The Blue Rose 3/3
Title: The Blue Rose
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Tenth Doctor (10/Rose implied)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Doomsday, Evolution of the Daleks, and a teeny-tiny (blink and you'll miss it) spoiler from S2 Torchwood.
Summary: After risking everything to find Rose, the Doctor must face the terrifying possibility that everything he believes is an illusion.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Finally-finally, one of the nurses escorted him onto a narrow balcony for some fresh air. He'd earned the privilege, Dr Franklin had decreed. Away from of the confines of the hospital corridors, he breathed deeply, anxious to get the sterile atmosphere out of his lungs. A friendly breeze blew, stronger up here than it would be down on the surface. It ruffled his hair, and for a few moments, he felt almost alive and free again. Almost.
Once he'd gotten rid of the hospital stench, John Smith tightened the belt of his thin robe and stepped further out onto the patio. The metropolitan lights sparkled all the way to the horizon, but he had no interest in this alien city. His heart would always belong to the stars, and that's where he directed his gaze now, in hopes of seeing past the city's glow. He wasn't disappointed. A vast expanse of glittering diamond dust stretched above, with the blue-black of space behind it. Off to the north, a nebula glowed with swirls of gold and green. The colours reminded him of the inside of the TARDIS . . . and he felt a pang in his chest. His subconscious must've drawn the colours from the nebula. The TARDIS didn't exist-had never existed.
Back to the stars, then. Once upon a time, he could calculate his position anywhere in the universe, in any time period-or so he'd believed-just by examining the stars. Of course, he might be off by a decade or two, depending on how well he remembered his stellar cartography . . . not that it mattered. John Smith didn't have those kinds of abilities, only the Doctor did. Still, his eyes sought out familiar patterns in the stars. Sought and found. Yet what he found didn't make sense.
Minutes passed by while he stared without comprehension at the stars. How could the stars be wrong? How could they possibly. . . ?
“No,” he finally whispered, breathing the word out. He glanced at the nurse wildly, then moved up against the railing. Against her panicked cautions, he leaned out and stared upward. His gaze swept from the nebula to the cluster of stars in the eastern sky, over to the crystallised band of debris that encircled this world, and down to the broken constellations that curved across the horizon. “No! No, no, no! Impossible!”
His fragile reality threatened to turn upside down.
The nurse's insistent hand on his arm brought him back to his senses. Obediently John walked back inside, his heart pounding a rapid double tempo. He pressed a hand to his chest, wondering. Once in the hallway, he stopped in a daze. “Impossible,” he muttered, and began counting on his fingers. He glanced up only when someone walked by, and then he stopped and ran after the passing doctor.
“Doctor Franklin! Where did you say we are again? No, not the facility-the planet! Which planet are we on?”
“Tilumnia. Oh, d'you mean the designation? Beta Orion IV. Why?” He gave the nurse a significant look, and she nodded in return. One hand slipped into the pocket of her apron where a tranquilliser waited.
“Why?” He laughed and ran a hand through his frenzied hair. “Because we're not on Beta Orion IV! Not according to those stars out there.” He jabbed a finger toward the doors leading outside. “We're nowhere near where Beta Orion IV should be! Though, in all fairness, I suppose you could say that we're somewhere in the same neighbourhood-just not at the right address. I don't know what it means yet-give me time and I'll figure it out.”
Dr Franklin looked thoughtful as he folded his arms. “Perhaps your calculations are thrown off by the Cataclysm?”
“The what?” If possible, his eyes grew even wider. A celestial phenomenon that he'd never heard of? For a moment he even forgot that he wasn't an all-knowing Time Lord. “Oh, but this is brilliant! What was this Cataclysm? Go on, tell me!”
Franklin frowned but complied. “More than a thousand years ago, not long after humans colonized this planet, something caused the nearest world in our system to explode. Theories run the gamut from the commonly-accepted asteroid impact, to a deliberate attempt at sabotage by some unknown enemy, to the more fantastic idea of a sentient population causing the disaster themselves, either through a self-destructive war, or by experimenting with technology they didn't understand. Whatever the true cause, the force of the destruction shifted our planet into a different orbit, closer to the sun. For a century or more, the colonists had to live in underground shelters to escape the dust in the atmosphere and the constant tremors. Eventually, things calmed down enough for civilisation to resume itself and that's when we took our place within the Empire.”
John shook his head and then threw his arms up in the air and whooped with laughter. When the expressions of the doctor and nurse grew too consternated, he attempted to regain control. His mind spun, but he forced himself to focus. Still wheezing, he clapped Dr Franklin on the shoulder. “You, sir, deserve a medal.”
The doctor exchanged a glance with the nurse. “Of course I do. Now, why don't you come along to your room? We'll get you something to eat, maybe something to read. I have one of the latest science journals-just arrived in the post this morning. Would you like that, John?”
“I might, if I really was John Smith,” he answered, grinning insanely. “But I'm not.”
“No? And who might you be, then?” Franklin asked, frowning a bit more as he began to steer his patient back toward his room.
“Me? Oh, I'm the Doctor!”
“I see. And what's made you change your mind about this? I thought you'd agreed that your experiences at a 'Time Lord' were fantasy-a delusion created by your mind to protect you from a reality you couldn't accept.”
“Oh, there's nothing wrong with that theory! It's rather brilliant, in fact. Just not as brilliant as the truth,” the Doctor said, with a wink at the nurse. “You see, sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. I woke up here, and everything you showed me seemed to support your statement about John Smith experiencing a severe enough trauma to create a break from reality: no one had ever heard of the Doctor, UNIT never existed, London never had a Prime Minister Harriet Jones, and Rose Tyler was never born. So, logically, those things must be the fantasy. Occam's Razor-the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”
Franklin lifted a finger to interrupt. “You mean Schrödinger's Razor, I believe.”
“And I suppose it's Occam's cat? Never mind. You've proved my point,” the Doctor said, his grin widening. “For awhile you had me convinced. I couldn't prove anything-not until now, that is.”
Franklin raised an eyebrow and paused in the doorway to John Smith's room. “And the Cataclysm supports all of this, somehow?”
The Doctor cheerfully thumped Franklin on the shoulder. “Smart man! The Cataclysm does exactly that. You see-” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “-I've never heard of it.”
“No? Well, I shouldn't be surprised at that. We did speculate that you're from one of the outer colonies. Their schools aren't exactly known for their well-rounded curriculum. Perhaps they didn't view it as necessary to their history or astronomy classes.”
“Oh, I'm sure. But that isn't why I hadn't heard of it. You see, where I come from, that event never happened. That's why the stars looked wrong-this planet's in a completely different location than it should be! Shifted orbits and all that.”
“I see.” Franklin nodded as though he understood. “And UNIT? Captain Harkness? Miss Tyler? How does the Cataclysm explain their absence from the history records?”
“Oh, it doesn't,” the Doctor said, rising up onto his toes with barely-repressed excitement. He grinned. “But the fact that we're in a parallel universe does.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Doctor hesitated just before the hospital's double glass doors. It had been years since he'd been free and among the sane. The sight of so many people moving along the pavement nearly sent him running. But he had one chance to convince Dr Franklin of the truth of his existence. One chance to find the TARDIS and prove that he didn't belong in this universe. If he failed . . . well, it didn't bear thinking about.
He tugged at his jacket, the brown pinstriped suit lending him a bit of the Doctor's strength. But no-he couldn't think that way. He was the Doctor. Thus, the suit merely reminded him of his own self: a man who'd given Daleks and Cybermen nightmares, a man who'd witnessed the birth and death of entire galaxies. The last of the Time Lords. With that thought, he straightened his posture and stepped out into the flowing mass of pedestrians.
Unfortunately, after five and a half years of enduring a constant stream of psychoactive drugs and periodic jolts to his brain, the Doctor couldn't remember quite where he'd parked the TARDIS. He could sense Dr Franklin's growing impatience, and so he finally stopped on a street corner.
“Is this it?”
“No, no. I just need to get my bearings. Quiet for a minute, would you?” And with that the Doctor closed his eyes. A few deep breaths calmed him, and ever so gently he stretched out his weakened senses. It took him a minute to build a psychic wall strong enough to tune out the personal timelines of all the people surging around him, but once he did so, he could concentrate all his focus on his link with the TARDIS. She had to be close by.
And there she was: faint but glowing with the golden energy of Time itself.
“Ah.” He let out a rush of air, dizzy and euphoric with relief. “We're close. Just another two streets north of here. Come on!”
He ran. He ran all the way, until he rounded a corner and came to a skidding halt in front of one of the most beautiful sights he'd ever seen: an ordinary blue police box from mid-twentieth century Earth.
“Oh, but look at you. You poor thing. You poor, magnificent thing.” The Doctor ran his hands across the faded, peeling paint of the wood, then stood on his toes in order to reach up and finger the missing letters in the sign. One of the windows had cracked glass, and the door itself had warped, the wood buckled from neglect. “I'm sorry,” he murmured, caressing the door handle, which had come loose. “I'm so sorry.”
“Police Public Call Box?”
The Doctor turned, startled. Of course: Dr Franklin. He could see scepticism in the man's eyes, so he fumbled in his pocket for his key. “Care to see inside?”
He unlocked it easily enough, but had some trouble getting the door to open. A firm shove with his shoulder finally did the trick, and he nearly stumbled with the psychic equivalent of a slap and the agitated query, “Where've you been, you filthy tosser?”
“Oh, I know. I know,” he soothed, jogging up the ramp directly to the console. The lights flickered on when he skimmed his fingers across the dark time rotor. “We'll get you fixed up in no time, I promise.”
“Your ship-she's damaged?”
The Doctor placed his overcoat gently across the nearest support strut, his hand lingering against the rough coral surface. Without breaking contact, he glanced at Dr Franklin. He had to give the man points for not stating the obvious-if he'd heard, “bigger on the inside” once, he'd heard it a thousand times. Turning to continue his inspection, he shrugged. “Damaged, yes. But repairable.”
“Was it because you were gone?”
“Gone. Drugged out of my mind. Shocked repeatedly. All of that disrupted my brainwave pattern, made it difficult to maintain my connection with the TARDIS. Poor thing must've thought I'd died. Of course, it didn't help that we're in the entirely wrong universe. She's been running on batteries the entire time, without the benefit of my psychic reserves to boost her strength.”
“But she'll be all right? Your ship, I mean. She'll recover?”
The Doctor waved negligently. “Been through worse, she and I. Of course, I'll have to give her an infusion of my own life energy-no more than five or six years, I'd imagine. Give her a few hours to recover and she'll be right as rain.”
“I see.”
“Do you? You believed in me, Dr Franklin-”
“But I didn't! I kept you on those medications. I authorized those treatments. . . .”
“So you did. But only because you didn't know better. When it mattered-really mattered-you listened, and you gave me a chance. Now I'd like to give you one.” He waited until Franklin tilted his head with curiosity, then delivered his offer. “Ever want to travel in time? Your brother's a Time Agent. Bet you got jealous a time or two, yeah? Well, here's your chance! One place, one time: your choice. Anywhere you want.”
Franklin stared at him, astonished.
“Come on,” the Doctor cajoled. “The sky's the limit! Isn't there some historic event you've always wanted to see first-hand? Or some alien world that you've always dreamed about?”
“I think. . . .”
“Yes? Go on! No, don't tell me. I know-the Cataclysm, yeah? You want to go and find out what caused it?”
“As amazing as that would be, I think I've kept you from your mission long enough,” Franklin said, with only a hint of visible regret.
The Doctor frowned at him for a moment, then turned to the console. He pulled out one of the depleted power cells and nonchalantly sacrificed five years of his life to recharge it. Once it began glowing, he gently set it back into its slot. “Mission? What mission?”
Instead of answering, Franklin walked to where the Doctor's coat hung from the support strut. He bent and picked something up from the grating below it. A photograph. He held out the photo with an apologetic smile. “Rose. You had her image with your things the entire time. Why did you never say anything?”
The Doctor looked away without taking the photo. “You wouldn't have listened. She wasn't born in this universe.”
“But she did exist.”
The emergency brake had rusted. He'd have to fix that before he went anywhere. A bit of industrial lubricant should do the trick. He had some around here somewhere, didn't he?
“John,” Franklin began, then stopped. “Doctor, I was wrong. Rose Tyler did exist in this universe. I didn't lie to you-no one by that name was ever born in twentieth-century London. But after you told me about the Cataclysm, I did some checking. Pete and Jackie Tyler lived in London of that era. He was some kind of entrepreneurial genius. Made a fortune by the time he was thirty-five, then took over as head of Torchwood. He and his wife didn't have children-not at first. But after the Cyber-invasion of 2006, Jackie Tyler vanished, presumed dead. Three years later she reappeared, not a scratch on her . . . and with a twenty-year-old daughter that no one had ever seen before. They went on to have half a dozen more kids, but the daughter, the eldest-her name was Rose.”
The handbrake broke off in the Doctor's hand.
“She never had any sort of official identity. A bit of a ghost, it seemed. Worked for Torchwood with Pete, and that other bloke you mentioned: Mickey Smith. Except his name is given as Ricky Smith, in the archives. That's why I never found mention of him.”
“Ricky?” The Doctor turned a hard stare upon Franklin. “Ricky Smith? Are you certain? Absolutely one-hundred-percent positive? It was Ricky Smith? Not Mickey?”
“Richard Michael Smith, yes: otherwise known as Ricky. Raised by his grandmother; part of an underground organization known as 'The Preachers'; played a crucial role in defeating the Cybermen.”
“Oh, bless you, Mickey the Idiot!” With a grin, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and gave it a quick recharge from the port on the console.
Franklin looked on with confusion. “Is it the right man, then? This Mickey, or Ricky, or whoever he is?”
“Oh, yes!”
“But, what about the name, then? Why did you call him Mickey, when the records state. . . .”
“Long story,” the Doctor replied. He stuck the sonic screwdriver between his teeth and used both hands to pull open the grating beneath the console. Once he'd yanked a handful of wires out, he aimed the screwdriver at them and resumed talking. “Mickey is Ricky-only from a parallel universe. We accidentally landed here in this universe during the Cyber invasion, Ricky got himself killed, Mickey stayed behind and took his place. And that, my dear Dr Franklin, is how I know I'm in the right one.”
“But-parallel universes! You keep saying that, but it's impossible.”
“You believed me back at the hospital. What's so different now?”
Franklin shook his head. “But I didn't, not really. I thought if I let you look for your ship, you'd realize that you were mistaken and finally accept the truth. But now? Now I'm standing in a time ship that's bigger on the inside, watching a madman effect repairs on organic circuits.”
“I'm not mad,” the Doctor said, pausing his work. Even in the dim light, his eyes gleamed fiercely. “You know that. Or we'd never have left that hospital.”
“Perhaps.” Franklin shrugged. “Maybe I'm the one who's crazy. Parallel universes?”
The Doctor pulled out a fresh batch of corroded wiring and began stripping them. “It's a well-known concept, even in your era: every time a major decision is made, a parallel universe is created where events follow a different path.”
Franklin looked thoughtful. “I wonder what sort of decision led to your birth, Doctor. And why didn't it happen here, as well? Pity, that. I have a feeling that our universe is a lot worse off without you.”
“A lot of people would disagree with you,” the Doctor said, while soldering fresh connections between two vital circuits. “I save lives, yes. But I always show up when there's trouble, and sooner or later people begin to associate my arrival with death and destruction. You wouldn't believe the nicknames I've earned over the centuries.”
“Those creatures, then, the ones you spoke of in your delirium?”
His jaw tightened imperceptibly. “All real. More dreadful villains than you can imagine, all of them deadly.”
“And Rose, she helps you fight these Daleks and all the rest?”
The Doctor glanced over at Franklin. “Hand me that stabiliser, would you? That bit of metal, just there, on the floor. Yes, that's the one.”
He handed the requested item to the Doctor, then folded his arms and leaned against the console. “You loved her-Rose. I'd be a very poor psychiatrist indeed if I couldn't see that.”
The Doctor concentrated on screwing the stabiliser in place. Once he'd done that, and connected it to the new wires, he said, “Here's a thought: put that in a memo and entitle it 'Things I Already Know'.”
Franklin half smiled. “I think you mean 'things I already know'.”
“That's what I said.” He knelt in front of the console and reached inside the open panel. His face contorted as he felt around for the proper junction. His fingers found the right spot, he twisted, and the Time Rotor slowly began to glow. “Ah-ha! There we go.”
“It's beautiful,” Franklin said. “But you didn't say 'things'-I very clearly heard you say 'things'.”
“But that doesn't make sense. Why would I say 'things', when the phrase is 'things I already know'?”
“Right. Of course. Why would you?” Franklin began to look more than a little concerned.
“Things,” the Doctor repeated, puzzled. He tapped the sonic screwdriver against the palm of his hand. Then his face cleared in understanding. “Right, sorry! It's the TARDIS. She gets into your head, automatically translates. Sort of a telepathic language field. But she dislikes vulgarity-has a funny habit of changing words around when she translates them. So when I said, 'things', you heard 'things'. And you still only hear 'things', not 'things', don't you?”
Franklin blinked as he tried to make sense of this. “An automatic censor, you mean? So, I assume that when you say 'things', you're actually saying 'things'?”
“That's right.” The Doctor grinned. “Actually, I'm saying-” and he glanced up at the ceiling while he spoke a series of fluid syllables and dancing vowels. “But that won't translate at all into your language, so she substitutes the closest thing. Which in this case, is 'things' and so she again substitutes, and we end up with a conversation that makes little sense.”
“Not a problem.” Franklin looked a bit dazed, not that the Doctor blamed him. It was a lot for a man to take in, even one who dealt with the insane on a daily basis.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Doctor jiggled his hands in his pockets, glancing around the dim TARDIS with a sense of being within a dream. Any minute now, he'd wake inside that padded room again. Or tied to a bed in a ward full of manic-depressives and paranoid schizophrenics. To distract himself from the dismal feeling, he bounced on the tips of his toes. Dr Franklin had left some time ago, with a final admonition to go and find Rose. But it wasn't that easy. He'd spent more than five years being told that she didn't exist, and had even begun to believe it himself over the last year. His Rose was nothing but a blue rose-a symbol among humans for an impossible dream, a quest for something that didn't exist.
And yet . . . hadn't humans genetically engineered a rose with blue petals, sometime in the twenty-first century?
If they could do the impossible, why couldn't he?
After all, he'd already done the hard part-crossing universes. Doing so had almost killed him-and who was insane enough to try and travel through a black hole and a supernova at the same time? Served him right that they'd found him semi-conscious and delivered him to the nut house. But now he knew that he wasn't crazy, that he really was the Doctor, that Rose did, in fact, exist, and in this very universe. It should only be a matter of setting coordinates for Earth and hoping he arrived before Rose gave up on him.
He let the torment of indecision wash through him for a moment. For a half a moment he allowed himself to admit that the past few years had been terrible. Beyond terrible-excruciating, humiliating, and . . . well, terrible. But he'd been through worse, hadn't he? Many times, and he was always all right.
Yet, how much easier his life would be if he wasn't the Doctor.
The thought escaped from the darkest corners of his mind before he could prevent it. Once there, he tried to banish it, but it was true. John Smith didn't have to face Daleks and all of the worst nightmares the universe could create. John Smith didn't have to save the world, again and again, losing everything in the process, and without a word of thanks for his trouble. John Smith didn't have to be responsible for the well-being of every life in the universe.
John Smith . . . didn't have Rose.
And with that, the Doctor began powering up the minor systems, slowly bringing the TARDIS back to life.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Tenth Doctor (10/Rose implied)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Doomsday, Evolution of the Daleks, and a teeny-tiny (blink and you'll miss it) spoiler from S2 Torchwood.
Summary: After risking everything to find Rose, the Doctor must face the terrifying possibility that everything he believes is an illusion.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Finally-finally, one of the nurses escorted him onto a narrow balcony for some fresh air. He'd earned the privilege, Dr Franklin had decreed. Away from of the confines of the hospital corridors, he breathed deeply, anxious to get the sterile atmosphere out of his lungs. A friendly breeze blew, stronger up here than it would be down on the surface. It ruffled his hair, and for a few moments, he felt almost alive and free again. Almost.
Once he'd gotten rid of the hospital stench, John Smith tightened the belt of his thin robe and stepped further out onto the patio. The metropolitan lights sparkled all the way to the horizon, but he had no interest in this alien city. His heart would always belong to the stars, and that's where he directed his gaze now, in hopes of seeing past the city's glow. He wasn't disappointed. A vast expanse of glittering diamond dust stretched above, with the blue-black of space behind it. Off to the north, a nebula glowed with swirls of gold and green. The colours reminded him of the inside of the TARDIS . . . and he felt a pang in his chest. His subconscious must've drawn the colours from the nebula. The TARDIS didn't exist-had never existed.
Back to the stars, then. Once upon a time, he could calculate his position anywhere in the universe, in any time period-or so he'd believed-just by examining the stars. Of course, he might be off by a decade or two, depending on how well he remembered his stellar cartography . . . not that it mattered. John Smith didn't have those kinds of abilities, only the Doctor did. Still, his eyes sought out familiar patterns in the stars. Sought and found. Yet what he found didn't make sense.
Minutes passed by while he stared without comprehension at the stars. How could the stars be wrong? How could they possibly. . . ?
“No,” he finally whispered, breathing the word out. He glanced at the nurse wildly, then moved up against the railing. Against her panicked cautions, he leaned out and stared upward. His gaze swept from the nebula to the cluster of stars in the eastern sky, over to the crystallised band of debris that encircled this world, and down to the broken constellations that curved across the horizon. “No! No, no, no! Impossible!”
His fragile reality threatened to turn upside down.
The nurse's insistent hand on his arm brought him back to his senses. Obediently John walked back inside, his heart pounding a rapid double tempo. He pressed a hand to his chest, wondering. Once in the hallway, he stopped in a daze. “Impossible,” he muttered, and began counting on his fingers. He glanced up only when someone walked by, and then he stopped and ran after the passing doctor.
“Doctor Franklin! Where did you say we are again? No, not the facility-the planet! Which planet are we on?”
“Tilumnia. Oh, d'you mean the designation? Beta Orion IV. Why?” He gave the nurse a significant look, and she nodded in return. One hand slipped into the pocket of her apron where a tranquilliser waited.
“Why?” He laughed and ran a hand through his frenzied hair. “Because we're not on Beta Orion IV! Not according to those stars out there.” He jabbed a finger toward the doors leading outside. “We're nowhere near where Beta Orion IV should be! Though, in all fairness, I suppose you could say that we're somewhere in the same neighbourhood-just not at the right address. I don't know what it means yet-give me time and I'll figure it out.”
Dr Franklin looked thoughtful as he folded his arms. “Perhaps your calculations are thrown off by the Cataclysm?”
“The what?” If possible, his eyes grew even wider. A celestial phenomenon that he'd never heard of? For a moment he even forgot that he wasn't an all-knowing Time Lord. “Oh, but this is brilliant! What was this Cataclysm? Go on, tell me!”
Franklin frowned but complied. “More than a thousand years ago, not long after humans colonized this planet, something caused the nearest world in our system to explode. Theories run the gamut from the commonly-accepted asteroid impact, to a deliberate attempt at sabotage by some unknown enemy, to the more fantastic idea of a sentient population causing the disaster themselves, either through a self-destructive war, or by experimenting with technology they didn't understand. Whatever the true cause, the force of the destruction shifted our planet into a different orbit, closer to the sun. For a century or more, the colonists had to live in underground shelters to escape the dust in the atmosphere and the constant tremors. Eventually, things calmed down enough for civilisation to resume itself and that's when we took our place within the Empire.”
John shook his head and then threw his arms up in the air and whooped with laughter. When the expressions of the doctor and nurse grew too consternated, he attempted to regain control. His mind spun, but he forced himself to focus. Still wheezing, he clapped Dr Franklin on the shoulder. “You, sir, deserve a medal.”
The doctor exchanged a glance with the nurse. “Of course I do. Now, why don't you come along to your room? We'll get you something to eat, maybe something to read. I have one of the latest science journals-just arrived in the post this morning. Would you like that, John?”
“I might, if I really was John Smith,” he answered, grinning insanely. “But I'm not.”
“No? And who might you be, then?” Franklin asked, frowning a bit more as he began to steer his patient back toward his room.
“Me? Oh, I'm the Doctor!”
“I see. And what's made you change your mind about this? I thought you'd agreed that your experiences at a 'Time Lord' were fantasy-a delusion created by your mind to protect you from a reality you couldn't accept.”
“Oh, there's nothing wrong with that theory! It's rather brilliant, in fact. Just not as brilliant as the truth,” the Doctor said, with a wink at the nurse. “You see, sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction. I woke up here, and everything you showed me seemed to support your statement about John Smith experiencing a severe enough trauma to create a break from reality: no one had ever heard of the Doctor, UNIT never existed, London never had a Prime Minister Harriet Jones, and Rose Tyler was never born. So, logically, those things must be the fantasy. Occam's Razor-the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”
Franklin lifted a finger to interrupt. “You mean Schrödinger's Razor, I believe.”
“And I suppose it's Occam's cat? Never mind. You've proved my point,” the Doctor said, his grin widening. “For awhile you had me convinced. I couldn't prove anything-not until now, that is.”
Franklin raised an eyebrow and paused in the doorway to John Smith's room. “And the Cataclysm supports all of this, somehow?”
The Doctor cheerfully thumped Franklin on the shoulder. “Smart man! The Cataclysm does exactly that. You see-” He leaned closer, lowering his voice. “-I've never heard of it.”
“No? Well, I shouldn't be surprised at that. We did speculate that you're from one of the outer colonies. Their schools aren't exactly known for their well-rounded curriculum. Perhaps they didn't view it as necessary to their history or astronomy classes.”
“Oh, I'm sure. But that isn't why I hadn't heard of it. You see, where I come from, that event never happened. That's why the stars looked wrong-this planet's in a completely different location than it should be! Shifted orbits and all that.”
“I see.” Franklin nodded as though he understood. “And UNIT? Captain Harkness? Miss Tyler? How does the Cataclysm explain their absence from the history records?”
“Oh, it doesn't,” the Doctor said, rising up onto his toes with barely-repressed excitement. He grinned. “But the fact that we're in a parallel universe does.”
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Doctor hesitated just before the hospital's double glass doors. It had been years since he'd been free and among the sane. The sight of so many people moving along the pavement nearly sent him running. But he had one chance to convince Dr Franklin of the truth of his existence. One chance to find the TARDIS and prove that he didn't belong in this universe. If he failed . . . well, it didn't bear thinking about.
He tugged at his jacket, the brown pinstriped suit lending him a bit of the Doctor's strength. But no-he couldn't think that way. He was the Doctor. Thus, the suit merely reminded him of his own self: a man who'd given Daleks and Cybermen nightmares, a man who'd witnessed the birth and death of entire galaxies. The last of the Time Lords. With that thought, he straightened his posture and stepped out into the flowing mass of pedestrians.
Unfortunately, after five and a half years of enduring a constant stream of psychoactive drugs and periodic jolts to his brain, the Doctor couldn't remember quite where he'd parked the TARDIS. He could sense Dr Franklin's growing impatience, and so he finally stopped on a street corner.
“Is this it?”
“No, no. I just need to get my bearings. Quiet for a minute, would you?” And with that the Doctor closed his eyes. A few deep breaths calmed him, and ever so gently he stretched out his weakened senses. It took him a minute to build a psychic wall strong enough to tune out the personal timelines of all the people surging around him, but once he did so, he could concentrate all his focus on his link with the TARDIS. She had to be close by.
And there she was: faint but glowing with the golden energy of Time itself.
“Ah.” He let out a rush of air, dizzy and euphoric with relief. “We're close. Just another two streets north of here. Come on!”
He ran. He ran all the way, until he rounded a corner and came to a skidding halt in front of one of the most beautiful sights he'd ever seen: an ordinary blue police box from mid-twentieth century Earth.
“Oh, but look at you. You poor thing. You poor, magnificent thing.” The Doctor ran his hands across the faded, peeling paint of the wood, then stood on his toes in order to reach up and finger the missing letters in the sign. One of the windows had cracked glass, and the door itself had warped, the wood buckled from neglect. “I'm sorry,” he murmured, caressing the door handle, which had come loose. “I'm so sorry.”
“Police Public Call Box?”
The Doctor turned, startled. Of course: Dr Franklin. He could see scepticism in the man's eyes, so he fumbled in his pocket for his key. “Care to see inside?”
He unlocked it easily enough, but had some trouble getting the door to open. A firm shove with his shoulder finally did the trick, and he nearly stumbled with the psychic equivalent of a slap and the agitated query, “Where've you been, you filthy tosser?”
“Oh, I know. I know,” he soothed, jogging up the ramp directly to the console. The lights flickered on when he skimmed his fingers across the dark time rotor. “We'll get you fixed up in no time, I promise.”
“Your ship-she's damaged?”
The Doctor placed his overcoat gently across the nearest support strut, his hand lingering against the rough coral surface. Without breaking contact, he glanced at Dr Franklin. He had to give the man points for not stating the obvious-if he'd heard, “bigger on the inside” once, he'd heard it a thousand times. Turning to continue his inspection, he shrugged. “Damaged, yes. But repairable.”
“Was it because you were gone?”
“Gone. Drugged out of my mind. Shocked repeatedly. All of that disrupted my brainwave pattern, made it difficult to maintain my connection with the TARDIS. Poor thing must've thought I'd died. Of course, it didn't help that we're in the entirely wrong universe. She's been running on batteries the entire time, without the benefit of my psychic reserves to boost her strength.”
“But she'll be all right? Your ship, I mean. She'll recover?”
The Doctor waved negligently. “Been through worse, she and I. Of course, I'll have to give her an infusion of my own life energy-no more than five or six years, I'd imagine. Give her a few hours to recover and she'll be right as rain.”
“I see.”
“Do you? You believed in me, Dr Franklin-”
“But I didn't! I kept you on those medications. I authorized those treatments. . . .”
“So you did. But only because you didn't know better. When it mattered-really mattered-you listened, and you gave me a chance. Now I'd like to give you one.” He waited until Franklin tilted his head with curiosity, then delivered his offer. “Ever want to travel in time? Your brother's a Time Agent. Bet you got jealous a time or two, yeah? Well, here's your chance! One place, one time: your choice. Anywhere you want.”
Franklin stared at him, astonished.
“Come on,” the Doctor cajoled. “The sky's the limit! Isn't there some historic event you've always wanted to see first-hand? Or some alien world that you've always dreamed about?”
“I think. . . .”
“Yes? Go on! No, don't tell me. I know-the Cataclysm, yeah? You want to go and find out what caused it?”
“As amazing as that would be, I think I've kept you from your mission long enough,” Franklin said, with only a hint of visible regret.
The Doctor frowned at him for a moment, then turned to the console. He pulled out one of the depleted power cells and nonchalantly sacrificed five years of his life to recharge it. Once it began glowing, he gently set it back into its slot. “Mission? What mission?”
Instead of answering, Franklin walked to where the Doctor's coat hung from the support strut. He bent and picked something up from the grating below it. A photograph. He held out the photo with an apologetic smile. “Rose. You had her image with your things the entire time. Why did you never say anything?”
The Doctor looked away without taking the photo. “You wouldn't have listened. She wasn't born in this universe.”
“But she did exist.”
The emergency brake had rusted. He'd have to fix that before he went anywhere. A bit of industrial lubricant should do the trick. He had some around here somewhere, didn't he?
“John,” Franklin began, then stopped. “Doctor, I was wrong. Rose Tyler did exist in this universe. I didn't lie to you-no one by that name was ever born in twentieth-century London. But after you told me about the Cataclysm, I did some checking. Pete and Jackie Tyler lived in London of that era. He was some kind of entrepreneurial genius. Made a fortune by the time he was thirty-five, then took over as head of Torchwood. He and his wife didn't have children-not at first. But after the Cyber-invasion of 2006, Jackie Tyler vanished, presumed dead. Three years later she reappeared, not a scratch on her . . . and with a twenty-year-old daughter that no one had ever seen before. They went on to have half a dozen more kids, but the daughter, the eldest-her name was Rose.”
The handbrake broke off in the Doctor's hand.
“She never had any sort of official identity. A bit of a ghost, it seemed. Worked for Torchwood with Pete, and that other bloke you mentioned: Mickey Smith. Except his name is given as Ricky Smith, in the archives. That's why I never found mention of him.”
“Ricky?” The Doctor turned a hard stare upon Franklin. “Ricky Smith? Are you certain? Absolutely one-hundred-percent positive? It was Ricky Smith? Not Mickey?”
“Richard Michael Smith, yes: otherwise known as Ricky. Raised by his grandmother; part of an underground organization known as 'The Preachers'; played a crucial role in defeating the Cybermen.”
“Oh, bless you, Mickey the Idiot!” With a grin, the Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and gave it a quick recharge from the port on the console.
Franklin looked on with confusion. “Is it the right man, then? This Mickey, or Ricky, or whoever he is?”
“Oh, yes!”
“But, what about the name, then? Why did you call him Mickey, when the records state. . . .”
“Long story,” the Doctor replied. He stuck the sonic screwdriver between his teeth and used both hands to pull open the grating beneath the console. Once he'd yanked a handful of wires out, he aimed the screwdriver at them and resumed talking. “Mickey is Ricky-only from a parallel universe. We accidentally landed here in this universe during the Cyber invasion, Ricky got himself killed, Mickey stayed behind and took his place. And that, my dear Dr Franklin, is how I know I'm in the right one.”
“But-parallel universes! You keep saying that, but it's impossible.”
“You believed me back at the hospital. What's so different now?”
Franklin shook his head. “But I didn't, not really. I thought if I let you look for your ship, you'd realize that you were mistaken and finally accept the truth. But now? Now I'm standing in a time ship that's bigger on the inside, watching a madman effect repairs on organic circuits.”
“I'm not mad,” the Doctor said, pausing his work. Even in the dim light, his eyes gleamed fiercely. “You know that. Or we'd never have left that hospital.”
“Perhaps.” Franklin shrugged. “Maybe I'm the one who's crazy. Parallel universes?”
The Doctor pulled out a fresh batch of corroded wiring and began stripping them. “It's a well-known concept, even in your era: every time a major decision is made, a parallel universe is created where events follow a different path.”
Franklin looked thoughtful. “I wonder what sort of decision led to your birth, Doctor. And why didn't it happen here, as well? Pity, that. I have a feeling that our universe is a lot worse off without you.”
“A lot of people would disagree with you,” the Doctor said, while soldering fresh connections between two vital circuits. “I save lives, yes. But I always show up when there's trouble, and sooner or later people begin to associate my arrival with death and destruction. You wouldn't believe the nicknames I've earned over the centuries.”
“Those creatures, then, the ones you spoke of in your delirium?”
His jaw tightened imperceptibly. “All real. More dreadful villains than you can imagine, all of them deadly.”
“And Rose, she helps you fight these Daleks and all the rest?”
The Doctor glanced over at Franklin. “Hand me that stabiliser, would you? That bit of metal, just there, on the floor. Yes, that's the one.”
He handed the requested item to the Doctor, then folded his arms and leaned against the console. “You loved her-Rose. I'd be a very poor psychiatrist indeed if I couldn't see that.”
The Doctor concentrated on screwing the stabiliser in place. Once he'd done that, and connected it to the new wires, he said, “Here's a thought: put that in a memo and entitle it 'Things I Already Know'.”
Franklin half smiled. “I think you mean 'things I already know'.”
“That's what I said.” He knelt in front of the console and reached inside the open panel. His face contorted as he felt around for the proper junction. His fingers found the right spot, he twisted, and the Time Rotor slowly began to glow. “Ah-ha! There we go.”
“It's beautiful,” Franklin said. “But you didn't say 'things'-I very clearly heard you say 'things'.”
“But that doesn't make sense. Why would I say 'things', when the phrase is 'things I already know'?”
“Right. Of course. Why would you?” Franklin began to look more than a little concerned.
“Things,” the Doctor repeated, puzzled. He tapped the sonic screwdriver against the palm of his hand. Then his face cleared in understanding. “Right, sorry! It's the TARDIS. She gets into your head, automatically translates. Sort of a telepathic language field. But she dislikes vulgarity-has a funny habit of changing words around when she translates them. So when I said, 'things', you heard 'things'. And you still only hear 'things', not 'things', don't you?”
Franklin blinked as he tried to make sense of this. “An automatic censor, you mean? So, I assume that when you say 'things', you're actually saying 'things'?”
“That's right.” The Doctor grinned. “Actually, I'm saying-” and he glanced up at the ceiling while he spoke a series of fluid syllables and dancing vowels. “But that won't translate at all into your language, so she substitutes the closest thing. Which in this case, is 'things' and so she again substitutes, and we end up with a conversation that makes little sense.”
“Not a problem.” Franklin looked a bit dazed, not that the Doctor blamed him. It was a lot for a man to take in, even one who dealt with the insane on a daily basis.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The Doctor jiggled his hands in his pockets, glancing around the dim TARDIS with a sense of being within a dream. Any minute now, he'd wake inside that padded room again. Or tied to a bed in a ward full of manic-depressives and paranoid schizophrenics. To distract himself from the dismal feeling, he bounced on the tips of his toes. Dr Franklin had left some time ago, with a final admonition to go and find Rose. But it wasn't that easy. He'd spent more than five years being told that she didn't exist, and had even begun to believe it himself over the last year. His Rose was nothing but a blue rose-a symbol among humans for an impossible dream, a quest for something that didn't exist.
And yet . . . hadn't humans genetically engineered a rose with blue petals, sometime in the twenty-first century?
If they could do the impossible, why couldn't he?
After all, he'd already done the hard part-crossing universes. Doing so had almost killed him-and who was insane enough to try and travel through a black hole and a supernova at the same time? Served him right that they'd found him semi-conscious and delivered him to the nut house. But now he knew that he wasn't crazy, that he really was the Doctor, that Rose did, in fact, exist, and in this very universe. It should only be a matter of setting coordinates for Earth and hoping he arrived before Rose gave up on him.
He let the torment of indecision wash through him for a moment. For a half a moment he allowed himself to admit that the past few years had been terrible. Beyond terrible-excruciating, humiliating, and . . . well, terrible. But he'd been through worse, hadn't he? Many times, and he was always all right.
Yet, how much easier his life would be if he wasn't the Doctor.
The thought escaped from the darkest corners of his mind before he could prevent it. Once there, he tried to banish it, but it was true. John Smith didn't have to face Daleks and all of the worst nightmares the universe could create. John Smith didn't have to save the world, again and again, losing everything in the process, and without a word of thanks for his trouble. John Smith didn't have to be responsible for the well-being of every life in the universe.
John Smith . . . didn't have Rose.
And with that, the Doctor began powering up the minor systems, slowly bringing the TARDIS back to life.