Held in Trust: Chapter 14
Title: Held in Trust (14/?)
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 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 |
The afternoon didn't feel so much cold as airless, like space. There was nothing to be called "warm" or "cool," just an empty vastness. Rose took out her phone and checked the time, again.
"Four and a half hours," she muttered, the vibrations of her voice going flat as they hit the vacuum surrounding her.
Next to her, on a small hill overlooking the burned-out husk of the compound, Donna fussed with the zip of her jacket nervously.
"Those Torchwood people sounded like they knew a thing or two. I reckon they're getting it all sorted right now." Her words wouldn't have convinced anyone, least of all herself.
Rose shook her head. "I can see from here that all they've done is set up a cordon and taken a bunch of readings. They'll have interrogated the detainees by now. If they knew what to do, they'd have done it already."
Donna took her gloves off and then put them back on again, for the tenth time. "Kind of like us then," she sighed, her teeth chattering, though not from the chill. "When the Doctor comes back and settles this, can we tell him instead how brilliant we were? I don't fancy him knowing that we've just sat here being useless."
Rose gave her a look so forlorn, it was like she had called down a mist to settle between them, but she said nothing.
"He'll come back," Donna ventured. "He always does."
Donna had always been rubbish in these sorts of situations, saying the wrong thing or making an unconvincing face. For most people in her life, she didn't even make the effort to be comforting or sympathetic any more. But from the first time she and the Doctor had gotten themselves in to a bit of a jam, she'd gotten a hint of what it might be like to love a man like this--when the very thing that made him so extraordinary also threatened to take him from you at every turn. She'd never quite worked out what it was between he and Rose that made it all okay in the end, and thus she was at a loss now for any words that would be comforting or insightful.
"He hasn't always," Rose said flatly.
"What's that?"
"He hasn't always come back."
Donna tore her eyes away from the scurrying-about of the ant-like Torchwood operatives below. "I know sometimes we aren't exactly home in time for tea, but we do come back."
"I think I've known him a bit longer than you, yeah?" Rose said bitterly.
Donna boggled. The world was arguably about to end and Rose was feeling jealous of her fella's mate?
"Sorry," Donna replied acidly. "And it's not like either of you ever tell me anything anyway, so I don't have much to go on, do I?"
There was a long pause and if it had felt airless before, that was nothing compared to now.
"Do you really want to know?" Rose asked archly.
"I don't really think this is the time--" Donna began, but Rose cut her off with the wave of a hand.
"We're not doing anything else. At the very least we have to wait for Torchwood to clear out." She gave a wry, mirthless half-smile.
"Only if you want to tell," Donna replied slowly. She'd always felt that the best course of action was just to go on as if nothing were at all abnormal about her friends, and above all to never pry or ask questions. It seemed like the two of them together had carefully constructed a protective carapace around some horrible secret, and to even acknowledge the existence of this shell would be a betrayal of their trust. And so, when left openings in conversation in to which she might thrust a word in order to peel the armour back a bit, she kept her peace--as hard as that was considering her burning desire to know.
"Has the Doctor ever told you who he really is?" Rose asked.
Donna shrugged. "He drives me mad, and he drives you even madder, so, no different than most blokes then." She tried to sound casual, as if she wasn't really interested.
Rose heaved a sigh, full of longing and long suffering. Donna had never heard Rose speak of the Doctor outside of the contexts of either day-to-day annoyances that any woman has with her lover, or conversely, glowing admiration.
"You'd think there'd be no one else quite like the Doctor, yeah?"
"Well, yeah," Donna chuckled. "And a good thing for it, too."
"What if I told you there was another?"
Donna's mental antennae went way up. "Another half-alien Time Lord thing?"
Rose arched an eyebrow, a mannerism surely born of spending so much time with the Doctor. "No, I mean another Doctor. Literally another him."
Donna narrowed her eyes, trying to catch her meaning. "What, like a clone?"
Rose snorted. "More like the other way 'round."
"So," Donna said, trying to wrap her mind around this concept, "the Doctor, the one I know, he's a clone, like what they do with sheep and dogs and stuff these days?"
Rose sighed again. "Not exactly. Not really, no. He's got all the memories of the other Doctor, the same personality, the same everything. In nearly every way he's the same man." She paused and then added, seemingly as an the afterthought, "Almost the same as the man that I first fell in love with."
Donna's mind was, quite simply, blown. World ending, impending apocalypse, missing friend, these were nothing in comparison to this intimation that Rose was living with a copy of the man she loved, and that the original was still out there somewhere. Or was he? Perhaps he had died, or run out on her, rejected her.... The possibilities layered one on top of the next, in heart-breaking geological strata. For the first time Donna saw Rose as her own person and not just her friend's well-meaning but slightly hen-pecking girlfriend.
"Still," Rose said, her tone lightening, "they're both equally good at buggering off when they're needed most. I suppose I should be used to that by now. I think it's about time to save the world, don't you?"
*******
"Well, you're not dressed like a Proprietor, and you don't look like an indenture. And definitely not a sixer. You'll have to sneak in." Crede stood back a few paces from the Doctor and looked him up and down appraisingly.
"Definitely not a what?" the Doctor chirped as he rifled through his pockets, of which there were surprisingly many.
"A sixer. A non-human?"
"So that's a term of endearment then, is it?" the Doctor asked sarcastically as he extracted a complicated-looking metal instrument from the inside pocket of his jacket.
Crede shrugged, not really ever having thought about it. "It just comes from the section of imperial law that covers non-humans. Section Six of the Proclamation of Human Rights and Responsibilities.Sixers."
"Where I'm from we just call them people," the Doctor said grimly as he palmed the device he'd pulled from his pocket. "You seem like a bright lad so I'm sure you understand where I'm coming from. Now then, what's the plan?"
Crede hadn't really counted on being asked to formulate a plan and blanched at the thought of the world of trouble they would both be in should they be found out. That was entirely more responsibility than he was really interested in taking on.
"Plan, sir?" he stammered, stalling for time.
"Plan, scheme, stratagem, procedure--"
"Right, sir, but I thought perhaps that you'd already have one." Crede cut him off, it having become clear that he would have gone on with the synonyms had he not stopped him.
"Well that's silly," the Doctor gave a half-smile, his eyes suddenly merry. "I only just got here, so you're much more the expert, yeah? So, you tell me, what's the best way to sneak in? Or maybe we shouldn't sneak at all, what do you think? Take the bold approach, throw everyone off their games, waltz in like we own the place? There's something to be said for that tactic."
Crede could not help but notice the first-person plural pronoun. "I don't really know, sir."
"Doctor," the Doctor corrected as he flipped the pen-like device he'd been holding over and over between his fingers.
"Doctor," Crede repeated obediently, not really knowing what the title designated.
"Well, is there anything that enters and leaves your unit on a regular basis? And please don't say the rubbish bins. I'm rather fond of this suit and I just don't have laundry facilities like I used to."
"I was going to say...Doctor, I work in the laundry, actually."
The Doctor brushed a bit of dust from the leg of his trousers. "Well, let me rephrase that then: I don't fancy smelling of rubbish, even if you can do a spot of washing after."
Crede fiddled with the hem of his tunic and looked down at his feet. "If you'll pardon me, what I mean to say is hampers of laundry come in and out of the unit all the time. Some of the nearby smaller units don't have their own laundries, so they send it all to us to do. You could hide in one of them and I'd let you out before...."
"Before what?" The Doctor met Crede's lowered gaze.
"Well, before the laundry's done."
The Doctor cleared his throat. "And what exactly does that entail?"
Asked a direct question, Crede had to answer, though it made his plan sound much less like a sure thing. He felt a spike of discomfort in the back of his throat that he couldn't quite quantify and swallowed it down again long enough to mumble, "The hampers are put in to an automated conveyor system that takes them to where the clothes are mixed with a chlorinated hydrocarbon, and then irradiated."
"So, no danger at all to my personal well-being then," the Doctor said with a mischievous grin. "We'll just have to make sure we don't cock it up. Oh yes, we'll be in like Flynn! Who was Flynn anyway, do you suppose? And what was he in to? Hopefully not carcinogenic solvents and low-level radiation. Because then I'd have to say that we'll be very much out, and quite unlike Flynn, who would seem to have some extremely unusual hobbies."
The Doctor gave Crede a cheeky wink, and bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, as if getting ready to begin a foot race. "I bet when you woke up this morning you had no idea you'd be saving the world! Well, a world. And maybe yours. I haven't quite worked that bit out yet. But lead on, young Crede! I am entirely in your capable hands."
(To Chapter 15: The best laid plans)
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 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 |
The afternoon didn't feel so much cold as airless, like space. There was nothing to be called "warm" or "cool," just an empty vastness. Rose took out her phone and checked the time, again.
"Four and a half hours," she muttered, the vibrations of her voice going flat as they hit the vacuum surrounding her.
Next to her, on a small hill overlooking the burned-out husk of the compound, Donna fussed with the zip of her jacket nervously.
"Those Torchwood people sounded like they knew a thing or two. I reckon they're getting it all sorted right now." Her words wouldn't have convinced anyone, least of all herself.
Rose shook her head. "I can see from here that all they've done is set up a cordon and taken a bunch of readings. They'll have interrogated the detainees by now. If they knew what to do, they'd have done it already."
Donna took her gloves off and then put them back on again, for the tenth time. "Kind of like us then," she sighed, her teeth chattering, though not from the chill. "When the Doctor comes back and settles this, can we tell him instead how brilliant we were? I don't fancy him knowing that we've just sat here being useless."
Rose gave her a look so forlorn, it was like she had called down a mist to settle between them, but she said nothing.
"He'll come back," Donna ventured. "He always does."
Donna had always been rubbish in these sorts of situations, saying the wrong thing or making an unconvincing face. For most people in her life, she didn't even make the effort to be comforting or sympathetic any more. But from the first time she and the Doctor had gotten themselves in to a bit of a jam, she'd gotten a hint of what it might be like to love a man like this--when the very thing that made him so extraordinary also threatened to take him from you at every turn. She'd never quite worked out what it was between he and Rose that made it all okay in the end, and thus she was at a loss now for any words that would be comforting or insightful.
"He hasn't always," Rose said flatly.
"What's that?"
"He hasn't always come back."
Donna tore her eyes away from the scurrying-about of the ant-like Torchwood operatives below. "I know sometimes we aren't exactly home in time for tea, but we do come back."
"I think I've known him a bit longer than you, yeah?" Rose said bitterly.
Donna boggled. The world was arguably about to end and Rose was feeling jealous of her fella's mate?
"Sorry," Donna replied acidly. "And it's not like either of you ever tell me anything anyway, so I don't have much to go on, do I?"
There was a long pause and if it had felt airless before, that was nothing compared to now.
"Do you really want to know?" Rose asked archly.
"I don't really think this is the time--" Donna began, but Rose cut her off with the wave of a hand.
"We're not doing anything else. At the very least we have to wait for Torchwood to clear out." She gave a wry, mirthless half-smile.
"Only if you want to tell," Donna replied slowly. She'd always felt that the best course of action was just to go on as if nothing were at all abnormal about her friends, and above all to never pry or ask questions. It seemed like the two of them together had carefully constructed a protective carapace around some horrible secret, and to even acknowledge the existence of this shell would be a betrayal of their trust. And so, when left openings in conversation in to which she might thrust a word in order to peel the armour back a bit, she kept her peace--as hard as that was considering her burning desire to know.
"Has the Doctor ever told you who he really is?" Rose asked.
Donna shrugged. "He drives me mad, and he drives you even madder, so, no different than most blokes then." She tried to sound casual, as if she wasn't really interested.
Rose heaved a sigh, full of longing and long suffering. Donna had never heard Rose speak of the Doctor outside of the contexts of either day-to-day annoyances that any woman has with her lover, or conversely, glowing admiration.
"You'd think there'd be no one else quite like the Doctor, yeah?"
"Well, yeah," Donna chuckled. "And a good thing for it, too."
"What if I told you there was another?"
Donna's mental antennae went way up. "Another half-alien Time Lord thing?"
Rose arched an eyebrow, a mannerism surely born of spending so much time with the Doctor. "No, I mean another Doctor. Literally another him."
Donna narrowed her eyes, trying to catch her meaning. "What, like a clone?"
Rose snorted. "More like the other way 'round."
"So," Donna said, trying to wrap her mind around this concept, "the Doctor, the one I know, he's a clone, like what they do with sheep and dogs and stuff these days?"
Rose sighed again. "Not exactly. Not really, no. He's got all the memories of the other Doctor, the same personality, the same everything. In nearly every way he's the same man." She paused and then added, seemingly as an the afterthought, "Almost the same as the man that I first fell in love with."
Donna's mind was, quite simply, blown. World ending, impending apocalypse, missing friend, these were nothing in comparison to this intimation that Rose was living with a copy of the man she loved, and that the original was still out there somewhere. Or was he? Perhaps he had died, or run out on her, rejected her.... The possibilities layered one on top of the next, in heart-breaking geological strata. For the first time Donna saw Rose as her own person and not just her friend's well-meaning but slightly hen-pecking girlfriend.
"Still," Rose said, her tone lightening, "they're both equally good at buggering off when they're needed most. I suppose I should be used to that by now. I think it's about time to save the world, don't you?"
*******
"Well, you're not dressed like a Proprietor, and you don't look like an indenture. And definitely not a sixer. You'll have to sneak in." Crede stood back a few paces from the Doctor and looked him up and down appraisingly.
"Definitely not a what?" the Doctor chirped as he rifled through his pockets, of which there were surprisingly many.
"A sixer. A non-human?"
"So that's a term of endearment then, is it?" the Doctor asked sarcastically as he extracted a complicated-looking metal instrument from the inside pocket of his jacket.
Crede shrugged, not really ever having thought about it. "It just comes from the section of imperial law that covers non-humans. Section Six of the Proclamation of Human Rights and Responsibilities.Sixers."
"Where I'm from we just call them people," the Doctor said grimly as he palmed the device he'd pulled from his pocket. "You seem like a bright lad so I'm sure you understand where I'm coming from. Now then, what's the plan?"
Crede hadn't really counted on being asked to formulate a plan and blanched at the thought of the world of trouble they would both be in should they be found out. That was entirely more responsibility than he was really interested in taking on.
"Plan, sir?" he stammered, stalling for time.
"Plan, scheme, stratagem, procedure--"
"Right, sir, but I thought perhaps that you'd already have one." Crede cut him off, it having become clear that he would have gone on with the synonyms had he not stopped him.
"Well that's silly," the Doctor gave a half-smile, his eyes suddenly merry. "I only just got here, so you're much more the expert, yeah? So, you tell me, what's the best way to sneak in? Or maybe we shouldn't sneak at all, what do you think? Take the bold approach, throw everyone off their games, waltz in like we own the place? There's something to be said for that tactic."
Crede could not help but notice the first-person plural pronoun. "I don't really know, sir."
"Doctor," the Doctor corrected as he flipped the pen-like device he'd been holding over and over between his fingers.
"Doctor," Crede repeated obediently, not really knowing what the title designated.
"Well, is there anything that enters and leaves your unit on a regular basis? And please don't say the rubbish bins. I'm rather fond of this suit and I just don't have laundry facilities like I used to."
"I was going to say...Doctor, I work in the laundry, actually."
The Doctor brushed a bit of dust from the leg of his trousers. "Well, let me rephrase that then: I don't fancy smelling of rubbish, even if you can do a spot of washing after."
Crede fiddled with the hem of his tunic and looked down at his feet. "If you'll pardon me, what I mean to say is hampers of laundry come in and out of the unit all the time. Some of the nearby smaller units don't have their own laundries, so they send it all to us to do. You could hide in one of them and I'd let you out before...."
"Before what?" The Doctor met Crede's lowered gaze.
"Well, before the laundry's done."
The Doctor cleared his throat. "And what exactly does that entail?"
Asked a direct question, Crede had to answer, though it made his plan sound much less like a sure thing. He felt a spike of discomfort in the back of his throat that he couldn't quite quantify and swallowed it down again long enough to mumble, "The hampers are put in to an automated conveyor system that takes them to where the clothes are mixed with a chlorinated hydrocarbon, and then irradiated."
"So, no danger at all to my personal well-being then," the Doctor said with a mischievous grin. "We'll just have to make sure we don't cock it up. Oh yes, we'll be in like Flynn! Who was Flynn anyway, do you suppose? And what was he in to? Hopefully not carcinogenic solvents and low-level radiation. Because then I'd have to say that we'll be very much out, and quite unlike Flynn, who would seem to have some extremely unusual hobbies."
The Doctor gave Crede a cheeky wink, and bounced up and down on the balls of his feet, as if getting ready to begin a foot race. "I bet when you woke up this morning you had no idea you'd be saving the world! Well, a world. And maybe yours. I haven't quite worked that bit out yet. But lead on, young Crede! I am entirely in your capable hands."
(To Chapter 15: The best laid plans)