The Copy

Chapter 2: Conversation

Disclaimer: I own neither Inception nor Doctor Who.

Author's Note: I'm also not British, so the speaking style may be wrong. Tell me how it is. Please read and review!

Rose woke up, feeling the other side of the bed dip a little. She rolled over and leaned her head on her Doctor's shoulder. "Welcome back," she mumbled, her head still heavy from sleeping deeply. "I missed you."

He brushed a dyed blonde bang from her eyes and settled in next to her. "Really." It wasn't really a question, but it wasn't an affirmation either. It was just a word he used to respond to her.

"Of course, really. I can't believe you went all the way to France without me. I'm not a good assistant anymore?" She snuggled in closer to him, rubbing her face in his pinstriped pajamas. She'd bought them for him because they matched the suit he always wore. The blue one, not the brown one with the trench coat. Whenever she pointed one out, he wouldn't say anything, just smile at her.

"You're fantastic. And brilliant."

"So are you." She rubbed her eyes. "I'm still sleepy."

"Me, too." Sleep was something he'd needed to get used to. Well, the vast amounts of it humans needed. Timelords slept, sure, but not nearly as much as he did. Maybe that's the side effect of having one's heart ripped out.

He listened to her breath slow into steady breathing, her head resting on his chest. He maneuvered her back onto her pillow; he couldn't quite breath when she lay there, as much as he liked having her close. This, John reminded himself, is the life that he can't have, but you can. But he wondered if it was a fair trade—the whole of the universe for Rose Tyler. It hadn't been for the Timelord Doctor; if it had, he would have stayed and stored himself away in a fob watch and fallen in love with Rose all over again. But John Smith was human, and humans built their lives around other humans.

He lay in bed, and the darkness swelled with his thoughts. He barely thought of himself as the Doctor anymore, even though Rose still called him that. But she also still had the TARDIS phone number programmed into her old mobile, and he'd noticed she always kept that phone charged, even though she had a new, Torchwood-issued phone.

He had something hidden away, too, but he couldn't tell Rose about it. Not if his attempt to grow it failed. As he pursued this line of thought, he too disappeared into the oblivion of sleep.

"This is nice," Ari said, as they settled into a window seats at a coffee shop.

"Rose and I eat here often," John said. "Gets a bit boring after a while, but it's perfect for meetings. Humans never seem to pay attention to anyone else, do they?" He offered her a lopsided smile.

She blushed, unsure of how to approach this man. She'd been sent to figure out what made him tick, what his secrets were, anything that could make the job more personal. Arthur was meant to do research, but he couldn't unearth anything about this man. He might as well have been John Doe.

"Coffee. Nasty stuff," he said, taking a drink of the bitter liquid.

"Why do you drink it?"

"I have a theory that eventually I will enjoy this. One day."

"Have you been working on that theory your whole life?" Ari asked, sipping at her earl grey tea. She wrapped her chilled hands around the teacup, letting the warmth settle into them.

"Only about the last two years of it."

"Not long then."

"Not long at all."

They sat in silence, sharing a platter of biscuits set between them. After a while, John adjusted his glasses and raised an eyebrow. "You didn't call me here to eat biscuits and talk about overrated Earth beverages, did you?"

She shook her head. She was no good at being sneaky—her job was to build the worlds the team populated, not extract data from their subjects. That was Cobb's job. Or Arthur's. But she was sent to find out what she could, using her "womanly wiles." That's what Eames had called it anyway, right before Arthur smacked him over the head with a rolled up newspaper. "I'm not a bloody dog," Eames had protested. Arthur had mumbled something about how he'd never treat a dog that way. Ari giggled at the memory.

"Something funny?"

"Just... the team. How did you find us, anyway?"

"I'm clever."

He said it as if it were a fact, not as if he were bragging. She liked that.

"And since I am clever, I know this isn't a social call. Ask me exactly what you want to know. I used to have all the time in the universe, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore."

"Why don't you make sense?" she said, and then blushed. She'd spoken too quickly and without restraint.

He laughed. "The story is just about 900 years old, but I suppose the short of it is that I'm an alien. Well, not anymore. Now I'm part human, part alien."

"But you look human."

"Actually, you look alien. Specifically, Timelord, which is what I am. Was. I never had this much trouble with tenses when I actually was a time traveler."

"You were a time traveler?"

"And space traveler. Time and space was my backyard. I could be in Italy for the Renaissance one day and then on an impossible planet circling a black hole the next. My life was very wibbly-wobbly, you see."

"Not really," Ari said. She finished off her cup of tea and dabbed at her mouth with a napkin.

"And yet you go into dreams like they're your personal playground, like it's normal. Who's to say that I'm not an alien?"

"You're crazy."

"Most definitely. That doesn't mean what I did wasn't real." He gazed off into the horizon. "I probably would have asked you to come with me, during that time I'd lost her." His words were soft, non-threatening.

"Is that what you do, kidnap people and then replace them with other people?" she asked.

"They come with me because they want to. And then they break my heart. It was lucky I used to have two. Now I just have the one, and it belongs to Rose Tyler." He leaned back in his chair, folding his hands in his lap. He fidgeted with them.

"Rose Tyler," Ari repeated, making a mental note of the name.

John Smith threw that lopsided smile at her. "Her life doesn't make any sense either, if you were going to do some research about it." He stood up and pulled on a navy blue coat he had hanging on the back of his chair. "Well, I'll be leaving now, Ms. Ariadne. I hope this chat helped a bit, but I don't see how it could have."

With that, he left her with a single name: Rose Tyler, and the assurance that researching this name would just lead to more mystery. She sighed. The team would be happy to find out that she'd learned absolutely nothing about anything. Just that their target was an alien who wasn't an alien anymore—at best, he was delusional.

At worst, he was telling the truth.