Kissing Rose Tyler II (1/7)
Summary: The Doctor and Rose embark on their first new adventure together which leads to a dangerous discovery and potential disaster for Pete's World.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Wouldn't own 'em if I could. Too high maintenance.
Spoilers: Nothing's sacred. Watch the series (starting with the first Doctor in 1963) if you don't like surprises.
Characters: Doctor 10.5, Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Pete Tyler, Jake Simmonds.
Rating: All ages.
Author's note: This is a post-Journey's End AU and the next part of a story that begins with Kissing Rose Tyler.
Kissing Rose Tyler II
by Iliana
The sanctity of a man's private study was supposed to be... Well... Sacred, Pete Tyler thought as he entered the room only to find the Doctor comfortably ensconced in his chair, at his desk and going through his files.
"Make yourself at home," Pete commented -- the sarcasm of his words completely lost on the Doctor.
"Right. Thanks. Will do." He barely glanced up as he worked his way through the contents of Pete's personal computer, aiming his sonic screwdriver at the machine -- a maestro with his baton.
"Anything I can help you with?" Pete asked tartly. He strode over to a side table where a drinks tray sat and poured himself a whiskey.
"Is this all of it?" the Doctor inquired several minutes later, sounding somewhat vexed.
"All of what?"
This earned a look from the Doctor which, had Pete been a younger, less self-assured man, might have made him flush with chagrin. Instead, he just felt slightly stupid.
"All of what you know, they now know," the Doctor explained pedantically. "Which means I need to know it all as well -- if I'm to figure out what's actually worth knowing and for what it can be used."
Pete frowned at the Doctor's tone and finished his drink in one swallow. "No, that's it. Except for the encrypted files." Another look from the Doctor -- this one included a raised eyebrow and a sardonic quirk of the lips -- made him falter. "Which you've already been through." The eyes twinkled merrily. "First."
"It's a learning curve," the Doctor cheekily confided.
"I'll bet," Pete muttered, deciding against the refill he'd been about to pour.
"The good news is," the Doctor went on, "I've hardened your defenses. Nothing should be able to get through your firewall again. Well, I say nothing-- Just don't run any hairdryers in the vicinity and your files should be perfectly safe."
"Not much chance of that." Pete slid a hand across his balding pate with a heartfelt sigh.
The Doctor nervously touched his own scalp at the gesture. "Could be that's in the future for me," he commented, running a hand through his hair. "Hadn't thought about it. Well, not for a while." He rose from the chair, ambling over to peruse the shelves of Pete's extensive music collection. "Did have the chance to experience life as an old man. Once. Briefly. Aged by one hundred years." He left out the extra eight hundred the Master had added on at the end of his ordeal as being superfluous to the conversation. "Funnily enough," he went on. "I didn't mind the loss of hair, or the wrinkles. It was the loss of mobility irked most." He sighed ruefully. "I expect when it does happen I'll be too busy worrying about-- Oh, I don't know... Bursitis and broken hips? Much too busy too indulge in narcissistic bouts of vanity." He pulled a handful of CDs by artists unique to this universe from the cabinet and began examining them more closely.
Even as the Doctor spoke Pete went to his desk and repossessed his chair. He remained quiet for several long moments as he considered the Doctor's words. He knew from Mickey's tales, at least in theory, about regeneration. And from Rose he'd learned that Time Lords didn't age -- not like Humans at any rate. Which explained a lot, he thought. Especially why the original Doctor, the full Time Lord, had tried to send Rose away before he'd closed the breach. And why he'd ultimately left her here with this physically flawed copy of himself. One that would wither and die right along side a woman he himself couldn't bear to watch do the same.
"What you said last night..." Pete began curiously.
"Hmm?"
"About being part Human."
The Doctor inclined his head. "You want to know if I'm okay with it now?"
Pete started to nod then stopped when he noticed the Doctor's expression. It was the eyes did it -- piercing him like a pair of tightly focused lasers.
"Probably none of my business," Pete mumbled as he hastily waved away the question, hoping the alien thing he'd inadvertently invoked would simply leave. Human body or not, Pete belatedly recalled, the Time Lord's mind, in all its power and self-possessed glory, was still in there. "Just-- You know... Worried about Rose," he temporized.
"Yeah, about Rose," the Doctor changed the subject. "How's that working out for you? She seems quite happy with the arrangement."
Pete slowly released the breath he'd been holding as the aggregated millennia of knowledge that was the Doctor's consciousness shuttered itself away inside the mundane niceties of its quasi-Human life.
"Sort of hard not to care about someone so willing to love you just because you look like--" Pete inhaled deeply as he suddenly understood. To Rose, a difference that made no difference was no difference. Point taken. Lesson learned.
"The thing of it is," he went on. "I kept insisting she wasn't mine. But then Jacks came up with that long lost daughter stuff and I thought... You know, why not? Approach it that way. 'Cause that's pretty much what she is. Legally speaking, in this universe. The lawyers say her DNA makes her mine and Jackie's, just like Tony. And Rose is just so..."
"Open to caring?" the Doctor supplied knowingly.
"Yeah," Pete agreed. "That. And she just feels right. The way she wanted to save my Jackie." He swallowed hard at the still painful memory of that awful night. "I think she was more upset than I was when we saw her in that Cyber suit. I was in shock, but Rose seemed..."
"Devastated?"
"Angry," Pete corrected. "I kept thinking about that after she and Jackie came here. Kept thinkin' how she'd said she was helping me for her parents' sake. And well..." He sighed in befuddlement, as if he didn't have the words to describe what he felt. "She's never actually asked me for anything. You know, in terms of money. Not once." He shook his head, still amazed. "So it wasn't like it was some strange kid found out she had a rich dad and came here looking to get something for nothing. In the end," he shrugged, "I just sort of found her here," he tapped his chest lightly. "In my heart."
The Doctor smiled warmly. "Rose does have a tendency to do that."
"Do what?" The lady in question entered the room, startling them both.
"Barges in unannounced whilst others are in the midst of a private conversation," the Doctor sniffed disapprovingly.
"Oi! You want privacy, hang a sign."
"Everything ready?" Pete asked, smiling just a little when Rose casually moved to the Doctor's side and took his hand.
"Yup. It's a go."
The Doctor sneered in derision. "Three hours, twenty-seven minutes and forty-six seconds since I gave you the coordinates? Call yourselves a secret organization for keeping Britain safe? I've seen revolutions fought and won in less time."
Rose glared at the Doctor then shook it off to share a bemused glance with her father as the cupboard beside the Doctor slid open to reveal a secret passage.
"Oh." The Doctor cocked his head. "Well... That's sort of secret organization-y I suppose." He smiled broadly, shoved the CDs back on their shelf then pulled Rose along beside him. "Allons-y!" he cried, leading the way. A few paces inside he stopped abruptly, staring at the clean, well-lit, smoothly plastered tunnel walls. He frowned. "Takes all the fun out, doesn't it?"
"What does?" Rose asked, moving to take the lead.
"No choking layers of dust, no smoky torches, no giant spider webs or shadowy corners for timely lurking and the occasional cheap thrill. Seems a bit...sterile," he frowned. "A bit boring for a secret tunnel."
"Not really secret. Just a previous owner's very private entrance." Rose looked over her shoulder and flashed him a toothy grin, clipping her accent to sound properly snooty. "A penchant for male prostitutes and politics do not generally mix well."
"Oh, very Cassandra," the Doctor laughed approvingly.
"Works a charm at those snob-nobs I have to attend. Jackie and her charities." She rolled her eyes. "Mum loathes 'em even more than I do, but it's usually for a good cause, so we just put up with it."
They followed a gentle downward incline with a few twists and turns for another forty meters until reaching their destination -- a heavily bomb proofed door that opened into an underground garage.
"There you are!" Jackie called, sounding very much annoyed. "We've been waiting!"
"We?" the Doctor asked, his brows rising at the sight of Rose's mother standing near a battered mini-van.
"Hello again, Doctor," a familiar voice called out. A fair-haired man with a cheerful grin stepped to the front of the vehicle.
"Jake! Good to see you."
"Sorry, Mum," Rose apologized as Jake Simmonds and the Doctor shook hands. "Was waitin' on the new ear pods to be delivered."
"Waitin' on himself more like," Jackie retorted. "What you two get up to in the privacy of your own--"
"Mum!" Rose hissed.
Jake grinned. "So it's like that now, eh?" The younger man's smile broadened even further at the Doctor's discomfiture.
"E tu, Jake?" he muttered.
"Only want to say congratulations. I'll be tyin' the knot myself soon enough."
"We're not--" the Doctor started. A sharp glance from Jackie rendered him mute on the subject. "Right. Moving on. Ear pods?" he asked eagerly.
"Yeah," Rose grinned, producing four of the devices and offering one to the Doctor.
He put on his glasses. Now that's not right, he silently observed, carefully examining the item. These weren't really ear pods, the Doctor noted. More like military grade ear buds with microphones of... Mono-filament plasti-wire? Sheathed in translucent epithelium fibers? That-- Yes, he frowned-- Adapted to both bind and blend to the wearer's skin, thus making them virtually undetectable to the naked eye. "No. No. No!" he shouted angrily. "You can't have this kind of technology. Where did you get these?" he demanded.
"Mickey invented them," Jake stated bluntly, daring the Doctor to contradict him.
He dared.
"The hell Mickey Smith invented these! So answer the question. Properly." He shoved his glasses into a pocket, crossed his arms and waited.
Rose sighed, handing out the devices to her mother and Jake. "Mickey did come up with the idea," she admitted. "But some friends of ours designed and implemented the actual production."
"What friends?"
"You wouldn't know them."
"What. Friends."
"They're aliens, if you must know."
"I must," he insisted. "What kind of aliens?"
Rose climbed into the van and started the engine, leaving the Doctor to scramble inside with the others. "They're refugees," she explained tartly. "The Titanic that nearly crashed in your universe almost did the same here. Except we shot it down before it could breach the atmosphere. Some of the passengers escaped in a life pod. A few wanted to stay, so we gave them sanctuary."
"How many passengers?" Astonished, the Doctor leaned forward in his seat, gripping Rose's shoulder. "What were their names?"
"Well there's Foon and Morvin Van Hoff."
"Hah!" The Doctor gave a joyous shout. "Who else?"
"Just Mr. Copper," she added. "The rest went back with the salvage ships."
"What about Astrid Peth? Tiny woman. Blonde hair. One of the wait staff. Was she...? Did she...?"
"Don't recall an Astrid Peth," Rose shrugged. "Why? Was she important?"
"No." The Doctor looked away. "Not important. Just someone I met. Bought me a drink, that's all." It doesn't mean she's dead, he told himself. Could be in this universe Astrid never left the spaceport diner on Sto. But, he doubted it -- so much else being similar.
"There was some fella with a mobile kept complainin' about everything," Jake added helpfully. "Couple of others in posh gear. And a little red bloke. Banana Café Latte, or some such they called 'im."
"Bannakaffalatta," the Doctor corrected.
"Yeah, but he were dead though when they landed. Somethin' about an EM pulse and life sized angels servin' up murder for Christmas dinner. Never did get the whole story, but Mr. Copper wanted him buried proper so we left him to it."
The Doctor slumped back in his seat. "No Midshipman Frame either, I suppose?"
"Nope," Jake went on, oblivious to the Doctor's mood. "Mickey and me got to the crash site first, so we had a chance to keep everything quiet like. Moved the survivors out and made it look like the pod malfunctioned. Which I suppose it did, because Mr. Copper said it were fixed so they couldn't escape."
"And Torchwood?"
"Doesn't know a thing. Morvin, Foon and Mr. Copper work for us," Rose stated blandly.
"Work for--"
"Lovely people, Mr. Copper and the Van Hoff's," Jackie interrupted. "But you'll meet them at Sunday dinner."
The Doctor's head snapped around to stare at Jackie. "Sunday dinner?" he repeated, appalled.
The others ignored him as the van pulled out and turned away from the main exit heading toward what appeared to be a rock wall.
"Hologram," Jake supplied. The Doctor nodded just before they passed through it into another tunnel. "Mickey's idea. Said he got it from some movie. We come out a bit of a ways from the property and no one's the wiser."
"Batman," the Doctor commented absently. "Michael Keaton. Best of the lot. Well, darkest anyway. Except maybe for that Christian Bale fellow. But his was a different series of films."
Jake chuckled. "Right naffed Mickey was when he found out we didn't have that here. But he reckoned without a Second World War the Americans didn't need superheroes."
"Batman isn't a superhero," the Doctor explained, frowning again as he turned the ear pod over in his hands. "He's a vigilante."
"So the tech, yeah?" Rose interjected, wondering at the Doctor's expression. "Mickey wanted a way to communicate that was outside any government range. He built the radio set up you saw so's all the Preacher cells could communicate on different channels. No overlap, less likelihood of detection. But these," she tapped the ear piece she was wearing, "are for special operations. You know, infiltration stuff. Specially designed not to register on government scans. Bit of a prototype, but--"
"Good. Good," the Doctor nodded, though he still seemed somewhat perturbed. "Well, not good. Not really."
"What's not good?"
"Nothing. Well, everything. But not that you lot can do much about it." He grimaced. "Back in our universe I told Mr. Copper to keep his head down. Not to interfere. And now you go and--" He shook his head in disgust and tried to let the matter drop.
Rose glanced over at him as they left the underground tunnel, pulling into a car park several miles past the estate. "But Mr. Copper-- Well, the Mr. Copper Foundation in the old universe... Harriet said they developed the sub-wave network. That worked okay, yeah?"
The Doctor ran a hand across his face, scrubbing his chin. "No one ever listens," he muttered. "Still, never mind that now. Allons-y," he added with a bit less excitement, practically vaulting out of the vehicle almost before Rose had time to break.