A/N: Sorry for the wait for this chapter. I ended up rewriting it at the last minute, and I also managed to injure my back while working on a jigsaw puzzle because I'm such an amazing specimen of humanity.
Notes on terminology: The dapper aliens that make you forget, I've seen them referred to on the Interwebs as Silents - versus the Silence, which is the religious organization out for the Doctor's blood. I liked that distinction, so I'm using it here.
Chapter 7
Rory hovered at Amy's elbow as they made their way across the hull of Jack's stupid invisible ship. He wanted to stay close so he could catch her if she stumbled or grip her hand in reassurance if she needed it. But Amy, of course, was fine. Being dead for three weeks didn't seem to have slowed her down at all, and she took the invisible spaceship in stride.
She did, however, stop when she noticed the pair of strangers waiting at the door of the TARDIS. "You must be the help," she said calmly, waiting expectantly for introductions.
Jack held out his hand and flashed Amy the most charming smile he'd ever seen. "Captain Jack Harkness, and it's my pleasure to finally meet you, Amy." Amy happily let herself be charmed, her eyes sparkling as Jack lifted her hand to his mouth for a kiss.
Still, Rory couldn't help but wince when Rose elbowed her friend. "Not the time," he heard her mutter.
Amy shifted her attention to Rose. Rory tried looking at her with fresh eyes, imagining how his wife might see the unassuming blonde woman in her simple jeans and trainers, never having seen her surrounded by power made visible. He failed miserably - how could you pretend you hadn't seen something like that? - but Amy didn't seem to notice anything odd. She simply extended her hand to Rose with a tilt of her head. "And you are...?"
"Rose," the other woman answered, shaking Amy's hand. "Rose Tyler."
Then Amy pushed past them both into the TARDIS, saying, "Now where's the Doctor got to?" But she was transfixed upon entering the ship. Rory watched her carefully. "What happened to the TARDIS?" she murmured. "I thought House deleted this room."
Rory walked in after her, trying to think of a way to explain it to her when he didn't even know the whole story. Before he could find the words, the sounds of the dematerialization sequence cut him off.
Amy laughed and turned back to the console. "Doctor, where were you h-" The words died on her tongue when she saw Rose at the helm. She marched up to the blonde woman and glared down at her. "If you're not the Doctor, then how can you fly his ship? What have you done with him?"
Rose's expression had grown resigned. "Rory, I thought you were going to explain it to her." So I wouldn't have to was the unspoken but very clear end of that sentence.
Rory sighed, and reminded himself that this woman had brought Amy back to him. He had to trust her now, didn't he? He didn't like admitting, even to himself, that part of him just wanted to go back to 2011 Leadworth with his wife. He almost wouldn't mind leaving the Doctor to his fate if it meant that Amy was alive and safe. Almost.
"Amy," he said instead, "Rose and Jack haven't done anything with the Doctor. They're here to help us rescue him from the Silence."
After sorting everything out, the four companions had skedaddled back to Rose's TARDIS to leave 1941 before they messed anything up. Especially since it turned out the Doctor had also taken Amy to London during the Blitz. It was all a great big mess and if any of them stirred it the wrong way, they probably wouldn't have to worry about saving the Doctor because they'd be too busy fighting off Reapers.
Rose had quickly taken them out of the city and back into the Vortex, where they would be waiting and planning. They wanted to make sure Amy wouldn't suffer any complications in the middle of their rescue, and the rescue itself was still little more than an idea. It needed to be a full-fledged plan. That was the reason they were all sitting around the coffee table in Rose's study.
Tension crackled in the air between them. Rose was nervous around the two new companions. Amy was still suspicious of her - Rory had explained what he knew, but his answers didn't seem to sit well with his wife. Jack had been careful with her secrets so far, but Rose couldn't help but worry he'd let something slip.
From his seat beside her, he snagged a cookie and bit into it. He nodded to Amy and, mouth still full, said, "Go on. Ask away. I'm sure you've got questions."
They had already filled Amy in on the events between her death and resurrection, but they'd left out most of the details. And she didn't really know who Rose and Jack were beyond their rushed introductions as they'd left London.
"Shouldn't we be going back for the Doctor now?"
Rose shook her head. "Going back now would only be wasting time. If we do all our plannin' and stuff here, we can go back to right after we left. If we go back now, we'll be spending days in that timeline, leaving the Doctor in trouble longer."
"Right. Okay. Good answer." Amy crossed her legs and turned to Jack. "What are you captain of, anyway?"
"Torchwood Cardiff, most recently." He quirked his eyebrow and gave her a cocky grin. "Is that really the most pressing question you could think of?"
Amy ignored his blatant attempt at flirting with a wave of her hand. "Rose says we've got as much time as we need. Might as well ask all my questions. And Rory says you're immortal. Human, but immortal. How?"
Rose tensed, and she knew Jack had noticed it. "What, you wanna steal my secret? Sorry, you'll have to ask the Doctor. He's the only one who remembers how it happened."
She smothered her sigh of relief. Trust Jack to watch out for her. She'd have to remember to thank him later.
But Amy turned to grill her next. "And you." She stared at the blonde woman. "You can pilot the TARDIS. How?"
Rose met her gaze steadily. "Long story." Her clipped words and polite smile indicated that the subject was closed.
The younger woman sat back at such a clear rebuff. "Well, so much for getting questions answered," she muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear. Rose was certain that had been her intention. With a huff, she tried again. "Rory told me you're ninety years old. Are you immortal, too?"
Rose's smile softened. This time she could answer honestly. "I dunno." She could practically feel Jack's gaze on her, but she ignored it. They could have this conversation later, away from nosey youngsters.
"Are you human?"
"I used to be. Probably not anymore."
"But you don't know."
"No. Is that a problem?"
Amy shrugged. "Just wondering."
"I've got a question for everyone," Jack said, drawing Amy's attention away from Rose. "How much experience do you have in combat?"
"You can answer first," Amy told him, "seeing as it's your question."
He grinned. "I've worked for the Royal Air Force, the Time Agency, and Torchwood. I fought Daleks on Satellite Five, I fought them here on Earth, I fought them in the heart of their own bomb. I'd say I've got more experience in combat than the rest of you combined."
Rory shrugged. "I fought in the Roman legions, plus all the traveling with the Doctor. And I went to war at Demons Run."
Amy smiled at her husband and took his hand in hers before answering. "All of my fighting experience is in a future that never happened, and it was kind of specialized anyway. But I am great at improvising." She turned to Rose. "What about you?"
Rose was a little unsure of how to respond. Did her experience count if she couldn't repeat her actions? "I... fought the Daleks on Satellite Five with Jack and the Doctor," she said, settling for somewhere in the middle. "And I fought them again at Canary Wharf and the day the Earth was stolen. I worked as a field agent for Torchwood in Pete's World, so I know how to use a gun." That experience was real, the memories accessible, and the muscles trained. "Got a bunch of 'em on my TARDIS, actually. We kept 'em around in case of emergencies."
"Your husband got over his issues with guns?" Jack asked curiously, though he chose his words to protect her.
Her hand twitched in an ambivalent gesture. "Born in battle, remember? We never had to use 'em, but he liked to say that we'd gotten a second chance together and he didn't want it cut short by either one of us gettin' killed." Then she noticed Amy listening intently to their little interlude, and she fell silent.
Jack reached over to squeeze her shoulder before picking up the main thread of the conversation. "All right, so we've got three experienced fighters, one of whom can't be killed, and we know that Amy will be an asset rather than a liability. Our wildcard. Rory, Amy, what are we up against?"
"The Silence," Amy replied immediately. "A religious order. As far as we can figure out, their purpose is to kill the Doctor, because they think he'll cause the end of the universe."
Jack snorted. "Sweet of them, but I've been there and it wasn't anything out of the ordinary."
"What, you've been to the end of the universe?"
"Yep. The year 100 trillion."
"Okay, then. Anyways, that's just what the Silence thinks. But we know that time can be rewritten and unwritten, so maybe they have a point. Not that we'd let them kill the Doctor."
"Except that they did," Rory said. "April 22, 2011, at 5:02 pm in Lake Silencio, Utah. But the Doctor tricked them, made them think that they'd killed him when really it was just a - what did he call it? - a Doctor suit. And the Doctor's been erasing any mention of himself from systems all over the place since then. We thought we were done with the Silence. I suppose it was too good to last."
A sudden moment of heartache struck Rose. Too good to last. It seemed that was always the case. Especially now. She had only just found him again - hadn't even had a chance to say hello - and he was snatched from her fingers once again. "If their only goal is to kill the Doctor," she began slowly, "then what reason do we have to believe he's still alive right now?"
Jack's gaze snapped around to meet hers. "Don't say that, Rose. If there's any chance that he's still alive, now matter how small, we've got to take it." His words, she knew, were as much for his benefit as hers. They were both still in love with the Doctor.
Amy's words brought them back to the present company. "He's alive because he's with Madame Kovarian." Her eyes matched her voice, hard and cold. She hated this woman. "She's an awful person, horribly cruel. If she's got her hands on him, you can bet she'll be torturing him or trying to use him for some twisted experiment. She won't just kill him straight off, she'll want to rub it in his face that he lost."
Rory began rubbing his wife's back. "Amy..."
"But I don't think there were any Silents out there," she continued. She rolled up both her sleeves as if checking for something and then rolled them back down, seemingly satisfied. "None that I saw, anyways."
"Me neither," Rory echoed, looking down at his mostly bare arms. "Not a single mark."
"I wonder why?"
Rose cut in. "Sorry, what? I don't understand."
Rory quickly described a race of aliens that could erase themselves from humans' memories, and his and Amy's system of tally marks drawn on skin. Gesturing at Amy's forearms, though they were once again covered by her sleeves, he explained, "Nothing. No Silents."
"We can't assume that there won't be any when we go in," Jack reminded them. "Just in case. But so far we've got a Madame Kovarian and probably no Silents. Who else? She isn't doing this on her own."
"Headless Monks," Amy answered. "They wear black robes with their hoods pulled all the way up, but there's no head underneath."
Jack groaned. "And the Order of the Headless means these guys've got the strength of the Church behind them."
Rory nodded. "The Anglican branch, I think. Hold up, how do you know about the Church?"
"I was born in the 51st century. The Church is old hat." He turned to look at Rose. "Do you need to be filled in? If not, we can skip the description."
Rose shook her head. "John's mentioned them to me before. I think I'll be fine."
"Excellent." Jack turned back to Amy and Rory. "Anything else?"
Rory glanced at Amy before shaking his head. "That's it. So we can get started planning now?"
"Not quite. I wanna know what happened when the Doctor was captured. And you were the last one to see him, right?"
He nodded. "Yeah." A sigh escaped as he slumped in his seat. "We were supposed to be on vacation. Somewhere fun and not dangerous. Only we got pulled off course. He insisted on going out to investigate."
"Let me guess," Jack interrupted. "They waited until they could cut you off from the TARDIS before revealing themselves."
Amy nodded. "It went bad pretty fast from there. We didn't have anything to use against them. The Doctor only had his screwdriver. River always has a blaster on her, but she wasn't with us."
"And River is...?"
"Our daughter." Noticing a skeptical look from Jack, she stuck her chin out. "Yeah, we've got our secrets, too. Thanks to the Silence, our daughter is older than we are. But this time it was just the three of us - me, Rory, and the Doctor."
Rory took up the narrative. "It was chaotic. We were trying to get back to the TARDIS, but they cut us off. The Doctor tried to stay between us and them since he can regenerate. We didn't make it. One of the Headless Monks blasted Amy. That was when the Doctor lost it.
"He started roaring and shouting, like he wasn't properly sane. I think they were afraid of him. They stopped shooting and just stood there watching him. I grabbed Amy and started carrying her back to the TARDIS, but then the clerics noticed and they started shooting again. I barely made it back safely with Amy, and I could still hear the Doctor screaming at them when I closed the door.
"Once Amy was inside, I grabbed my sword and tried to go back out to find the Doctor, but they had the TARDIS surrounded. I wouldn't have made it out the door in one piece, so I waited three weeks for the Doctor to come back. He never showed up. And that was when you arrived." He indicated Rose with a nod of his head.
Rose turned to Jack, who looked as grim as she'd ever seen him. "What's the plan?"
"Well, the Silence brought you to them instead of going to you. That's a pretty good indication that their current base of operations is on whatever planet you landed on. Probably pretty close to the Doctor's TARDIS. Rory, Amy, did you notice any buildings when you went outside?"
Amy shook her head. "No, but the Silence sort of popped up from the ground."
"I can do a scan of the surrounding area once we get back," Rose said. "Look for structures underneath the surface of the planet. If we can get a look at the inside of their base, we can plan around that. And my TARDIS should be able to locate the Doctor if he's close enough." Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Amy stiffen. Apparently Rory hadn't explained about that yet.
"I'll take us into their base," she continued undaunted, "so we don't have to worry about the guards around his TARDIS. We can use perception filters to make our way through the base unnoticed. There's a chance that we may be discovered anyway, so we'll need to be prepared for combat, too. Once we find the Doctor, we have to get him back to my TARDIS as quickly and quietly as possible, and then I'll take us back to his TARDIS. Jack-"
"No need to ask, Rosie. I'll take point. Everyone, if we enter combat, get behind me."
"They may try to attack the Doctor's TARDIS once they realize that he's escapin'. Jack, if you can find that waveform extrapolator we took from Blon, I want you to hook it up to the TARDIS again. We'll want to have that force field active in case of emergency."
"But won't that prevent you from materializing inside the TARDIS on the way back?"
"No. His TARDIS will welcome mine. They're like sisters."
"Oh. Then sure."
"Is that it, then?" Amy asked. "Are we done planning?"
Jack sighed. "For today. Not much else to do until we get those scans done. But one last thing. Just in case he's changed his face on us again. What does the Doctor look like now?"
Rose made a face at him. "Honey," she said aloud, "establish a connection. Find me a current image of the Doctor. Pick the one with the highest resolution and display it here."
Amy bounced excitedly. "Your TARDIS takes voice commands? Can she speak?"
"Only from me and only to me, but telepathically. Even J - even the Doctor can't do it." She looked away from the curious young woman to find Jack studying her. Stretching her mind a little, she left a single word in his head: Later.
His gaze snapped up to meet hers, but he said nothing. His look of shock quickly gave way to a small grin.
Before Amy could fire another round of questions at Rose, the TARDIS gave a small burble and a life-sized hologram appeared in the center of the room, just to one side of the coffee table.
"Yep, that's him," Amy murmured.
Rose burst out laughing.
It wasn't long before all eyes were on her. "I know his wardrobe choice is questionable," Jack said, "but he doesn't look that bad."
"I know him," she sputtered once she caught her breath. "I've seen him before. He - he was my maths tutor when I was fifteen. The Doctor was my maths tutor before I ever knew him." She collapsed into giggles again.
Jack gave her a half-smile. "I guess I wasn't the only one who went back to visit you before you knew me." His elbow nudged her. "We both missed you."
Rose felt it better not to respond to her friend's remarks. With those words, Jack had managed to turn her from laughter to the edge of tears. Right now she needed to focus on getting the Doctor back, and she couldn't do that if she wound up sobbing at the sight of his face.
It was ridiculous that he could still do this to her. "TARDIS," she said, "end display."
Amy pounced on her again. "Who exactly are you? Why are you helping us?"
Rose felt Jack bristling at her side. She understood Amy's suspicion-or was it jealousy?-but even if she'd wanted to talk about this with a stranger, what would she say?
With a sigh, she stood. "I'm going to make some tea. Make yourselves at home."
Rose in the kitchen when Amy cornered her. "Hello again." She forced her voice to be as pleasant as possible. She'd known this would happen sooner or later.
"Rose."
"Did you want a cuppa tea?" Rose proffered the kettle.
"I want answers." Amy stepped into her personal bubble, her voice hard. "And you're going to give them to me."
Rather than intimidating her, the redhead's outburst awakened Rose's sense of outrage. "Look, I get it, you don't like me or trust me, but I don't owe you anything. Least of all answers."
But Amy didn't back off. If anything, Rose's anger only made her more determined. "That's right, I don't trust you. Nothing about you adds up! So you're going to answer my questions or - "
"Or what?" Rose broke in, squaring her shoulders. "You can't stop me; this is my ship. I don't need your help to rescue the Doctor. And my relationship with him is none of your business!"
Amy scoffed. "At least you're consistent. But how can you possibly have a TARDIS? The Doctor's is the only one left."
That was the last straw. Knowing she was being goaded into answering but not caring enough to stop, Rose set her cup down on the counter. She was tired of being poked and prodded at. "The Doctor gave me this TARDIS," she bit out. "Me and my husband. She was grown from a piece of the Doctor's own."
"You expect me to believe he just gave you a TARDIS," Amy said, flat.
"I expect you to at least pretend to. It's what happened, after all."
"But he wouldn't just... He can't have-" Amy disguised the crack in her voice well, but she couldn't hide the growing desperation in her words. "Why would he do that? Why wouldn't you just keep traveling with him?"
Rose suddenly found herself wondering if he'd tried to leave Amy behind too. Her anger softened a bit. "I would have if he'd let me," she answered without meaning to.
The redhead studied her silently for a few long minutes. "What are you to the Doctor?" she asked finally.
Unsure of the answer herself, Rose settled on something she'd heard from John. "He says my name keeps him fighting. If you want to know more, ask him yourself." She left the kitchen.
Rose was unsettled by her borderline fight with Amy, so she sought out her workshop for a project to focus her mind. It was a few hours before anyone tracked her down, and Rose was surprised to find that it was Rory and not Jack. "What did you need?" she called from her workbench, not looking up. Building perception filters wasn't difficult, but it demanded attention.
He shuffled about for a few minutes before presumably finding somewhere to stand comfortably. "I wanted to, ah... When we were all talking in the study. Amy wasn't trying to be rude. It's just... she's known the Doctor for a long time. Since she was seven years old. He trusts her a lot. But she'd never even heard your name before. She doesn't know what to think-"
"It's fine." Rose put down her soldering iron and turned to face the younger man. "I've been on the other end of it before. I know what it's like, and why she wants to interrogate me."
Her gaze fell to her feet momentarily. "But a lot of what she's asking about is very personal. I don't want to talk about those things with someone I barely know." She looked up again. "And I'm not tryin' to steal the Doctor away from you two. As long as she remembers those things, we'll be fine."
Rory nodded awkwardly. "Thanks."
Rose turned back to her workbench as he left.
It wasn't another hour before Jack walked in and took a seat beside her.
"How're the filters coming?" he asked.
"I'm workin' on the second one now," she said. She set up the soldering iron once again and handed Jack the finished one. "Go ahead and try this."
He slipped the chain around his neck and Rose's eyes and attention slid immediately away from him.
"Yeah, that works." She held out her hand for the necklace and Jack gave it back. "You have one already, don't you? John mentioned it a couple times."
He nodded. "From when we were hiding from the Master. But you should make one for the Doctor. For our escape. He used to have one, too, but I've no idea where it is."
"Yeah, I was plannin' to." She shifted in her seat and felt a grin overtake her face. "So what are you really here for, Jack Harkness? You didn't come just to tell me that."
His answering grin warmed her to the core. The best of friends. "You promised me some information, sweetheart, and I came to collect. So, what's the story behind your telepathic connection to the TARDIS?"
She leaned forward conspiratorially, happy to be able to share this with someone who would understand. "I didn't find out about it until after we grew this one, but John thinks that I used the connection to get back to the Doctor with the dimension cannon, like maybe I was trackin' the TARDIS. And it might have somethin' to do with me lookin' the same after all these years. Remember when Rory asked if I was part-Time Lord?" Taking a deep breath, she continued, "John thinks I'm part-TARDIS."
"You're what?"
"Think about it. I don't remember anything that happened when I went back to Satellite Five, and you were dead at that point. But I opened the TARDIS and looked into its heart-absorbed it. I know the Doctor told you about that. D'you see it?"
He stared. "You absorbed it, and then-what, fused with it?"
She shrugged. "We're not really sure. It's never happened before that we knew of. Maybe we fused, maybe it changed me, maybe somethin' else entirely. But as far as we can tell, I'm not in any danger. I'm stable now."
"Rose Tyler, you are something else." He pulled her into a hug, laughing to himself. "Literally."
She snorted. "You can talk."
