TITLE: Distantly in Love
AUTHORS: Gillian Taylor(Dark Aegis) & NNWest
DISCLAIMER: Don't own them. We just like playing with them...a lot.
Chapter Ten
"Curiosity, Fräulein, killed the cat." Klein smiled as he now paced before Rose Tyler's restrained form. "Your friend did not understand this."
Rose blinked her eyes in an unsuccessful attempt to get the fuzzy features of her captor to resolve themselves. Her head pounded uncomfortably, as if someone had decided to start up a garage band in her skull. "So," she began, licking her parched lips, "What did you do to the Doctor?"
"You'll find out. Actually, I'd say that you'll find out rather intimately what we did to your friend." Klein's lips curved into a smile with just a hint of his white teeth showing.
"You've been watching too many bad movies, haven't you? The bad guys in those are just as boring." Rose rolled her eyes in exasperation.
"I'm not the 'bad guy,' Fräulein Tyler." Rose's eyes widened as he spoke her name. "Ah, yes, we know who you are. The missing persons posters in London during 2006 were quite informative."
"Who are you?"
"Director Klein, commander of this complex. You, Fräulein, are a guest of the Time Agency."
Rose swallowed nervously. From what Jack had told her about the Agency, she knew that they were anything but 'nice people.' "Can't say much about the accommodations. Or the decor."
"Not to worry, my dear. You won't remember it. Summon Doctor Alvarez," he instructed the lone guard. "You'll enjoy this, Fräulein. Your friend was quite vocal in his appreciation of Doctor Alvarez' work."
She suddenly put two and two together. "You're going to take my memories."
"I believe the term is, a gold star for you, Fräulein."
She tested the strength of her bonds, but found that she was bound far too tightly for any attempted escape. The sonic screwdriver was inaccessible in the front pocket of her hoodie, and she silently cursed herself for not putting it in her back pocket. Suddenly, the Doctor's insistence on keeping it in his back pocket made a great deal of sense.
The door squeaked open and Doctor Maria Alvarez pushed her machine into the room. She shot Klein a bitter look as she took in the too young appearance of her next victim. She seriously wished that there was something she could do to help, but she was bound just as tightly as the young woman before her. Her lips turned downward into a frown. "She is very young, señor."
"Yes." Klein nodded. "But she knows too much. You know what you have to do."
"Sí," she answered, mentally adding, '¡Cabron!' Maria pushed the cart next to Rose, and began setting up the machine. Her tone was insubordinate as she added, "I do not need supervision, señor."
Klein looked at her intently for a moment before nodding. "You and I will have a talk later, Fräulein Alvarez."
"Whatever." Maria pointedly directed her attention away from Klein and began to pull out electrodes. The slam of the door behind her was the only indication of her supervisor's departure. Now, alone with Rose, she muttered out loud, "Cabron."
Rose looked at the Mexican woman, her eyes pleading. "You can just let me go, you know."
"I had this discussion with your friend, señorita. I cannot." Her eyes, however, revealed how torn she was. She wanted to help, but she still feared what the Agency could do to her and her family.
"Sure you can. It's easy."
"No, señorita, it is not." Maria began placing the electrodes on Rose's scalp and forehead. "Though I will tell you what I told your friend. A copy will be made of your memories, which is of some small comfort. However, you will not remember this conversation."
"Fantastic," she said sullenly.
With a murmured apology, Maria turned on the machine and tried to drown out the screams of yet another innocent. She really hated her job.
Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor paced. In his opinion, Jack and Rose had been gone far too long. While they'd been gone, he'd been exploring the myriad rooms of the time ship. He'd been resisting the urge to crawl under the console and take it to pieces.
Suddenly he stopped. Indistinct images of a flea market filtered through his mind, its stalls boarded up for the night. Exploring the thought, he tried to pick through the recollection, grasping to pull out anything that would help him remember more.
He remembered loud music. "Yes," he murmured, a furrow appearing in his brow. There had to be more than just that, there had to be some means of finding where he had been the night before. It would be a first step in, hopefully, finding out what had happened to his memories.
An image of a parrot bizarrely wearing sunglasses appeared in his mind, and the furrow in his brow deepened. "Yes," he encouraged his memory. Though, what he really needed was something that was more useful than a cartoon parrot, loud music, and a closed flea market.
A thought tickled the edge of his consciousness and he waited patiently for it to coalesce. There was something else, something...a volcano. A volcano with yellow lava. The furrow in his brow was practically a crevasse. "Yes..."
He remembered a sail boat, but he did not mentally associate it with water. "A sign, perhaps. Yes..."
The Doctor closed his eyes, as if by blocking out the image of the TARDIS control room he might be able to recall more. A word came to him, a word that did not make sense when taking into account his other memories. "Kukulcan," he said out loud, and tried to remember what that word meant in context.
"Kukulcan...Boulevard. A street. Oh." A manic grin crossed his face due to his success. He had a starting point, a place from which to start looking. He glanced at his watch. "Yup, they've definitely been gone too long. But, there are better things I could be doing. Finding that bar for one." Thus decided, he walked out of the TARDIS.
Chapter Eleven
Her head hurt. It hurt a lot. She wasn't certain if opening her eyes would be a good idea or not. At the moment, she was leaning toward a 'definitely not.' Strangely, her entire body ached as if she had been through some sort of physical activity but she could not recall what it was. Truthfully, she could not recall much more beyond her head hurting. "Ow," she muttered ingeniously.
"Are you okay, sweetie?" a woman's low voice echoed painfully in her already throbbing skull and she fought the urge to groan.
"Jus' peachy," she murmured.
"Why don't you open your eyes, sweetie? I'm going to tell the bartender you've had enough."
"Bar?" A bar wasn't part of her memories. Steeling herself for more pain, she opened her eyes and almost immediately shut them again. A shirt that brightly coloured should be illegal, she decided.
"Sweetie?"
"Your shirt hurt."
"Definitely cutting you off, then. I'll walk away for bit, and you can continue to try and open your eyes, okay? I won't let you walk home like this. A woman your age, this drunk, at this hour. What's this world coming to?" Still muttering to herself, the waitress' voice receded.
Satisfied that she would not be attacked by vibrant parrots, she opened her eyes again. Ten glasses in various stages of consumption were arrayed before her. All were apparently frozen, and in various shades of the rainbow. She found the blue one particularly intriguing. "Pretty."
There was money on the table, which struck her as odd. She did not remember bringing any money. Though, truthfully, she didn't exactly remember much of anything. "I'm going home," she said, pushing away from the table.
When she stood, she wobbled slightly as if she could not quite find her balance. The world spun crazily for a moment, and she screwed her eyes shut and mentally willed it to stop. Carefully she opened one eye and then the other once the sensation had ceased. Satisfied that the world had stopped spinning, she continued on a weaving path to the door.
That was when she remembered that she had no idea where 'home' was. Deciding that she'd know it when she saw it, the young woman began walking. She wandered aimlessly, letting her feet take her where they willed. The brightly coloured shops and goods of a flea market caused her head to ache even more, but she had the feeling that she had to pass through the market to find 'home.' She still had no idea where that was, but she decided to not let the idea bother her for the moment.
Unbeknownst to her, a figure detached itself from the shadows of a stall and began to follow her unsteady tracks through the crowd. A young woman, alone, a tourist, and apparently drunk marked her as a prime target.
She turned a blind corner and found herself in an all but abandoned alleyway. Shrugging to herself, she continued walking.
A voice from behind her interrupted her thoughts. "Your money, señorita. Give it to me, and I won't hurt you." She turned and a burly teenager grinned as he brandished a knife before her.
"I don't have any money," she said. For all she knew, she didn't.
"You lie," he accused as he stepped forward menacingly.
"I don't have money. I'm sorry," she assured him again, her words slightly slurred.
A slap that she did not know was coming rocked her head to the side. Her hand reached up to tentatively touch her lip. When she pulled her fingers away, they were tinged red.
"You lie!" the boy screamed, raising the knife and grabbing her arm. "Turn out your pockets!"
"I don't have anything!" she screamed back, struggling against his grip.
"Oi, leave her alone!" a new voice interrupted them.
The teenager sneered at the newcomer as his grip tightened on her arm. "And you will stop me, hero?"
The Doctor smiled, and in that smile the young Mexican felt the first tendrils of fear. "Yeah."
With a low growl, the boy pushed Rose away and unbalanced, she collapsed to the ground. Anger surged through the Doctor, an oncoming storm within his eyes as he spotted Rose's bloodied lip. She was injured, and he could not stand by and allow this little ape to hurt her anymore.
The boy stepped back, sensing that the man in front of him was extremely dangerous. There was death in this man's eyes, death and a hint of something alien to anything he had ever seen in his young life. He finally labelled it with a whisper of fear, "El diablo. ¡Es el diablo!" No money was worth facing the devil. With that thought in mind, the boy turned and fled.
Satisfied that the young man would not return, the Doctor crossed the alley to his fallen friend. Kneeling before her, he gently brushed her hair back with one hand. With the other he tilted her chin to look at her injured lip. Tenderly, he wiped the blood away as he said, "Jack said you were jeopardy-friendly. He really wasn't kidding, was he?"
She looked at her saviour and found herself trusting him immediately. "And you are?" she asked as he helped her to her feet.
He blinked at the question. "The Doctor?" he offered.
"'Kay. Don't sound very sure of that, do you?"
The Doctor's brow furrowed at the blank look in her eyes. While his own memories were missing, he was certain that Rose Tyler's eyes had never been that barren. "Rose, are you alright?"
"Rose?" she inquired curiously. "Who's that?"
"That would be you."
"Like you're-" she said, curling her fingers in the air to indicate quotation marks, "'The Doctor'?"
"Sort of, yeah." He regarded her seriously. "Do you remember what happened?"
"There was this bar...an' alcohol." Her brow creased with the effort of trying to remember. "Probably lots of alcohol."
"Near a flea market? Parrots, huge sailboat, volcano?"
"Yeah! That's the one."
"Hmmmm. Been there before. Good margaritas. But you're injured. Let's get you back to the TARDIS. I want to take a look at that cut."
He obviously knew her, she decided, and she knew unwaveringly that she trusted him. However, she paused at the unfamiliar word. "The TARDIS?"
"Yeah. Home." He offered her his hand with a wide smile. "Coming?"
She took it, enjoying the feel of his fingers between her own. "Yeah."
Pushing through the TARDIS doors, a confused Rose in tow, the Doctor was instantly confronted by Jack. "Where the hell have you been? I told you to stay here."
"Ah, Jack. You're back. Rose lost her memories. How are you?"
Jack was rocked back by the Doctor's revelation. "Peachy. I just talked to her three hours ago. Rose, what happened?" He stepped forward and gently touched her split lip, his eyes dark with concern.
She regarded the amazingly handsome man before her. There was something in his eyes that sent shivers down her spine. It was that same something that she had felt the moment that the Doctor had taken her hand. "I just told him. Bar. Alcohol. Need I say more?"
"Unless early twenty-first century Earth has discovered Pangalactic Gargleblasters, I doubt alcohol had anything to do with it. We're gonna need to back track her last three hours starting with that bar."
"I know where the bar is," the Doctor revealed with a smug grin.
When the Doctor did not say anymore, Jack arched an eyebrow. "And? Where is it? Inquiring minds want to know."
"Kukulcan Boulevard," the Doctor said. "I was heading there when I came upon Rose. She had had an encounter with a rather unfriendly local." His eyes darkened with remembered anger.
"Are you okay?" Jack asked, reaching out to touch the Doctor's shoulder in concern.
Rose's eyes darted between the two men and she savored the feel of their hands - one grasped within her own, the other still touching her face. There was something right about this, about them all together that vibrated within her soul. It had to be love, she concluded. What else could it be?
"Yeah. We both are. Well, if you disregard our lack of memories."
Jack cocked a grin. "There is that. Then, I think our next course of action is to find this bar once we get Rose cleaned up." With those words, he led the others towards the med bay.
Chapter Twelve
Darkness crept over the forested hills of Ampelle, the Sevateem homeworld. A tall, dark haired woman leaned against her spear as she regarded the view with a slightly narrowed gaze. The scents of the forest caused her nose to spasm, but her appearance of watchfulness did not waver. Only the slightest twitch of her hand against her spear gave away her notice of the soft scuffle of feet behind her.
"Leela." Her name was but a breath upon his lips.
"Andred," she greeted in return with a soft smile that was reserved for him alone. Her eyes did not waver from the forest, but she knew he could see her smile in the dusky light from the rising moon.
"Nothing has changed," he informed her, resisting the urge to wrap his arms around her slender frame. He knew that she would not appreciate it, especially when it was her turn to guard the unassuming hillock against any enemies. His skin tingled with awareness of the time distortion behind them. It was the only reminder that he had of his world; that and the artifact hidden in a permanent temporal loop of one millisecond ahead of normal time.
"Emily is a warrior. She will protect the secret with her life," Leela told him, her eyes fierce in the reflected moonlight. "And if she dies, I will avenge her."
"She might not have a choice. Her brother might remember what happened - he might remember her."
"I do not care for ifs, Andred. There have been far too many of them in my life. The Doctor..."
"The Doctor," Andred repeated with a brief and bitter laugh. "The Doctor is gone, along with the rest of my people."
"We remember him. As long as there are stories told of the Doctor, he lives on. I have told his stories around the Tale Fire. He is a legend among my own people. He lives."
Andred's lips turned upward into a faint smile at her innocence. Gallifreyans were now nothing more than figments, dreams, legends. He, as far as he knew through the shielding influence of the artifact, was alone in the universe save for Leela and their unborn child. "True." He would allow her that comfort, at least.
"Do you have a..." she searched for a word before concluding, "feeling that something is wrong?"
"Yes." He confirmed, uneasy with that aspect of his being. Psychic abilities used to run rampant amongst his people with telepathy being the most common. His telepathy was close to null, but he had started to develop what amounted to precognition. He knew something was wrong, just as he knew it involved Emily.
"Then we will increase the watch. No one will pass us, or use the Sevateem to get to the Matrix. I swear it." Leela stated, "I will arrange for more warriors at dawn."
Andred did not answer, but his eyes spoke his feelings. She should not promise what she could not keep. Knowing the desperation of any of a dozen species who would wish to gain access to the Matrix only confirmed to him that they would try to find a way. Through Emily first, and then through the Sevateem and himself. It was as inevitable as the dawn.
"You doubt me?" she asked, hurt creeping into her voice.
"No, Leela. I don't doubt that you will do all you can to prevent the Matrix from falling into enemy hands. I just fear that you, we, might not have a choice in the matter."
"The Doctor said that there was always a choice. My choice is no."
He laughed quietly. "Ah, Leela, what would I do without you?"
"I do not know. Though, you would have a quieter life."
"I would have no life at all," he assured her and was rewarded with a blinding smile. "I'll leave you to your watch. Do you need anything from camp?"
"No. I will see you later, my love."
"Later," he confirmed and disappeared into the darkness of the forest. Leela tracked his progress with her ears and nodded quietly to herself when she determined that he had reached the camp without incident. Returning to her watch, she whispered a silent prayer for the safety of Emily Harkness and the secret which she carried. Even the most skilled warrior could be captured, or killed.
The noise washed over Jack as he pushed open the double doors to the bar. The mindless chatter of the crowd, the normal sounds of a restaurant, and the loud tropical music all combined in a clamor of sound that made him flinch in sympathy for Rose and the Doctor. This was not the type of place where being a drunk was comfortable, especially given the loud decor.
"Just grab yourselves a seat where you like," a waitress told them as she bustled past, jockeying a tray full of drinks and a stand.
"Thanks," Jack called after her. He scanned the room once before selecting a table that would give them a clear view of the exits. His instincts in this situation were to be extra careful; there was something about this bar that tickled the edge of his consciousness like a half forgotten word.
The Doctor caught what he thought was a hint of distaste in Jack as he surveyed the bar crowd. "What's wrong Jack?"
"Nothing much. Not quite what I was hoping for."
"Really?" The Doctor looked perplexed. "My judgement may be dodgy, but I'd have expected this to be just your kind of place."
"Too touristy," Jack said as his eyes followed a slender form in an incredibly short skirt.
When his gaze returned to his companions, Rose pinned him with a look that said, 'Yeah, right.'
Jack grinned. "I didn't say the scenery wasn't good. I just prefer locals."
Not far away from where the Doctor, Rose, and Jack were sitting, a commanding older man and a pretty thirty-something brunette woman surreptitiously studied the trio.
"He's here. Now, how do we trigger Captain Harkness' memory?" Danninger hissed.
"I told you all I know. Jack only said the trigger was here. This bar, this time zone. Nothing more." Janette looked uncomfortable. She didn't want to be here and she certainly did not want to be helping this man. "I don't even know what it was he erased."
"Ah, but we're pretty sure we know what he erased, Captain Fischer. And as soon as we have that information, you'll be free to return to duty."
"And my brother?"
"Will have our support during the election. The evidence of his...impropriety will disappear," he replied mildly.
A busty blonde wearing a loud Hawaiian shirt and a black apron stopped at their table, setting down three menus. "Can I get you anything? We've a special tonight on margaritas - two for six pesos."
Jack cast a glance over the Doctor and then Rose. "Probably best to avoid the drinks," he decreed and ordered three waters.
With a shrug, the waitress jotted down their order on a pad of paper and headed to the bar.
The water arrived a short time later and, as a precaution, Jack used his wristcomm to give it a quick scan. The Doctor and Rose continued to look around the bar inquiringly, searching for some sign that this was anything but a typical tourist spot.
"What's the scan say?" Receiving no answer, the Doctor looked back to the other man at the table. Something was wrong. Jack was staring, eyes wide, his gaze unfocused. The Doctor reached out for his shoulder. "Jack?"
"What do you think's wrong with him?" Rose's voice was worried.
"No idea." The Doctor glanced around them, but could find nothing he could point to as a cause for Jack's sudden catatonia.
Looking back, the Doctor was in time to read the former Time Agent's lips as he silently mouthed, "Yesterday's over my shoulder, so I can't look back for too long," before he slumped forward across the table unconscious.
Unnoticed at a table nearby, the man raised a wristcomm very much like Jack's to his mouth to speak the words, "Move in."