amberfocus | A Sky Without Zeppelins: Chapter Fifty-Two

Banner by Mitashade

Title: A Sky Without Zeppelins (52/55)
Author: Amberfocus
Genre: romance, action adventure, alternate reality, humor, fluff, smut
Characters/Pairings: Ten2/alt!Rose, alt!Donna Noble/James Lumin, alt!Martha, Ten/Rose (briefly)
Beta:

amyo67,

jeprdyfrndly
Spoilers: If you haven't seen Journey's End
Rating: NC-17 for graphic sex, Please Note Rating Change!
Summary: In a newly sealed off alternate reality, a chameleon arched human Ten meets a very different Rose Tyler after being left behind by his Time Lord self and the Rose he once loved. This is their story.

Chapter Fifty-two

The weekend is a blur of activity, from shagging and shopping for a dress, to Keisha and Mickey’s wedding, to making love afterwards, to shopping for the essentials Rose needed to get on with her life and move to Donna’s flat, to making love again and then moving those essentials. Elliot had been willing to loan them his truck again and they’d been able to move the few small pieces of furniture they’d found in the second hand shops to Rose’s new room. Now as they look around the room there is so little to show of Rose’s personality, of the girl she was before knowing Jonathon, or even of the woman she is now.

“I have a few things for you,” Jonathon says. He’s holding a bag that he’d casually put into the truck when Elliot had first delivered it to them for the day. He pulls out a long tube, opens it, and slides out one of the portraits they’d had done while in Paris.

“I’d forgotten about these,” Rose exclaims taking the one he hands her.

“Me, too. We got back from Paris and I just put it in the wardrobe and forgot about them. One was supposed to go to you, but we never got around to doing anything with them.”

“I’m glad. If these had been lost…” She looks so sad at the prospect that Jonathon pulls her into his arms and gives her a comforting hug. When he lets go of her he digs in the bag and comes up with a container of Blu Tack that they use to adhere the artwork to the wall. He pulls out a small picture frame next and hands it to her. It’s a photo of them kissing in front of the ‘I love you’ wall in Paris.

“But this is your favorite photo,” she protests.

“I had a copy made,” he says. “I had copies made of all the photos we’ve taken together since we met. He pulls out a small album. “It doesn’t replace your childhood ones, I know, but there’s some from your mum’s wedding, so you have a couple of her.”

Rose hugs him tightly then glances quickly through the album before setting it down on her bedside table. “I also…well, maybe it’s presumptuous of me, but I thought…would it be okay if I, if I left some of my things…here? Like, like you’ve got at my flat?” He looks sheepish and incredibly nervous and Rose grins at him.

“Of course you can, you goose. I left an entire shelf for you in the wardrobe and there’s a drawer in the bathroom for you, too,” she assures him.

“Really?”

“You may not be over here as often as I’m over there, but there’ll be times when you stay over. At least I hope so. And – and Donna says she doesn’t mind it as long as we’re not so loud she gets jealous, so,” Rose shrugs, “make yourself at home.”

He grins like a schoolboy and then leaps up to put his two changes of clothing in her wardrobe and then unload his bag of toiletries into the second drawer of her bathroom. She watches him fondly, remembering how exhilarated she’d been the first time she’d brought a bag to unpack in his flat. Rose stands up and she puts her hand into her pocket then crosses to where he’s standing and hands him his own shiny gold key to the front door. “You get one of these, too.”

He looks utterly overwhelmed. “Thank you,” he says softly looking at her with liquid eyes. “When you didn’t want to live with me, I worried, Rose, that maybe you weren’t as serious about me as I am about you. This goes a long way toward making that feeling go away.”

“Don’t be daft,” Rose says. “I’d live with you in a heartbeat if it were just as easy as going by what my heart tells me. I’d – I’d marry you tomorrow if I thought…” She stops herself. “I love you. My future is with you. I’m just…I don’t want to rush. I want to take this one step at a time and I want to completely get to know you. There’s so much that we still don’t know and I want to enjoy it all, being lovers and being on my own. I know it’s got to be so confusing for you, but I want you in my life, I want you close, I’m just…”

“You’ve got things you still need to prove to yourself.” She nods. “I understand. I’ll not push you. It’s just good to know that I have a space here, too.”

She lifts his hand to her chest and places it over her heart. “You do. As long as you have a place here, and you’ll always have a place here, you’ll have a shelf or a drawer or a piece of me.”

“Speaking of a piece of something…” He walks across the room and reaches into his bag again and withdraws something small. He’s not showing it to her, instead going to sit down on the bed. He pats the space beside him and she joins him. “When you were struggling to find jewelry to wear to Keisha and Mickey’s wedding it made me feel bad. I know that you lost everything. Even the jewelry I gave you in Paris. The only things you have are what you were wearing that day, the earrings and the rings you have on. So I’ve thought about it, and I want you to wear this, Rose.”

He presses something cold into her hand and for a moment all she can do is stare at it. “Jonathon, I…” She breaks off and swallows hard as she stares at the shining silver locket. “This was your mother’s locket.”

He nods. “I know.” He takes it back from her and slips it over her head. The chain is a long one and comes to rest right over her heart. She picks it up, looks inside it at the photographs then snaps it shut. Her fingers glide over its surface, becoming familiar with the cold silver. There’s a bump on the back. She’s never really had the chance to examine it fully so she turns it over and looks at it. Embedded in the back is a glittering stone. It’s about two carets in size and it shines brighter than any diamond, even brighter than the rock Howard gave her mum.

“What’s this?” she asks holding it out towards him.

“The diamond from mum’s wedding ring. When we become engaged, I’d like to take this stone and have it made into a ring for you.”

“Oh. It’s beautiful. It shines so brightly. But it’s your good luck charm. And I thought you wanted our daughter to have it someday, if we have one.”

“I do want our daughter to have it. When she’s grown. On her wedding day, maybe, or when she has her first child. But for now I want you to wear it,” he says.

“It’s the most precious thing you have,” she says, her fingers closing tightly around the locket.

“No,” he says. “You are the most precious thing I have. I could have lost you that day. I know that I say I love you every day and I know that I can show you with my body just how much I treasure you, want you, desire every part of you, but…I want something solid, something that is mine that you can hold onto, that you can look at every day and say Jonathon gave me a piece of himself, a piece of his heart, and it’s something you can have, something you can hold onto in case…in case…”

Rose moves into his arms and he holds her so tightly she almost can’t breathe. “I’m not losing you,” she gasps. “You aren’t losing me.” This isn’t about Donna Noble and James Lumin; this is about so much more. This is about him losing everything he’s ever loved, everything that held any kind of place in his heart. This is about needing to hold onto her with a desperation that is fierce and necessary. This is about his need not to be alone ever again.

He shudders in her arms and she realizes that he is crying. His tears are silent but they soak the neck of her shirt. He has spent so much of his life holding back, holding out against his own pain. The fact that he can let it out now, finally, with her, honors her more than any words he can ever say to her. She makes quiet little shushing noises as she rubs his back and strokes his hair. She wonders how much one man can be expected to take.

When his sobbing ceases she isn’t sure how much time has passed. He pulls back from her and she shakily lifts her hands to his face, cradling it and looking him in the eyes. “You’re not losing me. I promise you. Not ever.” She kisses him gently, cementing her promise and as he deepens the kiss her thumbs brush across his temples and he pulls her rather violently inside his mind.

He cries out and she sees fire and ice and rage and the heat at the center of the sun and it threatens to overwhelm all of who she is and she pulls back, but only a little bit, not enough to break contact, and sees a fiercely strange sun in a sky that turns the grass from green to red, sees him standing amidst a forest of oddly silver trees, blood covering his hands as he lifts his head to the heavens and howls into the night. She sees another face superimposed on his before it shifts back to the one she recognizes.

Rose jerks back but doesn’t let go of his head, sees him turning to find her in the midst of the blood and silver light and the strange landscape, sees him seeing her as he never possibly could have looked before, so young and shining in a pure and golden light, her eyes on fire. And as this other her steps forward, her light washes over him, washes the blood from his hands, turns the grass green and the sun in the sky yellow and he no longer looks like some avenging angel or demon or god, but just a man…just her Jonathon, standing there loving her with all that he is.

She reels backwards, the connection broken as her hands come away from his head. She scrambles backwards on the bed, her eyes wide as she looks at him. She tries to push down her own panic. She isn’t afraid, but this is not something…normal. He is a million miles away, still stuck inside whatever he is seeing in his mind. “Jonathon. Jonathon!” she cries out. She shakes him when he doesn’t answer and slowly his eyes focus back on her.

“Rose?” There is pain in his voice and etched deeply into the lines of his face.

“What?” Her voice cracks and her mouth is suddenly dry. She tries again. “What was that?”

He shakes his head seeming to be as uncertain by this turn of events as she is. “It’s my nightmare,” he says. “It’s what I dream sometimes at night…only you’ve never been in it like this before. You’ve never stopped it. Usually we both burn.”

“Stopped what?” she asks.

“I don’t know. I can’t remember. Something so horrible, so wrong and it—it always happens, Rose—always! And whatever it is, whatever it is, you stopped it. Just by being there.” He shakes his head. “Already it’s fading. It never stays with me long and I’ve never had it come to the surface when I’ve been wide awake.”

“Since when do you have nightmares?” she asks.

“I’ve never had one when you’ve stayed over,” he says with a shrug. "At least, not one like that." Already the pain of the waking dream seems to be fading from his mind. “But I’ve had them since the accident. They started getting more frequent again when I moved to London, but after the first couple of weeks they faded. It’s been some time since it’s happened. Losing James Lumin and being helpless to stop it from happening, almost losing you and Donna that night, it must have stirred up a lot in my subconscious mind.”

He’s trying to explain it away as if it doesn’t really bother him but Rose can tell by the haunted look in his eyes that it does. She thinks for a moment. “The accident that your family died in…there was a fire, wasn’t there?”

He nods. “The boat caught fire. Everything, everyone was burning.”

“And you barely escaped with your life. So maybe these dreams are about that fire. You’re afraid that you’ll lose me the same way. Only thing I don’t get is that there were two men there. You were two men, but they were both you. Doesn’t make sense to me,” she tells him.

He touches his face carefully. “I used to look different. Had to have a lot of plastic surgery in the beginning to fix the burns. I was lucky. The hospital I was brought to had a doctor involved in picking candidates for an experimental treatment that they were about to start and I got in on the human trials because they wanted to see how it would work on a brand new burn victim, not just on scar tissue. It was one of Illuminate’s products, or got bought up by them later, anyway. It’s what became Bio-Grow Second Skin. The other man you saw…he’s me.”

“But you look so different.” Rose strokes her hand over the features of his face.

“I was told they did some rebuilding with bone grafts. I don’t really remember on a conscious level what I looked like.”

“Handsome,” Rose says promptly. “I mean, if that man that I saw was you, then handsome. In a totally different way.” She shakes her head. “This telepathy thing is so weird.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to pull you in like that.”

“I don’t mind,” she says and he looks down like he’s ashamed of himself.

“I can’t control it.”

“I don’t mind, Jonathon,” she says taking his hand and tugging until he looks at her again. “I don’t. We’re all kinds of intimate, yeah? This is just another sort. I wish…well, I wish that it could be equal, that I could do it, too. I know I can invite you in and you can take a look ‘round but it’s not quite the same thing, is it? I’m not quite equal to you with it, just like I can’t communicate that way with the little one.”

“It’s not about equality, Rose. It’s just an ability. One that quite frankly scares me sometimes. I don’t want it,” he says.

“But it makes for more intense lovemaking,” she says philosophically. “I mean, I couldn’t handle that all the time but when we do, when you let go and let yourself use it with me, the intimacy astounds me.” She gives him a small smile. “I mean, yeah, that nightmare, I really don’t want to share anymore of those, but the rest? I wouldn’t miss out on this part of you for the world, love.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.”

He raises her hands to his mouth and slowly kisses her fingers one by one. “Show me?” he invites.

Rose grins. “Again?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“All right but if I can’t walk at work tomorrow you’re so explaining it to the new boss!”

Jack Harkness frowns at the results of his readings. So far all he has been able to do is receive a signal from the 51st century. He has not been able to send one back. Every time he tries it bounces right out again, fully stuck in this time period right along with him. It is clear the Time Vortex is still not fully functional. It needs more power if it is to ever get him back home again and be usable for the Time Agency. He wants to go home. He’s so tired of this century, so tired of being the man who has to make the hard decisions for planet Earth. He’s not the highest authority, not quite, but he has that man’s ear and his advice has given him much cause for regret since he arrived here years ago.

Not that he would change things if he could, because the decisions were the right ones, but that doesn’t mean he can’t regret them, can’t ache for outcomes that were right for this planet but not for the individuals who were sacrificed because of it. He just wants to be an ordinary man. He knows that is pretty much impossible. Really, it always was. He knows where he comes from. He knows his beginnings stem from this century, from what is going on right here and right now. From what is infinitesimal, such a tiny, tiny spark of life, but big enough to ignite his family line.

He sighs and reads the report again on Donna Noble. Dr. Sasaki has been dealt with, preferably in the manner he much prefers, with a sizable bribe and a non-disclosure contract; the sort that if terminated means you don’t leave Torchwood alive. It was surprisingly easy to get her agreement, money being about the only thing the woman cares about. He wishes all things were this easy, that he could do more to protect his ancestress than just hide her pregnancy. He rubs at his eyes. He knows better than to interfere any further with the time line than that, especially since the woman’s records were lost to time and he only knows what has been passed down orally through the generations.

Abruptly he draws his mind back to the problem at hand, further opening the Time Vortex so that he can get home. He’s thought about sending through a nuclear warhead. The Institute has a few on hand as well as other powerful weapons of alien design, but he doesn’t think any of those things would be enough. What he really needs is to detonate a warp star just inside the mouth of the Time Vortex. Its power would rip through to the 51^st century, permanently opening the path in both directions.

He might as well ask for the impossible. In his time warp stars were easy enough to come by. They were manufactured on both Delphi and Centrificus and the outermost of the Sirian consortium had been in the midst of haggling on a contract to extend the manufacturer’s territory, but illegal ones had been available for years. It would have cost him three years salary, but he could have done it. Here on 21^st century Earth? All he can hope for is that an alien will fall to Earth and have one, not realize its value, and be persuaded to part with it.

He wonders if poking around through the Torchwood archives will do him any good at all. He’s been there before, but there’s always new artifacts coming in. It’s an outside chance, but it’s better than sitting here and staring at a field report on the status of Donna Noble, Jonathon Smith, and Rose Tyler. He picks up the phone and dials Adeola.

“Yes, Jack?”

“Addie, who’s working in archives today?” he asks.

“Let me check.” He can hear the sound of computer keys clicking and then Addie says, “Suzie Costello.”

“Thank you.” He hangs up the phone. “Damn.” Suzie is going to want to know why he wants into the archives. Lisa Jones would have been easier to work around or distract from his true purpose. She is fully consumed with her seventh month of pregnancy right now and because of this, doesn’t tend to leave her archivist’s station. Suzie is much more diligent at keeping track of things. Still, if there is a warp star in stores, it’s a small enough item to hopefully go missing and not be noticed right away. He puts on his game face and heads off to the cellar.

Suzie is as big a pain as he expects her to be, but Jack is a master at distraction, and it doesn’t hurt that the remaining pieces of the Caligo ship that crashed several months ago have finally been released from quarantine. Once he finally promises to submit to a scan on the way out Suzie leaves him in peace to sift through the most recent acquisitions. Of course it’s a long shot and it fails to pay off, but an idea occurs to him and he makes a left turn deeper into the tech vault. He scans the shelves until he finds what he’s looking for, a compressed energy reader.

With a grin he lifts it from the shelf and pulls the teleport device out of his pocket. He quickly programs it with the coordinates for his office, more specifically under his desk, and attaches the little machine to the slightly larger one. He pushes the green button and it flashes out of existence and hopefully up a few floors to where he can safely retrieve it. With a grin he ambles back out to Suzie and submits to her body scan. Suzie rather sourly lets him go. She’s gotten rather used to busting him for his somewhat sticky fingers.

He hurries back to his office. The CER is slightly damaged but he has the skills to repair the device. He requests a small tech kit be brought up to him and a few moments later Addie is knocking on his door. He pockets the device in his jacket and then says, “Enter.” Addie walks in and puts the tool box down on his desk.

“Here you are, sir,” she says with a slight smile. Addie is never one hundred percent comfortable around him and he doesn’t blame her. She’s been witness to a few of his lesser moments when tough decisions had to be made and he was the only one willing or able to make them.

“Thank you.” She lingers in the doorway a moment and he looks up at her impatiently. “Yes? Was there something else?”

“The alien, sir,” Addie says.

“Which alien? This is a big place, Addie. Lots of aliens in it.”

“The one I helped put medicine on the other night. I was just wondering how he was doing?” she asks.

Jack smiles. “Much improved, actually. I think in another week he can come out of the nutrient tank.”

“Can I…can I see him?” she asks.

Jack frowns. “Why do you want to do that?”

Addie shrugs. “I don’t know. Feel a bit…interested is all. Since I was there the night he came in and all. Mostly all I get to see are the dead and the dying. Sometimes it’s good to see those that survive due to our efforts.”

“If you want to go down and see him, he’s in the large Moruno tank. I can make you a pass.” Addie nods and he holds out his hand. She takes off her Torchwood ID and he slides it into a reader on his desk. He punches in a code that will give the woman temporary access to the holding tank room then waits for the machine to spit out her card. He hands it back to her and she smiles, a little more fully this time.

“Thank you, Captain.”

“Any time, Addie,” he says. When he turns his trademark smile on her she flees the room, pulling the door quickly closed behind her. Safely alone again he opens the tech kit and pulls out the device, detaching it from the teleport. A half an hour’s tinkering has the machine running exactly the way he needs it to. He’s got a definite hit. He signs himself out of Torchwood and goes in search of the compressed energy device. Whether it turns out to be a warp star or something else, it’ll work for his purposes. Now he just has to get his hands on it.

Ch. 53: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/274498.html