A/N:

I don't own Doctor Who... not right now anyway!

Orlaith is a Scots/Irish name, and is pronounced Orla.

This was originally a oneshot and my first fic, based on Satan Pit's Jefferson but I like it so much I decided to include it here – hope you don't mind a repeat!

Mr Jefferson, tell me sir. Did your wife ever forgive you?

John Maynard Jefferson's mouth went dry, and a shiver ran down his spine. "I don't know what you mean."

Let me tell you a secret. She never did.

Thirty years earlier.

The base was in chaos, fires and screaming all around him. John clutched his wife tight and held his gun up – they were the only two things he had left.

Things had begun so hopefully. John was a brave young army cadet, sent out to his first post within a week of graduation. When he'd met Orlaith he'd been instantly enthralled. She was intelligent and lovely – a scientist on the base.

John had never imagined that Orlaith would want anything to do with a low-level army grunt like him, but pretty soon he found her taking little flirty glances at him. His father had always told him that a woman's look never lied, so John gathered together the courage to ask Orlaith out.

She'd laughed at his old fashioned turn of phrase.

"Really, Mr Jefferson! Has nobody mentioned to you, the small fact this is the 42nd century? And besides, this is a Climate and Gravity Controlled Sanctuary Base! "Going out" as you put it, could be fatal!"

But there was a laugh in her voice, and a smile in her shining eyes. Her cheeks were flushed. He decided to move closer.

"Please, call me John", he murmured. He was close enough to smell her floral perfume, " And I'm sure you understand the sentiment behind my request, if not the wording." Another step, close enough to put his arms round her waist and stare into her eyes. "What do you say?"

"Yes", Orlaith breathed. Their lips met.

The pair were married just over a year later. Orlaith was radiant in her white dress, and John felt like the luckiest man in the known universe. He'd known right from that first kiss that he wanted to spend his life with the woman in his arms. He never asked, but knew that his wife felt the same. He saw it in her shining brown eyes.

John had never asked very much about the Scientific side of the Athlete Intergalactic Research Project (representing the Torchwood Archive and other Interested Scientific Bodies). But he knew from his brief and the little snippets his wife told him, that they were looking for an alternative fuel – one that neither harmed the environment, nor was a finite resource.

That was good enough for John. He was perfectly content in working in security and maintenance. Trouble was, the academy never covered enough bases. In all his army training, John had never imagined a battle where the weapons were not guns or explosives.

Afterward, nobody was really sure how the disaster had happened. The Athlete project was shrouded in mystery, at the end of the day. The brief was kept as vague as possible – through design or clerical error, no one could be sure.

But that something had gone wrong was blatantly clear.

The scientists had been manufacturing chemicals: Manipulation of genetic strands, fusion with chemicals using some kind of advanced acceleration process – boffin stuff which went over John's head.

That day in the lab had been important, but Orlaith hadn't been allowed in. She had a cold and they couldn't risk foreign contaminants. Orlaith had been frustrated at first, but a nice cup of tea and a cuddle in bed had changed her mind. John had taken a day off, leaving the security to his trainee, Collette. It wasn't often he was given time to spend with his busy wife.

They heard the banging and the sirens first. John recognised the sirens – they weren't good news.

He raced down the corridor towards the source if the problem – his com device told him that the main experimentation lab was the source. His heart sank. It didn't take a genius to figure out that experiments gone wrong caused trouble.

He knew the moment he saw it that any research from the lab would be unsalvageable. Flames and some kind of blue mould were steadily appearing out of the doorway. He saw Collette running down the corridor from the opposite direction. She slipped in the blue mould and fell, coughing, to the ground, her lips turning blue.

A man in a white coat appeared at the doorway, also coughing. His name was Blake, John remembered.

"Run!" gasped Blake, "The mould holds a highly destructive - " he broke off in a paroxysm of coughing.

"Highly destructive virus", he continued, wheezing. "It contains miniscule termites which break through the lungs, making their way into the blood stream. When they reach the heart, you're done for."

"But that's not the worst of it", he gasped, "These things can literally reanimate the corpse, moving its muscles just long enough to pass itself on to the next host."

At this point Collette rose from the ground. Her skin was deathly pale, apart from her lips and eyelids which were a bruise-like blue colour. Tendrils of the mould drooled hideously out of her mouth, curling round her neck and shoulders, past the sleeves of her security-issue tank top and round her arms and wrists.

John had no doubt in his mind that she was dead. He was barely aware of pulling the trigger, but Collette's body jerked as a bullet slammed into her, and he felt the recoil of his gun.

"What can we do? Is there a cure?" He could hear the tremor in his voice as he addressed the dying Blake.

"No time", gasped the scientist, "We could've figured out a vaccine if the virus had been controlled, but the explosion's spread it too fast. Get anyone clean out first."

"What about you?" John asked him, already knowing the answer.

"It's too late for me, John, you can see that! Just get the others out. Shoot on sight, soldier!"

Blake collapsed, but not before he'd seen John's nod and salute.

Now that he understood what was going on John was haring back down the corridor towards the room where his wife was waiting. He found her standing, already dressed, her brown eyes wide with worry.

"John, what's happening?"

"There's a virus – deadly," he said, breathing heavily, " There are people dead – and I doubt they'll be the last. We need to find anyone not infected on the way to the rocket, and get out of here."

Orlaith gasped, "What about those already infected?" He knew her big heart would want to help them. He'd never want his beautiful, gentle wife to witness what he'd just seen, but John knew she probably would. He clenched his jaw.

"I've been ordered to shoot on sight."

The next hour was filled with horrors. Adrenaline pumped through him as he shot at the zombie-like plague carriers and Orlaith screamed – at them, at him, at anything that would hear her.

Just when they thought the horror was over and they were safe to move away, another figure rounded the corner. It was just a child, the son of one of the secretaries. In a community of no more than thirty people, a child stood out. The boy's name was Keerann – he was popular with every adult on the base, with his cheeky grin and gold curls.

John's heart sank as he heard Keerann's hacking cough, saw the deathly pallor of his skin.

"Uncle Johnny..."

"Help him, John!" Orlaith screamed.

"He's infected!"

"We can help him, John."

"Please Uncle Johnny..."

Tendrils of blue escaped from his blue lips.

"It's too late for him! I'm sorry."

The bullet hit the child and his little body crumpled to stillness. Orlaith let loose an inhuman cry of grief. John opened the hatch of the rocket silently.

When they got home a full enquiry was raised. John Jefferson was exempted from all blame for the deaths. If the disease had not been contained it would have been a disaster of galactic proportions. But John could see the accusation in his wife's eyes.

The memorial was beautiful. Both of them were there, along with the grieving families and bosses of the Torchwood Archive. Orlaith had barely spoken a word to him since they reached Earth, but her fingers found his as they listened to the word's of the Eulogy.

And how can man die better, than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?

Thirty years later

John Maynard Jefferson leaned against the firmly closed metal wall, gasping. The words of the thing in the pit running round and round his head.

The soldier, running from the eyes of his wife.

Well it was true. He'd travelled thousands upon thousands of miles, into the mouth of a Blackhole just to escape those accusatory brown eyes. They'd tried to pretend the distance wasn't there, but it was. The archive had been surprised to receive his application, given that he was basically on retirement. But he was the best qualified, the best option.

It was such a relief to be plain old Jefferson again. No emotions, no baggage. Just a soldier doing his job.

Then that mysterious couple arrived. Then that thing in the pit started talking. The Ood lost their minds, and Toby... It was all too familiar. He'd been ready to start the shooting again, starting with Toby Zed.

But seeing the look in Rose Tyler's eyes – brown eyes, so like his dear, distant Orlaith - something had made him hold fire. Rose had been right, and behind his gruff bravado he'd been relieved that he didn't have to take yet another human life.

Jefferson had seen too many people die. Blake, Keerann, all the other members of Athlete, Captain Walker, Scooti, probably Ida and the Doctor too. But if anyone made it off the God forsaken rock of Krop Tor alive, he hoped they could tell his beautiful Orlaith that he did right this time. That he died saving lives.

Mr Jefferson, tell me sir. Did your wife ever forgive you?

Maybe not, thought John Maynard Jefferson PKD, as the last of the air was sucked from the vent.

Not yet.

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