Author's Notes: I do not own Doctor Who, the Doctor, the Duplicate Doctor, Rose or Madame Kovarian. Thank you for the reads and follows and reviews. They mean a lot to me, honestly. So, please enjoy this chapter and let me know what you think! Thanks!
John woke up to the sound of screaming in the wardrobe. He stirred, recognizing it wasn't the sort of life and death screaming he was accustomed to.
He walked in to find Donna, struggling to find an outfit. She turned as she tried to zip up a dress.
"Look at this!," she said, pointing at her baby bump. "Nothing fits! Did this thing get bigger overnight? Is this some Time Lord thing you failed to warn me about? The sudden inability to fit into your own clothes?"
"You don't look any bigger than you did last night," said John.
"My breasts are enormous," muttered Donna. "Not that they were ever small... It's like trying to keep cantaloupes in here."
"I think they're lovely."
"Yes, well, you are a tit man," said Donna. She struggled to work back out of the dress. "I have to find something to wear to work."
John helped her pull the dress back down over her bump and kissed her on the shoulder. "You are beautiful."
Donna sighed. "Maybe I can go to work in my dressing gown."
"Don't you have something left over from Josh and Ella?"
"That was nine years ago, John. Besides, I gave them to Nerys."
He looked around and pulled out a wrap dress. "What about this?"
She appraised it. "If I wear a cami to cover my chest, it may do." She gave him a peck. "Thanks."
John started getting dressed in his small section of Donna's walk-in wardrobe. She seemed to have clothes for everything here: evening gowns, work outfits, home outfits, mum at school outfits, jewelry, shelves of shoes, towers of hatboxes and two drawers of lingerie that John was quite fond of.
"I need to shop for new clothes anyway," sighed Donna. "I'll have to ring my personal shopper and tell her it's an emergency." She faced him as she tied the belt of the dress over her bump. "I'm having no luck for finding a school for Ella."
"Are you certain you want to split her and Josh up?"
Donna shook her head. "I don't see that I have a choice. I can't even find anyone willing to hear me out, there's not a space at a bloody priivate primary school in West London and the bloody Notting Hill council woman put me on a waiting list. I think I heard her laughing as I left. I should just buy a bloody school and not let any of thoses bitches enroll their children."
"It's almost September, Donna."
"I know..." Donna put her head in John's chest. "She's going to have to go back there, isn't she?"
He stroked her hair. "She'll be fine."
John didn't relish his job at this moment.
Interrogating the members of the Silence they had rounded up at the warehouse was extremely slow going. For one thing, they weren't exactly a talkative bunch. They gave one word answers and they certainly had nothing to say about what the Silence were doing on Earth and what they might want.
Then sometimes the ones who spoke didn't seem to know anything.
John sat in with Gwen for their latest chat with a young man called Ephraim. He was one of the more talkative ones who didn't seem to know much of anything.
John put the eyepatch down in front of him.
"What's that for?," he asked, pointing at the eyepatch.
Gwen and John studied him carefully. He picked it up and held it like an Alzheimer's patient who had forgotten what car keys were meant to do.
"I don't know," Ephraim finally concluded.
"You don't know?," asked Gwen.
"No."
"Then why were you wearing it at the warehouse?"
"Was I?"
"We've had enough of these games, Ephraim," said Gwen. "It's about time you level with us."
"Do you remember putting it on?," John asked softly. He was currently playing good cop. Everyone played good cop to Gwen.
He nodded. "Long ago. When I joined the Silence."
"What was that like?," asked John, ignoring Gwen's roll of her eyes. "Why did you join? Must have been a big decision."
"The prophecy."
"And what's 'the prophecy'?," asked Gwen.
This Ephraim seemed to know by heart, "On the fields of Trenzalore, at the fall of the eleventh, when no living creature can speak falsely or fail to answer, a Question will be asked, a question that must never, ever be answered."
"Eleventh what?," asked Gwen.
"What's the question?," asked John.
"The oldest question in the universe, that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight."
"What's that then?," asked John.
Ephraim looked at John, practically boring holes into him. "You don't know?"
"The question," started John, writing on the dry erase board in the main room of the Extraterrestrial Desk, "question, question, question. Oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight."
"Why did the chicken cross the road?," proposed Gwen.
"How much vermouth in a good Martini?," asked Jack.
Amy smiled at the proposed questions. "Silence will fall when the question is asked," said Amy. "That's all I know. Never got anyone to actually say what the bloody question is."
"Wait, do they want the question asked or not?," asked Jack.
"Secret of the universe, you'd think they would want to know," said Adeola.
"Why is it a secret?," asked John. "If it's in plain sight, why is it a secret? Some fundamental truth, obscured by time?" His voice trailed off and he began frantically writing on the board. "Anyway, let's go over what we do know. The Silence has memory proof aliens that absolutely no one can remember seeing? Correct?"
"Correct," said Amy. "I must have seen them hundreds of times and I have no idea what they look like."
"They are at war with the Time Lords. They tried to create their own Time Lord..."
"John," said Jack.
"Uh-huh?"
"You're writing in Gallifreyan."
John looked back to see that he was in fact writing in Gallifreyan on the board. "Sorry. Thought I'd forgotten how to do that."
"It's all circles," said Gwen. "How can you possibly tell what that's meant to be?"
John shook his head. "I didn't think I could anymore. My brain may be part Time Lord, but the human bits, trying to process it all, I thought this had gotten pushed out."
"So, isn't that a good thing? You haven't lost it?," asked Amy.
John nodded. "It is." He sighed. "Wait a minute."
The four watched in confusion as John erased a portion of the board to start writing in what looked like cuneiform. He stopped, seeming satisfied with himself.
"What is that?," asked Jack.
"That's the preamble of The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey in Old High Gallifreyan. I had to write it as punishment most of my first year at the Academy. I can't believe I can remember that, too."
"Got something you can write in Low Gallifreyan?," teased Gwen. "Some dirty words or something?"
"That's really weird," said John. "Adeola, let's go to the clinic. You can give me a scan."
"A scan?," asked Adeola.
"What?," asked Amy. "Something must be wrong because you can remember what you did in primary school?"
"Humor me," said John, popping the cap back on the dry erase marker. "If my brain is about to explode, I think I should give Donna fair warning."
John came out of the scanner room. It had been a long hour, made longer by his complete inability to not talk and stay still. Adeola looked up at him, not a little perturbed.
"All clear. Same brain you've always had."
John cleared his throat. "Since I've had a brain..."
She looked at him quizzically.
"Anyway," said John, "still doesn't explain my sudden ability to remember and use High Gallifreyan."
Adeola shrugged. "It doesn't mean anything. Old memories awaken, it's what they do."
"Not for me. I forget."
"Sorry, John, but your head is not going to explode. You are going to have to spend the rest of your life as human as the rest of us."
"Silence will fall when the question is asked..." John pondered again. "The oldest question in the universe, hidden in plain sight..."
Life at the mental hospital was not pleasant for Rose Tyler. There were twice daily individual therapy sessions with a psychiatrist who just did not understand how much the Doctor truly loved her. Then she had a daily group therapy session where drug addicts and manic depressives looked at her like she was the mad one when they were so clearly the ones with problems. Twice daily she had the same arguments with the nursing staff over medication. There wasn't anything wrong with her, she didn't need it. Throw in the odd puzzle making or art therapy and the constant barrage of the Noble Family of Networks, that name a constant reminder on the corner of the telly and that was Rose's routine.
Rose was not getting many visitors at the mental hospital these days. Life was like that when you alienated what few friends you had made in a new universe and when you made a point of telling your parents to bugger off. Jackie still visited in spite of herself and even though there was nothing to be gained from such interactions.
Madame Kovarian was her only consistent visitor, coming once a week to offer comfort and of course, ask probing questions.
"When you came to this universe, you had a key to the Doctor's TARDIS, didn't you?"
"Yeah," said Rose. It was her last link with her old life, her real life, travelling with the Doctor, the life that she was supposed to have, not Donna Noble. She was supposed to be with the Doctor.
"I think you always carried it, didn't you?," Kovarian prodded. "I think you always kept it safe as a reminder of the Doctor."
"Yeah," said Rose so softly it was barely audible. But Kovarian understood what she had said well enough. "I always had it. Everywhere. It's the only real thing here."
"Do you have it now?," asked Kovarian.
Rose looked up, suddenly curious. "Why? Why do you need it?"
"It will help us locate the Doctor, it carries a signature from your universe to help us get there. Use the key to track it back to its source, the TARDIS."
Rose looked behind Kovarian and thought she saw something, she looked back at Kovarian, startled.
"I, I don't have it," Rose said.
"Are you lying, Rose?"
"No, never!" She sighed. "I left it at Torchwood, security took it when I got banned from the building. The committee said the perception filter shouldn't be left in my hands," she finished with a disdainful roll of her eyes.
"Well, then," said Kovarian, "we'll just have to get it back, won't we?"
"Yeah," said Rose.