Collab Fic: To the Waters and the Wild (8/10?)
Title: To the Waters and the Wild: Chapter 7 (8/10ish)
Authors: ladychi and the_tenzo
Beta: spikewriter (special thanks especially to her for this chapter)
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. the_tenzo and I will alternate whose journal we post at.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |Chapter 6
Chapter Seven
It had been a long time since Rose had heard such a large variety of curse words-and so creatively deployed, too-as were emanating from the blindfolded woman behind her.
"How are we going to get her through the park like this?" Rose hissed to Jack, who was going through traffic lights with the wild abandon of someone who knows he's quite above the law. "It might be the middle of the night, but I think someone is going to notice the loudly swearing woman wearing a blindfold. And why did you have all that stuff in the glove box anyway?"
"A boy scout is always prepared," Jack said, a broad smile on his face in spite of the life or death situation currently afoot.
"I'll prepare you!" Donna bellowed from behind them. "I'm a British subject, I have rights!"
Rose turned to Jack again and bit her lip. "I don't think I'm cut out for kidnapping."
"You get used to it. Oh, would you look at that? Perfect parking spot!" He aimed the car head-in and, one-handed, executed a flawless parallel parking job. "Now that is a work of art," he beamed, unlocking the doors.
"A work of what?!" Donna asked incredulously. "Are you talking about parking a car while I'm back here being kidnapped by bloody Spooks?"
"I'm sorry you can't see it yourself. Maybe later," Jack said, folding the passenger-side seat forward and taking Donna's wrist gently but firmly. "Out you come. There's someone I'd like you to meet." Jack pulled a bit on Donna's wrist but she still stubbornly refused to get out of the car. "I promise we're not going to hurt you. We've got just a little way to walk and then we can talk, okay?"
"Not so fast, sunny Jim!" she huffed. "You've got me blindfolded and handcuffed in the back seat of your car. You give me one good reason why I should trust you."
"Because I'm the man of your dreams," Jack replied, without missing a beat.
"Are you trying to kidnap me or chat me up?"
"Can't a guy do both?"
***
Donna was escorted over roots, under low-hanging branches, and up over curbs-all much more carefully than she'd have expected from people who could be described as "abductors." The man, an American, chatted with her quietly, in the same cheekily familiar tone that he'd used in the car. The woman didn't say much at all, and sounded a bit of a wet-blanket when she did talk.
It seemed like they hadn't walked for very long at all (though it was difficult to judge, being blindfolded) when they came to a stop and Donna felt the man's breath near her ear as he leaned over. "Do you promise not to undo this blindfold if I untie your hands?"
Normally, her first instinct would be to give him a swift kick in the bollocks and make a run for it as soon as her hands were free, but instead she found herself nodding, honestly intending to follow through on her promise. He just sounded so friendly, so nice, like this was some sort of easily-explained joke. The familiar tone in his voice, his flirty good-nature, she felt rather thrown for a loop and unable to refuse.
The sound of a key in a lock, and a door squeaked open on rusty hinges. An old shed? Is this where she was being taken to be quietly and discreetly murdered? It was so confusing, with her captors being so nice, but everything else being so dodgy.
"I let myself in," a new voice said. Another woman, London accent, well-educated but not posh.
Donna was led forward again, up a slight rise, and the floor under her feet clattered as she walked. The sound of their footfalls indicated a large room, but what Donna couldn't figure out was the pulsating, breathing sort of noise. It didn't sound electronic necessarily, but it certainly wasn't anything she'd ever heard before. Regular, like a heartbeat, and soothing. Even the air around her seemed to move over her skin in time with it.
"I've had to patch my computer in to the on-board systems. Nanogenes are being programmed now via the matrix database on Donna Noble."
Donna could only understand about every third word of what the new woman was saying, but she didn't like how the woman was using her name in such a familiar way. "Don't say you know me too!" she piped up, still unsure that she believed what was happening to her.
"I'm sorry we have to do it like this. You'll understand soon, I promise." The first woman, the one she'd ridden in the car with, sat down next to Donna-a bit closer than a total stranger should be sitting, quite frankly. "We just want to help."
"Why do I need helping? I was just minding my own business today and all of a sudden it's Police! and Secure the area! and then I'm being bundled into a car with my hands tied. I didn't need any help until you lot showed up in the first place!" Her protestations were righteously indignant, a bit shrill, but seemed even to her own ears to be out-of-place in this new setting.
"I know," the woman said, trying to sound contrite and calm, but mainly sounding incredibly stressed and worried.
"Programming at eighty-nine percent," the other woman intoned. "Jack, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"What?" the American said, sounding legitimately surprised and taken aback. Donna surmised that being shocked was not a sensation he was normally accustomed to, given his reaction.
"Chula nanogenes are highly suggestible. Your... condition might be a problem for them if you're present for the procedure."
Donna felt a new panic rising, sudden and fierce, as if her brain had simply not let her believe until now that people she didn't know were about to perform a medical procedure on her, without her consent. "Procedure? What are you doing? Where am I? What's going on?" She stood up from the seat and started tugging at the blindfold, trying to find the ties.
Her wrists were grabbed from behind again, but the grip was tentative, as if the woman wasn't very practised at this sort of thing, or perhaps just didn't want to hurt her. The other woman began to announce a series of percentages in the nineties and was insisting that Jack leave immediately. There was an atmosphere chaos as the heavy footsteps of the American man clattered around her, the squeaky-hinged door opened and shut again, and a count-down of sorts was being announced by one of the remaining women.
Donna's fight-or-flight response calmed momentarily and she was able to think clearly about her situation, and the getting out of it. She stopped thrashing, and the woman holding her loosened her grip, just for a second. Donna broke free in one fluid motion, and ripped the blindfold off of her head.
She looked around, at first just scanning for the door but then not quite comprehending what she was seeing. It looked like she was on the set of a film, and a vaguely familiar one at that. Something sci-fi that her grandfather would love. The ceiling was vaulted and high, a central column ran down from it and ended in a ridiculous-looking control panel, covered with dials and switches and levers of all sorts. At the control panel was a young woman in a white lab coat, looking very serious; and behind her was a blonde, her brows knit and her stance one of being prepared to spring in to action. The whole scene was just confusing, like elements that separately she recognized, but together seemed all wrong. The overall effect had left Donna feeling wrong-footed and unsure of how to extricate herself.
"I don't know who you think you are," Donna said, circling on the spot and looking desperately for exits , "but you're not doing any kind of Frankenstein thing on me!"
"Shit!" the blonde muttered under her breath and ran around the console towards the doors, to block Donna's exit. "We're not trying to hurt you, Donna, I promise!"
"It's all right," the woman in the lab coat said, moving closer, but not so close that she'd be liable to catch a left hook. "I'm a medical doctor." She pointed to an official-looking badge, pinned to her lab coat.
"Dr. Martha Jones," Donna read, narrowing her eyes. "Martha Jones, Martha Jones..." She muttered the name quietly to herself, feeling how it rolled out of her mouth easily, familiarly. She was sure she'd heard it before, and now looking at the young doctor, was sure she'd met her before. Normally, Donna would have no problem peppering the woman with questions until she figured out what party or pub quiz or temp assignment at which they'd met, but she found she couldn't stop repeating the name, like a mantra. Her mouth moved, air passed over her vocal chords, and she didn't feel in control of any of it.
That's when the sensation began at the base of her spine and started to move upwards. A tickle, then a tingle, and then a full-blown shiver, causing her fingers to go numb and goose-bumps to break out all over her left side. The feeling moved upwards as it grew in intensity, and a blinding white pain shot through her head, unlike anything she'd ever felt before. The last thing she did before squeezing her eyes shut was to take a long look at the blonde woman standing before her, naming her without knowing where the words came from or what they meant: "Rose Tyler. Oh... oh my God..." she moaned, and crumpled to the floor.
Everything went white-a searing brightness that threatened to burn the skin off her bones and consume her in one hot instant. She felt like she was imploding, collapsing in on herself. She scratched and clutched at her head, chanted the same words over and over like a litany until they'd lost all meaning. A new word bubbled to the surface, and broke free, a scream that could have been a call for salvation or to be put out of her agony: "Doctor!"
Time sped up, rewound and went round again until it slowed to a crawl, and a creeping heaviness saturated her limbs. The pain didn't so much as go away as ceased to be happening to her. That body was somewhere else, was someone else now. She felt free-freer than she'd ever felt since childhood. She wanted to skip and sing, looking down on her body as agonized writhing turned to shudders, shudders turned to twitches, and finally an unnatural stillness.
"Oh, Mum, you'll never believe the dream I just had!" she said, tentatively opening her eyes again.
Rose smiled benevolently down at her and grabbed her hand. "It's okay, Donna, we're here."
"Something's not right," Dr. Jones said darkly, and she reached over to take Donna's pulse at her wrist. "She thinks her memories are dreams." Dr. Jones sounded upset and concerned, but there was nothing to be concerned about. Donna thought both women entirely silly to be fussing in this way. It was only a dream, like all the fabulous, nightmarish, thrilling dreams she'd had... it seemed she'd been having them her whole life. Had it been, or was this the first?
"First or last, first or last," she mused aloud. "The creatures always come, and he's always there as well. The man in the suit, but sometimes he's different. I always know him, and he's always mad."
"Donna, can you hear me?"
"Of course I hear you, Rose Tyler. Big Bad Wolf. When I was a girl, I dreamed of you... You and me together trying to get back home-we're stuck somewhere, somewhere wrong. But when I wake up, I can never remember."
She turned her head over to look at the other woman. "And you, too, Martha Jones. You're always a step ahead of me, and I try to catch up but then you're gone."
Rose's lips were moving, but the words were out of synch, as if she were so far off that the light moved faster than the sound. "Come on, Donna, just do this for me, okay? Just say, I'm the companion of the Doctor."
She felt herself slam downwards, into the floor, into her body, and the suffocating, crushing force of of entire oceans was pulled over her head. "But I'm just a temp," she said quietly, gasping for breath. "This is just a dream." Rose's features began to shift, then fade, a dream that was never dreamt, gone forever. "I'm just a temp."
"No, you're not just a temp, Donna Noble. You're the Doctor's companion. You saved the universe, you met Agatha Christie... Oh, Donna, he misses you so much. Please. Just say it: I'm the Doctor's Companion. My dreams are real."
"My... my dreams are," she couldn't grasp that last word, couldn't make give it meaning in her mind. Real? In her dreamlands it signified nothing.
"Yes, that's it." Martha Jones, high priestess of the unreal , urged her to explore the edges of the fantastic. Donna stretched out with her mind, searched blindly for the limit of her nightmares.
"Your dreams are real; you're the Doctor's companion. You have to believe."
"But I'm just-" A tiny voice with a tiny thought.
Rose cut her off, growing impatient with worry. "You are not just a temp! Everything you see yourself doing in your dreams, you did all of that! They're real, the Doctor's real, I'm real, the TARDIS, all of it. Those aren't dreams you have been having; they're memories. Now do you remember?"
Donna's dreams had been flat, with boundaries and a ceaseless fall into void all around the edges. There were dragons, and terrors beyond those of which she'd already dreamed. Stepping off that ledge, she knew, would be a ceaseless fall in to the abyss. She'd always carefully avoided it in her dreams, skirted around it, kept one eye on it at all times to make sure it hadn't grown any closer. But now she was beckoned over the edge-ordered over, even. It would mean the end of her dreams, the end of her, the end of everything she'd imagined.
She fought the crushing weight that held her to the ground. The void sang to her, and called her like a lover. "Up and over," Donna sighed. "Up and over, down-down-down. My dreams are real." Her eyes flew open and she saw the TARDIS remade around her, piece by piece, threads of time woven line by line , and she took a gasping breath. "Doctor." She looked around, sat up and craned her neck. "Where is he?"
***
The man in brown leaned forward. "Rose."
"The pink knickers..."
"...with the white lace."
There was a pause in the cell.
"Master."
"Twat."
The Time Lord raised an eyebrow at his double across the room. "Good one."
"Thank you."
"Thank me, you mean."
The man in blue shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever. Playing word association with yourself is probably not the best way to pass the time."
"It's better than pulling them out and measuring, I suppose," the Time Lord muttered and studied his fingernails.
"What's that supposed to mean? Some veiled insult about my humanity?"
"Nope. Just a comment on the frequency of your nudity."
The human Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Don't act like you don't like it. I've seen you looking. What do you think they'd say back at the Academy, you lusting after a clone of yourself?"
"They'd probably say it's about par for the course," the Doctor said, with a rueful laugh. "But they'd be wrong."
"Nah, we've always been a bit..." the Doctor sniffed, "well. Vain."
"No, about you being a clone. You're... different."
"Well now," drawled a familiar voice, "isn't this cozy? Nice padded cell, a manifestation of everything you hate about yourself and hours and hours of free time. Freud would have a hard-on."
"Didn't think we'd see you again so soon," the Doctor in brown said, rising to his feet. "We've been talking-there's a way to help you. You don't have to do this."
The Master's laugh turned into a painful cough, and he grimaced before he turned a smile on the Doctors. "Are we going to do this every time we meet? First it's shock, then you act like a disappointed parent, and then you always try to sell me on some let's-all-hold-hands bullshit. I'm not sure if you've caught this, Doctor, but I don't exactly have time to play the traditional games."
"You're dying," the man in blue said flatly. "Really dying."
"Ding ding ding! Right in one. God, you're so thick. The pair of you. You'd think with twice the brains you'd be a little bit more adept, but no, consistently disappointing, that's you."
"You can hardly expect us to help you with that attitude," the metacrisis Doctor said.
"You can hardly expect me to take you seriously. It's like you're some -- half-assed copy. All of the looks, none of the brains. Bad enough when you had bleeding Time Lord hearts. Now you're half-human it's worse, and I would have never believed that before, let me tell you." The Master bent over and coughed, sweat rolling out of his pores.
"This is a little bit disturbing," the human Doctor said under his breath in the ear of his double.
"Tell me about it," the Time Lord said. "It's like I'm seeing the future..."
"Oi, way to be self-absorbed, you ponce," he shot back.
"Dying over here!" the Master yelled. "Literally dying! If we could get back to what matters. Gentlemen, your cooperation would be appreciated... but isn't anticipated."
Two men in black uniforms stepped into the light -- large, beefy-muscled men with shaved heads, and the Time Lord scoffed. "Oh, come on now. Give us something original."
"That's the thing with you," the Master said with a wicked smile and a wheeze, "you never could appreciate a classic."
"So what happens now? Strap to us to Frankenstein tables, suck the life out of us?" the man in blue asked mockingly.
The Master tilted his head to the side. "You know, I'd love to tell you you're wrong, but -- you're right." He turned his back to the Doctors and gestured to the men. "Knock them out first."
The human Doctor put his hands over his head. "Enough with the blows to the cranium already!"
"I'm afraid," the Master said, "that you don't get a choice."
**
Chaper 8
Authors: ladychi and the_tenzo
Beta: spikewriter (special thanks especially to her for this chapter)
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. the_tenzo and I will alternate whose journal we post at.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 |Chapter 6
Chapter Seven
It had been a long time since Rose had heard such a large variety of curse words-and so creatively deployed, too-as were emanating from the blindfolded woman behind her.
"How are we going to get her through the park like this?" Rose hissed to Jack, who was going through traffic lights with the wild abandon of someone who knows he's quite above the law. "It might be the middle of the night, but I think someone is going to notice the loudly swearing woman wearing a blindfold. And why did you have all that stuff in the glove box anyway?"
"A boy scout is always prepared," Jack said, a broad smile on his face in spite of the life or death situation currently afoot.
"I'll prepare you!" Donna bellowed from behind them. "I'm a British subject, I have rights!"
Rose turned to Jack again and bit her lip. "I don't think I'm cut out for kidnapping."
"You get used to it. Oh, would you look at that? Perfect parking spot!" He aimed the car head-in and, one-handed, executed a flawless parallel parking job. "Now that is a work of art," he beamed, unlocking the doors.
"A work of what?!" Donna asked incredulously. "Are you talking about parking a car while I'm back here being kidnapped by bloody Spooks?"
"I'm sorry you can't see it yourself. Maybe later," Jack said, folding the passenger-side seat forward and taking Donna's wrist gently but firmly. "Out you come. There's someone I'd like you to meet." Jack pulled a bit on Donna's wrist but she still stubbornly refused to get out of the car. "I promise we're not going to hurt you. We've got just a little way to walk and then we can talk, okay?"
"Not so fast, sunny Jim!" she huffed. "You've got me blindfolded and handcuffed in the back seat of your car. You give me one good reason why I should trust you."
"Because I'm the man of your dreams," Jack replied, without missing a beat.
"Are you trying to kidnap me or chat me up?"
"Can't a guy do both?"
***
Donna was escorted over roots, under low-hanging branches, and up over curbs-all much more carefully than she'd have expected from people who could be described as "abductors." The man, an American, chatted with her quietly, in the same cheekily familiar tone that he'd used in the car. The woman didn't say much at all, and sounded a bit of a wet-blanket when she did talk.
It seemed like they hadn't walked for very long at all (though it was difficult to judge, being blindfolded) when they came to a stop and Donna felt the man's breath near her ear as he leaned over. "Do you promise not to undo this blindfold if I untie your hands?"
Normally, her first instinct would be to give him a swift kick in the bollocks and make a run for it as soon as her hands were free, but instead she found herself nodding, honestly intending to follow through on her promise. He just sounded so friendly, so nice, like this was some sort of easily-explained joke. The familiar tone in his voice, his flirty good-nature, she felt rather thrown for a loop and unable to refuse.
The sound of a key in a lock, and a door squeaked open on rusty hinges. An old shed? Is this where she was being taken to be quietly and discreetly murdered? It was so confusing, with her captors being so nice, but everything else being so dodgy.
"I let myself in," a new voice said. Another woman, London accent, well-educated but not posh.
Donna was led forward again, up a slight rise, and the floor under her feet clattered as she walked. The sound of their footfalls indicated a large room, but what Donna couldn't figure out was the pulsating, breathing sort of noise. It didn't sound electronic necessarily, but it certainly wasn't anything she'd ever heard before. Regular, like a heartbeat, and soothing. Even the air around her seemed to move over her skin in time with it.
"I've had to patch my computer in to the on-board systems. Nanogenes are being programmed now via the matrix database on Donna Noble."
Donna could only understand about every third word of what the new woman was saying, but she didn't like how the woman was using her name in such a familiar way. "Don't say you know me too!" she piped up, still unsure that she believed what was happening to her.
"I'm sorry we have to do it like this. You'll understand soon, I promise." The first woman, the one she'd ridden in the car with, sat down next to Donna-a bit closer than a total stranger should be sitting, quite frankly. "We just want to help."
"Why do I need helping? I was just minding my own business today and all of a sudden it's Police! and Secure the area! and then I'm being bundled into a car with my hands tied. I didn't need any help until you lot showed up in the first place!" Her protestations were righteously indignant, a bit shrill, but seemed even to her own ears to be out-of-place in this new setting.
"I know," the woman said, trying to sound contrite and calm, but mainly sounding incredibly stressed and worried.
"Programming at eighty-nine percent," the other woman intoned. "Jack, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"What?" the American said, sounding legitimately surprised and taken aback. Donna surmised that being shocked was not a sensation he was normally accustomed to, given his reaction.
"Chula nanogenes are highly suggestible. Your... condition might be a problem for them if you're present for the procedure."
Donna felt a new panic rising, sudden and fierce, as if her brain had simply not let her believe until now that people she didn't know were about to perform a medical procedure on her, without her consent. "Procedure? What are you doing? Where am I? What's going on?" She stood up from the seat and started tugging at the blindfold, trying to find the ties.
Her wrists were grabbed from behind again, but the grip was tentative, as if the woman wasn't very practised at this sort of thing, or perhaps just didn't want to hurt her. The other woman began to announce a series of percentages in the nineties and was insisting that Jack leave immediately. There was an atmosphere chaos as the heavy footsteps of the American man clattered around her, the squeaky-hinged door opened and shut again, and a count-down of sorts was being announced by one of the remaining women.
Donna's fight-or-flight response calmed momentarily and she was able to think clearly about her situation, and the getting out of it. She stopped thrashing, and the woman holding her loosened her grip, just for a second. Donna broke free in one fluid motion, and ripped the blindfold off of her head.
She looked around, at first just scanning for the door but then not quite comprehending what she was seeing. It looked like she was on the set of a film, and a vaguely familiar one at that. Something sci-fi that her grandfather would love. The ceiling was vaulted and high, a central column ran down from it and ended in a ridiculous-looking control panel, covered with dials and switches and levers of all sorts. At the control panel was a young woman in a white lab coat, looking very serious; and behind her was a blonde, her brows knit and her stance one of being prepared to spring in to action. The whole scene was just confusing, like elements that separately she recognized, but together seemed all wrong. The overall effect had left Donna feeling wrong-footed and unsure of how to extricate herself.
"I don't know who you think you are," Donna said, circling on the spot and looking desperately for exits , "but you're not doing any kind of Frankenstein thing on me!"
"Shit!" the blonde muttered under her breath and ran around the console towards the doors, to block Donna's exit. "We're not trying to hurt you, Donna, I promise!"
"It's all right," the woman in the lab coat said, moving closer, but not so close that she'd be liable to catch a left hook. "I'm a medical doctor." She pointed to an official-looking badge, pinned to her lab coat.
"Dr. Martha Jones," Donna read, narrowing her eyes. "Martha Jones, Martha Jones..." She muttered the name quietly to herself, feeling how it rolled out of her mouth easily, familiarly. She was sure she'd heard it before, and now looking at the young doctor, was sure she'd met her before. Normally, Donna would have no problem peppering the woman with questions until she figured out what party or pub quiz or temp assignment at which they'd met, but she found she couldn't stop repeating the name, like a mantra. Her mouth moved, air passed over her vocal chords, and she didn't feel in control of any of it.
That's when the sensation began at the base of her spine and started to move upwards. A tickle, then a tingle, and then a full-blown shiver, causing her fingers to go numb and goose-bumps to break out all over her left side. The feeling moved upwards as it grew in intensity, and a blinding white pain shot through her head, unlike anything she'd ever felt before. The last thing she did before squeezing her eyes shut was to take a long look at the blonde woman standing before her, naming her without knowing where the words came from or what they meant: "Rose Tyler. Oh... oh my God..." she moaned, and crumpled to the floor.
Everything went white-a searing brightness that threatened to burn the skin off her bones and consume her in one hot instant. She felt like she was imploding, collapsing in on herself. She scratched and clutched at her head, chanted the same words over and over like a litany until they'd lost all meaning. A new word bubbled to the surface, and broke free, a scream that could have been a call for salvation or to be put out of her agony: "Doctor!"
Time sped up, rewound and went round again until it slowed to a crawl, and a creeping heaviness saturated her limbs. The pain didn't so much as go away as ceased to be happening to her. That body was somewhere else, was someone else now. She felt free-freer than she'd ever felt since childhood. She wanted to skip and sing, looking down on her body as agonized writhing turned to shudders, shudders turned to twitches, and finally an unnatural stillness.
"Oh, Mum, you'll never believe the dream I just had!" she said, tentatively opening her eyes again.
Rose smiled benevolently down at her and grabbed her hand. "It's okay, Donna, we're here."
"Something's not right," Dr. Jones said darkly, and she reached over to take Donna's pulse at her wrist. "She thinks her memories are dreams." Dr. Jones sounded upset and concerned, but there was nothing to be concerned about. Donna thought both women entirely silly to be fussing in this way. It was only a dream, like all the fabulous, nightmarish, thrilling dreams she'd had... it seemed she'd been having them her whole life. Had it been, or was this the first?
"First or last, first or last," she mused aloud. "The creatures always come, and he's always there as well. The man in the suit, but sometimes he's different. I always know him, and he's always mad."
"Donna, can you hear me?"
"Of course I hear you, Rose Tyler. Big Bad Wolf. When I was a girl, I dreamed of you... You and me together trying to get back home-we're stuck somewhere, somewhere wrong. But when I wake up, I can never remember."
She turned her head over to look at the other woman. "And you, too, Martha Jones. You're always a step ahead of me, and I try to catch up but then you're gone."
Rose's lips were moving, but the words were out of synch, as if she were so far off that the light moved faster than the sound. "Come on, Donna, just do this for me, okay? Just say, I'm the companion of the Doctor."
She felt herself slam downwards, into the floor, into her body, and the suffocating, crushing force of of entire oceans was pulled over her head. "But I'm just a temp," she said quietly, gasping for breath. "This is just a dream." Rose's features began to shift, then fade, a dream that was never dreamt, gone forever. "I'm just a temp."
"No, you're not just a temp, Donna Noble. You're the Doctor's companion. You saved the universe, you met Agatha Christie... Oh, Donna, he misses you so much. Please. Just say it: I'm the Doctor's Companion. My dreams are real."
"My... my dreams are," she couldn't grasp that last word, couldn't make give it meaning in her mind. Real? In her dreamlands it signified nothing.
"Yes, that's it." Martha Jones, high priestess of the unreal , urged her to explore the edges of the fantastic. Donna stretched out with her mind, searched blindly for the limit of her nightmares.
"Your dreams are real; you're the Doctor's companion. You have to believe."
"But I'm just-" A tiny voice with a tiny thought.
Rose cut her off, growing impatient with worry. "You are not just a temp! Everything you see yourself doing in your dreams, you did all of that! They're real, the Doctor's real, I'm real, the TARDIS, all of it. Those aren't dreams you have been having; they're memories. Now do you remember?"
Donna's dreams had been flat, with boundaries and a ceaseless fall into void all around the edges. There were dragons, and terrors beyond those of which she'd already dreamed. Stepping off that ledge, she knew, would be a ceaseless fall in to the abyss. She'd always carefully avoided it in her dreams, skirted around it, kept one eye on it at all times to make sure it hadn't grown any closer. But now she was beckoned over the edge-ordered over, even. It would mean the end of her dreams, the end of her, the end of everything she'd imagined.
She fought the crushing weight that held her to the ground. The void sang to her, and called her like a lover. "Up and over," Donna sighed. "Up and over, down-down-down. My dreams are real." Her eyes flew open and she saw the TARDIS remade around her, piece by piece, threads of time woven line by line , and she took a gasping breath. "Doctor." She looked around, sat up and craned her neck. "Where is he?"
***
The man in brown leaned forward. "Rose."
"The pink knickers..."
"...with the white lace."
There was a pause in the cell.
"Master."
"Twat."
The Time Lord raised an eyebrow at his double across the room. "Good one."
"Thank you."
"Thank me, you mean."
The man in blue shrugged his shoulders. "Whatever. Playing word association with yourself is probably not the best way to pass the time."
"It's better than pulling them out and measuring, I suppose," the Time Lord muttered and studied his fingernails.
"What's that supposed to mean? Some veiled insult about my humanity?"
"Nope. Just a comment on the frequency of your nudity."
The human Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Don't act like you don't like it. I've seen you looking. What do you think they'd say back at the Academy, you lusting after a clone of yourself?"
"They'd probably say it's about par for the course," the Doctor said, with a rueful laugh. "But they'd be wrong."
"Nah, we've always been a bit..." the Doctor sniffed, "well. Vain."
"No, about you being a clone. You're... different."
"Well now," drawled a familiar voice, "isn't this cozy? Nice padded cell, a manifestation of everything you hate about yourself and hours and hours of free time. Freud would have a hard-on."
"Didn't think we'd see you again so soon," the Doctor in brown said, rising to his feet. "We've been talking-there's a way to help you. You don't have to do this."
The Master's laugh turned into a painful cough, and he grimaced before he turned a smile on the Doctors. "Are we going to do this every time we meet? First it's shock, then you act like a disappointed parent, and then you always try to sell me on some let's-all-hold-hands bullshit. I'm not sure if you've caught this, Doctor, but I don't exactly have time to play the traditional games."
"You're dying," the man in blue said flatly. "Really dying."
"Ding ding ding! Right in one. God, you're so thick. The pair of you. You'd think with twice the brains you'd be a little bit more adept, but no, consistently disappointing, that's you."
"You can hardly expect us to help you with that attitude," the metacrisis Doctor said.
"You can hardly expect me to take you seriously. It's like you're some -- half-assed copy. All of the looks, none of the brains. Bad enough when you had bleeding Time Lord hearts. Now you're half-human it's worse, and I would have never believed that before, let me tell you." The Master bent over and coughed, sweat rolling out of his pores.
"This is a little bit disturbing," the human Doctor said under his breath in the ear of his double.
"Tell me about it," the Time Lord said. "It's like I'm seeing the future..."
"Oi, way to be self-absorbed, you ponce," he shot back.
"Dying over here!" the Master yelled. "Literally dying! If we could get back to what matters. Gentlemen, your cooperation would be appreciated... but isn't anticipated."
Two men in black uniforms stepped into the light -- large, beefy-muscled men with shaved heads, and the Time Lord scoffed. "Oh, come on now. Give us something original."
"That's the thing with you," the Master said with a wicked smile and a wheeze, "you never could appreciate a classic."
"So what happens now? Strap to us to Frankenstein tables, suck the life out of us?" the man in blue asked mockingly.
The Master tilted his head to the side. "You know, I'd love to tell you you're wrong, but -- you're right." He turned his back to the Doctors and gestured to the men. "Knock them out first."
The human Doctor put his hands over his head. "Enough with the blows to the cranium already!"
"I'm afraid," the Master said, "that you don't get a choice."
**
Chaper 8