Part 5 of this fanfic (specifically "Darkness Falls") was written after the Torchwood Season 2 finale, during the final episodes of Doctor Who Season 4, and pre Children of Earth. It is a diligently-researched work of love that I never intended to make public; I began it for my own enjoyment, and continued it out of love, and as a means of coping with some of the grief left behind by TW Season 2. With that in mind, R&R, and I hope you enjoy!
I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who have stayed with me this far. It took me an entire year to have the guts to make this fanfic public, and I never expected anyone to read it. So, muchÃsimas gracias, everyone! I hope this final volume, though short, is everything you expect and more.
Disclaimer: Torchwood and Doctor Who are franchises that don't belong to me. I simply like to visit their 'verse and play.
Primarily, what's not mine belongs to Russell T. Davies et al. of the current incarnation of the Whoniverse.
I am a child of Gallifrey. I have many names, but only one face.
My father has many faces, and yet only one name. The Doctor.
His true name is hidden. It is never to be spoken.
I am the Sage. The Seer. Miranda Small. Sage Smith. My true name is hidden, too. Only one man knows it because we met before the Fall. Aside from him, only my father. When he calls my name, I will go to him. I will have to, whether I'm ready to or not. We are the last of our kind, and blood calls to blood.
I have an unlucky name. It means darkness. I'm quite accustomed, after more than a century, to going by names other than my own. For many years I used my sister's name. My best friend goes by the name Jack Harkness, but that's a borrowed name as well. Even John Hart, the only man other than my father who knows my true name, is not really named Hart. As a child I called him Johnny, but he may have been lying even then. He lies often, and I don't always see it.
I hear names in my head sometimes. Rose Tyler. Romana. Ace. Sarah Jane Smith... Some of them my father mentioned at one time or another... some of them Jack met... the rest remain unexplained. Sally Sparrow. River Song. They're musical to me, yet strange. I've only met one of them. Martha Jones. She called me sister. I call her friend. Fate was not kind to my sisters, after all.
Rose Tyler... The Bad Wolf. Her name means Darkness, too.
She is near, and I can sense her. So near, in fact, that Ianto senses her, too.
Ianto Jones is far from ordinary; brave, steadfast, loyal, insightful, strong, and strong-willed; but he has no psychic powers. I allowed him a glimpse of the inner workings of my mind, and he saw more than we'd bargained for.
Something is coming. Something terrible. Rose has been fighting her way back to our universe, trying to find my father. She believes he's the only one who can save us. For all I know, she's right.
There has never quite been another Time Lord like my father. He's what's called an Individual; when Gallifrey still stood, he could shield his mind from the others. This is an ability I inherited from him, but that was never supposed to happen. Individuals were extremely rare, born once every thousand years. It may have had something to do with the mother I never knew. They say she only lived long enough to name me, and then my father gave me over to the Council, which raised me as an orphan, as I was motherless and my father had been exiled long before my birth. I suspect my mother wasn't Gallifreyan at all, but from Earth. It would explain why I was always treated differently, even differently from the other orphans, and why I was drawn to Earth at the start of the last great Time War.
My father loves me. I know he does, though he's never said it. He visited me as a child. He brought me books and trinkets. Above all, he made sure I received an education, even though the Council was opposed to it and often lax about it. They took no real interest in me until I passed Initiation at age eight. Gallifrey fell little more than six months later.
Dad had other children before me. He was married and had a son. He also raised Miranda, my sister from a parallel universe, as his own and protected her. I was the one he left behind, and I resent it. He must have had his reasons, but it pains me anyway because I love him quite dearly, in spite of everything. More than that... I admire him, in spite of feeling betrayed.
My youngest sister, Jenny, was born an adult and left behind quite by accident. Her very existence is a paradox, as she was bio-engineered from our father's DNA... the DNA being what pulled him to the planet Messaline to begin with. I was bound to this paradox by the Vortex, and it nearly killed me. Jenny herself died once, and as she didn't regenerate, she was left behind. A terraforming agent reacted with her Gallifreyan physiology and jump-started her hearts, but by then Dad had left. She doesn't seem to resent it, though. As far as I know she's out there galaxy-hopping; worlds to see, civilizations to save, and a lot of running.
That's what my father does. He runs. Runs to save us. Runs to leave us behind. Jack says they seem to be the same thing. He runs from us so we can learn to save ourselves from... ourselves.
I haven't told Jack that I saw Rose again. I probably should, but I don't want him to know about Ianto and the Vortex. It was risky. I could have killed him or driven him mad, and Jack loves Ianto more than he has words for. I love them both, myself.
I fear Rose Tyler. The Bad Wolf. The Life-Bringer who trapped Jack in a seemingly endless cycle of death and revival because she loved him too much to let him go. I love her as much as I fear her, though. I want to know her, this girl my father loves more than the Universe itself.
Though I fear it, I want to know the Darkness. My mother named me after it. Perhaps she saw it, too.
"I had a very strange dream," I told Ianto over coffee.
"What was it about?" he inquired distractedly, shuffling papers on his desk.
"The Darkness," I murmured. "My father was dead and no one could stop it. It was eating up the universe."
"What about you?" Ianto asked me, looking far more alert than he had mere seconds before. "Did you try to stop it?"
"I was human," I said softly. "With my father dead, Jack decided not to bring me into Torchwood. The world was in chaos. That replica of the Titanic that swooped low over Buckingham Palace; do you remember it?" He nodded. "It crashed. There was no one there to pull it back out of our atmosphere and London was vaporized."
Ianto frowned, getting that crease between his eyebrows that I normally found quite adorable. "And we were safe here in Cardiff, weren't we. What did we do?"
"You blew yourselves up stopping the Sontarans," I admitted reluctantly. "Martha was long dead, had never met my father, and had never joined UNIT. Tosh and Owen were still dead, and I was human. You sacrificed yourselves for us... but it didn't stop the Darkness."
"Are you sure it was a dream?" he asked me tentatively.
"No," I sighed. "I'm not sure at all. It felt... wrong. It felt like a warning. Rose said to tell my father two words. Bad Wolf."
"What does that mean?"
"I don't know. Some sort of code? She called herself that when she took out the Daleks. Jack's seen it in graffiti for years. Other than that... I just don't know."
"But how could you tell your father if he was dead?"
"Paradox," I shrugged. "And it wasn't me she told. It was Donna Noble. Donna was at the centre of it all, not Rose."
"Are you going to tell Jack?"
I shook my head. "I don't think I should. He'd just worry. You'll be strong for him when it comes, won't you Ianto?"
"I'll do my best, considering I have no idea what 'it' is."
"My father will know," I said, but my insecurity came through in my voice.
"You don't think he can stop it," he guessed.
"Not without help, no."
"You're leaving, aren't you," Ianto said.
I opened my mouth to say no. Leaving wasn't my intention at all. I had meant to stand with them, with Torchwood, no matter the cost. In hindsight, I suppose that was rather selfish of me. At any rate, the word never passed my lips. At that moment, he spoke my name, and I had no choice but to go.
"Adria," John Hart said behind me. I stood, one lone tear coursing down my cheek.
I pulled my coat off the back of my chair and slung it over my shoulder. "Tell Jack I love him," I told Ianto.
"Why?" Ianto asked me. Why was I leaving? Why with him?
"I have to," I replied. "And I love you, too, Ianto Jones. Always know that," I told him, my voice breaking at the end. "Always."
"I don't understand," he said, looking angry and hurt.
"Neither do I," I admitted. "I just have to. Be safe."