The One True Free Life 17/ 26
Title: The One True Free Life (17/26)
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.
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
A/N: And we're back!
Pete Tyler was staring out of the window of the Vitex zeppelin at the grey impression of the English Channel when Rose's message arrived.
So, that's everyone accounted for, he thought, and he took a few moments to breathe more freely. Rose was so surprisingly like himself--full of big plans and unwilling to declare anything impossible. She was also, much less surprisingly, like her mother; fierce and stubborn as an ox. How those two managed to live under the same roof for twenty-odd years and not kill each other remained a mystery to him. And though she never called him "dad," he had come to see her as a daughter, the sum and combination of himself and the woman he loved. While he never quite understood Rose's devotion to the Doctor at all costs, he did completely understand the tenacious grip she held on anything that would bring her what she wanted. She would have made a fantastic businesswoman, and perhaps still would.
In the middle of a neighbour's pasture that he'd asked Gordon to stop next to on their way home from the zeppelin port, he placed the return call. When Rose did not answer but the Doctor did, he felt a spike of panic and skipped over all niceties.
"Where's Rose? Is she okay?"
"She's sleeping," said the Doctor in a hushed but calm voice.
Pete felt suddenly foolish, not having had the full experience of the irrational fear that parents live with every moment of every day. "Right," he said, recovering. "Right. She must be exhausted. We haven't long to talk though. I'm afraid--"
"Of course. I'll wake her."
Pete listened to the reverent way with which the Doctor roused Rose, and to the muffled sounds of her waking, with renewed anger at anyone who could separate two people so clearly in love--an anger born out of experience.
"Pete?" Rose's voice was fully alert, and quavered a little at the edges.
"Thank God. I'm so happy you're all right. I've just taken your mum and Tony somewhere safe--" At this he heard a choked noise from her end and he paused to make sure she was still on the line before continuing. "I can't tell you where, but I can tell you that they're okay. Well, your mum is worried sick, but it wouldn't be the first time."
"Oh," she said. "Yes, of course. Good. I mean, not that mum is worried, but that they're safe."
"Look, we shouldn't stay on the line much longer, but I'm going to send you some information. If I don't hear from you for 24 hours, I'm going to assume the worst, so have a care for my old heart, okay?"
"But don't you want to know...well, anything?" Rose sounded lost, as if she were ticking off items on her What to Do When People Want to Abduct Your Loved Ones list but came up short.
"No. The less I know, the better. I just need to know you're still alive and all right. So just do that for me. We don't need to talk about what you and he need to do, because I know you know. And I know you will."
~o0o~
The Doctor watched the phone sail through the air and land with a metallic clatter on the ground about ten yards away after bouncing a couple of times. Then he watched Rose burst in to sobs that twisted and reddened her face almost instantly. And then he watched the phone vibrate several inches to the left of where it had landed, as the screen lit up with a message.
The phone seemed to have the less complicated needs, and he strode over and snatched it up, taking a quick peek at the message:
ALIS JONES--CONWY-- 53/2'5.54"N 3/55'58.71"W
He brandished it as an offering to the distraught Rose. "Look, Pete's sent us a message. It's got a name and some...other stuff. Isn't that good? See?" He made the phone dance around in the air a bit in front of her, but she turned away from him and it and covered her face with her hands, still making a lot of angry, wet noises.
The Doctor cast about for something to say. "Did he say something?" There was no answer from Rose and if anything she curled up in to an even more impenetrable ball. "Did I say something?" He searched back through the past few minutes and couldn't come up with anything that might have been controversial. Crouching down next to her, he could see that her shoulders had stopped shaking so violently but her face was still twisted in to a horrible grimace.
She turned her glassy, red eyes on him. "I can't believe I did it again!" she choked out and a fresh wave of sobs racked her.
The Doctor made a number of non-committal yet vaguely affirmative statements and sat down on the ground next to where she'd curled up in the foetal position, waiting for more information. He explored the growing awareness that what he was really waiting for was clarification of who should next be added to the list of People Who Had Hurt Rose, and therefore deserved a good, and perhaps permanent, dose of the Oncoming Storm.
She suddenly rolled over and sat up, and then punched him hard on the arm. "And you let me! You never even asked!"
His arm smarted and he rubbed it vigorously. "Hey, what was that for?"
"I completely forgot about mum, and Tony, again." She wiped a large swath of her face with her palms, and picked up a corner of the towel she'd been laying on to wipe her nose with.
His skin pricked with fear all along the left side of his body. "They're not--"
"Pete said he took them somewhere safe. But I didn't even ask, I didn't even think about it. Of course they'd be in danger once these people realised you and I had both escaped from under their noses. And I totally forgot about them!"
"Okay, good." She shot him a look. "I mean, good that they're okay."
"Of course they're okay. They've got someone looking after them who cares. Unlike me. And unlike you." The red in her eyes when she looked at him made her look many times more angry than she already was, which was already terrifying enough.
"Rose, I am no stranger to the parent-child dynamic and it's the way of the universe: parents worry themselves sick over their children, even when there's no good reason to, and children take their parents for granted."
She clenched her teeth together in a way that wrinkled up her chin. "I do not take mum for granted. I love her. She's my mother."
The Doctor could not help but reach out with a thumb and try to stroke the creases out of her chin. "Of course you love her. I never said you didn't."
She batted his hand away from her face. "I can't believe I didn't even ask," she mumbled. "My own mother and brother."
"So just to clarify, this is yourself you're cross with now, is it?"
She let a smile briefly flit across her face before reforming it back in to a pout. "Yes, very much."
"So, I'd be within my rights to ask you to apologize for hitting me?"
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that. I told you, we Tylers are a passionate lot." She reached out and touched his knee, then his arm where she'd struck him.
"Well, just for the record, next time when you want to get passionate on me, there are other ways I'd prefer you go about doing so." He captured her hand with his and held it at his knee again. "Can we talk about this now?" He held up the phone so she could see the message.
"What's all that, then?"
"As far as I can tell, it's a name, and some map coordinates. Have we a sat-nav?" He began to rummage about in their gear as Rose inspected the message on the phone.
"I've got a palm-top, but I'm sort of wary of using it. It's got a wireless signal that can be traced but I can't go switching SIM cards in it like the phone. What's this, Conwy? Sounds Welsh."
"It is. North Wales." He took the phone back and started pointing to the display and muttering to himself.
"Sounds wet," Rose frowned. "And cold."
"No doubt," said the Doctor between mumbles.
"And what's all this?" Rose gestured to the increasing number of tics the Doctor was engaging in, from rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, to sticking his tongue behind his teeth and wrinkling his nose.
"Well, I should be able to tell you exactly where this is, or get us there at least, but I can't do that here. Which, by the way, is another thing we need to talk about. But I think I can get us relatively close. Close enough that we can boot up the palm-top just for a couple of minutes to go the last little bit." He shut the phone with a snap and laid it on the ground next to him.
"All right, so that's our next move then. And now the moment we've both been avoiding, yeah?" She gave him a long appraising look, and he tried to keep his features blank. "What in bloody hell is going on here? I hope you have some insights, because I'm really fresh out. How does anyone here even know who you are?"
The Doctor's mouth settled in to a thin line. "I don't think they do know who I am. Not really, at any rate. I barely know who or what I am, I doubt those people have any inkling at all."
"Then why did they take you? What were they doing to you?" A cloud passed over her features as she recalled the sight of him tethered and sedated on the bed.
"They wanted me for something. Because of what I can do, though I can't do it very well here, as I've said. They ran tests--that hurt, a lot." His hands automatically flew to his temples and began rubbing vigourously. "They tested my DNA, and that really threw them for a loop, and they did all sorts of brain scanning and that sort of thing. It was my brain that they seemed interested in." He sniffed and cleared his throat. "Of course. But they never told me who they were or why they did it."
"Liberty Systems," Rose said simply. "That's how I found you. Pete received a message after you were taken with just the word Liberty. I didn't know what that meant at first, so I went and saw Donna."
The Doctor began to splutter and cough and Rose had to whack him on the back before he stopped. "Sorry, you were saying? Donna? Donna Noble? How extraordinary."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Please, Doctor, don't even try. I know you went to see her that morning."
"Well, I never actually saw her. Saw her house. I saw a ginger cat sitting on the door step and thought that might be her."
"Oh no, Donna Noble--or rather Mott is her surname here--is very much a human. And she is temping right now for Liberty Systems. They're supposedly some sort of education company" Rose pushed on the Doctor's shoulder for emphasis. "Quite a coincidence, don't you think?"
He did look legitimately dumbstruck by this information and circled with his index finger to signal that she should continue.
"It was Donna that told me about the paper shredding company, and that the building had a tenth floor that was not accessible by regular staff. And also that they don't use much computer technology in the building, which surprised me, but she was certainly right about that. There was no way I could have gotten you out if there'd been all sorts of lasers and alarms and stuff."
Rose pulled a bottle of water out of the rucksack, took a long gulp and offered it to the Doctor, who turned it down.
"Donna Noble--Mott," he sighed. "Brilliant."
"She is rather, isn't she? If only she knew what her counterpart was getting up to right now!" Rose hooted and let out a loud "Ha!" that sent some doves fleeing from the branches above their heads. "So that's pretty much it. Oh, and there was a woman who showed up and helped me not kill you."
He perked up a bit from the dazed reverie he seemed to have been falling in to momentarily. "Dark hair? Lab coat?"
"That's the one."
"She was nice. She apologised at least," said the Doctor.
"She's the one that unhooked you from all that...stuff. And there were other people up there, as well. She created a diversion so we could get away."
He looked thoughtful. "I'm not overly optimistic about her future."
"Is there anything else? What have we got so far here?"
He laid back on the towel and put his hands behind his head, staring up at the shifting jigsaw of the leaves above their heads. "So, the people who took me are somehow associated with Liberty Systems, which does what?"
Rose took another sip from the water bottle. "Education. Like, test revising and tutoring, that sort of thing."
"Okay, so clearly that's not what they really do. Or at least, that's not all they do. They took me with great interest in my frankly magnificent Time Lord brain, but don't seem to be that up on the latest computer technology. That's what strikes me as really odd. They had plenty of medical technology, though they may have sent the DNA sample out of house to be analysed. You were able to get in and out with apparent ease--"
"Oi, it wasn't that easy!"
He continued on without looking at her. "With some amount of ease. And then there was the final test they ran on me."
"Did you tell me about that already?"
"No. I don't remember it that well myself. They kept me sedated a lot of the time, but I remember...." He squeezed his eyes shut and beetled his brow in concentration. "I remember Cybermen."
Rose immediately sat up straight and started to pack the bags. "Cybermen?"
He opened his eyes again and rolled over to his side, reaching a hand out to stop her frantic packing. "Just in my mind, not for real. But I have this memory of Cybermen taking my family. Only, they're not my family. But I felt everything that you'd expect someone to feel in that situation. Terror, and guilt, fear, anger. I felt it just as if it really had been me. I still feel it, though I know it's not real. Or at least, not real for me."
"Someone else's memories?"
"And emotions. But yes, that's it exactly."
Her voice was still hoarse and froggy from crying earlier, and it cracked as she spoke. "That's terrible. I'm so sorry."
"It's okay, it was only the one. I got the impression though that that was supposed to be one of many. If I'd have been there just a day longer, who knows. The woman with the dark hair--I think it was her--I overheard her saying to someone else that I'd be driven mad."
"Madder," Rose corrected, trying to bring a bit of levity in to a topic she'd rather not seriously contemplate. It didn't exactly work however, and there was a long silence, finally broken by the Doctor sitting bolt upright.
"So, shall we see about this Alis Jones, Conwy, fifty-three degrees latitude, two minutes, five point five four seconds north, three degrees longitude, fifty-five minutes, fifty-eight point seven one seconds west?"
Rose's head spun. "I guess that means you're driving. Can you drive one of those things? I actually hate it, personally."
The Doctor stood, fastidiously brushing leaves and dirt off of his jeans as if they were an Armani suit. "Rose Tyler, I'm astounded you even have to ask."
She stood as well, picked the phone up from the ground, opened it's back cover, removed the SIM card and broke it in two. Holding out her hand, she requested the book, which the Doctor provided from the pile of items he was packing in to the rucksack. She took the first leaf and ripped it carefully out, then tore it in to several pieces and stuffed them in to her pocket.
When she looked up again, the Doctor was leaning against the trunk of the great oak, surveying their gear. She approached him tentatively, and he thought she might be wondering what he was wondering: Is it all right to romance under such dire circumstances? Are there rules for these sorts of things?
There was a time when danger and fun weren't mutually exclusive, back when he'd had a very different definition of "dire circumstances." He had led this fragile human girl down that path, imbuing her with his own alien sense of invincibility. Now that the shoe was most decidedly on the other foot, things were no longer nearly as clear.
She seemed to arrive at a conclusion however, and pressed her body against his, creating an electric contrast with the gnarled bark of the tree at his back. This was a type of passion he much preferred and he loved the way that he could easily capture her to him with his arms around her waist. Her body remained in constant motion as she stood on her tiptoes and tried to close the height differential between them. The feel of her hips moving this way and that against him made it difficult to focus when she pulled away again and began to murmur sweet words of reunion and love. "Tell me again," she said, her breath warm at his throat. "What you told me on the beach."
"I said, I love you. Forever."
He felt the low vibrations of her little noise of acknowledgement. "You and me, saving the world together. As it should be." She placed both hands on his chest and pushed off, leaving the circle of his arms.
He was glad she seemed to be so decisive on the matter, but at the same time he wondered at it. She had always been free to come and go, to leave him and the TARDIS and go back to her life, but she chose not to. He'd never given that much thought to it before--staying with him had seemed the obvious choice. But now, when they could just run and not look back--a very tempting idea were it not for the desire for vengeance that simmered below the surface--she hadn't even presented doing so as an option. Did his other self know that freedom could be so heartbreaking? It never would have occurred to the man he'd once been: A free man is also free to be a coward.
(To Chapter 18)
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.
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
A/N: And we're back!
Pete Tyler was staring out of the window of the Vitex zeppelin at the grey impression of the English Channel when Rose's message arrived.
So, that's everyone accounted for, he thought, and he took a few moments to breathe more freely. Rose was so surprisingly like himself--full of big plans and unwilling to declare anything impossible. She was also, much less surprisingly, like her mother; fierce and stubborn as an ox. How those two managed to live under the same roof for twenty-odd years and not kill each other remained a mystery to him. And though she never called him "dad," he had come to see her as a daughter, the sum and combination of himself and the woman he loved. While he never quite understood Rose's devotion to the Doctor at all costs, he did completely understand the tenacious grip she held on anything that would bring her what she wanted. She would have made a fantastic businesswoman, and perhaps still would.
In the middle of a neighbour's pasture that he'd asked Gordon to stop next to on their way home from the zeppelin port, he placed the return call. When Rose did not answer but the Doctor did, he felt a spike of panic and skipped over all niceties.
"Where's Rose? Is she okay?"
"She's sleeping," said the Doctor in a hushed but calm voice.
Pete felt suddenly foolish, not having had the full experience of the irrational fear that parents live with every moment of every day. "Right," he said, recovering. "Right. She must be exhausted. We haven't long to talk though. I'm afraid--"
"Of course. I'll wake her."
Pete listened to the reverent way with which the Doctor roused Rose, and to the muffled sounds of her waking, with renewed anger at anyone who could separate two people so clearly in love--an anger born out of experience.
"Pete?" Rose's voice was fully alert, and quavered a little at the edges.
"Thank God. I'm so happy you're all right. I've just taken your mum and Tony somewhere safe--" At this he heard a choked noise from her end and he paused to make sure she was still on the line before continuing. "I can't tell you where, but I can tell you that they're okay. Well, your mum is worried sick, but it wouldn't be the first time."
"Oh," she said. "Yes, of course. Good. I mean, not that mum is worried, but that they're safe."
"Look, we shouldn't stay on the line much longer, but I'm going to send you some information. If I don't hear from you for 24 hours, I'm going to assume the worst, so have a care for my old heart, okay?"
"But don't you want to know...well, anything?" Rose sounded lost, as if she were ticking off items on her What to Do When People Want to Abduct Your Loved Ones list but came up short.
"No. The less I know, the better. I just need to know you're still alive and all right. So just do that for me. We don't need to talk about what you and he need to do, because I know you know. And I know you will."
~o0o~
The Doctor watched the phone sail through the air and land with a metallic clatter on the ground about ten yards away after bouncing a couple of times. Then he watched Rose burst in to sobs that twisted and reddened her face almost instantly. And then he watched the phone vibrate several inches to the left of where it had landed, as the screen lit up with a message.
The phone seemed to have the less complicated needs, and he strode over and snatched it up, taking a quick peek at the message:
ALIS JONES--CONWY-- 53/2'5.54"N 3/55'58.71"W
He brandished it as an offering to the distraught Rose. "Look, Pete's sent us a message. It's got a name and some...other stuff. Isn't that good? See?" He made the phone dance around in the air a bit in front of her, but she turned away from him and it and covered her face with her hands, still making a lot of angry, wet noises.
The Doctor cast about for something to say. "Did he say something?" There was no answer from Rose and if anything she curled up in to an even more impenetrable ball. "Did I say something?" He searched back through the past few minutes and couldn't come up with anything that might have been controversial. Crouching down next to her, he could see that her shoulders had stopped shaking so violently but her face was still twisted in to a horrible grimace.
She turned her glassy, red eyes on him. "I can't believe I did it again!" she choked out and a fresh wave of sobs racked her.
The Doctor made a number of non-committal yet vaguely affirmative statements and sat down on the ground next to where she'd curled up in the foetal position, waiting for more information. He explored the growing awareness that what he was really waiting for was clarification of who should next be added to the list of People Who Had Hurt Rose, and therefore deserved a good, and perhaps permanent, dose of the Oncoming Storm.
She suddenly rolled over and sat up, and then punched him hard on the arm. "And you let me! You never even asked!"
His arm smarted and he rubbed it vigorously. "Hey, what was that for?"
"I completely forgot about mum, and Tony, again." She wiped a large swath of her face with her palms, and picked up a corner of the towel she'd been laying on to wipe her nose with.
His skin pricked with fear all along the left side of his body. "They're not--"
"Pete said he took them somewhere safe. But I didn't even ask, I didn't even think about it. Of course they'd be in danger once these people realised you and I had both escaped from under their noses. And I totally forgot about them!"
"Okay, good." She shot him a look. "I mean, good that they're okay."
"Of course they're okay. They've got someone looking after them who cares. Unlike me. And unlike you." The red in her eyes when she looked at him made her look many times more angry than she already was, which was already terrifying enough.
"Rose, I am no stranger to the parent-child dynamic and it's the way of the universe: parents worry themselves sick over their children, even when there's no good reason to, and children take their parents for granted."
She clenched her teeth together in a way that wrinkled up her chin. "I do not take mum for granted. I love her. She's my mother."
The Doctor could not help but reach out with a thumb and try to stroke the creases out of her chin. "Of course you love her. I never said you didn't."
She batted his hand away from her face. "I can't believe I didn't even ask," she mumbled. "My own mother and brother."
"So just to clarify, this is yourself you're cross with now, is it?"
She let a smile briefly flit across her face before reforming it back in to a pout. "Yes, very much."
"So, I'd be within my rights to ask you to apologize for hitting me?"
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that. I told you, we Tylers are a passionate lot." She reached out and touched his knee, then his arm where she'd struck him.
"Well, just for the record, next time when you want to get passionate on me, there are other ways I'd prefer you go about doing so." He captured her hand with his and held it at his knee again. "Can we talk about this now?" He held up the phone so she could see the message.
"What's all that, then?"
"As far as I can tell, it's a name, and some map coordinates. Have we a sat-nav?" He began to rummage about in their gear as Rose inspected the message on the phone.
"I've got a palm-top, but I'm sort of wary of using it. It's got a wireless signal that can be traced but I can't go switching SIM cards in it like the phone. What's this, Conwy? Sounds Welsh."
"It is. North Wales." He took the phone back and started pointing to the display and muttering to himself.
"Sounds wet," Rose frowned. "And cold."
"No doubt," said the Doctor between mumbles.
"And what's all this?" Rose gestured to the increasing number of tics the Doctor was engaging in, from rubbing the back of his neck with one hand, to sticking his tongue behind his teeth and wrinkling his nose.
"Well, I should be able to tell you exactly where this is, or get us there at least, but I can't do that here. Which, by the way, is another thing we need to talk about. But I think I can get us relatively close. Close enough that we can boot up the palm-top just for a couple of minutes to go the last little bit." He shut the phone with a snap and laid it on the ground next to him.
"All right, so that's our next move then. And now the moment we've both been avoiding, yeah?" She gave him a long appraising look, and he tried to keep his features blank. "What in bloody hell is going on here? I hope you have some insights, because I'm really fresh out. How does anyone here even know who you are?"
The Doctor's mouth settled in to a thin line. "I don't think they do know who I am. Not really, at any rate. I barely know who or what I am, I doubt those people have any inkling at all."
"Then why did they take you? What were they doing to you?" A cloud passed over her features as she recalled the sight of him tethered and sedated on the bed.
"They wanted me for something. Because of what I can do, though I can't do it very well here, as I've said. They ran tests--that hurt, a lot." His hands automatically flew to his temples and began rubbing vigourously. "They tested my DNA, and that really threw them for a loop, and they did all sorts of brain scanning and that sort of thing. It was my brain that they seemed interested in." He sniffed and cleared his throat. "Of course. But they never told me who they were or why they did it."
"Liberty Systems," Rose said simply. "That's how I found you. Pete received a message after you were taken with just the word Liberty. I didn't know what that meant at first, so I went and saw Donna."
The Doctor began to splutter and cough and Rose had to whack him on the back before he stopped. "Sorry, you were saying? Donna? Donna Noble? How extraordinary."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Please, Doctor, don't even try. I know you went to see her that morning."
"Well, I never actually saw her. Saw her house. I saw a ginger cat sitting on the door step and thought that might be her."
"Oh no, Donna Noble--or rather Mott is her surname here--is very much a human. And she is temping right now for Liberty Systems. They're supposedly some sort of education company" Rose pushed on the Doctor's shoulder for emphasis. "Quite a coincidence, don't you think?"
He did look legitimately dumbstruck by this information and circled with his index finger to signal that she should continue.
"It was Donna that told me about the paper shredding company, and that the building had a tenth floor that was not accessible by regular staff. And also that they don't use much computer technology in the building, which surprised me, but she was certainly right about that. There was no way I could have gotten you out if there'd been all sorts of lasers and alarms and stuff."
Rose pulled a bottle of water out of the rucksack, took a long gulp and offered it to the Doctor, who turned it down.
"Donna Noble--Mott," he sighed. "Brilliant."
"She is rather, isn't she? If only she knew what her counterpart was getting up to right now!" Rose hooted and let out a loud "Ha!" that sent some doves fleeing from the branches above their heads. "So that's pretty much it. Oh, and there was a woman who showed up and helped me not kill you."
He perked up a bit from the dazed reverie he seemed to have been falling in to momentarily. "Dark hair? Lab coat?"
"That's the one."
"She was nice. She apologised at least," said the Doctor.
"She's the one that unhooked you from all that...stuff. And there were other people up there, as well. She created a diversion so we could get away."
He looked thoughtful. "I'm not overly optimistic about her future."
"Is there anything else? What have we got so far here?"
He laid back on the towel and put his hands behind his head, staring up at the shifting jigsaw of the leaves above their heads. "So, the people who took me are somehow associated with Liberty Systems, which does what?"
Rose took another sip from the water bottle. "Education. Like, test revising and tutoring, that sort of thing."
"Okay, so clearly that's not what they really do. Or at least, that's not all they do. They took me with great interest in my frankly magnificent Time Lord brain, but don't seem to be that up on the latest computer technology. That's what strikes me as really odd. They had plenty of medical technology, though they may have sent the DNA sample out of house to be analysed. You were able to get in and out with apparent ease--"
"Oi, it wasn't that easy!"
He continued on without looking at her. "With some amount of ease. And then there was the final test they ran on me."
"Did you tell me about that already?"
"No. I don't remember it that well myself. They kept me sedated a lot of the time, but I remember...." He squeezed his eyes shut and beetled his brow in concentration. "I remember Cybermen."
Rose immediately sat up straight and started to pack the bags. "Cybermen?"
He opened his eyes again and rolled over to his side, reaching a hand out to stop her frantic packing. "Just in my mind, not for real. But I have this memory of Cybermen taking my family. Only, they're not my family. But I felt everything that you'd expect someone to feel in that situation. Terror, and guilt, fear, anger. I felt it just as if it really had been me. I still feel it, though I know it's not real. Or at least, not real for me."
"Someone else's memories?"
"And emotions. But yes, that's it exactly."
Her voice was still hoarse and froggy from crying earlier, and it cracked as she spoke. "That's terrible. I'm so sorry."
"It's okay, it was only the one. I got the impression though that that was supposed to be one of many. If I'd have been there just a day longer, who knows. The woman with the dark hair--I think it was her--I overheard her saying to someone else that I'd be driven mad."
"Madder," Rose corrected, trying to bring a bit of levity in to a topic she'd rather not seriously contemplate. It didn't exactly work however, and there was a long silence, finally broken by the Doctor sitting bolt upright.
"So, shall we see about this Alis Jones, Conwy, fifty-three degrees latitude, two minutes, five point five four seconds north, three degrees longitude, fifty-five minutes, fifty-eight point seven one seconds west?"
Rose's head spun. "I guess that means you're driving. Can you drive one of those things? I actually hate it, personally."
The Doctor stood, fastidiously brushing leaves and dirt off of his jeans as if they were an Armani suit. "Rose Tyler, I'm astounded you even have to ask."
She stood as well, picked the phone up from the ground, opened it's back cover, removed the SIM card and broke it in two. Holding out her hand, she requested the book, which the Doctor provided from the pile of items he was packing in to the rucksack. She took the first leaf and ripped it carefully out, then tore it in to several pieces and stuffed them in to her pocket.
When she looked up again, the Doctor was leaning against the trunk of the great oak, surveying their gear. She approached him tentatively, and he thought she might be wondering what he was wondering: Is it all right to romance under such dire circumstances? Are there rules for these sorts of things?
There was a time when danger and fun weren't mutually exclusive, back when he'd had a very different definition of "dire circumstances." He had led this fragile human girl down that path, imbuing her with his own alien sense of invincibility. Now that the shoe was most decidedly on the other foot, things were no longer nearly as clear.
She seemed to arrive at a conclusion however, and pressed her body against his, creating an electric contrast with the gnarled bark of the tree at his back. This was a type of passion he much preferred and he loved the way that he could easily capture her to him with his arms around her waist. Her body remained in constant motion as she stood on her tiptoes and tried to close the height differential between them. The feel of her hips moving this way and that against him made it difficult to focus when she pulled away again and began to murmur sweet words of reunion and love. "Tell me again," she said, her breath warm at his throat. "What you told me on the beach."
"I said, I love you. Forever."
He felt the low vibrations of her little noise of acknowledgement. "You and me, saving the world together. As it should be." She placed both hands on his chest and pushed off, leaving the circle of his arms.
He was glad she seemed to be so decisive on the matter, but at the same time he wondered at it. She had always been free to come and go, to leave him and the TARDIS and go back to her life, but she chose not to. He'd never given that much thought to it before--staying with him had seemed the obvious choice. But now, when they could just run and not look back--a very tempting idea were it not for the desire for vengeance that simmered below the surface--she hadn't even presented doing so as an option. Did his other self know that freedom could be so heartbreaking? It never would have occurred to the man he'd once been: A free man is also free to be a coward.
(To Chapter 18)