Disclaimer: Don't Own.
"You're coming with us," the Doctor said, tagging at her heals as she stormed out of the main building and into the maze of tents. Suddenly, she stopped and rounded on them. Her gaze sharp as she stared down the Doctor. As a superior power, as if he wasn't even on her level.
"Of course I am," She snapped, "Now, where did you park your TARDIS?"
Rose let out a snort of amusement once she caught up, "Park? When does he ever park the TARDIS?"
"Hey! I can drive the TARDIS just fine!" the Doctor sniffed.
"Right, right, just show me where you crashed." Then she kept on, walking faster than all of them.
They followed her out.
"Doctor, how does she know you?" Rose peered up at him curiously.
"She was one of the people who taught me at the academy when I was young." He wasn't ready to tell Rose everything. "That woman's a sadist."
"Sounds like a teacher I had during Secondary School," Rose groaned, "Projects and essays every other day. The tests were awful."
"No, I mean she was literally a sadist. If we didn't do what she said or went against the rules, she'd beat us into submission."
"That's awful!" Rose exclaimed, that anger from earlier lighting up again. This woman was making her bipolar. It was like Time Lords had a special ability to twist someone's emotions with just a look. She knew that the Doctor had that sort of talent. Then the thought of him being a child, big ears and nose all, made her giggle.
"It's not funny! She made us take apart, clean, put back together, and configure a teleportation unit in one day!" There was an exhilarated gleam in his eyes.
"She was your favorite teacher, wasn't she?" Jack grinned as they exited the empty tents. Rose's eyes widened, there wasn't even a trace of the bodies anymore. She leaned over and gingerly picked up a bullet casing. It reminded her so much of the wars on Earth.
"How'd you guess?"
Rose tucked it into her pocket. In an odd way, it was soothing. A reminder of home was a reminder of home, no matter how destructive.
Her gaze flicked up to see the Professor on one knee on the ground. "Professor…?"
"Just honoring the dead, Rosie," the Professor said as she got up, brushing invisible dust off of her jeans, "the value of life is sacred. So it's only proper." She gave a salute to the flags of the two species before they were sucked into the ground. "Now about your TARDIS. I finally understand why the ancients called it a Great Blue Temple. What'd you do to break it?"
"I didn't break her, she just got stuck like this and I liked it, so I didn't fix it." The Doctor said, "And why are you here?"
"You all saw that meeting," Her American accent ringing, "I'm a registered member of the Intergalactic War and Peace. I actually try to know and follow the laws of the Shadow Proclamation, Doctor."
The planet shook roughly.
An ear piercing ring came sharply through the air.
The Professor let out a loud, frustrated scream and whirled around to face the Doctor. "We'll talk later, right now we need to get in your TARDIS."
"Of course, of course," the Doctor was already working on opening the TARDIS. Rose and Jack raced in, the Professor right on their heels. That orange suitcase wobbling along behind her. The Doctor slammed the door shut and was at the console within a blink of an eye.
"Operating a TARDIS by yourself?" She almost seemed impressed as she stepped up to the controls, "And an old girl at that."
"Mind giving a hand?"
"You don't even need to ask, thief." There was a hungry look in her eye as she stepped up to the controls.
"Ah, that's not nice," He gave a sly smile.
"You know I'm not nice." She shot back.
"Doctor, why aren't we trying to save the planet?" Rose asked, feeling an unexpected flash of possessiveness and jealousy stemming from the familiar banter.
The Doctor and the Professor shared a look. He raised a brow at her.
"What matters is that y'all are getting out of here." The Professor said, "I'll go back and… fix what's going on there."
The Doctor moved his lips, but no audible sound came out. The Professor glared at him, then sighed.
"There's a crack in the universe, the planet is going to be absorbed into the crack. It's an artificial planet, all wire and hardware at the core. No life forms or organisms." The Doctor quickly explained, tossing the strawberry-blonde his mallet.
"And since war planets are plentiful, it won't be a big sacrifice," the Professor continued on, "but that just means the crack will stay there and wait for a larger energy source. Once you three are landed, I'm going to go fix it."
"How're you—" the Doctor glanced down before a grin spread across his mouth, "Oh, you clever girl. How'd you make the entrance so small?"
"I'd like to say that I bought her off a midget, but that would be a lie." The Professor cast an affectionate glance at her bright orange suitcase. "Her entrance is actually a lot bigger, but I am quite… paranoid. She's with me, wherever I go."
"But wouldn't that just mean she's easier to steal since she's so compact?" Jack broke in, catching on to what the time lords were talking about.
"When she's not in my hands, she's heavy. Very heavy." She slammed her fist down onto a jammed control.
Rose, however, was not catching on. In fact the entire conversation had taken a turn down gibberish lane and hadn't taken the U-turn back to English. Proper, cockney, English. "What are you talking about?"
"And here I thought you were clever," the Professor pulled away from the controls to cast Rose a mildly disappointed look, "shouldn't put much faith in the human mind."
"That doesn't answer my question." Rose stated, her teeth grinding again behind her big lips.
"My TARDIS, Rosie, my TARDIS," the Professor sighed, glancing over a screen. "Prepare for landing."
The TARDIS began to make that air scraping sound and the Professor's brow pulled together, "That doesn't sound right…" But she didn't have the time or patience to fix it since the landing was safe and sound.
"Well, it was nice to catch up. Sort of. Not really." The Professor walked over to her suitcase and quickly unzipped it, pulling it open, "Don't look for me. Don't find me, If you find me, I will shoot you. Got that, Doctor?"
"Wait, you can't just leave!" Rose called out as the other woman crawled into the suitcase.
"I think that's what—well—No, the Doctor isn't curious at all." The Professor argued sarcastically with herself, "Doctor, would you like to see inside my TARDIS?"
"Go into a TARDIS inside another TARDIS, sure, I'll give it a go." The Doctor said then he turned to Jack and Rose, "Just wait here for five minutes."
"I'm not sure we can handle that, Doctor," Jack said sarcastically.
"Your companions can come in too." The echo of the Professor said. Then it gave Jack a nice view of Rose's rear as she crawled in.
"Only for a minute," the Professor said as she pulled at her own controls. To say that her TARDIS looked like the Doctor's would be like saying two people looked exactly the same. Two people of different races, ages, and countries. The floor wasn't a basic iron lattice but a see through glass covering an intricate wire working with a gravity belt, it was moving since the Professor was on it. There were branches coming down from the ceiling and connecting to the circular walls. There were staircases leading off in random directions.
Then she walked toward the Doctor. Or where he was. While she was at the console, he had gone exploring.
"Ah, you two!" The Professor said, pointing at Rose. Jack had wandered off. "Well, just you then, Rosie, you know the Doctor pretty well. And you know that Jack boy, so which way d'ya say they'd go?"
"I-I dunno," Rose stuttered, following the older woman around as she glanced up the stairs and into the hallways, "the Doctor likes to tinker with things a lot so if there's an underneath."
"That sounds like him, thanks, hun." The Professor slipped down the stairs and hanging upside-down. "Stop messing with my baby, unless you want a cap in your ass."
"I'm just looking, wouldn't know what to touch anyway." The Doctor retorted, not looking at her. His arms snapped behind his back.
"Liar." Several wires were swinging about. "Rosie, left upstairs, second hallway, third door on the left is my closet. I'm pretty sure that's where the Captain is. Please go get him."
"But-ah-Doctor?"
"Go on, Rose."
The Professor flipped herself up and glanced back, making sure that Rose had gone up the staircase and disappeared from sight. She pulled out her compact and scanned up the stairs.
"Well, that's a good girl you have there," She commented dryly, going down the stairs to be on even ground with him.
"How are you alive?"
She was silent for a moment then looked up at him, "I took my family away from Gallifrey before the war started—"
"You mean there are others alive?"
"I don't know," She stared straight into his steely eyes, "It's possible."
"What'd you do?" He grabbed her upper arms and pulled her closer.
"You should be able to figure it out." She squared her jaw.
"You're alone on this TARDIS, it only lit up when you walked in—"
"My husband had a TARDIS, as did my oldest son and youngest daughter." She interrupted.
"But you had other kids without TARDISes." He insisted, "Where did you leave them?"
"I'm. Not. Telling. You."
"Why. Not?"
"You are the Vashta Nerada hiding in the shadows to my children," She grabbed his upper arms in return, "All of them know about the war, but they don't understand why. Now they see you saving the universe and think you're trying for repentance."
He simply glared down at her.
"Don't you realize it, Doctor? To us, you're terrifying. You conquered an army of Daleks and destroyed our home planet."
"I've looked all over the universe and I haven't found any of us. Except you. Why would I only find you?"
"You tell me," Her voice dropped to a whisper, "We're very good at hiding."
"You…" He stared at her, pressing his lips together, "I didn't recognize this face. How old are you?"
She almost snickered at his sudden change in subject, "That's pretty rude of you to ask, but I'm about 910 years old. My seventh face. And you?"
"Nine hundred, ninth face." His eyebrows were raised in surprise, "If this is only your seventh face, how're you…?"
"I'm rather fond of my bodies, thanks, so I had my biological clock slowed down during my second incarnation. And, for the most part, I've had to regenerate because of old age."
"That's cheating," He couldn't stop a chuckle.
"Life's not fair, so why should I play by the rules?" She glanced away, her fingers pinching his leather jacket. "When you leave my TARDIS, you have to promise me that you won't follow me and won't look for me."
"Why?" He asked, then his eyes flashed, "A crack in the universe, you said you were going to fix it—"
"It's the only way to keep them small, no promise me." She gripped his arms tightly, her eyes wide with urgency. "Please just leave. Forget you met me. Now go back to your TARDIS."
"What exactly are you planning on doing?" It only took a look for him to understand. "Don't you dare."
"Don't you try and stop me," She hissed, his hands were tight iron bands around her biceps.
"Just tell me you have some sort of plan for this." His sharp gaze searching her brown eyes for a shred of something positive.
She raised a brow, "Would that reassure you?"
"Yes, yes it would."
"Then no," She pulled out of his grip, "I don't have a plan."
Then she walked up the stairs and to her console.
"Fantastic," the Doctor murmured under his breath, following her up. Jack and Rose had been standing there silently. Jack beamed at him and Rose just gave a sheepish smile.
"Y'all can leave now," the Professor said rather abruptly, already back on the gravity belt, "be quick about it and I'll forgive you for eavesdropping."
"It's not like we could hear anything anyway, but you two did look pretty cozy." Jack grinned.
"Oh, only catching up with ages and gaces, Captain," the Professor said, the belt whirring her about to the other side of the console.
"And how old are you, Professor?"
"Wouldn't you like to know." The belt came to a stop, she was grinning.
"So when I ask, it's rude, but when he does, it's not." The Doctor huffed.
"He's charming, you're not."
Jack winked, "So I've been told."
The belt stopped abruptly and the Professor grabbed the railing, she looked at Jack up and down, then to Rose, "Good, you didn't steal anything. Now leave." Her TARDIS hummed and she stroked the railing gently.
"Are we going to see you again?" Rose asked, taking a few steps toward the console.
"Probably not," the Professor tapped her fingers on the bar, then she shed her jacket and threw it onto the railing, "but you never know. He has my TARDIS's signature, so you never know."
"But you two are the last of your kind," Rose said, her lower lip quivering, "Wouldn't you want to stay together?"
"How naïve," the Professor chuckled, "You babies…I'm not sure why the Doctor took you two with him, but he is definitely not lonely enough to desire my company." Then she made a shooing motion. "Now leave." They didn't move a muscle. "Get on! Get!"
"C'mon you lot," the Doctor said, ushering the two toward the door.
"Goodbye, Doctor."
He turned to look over his shoulder at the woman. Then he gave a small frown, "Goodbye Professor."
With that, he left, the door sealed itself.
From the outside, the Doctor, Rose, and Jack stood a healthy distance from her TARDIS as it whirred and slowly disappeared. Immediately, the Doctor jumped to the console.
"What's she doing, Doctor?" Rose burst out as his TARDIS made the vworping nose.
"She's going back to the war planet and opening up the crack." The Doctor said quickly, bringing down the heavy mallet again, "And she's going to feed it something powerful so it will close."
"You think she's goin got feed herself to the crack?" Jack asked, gripping the console so that he wasn't sent flying.
"Maybe, unless she—oh, she's clever!" The Doctor exclaimed, grabbing a lever and pulling it all the way down. A path of lights following its descent down. The loud scraping sound against frozon air came again. "Right, Jack, go to the main control room, center of the planet—here's a map—" He tossed a holographic panel to him, "Rose, you're with me. Everyone got that?"
He was met with silence.
"Fantastic!"