No Compromises: Chapter 4
South London, 1988
The Doctor landed on a pile of garbage, his shoulder violently crashing against an alley wall and bouncing him back towards the ground on his opposite side. His head scraped the pavement and a second later, he vomited. Ignoring how awful he felt, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, stumbled to his feet, and sprinted out of the alley.
He took in the loud, smelly, vibrant scene before him and breathed a sigh of relief. It was London. But now the question was, was it the right London? The right universe? The right year?
Boxy cars whizzed by. Women with feathered haircuts and men in bright, cheesy, busily-patterned jumpers walked the busy sidewalks. So far, so good. A look further down the street revealed a bank clock displaying the date and time, and beyond it, Henrik's Department Store with some police cars outside. Jackpot.
The Doctor took off at a run towards the store, nearly getting hit by two taxis, when he was slammed with horrible head pain again. It was followed by the image of a dingy warehouse and an address a few blocks away. When he got the image of young Rose sleeping on a dusty, dark cement floor, he practically bowled over a woman and a pram as he turned on his heel and sprinted down another alleyway.
The warehouse was pitch black inside. The Doctor crept along a wall and stayed as quiet as possible. He knew it was incredibly unlikely that he'd be able to find and sneak out with the toddler, and even if he could do so, he'd still have to eliminate the Lagamai threat. But this was Rose. If there was any way he could avoid having her near a potentially dangerous confrontation with hostile creatures, he was damn well going to try it.
He rounded a corner and spotted a door. He instantly knew she was behind it. They had bonded their minds on their wedding night and now each could feel the very essence of the other when they were close by; they were, to use the human cliché, soulmates. The Doctor used the sonic on the heavy metal door and pulled it open as quietly as possible. There, curled in the corner and impossibly tiny, was little Rose. He felt a wave of love and protectiveness wash over him, in awe that this vulnerable sleeping child was the very same person that someday would grow into his strong, fearless wife. It was his job now to make sure she even got to grow up. The Doctor shuddered at the thought and took a deep breath, trying to tamp down the rage boiling up again about what was happening.
Rose stirred a bit but was clearly still deep asleep. The Doctor realized it was likely they had given her some kind of soporific and this fact ignited the fury again. He knew the Lagamai wouldn't hurt her – at least not yet – but the fact that they had even given her something to make her sleep felt incredibly invasive.
He quickly and quietly approached Rose and scooped her up. She didn't wake, but made a little squeaking noise and cuddled into him, a child seeking comfort. He held her to him protectively and began to move towards the door of the dank room. Just as he was about to cross the threshold, it slammed. He tried to sonic it but this time his screwdriver didn't work. He'd only gotten in before because the Lagamai let him. That's why they'd shown him where she was in the first place.
"YOU DIDN'T REALLY THINK IT WOULD BE THAT EASY, DID YOU?" came the message screamed into his head.
The loud crash of the metal door had finally stirred Rose, who looked up at the Doctor with confused, frightened eyes and promptly began to cry. "Shhh," he cooed, but he couldn't quite keep his frantic feelings out of his voice. The little girl started to fidget and kick, trying to get away from the nervous stranger holding her. The Doctor looked towards the door, half expecting a jagged-toothed four-legged leathery beast to come charging through. The Lagamai didn't like to waste much time when it came to asking for ransom. But the presence in his mind felt further away now, and the Doctor sensed that no one would be coming to the dank cell just yet. Rose continued to kick and scream, and the Doctor continued his futile attempts to soothe her. "It's okay, Rose. It's okay," he murmured.
"No!" Rose wailed, "Mummy! Want Mummy!" Her kick got him in the ribs this time and he winced.
"I know you want your mummy," the Doctor said as he set her on the floor and sat down across from her. "But…Mummy is busy right now so…she sent me to play with you! I'm her friend, the Doctor! Hello!" He smiled at the toddler, trying to put her at ease, but Rose was too busy snuffling while simultaneously taking in her surroundings to pay attention to him. Finally, she stopped crying and turned to the Doctor.
"Where is Mummy?" she persisted. "I don't like this place! I want to go home and see Mummy! Stupid Doctor!"
The Doctor was surprised to hear the child speak in full, fairly long sentences. By his calculations, she was just under eighteen months old; her speech was really quite advanced for her age. He smirked at her calling him "stupid" with a fire in her eyes she still had more than twenty-five years later. "Why is it dark and yucky?" she demanded.
Stubborn as anything and too clever for her own good. That's my Rose, all right.
"That is a bit silly, isn't it? I think the lights must be broken, but I bet someone's working on fixing them right now," he told her. It felt strange lying to Rose, even in this form, but obviously he had to keep her calm and safe and the truth was something she couldn't and shouldn't understand. So for now, it was all about distraction. "Rose, would you like to play a game while we wait for the lights to get fixed?"
Rose regarded the Doctor, giving him a long stare that coming from a young toddler was equal parts ridiculous and slightly creepy. After a moment, she turned her body to face him. "Pat-a-cake?"
"Good choice, Rose Tyler! I love a good game of pat-a-cake!" They began the rhyme and hand game and Rose finally began to smile. The Doctor smiled, too, first because Rose's smile made him happy (Rose's smile always made him happy) and second because this moment was just so absurd. So, what did you do today, Doctor? Oh, you know, just took a trip to the Eighties and played pat-a-cake in a prison with a toddler who, in another dimension, is twenty-six years older and my wife.
But the silly thought also reminded him of the harsh reality he was facing. Despite his Rose being in Pete's World, the toddler who became that woman grew up in this world. The child in front of him was no alternate Rose, it was the same person, and this was never supposed to happen to her. The longer they both were here and in this situation with the Lagamai, the more the adult Rose was at risk. As he repeated the rhythms and rhyme of pat-a-cake by rote, the Doctor began to once again think about why the Lagamai were doing this, and doing it in this way. "YOU," they had said when he asked what they wanted for ransom, and it wasn't so crazy to think that a species was after Time Lord energy or technology. He had encountered several such species before. He shuddered as he remembered his and Martha's harrowing encounter with the Family and how he'd had to turn himself human and forget who he was just to save them.
Human. The word registered something in the Doctor's head and he sprang up on his feet. He was part human. Why did the Lagamai drag this version of him to a parallel world, ripping a hole in the fabric of reality, when there was a full Time Lord version of him (actually, many full Time Lord versions of him) present in this universe? Why go through all that trouble?
"Doc-TOR!" Rose whined, annoyed that he had stopped the game.
"Shhh, Rose, I'm thinking," he responded curtly. Luckily, Rose didn't cry, and just began running her fingers over the stone on the wall to entertain herself. It was as though she sensed this was important, even if she was too young to be aware of intuition.
The Doctor ran through everything he knew about the Lagamai again. They were opportunistic, power-hungry kidnappers and conquerors from the planet Selian in the Andromeda Galaxy. They liked to take the path of least resistance to get what they wanted quickly and easily. That's why they liked to kidnap – it wasn't too hard to steal a member of a prominent family or ruler, especially if they were a child, and their desperate loved ones usually paid up quickly. When the Lagamai amassed enough capital – galactic credits, technology, energy, or other resources – they'd find a planet with a small, easy-to-extinguish population and take it over. The Lagamai had been building a multi-planet empire across galaxies this way for the last ten thousand years. Still didn't explain why they wanted this specific version of him.
The Doctor sighed, frustrated. If he couldn't figure out why the Lagamai had taken him, then he couldn't figure out how best to beat them and return Rose to safety. He tried to think of what his wife, expert Torchwood operative that she was, would do in this situation. Spy? Infiltrate their headquarters?
"Why don't you just ask them, you git?" It was grown-up Rose's voice, clear as day. He turned towards it, but no one was on that side of the room. He had just imagined it. The Doctor's heart sank a bit, but then he realized, imagined or not, his wife had just told him exactly what he should do.
"Lagamai," he sent telepathically, "Why do you want me? There must be a dozen of me running around this universe. Why not take one of them?"
"YOU HAVE TIME LORD ENERGY. YOU HAVE WHAT WE WANT."
"So do they. More of it, in fact."
"YOU ARE EASIER TO DEFEAT."
The Doctor seethed as he broke the telepathic connection. He was more determined than ever to not only get Rose out of this safely, but to make the Lagamai pay for what they did. Still, every minute that went by put future Rose in more danger and he had yet to form a plan. Would his full Time Lord self have figured out a solution already? And what if he, as a part-human who can't regenerate, fought the beasts, only to die before Rose was safe?
Easier to defeat. A little part of him couldn't help but wonder if the Lagamai were right.
