Disclaimer: Who decided that the Doctor should be colour-co-ordinated with the Tardis? Who thought it was a good idea to have Martha sneering in the first pic that nearly everyone saw? It wasn't me. It was the people who own Doctor Who. That doesn't include me.
It has been four days. Four days in which they have watched her slowly but surely slip away from them. Jack has looked for the last patch, but the box has disappeared. The Doctor doesn't want to use it anyway. He has a suspicion, and if his suspicion is right, and they use that patch, the consequences are likely to be…not good.
So four days later sees him slumped in a chair, holding her too-cold hand, watching the tiny movement of her chest as she breathes shallowly. They're gradually getting further apart. Every so often, there will be a particularly long pause, and a steel claw will squeeze his hearts. It barely loosens when he sees her breathe again. Sooner or later, she won't. His muscles ache, his body screams for rest and his eyes feel full of grit. He hadn't slept for a few days before all this and now he is definitely pushing the limit. He's terrified that he will fall asleep and wake up to find…to miss her.
He glances across at Jack, slumped in his chair. Even Sajkinan coffee can't fuel a human body for over a hundred hours without rest. He rescues the cup and drains it. It's stone-cold and he can taste the faintest trace of bitterness. Jack wouldn't have noticed it. As his vision begins to cloud, he mentally curses himself for forgetting.
Jack's slumber might have less to do with his tiredness and more to do with the fact that I put a sleeping drug in his coffee. Then I go and finish the coffee myself. Sometimes, I really am an idiot.
His last awareness is thankfulness for the lack of anyone around able to notice what an idiot he can be.
xxx
He struggles, shedding the clinging darkness. He manages to force his eyes open and focus on Jackie Tyler's face.
"Jackie?"
She smiles and speaks to him almost gently. He's confused. She asks what happened. He tells her. He waits for a slap that doesn't come. Oh, there it is.
Something isn't right. The details are fuzzy. It's almost as if they're not speaking verbally. It's similar to telepathic communication. No words, just the meanings.
He asks about Romana. She points to her, sprawled across his chest. He picks her up and she scares him. He's scared for what she's done. He pushes her at Jackie. She's confused and she starts to offer her back. It's possible that that's the worst thing possible. He pushes himself as far away as possible, talking quickly. Jackie has to understand.
The darkness smothers him again.
xxx
The Doctor fights his way free. The blackness has invaded his body, making his body so heavy. Warm, heavy and sleepy… sleepy! He shoots to his feet before he gets his eyes open. When he finally manages to pull them apart, he sees things as he left them. Jack slumped in his chair and Romana lying on the bed, breathing slowly. But there's an important difference.
I know.
He doesn't want to worry Jack; he'll leave him a note. The Doctor turns to the paper and pen that have just appeared.
xxx
Jack stirs slowly. In the time it takes him to open his eyes, he registers his location by his aches. He must have fallen asleep in his chair. Not surprising really, the human body is not designed to go for days without sleep. Even the Doctor had been showing signs of tiredness. He manages to open his eyes. The bright white light immediately scorches them and he squeezes his eyes shut, seeing purple dots dancing before him. If it wasn't for the lack of a headache, or the fact that he hasn't being drinking, he would think he was hungover.
He gropes blindly for his coffee and encounters a piece of paper instead.
Don't disturb us. Don't try to wake us. This could save her. I'm sorry Jack, I'll explain later if I get the chance.
Jack stares at Romana and the Doctor, lying together on the now-double bed. The Doctor has his fingers pressed against her temples, and their foreheads rest together. Both appear to be unconscious.
"If I get the chance…" If the Doctor's aim was to keep Jack from worrying, he's failed miserably. From that one phrase, he understands. Whatever the Doctor's doing will either save Romana or kill him with her.
xxx
The ship screams overhead. The residents of Mayblossom stand outside, staring upwards. It's the first ship they've seen in over five years. It's quite obvious, though, that the ship had no intention of stopping here. Something to do with its near vertical dive or the sparks it's spitting.
It crashes to ground in the forest, a few miles from Rose's village. The residents shrug and continue with their daily lives. Anything useful will be stripped out by the community over the other side of the forest before they can get there. Except for three. A woman and a small boy run towards the forest, pursued by another woman, breathlessly trying to explain the pointlessness of the expedition.
"It crashed! You can't just get in there and fly away. If it was salvageable, by the time we get there, it'll be stripped bare."
"By whom?" Rose shouts back over her shoulder.
"Others." Lydia trips over a tree root that Rose and Matthew both managed to avoid.
Rose stops and turns back. "Others?"
She sits up and rubs her ankle. "Yes, others. There's another community over the other side of the forest. You didn't think we were one village on the face of the planet, did you?"
"I've never seen anyone else."
"Well, we don't exactly pop back and forth easily. It's eight miles through dense forest."
Rose sometimes wonders whether Lydia actually says miles. Whether she actually speaks recognisable English or whether it's the Tardis translator. It's hard to believe that she would still be able to naturally understand the language of half a million years later. English changed enough in 800 years; she could have used the Tardis translator when they were studying the Canterbury Tales. It doesn't particularly worry her. What worries her is the idea that she and Matthew could be speaking completely different languages.
"Better hurry, then!"
Lydia pulls herself off the ground and hurries after them, ignoring the slight twinge in her ankle. She'd known it was hopeless; known that Rose was never going to just turn back. If she didn't have hope that eventually she'd find her way back to…him, she'd just curl up and die. It'll probably dim into acceptance as the years go past, but she'll always nurse that spark that says it could happen. It is possible. One day.
Lydia knows. She still nurses her own spark; one day he'll come back. Those years meant something.
She never told Rose about him, Rose never expected her to. Mind you, Rose never expected her to find out who her 'someone' was.
xxx
It's as bare as Lydia predicted. Anything that would come away has. In some places, that includes the walls, exposing the circuits beneath. The circuits themselves appear untouched, obviously they were deemed useless. Rose is disappointed to discover the lack of an escape pod. The lack of a pilot would suggest the two are linked; the pilot left in the escape pod.
They make their way through the ship to the cockpit. It is similarly bare, apart from a figure bending over the controls.
"Doctor?"
The figure spins round and Rose curses silently. Of course it isn't the Doctor. She doesn't know why she said it. It isn't brown-haired. Or male.
The woman pushes her blond hair back from her face.
"Bit past a doctor, poor thing." Rose shakes her head to dispel her imaginings. Not only is she going around believing fair-haired females to be the Doctor, but then she's imagining some response, a quickly suppressed flicker in the eyes, to the title.
"She's recycling material. If we had the facilities, which we don't. I dare say some of the circuits could be salvaged. This was a time ship; you could make a portable transmat. I wouldn't imagine it would be very comfortable, but it should let you travel in time. You might even be able to set up a bio-mech platform. If you knew what to do, which I don't."
A bio-mech platform. The phrase is just beyond his reach. He chases it across a clear dividing line and another almost blurred out of existence.
She jumps down and walks away without looking back.
Rose and Lydia stare after her, until she is lost amongst the trees.
"What was that about?"
Rose shakes her head wordlessly.
Matthew doesn't hear Lydia's question. His head is full of knowledge not his own.
A portable transmat. This and this. I need a refracter; it'll be in the control panel.
"Matthew?"
The knowledge starts to slide from his mind. He blocks out any interruptions.
"Matthew!"
He ignores them. Rose and Lydia watch as he constructs some kind of device, held together by emergency conducting bonding agent.
"Matthew!" Rose shakes his shoulder.
He stares morosely at the bundle of components. He knows it's almost finished. But he no longer knows how to finish it.
"What were you doing? What is that?"
He doesn't lift his eyes from it. "I was building a portable transmat with a bio-mech platform. This is a portable transmat with a bio-mech platform."
It's strange. He'd quite liked it here. It was all he had ever known. Whenever Rose talked of leaving, of finding the Doctor and Romana, he could never really make himself care. It was something far off and misty; people he didn't know, couldn't identify with.
But now, the idea of going back to the village, carrying on with his life, seems intolerable.
But the fact remains that they will have to.
The woman steps back inside.
"Finished? I thought you might find the knowledge." She carries a small bag and a much bigger bag.
"Not quite. I don't know how to finish it."
She takes it from Matthew.
"Not bad. Must have a strong link there. Well, I say not bad, I wouldn't have a clue how to construct it. Never got the chance to learn. But I know the basics, what should be there. I think this is enough to transport three people. I think you need to calibrate it though."
"How do I do that?"
"The bio-mech platform?"
"Here."
She quickly presses his pointing finger against a spike. Two drops of blood fall.
"There."
Matthew retrieves his finger and sticks it in his mouth.
Rose looks between the two.
"What is going on?"
"He misses you. Go to him." She shoves the small bag at Rose.
"You know the Doctor?"
"I never knew your Doctor."
"When did you meet him?"
"I met him six years ago. He has yet to meet me."
She turns back to Matthew. "This should activate it, just hold and think."
Lydia interrupts. "What's happening? What are you doing? Who are you?"
She answers with a question of her own. "Are you going?"
"Going where?"
"To find their Doctor."
Lydia flounders. "I…I…the library…"
"Do you realise you're the only ones within a few hundred miles with a library? I'll bring Daphne to keep an eye on it. She's always wanted to go."
"But… but we can't just disappear…"
"Would anyone miss you if you went?" Lydia looks down. "Would you miss anyone if you stayed?"
"Please come," Matthew whispers.
Lydia looks at Rose uncertainly. "Rose?"
"What kind of historian turns down a chance to travel in time?" Rose smiles, "What kind of friend needs to ask?"
"An uncertain one…oof." The wind is knocked out of her as her bag is shoved at her.
Rose looks between Lydia's bag and hers. Is this the sum total of five years? She looks between Matthew and Lydia. They are the sum total of five years.
"Are you coming?" It seems only polite to ask her along.
Blond hair flies as she shakes her head. "I chose to stay here."
"Well…" Well, what? Well, thanks? Thanks? It seems so inadequate.
"Well, thanks…" Rose trails off with the realisation that she does not even know her name.
The woman smiles. "Delta. My mother named me Delta Astra."
Delta! So many questions explode in Rose's mind, but Matthew has already activated the device and she can no more remove her hand from the device than regenerate.
Her last sight is of Delta dropping her shawl to the ground, revealing the patterns of Gallifreyan text swirling across her shoulder.
Then they are ripped away.
xxx
The Doctor first conscious awareness is of complete and utter contentment. He feels warm and safe and happy. He can just lie here and luxuriate; he's not going to risk shattering the illusion by opening his eyes. After all, this is a very rare occurrence.
However he seems to have other ideas. His mind has left the cocoon of drowsiness and is well on the way to full alertness, running quick checks, tracing the path of events that have led to this.
His eyes fly open and meet a pair of twice-familiar brown eyes.
"Finally. I was just getting bored." Only the look in her eyes betrays her worry, quickly banished by relief. She had woken up perhaps ten minutes earlier and had just reached the 'what if I've killed him?' stage when he woke up.
"Romana! You're alright!"
"I'm always alright!" She screams with glee as he sweeps her up and dances around the med-bay.
Jack had been in the kitchen, making yet more coffee when their laughter echoed down the corridor. He hadn't known he could run that fast especially after a sleep-deprived, worrying-himself-sick week.
Romana spots him in mid-air, over the Doctor's shoulder.
"Jack!" she shrieks. The Doctor whirls around and she throws herself at him. He's not sure whether she touched the ground between him and the Doctor. He thinks not.
He swings her around. "Ro-Ro!" She doesn't even care.
It takes them sometime to hear the ringing phone over their wild exclamations and shouts of laughter. They are wonderfully, riotously happy; the stresses and frustrations of the previous week relieved. Laughing for the sheer joy of being alive and well together.
The Doctor dashes over to the wall and hits the button. He got tired of having to run to the console room every time to answer the phone. Most times it had stopped by the time he got there. Now the Tardis phone can be answered from any of the main rooms. He had been quite pleased with the idea, even more pleased when it actually worked and didn't blow out their communications and leave them stranded in the vortex.
Jackie Tyler's voice fills the room. "How long does it take to answer the phone? I thought that was the idea of all those big buttons."
The Doctor interrupts. He hasn't the faintest idea what she actually said, he recognised the tone. The only other thing he registered was the owner of the voice.
"Jackie!" he says delightedly, "Romana's okay!"
"Okay? Why wouldn't she be okay? What have you been doing now?"
Over on the other side of the room, Jack and Romana wince.
xxx
Half an hour later, the Doctor finally presses the button again.
Jack sticks his head around the door, shock on his face. "Silence. And after only half an hour. What happened? Did she get instant laryngitis?"
"No. She decided to save it so she could scream at me to my face."
"London, then?"
"London."
The Doctor strides to the console room. Romana is curled up in his chair, eating a banana. The banana skin will probably be used in conjunction with a joke played on Jack later, even though officially, it might still be Jack's turn as the Doctor fell prey to his revenge rather than Romana.
"Where are we going?"
"London."
"Why?"
"Two reasons. One, your grandmother's hand has a quick, sharp appointment with my face, after we tell her the whole story. And two, what day is it the day after tomorrow?"
Romana hops off the chair and promptly trips over her scarf.
The Doctor sighs, loudly.
"What?" She stuffs the banana skin into her pocket. Yes, Jack will definitely be encountering it later. "I haven't worn this for a week."
"That doesn't count. You have been unconscious for the past week. Is that what it takes to separate you from it?"
"Perhaps." She wanders over to the calendar, stuck on the inside of the interior door. Jackie had made it quite clear what her feelings would be if they turned up one day, having aged five years in one month or so. So they try to mark days as Jackie does. Occasionally, they visit Earth and discover they're a day or two out, but they have been keeping meticulous dates since their last visit, in awareness of the approaching date. Even this past week, Jack has been marking a day off every night cycle. Jackie would be furious to miss Romana's birthday.
"Yay! Boo."
Jack wanders into the console room. "Yay, boo?"
"Yay, it's my birthday. Boo, I missed an entire week of present-hunting."
"You've got ten minutes."
Romana runs from the console room. She'll find them in the first place she looks, but she won't actually get to touch them till her birthday. The Tardis enjoys playing hide and seek with her presents. As soon as she finds some, they'll disappear. The only problem was on her 4th birthday. The Doctor, fiddling with the circuits, accidentally caused the Tardis to forget where they were. So she, the Doctor, Jack and Jackie all played Hunt the Presents. And in an infinite timeship, that was no easy task. Luckily, they were hidden in a more-used room. Otherwise, they might have had to declare them lost, and they would have become one of those things that turn up years later.
Jack scowls. "And boo, I have to wait to revenge my hair." At the Doctor's surprised look, he explains "Can't play tricks on the birthday girl, can I? That's not fair."
He pulls a stick of celery from his pocket and holds it against his chest, where his lapels would be if he wore a jacket with lapels. He adopts what he probably imagines to be a posh English accent. In fact, it's the worst accent spoken by a Tardis traveller since Rose in 1879 Scotland. "That's just not cricket."
The Doctor pales as Jack pulls a small book from his other pocket. He knew this day would come. It was simply inevitable. One book, an infinite sentient timeship to hide it in, Jack Harkness looking for it. He's found his album of past selves.
A/N: I am now completely sick of the summary that says nothing about the story and the wildly wrong genres. So I am asking you, my wonderful reviewers, the people who actually read this story, please tell me what you think. Please. I am famously indecisive and need your help!