Roses are Red; Screwdrivers are Blue
By Angela Laine
Rose Tyler felt like the luckiest girl in all of time and space. When she fell in love it was amazing and horrible. The subject of her affections was the Doctor, an immortal Time Lord who had no hope of spending the rest of his life with her; or so they both thought. Long story short, he lost his hand; his hand grew a replica of him; and the hand and Rose were exiled together in a parallel world. The good news? The Doctor's replica wasn't immortal. He and Rose could spend the rest of their lives together.
It took very little for the Doctor's twin to convince Rose that being with him was so much better for her than trying to win and keep the love of a man with a future eleven times as long as hers.
"Quit your stalling and pick something other than me!" Rose laughed as the man she could have a future with flashed that winning grin at her and looked around happily. She couldn't believe he'd persuaded her to play 'I Spy' with him. The two were out window-shopping in London. The sun shone in the summer sky and they held hands as they walked along, pointing and laughing.
"Have you thought of a name for yourself yet?"
"Mmm..." he looked ahead dubiously.
"I'll take that as a 'no.' But you must have some ideas?" Rose was getting worried. It had been a full two weeks since the Doctor had left and the question of what to call this new man had been posed. He still hadn't decided on anything.
"Well," he made a face, "What do you think about..." he looked at Rose hopefully, "Archibald?"
Rose stopped and looked at him, dumbfounded. "You're kidding me. Archibald? Where on Parallel Earth did that one come from? ...or did you just...run out of alphabet, or something?"
He looked at her wincingly. "Maybe."
Rose laughed, and still smiling, began to think about it herself. They kept walking.
"The question is: What name will fit you well; what do you look and act like? Are you a - a Tony; Monty? ...A Brent?" She checked herself and winced. "Ooh, no, none of those...Well, what names do you like?"
"Samuel?"
She thought about it skeptically. "No."
"Max?"
"No."
"Henry."
"No!"
They turned the corner, laughing hysterically, onto a cobbled plaza with yellow umbrella-ed tables. Rose looked at her Doctor-look-alike, waiting for another suggestion. She looked again; something was wrong. He'd stopped dead still, staring into the middle of the plaza.
"Rose..."
"Yeah? What is it?"
He nodded toward what he was looking at, indicating that she should see for herself.
Rose looked; blinked. She stepped forward a pace and squinted, her jaw dropping open.
"No way... Is that me?"
Sitting at the table in the center of the plaza was someone who had Rose's blond hair, brown eyes, and graceful figure. The one obvious difference between the two nineteen-year-old girls, even at this distance, was the absolute look of contempt and self-hatred on this new Rose's face. The look carried itself throughout the rest of her as well. With her dejected but resigned slump, headphones drowning out the world with heavy rock music, and baggy dark clothing she wore, this Rose had withered from the experiences she'd suffered.
As if aware of the attention she was receiving, this impossible person started and looked up. The two Roses locked eyes for a moment, their expressions now of literally identical shock. Then Rose the Second's face darkened in an angry frown and Rose the First was aware of her mouthing 'Oh my god.' She got up, yanked the headphone plugs out of her ears, and started stomping towards them.
"Erm, what do we do? This is usually the part where you say something like - RUN!" Rose turned and found herself trapped with the Doctor-look-alike's hands grasping her shoulders.
"For starters, we don't run."
"Yeah, well that's a switch. But, erm, I think I will this time, if it's all the same to you." Rose moved to make a break for it, but he held her firmly in place.
"No. We need to find out why she's here. You're not supposed to exist in this parallel world, so we need to find out what changed that. The sooner we do, the sooner things get back to normal. I already feel like there's a big part, right in front of me; that I'm just missing! It's like something in my head just clicked into place, but I haven't figured it out yet. I just need to talk to her." He had a pleading look on his face.
Rose sighed. "I guess." She turned back around and took his hand again as the parallel Rose stormed up to them. "You do the explaining, though."
"Why the hell do you have my face? Who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing here?" When she paused for breath Rose's phone rang.
"Rose?"
"Mum?"
"Put that man on."
Rose winced at the tone of her mother's voice; it sounded like the Doctor Replica was about to get a piece of Jackie Tyler's mind. Rose looked at the poor man. "It's for you." He took it, "Yeah?" Strains of Jackie's voice could be heard from the phone as she frantically talked That Man's ear off. As he listened and exclaimed, "What?" every few seconds, the two Roses looked from each other to him and back again.
"He was drinking coffee in the kitchen, standin' right next to me; Pete was. I looked away, and when I looked back he'd vanished! His cup smashed on the floor. He just disappeared! Oh, god. I don't know what to do - " she broke off.
"Jackie; Jackie, listen to me. I don't know what's going on, but Rose and I are finding weird things too. And I promise you, we're going to get him back. Do you hear me, Jackie? I promise you, we'll get him back. Jackie?"
"Okay, okay. I'll just - AGH! Where did you come from? Is that so? - well do you know what's going on? ... What? Oh, you two better get here quick! I just don't know what to make of this." She hung up and he flipped the phone shut, then handed it back to Rose, who pocketed it.
She and parallel Rose both started chattering at once and firing questions at the poor baffled partial Time Lord.
"What's happening; what's wrong with Mum? Did I hear that right; did she say Dad disappeared?"
"Who the hell are you? Why the hell are people disappearing? Why the hell does she look like me?"
After a minute of struggling to calm down the panicked girl and the angry girl, the man finally gave a shout of "QUIET! ...That's better."
Though the shout drew the stares of some passers-by, it had worked the way it always did on people who were making no sense.
"First off, what's your name?" He queried of the parallel girl.
She gave the pair of them a menacing look, "Rosie."
"Seriously?" Rose couldn't believe her ears, and received a dark frown for her reaction.
The Doctor's twin decided to interrupt before it got out of hand. "Alright, here's what - " Rose suddenly shushed him and made a motion with her hand. She had heard something impossible, something dreamlike. The Doctor's Replica heard it too, and they looked at each other, then at Rosie.
"What's that song coming from your headphones?" Rose asked.
Rosie rolled her eyes and narrowed them. "I don't see what that has to do with this," she retorted sharply, but she showed them the screen of a music device that she'd pulled from her pocket.
The song that was playing was Rosie's favorite. It put into words what she could not, even though the piece was instrumental. The song was melodious and sorrowful with angry tendencies toward darkness, yet at other times, it seemed almost peaceful; blissful; happy. It had so many different instruments that they could hardly be told apart. And in the background was the sound that Rose had heard. The loudest instrument, a whiny grinding, windy, whooshing sound that kept the rhythm.
Rose read the name of the song and felt a sudden dread well up in the pit of her stomach. She looked up at the Doctor's Replica, who modeled the same appearance of disbelief and wariness as Rose herself felt.
"Bad Wolf."
"Mum? Mum, are you here? Where are you? Mum?"
"I'm here; oh, thank God you're alright, sweetheart." Jackie rushed into the living room to sweep Rose up in the kind of hug only a mother can give.
Rose suddenly remembered Rosie as the girl heaved a subdued sob. There was a mortified look on her tear-covered face. Trying to comfort her was a woman with short, curly black hair in a black-and-white maid's uniform. The woman rubbed Rosie's shoulders sympathetically, only to be batted away. With a determined but understanding expression, the small woman kept at it and Rosie gave in after throwing her one annoyed look.
Jackie looked at her over Rose's shoulder and felt her eyes widen as she realized exactly who was in the room with her.
"Oh my word," she said softly and caringly, "Who are you?" Jackie stepped between the identical girls and ignored completely the black-haired maid.
The door opened and shut behind Rosie as the Doctor's twin entered into the house.
"Jackie Tyler, this is Rosie Tyler. She was born here and we have no idea how that happened. We're going to figure this out." He turned to Rosie. "The most important question right now, though, is: why are you crying - or more exactly, why are you weeping?"
Rosie glanced up at him miserably and back at Jackie. Rosie took a step closer to the older woman, searching her face in earnest.
"I don't understand how you can be here. My mum died three years ago on her birthday. How can you be here?"
"Ahh... now we're getting somewhere." The Doctor-look-alike looked at Rosie analytically for several moments and abruptly turned to Rose with a wild look on his face. "I just remembered! Rose, I need to punch in at work."
Rose gazed at him exasperatedly. The only thing she could think to say was, "But... I don't want to go to work. We're on vacation."
"Well," he said, sighing, as he looked from Rosie and back to Rose, "Not anymore. It's the only place that's got what I need. Oh, wait; Jackie. Who was there when you were talking to me on the phone?"
The maid spoke up at last. "I was. I'm Allyssa Fruggen. I've looked after Rosie since the death of her parents. They were both turned into cybermen, poor souls."
"What?" Jackie's face was a mask of panic and anger as she stepped towards the woman. "Don't you tell me he's dead. Don't you dare."
The Doctor's replica decided it was time to get a move on. "Right. Now, everyone; we really need to be at work. Come on, gang; car's waiting."
All five people piled into the car, including the maid, at the Doctor-Replica's insistence. Rose drove and he sat between Jackie and Rosie in the back.
The drive went quickly, but it was long enough for the Doctor's twin to notice a tattoo on the inside of Rosie's right wrist. He groaned when she showed it to him.
"Bad Wolf again," he voiced so Rose would hear. "The plot thickens."
They reached their destination and parked the car. Rose headed for the front of the building with everyone following. She pushed a door open to see a large white reception hall with huge windows along the edges of the ceiling. Rose enjoyed the look of surprise on his face as he spotted her and loud clatter his clipboard made as Bert the secretary pulled his feet off the surface of his desk.
"Boss!" he exclaimed as he bent to pick up the clipboard. When Bert surfaced and found his gaze met by his other boss and three more people, one of whom looked like his first boss, he knew with a sinking feeling that his lazy day had just ended.
"What do we need?" Rose asked the Doctor-look-alike. He started pacing and he grimaced as he felt his part-Time Lord brain begin to function with everything it had. He scratched his scalp and ran both hands through his short brown hair, mussing it instantly.
"There's got to be something else we can do, but I can't think of it. Being half-human has so many limitations! Oh, what else, what else, what else, what else?... Agh!, I can't think of anything. Actually, I don't think there's anything else we can do." He stopped pacing at one end of the desk and leaned in over it, one hand on each corner. "We need contact." He looked at the other man. "Bert, my right-hand deskman, give me a psychic paper."
"Sure, boss." He unlocked a drawer and pulled it open. "What kind do you need?"
"Oh, give me a... housecall."
"One housecall. Here you are, boss." He took a small sheet of paper from a box with a lid labeled 'Private.' Other boxes had labels like 'Bulletin,' 'Speech,' and 'Long-Distance.' Bert locked the drawer back up again and surveyed the group quizzically.
"Thank you. That'll be all for now, Bert. We'll check back out again in a little while. As you can see..." he gestured towards the three guests who were now all wearing clearance badges, "we have some things to sort out."
"Yes, sir. Good luck."
The Doctor-look-alike made a face at Bert. "Oh, don't; just - just don't do the 'sir' thing, Bert... See you later. Again, come along, gang." He made another face. "I need to call you lot something else. Oh, well, I'll work it out later."
The 'gang' followed him out of the large foyer, down a hallway, around a corner, up two flights of stairs, through a hallway that ran the length of the building, down three flights of stairs, and finally through a secret voice-access-only door into a private workshop.
It was a well-lighted medium-sized room with tables loaded full of tiny parts and tools.
"Don't touch anything," was the strict warning given to the four women as they gazed around in wonder.
Allyssa whispered to Rosie, "Well, this just about takes the prize for magnificence." Rosie nodded.
"Thanks," was the proud reply made by the Doctor's duplicate. "It's not much, really, though. You should see the place I used to have."
"You really should, though. It's amazing," Rose said, reminiscing.
The Doctor's twin walked swiftly to the middle of the room, placing a pair of narrow black-rimmed glasses on his face, and took some small thing from the pedestal that was positioned there. With his back to Jackie, Allyssa, Rosie and Rose, he twisted himself and the object this way and that testing different mysterious levels and satisfying himself with the way it worked. Once he went over to a table, picked something up and tinkered with the two objects for a minute.
"What are you doing?" Rose called to him, only to hear a muttered response containing 'almost there.' He tested the settings again and ran a hand through his hair, furthering the damage done to his appearance.
Rosie turned to Rose, looking skeptical. "And you fancy this guy? He's a science freak! So weird. No way would you catch me ever going for someone like him."
"Hey." Now it was Rose's turn to flash a menacing look.
"No, no-no-no; not right, it's just not right." He set the instrument down on a table and rested his elbows to either side of it, hands on head. After a moment he exclaimed, "Ha! Oh, yes, yes, yes!" He started running from table to table, picking things up and putting them down, looking for exactly the right item. He came to the table nearest the four women and started rummaging through its contents.
"What's he doing?" Allyssa whispered.
"I never know," Jackie replied. "We just go along with it and he usually does something right, in the end. You just kind of have to pretend you can follow him." Jackie and Allyssa exchanged knowing nods and the Doctor-look-alike gave Jackie a look.
"What are you looking for?" Rose asked him, changing the subject before he could order her mum out of his workshop.
"A chip," he looked at Rose and then resumed his frantic but thorough search. "A tiny, microscopic computer chip. The kind people insert into their dogs so that in case they get lost, the animal can be tracked. I'm going to use that exact same thing and program it to find my old psychic paper at a certain date. Haven't got one on you, I suppose?" He glanced up and back down when Rose shook her head.
"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I have." Everyone looked at Rosie as she stepped forward. She glanced around cautiously as she extended her right wrist." Everyone has one who works for the shop. Mine's on my tattoo. The only thing is, erm... I don't know how to get it off. But I'd be glad to get shot of it. I'm quitting anyway."
The Doctor's Replica walked toward her, astounded. He took her wrist and removed something nearly invisible with a tweezers. Rosie's wrist felt like it had just received a painful mosquito bite and she gave him a reproving glance, which he failed to see. His face broke into a madcap grin. "Thank you, Bad Wolf."
He ran back to the table where he'd left what he was working on and picked it up. He emptied the tweezers into the end of what looked like a complicated silver rod and pressed a button. He began twisting it around again and fiddling with the minor settings. Finally he whacked the edge of the table with it, sending several parts and tools tinkling onto the floor and making everyone else jump. He pressed a button; a blue glow and a buzzing sound triggered a triumphant grin.
Holding it up and walking towards the excited and curious group, the Doctor-look-alike's smile widened.
"Ladies, allow me to introduce you to my first-ever homemade sonic screwdriver." His pronouncement received a bored look, a curious look, a skeptical look, and an excited look.
"What all does it do?" Rose stepped forward, grinning, to look at it.
"Oh, everything my old screwdriver did. For our purposes, though," he examined it hopefully, "it should help me deliver a message to my old psychic paper at the time that our history was changed."
"When was that?" Rose glanced up at him.
As he looked back at her, the expression on his face reminded her of the Doctor's nickname, The Oncoming Storm. Not exactly the best sign. "The day of your dad's death."
"What does that mean? Are you saying we came here instead?"
He nodded the affirmative. "And that wasn't the day of your dad's death. You don't remember? We went to the scene of the accident; someone got hit by a car and died before the ambulance got there, but it wasn't Pete Tyler."
Rose's eyes widened as she said, "I remember. I was so confused; I thought you'd know what happened. We ran back to the TARDIS and nothing looked different, but you said you could feel something wasn't right. You looked at the screens for a bit. You looked at our flight path and you finally figured it out," she paused and looked up at him. "What was it, again?"
"Someone had been interfering with the TARDIS and sent us to the parallel dimension, but who knows who? That's what we have to find out; and stop them from changing our past."
"But..." Rose looked over at Rosie, "What about her? Don't you remember? We went to the church and we found Mum and Dad and I talked to them. I guess I convinced them that they needed a daughter. If we stop all that, she won't exist."
With a glance at Jackie and Rosie he replied slowly, "I promised your mother I'd get Pete back. And Rose," he pulled her away to talk so only she could hear, "Rosie isn't supposed to exist. Whoever's messing with our time stream brought her into existence. That isn't right."
"I shouldn't be here; that's what you're saying." Rosie walked up to them with her usual cloudy look. "But if you're thinking I can't bear to hear it; if you think it'll break my pitiful anomaly of a heart; you're wrong. At least I got a chance to know what it's like to live for twenty years - and even that was horrible. If you make it so I never existed, then I won't have to worry about being a poor little rich kid who got her mommy and daddy taken away from her while she was at rich-kid school." By now she was speaking vehemently and shaking. "And at least Dad will still be alive," she added. "Do it."
The grin returned; that was all he needed to hear. He positioned the new sonic screwdriver over the piece of psychic paper and everyone held their breath as silence roared in their ears.
"Here we go," and they were bathed in buzzing and blue light. Rose looked at the psychic paper and saw words flashing across so rapidly that they seemed to be a never-ending thick navy line.
"Can he read that -?"
"Ssh!"
It continued for a few more moments. Then all of a sudden, it all stopped.
"He's getting the message. And, yes. He can read that, because he's me. Sort of." An echo of the buzzing reached their ears through the sonic paper. "Oho, yes! He's returning a message! It worked!"
This time, the message was simple and everyone watched as one short phrase was replaced by a word.
"'Locked on coordinates.' Hey, listen to you! Very Spock." Rose grinned up at him and received a surprised and skeptical look. She glanced back down at the psychic paper. "'Coming.' But he can't do that - can he? You know, with the whole 'punching a hole in the universes' thing? It's impossible, right?" Rose asked, looking for confirmation.
"Well, I explained the whole thing to him and he must've realized that he'd already punched a hole in the walls of the two universes. The Doctor wouldn't say that if he hadn't. He's just going to time-travel to get here. He's coming to pick up Rosie. I was right; there was something else we could do." He grinned at everyone, "You're gonna love his plan."
"Why's that?"
"I think - yeah; two reasons: One; because we're going to break my rules, which... I'm not crazy about; and Two; because Rosie stays in existence."
"That's great! - Erm, number two, I mean. How's that gonna work, exactly?"
"By breaking the rules."
At that moment the room began to fill with gust after gust of growing wind permeated by the sound Rose had recognized in Rosie's music.
A blue Police Box slowly materialized and the wind died away with the noise.
When all was quiet again the TARDIS door was opened by a tall, blue-eyed, black-haired man in a worn black leather jacket.
"So," he said with a smile and clasping his hands together in front of him, "Probably shouldn't ask, but then I'm always doing things I shouldn't be. Which one of you is the future me? Hopefully the one with the glasses. Also, I'm meant to pick up a certain Rosie Tyler." She stepped forward, radiating caution and distrust. "Hello Rosie Tyler, allow me to introduce you to my TARDIS." He nudged the door open. Rosie stepped inside with a sideways look at the Doctor and quickly backed out again, looking alarmed.
"You are not getting me on that thing. No way." She looked back at the Hand. "And I thought he was weird. I think you can leave without me. I'd rather just be erased from history." She looked back at the Doctor.
"Not on my watch." The smile disappeared from the Doctor's face. "Get in."
Rosie averted her eyes and stepped once more into the TARDIS and sat down on the jump seat, looking around sadly and quietly. She was leaving everything she knew, and her tough-girl façade trembled slightly. Allyssa recognized what it meant and rolled her shoulders back, preparing herself to follow her charge into the unknown. She walked determinedly towards the strange box that looked bigger on the inside than the outside.
"And where do you think you're going?" the Doctor reached out a hand to halt her.
She gazed at him with steely eyes. "My job is to take care of Rosie Tyler. I'm not going to stand back and watch her do something dangerous by herself just because she's not supposed to exist; which I don't buy anyhow. And can't you see her in there?" Allyssa lowered her voice, which took on a pleading tone. "She's so scared that she isn't even pretending not to be. She needs me with her."
The Doctor regarded the woman regretfully. "I know. But I also know how it is to be the one nobody likes because they're 'too good' for everyone else. The life I can take her to will be the one she's always wanted. She'll have to prove herself. She can't do that with someone whose job it is to take care of her every need. Do you want her to finally have a life she will love living?" he paused, "And you; you have your own life to live. Your life is about to change and you can do anything you want with it. You can have a life you'll love living, too." The Doctor regarded her and was pleased to see that she knew he was right. He thought she even looked a little hopeful. Allyssa walked past him into the TARDIS anyways, 'just to say goodbye.'
"Make sure it is. I'll have no stowaways aboard my ship."
The Doctor turned back to the rest of his audience with his old humor returned and gave them a look. "My question hasn't been answered... Does that mean something bad?"
The Hand stepped forward. "I'm the one who messaged you, but I'm not the Doctor. None of us is. And, nicely handled by the way. I would've said the same thing."
He smiled, and then a puzzled look came over the Doctor's face. "Thanks; but... hang on; you've got a screwdriver. And psychic paper. What is this? Where am I?" he looked around, finally realizing he hadn't the foggiest of where he was.
"Torchwood. I'm one of the two people in charge of this place; but we are a parallel Torchwood. We're the good guys. Just remember that for future reference..." He stared at the Doctor for a moment. "You're not doing it. Remember it; it's important. Okay, there it is. Yep. Here it comes. Yes. Okay. Thank you."
The Doctor stepped forward so the two men stood face-to-face.
"But you don't look anything like me."
"Huh," the Hand said with a smile, "No I don't." He winked back at Rose. "That's probably a good thing."
The Doctor noticed Rose for the first time and his eyebrows flew upwards of a hundred feet.
"You're telling me you left me for him?"
Rose walked over and threaded her arms through the Hand's left arm. "Sorry, but - well, who could resist -?" She looked at the TARDIS, "Oh, alright, well - some people can, but I'm not complaining." She grinned up at her man.
"Ooh, easy does it, Rose," he grinned back down at her. "The memories."
"The more pain, the more relief."
"Well, yeah; for me. But not for him."
"Oh; right." Rose looked apologetically at the Doctor, "Sorry."
"Okay... Very confused and more than a little hurt, but the future will come."
"Not unless we put my past back in order, though. The memories keep changing. I want them to stay put. Help me."
"Always."
"You know the plan."
"I made it."
"Oh yeah... Right. By the way, where is Rose?"
The Doctor smiled mirthfully and said, "I sent her on a quest to find me something."
Rose looked between him and the Hand with wide eyes and said, "I remember; I never found it."
The Doctor grinned at her and said, "That doesn't surprise me."
Rose looked quizzically from him to the Hand, who had a kind of embarrassed expression on his face.
The Doctor headed back into the TARDIS, the gravity of what next needed to be done foremost in his head. Allyssa came out as he reached it, looking as though she was attending a funeral.
The Hand's call of, "And message me when you find out what happened!" was met by a smiling nod when the Doctor reached the doorway of the TARDIS.
And then it whooshed off to go fix history.
Rosie clung to the jump seat with everything she had, feeling for all the parallel world like she would be sick, and she said as much to the Doctor. The ride was more than bumpy for the simple reason that the Doctor had his mind more so on the two sheets of paper he was writing on than his steering.
He glanced up. "There's a bin down the hallway that will recycle your vomit into compost, if you'd like to hurl. Just be careful you don't get anything else in it or I'll have a very confused bin on my hands. And we really don't have time for that." He finished writing and took out his sonic screwdriver, waving it over the second piece of paper.
"Right. A vomiting vomit bin. That should probably surprise me." Rosie replied sarcastically with a roll of the eyes. The TARDIS tipped suddenly and Rosie toppled to the floor. "How the hell can anyone stand this thing? God, it's nauseating."
"Like I said, just go down the hall." He straightened up and walked past Rosie into the aforementioned hallway. "I'll show you."
Rosie got shakily to her feet and turned to follow the Doctor. A particularly immediate jerk of the TARDIS sent her vaulting down the hall to bump into the Doctor.
"Oi, watch it. Anyway; in here." The Doctor pulled open a narrow door and a red light illuminated Rosie's face as she curiously but suspiciously leaned in and over. She looked back up at the Doctor and back down. She stepped closer. "And I'm just supposed to sick onto the floor of this cupboard -?"
Without a warning Rosie was abruptly shoved inside the cramped chamber and a clear door slid shut around her, sealing her inside.
As she hammered on the door and her shouts bounced around the soundproof case, the Doctor gave her a sad look.
He pushed a small intercom button and said into the speaker, "Sorry Rosie, but this is the part about breaking the rules. Soon you're going to be a living paradox, thanks to my handy spare paradox pod. But now it gets tricky," he reached out and pressed a button on the outside of the pod, releasing a sleeping gas on Rosie's side, "And you'd be better off out of the way."
Rosie's body relaxed and her head slumped as the gas did its work. A betrayed expression was frozen on the girl's face. Ignoring it, the Doctor reached up and pulled a lever sideways. Rosie's pod rose up a few inches and rolled into the hall. The Doctor took a handle at the top and moved the cylindrical pod into the control room, positioning Rosie right by the doors. Next he taped the first of the two papers to the outside of the pod and opened the TARDIS door.
He strolled out, leaving Rosie behind, and taped the other paper to the brick wall he'd landed next to. After using the sonic screwdriver to make sure it was secure, he got back inside and set the controls for a different destination. Once he arrived, he would have to be quick. He would have a matter of seconds.
Mickey Smith ran to the corner just in time to see something that looked very wrong indeed.
He was too late to see the Doctor, as the TARDIS was already dematerializing, but where was its trademark wind and whooshing noise? Where was the light on top - and the strobing view pf the Police Box fading in and out of sight? Then he saw Rose and a whole new volley of questions hit his mind as he ran towards her encased body.
How could the Doctor just leave her? Why was she in a box? Why wasn't she moving? Why was she even here? Was she dead?
Mickey reached her side and saw the attached note. It was addressed to him.
Mickey,
This is Rosie Tyler. She is Rose's paradoxical parallel. She hates TARDIS travel and she detests me. I hope you won't mind that I thought you were the best person to take her to. Please take care of her.
The Doctor
P.S. Push the blue button on top to open it.
P.P.S. When she gets out of the paradox pod, you have five seconds before it blows up.
"That is just like him," Mickey said as he pushed the button.
A cloud of funny-smelling gas was released as the front slid open and Rosie opened her heavily made-up eyes.
"Come on, we have five seconds before this thing blows up." Mickey moved to put his arm around her waist to help Rosie out of the pod.
"Don't touch me. I can manage. Where the hell is the Doctor? No; if he's never coming back, then I can live a happy life. God, that was awful." Rosie pushed herself up and stepped unsteadily onto the street. Mickey caught her as her knees started to fail. "Thanks," she said, finally getting a good look at him. "Please tell me you're normal. All I need is more weird people. Ugh; and I'll be glad to get away from that stinking thing as soon as possible."
"Is 'immediately' soon enough? It's gonna blow," Mickey said with a grin as he took her hand and started running.
Sometimes, Mickey thought, the Doctor does alright. Sometimes.
When the TARDIS dematerialized in so odd a fashion, the Doctor didn't panic. In fact, he'd known this would happen. The problem was, he just didn't know what would happen next.
It felt like falling asleep and having a dream. As though he were a video camera, he saw himself and Rose come out of the TARDIS and find his note. They talked about it for a second, then trooped back into the TARDIS and doubled back to try for their original destination.
He watched as the Doctor and Rose saved Pete Tyler's life on the day of his death. He saw the creatures that came to clean up the wound in time and he vaguely felt himself being eaten alive inside the church.
Next thing he knew, the Doctor was standing next to an emotionally desecrated Rose Tyler and saying, "Go to him. Quick."
He followed her and waited while she held Pete Tyler's hand as he died. Rose stood up and her dad's hand was replaced by the Doctor's as the two made their way back to the fully restored TARDIS.
After making sure Rose was as alright as she could be, what with seeing him die and then her dad, and letting her know that he wasn't angry, the Doctor set to work using his infinite knowledge of the TARDIS to figure out why there had been a detour.
Back at the parallel Torchwood, the psychic paper started buzzing.
"What's it say?" Rose looked over the Hand's shoulder to see the message sent by an enlightened Doctor.
"'Everything worked perfectly; it wasn't a malfunction; the TARDIS flipped some switches at the last second so that this would happen. She wanted Rosie to exist. When you possess all of time and space, you know what needs to happen for the future.' Heh. Poor Rosie. She's going to have to get used to weird things happening to her; this was only the beginning." The Hand looked up and said, "Jackie, you'll find Pete in the kitchen getting rid of the broken coffee cup. Allyssa, I think you'll find that you remember everything that happened today, but you also have a different life to continue leading now. And Rose, the Doctor took Rosie to Mickey. She's a paradox, but she's fine and in good hands."
Everyone felt a mix of happiness and relief and Jackie left immediately at a run followed shortly, and more slowly, by Allyssa, who informed them that she had a laundry shop to run.
"Well Rose, that worked out very well. If I might say so myself. The only question left unanswered, in this grand scheme of things," he looked at her, trying unsuccessfully to hide a smile, "is what to call me." She burst out laughing as they walked out of the workshop and he asked, "So what do you think about 'David?' I've always liked the name 'David.' Got a good ring to it. 'David.' Do I look like a 'David?' I think so. What do you think?"