Sci-Fi Big Bang - Children Through Time - David's Book
Title: Children Through Time - The Book of David
Chapter: 4
Rating: R
Characters: Team Torchwood, David Ortiz, OC's
Spoilers: Children of Earth
Disclaimers: I do not own Torchwood or the characters therein, they belong to the BBC and RTD. Any original characters and places are my property.
Author's Notes: The series of events in Children Through Time take place after Children in Time. It is not necessary to read Children in Time but it can be found here.
Special Thanks: To my awesome beta faithharkness, and to my artist laura_guerin, and great cheerleading from knitchick1979, chicago_girl_07 and all the others. It was rough going this time, but we did it.
Chapter 4
David sat gingerly sat down in his office chair, wincing at the pain from his stomach. This pain was manageable, like it had been for years. He just had to be careful with the pain from the surgery when they finally removed the kidney stone a week ago. All they had used was sound waves, but until he had checked himself out and tried killing himself, they fussed around, unsure if it was only a kidney stone. His stomach seemed so screwed up, and no one could tell him why. David figured it had something to do with when they had all disappeared in Cardiff 16 years ago.
He closed the folder on the client he had just met with and tossed it to the side, mildly fascinated as it slid off his desk and to the floor, spilling papers all over. Shrugging his shoulders, David picked up the phone and dialed the number for the parking garage downstairs.
After telling the attendant to have his Porsche waiting for him at the entrance, with the top down, he strode across the office and threw on his faded leather coat. Pulling the door open with his right hand, he favored his left one, and walked right past Melissa without saying a word to her. He didn’t care about anything she had to say.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Melissa asked, looking up from her computer screen.
“I’m done for the day.”
“You still have two more meetings,” Melissa replied, standing up behind her desk.
“Well fucking change them,” he said. “That is what I pay you for, isn’t it? Not like I’m paying you to give me a blowjob.”
“No. No. No.” Melissa stalked around the desk and nearly ran past him, standing in front of the door. “Do you know how hard it was to reschedule Mr. Sakamoto? You are meeting with him, today.”
“I’m leaving and you are doing whatever you need to do with Mr. Sakamoto to keep the deal,” David replied. He clapped his hands together. “Hey! Why don’t you give him that blowjob? I hear he likes them big.”
He went to push Melissa aside when she hit him in the solar plexus. Stumbling back, David choked on his air, and before he could call her the cunt she was, Melissa stood her ground. Hands on her hips, she glared at him. Oh yeah, she had that mother look down.
“What the hell is going on?”
“I’m trying to get past some big ass fucking bitch who is blocking the door to my office.” David stood his ground. Granted, he was still recuperating, but he was bigger than her, and would move her if necessary. He found himself wondering why she had suddenly grown a spine. He tugged down on the corners of his coat, visibly wincing as a shot of pain coursed through the arm he had cut.
“That! What the hell is going on with you Mr. Ortiz?” she asked as she pointed at his left arm.
David pulled down the cuffs of his shirt and coat, trying to hide the bandages. “That is none of your business.”
“Bullshit,” she said, moving closer to him, invading David’s space. “Why?”
“It was an accident. Painkillers and alcohol don’t exactly mix too well.” He stepped around her, heading for the door, and anywhere that was away from her.
“No.” He could sense her turning towards him. “David…” She put her hand on his shoulder, and suddenly snatched it away as if she could feel the heat from him. “If I hadn’t found you-“
He whirled around, slapping her across the cheek. “No one asked you to save me.”
Melissa cradled her cheek, but she stood her ground. “Tell me. Tell me what’s in your mind. If I can’t help… My brother is a doctor with UNIT, we can find you help.” She started rambling on, not letting him break in. “He did some digging for me. Something happened to you 16 years ago. He told me you were gone for five years. If somebody did something to you, if aliens took you, he can help.”
David suddenly wanted to laugh at how she seemed to whisper the word “aliens,” as if it were still some secret the world couldn’t acknowledge. Then his mind turned dark. He stomped towards Melissa until he was nose-to-nose with her, but she did not back down. Without looking, he grabbed her wrist and wrenched it towards him and started dragging her towards the door with him.
“What the hell! Let go of me!” She struggled with him, but seemed to still be sensitive to his bad arm.
“You want to know what haunts my mind? Fine then,” he snarled as he nearly threw her into the open elevator.
They rode down all 28 floors in stony silence. No one got on or off the elevator the entire ride. Melissa huddled in the corner of the elevator, rubbing her wrist, staring at him like she was seeing him for the first time in the eight years she had been working for him. When they got to the garage, he strode out and she silently followed. He could feel her eyes boring into his back. Curtly nodding at the parking garage attendant, David strolled around his car and got into the driver’s seat. He revved the motor and looked at her.
“Get in the fucking car.”
Melissa looked at the car and looked at him. “You have the top down. It’s 40-degrees out there.”
“Get in the fucking car or don’t even bother coming to work tomorrow. Then you can worry about paying your daughter’s tuition on your own as well.”
Melissa hesitantly opened the passenger-side door and sat down next to him. Before she could close the door and buckle herself in, he careened out of the parking garage and cut across all the lanes of traffic on Congress Parkway. Melissa held on to the door handle, gripping it tightly.
“For God’s sake, slow down,” Melissa cried out as he ran through three yellow lights in a row.
David did not say a word the entire drive, but he did slow the car down to only 40-miles per hour through downtown and into the Northern neighborhoods. Driving, he then jerked the wheel right and pulled into All Saints Cemetery.
“Why are we here?” Melissa asked.
David took the soft turns and meandered the car to the back of the cemetery. He slowed the car down to a crawl as he noticed the bare tree limbs, reaching out to pierce the swollen sky. He found himself hoping it would rain, maybe he would feel those drops on his skin. It would be nice to feel something.
“You wanted to know what is in my mind,” David responded coolly.
Melissa regarded him, but did not say a word. David was convinced he saw a hint of fear in her eyes. He stopped the car on one of the back lanes and put it into park, turning it off. The silence and soft rustling of dead leaves filled the space around them. Hopping out of the car, David headed for a small outcropping of stones a hundred feet away. He didn’t even look to see if she followed: it was Melissa’s choice now.
He knelt down in front of the first stone, the wet grass from the recent rains seeping through his trousers. Reaching out, David ran his fingers along the name - Allison Ortiz. Rubbing the beginning of moss off the gravestone, David wiped his fingers on his trousers and put his hands on his leg, staring at the name. This was all she was now. Over 20 years later, all Allie was, was a name he couldn’t even utter to people who were close to him.
Who was he kidding? David had no one close to him anymore. Melissa was the closest thing to an acquaintance he had and he kept her at a distance. What did that do? Was he protecting her or himself? Burying his chin into his chest, David stared at the brown, dead grass, trying to keep the tears at bay.
Looking up, his eyes rested on the gravestone next to Allie’s - Constance Ortiz. It was then that the tears began to fall. They started as a line of single drops, streaking down his cheeks and falling to the dirt, to be followed by a stream coursing down his face. David buried his face in both hands as he knelt before their graves, wondering why he had been chosen. Why was he fated to this life of loneliness? Everyone he had ever cared about had been ripped out of his life and he had no say, could do nothing to stop it.
His eyes burned and his throat closed up, but David could not stop the tears from falling. Great wracking sobs coughed out of his body. A cold wind raced among the graves, but he did not feel it. In this great big universe full of more than humanity could imagine, David Ortiz felt the most alone.
A small hand tentatively closed around David’s shoulder. The sobbing stopped, but the tears did not. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, David looked at the hand. He followed the pale skin up the arm and to Melissa’s face. Her blue eyes gazed into his and David trembled.
“They have the same last name as you,” Melissa nearly whispered. “Who are they?”
David did not say a word. He could not say a word. His throat closed around he words before they could pass through his lips.
“Allison Ortiz, Constance Ortiz, Maria and Jose Ortiz.” Melissa read the names almost reverently. “Were they your family?”
David shook his head yes, trying to stop the crying so he could speak. He pushed himself up from the ground and stumbled. Melissa grabbed his arms and held him steady. It was then that he felt how cold she was and realized all she had on was the skirt and blouse she had been wearing earlier, not even the blazer that went with it. He quickly shed his leather coat and handed it to her.
Melissa hesitantly put the coat on, looking dwarfed in it, but she held it tight to her, trying to warm up. David ran his fingers through his graying hair and looked at the group of stones. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Maria and Jose Ortiz were my parents,” David finally said, breaking the silence of the cemetery. “Constance Ortiz was my paternal grandmother.”
“And what about Allison?” Melissa asked quietly.
“Allison… Allie had been my wife,” David replied, barely getting the words out as he nearly choked on them.
Melissa’s hand went to her mouth but she did not say a word. Her brown eyes just looked at him.
“We had been married… We were… She was killed in a car accident,” David said. “She was my world. If she had told me to give up business or computers… I would have told her to fuck off, and she would have expected no different, but I would have considered it for her.”
David reached into his wallet and pulled out a tattered picture of him and Allison. He looked at it longingly. She was giggling like crazy and he was looking perturbed. She had finally dragged him up to Wisconsin and to the Bristol Renaissance Faire and had even gotten him into costume. He had not been happy about that, but she had fun.
He angled the picture slightly so Melissa could see it. “That was her, and that was her gorgeous smile. Even after I lost a client she could usually end up making me forget about it for a night.”
“You loved her,” Melissa said.
“More than I ever told her,” David replied.
“What about your grandmother? Did you tell her you loved her?”
“Oh no, you didn’t do that with Abuela,” David replied. “She was a tough old broad and everyone knew that. Even the guy at the supermarket didn’t dick her around, otherwise she would have had his little boys bronzed.”
“I see where you get some of your attitude from,” Melissa said softly.
“She had been real sick when I disappeared,” David said. He looked up at Melissa after putting the picture of Allie away. Sliding his wallet back into his trousers, he turned to Melissa. “She was going through intensive chemo for Stage 4 cancer and I nearly didn’t go with my friends on our trip. We had planned it for months - the trip I mean. Hell, Samantha and I had planned it for nearly a year, the others didn’t know.”
Melissa let out a sigh and looked as if she was going to say something, but decided against it at the last minute.
“Two days before we left for the trip, she went back into the hospital. I had just exchanged my ticket when Beth called. She was so excited, but something seemed wrong with her. She kept mentioning her boyfriend, but didn’t say anything. I had to go back into the computers and get my ticket back.” He took a deep breath. “When I realized that five years had past, I thought she would be dead. She wasn’t. She died two weeks later. My sister seems to think she waited for me. I wish the waiting could have saved her the pain.”
David scrunched his eyes shut, trying to keep the tears form starting anew. He sucked in several shallow breaths, wiping his nose on his cuff.
“What about your parents? The stones look newer than the others, but it’s an earlier date,” Melissa commented.
“I don’t know. They were finally declared dead about nine years ago. I don’t know where their bodies are, if there are any to bury,” he replied.
“How can that be?”
“There are years in my life that are missing. During that stretch of time, things happened to this planet, and no one will admit it. There was a day that the moon and sun seemed to disappear and then the Dalek invasion began and they rounded up humans, never to be seen again. It had been a Saturday when the aliens came. My parents were rounded up, and were never seen again.” David held his left arm gingerly, secretly delighting in the small zings of pain, knowing he could feel that. “Every parent I have ever had is dead: I can feel it inside of me.”
They stood in silence, just gazing at the headstones. Somewhere in the cemetery a bird began its lonely chirrup, with no reply from any other bird. The wind blew against David’s face and he could feel the ghosts of the past burying him.
“Mr. Ortiz,” Melissa said. “David?” She moved, and stood in front of him. “Please consider talking to my brother. If he is not able to help you, he has all of UNIT at his fingers and can find you the help. You are not alone.”
David walked past her and leaned down, kissing the top of Allie’s headstone. He stood up, and looked at Melissa, his eyes glistening. David merely shook his head yes.
Chapter: 4
Rating: R
Characters: Team Torchwood, David Ortiz, OC's
Spoilers: Children of Earth
Disclaimers: I do not own Torchwood or the characters therein, they belong to the BBC and RTD. Any original characters and places are my property.
Author's Notes: The series of events in Children Through Time take place after Children in Time. It is not necessary to read Children in Time but it can be found here.
Special Thanks: To my awesome beta faithharkness, and to my artist laura_guerin, and great cheerleading from knitchick1979, chicago_girl_07 and all the others. It was rough going this time, but we did it.
Chapter 4
David sat gingerly sat down in his office chair, wincing at the pain from his stomach. This pain was manageable, like it had been for years. He just had to be careful with the pain from the surgery when they finally removed the kidney stone a week ago. All they had used was sound waves, but until he had checked himself out and tried killing himself, they fussed around, unsure if it was only a kidney stone. His stomach seemed so screwed up, and no one could tell him why. David figured it had something to do with when they had all disappeared in Cardiff 16 years ago.
He closed the folder on the client he had just met with and tossed it to the side, mildly fascinated as it slid off his desk and to the floor, spilling papers all over. Shrugging his shoulders, David picked up the phone and dialed the number for the parking garage downstairs.
After telling the attendant to have his Porsche waiting for him at the entrance, with the top down, he strode across the office and threw on his faded leather coat. Pulling the door open with his right hand, he favored his left one, and walked right past Melissa without saying a word to her. He didn’t care about anything she had to say.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Melissa asked, looking up from her computer screen.
“I’m done for the day.”
“You still have two more meetings,” Melissa replied, standing up behind her desk.
“Well fucking change them,” he said. “That is what I pay you for, isn’t it? Not like I’m paying you to give me a blowjob.”
“No. No. No.” Melissa stalked around the desk and nearly ran past him, standing in front of the door. “Do you know how hard it was to reschedule Mr. Sakamoto? You are meeting with him, today.”
“I’m leaving and you are doing whatever you need to do with Mr. Sakamoto to keep the deal,” David replied. He clapped his hands together. “Hey! Why don’t you give him that blowjob? I hear he likes them big.”
He went to push Melissa aside when she hit him in the solar plexus. Stumbling back, David choked on his air, and before he could call her the cunt she was, Melissa stood her ground. Hands on her hips, she glared at him. Oh yeah, she had that mother look down.
“What the hell is going on?”
“I’m trying to get past some big ass fucking bitch who is blocking the door to my office.” David stood his ground. Granted, he was still recuperating, but he was bigger than her, and would move her if necessary. He found himself wondering why she had suddenly grown a spine. He tugged down on the corners of his coat, visibly wincing as a shot of pain coursed through the arm he had cut.
“That! What the hell is going on with you Mr. Ortiz?” she asked as she pointed at his left arm.
David pulled down the cuffs of his shirt and coat, trying to hide the bandages. “That is none of your business.”
“Bullshit,” she said, moving closer to him, invading David’s space. “Why?”
“It was an accident. Painkillers and alcohol don’t exactly mix too well.” He stepped around her, heading for the door, and anywhere that was away from her.
“No.” He could sense her turning towards him. “David…” She put her hand on his shoulder, and suddenly snatched it away as if she could feel the heat from him. “If I hadn’t found you-“
He whirled around, slapping her across the cheek. “No one asked you to save me.”
Melissa cradled her cheek, but she stood her ground. “Tell me. Tell me what’s in your mind. If I can’t help… My brother is a doctor with UNIT, we can find you help.” She started rambling on, not letting him break in. “He did some digging for me. Something happened to you 16 years ago. He told me you were gone for five years. If somebody did something to you, if aliens took you, he can help.”
David suddenly wanted to laugh at how she seemed to whisper the word “aliens,” as if it were still some secret the world couldn’t acknowledge. Then his mind turned dark. He stomped towards Melissa until he was nose-to-nose with her, but she did not back down. Without looking, he grabbed her wrist and wrenched it towards him and started dragging her towards the door with him.
“What the hell! Let go of me!” She struggled with him, but seemed to still be sensitive to his bad arm.
“You want to know what haunts my mind? Fine then,” he snarled as he nearly threw her into the open elevator.
They rode down all 28 floors in stony silence. No one got on or off the elevator the entire ride. Melissa huddled in the corner of the elevator, rubbing her wrist, staring at him like she was seeing him for the first time in the eight years she had been working for him. When they got to the garage, he strode out and she silently followed. He could feel her eyes boring into his back. Curtly nodding at the parking garage attendant, David strolled around his car and got into the driver’s seat. He revved the motor and looked at her.
“Get in the fucking car.”
Melissa looked at the car and looked at him. “You have the top down. It’s 40-degrees out there.”
“Get in the fucking car or don’t even bother coming to work tomorrow. Then you can worry about paying your daughter’s tuition on your own as well.”
Melissa hesitantly opened the passenger-side door and sat down next to him. Before she could close the door and buckle herself in, he careened out of the parking garage and cut across all the lanes of traffic on Congress Parkway. Melissa held on to the door handle, gripping it tightly.
“For God’s sake, slow down,” Melissa cried out as he ran through three yellow lights in a row.
David did not say a word the entire drive, but he did slow the car down to only 40-miles per hour through downtown and into the Northern neighborhoods. Driving, he then jerked the wheel right and pulled into All Saints Cemetery.
“Why are we here?” Melissa asked.
David took the soft turns and meandered the car to the back of the cemetery. He slowed the car down to a crawl as he noticed the bare tree limbs, reaching out to pierce the swollen sky. He found himself hoping it would rain, maybe he would feel those drops on his skin. It would be nice to feel something.
“You wanted to know what is in my mind,” David responded coolly.
Melissa regarded him, but did not say a word. David was convinced he saw a hint of fear in her eyes. He stopped the car on one of the back lanes and put it into park, turning it off. The silence and soft rustling of dead leaves filled the space around them. Hopping out of the car, David headed for a small outcropping of stones a hundred feet away. He didn’t even look to see if she followed: it was Melissa’s choice now.
He knelt down in front of the first stone, the wet grass from the recent rains seeping through his trousers. Reaching out, David ran his fingers along the name - Allison Ortiz. Rubbing the beginning of moss off the gravestone, David wiped his fingers on his trousers and put his hands on his leg, staring at the name. This was all she was now. Over 20 years later, all Allie was, was a name he couldn’t even utter to people who were close to him.
Who was he kidding? David had no one close to him anymore. Melissa was the closest thing to an acquaintance he had and he kept her at a distance. What did that do? Was he protecting her or himself? Burying his chin into his chest, David stared at the brown, dead grass, trying to keep the tears at bay.
Looking up, his eyes rested on the gravestone next to Allie’s - Constance Ortiz. It was then that the tears began to fall. They started as a line of single drops, streaking down his cheeks and falling to the dirt, to be followed by a stream coursing down his face. David buried his face in both hands as he knelt before their graves, wondering why he had been chosen. Why was he fated to this life of loneliness? Everyone he had ever cared about had been ripped out of his life and he had no say, could do nothing to stop it.
His eyes burned and his throat closed up, but David could not stop the tears from falling. Great wracking sobs coughed out of his body. A cold wind raced among the graves, but he did not feel it. In this great big universe full of more than humanity could imagine, David Ortiz felt the most alone.
A small hand tentatively closed around David’s shoulder. The sobbing stopped, but the tears did not. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, David looked at the hand. He followed the pale skin up the arm and to Melissa’s face. Her blue eyes gazed into his and David trembled.
“They have the same last name as you,” Melissa nearly whispered. “Who are they?”
David did not say a word. He could not say a word. His throat closed around he words before they could pass through his lips.
“Allison Ortiz, Constance Ortiz, Maria and Jose Ortiz.” Melissa read the names almost reverently. “Were they your family?”
David shook his head yes, trying to stop the crying so he could speak. He pushed himself up from the ground and stumbled. Melissa grabbed his arms and held him steady. It was then that he felt how cold she was and realized all she had on was the skirt and blouse she had been wearing earlier, not even the blazer that went with it. He quickly shed his leather coat and handed it to her.
Melissa hesitantly put the coat on, looking dwarfed in it, but she held it tight to her, trying to warm up. David ran his fingers through his graying hair and looked at the group of stones. He rubbed the back of his neck.
“Maria and Jose Ortiz were my parents,” David finally said, breaking the silence of the cemetery. “Constance Ortiz was my paternal grandmother.”
“And what about Allison?” Melissa asked quietly.
“Allison… Allie had been my wife,” David replied, barely getting the words out as he nearly choked on them.
Melissa’s hand went to her mouth but she did not say a word. Her brown eyes just looked at him.
“We had been married… We were… She was killed in a car accident,” David said. “She was my world. If she had told me to give up business or computers… I would have told her to fuck off, and she would have expected no different, but I would have considered it for her.”
David reached into his wallet and pulled out a tattered picture of him and Allison. He looked at it longingly. She was giggling like crazy and he was looking perturbed. She had finally dragged him up to Wisconsin and to the Bristol Renaissance Faire and had even gotten him into costume. He had not been happy about that, but she had fun.
He angled the picture slightly so Melissa could see it. “That was her, and that was her gorgeous smile. Even after I lost a client she could usually end up making me forget about it for a night.”
“You loved her,” Melissa said.
“More than I ever told her,” David replied.
“What about your grandmother? Did you tell her you loved her?”
“Oh no, you didn’t do that with Abuela,” David replied. “She was a tough old broad and everyone knew that. Even the guy at the supermarket didn’t dick her around, otherwise she would have had his little boys bronzed.”
“I see where you get some of your attitude from,” Melissa said softly.
“She had been real sick when I disappeared,” David said. He looked up at Melissa after putting the picture of Allie away. Sliding his wallet back into his trousers, he turned to Melissa. “She was going through intensive chemo for Stage 4 cancer and I nearly didn’t go with my friends on our trip. We had planned it for months - the trip I mean. Hell, Samantha and I had planned it for nearly a year, the others didn’t know.”
Melissa let out a sigh and looked as if she was going to say something, but decided against it at the last minute.
“Two days before we left for the trip, she went back into the hospital. I had just exchanged my ticket when Beth called. She was so excited, but something seemed wrong with her. She kept mentioning her boyfriend, but didn’t say anything. I had to go back into the computers and get my ticket back.” He took a deep breath. “When I realized that five years had past, I thought she would be dead. She wasn’t. She died two weeks later. My sister seems to think she waited for me. I wish the waiting could have saved her the pain.”
David scrunched his eyes shut, trying to keep the tears form starting anew. He sucked in several shallow breaths, wiping his nose on his cuff.
“What about your parents? The stones look newer than the others, but it’s an earlier date,” Melissa commented.
“I don’t know. They were finally declared dead about nine years ago. I don’t know where their bodies are, if there are any to bury,” he replied.
“How can that be?”
“There are years in my life that are missing. During that stretch of time, things happened to this planet, and no one will admit it. There was a day that the moon and sun seemed to disappear and then the Dalek invasion began and they rounded up humans, never to be seen again. It had been a Saturday when the aliens came. My parents were rounded up, and were never seen again.” David held his left arm gingerly, secretly delighting in the small zings of pain, knowing he could feel that. “Every parent I have ever had is dead: I can feel it inside of me.”
They stood in silence, just gazing at the headstones. Somewhere in the cemetery a bird began its lonely chirrup, with no reply from any other bird. The wind blew against David’s face and he could feel the ghosts of the past burying him.
“Mr. Ortiz,” Melissa said. “David?” She moved, and stood in front of him. “Please consider talking to my brother. If he is not able to help you, he has all of UNIT at his fingers and can find you the help. You are not alone.”
David walked past her and leaned down, kissing the top of Allie’s headstone. He stood up, and looked at Melissa, his eyes glistening. David merely shook his head yes.