Chapter 7

The Doctor helped Daphne and Josh Holiday from the SUV. He was a little surprised, but pleased, that Daphne was so calm. He'd half-expected her to still be shaking. Good for her, he thought.

Rose was standing at the front of the car when he looked up. She had a cross look bending her lips and eyebrows, and her arms were tightly folded. He closed the car door and it echoed across the empty warehouse floor.

"Where have you been?" she demanded.

"Took Donna home," he began. He nodded at the Holidays. "Then we rescued them from a nest in their house. Took Donna home again. How are you?"

She did not smile at him. The Doctor frowned. Why was she angry?

"And who are they?"

"Rose Tyler, meet Daphne and Joshua Holiday." Daphne nodded a greeting, since she was largely occupied by holding up her half-conscious son. Rose stared back at her.

"You went to their house?"

"Donna wanted to see them."

Rose grimaced. "The police were handling it."

"We didn't know that." He nodded at Josh. "Besides, the police were in and out and never knew that they had a nest under their noses. Lucky thing Donna and I showed up. Josh here got a bite." When Rose's eyes widened, he said, "Just a little one. I already gave him some antidote. Still, Owen'll probably want to have a look at him. I thought I'd bring them back here. They can't go home at the moment. Speaking of which, somebody ought to go back there and capture the Zvazvera. There were nine of them that I saw, might be more still hidden."

"Stop!" Rose cried. She shook her head. "Just stop."

The Doctor closed his mouth. "What's the matter?" he asked after a moment.

Rose turned to Daphne. "Come with me, we'll get you sorted, yeah?" She darted a glare in the Doctor's direction. He kept silent, deciding it was best until he figured out exactly why she was annoyed with him. Everything was all right. He'd gotten Donna home, like he'd said he would, he'd rescued two people, incapacitated nine Zvazvera with a slight modification to a smoke alarm (without his screwdriver, even!), and no one had gotten killed, or even seriously injured. Except maybe a few of the Zvazvera.

As he followed the others down the stairs to the office, he thought over the incident. There was the gore on Daphne's knife... that was worrying... and the way Josh had hit that first biomorph.

And the one he'd hit himself with the extinguisher. The gas wasn't any more harmful to the biomorphs than it was to a human (okay, so it wasn't healthy), but when it had run out... Their arms had been reaching out, clawing at him, at Donna... He hadn't even thought about it, he'd just reacted. He'd smashed that Zvazvera's leg. Like he'd hit the one who'd attacked Rose at H.C. Clements. No thought, just action, and he'd struck out. That one had come out with a crushed thorax... His attack had had far more force than necessary to incapacitate it. He hadn't measured the blow. He could have, should have. He hadn't been thinking. Rose had been in trouble, and he'd just...

He'd have to be more careful, he decided. The adrenaline this human body produced clouded thought. Couple that with the other hormones—troublesome testosterone for one—and he was a bomb waiting to go off. He was dangerous, maybe more so than his Time Lord self had predicted. He couldn't go around hurting people just because they were his adversaries. That was what a human would do. He was better than that.

You are human, Spaceman.

Half human. I can still behave like a Time Lord.

There's nothing wrong with protecting the people you care about.

"Not like that," he muttered, determinedly.

"What?"

He looked up. Rose was looking at him with a crease on her forehead.

"Nothing," he lied. He glanced around the office and saw that Owen was already ushering the Holidays down to the medical bay. They'd be all right. He turned back to Rose and was about to ask her if she'd had any lunch when he stopped dead.

There were two new people in the room. They stood near the main entrance, followed closely behind by Ianto, who nodded a greeting to Rose.

Rose went over to the newcomers and extended a hand. "You must be Martha Jones," she said, in a not entirely friendly tone, which wasn't like Rose. Rose was always friendly. The Doctor frowned.

Wait, had she said Martha Jones?

He blinked and stared. It was, it was Martha. His hearts—heart—leapt and he stood up straight, unable to suppress a grin. She looked just as he remembered her. Well, no... she was several years older; her hair was in long braids swept back from her face into some sort of elaborate twist. The smile she gave Rose was not the brilliant and bright thing that his Martha had had. It was small, restrained, and just a little smug. She carried herself differently. Her shoulders were stiff and square. Despite the fact that she was several inches shorter than Rose was, she had a towering sort of look to her. She wore a leather jacket and black trousers. He was disappointed to see that the jacket was dark green and not red.

Her companion was a Japanese woman dressed in a grey pencil skirt and an indigo blouse. She had a pair of horn-rimmed glasses on, and her hair pulled back from her face, giving her a librarianish look. He thought that he recognized her, too, but he wasn't quite sure where from. Maybe there'd been a version of her in Torchwood back in the other universe.

Martha Jones shook Rose's hand. "A pleasure to meet you. This is Toshiko Sato."

Sato, yes! There'd been a Dr. Sato doing the autopsy on that poor pig when the Slitheen had tried to destroy Earth.

Toshiko shook Rose's hand. The look Rose gave Toshiko was decidedly nicer than the one she was giving Martha.

He put himself forward. "Rose Tyler," Rose was saying, "And this is the Doctor."

He nodded. "Nice to meet you. New recruits?"

Martha raised an eyebrow at him, and then turned to Rose. "You should keep your team better informed," she said.

Rose's smile faltered. "He was out when President Jones informed me you'd be coming."

"Wait, Harriet Jones was here?" the Doctor cried. "Why'd she come here? Incidentally, what's she like? I've been wondering ever since..." He trailed off, seeing the looks on the women's faces. "Anyway... You could inform me now."

"I'm taking over this branch of Torchwood," Martha said. She gave the room a quick survey. "My reward, I suppose." She gave Toshiko a private smile. "Well, Miss Tyler, you might as well show me to my office. You can brief me on the current situation. Your man Mr. Jones wasn't very forthcoming."

Ianto, who had retreated to his coffee nook, glanced up at his name.

"Of course," Rose said.

"Doctor..." Martha began.

"Yes?" He didn't like the look she was giving him. Like she thought she knew everything there was to know about him just after one quick glancing-over. His Martha'd never looked at people like that.

Alternate universe, alternate Martha, chimed the Donna voice.

"You can show Ms. Sato to her station. And then I think I'd like it if we could get some sort of lunch." Martha looked at Rose.

"Ianto can arrange it," Rose replied. "There's a good sushi place nearby. Make you feel more at home."

Toshiko and Martha exchanged glances.

"Is she serious?" Toshiko muttered in Japanese.

The Doctor caught the quirk of Martha's lips. "I think sushi is the last thing we want," Martha said diplomatically. "Sandwiches would be fine."

Rose gave Martha a plastic smile and walked with her down to the head office. An uneasy feeling settled in the Doctor's stomach. When he turned around, Toshiko was waiting.

"Sorry," he said when he realised she was waiting on him. Then, in Japanese, "So, how long have you been with Torchwood?"

She looked surprised, but pleased. "Eight years. How about you?"

"Oh, I'm not an agent." He smiled. "Just helping out."

"Miss Sato?" Ianto walked over with a large mug of coffee in a teal blue mug. "Your coffee."

"Thank you," she replied, in English. With a British accent, no less. The Doctor grinned.

"Would you like any coffee, sir?" Ianto asked.

"Yes, thanks." Then, remembering, "Hold the 'sir'."

Ianto gave that same little nod he always gave.

"Which is my desk, then?" Toshiko asked.

The Doctor looked at the desks for a moment. There were three of them in a semi-circle around the central terminal.

"I'm... not sure..." There was Owen's on the far left, with the dinosaur, then there were the two on the other side of the Argus interface. The one in the middle had a picture of Pete and Jackie holding baby Tony, so that would be Rose's desk...

Rose's desk? What Martha had said about taking over sank in.

He pointed at the empty one on the right. "I assume it's that one."

Toshiko sipped her coffee as she walked over. "It's rather dark in here, don't you think?"

The Doctor looked up. The lighting was minimal, but they were several levels underground. "Not too bad," he said reasonably. "No windows, of course."

"It reminds me a bit of the Hub in Cardiff. Now that was a dank little hole in the ground." She smirked at the computer as she pressed the screen, signed in, and started to manipulate different files at an impressive speed. (For a human.)

"Oh, I don't know," the Doctor said. "I expect there's a charm to it."

"I liked the facilities in Washington, personally. But then again, I like Federal architecture." She brought a new file to the screen; it looked like technical schematics, then quickly dismissed it and moved on.

"Hang on!" He bounded forward. "Bring that back!"

Toshiko stared at him. "What?"

"Those schematics."

She brought the diagram back to the front. The Doctor was almost open-mouthed in his amazement.

"Do you know what you have here?" he asked her.

She pushed her glasses down her nose and peered at the screen. "It's a sonic wave generator."

"It's not just a generator," he said. "It's an amplifier. Where did you get that schematic?"

"It was in the Archive," she replied. "It's something I've been studying for the last six months. I thought, since I was going to be stationed at Alpha now, I could have a look at the physical document."

"Do you understand it?" he asked her.

Toshiko hesitated. "I can't read the language, if that's what you mean. The Torchwood language matrix has never been able to give more than a partial translation; not enough extant data. But I think I understand the major principles."

The Doctor felt himself grinning from ear to ear. "Oh, Toshiko Sato, you and I are going to be best friends."

She frowned. "I'm sorry?"

He pointed at the screen. "What if I told you that I have my own plans for a sonic device, better than this one? And that I can read what that says?"

"I'd say you were lying," she replied shortly. "Our scientists haven't come anywhere near this far in that field. And the idea that any human could know the language of a species we've never even encountered—"

"Not yet," he said. "I imagine these schematics came through some sort of rift in time and space."

Her eyes widened. "How did you know?"

"Want me to teach you?"

Toshiko took off her spectacles and gave him a searching look. "Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor." When she opened her mouth to ask his name, he said, "And yes, that's all of it." He sighed. "Blimey, never satisfied, you lot, are you?" He stood up straight and jerked his head towards the stairs that led down to the tech lab. "Come with me."

Toshiko was bright—almost frighteningly so—and it didn't take her long to understand the basic principles behind sonic manipulation. She was also quite adept at asking just the right questions. She'd be an excellent companion.

What are you going to do, stuff her in the TARDIS and fly off?

He grit his teeth and kept working. The lab was full of spare parts and abandoned projects. It was easy to steal a casing here, a filament there... By the time Ianto had brought them lunch—sandwiches and surprisingly good chips—the Doctor had a pile of parts to sort through.

Ianto peered at the sketch the Doctor had made to illustrate his plan to Toshiko. "May I ask?"

"Just a little pet project," he replied.

"Is this what you wanted?" Across the room, Toshiko was holding up what looked like a comm headset from a Q'alatrixi warship. The Doctor grinned. "Exactly!" He hopped eagerly over and took it from her. He put it on and peered through the viewer with one eye. "Just the thing!" He went back to the work station, yanked off the headset and popped off its earpiece. Toshiko caught the headset as he tossed it back over to her. She looked down in dismay.

"Was that it?"

The Doctor pried the earpiece open and picked at the innards. He held up the little blue emitter on the tip of his finger. "The Q'alatrixi are masters of sound production. This little gizmo can produce up to three megahertz. With a few modifications, I can get that up to five."

"That's ultrasound," Toshiko said. Ianto looked pained, but curious.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "Average human can't hear above sixteen thousand Hertz. The Zvazveraz can hear up to one-point-five megahertz; more than that and they're a bit worse for the wear. Like nails on a chalkboard..." He frowned. "Take it too high, and it liquefies them in their shells." At Toshiko's grimace he said, "Of course, being somewhat similar to Earth insects, their internal organs are already relatively liquid."

"These are the things you've been fighting?" Toshiko asked.

"They're sentient beings," the Doctor said, less patiently than he'd intended. "Not things."

"Sentient beings who want to eat us and take our planet," Ianto said with a tiny smile.

The Doctor frowned stubbornly at the workstation. "It's what they've evolved to do. Humans eat other animals all the time."

"You're not suggesting we should let them?" asked Toshiko.

He glanced at her. "No," he said, "of course not. But acting like they're just inhuman monsters to be destroyed..."

"We've only killed one, so far," Ianto said. The Doctor met his eyes. There was no judgment in Ianto's expression, but it was clear exactly which Zvazveraz he was talking about. The Doctor looked away.

"With this," he said, holding the emitter between finger and thumb, "we can incapacitate them without harming them. A lot more efficient than darts."

Four hours, forty-three minutes elapsed between the time Ianto brought the sandwiches and when Martha came into the lab to demand a report on what had happened at the Holiday house. Every minute ticked by in his head, a comforting, familiar sense among unfamiliar senses and impulses. Moments were punctuated by cutting wires and discussions on the relative merits of a titanium versus adamantium casing, even debate on what the proper colour of the lens ought to be. He liked blue. It had been blue for a long time. Toshiko had suggested that he ought to expand the infrasonic range he had planned. And that red was sportier.

The discussion was cut short by Martha's arrival. Toshiko vacated the lab after one nod from her.

Martha Jones—the one he'd known in the other universe—had been more scrutable. Not an open book, exactly, but there had been the little smirks, the rolling of the eyes both incredulous and irritated; she'd had a lovely, expressive face.

The Martha Jones of this world was... well, her smile was wrong, for one thing. That was the most obvious and unacceptable difference. At least this world's Donna still made the same face at him when she thought he was insane. Martha Jones gave him a critical eye and demanded that he explain himself. The nerve!

"As I said," he growled through his teeth. "I took Donna home and then I brought them here."

"This would be the same Donna Noble who works at the H.C. Clements building, witnessed two separate attacks there, and was in the holding area last night when the subject Zzfstaz informed you of the presence of high numbers of invaders in the city of London?"

"Yes."

"And you just took her home?"

"Yes."

Martha gave him a very cold look. "I don't suppose you gave her any retcon?"

"No. She wouldn't have wanted that."

"Her wants are immaterial next to the security of this planet, Doctor."

The two of them glared at each other.

"She's not going to go shouting Torchwood secrets from the rooftops, Ms. Jones."

"What I find most interesting," Martha said, "is that a man who is not even a Torchwood agent has been able to insert himself into—"

"I'm going to stop you there."

There was the incredulity he remembered. "Oh?"

"You were going to go on about how I'm not Torchwood, so what am I doing in your base, playing with your toys, right?"

"That is a good question. Rose has told me that you aided in the original Cybus Industries incident in 2007. Obviously, you're some kind of technical expert." She looked at the work station. "Peter Tyler has vouchsafed for you, and is eager for you to join the team officially." There were several seconds of silence as they regarded each other.

"So what are you waiting for?" she went on. "You've had two weeks to see what we're about."

It took him half a second to realize that his mouth was open. "Are you asking me to join up?"

"That is why you're here, isn't it?"

He glanced at the bare-bones of a sonic screwdriver at his fingertips, thought of Rose, and the Holidays, and Donna smashing a vase and reaching out to help him.

"I haven't decided yet."

Martha let out a short sigh. "Well, I can't force you. But we could always use another agent. And Rose thinks very highly of your abilities."

That brought up a question that had been buzzing around his mind. "Why are you replacing her?"

She smiled wanly. "I'm not at liberty to discus internal affairs with outsiders."

"I guess that answers my question then," he said nastily.

Martha raised an eyebrow.

Nice, Spaceman. Such a measured response.

He went back to work for twenty-six minutes until the space that had been occupied by Martha held Rose. He inhaled her perfume, looked up at her face, and decided that he could leave the sonic screwdriver until later.

Rose was hugging herself. The patterned green and blue fabric of her blouse bunched around her elbows and stretched quite pleasantly over her breasts and hips. He had never really considered women's fashion to be of much interest before. He wondered if the change was due to Donna, or to the new hormone cocktail.

"How did it go?" she asked.

"What go?"

"Talking to Martha."

He looked away from her breasts, stared at her clavicle for a moment, and then busied himself with the tool he'd modified into a passable hyper-spanner. "Fine."

Rose chewed on a lip. "Did she ask you to join?"

"Yep."

"Are you going to?"

There was something in her tone, obviously nervous, or maybe it was exhaustion... She always looked tired. Maybe she wasn't sleeping? He ought to get her away from here. They could go to... He grimaced.

"Do you want me to?"

Her mouth hung open for a moment. "I don't know. It's your decision, isn't it?"

"That's not what I asked."

"Do what you want," she said. It wasn't a dismissal, not the way she said it, but he felt a twinge anyway. She pulled her hair back and nodded at the work station. "What's that you're doing?"

"New sonic screwdriver. I meant to start it ages ago, but there was all that mess with the living arrangements and biorhythms and alien invaders and whatnot." He waved a hand in disgust.

"You look tired."

"I'm fine," he said, automatically. He hesitated. "You look..."

Rose rubbed her eyes. "I'm half-dead." She tilted her head and looked at the bits on the table. "How long is that going to take?"

"The basic structure will only take a few hours, assuming I can find all the materials. The programming is another matter, of course. The last time I needed a new screwdriver, I had old templates to build on. And the TARDIS."

She nodded. Then, after a long, horrible, awkward silence, she asked, "How are you holding up?"

"I'm all right."

Rose narrowed her eyes. "Well. That's good. Glad everything is hunky dory."

"Oi," he said, feeling his hackles rise at her sarcasm. "You don't have to take that tone."

"I'll take whatever tone I like if you're going to lie to me," she snapped back.

"Look, there's nothing you can do, all right? I'm fine! I'll be fine!"

"Fine," Rose said, mockingly. "You go ahead and play with your screwdriver, then. I'm going home." Before he could come up with a response that didn't sound childish, she had marched out of the lab.

That went well.

"Oh, shut up," he muttered.

Unacceptable. There was no other word for it. The Doctor sat heavily on the shiny chrome stool. He'd never had this much trouble adjusting to a regeneration—and that was including the sixth and the ninth. The ninth had been bad. He'd been more than a bit mad after... After. He'd wandered aimlessly, ended up on Earth a few times, saved a family from their fate aboard the Titanic, seen Kennedy shot, not to mention a few hazy adventures that he couldn't entirely remember. And then he'd met Rose, and aimless as he still had been (he liked aimless) he hadn't been talking to himself anymore. He'd had a hand to hold.

He flexed his right hand. Well... not this hand. He'd barely gotten to know it before he'd lost it. (It had been the replacement hand that had taken hers outside the Powell Estate that Christmas, out there in the not-snow.) This one had touched hers before that, in the TARDIS right after the discovery of the mole and before he'd flown the TARDIS into the pavement. That was this hand. The hand that pressed the big threatening button. (Not the fighting hand, though he was beginning to wonder.) It was the hand that had taken up the sword in the first place. The hand that Donna had given new life.

Half life, half human, one bloody heart, and the echoes of his friend in his head. Absolutely unacceptable.

All he had to do was one, simple, solitary thing, and that was be with Rose, but here he was, sitting alone in a Torchwood basement while she went home to her family. And she was cross with him.

But she kept poking where he didn't want to be poked, and... and...

He waited for the answering Donna voice. When it said nothing, he felt a sudden crushing emptiness. That had been simple. Him and Donna, just mates, running around the universe. None of these twisted, pining, agonizing feelings gutting him. (At least, not in the foreground.) He thought of going to Chiswick, just to have a chat with her, or Gra—Wilf.

No. He had to remember that he was a stranger to them.

Donna might have been a comfort, but he wanted Rose. But the first thing in the zeppelin from Norway, the very first thing, she'd asked for time. It wasn't easy for her, either. She'd been stranded here with him, when what she really wanted was him. She hadn't said it, not like that (she was too kind for that), but he'd known it. He still knew it.

He considered several options. One: go after her now, and maybe have a row. Two: go after her now, definitely have a row. Three: Go after her now, no row, but suffer Jackie's probing until bedtime, when he would be allowed to retire to the rooms he'd been given to spend the night reading or watching horrible late-night television. Four: stay here and work on the sonic screwdriver, maybe even finish the basic programming by the time Rose came back in the morning, drink coffee.

He decided on option five: drink coffee, then stay and work on the screwdriver.

On his way to the coffee, in between wondering when he'd started to find lists so satisfying, he stopped at Rose's desk. Everyone seemed to be gone for the evening, except Ianto, who was working quietly at the Argus station.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"No, I'm fine." The Doctor winced. "Actually, I was hoping for a bit of coffee."

Ianto left Argus for the coffee nook. The Doctor stood his ground, unconsciously putting his hands in his pockets and keeping a good distance away. The nook was Ianto's domain, at least when he was here.

The sense of human personal and territorial boundaries was useful, at least. Not as useful as a tongue that could taste the molecular composition of things, but useful.

He liked coffee more now, too, which was good, because he was going to need the caffeine. He could feel his body flagging. Fifty-seven hours might be pushing it. Thing was, he still had a Time Lord brain, and it did not need all that wasteful sleep.

After some quiet, controlled, but largely abstract (at least to the Doctor's mind) busyness, Ianto presented him a cup of espresso.

"A double-shot," he said with a tiny smile.

"What did you do before Torchwood, Ianto?" the Doctor asked, genuinely curious.

"One year of University, and a summer of painting houses."

The Doctor grinned at him. "I spent a summer painting houses, once," he said. "Well... when I say houses... More like daub and wattle huts."

"Habitat for Humanity?" Ianto ventured.

"Yeah," the Doctor lied. He drank from his espresso and winced. Too hot. His poor human tongue couldn't take it. "Ow."

"Planning on burning the midnight oil, then, sir?"

He gave the young man an annoyed look. "Yes. No 'sir'. I mean it." He sipped his espresso more cautiously this time and only after blowing on it. He couldn't be sure if the effect was real or psychosomatic. Damn tongue—he might as well have it coated in wax. "Are you sure you weren't somebody's butler?"

"I was Mr. Tyler's personal valet for four years."

"Ah! That explains it. Wait... Was this after you joined Torchwood?"

Ianto smiled conspiratorially. "It was my first assignment."

The Doctor glanced at the gun at the young man's hip. Like most Torchwood agents, Ianto went armed. (He and Rose had argued over that the first day he'd come to the Warehouse. And it had turned out that Rose's gun only ever had tranqs in it.) Was 'valet' really code for 'bodyguard', then?

"I got to know the Tylers quite well."

"How well?" the Doctor asked.

"Well enough to know that you were never actually part of Habitat for Humanity. At least, not in this reality."

It took the Doctor a few moments to collect his chin from his chest, metaphorically speaking.

"You... what?"

"I've known Miss Tyler for some time, Doctor. You were," he constructed his language like one might arrange flowers, "... a frequent topic of conversation."

The Doctor put down his saucer. "Ianto Jones, I think you have me at a disadvantage."

"Yes, sir."

Well, that was something.

"Tell me about myself, Ianto."

"I wouldn't presume."

"What is that, valet/valee confidentiality?" the Doctor teased. "What can you tell me? Perhaps you can fill me in on things I ought to know about them? Or can you not presume that, either?"

"That's a long list," Ianto replied, somehow managing to show thoughtfulness without moving more than just one muscle in his (generous) forehead.

"Whatever you can tell me," the Doctor said, holding in a sigh as he thought about Rose leaving the lab. Ianto began to talk.