Author's notes: Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays to everyone! Apologies that I've not completed the Christmas part of the story, but I assure you that will come before New Year's Day.
Also, I have not watched the recent Christmas episode or much of season 9 because I have heard rumours that some of my ideas may overlap with the material. I didn't want to make it a complete ripoff. Anyway, please read and respond, if you like. We're now getting into the second third of the story.
Chapter 23: Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics
Doctor James Noble sat motionless on the cream-coloured sofa eying the irascible Scottish Fold sitting on the coffee table opposite him. Though Olivier had permitted the alien to move about the Parisian flat freely, his gaoler still followed him wherever he went, from the front door to the en-suite, where the Doctor showered and changed his soiled clothes. The half-alien shut the door on him; Daph stretched up the door, turned the handle in his paws and entered the en-suite, much to the Doctor's audible chagrin. He tried to shoo him away as he dressed; the Grand Marquis made it clear through pointed sneers, growls and hisses that he did not take orders from a lowly Time Lord. Since Pierre and Claire insisted that he, like Olivier and Ahmad, was their guest and he should be at ease whilst they prepared dinner, he was left completely at the mercy of the cat. The four-legged beastie moved his paws toward the Doctor, stretching from arm to the tip of his medium-length tail, flexing his sharp claws, and then jumping onto the unwilling alien's lap.
"Oi!" shouted the Doctor.
Ahmad, who was fiddling with his phone in a pushy brown chair to the right of the Doctor, looked up at the sight. "I think he likes you, Doctor," he snickered.
"Yeah, well, I'm really not a cat person," muttered the Doctor, never taking his eyes off the feline. Daph moved in a circle, trying to find the best position for him and finally settled in on the Doctor's reclined chest. He began paddy pawing, making sure on occasion to poke the Doctor with his claws. James winced in pain, glaring at the blue-coloured animal with the vibrant orange eyes. "Bloody bastard," he grunted under his breath. Daph looked up and slowly stretched his right paw up to the Doctor's jugular. Taking note of the cat's obvious and ominous threat, the Doctor rolled his eyes and stroked him twice. Appeased, Daph started to purr and close his eyes in momentary contentment. "Does he do this with everyone, Ahmad?" asked the compromised Doctor.
Ahmad's lips twitched from his forced neutral expression. "No, not really. Usually, he avoids people. He only comes out for Olivier, Claire and Pierre. Not for me and not for Monsieur Cohen, the rare times he comes home."
James glanced down at the cat again, who had not and would not move. "Lucky me," he groused. "Is Monsieur Cohen coming home tonight?"
The Moroccan shrugged. "I doubt it. I haven't seen him in six months; he prefers to talk to Pierre and Claire by phone."
"What a dad," said the Doctor.
He shrugged again. "At least they have one."
James Noble studied the Moroccan boy intensely. "And what about Olivier? He adopted you, yeah?" he inquired neutrally.
The boy rolled his eyes and made a grand show of putting down his smartphone, scowling. "What do you care, Doctor?" he snarled.
The Doctor straightened up as best as he could with Daph sleeping on him and threw Ahmad a look that he had not used in centuries – the disappointed father. "I don't understand why you're hostile with me, Ahmad. Care to share?"
Rolling his eyes once again, he threw himself out of the chair and stalked toward the kitchen, without saying a word in response. The Doctor exhaled and reclined fully on the couch. He petted the sleeping Daph absently. "I think I've set a record for having cheesed off everyone around me." The cat let out a loud snore. "Well, thank you for your support!" he snapped.
James sighed. The past five months were arguably the worst he had had since the Time War. As a Time Lord, he had not considered that Rose might not welcome him into her new life with open arms, nor how the emotional fallout from the Time War might affect him as a human.
Particularly after what transpired at the aftermath of the bombing.
As a human, the Doctor noticed that the reaction to his Time Lord memories were decidedly different. He looked back on some with laughter, some with embarrassment, others with warmth. Most, however, he regarded with shame and remorse. The worst memories, he found, were not simply of the Time War, which were horrible in both bodies, but were those of certain companions: Sarah Jane, Adric, Martha, Donna and Rose. Adric died bravely, but senselessly, during the Doctor's fifth incarnation; as a human, he could finally admit to himself that he loved Adric, like his namesake, James McCrimmon, and was helpless to prevent his death. Sarah Jane was a good friend, if not slightly more, like Adric, but he was too afraid to be left alone, to be discovered not only as a married man, but also a father and grandfather. So in true Doctor form, he left her first. Most of his painful memories, however, seemed to centre on his previous incarnation. Martha was a good companion and mate to him; thanks to her, he pulled himself out of his post-Rose path toward self-destruction and resumed his travels as the Doctor. But the sainted physician treated the poor woman horribly; he took her to all of the places he had travelled to with Rose. That's the view we had the last time, he said to Martha, ironically from the slums, not the scenic harbour of New New York. The "we" had not been with Martha, but with Rose.
He doesn't see me, lamented the young medical student.
She was right; as a human, the Doctor realised that he had retreated into denial, grief-stricken, angry and suicidal over the loss of his precious girl. He needed Martha to forget, to the point of fostering her romantic feelings to avoid being alone.
Yet most of his current pain and grief came from the circumstances surrounding Donna and Rose. Neither one knew just how intertwined they really were. The Donna-Doctor knew what the Other was planning to do to Donna. A two-way metacrisis between Time Lord and human was impossible; like a graft or transplant, the Time Lord mind imprinted itself onto Donna's forty-year-old human mind. But the Time Lord triple helix DNA was incompatible with a developed human double helix. The Doctor-Donna metacrisis was a failed one; her body predictably rejected the dominant Time Lord DNA and began to shut itself down at Darlig Ulv Stranden. It would have made more sense for her fraternal twin, James Noble, to absorb the Time Lord mind from Donna, since they were biologically the most similar. However, the Other did what he refused to do. He saw inside Donna's mind: the humiliation and pain from Sylvia's emotional abuse, the anguish of Lance's betrayal and loss, the self-doubt and the lack of confidence – all of which the Time Lord couldn't or wouldn't understand. He could not take the one thing she had always wanted: to be good enough. In the end, he ran away whilst the Other was left to purge her memory to save her life.
There was, however, another reason why Donna's mind was purged on board the TARDIS. The Doctor was a sum of secrets, right down to his name and being. No one in Universe Prime could ever know who and what the Doctor was, especially not Rose. Had she known the truth, Rose would have almost certainly and bitterly rejected him as a liar and manipulator. The metacrisis was necessary as much as it was reciprocal; Donna wanted to be brilliant, the Doctor wanted to die as he was. If the TARDIS had energised his hand, then he would have been created as fully Time Lord, much like Jenny. But it wouldn't have been the Doctor. Thankfully, no one asked how it was possible for human DNA to recreate an exact duplicate of the Doctor's tenth incarnation. Biologically, it should have been impossible.
Except in exactly one instance.
Humans require similar human DNA to transplant body parts.
In the Doctor's case, the distinction between Time Lord and human was a fabrication, both literally and metaphorically. After all, his people were the inventors of genetic engineering. His true origins, for the most part, mattered little on Gallifrey; he graduated from the Academy as a Time Lord and demonstrated the ability to regenerate. For Time Lords, the body was only as important as its ability to house the mind. The senses, specifically at the quantum level, were faulty; logic and reason were perfect. Rassilon's philosophy was, at heart, Cartesian: cogito ergo sum – I consider, I doubt, therefore I am – the mind is the centre of the the end of a Time Lord's life, thirteen lifetimes of memories and experiences were downloaded into the Matrix.
Rose asked him to become human, a notion he resisted throughout the time they travelled together. He insisted that he was a Time Lord – nothing else. But if she knew the truth, she would understandably feel cheated. She would know that the possibility had always existed, but think he reserved it for someone else.
With Rose, more than any other companion, it always came to choosing the lie that sounded the most romantic and impressive. As a human, he saw through the Time Lord denial and comfortable excuse of duty of care: it was love at first sight. Even after all these years and one and a half regenerations, Doctor James Noble's love never waivered: he had fallen in love with the authority with which Rose Tyler spoke in their meetings at Torchwood, the silent, upright way she carried herself when interviewing Magnussen, and the curiosity she still displayed whilst breaking into the Pasteur's vault and Magnussen's hotel room. He did not know how it was possible to fall in love with someone without fully knowing this self, but he could not otherwise explain why he ogled and fantasised about her body, why his hearing seemed more attune to her voice, pitch, tone and words whenever she spoke and why his heart thudded when she smiled. It was not that he was unaffected before – he tinkered endlessly with the TARDIS, much to the old girl's irritation, to keep his mind off Rose's rear bumper, ample coconuts and velvety voice. He compelled her to become a dinner lady and a serving girl to keep her invisible to both other men and his wanton desires. As a human, James Noble's thoughts were consumed with the blonde to the point of compulsively entering a world of fantasy and desire. In the real world, what could he offer her? No TARDIS, no special trips throughout time and space, no way of protecting her or telling her the truth.
Rose was correct, in a way – he did not know what he wanted. On one hand, he wanted and loved Rose; yet on the other hand, he wanted her to have a good life, free from the monsters, conspiracies and danger that his existence would bring her. As the coral was not yet large enough for forced growth via shatterfrication, the Doctor could not leave Earth for another year or two. Until then, he was powerless; aliens could take over Earth and he would be, like its seven billion inhabitants, resigned to watch it unfold on telly. They could take anyone; if aliens or humans knew of his existence, his intellect and his power, then no one, least of all Rose, would be safe. Both he and the Other knew that he would never survive Rose's abduction or death. The Time Lord would barely carry on like he had done post-war; the human would inevitably go insane with grief and loss.
She might hate me, but she'll live a long life with the people who love her, he thought. Her happiness is worth my unhappiness.
XXX
Rose felt strangely empty and dark, contrasting with the bright hospital room. Karl Björnstjerna watched her intently. Such a marvellous creature, he thought. A bit primitive, but she shall evolve to her natural state soon. He would help her complete her special purpose in this puny, pocket universe. "Agent Tyler?" he asked softly.
"Hmm?" Rose hummed absent-mindedly. "Sorry, I must've been miles away."
Björnstjerna's lips turned up in amusement. "Difficult case? You're going back to London soon, I'd imagine."
The blonde agent nodded. "Yes, this evening."
He shifted on the hospital bed, moving to sit upright. "If you don't mind me asking, Agent Tyler, how did you come to work for Torchwood?"
She shook her head, smiling. "No, not at all. I started working at Torchwood after a…loss. I wanted to help people and forget about my pain."
The Swede gazed at her. "Sounds familiar. I became a diplomat to make the world a better place." As he seemed to relax around her, Rose felt a faint, chilly draft entering her bones and blood, mad as the mist and snow.
Attempting to disregard the hair that stood erect on her neck, the blonde agent rose from her chair, preparing to leave. "Is there anything else you can remember, Minister?"
He observed her movements, eying the uneasy expression on her face. "No, Agent Tyler. Please find the persons responsible." As she turned to pick up her bag, the Minister called out, "One last thing, Agent Tyler, if you will? Would you please fetch the books in my bag? The telly's absolute drivel and sitting in a hospital bed is rather dull."
Rose relaxed at his request; she went to his black leather bag that, she assumed, Agent Olson must have brought from his residence in Neuilly-sur-Seine, and pulled out two leather-bound volumes. The first was a collection of poems by Edgar Allan Poe and the second was a special tercentennial edition of the Somnium by Johannes Kepler. Rose froze at the last book. Karl Björnstjerna's eyes followed her surprise. "I enjoy old science fiction. You know Kepler's Somnium, Agent Tyler?"
She swallowed agitatedly. "Yeah, I do. It's a good story." She abruptly handed the volumes to the Swede and muttered her goodbyes. Exiting the hospital room, Rose ignored the frantic ringing in her pocket. Her surroundings were silenced except for the scratchy whisper of sinister words in her mind:
"From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view."
Her amber eyes cascaded to shiny, obsidian black.
XXX
The Doctor blinked back tears; as a human, he never felt so alone in the darkness. Other than the faint music of the TARDIS, he could not hear anyone in his mind. Daph woke up and tilted his head up at him quizzically. Standing up, pressing his sturdy legs into the man's chest, the cat walked up his sternum so that his face was centimetres from the alien's. Standing on his hind legs, he rested his arms and paws on his shoulders. The Doctor's tears slid silently down his cheeks, his eyes fixated on the blue-grey cat. Daph leant forward, licking lips and whiskers with a long, blush-coloured tongue. Wet cat nose met dry humanoid nostrils. The Doctor reached up to pet him when he felt a set of sharp teeth piercing the bridge of his nose.
"Ouch!" cried the Doctor, rubbing the source of his pain. Daph jumped onto the coffee table and smirked. The Doctor stood up, glaring at the Scottish Fold. "You bloody tosser!" The Grand Marquis yawned, licked his paws and lay next to the Doctor's smartphone.
"Oh, no, you wanker. You'll not be taking my phone!" he spat, picking it up from the table. He turned unlocked it to mail viewer; a message from Pete Tyler awaited him. Groaning, he opened it, expecting an icy termination of his contract at Torchwood. Instead, it was a blind carbon copy of an original email sent to his former associates regarding an itinerary for a Vitex zeppelin scheduled to depart Paris at 21.00. A secure, encrypted message using pre-Cyber Wars binary 9 was attached; his Time Lord mind easily cracked the complicated code that read in English:
Do not take Zeppelin. Drive instead. Calais's nice. –PT.
James's brow furrowed. Obviously, Pete wanted him to stay in Paris with Olivier, but for what reason?
"Olivier," he called out, "did you hear from Pete?"
Olivier came upstairs upon hearing the Doctor's voice and walked into the sitting room. "No, I haven't heard anything from the Director today. We haven't spoken since before you arrived, Doctor," he said.
"Well, isn't that wizard?" remarked the Doctor, "Because I just received a message from Pete. There's a zeppelin bound for London scheduled to leave tonight at nine o'clock. He told me via coded message to stay with you here. How did he know that I was with you?"
Olivier shrugged. "I don't know, Doctor. Part of the ruse to bring you here was not telling him, obviously. And none of the kids know Pete. May I see the message?"
The Doctor scanned him suspiciously. "Olivier, just what the hell is going on? My life, in the span of forty-eight hours, has become a bloody Ian Fleming novel."
The Haitian looked at him confusedly. "Ian Who?"
James bit his lip in exasperation. "Oh, never mind. Just tell me what this spy rubbish is about."
"Honestly, Doctor, I have no idea how Pete would know. I don't think he could."
Drying her hands with a dishtowel, Claire exited the kitchen to join Olivier and the Doctor. "May I look, Doctor?" Studying the concerned, yet interested looks of Olivier and Claire, the Doctor finally yielded the smartphone to the young woman, who read the email and the encrypted version. "Doctor, someone is spoofing this man's email address. It's virtually undetectable, except that Torchwood has a specific server." At the Doctor's raised eyebrow, she blushed, "We keep them under surveillance in order to keep track of you. But anyway, someone wants you to either respond or track your whereabouts." She scanned the email and froze. "Putain, Doctor! You opened this attachment?"
The Doctor looked down and mentally cursed himself. "Bloody Trojan! Now they know where we are. Shit!" He quickly pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned his smartphone. "Don't worry; they think I'm in Ireland." At their sceptical glares, he added, "Well, I'm using the same path that NORAD uses for Santa's sleigh."
Olivier gazed at the phone worriedly. "Could they track you here? If so, then we need to leave immediately."
James shook his head. "I doubt it, though somehow the NSA knew I broke into their servers." He looked at his screwdriver furtively. "I don't know. The sonic hasn't worked properly since I arrived in this universe."
"Different universe?" exclaimed Olivier. "We'll discuss this later. Pierre, Ahmad! Get your coats and a change of clothing. We also need Daph's cat carrier. We're leaving Paris tonight," cried Olivier. "Doctor, use my phone to call Eileen. It has a scrambler. Don't use your smartphone anymore." He tossed it to the Doctor.
Glancing at the email and attachment, the half-alien's eyes chilled from chocolate brown to icy black. "Olivier, Claire, the forwarded message is also a spoof. It's from the same server, yes?" Olivier and Claire grabbed the phone and reread the message. Claire nodded slightly, afraid of the man before her. "Yes, you're right, Doctor."
"Rose is in danger. She received the original message. We have to find her before they do," rasped the Doctor.
Pierre entered the sitting room with a small blue bag and a cat carrier. Daph backed away from the young Parisian upon seeing the carrier and let out a loud hiss. He eased the duffle bag-like cage, whose inside was lined with towels and cat toys, and tapped the floor. "Viens, Daph," he coaxed the growling blue beast.
"Oh, for pity's sake," muttered the Doctor, who used his Converse-covered foot to swiftly push the aggravated cat into the cage. As a shocked Pierre closed the door, Daph swung at the humanoids, let out a snort and made sure that the Doctor saw the enraged orange twinkle in his orange eyes. "That's for earlier, tosser!" scoffed the half-alien. The cat settled in the cage, narrowing his eyes to patient slits.
"So where are we going, Patron?" asked Ahmad.
Olivier quietly and cautiously went to the window and looked outside into the dark street. "I don't quite know yet."
XXX
A dark Peugeot parked across from a small apartment in Neuilly-sur-Seine, where a man in a dark raincoat sat calmly in the driver's seat and looked at his tracking device. Maybe John was right; James Noble seemed to be just a bumbling idiot who would open any candygram. The man carefully laid the device on the passenger seat, pulled out a Smith and Wesson with a silencer and checked the ammunition. "…Three blind mice. Three blind mice. See how they run. See how they run. They all ran after the farmer's wife, who cut off their tails with a carving knife…" he whistled and mumbled intermittently.
