Disclaimer: I make no profit or gain from the use of these characters who belong to the BBC.
Author's note: Well, this chapter is a lot longer... Y'all got lucky. This chapter also marks the point where more than half of what I've written is posted. Wahoo! Enjoy.
Rose wasn't sure she existed anymore. She didn't feel anything, not air, not clothes on her skin, not even her own body. Did she have a body? She didn't have eyes, so it wasn't seeing, but she could, sort of, sense her environment. The chaotic swirl of red and blue shot through with golden threads surrounded her. And she could sense, no, more than that, feel. The only thing she could feel was all of time and space happening at once. And she existed in all of it. Her thoughts slowly coalesced. She remembered who she was and her body formed, suspended in the intoxicating swirl of the vortex. Then she remembered why she was there and what she was trying to do. There was no need to reach for the golden Heart, it enveloped her. She thought about the open courtyard of the empty estate and, though she had looked at her watch just before she jumped, she could feel the time, the exact moment, that she disappeared, and she focused on that. Her stomach dropped in what was now a familiar fashion as she appeared in the courtyard, but it was nowhere near as miserable as the vortex manipulator had been.
Blinking against the sudden sunlight, Rose shielded her eyes and looked around. She made it, she really made it. She whooped with laughter that refused to stop. Her laughter echoed from the buildings around her, amplifying the sounds that turned to sobs. She was going to make it, she was really going to be able to leave. To go home, to the Doctor. The enormity of it crashed on her all at once and she fell to her knees, gasping for air around her sobs. As the sobbing subsided, she chuckled thickly. Her father was a multimillionaire, she made six figures a year, and where does she have her breakdown? In an abandoned, derelict council estate. Some things never change.
She stood, pulling back the damp locks of hair clinging to her face and wiped away the moisture on her cheeks. Only once her jacket was straightened and the dust swept off the knees of her jeans did she prepare for her journey home. It was easier the second time; both letting the Tardis sweep through her mind and reassembling herself in the chaos of the Time Vortex. Standing back in her flat, she realized that in some ways it was easier than she expected. In the vortex she could feel time and space in a new way. Once in the vortex it was easy to get where she wanted to go. Instinctive even. But that feeling of simultaneously not existing at all and existing across all of time and space was exhausting. After just the two trips, Rose needed a nap. She moved her furniture back into place before setting an alarm and crashing on her bed fully clothed.
An hour later Rose scrubbed the sleep and dried tear tracks from her face and put on a light layer of makeup. Time for dinner with the family.
After dinner Rose turned down Pete's offer of a car to take her home as usual, but decided to take a shortcut instead of the underground and bus like she usually did. She walked a fair ways away and stepped behind some tall shrubs. She let her mind get taken over by the Tardis and stepped into the vortex. The time she spent in the vortex was definitely shorter and no where near as exhausting, Rose was glad to find. Happiness in small victories, she reminded herself.
She worked on the drawings to send to the fabricators long enough to call her mum and tell her that Rose was home safely before heading to see River.
"I did it!" Rose crowed, flinging her arms around her friend. "Space travel, no time." She grinned.
"Good work, sweetie. How was it?"
"Exhausting. Being in the vortex is overwhelming."
River glanced at her curiously. "I think..." She began slowly, "I think with more practice you'll spend less and less time in the vortex. Nanoseconds even, so long as you have a destination in mind."
"Really? That's the best news I've heard all day."
"Yup. When I traveled with you, I don't ever remember being in the vortex. Just a bit of a twirl and a pop from place to place."
"Huh. I'll keep working on it."
River smiled softly. "Rose, have you bought a journal?"
"Yeah." Rose said, she'd pulled the blue book out of its case a few times since she bought it but hadn't written anything in it yet. She was waiting for River to tell her what it was for, but Mr. Swarton was right, it was... special, somehow.
"Good. I think it's time we go over what you have to do before you go back to the Doctor."
Rose nodded and River pulled something from a pocket that was definitely bigger on the inside and set it on the table.
Rose stared at it. "But- but that's my journal." She sputtered.
River nodded. "I've seen it a few times over the years, I know what it looks like. Now look, I've written down each of the places you have to be and when with a brief description of what to do. But I'll need to tell you more about each one."
"How is writing it all down going to help? I'll just have to copy it into my journal, right?"
"That's a possibility, but I'm hoping we won't have to."
"What do you mean?"
"Hopefully, we'll be able to set up a psychic echo."
Rose opened her eyes back in her flat, her brain rattling from the psychic echo. There was a good reason for the name, Rose thought as she stood shakily and staggered to her desk. Her balance was thrown by the noise in her head. She wasn't sure what the noise was exactly, but it wasn't anything she could understand. It was a bit like static halfway autotuned to a melody reverberating through an opera hall.
With a trembling hand, she pulled her diary from its case. The moment her fingers brushed the cool leather, the noise in her head drained away. Rose decided to take that as a good sign as she finished pulling the journal out and opened the cover. Where there was only blank paper before, there was now writing. The first dozen pages were covered in River's neat handwriting. Rose grinned, happy to not need to copy out everything River told her. Her smile slipped as she looked over some of the entries. River told her it would be difficult. Some of the things she needed to do would be heartbreaking. She slammed shut her eyelids and closed the book a bit more gently. That was the future and she would take it as it came. She crawled into bed and fell asleep.
She spent her Sunday practicing hopping. The night before as she was drifting off, she decided she needed a word for the time-and-space moving she could do and decided on hopping. River was right, it did get easier. The time in the vortex was getting much shorter, to the point where she was nearly instantly herself when she entered, rather than scattered into particles of awareness. She made her first time hop as well, stepping forward five minutes. Her connection to the Heart was much stronger, pulsing and singing in her mind at all times. She was still quite far from being able to hop whenever she wanted. The golden light slipped away from her sometimes when she tried to call it.
The night before, River had assured her that, like the Tardis appearing, her vanishing act would be noticed by few. After a few hours practice, she was confident enough to try hopping to other places. Around lunchtime she hopped just around the corner from her favorite chippy. She glanced cautiously around her as she appeared but despite the light, nearly constant foot traffic of London, no one seemed to notice her strange method of arrival. Rose grinned to herself and shook her head as she followed her nose towards her favorite food. Stupid apes, she thought fondly. The mind subconsciously making excuses for something they didn't want to know.
Rose finished drafting the parts she needed fabricated before she headed to see River. The fabricator was only open during usual business hours which was slightly problematic for Rose, as she needed to be at Torchwood during that time. She knew that the moment she stepped out of the building something would go wrong and she would be needed. The rules of the universe it seemed. Rose chewed gently on her lower lip as she thought. It wouldn't take too long and as long as she kept away... She sighed. She'd have to time hop to Bad Wolf Creations. For an hour or so, there would be two Rose Tylers in London.
River and Rose worked on plans to modify Rose's Torchwood gun to meet the requirements for her first task back in her home universe. It would be a quick adaptation for her gun so mostly they just talked. Rose tried her best to help alleviate River's boredom but she knew she couldn't be there all the time. Both of them were confident that Rose could get to that world once she was back in her home universe but River was adamant that it would be too dangerous during the first task. She couldn't afford to be that unaware of her surroundings. Rose grumbled but agreed. She'd miss her friend too.
Rose was on edge the whole time she was dropping off the plans and the half hour back at Torchwood while another version of her was across town but it passed without incident and there were no reapers in the sky.
Rose quietly requisitioned the other parts she needed from the Torchwood tech storage. She slipped quietly into the computer codes and back dated the requests, spreading the timing out so it looked like many of them had been on hold for a while, before her blackout. She froze after she finished and double checked each one, making sure that she hadn't requested any before they actually arrived at Torchwood. She breathed a sigh of release when she finished, finding no inconsistencies. Most of the parts were small components salvaged from larger things and many had been at Torchwood for a long time. Which meant that they were sitting on dusty shelves deep in the archives of the tower. Rose would have to track them all down.
At the end of the day, Rose stayed in the building, heading to the labs instead of the exit. The Torchwood laboratories were extensive. Although Pete tried not to repeat the errors of the other Torchwood, a majority of the resources of the organization still went into alien tech. However, this version was both cautious about the things they played with and willing to use the discoveries to help the public as much as they could. Of course, some things were just too advanced to release just yet, but little things made their way into the average person's life. There were several large labs where tests were done and larger things examined, but there were also a plethora of small workrooms for the scientists to work on projects on their own or in small teams.
Rose found one of the rooms deep in the archives that was evidently little used. She changed the sign on the door, marking it as in use, and cleaned out the dust before setting off in search of her parts. The rumbling of her stomach interrupted her as she carried the last load of them back to the workroom. She looked carefully around the room and, once she was certain there were no cameras, hopped home.
The rest of the week passed as quietly as it could, working field ops at Torchwood. Rose's team ran a few ops that all went smoothly. Rose, out of the hearing of the other members of her team, took full advantage of the translation matrix on a few of them. Other times she was forced to use her gun, avoiding the new setting she added, to stun aliens bent on taking over. Once stunned and in custody, they were picked up by the Shadow Proclamation. Only once was she forced to kill. Her job was hard and she was forced to make hard decisions, but each time she had to kill, or order a kill, Rose felt she died a little inside. Travel with the Doctor made her leery of guns in general as much as she appreciated the need for them. She always gave enemies a chance though. Members of her team had long since learned not to question that. Still, Rose looked forward to the time when she was back with the Doctor and could leave her gun behind.
At lunchtime, she ignored the studying looks Mickey fixed on her, choosing instead to joke and laugh with her coworkers. Many of them had noticed the shift in Rose's attitude as well and often blinked in surprise when she grinned or laughed fully, having never seen that level of happiness from her in the year and a half she'd been there.
She spent three evenings that week in the workroom, determinedly soldering wires and fitting together the components of the cannon. Some of it had to wait until she could pick up the other pieces, but some she could do then. She also cut and shaped the outer metal casing and the internal structure that would hold each component where it needed to be. The progress was steady.
Her visits with River were more relaxed than the first two weeks. River helped as Rose discovered problems with the cannon, making the minor adjustments to the plans they'd drawn. But most of the time, they just spent the time together. River showed Rose through the extensive gardens surrounding the mansion. She'd designed and planted them along with Anita and Proper Dave. The three of them still tended to them. CAL gave them a sort of perpetual summer. In a world unbound by the usual laws, the weather didn't have to affect anything other than their comfort. Sometimes they'd have a week of snow, or the occasional rainstorm just for variety's sake, but mostly it was warm and sunny.
They hiked to the nearby river for a picnic. It was a good respite for Rose, she was able to ignore the pressures of her real life, and it was a highlight for River. Having Rose in her life was normal, though the frequency was unusual. Really though, some of River's earliest memories were of the blond woman.
Rose's team was on call for the weekend. For Rose, that meant that she could practice space hopping, but time was out, since she needed to be reachable at all times. She divided her day by level of boredom. She practiced hopping first to various places within the city until she got tired (and bored, and possibly dizzy, there's only so much spinning one can do) then hopped directly into the workroom in the labs at Torchwood Tower. She stayed there until lunch then practiced hopping again. She switched between the two several times and by the time she appeared behind a large shrub outside her parents' house, she'd made considerable progress with each.
On Monday afternoon, she had to cross her timeline again to pick up the parts from the fabricators. She was less uneasy the second time, since the first hadn't ended the world, she just had to be careful. It had to be done though, she left on Thursday for the Mursagi ball and wouldn't be back until sometime on Monday. River's one month deadline was starting to loom very close.
That evening as she worked on the cannon in her workroom, she stumbled across a problem after only an hour. The nth gamma wavelength capacitor she'd dug out of the bowels of the archive had a different wiring system than the one she and River included in their designs. Rose growled at it with frustration, realizing that they'd used a human design from several centuries further along in the plans rather than the alien one that Torchwood had. She needed to connect it to the new pieces before she could do anything else. The circuitry was similar and Rose was fairly sure she knew which wire she wanted, but if she was wrong... Then the first time she started the device it would, best case, short circuit, and worst, explode in a fireball and emit gamma radiation. There was no way around it, she had to check with River and it had to be right away.
She settled herself on the floor and slipped away.
"Director Tyler!" A man called as Pete walked through the lobby of Torchwood Tower, heading home for the day. He was one of the only people left, his final meeting had run late.
He turned to the voice and was beckoned over to the front desk by the security aide working there.
"Can I help you?" Pete asked, his voice tired but patient.
"It's about Captain Tyler, sir."
"Not again..." Pete mumbled, running a hand over his cropped and thinning hair. "Tell me." He said, louder.
The security guard, a man in his thirties with a name tag that read 'Steve' raised his eyebrows at Pete's initial reaction, but quickly returned to business. "Last Friday, I noticed something unusual with Agent Tyler's traffic in the building. I checked the cameras to see if I missed it, but I didn't. It felt like a pattern, things I'd noticed earlier in the week catching up. So I checked it for a few more days. Monday and Wednesday, the same thing happened, and again today."
"What happened, exactly?"
"Well, she entered the building in the morning, did the usual missions, lunch runs, etc. but she never left the building for the night. I think we have a potential security problem if she's leaving the building from another door that we don't know about."
Pete froze. "Show me." He said and followed the man back to the camera rooms.
"There, she's leaving her office, but she never comes into the lobby." Steve said, gesturing at the screen.
"But she definitely enters the elevator." Pete said, looking at a different camera feed. "Thank you, Steve, I'll take over from here if you want to go back to the desk. Call for me if she does turn up."
"Yes sir."
Pete settled into the chair and skimmed his hands over the keyboard. "Let's see what you're up to, eh Rose?" He said to himself as he pulled up the footage for the elevator bays of each floor. He cursed the Torchwood security for the lack of cameras in the elevator. The unfortunate truth was that field agents, security forces, and a few other types of personnel used the elevators to change clothes on the move so they limited the cameras to just outside the elevators. By the time he checked the footage for the thirtieth floor, he was nearly ready to give up the whole idea, but Rose's secret had been wearing at him for too long.
Pete groaned as he finally found her exit point, realizing he should have anticipated it. Rose was in the basement laboratories. So she was studying something... or repairing something. He twisted his wedding ring as he thought. Rose may not be telling anyone about this, but she would still (mostly) follow the rules. He opened the database of the Torchwood archives and ran a search for any item she had requisitioned. His guess was the dimension hoppers that stopped working after the battle with the Cybermen and Daleks. He nearly fell off his chair when the results came back. She'd placed holds on nearly two dozen items, mostly small component parts. He scanned over the list. The system was supposed to flag the science department head if someone placed more than three holds within a week. The dates on the requisitions were spread out over the past several months, far longer than Rose had been acting oddly. And, Pete thought, none of them would have caused her blackout.
"Oh..." He breathed. Rose had taken some computer science courses at university and Torchwood taught their field agents basic hacking techniques. The date stamping part of the computer systems was likely only lightly secured since it wasn't sensitive or valuable and it was part of a user submitted form.
He used the cameras to track Rose into one of the project workrooms adjacent to the archives. He still didn't know how Rose was getting out of the building, unless she just stayed so long that Steve didn't check that far on the tapes and it switched to the night guards at the front desk. In any case, it was time to check on his daughter. He glanced at his watch then pulled out his phone.
"Jacks? I've been held up by something at work, not sure how long it'll take, so don't wait on me."
"Is there something big happening?" His wife asked.
"I don't think so, just something I have to look into. I'll see you later, love you."
"I love you too, hurry home."
"Will do."
"Did you get it sorted, sir?" Steve asked as Pete walked back into the lobby, heading for the elevators.
"I believe so, thank you for your help."
"Anytime, sir."
As he delved further into the laboratories, Pete remembered why he didn't often go all the way down there. The inventory room was large, well lit, and open, but further in things changed. It was a fairly new building but the archives stretched underground into old tunnels. The area with Rose's workroom was darker with old, brick walls and a feeling of dust in the air. Pete didn't remember exactly which room Rose was using so he had to peer into a few of them before he found her.
The large workbench, which dominated the far wall, was scattered with tools and wires. A focused work light illuminated the object in the middle of the table. The metal casing was open, the device still in pieces, but Pete could see it was the shape of a rugby ball, several times larger. He studied it from the doorway briefly before he caught sight of his daughter sitting on the floor, her eyes shut.
"Rose, Rose." He called as he shook her shoulders gently. Her body was limp. She'd been sitting supported by the wall and he was careful to position her back that way. He stepped back, uncertain. He should, he knew, take her up to medical and have them give her whatever it was that woke her the last time, but he hesitated. Studiously, he examined her. Her breathing was regular, her color fine, and her heart rate normal. And there was something about the way she was sitting... Of course, it was standard meditative position. Which meant that whatever was going on, there was a chance that it was intentional. He made his decision. He'd give her half an hour. After that, she'd go to medical. He sat in the chair at the workbench. He pulled out his phone and launched his favorite game.
