Starting From The End, Part One: Pete Tyler

[kalleah]

I've made allusions to some vignettes I've been working on in the same continuity as The Calm Before The Storm and Voyages of Discovery, and I'm pleased to post the first of these. Each of these vignettes is told from the POV of a different character from Pete's World.

Note: I strongly recommend reading Voyages first. The vignettes will make much more sense in context, and there are spoilers for that story and the series through Doomsday in them.

Pete Tyler.

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."
T.S. Eliot

His daughter was born on the day his not-daughter disappeared.

He held the infant girl, swaddled in soft blankets, tenderly. Her skin was ruddy and wrinkled, with the look of countless newborns that he had seen in the arms of friends and family and never before found attractive. In her eyes, now scrunched tightly closed as she grasped hard onto sleep, he saw all the beauty and promise of the world he had helped to save.

While Jackie slept, he made a call to Torchwood and asked his staff to begin a discreet search for Rose. "No media," he instructed. Jackie had been distraught, in the pains of birth, not to have her daughter at her side. He would not have tabloids speculating about Rose to compound her existing anxiety.

Pete sat in the chair by Jackie's bedside and rocked his daughter with more tenderness than he had thought he possessed. He touched her baby hand, crinkled up in an involuntary fist, and felt the velvet skin under his rough fingertip. She looks like Jackie, he thought, all stubborn mouth and deep-set eyes.

In his mind, he wasn't quite sure which Jackie he meant, the one he now loved, or the one he had lost.

More Starting From The End

Comments

[misssara11.livejournal.com]

Yay! for vignettes. This was lovely and very Pete to me. I can't wait for the rest.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've finished ones for Mickey, Anna Weidley, and Jackie thus far, and as the muse deems appropriate, may have others. I'd like to do one for my OC Paul but I just haven't found the right way, yet.

[pescivendolo.livejournal.com]

That's really sweet.

I miss Pete.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

Pete is a good man, no doubt -- both versions of him.

[karenor.livejournal.com]

ah lovely. poor Jackie, tho! will you be dealing at all with the message that was sent, with these vignettes?

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

will you be dealing at all with the message that was sent

Yes, I will.

[jesidres.livejournal.com]

Oh, goodness, you just keeping setting that dang bar higher- I was crossing my fingers we'd get to see the closure on the other side, and you once again weave a happy little bit of magic that I will eventually attempt to doodle bits of.

But then I get worried I won't be able to catch your brilliance and just end drooling over it repeatedly at work.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

Eeep, chibis. Hee.

I didn't really think it made sense to get into what happened in the other universe in Voyages other than Rose's perspective, but I did want to come back to it in a separate piece.

[nostariel]

Beautiful, as always.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

Thank you, thank you.

[larielromeniel.livejournal.com]

Love that first line. Very very nice!

(How are things going?)

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

I like the first line, too. I wanted to cram as much as I could into a very short space, which is a challenge for me. (I am, as perhaps you might have noticed, a tad wordy.) I like the idea in theory of drabbles but ... I need more space. :)

Things are going well, I think. I'll post separately, because there is some news on the home front.

[jvgymnast.livejournal.com]

It's nice to see a Pete perspective. One question, though-- didn't Rose get a message back through in Voyages of Discovery (with some going back in time and having the Doctor deliver it)? Wouldn't they know where Rose was then? *is confused*

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

didn't Rose get a message back through in Voyages of Discovery (with some going back in time and having the Doctor deliver it)

Yes, there was absolutely a message, but this vignette (and several others) come before anyone has seen the message. In theory, this occurs right after the birth of Jackie and Pete's daughter.

[starlightmoonla.livejournal.com]

Lovely story! Very much in character for Pete. Aww Jackie, hopefully she won't be too uspset...especially after Rose's message is sent.

I can't wait for the rest of the vingettes! I am particularly looking forward to reading about your OC Paul's perspective.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

Pete strikes me as very much a type A, in-charge kind of person. He'd want to DO something.

I am particularly looking forward to reading about your OC Paul's perspective.

I fully intend to write one for Paul, but I haven't yet. I've tried to make myself sit down and just start writing out what he might be doing ... but no luck yet.

[squeeepatrol.livejournal.com]

Lovely, and the tone is perfect.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

Thank you kindly.

[bluevolvic.livejournal.com]

Yay! a sort of follow up to 'Voyages', i really liked Pete's POV the ending was very interesting :)

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

Yes, a follow-up in truth. I'm working on a longer story but these vignettes have just been in my mind for a while ...

[scifiangel.livejournal.com]

I felt like squeeing when I saw you had posted something new. Wonderful! You don't disappoint. I'm looking forward to seeing how they react to the message.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

Yay, squee. :)

[kb91.livejournal.com]

I really love this universe, and I'm glad that you're working on vignettes to complement the larger stories. I've always wondered what was going on in the other universe after Rose disappeared, so I'm really looking forward to reading these and getting some closure for the family Rose left behind.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

"Closure" is a good way to put it. Voyages did leave everyone hanging ... and I just didn't feel it was appropriate to get into the POV of those people Rose was worried about and couldn't see.

Next up is our boy Mickey.

[np-complete.livejournal.com]

"What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from."

If I recall correctly, "In my end is my beginning" was the motto of Mary, Queen of Scots.

Nothing to do with anything, just happened to be jogged out of my memory.

[kalleah.livejournal.com]

If I recall correctly, "In my end is my beginning" was the motto of Mary, Queen of Scots.

You're absolutely right. Interesting.