Chapter Four:
"I'm trying to remember everything the Doctor ever told me about parallel universes, see if I can find a flaw somewhere." Rose said as Tosh continued running through mathematical possibilities on her computer. "It's not gonna be nearly as easy as it was last time. There's no holes to jump through, and we don't have the in between that we had with Donna last time."
Tosh scoffed. "Yes, because last time was so easy."
Rose rolled her eyes and turned upon hearing Gwen enter the room.
"Find anything?" The brunette questioned, handing Rose a cup of tea and placing a cup of coffee next to the computer for Toshiko. Both murmured their thanks, Tosh never taking her eyes off the screen. Sighing, Rose turned her attention to Gwen.
"We haven't found anything yet," she told her, balancing her weight on her left foot and caressing her tea. "Like I was just telling Tosh, we don't have the advantage of the universal walls being weak like last time. But, we do have the bonus of not having to start from scratch. Right now we're working on finding out how much we have to boost the power of the dimension cannon in order to break through to the other universe. Then we'll worry about reducing the damage and then a way to fix it once I'm through."
"And making sure you don't get torn to pieces in the process?" Gwen questioned.
"Still working on that." Rose replied with a cheeky tongue in teeth grin. Gwen chuckled nervously and shook her head at the team leader's seemingly little care for her own wellbeing.
"It'll be different without you around, that's for sure." She said before moving around Rose and over towards the table holding the old dimension cannon. "And I had so hoped we'd never have to use it again..." She mumbled in agitation. Toshiko laughed behind her. Getting the cannon working had been a difficult task for all of Rose's team and a number of other Torchwood employees as well. But luckily, because of who Rose's father was, she was able to enlist some of the best help she could get in regards to the mechanics as well as the cost of the supplies required. Sometimes being an heiress has it's benefits, she had thought to herself. Now she only hoped that she could find a way to make it work once again.
"I suppose I've been delaying long enough, haven't I old girl?" The Doctor asked as he stroked the TARDIS console fondly. The ship gave an excited whir in reply to which the Doctor whacked the console. "How can you be so excited? Ood Sigma told me 'my song would be ending soon'; how is that not in the least bit foreboding?" In response, the ship let out a small sound as if to console the Time Lord. Sighing, the Doctor stood up from his spot on the jump seat and began inputting the coordinates that would take him back to the planet of the Ood.
"Well, here we are!" The Doctor stated as the TARDIS materialized on the snowy ground. "No more delaying I'm afraid..." He added with a sigh before smiling brightly and running towards the door as if he wasn't in the least bit troubled. "Off we go!" Grabbing a Stetson off the railing, he headed down the ramp and poked his head out the big blue door to see Ood Sigma waiting for him a little ways away, translator ball in hand.
"Ah! Now, sorry. There you are. So, where were we? I was summoned, wasn't I? An Ood in the snow, calling to me." He greeted before trailing off absentmindedly. "Well, I didn't exactly come straight here. Had a bit of fun, you know. Travelled about, did this and that. Got into trouble. You know me. It was brilliant. I saw the Phosphorous Carousel of the Great Magellan Gestadt, saved a planet from the Red Carnivorous Maw, named a galaxy Alison. Got married. That was a mistake. Good Queen Bess. And let me tell you, her nickname is no longer. Ahem. Anyway, what do you want?" The Doctor asked Ood Sigma following his short rambling.
"You should not have delayed." The Ood replied scoldingly. The Doctor shrugged before replying.
"The last time I was here you said my song would be ending soon, and I'm in no hurry for that."
Without giving a reply, Ood Sigma began walking in the direction opposite the TARDIS.
"You will come with me." The creature stated bluntly, continuing to trek through the snow.
"Hold on." The Doctor interjected, causing the Ood to pause and look at him. "Better lock the TARDIS." Pointing a small remote at the ship, the Time Lord pressed a button causing the light on top of the TARDIS to flash twice, accompanied by matching beeps. "See?" The Doctor asked in a amusement, looking at Sigma for a reaction. "Like a car. I locked it like a car. Like. It's funny. No? Little bit? Blimey, try to make an Ood laugh. So how old are you now, Ood Sigma? Ah-" The Doctor cut himself off as his gaze settled on the extravagant Ood city standing tall before him.
"Magnificent. Oh, come on, that is splendid. You've achieved all this in how long?" He questioned, turning his eyes to Ood Sigma.
"One hundred years." Sigma replied proudly, or as proudly as an Ood was able to. The Doctor's eyes shot quickly back and forth before the head Ood and the metropolis in which his species lived before releasing a sigh.
"Then we've got a problem, because all of this is way too fast. Not just the city, I mean your ability to call me, reaching all the way back to the twenty first century. Something's accelerating your species way beyond normal." He explained, his mind working a mile a minute in an attempt to explain the accelerated progress. Meanwhile, Ood Sigma stopped walking and turned to face the Doctor.
"And the Mind of the Ood is troubled." The creature informed him, turning his head to the side and blinking.
"Why, what's happened?" The man replied absentmindedly, still lost in his own thoughts.
"Every night, Doctor, every night we have bad dreams."
Startled awake by a loud yell, Rose shot up out of her chair and into a defensive stance, looking around frantically. After a few seconds, she realized that there was no threat and that she had simply fallen asleep at her desk at Torchwood. Slipping out of her attack position, Rose rubbed her eyes and left her office to investigate the noise that had woken her.
"Ianto?" Rose asked sleepily, stifling a yawn as she stumbled into the room holding the dimension cannon. "Is that you?" The young woman was met only with silence, causing her to look around questioningly. She waited for a few more moments and still nobody presented themselves. Crouching into an offensive posture, Rose slowly pulled out the gun she kept in her belt and made her way towards where the dimension cannon was being held. "Hello?" She called, but once again there was no answer. As she rounded the corner and laid eyes on the table, she froze and a bolt of panic made its way through her chest.
The dimension cannon wasn't where it was supposed to be resting on the flat black surface.
With a deep breath, Rose crept further forward until she was standing almost beside the table. Cautiously, she looked over to the other side of it and stumbled back in surprise.
"John!" She shrieked, causing the Doctor's duplicate to jump and drop the screwdriver he was holding. "What the bloody hell are you doing here?!" Putting her gun back in its holster, Rose examined the space behind the table. Spread out across the floor was a variety of different metal pieces, tools, wires, and many other miscellaneous objects, as well as the dimension cannon itself.
"What does it look like I'm doing?" John huffed, picking up the screwdriver he dropped and continuing to work at the small circuit board he was holding. "I'm trying to get your stupid dimension cannon working." Rose blinked.
"Why?" She questioned. A small flare of hope bubbled in the pit of her stomach as she watched the human incarnation of her Doctor fiddle with the circuitry. That hope was shattered however, when he shot her a glare and spat his reply.
"The sooner you're back with your precious Doctor, the sooner I can get on with my life." Rose flinched, trying to mask the hurt, but John was still able to sense that he'd hit a mark. "Besides, you need my help with this. You have no chance of getting to the other universe without my knowledge." This remark caused a spark of anger to flare up in Rose and she quickly started to defend herself.
"I managed to do it just fine the last time thank you." She snapped, crossing her arms across her chest. John just rolled his eyes and began installing the circuit board to the dimension cannon. Rose waited a few more moments for a response, but when she found that John wasn't going to grace her with an answer, she turned on her heel and headed back into her office.
Plunking back down onto her chair, she finally glanced at the clock to see what time it was. She started slightly when she saw that the clock on her desk read eleven thirty in the evening. Glancing around, she just then realized that the office was fairly dark and she couldn't hear anybody else around.
They probably all went home, she thought to herself as she stood up and made her way over to the coffee machine. She decided it was too late for her to drive home, only to have to come back again in the morning. Besides, someone had to keep an eye on John and make sure he didn't destroy the entire laboratory. Human or not, he was still the Doctor, and he tended to make a mess of things wherever he went.
No, Rose scolded herself, shaking her head as she put a fresh packet of coffee into the machine. John wasn't the Doctor, he was a man made up of his same memories and experiences. Although it could be argued that that made him the same person, Rose knew better. John was a human living in the shadow of a bigger man, and it was damn well time that she started seeing that. From the moment he was created and blew up the Dalek crucible, he was a different man. The Doctor said he was lost, broken; but that was wrong. John was an entirely different man from the wandering time traveller, a man who handled situations far differently than his doppelgänger. Besides, she had extra proof that the two men were not the same- the Doctor would never hurt Rose the way that John was hurting her now.
Picking up her now full coffee mug, Rose walked back to where John was fiddling with the dimension cannon and sat down on the floor across from him.
"How long have you been here?" the blonde woman asked, taking a small sip of her steaming beverage.
"Four hours." He responded without looking away from what he was doing. "My plan was to come here and fix this piece of junk while you were at home. But of course you had to fall asleep at your desk and still be here when I started working." Rose looked down at her fingers, curling them around her mug and taking in the excess heat through her skin.
"You've been here that long?" She asked with concern. John grunted in reply. More guilt flooded Rose's consciousness at the knowledge that she was the cause for yet another sleepless night for her now ex-boyfriend. While reason told her that it wasn't her fault that John was here, she still couldn't help feeling bad that he was, and so soon after she had broken his heart. "You should take a break."
John scoffed, picking up a pair of pliers from the ground next to him. "Taking a break won't get this cannon working any faster. Besides, I'm just about finished my modifications to the cannon itself, then all I have to do is finish the programming that Tosh started."
Rose stared blankly at John, unable to fully comprehend what he had just said. "You're almost finished... already? How is that even possible? It took us months to figure it out the first time, and that was with the interdimensional holes! Not to mention that the Doctor said crossing to parallel universes was impossible."
"Did the Doctor ever try to cross through parallel worlds?" John asked rudely, although he did have a point. The Doctor had always said that jumping across the void was impossible, and yet how many times had she done it now? True, the last time there were multiple gaps between the universes, but what about when Mickey and Pete had so easily come through when she was still in the other world? And the first time they travelled to a parallel reality, when the TARDIS had so easily just fallen through?
Rose shook her head. Thinking negatively wasn't going to get her anywhere in this situation. She needed to put those thoughts out of her head and be glad that John was going to have the cannon up and running so quickly. Besides, the Doctor had given her perfectly reasonable explanations for the ease of travelling between the worlds when had been done previously; she just couldn't exactly remember them. But then, the Doctor did like to ramble on and use big scientific words that did nothing but make Rose's head hurt.
"Whatever, it doesn't matter. I guess I'm just lucky that you decided to give me a hand. Thank you, by the way."
"Yeah, sure. Whatever."
The next few hours passed in mostly silence, the only noises being the occasional irritated exclamation from John or a small question from Rose. The young woman had attempted to make conversation a few times, but eventually gave up when John showed no interest in making small talk. Eventually, Rose drifted off to sleep again, this time on the cement floor of a Torchwood laboratory, using her arm as a pillow while she listened to John click away at keys on the keyboard.
"No, no, no, no, no," The Doctor mumbled quickly under his breath as he dashed back to the TARDIS, not caring that his favourite chucks were being soaked by the snow. "No, no, no!" The pinstripe clad man pulled out the same remote he used to lock the ship earlier as a joke and unlocked it, flinging the doors open without slowing down for even a moment. Dashing straight to the console, he began frantically pulling levers and flipping switches, stopping quickly to plug in his desired coordinates. There was no way, simply no way, that this was possible. It wasn't fair. He wasn't allowed to come back, not again.
The TARDIS swirled through the time vortex at a breakneck speed, sending miscellaneous items flying within its depths. The Doctor was pushing her, harder and faster than he ever had before. The usually playful ship was working her hardest to aid her thief, knowing how important it was that they arrived in the smallest amount of time possible.
Finally, the blue box jerked to a stop, arriving on the familiar ground of London 2009. Christmas.
Ironic, the Doctor thought, that all bad things seemed to happen on what was supposed to be the most joyous holiday of the human race.
Flinging open the doors, the Time Lord exited the TARDIS in a hurry only to stop and look around, inhaling deeply. A few blocks East, the Master did the same, sniffing the air and detecting his fellow Gallifreyan. Smirking evilly from his mountain of rubbish, the Master jumped down and grabbed a large iron bar before hitting it against an old oil drum.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
He paused before repeating the pattern.
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Here come the drums Doctor, he thought. Here. Come. The. Drums.
(A/N): Thank you everyone for reading! Please take a moment out of your day to drop a review! Please? Have a great week!
~JL