Disclaimer: I own merely my story-notebook. Oh, and my imagination - though to be truthful, sometimes I do wonder whether my imagination's the one in charge.
So, so, so sorry about the long wait. I swear, it's all my school's fault. Seriously. But I finally got round to it, and (although next chapter is going to be so much more awesome!) it's not all that bad, in my opinion. P It may not be very action-packed, but trust me, it's so important. As you'll find out.
NTMR (Notes to my reviewer(s)):
-Josie: Yeah, the character reference was Mrs Moore - she told the Doctor her real name was 'Price' and that she had a family, and I missed her. Look out for more references - I love them, and my favourite one's coming up soon. ;)
Chapter 7: Not Quite Just A Dream
Martha smiled to Suzie as she slipped behind the desk that morning.
"Where were you last night?" she asked. "Half an hour I waited for you at that pub! You didn't answer your phone or anything!"
"Sorry." Suzie replied expressionlessly. "I was busy."
"Well, you could've called." Martha retorted, but the conversation seemed to end there.
"Look, I wanted to ask you something." Martha began nervously. "You might think I'm crazy, but…what're all those zeppelins doing, exactly?"
Suzie looked blankly at Martha, as if recovering thoughts hidden deep inside her mind. Then she relaxed and laughed. "Tell me about it." She turned away, still speaking, and started to check in the line of employees that had appeared behind the desk. "Half the time I wonder the same thing. Apparently they've been investigating it, ever since Mr Tyler and the People's Republic took control, up there at the top of the tower."
Martha nodded, wondering what exactly the People's Republic was, but Suzie hadn't finished talking.
"'Cause I think most of us want them gone - the zeppelins, I mean - but the government's still arguing. Not much of a People's Republic if the people don't get a say, is it?" she joked. Martha smiled back, but then turned to her computer and frowned.
'Since when has there been a People's Republic for government in England?' she wondered. 'Not that much could have happened in three years.'
But she cast the thought away as Suzie began talking again. "But Torchwood's been fighting for them to go, 'cause of the whole Lumic thing. First thing Mr Tyler wanted to do when he took over. But five years on, and still nothing's happened."
Martha started, looking to Suzie disbelievingly. "Wait - five years?"
Suzie didn't spare Martha a glance, still checking people's identity cards as they came up to the desk. "Yeah, five years. What about it?"
Martha swallowed and turned back to her computer screen. "No, nothing. Just…nothing."
"Okay, so maybe this isn't 2011." she muttered to the screen, absent-mindedly trawling through the records she was supposed to be updating.
- - - - - - -
Rose entered her office at midday to see John stood in the middle of the room, hands in his suit pockets, staring at the walls sadly.
"How was yesterday?" he asked, not turning to check if it was her. "I heard you came in for the day.
Rose walked up to him and stood by his side.
"I wasn't here." he continued. "Had to go to some conference in Wales. Very boring, you'd have hated it."
Rose smiled weakly. "Yeah, well, I persuaded my mum to let me come back. And I don't know why, but she let me come back in this afternoon as well, thank God. I don't know what I would've done if she'd kept me in that house any longer."
John chuckled, and then looked at Rose. "First time I've been back here since…you know." Rose nodded understandingly. "It's weird," he continued. "I met him less than a month ago, but it feels like I knew him for years."
There was an awkward silence before Rose spoke. "Same here. I couldn't bring myself to come here yesterday."
John frowned. "What did you do then? All your work's in here."
Rose looked up at him but didn't answer.
"Upstairs?" he asked quietly. Rose froze momentarily.
"Yeah."
They looked at each other for a moment, trying to decipher each other's thoughts, before they were interrupted by the door swinging open. A woman's footsteps echoed in the room as Kate trudged slowly into the room. She stood next to Rose and sniffed sadly.
"He's really gone." she said quietly, and walked over to Mickey's section of the room. His large desk was cluttered with papers and folders, all strewn about the place in what Mickey had called his 'organised mess'.
"Just came for something." she muttered, as a way of explanation as she rifled through one of the pockets of Mickey's lab coat that was hung up on the wall next to the desk. She pulled out two small, silver earrings and held them tightly in her hand.
"First date." Kate murmured, the sounds bouncing off the walls. "I left them round his place and thought I'd lost them. He said he'd buy me new ones." She suddenly raised her free hand to her mouth and cried into it jaggedly.
She sat down on Mickey's chair for a moment to gather herself, and Rose and John walked over Rose's portion of the room to give her some privacy. Rose sat in silence on her desk chair and John perched on the side of her desk, looking at his shoes awkwardly.
Kate fell silent and opened her hand to reveal the two earrings. She stroked them gently and placed them in her inside pocket carefully. Wiping her eyes with a deep sigh, she noticed a large fob watch, lying discarded on the edge of Mickey's desk. Slightly confused, she picked it up and examined it. She couldn't remember Mickey owning a fob watch, but it must be his. It had beautiful, abstract indents on the front, and she caressed them softly, as if the slightest touch would break the object.
She was about to press down the button on the top of the watch when voices erupted in her ears.
"Time Lord." it sang out, a whisper louder than words. "Help me. Hide me. I'm trapped, kept inside the cogs."
She froze and looked around at John and Rose. Neither of them seemed to have noticed, or heard anything, for that matter. She frowned, and slipped the watch into her pocket silently. Then, after a moment of thought, she stood up straight, breathed out slowly, and walked out of the door, stopping briefly near Rose and John to say a hesitant goodbye.
John stood up uneasily, and walked over to the large desk in the centre of the room. Rose did the same, after a pause, and stood opposite John in the bland, white room.
"Had any more dreams?" she asked, in a vain attempt to brighten the mood, but John looked down, avoiding her eyes. The edges of Rose's mouth twisted up into a sly smile as his face grew slowly redder.
"I, uh, I have, actually." he muttered.
"Go on." Rose said teasingly, surprised at how easy it was to make fun of him.
"Well…" he looked up embarrassedly. "Uh, you were there, again. And I was there, I think. But as I said, I looked…different." He paused, but Rose didn't reply, anticipating what John would say next. He didn't speak again for a few moments, gathering his thoughts, and there was silence in the room.
Martha approached John's floor cautiously, unsure of whether she was allowed up here. She had arranged to meet with John for lunch, but he seemed to have forgotten. She was just glad that he 'remembered' them being good friends, so she wasn't going to complain. But she couldn't help but feel slightly wrong-footed, up here at the top of the building. She knew she didn't belong, but her curiosity had gotten the better of her.
Hearing John's voice from inside the room, Martha walked away from the staircase and pushed the door slightly open. She saw John leaning on a huge desk in the middle of the room, and Rose stood a few metres in front of him. Leaving the door slightly ajar, she ducked out of sight and pressed her ear up to the crack.
"And we were in this…uh, museum." John was saying to Rose, with the air of a man recounting something he didn't believe in the slightest. "In - in the future." He gave a small laugh before continuing. "We, uh, we got there in this…spaceship. The 'TARDIS'. And we - that is, you and I - we saw all kinds of dead aliens. 'Dalek', one of them was called. And it was, well, it looked like a giant pepper-pot!" He said it as if it was the most ridiculous thing on Earth, but Rose was hanging on to every word. There was a stony silence as Rose stared into John's eyes.
"Have you been up there?" she asked, suddenly cold. "Who let you in?"
John froze, unaware of what to say or do. "I-I'm sorry?"
"Did you take my key?" she asked indignantly, rummaging around in her pockets. She pulled out a silver key on a long piece of string and paused. "Okay…no, then. Sorry." she muttered, keeping a firm hold of the key. "But how did you get in there? Just tell me!"
John still didn't know what to do. "I-I don't - I'm not - I haven't…been up anywhere!" he stuttered. "W-What do you mean?"
Rose backed away a little, swallowing hard. "You haven't been…up there?" she asked him suspiciously. He shook his head frantically, standing up straight and edging towards her.
"The room upstairs?" he questioned, and he took her silence as a yes. "No! No, I would never -!" He didn't finish the sentence though, because at that moment, Rose rushed out of the room, not even noticing Martha as she slid to the side to get out of the way.
She ran up the final flight of stairs to the top level, rounded the corner, and forced the key into the lock on the door. Wrenching it open, she ran inside and slammed it shut behind her, leaned back onto it, and stared straight ahead. She gazed at the two levers by the clear white wall with distaste; she glanced over the hundreds of sheets of paper littered across the floor with mild interest; and then she walked across the room and sat down cross-legged, amongst the messy piles of paper.
Picking a sheet up at random, her eyes narrowed with sadness. It had been her seventh attempt at drawing the Gelth, and Gywneth, but had been thrown to the floor with anger on a particularly stressful day. She glanced to her left, stretched over, and pulled across a huge, red folder, filled to the brim with sheets of scrappy paper. She flicked through it, stopping at the section of pictures and writing from her visit to Van Statten's museum in Utah, 2012. She had found this section one of the easiest to remember, jotting down everything she'd felt, everything she'd done, in pictures, or diary entries, or just single words scrawled across pieces of paper.
But he'd known. John had known. And there was only one way he could know about all that - only one thing could explain all of this.
It suddenly dawned on her. He didn't just look like the Doctor. He had the same memories. The same voice, though he used it differently; he was definitely not as brave; and he didn't see things in the same way the Doctor did, but it was the same person. It must be. There was no other explanation. She didn't know how, she didn't know why, but she knew she must be right.
He was the Doctor.
Yay, the realisation finally hits! Not sure whether I've made Rose a bit thick for figuring it out so slowly, but the plot depended on it being dragged out even longer - as you can see, I didn't stick to it. But I know what I'm doing(ish), so don't worry!
What did you think? Bear in mind that, once again, it's very late at night (I blame my Maths teacher for giving me stupid homework), so sorry for any stupid mistakes. Please, please, please point them out. Especially anything about the People's Republic and/or the whole zeppelin thing, because I really don't get those bits. I'm just making it up as I go along. ) But hey, it's my story - nothing is sacred.