Daughter of Torchwood

Judoon

The drive home from the station was a frantic monologue. Starla's voice filled the car, spilling every jagged detail of what she had seen until the moment the tyres crunched against the kerb. Eliza pulled the car up to the side of the road in front of their house. The engine had barely died before the talking stopped. The silence was absolute. Starla retreated inside and headed straight for her room, the lock clicking like a final punctuation mark. She stayed there, bolted away, until dinner time on Sunday evening. Even the arrival of Maria and Luke, usually the best medicine for her moods, failed to draw her out. They received only clipped, hollow syllables through the wood of her door.

Word of Starla's distress travelled fast through their small circle. It wasn't long before Sarah Jane Smith was at the door, her face etched with a familiar, maternal concern.

"Did she say much?" Eliza asked, her voice tight and hovering on the edge of a fracture as Sarah Jane descended the narrow stairs.

"Only the basics," Sarah Jane admitted softly. She didn't have the heart to push for more. In their world, monsters and alien invasions were almost easier to process. But the cruelty of one's own kind, the systematic malice of that village, was a different poison entirely. It was enough to sicken even the most seasoned traveller.

Eliza let out a heavy, defeated sigh, her eyes drifting toward the ceiling where her daughter sat in the dark, "What do I even do? Do I give her space to breathe, or would I be letting her drown?"

"You have more years as a parent than I do, Eliza," Sarah Jane said, reaching out to squeeze her arm, "But I think she needs a change of scenery. Something that isn't us, isn't school, and definitely isn't Torchwood. She needs to see a different side of the world for a while."

The suggestion flickered in Eliza's mind until a spark of an idea took hold, "The hospital," she murmured, "Maybe some volunteer work would ground her." When she pitched the idea to Starla later that night, bracing for a rejection, she was stunned by how quickly her daughter nodded in agreement.

The next morning, the car idled at the curb drop-off outside Royal Hope Hospital.

"Aren't you coming in?" Starla asked, glancing at her mother's hands, which remained firmly on the steering wheel.

"I have a meeting across town first," Eliza explained, "I'll walk you in to find Clare in the catering department, but then I have to fly."

Once Clare took charge, Starla was immediately put to work. There was no time to think as she began navigating the labyrinthine corridors, delivering meal trays to the various wards. To her surprise, the physical rhythm of the work felt good. It was a stark contrast to the heavy, existential shadows of Torchwood or the suffocating social pressures of school. By the end of the first hour, the forced politeness had melted into something real. She found herself offering genuine smiles to the patients, discovering that in the simple act of trying to lift their spirits, she was finally beginning to lift her own.

------

Starla navigated the corridors of the penultimate floor, the rattle of her tea trolley a steady rhythm against the linoleum. She stopped beside a bed where a man sat, appearing to be in his mid-thirties with a shock of spiky brown hair and an intense, restless energy.

"Tea, Mr...?" she asked, reaching for a cup.

"Smith," he said, his face breaking into a wide, boyish grin, "Oh, yes, please."

"I'm Starla," she introduced herself, fixing the tea exactly the way he liked it.

"Starla?" he repeated, his eyes narrowing with a sudden, sharp focus as he looked her over, "Good name. You look familiar, though I'm certain we've never met."