A/N: Sorry if there's too much talk and not enough action, but this is the one were lots of stuff gets explained and after this it should hopefully start to kick off :)

Thanks again to Dawn for the lovely review XD and to Lady Clark-Weasley of Books and Rose-jane.

Chapter 3

The Doctor's Theory

The Doctor fidgeted restlessly as he awaited the return of Ianto with the components of his plan. He didn't want to seem impatient, but he just couldn't sit still and Ianto appeared to be taking his time. Thoughts of Rose once again flashed tauntingly across his mind, and he felt his hearts flutter. He prayed he wasn't just getting his hopes up for nothing. Donna must of thought of this too, for she walked up to him cautiously and spoke to him quietly.

"How sure are you that this will work?" She said under her breath so the others couldn't hear. "I don't want to put a downer on things but I know how much she means to you and I don't want to see you get hurt. I don't want you to be running on false hope." She looked at him caringly with concern etched into her eyes. The Doctor smiled at her, appreciating her worry.

"There's no such thing as false hope. Hope isn't a promise or a guarantee that good things will happen, its just a positive emotion that says maybe you do still have a chance. So how can there be false hope?" He smiled warmly at her, but she could still see the doubt in his eyes, the fear of losing Rose again. "Besides, even the slightest chance of getting Rose back is worth trying right?" This was almost a question, as if looking to Donna for reassurance.

"Yeah." she nodded. "How can you be so positive after all that's happened to you? How can you be so strong?" She asked incredulously and the Doctor sighed heavily.

"I guess that was one of the many things Rose did for me. She taught me to look at the world anew, showed me there was still hope even in the bleakest of situations." With that he stared off into the distance, lost in his memories. Donna looked at him with a great deal of admiration, praying that he would be rewarded for his strength and that she would get to see him reunited with Rose. He abruptly snapped out of his trance, springing to his feet and startling Donna. He needed to busy himself to take his mind off Rose.

The Doctor began to rummage through various pieces of alien technology that were left lying around in messy piles, putting on his thick rimmed glasses and examining bits that caught his attention. For a while no one said anything but were lost deep in their own private thoughts, and the only noise that could be heard was the clattering of the Doctor discarding useless artefacts.

"So Doctor," Jack suddenly said cutting through the silence, "Are you telling us that you know what happened to us in those two days none of us can remember?" He asked dumbfounded- he had obviously been racking his brains trying to dredge up any details at all.

"Well… not exactly. Who knows what you get up to Jack, I just know that you must have met Adam." The Doctor responded, turning away from the desk of now deconstructed alien devices.

"But who is he? An alien?" Jack said with raised eyebrows.

"Yeep. When Ianto gets back with Adam's box I'll explain everything to the whole team. But first there's a high probability that I'll need to do a fair bit of tinkering with this box, including hooking it up to some kind of power supply."

"I'm sure Toshiko can help you there, she's our technological genius!" Jack said proudly and Tosh nodded, bashful at the praise. "And like I said before, you can have access to any of our resources."

"Excellent!" The Doctor grinned, hopeful that there would be plenty of the supplies he required in the base. "Ah…" He suddenly bounded over to the approaching Ianto with youthful energy.

"Here you are, still exactly as we found it." Ianto said, passing over a clear bag with Adam's Property written boldly across the top, containing an unusual box with intricate geometric carvings worked into its surface.

The Doctor instantly took it out, turning it over and inspecting every inch closely. The team watching in fascination as he examined it, eager to learn of this unexplained item and this so called Adam that had stolen two days of their lives.

Donna peered over the Doctors shoulder, eyeing up the object he had been so desperate to find. To her it didn't seem all that special; she had seen far more remarkable things on her travels. She could not believe that something so small and apparently simple could be the key to finding Rose. It even looked to be made from wood from where she was standing. It was then that she realised that similar things could be said about the TARDIS by a person who had not looked inside, and waited patiently for the Doctor to reveal its secret.

She pulled back suddenly repulsed as the Doctor licked the surface briefly- she wished he didn't have to do that so often. The Torchwood team were also taken aback, baffled by the odd ways of this stranger. Owen looked particularly disgusted, staring at the Doctor as if he was completely mad- but perhaps he wasn't far wrong.

The Doctor then proceeded to pull out his sonic screwdriver and began probing the box. Toshiko looked up intrigued by the small device. "What's that?" She inquired.

"Sonic screwdriver," He said without really explaining, too engrossed in his work to pay the surrounding people any attention. After a few minutes he set the box down and smiled up at everyone.

"Right! Time to explain." There was a collective groan from his audience.

"At last!" Donna muttered in exasperation, giving him a shove.

x x x x x

The Torchwood team and Donna all sat around the long table in the conference room, looking up expectantly at the Doctor as he paraded at the top of the room.

"Okay," The Doctor breathed in deeply, preparing for what he did best- a lot of talking. "So let me start by telling you about Adam's species. They exist initially in the void; it's where they are born. Can you imagine that?" The Doctor said seriously, sympathy shining in his eyes.

"I'm sorry but what is the void exactly?" Gwen interjected.

"The space between parallel worlds." At the response of more blank faces he continued, "There are billions of parallel universes surrounding ours all piled up together, and the void is the gap between those worlds. It contains absolutely nothing- no life, no light, not even time." He said darkly. Gwen nodded uncertainly, not entirely sure she had grasped this concept but allowing him to continue.

"These creatures are telepathic and have the ability to alter a living organism's memory to suit their will. They are drawn to those with the most vivid, extraordinary memories, which is probably what drew Adam to you Jack. To all of you. Your knowledge and experiences with aliens is unlike most people on Earth. The same reason he was drawn to you Donna, after travelling with me." He saw Donna pale at these words. She suddenly became aware of how different she was from the average person now, and that she could never go back to an ordinary life. In addition to find out that that had made her a target for an alien scared her, especially seeing as if it weren't for the Doctor she'd still be best buddies with it. She felt suddenly vulnerable.

"What these creatures do is write themselves into your memories, making you believe that you've known them for years. And when they do that it causes them to become a reality, pulling them out of the void simply because you believe so strongly that they are real. But in return you lose some other memory. Maybe a person in your life, or an event. These are the things that define you as a person, so more often than not they cause you to become a completely different person, changing your very personality." The Doctor paused dramatically.

"Judging by the fact that none of you can remember Adam but you have two days missing that none of you can remember, I believe you encountered him. But what he didn't count on was how clever you lot were, and you figured it out. You say you have the ability to wipe the public's memory for convenience?" Jack nodded, "And that the CCTV footage must have been wiped by one of your team because no one else would have the access codes?" He directed at Tosh, and she agreed.

"So you're saying that we realised who he was and wiped our own memories of the two days he spent with us, forgetting he was ever there?" Jack summarised.

"Yep. Causing him to fall back into the void most likely, and leaving you without a clue who he was."

"So isn't it dangerous for you to tell us about him? Because technically now we do believe he was real even if we don't actually remember any of what happened." Tosh added.

"Well, no because once these creatures make it into the world it'd be impossible to completely erase them. There are always fragments of them that exist outside of the void, floating throughout reality because there will always be passers-by who may have walked past and glanced their faces. It's not substantial enough to keep them alive in the real world but it's enough for a small part of them to exist.

"Now, this box," The Doctor indicated the small wooden container, "acts essentially as a storage unit for the memories these creatures steal. They form a telepathic link with the box so that when they are inside a person's mind this is where their stolen memories get sent. But it is also an important part of what keeps them anchored in the real world. Now, once they have written themselves into a person's memory it releases a sort of energy from the belief they have that the creature is real, and the box harnesses this energy and allows the creature to come through from the void. If their link with the box is broken then they completely lose their grip on the world, and become trapped in the void permanently." The Doctor stopped to catch his breath, looking at the teams impressed faces.

"How do you know all this?" Tosh asked incredulously.

"Like I said I'm an alien." He said simply.

"Trust me it'd be harder to think of something he's not an expert on." Donna turned to her, "He's in his element right now." The Doctor grinned and winked at her. It was clear Tosh wanted to know more, but managed to refrain from pressing the matter.

There was a moment of silence as they waited for the Doctor to resume his speech, but he appeared to be in another world. He was frowning slightly, and staring at the wall in front of him.

He knew that the next bit he needed to explain involved telling them who Rose was. How could he describe her? How could he make them understand how important she was to him? Thousands of words he would use to describe her flashed before his mind but still he could not find a description that would do her justice. She was simply Rose. It was almost as if her name were a word you could look up in the dictionary and see next to it brave, caring, funny, selfless… he could go on all day.

"Doctor?" Donna prompted gently. She had guessed what was coming next.

"Yes! Sorry!" The Doctor attempted to recover, but his fake smile failed to cover up his true feelings. Jack too now realised what it was that had caused the Doctor to falter, and attempted to help him out a little, nudging him on.

"The Doctor needs us to help him find our good friend Rose." He started for him, and the Doctor gave him a thankful glance.

"Travel between parallel worlds – as I mentioned earlier when describing the void to you – is impossible. I'm guessing all of you recall the battle of Canary Wharf?" The Doctor asked grimly. The team nodded, all except for Ianto who merely stared straight ahead, his eyes glazed over. "The truth of what happened there was that there was a breach between two parallel worlds caused by the Daleks coming through from out of the void. Torchwood found this breach and deliberately tried to open it, allowing the Cybermen to come through that breach from a different universe. The fact that they were travelling across parallel worlds was damaging both worlds and left alone both universes would have collapsed. But I stopped it by opening the breach for a final time, and all the Daleks and Cybermen were pulled back into the void, the breach sealing itself shut behind them." The Doctor sighed, stating his victory casually as if it were nothing.

"But I lost Rose." He took a deep breath. "She ended up on the other side of the breach in the parallel universe just before it shut forever. There was no way for her to come back." The Doctor looked down, avoiding everyone's eyes. Everyone in the room was affected by his story- it may not have been your average tragic tale but to see this man who minutes before had been bouncing around grinning reduced to this was shocking to them all. Even Donna had never heard the full story, and her heart went out to him.

"But you have found a way?" Jack reminded him. The Doctor looked up and smiled truly this time, hope shining through.

"Yes I have. Adam used this box to write himself into your memories, to bring him out of the void yes? Well what if I could rewire it a little, form a new telepathic link with the box and use it with my memories to write Rose into existence, bringing her from that world, across the void and into ours?" He grinned broadly. Jack stared at him, his mouth hanging slightly open in astonishment.

"You could really do that?" He said in awe.

"Theoretically." The Doctor replied, avoiding confronting whether or not it would physically work. He would deal with that later if he needed to, but right now he felt drunk off hope.

"Hang on a minute," Owen started, "You said you are going to telepathically link yourself to that box, but isn't it already linked to Adam?"

"Well first I would have to break his link with the box yes." The Doctor admitted.

"But won't that trap Adam in the void?" Gwen criticised.

"But it was you lot that tried to wipe him from your memories in the first place." The Doctor gave her a grave stare.

"You don't know that for certain." She countered, but at his unwavering glare she looked away guiltily.

"Anyway no, it won't actually." The Doctor carried on, returning to his cheerier mood. "These creatures must have more than one of these boxes otherwise it would be too risky if anything happened to one. This one was even inactive according to my sonic; this was just the closest one that it picked up."

"So what do we do first?" Jack urged on.

"Firstly I need to physically alter the box in various ways, so for example I need to tune it in to the parallel world where Rose is."

Jack rubbed his hands together eagerly and got to his feet. "Right! So what are we waiting for!"

A/N: Hope that wasn't too farfetched XD Now I really should be focusing on my revision in the next couple of weeks as I have A levels on the 12th and 18th of June :( I have roughly planned what will go in the next three chapters though, so I might still keep writing, just please be patient until after the 18th because then I will be free of school forever :D

Thanks again for reading :) Doctor Who is back on tomorrow!!