FIC: "Equal and Opposite" 5/10, NC-17, Ten/Rose
Title: Equal and Opposite
Author: Amanda Rex, amandarex
Character/Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: NC-17, M
Spoilers: All of S1, S2, and S3 up to "The Lazarus Experiment"
Summary: As the Doctor discovered during the events of "The Runaway Bride", an excess of Huon particles can send you straight to the TARDIS, if you're not careful. What if Rose carried enough residual Huon energy after absorbing the Heart of the TARDIS in "The Parting of the Ways" to pull her through the Void and back to the Doctor?
Disclaimer: I don't own anything but the laptop this was written on. You know it, I know it.
Warnings: This isn't the usual, happy reunion fic. Warnings for dark and unhappy moments.
Author's Notes: I would like to thank my wonderful beta reader for all of her time and support, dynapink. Couldn't do it without you. Concrit on this fic is welcome. I would also like to thank scifiangel, corruptinnocent, iwillrememberu, svanderslice, firefaery2, hannagreen20, calapine, megoddess2, ellenscult, blackadder72, calleigh-j, jen-chan13, effulgent-girl, misscam, isolus-gurl, eulalumel, monkeefan1 for their contributions to a thread I posted on time_and_chips, which helped me a great deal with Chapter 6 of this fic.
Earlier parts: Teaser | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
"So, that's it?" she asked, staring at the door directly opposite the TARDIS. "How d'you suppose we should-"
The Doctor silenced her with a gesture inside his jacket, quickly producing the bifold containing his slip of psychic paper. He plastered a ridiculously pleasant grin on his face and jogged up the stone stairs, Rose trailing behind him.
They rang the bell and waited, the Doctor bouncing forward on the balls of his feet as his impatience grew more and more apparent. He rang a second time, and they soon heard a loud stomping noise coming from the interior. It was followed by a rather annoyed-sounding woman bellowing at them, something about leaving her bell "bloody well alone" if Rose's hearing was to be trusted.
The door opened with a jerk and they were faced with a quite striking-looking woman, wearing a pronounced scowl on her face.
"I haven't got all bloody day," she said, her eyes blazing.
The Doctor proffered the psychic paper, proclaiming them to be television researchers for BBC2.
"We're out today doing advance work for a new show, looking for examples of the typical British family. May I ask your name, madam?"
"What's it called?" she demanded, looking with eyes narrowed with suspicion between her two unwelcome visitors.
"I'm sorry?" the Doctor said, choking the words though a tiny cough of surprise.
"It's tentatively called 'Here's Looking at You'," Rose supplied, saying the first thing she could think of.
"Could you answer just a few questions for research purposes, and we may contact you later for an on-camera interview?" the Doctor added, his words running together with fake charm, just like a smarmy television presenter.
"All right," the woman ventured, still clearly regarding them as questionable, at best.
"Married?" the Doctor asked.
"Divorced."
"Children?" the Doctor continued.
"Two. Boy and a girl," came the answer, in clipped tones.
"And do they keep in touch with-wait. Two? Not three?"
"Yes," the woman said. "I think I know how many children I have, not that it's really any business of yours."
"What do they do?" the Doctor continued, his voice now much more serious.
"My daughter's in public relations, and my son is-shouldn't you be taking this down, if this is really research for BBC2? Let me see your identification again."
The Doctor flashed the psychic paper a second time, apparently satisfying her immediate suspicions, but she still seemed wary of them.
"I'm sorry for taking so much of your time, madam. I believe we're looking for larger families for the present, but we'll be in touch if that changes," the Doctor told her, walking backward a few steps as he spoke.
"Bloody waste of time," the woman muttered, slamming the door enough to rattle the hinges as the Doctor turned away and walked quickly back to the TARDIS.
When they were inside, Rose waited for the Doctor to say something, but he didn't. He didn't do much of anything, really, other than torture his hair with his long, manic fingers and take in breath as though he was about to speak, only to fail to do so when the moment came.
"What did that mean, Doctor?" she ventured.
"She's gone," he said, his voice small and sad, as though he still didn't quite believe it. "She's been wiped out of time. And it's because she was here, with me."
"But how? Why?"
"It must have had something to do with-" he began, cutting himself off abruptly as his head snapped upward and their eyes met. "No, I'm not certain. I have to think. There's bound to be-"
"You've already said it had something to do with me. You know something else, and you're not telling me," she said, feeling much more like her more impulsive and emotional 19 year old self than the more composed woman she'd fought to become.
"You always could see straight through me," he said, smiling sadly at her for a moment until he suddenly sprang to action. "Come on, then. We'll sit down and I'll tell you what I'm thinking."
Instead of leading her somewhere in the TARDIS, he went back to the controls and entered a new set of coordinates. After a short trip in which she somehow managed to stay on her feet, he led her to the door and out into the sunlight. She laughed as soon as she realized where they were.
"Hungry?" she asked him, looking up at the neon sign that identified this restaurant as one that she and his previous incarnation had found together, after saving Earth from the Slitheen. She'd looked for it once in her new world, actually, only to find that world's version of Marks and Spencer's in its place. That discovery had put her in a foul mood for several days.
"Famished," he answered. "I'll need some energy to work this out, as well."
He chose a table on the patio, far away from any other diners. A waitress took their order not long after they'd sat down, and it was only then that he began to speak.
"There's a balance in the universe, Rose. Across them, as well. This world and the one you've just come from are closely connected, but they're still separate."
"I know," she told him, remembering exactly how separate they were and how trapped she'd felt.
"Any transfer from one universe to another requires something in return. Energy transfer, mass transfer. It's Newton's Third Law, but in a way he could never have imagined it. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
"Are you saying I've put my mum's world in danger?" she said, suddenly worried about the friends and family she'd left behind.
"No," he said, decisively. "Pete, Mickey, your mum, everyone there, they're all fine. I'm certain of that. One person making the trip wouldn't require a reaction large enough to cause significant damage to that world. It would be very small; so small that it would be difficult to tell the difference in either world."
"About the size of one human being?" she asked, suddenly understanding what the Doctor was trying to tell her. "You're saying that when I was pulled back to the TARDIS, something happened to-" she stopped suddenly, unable to finish the thought aloud. "I killed her."
"No," he told her again. "You must have transferred the energy from the Huon particles to her after you were pulled through the Void and back to the TARDIS. She was the closest organism to your physical makeup. The easiest way for the universes to balance the scales."
"But Mickey, my dad, all of us...we all went back and forth without anything happening."
"But there were consequences. Don't you remember the state your dad's world was in? The global warming? That was all due to the breaches, to the bodies and energy passing through them. It was why we needed to close them."
"But I didn't come through a breach this time."
"Doesn't matter. You, Rose, are many things, but on one level, you are a bundle of matter and energy. The world you came from merely re-balanced itself."
"So she's stranded there. Alone. She doesn't know what's happened or why she's there, and no one here remembers she even existed."
"Yes," he answered, and he shut his eyes for a moment.
"I'm so sorry," Rose said, though she didn't know what she was apologizing for, exactly.
"It's not your fault," he reassured her, but it didn't make her feel better at all.
"Doesn't matter. It still happened."
"We'll fix this. We'll find a way," he told her, his eyes wide open and earnest as they drilled into her.
"How will you fix it?"
"One breach," he said, holding up an insistent finger. "We'll open one, just one, and we'll pull her through. If there's a breach open, the energy can flow back more freely, and there'll be no more people disappearing from my TARDIS."
"How do we open it?"
"I'm not sure," he said, looking extremely thoughtful. "Yet," he added, making it clear that he had no intention of failing.
"What about all the horrible things you said would happen if we left them open before? Everything fracturing and collapsing, you said."
"Just one very small breach, opened for a short period of time, would be low risk."
"But how do we close it?"
"If I can open it, I'll be able to close it. It may even repair itself, as the others did after we closed the largest breach in Torchwood Tower." He took her hand under the table. "So, there's my plan, and it's a brilliant one, if I say so myself. To start, we have to locate a power source. The rest, we'll take from there."
"So, we should go, yeah? Let's start-"
"I'm already considering a few options, Rose. We can talk while I do that."
"And have chips, for old times' sake?" she said, winking at him.
The food arrived just then, but it sat in front of them untouched as the Doctor practically interrogated her about the life she'd led in her new world. He wanted to know about each race she'd encountered working at Torchwood, leeching the tiniest of details from her until she was nearly exhausted.
"So, Mickey's fine, then. And you're fine. The two of you, just fine?" he asked, the question coming out of the blue, close on the heels of a long discussion about the Foamasi and a narrowly-averted nuclear war.
"We were. Are. Yeah," she stammered, confused at the sudden change of subject.
"The two of you. Just fine. That's fine, then." He suddenly picked up his fork and poked it into his food, examining it closely for a moment before biting into it. He pulled a face and put the fork down.
"Mickey's married, in fact," she added, finally understanding what he was really asking her. "But not to me, of course."
"Of course," he repeated, a smile slowly taking over his face.
"Doctor?" she asked, just as the information from their earlier conversation finally clicked into place in her mind. "If you thought there was a way to open a small breach and pull someone through, why haven't you-"
"What makes you think I haven't been preparing to do it?" he answered, before she had a chance to finish her question. They stared at each other for a long moment, the mood becoming more and more serious until it threatened to suffocate them both.
"Let's go back to the TARDIS," she suggested, knowing exactly what she meant by that, but wondering if the Doctor was too thick to understand.
He pushed his chair back from the table and stood without a word, throwing some money onto the table from an inner pocket of his suit jacket. He walked behind her chair and helped her up, putting his chin on her shoulder and enclosing her hand in his.
"Run," he whispered, so close to her that she felt his breath on her earlobe. His grip tightened on her hand as he jerked her away, both of them running at top speed and sending their laughter into the night.
on to Chapter 5
Author's note: Posting a little early as I won't be online tonight when I normally grab time to post. Additionally, if I'm delayed in responding to any comments, it's not because I don't appreciate them. It's just that I have a circus going here this evening.
Author: Amanda Rex, amandarex
Character/Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: NC-17, M
Spoilers: All of S1, S2, and S3 up to "The Lazarus Experiment"
Summary: As the Doctor discovered during the events of "The Runaway Bride", an excess of Huon particles can send you straight to the TARDIS, if you're not careful. What if Rose carried enough residual Huon energy after absorbing the Heart of the TARDIS in "The Parting of the Ways" to pull her through the Void and back to the Doctor?
Disclaimer: I don't own anything but the laptop this was written on. You know it, I know it.
Warnings: This isn't the usual, happy reunion fic. Warnings for dark and unhappy moments.
Author's Notes: I would like to thank my wonderful beta reader for all of her time and support, dynapink. Couldn't do it without you. Concrit on this fic is welcome. I would also like to thank scifiangel, corruptinnocent, iwillrememberu, svanderslice, firefaery2, hannagreen20, calapine, megoddess2, ellenscult, blackadder72, calleigh-j, jen-chan13, effulgent-girl, misscam, isolus-gurl, eulalumel, monkeefan1 for their contributions to a thread I posted on time_and_chips, which helped me a great deal with Chapter 6 of this fic.
Earlier parts: Teaser | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3
"So, that's it?" she asked, staring at the door directly opposite the TARDIS. "How d'you suppose we should-"
The Doctor silenced her with a gesture inside his jacket, quickly producing the bifold containing his slip of psychic paper. He plastered a ridiculously pleasant grin on his face and jogged up the stone stairs, Rose trailing behind him.
They rang the bell and waited, the Doctor bouncing forward on the balls of his feet as his impatience grew more and more apparent. He rang a second time, and they soon heard a loud stomping noise coming from the interior. It was followed by a rather annoyed-sounding woman bellowing at them, something about leaving her bell "bloody well alone" if Rose's hearing was to be trusted.
The door opened with a jerk and they were faced with a quite striking-looking woman, wearing a pronounced scowl on her face.
"I haven't got all bloody day," she said, her eyes blazing.
The Doctor proffered the psychic paper, proclaiming them to be television researchers for BBC2.
"We're out today doing advance work for a new show, looking for examples of the typical British family. May I ask your name, madam?"
"What's it called?" she demanded, looking with eyes narrowed with suspicion between her two unwelcome visitors.
"I'm sorry?" the Doctor said, choking the words though a tiny cough of surprise.
"It's tentatively called 'Here's Looking at You'," Rose supplied, saying the first thing she could think of.
"Could you answer just a few questions for research purposes, and we may contact you later for an on-camera interview?" the Doctor added, his words running together with fake charm, just like a smarmy television presenter.
"All right," the woman ventured, still clearly regarding them as questionable, at best.
"Married?" the Doctor asked.
"Divorced."
"Children?" the Doctor continued.
"Two. Boy and a girl," came the answer, in clipped tones.
"And do they keep in touch with-wait. Two? Not three?"
"Yes," the woman said. "I think I know how many children I have, not that it's really any business of yours."
"What do they do?" the Doctor continued, his voice now much more serious.
"My daughter's in public relations, and my son is-shouldn't you be taking this down, if this is really research for BBC2? Let me see your identification again."
The Doctor flashed the psychic paper a second time, apparently satisfying her immediate suspicions, but she still seemed wary of them.
"I'm sorry for taking so much of your time, madam. I believe we're looking for larger families for the present, but we'll be in touch if that changes," the Doctor told her, walking backward a few steps as he spoke.
"Bloody waste of time," the woman muttered, slamming the door enough to rattle the hinges as the Doctor turned away and walked quickly back to the TARDIS.
When they were inside, Rose waited for the Doctor to say something, but he didn't. He didn't do much of anything, really, other than torture his hair with his long, manic fingers and take in breath as though he was about to speak, only to fail to do so when the moment came.
"What did that mean, Doctor?" she ventured.
"She's gone," he said, his voice small and sad, as though he still didn't quite believe it. "She's been wiped out of time. And it's because she was here, with me."
"But how? Why?"
"It must have had something to do with-" he began, cutting himself off abruptly as his head snapped upward and their eyes met. "No, I'm not certain. I have to think. There's bound to be-"
"You've already said it had something to do with me. You know something else, and you're not telling me," she said, feeling much more like her more impulsive and emotional 19 year old self than the more composed woman she'd fought to become.
"You always could see straight through me," he said, smiling sadly at her for a moment until he suddenly sprang to action. "Come on, then. We'll sit down and I'll tell you what I'm thinking."
Instead of leading her somewhere in the TARDIS, he went back to the controls and entered a new set of coordinates. After a short trip in which she somehow managed to stay on her feet, he led her to the door and out into the sunlight. She laughed as soon as she realized where they were.
"Hungry?" she asked him, looking up at the neon sign that identified this restaurant as one that she and his previous incarnation had found together, after saving Earth from the Slitheen. She'd looked for it once in her new world, actually, only to find that world's version of Marks and Spencer's in its place. That discovery had put her in a foul mood for several days.
"Famished," he answered. "I'll need some energy to work this out, as well."
He chose a table on the patio, far away from any other diners. A waitress took their order not long after they'd sat down, and it was only then that he began to speak.
"There's a balance in the universe, Rose. Across them, as well. This world and the one you've just come from are closely connected, but they're still separate."
"I know," she told him, remembering exactly how separate they were and how trapped she'd felt.
"Any transfer from one universe to another requires something in return. Energy transfer, mass transfer. It's Newton's Third Law, but in a way he could never have imagined it. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction."
"Are you saying I've put my mum's world in danger?" she said, suddenly worried about the friends and family she'd left behind.
"No," he said, decisively. "Pete, Mickey, your mum, everyone there, they're all fine. I'm certain of that. One person making the trip wouldn't require a reaction large enough to cause significant damage to that world. It would be very small; so small that it would be difficult to tell the difference in either world."
"About the size of one human being?" she asked, suddenly understanding what the Doctor was trying to tell her. "You're saying that when I was pulled back to the TARDIS, something happened to-" she stopped suddenly, unable to finish the thought aloud. "I killed her."
"No," he told her again. "You must have transferred the energy from the Huon particles to her after you were pulled through the Void and back to the TARDIS. She was the closest organism to your physical makeup. The easiest way for the universes to balance the scales."
"But Mickey, my dad, all of us...we all went back and forth without anything happening."
"But there were consequences. Don't you remember the state your dad's world was in? The global warming? That was all due to the breaches, to the bodies and energy passing through them. It was why we needed to close them."
"But I didn't come through a breach this time."
"Doesn't matter. You, Rose, are many things, but on one level, you are a bundle of matter and energy. The world you came from merely re-balanced itself."
"So she's stranded there. Alone. She doesn't know what's happened or why she's there, and no one here remembers she even existed."
"Yes," he answered, and he shut his eyes for a moment.
"I'm so sorry," Rose said, though she didn't know what she was apologizing for, exactly.
"It's not your fault," he reassured her, but it didn't make her feel better at all.
"Doesn't matter. It still happened."
"We'll fix this. We'll find a way," he told her, his eyes wide open and earnest as they drilled into her.
"How will you fix it?"
"One breach," he said, holding up an insistent finger. "We'll open one, just one, and we'll pull her through. If there's a breach open, the energy can flow back more freely, and there'll be no more people disappearing from my TARDIS."
"How do we open it?"
"I'm not sure," he said, looking extremely thoughtful. "Yet," he added, making it clear that he had no intention of failing.
"What about all the horrible things you said would happen if we left them open before? Everything fracturing and collapsing, you said."
"Just one very small breach, opened for a short period of time, would be low risk."
"But how do we close it?"
"If I can open it, I'll be able to close it. It may even repair itself, as the others did after we closed the largest breach in Torchwood Tower." He took her hand under the table. "So, there's my plan, and it's a brilliant one, if I say so myself. To start, we have to locate a power source. The rest, we'll take from there."
"So, we should go, yeah? Let's start-"
"I'm already considering a few options, Rose. We can talk while I do that."
"And have chips, for old times' sake?" she said, winking at him.
The food arrived just then, but it sat in front of them untouched as the Doctor practically interrogated her about the life she'd led in her new world. He wanted to know about each race she'd encountered working at Torchwood, leeching the tiniest of details from her until she was nearly exhausted.
"So, Mickey's fine, then. And you're fine. The two of you, just fine?" he asked, the question coming out of the blue, close on the heels of a long discussion about the Foamasi and a narrowly-averted nuclear war.
"We were. Are. Yeah," she stammered, confused at the sudden change of subject.
"The two of you. Just fine. That's fine, then." He suddenly picked up his fork and poked it into his food, examining it closely for a moment before biting into it. He pulled a face and put the fork down.
"Mickey's married, in fact," she added, finally understanding what he was really asking her. "But not to me, of course."
"Of course," he repeated, a smile slowly taking over his face.
"Doctor?" she asked, just as the information from their earlier conversation finally clicked into place in her mind. "If you thought there was a way to open a small breach and pull someone through, why haven't you-"
"What makes you think I haven't been preparing to do it?" he answered, before she had a chance to finish her question. They stared at each other for a long moment, the mood becoming more and more serious until it threatened to suffocate them both.
"Let's go back to the TARDIS," she suggested, knowing exactly what she meant by that, but wondering if the Doctor was too thick to understand.
He pushed his chair back from the table and stood without a word, throwing some money onto the table from an inner pocket of his suit jacket. He walked behind her chair and helped her up, putting his chin on her shoulder and enclosing her hand in his.
"Run," he whispered, so close to her that she felt his breath on her earlobe. His grip tightened on her hand as he jerked her away, both of them running at top speed and sending their laughter into the night.
on to Chapter 5
Author's note: Posting a little early as I won't be online tonight when I normally grab time to post. Additionally, if I'm delayed in responding to any comments, it's not because I don't appreciate them. It's just that I have a circus going here this evening.