Of the Vortex Born: Chapter Thirty-Five

[amberfocus]

Title: Of the Vortex Born
Author: amberfocus
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose, Luke Smith/Jamie Tyler, Mairi Tyler, Landon Tyler, Jake Symmonds, Gwen Cooper/Owen Harper, Mickey Smith, Brigadier-General John Cassidien, Nikolas Onishenko, Viktor Onishenko, Private Daniels, Sharri Moreno Jackie Tyler/Pete Tyler
Genre: Action/adventure, romance, angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, alternate universe, family!fic
Rating: Adult for a couple of chapters, but mostly Teen
Betas: amyo67, draconin
Summary: A slightly different reunion fic. Forty-nine year old single mother Rose Tyler is working for U.N.I.T. and living on the moon in the alternate universe with her three children when a U.F.O. crash lands there. A very familiar U.F.O.
A/N:This is a post-Doomsday Rose/Ten reunion fic, mostly written pre-season four of Doctor Who, pre-season two of Torchwood, and pre-season two of The Sarah Jane Adventures, so I basically will continue to ignore any canon that exists after that for the sake of finally finishing this fic, 'kay? Thanks. And we will all just pretend the last update to this story was not in December of 2008, y/y?

WARNING: Please be warned that this fic contains discussion of a non-graphic, off screen rape and flashbacks of it. If that sort of thing triggers you it might be best not to read this fic. You have been warned.


Chapter Thirty-Five: Waiting Period

The troop carrier had been on high alert for six hours watching as the strange Ganyite formation had shuffled itself back and forth across a small, ten foot long area. It seemed to be doing no more than that and made no aggressive moves towards the vehicle. Jake had gone to get a few hours of sleep while Landon stayed in the gunnery chair. Half of the soldiers had followed Jake’s lead, while the remainder on duty were eating and talking softly, but the air of readiness never left them.

“Sergeant Tyler, sir, you should try to get some sleep,” one of the privates told him. “I can take a turn manning weapons and have someone wake you if something happens.”

“I don’t need sleep yet,” he said.

“Well, food then,” said the man.

“Private…” He paused, trying to retrieve the man’s name from his memory. The man had assistant medic bars, so he had to be either Jefferson or Daniels, that explained why the man was confident enough to try pressuring him to sleep or eat.

“Daniels, sir.”

“I don’t want to leave my post just yet.”

“At least let me bring you something. There’s a poultry-based root vegetable stew and some of that bread made from the new hybrid Moon flour. I can bring you a plate,” he said.

“I’d appreciate it.”

When the man returned with the food he realized just how hungry he was, his stomach growling at the delicious smells emanating from the tray in front of him. One of the things his mother had always chided him for was getting so involved in something he forgot to eat. He consumed the meal quickly, his eyes never leaving the viewer. All remained quiet and when Daniels returned later for the plate he let the man take the gunnery chair while he used the loo and walked through the carrier, stretching his legs and taking in the general mood of the crew.

When Jake came back on duty with the other officers who had slept, he made sure those who had remained awake went down for a few hours. He didn’t try to make Landon sleep, knowing it wasn’t necessary yet for another half day. The creature continued to shuffle back and forth, lulling them into complacency. No one wanted to make any aggressive moves now that things were calm, yet until the thing left the Moon they would have to remain on alert. There had been far too much loss of life and structural damage done to the colonies to stand down until they were one hundred percent sure that the threat was over.




Rose had done her best to supervise the move of her family from the shattered remains of Moon Base One, to Colony Two, where her mother and step-father lived, but with Jake out on a mission, she was acting head of UNIT pro-tem. All she wanted to do was curl up with her fiancé and hold her damaged daughter close, but work held its demands out to her.

Rose had argued with Jake that her head wasn’t in the game and he had said that even with Rose half paying attention she could still run things better than anyone else. Thirty years of working together had told him that. Rose had insisted on hand-picking a team of the remaining few UNIT soldiers with admin skills and tactical training to back her up and so far the wheels seemed to be running just fine with them stepping into her office laboratory to update her as needed. Viktor Onishenko, Nikolas’ older brother, would take over for her when she got too tired to function, which hopefully would not be for a while yet.

As each hour passed she was gladder than ever that she had made the decision to leave if they could return to the original universe. The weight of the Moon’s population hanging over her was getting to be a burden she no longer wanted to bear, despite her fear that undefended this world might have trouble sustaining itself.

She hadn’t seen Jackie yet and hadn’t even thought about her much since the Doctor had arrived, but she knew she was going to have to. Her mother didn’t know the Doctor was back. She didn’t even know that Rose had regenerated and she certainly didn’t know what Jamie had been through. She’d gotten an invitation to come by for dinner, but she didn’t really want to deal with what that would mean. Security would be atrocious to get through at the presidential suite. She wished, not for the first time, that Pete hadn’t decided running for President of the Moon Colonies would be a fun thing to do with his retirement. Although she was proud of him, and had used his position to her advantage on numerous occasions, it was at times like this that she wished he had lost.

Rose knew she couldn’t keep avoiding the messages her mother had been sending since the first attack. She’d answered one, tersely, early on to say they were all okay, but if she kept ignoring them now that they were in the same colony she knew that her mother would show up on her doorstep or in her office and she’d do it with full security detail. Jackie already suspected something was really wrong as Rose rarely went more than a week without some kind of contact.

“Rose, you need to eat,” said the Doctor.

“Where did you come from?” she asked absently.

“Little planet known as Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous,” he quipped. She rolled her eyes at him and he offered her a sandwich.

“How’s Jamie?” she asked.

“Physically fine. Still mentally gone,” he told her. “Luke’s with her. They’re in the TARDIS. I feel safer with them there until we know for sure the attacks are over. I wish I could make Mairi stay in there, too.”

“She has a job to do. And anyway, she wouldn’t. Even Jamie wouldn’t if she was her old self again.”

“Mairi’s stubborn.”

“She takes after her father,” Rose said.

“I’m sure she gets some of it from you, too,” he said mildly. He wrapped his arms around her and she leaned back into him. He kissed her temple and she sighed.

“Mom wants to see me,” she said.

“Well, then you better go see her or she’ll end up seeking you out and then it’ll be on her terms, not yours.”

“I haven’t told her anything.”

“About us?”

“That and that I’ve changed. That Jamie’s changed. That Jamie was in an escape pod, was rescued, was captured, was raped. Any of it,” she said.

“Why not?” the Doctor asked curiously.

“It’ll make things…real, I suppose,” said Rose running her hand through her curls.

“It is real.”

“I know that!” Rose snapped. At his hurt look she modulated her tone. “I’m sorry. I know that it’s real. I just…she’s going to look at me like I’m a stranger, the same way she did when I told her I was pregnant and the baby was yours. She’s had to deal with some pretty unbelievable things these last few decades. How do I tell her that I’ve regenerated?”

“She had to know it might be a possibility.”

“I don’t think she ever thought it would happen. Or if it did, she’d be long dead and wouldn’t have to deal with it.”

“How old is Jackie now?” he asked.

“Almost 70, though she’s convinced everyone she’s not a day over 65,” Rose said with a wry grin. “Most people are too polite to call the First Lady a liar, but Jacqueline Tyler’s birth is a matter of public record. I don’t know who she thinks she’s fooling.”

“How does she explain having a forty-nine-year-old daughter?”

“Oh, I’m supposedly the love child of Pete and her that she got knocked up with at 15 and had at 16 and they gave me up for adoption. I mean how else do you explain a fully grown daughter showing up on the scene like I did? We had to concoct some sort of story, so that was it.”

“But anyone checking into her records could see you were born when she was 21.”

“I know. It all falls apart. I think…” She paused and gulped. “I think…Mickey…may have wiped some files at some point. Before things went bad.” She gave a little shake.

“How did things ever get so bad? You didn’t say. Was he possessed by the sprit wing when he—?”

“No,” Rose said shortly. “He just thought we’d be able to be a couple again with you out of the way and I didn’t and things just got really bad. I don’t want to discuss it.”

“Okay,” said the Doctor softly. “You going to eat that.” He loosened one hand from his hold on her and gestured at the sandwich he’d set down on the lab table.

“Yeah, I promise I’ll eat. You should really get back to the kids.” She turned around in his arms. “I don’t like leaving Jamie for too long without an adult right now.”

“All right. Let me know if anything changes.” He kissed her slowly but thoroughly and then left her to her work.



Jamie and Luke had progressed from board games and were playing a rousing game of anti-gravity hockey with far more gymnastics than the rules indicated were necessary, when the first sharp, shooting pain through her head sent Jamie to the floor. At first Luke thought she had simply lost control of the anti-gravity thruster but when she clutched at her head and slowly rocked back and forth he knew it was more serious than that.

He turned off his machine and gravity reasserted itself on his body. He dropped the foot to the ground, landing with a solid thud. “Jamie?” he asked.

“It hurts, Luke,’ she said.

“What’s wrong?”

“My head. I don’t know. It just feels like someone jabbed my brain with a red hot screwdriver,” she said.

“Does it feel like it’s still in there?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you want me to go get your Dad?” he asked, his hands on his super phone.

“No. I don’t think I should be left alone,” she said, then with a complete lack of grace she scrambled to her knees, hunched forward and started vomitting all over the floor.

Luke didn’t say a word about it, just reached out and held back her hair until she had finished. She pulled away from him. “I am so sorry.”

“Jamie, it’s okay.”

“I feel better now,” she said sheepishly.

He helped her to her feet. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up,” he said. “Then maybe you should lay down for a while.” A loud sucking noise started and the TARDIS quickly took care of the mess on the floor.

“Thank you,” Jamie said patting the wall.

Luke put his arm around her shoulders, helped her to the nearest loo, and found her a face flannel. She took it from him, washed her face, then took the cup he’d found and rinsed her mouth. When she was a bit steadier, they made the walk back to her assigned bedroom, near the console room so the doctor could keep an eye on her while doing the necessary repairs the TARDIS would need to leave this universe. She lay down on the bed and he sat in the chair beside it.

“Are you all right now?”

“I think so. You better call Dad now.”

He pulled out his super phone and rang the Doctor, who said he was on the way back to the ship anyway.

“Why are you so good to me, Luke?” she asked him.

“I like you.”

“You liked who I was,” she corrected, emphasizing the last syllable.

“No,” he said. “I had fallen in love with who you were. But I like you now, too. This you. Confused, scared, unsure—.”

“Puking,” she interrupted.

“Well, I could do without the puking, Jamie," he admitted with a wry smile, "but it’s not going to make me turn away from you.”

“You’re loyal,” she said.

“To a fault, maybe.”

“I like it. I can see why she cared for you.”

“Why do you call her she? She’s you, even if you can’t remember it,” he said.

“I…feel like that Jamie was another person entirely. I don’t feel like she could possibly have been me.”

“But she was. And she still might come back.”

“But what if I don’t want her to?”

“You don’t want to remember who you were?”

“What if it erased who I am now?” she asked him.

“I don’t think it works like that.”

“I don’t know.” She paused and picked at the blanket under her hand. “Luke, is there something they’re not telling me?” Luke didn’t answer her at first but he felt his face freeze into position. “Luke?”

“Not telling you about what?”

“When I rescued Mum and Dad. When I used the power. Was there more to it than that?” she asked.

He relaxed. “No, there wasn’t. You used the power and it overwhelmed you just like it did the first time.” Luke’s eyes went wide as he realized he might have said too much.

“The first time? I used that power once before and then I did it again?”

“Yes,” he admitted.

“And what happened the first time?”

“He’s not allowed to tell you.” Luke whirled around at the quiet voice of the Doctor in the doorway behind him.

Ch. 36: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/539653.html