A/N: I'm back! Finally, another chapter. I had over two-thirds of this done when I posted the last chapter, but life got it the way. I've got a few original works that I've been focused on lately, so this just kind of fell off to the side.
So, just as a warning, John kills someone in a moment of insanity. Also, there's a brief mention of dub-con.
Enjoy!
disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.
Chapter Ten
John was doing his bloody best to ignore the young man who was giving the day's report. A German village had been attacked, thirteen dead, eighteen missing. America was building a space fighter. China was producing nuclear weapons. Earth was at war. John didn't need to hear the details. They just added to the weight on his shoulders that made him feel like he was going to suffocate.
It had been six months since the Sycorax ambassador's visit to earth. Six months since John had chosen Rose over the earth. Six months since the UN was razed to the ground. Six months since the world went to hell.
The week after John sent away the Sycorax ambassador had been nerve-wracking. John had barely slept. Without Leticia there forcing him to eat and take the occasional nap, he thought he might have gone mad, waiting to see what the Sycorax would do.
John got his answer at the end of that hellish week when the Sycorax dropped a bomb on the headquarters of the United Nations.
John hadn't meant to take charge. He never cared much for power. The power he'd had back then had nearly been too much as it was. But everyone else had been panicking, and the world had been on the brink of unraveling. John had done the only thing he could do. He'd stepped up and taken the lead. It had been his fault this had happened. It was his responsibility to fix it.
Now, six months later, John practically ruled the earth alone. The humans of this universe had never been involved in war on this scale before, but John had – well, he remembered it, anyway. The world had turned to John. No, they had turned to the Doctor, but John had been the closest they could get.
John had taught the world to defend itself. He kept the Sycorax at bay, stopped the warrior race from crushing the world. He knew they couldn't win, though. They had too few resources, and too little experience. Sooner or later, the aliens would grind down their defenses. One day, earth would be too tired to fight back.
John had a plan, of course. A very Doctor-ish plan, with extremely low odds of success and no escape but to run should it fail. It was exactly the kind of plan the Doctor would have come up with. Except for the killing part, of course.
John's plan was simple. He would use the new TARDIS he was growing to sneak into where the Sycorax leaders were. Then he would assassinate them all. Simple.
John didn't want to resort to killing, but he had no choice. This universe's Torchwood didn't have the memory-erasing retcon that Jack's Torchwood had. John suspected Jack's Torchwood only retcon because of Jack's Time Agency knowledge. John had no clue where he would find the Jack Harkness of this universe, or even if he existed. So John was going to assassinate all the leaders of the Sycorax.
Besides being immoral, there was only one real flaw in the plan. The new TARDIS wasn't ready. Thanks to Donna, the new TARDIS was growing extraordinarily faster than in would naturally take. But at the normal rate, it took hundreds of years before a TARDIS was even capable of traveling. The growth process could only be accelerated so much. It took time. John would have to wait at least another year before he could put his plan into action.
But in the mean time, the people John had been burdened with the privilege to lead were being slaughtered.
John tried to figure out how to win this war, but his desperate, mad, assassination plan seemed to be the only chance at victory.
The young man continued the report. There was a small town in Brazil that had also been attacked today. Unlike the German village, there had been no survivors.
John's hand drifted to his gun. He'd had to use it to silence people more times than he cared to remember. But a shot fired at the sky was quite effective in shocking people into silence, which was often the only way to shut anyone up these days.
John didn't want the man to keep talking. People were dying. John knew that all too well. People died all the time, but these deaths were his fault because he had brought on this war. He knew that. He didn't need to be reminded. He already knew. He already bloody knew. He didn't need this young man to tell him something he already knew. He needed this young man to shut up. He needed this young man to shut the hell up. The man had to shut up! Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP – !
Bang!
The young man shut up. He stared at John in shock. Then his knees gave out and he fell over. Blood poured out of the hole in his chest where his heart had been.
For a moment all John could do was stare. Then he shifted his eyes to his hand that held the still smoking gun.
John remembered the sick sense of self-loathing the Doctor had felt whenever he had been forced to kill. John remembered those feelings as if they had been his own.
But John also remembered the first moments of his own life. He remembered committing his own genocide of the Daleks and feeling only grim determination. He had felt no remorse then.
He felt no remorse now, either. He only felt sweet relief at finally having a few moment of quiet for the first time in days. Even alone, the horrible voices of doubt and fear had plagued John's every waking moment since this war began.
But now, for the first time in months, even those cruel voices were blissfully silent. For a few precious moments, all that existed was John and the body on the floor. The body that was still bleeding as it stared up at the ceiling with glassy, empty eyes.
Oh hell. Oh hell. Oh bloody fucking hell.
John tossed the gun aside in horror as he realized what he had done.
He had killed a man in cold blood, just so he would be quiet. He had killed that man. He was a murderer.
The Doctor had been right. John was a monster. He was a monster and a murderer. Oh god, a murderer. He had committed murder. Murder.
The voices would never be quiet now.
John seized the gun again and started firing shot after shot into the body. It had worked once. It would work again. The voices would shut up again. They would shut up. Shut up! Shut up!
John didn't stop firing until he had emptied the gun. The voices had died down, but they were still there.
John felt numb. He couldn't feel anything. He wondered if he would ever feel anything again.
"What the hell were you thinking, Ianto?"
Somewhere beyond the confines of his cell, the Doctor could hear Martha yelling at Ianto.
To say Martha was angry when the Doctor walked out of Ianto's bedroom would have been a severe understatement. She had been furious. She looked like she was about to explode.
Humans had such funny ways of depicting emotions. Then again, this was a parallel universe. Maybe here humans actually did explode when they were angry. After all, human emotions had been enough to overload the circuitry of Lumic's cybermen.
Whether it could happen or not, Martha hadn't exploded. Silently fuming (again with the funny depictions of anger), she had forced the Doctor out of the flat, taking him straight back to those cells where the Doctor had last seen Rose. Ianto had followed after a few halfhearted protests.
Despite having been here before, the Doctor hadn't known where this place was before Martha unceremoniously dragged him here less than an hour before. Martha had blindfold him when she brought him here before. He had been unconscious in a body bag when Ianto smuggled him out (he didn't like to think too much about why taking out a body bag was less suspicious than releasing a prisoner), and Ianto hadn't said much about the place after they were out. It was a safe place for the resistance, beyond John Smith's reach.
Martha hadn't bothered with a blindfold this time, either because in her anger she forgot or she didn't care, so the Doctor got to see the entrance to this safe place that the Preachers operated from.
Hidden behind a panel in the back of Martha's closet was a lift. It had only two stops, the closet, and a tunnel deep underground. The tunnel was a dark, gloomy, subterranean path that snaked around a lot before ending in a chamber with a transmat. The transmat was linked to only one other, which was here, at the safe place.
"Here" was an old military space station that had been abandon and forgotten, until the Preachers took it over.
The Doctor wondered how his duplicate had yet to find this place. Rose was smart. She probably had the space station covered in cloaking devices, but how had the transmat gone undiscovered in the decade or so that it had been down there? Ianto had barred the Doctor from tinkering with anything that ran on electricity for fear that John's scanners (which were as numerous as the cameras and microphones) would pick up something as alien. Even if the transmat was beyond the scanners' reach, how had the metacrisis not noticed the suspicious power surges under London?
"Rose is wrong! We need him!" Ianto's voice interrupted the Doctor's thoughts.
Upon arrival, Martha had locked the Doctor in a cell and then proceeded to yell at Ianto. Once she had calmed down enough to think rationally, she had started arguing with Ianto. They were right outside his cell, so the Doctor could hear everything. The argument was beginning to escalate into a shouting match again.
"Rose specifically said that the Doctor had to be on the next ship out!" Martha snapped.
"Why?" Ianto countered. "He's the only one who can save us!"
"Rose has a plan!"
"Not everyone can wait that long!"
"This isn't about Lisa! This isn't even about us! The Doctor has to survive. Far too often he's all that's standing between life and the destruction of the universe!"
"This isn't your bloody Torchwood field team. You don't just do what Rose says and replay her justifications until you believe them."
"I trust Rose's judgement. Don't you?"
"On this? Bloody hell no. He broke her heart. He ripped it out with his bare hands and gave her John Smith as a consolation prize. She's not capable of judging this rationally!"
Ianto's world stabbed something in the Doctor that he had been doing his best to ignore. It was big, dark, and ugly. It whispered of doubt and guilt, and harsh truths that the Doctor found too painful to look in the eye.
"You know what? Fine! This is your bloody mess. If it goes to hell, it's on you. I'm telling Rose" Angry feet stomped away, fading as they got farther away.
"Martha . . ."
The Doctor leaned against the door, hoping to hear enough to figure out what had happened.
The lock clicked. The Doctor backed up as the door swung in.
Ianto stood in the hall. He looked worn out, but he still managed a small smile.
"Now that Martha knows about you, it's probably safest if you stay here." Ianto said. "Maybe we can start working on some kind of plan while we're here."
The Doctor nodded in agreement. In the month he had hidden in Ianto's flat, he had gotten no closer to figuring out how to free the world of the metacrisis. Maybe he would have more luck here, among the people who risked themselves everyday to defy their corrupt dictator.
After her miserable breakfast with John, Rose had spent the rest of the day anxiously pacing every last square inch of the Tyler Mansion.
Rose hadn't called off the search yet. The Preachers needed to know that John had the sonic before they walked into a trap. She didn't dare contact them just yet, though. John was probably monitoring her every move right now.
Rose was on the verge of an anxiety attack. Her emotions were running around in circles. Worry and fear threatened to overwhelm her. The anxiety became heavier, until it was too much. Her mind started to go numb. The numbness blotted out the fear and she could breathe a little better. Then she would remember and start panicking again.
John had the sonic. He knew the Doctor had been here. He would look for the Doctor now. It was just a matter of time before he realized the Preachers had smuggled the Time Lord off-planet. There was no way John would turn a blind eye after that. He would methodically dismantle her band of rebels. He would kill they all and make her watch.
Oh god, he would never let Rose out of his sight again. Out of everything John was capable of, that was what frightened Rose the most. It was what drove her to take him down. She couldn't bear the idea of forever at his side, without even death as an escape.
Of course, there was the hope that Rose would outlive John. One day John would die, and Rose would at long last be free. But it was a bleak hope, born out of wishful thinking. Rose knew that John was using the new TARDIS to hop into the future for longevity treatments. Depending on where and when he was getting the treatments, he could easily live for another thousand years or so.
Rose resented her, the young TARDIS. Why did the ship lack the spark of rebellion that the Doctor's TARDIS had? Why did she not decide she knew better than her pilot? Did she never protest against the crimes in which John forced her accomplice? Did she feel no guilt for being forced to assist John commit the slow, methodical genocide of the Sycorax on her maiden voyage?
Without the TARDIS, John could have been defeated years ago. The ship was the key source of his power. Those who angered him had no time to run, not when he had a time machine. It was why he got away with the murder of the prime minister of Italy. It was why the world turned a blind eye when the President of the United States died mysteriously after publicly disagreeing with John. How could a man be fought when he could kill his opponents before they realized they were in danger?
Rose needed to get the Doctor's sonic back. She would probably give it to the Preachers. It might prove useful, or it might not. Either way, it didn't feel right to leave the Doctor's belongings with John. John would find a way to use the sonic, and whatever the Doctor kept in his pockets, for his own benefit. Rose doubted the Doctor would have wanted that.
Rose kept those thoughts in her head as she steeled herself to do what she had to. It was going to be a very unpleasant evening, followed by an exhausting night. It would be worth it, though, once she had the sonic.
It would be worth it.
Rose clung to those words as she forced herself to gag down the dinner she shared with John. Then again as she forced herself not to flinch as his fingers touched her skin. Then as he used her for his own pleasure.
It would be worth it.
Three hours later, Rose lay naked, staring at the ceiling. She shivered as she listened to the even breathing beside her. She didn't pull the covers around her, though. She feared she would fall asleep if she did, and tonight would have been for nothing.
John had fallen asleep a while ago. It could have been minutes, but it could have been hours.
However long it was, Rose decided it was time. Silently, she slid off the bed and slipped on a skimpy silk thing John had gotten for her a few years ago. She would have preferred something less revealing, but she had more important things to think about at the moment. Besides, she had stopped caring about things as trivial as modesty years ago. It was just another thing she'd lost in the years she'd been married to John.
Rose crept around the bed. Clothes that had been discarded last night were now scattered on the floor. It was hard to see in the almost non-existent light. Rose had to grope around to find what she wanted.
Minutes later, thought it felt like hours, Rose found John's jacket. She found the pockets and had to resist the victory shout that wanted to escape her lips. She had done it. She'd found the Doctor's sonic.
Rose made sure to be silent as she left the bedroom, but once she was out, she ran. She had to get the sonic to the Preachers' base, and then return before John found her missing. She ran down the halls of the mansion. She ran out the front door. She ran down the streets of London. She wasn't fast enough, though.
Rose was three blocks away from the chip shop when John's men found her. They seized her wrists and handcuffed her. Then, with a rough shove, they had her begin the walk back to the mansion.
As they walked, Rose caught a few of the younger men watching her. Their eyes eagerly drank in the sight of her barely-covered body. Such looks would have frightened her once, but now she ignored them. Back in the first years of John's reign, men had attempted to have their way with her. Rose wasn't sure what had happened to those men, but she knew John's men still passed down stories to the new recruits. They were stories that told of the horrors that befell those that dared touch the wife of John Smith.
So Rose ignored the hungry stare and walked with her head held high. She would not show these men any weakness.
John must have known she might try to steal the sonic. He must have added a tracker or something.
Before long, Rose was back at the Tyler Mansion. John was standing on the front steps, waiting for her. He watched as she approached. Rose could see all the emotions in his eyes – the anger, the betrayal, the frustration, and , worst of all, the love. He held out his had expectantly.
Rose met John's gaze defiantly. In the end, one of the men had to take the sonic from her tied up hands and hand it to John.
John put the sonic back in the pocket of his jacket, then turned to Rose. He caressed her cheek gently as he gazed sorrowfully into her eyes.
"Oh Rose, my Rose." John sighed sadly.
Rose turned her head away. She made no effort to hide her disgust. She had failed, so there was no point now. She would have to lay low for a while before attempting to contact Martha again.
"What am I going to do with you?" John wondered out loud.
Rose shuddered. She didn't think she wanted to know the answer.
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