The mantra inside Ianto’s head was so loud and persistent that he was amazed the others couldn’t hear it.

This is Owen, and Owen’s dead.

Not Owen, surely.  Owen Harper?

It was Ianto’s self-imposed duty to care for Torchwood Three’s dead – whether or not they managed to permanently or temporarily resurrect themselves, as per Harkness and Costello – and it was something he didn’t baulk at.  He treated his colleagues and those who fell under Torchwood’s remit with the utmost respect and, as far as was possible, allowed them to maintain their dignity into death.

Despite their frequent spats, Ianto was determined that Owen would be no different.  Respect and Dignity.  It was due and, at the last gasp, earned.  Owen had changed after killing Jack, or rather, he was changed by crashing into the emotional breakdown he’d been teetering on the edge of, the killing of Jack being the final push he’d needed.

Changed, and better for it: mellower, no longer spitting venom at the world in retaliation for past slights.  But even the bastard version would have received Ianto’s most reverential treatment; Ianto knew that and was proud of the fact.

This is Owen, and Owen’s dead.

So…  Where was the scar?  Ianto had shot Owen, and nobody healed flawlessly from a bullet wound.  Even Jack, with his wondrous ways, retained a blemish until he was next dead and alive.

Ianto’s fingertips brushed over the same spot on Owen’s shoulder a hundred times, feeling the skin growing ever colder beneath his touch.  No scar.  He checked Owen’s medical records to pin down the exact location of the wound, just to make sure he wasn’t missing something.  He ran a search of their medical database, then of their entire inventory to see if Owen had liberated something from the alien pharmacopeia or the archives to treat himself, but there was nothing so cosmetically useful.

Ianto returned to the body, stroking that troubling spot, murmuring questions that Owen was no longer in a position to answer.

This is Owen, and Owen’s dead.

Or rather…

Jack was a well-intentioned idiot, and suddenly Owen was alive.  Or should that be conscious?  Because alive indicated the presence of certain non-debateable markers, a beating heart falling into the category of bare minimum.

As Jack and Gwen and Toshiko recovered from their tears, and Martha looked on in shock and disapproval, Ianto studied the freshly animated corpse and tried not to allow the inkling he was experiencing to do more than…inkle.  Because it wasn’t possible that some kind of switch had taken place and that Owen’s non-death was about this being non-Owen.  The lack of a scar, and the entire living death scenario, didn’t naturally equate to this not being the Owen Harper.

Ianto’s inkling led to a peculiar brand of hope.  That one day Living Dead Owen would prove to be not Owen at all, and Owen – Living Living Owen – would be reinstated, scar and all.

He kept it to himself, this peculiar hope, and behaved toward Owen as if he were…well…Owen, and waited for the day when the Owen would walk through the cog door, expose the imposter, and take his rightful place.  At which time Ianto would sincerely welcome him back, and probably start wishing he was dead.  Again.

…

Turnmill would change everything.  Throw a nuclear meltdown into the mix and Owen, living or dead, would never walk through the cog door again.

And that would be when Ianto realised his mistake.

With Owen at peace, and Ianto not, Ianto would look to himself and study his entire being for wounds.

Then, only then, would he understand that he’d been looking for scar tissue in entirely the wrong place.