Fic: Inertia (Doctor Who)
Title: Inertia
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Spoilers: S1 and S2 - through Doomsday, and including casting spoilers for S3
Vital stats: Approx. 28,700 words. Complete. Humor/Drama. Post-Doomsday "fix-it" fic.
Summary: Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight ahead, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed. [First Law of Motion - Cohen & Whitman 1999 translation]
A/N: I *completely* blame this all on Doomsday trauma. I began writing this about two weeks after it aired, and just kept going. It's by far the longest fic I've ever written. Spoilers are through Doomsday, obviously since it takes place post-Doomsday, but it also makes heavy references to/draws from many episodes throughout S1 and S2.
Thanks to my *utterly* awesome betas, beck_liz and splash_the_cat, for wading through this monster. Anything wrong or just plain lame, they tried to correct or take out; however, sometimes I can't be helped. Thanks to the Brit-speak checkers (aka UK Production Team) of brookeormian, elaminen and sethoz, for each taking sections of the fic and making sure I didn't use words like "flashlight." Any American words still in the fic were snuck in after they read it. Thanks to elismor for listening to me whine, complain and say "hey, does this work?" just about every day since July. And thanks to pretty much anyone I've ever had a meta discussion with, as they unknowingly helped me hammer out many concepts in the fic.
You can read it at my site:
http://sg1michelle.homestead.com/dw/inertia.html
Or here on LJ:
*
"Martha!"
The Doctor stepped over one downed service droid and then another that still twitched.
It had been brilliant, hadn't it? He ran through it again. Yes, brilliant. Just needed an audience, and his was currently not in the vicinity.
He crouched down next to the twitching droid, poked at it with the sonic screwdriver and grinned. Really fried them all when the command link was severed. Destroying things was fun when non-sentient things were involved - no R2-D2s here. He held down the button on the screwdriver.
"Ooh, you won't be needing this, my friend, but I might." The Doctor liberated a gyroservo from the robot's casing and held it up. "Someday, that is. Never know when one of these will come in handy. Come to think of it, the toaster's been acting up again." He tossed it in the air once and then pocketed it. "And toast can always stand to be more...stable."
He poked around inside the droid but decided he had the only thing worth keeping. "Hmm. Do I need more?" He looked at the surrounding droids. No sense in being greedy.
The Doctor stood up and walked to one of the enormous, arched windows in the grand hall. There was really no point to the windows since the foliage outside obscured any view - probably placed there by the now-former dictator to shield him from the masses - but he could hear faint shouts from outside.
Probably one of those people would have thought it was brilliant.
"MARTHA!" he bellowed.
"Oi!" Martha poked her head around the corner of the main entry to the hall. "Wake the..." Her eyes darted around the room. "...non-living, why don't you?"
"Really now, Martha. Not even remotely funny, but I'll give you points for trying. Where've you been?"
He was rewarded with a wry smile. "Worried?"
The Doctor let out a small snort. "About a former Lieutenant in the Jangian guard?" He gave her a quick salute. "Never!"
She flinched and he kicked himself. Damn mouth.
Former.
Martha shrugged. "Was busy taking out the shield generator so these people can get off this rock. Someone has to save the world, you know."
"Someone, yes. Me, in fact. Oh!" He grabbed her by the shoulder and steered her out into the corridor towards the TARDIS. "So the magistrate was really a robot, yeah? How these people didn't notice I'll never know. And as I pulled off his head, I said, 'This isn't something to lose your head over. Oh, wait. Maybe it is!' Brilliant, yeah? Huh?" He grinned at her.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Guess you had to be there."
"Really now, Doc. Not even remotely funny, but I'll give you points for trying," she smirked.
"Seriously. What can I do to make you stop with the 'Doc?' Makes me sound like a rabbit. Or does it make you sound like a rabbit? Well, someone's sounding like a rabbit and it's not pleasant." He put his key into the TARDIS door.
"So, off we go then?" Martha asked. "Cleanup's not your thing."
"Yup. People have been liberated. What they do now is up to them. Besides, I've never been good with a mop."
She sighed and he ignored it. They'd had this conversation before.
"I'm gonna get something to eat," Martha announced, following him in. "You hungry?"
"Not really. But since you're headed to the galley," he pulled the gyroservo out of his pocket and tossed it to her. "Throw this in the top drawer, third from the right, would you?"
"Sure thing, Doc," she answered. He made a face at her and she chuckled as she left.
The Doctor frowned at the console and then batted at a lever with his hand, sending the TARDIS into the time vortex. There was no point in picking some new destination at the moment since Martha would probably want to sleep soon. So he let the TARDIS cruise as he hopped onto the chair, kicking his legs up onto the console.
He scratched at his knee, wrinkling the fabric of his blue suit. A faint noise from the direction of the galley grabbed his attention and he smiled.
Martha Jones.
He hadn't planned on picking up someone again so soon. Well, there had been the whole Donna nightmare, which he decided was the universe playing a really sick joke on him - it wouldn't have been the first time. But the TARDIS had caught a distress signal from a Delta Colony in the Pentaris Quadrant in the 34th century. Or what was left of the Delta Colony after a Birondite attack. Martha had been banged up but alive - the only one the TARDIS found out of nearly ten thousand. That had been six months ago, relative time.
By the time she had recovered, he found he liked having her around. He offered and she stayed.
But she kept things close to the vest and he didn't blame her. From what she had told him, he knew the Lieutenant thing, that she had just started training in medicine, she'd been stationed at the Delta Colony on a long-term assignment, she used to have a cat and she hated tea. The last two were fairly disturbing. Oh, and she was devastatingly beautiful but was the type that didn't care, or wanted you to think she didn't care. He hadn't quite decided on that one yet.
She reminded him a bit of Jack Harkness, without the libido from hell; a bit of Ace, without the need to blow everything up; and a bit of himself, without his fantastic wit, if he did say so himself. Not that she needed to remind him of anyone, but it was hard not to haul out the mental checklist. He was just glad that he hadn't met her right after the regeneration into his previous incarnation. They probably would have found the nearest pub and drank themselves into oblivion.
The Doctor rubbed his eyes. His mind was starting to wander, which meant that soon he'd be...
"Vector tracker," he announced to the room. "Needs fixing, I'd imagine."
He whipped out the sonic screwdriver and threw himself under the flooring, poking at wires and tubes. But like every other time something didn't actually need fixing, he was soon back to doing it.
He was thinking about Rose.
*
"Well, stop touching it!" It was all Rose could do to not glare at the man who had just seconds ago asked her what he should do about the metal disk that kept shocking him. He blinked owlishly at her and set the object down on the table.
"Really, where do they find these people?" Rose muttered under her breath and retreated to her office, glancing at her name on the door. After nearly a year, she still found the thought of having an office bizarre, but at least it had a door. That could close. And lock.
She flopped down in her chair, wishing for some tea but not wanting to go back out at the moment. She so needed this holiday that would be starting in... She looked at her watch. Thirty minutes. Off to nowhere - no plans. Just her and a backpack.
She pecked at the computer and checked her email. One was from Mickey saying he and Jake wouldn't be flying back from the Glasgow office today, so he wouldn't see her before she took off.
"Oh well," Rose sighed. The guys would have dragged her out to a pub anyway and it probably wouldn't have been best to start out her trek with a hangover. She typed a 'don't do anything I wouldn't do' reply and sent it on its way.
Twenty-five minutes.
A tiny feeling in her stomach nagged at her, putting a damper on the excitement of the holiday. She'd only be gone a week and then she'd be right back at this desk, staring at the computer again.
Something Rose barely wanted to admit to herself was that after nearly a year, Torchwood was starting to lose its appeal. She should be grateful she still got to deal with the strange and unusual. She should. But here the strange and unusual mainly sat in crates and was poked at by scientists. The "Red Alert Incidents" - which she mentally changed to "Mauve" - where they rushed out beyond the walls of Torchwood, were few and far between. Most of them turned out to be nothing. Not that it was all dull - last week they found a meteor that was pretty intriguing, it being orange and humming and all, but it was packed up in a crate. And then poked at by scientists.
Hopping around time and space looking for the interesting was easy. But stuck in one time and on one planet, waiting for the interesting to come to you? There was a lot of down time. Rose spent most of her days wandering around to see if she recognized anything, or being visited by a wide-eyed person, looking at her as if she was alien, asking if she knew what something did or what it was called. She was starting to make names up. That was probably bad.
The big problem was, what else was there?
She typed in her "away" auto-response message on her Torchwood email.
Twenty-one minutes.
Rose closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. It all came down to the fact that what she really wanted, she could never have. And she had no desire to get over that problem at the moment. The Doctor would probably be kicking her ass right now if he saw her. Rose was sure of it. She could still see that hologram that now seemed like a million years ago.
"Oh, to hell with it." Rose shut down the computer and grabbed her bag, switching off the lights as she closed the door behind her.
Wandering past one of the field agent's desks, she found two men in the middle of a conversation. "Has she tried bait?"
"Three kinds."
"Sounds like something for RSPCA or DEFRA then, John."
"Probably," the other replied.
"Problem?" Rose asked, part of her hoping for something interesting, and part of her wanting to just get out of there.
"Nah. Just some woman upset that slugs have taken a liking to her garden."
Rose chuckled and kept moving. "Right. See you in a week," she called over her shoulder.
The long drive home made Rose think of another thing she'd be glad to leave behind for a week: her car. It was a necessary evil since the house was so far out of town. She really needed to get her own place, but anytime she started talking about it, her mum would shut her down. Maybe it was something to bring up again after she got back.
She suddenly remembered she'd meant to pick up smaller bottles of shampoo and conditioner before heading out of town. She'd have to take her chances with the selection at the small store in the village near the house. Rose detoured left and found an empty spot just down the street. She hopped out and started walking.
And that's when she heard it.
It was soft at first. For a minute she thought she was losing it. But then it got louder.
She raced up the street in the direction she thought it had come from. The sound had stopped but it had to be somewhere close. She hurdled over a dog, much to the surprise of its owner, and rounded a corner to nothing.
Damn damn damn. Where the hell was it?
She flew across the street and around another corner, eyes instantly finding it - that wonderful, glorious, magnificent blue box!
He had done it! He'd found a way!
"WHOOO!" Rose yelled at the top of her lungs, throwing her arms in the air. Laughing and blinking back tears, she bounded towards the TARDIS. She heard the familiar creak of the door opening, music to her ears! She had a "took you long enough" all ready to go when she stopped.
He was...
He wasn't...
"Hello?" The Doctor, looking somewhat taken aback at his greeting party, stared at her with those bright blue eyes.
Then Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth and destroyer of the Emperor of the Daleks, did something very embarrassing.
She fainted.
*
The Doctor had arrived at the beating-himself-up-over-the-Torchwood-incident phase of his Rose musings, his favoured mental punishment. How could he have expected her to hold on? If only he had chains. Thoughts he'd had had no less than several hundred times before. But it was pointless to think about it since what was done was done.
He disconnected a wire, the TARDIS groaned, and he quickly reconnected it.
He prayed that she was getting on with her life. She had always been so worried about him leaving her, even as far back as their first visit to her home, and...well, it wasn't as if leaving her was his choice. Not in the end.
Sure, he had to try and get her to go with her mum, but she came back - which was more than predictable, it was inevitable. And then calmly telling him she'd never leave him, which she had been telling him in lots of ways since practically the beginning. He just never allowed himself to think like that. She was human after all, and so all that had been brushed aside.
Sort of.
Well, not really.
But, again, what was done was done and replaying it all would get him nowhere. Of course, that fact didn't seem to help during idle moments.
He sighed and brushed an errant piece of tubing away from his face.
He really wanted her to be happy now, and not spend her life with a pain he could never fix. But it was also the getting on with her life that he dreaded. She should have the husband, probably Mickey, the kids and that damn mortgage. It was a proper human life, after all.
But then, his thoughts would have absolutely no effect on what actually happened to Rose, right? So in his mind, he could be selfish. It was harmless. Yes, how he was going to picture her was as Torchwood guru and mystery-solver extraordinaire who would have a happy, fulfilling, but very single life. Nun-like, even. She'd have a nice little house with a fence and a garden. Oh! And a dog. That she'd name Mickey.
He was happily stocking the bookshelves and DVD case in her nice little house when the TARDIS jolted violently, sending the screwdriver flying. Scrambling after it, he pitched to the side as the TARDIS shook again, this time banging his head against a platform support.
"Dammit, OW!"
Spotting the screwdriver, he grabbed it and hauled himself out of the flooring as the TARDIS continued to shake. Everything tilted as he got to his feet and he narrowly avoided crashing into the railing.
"Easy, now!" he yelled, lunging at the controls. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Martha stagger into the room.
"What's happening?" she shouted to him, trying to keep herself steady.
"Don't know! She's gone all...wonky."
"Technical term?"
"Very! Wonky," he said, smacking at a control. "Related to the state of wonk. Stated in the form of a sentence, the TARDIS will be going wonky today."
"Have I mentioned I'm glad you're in charge?"
The Doctor grinned as he tried flipping the manual override switch a few times with no response. The TARDIS was in control, although 'control' probably wasn't the best word. "Well, I'm not the one in charge at the moment. And seems we're headed for a landing." He looked up at the glow of the time rotor. "Usually she's much sneakier about it, turning up in 1879 instead of 1979 or Mongolia instead of Bannet Nine."
As if in response, the violent shaking subsided to a mere trembling.
"I wondered about the Mongolia thing," Martha commented.
The Doctor sucked in his breath. "But there's always some cosmic reason for it all. Oh, there's a good chance everyone will be covered in slime by the end of the cosmic reason, but then the universe does lean towards the dirty side."
"So, boots?"
He smirked and the TARDIS finally stopped moving. Usually he'd happily walk out the doors, not a clue where he was, but not under circumstances like these. He tapped at the monitor and waited as an image of the outside world appeared.
"Where are we?" Martha asked, peering over his shoulder.
The Doctor stared at the monitor.
Unbelievable.
He strode towards the doors, snatching up his coat from the railing, refusing to believe they were there. Maybe it just looked like it, he told himself as he shook on his coat and opened the door. But one step outside and he knew he was back.
It just wasn't fair.
The Doctor had purposefully not visited the same places he'd gone to with Rose. It was too soon. But now there he was. It was a few years later here, of course, but still. And the TARDIS had seen fit to land in the same damn spot as before.
Martha appeared from behind the TARDIS doors and instantly the Doctor went into intergalactic-tour-guide mode. He smiled at her.
"Martha? Welcome to New Earth."
*
Rose blinked open her eyes to find him kneeling over her.
"Oh, awake then, I see."
She stared.
He stared back.
"Doctor?"
A puzzled expression appeared on his face. "Yes?" he asked slowly.
Rose started to laugh. She was going mad. Yes, that was it. Mad, and the Doctor would soon turn into a giant rabbit or something.
She sat up. "You're not supposed to look like that."
"Like what? Like me? I look just fine, thank you very much."
"You're from earlier, yeah?"
"What?"
Hold on. This couldn't be the Doctor she knew; if he had this face and was from an earlier time, he would still know her. Plus what the Doctor had said about not being able to hop between worlds...
Oh man, she was dumb.
This Doctor was this universe's Doctor. But hadn't the Doctor said that was impossible? That there weren't parallel versions of himself? It seemed like he had said at one time, but she couldn't remember for sure. Although, it wouldn't have been the first time he was wrong. And now that she really looked at him, there was something different, although she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.
"You're really not going to believe this," she said, putting a hand into her hair.
"You'd be surprised at what I believe. Try me!"
Rose took a deep breath. "Okay then. About a year ago I came to this world from a parallel universe. Before that I had been travelling around with the Doctor. The parallel version of you."
The Doctor stared at her and then smirked. "That's impossible. Almost had me going there for a mo." He wagged a finger at her and stood up.
"Really." Rose scrambled up after him, shaking off the lingering lightheadedness.
"Sorry. Not buying it," he said as he turned away from her.
Where was he going? Back to the TARDIS? Rose racked her brain for something irrefutable to give him and remembered something he had shared with her not too long before the whole Torchwood incident. It was a risk since things didn't always happen in the same way as in other worlds, but it was worth a try. "You got this body at the end of the Time War, yeah?"
He turned back, his eyes now dark and piercing.
"I'm sorry," she said. She felt the instinct of wanting to hold his hand or even hug him kick in, but she held herself back. "The same thing happened to the Doctor I was with. He ran into me right after it happened."
"It's been fifty years since the Time War. Every day I try not to think about it and what do I get? A blonde who faints at the sight of me, and then wakes up yapping about it."
"What, fifty years?"
"I moisturise."
Rose gave him a half smile. "It's not that. It's just that he only lasted in that body for about a year."
"Careless bloke."
Yeah, careless. Right. Rose suddenly thought of the game station. "Doctor!" she said urgently. "There are Daleks hiding in the year 200,100!"
He narrowed his eyes. "I don't think so."
"No, really. They were controlling Earth! The planet was all..." She waved her hands around, trying to find the right word. "...nasty." Good enough.
"The Fourth Great and Bountiful Empire? Swung by there about five years ago. Looked fine to me. Better than fine, in fact."
Rose frowned. "Okay, maybe not everything's the same."
He cocked his head to the side, looking quizzically at her. "All right. Say I believe you. Not sure how it's possible, but you look like you're telling the truth. Or think you're telling the truth."
"Think?! How could I make this up?"
"Don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm the Doctor, which you apparently already know. And you are...?" He held out his hand and she shook it.
"Rose Tyler."
"Nice to meet you, Rose. And now if you'll excuse me..."
Rose quickly interrupted him. "Don't suppose you'd let me buy you a cup of tea or something. Two sugars? Or maybe..." She trailed off.
"Maybe what?"
Ever since she'd come to this world, she had been going through her life with a 'what else is there?' attitude. And now to have the Doctor, or a version of him, and that 'what else' life right in front of her? "Have tea on the TARDIS? Don't suppose you're in the market for a..." Again she tried to find the right word. "...an assistant?"
The Doctor took a step back from her, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I don't take up much room?" she tried.
"Suppose you've been preapproved."
"Yes!" Rose pointed at him. "Preapproved!"
"'Course the parallel me, which I'm not completely buying yet, mind, could be barmy."
"Only slightly." Rose felt a twinge of that lingering melancholy that had followed her in the past year. But she mentally pushed that aside, giving the Doctor a hopeful smile.
He moved his jaw back and forth. "All right. I'll give it a go."
She couldn't help it. Rose grabbed his hand and actually bounced. The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her and she stopped. "Sorry. Not mad," she said grinning at him. "Can we...?" She nodded at the TARDIS.
"Okay, but no bouncing," the Doctor said, smirking. He ambled over to the door and unlocked it. He barely had time to get out of the way before Rose dashed inside.
The glowing console and the arching beams, the hum of the TARDIS, even that faintly metallic smell all blasted into her. Rose ran her hand along the railing as she walked up the ramp. She was really here. Not some dream where she would wake up cursing the fact that it had only been in her mind. Her hand moved across the edge of the console as she mentally identified some of the buttons and knobs.
She now thought she had the tiniest inkling of what the Doctor felt with the TARDIS and why he even stroked it, as Sarah Jane had put it. This was home.
The Doctor's head appeared from the other side of the console. "Call me crazy, but I have a sudden urge to make sure there are no Daleks in 200,100."
"Sounds pretty opposite of crazy to me." Rose hovered as he manoeuvred the controls and peered at the monitor. "I should probably mention we also found a Dalek in a museum run by a man named Van Statten."
"That nutter? He wanted to add me to his collection, which I ever so impolitely declined, but he didn't have any Daleks."
"Huh. Oh," she said as she waved in the direction of the monitor. "There was something about the Daleks being hidden because of some signal put out by the game station."
The Doctor fiddled with the controls. "Did find one on Justicia. Don't suppose you ever went there," he said, still staring at the monitor.
"Justicia? The prison system? There weren't any Daleks there. Not when we went."
"Nope," the Doctor announced as he straightened up. "No Daleks, no signal and no game station as a matter of fact." He clapped his hands together and grinned at her. "Right, Rose Tyler. Where do you want to go first?"
*
"Come on. Here we go." The Doctor walked briskly towards the bridge that would take them to the city of New New York, his coat flapping in the breeze.
"This place is amazing. When are we?" Martha asked, scrambling after him.
"The year five-point-five-slash-apple-slash-fifty-three. Or five billion and twenty-seven, whichever floats your boat."
"Blimey."
"Oh, I'd watch out for the cat people. They lean towards morally ambiguous. Of course, that's a cat for you."
"Cat people?"
"I wonder if there are any non-nun cats. They may all be locked up," the Doctor mused. "Now here's a thought - did the cat people have cats? That would be amusingly odd. Of course, humans do seem to like monkeys, so there is precedent."
"Back on the monkey thing, are we?"
"Well, you should be happy you lot didn't evolve from anteaters!" he said, sidestepping a plant. "Big, long noses. Small, little ears. All the..." The unmistakable glow of a teleport appeared to his left and the Doctor and Martha stopped. "...ants."
"It is very good to see you again, Doctor," a telepathic voice called to him.
The Doctor smiled. "Martha? Might I introduce the Face of Boe?"
"Nice to meet you," she said to him. "Do I shake anything?" she whispered to the Doctor.
He chuckled and walked up to the life support tank. "So," he said, putting his hands in his pockets, "I have a feeling I have you to thank for our detour. As you said, 'the third time, for the last time?'"
"Indeed it is."
"And by last time, you mean..."
"It is now my time to die."
The Doctor couldn't help but feel for this legend of the universe. "I'm sorry."
The Face of Boe closed his eyes, his lips moving but no thoughts sent. Finally, eyes still closed, he said, "I have had more than a full life."
"Yes you have." The Doctor gave him a warm smile.
He looked up at him. "My apologies, Doctor. I should not have tried to summon you on your last trip here. I was mistaken as to your time." Even though telepathic, his words had become slow and deliberate.
"Ah, so that's why you left. You had to meet me at a certain point in my time. And this is the correct time?"
"Quite right."
"Very intriguing," the Doctor said, loving the mystery of it all. "So on Platform One, were you mistaken as well?"
"No, that was deliberate," he said slowly. "Let's just say I was curious."
"And was that curiosity satisfied?"
"Yes, it was." There was a touch of amusement in the Face of Boe's voice.
"And so now we're here. And you have a great secret."
"Great, yes. And in some ways..." he trailed off.
"Some ways?" the Doctor prompted.
"You said you weren't ready," he said faintly into the Doctor's mind.
"I said?"
The Face of Boe closed his eyes, murmuring.
"Did I tell you to meet me?" the Doctor asked.
"The secret...the secret..." The Face of Boe gave a weary sigh. "There is a legend. To some who have read it, it is prophecy."
"Read what?"
"Come."
The next second, the Doctor and Martha were surrounded by the glow of a teleport.
*
Rose rattled off times and places where she and the Doctor had helped or rescued people, to see if they needed help or rescue again. Unlike the incidents with the Daleks, the Doctor scratched each one off her list with a "been there, done that." Sure the details were different, but it made her wonder about how the Doctor chose where to go each day. Or maybe the TARDIS had a lot to do with it. They did seem to end up in the wrong spots often enough.
He then started listing some places, which Rose nixed, having gone to them herself. They just hadn't been on her "need to save the world" list.
"How long did you say you travelled with him?" the Doctor finally asked, taking a seat.
"I sorta lost track of time. I think it was about two years."
"You two were busy."
"So..." Rose looked around. "No one else here? You between travelling companions at the moment?"
"Well, not between anymore," he said with a smile. "But yeah. Last person on the TARDIS was Camron. He was a Plarnite, which meant cleaning up a lot."
Rose smirked at the implication. "When was that?"
"'Bout twenty years ago."
"What? You've been on your own for that long?"
"I'm a big boy. I'm pretty good at looking after myself."
"But...don't you miss having someone around? Talking to someone?"
"I talk to people all the time out there," he waved towards the door.
That thing, that difference she couldn't identify before - it was in his eyes. When she had met the Doctor, her Doctor, there was raw pain there. But this Doctor - there was a sort of sad resignation. And he was alone.
Or maybe her mind was just filling in blanks that weren't there.
"It's not the same," she said.
"So now you're a judge of my social skills?"
"Sorry. No."
She ached at the thought that her Doctor could be alone like that. That he might go wandering around for years, even decades without someone. But no, with his new body came a new personality and one that was very social, right? Surely he would have found someone to travel with by now. She just couldn't picture him sitting alone in the TARDIS. She wouldn't let herself.
No, she wanted to believe that right now he was off being himself, surrounded by people that cared about him and generally having fun. And hopefully more fun than she and this Doctor were having at the moment. "Well, I'm stumped. Think of anything yet?" Rose asked, watching the Doctor stare into the glow.
"Right. Got it," the Doctor declared, moving to the console. "Tea. You said tea and so we'll have tea. Ever been to Bannet Nine?"
"Doesn't sound familiar."
"Always wanted to go. Best tea in the universe is made there! Just always got sidetracked for some reason."
She grinned at him. "Fantastic!"
He grinned back.
"Oh, hang on." Rose fished in her jacket pocket and pulled out her mobile and a crumpled wad of notes that had been meant for the shampoo. "Gotta make a call," she said, shoving the money back in the pocket.
"Sorry, that won't work in here," he said as he went about adjusting the controls.
She waved the mobile at him. "Superphone. Very handy. Haven't gotten a bill yet."
Rose purposely called the house instead of her mum's mobile and was relieved when she got the machine.
"You guys are not going to believe this. I ran into the Doctor! Well, the one from this universe. And, mum, he looks like he used to look!" Rose glanced at the Doctor, who was doing a bad job of pretending not to listen. "Oh, I left the car on Thomas Street, down from the market and my bag's in there." Rose patted the console and grinned again. "We're going to a planet called Bannet Nine! For tea! Can you believe it? Love you lots and kiss Petey for me!" She pushed the button on the mobile.
"You have family in this world?" The Doctor looked surprised.
"It's a long story, but yeah. My mum and my friend Mickey also came over from the other universe."
"I think I'd like to hear that story. Sounds like tea conversation."
Rose suddenly felt a lump in her throat that she swallowed against. "Yeah. Sure." Maybe some stuff she'd leave out.
The TARDIS stopped moving and Rose put that feeling away, back to that familiar corner of her mind, and instead focused on the fact that they had just landed on a whole new planet. She was about to breathe non-Earth air, see non-Earth things and drink non-Earth tea. She shot the Doctor a smile and took off down the ramp.
Rose couldn't help it, she laughed as she stepped foot out of the TARDIS and onto the alien world, which earned her a suspicious look from the Doctor as he followed her.
"Still not mad, right?" he asked.
"Not anymore. Let's go!"
They started walking through the vast, open meadow the TARDIS landed in, towards a structure that looked to be about a mile away. Unfamiliar sounds and smells surrounded her in the brown, grassy landscape. A small, red bird flew overhead and she watched it until it finally disappeared into a very green tree, its leaves rustling in the light, warm breeze.
It all was intoxicating.
Rose bent down and plucked a flower from the ground.
"It's green!" She smiled. "And it's beautiful! And it smells..." She sniffed it. "Okay, it smells really bad. But it's still beautiful." She held it out towards the Doctor.
"Yup. Beautiful." He glanced at it and then began to scan the horizon with a look that Rose recognized.
"Trouble?"
"You see any tea plants?"
"Well, no. But I just figured we landed in a non-tea spot."
"Something's not right."
Rose dropped the flower and began looking around as well, her guard now up. A beautiful meadow which was surrounded by groves of trees - it was all the perfect setting for a picnic. But if the Doctor was concerned, she'd be stupid not to be as well.
As they neared the structure, a metallic grid-like tower that rose about twenty feet in the air, Rose noticed movement to their right. She stopped and a pair of tiny eyes surrounded by a mound of tan fur blinked at her. The little animal, barely bigger than her foot, chirped.
"Aww, how sweet!" She crouched down but kept her distance. It blinked at her again.
"Rose?"
Rose looked up and there, hovering above them with barely a sound, was a round, grey thing, about a meter in length. It had a shiny black band across what she assumed was the front and it sort of reminded her of the bottom part of one of those old-fashioned vacuum cleaners.
The thing hovered for a moment and then a bright beam shot out from it, straight at the animal. Rose jumped back and instinctively grabbed onto the Doctor's jacket sleeve. The thing turned towards the Doctor and Rose before hovering off into the trees.
Rose stared at the now-charred remains of the little creature.
"Okay, pretty sure this isn't Bannet Nine," the Doctor said, starting to walk again.
"What was that?" Rose asked, scrambling after him.
"We're on a wild game planet. That drone you saw? Runs about three million credits. Fun for the idle rich."
"They're hunting these creatures for sport?"
"Fox. Deer. Fish. Sounding familiar?"
"Yeah. Why didn't it shoot us?"
"They're programmed for one thing. They have these clubs where they find a planet and set their drones loose on a specific target. Whoever's drone scores the most, wins."
"Scores?" Rose felt a bit sick. "Can't we do something?"
"Stay out of the way?"
"Oh, that's nice." Another ball of fur skittered past her legs, whining as it went. "Doctor!"
He stopped at the tower. "Right. Relay for the drones. Take out the relay, take out the drones."
Rose sighed in relief that this Doctor hadn't turned out to be a heartless - or was that heartsless - fluffy animal destroyer. Not that he was actually killing them, but not doing anything would have been pretty much the same in her book.
As the Doctor climbed up the tower, Rose watched for any sign of movement. Sure he said they were only programmed to hunt one thing, but who knew if they were also programmed to protect the relay? She wondered how far their range was. Did they hunt the whole planet?
The Doctor was smiling when he climbed back down. "Sent a signal back to wherever the fat cats are sipping their brandy. They won't be using their controller again anytime soon."
Rose felt his satisfaction. "Good."
"Bet they're standing there right now, crying about their..." He didn't finish. His eyes shot up over her shoulder. Rose turned. Two drones were now headed in their direction. "Oh. Whoops."
"Whoops, what? Doctor?"
"Default mode."
"What the hell is that?"
"It's...RUN!"
*
The cavern was eerily familiar; its vastness was broken by statues crumbling with age, illuminated by some indeterminate source. The Doctor saw pillars and steps at the far end, leading into some kind of structure carved out of the rock. However, in this place there was no capped pit, at least that he could see.
And then there were the tablets. Giant tablets that appeared to be carved from the walls themselves, jutting out slightly from the stone. They were covered with the writings the TARDIS could not translate, the same writings as on the planet with no name that sat under the black hole, and the stones lined the cavern as far as he could see.
"Absolutely amazing," Martha breathed.
The Doctor walked up to a tablet and ran his hand over the smooth surface. "These writings. I've seen these before." He turned to the Face of Boe. "What is all this?"
The Face of Boe closed his eyes with a weary groan, his forehead creasing. Movement caught the Doctor's eye and he jerked his hand away, stepping back from the wall. The indistinguishable characters were moving, changing in front of him.
He could read it now.
"It starts here," the Face of Boe said, still with closed eyes.
The Doctor jogged over to what looked like the beginning, pulled out his glasses and began to read. They were overly poetic, flowery words, but that was prophecy for you. He had only gotten to the middle of the first tablet when he stopped, his mouth hanging open. "Impossible."
He turned to the Face of Boe. "This is impossible."
The Face of Boe opened his eyes slightly, but the Doctor only heard murmurings in his mind. The Doctor stared at the writings that seemed to go on forever.
It was about him.
He started briskly walking along the wall, events of his life flashing in front of him. It was all there. Things he had done, people he had known. Jo. Romana. Sarah Jane. Nyssa. Everyone. Not that it said their names outright, but he recognized them all. Sometimes the words dwelled on an event; other things were barely mentioned. The Ice Warriors. The Vardans. The Black and White Guardians. The Cheetah People.
Everything.
But then he stopped dead in his tracks. Stopped at the point of inevitability.
The Time War.
He read in horror as battle after battle played out in words, reliving each moment, images assaulting his mind. And then the names. Oh, the names.
Karn. The first to fall.
Arcadia. Where he had been on the front line; so much death and destruction all around him.
Gallifrey. Where he alone had ended it. Ended it all.
And all the names in between. No vague references on this tablet. He slowly ran his hand over them. And then two words at the very bottom turned his blood to ice.
"Why is this here?" he asked softly, still leaning against the tablet. He turned to the Face of Boe, who was now a fair distance away. "Why is this here?" he yelled out. "What is the point? Who wrote this?!" But he was only rewarded with more murmurings in his mind, and echoes of the past ringing in his ears.
The Doctor closed his eyes, and for only about the third time in his life he lost track of time. Visions swirled in his head and he did nothing to stop them. He deserved them.
When he opened his eyes again, he wasn't sure if he had been there seconds or hours. Hand still on Gallifrey, he pushed away from the stone, brushing the name as he forced himself to go on to the next tablet, actually willing himself to move.
He adjusted his glasses and began to read. Distracted by memories, he had to read the text twice before it registered that these words were oddly familiar.
The Doctor read on, trying to smile at the descriptions of his adventures with Rose, but that ache from reliving the war made her loss even more acute. She'd never known just how much she had helped him through the horror of those early days and right now, more than anything, he wanted to touch her. Just holding her hand would be enough.
A block of text jolted him from his longing.
And then a thought occurred to him. A horrible thought. But he pushed it aside and read more.
The ache returned as the words swam in front of him. The text spoke of friendship, the beginnings of understanding, and even of love. Of course, that was all gone now. Words spoke of the Beast and how encountering him would foretell the death of the Valiant Child. Obviously the Beast hadn't read any further since Rose wasn't really dead.
He read on through the events of Torchwood. Then came events with Martha, and finally a reference to meeting the Face of Boe on New Earth. And that's where the text stopped translating. Had the Face of Boe taken precautions? It never was a good idea to know too much about your own future after all. Or was it something else? A wild idea hit him that the text was linked to him and would only translate after he lived through it, but he abandoned that thought.
But hold on.
Something else had been odd in the section about Rose, but he had skimmed past it, not wanting to dwell on yet one more pain. He jogged back to the section about Torchwood and there it was. While most of the words on the walls were ridiculously obscure, all of them were deliberate.
Time of separation.
The next second he was running back to the Face of Boe, skidding to a stop in front of him. "I can get to her?" He knelt in front of him, pressing his palms against the glass. "Tell me. Please," he pleaded.
The Face of Boe opened his eyes slightly. "Traedan's Sphere," he said.
"What is that? Where do I find it?"
The Face of Boe breathed heavily. "You are not alone." The breathing stopped.
The Doctor closed his eyes, his hands still on the glass.
"Doctor?" Martha called softly from behind him.
He didn't answer; instead he turned to the cavern wall. So much knowledge, so many secrets and so many answers had just died with this being.
He shook his head and stood up, staring at the Face of Boe.
"He needs a proper burial," the Doctor finally said, taking off his glasses. He walked to the back of the life support tank and located the teleport controls. A flash of light later and they were all back out on the cliff. He pulled the psychic paper out of his coat pocket and handed it to Martha. "Go to the Isop consulate in New New York and tell them of his death. You can say you were his travelling physician."
Martha looked at the psychic paper. "What are you going to do?"
"I have to check on something." He nodded to her, as he headed towards the TARDIS. "Go on, hurry."
When she was out of sight, he broke into a run.
There couldn't be another casualty to the Time War. There just couldn't. It was too much. He sprinted down the hallway.
He would have been able to tell, wouldn't he? Although... No, he never noticed a thing and so never had the urge to look at her DNA. Never needed to say, 'Say, Rose. Think I feel like seeing if you've got a pesky triple helix. No reason.'
Now inside the med bay, he flipped the switch on a machine, and then pulled a strand of Rose's hair from the brush with a nearby tweezers, careful not to touch it himself. Placing the hair in the machine, he shoved on his glasses and stared at the monitor, waiting for it to spit out the answer. After what seemed like an eternity, an image came into focus.
"Oh god."
*
Part 2
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Spoilers: S1 and S2 - through Doomsday, and including casting spoilers for S3
Vital stats: Approx. 28,700 words. Complete. Humor/Drama. Post-Doomsday "fix-it" fic.
Summary: Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight ahead, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed. [First Law of Motion - Cohen & Whitman 1999 translation]
A/N: I *completely* blame this all on Doomsday trauma. I began writing this about two weeks after it aired, and just kept going. It's by far the longest fic I've ever written. Spoilers are through Doomsday, obviously since it takes place post-Doomsday, but it also makes heavy references to/draws from many episodes throughout S1 and S2.
Thanks to my *utterly* awesome betas, beck_liz and splash_the_cat, for wading through this monster. Anything wrong or just plain lame, they tried to correct or take out; however, sometimes I can't be helped. Thanks to the Brit-speak checkers (aka UK Production Team) of brookeormian, elaminen and sethoz, for each taking sections of the fic and making sure I didn't use words like "flashlight." Any American words still in the fic were snuck in after they read it. Thanks to elismor for listening to me whine, complain and say "hey, does this work?" just about every day since July. And thanks to pretty much anyone I've ever had a meta discussion with, as they unknowingly helped me hammer out many concepts in the fic.
You can read it at my site:
http://sg1michelle.homestead.com/dw/inertia.html
Or here on LJ:
*
"Martha!"
The Doctor stepped over one downed service droid and then another that still twitched.
It had been brilliant, hadn't it? He ran through it again. Yes, brilliant. Just needed an audience, and his was currently not in the vicinity.
He crouched down next to the twitching droid, poked at it with the sonic screwdriver and grinned. Really fried them all when the command link was severed. Destroying things was fun when non-sentient things were involved - no R2-D2s here. He held down the button on the screwdriver.
"Ooh, you won't be needing this, my friend, but I might." The Doctor liberated a gyroservo from the robot's casing and held it up. "Someday, that is. Never know when one of these will come in handy. Come to think of it, the toaster's been acting up again." He tossed it in the air once and then pocketed it. "And toast can always stand to be more...stable."
He poked around inside the droid but decided he had the only thing worth keeping. "Hmm. Do I need more?" He looked at the surrounding droids. No sense in being greedy.
The Doctor stood up and walked to one of the enormous, arched windows in the grand hall. There was really no point to the windows since the foliage outside obscured any view - probably placed there by the now-former dictator to shield him from the masses - but he could hear faint shouts from outside.
Probably one of those people would have thought it was brilliant.
"MARTHA!" he bellowed.
"Oi!" Martha poked her head around the corner of the main entry to the hall. "Wake the..." Her eyes darted around the room. "...non-living, why don't you?"
"Really now, Martha. Not even remotely funny, but I'll give you points for trying. Where've you been?"
He was rewarded with a wry smile. "Worried?"
The Doctor let out a small snort. "About a former Lieutenant in the Jangian guard?" He gave her a quick salute. "Never!"
She flinched and he kicked himself. Damn mouth.
Former.
Martha shrugged. "Was busy taking out the shield generator so these people can get off this rock. Someone has to save the world, you know."
"Someone, yes. Me, in fact. Oh!" He grabbed her by the shoulder and steered her out into the corridor towards the TARDIS. "So the magistrate was really a robot, yeah? How these people didn't notice I'll never know. And as I pulled off his head, I said, 'This isn't something to lose your head over. Oh, wait. Maybe it is!' Brilliant, yeah? Huh?" He grinned at her.
She raised an eyebrow.
"Guess you had to be there."
"Really now, Doc. Not even remotely funny, but I'll give you points for trying," she smirked.
"Seriously. What can I do to make you stop with the 'Doc?' Makes me sound like a rabbit. Or does it make you sound like a rabbit? Well, someone's sounding like a rabbit and it's not pleasant." He put his key into the TARDIS door.
"So, off we go then?" Martha asked. "Cleanup's not your thing."
"Yup. People have been liberated. What they do now is up to them. Besides, I've never been good with a mop."
She sighed and he ignored it. They'd had this conversation before.
"I'm gonna get something to eat," Martha announced, following him in. "You hungry?"
"Not really. But since you're headed to the galley," he pulled the gyroservo out of his pocket and tossed it to her. "Throw this in the top drawer, third from the right, would you?"
"Sure thing, Doc," she answered. He made a face at her and she chuckled as she left.
The Doctor frowned at the console and then batted at a lever with his hand, sending the TARDIS into the time vortex. There was no point in picking some new destination at the moment since Martha would probably want to sleep soon. So he let the TARDIS cruise as he hopped onto the chair, kicking his legs up onto the console.
He scratched at his knee, wrinkling the fabric of his blue suit. A faint noise from the direction of the galley grabbed his attention and he smiled.
Martha Jones.
He hadn't planned on picking up someone again so soon. Well, there had been the whole Donna nightmare, which he decided was the universe playing a really sick joke on him - it wouldn't have been the first time. But the TARDIS had caught a distress signal from a Delta Colony in the Pentaris Quadrant in the 34th century. Or what was left of the Delta Colony after a Birondite attack. Martha had been banged up but alive - the only one the TARDIS found out of nearly ten thousand. That had been six months ago, relative time.
By the time she had recovered, he found he liked having her around. He offered and she stayed.
But she kept things close to the vest and he didn't blame her. From what she had told him, he knew the Lieutenant thing, that she had just started training in medicine, she'd been stationed at the Delta Colony on a long-term assignment, she used to have a cat and she hated tea. The last two were fairly disturbing. Oh, and she was devastatingly beautiful but was the type that didn't care, or wanted you to think she didn't care. He hadn't quite decided on that one yet.
She reminded him a bit of Jack Harkness, without the libido from hell; a bit of Ace, without the need to blow everything up; and a bit of himself, without his fantastic wit, if he did say so himself. Not that she needed to remind him of anyone, but it was hard not to haul out the mental checklist. He was just glad that he hadn't met her right after the regeneration into his previous incarnation. They probably would have found the nearest pub and drank themselves into oblivion.
The Doctor rubbed his eyes. His mind was starting to wander, which meant that soon he'd be...
"Vector tracker," he announced to the room. "Needs fixing, I'd imagine."
He whipped out the sonic screwdriver and threw himself under the flooring, poking at wires and tubes. But like every other time something didn't actually need fixing, he was soon back to doing it.
He was thinking about Rose.
*
"Well, stop touching it!" It was all Rose could do to not glare at the man who had just seconds ago asked her what he should do about the metal disk that kept shocking him. He blinked owlishly at her and set the object down on the table.
"Really, where do they find these people?" Rose muttered under her breath and retreated to her office, glancing at her name on the door. After nearly a year, she still found the thought of having an office bizarre, but at least it had a door. That could close. And lock.
She flopped down in her chair, wishing for some tea but not wanting to go back out at the moment. She so needed this holiday that would be starting in... She looked at her watch. Thirty minutes. Off to nowhere - no plans. Just her and a backpack.
She pecked at the computer and checked her email. One was from Mickey saying he and Jake wouldn't be flying back from the Glasgow office today, so he wouldn't see her before she took off.
"Oh well," Rose sighed. The guys would have dragged her out to a pub anyway and it probably wouldn't have been best to start out her trek with a hangover. She typed a 'don't do anything I wouldn't do' reply and sent it on its way.
Twenty-five minutes.
A tiny feeling in her stomach nagged at her, putting a damper on the excitement of the holiday. She'd only be gone a week and then she'd be right back at this desk, staring at the computer again.
Something Rose barely wanted to admit to herself was that after nearly a year, Torchwood was starting to lose its appeal. She should be grateful she still got to deal with the strange and unusual. She should. But here the strange and unusual mainly sat in crates and was poked at by scientists. The "Red Alert Incidents" - which she mentally changed to "Mauve" - where they rushed out beyond the walls of Torchwood, were few and far between. Most of them turned out to be nothing. Not that it was all dull - last week they found a meteor that was pretty intriguing, it being orange and humming and all, but it was packed up in a crate. And then poked at by scientists.
Hopping around time and space looking for the interesting was easy. But stuck in one time and on one planet, waiting for the interesting to come to you? There was a lot of down time. Rose spent most of her days wandering around to see if she recognized anything, or being visited by a wide-eyed person, looking at her as if she was alien, asking if she knew what something did or what it was called. She was starting to make names up. That was probably bad.
The big problem was, what else was there?
She typed in her "away" auto-response message on her Torchwood email.
- In the event of werewolves, mummies, zombies, non-friendly aliens or any other world-ending emergency during my absence, please contact Mickey Smith.
Twenty-one minutes.
Rose closed her eyes and leaned back in her chair. It all came down to the fact that what she really wanted, she could never have. And she had no desire to get over that problem at the moment. The Doctor would probably be kicking her ass right now if he saw her. Rose was sure of it. She could still see that hologram that now seemed like a million years ago.
- Do that for me, Rose. Have a fantastic life.
"Oh, to hell with it." Rose shut down the computer and grabbed her bag, switching off the lights as she closed the door behind her.
Wandering past one of the field agent's desks, she found two men in the middle of a conversation. "Has she tried bait?"
"Three kinds."
"Sounds like something for RSPCA or DEFRA then, John."
"Probably," the other replied.
"Problem?" Rose asked, part of her hoping for something interesting, and part of her wanting to just get out of there.
"Nah. Just some woman upset that slugs have taken a liking to her garden."
Rose chuckled and kept moving. "Right. See you in a week," she called over her shoulder.
The long drive home made Rose think of another thing she'd be glad to leave behind for a week: her car. It was a necessary evil since the house was so far out of town. She really needed to get her own place, but anytime she started talking about it, her mum would shut her down. Maybe it was something to bring up again after she got back.
She suddenly remembered she'd meant to pick up smaller bottles of shampoo and conditioner before heading out of town. She'd have to take her chances with the selection at the small store in the village near the house. Rose detoured left and found an empty spot just down the street. She hopped out and started walking.
And that's when she heard it.
It was soft at first. For a minute she thought she was losing it. But then it got louder.
She raced up the street in the direction she thought it had come from. The sound had stopped but it had to be somewhere close. She hurdled over a dog, much to the surprise of its owner, and rounded a corner to nothing.
Damn damn damn. Where the hell was it?
She flew across the street and around another corner, eyes instantly finding it - that wonderful, glorious, magnificent blue box!
He had done it! He'd found a way!
"WHOOO!" Rose yelled at the top of her lungs, throwing her arms in the air. Laughing and blinking back tears, she bounded towards the TARDIS. She heard the familiar creak of the door opening, music to her ears! She had a "took you long enough" all ready to go when she stopped.
He was...
He wasn't...
"Hello?" The Doctor, looking somewhat taken aback at his greeting party, stared at her with those bright blue eyes.
Then Rose Tyler, Defender of the Earth and destroyer of the Emperor of the Daleks, did something very embarrassing.
She fainted.
*
The Doctor had arrived at the beating-himself-up-over-the-Torchwood-incident phase of his Rose musings, his favoured mental punishment. How could he have expected her to hold on? If only he had chains. Thoughts he'd had had no less than several hundred times before. But it was pointless to think about it since what was done was done.
He disconnected a wire, the TARDIS groaned, and he quickly reconnected it.
He prayed that she was getting on with her life. She had always been so worried about him leaving her, even as far back as their first visit to her home, and...well, it wasn't as if leaving her was his choice. Not in the end.
Sure, he had to try and get her to go with her mum, but she came back - which was more than predictable, it was inevitable. And then calmly telling him she'd never leave him, which she had been telling him in lots of ways since practically the beginning. He just never allowed himself to think like that. She was human after all, and so all that had been brushed aside.
Sort of.
Well, not really.
But, again, what was done was done and replaying it all would get him nowhere. Of course, that fact didn't seem to help during idle moments.
He sighed and brushed an errant piece of tubing away from his face.
He really wanted her to be happy now, and not spend her life with a pain he could never fix. But it was also the getting on with her life that he dreaded. She should have the husband, probably Mickey, the kids and that damn mortgage. It was a proper human life, after all.
But then, his thoughts would have absolutely no effect on what actually happened to Rose, right? So in his mind, he could be selfish. It was harmless. Yes, how he was going to picture her was as Torchwood guru and mystery-solver extraordinaire who would have a happy, fulfilling, but very single life. Nun-like, even. She'd have a nice little house with a fence and a garden. Oh! And a dog. That she'd name Mickey.
He was happily stocking the bookshelves and DVD case in her nice little house when the TARDIS jolted violently, sending the screwdriver flying. Scrambling after it, he pitched to the side as the TARDIS shook again, this time banging his head against a platform support.
"Dammit, OW!"
Spotting the screwdriver, he grabbed it and hauled himself out of the flooring as the TARDIS continued to shake. Everything tilted as he got to his feet and he narrowly avoided crashing into the railing.
"Easy, now!" he yelled, lunging at the controls. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Martha stagger into the room.
"What's happening?" she shouted to him, trying to keep herself steady.
"Don't know! She's gone all...wonky."
"Technical term?"
"Very! Wonky," he said, smacking at a control. "Related to the state of wonk. Stated in the form of a sentence, the TARDIS will be going wonky today."
"Have I mentioned I'm glad you're in charge?"
The Doctor grinned as he tried flipping the manual override switch a few times with no response. The TARDIS was in control, although 'control' probably wasn't the best word. "Well, I'm not the one in charge at the moment. And seems we're headed for a landing." He looked up at the glow of the time rotor. "Usually she's much sneakier about it, turning up in 1879 instead of 1979 or Mongolia instead of Bannet Nine."
As if in response, the violent shaking subsided to a mere trembling.
"I wondered about the Mongolia thing," Martha commented.
The Doctor sucked in his breath. "But there's always some cosmic reason for it all. Oh, there's a good chance everyone will be covered in slime by the end of the cosmic reason, but then the universe does lean towards the dirty side."
"So, boots?"
He smirked and the TARDIS finally stopped moving. Usually he'd happily walk out the doors, not a clue where he was, but not under circumstances like these. He tapped at the monitor and waited as an image of the outside world appeared.
"Where are we?" Martha asked, peering over his shoulder.
The Doctor stared at the monitor.
Unbelievable.
He strode towards the doors, snatching up his coat from the railing, refusing to believe they were there. Maybe it just looked like it, he told himself as he shook on his coat and opened the door. But one step outside and he knew he was back.
It just wasn't fair.
The Doctor had purposefully not visited the same places he'd gone to with Rose. It was too soon. But now there he was. It was a few years later here, of course, but still. And the TARDIS had seen fit to land in the same damn spot as before.
Martha appeared from behind the TARDIS doors and instantly the Doctor went into intergalactic-tour-guide mode. He smiled at her.
"Martha? Welcome to New Earth."
*
Rose blinked open her eyes to find him kneeling over her.
"Oh, awake then, I see."
She stared.
He stared back.
"Doctor?"
A puzzled expression appeared on his face. "Yes?" he asked slowly.
Rose started to laugh. She was going mad. Yes, that was it. Mad, and the Doctor would soon turn into a giant rabbit or something.
She sat up. "You're not supposed to look like that."
"Like what? Like me? I look just fine, thank you very much."
"You're from earlier, yeah?"
"What?"
Hold on. This couldn't be the Doctor she knew; if he had this face and was from an earlier time, he would still know her. Plus what the Doctor had said about not being able to hop between worlds...
Oh man, she was dumb.
This Doctor was this universe's Doctor. But hadn't the Doctor said that was impossible? That there weren't parallel versions of himself? It seemed like he had said at one time, but she couldn't remember for sure. Although, it wouldn't have been the first time he was wrong. And now that she really looked at him, there was something different, although she couldn't quite put her finger on what it was.
"You're really not going to believe this," she said, putting a hand into her hair.
"You'd be surprised at what I believe. Try me!"
Rose took a deep breath. "Okay then. About a year ago I came to this world from a parallel universe. Before that I had been travelling around with the Doctor. The parallel version of you."
The Doctor stared at her and then smirked. "That's impossible. Almost had me going there for a mo." He wagged a finger at her and stood up.
"Really." Rose scrambled up after him, shaking off the lingering lightheadedness.
"Sorry. Not buying it," he said as he turned away from her.
Where was he going? Back to the TARDIS? Rose racked her brain for something irrefutable to give him and remembered something he had shared with her not too long before the whole Torchwood incident. It was a risk since things didn't always happen in the same way as in other worlds, but it was worth a try. "You got this body at the end of the Time War, yeah?"
He turned back, his eyes now dark and piercing.
"I'm sorry," she said. She felt the instinct of wanting to hold his hand or even hug him kick in, but she held herself back. "The same thing happened to the Doctor I was with. He ran into me right after it happened."
"It's been fifty years since the Time War. Every day I try not to think about it and what do I get? A blonde who faints at the sight of me, and then wakes up yapping about it."
"What, fifty years?"
"I moisturise."
Rose gave him a half smile. "It's not that. It's just that he only lasted in that body for about a year."
"Careless bloke."
Yeah, careless. Right. Rose suddenly thought of the game station. "Doctor!" she said urgently. "There are Daleks hiding in the year 200,100!"
He narrowed his eyes. "I don't think so."
"No, really. They were controlling Earth! The planet was all..." She waved her hands around, trying to find the right word. "...nasty." Good enough.
"The Fourth Great and Bountiful Empire? Swung by there about five years ago. Looked fine to me. Better than fine, in fact."
Rose frowned. "Okay, maybe not everything's the same."
He cocked his head to the side, looking quizzically at her. "All right. Say I believe you. Not sure how it's possible, but you look like you're telling the truth. Or think you're telling the truth."
"Think?! How could I make this up?"
"Don't think we've been properly introduced. I'm the Doctor, which you apparently already know. And you are...?" He held out his hand and she shook it.
"Rose Tyler."
"Nice to meet you, Rose. And now if you'll excuse me..."
Rose quickly interrupted him. "Don't suppose you'd let me buy you a cup of tea or something. Two sugars? Or maybe..." She trailed off.
"Maybe what?"
Ever since she'd come to this world, she had been going through her life with a 'what else is there?' attitude. And now to have the Doctor, or a version of him, and that 'what else' life right in front of her? "Have tea on the TARDIS? Don't suppose you're in the market for a..." Again she tried to find the right word. "...an assistant?"
The Doctor took a step back from her, crossing his arms over his chest.
"I don't take up much room?" she tried.
"Suppose you've been preapproved."
"Yes!" Rose pointed at him. "Preapproved!"
"'Course the parallel me, which I'm not completely buying yet, mind, could be barmy."
"Only slightly." Rose felt a twinge of that lingering melancholy that had followed her in the past year. But she mentally pushed that aside, giving the Doctor a hopeful smile.
He moved his jaw back and forth. "All right. I'll give it a go."
She couldn't help it. Rose grabbed his hand and actually bounced. The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her and she stopped. "Sorry. Not mad," she said grinning at him. "Can we...?" She nodded at the TARDIS.
"Okay, but no bouncing," the Doctor said, smirking. He ambled over to the door and unlocked it. He barely had time to get out of the way before Rose dashed inside.
The glowing console and the arching beams, the hum of the TARDIS, even that faintly metallic smell all blasted into her. Rose ran her hand along the railing as she walked up the ramp. She was really here. Not some dream where she would wake up cursing the fact that it had only been in her mind. Her hand moved across the edge of the console as she mentally identified some of the buttons and knobs.
She now thought she had the tiniest inkling of what the Doctor felt with the TARDIS and why he even stroked it, as Sarah Jane had put it. This was home.
The Doctor's head appeared from the other side of the console. "Call me crazy, but I have a sudden urge to make sure there are no Daleks in 200,100."
"Sounds pretty opposite of crazy to me." Rose hovered as he manoeuvred the controls and peered at the monitor. "I should probably mention we also found a Dalek in a museum run by a man named Van Statten."
"That nutter? He wanted to add me to his collection, which I ever so impolitely declined, but he didn't have any Daleks."
"Huh. Oh," she said as she waved in the direction of the monitor. "There was something about the Daleks being hidden because of some signal put out by the game station."
The Doctor fiddled with the controls. "Did find one on Justicia. Don't suppose you ever went there," he said, still staring at the monitor.
"Justicia? The prison system? There weren't any Daleks there. Not when we went."
"Nope," the Doctor announced as he straightened up. "No Daleks, no signal and no game station as a matter of fact." He clapped his hands together and grinned at her. "Right, Rose Tyler. Where do you want to go first?"
*
"Come on. Here we go." The Doctor walked briskly towards the bridge that would take them to the city of New New York, his coat flapping in the breeze.
"This place is amazing. When are we?" Martha asked, scrambling after him.
"The year five-point-five-slash-apple-slash-fifty-three. Or five billion and twenty-seven, whichever floats your boat."
"Blimey."
"Oh, I'd watch out for the cat people. They lean towards morally ambiguous. Of course, that's a cat for you."
"Cat people?"
"I wonder if there are any non-nun cats. They may all be locked up," the Doctor mused. "Now here's a thought - did the cat people have cats? That would be amusingly odd. Of course, humans do seem to like monkeys, so there is precedent."
"Back on the monkey thing, are we?"
"Well, you should be happy you lot didn't evolve from anteaters!" he said, sidestepping a plant. "Big, long noses. Small, little ears. All the..." The unmistakable glow of a teleport appeared to his left and the Doctor and Martha stopped. "...ants."
"It is very good to see you again, Doctor," a telepathic voice called to him.
The Doctor smiled. "Martha? Might I introduce the Face of Boe?"
"Nice to meet you," she said to him. "Do I shake anything?" she whispered to the Doctor.
He chuckled and walked up to the life support tank. "So," he said, putting his hands in his pockets, "I have a feeling I have you to thank for our detour. As you said, 'the third time, for the last time?'"
"Indeed it is."
"And by last time, you mean..."
"It is now my time to die."
The Doctor couldn't help but feel for this legend of the universe. "I'm sorry."
The Face of Boe closed his eyes, his lips moving but no thoughts sent. Finally, eyes still closed, he said, "I have had more than a full life."
"Yes you have." The Doctor gave him a warm smile.
He looked up at him. "My apologies, Doctor. I should not have tried to summon you on your last trip here. I was mistaken as to your time." Even though telepathic, his words had become slow and deliberate.
"Ah, so that's why you left. You had to meet me at a certain point in my time. And this is the correct time?"
"Quite right."
"Very intriguing," the Doctor said, loving the mystery of it all. "So on Platform One, were you mistaken as well?"
"No, that was deliberate," he said slowly. "Let's just say I was curious."
"And was that curiosity satisfied?"
"Yes, it was." There was a touch of amusement in the Face of Boe's voice.
"And so now we're here. And you have a great secret."
"Great, yes. And in some ways..." he trailed off.
"Some ways?" the Doctor prompted.
"You said you weren't ready," he said faintly into the Doctor's mind.
"I said?"
The Face of Boe closed his eyes, murmuring.
"Did I tell you to meet me?" the Doctor asked.
"The secret...the secret..." The Face of Boe gave a weary sigh. "There is a legend. To some who have read it, it is prophecy."
"Read what?"
"Come."
The next second, the Doctor and Martha were surrounded by the glow of a teleport.
*
Rose rattled off times and places where she and the Doctor had helped or rescued people, to see if they needed help or rescue again. Unlike the incidents with the Daleks, the Doctor scratched each one off her list with a "been there, done that." Sure the details were different, but it made her wonder about how the Doctor chose where to go each day. Or maybe the TARDIS had a lot to do with it. They did seem to end up in the wrong spots often enough.
He then started listing some places, which Rose nixed, having gone to them herself. They just hadn't been on her "need to save the world" list.
"How long did you say you travelled with him?" the Doctor finally asked, taking a seat.
"I sorta lost track of time. I think it was about two years."
"You two were busy."
"So..." Rose looked around. "No one else here? You between travelling companions at the moment?"
"Well, not between anymore," he said with a smile. "But yeah. Last person on the TARDIS was Camron. He was a Plarnite, which meant cleaning up a lot."
Rose smirked at the implication. "When was that?"
"'Bout twenty years ago."
"What? You've been on your own for that long?"
"I'm a big boy. I'm pretty good at looking after myself."
"But...don't you miss having someone around? Talking to someone?"
"I talk to people all the time out there," he waved towards the door.
That thing, that difference she couldn't identify before - it was in his eyes. When she had met the Doctor, her Doctor, there was raw pain there. But this Doctor - there was a sort of sad resignation. And he was alone.
Or maybe her mind was just filling in blanks that weren't there.
"It's not the same," she said.
"So now you're a judge of my social skills?"
"Sorry. No."
She ached at the thought that her Doctor could be alone like that. That he might go wandering around for years, even decades without someone. But no, with his new body came a new personality and one that was very social, right? Surely he would have found someone to travel with by now. She just couldn't picture him sitting alone in the TARDIS. She wouldn't let herself.
No, she wanted to believe that right now he was off being himself, surrounded by people that cared about him and generally having fun. And hopefully more fun than she and this Doctor were having at the moment. "Well, I'm stumped. Think of anything yet?" Rose asked, watching the Doctor stare into the glow.
"Right. Got it," the Doctor declared, moving to the console. "Tea. You said tea and so we'll have tea. Ever been to Bannet Nine?"
"Doesn't sound familiar."
"Always wanted to go. Best tea in the universe is made there! Just always got sidetracked for some reason."
She grinned at him. "Fantastic!"
He grinned back.
"Oh, hang on." Rose fished in her jacket pocket and pulled out her mobile and a crumpled wad of notes that had been meant for the shampoo. "Gotta make a call," she said, shoving the money back in the pocket.
"Sorry, that won't work in here," he said as he went about adjusting the controls.
She waved the mobile at him. "Superphone. Very handy. Haven't gotten a bill yet."
Rose purposely called the house instead of her mum's mobile and was relieved when she got the machine.
"You guys are not going to believe this. I ran into the Doctor! Well, the one from this universe. And, mum, he looks like he used to look!" Rose glanced at the Doctor, who was doing a bad job of pretending not to listen. "Oh, I left the car on Thomas Street, down from the market and my bag's in there." Rose patted the console and grinned again. "We're going to a planet called Bannet Nine! For tea! Can you believe it? Love you lots and kiss Petey for me!" She pushed the button on the mobile.
"You have family in this world?" The Doctor looked surprised.
"It's a long story, but yeah. My mum and my friend Mickey also came over from the other universe."
"I think I'd like to hear that story. Sounds like tea conversation."
Rose suddenly felt a lump in her throat that she swallowed against. "Yeah. Sure." Maybe some stuff she'd leave out.
The TARDIS stopped moving and Rose put that feeling away, back to that familiar corner of her mind, and instead focused on the fact that they had just landed on a whole new planet. She was about to breathe non-Earth air, see non-Earth things and drink non-Earth tea. She shot the Doctor a smile and took off down the ramp.
Rose couldn't help it, she laughed as she stepped foot out of the TARDIS and onto the alien world, which earned her a suspicious look from the Doctor as he followed her.
"Still not mad, right?" he asked.
"Not anymore. Let's go!"
They started walking through the vast, open meadow the TARDIS landed in, towards a structure that looked to be about a mile away. Unfamiliar sounds and smells surrounded her in the brown, grassy landscape. A small, red bird flew overhead and she watched it until it finally disappeared into a very green tree, its leaves rustling in the light, warm breeze.
It all was intoxicating.
Rose bent down and plucked a flower from the ground.
"It's green!" She smiled. "And it's beautiful! And it smells..." She sniffed it. "Okay, it smells really bad. But it's still beautiful." She held it out towards the Doctor.
"Yup. Beautiful." He glanced at it and then began to scan the horizon with a look that Rose recognized.
"Trouble?"
"You see any tea plants?"
"Well, no. But I just figured we landed in a non-tea spot."
"Something's not right."
Rose dropped the flower and began looking around as well, her guard now up. A beautiful meadow which was surrounded by groves of trees - it was all the perfect setting for a picnic. But if the Doctor was concerned, she'd be stupid not to be as well.
As they neared the structure, a metallic grid-like tower that rose about twenty feet in the air, Rose noticed movement to their right. She stopped and a pair of tiny eyes surrounded by a mound of tan fur blinked at her. The little animal, barely bigger than her foot, chirped.
"Aww, how sweet!" She crouched down but kept her distance. It blinked at her again.
"Rose?"
Rose looked up and there, hovering above them with barely a sound, was a round, grey thing, about a meter in length. It had a shiny black band across what she assumed was the front and it sort of reminded her of the bottom part of one of those old-fashioned vacuum cleaners.
The thing hovered for a moment and then a bright beam shot out from it, straight at the animal. Rose jumped back and instinctively grabbed onto the Doctor's jacket sleeve. The thing turned towards the Doctor and Rose before hovering off into the trees.
Rose stared at the now-charred remains of the little creature.
"Okay, pretty sure this isn't Bannet Nine," the Doctor said, starting to walk again.
"What was that?" Rose asked, scrambling after him.
"We're on a wild game planet. That drone you saw? Runs about three million credits. Fun for the idle rich."
"They're hunting these creatures for sport?"
"Fox. Deer. Fish. Sounding familiar?"
"Yeah. Why didn't it shoot us?"
"They're programmed for one thing. They have these clubs where they find a planet and set their drones loose on a specific target. Whoever's drone scores the most, wins."
"Scores?" Rose felt a bit sick. "Can't we do something?"
"Stay out of the way?"
"Oh, that's nice." Another ball of fur skittered past her legs, whining as it went. "Doctor!"
He stopped at the tower. "Right. Relay for the drones. Take out the relay, take out the drones."
Rose sighed in relief that this Doctor hadn't turned out to be a heartless - or was that heartsless - fluffy animal destroyer. Not that he was actually killing them, but not doing anything would have been pretty much the same in her book.
As the Doctor climbed up the tower, Rose watched for any sign of movement. Sure he said they were only programmed to hunt one thing, but who knew if they were also programmed to protect the relay? She wondered how far their range was. Did they hunt the whole planet?
The Doctor was smiling when he climbed back down. "Sent a signal back to wherever the fat cats are sipping their brandy. They won't be using their controller again anytime soon."
Rose felt his satisfaction. "Good."
"Bet they're standing there right now, crying about their..." He didn't finish. His eyes shot up over her shoulder. Rose turned. Two drones were now headed in their direction. "Oh. Whoops."
"Whoops, what? Doctor?"
"Default mode."
"What the hell is that?"
"It's...RUN!"
*
The cavern was eerily familiar; its vastness was broken by statues crumbling with age, illuminated by some indeterminate source. The Doctor saw pillars and steps at the far end, leading into some kind of structure carved out of the rock. However, in this place there was no capped pit, at least that he could see.
And then there were the tablets. Giant tablets that appeared to be carved from the walls themselves, jutting out slightly from the stone. They were covered with the writings the TARDIS could not translate, the same writings as on the planet with no name that sat under the black hole, and the stones lined the cavern as far as he could see.
"Absolutely amazing," Martha breathed.
The Doctor walked up to a tablet and ran his hand over the smooth surface. "These writings. I've seen these before." He turned to the Face of Boe. "What is all this?"
The Face of Boe closed his eyes with a weary groan, his forehead creasing. Movement caught the Doctor's eye and he jerked his hand away, stepping back from the wall. The indistinguishable characters were moving, changing in front of him.
He could read it now.
"It starts here," the Face of Boe said, still with closed eyes.
The Doctor jogged over to what looked like the beginning, pulled out his glasses and began to read. They were overly poetic, flowery words, but that was prophecy for you. He had only gotten to the middle of the first tablet when he stopped, his mouth hanging open. "Impossible."
He turned to the Face of Boe. "This is impossible."
The Face of Boe opened his eyes slightly, but the Doctor only heard murmurings in his mind. The Doctor stared at the writings that seemed to go on forever.
It was about him.
He started briskly walking along the wall, events of his life flashing in front of him. It was all there. Things he had done, people he had known. Jo. Romana. Sarah Jane. Nyssa. Everyone. Not that it said their names outright, but he recognized them all. Sometimes the words dwelled on an event; other things were barely mentioned. The Ice Warriors. The Vardans. The Black and White Guardians. The Cheetah People.
Everything.
But then he stopped dead in his tracks. Stopped at the point of inevitability.
The Time War.
He read in horror as battle after battle played out in words, reliving each moment, images assaulting his mind. And then the names. Oh, the names.
Karn. The first to fall.
Arcadia. Where he had been on the front line; so much death and destruction all around him.
Gallifrey. Where he alone had ended it. Ended it all.
And all the names in between. No vague references on this tablet. He slowly ran his hand over them. And then two words at the very bottom turned his blood to ice.
- They burned.
"Why is this here?" he asked softly, still leaning against the tablet. He turned to the Face of Boe, who was now a fair distance away. "Why is this here?" he yelled out. "What is the point? Who wrote this?!" But he was only rewarded with more murmurings in his mind, and echoes of the past ringing in his ears.
The Doctor closed his eyes, and for only about the third time in his life he lost track of time. Visions swirled in his head and he did nothing to stop them. He deserved them.
When he opened his eyes again, he wasn't sure if he had been there seconds or hours. Hand still on Gallifrey, he pushed away from the stone, brushing the name as he forced himself to go on to the next tablet, actually willing himself to move.
He adjusted his glasses and began to read. Distracted by memories, he had to read the text twice before it registered that these words were oddly familiar.
- He was now a wanderer, a man without a home. Fated by the universe was this Lonely God. But into this darkest time of despair and grief came the Valiant Child.
The Doctor read on, trying to smile at the descriptions of his adventures with Rose, but that ache from reliving the war made her loss even more acute. She'd never known just how much she had helped him through the horror of those early days and right now, more than anything, he wanted to touch her. Just holding her hand would be enough.
A block of text jolted him from his longing.
- But hidden in the dark space, the enemy of the war had survived to do battle with him. To save him from his fate, the Valiant Child willingly sacrificed herself, forever giving up her being so that she too burned away.
And then a thought occurred to him. A horrible thought. But he pushed it aside and read more.
The ache returned as the words swam in front of him. The text spoke of friendship, the beginnings of understanding, and even of love. Of course, that was all gone now. Words spoke of the Beast and how encountering him would foretell the death of the Valiant Child. Obviously the Beast hadn't read any further since Rose wasn't really dead.
He read on through the events of Torchwood. Then came events with Martha, and finally a reference to meeting the Face of Boe on New Earth. And that's where the text stopped translating. Had the Face of Boe taken precautions? It never was a good idea to know too much about your own future after all. Or was it something else? A wild idea hit him that the text was linked to him and would only translate after he lived through it, but he abandoned that thought.
But hold on.
Something else had been odd in the section about Rose, but he had skimmed past it, not wanting to dwell on yet one more pain. He jogged back to the section about Torchwood and there it was. While most of the words on the walls were ridiculously obscure, all of them were deliberate.
- In this time of separation they were now divided by two worlds.
Time of separation.
The next second he was running back to the Face of Boe, skidding to a stop in front of him. "I can get to her?" He knelt in front of him, pressing his palms against the glass. "Tell me. Please," he pleaded.
The Face of Boe opened his eyes slightly. "Traedan's Sphere," he said.
"What is that? Where do I find it?"
The Face of Boe breathed heavily. "You are not alone." The breathing stopped.
The Doctor closed his eyes, his hands still on the glass.
"Doctor?" Martha called softly from behind him.
He didn't answer; instead he turned to the cavern wall. So much knowledge, so many secrets and so many answers had just died with this being.
He shook his head and stood up, staring at the Face of Boe.
"He needs a proper burial," the Doctor finally said, taking off his glasses. He walked to the back of the life support tank and located the teleport controls. A flash of light later and they were all back out on the cliff. He pulled the psychic paper out of his coat pocket and handed it to Martha. "Go to the Isop consulate in New New York and tell them of his death. You can say you were his travelling physician."
Martha looked at the psychic paper. "What are you going to do?"
"I have to check on something." He nodded to her, as he headed towards the TARDIS. "Go on, hurry."
When she was out of sight, he broke into a run.
- To save him from his fate, the Valiant Child willingly sacrificed herself, forever giving up her being so that she too burned away.
There couldn't be another casualty to the Time War. There just couldn't. It was too much. He sprinted down the hallway.
He would have been able to tell, wouldn't he? Although... No, he never noticed a thing and so never had the urge to look at her DNA. Never needed to say, 'Say, Rose. Think I feel like seeing if you've got a pesky triple helix. No reason.'
Now inside the med bay, he flipped the switch on a machine, and then pulled a strand of Rose's hair from the brush with a nearby tweezers, careful not to touch it himself. Placing the hair in the machine, he shoved on his glasses and stared at the monitor, waiting for it to spit out the answer. After what seemed like an eternity, an image came into focus.
"Oh god."
*
Part 2