Held in Trust: Chapter 11
Title: Held in Trust (11/?)
Characters/Pairings: Duplicate Tenth Doctor/Rose, alt!Donna, various Tylers and Motts, and several OCs
Rating: Most chapters Teen (Adult chapters noted as such)
Series: Part of the Morris Minor 'Verse
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. Romance, action, adventure, sci fi, occasional smut Donna being awesome, as usual all par for the course.
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.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10
Additional A/N for this chapter: Thanks to jaradel for giving this a "general coherence/am I making any sense?" read on short notice last night.
The Doctor stepped in to the little cinder block building with a stomach-churning combination of curiosity and dread. He was able to catalogue and categorise what he found there with a speed that made him feel as if he was perhaps dreaming, and all of the specs and uses of the objects were simply designs of his own subconscious. Reaching out to touch a nearby plasma displacer--half hoping and half fearing that it would disappear under his hand--he found it to be a very real example of 153rd century human craftsmanship. The same went for the sonic probe resting innocently on a lower shelf, which he pocketed casually before continuing to rake his eyes over the treasure trove he'd happened upon.
These items would have to be destroyed of course, displaced in time as they were. He didn't fancy Torchwood getting a hold of them any more than anyone else on 21st century Earth, but there'd be no harm in hanging on to these translation discs, would there? Might come in handy should he want to take Rose on holiday somewhere exotic. He promised himself that no matter what else he came across, that would be it: One sonic probe and one brand new unopened package of six translation discs. He contemplated keeping only one disc and destroying the other five, but thought better of it and shoved the whole lot into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Continuing to move around the small room, he scanned for the direct source of the disruptions he was feeling, and it did not take long at all to find it. In a darkened corner, blinked a number of green and blue lights, and as soon as he locked eyes with a squat object on the floor, his head was wracked momentarily with phantom sounds of keening and wordless crying. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, pushing the sounds aside, as well as the basso profundo thrumming that he felt deep in his chest.
"No," he gasped. "No no no no!" He squatted down in front of a little black metal object on the floor, about the size of a kerosene lamp, gritting his teeth and chastising himself for not being as literal as he should have been for once in his life. "How could I have been so stupid?" he asked no one in particular. "Church of the Final Singularity, and here you are."
He stood back up and stepped away from it, rubbing the back of his neck furiously and calculating all of the myriad ways a Voetsek Mark IX Singularity Generator could be used. It was perhaps the worst idea that anyone in the Third Great and Bountiful Human Empire had ever had, but as a military deterrent, they did serve a rather ghastly purpose. A set of singularity generators placed in orbit around a planet, and an entire star system could go from zero to oblivion in a fraction of a second. Just one generator without its mates could itself wreak massive destruction, emitting radiation that would unknit molecules from one another in a radius of thousands of miles. He jammed the heels of his hands in to his eyes in an attempt to clear away the panic and get back to rational, logical calculations.
Was this the only one, or were there more on Earth already? And how did they get here? His leisurely stroll through the museum of the future was now well and truly over, and he turned round and round on the spot searching for the one thing he hadn't yet found. The vehicle, the conveyance he'd already detected both scientifically and neurologically, it couldn't possibly be....
Right there in plain sight, behind the door he'd opened to enter. He rolled his eyes for his own benefit and approached what looked for all the world to be a high-tech vampire's coffin, lid open and the rather uncomfortable-looking chamber within exposed. Certainly not the time travel Ferrari that the TARDIS was, and on closer inspection, it didn't resemble any temporal vehicle from any epoch that he was familiar with. It looked to be more of an escape pod, from a space craft of some sort. There was a tangle of exposed wires in one corner of the open chamber that seemed quite dodgy and had several smaller blinking, whining, whirring devices seemingly patched in, but as the Doctor raised a hand to investigate, the front door to the building opened further and an abnormally tall, thin man entered.
The Doctor froze, rooted to the spot, and the other man looked nearly as surprised. They stared one another down like wild animals for a long moment before the tall man blinked, relaxed his shoulders and entered in to the room fully.
"I suppose these are all your toys, then?" the Doctor asked casually. There were quite a few dangerous implements of destruction hidden away among the less harmful bits and bobs scattered about the room, he knew. No use getting a man with such a long reach on his guard in a building full of potential weapons. "Very nice collection, I must say. Fancy giving a guided tour? I'm what you might call an interested party." He winked and tried hard not to direct his gaze towards the singularity generator.
"We were wondering when you'd show up in person," Gliese answered calmly. "Did you run out of pretty women to send in your place?"
The Doctor blanched. "That's a bit of a low blow, don't you think? I was indisposed. I'm all right now though, thanks for asking."
Gliese just gave a non-committal shrug. "Between you and me, I'd recommend you get back to your own time and your own planet."
"Who says this isn't exactly where I belong?"
"I've studied the contemporaneous technology of this era, and I can say with some certainty that temporal radiation measurement devices made out of old mobile phones are not in keeping with that." Gliese chuckled a little and gestured with a nod of his head to where the device that Rose had dropped several weeks previous sat on a table.
"Well," the Doctor drawled, "the thing is, where I'm from and where I'm going, it's really very complicated and I don't have the leisure now to get in to it. Maybe some other time, over a nice cream tea. But you...human?"
Gliese nodded, "Of course."
"Raised in microgravity?" The Doctor looked him up and down, taking visual measure of his long, spindly limbs.
Gliese nodded again. "Yes. Nursery station delta-five-stroke-eighty-seven."
"They couldn't be bothered to generate a little more gravity? The risk of broken bones has got to be enormous--no offence, mind." The Doctor in the back of his head tried desperately to slot this information in to what he already knew of the 153rd century, but it just wasn't fitting properly.
"No offence taken. There's no use in incurring extra expense in the rearing of the completely expendable. Generating terrestrial-levels of gravity isn't free."
"But why not just settle on a planet? Surely the Empire's got enough of those." The puzzle of the man's nativity was beginning to crowd everything else from the front of the Doctor's mind.
"Why bother wasting the resources of a perfectly good planet like that? Besides, no one likes to see where the help actually comes from. Best to keep us in orbit somewhere far, far away." Gliese moved backwards a few steps as he spoke, and the Doctor made note. "Some place we'd be out of the way, isolated. And if there was a problem...." He shrugged again. "Just one space station lost, not a whole planet."
The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. "I see," he said thoughtfully. "By which I mean to say that I don't really see at all, and nothing you're telling me bears any resemblance to what I already know of your time. But I'm willing to let that slide--though I must confess the curiosity is just about killing me--because I think I'm going to need to ask you to turn that singularity generator off." He paused for dramatic effect. "Right now."
A slow smile crept across Gliese's thin, fair face. "I can't. Even if I wanted to."
"Shall I, then? Because I'll tell you now, mate, I don't know who you are or where you're really from, but this planet and this time is defended." The Doctor set his jaw and shot Gliese a dark glare. The words had tumbled from the Doctor's mouth long before the more realistic part of his mind was able to ask vital questions, such as, how exactly would he defend this planet now? And did he really want to have the burden of trying?
"Try and defend it all you like. Tamper with that device and you'll destroy most of this hemisphere."
It was now the Doctor's turn to give a thin-lipped smile. "Actually I think you'll find that killing off one's own ancestors is a lot harder than it looks. A paradox of that magnitude tends to get rejected by the fabric of reality."
"Are you quite sure about that?" Gliese seemed unperturbed and the Doctor's curiosity was piqued again.
"Quite," he replied matter-of-factly. "I think it's fair to say that I am the sine qua non of time travellers and I know a thing or two about paradoxes. You just try it, and you'll set off a recursive time loop that never actually gets anywhere."
"Then why are you concerned at all?"
"Better safe than sorry," the Doctor shrugged. "And there may or may not be some hideous chroniverous creatures to contend with as well. I'd rather not have to tangle with them again, if I can help it."
Gliese snorted derisively. "Keeping me talking and spouting nonsense won't make any difference. I told you already, what's done is done. We can stand here and converse for the next...." He pulled a timepiece out of his pocket and checked it. "For the next 19 standard hours and it won't change anything. If you'd like, we can talk about Block Transfer Computations and the amazing ways that just the right one can deal with what would otherwise be a nasty self-defeating paradox."
The Doctor had already opened his mouth to say something terribly clever and disarming, but then shut it again with a click.
"I can see you fancy yourself quite the expert," Gliese continued, "and I can also see that I've finally convinced you that I may not be completely ignorant myself. Give people a bit of credit, it might get you further in life. Though I suppose that's all a bit of a moot point now. Or soon will be."
"Not if I have anything to do with it," the Doctor growled, and as he did so he saw Donna and Rose peering in a window on the far side of the building. He tried not to let his glance dart their way, for fear that he might reveal their whereabouts to this clearly deranged man, but at the same time he wanted to warn them to stay back and let him handle the situation.
"But you don't have anything to do with it. I don't either, at this point. No one does." Gliese took another half step backwards, disguised in part as a little shrug.
"Temporal failsafe," muttered the Doctor. "I have my ways of dealing--"
His words were cut off by a great clattering as Gliese's hand shot out and knocked a number of little objects off the shelf behind him. Faster than the Doctor could even see with his human eyes, something very threatening indeed was being aimed at his head.
"As you say, better safe than sorry," Gliese announced in a clear, determined, yet still calm voice.
Rose and Donna, watching from the window, each drew in sharp, jagged breaths instinctively, and before they could exhale, an orange beam lit up the little building as Gliese discharged the weapon he was holding. Rose shielded her eyes but Donna was unable to look away and wound up seeing spots after the light disappeared again.
Rose looked aghast at the spot where the Doctor had been standing, paralysed with dread and grief already at what she was sure she'd find there, but the area was surprisingly quite free of both the Doctor and the strange vessel that he'd been standing next to.
Donna rubbed her eyes vigorously and jumped back from the window hissing, "What is it? What's happened? Doctor? Doctor!"
Rose's mouth went dry as her stomach shrank and twisted, and she found herself unable to answer Donna's questions. She felt some sort of force building inside of her, starting below her stomach and gathering strength. Donna clutched her arm like a vice and with her other hand grasped at the cement wall.
Rose saw what Donna could not in her temporary blindness: Gliese turning towards the window, looking her dead in the eye, and raising the device in his long arm once again.
(To Chapter 12: Going Home)
Characters/Pairings: Duplicate Tenth Doctor/Rose, alt!Donna, various Tylers and Motts, and several OCs
Rating: Most chapters Teen (Adult chapters noted as such)
Series: Part of the Morris Minor 'Verse
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. Romance, action, adventure, sci fi, occasional smut Donna being awesome, as usual all par for the course.
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.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10
Additional A/N for this chapter: Thanks to jaradel for giving this a "general coherence/am I making any sense?" read on short notice last night.
The Doctor stepped in to the little cinder block building with a stomach-churning combination of curiosity and dread. He was able to catalogue and categorise what he found there with a speed that made him feel as if he was perhaps dreaming, and all of the specs and uses of the objects were simply designs of his own subconscious. Reaching out to touch a nearby plasma displacer--half hoping and half fearing that it would disappear under his hand--he found it to be a very real example of 153rd century human craftsmanship. The same went for the sonic probe resting innocently on a lower shelf, which he pocketed casually before continuing to rake his eyes over the treasure trove he'd happened upon.
These items would have to be destroyed of course, displaced in time as they were. He didn't fancy Torchwood getting a hold of them any more than anyone else on 21st century Earth, but there'd be no harm in hanging on to these translation discs, would there? Might come in handy should he want to take Rose on holiday somewhere exotic. He promised himself that no matter what else he came across, that would be it: One sonic probe and one brand new unopened package of six translation discs. He contemplated keeping only one disc and destroying the other five, but thought better of it and shoved the whole lot into the inside pocket of his jacket.
Continuing to move around the small room, he scanned for the direct source of the disruptions he was feeling, and it did not take long at all to find it. In a darkened corner, blinked a number of green and blue lights, and as soon as he locked eyes with a squat object on the floor, his head was wracked momentarily with phantom sounds of keening and wordless crying. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, pushing the sounds aside, as well as the basso profundo thrumming that he felt deep in his chest.
"No," he gasped. "No no no no!" He squatted down in front of a little black metal object on the floor, about the size of a kerosene lamp, gritting his teeth and chastising himself for not being as literal as he should have been for once in his life. "How could I have been so stupid?" he asked no one in particular. "Church of the Final Singularity, and here you are."
He stood back up and stepped away from it, rubbing the back of his neck furiously and calculating all of the myriad ways a Voetsek Mark IX Singularity Generator could be used. It was perhaps the worst idea that anyone in the Third Great and Bountiful Human Empire had ever had, but as a military deterrent, they did serve a rather ghastly purpose. A set of singularity generators placed in orbit around a planet, and an entire star system could go from zero to oblivion in a fraction of a second. Just one generator without its mates could itself wreak massive destruction, emitting radiation that would unknit molecules from one another in a radius of thousands of miles. He jammed the heels of his hands in to his eyes in an attempt to clear away the panic and get back to rational, logical calculations.
Was this the only one, or were there more on Earth already? And how did they get here? His leisurely stroll through the museum of the future was now well and truly over, and he turned round and round on the spot searching for the one thing he hadn't yet found. The vehicle, the conveyance he'd already detected both scientifically and neurologically, it couldn't possibly be....
Right there in plain sight, behind the door he'd opened to enter. He rolled his eyes for his own benefit and approached what looked for all the world to be a high-tech vampire's coffin, lid open and the rather uncomfortable-looking chamber within exposed. Certainly not the time travel Ferrari that the TARDIS was, and on closer inspection, it didn't resemble any temporal vehicle from any epoch that he was familiar with. It looked to be more of an escape pod, from a space craft of some sort. There was a tangle of exposed wires in one corner of the open chamber that seemed quite dodgy and had several smaller blinking, whining, whirring devices seemingly patched in, but as the Doctor raised a hand to investigate, the front door to the building opened further and an abnormally tall, thin man entered.
The Doctor froze, rooted to the spot, and the other man looked nearly as surprised. They stared one another down like wild animals for a long moment before the tall man blinked, relaxed his shoulders and entered in to the room fully.
"I suppose these are all your toys, then?" the Doctor asked casually. There were quite a few dangerous implements of destruction hidden away among the less harmful bits and bobs scattered about the room, he knew. No use getting a man with such a long reach on his guard in a building full of potential weapons. "Very nice collection, I must say. Fancy giving a guided tour? I'm what you might call an interested party." He winked and tried hard not to direct his gaze towards the singularity generator.
"We were wondering when you'd show up in person," Gliese answered calmly. "Did you run out of pretty women to send in your place?"
The Doctor blanched. "That's a bit of a low blow, don't you think? I was indisposed. I'm all right now though, thanks for asking."
Gliese just gave a non-committal shrug. "Between you and me, I'd recommend you get back to your own time and your own planet."
"Who says this isn't exactly where I belong?"
"I've studied the contemporaneous technology of this era, and I can say with some certainty that temporal radiation measurement devices made out of old mobile phones are not in keeping with that." Gliese chuckled a little and gestured with a nod of his head to where the device that Rose had dropped several weeks previous sat on a table.
"Well," the Doctor drawled, "the thing is, where I'm from and where I'm going, it's really very complicated and I don't have the leisure now to get in to it. Maybe some other time, over a nice cream tea. But you...human?"
Gliese nodded, "Of course."
"Raised in microgravity?" The Doctor looked him up and down, taking visual measure of his long, spindly limbs.
Gliese nodded again. "Yes. Nursery station delta-five-stroke-eighty-seven."
"They couldn't be bothered to generate a little more gravity? The risk of broken bones has got to be enormous--no offence, mind." The Doctor in the back of his head tried desperately to slot this information in to what he already knew of the 153rd century, but it just wasn't fitting properly.
"No offence taken. There's no use in incurring extra expense in the rearing of the completely expendable. Generating terrestrial-levels of gravity isn't free."
"But why not just settle on a planet? Surely the Empire's got enough of those." The puzzle of the man's nativity was beginning to crowd everything else from the front of the Doctor's mind.
"Why bother wasting the resources of a perfectly good planet like that? Besides, no one likes to see where the help actually comes from. Best to keep us in orbit somewhere far, far away." Gliese moved backwards a few steps as he spoke, and the Doctor made note. "Some place we'd be out of the way, isolated. And if there was a problem...." He shrugged again. "Just one space station lost, not a whole planet."
The Doctor shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his heels. "I see," he said thoughtfully. "By which I mean to say that I don't really see at all, and nothing you're telling me bears any resemblance to what I already know of your time. But I'm willing to let that slide--though I must confess the curiosity is just about killing me--because I think I'm going to need to ask you to turn that singularity generator off." He paused for dramatic effect. "Right now."
A slow smile crept across Gliese's thin, fair face. "I can't. Even if I wanted to."
"Shall I, then? Because I'll tell you now, mate, I don't know who you are or where you're really from, but this planet and this time is defended." The Doctor set his jaw and shot Gliese a dark glare. The words had tumbled from the Doctor's mouth long before the more realistic part of his mind was able to ask vital questions, such as, how exactly would he defend this planet now? And did he really want to have the burden of trying?
"Try and defend it all you like. Tamper with that device and you'll destroy most of this hemisphere."
It was now the Doctor's turn to give a thin-lipped smile. "Actually I think you'll find that killing off one's own ancestors is a lot harder than it looks. A paradox of that magnitude tends to get rejected by the fabric of reality."
"Are you quite sure about that?" Gliese seemed unperturbed and the Doctor's curiosity was piqued again.
"Quite," he replied matter-of-factly. "I think it's fair to say that I am the sine qua non of time travellers and I know a thing or two about paradoxes. You just try it, and you'll set off a recursive time loop that never actually gets anywhere."
"Then why are you concerned at all?"
"Better safe than sorry," the Doctor shrugged. "And there may or may not be some hideous chroniverous creatures to contend with as well. I'd rather not have to tangle with them again, if I can help it."
Gliese snorted derisively. "Keeping me talking and spouting nonsense won't make any difference. I told you already, what's done is done. We can stand here and converse for the next...." He pulled a timepiece out of his pocket and checked it. "For the next 19 standard hours and it won't change anything. If you'd like, we can talk about Block Transfer Computations and the amazing ways that just the right one can deal with what would otherwise be a nasty self-defeating paradox."
The Doctor had already opened his mouth to say something terribly clever and disarming, but then shut it again with a click.
"I can see you fancy yourself quite the expert," Gliese continued, "and I can also see that I've finally convinced you that I may not be completely ignorant myself. Give people a bit of credit, it might get you further in life. Though I suppose that's all a bit of a moot point now. Or soon will be."
"Not if I have anything to do with it," the Doctor growled, and as he did so he saw Donna and Rose peering in a window on the far side of the building. He tried not to let his glance dart their way, for fear that he might reveal their whereabouts to this clearly deranged man, but at the same time he wanted to warn them to stay back and let him handle the situation.
"But you don't have anything to do with it. I don't either, at this point. No one does." Gliese took another half step backwards, disguised in part as a little shrug.
"Temporal failsafe," muttered the Doctor. "I have my ways of dealing--"
His words were cut off by a great clattering as Gliese's hand shot out and knocked a number of little objects off the shelf behind him. Faster than the Doctor could even see with his human eyes, something very threatening indeed was being aimed at his head.
"As you say, better safe than sorry," Gliese announced in a clear, determined, yet still calm voice.
Rose and Donna, watching from the window, each drew in sharp, jagged breaths instinctively, and before they could exhale, an orange beam lit up the little building as Gliese discharged the weapon he was holding. Rose shielded her eyes but Donna was unable to look away and wound up seeing spots after the light disappeared again.
Rose looked aghast at the spot where the Doctor had been standing, paralysed with dread and grief already at what she was sure she'd find there, but the area was surprisingly quite free of both the Doctor and the strange vessel that he'd been standing next to.
Donna rubbed her eyes vigorously and jumped back from the window hissing, "What is it? What's happened? Doctor? Doctor!"
Rose's mouth went dry as her stomach shrank and twisted, and she found herself unable to answer Donna's questions. She felt some sort of force building inside of her, starting below her stomach and gathering strength. Donna clutched her arm like a vice and with her other hand grasped at the cement wall.
Rose saw what Donna could not in her temporary blindness: Gliese turning towards the window, looking her dead in the eye, and raising the device in his long arm once again.
(To Chapter 12: Going Home)