Sci-Fi Big Bang - Children Through Time - Elizabeth's Book
Title: Children Through Time - The Book of Elizabeth
Chapter: 5
Rating: R
Characters: Team Torchwood, Elizabeth Murphy, 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 5
Elizabeth placed a little kiss on Grace's head. She stood up from the bassinet and looked down on her little fighter. For Grace has brought me safe thus far, and Grace will lead me home. Elizabeth looked around the nursery. It was obvious the room had other uses originally, but now it would do as Grace's room for the time being. She didn’t know if Grace had led her home, but at least Elizabeth was with her children.
Turning off the overhead light, she continued to watch Grace just breathe. It had been a long two months, but her daughter was with her. Elizabeth's heart ached, as if it was being ripped in two. Backing out of the room, Elizabeth stopped at the next doorway and peeked in on James. He was nestled under all his blankets, Duncan the stuffed red dragon lying on the floor under his outstretched hand. She snuck in and picked up Duncan, putting the dragon on the nightstand, and re-tucked James in. She kissed him on the forehead and closed the door behind him.
Looking down at her hands, Elizabeth noticed she was wringing them. She let out a sigh and then held her head up and marched down the hall to David's study. Standing in the doorway, she silently watched as he finished up a call with a client in Tokyo. Elizabeth leaned up against the doorjamb, her head resting on the wood. This is not where she had seen her life headed all those years ago.
Finishing up the call, David disconnected and then looked up at her. He stacked the digital pads on the corner of his desk. "I'm glad you decided to stay here," he said, his voice flat.
"I didn’t exactly have a choice, now did I," Elizabeth sniped. "Not if I wanted to see my children."
"Stop that," he demanded, standing up. He clicked off the business computer and walked towards the doorway.
Elizabeth stood up, blocking the doorway. "No. Not when it's the truth."
"Let me through," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Snapping, she hit him in the chest with the flat of her hand. "No."
David stumbled backwards, hand over his chest. "Listen-"
"No. You listen for once," Elizabeth said, advancing on him. "Ever since I came back from God knows where, I have sat in the background letting you run things. I swear you don’t even pay attention to me, you never share yourself with me anymore. We have all been through some immense shit, but this will not help."
"Beth-"
"Shut it!" Elizabeth smacked David repeatedly on the upper arm and felt some satisfaction as he grabbed her hand in his, stopping her.
His hand closed around hers, nearly strangling the fingers. "No!" He pulled her in close to him. "I will not be treated this way in my own house!"
Elizabeth seethed with the anger that had been building since the Cleaners had taken her. Anger at them, anger at UNIT, anger at nearly losing it all again, anger at David's betrayal. Then David did something neither of them seemed to expect; he pulled Elizabeth in close and hugged her fiercely. She didn’t know what to think or do anymore. Elizabeth started to cry.
Pushing herself out of his embrace, Elizabeth tried to wipe the tears away. "No, no, we can't do this."
"Beth…"
She put her hand over his mouth and then quickly turned away. Elizabeth rushed out of the room and down the long hallway to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Collapsing onto the bed, Elizabeth let herself cry, letting the tears fall as fast and furious as they wanted to.
Several hours later she pushed up from the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Glancing in the mirror, she saw that she looked like hell: puffy eyes, blotchy skin, dried tears. Turning on the faucet, she attempted to make herself feel human again and freshened up. Deciding she needed some tea to calm her, she padded out into the hall towards the kitchen. Elizabeth stopped as she saw a light on in Grace's nursery. Drawn to the light, Elizabeth watched as David tucked the little girl back into the bassinet.
Looking up and seeing Elizabeth, David turned off the light in the room. "She needed her medicine," David said.
"Oh God, oh God, I can't do anything right," Elizabeth muttered, headed into the room.
David grabbed Elizabeth by the arm and escorted her out of the nursery, and away from Grace. "She'll be fine now." He looked Elizabeth in the eyes. "We need to talk. Now." David held on to her elbow and manoeuvred Elizabeth into the living room, looking out over the lake.
Grabbing two rocks glasses, David poured copious amounts of whiskey into both glasses and handed one to Elizabeth as he sat down on the couch, taking a sip of his. Elizabeth looked down at the amber liquid and then found herself staring at the darkness over the lakefront. When had her life become so complicated? Taking a big gulp of the liquor, Elizabeth winced as it burned going down her throat. She plopped down onto the couch next to David.
"This has all gone to shit, hasn't it?" David asked, sipping his whiskey.
"That's putting it mildly," she retorted. She looked down at the glass her hand, spinning it amongst her fingers. "Why did you want to take my children?"
"They are my children, too," David stated.
"You sure don't act like it at times."
David downed the rest of the whiskey and put the glass down on the side table. "They are my kids and I don’t need to smother them."
"As distant as your parents were with you, you mean?"
David stopped and looked at her. He quickly stood up and grabbing his glass, refilled it with even more whiskey. He swigged back half the glass. "I never intended to be like them."
"Just some rapid control freak who betrayed his best friend?"
"What kind of fucking bullshit are you talking about?
She slammed the glass down on the coffee table in front of her. "You dictate my life to me, or rather you did. You set up my apartment. You keep me here. You won’t let me go anywhere without an escort. Does that ring a bell?"
"I was trying to keep you safe."
"So you turn me over to UNIT, and I get abducted again."
"What? Again?"
"I have had some things happen in my life that you don’t even know about yet."
"You and me both."
"Why did you demand to keep James?"
"To keep him safe, to keep you safe."
"Sure, that worked so well two months ago," she sniped. Elizabeth stood up, wanting to run from the room. She turned to the doorway fully intending to go.
"They came after me. They came after me and James that day."
She stopped cold in her tracks. "What?"
"The Cleaners, as you call them, came after me."
"Then why the fuck didn’t they take you?" She turned on her heel and glared at him, prodding him to continue.
"Because I kept us safe. We had been in public, at the hot dog vendor down the street. I caught a glimpse of something and hurried James back to the office building."
"I was in a building. I was in a fucking UNIT facility and they still took me."
"UNIT doesn’t have the same structure in their walls as I do in the office building that was built by Ortiz Industries, or installed in your apartment, here, and in the vehicles my drivers use."
Elizabeth felt her head spinning and moved back to the couch. Slumping down against the cushions, she just looked at David.
"Before you came back, I started working with UNIT, not of my own volition mind you. One of the things I found out is that attached to our blood cells is an unknown metallic alloy with alien tracking numbers imbedded into it. Thanks to Mr. Yoshi-"
"Your herbalist?" She looked at him unbelievably.
"He also has a passing interest in cybernetics. He has almost all the pieces for a complete Dalek in his storehouse. He came up with a frequency beacon that would mute the trackability of the alloy. That's how I intended on keeping us safe."
"A lot of good that did," Elizabeth said, drumming her fingers on the arm of the sofa. She let out a sigh.
"Fine. Whatever."
"No! Not whatever!" Elizabeth sat forward on the edge of the sofa. "Why didn’t you tell me any of this? Any of it? I'm a big girl, I can handle it!"
David turned away from her, swallowing down the rest of his whiskey. She wanted to smack him and hug him at the same time. She knew he meant well, but he could be so goddamn infuriating at times. Two other questions weighed on her mind though.
"What's Torchwood? And what was in the data disc Agent Johnson left for you?"
Still looking out the window, David began to answer her. "I'm still not exactly sure what Torchwood is. They're fucking well protected, that's for sure. I've started having shades of memories and Torchwood keeps coming to the tip of my tongue."
"The alien that tried to help me on the ship, he said my answer was 'Torchwood.' And Agent Johnson seemed to recognize the name."
David spun around, shock on his face. He grabbed Jeanie from the desk and sat down on the desk, opening the computer.
"What can I do for you Master?" Jeanie asked.
"Open the files I have on Torchwood," David said. "It appears there was a Torchwood in Cardiff years ago. Months after we had gone missing they accessed our missing persons reports from the Cardiff Police Department."
"What did the reports say? I've never seen them," Elizabeth said. She found herself getting more and more interested.
David typed in a couple of encryption commands and a set of reports from the Cardiff Police Department opened up on the screen. "Cold cases now, so they think. Nothing big; date of disappearance, last date seen, style of dress, etc. Apparently the maid at the hotel came in and cleaned up the day we went missing, but a report wasn't received until two days later. Jillian's parents were worried when it had been two whole days and she hadn't called Eve."
"Oh God, Evie. She'd be graduated from college already, wouldn’t she?"
"She did. Top of her class at Stanford. She's running for the Senate now." David looked sideways at Elizabeth. "I made sure she was taken care of. It was the least I could do."
Elizabeth reached out a hand and put it over David's, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. She smiled at him. "Right. So we disappear, and there's something about a Torchwood. What does that do for us?"
"Torchwood has been around in various cities for almost two centuries. Thing is, I can’t find any current databases to hack into. There's two I have seen, but they look like shells, nothing more. If I could get some more free time, I might be able to crack some of the old databases, but those are even starting to degrade from not being used for so long."
"What about the data disc?"
"Copies of records from the ship that took you. Apparently they had this thing with this other species-"
"The Galatans," Elizabeth said, sitting up straight. "The Galatans made me, or so I was told."
"Uh-huh. Sure they did," David said, not even looking at her. He ran a couple of more encryption programs.
"The Cleaner said there had been five of us, I didn’t know who he had meant," Elizabeth said.
David slowly turned to her. "Five? Five things the Galatans had made?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Galatan records show one human male and four human females. Five human babies."
"And?"
"They took you. They came after me. There are three of us still missing."
Elizabeth flopped back against the sofa cushions. Her mind felt like it was spinning out of control. She had always felt a special connection to Samantha, Lynnae and Jillian. Even David, she felt like she had known him forever. She put a hand up to her forehead as a sweat broke out on her brow.
David held her glass up to her and Elizabeth weakly took it, draining the rest of it. She rested the glass on her knee and looked at him bug-eyed. So many thoughts sprinted through her mind. Before she could say anything, a sleepy-eyed James padded into the living room, dragging Duncan the Dragon by the tail behind him.
"Momma, I had a bad dream," James said as he rubbed at his eyes.
Elizabeth quickly stood up and scooped him up into her arms. Her muscles still hurt at times, but nothing would stop her from holding her baby. "Hush now, sweetheart. It can’t be that bad."
"I saw Daddy in a plane and then it went crash. There was fire and everything." James nestled his head into the crook of Elizabeth's neck.
"Don’t worry," David said, getting up and coming behind Elizabeth. "Daddy's not exactly flying anywhere any time soon. Not like I can if I wanted to," David stated, putting a hand on James' back.
The computer on the coffee table beeped. Elizabeth glance at it as a logo seemed to come up, some weird shaped T. James let out a deep sigh. She cooed into his ear as David rubbed the boy's back, the entire city spread out below them.
Chapter: 5
Rating: R
Characters: Team Torchwood, Elizabeth Murphy, 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 5
Elizabeth placed a little kiss on Grace's head. She stood up from the bassinet and looked down on her little fighter. For Grace has brought me safe thus far, and Grace will lead me home. Elizabeth looked around the nursery. It was obvious the room had other uses originally, but now it would do as Grace's room for the time being. She didn’t know if Grace had led her home, but at least Elizabeth was with her children.
Turning off the overhead light, she continued to watch Grace just breathe. It had been a long two months, but her daughter was with her. Elizabeth's heart ached, as if it was being ripped in two. Backing out of the room, Elizabeth stopped at the next doorway and peeked in on James. He was nestled under all his blankets, Duncan the stuffed red dragon lying on the floor under his outstretched hand. She snuck in and picked up Duncan, putting the dragon on the nightstand, and re-tucked James in. She kissed him on the forehead and closed the door behind him.
Looking down at her hands, Elizabeth noticed she was wringing them. She let out a sigh and then held her head up and marched down the hall to David's study. Standing in the doorway, she silently watched as he finished up a call with a client in Tokyo. Elizabeth leaned up against the doorjamb, her head resting on the wood. This is not where she had seen her life headed all those years ago.
Finishing up the call, David disconnected and then looked up at her. He stacked the digital pads on the corner of his desk. "I'm glad you decided to stay here," he said, his voice flat.
"I didn’t exactly have a choice, now did I," Elizabeth sniped. "Not if I wanted to see my children."
"Stop that," he demanded, standing up. He clicked off the business computer and walked towards the doorway.
Elizabeth stood up, blocking the doorway. "No. Not when it's the truth."
"Let me through," he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Snapping, she hit him in the chest with the flat of her hand. "No."
David stumbled backwards, hand over his chest. "Listen-"
"No. You listen for once," Elizabeth said, advancing on him. "Ever since I came back from God knows where, I have sat in the background letting you run things. I swear you don’t even pay attention to me, you never share yourself with me anymore. We have all been through some immense shit, but this will not help."
"Beth-"
"Shut it!" Elizabeth smacked David repeatedly on the upper arm and felt some satisfaction as he grabbed her hand in his, stopping her.
His hand closed around hers, nearly strangling the fingers. "No!" He pulled her in close to him. "I will not be treated this way in my own house!"
Elizabeth seethed with the anger that had been building since the Cleaners had taken her. Anger at them, anger at UNIT, anger at nearly losing it all again, anger at David's betrayal. Then David did something neither of them seemed to expect; he pulled Elizabeth in close and hugged her fiercely. She didn’t know what to think or do anymore. Elizabeth started to cry.
Pushing herself out of his embrace, Elizabeth tried to wipe the tears away. "No, no, we can't do this."
"Beth…"
She put her hand over his mouth and then quickly turned away. Elizabeth rushed out of the room and down the long hallway to her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Collapsing onto the bed, Elizabeth let herself cry, letting the tears fall as fast and furious as they wanted to.
Several hours later she pushed up from the bed and stumbled into the bathroom. Glancing in the mirror, she saw that she looked like hell: puffy eyes, blotchy skin, dried tears. Turning on the faucet, she attempted to make herself feel human again and freshened up. Deciding she needed some tea to calm her, she padded out into the hall towards the kitchen. Elizabeth stopped as she saw a light on in Grace's nursery. Drawn to the light, Elizabeth watched as David tucked the little girl back into the bassinet.
Looking up and seeing Elizabeth, David turned off the light in the room. "She needed her medicine," David said.
"Oh God, oh God, I can't do anything right," Elizabeth muttered, headed into the room.
David grabbed Elizabeth by the arm and escorted her out of the nursery, and away from Grace. "She'll be fine now." He looked Elizabeth in the eyes. "We need to talk. Now." David held on to her elbow and manoeuvred Elizabeth into the living room, looking out over the lake.
Grabbing two rocks glasses, David poured copious amounts of whiskey into both glasses and handed one to Elizabeth as he sat down on the couch, taking a sip of his. Elizabeth looked down at the amber liquid and then found herself staring at the darkness over the lakefront. When had her life become so complicated? Taking a big gulp of the liquor, Elizabeth winced as it burned going down her throat. She plopped down onto the couch next to David.
"This has all gone to shit, hasn't it?" David asked, sipping his whiskey.
"That's putting it mildly," she retorted. She looked down at the glass her hand, spinning it amongst her fingers. "Why did you want to take my children?"
"They are my children, too," David stated.
"You sure don't act like it at times."
David downed the rest of the whiskey and put the glass down on the side table. "They are my kids and I don’t need to smother them."
"As distant as your parents were with you, you mean?"
David stopped and looked at her. He quickly stood up and grabbing his glass, refilled it with even more whiskey. He swigged back half the glass. "I never intended to be like them."
"Just some rapid control freak who betrayed his best friend?"
"What kind of fucking bullshit are you talking about?
She slammed the glass down on the coffee table in front of her. "You dictate my life to me, or rather you did. You set up my apartment. You keep me here. You won’t let me go anywhere without an escort. Does that ring a bell?"
"I was trying to keep you safe."
"So you turn me over to UNIT, and I get abducted again."
"What? Again?"
"I have had some things happen in my life that you don’t even know about yet."
"You and me both."
"Why did you demand to keep James?"
"To keep him safe, to keep you safe."
"Sure, that worked so well two months ago," she sniped. Elizabeth stood up, wanting to run from the room. She turned to the doorway fully intending to go.
"They came after me. They came after me and James that day."
She stopped cold in her tracks. "What?"
"The Cleaners, as you call them, came after me."
"Then why the fuck didn’t they take you?" She turned on her heel and glared at him, prodding him to continue.
"Because I kept us safe. We had been in public, at the hot dog vendor down the street. I caught a glimpse of something and hurried James back to the office building."
"I was in a building. I was in a fucking UNIT facility and they still took me."
"UNIT doesn’t have the same structure in their walls as I do in the office building that was built by Ortiz Industries, or installed in your apartment, here, and in the vehicles my drivers use."
Elizabeth felt her head spinning and moved back to the couch. Slumping down against the cushions, she just looked at David.
"Before you came back, I started working with UNIT, not of my own volition mind you. One of the things I found out is that attached to our blood cells is an unknown metallic alloy with alien tracking numbers imbedded into it. Thanks to Mr. Yoshi-"
"Your herbalist?" She looked at him unbelievably.
"He also has a passing interest in cybernetics. He has almost all the pieces for a complete Dalek in his storehouse. He came up with a frequency beacon that would mute the trackability of the alloy. That's how I intended on keeping us safe."
"A lot of good that did," Elizabeth said, drumming her fingers on the arm of the sofa. She let out a sigh.
"Fine. Whatever."
"No! Not whatever!" Elizabeth sat forward on the edge of the sofa. "Why didn’t you tell me any of this? Any of it? I'm a big girl, I can handle it!"
David turned away from her, swallowing down the rest of his whiskey. She wanted to smack him and hug him at the same time. She knew he meant well, but he could be so goddamn infuriating at times. Two other questions weighed on her mind though.
"What's Torchwood? And what was in the data disc Agent Johnson left for you?"
Still looking out the window, David began to answer her. "I'm still not exactly sure what Torchwood is. They're fucking well protected, that's for sure. I've started having shades of memories and Torchwood keeps coming to the tip of my tongue."
"The alien that tried to help me on the ship, he said my answer was 'Torchwood.' And Agent Johnson seemed to recognize the name."
David spun around, shock on his face. He grabbed Jeanie from the desk and sat down on the desk, opening the computer.
"What can I do for you Master?" Jeanie asked.
"Open the files I have on Torchwood," David said. "It appears there was a Torchwood in Cardiff years ago. Months after we had gone missing they accessed our missing persons reports from the Cardiff Police Department."
"What did the reports say? I've never seen them," Elizabeth said. She found herself getting more and more interested.
David typed in a couple of encryption commands and a set of reports from the Cardiff Police Department opened up on the screen. "Cold cases now, so they think. Nothing big; date of disappearance, last date seen, style of dress, etc. Apparently the maid at the hotel came in and cleaned up the day we went missing, but a report wasn't received until two days later. Jillian's parents were worried when it had been two whole days and she hadn't called Eve."
"Oh God, Evie. She'd be graduated from college already, wouldn’t she?"
"She did. Top of her class at Stanford. She's running for the Senate now." David looked sideways at Elizabeth. "I made sure she was taken care of. It was the least I could do."
Elizabeth reached out a hand and put it over David's, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. She smiled at him. "Right. So we disappear, and there's something about a Torchwood. What does that do for us?"
"Torchwood has been around in various cities for almost two centuries. Thing is, I can’t find any current databases to hack into. There's two I have seen, but they look like shells, nothing more. If I could get some more free time, I might be able to crack some of the old databases, but those are even starting to degrade from not being used for so long."
"What about the data disc?"
"Copies of records from the ship that took you. Apparently they had this thing with this other species-"
"The Galatans," Elizabeth said, sitting up straight. "The Galatans made me, or so I was told."
"Uh-huh. Sure they did," David said, not even looking at her. He ran a couple of more encryption programs.
"The Cleaner said there had been five of us, I didn’t know who he had meant," Elizabeth said.
David slowly turned to her. "Five? Five things the Galatans had made?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"Galatan records show one human male and four human females. Five human babies."
"And?"
"They took you. They came after me. There are three of us still missing."
Elizabeth flopped back against the sofa cushions. Her mind felt like it was spinning out of control. She had always felt a special connection to Samantha, Lynnae and Jillian. Even David, she felt like she had known him forever. She put a hand up to her forehead as a sweat broke out on her brow.
David held her glass up to her and Elizabeth weakly took it, draining the rest of it. She rested the glass on her knee and looked at him bug-eyed. So many thoughts sprinted through her mind. Before she could say anything, a sleepy-eyed James padded into the living room, dragging Duncan the Dragon by the tail behind him.
"Momma, I had a bad dream," James said as he rubbed at his eyes.
Elizabeth quickly stood up and scooped him up into her arms. Her muscles still hurt at times, but nothing would stop her from holding her baby. "Hush now, sweetheart. It can’t be that bad."
"I saw Daddy in a plane and then it went crash. There was fire and everything." James nestled his head into the crook of Elizabeth's neck.
"Don’t worry," David said, getting up and coming behind Elizabeth. "Daddy's not exactly flying anywhere any time soon. Not like I can if I wanted to," David stated, putting a hand on James' back.
The computer on the coffee table beeped. Elizabeth glance at it as a logo seemed to come up, some weird shaped T. James let out a deep sigh. She cooed into his ear as David rubbed the boy's back, the entire city spread out below them.