Ficathon fic: Don't Ask, Don't Tell 2/3
Title: Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Author: wmr wendymr
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not my characters!
Gift for: ameretrifle
Beta: dark_aegis , without whom I could NOT have written one character in this story.
Summary: Ask not-we cannot know-what end the gods have set for you, for me.
Prompt: will appear at the end.
Chapter 1: Anomalous
Chapter 2: Separation
“Rose!”
Jackie’s running across the concourse the second he steps outside the TARDIS. Of course she would be. Just his luck.
But that answers one question. She’s not here either.
“Doctor?” The look of relieved excitement’s instantly wiped from her face as she gives him a glare of dislike. “She inside that thing still?”
“Ah. Jackie.” He hesitates, considers his options, then just plunges into it. She’s going to kill him whatever he says. “Rose not here, then? Was hoping she might’ve...”
Jackie stops dead, and her face turns pale. “What’ve you done with her?”
“Nothing!” Indignant, he protests his innocence. “Not my fault if your daughter decides to wander off! One minute she was beside me, the next she’d vanished. Couldn’t find her anywhere.”
“You tellin’ me you lost her?” Jackie stares, hands on hips. “Where? I bloody hope it wasn’t on some planet a million miles from here!”
“If it had been, it’d be more like a hundred million miles. Or even a billion,” he points out, unable to resist the urge to prove her wrong. “An’ if it had been, you honestly think I’d’ve thought she’d made her own way back here?” He rolls his eyes. Some humans!
“Where, then?”
“Charing Cross Road. Half an hour ago. Like I said, one second she was there, the next she wasn’t.”
Jackie reaches for her mobile and presses a key. “You think I’ve not already tried that?” he points out as she raises the phone to her ear.
“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you,” Jackie retorts, and he can only shake his head in disgust. Making assumptions, typical.
But, after a few seconds, she frowns, then speaks quickly. “Rose, love, where are you?” She’s answered? Where is she, then? He starts forward, ready to grab the phone from Jackie, but she’s still speaking. “Call me soon as you get this, you hear? That Doctor o’ yours, he’s worried about you.”
Oh. Right. Voicemail. “Not answerin’, then?” he says, and a small knot’s beginning to form in his stomach. Stupid, though, that. This is her own city, in her own time. What can possibly have happened to her here?
He’s just being stupid. She’s going to turn up an hour, two hours from now, acting all innocent and laughing at him for being worried.
Jackie puts her phone back into her pocket. “So what were you doin’ before she went off on her own, then? Argue about something, did you?”
Immediately, he shakes his head. “No. Nothin’ like that. We were just talkin’. Nothin’ important, just stuff.”
She’s giving him a hard stare, and it’s difficult not to glare back. What is it about this woman that she always manages to put him on the defensive? “You must’ve said something. She wouldn’t just run off for no reason. Not from you,” Jackie adds, and there’s resignation in her voice.
Resignation? He frowns. Oh, he knows she hates Rose travelling with him because it’s dangerous, and because she should be at home getting a job, earning money, getting a place of her own - all that human, domestic stuff that’s completely anathema to him. But this is a new angle. She’s jealous that Rose wants to be with him rather than her?
Though it makes sense, really. Especially with how he’s behaved.
Still. She’s accused him of something that’s just not right. “Didn’t say anything, me. Like I said, we were just talking. ‘Bout travelling and stuff. She was sayin’ how much she likes it. That sound like a fight to you?”
“And... what? She just walked off?”
“Didn’t say that, did I?” He huffs a little. “Said I looked round and she’d gone. Just vanished. I only looked away for two seconds at most. That’s how quick it was.”
Jackie’s frowning now. “Charing Cross Road... well, she could’ve gone into a shop, couldn’t she?”
“Thought of that. Not where we were, not likely. Nothin’ there that’d have taken her fancy.”
Jackie chews her lip. “Got me, then. That’s not like Rose.”
“Exactly!” he exclaims. “I mean, yeah, she can wander off. Does, I mean. Sometimes. But usually it’s cause I’m doin’ something, or we’re somewhere she hasn’t been before an’ she goes to explore. This? Doesn’t make sense.”
“An’ with all that tech stuff in that ship of yours you can’t find her?”
Using the TARDIS? Didn’t think of that, did he? He looks away; he’s damn well not going to admit that to Jackie Tyler!
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees her shake her head. “Men! All the same, never mind whether you’re human or alien. Not got the brains you were born with!”
Ignoring her, he turns back to the TARDIS. It’s definitely not part of his plan that she come with him, but before he can shut the door behind him she’s pushed her way inside.
Great. That’s all he needs. His TARDIS invaded by someone’s mother.
***
So she’s gone back in time. Without a TARDIS. Well, a lot of things make sense now, at least. How the Doctor could just vanish in the blink of an eye. That song from years back. Everything looking so much older than she remembered it.
But now there’s a whole new lot of stuff that doesn’t make sense, and most of it’s standing right in front of her. “All right,” she says, meeting his gaze again. “I get it - you are the Doctor. But what I don’t get is why you look nothin’ like him. ‘S like you’re a different bloke.”
“Well...” He smiles, amusement dancing in his eyes. Right. He doesn’t just look nothing like her Doctor, he behaves nothing like him either. “In a way, I am.”
“What?” She frowns, scrunching her eyes. “That doesn’t make sense. How can you be him an’ a different bloke?” He’s still watching her, running one hand over the console, as if he’s just waiting for her to draw her own conclusions. “How can you change your face, anyway? Not just your face, but everything about you? Or, let me guess. You’re gonna tell me I’d never understand, bein’ just a stupid human.”
“Why on earth would I say that?” He actually sounds genuinely surprised. “Apart from anything else, it’s obvious that you’re not stupid. I might not have known you very long, but that’s easy to see.”
Okay, now she’s really not so sure he can be the Doctor. Cause her Doctor would never say that, even if he actually believed it. Well, unless he was having a dig at someone else.
“You’re so different,” is all she can say. “He’d never say that.”
“He believes it, though.” Grey eyes twinkle in amusement as he regards her. “Some of my incarnations have been a little more... well, gruff... than others. Sounds like the me you know’s like that. But I’ve never taken anyone with me I didn’t think was special. That I didn’t think was capable of greatness.”
Well, it’s true. Her Doctor did say he only took the best. “But I still don’t understand,” she persists. “You’re still the Doctor but you’re not the same person? An’ you said... incarnations. What’s that mean?”
He gestures with his hand, then flaps his frock-coat out behind him and sits on the edge of the console platform. She drops down next to him. “Time Lords aren’t like humans,” he begins.
“Yeah, got that, with the whole two hearts an’ nine hundred years old business.”
“Nine hundred?” He quirks a brow. “If I had to guess, I’d say your Doctor’s my next incarnation, in that case. At most, the one after that, though I doubt it. Anyway, yes. We’re not like humans. Time Lords get to regenerate. What that means is, if we die, every cell in our bodies changes. Converts. Becomes something new. So we look completely different on the outside, and some superficial things about us change as well - maybe we like sugar in our tea in one regeneration and not another. The fifth me liked cricket. The second me played the recorder - that sort of thing. But the essentials, everything inside that is me, don’t change. I’m still the Doctor. Still a renegade Time Lord who avoids Gallifrey as much as I can and thinks most Time Lords are pompous stuffed-shirts who aren’t interested in anything but furthering their own self-importance.”
She has to let that sink in for a few moments. “So you can’t die? You’re - what, immortal?”
“Oh, no, no!” He shakes his head insistently. “The Council grants all Time Lords twelve regenerations. That means thirteen lives. So we can die twelve times and regenerate each time, but when our thirteenth life ends that’s it. Permanently dead. And that’s simplifying it - there are some deaths we can’t regenerate from.”
“Right.” Well, she sort of understands. “So you get thirteen different bodies, yeah? Which one are you on, then?”
“My eighth,” he says, stretching his legs out in front; they’re nowhere near as long as her Doctor’s. “So I’m guessing your Doctor is the Ninth.”
“I’ll have to ask him,” she says. Nine lives. He’s a cat. “An’ speakin’ of my Doctor, I’ve got to get back to where I should be. He’s gonna be worried.”
“Right. Yes. Of course.” He scratches his head. “Now, normally that wouldn’t be a problem at all. Quick trip in the TARDIS, have you back in no time, but at the moment... well, there’s just a minor hitch.”
“How minor?” Her voice is laced with suspicion; she knows her Doctor far too well to believe he’s doing anything other than minimising things.
“Minor. Really, it is, I promise! The chronometric flux redactor burnt out. I was actually fixing it when you came in. It’ll only take me an hour to finish it, two at most, and then I can take you back.”
“Oh.” But he’ll be searching for her - he’ll be frantic by then. Or furious. Though, of course... “You can take me back, though, can’t you? To the time I disappeared?”
He frowns, shaking his head; the brown curls bounce around in a way that really doesn’t look at all Doctor-like. “Normally, yes, of course I could. But I’m not at all happy about taking the TARDIS near a time-bubble, especially not when there’s already another paradox there. It’s too dangerous, Rose. I’ll take you back, but it’ll be to a point at least ninety minutes after you vanished.”
This Doctor might look a bit like a cuddly teddy-bear, but right now it’s clear to see that he’s exactly like her Doctor in one respect: when he looks this determined, she knows there’s going to be no changing his mind.
She’s stuck here until he can get her back, and her own Doctor’s probably going to be worried sick.
Though - wait. Her phone!
She’s got the TARDIS number stored from when he phoned her. A quick scroll through her contacts list finds it, and she hits send. But all she gets is static fuzz.
“That’s... that doesn’t make sense.” She shakes her head, then tries the number again.
“What’s the problem?” the Doctor asks, his soft voice such a contrast to her Doctor’s. He sounds like he’s from... oh, somewhere around Merseyside, a bit. Weird. She wonders what accents the others had.
“Tryin’ to call the TARDIS. His TARDIS, I mean. But it’s not ringing.” She passes him the phone, and he listens for a second or two.
“Ah.” He hands it back. “But, remember, you’re trying to connect to a phone that’s almost five years in the future.”
“Yes, but this is a Superphone. He did something to it, an’ now I can call from anywhere in time an’ space. Phoned my mum from the year five billion.”
“Yes, that sounds like something I’d do. If I was showing off.” His lips twitch. “Still, there’s no guarantee that the call would connect to exactly when you need it to.”
“It’s not connecting at all at the moment,” she reminds him.
“Hmm. Yes. Well, you are inside a TARDIS, trying to connect to another TARDIS. Bit paradoxical, that. That might be why. Or it could be the anomaly. There could still be ripples distorting the normal flow of time. Or it could just be that I haven’t set the phone in my TARDIS to accept incoming calls.”
Yeah, sounds like the Doctor, all right. He’ll solve half a dozen theorems before breakfast, and then he’ll forget to put water in the kettle so it boils dry.
One way to find out what’s wrong. She selects her mum’s mobile instead and hits send.
When all she gets this time is static fuzz, the truth’s clear. She’s stuck here, and there’s no way of letting her Doctor know where she is.
***
“No! No, no, no, no, no! That’s impossible! That just can’t be-” He thumps the console, then feeds in the instructions for a third time.
The result’s just the same. The TARDIS can’t locate Rose anywhere either. She really has just disappeared.
“What’s happening? What’s that thing doing?” Jackie asks for about the fifth time.
“That thing, if you don’t mind, is my TARDIS,” he points out stiffly. “The last of her kind in the universe, one of the greatest time-ships ever made.” All right, she’s far from the most advanced Gallifrey ever produced, but she’s his TARDIS, and he never wanted a Type 102 anyway. At least his TARDIS actually looks like a proper time-ship, and it’s properly bigger on the inside, unlike one Time Lord’s he could mention.
“What she’s doing,” he says, with pointed emphasis, “is using Rose’s biosignature to search London for her. I should be able to locate her within a few feet of her actual position. But the TARDIS is telling me she’s nowhere within a fifty-mile radius of here.”
Jackie stares at him. “Well, that can’t be right. Only way that could be’s if she hopped on an InterCity and she’s halfway to Brighton by now. Nah. Your ship’s not working right, that’s what.”
“My ship is working, as you put it, perfectly.” Though, of course, the fact remains that she’s not been able to find Rose.
He’s about to order Jackie out, to tell her that he’s busy and hasn’t got time to listen to her moaning, when he’s reminded that he still hasn’t found Rose through his own efforts. Appalling though it is to admit it, he needs Jackie Tyler.
“Jackie.” He comes out from behind the console, hands thrust deep into his jacket pockets. “Thought maybe... well, she could be with a friend, yeah? I mean, she’s mentioned people - Shareen, Keisha...” He hesitates, then finally concedes. “Mickey.”
“Right.” Jackie nods, and it’s galling that she actually looks surprised that he’s come up with a halfway-sensible suggestion. “I could phone them. Not got their numbers on my mobile, though. Have to go up to the flat.” She’s about to turn and leave the TARDIS, but then she stops, half-turns back, and then gives a huff.
“So, you gonna come up, or jus’ skulk around here so I have to come lookin’ for you to tell you what I find out?”
“I do not-” he begins to protest.
“Cause, I mean, last time you couldn’t even wait around for tea, could you? Oh, no, my flat’s not good enough for the likes o’ you. Nor me. You couldn’t-”
“Jackie,” he interrupts. “Jackie,” he repeats more emphatically as she glares at him. “All right. I shouldn’t’ve made her leave so fast. But that’s hardly what’s important right now, is it?”
She visibly deflates. “S’pose not. Oh, well, you better come with me, then.”
She marches out of the TARDIS, and he’s left to follow behind, for all the world like a guilty schoolboy with his tail between his legs. Bloody humans! Mothers!
***
“I just thought.” She turns to him, excitement flowing through her. “My Doctor’ll know.”
“Know what?”
“He’s you, just older, right? So then won’t he - you - remember this? He’ll know where I am!”
He grins at her, eyes alight. “Yes! Brilliant point. But - well, not necessarily. It depends.”
“On what?” That doesn’t make sense.
“I might have made myself forget.”
“Do you often do that, then? Make yourself forget things?” And how does he do it, anyway?
“When I need to.” He bounds to his feet abruptly. “It’s not always a good idea to know my own future. Can’t risk causing a paradox. Now, your being here, Rose, is a predestination paradox. Because you’re here with me now, I have to lose you in the future in order to preserve the timeline. If I remember this, and I try to stop you vanishing, or do anything different, then you wouldn’t disappear and come back to this time, this me.”
“Right. Got that.” She stands, stretching to get the kinks out of her legs. “So you can’t remember, an’ my Doctor doesn’t know where I am, then. Isn’t there anything...” She shrugs, feeling a little helpless.
“Yes! Of course!” He’s on his way over to the console, but he halts abruptly, whirling back to face her. Again, the way his hair moves mesmerises her. She’s so used to her Doctor and his skinhead cut - in many ways it’s so hard to believe that this really is the same person.
“What?”
“Simple. I just write myself a note!”
“A note? Really? But wouldn’t you see it before you should?”
“No, no.” He’s moved to the odd-looking console now and is busy typing away. “Think of it as a bit like a telegram - or, no, an email. Only it’s got a date and time on it. The note won’t appear until the minute you disappear from your time and appear in mine.”
“Clever!”
“I am, actually.” His long, slender fingers, pianist’s hands - and where did that come from? - glide over the console. “There. Done. Now I’ll know you’re safe and I’ll get you back to me as soon as possible.” He raises his gaze to hers again, and his eyes are twinkling with merriment. “Good enough?”
She has to laugh. “You think you’re so impressive.”
His smile turns into a grin. “Impressed, then?”
Course she is. But, just as she pretends not to want to give her Doctor the satisfaction of knowing it, she’s not going to let him see either. “Still can’t fix your ship, can you?”
“Don’t say that!” he protests, and he actually looks alarmed. “You’ll hurt her feelings. She’s a grand old lady, even older than I am. Of course she needs a little loving care every now and then.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just looks like an excuse to stroke bits of the console to me.”
***
The flat looks more or less the same as the last time he was here, except for the missing-person posters. A tiny, paranoid part of his mind fears that they might be needed again.
But that’s stupid thinking, and he’s supposed to be above that. Logical, rational, a genius. Not at all prone to emotional flights of fancy. That’s for humans.
Jackie hesitates by the kitchen door. “You want a cup of tea?”
He has to bite back the urge to snap that what he wants is for her to get on the phone and start calling Rose’s friends. For a start, she’s only trying to be hospitable, even to a bloke she’s got every reason to despise. And, second, the fear now in her eyes is apparent. He’s got her worried sick about Rose too.
Maybe a cup of tea would be good for both of them.
“I’ll get it. You start making those phone calls,” he suggests. At her reaction - she looks uncertain - he insists, “Not helpless, me, whatever you might like to think. Might be an alien, but I do know how to make tea.”
She’s wavering, biting her lip as she glances behind her to the phone. Then she nods abruptly. “All right. Milk, one sugar.”
It gives him something to do as well, which helps. The routine of filling the kettle, plugging it in, then searching the cupboards for mugs and sugar and then finding tea-bags - typical, no leaf-tea. Why does no-one believe in making a proper cuppa any more? - calms him down just a little bit. Keeps him out of Jackie’s hair, too. If he was in the other room with her, he’d be pacing the floor and demanding answers she probably doesn’t have yet.
Finally, the tea’s made and he brings it through. Sounds like Jackie’s just ending a conversation.
“...all right, then, Mick. Phone me if you do hear from her, yeah? Please?”
Damn. Much as he hated to admit it, Mickey was his best hope. Rose’s boyfriend, who still means a lot to her even after she chose him over the boy twice, was top of his list of people she’s likely to have gone to see. Well, after her mum, of course.
Jackie replaces the receiver, and he passes her a mug of tea. “No luck?”
“Nothin’. Mickey’s not heard from her since she left last time, an’ Shareen’s in Mykonos for a week. Package holiday. On the pull, more like. Always was too quick to spread her legs, that one.” Jackie rolls her eyes.
Glass houses, he can’t help thinking, but smothers it. “And Keisha?”
“Gonna phone her now.”
Shaking his head abruptly - after the lack of success with Mickey and Shareen, he’d bet it’s a waste of time - he says, “Try her mobile again first.”
After all, maybe she was just out of range. Dead signal areas do exist. Maybe she was somewhere noisy and just didn’t hear it ring.
Jackie dials, listens, and he holds his breath. And then his hopes are crashed once more as she shakes her head.
***
He’s been working away for close to half an hour now, and she’s sitting in the Queen Anne chair by the clock garden - nothing like the battered yellow chair beside the console in her Doctor’s ship - with her feet up on the matching footstool, watching him. And thinking. Working things out.
This Doctor’s planet still exists. His people are still alive. So the war her Doctor’s told her about - well, mentioned as little as possible, really - happens in either this Doctor’s lifetime or very soon after he regenerates into her Doctor. And the things this Doctor’s said about his people suggests that he doesn’t really care for them very much. Avoids spending much time with them.
If he knew, or even suspected, what he will lose in his future... would he make the most of his present?
She can’t tell him, of course. He can’t know his future; he’s already told her that, and her own Doctor’s mentioned it once or twice.
But... maybe she can hint? If she can even make him think about spending a bit more time on his planet, wouldn’t it be a good thing? After all, she knows - who better? - what losing everything he ever called home, apart from his TARDIS, has done to him. Seeing this Doctor, too, is rubbing it home even more.
This Doctor has none of the sadness she sees in her Doctor’s eyes almost every time she looks at him. There’s a sunny lightness about him, so different from the submerged grief she sees in her own Doctor almost all the time now, even if he does hate to acknowledge it; he detests people feeling sorry for him. Yet a few years from now - how many, she has no idea - this Doctor is going to be that devastated, grieving man.
She can’t change that, of course she can’t, no matter how part of her would love to take that grief away from him. But maybe she can do one little thing to make it a tiny bit better. Is that so wrong?
It has to be done carefully, though. Subtle. If he even suspects what she’s up to - well, he won’t let her.
Getting up off her chair, she comes to join the Doctor at the console. “So, your people - the Time Lords, yeah? Do they all fly around in TARDISes savin’ the universe, then?”
He glances at her, a look of mild interest. “Haven’t I told you about my people, then?”
She shrugs. “Bits an’ pieces. He... well, s’pose, same as you, he doesn’t like them much. Doesn’t seem to like talking about them.”
“So you thought you’d find out more from me?” His smile’s almost conspiratorial. “Oh, I don’t see why not. It’s going to take another hour to finish this - it’s as good a way as any to pass the time.”
It’s worked. She turns away so he can’t see her involuntary smile of relief, then faces him again with what she hopes is a look of eager interest instead of calculation.
“Tell me about your planet, then. What’s it like?”
***
tbc