This is the first chapter set after Wings of Gold, and it will probably make more sense if you've read that.

Chapter 6

The Doctor slowly woke up from the best sleep he'd had in weeks. As always, holding Rose had helped to keep the nightmares at bay, even if she hadn't been physically present. He had told Rose that they were sharing a dream, but it was so much more than that. As far as his people had been concerned it was just another aspect of reality, a place that existed beyond time and space. For him the night he had spent with Rose in the pavilion had been as real as if they had landed the TARDIS on the planet. To Rose it would probably seem like a very intense dream, but the memories wouldn't fade.

Unfortunately it was even more complicated than that. Everything that was done and said there had repercussions in the physical world. He even could influence their surroundings to a certain point, although that apparently did not apply to food, he thought wryly. But there were also other limitations. For example he couldn't simply bring schematics for a potential Void crossing device to one of their meetings. Not that he had even a basic idea for one. Oh, he really should have explained this better to Rose.

One day they would find a way across the Void, but until then they at least had this. They would be able to see each other, talk to each other, hold each other. Not often, but sometimes. That was something, and it was a lot more than he had dared to hope. Truth be told, he hadn't even been sure she'd say yes when he'd asked her to bond with him on that godforsaken beach. Now he just had to find a way to get her back.

It was time for a trip to Cardiff, he decided. He owed someone an explanation and an apology. And if he was very, very lucky he might get access to the CCTV footage of the battle of Canary Wharf and a few answers. He showered quickly, donned his clothes and left his room, yelling for his companion. "Donna!"

Two minutes later he was in the console room and set the coordinates for Cardiff, Wales, 2007, then he retreated to the galley and put the kettle on. By the time the tea was ready Donna finally appeared, still yawning widely. "What's going on?"

"We're going to Cardiff!" he announced brightly and handed her a mug.

She took it, although the first sip of tea did nothing to improve her mood. Not really unexpected, that, but it couldn't hurt to try, could it?

"Cardiff? You wake me up just because you want to go to Cardiff?" she asked incredulously.

On seeing her expression, the nerve endings in his left cheek reminded him why it was a really bad idea to piss off Donna Noble. Let alone a Donna Noble who hadn't finished her first mug of tea yet. Nevertheless he confirmed their destination. "Yep!"

"Are you insane?" she asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Certified on a couple of dozen planets," the Doctor gave back with a slightly manic grin. "But that's not the reason why I want to go to Cardiff."

"Then why the hell are we going there? What's so bloody interesting about Cardiff?"

He sighed exasperatedly. "Humans. The truth can be staring you in the face, but you keep ignoring it. Did you ever wonder about the number of gas leaks and mass hallucinations in Cardiff?"

"Should I have?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Donna, what did I say about that big picture of yours?"

She narrowed her eyes even more. "What. Are. You. Talking. About?"

"There is a massive rift through space and time in Cardiff that causes disturbances in time and attracts aliens. And it's one of the very few places in the universe where the TARDIS can fuel up."

"Are you telling me you want to go to Cardiff for a pit stop?"

"Basically, yes."

"And you can't have a pit stop on, I dunno, the second star on the right and straight on till morning?"

"Nah, pit stops on Volag-Noc would be a really bad idea. Too cold and too many mass murderers. Besides, I want to meet an old friend." Although the word 'friend' was probably pushing it, considering the events on Satellite Five, he added mentally while he dumped his mug in the sink.

"You've got friends?"

"Of course I do," the Doctor gave back indignantly. Three or four maybe, if he included those former companions who would probably wait more than half a second before they shut their respective doors in his face.

"Right. And that's the reason we end up running for our lives wherever we land."

"Oi! That has got nothing to do with it."

"No, that's just your charming personality."

"I can be very charming, I'll have you know," he replied petulantly and crossed his arms.

Donna grinned. "Remind me that I ask Rose how you pulled her with that personality when you get her back. It can't be your piloting skills, or we wouldn't have ended up on Teralix in the middle of the monsoon season."

The Doctor had barely opened his mouth to respond to this completely, well, mostly unjustified offence when the TARDIS jerked suddenly. He managed to grab the counter, or he would have tumbled against the doorframe. Donna lost her footing and fell against him. It felt as if they'd been hit by something, which should have been completely impossible in the Void. For about two seconds that felt like an eternity nothing else happened, and then his ship started to shake violently.

"Bugger!" Whatever just had happened, this was Not Good, the Doctor decided, disentangled himself from Donna and left the galley.

"What did you do?" she yelled.

"I didn't do anything!" he gave back, already halfway down the corridor to the console room, occasionally having to steady himself against the walls to keep upright. He cursed under his breath. The TARDIS seemed to be completely out of control.

Donna followed him hard on his heels. "Well, you must have done something!"

He ignored her accusation. Five seconds later he reached the console room and began circling the console, trying to stabilise their flight path. He desperately adjusted the controls, but without any visible effect. "Hold that lever down!" He pointed wildly in the general direction of the instrument.

Donna dashed to the console and grabbed a lever.

"No, not that one, that would kill us. Take the one next to the green lamps," he yelled.

Donna complied immediately, while struggling to keep on her feet.

"Second button on the left. Now!"

It took her a moment to reach the button because the ship jerked again, but she managed to press it. Then the Doctor yanked another lever in the opposite direction. The shaking stopped and a mauve flash light began to blink madly.

"What happened?" she asked, panting heavily.

"We've left the Time Vortex and she's piloting through real space," he replied, adhering to the bare facts. He didn't even have a basic idea what might have caused this. He stared at the monitor and typed a few commands, but the screen stayed dark. Eventually blue lamps began to light up on the console, indicating various system failures. There couldn't possibly have been more destruction if someone had blown up the console room, and he didn't even know what had happened.

"What does that mean? Doctor?"

He ignored her in favour of the status lights. Another light began to flicker. He leaned heavily against the console and closed his eyes in despair. By the looks of it, the dematerialisation circuit was heavily damaged, as well as the temporal stabilisers. If he didn't get them working again once they'd landed, they'd be stuck there indefinitely. Wherever they were heading to. The TARDIS had diverted every available spark of energy to the engines and didn't let him access the navigation system. Knowing her, she would put everything she had into getting them to a place where he could find the materials to repair her, but with a damaged TARDIS he really would have liked to at least know where they were going.

Another alarm interrupted his thoughts. They were approaching a gravitational field that was drawing the TARDIS in rapidly. In her current state she would be completely unable to land them securely. And without access to the controls he just could sit and watch. He circled the console in four large steps and pulled Donna to the floor, then he put her arms around a handhold on the console.

"Keep your head down, and whatever you do, hold on to that handle. We're gonna crash."

~o~o~o~

Rose sighed, shut the computer down and buried her head in her arms. The report of today's events was finally done and e-mailed to her supervisor. It hadn't taken her long to hate Torchwood's penchant for paperwork passionately. She was tempted to manufacture an invasion – just to get rid of the paperwork for the time being. If only she could be certain that the paper trail after the invasion wouldn't be worse.

Almost six months ago, she had promised herself that she would have a fantastic life. But sometimes it was just hard. Today had been better than most days, having something to do and running for her life helped. It had been worse when she had been stuck in research. But every so often she would forget and expect to see a leather clad figure reaching for her hand or to hear a rough Northern accent telling the aliens that whatever they were planning ended here and now. She missed him, and the dream she'd had a few nights ago had only helped so much.

Nowadays she ran alone, despite Mickey's or Jake's presence. There was a lot less telling the aliens off and a lot more shooting. And with the Doctor there had definitely been a lot less red tape involved. Unless she counted the various times they had ended up in various prisons all over the universe and the additional hours they had spent filling out whatever paperwork the respective local government required to let them go.

She had fond memories of Noia Five. Two hours in a prison cell for crossing a street followed by eight hours being buried under red tape. Finally they had signed the last pages as Bonnie and Clyde and had violated approximately seventeen additional laws on their run back to the TARDIS, the local law enforcement in hot pursuit. Noia was rated fairly high on her personal "places to never visit again" list.

Right. Time for her private research project, aka Advanced Crossing Dimensions. She had already found out that original dimension jump technology had only worked because of the cracks between universes, but she still didn't know how the cracks had been created in the first place. That was next on the agenda. Children's play, really, she thought sarcastically.

With another sigh she got up, left the office and turned towards the lift. In the lobby she got out, went into the cafeteria and snatched a few fruits from one of the baskets on the counter.

"Still working?" Eliza, one of the dinner ladies, asked.

"Yeah. Paperwork to finish. You know how it goes," she lied. "Many people around?" Sometimes the dinner ladies knew better who was in the building than the security team.

"The boss and a few of the directors. Joshua from R&D, and one or two of the archivists."

Pete had mentioned a board meeting during breakfast this morning, Rose remembered. Her relationship with him still bordered on awkward; and mostly they resorted to small talk. They still differed on various topics and probably always would, but he hadn't told Jackie that he'd known about the Doctor's proposal. That had helped, although she wasn't sure if she really saw him as her dad. It still felt disloyal. But Pete had proven himself as a very good friend, and that was something she wasn't likely to forget either. He knew her, not the made up story the public relations department of Vitex had told the press, and that was very important to her.

But if Joshua was still in R&D she wouldn't have a chance to get into the archives undetected. With a smile and wishes for a quiet night she left the cafeteria and went back to the lift. "Sod it!" she decided. What could they do? Fire her? Unlikely. They'd rather confine her to desk duty for the foreseeable future. Not that she'd like that but it was worth it. She pressed the button for sublevel C.

~o~o~o~

Rose rubbed her eyes. She had spent more than two hours in the basement, staring at the report about the dimension jumps, trying to make sense of what she already knew.

Fact one: The Void Ship contained the Genesis Ark and the Genesis Ark was Time Lord technology, obviously. Fact two: There were no Time Lords in this universe, the Doctor had said as much. Both facts combined meant that the ship's origin was her universe.

From what the Doctor had told her she imagined the Void like the area between the two walls of the Tower of London. Assuming she was right with that image this led to two possibilities. One, the Void Ship had accidently damaged the walls to this universe and created the cracks. If that was the case, had the Cult of Skaro ever entered this universe? She did not exactly look forward to running into renegade Daleks without the Doctor to deal with them, but she would have to prepare herself for the possibility.

The other possibility was that the Void Ship didn't have anything to do with the cracks on her side of the wall. That would mean that they were sort of natural. And in that case they couldn't be dangerous to the integrity of this universe, could they?

In addition, they still didn't know what had happened to the cracks on this side of the Void after the Doctor had closed them on his side. Had they vanished as well? And if they hadn't, could she use them?

Her musings had reached that point when suddenly her mobile buzzed. She recognised the caller ID.

"Yeah, Mickey?"

"Rose? Emergency. See you in conference room one in ten minutes." When they had grown up together she would never have imagined how businesslike Mickey could sound.

"Okay." She pressed the end button, collected her papers and stashed them in a box in the far corner of the archive where hopefully nobody would ever look for something. Then she grabbed her phone and headed for the lift, wondering what was going on.

~o~o~o~

Half an hour after the time the meeting should have begun Pete Tyler finally entered conference room one, where eight people were waiting for him. He looked exhausted.

"Sorry. The Defence Secretary called when I was about to leave. Kept going on about the budget."

A woman who looked as if she was in her fifties groaned. "When will the Defence Secretary learn that we can either spend our time with actually doing our job or with administrating it?"

After a few seconds Rose remembered her name. Jane Cunningham was the head of the R&D department and responsible for the budget. Pete wanted to keep the administration as small as possible, so most directors had two functions. And she seemed to prefer the not-administrative role.

"He'll get over it," Pete said. "I'm not going to change a single thing about how this agency works." He looked at Mickey. "So, what's going on?"

"We received an enquiry." Mickey had been the agent in charge when the first transmission came in and thus the case had been assigned to him. At that point the task had mostly comprised of channelling information to the parties involved, while the decisions had been made elsewhere.

He activated the large monitor that covered one of the walls. A vaguely humanoid alien appeared on the screen, with greenish-black skin and an additional set of eyes. "We are the Corrivex. We seek audience with your world leader," the alien on the screen said, then Mickey froze the picture.

"That was two days ago. According to the rest of their message they wanted to negotiate a trade agreement."

"And where exactly is the emergency if this is already two days old?" Terrence Gold was a small man with mousy brown hair who had fought his own personal war against the Cybermen. This had brought him in contact with Torchwood, and now he was in charge of the field agents which meant he was Rose's supervisor.

"The message was received by the government as well. They sent a reply."

"And why didn't they inform us?" Jane Cunningham asked.

"They did," Pete said, resignation audible in his voice. "After they had sent the reply. Apparently they thought they needed the publicity. I can't wait for the elections. At least then we might have a government that deserves the name. At the moment we're just dangling on strings played by whoever pulls tightest."

Pete was right. Soon after she had come here Rose had found out that there hadn't been a stable government since the Cybermen attack in 2007. Because so many prominent members of the larger parties had been killed, smaller parties had taken a chance and won seats in the election, making it difficult to form a coalition. Four months ago this universe's Harriet Jones had had to step down as president because her coalition had lost its majority, but her successor had brought her back into the cabinet. She was too influential among members of all political parties to ignore her completely. Unfortunately the instability of the government meant that politics followed no clear course, and it was also part of the reason why the zone system hadn't been revoked yet.

"The delegation was led by the Vice President." The audience groaned. Vice President Stanton was well known for his lack of diplomacy, but like Harriet he was very influential. "Harriet Jones wanted to bring us in, but the President ignored her. The meeting took place this morning." Mickey paused. "One hour ago we received another transmission."

He pressed a button on his remote control and another alien appeared on the screen. Unlike the one they had seen on the previous transmission he had very distinctive markings on his head, and his words chilled Rose to the bone. "A member of your delegation has attempted to kill our leader. According to our laws this means his death, and everyone associated with him will suffer the same consequences. We require you to give your consent to their execution in accordance with article seventy-six of the Shadow Proclamation. If you refuse we will consider ourselves at war with your planet. You have forty-eight hours."

~o~o~o~

When the Doctor came back to his senses he found himself on the grating. The console room was almost completely dark, lit only by a faint glow from the time rotor and the status lights on the console, and the hum of the TARDIS was barely noticeable.

He set up and winced slightly. He had a couple of bruises and a quickly developing headache, but that was all. Nothing what a mug of tea wouldn't cure.

A glance to his left told him that Donna was unconscious, but somehow she had managed to hold onto the handle. Although he probably should have anticipated that, he thought wryly, given her stubbornness. He knelt next to her and discovered a few formerly undetected bruises in the process, which resulted in a few muttered curses.

Pushing every other thought aside he methodically scanned Donna with the sonic screwdriver. When the results came up he released a breath he hadn't even realised he'd been holding. She had a few bruises, mostly where her body had banged against the handle, and she would most likely also have a headache when she woke up, but no other injuries.

Since he didn't exactly want to carry her through a ship running on auxiliary power that had only emergency lighting for the time being, he decided to wake her. He was fairly certain that she wouldn't be too happy about the bruises from the crash, making it worse by hitting a corner would be tempting fate. "Donna?"

Her eyelids fluttered and eventually she opened her eyes. "Doctor? What happened?"

"We crashed," he replied matter-of-factly. "You were unconscious. Think you can walk?"

She tried to set up and groaned. "I feel like I've been run over with a lorry. Did you see the plate?"

He smiled briefly and held out his hand. "Let's get you to the infirmary."

~o~o~o~

It took him almost fifteen minutes to run the dermal regenerator over every single bruise Donna had received. Although the device hadn't been designed for this purpose, it was able to repair the damage to the deeper layers of tissue at least partially and lessen the discomfort. That done, the Doctor left a couple of painkillers and a cup of water for her and returned to the console room, not caring about his own bruises.

Donna wouldn't like that he'd just left her in the infirmary, but his ship was more important. There was no telling where they had landed, and without working instruments he couldn't even determine which systems were necessary and which they could do without for a while. He was also certain that the TARDIS had diverted energy from the shielding. He just hoped there was enough left to raise the shields again, because without them the exterior of his TARDIS was exactly what it looked like: A wooden box.

He typed a few commands and the monitor came back to life. He started a diagnosis program to get a more detailed overview of the damages than the status lights could provide, then transferred the navigation controls back to the console and called up the coordinates.

~o~o~o~

When Donna entered the console room the Doctor was staring at one of the monitors in disbelief, his hands gripping the screen as if he wanted to break it in half. "Impossible," he whispered, almost too low to be audible.

Donna circled the column and looked at the screen that showed their surroundings. "That's not Cardiff," she stated.

It seemed he hadn't even realised she was back in the console room until she spoke. He loosened his grip on the monitor and pulled his leather jacket tighter with an unconscious gesture. "No. It's not." His voice was hollow.

"That's all you've got to say, Doctor?"

No answer.

Donna tentatively touched his arm and he turned in her direction. His expression was completely blank, and the emergency lighting in the room made him look truly alien. She had never seen him like this before, not even when he had faced the Racnoss. He looked almost frightened, but there was also something else in his eyes that she didn't even dare to name. For the first time she wondered what she had gotten herself into.

"Doctor? Where are we?" she asked tentatively.

He avoided her eyes when he answered her question. "This is Skaro."