Part Three
He moved with some uncertainty as if he didn't know
Just what he was there for or where he ought to go
Once he reached for something golden hanging from a tree
And his hand came down empty
Home?
Larrik Hollow, Serenity, Original Universe
Joshua paused the old recording the Doctor had left him all those decades ago, in their fifteenth year on Serenity, when he'd come back from one of his first solo trips in Baby to find the Doctor and Mama Rose mysteriously missing. The message had told him to hop forward three days and he'd find them returned safe and sound (and he had, both), and also to save the message always, because someday he'd need to know the exact date. Finally, after all these years, it was time. The second part of the Doctor's prediction had come true: there was no doubt in Joshua's mind that this was the moment, the reason: to take the Doctor to New Gallifrey, to be reunited with his mother, Lady Tis'hania. Mum had been exactly right.
Carefully punching the exact space-time coordinates from the readout on the message coin's flat surface into Baby's nav computer, he checked them against each other three times before he shook his head, ruefully recognizing the delaying tactic for what it was. I've been longing for this day to come for so long. Why am I hesitating now? He didn't bother replying to his own question; he knew the reason. He had no idea how long this trip would last, but the sooner it began, the sooner it would be over, and then... he really would never see them again. Ever. All these years I've had this one last meeting to look forward to, to hold on to. How can I bear it when it's done? There wasn't an answer for that one, either. There never was.
Sighing, he forced himself to drop into the pilot's seat and work the controls, bringing Baby back to Larrik Hollow. Home. No matter that he'd lived his first fifteen years with Mum and Dad at their Gallifrey Estate outside London in Pete's World, no matter how long he lived or with whom anywhere else in his life, Home could only be one place in all the multiverse: Larrik Hollow, Serenity, with the Doctor puttering around the farm and Mama Rose laughing at his shoulder. He never examined why he felt closer to the Doctor than to Dad – simple math took care of that answer. He'd lived with the Doctor twice as long, and more recently. Besides, now that he'd at last found the way to slip between the worlds, Dad and Mum were likely in his future, for a long time yet.
He'd arrived. He stood, stretching, as if he'd only been gone a few days, and reached for the chain to schloop himself out of Baby. Still, he hesitated one long, last moment before pulling it down, to find himself in the afternoon sunshine before their front door. The sights and scents of the farm washed over him, blowing away the cobwebs from his mind, rinsing his soul clean again of everything but the sharp edge of longing. I suppose nearly everyone feels the same way about their childhood home. Doesn't make my memories any less real, my emotions any less valid.
He stopped justifying himself to a nonexistent inquisitor and peered around the landscape, listening hard for any sign of the Doctor's or Mama Rose's whereabouts. Silence. So he opened the door and stepped across the threshold, holding his breath against the stinging memories. Still no sign – then he spied the kitchen door hanging ajar and grinned. Only one place they'd be on a quiet, sleepy, late summer afternoon like this. The hammock.
Knowing the squeaky front door should have attracted the sharp-eared Doctor's attention as it usually did, Josh walked across the large communal room and out the open door. Sure enough, the hammock was just swinging to a stop, a familiar tousled brown head popping above the rim, followed by blonde. He paused involuntarily, inhaling sharply, then walked swiftly up the path. Unable to speak, he ignored the Doctor's "Joshua? What happened?", reaching instead for both of them and pulling them into a tight embrace so they couldn't see his face, already streaking with tears. They must have realized something was wrong, because they each simply put their arms around him in return, holding him close, until he got himself under control.
"I've missed you both so much!" he managed to tell them. Their hugs tightened, and after a few moments longer, he was able straighten up and draw back, so they could see each other's faces.
"What happened?" repeated the Doctor, greatly concerned. "How long have you been gone? Why weren't you able to get back?"
Realizing instantly that they thought his younger self had never made it back until now, he shook his head. "No, that's not it. I – the me that left here a couple of days ago – I'll be back tomorrow. This is something else."
The Doctor was growing even more concerned. "You're crossing your own timeline? Joshua, you know that's forbidden!"
The younger man shook his head again, moving one hand to the Time Lord's shoulder and squeezing it. "It's all right, don't worry. I already lived through this. We won't be here when the young me arrives – though I'll about have a heart attack before I find the message you're going to leave me. You'll tell me to jump ahead three days, and when I do, you'll be back, and this me will be gone again. I won't meet myself, I promise."
The Doctor and Rose glanced at each other, supreme puzzlement written on both faces. "But where are we going?" asked Rose.
Joshua smiled down at her, then back to the Doctor, waiting a beat for emphasis. Then, quietly, "I've come to take you home."
He could almost see the thoughts run through the Time Lord's mind. "This IS home, Joshua. Gallifrey is gone. Not even you could go back to before the Time Lock was broken."
Rose was remembering another time she'd been told she was "home". Her eyes grew wide, and she half-gasped, "Joshua? Have you found the way to the parallel world again?"
"Yes. And I'm not the only one." Still speaking to the Doctor, "You remember the cracks in time and space that took first me and then her into the Time Lock, between Gallifreys? I found out – just as the Lock was breaking, one opened again, in the other direction. And everyone waiting in the Council Chamber, along with many who had been frozen in the square outside it, made it through."
The Doctor's eyes grew impossibly wide, but he didn't dare breathe the question so obviously in them. But Josh saw it anyway, and answered, gently. "Yes. Including Lady Tis'hania. She's alive, Doctor, on the alternate Gallifrey. I've just come from there, to take you back."
The Doctor staggered back a few paces, then covered his face with both hands and stood for a moment, shoulders shaking. Then he dropped his hands, took a deep breath and said, as steadily as he could, "How do we get there?"
^..^
Two hours later, the holographic message to young Joshua duly recorded and left for him to trip over, the three of them were arranged in the leather seats on Baby's bridge. After some discussion, the Doctor had elected to leave his Mama TARDIS in Larrik Hollow. "She's almost out of power; she'd be dead in the water as soon as we slipped worlds. That's what happened the first time we went there, remember?" he asked Rose.
"I never have asked you," she replied, "how it was that you and Jenny could make so many jumps in her the last time, when I was twinned?"
"Because her battery banks just happened to be full – we'd made a stop just before then at the old Cardiff Rift to fill them up – in fact, that's where we got the whiff of those Sontaran kids that led us across. And don't forget the extra power supplies Jenny had installed the years before then. Even with them, though, we were dangerously low before we slipped back. It's been a long time since we've been anywhere, now, and she's just been sitting here. I should have powered her up a while back. But, no, I don't want to wait and do that now – even if you could take us through in tandem, Josh – and I'm not convinced you can, yet. No, we'll just leave her here this time." And so they did.
Now, he grinned at the younger Time Lord from the nav seat. "Can't wait to see how you pull this off. How ARE you slipping realities? What hole did you find this time? And how long did it take you to find it?"
Josh laughed. "Several decades. But your promise was kept in the end, Doctor. I found my way back to Mum and Dad's at last." His smile turned sly. "You're going to get a kick out of how. Courtesy of the Daleks."
The Doctor sat bolt upright, alarmed, but Josh laughed again and waved him down. "No, not new ones. They're not back. Residual side effects of an old battle. Just wait." Refusing to say more, he swiveled around and faced his panel, throwing switches and turning dials with as much ease as his elder ever had. Said elder watched admiringly, his smile broadening as he picked up the clues: Josh was showing off. He glanced sideways at Rose, sharing his amusement, to be met by her own; she'd caught it, too.
"Here we are! Recognize the place?" came from the pilot. The Doctor stood to peer out the high windows – and his jaw dropped.
"The Medusa Cascade! But..."
"Where the stolen planets were brought, for the Dalek's Reality Bomb, right?" Rose stood, too; she'd never had a proper look at the Cascade the first time.
"Right you are! And that's our doorway, too: tiny leaks of Z-neutrino energy that escaped from the Crucible's heart as it exploded bored through to the mirror Cascades in thousands of alternate universes, tying them all together at this spot, and leaving atomic-sized pinhole routes open between them. Hold on tight, I need to find the exact balance point..." Flying straight, Joshua took them to the heart of the amazing light show that was the Medusa Cascade, then spent a few minutes carefully nudging them back and forth until he was in the "sweet spot".
"OK, I'm with you so far," the Doctor piped up, having been chewing over the problem while Josh maneuvered. "I can see how a TARDIS might be able to slip through. But how can you find the right one?"
Josh turned back and favored him with a huge, satisfied smile. "Only one way. With the right TARDIS. One that can recognize and home in on precisely the right base frequency." He reached a hand and patted the console beside him. "Like Baby here. Because she lived the first twenty years of her life in Pete's World, she absorbed those frequencies, then we weaned her onto those of our universe. But she still remembered. She can operate quite easily in both worlds."
"AC-DC!" laughed Rose. "Electrical current converters," she explained to her husband's puzzled look.
Even more confused now, he shot her a "OK, right" look, then turned back to Josh with a grin. "Brilliant. Simple, and brilliant. I don't want to know how you figured it out, you'll make me look bad."
Josh laughed again, and waved him off. "Ready?"
"Ready!" came two replies. The passengers resumed their seats, and Josh faced forward once more, using both console controls and their telepathic communion to help Baby reach out and search for her first home frequency.
Very softly at first, then growing steadily more pronounced, a deep, rumbling vibration overtook the time ship. It never quite reached tooth-rattling stage, but the three passengers were quite glad when it faded out after several long minutes. Watching out the windows, the Doctor and Rose saw the phantasmagoria of the Cascade repeatedly shift colors and shapes, stars from beyond the clouds jumping positions several times before they found their new sockets. When the rumbling faded and their vision cleared, the Doctor blinked. "Whoa."
"Yeah," replied Josh. "This Cascade is slightly red-shifted from ours. Just enough to give me a headache if I stare at it too long, like I did the first time."
Thus warned, the Doctor hastily averted his eyes, and watched his adopted son work his controls again, flying them straight once more until they had left the eye-searing lights behind. Then Josh swiveled around and asked, "Can you call up the last bookmark for me? Labeled New Gallifrey, of course."
The Doctor turned and fired up the nav computer, opening the file of precise time-and-space coordinates logged whenever the large red Bookmark! button above the console was pressed.
Rose grinned, remembering the idea that had led to the installation of that button: prompted by her stories of coming home to Jackie after just a few days, only to find she'd been gone a year and believed murdered. Her bondmate caught her thought and winked over his shoulder at her. "Much better this way, yeah? Ever missed a meeting?" he asked Josh, who grinned and shook his head.
The Doctor continued, "Never have gotten around to putting one in my TARDIS yet. Really need to do that before we begin traveling again. Do remind me, love?" Then, selecting the New Gallifrey bookmark, he sent the coordinates over to the pilot's controls. Josh added half an hour to the time, and then looked seriously at the Doctor one last time.
"Ready?" he asked again.
Tears prickling at the rushing returning realization of their destination, and who was waiting for him there, the Doctor took a deep breath. "Yeah," he said softly.