Notes: I am so sorry for the long delay on this chapter. I got the worst case of writer's block over it. But now that I'm past this episode, my brain is on fire! I promise that the next one won't be too far away.
Chapter 10 - The Almost People
Everyone in the room watched in confusion as the Ganger Doctor suddenly convulsed in pain and Rose grabbed her head as she felt his suffering as well.
"Ah! What's happening? I wonder if we'll get back. Yes, one day," he rambled, his voice changing occasionally to sound like one of his previous regenerations. "I've reversed the polarity of the neutron flow. Would you like a jelly baby?"
"The Flesh is struggling to cope with our past regenerations. Hold on. Rose, what's the matter, love?" the Doctor explained.
"I can feel it. All of it, oh Doctor!" Rose moaned. Her eyes were clenched shut as she leaned heavily on the Doctor next to her.
"Why? Why? Why?" the Ganger Doctor questioned.
"Why what?" the other Doctor asked, struggling to keep his wife upright.
"Hello, I'm the Doctor. No, let it go, we've moved on," the Ganger Doctor continued as if he couldn't hear anything else. "Need to control it. Can't keep hurting Rose," he insisted through clenched teeth.
"Hold on, you can stabilize," the Doctor assured him.
"Jelly baby... No! Adric!" Rose shouted in agony.
"I've reversed the jelly baby of the neutron flow. Would you like a Doctor? Doctor, I'm... I'm the... I can't," the Ganger Doctor stuttered.
"Rose? Doctor? Listen, hold on, hold on. Come here," the Doctor insisted and pulled the other next to Rose so that he might be able to help them both telepathically.
He could hear Amy and the others trying to get his attention on the other side of the room. Something about the other Gangers that were trying to break through the door, but he couldn't focus on that at the moment. The Ganger Doctor seemed to calm down after a moment and settled into the appearance of the Doctor properly. Both of them grasped Rose's upper arms to steady her as the telepathic onslaught faded away.
"Are you alright, love? I'm so sorry about that," the Ganger Doctor asked, his eyes pleading for her forgiveness.
"Yeah, I'm alright. I can feel both of you!" Rose gasped as she looked back and forth between them.
"Well, I suppose that's proof enough that he's me. I didn't think it would copy down to the detail of our bond, that's interesting," the Doctor commented.
"What you mean you can feel him?" Buzzer questioned.
"His race is telepathic and he's my husband. We have a connection, up here," she told him as she tapped her temple. "And now, I can feel both of them, exactly the same."
"That has potential," the Ganger Doctor flirted with Rose. She hummed her agreement and the other Doctor looked mortified between them.
"Do we have time for this?" the Doctor asked.
"No! We don't," Amy insisted, gesturing toward the door that was apparently being melted with acid and battered upon by the Gangers on the other side.
"Right, so, what's the plan?" the Ganger Doctor asked when he finally pulled his gaze away from Rose.
"Save them all, humans and Gangers," the Doctor replied.
"Tall order. Sounds wonderful," the Ganger Doctor beamed.
"Is that what you were thinking? It's just so inspiring to hear me say it," the Doctor gushed happily.
"I know," the other responded.
"Tell you what I'm thinking," Rose interrupted and sent them both a rather illicit mental image involving herself with both of them together and both of their faces went slack for a moment.
"That's enough, you three! Come on!" Amy chastised.
"Breathe!" the two Doctors told Amy together.
"What?" Amy asked.
"We have to get you off this island, and the Gangers too," the Doctor told everyone.
"Sorry, would you like a memo from the last meeting? They are trying to kill us!" Cleaves argued.
"They're scared after you killed one of them. How would YOU react? Oh, just like the other one because she's the same as you," Rose insisted.
"Doctor, we're trapped in here," Amy interrupted, bringing their attention back to the most pressing matter at hand.
"Right, see, I don't think so. The Flesh Bowl is fed by cabling from above," the Doctor responded.
"But where are the earthing conduits?" the Ganger Doctor added.
"All this piping must go down into a tunnel or a shaft or something, yes? With us?" the Doctor continued and pulled a section of metal grating off of the wall. It seemed large enough for them to fit through one at a time. "Yowza. An escape route," he added.
"Yowza? Really?" Rose questioned, wrinkling her nose.
The two Doctors argued a bit over which words were cool or not and which of them would get to be below Rose as she was descending. The Doctor was the last to enter to shaft that led downward since he needed to sonic the grating shut behind them just as the Gangers managed to break into the chapel.
When they reached the bottom, they found that the acid was dissolving the stones of the building and creating a dangerous gas. Cleaves led them up to the evacuation tower so that they could get above it as well as try to restore power and contact the mainland.
The Doctors got to work immediately, one of them borrowing Rose's sonic so that they could work faster.
"Can you really get the power back?" Cleaves questioned doubtfully.
"Of course they can," Rose replied confidently and both of them popped up from behind the console.
"Never doubting us, that's our Rose," one of them beamed. It was impossible to tell which was which now.
"There's always some power floating around," the other told Cleaves.
"Sticking to the wires, like bits of lint," he concluded.
"Can you two stop finishing each other's..." Amy began.
"Sentences? No probs," the Doctor interrupted with a smile.
"No, hang on. You said that the TARDIS was stuck in acid, so won't she be damaged?" Amy asked worriedly.
"Oh, she's a tough old girl. Don't worry Amy, if anything happens to her, it would hurt me as well. If they aren't worried, then I'm sure she'll be just fine," Rose assured her.
"Tough, old, Sexy," one of the Doctors agreed.
"Tough, dependable, Sexy," the other added.
"And the gift that she's given us with her connection to Rose," the first said, staring at his wife like she was a goddess.
"Come on, ok. How can you both be real?" Amy demanded.
"Well, because we are. I'm the Doctor," one of them told her.
"Yeah, and so am I. We both contain the knowledge of over nine hundred years of memory and experience," the other added.
"We both wear the same bow tie, which is cool," the first insisted as he adjusted said bow tie.
"Because bow ties are..."
"And always will be."
"But how did the Flesh read you? Because you weren't linked up to it," Amy argued.
"Amy, don't you remember? When he was scanning it, he said that it reached out to him, like it was scanning him as well," Rose reminded her.
"Exactly, and a new, genuine Doctor was created," the Doctor concluded.
"Ta-da!" the other added as he held out his arms dramatically.
"No getting away from it. One of you was here first," Amy insisted.
"Listen, Amy. It doesn't matter. You know that I have a telepathic link with my husband. I can feel both of those men equally. And their minds feel exactly the same to me. One isn't stronger or weaker or more or less real. What is it that makes us who we are other than our minds?" Rose told her emphatically as she moved to take a hand of each of the Doctors.
"You're brilliant, my love," the Doctor told Rose as he nuzzled her cheek with his nose.
"Absolutely, spectacularly brilliant, my shining star," the other agreed and did the same on the other side.
"Ooh, I like that! We did say that we were going to think up a pet name for you after all that business with Sexy, didn't we? And now we've got two minds on the job. Two heads are better than one, after all," the Doctor rambled as the two of them got back to work on restoring power to the computer systems.
The computer screens all sprang to life suddenly and one of the Doctor's shouted, "Yes! Communication a go-go."
Cleaves ran to the main computer station and started scanning for the other humans.
"Find Rory! Show me the scanning tracking screen. Come on, Rory, let's be having you," Amy demanded, looking over the woman's shoulder.
"There's no sign of him anywhere," Cleaves told her.
"Come on. Come on, baby, show yourself," Amy mumbled as she continued staring at the scanner screen.
Cleaves was flicking switches as she began to activate the radio that would contact the mainland. She almost had it up and running when one of the Doctor's cried out suddenly and grasped his head.
"What is it, Doctor? What's wrong?" Rose asked him worriedly.
"I can feel them. Why? Why? It's all the eyes say. I can feel them as they work each day, knowing the time was coming for them to be thrown away again. Not again, please! And then they are destroyed and they feel death. All they can say is, why?" the Ganger Doctor moaned in despair.
"Oh my god! They remember dying. Every single time, they remember being tossed aside like garbage," Rose cried and hugged the newest version of her husband.
"You're connected to the Flesh," the other Doctor realized.
"He is Flesh, Doctor," Amy responded impatiently.
"Can we use that connection? Could we contact them or something?" Rose wondered, looking up at the other Doctor.
"Perhaps. Telepathically, they would not only hear the words, but also feel our intentions. They would realize that we truly mean them no harm, they would feel it," the Doctor suggested.
"I'm not here to set up a tea party with the enemy. I'm contacting the mainland," Cleaves argued.
"And I'm not here to start a war!" the Doctor shouted and quickly moved to pull one of the wires from the back of the computer station, effectively silencing the radio again.
"What the hell are you doing?" Jimmy shouted angrily.
"Saving everyone on this island," he replied and returned to the side of the Ganger Doctor and Rose.
"I think, if the three of us work together, we can contact them. Direct them to where the TARDIS should come through into the tunnels. If we all meet up there, we can get out of here safely," the Ganger Doctor planned.
"Sounds good to me, love. Now, what about Rory and Jennifer? They won't hear this little conference call and we need to get them out of here too," Rose prompted.
"If we can get them all on board with this plan, they might help us find them on the way. If not, we might be able to use the TARDIS scanners more effectively to search for them once we get there," the other Doctor suggested.
"Alright, let's get on with this then, before anyone else gets hurt," the Ganger Doctor insisted and the three of them touched each other's temples as they tried to reach the Gangers telepathically.
In the honesty of mental contact, they managed to convince almost all of the other Gangers to join them peacefully in the tunnels. They could tell though that Jennifer's Ganger was not so happy with the plan. They were sure that she would try to cause trouble for them, but went ahead with the plan anyway and would deal with that as it came.
The group was extremely careful as they made their way down to the tunnel where the Doctor had calculated that the TARDIS would fall through from the ground above. The Gangers met them there, anxious to get away from the painful memories of their repeated deaths in this place.
"Amy!" Rory shouted suddenly and they all turned to see Jennifer's Ganger holding him threateningly around the neck. Her face had the white and slightly misshapen look of the gangers while they were forming.
"Leaving so soon?" she asked with a frightening grin.
"Rory!" Amy cried.
"This factory is going to explode. I'll take all of you with me," she told them.
"Where's Jennifer?" the Doctor asked her.
"I am Jennifer," she replied angrily.
"Yes, Jennifer, we know that. But where is the other Jennifer?" the Ganger Doctor responded.
"I killed her. We don't need the humans. We can live on our own. Take revenge on humanity for their torture of us. I can connect to the rest of the Flesh on the planet, just like you contacted us. Even if I don't survive this, they will know and they'll rise up against them," Ganger Jennifer insisted confidently.
"You don't have to do this, Jennifer. Just let Rory go. You can come with us and we can work things out to help everyone," the Ganger Doctor explained as he approached her with his hands raised.
"I am stronger now. We are stronger than them. We don't need the humans to survive," she argued and squeezed Rory's throat more tightly.
Feeling that time was running short before her threatened explosion would take out the whole building, the Ganger Doctor withdrew Rose's sonic from his pocket quickly and used the setting that he hoped would disrupt the Flesh temporarily. Ganger Jennifer flinched as her arm reverted to liquid for a moment and Rory wrestled himself free of her and ran toward the TARDIS. Amy caught him in her arms and they all backed toward the time ship.
Jennifer lunged at the Ganger Doctor and knocked Rose's sonic from his arms as she wrapped rubbery, stretching arms around him in a vice-like grip.
"Doctor!" Rose cried tearfully as she saw what she knew would end up with sacrifice.
"You all need to leave now, before this place explodes," he shouted back to them.
"I can't leave you," Rose sobbed, but was held back by the original Doctor who looked sadly at his counterpart.
"You have to, love. You've still got me, right there," he insisted with a nod to the Doctor holding her tightly.
"You'll not get away!" Jennifer shouted and began to run toward the ship at lightning speed. It was clear that she meant to keep them all from escaping before the explosion, but the Doctor pushed everyone through the doors and shut them tightly before she could reach them.
The Doctor flew the TARDIS back to the mainland and left the humans and gangers at company headquarters where things would be explained, debated, and agreements could be reached.
When the Doctor, Rose, Amy and Rory returned to the TARDIS, Rose sat on the jump seat and cried quietly. Amy sat next to her sympathetically and asked, "Are you ok?"
Rose nodded quietly. Amy suddenly clutched at her stomach and gasped.
"I said breathe, Pond. Remember? Well, breathe!" the Doctor told her.
"Why?" she asked and doubled over in pain.
"Whoa!" Rory shouted and ran to her side supportively. "What's wrong with her?"
"Contractions. It'll be alright, Amy. Just keep breathing, yeah?" Rose replied.
"Contractions?" Rory asked, disbelieving.
"She's going into labour," the Doctor responded simply.
"Did he say? No. No, no. Of course he didn't. Rory, I don't like this. Ow!" Amy gasped.
"It's true, Amy, just please try to breathe deeply, it'll help with the pain," Rose insisted. It was a long time ago that she had gone through labour, but she did it without any drugs and knew that Amy was strong enough to get through this.
"You're going to have to start explaining some of this to me, Doctor," Rory demanded.
"What, the birds and the bees? She's having a baby. I needed to see the Flesh in its early days. That's why I scanned it. That's why we were here in the first place. We were going to drop you off for fish and chips first, but things happened and there was stuff and shenanigans. Beautiful word, shenanigans," the Doctor rambled.
"It hurts," Amy groaned.
"I know, sweetheart, but you can do this. Just keep breathing," Rose told her and modelled the panting breaths that helped her the most during painful contractions.
"I needed enough information to block the signal to the Flesh," the Doctor explained.
"What signal?" Amy shouted.
"The signal to you," he told her.
"Doctor? Doctor!" Amy protested as he raised his sonic screwdriver in her direction.
"Stand away from her Rose, Rory," he instructed.
Rose moved, but Rory tried to actually get in front of her. "Why? No and why?" he questioned.
"Given what we've learned, I'll be as humane as I can, but I need to do this and you need to stand away!" the Doctor insisted and Rose pulled Rory aside as they all looked at Amy. She was shaking terribly and tears were running down her cheeks.
"No. No, Doctor, Rose, I'm frightened. I'm properly, properly scared," Amy sobbed, reaching toward them.
"Oh, Amy. We'll find you," Rose assured her.
"Don't be scared. Hold on. We're coming for you. I swear it. Whatever happens, however hard, however far, we will find you," the Doctor told her.
"I'm right here," Amy insisted.
"No, you're not. You haven't been for a long, long time," he informed her and buzzed his sonic in her direction. She immediately dissolved into white liquid on the floor of the TARDIS and Rory fell to his knees in agony.
Rose pulled out her mobile and called her son. "Jamie, we're going to need your help."