"Rose, there's a disturbance over by Ely Bridge that's sending up our red flags. Want to go check it out?"
"Sure thing, Jack," Rose replied, looking up from coding a new rift manipulation program. "Just give me a sec to finish this up."
After typing out the last two lines of code, she grabbed her dark green leather jacket and followed Jack out to his SUV.
Rose caught Jack sneaking glances at her as they drove. She sighed.
"Just say it, Jack."
He seemed to consider her a moment, as if debating with himself how much to press her before blurting, "I just don't understand why, after three months back home, you still have made no attempt to contact the Doctor. He misses you like crazy, Rose. I know he does. And don't try to tell me that you don't still lo–"
"It's not that simple. I'm different, Jack. I'm not the same woman I was when I travelled with him. It wouldn't be right to try to pick up where we left off."
"The Doctor of all people understands about regeneration, Rose."
Rose played with the skin of her too delicate wrist. She pushed it forward, watching it move and wrinkle to her will, pinching it so that she could feel the pain, ground herself in this body. She sighed.
"I don't know who I am anymore. How can I expect him to accept me again if I don't even know who that is?" She could barely hear her own voice as she made this confession.
Jack studied her out the corner of his eye.
"You're Rose Tyler," he replied after a beat. "You're the exact same woman I met during a London air raid. You're fearless and forgiving and have the greatest capacity to love of anyone I've ever met."
Rose swallowed and looked away. She began to play with a strand of auburn hair that had come loose from the knot at the back of her head, unable to look Jack in the eye.
"After I was…trapped…." She paused and bit her bottom lip, twisting the hair around her finger in earnest. Taking a breath, she began again, "It was a very dark time in my life, Jack. I can't just pretend that it hasn't had an effect on me. The absolute…" She shuddered and shook her head before continuing on. "It changed me. It would be unfair to both of us if I were to suddenly ring him and try to force upon him the presence of a woman who is completely different from the person he invited to travel with him all those years ago. And our history…it's too much baggage. We couldn't just start over."
She turned to him then.
"Part of me wonders how you've managed to maintain your sense of self after everything you've been through, Jack." She eyed him curiously.
Jack seemed to consider this a moment.
"I've had a lot of time to come to terms with it all, what I've seen, what we do. I just live in the now, Rose. It's how I cope."
Rose nodded and looked down. She still could not get used to her new boyish frame, with its narrower hips, and smaller chest. The too delicate features she saw in the mirror every morning unsettled her. She returned to twisting her hair, giving it a hard pull. She felt a couple strands break free at the roots.
"Well, then, maybe that's what I'm doing. Going back to my life with the Doctor would just be living in the past, wouldn't it?"
Jack raised his eyebrows.
"There's a difference between living in the moment and refusing to acknowledge your past entirely, Rose."
She opened her mouth to retort, but stopped short at the sight before her as they reached their destination.
"Bloody hell. Is that..?"
"Yep."
"Surrounded by…?"
"Yep."
Rose gave Jack a resigned smile.
"Here we go again."
It was times like these that the Doctor really missed travelling with a companion.
For one, the Judoon would not let you be your own character witness when they arrested you. It was also much more difficult to draw attention away from the fact that you were trying to sonic yourself out of your handcuffs when a hundred and fifty members of the most respected intergalactic police force, who were selected for being the most hard-nosed of a race known for its hard-nosedness, have their steely eyes trained solely on you. And, if the Judoon had their way he would likely be imprisoned for ages and really, that was so much more fun with friends. Prolonged periods of solitude with no adventure to liven things up gave him time alone with his thoughts. And that made him rather maudlin, really. Oh, who was he kidding? Maudlin had been his natural state of being for the better part of six years.
It had been a bit better with Donna aboard. Martha had been brilliant, of course, but the wounds to his hearts had still been so fresh that most of the time her presence did little more that keep him a notch above suicidal. But by the time Donna began travelling with him he felt ready to start living again, even if it would never again be with the same zeal that he once had. And Donna was the best mate he could hope for, always up for an adventure and ready to call him out when he let the anger and grief get to him. He even told her a bit about Her, and it felt good have a sympathetic ear to which he could vent some of the pain he kept bottled up inside.
But Donna had met Lee in that virtual world in The Library, and he could not let himself hold her back from having a normal life with the man she loved. Well, as normal a life a twenty-first century human could have single-handedly overhauling the bureaucracy of an alien government millions of light years and thirty centuries away from her place of birth. Donna had not wanted to leave him, but they were eventually able to come to a compromise; he would stop by their flat on a small planet in the Dagmar Cluster once a month for tea, an adventure, and a trip home to visit her mum and grandfather.
He had not even asked anyone to come with him since Donna. Two years had come and gone and he still could not bring himself to be open to that kind of loss again. Not that he had really lost Martha and Donna. He knew he was always welcome for a visit. But the universe lost a bit of her lustre when he had no one to share it with. Perhaps it was time he opened himself to the possibility of bringing someone new on board.
An angry Judoon approached. Weeeell…he said angry, but there really was not much difference between an angry Judoon and a normal Judoon, was there? Unflappable species, the Judoon. But, he had gotten under their tough hides often enough now to distinguish how they marched with a bit more purpose when he was involved.
"Mo ho sno cro dafojo," the Judoon stated.
Oh dear. That charge meant a high security holding cell. Even he couldn't break himself out of one of those.
"Fro grobojo, fomodo!" he replied.
The Judoon grunted and stomped its feet, pulling out an electronic device with rather large antennae extending from the top. Was that…? Oh no, it was. The Judoon grabbed his arm and activated the device.
It was going to be a long night.
She should not have been so surprised to see the TARDIS sitting in the field opposite Ely Bridge surrounded by an angry platoon of Judoon. After all, finding trouble of an alien variety was kind of the Doctor's thing. And, having found employment at an organization that does the same thing, they were bound to run into each other eventually. She had just counted on having a bit more time to mentally prepare herself.
Suddenly, both the Doctor and his ship disappeared with a flash of red light.
"C'mon, let's go save him," Rose told Jack, reaching for her bag.
Jack raised his eyebrows.
"And how do you propose we do that? That teleport could have gone anywhere."
Rose pulled out a sonic screwdriver and pointed it toward the location the Doctor was standing moments before.
"Only quatrifold compression teleports flash red like that, and the fun thing about quatrifold compression teleports is that they leave a quantum signature from which I can extrapolate the space-time coordinates of reappearance within a 200 yard margin of error," Rose replied, tilting her head to side thoughtfully for a moment before grabbing Jack's wrist computer and sonicking it.
"What are you doing?"
"Repairing your vortex manipulator so we can follow that teleport."
Rose punched in some coordinates and pressed ENTER. They suddenly found themselves in the abandoned corridor of what appeared to be some kind of space station.
"Right," said Jack. "Keep forgetting about the Time Lady superpowers."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Not superpowers so much as picking up a few things whilst building a transdimensional slingshot."
She scanned their surroundings, and put her ear to a door at the end of the hall.
"Rose…"
Rose waved her hand and shushed him, using her sonic to amplify the voices on the other side of the door.
"Okay," she said finally, turning towards him. "They keep talking about someone who is supposedly the best guard on Chat Dif III. Probably the name of the planet we're on, yeah? Ever heard of it?"
Jack paled visibly.
"It's a high security prison, Rose," he replied. "When I worked for the Time Agency we were told this was the worst possible place we could end up. Once I started travelling time and space I was under the legal jurisdiction of the Shadow Proclamation."
"The Doctor mentioned the Shadow Proclamation a couple of times," Rose nodded.
"That doesn't surprise me. They're intergalactic police. The highest legal authority in the universe. A sort of universal UN, if you will. And if you've broken intergalactic law…they aren't kind, Rose. Chat Dif III is their death row. And their death sentences aren't pretty. They argue that breaking their laws can have a terrible impact on the universe, and therefore the consequences of doing so needs to pose a significant threat to potential perpetrators. And they're not wrong. Xenocide, crimes against time, violation of intergalactic treaties…these are things the universe needs protecting against. But things they do to their prisoners…they would be unthinkable even among the least humane of civilizations. If you're of a species long-lived enough, they might torture you for centuries before finally killing you."
Jack looked at Rose meaningfully.
She took this in. If the Judoon brought the Doctor here they must believe that he broke some kind of intergalactic law. And, if he was convicted of whatever they were accusing him of, he might be at their mercy for millennia before his ultimate death. She shivered. That sure as hell wouldn't happen on her watch.
"Well, we're going to have to rescue him then, aren't we?" Rose had no shadow of a doubt of what her course of action would be.
Jack grabbed her hand, stopping her from setting off down the corridor.
"Rose, we're going to want to have a plan for this one. I know that you like to use the Doctor method and just improvise, but we really cannot afford a screw this one up. I'm immortal, and I would wager the entire contents of my bank account that you have a few more regenerations left in you. We're facing thousands of years of every kind of torture imaginable if we're caught."
Rose hesitated a moment and gnawed at her bottom lip. She did not like the thought of the Doctor being locked up here for any length of time. Then again, she also knew she would not be able to save him if she was imprisoned herself.
"Alright," she conceded. "Let's do this your way."
The Doctor leaned his head back against the cool metal wall of his cell, fighting the urge to scratch where the rough material of the boiler suit they had forced him into rubbed against his skin. He found it quite ironic that the Shadow Proclamation thought that solitary confinement was the mildest form of punishment they could inflict upon him. Oh how wrong they were. He would take the physical torture and the invasions of his mind to implant psychic horror over this. Hell, even the manipulations of his time sense, which would have made any other member of a time sensitive species go mad, were preferable to the isolation. There was a reason he avoided being left alone with his conscience these days. It almost made him wish that the next Judoon to come by would knock four times.
Suddenly, the door to his cell burst open, and he jumped up. Before him stood a tall woman in a green leather jacket who bore absolutely no resemblance to the Judoon he was expecting to see. She walked up to him swiftly and took his hand.
"We need to run," she said in a low voice, dragging him towards the door.
"Right. Yes."
She pulled him forward, peeking out briefly before taking off at top speed down the long corridor, still clutching his hand tightly. This was certainly a role reversal. Usually he was the one grabbing hands and telling people to run for their lives.
They zigzagged through corridors, seemingly at random, though he had a sense from the purposeful look in his rescuer's eyes that she knew exactly where she was going. He had an idle thought that they should have run into a Judoon by now.
His gaze flicked again to the woman firmly clutching his hand. Humanoid. Auburn hair. Green eyes. Mid-twenties, he would guess, if she was from a time before drugs to slow the aging process were invented. Of if she was from Oombuprak. But her fingers lacked webbing, so that option seemed unlikely. If fashion was anything to go by he would guess that she was a human from the early twenty-first century. Maybe late twentieth. Though, if that were the case, what was she doing on Chat Dif III in 8347?
They stopped briefly at the end of the hall and she pulled him so that their backs were against the cool metal wall as she peeked around the corner.
"Bugger. Judoon coming this way," she muttered, looking around quickly before pulling him with her into a nearby supply cupboard.
"Surprised we didn't run into any before now," he whispered, pushed closely against her in the cramped space.
"Jack's creating a distraction that should occupy most of them, while I get you to your TARDIS," she whispered back, smirking slightly.
Jack. Harkness? Must be. How else could she know about the TARDIS? Though, last he checked Jack didn't have the technology to get here. Maybe a future Jack? The man was immortal. Though that still couldn't explain how anyone outside the Shadow Proclamation knew he was here. They kept no records and were notoriously tight-lipped about the identity of the prisoners they contained in Chat Dif III. No, the most likely explanation was that they found a way to follow him from Cardiff. Though, how they might have managed that, he hadn't a clue.
"We need to get you down to confiscated goods on the ground floor," she continued. "That's where they're holding the TARDIS. Do they have any kind of special fields over this planet that would prevent you from entering the vortex once we get you there?"
"No," he replied, "their containment security and surveillance is supposed to be impossible to escape and they strip search prisoners to make sure they don't have any vortex manipulators or their ilk. Plus, they need to be able to trans-temporally teleport suspects into holding cells, which they can't do if they limit access to the vortex."
He paused a moment. Her knowledge of these things went far beyond what he would expect of any human, aside from a time agent. Maybe Jack had taught her a few things?
"You're Torchwood?"
"Yep," she replied, popping the p in such a way that she might be mimicking him, had she ever heard him say the word.
He cleared his throat.
"So I'm the Doc–"
"Time to run again," she said before he had a chance to ask her name, pulling him with her out the door, before immediately shoving him back inside again.
Through the door, he heard the muffled sound of her voice.
"Hello there, boys! Did you hear about the disturbance down in the Convention Chamber? Mad isn't it?"
"You are not authorized on this level," replied the harsh monotone of a Judoon.
He cracked the door open, preparing to jump in and help her. She didn't deserve to be captured by the Shadow Proclamation for his sake. He most certainly was not worth that.
"What? Of course I am. I'm cleaning staff. Even high security holding cells need cleaning. Just returning my supplies to this cupboard here before heading home for the day."
He felt her lean back against the cupboard, latch clicking as she closed it. He tried the door again and met firm resistance. That little… Wait, was that a particle-level bioscanner he just heard? Shit. Shitshitshitshit…
"Confirmed. Member of high security housekeeping staff. You may proceed."
He let out a breath. If she was Torchwood, then how did she get herself into the Chat Dif III personnel records? Before he could contemplate this further, the door opened and she grabbed his hand again, pulling him with her down the corridor.
At the end of the hall, she pulled him into a lift, selecting the ground floor on the control panel and entering a code to prevent it from stopping at any other floors in transit. He felt it shudder into motion, and they began a slow descent down forty-seven floors.
"What did you think you were doing back there?" He turned to her, giving her a murderous glare. "Do you know what the Judoon could have done to you if you had been caught? We're talking–"
"Yes, I'm quite aware of the consequences of trifling with the Shadow Proclamation." She gave him a meaningful look. "I hacked the mainframe before coming to get you to give myself a plausible reason for being on that level."
"You shouldn't be risking yourself for me."
Her eyebrows narrowed, and she spared him glance before returning her gaze to the steel lift doors. "I think I can be the judge of for whom I should risk my life, Doctor."
The lift dinged and the doors opened onto another steel-lined hallway. He followed her to a large archway that opened onto a large, circular chamber where a large crowd had assembled. In the centre stood Jack Harkness, wearing nothing but his wrist computer.
"Really, Shadow Architect, how could you not want a piece of this?" Jack flashed his signature flirty smile, seemingly oblivious to the hundred Judoon pointing their weapons at him.
"Sir, you need to leave before I hold you in contempt of the Shadow Proclamation!" the Shadow Architect threatened, red-tinged eyes flashing dangerously.
"See, I've got this little S&M fantasy involving you, me and one of your high security holding cells," Jack smirked, eyes roving her form. "The Judoon can watch if that's your thing. I'm always up for an audience."
The Doctor felt a tug on his arm.
"C'mon. This way." The Doctor looked away from the spectacle to see his rescuer pulling him in the direction of a nondescript door across the hall.
"What about Jack?" he asked, slipping with her into what looked like some kind of storage room, with long rows of neatly catalogued items.
"I signalled to him that I got you, so he knows that he can give up the ruse," she answered, leading him through the labyrinthine shelves in an expert manner. "I fixed his vortex manipulator, so he'll be able to get back to the Hub just fine on his own."
"I'm sorry, you did…you did WHAT?" the Doctor replied.
She rolled her eyes, but didn't reply.
"And while we're at it, how did you track me here? I was trans-temporally teleported!"
"You don't have a monopoly on knowledge of temporal physics, Doctor."
He grabbed her shoulders, then, to stop her.
"All I know is that you've demonstrated knowledge not available to even the most advanced scientists of your species until thirty centuries in your future. Jack may have taught you a bit, but even he wouldn't be able to track that teleport the Judoon used or be able to repair his vortex manipulator."
She raised her eyebrows.
"Relax, Doctor. I know better than to share information that could cause the human race to accelerate too quickly."
He studied her face.
"You're not from the twenty-first century, are you? You've…what? Fallen through time? Got sucked up by the rift and ended up in twenty-first century Cardiff? Or maybe you're a time agent? You're a long way from home, aren't you?"
She twisted her lips.
"Yes and no."
"But if you have the knowledge to fix Jack's vortex manipulator, why don't you just go home? Granted, the accuracy can be iffy, but you could probably get pretty close…"
Her eyes looked troubled, then, her face filled with an emotion he knew quite intimately. She bore the look of a woman who was running away.
"I can't go home."
His instincts told him not to press her, but his curiosity got the better of his tact.
"Why not?"
She bit her bottom lip, hesitating.
"Sometimes….sometimes you need to leave the past in the past and the future in the future. Just be who you are now rather than who you were or who you could have been or who you might be."
He nodded in tacit understanding. A man on the run from his prophesied future could hardly argue with that. They began again on their meandering path through the storage room.
They turned a corner, and there, at the end of the aisle, stood a very familiar police box. He snapped his fingers and gave a little chuckle when the doors opened of their own accord. He so liked that little trick.
The two of them entered the TARDIS and his mind was flooded with a feeling of effervescent warmth. His ship sometimes had this reaction when he escaped from a particularly tricky scrape, but he hadn't felt her this pleased since…he swallowed and ducked his head, pushing it from his mind, choosing instead to focus on his new passenger.
He did a double take. She was…well, stroking one of the coral pillars, a soft smile on her face. That had to be the strangest reaction anyone has ever had to seeing the inside of his ship for the first time. Not that it was a bad reaction, mind. As much as he looked forward to the inevitable "it's bigger on the inside" comment, he found himself rather affected by how lovingly she looked at his ship. He cleared his throat.
"So, what do you think?" he asked, throwing his arms wide. He found himself wanting to impress her.
Her smile bloomed radiantly and her green eyes shone in a way he could not explain.
"She's beautiful," she replied, "inside and out." Her lips twitched slightly, as though this was some kind of private joke, before the look dissipated and she met his eyes expectantly.
"You're not going to ask about…" He gestured about him.
"I know a thing or two about temporal physics, Doctor, in case you hadn't noticed. I imagine for a being, such as yourself, who walks in a world of 4+1 dimensions, bigger on the inside would be a party trick."
"Weeeell…bit dull for a party trick, to be honest. Though I am quite brilliant at a party, I must say." He winked. Hold on. What the hell did he do that for? Women always felt it was flirting, and he knew better by now than to lead some poor woman on. Learned a lesson or two from Martha on that.
"Aren't you going to get us out of this place?" She gestured at the console and made her way over to the jump seat, plopping down as though this was all rather routine to her.
"Right. Yes. Of course." He sprang into action, pulling levers and turning knobs until they were sitting safely in the vortex.
His guest pulled out a large plastic bag from her satchel and handed it to him.
"I nicked your stuff from the storage room. In case you want to go change." She nodded towards the lime green boiler suit he was wearing.
"Right. Yes. I'll just…" He gestured at the hallway over his shoulder, and took off towards his bedroom.
As he pulled a suit out of the wardrobe, he contemplated what it was about this woman that put him so off guard. He had met Jack's recruits in the past, when he had assisted on an invasion or two over the years, but she did not quite fit that mould. It was not just the anachronistic level of scientific knowledge either, though that was certainly enough to catch his attention. It was that there was no fear underlying her competence, no instinctive drifting of her hands towards a weapon in face of danger. Indeed, there was something of himself in the way she seemed so at ease in this alien world, yet so ill-at-ease at the mention of her own history. It both scared and beguiled him.
Rose sighed, leaning her head back and putting her heels up on the edge of the console. She could not believe she was back here, in the TARDIS, with the Doctor. Oh, how she had longed for this when she was first separated from him over a year ago. But to be here now, after all this time…she did not know how to feel.
She felt an affectionate nudge in the back of her mind, and jumped slightly. Oh, of course. The TARDIS. When she had felt the Doctor's telepathic presence on Chat Dif III, she had quickly erected mental barriers to shield herself, not wanting to distract him with the knowledge that she was a telepath. However, she'd had a bond with the TARDIS ever since she had looked into the heart of the ship, and mental barriers would be useless against that sort of bond. She sent the ship her own warm greeting in return. She had missed the TARDIS almost as much as she had missed her pilot. She just wished that her relationship with the man could be as uncomplicated as her relationship with his ship.
When the Doctor reappeared, he was wearing a blue suit she had never seen before. He put his hands in his pockets and strode over to her.
"So, you seem to have me at a disadvantage here," he smiled, leaning back on his heels and rocking forward. "You seem to know quite a lot about me, but I don't even know your name."
She froze. What was she supposed to say? She had not been lying when she told Jack that she could not just waltz back into the Doctor's life and pick up where she left off.
"How about first you tell me what you did to tick off the Shadow Proclamation."
She was deflecting, she knew, but this was an issue that did need to be addressed. The Shadow Proclamation might be harsh, but from what Jack told her, their laws were just.
"Oh, that was just a misunderstanding," he shrugged. "Bit of he-said she-said and some cultural mix-ups."
"If they locked you up in Chat Dif III that implies that they believe you broke intergalactic law, which is hardly an arbitrary set of rules, Doctor," she replied, crossing her arms over her chest.
"Weeeeeell…never been one to play by the rules, me," he grinned. "Besides, you must not believe I did anything too terrible if you decided to break me out."
She hesitated a moment, glancing away.
"I rescued you because…because I believe at heart you are a good man," she replied. "A good man who did not deserve what the Shadow Proclamation would have done to him. But even good men can do terrible things when driven by duty or grief or desperation."
She met his eyes steadily. Now it was his turn to glace away.
"You've known me all of an hour and yet you are so sure of my character."
She paused and tilted her head, trying desperately to come up with a plausible reply.
"I have…a rather thorough knowledge of your history." She bit her bottom lip, hoping he wouldn't press her.
"Oh, do tell. Has Jack been gossiping about me? Or…oh no. Have you read my UNIT file?"
She suppressed a grin. His UNIT file really was a laugh.
The Doctor cleared his throat and grimaced. "I'll take that as a yes." He rubbed the back of his neck, looking absently at the time rotor.
"Guess we're at a stalemate, then," he said, pacing around the console to flip a few levers. "I'd rather not get into the gritty details of what the Shadow Proclamation wanted with me, and you don't want to give me your name." He sniffed and looked her quickly up and down. "Too bad, really, you seem like someone I might like to know."
"Well, it's not as if I know your name, either, Doctor."
The Doctor chuckled, tugging his ear and eyeing her with a grin.
"Touché."
She bit her bottom lip and grinned back. Oh, this man and his ship and his adventures. They never lost their allure.
"Well. Guess you'll want to get back to Cardiff then. Unless…" He hesitated.
"Unless…?"
"You could come with me…if you want." He shrugged. "Just for one trip. A thank you for your help. Torchwood agent such as yourself, must be curious about distant alien planets."
He was asking her…? Her mind reeled, and before she could stop herself, words were tumbling out of her mouth.
"That sounds fantastic."
He grinned manically, a note of delight issuing from the back of his throat.
"Well then. Allons-y."
She took a breath. What the hell had she just got herself into?
