REFUGEES
Chapter Twelve John and Rose took a little break while the Doctor and Jack went to make some tea for everyone. While they were upstairs, Donna stood up and put her hand on John's shoulder. "I'm sorry about what happened over there," she said. "Thanks, Donna," John said, taking her hand and squeezing it. "I'm glad we made it over here and for that I'm grateful for Amy and Rory," he said, looking over at them. "I wish we could bring your family members here so you can see them again but I'm sure they're in the Heaven in the other universe and like I said, that's a separate realm," Amy said. "But I'm sure they're at peace and happy now." Rose nodded. "It'll take a lot just to get through the next part of the story," she said. "I really don't fancy remembering what I went through, let alone talk about it." "Then let me talk, love," John said, patting her hand. "You just cuddle Panda and rest." Rose grinned. She picked up the panda and held it close. XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX When the Doctor and Jack returned with the tea, they passed out a cup to all the living adults. Amy and Rory glanced at each other and produced two cups of tea out of thin air. When the Doctor got to Michelle and Brittany, he smiled and showed them the tray he had given Lori. There were two mugs of tea left. "Tea with milk in it, done the British way," he said to them. "Fancy a sip of it?" "You put milk in tea?" Michelle said to them. "Yes, we do," Donna said. "And it's good, try it." Michelle and Brittany glanced at each other before taking the mugs. "Splendid," the Doctor said happily. "You lot are gonna live in London, you oughta get used to the British way of doing things. Enjoy." He put the tray over by the TV while Michelle and Brittany took a sip of their tea. "Wow, it's not bad," Brittany said. "It's different but I like it." "Me too," Michelle said. "Splendid, not you are going to be British," the Doctor said, zooming back over to her. "And be sure to say macaroni cheese from now on." "No!" Michelle said and giggled when the Doctor gave her a peeved look. "Give me time, you will come round to my way of doing things," he said as he went back to the TV, took his mug off the top of it and sat down beside her. "Thank you for this," John said after taking a sip of his tea, "this is another thing we missed. A nice cuppa. So…" he said, scratching his chin. "After the initial onslaught, me, Rose and Pete were taken aboard the mothership with several others and put inside a bleak metal cell with no food, water, beds or anything to make us comfortable. We sat there for several hours until Matthew deigned to speak with us. By then, the invasion force was going across London, wiping out any last pockets of resistance and making sure everything was secure. In this meeting with Matthew, all formalities were dropped and he revealed his true plans to us at last and also revealed that he had spied on us and gathered information about us, our family and Torchwood. He also told us that he'd been studying Earth history in preparation for the invasion and fancied Hitler and his Final Solution. He liked the idea of the Nazi concentration camps so that was his idea, to emulate what he did." He took another sip of tea before continuing. "The camps were set up along the lines of the Nazi ones. Except that instead of being gassed, people who were deemed to be weak and inefficient were vaporized into atoms. Matthew told me that they like to keep things tidy when they invade. He even named most of the camps after the Nazi ones so when it was assembled, we were sent to Dachau. That was put in the heart of London after the mothership vaporized some buildings to make room for it." "We studied Hitler in school," Brittany said. "How Hitler rounded up the jews and gassed them or put them to work or did experiments on them." "Yes and that's what Matthew did as well," John said. "And like those camps, his camps had horrible food…when it was available, cramped conditions and poor waste disposal. So naturally there was disease everywhere. Cholera, typhus, tuberculosis…and that's how Pete succumbed. He died from Cholera after being weakened by starvation, torture and forced labor," John said, taking Rose's hand. "And most of the others from Torchwood suffered the same fate. Rose and I…however…were kept alive and kept relatively disease free because Matthew wanted us to watch as everyone else died around us. We and everyone else had our hair shaved off, which actually was a blessing as there were also lice and fleas in the camps. We were completely bald when we finally made our escape and now…" he said, touching the top of his head. "We do have a bit of fuzz up there so I suppose you could calculate who long we were in the void by the rate of our hair growth." "We did try to escape eventually…" Rose said when John paused to take a sip of his tea. "Are you sure you're up to talking about this?" John said, giving her a worried look after swallowing his tea. "Yeah, I'll be fine. Just rest, you don't have to do all the talking," Rose said, patting his hand. "Anyway, we'd been starved. Although, we lost a bit more weight in the void ship but we were nearly this thin by the time we tried to escape…" XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX "Rose!" Rose jerked awake when she heard John calling her name. She had been sleeping in the barracks in a metal framed bed with a thin mat for a mattress and a thin cotton blanket that barely kept her warm at night. It took her a few minutes to respond since she was so weak from hunger and lack of proper rest. "Yeah?" she finally said in a groggy voice. John was standing over her, wearing ragged clothes with a shaved head and a determined expression on his face. "Rose, we have to go," he whispered as he knelt down beside her bed. "Go where?" Rose whispered back after checking to make sure no one was listening. "Anywhere. Out of here before we've snuffed it," John whispered. "We're not gonna last much longer unless we do something." "But how?" Rose said. "They have fences all around this place with razor wire on it. We can't climb over and we can't go under, unless you've been tunneling all this time." "No, I haven't. But we need to take control of the supervisor's office and force him to fly us out of here." "How?" Rose whispered. "I don't know how but we have to try. Anything is preferable to here right now, even death. Are you with me?" "Always," Rose said. "Okay, give it an hour until the camp settles down for the night. Then we sneak out of here and find a way to get out or die trying." Rose squeezed his hand and John kissed her forehead before getting up and hurrying back to his bed. XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX "So we waited until everything was quiet in the camp," Rose said. "Well, relatively quiet since there were always people moaning and crying out in pain or just weeping but the outside was quiet and we knew the guards were on patrol. Well, I realized that John had managed to smuggle a bit of rope from the camp's shed, one for each of us, and we used that little bit of rope as a garrote." "Huh?" Michelle said. "We used it to strangle people with," John said. "Oh," Michelle said. "So you snuck out and strangled the guards?" "Yes," John said. "We tried to be quiet and silent and we managed to kill three of them before making it to the supervisor's office. Or so I thought. Because you see, I didn't know much about The Brotherhood and I didn't know that they could do what the Doctor does and activate a respiratory bypass system in order to survive. That means that he can turn off his breathing voluntarily and live for awhile without having to breathe. They did that when we were strangling them and pretended to be dead so by the time Rose and I got to the supervisor's office, they were waiting for us." He paused when Michelle stood up. "Sorry, I changed my mind, I don't think I wanna hear what happens next," she said. "I'm gonna go upstairs for awhile." "Yeah, me too," Brittany said, standing up. "Well, wait, we don't have to go into gory detail," John said, gesturing for them to come to him. "I really don't want to go into detail and I know Rose doesn't. But Rose was beaten severely and I lost my eye, which was our punishment for our attempted escape. They thought that would deter me from making any more escape attempts but that just made me all the more determined, especially after seeing Rose once they got through with her. I just bided my time and Rose and I made sure that we kept on their good side and pretended to be obedient and a few months later, we tried again and this time we used pieces of metal that we'd managed to fashion into crude knives after tying them to the ends of broom handles and we stabbed those bastards several times to make sure they were well and truly dead. By then we were both sick, tired and enraged and at our wit's end so we both attacked with no hold's barred and this time we burst into the office and just stabbed whoever was there until we reached the supervisor and we held our knives to his throat and demanded he take us to his shuttlecraft. We'd also got a few laser blasters and we shot any Brotherhood person that we saw on the way to the craft. We got inside and forced the supervisor to fly us back to Torchwood because I had thought of the void ship and knew that Torchwood had made one after studying the one the Cult of Skaro used. Don't ask me why they did it because I don't wanna know but we were thankful they had it. We killed the supervisor the moment he landed beside Torchwood and we forced our way inside. By then, others were coming including Matthew so we grabbed a couple of rucksacks from the locker room and some food that we found and we ran to the storage room where the void ship was being held, used the magna clamps that were also there, carried it to the dimension cannon room, set a course for here, climbed inside and hoped for the best. We survived for a time on the food but eventually we ran out and we weakened and passed out and when I came to, there was Michelle," he said, patting her shoulder. And the rest you know. So that was the tale of our captivity and escape without going into too much grisly detail. And I'm spent," John said, sighing, before taking another sip of tea. He smiled when Michelle and Brittany hugged him and he hugged them with one arm before they went around to Rose and did the same. John looked over when the Doctor came over to him and patted his shoulder. "Wanted to check the eye and tell you that you both were very brave and I'm glad you tried again after the first attempt," he said to them. "You're eye looks like it's healing up, mate. Good." "Thank you for mending it and not bringing up the past," John said. "I was wrong to do that. I told you when I did that, I did it out of anger and wasn't thinking clearly and I still blame myself for what happened to you and Rose, even though you don't want me carrying any blame. I still do and I will for as long as I live but I can do some good and mend you both." "Thank you," John said. "Now what about this whole living for 1000 years thing?" he said, looking at Rory. "How did you end up being an auton?" Rory pointed to his wife and Amy raised her hand. The Doctor told everyone he would check on his patients while Rory and Amy told their story. Michelle watched while he walked to the TARDIS to get more IV bags and serum and followed him. "Hey, Bookworm, don't you wanna hear about Rory the Roman?" he asked when he noticed she was following him. "No, I can hear that another time," Michelle said as they walked into the storage room. "Are you okay?" the Doctor said when he noticed how glum she looked. "It got to you, didn't it? Their story." Michelle nodded and the Doctor put his arm around her while clicking his fingers. The TARDIS doors opened and they went inside. "You can help me carry out the supplies then," the Doctor said to her while they headed towards the back door. "I wish we could make things right," Michelle said as she followed the Doctor up the stairs. "Ah, my little friend, I wish that often," the Doctor said. "But that's not always possible. There were times when I didn't see eye to eye with Jackie, Rose's mum, but I never wanted her dead. And I hate that Rose lost her mum. I wanted her to be safe the day she was first taken from me and I tried to make her stay with her mum because I knew they were close. It would be the same with you and your mum because I know you and Lori are close. It's terrible and I wish it could be fixed but what's done is done and sometimes you just have to pick up the pieces and try to move on and live for the people you lost." Michelle nodded and the Doctor took her hand and squeezed it while they walked towards the med bay.
Back Home Doctor Who Main Page Next