As I am a professional writer and have work to do to get paid, I have decided to deal with these thudding plot bunnies in the traditional manner - I will inflict them on others. Please see my Profile for the Challenges of the Month. Brand new August challenges have been added for your entertainment, education, and inspiration. If you'd rather do July's, instead, I'm accepting July II Challenges until the end of August or until I can't keep up, whichever. Thanks to all those who have participated thus far - I've REALLY enjoyed all the results. The new challenges will run through the end of August. Please let me know when you respond to a Challenge so I can read and review.

Response to ZephyrFox's challenge for July II!

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who. However, I do not guarantee this to be a permanent condition.

Double Crossing

Chapter 5: Ticked off Time Lords

The Doctor let them into the darkened conference hall, and he and her other Doctor immediately got into a debate over which function of the sonic screwdriver was needed for this particular operation. Ace, obviously the most clever of the lot of them, immediately set about searching.

"Stay here, Rose, and guard this door," her Doctor commanded her.

Rose nodded and giggled. "Guard the door, guard the floor, guard ashore, guard some more..." She was feeling so very, very strange.

But good. She was feeling good, too. That was nice. She leaned back against the door, but couldn't make the room stay still when she did that. Stupid room. It was getting really, really hot, too, this room, and she was starting to think that maybe her dress was the problem. It was cute and everything, this little dress, but it was sticking to her and trying to suffocate her. She couldn't breathe. The room was way too hot. How could the Doctors stand it? They were wearing even more clothes than she was.

They should take some of them off. If they would pay attention to her, she would suggest it. Yes, very, very good idea. She leaned against the door again and sighed with frustration.

There was something really, really wrong with her clothes.

"How's Buttercup doing?" Ace asked as she climbed out from under one of the vendor display tables.

"Fine," said the pin-striped Doctor, from where he was kneeling, rummaging through a box of stuff he'd found under one of the tables. He was pointing his sonic screwdriver at everything, barely stopping to look at the readings.

The Professor was grumbling audibly. "This should not be this difficult," he muttered, dragging another box from under yet another display table. "It's not as if they're hiding Sontarans in here."

The Doctor chortled. "Just wait 'til you see what they do next," he said, humorously. "Haven't had a run-in with them recently, but I've heard."

"Oh, what?" asked the Professor. "I shan't remember and I could do with a laugh."

"They've shrunk," said the Doctor. "I'm serious. They must have had a bad turn in that endless blasted war of theirs, because they've all cloned themselves down to about four and a half foot tall - tops - now."

The Professor laughed merrily at that for a moment. "Micro-Sontarans," he offered, and the Doctor burst out laughing at the joke.

Ace, who had never seen a Sontaran, just shoved the box back under the table and dragged out another one. "Oh, look. Toy guns. Lots of toy guns. When all we really need are the real ones." The Doctor leaned over her and shoved his screwdriver into the box, probably making sure no real ones had been hidden in with the fake ones.

No such luck, of course. It'd never be that easy.

The Professor crawled out from under another table with a large, flat box. He pulled out a poster with one of the Orion slave girls on it, staring at it, a look of annoyed disgust on his face. "Is this supposed to be attractive?" he demanded, flashing it at the Doctor and Ace.

Ace snorted. "Not to me, Professor," she said. "I don't play for that team."

"You, young lady, are not old enough to play for any team at the moment," said the Doctor, sternly.

"Seconded," said the Professor.

"How old's your girlfriend?" asked Ace, smirking at both of them.

"Dorothy," the Doctor cautioned.

"Suffocation work on you?" she asked mildly.

"Right," said the Doctor, and dove back under one of the tables, apparently to hide. Ace grinned.

The next poster the Professor found to glower at was under a different table, and this one was of a scantily clad Klingon girl. "Really," he said, "what is the fascination young human males find with this sort of thing?"

"This from a man who went to pollinate with a tree," said Buttercup from right behind them.

The Doctor slid out from under his table and turned to her, a decidedly annoyed expression on his face. "I did not go pollinate with a tree," he snapped. "And didn't I tell you to guard the door?"

"Only 'cuz I gave you a curfew. And I asked it to guard itself," she said. "And it said it would, so it's fine. I can come down there with you, if you like."

He looked at her closely and his eyes widened. "Rose, go stand by the door and do not move from that spot. It's imperative, you understand me?"

"But it's so hot over there," she whined.

"I know," he said soothingly. "I'm sorry, but you have to do it. For me, please?"

"Aren't you hot in that coat?" she asked, softly, moving slowly toward him like a cat stalking prey.

Ace's eyes widened and she turned her head away sharply. Didn't want to see what was going to happen next.

"Oh, nonononononono," yelped the Doctor.

The girl let out a strange, gasping, growling noise. The Doctor bounded to his feet - you couldn't miss that, even if you were trying not to look. "Rose Tyler," he proclaimed, his voice like a prophet of doom, "you will go back over there, or I will take you home to your mother!"

Rose sobbed and retreated, but not before shooting him an absolutely horrified glance.

"And stay there, you stupid ape!" he added, coldly. Then, hands went into hair, and the Doctor danced around a bit, looking to Ace pretty much like he was panicking. He tapped the Professor on the back. "We have a problem," he muttered.

"What's his problem, Professor?" Ace asked. She got to her feet to go see to the still sobbing Buttercup.

The Professor's hand closed on her arm, firm and unmoving. "Stay here, Ace."

"That the way you do things on your planet, leave girls crying in doorways?"

"Ace!" the Professor exclaimed indignantly, "this is a bit more serious than that."

Ace glared at him, then turned to look at poor, miserable Buttercup. She blinked a couple of times in astonishment. Buttercup probably needed to have some time alone with that wall she was getting so friendly with. "Right," she said. "Have you considered the Vulcan nerve pinch?"

The Doctor made a chuffing noise of fury and exasperation. "Why is sodding Jack Harkness never around when you need him?"

"Hypnotism?" the Professor suggested.

The Doctor looked at Buttercup, looked at her like he couldn't decide if he wanted to stare at her forever or run like hell right now. "Yes, I suppose I'd better. Assuming it will work."

"Why wouldn't it?" the Professor demanded.

The Doctor just looked at him. Whatever was passing between them, which Ace didn't even try to understand, it obviously made it difficult for the Professor. His hands clenched into fists. "Don't tell me," he grated out at last. "Ace and I will be upstairs."

"What was all that, Professor?" Ace asked after they'd left the conference room.

The Professor sighed. "I'll just say that I rather expected better behavior of myself in my old age. Or at least less melodrama about it if I wasn't going to behave better."

"So?"

"So I've become an idiot," he admitted, defeated. "It's not a pleasant thought."

"Maybe you should tell him he's an idiot," Ace suggested. "He might believe you."

The Professor smiled and punched for the elevator. "I might just do that," he said after awhile.

"I'm not a stupid ape," said Rose softly as the Doctor approached her warily.

"I know you're not, Rose," he said with a sigh. "If either of us is stupid, it's me. I forgot this was what happened next with what they gave you."

"It hurts!" she whimpered. "I just..." She gasped as he touched her face, reaching for the right contact points. Completely out of her control, she arched into him, her body trembling as she fought it. "Don't touch me! I can't..."

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry." He kept his hold on her, his own hands trembling as Rose moved against him, trying to get away, maybe, trying to get closer, maybe. "Hold still, Rose," he pleaded. "I need to concentrate."

"I can't!!" she wailed. "Why can't I just..."

"I'm sorry," he said. He didn't think he'd ever meant it more in his entire life. Sorry this had happened to her, sorry she wanted to get away from him and he couldn't let her, sorry for how he was reacting to the way she moved against him, sorry for how unlikely this was to work, sorry for why it was unlikely to work. "Hush now, Rose," he whispered, in her head and across the lips that had managed to get too close to him. "Trust me?"

Her reply was instantaneous and so complete as to leave him utterly breathless. It was a sense answer, not a verbal one, just an utter surrender to him and whatever he needed to do to her to make this work. He shook all over. "Sleep," he whispered and she collapsed against him instantly.

He picked her up and held her close, alternating between concern for her, disgust with himself, and righteous rage. They had violated her, drugged her, damaged her. Even if she would never remember it, he always would.

There was a Storm coming, and he was it, and they deserved it.