amberfocus | Of the Vortex Born: Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-two: Shifting Emotions

“I go with you?” Jamie asked. She looked at her father then back at her mother. “What do you mean I go with him? Mum? What’s going on?”

“When…when your father goes back…” Rose stopped, swallowed convulsively and blinked back tears. “When he goes back home, you’ll be going with him. I can’t train you to control your power, Jamie. I don’t have a hope of doing it, but the Doctor can.”

“But…Mum, what about you? You’re coming with us. Aren’t you?” She sounded scared. "You have to. I can't lose you."

Rose stared at her daughter’s face, nearly swallowed up in the tangle of her black curls. She reached out and brushed Jamie’s hair away and Jamie caught her wrist, holding it firmly. “Aren’t you?” she repeated in a voice that was less little girl lost and more annoyed teenager.

“Right now we don’t even know if there is a way back to the other universe,” Rose told her daughter. The phone rang and Rose jumped up hastily, relieved to get away from the look in Jamie’s eyes, and bolted towards the living room to answer it.

“Dad?” Jamie said. “Dad, she’s coming with us?”

The Doctor’s voice was low and intense when he answered. “If I have to reorder reality to do it, she’s coming with us,” he said so softly she wasn’t sure she heard him right. Louder, he said, “That’s her decision, Jamie. But I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure she does.”

A look of understanding passed between father and daughter. When Rose returned to the room she said, “Mickey’s awake and he’s asking to see me. Doctor?” she asked hesitantly. “Will you please come with me?”

“What about Jamie?” he said. “She shouldn’t be left alone.”

“I’m here,” said Luke. “And I can call you if you’re needed back here.”

“Jamie, is that okay? Being left with just Luke?” Rose said, her eyes asking a different question silently.

“Luke makes me feel safe,” said Jamie.

“All right.” Both of her parents leaned down and gave her kisses on the forehead and then made their way out of the Tyler quarters.

Luke watched Jamie from his position near the door. He was leaning against the wall, his lanky frame somewhat tense as he looked at her. Jamie bit her lip. “Are you afraid of me now?” she asked him when he didn’t move.

“What?”

“Because I killed that man? Because I have power enough to rip apart a space station?” she worried.

“No, Jamie. I’m not scared of you.” His voice was calm.

“Then why are you so far away?”

Hesitantly he pushed away from the wall and came and sat down in the chair next to the bed. She wanted him to reach out for her hand. She found so much comfort in that, but he didn’t.

“You are afraid of me,” she said.

“No.” She held out her hand and he just stared at it.

“You are.” She pulled it back, tears coming into her eyes.

“No, I’m not. Jamie, I don’t care about that. You killed that man in self-defense. He shot at Gwen and he shot at you and he would have probably killed everyone in that room if you hadn’t stopped him. So you went a little overboard afterwards, but who can blame you?” Jamie snorted. The words spilled out of Luke now that he’d begun. “No one’s told you I suppose, but the only person who died was that man. Everyone else made it out either in life pods or on the shuttles. So aside from self-defense, what you did was really just destruction of property and since you were illegally detained, Torchwood isn’t pressing charges.”

“Then if you’re not afraid of me why won’t you…” She stopped and turned her face towards the opposite wall. “I thought you liked me.”

“I do,” he said.

“You haven’t touched me since I woke up.” Her voice broke.

“But Jamie, you were…” He stopped. “What that man did…” He couldn’t continue.

“And you don’t want to touch me anymore? Because,” her voice shook, “because he did?”

“No, Jamie, no! But…I didn’t think you’d want me to. I thought it might frighten you. What you went through. Jamie, I…I’m so sorry.” A tear fell free from one of his eyes as he looked at her.

“Luke,” she said. “I really don’t…the memory is…it’s like it isn’t mine. It’s mixed up in the drug they gave me and a haze of nightmares and the surge of power that washed out everything else. It scares me…a little, because I know it could come back completely and then… I don’t want to think about that. But I do know that what I said to my parents is true. You make me feel safe. And I want to hold onto you.”

Luke stood up and said, “Scoot then.” Jamie moved over and he lay down next to her, opening his arms. She moved into them and felt the soothing presence of Luke’s essence enfolding her at the same time.

“Do you think my dad will be able to get us back to the right universe?” Jamie asked him.

“I think so. He’s brilliant. He needs to fix the TARDIS first, though. What with everything that’s happened, it still needs about two weeks worth of repairs,” Luke said.

“Maybe Mairi can help him. She’s good at mechanical things. It’s almost instinctive with her,” Jamie said.

“I’m glad you’ll be coming back to the other universe,” Luke said.

“Yeah?” she replied.

“Yeah. Because it means that after all this is over, I’ll have a chance to see you again. I didn’t like the idea of leaving you behind here.”

“Really?”

“Really.” For a moment his arms tightened around her.

“I didn’t really like the idea of you going away, either,” she told him suddenly feeling quite shy. Luke reached up and wiped one of her curls out his mouth and smiled. He was starting to believe that Jamie just might have made it out of this okay.

“Hello, Mickey,” Rose said. She approached the bed warily, looking down into a face that she barely recognized but mostly because she barely recognized the man wearing it anymore. The Doctor was waiting just outside the open door. He would be able to hear everything and come in if she needed him.

Mickey raised tired eyes to her face. “It feels like I haven’t seen you in decades,” he said slowly.

Rose sat down heavily in a chair, making sure she was out of his reach. “I need to know what happened, Mickey,” she said turning on the brusque professional manner that she’d developed to use on uncooperative aliens and subordinates. “When did the spritwing possess you?”

“It was a long time ago.” He coughed and reached for the cup of water sitting on the table next to the bed. He took a careful sip then set it down again.

“When?”

“The rage let it in,” he said. “After…after I couldn’t get you to see that we should be back together.”

“Is that why you…” Rose stopped.

“Is that why I made you feel you had no choice, but to sleep with me? Is that why I intimidated and bullied you into having sex that night? Is that what you’re asking, Rose?” he wanted to know.

“I guess I am, yeah.”

“No. It would be so easy for me to blame it on the spritwing, to say that it was the reason that I treated you like that, but it wasn’t. I wanted what I wanted that night, Rose. I did what it took to get it. And I’m ashamed to say I would have done more if you hadn’t just…let me.” He looked down. “I was still angry when I left you but I knew it was over. Figured you weren’t going to forgive me for what I’d just done and I was having all kinds of negative thoughts.”

He took in a deep breath. “The spritwings are attracted by negative emotions. The more distressed the better. They can’t get in unless your emotions are in violent chaos. I was mad at you and I was even madder at myself. That’s never the kind of man I wanted to be, Rose. Not ever. I was supposed to love you and I’d done that to you.”

He sighed. “It took me that night before I even made it home. I was an easy target. It fed off my violent emotions, and it took control pretty quickly. When I found out you were pregnant I thought that maybe we could work things out but when it was made clear to me that you were carrying a Time Lord child I knew there was never ever going to be a chance of us sorting past my idiocy. And then it began to work on my impulse control. Fired up my rage. Made me angry enough to take the baby for Torchwood when he was born. And the spritwing gorged on the chaos that ensued.”

Mickey looked at the wall. “That’s what they do. We found it out with Yvonne Hartman. They push you to do more and more despicable acts and they feed on the resulting carnage of human pain and despair and destruction. That’s all they exist for. They don’t want to take over the planet or the government. We’re just a feeding ground. They can’t kill us because they feed on the emotional energy. But they can make us do things that make us wish we were dead.”

Mickey fell quiet and the silence stretched for a long time. Finally Mickey met her eyes again. “I’m sorry, Rose.”

Rose nodded her head, recognizing the man who had once been her friend for the first time. “I know you are,” she said. She stood up. “They’re going to be keeping you in custody for a long time, Mickey. They have to be sure.”

Rose moved towards the door. His voice stopped her. “Rose, do you think you can ever forgive me?”

“Mickey, I can forgive you for what you did to me that night. I can even forgive you for kidnapping Landon. But my little girl was raped and she killed a man. And I can’t forgive you for that. I’m not sure any mother could.” Head held high, Rose walked from the room and straight into the Doctor’s arms.

“Take me home,” she said.