A/N: Note Jessa7: I waaant that cookie!

And all other reviewers, you're all great! Thanks so much! This chapter will be up sooner than planned, simply 'cause I like writing this so much!

Disclaimer: Sigh I still don't own Doctor Who or my very own David Tennant. I don't even own that darn cookie… yet.

CHAPTER 4

Touching Your World Upon my Whispers

Kastal

The rocky landscape was not deserted, though at first it could seem that way. Kastal, Pavar's twin planet, was just as civilised as its twin. It had fewer resources, less inhabitants, but the civilisations there were bustling with activity. There was always something to do, somewhere to go, and most Kastalians weren't as power crazed as the main feud starters at all. They were akin to Magpies slightly; they collected talismans, loved having possessions. But they were just normal beings. Going about their business, underneath the crust of the world.

The Empire was an underground civilization, dark, lit by globes of artificial light. There world was of earth and of steel; a secret city hidden underneath the ground, full of colour, light, and peaceful Kastalians.

The Headquarters, however, were a different story. No one expected the light fearing Kastalians to build a place above ground, and even if they did suspect such a thing, how would they find amidst all of the fake projections? The headquarters was ingeniously a huge hologram that covered miles, projecting just… nothing. It never wavered, never showed any interference; simulated its own storms over the parched landscape it projected. It was perfect in every sense. No Pavarian could ever have detected it.

That is, until the Doctor joined their forces.

Grinning to himself, he stowed the Sonic Screwdriver back in his pocket and jumped out of the little space craft, pressed the button on his keys and the reinforced shields slid over the top. It hadn't really been a bumpy ride. He'd only crashed twice and had to be towed some of the way by an Emergency Assistance shuttle. Well, only, if you didn't include being pulled over by the Intergalactic Police and being given a ticket.

Ticket Shmicket.

He walked across the dune ahead of him and looked at the blank landscape ahead of him, and his grin broadened. He pulled out the sonic screwdriver again and pointed it directly at the ground beneath his feet. Perhaps only an inch before him, the ground flickered and wavered, until it gave away completely. Just a section of it, hardly detectable. But the Doctor could definitely see the bit beneath the illusion was definitely not rocks and sand. Oh no. It was steel.

The Doctor laughed, span around in a circle with his arms out and said:

"Brilliant! Just brilliant. They created a hologram to cover the headquarters. Ingenious."

And just like that, the Kastalian Empire completely lost their chance of being hidden.

The Doctor walked straight through the hologram, pressed the button on his sonic screwdriver, and took away more of it, until he had made a clear path through the mirage of desert right up to the front door of the Kastalian head quarters.

His hearts began to beat faster as he walked down the narrow pathway that wasn't hologram. It had been too long since he'd last seen that face. Half of him wanted to forget it, to be rid of it so he could move on, but the greater part was just too attached. He needed something of hers to hold onto and even if he only had a memory…

It would do. But the real thing would be better. And even if this was a parallel Rose he wouldn't hesitate to say… to do…

…What was he going to do?

Shaking his head slightly, the Doctor shook off troublesome thoughts. There were people's lives at risk. And besides, he had his psychic paper. Due to the fact the authorities on Pavar hadn't had any psychic training to speak of; it was unlikely their twins on Kastal would. So… who did he want to be?

X

"Captain Doctor reporting for duty," he grinned up at the skeletal Kastalian at the door. The alien's visor slipped up to reveal the trademark one eye that could always identify a Pavarian or Kastalian. It widened slightly as the clicking, grating voice spoke back. To the Doctor, it was perfect Galifreyan. He wasn't bothered about even trying to comprehend what the alien said: if he was pathetic enough to get involved in the war, so be it.

"Authorization required," clicked the voice, and with his confident smile still perched, unwavering on his face, the Doctor waved the psychic paper unceremoniously in the guard's face, then strode past him while the doors were only just opening.

Out of habit, he looked back down at the psychic paper to see what it had said, and sniggered to himself when he saw: Captain Doctor, Authorization Granted. Kastalians: they were so damn stupid. Of course… compared to the Doctor, that was.

Walking down the corridor, he looked at the clinical doors, the white walls, the steel beams and the metal bolts with distaste. He wanted to look behind those doors, wanted to see what was behind them, but as he came to the first he put his fingers to the handle, turned it, but stopped there. Again his two hearts clenched. He lifted his hand from the door, looked at it almost with regret, and walked away. There wasn't a chance, anyway. He shouldn't have hoped or tried. He walked past the rest of the doors with his head down, hands in his pockets.

Ahead of him, two Kastalians walked down the corridor, guns out. He looked up then, just when his superhuman Doctor senses noticed that something could be just a small, just a teensy bit wrong. Just a teensy, tiny, little bit. As little as you get when he found that two guns were pointed at his head.

"Aha," he said. Not much more to say, really.

"Scan registers as negative." Clicked a voice. "It should not exist."

The Doctor, of course, was deeply offended. "It?" He said, in a tone that could only be described as completely and utterly offended. "Now, don't you think that even if I did sneak up on your headquarters, get in with my lovely fake ID, and am probably about to be shot, you could at least call me by my proper name."

"It admits to its alliance to the Pavarian Empire."

"Ah," said the Doctor. Right. So maybe, if he hadn't opened his big mouth, he could have got out of this situation. Well, be that as it may, he certainly wasn't going to permit himself to be called by such an offensive name.

"It will be taken hostage. The alliance with Pavar will mean that they will comply with our wishes to get it back."

"Now," said the Doctor, infuriated, "can we please just stop it with the whole "It" thing, right? I have a name!"

"You will identify yourself."

"I'm the Doctor," he said, flourishing a hand proudly.

"Identified. You shall proceed with us."

Shut your mouth, said something angrily in the back of the Doctor's head. That was probably himself, making conversation. Maybe one of his former self's. Maybe his… sixth generation? Hell, had he been a bitch back then.

The Doctor kept a hand in his pocket, holding his precious screwdriver firmly in one hand. There was always a way out. For the Doctor… always.

So that's why the Kastalian Guards were confused, even scared of this new person in their ranks. Why wasn't he terrified? Why wasn't he looking around, bewildered shock upon his face? And why… why was he walking around like he owned the place.

They only had one option to stop this. They were going to have to break him.

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The Doctor declined the kind offer of the manacled chair. He grimaced. He always had preferred standing up to sitting down. Of course, his hosts didn't appreciate this, but all he could really see was angry aliens waving guns about in his face, which wasn't something he felt like responding to with politeness.

"You will sit."

"No, ta. I'm fine standing. Try to sit down and my… back… might give way."

"You will sit!"

The Doctor sat obediently on the arm of the chair. And looked around, put an arm round the back of it. "Nice place you got here. Bit claustrophobic, need a bit more colour and that… but if I get you the name of my decorator… nah, on second thoughts, you don't want his name…"

"You will cease this witless talk," said one of his… escorts. It thrust a small computer screen into his lap with green runes upon its surface. The Doctor looked at it blankly, and then up as a communications screen popped up in front of him. It was blank.

The guard moved in front of him and put his gun to his forehead. "You will comply to our wishes and read the ransom note before you."

"Nah, I'll pass on that one, I think. No, on second thoughts, I know."

Behind that mundane, clouded visor, the Doctor saw an eye flash. Dangerously. And suddenly, the screen in front of him wasn't blank at all, but what he see made his whole stomach flip, his heart rising into his throat. For before him stood the impossible. He stood up, as if wanting to confront it. It spoke in its metal, murderous tones and the Doctor shook with anger.

"Doc-tor."

The Doctor raised his head in acknowledgement. "Dalek Sek."

He circled the room. The Dalek's single eye stalk followed his progress round the room. They were two ancient enemies glaring hate at each other, the Doctor's own anger burning like a furnace. It was the Dalek's fault. Their whole race had torn his one salvation away from him and he wasn't having it. He wasn't going to accept that one had survived. He would right this wrong.

"How did you survive the Void?" Said the Doctor softly, looking directly at the screen in front of him.

"Emergency transportation," grated Dalek Sek. "I landed on this planet with its slow and unintelligent life forms. I survived."

"And now…" said the Doctor, looking around with a smile on his face though it held no mirth, "you've created an alliance with the Kastalian Empire. The one thing a Dalek would never do, and you've gone ahead anyway."

"We were the Cult of Skaro. We imagined. We accepted. We found new ways of extermination."

"Yep," sighed the Doctor, looking at his blank surroundings. "You did."

"You will obey the wishes of the Kastalian Empire. It is required for Dalek Supremacy."

The Doctor picked up the ransom note and looked at it for a second. Then he looked at the Dalek as if it was mad: well, it was. In its cold cage for eternity, never aging, never dying, never feeling.

"This?" he said incredulously. "What good is this going to do? They haven't even spelled 'execution' right and it's in their own language!"

"You will READ." Persisted the Dalek. If the Doctor hadn't known better, he would have said the Dalek was angry.

"Why do you want me to read?" Said the Doctor softly, dropping the panel onto the floor.

The Dalek said nothing. The communications screen winked out. A new one opened, that traced his movement and sound vibrations. The Doctor was officially on camera, and he smiled and waved to his millions of viewers on Pavar. Inside, his emotions were in a turmoil. A Dalek lose in the universe again; old memories awakening. A girl…

"Read."

The Doctor picked up the panel off the floor and read it all obediently, then looked up again at the camera, and shrugged to his viewers at the Pavarian Government.

"But I wouldn't listen to all that," he said. "These lot, they're a bit stupid. Oh, but they got one thing right. Help right now would probably be helpful…"

The Doctor looked around as a Kastalian angrily shoved a gun next to his ear. It hissed: "They will never find you, Doctor."

"Nah… I doubt they will… K22334, 00678… two miles away from landing point… see, there's no hope for me, I'm going to be killed, murdered brutally, put in that boiling pot just round the corner of this room… follow the path through the desert… terrible things, those, get way too dehydrated…"

The Doctor winked at the video screen before it was cancelled and two very, very angry guards lead him out of the room to an isolated cell.

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The hours passed so slowly. Painfully so. Rose guessed it would be harder if they were passing quickly, but the time she had in which to think about her death was even worse.

Nineteen hours to go now… eighteen… fifteen…

Mickey checked his watch again, sighed, and put his head in his hands. Rose shifted slightly from her position. Her legs were cramped from staying still for so long, but she couldn't move from her position. She simply sat there, looking into the distance. She didn't even hear Mickey's voice as he said glumly:

"Two hours…"

Rose had thought so much over those hours. Not about anything much. Old memories she had never put away and never desired to. Losing them… no. That just wasn't going to happen. She imagined about where she was. Not Krop Tor. Definitely not. There were no staking storms, no Ood… no strange messages in the air.

There were so many things she wanted to talk about to Mickey but found she couldn't, such was the hard lump in her throat. She guessed they'd just have to be kept to herself for the rest of life. However short that may now be.

But there was every possibility of escape. Rose had learnt that a long time ago. There was always a hitch, a slight weakness in the enemy's defences.

"Right," she said, getting up. "Here's the plan…"

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The Doctor let the Guard fall down freely as he fell unconscious. Stowing his screwdriver back in his pocket, he lifted the newly opened bolts of the door and snuck outside, keeping close to the wall. He knew perfectly well what date it was, and even if she wasn't… his… Rose, he was going to do absolutely anything to save that face. Anything.

So, he thought to himself. I have a plan.

A/N: Oho, massive cliffy, I hope! Next chapter is going to be explosive, I promise you, and Rose is going to be in it a lot more. I think both of them will! Thanks to all you great reviewers. You are just wonderful. I was checking my STATS and was just amazed to find that 20 people have me on alert! That's more than ever! I am so, SO grateful!

So, special thanks to: LarielRomeniel, dolly.the.sheep, lymony, Fanficer Lore, Ravena Storm, Radish earrings, Jessa7, Starlite 1, Romana I, Cassandra Sita Terra, I-Confuse-Everyone, Annie Coomes, stargazing Basketcase, Black Sorceress, Eeveekitty85, Give My Socks Back, and everyone else who replied to my PMs… I can't thank you enough!

Well, it's good bye from me!

Till tonight, either the finishing, or penultimate chapter. We'll see when I write it.

Yours,

StrangePrinciples.