Title: Shattered (1/1)
Characters: Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness, Tenth Doctor (implied Jack/Rose, Doctor/Jack/Rose), and Martha Jones on the sidelines.
Summery: AU. Of the 'reunion fic' variety, where there were no last minute saves, ghostly goodbyes on a cold windy bay, or happy endings. Here is confusion and second chances.
Disclaimer: American me, this is all in good fun.
Author's Notes: I would like to thank my wonderful beta fajrdako (LJ name), who allowed me to pester her with questions and gave me her reassurances. Comments and criticisms loved. Takes place after S2 Doomsday, sometime in the early days of Torchwood (forgive me, I have only heard rumors of this show and read a brief description of some episodes, so if anything is incorrect lets just chaulk it up to an alternate dimension).
ETA: Reread and proofed a bit more; August 26, 2009.
"Do you think…"
You can't do this! She isn't going anywhere, she mentally unstable. She's-
Wafty cotton spread to coat the sky, darkening it to the point she could no longer see past the protective film that tinted her window. Was instead granted a mirror image of a small woman with messy yellow-mud hair and too pail face. Of a narrow bed and thin covers, of wrists encased by thick straps.
Is no longer your concern. Dr. Owens here will need all her medical records.
There was something hitting the glass, leaving a trail like a comet with a collision course. She couldn't hear it, but sometimes just for a moment, she could see it. They looked like tears.
But this is highly irregular, Sir. This…
It meant nothing to her yet.
She feels a weight, something smooth and cool in her hands. Paper, just paper. When the man in blue takes it back she watches a crease form in his brow. He slid down the wall, sat facing her and looked between them. Her then the paper, from her vacant expression down again to the two words that had magically appeared.
For a moment his features soften, precious seconds where she was no longer alone and she could almost grasp… Then it was gone, broken like ripples in a pond. Fracturing right before her. Then the darkness finds her again and she doesn't know how to escape.
There were memories of existing, with the monsters and the singing and the emptiness, of an echo giving warmth. Not real, couldn't be. Nothing lived or changed or faded. It might have been hell, but there were memories of a devil and desperation and talk of mortgages. So really, it couldn't have been. It just was, it always was. So dark and vast and...
But then there was the echo, finding her once more.
A tear, a breech… wind?
Vials were filled with warm liquid, red coating the small tube as it hit the upturned bottom with a brilliant splash. She liked watching as it slid down the sides, falling to a forced she understood now to be gravity.
I want those tests as soon as possible.
They were a unit of energy, seeming to fall under his command and all moving around the room. A woman edged forward, a small box in her hand taking readings she didn't understand. It was beeping, relentlessly loud. Was it never quiet here?
The one in the long blue jacket with floppy lapels stayed close, always close, weary and anxious.
The gray was comforting after awhile, she found. Slightly more organic than the stark white of a sick room; infinitely better than what came before even that. She thinks it might be more of a home than the man intended, this office he had brought her to. The floor was hard and cold underneath her; the metal frame of the cot she was provided dug into the flesh of her back. She stayed completely still, staring at the wall as her words started to fill the silence. Grown use to the lack of it.
"Tried to fix it. So it wouldn't happen. Completely successful once. So many…" She swallowed and followed a patch of light as it drifted down the wall, hesitation and uncertainty causing her voice to drift away.
Come on, sweetheart.
His face was inches from hers and he pleaded so nicely with his eyes. He was there, always there, just a step or two away.
"…so many. So many different wards to care for; of possibilities and alternates to keep straight. Tried so hard. The last great Time War. Never ended. Won't. Can't. Sing a song and they run away…" There was a rough quality to her voice that spoke of neglect. "Too much. Overcompensated, underestimated, forgot."
What, what did you forget?
She didn't have an answer to that, so she hummed and tried to fight the silence.
Clouds and sky and day turned night. A dark figure loomed above, silhouetted in her limited view of twinkling pinpoints and hazy gray. Touch ghosted over her battered form as something fell from they sky so very much slower in its decent than she herself had. The light that danced and twirled before settling down on her numb face.
Everything felt wrong, the taste of the air and the scent of a voice.
I need you get an ambulance over at…
The cold, the weight, the harsh abrasive pavement under her; the ice was burning her alive. It was all too sharp after so much nothingness. The metal here tasted different and everything was far to loud. She tried to push the hands away as they dug into her side, but she was to weak and they pressed downward. Red pulsed and a long wail keened. The dark woman hovered above her as everything shifted and the sky was hidden from view.
Just stay with me a little longer, and we'll have you at the hospital in no time.
There was something just at the edge, pulling.
We'll get you to a doctor.
A doctor? No. That wasn't right.
You're going to be okay.
We're loosing her.
A voice was calling, thousands of tones became entangled and its separation was impossible.
"Do you think… Do you think I'm…"
Well?
I don't know what to tell you, they sure as hell aren't normal readings.
What do you mean?
Its something I've never seen before, nothing Torchwood's seen before. Take a look if you don't believe me.
They weren't trying to be quiet anymore, to speak in whispers, so she sat still and only occasionally shifted focus.
"It won't hold. Useless."
What is?
"The barrier. Connects too many things and it's thinning. They're persistent and I can't do anything. Not anymore." She laughs, so sad and tired as calloused fingers trace a path of damp salt that hers and not. "It won't protect you. They'll come; have already. Will again. Here now. They won't die you see. Not really. Just like you. I'm sorry."
She noticed a second man, one who hovered close to the one always by her side. He was always silent, like a shadow in the background. She was glad; the man in blue needed a companion. Focused again on the first.
"I can feel it, them. Locked in cages beneath us, crying, out of time. You're waiting with them. For someone. A man." No. Not a man, "For a doctor…?" But that wasn't right either.
The kind smile and special treats she was given as her body continued to mend were wasted on her. They were strangers and she had no appetite. It was the dark woman who brought her here who first suggested it, that it was a miracle. That the rate of recovery should have been impossible, that she was still alive. Said it in such a way she knew the woman expected a response. Continued on regardless.
Can't you tell me your name?
She tried to ignore the acidic smell of bleach, the insistent sound of beeping.
Is there anybody we call for you?
She was moved soon after, yesterday's tomorrow, a journey of twists and turns down a bumpy road as things flew by. It was another hospital, different. Larger, whiter, colder.
I don't know. Don't look at me like that, I don't. There's nothing wrong with her, physically, in fact I'd say she's healthier than you. There is no way she was suffering from hypothermia, and don't even get me started on the x-rays. Either somebody got to them first, or she's not exactly home-grown.
She's human.
No. I'm not quite sure she is. Take a look at the report that Jones woman submitted with the blonde, 'emitted with concussion and possible contusion'. And here, look at this one; it clearly states the time of death. Twice. Once on the way to Royal Hope Hospital, and again-
-I know. Just find out what's wrong with her.
Someone gave her a blanket and she pulled it close in a vein hope to ward off the cold. She was shivering again; alone in a crowd of strangers and their loud voices.
Jack, even assuming she's the one you used to know… Fine! But I'm telling you now it's not something I can fix, she's craz-
The sound failed to gain a reaction from her, though there was something… something…an echo of a song.
"Do you think… Do you think I'm damaged?"
A foreign substance in her system, arms bound and body too heavy. She was floating again, like before in the dark, like she had with the gold. They had left here there, in a small room with smooth surfaces and softer colors. Isolated, trapped between a window that refused to open and a door they had locked from the outside. When they came it was in groups of two or three, with their clipboards and white jackets, with their needles and their endless questions. Repetitive accusations that halted her words and silenced her voice.
Nothing but dreams…
There was a sound, of grinding and singing; a distortion to the air.
Nothing but figments of your imagination.
Their doctor said she might never recover, but then he was the wrong kind of doctor, and she wasn't sure she wanted to anyway.
Hey sweetheart, you have to remember me. How we met.
A charming smile, a flash of teeth; honeyed voice hiding unrelenting steel. Confidence in every move and action taken, the passing of time had little meaning in this room illuminated by artificial light.
I remember you. Come on, I know you're in there.
The words were soft, pained. A string of sounds that had no meaning.
She laughs for no apparent reason when the tears are falling; stares blankly at the man who came like the tide. Repelled and attracted. She watches him watch her, this stranger lurking by the door. Large hands shifting in agitated movement, jaw clenched and eyes of brown narrow as he tires to swallow the question. She watches him watch her, unable to do anything else.
Give me something.
The façade was slipping, slowly succumbing to inevitability; desperation showed itself in brown eyes, and a fracture in well-built defenses spread.
Please, sweetheart.
His whisper echoed in the room, louder than the sound of metal hitting concrete, of violent frustration and something breaking. When he turns around she follows his coat, so long and blue and swift as he paces back and forth.
Stars dying, solar systems born anew, a sun spinning out of control. Ends meshed with beginnings and time was erratic with motion. The universe was expanding, its barriers deteriorating as everything prepared for the fall. The ground beneath her feet twisted and spun, their motion as constant as everything else. She could almost taste it, the entirety and inevitability and the many possibilities.
She saw everything. Anything. Nothing. All behind closed eyes.
She couldn't sleep anymore. Didn't dare try. Stared at the white ceiling instead and tried to remember a time before her confusion.
Her hands felt empty, and late at night when the men in white left her alone, she tried to understand why.
"Do you think… do you think I'm damaged? I might be, y'know." There was heat and pressure and she remembered this. She looked down at the bent form of the man still in a long blue coat with its floppy lapels, knew it was stolen from a time both future and past. Let her head fall to his shoulder as the grip about her tightened.
"Are we dancing?" A choked sob was the answer she could feel, wondered at the mixture of emotions she was reading though this simple contact. "We left you. It hasn't happened, but we did. All alone. Should you warn yourself? I would, but I'm already there, losing you."
A name, broken and low. Was it supposed to mean something, was it hers? Maybe… maybe this was real.
"It's alright." She lifted her arms and wound them around him, embracing more than just his form. "I'll wait with you." There was no hope in her voice and the child-like words were belied with a look in her eyes. "Maybe he can fix us both."
She remembers saying she wanted forever, jumped through dimensions to give the word meaning. Metal streaked and the white was almost blinding, a leaver dislodged and she had to do something. It was still there sometimes, the pull. The fall.
Its alright sweetheart, I've got you.
Forever. Still had it, a different sort of forever but it was hers. Theirs. It became easer everyday.
She was standing between them, their long coats of blue and brown. Wanted to run, to stay. Then they were joined by a fourth, a familiar woman in red with dark skin who stepped out of a blue box and the choice was made for her. The man in brown raised his hand, to touch, for proof. Came closer.
Rose…
The woolen blue arm about her pulled backwards, away.
"Are you… the Dok-tor?"
Oh Rose.
"I told Jack we'd wait for you. It was only a matter of time. We have plenty, you see. Time. To wait. So we did."
How?
"Fell though. Years ago, weeks?" She looked over her shoulder to the man in blue a question in her eyes, but his face was hard as he looked across the short distance to the man who took another step. She sighed and turned back, "Its so hard to keep track. It shouldn't be, but it is." Laughed as her fingers played on died wool and tilted her head to the left, "I told him I'm broken, but then we both are- all are? He says my name's Rose, but she died in a battle and fell to the void. I don't remember, but I saw it. Watched a recording. I think I was there, floating with the Daleks and the Cybermen and the stings of golden light. Shouldn't have survived, but then that's why I'm broken. Jack is too, just a little bit. My fault, but he doesn't believe me."
She was quiet after that. Watched as emotion flickered over their faces, the Doctor and his companion; felt the tension from the man still holding her and how he shook. She could see the possibilities, of Jack becoming violent, of tears and grief, of the woman called Martha silently retreating, of red between shouting blue and brown, of glasses braking and a blue box fading, of laughter and happiness, of two becoming three became four. To many alternates, really. So she just watched and let the situation have free reign, it was the best she could do now.