Part Two
Captain Jack Harkness set his jaw and looked the Doctor over. They were currently on Arubem Prime and were making their way through the forest toward where Rose's instructions told them to go. "So, do you think that we'll find Rose here?" The Doctor seemed to ignore him in favor of focusing on getting to their destination. "Doctor?"
"This is just our first step," the Doctor answered quietly. "And Rose won't be here."
"How do you know?"
The Doctor stopped and really looked into Jack's eyes. If the immortal man could die, he would be very afraid of the Doctor right then. Jack hadn't ever seen the Doctor look so haunted or lost since, well, ever. Not even before Rose had returned from the parallel world. The two of them held the other's gaze for what seemed like an age (but in reality it was only thirty seconds) before the Doctor turned back to the path ahead of them and continued on. The Doctor didn't say anything.
Jack was worried. Never had the Doctor been so quiet. And that was saying a lot, because he had met at least three other regenerations of the Doctor (it could've been more, but he wasn't so sure he'd met earlier regenerations or not).
"She's alive," the Doctor suddenly said. "But not here."
"Then why are we here?"
"Because this is where she wants us to start looking for her. Somewhere on this planet is something that will help us find her. Or find the people responsible for taking her from me on Olympus."
Jack stopped and thought about what the Doctor had said. Rose really wanted them to waste time in searching for clues on a distant planet while she was captured, and most likely getting hurt while she was at it?
"She can handle herself, Jack."
"But how do you know she's not here?"
"Our bond," the Doctor hissed. "I can feel her, but only barely. I know she's still alive, and that's it. If we were in the same vicinity, I would be able to follow our link and find her. I can't do that here."
"Oh." Jack looked downcast and continued after the Doctor. He didn't know, and really didn't understand, the Doctor's marriage bond to Rose. "I didn't know."
"It's not something we advertise." The Doctor took in a deep breath and paused as the two of them came up on the camp they had been heading to. "But the good thing is that I know that she's still out there somewhere. And she will know that I'm coming for her." The Doctor reached into his coat and pulled out the instructions sent to Jack and added, "This gives me hope that we'll find her, because she wrote them. In Gallifreyan."
Jack smiled slightly. He knew that the Doctor had only really taught Rose Gallifreyan after she had returned to him from the parallel world. "Shall we find out why we needed to come here, then?"
The Doctor gave his friend a ghost of a smile and nodded.
NTLNTL
Every inch of Rose's body hurt as the guards dumped her back in her cell. She curled into a fetal position on her side and protectively laid her arms across her belly and where her unborn child lay. It had been five months since she'd been taken from Olympus: three months since she found out she was carrying a child (and just over one and a half since she started to show); and still the Doctor hadn't found her, hadn't rescued her from this living nightmare. He didn't even know that she was pregnant, and here she was, afraid that she was going to lose their child.
"Are you sure she's a telepath?" the master of the ship asked as he looked down on Rose's prone figure.
"I felt her when we took her from Olympus."
"Was it her, or the thing she's carrying?"
The head jailer frowned and walked over to where the broken woman lay. They had tortured this woman repetitively for the five months they'd had her in their possession, and yet, there was not one shred of evidence that Rose was in any way telepathic.
"I was sure it was her. I heard a woman's voice in my head as we scouted the area, and heard her calling out for someone named 'Doctor' when we took her."
"But she hasn't shown any signs since."
"No. Perhaps you are right, and it is the thing growing in her."
The two men left Rose lying half dead on the jail floor and locked her up. Again. She heard the lock slide into place and couldn't bring herself to care.
Susan looked horrified at the condition her friend was in. The two women had formed a bond over the months they'd been trapped together, and more so since they both worked out they were connected as family. Both had shared stories of their past, and their respective experiences traveling through space and time with the Doctor. Even though Susan hadn't quite forgiven the Doctor for the loss of her son, she still cared about the man and was thankful that he was still alive out there somewhere. What made it worse for her, though, was hearing about the loss of Gallifrey and the effect that had on the Doctor's wellbeing. And Susan had to admit, what she'd heard from Rose made her thankful for the younger woman's presence in her grandfather's life.
Looking over at the still form of her friend, Susan was worried what the loss of this remarkable woman would do to her already devastated grandfather. "Please, Rose, tell me you're still alive. For Grandfather's sake, I hope you're still alive."
Rose groaned softly and clutched her stomach. The guards had been particularly unbearable with their mental and physical torture that day. "Yes," she said and then winced in pain as a particularly sharp kick from the baby hit her injured ribs. Rose started coughing, and Susan didn't like the sound of her shallow breathing – and the sight of blood Rose was coughing up. "I'm still alive. But I really need to get out of here. I won't be able to handle much more of this before I have to regenerate."
"We've got to get you out of here before the baby comes. Or Rassilon help me, Grandfather won't be happy."
Rose laughed slightly, before she started coughing again. Oh, she already knew the Doctor would not be happy with the way these people were treating her. But for him to find out they also had his granddaughter – and unborn child – there would be hell to pay.
NTLNTL
The Doctor – in his fourth body with his long scarf and brown, curly hair – looked around the area just after he stepped out of the TARDIS behind Sarah Jane. "Ah, it's another ship," he said.
"Why did you bring us here?" Sarah Jane asked. "Haven't we had enough of space ships or stations yet?"
The Time Lord raised a bushy eyebrow and gave his companion a wide smile. They had just come from giving Harry Sullivan his first tour of space – and had managed to just escape the giant space ark. "We can never have enough of stations or ships as long as there's trouble out there, Sarah." He looked back over his shoulder at the TARDIS and called out, "Are you coming, Harry?"
Harry stepped out of the TARDIS. "Yes, Doctor."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "No shock this time? You know that we can move?"
"I wasn't expecting it the first time, Doctor. This time, though, I was." Harry looked around the immediate area. "This looks just like the last place you bought us."
"Except without the cold, and there are lights," Sarah Jane put in. "Again, Doctor: why are we here? Wasn't that Ark in Space enough for one space station? Couldn't we have done something like a planet?"
The Doctor moved to the nearest door. "Where's the fun in leaving now?" he asked. "May as well have a look around while we're here."
NTLNTL
Bad Wolf… Those same words from Satellite 5 and from Cardiff (the first time he'd gone to Cardiff with the 9th Doctor and Rose) were now on the databanks of the camp Jack was looking through. It seemed like the same two words were all over the files they needed to start bringing down the criminal ring that had taken their Rose. And Jack knew that she really did belong to both of them, even if the Doctor hated to admit it. Rose may have been the Doctor's wife, but she was Jack's sister first.
"How can those words be here now?" Jack asked. He hadn't ever been told what those words meant, and hearing them again after so many centuries since Satellite 5 really scared him. "What's Bad Wolf?"
The Doctor said one word in reply. One word was all that was needed. "Rose."
"Rose is the Bad Wolf?"
"Yeah. Back when she bought you back, at the same time she scattered those two words all over time and space to lead her back to us. But she's used the words a number of times since to give me hope, or a warning, that something big was happening." The Doctor quickly looked over the files they had found. All of it was for low level informants, product descriptions (thankfully Rose wasn't on that list – yet) and certain meeting points. At one of the descriptions, the Doctor's hearts stopped.
Woman, blond, late twenties, 1.57 meters in height, untrained telepath, respiratory bypass, double heartbeat.
Jack looked at the entry that the Doctor had stopped on and frowned. "What's so important about that particular woman, Doctor? I mean, aren't we going to try free all of these poor, unfortunate people?"
"We've got to find her first. And get her out," the Doctor said sharply. "She's family."
"Family?"
"My daughter." Oh, how those words just tumbled from his lips. It had taken him a long time to really accept that Jenny, a child of the machine on Messaline, was actually his before he thought he'd lost her. But now, seeing her statistics written in this machine for telepath slavers made him boil. And he knew then that this was the reason why Rose had him go to Arubem Prime first. He knew that though his main concern would be to find his wife, he also had another goal to keep him going: find and rescue Jenny.
"Where do we find her, Doc?"
The Doctor scowled at the nickname, but knew he couldn't change Jack's mind about it. He quickly looked up the meet point for Jenny's sale. "Pluto. And here are the co-ordinates. Let's go."
NTLNTL
Susan tried to ease Rose's pain. The guards had allowed her to be in the same cell as Rose once they had bought her back after another round of torture. She was worried. Very worried.
Rose was barely conscious, and after what the younger woman had said after her last round of torture, she wasn't sure what would happen if the guards actually managed to beat the Time Lady to death. Susan couldn't ever remember if there was an instance of a naturally born child on Gallifrey after the looming process had taken over the reproductive cycle. She knew that she had been loomed, just like both of her parents and their parents before that. In fact, she thought that by the time she had come into existence on her home planet, the looms had been in play for more than five generations.
No one had ever experimented with carrying a natural born child through the regeneration process.
Looking down at the now disfigured face of her closest friend, Susan wished for her grandfather to come soon. Or else she would never ever forgive him for leaving his wife and child to die in this miserable existence. "Oh, please hurry, Grandfather," she whispered as she tried to clean out the wounds that would surely scar.