Part 03 - Chapter 12 - Reunion
Verity has continued to search her agitation escalating the longer the time she and her friends are separated. She needs to find her Theta. As she is scanning the last inhabited moon in the solar system his mind bursts into her mindscape bright and hot like a super nova. At first she is relieved beyond words that she has found him but as it becomes obvious that he is in no way trying to contact her, her worry escalates to new heights.
His mind is too bright as if in overdrive and incapable of moderating the psychic energy that he naturally holds, and the energy that is building is starting to get to be too much for his safety. She has to get to him now, shield his mind before he draws beings that will feed on just this kind of energy till there is nothing left or he completely burns out his ability to function on that level. Either one will kill him just one would be quicker than the other. She has to get him sedated before he draws in too much energy for her to be able to siphon it off.
As Verity begins to land she knows things have gone very, very wrong, Theta’s mind has begun to overload, almost like he has stopped trying to hold in check the energy he can wield and he is uncontrollably drawing in energy. His control which has become second nature is starting to come undone, the mental bindings he habitually keeps are fraying as they did right before he committed suicide which scares her even more because she doesn’t know what could be so bad as to make him loose control in this manner. She can’t materialize around him as she would like but she does the next best thing and materializes right next to him. She is in fact so close to Jack's back that it makes him jump forward with alarm as she begins to materialize.
As she moved the medical bay to connect to the front door she knows she must try to do something she has only tried to do in private since she got the idea and begins modifying her internal walls in the medical bay to create an energy refraction allowing her to project a mental image of herself into the med lab. It is difficult, it takes her whole two and one half full minutes of concentrated effort but she eventually gets the right combination to make it work.
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Jack has been feeling the first ripples of energy, he can’t identify what it is but it is making his short hairs stand on end like the static electricity before a thunderstorm. He is almost completely positive it is coming from the Doctor so he pulls him into his arms as the TARDIS begins to materialize. If anyone is going to be able to help him it will be his sentient ship. As he stands the front door of the TARDIS swings open in front of him revealing a clean well-stocked medical area instead of the control room he had been expecting and without thinking he says, “Thanks!” Her reply is a concerned hum. As Jack moves to the nearest medical bed and puts the battered form of the Doctor down he notices that the static he had felt a few moments before entering has now completely disappeared which confirms in his mind that it was something that the Doctor had been doing. As he is putting the Doctor down Rose staggers through the door, which closes behind her just as shouts and blaster fire begin outside.
Holding her head, she says in a distressed but confident voice, “I knew she would come.”
Jack’s reply is brusque but relieved, “And it sounds like it was just in time if what I heard coming from outside was anything to go by.” Sounding rather pleased with the prospect he said, “They’re not going to be happy.”
From two directions he hears the word, “Tough!” Both Jack and Rose jump at the second voice looking for its source. Turning in the direction it seems to have come from Jack instinctively moves his body to shield the Doctor as much as he can from that direction. What they see surprises them both.
About three feet from them is the ghostly golden form of a woman. Jack instantly recognizes the woman from his dreams the night before. “You! What are you doing here?" Then, with suspicion, in his voice, "and how did you get in here?”
He watches as Rose in panic moves to shield the Doctor from the perceived intruder as well.
'I am Verity, and you are my residents’, she says gently to them.
Rose clutches her head in pain at the words; her head still hurts from the bombardment of emotions that the Doctor had been projecting and grits out through the pain, “Then why have I never seen you before?”
--------------------------------
In her focused intent to communicate in this new manner she realizes she has hurt Rose with her mental projection and it grieves her terribly, but she doesn’t have time for that grief. She will do what she can for the girl as soon as her Theta is more stable.
Moderating her mental tone to a quiet whisper Verity replies, ‘I am sorry Rose I didn’t mean you distress. I forget for a moment how sensitive you have become to his emotions and what it must have been like out there for you.’ Then to them both she answers Rose’s question, ‘because the need hasn’t ever been this great. This form is not easy to maintain, but I needed your full attention quickly.’ With that the glow breaks apart and vanishes, ‘The Doctor is in critical need of some medical attention but you don’t have the knowledge to help him and I don’t have the hands to do so.’ Her last words are heartfelt and anguished, ‘Will you please help me to help him?’
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Rose can’t believe what she is seeing at first, unsure how this glowing being got in, she is sure the door had closed behind her. She is even more surprised as Jack seems to recognize the glowing woman that has appeared. At first the voice hurts her, but her gentle apology and the soft mental voice help her feel confident that she is the loving presence that she has been dwelling with for months now. It bothers her though that she has never thought to ask if the TARDIS had a name, and suddenly she realizes how odd that is, wondering why she has never asked, as she has known from that first trip that the TARDIS was sentient. For now though the Doctor is more important and turning Rose looks at the Doctor’s face, pale beneath the black bruises. She is glad he has at least stopped trying to speak, which considering the odd angle of his jaw, which she figures indicates it too is broken, is a good thing. But his very stillness frightens her so she asks, “How?” hoping and trusting that the melodic mental voice is that of the TARDIS knowing that the TARDIS would do nothing to hurt the Doctor.
With that question Verity begins explaining what needs to be done to stabilize his condition.
At Verity's direction she pulls back the great coat that Jack had carried him into the room in cringing as she again looks at the damage that has been done to the man she loves. Jack is already moving about the room pulling together other items as directed. Rose hears again that gentle voice. ‘Rose, I need you to find a vein in his left arm while Jack gets together the medicine and monitoring equipment.’ She gently picks up his left arm, trying to be careful but there are so many bruises. As she does so she is thankful for the first aid course that Henrick’s put her through. Never did she dream when she was taking that course she would be using bits of that knowledge galaxies away from home to try to the save the man she had fallen in love with more than life itself, who just happens to be from another planet, at the directions of a sentient time ship. The oddness of that thought almost makes her laugh. The horror of everything that has happened the last couple of days makes her almost wish that this were some sort of nightmare that she would wake from any moment. But looking up and seeing the Doctor’s face, even damaged as it is, she knows that even in spite of the monsters they encounter the presence of the Doctor in her life makes it all worth while. Even in the grief she feels right now she knows her life is better here at his side than anywhere else.
She watches as slowly the Doctor’s vitals begin to stabilize somewhat once the sedative the TARDIS has Jack give him starts to take effect. As they work to get the internal bleeding he has been experiencing under control his color and breathing begin to improve as well. As they complete that task she asks.
“So what next?” She doesn’t know much about medicine, never thought she would need to, but she does know that he is making progress based on his physical appearance.
‘Next would be his jaw.’ Is the TARDIS’ reply, ‘like you humans there are a large number of nerves near the joint of the jaw and I dare not have you give him more of the sedative till his vitals stabilize some more. That means he may wake at any time and that is the area that will cause him the greatest pain at the moment.’
“I didn’t figure he would be talking if the nerves ran the same,” Jack comments
‘He wouldn’t have been if he had been more aware. There are still drugs in his system I haven’t been able to completely analyze, but I have been able to isolate part of the components as being hallucinogens.’ Her mental voice turns chilling, as I feel her anger and I shiver as much from that as from her words, ‘Another component stimulates the pain receptors in his brain, so I am unsure if he would even have been able to tell his jaw was broken.’ The expression Jack gives me tells me he is feeling the same sense of horror, as I am at what that must mean.
After that is done next is his broken right arm.
Jack's serious expression warns Rose before he even begins speaking that what he is about to say is not going to make her happy, "Rose, I want you to know there are limits to what the equipment can do, at least in humans this kind of damage takes weeks sometime months to heal from."
"But I thought..."
"Yes, this is healing the bone and tissue damage," he says gesturing with the device in his hand. "But the nerve damage is not so easily fixed it takes more time for them to heal and even with this, it will take a couple of days for the bones to complete the knitting process and get back to full strength.”
"Oh," I think about that and all the injuries they inflicted on him. As I look at his hand which I am gently cradling in my own as Jack works on the upper break in his right arm and I shudder as I think about how badly it must have hurt with all the nerves in his hands to have so many of the bones broken, and what it will mean for him as his hands heal.
It will mean that most likely he will need help with things like buttons and other tasks needing small motor control. Based on the extent of damage to his hands and feet it may take awhile before things go back to normal. She also knows he will hate having to be dependant on her and Jack so she decides she will need to stay close as she suspects, based on his past behavior when hurt, that he won't ask for that needed help.
If the Doctor and Jack didn't need her here she would be tempted to go and have a good cry, but she is needed here and so she tries to hold in the tears threatening to fall.
As they begin work on the second break in his right arm the Doctor begins to wake and she tries to brace herself for the oncoming wash of emotions that had bombarded her previously. To her relief she doesn’t feel anything but her own distress as he again starts with his mumbled litany of pleading for her forgiveness.
A moment later she does get a wave of emotion but this time it isn’t from the Doctor and it is of cold fury not pain. At her gasp the emotion is shut off abruptly leaving her stunned with its intensity.
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I feel anger as I see what he believes to be true, an anger that boils through my circuits that they could be so cruel. I watch as in his minds eye I see how he goads the Essarrian into beating him in hopes that it will do what he can't muster the concentration, due to the Essarrians continued torture, to do for himself. I feel his intense desire to die rather than to go on, knowing he has killed his Rose. Not just because he failed to protect her which is a fear I know he had come to live with, but as a deliberate, despicably brutal action on his part. That he cannot, will not, bear as he thinks of all the times Rose has made him smile, showed him he could be happy again and to repay her thus was the worst betrayal of which he could think. I see in his mind he feels he has no other choice, if she hasn't survived because of him then he knows he deserves everything the Essarrian is doing to him and more. With his each thought my anger boils more forcefully till it overflows its bounds, affecting Rose. I reign in my anger and again shield her as I realize I am affecting her. In those brief moments though Theta has recaptured his resolve and now without the painful distractions sapping his concentration he begins a deliberate shut down of his body's functions.
Chapter 13 - Crisis (R)
Stories Index
His mind is too bright as if in overdrive and incapable of moderating the psychic energy that he naturally holds, and the energy that is building is starting to get to be too much for his safety. She has to get to him now, shield his mind before he draws beings that will feed on just this kind of energy till there is nothing left or he completely burns out his ability to function on that level. Either one will kill him just one would be quicker than the other. She has to get him sedated before he draws in too much energy for her to be able to siphon it off.
As Verity begins to land she knows things have gone very, very wrong, Theta’s mind has begun to overload, almost like he has stopped trying to hold in check the energy he can wield and he is uncontrollably drawing in energy. His control which has become second nature is starting to come undone, the mental bindings he habitually keeps are fraying as they did right before he committed suicide which scares her even more because she doesn’t know what could be so bad as to make him loose control in this manner. She can’t materialize around him as she would like but she does the next best thing and materializes right next to him. She is in fact so close to Jack's back that it makes him jump forward with alarm as she begins to materialize.
As she moved the medical bay to connect to the front door she knows she must try to do something she has only tried to do in private since she got the idea and begins modifying her internal walls in the medical bay to create an energy refraction allowing her to project a mental image of herself into the med lab. It is difficult, it takes her whole two and one half full minutes of concentrated effort but she eventually gets the right combination to make it work.
-----------------------
Jack has been feeling the first ripples of energy, he can’t identify what it is but it is making his short hairs stand on end like the static electricity before a thunderstorm. He is almost completely positive it is coming from the Doctor so he pulls him into his arms as the TARDIS begins to materialize. If anyone is going to be able to help him it will be his sentient ship. As he stands the front door of the TARDIS swings open in front of him revealing a clean well-stocked medical area instead of the control room he had been expecting and without thinking he says, “Thanks!” Her reply is a concerned hum. As Jack moves to the nearest medical bed and puts the battered form of the Doctor down he notices that the static he had felt a few moments before entering has now completely disappeared which confirms in his mind that it was something that the Doctor had been doing. As he is putting the Doctor down Rose staggers through the door, which closes behind her just as shouts and blaster fire begin outside.
Holding her head, she says in a distressed but confident voice, “I knew she would come.”
Jack’s reply is brusque but relieved, “And it sounds like it was just in time if what I heard coming from outside was anything to go by.” Sounding rather pleased with the prospect he said, “They’re not going to be happy.”
From two directions he hears the word, “Tough!” Both Jack and Rose jump at the second voice looking for its source. Turning in the direction it seems to have come from Jack instinctively moves his body to shield the Doctor as much as he can from that direction. What they see surprises them both.
About three feet from them is the ghostly golden form of a woman. Jack instantly recognizes the woman from his dreams the night before. “You! What are you doing here?" Then, with suspicion, in his voice, "and how did you get in here?”
He watches as Rose in panic moves to shield the Doctor from the perceived intruder as well.
'I am Verity, and you are my residents’, she says gently to them.
Rose clutches her head in pain at the words; her head still hurts from the bombardment of emotions that the Doctor had been projecting and grits out through the pain, “Then why have I never seen you before?”
--------------------------------
In her focused intent to communicate in this new manner she realizes she has hurt Rose with her mental projection and it grieves her terribly, but she doesn’t have time for that grief. She will do what she can for the girl as soon as her Theta is more stable.
Moderating her mental tone to a quiet whisper Verity replies, ‘I am sorry Rose I didn’t mean you distress. I forget for a moment how sensitive you have become to his emotions and what it must have been like out there for you.’ Then to them both she answers Rose’s question, ‘because the need hasn’t ever been this great. This form is not easy to maintain, but I needed your full attention quickly.’ With that the glow breaks apart and vanishes, ‘The Doctor is in critical need of some medical attention but you don’t have the knowledge to help him and I don’t have the hands to do so.’ Her last words are heartfelt and anguished, ‘Will you please help me to help him?’
-------------------------------------
Rose can’t believe what she is seeing at first, unsure how this glowing being got in, she is sure the door had closed behind her. She is even more surprised as Jack seems to recognize the glowing woman that has appeared. At first the voice hurts her, but her gentle apology and the soft mental voice help her feel confident that she is the loving presence that she has been dwelling with for months now. It bothers her though that she has never thought to ask if the TARDIS had a name, and suddenly she realizes how odd that is, wondering why she has never asked, as she has known from that first trip that the TARDIS was sentient. For now though the Doctor is more important and turning Rose looks at the Doctor’s face, pale beneath the black bruises. She is glad he has at least stopped trying to speak, which considering the odd angle of his jaw, which she figures indicates it too is broken, is a good thing. But his very stillness frightens her so she asks, “How?” hoping and trusting that the melodic mental voice is that of the TARDIS knowing that the TARDIS would do nothing to hurt the Doctor.
With that question Verity begins explaining what needs to be done to stabilize his condition.
At Verity's direction she pulls back the great coat that Jack had carried him into the room in cringing as she again looks at the damage that has been done to the man she loves. Jack is already moving about the room pulling together other items as directed. Rose hears again that gentle voice. ‘Rose, I need you to find a vein in his left arm while Jack gets together the medicine and monitoring equipment.’ She gently picks up his left arm, trying to be careful but there are so many bruises. As she does so she is thankful for the first aid course that Henrick’s put her through. Never did she dream when she was taking that course she would be using bits of that knowledge galaxies away from home to try to the save the man she had fallen in love with more than life itself, who just happens to be from another planet, at the directions of a sentient time ship. The oddness of that thought almost makes her laugh. The horror of everything that has happened the last couple of days makes her almost wish that this were some sort of nightmare that she would wake from any moment. But looking up and seeing the Doctor’s face, even damaged as it is, she knows that even in spite of the monsters they encounter the presence of the Doctor in her life makes it all worth while. Even in the grief she feels right now she knows her life is better here at his side than anywhere else.
She watches as slowly the Doctor’s vitals begin to stabilize somewhat once the sedative the TARDIS has Jack give him starts to take effect. As they work to get the internal bleeding he has been experiencing under control his color and breathing begin to improve as well. As they complete that task she asks.
“So what next?” She doesn’t know much about medicine, never thought she would need to, but she does know that he is making progress based on his physical appearance.
‘Next would be his jaw.’ Is the TARDIS’ reply, ‘like you humans there are a large number of nerves near the joint of the jaw and I dare not have you give him more of the sedative till his vitals stabilize some more. That means he may wake at any time and that is the area that will cause him the greatest pain at the moment.’
“I didn’t figure he would be talking if the nerves ran the same,” Jack comments
‘He wouldn’t have been if he had been more aware. There are still drugs in his system I haven’t been able to completely analyze, but I have been able to isolate part of the components as being hallucinogens.’ Her mental voice turns chilling, as I feel her anger and I shiver as much from that as from her words, ‘Another component stimulates the pain receptors in his brain, so I am unsure if he would even have been able to tell his jaw was broken.’ The expression Jack gives me tells me he is feeling the same sense of horror, as I am at what that must mean.
After that is done next is his broken right arm.
Jack's serious expression warns Rose before he even begins speaking that what he is about to say is not going to make her happy, "Rose, I want you to know there are limits to what the equipment can do, at least in humans this kind of damage takes weeks sometime months to heal from."
"But I thought..."
"Yes, this is healing the bone and tissue damage," he says gesturing with the device in his hand. "But the nerve damage is not so easily fixed it takes more time for them to heal and even with this, it will take a couple of days for the bones to complete the knitting process and get back to full strength.”
"Oh," I think about that and all the injuries they inflicted on him. As I look at his hand which I am gently cradling in my own as Jack works on the upper break in his right arm and I shudder as I think about how badly it must have hurt with all the nerves in his hands to have so many of the bones broken, and what it will mean for him as his hands heal.
It will mean that most likely he will need help with things like buttons and other tasks needing small motor control. Based on the extent of damage to his hands and feet it may take awhile before things go back to normal. She also knows he will hate having to be dependant on her and Jack so she decides she will need to stay close as she suspects, based on his past behavior when hurt, that he won't ask for that needed help.
If the Doctor and Jack didn't need her here she would be tempted to go and have a good cry, but she is needed here and so she tries to hold in the tears threatening to fall.
As they begin work on the second break in his right arm the Doctor begins to wake and she tries to brace herself for the oncoming wash of emotions that had bombarded her previously. To her relief she doesn’t feel anything but her own distress as he again starts with his mumbled litany of pleading for her forgiveness.
A moment later she does get a wave of emotion but this time it isn’t from the Doctor and it is of cold fury not pain. At her gasp the emotion is shut off abruptly leaving her stunned with its intensity.
---------------
I feel anger as I see what he believes to be true, an anger that boils through my circuits that they could be so cruel. I watch as in his minds eye I see how he goads the Essarrian into beating him in hopes that it will do what he can't muster the concentration, due to the Essarrians continued torture, to do for himself. I feel his intense desire to die rather than to go on, knowing he has killed his Rose. Not just because he failed to protect her which is a fear I know he had come to live with, but as a deliberate, despicably brutal action on his part. That he cannot, will not, bear as he thinks of all the times Rose has made him smile, showed him he could be happy again and to repay her thus was the worst betrayal of which he could think. I see in his mind he feels he has no other choice, if she hasn't survived because of him then he knows he deserves everything the Essarrian is doing to him and more. With his each thought my anger boils more forcefully till it overflows its bounds, affecting Rose. I reign in my anger and again shield her as I realize I am affecting her. In those brief moments though Theta has recaptured his resolve and now without the painful distractions sapping his concentration he begins a deliberate shut down of his body's functions.
Chapter 13 - Crisis (R)
Stories Index