A/N: Nothing you recognize belongs to me!
My university's computers have killed my flash drive which had, among other things, the next chapter of "A Beautiful Disaster" on it. I'm going to attempt to retrieve the data, if I can, but if not I may have to rewrite the entire chapter, which will take a little bit. I apologize, and will hopefully one day be taking a sledgehammer to those annoying machines. In its place I offer a chapter of "The Long and Winding Road."
Chapter Thirty-Three: Hello and Goodbye
He would not let them bury Jenny, not right away, even though there was no sign of an impending regeneration and both her hearts had stopped. He would not let the soldiers touch her at all. When Rose suggested gently that they move her to a place that was better suited for waiting he scooped Jenny's body up and carried her, much the same way that he had carried Rose when she fell asleep in the console room or the library. He laid her on a cot tucked away in the corner of the theatre (previously, the barracks) and pulled a stool up beside it. He sat next to her, his long fingers wrapped around her hand, almost completely immobile. From where Donna was standing he hardly seemed to breathe. His face was carefully blank they way that it was when she first met him, the way that sent chills down her spine. Rose sat on his right side, her fingers threaded through his. He watched Jenny and she watched him and something moved in her eyes, something ancient and terribly sad.
The air was thick, too thick. Donna felt like she couldn't breathe with the weight of everything the Doctor had lost pressing down on her. The silence was overpowering—it crawled into her mouth and down her throat, threatening to choke her. She wanted to stay there for him, to help him keep vigil over the body of his child, but she couldn't. It was too much, and she turned and walked quickly out of the room.
Martha had left just after the Doctor sat down. She squeezed his shoulder in a show of solidarity, nodded to Rose, and moved away. Donna found her leaning against the wall just outside the theatre.
"How is he?" the young black woman asked.
Donna shrugged. "The same."
Martha sighed. "I tried, I really did but—it's too intense. You asked why I left, earlier, and that's why." She studied the ceiling. "He pulls you in like a planet's gravity and you burn up in the atmosphere before you touch the ground. This life of his is brilliant, but it's terrible too, and if you get too close it'll consume you." She sighed. "You'll feel like that too, one day. You'll wake up and realize that if you don't get out now, you'll never break out of his orbit."
The ginger woman looked thoughtful, but shook her head. "There's so much to see," she said, wonder in her voice. "I'm going to travel with them forever."
"I thought that too," Martha replied softly.
Five and a half hours later Rose and the Doctor stepped into the hallway and shut the door behind them. "We're going," he said without looking at them.
They were silent on the trip back to the TARDIS. The Doctor moved mechanically and even the ship seemed to pick up the sorrowful mood that hung over them. Their landing was smoother than normal, and when Martha opened the doors she discovered that they were not back on Earth. A vast plain stretched out in front of them, covered in grass as high as her hips that undulated in the warm breeze. Birdsong filled the air along with the light perfume of flowers. Clouds rolled across the sky, fluffy cumulus that looked like cotton balls, and higher up brittle cirrus clouds stood between the sun and the Earth.
"It's beautiful," Donna said.
"It's Messaline," the Doctor replied. "A thousand years later. Human and Hath formed a cooperative society. They turned the progenation machines back to their original purpose." He paused. "There hasn't been a war here in all that time. They remembered how their world came into being. They chose peace."
Rose wrapped her arm through his. "She helped create this."
Everyone knew who 'she' was. The Doctor nodded. "Yes." They stood in silence for a long moment, and then he turned away. "Back to the TARDIS," he told them. "It's time to take you home, Martha Jones."
Martha's goodbyes were short and to the point. The Doctor maintained his blank façade as he hugged her and wished her well, as he sent them into the Vortex, as Rose gently detached his fingers from the console and led him through the byzantine hallways to the smooth wooden door of his room. He stayed in control as she shut the door behind them and brought him to sit on the bed, but when her arms slipped around him, when she pulled him down onto the duvet beside her and wrapped herself around him offering what could be constructed as forgiveness he broke.
He didn't deserve to be forgiven. Once again someone he loved had been killed for him. He clung to her, buried his face in the curve of her neck and she stroked his back soothingly. He wept. He hadn't cried, properly cried anyway, in such a long time. Sobs wracked his body and she held him, a point of calm in the storm of his grief.
She didn't know how long they spent lying on his bed, curled around each other in the darkness. Eventually he quieted. The wrenching sobs lessened, and finally stopped, and he lay against her just breathing. She rested her cheek against the top of his head and breathed in the scent of him. He pulled back, just enough to see her face. His eyes were red and puffy and there were tear tracks on his cheeks.
"Thank you," he said simply.
She kissed him. "Any time, Doctor." He laid his head on the pillow and she scooted down so that they were laying nose to nose. He sighed, and then yawned. "You should get some sleep," she told him, and moved to go.
He grabbed her arm. "Please," he asked hesitantly, "will you stay?"
Rose sat down on the bed and pressed her lips to his forehead. "I will."
They laid Jenny's body on a table on the stage of the theatre. A proper ceremony would help, they'd told the Doctor. Give them closure. Allow Hath and Human to heal. They wanted to pay their respects to the last casualty of a war that shouldn't have been. Flowers from the garden on board the spaceship lay around her and a thin white sheet covered most of her body.
They were certain that she was dead—even the Doctor had said so, and thus they were very surprised when a strange golden light seemed to shimmer under her skin. It grew brighter and brighter until it was blinding to look at and they turned away. When it died down Jenny was gone. Where the slim, blonde girl had lain a strange woman sat blinking at them. She was a bit taller than Jenny had been, and although her face was similar in shape her eyes were a bright bluish green and her hair had more red than gold in it. She stretched her arms as if she had just woken from a deep sleep and cracked her neck.
"Blimey!" she said. "That was a rush!" And then she clapped her hands over her mouth as her eyes widened in shock. "What happened?" she asked after a moment. "I sound all weird!"
"Hello, sweetie." They whirled around and found themselves face to face with another strange woman. Her dirty-blonde curls framed a face that was thirty, maybe thirty five years old, and a pair of startlingly blue eyes. Her skin was tan, almost weathered and approximately the same color as her hair. She leaned against the doorway, arms crossed, as nonchalantly as if she was standing in her own home.
"Who are you?" the girl-that-wasn't-Jenny asked.
"I'm River Song," the strange woman replied. "And you're Jenny." She smiled. "Your father sent me to find you. It seems that you've inherited your mum's jeopardy-friendly nature. I think you've set a new record for youngest regeneration."
Much to his surprise, the Doctor slept through what passed for night on the TARDIS, and late into the morning. Rose was still with him when he woke, although they'd shifted in the night and she lay on her back, one arm thrust out beside her and the other wrapped around him. His head was pillowed on her chest, and he lay half on, half off of her. She made a very good pillow, he noted, his mind still foggy with sleep. Much better than he would. She mentioned frequently that he seemed to be made up of bony angles.
He tried to move without waking her, but failed. She yawned and stretched and smiled when she saw him. "G'morning," she said, her voice fuzzy and her speech slow.
He smiled at her. "Good morning, Rose." He stood and she rolled onto her stomach. The duvet slipped down to pool around her waist and he found that he was having difficulty focusing on getting dressed. "I thought we'd visit Jack today," he said after he shrugged into his suit jacket and straightened his tie. When they were in the TARDIS he rarely wore all of his layers, but he felt the need for a buffer after recent events. His armor wasn't quite as impregnable as, oh, a leather jacket, but it would do.
She lifted her face from the pillow and blinked at him. "Really?"
"Don't you want to?" he replied.
"Well, yeah, but usually you're so—" She waved her hand vaguely. Rose Tyler was not a morning person, and it showed.
"Donna wants to meet him, the TARDIS could use a top-up, and the last time we saw him, well…" his voice trailed off.
She held up a hand to stem the flow of chatter that passed as his version of an explanation. "Doctor, it's okay. I'd love to see Jack."
"It would just be nice," he said softly, as he sat on the bed next to her, "to see that I haven't destroyed everyone that I care about."
Rose laid her head in his lap. "You didn't destroy me," she offered. He stroked her hair.
"Sometimes I wonder."
Donna was having tea in the kitchen when Rose and the Doctor finally emerged. She remained silent except for a quite "Good morning," as they made breakfast (eggs and toast, seriously, was that all he ate in the morning?). She wanted to ask Rose, but they seemed—subdued. Not that she blamed them. She was still reeling from Jenny's birth and death (she'd lived for less than twenty-four hours) and could only imagine how they felt.
"So, Donna Noble," the Doctor said after he cleaned his plate and part of Rose's. "Do you fancy meeting Captain Jack?"
She blinked. Of course, she hadn't really expected him to bring up what happened yesterday, but his offer seemed like such a non-sequitar. Didn't he need some time to mourn? After Lance's death she'd moped for a week, and she didn't even like the man when she found out what he'd been up to! And then she remembered how they had met the first time. He'd been standing in the TARDIS, crying, although she hadn't realized it at the time. Then she'd been beamed aboard or whatever and he'd been off and running. Oh, there'd been some pretty obvious hints that he'd lost someone important (Rose), but he seemed happiest solving puzzles and running for his life. She thought she understood, then, why he was always on the go. It was a distraction, something he could do to not think about everything that he'd lost. She glanced at Rose and received all the confirmation she needed in a tiny nod from the other woman.
Donna smiled. "Sure, why not? Think it's time I saw whether the man lives up to all the hype I've been hearing."
The Doctor grabbed his and Rose's plates and deposited them in the sink. "Next stop, Cardiff!" he proclaimed with a manic grin.
"Oi, spaceman!" Donna yelled as the TARDIS jostled again. "Get your head out of the clouds and fly this ship!"
The Doctor was whirling around the console like a madman, well, like more of a madman than usual. The TARDIS shook and listed and Rose held on to the jump seat. "I am, Donna!" he replied. "What are you doing?" he asked his magnificent ship. She hummed apologetically, but continued to shiver and shake.
"She's not going off on her own again, is she?" Donna demanded.
"No, no!" the Doctor spared a moment to roll his eyes at her. "That was a paradox, Donna. Jenny being in danger pulled the TARDIS to Messaline, but she got there too early, thus causing Jenny's creation. This is something else."
Rose reached out and put a hand on the wall behind her. "What is it?" she asked the TARDIS. Her only reply was a vague feeling of wrongness. "I think something's happening, Doctor," she said. The feeling spread over her body, like ants were crawling on her skin.
"Almost there!" He got in a few strategically placed whacks with the rubber mallet that hung from the console, and then the TARDIS shuddered and stopped. Donna sighed with relief and picked herself up from the floor. Rose uncurled from the jump-seat, and the Doctor threw open the doors. "I give you, Cardiff!" he proclaimed grandly.
Rose was the first out. The smile drained from her face as she took in the scene before her. The Millenium plaza was in dissaray. Police cordons cut off most of the area and it was unusually deserted. Her eyes, however, were fixed on the hub. It was gone. In its place was a heap of rubble. Chunks of rock and steel radiated out from the former site of Torchwood three.
"Doctor!" she yelled, her face pale.
"What?" He stuck his head out of the TARDIS and followed the line of Rose's shaking arm as she indicated the destruction around them. "Oh," he said, his eyes wide."
"What is it?" Donna finally joined them and gasped. "It's not supposed to look like that, I take it?"
"Where's Jack, Doctor?" Rose asked, ignoring the ginger woman's remark.
After he recovered from his initial shock the Doctor's lips pulled into a thin slash across his face and his brows lowered. His eyes were dark and dangerous. "This isn't right," he said softly. "This isn't right at all."