Bella rocked the remains of her baby. Tears streamed down her face in quiet grief; she couldn't stop crying though the sobs had ceased some time before. To her relief the men had finally left her alone to say farewell to her stillborn little boy.
She unwrapped the soft blanket once again. Tiny little fingers begged to be held and Bella clasped them in one shaking hand. She was awed by what she saw; even partially developed he was definitely her child. He was so tiny! Bella wondered what he would have looked like if she hadn't gotten him killed. One of the men had placed a tiny blue cap upon his head; Bella lifted it and placed a kiss on his forehead.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, hugging her child to her breast as she rocked him once more. He had been the only thing she had truly been thankful for since everything had started.
While the guys had explained that it wasn't her fault, that they were to blame for not warning her about the traffic differences she knew they were just trying to make her feel better. She should have known to look both ways, known not to pause and look back at her husband and Jack. Why had she been so stupid?
Soon the men would take her to a quiet little place and set her baby on fire. It was apparently tradition among the Doctor's people to give their own a blazing farewell. How could she handle watching her own flesh and blood go up in flames? She had barely been able to handle having her grandfather's remains cremated and she hadn't been forced to watch that.
Bella could see herself ripping the baby off the funeral pier and saving him from the flames. See herself jumping up there and letting the fire take her as well. See so many things but how to survive this miserable disaster.
"They should have just let me die," she muttered. "I want to be with you."
Laying back down upon the bed, she curled herself around her baby as she continued to grieve.
~#~
"Will you quit pacing! You're going to wear a hole in the floor!" Jack snapped for the fifth time that hour.
"She doesn't need to be left alone!" The Time Lord retorted. "I can feel her, Jack! She's hurting!"
"Of course she's hurting! She just lost her baby, for Christ's sake! You've got to give her a chance to grieve!" Jack softened. "Look, I know it's hard to understand; you've got her in your head, after all, but Bella does best when she deals with things on her own. She's not used to being smothered. And since I've got a few year's worth of experience over you when it comes to that girl, you're going to bow to me when it comes to that. Give her some space, Doc. She'll come around."
Jack pushed a glass of whiskey into the Time Lord's hand. "You want to help her? Get drunk. It can't be helping that she's got you freaking out in her skull on top of everything else, so we're getting you plastered."
The Doctor looked at Jack in shock. "Are you insane? What if she needs me? I can't get drunk even if I wanted to, which I don't."
"Yes you can. You forget I've seen you plastered. All you have to do is slow down your metabolism. I'll stay sober enough to watch after Bella. Now drink!"
The Doctor drank. Jack paced himself as he fed the Time Lord glass after glass of the amber liquid, hoping to get the man so sloshed that he would pass out and give Bella some relief. If the man was getting on Jack's nerves he could only imagine how much worse it was for Bella having the hyperactive Time Lord in her head.
"I've never lost a child before; not one so young," the Doctor confessed when he finally settled on the sofa. "I've lost them, true, but they were all adults."
Jack nodded as he refilled the decanter from a fresh bottle. "Yeah. It's different when they're babies."
"You've experienced it then?"
"Once or twice. One of my wives never could manage to carry a child to term."
"I'm sorry."
"I still say we need to bury the ashes on Earth. Get a marker, give Bella someplace she can visit. It'll help her heal."
"No."
"Why not?" Jack wanted to know.
"You know why; the wrong person finds out about that child they could harvest the DNA and cause all sorts of trouble."
"Not if we do it right. I can set it up so that no one ever suspects; put a false name on the headstone – I'll give him my name if have to. No one would ever know the difference."
"I would."
"Now that's just being selfish! I thought you cared for Bella."
"I do; I'm not about to endanger the universe on the whim of a woman, though."
Jack snorted in disgust. "Well at least let her have the cremation on Earth. I own a patch of land outside of Cardiff that would be perfect. That way I can make sure that no one puts a building over the baby. Let me do that for her at least."
"All right," the Doctor relented. "We'll do it in Cardiff. But no markers, understood?"
"Agreed." Jack clinked his glass against the one held in the other man's hand.
~#~
Sometime later Jack tiptoed into the Infirmary to visit Bella. "Hey gorgeous? You awake?" he whispered.
"Yeah," Bella answered softly from the bed as she sat up. "How did you get away from the Doctor?"
"Got him sloshed enough to fall asleep," Jack answered.
Bella shook her head. "I was wondering why he felt off. Leave it to you to get a Time Lord drunk."
Jack chuckled. "I managed to talk him into letting us do the cremation on some land I own outside of Cardiff. I know it's not the mountains but at least it's not on another planet like he wanted."
"Thank you," Bella said softly.
"So, how did he manage to talk you into marrying him? I imagine that's quite a story."
Bella snorted. "He didn't."
Jack's eyes widened. "You're kidding! What happened?"
"I'd just woke up after Pompeii. I was freaking out because I didn't know what had happened to you. Guess I pissed him off, cause he grabbed me and did the bond. Hurt like hell, too." Bella rubbed her temple in memory.
"So the Doctor didn't give you a choice this time either?"
Bella shook her head. "No."
Jack took a deep breath. "Okay, the first time I can grant because maybe you freaked him out or something. I know how scary your pity parties can look from the outside. Second time? No. There's no excuse for that one. I thought he had given you a choice. How do you feel about it?"
"I honestly don't know, Jack. I mean, I love him, but I can't really tell if it's me or just the bond, you know?"
"Yeah, that's gotta be confusing. Do you want to stay with him, or do you need me to get you out?" Jack asked.
Bella sighed. "I don't know. I honestly don't know what to do. I enjoy being with him, he's nice enough but I...I just don't know. Part of me just feels trapped."
Jack thought for a moment. "Okay. How would you like to have a place on Earth as a safe haven? I could buy you a place, get it set up so that if you ever decide to leave him you could go there."
Bella's eyes widened. "You would do that?"
"Of course! Besides, it would give you an excuse to visit."
Bella frowned after a moment. "I can't; the Doctor would go ballistic. You've seen how he is."
Jack smiled grimly. "Bella, we don't have to tell him; it could be our secret. That might be better, actually. You would have a place to go that he wouldn't know about."
"You know he can track me now, right? He's got it set so the link won't break anymore."
Jack gave Bella a mischievous grin. "You let me worry about that. I may not be able to break that bond but I'm pretty sure I can figure out how to block it if you ever want to. Leaving that up to you, though; I suspect it might hurt worse than when you managed to snap it that one time. So what do you say? Want me to set it up when I get back to Earth?"
"Have I told you lately how much I love you?" Bella smiled.
Jack waggled his eyebrows. "You could always start showing me," he leered playfully.
"C'mere," Bella pulled Jack close and gave him a resounding kiss.
"Oh, that reminds me," Jack said when the quick kiss finished. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. "Take this; I had the Doctor sonic it for Universal Roaming."
Bella examined the device as he put it in her hand. "What for?"
"You need a way to contact me if something ever happens. I'm serious, Billie; if you need anything I'm just a phone call away."
"But which number will I dial?"
"I'll pick up a new phone as soon as I get home and give you a call. That way all you have to do is save the number. You might want to hide that; I'm not sure how he'll react if he knows we can communicate regularly."
Bella nodded. "Can you hold onto it until he lets me out of bed? I'm afraid he'll find it in here."
Jack took the phone back and placed it in his pocket. "Sure." He nodded at the tiny bundle laying beside her. "I need to put him back in stasis. You okay with that?"
Bella swallowed. "I don't have much choice; he's dead."
"Yeah." Jack picked up the tiny form and cradled it in his arms. "Why don't you get some sleep; I think he's letting you out of bed in the morning."
Bella nodded.
