A Sky Without Zeppelins: Chapter Fifty

[amberfocus]

amyo67 
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.
A/N:  Amy says this chapter needs a Tissue Warning, too.  Sorry.

Previous Chapters:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/263349.html

Chapter Fifty

Rose squeals as the baby alien suddenly appears on her lap. Rose’s arms instinctively go around the little creature and she cradles the coral close to her body. “Jonathon,” she calls out and her lover looks around from where he is standing watching Donna sleep. He can’t seem to stop himself from checking on her every ten minutes or so. Jonathon catches sight of what she is holding and rushes quickly to her side.

“She’s alive!” His hands move joyously over the scratchy surface and he closes his eyes. “She’s alive and she says Caelum is, too, and that he’s going to be fine given time.” His tone changes as he looks down at her. “Look at you, you’ve grown again.”

“Yes, she has and she’s gotten quite heavy,” Rose says. “Can you lift her off me?” She pats the coral awkwardly. “Not that I’m not pleased it was me you came to.”

“Well, you were the one sitting down. She probably couldn’t be sure I’d catch her,” Jonathon says.

“Probably,” Rose says. “But it’s nice to feel like she favors me, sometimes. I don’t have the connection and I’m left to wonder if she cares about me, too.”

“She does.”

“But I can’t sense that,” Rose says in frustration. “You’re clearly her favorite.” She glances over at Donna who is sleeping under the strength of the sedative Dr. Sasaki gave to her and suddenly feels guilty for being petty. “Sorry, this is stupid. Donna’s lost everything and I’m jealous that your pet alien likes you better than she likes me.”

“She’s not a pet,” he says lifting the baby out of Rose’s lap and carrying it to one of the spare beds in the dormitory. They’ve been put up for the night while the doctor runs their blood work. “She’s a sentient creature who has chosen to link her mind to mine. If you were telepathic she’d be with you, too.” Jonathon sits down on the bed next to the coral and keeps one hand on her surface. “She’d like you to come over here, too. She’s shaking.” Rose glances at the creature and frowns. “On the inside,” he amends.

Rose sits on the other side of the baby and rests her hand against the side. An agreeable hum comes from her. “Did she say what happened to her?” Rose asks.

“I’ll ask her.” He pauses. “I’m getting the impression…” He closes his eyes as he trails off for a moment. “Yes. Seems as if the reason Caelum lost so much of himself was he converted some of his matter to energy. He channeled enough of it into her to make her grow big enough to not be killed by the attack, but not so big that he couldn’t still protect her. The rest of it he used to generate a partial force field around her body. He’s not at full strength due to the old injuries or he would have been able to protect us all. She seems to think he’s jettisoned the part of himself that was preventing his old injuries from healing completely. He’s going to be sick for a while, but when he heals this time, it should be fully. From all his injuries.”

Rose feels a tear fall down her face. “Lumin would have been…” She can’t finish her sentence.

“He’d have been so joyful for Caelum’s recovery,” Jonathon says and she nods. He looks over at Donna and then his hand lifts off the coral and covers hers. “I’m so glad it wasn’t you. I feel horrible for saying it, but Rose…if it’d been you…”

“I know,” she says and more tears escape her eyes. “I don’t think I could have handled losing you when I’ve only just found you and I know that Donna has…that—that she has to go through this and I feel so selfish because, because I don’t and how can I be so happy you’re alive when she’s lost him?”

“Come here,” he says and she gets up and settles into his lap. He cuddles her close and she rests one hand back on the coral. “I know exactly what you’re feeling. But I can’t be upset for being glad you’re alive.” She tilts her head up and he kisses her fiercely. “I won’t be,” he says when he breaks from her.

“Is she calming down at all?” Rose asks.

Jonathon goes quiet for a moment. “She’s fallen asleep.”

“That’s probably a good idea.” He glances at the coral and then at the next bed. “I think she’ll be okay now. We’re close enough to her to move to another bed. There really isn’t room for the three of us in one of these.”

“Or we could just shove two beds together,” Rose says.

Jonathon nods and they get up and push the next bed over beside the first one. One bed is really too small for two people but they don’t care. They’ve been in closer quarters on the train to Scotland and Rose feels like the baby might panic when she wakes up if she’s not within touching distance. Too much was lost tonight and they need to cling to each other to remind themselves that at least they’re both still here and that at least one who could have died did not.

 

Jack Harkness eventually manages to shake off the skull splitting ache in his head that the small piece of the creature gave him before it disappeared. He’s back in his office watching the preliminary scans of Satellite Five as it begins its search of the sky over the destroyed building and glancing over Dr. Sasaki’s medical reports on the three witnesses to the event. There isn’t much on Rose’s report, other than clear evidence she’d once been infected by and cleared of the Caligo contagion. Otherwise she is a healthy, normal human woman of twenty-two.

Jonathon’s report has a lot of interesting anomalies. Dr. Sasaki has run a far more detailed analysis on his blood work and DNA profile. Jack frowns as he reads over the results. There are no traces of antibodies in the man’s system, no vaccine residues, no genetic mutations. The cells show little sign of decay, appearing much like that of an infant and not of a grown man of nearly 35. His immune system appears to be perfect. Far too perfect. And he doesn’t appear to have any junk DNA. At all. That’s not humanly possible, but there is no denying the man is fully human. And yet there it is in black and white, evidence that all is not what it seems.

He sighs and sets it aside, picking up Donna’s report. Aside from an excessive amount of human chorionic gonadatropin hormone running through her system she appears to be in normal good health. He hums at that result. From her employment file that he was able to retrieve from the Illuminate database, he knows that she’s 40 years old. It’s not impossible, but it seems quite unlikely that that hormone would be in her bloodstream for the normal reason. He wonders if Dr. Sasaki ran any further testing on that score and turns the page.

Jack frowns as he reads over the new pages of tests and then very carefully removes the second page of the report. He lights it on fire and lets it burn mostly down until he drops the last bit into his metal rubbish bin. He’ll have to have a word with Dr. Sasaki about keeping this information out of the database. The last thing that poor woman needs after losing her fiancé is to be further poked and prodded or prevented from returning to her normal life. He wonders if the new, highly selective memory inhibitor would be safe to use on the woman if she gives him any difficulty. He can’t simply retcon her and remove all of her memories of the night. She’s the doctor on call for the night and it would involve erasing too much data, altering too many logs, and hacking into the security system. Hopefully she’ll agree to keep this quiet and if not, he’ll have to take a shot with the inhibitor.

He puts the reports into a drawer and locks them securely inside then turns his eyes back to the progress, or lack thereof, that Satellite Five is giving in the search for the dissipated remains of James Lumin. It’s going to take time, he knows, but he’s not yet ready to give up hope. Even as he thinks this he knows he’s going to have to issue a statement of some sort to the company heads. He hates doing that sort of thing, but a man like Lumin cannot just disappear. It would crash the world stock exchange and do serious damage to the global economy. Jack glares at his computer screen for a while before opening a document file and beginning to type.

Once finished with that particular chore he attaches it into an email and shoots it off to Illuminate France, to Lumin’s second in command. She’ll know what to do about London and she’ll send someone immediately to take charge of the company and run it during whatever transition process is necessary. He’s enclosed a cover story, that Lumin has fallen gravely ill and has taken a two month leave to recuperate. That way if Lumin really is dead, it’ll have given the world a chance to have someone else at the helm and realize the massive behemoth of a corporation will not come crashing down without its founder at the helm. He just hopes that Donna Noble will understand his reasons for doing this and not refuse to cooperate.

A small beeping sound distracts him for a moment. It’s coming from the lockbox he keeps in his filing cabinet. He gets to his feet and quickly unlocks the cabinet then retrieves the lockbox, unlocking it as well. He lifts out something he hasn’t used in a very long time, namely because in this century there is no Time Vortex. His people have always known that it was created in the early part of the 21^st century, but not exactly how and certainly not when. They’d sent him back in time to babysit the time period it formed in, but he’d known it would be a one way trip, at least until the Vortex formed. If he is getting a signal from the future it means that something has happened, something has started the formation of the Time Vortex.

A loud alarm issues from his computer and he hastily straps the Vortex manipulator onto his wrist. He hurries back to his desk and glances at the readout from Satellite Five. There is still no sign of the energy signature of the missing James Lumin, but there is something quite out of the ordinary, something he recognizes as soon as he sees it, small as it is. In front of his disbelieving eyes he sees the early stages of a very tiny time singularity. He frowns as his mind races through the possibilities, but all he can come up with is that something that James did in the destruction of the Caligo gave birth to the Time Vortex itself this night. He swallows hard and sits down, a sinking feeling in his guts. The release of that kind of power means that there is no way James Lumin could ever have survived. Still, he continues to scan the skies, something in him refusing out of hand to just give up.

 

The first thing Donna sees when she wakes up the next morning is her hand resting on the pillow in front of her, the emerald ring glinting in the low light of the overhead lamp. For a moment her heart leaps with joy before it crashes and the full memories of the previous day’s events threaten to drown her. She forces the pain back down viciously and sits up abruptly, the effects of the sedative making her a little bit dizzy. She shakes her head, trying to clear it. If she sees that doctor again the woman is not going to be saved from the sharp end of Donna’s tongue.

She glances across the room to where Rose and Jonathon have pushed two beds together and are laying curled up with the little alien that is like Caelum between them. Her smile is bittersweet.  At least she survived. She wonders whether or not Caelum did. She knows how important the creature was to James, his longest running friend, and she hopes that the sacrifice that was made saved all of what her lover must have intended it to save.

Donna thinks briefly of waking them but she’s not ready to face them, not ready to see the looks of pity and regret that she knows will wash over their faces when she does. Instead she steps to the door to the small dormitory and is surprised when it opens. A man looks up at her. “Good morning, Miss Noble.”

“Is there a loo nearby?” she asks. The soldier gestures just down the hall and she follows his vague hand wave. Her face is a mess and she takes care of it, finger combing her hair and taking other necessary actions. When she exits the bathroom the man from the night before is waiting for her. The young soldier must have alerted him.

“Are the others still sleeping?” the man asks. His accent is American, she notes, something that hadn’t made it through her haze of grief the night before. She wonders what he’s doing in such an obviously British facility, apparently rather high up in the chain of command. She nods. “Come with me.”

He leads her down the hall to what is obviously his office. “I’ll send up for some food,” he tells her. She nods without speaking and he motions for her to sit down into a chair. “There are some things you need to know.”

“Who are you?” she asks. “And where am I?”

“My name is Jack Harkness and you are at a processing facility for people who come into contact with alien life forms,” he says.

Donna crosses her arms over her chest and narrows her eyes. “There’s more to it than that.”

“Yes, there is,” he says flatly.

“You already knew what…what James…was,” she says.

“I did. I’ve worked with him off and on for over a decade. He managed to figure out alien tech we couldn’t and turn it to purposes that could benefit the human race. Eventually I put two and two together. He was never a threat. I left him alone,” Jack says. “I’m surprised he told you what he was.”

“James is a very honest man. There is no way he would enter into a relationship with me without telling me the truth first.”

“And you accepted him.”

“I love him,” she says simply.

“How deep does your knowledge go?” he asks.

Donna eyes him shrewdly. “As deep as yours does.”

“Sanctuary?”

“Yes.”

He nods then sits back abruptly in his chair. “I’ve put out a cover story saying Mr. Lumin has fallen ill. We can’t risk the kind of chaos that his presumed death will wreak on the planet’s economy.”

“I told you he’s gone,” she says dully. “Have you found any evidence to indicate otherwise?” Despite herself she can’t stop a tiny spark of hope from rising as she asks.

“No,” he says. “I’m sorry, Miss Noble, but I’ve found evidence to the contrary.”

Her intake of breath is short and sharp and she has to fight to keep the tears from flowing. She already knew this and yet hearing it so flatly stated hurts. “I want to go home,” she says

“I need you to agree to the cover story, Miss Noble.”

“Stop calling me that,” she says in annoyance. “My name is Donna.” She sighs. “I can see the reasoning behind your actions and I won’t go public with his death.” She almost makes it through that sentence without her voice cracking.

He asks her then to relate, as specifically as she can, events of the prior evening. In a lifeless monotone she relays what she remembers, step by step. It’s all so emotionless as she tells it. It’s only the story of her life crumbling to pieces, but if she stops to think about that she’ll never get through it.

“Thank you,” he says when she finishes. “And,” he pauses for a moment, “Donna, there’s something you need to be aware of.”

“What?”

“We did a blood panel on you last night to make sure you weren’t infected by the Caligo,” he begins.

“They didn’t touch me,” she says.

“I know. Your blood is clean, but there is something else that did turn up on the panel. Dr. Sasaki ran further tests to be sure. It’s very, very new but there is no doubt of it. You’re pregnant.”

For once in her life Donna Noble cannot find the words to reply. She sits there like a lemon, staring at Jack with unseeing eyes as his words sink in. Her first thought is that she’s absolutely going to kill James, followed sharply by the blinding pain of her stupidity in thinking that when she’s lost him to death. She closes her eyes, thinks about how he’d promised that though they could have a child together one day if they wanted, he had deactivated his sperm until such time as they were ready to make that decision. She sighs. One of the little buggers had obviously been living off the grid.

Pulling herself together, and just to make sure, she looks up at Jack. “Pardon?”

“You’re pregnant,” he repeats.

“You’re positive?”

“The test was.”

“Damn.” She’s forty years old and she’s put all thought of becoming a mother behind her. Even the vague discussion she’d had with James about the possibility of them being able to have a baby together she hadn’t really taken seriously. It isn’t that she doesn’t necessarily want a child, it is just that under these circumstances, it all feels like it’s too much, like life just has to pile one more thing on her and see if it can make Donna Noble break. She should be happy that she has some small piece of him, but all she can think of is how unfair it is that this child will never know his father. Her father. Whatever the baby turns out to be.

A thought occurs to her and panic rises inside her. “That sedative I was given—.”

“Is perfectly safe. We don’t know what we’re dealing with when we bring people in and sometimes drugs have to be given. We’ve made sure they are harmless to a developing embryo or fetus,” Jack reassures her.

“Where is she?” an angry voice roars from the hallway and then Jonathon is charging into Jack’s office. Donna turns to stare at him in surprise.

“What is wrong with you, space man?” she asks.

“They wouldn’t tell me where you were,” he says and his voice is very small. Rose is a few steps behind him and relief covers her face as Jonathon calms in Donna’s presence.

“You all right?” he asks.

Donna gives him a long look and his expression shutters. “Physically,” she says.

“We’d like to take Donna home now,” Rose says softly.

“You two haven’t been debriefed yet,” Jack reminds them.

“You can’t hold us indefinitely,” Jonathon says.

“Yes, I can. Didn’t Dr. Sasaki tell you that? We have very broad and sweeping jurisdiction over national laws. However, I won’t. It’s clear to me none of you are a risk to national security. Mr. Lumin wouldn’t have had you working for him or told you the truth of his identity if that were a problem. But I do need the details of what happened last night from you. So if you’ll go back to your room and wait—.”

“No,” Jonathon says with an edge of belligerence in his voice. “You want to question us you can bloody well do it with all of us in one room.”

Jack sighs, but it’s clear he’d much rather have cooperative witnesses than follow the rule of interviewing witnesses separately so as not to have them influence each other’s statements. The information comes out in fits and starts but in the end Donna’s pretty sure the man has been given a coherent picture of the night’s events and she’s been assured by Jack that Caelum is resting peacefully in a holding tank recovering from his injuries.

She asks hesitantly about the little one, noticing how the Captain perks up with interest at her comment. Jonathon says that the baby has teleported herself to a safe location and is unharmed. Donna relaxes, her ability to hold herself together starting to slip from her control. Jack releases them with the admonishment to keep to the cover story and he will be in touch. Donna sighs. She hates him just a little bit. She lets the conversation flow over her and when Jonathon and Rose decide to take her back to Jonathon’s flat she allows herself to be led, deciding that conscious decision making is a skill she no longer wishes to execute.

 

Rose nips away to Donna’s flat while Jonathon orders food in and returns quickly with a few essential belongings. They’re not about to let Donna go home by herself and the little alien seems happy enough to give up her spot in the spare room, her tank of nutrients easily moved to the living area. After lunch, Donna sits docilely on the couch, her face blank as she stares off into space.

Rose sets about contacting her stepsister Emma who is immensely relieved to find out that Rose survived the collapse of her apartment building and is able to forward a message to Jackie and Howard on their honeymoon to let them know she’s fine. She calls Sarah next who’s been in a blind panic over Rose’s disappearance. Rebecca Hollister has not checked in and Sarah fears the worst. Rose tries to soothe her, but she’s not particularly sure she can believe any of the words of hope that she offers her friend. She saw the building collapse and she knows anyone who didn’t get out and away in time has no chance of survival.

Rose tries not to think about everything she’s lost in the building’s collapse. It seems petty to think that her entire history was in that building when Donna’s fiancé is dead. She can’t seem to help it though. Almost everything she owned was there. Even the keepsakes that she’d forgotten to retrieve from the boot of Jonathon’s car were crushed beneath the rubble. All she has is the clothing and few items she keeps here at Jonathon’s flat. It’s ironic, considering that she met Jonathon because he had to replace all of his belongings, having lost everything in a fire. Now, it’s almost like coming full circle.

“I’m going to have to find a new place to live,” she says quietly. “Get new ID. Everything.”

“You know you can move in with me,” Jonathon offers.

“I know. And I’ll stay until I can find a place if that’s all right. But my reasons for wanting to live on my own for a bit still stand. I need to know I can make it without depending on you,” she says.

“You can stay with me,” Donna says.

“What?”

“In a couple of days when I go back home, you can come live with me. I’ve got a spare room and I…I don’t want to be alone now, Rose,” she says.

“Okay.”

“I think I’m going to take a nap,” Donna says. She rises abruptly and goes into the spare room. 

Jonathon moves over next to Rose on the couch and pulls her tightly into his body. They cuddle together, both their minds clearly on what they almost lost the night before. They seek solace in each other with soft little strokes and gentle, tiny kisses. It is several minutes before the soft sobs of Donna’s crying infringes on their awareness.

“I’ll go,” Rose says. She untangles herself from the comfort of Jonathon’s arms and heads to the spare bedroom. Donna is in the fetal position in the middle of the large bed, her face turned towards the opposite wall. “Donna?”

There is no coherent response, only a fresh burst of sobbing. Rose immediately crawls on the bed beside Donna and wraps an arm around her. “It’s going to be okay. I promise you, Donna. We’ll make it okay.”

“Oh, Rose. I m-m-miss him so much,” Donna says miserably through her tears. “My-my James is-is g-gone.”

“I know, love. And I’m so sorry.”

“And I-I’m-I’m pr-preg-pregnant,” she stutters.

Rose gasps and her arm tightens around Donna. “You’re not alone. You’ve got us.”

“We’ll help you however we can.” It is Jonathon’s voice coming from the doorway. Rose looks over her shoulder and he approaches them slowly. He eases himself onto the bed in front of Donna, back to her, and pulls her arm around him, holding it fiercely tight to his chest with both arms. It is the simple comfort of being held close that they both offer to Donna, a gift beyond their friendship, a proof that they have become family.

“We’ll take care of you,” Rose promises. They hold her while she cries, and if Donna’s tears are not the only ones that fall that day, and if her grief is not the only grief that fills the room, it is the strongest. It threatens to swallow her whole and all they can do is pull her back from the edge each and every time her heart threatens to hurtle her off it.

Ch. 51:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/270772.html