It's Far From Over: Pete's World (3/3)
Title: It’s Far From Over: Pete’s World
Rating: T
Genre: sci-fi, adventure, drama, romance, het, AU
Fandoms: Doctor Who & Torchwood
Characters: Rose Tyler, the Doctor (10.5, 10.2, Handy, or whatever else you want to call him), AU!Gwen Cooper, AU!Jack Harkness, mentions of others
Pairings: Rose/10.5, AU!Gwen/AU!Jack
Summary: Rose & her Doctor in the alternate reality
Author notes: This was written as a backstory for my Multi-Crossover fic 'It's Far From Over'. It can be read on its own, but will end in a bit of a Cliffanger (which will be solved in the Crossover story).
Setting: The story is set in the Alternate reality after the events of Doctor Who season 4.
Word count:: ~ 2072 (part 3)
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the characters or fandoms. I wish I did. I don’t make any money with this! I just write for fun and hope someone else will enjoy it, too.
Spoiler Warnings: Doctor Who up to the end of season 4. Not much for Torchwood, since it is all AU for it.
Other Warnings: This is more of a series of ficlets than a whole story. It shows what Rose and 10.5 have been up to in the alternate reality.
There will be a character death.
Like always I do write from multiple points of views to give more insight into the different characters. Don’t like it -> don’t read it! No need to complain about it.
I’m German and my English isn’t and probably never will be perfect. I hope I don’t make too many mistakes. Feel free to point out errors so I can learn and improve.
Thank you to my beta landiana24 for betaing this! :-)
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When: about 40 years later
Where: AU London suburbs
“I guess this is it,” Rose stated looking at the four story building in front of them.
“Let’s go,” the Doctor said and started to run. Rose was on his heels, a small smile on her lips. They finally had them. After chasing the Tolaan for decades they had them trapped at last. Torchwood had the building surrounded. There was no way out. They wouldn’t get away, not this time. It was fitting, too, since it had been exactly 40 years to the day since they saw them for the very first time, 40 years since they killed Jack. And now they’d pay for what they did to him and all the other people they killed over the years.
It took them about an hour to round up the guards and lower class Tolaan, rescue about two dozen humans they used for experiments, and fight their way into the heart of the building, where the leaders were.
“Wait out here and don’t let anyone escape,” Rose instructed her Torchwood colleagues before kicking the door open and entering the room guns blazing. The Doctor was right behind her, waving the sonic screwdriver and making sure the Tolaans' security system was offline. Rose was glad about that. The last time she and the Doctor found the Tolaans they had had an unfortunate encounter with the very same security system. She really didn’t want to repeat the experience, immortal or not. Dying still sucked and usually hurt like hell.
Ducking behind a table Rose pushed it over to use it as cover against the Tolaan leaders, who of course were armed to the teeth. It had definitely been a good idea to leave the others outside. They weren’t immortal after all.
“How many times do we have to kill you?” one of them called.
Rose gritted her teeth. It was the one who had shot and killed the Doctor all those years ago. No matter if she had been able to bring him back, she still hated that Tolaan more than all the others.
“I thought you would have figured it out by now,” Rose answered in a taunting voice. “You can’t kill us, no matter how often you try.” She fired a few shots over the table before glancing at the Doctor next to her. “What is all this stuff?” She gestured around the room, where a lot of weird looking machines were beeping and making other strange noises.
“I’m not entirely sure,” the Doctor answered before taking some reading with the sonic screwdriver. “I think they are analysing… something.”
“Something? Like what?” Rose wanted to know.
The Doctor frowned as the sonic screwdriver hummed, then his eyes widened. “The rift, they are analysing the rift… and looking for something specific.”
“The rift? From here? Why not in Cardiff?”
“I don’t know,” the Doctor answered just as a machine at the other end of the room started to blink. A second later the Tolaan began to laugh in a triumphant way.
“Finally,” one of them called.
Rose looked at the Doctor for an explanation before deciding that no matter what the Tolaan meant it couldn’t be anything good. She quickly moved to the edge of the table and started to fire above and next to it with both of her guns. Maybe she’d get lucky and hit one of them or destroy whatever they were so happy about.
“No, no, no,” the Doctor exclaimed, then a light illuminated the room and the Tolaan stopped shooting.
“What?” Rose asked.
“They built their own version of a vortex manipulator!” the Doctor said before getting up.
“What are you doing?” Rose exclaimed and tried to pull him back down behind the relative safety of the table.
“They’re gone, Rose.”
Rose’s eyes widened, then she stood up as well and looked around the room. Sure enough it was empty.
“Where did they go?” she asked. “Or better when?”
The Doctor pushed up his sleeve to reveal the vortex manipulator Gwen had given him after Jack’s death. A Time Lord was supposed to be able to travel through time, she had said. It wasn’t like he wouldn’t have been able to build his own vortex manipulator if he had found the right components, but he preferred this one anyway; it had been Jack’s after all.
“Who cares, let’s just follow them,” the Doctor decided with a grin, grabbed Rose’s hand and with the sonic screwdriver made sure that they followed the traces left by the Tolaan. In a matter of seconds they disappeared.
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Rose groaned when they materialized.
“Yeah, time travel without a capsule… Never gets any easier,” the Doctor stated and slightly shook his head to clear it.
“I really miss the TARDIS,” Rose complained, but regretted it almost as soon as the words left her lips. The Doctor never talked about it, but she knew how much he missed his ship. The look on his face right now was testament to that.
“We’re in Cardiff,” the Doctor said a moment later.
Rose looked at him then her surroundings. They were in a dark room, probably an office of some kind. “How do you know?”
The Doctor pointed at his vortex manipulator. “But even if it didn’t show Cardiff as our location I would have known. We’re inside the Hub, Rose. This is Lisa Hallet’s office.”
“So they really are after the rift,” Rose concluded whilst leaving the office and following the Doctor who was waving the sonic screwdriver, probably to find out where exactly the Tolaan were.
“Looks like it,” the Doctor agreed. “Maybe they stayed away from it for the past years so we wouldn’t know what they were after.”
That made sense, Rose thought. If Torchwood knew that the Tolaan were after the rift they would have sent more employees to work for Torchwood 3. Not that that would have done any good, since it seemed to be the middle of the night right now. There was no one around. As soon as Rose had finished that thought gun shots echoed through the Hub, as if trying to prove her wrong.
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“Gwen?” Rose called surprised when she saw her friend, who was hiding behind a desk and shooting at the Tolaan. She hadn’t seen her in almost 40 years. After Jack’s death Gwen hadn’t really wanted them around. They reminded her too much of Jack. Rose hadn’t wanted to leave her, but respected her wishes. She and the Doctor went back to London, and she stayed in contact with Gwen mostly through e-mail, hoping that one day Gwen would realize that she wanted her friends around again. Unfortunately about six months after Jack’s death Gwen disappeared. Some had speculated that Jack’s death had been too much for her and she ran off, others thought it might have had something to do with unusually high rift activity the night after Gwen had last been at work. Rose had thought that the rift must have taken her, because no matter how badly Gwen took Jack’s death, she didn’t think Gwen would ever run off and stop hunting the aliens that killed him.
“Rose? Doctor?” Gwen asked surprised. “I haven’t even had a chance to call for backup yet.”
Rose smirked. “Mind if we help anyway?” she asked whilst ducking behind another desk and starting to shoot as well.
“Be my guest,” Gwen replied with a hint of a smile.
Rose grinned, happy to see her friend again.
“Rose, this is it,” the Doctor whispered next to her. Rose turned to him, not sure what he was talking about.
“The night the rift acted up, and the night Gwen disappeared. It’s happening right now. We travelled back in time to it.”
Rose’s eyes widened. All this time she had had no idea what really happened to Gwen; and now here they were, right in the middle of everything. She’d find out first hand what happened.
“You don’t think the Tolaan got her?” she asked. “I’m not going to let that happen!”
“No we won’t,” the Doctor agreed. He hadn’t been able to save Jack, and hadn’t been able to save Gwyneth, Gwen’s ancestor… or well, the ancestor of the Gwen back in their own reality. He would not let anything happen to Gwen now.
“They are opening the rift,” Gwen called. “We have to stop them.”
Before Rose could say anything Gwen jumped out from behind her desk and went towards the Tolaan, shooting at them with two guns. Rose cursed and quickly followed. They advanced side by side, taking down at least 4 Tolaan in the process, then the Doctor tackled them from behind. They hit the floor just as a blast soared above their heads and ended up ripping a large hole through one of the desks. The next second the remaining Tolaan roared in triumph, then disappeared in a greenish light at the same time as an alarm went off.
“No!” Gwen exclaimed scrambling to her feet and rushing over to one of the computers.
“Where did they go?” Rose asked glancing at the Doctor. “Can we follow them again?”
The Doctor was already fumbling with the sonic screwdriver and looking at his vortex manipulator, his eyes narrowing. “No, no, no,” he exclaimed whilst a wind was starting to ruffle his hair.
“They opened the rift,” Gwen exclaimed and pushed away a paper that soared towards her through the air. “We have to close it.”
Rose looked from the Doctor to Gwen, a frown on her face. The Tolaan couldn’t have gotten away again, could they? Had they opened the rift to make sure they wouldn’t be followed? She sighed and went to join Gwen. No matter how much she hated it, closing the rift was more important right now. It was simply too dangerous to be left active for a moment longer than necessary. Every second it was open it could displace someone else in time and space.
“Enter your security code to close it,” Gwen shouted over the noise of the alarm and the stronger getting wind inside the Hub.
Rose nodded and started typing.
“No, wait,” the Doctor called. “The Tolaan escaped through the rift. If we close it we can’t follow.”
“But we have to close it,” Gwen exclaimed. “It could destroy everything!”
“I know,” he answered. “One of us has to stay behind to close it.”
“Oh no,” Gwen said firmly. “They killed Jack, I’m not staying behind!”
The wind was getting stronger by the second and Rose was having difficulties understanding the others, but that wasn’t the worst, neither was the blaring alarm or the objects soaring through the Hub. She barely registered those. The rift was getting stronger and she could feel it in every cell of her being. It was as if it was calling to her, showing her things. Her mind seemed to connect with it on a level she couldn’t fully comprehend.
“Bad Wolf,” she whispered. It wasn’t really her the rift connected with, it was Bad Wolf. Over the years Rose had learned to understand Bad Wolf better and tap into its power occasionally, but she still didn’t understand most of what was happening when Bad Wolf actually awoke. The only thing she was absolutely sure of was that Bad Wolf only decided to take over when it was absolutely necessary. Like right now, she thought as she started to comprehend what was going on.
“The Tolaan used the rift to cross over to another universe,” she said as her skin started to glow.
“Rose?!” Gwen exclaimed, staring at her.
“Everything they did was in order to find a way home,” Rose continued. She could actually sympathise with that. When she had been stuck in this world without the Doctor she had wanted nothing more than to get back home either. The difference was that Rose wouldn’t have killed innocents for it.
“We can follow them and I can close the rift whilst we’re leaving.”
“Rose, are you sure you can do this?” the Doctor asked, sounding concerned.
“Bad Wolf can,” Rose assured him. “And don’t worry about me. Like you said, Bad Wolf would never let me die.” That said she let go, allowing Bad Wolf to take over. Glowing brighter than before she held her hands out to Gwen and the Doctor, then smiled at him.
“We’re going home.”
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