Double Crossing (12/20)
Title: Double Crossing
Author: Jessa L'Rynn
Character(s): Tenth Doctor, Seventh Doctor, Rose Tyler, Ace McShane
Rating: T+
Warnings: None
Summary: The Doctor is out of his depth. The Doctor is wondering what he could possibly be thinking. The companions are having the time of their lives. Two threats at once lead to a complicated situation.
Note: It... got a way from me a bit, yeah. Also, this is my favorite chapter. Well, one of two. Or three. Alright, I just love this one more than some.
Chapter 12: Conjunction and Connection
Time rippled. Moments stretched. A blank, black, impenetrable wall.
Time rippled. A star that never was died... drew in... collected... refracted. A crack.
Time rippled. A small beacon did what it said on the tin. Widening.
Time rippled. A fallen star collapsed further in on itself. A calamitous detonation.
Time rippled. Identical and dissimilar all the same, beacon reached for beacon. A nanosecond passed.
Time rippled. Time bent. Time touched Time.
*?*
The Doctor fretted as he reached under the console and reprogrammed the phase manipulator on the temporal array. It was nice to know that, even if he was going to lose even more of his sanity - actually most of his sanity, if the chaos that was Ten's mind was any indicator - at least the genius would remain.
It took a moment for the induction of the new command and, for an instant, all the indicators went red. He glowered and, in the age-old tradition of Doctor and TARDIS, he forced the issue with a quick "kinetic redirect".
As he stood there shaking out his hand to block the little bit of pain, the TARDIS sang out joyful confidence in the new program and all the indicator lights went green at once. The beam connected to the impossible ship changed from a simple tractor beam into a wave-guide. He looked at the screen and smiled with intense satisfaction.
Ever so slowly, a small section of the alien shielding began to unravel.
*?*
"Well," exclaimed the Doctor, startling the small, drowsy person at his side, "that was a nice nap!"
Rose blinked at him blearily. "Was it? I missed out."
He smiled down at her. "How are you feeling, Captain?"
"Baffled and disturbed," she admitted. "And you?"
"Hopeful, my Rose. Hope's a good one, you know, the very best. Of all the emotions there are, and you know there's a whole panoply out there, an entire flotilla, really, I think hope's the one we should definitely go with. How many guards?"
She smiled, her eyes lighting up with such joy that he wondered for an instant if she had maybe broken the mind control programming without his help. "If they're using standard protocols, there should be two just outside the door."
He nodded. He knew he would have to remove the device from her, but there just wasn't time, and he'd need that, and privacy, to do a complete scan. He had to be sure that it would do no damage to her body and even less to her precious mind. As he thought about it, he wondered if it might be a two Doctor operation.
This situation was infinitely more complex than it had seemed at first. He's had the mistaken apprehension that Seven was here by wildest chance, but now he had to suspect that it might be by design. The Legends always said that Time Lords were capable of, indeed unable to prevent themselves, doing very strange things in defense of... of someone like Rose.
He shook his head and popped up from the bench, dragging her with him, her small hand tight in his. Where it belonged, where it always belonged, where she belonged.
He looked at her, she looked at him. Her eyes shone brightly, even through the haze. His breath caught in his throat. She trusted him, now, as she had always done...
His hand came up to cup her cheek. "Oh Rose," he whispered, couldn't help himself. "Oh, my precious girl. I'll bring you back to me, soon, I promise."
The look she gave him was utter incredulity. Of course, to her, there was nothing believable about what he'd just done, not in the dream she was living, not even in her real, waking life.
If he didn't get this mind control off of her, if he didn't get the link reestablished, and soon, it was entirely possible that he would no longer be responsible for his actions.
Well, not really.
*?*
Ace moved through the narrow jeffries tube, her muscles aching a bit from the long climb and the longer crawl. The Doctor had explained what needed to be done, but she wasn't sure this was going to work without his help.
In truth, he wasn't either, but she knew that what he needed to do couldn't wait. Not even knowing this him very well, she could tell that what was happening to Buttercup was making him a little crazy. Well, a little crazier than usual.
She reached the end of the tunnel. Whoever designed any space ship she had ever seen except the TARDIS was an idiot: she'd long since come to this conclusion. She touched that weird blue device, the cause of all of this, to a slot that looked like it had been designed for it. She'd stolen this one off one of her downed guards, just in case they caught on to her and went looking. Hers was in "her" office.
According to the schematics the Doctor had memorized and recited, this should be engineering. She listened for voices and then stepped out, walking past the random, zombie-looking people who were shifting from place to place around her.
They thought they were doing jobs, the Doctor said. Or, rather, they were doing jobs, but they thought they were supposed to be doing. Every one was under mind control, everyone in the place was hypnotized to some degree.
He'd said she was easier to remove from the weird psychic control because she wasn't part of the original program and because her mind was her own. She was used to ignoring the status quo, he'd said. And if he hadn't looked one hundred percent truthful as he said it, she could still give him the benefit of the doubt. He was the Doctor - the Professor - and he kept secrets like most people kept photos and old letters and such not.
She scanned the room briefly with a careful gaze. Everyone here was under deep, it seemed, and there was no sign of the green blokes or Prince Mevlin's group of Mdrestry supporters, who were not controlled but actually part of the plot.
She found the computer bank he'd sent her after, sat down, and began to work.
*?*
Doctor Q scanned his little device over the door and checked something. "Two guards, well done," he murmured to her. "Right. We need to get to Engineering to join Ace."
"Chief McShane is with us?" Captain Tyler asked. She couldn't even describe how relieved she felt to know this.
"Yep, Ace and I are on your side," he said. "Prince Mevlin of Mdrestry is not going to succeed in his little plot here, Rose. I'm not letting it happen."
"He's from Mdrestry?" she demanded. "Oh, that explains so much. But what's he up to?" She watched, unprotesting, as he ripped open a section of her bulkhead and began to rewire bits of it with his hands and intermittent flashes from his device.
As he worked, he answered her. "It's a very long story but it had to do with a philosophical difference between himself and his father. I'd normally let them argue it out, but they got others involved and then..." Doctor Q broke off and looked deep into her eyes. His were blazing, all righteous fury and ancient darkness, a storm held scarcely in check. "He broke the Rules. There are Laws against... against what he's done, what he's still doing. I have to stop him."
There was something heart-stopping in the way he said that, and something unspoken in the words he said. She wondered, all of the sudden, what he tasted like. She licked her lip, then chewed on it, startled at the intensity of that sudden curiosity and the fire it sent pooling in her belly.
His nostrils flared and his whole body trembled briefly. "Right!" he exclaimed. "Work to do." He turned back to the bulkhead and she wondered, really, if it was her imagination that his hands were shaking as he did it.
"Can't you just pop down to Engineering?" she asked.
"Yes," he agreed, "but I can't take you with me. Or I can't be sure I can take you with me without hurting you. We're going to have to go on foot and we need to do it undetected as far as possible. I don't want anyone to notice we've even left the brig. So those two out there are going to take our places in just about..."
A shower of sparks flew from the wall. The doors opened and the two guards raced in, looking confused and furious.
Rose didn't think, she just ducked the one who ran at her and kicked his feet out from under him. She knew how to do this, had watched them training for month. Them who, she couldn't remember, but now wasn't the time.
Whatever Doctor Q was doing, it seemed to involve popping around and a lot of flashing blue light. She ducked her attacker again, got a fist up, punched him in the face because she didn't remember what she was supposed to do at this point otherwise.
He grabbed her roughly by the arm, spitting blood, and dragging her towards her cell again. His other hand came up, caught her throat, squeezed. Rose knew she was going to die here and she'd never even understand how it had happened.
Behind them there was a blinding flash. Her attacker froze, then dropped like a rubber ball. He even bounced when he hit the floor.
Her heart thundering in her chest, her head spinning with adrenaline and something else, the headache she'd had off and on all day pounding between her ears, Rose whirled. The other green guard was on the floor, Doctor Q's trainer on his throat, pinning the man to the ground. The guard's eyes were wide open, he wasn't moving, wasn't doing anything.
Rose yelped in horror as the trainer slowly lowered, regardless of the body under it. "Doctor, NO!"
His eyes flew to hers. They were so dark, so dangerous, and she hadn't seen that kind of rage in them since they were steel and gunmetal and blue and ice. Slowly, looking like he was fighting it every millimeter of the way, his foot lifted, moved away from his still prisoner, settled to the ground.
What happened next wasn't slow, in the same way that a collision between two hydrogen atoms in stellar fusion is not.
He moved toward her or she moved toward him. Either way, they came together. She grabbed his tie, or maybe he seized her arms, but either way, that was the hold they ended up with. His lips crashed over hers or she tugged him down to meet them.
The kiss was fire and ice at once, all rage and fear and adrenaline, teeth and tongue and moans like wind in mountains. He seized control, had to have it, that mouth that whispered such wicked promises keeping them with bruising intensity. His tongue captured hers, tortured it to submission and then invited it to dance. And dance it did, around and around, learning the taste of him, memorizing it so that she could never forget, never escape it. This was his kiss and it was hers, theirs, the tastes of rain and mysteries and moonlight and time all blending together into a perfect compliment that was the only kind of kiss that would ever taste right, feel right, be right, ever again.
Her heart raced, the pounding in her skull increased. She whimpered and shivered and, vaguely, in the back of her mind, there was the strange dream-memory-idea that this was where she had once chosen to die, on these lips, in these arms. Where he had chosen to die instead. Where she belonged.
Forever.
When he tore his mouth from hers, when her lungs seized air and shredded it, she looked up at him and found tears standing in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
She decided, right there, that she would never understand him.
She also decided that she would die trying anyway.
Author: Jessa L'Rynn
Character(s): Tenth Doctor, Seventh Doctor, Rose Tyler, Ace McShane
Rating: T+
Warnings: None
Summary: The Doctor is out of his depth. The Doctor is wondering what he could possibly be thinking. The companions are having the time of their lives. Two threats at once lead to a complicated situation.
Note: It... got a way from me a bit, yeah. Also, this is my favorite chapter. Well, one of two. Or three. Alright, I just love this one more than some.
Chapter 12: Conjunction and Connection
Time rippled. Moments stretched. A blank, black, impenetrable wall.
Time rippled. A star that never was died... drew in... collected... refracted. A crack.
Time rippled. A small beacon did what it said on the tin. Widening.
Time rippled. A fallen star collapsed further in on itself. A calamitous detonation.
Time rippled. Identical and dissimilar all the same, beacon reached for beacon. A nanosecond passed.
Time rippled. Time bent. Time touched Time.
*?*
The Doctor fretted as he reached under the console and reprogrammed the phase manipulator on the temporal array. It was nice to know that, even if he was going to lose even more of his sanity - actually most of his sanity, if the chaos that was Ten's mind was any indicator - at least the genius would remain.
It took a moment for the induction of the new command and, for an instant, all the indicators went red. He glowered and, in the age-old tradition of Doctor and TARDIS, he forced the issue with a quick "kinetic redirect".
As he stood there shaking out his hand to block the little bit of pain, the TARDIS sang out joyful confidence in the new program and all the indicator lights went green at once. The beam connected to the impossible ship changed from a simple tractor beam into a wave-guide. He looked at the screen and smiled with intense satisfaction.
Ever so slowly, a small section of the alien shielding began to unravel.
*?*
"Well," exclaimed the Doctor, startling the small, drowsy person at his side, "that was a nice nap!"
Rose blinked at him blearily. "Was it? I missed out."
He smiled down at her. "How are you feeling, Captain?"
"Baffled and disturbed," she admitted. "And you?"
"Hopeful, my Rose. Hope's a good one, you know, the very best. Of all the emotions there are, and you know there's a whole panoply out there, an entire flotilla, really, I think hope's the one we should definitely go with. How many guards?"
She smiled, her eyes lighting up with such joy that he wondered for an instant if she had maybe broken the mind control programming without his help. "If they're using standard protocols, there should be two just outside the door."
He nodded. He knew he would have to remove the device from her, but there just wasn't time, and he'd need that, and privacy, to do a complete scan. He had to be sure that it would do no damage to her body and even less to her precious mind. As he thought about it, he wondered if it might be a two Doctor operation.
This situation was infinitely more complex than it had seemed at first. He's had the mistaken apprehension that Seven was here by wildest chance, but now he had to suspect that it might be by design. The Legends always said that Time Lords were capable of, indeed unable to prevent themselves, doing very strange things in defense of... of someone like Rose.
He shook his head and popped up from the bench, dragging her with him, her small hand tight in his. Where it belonged, where it always belonged, where she belonged.
He looked at her, she looked at him. Her eyes shone brightly, even through the haze. His breath caught in his throat. She trusted him, now, as she had always done...
His hand came up to cup her cheek. "Oh Rose," he whispered, couldn't help himself. "Oh, my precious girl. I'll bring you back to me, soon, I promise."
The look she gave him was utter incredulity. Of course, to her, there was nothing believable about what he'd just done, not in the dream she was living, not even in her real, waking life.
If he didn't get this mind control off of her, if he didn't get the link reestablished, and soon, it was entirely possible that he would no longer be responsible for his actions.
Well, not really.
*?*
Ace moved through the narrow jeffries tube, her muscles aching a bit from the long climb and the longer crawl. The Doctor had explained what needed to be done, but she wasn't sure this was going to work without his help.
In truth, he wasn't either, but she knew that what he needed to do couldn't wait. Not even knowing this him very well, she could tell that what was happening to Buttercup was making him a little crazy. Well, a little crazier than usual.
She reached the end of the tunnel. Whoever designed any space ship she had ever seen except the TARDIS was an idiot: she'd long since come to this conclusion. She touched that weird blue device, the cause of all of this, to a slot that looked like it had been designed for it. She'd stolen this one off one of her downed guards, just in case they caught on to her and went looking. Hers was in "her" office.
According to the schematics the Doctor had memorized and recited, this should be engineering. She listened for voices and then stepped out, walking past the random, zombie-looking people who were shifting from place to place around her.
They thought they were doing jobs, the Doctor said. Or, rather, they were doing jobs, but they thought they were supposed to be doing. Every one was under mind control, everyone in the place was hypnotized to some degree.
He'd said she was easier to remove from the weird psychic control because she wasn't part of the original program and because her mind was her own. She was used to ignoring the status quo, he'd said. And if he hadn't looked one hundred percent truthful as he said it, she could still give him the benefit of the doubt. He was the Doctor - the Professor - and he kept secrets like most people kept photos and old letters and such not.
She scanned the room briefly with a careful gaze. Everyone here was under deep, it seemed, and there was no sign of the green blokes or Prince Mevlin's group of Mdrestry supporters, who were not controlled but actually part of the plot.
She found the computer bank he'd sent her after, sat down, and began to work.
*?*
Doctor Q scanned his little device over the door and checked something. "Two guards, well done," he murmured to her. "Right. We need to get to Engineering to join Ace."
"Chief McShane is with us?" Captain Tyler asked. She couldn't even describe how relieved she felt to know this.
"Yep, Ace and I are on your side," he said. "Prince Mevlin of Mdrestry is not going to succeed in his little plot here, Rose. I'm not letting it happen."
"He's from Mdrestry?" she demanded. "Oh, that explains so much. But what's he up to?" She watched, unprotesting, as he ripped open a section of her bulkhead and began to rewire bits of it with his hands and intermittent flashes from his device.
As he worked, he answered her. "It's a very long story but it had to do with a philosophical difference between himself and his father. I'd normally let them argue it out, but they got others involved and then..." Doctor Q broke off and looked deep into her eyes. His were blazing, all righteous fury and ancient darkness, a storm held scarcely in check. "He broke the Rules. There are Laws against... against what he's done, what he's still doing. I have to stop him."
There was something heart-stopping in the way he said that, and something unspoken in the words he said. She wondered, all of the sudden, what he tasted like. She licked her lip, then chewed on it, startled at the intensity of that sudden curiosity and the fire it sent pooling in her belly.
His nostrils flared and his whole body trembled briefly. "Right!" he exclaimed. "Work to do." He turned back to the bulkhead and she wondered, really, if it was her imagination that his hands were shaking as he did it.
"Can't you just pop down to Engineering?" she asked.
"Yes," he agreed, "but I can't take you with me. Or I can't be sure I can take you with me without hurting you. We're going to have to go on foot and we need to do it undetected as far as possible. I don't want anyone to notice we've even left the brig. So those two out there are going to take our places in just about..."
A shower of sparks flew from the wall. The doors opened and the two guards raced in, looking confused and furious.
Rose didn't think, she just ducked the one who ran at her and kicked his feet out from under him. She knew how to do this, had watched them training for month. Them who, she couldn't remember, but now wasn't the time.
Whatever Doctor Q was doing, it seemed to involve popping around and a lot of flashing blue light. She ducked her attacker again, got a fist up, punched him in the face because she didn't remember what she was supposed to do at this point otherwise.
He grabbed her roughly by the arm, spitting blood, and dragging her towards her cell again. His other hand came up, caught her throat, squeezed. Rose knew she was going to die here and she'd never even understand how it had happened.
Behind them there was a blinding flash. Her attacker froze, then dropped like a rubber ball. He even bounced when he hit the floor.
Her heart thundering in her chest, her head spinning with adrenaline and something else, the headache she'd had off and on all day pounding between her ears, Rose whirled. The other green guard was on the floor, Doctor Q's trainer on his throat, pinning the man to the ground. The guard's eyes were wide open, he wasn't moving, wasn't doing anything.
Rose yelped in horror as the trainer slowly lowered, regardless of the body under it. "Doctor, NO!"
His eyes flew to hers. They were so dark, so dangerous, and she hadn't seen that kind of rage in them since they were steel and gunmetal and blue and ice. Slowly, looking like he was fighting it every millimeter of the way, his foot lifted, moved away from his still prisoner, settled to the ground.
What happened next wasn't slow, in the same way that a collision between two hydrogen atoms in stellar fusion is not.
He moved toward her or she moved toward him. Either way, they came together. She grabbed his tie, or maybe he seized her arms, but either way, that was the hold they ended up with. His lips crashed over hers or she tugged him down to meet them.
The kiss was fire and ice at once, all rage and fear and adrenaline, teeth and tongue and moans like wind in mountains. He seized control, had to have it, that mouth that whispered such wicked promises keeping them with bruising intensity. His tongue captured hers, tortured it to submission and then invited it to dance. And dance it did, around and around, learning the taste of him, memorizing it so that she could never forget, never escape it. This was his kiss and it was hers, theirs, the tastes of rain and mysteries and moonlight and time all blending together into a perfect compliment that was the only kind of kiss that would ever taste right, feel right, be right, ever again.
Her heart raced, the pounding in her skull increased. She whimpered and shivered and, vaguely, in the back of her mind, there was the strange dream-memory-idea that this was where she had once chosen to die, on these lips, in these arms. Where he had chosen to die instead. Where she belonged.
Forever.
When he tore his mouth from hers, when her lungs seized air and shredded it, she looked up at him and found tears standing in his eyes. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."
She decided, right there, that she would never understand him.
She also decided that she would die trying anyway.