Post Pomp (9&10 of 22)

[amberfocus]

New banner courtesy of angelfireeast

Chapter Nine:  Two Hundred Ten Days

For the first week the medic had kept the girl Rose under heavy sedation while he dripped nutrients, anti-toxin for carris poisoning, and pain medication into her veins. Jack had visited her often and though she slept it seemed like she was aware of his presence, shifting her body slightly in his direction whenever he sat in the chair next to her bed in the infirmary.

He’d been part of the team that had recovered her belongings from the Hydroponics chamber earlier that week and he’d brought them to her bedside. Albeit some of it he had put through the wash first. He’d found the diary and read it without guilt, searching for clues to whatever had left her alone on that rusty space bucket.

It had given him a last name to go with her first, Tyler. Rose Tyler. He liked the way it felt in his mouth as he said it. He’d looked through her photo albums as well. There had been two. One of her as a girl and one of her from the last couple of years. He had been startled to find his own face in that one.

Oh, she’d said she knew him and she’d known his name and he’d suspected time travel had been involved, but seeing the evidence of it, himself around thirty-five or forty if he was any judge, had given this all a deeper sense of immediacy. She’d also said he’d died in the future and that made this even more real.

He stared most at the pictures of Rose, though. She’d been so full of life, with her beautiful smile and brilliant brown eyes that sparkled from every photograph. She’d been well-rounded in all the right places, her hair had shone like the sun, and her happiness leapt from the pages.

There were a lot of pictures of him and Rose with another man, an older man with prominent ears and nose, piercing blue eyes and a leather jacket Jack was quite covetous of. It was obvious to him that the girl was in love with this man from the way her eyes looked at him. But one or two of the photos had caught her looking at the older Jack in a very similar way. She’d obviously had feelings for him, too, though not as strong.

For some reason it made him happy that she’d liked him so much, or would like him so much if he thought of it as his own future. He wondered how long it would take before the girl lying in that bed even began to resemble the girl in the photos. His eyes took in her sunken cheeks and the head that the medic had shaved of hair the first day in the infirmary, to remove the infestation of lice. She looked like a survivor from the Trioxilan slave camps.

He reached out and ran his fingers over the soft dirty blond stubble that had started growing back in and she sighed softly at his touch, her eyes fluttering for a moment. Once she had been taken off anti-toxin medication she was given medication to encourage faster regrowth of her hair and nails. Most of her finger and toenails had softened to the point of mush and would have to be completely replaced. She still slept a lot as her body worked on regrowing cells and muscle mass.

“She’s going to live now.” Jack looked up in surprise, frowning at the unfamiliar woman standing before him. He had not heard her come in, not heard any sound at all other than Rose’s shallow breathing. The woman was pretty but not in a way that immediately made him think of taking her to bed. Kind of odd in and of itself, because he could pretty much take anything to bed; man, woman, multi-form...

She was more remote than that, with her tall regal stance, flowing red curls, and brilliant blue eyes that rivaled his own. There was something very other worldly about her, but even other worldly didn’t seem quite right. She smiled at him as if her face was unfamiliar with the motion. “Thank you, Jack Harkness.”

“Harkness? That’s not…how do you know that name?”

The woman shrugged. “It will be yours soon enough.” She came forward and gently stroked Rose’s forehead. Her own eyes closed and a look of tenderness came over her. A beautiful little trill fell from her lips, the closest thing he could think of was singing but it was beyond that even. It was music and language and rhythm and it was saturated in time. Rose moved towards the sound without opening her eyes.

“Who are you?” Jack asked, amazed that he had not yet jumped to his feet and tried to take control of the situation. He felt completely at ease. He knew that often meant trouble but he couldn’t even think in that direction with her. He reached forward and grasped the hand on Rose’s face. “What are you?”

“I am more than you can ever imagine, Jack Harkness. You may call me Cara Mia.”

“My beloved?” Jack said.

“In one of your older languages.” She smiled softly. “I always was fond of Terran Italian.”

“But who are you?” Jack asked again.

“Emergency Hologram Three. I sent the signal.” Rose’s eyes flickered.

“But I can touch you,” he said.

Cara tilted her head. “Yes, you can. I am…a physical manifestation of…” She frowned trying to think of how to explain… “Of myself.”

Rose’s eyes came open as she focused on the words she’d been hearing as Cara’s voice spoke her next words. “I am...”

“You’re the TARDIS,” said Rose, finally understanding. “A piece of her at any rate.”

Cara nodded. “TARDIS?” Asked Jack.

“The ship I travelled on. She’s sentient.”

“There are things you need to know, Rose Tyler. Things I couldn’t tell you before. Being in this form takes massive quantities of energy. That’s why I couldn’t be with you all of the time. I could only be with you when you needed me the most. I would have been with you more if I could have been, but I had to maintain the signal and I had to freeze the hermetic chamber in time.”

“Signal?” Queried Rose.

“I remembered Jack was from the 51st century,” said Cara. “So I sent out a signal, steeped in Vortex energy. I had to broadcast pretty wide. I knew there’d be time agents running about. I knew we could depend on Jack to rescue you.”

“You had an awful lot of faith in me,” said Jack.

“Never doubted you. Never will,” said Cara. Rose nodded in agreement.

“Now that I’ve shut off the signal I can speak more, convey more than the simplest of thoughts. But I am going to lose power pretty soon if I keep up this manifestation so this program will be shutting down. This will be the last time I will see you, Rose. I need to shut down the other program as well.”

“What other program?” Rose asked, confused.

“The one that keeps time frozen in the hermetic chamber. Aren’t you listening?” ahe asked softly.

“Oh.” Rose turned her eyes to Jack. “There’s a body in the chamber that needs to be disposed of properly. My friend died.”  Tears came into her eyes.

“Mickey isn’t dead, Rose,” said Cara. “I stopped him just this side of death. I’m sorry I didn’t have the capacity to convey that to you at the time. I had to keep the other functions up and it took all I had.” Cara turned her eyes to Jack and said, “The boy has tetanus and simaltrux blood poisoning. Can you treat that here?”

Jack nodded. “He’ll need to be treated quickly. Within two hours of my releasing him,” Cara said.

She turned to Rose, and gently wiped away the tears that had fallen from the sick woman’s eyes. “He’s alive?” Rose gasped. “He’s really alive?”

Cara nodded. “I did everything I could for you, Rose. You’re my beloved.”

“But the Doctor--.”

“The Doctor is my soul, Rose. But you are my heart.”

“Do you know…what happened to him?” Rose asked.

Cara’s expression closed off and her eyes would not meet Rose’s. Instead she turned to Jack. “You will find him in Versailles, France in 1758,” she said. “And you will bring him back.”


Chapter Ten:  Two Hundred Twenty-Five Days

Promising Rose that he would go back into the past and find her missing friend was one thing. Getting clearance to do so was turning into nothing but a series of hurdles that fate seemed to be delighting at throwing in his way. Still, he’d been immersing himself in the learning tapes of the selected time period and language in the hopes that he’d get his way. Jack usually did, either through hard work and sheer determination, sleeping with the right person, or if, and he hated this one, all else failed he played the Daddy card.

Most people didn’t know his real last name. Some of the agency knew of his Harkness identity, but most just thought he was simply Jack Ashford, poster boy for the Time Agency. If anyone ever knew he was really Jonathon Ashford Kensington the fourth, who had been placed into hiding at the age of four with his baby brother on a little backwater peninsula to be raised by 3rd cousins while the galactic government had been overthrown and his father deposed for 14 years until he’d regained the throne in a bloodless coup four years ago, they never said.

He didn’t make that connection known to anyone if he could help it. But something about this woman’s plight made him want to go over every head of every bureaucracy in the known galaxy and get the ultimate permission to do what he wanted. And because he’d only done that once since his father returned to power and the result of that had been a mission that resulted in the release of four million people from the Trioxilan slave camps, he doubted his father would deny him his wish.

Still, this was something he wanted to do for Rose and he wanted to do it on his own. He sighed, looked down at the eighth request form he’d filled out that week and rose to put it in the appropriate box for consideration. When he ran the Time Agency, and he had no doubt that one day he would, he promised himself he would listen to lower ranking members. He glanced at his wrist computer and a slow smile came over his face. It was time to get Rose.

He wove through the corridors of the agency ship and arrived one minute early. He paused in the doorway to the infirmary for a moment and his breath caught. Twenty-five days of proper nutrition had done a lot for the girl. Though she still needed to gain a good twenty pounds her face had started to round out again and her skin had pinked up remarkably. Her hair had grown out to about six inches long and it waved softly against her head, giving her the look of an angel.

But that wasn’t what got to him. What got to him was the fact that when she’d heard him in the doorway and turned to see him, her face had broken into a remarkable smile that he felt honored to have been the cause of. “Jack.” She reached a hand in his direction and he came over to her, echoing her smile with one of his own.

“I’d forgotten how potent a Jack Harkness smile could be,” she told him, her lovely amber eyes shining at him.

“About that, Rose. Harkness is kind of an undercover name. Round here I’m known as Jack Ashford. So if people are about, you’d best call me that.”

“Okay.”

“Now, what you’ve been waiting for. It’s time for you to go to see Mickey.” He picked Rose up in his arms, marveling at how light she still felt but relieved she no longer felt like the little bundle of nothing he’d first carried off the Madame de Pompadour.

He carried her down the hall. She was giggling but she didn’t protest. Her bones were still too weak from the osteomalacia she had developed from vitamin D deficiency to walk for more than a few meters at a time. That would change in another ten days and by then her muscular atrophy should have completely reversed. The medication she was being given to regrow her hair and nails was also helping to repair the damaged bone. She would be whole again.

It would be the first time that Rose would see Mickey since Cara had removed him from the strange blue box and disappeared. Cara hadn’t let anyone in to help her; she’d simply pushed the bed with Mickey on it out into the walkway and shut the doors behind her. Jack had enormous curiosity about what was in that box but it hadn’t seemed like the time to push. And when he’d gone back later, the doors had firmly refused to budge.

He set Rose down in a chair next to Mickey’s bed and the girl reached out and clasped her friend’s hand. Mickey’s eyes came open. “Rose,” he said with a croaking voice, his eyes growing huge as he saw her for the first time. “Rose, what happened to you?”

“Got a bit sick myself, Mickey,” Rose said, stroking the man’s face. She gestured to the man beside her. “Jack saved us.”

“Jack?” Mickey’s eyes turned to look at the other man and he gave an odd smile. “Young Jack, isn’t he?”

“A bit,” said Rose. “Still older than we are, though.”

“So you’ll know me, too.”

“Didn’t know you well, though. Only in passing. You were Rose’s friend. We had one little adventure together. How long have I been sick, Rose?” Mickey asked. “The medics won’t give me a straight answer.”

“I don’t remember how long.”

“Two hundred days, give or take a few.” Rose looked up at him in surprise. “I read your diary while you were ill.” He had been hesitant to make the confession but she simply nodded in acceptance.

“I suppose you needed to find out what had happened. That’s really all I wrote it for, that and to stay sane,” Rose said.

“Sane? Rose, what?” Mickey asked.

“I was alone for a long time,” Rose admitted.

“But the Doctor? Why didn’t he help me when he came back? Or is he sick, too?” Mickey asked.

“The Doctor never came back, Mickey,” Rose said, tears coming into her eyes.

“He what?” Mickey roared, or it would have been a roar if he hadn’t still been weak as a kitten, so really it was more of a loud, indignant mew. He sat up abruptly, yanking his IV pole so hard he brought it crashing towards Rose. Jack caught it easily before it hit her and uprighted it quickly, pushing Mickey back down. “That git never came back for you? Me, I can see, but you, Rose? I don’t care what kind of stupid crush he had on that French bint, he loved you! I know he did, because he warned me off you the night he brought me on board. And he didn’t--.”

“Stop it, Mickey!” Rose put her face in her hands and started crying in earnest. Jack knelt down beside her and started stroking her hair.

“Shh, Rose, sweetheart, its okay.” His eyes met Mickey’s and he gave the man a quelling look.

“I’m sorry, Rose,” Mickey said. “I just…I was surprised.” Rose nodded and buried her face in Jack’s uniform shirt. “I’m sorry.”

“I need to take Rose back to bed. The medic said she could only be up for a little bit, but I’ll bring her by for another visit tomorrow,” Jack said.

“Bye, Mickey,” Rose managed to hiccough.

“Bye.” Jack scooped Rose back up into his arms and took her back to the infirmary.

“Do you have to get back to work?” Rose wanted to know.

“Work’s stalled,” Jack said.

“Can you stay with me?” Rose asked softly.

“Part of my job, right now. Not that I wouldn’t be happy to spend time in your company anyway, sweetheart.”

“Would you hold me, Jack?” Rose asked shyly.

“Of course. Shove over.” When she did he climbed onto the bed and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, his other hand going to rest on her waist.

When they’d settled into a comfortable silence Jack brought up the question he really didn’t want to know the answer to. “Do you love him?”

“Who? Mickey? Nah. I mean, yeah, but not like that. Been a long time since Mickey and I were…like that.”

“That’s not who I meant, Rose. This Doctor of yours. Do you love him?” Jack wanted to know.

“Why does it matter?”

“It’ll help with knowing how hard to throttle the guy when I find him.”

“Oh,” said Rose. “Me and the Doctor, we’re hard to describe but…yeah, I think I did.”

“And now?”

“And now I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for leaving me.”

“But do you love him?” Rose let out a soft sigh but she never did answer his question.

7.  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/40764.html