A Sky Without Zeppelins (55/55)--Complete

[amberfocus]

                                                                                                                         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.
A/N:  Final chapter, my lovelies.  It has a little bit of everything and the promised happy ending.  This universe will be taking a short break, but I will be back with a sequel in a bit of time.  It will be called A Sky Without Stars.  Thank you to everyone who has stuck with me this last year as I have written this story and given me so much support with your beautiful comments.  I've loved hearing from so many of you, and if you've never commented before I'd certainly love to hear from you.  It's okay if you're shy.  You are just as welcome here as anyone else, and I promise I don't bite!

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

Chapter Fifty-Five

 

Martha and Tom have safely made it off the floor and are heading down to the infirmary for the gurney and needed medical supplies. Rose and Donna are still in the vault with James and Caelum. Left standing guard with the doorway to James’ office cracked just enough to look out, Jonathon sees Mademoiselle Pascal heading down the hallway in a pink silk dressing gown and high-heeled, pink feathered slippers which cannot be comfortable. He notes that her toenails, like her fingernails, are painted a brilliant hot pink. So are her lips. He’s entirely convinced that she has an unnatural attachment to the color.

“Hello? Is someone there?” she asks. He steps back away from the door but if he dares to close it now she’ll see the movement. He’s pretty sure she’s going to notice the fact that the door is ajar four inches. She is not a woman who overlooks the details. He contemplates hiding behind the big desk but discards the idea. He can talk his way out of the situation if he has to. He has every right to be in James’ office. Well, he had every right. It’s hers for the interim and she might consider it off limits. He just doesn’t know her well enough to know.

“Hello?” Her French accent is heavy and the word comes out sounding more like allo. He steps away from the door, stands at the bookcase and begins scanning the titles. He’s just put his hands on a big volume about the possibility of time travel through wormholes when the door opens the rest of the way. He pulls it out and turns to look at the door as if he’s just noticed it.

“Docteur Smith? Didn’t you hear me calling? What are you doing here? How did you get in? I locked this room up,” she says.

“I have a key. Mr. Lumin’s given me permission to borrow anything from his personal library whenever I feel like it,” he lies smoothly.

She walks over to the desk and perches there, crossing one long leg over the other, the dressing gown falling away to her upper thigh as she does so. He snaps his eyes up to her face and is very careful not to look anywhere else. “I’m sorry. Did I wake you?” he asks.

“Mmm,” she says and he can’t tell if she means yes or no. “I think, perhaps, this is an excuse for something else, is it not?”

“What?”

Her dressing gown falls slightly open as she leans back onto the desk. His eyes skitter quickly away and to her face again and there is a knowing look covering it. “Oh, I think we both know why you are here, this late at night, in my office. And it has nothing to do with,” she hops off the desk and plucks the book from his hands, “wormhole physics.” She tosses the book behind her on the desk with a heavy thump and runs one hand up his arm.

He backs up so quickly he rams into the bookcase. He winces. He’s going to have a bruise in the morning between his shoulder blades. She follows him, her body pressing tightly into his and her hand snaking up to the back of his neck. “I think you are here because you want me,” she purrs. Her mouth comes closer to his.

“No,” he says softly. “No,” he repeats more firmly, this time sounding like he means it. “I most certainly am not here for that. You know that Rose and I are together.”

“Some men, they, how you say?” Her mind struggles through the English language until she falls on the right word. “Stray. Did you come here, Docteur Smith…Jonathon…to stray with me?”

“No!” This time his voice is sharp, edged, and full of refusal. “Rose and I are getting married. I am and always will be faithful to the woman who will be my wife.” He breaks away from her and crosses the room. “I don’t want anyone else, no matter how—.”

“Beautiful?” Renee fills in.

“Persistent,” he corrects, “she is.”

“Then leave,” she says. He glances towards the door and swallows hard. He doesn’t move. “I think I know when a man is lying to me. When he simply needs gentle,” she loosens the tie on her gown, “convincing.”

“I love Rose,” he says biting each word out one by one. “And no amount of convincing is going to change that. But you were right about one thing. I am lying to you. Just not for the reasons you think.” He nods to the open door and she turns to see Martha and Tom standing there with the medical supplies and the gurney.

“What’s all this?” she asks. Her expression is upset, her annoyance at the interruption of her attempted seduction obvious. She ties her gown firmly shut and crosses her arms over her chest.

“We can’t tell you,” Jonathon says.

“I am in charge of this company while Monsieur Lumin is ill,” she says.

“Yes, but I am in charge of Mr. Lumin’s health,” Martha says firmly. “And right now your presence here is interfering with his treatment. So I need to ask you to leave the room and I cannot tell you why.”

“I thought Monsieur Lumin was in the infirmary,” Renee replies in a dubious voice.

“He got it into his head to follow up on an experiment,” Jonathon says quickly. “It backfired, he was injured, and we need to get him back there.”

“Please, stand aside and let me do my job,” Martha orders.

Renee’s eyes narrow. “I will come with you.”

“I’m sorry,” Martha says, “but you do not have the appropriate clearance level for the area we’re going to.”

“I have clearance for every level! I am in charge of this company!” she snaps in outrage.

“Not level gamma epsilon alpha,” Martha says.

“And you do?” Renee asks, so surprised she forgets to sneer.

Martha pulls out a small wallet and flashes it open. At first it looks blank, but as Jonathon watches words seem to form on the paper. Renee takes the billfold and studies it a moment then hands it back to Martha. “Very well.”

“And I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Top secret, you know.”

“What and they both have clearance, too?” she asks. Jonathon and Tom nod solemnly. Jonathon hopes she won’t ask him for some kind of proof. Renee holds her gaze for one long moment before nodding abruptly and marching from the room with a little, “Humph.”

As soon as Tom closes the door behind her they rush to the lift. “I hope we didn’t lose too much time,” Martha frets. The doors open immediately, the lift still on their floor and Tom manhandles the gurney in first, the two others squeezing in around it and him. The ride down is silent and heavy.

As the doors slide open Donna greets them with a, “What took you so long?”

They ignore her and Martha secures Lumin’s head and neck, then as carefully as possible the two men lift Lumin’s body onto the gurney. With a reassuring pat to the side of Caelum’s tank and a brief assurance that they’ll take care of the creature’s friend from Martha, she, Tom, Donna and Lumin ride up in the lift and send it back down.

When they are alone in the lift Jonathon turns to Rose and says, “Renee Pascal walked in on me standing guard. She…Rose, she hit on me.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Rose says clearly unconcerned. She slips her hand into his and leans her head against his shoulder. “Look at you, you’re gorgeous.”

“But doesn’t that bother you? Worry you?” he asks.

“Should it?” she wants to know. She pulls back and turns to look at him.

“No,” he says. “I just thought you’d be…”

“Jealous?” she asks with a soft smile.

“Well…yeah.”

“Do you want me to be?” she asks. “Donna snogged you tonight. Do I need to be worried about that?” she asks with a giggle.

“Rose be serious. Renee meant business,” he says.

She studies him searchingly and then hugs him. “I’m sure she did. She wants you. That’s been obvious to me since the day she met you. But she doesn’t understand three things.”

“What’s that then?” he wants to know.

“That you are a faithful man. That we are madly in love with each other. And that you are fully, and irrevocably, mine.” She pulls his head down and kisses him, her mouth soft but possessive against his lips. He backs her into the wall, taking the kiss to the next level, searching her mouth and running his hands freely up and down her sides, thumbs grazing her breasts, fingers sliding over the soft curve of her bum.

When the lift dings open he nearly curses it because Rose pulls away from him. “Someone missed me,” she says a little breathlessly.

“Aye,” he agrees. He sighs and takes her hand as they exit the lift. “I really don’t like this business about sleeping in separate places at night. That’s all.”

“It won’t be forever. You know that.”

“I do.” He opens the door to the corridor and looks quickly in both directions. There is no sign of Renee so he tugs Rose out into the hallway and they quickly catch the lift down to the infirmary. Martha looks up from where she is monitoring Lumin’s vitals.

“Donna and I are going to stay with him tonight,” she says. “He’s unconscious and likely to remain so for a while. Tom can give you a lift home.” She reaches her hand into her pocket and tosses the van keys to her husband.

“Is he going to be okay?” Rose asks. Every eye in the room turns on Martha.

“It’s…it’s just too soon to tell,” she says finally. “It’s going to be a long night.”



A long night is followed by two long months with Donna taking some of her vacation time to hold as near a constant vigil as she can at James’ bedside. She barely ever comes home and Rose hardly feels like she’s living with a roommate at all. She misses Donna being there a lot more than she should, since they never really got to live together at all.

James has been very slowly healing and though the pale green fog hanging over Illuminate has nearly disappeared, the sky is still not quite the right color there. His energy is slowly being absorbed into the building, focusing on the epicenter that is the man himself. They are in Martha’s office going over the latest scans.

“Why is it taking so long for him to…pull himself together?” Donna asks in frustration one night after work when Jonathon and Rose are visiting him, too.

“I think it’s because the explosion he was in spread his energy so incredibly thin that he was almost completely gone,” Martha explains. “The first thing he was likely capable of was generating a human form to gather himself into and even that took him days. That had to have taken all of the remaining energy he had. It’s probably what caused the coma. It’s possible if he were conscious, he could pull the energy back inside himself, but that’s not…Donna, he won’t…he won’t wake up until he does so…we have to wait for it to happen at a natural rate, unhelped by his brain’s waking processes.”

“Can’t you—I don’t know—stimulate his brain? Wake him up?” Donna bursts out. She is usually so accepting, so calm with the situation, but her frustration level today must have built up really high.

“No,” says Martha firmly. “I’m sorry, but no. I won’t. I am not taking that chance with him. Look, Donna, I know it’s hard, but we just have to wait. The scans show that there is no brain damage. And with what I know of his physiology, I think he did this to himself. Put himself in a healing coma, because it’s the only way to become whole again. And honestly, I don’t even know if he’ll even be able to switch between his human and his energy forms again when the process is complete. There’s no way of telling if all his…essence even survived.”

“So he’ll just be…human?” Donna asks.

“No, not quite. His DNA is still all quirky, but…mostly. Yeah, mostly human. Possibly. It’s all just a theory until he wakes up,” she says. “Now, you need to calm down. Getting yourself worked up and stressed out isn’t good for your baby.”

Donna rolls her eyes. “I’m pregnant, not an invalid,” she says.

“You’re pregnant with an alien baby, your blood pressure is higher than I like, and you haven’t been getting enough sleep or enough to eat. You’re not the only one who’s practically been living in this infirmary. I see what you do and don’t do, Donna Noble,” Martha scolds, hands on her slim hips.

She turns to Jonathon and Rose. “In fact, why don’t you two take her out tonight? Make her go home, take a shower, eat a hot meal, spend some time away from here.”

“But what if he wakes up?” Donna asks forlornly.

“That won’t happen tonight,” Martha says. “Nor any night in the near future.”

“It’s just…I don’t…I can’t…”

Jonathon and Rose close ranks on Donna, each gripping a hand and steering her gently towards the lift. “You can. Just for a little while. You can,” Rose encourages. They lead her away and take her home.



It falls into more and more of a routine, making sure Donna leaves James long enough to take care of herself properly. She spends less time at his side, back to working full time, but every lunch hour, every break, and several off hours a day are spent at his side. So are weekends. After the third month she goes home every night to sleep in her own bed. By the fifth month she is starting to show enough that she can’t get away with letting out her clothes anymore, her baby bump necessitating that Rose and Jonathon take her shopping for maternity clothes.

Donna and Rose are in the changing room when the baby kicks for the first time and with the first happy smile Rose has seen on her friend in months, Donna places Rose’s hand on her belly to feel. Jonathon gets his turn, too, and it is only on the car ride home that Donna loses her stoicism and breaks down into tears. “He should have been the first one to feel it,” she says when she can speak again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s just…it’s so hard.”

“Hush, dear heart. Cry all you want to. We don’t mind,” Rose says. Donna leans into her in the back seat of the car and Rose strokes her soft red hair back from her face as the woman mutters about her damn hormones.

“Can we go visit him?” she says. “I know it’s Saturday and I know we still need to buy a bassinet and other baby furniture but…I at least want to tell him. I haven’t been able to bring myself to say it to him, but this makes it real. So real. I want to tell him he’s going to be a father.”

Jonathon turns the car around and they head back for work. It’s only a matter of a few minutes before Donna is once again sitting in the comfortable chair that Martha had had installed for her shortly after they’d found James. “He looks different,” Donna says as she stares down at him. It takes them all a moment to figure out why.

“His hair,” Rose says, always one to recognize changes like that. “It’s not white anymore. It’s back how it was.” It is, thick and full, part grey, part black.

“And his pupils are reactive,” Martha says coming out of her office. “There were huge signs of improvement this morning. I tried your mobile but you left it here.” She points to the side table beside Donna’s chair.

“Will he wake up?” Donna asks barely daring to hope.

“I think he will soon.”

“Soon? Does that mean a few weeks, a few days, a few hours, what?” Donna asks trying not to let her frustration out again. Martha has been a saint through all of this. The last thing Donna wants to do is drive her crazy, but she has to know.

“I keep saying I don’t know to you. I keep having to say that and this is the first time in a long time that I can say he actually seems to be coming out of the coma. If he’s going to surface, I think it’s going to happen in the next 48 hours.”

Donna launches herself at Martha, engulfing the tiny woman in a boisterous hug that lifts her off her feet. Martha laughs at Donna’s joy. “Stay with him. Talk to him. Right now everything you say can make a difference.”

And so Donna talks. She holds James’ hand over her belly and she tells him about the baby, how much she wants him or her, how much it’s changing her body. She tells him about morning sickness and aching breasts and widening hips and swollen ankles and sore feet. She tells him about shopping for maternity clothes and how she wants to eat everything in sight.

She tells him about the progress in Rose and Jonathon’s relationship, how things are progressing with the Centaurs, the Nereidians, Caelum and the baby girl. She tells him about the Institute and visits that Jack Harkness has been making once a week to see Lumin. She tells him about Yumi’s continued success with the language program and the progress of the underwater exploratory vessel. She tells him what it’s like working for Renee Pascal and how the woman hit on Jonathon. She talks about how Frank, with his perception filter on, is now the most popular employee at Illuminate.

It is hours later that she falls asleep. Jonathon and Rose have left, come back once to bring her food, and left again. When she wakes it is slowly. A heavy afghan blanket has been laid over her body and someone has put the reclining portion of her chair back. She blinks her eyes open slowly as she feels movement against her belly. At first she thinks that James’ hand is simply sliding off, but then it stills and she turns her head to look at him. His eyes are open, wide and brilliant and beautiful.

“Donna?” he says, his voice thick and gravelly from disuse.

“James,” she whispers back. Her eyes fill with tears.

“A baby?” he says. “We’re pregnant?”

“Yeah. Plan to have a word with you about that when you’re better,” she says with a rusty smile.

“I was asleep for a long time.”

“Yeah. Found out I was pregnant the day after you…after you saved all of us.”

“I’m sorry you had to do it alone,” he says sadly.

“I wasn’t alone. I had Rose and Jonathon and Martha and Tom. But now I have you. That’s important. I have you.” The tears overflow and he looks like he wants to wipe them away. “I should get Martha. She should know you are awake.”

“Don’t leave me,” he says as she begins to rise.

Donna fishes in her pocket instead and pulls out her mobile, calling Martha in her office. The woman answers the phone groggily. She’s slept over again as she has so many nights since they found James. “Yeah?” she says.

“James woke up,” is all she says before the woman is in the room, almost as fast as if she’d teleported. Martha does a quick examination. It exhausts James greatly and by the time Martha is done he can no longer keep his eyes open.

“James!” Donna says in a panic.

“It’s okay,” he says. “Just tired. Just sleeping. Won’t…won’t…not again…” And he’s out. Martha checks him over again.

“He’s fine. Just truly sleeping this time.”

“Can I…? I just want to lay with him.” Martha nods and Donna crawls onto the bed next to James, cuddling into his side and laying her head on top of his heart.

“Not too long, okay?” she says.

“Okay. Martha?”

“Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“Anytime, love,” she replies moving to the edge of the room.

“Martha?” Donna says again.

“Yes?”

“Can you call Rose and Jonathon? And Tom? Let them know that James is going to be okay?” she asks.

“That’s just what I was going to do. Rest easy, Donna. Everyone who should be told will be told.”



Rose hangs up the phone, her face wreathed by her smile as she turns to Jonathon. “Mr. Lumin woke up. He’s going to be okay.”

“Oh, Rose!” Jonathon says, the joy breaking across his face rivaling her own. “Donna must be over the moon.” Rose chokes for a moment. Donna had shared that particular tidbit with her months ago, but she knew for a fact that she hadn’t said anything to Jonathon. It has to be a mere coincidence. It is, after all, just an expression.

“Yeah. Martha says she was ecstatic. They’re both resting now. Donna’s going to stay with him until he wakes up again.”

She returns to setting the table. Her cooking lessons with Jonathon over the past several months have paid off. He has made her the most beautiful dinner of roast rack of lamb, baby potatoes, carrots and courgettes. There is a magnificent from scratch chocolate cake, even if it is just the simple one off the side of the cocoa tin and a beautiful wine. Rose lights the candles that he’s put on the table and they settle down to eat the delicious meal.

It is only afterwards as they are sipping their wine in the candlelight that she begins to recognize that this night is different from the ones that came before. For one thing it’s quieter. It’s not the stress of James’ condition or the worry over Donna suddenly being lifted, either. It’s the way that he’s looking at her so quietly, so carefully. He looks nervous. He is nervous. He strokes the back of his neck and runs his fingers through his hair incessantly.

Finally she reaches out and stills his hands. “Something on your mind?” she asks softly.

He nods. “Let’s move to the living room, shall we?” he asks. “Bring the candles.”

He carries the wine glasses and the wine as they change locale. Rose settles comfortably onto the sofa. Instead of cuddling in next to her he sits further away than normal but he turns his body towards hers. “Rose, I...” he begins. But he seems lost, as if he can’t finish his sentence.

“What is it, love?” she asks.

“James could have died,” he says. She’s not sure that’s what he planned to say, but that’s what has come out.

“I know.”

“He could have died and he and Donna might never have gotten another chance at happiness and this, everything that has happened to them, it just…it puts a lot of things into perspective. At least for me,” he says.

“For me, too,” Rose replies slowly. “I don’t want to wait any longer to move in with you. Donna’s going to be okay now and I think…well, I think I don’t want to be away from you another day. Life’s too short. We’re happiest when we’re together. I don’t want to not be together anymore.”

His smile lights the room. “I don’t either. And with that in mind…well, I’m not rushing you…you can set whatever date you want, but Rose…” He pulls a small, blue velvet box out of his pocket and opens it up and clears his throat. “Rose Tyler, will you marry me?”

She looks down at the ring in the box. It’s silver or platinum, she can’t tell which, and a large, round diamond solitaire sits at its center. It looks to be roughly two carats. She thinks it’s bigger than the stone Howard bought Jackie. She just stares at it, marveling in its beauty and the way it sparkles in the candlelight. “Rose?” Jonathon says sounding slightly worried.

“Yeah,” she says.

“Yeah, what do I want, or yeah, you’ll marry me?” he asks, a slightly panicked laugh in his voice.

“Yeah. I’ll marry you. I will marry you, Jonathon Smith.”

He grins and pulls the simple ring from its box, sliding it onto the ring finger of her left hand. Rose tilts her hand back and forth, admiring the glints of rainbow light caught in the stone. When she looks up at him he’s staring at her with adoration. “How’s a year from now sound?” she asks. “Mum says it takes at least a year to plan a good wedding. She and Howard rushed theirs. I think a year from now would be good.”

“Whatever you want,” he says. He leans forward and she meets him halfway and they brush lips once, twice, three times. “I love you,” he says.

“I love you, too.”

“I think,” he says, “that we should seal this with more than just a kiss.”

“Mmm,” she says. “I like the way your mind works. Shall we move to the bedroom?” she asks.

“I think we shall.”

She stands up and starts shedding her clothes on the way out of the room. He watches her go, a grin on his face, before he hastily gets up and follows, his own clothing gone before he even reaches the door. She’s already laying on the bed waiting for him. He dives for the bed with a silly, happy smile and she opens her arms and her body to him. As he sheathes himself inside her, he says words he’s only said once to her before. She answers him the exact same way.

“How long you going to stay with me?”

“Forever.”