Author's Note: Trigger warning for torture. Jenny is finally talking to me and it's worse than I thought it would be. Some serious whump coming.
Much love to BMG and DM12 and everyone else who has taken the time to comment or love this story. I hope this chapter finds you all safe and healthy. Enjoy!
"The first thing that I remember was stepping out of the machine, but I'd already learned all the military and strategic protocols I needed to know. Everything that I would need to know to be the perfect soldier was already there, but that was all that I'd been given; I had no name and no identity, I was simply a child of the machine." Jenny let herself remember the very early days of her life, when she'd felt a sense of belonging that had been ripped from her all too quickly.
She noticed Alec settling a bit more in his blankets, trying to hide the wince as his movements aggravated his broken leg but he simply nodded to her to continue with her story. She hadn't thought about the early days of her life for many years, and now she was willingly opening the door on those memories and sharing them with a complete stranger.
Jenny closed her eyes tight for a moment more before she took a deep breath and continued. "I remember stepping out into a tunnel and being handed a weapon to prepare for battle, but there were three strange people and apparently one of them said that he was my father. He wasn't like the rest of us in the tunnel and neither were the two women, and I knew instantly that he was even more different then the children of the machine knew."
Alec was engrossed in her story even though it had just begun and that thread that had vibrated between the two of them since he'd first regained consciousness was being pulled taut. "Go on, Jenny, why was he so different from the other children of the machine?"
Jenny's head jerked at the sound of his voice and he cursed inwardly when he realized he had nearly broken her concentration. There was sweat beading on her forehead and her eyes were focused with a deadly earnestness on the flames dancing so near to them as if with that focus she could hold the pain of her memories at bay. He almost wanted to tell her to stop, that if it caused her too much pain then her telling could come at a later time.
She smiled at the obvious concern in his eyes and shook her head, "It's alright, Alec. It's never felt like the right time and there was no one that I wanted to tell my story to, but for some reason I want to tell you."
She paused when she felt a faint touch from the ship, a gentle pulse of energy that brought a smile to her lips. "No, I need to tell you my story."
Alec smiled softly when he heard the correction and felt the gentle caress from the Tardis, the ship had brought him here to this planet and to this time specifically so he could find Jenny and now he was about to find out why.
She took a deep breath and picked up where she had left off, "First, the man wanted nothing to do with the war that we were all bred to fight and he got angry when we'd set off an explosion that cut us off from one of his friends. I simply called her collateral damage, a term that his companion took great offense to." Jenny smiled briefly at the memory. "She even called me G.I. Jane as if that was supposed to mean something to me. But she made sure that we knew the name of their fallen comrade, because it seemed that names were so important to the both of them. The fact that I didn't have a name seemed to bother her more than it did my father. He seemed indifferent to me and didn't want to admit that I'd been born from him."
Jenny shifted on her makeshift bed, folding her legs comfortably under her body so that she could face Alec more directly while making sure that her face didn't fall into shadow. "The man called himself the Doctor and said his companion's name was Donna and that the woman who'd been lost in the explosion was called Martha."
Alec sat bolt upright at her comment, his eyes opening wide as he shouted, "That's where I know you from! You're the generated anomaly!"
Jenny jerked as if he'd slapped her, her brown eyes going wide even as she pushed herself away from him. "How can you know that? No one was there except the Doctor, Donna and I."
She was looking at him with wide frightened eyes, her mind racing with a million questions even as she feared the worst. "Do you know them? Did they ever talk about me?"
Alec was dumbfounded, his mind trying to reconcile the angry, bitter woman in front of him with the vibrant woman who'd stood in front of the Doctor to protect him from that final shot. He felt tears welling in his eyes when he realized the Tardis had latched on to Jenny's timeline rather than the Doctor's because she had needed him far more than the Doctor had at that precise moment.
The Doctor had obviously defeated the Master and Rassilon and reality was safe once more, but that Jenny was alone and so desperately tired and confused and that if he didn't find her then she would spend the rest of her days wandering the galaxy never quite understanding who or what she was. He felt as if all the pain he'd suffered in the last few years had prepared him for this moment when he was finally able to look his sister in the eyes.
"Yes I do know them, Jenny. You could say I was born from them as well, though in as unique a way as you were. You're my sister, Jenny."
Jenny's jaw dropped open, her eyes bulging with disbelief before she burst out laughing and threw herself at him, heedless of his cry of pain even though he wrapped her up in a tight embrace. "I can't believe it. After all these years, I'm finally not alone." She began to sob against his chest, "I'm finally not alone anymore."
Alec just held his sister tightly to him, his mind spinning with the pain that had filled the Doctor at her death and Donna's own sorrow as well. The both of them hadn't quite been the same after losing Jenny and it had been that loss that had led to some of their more reckless escapades and ultimately had led to the DoctorDonna. He rocked Jenny in his arms as she sobbed brokenly against his chest, his mind trying to connect with hers but the pain that flared in his head told him that it was still too soon for that and he had to be content with simply holding her as the storm of her weeping slowly began to subside.
He now knew that he needed to hear the rest of her story more than ever, but she wasn't done with her questions. "How did you know about what they called me, Alec? It sounds like they might have talked about me a little bit if you know that they called me a generated anomaly."
Alec squirmed slightly at her direct question, but with her strange birth he knew that nothing would really surprise her when it came to the Doctor. "They didn't talk about you, Jenny. It hurt the Doctor too much to think about you after he'd thought you were lost. He'd just started to open his heart once more to the possibility of having another child and then you were taken so suddenly and cruelly from him. He fell into a very dark place after losing you and it was only because he had Donna by his side, that he was able to pull himself out of it."
She looked up at him with a soft smile. "I knew the two of them were together, they kept denying it and saying that they were only friends but it was obvious."
Alec laughed softly and shook his head, though he knew more intimately then she could imagine just how they had felt about each other but both had been too pigheaded and stubborn to ever do anything about it. And now that possibility was lost forever. He frowned before he pushed that thought away, not allowing himself to think about Donna's fate now that the cries in his mind had been silenced once more. Once he was healed, he and Jenny would fix the Tardis back up and they would set out to find the Doctor.
"They weren't together, Jenny. They didn't lie about that. They may have had feelings for each other, but they were never together."
Jenny sniffled once more into his shirt before she pushed herself away from him, trying to dry her eyes before she gave up and just smiled at her brother. It was going to take some getting used to, thinking of him in that way, but already he was filling all the empty spaces that had haunted her for far too long.
"You sound like you got to spend a lot of time with them, you know them both so well Alec. You're so lucky that you got to have that time, what happened to them? Are they going to be coming for you? I remember Dad said he would take me with him in the Tardis before I was…." She stopped with a gasp, her eyes rising to his before she shook her head and tried to change the subject.
"How much time did you get to spend with them, Alec?"
Alec shook his head, reaching out to wipe the tears from her cheek before he murmured, "You're supposed to be telling me your story, Jenny. We've got plenty of time for mine. Please I need to hear what's happened to you." His breath caught and a brief sob escaped before he continued, "You were supposed to be dead."
She shrugged even though she felt a flare of pain at his words, her own mind filled with the pain of her final moments and the anguish she'd seen in her father's eyes. They were supposed to travel together, he'd finally accepted her as his daughter and he'd been prepared to show her new worlds until Cobb stole all that away. She didn't like to dwell too much on her deaths, each one was different but filled with the same fear that she wouldn't come back but also that she would come back. Finally, she was going to have all her questions answered and she would be able to learn what it really meant to be a Time Lord. It seemed that Alec had had that chance to learn from the Doctor when that'd been taken from her, but rather than be angry at his good fortune she was just happy that he'd been able to finally find her.
"I don't know what happened, Alec. I remember dying. I remember the pain in Dad's voice as he said goodbye to me and I could see so much anger in his eyes, I was worried that he would do something that he would regret when I died but I didn't even think to ask that when I woke up again as they were pulling a sheet over my body. I assumed that there'd been some mistake and they'd all thought I died but that I had just sort of fallen asleep and woke back up. I thought if I hurried that I might catch up with Dad and Donna and so I immediately ran for the shuttle to escape from Messaline. I hoped that it would be just like Donna had described, and I wanted to see the new worlds that Dad had promised to take me to. I didn't think to wait in case I got stuck on Messaline just as they were starting to rebuild, so I took the shuttle and escaped the planet for destinations unknown."
Jenny sighed softly when she remembered how carefree she'd been in the beginning, just thinking that if she set a course for some unknown world it would be just like her father had described.
"The first few years were just like Donna had described, filled with so much adventure and there was no one to tell me what to do or to guide me in any way. I had all the knowledge that the machine had given me, but not much else beyond that. I bounced from system to system and always seemed to be drawn into one battle after another, whether I wanted to be or not, and so I started to do what I thought Dad would want me to do. I started to help people who needed it, in exchange for supplies and fuel for my ship. It really wasn't a bad life in the beginning, and I was able to help so many planets who needed a little helping hand in making their lots in life a little better."
Alec smiled while he listened to her, the firelight dancing across her animated features as she regaled him with the tales of her early life. It seemed that the universe had been filled with so much promise in the beginning, such hope with each new world that maybe it would be the one that she would find her father on again.
"With every world that I helped, and every new wonder that I saw it started to dawn on me that I didn't have the faintest idea where to begin looking for him and no one seemed to know who or what the Time Lords were until I ran into an ion storm that damaged my ship and sent me spiraling out of control towards a colony in one of the arms of the Andromeda Galaxy. I tried to save the ship from crashing but there was nothing I could do and before I knew it, the ship crashed and everything went black again."
Jenny's breath caught and there was no mistaking the fleeting look of pain that crossed her features before she shook her head and looked at him with a sad smile. "I'm sorry, Alec. It's been a long time since I've been able to trust anyone enough to open up in any way, this is going to take some getting used to."
Alec nodded in response to her words, his hands twitching as he held them clasped in his lap so that he didn't make the mistake of reaching out to her again and distracting her from her tale. "It's alright, Jenny, take as long as you need. If you don't want to continue at any time, just let me know. I don't want to force you, not when I've just found you."
She dropped her head at his words, her mind once more thrilled at the thought of finally having some family again just when she'd begun to give up all hope of ever belonging. "It wasn't exactly the happiest time in my life, Alec. I haven't thought about that first real death in a long time."
He could hear the pain in her words,but more than that he saw the chaotic swirl in her timelines as she forced herself to walk through the past in order to let him know what she had experienced. He couldn't get a sense of how long she'd been walking the universe, but he was beginning to feel that it was longer than just a few short years. A lot had happened to her, and he was beginning to think that there wasn't a lot that had been good in her life.
Alec remained silent while Jenny gathered her thoughts, her gaze was unfocused on the dance of the flames before she continued, "I vaguely remember being pulled out of the wreckage and voices speaking over me in a language that I couldn't recognize, but I was injured very badly and so I passed out as soon as they had me on some sort of stretcher and seemed to be wheeling me into what looked like a medical facility."
She laughed softly, but it was a hard, bitter laugh before she looked up at him with a gleam in her eyes. "I didn't realize it at the time but I'd changed completely in that crash. I was no longer the blonde haired woman that I had been before the crash, but it would be a while before I made that discovery. They looked human enough though I could feel their thoughts as they touched me and I could tell that I'd crashed someplace that I most likely didn't want to be. However, I was in no condition to do anything about my situation and so I had to hope that they would help me before I could work out how I was going to continue on my way."
Alec was caught up in her story, so much that he forgot himself and asked, "Do you know what the name of that colony was that you crash landed on?"
Jenny shook her head with a growl, her hand rising up to run through her hair agitatedly before she continued, "No, I never did find out and I ended up staying at that colony for years. I didn't stay there because I'd chosen to but because they thought I'd be a good test subject for some weapons that they were developing to attack a nearby colony."
She drew her arms around herself, her eyes sliding closed as she remembered the first time she'd woken up in the medical facility and had thanked her rescuers for nursing her back to health but then the questions started.
"I remember them asking what species I was, and what kind of benefit did two hearts serve me. They started to ask questions about telepathy and my stamina because they said that the crash I was involved in should have killed me." She grunted at that, her eyes rising to lock onto Alec's haunted gaze as her story took a decidedly sinister turn. "I didn't understand what they meant and when I asked if I could please get passage off the colony on the next transport they just laughed and said that I wouldn't be going anywhere. I was too valuable to them to let go."
Alec reached out to her, unable to help himself as he took one of her clenched hands in his and began to gently stroke the back of her wrist in an effort to ease some of the tension from her body. "How long were you there, Jenny?"
Jenny turned her hand over and squeezed his hand tight, her eyes sliding closed before she whispered, "I was in the lab for nearly five years before there was an attack on the colony. Fighters from the other colony had learned about what they were trying to do and decided to strike first before they were able to use any of the weapons that they'd been developing. If they'd actually managed to deploy those weapons, then the other people wouldn't have stood a chance."
"What did they do to you, Jenny?"
She took a deep breath and shrugged, her eyes were shining bright as she shied away from the days and months of torture that she'd been subjected to while in captivity. "The usual torture, Alec. Electric shock, physic torture, poisons, gases and anything else that they could think of. There was one scientist in particular who seemed to really enjoy running his experiments on me. He said that it was because of my triple stranded DNA that I was able to withstand far more torture then their usual subjects." She shuddered slightly with the memory, her hand pulling out of Alec's clasp in order to rub her temples tiredly as the old remembered pain flared to life once again.
Alec was rooted to where he sat, his jaw clenched as he thought of everything that Jenny had been through and the suffering that she had endured all because she had gone looking for the Doctor. He'd felt flashes of her memories while he'd held her hand and it had been enough to fill him with an impotent rage because the man was already long dead and there was no death that would ever be good enough for him.
"Thankfully, he didn't get me to himself very often because the other scientists didn't want him to go too far with me and end up killing me. That really was the only thing that kept them from going too far, because they seemed to have a hard time keeping their other test subjects alive most of the time."
She jumped when there was a crack from the fire, her arms rising to wrap around herself before she was able to meet his eyes and smile softly in response to the pain she saw reflected in his gaze. "It's alright, Alec. It was a long time ago and I survived. I even managed to survive in the same body and I met some amazing people when the attack finally did come from the other colony."
Alec swallowed at the forced cheer in her voice, he wasn't fooled by her false bravado but decided against pressing her for any further details. It was obviously a very traumatic memory for her and he was grateful that she'd shared even as much as she had with him. It now made her earlier comment in regards to telepathy being used as a means to hurt her make sense and also made him realize that it was going to be a long while until she was able to completely open up to him.
"What about this other colony, Jenny? You said that they preemptively attacked the colony where you were being held prisoner. Were they on the same planet or were they on a different planet?"
Jenny shook her head, thankful that he changed the subject and didn't dwell too much on what she'd endured at the hands of those scientists on that distant, forgotten planet.
"They were on the same planet but seemed to be rival colonies, which I could never make sense of because the planet was rich in resources and there only seemed to be several thousand of them in each colony. It reminded me almost of Messaline, but this went deeper than the hatred between the Hath and the humans on Messaline. They both seemed to be from the same race but from different factions and they had been fighting for many years. It seemed that the lab where I was kept had been a key target and a strike team had been sent to destroy it. Their leader though, had intelligence that there might be prisoners in the lab, and he decided to see if there were any that were still alive in the facility. That's how I was finally rescued."
Jenny let out her breath, feeling like she had run a marathon as she quickly glossed over the five years of hell that she had spent in captivity. She'd felt close to death so many times and it had only been the quick intervention of the scientists that had kept her from dying from their more heinous experiments.
"Did they never discover your ability to regenerate?"
She shook her head, her hand rubbing her forehead tiredly before she whispered, "I know now if they'd ever discovered that then nothing would've stopped them from just killing me again and again to see how far they could go before killing other prisoners."
Alec took a deep breath and sat up a little straighter, wincing as his entire body protested the movement but he had to break the tension that seemed to fill the control room and even the Tardis in her damaged state was trying to comfort Jenny. "You don't have unlimited lives, Jenny. You can only regenerate twelve times before you die your final death, and each time is not necessarily a death. Usually the regeneration process begins when you're gravely wounded and are dying or when you've reached such an advanced age in your current body that old age triggers a regeneration. But there's a definite limit on how many times you can cheat death so to speak."
Jenny nibbled on her lower lip as she listened to Alec, nodding as that important piece of her makeup was revealed. So she'd only used a third of her lives, that was good to know but she was going to have to be much more cautious in the future.
"You'd mentioned being rescued by a strike team from the other colony? What happened then?"
Jenny blushed and ducked her head with a smile, her eyes darting to Alec before she murmured, "Yes, I was rescued and it was then that I finally realized that I'd changed completely when I'd been pulled from that crash. I was never allowed to look at myself in the mirror, no one ever really spoke to me and I was never let out from my cell much. They made sure to keep my head shaved so that they could easily attach diagnostic instruments to me when they were working on me, but I'd never been allowed to do much in the way of running or exercise. The changes the first time around were subtle, but more noticeable when my hair finally started to grow in and I realized that I was quite a bit taller than I had been before and I was definitely more of a strawberry blonde." She laughed softly before continuing, "They thought I was completely daft and that my mind had been broken by all the experiments when I kept telling them that I'd changed and that I used to be a lot shorter. Their leader, Lucas, actually was the one who took me under his wing and I'm still not sure that he didn't do so just to shut me up."
Alec smiled when he heard the warmth in her voice when she spoke about this Lucas, obviously the man had been a balm in the midst of a world gone mad. He pulled his blanket up over his shoulders as the fire was beginning to die down, and the glow from the coral overhead was fading as well as the Tardis was settling down for a rest cycle.
Jenny was silent for a while, her eyes lost as she was obviously reliving memories that had been buried for far too long and she was struggling with the best way to continue the telling without drowning in the emotion all over again.
"Lucas nursed me back to health in the end, and helped me to get back into fighting shape as he put it. I ended up spending quite a few years on that planet before I began to realize that I wasn't aging like the rest of them, and Lucas didn't want me to stay much longer just in case the rest of the colonists started to turn on me. I'd helped them with their revolution, much as I'd done on many planets before but I'd stayed on this planet for a lot longer because I felt I had a lot more to lose. And I was angrier than I'd ever been before. I wanted them to pay for what they'd done to me, and it wasn't until Lucas managed to get me a small transport off the planet that I realized how much the experience in the lab had changed me."
She sighed softly, her gaze locking with Alec's while she waited for his judgement. She hated admitting that she'd lost her way so spectacularly and that she'd become a killer just for the sake of a useless and petty revenge. She'd remembered her father's words so distinctly, and his voice had faded more and more over the years she'd been held in captivity until she could barely remember what he'd looked like. The moral compass he'd tried to instill in her had been shattered and so it was until Lucas had spent months and years with her that she'd finally been able to find her way back.
"I managed to escape on the transport with enough supplies to last me for several months in space and I began to wander again, though I was very careful in all my future dealings with other planets because I didn't want to be caught again like I'd been before. I wasn't sure I'd be able to survive another captivity without going insane."
Alec nodded thoughtfully at her words, finally making sense of the angry, bitter woman who sat beside him. Her zest for traveling the universe was killed in that laboratory and so she just continued to wander, not knowing where she was going but driven by the hope that one day she'd find the answers for which she'd been searching.
"How'd you finally end up regenerating into this current form, Jenny?"
She shook her head with a laugh. "I was an idiot. I'd landed on a deserted planet in order to stock up on water and some supplies when I fell down a ravine. The fall itself didn't kill me, but I could tell that I had massive internal injuries and before I knew it the world went black again. When I woke up, I was as you see me now."
He chuckled softly at her tale before he asked, "Jenny, how old are you?"
She caught her breath, her hands clenching for a moment before she replied, "It's been one hundred and nine years since Messaline, Alec."
Alec's eyes widened at her answer, his gaze flying to hers before he whispered, "I'm so sorry, Jenny. I'm so, so sorry that you've been alone for all those years. I know that if the Doctor had had any inkling that you were still alive then he would've done everything in his power to find you."
She choked back a sob, his words hitting her harder then she had expected before she murmured, "It is what it is, Alec. I know now he's probably not even in the same time as I am right now, and really I have no means of finding him anyway. At least I've found you now and I'm not alone anymore."
Alec smiled and raised his arm to indicate the ship around them. "Actually, we've got a way to find him now, Jenny because this ship is the child of his ship and the two of them are bound together. Once I'm healed, we'll fix her up and go looking for him."
Jenny gasped at his words, her eyes widening as she whispered, "Please don't be lying to me, Alec. I couldn't stand it if you were."
"I'm not lying to you, this ship is actually how I was able to find you. I told her to lock onto Time Lord energy because I was trying to find him as well, but instead she locked on to you and brought me here."
She started crying softly once more, her hands rising to wipe ineffectually at her tears. It was almost too much to believe that after over a century of wandering alone she had finally found someone that she could call family, and that he brought with him the promise of maybe being reunited with her father. It was almost too fantastic to believe, but she knew that his ship wasn't like anything she had ever seen before and if it really was descended from the Doctor's ship then maybe, finally they could be a family together.
"I hope so, Alec. I'd love to see him again, but even if I don't ever see him again at least your ship has brought me you."
Alec smiled and reached out to her, she leaned close to him and cuddled into his arms as she felt completely drained from having relived the last hundred years of her life. There was more she would tell him as they got to know each other better, but for now she felt that that had been a good start. She was battered though from diving back into the memories of her captivity, and so she looked up at him and asked, "Tell me about your story now, Alec. I've talked your ear off, it's only fair that you return the favor."
Alec grunted softly when he heard her question though he supposed turnabout was fair play, but really how did he explain the fact that he'd been born from a severed hand that had been kept in a jar? Well there was no time like the present to just dive in.
"The first thing that I remember was being surrounded by explosions…"