~10~
The Doctor knocked at the cottage door twice, but there was no response. Rose peered in through one of the windows.
"I can't see anything," she said. "'S'all dark – I don't think anyone's home."
The time lord soniced the door and pushed it open gingerly, walking in with caution.
"Hello?" his voice echoed a little in the hallway. "Anyone here?"
Silence.
"Rose," he called back, "you were right, it's empty!"
Impatient to investigate, The Doctor walked into the first room without her.
The room gave the impression of somewhere recently vacated. There was a dark spot on the carpet where a chair would have been, and a similar one on the wall, marking the place a picture once hung. An old radio had been left behind, still plugged into the wall. Without thinking, the Doctor went over and turned it on, smiling as Nancy Sinatra's voice crackled out.
"Rose, come listen to this!" he called, before moving into the next room. "Classic 1966!"
'You keep lying, where you oughta be truthin'…'
It was almost exactly the same as the first one.
"I love this song," the Doctor yelled out to his companion, singing along, "you keep loosin' where you oughta not bet… Don't you love this song, Rose?"
'Now what's right is right, but you ain't been right yet.'
There was a green, metal box in the corner, fit with a small black button.
"Teleport router," he muttered, turning it over in his hands, before putting it back down again, "so where's your controller?"
'These boots are made for walking…'
The Doctor stood up, realizing that his friend still hadn't followed him.
"Rose?" he called again.
'And that's just what they'll do….'
He stepped outside.
Rose was gone.
'One of these days these boots are gonna walk over you...'
A small wave of panic hit him.
Looking around a little frantically, the Doctor tried calling out again. She didn't appear.
The Doctor rushed back inside, hoping she'd walked into another room, and he'd somehow missed her.
'You keep playin' where you shouldn't be playin', and you keep thinkin' that you'll never get burnt...'
He pushed open every door, but she wasn't behind any of them.
'Well I just found me a brand new box of matches, and what he know you ain't had time to learn…'
With a yell of frustration the Doctor ran back out into the street, determined to find out where she'd gone.
'Yeah these boots are made for walking, and that's just what they'll do… One of these days these boots are gonna walk all over you.'
The Doctor almost knocked over an old woman, who was walking her dog, in his haste to reach her.
"Sorry," he said, sounding puffed, "but you haven't seen a blonde girl have you? 'Bout this high, quite pretty, wearing a purple shirt?"
The lady shook her head. "I'm sorry dear," she said, "but the only other person I've seen today is Mr Michaels down at the butchers."
He nodded, still catching his breath. "Right, thanks anyway," he said, and began his run down the street again.
Usually he would have been far calmer about the situation, muttered something about wandering off and called out for a few more times (probably sounding like a lost puppy), but there were too many worrying, confusing things happening in this village. He ran through them in his head…
1. Them getting pulled here in the first place.
2. His sonic screwdriver.
3. That cry for help.
4. The fact that the alien technology he'd found was a teleport router, which meant that there could be aliens popping in and out all over the place – as long as they were in range, of course. That did help to explain why they didn't reach the mystery shouter in time…
5. That odd echoing in his head, which still wouldn't go away. In fact, it was getting worse. And it was very confusing. He'd had a stronger link to the TARDIS ever since his regeneration; he supposed it was a side effect of taking in the time vortex from Rose. But now the link was confused, as if it was bouncing around, deflecting off things… It sounded as if there was more than one whisper, and it was giving him a headache. The Doctor hypothesised that his link would become normal again when he next regenerated, and for the first time, that didn't disappoint him.
The Doctor could have accepted all of these mysteries fairly well, been intrigued and excited to crack them, but Rose disappearing made everything feel much more sinister.
He stepped back into the pub they'd bought chips in, and walked over to the bar.
"Excuse me," he said to the barman, "my friend, the one I was with before, you haven't seen her, have you?"
"Not since you left," he shook his head. "But she can't have gone far, we don't have that much room here," he laughed, turning back to his cleaning.
Frustrated and more worried, the Doctor decided to go back to the TARDIS.
Rose still had her key with her. Maybe he could trace her through that.
He practically sprinted over the field, not wanting to waste anymore time. He closed the door behind him quickly, walking up to the console.
"I should have waited for her to come in," he muttered to himself, "I should have gone out and checked on her…"
The Doctor pulled out his own TARDIS key, and was about to use it to get to work, when there was a knock at the door.
Surprised, he walked back down the ramp and opened it. As he pulled it open, he couldn't help but say a hopeful "Rose?"
The door swung open the rest of the way, and the Doctor's eyebrows flew up.
Standing in the doorway, looking back at him with an apologetic grimace was the very last face he expected to see… His own.
~11~
"Tell me what to do," the Doctor said.
The tough looking man in front of him nodded, and walked closer to him.
"We were on Castellan Prime," said the man in his thick accent, "wanted her to see the human empire in all it's glory… but there was a bit of trouble with this woman, Aurelia. She'd stolen technology, done experiments on other species. She worked out a way to see timelines, see what was fixed and in flux, all the possibilities."
The Doctor's mouth went dry. "Like a Time Lord," he said quietly.
The other man nodded gravely for a moment, before breaking into a smile. "Stopped 'er, don't worry. But she took Rose," the smile vanished again. "She saw her timeline before I took it out of her… Wanted to… to study 'er."
The Doctor saw his hands clench, and felt his own start to do the same.
"But she must have got it wrong, must have thought she was in the wrong time, 'cause the way she was talking 'bout Rose," he continued, "'s like something that hasn't happened to 'er yet. I mean, why would she wanna study an ordinary human?"
The Doctor swallowed, moving his long fingers anxiously, not wanting to reveal the future. The future of Rose Tyler, the ordinary (though of course, she'd never been ordinary to him) girl who'd stared into the time vortex and become a goddess. The woman who'd brought life and death, who'd seen all of time and space, and had still stopped to kiss him.
That was the future Aurelia must have seen. The future she'd mistaken for Rose's past.
He couldn't reveal that.
But the man in front of him, angrier and far more scared than he was willing to let on, deserved to know something. He would need something. The Doctor knew that, because he remembered being him.
The ninth Doctor waited for his response.
"Well?" he said, patience cracking under the strain of his fear, "why has she been taken from me?"
"Something happens," the older Doctor replied slowly, "in the future."
The leather-clad man rolled his eyes. "Yeah, I worked that out already, thanks."
The eleventh Doctor frowned. He'd forgotten how abrasive he could be in that form. But he knew he should be patient. After all, he'd just lost Rose. And they could both feel that this wasn't meant to happen. The older Doctor's lack of memory of this was testament to that.
He hesitated, not sure what he could reveal.
"I don't how much I can tell you," he said, voice quiet, "but Rose changes. She's safe, we protect her, but she does change." He annunciated every word slowly, putting light pressure of each syllable, trying to stress importance in each one.
His past self frowned. "How?"
The Doctor ran a hand through his hair, looking away. "I can't tell you," he said quickly, "you know that."
He saw his old body look him up and down again, the same disapproving frown as before.
"How much older are you?" he asked, crossing his arms.
He gave a small smile to his past. "Quite a bit," he said softly.
"Is Rose," the younger man hesitated, "is – is she still with you?"
The small smile became sadder, and the older Doctor looked at his feet for a second, before meeting his past eyes again.
"No," he said, honestly.
The other version of him looked down at his own, much larger feet, and put his hands in his pockets, before meeting his future eyes, mimicking the other man unintentionally. Then he nodded.
"She wouldn't leave me," he said. It was a statement, not a question.
The eleventh Doctor, knowing this was going into dangerous territory, spun around to face the two other people in the room. He didn't want to say anything about Rose's departure, partially because it still, somehow, stung, and partially because he wouldn't put it past himself to try and change it, and that might stop her from getting her forever with the other him.
"Now," he said, once more full of energy, "would someone like to explain how you two got here?"
"They were with me," the northern Doctor said, walking forward to stand next to him, "not that I wanted them there," he added gruffly.
The woman rolled her eyes. "Like I told you back on Castellan, Doctor," she said, "the C.P.C.A has been trailing Aurelia for years – we weren't about to stay behind and let you make a citizen's arrest!"
The younger Doctor rolled his eyes back, crossing his arms again.
Eleven noticed for the first time that the two aliens were wearing matching green uniforms.
"C.P.C.A?" he questioned.
"Castellan Prime Central Authority," the nervous looking man said, "I'm Tithos, and this Katia."
"I'm the Doctor," he responded, straightening his bow tie and stepping forward.
"You'd be better taking it off," the other Doctor commented, looking at the piece of fabric in distain.
"Oh, come on, U-Boat captain," replied his future self, "I look cool."
"You're really both the Doctor?" asked Tithos, looking amazed. "I thought he was winding me up."
"Nope," replied the Doctor, "same man. I'm just a bit older."
"Older?" Kastia smirked. "You look younger than me!"
"I am looking good," he said smugly.
He turned back to his past self. "You still haven't explained how I can help."
Nine nodded. "Aurelia might not be able to see timelines anymore, but she still has a lot of stolen technology from the Time Agency. She's using it to somehow hide outside of time… My ship managed to trace her back here, but we couldn't get any further than that."
"You need help working it out."
"And I'm a genius, me, so I figured there was only one other person smart enough."
Eleven smoothed down his jacket smugly. "I am a genius," he agreed.
"I got the TARDIS to pull you 'ere," his other self continued, "the signal got a bit confused for a while, like it was splitting in two - I was worried she might not have done it."
"Never underestimate that ship."
Nine smiled proudly, agreeing, before his expression shifted, remembering their purpose. "So," he said, "since she did succeed, we need to bring your TARDIS closer to us… Katia reckons she saw you arrivin' on the field, an' that's not too far away, shouldn't take long… By the way, did you find my sonic screwdriver? Baby face over there dropped it out there when we arrived," he nodded at Tithos, who squirmed uncomfortably.
The other man frowned, confused.
"No," he said, taking a few nervous, awkward steps, "I landed in the village."
The other Doctor frowned back.
Katia looked between them with concern. "Hang on a minute," she said, "you said the signal split in two… Could that mean?"
The eleventh Doctor turned to her with an expression between amusement and apprehension.
"Big ears over there brought someone else to the party," he said.
Nine looked embarrassed for a second, then straightened his leather jacket, running towards the door.
"Where are you going?" his older self called out.
"I'm gonna find 'im! He can help us get Rose!"
Eleven sighed, running a hand down his face.
"This is like Omega all over again," he muttered.
~10~
The Doctor stared dumbly out at his past self, still in shock.
"Right then," the younger man said, looking him up and down, "not exactly what I would've hoped for, but better than bow-tie back there."
The Doctor stepped aside automatically; letting his past self walk into the TARDIS.
"How far into my future are you?" the other man asked. "Can't be too far if you've kept the coral."
"Next regeneration," the Doctor finally replied, putting his hands in his pockets. "So how- how did you get here?"
"I pulled you here," Nine replied, leaning against the console, "not on purpose, mind, only meant to get one… But now you can help."
"Help with what?" Ten frowned. "I don't remember this."
"Neither did bow tie," remarked Nine, "this wasn't meant to happen."
Ten swallowed.
"I've got my own problems," he said suddenly, walking back over to the console to start the trace again, "Rose is in trouble, and…"
Nine pushed himself up quickly. "But so is my Rose," he said, "That's why I need your help."
They stared at each other, both feeling even more worried than before.