(no subject)
Distress Signal (10/?)
Characters: Rose/Ten, Jackie, Pete, Mickey, Jack
Disclaimer: The usual. I do not own Doctor Who. I do not make any money. Etcetera...
Spoilers: Through Doomsday
Rating: I think no worse than PG-13 by the end.
Summary: Rose meets her captors properly
Categories: Romance, angst, reunion-fic. (I'm sure there's others, but I'm not hugely familiar with the tagging system)
Author's Note: Rose learns a bit about what's happened to her.
Chapter 10
When Rose woke again, she was shocked by just how good she felt. She still felt a bit out of sorts and a bit off balance, but there were no signs of her headache and all her insides finally felt content to remain where they were. There still was an amazing amount of information coming into her senses, but the sensations weren't overwhelming her this time. Now she just felt like she was walking down the streets of Italy without the benefit of the TARDIS translation circuit. There was all this information she didn't really understand, but for the moment, she could just ignore it and focus on the bits she did understand.
She was startled out of her self-analysis almost immediately when she heard the door to the room open. She tried to sit up to face her captors only to find she was trapped inside their radiation collector again. After a moment, the door closed again and Doctor Tanizaki came into view. This time, he wore a standard looking lab coat with his Torchwood ID clipped to the lapel. He was watching her intently through his glasses as he pushed a trolley over to her side. "Good morning. You gave us quite the scare."
"Can I get up now?" she asked, her tone of voice coming out a bit sharper than she intended. She hated feeling trapped and helpless but that was exactly how she felt back in that restrictive machine again. She wasn't sure which was worse, the fact that she couldn't move or that she still didn't understand why any of this was happening in the first place. Some of that frustration came through in her tone, despite her best efforts to keep her voice level.
"I have to run some tests first," he replied, shaking his head. "You gave us quite the fright."
She groaned. She had been stationary for nearly three days now. She needed to move. She needed to sit up and examine her body - find out exactly what the explosion had done to her. Not only that, but she wasn't keen on Tanizaki spending any more time examining her than he'd already had. She didn't know him beyond the fact that somehow he'd been involved in her near death and that was reason enough for her to want to be very far away from him. "I'm fine. Just let me up," she pleaded.
"Get comfortable. This won't take long," he responded in a tone of voice that told her he wouldn't listen to any argument. She opened her mouth to protest anyway, but Tanizaki had already turned away from her as if the matter were settled. She was, however, Rose Tyler, and she wasn't just going to accept her situation lying down... and that was a terrible choice of words given her situation. She brought her attention back to her current predicament. Tanizaki was engrossed in some readouts, so that gave her time to examine the machine restraining her more fully. Despite the restraining nature of the machine she managed to twist her wrists so that she could examine the interior. She had hoped that there would be some emergency release. Unfortunately it took her less than twenty-three seconds to explore all surfaces inside the machine within reach of her hands and she couldn't find anything beyond some wrinkles in the padded lining. She wouldn't be able to free herself just yet.
She turned her attention towards gathering information for the moment. "What happened?" Rose finally asked. Her voice sounded strange in her ears and she wondered if it was from all the screaming.
Tanizaki continued to busy himself with the machinery attached to Rose for some time. She was beginning to wonder if he was just going to ignore her when he finally spoke up. "Everything looks good. Your vitals have stabilized and it's been eight hours since the last radiation spike." He grabbed her medical chart and began jotting down notes. Every few seconds his eyes would drift to one of the machines and he'd record some data-point. She tried to crane her neck so that she could read over his shoulder but the machine restraining her didn't leave her much room to work with.
When he finished taking notes he dropped the chart back in the folder hanging from her bed and pulled up a chair. "After you lost consciousness yesterday, your condition continued to deteriorate. Twenty-five minutes after you blacked out, your organs began to fail. Your body was shutting down." He shook his head in amazement before continuing. "Your body was literally at war with itself. The human DNA and the alien DNA were vying for dominance, kicking your immune system into overdrive. It nearly destroying you in the process." Tanizaki took his classes off and cleaned the lenses off with the corner of his lab coat before giving Rose a self-confident smile. "We were running out of time and you showed no signs of waking to tell us what else to do, so I took a chance. I administered some immuno-suppressants to slow down your immune system long enough for your natural healing to have a chance to work. After that, you were strong enough to survive while your body eliminated the remaining human DNA."
Rose shuddered. So her memories were correct. She'd changed. What did that make her now? Had she really changed into an alien - a Time Lord? She itched to examine the readouts from the various machines for herself - to verify every data-point for herself - but she didn't dare with Tanizaki watching, even if she could have moved to do so.
Tanizaki's gaze hadn't wavered from her during his speech and Rose was sure he was cataloging her reactions to every word he uttered. "We were able to stop treatment six hours ago." He nodded to the IV pole next to her. "Now we're just administering fluids. How are you feeling?"
"Stuck," she responded pointedly.
"I meant physically," Tanizaki replied tersely. "I can't remove any equipment until I know you won't relapse."
She watched him for a good minute, trying to get some insight into the man who'd sent her into an exploding ship and subsequently hauled her out of the wreckage to patch her up. Eventually, she decided that it wouldn't be in her best interest to continue being difficult. With the machine trapping her, she had little she could do to improve her own situation and she saw no reason for Tanizaki to free her if she gave him reason not to. "I'm not in any pain." She shrugged slightly but the gesture probably wasn't visible around the machinery. "I feel fine... antsy though." And she did. She wanted to get up, move around. "Can I please sit up, at least?"
Tanizaki's gaze bored into her for a minute before he sighed. "Alright, but that's it. You need your rest."
Rose resisting the urge to roll her eyes. As much as she wanted to chew her captors out, she needed to contain her attitude until she had more freedom. It was all she could do to hold still while Tanizaki flipped switches and turned dials on the control panel. The machine around her beeped a few times in response to Tanizaki's fiddling before finally powering down. The bed she was lying on shifted slightly with a soft clunk and the machine encasing her began to slide towards her feet. She breathed a sigh of relief when she felt cold air hit her arms.
"Keep still a minute," Tanizaki ordered and Rose struggled to comply. He rolled the device down over the foot of the bed and she was free. She moved her hands experimentally only to find that her wrists were restrained in soft leather bindings. Well, so much for more freedom, she thought in annoyance. "There," he told her when he had the machine snugged up against the far wall. "All set."
Still, she could move a little. Rose slid her elbows back as far as they could go, given the wrists restraints and was able to prop herself up enough to maneuver to a sort of half-sitting position. She took a moment to take in her new situation. She didn't see any scars or injuries on the exposed flesh she could see on her arms. She had been dressed in a hospital gown and covered with a sterile, white sheet. She had to fight down anger that someone she didn't know had changed her clothing and treated her wounds without her consent. Getting upset wasn't going to improve her situation any. She needed information, and to get that, she had to remain calm.
Tanizaki carefully reached behind her and the head of the bed raised into a sitting position. "Better?" he asked curiously.
"Better than that machine, but I would prefer not to be tied to a hospital gurney," she responded dryly, before she could stop herself.
"Patience. You were thrashing about in your sleep. Once we're sure the seizures have stopped, we can talk about removing the restraints," Tanizaki told her seriously. "Now, when you first woke up, you asked what happened. What's the last thing you remember?"
Rose frowned. If she told Tanizaki she remembered Handel's offer to kill her, she might put these guys on alert more than she needed to. If she played dumb to their schemes, however, they might let their guard down and she might learn more. "It's all a bit hazy," she dodged. Her memories were still falling into place after the severe trauma her brain had suffered over the last three days, but she remembered everything important related to Tanizaki and Handel.
"Take your time," Tanizaki gently encouraged.
She paused for a moment, carefully chose which details to reveal. "I remember burning," she finally answered, closing her eyes at the painful memory. "I remember going into an alien ship to look for survivors. I was in the engine room when everything exploded." She shuddered and opened her eyes to watch his reaction. "I felt like my skin was on fire. I thought I was gonna die," she told him honestly and was surprised to see him wince slightly.
Barely a moment later, however, his gaze turned curious. "You remember searching the alien ship. That is to say, you have memories from before the explosion?" he asked giddily. "That's fascinating!"
"Course. Were you expectin' me to get amnesia or something?" she asked dubiously.
"No, no," he replied with a shake of his head. "I didn't really have any expectations. No one's seen anything like this before, so I'm just collecting data and trying to piece together what happened." He reached for her chart again and scribbled yet more notes. This time, he only spent a few seconds writing before returning his gaze to her face where his eyes met hers. They reminded her of the Doctor when he was trying to sort through a particularly interesting puzzle. "Do you know how you survived?"
Rose shook her head. She had some wild suspicions, but she wasn't going to voice any of those. She bit her bottom lip in what she hoped made it look like she was thinking hard while she thought. The urge to turn around and examine her vitals for herself came to the forefront of her mind again, but she quickly suppressed the urge. If she started to formulate ideas, she might have trouble keeping them to herself. So as much as she wanted to see her own medical readouts, she forced herself to keep her gaze on Tanizaki. "No," she whispered, shaking her head.
His eyes narrowed slightly and he slowly straightened in his seat. Rose knew immediately she hadn't given him the answer he wanted. "I have been working for days to keep you alive. The least you can do is answer some of my questions."
She bit back the urge to point out that he and his partner, Handel, were responsible for her near death experience. She didn't want them to know how much she knew just yet. She settled on a broader retort instead. "You're a doctor. Isn't it your job to save people?"
Tanizaki gave her an amused look before replying. "It's my job to save 'humans', yes." She tensed at the emphasis he put on the word human. "You remember Torchwood's policy, don't you?" If it's alien, it's ours, Rose thought to herself. She was trapped in Torchwood and she bore a remarkable resemblance to an alien. Tanizaki had implied her regeneration had wiped out all traces of human DNA in her, but that she'd had human DNA before the explosion. Not for the first time, she wished she knew how this had all come about.
In the tense quiet that had settled over the room at Tanizaki's statement, she couldn't help but hear the gentle four beat rhythm playing out behind her. She didn't want to listen, but she couldn't help it. The machine innocuously beeped in time with her dual-heartbeat. It even had the audacity to increase in speed exactly when she began to panic as the full ramifications of her situation came to the forefront of her mind. She would know that cadence anywhere. It was the same beat that had comforted her during more than one hug when she'd traveled with the Doctor - a sound she thought she'd never hear again. She couldn't decide if it was comforting or terrifying in her current circumstances. But she knew with a cold certainty what it meant. Her intuition during her neural collapse was confirmed. She was a Time Lord. Not that she'd truly doubted herself. It was just another thing to have the truth pounding in her ears.
She wanted more than anything to be left alone to come to terms with everything that happened but she knew she would get no such thing. "What do you want from me?" she finally whispered numbly.
He stood up and came to stand next to Rose's bed. "Are we done playing games, then?"
"I was never playing a game," Rose replied quietly. When he gave her a skeptical look she sat up a bit straighter. "Doctor Tanizaki, right? You said yourself I just suffered a complete neural collapse. Why is it so hard to believe I might not be able to answer all of your questions?"
He nodded and Rose thought she might have finally gotten through to the older man, if only a bit. "Alright, we'll d this your way... for now. What do I want? I want to know how you survived the explosion."
Rose shook her head, more frustrated than ever. "I really don't know." Which she told herself was true. Even though she understood regeneration, she didn't know how she, a former human, had pulled it off.
Tanizaki fixed her with an intense stare before crossing his arms. "Fine. For now, we'll let that go. It would be nice to understand, but there are more important things to learn from you." Rose looked up at him and heard her heart-beats accelerate. The intense look in his eyes made her nervous and she wanted to do nothing more than to run and hide. "How did you bring Jacqueline Tyler back from the dead?"
With that one statement, Rose felt all the air leave her lungs. How could she answer that question? More importantly, how could she answer that question in a way they would believe? What could she say that wouldn't also endanger her mother's life? If they had just wanted Rose, that would have been simple. But her life was never simple, now was it?
Characters: Rose/Ten, Jackie, Pete, Mickey, Jack
Disclaimer: The usual. I do not own Doctor Who. I do not make any money. Etcetera...
Spoilers: Through Doomsday
Rating: I think no worse than PG-13 by the end.
Summary: Rose meets her captors properly
Categories: Romance, angst, reunion-fic. (I'm sure there's others, but I'm not hugely familiar with the tagging system)
Author's Note: Rose learns a bit about what's happened to her.
Chapter 10
When Rose woke again, she was shocked by just how good she felt. She still felt a bit out of sorts and a bit off balance, but there were no signs of her headache and all her insides finally felt content to remain where they were. There still was an amazing amount of information coming into her senses, but the sensations weren't overwhelming her this time. Now she just felt like she was walking down the streets of Italy without the benefit of the TARDIS translation circuit. There was all this information she didn't really understand, but for the moment, she could just ignore it and focus on the bits she did understand.
She was startled out of her self-analysis almost immediately when she heard the door to the room open. She tried to sit up to face her captors only to find she was trapped inside their radiation collector again. After a moment, the door closed again and Doctor Tanizaki came into view. This time, he wore a standard looking lab coat with his Torchwood ID clipped to the lapel. He was watching her intently through his glasses as he pushed a trolley over to her side. "Good morning. You gave us quite the scare."
"Can I get up now?" she asked, her tone of voice coming out a bit sharper than she intended. She hated feeling trapped and helpless but that was exactly how she felt back in that restrictive machine again. She wasn't sure which was worse, the fact that she couldn't move or that she still didn't understand why any of this was happening in the first place. Some of that frustration came through in her tone, despite her best efforts to keep her voice level.
"I have to run some tests first," he replied, shaking his head. "You gave us quite the fright."
She groaned. She had been stationary for nearly three days now. She needed to move. She needed to sit up and examine her body - find out exactly what the explosion had done to her. Not only that, but she wasn't keen on Tanizaki spending any more time examining her than he'd already had. She didn't know him beyond the fact that somehow he'd been involved in her near death and that was reason enough for her to want to be very far away from him. "I'm fine. Just let me up," she pleaded.
"Get comfortable. This won't take long," he responded in a tone of voice that told her he wouldn't listen to any argument. She opened her mouth to protest anyway, but Tanizaki had already turned away from her as if the matter were settled. She was, however, Rose Tyler, and she wasn't just going to accept her situation lying down... and that was a terrible choice of words given her situation. She brought her attention back to her current predicament. Tanizaki was engrossed in some readouts, so that gave her time to examine the machine restraining her more fully. Despite the restraining nature of the machine she managed to twist her wrists so that she could examine the interior. She had hoped that there would be some emergency release. Unfortunately it took her less than twenty-three seconds to explore all surfaces inside the machine within reach of her hands and she couldn't find anything beyond some wrinkles in the padded lining. She wouldn't be able to free herself just yet.
She turned her attention towards gathering information for the moment. "What happened?" Rose finally asked. Her voice sounded strange in her ears and she wondered if it was from all the screaming.
Tanizaki continued to busy himself with the machinery attached to Rose for some time. She was beginning to wonder if he was just going to ignore her when he finally spoke up. "Everything looks good. Your vitals have stabilized and it's been eight hours since the last radiation spike." He grabbed her medical chart and began jotting down notes. Every few seconds his eyes would drift to one of the machines and he'd record some data-point. She tried to crane her neck so that she could read over his shoulder but the machine restraining her didn't leave her much room to work with.
When he finished taking notes he dropped the chart back in the folder hanging from her bed and pulled up a chair. "After you lost consciousness yesterday, your condition continued to deteriorate. Twenty-five minutes after you blacked out, your organs began to fail. Your body was shutting down." He shook his head in amazement before continuing. "Your body was literally at war with itself. The human DNA and the alien DNA were vying for dominance, kicking your immune system into overdrive. It nearly destroying you in the process." Tanizaki took his classes off and cleaned the lenses off with the corner of his lab coat before giving Rose a self-confident smile. "We were running out of time and you showed no signs of waking to tell us what else to do, so I took a chance. I administered some immuno-suppressants to slow down your immune system long enough for your natural healing to have a chance to work. After that, you were strong enough to survive while your body eliminated the remaining human DNA."
Rose shuddered. So her memories were correct. She'd changed. What did that make her now? Had she really changed into an alien - a Time Lord? She itched to examine the readouts from the various machines for herself - to verify every data-point for herself - but she didn't dare with Tanizaki watching, even if she could have moved to do so.
Tanizaki's gaze hadn't wavered from her during his speech and Rose was sure he was cataloging her reactions to every word he uttered. "We were able to stop treatment six hours ago." He nodded to the IV pole next to her. "Now we're just administering fluids. How are you feeling?"
"Stuck," she responded pointedly.
"I meant physically," Tanizaki replied tersely. "I can't remove any equipment until I know you won't relapse."
She watched him for a good minute, trying to get some insight into the man who'd sent her into an exploding ship and subsequently hauled her out of the wreckage to patch her up. Eventually, she decided that it wouldn't be in her best interest to continue being difficult. With the machine trapping her, she had little she could do to improve her own situation and she saw no reason for Tanizaki to free her if she gave him reason not to. "I'm not in any pain." She shrugged slightly but the gesture probably wasn't visible around the machinery. "I feel fine... antsy though." And she did. She wanted to get up, move around. "Can I please sit up, at least?"
Tanizaki's gaze bored into her for a minute before he sighed. "Alright, but that's it. You need your rest."
Rose resisting the urge to roll her eyes. As much as she wanted to chew her captors out, she needed to contain her attitude until she had more freedom. It was all she could do to hold still while Tanizaki flipped switches and turned dials on the control panel. The machine around her beeped a few times in response to Tanizaki's fiddling before finally powering down. The bed she was lying on shifted slightly with a soft clunk and the machine encasing her began to slide towards her feet. She breathed a sigh of relief when she felt cold air hit her arms.
"Keep still a minute," Tanizaki ordered and Rose struggled to comply. He rolled the device down over the foot of the bed and she was free. She moved her hands experimentally only to find that her wrists were restrained in soft leather bindings. Well, so much for more freedom, she thought in annoyance. "There," he told her when he had the machine snugged up against the far wall. "All set."
Still, she could move a little. Rose slid her elbows back as far as they could go, given the wrists restraints and was able to prop herself up enough to maneuver to a sort of half-sitting position. She took a moment to take in her new situation. She didn't see any scars or injuries on the exposed flesh she could see on her arms. She had been dressed in a hospital gown and covered with a sterile, white sheet. She had to fight down anger that someone she didn't know had changed her clothing and treated her wounds without her consent. Getting upset wasn't going to improve her situation any. She needed information, and to get that, she had to remain calm.
Tanizaki carefully reached behind her and the head of the bed raised into a sitting position. "Better?" he asked curiously.
"Better than that machine, but I would prefer not to be tied to a hospital gurney," she responded dryly, before she could stop herself.
"Patience. You were thrashing about in your sleep. Once we're sure the seizures have stopped, we can talk about removing the restraints," Tanizaki told her seriously. "Now, when you first woke up, you asked what happened. What's the last thing you remember?"
Rose frowned. If she told Tanizaki she remembered Handel's offer to kill her, she might put these guys on alert more than she needed to. If she played dumb to their schemes, however, they might let their guard down and she might learn more. "It's all a bit hazy," she dodged. Her memories were still falling into place after the severe trauma her brain had suffered over the last three days, but she remembered everything important related to Tanizaki and Handel.
"Take your time," Tanizaki gently encouraged.
She paused for a moment, carefully chose which details to reveal. "I remember burning," she finally answered, closing her eyes at the painful memory. "I remember going into an alien ship to look for survivors. I was in the engine room when everything exploded." She shuddered and opened her eyes to watch his reaction. "I felt like my skin was on fire. I thought I was gonna die," she told him honestly and was surprised to see him wince slightly.
Barely a moment later, however, his gaze turned curious. "You remember searching the alien ship. That is to say, you have memories from before the explosion?" he asked giddily. "That's fascinating!"
"Course. Were you expectin' me to get amnesia or something?" she asked dubiously.
"No, no," he replied with a shake of his head. "I didn't really have any expectations. No one's seen anything like this before, so I'm just collecting data and trying to piece together what happened." He reached for her chart again and scribbled yet more notes. This time, he only spent a few seconds writing before returning his gaze to her face where his eyes met hers. They reminded her of the Doctor when he was trying to sort through a particularly interesting puzzle. "Do you know how you survived?"
Rose shook her head. She had some wild suspicions, but she wasn't going to voice any of those. She bit her bottom lip in what she hoped made it look like she was thinking hard while she thought. The urge to turn around and examine her vitals for herself came to the forefront of her mind again, but she quickly suppressed the urge. If she started to formulate ideas, she might have trouble keeping them to herself. So as much as she wanted to see her own medical readouts, she forced herself to keep her gaze on Tanizaki. "No," she whispered, shaking her head.
His eyes narrowed slightly and he slowly straightened in his seat. Rose knew immediately she hadn't given him the answer he wanted. "I have been working for days to keep you alive. The least you can do is answer some of my questions."
She bit back the urge to point out that he and his partner, Handel, were responsible for her near death experience. She didn't want them to know how much she knew just yet. She settled on a broader retort instead. "You're a doctor. Isn't it your job to save people?"
Tanizaki gave her an amused look before replying. "It's my job to save 'humans', yes." She tensed at the emphasis he put on the word human. "You remember Torchwood's policy, don't you?" If it's alien, it's ours, Rose thought to herself. She was trapped in Torchwood and she bore a remarkable resemblance to an alien. Tanizaki had implied her regeneration had wiped out all traces of human DNA in her, but that she'd had human DNA before the explosion. Not for the first time, she wished she knew how this had all come about.
In the tense quiet that had settled over the room at Tanizaki's statement, she couldn't help but hear the gentle four beat rhythm playing out behind her. She didn't want to listen, but she couldn't help it. The machine innocuously beeped in time with her dual-heartbeat. It even had the audacity to increase in speed exactly when she began to panic as the full ramifications of her situation came to the forefront of her mind. She would know that cadence anywhere. It was the same beat that had comforted her during more than one hug when she'd traveled with the Doctor - a sound she thought she'd never hear again. She couldn't decide if it was comforting or terrifying in her current circumstances. But she knew with a cold certainty what it meant. Her intuition during her neural collapse was confirmed. She was a Time Lord. Not that she'd truly doubted herself. It was just another thing to have the truth pounding in her ears.
She wanted more than anything to be left alone to come to terms with everything that happened but she knew she would get no such thing. "What do you want from me?" she finally whispered numbly.
He stood up and came to stand next to Rose's bed. "Are we done playing games, then?"
"I was never playing a game," Rose replied quietly. When he gave her a skeptical look she sat up a bit straighter. "Doctor Tanizaki, right? You said yourself I just suffered a complete neural collapse. Why is it so hard to believe I might not be able to answer all of your questions?"
He nodded and Rose thought she might have finally gotten through to the older man, if only a bit. "Alright, we'll d this your way... for now. What do I want? I want to know how you survived the explosion."
Rose shook her head, more frustrated than ever. "I really don't know." Which she told herself was true. Even though she understood regeneration, she didn't know how she, a former human, had pulled it off.
Tanizaki fixed her with an intense stare before crossing his arms. "Fine. For now, we'll let that go. It would be nice to understand, but there are more important things to learn from you." Rose looked up at him and heard her heart-beats accelerate. The intense look in his eyes made her nervous and she wanted to do nothing more than to run and hide. "How did you bring Jacqueline Tyler back from the dead?"
With that one statement, Rose felt all the air leave her lungs. How could she answer that question? More importantly, how could she answer that question in a way they would believe? What could she say that wouldn't also endanger her mother's life? If they had just wanted Rose, that would have been simple. But her life was never simple, now was it?