Chapter 7
Not long after Jack's departure, Rose helped the Doctor from the infirmary to their room, insisting he still needed to rest. She lay awake beside him in the darkened bedroom long after he'd fallen asleep, not quite trusting he was all right. Eventually, exhaustion claimed her as well, and Rose fell into a dreamless sleep.
When she awoke, it took her a moment to discover something was out of the ordinary. She blinked a few times to clear her vision and saw the Doctor with his black-rimmed glasses perched on his nose sitting up against the headboard and reading a book. He was still wearing his rumpled white shirt from the previous day with the buttons at the collar and cuffs undone. Needing far less sleep than a normal human, the Doctor was nearly always out of bed and tinkering with something in the console room by the time Rose awoke.
"Hello," he greeted with a smile, knowing she was awake even before she did.
Rose gently ran her hand along his arm. "Hello. How are you feeling?"
"Right as rain. I slept nearly five hours. There's something I can't quite figure out, though," he continued, setting his book on the small bedside table. "How did you stop the Vidinians?"
"The Judoon took them away." Rose knew she was dodging the truth, but so did the Doctor.
"No, before that. The attack stopped before the Judoon arrived."
Rose sat up and leaned one shoulder against the headboard. "I'm not really sure. I just wanted them to stop hurting you, and then...they just stopped and sort of fell over."
The Doctor's brow creased with concern, and he leaned in to peer closely into Rose's eyes. "Are you feeling all right?" He pressed a hand to her cheek, and she got the impression he was considering licking her forehead to see if her electrolytes were off. She certainly wouldn't put it past him.
"Of course I'm all right. They didn't do anything but give me a headache."
The Doctor wasn't convinced. "No sign of glowing, burning, or the ability to see all of time?" Rose just looked at him as if he were mad. "Does your head still hurt?"
"Nope."
He moved his hand up towards Rose's temple. "May I?"
She nodded, and the Doctor reached out into Rose's mind, finding himself in the long hallway lined with a variety of mismatched doors that represented Rose's memories. He was surprised to find a blonde figure in what amounted to white and beige rags sitting cross-legged on the floor of the hallway.
"Who are you?" the Doctor asked in confusion. Memories should have been contained behind the doors, not wandering the corridor.
The woman turned her head to look at him over her shoulder, and he could see that she looked like Rose, but not quite. Her hair was lighter and longer, and her eyes seemed to glow, not with the bright golden light he remembered from the Game Station years ago but with a colder white light. Her gaze was almost predatory.
"You know who I am, Doctor," she replied in a husky voice that hardly sounded like Rose at all. She unfolded her legs and stood more smoothly than any human should have. "The big," she paused for emphasis, "bad wolf."
"You can't be here," the Doctor insisted. "You'll kill her."
The woman didn't seem concerned by his dire statement. "But I've been here all along."
The Doctor shook his head. "If that's true, then why is Rose changing? Her telepathy is growing stronger, and you managed to stop the Vidinians."
The Bad Wolf looked at him guilelessly. "We wanted to keep you safe. It's what we've always wanted. But did you consider that perhaps you are the one changing her?"
"What? Me? How?" The Doctor turned in place as the Bad Wolf circled him slowly, stalking or possibly just biding her time. He didn't remember the time entity being this frustrating.
"For four years, Rose's mind was alone," the Bad Wolf finally pronounced. "Now she has both you and her." At the Doctor's look of confusion, she clarified, "The TARDIS. The three of you are bonded."
The Doctor frowned as he considered her words. "Oh!" he exclaimed, finally understanding what she meant. "But that's brilliant." Bad Wolf just smiled indulgently. "That shouldn't be possible for a human, though."
"A human-Time Lord biological metacrisis shouldn't be possible, either, and yet here you are." Bad Wolf trailed a finger down the Doctor's shirtfront. "Besides, Rose is...special."
The Doctor gave her a dreamy smile. "That she is. But how do you fit into this?"
Bad Wolf shrugged. "Oh, I'm just the interface."
Before he could question her further, he was interrupted by the real Rose, and the mental connection was broken. "Well? Everything all right?"
The Doctor opened his eyes to see Rose's face just inches from his. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Perfect."
"So now you'll stop worrying?"
The Doctor's eyebrow rose. "You're far too jeopardy-friendly for me to ever stop worrying. So, Rose Tyler, where to now?" He leapt off the bed and held his hand out to Rose, who let herself be pulled to the edge of the mattress.
"Torchwood, I suppose. Dad will want to know about the Vidinian ship."
The Doctor sighed. "You know I don't like to stick around for the clean-up."
Rose placed a hand on his arm. "I know, but we'll just make our report and be on our way. But first, I'd like to go clean up. Thursday morning should do it, yeah?"
The Doctor nodded and quickly sonicked the wrinkles out of his shirt and pulled on his jacket before heading to the console room. When Rose joined him some twenty-two minutes later, she noticed a post-it note had appeared next to the monitor. As the TARDIS hadn't seen fit to translate the Gallifreyan scribbles, it could have been anything from a reminder to his shopping list. She pressed the sequence of buttons on her section of the console to start the materialisation process, and the telltale shudder of the time ship let her know they'd arrived.
The Doctor followed Rose down the ramp and into Pete Tyler's high-rise office. Pete himself stood behind his desk, only mildly surprised by the sudden appearance of a bookcase that swung open to reveal his daughter and her...Doctor.
"Rose, Doctor," Pete greeted them efficiently. "What's going on?"
"Your mysterious alien ship is a mystery no longer," the Doctor announced grandly.
"That's excellent news." Pete gestured for them to sit. "What can you tell me about it?"
"It belongs to a group of empathic aliens called Vidinians," Rose explained. "They came to Earth to harvest human emotions."
The Doctor folded his lanky frame into one of Pete's sleek, modern office chairs. "We of course foiled their plan, and they are safely in custody."
"And quietly, at that. Excellent work. But Rose, why didn't you call for backup?" Pete's tone suggested more fatherly concern than that of her employer.
"Because it happened in 1939."
Pete's brow furrowed in confusion. "Then how did their ship end up here?"
"Well," the Doctor stretched out the single syllable, "that would be because we brought it here."
Pete looked to Rose for confirmation that he'd heard the Doctor correctly. "You brought it here? But you said you didn't know what it was."
"We didn't," Rose replied quickly.
"At the time, we hadn't yet brought it here," the Doctor added, as if that clarified everything.
Pete placed a hand on the back of his balding head. "I'm afraid I don't follow."
"It's a temporal causality loop," the Doctor explained. "We had to bring the ship here so we—well, you, Torchwood—would find it so we'd know to bring it here. It had to happen because it had already happened."
"In order to keep the Vidinians from escaping," Rose added.
Pete still looked confused but pushed on. "So just where are these Vidinians?"
Before either could answer, an alarm blared throughout the building. Pete glanced at his phone before shoving it in his suit jacket pocket. "There's been a breach in the lever room."
"I thought that might happen," the Doctor muttered.
"What?" Rose pushed him along to follow Pete to the lift.
"I suspect the Judoon have come to collect the ship."
"The who?" Pete asked.
"They didn't have to break in," Rose complained.
The Doctor gave her a sceptical look. "Just you try explaining that to a Judoon. Pete, tell your people to let them take the ship."
"And why should I do that?" Pete demanded as the lift doors opened.
The Doctor stepped in front of Pete to stop him, his expression hard. "Judoon are hired muscle for the Shadow Proclamation. A bit thick, Judoon, but they follow orders to a fault and won't allow Torchwood to prevent them from executing those orders. They've taken the Vidinians away to stand trial, and now they've come to collect that ship as evidence. If you resist, you put every person in this building at risk. Is keeping one spaceship worth that?"
"Of course not," Pete answered immediately. "Doctor, I know you don't have a terribly high opinion of us, but the objective of this Torchwood is to protect the Earth."
"Then let's hope your people haven't done anything to provoke the Judoon," the Doctor relented as he let Pete go by.
They entered the lever room to find a standoff in progress. A Judoon platoon (and didn't the Doctor enjoy saying that) lined the dark inner curve of the Vidinian ship, but at least a dozen Torchwood agents had weapons pointed at the hulking Judoon.
"Stand down!" Rose barked with a harsh authority the Doctor had never heard in her voice before. About half of the agents obeyed her order, with a number of murmured "yes, ma'ams" heard around the room.
"You heard her, stand down," Pete shouted. He strode up to one of the armour-clad Judoon. "You are free to take the ship. Collect it and leave."
The Judoon grunted in Pete's face, and to the Director's credit, he didn't flinch. The rhinoceros-like alien then turned away and spoke in its rhyming native language to the others.
"Everyone stay back," the Doctor shouted, waving his arms at the Torchwood agents. Pete Tyler moved quickly away from the Judoon to join his agents. A crack of thunder shook the room followed by a flash of light. When the humans in the room had recovered from the temporary blindness, they found the alien ship and the Judoon had disappeared. Chaos erupted as the Torchwood agents struggled to comprehend what had just happened. They were on computers and phones, checking sensors and security and CCTV footage for any sort of answer and wondering why the floor was suddenly wet.
The Doctor grabbed Rose's hand, and with a single look–no telepathy required–Rose knew it was time for them to leave. With a wide grin, the Doctor tugged her into a run, and they dashed into a stairwell, down to Pete's office, and into their waiting TARDIS.
