Collab Fic: To the Waters and the Wild (6/10ish)
Title: To the Waters and the Wild: Chapter 5 (6/12ish?)
Authors: ladychi and the_tenzo
Beta: spikewriter
Rating: Adult
Characters/Pairings: Ten II/Rose/Ten (yes, all together), and many other characters from the New-Whoniverse (but if we tell you who they are, we'd have to kill you).
Dedication: Written for unfolded73 and fid_gin for their birthdays
Summary: Rose and her two Doctors try to make the new configuration of Team TARDIS work after Journeys End. Meanwhile, an old foe has other plans for them entirely.
A/N: Updated weekly, on Tuesdays (except for Sunday, 17 May, to celebrate fid_gin's birthday). the_tenzo and I will alternate whose journal we post at.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
Chapter Five
Jack might have lost his Doctor-detector but the TARDIS still stuck out like a sore thumb if you knew what you were looking for. Minutes after he'd parked his car, he was knocking on the door of the blue box he'd once called his home. He steeled himself for the emotional state Rose would surely be in, but when she opened the door he found himself quite at a loss.
He would have been able to take crying. He would have been able to take rage.
But the calm, wearied, resigned expression on her face spoke of too many Torchwood missions gone wrong in that other universe, and of the certainty of a woman who'd lost her happiness too easily before. It stirred Jack in his soul.
"I'm so glad you came," Rose said, the strain of the last couple of hours (and perhaps longer?) evident on her face.
"I'm glad you called." Jack opened his arms and Rose took a step forward, but her embrace was strangely hesitant, as if she was trying not cling to him too desperately, despite a deep desire to. "Hey, now. We're going to make this right. You and me. The Doctor's flubbed it up countless times, but you just don't beat Jack and Rose for getting the job done, right?"
"Right. Jack," Rose's breath rattled as she sighed, "I don't know where to even start."
"That's why you called me. Torchwood, remember? Tracking the Doctor is practically our job. Well, it is our job. We'll find him." Jack flashed a grin at her. "I'll call Gwen while we're in the car and she can get things started for us. We'll start with CCTV footage and go from there. I'm going to need you to tell me everything, from the beginning." He reached out to take her hand, and for a split-second she hesitated in taking it. There was most certainly something deeper at work with her-even deeper than the fear and anger and anxiety caused by being again forcibly separated from the Doctor. Her moment's hesitation spoke volumes on the topic of doubt, and Jack Harkness definitely had the eyes to read that book.
"We aren't going far," he said as she finally took his hand. "We have a little London base of operations. I need a fast network link to Cardiff so we can pool our resources. The TARDIS can look after herself."
"I'm not sure I really know anything useful. Nothing seems to make sense, and it happened so fast," Rose said as they walked towards a nondescript saloon car parked up on a nearby street.
"I'll be the judge of that. In the meantime, though, you can tell me: Which one is better in the sack? Please say it's the human one. Because I have to tell you, the activities that hand was probably used for before chopping-off leads me to believe he would be well acquainted with the ways of the flesh. As it were-"
"Jack!" Rose protested, a bit horrified. But she began to smile.
"You tell me that and I'll tell you all about my little bit of something in Cardiff. He has the finest arse in all of Wales. Rose, you have to see it. It doesn't just sway, it bounces. Literally bounces. Right in his trousers. Not that it's the only thing that bounces, mind. Although you don't like hearing those bits, do you? Ah well, they're better memories privately savored, but I do wonder if all Welshmen are hung like horses..."
"Jack!" Rose bent over, laughing. "A lady doesn't kiss and tell, though apparently Torchwood operatives do. You're horrible!"
"And you're smiling. C'mon, Rosie. We've got Doctors to save."
***
"That's not the Doctor," Rose said with icy certainty.
Jack boggled and rewound the grainy black and white CCTV footage again. The phone link was still open to Cardiff and Gwen was able to articulate her disbelief in a way that Jack just couldn't bring himself to.
"I'm not an expert, but he certainly fits the description," Gwen's voice crackled down the line. "About six-foot-two, bare-foot, trousers and a t-shirt, dark hair. The computer found this footage based on that description, and that's the car park where you said you found him. It has to be him."
Rose shook her head mutely, forgetting (or not bothering to remember) that one member of the conversation couldn't actually see her. "No," she said finally after watching the rewound footage twice more. "No, that's not him. It looks like him, but it's not."
Jack finally spoke, worried now for Rose's judgement under so much stress. "I'm not saying you're wrong," he said, "but can you say what it is that leads you to believe that that man is not the Doctor? The human Doctor?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jack regretted them.
Rose turned on him, fire flashing in her eyes. "Are you trying to say that I don't know the new Doctor well enough to know whether or not that's him? I know him, Jack. I'd bloody well better, hadn't I? Or else I'm a..." She turned back to the screen again and pursed her lips. "I just do. And that's not him, okay?"
"Okay, it's not him," Jack said calmly. "But you have to admit the resemblance is a bit uncanny."
"I'm not saying it's not his body," Rose said. "I'm just saying it's not him in it."
Gwen made a sound that was a bit like, "Whoa," but then fell back in to silence.
"And look," Rose continued, "I mean, he's thin, but he's not that thin. I don't know why I didn't notice it before: It looks like he hasn't eaten in days, but he just left us this morning. You sure there's no more footage after the TARDIS dematerializes?"
"The remote signal the Doctor sent to activate the emergency program shorted out all the nearby CCTV cameras. We can see what happened before you got there, but nothing from after you left."
There was a polite coughing noise and the voice of a male came down the line. "Sir?"
"Not now, Ianto," Jack replied firmly and then turned to Rose again. "Maybe something about whatever is using his body, it maybe makes him... lose weight? That doesn't really make much sense."
"Sir, I think you should hear this." There was the sound of papers being shuffled and whispering between the two people in Cardiff.
"Jack," Gwen urged.
Rose spoke before Jack could respond. "What is it?" Such authority in her voice. It spoke of formal leadership experience since she'd been away across the Void.
"I took the number plate of the van that dropped the Doctor in the car park-"
"Not the Doctor," Rose corrected.
Gwen muttered something unintelligible and Ianto continued. "Right. Not the Doctor. But I had the computer scan all incoming CCTV footage for that vehicle and, well, where does Donna Noble work?"
Rose and Jack looked at one another and Jack's skin prickled with fear. Ianto was only asking as a formality-he'd of course done his homework on all associates of the Doctor in the London area already, and cross-referenced that information with the video feed and computer analysis.
"Waldenheim & Associates, Liverpool Street," Jack said evenly, pushing through the panic of what he knew was coming next.
"Yes, well, sir... that same vehicle was just spotted leaving that area. Heading now towards west London."
"What would someone who's taken the Doctor want with Donna Noble?" Gwen asked. "I've read her case file-her memory was erased."
"And if they want the Doctor, they've got him. Both of him," Jack mused.
"No they don't," Rose said darkly, almost to herself. Jack looked in to her face, studied it for signs of what was going to happen next. He knew that no matter how much technology he commanded, Rose would always run the show where the Doctor was concerned. "They've got the original Doctor, they've got the human Doctor, but there's still one Doctor left."
"The Doctor-Donna." Jack swallowed hard, his mouth going suddenly dry. "Ianto, I want you to call Martha Jones. Someone or something is collecting Doctors."
***
The Doctor came to consciousness and rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. The stun gun had been a little bit over-the-top, he thought. He appeared to be in some sort of prison cell, and he wasn't alone.
"Hello," came a nearly cheerful voice from the other side of the cell. "Head hurt much?"
The Doctor groaned. "Hello. And yes."
His duplicate beamed and sniffed. "Mine hurt for hours. Didn't help that it's so cold in here. Or that I'm part human. Blocking the pain receptors doesn't work as well now as it used to-count yourself superior there, I guess."
The Doctor lifted his head and did a double-take. "Why is it that every time I see you any more, you're naked?"
"You're just lucky," the naked man said. "Or it could be that the Master needed my clothes to pull off that masterful impression of us."
The Doctor groaned. "The puns, they need to stop."
"Where's Rose? Does he have her too?" His counterpart suddenly dropped his voice much lower, as if to indicate that they were being listened-in on.
"No. I sent her away. Back to Hyde Park." The Doctor studied his hands for a minute. "He didn't see her."
"But he knows you sent the TARDIS away," the other man said. "He'll go after it. If Rose is still there..."
"Rose won't just sit around and wait for us to save ourselves, you know that. Clearly you've been here a few hours longer than me. What have you been able to figure out about this place?"
"Definitely a Mission: Impossible scenario. Solid stone walls, three meters high. The only window's near the top. Couldn't be more than 40 centimeters tall, 20 centimeters wide. If I were to, you know, make a rough estimate." He averted his eyes, letting the Doctor know that he'd in fact been measuring quite carefully. Planning. Thinking. And clearly so far coming up with nothing. "Door bolts from the outside, and there's a very large chap out there whom I don't recommend making the acquaintance of."
"I think you're leaving out a vital piece of intel."
The other Doctor raised an eyebrow, quite earnestly given his rather preposterous state of undress. "Did you just use the word 'intel'?"
"I did," the Doctor said, taking his brown suit jacket off and handing it to his counterpart (his coat had apparently been confiscated, and all pockets of his remaining clothes quite thoroughly and transdimensionally emptied). "Here; you must be freezing. But getting back to the point, don't you think we should discuss the unimportant little fact that Master looks like us now?"
Both Doctors shuddered in unison and raised their hands to rub the backs of their necks in discomfort at the very thought.
"Yeah," the Doctor said, trying in vain to huddle under the jacket and get warm. "He came down here right off, to dance around a bit and talk a lot of rubbish using my-our-voice. He's not well, though. I mean, in more than just the head. Well, you saw him. Do you think that's what I'll look like when..." The Doctor pulled the other Doctor's jacket around him a bit tighter and his features shifted back to all-business. "Anyway, whatever he's done, he's quite ill."
"Did he say how... or why. Okay, scratch that last bit, I think I know why and I'd rather not get Freudian about it at the mo'. But how?"
The human Doctor smiled smugly. "I guess I've had a bit more time to work it out than you. It's nauseatingly simple, really, and quite unlike him to take such an easy route. Would you like a few minutes to have a go, or shall I just tell you?"
***
Donna Noble had the feeling she was being followed.
It wasn't like she had these feelings often. Well, not any more often than other people. She wasn't a paranoid freak like she saw on telly all the time, but that black van had been following her ever since she left the City. She turned left, they turned left. She signaled right, they signaled right. Her heart began to race in her chest.
Abruptly, she turned her car off the main road into a side street, and watched with a sort of horror when the van squealed its wheels as it barreled right behind her.
Shaking, she reached for her cell phone, but before she could dial a number, a blue saloon car swerved into the lane behind her, between the van and Donna's own car. She gunned the accelerator and maneuvered into another lane, but both cars followed after her.
Her heart racing, she scanned the road left and right-there was nowhere to go, nowhere to pull off.
Suddenly, the blue car slammed on its brakes, and Donna watched in horror as the van smashed into its rear bumper, but she couldn't stop. She couldn't take the risk.
She sped off, the blue car right behind her again, until she turned off to go home. She parked the car and was about to step out.
"Police!" She heard a voice shout. "Get back in the car until we've secured the area!"
She whirled, and saw the most perfectly symmetrical (and perfectly handsome) face she'd ever laid eyes on. "Secure the area?" she heard herself asking. "Are you out of your flipping mind?"
**
Chapter Six
Authors: ladychi and the_tenzo
Beta: spikewriter
Rating: Adult
Characters/Pairings: Ten II/Rose/Ten (yes, all together), and many other characters from the New-Whoniverse (but if we tell you who they are, we'd have to kill you).
Dedication: Written for unfolded73 and fid_gin for their birthdays
Summary: Rose and her two Doctors try to make the new configuration of Team TARDIS work after Journeys End. Meanwhile, an old foe has other plans for them entirely.
A/N: Updated weekly, on Tuesdays (except for Sunday, 17 May, to celebrate fid_gin's birthday). the_tenzo and I will alternate whose journal we post at.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4
Chapter Five
Jack might have lost his Doctor-detector but the TARDIS still stuck out like a sore thumb if you knew what you were looking for. Minutes after he'd parked his car, he was knocking on the door of the blue box he'd once called his home. He steeled himself for the emotional state Rose would surely be in, but when she opened the door he found himself quite at a loss.
He would have been able to take crying. He would have been able to take rage.
But the calm, wearied, resigned expression on her face spoke of too many Torchwood missions gone wrong in that other universe, and of the certainty of a woman who'd lost her happiness too easily before. It stirred Jack in his soul.
"I'm so glad you came," Rose said, the strain of the last couple of hours (and perhaps longer?) evident on her face.
"I'm glad you called." Jack opened his arms and Rose took a step forward, but her embrace was strangely hesitant, as if she was trying not cling to him too desperately, despite a deep desire to. "Hey, now. We're going to make this right. You and me. The Doctor's flubbed it up countless times, but you just don't beat Jack and Rose for getting the job done, right?"
"Right. Jack," Rose's breath rattled as she sighed, "I don't know where to even start."
"That's why you called me. Torchwood, remember? Tracking the Doctor is practically our job. Well, it is our job. We'll find him." Jack flashed a grin at her. "I'll call Gwen while we're in the car and she can get things started for us. We'll start with CCTV footage and go from there. I'm going to need you to tell me everything, from the beginning." He reached out to take her hand, and for a split-second she hesitated in taking it. There was most certainly something deeper at work with her-even deeper than the fear and anger and anxiety caused by being again forcibly separated from the Doctor. Her moment's hesitation spoke volumes on the topic of doubt, and Jack Harkness definitely had the eyes to read that book.
"We aren't going far," he said as she finally took his hand. "We have a little London base of operations. I need a fast network link to Cardiff so we can pool our resources. The TARDIS can look after herself."
"I'm not sure I really know anything useful. Nothing seems to make sense, and it happened so fast," Rose said as they walked towards a nondescript saloon car parked up on a nearby street.
"I'll be the judge of that. In the meantime, though, you can tell me: Which one is better in the sack? Please say it's the human one. Because I have to tell you, the activities that hand was probably used for before chopping-off leads me to believe he would be well acquainted with the ways of the flesh. As it were-"
"Jack!" Rose protested, a bit horrified. But she began to smile.
"You tell me that and I'll tell you all about my little bit of something in Cardiff. He has the finest arse in all of Wales. Rose, you have to see it. It doesn't just sway, it bounces. Literally bounces. Right in his trousers. Not that it's the only thing that bounces, mind. Although you don't like hearing those bits, do you? Ah well, they're better memories privately savored, but I do wonder if all Welshmen are hung like horses..."
"Jack!" Rose bent over, laughing. "A lady doesn't kiss and tell, though apparently Torchwood operatives do. You're horrible!"
"And you're smiling. C'mon, Rosie. We've got Doctors to save."
***
"That's not the Doctor," Rose said with icy certainty.
Jack boggled and rewound the grainy black and white CCTV footage again. The phone link was still open to Cardiff and Gwen was able to articulate her disbelief in a way that Jack just couldn't bring himself to.
"I'm not an expert, but he certainly fits the description," Gwen's voice crackled down the line. "About six-foot-two, bare-foot, trousers and a t-shirt, dark hair. The computer found this footage based on that description, and that's the car park where you said you found him. It has to be him."
Rose shook her head mutely, forgetting (or not bothering to remember) that one member of the conversation couldn't actually see her. "No," she said finally after watching the rewound footage twice more. "No, that's not him. It looks like him, but it's not."
Jack finally spoke, worried now for Rose's judgement under so much stress. "I'm not saying you're wrong," he said, "but can you say what it is that leads you to believe that that man is not the Doctor? The human Doctor?" As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Jack regretted them.
Rose turned on him, fire flashing in her eyes. "Are you trying to say that I don't know the new Doctor well enough to know whether or not that's him? I know him, Jack. I'd bloody well better, hadn't I? Or else I'm a..." She turned back to the screen again and pursed her lips. "I just do. And that's not him, okay?"
"Okay, it's not him," Jack said calmly. "But you have to admit the resemblance is a bit uncanny."
"I'm not saying it's not his body," Rose said. "I'm just saying it's not him in it."
Gwen made a sound that was a bit like, "Whoa," but then fell back in to silence.
"And look," Rose continued, "I mean, he's thin, but he's not that thin. I don't know why I didn't notice it before: It looks like he hasn't eaten in days, but he just left us this morning. You sure there's no more footage after the TARDIS dematerializes?"
"The remote signal the Doctor sent to activate the emergency program shorted out all the nearby CCTV cameras. We can see what happened before you got there, but nothing from after you left."
There was a polite coughing noise and the voice of a male came down the line. "Sir?"
"Not now, Ianto," Jack replied firmly and then turned to Rose again. "Maybe something about whatever is using his body, it maybe makes him... lose weight? That doesn't really make much sense."
"Sir, I think you should hear this." There was the sound of papers being shuffled and whispering between the two people in Cardiff.
"Jack," Gwen urged.
Rose spoke before Jack could respond. "What is it?" Such authority in her voice. It spoke of formal leadership experience since she'd been away across the Void.
"I took the number plate of the van that dropped the Doctor in the car park-"
"Not the Doctor," Rose corrected.
Gwen muttered something unintelligible and Ianto continued. "Right. Not the Doctor. But I had the computer scan all incoming CCTV footage for that vehicle and, well, where does Donna Noble work?"
Rose and Jack looked at one another and Jack's skin prickled with fear. Ianto was only asking as a formality-he'd of course done his homework on all associates of the Doctor in the London area already, and cross-referenced that information with the video feed and computer analysis.
"Waldenheim & Associates, Liverpool Street," Jack said evenly, pushing through the panic of what he knew was coming next.
"Yes, well, sir... that same vehicle was just spotted leaving that area. Heading now towards west London."
"What would someone who's taken the Doctor want with Donna Noble?" Gwen asked. "I've read her case file-her memory was erased."
"And if they want the Doctor, they've got him. Both of him," Jack mused.
"No they don't," Rose said darkly, almost to herself. Jack looked in to her face, studied it for signs of what was going to happen next. He knew that no matter how much technology he commanded, Rose would always run the show where the Doctor was concerned. "They've got the original Doctor, they've got the human Doctor, but there's still one Doctor left."
"The Doctor-Donna." Jack swallowed hard, his mouth going suddenly dry. "Ianto, I want you to call Martha Jones. Someone or something is collecting Doctors."
***
The Doctor came to consciousness and rubbed the back of his neck ruefully. The stun gun had been a little bit over-the-top, he thought. He appeared to be in some sort of prison cell, and he wasn't alone.
"Hello," came a nearly cheerful voice from the other side of the cell. "Head hurt much?"
The Doctor groaned. "Hello. And yes."
His duplicate beamed and sniffed. "Mine hurt for hours. Didn't help that it's so cold in here. Or that I'm part human. Blocking the pain receptors doesn't work as well now as it used to-count yourself superior there, I guess."
The Doctor lifted his head and did a double-take. "Why is it that every time I see you any more, you're naked?"
"You're just lucky," the naked man said. "Or it could be that the Master needed my clothes to pull off that masterful impression of us."
The Doctor groaned. "The puns, they need to stop."
"Where's Rose? Does he have her too?" His counterpart suddenly dropped his voice much lower, as if to indicate that they were being listened-in on.
"No. I sent her away. Back to Hyde Park." The Doctor studied his hands for a minute. "He didn't see her."
"But he knows you sent the TARDIS away," the other man said. "He'll go after it. If Rose is still there..."
"Rose won't just sit around and wait for us to save ourselves, you know that. Clearly you've been here a few hours longer than me. What have you been able to figure out about this place?"
"Definitely a Mission: Impossible scenario. Solid stone walls, three meters high. The only window's near the top. Couldn't be more than 40 centimeters tall, 20 centimeters wide. If I were to, you know, make a rough estimate." He averted his eyes, letting the Doctor know that he'd in fact been measuring quite carefully. Planning. Thinking. And clearly so far coming up with nothing. "Door bolts from the outside, and there's a very large chap out there whom I don't recommend making the acquaintance of."
"I think you're leaving out a vital piece of intel."
The other Doctor raised an eyebrow, quite earnestly given his rather preposterous state of undress. "Did you just use the word 'intel'?"
"I did," the Doctor said, taking his brown suit jacket off and handing it to his counterpart (his coat had apparently been confiscated, and all pockets of his remaining clothes quite thoroughly and transdimensionally emptied). "Here; you must be freezing. But getting back to the point, don't you think we should discuss the unimportant little fact that Master looks like us now?"
Both Doctors shuddered in unison and raised their hands to rub the backs of their necks in discomfort at the very thought.
"Yeah," the Doctor said, trying in vain to huddle under the jacket and get warm. "He came down here right off, to dance around a bit and talk a lot of rubbish using my-our-voice. He's not well, though. I mean, in more than just the head. Well, you saw him. Do you think that's what I'll look like when..." The Doctor pulled the other Doctor's jacket around him a bit tighter and his features shifted back to all-business. "Anyway, whatever he's done, he's quite ill."
"Did he say how... or why. Okay, scratch that last bit, I think I know why and I'd rather not get Freudian about it at the mo'. But how?"
The human Doctor smiled smugly. "I guess I've had a bit more time to work it out than you. It's nauseatingly simple, really, and quite unlike him to take such an easy route. Would you like a few minutes to have a go, or shall I just tell you?"
***
Donna Noble had the feeling she was being followed.
It wasn't like she had these feelings often. Well, not any more often than other people. She wasn't a paranoid freak like she saw on telly all the time, but that black van had been following her ever since she left the City. She turned left, they turned left. She signaled right, they signaled right. Her heart began to race in her chest.
Abruptly, she turned her car off the main road into a side street, and watched with a sort of horror when the van squealed its wheels as it barreled right behind her.
Shaking, she reached for her cell phone, but before she could dial a number, a blue saloon car swerved into the lane behind her, between the van and Donna's own car. She gunned the accelerator and maneuvered into another lane, but both cars followed after her.
Her heart racing, she scanned the road left and right-there was nowhere to go, nowhere to pull off.
Suddenly, the blue car slammed on its brakes, and Donna watched in horror as the van smashed into its rear bumper, but she couldn't stop. She couldn't take the risk.
She sped off, the blue car right behind her again, until she turned off to go home. She parked the car and was about to step out.
"Police!" She heard a voice shout. "Get back in the car until we've secured the area!"
She whirled, and saw the most perfectly symmetrical (and perfectly handsome) face she'd ever laid eyes on. "Secure the area?" she heard herself asking. "Are you out of your flipping mind?"
**
Chapter Six