A Life Unexpected (11/15)
Apr. 11th, 2008 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocusChapter Eleven: Trust
Ian drove towards Torchwood 1, his hands gripping the steering wheel grimly. He had only read enough of the file to know that he had to get to Rose and get her out of that building to someplace they could talk freely. Torchwood was no longer safe. If it ever had been. His eyes were drawn to the file sitting on the passenger seat and he wearily forced them back on the road.
He was almost there, just a few blocks more now. Why was his heart beating so fast? Why was he perspiring? His eyes were again drawn to the file like a magnet and he reached out and gripped it with one hand. Couldn’t he just be there? And then he felt that unsettling twisting and pulling and yanking and was enveloped by the purple light and when he opened his eyes again he was standing in front of Rose. He lurched against the desk, reaching one hand out to steady himself.
“Ian?” Rose’s eyes widened. “Ian, what--?”
And it was almost easy. He reached out one hand and gripped hers and said, “Trust.” She nodded, and in a blur of purple they were gone.
When Rose could breathe again she took time to look around the little flat she found herself in. “Would you like to tell me what’s going on?” she asked him calmly as she sat down at his kitchen table. He went to the sink and turned on the tap, placing a glass beneath it. He drank the entire glass of water straight down and refilled it, doing it again.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“But you--.” She stopped. “We--.” Again she stopped, looking for words. “You teleported us.”
“Not, not, not exactly,” he stuttered, clearly shaken. “I,” he took a deep breath and began again, “I opened a gap between here and there and moved us. Here.” He shoved the folder at her. “I didn’t have time to read it all, but enough to know we’re in danger.”
“Us? What do I have to do with this?” Rose asked.
“More than you could ever imagine.”
“You don’t have any idea of what I can imagine,” Rose said. “Start at the beginning.”
“Torchwood has been tracking me since I was six years old,” he said. “From the time of the explosion that killed my mum and dad. Almost every time that I’ve opened a miniature entrance to the Time Vortex, as you called it, they have it listed in that file. Every time Torchwood 4 moved they have it reported that it was in relationship to me. Torchwood 4 was about me. They put me there on purpose to track me.” He rubbed his hand across his face. “I didn’t know it was me doing it until today. But they did. And they didn’t share,” he said bitterly. “And for some reason, proximity to you has made it stronger.”
His eyes held hers as he continued. “They knew it would. They knew it. For some reason you’re a catalyst for what I can do. Only they thought it would increase the time corridors in size, hopefully make them stabilize enough to be useable. That’s not what it did, at least it hasn’t yet. It made spacial movement easier, faster if you were present, or if I was thinking about you when it happened. I don’t know why. What is it about you, Rose? Jack said we were both anomalies in space and time. I don’t know what I am at all. Do you know what you are?”
Rose closed her eyes and in her mind she could see golden light reaching for green, surrounded by purple, swirling in madness, burning, churning, fighting, moving, reaching. Red, blue, forwards, backwards, purple, sideways, green, between, middle, center, golden--. “Rose!” screamed out in her mind across time and space and reality. “Rose! Give her back to me!” She gasped, shutting down the wildness, the pain, the fear, the doubt and feeling one thing slamming into her across eternity: His love. Her Doctor.
She reeled, trying not to fall off the chair. Ian sat down hard in the chair across the table from her clutching at his head. There were tears forming in his eyes. “What was that loss?”
“You heard him?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. He nodded. She stared at him for a long moment and then saw a shadow fall across the window behind him. “We’re not alone,” she said.
“Torchwood’s come looking.” He grabbed up the file, took Rose’s hand and said, “Think of your home.” She did and he leapt. This time when she opened her eyes she was surprised not to be standing in her flat, but on the front lawn of her parent’s house. They both staggered and fell to their knees in the grass.
As soon as they recovered enough to stand, Rose hurried him into the house. “Where’s Mum?” She asked the first servant she saw.
“Kitchen, Miss,” the maid said.
“Thank you.” She dragged Ian behind her.
“Rose! You’re early. Oh, we’re not ready yet. Cook’s making all your favorites and--.” Jackie Tyler broke off, her eyes going to the man standing behind her daughter, still attached to her daughter’s hand. “Who’s this, then?”
Rose took a deep breath, smiled, and tried to speak as normally as possible. “Mum, this is Ian McCullen. He’s my partner.”
“You’re partner! Oh, Rose, how wonderful. I knew you’d find someone some day and isn’t he a handsome one, at that?” Jackie brushed forward brashly and threw her arms around Ian.
“I’m Jackie,” she said giving him a bear hug.
“No, Mum, no. He’s my partner from work,” Rose said looking up at the ceiling and despite herself feeling the urge to laugh like a crazy person.
“Ah, well, then,” Jackie said stepping back and straightening the front of Ian’s suit. “Well, he’s still a handsome one, and you know our Rose is quite the catch--.”
“Mum!” Rose said. She looked at Ian and the expression on his face was priceless. She burst out laughing so hard she doubled over with it, and soon Ian was joining her and even Jackie, who hadn’t really thought it was funny, was caught up in their mirth the way a person sometimes can be when surrounded by it.
“I love you so much, Mum,” Rose told her giving her mother a hug after she had calmed down. “Your spirit is indomitable!”
“I’d have to agree with that,” said Pete Tyler coming into the kitchen and giving Jackie a hug and kiss and then pulling Rose to him and dropping a kiss on her forehead. “Who’s your young man?” he asked.
“Dad, this is my work partner, Ian McCullen,” Rose said, carefully. She didn’t want a repeat of what her mum had just done.
“Ah, yes, heard good things about you,” he said, shaking Ian’s hand. Presumably someone at work had told him good things, because Rose hadn’t really known him long enough to. They made small talk for a bit and then Cook shooed them out of the kitchen.
“Dad, can Ian and I use your den for a bit? We’ve got some paperwork we need to get out of the way before I can really relax and enjoy the weekend.”
Pete nodded and Rose got up and led Ian to the den. They sat down side by side on the leather sofa, spreading the papers out before them. As Rose finished reading a page she would hand it to Ian. It took them an hour to read through all the documentation.
When they had finished Rose sat back and rested her head in her hands, her fingers lacing through her hair. “They don’t know the half of it. I’m not from this universe,” she stated. “I’m from a parallel dimension. Mum, too.”
“If you’d told me that a week ago, I would have thought you were crazy,” Ian said. “Well, not the part about your mum. I can easily believe she's from a parallel dimension.”
Rose snorted. “We got trapped here when the doorway between my Earth and this one was closed. We had to. It was the only way to keep the Cybermen and the Daleks from destroying both worlds. They fell into the Void. I almost fell into the Void. The door shut. Me on this side.”
“And the man who screamed your name across the universe, he’s on the other, isn’t he?” Rose nodded.
“It’s been five years. Five lonely years. But he’s gone. He’s gone. And I go on.”
“Isn’t there a way to open the door again? There must be.”
“No. It would rip a hole in the fabric of space and time. It can’t be done.”
Ian was quiet for a long time. “I can move sideways,” he said. Rose just looked at him. “I can move sideways,” he repeated. “Maybe I can get you back.”
Rose’s heart leapt for just one moment, but then she looked down. “It can’t be done. He told me. There’s not a way. Not anymore.”
“But once there was?”
She nodded. “A long time ago.”
A pounding on the door to the den intruded on their quiet conversation. “Yes?” Rose called out and the door slammed open. Violet and Iris stood in the doorway, Peter behind them. They swarmed in, covering Rose with hugs and kisses. She smiled, unable to be sad around her siblings’ infectious joy.
“Rose’s home!” Violet squealed happily.
Rose laughed, as Iris squirmed between her and Ian, while Violet shoved in between Rose and the couch arm. Peter climbed up into her lap. Ian watched quietly, his heart caught for just one moment by the sight of Rose surrounded by children, looking tenderly from face to face.
‘She should be surrounded by her own children,’ he thought. ‘Children with the man she lost.’ He didn’t know why it was pulling so hard at his heart, but it was. Rose should have been happy, should have been with her great love. Without that, the universe felt wrong to him. But why should it? He was hardly a romantic. He barely knew this woman and yet…it was like he had always known her. And that scream…
He gathered the papers together and put them back in the folder. They were called to dinner and at the table, Rose picked up David from his high chair and swung him up in the air. He squealed in delight. She brought the baby down and hugged him and kissed him before setting him back down.
It was a happy dinner, Jackie babbling along about anything and everything and filling Rose’s heart with so much happiness. She felt peaceful for the first time in a long time, safe from the day’s crazy events. Nothing could shatter how she felt right now. The moment she thought it she knew she should have kept her mental mouth shut.
Special ops burst into the house. Ian reached for her hand. She turned to her parents. “I love you,” she cried out. And she and Ian vanished from their sight, bathing everything around them in a brilliant purple glow.
Ch. 12: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/35285.html
Ian drove towards Torchwood 1, his hands gripping the steering wheel grimly. He had only read enough of the file to know that he had to get to Rose and get her out of that building to someplace they could talk freely. Torchwood was no longer safe. If it ever had been. His eyes were drawn to the file sitting on the passenger seat and he wearily forced them back on the road.
He was almost there, just a few blocks more now. Why was his heart beating so fast? Why was he perspiring? His eyes were again drawn to the file like a magnet and he reached out and gripped it with one hand. Couldn’t he just be there? And then he felt that unsettling twisting and pulling and yanking and was enveloped by the purple light and when he opened his eyes again he was standing in front of Rose. He lurched against the desk, reaching one hand out to steady himself.
“Ian?” Rose’s eyes widened. “Ian, what--?”
And it was almost easy. He reached out one hand and gripped hers and said, “Trust.” She nodded, and in a blur of purple they were gone.
When Rose could breathe again she took time to look around the little flat she found herself in. “Would you like to tell me what’s going on?” she asked him calmly as she sat down at his kitchen table. He went to the sink and turned on the tap, placing a glass beneath it. He drank the entire glass of water straight down and refilled it, doing it again.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“But you--.” She stopped. “We--.” Again she stopped, looking for words. “You teleported us.”
“Not, not, not exactly,” he stuttered, clearly shaken. “I,” he took a deep breath and began again, “I opened a gap between here and there and moved us. Here.” He shoved the folder at her. “I didn’t have time to read it all, but enough to know we’re in danger.”
“Us? What do I have to do with this?” Rose asked.
“More than you could ever imagine.”
“You don’t have any idea of what I can imagine,” Rose said. “Start at the beginning.”
“Torchwood has been tracking me since I was six years old,” he said. “From the time of the explosion that killed my mum and dad. Almost every time that I’ve opened a miniature entrance to the Time Vortex, as you called it, they have it listed in that file. Every time Torchwood 4 moved they have it reported that it was in relationship to me. Torchwood 4 was about me. They put me there on purpose to track me.” He rubbed his hand across his face. “I didn’t know it was me doing it until today. But they did. And they didn’t share,” he said bitterly. “And for some reason, proximity to you has made it stronger.”
His eyes held hers as he continued. “They knew it would. They knew it. For some reason you’re a catalyst for what I can do. Only they thought it would increase the time corridors in size, hopefully make them stabilize enough to be useable. That’s not what it did, at least it hasn’t yet. It made spacial movement easier, faster if you were present, or if I was thinking about you when it happened. I don’t know why. What is it about you, Rose? Jack said we were both anomalies in space and time. I don’t know what I am at all. Do you know what you are?”
Rose closed her eyes and in her mind she could see golden light reaching for green, surrounded by purple, swirling in madness, burning, churning, fighting, moving, reaching. Red, blue, forwards, backwards, purple, sideways, green, between, middle, center, golden--. “Rose!” screamed out in her mind across time and space and reality. “Rose! Give her back to me!” She gasped, shutting down the wildness, the pain, the fear, the doubt and feeling one thing slamming into her across eternity: His love. Her Doctor.
She reeled, trying not to fall off the chair. Ian sat down hard in the chair across the table from her clutching at his head. There were tears forming in his eyes. “What was that loss?”
“You heard him?” Her voice was barely above a whisper. He nodded. She stared at him for a long moment and then saw a shadow fall across the window behind him. “We’re not alone,” she said.
“Torchwood’s come looking.” He grabbed up the file, took Rose’s hand and said, “Think of your home.” She did and he leapt. This time when she opened her eyes she was surprised not to be standing in her flat, but on the front lawn of her parent’s house. They both staggered and fell to their knees in the grass.
As soon as they recovered enough to stand, Rose hurried him into the house. “Where’s Mum?” She asked the first servant she saw.
“Kitchen, Miss,” the maid said.
“Thank you.” She dragged Ian behind her.
“Rose! You’re early. Oh, we’re not ready yet. Cook’s making all your favorites and--.” Jackie Tyler broke off, her eyes going to the man standing behind her daughter, still attached to her daughter’s hand. “Who’s this, then?”
Rose took a deep breath, smiled, and tried to speak as normally as possible. “Mum, this is Ian McCullen. He’s my partner.”
“You’re partner! Oh, Rose, how wonderful. I knew you’d find someone some day and isn’t he a handsome one, at that?” Jackie brushed forward brashly and threw her arms around Ian.
“I’m Jackie,” she said giving him a bear hug.
“No, Mum, no. He’s my partner from work,” Rose said looking up at the ceiling and despite herself feeling the urge to laugh like a crazy person.
“Ah, well, then,” Jackie said stepping back and straightening the front of Ian’s suit. “Well, he’s still a handsome one, and you know our Rose is quite the catch--.”
“Mum!” Rose said. She looked at Ian and the expression on his face was priceless. She burst out laughing so hard she doubled over with it, and soon Ian was joining her and even Jackie, who hadn’t really thought it was funny, was caught up in their mirth the way a person sometimes can be when surrounded by it.
“I love you so much, Mum,” Rose told her giving her mother a hug after she had calmed down. “Your spirit is indomitable!”
“I’d have to agree with that,” said Pete Tyler coming into the kitchen and giving Jackie a hug and kiss and then pulling Rose to him and dropping a kiss on her forehead. “Who’s your young man?” he asked.
“Dad, this is my work partner, Ian McCullen,” Rose said, carefully. She didn’t want a repeat of what her mum had just done.
“Ah, yes, heard good things about you,” he said, shaking Ian’s hand. Presumably someone at work had told him good things, because Rose hadn’t really known him long enough to. They made small talk for a bit and then Cook shooed them out of the kitchen.
“Dad, can Ian and I use your den for a bit? We’ve got some paperwork we need to get out of the way before I can really relax and enjoy the weekend.”
Pete nodded and Rose got up and led Ian to the den. They sat down side by side on the leather sofa, spreading the papers out before them. As Rose finished reading a page she would hand it to Ian. It took them an hour to read through all the documentation.
When they had finished Rose sat back and rested her head in her hands, her fingers lacing through her hair. “They don’t know the half of it. I’m not from this universe,” she stated. “I’m from a parallel dimension. Mum, too.”
“If you’d told me that a week ago, I would have thought you were crazy,” Ian said. “Well, not the part about your mum. I can easily believe she's from a parallel dimension.”
Rose snorted. “We got trapped here when the doorway between my Earth and this one was closed. We had to. It was the only way to keep the Cybermen and the Daleks from destroying both worlds. They fell into the Void. I almost fell into the Void. The door shut. Me on this side.”
“And the man who screamed your name across the universe, he’s on the other, isn’t he?” Rose nodded.
“It’s been five years. Five lonely years. But he’s gone. He’s gone. And I go on.”
“Isn’t there a way to open the door again? There must be.”
“No. It would rip a hole in the fabric of space and time. It can’t be done.”
Ian was quiet for a long time. “I can move sideways,” he said. Rose just looked at him. “I can move sideways,” he repeated. “Maybe I can get you back.”
Rose’s heart leapt for just one moment, but then she looked down. “It can’t be done. He told me. There’s not a way. Not anymore.”
“But once there was?”
She nodded. “A long time ago.”
A pounding on the door to the den intruded on their quiet conversation. “Yes?” Rose called out and the door slammed open. Violet and Iris stood in the doorway, Peter behind them. They swarmed in, covering Rose with hugs and kisses. She smiled, unable to be sad around her siblings’ infectious joy.
“Rose’s home!” Violet squealed happily.
Rose laughed, as Iris squirmed between her and Ian, while Violet shoved in between Rose and the couch arm. Peter climbed up into her lap. Ian watched quietly, his heart caught for just one moment by the sight of Rose surrounded by children, looking tenderly from face to face.
‘She should be surrounded by her own children,’ he thought. ‘Children with the man she lost.’ He didn’t know why it was pulling so hard at his heart, but it was. Rose should have been happy, should have been with her great love. Without that, the universe felt wrong to him. But why should it? He was hardly a romantic. He barely knew this woman and yet…it was like he had always known her. And that scream…
He gathered the papers together and put them back in the folder. They were called to dinner and at the table, Rose picked up David from his high chair and swung him up in the air. He squealed in delight. She brought the baby down and hugged him and kissed him before setting him back down.
It was a happy dinner, Jackie babbling along about anything and everything and filling Rose’s heart with so much happiness. She felt peaceful for the first time in a long time, safe from the day’s crazy events. Nothing could shatter how she felt right now. The moment she thought it she knew she should have kept her mental mouth shut.
Special ops burst into the house. Ian reached for her hand. She turned to her parents. “I love you,” she cried out. And she and Ian vanished from their sight, bathing everything around them in a brilliant purple glow.
Ch. 12: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/35285.html
