- Chapter ten -
New hope
During the flight to the Torchwood Tower, the Doctor gave Clara a short explanation of who John was. A human biological meta-crisis, as he said with his technical words and terms, human clone, as Clara called it.
The whole thing creeped her out a bit, but she soon realized that they were not the same person. The Doctor had lived and experienced two centuries that John hadn't, and John had lived five years the Doctor hadn't. Top of that, John was half human – and a bit affected by someone called Donna, apperently – and the Doctor had regenerated. They were like brothers, who shared pretty much the same childhood memories, but nothing more. They may have been the very same once, but not anymore, she knew that much.
The TARDIS had landed in Rose's office, John claimed as they stepped outside. With a hurt look on his face he walked up to the desk and picked up a photo, picturing the two of them.
The Doctor glanced at him, then straigthened his back and started to scan the area with his screwdriver.
Oh, he really must have loved her, Clara thought as she leaned against the TARDIS wall. He probably still did. The hurt and guilty look hadn't left his eyes since they'd landed in the Tyler mansion. He wore it like a mask, hiding it with false smiles and energetic shoutouts. But John didn't seem so very happy either. Of course, he'd lost the woman he loved and the only man who could save her, was also a man she loved. If they found her, the Doctor could take her away from him again. That couldn't be very nice to know.
But this Rose, she wouldn't just leave him now, would she? Even if she saw how much the Doctor loved her..? Tilting her head, Clara searched for a wedding ring on Johns finger, but couldn't find any. That was good news for the Doctor, right?
"Sooo", she started by dragging out the o. "You and Rose, 'you married?" She walked over to John and watched the photos of them holding hands and smiling, but no wedding ring. Hiding a smirk, she glanced back at the Doctor – who pretended to be very busy scanning the room.
"Not married", John muttered.
"Engaged?"
"... No." He waited before he answered, as if he tried to come up with a better way to describe it. Clara nodded and pretended to absently go through Rose's pens. This John seemed to be an alright fella, but he seemed so... Angry? Was that the right word to describe it? Anyway, she wasn't going to investigate his private life, but the Doctor loved Rose as well. She wanted him to know that he at least had a shot with her.
"So, you're just a couple then?" She said and turned to John, mentally putting him against a wall. His eyes flickered nervously as he did his best not to look up at her.
"We... Um..." He cleared his throat. "Is this really of importance right now?" He spun around to face the Doctor. "Found anything yet? Maybe there's other traces in my and Rose's apartment?"
Oh, he so said that just to make the Doctor feel inferior. Clara crossed her arms. Darn. Just as she thought that she had him. But, she added. People could share an apartment without being a couple, and John had only confirmed the first. Yeah, they shared an apartment, but that was just like when they had shared the TARDIS.
"Six months and any trace of energy or technology are pretty much gone", the Doctor muttered as he walked towards them, still looking at his sonic screwdriver as if something would magically show up.
"I know", John said and gave him a we-used-to-be-the-same-duh-look. At least Clara took it that way.
"Although..." the Doctor said and changed some settings. "Something is stronger around the desk."
"What is stronger?" Clara asked and joined him in a leap around the table.
He scratched his neck and put the screwdriver in his jacket pocket.
"Energy", he said in a low voice. "Time energy, to be more precise. Incredibly weak though, I had to turn it up to three hundred thousand, but it doesn't make any sense..." He leaned over the desk and gently let his finger follow some markings that somehow didn't seem to fit in. Why would a desk this expensive, standing in a fancy office, have that many and deep markings as if someone had banged something to it?
"What doesn't make sense?" Clara asked and let her own finger slide over a marking.
"The time energy", the Doctor said suddenly, very loud, and ran back to the TARDIS. "Not many species have the technology or ability to travel in time, even fewer kidnap young women."
Clara ran behind him but stopped in the door. Grinning, she watched him run around in the machine, pressing some buttons and looking for something. This was the Doctor she knew and prefered.
"So, what kind of alien are we dealing with?" she asked and leaned against the doorframe. "The time lords greatest enemies who kidnap blonde women and sends them somewhere else in time?"
"What? No!" He stopped and frowned at her. "That's just stupid. No." He disappeared under the console and pulled out something with a huge grin. "No, this is even stranger; the technology appears to be human.
"Human?" Clara repeated surprised. "What's so weird about it being human?"
"Everything!" He cried as he passed her in the doorway. "Why would humans kidnap humans using time energy?"
Clara opened her mouth to tell him that humans pretty much kidnapped humans every day, maybe not by using time energy, but still. There were a lot of sick minds out there. But then John stepped forward.
"It was six months ago", he said with tired voice. "The time energy may have gotten mixed with all the human technology that is here. We're at Torchwood, they got everything from the 19th century to the 190th. More, even."
The Doctor stopped to give him a small grin. "Exactly. If you were a kidnapper who needed advanced technology, were would be a better place to come than to Torchwood?"
"What is that?" Clara asked and nodded to what he was holding in his hands. It looked like a detector of some sort, with antennas and everything.
"Oh, this", the Doctor said and his grin grew bigger. "This is a little someting I picked up in the 71th century Earth. Usually, I don't take things with me – why would I, I got my sonic screwdriver! – but this little machine, was a real beauty." He put it down on the desk. "You see, by putting a DNA-sample right here–" He pointed at a vitro of glass. "– it will send out an algero-electrical pulse, searching for more of the DNA, but only in great amount, meaning, only the person."
"Algero-electrical?" Clara repeated dumbly.
"Yeah, electrical but with... Uh, that's all in your future, never mind." He was speaking a hundred kilometers per hour. "Anyway, if we put something of Rose's here, like a hair, it will find her."
"But, Doctor..." Clara didn't want to ruin his happiness, but still. "You said there were traces of time energy. What if she's a hundred years back in time? Or two hundred into the future?"
He held up a cable. "I'll connect it to the TARDIS, sonic it so it can take the pressure, and then it will search through all of time and space." He grinned. "But don't worry, it wont find her of every second she have spent here, because if we take a hair from the day she disappeared, it will only search for her from that day and forth." His smile fell slowly. "Well. Uh. That's not really– Uh. Never mind, we'll find her!"
Even John was starting to let a grin spread across his face. Clara laughed and clapped her hands. Then she stiffend.
"But, how great is it's range? I mean, I know we're dealing with human tech but it may be stolen? She could be on Earth or she could be at–... at the Rings of Akhenaten!" she picked the first alien place that came up in her mind.
"Uh." The Doctor lifted it up and checked something underneeth. "It got a range of... Pretty much the size of London..." Then he soniced it, and after some sparkles and burning sounds, he laughed in triumph. "But now it cover's the entire universe. Well. The known part, anyway. Well. The part she should be in. Well–"
"Rambling", John reminded him shortly. "Let's find her."
"That's just... Impossible." Clara said slowly. But then again, wasn't travel in time and space as well? The thing about being with the Doctor was that things just stopped being impossible.
"Well, you're my lucky charm", he grinned and then ran to connect the cables between the detector and the TARDIS. The room that just a few minutes ago had felt so silent and sad, was now bursting of hope.
When everything worked the way it was supposed to, ish, the Doctor pushed a final button on the TARDIS console and ran out to John and Clara.
John had found a brush Rose had kept in her drawer and taken a hair, just hoping it was something from the day she disappeared. With pounding hearts and held breaths, they stood around the detector – who had a much fancier name, but Clara had already forgotten it – and John held up the hair. Slowly, he put in the vitro, watched as a clear liquid reached up and corroded it.
The machine started to beap, sending a signal to the TARDIS and the trio ran in to the spaceship. Smiling, they looked at the monitor as it started to show the location of Rose Tyler.
Clara giggled and turned to the Doctor, expecting him to laugh with her, but he just stared at the screen. John too.
"What?" she said and felt the joy leaving her very quickly. "What is it?"
"That doesn't make any sense", the Doctor said, a bit irritated.
"What?"
John covered his face with his hands, making Clara real worried.
"What is it, Doctor!?"
"That ship", he said quietly. "The strongest signal leads us to that ship. A ship in orbit above the Earth."
"So?"
"Well, the strongest signal means where she've spent most time, so to speak, and that's on that ship", he said. "Seventy-five years, to be exact. The ship has been in orbit above the Earth for seventy-five years – and she's always been on it."
A/N: Hallu. Sorry about the ve-hery lazy update, but my computer kind of broke down (in the middle of nowhere!). No. But seriously. It just went kapouff and the other one, well, it doesn't recognize english as a language so I'm terribly sorry if there's any typos of things like that – but I think I got it right.
Next time, you wont have to wait as long. I'm almost done with the story now, you see, but you have atleast fifteen chapters left. Wehey. Rose will be in the next chapter, and it will be confusing BIG TIME but you'll finally kind of understand what's going on. Well...
Sorry for the lack of Ten in John by the way, and sorry for the fact that he's really annoying. I didn't intend to write him like that, it just happened, and now I kind of can't let it go.
ONE LAST THING THOUGH, would you, my lovely readers, like this story to evolve around 11/Rose or John/Rose? Or maybe Clara/Rose, haha? Or none of them. I'd like to see what you want to get out of this story, even though I already have a plan. Well. Kind of. Well. Not really, let's just see what happens.