Fic: Mother Time (Chapter 1)
Title: Mother Time
Author: country_who
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, Jenny/Jack, Idris
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Romance
Summary: The Doctor, Rose, Jenny and Jack are planning on going to see Donna, but when the TARDIS starts acting up and the Doctor receives a message, they have no choice but to investigate. (The Doctor's Wife, AU). Sequel to The Doctor and His Time Ladies.
Prologue
The Doctor bent over Rose, softly stroking her hair with his fingers. Worry was eating away at his insides, but he forced himself to smile that grin that he saved just for her. He wasn’t going to make the first thing she woke up to his face stretched in anxiety. She didn’t deserve that. He heard Jenny helping Jack up from the floor before she crossed over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. Sparing a looking in her direction, he let his defenses down briefly and showed her a fraction of the concern he really felt.
“What happened?” she questioned.
“The TARDIS matrix it’s just gone, not destroyed but gone,” he whispered, looking back towards Rose. “The TARDIS is a part of Rose, so it’s rather hard on her. Where ever we landed, it’s not agreeing with either of them.”
The Doctor thought about what could possibly be outside, and how more than anything he wanted to turn around, despite the possibility of more Time Lords. He would take Rose back, where she’d be safe and investigate alone; too bad he was out of power.
“And, where are we?” Jenny asked softly, as Rose scrunched her face up at the sound of her voice and reached out her hand in a ghosted motion as the Doctor took it.
He ignored his daughter for the time being, as he took both of Rose’s hand in one of his and held them up to his chest. They were soft in his hands, supple and warm against his cool skin that had ultimately become rough in this regeneration. He didn’t know why it occurred right after he had lost her in the Battle of Canary Warf, but he assumed it was because he had quit filtering out the most dangerous situations he could get into. The rest of him had showed that as well. His hair had grown longer and he let stubble grow in around his chin and jawline. He decided then that Rose didn’t just make him better. She kept him better.
“I’m here,” he told her in a soft cheerful voice. “Don’t think most Earthmen could make you faint like that-must be something special. Eh?”
Rose groaned again mumbling something under her breath as she squeezed his hand tighter, as if it would help her to create a link to what was real and whatever was going on in her head. He cupped her face and rubbed her temple with his thumb, a gentle psychic link to coax her back to him.
“Hello,” he murmured, helping her to sit up as she opened her eyes and grinned at him. Something about her eyes seemed duller however The shine that had come back to her dark, hazel eyes was gone now. He missed it already, despite not being ale to put his finger on it.
Rose must have sensed his feelings; because just as he opened his mouth to comment, she locked her mouth on his and rested her lips there for a brief moment before retreating with the same feather light touch. He smiled at him as reopened her eyes from the kiss, and touched his cheek with her thumb and made her way to the wide of his nose before working downward coming to a stop at his chin, holding it for the briefest of seconds.
“Hello,” she mumbled dazedly, as she wrapped her arms around him and smiled against his shoulder.
“Hello,” he repeated, but he caught sight of Jenny and Jack’s equally entertained faces and cleared his throat noisily. Were they really expecting him to have some other reaction to Rose waking up? It was Rose after all. “Where was I?”
“Where are we?” Jack told him, hiding the snicker from his voice with considerable skill.
“Right, well we’re outside the universe,” the Doctor said simply. “Any other questions?”
“I’ve got one,” Rose said, falling easily into what the Doctor expected them to do, with a giddy smile. “How?”
“Good question, Rose-much more prevalent that the Captain’s one,” he added with a small laugh, as Rose gave Jack an apologetic look. “You should take note, Jack. Anyway, right, how, good question. I burned up seventy percent of the rooms, the ones I saved include, the med-bay, the console room-obviously-, the rose garden, the sitting room, the zero room, and well, don’t feel like listing them all, but you get the point.”
“Rose garden,” Jack muttered in Jenny’s ear and snickered, while the Doctor glared.
“Anyway, we used the other rooms a fuel to get onto this little universe outside our bigger universe,” the Doctor explained.
“Like a parallel world?” Rose asked.
“Exactly, but nothing like that,” the Doctor said with a confirming voice, as he turned to Jenny. “Jenny, your turn.”
Jenny tugged at her loose hair and thought for a moment. “The Universe itself isn’t perfect. There are loads of imperfections all over the place, so it’s like the universe pinched in on itself the sealed it off. So, we had to break through those walls to get in,” Jenny said, pushing her glasses up her nose, while she looked at her feet for inspiration on how to continue, but her father seemed satisfied.
“Brilliant,” the Doctor said. “But, you really couldn’t expect much less, when you consider her excellent gene pool.”
Jack rolled his eyes and Rose punched the Doctor in the arm, as he looked at her affronted. He was just stating the facts; it wasn’t his fault if there were some inferior species out there.
“But, you said the TARDIS matrix was gone,” Jack reminded him, “from what you’ve told me about the TARDIS that’s…:
“…The essences of the TARDIS, everything she was and is, and everything she feels or does,” Rose continued. Her voice audibly dropped off, and she touched the dead console, feeling the emptiness. She could feel the small part of the TARDIS that was left calling to her, asking for help, but she could do nothing. She looked down at her hands clenching and unclenching them until it hurt, just to feel something.
“The heart and soul of the TARDIS,” the Doctor confirmed. “But, she’s not destroyed, just gone, like a vacation,” he told Rose, taking her hands in his and looking deeply in her eyes. “We’ll find her. The Doctor and Rose in the TARDIS, just how it’s supposed to be, yeah?”
“With Jenny and Jack,” Rose added quietly while she nodded and smiled. “We’ll save her.”
“If she needs saving,” the Doctor corrected, getting back into his usual jocund mood. “I said vacation; she might be sitting on some proverbial beach somewhere, drinking wine and resting her… rotor.”
He watched the genuine smiled spread over her face as he squeezed her hand a final time and leapt down the ramp.
“So, plan, step one find the Time Lords, step two… is in the works,” he announced, shoving his hands in his pants pockets as Rose followed him.
Jenny rested one of her hands in Jack’s, while they stepped out of the TARDIS doors after the Doctor and Rose. They were already surveying the area around them. Jenny toed the ground with her sneaker and sent dry dust into the air. The whole place was rather dimly lit as she squinted against the strange green fog around them.
“It’s like and asteroid,” Jack said, stepping next to the Doctor, who nodded.
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed halfheartedly, while he ran his fingers through his hair. “But there’s something off about it.”
“Like it’s living,” Jenny said, bending down and taking a handful of dirt into her hands and letting it slide through her fingers and back in the ground. Rose joined her, as she picked up some foliage and examined it.
“What makes you say that?” Rose asked, tossing the green object aside as she realized it was well into a stage of rotting, despite appearing to have been growing from the ground. She rubbed her hands on her jeans and grimaced.
“Dunno, just feels like it,” Jenny replied.
“It just feels dead to me,” Rose said, running her hands over her arms against the gooseflesh forming on her arms.
“But, being dead means that it was once living,” Jack pointed out.
“Mhm,” the Doctor confirmed from where he stood, looking out to the distance. “Hello,” he said brightly into the distance, as three figures began to approach. He held his hand out behind him to stop his friends from joining him. They didn’t feel like Time Lords, but he definitely heard their voices in his head. They were close, and he was just about to find them. The brief knowledge that they might not take too kindly to the fate of the rest of the Time Lords crossed him, but he forced the thoughts to the back of his mind. He could explain, and they might accept him. They were the last and had been gone for a while on a dying asteroid, they’d need him, and he could make it up to them.
Two of the three figures walked rather strangely, but answered back to his call with clumsy waves, while the third figure simply approached stiffly. They appeared to be alone and harmless, until just behind them the figure of a woman started running towards them. In the Doctor’s head, she felt different than the others, more timey wimey and certainly more wibbly wobbly. She wasn’t exactly a Time Lord either, but she was closer, perhaps some sort of cross-breed with the natives on the asteroid. They were spreading; the Doctor thought cheerfully, maybe there was a chance at hoping for him and…
“Thief! Thief! Thief!” the woman cried from the distance, as she covered the length of ground between the Doctor and herself in record time. In shock, the Doctor didn’t move to avoid her as she threw herself on him and knocking him to the dirt as his companions shouted around him-all but Rose, who stood aside grinning as the woman kissed the Doctor multiple times hastily and wetly. Somewhere in the middle of the kissing, she started biting at his neck, as he yelped in pain.
Finally, regaining his control when she felt the mad woman’s tongue trying to reach out to him, he pushed her off of him and Jenny was immediately at his side, helping him to his feet and brushing off his jacket.
“Are you okay, Dad?” Jenny asked, as she touched the angry red welt just under his ear.
“I’m fine, yeah,” the Doctor replied, as Jack walked over to the woman, who had taken to having a lively conversation with Rose.
“Wolf, you’re the Wolf,” she said happily, as she wrapped Rose in a hug that was much less violent than the greeting that the Doctor had received. “I miss you so much.”
“I missed you too,” Rose agreed, putting her hands on the woman’s shoulders. “I can’t believe it’s you. Why here? I mean of all the places in the world? Why here?”
“Oh, what do you call them,” the woman said, thinking hard. “The knots, the places that must be or are being or have been. Oh, must you people use so many tenses and have them so limited.”
“Tell me about it,” Rose joked. “I hated grammar with a passion.”
Jack stepped in and took the woman by the shoulder and tugged on her slightly, but she quickly turned around and slapped him across the face.
“And it’s you, you’re so wrong,” the woman shouted, but stopped and shook her head. “No, you’re right. Right and wrong at the exact same time, how do you do that?”
“Well, I’m a man of many talents,” Jack said smugly, as Jenny touched his face gently, but he simply smiled.
“Flirting, obviously not being one of them,” she told him while she crossed her arms and turning away from Jack, before whirling around in a circle and proclaiming in Jenny’s face. “It’s to come back to life after death.”
“What are you talking about,” Jenny asked, anchoring the woman down with her hands, and she seemed to accept this.
“Anabiosis,” she said as if it was obvious. “Don’t ask why it has been important. It is… no, will be important.”
“Who are you?” the Doctor demanded stepping forward only to recede as the woman turned toward him. He audibly yelped and wrapped his arms protectively around his neck.
“Don’t worry it’s only a stun-he’s not functioning properly,” the woman answered instead.
“What are you-” the Doctor trailed off when Rose started talking.
“Doctor, don’t you see this is…” Rose was cut off as a scream ripped through her and she fell to the ground limply. An Ood with glowing, green eyes stood behind her a sparking ball of light poised in his hands. The Doctor charged forward and fell to his knees beside Rose. He ignored Jack and Jenny shouting in anger as the other two figures that had been far away reached them and grabbed them from behind as the woman knelt beside Rose, stroking the side of her face caringly.
“Don’t touch her,” the Doctor said coldly, fumbling for a moment as he pushed some of Rose’s long blonde hair away from her neck and felt for her pulse. It thrummed steadily beneath his fingers as he reached down and touched her chest, his hands covering the golden pendant in the process. He counted her respirations until he was satisfied and went to stroke her face, but found his hand being pressed lightly against the golden pendant carved by his own hand. He looked up to see the woman looking at him sadly.
“You haven’t told her,” the woman told him softly, while Jack and Jenny were finally released, but hung back as the Ood stepped forward menacingly.
“Told her what?”
“What the token means, not really.”
“I will.”
“You wait and wait and wait and never get anything done,” the woman suddenly shouted, tackling the Doctor and knocking him over before jumping to her feet and running towards the TARDIS. “I must get back home.”
She managed a few feet before falling down against a pile of junk.
The humanoid male of the two people stepped over. “It’s sad. She’s dead.”
“No she’s not,” Jenny said, walking past him and kneeling down beside her, touching her neck gently and feel the erratic beating. She gently tried to coax her awake, but her father stopped her, nudging her with the toe of his sneaker against his.
“Jenny, leave her.”
“Rose trusted her,” Jenny told him, touching the woman’s warm face and smiling gently. “So, I do.”
“Rose trusted a Dalek,” the Doctor mumbled under his breath, not meaning for the words to come out at all let alone sound so bitter.
“Nephew, take her away in case she wakes up, we don’t need her to hurt anyone else,” the male said, as the Ood approached and heaved the woman to her feet, and hefted one of her arms over his shoulder and began dragging her away.
“I’m sorry for that, Mate,” the woman said, stepping forward and touching the side of Captain Jack’s face chummily. “She’s a bit off now, you see. I’m Auntie, by the way, and that there is Uncle. And, he’s Nephew.”
She pointed vaguely in the direction of where the Ood had been moments ago. Even Jack looked slightly repulsed by the state of the two people in their presence. Their clothes were torn and molding, while their bodies just seemed grotesque and pieced together like they were pieced together from a kids broken toys. Taking Auntie’s arm in his he pushed up her sleeve and revealed the image of a snake eating its own tail.
“Doctor,” Jack called, holding the woman at an arm’s length.
“Not now,” the Doctor shouted, not taking his eyes off of Rose, leaning over her and touching the pendant. The woman was right he hadn’t told Rose properly. She wasn’t raised on Gallifrey, so she wouldn’t know what the weight of his gift had meant. Picking up the pendant in his fingers and bringing it to his lips, he kissed it briefly before moving to her hand and kissing her knuckles as well.
“Doctor, it’s important, she has an Ouroboros tattooed on her arm,” Jack shouted.
The Doctor sat up stiffly, not moving at first, but he ran his hands through his hair, as Jenny came over to him and sat on the ground beside Jenny. “I’ll watch her, and it’s only a few feet away. She won’t mind.”
Smiling dimly, the Doctor complied, clearing the space between him and Jack in a few bounds. He took the woman’s arm in his hand and looked at the other, revealing her two left hands. He blew air tensely through his teeth before turning to Uncle.
“You’re made of Time Lords, dead Time Lords,” he stated hotly. “How could you.”
“House does it, my Love,” Auntie replied. “He cares for us, feeds us, loves us.”
“Show me,” the Doctor said roughly, and the two lead him off, with Jack following close behind, watching Jenny beside Rose until they were out of sight.
~o~
“This is him,” Uncle announced showing him to a large vent in the inside of the cavern where thick green smoke was coming out of the ground. “We live on him, breath his air, walk on his back...”
“…And do my will,” Auntie and Uncle said together in a sinister voice, their bodies tilting slightly as if the creature inside of them were not used to being limited to such a small area. “Hello, Time Lord, with human companions. I always thought your race to be too pure to cohort with such a meager species.”
The Doctor touched Jack behind him a silent motion to tell him to be quiet.
“And, you, a powerful beast enough to control a whole asteroid, yet you allow three living things to sustain themselves through you. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were bored. Although, there must be others. I can practically feel the energy from the minds of Time Lords.” The Doctor suddenly perked up leaping to his feet, his voice raising an octave. “So, where are they?”
“You are the only Time Lord here,” House said.
“But, I feel them.”
“You are the only pure Time Lord,” he repeated, as Nephew approached and stood beside the bodies of Auntie and Uncle.
“No, I’m not. Look, I can prove it,” the Doctor move toward the Ood, took the translation sphere split it in half and soniced it quickly. “There, a sign of goodwill if you will, well not goodwill considering what you just did,” the Doctor said harshly. “Just be glad that I’ve already killed too many Oods, and I won’t add you to the list. Oh, and I wouldn’t think about using that to shock anyone ever again it might backfire.”
Jack stepped over to the Doctor and whispered in his ear. “Doctor, what are you doing?”
“You’ll see,” the Doctor murmured back, giving the Ood a final sonic and the device lit up the sound of screaming voices calling for help filled the air. They called for help as the war waged on and the burning started as they tried to escape. Long buried memories resurfaced across the Doctor’s face as he tried to block them all out again. He almost managed it, save for the lone tear tracking its way down his face and falling into the dust.
“Time Lords,” he breathed softly his words almost hidden underneath the cacophony.
“The liar,” Jack muttered, glaring back at Auntie and Uncle as the house released him. “Come on, Doc, we’ll get Jenny and Rose and find them.”
Jack wrapped his fingers around the Doctor’s forearm and tugged him in the direction of the girls, but he stayed in place, as the voiced died down.
“Would you want me back, Jack? If I killed everyone?”
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” he answered, knowing that it wasn’t satisfactory enough for the Doctor, but the Time Lord didn’t question further, so he assumed that he had gotten away with it, for now at least. He knew the Doctor liked to pretend that the Time Lords were perfect, but now he was faced with meeting real ones that would more than likely hate him. How did he stand it?
The Doctor cleared the mound of rubbish with Jack while Uncle and Auntie walked away. Jenny was helping Rose to her feet. She smiled and waved to the Doctor, who was now running towards her. He wrapped his arms around her and swept her off of her feet. He felt her arms snaking around his shoulders, holding on for stability, as he swung her around. Laughs surfacing and pain receding from his face.
“Doctor,” Rose squealed in surprise, as he knocked the breath out of her, but neither of them cared. He ran his fingers down her back lovingly, but stopped when he touched the scorched fabric at the back of her sweatshirt.
“Rose,” he said mournfully. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Rose told him. “I’m fine. Now, let’s find those, Time Lords, eh?
“Yeah,” the Doctor said softly.
Jack watched appreciatively from the distance, as Jenny came up next to him.
“They’re so right for each other,” Jenny whispered.
“More than even they know,” Jack told her, kissing her softly before going back to watching the Doctor and Rose. His face was so much younger when he was with her. He didn’t show any pain or suffering, just love. He couldn’t figure out how they had even gotten torn apart in the first place, it didn’t seem to him that the Doctor ever gave her much time out of his arms or hand.
Author: country_who
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Rose, Jenny/Jack, Idris
Genre: Adventure, Alternate Universe, Romance
Summary: The Doctor, Rose, Jenny and Jack are planning on going to see Donna, but when the TARDIS starts acting up and the Doctor receives a message, they have no choice but to investigate. (The Doctor's Wife, AU). Sequel to The Doctor and His Time Ladies.
Prologue
The Doctor bent over Rose, softly stroking her hair with his fingers. Worry was eating away at his insides, but he forced himself to smile that grin that he saved just for her. He wasn’t going to make the first thing she woke up to his face stretched in anxiety. She didn’t deserve that. He heard Jenny helping Jack up from the floor before she crossed over to him and put her hand on his shoulder. Sparing a looking in her direction, he let his defenses down briefly and showed her a fraction of the concern he really felt.
“What happened?” she questioned.
“The TARDIS matrix it’s just gone, not destroyed but gone,” he whispered, looking back towards Rose. “The TARDIS is a part of Rose, so it’s rather hard on her. Where ever we landed, it’s not agreeing with either of them.”
The Doctor thought about what could possibly be outside, and how more than anything he wanted to turn around, despite the possibility of more Time Lords. He would take Rose back, where she’d be safe and investigate alone; too bad he was out of power.
“And, where are we?” Jenny asked softly, as Rose scrunched her face up at the sound of her voice and reached out her hand in a ghosted motion as the Doctor took it.
He ignored his daughter for the time being, as he took both of Rose’s hand in one of his and held them up to his chest. They were soft in his hands, supple and warm against his cool skin that had ultimately become rough in this regeneration. He didn’t know why it occurred right after he had lost her in the Battle of Canary Warf, but he assumed it was because he had quit filtering out the most dangerous situations he could get into. The rest of him had showed that as well. His hair had grown longer and he let stubble grow in around his chin and jawline. He decided then that Rose didn’t just make him better. She kept him better.
“I’m here,” he told her in a soft cheerful voice. “Don’t think most Earthmen could make you faint like that-must be something special. Eh?”
Rose groaned again mumbling something under her breath as she squeezed his hand tighter, as if it would help her to create a link to what was real and whatever was going on in her head. He cupped her face and rubbed her temple with his thumb, a gentle psychic link to coax her back to him.
“Hello,” he murmured, helping her to sit up as she opened her eyes and grinned at him. Something about her eyes seemed duller however The shine that had come back to her dark, hazel eyes was gone now. He missed it already, despite not being ale to put his finger on it.
Rose must have sensed his feelings; because just as he opened his mouth to comment, she locked her mouth on his and rested her lips there for a brief moment before retreating with the same feather light touch. He smiled at him as reopened her eyes from the kiss, and touched his cheek with her thumb and made her way to the wide of his nose before working downward coming to a stop at his chin, holding it for the briefest of seconds.
“Hello,” she mumbled dazedly, as she wrapped her arms around him and smiled against his shoulder.
“Hello,” he repeated, but he caught sight of Jenny and Jack’s equally entertained faces and cleared his throat noisily. Were they really expecting him to have some other reaction to Rose waking up? It was Rose after all. “Where was I?”
“Where are we?” Jack told him, hiding the snicker from his voice with considerable skill.
“Right, well we’re outside the universe,” the Doctor said simply. “Any other questions?”
“I’ve got one,” Rose said, falling easily into what the Doctor expected them to do, with a giddy smile. “How?”
“Good question, Rose-much more prevalent that the Captain’s one,” he added with a small laugh, as Rose gave Jack an apologetic look. “You should take note, Jack. Anyway, right, how, good question. I burned up seventy percent of the rooms, the ones I saved include, the med-bay, the console room-obviously-, the rose garden, the sitting room, the zero room, and well, don’t feel like listing them all, but you get the point.”
“Rose garden,” Jack muttered in Jenny’s ear and snickered, while the Doctor glared.
“Anyway, we used the other rooms a fuel to get onto this little universe outside our bigger universe,” the Doctor explained.
“Like a parallel world?” Rose asked.
“Exactly, but nothing like that,” the Doctor said with a confirming voice, as he turned to Jenny. “Jenny, your turn.”
Jenny tugged at her loose hair and thought for a moment. “The Universe itself isn’t perfect. There are loads of imperfections all over the place, so it’s like the universe pinched in on itself the sealed it off. So, we had to break through those walls to get in,” Jenny said, pushing her glasses up her nose, while she looked at her feet for inspiration on how to continue, but her father seemed satisfied.
“Brilliant,” the Doctor said. “But, you really couldn’t expect much less, when you consider her excellent gene pool.”
Jack rolled his eyes and Rose punched the Doctor in the arm, as he looked at her affronted. He was just stating the facts; it wasn’t his fault if there were some inferior species out there.
“But, you said the TARDIS matrix was gone,” Jack reminded him, “from what you’ve told me about the TARDIS that’s…:
“…The essences of the TARDIS, everything she was and is, and everything she feels or does,” Rose continued. Her voice audibly dropped off, and she touched the dead console, feeling the emptiness. She could feel the small part of the TARDIS that was left calling to her, asking for help, but she could do nothing. She looked down at her hands clenching and unclenching them until it hurt, just to feel something.
“The heart and soul of the TARDIS,” the Doctor confirmed. “But, she’s not destroyed, just gone, like a vacation,” he told Rose, taking her hands in his and looking deeply in her eyes. “We’ll find her. The Doctor and Rose in the TARDIS, just how it’s supposed to be, yeah?”
“With Jenny and Jack,” Rose added quietly while she nodded and smiled. “We’ll save her.”
“If she needs saving,” the Doctor corrected, getting back into his usual jocund mood. “I said vacation; she might be sitting on some proverbial beach somewhere, drinking wine and resting her… rotor.”
He watched the genuine smiled spread over her face as he squeezed her hand a final time and leapt down the ramp.
“So, plan, step one find the Time Lords, step two… is in the works,” he announced, shoving his hands in his pants pockets as Rose followed him.
Jenny rested one of her hands in Jack’s, while they stepped out of the TARDIS doors after the Doctor and Rose. They were already surveying the area around them. Jenny toed the ground with her sneaker and sent dry dust into the air. The whole place was rather dimly lit as she squinted against the strange green fog around them.
“It’s like and asteroid,” Jack said, stepping next to the Doctor, who nodded.
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed halfheartedly, while he ran his fingers through his hair. “But there’s something off about it.”
“Like it’s living,” Jenny said, bending down and taking a handful of dirt into her hands and letting it slide through her fingers and back in the ground. Rose joined her, as she picked up some foliage and examined it.
“What makes you say that?” Rose asked, tossing the green object aside as she realized it was well into a stage of rotting, despite appearing to have been growing from the ground. She rubbed her hands on her jeans and grimaced.
“Dunno, just feels like it,” Jenny replied.
“It just feels dead to me,” Rose said, running her hands over her arms against the gooseflesh forming on her arms.
“But, being dead means that it was once living,” Jack pointed out.
“Mhm,” the Doctor confirmed from where he stood, looking out to the distance. “Hello,” he said brightly into the distance, as three figures began to approach. He held his hand out behind him to stop his friends from joining him. They didn’t feel like Time Lords, but he definitely heard their voices in his head. They were close, and he was just about to find them. The brief knowledge that they might not take too kindly to the fate of the rest of the Time Lords crossed him, but he forced the thoughts to the back of his mind. He could explain, and they might accept him. They were the last and had been gone for a while on a dying asteroid, they’d need him, and he could make it up to them.
Two of the three figures walked rather strangely, but answered back to his call with clumsy waves, while the third figure simply approached stiffly. They appeared to be alone and harmless, until just behind them the figure of a woman started running towards them. In the Doctor’s head, she felt different than the others, more timey wimey and certainly more wibbly wobbly. She wasn’t exactly a Time Lord either, but she was closer, perhaps some sort of cross-breed with the natives on the asteroid. They were spreading; the Doctor thought cheerfully, maybe there was a chance at hoping for him and…
“Thief! Thief! Thief!” the woman cried from the distance, as she covered the length of ground between the Doctor and herself in record time. In shock, the Doctor didn’t move to avoid her as she threw herself on him and knocking him to the dirt as his companions shouted around him-all but Rose, who stood aside grinning as the woman kissed the Doctor multiple times hastily and wetly. Somewhere in the middle of the kissing, she started biting at his neck, as he yelped in pain.
Finally, regaining his control when she felt the mad woman’s tongue trying to reach out to him, he pushed her off of him and Jenny was immediately at his side, helping him to his feet and brushing off his jacket.
“Are you okay, Dad?” Jenny asked, as she touched the angry red welt just under his ear.
“I’m fine, yeah,” the Doctor replied, as Jack walked over to the woman, who had taken to having a lively conversation with Rose.
“Wolf, you’re the Wolf,” she said happily, as she wrapped Rose in a hug that was much less violent than the greeting that the Doctor had received. “I miss you so much.”
“I missed you too,” Rose agreed, putting her hands on the woman’s shoulders. “I can’t believe it’s you. Why here? I mean of all the places in the world? Why here?”
“Oh, what do you call them,” the woman said, thinking hard. “The knots, the places that must be or are being or have been. Oh, must you people use so many tenses and have them so limited.”
“Tell me about it,” Rose joked. “I hated grammar with a passion.”
Jack stepped in and took the woman by the shoulder and tugged on her slightly, but she quickly turned around and slapped him across the face.
“And it’s you, you’re so wrong,” the woman shouted, but stopped and shook her head. “No, you’re right. Right and wrong at the exact same time, how do you do that?”
“Well, I’m a man of many talents,” Jack said smugly, as Jenny touched his face gently, but he simply smiled.
“Flirting, obviously not being one of them,” she told him while she crossed her arms and turning away from Jack, before whirling around in a circle and proclaiming in Jenny’s face. “It’s to come back to life after death.”
“What are you talking about,” Jenny asked, anchoring the woman down with her hands, and she seemed to accept this.
“Anabiosis,” she said as if it was obvious. “Don’t ask why it has been important. It is… no, will be important.”
“Who are you?” the Doctor demanded stepping forward only to recede as the woman turned toward him. He audibly yelped and wrapped his arms protectively around his neck.
“Don’t worry it’s only a stun-he’s not functioning properly,” the woman answered instead.
“What are you-” the Doctor trailed off when Rose started talking.
“Doctor, don’t you see this is…” Rose was cut off as a scream ripped through her and she fell to the ground limply. An Ood with glowing, green eyes stood behind her a sparking ball of light poised in his hands. The Doctor charged forward and fell to his knees beside Rose. He ignored Jack and Jenny shouting in anger as the other two figures that had been far away reached them and grabbed them from behind as the woman knelt beside Rose, stroking the side of her face caringly.
“Don’t touch her,” the Doctor said coldly, fumbling for a moment as he pushed some of Rose’s long blonde hair away from her neck and felt for her pulse. It thrummed steadily beneath his fingers as he reached down and touched her chest, his hands covering the golden pendant in the process. He counted her respirations until he was satisfied and went to stroke her face, but found his hand being pressed lightly against the golden pendant carved by his own hand. He looked up to see the woman looking at him sadly.
“You haven’t told her,” the woman told him softly, while Jack and Jenny were finally released, but hung back as the Ood stepped forward menacingly.
“Told her what?”
“What the token means, not really.”
“I will.”
“You wait and wait and wait and never get anything done,” the woman suddenly shouted, tackling the Doctor and knocking him over before jumping to her feet and running towards the TARDIS. “I must get back home.”
She managed a few feet before falling down against a pile of junk.
The humanoid male of the two people stepped over. “It’s sad. She’s dead.”
“No she’s not,” Jenny said, walking past him and kneeling down beside her, touching her neck gently and feel the erratic beating. She gently tried to coax her awake, but her father stopped her, nudging her with the toe of his sneaker against his.
“Jenny, leave her.”
“Rose trusted her,” Jenny told him, touching the woman’s warm face and smiling gently. “So, I do.”
“Rose trusted a Dalek,” the Doctor mumbled under his breath, not meaning for the words to come out at all let alone sound so bitter.
“Nephew, take her away in case she wakes up, we don’t need her to hurt anyone else,” the male said, as the Ood approached and heaved the woman to her feet, and hefted one of her arms over his shoulder and began dragging her away.
“I’m sorry for that, Mate,” the woman said, stepping forward and touching the side of Captain Jack’s face chummily. “She’s a bit off now, you see. I’m Auntie, by the way, and that there is Uncle. And, he’s Nephew.”
She pointed vaguely in the direction of where the Ood had been moments ago. Even Jack looked slightly repulsed by the state of the two people in their presence. Their clothes were torn and molding, while their bodies just seemed grotesque and pieced together like they were pieced together from a kids broken toys. Taking Auntie’s arm in his he pushed up her sleeve and revealed the image of a snake eating its own tail.
“Doctor,” Jack called, holding the woman at an arm’s length.
“Not now,” the Doctor shouted, not taking his eyes off of Rose, leaning over her and touching the pendant. The woman was right he hadn’t told Rose properly. She wasn’t raised on Gallifrey, so she wouldn’t know what the weight of his gift had meant. Picking up the pendant in his fingers and bringing it to his lips, he kissed it briefly before moving to her hand and kissing her knuckles as well.
“Doctor, it’s important, she has an Ouroboros tattooed on her arm,” Jack shouted.
The Doctor sat up stiffly, not moving at first, but he ran his hands through his hair, as Jenny came over to him and sat on the ground beside Jenny. “I’ll watch her, and it’s only a few feet away. She won’t mind.”
Smiling dimly, the Doctor complied, clearing the space between him and Jack in a few bounds. He took the woman’s arm in his hand and looked at the other, revealing her two left hands. He blew air tensely through his teeth before turning to Uncle.
“You’re made of Time Lords, dead Time Lords,” he stated hotly. “How could you.”
“House does it, my Love,” Auntie replied. “He cares for us, feeds us, loves us.”
“Show me,” the Doctor said roughly, and the two lead him off, with Jack following close behind, watching Jenny beside Rose until they were out of sight.
~o~
“This is him,” Uncle announced showing him to a large vent in the inside of the cavern where thick green smoke was coming out of the ground. “We live on him, breath his air, walk on his back...”
“…And do my will,” Auntie and Uncle said together in a sinister voice, their bodies tilting slightly as if the creature inside of them were not used to being limited to such a small area. “Hello, Time Lord, with human companions. I always thought your race to be too pure to cohort with such a meager species.”
The Doctor touched Jack behind him a silent motion to tell him to be quiet.
“And, you, a powerful beast enough to control a whole asteroid, yet you allow three living things to sustain themselves through you. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were bored. Although, there must be others. I can practically feel the energy from the minds of Time Lords.” The Doctor suddenly perked up leaping to his feet, his voice raising an octave. “So, where are they?”
“You are the only Time Lord here,” House said.
“But, I feel them.”
“You are the only pure Time Lord,” he repeated, as Nephew approached and stood beside the bodies of Auntie and Uncle.
“No, I’m not. Look, I can prove it,” the Doctor move toward the Ood, took the translation sphere split it in half and soniced it quickly. “There, a sign of goodwill if you will, well not goodwill considering what you just did,” the Doctor said harshly. “Just be glad that I’ve already killed too many Oods, and I won’t add you to the list. Oh, and I wouldn’t think about using that to shock anyone ever again it might backfire.”
Jack stepped over to the Doctor and whispered in his ear. “Doctor, what are you doing?”
“You’ll see,” the Doctor murmured back, giving the Ood a final sonic and the device lit up the sound of screaming voices calling for help filled the air. They called for help as the war waged on and the burning started as they tried to escape. Long buried memories resurfaced across the Doctor’s face as he tried to block them all out again. He almost managed it, save for the lone tear tracking its way down his face and falling into the dust.
“Time Lords,” he breathed softly his words almost hidden underneath the cacophony.
“The liar,” Jack muttered, glaring back at Auntie and Uncle as the house released him. “Come on, Doc, we’ll get Jenny and Rose and find them.”
Jack wrapped his fingers around the Doctor’s forearm and tugged him in the direction of the girls, but he stayed in place, as the voiced died down.
“Would you want me back, Jack? If I killed everyone?”
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” he answered, knowing that it wasn’t satisfactory enough for the Doctor, but the Time Lord didn’t question further, so he assumed that he had gotten away with it, for now at least. He knew the Doctor liked to pretend that the Time Lords were perfect, but now he was faced with meeting real ones that would more than likely hate him. How did he stand it?
The Doctor cleared the mound of rubbish with Jack while Uncle and Auntie walked away. Jenny was helping Rose to her feet. She smiled and waved to the Doctor, who was now running towards her. He wrapped his arms around her and swept her off of her feet. He felt her arms snaking around his shoulders, holding on for stability, as he swung her around. Laughs surfacing and pain receding from his face.
“Doctor,” Rose squealed in surprise, as he knocked the breath out of her, but neither of them cared. He ran his fingers down her back lovingly, but stopped when he touched the scorched fabric at the back of her sweatshirt.
“Rose,” he said mournfully. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Rose told him. “I’m fine. Now, let’s find those, Time Lords, eh?
“Yeah,” the Doctor said softly.
Jack watched appreciatively from the distance, as Jenny came up next to him.
“They’re so right for each other,” Jenny whispered.
“More than even they know,” Jack told her, kissing her softly before going back to watching the Doctor and Rose. His face was so much younger when he was with her. He didn’t show any pain or suffering, just love. He couldn’t figure out how they had even gotten torn apart in the first place, it didn’t seem to him that the Doctor ever gave her much time out of his arms or hand.