The Hidden Well, Chapter Seventeen
Sep. 15th, 2007 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kalleahPairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Betas:ivydoor, np_complete, platypus, and sensiblecat
Previous Chapters
In this chapter: Seeking out comfort, and answers, after the lost nine hours.
Rating: PG
Betas:
ivydoor, np_complete, platypus, and sensiblecatPrevious Chapters
In this chapter: Seeking out comfort, and answers, after the lost nine hours.
"Did you tell the boys anything?" asked Connor as he and Emelia walked back to their flat.
"Of course not," she retorted. "I didn't have anything to tell them. I just got them ready and off to the nursery like there was nothing at all unusual about their father mysteriously not coming home the night before."
"Thanks," he said quietly. "It's bad enough that you spent the night worrying about me."
"It certainly is."
They proceeded in silence for several minutes. Connor could hear the steady crunch-crunch of their shoes on the ground and the occasional faint sniff from his wife.
"Did you get any sleep?" he asked carefully. She shot him a contemptuous look and didn't deign to reply.
He hadn't either, since the lost nine hours had been only a few chaotic minutes for him. His body clock told him it was almost midnight, time to get some sleep, not bright and early in the morning. The idea of time travel jetlag had never occurred to him before, for several excellent reasons, the foremost of which that he had never considered time travel as anything more than a science fiction conceit.
Oh, sure, it was theoretically possible, but would use almost an infinite amount of energy and bring up several seeming paradoxes, including the idea that if time travel were possible in the future, wouldn't we already know about it by now? His head ached, and he realized he was simply trying to avoid thinking about his present set of problems.
"On the bright side," said Emelia without a hint of optimism, "the entire project will know that our company flunky isn't a company flunky after all, once Tom's had a chance to make the rounds." He opened their front door for her and she stepped through, chin up, shoulders back, looking as dignified as a rumpled queen.
Shit, he thought. "They did burn his flat down, so I think they figured it out already," he said, trying not to sound defensive.
"I wasn't talking about the saboteurs," she snapped. "I was talking about the rest of the project. We'll both look like fools. Do you think no one will notice that you've been working closely with him, like he was from the company?"
Connor needed a drink. No,, he corrected himself, I don't need one. I just really, really want one. He turned into the kitchen and poured himself a glass, peering at Emelia in silent offer through the cutout window.
"Little early for that, isn't it?" she said acidly.
Since his body still assured him that it was around midnight, he decided that it wasn't, and gulped down the sweet liquid. It warmed all the way down and settled in his stomach with a comforting tingle.
"What do you want me to do, Em?" he asked, feeling somewhat fortified and desperate to break through to her. "I wouldn't have knowingly done that to you in a million years. God. I can't imagine what you went through. I'll apologize for weeks if you want. It was an accident. Yeah, you can blame the Doctor if you want, but we still need him. It doesn't change anything."
He poured himself another glass and looked through the window into the front room. Emelia wasn't in his frame of vision, and he had a moment of fear that she might have walked away during his little speech. He put his head through the door and found her sitting in one of the chairs, staring at the floor, her shoulders slumped and her head down. His throat tightened at the sight of her in a position of defeat.
"Em?" he said, crossing to sit on the arm of the chair next to her. He put a hand, very cautiously, on her back.
"I hate this," she said, all the anger and energy gone from her voice. "I have no control over anything that's happening. I can't find the bastards who are willing to kill to get us off this planet and I can't help Jonah. I need this man, this Doctor, who shows up on a whim and lies to us, then proves he can communicate with our son in a way I can never do. He dangles bits of technology in front of you and you're suddenly lifelong friends. I don't trust him! But I – I need him, and that's worse."
"Emelia," he said, her name a caress on his lips. "Emelia." She looked up at him, her eyes wide and shining with tears. He could see her in his mind's eye, naked before him, unwinding her hair and letting it fall down her back in a dark cascade. Before him, she laid herself bare in spirit, showing him a vulnerability she would never share with another. He would kill for her, die for her.
He stood up and pulled her out of the chair. To his surprise, she let him draw her into the circle of his arms, although her body was rigid against him. "I'm so, so sorry," he breathed into her hair. "You didn't deserve to go through what you did last night. I wish it had been me, instead." He swayed, holding her close, and pressed a kiss against her cheek.
"I thought you were dead," she stammered. "Don't ever leave me, Connor. Don't you dare. I couldn't bear it." She clutched him to her, her stringent control faltering. Her nails dug painfully into the skin below his shoulder blades, but he ignored the sting, knowing she just wanted to hold him close.
"I won't," he soothed, his hands tracing up and down her back. "Not now, not ever. I promise."
…
Rose returned to her post on the jump seat after several hours, and did feel better for it. Sleep had muted her sharp, aching guilt, although the mental image of Emelia searching frantically in the night for her lost husband still pained her.
The Doctor had been busy while she slept, although he was currently nowhere in sight. His coat and jacket were hanging on the coat rack near the front door and he had disassembled part of the underside of the console, from what she could tell. Debris of all sorts littered the grated flooring. She squinted and shook her head with amusement at what she saw. A shiny metal corkscrew, an egg timer, and a pink plastic pig were mixed in with miscellaneous wires, vacuum tubes, and other parts she was sure he had probably explained to her at one point. While there was always some work to be done on the TARDIS, she also knew that he took great comfort in immersing himself in a project when he was trying not to dwell on something.
He came back into the room as she was trying to figure out the significance of the plastic pig, wearing a jeweler's loupe on his head. "I found it!" he crowed.
"Good," said Rose, staring at the gizmo he was shaking excitedly in his hand. "What is it?" It looked like an electrician's crown, with curving branches and taped wires coming out of it in a bizarre halo.
"A Gaussier's synchrotron," he said, putting it in the pile of debris on the floor rather than on his head, which she had half expected. "It's a particle accelerator. Very handy that I happened to have a spare one. I didn't want to have to borrow the one from the oven."
She wasn't sure if she should be alarmed or comforted by that statement, so she pointed to the pig and said "What's that for?"
"The pig? Purely decorative." He chuckled to himself that she would ask such a silly question. She rolled her eyes. "Are you all right?" he asked, suddenly serious.
She considered her answer for a moment. "Mostly," she said at last. It was the truth.
"If you want to talk about it," he offered, "we could, I mean, just ask or whatever –" His eyes shifted anxiously.
"I'll let you know," she told him. She loved him so much for this offer, when he plainly didn't want to make it.
"So," he said, pulling the loupe into place and squinting through it at the synchrotron, "is it safe to go and check on the Trabanes now, do you think?"
"I'm not sure if it will ever be safe for you around Emelia again," she told him seriously.
"I could bring a gift," he said, looking up. His right eye, from this angle, looked hugely magnified through the loupe. "Humans like gifts. Well, not just humans. Everyone likes gifts."
"I think we'd better stay on task," she said hurriedly, wanting to cut off the inevitable digression on the gift-giving habits of the universe at large. "Work with Jonah, find the saboteurs."
"All right," he agreed readily enough, and began threading a fine gauge wire into the side of the synchrotron. As he worked, attention focused on his task, Rose heard a cheerful, distinct two-tone chime echo throughout the room. For a moment, out of context, she couldn't place it, and then she swiveled to look incredulously at the Doctor.
"You installed a doorbell?"
He grinned as he bounded over to the console and held down a button. "TARDIS here, Doctor speaking."
"Doctor," came Emelia's clipped tones, only slightly tinny. "Come to the flat in ten minutes. The analysis is finished."
Wisely, the Doctor kept his response brief. "We'll be there." A click on the other end indicated the end of the transmission. Obviously, Emelia was not in the mood for social niceties. Rose was a little surprised that she had been civil.
"I patched into the comm," he explained. "I didn't want to have to keep the door open to make sure we heard if someone buzzed us. Anyone could have just wandered in, after all."
She shot him a severe look and he assumed an innocent, "who, me?" expression in return. "Please don't make things worse with Emelia," she pleaded.
"Rose," he said, all traces of lightheartedness wiped away, "I can't rewind and get back those nine hours –"
"I know." She came over and stood by his side, offering the lightest touch of her hand against his. He touched back, equally softly, and laced his fingers through hers. "Just do your best, okay?"
He exhaled around a tentative smile, and took the loupe off. "Let's go."
…
Connor opened the door to the Trabanes' flat in response to Rose's knock. She stepped inside with the Doctor close on her heels, and her eyes flicked around the room for Emelia. She was nowhere in sight.
"Is everything all right?" she asked him, keeping her voice low.
He turned his lips up at the corner, with no evidence of mirth or pleasure in his expression. "Fine, thanks." It was the perfunctory answer of a stranger. She would get no confidence from him as to his own mental state, or Emelia's. It was no less than she deserved.
The Doctor cleared his throat, a cue for both of them to get back to the business at hand. "Have you checked the analysis logs?"
"Glanced through them," Connor told him. "I started on the first twenty or so records, and I don't see anything there that alarms me."
The Doctor put on his glasses and pulled a chair in front of the device, eyeing the display thoughtfully. Rose moved to stand behind him. "So what's all this?" she asked.
"System access by users who typically don't access those systems, for one," answered the Doctor. "Here's an example." He tapped the display. "Engineer Rollen Saunders, assigned to work with the mirror arrays, accessed the systems controlling the exchange units on this date. It's the only record of his having done so."
"Right," said Connor. "That happened when we had short staff one day – a bad case of Cortranian flu going around – and Rollen came down to help us out."
"Most of them, perhaps all of them, will have a perfectly harmless explanation, which is why I need Connor for this," said the Doctor. "We're hoping that something in these logs gives us a clue to someone who consistently accesses systems without a valid reason. Otherwise, we're looking at a lot of junk."
"Let's get to it, then," Connor said, looking like a man about to climb a very tall mountain.
…
While the Doctor and Connor pored through a seemingly unending amount of data, Rose fidgeted on the couch. She ached to do something useful, but she knew she couldn't contribute to what they were doing. Her ears strained for any sound from Emelia, and heard none. She wasn't even sure the other woman was in the flat, and didn't feel confident enough to ask Connor.
A loud knock on the door made Rose and Connor both start, although the Doctor remained unperturbed. She jumped up to answer the door, glad to have a purpose at last. She couldn't have been more surprised to find herself facing a very red-faced (not to mention red-haired) Frances Wittener, clutching Ian's hand on one side and Jonah's on the other.
"Rose!" said the other woman in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"Miss Rose!" said Ian simultaneously. He struggled loose from Frances' hand and hugged as much of Rose as he could reach, which left his small face snuggling into her belly. She put a hand down on his head and ruffled his dark hair.
"Helping Connor," she said, with a vague wave at the Doctor and Connor in the corner, probably just visible to the other woman. "Everything all right?"
"Just fine," said Frances. "Emelia asked me if I would walk the boys home. She's sealed up in her office working on something." She paused. "You look well."
There was a moment of awkwardness as Rose remembered the last time she had seen Frances; the Doctor had been bustling her back to the TARDIS after her collapse and mowing over any obstacles in his way. Obstacles that had, unfortunately for Frances, included her. "Yeah, I'm much better. Thanks for your help."
Ian let go of Rose and trotted off into the front room. "Hi, Dad!" he cried, and Connor scooped him up into his lap.
Jonah stood perfectly still at Frances' side and Rose gently took his other hand. Frances released him at the same time. His hand was warm, slightly damp and sticky, and soft in Rose's. "Did you have a good day, Jonah?" she asked him.
"Same as ever. Blocks and staring into space," said Frances, and Rose felt a flash of irritation that she should speak about Jonah as if he wasn't there.
"Do you want to play with your blocks now?" she asked, purposefully ignoring Frances, and Jonah took a step forward toward her. She grinned in triumph. See, he does hear us, she thought, and led the little boy into the front room where he could take up his usual spot. He folded down onto his knees and reached for a red block.
Rose sank down to the floor opposite him and crossed her legs. Frances still stood in the open doorway, effectively dismissed. She opened her mouth once or twice to start speaking, and eventually came out with "I'll be off, then."
"Bye," said Rose. "Nice to see you again."
"Thanks for bringing the boys home," called Connor, taking his first notice of Frances, as the door closed behind her.
That's different, thought Rose. Rudeness all around and the Doctor not involved in any of it.
...
Jonah radiated textures and sensations toward Rose while he worked with his blocks. She leaned back, propped on her hands, and tried to observe and catalogue each separate sensation.
There was the sharp corner of one red block as he shifted it in his palm. The nubby top surface of a blue block and the moment of resistance before two blocks interlocked with a snap. She could close her eyes and see the contrast between the bright red blocks and the yellow, green, or blue, and how the red ones seemed to pop out of the background. Once, for a moment, she felt the fuzzy outline of the carpet underneath the tips of his fingers as he worked to pick up a piece of lint that disrupted the geometric precision of his work.
Beyond, she could hear voices: the low rumbles of the Doctor and Connor, occasionally interrupted by Ian's higher pitch. The connection with Jonah was gentle enough that she felt she could shake it off, like the pivoting moment before sleep, before dreams. She didn't, though. It was a connection to the child who spent so much of his time alone.
"That's nice, Jonah," she said dreamily, and his response was a tickle at the base of her skull that made her laugh. She had grown accustomed to the touch of his mind, not at all like the Doctor's but familiar enough in its own way. The next sensation was strange, full of effort and intent, not at all like the drifting impressions that usually came from him. She could feel a tightening in her throat, a buzzing at the back of her palate, and then, an utterly alien vibration in her head.
"Uhhh," said Jonah.
It wasn't a word, but it was a sound. She sat up straight and her eyes flew open. His face was flushed and his mouth was open. His blue eyes were wide in shock, mirroring the astonishment that she felt. For a moment, they gaped at one another – he's looking straight at me! – then the world, in the form of Connor Trabane, intervened.
"Jonah," he cried, falling to his knees beside Rose and taking the little boy's hand in his. His face was flushed as Jonah's was, but his expression was rapturous rather than astonished. "I heard that, Jonah."
"Did you hear?" said Ian, tugging at the Doctor's sleeve. "Jonah said something. I thought they said he couldn't but he did and I heard it. Did you hear it?"
"Oh yes," said the Doctor. He was wearing the gentle smile he saved for the most miraculous of moments. "I heard, Ian."
Rose made a distressed sound and waved her hands in front of her. She felt waves of anxiety from Jonah, and she had the strong urge to run, to clap her hands over her ears.
"Quiet," said the Doctor, in a soft but carrying voice, and everyone stopped speaking at once. "Jonah, it's all right." He knelt and sat back on his feet, then touched his fingers lightly to the boy's temples. "We're all happy, see?" he soothed. "There you are."
The anxiety pouring from Jonah faded, but Rose's stomach roiled in turbulent waves. She drew in a shaky breath. The Doctor's eyes, focused on her over Jonah's head, met hers. She could feel his presence through her lingering contact with Jonah, and it was too much for her to bear. She shook her head almost to shake off the sensation, disoriented, and shuddered with relief when the Doctor released Jonah's head.
"Too much," she managed. He extended a hand toward her and she reached out for it without hesitation. She swallowed and closed her eyes, tried to clear her head. He stroked her hand lightly with his thumb and kept gentle pressure with his other fingers. Her heartbeat gradually slowed, and she felt the last touch of Jonah's mind recede into the background.
"Better?" he asked, smoothing her hair back from her face. She offered him a smile and a brief nod.
Beside her, Connor was speaking in low, earnest tones to Jonah. "… so happy you spoke," he said. "If we get too loud and excited, it's because we love you and we're proud of you." He handed Jonah a brick. "Take all the time you need."
The three adults stood in unison and went into the kitchen, giving Jonah some space. Rose wondered where Ian had wandered off to, and then saw him, sitting at the table with his legs swinging below him, too short to touch the ground. He bent intently over something on the table and was drawing with controlled, precise strokes of a pencil.
"I should tell Emelia," said Connor. He kept trying to suppress his smile, but it kept creeping back into place. "I don't want to interrupt her but this is what we've been hoping for." He studied Rose for a moment, the scrutiny making her uncomfortable, and then the Doctor. "Thank you for this," he said. "Last night – well, it was an accident, wasn't it?"
"It was," said the Doctor before Rose could answer. "A careless accident, and I owe you an apology."
"Yes," Connor agreed. "I'd say you do. Emelia, more than me. That ship of yours is amazing, but I have to say, I'll be happier if I never set foot inside again." He laughed without humour. "Needless to say, my marriage will be on much better ground if I stay away."
There wasn't much to be said in answer to that, so neither the Doctor nor Rose said anything.
"At any rate," Connor continued, "whatever you're doing with Jonah is amazing, no doubt about it."
"He knows we're listening," the Doctor said with an affectionate look at his small protégé through the kitchen window. "He knows we can hear him now, and he's trying new things."
We all are, Rose thought. Not just Jonah.
"Of course not," she retorted. "I didn't have anything to tell them. I just got them ready and off to the nursery like there was nothing at all unusual about their father mysteriously not coming home the night before."
"Thanks," he said quietly. "It's bad enough that you spent the night worrying about me."
"It certainly is."
They proceeded in silence for several minutes. Connor could hear the steady crunch-crunch of their shoes on the ground and the occasional faint sniff from his wife.
"Did you get any sleep?" he asked carefully. She shot him a contemptuous look and didn't deign to reply.
He hadn't either, since the lost nine hours had been only a few chaotic minutes for him. His body clock told him it was almost midnight, time to get some sleep, not bright and early in the morning. The idea of time travel jetlag had never occurred to him before, for several excellent reasons, the foremost of which that he had never considered time travel as anything more than a science fiction conceit.
Oh, sure, it was theoretically possible, but would use almost an infinite amount of energy and bring up several seeming paradoxes, including the idea that if time travel were possible in the future, wouldn't we already know about it by now? His head ached, and he realized he was simply trying to avoid thinking about his present set of problems.
"On the bright side," said Emelia without a hint of optimism, "the entire project will know that our company flunky isn't a company flunky after all, once Tom's had a chance to make the rounds." He opened their front door for her and she stepped through, chin up, shoulders back, looking as dignified as a rumpled queen.
Shit, he thought. "They did burn his flat down, so I think they figured it out already," he said, trying not to sound defensive.
"I wasn't talking about the saboteurs," she snapped. "I was talking about the rest of the project. We'll both look like fools. Do you think no one will notice that you've been working closely with him, like he was from the company?"
Connor needed a drink. No,, he corrected himself, I don't need one. I just really, really want one. He turned into the kitchen and poured himself a glass, peering at Emelia in silent offer through the cutout window.
"Little early for that, isn't it?" she said acidly.
Since his body still assured him that it was around midnight, he decided that it wasn't, and gulped down the sweet liquid. It warmed all the way down and settled in his stomach with a comforting tingle.
"What do you want me to do, Em?" he asked, feeling somewhat fortified and desperate to break through to her. "I wouldn't have knowingly done that to you in a million years. God. I can't imagine what you went through. I'll apologize for weeks if you want. It was an accident. Yeah, you can blame the Doctor if you want, but we still need him. It doesn't change anything."
He poured himself another glass and looked through the window into the front room. Emelia wasn't in his frame of vision, and he had a moment of fear that she might have walked away during his little speech. He put his head through the door and found her sitting in one of the chairs, staring at the floor, her shoulders slumped and her head down. His throat tightened at the sight of her in a position of defeat.
"Em?" he said, crossing to sit on the arm of the chair next to her. He put a hand, very cautiously, on her back.
"I hate this," she said, all the anger and energy gone from her voice. "I have no control over anything that's happening. I can't find the bastards who are willing to kill to get us off this planet and I can't help Jonah. I need this man, this Doctor, who shows up on a whim and lies to us, then proves he can communicate with our son in a way I can never do. He dangles bits of technology in front of you and you're suddenly lifelong friends. I don't trust him! But I – I need him, and that's worse."
"Emelia," he said, her name a caress on his lips. "Emelia." She looked up at him, her eyes wide and shining with tears. He could see her in his mind's eye, naked before him, unwinding her hair and letting it fall down her back in a dark cascade. Before him, she laid herself bare in spirit, showing him a vulnerability she would never share with another. He would kill for her, die for her.
He stood up and pulled her out of the chair. To his surprise, she let him draw her into the circle of his arms, although her body was rigid against him. "I'm so, so sorry," he breathed into her hair. "You didn't deserve to go through what you did last night. I wish it had been me, instead." He swayed, holding her close, and pressed a kiss against her cheek.
"I thought you were dead," she stammered. "Don't ever leave me, Connor. Don't you dare. I couldn't bear it." She clutched him to her, her stringent control faltering. Her nails dug painfully into the skin below his shoulder blades, but he ignored the sting, knowing she just wanted to hold him close.
"I won't," he soothed, his hands tracing up and down her back. "Not now, not ever. I promise."
…
Rose returned to her post on the jump seat after several hours, and did feel better for it. Sleep had muted her sharp, aching guilt, although the mental image of Emelia searching frantically in the night for her lost husband still pained her.
The Doctor had been busy while she slept, although he was currently nowhere in sight. His coat and jacket were hanging on the coat rack near the front door and he had disassembled part of the underside of the console, from what she could tell. Debris of all sorts littered the grated flooring. She squinted and shook her head with amusement at what she saw. A shiny metal corkscrew, an egg timer, and a pink plastic pig were mixed in with miscellaneous wires, vacuum tubes, and other parts she was sure he had probably explained to her at one point. While there was always some work to be done on the TARDIS, she also knew that he took great comfort in immersing himself in a project when he was trying not to dwell on something.
He came back into the room as she was trying to figure out the significance of the plastic pig, wearing a jeweler's loupe on his head. "I found it!" he crowed.
"Good," said Rose, staring at the gizmo he was shaking excitedly in his hand. "What is it?" It looked like an electrician's crown, with curving branches and taped wires coming out of it in a bizarre halo.
"A Gaussier's synchrotron," he said, putting it in the pile of debris on the floor rather than on his head, which she had half expected. "It's a particle accelerator. Very handy that I happened to have a spare one. I didn't want to have to borrow the one from the oven."
She wasn't sure if she should be alarmed or comforted by that statement, so she pointed to the pig and said "What's that for?"
"The pig? Purely decorative." He chuckled to himself that she would ask such a silly question. She rolled her eyes. "Are you all right?" he asked, suddenly serious.
She considered her answer for a moment. "Mostly," she said at last. It was the truth.
"If you want to talk about it," he offered, "we could, I mean, just ask or whatever –" His eyes shifted anxiously.
"I'll let you know," she told him. She loved him so much for this offer, when he plainly didn't want to make it.
"So," he said, pulling the loupe into place and squinting through it at the synchrotron, "is it safe to go and check on the Trabanes now, do you think?"
"I'm not sure if it will ever be safe for you around Emelia again," she told him seriously.
"I could bring a gift," he said, looking up. His right eye, from this angle, looked hugely magnified through the loupe. "Humans like gifts. Well, not just humans. Everyone likes gifts."
"I think we'd better stay on task," she said hurriedly, wanting to cut off the inevitable digression on the gift-giving habits of the universe at large. "Work with Jonah, find the saboteurs."
"All right," he agreed readily enough, and began threading a fine gauge wire into the side of the synchrotron. As he worked, attention focused on his task, Rose heard a cheerful, distinct two-tone chime echo throughout the room. For a moment, out of context, she couldn't place it, and then she swiveled to look incredulously at the Doctor.
"You installed a doorbell?"
He grinned as he bounded over to the console and held down a button. "TARDIS here, Doctor speaking."
"Doctor," came Emelia's clipped tones, only slightly tinny. "Come to the flat in ten minutes. The analysis is finished."
Wisely, the Doctor kept his response brief. "We'll be there." A click on the other end indicated the end of the transmission. Obviously, Emelia was not in the mood for social niceties. Rose was a little surprised that she had been civil.
"I patched into the comm," he explained. "I didn't want to have to keep the door open to make sure we heard if someone buzzed us. Anyone could have just wandered in, after all."
She shot him a severe look and he assumed an innocent, "who, me?" expression in return. "Please don't make things worse with Emelia," she pleaded.
"Rose," he said, all traces of lightheartedness wiped away, "I can't rewind and get back those nine hours –"
"I know." She came over and stood by his side, offering the lightest touch of her hand against his. He touched back, equally softly, and laced his fingers through hers. "Just do your best, okay?"
He exhaled around a tentative smile, and took the loupe off. "Let's go."
…
Connor opened the door to the Trabanes' flat in response to Rose's knock. She stepped inside with the Doctor close on her heels, and her eyes flicked around the room for Emelia. She was nowhere in sight.
"Is everything all right?" she asked him, keeping her voice low.
He turned his lips up at the corner, with no evidence of mirth or pleasure in his expression. "Fine, thanks." It was the perfunctory answer of a stranger. She would get no confidence from him as to his own mental state, or Emelia's. It was no less than she deserved.
The Doctor cleared his throat, a cue for both of them to get back to the business at hand. "Have you checked the analysis logs?"
"Glanced through them," Connor told him. "I started on the first twenty or so records, and I don't see anything there that alarms me."
The Doctor put on his glasses and pulled a chair in front of the device, eyeing the display thoughtfully. Rose moved to stand behind him. "So what's all this?" she asked.
"System access by users who typically don't access those systems, for one," answered the Doctor. "Here's an example." He tapped the display. "Engineer Rollen Saunders, assigned to work with the mirror arrays, accessed the systems controlling the exchange units on this date. It's the only record of his having done so."
"Right," said Connor. "That happened when we had short staff one day – a bad case of Cortranian flu going around – and Rollen came down to help us out."
"Most of them, perhaps all of them, will have a perfectly harmless explanation, which is why I need Connor for this," said the Doctor. "We're hoping that something in these logs gives us a clue to someone who consistently accesses systems without a valid reason. Otherwise, we're looking at a lot of junk."
"Let's get to it, then," Connor said, looking like a man about to climb a very tall mountain.
…
While the Doctor and Connor pored through a seemingly unending amount of data, Rose fidgeted on the couch. She ached to do something useful, but she knew she couldn't contribute to what they were doing. Her ears strained for any sound from Emelia, and heard none. She wasn't even sure the other woman was in the flat, and didn't feel confident enough to ask Connor.
A loud knock on the door made Rose and Connor both start, although the Doctor remained unperturbed. She jumped up to answer the door, glad to have a purpose at last. She couldn't have been more surprised to find herself facing a very red-faced (not to mention red-haired) Frances Wittener, clutching Ian's hand on one side and Jonah's on the other.
"Rose!" said the other woman in surprise. "What are you doing here?"
"Miss Rose!" said Ian simultaneously. He struggled loose from Frances' hand and hugged as much of Rose as he could reach, which left his small face snuggling into her belly. She put a hand down on his head and ruffled his dark hair.
"Helping Connor," she said, with a vague wave at the Doctor and Connor in the corner, probably just visible to the other woman. "Everything all right?"
"Just fine," said Frances. "Emelia asked me if I would walk the boys home. She's sealed up in her office working on something." She paused. "You look well."
There was a moment of awkwardness as Rose remembered the last time she had seen Frances; the Doctor had been bustling her back to the TARDIS after her collapse and mowing over any obstacles in his way. Obstacles that had, unfortunately for Frances, included her. "Yeah, I'm much better. Thanks for your help."
Ian let go of Rose and trotted off into the front room. "Hi, Dad!" he cried, and Connor scooped him up into his lap.
Jonah stood perfectly still at Frances' side and Rose gently took his other hand. Frances released him at the same time. His hand was warm, slightly damp and sticky, and soft in Rose's. "Did you have a good day, Jonah?" she asked him.
"Same as ever. Blocks and staring into space," said Frances, and Rose felt a flash of irritation that she should speak about Jonah as if he wasn't there.
"Do you want to play with your blocks now?" she asked, purposefully ignoring Frances, and Jonah took a step forward toward her. She grinned in triumph. See, he does hear us, she thought, and led the little boy into the front room where he could take up his usual spot. He folded down onto his knees and reached for a red block.
Rose sank down to the floor opposite him and crossed her legs. Frances still stood in the open doorway, effectively dismissed. She opened her mouth once or twice to start speaking, and eventually came out with "I'll be off, then."
"Bye," said Rose. "Nice to see you again."
"Thanks for bringing the boys home," called Connor, taking his first notice of Frances, as the door closed behind her.
That's different, thought Rose. Rudeness all around and the Doctor not involved in any of it.
...
Jonah radiated textures and sensations toward Rose while he worked with his blocks. She leaned back, propped on her hands, and tried to observe and catalogue each separate sensation.
There was the sharp corner of one red block as he shifted it in his palm. The nubby top surface of a blue block and the moment of resistance before two blocks interlocked with a snap. She could close her eyes and see the contrast between the bright red blocks and the yellow, green, or blue, and how the red ones seemed to pop out of the background. Once, for a moment, she felt the fuzzy outline of the carpet underneath the tips of his fingers as he worked to pick up a piece of lint that disrupted the geometric precision of his work.
Beyond, she could hear voices: the low rumbles of the Doctor and Connor, occasionally interrupted by Ian's higher pitch. The connection with Jonah was gentle enough that she felt she could shake it off, like the pivoting moment before sleep, before dreams. She didn't, though. It was a connection to the child who spent so much of his time alone.
"That's nice, Jonah," she said dreamily, and his response was a tickle at the base of her skull that made her laugh. She had grown accustomed to the touch of his mind, not at all like the Doctor's but familiar enough in its own way. The next sensation was strange, full of effort and intent, not at all like the drifting impressions that usually came from him. She could feel a tightening in her throat, a buzzing at the back of her palate, and then, an utterly alien vibration in her head.
"Uhhh," said Jonah.
It wasn't a word, but it was a sound. She sat up straight and her eyes flew open. His face was flushed and his mouth was open. His blue eyes were wide in shock, mirroring the astonishment that she felt. For a moment, they gaped at one another – he's looking straight at me! – then the world, in the form of Connor Trabane, intervened.
"Jonah," he cried, falling to his knees beside Rose and taking the little boy's hand in his. His face was flushed as Jonah's was, but his expression was rapturous rather than astonished. "I heard that, Jonah."
"Did you hear?" said Ian, tugging at the Doctor's sleeve. "Jonah said something. I thought they said he couldn't but he did and I heard it. Did you hear it?"
"Oh yes," said the Doctor. He was wearing the gentle smile he saved for the most miraculous of moments. "I heard, Ian."
Rose made a distressed sound and waved her hands in front of her. She felt waves of anxiety from Jonah, and she had the strong urge to run, to clap her hands over her ears.
"Quiet," said the Doctor, in a soft but carrying voice, and everyone stopped speaking at once. "Jonah, it's all right." He knelt and sat back on his feet, then touched his fingers lightly to the boy's temples. "We're all happy, see?" he soothed. "There you are."
The anxiety pouring from Jonah faded, but Rose's stomach roiled in turbulent waves. She drew in a shaky breath. The Doctor's eyes, focused on her over Jonah's head, met hers. She could feel his presence through her lingering contact with Jonah, and it was too much for her to bear. She shook her head almost to shake off the sensation, disoriented, and shuddered with relief when the Doctor released Jonah's head.
"Too much," she managed. He extended a hand toward her and she reached out for it without hesitation. She swallowed and closed her eyes, tried to clear her head. He stroked her hand lightly with his thumb and kept gentle pressure with his other fingers. Her heartbeat gradually slowed, and she felt the last touch of Jonah's mind recede into the background.
"Better?" he asked, smoothing her hair back from her face. She offered him a smile and a brief nod.
Beside her, Connor was speaking in low, earnest tones to Jonah. "… so happy you spoke," he said. "If we get too loud and excited, it's because we love you and we're proud of you." He handed Jonah a brick. "Take all the time you need."
The three adults stood in unison and went into the kitchen, giving Jonah some space. Rose wondered where Ian had wandered off to, and then saw him, sitting at the table with his legs swinging below him, too short to touch the ground. He bent intently over something on the table and was drawing with controlled, precise strokes of a pencil.
"I should tell Emelia," said Connor. He kept trying to suppress his smile, but it kept creeping back into place. "I don't want to interrupt her but this is what we've been hoping for." He studied Rose for a moment, the scrutiny making her uncomfortable, and then the Doctor. "Thank you for this," he said. "Last night – well, it was an accident, wasn't it?"
"It was," said the Doctor before Rose could answer. "A careless accident, and I owe you an apology."
"Yes," Connor agreed. "I'd say you do. Emelia, more than me. That ship of yours is amazing, but I have to say, I'll be happier if I never set foot inside again." He laughed without humour. "Needless to say, my marriage will be on much better ground if I stay away."
There wasn't much to be said in answer to that, so neither the Doctor nor Rose said anything.
"At any rate," Connor continued, "whatever you're doing with Jonah is amazing, no doubt about it."
"He knows we're listening," the Doctor said with an affectionate look at his small protégé through the kitchen window. "He knows we can hear him now, and he's trying new things."
We all are, Rose thought. Not just Jonah.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 03:34 am (UTC)Staying and cleaning up the mess -- not to mention seeing how the people around him are affected -- are very new to him.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 02:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 03:35 am (UTC)That's absolutely wonderful. I'm so glad this seems genuine to you, and thanks for sharing this.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 02:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 03:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 04:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 05:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 09:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 05:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 02:54 pm (UTC)"A Gaussier's synchrotron," he said, putting it in the pile of debris on the floor rather than on his head, which she had half expected.
I love the way that despite the fact Rose knows him better than anyone and that she has been exposed to these weird and wonderful gadgets for some time now, you can still write her as being totally puzzled at them. It is so in character and always serves as a subtle reminder that the Doctor is, in fact not human (something which can be easily forgotten when he is written as being in a relationship with Rose).
The dooorbell bit had me in stitches... How domesticated is that?! In fact all of this scene was brilliantly written.
Loved the last part with Jonah too. You are achieving (as usual) the perfect balance between serious, heart-rending moments and those of complete hilarity.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 05:03 pm (UTC)Oh, thank you for that. The show has a balance between the two, and goes from humor to drama and back in the blink of an eye. It's terribly fun, to boot.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 03:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 09:27 pm (UTC)The contact between Rose and Jonah was perfect.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-16 11:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 12:18 am (UTC)I saw how the trip looked to Connor vs. the impact it had on his family as being a perfect example of the disproportional burden a person's traveling with the Doctor places on their family and friends. There's a tremendous disjunction, always, between how the relationship with home looks to the companion and how it looks to those who remain at home. The companion lives in the myth that they can rejoin their old life at whatever point they please. Those at home know better.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 12:55 am (UTC)Yes. The companion may step back to their "real life" at the exact moment they left, but they will be changed fundamentally by that experience.
no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-17 06:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-09-18 12:17 am (UTC)