Held in Trust: Chapter 1
Title: Held in Trust (1/?)
Characters/Pairings: Duplicate Doctor/Rose, Alt!Donna, the Tyler clan, and lots of OC's.
Rating: Teen
Summary: An Alt!Ten, Rose and Alt!Donna Adventure!
Join our heroes as they investigate a mysterious man from the future, an apocalyptic death cult, and the wonders of the internal combustion engine.Previous Chapters: Prologue
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life.
Rose felt as if the glow from the laptop was searing a hole in to her brain through her eyelids. She couldn't in good conscience ask the Doctor to go somewhere else--he was well ensconced with his bad leg propped up on a stack of pillows--but the bizarre hours he was beginning to keep were driving her around the bend.
She made some unhappy-sounding noises in the hopes that he'd catch the meaning behind them, shut the computer off and go to sleep. Not detecting any such movement from his side of the bed, she tried again.
"Mmmph!" she groaned, and flopped quite pointedly over on to her stomach.
He leaned over to look at her, glasses balanced on his nose, and Rose smiled to herself as she awaited the inevitable apology and perhaps even a few sweet-nothings. Life had gotten frustrating with his limited mobility, but he still could talk a good game, and sometimes that was enough.
"Hawking radiation!" he said, rolling the vowels around in his mouth as if it were the sexiest phrase in any language, terrestrial or otherwise.
Rose finally let one eye flip open, though he was behind her and couldn't see the look of complete confusion in it.
"Wha'?" she mumbled, sleep making her voice hoarse and scratchy.
"Hawking radiation. Radiation created by black holes and worm holes. Incidentally, also created by time travel. Do you have Stephen Hawking in this universe? He's brilliant, I'm keen to ask him about a few things. Well, I say a few things, there's a couple problems I have with.... Well, I say a couple problems, really just one really big one: he's mostly wrong. But still, brilliant! And very much correct about the radiation."
Definitely not among the more romantic speeches in the history of man or Time Lord. She decided to take the direct approach, and felt that by now she really should have learned that when it came to the Doctor, subtle hinting almost always ended in failure.
"Can you shut the computer off and go to bed, please?" She rolled over again to face him, noticing that he didn't look like a man who was going to go to sleep any time soon, and made a mental note to hide the coffee. "I have to be back at the office in," she checked the clock, "four hours."
"But I am in bed," the Doctor pouted, though she could tell he was fully aware of her precise meaning and was just playing dumb to buy time. This technique tended to work well on the less intelligent class of villain, but would get him precisely nowhere with Rose. She'd seen him try it on Donna too, only to be met with gales of laughter and some choice impolite names.
"Exactly. You are in bed, which is for sleeping, not for keeping me up with that bloody computer."
"It's not always for sleeping." He winked, which just served to infuriate her further.
"It will be if you don't turn it off and let me get some sleep."
That seemed to get through to him more than all of her previous whinging and he looked quite crestfallen. "Since you put it that way.... But can I just show you something? I promise I'll go to sleep after. Please? It's really good." He began to rearrange himself so that he was laying down at her level, tilting the laptop screen so they could both look together.
Rose found herself surveying a satellite image of Southwestern England, squinting in the glare of it in the darkened room.
"What am I looking at?"
He pointed to an area of the screen. "That's the Somerset Levels, and if you look right here, don't take your eyes off this spot, and I'll run the footage. This is from earlier today." He clicked the mouse and all over the map things went in to motion with little bursts of colour here and there. She tried to keep her tired eyes trained on the spot that the Doctor had indicated, but she clearly had missed something as he gave a little hoot and said, "There!"
"Where?"
He looked over indulgently. "We'll be needing to get you specs next. I'll run it again, watch that spot." He clicked the button again and brought his finger up to the screen. "Just wait."
This time Rose saw it: a little mushrooming dot of purple that grew and then shrank back to nothing just as quickly. It didn't seem that much different from all of the other colours appearing and disappearing all over the image.
"I saw it, but...what is it?"
He finally put the laptop to sleep and shut the screen, drenching the room in a welcome, soothing darkness at last. Removing his glasses and setting them on to the bedside table with a click, he snuggled under the duvet as best he could without disturbing his wrapped and elevated sprained ankle.
"Hawking radiation. Either there's a black hole in the southwest--and I was watching News 24 all day today and I'm pretty sure no one mentioned that--or at 8:24 this morning, someone in Somerset time-travelled."
Rose's hand flew to her chest, her brain lagging a few seconds behind before reminding her that the item her fingers sought was tucked safely away in her bedside table drawer. She thought she saw the Doctor's gaze move over the fluttering movement of her hand before returning to her face, but with her eyes adjusting to the dark she couldn't be sure.
"It's not...?" was all she could get out before her mouth went dry.
"No. I'd know." The Doctor tapped his head with an index finger. "I'd feel any Time Lords in this universe and there aren't any. No TARDISes , no Time Lords. But that doesn't mean no time travel. Anyone with the right technology can do that. Though," he sniffed pompously, "my people perfected it."
"What do you think it is, then?"
He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the dark. "Don't know!"
***
The next morning, everything seemed to involve more steps than it normally did and be more complicated than it usually was. Rose burned the first batch of toast and had to bin it all and start again. She put the coffee grounds in to the filter, filled up the water, and then walked away without turning it on, leaving her distressingly bereft of coffee for precious minutes. Taking the Doctor a tray of breakfast, the jar of marmalade seemed to fly off of its own accord, tracking quivering blobs of orange goo all over the carpet and the duvet. They hadn't even finished unpacking and already the rugs were a disaster.
"Steady on!" the Doctor exclaimed as the marmalade went flying, and she was sure she detected an entitled and chiding tone in his voice, as if she'd done it on purpose. It was the last straw.
"I am doing the best I can!" she huffed, slamming the tray down on the bedside table. "I've got to look after you, we're still not unpacked, I've got another bloody meeting and I haven't read the sales reports yet, I'm running late, you kept me up all night with your nattering and my coffee isn't ready yet!"
He sat amidst a nest of pillows staring at her mutely as she grabbed a nearby tea towel and began to clean the marmalade off the floor, her shoulders tensely moving with her shortened breaths.
"It's okay..." he began lamely, himself completely unimpressed with how it came out.
"It is not okay," she bit out through a clenched jaw. "If you hadn't run off all half-cocked after some random freak you heard about on the news maybe I'd have a little help." She trailed off and gestured to his leg, wrapped up in bandages and ice packs.
"Sorry," he mumbled, not actually feeling sorry so much as just wanting Rose to calm down. He remained fairly certain that the beings he'd been chasing when he'd fallen and injured himself were not entirely human and perhaps had less than honourable intentions. Or maybe not.
"You always say you're sorry, but you never change." As soon as the words left her mouth she wanted to take them back, and she couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye for several long moments.
"Maybe you should ease off this thing with Pete and Vitex," he said finally.
She sighed and sat down on the bed next to him, smoothing his wild hair back from his forehead. Always the problem-solver, her Doctor. There was no difficulty in the universe that he couldn't dream up a solution for, and this one seemed both easy and obvious.
"No, I have to stay, at least for a little while. It's the family business and if something happens to Pete I have to know enough to run it until Tony's older. Mum's got no head for business at all--I'm really the only one who could do it. I'm just having a bad morning, I didn't mean those things I said."
"I know."
She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.
"I was just blowing off steam."
"I know," he said again, rubbing the lipstick off of his skin.
"I'll see you tonight. I've wrapped up a sandwich for you, it's in the fridge. Mind you use your crutches, yeah? You'll kill yourself if you keep trying to just hop around on one foot."
She began to collect her personal effects and leave, but he called after her as she reached the doorway. When she turned to face the bed again, his lips were curled in a hopeful smile and there seemed to be dimples absolutely everywhere.
"Fancy a trip to Somerset at the weekend?"
She took a long blink just to make sure she had not hallucinated the suggestion. "We'll discuss it when I get home but I don't think you'll be doing any adventuring for a while."
"But...Hawking radiation?"
"Mmm...I love it when you talk physics." She blew him a kiss as she scurried down the hall, grabbing keys and coffee mug on her way out the door. He took note of the fact that she did not actually say "No."
For some reason that he wasn't quite able to quantify, he waited in expectant silence until he heard Rose start her car and drive off before reaching for the phone and ringing Donna.
(To Chapter 2: Interlocking Circles)
Characters/Pairings: Duplicate Doctor/Rose, Alt!Donna, the Tyler clan, and lots of OC's.
Rating: Teen
Summary: An Alt!Ten, Rose and Alt!Donna Adventure!
Join our heroes as they investigate a mysterious man from the future, an apocalyptic death cult, and the wonders of the internal combustion engine.Previous Chapters: Prologue
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life.
Rose felt as if the glow from the laptop was searing a hole in to her brain through her eyelids. She couldn't in good conscience ask the Doctor to go somewhere else--he was well ensconced with his bad leg propped up on a stack of pillows--but the bizarre hours he was beginning to keep were driving her around the bend.
She made some unhappy-sounding noises in the hopes that he'd catch the meaning behind them, shut the computer off and go to sleep. Not detecting any such movement from his side of the bed, she tried again.
"Mmmph!" she groaned, and flopped quite pointedly over on to her stomach.
He leaned over to look at her, glasses balanced on his nose, and Rose smiled to herself as she awaited the inevitable apology and perhaps even a few sweet-nothings. Life had gotten frustrating with his limited mobility, but he still could talk a good game, and sometimes that was enough.
"Hawking radiation!" he said, rolling the vowels around in his mouth as if it were the sexiest phrase in any language, terrestrial or otherwise.
Rose finally let one eye flip open, though he was behind her and couldn't see the look of complete confusion in it.
"Wha'?" she mumbled, sleep making her voice hoarse and scratchy.
"Hawking radiation. Radiation created by black holes and worm holes. Incidentally, also created by time travel. Do you have Stephen Hawking in this universe? He's brilliant, I'm keen to ask him about a few things. Well, I say a few things, there's a couple problems I have with.... Well, I say a couple problems, really just one really big one: he's mostly wrong. But still, brilliant! And very much correct about the radiation."
Definitely not among the more romantic speeches in the history of man or Time Lord. She decided to take the direct approach, and felt that by now she really should have learned that when it came to the Doctor, subtle hinting almost always ended in failure.
"Can you shut the computer off and go to bed, please?" She rolled over again to face him, noticing that he didn't look like a man who was going to go to sleep any time soon, and made a mental note to hide the coffee. "I have to be back at the office in," she checked the clock, "four hours."
"But I am in bed," the Doctor pouted, though she could tell he was fully aware of her precise meaning and was just playing dumb to buy time. This technique tended to work well on the less intelligent class of villain, but would get him precisely nowhere with Rose. She'd seen him try it on Donna too, only to be met with gales of laughter and some choice impolite names.
"Exactly. You are in bed, which is for sleeping, not for keeping me up with that bloody computer."
"It's not always for sleeping." He winked, which just served to infuriate her further.
"It will be if you don't turn it off and let me get some sleep."
That seemed to get through to him more than all of her previous whinging and he looked quite crestfallen. "Since you put it that way.... But can I just show you something? I promise I'll go to sleep after. Please? It's really good." He began to rearrange himself so that he was laying down at her level, tilting the laptop screen so they could both look together.
Rose found herself surveying a satellite image of Southwestern England, squinting in the glare of it in the darkened room.
"What am I looking at?"
He pointed to an area of the screen. "That's the Somerset Levels, and if you look right here, don't take your eyes off this spot, and I'll run the footage. This is from earlier today." He clicked the mouse and all over the map things went in to motion with little bursts of colour here and there. She tried to keep her tired eyes trained on the spot that the Doctor had indicated, but she clearly had missed something as he gave a little hoot and said, "There!"
"Where?"
He looked over indulgently. "We'll be needing to get you specs next. I'll run it again, watch that spot." He clicked the button again and brought his finger up to the screen. "Just wait."
This time Rose saw it: a little mushrooming dot of purple that grew and then shrank back to nothing just as quickly. It didn't seem that much different from all of the other colours appearing and disappearing all over the image.
"I saw it, but...what is it?"
He finally put the laptop to sleep and shut the screen, drenching the room in a welcome, soothing darkness at last. Removing his glasses and setting them on to the bedside table with a click, he snuggled under the duvet as best he could without disturbing his wrapped and elevated sprained ankle.
"Hawking radiation. Either there's a black hole in the southwest--and I was watching News 24 all day today and I'm pretty sure no one mentioned that--or at 8:24 this morning, someone in Somerset time-travelled."
Rose's hand flew to her chest, her brain lagging a few seconds behind before reminding her that the item her fingers sought was tucked safely away in her bedside table drawer. She thought she saw the Doctor's gaze move over the fluttering movement of her hand before returning to her face, but with her eyes adjusting to the dark she couldn't be sure.
"It's not...?" was all she could get out before her mouth went dry.
"No. I'd know." The Doctor tapped his head with an index finger. "I'd feel any Time Lords in this universe and there aren't any. No TARDISes , no Time Lords. But that doesn't mean no time travel. Anyone with the right technology can do that. Though," he sniffed pompously, "my people perfected it."
"What do you think it is, then?"
He grinned, his teeth flashing white in the dark. "Don't know!"
***
The next morning, everything seemed to involve more steps than it normally did and be more complicated than it usually was. Rose burned the first batch of toast and had to bin it all and start again. She put the coffee grounds in to the filter, filled up the water, and then walked away without turning it on, leaving her distressingly bereft of coffee for precious minutes. Taking the Doctor a tray of breakfast, the jar of marmalade seemed to fly off of its own accord, tracking quivering blobs of orange goo all over the carpet and the duvet. They hadn't even finished unpacking and already the rugs were a disaster.
"Steady on!" the Doctor exclaimed as the marmalade went flying, and she was sure she detected an entitled and chiding tone in his voice, as if she'd done it on purpose. It was the last straw.
"I am doing the best I can!" she huffed, slamming the tray down on the bedside table. "I've got to look after you, we're still not unpacked, I've got another bloody meeting and I haven't read the sales reports yet, I'm running late, you kept me up all night with your nattering and my coffee isn't ready yet!"
He sat amidst a nest of pillows staring at her mutely as she grabbed a nearby tea towel and began to clean the marmalade off the floor, her shoulders tensely moving with her shortened breaths.
"It's okay..." he began lamely, himself completely unimpressed with how it came out.
"It is not okay," she bit out through a clenched jaw. "If you hadn't run off all half-cocked after some random freak you heard about on the news maybe I'd have a little help." She trailed off and gestured to his leg, wrapped up in bandages and ice packs.
"Sorry," he mumbled, not actually feeling sorry so much as just wanting Rose to calm down. He remained fairly certain that the beings he'd been chasing when he'd fallen and injured himself were not entirely human and perhaps had less than honourable intentions. Or maybe not.
"You always say you're sorry, but you never change." As soon as the words left her mouth she wanted to take them back, and she couldn't bring herself to look him in the eye for several long moments.
"Maybe you should ease off this thing with Pete and Vitex," he said finally.
She sighed and sat down on the bed next to him, smoothing his wild hair back from his forehead. Always the problem-solver, her Doctor. There was no difficulty in the universe that he couldn't dream up a solution for, and this one seemed both easy and obvious.
"No, I have to stay, at least for a little while. It's the family business and if something happens to Pete I have to know enough to run it until Tony's older. Mum's got no head for business at all--I'm really the only one who could do it. I'm just having a bad morning, I didn't mean those things I said."
"I know."
She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead.
"I was just blowing off steam."
"I know," he said again, rubbing the lipstick off of his skin.
"I'll see you tonight. I've wrapped up a sandwich for you, it's in the fridge. Mind you use your crutches, yeah? You'll kill yourself if you keep trying to just hop around on one foot."
She began to collect her personal effects and leave, but he called after her as she reached the doorway. When she turned to face the bed again, his lips were curled in a hopeful smile and there seemed to be dimples absolutely everywhere.
"Fancy a trip to Somerset at the weekend?"
She took a long blink just to make sure she had not hallucinated the suggestion. "We'll discuss it when I get home but I don't think you'll be doing any adventuring for a while."
"But...Hawking radiation?"
"Mmm...I love it when you talk physics." She blew him a kiss as she scurried down the hall, grabbing keys and coffee mug on her way out the door. He took note of the fact that she did not actually say "No."
For some reason that he wasn't quite able to quantify, he waited in expectant silence until he heard Rose start her car and drive off before reaching for the phone and ringing Donna.
(To Chapter 2: Interlocking Circles)