2006
Date: January 3
"Jenny?"
"Yes Mara?" Jenny asked as she cleared away the dinner plates and loaded them into the dishwasher. She could feel that something was weighing on her sister's mind.
"Do you think…?"
She smiled to herself before she turned back to Mara. "Do I think what?"
Mara was looking down at her hands and refused to meet Jenny's eyes. "Do you think, for my birthday this year, that I could attend a proper school like Sierra?"
Jenny inwardly sighed. She'd known this question was going to come up today. In preparation, she'd been weighing the pros and cons ever since Mara's trip to the cinema when the subject had come up again. And, despite how every instinct she had was telling her not to let her precious baby sister go, she'd decided that the pros outweighed the cons at the moment. They hadn't seen or heard anything from the Angels in months, and according to the scans at Torchwood, the rift was unusually quiet. This was as good a time as any.
She finally smiled at Mara. "Yes."
Her little sister stared at her in shock for a moment. "Really?"
Jenny laughed. "Well, you're a big eleven year old now, aren't you? Who am I to stand in your way?"
Mara let out a loud squeal of elation and charged towards Jenny to give her a bone-crushing hug. "Thank you sister!"
Date: January 7
Jenny couldn't believe that she was actually going through with this.
She'd barely gotten to Mara to bed the night before. Her sister had been so excited about this day that she hadn't stopped talking about it since Jenny had told her she could go. She'd chattered on and on about how Sierra was going to introduce her to lots of new friends, and how she was going to enjoy being taught by multiple teachers. She especially couldn't stop talking about how she was going to have to keep herself from correcting those teachers. Mara knew full well that she was quite advanced for her age.
She couldn't keep the smile off of her face the whole time Jenny drove her to her new school. It made Jenny's hearts fill to the brim with happiness to see her sister so enthusiastic about something. It reaffirmed, in her mind, that she'd made the right decision to let her attend. That, and the fact that she'd gotten Jack to allow her to use Torchwood resources to do a full background check on the staff, students, and school itself. She'd determined that, if Mara had to go to school to be happy, there could be no other institution that would be safer for her than this one.
When they finally did pull up to the tall brick building that made up the front of the school, Jenny saw Sierra waiting for Mara on the front steps. Mara smiled widely and waved to her friend before she reached back to grab her new book bag.
Before she could leave, however, Jenny stopped her. "Mara, I want you to be careful today. I know it's just a school, and I'm probably being paranoid, but if you see anything out of the ordinary you call me, deal?"
Mara nodded and tapped her temple. "Deal."
Jenny grinned then, and kissed her sister's cheek. "Off you go then. Have fun."
Mara burst out of the car and all but ran to the steps. Jenny's hearts squeezed anxiously when Sierra pulled her sister over to a group of kids, but she forced herself to drive away. She'd always known that she was going to have to start loosening her grip on Mara sometime, and this was as best a time as any to start that process.
She'd gone to work then, and was just about to finish cataloging an alien flower that the team had discovered when she got a call. She glanced at the ID, and her eyes widened when she saw it was the school calling.
"Yes, hello?" Her voice was filled with tightly controlled anxiety.
"Hello, is this Miss Jenny Tyler?" a pleasant voice answered.
"Speaking," she said.
"Hello miss, my name is Terry Walters. We need you to come pick up your sister, Mara."
Not an hour later, Jenny sat across from her sister at the dining room table in utter disbelief. "I sent you to school for one day. Just one day. Don't you think you could keep yourself out of trouble without me for one day?"
Mara pursed her lips. "It's not as if I tried to light the table on fire."
"Sarah's mother was furious with me because your little fire got caught in her daughter's hair. She threatened to take me to court over it. And the school! We're lucky they didn't decide to send us the bill or press charges!" Jenny shouted before she let her face fall into her hands. She wasn't sure what she had expected to happen, really. She'd forgotten how jeopardy-friendly Tylers could be. "That's it. No more school. Not until you're old enough to pay your own bills."
"But—" Mara started.
Jenny looked up to give her a dark glare, and Mara shrank back. She didn't have the patience to deal with her sister arguing her point at the moment. "But what?"
Mara gulped, and shrank back down into her seat. "Nothing."
Jenny stood then, and turned towards the living room. "That's what I thought. Go to bed."
Mara slid out of her chair and left the room without another word.
Date: April 18
Jenny heard Mara sneak back into the house, but said nothing. She heard her land on the floor after climbing through the window, and glanced at her clock. It was 2:30 in the morning; what could her sister have possibly been doing?
All sorts of ideas came to mind, none of them good, but Jenny did nothing to confront her sister. Instead, she stayed in the dark lounge and waited for her to fall asleep. Because tonight was the third Tuesday of the month, and she had more important things to do than scold her.
She waited until Mara was fast asleep to sneak into her room. She felt her hearts clench at the sight of her muddy boots tossed under the bed and her knotted hair strewn all over the pillow. Where could she have gone? Who was she with? She had been able to feel Mara's adrenaline over getting away with sneaking out, her amusement over something, but also her nervousness. Something she had seen had made her uneasy, and Jenny could feel the memories she couldn't have yet seeping into the corners of her sister's mind as she slept.
She sighed heavily and sat down beside Mara on her bed. It was the third Tuesday of the month, and it was time to suppress her memories again. She hated doing this. She shouldn't have to. With an adult Time Lord it would be no problem. The suppressed memories wouldn't return until the precise moment they were supposed to. But Mara was a child, despite what she may believe, and she wasn't quite fully Time Lord.
Jenny leaned down to her ear. "I'm sorry," she whispered, and placed her fingers along Mara's temples. "Forget."
Jenny left Mara's room quietly once she had finished her task. Earlier, she had asked Jack for his advice on what to do about Mara sneaking out. He had sighed, and sat back in his desk chair. "Well," he'd said. "You have one of two choices. You can either confront her about it and deal with the fight, or you can let her come to you on her own. That's what I did with my children more often than not when they did something they weren't supposed to."
She'd stared at him with surprise then. "You had kids?"
He'd smirked, and winked at her. "Oh, Jen, there are stories I could tell you." He'd stood up then and grabbed a folder. "But we haven't got the time! New case! Weavels spotted at the tube station. Get Tosh on this one."
Date: July 8
She wasn't really sure what compelled her to go watch the Torchwood One tower burn. Maybe it was because she could still feel that deep longing in her chest for her parents, or maybe it was because of the words commander Chex had said to her that she still couldn't seem to escape.
"Are you so afraid of the monster you will become that you cannot even admit to the possibility that she lives inside of you?"
She still couldn't accept the idea that her family was responsible for the annihilation of an entire species, nor could she accept the idea that she herself was a monster, and yet here she was. Watching a building burn to the ground in a fire that she knew her dad had started in the pain filled, vengeful, and grief-ridden rage he had been in after he'd lost her mum to another dimension. Did his lack of control make him a monster?
Jenny swallowed hard. She wasn't sure.
She could feel how close they both were.
She stood way off in the distance as she watched Canary Wharf burn to make sure she wouldn't accidentally run in to the past versions of her parents. She knew they were both close—she could feel it. They were not only at the heart of the disaster, they were watching. She knew that at this point a past version of herself, her mum, and her dad were packing up the flat her mum and her gran used to share. And she could tell that at least one other version of her dad, the one that coincided with her own timeline, was closer than the rest.
Very close.
"There's no point in standing behind me," she said. "I know you're there."
Her dad walked up beside her, and stopped. "Sad, isn't it? To watch, I mean."
She swallowed, and nodded. "So many died today."
"I know," he said quietly.
Jenny shot him a sideways glance. "So where have you been?"
He reached up to tug on his earlobe. "Oh, I've been around. Saw Mara burn down that building at her school."
Jenny snorted, and let out a small laugh. "She takes after you."
Her dad chuckled. "No, she takes after her mum. I would have burnt the whole school down."
Jenny laughed at that. "I suppose you're right." She tore her eyes away from Canary Wharf then to look at him. "Why are you here?"
He swallowed, and returned her gaze. "Same as you," he said. "I wanted a reminder."
Jenny bit down on the inside of her lower lip before she turned her eyes back towards the burning building. She could see helicopters filled with fire retardant flying overhead now. "Have you heard from her?"
He sighed heavily, and Jenny saw him shake his head out of the corner of her eye. "She can't talk to me, Jen; it's only a partial bond. She can only feel me. I can't feel her." She could hear the pain in her dad's voice.
She let out a slow breath, and stepped back to lean against his side. He pulled his arm out from under her to wrap it around her shoulders. She swallowed. "Do you think…will we ever see them again? Will we ever see her again?"
Jenny looked up at him. He was squinting as he stared out at Canary Wharf. She could tell her words had sparked a particularly painful memory for him.
"I'm sure of it," he said finally.
She nodded.
He searched her eyes for a moment. "You're thinking about what commander Chex said to you."
She half smiled. "I didn't think you would remember his name."
His eyes darkened. "I never forget the names of the people who die because of me."
Jenny pulled in a slow breath. "I'm worried that he was right."
"No, he wasn't," her dad said quickly. "You're not a monster, Jen, you never could be. You couldn't harm anyone. You couldn't even harm him. You tried to save him."
"I know that," she said. "But I'm worried about the future. I'm worried about what time will do to me if I keep traveling. If we all make it out of this and go back to the stars."
"Oh, Jen," he said, and Jenny felt the guilt roll off of him, along with the spark of that fiercely protective edge she knew he had. "I'd never let you become a monster."
"It may not be up to you," she said. "And besides..." She swallowed hard, and looked up at him. "Never say never ever."
He pulled in a slow breath, and let it out in one gust. "Jenny, I won't let you become anything other than who you are. My amazing daughter."
Jenny half smiled, and wrapped one of her arms around his waist. "Do you promise?"
"Yeah." He nodded, and then leaned over to kiss the top of her head. "I promise."
