Author's note: The storm is coming...
As the years had gone by, Jenny had developed an exquisite sense of the overall passage of time. She sometimes thought that she would be driven mad by the slow tick ticking of the seconds of every hour of every day of her tortuously long life.
She'd often wondered if this was what it meant to be a Time Lord and that it wasn't really a race of beings with a shared purpose and suffering but that they were the timekeepers of the universe and really were just glorified clock watchers.
Jenny had found that her time sense would quickly adjust to the natural rhythms of any planet she landed on within a few short hours and then she'd be in perfect sync with that planet until she moved on to the next one.
She had always had trouble with that sense developing on this world and it had been the first indication she'd had that something wasn't right when she'd landed. It was why she had tried to leave again so quickly when she had felt that strange warping of her time sense.
The fact that she'd been so easily robbed should have been the first indication that all was not as it seemed on Bir Tochter, but her reeling senses had led to far too many moments of inattention on this backwards world.
She sat on the floor of her cell with her father's head in her lap, worried that far too much time had passed since he'd cried out and lost consciousness.
Jenny gently stroked his hair back from his forehead in a gesture that she knew was more for her own shattered peace of mind than any comfort that it might offer to him.
"What's wrong with him?"
Jenny looked up at the harsh intrusion of a male voice into her musings, her eyes blinking to try to bring the rest of the cell into focus.
A uniformed man stood on the other side of the glass partition, his eyes indicating the prone form of the Doctor as he laid unconscious on the floor. He wasn't the same man who'd taunted her father earlier about Donna, but was one of the new men that had come on with the shift change.
"He's still suffering from the effects of the stun blasts." Jenny wasn't in the mood to engage in any further conversation as all her illusions about the people of this planet had been shattered.
She'd felt that deep down they were a caring and giving people who had just suffered far too much and were leery of strangers. Even as she'd moved from town to town, and in some cases run from town to town, she'd never have thought that there had been something so ugly and sinister brewing under the unassuming surface of the natives.
The officer didn't seem to take the hint that she wasn't in the mood for a friendly chat and leaned against the glass to study both her and her father more closely. Jenny couldn't help feeling like a specimen in a cage as he looked over the both of them, his head was cocked slightly as he was obviously arguing with himself over whether to continue.
"It was reported that it took ten stun blasts to finally put him down, and that he was in a fighting rage to protect both you and that other woman before he eventually blacked out."
Jenny took a deep breath as she could only imagine the fury that her father had felt when both she and Donna had been knocked out, her first instinct was to try to reach out to him again even though she knew that the gesture would be useless until his mind returned from wherever it was currently journeying. She knew about his protective instincts and had felt a flash of his incomprehensible rage when he'd first brushed over her memories of her past, but that had been quickly shuttered behind his formidable barriers as he'd known that he would have completely overpowered her mind if he'd let her see the depths of that wrath.
Her hand drifted lightly over his tousled hair, trying desperately to calm the chaos that was clawing for purchase in her mind the longer they remained trapped in this cell. In a strange way, the talkative officer was giving her an unexpected lifeline by his inane chatter.
"Well, I'm not surprised he was angry about that since he's my dad."
The man pursed his lips as he considered her response, his gaze dropping to the absent-minded, almost tender movements of her fingers in the other man's hair, almost as if she was using the motion to calm herself rather than to provide any real comfort to the man.
"He'd said as much when he first regained consciousness here, but then he seemed more concerned about the other woman than you at that time. Something about her being his wife or some such?" The last was said with the hint of a question, though Jenny just looked back at him stonily.
She wasn't about to get into her father's relationships with this stranger and she certainly wasn't going to tell him anything more about Time Lords than he and his people could already surmise by scanning their unique DNA. Not that she really knew that much about what a Time Lord was or what it meant to the universe at large.
The officer seemed to be fighting with himself for a moment, before he pushed off the glass with a softly voiced command to not go anywhere and then he walked across the control room and disappeared.
Jenny would've laughed at the absurdity of his command to not go anywhere if she'd had the wherewithal to actually find anything amusing about the situation in which she currently found herself. She was once more trapped in a cell on a planet that had no reason to hold her other than she'd been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Her very presence there seemed to have sparked a riot completely out of proportion to the fear that she'd felt in the population since she'd arrived and that riot had led to both her and her father being separated from Donna.
She could only imagine that Alec and Wilf were besides themselves with worry over the fact that they'd been gone so long and even though the Doctor had stated he'd connected with Alec to let him know that they were alright, she knew that it had in fact been several agonizing hours since he'd lost consciousness.
Jenny wasn't strong enough to connect with Alec without her father's guidance, and the one attempt she'd made to expand her mind to the degree needed to reach out to Alec had left her feeling completely shredded as the energies on the planet greedily tried to rip her soul free of her body.
It was a strange feeling and one she hadn't felt since she'd landed on this planet, so she could only surmise that somehow the reunion with her father had awakened senses in her untried mind that were now floundering for purchase.
Jenny lifted her knees once more and wrapped her arms around them in order to give herself something to focus on before she lost what little control she had over the panic that was churning deep within her gut.
She'd caught flashes of the Doctor's emotions as he'd connected with Donna, but she hadn't been able to hear anything he had said to her. The link that he had with Donna was intensely private and on a level so profound she knew that she'd never quite be able to understand the bond that they shared. However, that didn't stop his emotions from bleeding through and she'd been surprised when she had felt his deep-seated fury break through the tight control that he maintained before he'd lost consciousness.
Jenny was frightened by that seething cauldron of anger she sensed in him, a rage that eclipsed anything that she'd felt as she had gone careening through the universe once she'd managed to escape from that nameless planet all those decades ago. She remembered him speaking so passionately to her about rising above petty indignation and anger and always choosing the better path and had worried that he would have been disappointed in her if he'd ever known the depths to which she had fallen.
Her hands were shaking as they curled around her shins, the hold was somewhat desperate when she once more tentatively reached out to her father to try to find him wherever he had gone. She dropped her forehead on her knees, whispering softly into the quiet cell, "Come back, Dad. I need you too and can't do this alone." She took a deep shuddering breath in order to swallow the tears that were threatening, she'd be damned if she was going to let these bastards see her cry.
"I've brought you some water and towels, maybe that will help your father a little bit. I'm sorry I can't do anything more."
Jenny looked up with surprise to see the officer had come back with a tray that held a pitcher of water, a bowl and towels, along with several cups for drinking. She rose up to her knees as he walked around the side of the cell that led to the door and then was even more surprised when a small panel opened in the wall next to the door so that he could slide the tray inside.
Jenny looked at the tray, half expecting it to morph into some kind of monster before she would trust that it was indeed just water.
She froze in a crouch, her hand on the ground to provide stability while she watched him walk back around the outside to the position directly across from her on the other side of the glass.
Jenny looked from the officer to the men that were sitting by the computer monitors who were obviously unhappy by the man's gesture. It was the first time that she noticed the single knot of rank above a series of bars on the front of his uniform whereas the men monitoring the cells only had the bars. She was surprised that an officer of any kind would show compassion to her and her father when the officer in the streets had been so ready to shoot first and ask questions later. Maybe it meant that not everyone in this strange military organization were xenophobic monsters, but that still didn't mean that she trusted any of them or their motives.
"Why are you helping us?"
The man shrugged and turned back around to bark something at the men sitting at the monitors, the tableau frozen in time as he stared the men down before they lowered their eyes and once more focused on their work. He looked back to Jenny with a sigh, his eyes not failing to take in the defensive nature of her stance or the fact that she'd crouched between her father and the glass as if she could somehow defend him when she was weaponless.
"You remind me of a friend I once had, that's all. She was fiery just like you and fiercely protective of those she loved." He smiled softly at the memory before he shook his head and straightened back up. "You'll find that it's just water, but at least that should quench your thirst and possibly help him to wake up again. You're both wanted alive and I figured this was the best way to make sure that happened."
He then turned away from the glass and returned to stand by the control console as he resumed a position of attention where he could watch all the cells in their block without having to move too much in any single direction.
Jenny didn't know what to think of the man's gesture. It was at odds with the treatment that they'd received once the town had exploded into chaos, but was more in line with what she knew of the inhabitants from her own experiences. It was impossible for her to reconcile with the events of the last day and it was giving her a headache as her mind went round and round in confusion.
She realized that her throat was parched which she was certain led at least to part of her pounding headache. She knew that she didn't have any choice in the matter and so against her better judgment, she rose to her feet and poured herself a glass of water that she downed without pausing to take a breath.
The water was sweet and cool and when she didn't feel any ill effects from the fluid, she bent down to lift the tray before carrying it back across the cell to her father's side.
Jenny set the tray down on the sleeping platform and poured a small amount of water into the bowl, before she moistened a towel and gently began to wipe her father's brow. His eyes were sunken deep into his head and there was a small bruise that had formed on his forehead that she was certain wasn't there before they'd been detained. He could have been sleeping for all she knew rather than deeply unconscious in a place that she couldn't identify or reach.
She couldn't believe that they'd found each other after she'd spent so many decades searching for him. She'd also been worried that she could have been near him in the past but that he'd gone through whatever strange face changing thing she'd endured and that she never would've been able to recognize his new face.
She now knew that the process was called regeneration and that it was normal for her species to undertake the process when either ill or severely injured or aged, but the fear of never finding him again because of such a change had kept her awake many nights.
The Doctor's body jerked as his mind suddenly snapped back into his body and his eyes opened wide when he felt the stroking of a cool cloth over his brow.
He looked up at Jenny leaning over him, his mind struggling to reconnect completely from the psychic blow that it had taken when Donna had been forcibly ripped from his mind.
Jenny gasped when her father jerked awake next to her, her gaze flying to meet his when they'd open with no warning. She pulled back when she saw the black anger that was swirling unchecked through those depths, the unguarded fury of a man whose last thread of control had snapped and was now completely adrift in a sea of fire.
"Dad?" Jenny whispered quietly, trying to bring some semblance of balance back to the man lying beside her. She felt the first flutters of fear deep in her belly at the storm that was in her father's eyes, his breathing was harsh and guttural before he blinked and the façade was once more back in place. Her hand had frozen against his brow, and a cold drop of water was dripping from the towel into his hairline but neither of them seemed to notice the motion while they sat frozen for an eternity in that gaze before he finally reached up to pull her hand away.
The Doctor struggled to sit up, his hand rising to his head while he tried to bring his time sense back in line with the world around him. He knew that hours had passed but anything more specific than that seemed to be lost in a distortion of fear and pain. Jenny's fear was washing over him in great waves and was adding to the distress that he felt upon returning to his body with such a forceful jolt, but for a moment he could do nothing more than flounder against the empty void that filled his soul and seemed to be growing by the moment.
Donna was gone. Not just gone, she'd been ripped from his mind and their bond had snapped in such a strident manner that it'd thrown his own mind from his body and cast it adrift in the mire that was Bir Tochter. He'd floundered through the temporal eddies, unable to connect with anyone as he had fought his way back from the brink of madness before he'd finally found the faint thread back to his body.
He was shredded and exhausted but he also knew that they were anything but safe and that he couldn't leave his daughter alone in a cell that could have caused her to have another panic attack.
When he looked up at her and saw that fear in her eyes when she'd jerked back from him, he silently berated himself for leaving her to search for Donna so quickly after she'd had her panic attack. He could see she was holding herself together by a thread and the inferno hat had been awakened within him wasn't going to help her if he unleashed it too soon.
The Doctor took a deep breath and with a will power born of centuries of control, he forced his senses back under control and allowed the calm of his analytical mind to once more settle over him. It was a brittle control though and he knew that once unleashed, the Oncoming Storm would rain fire over any who dared to oppose him. But now wasn't the time and he also couldn't be certain of his conclusions without more investigation, a situation that he expected to remedy shortly.
"I'm sorry, Jenny. I wasn't expecting to receive that kind of a blow when I connected with Donna, but she's been cut off from her psychic abilities and the kickback sent my mind reeling for a while before I found my way back."
Jenny knew that her father was watering down the pain that he must've felt when that blow had slapped him, and she could feel even now that he was still floundering from whatever had just happened. When he looked up at her, the cool control that she'd come to associate with him in the past was frayed and she could see inky madness lurking through the cracks. "How could they do that, Dad? Why would they do that?"
He shook his head, his eyes blinking rapidly as he tried to clear the cobwebs from his mind, before he saw the pitcher of water on the bed and poured himself a glass. Jenny was surprised when he threw the water into his own face and shook his head once more before blinking at her and laughing darkly.
"There, that's better. Gets the old synapses firing once again." The Doctor blew a forceful breath through his mouth, shifting his head side to side until Jenny heard a very distinct crack in his neck that caused the Doctor to groan before he looked back at her. "I'm not sure why they'd do that, Jenny, though they were obviously prepared to deal with a telepathic being. They had a neural inhibitor ready for when she woke up and they knew that she was talking to me. Most likely because they were able to monitor her brain functions and would have seen the jump in brain waves. They let her remain in contact with me for a lot longer than I would've expected if they'd had very attuned readings. Which begs the question, why not just put the inhibitor on her when she was unconscious instead of allowing her to make contact first?"
The Doctor rubbed his head once more, feeling the cooling of the water quickly dissipate as it dried in the confines of the cell. "Why let her connect at all if they didn't want her to be speaking to any of us? If they'd already determined that she potentially had psychic abilities when they'd first examined her, then why take that risk?" Jenny could see he was genuinely puzzled by the actions of the strange people that were holding Donna, but she knew that it was only one piece to the larger puzzle with which they were currently faced.
"I don't know, Dad. You seemed to mumble quite a bit when you found her and for a minute, I felt you get angry. Angrier than I've ever felt anyone get." Jenny was looking directly at him, so she didn't fail to see the flash of that rage deep in his eyes before he blinked and it vanished, making her wonder if she'd seen it at all.
"I was angry because she's being held in some sort of a lab and it looks like they were conducting or preparing to conduct experiments on her. I'm angry because we're trapped in this cell, but now that I have an idea of where she's being held…"
He turned when he saw Jenny's gaze lift to something behind him, coming quickly to his feet when he turned and noticed the uniformed officer stepping back up to the glass to check on them.
He was surprised when Jenny stepped around him and made her way to the glass. "It's alright, he's just waking up now and is feeling a little better because he's had a bit more sleep."
The man looked over her head at the dark-haired man that was towering behind her, the alien's gaze was cool and collected as he waited to see what if anything was going to be done to them. "We're going to be taking you individually for questioning in a little while, so freshen up while you can."
The Doctor laid his hand on Jenny's shoulder and stepped around her to address the officer directly, "Will we be taken to see our companion?" The Doctor already knew the answer by the set of the man's shoulders, but he could tell that the man wasn't comfortable with his orders.
"No, you won't. She's being held in a medical facility right now and being treated for her wounds. There won't be any visits for either of you."
The Doctor's gaze called the man a liar and he could see something terrifying smoldering deep in the alien's eyes. He stepped back from the glass for a moment before he remembered that the alien was in a cell and he was surrounded by his men and that they were armed. Nevertheless, he was worried about this stranger and his daughter and so like a coward, he retreated quickly from the glass to resume his post by the control station.
"He was the one who brought the water, Dad. He seemed genuinely concerned that you were unconscious for so long and brought the water despite his men giving him a hard time over it. Maybe not all of them are inherently cruel."
The Doctor looked back to the officer standing guard with his men, his gaze thoughtful before he turned back to Jenny. "One man out of a thousand doesn't always matter, but maybe he can be the officer to start the change. He has to be willing to make a stand against what he feels are unjust orders."
Jenny hid her smile when she heard his words, some of his previous spirit to make a change and protect people was obviously rising to the surface once more. "Maybe he's already starting to make that change?"
The Doctor looked down at her and felt some of the edges of his pain melt away with the comfort of her presence. The gentle feel of her mind next to his eased some of his anguish but did little to still the gibbering insanity that was clawing at the back of his mind from the forceful severing of his bond to Donna. If he didn't find her soon, nothing any of them did would be able to stop the vengeance of the Oncoming Storm.