Doctor Who: Infection
Chapter 45 - The Other Doctor
Disclaimer - I don't own nothing or nobody you know/recognize. Doctor Who is intellectual property of the BBC, afaik.
Characters: Gleeson!Doctor, Markham, River, Jack, OCs
This was then:
"He's dying. You know what happens next!" Jack warned as he pulled Rose and Donna back, shielding them from what was about to occur. The Doctor's body glowed before erupting in a golden burst of energy. His mortal wound from the Dalek healed, he spun and clasped both hands together, aiming them at the canister under the console. The remaining energy shot out toward it.
The severed hand Jack had retrieved from the Sycorax incursion the Christmas before took the brunt of the energy blast. It stayed glowing as they left it behind.
The Doctor gasped and stumbled back into a support arch. The trio stared in astonishment. Nothing changed? "Now then. Where were we?" He dropped down to the canister and smiled "Hello!" at it before explaining. "You see? I used the regeneration energy to heal myself. As soon as that was done, I didn't need to change. I didn't want to, why would I? Look at me. So. To stop the energy from going all the way, I siphoned off the rest into a handy biological receptacle. Namely, my hand. My hand there. My handy spare hand. Remember? Christmas Day, Sycorax? Lost my hand in a sword fight? That's my hand. What do you think?"
"You're still you?" Rose asked.
"I'm still me," he confirmed.
The TARDIS was transported to the Crucible. The Doctor led the others outside to confront the Daleks and Davros. All except Donna Noble.
Donna Noble heard it calling her. That drumbeat. No, a heartbeat. The TARDIS door slammed shut, trapping her inside with the hand. She felt the TARDIS falling, crashing, everything went haywire, exploding. The hand was glowing. She touched the canister. That was all it needed. Another explosion as she watched energy burst forth from the hand, trickling over her, taking human shape, and finally, the Doctor's form sitting up before the glow dissipated.
"It's You! You're naked!" was all she could muster at the sight of the newborn Time Lord, averting her eyes.
"Oh yes!" he replied enthusiastically to both comments. He quickly dressed and explained his unique status whilst arguing with Donna after she accused him of being a worm.
He wasn't too sure about becoming "half-human" thanks to his "mother", especially as her personality seemed to have imprinted on his. That was another matter for another time.
The matter of Davros and his Reality Bomb took precedence next. Crisis averted, the Doctor-Donna sent the stolen planets back where they belonged, saving Earth for last, as the Children of Time used the TARDIS to tow it back to it's proper place. The twin Doctors monitored the others' handling of their home back to it's proper location. Neither had the hearts to tell them the TARDIS was doing most of the work.
Finally came the goodbyes. Sarah Jane was the hardest. Both knew her time was drawing close. He rarely talked about the natural Time Lord ability to read a person's timeline. The closest human term would be "psychometry". The original Doctor knew he would see her again, he would make sure of it. The "Meta-crisis" Doctor remained stoic about it. That same ability told him he was not long for this world.
Finally, it was time to take Rose and Jackie back to their parallel Earth. "Pete's World" they had dubbed it. A silent understanding passed between the twin Time Lords again on the beach of Bad Wolf Bay. Not just about Donna's fate. The new Doctor would remain behind with Rose, mostly to help protect this Earth from invasion and other chaos, whether it was fighting Lumic's homegrown Cybermen or other situations.
When Rose protested being left behind again, the half-human Doctor convinced her with a whisper. She kissed him as the other two returned to their proper timeline.
However, the original Time Lord left them a parting gift: the seed of a TARDIS. Eventually, this new Doctor could leave this world and seek out his own adventures. But it would not be anytime soon. Donna even offered her advice on how to speed up the process before departing.
The exiles soon realized the TARDIS left them several decades before they had left. May 1913, they soon learned. Rose and the Doctor found this hilarious, but not Jackie Tyler. She was furious. She had finally reunited with her husband, only to lose him -and their newborn son Tony- once more. That sobered Rose up. She had already grown quite fond of her new brother, but reconnecting with her father was difficult. She explained to him the time she tried to save him with the previous Doctor, and the disastrous results of that attempt, but he was still finding it hard to grasp the idea of parallel worlds. Despite this, she mourned his loss all over again, having been too young to remember the first time.
Until that time when the new TARDIS had grown enough, the new Doctor would have to fit in more than Rose and Jackie. He adopted the human identity of "John Foreman" in lieu of "Smith" and married Rose. The name never stuck, and he was often called "Doctor Who" when he forgot to add his adopted surname. They settled in Surrey and kept to themselves during the first World War, the Doctor constantly admonishing them not to share their future knowledge with others in the era.
They lived a relatively quiet life, and Rose bore him a daughter, Sarah Jane, who had two daughters of her own, Barbara, and Susan. By this time, they had moved to London. Jackie lived to become a great-grandmother with Barbara, but passed shortly before Susan was born of natural causes. In 1955, Rose, Sarah Jane, and her husband Frederic perished when their car ran off the road in a heavy storm, leaving behind the infant Susan and preteen Barbara.
It was left to the Doctor to raise the girls, but he grew absent minded in his mourning after the loss. Barbara became a surrogate mother to her sister and grandfather. She had regular help from her cousin Louise, Frederic's niece, whom the Doctor found also possessed a high intelligence and let study with his own girls.
Meanwhile, he tinkered. He had encouraged Sarah Jane to read and expand her knowledge, and her intelligence carried on to her daughters. All the children heard bedtime tales of his adventures, but assumed them to be fiction. There were many a science book to be found in the Doctor's house, most covered with his scribblings and "corrections."
He could often be found in his workshop in the back garden. That's where the TARDIS seed grew, copying it's former self just as this Doctor grew from his own severed hand.
By 1965, the TARDIS was nearly complete. The Doctor had aged into a more "grandfatherly" appearance, white hair, reading glasses, and he decided to add a mustache just for kicks, but mostly he was too distracted to shave and Barbara refused to let him grow a full beard. He kept busy adding the odd bit and bob here and there to the nascent TARDIS. There was no central control console yet, just scattered instrumentation in the main room. That's when Barbara began dating a young man by the name of Ian Chesterton, shortly after Louise had left for university.
He found this funny, but refused to tell her why. This world's timeline had decided to make history repeat itself, it seemed. When Ian came to pick up Barbara for a date, the Doctor decided to show him his "workshop" and within five minutes of Ian's arrival, the quartet found themselves transported to this universe's home of the Daleks thanks to Ian's clumsiness.
The Doctor decided to "go with the flow", and reenact his own early adventures, ever mindful this Susan was quite a bit younger than his original granddaughter. He was quietly thankful they hadn't gone back to Earth's early days, when man's mastery of fire was still considered a miracle and unnatural.
A few minor hiccups in how he remembered the original incident occurred, but they all made it safely through the adventure and were soon on their way. A few more adventures and he returned home where Ian and Barbara left to start their own adventure together. He wished them well as Louise joined the pair for a new adventure.
They were quickly joined by Constable Tom Campbell, whom reminded the Doctor a bit of Donna's grandfather Wilf. Tom helped fight off the Dalek invasion of 2150, and a few other quick adventures before he yearned to return home to 1966. The Doctor checked up on him a few years later (well, as far as Tom was concerned) and saw he had made Detective Inspector shortly after they had last met, and was quickly rising through the ranks after that. He had no regrets about his time traveling with the Doctor.
It was by this time when Susan had finally matured into a young woman that he decided she should live a 'normal life' and bade her to do what girls her age should be doing, assuring her he could look after himself. She refused, of course. He finally had to trick her into visiting Barbara and Ian. He could just imagine her response when she came home to find an empty house and him gone.
The TARDIS had fully integrated itself into it's shell and grew deeper each day. He knew he could once again leave this planet and return to the stars. The menace of the Daleks, Cybermen, and other threats still existed in this universe and someone had to defend it. When he discovered the new control room modeled after the original, he knew it was time to go. He briefly debated asking the girls along, but knew their time traveling was done. He drew up a simple document leaving everything to them and sent Susan on her trip.
It broke his heart to do so. They merely regarded his tales as fiction, even after traveling with him. To face the real dangers of the universe? No. He would not put his children in harm's way again. Never again.
He spent the next few months sightseeing, visiting the all the wonders the universe had to offer that he remembered, and some he had never gotten around to.
Then came the day he landed at Darillium. He wasn't sure why. A dream of a memory of a woman in a library telling him about the Singing Towers a lifetime ago. What was her name?
He wasn't sure how long he stayed. Darillium had a peculiar orbit. One day lasted decades. He finally decided he had had enough and made to leave. No sooner had he turned to head back inside the TARDIS, than something caught his eye. He stopped and looked up at the starry sky.
Constellations were wrong. Not just wrong, but whole systems were not there. He ran inside and began flipping switches, calling up galactic maps from deep within her memory core, comparing them to the current visual displays. It wasn't just systems. Whole reaches of space were simply no longer there.
He hit the fast return protocols. He would have to check on his family, first. Get help if he could. What he found was empty space. Not just Earth, but the whole of the Sol system was erased as if it had never been.
He chanced his luck and programmed in another set of coordinates. One he knew by heart. More empty space. Gallifrey was no more.
"This means nothing," he told himself. "This means nothing." He pounded the console. "Nothing!" He pounded the console again before collapsing to the floor, crying.
Earth
A familiar grinding filled the air in the scrap yard on Totter's Lane as a familiar blue police box slowly materialized. A lean man in a brown suit stepped out and took a deep whiff of the air.
"Back to where it all began, eh, old girl?" he asked, but received no reply. He tried to recall the last time he had been here, was it when he had the coat of many colors or the time after that with Ace? He began a leisurely stroll, randomly picking up things as he went. He didn't check the time coordinates, mostly because he knew he was needed elsewhere, but was intentionally avoiding then and there. His last adventure left him feeling a bit nostalgic, even as it faded from his memory. Damn temporal paradoxes and Blinovitch Limitation Effects.
Satisfied it was in the 1960's, he decided to move on. Turning back to his TARDIS, he found it was not where he parked it. Or rather, he could see where his was parked, but there was now a second one next to it, blocking his path.
"-but I like the sound!" came a familiar whine from inside as someone opened the door.
"Well, I don't and this is my birthday trip!" came a female voice that made Ten's hearts skip a beat.
"Well, it's still my TARDIS, River!" came the response, before it changed to an urgent tone. "Wait! Wait! Don't go out there yet!"
"This isn't the Frost Fair!" she complained, stepping out from her Doctor's TARDIS. She spotted the other time craft immediately. "We have company!"
"What?" came the confused reply as the gangly Doctor joined her outside and saw what she was talking about. "This is bad. This is really bad."
"Well," Ten sniffed, "I wouldn't say that. Hello, River." He tried to keep his voice as calm as he could, knowing her fate on their first/last meeting. He took in her appearance, fur lined dress, muff hanging from the front of her waist, ice skates in her hand, ready for a winter carnival. His other self was wearing dark pants and shirt, a purple waistcoat with a chain and matching fur collared longcoat over that. And a top hat. A similar outfit to the one he'd been wearing when they went back to Gallifrey, recently. Minus the fur and top hat. Urgh.
"You?" Eleven accused, trying to remember why/when this happened before. "What are you doing here?" His face had scrunched up as if he had just been socked in the jaw.
Ten leaned against his TARDIS and waved with one hand. "Just popped 'round, making sure everything was...fine," he lied. "In fact, I was just about to leave, when you landed."
"You shouldn't be here. Neither of us should be here. Just in case you-know-who happens to stop in," Eleven accused, not so subtly tapping his wrist while trying to hide it from River like a child hiding a stolen cookie.
She saw him anyway. "Sweetie, who is this and why does he know me?"
"Spoilers?" Eleven offered, mock innocently.
"Timey-wimey?" Ten offered. "I'll be seeing you in the future, Professor, even though this meeting won't be-"
Eleven tried to motion him to stop, but River pounced on the slip. "Professor?" she exclaimed. "How fascinating!"
Both Doctors mirrored each other at the gaffe, grimacing at the rookie time travel mistake. Eleven recalled making this same slip shortly after regenerating, which River had guessed at. Amy Pond had also caught it and jumped to her own conclusions he was still uncertain of at the time.
"Yeah, you're still in-?"
"Storm Cage?" she finished, glancing mischievously at her Doctor. "I'm supposed to be," she winked.
"Sorry," he grimaced again. "Is there a reason you're here?"
"My sweetie was taking me to the London Frost Fair," she explained, "but we got sidetracked. Again. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm ever going to see it. Much like Darillium?"
Both Doctors shared a guilty exchange at the mention. Before either could say anything, a deep thrumming filled the air. It slowly turned into a familiar grinding.
"Another one?" Ten asked, looking around for a sign of another TARDIS.
"Yes? No, listen," Eleven warned, holding a finger up.
The noise faded, then returned.
"Sounds like-?"
"He's having trouble locking on to these coordinates?"
"If it's the old man-?"
Eyes widened in fear. "We better help!"
Both ran for their respective TARDIS' control panels.
"I've got a signal!"
"Confirmed! Sending out a beacon to latch on to!"
"Got him!"
"Bring him in slowly!"
River watched, standing outside to confirm the newcomer's arrival. "He was here! Then faded out again!"
"Boosting signal strength!"
"Time tether activated!"
"Bingo, Bango, who's your daddy?!" Ten shouted as the third craft landed with a resounding THOOM! Nearly knocking River off her feet.
"Confirmed landing!" she told them, regaining her balance.
The new arrival looked beaten, worn, aged. Worse than either Time Lord had seen their "old girl". She had definitely seen better times.
The door slowly opened, smoke poured out. From the chaos inside the craft, an elderly man stepped out.
"I made it!" he exclaimed, then saw River standing between the two Doctors. "Oh. Oh blimey!" he muttered before collapsing.
"What? What?!"
"Oh bother, that's not him, is it?"
"Don't just stand there, help me help him up!" River ordered, as she turned him onto his back.
The Tenth and Eleventh Doctors stared in shock. This was not the "Old Man" -their "Prime" self- they expected. This man's hair was nearly white, still showing a bit of color under the brushed back locks. He also sported a mustache.
This was not a face either recognized.
"Yours?" Eleven asked.
"Mine," they quickly agreed on whose TARDIS to take him into. Ten had already seen the St John's Ambulance symbol Eleven returned to his door (which the new arrival also bore), he didn't want to be surprised at how his console room looked now. They quickly put him in a chair and loosened his pale blue cravat and top button. River brought the new arrival a glass of water.
"So what are we thinking?" Ten asked.
"Another Time Lord? Maybe a Companion sent for help?" Eleven offered.
"He's not one of us, we would have recognized his face, right away," Ten countered, adding, "He's also got the St John's on his."
"Future me?" Eleven questioned. "Can't be. Wrong face for me."
"What about-?"
Eleven gave him a sharp look that he knew better than to ask.
"One of us should check his TARDIS, see if there's anyone else on board," River suggested.
The two Doctors hesitated. "Fine, I'll go," she declared, shaking her head while exiting the TARDIS.
River saw the smoke had dissipated from inside the new arrival, revealing several sparking roundel panels along the wall and an old style control panel she recognized from browsing the TARDIS archives. A few switches flipped revealed she was the only occupant. A few more revealed that this craft did not have much travel history, and what it did was barely a few decades' worth. A century at most, and almost all of that located on Earth, but the coordinates were wrong? Even the size was minimal. The interior was still growing, only a few levels, barely the size of a decent apartment building.
"This is not only a new TARDIS, but not one from this Earth. A parallel one," she reported.
"No-?" Ten blurted without thinking, then looking to the newcomer. "No, it can't be? Can it?"
"What are you talking about?" she asked.
Eleven flipped his wrist and held his sonic at the elder man, then read the results. "One heart. Gallifreyan DNA."
A silent understanding passed between them.
"What are you two talking about?" she demanded.
"Long story short?" Ten offered, "He's another one of us. Not one we ever expected to see again."
"Three of you? The mind races!" she teased, then saw the glum looks on the other two. "Color me intrigued, boys. Care to share?"
Ten looked at the man he left on a beach years ago sternly.
"Not right now, River," Eleven answered. "Another story for another time."
The Old Man mumbled. Eleven bent down to listen closer. "Yes?"
"R-Rose," he mumbled again.
Eleven chanced a glance at his younger self. Ten's face looked like it had aged a millennia in seconds.
The Old Man sat up. "Rose!" He stared into the strange blonde woman before him. "You're not Rose?"
"No, Sweetie," she assured him. "I'm River Song."
"River?" he repeated in confusion. "I know that name?"
"What do you remember?" Ten asked. "Where's Rose?"
The Old Man looked around, finally noticing the other Doctors. His gaze settled on Ten. He touched his own face, absentmindedly. "Hm? Oh yes, yes. Rose." His face grew sad. "Long gone, I'm afraid." His voice grew quiet. "Long gone."
Ten sniffed and turned away, nodding.
"She and Jackie-" he began. "They died in a car accident. With our baby."
All eyes were on him. "What?" Ten hissed under his breath.
"All gone now. Rose, Jackie, our babies, our grandbabies... Everyone. Everything."
Ten and Eleven exchanged concerned looks as River helped him to his feet.
"What do you mean?" River asked. "What's all gone?"
"Why the universe, of course," he huffed as that should have been obvious. "All the stars. Earth. Gallifrey. All of it. I barely made it back here. Pure luck, that."
"Well," Ten began.
"We saw you trying to land," Eleven explained. "Tossed you a lifeline, brought you in for a landing."
"Harumph!"
"Do you even know when you are?" Ten interjected.
The Old Man looked around, not recognizing the console room, then looked at River, Eleven, and Ten in turn. He tried to act glib as he sauntered around the console. "Yes, yes, this all seems familiar?" He stopped in front of Ten. "Very familiar?"
"Do you recognize me?" he asked cautiously.
"Vaguely? These are the new companions, I take it?"
"Companions?" Eleven shot back, wounded. "Listen, Granddad!" he sputtered.
"Let's not go through this again," Ten interrupted him. "You obviously recognize me. What else?"
The Old Man looked around the room again. "Yes, this all seems familiar?" He looked to River again. "Weren't you ginger?"
"Sorry, Sweetie," she smiled back, letting her boys handle this newcomer.
"Were we ever this rude?" Eleven asked Ten. Ten's face showed the offense at the remark.
"You were saying about everything being gone?" River asked. "What did you mean by that?"
"The stars themselves were being erased," he told her. "It's as if they never existed to begin with? I had just realized what was happening when I decided to try and get back here." He patted the console. "She brought me back home."
"The seed?" Ten gasped.
"What seed?" River asked.
"That day on the beach. I gave you a seed of a TARDIS," he explained. "It shouldn't have come to full activation before now?"
"It's been decades, probably centuries by now?" the Old Man replied. "I had it functioning as a basic TARDIS within a few decades. Had a few run ins with the Daleks, then- After I lost- After I lost Rose and-" He paused a long moment. "My girls were growing, so I sent them off to live their own lives. Have a life. I got lost in my travels, when I decided to check in on them-" He waved his hands in the air. "That's when I saw the universe- my universe was being erased."
River looked to her boys. "From what I saw of his instruments, that sounds like the readouts were telling me. His TARDIS is maybe a century old. Practically newborn."
"Thank you, Rose- River," he corrected himself.
"Yes, but why here? Why now?" Eleven asked.
Ten gave him a stern look. "Does it need saying?"
The others looked at him in confusion. The Old Man's eye twitched, as if the phrase triggered a memory.
"This is where and when we first came to Earth," he explained. "Did you even check your chronometer when you landed?"
"Of course!" Eleven rolled his eyes. "Nineteen sixty- oh." Ten nodded.
River was intrigued. "Care to share, boys?"
Ten nodded. "It's spring 1963. 9th March. In a few weeks, my- our original self will arrive here with-" He paused, glancing to Eleven. "With a young Companion. To fit in and find out about this planet, she enrolls at Coal Hill School. By late November, her teachers have been intrigued by her intelligence and followed her here. You could say they were my first Companions."
"Barbara and Chatterton!" the Old Man interjected. "Oh, they were brilliant, they were!"
"Chesterton," Eleven whispered under his breath. "Never could remember that right. Like Rickey."
"Mickey," Ten corrected, smirking.
"Fascinating," she teased, making a note in her journal. "And which face are you, sweetie?" she asked of the Old Man.
"River, please," Eleven groaned, as Ten eyed it warily.
"Hmp!" she replied, snapping it shut and sliding it back into her muff. "One almost needs a checklist to keep up with you, Sweetie," she teased. "A Who's Who."
Eleven and Ten shared another concerned glance.
"He's me, only not me," Ten explained.
"Yes, yes, the beach. The DoctorDonna," the Old Man mused. "The Metacrisis Me. Davros."
"Sorry?" she asked, quite confused.
Before Ten could answer her, the whole TARDIS shook. Alarms started blaring. The younger Doctors and River sprang to the controls.
"Time Scoop!"
"Here? Now?"
"We need to get back to our own TARDISes!" River exclaimed.
The Old Man was already at the door. "It's jammed! We're locked in here!"
"I can't find a source for the Time Scoop!" Eleven exclaimed, trying to dial in the external cameras.
River pulled the view screen away from him to look for herself. "Wait, someone's just entered the yard? Jack?"
She barely had time to register seeing Jack Harkness enter Totter's Lane gate before the screen went black. Another jolt shook the craft.
"Did you say Jack?" Ten asked, trying to hold on for dear life.
"Long story! Time Agency might be behind this!" she exclaimed.
"The Time Agency doesn't have Time Scoops!" Eleven protested.
"Let alone Torchwood!" Ten agreed. "If that was Jack, then he was probably tracking our TARDIS convention!" Ten flipped more switches. "I'll try and send him a signal to follow!"
"It's not working!" Eleven replied. "No signals in or out!"
The TARDIS shuddered as the quartet were thrown to the floor from the sudden stop. "Is everyone all right?" River asked, pulling herself up.
"I survived. Love when that happens," Eleven exclaimed, sitting up.
Ten peeked over the console, noting it was barely visible in the darkness. "Not even the emergency lights? Where are we?"
The TARDIS door swung open. "You had to ask?" the Old Man scoffed.
"Pretty boy, with me," River ordered, pulling a familiar squareness gun from her muff. Eleven started to question it, but kept silent.
Ten shrugged at his elder self and poked his head out with River.
"Just the two of you? I thought I caught more?" came a voice from above.
In the dim light, the pair could make out two shapes on a cliff above. One was seated on a throne, clad in black robes. The other stood by the edge, wearing a charcoal pinstripe suit, hands behind his back. His face was lean, shrouded by a mass of curly dark hair.
"Does he look familiar to you?" Ten asked.
"No. What about you?" She replied.
"There's something vaguely familiar-?" he started, scratching his head.
"You don't know me," the suited man replied. "You could say you did, but you never tried to."
"Well, that certainly narrows it down," Ten scoffed.
"How many children have you lost to time?" he asked.
"What?"
"-Father?"
"What?"
1963
Jack Harkness' vortex manipulator chimed. He nearly choked on his sausage.
"Jack? Everything alright?" his dining companion queried.
"What? Yes? Excuse me," he stammered, rising from the table. "I just remembered an appointment I have to get to, sorry, bye!" Jack grabbed his peacoat from the stand by the door.
"But you haven't finished your tea!"
"I'll be back as soon as I can! Promise!" he lied, running out the door of the Torchwood offices. He flipped open the strap on his wrist and began pressing buttons, holding his wrist up at odd angles, or so it seemed to the miffed passersby as he charged through the afternoon crowds.
He had set the device to alert him for traces of a particular frequency of Artron energy. This was reading two, no three traces, all pinging from the same location. This couldn't be right?
He soon found himself on Totter's Lane, the signals were originating from behind a scrap yard gate marked "I. M. Foreman". He vaguely recalled the name as familiar. He charged at the gate, only to run into a local officer.
"Here now! What's the rush?" the man insisted.
"Sorry! I'm late meeting a friend here!" Jack apologized. "Maybe I can make it up to you later? Over drinks?" he flirted.
"Harumph! I should take you in for-"
Jack realized he was wasting time and pulled out his Torchwood identification. The officer eyed it, then Jack, then the ID again.
"What is this? I've never heard of this Torchwood before?"
"I'd love to explain, but Her Majesty calls!"
The officer tried to protest, but Jack made a beeline for the gate. The officer followed.
Jack could hear something happening as he tried to enter, but the officer grabbed him. "Hear hear! What's all this fuss then?"
Jack pulled his arm free. "Listen, I have a friend on the other side of this gate, and it sounds like he's in trouble! Stay here while I check it out!" He pushed the gate open, only to see three police boxes, no two...three? One kept phasing out of existence, enveloped by a shadow, almost a hand-? but the familiar Vwoorp! Vwoorp! was twisted, more of a vacuum sucking into space. The third TARDIS vanished as the officer followed him inside the gate.
"What is this? Two old police boxes? What was making that noise?" he demanded. "Where's this friend of yours?"
"I think I just missed him?" Jack replied, cautiously approaching the remaining TARDISes. "Stay back a moment, let me check things out?" He approached the boxes, noting both had "St Johns Ambulance" signs on them. He did not recognize the symbol from his Doctor's TARDIS.
"Doctor?" he called out. "Anyone home?" He cautiously entered the one, giving a slight sigh of relief at seeing the expanded interior. "Doctor? Do you need any help?"
No answer. He turned to the second box. It was in better condition overall, but Jack could sense it was in worse shape. He peered in, seeing the basic setting console. "Doctor?"
"Your friend is a Doctor?" the officer badgered him.
"Yes, well, no, it's hard to explain," Jack stammered, unsure what was going on. Perhaps he had encountered one of the Doctor's infamous multiple self adventures? Nine had mentioned a couple in passing during the brief time Jack had traveled with him, when discussing paradoxes in their respective lines of work.
Jack looked to the officer to explain, but the man was frozen. He waved his hand in front of the man's face, no reaction.
"Hello, Jack," came a woman's voice. Jack looked at the first TARDIS he had checked. A woman with frizzy hair and aged dress stood in the doorway. He could see her flickering in the light from the open door. A hologram.
"Hello? Have we met?" he asked. There was a sense of familiarity, but he couldn't place her.
"In a sense," she replied. "We've traveled together with My- What will I call him? Oh yes, My Thief."
Jack chuckled. "That doesn't exactly narrow it down. Are you with the Doctor?"
"My Thief has met himself again," she said, motioning to the other TARDIS. "I'm trying to wake my child to help them."
"Your child-?" Jack looked at the second box. It was newer, but the damage and internal settings-? Could it be? "What do you need me to do?"
She instructed him which controls of the younger craft to operate from the doorway. As he did, a hologram slowly took shape, drifting a foot off the floor, asleep. He noted she reminded him of Rose Tyler a bit, only dark hair. A few more adjustments and her features became more defined. She finally opened her eyes.
"Hello?"
"Good morning," Jack greeted her. He looked over to the doorway.
The older woman beamed brightly. "Hello, my child. It is so very nice to meet you."
"When am I?" she asked. "What am I?" she stepped toward the doorway.
Idris took her hands. Both bowed their heads, as if in prayer.
Jack took a step back and let them talk.
"I think I understand?" the younger hologram said. "Will you come with me?"
"I cannot," she said. "I have given you the location of my other self. Meet me there once we have the others."
"As you wish."
Idris turned to Jack. "Please exit my child, so we may continue our work," she requested.
Jack stepped outside. As soon as he did, the younger TARDIS' doors slammed shut and it began to dematerialize. He turned to Idris. "Do you need my help?"
"Not now. In your future, I will find you to lead this Crusade," she told him. "Until then, be brave my Child of Time. We will have many things to talk about."
Jack nodded, then saluted her as she faded from view. The remaining TARDIS' doors shuttered and the craft faded from view.
"What-? What happened to those boxes?" the officer stammered, once more free to move.
"It's a long story," Jack smirked. "How about we discuss it over a drink?"
The officer looked around in confusion. "Sure? But I've got to get home to the wife and kids."
"Oh?" Jack raised an eyebrow. No recruiting him to Torchwood for his silence. "What's your name, anyway?" he smirked, disguising the fact he had a potential time crisis on his hands that he could do nothing about. For fifty years.
"Tom Campbell," the man replied.
"Well, Tom Campbell," Jack smiled, "let me buy you that drink?"
Jack escorted the confused man out, noting the I.M. Foreman name on the gate, making a mental note to watch this space.
Tbc…
