Leap of Faith: Chapter Thirty-One

[amberfocus]

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Title: Leap of Faith (30/?)
Author: amberfocus
Characters/Pairings: John Smith (alt!Nine)/Rose Tyler, Toshiko Sato, Jake Simmonds, Mickey Smith, Ianto Jones, Jackie Tyler/Pete Tyler, Tony Tyler, various original characters
Genre: Romance, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe
Rating: Adult
Betas: amyo67, jeprdyfrndly
Summary: Hiding from the Family of Blood, the alt!Ninth Doctor turns himself into John Smith via the chameleon arch and with his companion Toshiko Sato, takes a job at Torchwood. He clashes with everyone he meets and Rose Tyler, the beautiful young director of Torchwood Field Operative Training and the daughter of his boss, is no exception. AU after season 2.
A/N:  For those of you who have been asking after me, but don't necessarily read my journal for more than fic, I am nine days post op and doing fairly well. The outcome was the best possible one, though I will require more surgery to finish repairing things in November. I am just getting back my writing groove and I thank you much for your patience with this story.  With all my stories, really.

Previous Chapters: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/327895.html

Chapter Thirty-One: Tyler, Smith, and Jones

“She’s breathing normally,” said Owen who had pushed his way between John and Rose and put his head down to Rose’s face to hear her breathing. He felt for the pulse in her neck. “Slow but steady pulse,” he said. He examined her arm. “Not sure I’ve seen a weapon before that does this,” he added. “Good thing she got the cauterizing spray on it when she did, though.”

“Why is she unconscious?” John asked.

“I’d say blood loss. That’s a lot of blood on the floor. She may need a transfusion. I’ve got synth blood in the car.”

“Let’s get her out of here,” John said. Together they pulled Rose up and John put her over his shoulder.

“We’re going to have a long talk about me always having to carry you off the battlefield when this is over, Rose,” John said as they made their way down the corridor.

The loud blast of machinery starting up rang through the air. The floor, walls and ceiling began vibrating at a crazy rate. “What the hell is that?” Owen shouted.

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it.” He picked up the pace and the three of them headed for the doors to the outside. The noise increased as they burst into the parking area. John kept going until they were on the far side of it.

Owen opened the car and pulled out a bag that held synth blood and tubing. “Any sign of the others?” Owen asked as John put Rose down on the ground. He took off his jacket and balled it up, putting it under her head.

John glanced around and then back at the building. “No.” He turned back to Rose and saw that Owen had already got the transfusion started.

“Here, hold this,” said Owen handing John the bag of synth blood. “Keep it above her.” He started to walk away.

John caught his arm. “Wait, where are you going?”

“We got your girl out,” Owen said, “but we didn’t get mine.”

“Yours?” His eyes widened. “You and Tosh?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ve had two dates. But…yeah, maybe.” He shrugged self-deprecatingly. “She seems to like me.”

“What do I do if this isn’t enough blood?” John asked.

“It should be. It’s a double bag. And I’ll be back soon.” Owen took off for the clinic before John could ask him any more questions.

He turned his attention back to Rose, who made a soft whimper. Her eyes began to flutter. “Rose?” He knelt on the ground beside her, keeping the synth blood bag high.

She made a louder sound and then her eyes blinked open. “John?”

“I’m here.” He grabbed the hand on her uninjured side.

“I hurt.”

“I imagine.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“You were shot. Owen will be back in a minute. He can give you something for the pain. He went to check on the others.”

Rose coughed. “I think Gabriel is dead,” she said. She coughed again. “I liked him.” She closed her eyes.

“Rose?”

“Just tired, Doctor,” she said. “So tired.”

John frowned. “Dr. Harper isn’t here,” he told her.

Rose’s eye blinked open again. “Wha’?” she said.

“You were talking to Dr. Harper, but he isn’t here.”

For a moment her eyes clouded and if he wasn’t mistaken, panic crossed her face. It was so fleeting he thought he might have imagined it, if he hadn’t learned to read every expression on her face. Her eyes closed again and when she didn’t respond to her name he put a hand on her chest to make sure it was still rising and falling.

He heard a noise behind him and turned to see Mickey dragging Gabriel, holding him under his arms. He pulled him over to where Rose lay and put him down. “Is he alive?” John asked.

“Yeah, no thanks to them. His picos saved him, but he’s out cold. They shut down his awareness. How’s Rose?” Mickey asked.

“Going in and out. She was shot, too. She said she’s hurting, but Owen went back in to look for Tosh,” John said sounding worried.

“I can give her a shot,” said Mickey. “I’m trained as a field medical technician. Can’t do much more than start IVs, stich people up, and give shots, but I can do that. Do you know where Owen keeps his bag?”

“On the floor in the back,” said John. The noise from the building had suddenly become so loud that Mickey had to cup a hand around his ear.

“Say again?”

“On the floor in the back,” John yelled.

Mickey found the bag and pawed through the contents. “Oporium,” he said holding up the vial. Quickly he drew up five ccs. He tore open an alcohol wipe and rubbed it against Rose’s neck. He injected it into her just as Gabriel began to stir.

John glanced at the man and saw that his eyes were opening. “Rose?” was his first word.

“Alive,” said Mickey. “Safe, right here.”

Gabe turned his head. “Toshiko?” he said.

“Owen went in to find her,” said John.

The noise from the building became a shrill whine. “What the hell is that?” asked John.

“I think it’s the engines. We saw massive engines in one part of the building. They seemed to stretch the whole length,” Gabe said. He made an attempt to sit up, but lay back down. “Not done cooking yet,” he said. He glanced down at his abdomen, where the laser shot had hit him on the right side.

“Do you want some Oporium?” Mickey asked.

“Can’t,” said Gabriel. “It interferes with my picos, keeps them from doing what they need to do. Besides, they dampen most of the pain. But it doesn’t stop things like dizziness.”

“Why would they have engines?” asked John, his mind still on the building.

Gabe said, “We weren’t sure. But they had people in suspended animation. And several…clones of themselves. There were thousands of tanks, I think.”

“That sounds like they’re overloading,” Mickey said. He flicked his ear piece. “Toshiko?” He must have gotten an answer because he said, “Did Owen find you? Good. Listen, you need to get out of the building now.”

A moment later he said, “I don’t care about the files, get out now. That’s an order.”

Mickey winced and then flicked off his ear piece. “She hacked their database. She’s almost finished uploading it to the Torchwood mainframe. Stubborn woman doesn’t want to leave until she gets it all.”

Mickey stood up. “I’m going in.” He was halfway to the building when a violent blue flash of electricity enveloped the building, filling the vicinity with the stink of ozone, and letting off a sonic boom that rent the air. When he was able to see again the entire building had risen up into the sky and with another flare of energy and a second, even louder sonic boom, it disappeared with Tosh and Owen still inside.

“Tosh!” John yelled. “Tosh!” He felt something turning over in his stomach, a slow churning distress. “Tosh!” he called again uselessly.

“They’re gone, John,” Mickey said softly. He put a comforting hand on John’s shoulder but the other man shrugged it off.

“What was that thing?” Gabe asked. “It looked like…”

“The building must have been a spaceship or capable of teleporting or something,” Mickey said slowly.

“All those engines,” Gabe said shaking his head and regretting it as it rested against concrete.

“Tosh,” John said again, softly. He closed his eyes. His best friend. And how was Rose going to take the news? Tosh was just…gone. He reached down for Rose’s hand.

Mickey hit his ear piece and called headquarters. “Delilah? Did radar pick up anything moving from this location?” he asked.

He paused to listen. “John, Gabe, Rose and I all got out, but Tosh and Owen were still inside.” He scratched his head. “Rose was hurt pretty bad. We’re giving her synth blood. Gabe was shot, too, but his picos are doing their job.” He paused again. “She has? Oh, that’s great news. I didn’t know what we would do with Owen MIA.” He turned away from the others and glanced back at the building. “Yeah, yeah, we will. As soon as we can move her,” he said. He said good-bye then and turned off the ear piece.

“She wants us back at headquarters, ASAP. The British Space Agency, Roscosmos, and NASA have all reported picking up something blasting off from here. So has the Multinational Space Station. The president is demanding an explanation to what’s going on.”

“Does she need more blood?” John asked. “This one’s empty.”

“No, I don’t think so. Her color is much better. See how her face is pinking up? It was ashen when I got here,” he said.

Gabe tried sitting up again and when he didn’t get dizzy he stood up slowly. Mickey, on the other hand, got down on the ground to remove the needle from Rose’s arm. He held cotton gauze to it for a minute before taping a fresh piece into place.

“Okay, let’s get her into the SUV,” Mickey said. “Someone can come back for the other cars later.”

Gently John and Gabe lifted Rose up off the ground. Mickey opened the vehicle’s hatch then went forward to the back seat to put part of the split seat down flat. John slid into the backseat while Mickey helped Gabe ease Rose into the car. They got her settled with her head on the folded down seat and her body in the section usually reserved for weapons. John put his jacket back under her head and the two other men got in the front seat. They started the car and headed back for Torchwood Cardiff.

John stroked Rose’s hair back from her face and held tightly to her hand. About halfway to headquarters Rose began to stir, her body twitching. Her eyes blinked open and she stared up at John. “Hey, there, sleepy-head,” he said gently.

She gave him a weak smile. “’lo, John,” she said her voice tripping over the first syllable.

“Hello. We’re on our way back to Torchwood.”

“Okay,” she said. Her eyes closed again.

“Rose?” he said a bit desperately.

Her eyes opened again. “I’m just tired,” she said. Her eyes blinked shut once more.

“She’ll be okay,” Mickey said glancing at John in the rearview mirror. “Rose is as tough as they come.”

“Thanks, Mick,” Rose murmured. She sighed and shifted trying to get more comfortable. She cried out when she bumped her bad shoulder.

“Can we give her more Oporium?” John asked.

“I gave her the maximum dosage,” Mickey said. “I wouldn’t want to give her more without a doctor’s blessing.”

“Owen’s…not here,” said John.

“Yes, but we can ask the new one. That specialist UNIT was trying to get out of South America for so long? She’s arrived. She can tend to Rose and see whether or not she needs more medicine,” Mickey said.

“I’d let her have some of my picos, but I’m not sure she’s coherent enough to make that kind of decision. They’d alter her for life,” Gabe said. “And quite frankly, it freaked me the hell out the first time they healed me.”

“Best not to,” said Mickey. “If there’s one thing Rose can’t stand it’s people making her decisions for her.”

They pulled into the Torchwood car park and John helped Rose to sit up. Carefully they maneuvered the woman out of the vehicle, and she stood on wobbly legs between Mickey and John, while Gabe got out and moved under his own power as if he had never been injured. It was a makeshift situation. The minute his picos knew he was in a safe place they would shut down his systems to minimal levels to complete the necessary healing.

“Can you walk?” asked John. “We can go and get the gurney if you need it.”

“I think so.” Rose glanced at Gabe. “I thought they’d killed you. You’re okay?”

“Getting there.” He flipped up his shirt to show a flat belly and six-pack abs. Pink scar tissue was already forming over the area where he’d been shot. “My picos have their benefits.”

“I’m jealous,” Rose said. “I’ll have to heal the old-fashioned way.”

“Don’t be. The crash is going to be bad when it hits. Warn the new doc that it’s a healing coma.”

Rose leaned heavily against John as the group began moving towards Torchwood proper. It was slow going. Mickey went on ahead while Gabe remained with John and Rose to lend a hand if needed. Delilah and the new doctor met them at the secret entrance behind the desk at the travel agency, a gurney between them. Rose didn’t even protest, settling gratefully onto it. They whisked Rose away to the lift, leaving John and Gabe to take the stairs.

The new doctor was shockingly pretty, her skin a warm brown and her eyes very dark and sparkling. She was a tiny thing, maybe an inch or two over five feet tall, with delicate features and her long brown hair had been straightened, lightly curled, and then pulled back into a cascading ponytail behind her head. She wore a nondescript white lab coat, but the flash of a turquoise jumper could be seen underneath.

“Hello,” said Rose after staring in a slightly loopy manner at her for a minute. “I’m Rose Tyler.” She offered a wan smile.

“Dr. Martha Jones,” the woman said. “Pleased to meet you.” Her smile was somewhat blinding and Rose thought again what a gorgeous woman she was.

“Wish it was under better circumstances,” Rose said.

“That’s seldom the case in my line of work,” Dr. Jones said.

“You’re very pretty,” she said.

Dr. Jones smiled at her. “Thank you. How many drugs has she had?” She looked at Delilah.

“Um, Mickey knows. Where is he?”

“The ceiling is spinning.”

“What’d they give you?” the doctor asked her.

“Dunno,” said Rose.

“I need to know what she had before I can treat her further.”

“I’ll find Mickey.”

The lift opened with a ding and the two women maneuvered the gurney out into the hallway and down into the exam room where all of the medical equipment was kept. Delilah helped Rose take her vest off while Dr. Jones searched through the cabinets to see what sort of medicine was available to her.

John arrived a moment later, halting in the doorway. “You can’t be here,” said Dr. Jones. “I’m going to have to cut her shirt off and you’ll need to respect her privacy.”

“It’s okay,” said Rose. “He’s mine.”

Dr. Jones gave her a startled look then glanced at Delilah to confirm. “They’re very much together.”

“All right then,” said Dr. Jones. She picked up a pair of shears and began cutting Rose’s shirt away from the injured shoulder. Quite a bit of it had been burned away by the laser shot and then by the cauterizing agent Rose had used to stop the bleeding. The bra had been burned through and peeled away easily from that side of her body.

“Oh, that’s nasty,” said Dr. Jones. “I do wish they’d stop giving that cauterizing agent out. UNIT’s developed a much better one. It doesn’t leave such a mess.”

“It worked,” said Rose.

“Yes, but there will be scarring.” She glanced over at John. “What kind of medication was she given?”

“Oporium,” said John. “Mickey said he gave her the maximum dosage.”

“How long ago?” said Dr. Jones.

“I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly looking at my watch.”

“Does anyone know?”

“Maybe Mickey.”

“I’ll go find him,” said Delilah and left the room.

Dr. Jones placed a blanket over Rose. “I’ll need to pick the material out of the wound, but I can give her something for the pain as soon as I know how long that drug has been in her system.”

A moment later Delilah returned. “It was about an hour ago.”

“All right.” Martha went back to the cabinets and rummaged through some vials until she found what she was looking for.

“Where is Mickey?” John asked.

“Talking to Rose’s mother,” Delilah said.

“Oh.” He hadn’t thought of that and he hoped it didn’t mean the Tyler family descending en masse from London. “What are you giving her?” John asked.

“Morphium. She’s not allergic, is she?”

“Not that I’m aware,” said John.

“There’s nothing in her records to indicate a drug allergy,” said Delilah.

“Good.” Dr. Jones got out a syringe and a wipe. Carefully she cleaned a spot on Rose’s neck and then drew up 10 ccs of the drug and injected it into her patient. “She’ll bruise,” Dr. Jones told John. “Morphium does that.” Already they could see the nasty blue bruising welling up around the injection site and spreading across Rose’s throat.

Rose’s eyes rolled back in her head and she lost consciousness. “I gave her a good dose. She’ll be out for a bit.” She pulled back the blanket and began picking the fabric out of Rose’s wound with tweezers. As she did she glanced at Delilah. “Why don’t you call the scientific advisor at UNIT and ask him to prepare healing salve 872? It will heal her much faster and minimize the scarring. Send one of the men to go and pick it up.”

Again Delilah left the room to go and do what Dr. Jones had asked.

“She is going to be okay, isn’t she, Dr. Jones?” John asked.

“Please, call me Martha. And yes. I’d hazard that whatever the weapon was that was used on her, it hadn’t had time to fully charge.”

“Gabe was shot first,” John said. “Then Rose.”

“She’s lucky. We can reverse the damage to the shoulder muscles and it didn’t go deep enough to destroy bone. It’ll take at least a week for it all to knit back together assuming she responds well to the salve.”

Twenty minutes later Martha had picked the last of the fabric from the wound and treated Rose with ointment to keep the tissue supple until the salve could be applied. She then drew up another syringe and injected it into Rose’s good arm.

“What was that?” John asked.

“It was a megadose of gangrene blockers. Any time this much tissue dies it’s a risk. We’ll start her on antibacterials when she wakes up. This sort of injury is prone to not only gangrene but other forms of infection if not treated immediately. It’ll prevent wound sepsis.”

“But she’ll be fine?”

Martha nodded. “I’ve never seen anyone not respond favorably to this course of treatment. Between what I’ve given her and that salve she’ll come through this with flying colors.” She pulled a blanket up to cover Rose’s chest.

A loud crash diverted their attention from Rose. John hurried out into the next room and found Gabe collapsed on the floor. He turned him over and checked his pulse. It was slow, but steady. He hauled Gabe into the room and dumped him unceremoniously onto the spare bed.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing. This is Gabe. He’s the one with the picogenes in his body. He said something about a healing coma once they figured he was safe and to make sure the new doctor knew not to interfere with it.”

“All right.” She moved toward him anyway.

“What are you doing?”

“Well, we can at least make him comfortable.” She removed the man’s shoes and socks and belt. “Help me get his jacket off.”

John pulled him into a sitting position and Martha removed the jacket. He let the man back down onto the bed and the doctor covered him with another blanket.

“I’m going to hook Rose up to an IV line now and put her on Ringer’s Lactate. Dr. Harper got enough blood synth into her to stabilize her, but I’d feel better about replacing her blood volume if we got a couple bags into her since no one is really sure how much she lost. You…might want to clean up.”

John looked down at his clothes realizing that his shirt was stiff with hardened blood. Rose’s blood. For a moment he felt his face drain of color and he swallowed convulsively. “Hey, hey, are you all right? You weren’t hurt?” Martha asked.

“No,” he said. “No, I’m fine. Just realizing…She’s…she could have died.”

“But she didn’t. Go shower, change, grab some food and then come back. I won’t leave her,” Martha said gently turning him about and giving him a gentle shove out of the infirmary. With one last glance back at his girlfriend he sighed, let his shoulders sag, and probably for the first time in his life, certainly for the first time in recent memory, went to do as he was told.



By the time John had showered and changed he had determined that he wanted to waste no more time with Rose. This was the second time he could have lost her. Well, the first time she hadn’t been his to lose, but still. He knew it was soon, ridiculously early, but he was going to ask her if they could move in together. Considering they hadn’t even slept together it might be considered a risky move for him to make, but he didn’t care about that. He just wanted her with him every moment that she could be. He’d lost Tosh, maybe permanently—his mind tried to dodge that thought—and he’d never even told her how much he depended on her friendship. He would not lose Rose, too.

With a bit of disgust he searched through his filthy clothes, removing his wallet and phone and tucking them into the baggy pockets of one of the Torchwood recovery suits. It was too big for him and yet at the same time not quite long enough in the leg, but it would do until he could get back to the manor house and change. He balled up his clothes and shoved them into a bag and then headed back to the infirmary.

His phone rang and he stopped to look at it. He didn’t recognize the number but it was a London area code and some small instinct in him told him to answer it since it was his work mobile and not his personal one. “Hello.”

“Is this John Smith?” The voice that came over the air waves was scared and far less shrill than the last time he’d heard it.

“Hello, Mrs. Tyler,” he said.

“Pete gave me your number. How is…how’s Rose?” she asked him.

“She’s going to be all right.”

“Mickey said she was okay, but I got the feeling he was holding something back. He always has tried to protect me from the truth.” He recognized the fear in the woman’s voice. He’d felt it himself seeing her lying there. “I figured you’d tell me the truth."

He leaned against the wall. A month ago he never thought he’d feel empathy for Jackie bloody Tyler. “There’s a doctor here, a specialist, looking after her. I believe her when she says Rose will be okay.”

“Will…will you have her call me when she’s able? We haven’t talked since…since I came into your lab and we had that…argument,” Mrs. Tyler said. “She wouldn’t take my calls.”

“Can you blame her?” There was a heavy sigh on the other end of the line. “I’ll tell her you’d like her to call you. I can’t promise that she will.”

“You’d tell me if it was bad enough for me to come?”

“I’d go and get you myself,” he said, his tone revealing both his displeasure at the idea of having to and his sincerity.

“You care for her very much, don’t you?” the woman asked him.

“I love her,” he said simply.

“Please, John…don’t break her heart.”

“Not if I can ever help it,” he said. “I need to get back to her.”

“Yes, of course. Thank you for taking my call.”

It was his turn to sigh. “You’re her mother.”

“I know, but…just…take care of her.”

“I will.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.” He hung up and stared at the mobile. That had been an awkward, but he supposed necessary, phone call. He shoved the thing in his pocket and quickly made his way back to the infirmary.

When he entered the room Rose was awake, sitting propped up against a couple of pillows. Gabe was still out cold. He crossed quickly to the chair that had been put beside her bed in his absence. Martha sat on the other side of the bed in a matching chair and had been talking quietly to her patient.

“You’re awake,” he said sitting down beside her and pulling her hand into his lap, holding it fiercely.

“I’ll just check on Gabe and then give you two some privacy.”

As soon as she left the room John’s eyes snapped back to Rose’s face. “You going to make it?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She gave him a big smile. “I’m going to hurt a lot for a while and be riding a desk again for a couple weeks, but I’ll recover.”

“Can I hug you?” he asked.

“Carefully,” she said. He reached over and grasped her to him. His arms went around her and he held her to him. Her arms tightened reflexively around him.

“I thought…there for a while I thought I was going to lose you.”

“I’m not so easy to lose,” she told him.  "I turn up like a bad penny."

“Don’t joke about it,” he said. He let her go and sat back. “I can’t lose you. I’ve lost too much. My family, my home, so many people. Not you.” He felt moisture in his eyes and blinked furiously, swallowing hard against the lump in his throat.

Rose tugged him to her, putting one hand to the back of his neck and bringing his head down. She kissed him with everything she had and he felt his heart speed to twice its normal rate before she released him.

“John, I’m okay.”

“I know.” He ran his hand over his face. “But…we may have lost Tosh and Owen.”

Rose looked stricken. John explained what had happened. “So it might have just teleported somewhere else?”

“Or gone off planet.”

“So they’re not dead.”

“But we may never see them again. If that spaceship or whatever the hell it was headed for home…”

“No. There were too many empty tanks. They hadn’t fulfilled their mission. They’re still around. Maybe they jumped to another place on the planet, but I can’t believe they’d go home without filling every one of those tanks,” Rose said.

“You think so? None of the space agencies have seen it reenter the Earth’s atmosphere.”

“So maybe it time-slipped.”

John frowned. “That’s not possible.”

“Yes, it is,” Rose said stubbornly. “Or it could be on the dark side of the moon or the bottom of the ocean. There’s lots of places it could be where the BSA wouldn’t see it. Teleportation just doesn’t work the same way as conventional forms of space travel. We’ll see them again.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“I am.”

“Okay you two,” Martha said coming back into the room. “Rose needs to rest.”

“I’m not leaving her.”

“I didn’t say you had to,” the doctor said mildly. “If you very gently turn onto your good side, there’s enough room there for John to climb in behind you. Just try not to move her arm.”

Martha checked Rose’s vitals one more time and then John did as suggested, wrapping himself carefully around Rose. Martha checked on Gabe and then turned out the light. “Rest. I’ll be right outside if you need anything.” And with that she excused herself and left them alone.

Ch. 32:Ch. 32: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/490340.html