Held in Trust: Chapter 7
Title: Held in Trust (7/?)
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 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life. It's not entirely necessary to have read that, but if you're finding yourself at any point going, "Huh?" it's just probably something that was explained in that story.
Additional A/N: Posting today as a little pressie for my non-US readers who I'm sure are all cursing Thanksgiving for depriving them of American lj content (lol, or not! maybe happy to be rid of us?).
Monday was as Mondays usually are; a drowsy controlled fall back in to the real world. Around mid-day, Rose received a text message from Donna that simply read, "Can we travel back in time and make it so this wanker was never born?"
A few moments later and right on schedule, Pete popped in to her office with what had become a standard weekly pep-talk.
"You're doing a fantastic job and I think if you can just stick it out until the end of this quarter, we'll have proved our point to everyone that just because you didn't go to uni doesn't mean you couldn't sub for me in a pinch. Heck, I didn't go to uni either," he added as an aside. "I'd like you to handle the roll-out for the new flavour--that'll really show 'em, eh?"
Roes felt the colour rise in her cheeks as she sank back in to her posh office chair that adjusted in two dozen different ways, coughing falsely in to the back of her hand to hide her extreme and sudden trepidation.
"I've got complete faith in your abilities, Rose. You're a Tyler," he sniffed. "Of course it'll be fantastic. I'd like to see your preliminary proposals by Friday--we'll polish them up and present them to the department heads Wednesday next."
Later, as Rose sat alone in her office, tapping a pen on a pad of post-it notes and staring blankly at the advert mock-up for the new Vitex flavour (Holly Berry Blast, just in time for the holidays!), an email from the Doctor appeared in her inbox, requesting take-away for supper as well as containing a reminder to ring Jake about their little project.
As if she needed reminding--it was all she could do to keep her head in the health beverages business for more than two minutes at a time. Given the Doctor's reputation, approaching Torchwood would take some amount of finesse, and she'd spent most of the Monday marketing team meeting strategising the running of a campaign that had nothing at all to do with how to make holly berries sound even vaguely appetising. Jake, of course, was the easy mark, but if he didn't have the information they needed, then she'd have to work her way through former co-workers whom she knew less well. Co-workers who were not nearly as fond of the Doctor's uncanny ability to cock up their investigations with his meddling and constant insistence that if everyone just sat down with the aliens for a nice cuppa, any misunderstandings would sort themselves out over the McVities biscuits.
At the back of her mind, ceaselessly and slowly turning like a great windmill, were the Doctor's words regarding the time and space ship they were pursuing: find it, and destroy it.
Find it and destroy it. Not find it and use it. Not find it and explore history and the stars together once again, but find it and destroy it. It felt like a personal insult, and of all the people to fling it at her, the one person who could fully understand her longing. She couldn't bring it up with him, however, as he'd surely take it the wrong way. She could almost hear his wounded tone as he'd ask, "Was it always the adventure you loved, and not really me at all?"
He stubbornly refused to understand that it had been both. She did want to have it all--her lover and her adventure. Why didn't he?
***
When she arrived back home with Singapore noodles and intelligence from Torchwood, the Doctor was nowhere to be found in the house. His usual spot on the sofa was empty of all evidence of him. Also without occupant was the cabinet under the stairs, which he liked to call his "workshop" and to the door of which he had stuck a note reading (bilingually) "Time Lords Only." Rose was just about to begin to be confused when she heard the sound of dropping tools and swearing (also bilingual, but inexplicably in English and Italian) coming from the garage out back.
Rose found the Doctor peering desultorily under the bonnet of an old Austin Mini that someone had ironically painted flames down the side of. He balanced gingerly with one crutch, just the tips of the toes of his bad foot brushing the ground as he leaned closer to the engine brandishing a torch in his free hand.
"Hello," Rose called as she entered, and as the Doctor stood up again he nearly hit his head on the bonnet.
The Doctor's smile as he turned to face her was utterly uninhibited and Rose wondered at what point he would stop grinning at her like that every time they met again at the end of the day. Six months? A year? Tomorrow?
"Hello yourself."
Their embrace was a little logistically awkward, but Rose had gotten used to one-handed or no-handed hugs and kisses in the past few weeks.
"I didn't expect to find you out here." She gestured vaguely to the car, the garage, the entire world outside their house.
"She's a beauty, isn't she?" the Doctor beamed as he stroked the chrome of the front bumper lovingly.
"It's a...Mini? Not really much of a roadster, is it?"
The Doctor looked supremely offended on behalf of the car. "Oi, watch what you say in front of her! If she wants to be a roadster, then that's what she'll be, and I'll not have you telling her any different."
"Why are all the cars you work on she's anyway?" Rose asked as the Doctor hopped about putting his tools away. She knew better than to help him, as he got very cross if anyone else handled his spanners.
"Dunno, they just are. All beautiful machines are she's. And all she's are beautiful machines." He stopped working to contemplate his turn of phrase, one hand hanging motionless in the air above his work bench. "I quite like that." He repeated it to himself a few more times as Rose stifled giggles from behind him.
"It's all clear to me now," she laughed. "Your ship, your cars, your companions. Really now, be honest, you just want to be a woman don't you?"
"Oh now I wouldn't say all my--what? Now that's just...I say...what an odd conclusion to come to," he spluttered. "You cheeky girl," he purred, getting over his shock at her words to see them for the tease that they were.
"So where'd this one come from, then?" Rose pointed to the other lady in the room, the red Mini with the flames up the sides.
"Liam sold her to me, five hundred quid 'cos she looks great but doesn't run at all and he could never find the problem. Couple of weeks with me, I'll have her humming like, well, like you I expect." He gave an exaggerated wink and closed the bonnet gently. "Resell her for at least two thousand."
"Mind you don't get any ideas about reselling me. Come on, I've brought Singapore noodles and Torchwood goss."
The Doctor clapped his hands, as well as he could while leaning on a crutch. "Fantastic! Let me just...can you help me back in the house? I want to try with just the one. If we're going to save the world, I had better get back in shape, don't you think?"
"Are you sure you're ready? What did the doctor say?" Rose moved round to the side of his good leg and let him put an arm on her shoulder.
"The only Doctor who matters says it's high time I get off the sofa," he sniffed, and took a few shuffling steps forward with Rose's stabilising assistance.
The Doctor slurped his noodles loudly, which he constantly reminded Rose was considered polite in Asian societies and on several other planets as well. She knew from experience that any argument on the matter from her would get rebutted with several pokes from his chopsticks, so she stuck primarily to the topic of the information she'd prised from Jake.
"I hope you were circumspect about the reasons why you were asking," the Doctor said through a mouth full of egg roll.
"How circumspect could I have been when asking about what he knows about stick-wielding time travellers in Somerset? I think he may be on to our cunning plan, Doctor."
He looked concerned and levelled a dark look over the top of his Riesling as he took a sip.
"'Sokay, I think we can trust him to not ruin our good time. Anyway, he says that Torchwood has been following a group in the area calling themselves the Church of the Final Singularity. Apparently just a bunch of nutters who think the end of the world is coming, or so they reckon," she snorted at the absurdity of anyone but her and the Doctor knowing anything about the end of the world. "But the Institute is bound by its charter to investigate any such esoteric activities."
"Did they find anything?"
"He was less apprised of what the results of the investigation were, but he says there are no ongoing operations concerning the group, which must mean they didn't turn anything up that warranted pursuing it further or sending a field team out."
The Doctor stroked the back of his neck and sat back in his chair. "No mention of any temporal anomalies? They can't have missed that. Can they?"
"You must remember, the Torchwood in this world wasn't set up to deal with you. They don't really know that much about time travel, and I'm not sure they'd really know what to look for."
He hummed thoughtfully and stared out the front window in to the street. "Right then. We've got our work cut out for us. We'll have to infiltrate."
"Well, they already know what I look like, so that won't work. Can we get a closer satellite picture do you think?"
The Doctor whipped his bright gaze over to her now, and she could see his mind was already at least ten steps ahead.
"Rose, you didn't have any pictures of me on your phone, did you?" He bit his bottom lip and his hand began more frantic scratchings at his scalp.
"'Fraid I did, sorry. As soon as they rang you last night they would have seen."
"And Donna?" He shovelled the last bit of noodles in to his mouth with a great sloppy slurp.
"And Donna what?"
The Doctor gave her a look like she was utterly and completely thick. "Do you have a picture on your phone of Donna?"
"Nah, she won't let me take one. Why d'you...oh. You're not going to ask her to..." Rose pushed her plate away suddenly no longer interested in food.
"Why shouldn't I? She's got some time off coming up anyway, and she seems rather keen on the whole thing." He pulled her half-full plate towards him and began to pick little bits of baby corn out of it, popping them one by one in to his mouth.
"It could be dangerous."
"True," the Doctor said simply, smiling. "I thought I was supposed to be okay with that. With not needing to have my finger in the pie all the time? Do you need to be taught a lesson as well, then?"
"No, I'm just...I'm just concerned is all. For her well-being."
"'Course you are. So am I. But if it's just a bunch of nutters messing about with some time thing that they don't properly understand, she'll get that sorted right out and be home in time for Sunday tea. I'll ask her, and if she says no, we'll just have to think of something else. Disguises maybe." He reached out and laid his hand across hers where she was tapping her finger nervously on the table.
"Disguises?" she looked up at him and his eyes were so earnest, she could help but laugh.
"What? Bad idea?"
Now that she was off and giggling, she could stop, for some reason picturing them done up like the farmer and his wife from American Gothic, and the idea of sending Donna in got exponentially better-sounding.
Calming down after a bit, the look of confusion on the Doctor's face nearly enough to set her off again, she met his eyes seriously. "Don't pressure her, yeah? Just don't do that thing that you do where you just assume that everyone else exists to happily do your bidding. We'll come up with something else if she says no."
"She won't," he said, with great certainty.
Rose shook her head sadly. "She's not your Donna, Doctor. She may surprise you, and if she does I want you to prepare yourself for it now because it is going to hurt."
Her eyes were full and there was no trace of her former mirth now. The Doctor wondered how she knew about the pain of someone not being who you thought they were. She reached out and stroked the side of his face, ran her thumb over the whiskers, and smiled wistfully.
"But it'll be okay," she said quietly. "Better than."
(To Chapter 8: Forty-eight seconds)
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 | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life. It's not entirely necessary to have read that, but if you're finding yourself at any point going, "Huh?" it's just probably something that was explained in that story.
Additional A/N: Posting today as a little pressie for my non-US readers who I'm sure are all cursing Thanksgiving for depriving them of American lj content (lol, or not! maybe happy to be rid of us?).
Monday was as Mondays usually are; a drowsy controlled fall back in to the real world. Around mid-day, Rose received a text message from Donna that simply read, "Can we travel back in time and make it so this wanker was never born?"
A few moments later and right on schedule, Pete popped in to her office with what had become a standard weekly pep-talk.
"You're doing a fantastic job and I think if you can just stick it out until the end of this quarter, we'll have proved our point to everyone that just because you didn't go to uni doesn't mean you couldn't sub for me in a pinch. Heck, I didn't go to uni either," he added as an aside. "I'd like you to handle the roll-out for the new flavour--that'll really show 'em, eh?"
Roes felt the colour rise in her cheeks as she sank back in to her posh office chair that adjusted in two dozen different ways, coughing falsely in to the back of her hand to hide her extreme and sudden trepidation.
"I've got complete faith in your abilities, Rose. You're a Tyler," he sniffed. "Of course it'll be fantastic. I'd like to see your preliminary proposals by Friday--we'll polish them up and present them to the department heads Wednesday next."
Later, as Rose sat alone in her office, tapping a pen on a pad of post-it notes and staring blankly at the advert mock-up for the new Vitex flavour (Holly Berry Blast, just in time for the holidays!), an email from the Doctor appeared in her inbox, requesting take-away for supper as well as containing a reminder to ring Jake about their little project.
As if she needed reminding--it was all she could do to keep her head in the health beverages business for more than two minutes at a time. Given the Doctor's reputation, approaching Torchwood would take some amount of finesse, and she'd spent most of the Monday marketing team meeting strategising the running of a campaign that had nothing at all to do with how to make holly berries sound even vaguely appetising. Jake, of course, was the easy mark, but if he didn't have the information they needed, then she'd have to work her way through former co-workers whom she knew less well. Co-workers who were not nearly as fond of the Doctor's uncanny ability to cock up their investigations with his meddling and constant insistence that if everyone just sat down with the aliens for a nice cuppa, any misunderstandings would sort themselves out over the McVities biscuits.
At the back of her mind, ceaselessly and slowly turning like a great windmill, were the Doctor's words regarding the time and space ship they were pursuing: find it, and destroy it.
Find it and destroy it. Not find it and use it. Not find it and explore history and the stars together once again, but find it and destroy it. It felt like a personal insult, and of all the people to fling it at her, the one person who could fully understand her longing. She couldn't bring it up with him, however, as he'd surely take it the wrong way. She could almost hear his wounded tone as he'd ask, "Was it always the adventure you loved, and not really me at all?"
He stubbornly refused to understand that it had been both. She did want to have it all--her lover and her adventure. Why didn't he?
***
When she arrived back home with Singapore noodles and intelligence from Torchwood, the Doctor was nowhere to be found in the house. His usual spot on the sofa was empty of all evidence of him. Also without occupant was the cabinet under the stairs, which he liked to call his "workshop" and to the door of which he had stuck a note reading (bilingually) "Time Lords Only." Rose was just about to begin to be confused when she heard the sound of dropping tools and swearing (also bilingual, but inexplicably in English and Italian) coming from the garage out back.
Rose found the Doctor peering desultorily under the bonnet of an old Austin Mini that someone had ironically painted flames down the side of. He balanced gingerly with one crutch, just the tips of the toes of his bad foot brushing the ground as he leaned closer to the engine brandishing a torch in his free hand.
"Hello," Rose called as she entered, and as the Doctor stood up again he nearly hit his head on the bonnet.
The Doctor's smile as he turned to face her was utterly uninhibited and Rose wondered at what point he would stop grinning at her like that every time they met again at the end of the day. Six months? A year? Tomorrow?
"Hello yourself."
Their embrace was a little logistically awkward, but Rose had gotten used to one-handed or no-handed hugs and kisses in the past few weeks.
"I didn't expect to find you out here." She gestured vaguely to the car, the garage, the entire world outside their house.
"She's a beauty, isn't she?" the Doctor beamed as he stroked the chrome of the front bumper lovingly.
"It's a...Mini? Not really much of a roadster, is it?"
The Doctor looked supremely offended on behalf of the car. "Oi, watch what you say in front of her! If she wants to be a roadster, then that's what she'll be, and I'll not have you telling her any different."
"Why are all the cars you work on she's anyway?" Rose asked as the Doctor hopped about putting his tools away. She knew better than to help him, as he got very cross if anyone else handled his spanners.
"Dunno, they just are. All beautiful machines are she's. And all she's are beautiful machines." He stopped working to contemplate his turn of phrase, one hand hanging motionless in the air above his work bench. "I quite like that." He repeated it to himself a few more times as Rose stifled giggles from behind him.
"It's all clear to me now," she laughed. "Your ship, your cars, your companions. Really now, be honest, you just want to be a woman don't you?"
"Oh now I wouldn't say all my--what? Now that's just...I say...what an odd conclusion to come to," he spluttered. "You cheeky girl," he purred, getting over his shock at her words to see them for the tease that they were.
"So where'd this one come from, then?" Rose pointed to the other lady in the room, the red Mini with the flames up the sides.
"Liam sold her to me, five hundred quid 'cos she looks great but doesn't run at all and he could never find the problem. Couple of weeks with me, I'll have her humming like, well, like you I expect." He gave an exaggerated wink and closed the bonnet gently. "Resell her for at least two thousand."
"Mind you don't get any ideas about reselling me. Come on, I've brought Singapore noodles and Torchwood goss."
The Doctor clapped his hands, as well as he could while leaning on a crutch. "Fantastic! Let me just...can you help me back in the house? I want to try with just the one. If we're going to save the world, I had better get back in shape, don't you think?"
"Are you sure you're ready? What did the doctor say?" Rose moved round to the side of his good leg and let him put an arm on her shoulder.
"The only Doctor who matters says it's high time I get off the sofa," he sniffed, and took a few shuffling steps forward with Rose's stabilising assistance.
The Doctor slurped his noodles loudly, which he constantly reminded Rose was considered polite in Asian societies and on several other planets as well. She knew from experience that any argument on the matter from her would get rebutted with several pokes from his chopsticks, so she stuck primarily to the topic of the information she'd prised from Jake.
"I hope you were circumspect about the reasons why you were asking," the Doctor said through a mouth full of egg roll.
"How circumspect could I have been when asking about what he knows about stick-wielding time travellers in Somerset? I think he may be on to our cunning plan, Doctor."
He looked concerned and levelled a dark look over the top of his Riesling as he took a sip.
"'Sokay, I think we can trust him to not ruin our good time. Anyway, he says that Torchwood has been following a group in the area calling themselves the Church of the Final Singularity. Apparently just a bunch of nutters who think the end of the world is coming, or so they reckon," she snorted at the absurdity of anyone but her and the Doctor knowing anything about the end of the world. "But the Institute is bound by its charter to investigate any such esoteric activities."
"Did they find anything?"
"He was less apprised of what the results of the investigation were, but he says there are no ongoing operations concerning the group, which must mean they didn't turn anything up that warranted pursuing it further or sending a field team out."
The Doctor stroked the back of his neck and sat back in his chair. "No mention of any temporal anomalies? They can't have missed that. Can they?"
"You must remember, the Torchwood in this world wasn't set up to deal with you. They don't really know that much about time travel, and I'm not sure they'd really know what to look for."
He hummed thoughtfully and stared out the front window in to the street. "Right then. We've got our work cut out for us. We'll have to infiltrate."
"Well, they already know what I look like, so that won't work. Can we get a closer satellite picture do you think?"
The Doctor whipped his bright gaze over to her now, and she could see his mind was already at least ten steps ahead.
"Rose, you didn't have any pictures of me on your phone, did you?" He bit his bottom lip and his hand began more frantic scratchings at his scalp.
"'Fraid I did, sorry. As soon as they rang you last night they would have seen."
"And Donna?" He shovelled the last bit of noodles in to his mouth with a great sloppy slurp.
"And Donna what?"
The Doctor gave her a look like she was utterly and completely thick. "Do you have a picture on your phone of Donna?"
"Nah, she won't let me take one. Why d'you...oh. You're not going to ask her to..." Rose pushed her plate away suddenly no longer interested in food.
"Why shouldn't I? She's got some time off coming up anyway, and she seems rather keen on the whole thing." He pulled her half-full plate towards him and began to pick little bits of baby corn out of it, popping them one by one in to his mouth.
"It could be dangerous."
"True," the Doctor said simply, smiling. "I thought I was supposed to be okay with that. With not needing to have my finger in the pie all the time? Do you need to be taught a lesson as well, then?"
"No, I'm just...I'm just concerned is all. For her well-being."
"'Course you are. So am I. But if it's just a bunch of nutters messing about with some time thing that they don't properly understand, she'll get that sorted right out and be home in time for Sunday tea. I'll ask her, and if she says no, we'll just have to think of something else. Disguises maybe." He reached out and laid his hand across hers where she was tapping her finger nervously on the table.
"Disguises?" she looked up at him and his eyes were so earnest, she could help but laugh.
"What? Bad idea?"
Now that she was off and giggling, she could stop, for some reason picturing them done up like the farmer and his wife from American Gothic, and the idea of sending Donna in got exponentially better-sounding.
Calming down after a bit, the look of confusion on the Doctor's face nearly enough to set her off again, she met his eyes seriously. "Don't pressure her, yeah? Just don't do that thing that you do where you just assume that everyone else exists to happily do your bidding. We'll come up with something else if she says no."
"She won't," he said, with great certainty.
Rose shook her head sadly. "She's not your Donna, Doctor. She may surprise you, and if she does I want you to prepare yourself for it now because it is going to hurt."
Her eyes were full and there was no trace of her former mirth now. The Doctor wondered how she knew about the pain of someone not being who you thought they were. She reached out and stroked the side of his face, ran her thumb over the whiskers, and smiled wistfully.
"But it'll be okay," she said quietly. "Better than."
(To Chapter 8: Forty-eight seconds)