I started posting this story ages ago, but for the last few years it's been quite difficult to sit down and get it finished. As circumstances have made me spend much longer at home than I'd have wanted to, at long last here are the last three chapters. I apologise to those who were reading. As I said I couldn't find the time, but this silly tale would keep nagging me!
There some references to the Rose Tyler - The Dimension Canon stories.
No beta, so all mistakes are mine.
The Doctor opened his eyes the moment his backside hit the ground. The first thing he did was look down at Rose, thus making sure she had made it safely through the wormhole, although she remained unconscious. The next thing he did was turn around and watch in horror as the whirl of gas and dust that had granted them both access to this new reality shrank gradually until it vanished from his sight completely.
His eyes remained fixed on the spot where the portal had been as the Doctor succeeded in his attempt to stand up. It took tremendous effort as he was still holding Rose in his arms. Once he did he spun around slowly, studying their surroundings. The place they had been taken to was an enormous room that was in complete darkness except for the light coming in through the glass walls. Such light made it possible for him to discern the silhouette of a massive round table in the centre of the room. Monstrous as it was, it struck him as odd that there should only be an armchair next to it. That meant this couldn't be an executive meeting room. It had to be someone's office instead, and that someone not only seemed to keep to themselves very much, but they must also have been very busy judging by the amount of computers and other technological and electronic devices on top of the table.
The Doctor walked towards the armchair and softly placed Rose on it, then turned around and strode towards the glass walls. Upon looking up, what immediately caught his eye was the long-forgotten sight of hundreds of zeppelins floating about high up in the sky. It had been such a long time since he had last been to this universe that he had completely forgotten about them. Now that he had returned, he would have sworn there was something different about them. They were so high up above that it would have been nearly impossible to spot them for someone who had never known they had been there in the first place. As far as he could remember they used to be suspended at a much lower altitude. Maybe there wasn't anything wrong about them at all though. Maybe it was just that, after roughly a thousand years, his memories of this place were more distorted than he would have expected and anyway, if there was something different about them Rose would know for sure. He'd just have to wait until she regained consciousness to have the chance to ask her.
'Rose would know', his mind unexpectedly shot back. In the blink of an eye, his tricky brain showed him the loving face of his dear friend Martha Jones lying on a bed next to his pinstriped self as he uttered those very words. Over a thousand years had passed since the days when it would have been a habit for him to think of Rose Tyler as the person who would undoubtedly have all the answers that had escaped him. As of late it had been Clara Oswald that he had grown accustomed to turning to whenever he had needed help, yet here he was now. Stuck in a different universe in the company of Rose Tyler.
To put it another way, with no TARDIS, no Clara, and very slight chances of ever seeing any of the two again.
"But it just can't be!" he muttered as he kept looking up at the zeppelins. There had to be a way to come back. The whirlpool that had brought Rose back might have disappeared, but if Rose herself had been able to make her way back to her home universe twice, wouldn't he be able to make it himself? He was the Doctor, for goodness' sake! He just needed to find out how and he needed to start right now!
He took a deep breath as he gritted his teeth in silent fury, but also in the hope that those thoughts wouldn't just turn out to be wishful thinking.
"Okay Doctor, focus," he thought to himself. "Start from scratch. Why would that portal bring you here? What is this place and why is it important?"
Patience had never been one of his strong suits regardless of the incarnation, and yet this one time the Doctor waited patiently until his pupils adjusted to the darkness engulfing the room. As soon as they did, he spun on his heels once and twice and again in an attempt to memorise every single detail about it. Still, there didn't seem to be anything remarkable about it.
"Just an ordinary office, that's what this is," he muttered after having examined the table, the armchair, the glass windows, and the naked walls more closely. Other than that, it was empty. Which was ironic though, because it didn't feel empty. His sixth sense was telling him that they were not alone - as was the hair standing on end at the back of his neck.
"Well hello you," he said, his voice low and deep, but no one answered. "I said 'hello you,' whoever you may be. 'Cause I still don't know who you are, but I know you're watching," You can't be peering in through the door. That's pretty much beneath most of the species I've met in all these years. So if you're not anywhere in or around here, and there are no surveillance cameras in the room, which there aren't," he added, spinning around again, "then you must be some kind of psychic creature. Yes, that's it. I'll go for psychic species. Unless… Oh!" he muttered again as his eyes widened. Gaping, he remained still for a moment until he shove his hand in his coat pocket and fished his sonic out of it. "Unless…" he said as he strode to and fro scanning every corner of the room. "Unless… Unless…"
"Unless you're being deceived by a perception filter," he heard somewhere above him.
Saying that the voice he had just heard was a very familiar one would have been a terrible understatement. The Doctor turned around but still couldn't see anyone except Rose. Not that he needed to. He knew exactly who it was that had just spoken.
His eyes watched as the reality surrounding them slowly started to transform. Everything around them became hazy until some sort of nebula formed right in front of his eyes. The clouds rapidly evaporated and he found that the place they had been transported to was bathed in soft pink, mauve, and white lights.
The moment the Doctor realised where he was, many of the questions that had been rushing through his brain since he emerged in this world got answered. As it turned out, he happened to be in the most extraordinary place in the multiverse. It surely was the one place where he had wanted to be.
He was home.
"Sorry," the voice said, but the Doctor hardly registered that word. He was completely mesmerised by the silvery masterpiece in front of his eyes. Crowned by a massive silver metal disc lay four silvery metal columns arranged on top of a silvery platform. They bent towards the centre and met right in the middle, in the upper part of the brightest console that any TARDIS had ever had. The glow of the pink, mauve and white lights against the silvery columns gave the whole of the console room a magnificent brightness, and when the soothing background sound that he loved so much started to caress his eardrums he couldn't help but close his eyes and fleetingly enjoy the peace it brought him.
"It's okay," he answered a few seconds later, smiling softly as he kept looking around in profound awe of what he was seeing. Eventually he turned to face the man behind him. No surprises there. It was him. Blue pinstriped suit, purple shirt underneath, spiky brown hair, and of course those hateful red sandshoes. He looked exactly as he had done when his fully Time Lord past self had left him on Bad Wolf Bay so many centuries before. Still as skinny as he used to be, and his eyes as sad as they had become after that one terrible day when Torchwood, the Daleks and the Cybermen deprived him of the human that he had loved most. "Spacious. Lots of silver. Gives it quite the sleek look. Also, very minimalistic. No need to jump with excitement though. I'm not saying I like it. What I'm saying your taste has got much better. Anyway, what matters is you did it. You grew your own TARDIS. Wow! How long did it take?"
"Over three years I'd say? Not quite sure. Did everything in my power to accelerate the process, so it might've been a bit less," the partly human Doctor explained, furrowing his brow. "Also, I got a little help from parallel Torchwood."
"Might as well call it the only Torchwood that's left. You haven't been working for them, have you?" the older Doctor asked a bit puzzled, since Rose had implied quite the opposite while saying goodbye to the other Sandshoes before being taken back to this world.
"Not really, no," he answered, "but Pete and Jakey-boy have kept in touch. Occasionally they've provided me with certain stuff I've needed. Actually, they thought…"
The Tenth Doctor hybrid went silent just for a few seconds, his eyes darting towards unconscious Rose. Sauntering towards her, he knelt down when he reached the massive mauve jumpseat she was lying on and and smiled almost imperceptibly. His eyes feasted on her dear face, which he hadn't had the chance to watch that closely for years.
"They thought she'd change her mind at some point," he added, then suddenly found himself unable to carry on.
"Does she know?"
"Never told her, so I guess she doesn't."
"Won't take her long to find out though," said the Eleventh Doctor. "She'll wake up any minute."
"Of course she will," said the younger Doctor, "but I won't be here when she does."
"What do you mean you won't be here?" asked the Eleventh Doctor, frowning. "Where the hell do you think you're going?"
"Far away from her," answered the metacrisis Doctor.
"Fifty percent Donna Noble but still the drama queen prevails…," moaned the Eleventh Doctor, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "Sandshoes you can't do that... You just can't!"
"Oh, you just watch me," he answered. "It's been three years since Bad Wolf Bay part two and in all that time she has never tried to get in touch. Not even once. This is no mistake, Doctor. This is me just doing what I must," he added defeatedly as he softly caressed Rose's hand with his fingertips.
"But still, all these years, you've devoted yourself to her, haven't you?" asked the Eleventh Doctor. "I mean, she did manage to jump dimensions before, but this time… This time it's been you who's made it possible for her. Am I right?"
"I was just the one who pushed the last button. Otherwise she might've been roaming other universes for who knows how long. That's happened before. In the days the dimension cannon was being tested she ended up in lots of other worlds. All the friends she made along the way knew what she was up to and have been willing to help. Still, it seems one of her friends somewhere must've decided to do things their own way in the end."
"What do you mean?" asked the Eleventh Doctor.
"I mean she wasn't supposed to be coming back this time, so by now it's pretty clear that someone somewhere thought they knew better and kept the portal open for much longer than it should've been."
"So you wanted her to stay with me?" asked the Eleventh Doctor incredulously.
"Of course I did," the pinstriped Doctor answered. "That's what she's always wanted, since the day she got stuck in this universe. It was only fair to try and help her."
"In other words," said the Eleventh Doctor, "you had to send her off again."
"Things are different this time," said the metacrisis Doctor, taking a few steps forward towards his future Time Lord self. "She begged everyone at Torchwood to help her go back but no one would listen. Not even Pete, nor even her mother! As soon as Clive told me, I realised it was me who'd have to give her that chance."
"Who's Clive?"
"Long story short, a really good friend of hers. And of mine by now as well."
"And how did you do it?"
"Well you know, Time Lord technology," the pinstriped Doctor answered. "Clive was really worried about her. Said she would spend countless hours locked up in her office every day and would conduct all kinds of tests and experiments in order to find the smallest tear in the fabric of the multiverse or anything that would allow her to entertain even the slightest hope that she'd be able to go back. Pete kept me and my TARDIS-growing process hidden on the top floor of the Torchwood building so I'd watch her sometimes, always from a safe distance. For years and years she's been working twenty-four seven and it broke my hearts. Sorry. Heart. You have absolutely no idea how difficult it is to get used to saying that in the singular. Meaning just one. Anyway, I decided to help her. Among the many things I asked Pete and Jake for in order to grow TARDIS I made sure to include the necessary equipment that would allow me to find the coordinates not only for the nearest wormhole, but also for its time of greatest activity within the next billion years. After the birth of the new TARDIS, I even made a couple of trips to the area to make sure everything would be fine when the moment came. This morning, when she thought she was stepping into her office, I was using a perception filter to make the TARDIS look like her office. As soon as she closed the door I took her to the exact point when wormhole activity was about to reach its peak, and by the time she had turned on her computer, there she was, right where she wanted to be! A portal opened and all the work she had been doing for years was finally rewarded, or so she thought when she jumped in."
"But she's back here now, Sandshoes," answered the Eleventh Doctor, "and she's staying for good."
"So are you," said the Tenth Doctor, pain written all over his face. "I never meant you to cross dimensions, though, Chinny. Sorry about that. Sorry I called you Chinny too. Don't know what made me do that. Your chin, probably. You know, it's… Prominent."
"But I can't stay in this universe," said a suddenly very anxious Eleventh Doctor.
"Sorry to be a spoilsport but it doesn't look like you have a choice," he said, getting back on his feet and ambling towards the other Doctor.
"Then I'll have to find a way out, Sandshoes, and rest assured I will. Oh you just watch me."
The Eleventh Doctor hoped he had sounded convincing enough. The truth, however, was he seriously doubted it would be that easy.
"Oh come on Chinny, this is your chance!" shouted the Tenth Doctor, becoming increasingly agitated and tense. "Rose and this universe have you now! Besides, you don't even need me to explain how to grow a TARDIS. I can do it to save you the time though but you'll figure it out and you know it."
"Sandshoes, you're talking nonsense."
"No, I'm not! I can't stick around anymore... I just can't! I was left here to be with Rose Tyler but Rose Tyler doesn't want to be with me - she wants to be with you."
"No she doesn't!" shouted the Eleventh Doctor. "Whatever she crossed universes looking for doesn't exist anymore, Sandshoes! Can't you see? You and I... We're both the Doctor but we're not the same. We never are! The Doctor keeps regenerating. The man I used to be, or the man I am now… How he talks and how he walks, how he feels and how he acts… That changes every time! The Doctor in the brown coat and the brown suit ceased to be and Rose got there in time to see him go. If you think I'm him, well then I've got news for you - I'm not! Is that so difficult to understand? I'm not that man anymore, Sandshoes. You are! The man she's been longing for only exists in this universe. That man is you, and you both need to understand that!"
"Doctor?" they heard Rose whisper softly behind them.
All of a sudden, the Tenth Doctor went blue in the face as a shiver ran down his spine and his palms started to sweat. Turning away from the Eleventh Doctor, he felt slightly relieved once he checked that Rose wasn't fully awake just yet. She would soon be though, and so he needed to act fast. Running in the direction of the console, he didn't waste any time and started to push and pull levers as soon as he reached it. In a matter of milliseconds the older Time Lord could tell that they had landed somewhere. The Tenth Doctor snapped his fingers, a trick he had learned in the Library from that mysterious Professor Song, and the doors of the TARDIS opened.
"Where are we?" asked the Eleventh Doctor.
"Her flat," he answered. He rushed away from the console and strode towards Rose, kneeling down again when he reached her to take her carefully in his arms. Immediately afterwards he turned around and walked towards the door.
"Sandshoes what are you doing?" asked the Eleventh Doctor as he watched him step out of the TARDIS, but his partly human self didn't answer. It was obvious after all. He was leaving Rose behind once again.
Rushing to the door, the older Time Lord discerned the shape of his younger self walking along a long dark corridor at the end of which a room could barely be seen. As soon as he reached that room, the Tenth Doctor turned right and disappeared from his sight.
The partly human Doctor walked into Rose's bedroom very unwillingly, then knelt down in front of her bed and carefully put her on it. Taking a wooden blanket that was neatly folded on an armchair, he covered her with it. She would be regaining her consciousness soon and he definitely didn't want to be there when that happened. He took her in briefly, just one last time, then he leaned forward and put a soft kiss on her forehead, which he brushed with the back of his hand to try and dry the tears he had left on it.
"I love you, Rose Tyler," he whispered. "Do me a favour when you wake up, will you? You hold his hand and cling to him forever and never let him go again. Goodbye, my love."
Barely three seconds had passed when Rose's hand instinctively reached out for his, weakly and with great difficulty, but unfortunately the Doctor wasn't there to see it when it happened. He had jumped back to his feet and rushed out of the room so hastily that he didn't even notice when he passed the Eleventh Doctor in the living room. It was only when he stepped inside the TARDIS and couldn't find him inside that he turned around and saw him.
"You stay with her, you hear me?" he ordered, tears welling in his eyes again.
"Sandshoes, you're making a big mistake!" said the Eleventh Doctor stepping back in the direction of the TARDIS but to absolutely no avail. The Tenth Doctor swiftly closed the door with another snap of his fingers and the dematerialization process started right away. Under ten seconds, both the TARDIS and the partly human Doctor were gone.
It wasn't like him at all but the Eleventh Doctor was utterly speechless, even more so when he noticed a flash of light coming from behind.
"Oh, brilliant," he heard a disappointed woman's voice say. A disappointed woman's voice that sounded terribly and unequivocally familiar to him.
But it couldn't be, could it? Not only was it absurd - it was also utterly impossible.
Wide-eyed, the Doctor headed back towards the living room, which was as dark as the rest of the flat except for the moonlight that came in through the open window. As the curtains blew in the cold wind, they caressed the fingertips of the petite human figure standing next to it. The moment the Doctor looked in its direction, his suspicions were confirmed. A few seconds before he had honestly thought his mind had been playing tricks on him, but now there was no doubt that it wasn't. The tunic the woman was wearing left no room for doubt anymore and neither did her long dark hair.
"Hang on," she said to herself, "am I back in the twenty-first century again?"
But how was it even possible? The more he kept thinking about it, the less a plausible answer presented itself.
The Doctor tiptoed towards the window, coming to a halt behind her and putting a hand on her shoulder. He noticed the fear that momentarily paralysed her, but soon her innate courage took over and she turned around.
No words could ever describe what he felt when he noticed the sparkle in her eyes at seeing him. Wherever she had come from and whatever she had come looking for, she had certainly been wanting to finally lay her eyes on him.
Probably nearly as much as he had been wanting to lay his eyes on her.
"Clara!" was all managed to say, his eyes wide open again as he took her in. He would normally do that a lot - take her in when she wouldn't notice. Still, he never seemed to have enough. "What are you doing here?"
"Doctor!" she said emotionally as he felt her soft hand taking his. "Is everything alright?"
No it was not, the Doctor thought. Things were in fact far from being alright. But how could he possibly tell her that?
'Okay Doctor, focus,' he thought to himself for the second time that night. He believed himself to be trapped, but upon giving it some more thought, everything seemed to indicate that Clara herself was not. The tunic she was wearing betrayed it. It had formerly belonged to a Headless Monk and she had donned it, as he and Sandshoes had done, with the aim of getting around 1600 London incognito. She'd been wearing it since the three of them stepped out of the TARDIS in order to roam the city, up until the moment when they were all led to Whitehall Palace after rescuing Rose and Anne Boleyn. Which meant that, for Clara, this was happening at some point in between those two moments.
How could she possibly have made it here? He didn't have a clue about it, but he didn't think it even mattered anyway.
"Yes," he lied. Slowly, he raised his thumb and caressed her dear chin. This might well be the last time he would ever see her, but he couldn't let her know that. "After a very long time, I think everything's finally alright," he lied again. Oh, he was such a bad liar. He really needed to try harder if he wanted to sound convincing. Or maybe… Maybe he should just shut up and get her away from here as soon as he could. How she had gotten there was still a mystery to him but the portal that had let her in might not be open forever, and he knew only too well that her future was not in this universe. Putting his hand down, he squeezed hers in a way that told her she really needed to do what he was about to say - even if it would kill him to do so. "Clara, you need to go."
"I wish I could, but I don't know how," she answered. "I don't even know how I ended up here. All I know is this thing definitely had something to do with it."
The Doctor watched as Clara lifted her arm. Underneath her tunic sleeve, Jack's old vortex manipulator was attached to her wrist. No way, the Doctor thought the moment he saw it. A vortex manipulator - or a space scooter as Sandshoes used to call it - was merely a teleport device. It could never have allowed her to travel between universes. There had to be something else! Too many strange things had happened that night. To begin with, Rose had somehow been made to come back, which as the partly human Doctor had said himself was never meant to have happened. A breach in the fabric between universes is never open for long, but still Clara that had been able to cross universes as well. To make things worse, it hadn't even been the version of Clara that had been by his side while the Tenth Doctor regenerated, but the past version of Clara had been arrested and taken to the Tower to share a dungeon with Rose herself in 1600 London. And the vehicle that had led her here was just a simple vortex manipulator? It was ridiculous! He really needed to think and make sense of it all.
"I see," he lied again.
"Captain Jack was trying to help me teleport to..." Clara started, but the Doctor cut in.
"Captain Jack? Are you with Captain Jack?" Captain Jack! Of course! Before this new adventure started, it had been a long time since the Doctor had last seen the former Time Agent, and what he might have been doing all those centuries was a mystery to him. Could he possibly have been toying with vortex manipulators so much that he had found a way to make travel between universes possible? And most importantly, had he ever even realised how terribly dangerous that might turn out to be? What if something had happened to Clara? That single thought made him grimace with disgust, and of course Clara noticed. "What on earth are you doing with him? You can't be with him! Oh, wait a minute… I think I'm having a déjà-vu!"
"Doctor, listen, I really shouldn't be here," she said.
"You have absolutely no idea how much you really shouldn't," he answered, and as soon as he did he panicked. The thought of never seeing her again kept sending shivers down his spine, but he had seen her future and he knew there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. "You need to go now, before it's too late."
"Then help me," she said. "That indigo thing, a code, or a series of digits or whatever it was that Captain Jack dialled… That's what's brought me here."
It was the moment Clara uttered the word 'indigo' that things steadily started to fall into place.
'Indigo,' the Doctor thought. Project Indigo. One of the many secrets UNIT thought they had successfully kept away from him. An experimental teleportation device developed from Sontaran technology. Back in the days when the Daleks kidnapped the Earth together with loads of other planets, Martha Jones used the only existing device to escape from the UNIT division in New York. Much to everyone's surprise, including Jack's, not only did the device work, but it also took Martha to her mother's - curiously enough, the place one where she had wanted to be, as she put it later herself. That the device should choose such a surprising destination was a very clear indication that a neural interface had been added to it. Jack himself had used the Indigo teleport base code on his own vortex manipulator to get out of Torchwood and find the Doctor. Once the Daleks were defeated and each of the planets they had kidnapped were towed to safety, the Doctor successfully rendered Jack's vortex manipulator useless, or so he thought. Right now everything seemed to indicate that Jack had outwitted him that one time and prevented him from totally removing the teleport base code from his wrist device.
However long the Doctor might have yet left to live, it would never be enough to thank Jack for that. As it happened, he had just remembered borrowing Clara's vortex manipulator while at Whitehall Palace to go looking for Sandshoes when he would be too scared to face Rose after her rescue. He never took it off afterwards, which meant he was still wearing it.
Which meant he and the version of Clara that was standing in front of him were wearing the very same vortex manipulator.
Which meant that, if the right wormhole had been enough to make it possible for Clara to travel between universes, his chances of being able to make it back to his own universe had suddenly increased significantly.
That single revelation filled his hearts with such tremendous joy that the Doctor couldn't help but wrap his arms around her. Oh, he loved her so much! Why hide it any longer? So enraptured was he in that thought that he could even kiss her right now. Instead, he lifted a hand and started to caress her long dark hair. Clara didn't move of course. He knew she wouldn't. If anything, she sank even more deeply into his chest and he wasn't the slightest bit surprised about it. In spite of the insecurity he had always felt while being around her, deep down he had always known that what he felt for her was exactly the same thing that she felt for him.
"What are you doing here?" she whispered. "What's this place?"
"I'll be back with you soon, I promise," he told her. "I just… I had to come here, Clara. There was one last thing I had to do."
And given that parallel Sandshoes had already left, it had all gone terribly wrong. One more thing he just couldn't tell her about the events of that day, he guessed.
"It's okay," said Clara. "There's one thing I need to do too, so I guess I'd better get going."
The Doctor's thoughts instantly drifted from Clara to the neural component of the Indigo teleportation device - or rather the part of it that was still functioning in their shared vortex manipulator. If her mother's house had been the place where Martha had truly wanted to be when she thought the end of all things was coming, Clara's deepest desire must have been to be reunited with him or to come to the place where the weakened and terrified blonde girl she had met only briefly in a dungeon in the Tower of London would finally be safe. Or perhaps both. Otherwise she wouldn't be here right now. He'll probably never know, but he didn't care about it. Those had been the very reasons why he had singled Clara out among everyone else in the universe, her unstoppable desire to travel with him and her willingness to assist those who most needed assistance.
"Is the Bard already with you?" the Doctor asked. That wasn't really a question of course. He was just trying to make some small talk that would prevent him from thinking he would have to free her from his arms soon.
"Yes he is," she answered.
"Good! Good!" the Doctor said. Clenching his teeth, he put on his best smile and prepared for the inevitable. "Here, let me help," he said as he loosened his grip on her. On setting his eyes on her again, he thought that smiling as mischievously as she was smiling right now was a very unfair thing to do to him. Once again, he felt a terrible urge to kiss her, but succeeded in refraining himself from doing so.
"I'm not with Captain Jack Harkness," she whispered as the Doctor took his sonic from his pocket and pointed it to her vortex manipulator. "I ended up with him the last time I used this thing, but it was an accident… I was trying to find you!"
"And you did," he said softly. 'Right when I needed to be found by you,' he felt the temptation to say, but he didn't. Indigo or no Indigo, he didn't want to risk her being in this universe any longer than strictly necessary. "Jack usually… You know… He sort of has this effect on people…," he added, remembering that he had felt slightly jealous and worried that Jack might get too flirty with Clara when he first arrived in the sixteenth century. "And on aliens… Even on droids. Once he told me the story of a…"
"Trust me, he's not as irresistible as he thinks he is," she cut in.
"Okay, this is done now," said the Doctor, putting his sonic back inside his pocket, "and you really shouldn't stay here any longer, Clara, or you might never be able to come back."
"Okay, I'm leaving! But so are you, right?" she asked, worry suddenly written all over her face.
"Of course I am!" he answered, giving her one of his broadest smiles ever. Indeed this time he had a very good reason to smile.
"Then why are you still here?"
"I'm here because you're here," he answered as he put his hands on her shoulders. "I was actually on my way out when I saw you, but now I'm not leaving until you've left first."
"And can't we just leave together?" she asked as her eyes widened.
"Afraid not. We're going to different places and times," he replied. "I've reprogrammed that thing so that it'll drag Jack's to it wherever he might be."
"But he said his isn't working."
"Oh, he was wrong. As usual!" he said grimacing.
They both smiled, and the Doctor kept looking as Clara lifted the flap of her vortex manipulator getting ready for departure. There was something in her eyes that he couldn't quite describe - or could he? Like there was something she wanted to say. Not surprising in the slightest, he thought. There were so many things he would have wanted to say to her as well.
He would make his way back to her. Not only would he make use of the Indigo teleport base code in his vortex manipulator, he would also find whomever had kept that wormhole open for Rose and do the impossible to help them reopen it. And if that didn't work, he'd find the right wormhole, even if it took him centuries to find it.
For the time being though, he had to stay.
"See ya," he heard Clara say, then she disappeared.
Even if he didn't want to, he just couldn't go back. Not right now. How could he possibly have the heart to abandon Rose now that parallel Sandshoes had left? It would break her heart! Strong as she had always been, finding that all of her efforts to return to the man she loved had been in vain after having been so close to making it would probably destroy her. Whether he liked it or not and regardless of how much it might take, the truth was that, here and now, he was 'trapped' in this universe. For a very different reason, but trapped nonetheless.
He hadn't lied to Clara though. It might be a long time before he saw her again, but he would go back. He was a Time Lord, for goodness' sake! He could spend a thousand years in this universe and return to her just five seconds after he had left. What was time to him after all? Certainly not an impediment!
So full of Clara were his body and mind and soul at the time that the Doctor never noticed Rose Tyler was fully awake by now and watching him from her bedroom door.
"Why are you still here?" she asked him incredulously.