The One True Free Life (13/26)
Title: The One True Free Life (13/26)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
This chapter is as of yet unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
The light from the Mott's kitchen window spread a soft yellow nimbus around the shrubbery in their back garden. A neighbourhood cat--not ginger, but calico--twined around Rose's knees as she squatted behind the wall and watched. She'd been there long enough that she'd switched positions several times and had now gone back to her original posture, waiting for this Donna Mott to be alone.
And now she was, sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of tea growing cold before her, scowling at a cheque book and a stack of bills. Rose would have preferred it if the woman she was about to very rudely intrude upon had been spending her evening petting puppies or eating chocolate bars, but paying bills would have to do. She disengaged the cat from her feet and quietly hopped over the back wall.
Donna jumped in fright and opened her mouth to scream as Rose first tapped on the glass and then frantically put her finger to her lips and even made a few shushing noises.
"Oi, this is private property!" Donna spat out as she opened the back door just a crack. "You're trespassing!"
Rose continued to make what she hoped were soothing, shushing noises. "I'm sorry, but I had to talk to you."
Donna rolled her eyes. "You know, we've got a front door, Mata Hari." Squinting, she opened the door a little wider. "You're the lady that almost made me late for work this morning, aren't you?"
"I'm sorry for that, but this is important." How to even explain? "Can I come in?"
Donna again looked her up and down, sneering , but seemed to, in the final analysis, come to the conclusion that Rose Tyler was mostly harmless. "Yeah, alright then. Go on." She opened the door all of the way and Rose entered, blinking in the light, rubbing her eyes.
Donna stood directly across from her in the small kitchen, arms folded. "Out with it. Who are you, what do you want, what's so important. ITV's got a film starting in twenty minutes and I hate missing the beginnings of things."
Rose suddenly felt defiant. She knew Donna Noble intimately, or so she thought, but she now realised that it was almost always Donna Noble in extremis that she'd met and talked to. "Could I trouble you for a cuppa?" The great teaching of Jackie Tyler : When in doubt, share tea.
Donna narrowed her eyes. "Suppose you look like you could use one."
Rose didn't quite know how to take that, so she just said, "Ta," and sat at the table. Donna plugged the kettle in and busied herself with the tea things.
"I haven't got any biscuits though, so don't ask," she huffed as she brought a steaming mug over and placed it unceremoniously before Rose.
"Thanks." She took a deep breath. "So, here's the situation. You work for a company called Liberty Systems--"
"Temp," interjected Donna.
"What's that?"
"Temp. I temp for a company called Liberty Systems. I don't really work for them, I work for an agency." The tone in Donna's voice was that of someone who's had to explain the same thing to many people repeatedly.
"Sorry. You temp for a company called Liberty Systems. Can you tell me what you know about it?"
"About temping? Quite a bit if I do say so--" A self-satisfied smile drifted around Donna's lips.
Rose took a sip of her tea to hide her rapidly waning patience. "No, about the company."
Donna's face fell. "Oh. Well, not much really. They provide materials for students to revise for exams and stuff. That's pretty much it. Look, I just show up and do my job."
"And what is your job, exactly?"
"Why do you need to know?" Donna shot back defiantly.
"Why's it such a big secret?" countered Rose.
"Don't get your back up with me, Mata Hari," hissed Donna. "It's not a secret, but you're not exactly one of my best mates either. But if you have to know, I work in data storage. I file things." She held her hands up. "See these paper cuts? And look at my nails! Handling all that paper, it dries your hands out, and who even uses that many paper files any more, I ask you? Is that what you're on about, is it an environmental thing, using too much paper or something?"
Oh, she was brilliant, Donna. The edges of Rose's mouth lifted in to a warm smile. "So what sorts of things do you file?"
"I don't really pay much attention. It's just a job. I'll probably be pulled from there and on a new assignment in a few weeks. But hold on a mo'. I get to ask some questions now, sunshine." Donna set her face to 'threatening and determined.' It was a look Rose knew well, from her own similar setting.
"I can't promise you I'll be able to answer."
"Yeah, I get it, all dressed in black, spying on me over the back wall, top secret, eyes only, all that. But I'm just a temp, so why me? If this company is in some kind of trouble with the government or whatever, why come to me?"
Rose was momentarily overcome by the memory of Donna Noble saying so many similar things about herself before. Just a temp, unimportant, insignificant, yet, two other versions of her had saved the universe--all universes--on two seperate occasions, and one was now living a life most humans couldn't even conceive of, the greatest companion the Doctor had ever had.
"Because you're special," Rose began, and waved her hand around, stoppering Donna's protests. "No one ever considers the temps. One of my mum's mates, she was a substitute teacher, and she used to eat her lunch in the teacher's lounge every day and no one would ever talk to her, but the gossip she used to hear being passed around the other teachers, it would make your ears melt right off your head! They never even looked at her, but she heard every word. I'm going to guess being a temp is the same, yeah? No one even looks at you, no one talks to you really, except to give you orders, but then you hear things. Don't you?"
Donna flashed a wicked grin. "Oh you would be amazed at the things I've heard! One time, I was temping for this security company, and I this bloke stopped right in front of my cubicle and had this whole conversation on his mobile about how he didn't really love this girl he'd been dating from the office, but that he had some kind of plan for her so was going to stay with her anyway and pretend he did! Can you even believe that? Men!"
"What did you do?"
Donna barked a laugh but then silenced herself and stifled a few more chuckles behind a hand. "Well, I tipped off his girlfriend sharpish, that's for sure. I can't abide that kind of horrid behaviour from men. And then I left a note in the ladies about him." She was overcome by a fit of giggles again.
Rose felt herself smiling and even letting a few amused sounds escape her throat, for the first time in two days. "Good on you! See, that's what I mean. That's why I need you to help me now. What I'm going to tell you, you have to understand that anything I leave out it's for your own safety."
Donna turned and looked at her sidelong, pursing her lips.
"What you think I'm dressed like this for my health? I detest black." Rose gestured to the sleeves of her jacket. "I am in danger, and so is a friend of mine, and we need your help."
"But--" Donna began but Rose cut her off immediately.
"You're just a temp. I know. That's why we need you. I think this company--Liberty--I think they're not really what they say they are. I think they took my friend and they're keeping him somewhere, against his will." This was the first time Rose had really formed these words even in her head and she felt the blood drain from her cheeks.
"Your bloke, is it? You sure he didn't just run out on ya?"
Rose shook her head. "Not unless it was the most elaborately staged dumping in the history of time and space."
"I don't really know anything," Donna sighed. "I'm sorry for you and your friend, but I haven't heard anything aside from just personal rubbish. Who's shagging who, that sort of thing."
"Well, can you tell me about the building then? It's in Whitechapel, yeah?"
"Yeah. It's just an office building, I don't really know what to say about it. Big lobby, lifts, offices, that sort of thing." Donna's features had shifted and grown to be more like the Donna that Rose knew; concerned, wanting to help, but not really knowing how yet.
"What about the layout? How many floors, and are any restricted?"
Donna stood and went to a cupboard, producing a package of biscuits and placing it on the table between them, pushing her bills and cheque book aside in the process.
"Well, the lift buttons go to ten floors, but I work on the third. Come to think of it, there is a little lock next to the tenth floor button, like you need a key to get up there. I always just figured it was where all the maintenance stuff was, the air conditioning and all that."
They each took a biscuit from the pack--chocolate digestives.
"Seems kind of low-tech, don't you think?" Rose nibbled at the edges of the biscuit, her stomach telling her she was hungry but her brain providing no desire to eat.
"You have no idea. It's like the place is permanently stuck in 1989." She wiggled her fingers around in front of Rose's eyes. "Papercuts."
"Papercuts," Rose repeated, half to herself. "What do they do with paper they don't have room for any more?"
Donna whaled through her biscuit and took another. "What'ya mean?"
"I mean, if Liberty is so in to having hard copies of things, they'd run out of space pretty quick for it all, right?"
"Mm," Donna spat a couple of crumbs out. "Shredded."
"And then what? Where does it go, just in to the bin out back?" Rose sat straight up in her chair now, her mind finally having something to turn around, something solid to push down the dread and fear that had been at a mid-level hum all day, through her hours of waiting at the library, and the newspaper research in to all things related to Liberty (none of it revealing anything useful).
"Nah. They got a company. There's these big bins, see, and we put the old files in there, and these other people come every night and put it into this big truck. 'S like a giant paper shredder on wheels, you ever see one of them things?"
"What time do they come?" The words rushed out of Rose's mouth as if they'd bypassed her brain completely.
Donna looked taken aback. "How should I know? I fill the bin, go home, come back the next day, it's empty."
Rose pushed the chair back and stood abruptly. "Don't tell anyone about this. About me being here."
Donna just laughed and drained her tea cup. "Go on, you're just a nutter, aren't you? Playing at a little Spooks? Did Nerys put you up to this?"
Rose gritted her teeth. "This is very serious, I assure you, Donna Mott. You have to promise me you'll keep yourself safe, not breathe a word of this to anyone. Please promise me."
"Why do you care so much?" Donna now stood as well and moved to open the back door.
"I could ask the same of you," she said and fled quickly out the door, dodging the light cast by a street lamp and leaping silently and nimbly over the garden wall. Donna hovered at the open door and heard a motorbike start with a roar nearby..
(To Chapter 14)
Characters: Alt!Ten/Rose, and everyone else I can cram in to the Alt!Verse, plus several OCs
Rating: Teen
Spoilers: Everything
Disclaimer: It would be a very different, and possibly quite upsetting, world if I owned these characters. For the sake of the world's children, I don't.
This chapter is as of yet unbeta'd, so read at your own risk.
Summary: When Rose and Alt!Ten return to Pete's World, after a much longer absence than planned, they find that things have begun to go a bit pear-shaped there. Can Our Heroes save the British Republic while at the same time working out their own Byzantinely complicated personal issues?
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26/ Epilogue | Whole story on Teaspoon
The light from the Mott's kitchen window spread a soft yellow nimbus around the shrubbery in their back garden. A neighbourhood cat--not ginger, but calico--twined around Rose's knees as she squatted behind the wall and watched. She'd been there long enough that she'd switched positions several times and had now gone back to her original posture, waiting for this Donna Mott to be alone.
And now she was, sitting at the kitchen table, a cup of tea growing cold before her, scowling at a cheque book and a stack of bills. Rose would have preferred it if the woman she was about to very rudely intrude upon had been spending her evening petting puppies or eating chocolate bars, but paying bills would have to do. She disengaged the cat from her feet and quietly hopped over the back wall.
Donna jumped in fright and opened her mouth to scream as Rose first tapped on the glass and then frantically put her finger to her lips and even made a few shushing noises.
"Oi, this is private property!" Donna spat out as she opened the back door just a crack. "You're trespassing!"
Rose continued to make what she hoped were soothing, shushing noises. "I'm sorry, but I had to talk to you."
Donna rolled her eyes. "You know, we've got a front door, Mata Hari." Squinting, she opened the door a little wider. "You're the lady that almost made me late for work this morning, aren't you?"
"I'm sorry for that, but this is important." How to even explain? "Can I come in?"
Donna again looked her up and down, sneering , but seemed to, in the final analysis, come to the conclusion that Rose Tyler was mostly harmless. "Yeah, alright then. Go on." She opened the door all of the way and Rose entered, blinking in the light, rubbing her eyes.
Donna stood directly across from her in the small kitchen, arms folded. "Out with it. Who are you, what do you want, what's so important. ITV's got a film starting in twenty minutes and I hate missing the beginnings of things."
Rose suddenly felt defiant. She knew Donna Noble intimately, or so she thought, but she now realised that it was almost always Donna Noble in extremis that she'd met and talked to. "Could I trouble you for a cuppa?" The great teaching of Jackie Tyler : When in doubt, share tea.
Donna narrowed her eyes. "Suppose you look like you could use one."
Rose didn't quite know how to take that, so she just said, "Ta," and sat at the table. Donna plugged the kettle in and busied herself with the tea things.
"I haven't got any biscuits though, so don't ask," she huffed as she brought a steaming mug over and placed it unceremoniously before Rose.
"Thanks." She took a deep breath. "So, here's the situation. You work for a company called Liberty Systems--"
"Temp," interjected Donna.
"What's that?"
"Temp. I temp for a company called Liberty Systems. I don't really work for them, I work for an agency." The tone in Donna's voice was that of someone who's had to explain the same thing to many people repeatedly.
"Sorry. You temp for a company called Liberty Systems. Can you tell me what you know about it?"
"About temping? Quite a bit if I do say so--" A self-satisfied smile drifted around Donna's lips.
Rose took a sip of her tea to hide her rapidly waning patience. "No, about the company."
Donna's face fell. "Oh. Well, not much really. They provide materials for students to revise for exams and stuff. That's pretty much it. Look, I just show up and do my job."
"And what is your job, exactly?"
"Why do you need to know?" Donna shot back defiantly.
"Why's it such a big secret?" countered Rose.
"Don't get your back up with me, Mata Hari," hissed Donna. "It's not a secret, but you're not exactly one of my best mates either. But if you have to know, I work in data storage. I file things." She held her hands up. "See these paper cuts? And look at my nails! Handling all that paper, it dries your hands out, and who even uses that many paper files any more, I ask you? Is that what you're on about, is it an environmental thing, using too much paper or something?"
Oh, she was brilliant, Donna. The edges of Rose's mouth lifted in to a warm smile. "So what sorts of things do you file?"
"I don't really pay much attention. It's just a job. I'll probably be pulled from there and on a new assignment in a few weeks. But hold on a mo'. I get to ask some questions now, sunshine." Donna set her face to 'threatening and determined.' It was a look Rose knew well, from her own similar setting.
"I can't promise you I'll be able to answer."
"Yeah, I get it, all dressed in black, spying on me over the back wall, top secret, eyes only, all that. But I'm just a temp, so why me? If this company is in some kind of trouble with the government or whatever, why come to me?"
Rose was momentarily overcome by the memory of Donna Noble saying so many similar things about herself before. Just a temp, unimportant, insignificant, yet, two other versions of her had saved the universe--all universes--on two seperate occasions, and one was now living a life most humans couldn't even conceive of, the greatest companion the Doctor had ever had.
"Because you're special," Rose began, and waved her hand around, stoppering Donna's protests. "No one ever considers the temps. One of my mum's mates, she was a substitute teacher, and she used to eat her lunch in the teacher's lounge every day and no one would ever talk to her, but the gossip she used to hear being passed around the other teachers, it would make your ears melt right off your head! They never even looked at her, but she heard every word. I'm going to guess being a temp is the same, yeah? No one even looks at you, no one talks to you really, except to give you orders, but then you hear things. Don't you?"
Donna flashed a wicked grin. "Oh you would be amazed at the things I've heard! One time, I was temping for this security company, and I this bloke stopped right in front of my cubicle and had this whole conversation on his mobile about how he didn't really love this girl he'd been dating from the office, but that he had some kind of plan for her so was going to stay with her anyway and pretend he did! Can you even believe that? Men!"
"What did you do?"
Donna barked a laugh but then silenced herself and stifled a few more chuckles behind a hand. "Well, I tipped off his girlfriend sharpish, that's for sure. I can't abide that kind of horrid behaviour from men. And then I left a note in the ladies about him." She was overcome by a fit of giggles again.
Rose felt herself smiling and even letting a few amused sounds escape her throat, for the first time in two days. "Good on you! See, that's what I mean. That's why I need you to help me now. What I'm going to tell you, you have to understand that anything I leave out it's for your own safety."
Donna turned and looked at her sidelong, pursing her lips.
"What you think I'm dressed like this for my health? I detest black." Rose gestured to the sleeves of her jacket. "I am in danger, and so is a friend of mine, and we need your help."
"But--" Donna began but Rose cut her off immediately.
"You're just a temp. I know. That's why we need you. I think this company--Liberty--I think they're not really what they say they are. I think they took my friend and they're keeping him somewhere, against his will." This was the first time Rose had really formed these words even in her head and she felt the blood drain from her cheeks.
"Your bloke, is it? You sure he didn't just run out on ya?"
Rose shook her head. "Not unless it was the most elaborately staged dumping in the history of time and space."
"I don't really know anything," Donna sighed. "I'm sorry for you and your friend, but I haven't heard anything aside from just personal rubbish. Who's shagging who, that sort of thing."
"Well, can you tell me about the building then? It's in Whitechapel, yeah?"
"Yeah. It's just an office building, I don't really know what to say about it. Big lobby, lifts, offices, that sort of thing." Donna's features had shifted and grown to be more like the Donna that Rose knew; concerned, wanting to help, but not really knowing how yet.
"What about the layout? How many floors, and are any restricted?"
Donna stood and went to a cupboard, producing a package of biscuits and placing it on the table between them, pushing her bills and cheque book aside in the process.
"Well, the lift buttons go to ten floors, but I work on the third. Come to think of it, there is a little lock next to the tenth floor button, like you need a key to get up there. I always just figured it was where all the maintenance stuff was, the air conditioning and all that."
They each took a biscuit from the pack--chocolate digestives.
"Seems kind of low-tech, don't you think?" Rose nibbled at the edges of the biscuit, her stomach telling her she was hungry but her brain providing no desire to eat.
"You have no idea. It's like the place is permanently stuck in 1989." She wiggled her fingers around in front of Rose's eyes. "Papercuts."
"Papercuts," Rose repeated, half to herself. "What do they do with paper they don't have room for any more?"
Donna whaled through her biscuit and took another. "What'ya mean?"
"I mean, if Liberty is so in to having hard copies of things, they'd run out of space pretty quick for it all, right?"
"Mm," Donna spat a couple of crumbs out. "Shredded."
"And then what? Where does it go, just in to the bin out back?" Rose sat straight up in her chair now, her mind finally having something to turn around, something solid to push down the dread and fear that had been at a mid-level hum all day, through her hours of waiting at the library, and the newspaper research in to all things related to Liberty (none of it revealing anything useful).
"Nah. They got a company. There's these big bins, see, and we put the old files in there, and these other people come every night and put it into this big truck. 'S like a giant paper shredder on wheels, you ever see one of them things?"
"What time do they come?" The words rushed out of Rose's mouth as if they'd bypassed her brain completely.
Donna looked taken aback. "How should I know? I fill the bin, go home, come back the next day, it's empty."
Rose pushed the chair back and stood abruptly. "Don't tell anyone about this. About me being here."
Donna just laughed and drained her tea cup. "Go on, you're just a nutter, aren't you? Playing at a little Spooks? Did Nerys put you up to this?"
Rose gritted her teeth. "This is very serious, I assure you, Donna Mott. You have to promise me you'll keep yourself safe, not breathe a word of this to anyone. Please promise me."
"Why do you care so much?" Donna now stood as well and moved to open the back door.
"I could ask the same of you," she said and fled quickly out the door, dodging the light cast by a street lamp and leaping silently and nimbly over the garden wall. Donna hovered at the open door and heard a motorbike start with a roar nearby..
(To Chapter 14)