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Recommend reading Another World before this, but it's not a necessity.
Another World – A Natives Tale
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As I looked at Mickey and the young girl who'd both just lost everything, no matter how hard I tried, knew that their pain was probably worse than my own, I couldn't comfort them. I was too wrapped up in my own pain, my own disaster to be concerned about them. This had been the worst day of my life.
The young girl, who I later learned was named Jessica, Jessie for short, had just lost both of her parents. They had both been forcefully stripped from her by the mad man John Lumic. They had no doubt been altered, changed beyond all recognition. Their brains surgically removed from their bodies and implanted into steel constructs, Cybermen. They would have lost all that made them human. Love, pain, emotions of any kind torn from them and left as unfeeling machines, at least until Mickey Smith and I got involved.
We had deactivated the code that maintained the balance within their cybernetic minds that stopped their emotions, their humanity, from surfacing. As soon as we removed that they destroyed themselves, good riddance.
But that left the girl, young, uncomprehending, but alone. Mickey had saved her that day. When I had arrived to collect him at midday he had been holding the girl in his arms, wrapped tightly in a blanket, a small bag of her clothes and other personal belongings next to him. Mickey had saved her and in doing so tried to save himself.
I looked at Mickey then, I remember that, looked at him as he stroked the young girls hair caught up in his own pain, his own loss.
Like the girl, he'd lost everything close and dear to him. He'd lost his parents many years before, I knew that already. But more than that, he'd now lost his life. Not in the living breathing sense of life, but the people he knew, the people he cared for, they were all gone, lost to him for what we believed then to be forever.
Mickey Smith was not from our world. Oh he was human all right. Was born, raised and lived his entire life on Earth, but not our Earth. Mickey Smith had come from an alternate universe. Such things seemed impossible then and had anyone even tried to suggest such a thing to me before the events of that day then I would have scoffed at them, called them crazy, but the facts are the facts and Mickey Smith was living proof.
He had lost everything that day. He had lost his world, now trapped here with no chance of return.
He had lost his friends. The one called the 'Doctor' and, more importantly, Rose Tyler. He had lived with them, travelled with them. Even, in the case of Rose, loved them, but now they were gone; unreachable through the void between two universes, but to Mickey it had been an easy decision because by losing them he gained something he could never have hoped to have in his world, he regained family.
His old Gran was here, alive. She had died many years previously, in an accident in her home I would learn not long after, but in coming to this world Mickey had seen her one last time. But, like the young girl who he cradled in his arms now, she too had been taken by John Lumic. Unlike the girls parents though, she would have been more likely determined to have been unsuitable stock for conversion and, more than likely, incinerated.
Mickey had given up everything to be with his Gran again, but it was not to be. He had lost her for a second time and, though at this moment in time he hid it well, the pain was tearing him apart. Were it not for finding Jessie I don't think Mickey would have become the friend to me that he is now. In fact, I would be surprised if he would still have been with us.
Yet here was I. Whilst the two of them were attempting to come to terms with the loss of their families I had to put up with a different pain.
When I had left Mickey in that empty street I had done something I hadn't in months, I went home. When I was part of the Preachers I had been told not to see my family as it was likely to put their lives at risk, to put them into the danger I was facing daily. We couldn't risk anything happening to our families or, worse, them being used against us.
So, here I was this day. Returning home for the first time in many months. At first I was sure my parents would be so angry with me that they would refuse to see me. As I rang that doorbell to my parents' home I had to stop myself from turning tail and fleeing, almost unable to take the pressure from what they might think of me.
My Father answered the door. Looking back on it now I feel ashamed. I had hoped it would've been my Mum. Not because I rather would have seen her, but because I thought she would be more understanding. Then, and only then, with her by my side I would've seen my Dad again and she would've stopped his anger.
"Hi Dad" I'd said sheepishly, waiting for the backlash with not a little reluctance. I couldn't have been more wrong.
The smile on his face, the almost immediate tears flowing freely from his narrow brown eyes. My Dad, if you had never met him before, would scare most people. He's a large man, not tall, but built like a Rugby Scrumhalf. His bald head, cauliflower ears and broken nose left him looking like someone you'd not want to have an argument with at the best of times. But here he was now, tears flowing uncontrollably down his cheeks in unbridled joy to see me alive and well. He hugged me so tightly he almost forced all the air from my lungs. I'd never seen such a display of emotion from 'the Big Man', and especially not in public. But here he was, on his doorstep, crying like a schoolgirl.
He half dragged, half carried me into the house for my Mother to see. She was in their kitchen, sat on a leather topped metal stool. She looked up as she heard my Dad shout. If I had thought my Dads reaction had been over the top it was nothing compared to hers.
My Mother, quite a slight women in all ways, almost sent my Dad flying as she tore toward me a grabbed me by the shoulders, flinging her arms around my neck so tightly she almost chocked me. I was pressed into the tightest of bear hugs that had made my Fathers crushing grip earlier feel like a two years olds.
It was as she looked up at me with her watery eyes that she noticed something in my face, the pain that was etched into my very soul.
"What's wrong" she asked in her commanding yet loving motherly tone.
I said nothing, could say nothing. I just broke down, collapsed into the loving embrace of my parents and released my pain, my anguish.
I told them everything. I told them about the Preachers, about how we'd been fighting against Cybus Industries, knew they'd been up to something. I told them about the Cybermen, I watched their horrified faces as they realised that everything I was saying was true, that what they'd been listening to and watching on the television was just an edited, simplified version of events.
I told them of Mrs Moore, that her real name was Angela Price and that I had to contact her husband, her family, and tell them what had happened, how she'd helped save the world.
I even told them about Rose and the Doctor, though in a simplified and less dramatic way, I wasn't sure that even after everything else that they'd believe that people could travel from one dimension to another, not yet anyway. Then I told them about Ricky.
I felt the stinging behind my eyes again as I told them about him. Felt the pain of loss, the anguish of despair. It wasn't fair; he hadn't deserved what happened to him, and again I felt the uncontrollable, yet wholly undeserved, hatred for Mickey Smith. Mickey could no more have helped Ricky than I could've, but that meant nothing. He was alive and Ricky wasn't.
Again I was back in the van, looking at that face. He was identical to Ricky in every way conceivable and, though he hid his pain well, I could see the anguish in his eyes and, I'm ashamed to admit, I was perversely pleased. I knew that the death of his Gran had affected him badly, and in the coming months I would help him, but at that moment I was glad he felt that pain. It was the only reason I could think of that that made me even remotely happy that it was Mickey that was alive and sat here with me rather than Ricky. I was happy that Ricky didn't have to go through the pain of losing his Gran.
It was shameful of me and I would, in the coming weeks, months and years make it up to Mickey. I never told him how much I had hated him, though he realised very early on in our relationship that I was … upset.
Over time Mickey became my friend. And even though at that moment in time in the van I would've wished extreme pain and suffering on Mickey just for a glimpse, just for a moment, of Ricky I soon became accepting of Mickey and helped him through his pain as he helped me through mine and as we both helped young Jessie.
"I know it's not easy with my face looking exactly like Ricky, but I'm a different man, I'm not replacing him."
"You never could. I'll never have another boyfriend like him."
"Okay, definitely not replacing him. But we can remember him by fighting in his name."
Throughout that period, chasing and destroying Cybermen in their factories across the globe, Mickey Smith by my side, and later into my 'career' at Torchwood I never forgot Ricky. He was my first, and I would always love him for that.
Mickey Smith has become my friend and my confidante and we have kept alive the memory of Ricky and Mrs Moore – Angela Price – by doing exactly as we said we would, by fighting in their names.
But Ricky Smith was everything to me. He was my best friend. He was the person I could share anything with. He was my lover and I his.
He was my Ricky.
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A/N: Well, there we have it. So much for "Another World is a one off" and "There's not going to be anything else, so don't ask" blah blah blah.
Ok, so this is like Another World, it is a stand alone, but is now part 2 of a three part series (the next part is about Rose, but unlike these two it's an ongoing multi-chapter story so it's taking time).
So why'd I write this? Well, in case you hadn't worked it out, it's all from Jakes point of view. I haven't seen any other Jake fics (they may well be out there, I just haven't seen or read them, sorry) and I always felt that there was something missing from his character. That "missing" part was fully filled in for me when I watched the deleted scenes on the Series 2 DVD (well worth buying just for them, but the outtakes are great!) which is the quote above. Jakes whole character fell into place with that one edited line, and though the thought had crossed my mind that one line made it so this story blossomed out from it.
Well, I hope you enjoyed it and please review, if only to tell me it's random and junk. I've spent the time to write it, and if you've got this far you've spent the time to read it, so take a little more time and review, you'll feel better for it! ;-)