after awhile." Something Alex knew well, even if the combination of youth and training let her ignore her own late nights to a point. "But it's not as bad when it's late nights: fun, not just late nights: drudge."

"Well, tonight was a bit of drudgery," she admits finally, the light changing and nodding to see if the other woman is going her way. "More just another dead end, in a long series of them."

Alex started across the street along with the other woman, considering her words in light of what she'd seen before deciding they should meet. "'Another dead end.' You're looking for a way out, aren't you?"

"A way out?" Tosh asks it as if it's a new idea, which really is silly even by her own standards. There's almost no one in Darrow who's not from here that hasn't looked for a way out at some point. She shakes her head, wondering if the woman saw her with her equipment, ready with her standard excuses about taking photos for a project. For some reason, she doesn't give them. "More a connection, I think. Between everyone."

"Either way, I think it's more than I could figure out." Alex didn't even know enough to have a target for any investigation she might start. "Not that I've really tried or anything."

Tosh shrugs as she walks, knowing that her efforts haven't exactly brought her anywhere. Pausing in front of the wine bar, she looks to the other woman to see if she's going to join her here as well. "Nearly two years and I'm not any closer than I was on day one. Which leads me this part of the evening. I'm Tosh, by the way, and you're welcome to join me."

"Alex." She hadn't expected to end up at a wine bar, but it probably shouldn't have surprised her either. "I'd be curious to hear more about what you've tried, if you're up for talking about it," she admitted. "I've only been here a couple of weeks, so it's all new to me. I'll probably stick to just water, though."

Tosh nods at that, knowing that there are things she wouldn't tell anyone other than Owen or someone actually inside of Torchwood. But talking about arrivals and energy fluctuations should be harmless enough. "As long as you don't mind if I have wine?"

"Not at all." Alex was used to being the only one not drinking. But before, she was around people who knew and expected that. Here, she wasn't, and it could be awkward for some. "Funny thing is, I've spent a lot of time in bars, not drinking, since I got here."

"We gravitate toward them, I suppose," she admits after a moment. Tosh smiles at the bartender, heading for a table in the corner, away from others. It's not crowded, and the music is at a nice level, but she doesn't like being overheard. "It's where we're most social."

When you didn't have a particular target in mind, bars were good places to pick up information, whether it was dancing or starting up a conversation with the person next to you. To Alex, it didn't really count as social in the same way if she was working. All the more reason to stay clean, though, which helped if she was going to be around temptations.

"It is easier than striking up a conversation in the elevator. Or at a street corner, although we didn't do so badly at that."

"It seems that we didn't." Tosh points to an entry on the menu when the waitress comes past, a white that she's had before and is easy to drink. "Strange, because I remember a time I don't think I would have talked to anyone I just ran into. In a bar, or not."

The waitress made a face at Alex's request for water, but hid it quickly. Alex only smiled and thanked her. "I used to live in New York. I never just started talking to people." The latter had more to do with being a covert operative, or before that a street kid, than where she was living, but both things she said were true.

"What about you? I'd hate to guess wrong about your accent."

"Cardiff, by way of London, with a few years in Tokyo when I was a girl," she says, knowing her accent reflects London most of all, but that the intervening years influenced it. "None exactly encouraged conversation on street corners."

The waitress is quick with her wine, and Tosh smiles her thanks, even as the waitress plunks down the water carelessly. Tosh sighs, and shrugs, as if to say what can you do?

Alex looked unperturbed, and thanked the waitress again, waiting until the woman had left before rolling her eyes for Tosh.

"No, they really wouldn't. Well, I've never been to Cardiff, but London and Tokyo are great. A big difference between them and Darrow, though.

"I think of all of them, I miss Cardiff the most," she admits a bit ruefully. Tosh misses it, but there's also a part of her that is happy to be here now instead of there. "But even that seems like a bit of a dream after this long."

"You said almost two years, right? I can see why it feels like a dream. You've got a whole other life here." Alex shook her head. "Sometimes I can barely remember what my life was like two years ago, and I haven't been here the whole time." It was, she thought, about two years ago that she was on the island, best she could tell with her limited memories of that time. The stuff at Division was burned into her memory, never to be forgotten.

Well, assuming Amanda didn't do something to her.

Another life, and she's not sure she wants to leave it. Things are progressing with Owen, tensely and slowly, and she's fairly sure from what Jack let slip that she doesn't have much of a life to go back to. "I suppose that's why I've been a bit haphazard looking into things lately. Connections, that is."

"That should make not finding what you're looking for easier to bear, though, right?" Disappointing, though, from Alex's perspective; she'd never done well in a cage - and she'd been in too many.

"Not really," Tosh admits to Alex, her expression rueful. It may be strange, but it's true. "I don't like not being able to solve a problem like this, and I hate that there's no rule or law to this."

"Have you found some kind of direction or hint or anything? A starting point?" Sometimes just knowing where to look could help, even if the solution itself was a long way off. Alex took a sip of her water.

"The idea this might be completely random is probably more frightening than some greater purpose we just can't see yet."

"I started with locations, but they're not always common. There's the train, but it doesn't bring everyone." It brought fewer than half, from what she could tell, knowing she didn't have all of the data. "Then I went to see about energy fluctuations, and they're the same. Sometimes they're there, sometimes not, with no real pattern as to how and why."

"Huh. It's like whatever's behind this doesn't want anyone figuring it out." Alex toyed with her glass, watching the patterns of light reflecting off it. "Or it's too keep the science types so busy studying it they miss something else going on completely." She was naturally suspicious. Blame Division.

Tosh had thought the same when she first arrived. Now she's less sure that it's an overarching conspiracy, as much as she'd still like it to be. "Or it's a big enough picture that I can't see the pattern yet."

"Maybe. It is hard to get a good look at something when you're in the middle of it." With no way out, that was the only view they had. But Alex wasn't going to just accept that. She never had. Not in the brothel. Not at Division. So many of them had, but an Udinov never could.

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