They stood at bay in the Zhaleen control room. Both pairs of Doctor and companions surrounded on all sides by silver and red Zhaleen.
The silver Zhaleen stood back, the red Zhaleen crowded forward in a circle.
The two Tardises stood in the corner of the control room, they'd been transferred up here from the loading bay, as the bait for the trap to capture the Doctors. The Doctors had understood and decided to spring the trap. Naturally, sneaking in hadn't worked.
"Doctor, " Rose said as the circle of red Zhaleen crowded closer. "If they catch you this time, they might kill you."
"I certainly seem to have annoyed them," he agreed.
Charley and her Doctor attempted to flank the Zhaleen on their side and reach their Tardis, but they were cut off.
The red Zhaleen herded them back to the center of the room. They stood there in a row, the Doctors in the center, Charley and Rose at each end.
A silver Zhaleen stepped forward, Rose thought it might be the first one they'd met in the Tardis.
"Doctor. We have tried to be reasonable with you. We have taken into account the physical and mental needs of your companions, we have held you, unharmed, as we awaited your extradition."
"Unharmed!" Rose yelped. The Doctor squeezed her hand and she clamped her mouth shut, glaring.
"And in return you have immobilized myself and my crew, caused damage and no end of disruption to my ship, and continue to sublux your timelines." He gestured at the two of them. "And to top it off, your own people have refused to accept responsibility for you."
"Thank Rassilon for that," Charley's Doctor muttered under his breath. Charley grinned.
"You have left us with no other alternative but to terminate one of your timestreams, to repair the damage."
"What?!" Rose exclaimed.
The Doctor tensed beside her. She saw Charley and her Doctor shift forward onto the balls of their feet, prepared for action.
"You will be drained of your Artron energy until only one of your timestreams remains. We will do what we can to ensure the survival of the surviving companion."
"Oh, I don't like the sound of that," Charley said.
The silver Zhaleen waved the metallic red ones forward. The Zhaleen closed in. One lunged forward and grabbed Charley's Doctor by the free arm. The Doctor screamed and arched back, Charley yanked back with all her might on her bound arm and jumped up and kicked the Zhaleen in the chest with both feet.
The Zhaleen fell backwards into his companions with a clack, staggering them. Charley fell, yanked down by the Doctor's weight on her arm. But then, as abruptly, was hauled upward by him.
Rose and her Doctor broke for the gap in the circle, toward the Tardises, Charley and her Doctor right behind.
The Zhaleen had finally had enough. With a frustrated roar, all the Zhaleen burst toward them, red Zhaleen and silver.
"Rose!"
"Charley!"
"Clasp hands!" both Doctors yelled, spinning in place to bring their companions around.
Charley and Rose grimaced at each other in confusion, but swung and slammed their hands together, gripping tight.
A huge pulse of time exploded out of their clasped hands. The Zhaleen screamed and fell in a wave, their clear glass bodies turning murky black as they collapsed.
Something invisible tightened, and broke, with a resounding backlash, like braided rubber cords snapping under pressure. Rose and Charley, at the eye of the storm, stood stock still, frozen in shock, hands still clasped in a buddy salute.
"What just happened?" Charley asked.
"Yeah?" Rose looked around at the drifts of still, blackened Zhaleen, their metallic core bodies barely gleaming through their blackened glass surfaces. "Did we do that?"
Both Doctors beamed at their respective companions.
"Are they dead?" Rose asked uneasily. None of the Zhaleen seemed to be breathing. But then, she couldn't remember noticing if they ever had. These hadn't been bad guys, not the monsters she was used to fighting. She didn't think she wanted to be responsible for their deaths. Even if they had been about to "undo" her.
"Don't worry, Rose." Her Doctor chucked her lightly on the nose, still grinning. "They aren't dead. Just shocked, their insulation layer took the worst of it. Here, let's get out of these things." He pulled the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket and set to work on the armbands. She could already hear the other Doctor's sonic screwdriver at work behind her.
The Doctor quickly unzipped the cartilage bands and started to skin them off. "I... Wait!" Rose said. "What about that trans temporal thing?" she waved her hand in the air.
He finished removing his armband. "That pulse you sent out knocked out the environmental controls, we're running on a single timeline in here now." He skinned off her stiff armband, the cut edge pinching, and she rubbed at her scraped, sweaty arm. He tossed the armbands away and the sound was echoed by the other pair of armbands following it.
"Now." He clapped his hands and strode toward the Zhaleen's alien control banks. The other Doctor just ahead of him.
They plunged their hands into the glassy surface covering the controls. They tweaked and plinked and stretched and stroked the array of multicolored metal coils that made up the controls inside.
Rose left him to it and trotted over to the door, avoiding the piles of bodies, and carefully leaned out to check for Zhaleen reinforcements.
She felt a presence at her back and turned to find Charley behind her, checking the other way. Apparently all the Doctor's friends learned the same lessons. Rose grinned.
"They're all frozen," Charley said in surprise, seeing the motionless Zhaleen in the corridor, locked in place.
"Yeah. something like that happened in the Tardis. Change their type of time on them and they can't move."
Charley grinned and shrugged. "So long as we can. Much as I love the Doctor, he can be tiring to be chained up to." She rubbed her arm reminiscently.
Rose stared at her. "You love the Doctor?" She could feel jealousy creeping in.
"Yes. Why? Don't you?"
Put like that there wasn't a lot she could say.
She suddenly grinned, feeling a weight fall off her shoulders. It was okay to love the Doctor. "Well, he can be a git."
Charley shrugged. "Oh, that's just him." Her Doctor motioned to her from where he was elbows deep in the alien controls. Rose watched as Charley trotted over and, following instructions, stuck her own hands into the alien machinery.
Rose couldn't hold it against Charley that she loved the Doctor. The man needed to be loved.
Her eyes were drawn to her Doctor, as he sauntered up to her, his hands in his pockets. Eyeing her warily for her reaction.
"So what about Sam, then?"
"Hm?" his eyebrows flew up beneath his hairline.
Rose nodded over to where the other Doctor and Charley were still working on the controls.
"You said you kept slipping between Charley's timeline and Sam's. So, is he waiting for you somewhere?"
"Sam's a she," he corrected. "No. that pulse you sent out untangled our timestreams. They've stabilized. Sam and I should be still in our own timestream. The Zhaleen may have been intending to arrest them too, but they hadn't yet."
"So why are they still here? Or us? Shouldn't one of us have faded out when things straightened out? And how does that work anyway? All we did was grab hands."
Rose took an abrupt step back. "And is it my imagination, or is their glass starting to clear up?" Rose nodded down at the Zhaleen piled around them. The once-black glass had lightened to a smoky color, allowing their metal bodies to be seen.
"The shock is starting to wear off." He raised his voice and yelled at his other self and Charley, "We've got to go!"
The other Doctor raised a hand in acknowledgment and made one last adjustment. "There. Transtemporal environment systems will be restored in 15 seconds. Into the Tardises!" He hustled Charley ahead of him, and all four of them ran for the two Tardises parked in the corner.
Suddenly a wind kicked up, and a loud, familiar groaning sounded.
"What now?" Charley yelled over the tumult.
"I thought you said your other self and Sam were still in their own timestream?" Rose protested.
"They should be," her Doctor said. "Although, I always did have a ..."
A third Tardis materialized in front of them with a thud.
The door opened and a tall lanky man in a brown suit stepped out. "Here you are, at last! Do you have any idea how hard it is to track one of these Zhaleen ships? Especially when you don't know they're involved in the first place?"
"Eight seconds!" yelled Charley's Doctor.
"Fast return switch!" Rose's Doctor yelled.
"Oh, right!" The lanky Doctor ducked back into his Tardis and disappeared as both Doctors and the girls peeled around it and slammed into their own Tardises. They dematerialized.
The Zhaleen started to wake up.
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