Amorphous
By Kyizi
Disclaimer: Doctor Who, Torchwood and all related items do not belong to me. Only the Story and its related original ideas and characters are mine. No copyright infringement intended.
Rating: PG13/12A
Spoilers: There are definite spoilers running through this from season two of the new Doctor Who in the form of quote headers, but just to be safe, I'd say there's a chance that something from any of the new Who episodes up to the end of season three could work its way in. There are also spoilers up to and including the start of season two of Torchwood; lets say up to episode three or so, just to be safe, although it's nothing specific.
Pairings: Doctor/Rose, also some Rose/Ianto and hints at various other combinations, because lets face it; Jack's involved ;p
Word Count: 23,530
Beta: *points to the wonderful Roquentine* I *heart* her. Take a bow, honey, you deserve the applause! Seriously, thank you so very, very much for trawling through this and sticking it out despite my lack of productivity at the beginning…and in the middle… ;) You are so very awesome!
Note: I thought it about time I posted this one here. This one is already complete, and has been for some time, so no worries about it being another long term WiP!
Story Notes: Wow, okay, so I almost didn't make it through this one! Seriously, you have no idea how close I came to not making any of the deadlines. A HUGE thanks to Jadesfire et all for being so awesome about that, you guys rocks! And massive thanks to loriel_eris, lakadaisy and D for being awesome about listening to me whine about word count, deadlines and many other issues! Also *sporks RL for getting in the way so much*
I hope you enjoy!
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Amorphous: without a definite shape or form
-x-x-x-x-x-
Somewhere, in the darkened silence, it waits; imagines it can hear the racing heartbeats and silenced screams it longs for. There is no light, no sound, no smell, or wind, or weather. There is nothing to count the passing of time. But still it waits and wants and needs.
Gently, like the breaking of a twig underfoot, it stretches out, snatches and claws, but cannot reach. There is an urgency, a hunger that starves and drives it further and faster, pushes it towards the edges of the eternal cage. But not so eternal, not really. It knows, as sure as it hungers, that there is something close by; an untouchable energy that cannot be seen, nor heard, nor felt, surrounds it, just out of reach.
And still it waits.
-x-x-x-x-x-
…followed the voice... across the water... kept on driving hundreds and hundreds of miles. Because he's calling.
Sometimes, when she wakes up, she still think he's there. Just outside the door, pacing and telling her to hurry up. Almost as if he's just waiting for her to get with the programme. She imagines what it would be like; to wake up one morning and see him leaning over her with that stupid, smug smile of his and a twinkle in his eyes. He'd say something stupid like, "Come on then, sleepy head, time to go. Adventures wait for no man. And no woman either, so get moving, lazy."
And she'd follow him outside in her nightie until he had to remind her to change. It's the one thing she knows beyond all else; she'd follow him anywhere if he called her. Anywhere and any time. Only she can't. Because he's gone and she's stuck here. And she doesn't think she would've minded that before she met him, because she's got a family and money and a whole world to explore. But one world is nothing compared to all of time and space, and every thing and everybody she has here is nothing compared to him.
Sometimes she thinks she could stay in bed all day, all week, all year…forever and just not care. Because he's all she never knew she wanted and she can't have him. She never will again.
In her dreams she sees him, as sure as she ever did when he was standing right in front of her with his cheeky grin and an outstretched hand. It'd be easier if she could know it was a dream and be satisfied, but it always changes into something more, as if she's there but not, as if she's watching him from above, an eagle eye into adventures that never took place.
She sees him, more often than not, in the first incarnation she met, with those big ears and the breath of fresh air that seemed to follow him around, the one that smelled of adventure and excitement. She sees him tinkering with the TARDIS, sees him get himself into more trouble than he should really be able to handle, but always does, and sometimes she doesn't see him at all. Sometimes it's a feeling; a thrill of excitement, or a whisper of anger and fear that's quickly shuttered down and locked away. She feels as if she's seeing him again for the first time, as if she's understanding now what she never could before. She didn't love him then, but knew she could. Knew at that first moment when his fingers wrapped around hers that it was completely, totally, utterly what could happen if she stayed, but it wasn't until she lost him, really lost who he was and saw a stranger looking back at her that she knew. And when his fingers wrapped around hers again, she knew then; completely, totally, utterly that it didn't matter that he was different, because he was hers and she knew she was always his.
It's when she dreams of him as she last saw him, imagines him with a new companion and new adventures and so utterly without her, that she wants to get out of bed. Because that's when she knows he misses her, too.
-x-x-x-x-x-
There's a gentle, contented humming coming from the central control and the lights shift a little making him smile. He reaches out and runs his hand across the panel in front of him, almost as if he's petting a purring cat.
"You trying to seduce her again, Doctor? Because you know she's only got eyes for me."
"Nah, she's got better taste than that."
Chuckling, Jack jogs down the few stairs to lean against the controls beside him, hip almost grazing the Doctor's head. He's grinning cheekily and, despite the shiver that Jack's very existence still gives him, the Doctor can't help but grin back. He shakes his head and stands, flicking a few switches and adjusting the screen.
"So, what's going on?"
Jack frowns, a smile playing at his lips. "Since you're the one parked in my place of work, surely I should be the one asking you that."
"Jack, I've been here for four days and you've spent most of that time here. And not out there." He looks at Jack, eyebrows raised. "Where you said you now belonged."
"I do, things are just a little…" Jack circles his hands, as if searching for the right word. "Tense."
"Ah, you're hiding."
"Not hiding," Jack says, affronted, but with a smile. "They're just a little…upset."
The Doctor nods. "Hiding."
"I'm not-"
"Hiding."
Jack sighs. "Yeah, I'm hiding." The Doctor grins and Jack glares, but doesn't mean it, his smile getting wider by the second. "Seems they didn't take kindly to my not-being-there act as well as you and Rose did."
"So naturally disappearing again will go down well," the Doctor says, rummaging under the controls again. He frowns and pulls out a wire. "And we didn't take it well so much as…didn't dwell on it. I knew you were fine."
"Such a comfort."
"Haven't we been through this?"
"You didn't say sorry," Jack says with a smirk and an eyebrow wiggle and the Doctor's eyebrows jump up.
Smiling, the Doctor waves the wire at him. "Captain, behave."
"So, where are we going?"
"Don't you have a small branch of an evil government agency to run?"
"Not evil, not small," Jack waggles his eyebrows. "And they seem to be doing just fine without me."
"Ah, you're feeling neglected."
"Seems to be a running theme."
"And now you're pouting."
"I do not pout!" Jack says, pouting. "I...damn it, I should be allowed to pout. They're fine without me. Tosh and Owen are angry, Ianto's upset that I disappeared on him and…"
"And Gwen's getting married," the Doctor finishes. "Yes, I believe I've heard this, oh, a million times before."
"I just…want to go on an adventure. Like before."
The Doctor looks away. "It won't be like before."
"Can't be the fabulous three without the three of us, can we?" Jack sighs when the Doctor just continues to fiddle with the controls. "So let's just be the fantastic two."
"Fantastic," the Doctor says, grinning madly as he looks out from the panel under the controls. "Now, there's a word I haven't used in a while. I think I could handle a bit of fantastic."
Jack waggles his eyebrows. "You can handle my fantastic any time."
"Hah!" The Doctor stands up, using his sonic screwdriver to seal the panel again. "I'll bet you say that to all the boys and girls."
"Only the ones who-"
"Now, what's that?"
"What's what?" Frowning, Jack lets the Doctor move him aside, fiddling with some controls until a strange pattern emerges on the view screen. It jumps around like a voice pattern on Tosh's recognition scanner and he steps closer as the Doctor brings it into focus.
Suddenly the lights dim and they both look up, feeling the same shiver down their spines. The TARDIS makes a strange, echoing whine, as if it's in pain, and they look at each other, suddenly overcome with a feeling of dread.
Glancing back at the screen, the Doctor shakes off his discomfort and tries not to let the flickering lights get to him. He knows enough about the TARDIS to know she's scared and, for him, that's enough to know that whatever this is, it isn't good.
-x-x-x-x-x-
Here you are. Living a life day after day. The one adventure I can never have.
Rose growls and rubs her hands over her face, staring once more at the screen in front of her. The words and pictures should make sense to her in a way that they just don't to anyone else, but it's not that simple. It's like her brain's on overload and nothing's connecting together. She's sure she's seen this text before, but she always had the TARDIS to translate, always had the Doctor to fall back on and never really thought that maybe she should learn things for herself.
Good one, Rose, she thinks with a sigh and continues to stare uncomprehendingly.
"Miss Tyler?"
She flinches and turns to face him. "Ianto, right?" she asks and the man nods, still vaguely skittish around her. Not that she can really blame him. She's heard enough through the grapevine to know that he lost his fiancée during the initial Cybermen attacks and she understands that, understands how he's feeling, even if he doesn't know she does. "Call me, Rose, all right?"
He looks slightly lost for a second, then offers her a smile. "I don't think so. Not just yet, anyway."
"Fair enough," she says with a grin. "I can't ask for much more. What've you got for me?"
"Tea and sandwiches."
She laughs, a sound that's foreign not only to her, but to the people around her who stop and turn to look at her. "Ianto, you don't have to be my personal slave," she whispers loudly, ignoring everyone.
"I'm aware of that, yes. But I like to be useful and, if it's all right with you, I'd rather fetch you something when you've eaten nothing for the last eight hours, than clean Brian's car. Which was the alternative suggestion."
Rose frowns and makes a mental note to order Brian to do something really disgusting in the near future. She's never really thought much about what Ianto does for them, just has this sneaking suspicion that the place would fall about around their ears if he wasn't there. She knows he put in a request to be reassigned after his fiancée died, but had been informed that it wasn't going to happen. The higher-ups seemed to think he was a risk. Whether it was a risk to them or to Ianto, Rose has never quite worked out. Never really bothered to, actually. She buries herself in her work and tries to ensure that she's too exhausted to do anything other than sleep when she gets home, because sleep brings her closer to her Doctor and further away from the life she's inhabiting, rather than living.
She shakes her head, noting that Ianto has observed her momentary lapse and wonders how good his eye for detail really is. "Come `ere," she says finally, indicating her desk and reaching out to pull another chair over.
"Only if you eat," he says, his voice a thickly accented whisper.
She grins at his impertinence (she may be younger than him, but she is his boss) and nods, accepting the plate. He smiles back at her and she thinks that it might be the first time she's ever seen him look anything but serious. He has a nice smile.
"See if you can shed light on this for me." She tilts her screen in his direction and tries not to moan when she starts to eat. It really has been since breakfast since she had anything and she's sure her colleagues would understand (perhaps), but making a noise that should be restricted to the bedroom over a sandwich is likely not a good idea for her working environment. Especially since she's still to get a read on a lot of the people she works with. She's an outsider, ordered in from the top, and they know nothing about her except that she has a suspicious amount of knowledge about aliens and their technology.
"Looks to be in code," Ianto says and she instantly gives him her full attention.
"Yeah, but I can't figure out where I've seen it before."
"You've seen this before?"
"I think so." She smiles. "A long time ago."
"On your travels," he says with a conspiratorial look and she wonders, not for the first time, if he hasn't already figured her out; the silent man in the background who seems to know everything.
"Yeah, on my travels."
"Brian and Laura have placed it from Traxor," he says, shrugging.
"You don't think so?" she asks, very curious to see if she's right and maybe Ianto is being wasted in his current role.
"No. And neither do you."
"Oh, I don't, do I? You're very presumptuous, Ianto Jones." Rose tries to temper her smile, but only catches her tongue when it's already tucked in front of her teeth. She hasn't felt this free to be herself with anyone in this universe except Mickey – no, Ricky – and she's feeling a little heady with it.
Ianto doesn't seem to mind, though. He smiles. "I do apologise, Miss Tyler."
Rose laughs again, quieter this time and only the new guy, what's-his-name Parker, turns to look at her curiously. She stares at him until he shifts in his seat and turns back to his screen.
"So, Mister Jones, where do you think it's from?"
"I haven't the foggiest, but you have a fair idea, I'd bet."
Rose winks at him. "A fair idea." She turns back to her screen and calls up her translation program, the one M-Ricky had sent her last week. "I'm having trouble with this, though. Can't do programming to save myself. You?"
"No, sorry."
Rose nods. "Oh, well, it was a nice thought."
"But I know someone on the fifth level who could sort you out in a jiffy."
"In a jiffy, eh?" Rose stands up, taking her tea with her. "Then lead the way."
Ianto smiles at her and leads the way to the stairs, knowing that Rose prefers to walk rather than take the lift. She's feeling a little thrown off balance, because this isn't her world and she's not meant to fit in here, isn't meant to make friends or banter with the people she works with. But maybe she's been making things more difficult than they're supposed to be, because she knows the Doctor's never coming back. Knows that he can't come back for her. Wishes he could.
"Miss Tyler?"
"Yes, Mister Jones?" she returns, smiling when he turns and gives her a look.
"You're going to call me that until I call you, Rose, aren't you."
"Yes, I am, Mister Jones."
"Fair enough, Miss Tyler," he says, "but do you have to do it with that tone?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about, Mister Jones." She's smiling, damnit, and she's just…not supposed to be. But she actually is. And Ianto's laughing and she thinks that, maybe, they can help each other.
They reach the fifth floor and Rose is, once again, put off by the lack of natural light and wonders if Torchwood thought they were being cool making this place underground; like Mickey had invited them round one weekend and they'd watched a few too many episodes of Stargate. It's large and barren and cold. But then maybe that's better, because she can't see herself making a home here. Sometimes she'd like to transfer out of London herself.
They walk through the room, turning heads with every step. Each person looks at her as if it's been an age since they last saw another living soul outside of this room. She thinks they must not get out much, either that or her reputation has preceded her. She feels a little guilty at the knowledge that she'd rather think it's the former.
"Here we are," Ianto says softly and she snaps her attention to the man in front of them. He jumps to his feet, looking at her wide-eyed. He's a fair bit taller than her and built a little like Jack, much to her surprise. Wide rimmed, blue glasses frame his eyes and he has a large, over-friendly smile aimed at her, almost as if he's terrified of her, or whatever she's there for.
"Miss Tyler, this is Andrew Wallis. He's a senior analyst and translation programmer for foreign signals."
"Nice to meet you," Rose says, grinning and feeling a bit like a fool. She's never really cared much for formal introductions.
"Y-yes, you, too, Miss Tyler."
"So, Ianto here tells me you're a bit of a computer whiz."
"I understand the basics," he says, instantly relaxing. Rose grins at him, as the barriers come down; he's clearly familiar with more than the basics. It seems as if talking about something he's comfortable with lets the man feel more at ease.
"Excellent," she says. "Because I have a program here that I need you to fix. You know the signal we've been lookin' at this week?" she asks and he nods. "Well, I think I can figure it out if you can get me a place to start." She hands him the pen drive from around her neck and watches as he eagerly drops to his chair and begins to lose himself in the lines of code that mean absolutely nothing to her.
There's something about this script, this message, that's important. She has no idea what it is, or what it means to her, but she knows it's important.
Ianto leans over Andrew's chair and Rose smiles, doing the same over the man's other shoulder and watching him fiddle with the lines of code and executing translations until she's finally looking at something she knows. It's there, on the tip of her tongue and she still can't figure it out.
"Mera….noten….al…" She mutters under her breath a litany of sounds that mean nothing to her, a memory resurfacing, or perhaps an awakening of something inside her that she didn't know was there.
Andrew's watching her eagerly, his eyes almost puppy-like, as if he's desperate to finally be there when something happens, instead of being stuck here in a grey room with lines of code, but Rose has no answers for him. Ianto watches her curiously; she can see his face in the reflection on the screen before her and she finds that she really wants to give him answers she doesn't have. It's a feeling she hasn't had since she arrived in this reality and it makes her want to decipher the message all the more.
The words continue to change before her, turning into phrases and sounds she doesn't think she's ever heard before, but somehow seems to know inherently. The words whisper in her ear and she almost has it, can almost touch it, but the meaning continues to elude her. Still, she has a sense of something…
"Miss Tyler?" Ianto says softly and she turns to him, the word `herra' falling from her lips. Rose frowns, more at herself than at him, and he wonders if even she knows what she's saying. "Do you know what it is?"
"No," Rose whispers, shaking her head. "But I…"
"Yes?"
"Whatever it is, Ianto? It's not good." She frowns and tries to shake off her feeling of foreboding. "Not good at all."
-x-x-x-x-x-
"I don't understand," Gwen says, frowning at the Doctor again, and Jack lets out a frustrated breath. The Doctor doesn't help by just staring at her, grinning and rocking back on his trainers, as if he hasn't got a care in the world. Which Jack knows isn't true; there's a lot that Jack wishes he'd never seen before and the look in the Doctor's eyes when the TARDIS had reacted to that signal is definitely somewhere near the top of the list. When it's enough to put fear like that into a surely sentient time machine and a 900-year-old alien, it's enough to scare the living hell out of the rest of the universe.
"He's an alien."
"And it's bigger on the inside," the Doctor says, still grinning.
"Well, I can see that," Gwen says and the tone of her voice and the look on the Doctor's face is enough to make Jack chuckle.
"Look," he says, trying to get some cooperation. And fast. "All you need to know is that this is the Doctor, he's my friend and he's found something that we need to investigate."
"Why just me and you and what is his police box doing parked underneath the Hub?"
"Because you can't tell the others he's here and he needs to park near the rift." Sometimes Jack wishes she wasn't so inquisitive.
"Wait…he's your Doctor?" she asks, looking at the man in a different light. "Your `right kind of doctor', Doctor?"
"The very one," Jack says softly, smiling at the Doctor's confused look.
"Oh, right, well why didn't you just say so then?" Gwen nods, holds out her hand and smiles. "Gwen Cooper."
"The Doctor," he says bemusedly, looking at Jack. "I like her."
"Yeah, we share the same mental deficiency then, `cause I kinda like her myself."
"Oi!" Gwen says, trying to hide a grin. "I'm standin' right here!"
"And looking fabulous." Jack says with a wink and both Gwen and the Doctor roll their eyes.
"Right, so what are we lookin' at?" she asks, pointing at the strange signal on the screen. She frowns, shivers and visibly shakes off the feeling.
"It's not pleasant, is it?" the Doctor asks, his voice low.
"What is it?"
"The signal?" he asks and she nods. "Haven't the foggiest. But the feeling? The dread sinking into your bones, sending fear down your spine? That I have a name for; Herra," he says, his voice a whisper and both Jack and Gwen shudder. "It literally means fear and death and dread and nightmares beyond your worst imaginings. It creeps into the very soul of a living creature and burrows deeper and deeper until all you want to do is die, but it doesn't let you. It is a living hell and it can't be touched or seen or heard and it can't be fought."
Gwen gulps, clutching onto the hand Jack slips into hers, but her eyes don't leave the Doctor's penetrating gaze.
"What do we do?" Jack asks, his voice quiet, but determined.
"We find it. And we stop it before it takes hold. Or there's nothing we can do."
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End of Part One
