Author's Notes: Kit and Madhukar are mine; all else belongs to the BBC. Thanks to Aibhinn for help with this chapter and for musical pointers.

Chapter Two – The Colors of Noise

Rose watched in horror as the Doctor flew backwards, thrown from Kit's side down to the floor. Kit continued struggling and screaming despite Jack holding her down and repeating apparently unheard reassurances in her ear.

"Doctor!" Rose rushed to his side. His eyes were wide and staring as he lay supine on the floor, and her heart contracted in fear. "Doctor? Can you hear me?" She put her ear to his chest and breathed a sigh of relief when she heard the rapid beating of his hearts. She looked up at his face as he took in a gulp of air and tried to sit up. "Let me help you," she said, moving to support him. "What happened?"

The Doctor shook his hand as if it had been burned. "Kit's mind has an impressive autonomic defense! I got thrown out just as I made contact. But I saw enough. I know what to do!" He reached into his jacket pocket and drew out his sonic screwdriver.

"Whatever it is, do it quick!" Jack called.

The Doctor twisted the screwdriver and pushed a button. The device made no noise, but there was an immediate effect. Madhukar and Kit both gasped, and she leaned against Jack and began sobbing helplessly, like a lost child.

"It's gone," Madhukar rasped, panting as if he'd run for miles. "The Song is gone!"

The Doctor nodded as Rose helped him to his feet. "I was able to identify the ultrasonic frequency of the Music. The sonic screwdriver is generating white noise on that frequency to block the discord that was causing you pain. Are you all right?"

Madhukar blew out a slow breath. "Yes. Yes. The silence is easier for me to bear than the discord. Better nothing than that. But what of the Ekala?"

They turned toward Jack and Kit. He was stroking her hair and face, murmuring to her soothingly as she shuddered and wept in wrenching sobs. "C'mon, Angel. Talk to me. You're safe. I won't let anything hurt you." He looked up at the Doctor. "She can't stop crying. I think she's terrified."

"Just like the TARDIS," the Doctor said. "I've got an idea. Rose, hand me the bone growth stimulator. The green thing on the table."

Rose picked up the device and brought it to the Doctor. "How will this help?" she asked.

"Two birds with one stone," he answered. "The stimulator uses ultrasound to mend broken bones, so we can heal her and generate a bit of additional ultrasonic noise to calm her down at the same time. Hold this right here," he said, positioning the device over Kit's broken arm and turning it on. "Just a bit of blue noise should help."

Rose wrinkled her brow. "Blue noise?"

"Noise comes in a spectrum of colors," he explained. "White noise has a flat frequency spectrum in linear space. Blue noise increases in power density and frequency. There's also pink noise, brown noise, red noise, violet noise and so on. The bone growth stimulator generates ultrasonic blue noise, and I think that should do the trick for now. Blue is soothing, you know. Madhukar, you should be able to hear this. Is it better?"

The Seeker closed his eyes. "Better, yes." He opened his eyes again and nodded toward Kit. "And it seems to be helping her as well."

She was getting calmer, her sobs turning to whimpers. Jack brushed her tears away. She took some deep breaths and focused on him. "Jack?"

He smiled softly at her. "Right here, Angel. You found me, just like you told me you would. You're in the TARDIS. You're safe."

"Safe…TARDIS…" she repeated vaguely. "But…I can't…I can't hear them." Her eyes were wide and frightened. "I can't hear them!"

"Who, Angel?"

"She can't hear her people, Jack, probably for the first time in her life," the Doctor said in a sympathetic voice.

His tone drew Rose's attention away from the stimulator, to the all-too-familiar expression on his face. He knew only too well what it was like to suddenly be cut off from one's people. He can't get away from reminders of Gallifrey, she thought with a pang.

"I blocked out the discord, Kit," he went on in a gentle tone. "I know you're frightened, but we need you to help us fix this. Can you tell us what happened?"

Kit stared up at the ceiling for a moment before answering. "We….we've been closing the rifts between the worlds. Sealing up the last of the damage from the Time War. But something…something happened to the Music. All of a sudden, I couldn't hear the others any more. We could see each other, we could touch…but we couldn't hear."

"What difference would that make?" Rose asked.

To her surprise, Jack answered. "Choral singers have to be able to hear and tune to each other. Otherwise the harmony breaks down." He raised an eyebrow at the look she gave him. "Thought you knew I was more than just a pretty face, Rose!"

The Doctor steered the conversation back on topic. "Why couldn't you hear each other?"

"I don't know," Kit said, shaking her head. "It was as if…someone had thrown a switch, and there was nothing but noise."

"And then what?" Jack prompted.

Kit thought for a moment. "One of the others tossed me out of the Vortex and sent me here. I remember starting to change, and then hitting something. It's all black after that."

"And that's when I found you," Rose said. "The Doctor said you'd been thrown here." The device in her hand made a beeping sound and shut itself off. Kit and Madhukar both took in pained breaths at the sudden loss of blue noise.

"Automatic cutoff," the Doctor said. "Don't want to overgrow the bone once the break is fixed. Kit, try moving your arm."

Slowly, she raised her arm up off the bed, first flexing it and then turning her hand. "It's okay," she said, her voice trembling a bit.

The Doctor ran his hand along her arm, checking it over and then giving it a reassuring squeeze. "We'll get this all sorted. Jack, may I see your sonic blaster?" Jack handed him the weapon, and he made a few adjustments on it. "There. A white noise device for you, and one for Madhukar. Jack, use the stimulator to heal her leg. Then the dermal regenerator will take care of the scrapes and cuts. She's got some nasty ones on her back." He flashed her a grin, as if he was trying to lighten the mood. "You had to go and fall through the thorniest part of the Cloisters, didn't you?"

"Why do things the easy way?" Kit replied with a weak smile of her own.

"Now you're starting to sound like me!" he chuckled, picking up the sonic screwdriver along with a couple of bottles from the worktable. "Come on, Madhukar. I need your help for some jiggery-pokery. Rose? Need your help too."

Rose handed the stimulator over to Jack, who began to work on Kit's leg. She followed the Doctor and Madhukar out of the medical bay.

"Acarya, I'm no good at technical things," Madhukar was saying. "Shouldn't Jack be helping you?"

"Jack's right where he should be," the Doctor answered. "I need you to lend me your ears." He grinned as Rose rolled her eyes. "Always wanted to say that."

Kit's weak smile fell away as Jack passed the stimulator over her leg. New tears were starting, and she was trembling again. The stress was taking its toll. That wouldn't help her recovery. He needed to calm her down. Tenderly, he skimmed one hand over her newly healed arm, softly humming a tune meant to soothe and reassure her.

The stimulator beeped and shut off. He exchanged it for the dermal regenerator, and began to work on the scrape on her cheek. Once it was healed, he kissed that spot and wiped her tears away again. "Let me take a look at your back, Angel."

He moved behind her as she sat up and let the coat slip down, pooling around her on the bed as she wrapped her arms about herself in front. He gasped in pained sympathy as he saw the angry red gashes running from the nape of her neck to the base of her spine. "I'm doing some serious pruning in the Cloisters once all this is over. And I think I'll have some words with the Doctor about his taste in landscaping." He restarted the regenerator, gently stroking her arm and humming again as the instrument mended the damage. After a moment, he asked, "Is this what you saw and couldn't tell me about before?"

She was quiet for a moment, and then said, "I'm not sure, Jack. I remember seeing us together, but outside of the Music the memory becomes hazy. There are gaps in my mind, and I can't see anything. I don't know what must be anymore." She sounded so timid and unsure, not at all like the brash and confident woman who'd tackled him at Torchwood so many months before.

"It's going to be all right, Angel," he consoled her as he finished healing the last of the cuts. Once her back was smooth and flawless again, he put the regenerator down and laid both hands on her shoulders, massaging them lightly. She was still shaking, but not as much as before. "All better. Those had to hurt."

"Not as much as the silence," she replied with a shuddering sigh. "I'm scared, Jack."

He pulled the coat back up around her and walked in front of her again. He framed her face with his hands and took a long look into her blue eyes. They were still brimming with tears, full of her shock and horror. His heart ached to see her that way. "Kit. Angel. It'll be all right," he told her again softly, and bent to kiss her.

It was meant to be a chaste kiss of comfort, but Kit quickly turned it to something more. She opened her mouth under his and wound her arms around his neck, pulling him closer and letting the coat fall once again.

It was as if all his fevered dreams of the past few months were coming true. Heaven in his arms, Kit's hands roaming through his hair, her tongue twining with his own, her legs wrapping around his waist to draw him in tightly against her as he moaned into her mouth, twisting one hand into her hair and running the other along her satiny bare back. She was warm and soft and pliant—

And frightened and traumatized and this was all wrong.

With a groan he pulled back, gently but firmly. "Kit, don't."

She let out a disappointed whimper of her own as he disengaged her legs, trying hard to ignore just how smooth and inviting her skin felt. He drew the coat back up to cover her again, his eyes never leaving hers.

"No one will ever believe I'm the one saying no. I don't believe it," he chuckled. That earned him a ghostly smile. He kissed her forehead and drew back to look into her eyes again. "Angel, I want to make love to you more than anything. But I want a lot more than just a post-traumatic roll in the hay. You mean more to me than that. And I think you feel the same way."

She blushed and shifted back a bit on the bed, pulling the coat around herself a little more securely. "Jack, you know I do. I'm sorry. When…when we take this form, we're a bit sensitive to adrenaline overload. It can set us off and make us react—inappropriately."

"Then you and I aren't all that different," he said, caressing her cheek and winding one dark curl around his finger. "Nice to see your halo is just a bit crooked."

"I don't have a halo, and you darned well know it," she replied, leaning a little into his caress.

His smile widened. "Well, you sure proved that just now. Who'd have thought an angel could be so sinful?" He wrapped his arms around her to hold her close again, sheltering her from the silence in an innocent, tender embrace.

A soft cough drew their attention to the doorway. Rose was standing there with an armful of clothes. "I thought you'd want to wear something besides Jack's coat."

Jack dropped a kiss on top of Kit's head before pulling back to look at her. "I dunno, Rose. I think she looks pretty good in it." Knowing Rose couldn't see it, he gave Kit a wink, and then went on, "Of course, I think she'd look even better out of it."

A twinkle of her old humor sparked in Kit's eyes, just as he'd hoped. That's better.

Rose, however, i harrumphed /i in irritation. "Jack! Time and space are falling apart around us and you have to go and be…well, you? There's a time and a place, you know!" she scolded as she strode over to Kit. "Turn around and let her dress in private."

Jack grinned inwardly as he complied. She sounds just like the Doctor. And her mother. Imagine that. Both of them would be proud and horrified at the same time.

He waited patiently, listening to the women speaking in soft murmurs, the rustle of fabric, the slide of a zip. After a few minutes, Kit called, "Jack, I'm decent now."

He turned to see her sliding off the bed to stand up—or to try to. She winced and sank to her knees as Rose tried to help her. "My leg's still a little weak," Kit said.

Jack lifted her in his arms. "I don't think you're quite ready to go dancing yet," he said, winking at her when Rose let out an exasperated sigh.

"Hopeless, you are," Rose said, picking his blaster up off the work table. "Come on."

She led them to the console room, where the Doctor handed Kit a cup as soon as Jack settled her into the captain's chair. "Whipped this up in the kitchen for you."

Kit took the cup with a dark look. "You're giving me tea? And lukewarm tea at that?"

"It's not tea," the Doctor corrected. "It's a restorative. Calcium, alendronate and calcitonin to strengthen those newly healed bones. Jack can't carry you around all the time," he shot Jack a teasing look, "no matter how much he might enjoy it. Drink up. Doctor's orders."

She took a sip and made a face. "Tea would have been better."

The Doctor snorted. "Now, I have this for you too." He turned to the console and picked up an earpiece. "Madhukar helped me tune this. It transmits white noise on its main channel, and a rotation of the other colors of noise on the subchannel. I'm running the same sequence in the TARDIS' systems, and it's made her a lot calmer."

"It can't replace the Song," Madhukar said, tapping on his own earpiece, "but it does help."

Kit took the earpiece and looked at it closely. "Very Seven of Nine, isn't it?"

Jack raised an eyebrow, not understanding the reference. Rose apparently got the joke, because she giggled, and the Doctor smiled too, saying, "Alonzo could have built something a little more elegant and a lot less visible, but I'm afraid he's still Humpty Dumpty. We haven't been able to get the parts to put him back together again."

"Ah, well. Resistance is futile," Kit said, hooking the earpiece on. "I have been assimilated." Rose laughed outright at that, and even though he didn't get the joke, Jack grinned to hear Kit sounding more like herself. She closed her eyes for a moment, and then smiled slightly. "You're right. It does help."

"Good. Now finish that," the Doctor said, pointing at her cup. When she scowled at him, he said, "Resistance is futile, remember? It's easier if you drink it fast."

Kit sighed and raised the cup to her lips, closing her eyes and screwing up her face in unpleasant anticipation before drinking it all down and shuddering. Jack patted her shoulder and went over to the console. "So where'd we end up?"

Madhukar moved next to him. "Nowhere, it seems. Nowhere, no place, no time."

Jack looked at him in surprise, and then over at the Doctor, who nodded and motioned for Madhukar to go on.

"The TARDIS isn't reporting any space-time coordinates," the Seeker continued.

"How's that even possible?" Rose asked.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her. "Anything is possible, remember?"

"But wherever we are, it's improbable," Madhukar said. "I'd say this place doesn't exist, couldn't exist…except that we're here. We just don't know where 'here' is."

"Wherever it is, whenever it is, it did appear on the Web of Time as the source of the discord," the Doctor added.

"No space-time coordinates?" Kit queried, gingerly sliding off her seat and testing the strength of her leg. When it didn't buckle under her, she walked over to the console to look at the monitor. "Outside of space-time, but still inside the Music," she mused. She looked at the Doctor. "We're in a Mediary."

Jack rarely saw a blank look on the Doctor's face, but there was one there now. "What's a Mediary, Angel?" he asked.

"It's a space between the realities," she answered. "Mediaries are where we learn to sing."

"The Void is between the realities," the Doctor said, wrinkling his brow.

Kit shrugged a little. "Well, yes. The Void is between the realities and outside the Music. Mediaries are also between the realities, but they're inside the Music. That makes them perfect training grounds." She cocked her head at his expression. "Learning to manipulate reality is dangerous within space-time. So we use the Mediaries to copy realities, and then we learn within the copies."

"You copy realities?" Rose looked thoughtful. "Is that where parallel worlds come from?"

Kit nodded. "A few of them. Pete's World wasn't one of them, though, if that's what you're thinking. It's outside the Music."

"If we know the source of the trouble is here, then what are we waiting for?" Jack asked, taking his blaster back from Rose and resetting it. "We've got a universe to save. Again."

The Doctor looked over at Kit. "Are you ready for this?"

She nodded. "You bet."

Jack and the Doctor led the way out of the TARDIS, the women close behind them and Madhukar bringing up the rear.

They stepped out into a broad, flat desert. Only two things sprang from the ground: dry brown brush, and huge white radio telescopes pointing up at a clear blue sky.

"It's like that movie 'Contact,'" Rose said. "All these big dishes."

"Exactly like it," the Doctor said as they walked toward the closest of the telescopes. "This is a copy of the Very Large Array in New Mexico. But these telescopes aren't receiving signals. They're transmitting the discord in the Music." His voice became low. "I've seen something like this before. I've got a bad feeling about this."

"You always did worry too much," said an unfamiliar voice behind them. They turned, Jack holding his blaster at the ready until he saw the speaker…and the speaker's companions.

Sunlight glinted off metals of bronze and silver. A frighteningly familiar gunstalk was leveled at them from one side. An equally frightening, equally deadly silver arm pointed at them from the other. Standing between them and the safety of the TARDIS.

A Dalek and a Cyberman. But what transfixed the Doctor was the figure in between them. A man, dressed in black jeans and a black leather coat, wearing sunglasses to shield his eyes from the bright sunlight.

"You're dead," the Doctor said in a faint voice. "I watched you die. You can't be here. It's impossible."

The stranger laughed. "Haven't you learned that nothing is impossible, old friend? You saw me disappear. You didn't see me die. Because I didn't. Obviously." The man began to laugh. "Still careless after all these years."

"Who is this, Doctor?" Rose asked nervously, moving closer to the Doctor. Jack stepped in front of Kit, a protective gesture that wouldn't mean a damn if the Dalek or the Cyberman decided to use their weapons.

"I've told you about him before, Rose," the Doctor said. "A renegade Time Lord. A murderer. He likes to be called 'The Master.'"

"At your service," the Master said smoothly, with a mocking bow. He pulled his sunglasses off, revealing inhuman eyes glowing green. "Doctor, allow me to welcome you and your friends to Megiddo."