A Sky Without Zeppelins: Chapter Forty
Apr. 8th, 2009 05:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)

Banner by Mitashade
Chapter Forty
The alien suddenly looks nervous, as if he has said too much and is now regretting it. One glance at Donna serves to show that this is something not even she knew about and if Jonathon has come to recognize anything, it’s that Donna doesn’t like it when she’s kept in the dark. Her arms are crossed and her eyes are narrowed but she’s holding her tongue. Being kept in the dark by Lumin when she clearly thought she knew all of his secrets is upsetting her. He’s just glad that that upset doesn’t currently seem to be pointed in his direction.
There is silence for a long moment as the three of them absorb what Mr. Lumin has just said. “An adult…of this?” Jonathon asks. He feels completely lost all of a sudden and he’s once again cradling the coral against his body.
The man weighs the information in his head and seems to come to a decision. All signs of doubt and uncertainty vanish. “Just a moment.” He takes a transparent blue orb out of his pocket and throws it up in the air. It explodes and encompasses the four of them in a large bubble. “Privacy shield,” he says as they direct strange looks at him. “It means no one can eavesdrop on this conversation.”
“Paranoid much?” Donna asks him.
“About some things, yes, I am. In answer to your question about my alien…yes. Well, I think so. It’s kind of hard to tell. The one at Illuminate is a behemoth compared to yours, but in his natural, resting state, he looks rather like your little one,” Lumin affirms. “We can take her back to Illuminate and see what his opinion is.”
“What do you mean by his natural, resting state?” Rose asks. “Is he a shape shifter like you?”
Lumin frowns. “He can…look like something other than what he is. It’s a bit like with the biological masking device that Dr. Smith made for me, only on a massive scale.” He turns back to Jonathon. “I think we should introduce the two of them. Why don’t you let me take her to Illuminate?” He reaches out his hand but Jonathon holds onto the coral firmly.
“She’s afraid.”
“What?”
“She’s afraid of you,” Jonathon says. “She wants to stay with me.”
“Is she talking to you?” Rose asks.
“Not…talking, but…she’s inside my head. Not words or pictures, but emotions. She knows me. She’s afraid of being taken from me,” he explains slowly.
“No one is going to take her away from you,” Lumin says soothingly. “Best you come with me anyway. Last time I touched her she made me revert. She’s too young to control herself. Caelum was like that when I first knew him when I was a small child, barely more than a wisp of pale green light and I could only hold corporeal form for an hour or two at a time. He had little control because he was so badly damaged.”
“Caelum?” Rose frowns.
“That’s Latin, isn’t it? For sky?” Jonathon asks.
“It’s his name,” explains Lumin. “Or at least what my father called him. Caelum et Astra.”
“Sky and stars?”
“Why’s he called that?” Rose wants to know.
Lumin shrugs. “My father never said. And Caelum doesn’t answer questions in the most direct fashion.”
“Why not?” asks Donna.
“I’m not sure he can. He’s very…alien.”
Donna snorts. “What? Compared to you?”
Lumin gives her a dark look that makes her shiver just a bit. “Yes.”
“How?” Jonathon asks stroking one finger along the edge of the coral, his thoughts concentrating on soothing the slight upset he found emanating from the baby’s mind. “What exactly is he? What’s she?”
“Exactly? I’m not sure we’ll ever know.”
“Well, tell us what you do know,” says Rose.
“It’s a long story.”
“We have time,” Jonathon replies and gestures to the couch and chairs. They seat themselves around the coffee table and all eyes turn expectantly to Lumin.
“I can tell you that the planet that they come from is near to where mine is. That the creatures that lived there could sort of…well, I guess you’d call it bending space.”
“Bending space?” Rose repeats. “How?”
“I’m not sure how it works. I just know that Caelum has the ability. Or he had it, before he was so badly hurt.” He swallows hard then looks at Donna. “It’s hard to talk about. What happened…it’s all of my childhood nightmares rolled into one. More than nightmares because it was all real. We lost…so much.”
“Maybe you should start at the beginning,” Donna says gently, placing her hand reassuringly on Lumin’s arm. Her anger is gone in the face of his pain. He smiles at her and relaxes as her hand slides down his arm and wraps around his fingers.
“There was a war,” Lumin begins. “A war with the Caligo. And they lost. Caelum’s planet and every creature on it. They lost the war.” His voice is very far away. “In the end everyone in our galaxy lost.” He trails off and his eyes become distant, before he recalls himself. “Caelum’s planet was destroyed. He was the only survivor. I think…I think his people blew it up, rather than let such darkness take it. My father said…he said that Caelum had been off world at the time, but I always had the impression that maybe he’d been responsible for throwing the switch.”
“Why would they all suicide like that?” Jonathon asks as an unfamiliar itching starts in the back of his brain.
“If Caelum’s people had become enslaved, the Caligo would have been able to move anywhere in the universe within a matter of hours. It was a last ditch effort at containment. They had thought the entire fleet had descended on the planet. But they hadn’t. They’d held back one war ship. And with the Caligo, all it takes is one. They reproduce by simple cell division,” explains Lumin.
“Caelum sought refuge with the Lumos. He lived with my people for nearly two hundred years. And during those two hundred years the Caligo hid in the shadows and reproduced and created more war ships. And they tracked Caelum to my home. We fought. We fought so hard. Light against the darkness. But there were so many of them, just…so many.”
“Go on,” Donna encourages softly when he halts in his story-telling.
“It was decided that the ruling family and enough of us to carry on, would try to seek refuge as far away from home as we could get. There was a betrayal at the highest level of government and the royals were destroyed. What was left of my family, my father, my grandparents, and a few others fled at the height of the war with the Caligo, it was Caelum that helped us to reach Earth, though he was wounded as we escaped. My kind can manipulate matter, change forms, transfer ourselves and more solid life forms across short distances in the space of a few seconds. What you call teleporting. Caelum can…” Lumin shrugs, at a loss for words.
“He can what?” Donna prompts.
“Bend space and move quickly through it. We were to travel in his wake and it would pull us along with him. He’s the reason we’re on Earth. He brought us here. All of us. Across the universe in a matter of hours.”
Jonathon frowns. “From what I understand about the theory of teleportation, you exist in a state of nothingness while moving through space. Wouldn’t you have permanently lost cohesion and dissipated after being exposed to that for so long?”
“Some of us did. When Caelum realized what was happening, he took us within him, even though it injured him further to do it during the transfer.”
“Within him? What do you mean?” asks Donna.
“He acted as a…ship. A space ship,” Lumin says. “He pulled us inside him and those that weren’t too badly damaged survived. For a time.” He sighs. “As a child, as the only child, I had been protected by the collective of light, kept to the inside and I was the first put inside. I am the only one who didn’t receive any kind of permanent injury.”
“You told me once that you are the only one of your kind on Earth,” Donna says slowly.
“The only one left now. But in the beginning there were other survivors. When they knew it was their time, they went to Caelum and used what was left of their energy, the pouring out of all they were, to help heal him. My father…he was the last to dissipate and his energy made Caelum almost well. But I fear he never will fully recover. Even when I go, and I’ve got a few centuries left in my lifespan, I’m not even sure my energy will be enough for him to ever be whole again.”
Donna shivers beside him. “You talk of your death so easily.”
“It is a natural cycle. We were not raised to fear death. All energy must change eventually. I’ve been alone, save Caelum, for a long time. If he can make use of mine when I die, it is a good thing. We are family in many ways. And his lifespan is measured in millennia. I will go on in some small part in him,” Lumin says pragmatically.
“What…?” Rose begins and then breaks off as if she feels her question will be too impertinent.
“Yes?” Lumin asks patiently.
“What happened to your planet?” she asks.
“I don’t know. I have no way of knowing. That star it circled still appears in the heavens at night, but at the speed light travels that means nothing. It could be gone. I don’t think I’ll ever know. If Caelum were well he’d be able to take me back there and I could find out. I have come to accept that it will never happen,” he answers with a shrug.
“What about…her?” Jonathon asks. “If she is indeed the same life form, could she take you back there?”
“I’d never ask it. She’s an infant. She might not be able to stand against the darkness of the Caligo. It’s not a risk I’d ever take with her. They want the sort of power one of her kind possesses, and it is too dangerous to put that power within their grasp,” he says.
“But the Caligo were here,” Rose says. “They nearly killed me.”
“And I don’t think they were wiped out. They won’t come after her, will they?” Jonathon asks indicating the baby.
“I doubt they know of her existence. They were tracking Caelum and me. They don’t know he was injured beyond use for their purposes.” He sighs. “We really should take her to him. He can confirm for us what she is and he might be able to give instructions on how to care for her,” Lumin says.
Jonathon turns to Rose. “This isn’t the way I wanted to spend your birthday, Rose,” he says.
“No, I think we need to do this,” she tells him firmly. “Do you have an Illuminate car in the parking garage right now?”
“Yes.”
“We can meet you there if you want to teleport back,” Rose says.
“Not bloody likely,” says Donna. “I’m going with you.”
“Donna, I can absorb more of the—,” Lumin begins but Donna puts up her hand.
“No. It’s not at all like,” her eyes move sideways to glance at Jonathon and Rose and she changes what she was about to say, “what you compared it to.” There are high spots of color on her face. “You go on back. Having me with them will move us all through security faster anyway.”
With a brief nod Lumin squeezes her hand and then stands up. His face fills with concentration and he dissolves into a green field of light energy and then abruptly disappears.
“Whoa,” says Rose. “That’s a bit disconcerting.”
Donna shrugs. “I’ve started getting used to it.”
“What’s it like, teleporting?” Jonathon asks her as he and Rose gather their things together and put on their shoes.
As they move out of the flat and down to the lift, Donna says, “It’s rather like being electrocuted and then being left with an all over feeling of severe sunburn and nausea. It might be faster and more convenient, but it’s not worth the way I still feel an hour later.”
The lift takes them quickly down to the parking garage and the three of them get into Jonathon’s car for the short drive to work. Donna’s pass gets them straight through to the express elevator that goes directly to the 13th floor where Mr. Lumin’s office is located. He’s waiting there for them, back in his human form and looking completely and utterly normal.
He welcomes them into his office and then opens a panel in the wall. Behind it is a secret lift, one that leads directly down to the vault that isn’t located on any set of blueprints filed with the city planning commission. It is the only lift in the building that goes to the vault, the only way in and out, and as with the vault it is completely protected with a perception filter that is more intricate than anything Jonathon has ever seen.
When the door opens directly into Caelum’s living quarters Jonathon has no idea what to expect. What he sees astonishes him. Mr. Lumin had called the creature a behemoth, and it’s true. He’s much larger than Yumi, the whale being studied in the centaur’s language experiments. His body does not quite appear to fill the entire floor, but not for lack of trying.
He is a dull salmon color, and his structure is much like the coral he carries in his pocket, but is more crystalline in nature. Perhaps it is something that comes with age. “He’s huge,” Donna murmurs.
“This isn’t all of him,” explains Lumin. “This is simply what emerges into our dimension. He’s actually quite a bit larger than this…and bigger on the inside.”
“Bigger on the inside? How can he possibly be bigger on the inside?” Donna asks dismissively.
“I don’t know how. But he is.”
Very slowly Jonathon pulls his own piece of coral out of his pocket and with shaking hands holds her up in front of the giant creature. There is a sudden flash of golden light and a feeling of indescribable joy and longing hits him with a force that drops him to his knees. Tears come into his eyes as the little baby girl begins to sing in a voice so powerful it pierces through every barrier he’s ever had between his emotions and the rest of the world.
A deep bass counterpoint fills the cavernous room and what had been a sickly looking color on Caelum a moment before now shoots into a sunrise of flaming oranges and pinks. The little baby, too, is shot through with vibrancy. The sound of their music rises higher and higher and becomes nearly unbearable in its joy and beauty. Lumin loses cohesion and reverts to his energy form. Donna faints and Rose barely manages to support her body to the floor where she is beginning to list sideways herself as the power of the song overwhelms her.
The overriding emotion that floods through Jonathon as the two life forms recognize each other as like species is the cry from Caelum that roughly translates to, “I am not alone.” As it burns through his synapses, he, too, loses consciousness and crumples to the floor.
Surprisingly it is Donna who is the first to recover from the onslaught of emotions. She untangles herself from Rose and checks the girl’s pulse, finding it steady and strong beneath her fingertips. She moves next to Jonathon who is just beginning to stir. When she is sure he is okay, too, she then searches the ceiling for the green fog that is Lumin. He is spread quite thin, thinner than she’s ever seen before, and all of him is out of reach. Still, he is the right shade of green so she figures he is okay, too.
She glances down at the baby cradled carefully against Jonathon and then over at the giant. They are both pulsing with a pale gold light. Their singing has stopped but they both appear to be radiating contentment. Jonathon groans and sits up, the infant slipping to his lap. He puts out a hand to catch her before she falls to the floor.
“What?” he croaks. He clears his throat and tries again. “What happened?”
“We all lost consciousness from the emotional blast, I’d say,” muses Donna.
“Rose!” Jonathon scrambles across the floor, careful not to let the coral slip from his grasp.
“She’s all right,” Donna hastens to reassure him. “She’s got a strong pulse and her breathing is fine. She’s just unconscious.”
He calms as his fingers seek out and find evidence that confirms Donna’s words. “Where’s Lumin?” he asks.
“On the ceiling. It was a bit much for him.” She looks up again and sees that the mass of green energy is beginning to draw itself back together.
Rose groans and opens her eyes. “I think I need a doctor. My head is killing me.”
“I think we could all do with a visit to Dr. Milligan,” Donna agrees.
Lumin’s energy lowers towards the floor and his mass becomes solid as he resumes his human form. “No doubting it now. They are definitely the same species. Caelum says,” he tilts his head, “that she is his hope for a future. He’s never been so clear to me before.” He gestures at the baby. “Does she say anything?”
“Not…not in words,” Jonathon says. “But she feels, I don’t know, right somehow in a way she didn’t before. Maybe she’s too young to communicate properly with me.”
“It’s possible. It’s also possible you’re not enough of a telepath,” Lumin replies. “Is everyone all right?”
“Is Dr. Milligan in today?” Donna asks. Mr. Lumin nods. “Then I think we should go and see her, just to be safe.”
“Can they be separated?” Jonathon asks.
Lumin pauses and then nods. “The link between them has been established. They will never be alone no matter how far apart they are. Caelum says it’s actually better for them not to get too close physically.” He leads the way back to the lift.
Jonathon pockets the coral as they return to Lumin’s office and he sends for Martha Milligan. She carefully checks them over and doses Rose and Donna with paracetamol for the residual headaches, otherwise pronouncing them all with a clean bill of health. When she leaves Lumin turns to Jonathon.
“Do you want to leave the baby here? She’s safe and protected on the grounds of Illuminate,” he says.
“I want her with me. She wants to be with me,” Jonathon insists stubbornly.
Lumin goes to the wall and pulls a painting forward, swinging it open on hinges and presses his thumb print to a small pad on a wall safe. He spins the combination open and then reaches inside. He removes the perception filter and the biological signature masking device that Jonathon had made for him.
“Install these in your flat, in whatever room you put her in. Keep her safe.” Jonathon takes the equipment from him. “Why don’t the two of you head back home? Enjoy the rest of Rose’s birthday and I’ll see you both back here tomorrow for work,” Lumin suggests.
They agree readily enough, Rose letting out a tremendous yawn, and they make their leave. When they arrive at his flat shortly after that, Rose goes straight to bed while Jonathon sets up the perception filter and biological masker in the spare room. He places the baby alien inside the middle of the range on the guest bed and then with a gentle stroke retreats back to his bedroom where he strips off his clothes and crawls beneath the covers, pulling Rose tightly to him and relaxing into sleep.
Ch. 41: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/236711.html
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Date: 2009-04-09 01:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 06:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 01:20 am (UTC)Edit; forgot to say last night. This bit;
“Where’s Lumin?” he asks.
“On the ceiling."
Made me laugh quite a bit. Not sure if it was supposed to.
(I love this).
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Date: 2009-04-09 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 01:21 am (UTC)Aw. I <3 Jon & the baby TARDIS together.
P.S. I owe you a ficlet. Prompt?
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Date: 2009-04-09 06:49 pm (UTC)I haven't actually decided whether or not Caelum can travel through time. It may be a latent ability that hasn't been discovered yet. Or there may be no access to the Time Vortex here. For now all Lumin knows is that he could travel through space, bend space to make short cuts, before he was injured. Time travel may be unique to the baby!TARDIS. But she will have to learn how to travel through space before I even think about introducing the concept of Time Travel.
As for my ficlet, I've been thinking about it. I want Ten or 10.5 and Rose, a chocolate fountain with the Doctor sticking his fingers in and Rose beating him to it and licking them off, and feathers. Pure fluff and some romance for good measure.
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Date: 2009-04-09 01:22 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-04-09 01:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 06:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 01:45 am (UTC)*Hugs*
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Date: 2009-04-09 06:56 pm (UTC)Since I have you here, is there anything specific you want in your Nine/Rose fic besides smut? I'm 3700 words in so far. Oh, and did you just want the one long 15,000 word fic or do you want two 7500 word fics instead? 15,000 words is going to have to have a substantial plot before getting to the smut. Which I have a plot in mind so that's no big deal if I need one.
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Date: 2009-04-09 01:51 am (UTC)That was WILD!
So basically they had their own version of the Time War here? Only against the Caligo instead of the Daleks.
Love the meeting of the baby coral with Caelum. And I agree with Jonathon... I wouldn't want Donna mad at ME either! :-)
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 02:08 am (UTC)Heh. I'm rather curious to see how the relationship between Donna and Lumin is progressing.... Seems to be pretty good so far. =D
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:07 pm (UTC)I tease so much with Donna and Lumin, don't I? Their relationship is progressing quite nicely. They are certainly intimate at this point, but not with his human form. I may have to write a ficlet or something with the progression of their relationship if I have the time. It's hard to take the focus off Rose and Jonathon for long enough to explore their relationship more fully.
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Date: 2009-04-09 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 02:28 am (UTC)I would just like to say that that line almost killed me. It was rather unexpected, and I've been on a sugar rush all day. You do *not* want to know how I reacted.
Very nice. I was attempting to talk to my friend half-way through and I was incoherent. Though my reaction was probably over-exagerrated from the sugar. Anyway, very good. I'm in love with this story. Write more fast!
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 07:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 02:58 am (UTC)*pets baby!TARDIS*
I am on the edge of my seat.
Please miss? May I have some more????
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:10 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-04-09 02:59 am (UTC)Very interesting plot developments just make me want more.
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 03:06 am (UTC)But I have to say, however, OMG! Lumin has a Cone of Silence!! So does that make Jonathan Agent 86, Rose 99, and the baby TARDIS and Caelum Agents 13 and 44? Sorry, I just couldn't help it!!
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:14 pm (UTC)It was certainly an emotional explosion of joy, wasn't it? I don't get the reference to the Cone of Silence. I mean, I get you're comparing the privacy bubble to something but I don't know what. What's the reference?
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Date: 2009-04-09 03:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 03:26 am (UTC)I only hope that one day she can meet her mommy.
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2009-04-09 03:30 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2009-04-09 05:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 05:10 am (UTC)Still, he is the right shade of green so she figures he is okay, too. So Donna!
“I think I need a doctor. My head is killing me.” Awww.
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:27 pm (UTC)As for Rose's statement, her head really was hurting badly after this. She's not used to that kind of emotional explosion in her vicinity. Thought the words would be appropriate.
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Date: 2009-04-09 05:18 am (UTC)Thank you!
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-09 05:48 am (UTC)On a side note, I used this story as an example for my son today as we are covering different types of literary genres and got on the discussion of AU stories in relation to writing a known character in a different set of circumstances while retaining the essence of the character. Needless to say, certain romantic portions were left out of the description of the story, but the sci fi part of this story had him riveted. He especially loved the nod in having Rose create a robotic cat as he is fascinated with both robots and cats, LOL. Sorry for the blithering, but I just wanted you to know that this story was used in a lesson that could have been dry and ordinary but made interesting by discussing the fun and creativity in writing/literature. that's always a great thing in my book, so thanks again for sharing this story.
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:33 pm (UTC)Do you homeschool your son? I love the idea of the non-smutty portions of this story being used as a literature lesson. That is the best compliment you could ever give me.
(no subject)
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Date: 2009-04-09 06:26 am (UTC)Fic authors often take show dialogue and use it in a scene that makes the words more romantic. You did the complete opposite, and it makes me happy. XD
Also, you did a great job creating the reverberations of the Time War within this universe.
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Date: 2009-04-09 07:37 pm (UTC)